"When a cartoonist licenses his characters, his voice is co-opted by the business concerns of toy makers, television producers, and advertisers. The cartoonist's job is no longer to be an original thinker; his job is to keep his characters profitable. The characters become 'celebrities,' endorsing companies and products, avoiding controversy, and saying whatever someone will pay them to say. At that point, the strip has no soul. With its integrity gone, a strip loses its deeper significance."
- Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes
I agree with the above statement, and it's been demonstrated many times with strips like Peanuts.
I've read similar things from Scott Adams many times over the years, and while I can appreciate his honesty (he makes no qualms about doing it), I find that his willingness to do nearly anything for an extra buck is hardly commendable. IMHO, the credibility of his strip suffers a bit as a result.
I love MST3K, but I found this to be a little bit of a tough read because it is so resoundingly negative throughout. By the end I found myself asking 'does Mike like ANY movies at all?'
Some funny stuff, for sure, but probably more enjoyable little pieces at a time.
Anyone who has actually used LiveMotion would know better. While it simplifies some animation tasks, it is pretty much useless when it comes to interactivity, and the gap on that front will become much broader with Flash 5.
I guess I'd respectfully disagree. In the past year Netscape has quickly been sliding towards irrelevancy in the browser market, and anything that counters that perception is a plus. At this rate, though, I worry that it won't matter how good the end product is unless AOL really pushes it hard (and eats its own dog food by making Netscape 6 the AOL browser).
No one wants to see a standards-compliant browser win more than me, but as the WSP article suggests, you can't build your site on promises.
Discarding the development pace of Netscape 6, it's obvious from the lack of effort on AOL's part to aggressively promote or endorse this beast in any fashion that this is not a key strategic piece in their gameplan. If it WAS important, they'd have poured some of those billions they bought Time-Warner with into the project.
What's truly sad here is that MS is completely capable of creating a standards-compatible browser - their Mac group demonstrated it with IE 5 for the Mac. Instead, they choose to perpetuate the browser hell that web developers have had to live with for years because that validates their whole business model.
Microsoft's whole spin is that their products are better because of how easily they interoperate, and adhering to standards would only make it easier for competitors to offer this feature.
Until Mozilla, Netscape was no better, though, and I'm sure they wouldn't have embraced standards and open source had they not been driven to it by MS's monopoly.
Re:were pointed out much earlier.
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I think Gleick's book is a lighter read and a nice introduction to the concept (plus it also covers the time period of the past twenty years, which have been pretty radical in this regard).
The Discoverers is much more in-depth, though, and our changing concept of time is just one portion of it. A fascinating book - I'd highly recommend it.
Our changing perceptions of time...
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The most important point that Gleick makes in the book is how we've moved from knowing nothing more than what season it is to having a need to use devices such as atomic clocks to mark precisely the passing of tiny fractions of a seconds, and how that increasing need for precision has altered our lives for both good and bad. It's incredible when you start thinking about it how just dividing years, months, days, hours, etc. into more precise segments has had such an amazing effect on human history.
While I'm excited at the prospect of more professional-oriented graphics software being available on the Linux platform, I can't help but think this is one weird deal. I don't ever remember hearing of a software company that basically dumped all of their current products to focus on something that is pretty much untested...
Which when I last looked at it (a few months ago), had been in beta forever and didn't support any of the recent codecs that made ASF somewhat competitive to RealMedia or embedding ASF into pages. On top of that it still crashed trying to play back files it was supposed to support.
Nothing would make me happier than having more cross-platform streaming solutions, but it's highly unlikely that Microsoft will make a viable player for anything besides Windows.
Having worked in education for years, I've seen one fourth grade classroom with a teacher into technology integrate it into the daily curriculum while across the hall, another teacher refuses to even turn on the machines in their room because they don't know (and don't *want* to know) how to use them.
How can we address the wild variations in technology knowledge among K-12 teachers?
Honestly, it wouldn't bother me at all if people got burned by this. This is just the same as playing the lottery or any other 'get rich quick' scheme where nothing is actually *earned*.
Unfortunately, though, the effects of building our economy on a foundation of sand will have a disasterous impact on all of us.
I agree that some of IBM's commercials have been pretty funny, but a few lately have given me the creeps. In particular, that 'getting to know you' made me shiver...
Take a look at the credits for Eudora Pro sometime when you're bored (and if you're really bored, hold down the ctrl key while the list of names is scrolling by). Some of the people listed there haven't worked at Qualcomm for years. But they've been left in because some part of themselves went into Eudora.
Quite funny - I especially enjoyed the transformations of the departments...
why don't these companies just ask permission up front? I find it really tiresome to listen to them say that it's justifiable to discretely get any information from me they want because it makes their jobs easier or increases the potential profit they can make.
I agree completely. I think that using fear as a marketing tool to grab ratings during sweeps is pretty heinous. But to be honest, I'm surprised we haven't seen more of this kind of thing...
I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I don't see what the big deal is. They took the time and energy to do a Linux port, and they are making it available, just not in the box because they probably don't have the resources to hire and train support staff to handle what is likely a *very* small user base. And let's face it, as with most Linux problems, you'll be able to find ample support from the community. So in the end, the Linux crowd gets a great game (and boy is it) and GT tests the waters to see if there is enough interest to do 'in the box' games. A win-win.
It doesn't sound like it's a hybrid: "We should be handing off the masters for all three platforms within a day or two of each other, but they aren't going to show up in stores at the same time. Publishers, distributers,and stores are willing to go out of their way to expedite the arrival of the pc version, but they just won't go to the same amount of trouble for mac and linux boxes."
My favorite tactic with hybrids, though, is how retailers will actually raise the price for the exact same product just because they are putting it in the Mac section of the store. You can see that a lot with Myth 2.
In the little I've read about Q3:Arena, I don't remember seeing anything about other play options, like CTF, etc. Are there going to be any in the final release? This is one thing that Unreal:Tournament has really nailed down - lots of great team options, game-matching, and that ngStats stuff is fun, too (and allowing server mods on a demo is pretty cool).
Looking at Onsale.com, they had a nice variety of switches from Belkin, Apex, Cybex, and more. Even if you don't want to buy there, they have all of the specs and such there to compare. Just do a search for KVM.
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"When a cartoonist licenses his characters, his voice is co-opted by the business concerns of toy makers, television producers, and advertisers. The cartoonist's job is no longer to be an original thinker; his job is to keep his characters profitable. The characters become 'celebrities,' endorsing companies and products, avoiding controversy, and saying whatever someone will pay them to say. At that point, the strip has no soul. With its integrity gone, a strip loses its deeper significance."
- Bill Watterson, creator of Calvin & Hobbes
I agree with the above statement, and it's been demonstrated many times with strips like Peanuts.
I've read similar things from Scott Adams many times over the years, and while I can appreciate his honesty (he makes no qualms about doing it), I find that his willingness to do nearly anything for an extra buck is hardly commendable. IMHO, the credibility of his strip suffers a bit as a result.
Bill Watterson he ain't...
I love MST3K, but I found this to be a little bit of a tough read because it is so resoundingly negative throughout. By the end I found myself asking 'does Mike like ANY movies at all?'
Some funny stuff, for sure, but probably more enjoyable little pieces at a time.
A club in Walla Walla tries to break the record for the longest conga line made up exclusively of Star Wars action figures...
Anyone who has actually used LiveMotion would know better. While it simplifies some animation tasks, it is pretty much useless when it comes to interactivity, and the gap on that front will become much broader with Flash 5.
Hey - is /. down for you too?
I guess I'd respectfully disagree. In the past year Netscape has quickly been sliding towards irrelevancy in the browser market, and anything that counters that perception is a plus. At this rate, though, I worry that it won't matter how good the end product is unless AOL really pushes it hard (and eats its own dog food by making Netscape 6 the AOL browser).
No one wants to see a standards-compliant browser win more than me, but as the WSP article suggests, you can't build your site on promises.
Discarding the development pace of Netscape 6, it's obvious from the lack of effort on AOL's part to aggressively promote or endorse this beast in any fashion that this is not a key strategic piece in their gameplan. If it WAS important, they'd have poured some of those billions they bought Time-Warner with into the project.
What's truly sad here is that MS is completely capable of creating a standards-compatible browser - their Mac group demonstrated it with IE 5 for the Mac. Instead, they choose to perpetuate the browser hell that web developers have had to live with for years because that validates their whole business model.
Microsoft's whole spin is that their products are better because of how easily they interoperate, and adhering to standards would only make it easier for competitors to offer this feature.
Until Mozilla, Netscape was no better, though, and I'm sure they wouldn't have embraced standards and open source had they not been driven to it by MS's monopoly.
I think Gleick's book is a lighter read and a nice introduction to the concept (plus it also covers the time period of the past twenty years, which have been pretty radical in this regard).
The Discoverers is much more in-depth, though, and our changing concept of time is just one portion of it. A fascinating book - I'd highly recommend it.
The most important point that Gleick makes in the book is how we've moved from knowing nothing more than what season it is to having a need to use devices such as atomic clocks to mark precisely the passing of tiny fractions of a seconds, and how that increasing need for precision has altered our lives for both good and bad. It's incredible when you start thinking about it how just dividing years, months, days, hours, etc. into more precise segments has had such an amazing effect on human history.
Here
While I'm excited at the prospect of more professional-oriented graphics software being available on the Linux platform, I can't help but think this is one weird deal. I don't ever remember hearing of a software company that basically dumped all of their current products to focus on something that is pretty much untested...
Nothing would make me happier than having more cross-platform streaming solutions, but it's highly unlikely that Microsoft will make a viable player for anything besides Windows.
Having worked in education for years, I've seen one fourth grade classroom with a teacher into technology integrate it into the daily curriculum while across the hall, another teacher refuses to even turn on the machines in their room because they don't know (and don't *want* to know) how to use them.
How can we address the wild variations in technology knowledge among K-12 teachers?
Honestly, it wouldn't bother me at all if people got burned by this. This is just the same as playing the lottery or any other 'get rich quick' scheme where nothing is actually *earned*.
Unfortunately, though, the effects of building our economy on a foundation of sand will have a disasterous impact on all of us.
So it goes...
I agree that some of IBM's commercials have been pretty funny, but a few lately have given me the creeps. In particular, that 'getting to know you' made me shiver...
Quite funny - I especially enjoyed the transformations of the departments...
why don't these companies just ask permission up front? I find it really tiresome to listen to them say that it's justifiable to discretely get any information from me they want because it makes their jobs easier or increases the potential profit they can make.
I agree completely. I think that using fear as a marketing tool to grab ratings during sweeps is pretty heinous. But to be honest, I'm surprised we haven't seen more of this kind of thing...
I don't know, maybe it's just me, but I don't see what the big deal is. They took the time and energy to do a Linux port, and they are making it available, just not in the box because they probably don't have the resources to hire and train support staff to handle what is likely a *very* small user base. And let's face it, as with most Linux problems, you'll be able to find ample support from the community. So in the end, the Linux crowd gets a great game (and boy is it) and GT tests the waters to see if there is enough interest to do 'in the box' games. A win-win.
"We should be handing off the masters for all three platforms within a day or two of each other, but they aren't going to show up in stores at the same time. Publishers, distributers,and stores are willing to go out of their way to expedite the arrival of the pc version, but they just won't go to the same amount of trouble for mac and linux boxes."
My favorite tactic with hybrids, though, is how retailers will actually raise the price for the exact same product just because they are putting it in the Mac section of the store. You can see that a lot with Myth 2.
In the little I've read about Q3:Arena, I don't remember seeing anything about other play options, like CTF, etc. Are there going to be any in the final release? This is one thing that Unreal:Tournament has really nailed down - lots of great team options, game-matching, and that ngStats stuff is fun, too (and allowing server mods on a demo is pretty cool).
Finally someone at the Pentagon saw Terminator 2 or that Michael Jackson video and realized the horrible implications in future wars...
This really is old news - I think the Mission Impossible team was doing stuff like this with plain old makeup and wigs back in the 1960's...
Looking at Onsale.com, they had a nice variety of switches from Belkin, Apex, Cybex, and more. Even if you don't want to buy there, they have all of the specs and such there to compare. Just do a search for KVM.