To quote a widely-used software development guideline document*:
"Well-written applications include error-handling code that allows them to recover gracefully from unexpected errors. When an error occurs, the application may need to request user intervention, or it may be able to recover on its own. In extreme cases, the application may log the user off or shut down the system."
Now, I figure encountering a nonexistent date may well qualify as an "extreme case." Still, a developer might want to at least think a bit about calendars before qualifying February 29th as nonexistent.
(* It's from a Microsoft Developer Guideline. I put that as a note, since if I started with it, I'd be suspected of troling).
Actually, the first "maps" of Venus were from '61.
They were done by bouncing RADAR from Earth -- I think it was using the Goldstone tracking station near Barstow, California, but it may have been the Arecibo antenna in Puerto Rico.
Using those original echo patterns, Richard Goldstein was able to do some primitive mapping of surface details, as well as determine the rotational period of Venus (not to mention discover the fact that Venus rotates retrograde).
Set general direction. Don't argue specifics unless your people are going off in a direction that directly contradicts project (client) requirements.
Consider your role to empower your people, not "control" them. I know that's a buzzword, but look past that. If you're hiring good people, let them do their jobs. Be sure to hire good people. Run interference for them. Buffer them from the vicissitudes of corporate politics whenever possible.
If you're not hiring good people, or not able to hire the people you want, or have inherited a group, it's much more difficult. But if you focus on letting the good people do their jobs, and possibly having them help the not-so-good people, you can get somewhere.
You can get a lot of mileage by publically giving credit to your people. When your management commends you for your department's work, be sure to mention by name the people who contributed. Giving praise to your people (almost) never costs you any credit for your group's accomplishments; it usually reflects even more positively upon you. Placing blame will always reflect badly upon you, regardless.
If you have people who are deliberately out to sabotage you or your people, it's again a bigger challenge. Play a lot of Diplomacy on your spare time. Read Machiavelli and Lao Tsu. Pray. Be ruthless. Play golf/poker/Counterstrike with the boss occasionally. Don't always win, but never make it obvious. Always be exceedingly polite to your enemies. Cite them as inspiration for your good ideas, without suggesting that the idea was theirs (e.g., "I asked myself what ___ would do, which lead to our implementing a flexible framework... blah blah blah").
Always be friendly to the people other managers neglect. Secretaries can wield incredible power. Janitors know more about what's going on in a company than anyone else, even if they don't speak the language. The box guy usually has stories to tell. If you're not the IT staff, make friends with them. Make sure they trust you. Don't abuse their trust (or ask them to monitor your enemy's email); they'll be helpful to you if there's a crisis. Treat people with respect. The lower they are in the food chain, the more they will value this, and you never know when they will be in a position to help you out.
If you have power, use it quietly. Never pull rank unless it's a very, very serious situation. Don't be ostentatious about telling people what to do. Whenever possible, phrase orders as requests. Thank people for doing their jobs well. Sure, that's what they're paid for, but they'll do a lot better work for you if they feel appreciated.
I find it a surprising assertion that "everything of value is gone" from India.
Perhaps one could make an argument that India was not profitable to the empire at the time of Independence, but I doubt you could prove that based on a purely financial definition of "profitable."
(I'd try to bring this back on topic by making some tenuous analogy between System 9 and OS X, but I'm undercaffeinated.)
I use Memo Plus on the Palm, which is merely a hierarchical notepad.
I have things sorted into a hierarchy that works for me.
But oh, how I would love a cross-platform product that offered deep integration with email, address book, bookmarks, calendar, and random notes, with multiple hierarchical and/or directed graph maps, and good search capabilities. In my fantasy world, it'd run on my PC and on my Kyocera smart phone, and would be compatible with stuff on both ends: Firefox, Thunderbird, the Palm address book, etc. If I didn't have a job, that's what I'd be building right now...
Gnupg and similiar encryption tools, combined with date and time stamping (perhaps even authenticated date and time stamping via ntp servers) could be deployed relatively simply and make data tampering virtually impossible (e-mails are certain to be real, and have been created on such-and-such a date, etc).
Ah, but they were written by someone who broke into your machine, used a keylogger to get your passphrase, and were sent by this other individual while you were out having a beer with your buddies.
Sure, you have a good record that the email was sent at 8:30pm, but, then you can't really prove that you were at the corner bar at that time. After all, will the jury believe the testamony of your drinking buddies, or a cold, cryptographically-secure computer log?
(Admittedly, this is less likely to be an issue in investigating a crime that has already been committed... but if it's a computer-related crime, the probability goes up.)
We've already seen a few kiddie-porn cases in Great Britain thrown out because the machines had been compromised, thus making it impossible to conclusively prove that the individual arrested was responsible for the crime.
But this points up a scary possibility, one which has already been hinted at in various places, which is that there's no robust trace of events. Once there's a backdoor in your system, there are a lot of things that can happen:
- secrets can be observed. - "evidence" can be planted. - activities can be spoofed.
Say you live under a repressive government, and somehow offend someone with 'l33t h@x0r skillz. You may find, for example, that you published a series of articles critical of the leadership. Yup, it came from your personalized copy of Word, and was sent from your IP address. If they've planted a keylogger, it could even be digitally signed with your PGP key. In a less oppressive environment, you might discover that you just mailed a collection of kiddie porn to the FBI.
Now the person screwing you could be some vicious script kiddie, but there's also the potential for abuse in the political world. Like the case in Malaysia, where an opposition leader was tarred with a faked sex scandal, political operatives can be neutralized by opponents through these means (please don't let Karl Rove read this posting!).
It may not be "particularly inspired," but it is original. It's not a copy of any other game. It does have things in common with other games, but then again, so does Wolfenstein.
OK. I shouldn't get defensive. There's no question: it's not an "absolutely mind-boggling" game. I think it's a good game, and some of my play testers really got addicted. But it's certainly no genre-definer, no revolution, nothing of lasting significance.
Believe me, I've tried to come up with a mind boggling game as hard as anyone else who hasn't succeeded. I'm still working on some ideas. But I'll be the first to admit that I haven't found that magical spark.
I did some work on an established, GPLed Palm OS game (version 1.2 of Space Trader). That was fun! So I decided to write another Palm OS game.
Hence "Flummox" was born. Frankly, it's been a pain in the ass.
Flummox was born as "Rigmarole." I did a name search initially, but I probably misspelled in Google, or confused which variant spelling I'd used. Boom! I got slapped by the Trademark owner of the Rigmarole game. While the slapping was a bit legalistic, it was appropriate; I was in the wrong. So I renamed the game Flummox.
In my description of Flummox on my Palm Gear page, I meantion that if you like Bejewelled, Tetris, or Marbles, you'll probably like Flummox. Well, Handmark has acquired the rights to Tetris on the Palm platform, and sent me an email cease and desist from mentioning Tetris in my page. While I'm clearly in the legal right (check the Lanham Act's statutory fair use provision, 33(b)(4), 17 U.S.C. 1115(b)(4)), they went around me and told Palm Gear they'd sue if my page wasn't taken down. Or so they say; I doubt they really needed to threaten, since they do a lot of business with Palm Gear. While it is enormously frustrating to me to capitulate to a big bully with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, it's not worth it to me to spend the time or money to defend my rights in this case. So I had to capitulate, and remove the word Tetris from my page. Palm Gear, however, kinda sucks, and never re-indexed, so if you search for Flummox on their site, you won't find it, even though it's there.
Now, enough whinging about my trademark troubles.
You'll need to advertise to get anywhere. Probably a lot. The Palm market is heavily saturated with games, and it's hard to get people to download your game. It's also hard to get any registrations (if you're doing shareware, like I am). I have yet to make back the price of the compiler. It could just be that my game is no fun. Still, among the test players, I had very positive feedback.
When it comes to the Palm OS, configurations are also kind of a pain in the ass. While I love the simplicity of the Palm philosophy, Palm OS is still an ancient OS model. No protected memory. No common standards (or APIs) for displays beyond the original 160x160. If you're going to run from the expansion card, you have to code carefully. There are a lot of gotchas from the evolution of the OS. Just because you can run on the emulator (or now the simulator), doesn't mean you won't crash on specific devices.
So, long story short, it's a challenge. It can be a pain in the ass. But it can also be fun. For all my bitching and moaning, I had fun working on both games.
- Palm OS 4.x on a 40 MHz Dragonball processor
or
Palm OS 5.x on a 200 MHz ARM processor
- Graffiti input* - 16 MB memory (or more) - MMC/SD or other memory expansion slot - Analog and Digital (prefer CDMA so I can get it on Verizon) - Decent digital network (Verizon's Express Network is the minimum acceptable) - GPS, available to the OS (not E911) - Color display** - Clamshell form factor - Decent speakerphone capability - Ability to record digital voice memos to the expansion memory in a standard format that I can synch to my PC/Mac.
* T9 predictive key-entry would be a good addition, too. ** Standard 160x160 is acceptable, 320x320 would be better.
I don't want a camera, since cell phone cameras suck. I don't really need Bluetooth. I don't need an MP3 player in my phone, although I don't object to it.
Is this too much to ask? In a stable platform that doesn't suck too much juice?
Failing that, I'd settle for a memory expansion on my 6035:)
How true. In my mind the Wikipedia is a collection of generally accepted truths.
You could make a strong argument that that statement could be applied to any body of knowledge, whether science or religion or literature.
In all cases, the prevailing collection of truths evolve, and are considered "true" based upon the community. There may be different standards for qualifying "truth" between communities, but the fundamental process is pretty much the same.
"Real" encyclopaedias rely on "experts." An expert is defined as someone who is acknowledged by a community to have deep knowledge about a field. Sometimes, that community comprises other people who know the field, so there is a high probability that the expert actually does have a good handle on the truth. However, sometimes the prevailing understanding within a community is wrong, thus the expert is the one who is furthest along this incorrect path.
As far as I can determine, this is an intractible problem.
Yeah, I spent years cracking the code from one of the consistent Number Stations that was operating off the coast of California, only to discover that they were transmitting the ascii-art picture of the goatse guy.
During the dotcom years, I remember meeting with a client who represented a company that was going to put 3d scanning stations in malls for this very purpose.
"It's simple!" sez their Marketroid. "You go into the booth, strip, get a full body scan, and then we upload the 3d model to our Microsoft Passport(tm)-like service. Then, any participating online retailer will be able to recommend sizes, show you how you personally would look in any outfit, and do dynamic upselling by showing how much better the Gucci looks."
They even had a plan to implement realtime draping/rendering software so you could get photo-realistic images of yourself in those clothes. They thought that boyfriends would finally be able to buy clothes for their girlfriends. They thought that geeks would start getting color coordination.
My first thought was: how many people are going to let some bizarre company photograph them in their underwear (or less), just so that company could better market to them?
My next thought was: nobody reads the disclaimer they sign. I'll set up booths in malls, and run a voyeur web site, and people will even pay to model!
My next thought was: Jesus, I've gone as insane as these lunatics. I need a drink.
Needless to say, they burned through a lot of money, and it never went anywhere. Some guys got some nice SGI hardware out of it for the software side. The "idea people" probably got nice fat salaries for a while, and then had to go back to selling life insurance or flipping burgers or something.
Yes, but to tie this in to the numbers that they're so hot to compare to...
Look at movies. Some movies do really, really well, even though they suck.
Internet discussion boards, email, and SMS reduce this phenomenon through widespread, rapid word-of-mouth. But people who buy games based on the box are probably similar to people who go into movies based on the poster (or maybe even the theatrical trailer).
So numbers aren't really telling a lie. They're just not telling you what you might think they're telling you.
Trabants, or "Trabis" to friends, were actually from East Germany.
There are a lot of pages online about Trabis, e.g., This one.
While being pretty damn bare-bones as far as automobiles, they do have a cult following. Smoky, noisy, small, yeah, sure, but they would get you from Point A to Point B.
And, as I can attest from personal experience, you haven't lived until you've been driven across a city the size of Budapest in a Trabi (during a rainstorm) along with half a dozen beautiful women pleasantly buzzed on Maibowle.
I'm guilty of 1) being a US citizen, and 2) not really knowing the structure of the bureaucracy.
I get confused easily.
Take police, for example. There are too many kinds of police to keep straight: there are local City police, there are county Sheriffs, there are Treasury Police (except they now are a part of the Secret Service). There are National Park Rangers who act as police, who, I believe are separate from the Park Police, also under the Department of Interior. There are FBI agents, there are DEA agents, there are BATF agents, and there are INS agents who are all police. There are police even in the Energy Department under the NNSA. There are federal Transit Police. There may be FEMA police, or Department of Agriculture police, or even NEA police, but I'm not sure.
To be a bit more serious, it's daunting. There are 14 Federal Departments, at least 69 Federal Offices, 40 Federal Services, 23 Federal Agencies, 20 Federal Bureaus, 44 Federal Administrations, 20 Federal Commisions, 12 Federal Boards, 2 Federal Authorities, etc. Understanding the whole structure is obviously desirable for a citizen, but it's a challenge.
just think about which branch of government is the only one universally respected by your average American.
Universally respected... not the Judiciary any more... certainly not the Executive branch... Legislative hasn't been respected since, oh, say 1777...
Let's think. Maybe you don't really mean "branch" of government. Maybe you're talking about Departments or Divisions.
OK. I'm trying here. Dave Brin claimed once it's the Post Office, but he's all wet.
... um...
I think most Americans respect the Census department. But I can't quite see them leading a coup. "Stand up and be counted!" Well, it does have a certain ring to it...
OK, I'm on the wrong track here. Maybe you mean universally respected in terms of Power.
Universally respected as a Force of Destruction, perhaps? Oh! I get it! You mean the IRS!
Slashdot Mirror
To quote a widely-used software development guideline document*:
"Well-written applications include error-handling code that allows them to recover gracefully from unexpected errors. When an error occurs, the application may need to request user intervention, or it may be able to recover on its own. In extreme cases, the application may log the user off or shut down the system."
Now, I figure encountering a nonexistent date may well qualify as an "extreme case." Still, a developer might want to at least think a bit about calendars before qualifying February 29th as nonexistent.
(* It's from a Microsoft Developer Guideline. I put that as a note, since if I started with it, I'd be suspected of troling).
Actually, the first "maps" of Venus were from '61.
They were done by bouncing RADAR from Earth -- I think it was using the Goldstone tracking station near Barstow, California, but it may have been the Arecibo antenna in Puerto Rico.
Using those original echo patterns, Richard Goldstein was able to do some primitive mapping of surface details, as well as determine the rotational period of Venus (not to mention discover the fact that Venus rotates retrograde).
(Goldstein's my Dad)
The problem with Hungarian, of course, is that it lies.
It's like the comments. They tell you what the programmer *meant* to do, not what he or she did.
Similarly, Hungarian notation tells you the *intended* scope, type, etc, but the compiler may have a very different view of things.
As I understand it is:
... blah blah blah").
Set general direction. Don't argue specifics unless your people are going off in a direction that directly contradicts project (client) requirements.
Consider your role to empower your people, not "control" them. I know that's a buzzword, but look past that. If you're hiring good people, let them do their jobs. Be sure to hire good people. Run interference for them. Buffer them from the vicissitudes of corporate politics whenever possible.
If you're not hiring good people, or not able to hire the people you want, or have inherited a group, it's much more difficult. But if you focus on letting the good people do their jobs, and possibly having them help the not-so-good people, you can get somewhere.
You can get a lot of mileage by publically giving credit to your people. When your management commends you for your department's work, be sure to mention by name the people who contributed. Giving praise to your people (almost) never costs you any credit for your group's accomplishments; it usually reflects even more positively upon you. Placing blame will always reflect badly upon you, regardless.
If you have people who are deliberately out to sabotage you or your people, it's again a bigger challenge. Play a lot of Diplomacy on your spare time. Read Machiavelli and Lao Tsu. Pray. Be ruthless. Play golf/poker/Counterstrike with the boss occasionally. Don't always win, but never make it obvious. Always be exceedingly polite to your enemies. Cite them as inspiration for your good ideas, without suggesting that the idea was theirs (e.g., "I asked myself what ___ would do, which lead to our implementing a flexible framework
Always be friendly to the people other managers neglect. Secretaries can wield incredible power. Janitors know more about what's going on in a company than anyone else, even if they don't speak the language. The box guy usually has stories to tell. If you're not the IT staff, make friends with them. Make sure they trust you. Don't abuse their trust (or ask them to monitor your enemy's email); they'll be helpful to you if there's a crisis. Treat people with respect. The lower they are in the food chain, the more they will value this, and you never know when they will be in a position to help you out.
If you have power, use it quietly. Never pull rank unless it's a very, very serious situation. Don't be ostentatious about telling people what to do. Whenever possible, phrase orders as requests. Thank people for doing their jobs well. Sure, that's what they're paid for, but they'll do a lot better work for you if they feel appreciated.
I find it a surprising assertion that "everything of value is gone" from India.
Perhaps one could make an argument that India was not profitable to the empire at the time of Independence, but I doubt you could prove that based on a purely financial definition of "profitable."
(I'd try to bring this back on topic by making some tenuous analogy between System 9 and OS X, but I'm undercaffeinated.)
To paraphrase Potter Stewart, Associate Justice, US Supreme Court:
"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material with a rigorous boolean expression, but I know it when I see it."
I use Memo Plus on the Palm, which is merely a hierarchical notepad.
I have things sorted into a hierarchy that works for me.
But oh, how I would love a cross-platform product that offered deep integration with email, address book, bookmarks, calendar, and random notes, with multiple hierarchical and/or directed graph maps, and good search capabilities. In my fantasy world, it'd run on my PC and on my Kyocera smart phone, and would be compatible with stuff on both ends: Firefox, Thunderbird, the Palm address book, etc. If I didn't have a job, that's what I'd be building right now...
Yes, pictures of dressed people.
And lots of pictures of people not having sex.
Or is that not lots of pictures of people having sex?
ObStoppard:
"I've frequently not been on boats."
"No, no, no - what you've been is not on boats."
I'm hosting a few sites with them, on the cheapest plan, and it seems to be pretty good so far.
Ah, but they were written by someone who broke into your machine, used a keylogger to get your passphrase, and were sent by this other individual while you were out having a beer with your buddies.
Sure, you have a good record that the email was sent at 8:30pm, but, then you can't really prove that you were at the corner bar at that time. After all, will the jury believe the testamony of your drinking buddies, or a cold, cryptographically-secure computer log?
(Admittedly, this is less likely to be an issue in investigating a crime that has already been committed... but if it's a computer-related crime, the probability goes up.)
We've already seen a few kiddie-porn cases in Great Britain thrown out because the machines had been compromised, thus making it impossible to conclusively prove that the individual arrested was responsible for the crime.
But this points up a scary possibility, one which has already been hinted at in various places, which is that there's no robust trace of events. Once there's a backdoor in your system, there are a lot of things that can happen:
- secrets can be observed.
- "evidence" can be planted.
- activities can be spoofed.
Say you live under a repressive government, and somehow offend someone with 'l33t h@x0r skillz. You may find, for example, that you published a series of articles critical of the leadership. Yup, it came from your personalized copy of Word, and was sent from your IP address. If they've planted a keylogger, it could even be digitally signed with your PGP key. In a less oppressive environment, you might discover that you just mailed a collection of kiddie porn to the FBI.
Now the person screwing you could be some vicious script kiddie, but there's also the potential for abuse in the political world. Like the case in Malaysia, where an opposition leader was tarred with a faked sex scandal, political operatives can be neutralized by opponents through these means (please don't let Karl Rove read this posting!).
Scary stuff...
It may not be "particularly inspired," but it is original. It's not a copy of any other game. It does have things in common with other games, but then again, so does Wolfenstein.
OK. I shouldn't get defensive. There's no question: it's not an "absolutely mind-boggling" game. I think it's a good game, and some of my play testers really got addicted. But it's certainly no genre-definer, no revolution, nothing of lasting significance.
Believe me, I've tried to come up with a mind boggling game as hard as anyone else who hasn't succeeded. I'm still working on some ideas. But I'll be the first to admit that I haven't found that magical spark.
I did some work on an established, GPLed Palm OS game (version 1.2 of Space Trader). That was fun! So I decided to write another Palm OS game.
Hence "Flummox" was born. Frankly, it's been a pain in the ass.
Flummox was born as "Rigmarole." I did a name search initially, but I probably misspelled in Google, or confused which variant spelling I'd used. Boom! I got slapped by the Trademark owner of the Rigmarole game. While the slapping was a bit legalistic, it was appropriate; I was in the wrong. So I renamed the game Flummox.
In my description of Flummox on my Palm Gear page, I meantion that if you like Bejewelled, Tetris, or Marbles, you'll probably like Flummox. Well, Handmark has acquired the rights to Tetris on the Palm platform, and sent me an email cease and desist from mentioning Tetris in my page. While I'm clearly in the legal right (check the Lanham Act's statutory fair use provision, 33(b)(4), 17 U.S.C. 1115(b)(4)), they went around me and told Palm Gear they'd sue if my page wasn't taken down. Or so they say; I doubt they really needed to threaten, since they do a lot of business with Palm Gear. While it is enormously frustrating to me to capitulate to a big bully with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, it's not worth it to me to spend the time or money to defend my rights in this case. So I had to capitulate, and remove the word Tetris from my page. Palm Gear, however, kinda sucks, and never re-indexed, so if you search for Flummox on their site, you won't find it, even though it's there.
Now, enough whinging about my trademark troubles.
You'll need to advertise to get anywhere. Probably a lot. The Palm market is heavily saturated with games, and it's hard to get people to download your game. It's also hard to get any registrations (if you're doing shareware, like I am). I have yet to make back the price of the compiler. It could just be that my game is no fun. Still, among the test players, I had very positive feedback.
When it comes to the Palm OS, configurations are also kind of a pain in the ass. While I love the simplicity of the Palm philosophy, Palm OS is still an ancient OS model. No protected memory. No common standards (or APIs) for displays beyond the original 160x160. If you're going to run from the expansion card, you have to code carefully. There are a lot of gotchas from the evolution of the OS. Just because you can run on the emulator (or now the simulator), doesn't mean you won't crash on specific devices.
So, long story short, it's a challenge. It can be a pain in the ass. But it can also be fun. For all my bitching and moaning, I had fun working on both games.
Is a step up from the Kyocera 7135:
:)
- Palm OS 4.x on a 40 MHz Dragonball processor
or
Palm OS 5.x on a 200 MHz ARM processor
- Graffiti input*
- 16 MB memory (or more)
- MMC/SD or other memory expansion slot
- Analog and Digital (prefer CDMA so I can get it on Verizon)
- Decent digital network (Verizon's Express Network is the minimum acceptable)
- GPS, available to the OS (not E911)
- Color display**
- Clamshell form factor
- Decent speakerphone capability
- Ability to record digital voice memos to the expansion memory in a standard format that I can synch to my PC/Mac.
* T9 predictive key-entry would be a good addition, too.
** Standard 160x160 is acceptable, 320x320 would be better.
I don't want a camera, since cell phone cameras suck. I don't really need Bluetooth. I don't need an MP3 player in my phone, although I don't object to it.
Is this too much to ask? In a stable platform that doesn't suck too much juice?
Failing that, I'd settle for a memory expansion on my 6035
You could make a strong argument that that statement could be applied to any body of knowledge, whether science or religion or literature.
In all cases, the prevailing collection of truths evolve, and are considered "true" based upon the community. There may be different standards for qualifying "truth" between communities, but the fundamental process is pretty much the same.
"Real" encyclopaedias rely on "experts." An expert is defined as someone who is acknowledged by a community to have deep knowledge about a field. Sometimes, that community comprises other people who know the field, so there is a high probability that the expert actually does have a good handle on the truth. However, sometimes the prevailing understanding within a community is wrong, thus the expert is the one who is furthest along this incorrect path.
As far as I can determine, this is an intractible problem.
From the Christian Bible, Matthew 26:41.
"Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak."
My old man, who works at JPL, says that the current phrase going around campus is:
"Spirit is willing, but the Flash is weak."
And people wonder why NASA's budget keeps getting cut.
Yeah, I spent years cracking the code from one of the consistent Number Stations that was operating off the coast of California, only to discover that they were transmitting the ascii-art picture of the goatse guy.
During the dotcom years, I remember meeting with a client who represented a company that was going to put 3d scanning stations in malls for this very purpose.
"It's simple!" sez their Marketroid. "You go into the booth, strip, get a full body scan, and then we upload the 3d model to our Microsoft Passport(tm)-like service. Then, any participating online retailer will be able to recommend sizes, show you how you personally would look in any outfit, and do dynamic upselling by showing how much better the Gucci looks."
They even had a plan to implement realtime draping/rendering software so you could get photo-realistic images of yourself in those clothes. They thought that boyfriends would finally be able to buy clothes for their girlfriends. They thought that geeks would start getting color coordination.
My first thought was: how many people are going to let some bizarre company photograph them in their underwear (or less), just so that company could better market to them?
My next thought was: nobody reads the disclaimer they sign. I'll set up booths in malls, and run a voyeur web site, and people will even pay to model!
My next thought was: Jesus, I've gone as insane as these lunatics. I need a drink.
Needless to say, they burned through a lot of money, and it never went anywhere. Some guys got some nice SGI hardware out of it for the software side. The "idea people" probably got nice fat salaries for a while, and then had to go back to selling life insurance or flipping burgers or something.
Jesus, do I miss those days!
Yes, but to tie this in to the numbers that they're so hot to compare to ...
Look at movies. Some movies do really, really well, even though they suck.
Internet discussion boards, email, and SMS reduce this phenomenon through widespread, rapid word-of-mouth. But people who buy games based on the box are probably similar to people who go into movies based on the poster (or maybe even the theatrical trailer).
So numbers aren't really telling a lie. They're just not telling you what you might think they're telling you.
Trabants, or "Trabis" to friends, were actually from East Germany.
There are a lot of pages online about Trabis, e.g., This one.
While being pretty damn bare-bones as far as automobiles, they do have a cult following. Smoky, noisy, small, yeah, sure, but they would get you from Point A to Point B.
And, as I can attest from personal experience, you haven't lived until you've been driven across a city the size of Budapest in a Trabi (during a rainstorm) along with half a dozen beautiful women pleasantly buzzed on Maibowle.
No, you're confused.
Prescott Bush was director of Brown Brothers Harriman, and owner of Union Banking Corp's stock back in the 40s.
He was Dubya's Grandfather, and the one who did all that business with the Nazi government of Germany during WWII.
I'm guilty of 1) being a US citizen, and 2) not really knowing the structure of the bureaucracy.
I get confused easily.
Take police, for example. There are too many kinds of police to keep straight: there are local City police, there are county Sheriffs, there are Treasury Police (except they now are a part of the Secret Service). There are National Park Rangers who act as police, who, I believe are separate from the Park Police, also under the Department of Interior. There are FBI agents, there are DEA agents, there are BATF agents, and there are INS agents who are all police. There are police even in the Energy Department under the NNSA. There are federal Transit Police. There may be FEMA police, or Department of Agriculture police, or even NEA police, but I'm not sure.
To be a bit more serious, it's daunting. There are 14 Federal Departments, at least 69 Federal Offices, 40 Federal Services, 23 Federal Agencies, 20 Federal Bureaus, 44 Federal Administrations, 20 Federal Commisions, 12 Federal Boards, 2 Federal Authorities, etc. Understanding the whole structure is obviously desirable for a citizen, but it's a challenge.
"It's a good thing we don't get all the government we pay for." -- Will Rogers.
Universally respected... not the Judiciary any more... certainly not the Executive branch ... Legislative hasn't been respected since, oh, say 1777...
Let's think. Maybe you don't really mean "branch" of government. Maybe you're talking about Departments or Divisions.
OK. I'm trying here. Dave Brin claimed once it's the Post Office, but he's all wet.
... um ...
I think most Americans respect the Census department. But I can't quite see them leading a coup. "Stand up and be counted!" Well, it does have a certain ring to it...
OK, I'm on the wrong track here. Maybe you mean universally respected in terms of Power.
Universally respected as a Force of Destruction, perhaps? Oh! I get it! You mean the IRS!