I think the aspect of irrationality is that you are unable to understand the aspect of "betrayal". Because of that, you scare people.
But I'd wager you'd betray this nation in a heartbeat if the opportunity presented itself. Sure this nation has a long list of wrongs. But compared to most countries that wielded as much power as America has (or even a lot less) their atrocities far outweigh America's.
Remember, before America started winning wars, the victors made the losing nation(s) pay for the war costs. Instead, America said...it's peace, now let's rebuild and helped it's enemies rebuild. (That's part of the problem in Iraq, we balked on rebuilding them and investing as much as we did in the past. And it's cost us dearly.)
But let's look at other powers of the world:
- Russia/Soviet Union (estimates of at least 20 million killed by the regime)
- Great Britain (very harsh reputation during the time of her empire, was brutal against her colonists)
- Germans/Nazi (no point even going there)
- Japan (was exceedingly brutal throughout Asia in it's conquest)
You can trace the brutality of empires back through time. You'll be hard pressed to find an empire that was as merciful as the United States has been. Even if you list Vietnam & Iraq. The total loss of life is very low in comparison.
Actually, they weren't ready to capitulate. What you had were two factions. One who were in control wanting to dig-in and die to the last man. (Like they were doing on numerous islands in the Pacific.)
The other faction realized they had lost, and that they could not hope to win. And that if they continued to fight then millions would die on both sides.
The atomic bombs gave them the leverage to displace the controlling faction.
****
Mind you, anyone who thinks that Japan was ready to surrender is easily disproved by history. If that was the case, we would not have to have used "two" bombs.
It's an absolute proof they were not ready to surrender.
Look at a satellite photo of Korea. You'll notice a straight line in which the top is dark and the bottom brightly lit.
The top half is North Korea, and the bottom is South Korea. The fact of the matter is we conceded to that halfway point. Had we surrendered, that entire area would be black and suffering like N. Korea. Had we continued and won, the entire of Korea would be very much akin to the present day S. Korea. Which I think most of the global community finds to be a rather upstanding nation.
In truth, I would remove the first gulf war and the Yugoslavia/Bosnia war. Both I question the validity of. I accept the validity of the second gulf/Iraq war much more than I do the first or Yugoslavia.
Of course, thanks to the Yugoslavia war, the international community now controls the path to get Russia's precious oil to western europe. Yup...NO WAR FOR OIL! NO ILLEGAL WAR! Clinton's Yugoslavian war was both. But don't expect any liberals to chime in on that. Oh wait, I apologize, there are a fair number of liberals who did exclaim such. They were just a bit too left for most liberals. (ie: The Communist Party, which actually was bold enough to say what was going on).
Absolutely not. There is not 'law' requiring them to recognize it.
That said, if their users and constituents desire it and they want to continue pleasing said users. Than 'yes' they are required to do so. Not by any law, simply by economics.;)
"Really? Why is it that I was listening to and buying music from MP3.com back in 2000 but here we are in 07 and this is still considered the "new model" and is still considered unproven, and worse yet the examples we do have are largely failures for small indy bands?"
The same reason that after over 25 years. The CD is still considered "unproven" technology by RIAA. Oh, and MP3.com which allowed for music to be sold and direct CD sales was killed by same entity RIAA.
"Promotional and production costs still figure in and even with these numbers given it still is a damn sight better then you're original.25 -.50 USD per album claim."
"But that delivery you speak of it to *you*. Music shops and the distribution system doesn't work in the same fashion (I've been part of those industries too). Large scale distribution is much different than me shipping a product to your home."
Media rate on a sleeve of CDs isn't all that expensive. So we can add another $1 per CD for shipping. Oh yes, I did mail sleeves to various retailers. (As for mail order, the shipping costs are usually not included in the price of CD purchases.) So I don't include those in the price of earnings either.
"You're still skirting the issue when you say shit like this because it still avoids the fact that Radiohead got tons of free promotion."
And Radiohead is a mid-tier band. They're not uber-famous but they are recognized within their scene. Most mid-tier and lower bands get very little promotion.
And sorry, no I don't have the time to go in depth and do a detailed research of every band. I can send you a few links to articles which I did.
"How can they steal every artist's right to royalties but still some of them will see the royalties? Your ramblings make no sense."
It's not that my ramblings don't make sense. It's just you're uninformed regarding this issue. RIAA paid the government off. SoundExchange is a royalty collection service for ALL web cast radio. However, the bands did not have an opportunity to negotiate their rights. RIAA paid the government to give them exclusive control.
That said, most independent artists and niche genre artists will never accumulate enough thousands of plays for RIAA's SoundExchange to ever send them a check.
Commercial radio is thousands of stations playing the same 100 songs. Non-commercial radio and web radio, is 100 stations playing thousands of different songs. So the total any band is likely to see in accumulated plays during a pay period is likely to be too few to qualify for receiving a payment. That said, RIAA's still going to collect money for each and every song play that served by every web cast station. Essentially, what they came up with was a system that would bankrupt most independent web broadcasters while at the same time ensuring they do not have to pay the artists. Because it will be thousands of artists earning only a few dollars worth in plays. So they will just sit on the money. And bankrupt the independent music scene.
Promotions costs: Very few lesser bands get very much "promotions". Michael Jackson may get a $100 million dollars in promotions. But your average bands do not.
The thing about Napster & MP3.com was that they were self-promoting systems. With Napster, good or interesting music within a genre floated to the top. That is what this whole media war is about. The record labels are merely promotion machines. Who have controlled the music industry for decades. If you wanted any promotion you have to give 80%-90% of your profits to RIAA. This barrier got broken with the internet. Napster, MP3.com, online radio.
Take iTunes. The break down was something like Apple gets 19 cents, the artist 10-14 cents. And the record label the rest of the 99 cents.
For CDs, many artists never see any money except for their initial signing bonus and the CDs they sell on tour. The big RIAA labels tend to wheedle out & over deduct at every turn. When the actual cost of a CD to manufacture and deliver is about a $1. How do I know this? Because I've been involved in small scale CD projects and it worked out to a $1.50 for a 1,000 CD batch in jewel case with full color inserts - delivered. That was using a third party. Thanks to mass production, printing 500,000 CDs by a mega label with their own printing facilities equates to much less.
This isn't bullshit. Just ask the bands that aren't Michael Jackson, Metallica, or some other super-hit.
***
But RIAA knows it's business model is over. That's why it's trying to fight via buying off congressmen to pass new laws extending their control. In fact, RIAA stole every artist's right to royalties for web broadcasted radio. And very few bands will ever see any royalties from web radio as most are indies and just don't rack up enough plays for RIAA to consider it worth sending them a check. That said, RIAA collects for ever single play.
Even at $2/album, I bet you these guys netted more profit per sale than they would have received from the labels. Many bands are lucky to see more than a quarter to fifty-cents on the sale of an album.
Blockbuster would actually be better off re-discovering itself. In fact, it might do better to sell off it's online service to Netflix and do a partnership where Netflix members could swap their discs. And buy themselves a bit more time.
But I've said for a while brick and mortar DVD rentals is dying. In fact, Netflix's model only has another 5-15 yrs before it goes the same. But Netflix is actively engaged in developing the means for TV on demand in order to keep it's future open.
***
Regarding all of the hoopla over Blockbuster's "Total Access". I once received a $10 giftcard to Blockbuster. So I decided to go rent a couple of movies. Except I had already either seen everything I wanted in the new release section via Netflix or it was out. After over 2 hours in the store I was down to renting "Muppets Wizard of Oz".
In the end I simply bought a used copy of an already seen movie "I, Robot". And that evening I did not get to watch a movie. I had wasting my entire time simply trying to find a movie to watch. I could have gone home and watched my Netflix films.
That one incident proved to me that Blockbuster's "Total Access" was useless to me. Shortly there after Netflix announced the download on demand. Now, when I am out of movies or in a different mood I simply go there. Most availabile films/shows are kind of "B" status. But I can usually find something entertaining to watch in the immediacy.
***
Someone mentioned Red Box. This is really what Blockbuster should do. It's the future of brick'n'mortar rental. In fact, I think Netflix should hook up with Red Box. (Since they're both red.)
I even bought stock. Why? Because, I once exclaimed if I owned a $1,000 of Netflix stock and were they to go belly up (back when media was saying doomed to die) that I'd actually be more bummed about losing the service than the cash.
Of note, I've dropped cable/sat and pretty much feast on Netflix+iTunes. Netflix's online offerings are more limited but quality is usually much better than iTunes downloads; and quicker start times. iTunes gives me more current TV shows. Netflix gives me all my movies.
(I didn't buy much stock cause I'm not rich, but I found out I could buys stocks via my Simple IRA at work.)
Many people complain about the poor selection of movies on Netflix's "Watch It Now" but I think it's ingenius. They're working out all the kinks of the system and offering mainly "B" series and movies. (That said you can find some real gems. I've finally catching up on the Sliders episodes I missed.) But this keeps demand low and allows them to see how the system handles. Allows for a live working "non-beta" without a nightmare IT problem.
If it was posted they were homosexuals and they weren't, that'd be defamation. But it states their "homosexuality was revealed on wikipedia". Which leads me to believe they are in fact homosexual.
So how does revealing the truth equate to defamation?
Adobe is not just ye ol'graphic company of 80's & 90's. It's fast growing into a much more diverse entity. Adobe has been seriously entering the developer side of things, but with a much broader start to finish mindset.
Many programming languages let you write application code. Many graphic tools allow you to design GUI look'n'feel elements. Adobe is in a very unique position that no other company (not Apple, Microsoft, or anyone else for that matter) to bring a full fledge start to finish workflow. Those in the publishing industry will understand this aspect from design to mock-up, to proof and splits for printing.
Adobe has a number of radical developments in it's product range:
- First off, Adobe's Flash was rebuilt in version 9 with an entirely new virtual machine. Faster, more robust and exclusively uses ActionScript 3.0 (which is much more robust, object oriented, strongly typed, with a fuller feature set).
- Furthermore, Adobe's Flex is developing an awesome developer community, in part due the to sharing that is encouraged by the "component" philosophy. Oh, and although Flex Builder does cost money you can freely use the Flex SDK. Flex is for "developers" (no timeline, no layers, nada). Oh, the new Flex Builder 3 will only be $250(which I've been using beta versions for 4 months now and is by far more stable than most released software)
- Adobe AIR, takes the Flash Player out of the browser and into the desktop world. In a lot of ways, it's the dream that was the Java Virtual Machine. So while Microsoft catches up to Flash, Adobe is already moving it's technology beyond. Oh, and Adobe AIR can utilize either Flex or AJAX code.
- Thermo was just demoed at Adobe MAX. It's a tool to allow designers to create a graphic image and then mark aspects of the image to be GUI components. (ie: designer creates a stylized scrollbar, then marks it to be a scrollbar and it then becomes such. The designer's image become the scrollbar's skin). We've not seen much of this, but the potential benefits are pretty sweet.
Most people think of Flash technology as this stupid animation software and used for fancy ads & pop-ups. If that is all you're experience of Flash. Then you've really only scratched the tip, of the tip of the iceberg.
The Flash technology platform has become a application development environment. I've worked on medical applications written in Flash. There is so much more Flash can do outside of serving up ads and YouTube videos.;-)
Actually it doesn't in anyway, but nice of you to try to reverse apply it.
Furthermore, notability is rather subjective. As three of the four examples given by said admin are of so little notability that I've never heard of them (which in and of itself is not testament of notability), but I've also seen numerous posts from people who also have not heard of the others listed.
And most notability tests fail for web comics. (ie: most tests offered for notability require hard copy recognition. That's unlikely for most web comics, even notable ones, with but a few exceptions.
So long as America exists the baseball will not be banned. However, playing baseball might be prohibited or require specialized government mandated baseball insurance. The right to bear baseballs shall not be infringed, however, ownership of such baseballs will be limited to private property and to always remain in a locked display safe. Use of a baseball itself with be prohibited and a criminal act subject to criminal penalties.;)
And if not, I'd like to get rid of Wikipedia and start a collective of all human knowledge and info. And see Wikipedia destroyed, as it is distracting from the more important task of a real 'humanity' information site.
I've seen this trend for a while, and it predates 9-11.
I believe the issue is more of a "legal" than "security" issue. I think the high risk of lawsuits is what's killing these kits. In the old days, if you let your kids be unsupervized and they started eating the chemicals - you were considered a bad parent with a stupid kid. Now days, parents tell the kids to eat the chemicals in hopes of a winning lawsuit so they don't have to work anymore.
How many classic toys have gone the way of the dino because of our stupid frivolous legal system and lack of responsibility culture. I mean, Burger King/McDonald's (one of the two) had these flying princesses. They spin, their wings fly out and they whirl into the sky like helicopters. "Recalled and banned!" Why? Because they're uber dangerous. The fly toy might just land on the child's head. We can't have that. (Not like a baseball isn't a 100x more deadly - but we're not going to ban those.)
Bah...this plan deserves to be turned into an intergalactic entranceway.
But I meant more so regarding how the inner-mechanisms worked so that it wasn't as easy for RIAA to track. (Though a valid point was made that they could also give hooks to RIAA.)
I'm not opposed to closed source. THough I do like "free"...
There are two issues mainly being brought up regarding Wikipedia.
1) Reliability and verifiability of content.
2) Notability Deletions
This Slashdot post regarding Webcomics is NOT dealing with verifiability and reliability of facts. But rather addressing the second issue.
So to all those who keep talking about how we don't want a bunch of bad info. Please, stop replying until you understand the issue. I don't mean to be rude. But the vast majority of the sights being deleted contain valid information. The issue at hand is that certain admins have harsh judgments as to what constitutes notability and what does not.
I had a friend who's comic was deleted for notability issues. At the time, my friend's comic met ALL of the stated notability requirements. And has been running three times weekly since 2003. It was put up for deletion.
The main argument given was that the site's statistics weren't high enough on a particular tracking site (which I had never heard of, nor had most people I knew). So essentially notability was determined by stat ranking in an obscure non-notable stat site. Great!
Notability is a very opinionated quantification. What is notable? Is "Manic panic" hair dye notable? Yes or no? To most people it is not, but to certain sub-cultures - very much so. Likewise, a comic may fit a very particular sub-culture. It won't have mass readership outside of the sub-culture. Say the comic is on transgenderism; it might not have high readership but may be very noteworthy "especially" within it's genre. Dilbert is a pretty good example. Blue collar workers might not get it, office workers find it quite the read.
So to "Deletion Vote" we went. My friend's webcomic had a lot of support in voting. But most were dismissed because they weren't registered user comments. Even those of us who are registered users were dismissed. We apparently didn't have enough site edits. (Sorry, I have a life. And I can't justify wasting it on Wikipedia while it maintains frivolous notability requirements. Also, a great many articles on non-volatile topics are fairly at "done" point. So more often than not I see no need to edit.) However, those who just chimed in to the debate to vote "no" (assuredly at the request of the site admin) who provided generic reasons to delete and clearly had no relation or interest to the "web comic" discussion - their votes were counted. By the time the admin was done dismissing all the supportive votes and included all the delete votes. The totals had been so skewed it wasn't even funny.
The end result? It was deleted. Then they went on a spree and deleted another 50 or so entries. Guess what....
Most of us involved in this situation refuse to donate in support of Wikipedia. I think Wikipedia is an example of a "lot of potential" and "tons of failing".
Let the "users" decide what articles should be up. And as long as the content is valid...let it be. Admins should only be deleting invalid content.
"Saving every possible article just on the off chance that it might someday BECOME notable isn't really helping anyone."
Really, they've been doing this on microfiche and microfilm for years. Digital should only make it easier.
"If it becomes notable then just re-add the article-- " From where? By which point said article can no longer be found - history lost.
And we're not talking about "news articles" but rather entries written by people into an information collective.
"If it becomes notable then just re-add the article-- your sources are there, right? You cited your sources, didn't you? If you can get an admin's help, you can even get the article undeleted."
a) in regards to comics, there usually aren't sources per se
b) the admin's in this case are the one's trying to get articles deleted
"Of course, Notability, Citations and NPOV are both critical to Wikipedia doing its job, and the sources of the more pernicious abuse by admins and heavy users. Once you know how the game is played, you can use these three policies (and bio: living persons) as an ideological battering ram to put your bias into any article you want."
See here's the problem. I don't have time to waste re-writing articles and information. My time is precious. So guess what....
I DON'T CONTRIBUTE TO WIKIPEDIA ANYMORE. OTHERS ARE STOPPING. THIS IS A VERY BAD THING AND WILL EVENTUALLY LEAD TO WIKIPEDIA'S DEMISE.
"The best part is that many of these abuses occur from admins and contributors who genuinely believe they're doing the right thing. It's not that they're evil, it's that they're human and subject to bias like everyone else."
That may be....doesn't make it any less wrong.
"Overall, I love wikipedia. I'm a regular contributor, and I believe in the value of the project."
I use wikipedia, I want to contribute - but won't. Because I know just about anything I add will be deleted. Irregardless of whether it's controversial or not. But someone will label whatever I do as not notible enough for them. And it will be deleted.
"I'm sorry to the webcomic authors who feel abused by the system."
The problem is the webcomic authors are going against what the web comic community wants. And thus, it's been a 2 yr running fight.
Overall, I think Wikipedia is a bad thing. I do not believe in selective knowledge. I believe if someone takes the time to write an article, and it is a) accurate, b) unbiased (some topics are not political and are merely informational); then it should be allowed to remain.
And if you don't give a darn about said little topic, site, subject matter - fine. Others might, so leave it up.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, they can't...
Because hundreds of thousands who would tell you how we were stopping them from being slaughtered are now dead.
Knight Industries K.I.T.T. 2000 was able to do just this. ;)
I think the aspect of irrationality is that you are unable to understand the aspect of "betrayal". Because of that, you scare people.
But I'd wager you'd betray this nation in a heartbeat if the opportunity presented itself. Sure this nation has a long list of wrongs. But compared to most countries that wielded as much power as America has (or even a lot less) their atrocities far outweigh America's.
Remember, before America started winning wars, the victors made the losing nation(s) pay for the war costs. Instead, America said...it's peace, now let's rebuild and helped it's enemies rebuild. (That's part of the problem in Iraq, we balked on rebuilding them and investing as much as we did in the past. And it's cost us dearly.)
But let's look at other powers of the world:
- Russia/Soviet Union (estimates of at least 20 million killed by the regime)
- Great Britain (very harsh reputation during the time of her empire, was brutal against her colonists)
- Germans/Nazi (no point even going there)
- Japan (was exceedingly brutal throughout Asia in it's conquest)
You can trace the brutality of empires back through time. You'll be hard pressed to find an empire that was as merciful as the United States has been. Even if you list Vietnam & Iraq. The total loss of life is very low in comparison.
Actually, they weren't ready to capitulate. What you had were two factions. One who were in control wanting to dig-in and die to the last man. (Like they were doing on numerous islands in the Pacific.)
The other faction realized they had lost, and that they could not hope to win. And that if they continued to fight then millions would die on both sides.
The atomic bombs gave them the leverage to displace the controlling faction.
****
Mind you, anyone who thinks that Japan was ready to surrender is easily disproved by history. If that was the case, we would not have to have used "two" bombs.
It's an absolute proof they were not ready to surrender.
Carriers are projection weapons.
The mistake is that they float.
Long ago we should have began working on carriers designs that were submersibles and only surface in order to let their air craft take off.
Old net speech. A long time ago, you always "logged" on. Even if you didn't have to "log in".
You had to log on to the net, log onto a BBS, etc. It's just old vernacular.
Just a thought...
Look at a satellite photo of Korea. You'll notice a straight line in which the top is dark and the bottom brightly lit.
The top half is North Korea, and the bottom is South Korea. The fact of the matter is we conceded to that halfway point. Had we surrendered, that entire area would be black and suffering like N. Korea. Had we continued and won, the entire of Korea would be very much akin to the present day S. Korea. Which I think most of the global community finds to be a rather upstanding nation.
In truth, I would remove the first gulf war and the Yugoslavia/Bosnia war. Both I question the validity of. I accept the validity of the second gulf/Iraq war much more than I do the first or Yugoslavia.
Of course, thanks to the Yugoslavia war, the international community now controls the path to get Russia's precious oil to western europe. Yup...NO WAR FOR OIL! NO ILLEGAL WAR! Clinton's Yugoslavian war was both. But don't expect any liberals to chime in on that. Oh wait, I apologize, there are a fair number of liberals who did exclaim such. They were just a bit too left for most liberals. (ie: The Communist Party, which actually was bold enough to say what was going on).
Absolutely not. There is not 'law' requiring them to recognize it.
;)
That said, if their users and constituents desire it and they want to continue pleasing said users. Than 'yes' they are required to do so. Not by any law, simply by economics.
"Really? Why is it that I was listening to and buying music from MP3.com back in 2000 but here we are in 07 and this is still considered the "new model" and is still considered unproven, and worse yet the examples we do have are largely failures for small indy bands?"
.25 - .50 USD per album claim."
The same reason that after over 25 years. The CD is still considered "unproven" technology by RIAA. Oh, and MP3.com which allowed for music to be sold and direct CD sales was killed by same entity RIAA.
"Promotional and production costs still figure in and even with these numbers given it still is a damn sight better then you're original
"But that delivery you speak of it to *you*. Music shops and the distribution system doesn't work in the same fashion (I've been part of those industries too). Large scale distribution is much different than me shipping a product to your home."
Media rate on a sleeve of CDs isn't all that expensive. So we can add another $1 per CD for shipping. Oh yes, I did mail sleeves to various retailers. (As for mail order, the shipping costs are usually not included in the price of CD purchases.) So I don't include those in the price of earnings either.
"You're still skirting the issue when you say shit like this because it still avoids the fact that Radiohead got tons of free promotion."
And Radiohead is a mid-tier band. They're not uber-famous but they are recognized within their scene. Most mid-tier and lower bands get very little promotion.
And sorry, no I don't have the time to go in depth and do a detailed research of every band. I can send you a few links to articles which I did.
"How can they steal every artist's right to royalties but still some of them will see the royalties? Your ramblings make no sense."
It's not that my ramblings don't make sense. It's just you're uninformed regarding this issue. RIAA paid the government off. SoundExchange is a royalty collection service for ALL web cast radio. However, the bands did not have an opportunity to negotiate their rights. RIAA paid the government to give them exclusive control.
That said, most independent artists and niche genre artists will never accumulate enough thousands of plays for RIAA's SoundExchange to ever send them a check.
Commercial radio is thousands of stations playing the same 100 songs. Non-commercial radio and web radio, is 100 stations playing thousands of different songs. So the total any band is likely to see in accumulated plays during a pay period is likely to be too few to qualify for receiving a payment. That said, RIAA's still going to collect money for each and every song play that served by every web cast station. Essentially, what they came up with was a system that would bankrupt most independent web broadcasters while at the same time ensuring they do not have to pay the artists. Because it will be thousands of artists earning only a few dollars worth in plays. So they will just sit on the money. And bankrupt the independent music scene.
Promotions costs: Very few lesser bands get very much "promotions". Michael Jackson may get a $100 million dollars in promotions. But your average bands do not.
The thing about Napster & MP3.com was that they were self-promoting systems. With Napster, good or interesting music within a genre floated to the top. That is what this whole media war is about. The record labels are merely promotion machines. Who have controlled the music industry for decades. If you wanted any promotion you have to give 80%-90% of your profits to RIAA. This barrier got broken with the internet. Napster, MP3.com, online radio.
Take iTunes. The break down was something like Apple gets 19 cents, the artist 10-14 cents. And the record label the rest of the 99 cents.
For CDs, many artists never see any money except for their initial signing bonus and the CDs they sell on tour. The big RIAA labels tend to wheedle out & over deduct at every turn. When the actual cost of a CD to manufacture and deliver is about a $1. How do I know this? Because I've been involved in small scale CD projects and it worked out to a $1.50 for a 1,000 CD batch in jewel case with full color inserts - delivered. That was using a third party. Thanks to mass production, printing 500,000 CDs by a mega label with their own printing facilities equates to much less.
Here's a good break down of CD profits for the average band.
http://www.futureofmusic.org/itunes2.cfm
This isn't bullshit. Just ask the bands that aren't Michael Jackson, Metallica, or some other super-hit.
***
But RIAA knows it's business model is over. That's why it's trying to fight via buying off congressmen to pass new laws extending their control. In fact, RIAA stole every artist's right to royalties for web broadcasted radio. And very few bands will ever see any royalties from web radio as most are indies and just don't rack up enough plays for RIAA to consider it worth sending them a check. That said, RIAA collects for ever single play.
They have current Heroes?
I've been watching it on NBC's site (but the player isn't as nice).
Even at $2/album, I bet you these guys netted more profit per sale than they would have received from the labels. Many bands are lucky to see more than a quarter to fifty-cents on the sale of an album.
Saw those...took me two seconds to no the difference.
First off, they were in the same section as the little joystick low-end games. Second anyone thinking they can get a Wii remote for that cheap.
Now, what I was curious about is if any of the components could be converted into a Wii remote?
Sorry, it was a copy/paste error. I began this post as a response to the blog comments (the guy asking who the next VP in 2008) was going to be.
Forgot to remove it...
"Ron Paul" would be better than Obama though.
"Barack Obama"
And he's right...
Blockbuster would actually be better off re-discovering itself. In fact, it might do better to sell off it's online service to Netflix and do a partnership where Netflix members could swap their discs. And buy themselves a bit more time.
But I've said for a while brick and mortar DVD rentals is dying. In fact, Netflix's model only has another 5-15 yrs before it goes the same. But Netflix is actively engaged in developing the means for TV on demand in order to keep it's future open.
***
Regarding all of the hoopla over Blockbuster's "Total Access". I once received a $10 giftcard to Blockbuster. So I decided to go rent a couple of movies. Except I had already either seen everything I wanted in the new release section via Netflix or it was out. After over 2 hours in the store I was down to renting "Muppets Wizard of Oz".
In the end I simply bought a used copy of an already seen movie "I, Robot". And that evening I did not get to watch a movie. I had wasting my entire time simply trying to find a movie to watch. I could have gone home and watched my Netflix films.
That one incident proved to me that Blockbuster's "Total Access" was useless to me. Shortly there after Netflix announced the download on demand. Now, when I am out of movies or in a different mood I simply go there. Most availabile films/shows are kind of "B" status. But I can usually find something entertaining to watch in the immediacy.
***
Someone mentioned Red Box. This is really what Blockbuster should do. It's the future of brick'n'mortar rental. In fact, I think Netflix should hook up with Red Box. (Since they're both red.)
Yeah, I love Netflix....
I even bought stock. Why? Because, I once exclaimed if I owned a $1,000 of Netflix stock and were they to go belly up (back when media was saying doomed to die) that I'd actually be more bummed about losing the service than the cash.
Of note, I've dropped cable/sat and pretty much feast on Netflix+iTunes. Netflix's online offerings are more limited but quality is usually much better than iTunes downloads; and quicker start times. iTunes gives me more current TV shows. Netflix gives me all my movies.
(I didn't buy much stock cause I'm not rich, but I found out I could buys stocks via my Simple IRA at work.)
Many people complain about the poor selection of movies on Netflix's "Watch It Now" but I think it's ingenius. They're working out all the kinks of the system and offering mainly "B" series and movies. (That said you can find some real gems. I've finally catching up on the Sliders episodes I missed.) But this keeps demand low and allows them to see how the system handles. Allows for a live working "non-beta" without a nightmare IT problem.
If it was posted they were homosexuals and they weren't, that'd be defamation. But it states their "homosexuality was revealed on wikipedia". Which leads me to believe they are in fact homosexual.
So how does revealing the truth equate to defamation?
Adobe is not just ye ol'graphic company of 80's & 90's. It's fast growing into a much more diverse entity. Adobe has been seriously entering the developer side of things, but with a much broader start to finish mindset.
;-)
Many programming languages let you write application code. Many graphic tools allow you to design GUI look'n'feel elements. Adobe is in a very unique position that no other company (not Apple, Microsoft, or anyone else for that matter) to bring a full fledge start to finish workflow. Those in the publishing industry will understand this aspect from design to mock-up, to proof and splits for printing.
Adobe has a number of radical developments in it's product range:
- First off, Adobe's Flash was rebuilt in version 9 with an entirely new virtual machine. Faster, more robust and exclusively uses ActionScript 3.0 (which is much more robust, object oriented, strongly typed, with a fuller feature set).
- Furthermore, Adobe's Flex is developing an awesome developer community, in part due the to sharing that is encouraged by the "component" philosophy. Oh, and although Flex Builder does cost money you can freely use the Flex SDK. Flex is for "developers" (no timeline, no layers, nada). Oh, the new Flex Builder 3 will only be $250(which I've been using beta versions for 4 months now and is by far more stable than most released software)
- Adobe AIR, takes the Flash Player out of the browser and into the desktop world. In a lot of ways, it's the dream that was the Java Virtual Machine. So while Microsoft catches up to Flash, Adobe is already moving it's technology beyond. Oh, and Adobe AIR can utilize either Flex or AJAX code.
- Thermo was just demoed at Adobe MAX. It's a tool to allow designers to create a graphic image and then mark aspects of the image to be GUI components. (ie: designer creates a stylized scrollbar, then marks it to be a scrollbar and it then becomes such. The designer's image become the scrollbar's skin). We've not seen much of this, but the potential benefits are pretty sweet.
Most people think of Flash technology as this stupid animation software and used for fancy ads & pop-ups. If that is all you're experience of Flash. Then you've really only scratched the tip, of the tip of the iceberg.
The Flash technology platform has become a application development environment. I've worked on medical applications written in Flash. There is so much more Flash can do outside of serving up ads and YouTube videos.
Actually it doesn't in anyway, but nice of you to try to reverse apply it.
Furthermore, notability is rather subjective. As three of the four examples given by said admin are of so little notability that I've never heard of them (which in and of itself is not testament of notability), but I've also seen numerous posts from people who also have not heard of the others listed.
And most notability tests fail for web comics. (ie: most tests offered for notability require hard copy recognition. That's unlikely for most web comics, even notable ones, with but a few exceptions.
"American Pastime"
;)
So long as America exists the baseball will not be banned. However, playing baseball might be prohibited or require specialized government mandated baseball insurance. The right to bear baseballs shall not be infringed, however, ownership of such baseballs will be limited to private property and to always remain in a locked display safe. Use of a baseball itself with be prohibited and a criminal act subject to criminal penalties.
Perhaps not...
And if not, I'd like to get rid of Wikipedia and start a collective of all human knowledge and info. And see Wikipedia destroyed, as it is distracting from the more important task of a real 'humanity' information site.
I've seen this trend for a while, and it predates 9-11.
I believe the issue is more of a "legal" than "security" issue. I think the high risk of lawsuits is what's killing these kits. In the old days, if you let your kids be unsupervized and they started eating the chemicals - you were considered a bad parent with a stupid kid. Now days, parents tell the kids to eat the chemicals in hopes of a winning lawsuit so they don't have to work anymore.
How many classic toys have gone the way of the dino because of our stupid frivolous legal system and lack of responsibility culture. I mean, Burger King/McDonald's (one of the two) had these flying princesses. They spin, their wings fly out and they whirl into the sky like helicopters. "Recalled and banned!" Why? Because they're uber dangerous. The fly toy might just land on the child's head. We can't have that. (Not like a baseball isn't a 100x more deadly - but we're not going to ban those.)
Bah...this plan deserves to be turned into an intergalactic entranceway.
True...
But I meant more so regarding how the inner-mechanisms worked so that it wasn't as easy for RIAA to track. (Though a valid point was made that they could also give hooks to RIAA.)
I'm not opposed to closed source. THough I do like "free"...
There are two issues mainly being brought up regarding Wikipedia.
1) Reliability and verifiability of content.
2) Notability Deletions
This Slashdot post regarding Webcomics is NOT dealing with verifiability and reliability of facts. But rather addressing the second issue.
So to all those who keep talking about how we don't want a bunch of bad info. Please, stop replying until you understand the issue. I don't mean to be rude. But the vast majority of the sights being deleted contain valid information. The issue at hand is that certain admins have harsh judgments as to what constitutes notability and what does not.
I had a friend who's comic was deleted for notability issues. At the time, my friend's comic met ALL of the stated notability requirements. And has been running three times weekly since 2003. It was put up for deletion.
The main argument given was that the site's statistics weren't high enough on a particular tracking site (which I had never heard of, nor had most people I knew). So essentially notability was determined by stat ranking in an obscure non-notable stat site. Great!
Notability is a very opinionated quantification. What is notable? Is "Manic panic" hair dye notable? Yes or no? To most people it is not, but to certain sub-cultures - very much so. Likewise, a comic may fit a very particular sub-culture. It won't have mass readership outside of the sub-culture. Say the comic is on transgenderism; it might not have high readership but may be very noteworthy "especially" within it's genre. Dilbert is a pretty good example. Blue collar workers might not get it, office workers find it quite the read.
So to "Deletion Vote" we went. My friend's webcomic had a lot of support in voting. But most were dismissed because they weren't registered user comments. Even those of us who are registered users were dismissed. We apparently didn't have enough site edits. (Sorry, I have a life. And I can't justify wasting it on Wikipedia while it maintains frivolous notability requirements. Also, a great many articles on non-volatile topics are fairly at "done" point. So more often than not I see no need to edit.) However, those who just chimed in to the debate to vote "no" (assuredly at the request of the site admin) who provided generic reasons to delete and clearly had no relation or interest to the "web comic" discussion - their votes were counted. By the time the admin was done dismissing all the supportive votes and included all the delete votes. The totals had been so skewed it wasn't even funny.
The end result? It was deleted. Then they went on a spree and deleted another 50 or so entries. Guess what....
Most of us involved in this situation refuse to donate in support of Wikipedia. I think Wikipedia is an example of a "lot of potential" and "tons of failing".
Let the "users" decide what articles should be up. And as long as the content is valid...let it be. Admins should only be deleting invalid content.
"Saving every possible article just on the off chance that it might someday BECOME notable isn't really helping anyone."
Really, they've been doing this on microfiche and microfilm for years. Digital should only make it easier.
"If it becomes notable then just re-add the article-- "
From where? By which point said article can no longer be found - history lost.
And we're not talking about "news articles" but rather entries written by people into an information collective.
"If it becomes notable then just re-add the article-- your sources are there, right? You cited your sources, didn't you? If you can get an admin's help, you can even get the article undeleted."
a) in regards to comics, there usually aren't sources per se
b) the admin's in this case are the one's trying to get articles deleted
"Of course, Notability, Citations and NPOV are both critical to Wikipedia doing its job, and the sources of the more pernicious abuse by admins and heavy users. Once you know how the game is played, you can use these three policies (and bio: living persons) as an ideological battering ram to put your bias into any article you want."
See here's the problem. I don't have time to waste re-writing articles and information. My time is precious. So guess what....
I DON'T CONTRIBUTE TO WIKIPEDIA ANYMORE. OTHERS ARE STOPPING. THIS IS A VERY BAD THING AND WILL EVENTUALLY LEAD TO WIKIPEDIA'S DEMISE.
"The best part is that many of these abuses occur from admins and contributors who genuinely believe they're doing the right thing. It's not that they're evil, it's that they're human and subject to bias like everyone else."
That may be....doesn't make it any less wrong.
"Overall, I love wikipedia. I'm a regular contributor, and I believe in the value of the project."
I use wikipedia, I want to contribute - but won't. Because I know just about anything I add will be deleted. Irregardless of whether it's controversial or not. But someone will label whatever I do as not notible enough for them. And it will be deleted.
"I'm sorry to the webcomic authors who feel abused by the system."
The problem is the webcomic authors are going against what the web comic community wants. And thus, it's been a 2 yr running fight.
Overall, I think Wikipedia is a bad thing. I do not believe in selective knowledge. I believe if someone takes the time to write an article, and it is a) accurate, b) unbiased (some topics are not political and are merely informational); then it should be allowed to remain.
And if you don't give a darn about said little topic, site, subject matter - fine. Others might, so leave it up.