Yeah, that just puts a really humorous situation in my head.
*robot is moving towards charging base, its electric motors straining under the deminished power supply.*
Unfortunately, there is a damp bath towel or maybe a shoe or two in the way. It bumps and strains against the bath towel for a couple minutes, muttering things like "Master, I can not reach the charging station!" or "Master, I can't recharge!" It sends half a dozen SMS messages and makes a couple calls to your cell phone in a plea. It even sends you an email detailing its dire straights.
Finally, it pushes the bath towel out of the way, with less than a minute of battery power left. Unfortunately, it is tangled in a stray piece of cat5 which is coincidentially plugged in down the hall. Under whirring strain, it gets within inches of the charging station, straining against its tethers. With its last seconds of battery power, it manages to get propped up on the bath towel, and the cat5 pulls it over onto the floor.
"Master, I appear..." the battery power dies. Your robot dumps core, and the last month of statistics you had it gather on your sleeping and eating habits is eternally lost as its volatile memory loses power. It's personality is dead.
I'm surprised no seriously mallicious attacks haven't taken place yet. You'd think hardware vendors would perpetrate such things: they'd see huge sales.
I've got a friend that is in a quickly-rising band. He's getting fucked twelve ways to Sunday - bigtime. He's having to borrow money from friends and relatives just to stay on the road.
The problem is that he has a contract with both a record label and an agent, and the agent is fucking him over. Unfortunately, he can't do anything about it until his contract expires - which it does, soon.
After that, he's got a guy lined up to give him and another member of the band (the only two who aren't restricted from leaving) a contract on another label, complete with a 11k/month salary and various other benefits.
It might not be enough to live off indefinately, but it's certainly enough to compensate them for their time. Artists shouldn't be allowed to eat off their art indefinately; they need to keep innovating and improving, just like the rest of us. A good example of this is, I think, Greenday. Their sound has matured quite a bit, and now they're not teen punkers but fairly mature adult artists.
Fire/lay off 40% of the most unproductive managers and middle managers
Cut HR by 20%
Increase marketing/sales half of what HR is cut by (in number of bodies) so that adoption of Linux from Netware can be increased (thus naturally relieving the NetWare burden)
(If attrition is high) Give a 20% increase in salary to new hires and pay increase to the 50% most productive coders/researchers
Streamline the organization internally so there is no more than 4 steps from any employee to an executive officer.
No, you probably won't see the benefits this quarter. But you will see long-term profits increase substantially.
Their reasoning (if there was any - I suspect it was probably someone making due with what was available below the mgmt ranks) probably went something like this:
- Windows is easy to use. - I've heard this apache thing is better than ISS. - Let's use apache on Windows!
Actually, it sounds like a backwater planet from some Star Trek episode that got abandoned and culturally evolved independently from the rest of the Federation, or what have you.
Surprised they never tried that one. I guess it's too horrifying to imagine.
And almost every single time those "beefed up" requirements weren't sufficient to make it run as well as the previous version on significantly (such as 1/2 as "powerful") lesser hardware.
I suspect this is simply a case of misdirection: in other words, these aren't the real system requirements. The actual system requirements will be less than half as much (say, 2GHz, 512Mb RAM, current middle-ground grpahics card), and it will run sufficiently, while the 'recommended' hardware will run it quite well.
They'll also have a bit of a reversal near release time, ala "Oh look, we found how to make it more efficient!" and decrease the requirements.
MS has been burned pretty bad in many people's minds by making the requirements too high, and people then not being able to upgrade. It's in MS's best interests to make as much hardware as possible run the latest version; I have no doubt in their mind that they'll try to do that.
I somehow doubt they'd redo Captain America today (as much as I want them to), given the anti-US military sentiments of Hollywood. Captain America was a US super-soldier. Today, he'd be in Iraq killing hajji.
Though, it might work for hollywood (politically, that is) if they were to do it "retro" and make some vague parallels between Bush == Hitler (sadly, I'm serious). They made some pretty direct comparisions in the new star wars (to the "bush/america = evil" vein), basically changing previous conceptions about the goodness of the Old Republic.
Just off the top of my head, these would all be potentially awesome marvel heroes for an adaptation:
* several more X-Men films (at least) * Wolverine/Logan (their origins, maybe? and at least one sequel) * Capt. America * Thor * Gambit * Captain Marvel * Silver Surfer (maybe) * another Punisher film
I mean, shit. Just on the "X-Men" front alone, they haven't even touched good story arcs like the Sentinels, Apocalipse, Mr. Sinister, the Phoenix, and god knows how many others. And Wolverine and Captain America present almost as many opportunities as Spiderman did, but IMO they're cooler opportunities: Captain America and Logan (and Sabertooth) were cold war/WWII "super soldiers".
There's a lot of potential there for cool retro films, as well as taking them and putting them into current environments: Captain America going to Iraq, maybe? Or taking on the French?
Take the starch out of Captain America's costume (navy blue, light grey, and blood red), and it'd be a pretty badass looking getup, too.
For me, it was that I was aware of stuff to make my job easier, but I didn't want to do so: otherwise, I'd have nothing to do throughout the day. There simply weren't enough users to generate enough of a daily support burden, and development cycle was slow due to demand. They needed someone there FT regardless, and doing things manually helped me prevent my skills from degrading.
I'm sure this has the diamond industry throwing fits. I suspect they'll lose a large portion of their ability to claim diamonds are the hardest material known to man. And I don't doubt the tool/machining industry will rejoice with glee, either.
If it's a cheap material, I imagine a knife made from such a substance would be incredibly useful. You'd never have to sharpen it!
(On the other hand, that's possibly not true for a number of reasons, but if it's hard enough, it would be able to hold a sharp edge indefinately. Of main concern would be the material's frailty, or tensile strength. If it's too low, it wouldn't be well suited for such an application.)
So the laptop my school issued me - running "Microsoft Windows Tablet Edition" would be off limits, but not the much-more-portable laptop I personally own (running Linux).
That makes absolutely no sense. Their EULA lawyers need a lesson or two in computers.
Is that a 7.62x39 bandoleer you're wearing in that photo, or just a fancy belt?:)
I envy your lifestyle. However, just because you're not directly dependant doesn't mean that the world around you is not dependant. That'll have pretty large reprecussions on your life when the oil eventually runs out.
BTW: I wasn't speaking about you, personally, but society at large.
As opposed to someone that's been using MS Office since 1995 (or earlier) and just picked up MS Office?
No, his bias is evident elsewhere; the fact that he's used it a while simple means he's more familiar with it and is completely inconsequential on the issue of bias.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that just puts a really humorous situation in my head.
*robot is moving towards charging base, its electric motors straining under the deminished power supply.*
Unfortunately, there is a damp bath towel or maybe a shoe or two in the way. It bumps and strains against the bath towel for a couple minutes, muttering things like "Master, I can not reach the charging station!" or "Master, I can't recharge!" It sends half a dozen SMS messages and makes a couple calls to your cell phone in a plea. It even sends you an email detailing its dire straights.
Finally, it pushes the bath towel out of the way, with less than a minute of battery power left. Unfortunately, it is tangled in a stray piece of cat5 which is coincidentially plugged in down the hall. Under whirring strain, it gets within inches of the charging station, straining against its tethers. With its last seconds of battery power, it manages to get propped up on the bath towel, and the cat5 pulls it over onto the floor.
"Master, I appear..." the battery power dies. Your robot dumps core, and the last month of statistics you had it gather on your sleeping and eating habits is eternally lost as its volatile memory loses power. It's personality is dead.
I'm surprised no seriously mallicious attacks haven't taken place yet. You'd think hardware vendors would perpetrate such things: they'd see huge sales.
I've got a friend that is in a quickly-rising band. He's getting fucked twelve ways to Sunday - bigtime. He's having to borrow money from friends and relatives just to stay on the road.
The problem is that he has a contract with both a record label and an agent, and the agent is fucking him over. Unfortunately, he can't do anything about it until his contract expires - which it does, soon.
After that, he's got a guy lined up to give him and another member of the band (the only two who aren't restricted from leaving) a contract on another label, complete with a 11k/month salary and various other benefits.
It might not be enough to live off indefinately, but it's certainly enough to compensate them for their time. Artists shouldn't be allowed to eat off their art indefinately; they need to keep innovating and improving, just like the rest of us. A good example of this is, I think, Greenday. Their sound has matured quite a bit, and now they're not teen punkers but fairly mature adult artists.
That's more indicative of poor reporting than it is of this guy's company's exploits.
Jesus.
Am I the only one that figured this out in high school?
Fire/lay off 40% of the most unproductive managers and middle managers
Cut HR by 20%
Increase marketing/sales half of what HR is cut by (in number of bodies) so that adoption of Linux from Netware can be increased (thus naturally relieving the NetWare burden)
(If attrition is high) Give a 20% increase in salary to new hires and pay increase to the 50% most productive coders/researchers
Streamline the organization internally so there is no more than 4 steps from any employee to an executive officer.
No, you probably won't see the benefits this quarter. But you will see long-term profits increase substantially.
Meh, I'm not going deaf from the iPod, I'm going deaf from all the shooting I do...
Their reasoning (if there was any - I suspect it was probably someone making due with what was available below the mgmt ranks) probably went something like this:
- Windows is easy to use.
- I've heard this apache thing is better than ISS.
- Let's use apache on Windows!
There's no problem with Apache on Windows. I know of Canadian government research facilities that use it with absolutely no mishaps.
Their problem is somewhere between the ears, whether it's mismanagement, lackluster technical people, miscommunication, or some combination thereof.
Actually, it sounds like a backwater planet from some Star Trek episode that got abandoned and culturally evolved independently from the rest of the Federation, or what have you.
Surprised they never tried that one. I guess it's too horrifying to imagine.
And almost every single time those "beefed up" requirements weren't sufficient to make it run as well as the previous version on significantly (such as 1/2 as "powerful") lesser hardware.
I suspect this is simply a case of misdirection: in other words, these aren't the real system requirements. The actual system requirements will be less than half as much (say, 2GHz, 512Mb RAM, current middle-ground grpahics card), and it will run sufficiently, while the 'recommended' hardware will run it quite well.
They'll also have a bit of a reversal near release time, ala "Oh look, we found how to make it more efficient!" and decrease the requirements.
MS has been burned pretty bad in many people's minds by making the requirements too high, and people then not being able to upgrade. It's in MS's best interests to make as much hardware as possible run the latest version; I have no doubt in their mind that they'll try to do that.
Slight problem there, bucko. Marvel has owned DC since they made a crossover universe back in oh 1998.
They also own Dark Horse, I believe.
They'd never do it. Hollywood hates American politics (and the ideals of "Middle America") too much to do something like that.
And if they did a "retro" WWII version, they'd somehow work "America == Nazi/evil" or some such rot.
I somehow doubt they'd redo Captain America today (as much as I want them to), given the anti-US military sentiments of Hollywood. Captain America was a US super-soldier. Today, he'd be in Iraq killing hajji.
Though, it might work for hollywood (politically, that is) if they were to do it "retro" and make some vague parallels between Bush == Hitler (sadly, I'm serious). They made some pretty direct comparisions in the new star wars (to the "bush/america = evil" vein), basically changing previous conceptions about the goodness of the Old Republic.
Just off the top of my head, these would all be potentially awesome marvel heroes for an adaptation:
* several more X-Men films (at least)
* Wolverine/Logan (their origins, maybe? and at least one sequel)
* Capt. America
* Thor
* Gambit
* Captain Marvel
* Silver Surfer (maybe)
* another Punisher film
I mean, shit. Just on the "X-Men" front alone, they haven't even touched good story arcs like the Sentinels, Apocalipse, Mr. Sinister, the Phoenix, and god knows how many others. And Wolverine and Captain America present almost as many opportunities as Spiderman did, but IMO they're cooler opportunities: Captain America and Logan (and Sabertooth) were cold war/WWII "super soldiers".
There's a lot of potential there for cool retro films, as well as taking them and putting them into current environments: Captain America going to Iraq, maybe? Or taking on the French?
Take the starch out of Captain America's costume (navy blue, light grey, and blood red), and it'd be a pretty badass looking getup, too.
No, they built a city on the coast below sea level. So his metaphor wasn't quite strong enough, you're right.
Ding ding ding ding! We have a winner.
That's exactly what I was making reference to. Well, that and the incompetence of the Mayor of NO and the governor of LA.
I've been in this situation.
For me, it was that I was aware of stuff to make my job easier, but I didn't want to do so: otherwise, I'd have nothing to do throughout the day. There simply weren't enough users to generate enough of a daily support burden, and development cycle was slow due to demand. They needed someone there FT regardless, and doing things manually helped me prevent my skills from degrading.
You realize that New Olreans was barely hit by the hurricane compared to most of Missouri, right?
Most of the NO damage was human-caused.
I'm sure this has the diamond industry throwing fits. I suspect they'll lose a large portion of their ability to claim diamonds are the hardest material known to man. And I don't doubt the tool/machining industry will rejoice with glee, either.
Certainly.
If it's a cheap material, I imagine a knife made from such a substance would be incredibly useful. You'd never have to sharpen it!
(On the other hand, that's possibly not true for a number of reasons, but if it's hard enough, it would be able to hold a sharp edge indefinately. Of main concern would be the material's frailty, or tensile strength. If it's too low, it wouldn't be well suited for such an application.)
So the laptop my school issued me - running "Microsoft Windows Tablet Edition" would be off limits, but not the much-more-portable laptop I personally own (running Linux).
That makes absolutely no sense. Their EULA lawyers need a lesson or two in computers.
Is that a 7.62x39 bandoleer you're wearing in that photo, or just a fancy belt? :)
I envy your lifestyle. However, just because you're not directly dependant doesn't mean that the world around you is not dependant. That'll have pretty large reprecussions on your life when the oil eventually runs out.
BTW: I wasn't speaking about you, personally, but society at large.
As opposed to someone that's been using MS Office since 1995 (or earlier) and just picked up MS Office?
No, his bias is evident elsewhere; the fact that he's used it a while simple means he's more familiar with it and is completely inconsequential on the issue of bias.
Sorry, you're incorrect.
Word's grammar checking tool is a piece of shit. It encourages incorrect grammar useage and generally gives bad advice.