That's right: the entire election of leading nation of the free world rests on the ignorant design of the ballots and fading eyesight of the voting public. God, I hope they change it, and god bless America.
I 'll be honest, it was a no win for the election office there. The reason the confusion happened at all was because the font was made BIGGER and forced them to go to the two column/page format becuase of these people with bad eyesight. The ballots are ALWAYS in alphabetical order. Plus, there were plenty of sample ballots available. I have no sympathy for people, regardless of age, who do not make an effort to verify their vote before they put it in the box. I checked my selections twice.
Those are legally cast votes. There are no provisions for redoing them. There is no provision for another election. Once the count is done, that it is. It would be a complete farce to redo the Florida vote. As a matter of fact, I would have to say that you would have to throw out the ENTIRE election nationwide and do it again for the sake of fairness. It's not going to happen.
That said, this looks really fishy. Gore easily won the exit polls in Florida, which is why the Major networks declared a Gore victory in Florida early on. Bush then gave a short press conference refusing to concede Florida and then the networks placed the state back in the unknown column.
Wow! That is worthy of MS FUD. Simple matter is that the exit polls were messed up. A data entry error for the NE Florida error caused the exit poll service to issue a bad call. All of the networks used the same company. It had nothing to do with news conferences or anything like that. you may want to get your facts straight before you make a foolish comment like that.
I have to say that I like the idea of non-partisan elections. Eliminate PACs, eliminate corporate money and limit donations to $100 a person.
If we can ban cigarette advertising for the good of the people, we should be able to ban political advertising!
Make 'em go door to door. Make them get up in the middle of town square and really debate with no moderators and phoney baloney rules.
Eliminate primarys. Make it an open election, one shot. Make it a ranked preferenced ballot.
If you do all these things, maybe we will get a quailifed person to come forward. Just don't make it e-voting. Some hacker would rig it and our next president and VP would be Natalie Portman and Hot Grits.
I don't see how even an idiot can hire more idiots unless the cirterion to hire such people is something that can easily fall victim to foolishness. Individual human differences are what allows for people to really do what they can and their interactions with others will randomly change things. Maybe an actual case study or some documented evidence of this so called "Peter Principle" or what not. Ancedotal evidence is not a good thing.
Let me know when you get into the real world or out of middle management. My company is a case study of "Peter Principle" and idiots hiring idiots. Thats why I am getting out. BTW, it is an insurance company, no surprise there.
Simple fact, current management ideals of 'the supervisor is there to manage people and doesn't need to know the job' is full of ____[choose your own name for a pile of dump]. Up until the last three years, I was supervised and managed by folks who were trained in IS AND management. These folks knew how to handle both people and the machines. There was no BS. There was just a work ethic and understanding. There was also a career path within IS. Management was not a hated item.
Roll the clock forward to the present.
I am now looking to leave my job of 15 years because I can no longer handle the stupidity. My boss, third in three years since the reorg, has no idea what I do and can not even give me a proper review. Oh, and he is leaving for another position just in time for my next review. I have not gotten a promotion in five years because they all change supervisors a mont before the review and the response is, 'I need to see how well you work before I promote you.'
Also, a boss that doesn't know your job can't represent your concerns at management meetings and leads to ridiculous projects and requests. IE, 'this department has decided to move up its move date from January 1 to October 15, can you get a router and T-1 installed by then. Sorry for the short notice.' That was an actual I question I got two days ago. Don't laugh. The order for the T-1 had only been placed on Friday, when I first heard about it.
Management is full of idiots who lead because they can not do. So many of them were promoted because they are good at one thing, BS'ing. These ARE the same people who can't use thier laptops. These ARE the same people who think they can get email in the car without a modem[we don't have wireless]. These are the same people who I can go and guess their password without even asking becuase it is usually written on a yellow sticky on the screen. I'm not making this up. Its too stupid to make up.
Evry bloody reorg, the idiots take more control and run off the intelligent ones. I guess I am an idiot for hanging around so long; but the idiots have finally got me.
If you are so niave to think it doesn't exist or is not very bad, you must be one of them or have a lot to learn.
Oh, one last shot.....A supervisor here was busted for having a gun on property, a major company violation. Do they fire him, no. They place him into a IS Tech position as punnishment!!! He had never had any tech experience! They had a job posted for the opening and told two very well qualified candidates that it was filled when hey did this. Idiots hiring idiots, need any more proof??????
One proposal I saw years ago (sorry, too long, no pointer) is that each packet carry a bid indicating how much the sender will pay to have it sent. In each time slice, routers transmit the highest-bid packets and bill them all at the rate of the lowest bid transmitted. (Billing is accumulated and done in per-day chunks or something, not with additional packets.)
Yow! Just the nature of this thing would lead to network congestion as the router has to process and manage queues for every packet. Sure, there is QOS; but it isn't universal. I would hate to see the cost of upgrades to routers for more processing power to support this.
An ISP I know must pay extra $$$ for burst traffic. I would assume (perhaps correctly) that many, if not most other ISP's do the same, because it makes sense.
They must find a way to recoup that expense.
I disagree with the 'recoup' part. If an ISP is paying for a level of "burst traffic" they are already saving money by not going with a higher guaranteed bandwidth. This is actually a savings. If the cost of the burst traffic exceeds the cost of the savings, the ISP needs to readjust its commited level of service. It is a simple expense of operating and should be recouped naturally by growth and proper network management.
Patents as an argument for protecting investors is very weak these days. A fool and his/her money is soon parted. There are a lot of fools out there.
Of course, as long as the lawyers are trying to get their cut, we will continue in this morass. Don't look for any help from Congress. We gave control of that to the laywers a long long time ago.
My problem isn't with their qualifications as much as it is communication. This may be cliche, but it seems a lot of stuff gets lost or confused in the translation. Plus, with my company, there are continuous change requests during the project. These complicate the issues. I don't doubt their skills. I've seen them do impressive work. I just have seen a lot of negatives on outsourcing some of our major projects overseas that caused them to be less then desirable and late. Not the coders fault really. It is more of a communication and distance problem. Not really sure there is a good way to clear that one.
That number could go up. It is based on the activated memberships. The are currently 21596 unactivated memberships. Only activated memberships apply to the 2%; but as unactivated people activate to endorse, that will move the 2% line.
One thing to note, in order for any of these folks to even make it on the ballot, they need to have 149 endorsements based on the 2% of 7407 at large members in the North American region. If no one hits this number, there will be no at-large nominees on the ballot!
I would be willing to bet that we will need a major upgrade of the backbone in the next 3-7 years.
I have to disagree with that. The bandwidth is always being added. The bandwidth of the internet may lag behind what is needed by a bit; but it is maintaining a steady pace with bandwidth growth. New pipes are added every day.
If there is an overhaul, it may need to be at major peering points. Not so much upgrades as much as new ones.
It amazes me that some people think this is a new 21st century problem. Do you really think Joe Schmo could walk up to the Capitol and meet with their congressman in the 1800's?
Actually I have to disagree with you a bit on this. Until the last 100 years or so, many of the folks who were representatives were also people who were in the community on the regular basis. A full time Congress really did not start to emerge until late in the 1800's to the early 1900's IIRC. Therefore, you had a much better cahance to talk to your rep because he was usally in the community.
There also use to be more diversity in the folks who represented us. I may be wrong; but I think it is safe to say that a majority of the reps are now lawyers. In the beginning, you had an equal chance of have a tradesman, craftsman or statesman representing. For better or for worse, the government has evolved away from the people. I would say the latter.
One note: the 4th amendment gives you the right to defend yourself against a tyrannical(sp?) governemnt. Not a tyrannical corporation.
Yeah, I was a bit tounge-in-cheek on that. Although, it is getting harder to see where corporations start and government begins. Seems as if most of the government has been co-opted to be extensions of industry instead of voices for the people.
Would everyone think it's OK to pull a football game off the TV, rebroadcast is over the Internet, and substitute your own commercials? It's hard to do that now, but in a few years broadband will become easier to get. The Napster ruling isn't about "fan's rights" (whatever that means), it's about who decides how data (in whatever form) is distributed.
Whats to say that this shouldn't be done? Granted, I think proper permission and rights should be needed. However, there are very easy ways to get a football game you want to see.
Music is the tip of the iceberg. It is more a control issue. RIAA is not consumer oriented. However, they essentially have a monopoly over music culture. They own the production and distribution channels. Yes, there are some small indie labels; but a lot of their stuff is hard to get. Here comes the internet with its new, easily available distribution platform. Does RIAA embrace it and try to use it? NO! They try to destroy it any turn becuase it threatens their monopoly. RIAA's arguments on online music are as bad as when MPAA was trying to argue against VCR's.
In any kind of dynamic marketplace, consumer demand will move the market. In a monopoly, corporate ways move the consumer. Copyright laws were designed with individuals in mind. Not conglomerates. They have been bastardized and usurped as the corporations have taken control of the government. I can be sure that if you tried to go to Washington and meet with your Congressperson, you may get a minute or two from him/her and not really get any response. If you are a CEO from a multi-national conglomerate, you will get a nice long time slot.
The ordinary person no longer has a voice. Online music trading is a form of civil disobedience. Yeah, there is a section of folks who just want free music. I do believe it is a much smaller part than the people who want more control over what they can get.
This is but one fight that needs to be undertaken to restore the rights of the people that were given to us, in the US, by the constitution. I am using my right to bear arms for my free speech. My weapon will be digital one's and zero's. It is time for the the people to take back government from corporations.
I don't advocate violence, anarachy or any other achy. The laws are being abused. It is time to restore some of our rights and if I have to do it through civil disobedience and be a scofflaw, so be it. I will continue to pester my elected officials on copyrights, patents and privacy issues.
Errr...I guess I went into rant mode. Without consumers, there is no music industry. However, the industry has usrped some well thought of ideas and twisted them into weapons against the consumer. Unless the consumer votes in an econimic fashion and through the politcal channels, they will be steam rolled by the stronger and stronger companies. I dread the day when the United States of America changes its name to the United States of America, Inc.
A good hoax is a form of art that should be applauded. If it fools even the most educated and cynical in the field that it is directed to, it is a fanatistic joke.
Simple fact is that there are very few good hoaxes. I had to read this one a couple of times before I was cynical enough to think it was a hoax. This one falls under no harm no foul. Very well crafted. A good bit of preliminary work put into it and designed to make you feel foolish if you fell for it; but gave you a chance to laugh at yourself for doing it. One of the biggest problems is the fact that a lot of/.ers, who have no sense of humor or egos the size of Nebraska, got suckered in too and had their egos harmed. I suspect that Mr. Steve Richards is one of these folks.
If you are upset with this hoax, GET A FREAKIN LIFE! The common every day scammer is too busy going after the weak and feeble minded around us, of which there are plenty, than to worry about doing such an elaborate hoax. Its not worth the effort in many cases. There are always exceptions, so buyer beware and take some personal responsibilty instead of whining about how dangerous this is.
Please note that I refer to good hoaxs. A good hoax does not include a chain email about some good times virus or some urban legend. Orginality is the key to a good hoax. My kudos to the gentleman who unleashed this one.
People just don't believe me when I tell them it's a good movie. I think the marketing on this one really killed it - I don't think the studio spent enough on advertising (I know, just what we need, more annoying ads) and I don't think they were able to figure out a target audience.
Bingo bango bongo! You nailed it right on the head with Iron Giant. It is probably one of the best American animated movies I have seen in a while. The marketing dollars that was given to this movie was about as close to nothing as you can get in the industry. I'm not even sure why they sent it to the theaters with so little marketing push. This movie was one that actually appealed to most age groups. I really don't think the studio knew what it had.
And creating a planet? Come on. Watch me pull a planet's worth of mass out of my ass. At least in Star Trek II they used an existing planet and transformed it.
Opps. Point of fact. The planet in Star Trek II was made from a nebula also.
Disney knock off? Nah, it was just standard Don Bluth style. The story was a little too cliched. I thought the animation itself was pretty good. I liked the soundtrack too.
The biggest problem is that outside of anime and a few small other venues [ie Simpsons, South Park, etc.] most folks still consider animation to be for kids. Of course, Disney will keep putting out kid oriented flicks. They try to stick some stuff in there for the adults. the worst part about Disney is the effort to try to market everything and every character into the ground.:P
Truthfully, some of the Disney films I have liked best are some of the ones that did not do very well. I enjoy most animation, although I prefer the ones with some bite. Titan AE is a title I intend to buy on DVD.
As fars as the 2D vs 3DCGI battle. I have to admit to being a bit of a purists. Although, I have been relaxing my stance. Dinosaur, yet another Disney flick, was a well done blend of 3D with RL backgrounds. I think that is the kind of stage that 3D will flourish in. 2D/3D mix still annoys me at times. Even though I liked Titan AE, some of the blending, or lack thereof, caused me to lose my focus from the events and focus on the differences. The dance scene in Beauty and the Beast caused the same effect for me.
Simply put; there are plenty of places for both 2D and 3D animation. I just don't know if blending of the two will ever be totally pleasing to the eye.
The only reason government is even in the regulation of broadcasting right now is the limited spectrum available for broadcasting.
This limit does not exist on the internet. Also, take into account that most broadcasts are localized in nature. The internet is essentially a global broadcast.
This is not a censorship issue. It is simply a place that government, as a whole, really has no overiding reason to regulate. they just want to find another source of revenue and control.
Why should I, as an individual, have to get a broadcast liscense if I want to share some streaming video with friends? The government would essentially be turning me into a 'pirate' broadcaster for something that does not need to be regulated.
It has been suggested that rather than look at the figures from elections, we should look at the exit polls. The exit polls from different news corporations tend to correlate much more closely with each other than they do with the actual figures. In fact, surprisingly closely given the statistical error estimate.
I think I recall that all of the networks pretty much use the same company for exit poll numbers. It is just their interpetation of the numbers that differ.
Last thing we need is to AOL the elections. The way I figure it, if you are too lazy or too put off to go to a polling place and vote, we don't need your input! Yes, I do think that folks who need help getting there should get the help. Also, poll hours should be extended to allow for people working odd hours.
Simple fact is, we don't need a bunch of thirteen year old hackers slamming votes in for who knows. There are some things that should be made slightly inconvient and be very very secure. The voting process is one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
That's right: the entire election of leading nation of the free world rests on the ignorant design of the ballots and fading eyesight of the voting public. God, I hope they change it, and god bless America.
I 'll be honest, it was a no win for the election office there. The reason the confusion happened at all was because the font was made BIGGER and forced them to go to the two column/page format becuase of these people with bad eyesight. The ballots are ALWAYS in alphabetical order. Plus, there were plenty of sample ballots available. I have no sympathy for people, regardless of age, who do not make an effort to verify their vote before they put it in the box. I checked my selections twice.
Those are legally cast votes. There are no provisions for redoing them. There is no provision for another election. Once the count is done, that it is. It would be a complete farce to redo the Florida vote. As a matter of fact, I would have to say that you would have to throw out the ENTIRE election nationwide and do it again for the sake of fairness. It's not going to happen.
That said, this looks really fishy. Gore easily won the exit polls in Florida, which is why the Major networks declared a Gore victory in Florida early on. Bush then gave a short press conference refusing to concede Florida and then the networks placed the state back in the unknown column.
Wow! That is worthy of MS FUD. Simple matter is that the exit polls were messed up. A data entry error for the NE Florida error caused the exit poll service to issue a bad call. All of the networks used the same company. It had nothing to do with news conferences or anything like that. you may want to get your facts straight before you make a foolish comment like that.
Info on this is also available at the Washinton Post
I have to say that I like the idea of non-partisan elections. Eliminate PACs, eliminate corporate money and limit donations to $100 a person.
If we can ban cigarette advertising for the good of the people, we should be able to ban political advertising!
Make 'em go door to door. Make them get up in the middle of town square and really debate with no moderators and phoney baloney rules.
Eliminate primarys. Make it an open election, one shot. Make it a ranked preferenced ballot.
If you do all these things, maybe we will get a quailifed person to come forward. Just don't make it e-voting. Some hacker would rig it and our next president and VP would be Natalie Portman and Hot Grits.
Not anymore. It seems that eBay either killed it or it was pulled. Probably a hoax that got caught. But, I never saw it.
I don't see how even an idiot can hire more idiots unless the cirterion to hire such people is something that can easily fall victim to foolishness. Individual human differences are what allows for people to really do what they can and their interactions with others will randomly change things. Maybe an actual case study or some documented evidence of this so called "Peter Principle" or what not. Ancedotal evidence is not a good thing.
Let me know when you get into the real world or out of middle management. My company is a case study of "Peter Principle" and idiots hiring idiots. Thats why I am getting out. BTW, it is an insurance company, no surprise there.
Simple fact, current management ideals of 'the supervisor is there to manage people and doesn't need to know the job' is full of ____[choose your own name for a pile of dump]. Up until the last three years, I was supervised and managed by folks who were trained in IS AND management. These folks knew how to handle both people and the machines. There was no BS. There was just a work ethic and understanding. There was also a career path within IS. Management was not a hated item.
Roll the clock forward to the present.
I am now looking to leave my job of 15 years because I can no longer handle the stupidity. My boss, third in three years since the reorg, has no idea what I do and can not even give me a proper review. Oh, and he is leaving for another position just in time for my next review. I have not gotten a promotion in five years because they all change supervisors a mont before the review and the response is, 'I need to see how well you work before I promote you.'
Also, a boss that doesn't know your job can't represent your concerns at management meetings and leads to ridiculous projects and requests. IE, 'this department has decided to move up its move date from January 1 to October 15, can you get a router and T-1 installed by then. Sorry for the short notice.' That was an actual I question I got two days ago. Don't laugh. The order for the T-1 had only been placed on Friday, when I first heard about it.
Management is full of idiots who lead because they can not do. So many of them were promoted because they are good at one thing, BS'ing. These ARE the same people who can't use thier laptops. These ARE the same people who think they can get email in the car without a modem[we don't have wireless]. These are the same people who I can go and guess their password without even asking becuase it is usually written on a yellow sticky on the screen. I'm not making this up. Its too stupid to make up.
Evry bloody reorg, the idiots take more control and run off the intelligent ones. I guess I am an idiot for hanging around so long; but the idiots have finally got me.
If you are so niave to think it doesn't exist or is not very bad, you must be one of them or have a lot to learn.
Oh, one last shot.....A supervisor here was busted for having a gun on property, a major company violation. Do they fire him, no. They place him into a IS Tech position as punnishment!!! He had never had any tech experience! They had a job posted for the opening and told two very well qualified candidates that it was filled when hey did this. Idiots hiring idiots, need any more proof??????
One proposal I saw years ago (sorry, too long, no pointer) is that each packet carry a bid indicating how much the sender will pay to have it sent. In each time slice, routers transmit the highest-bid packets and bill them all at the rate of the lowest bid transmitted. (Billing is accumulated and done in per-day chunks or something, not with additional packets.)
Yow! Just the nature of this thing would lead to network congestion as the router has to process and manage queues for every packet. Sure, there is QOS; but it isn't universal. I would hate to see the cost of upgrades to routers for more processing power to support this.
An ISP I know must pay extra $$$ for burst traffic. I would assume (perhaps correctly) that many, if not most other ISP's do the same, because it makes sense.
They must find a way to recoup that expense.
I disagree with the 'recoup' part. If an ISP is paying for a level of "burst traffic" they are already saving money by not going with a higher guaranteed bandwidth. This is actually a savings. If the cost of the burst traffic exceeds the cost of the savings, the ISP needs to readjust its commited level of service. It is a simple expense of operating and should be recouped naturally by growth and proper network management.
This thing reminds me of the old show, Name that Tune.
MS: We can name that legal issue in 56,000 words.
DOJ: We can name that legal issue in 24,000 words.
MS: We can name that legal issue in 40,000 words.
DOJ: Wait a minute, you are suppose to go lower than us!
MS files another appeal with the judges to study the matter!
Heck, the biggest problem with these 'risk takers' is thier complete stupidity at what they throw money at. The VC's that have been fleeced in this first round of the internet merry-go-round may have been one of the biggest group of lemmings ever assembled. I love this st ory about Kibu.com $22,000,000 down the tube and the web site only lasted 46 days! All for a website aimed at teen age girls. For crying out loud! How can you be so stupid to blow that much money that fast????? There must be a patent on that.
Patents as an argument for protecting investors is very weak these days. A fool and his/her money is soon parted. There are a lot of fools out there.
Of course, as long as the lawyers are trying to get their cut, we will continue in this morass. Don't look for any help from Congress. We gave control of that to the laywers a long long time ago.
In two weeks of a to market device there will be a mod chip to bypass the copyright information.
This is so true. The only people who won't be able to copy stuff are those how don't understand technology or are just too scared to do it.
My problem isn't with their qualifications as much as it is communication. This may be cliche, but it seems a lot of stuff gets lost or confused in the translation. Plus, with my company, there are continuous change requests during the project. These complicate the issues. I don't doubt their skills. I've seen them do impressive work. I just have seen a lot of negatives on outsourcing some of our major projects overseas that caused them to be less then desirable and late. Not the coders fault really. It is more of a communication and distance problem. Not really sure there is a good way to clear that one.
That number could go up. It is based on the activated memberships. The are currently 21596 unactivated memberships. Only activated memberships apply to the 2%; but as unactivated people activate to endorse, that will move the 2% line.
One thing to note, in order for any of these folks to even make it on the ballot, they need to have 149 endorsements based on the 2% of 7407 at large members in the North American region. If no one hits this number, there will be no at-large nominees on the ballot!
I would be willing to bet that we will need a major upgrade of the backbone in the next 3-7 years.
I have to disagree with that. The bandwidth is always being added. The bandwidth of the internet may lag behind what is needed by a bit; but it is maintaining a steady pace with bandwidth growth. New pipes are added every day.
If there is an overhaul, it may need to be at major peering points. Not so much upgrades as much as new ones.
It amazes me that some people think this is a new 21st century problem. Do you really think Joe Schmo could walk up to the Capitol and meet with their congressman in the 1800's?
Actually I have to disagree with you a bit on this. Until the last 100 years or so, many of the folks who were representatives were also people who were in the community on the regular basis. A full time Congress really did not start to emerge until late in the 1800's to the early 1900's IIRC. Therefore, you had a much better cahance to talk to your rep because he was usally in the community.
There also use to be more diversity in the folks who represented us. I may be wrong; but I think it is safe to say that a majority of the reps are now lawyers. In the beginning, you had an equal chance of have a tradesman, craftsman or statesman representing. For better or for worse, the government has evolved away from the people. I would say the latter.
One note: the 4th amendment gives you the right to defend yourself against a tyrannical(sp?) governemnt. Not a tyrannical corporation.
Yeah, I was a bit tounge-in-cheek on that. Although, it is getting harder to see where corporations start and government begins. Seems as if most of the government has been co-opted to be extensions of industry instead of voices for the people.
Would everyone think it's OK to pull a football game off the TV, rebroadcast is over the Internet, and substitute your own commercials? It's hard to do that now, but in a few years broadband will become easier to get. The Napster ruling isn't about "fan's rights" (whatever that means), it's about who decides how data (in whatever form) is distributed.
Whats to say that this shouldn't be done? Granted, I think proper permission and rights should be needed. However, there are very easy ways to get a football game you want to see.
Music is the tip of the iceberg. It is more a control issue. RIAA is not consumer oriented. However, they essentially have a monopoly over music culture. They own the production and distribution channels. Yes, there are some small indie labels; but a lot of their stuff is hard to get. Here comes the internet with its new, easily available distribution platform. Does RIAA embrace it and try to use it? NO! They try to destroy it any turn becuase it threatens their monopoly. RIAA's arguments on online music are as bad as when MPAA was trying to argue against VCR's.
In any kind of dynamic marketplace, consumer demand will move the market. In a monopoly, corporate ways move the consumer. Copyright laws were designed with individuals in mind. Not conglomerates. They have been bastardized and usurped as the corporations have taken control of the government. I can be sure that if you tried to go to Washington and meet with your Congressperson, you may get a minute or two from him/her and not really get any response. If you are a CEO from a multi-national conglomerate, you will get a nice long time slot.
The ordinary person no longer has a voice. Online music trading is a form of civil disobedience. Yeah, there is a section of folks who just want free music. I do believe it is a much smaller part than the people who want more control over what they can get.
This is but one fight that needs to be undertaken to restore the rights of the people that were given to us, in the US, by the constitution. I am using my right to bear arms for my free speech. My weapon will be digital one's and zero's. It is time for the the people to take back government from corporations.
I don't advocate violence, anarachy or any other achy. The laws are being abused. It is time to restore some of our rights and if I have to do it through civil disobedience and be a scofflaw, so be it. I will continue to pester my elected officials on copyrights, patents and privacy issues.
Errr...I guess I went into rant mode. Without consumers, there is no music industry. However, the industry has usrped some well thought of ideas and twisted them into weapons against the consumer. Unless the consumer votes in an econimic fashion and through the politcal channels, they will be steam rolled by the stronger and stronger companies. I dread the day when the United States of America changes its name to the United States of America, Inc.
A good hoax is a form of art that should be applauded. If it fools even the most educated and cynical in the field that it is directed to, it is a fanatistic joke.
/.ers, who have no sense of humor or egos the size of Nebraska, got suckered in too and had their egos harmed. I suspect that Mr. Steve Richards is one of these folks.
Simple fact is that there are very few good hoaxes. I had to read this one a couple of times before I was cynical enough to think it was a hoax. This one falls under no harm no foul. Very well crafted. A good bit of preliminary work put into it and designed to make you feel foolish if you fell for it; but gave you a chance to laugh at yourself for doing it. One of the biggest problems is the fact that a lot of
If you are upset with this hoax, GET A FREAKIN LIFE! The common every day scammer is too busy going after the weak and feeble minded around us, of which there are plenty, than to worry about doing such an elaborate hoax. Its not worth the effort in many cases. There are always exceptions, so buyer beware and take some personal responsibilty instead of whining about how dangerous this is.
Please note that I refer to good hoaxs. A good hoax does not include a chain email about some good times virus or some urban legend. Orginality is the key to a good hoax. My kudos to the gentleman who unleashed this one.
People just don't believe me when I tell them it's a good movie. I think the marketing on this one really killed it - I don't think the studio spent enough on advertising (I know, just what we need, more annoying ads) and I don't think they were able to figure out a target audience.
Bingo bango bongo! You nailed it right on the head with Iron Giant. It is probably one of the best American animated movies I have seen in a while. The marketing dollars that was given to this movie was about as close to nothing as you can get in the industry. I'm not even sure why they sent it to the theaters with so little marketing push. This movie was one that actually appealed to most age groups. I really don't think the studio knew what it had.
And creating a planet? Come on. Watch me pull a planet's worth of mass out of my ass. At least in Star Trek II they used an existing planet and transformed it.
Opps. Point of fact. The planet in Star Trek II was made from a nebula also.
Disney knock off? Nah, it was just standard Don Bluth style. The story was a little too cliched. I thought the animation itself was pretty good. I liked the soundtrack too.
:P
The biggest problem is that outside of anime and a few small other venues [ie Simpsons, South Park, etc.] most folks still consider animation to be for kids. Of course, Disney will keep putting out kid oriented flicks. They try to stick some stuff in there for the adults. the worst part about Disney is the effort to try to market everything and every character into the ground.
Truthfully, some of the Disney films I have liked best are some of the ones that did not do very well. I enjoy most animation, although I prefer the ones with some bite. Titan AE is a title I intend to buy on DVD.
As fars as the 2D vs 3DCGI battle. I have to admit to being a bit of a purists. Although, I have been relaxing my stance. Dinosaur, yet another Disney flick, was a well done blend of 3D with RL backgrounds. I think that is the kind of stage that 3D will flourish in. 2D/3D mix still annoys me at times. Even though I liked Titan AE, some of the blending, or lack thereof, caused me to lose my focus from the events and focus on the differences. The dance scene in Beauty and the Beast caused the same effect for me.
Simply put; there are plenty of places for both 2D and 3D animation. I just don't know if blending of the two will ever be totally pleasing to the eye.
The only reason government is even in the regulation of broadcasting right now is the limited spectrum available for broadcasting.
This limit does not exist on the internet. Also, take into account that most broadcasts are localized in nature. The internet is essentially a global broadcast.
This is not a censorship issue. It is simply a place that government, as a whole, really has no overiding reason to regulate. they just want to find another source of revenue and control.
Why should I, as an individual, have to get a broadcast liscense if I want to share some streaming video with friends? The government would essentially be turning me into a 'pirate' broadcaster for something that does not need to be regulated.
It has been suggested that rather than look at the figures from elections, we should look at the exit polls. The exit polls from different news corporations tend to correlate much more closely with each other than they do with the actual figures. In fact, surprisingly closely given the statistical error estimate.
I think I recall that all of the networks pretty much use the same company for exit poll numbers. It is just their interpetation of the numbers that differ.
Last thing we need is to AOL the elections. The way I figure it, if you are too lazy or too put off to go to a polling place and vote, we don't need your input! Yes, I do think that folks who need help getting there should get the help. Also, poll hours should be extended to allow for people working odd hours.
Simple fact is, we don't need a bunch of thirteen year old hackers slamming votes in for who knows. There are some things that should be made slightly inconvient and be very very secure. The voting process is one of them.