It's perceived as less "risky" to follow a franchise than to try something original
It is the fashion of the days - McDonalds corporate logo is more important than quality and health. This is the meaning of success these days, so naturally they will be risk averse and dump cheap crap into Star Trek. The DMCA will ensure advertising revenues will be the measure of success in the future.
The reason it's called "soft walls" is because it's a graduated system. There's not a line in space where the plane says "WHOA FUCK! WE GOTTA GET OUT OF HERE!" There's a zone in which the plane is commanded to turn, safely and gently, away from the protected airspace.
If a confused pilot in fog with low fuel and one engine out can see his "softwall on" warning light, he would probably panic. Where should he steer? If he turns left he would get to the airport, if he turned right he would have to go 500 miles around the softwall and would run out of fuel, killing everybody.
Yeah, and innovation for the book died when they created the index, the table contents, and page numbering. As long as the glue that binds the book holds and the ink doesn't run when it gets wet, I'm happy.
Yup, once a product achieves ubiquity, nobody tries any stupid frills to sell more. Books are sold by Author and reputation, stupid frills don't help. I suppose that's the difference between content and presentation, some books have crap covers.
Agreed. This is a stupid system. Whenever the pilot is unsure in fog or hits turbulence, he'll blame the softwall and won't check his instruments... BANG! One quick check of the altimeter, speed and elevation would quickly show the pilot that he's in trouble.
I know if I had a device in my car that corrected harsh steering, if I hit a diesel spill I'd blame the steering aid, until it was too late.
To me it doesnt matter, my #1 goal is to change the world for the better. If my job leads me to accomplish my mission, it doesnt matter how many hours because the more I work the more I'd accomplish my mission
That is exactly the same goal as Osama binLaden. Osama binLaden does a lot of overtime.
Re:Jobs dont have to be enjoyable.
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Working Hard?
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and it's also unlikely that a grocery clerk's contributions were that profound
Don't fall for the worship of glamour. When did Michael Jackson last give you something apart from a mass-manufactured copy-protected CD that millions of other people also have? Is it strange that the important things that you talk about (enjoying a sunset whilst camping with your loved ones) are made possible by the less glamorous trades (camping shops, textile factories, propane dealers)
Perhaps instead you are simply frustrated that Walmart hires and fires so you get a different butcher everyday that doesn't give a damnn about you, whereas in times long past the Butcher's was a specialised small business, where the same proprietor would work for 50 years and he would remember what kind of meat you order, and would be like your Uncle?
Re:The greedy bastards just don't get it...
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The accidents cost everyone. That cost is spread around in insurance premiums and workman's comp., but we all pay for it. The cost of mediocre work in a global economy is that it makes slave labor from struggling countries more appealing to use because the quality differential has decreased.
Incorrect. Businesses aren't formed for making money. The businessperson obtains a huge Bank loan and takes on employees to look good. When he has a Ferrari, he doesn't want a profitable business, he wants to show that his workers are under him by making them work like slaves more than other fellow businessmen. This makes him look more powerful when playing Golf whilst all the while he's using the Bank's money. I've seen ten,ulti-millionaires spend 2 hours arguing over how to save $150. What other activity is there for a bored millionaire than to abuse his workers?
I can afford 18 Big Mac meals a day and don't have to worry about getting ill (NHS) or out of work (Social). You, American, might be able to afford 30 Big Mac meals a day, but is it worth it? What if your children are born with a disability whereby they are unable to save money, will you be a very sad Father?
Re:No Overtime No Vacation
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Working Hard?
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The CEO routinely yells at us oldtimer non-Siemens types at every quarterly meeting. "You guys just don't know how to cooperate!" After two rounds of layoffs he sees that our morale still hasn't improved, so we are now told to train our own replacements in their new engineering center in Bangalore India.
Everything I know about evil corporations I learned from the Europeans
So starving Indian programmers can eat, while you collect your welfare check. Sounds like a good deal to me, do you want those Indian programmers to starve to death? Now who's evil?
Re:Words change in meaning over time
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Isn't It Ironic?
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What we are seeing is a symptom of society's increasing sensationalism. The collective media overuse of nemes such as "Cool" has created a niche for intelligent words placed just before commercial breaks, to make the mind of the viewer more receptive to the advertisements, hence more $$$.
Their misuse is irrelevant, you have a Right under the Constitution to misuse whatever words you like. I don't believe in the users of English following the Oxford dictionary like Al Qaeda follows Osama binLaden.
I remember reading a rant by C.S. Lewis describing this very thing. He was saddened by the way that the word "gentleman" had, over the years, been generalized to mean practically any human male. Previously, it had mostly been used to describe a certain segment of wealthy landowners. Lewis implied that this kind of thing was unfortunate
Or perhaps it simply shows the meaningless of verbalisation. All interpersonal communication is performed via sympathy, and the populous will inevitably twist words to its own selfish ends (even if that end is love/respect/antiCapitalism hence the populous wishes to call each other Gentleman instead of a**hole).
It gives me hope in Humanity over Machiovellian Capitalism (kill least efficient workers without health benefit) that it's not twisted the other way.
WORDS ARE A FUNCTION OF OUR NEED FOR COMMUNICATION, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND
The real advancement is the cost of distribution (the Internet) is something the CUSTOMER pays for (ISP charges). The revolution that will now come will be similar to the one where Theaters gradually fizzled into oblivion to be replaced by TV and allowed the centralisation of the creation of actor-based performances (Hollywood as opposed to Pantomine).
The distributors will die a terrible death as they hedged the bet by leveraging their control of the music product to make the big hits so massive and succesful that they could support the up and coming artists. Economics assumes "perfect information", unfortunately you can't half-finish a song to gauge its marketability. The product has to be R&D'ed, pre-Produced, Produced and Post-Produced and released on pilot to guess the demand. 99.9% of songs fail. The very few successes paid for the music industry to survive despite this Inefficiency of Capitalism.
Using the Internet as a distribution mechanism decreases the penalty of this inefficiency, but doesn't eliminate it, ah well.
But even at 12c per track, that's a much better per track rate than artists have gotten traditionally from prepackaged albums
Ah yes, quite true. The real advancement is the cost of distribution (the Internet) is something the CUSTOMER pays for (ISP charges). The revolution that will now come will be similar to the one where Theaters gradually fizzled into oblivion to be replaced by TV and allowed the centralisation of the creation of actor-based performances (Hollywood as opposed to Pantomine).
The distributors will die a terrible death as they hedged the bet by leveraging their control of the music product to make the big hits so massive and succesful that they could support the up and coming artists. Economics assumes "perfect information", unfortunately you can't half-finish a song to gauge its marketability. The product has to be R&D'ed, pre-Produced, Produced and Post-Produced and released on pilot to guess the demand. 99.9% of songs fail. The very few successes paid for the music industry to survive despite this Inefficiency of Capitalism.
Using the Internet as a distribution mechanism decreases the penalty of this inefficiency, but doesn't eliminate it, ah well.
In the event that Software Quality becomes critical, I'm not joking - you can't beat Micro$oft Access, and there's no linux equivalent.
Before you flame me, please listen... I'm writing some database processing software for a layman manager in a huge Venture Capital/adverising firm. Using Microsoft Access I've created software in 7 days that has rollover buttons, inline help, and calls DLLs for high seed processing of large datasets. I've had days where I've rolled out more than 3 minor revisions of the software to the customer, with their feedback each time. RAD is here to stay, but I feel bad that I'm taking the job of 50 C++ programmers away that would be needed to provide this speed of service.
I know C++ but unfortunately in these days of RAD, C++ is too low-level (almost as low-level as C). Shell and Perl scripts are good for automated admin tasks, but don't serve any purpose to PHBs. The unfortunate fact of the matter is the high rollering PHBs are dumb and impatient with computers, and aren't willing to wait longer than a few hours for new software to meet business needs.
Of course, if the software actually runs the business this can be differrent (like JSP on www.expedia.com). The fact of the matter is that all the PHBs ever wanted from C++ was nice graphs, some data storage, and simple reports to pad out some powerpoint presentation that everybody will fall asleep in.
LPG and hybrid cars are exempt. The congestion charge also functions to encourage these new technologies. That methinks required the extra bump up from £3 to £5
It's possible that the average CD purchaser is switching to Kazaa. In that case, the music industry can either:
1. Fight P2P - This is what they're doing now, and if they want to make it illegal the majority of the populous will have to understand, otherwise it'll just be Prohibition all over again. Unfortunately the record industry is looked upon by its customers as a dirty industry, with Britney Spears deliberately marketted to take money from children nagging hard-working Parents like Happy Meals toys are. The Government cannot be seen to be on its side, otherwise it would upset the voting establishment (people older than 25) which sees this music as disgusting mass-manufactured rubbish. It would be regarded in the same way as the Government supporting McDonalds toys. Screaming, nagging children are the bane of Parents and is visible to all. It dissuades potential Parents from having children, inverting the Country's population triangle which will cause huge macroeconomic problems in the future.
2. Alter their product - This will be unsuccesful, I go to buy CDs because of the music they contain, not because of some snazzy stuff
3. Decrease prices - You can't beat free
4. Die out - the only remaining option. In its corruption and decadence, perhaps this would be most fitting. China illustrates what happens when a country has mass music piracy.
TV rots the mind... specially in the crucial early years... if your typical day is get home watch 2-4 hours of TV than you are falling behind your potential...
Potential of what? Getting better SATs so that you can become a more drone-like corporate drone than the other corporate drones? Then you can buy more useless stuff, and more stocks and shares so you can lose even more money when Wall Street next crashes, or when your 401k is worth $1...
However, for the moment, let us suppose that everything this article suggests about TV ruining Bhutan are true. Some posters seem to suggest that letting TV be introduced was therefore a bad idea. Are you really willing to advocate freedom for yourself, but not for others?
I want the FREEDOM to smoke crack, so what if I go and kill some people and rob some Banks. I want my crack. FREEEEDOM
The only lasting value in life is the joy we derive from life; our only real duty in life is to increase the amount of joy experienced by others
But what if an advanced AI robot could provide you with a lifetime of intellectual conversation, would you still derive joy? Or perhaps you are selfish just like most others and wish to impose the intellectualism you love upon unsuspecting victims, like industrialisation to African countries. Since knowledge is power, are you sure it isn't your objective to gain power by thinly veiling it as a search for knowledge?
True selflessness is to allow others the freedom to be intellectual or for a Joe sixpack to drink beer whilst climbing Everest and die whilst perhaps killing 50 intellectuals or whatever. You are then free to laugh at him. There is no point being selfishly selfless. It's this principle of adventure and "breaking away" that Islam robs of its true followers. "Is it OK by the book?" one must first ask.
And just what the fuck is wrong with having some ambition and not being content with what you were born with?
Capitalist rules dictate that only the small minority will be rich, and the vast majority will become meatpackers working minimum wage and having a good chance of losing fingers and arms during work.
If you go to the ghetto, every uneducated man is pissed off because he feels he deserves a Cadillac and $1 million. This causes crime and drug-dealing. Why do the drug dealers want money so bad?
If you want ambition, then here's an example - Osama binLaden wanted America out of Saudi, and he achieved his ambition succesfully. That makes Osama binLaden a success, now give him some American pie and a million dollars.
The real cause is information. The people of Bhutan are now bombarded with a million new concepts that they had not considered before. Now that they have learned more about the real world
I want to look like Arnold Scwarzenegger, be on heroin, have a porsche, a blonde size 3 girlfriend, a huge house with a massive swimming pool, a job on Wall Street for 15 minutes with no daily grind for $1million, and I want to be like Rambo so I can get all these beautiful blonde DD girls that no geek on Slashdot gets. Yeah, I think TV creates an unrealistic portrayal of life with false ideas and inapprpriate metaphors created by the liberal media elite.
Some may think it's naive of a nation to base its national goals on a "Gross National Happiness" metric
Yup, let's buy more stuff and kill each other over oil. Let's all eat feaces everyday (Book: Fast Food Nation) and be proud that it's cheap. I think I'll kill your children if it makes me money. If not "Gross National Happiness" then what? You want every company to become an Enron? Those Enron executives have tens of millions of Dollars, they are succesful by the "American Dream" cultural metric so you have no right to complain.
You have no authority to criticise Micro$oft and promote Linux if you don't believe that Gross National Happiness is superior to Gross National Product. Linux doesn't increase GDP, Micro$oft does because it creates employment via profits and customisation. How many linux programmers got rich off selling linux? Linux is Gross National Happiness.
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I know if I had a device in my car that corrected harsh steering, if I hit a diesel spill I'd blame the steering aid, until it was too late.
Perhaps instead you are simply frustrated that Walmart hires and fires so you get a different butcher everyday that doesn't give a damnn about you, whereas in times long past the Butcher's was a specialised small business, where the same proprietor would work for 50 years and he would remember what kind of meat you order, and would be like your Uncle?
Their misuse is irrelevant, you have a Right under the Constitution to misuse whatever words you like. I don't believe in the users of English following the Oxford dictionary like Al Qaeda follows Osama binLaden.
It gives me hope in Humanity over Machiovellian Capitalism (kill least efficient workers without health benefit) that it's not twisted the other way.
WORDS ARE A FUNCTION OF OUR NEED FOR COMMUNICATION, NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND
The distributors will die a terrible death as they hedged the bet by leveraging their control of the music product to make the big hits so massive and succesful that they could support the up and coming artists. Economics assumes "perfect information", unfortunately you can't half-finish a song to gauge its marketability. The product has to be R&D'ed, pre-Produced, Produced and Post-Produced and released on pilot to guess the demand. 99.9% of songs fail. The very few successes paid for the music industry to survive despite this Inefficiency of Capitalism.
Using the Internet as a distribution mechanism decreases the penalty of this inefficiency, but doesn't eliminate it, ah well.
The distributors will die a terrible death as they hedged the bet by leveraging their control of the music product to make the big hits so massive and succesful that they could support the up and coming artists. Economics assumes "perfect information", unfortunately you can't half-finish a song to gauge its marketability. The product has to be R&D'ed, pre-Produced, Produced and Post-Produced and released on pilot to guess the demand. 99.9% of songs fail. The very few successes paid for the music industry to survive despite this Inefficiency of Capitalism.
Using the Internet as a distribution mechanism decreases the penalty of this inefficiency, but doesn't eliminate it, ah well.
Before you flame me, please listen... I'm writing some database processing software for a layman manager in a huge Venture Capital/adverising firm. Using Microsoft Access I've created software in 7 days that has rollover buttons, inline help, and calls DLLs for high seed processing of large datasets. I've had days where I've rolled out more than 3 minor revisions of the software to the customer, with their feedback each time. RAD is here to stay, but I feel bad that I'm taking the job of 50 C++ programmers away that would be needed to provide this speed of service.
I know C++ but unfortunately in these days of RAD, C++ is too low-level (almost as low-level as C). Shell and Perl scripts are good for automated admin tasks, but don't serve any purpose to PHBs. The unfortunate fact of the matter is the high rollering PHBs are dumb and impatient with computers, and aren't willing to wait longer than a few hours for new software to meet business needs.
Of course, if the software actually runs the business this can be differrent (like JSP on www.expedia.com). The fact of the matter is that all the PHBs ever wanted from C++ was nice graphs, some data storage, and simple reports to pad out some powerpoint presentation that everybody will fall asleep in.
LPG and hybrid cars are exempt. The congestion charge also functions to encourage these new technologies. That methinks required the extra bump up from £3 to £5
1. Fight P2P - This is what they're doing now, and if they want to make it illegal the majority of the populous will have to understand, otherwise it'll just be Prohibition all over again. Unfortunately the record industry is looked upon by its customers as a dirty industry, with Britney Spears deliberately marketted to take money from children nagging hard-working Parents like Happy Meals toys are. The Government cannot be seen to be on its side, otherwise it would upset the voting establishment (people older than 25) which sees this music as disgusting mass-manufactured rubbish. It would be regarded in the same way as the Government supporting McDonalds toys. Screaming, nagging children are the bane of Parents and is visible to all. It dissuades potential Parents from having children, inverting the Country's population triangle which will cause huge macroeconomic problems in the future.
2. Alter their product - This will be unsuccesful, I go to buy CDs because of the music they contain, not because of some snazzy stuff
3. Decrease prices - You can't beat free
4. Die out - the only remaining option. In its corruption and decadence, perhaps this would be most fitting. China illustrates what happens when a country has mass music piracy.
True selflessness is to allow others the freedom to be intellectual or for a Joe sixpack to drink beer whilst climbing Everest and die whilst perhaps killing 50 intellectuals or whatever. You are then free to laugh at him. There is no point being selfishly selfless. It's this principle of adventure and "breaking away" that Islam robs of its true followers. "Is it OK by the book?" one must first ask.
If you go to the ghetto, every uneducated man is pissed off because he feels he deserves a Cadillac and $1 million. This causes crime and drug-dealing. Why do the drug dealers want money so bad?
If you want ambition, then here's an example - Osama binLaden wanted America out of Saudi, and he achieved his ambition succesfully. That makes Osama binLaden a success, now give him some American pie and a million dollars.
...stamp duty has that effect...
You have no authority to criticise Micro$oft and promote Linux if you don't believe that Gross National Happiness is superior to Gross National Product. Linux doesn't increase GDP, Micro$oft does because it creates employment via profits and customisation. How many linux programmers got rich off selling linux? Linux is Gross National Happiness.