Actually, I am not quite sure about the timeline here. The Rainbow was quite unique in that it had two CPU's: a Z80 and an Intel 8088. At boot time, you could either enter VT220 mode (using it as a plain terminal) or boot the operating system, CP/M-80/86, a very interesting system, which allowed you to use either Z80 (or 8080) programs or 8086 programs. I believe they called this "soft-sense technology" (it was also patented?), but in reality I guess they simply decided by name whether a program was one or the other, loaded the code into the user area (at 0100h?), then switched the CPU as appropriate before jumping to the program. CP/M-80 programs were suffixed.COM, whereas CP/M-86 programs were suffixed.CMD.
It was only later, when the IBM PC had won, that MS-DOS was ported to the Rainbow.
I remember how I attended a computer fair (MikroData) in Copenhagen in the years 1984 and 1985. In 1984 booths showing secondary equipment (computer tables, printers and other devices, etc) had typically obtained (loaned? rented?) a Rainbow to show. Next year, all machines used for display were IBM PCs.
(Oh, and in 1984 I typed my first "ls" on a Z8000 Cromemco machine, possibly running CROMIX? In 1985 I think they had a huge inflated "Macintosh" at the Apple booth. Also the LISA's from the year before were gone, I think.)
I am certain that Word 4 must have been an abominable kluge. When the first 68040 Quadras came out Word 4 wouldn't run on them, due to some CPU caching problem. Probably Word 4 contained some kind of self-modifying code.
I also recall using Word 4 on a two-monitor setup on a Mac IIfx. It was very nice to have your document open in two windows, one on the 13" monitor in outline mode, one on the 21" grayscale in Page layout mode, showing two full pages IIRC. But beware, this *was* prone to crashing. Once I lost two hours of work. Taught me to save often.
I think this was around 1992, BTW. The world sure has gone downhill since.
I'd really like to see a word processor for X (As in X11, not OS X) with roughly the feature set of Word 5.1, just a few improvements, and rock solid.
GPL is free code--the code itself is free from the whims of its users. What is the difference? BSD derived code (which may be FAR more useful than the original sources) can disappear while GPL derived code can not.
But of course it can. Or cannot, depending on your POV. If I derive code from GPL code, and don't release it to anyone, then delete it, it has disappeared, right? (AFAIK, GPL is about distribution, so what you do with GPL software in privacy is nobody's business.)
You're right about one thing: the GPL is *NOT* about user freedom while the BSD is.
I think this is an important point, you just made me realise why I prefer the BSD license. Stallman talks about "free software, free as in freedom, not beer" all the time. But I just came to the conclusion that this is nonsense: software is not sentient, does not possess a free will; software like all other IP is nothing but an expression of thoughts by someone, thoughts which themselves may be reflections and compositions of thoughts from others; it is pure form embodied in some physical matter.
Freedom is a property, indeed a fundamental right, of humans. Sometimes people are deprived of that right by others, either for good or bad reasons; but it remains their right nonetheless. What would it mean to liberate a beer? Pour it in the sink? "Dear Ale, you are now free to roam at your own will." How can beer or software be free, except as in "at no cost"? How can software be in possession of anything, not to say freedom?
Sometimes the phrase "Free speech" is also used. That is another nonsense phrase: it really should be "(somebody's) freedom to speak" - free speech is when I go to hear a speech, and I don't have to pay, freedom to speak is something entirely different. (I think this may be because, while verbing nouns is fairly safe, nouning verbs isn't.)
So BSD is about a meaningful and important concept: user's freedom, whereas GPL is about a nonsense concept: software's freedom.
-Lasse (I hope this made sufficient sense. Although I regard my self as fairly good at English, it *is* a foreign language to me.)
Your cursory scanning is, alas, in error. For 4A(2) to apply, all conditions abcd have to be fulfilled.
However, an argument could be made, that taliban warriors, and possibly also Al Qaidas supporting them, are covered by 4A(1), being members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict, as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.
I suppose that depends on what you can call armed forces.
This is all well and good but only applies if the structures are NOT being used as military staging areas. If you turn a hospital into a military base and launch attacks from it, it is no longer a civilian target and it not protected under the Geneva Convention. Ther Germans found this out in WWII. They took over a monestary, which was protected under the Geneva Convention, and used it to launch attacks (it was a very strong structure). Well the allies were having none of that, it was now a military target and they reduced it to rubble.
I assume you are referring to the case of the monastery on Monte Cassini. I've read an explanation for this, which may or may not be true, but in either case adds some insight.
According to this explanation, the attacking allies intercepted a communication between Germans, saying "Abt ist im Kloster". They interpreted that as "the company is in the monastery" (Abt being understood as an abbreviation for "Abteilung" = "detachment".) What was meant, however was "the abbot is in the monastery".
Assuming this is true, bad intelligence led to the attack and destruction of a civilian, protected target. The same situation has occured many times in Iraq, especially while trying to kill Saddam with cruise missiles.
The question it leads to is this: Is the risk of attacking a protected civilian target acceptable, when your intelligence is not 100% sure of whether that civilian target is actually abused by the enemy?
The way I understand the Geneva Conventions, I'd say the answer is no; if you can minimize collateral damage by chosing the appropriate means to attack, you are obliged to do so. In the case of trying to get at Saddam, I suppose an attack using special forces would have been preferable to an attack with cruise missiles.
"War is nothing but the continuation of policy by other means," (von Clausewitz)
If we accept that military intervention is a violent form of diplomacy (diplomacy being inter-national policy), then it should also be quite clear, that the force applied should be scalable, to achieve the maximum (political) effect with a minimum of force. Not only is that civilised, but it would also appear to be common sense.
You seem to not understand this. If US officers share your lack of understanding, I see no end to the political defeats your military will suffer. You might win battles, even wars. But as a nation, you will lose, face and all.
Judging from prominent officers like Colin Powell, it would seem that at least some of your officers understand this, and I am sure Clausewitz is obligatory reading for your cadets, so at least they have a fair chance of understanding this.
On the other hand, you also have had officers who obviously didn't understand it. Perhaps the most famous being General MacArthur. If he had had his way, he would have attacked China during the Korean war, thereby winning the war, but also taking an unacceptable risk of escalating the war to a devastating WW III. Fortunately he was withdrawn by a smart president. (Unfortunately, you don't have the advantage of a smart president at the moment, and a smart foreign secretary doesn't quite make up for it. Although I have great respect for Colin Powell, I believe his military past is a disadvantage for him as a politician, as he will be inclined to obey rather than disagree.)
As for Abu Ghraib, your officers failed. Either the soldiers acted on their own, in which case their commanders failed because they didn't ensure the discipline that would have prevented it. Or else, they simply ordered it, thereby giving illegal orders. Regardless, both the soldiers and their commanders are to blame.
Perhaps if US troops were trained as you say, they would perform better in Iraq. I believe the Danish military in general, and our International Brigade in particular is trained like that. I would assume that this is also the case in most European armed forces. This doesn't mean that they are ineffective as soldiers, they just have the capability to react in a scaled manner. Of course this means that even the private soldier has to continually weigh his actions against the Rules of Engagement.
BTW, Danish troops are explicitly taught that they are not allowed to obey illegal orders (such as orders which would violate Geneva conventions), and know what would constitute such an order. Instead, an officer issuing such an order is to be reported to higher superiors.
Assuming that the offenders in Abu Ghraib did act on orders; would they have been required to disobey them? Would they have the knowledge of Geneva conventions etc to assess the orders as illegal? Or is there no such concept as an illegal order in the US military?
I'm asking out of genuine interest, this is in no way meant as flamebait or trolling.
I disagree: Finding a good algorithm (indeed, finding the *best* algorithm for a task), is merely good programming. (And *inventing* a good algorithm is *excellent* programming!) Implementing it in the best possible manner, including applying shortcuts which are known to be possible due to knowledge of the specific task to which the algorithm is applied, is optimising.
You might be a good optimiser, or you might just be a good programmer. Your colleague however, is a bad programmer.
Very true. Just look at a map like this. Just Sahara alone is a sandbox (larger than Europe?) for terraforming experiments that could eventually provide space for a population like 500M - and still have room to spare for reservations, where desert specific wildlife could be preserved. After that, the desert in southern Africa, Arabia and Asia could be terraformed.
Of course it could be argued that these areas, being terrestrial, by definition already _are_ terraformed. So i'd suggest we find a more precise term that would indicate the _real_ intent: making land capable of sustaining life for a certain population density, without a significant import of food.
This means we have to study the causes of desertification, and hopefully find out a way to reverse the process.
I'd much rather see the USA put the money in such a project (together with the other rich parts of the world, of course) than see the money sent of on what can in reality only be considered an expensive, exclusive, and thorughly extravagant tourist trip to Mars. Sure, we may learn something from that trip. But the _relevance_ of what is learned is questionable, I'd say.
Let's hope he dies soon, otherwise there may be no money left to give. My prophecy is that MS will go down within 5 years due to open source competition combined with intervention from governments everywhere.
It is amazing how easily historic facts are forgotten. Especially when considering how easy it is to look up those facts thanks to the Internet.
Microsoft bought Mosaic technology from Spyglass, which had obtained Mosaic from NCSA. So it is somewhat meaningless to say that Mosaic was better than IE, as IE is a further development of Mosaic; they didn't really exist in parallel.
Thanks for that link. I had just read about the Opera IPO, and for a second considered that it would be cool, if I had some money to invest, to invest it in what I hitherto had considered a cool software company.
Upon reading *that*, however, Opera swiftly joined the place in my mind reserved for crooks, criminals, SCO, Microsoft, etc.
Suppose a mail program shipped a BCC of every mail you received to a third party, perhaps for the noble reason of "scanning for spam", but also openly for filtering and providing you with directed ads, and the third party with statistic material.
As for Google, I will hold on the decision so far. But they certainly lost a star in their rating. Let's see what Google has to say about it.
Lego might sell quality bricks, but everyone in China can do the same.
Yet they don't. It's the same thing with toy cars, however here we have another data point: Toy cars produced for some well-known international brand, even when produced in China, are of a better quality than cars sold under some obscure name. I can only think of one reason for that: higher expectations, leading to better Quality Control. Of course the "noname" cars can probably be sold at a lesser price and a higher profit. Naturally, in case of plastic bricks, any other brand than LEGO, is in effect a "noname", and therefore it would make no sense to produce quality bricks.
Actually I have been told that a Chinese company was making LEGO clones under a sort of brand name. They were called 0937.
I wasn't saying that all Chinese produced stuff is lousy. I said that there are lots of lousy stuff in our toy stores that has been produced in China. Probably there are also some good toys produced in China, and some lousy toys produced elsewhere.
I always thought Michael Palin would have been a good Arthur Dent, but he is too old for that role now. Seeing him in his travels around the world always made me think of Arthur Dent.
What's this Mostly harmless I keep hearing about? Sometimes I get a flash that I may have read or browsed a book called something like that, but afterwards my mind is always blank. As for So Long and thanks for all the fish, I think it is a great book. It really is a damn shame that DNA didn't write a fifth book, though. I always wanted to know more about how the relation between Arthur and Fenchurch evolved. In a parallel universe he wrote/is writing one, maybe.
Actually I'm not very worried about the future of LEGO. As you say, the brand is strong, and although there may be a crisis, I am quite sure LEGO will survive just fine, after some adjustments. After all, it isn't under the control of a profit-seeking shareholder's board, but entirely under family control. Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, grandson of the founder of LEGO, and son of the man who made LEGO what it is today, has taken over - again - and I'm confident that he will manage to steer LEGO back on course.
In this age of hi-tech, I usually say that forecasts beyond two years are impossible, but I am certain that my grand-children (when I get some) will also play with LEGO.
Actually, the Pirate legos are what started the specialization trend back in 1989.
It is sad to see that myth perpetuated. LEGO has *always* made "specialized" items. Back in the early 60's, they made for example scale cars (about 1/100 scale) to go with LEGO buildings. My brother has a garage for such cars (or other matchbox size cars), which came with a very peculiar spring-operated opening door. If I recall correctly there were: 1) a base plate with a cut-out, which would click-lock the door when closed; 2) a door, which could be inserted into 3) a frame, with a hole for attaching a small spring.
Other items were for example a set of policemen directing traffic with hand signals; about 1/72 scale. And there has been three different styles of road signs, with only the last type being properly made from a mast on a base, with the sign clicking onto it. The first type would not have looked out of place in a H0 scale model railway diorama; they were beautifully done, but had no attachment possibility to other LEGO, yet they were LEGO.
However, the current type of "specialized" items are often much more versatile: My son has a crocodile, and a dinosaur. The red tongue of the dinosaur is the exact same shape part as the green head of the crocodile. The sailmast of an ice-boat is attached to the boat by a sphere on the mast: this joint is the same as was used on the large mini-doll series, back in the seventies.
Often, when I get my son (:-) ) a new box of LEGO, I laugh out loud because of an old "specialized" brick being used in a new, totally surprising manner.
If this was a chinese company they'd sell 5lb buckets of assorted pieces for $5.
And each brick would have a lifetime of less than one year, developing cracks and warp. Of the 5 lb, at least 4 lb would be out-of-spec, either fit too loosely or too tight, and they would have sharp, annoying warts where they were carelessly ripped from the molding sprue. The color would vary extremely from batch to batch, be rather dull, and fade rapidly when exposed to the sun.
The problem with LEGO bricks is not that they are overpriced, but that they are overengineered. They are just too good. And quality is just not generally appreciated these days, especially when we're talking toys.
As a child, I had quite a few Matchbox, Corgi and Dinky cars, very accurate models, well made, often in England. Sure, you can still get those brands today, if you want to pay collector prices. The toy stores, at least here, abound with lousy chinese produced stuff, that breaks when you look too hard at it.
Mind you, many of my toys I had inherited from my older brothers. And many of my toys are still in such a good shape, that my son now continues to play with them. That's good for the customer, but it's just not good for sales: either kids inherit a toy (= no sale) or parents don't care about long life, and therefore buy cheaper toys.
I build plastic models (aircraft, military vehicles etc), and I can tell you that precisely molded plastic parts, even when they come in just one color and still attached to the sprue, as plastic model kits do, are *quite* expensive. *Even* when produced in China.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to see a puzzled face, ask a British person for the correct pronunciation of 'wilderness'
You mean "a bewildered face"?
-Lasse
Actually, I am not quite sure about the timeline here. The Rainbow was quite unique in that it had two CPU's: a Z80 and an Intel 8088. At boot time, you could either enter VT220 mode (using it as a plain terminal) or boot the operating system, CP/M-80/86, a very interesting system, which allowed you to use either Z80 (or 8080) programs or 8086 programs. I believe they called this "soft-sense technology" (it was also patented?), but in reality I guess they simply decided by name whether a program was one or the other, loaded the code into the user area (at 0100h?), then switched the CPU as appropriate before jumping to the program. CP/M-80 programs were suffixed .COM, whereas CP/M-86 programs were suffixed .CMD.
It was only later, when the IBM PC had won, that MS-DOS was ported to the Rainbow.
I remember how I attended a computer fair (MikroData) in Copenhagen in the years 1984 and 1985. In 1984 booths showing secondary equipment (computer tables, printers and other devices, etc) had typically obtained (loaned? rented?) a Rainbow to show. Next year, all machines used for display were IBM PCs.
(Oh, and in 1984 I typed my first "ls" on a Z8000 Cromemco machine, possibly running CROMIX? In 1985 I think they had a huge inflated "Macintosh" at the Apple booth. Also the LISA's from the year before were gone, I think.)
-Lasse
I am certain that Word 4 must have been an abominable kluge. When the first 68040 Quadras came out Word 4 wouldn't run on them, due to some CPU caching problem. Probably Word 4 contained some kind of self-modifying code.
I also recall using Word 4 on a two-monitor setup on a Mac IIfx. It was very nice to have your document open in two windows, one on the 13" monitor in outline mode, one on the 21" grayscale in Page layout mode, showing two full pages IIRC. But beware, this *was* prone to crashing. Once I lost two hours of work. Taught me to save often.
I think this was around 1992, BTW. The world sure has gone downhill since.
I'd really like to see a word processor for X (As in X11, not OS X) with roughly the feature set of Word 5.1, just a few improvements, and rock solid.
-Lasse
GPL is free code--the code itself is free from the whims of its users. What is the difference? BSD derived code (which may be FAR more useful than the original sources) can disappear while GPL derived code can not.
But of course it can. Or cannot, depending on your POV.
If I derive code from GPL code, and don't release it to anyone, then delete it, it has disappeared, right? (AFAIK, GPL is about distribution, so what you do with GPL software in privacy is nobody's business.)
You're right about one thing: the GPL is *NOT* about user freedom while the BSD is.
I think this is an important point, you just made me realise why I prefer the BSD license. Stallman talks about "free software, free as in freedom, not beer" all the time. But I just came to the conclusion that this is nonsense: software is not sentient, does not possess a free will; software like all other IP is nothing but an expression of thoughts by someone, thoughts which themselves may be reflections and compositions of thoughts from others; it is pure form embodied in some physical matter.
Freedom is a property, indeed a fundamental right, of humans. Sometimes people are deprived of that right by others, either for good or bad reasons; but it remains their right nonetheless. What would it mean to liberate a beer? Pour it in the sink? "Dear Ale, you are now free to roam at your own will." How can beer or software be free, except as in "at no cost"? How can software be in possession of anything, not to say freedom?
Sometimes the phrase "Free speech" is also used. That is another nonsense phrase: it really should be "(somebody's) freedom to speak" - free speech is when I go to hear a speech, and I don't have to pay, freedom to speak is something entirely different. (I think this may be because, while verbing nouns is fairly safe, nouning verbs isn't.)
So BSD is about a meaningful and important concept: user's freedom, whereas GPL is about a nonsense concept: software's freedom.
-Lasse
(I hope this made sufficient sense. Although I regard my self as fairly good at English, it *is* a foreign language to me.)
Your cursory scanning is, alas, in error. For 4A(2) to apply, all conditions abcd have to be fulfilled.
However, an argument could be made, that taliban warriors, and possibly also Al Qaidas supporting them, are covered by 4A(1), being members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict, as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.
I suppose that depends on what you can call armed forces.
-Lasse
This is all well and good but only applies if the structures are NOT being used as military staging areas. If you turn a hospital into a military base and launch attacks from it, it is no longer a civilian target and it not protected under the Geneva Convention. Ther Germans found this out in WWII. They took over a monestary, which was protected under the Geneva Convention, and used it to launch attacks (it was a very strong structure). Well the allies were having none of that, it was now a military target and they reduced it to rubble.
I assume you are referring to the case of the monastery on Monte Cassini. I've read an explanation for this, which may or may not be true, but in either case adds some insight.
According to this explanation, the attacking allies intercepted a communication between Germans, saying "Abt ist im Kloster". They interpreted that as "the company is in the monastery" (Abt being understood as an abbreviation for "Abteilung" = "detachment".) What was meant, however was "the abbot is in the monastery".
Assuming this is true, bad intelligence led to the attack and destruction of a civilian, protected target. The same situation has occured many times in Iraq, especially while trying to kill Saddam with cruise missiles.
The question it leads to is this: Is the risk of attacking a protected civilian target acceptable, when your intelligence is not 100% sure of whether that civilian target is actually abused by the enemy?
The way I understand the Geneva Conventions, I'd say the answer is no; if you can minimize collateral damage by chosing the appropriate means to attack, you are obliged to do so. In the case of trying to get at Saddam, I suppose an attack using special forces would have been preferable to an attack with cruise missiles.
-Lasse
If we accept that military intervention is a violent form of diplomacy (diplomacy being inter-national policy), then it should also be quite clear, that the force applied should be scalable, to achieve the maximum (political) effect with a minimum of force. Not only is that civilised, but it would also appear to be common sense.
You seem to not understand this. If US officers share your lack of understanding, I see no end to the political defeats your military will suffer. You might win battles, even wars. But as a nation, you will lose, face and all.
Judging from prominent officers like Colin Powell, it would seem that at least some of your officers understand this, and I am sure Clausewitz is obligatory reading for your cadets, so at least they have a fair chance of understanding this.
On the other hand, you also have had officers who obviously didn't understand it. Perhaps the most famous being General MacArthur. If he had had his way, he would have attacked China during the Korean war, thereby winning the war, but also taking an unacceptable risk of escalating the war to a devastating WW III. Fortunately he was withdrawn by a smart president. (Unfortunately, you don't have the advantage of a smart president at the moment, and a smart foreign secretary doesn't quite make up for it. Although I have great respect for Colin Powell, I believe his military past is a disadvantage for him as a politician, as he will be inclined to obey rather than disagree.)
As for Abu Ghraib, your officers failed. Either the soldiers acted on their own, in which case their commanders failed because they didn't ensure the discipline that would have prevented it. Or else, they simply ordered it, thereby giving illegal orders. Regardless, both the soldiers and their commanders are to blame.
Perhaps if US troops were trained as you say, they would perform better in Iraq. I believe the Danish military in general, and our International Brigade in particular is trained like that. I would assume that this is also the case in most European armed forces. This doesn't mean that they are ineffective as soldiers, they just have the capability to react in a scaled manner. Of course this means that even the private soldier has to continually weigh his actions against the Rules of Engagement.
BTW, Danish troops are explicitly taught that they are not allowed to obey illegal orders (such as orders which would violate Geneva conventions), and know what would constitute such an order. Instead, an officer issuing such an order is to be reported to higher superiors.
Assuming that the offenders in Abu Ghraib did act on orders; would they have been required to disobey them? Would they have the knowledge of Geneva conventions etc to assess the orders as illegal? Or is there no such concept as an illegal order in the US military?
I'm asking out of genuine interest, this is in no way meant as flamebait or trolling.
-Lasse
There is a tremendous difference between:
the thing itself,
what the thing is called,
the name of the thing,
and what the name is called.
Didn't you know? It's just like pointers in C or (better) refs in Algol68.
-Lasse
I disagree: Finding a good algorithm (indeed, finding the *best* algorithm for a task), is merely good programming. (And *inventing* a good algorithm is *excellent* programming!) Implementing it in the best possible manner, including applying shortcuts which are known to be possible due to knowledge of the specific task to which the algorithm is applied, is optimising.
You might be a good optimiser, or you might just be a good programmer. Your colleague however, is a bad programmer.
-Lasse
Huh? The 3/8th (decimal) edition?
-Lasse
Very true. Just look at a map like this. Just Sahara alone is a sandbox (larger than Europe?) for terraforming experiments that could eventually provide space for a population like 500M - and still have room to spare for reservations, where desert specific wildlife could be preserved. After that, the desert in southern Africa, Arabia and Asia could be terraformed.
Of course it could be argued that these areas, being terrestrial, by definition already _are_ terraformed. So i'd suggest we find a more precise term that would indicate the _real_ intent: making land capable of sustaining life for a certain population density, without a significant import of food.
This means we have to study the causes of desertification, and hopefully find out a way to reverse the process.
I'd much rather see the USA put the money in such a project (together with the other rich parts of the world, of course) than see the money sent of on what can in reality only be considered an expensive, exclusive, and thorughly extravagant tourist trip to Mars. Sure, we may learn something from that trip. But the _relevance_ of what is learned is questionable, I'd say.
-Lasse
Let's hope he dies soon, otherwise there may be no money left to give. My prophecy is that MS will go down within 5 years due to open source competition combined with intervention from governments everywhere.
-Lasse
It is amazing how easily historic facts are forgotten. Especially when considering how easy it is to look up those facts thanks to the Internet.
Microsoft bought Mosaic technology from Spyglass, which had obtained Mosaic from NCSA. So it is somewhat meaningless to say that Mosaic was better than IE, as IE is a further development of Mosaic; they didn't really exist in parallel.
-Lasse
Why do I suddenly hear the sound of two half coconuts clapping?
-Lasse
Thanks for that link. I had just read about the Opera IPO, and for a second considered that it would be cool, if I had some money to invest, to invest it in what I hitherto had considered a cool software company.
Upon reading *that*, however, Opera swiftly joined the place in my mind reserved for crooks, criminals, SCO, Microsoft, etc.
Suppose a mail program shipped a BCC of every mail you received to a third party, perhaps for the noble reason of "scanning for spam", but also openly for filtering and providing you with directed ads, and the third party with statistic material.
As for Google, I will hold on the decision so far. But they certainly lost a star in their rating. Let's see what Google has to say about it.
-Lasse
I wonder what your brother-in-law does whenever he sees a rainbow in the sky?
-Lasse
Lego might sell quality bricks, but everyone in China can do the same.
Yet they don't. It's the same thing with toy cars, however here we have another data point: Toy cars produced for some well-known international brand, even when produced in China, are of a better quality than cars sold under some obscure name. I can only think of one reason for that: higher expectations, leading to better Quality Control. Of course the "noname" cars can probably be sold at a lesser price and a higher profit. Naturally, in case of plastic bricks, any other brand than LEGO, is in effect a "noname", and therefore it would make no sense to produce quality bricks.
Actually I have been told that a Chinese company was making LEGO clones under a sort of brand name. They were called 0937.
-Lasse
I wasn't saying that all Chinese produced stuff is lousy. I said that there are lots of lousy stuff in our toy stores that has been produced in China. Probably there are also some good toys produced in China, and some lousy toys produced elsewhere.
-Lasse
Talk about a geek wet dream...
Whatever makes you tick...
-Lasse
I always thought Michael Palin would have been a good Arthur Dent, but he is too old for that role now. Seeing him in his travels around the world always made me think of Arthur Dent.
-Lasse
What's this Mostly harmless I keep hearing about? Sometimes I get a flash that I may have read or browsed a book called something like that, but afterwards my mind is always blank. As for So Long and thanks for all the fish, I think it is a great book. It really is a damn shame that DNA didn't write a fifth book, though. I always wanted to know more about how the relation between Arthur and Fenchurch evolved. In a parallel universe he wrote/is writing one, maybe.
-Lasse
Actually I'm not very worried about the future of LEGO. As you say, the brand is strong, and although there may be a crisis, I am quite sure LEGO will survive just fine, after some adjustments. After all, it isn't under the control of a profit-seeking shareholder's board, but entirely under family control. Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, grandson of the founder of LEGO, and son of the man who made LEGO what it is today, has taken over - again - and I'm confident that he will manage to steer LEGO back on course.
In this age of hi-tech, I usually say that forecasts beyond two years are impossible, but I am certain that my grand-children (when I get some) will also play with LEGO.
-Lasse
Actually, the Pirate legos are what started the specialization trend back in 1989.
:-) ) a new box of LEGO, I laugh out loud because of an old "specialized" brick being used in a new, totally surprising manner.
It is sad to see that myth perpetuated. LEGO has *always* made "specialized" items. Back in the early 60's, they made for example
scale cars (about 1/100 scale) to go with LEGO buildings. My brother has a garage for such cars (or other matchbox size cars), which came with a very peculiar spring-operated opening door. If I recall correctly there were: 1) a base plate with a cut-out, which would click-lock the door when closed; 2) a door, which could be inserted into 3) a frame, with a hole for attaching a small spring.
Other items were for example a set of policemen directing traffic with hand signals; about 1/72 scale. And there has been three different styles of road signs, with only the last type being properly made from a mast on a base, with the sign clicking onto it. The first type would not have looked out of place in a H0 scale model railway diorama; they were beautifully done, but had no attachment possibility to other LEGO, yet they were LEGO.
However, the current type of "specialized" items are often much more versatile: My son has a crocodile, and a dinosaur. The red tongue of the dinosaur is the exact same shape part as the green head of the crocodile. The sailmast of an ice-boat is attached to the boat by a sphere on the mast: this joint is the same as was used on the large mini-doll series, back in the seventies.
Often, when I get my son (
-Lasse
If this was a chinese company they'd sell 5lb buckets of assorted pieces for $5.
And each brick would have a lifetime of less than one year, developing cracks and warp. Of the 5 lb, at least 4 lb would be out-of-spec, either fit too loosely or too tight, and they would have sharp, annoying warts where they were carelessly ripped from the molding sprue. The color would vary extremely from batch to batch, be rather dull, and fade rapidly when exposed to the sun.
The problem with LEGO bricks is not that they are overpriced, but that they are overengineered. They are just too good. And quality is just not generally appreciated these days, especially when we're talking toys.
As a child, I had quite a few Matchbox, Corgi and Dinky cars, very accurate models, well made, often in England. Sure, you can still get those brands today, if you want to pay collector prices. The toy stores, at least here, abound with lousy chinese produced stuff, that breaks when you look too hard at it.
Mind you, many of my toys I had inherited from my older brothers. And many of my toys are still in such a good shape, that my son now continues to play with them. That's good for the customer, but it's just not good for sales: either kids inherit a toy (= no sale) or parents don't care about long life, and therefore buy cheaper toys.
I build plastic models (aircraft, military vehicles etc), and I can tell you that precisely molded plastic parts, even when they come in just one color and still attached to the sprue, as plastic model kits do, are *quite* expensive. *Even* when produced in China.
-Lasse
-Lasse