To quote Yahoo! news: "The last of the "Star Wars" movies has done what no movie in history has ever accomplished -- sold $50 million worth of tickets in a single day"
and... "It's staggering," said Bruce Snyder, president of domestic distribution at Twentieth Century Fox. "It's probably 20 percent more than I thought we could do."
and this is a gem of a quote: "Fifty million is a good opening weekend, let alone a single day," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations. "This is the box office equivalent of a 100-year flood."
And p2p apps like BitTorrent are hurting box-office sales? I don't think so.
Google is a fad and a delusion. I've come to this realisation only recently. Google isn't anything more than a search engine with alot of boring, unoriginal add-ons. I'm of the belief there really aren't any spectacularly smart people working at Google and there is no cohesive strategy to "take over the world" or "control all the information on the net". Judging by this steady stream of uninspired new features (Google desktop, accelerator, gmail, gmaps or whatever it's called), they will never be smart or innovative enough to bypass Microsoft Windows to create some sort of ubiquitous online operating platform - which I wish someone would do.
All this stuff is a distraction to divert users/stockholders attention from the fact there is no innovation and no strategy.
Google should support the "little guys" more
on
Gates on Google
·
· Score: 1
Why won't those smart people at Google headquarters make Google Desktop for Linux and Mac OS X? I'm not rippin' on Google - I use it for everything, a bigtime fanboy - but it's apps really aren't as cross-platform/platform independent as people say.
Linux seems to be revitalized as of late (I suspect it was the insurgence of Firefox) and it gave me a reason to go back to Linux after so many years. Wouldn't it be nice for Google to support open source as much as people say it does?
The good news was the four skydivers proved that an ad hoc wireless network using the Nintendo DS works perfectly at distances of 400 feet while falling 120 miles an hour...
The bad news is neither the Nintendo DS or the four skydivers bounce very well.
I can see SOCAN handing Bryan Adams a big fat check; monies accrued from the greedy hordes of music downloaders at iTunes. Yeah right.
Question is, if they were able to levy these tariffs, where would this money really go? Back to the artists? Into a legal fund? I doubt the artist would benefit one ioda from these taxes (much like Employment Insurance in Canada which is a huge ripoff taxgrab from the middle class worker).
The review isn't written any better or worse than your own comment DingerX. I found the review helpful because I've been hearing nothing but hype for the PSP and that review (the first negative one I've read) actually made me not want to buy it.
The review didn't have a vindictive tone, the author seemed lucid and intelligent and I never once thought he was "full of himself".
So not everyone shares your opinion. Should your remarks be downmodded into oblivion, or removed completely?
I'm using Zip.ca, a service identical to Netflix (who dosen't deliver into Canada), and the service is really cool. They've got a huge selection of movies - 30,000 or so, I've been able to satisfy my finical tastes - and there's no late fees, something I was having a problem with before. You build up a queue of 20 or so movies you'd like to see, and they mail you what's available from that list. It's kinda cool because you never know what kind of mix you'll get: I got the comedy "I'm gonna git you sucka", a documentary on deep sea aquatic life and the anime "Grave of the Fireflies"
I highly recommend the service (it's better than the trash on Satellite IMO).
Could these moves signal the beginning of a period of rapid improvement in Free drivers for video cards?
There's even open source hardware from the Open Source Project (OGP) coming out (info here and here, and the/. story here). for those who don't read the Developers section.
The PCI version is due soon, and reported to have resolutions up to 2048x2048, dual-link DVI and TV-out (but won't be capable of playing HalfLife2 or anything like that).
I have a solution: turn the computer off when it's not being used. I don't believe there is significant wear and tear on circuitry when you turn off and on a computer.
Actually, I don't believe a cpu running hot is particularly harmful either. Their designed to take alot of stress.
Some interesting facts I gleened from an article written by Tom R. Halfhill, an analyst for Microprocessor Report.
Fact #1: More's Law is not a scientific law, but and only an observation describing semiconductors pace of progress.
Fact #2: Intel cofounder Dr.Gordon E. Moore did not define Moore's law as it is understood today. He didn't even call it a "law" in the original article. Somebody else much later coined the now famous term.
Fact #3: Moore's law was never about processor clock frequency or other performance issues. Rather, it regards the economic manufacturing of component integration on integrated circuits.
Fact #4: Moore's law actually stated component integration doubles every 12 months - not 18 - and he actually ammended this prediction to 24 months. 18 months is a number seemingly drawn from a hat.
Fact #5: Moore's law is extremely inaccurate. Tom Halfhill estimates todays chips would have more than 27 trillion transistors, when in reality Intel's Prescott Pentium sports 169 million transistors.
Pure and simple, the PG-13 rating is meant to garner more attention and speculation. Otherwise, Revenge of the Sith's opening would be the worst ever for a Star Wars movie.
I was in a local band eons ago - called "Acid Toad Secretion", named after an incident when a teen licked a toad to get high and went into convulsions - and I personally did much of the booking and advertising. The reality is, whether your a recognisable band or not, club owners and journalists will not seek you out. There's enough demos and promo kits falling on their laps to keep them busy till the next millenium. Bands (ATS included) need to pound the pavement and make the cold calls for interviews and gigs. Networking with similar bands and share billings is also important. Make friends. Lot's of them. I found at least 50% of my time was spent on the promotional/networking aspect of being in a band, another (extremely annoying) 20% was spent on technical issues like soundchecks, soundmen, equipment... the remaining was the good stuff: actually jamming, rehearsing and making music.
It wasn't easy for us, but after a few years of hard work and patience we had our own following who supported us and dug our music. If the music is good, people will eventually hear about you. Posters and other schwag (no matter how polished and professional it looks) won't go very far nowadays. Word of mouth is the best form of advertisment, the rest will have to be done by lot's of gigging (which will make you better and tighter) and making those phone calls to any entertainment publication that will listen. Create a positive "buzz" where you live, and keep booking those shows. Don't ever let people forget about you. You'll find your band's rep is bigger and better than you actually are!
Yahoo has alot going for it. Their web-based email is arguably the best (as Johnny Storm/The Human Torch would say: "Flame On!"), they have geocities, web-based games even those with 33.6 modem can play, personals, chat, news and entertainment, etc... who actually uses Yahoo to find a website anymore? The people that frequent Yahoo are the nontechnical computer users (God bless 'em), whereas those who use Gmail, are members of Orkut and use the Google desktop are more likely powerusers. Two different crowds. Yahoo and Google hardly compete against each other at all.
Hey, at least Yahoo! didn't respond like AltaVista and completely mimic Google and their stripped-down page design (remember that?). It was startling and sad to see what was the most popular search engine a few years ago completely lose their vision and shrivel to almost non-existant mindshare as of today.
I think it's the economic climate nowadays. Canadians are carrying more personal debt than ever (I'd imagine US is the same), taxes are higher and income hasn't kept up with the price of inflation. The PSP is the apex of superfluousness (aha, I found my subject heading) at a time when everyone seems to be cutting corners and pinching pennies.
And it's all just PS2 games on a smaller screen. Big whoop.
A good operating system should automate any and all repetitous grunt work we've all done a thousand times before. Take for instance the whole driver rigamarole: searching, file retrieval and installing drivers should be done with nary a prompt, except for possibly a comfirmation (and even that should be optional). I'll also add highly configurable user/guest accounts to my list, and a streamlined, lo-tech version you can choose for that ancient PII system that most people have hiding in the cellar. Too much flash and polish can be off-putting too.
Guess what operating system best fits the description? Linux. The automated hardware identification and driver loading during installation on most distros is way underrated. XP Pro has a cool system restore feature (for when registry hacks go horribly awry... Linux could really use one of these) and it seems relatively stable (crashed a few times already) but Fedora Core had me off and running way faster.
XP Pro is hilarious. It forbade me from downloading the GIMP windows version, as well as a diagnostic tool recommended by a fellow Slashdotter. Why? Because they are open source apps. I realised there is a thin yellow strip at the top of the browser (I just installed XP the other day, so I'm still learning) that I have to click on to override the default security and actually download what I want.
I assume Longhorn will continue this prejudice against open source development.
Slashdot Mirror
To quote Yahoo! news:
"The last of the "Star Wars" movies has done what no movie in history has ever accomplished -- sold $50 million worth of tickets in a single day"
and...
"It's staggering," said Bruce Snyder, president of domestic distribution at Twentieth Century Fox. "It's probably 20 percent more than I thought we could do."
and this is a gem of a quote:
"Fifty million is a good opening weekend, let alone a single day," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations. "This is the box office equivalent of a 100-year flood."
And p2p apps like BitTorrent are hurting box-office sales? I don't think so.
Google is a fad and a delusion. I've come to this realisation only recently. Google isn't anything more than a search engine with alot of boring, unoriginal add-ons. I'm of the belief there really aren't any spectacularly smart people working at Google and there is no cohesive strategy to "take over the world" or "control all the information on the net". Judging by this steady stream of uninspired new features (Google desktop, accelerator, gmail, gmaps or whatever it's called), they will never be smart or innovative enough to bypass Microsoft Windows to create some sort of ubiquitous online operating platform - which I wish someone would do.
All this stuff is a distraction to divert users/stockholders attention from the fact there is no innovation and no strategy.
Why won't those smart people at Google headquarters make Google Desktop for Linux and Mac OS X? I'm not rippin' on Google - I use it for everything, a bigtime fanboy - but it's apps really aren't as cross-platform/platform independent as people say.
Linux seems to be revitalized as of late (I suspect it was the insurgence of Firefox) and it gave me a reason to go back to Linux after so many years. Wouldn't it be nice for Google to support open source as much as people say it does?
Comon Google! We want Google Desktop for Linux!
Why nickname Kevin Smith the "dirt devil"? Because that was the biggest suck up, kiss-ass movie review I have ever read in my life! Legendary!
I wish people would stop defending this ill written piece of trash advert and extolling Kevin's mediocrity.
The good news was the four skydivers proved that an ad hoc wireless network using the Nintendo DS works perfectly at distances of 400 feet while falling 120 miles an hour...
.500 ain't bad.
The bad news is neither the Nintendo DS or the four skydivers bounce very well.
Meh. Batting
I can see SOCAN handing Bryan Adams a big fat check; monies accrued from the greedy hordes of music downloaders at iTunes. Yeah right.
Question is, if they were able to levy these tariffs, where would this money really go? Back to the artists? Into a legal fund? I doubt the artist would benefit one ioda from these taxes (much like Employment Insurance in Canada which is a huge ripoff taxgrab from the middle class worker).
To avoid unnecessary banners and wasting bandwidth, click on page 4 at the bottom of the page. Page 4 has the screenshots of the monitor in action.
(Unless you want to see the other pics, and in that case knock yourself out)
The review isn't written any better or worse than your own comment DingerX. I found the review helpful because I've been hearing nothing but hype for the PSP and that review (the first negative one I've read) actually made me not want to buy it.
The review didn't have a vindictive tone, the author seemed lucid and intelligent and I never once thought he was "full of himself".
So not everyone shares your opinion. Should your remarks be downmodded into oblivion, or removed completely?
I'm using Zip.ca, a service identical to Netflix (who dosen't deliver into Canada), and the service is really cool. They've got a huge selection of movies - 30,000 or so, I've been able to satisfy my finical tastes - and there's no late fees, something I was having a problem with before. You build up a queue of 20 or so movies you'd like to see, and they mail you what's available from that list. It's kinda cool because you never know what kind of mix you'll get: I got the comedy "I'm gonna git you sucka", a documentary on deep sea aquatic life and the anime "Grave of the Fireflies"
I highly recommend the service (it's better than the trash on Satellite IMO).
Could these moves signal the beginning of a period of rapid improvement in Free drivers for video cards?
/. story here). for those who don't read the Developers section.
There's even open source hardware from the Open Source Project (OGP) coming out (info here and here, and the
The PCI version is due soon, and reported to have resolutions up to 2048x2048, dual-link DVI and TV-out (but won't be capable of playing HalfLife2 or anything like that).
Very true (and I'm going to boot into Fedora and try out that Risk clone game you wrote ;) Cool stuff.
I have a solution: turn the computer off when it's not being used. I don't believe there is significant wear and tear on circuitry when you turn off and on a computer.
Actually, I don't believe a cpu running hot is particularly harmful either. Their designed to take alot of stress.
Some interesting facts I gleened from an article written by Tom R. Halfhill, an analyst for Microprocessor Report.
Fact #1: More's Law is not a scientific law, but and only an observation describing semiconductors pace of progress.
Fact #2: Intel cofounder Dr.Gordon E. Moore did not define Moore's law as it is understood today. He didn't even call it a "law" in the original article. Somebody else much later coined the now famous term.
Fact #3: Moore's law was never about processor clock frequency or other performance issues. Rather, it regards the economic manufacturing of component integration on integrated circuits.
Fact #4: Moore's law actually stated component integration doubles every 12 months - not 18 - and he actually ammended this prediction to 24 months. 18 months is a number seemingly drawn from a hat.
Fact #5: Moore's law is extremely inaccurate. Tom Halfhill estimates todays chips would have more than 27 trillion transistors, when in reality Intel's Prescott Pentium sports 169 million transistors.
Pure and simple, the PG-13 rating is meant to garner more attention and speculation. Otherwise, Revenge of the Sith's opening would be the worst ever for a Star Wars movie.
Kinda clever if you ask me.
Get into a fistfight.
;)
I was joking btw
Get into a fistfight.
How is man to conquer space if we continue to send robots to do the job? Machines are supposed to take us there, not themselves there!
Launching robots into space is like paying someone else to do your homework.
WHEN ROBOSAPIENS ATTACK!
I was in a local band eons ago - called "Acid Toad Secretion", named after an incident when a teen licked a toad to get high and went into convulsions - and I personally did much of the booking and advertising. The reality is, whether your a recognisable band or not, club owners and journalists will not seek you out. There's enough demos and promo kits falling on their laps to keep them busy till the next millenium. Bands (ATS included) need to pound the pavement and make the cold calls for interviews and gigs. Networking with similar bands and share billings is also important. Make friends. Lot's of them. I found at least 50% of my time was spent on the promotional/networking aspect of being in a band, another (extremely annoying) 20% was spent on technical issues like soundchecks, soundmen, equipment... the remaining was the good stuff: actually jamming, rehearsing and making music.
It wasn't easy for us, but after a few years of hard work and patience we had our own following who supported us and dug our music. If the music is good, people will eventually hear about you. Posters and other schwag (no matter how polished and professional it looks) won't go very far nowadays. Word of mouth is the best form of advertisment, the rest will have to be done by lot's of gigging (which will make you better and tighter) and making those phone calls to any entertainment publication that will listen. Create a positive "buzz" where you live, and keep booking those shows. Don't ever let people forget about you. You'll find your band's rep is bigger and better than you actually are!
is the best part of waking up really Folgers in your cup?
If it is, I'm going back to bed!
actually, it flows better as "If there is an application that I run more often than my Web browser..."
"That" is a baggage word. It elogates the sentence without adding meaning. Try this:
If there is an application I run more often than my Web browser...
Class dismissed.
Yahoo has alot going for it. Their web-based email is arguably the best (as Johnny Storm/The Human Torch would say: "Flame On!"), they have geocities, web-based games even those with 33.6 modem can play, personals, chat, news and entertainment, etc... who actually uses Yahoo to find a website anymore? The people that frequent Yahoo are the nontechnical computer users (God bless 'em), whereas those who use Gmail, are members of Orkut and use the Google desktop are more likely powerusers. Two different crowds. Yahoo and Google hardly compete against each other at all.
Hey, at least Yahoo! didn't respond like AltaVista and completely mimic Google and their stripped-down page design (remember that?). It was startling and sad to see what was the most popular search engine a few years ago completely lose their vision and shrivel to almost non-existant mindshare as of today.
I think it's the economic climate nowadays. Canadians are carrying more personal debt than ever (I'd imagine US is the same), taxes are higher and income hasn't kept up with the price of inflation. The PSP is the apex of superfluousness (aha, I found my subject heading) at a time when everyone seems to be cutting corners and pinching pennies.
And it's all just PS2 games on a smaller screen. Big whoop.
A good operating system should automate any and all repetitous grunt work we've all done a thousand times before. Take for instance the whole driver rigamarole: searching, file retrieval and installing drivers should be done with nary a prompt, except for possibly a comfirmation (and even that should be optional). I'll also add highly configurable user/guest accounts to my list, and a streamlined, lo-tech version you can choose for that ancient PII system that most people have hiding in the cellar. Too much flash and polish can be off-putting too.
Guess what operating system best fits the description? Linux. The automated hardware identification and driver loading during installation on most distros is way underrated. XP Pro has a cool system restore feature (for when registry hacks go horribly awry... Linux could really use one of these) and it seems relatively stable (crashed a few times already) but Fedora Core had me off and running way faster.
XP Pro is hilarious. It forbade me from downloading the GIMP windows version, as well as a diagnostic tool recommended by a fellow Slashdotter. Why? Because they are open source apps. I realised there is a thin yellow strip at the top of the browser (I just installed XP the other day, so I'm still learning) that I have to click on to override the default security and actually download what I want.
I assume Longhorn will continue this prejudice against open source development.