I'd love to have met your Uncle Lee - I think the thing he was most known for was inventing Audio-Animatronics, wasn't he?
I've always had a fondness for the Disney of the past - the era of the Nine Old Men and such. Late last year I got to spend some time with Margaret Kerry, a wonderfully sweet little old lady who was the animator's model for Tinker Bell in Disney's "Peter Pan". She knew Disney and Marc Davis very well, and had some really great stories to tell. It was just so cool to be able to talk with someone that actually knew Walt himself. Disney (the company) was totally different back then, and really was less about commercialism and more about art and the engineering needed to effectively tell a great story. They had the attitude that if you did your job properly, the money would take care of itself, and they were largely right. Nowadays you can't do anything at all if it even looks as if it might hurt the quarterly numbers.
This was highly influential to a young animator named Walt Disney
As was Neuschwanstein - it's a beautiful castle, and elements of it were shamelessly used in some of Disney's creations. I visited Neuschwanstein and Linderhof last year, and regardless of Ludwig's state of mind, he had some sweet places to hang his hat.
A lot of very geeky stuff came out of Animation, long before nVidia etc. Fine old tradition.
Big time. Over at Disney-MGM Studios they have a Walt Disney exhibit where some of the cooler things like the multiplane animation camera and some of Disney's hand-made models are on display. That reminds me - I gotta get out there for the last Star Wars Weekend next week to see Jeremy Bulloch and Temuera Morrison. The Fett family's in town!
Big time. I received the same offer all the other customers did and after looking at it carefully, I decided not to participate because I don't see Vonage having long-term (5-10 years) viability. Vonage was *very clear* in their signup process about the risks involved, and anyone that chooses to buy stock in a publicly owned company should already be aware of such risks. I have not the least bit of sympathy for anyone who thought they were going to get rich quick and instead finds themselves in the hole five bucks per share. Guess what,
sometimes it happens to Warren Buffett too, but you don't see him whining about it.
The unfortunate thing is that no matter what Vonage does, they're screwed. If they try to (rightly, IMHO) hold these people to their commitments, it's a PR disaster in the making, and if they forgive the pledges, it's going to cost them real money, which isn't fair to the company and by extension those people who *did* fulfill their obligation.
Americans need to learn how to freaking relax. Only by doing that will our time off rejuvinate us enough to perform good work.
True, but try telling that to the shareholders.
Our CEO ranted at us a little bit last week saying that he didn't feel there was enough work being put in - "I'm seeing people coming in at 9 and going home at 5:30! You don't see the executives working that schedule!". Well Sparky, we notice the executives driving sparkling new Mercedes S-classes and Cadillac XLRs where the average employees are driving older Camrys and Sentras. We notice a very large pay differential, and with that much larger paycheck it's reasonable to expect longer hours. When you have a buttload of people that are working on salary, and see that it's executive management and the shareholders that reap the benefits of all that extra time that the underlings spent away from family and relaxation, are said underlings supposed to feel really charitable all of a sudden and go the extra mile so the boss can get that new summer home? Screw that, but there are a lot of places where the company seems to have an institutionalized entitlement mentality when it comes to their workers' time, and it's they that need to learn that the employees need to freaking relax.
Until February of last year, I spent six years at WDW driving monorails as a part-time "fun" job, hence the tagline and my handle. The job didn't pay worth a damn, but it's a lot of fun playing with a 14-mile, 70-ton electric train set.:-) Glad you liked the tagline.
At $30 a day, it's not really worth it to just go and play regular arcade games.
DQ offers annual passes for $89 too. Whenever my wife and I visit Downtown Disney (which is fairly often), we usually spend a couple of hours at DQ doing something, so it's been pretty cost-effective for us.
Both Test Track and Rock'N'Roller Coaster are older than "Pirates".:-) Your point still stands, however - Disney hasn't added anything new to DQ in six years, and you can't expect people to keep coming if you don't keep things fresh, or at least keep a high polish on what you already have.
I think the writing's been on the wall for a while - given the horsepower of today's PCs and game consoles, it's hard for a lot of people to justify spending a buck a game when you can get a great gaming experience at home for the cost of a few visits to an arcade. You won't get a nice sit-down cabinet that moves or a custom controller set, but the graphics and sound are great nowadays. It's just not like it was back in the '80s when there wasn't anything available in the home that was remotely comparable to what you'd find in an arcade, except for a few games on the Colecovision. "Defender" in the arcade vs. "Defender" on the Atari 2600 - I'd put my quarters in the machine, thanks.
I agree, it's sad, and I hope you're able to hold out a while longer.
I was bummed to hear about DQ closing when I learned of it a few weeks ago. I have a DQ annual pass, and while I obviously enjoy gaming there, what I'll miss most are the hamburgers available there - best on Disney World property, IMHO.
I should have known things were going downhill when their Tempest machine disappeared several months ago....
The alpha pad only costs more if you have more keys. You could still give it 10 keys, but instead of "0-9", you do "0-4" and "A-E", or just keep it alphabetic (gains the same UI benefits) and do "A-J". Anything that breaks a cognitive association between the item price and the item identifier will work for this purpose.
Awesome idea. Hey Kyocera - I'd sign on too. A phone with that kind of form factor would be a lot easier to carry around than having something stuck to my belt or being an uncomfortable brick in my pocket. Stick a USB port on the end so you can plug it directly into your PC to sync it, and it's pretty much a perfect product.
I believe that there is no such thing as "human error" when dealing with a computing device.
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that, but it seems reasonable that a voicemail system should ask for confirmation before deleting an as-yet-unheard message, because sometimes you'll find yourself needing to delete multiple messages and it's just too easy to do what the parent poster did.
It's rather like those poorly-designed vending machines that have numeric identifiers for the items inside - the item you want is number "77", but you end up getting item "45" because you were still subconsciously thinking about the $.45 you just put in to buy the item and punched the buttons before you were aware of what you were doing. Simply using an alphanumeric identifier fixes that for no extra cost.
I never said other providers could address the QoS issue, but then they're not trying to charge me forty bucks a month either. Practically, QoS has not been a problem for me as I've consistently gotten excellent sound quality, with no complaints of poor quality from anyone on the other end. The only problems that I *have* experienced relate to the fact that my cable service seems to go down periodically, which would take the cable-branded VoIP service down with it as well.
The extra cost from cablecos is that little convienence fee of having it appear on the same bill as your cable TV and data and having the phone service under a company that you've actually heard of and don't think will go disappear in a.bubble
For me, that convenience is not worth paying more than what the local POTS provider can give me real phone service for (including long distance charges), or more than double what competing VoIP providers charge while providing fewer services.
Right now, I have VoIP accounts from two different providers, and it's *still* costing me less than the local cable co.'s offering. I'd really prefer not even to buy my internet service from the cable co., but last year's FCC ruling all but destroyed competition for DSL service in my area.
Here, the local cable co. offers VoIP for $39.95/month (above and beyond their broadband service which is a prerequisite), which to my knowledge is by far the most expensive VoIP service available where I live. Services such as call display, voicemail, etc., I don't consider as a selling point as any VoIP package should include them, and the main thing that I *do* consider a selling point (bring your own device) is not offered through their service.
I don't know for certain that they route calls over the internet, but their maps seem to indicate that most of the United States is not covered by their network. Even if they are able to keep the packets completely in-network, it's just too damn expensive.
The Supreme Court ruled on this some time ago - common carrier status doesn't apply to internet service providers offerings because their offerings are considered to be "information services" rather than "telecommunications services" under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That's not to say I don't think they *should* be considered common carriers, but under current law they're not.
Most cable companies are already starting to offer VoIP.
Yeah, often at *substantially* higher costs than what is available from the independent VoIP providers, and with no guarantee that QoS can be maintained once the packets leave your provider's network.
I used to be 72310,272, and "cgremlin" on the CB Simulator. I had my CIS account from 1986 (starting with a 1200 baud VenTel modem) until 1998 when they attempted to double-charge my account and got unreasonable about it. I really miss the '80s and early '90s - the online experience was totally different then, even though we all had dog-slow modems and almost everything was text-based - I don't expect the kids today that have only experienced the Internet in its current form could understand the appeal. Hell, I even have some old CB Simulator friends that I still exchange Christmas cards with.
And I live 40 miles away from my parents' house.:-D
If I were going to (or if I were going to sell my phone), Cingular will unlock the phone for free with a little hassle (mainly finding someone one the phone that knows what 'unlocking' means and how to get it done).
That wasn't my experience. When I cancelled my contract, not only did Cingular steadfastly refuse to unlock the phone, but they insisted on charging me a cancellation fee until I forced them to pull the recording where I agreed to a one-year contract instead of the two years they argued I agreed to, because "we don't do one-year contracts". To this day, I still get a bill for the cancellation fee from those fools, with a corresponding credit that brings it to a zero balance. I've gotten one every month for five months now.
I wouldn't count on any assistance whatsoever from them if you're not going to be handing them money on a monthly basis.
Most people don't get cable back until they get power back (between three days and four weeks.)
I got lucky with the storms in 2004. The eye of Charley passed less than seven miles away, with 77 mph sustained winds and 109 mph gusts recorded at MCO about a mile and a half from my place, and the power was out for about 40 minutes where I was. Frances put us down for about eight hours, but that was punctuated by several periods where the power would be up for 5-10 minutes. We didn't lose power at all during Jeanne.
I think it was probably because we were located in a newer area where most of the lines were underground, but it seemed that areas served by Orlando Utilities got service back quicker in general than those served by FP&L.
As I recall we didn't lose phone service at all, which I have to contrast to the two weeks we were down last year because of a BellSouth screwup, which we didn't discover until our new neighbors let us know they were getting our calls. BellSouth's inadequate response and attempts to sell us yet more expensive services after that clinched our decision to go with Vonage, and the service has been great for us.
Yeah, I knew about that - the easy way to deal with that is to have a newer iTunes instance if it's needed for iPod support, and an older one to use when purchasing music. It's a bit of a PITA, but better than renting music.
Hymn still works just fine with iTunes versions prior to v6. I have a first-gen iPod, and thus haven't yet had the need to upgrade beyond v5. If and when I get a new iPod, I'll obviously have to use a newer version of iTunes, but I will continue buying any new music via the v5 copy. Problem solved.
The GP was referring to Nature magazine, which does describe itself as "the best in science journalism"
A magazine which let this little gem through the editorial process:
"The researchers found that once the plate was spinning so fast that the water span out to the sides, creating a hole of air in the middle..." (emphasis mine)
One might make the argument that they meant "spanned", but in context it seems obvious that they meant "spun". Either way, it's incorrect. The science might be peer-reviewed, but apparently the writing isn't.
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I'd love to have met your Uncle Lee - I think the thing he was most known for was inventing Audio-Animatronics, wasn't he?
I've always had a fondness for the Disney of the past - the era of the Nine Old Men and such. Late last year I got to spend some time with Margaret Kerry, a wonderfully sweet little old lady who was the animator's model for Tinker Bell in Disney's "Peter Pan". She knew Disney and Marc Davis very well, and had some really great stories to tell. It was just so cool to be able to talk with someone that actually knew Walt himself. Disney (the company) was totally different back then, and really was less about commercialism and more about art and the engineering needed to effectively tell a great story. They had the attitude that if you did your job properly, the money would take care of itself, and they were largely right. Nowadays you can't do anything at all if it even looks as if it might hurt the quarterly numbers.
It didn't cost nearly as many lives, and doesn't even show up in Wikipedia, but the Teton Dam failure in 1976 also deserves a mention.
This was highly influential to a young animator named Walt Disney
As was Neuschwanstein - it's a beautiful castle, and elements of it were shamelessly used in some of Disney's creations. I visited Neuschwanstein and Linderhof last year, and regardless of Ludwig's state of mind, he had some sweet places to hang his hat.
A lot of very geeky stuff came out of Animation, long before nVidia etc. Fine old tradition.
Big time. Over at Disney-MGM Studios they have a Walt Disney exhibit where some of the cooler things like the multiplane animation camera and some of Disney's hand-made models are on display. That reminds me - I gotta get out there for the last Star Wars Weekend next week to see Jeremy Bulloch and Temuera Morrison. The Fett family's in town!
Big time. I received the same offer all the other customers did and after looking at it carefully, I decided not to participate because I don't see Vonage having long-term (5-10 years) viability. Vonage was *very clear* in their signup process about the risks involved, and anyone that chooses to buy stock in a publicly owned company should already be aware of such risks. I have not the least bit of sympathy for anyone who thought they were going to get rich quick and instead finds themselves in the hole five bucks per share. Guess what,
sometimes it happens to Warren Buffett too, but you don't see him whining about it.
The unfortunate thing is that no matter what Vonage does, they're screwed. If they try to (rightly, IMHO) hold these people to their commitments, it's a PR disaster in the making, and if they forgive the pledges, it's going to cost them real money, which isn't fair to the company and by extension those people who *did* fulfill their obligation.
Americans need to learn how to freaking relax. Only by doing that will our time off rejuvinate us enough to perform good work.
True, but try telling that to the shareholders.
Our CEO ranted at us a little bit last week saying that he didn't feel there was enough work being put in - "I'm seeing people coming in at 9 and going home at 5:30! You don't see the executives working that schedule!". Well Sparky, we notice the executives driving sparkling new Mercedes S-classes and Cadillac XLRs where the average employees are driving older Camrys and Sentras. We notice a very large pay differential, and with that much larger paycheck it's reasonable to expect longer hours. When you have a buttload of people that are working on salary, and see that it's executive management and the shareholders that reap the benefits of all that extra time that the underlings spent away from family and relaxation, are said underlings supposed to feel really charitable all of a sudden and go the extra mile so the boss can get that new summer home? Screw that, but there are a lot of places where the company seems to have an institutionalized entitlement mentality when it comes to their workers' time, and it's they that need to learn that the employees need to freaking relax.
It would be nice if they would repair the stuff they've got.
Yes it would, and unfortunately that problem isn't just limited to DQ.
Until February of last year, I spent six years at WDW driving monorails as a part-time "fun" job, hence the tagline and my handle. The job didn't pay worth a damn, but it's a lot of fun playing with a 14-mile, 70-ton electric train set. :-) Glad you liked the tagline.
At $30 a day, it's not really worth it to just go and play regular arcade games.
:-) Your point still stands, however - Disney hasn't added anything new to DQ in six years, and you can't expect people to keep coming if you don't keep things fresh, or at least keep a high polish on what you already have.
DQ offers annual passes for $89 too. Whenever my wife and I visit Downtown Disney (which is fairly often), we usually spend a couple of hours at DQ doing something, so it's been pretty cost-effective for us.
Both Test Track and Rock'N'Roller Coaster are older than "Pirates".
I think the writing's been on the wall for a while - given the horsepower of today's PCs and game consoles, it's hard for a lot of people to justify spending a buck a game when you can get a great gaming experience at home for the cost of a few visits to an arcade. You won't get a nice sit-down cabinet that moves or a custom controller set, but the graphics and sound are great nowadays. It's just not like it was back in the '80s when there wasn't anything available in the home that was remotely comparable to what you'd find in an arcade, except for a few games on the Colecovision. "Defender" in the arcade vs. "Defender" on the Atari 2600 - I'd put my quarters in the machine, thanks.
I agree, it's sad, and I hope you're able to hold out a while longer.
I was bummed to hear about DQ closing when I learned of it a few weeks ago. I have a DQ annual pass, and while I obviously enjoy gaming there, what I'll miss most are the hamburgers available there - best on Disney World property, IMHO.
I should have known things were going downhill when their Tempest machine disappeared several months ago....
The alpha pad only costs more if you have more keys. You could still give it 10 keys, but instead of "0-9", you do "0-4" and "A-E", or just keep it alphabetic (gains the same UI benefits) and do "A-J". Anything that breaks a cognitive association between the item price and the item identifier will work for this purpose.
Awesome idea. Hey Kyocera - I'd sign on too. A phone with that kind of form factor would be a lot easier to carry around than having something stuck to my belt or being an uncomfortable brick in my pocket. Stick a USB port on the end so you can plug it directly into your PC to sync it, and it's pretty much a perfect product.
I believe that there is no such thing as "human error" when dealing with a computing device.
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that, but it seems reasonable that a voicemail system should ask for confirmation before deleting an as-yet-unheard message, because sometimes you'll find yourself needing to delete multiple messages and it's just too easy to do what the parent poster did.
It's rather like those poorly-designed vending machines that have numeric identifiers for the items inside - the item you want is number "77", but you end up getting item "45" because you were still subconsciously thinking about the $.45 you just put in to buy the item and punched the buttons before you were aware of what you were doing. Simply using an alphanumeric identifier fixes that for no extra cost.
I never said other providers could address the QoS issue, but then they're not trying to charge me forty bucks a month either. Practically, QoS has not been a problem for me as I've consistently gotten excellent sound quality, with no complaints of poor quality from anyone on the other end. The only problems that I *have* experienced relate to the fact that my cable service seems to go down periodically, which would take the cable-branded VoIP service down with it as well.
.bubble
The extra cost from cablecos is that little convienence fee of having it appear on the same bill as your cable TV and data and having the phone service under a company that you've actually heard of and don't think will go disappear in a
For me, that convenience is not worth paying more than what the local POTS provider can give me real phone service for (including long distance charges), or more than double what competing VoIP providers charge while providing fewer services.
Right now, I have VoIP accounts from two different providers, and it's *still* costing me less than the local cable co.'s offering. I'd really prefer not even to buy my internet service from the cable co., but last year's FCC ruling all but destroyed competition for DSL service in my area.
Here, the local cable co. offers VoIP for $39.95/month (above and beyond their broadband service which is a prerequisite), which to my knowledge is by far the most expensive VoIP service available where I live. Services such as call display, voicemail, etc., I don't consider as a selling point as any VoIP package should include them, and the main thing that I *do* consider a selling point (bring your own device) is not offered through their service.
I don't know for certain that they route calls over the internet, but their maps seem to indicate that most of the United States is not covered by their network. Even if they are able to keep the packets completely in-network, it's just too damn expensive.
The Supreme Court ruled on this some time ago - common carrier status doesn't apply to internet service providers offerings because their offerings are considered to be "information services" rather than "telecommunications services" under the Telecommunications Act of 1996. That's not to say I don't think they *should* be considered common carriers, but under current law they're not.
The Court's opinion can be found here. (PDF file)
Most cable companies are already starting to offer VoIP.
Yeah, often at *substantially* higher costs than what is available from the independent VoIP providers, and with no guarantee that QoS can be maintained once the packets leave your provider's network.
I used to be 72310,272, and "cgremlin" on the CB Simulator. I had my CIS account from 1986 (starting with a 1200 baud VenTel modem) until 1998 when they attempted to double-charge my account and got unreasonable about it. I really miss the '80s and early '90s - the online experience was totally different then, even though we all had dog-slow modems and almost everything was text-based - I don't expect the kids today that have only experienced the Internet in its current form could understand the appeal. Hell, I even have some old CB Simulator friends that I still exchange Christmas cards with.
:-D
And I live 40 miles away from my parents' house.
If I were going to (or if I were going to sell my phone), Cingular will unlock the phone for free with a little hassle (mainly finding someone one the phone that knows what 'unlocking' means and how to get it done).
That wasn't my experience. When I cancelled my contract, not only did Cingular steadfastly refuse to unlock the phone, but they insisted on charging me a cancellation fee until I forced them to pull the recording where I agreed to a one-year contract instead of the two years they argued I agreed to, because "we don't do one-year contracts". To this day, I still get a bill for the cancellation fee from those fools, with a corresponding credit that brings it to a zero balance. I've gotten one every month for five months now.
I wouldn't count on any assistance whatsoever from them if you're not going to be handing them money on a monthly basis.
Most people don't get cable back until they get power back (between three days and four weeks.)
I got lucky with the storms in 2004. The eye of Charley passed less than seven miles away, with 77 mph sustained winds and 109 mph gusts recorded at MCO about a mile and a half from my place, and the power was out for about 40 minutes where I was. Frances put us down for about eight hours, but that was punctuated by several periods where the power would be up for 5-10 minutes. We didn't lose power at all during Jeanne.
I think it was probably because we were located in a newer area where most of the lines were underground, but it seemed that areas served by Orlando Utilities got service back quicker in general than those served by FP&L.
As I recall we didn't lose phone service at all, which I have to contrast to the two weeks we were down last year because of a BellSouth screwup, which we didn't discover until our new neighbors let us know they were getting our calls. BellSouth's inadequate response and attempts to sell us yet more expensive services after that clinched our decision to go with Vonage, and the service has been great for us.
Yeah, I knew about that - the easy way to deal with that is to have a newer iTunes instance if it's needed for iPod support, and an older one to use when purchasing music. It's a bit of a PITA, but better than renting music.
Hymn still works just fine with iTunes versions prior to v6. I have a first-gen iPod, and thus haven't yet had the need to upgrade beyond v5. If and when I get a new iPod, I'll obviously have to use a newer version of iTunes, but I will continue buying any new music via the v5 copy. Problem solved.
If it is please show me where i can find a tool to remove the drm from music purcahsed from itunes.
Here ya go. It will only work with iTunes through version 5, but that's a fairly easy restriction to deal with.
Sure you can - just look under /usr/src/linux-2.6.16/arch/h20 in your favorite distro.
The GP was referring to Nature magazine, which does describe itself as "the best in science journalism"
A magazine which let this little gem through the editorial process:
"The researchers found that once the plate was spinning so fast that the water span out to the sides, creating a hole of air in the middle..." (emphasis mine)
One might make the argument that they meant "spanned", but in context it seems obvious that they meant "spun". Either way, it's incorrect. The science might be peer-reviewed, but apparently the writing isn't.