(BBC Three would be good, kick people into getting Digital TV)
Couldn't agree... less. I seriously hate the way the BBC pumps my licence fee into projects that the majority of licence payers have no access to.
This should be on Radio 4. Not BBCi, not one of the digital TV or Radio stations. This is the kind of crap Radio 4 was made for! And we can all receive it. Even online!
I buy CDs. I have an old laptop I dont use. I combine the two and plug into my amp. I have immediate access to all my CDs without having to worry about my better half bitching about putting the wrong disk in the wrong case every ten minutes.
I buy new CD. It wont go into my collection on my PC. I think - bastard! I fire up KaZaA. I find the files. I find a lot of other tasty files. Suddenly I have a much bigger collection than before!:-)
Now this MIGHT sound a bit like the old 'sell em Hash in the sweet shop so they wont buy Crack behind the bikesheds' kind of 'they pushed me into it by removing my choice' arguement. But hey - go read the Mail!
I've used them and I've found that, for the most part, they are solving a problem that I've never had. I suspect that it's a problem very few people have, so except in a few niche fields tablets aren't going to be a big thing. So buhbye transmeta.
Sitting back in your sofa watching TV while surfing the web on your lap without any moving parts (i.e. flapping lids on your laptop) seems kinda cool to me! This has to be a consumer item to succeed - not business.
The following is not un-typical as a brief run through of my assistance with a friends computer set up
Me: Okay - we'll just dump everything into this Zip drive I just stuck in the USB port - you want everything moved? Them: Yeah Me: Okay, My Docs, Email, etc... We'll get the 15Gb of MP3s later okay? Them: Can you at least copy over Dido? Me: Okay - right - not just plug it into the new machine click click tap tap click Waalaah - your email, address book, your docs all in place Them: But wheres my cool Kylie backdrop and freaky wavey light screen saver Me: You want those?? Them: What the fuck do YOU think! Jesus, I'd be better doing this myself, what a waste of fucking time, get the fuck out of my fucking house you twat! and take your Zippy disk with you!
Agree. Whats needed is a single simple download that can be dumped onto a fresh / old PC with an easily understood minimum spec by anyone that can instal a piece of windows software without wetting themselves.
Make it kazaa easy! Have different flavours, and plug ins, and skins, and all the other crap we love, but first make it EASY to install.
If it needs a big MF of a chip now instead of a dedicated hardware encode/ decoder who cares - we'll have 200GHx PVII systems in Walmart for $300 soon enough! THEN who needs a hardware encoder.
This stuff doesn't have to be complicated - just enable people to do simple things VERY easily. After that all works start adding the nice to haves.
The Up button point is an interesting one. If guessing a URL is to be seen as a criminal act these had better disappear, or check against the engines to find if its in the public domain yet before allowing it. Nonsense!
The whole point here is that many people set up important web sites as though they contained nothing more important than pics of their girlfriend on the beach. When someone stumbles across that document showing the REAL balance sheet the board go ape shit and try to sue someone.
Just remember that that average comes from 99% earning zero, with the 1% in paid employment earning shite loads so this IS interesting if your in the moneyed 1%.
How to tell them apart? Find the guys with just one laptop - they're rich - they know they can buy a new one anytime so they give their old ones away to impoverished geeks - the rest of us keep em (and even lug em about) just in case
The did nothing to make it less 'rejectable' than a human heart, just less rejectable than a pig heart - i.e. you might last 2 minutes instead of 2 seconds.
But this is perfect business. Not only do you charge a fortune for the pig heart, which likely cost the same to produce as a pack of bacon, you can sell a lifetime (literaly) of anti-rejection drugs aswell. The ultimate lump-sum + ongoing revenue business model. If the customer cancels he dies!
Little Story Time! I went cycling in europe a couple of years after Uni - left the job and bought some panniers and a tent. Started in March, had enough cash to last me til winter started to bite unless I spent too much time in Holland. Started in France, headed to Italy, Germany, etc...
I met this welsh family in a field in Germany, they had 2 kids, and lived in a camper van. They had sold their house 3 years before to fund a drive around the world for 3 or 4 years while their kids grew up to school age - the eldest was starting school in Autumn, so they were back in Europe for the summer. Vastly entertaining campfire natter with them.
They both were trained teachers, so should have found no great problems getting work on their return, and getting a mortgage after that. So the risks were tiny really.
And I thought I was living outside the normal pattern going cycling for a summer!
Employing people to 'handle a set of responsibilities' is ideal, IF you can get the right people.
This puts a huge pressure on management to know what their people are doing. Checking that responsibilities are satisfied is much harder work than checking that hours worked >=40.
It also means that if someone slips up regularly they have to be sacked. But, is that because you expected too much of them, or because they suck. And does legislation allow you to sack them?
You can see why management stick with the hour counting!
This is where art and business collide, and peoples expectations differ. Should I have to buy an official licenced postcard of the Mona Lisa? Or should I be able to buy a cheapo version? The official one may be better quality...
Some Directors go over budget to produce the right movie, some try and kill anyone that leaks a bit of script. You can pretty much tell a movie with some integrity by its lack of hype surrounding the leaking of footage / script / plot info.
Those aiming to be 'the biggest grossing movie ever' tend to be far more uptight about these things, and far WORSE films. Massive generalisation. But hey!
Artists want to speak to the world, so should applaud the pirates so long as they don't steal the bread from their table - and no one is suggesting that Lucas needs the money are they!
I live in the UK. On Sunday night Channel 4 showed A Clockwork Orange at last - first time on UK TV (other than cable). Very good movie.
Plenty of violence and nudity and drugs and the old in out in out.
What did my partner say at the end? "Was there any need for all those tits? Kubrick was a dirty old man wasn't he! No dicks though you notice!"
No mention of the hefty doses of violence, sinister political activities, etc... just "why so many tits"
Why do I mention this? Because I think the whole anti-nudity thing boils down to guys not wanting to see other guys dicks on the TV.
The latest thing to stir up the tabloid is Tipping the Velvet, a BBC period costume drama with healthy doses of girl on girl lesbian action. Complaints to the BBC are all about how LITTLE action there was. Safe. No guys. Everyone wants to watch!
Equality values are so live, especially in my neck of the woods, that any unequal representation is offensive - particularly if its seen to exploit the ladies. For many, the glimpse of boobs in Fifth Element is more offensive than 'that scene' in Reservoir Dogs. Simply because of the exploitation.
Also, nudity is often surplus to the plot. Shooting someone in the face brings the plot along, because that character is now dead. Seeing some chicks ass doesn't move the plot alon in the same way most of the time. It's just eye candy. So its easier to look down on and condemn. Which film would make more sense if you saw a penis in it? Which would make less sense without the tits? Without the guns? without the swearing?
Personally - I'd throw it all in and let people make and show what they want. Clockwork Orange was a good film. Fifth Element was not. Nothing to do with the tit count, gun count, or how many times a big guy says 'Shit!' as someone comes into shot.
Stop selling games with "FREE Bike Decals!" and replace it with "FREE Car Insurance Estimate!"
Who wouldn't like some new bike Decals! Even just for their laptop / shower screen / Merc. I long for the day that everything I buy has some crappy little stickers like cereals used to have! They were great. You could stick em anywhere. You could draw penises and beards and boobies on them. You could write your sisters name on the ugly one. Nothing funnier on a Saturday morning.
. With the threat of war for the U.S. and a subsequent raise in oil prices, this might be of some interest for our general aviation/. wavers in its eco stance. However, it pisses me off to read statements like the one above making out that the main reason to consider alternatives is the threat of war in the gulf.
The war in the gulf will be about PROTECTING the oil, not threatening it. Thats what the last gulf war was all about.
Global warming and a million other 'bad things' are a much weightier and more pressing reason to get excited about this stuff.
The US is seen as the environmental bad guy by most of the world. A couple of timely bits of legislation enforcing the use of these types of technology in certain minority (followed by majority) uses would shift the emphasis enormously.
Ban the sale of new 2-stroke petrol engines, and watch these alcohol babies take off. No duties on 'grown' fuel would push this further.
They still are shooting way too high in their job search, and aren't realizing that there are people out there who are looking (and finding with little trouble) who *are* qualified
A typical CV sent to me over the past year runs along these lines:
Degree: Any old shite Graduated: 2000 / 2001 Experience: A summer with Accounting firm and a half year with a web company doing a bit of SQL
Objectives: Team leader / Analyst / System Architect
The great thing about the internet generally is the ease with which content can be ripped off. If I get into a news site, I can easily mirror / cut and paste into a Yahoo chat room, onto/. etc...
As the use of the internet develops more granularity - i.e. people spend more time in smaller groups, not all huddling around google, bbc and yahoo, this will become a viable route for this 'big news' to get through.
About a year ago/. was a damn good source of news when all the news sites were knackered. If slash-knitting, slash-boarder and slash-hump all join in on the act that takes a decent chunk of the population away from the big news sources - freeing them up for others.
Then your just waiting for the whole net to crumple under the load of a hundred million people IMing each other with "do you have any new news???"
Slashdot Mirror
Because the courts are never wrong in the eyes of /.!
(BBC Three would be good, kick people into getting Digital TV)
... less. I seriously hate the way the BBC pumps my licence fee into projects that the majority of licence payers have no access to.
Couldn't agree
This should be on Radio 4. Not BBCi, not one of the digital TV or Radio stations. This is the kind of crap Radio 4 was made for! And we can all receive it. Even online!
I'd lose 1 and 4 personally, and for most part number 3 as well - as they all boil down to means to the end of number 2.
George 'WarMonger' Bush is only interested in kicking Saddams ass as a way to a: Protect his cheap oil, and b: generate a post war economic boom.
People only buy Vegas hotels in order to shag as many young women as is humanly possible - without having to go to them!
Security only protects a: your cash, and b: that tape of you and 14 prozzies you hope your wife will never see or she'll sue your ass.
The only new technology that achieved none of these things was the development of the Sinclair C5 - but then again, with a wife like Sir Clives...
I buy CDs. I have an old laptop I dont use. I combine the two and plug into my amp. I have immediate access to all my CDs without having to worry about my better half bitching about putting the wrong disk in the wrong case every ten minutes.
:-)
I buy new CD. It wont go into my collection on my PC. I think - bastard! I fire up KaZaA. I find the files. I find a lot of other tasty files. Suddenly I have a much bigger collection than before!
Now this MIGHT sound a bit like the old 'sell em Hash in the sweet shop so they wont buy Crack behind the bikesheds' kind of 'they pushed me into it by removing my choice' arguement. But hey - go read the Mail!
I've used them and I've found that, for the most part, they are solving a problem that I've never had. I suspect that it's a problem very few people have, so except in a few niche fields tablets aren't going to be a big thing. So buhbye transmeta.
Sitting back in your sofa watching TV while surfing the web on your lap without any moving parts (i.e. flapping lids on your laptop) seems kinda cool to me! This has to be a consumer item to succeed - not business.
Consumers dont type - they read!
The following is not un-typical as a brief run through of my assistance with a friends computer set up
Me: Okay - we'll just dump everything into this Zip drive I just stuck in the USB port - you want everything moved?
Them: Yeah
Me: Okay, My Docs, Email, etc... We'll get the 15Gb of MP3s later okay?
Them: Can you at least copy over Dido?
Me: Okay - right - not just plug it into the new machine click click tap tap click Waalaah - your email, address book, your docs all in place
Them: But wheres my cool Kylie backdrop and freaky wavey light screen saver
Me: You want those??
Them: What the fuck do YOU think! Jesus, I'd be better doing this myself, what a waste of fucking time, get the fuck out of my fucking house you twat! and take your Zippy disk with you!
Its the little things that matter!
Not so much 'Dirty Fingernails'... more 'Dirty'
Agree. Whats needed is a single simple download that can be dumped onto a fresh / old PC with an easily understood minimum spec by anyone that can instal a piece of windows software without wetting themselves.
Make it kazaa easy! Have different flavours, and plug ins, and skins, and all the other crap we love, but first make it EASY to install.
If it needs a big MF of a chip now instead of a dedicated hardware encode/ decoder who cares - we'll have 200GHx PVII systems in Walmart for $300 soon enough! THEN who needs a hardware encoder.
This stuff doesn't have to be complicated - just enable people to do simple things VERY easily. After that all works start adding the nice to haves.
The Up button point is an interesting one. If guessing a URL is to be seen as a criminal act these had better disappear, or check against the engines to find if its in the public domain yet before allowing it. Nonsense!
The whole point here is that many people set up important web sites as though they contained nothing more important than pics of their girlfriend on the beach. When someone stumbles across that document showing the REAL balance sheet the board go ape shit and try to sue someone.
Just remember that that average comes from 99% earning zero, with the 1% in paid employment earning shite loads so this IS interesting if your in the moneyed 1%.
How to tell them apart? Find the guys with just one laptop - they're rich - they know they can buy a new one anytime so they give their old ones away to impoverished geeks - the rest of us keep em (and even lug em about) just in case
The did nothing to make it less 'rejectable' than a human heart, just less rejectable than a pig heart - i.e. you might last 2 minutes instead of 2 seconds.
But this is perfect business. Not only do you charge a fortune for the pig heart, which likely cost the same to produce as a pack of bacon, you can sell a lifetime (literaly) of anti-rejection drugs aswell. The ultimate lump-sum + ongoing revenue business model. If the customer cancels he dies!
Follow up question - have you and a contestant ever had the need for a "If this bodged up hill climbers rockin', dont come a knockin'" sign????
Zigackly!
Little Story Time! I went cycling in europe a couple of years after Uni - left the job and bought some panniers and a tent. Started in March, had enough cash to last me til winter started to bite unless I spent too much time in Holland. Started in France, headed to Italy, Germany, etc...
I met this welsh family in a field in Germany, they had 2 kids, and lived in a camper van. They had sold their house 3 years before to fund a drive around the world for 3 or 4 years while their kids grew up to school age - the eldest was starting school in Autumn, so they were back in Europe for the summer. Vastly entertaining campfire natter with them.
They both were trained teachers, so should have found no great problems getting work on their return, and getting a mortgage after that. So the risks were tiny really.
And I thought I was living outside the normal pattern going cycling for a summer!
Im pretty sure it was shown uncut!
I love the expression 'shirt potatoes'!
Really
I do
Employing people to 'handle a set of responsibilities' is ideal, IF you can get the right people.
This puts a huge pressure on management to know what their people are doing. Checking that responsibilities are satisfied is much harder work than checking that hours worked >=40.
It also means that if someone slips up regularly they have to be sacked. But, is that because you expected too much of them, or because they suck. And does legislation allow you to sack them?
You can see why management stick with the hour counting!
This is where art and business collide, and peoples expectations differ. Should I have to buy an official licenced postcard of the Mona Lisa? Or should I be able to buy a cheapo version? The official one may be better quality...
Some Directors go over budget to produce the right movie, some try and kill anyone that leaks a bit of script. You can pretty much tell a movie with some integrity by its lack of hype surrounding the leaking of footage / script / plot info.
Those aiming to be 'the biggest grossing movie ever' tend to be far more uptight about these things, and far WORSE films. Massive generalisation. But hey!
Artists want to speak to the world, so should applaud the pirates so long as they don't steal the bread from their table - and no one is suggesting that Lucas needs the money are they!
I live in the UK. On Sunday night Channel 4 showed A Clockwork Orange at last - first time on UK TV (other than cable). Very good movie.
Plenty of violence and nudity and drugs and the old in out in out.
What did my partner say at the end? "Was there any need for all those tits? Kubrick was a dirty old man wasn't he! No dicks though you notice!"
No mention of the hefty doses of violence, sinister political activities, etc... just "why so many tits"
Why do I mention this? Because I think the whole anti-nudity thing boils down to guys not wanting to see other guys dicks on the TV.
The latest thing to stir up the tabloid is Tipping the Velvet, a BBC period costume drama with healthy doses of girl on girl lesbian action. Complaints to the BBC are all about how LITTLE action there was. Safe. No guys. Everyone wants to watch!
Equality values are so live, especially in my neck of the woods, that any unequal representation is offensive - particularly if its seen to exploit the ladies. For many, the glimpse of boobs in Fifth Element is more offensive than 'that scene' in Reservoir Dogs. Simply because of the exploitation.
Also, nudity is often surplus to the plot. Shooting someone in the face brings the plot along, because that character is now dead. Seeing some chicks ass doesn't move the plot alon in the same way most of the time. It's just eye candy. So its easier to look down on and condemn. Which film would make more sense if you saw a penis in it? Which would make less sense without the tits? Without the guns? without the swearing?
Personally - I'd throw it all in and let people make and show what they want. Clockwork Orange was a good film. Fifth Element was not. Nothing to do with the tit count, gun count, or how many times a big guy says 'Shit!' as someone comes into shot.
Stop selling games with "FREE Bike Decals!" and replace it with "FREE Car Insurance Estimate!"
Who wouldn't like some new bike Decals! Even just for their laptop / shower screen / Merc. I long for the day that everything I buy has some crappy little stickers like cereals used to have! They were great. You could stick em anywhere. You could draw penises and beards and boobies on them. You could write your sisters name on the ugly one. Nothing funnier on a Saturday morning.
. With the threat of war for the U.S. and a subsequent raise in oil prices, this might be of some interest for our general aviation /. wavers in its eco stance. However, it pisses me off to read statements like the one above making out that the main reason to consider alternatives is the threat of war in the gulf.
The war in the gulf will be about PROTECTING the oil, not threatening it. Thats what the last gulf war was all about.
Global warming and a million other 'bad things' are a much weightier and more pressing reason to get excited about this stuff.
The US is seen as the environmental bad guy by most of the world. A couple of timely bits of legislation enforcing the use of these types of technology in certain minority (followed by majority) uses would shift the emphasis enormously.
Ban the sale of new 2-stroke petrol engines, and watch these alcohol babies take off. No duties on 'grown' fuel would push this further.
They still are shooting way too high in their job search, and aren't realizing that there are people out there who are looking (and finding with little trouble) who *are* qualified
A typical CV sent to me over the past year runs along these lines:
Degree: Any old shite
Graduated: 2000 / 2001
Experience: A summer with Accounting firm and a half year with a web company doing a bit of SQL
Objectives: Team leader / Analyst / System Architect
Salary Expectations: £30K
You can guess where those land up!
Prior Art: http://www.google.com/search?q=darwinically
Apologees for my poor sense of humour.
My post simply implied that you wanted your robot to wake you up with a blowjob. Who gives a fuck about the dog with a slutty robot in the house!
If it can walk the dog and wake me up in the morning too, I'll be really happy
Thats DISGUSTING!
The great thing about the internet generally is the ease with which content can be ripped off. If I get into a news site, I can easily mirror / cut and paste into a Yahoo chat room, onto /. etc...
/. was a damn good source of news when all the news sites were knackered. If slash-knitting, slash-boarder and slash-hump all join in on the act that takes a decent chunk of the population away from the big news sources - freeing them up for others.
As the use of the internet develops more granularity - i.e. people spend more time in smaller groups, not all huddling around google, bbc and yahoo, this will become a viable route for this 'big news' to get through.
About a year ago
Then your just waiting for the whole net to crumple under the load of a hundred million people IMing each other with "do you have any new news???"