I'm torn on that. What if Alex were a Fundie Christian and was saying the earth was only 6000 years old and "you're lying!" etc? While I applaud him for standing up for his convictions, I'd probably just wish he'd shut the fuck up so we can go on with the lesson.
When gas was threatening $5/gallon last decade, we went up in arms and started blaming speculators and the like for artificially driving up the price. What's the reason now? Is Iran that big of a producer to impact the market price or is this the same scam as before, but with better marketing?
What makes anyone think that just because "we" have all this untapped oil underground that "we" will actually see the benefit of it? We don't have a nationalized oil industry, mind you, and it will get shipped off to the highest bidder. People are already paying $100/barrel+ for oil, and that's where it's going to stay. That $100/barrel will go towards funding legislation and lobbying efforts to continue to keep $100/barrel oil and the politicians and oil executives will laugh themselves all the way to the bank.
There were a lot of who went through college in the early-mid 90s where Hungarian notation was considered proper software development and scores were marked down in various programming classes if you didn't adhere to it. It was the late-90s/early-2000s when people apparently discovered that it was a very, very bad idea especially as we refactored 5-10 year old code. Now it seems we're happy if you just use camel-case.
Lived in Oregon and raised in TN, now in Los Angeles. It was 80 degrees yesterday and while the summers get mighty warm, it rarely ever rains. Sure, we might have a water acquisition problem, but I'll take it, the higher cost of living, 360 motorcycling days a year (365 if you wear rain gear), and all the beautiful women in skimpy clothes in the world over a bunch of hairy Portland girls who think deodorant is a form of patriarchal oppression or the 10 foot snow drifts in March of MN.
(just kidding, I love and miss Portland and if I could get a job with an equivalent, cost-of-living adjusted wage, I'd probably move back tomorrow. I miss tall bikes, clowns, cheap beer, and the smell of vintage stores).
Half the cost? Isn't there some sort of contractor rule that if it's designed to cost less, they have to figure out a way to double the budget by the end of the project and walk home with twice the profits hidden away as cost overruns?
True, but you probably dont' realize just how quickly a shop can turn racist/discriminatory without even realizing it. "Yeah, we tried a few guys from _____ and they just didn't work out, so we don't hire anyone like that anymore" which can go from a school, a town, to a race or gender and the broad brush begins. Then those guys who don't hire ________ as a matter of policy due to a few _______ not "working out" (for whatever reason of "working out") moving to other shops, keeping their internalized prejudices from previous experiences, moving into management positions, it spreads like a cancer. It feels like humans are hard-wired to EXCLUDE people, and we try to rationalize it, reason it out, but in the end, it ends up hurting a lot of folks who are perfectly fine for the job, but just because a "couple guys didn't work out" a couple decades ago....
If you don't think those "profit margins" can't be hidden away through operating costs and executive salaries, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in.
Not really. Having worked in the digital music industry for the past 6 years, I can assure you "500,00" artists are not making $100,000 each. Even with the giganticness of the digital library with artists from every genre, etc, the sales of tracks still follow closely with the Billboard top 100, with very, very few rare exceptions. So it's more like 1-2% of artists make 90% of the revenues (and profits), and the other 98% scrabble for the last 10%. The only company that seems to be doing something different, genuinely, is beatport and the majority of their sales, while diffrent from the mainstream, still concentrate amongst a "handful" of artists/producers and the great majority go generally ignored.
Hrm. I bet if there were enough interest, a cruise line might be willing to make a "stargazers" cruise and set-up with some telescopes/binoculars and some good astronomy teachers to show you how and where to look and use the equipment, etc... And, of course, alcohol. That's a cruise I might be interested in...
One of the most amazing demonstrations of this was the one time I flew down to Florida to visit with friends and we headed to keywest at night. A couple hours of driving, we pulled over out in the middle of nowhere and instructed everyone out. Not that that's creepy at all, no sir. But once we got out, he turned out the lights on the car and said "Look up." Magnificent. Then he killed us while we were staring up.
You should read up on what Austrian Economics is based on before you make that kind of assumption. It's *not* based on any mathematics models and in fact, prides itself on it.
You aren't looking hard enough. The fundamentalist church I went to growing up required women to wear full length dresses, no make-up was allowed, and generally kept their heads covered with a scarf when in public (but that part wasn't really enforced), amongst other asinine restrictions regarding separation of genders, etc. In some of our "cousin" churches, they "make marriage vows" that explicitly state that they accept that their husbands may beat them into submission, and that they understand that's God's will and the like. Granted, I grew up in rural Tennessee, but this was pretty common through that area amongst the Pentacostal family of churches. When people say "American Taliban", I've seen it first hand.
Hrm, my comment disappeared. Anyway, it's true, though: ideas are a dime a dozen. same as in software development. How many game ideas do you have? How's that working out for you?
The fact is, professional screenwriters have no qualms about sharing loglines, pitches, etc because they know that 1) 99.9% of the general population doesn't have the ability to write a screenplay from start to finish and 2) even if they did take your idea and run with it, chances are their script will turn out much, much different than your own. In fact, there are several industry sites (they escape me at the moment, though) where you can read about all of the latest script sales, including their loglines, open to the public.
It's still the same thing, though. Ask any serious screenwriter if they keep their loglines, pitches, whatever a secret and they'll tell you no, and that's a sign of an amateur. Because, given the same plotline, logline, whatever, two different writers can come up with two completely different movies and the vast majority of the population couldn't write shit.
Everything sucks to someone. Your favorite movie? Someone thinks it sucks.
Put yourself in a movie executives position. You're about to invest 30-100+ million dollars in a film. Once that money's spent, now you have to hope to hell that someone goes to see that movie and you can make your money back, and if you're really lucky, make a profit enough to fund 10 more movies, 9 of which will fail miserably. So, do you take the risk on an weird, quirky movie that appeals to, maybe,.1% of the general population or do you make another Tyler fucking Perry movie that brings in half a billion dollars a pop? Here's a newsflash: movies people actually like? They don't really make all that much money, if ever, and we're not talking about making money in the bullshit hollywood accounting way. They just fail to appeal to a broad enough audience that they sell tickets and DVDs. It's not just movies, however, it's just about any sort of artform you can think of. What was the #1 book last year, some version of the twilight series? What was the #1 album last year?
If you want to see how the STUDIO movie system works, I highly recommend reading "How to Write Movies for Fun and Profit" by Lennon & Garant (writers behind the "Night At The Museum" series, balls of fury, Reno 9-11). You don't have to want to write movies, but it's eye-opening at seeing what "the other side" (i.e. the money) is looking for when trying to fund movies.
At the same time, when's the last time you went to an arthouse and saw one of the many, many indie films that "don't suck"? Or even, what's YOUR great, original idea?
The real CPU guys don't seem to write any more. Peter Bright is just a fucking long-timer forum troll with a decent understanding of CPU architecture, but I think he relishes in the role of trying to write the most inflammatory anti-fanboy hit pieces to get the highest page view count on the site. I don't read anything by that fucking moron because I won't give them the satisfaction.
Why can't it based on a percentage one time and then some set amount another time? Are you a robot? Are you so inflexible or so mentally inept that you cannot handle contingency situations on the fly?
Slashdot Mirror
wait... photons or protons?
I didn't realize they had to be. You get what you get.
I'm torn on that. What if Alex were a Fundie Christian and was saying the earth was only 6000 years old and "you're lying!" etc? While I applaud him for standing up for his convictions, I'd probably just wish he'd shut the fuck up so we can go on with the lesson.
When gas was threatening $5/gallon last decade, we went up in arms and started blaming speculators and the like for artificially driving up the price. What's the reason now? Is Iran that big of a producer to impact the market price or is this the same scam as before, but with better marketing?
What makes anyone think that just because "we" have all this untapped oil underground that "we" will actually see the benefit of it? We don't have a nationalized oil industry, mind you, and it will get shipped off to the highest bidder. People are already paying $100/barrel+ for oil, and that's where it's going to stay. That $100/barrel will go towards funding legislation and lobbying efforts to continue to keep $100/barrel oil and the politicians and oil executives will laugh themselves all the way to the bank.
Look at the unit change.
There were a lot of who went through college in the early-mid 90s where Hungarian notation was considered proper software development and scores were marked down in various programming classes if you didn't adhere to it. It was the late-90s/early-2000s when people apparently discovered that it was a very, very bad idea especially as we refactored 5-10 year old code. Now it seems we're happy if you just use camel-case.
Lived in Oregon and raised in TN, now in Los Angeles. It was 80 degrees yesterday and while the summers get mighty warm, it rarely ever rains. Sure, we might have a water acquisition problem, but I'll take it, the higher cost of living, 360 motorcycling days a year (365 if you wear rain gear), and all the beautiful women in skimpy clothes in the world over a bunch of hairy Portland girls who think deodorant is a form of patriarchal oppression or the 10 foot snow drifts in March of MN.
(just kidding, I love and miss Portland and if I could get a job with an equivalent, cost-of-living adjusted wage, I'd probably move back tomorrow. I miss tall bikes, clowns, cheap beer, and the smell of vintage stores).
Half the cost? Isn't there some sort of contractor rule that if it's designed to cost less, they have to figure out a way to double the budget by the end of the project and walk home with twice the profits hidden away as cost overruns?
Read the book and realize that the author is taking Green/Sustainable culture to a dystopian end...
True, but you probably dont' realize just how quickly a shop can turn racist/discriminatory without even realizing it. "Yeah, we tried a few guys from _____ and they just didn't work out, so we don't hire anyone like that anymore" which can go from a school, a town, to a race or gender and the broad brush begins. Then those guys who don't hire ________ as a matter of policy due to a few _______ not "working out" (for whatever reason of "working out") moving to other shops, keeping their internalized prejudices from previous experiences, moving into management positions, it spreads like a cancer. It feels like humans are hard-wired to EXCLUDE people, and we try to rationalize it, reason it out, but in the end, it ends up hurting a lot of folks who are perfectly fine for the job, but just because a "couple guys didn't work out" a couple decades ago....
If you don't think those "profit margins" can't be hidden away through operating costs and executive salaries, I've got a bridge in Brooklyn you might be interested in.
Not really. Having worked in the digital music industry for the past 6 years, I can assure you "500,00" artists are not making $100,000 each. Even with the giganticness of the digital library with artists from every genre, etc, the sales of tracks still follow closely with the Billboard top 100, with very, very few rare exceptions. So it's more like 1-2% of artists make 90% of the revenues (and profits), and the other 98% scrabble for the last 10%. The only company that seems to be doing something different, genuinely, is beatport and the majority of their sales, while diffrent from the mainstream, still concentrate amongst a "handful" of artists/producers and the great majority go generally ignored.
Hrm, in my effort to remain productive today at work:
http://www.eyeonthesky.com/astrocruises/index.html
Apparently, they exist!
Hrm. I bet if there were enough interest, a cruise line might be willing to make a "stargazers" cruise and set-up with some telescopes/binoculars and some good astronomy teachers to show you how and where to look and use the equipment, etc... And, of course, alcohol. That's a cruise I might be interested in...
One of the most amazing demonstrations of this was the one time I flew down to Florida to visit with friends and we headed to keywest at night. A couple hours of driving, we pulled over out in the middle of nowhere and instructed everyone out. Not that that's creepy at all, no sir. But once we got out, he turned out the lights on the car and said "Look up." Magnificent. Then he killed us while we were staring up.
True story.
You should read up on what Austrian Economics is based on before you make that kind of assumption. It's *not* based on any mathematics models and in fact, prides itself on it.
You aren't looking hard enough. The fundamentalist church I went to growing up required women to wear full length dresses, no make-up was allowed, and generally kept their heads covered with a scarf when in public (but that part wasn't really enforced), amongst other asinine restrictions regarding separation of genders, etc. In some of our "cousin" churches, they "make marriage vows" that explicitly state that they accept that their husbands may beat them into submission, and that they understand that's God's will and the like. Granted, I grew up in rural Tennessee, but this was pretty common through that area amongst the Pentacostal family of churches. When people say "American Taliban", I've seen it first hand.
Hrm, my comment disappeared. Anyway, it's true, though: ideas are a dime a dozen. same as in software development. How many game ideas do you have? How's that working out for you?
The fact is, professional screenwriters have no qualms about sharing loglines, pitches, etc because they know that 1) 99.9% of the general population doesn't have the ability to write a screenplay from start to finish and 2) even if they did take your idea and run with it, chances are their script will turn out much, much different than your own. In fact, there are several industry sites (they escape me at the moment, though) where you can read about all of the latest script sales, including their loglines, open to the public.
It's still the same thing, though. Ask any serious screenwriter if they keep their loglines, pitches, whatever a secret and they'll tell you no, and that's a sign of an amateur. Because, given the same plotline, logline, whatever, two different writers can come up with two completely different movies and the vast majority of the population couldn't write shit.
Everything sucks to someone. Your favorite movie? Someone thinks it sucks.
Put yourself in a movie executives position. You're about to invest 30-100+ million dollars in a film. Once that money's spent, now you have to hope to hell that someone goes to see that movie and you can make your money back, and if you're really lucky, make a profit enough to fund 10 more movies, 9 of which will fail miserably. So, do you take the risk on an weird, quirky movie that appeals to, maybe, .1% of the general population or do you make another Tyler fucking Perry movie that brings in half a billion dollars a pop? Here's a newsflash: movies people actually like? They don't really make all that much money, if ever, and we're not talking about making money in the bullshit hollywood accounting way. They just fail to appeal to a broad enough audience that they sell tickets and DVDs. It's not just movies, however, it's just about any sort of artform you can think of. What was the #1 book last year, some version of the twilight series? What was the #1 album last year?
If you want to see how the STUDIO movie system works, I highly recommend reading "How to Write Movies for Fun and Profit" by Lennon & Garant (writers behind the "Night At The Museum" series, balls of fury, Reno 9-11). You don't have to want to write movies, but it's eye-opening at seeing what "the other side" (i.e. the money) is looking for when trying to fund movies.
At the same time, when's the last time you went to an arthouse and saw one of the many, many indie films that "don't suck"? Or even, what's YOUR great, original idea?
Servo and Nuts & Volts are still on paper, I do believe.
lol
white people.
The real CPU guys don't seem to write any more. Peter Bright is just a fucking long-timer forum troll with a decent understanding of CPU architecture, but I think he relishes in the role of trying to write the most inflammatory anti-fanboy hit pieces to get the highest page view count on the site. I don't read anything by that fucking moron because I won't give them the satisfaction.
Why can't it based on a percentage one time and then some set amount another time? Are you a robot? Are you so inflexible or so mentally inept that you cannot handle contingency situations on the fly?