It's possible we all have. Other articles linked to in the referenced article talk about Indian call centers where the employees use Americanized names when talking to customers and are trained to pick up American speech patterns and cultural references to convey the impression they're American; lots of tech support customers in the US apparently haven't the remotest idea they're speaking to someone in India.
In other words, one can't simply assume that one is talking to an American just because it's "obvious" the tech support person "is American," and therefore one can't easily determine whether the Indian workers offer the same quality, better, or worse.
I'm assuming your post was meant to indicate Indian workers generally don't offer the "same quality or better" cited by the previous worker; given the info in the other articles mentioned, how would you know?
So what should they have done? Should Indians simply not have accepted employment from US firms? Was it somehow wrong of them to work for "less," when the wages they make that wouldn't be sufficient for people here might be very reasonable pay over there? If it was "stupid" of them to work for someone who laid off someone else to hire them, what would have been smart - not working??
Yes, it sucks for the original US workers who lost their jobs to Indian ones; it sucks just as much for Indians who lose their jobs to someone else. It's not the Indian tech support workers' fault that market forces are moving jobs elsewhere, any more than it was American tech support workers' fault. It just sucks all around, and the Indian techs don't deserve it any more than the American ones do, but there it is.
Oh, I don't know; I doubt Ashcroft would really do anything that would keep kids from wearing images of elephants - heck, a few more years and it might be expected of them. Now, wearing hand-sewn donkeys might get third-graders designated as terrorists...
According to [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/079 2157648/qid=1054714539/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_2/102-48059 13-1769756?v=glance&s=video&n=507846#product-detai ls]
Raiders of the Lost Arc is chapter 24 in the complete adventures of Indiana Jones. So there might be an author that still holds a copyright somewhere, but who knows.
I would suspect that that Spielberg would be willing to atleast co-operate with the kids if they decided to release this either on P2P systems, TV, or video, at least give them a whos who to contact.
I am not a Raders of the Lost Arc geek... perhaps someone who knows more about the specifics can shed some light on the details.
Ok, here you go...:) Indiana Jones was first envisioned by George Lucas, but jointly fleshed out by him and Steven Spielberg (along with co-storywriter Philip Kaufman and scriptwriter Lawrence Kasdan) when they made the original Indy adventure, Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was released in 1981; Lucas had gotten the ball rolling (so to speak;), but he, Spielberg, and Kaufman all made significant, apparently near-equal contributions to the story of that particular film and the character of Indiana Jones in general. Lucas's company, Lucasfilm Ltd., owns the character since Lucas created him; Lucas and Spielberg went on to make two additional movies. Lucas is credited with writing or co-writing the story for each film, as well as being executive producer; Spielberg of course directs; and there are a few other "core" people involved with all the Indy movies, notably producer / executive producer Frank Marshall, associate producer / producer Robert Watts, stunt performer / coordinator Vic Armstrong, sound designer Ben Burtt, composer John Williams, and of course actor Harrison Ford, among others. However, each film has a different writing team, with Lucas the only writer who worked on each one.
In the early '90s Lucas created a TV series, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which premiered in 1992; the show had a deliberately different tone from the films but was meant to fill out the background of the character and develop him into a more realistic person, with the films dovetailing into what would eventually become a fleshed-out biography for the character. Spielberg was apparently not involved with the show personally, although Lucas and Lucasfilm made the show "in association with" Spielberg's company, Amblin Entertainment. Aside from Indy creator / executive producer George Lucas, a surprising number of other people involved with the movies made contributions to the TV series, including Armstrong, Burtt, and even Harrison Ford, who appeared for a few minutes in framing segments of one two-hour episode as a 50-year-old Indy, reminiscing about an earlier adventure and thus telling the story of the episode as a big flashback (most of the episodes were originally presented in a similar fashion, albeit usually by an aged, 90+something-year-old Indy in contemporary times, played by George Hall).
In late 1999 Paramount reissued the movies on VHS, along with the first domestic home video release of some of the Young Indy TV episodes (there had been a previous release of a few episodes as a laserdisc boxed set that was available only in Japan). For the new '99 release they organized all the Indy material into a timeline and designated the episodes and movies to be "chapters" in the Indy mythos; various adventures from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles comprise chapters 1 to 22, and the three movies are chapters 23, 24 and 25. Although the 1981 Raiders is the original movie, the second one, 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, is actually set a year earlier (Temple takes place in 1935, Raiders in '36 - Temple of Doom was Lucasfilm's very first prequel:), so Temple of Doom is chapter 23 and Raiders is chapter 24.
The movies are indeed available on VCD, but not legally. Despite claims to the contrary, Lucasfilm hasn't released the movies on VCD, and the VCDs that are out there are pirated.
One other thing is hopefully Apple won't increase the price of the songs as a particular one becomes popular. For example the CD for T.a.t.u. when it first came out in Canada was $11, now that they have become popular the price has shot up to $20!?
I've noticed weird things like that happening in conventional music delivery systems, too (a few years ago, when 1999 rolled around, I saw Prince's album 1999 being promoted at Camelot Music with an endcap in the store and sold for $17.99, despite having been available for many years for much less; apparently the label and retailer were just capitalizing on the new "currency" of the name of the album and its title song. This wasn't any kind of expanded edition with newly-added bonus tracks, either - just the same old 1999 one could buy back in the '80s).
Fortunately, I don't think Apple is going to do that; its scheme seems firmly tied to "one price for everything," or at least as close as the labels will allow - there are a few tracks sold at the iTMS that aren't available individually but only as part of album purchases, and other albums that can't be bought as albums but only as individual tracks; also, some albums are sold for less than the total cost of the individual 99-cent tracks, while other albums are simply priced at the total cost of the number of tracks x 99 cents. However, no single individual track, at least, is being sold for more (or less) than 99 cents, regardless of its popularity, or even its length (I've seen some tracks there running well over 15 minutes, and others that aren't even 30 seconds and which one can hear in their entirety in the 30-second samples - yet they're all priced equally at 99 cents). Whatever the deal is with albums, it really doesn't look as though Apple wants to deal with different prices for individual tracks.
I think it's certainly true the majority of hardcore Star Wars fans today were kids when the original(s) came out, but it certainly wasn't just kids who embraced them back then. Go back and look at reviews for them in their original releases, particularly the original - remember, this was the movie Time called the "best movie of the year" before the year was even half over, a movie that won or was nominated for eleven Oscars including Best Picture, and a movie that was seen multiple times even by plenty of adults. Clearly the appeal of the originals isn't limited to either kids or people who were kids when they first saw them. The prequels may be a different case, though...
Yeah, it's late (and that is indeed because M$ bought Bungie, largely so Halo would be the killer app for X-Box), but the PC and Mac versions are still being done. The PC one is being ported by Gearbox, and the Mac version by Westlake.
Of course, now that it'll be an M$ product, I won't be able to buy it in good conscience anyway...
Pulling back from M$ and the X-Box for a moment to look at the broader gaming world...
From the article (emphasis in bold added):
Q. Who else do you want to sell the Xbox to?
A. What we haven't done as successfully is reach out into the broader market place. We just announced the Xbox Music Mixer with interesting non-gaming features, something that a variety of different audiences, like women, might want to engage in. Or getting text messages on your cell phone on your virtual league?s standings.
Q. What fires Bill up about the Xbox?
A. He looks at the whole concept and says how do we bring console gaming into the mass market. How do you enable the 90 per cent of women who don't play games, want to play? How do you make it easy enough in our generation can pick up a game console and have a great entertaining experience?
Q. Do you play?
A. Mostly with my 12 year old son.
I find it interesting that even someone in the industry, who obviously has an interest in drawing women to the hobby, himself admits he mostly plays with his 12-year-old son. I wonder if he's tried "selling" the women in his own personal life on it? Does his wife play? His mom? His sisters, or women friends?? (Granted, as he's in the industry, it's likely a lot of his friends, including women, are also in the industry, but aside from that...)
I frequently see articles on modern gaming demographics that say more women are playing video games than is generally thought, though the numbers seem to vary. Is this really the case? If so, why are so many of the games obviously targetted toward 12-year-old boys (or older males, who arguably have largely the same interests)?
But that would put many of us in the difficult position of having a stake in the financial well-being of Microsoft, a company we'd like to see wither and die. There's no shortage of ways to make money, if one's willing to abandon one's principles.
Why argue about which one to go with, when one can have *both*? I can easily see someone buying a lot of individual tracks from the iTMS or something similar for one's "core" music library - the stuff one wants to have forever, with minimal or no usage restrictions, while at the same time using a subscription service to fill out the rest of one's library at a given time with a rotating selection of songs one might enjoy but doesn't necessarily want permanently and isn't willing to pay a lot for. I don't think it has to be an "either/or" choice; one should eventually be able to choose "both."
That said, I personally don't want anything to do with these particular subs given their reliance upon M$, but as a general model, the sub model does have some appealling points that mean it shouldn't be dismissed entirely just because the iTMS is "better," even though I'd agree it is.
You can still play on the original three computers, at the very least (I don't yet know whether you have to electronically notify Apple of your authorizations, or whether you can do it on your own closed network); you can also put the files on unlimited iPods (and presumably other portable players once they support AAC), and of course you can burn them all to CD (and then you can do all kinds of things with the CDs once you have them, too). Even if Apple went out of business tomorrow*, you'd still have the files, and lots of ways to use them.
*And let's see... judging from the pundits, it's been going out of business for, what, 10 years now? 15? Hell, I can't keep track - but at any rate it's healthier now than it was in '96, and has $4 billion in the bank, and brand loyalty other companies would kill for. I don't think they're going anywhere just yet.
Did you respond to the right post? I'm not the one defending the US's treatment of people (I'm pretty critical of it, actually); I think one of the posts by HBI must be the one you want.
I see your list did not mention "during WW 2", where I suppose it was terrible that the US bombed those nice Nazis.
That's because the list is made up entirely of countries bombed since WWII. Look at the dates. Also, reread the original post, and look for the words "...in the 58 years since the Second World War" (which the original poster thoughtfully put in bold text, though somehow you still overlooked it).
I can't speak for the poster to whom you're responding, but I was a registered Democrat during both of Clinton's campaigns (I later became an independent), yet I never voted for him; I just didn't trust him. My mistrust was borne out when his administration tried to push the Clipper chip, among other things, which I found very disturbing and which I told others about. So, no, at least for some of us, government isn't necessarily "just so *great*" when our party's in power; there are some of us (on both the left and right) who don't simply blindly accept whatever our leaders do just because they're ostensibly on our side of the political fence. How about you?
I don't think the post was anti-American. Americans who care deeply about the country and their freedoms have a strong interest in making such comments and observations. Perhas you think we US citizens should just lie down and take whatever the government or the prevailing social climate dishes out, but speaking as an American who is grateful for the freedoms guaranteed me and who cherishes the country's stated ideals, I'm very interested in seeing those freedoms and ideals preserved, and quick to criticize whenever I see those freedoms and ideals assailed or ignored, as has happened from time to time, whether you care to admit it or not. I strongly suspect the original poster ("Innocent times like the good ol' 50s," etc.) feels the same way.
Ah, I see. "Everybody else does it," so that makes it Ok for the US.
Yes, I'm well aware the US is and historically has often been far better than many other nations in its treatment of people. That still doesn't make it exactly exemplary. Perhaps you think when it comes to mistreating its citizens, anything the US does is Ok as long as it doesn't exceed that done by some other nation, but some of us envision a somewhat higher standard.
BTW, the hair-splitting over the definition of "native Americans" is a crock. Like it or not, there were non-European peoples here thousands of years before Europeans arrived, and attempts to downplay that fact by saying they weren't "native" (only in the sense that human beings as a biological species didn't evolve here; their cultures and languages did) smack of an intent to reduce or dismiss the legitimacy of their claims. And what else should one call them? If mere accuracy is your goal, you should note "Indians" is profoundly less accurate than "native Americans."
"What is it that keeps such an old platform going?" Well, I'm sure it varies from platform to platform, but in the case of the Apple II family, I'd imagine it's in part because it holds immense historical significance; this platform pretty much got the personal computer revolution off the ground. How different would things have been if not for the Apple II and, say, VisiCalc?
Off-topic: I wish that just for this one story, the Slashdot topic icon of the Apple logo could show the old one with the rainbow stripes.:)
Personally, I enjoyIndiana Jones and the Temple of Doom more than Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, even though I think Last Crusade is the better film of the two. Temple of Doom, IMHO, has better pacing and an arguably better score, and I like the portrayal of Indy himself more in that film than in the third. I do still love them all, but Temple of Doom is just more fun for me than Last Crusade.
Of course, the original Raiders of the Lost Ark is a nonpareil classic .:)
As the other two have already pointed out, the first three movies all took place (mostly) in the '30s; to be precise, Raiders of the Lost Ark is set in 1936, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom a year earlier in 1935, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade has a prologue set in 1912, and the rest of the movie takes place in 1938.
Hell, for that matter, the translation sounds made up - given that near-random assemblage of English words and phrases, for all I know the original French could be talking about how slow the 970 is. Still, I suppose it's more coherent than much of what one sees on Slashdot...
A few years ago, after becoming completely sucked into using the computer for hours at a stretch more or less every day, I began to notice slight twinges of discomfort in my right (mousing) hand. Realizing this was the early stage of an RSI and having read all sorts of unpleasant things about them, I switched the mouse to the left hand; I didn't have quite the same fine control with that one, but for things like surfing and whatnot it didn't matter. Around that time I also bought a trackball, which I intended to use principally for old arcade games under MacMAME, but I wound up using it as a mouse alternative as well. Between switching hands and switching mice a lot, or sometimes using both at once (one in each hand, and switching from one hand to the other on the fly), I apparently haven't ever repeated patterns of hand/wrist movement long enough to get a bad RSI. Unfortunately I have just one mouse at the moment, but I make sure to switch hands with it from time to time, and I intend to get a new trackball as well, and again switch between that and the mouse as well as switching hands.
The radiation may indeed pose no threat. However, much visual content seen on CRT monitors may very well pose a serious threat to brain health in some way.;)
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In other words, one can't simply assume that one is talking to an American just because it's "obvious" the tech support person "is American," and therefore one can't easily determine whether the Indian workers offer the same quality, better, or worse.
I'm assuming your post was meant to indicate Indian workers generally don't offer the "same quality or better" cited by the previous worker; given the info in the other articles mentioned, how would you know?
Yes, it sucks for the original US workers who lost their jobs to Indian ones; it sucks just as much for Indians who lose their jobs to someone else. It's not the Indian tech support workers' fault that market forces are moving jobs elsewhere, any more than it was American tech support workers' fault. It just sucks all around, and the Indian techs don't deserve it any more than the American ones do, but there it is.
;)
Ok, here you go... :) Indiana Jones was first envisioned by George Lucas, but jointly fleshed out by him and Steven Spielberg (along with co-storywriter Philip Kaufman and scriptwriter Lawrence Kasdan) when they made the original Indy adventure, Raiders of the Lost Ark, which was released in 1981; Lucas had gotten the ball rolling (so to speak ;), but he, Spielberg, and Kaufman all made significant, apparently near-equal contributions to the story of that particular film and the character of Indiana Jones in general. Lucas's company, Lucasfilm Ltd., owns the character since Lucas created him; Lucas and Spielberg went on to make two additional movies. Lucas is credited with writing or co-writing the story for each film, as well as being executive producer; Spielberg of course directs; and there are a few other "core" people involved with all the Indy movies, notably producer / executive producer Frank Marshall, associate producer / producer Robert Watts, stunt performer / coordinator Vic Armstrong, sound designer Ben Burtt, composer John Williams, and of course actor Harrison Ford, among others. However, each film has a different writing team, with Lucas the only writer who worked on each one.
In the early '90s Lucas created a TV series, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, which premiered in 1992; the show had a deliberately different tone from the films but was meant to fill out the background of the character and develop him into a more realistic person, with the films dovetailing into what would eventually become a fleshed-out biography for the character. Spielberg was apparently not involved with the show personally, although Lucas and Lucasfilm made the show "in association with" Spielberg's company, Amblin Entertainment. Aside from Indy creator / executive producer George Lucas, a surprising number of other people involved with the movies made contributions to the TV series, including Armstrong, Burtt, and even Harrison Ford, who appeared for a few minutes in framing segments of one two-hour episode as a 50-year-old Indy, reminiscing about an earlier adventure and thus telling the story of the episode as a big flashback (most of the episodes were originally presented in a similar fashion, albeit usually by an aged, 90+something-year-old Indy in contemporary times, played by George Hall).
In late 1999 Paramount reissued the movies on VHS, along with the first domestic home video release of some of the Young Indy TV episodes (there had been a previous release of a few episodes as a laserdisc boxed set that was available only in Japan). For the new '99 release they organized all the Indy material into a timeline and designated the episodes and movies to be "chapters" in the Indy mythos; various adventures from The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles comprise chapters 1 to 22, and the three movies are chapters 23, 24 and 25. Although the 1981 Raiders is the original movie, the second one, 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, is actually set a year earlier (Temple takes place in 1935, Raiders in '36 - Temple of Doom was Lucasfilm's very first prequel :), so Temple of Doom is chapter 23 and Raiders is chapter 24.
The movies are indeed available on VCD, but not legally. Despite claims to the contrary, Lucasfilm hasn't released the movies on VCD, and the VCDs that are out there are pirated.
I've noticed weird things like that happening in conventional music delivery systems, too (a few years ago, when 1999 rolled around, I saw Prince's album 1999 being promoted at Camelot Music with an endcap in the store and sold for $17.99, despite having been available for many years for much less; apparently the label and retailer were just capitalizing on the new "currency" of the name of the album and its title song. This wasn't any kind of expanded edition with newly-added bonus tracks, either - just the same old 1999 one could buy back in the '80s).
Fortunately, I don't think Apple is going to do that; its scheme seems firmly tied to "one price for everything," or at least as close as the labels will allow - there are a few tracks sold at the iTMS that aren't available individually but only as part of album purchases, and other albums that can't be bought as albums but only as individual tracks; also, some albums are sold for less than the total cost of the individual 99-cent tracks, while other albums are simply priced at the total cost of the number of tracks x 99 cents. However, no single individual track, at least, is being sold for more (or less) than 99 cents, regardless of its popularity, or even its length (I've seen some tracks there running well over 15 minutes, and others that aren't even 30 seconds and which one can hear in their entirety in the 30-second samples - yet they're all priced equally at 99 cents). Whatever the deal is with albums, it really doesn't look as though Apple wants to deal with different prices for individual tracks.
I think it's certainly true the majority of hardcore Star Wars fans today were kids when the original(s) came out, but it certainly wasn't just kids who embraced them back then. Go back and look at reviews for them in their original releases, particularly the original - remember, this was the movie Time called the "best movie of the year" before the year was even half over, a movie that won or was nominated for eleven Oscars including Best Picture, and a movie that was seen multiple times even by plenty of adults. Clearly the appeal of the originals isn't limited to either kids or people who were kids when they first saw them. The prequels may be a different case, though...
Of course, now that it'll be an M$ product, I won't be able to buy it in good conscience anyway...
From the article (emphasis in bold added):
I find it interesting that even someone in the industry, who obviously has an interest in drawing women to the hobby, himself admits he mostly plays with his 12-year-old son. I wonder if he's tried "selling" the women in his own personal life on it? Does his wife play? His mom? His sisters, or women friends?? (Granted, as he's in the industry, it's likely a lot of his friends, including women, are also in the industry, but aside from that...)
I frequently see articles on modern gaming demographics that say more women are playing video games than is generally thought, though the numbers seem to vary. Is this really the case? If so, why are so many of the games obviously targetted toward 12-year-old boys (or older males, who arguably have largely the same interests)?
But that would put many of us in the difficult position of having a stake in the financial well-being of Microsoft, a company we'd like to see wither and die. There's no shortage of ways to make money, if one's willing to abandon one's principles.
That said, I personally don't want anything to do with these particular subs given their reliance upon M$, but as a general model, the sub model does have some appealling points that mean it shouldn't be dismissed entirely just because the iTMS is "better," even though I'd agree it is.
*And let's see... judging from the pundits, it's been going out of business for, what, 10 years now? 15? Hell, I can't keep track - but at any rate it's healthier now than it was in '96, and has $4 billion in the bank, and brand loyalty other companies would kill for. I don't think they're going anywhere just yet.
Did you respond to the right post? I'm not the one defending the US's treatment of people (I'm pretty critical of it, actually); I think one of the posts by HBI must be the one you want.
That's because the list is made up entirely of countries bombed since WWII. Look at the dates. Also, reread the original post, and look for the words "...in the 58 years since the Second World War" (which the original poster thoughtfully put in bold text, though somehow you still overlooked it).
I can't speak for the poster to whom you're responding, but I was a registered Democrat during both of Clinton's campaigns (I later became an independent), yet I never voted for him; I just didn't trust him. My mistrust was borne out when his administration tried to push the Clipper chip, among other things, which I found very disturbing and which I told others about. So, no, at least for some of us, government isn't necessarily "just so *great*" when our party's in power; there are some of us (on both the left and right) who don't simply blindly accept whatever our leaders do just because they're ostensibly on our side of the political fence. How about you?
I don't think the post was anti-American. Americans who care deeply about the country and their freedoms have a strong interest in making such comments and observations. Perhas you think we US citizens should just lie down and take whatever the government or the prevailing social climate dishes out, but speaking as an American who is grateful for the freedoms guaranteed me and who cherishes the country's stated ideals, I'm very interested in seeing those freedoms and ideals preserved, and quick to criticize whenever I see those freedoms and ideals assailed or ignored, as has happened from time to time, whether you care to admit it or not. I strongly suspect the original poster ("Innocent times like the good ol' 50s," etc.) feels the same way.
Yes, I'm well aware the US is and historically has often been far better than many other nations in its treatment of people. That still doesn't make it exactly exemplary. Perhaps you think when it comes to mistreating its citizens, anything the US does is Ok as long as it doesn't exceed that done by some other nation, but some of us envision a somewhat higher standard.
BTW, the hair-splitting over the definition of "native Americans" is a crock. Like it or not, there were non-European peoples here thousands of years before Europeans arrived, and attempts to downplay that fact by saying they weren't "native" (only in the sense that human beings as a biological species didn't evolve here; their cultures and languages did) smack of an intent to reduce or dismiss the legitimacy of their claims. And what else should one call them? If mere accuracy is your goal, you should note "Indians" is profoundly less accurate than "native Americans."
Oh? And what rights would those be, that animals have and we don't?
Off-topic: I wish that just for this one story, the Slashdot topic icon of the Apple logo could show the old one with the rainbow stripes. :)
Of course, the original Raiders of the Lost Ark is a nonpareil classic . :)
As the other two have already pointed out, the first three movies all took place (mostly) in the '30s; to be precise, Raiders of the Lost Ark is set in 1936, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom a year earlier in 1935, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade has a prologue set in 1912, and the rest of the movie takes place in 1938.
;)
A few years ago, after becoming completely sucked into using the computer for hours at a stretch more or less every day, I began to notice slight twinges of discomfort in my right (mousing) hand. Realizing this was the early stage of an RSI and having read all sorts of unpleasant things about them, I switched the mouse to the left hand; I didn't have quite the same fine control with that one, but for things like surfing and whatnot it didn't matter. Around that time I also bought a trackball, which I intended to use principally for old arcade games under MacMAME, but I wound up using it as a mouse alternative as well. Between switching hands and switching mice a lot, or sometimes using both at once (one in each hand, and switching from one hand to the other on the fly), I apparently haven't ever repeated patterns of hand/wrist movement long enough to get a bad RSI. Unfortunately I have just one mouse at the moment, but I make sure to switch hands with it from time to time, and I intend to get a new trackball as well, and again switch between that and the mouse as well as switching hands.
The radiation may indeed pose no threat. However, much visual content seen on CRT monitors may very well pose a serious threat to brain health in some way. ;)