I was thinking more about watching this stoopid company through the '90s. It never looked like a fundamentally good company. But people kept buying it and buying it. Eventually the bubble was big enough to buy a real (if evil) company with real assets (Time/Warner) with the stock of their basically valueless company. for me they jumped the shark about the time they came out with their first PC client - which is long before most people knew they existed. Anyone else remember when they were Macintosh only?
" What's in it for you? If you agree, and you put your money where your mouth is by selling AOL stock short, you make good money riding it down to zero"
If only we had such sane markets. It matters not if AOL is a junk company or not, only if joe stockbuyer thinks it is. AOL has looked like a bad investment for years and years. You look at their various moronic business plans that they never really deliver on, etc. But as long as old Jod keeps buying it, it goes up - not down. Knowing they are wrong is easy, predicting the moment the bubble will burst in another thing entirely.
They don't say. I assume mass, since as you point out, weight becomes an imprecise term in this context. 125000 tons of mass would be a lot, but actually translates into nice size for a transit terminal.
It's really moot since they aren't talking about an anchored design. They just plan to extend the ribbon out as a counterweight.
" A good tech support person can handle bad users."
A good tech rep that can handle problem users can get a job that pays far better and entails less stress. And they do. What's left are the ones that can't. If you are lucky and treat them well you can hang on to good techs with poor people skills and poor techs with good people skills. You can get teh job done that way - but it ain't easy.
"Not to over-generalize, but I do notice that women tech support tend to handle "bad calls" a lot better than men."
AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! No... When I was a manager for tech support reps (the horror...) the worst from a customer dissatisfaction index were women. On average you may have a point but the worst of the worst were female. Most trouble was one with an upper crusty Jamaican accent that made her sound snotty to americans even when she was trying to be nice. Add to that the fact that she really was a snotty bitch most of the time. I winced everytime she picked up a call, but she was unfirable for political reasons.
"If I buy a print of the Mona Lisa, do I have the right to draw on it? Yes, I do."
No, you don't. There is a specific exemption in the first sale doctrine for "unique artistic works". If there is only one of it the seller can indeed enjoin you from altering it.
"This is almost certainly not the case. The idea that books turn to dust on the shelves is largely false. Even books printed on quite acidic paper will probably last for centuries (with typical research library handling frequency) if they are well looked after."
They are not book as a rule. They are PULPS. Magazines printed on paper that would be considered low quality even by newspaper publishers. Add to that the fact that they may have color artwork that used unstable inks/dyes. Add to that that they are already old, 75+ for many. Maybe some were pH buffered by Mr. Gibson as he collected them, maybe not - the treatments are not cheap and add up fast. They will already be fragile. They are not going to take much additional handling.
They shouldn't be cut up to scan, but they need to be scanned ASAP. On the plus side, they don't have book style binding. They should tolerate a fair amount of flattening for a good scan.
They should be more broadly available to be read than these could possibly tolerate. A lot of that old stuff has never been reprinted (some quite desevedly:-} )and may exist only in those copies at this date.
"We just had 'The Velvet Underground and Nico' released as a double CD so that you can listen to the mono version of the album, or the stereo."
?????? I've got the original CD of that. It's very very short. You could fit mono and stereo on one CD I would think. Greed at work I suppose. PS: Nico was no great artist but she did capure that spaced out Astrud Gilberto quality.
" Any study that "must" take all male volunteers because the results will be 'more stable' or something lacks good methodology"
Normally I would be the first to agree with you. If they are planning an all male mars expidition then the single gender experiment may be valid. That said, the experiment looks like total crap science from the get go. It's actually a poorly designed study on the medium term effects of being bedridden - a subject with a lot of literature behind it already. Too bad Fenymen isn't around anymore to rip them a new oriface.
I could save a lot of money by building my own file server too, but then I wouldn't have a support contract to go with it, and getting any warranty work done on it would suck, and would probably result in two companies pointing the finger at each other, saying "It's their fault!"
Then you shouldn't. I, on the other hand, would build my own file server in a heartbeat over most of the ones I can buy. If a hard drive goes out I can just get it replaced by Seagate/Maxtor/IBM - who can finger point? Service contracts are vastly overrated. I sign off on probably $100,000 in service contracts a year which have a real world value of $0. Good hardware rarely breaks, my 24/7 expensive maintenence contract with HP got me a $150 4.3G HD replaced last year for "free" - quite the ROI.... I know more about most of the software than the guys that man the support desks (hence we never call them), but we still have give them the $$ because it's "policy".
Well, that's you. I've bought maybe 10 CDs in the last year. I've downloaded hundreds. Would I have bought hundreds more if I couldn't have d/led them? No.
I'm not going to buy some K-Tel "80's Hits" CD just so that my son can play "Safety Dance" in the car. He would have just done without. In either case Men Without Hats wouldn't have gotten any $$.I doubt they make anything from those K-Tel Cds anyway.
I have certainly bought things only because I could get them from GNUtella first to sample. I'm still evil according to the RIAA. I'm fragmenting the market by enjoying j-pop that they don't own and importing CDs from Japan (DAMN... those are expensive) where their monopoly doesn't extend (yes, they have their own, yes they're just as bad). Next time I'm at the store I'll buy an Apohex Twin CD for the same reason - I sampled it first. Sad for the RIAA, I doubt they make mega $$ off him either. Too bad....
I'm certainly no expert in islamic law, but I can't think of any logical way a cleric could call IP infringement "the worst kind of theft". I realize that the article probably should have been titled "Egyptian Cleric Talks Out Ass", but is there any basis, even within the convoluted logic of sharia, that justifies this position?
maybe I'm too old to "get" his swinging phat grooves. Fine. I'd be happier if he made me angry. He doesn't. He's just deadly dull to me. He's as predictable as Brintney Spears, just marketed to a different audience.
I'll confess that I don't like 99% of rap/hip-hop (I start to get interested at trip-hop). But then 99% of everything is crap, eh? I don't care if Eminem is purple and spotted. His "music" is boring and contrived. He uses "shock" words to get people attention - but then what does he do once he's gotten your attention? Nothing. He whines "fag, faq, fag" but does he have any new insights into "faggotry"? No. He's "shocking" just to get press. "There's no such thing as bad press". Works, I guess he makes big $$. Blah, Howard Stern with a beat - I'll pass.
This tantrum he threw last week is a case in point. He screams an rants about he's going to hunt down and kill whoever ripped his new CD. Go home little boy. Better yet, go confront the Nigerians selling boots of the CD in Manhatten out of the trunks of cars for $5. Those guys have chunks of guys like Emeinem in their stool.
Mozart, Vivaldi and particularly Paganini *are* popular music. Just by dead guys. There isn't really a karass of "slashdot readers", but if there were I don't think it would consist of people that *only* listen to any one thing. People that think all the greatest music was written by europeans between 1700-1900 are just as stupid as those (more common) that think all the worlds best music was written in the last 18 months.
That said, Eminem is a talentless corporate hack. The sooner the vortex of history sucks him into the black hole that contains Vanilla Ice and Millie Vanilly the better.
"Why? Galileo claimed the Earth revolves around the Sun, which at the time was quite controversial and extraordinary. However, simply observing the planetary motions proved him right. Nothing extraordinary there"
It was indeed extraordinary. Observing the motions of the "wandering lights" with Galileo's "magic glass" was very extraordinary. Actually seeing the moons of jupiter revolve about the planet was a world shaking event for those that saw it and understood the Ptolemeic worldview that was official church dogma. It just *couldn't* be so. but you lool in the glass, and it *is* so.
Watch out with the sun worshipping. Most (all?) of the fucked up religions of the world evolved from sun/son worship. Suffice to say, when Uhura said "It's not the sun in the sky, it's the son of God" she was about as wrong as wrong can be. It's the sun in the sky.
Agree - that's a nasty looking cover and I would have walked right by it at the store. Actually looks enjoyable, perhaps a little like Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan books - which are also largely romances
It's called the DOT. Just try to import and license to drive in the US any of the "unfair competition". Nissan Skyline? Ford(UK) Mondeo? Honda Z Turbo? SMART? I could go on and on. US carmakers can and do sell us garbage because they don't need to compete with good cars.
Hell no! Here in the land of Big Pharma we have this peculiar thing that they call "Computer Validation". It has virtually nothing to do with "validation" in the ordinary sense and more to do with huge piles of paper and endless meeetings than it has to do with computers. But, there it is. It means it costs huge amounts of $$ to change or improve anything. I have to regularly deal with stuff that's 10-20 years out of date (yes, including many of my cow orkers) because it's impossible to update it without making the FDA freak out. Don't make one more thing where I have to fight the obsolesence versus costs of re-validation battle!
Slashdot Mirror
They may have existed before then, but even I never noticed them until they took over applelink in.... what... maybe '88?
I was thinking more about watching this stoopid company through the '90s. It never looked like a fundamentally good company. But people kept buying it and buying it. Eventually the bubble was big enough to buy a real (if evil) company with real assets (Time/Warner) with the stock of their basically valueless company. for me they jumped the shark about the time they came out with their first PC client - which is long before most people knew they existed. Anyone else remember when they were Macintosh only?
" What's in it for you? If you agree, and you put your money where your mouth is by selling AOL stock short, you make good money riding it down to zero"
If only we had such sane markets. It matters not if AOL is a junk company or not, only if joe stockbuyer thinks it is. AOL has looked like a bad investment for years and years. You look at their various moronic business plans that they never really deliver on, etc. But as long as old Jod keeps buying it, it goes up - not down. Knowing they are wrong is easy, predicting the moment the bubble will burst in another thing entirely.
They don't say. I assume mass, since as you point out, weight becomes an imprecise term in this context. 125000 tons of mass would be a lot, but actually translates into nice size for a transit terminal.
It's really moot since they aren't talking about an anchored design. They just plan to extend the ribbon out as a counterweight.
ironic, considering the subject header. From their FAQ:
"As currently proposed, the first Space Elevator is small! It is only 890 tons, less than half the mass of the Space Shuttle at launch."
140x that isn't trivial, but it's not all that massive either.
" A good tech support person can handle bad users."
A good tech rep that can handle problem users can get a job that pays far better and entails less stress. And they do. What's left are the ones that can't. If you are lucky and treat them well you can hang on to good techs with poor people skills and poor techs with good people skills. You can get teh job done that way - but it ain't easy.
"Not to over-generalize, but I do notice that women tech support tend to handle "bad calls" a lot better than men."
AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! No... When I was a manager for tech support reps (the horror...) the worst from a customer dissatisfaction index were women. On average you may have a point but the worst of the worst were female. Most trouble was one with an upper crusty Jamaican accent that made her sound snotty to americans even when she was trying to be nice. Add to that the fact that she really was a snotty bitch most of the time. I winced everytime she picked up a call, but she was unfirable for political reasons.
just a clarification to the orignal point. I didn't spot that you were referring to a print/reproduction
"If I buy a print of the Mona Lisa, do I have the right to draw on it? Yes, I do."
No, you don't. There is a specific exemption in the first sale doctrine for "unique artistic works". If there is only one of it the seller can indeed enjoin you from altering it.
"This is almost certainly not the case. The idea that books turn to dust on the shelves is largely false. Even books printed on quite acidic paper will probably last for centuries (with typical research library handling frequency) if they are well looked after."
:-} )and may exist only in those copies at this date.
They are not book as a rule. They are PULPS. Magazines printed on paper that would be considered low quality even by newspaper publishers. Add to that the fact that they may have color artwork that used unstable inks/dyes. Add to that that they are already old, 75+ for many. Maybe some were pH buffered by Mr. Gibson as he collected them, maybe not - the treatments are not cheap and add up fast. They will already be fragile. They are not going to take much additional handling.
They shouldn't be cut up to scan, but they need to be scanned ASAP. On the plus side, they don't have book style binding. They should tolerate a fair amount of flattening for a good scan.
They should be more broadly available to be read than these could possibly tolerate. A lot of that old stuff has never been reprinted (some quite desevedly
"We just had 'The Velvet Underground and Nico' released as a double CD so that you can listen to the mono version of the album, or the stereo."
??????
I've got the original CD of that. It's very very short. You could fit mono and stereo on one CD I would think. Greed at work I suppose. PS: Nico was no great artist but she did capure that spaced out Astrud Gilberto quality.
" Any study that "must" take all male volunteers because the results will be 'more stable' or something lacks good methodology"
Normally I would be the first to agree with you. If they are planning an all male mars expidition then the single gender experiment may be valid. That said, the experiment looks like total crap science from the get go. It's actually a poorly designed study on the medium term effects of being bedridden - a subject with a lot of literature behind it already. Too bad Fenymen isn't around anymore to rip them a new oriface.
I could save a lot of money by building my own file server too, but then I wouldn't have a support contract to go with it, and getting any warranty work done on it would suck, and would probably result in two companies pointing the finger at each other, saying "It's their fault!"
Then you shouldn't. I, on the other hand, would build my own file server in a heartbeat over most of the ones I can buy. If a hard drive goes out I can just get it replaced by Seagate/Maxtor/IBM - who can finger point? Service contracts are vastly overrated. I sign off on probably $100,000 in service contracts a year which have a real world value of $0. Good hardware rarely breaks, my 24/7 expensive maintenence contract with HP got me a $150 4.3G HD replaced last year for "free" - quite the ROI.... I know more about most of the software than the guys that man the support desks (hence we never call them), but we still have give them the $$ because it's "policy".
Well, that's you. I've bought maybe 10 CDs in the last year. I've downloaded hundreds. Would I have bought hundreds more if I couldn't have d/led them? No.
I'm not going to buy some K-Tel "80's Hits" CD just so that my son can play "Safety Dance" in the car. He would have just done without. In either case Men Without Hats wouldn't have gotten any $$.I doubt they make anything from those K-Tel Cds anyway.
I have certainly bought things only because I could get them from GNUtella first to sample. I'm still evil according to the RIAA. I'm fragmenting the market by enjoying j-pop that they don't own and importing CDs from Japan (DAMN... those are expensive) where their monopoly doesn't extend (yes, they have their own, yes they're just as bad). Next time I'm at the store I'll buy an Apohex Twin CD for the same reason - I sampled it first. Sad for the RIAA, I doubt they make mega $$ off him either. Too bad....
Who is more typical, you or me?
I'm certainly no expert in islamic law, but I can't think of any logical way a cleric could call IP infringement "the worst kind of theft". I realize that the article probably should have been titled "Egyptian Cleric Talks Out Ass", but is there any basis, even within the convoluted logic of sharia, that justifies this position?
maybe I'm too old to "get" his swinging phat grooves. Fine. I'd be happier if he made me angry. He doesn't. He's just deadly dull to me. He's as predictable as Brintney Spears, just marketed to a different audience.
I'll confess that I don't like 99% of rap/hip-hop (I start to get interested at trip-hop). But then 99% of everything is crap, eh? I don't care if Eminem is purple and spotted. His "music" is boring and contrived. He uses "shock" words to get people attention - but then what does he do once he's gotten your attention? Nothing. He whines "fag, faq, fag" but does he have any new insights into "faggotry"? No. He's "shocking" just to get press. "There's no such thing as bad press". Works, I guess he makes big $$. Blah, Howard Stern with a beat - I'll pass.
This tantrum he threw last week is a case in point. He screams an rants about he's going to hunt down and kill whoever ripped his new CD. Go home little boy. Better yet, go confront the Nigerians selling boots of the CD in Manhatten out of the trunks of cars for $5. Those guys have chunks of guys like Emeinem in their stool.
Mozart, Vivaldi and particularly Paganini *are* popular music. Just by dead guys. There isn't really a karass of "slashdot readers", but if there were I don't think it would consist of people that *only* listen to any one thing. People that think all the greatest music was written by europeans between 1700-1900 are just as stupid as those (more common) that think all the worlds best music was written in the last 18 months.
That said, Eminem is a talentless corporate hack. The sooner the vortex of history sucks him into the black hole that contains Vanilla Ice and Millie Vanilly the better.
I don't think he was saying Eminem is bad/scary evil. More along the lines of
Eminem: sucks
Johnny Cash: Doesn't suck
Refelections of society? If so
Society: sucks
"Why? Galileo claimed the Earth revolves around the Sun, which at the time was quite controversial and extraordinary. However, simply observing the planetary motions proved him right. Nothing extraordinary there"
It was indeed extraordinary. Observing the motions of the "wandering lights" with Galileo's "magic glass" was very extraordinary. Actually seeing the moons of jupiter revolve about the planet was a world shaking event for those that saw it and understood the Ptolemeic worldview that was official church dogma. It just *couldn't* be so. but you lool in the glass, and it *is* so.
Extraordinary.
Watch out with the sun worshipping. Most (all?) of the fucked up religions of the world evolved from sun/son worship. Suffice to say, when Uhura said "It's not the sun in the sky, it's the son of God" she was about as wrong as wrong can be. It's the sun in the sky.
Agree - that's a nasty looking cover and I would have walked right by it at the store. Actually looks enjoyable, perhaps a little like Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan books - which are also largely romances
more telling is this from one of the featured amazon reviews:
"The Skolian novels can be read in any order and the Quantum Rose particularly can be read out of sequence with the planet-hopping novels."
It's called the DOT. Just try to import and license to drive in the US any of the "unfair competition". Nissan Skyline? Ford(UK) Mondeo? Honda Z Turbo? SMART? I could go on and on. US carmakers can and do sell us garbage because they don't need to compete with good cars.
Hell no! Here in the land of Big Pharma we have this peculiar thing that they call "Computer Validation". It has virtually nothing to do with "validation" in the ordinary sense and more to do with huge piles of paper and endless meeetings than it has to do with computers. But, there it is. It means it costs huge amounts of $$ to change or improve anything. I have to regularly deal with stuff that's 10-20 years out of date (yes, including many of my cow orkers) because it's impossible to update it without making the FDA freak out. Don't make one more thing where I have to fight the obsolesence versus costs of re-validation battle!