We all know that the aim of a franchise is to make as much money as you can following a well understood formula, normally delivering predictable, mediocre goods or services.
The name franchise could not be more aptly applied to the serials we are force fed each summer nowadays.
Surely you would also be against a food critic that gives a bad rating to your local McDonalds.
You are in your right to go and watch rubbish and enjoy it, the job of the critic is to point out why something is rubbish, irrespective of how much a crowd is pleased by it.
That blockbuster movies are not normally high art is not the fault of the critic, it is the fault of the movie producers and the majority of the movie goer public, who are always happy to watch "popcorn-munchers" without ever attempting to watch anything else.
If the majority of the public wants banal low brow art most of the time, movie critics (the fucking experts in the field) should not pat the public in the back for their lack of good taste.
Any expertise carries an obvious degree of snobbery (we could say that techies and nerds are snob when it comes to technology) but that does not mean that you let the fools start running the asylum...
A critic is obliged to give an opinion and perhaps a rating to a movie, his position is of judge, to nick pick the bads and to praise the goods. That is the job description for bunnies sakes, not pointing out the flaws of a movie would be a critic's dereliction of duty.
If you want a description, then look for reviews. Normally the websites of the movies will give you enough information, and even the IMDB and similar sites have a plot outline that does not go into judging the merits of a movie.
Don't blame the critics about your personal confusion about their function, the name of the profession should be a major give away about what one can expect, but some folks have a twisted version of the Universe in which critics should not criticize, which is frankly baffling...
By switching to Linux for desktop computing needs you are left with tons of money (no Office, no Windows, no antivirus, no firewall, etc) that you can use to have a proper gaming machine.
I don't think you are as well informed as you claim, maybe snob and pretentious when it comes to gaming, but not well informed and certainly not financially astute.
Few human beings have understood the nature of the universe better than Einstein.
Who else could have authority to talk about the existence or non existence of god but the person that described how matter, energy and time, the most basic universal concepts, behave?
Few people will ever have as much authority as Einstein, and now it is uncontroversial exactly what his opinion (expert opinion) was about the matter.
For the simple fact that he demonstrates mathematically that energy, time and matter are predictable, no god needed, thanks.
Others took this even further to the very point when the universe started as we know it, to the point that pope John Paul II was fearful of the findings of Hawking and other astrophysicists, because they were clearly cornering the idea of a god, by mathematical means, to the point where it did not matter at all if there was one or not.
As for Buddhism, well, let me say that I was not impressed that menstruating women were not allowed in Buddhist temples in Thailand (how would they know is beyond me) and they were as jealous about modesty (cover legs, shoulders) that would have not been out of place in a mosque or a Catholic Church.
Scaling means that you don't hit performance issues for a particular resource or that you hit them in a lineal fashion.
An application that does not scale will stall at some point for some resource (CPU, disk, network, whatever) and just throwing more resource at the problem will not sort it.
Throwing machines at a problem is a typical case of an application that is not scaling at all, you would expect that an application that is going to scale requests CPU in a linear fashion until a second machine is needed, tha usage scales linearly in both until a third machine is needed and so on.
If you have a process that all of the sudden needs 2 or 3 more machines most likely you should rethink your whole design...
Conduction is done during rehearsals, there the different sections of the orchestra fine tune how the piece of music will be interpreted and later on all the sections of the orchestra are "stitched" together in order to deliver a performance of the work in question.
To direct an orchestra you require of many intellectual attributes that currently are not the grasp of any robot, no matter how advanced.
In any orchestra the director can safely take a sit during the performance and the music would flow flawlessly.
If this was a TV show SCO lawyer's nemesis would go back confidently to his desk, open his briefcase and pull the books you are mentioning to the complete and utter embarrassment of the bad taste joke Mr McBride has become.
In Nordic countries penal systems are highly developed, sodomization of inmates is not allowed, in countries like Germany people that are released go into farms or open prisions in the late stages of their time in jail.
But the US is a racist system that does precious little for the inmates, no wonder that some people think it is like that elsewhere.
I have Sysadministered most of my working life and rarely have been working a Sunday morning.
I run regularly, play the piano, travel very often, assist to the opera and classical music concerts and have a life that by most standards is quite good (now that I have been made redundant I am travelling around Europe for the next 3 or 4 months).
Your career choice is not going to ruin your life, what will do so is your decisions about what is important and your lack of capacity to say no when needed.
Today I booked a complex trip to Barcelona from London by rail and coach, I also applied to become a provider of computing services for the UK public sector, received a couple of job offers, organized a couple of meetings with friends next week (one is in Ireland, the other is in the other side of town) and interviewed a couple of guys in India to work for me for a pet project of mine.
I also called my mom and sister (hi Mum!), who live in Mexico, using Skype. I paid a couple of US dollars because my mum can't get Skype to work in Ubuntu (technical prowess of a 70 year old has limits), the call to my little sis was free. Yes, my mum is using Ubuntu.
In the meantime my PVR recorded the Chelsea-Liverpool game, which I can watch whenever I want. I also went for a run and measured the distance I ran and my pace using my Garmin 305 with integrated GPS and heart rate monitor. By the time I was home my food was warm and ready since my oven was programmed to cook it automatically about half way my run.
I will be posting a few pictures from a trip I made last week so friends all around the UK and in Mexico and Germany will be able to enjoy them.
I also just bought two tickets for the opera, and downloaded a couple of articles about Ruby in Rails (I could download a full book in a few seconds, but I am not sure I need it at the moment).
Fucking technology. It seems to be getting on the damn way all the time.
I would prefer to waste days dealing with a travel agent, wasting unholy amounts of money to talk to friends and colleagues, I would also love to guess my speed, distance and heart rate when I run and would be lovely to have to cook by hand once I get home.
Yeah, down with technology, the damn thing is useless.
And one day will get into trouble, or will create it for somebody else.
A person I knew was having an affair with a woman without his wife knowing anything about it. After following the respective legal procedure somebody else was named the person responsible to execute the will, pay debts, etc. on behalf of this person when he died.
Very sensibly (IMHO) he decided not to tell the wife about the extramarital life of this individual, all of which was documented to excruciating detail in one of the email accounts of the deceased person.
Thanks to this, the wife kept an unblemished memory of her husband, was not consumed by the bitterness of betrayal and had a positive role model to present to her children.
Just "hacking" (I would say cracking) the accounts would have most likely exposed a lot of innocent people to unnecessary pain (since after all knowing all this would have served no practical purpose).
There are legal procedures in place for a reason. Only somebody monumentally careless can suggest to do things without weighing carefully the possible consequences.
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So you are fine with a movie that for 1/3 of the screen time is just a big advertisement for a bad video game ?
Your kind of pickiness is, uhm, baffling.
... when start talking about franchises.
We all know that the aim of a franchise is to make as much money as you can following a well understood formula, normally delivering predictable, mediocre goods or services.
The name franchise could not be more aptly applied to the serials we are force fed each summer nowadays.
We, the ignorant public, know better.
....
Next thing you are going to say is that global warming is a scam and that humankind has never landed in the Moon
Surely you would also be against a food critic that gives a bad rating to your local McDonalds.
You are in your right to go and watch rubbish and enjoy it, the job of the critic is to point out why something is rubbish, irrespective of how much a crowd is pleased by it.
That blockbuster movies are not normally high art is not the fault of the critic, it is the fault of the movie producers and the majority of the movie goer public, who are always happy to watch "popcorn-munchers" without ever attempting to watch anything else.
If the majority of the public wants banal low brow art most of the time, movie critics (the fucking experts in the field) should not pat the public in the back for their lack of good taste.
Any expertise carries an obvious degree of snobbery (we could say that techies and nerds are snob when it comes to technology) but that does not mean that you let the fools start running the asylum...
A critic is obliged to give an opinion and perhaps a rating to a movie, his position is of judge, to nick pick the bads and to praise the goods. That is the job description for bunnies sakes, not pointing out the flaws of a movie would be a critic's dereliction of duty.
If you want a description, then look for reviews. Normally the websites of the movies will give you enough information, and even the IMDB and similar sites have a plot outline that does not go into judging the merits of a movie.
Don't blame the critics about your personal confusion about their function, the name of the profession should be a major give away about what one can expect, but some folks have a twisted version of the Universe in which critics should not criticize, which is frankly baffling...
By switching to Linux for desktop computing needs you are left with tons of money (no Office, no Windows, no antivirus, no firewall, etc) that you can use to have a proper gaming machine.
I don't think you are as well informed as you claim, maybe snob and pretentious when it comes to gaming, but not well informed and certainly not financially astute.
Einstein described a Universe that needs no god to function.
Heck, he wrote formulas about it.
Things in the universe just work, no god required.
If you don't understand why the opinion of such person is important we can't help you there.
Few human beings have understood the nature of the universe better than Einstein.
Who else could have authority to talk about the existence or non existence of god but the person that described how matter, energy and time, the most basic universal concepts, behave?
Few people will ever have as much authority as Einstein, and now it is uncontroversial exactly what his opinion (expert opinion) was about the matter.
For the simple fact that he demonstrates mathematically that energy, time and matter are predictable, no god needed, thanks.
Others took this even further to the very point when the universe started as we know it, to the point that pope John Paul II was fearful of the findings of Hawking and other astrophysicists, because they were clearly cornering the idea of a god, by mathematical means, to the point where it did not matter at all if there was one or not.
Somebody trained in Astrology is still a quack, no matter how you want to spin it.
Ditto with religion if you understand my analogy above.
Black holes for example.
As for Buddhism, well, let me say that I was not impressed that menstruating women were not allowed in Buddhist temples in Thailand (how would they know is beyond me) and they were as jealous about modesty (cover legs, shoulders) that would have not been out of place in a mosque or a Catholic Church.
And have not changed the user-agent identifier at all, actually I have never done it, I put my custom or visit where my beliefs are.
Now it is almost impossible to find a site that does not work satisfactorily with Firefox/Linux and the basic plugins (Flash, Java).
I urge everybody to try this, you will be pleasantly surprised while sending a clear messages to dumb designers out there.
There is expert advice about how much weight you should be carrying in your shoulders (around 5% of your own weight if I remember correctly).
The lighter the laptop the better for you, irrespective of your subjective feeling about the matter.
Scaling means that you don't hit performance issues for a particular resource or that you hit them in a lineal fashion.
An application that does not scale will stall at some point for some resource (CPU, disk, network, whatever) and just throwing more resource at the problem will not sort it.
Throwing machines at a problem is a typical case of an application that is not scaling at all, you would expect that an application that is going to scale requests CPU in a linear fashion until a second machine is needed, tha usage scales linearly in both until a third machine is needed and so on.
If you have a process that all of the sudden needs 2 or 3 more machines most likely you should rethink your whole design...
Do they have those technologies in the planet you just recently arrived from?
Why do your friends need to know you are going away during the weekend?
Answer: they don't.
In 99% of what passes for communication nowadays, the need for saying or informing other people about something it completely and utterly artificial.
Conduction is done during rehearsals, there the different sections of the orchestra fine tune how the piece of music will be interpreted and later on all the sections of the orchestra are "stitched" together in order to deliver a performance of the work in question.
To direct an orchestra you require of many intellectual attributes that currently are not the grasp of any robot, no matter how advanced.
In any orchestra the director can safely take a sit during the performance and the music would flow flawlessly.
.. is not perjury.
If this was a TV show SCO lawyer's nemesis would go back confidently to his desk, open his briefcase and pull the books you are mentioning to the complete and utter embarrassment of the bad taste joke Mr McBride has become.
... you don't care about the share price.
If you do care so much about the share price, you are an speculator.
The privation of freedom is supposed to be the punishment for a crime.
Petty humiliation of inmates is not supposed to happen, and as a matter of fact is not part of the law prescribed punishment.
In Nordic countries penal systems are highly developed, sodomization of inmates is not allowed, in countries like Germany people that are released go into farms or open prisions in the late stages of their time in jail.
But the US is a racist system that does precious little for the inmates, no wonder that some people think it is like that elsewhere.
I have Sysadministered most of my working life and rarely have been working a Sunday morning.
I run regularly, play the piano, travel very often, assist to the opera and classical music concerts and have a life that by most standards is quite good (now that I have been made redundant I am travelling around Europe for the next 3 or 4 months).
Your career choice is not going to ruin your life, what will do so is your decisions about what is important and your lack of capacity to say no when needed.
Damn right.
Today I booked a complex trip to Barcelona from London by rail and coach, I also applied to become a provider of computing services for the UK public sector, received a couple of job offers, organized a couple of meetings with friends next week (one is in Ireland, the other is in the other side of town) and interviewed a couple of guys in India to work for me for a pet project of mine.
I also called my mom and sister (hi Mum!), who live in Mexico, using Skype. I paid a couple of US dollars because my mum can't get Skype to work in Ubuntu (technical prowess of a 70 year old has limits), the call to my little sis was free. Yes, my mum is using Ubuntu.
In the meantime my PVR recorded the Chelsea-Liverpool game, which I can watch whenever I want. I also went for a run and measured the distance I ran and my pace using my Garmin 305 with integrated GPS and heart rate monitor. By the time I was home my food was warm and ready since my oven was programmed to cook it automatically about half way my run.
I will be posting a few pictures from a trip I made last week so friends all around the UK and in Mexico and Germany will be able to enjoy them.
I also just bought two tickets for the opera, and downloaded a couple of articles about Ruby in Rails (I could download a full book in a few seconds, but I am not sure I need it at the moment).
Fucking technology. It seems to be getting on the damn way all the time.
I would prefer to waste days dealing with a travel agent, wasting unholy amounts of money to talk to friends and colleagues, I would also love to guess my speed, distance and heart rate when I run and would be lovely to have to cook by hand once I get home.
Yeah, down with technology, the damn thing is useless.
... and don't get on the way of complex ramifications of legal, moral and emotional character.
And one day will get into trouble, or will create it for somebody else.
A person I knew was having an affair with a woman without his wife knowing anything about it. After following the respective legal procedure somebody else was named the person responsible to execute the will, pay debts, etc. on behalf of this person when he died.
Very sensibly (IMHO) he decided not to tell the wife about the extramarital life of this individual, all of which was documented to excruciating detail in one of the email accounts of the deceased person.
Thanks to this, the wife kept an unblemished memory of her husband, was not consumed by the bitterness of betrayal and had a positive role model to present to her children.
Just "hacking" (I would say cracking) the accounts would have most likely exposed a lot of innocent people to unnecessary pain (since after all knowing all this would have served no practical purpose).
There are legal procedures in place for a reason. Only somebody monumentally careless can suggest to do things without weighing carefully the possible consequences.