I would say the film was MUCH better than the TV series. The atmosphere, the milieu and most of all the actors. The film did suffer a lot from not being properly finished though. Lynch would happily have added three more hours for the last two thirds of the story. That would have made the film an awesome mini series. I think it boils down to whether you like Lynch or not.
I'n not sure you are right on that. Perhaps a subject for a vote? At present, personal use copying is not illegal where I sit. From Jan 1 2004 it will be. I don't like that. Commercial illegal copying has been illegal as long as I can remember, possibly my whole life. I symphatize with that legislation.
Sorry if you feel that i critizise your example rather than your general point, but...
Companies that sell gadgets sell something more than the software that's in them. They sell an image, a status, a thing that looks cool and fills some functions for the users. Reducing the development cost for software for a gadget X and the copies X2, X3... Xn (and the cost is not totally removed since code can be capsuled in different way as described elsewhere in this thread) simply transforms the market situation for gadget X into one where the monopoly time is shorter and product image has to be built faster. Healthy gadget makers can cope with this.
The fact that company B is screwed is quite allright in the capitalistic model we work with. They clearly have not adapted to the fact that gadget Xi competes on other grounds than they presumed. This indicates that their management needs to be replaced and/or forced to learn from the experience.
Given the large number of gadget makers out there and their quite comfortable profits, I don't feel the GPL will be the end of gadgets. For us non-gadget makers it will just mean better, shinier cheaper gadgets with fewer bugs in the software.
With that said, I write this on a MS box, which I curse every day.:-(/TLTS
The funny thing about lots of stuff I see posted is that you hear lots of stories of programmers complaining about poor leadership or management and the decision making process that management follows ending up in programmers biting the bullet and suffering the consequences. How often in comparison do you hear about management complaining about poor programming or developers?
Does that ratio tell you something about who has more horse sense and who really wants problems solved as opposed to who just wants to delegate the real problems away?
What do you think the ratio is between managers and programmers on slashdot posting?
Did you sign any papers when you started your latest job? If not, were you given any verbal promises of things like salary? Did you promise anything in return?
The above constitutes an employment contract. So you see, most people do operate under a contract.
Europe is great when it comes to working time and job security. True.
However, there is a downside to this in that your pay check is somewhat smaller.
Take Sweden as an example: A typical programmer/developer etc with 4-5 years of University studies and 5-10 years of experience would make about 3-4000 USD per month pretax, which would be 2000-2500 post tax. Price levels are comparable to US. What would the same type of person make in the US?
/ TLTS
I have spent a lot of time both in 2ed and 3rd and I have to sat 3rd is easier. Many of the rules are streamlined to work the same way. Early rpg systems have the bad point of introducing patched in fixes for this and that. 3rd ed is smooth in that way. Still, it retains the drawback of being mechanistic and unrealistic. Since most players have problems with at least one of those two things, it says a lot about the other stuff out there that D&D is on top sales wise.
I agree wholeheartedly. A decent company would have made those tweaks available as a freely available pdf, complete with little boxes to glue in for those so inclined. Personally I'll just stick with 3.0 for now. I have 4 meters of RPG stuff already. I don't need more just for those little tweaks. Maybe I'll just Kazaa them.
The three major problems I have with D&D 3e are
* lots of junk and very little useful per each new book
* Stupid errors in printing
* The mechanistic nature of the system that promotes rule playing instead of role playing.
I think you are dead wrong. Internet practices change much faster than Office software, and the cost of switching is much lower. Remember a few years back: Altavista was the king of the search engines. How big is their market share now? Taking another example: Free email. Lots of companies have started with doling out free email accounts and then starting to charge after a user base was built up. What is their retention rate? One of the biggest fallacies prior to the giant IT crash was the supposed value of brand names. The internet economy simply does not work the same way "old time" economy does. When changing suppliers is a few key strokes away and you don't risk running into your old supplier on the street corner a Sunday afternoon, customer loyalty is no more.
Googles primary asset is being the best (as far as I know) general purpose search engine out there. If a better one exists, please let me know. I'll try it tonight and make a permanent switch tomorrow.
I would like that too. I might even settle for jast a bug free version. At least on my computers, one of the monsters had the terrifying undocumented special attack of crashing the game (and the comp) if you ever got into melee combat with it. Also, sometimes the map developed a square of chaos, if yo came close to that the comp crashed as well. It speaks very well for the game that I spent 100+ hours on it despite these features. Don't even get me started on how (not) fun it was to reconfigure your DOS completely in order to get enough free memory of the right type for the game to play. Of course, this meant that Windoze wouldn't run.
The game was great, but the programming sucked bigtime.
I don't care the least who the president fucks, and in which cavity he puts it as long as he's a good president. Bill was far better than Dubya as leader of the world's only current super power.
Hey assface, those garrisons are there with the consent of the country. If they don't want us there all they have to do is ask us to leave.
Do you SERIOUSLY believe this to be true? Take Cuba for example: Do they want american bases, do they want to live under US of A's ongoing threats and trade limitations? Do you fail to see the correlation beween not being "impotent on the worldstage(sic)" and being imperialistic? Your tone does not seem to indicate that you argue very well, or even think very well, but please use what you've got up there.
In the mean time, I am happily enjoying my cuban cigars, thank you very much!
I have been a bit flabbergasted lately when watching CNN and the Swedish news. In swedish news, Iraq weapons inspectors are doing their work day to day and nothing big has come up yet. IE no reason to start a war. On CNN we are shown a totally different picture. CNN and Swedish news obviously uses the same sources, why then the difference?
My only explanation is that CNN is running someones errand. Sweden being as internationally unimportant as it is, swedish media probably faces rather limited pressure from the powers that be on this subject.
I agree with you --- up to a point. Communism is dead, The soviet Union was "Evil" and US of A did good in WW II.
However, you are wrong on a number of points:
Starting historically; US of A is the only reason communism was not wiped out by the fascists in WW II. I am not saying this would have been a good thing, but it lends little relevance to your other statements.
To me as a somewhat outside observer, US of A IS a relatively evil empire today. The extremely meddlesome foreign policy has killed millions of people in third world countries. Take for example Cuba, Iran-Iraq, Chile, Vietnam, Israel-Palestine, Grenada... The list goes on and on. This foreign policy is what fuels the Islamic terrorist movements today.
Given that there is no other relevant player in the international arena today, why is the world still such a relatively bad place?
The recent treatment of prisoners from Afghanistan (of course they are prisoners of war!) combined with the total lack of rights to a fair trial of those suspected of support to terrorism (for example people working in networks to send money back to african relatives of africans working abroad) makes me extremely negative towards US government control of who sent what private information to whom over the internet.
For your information I am not very young, not normally considered ignorant, moderately right-wing and well aware of the difference between mainstream right wing and Nazis.
I have one too. Best thing I ever bought (that has a power cord, at least). The different inputs, which you can toggle between with a nice little button on the front, is extremely nice since it lets me switch between the desktop I do nice things with and the laptop I use for work. I don't have a problem with playing games on it and it being flicker free is really good for those long sessions.
I think you are wrong. It takes quite an intellectual process to acquire a set of beleifs that are different from the ones that are historically prevalent in your community. Given that the ratio of atheists to believers have increased over the last century, quite a lot of people have made conscious shifts to atheism. It is most likely so that intellectuals are at the lead of this trend (not ALL intellectuals mind you) because intellectuals usually are. Therefore I think you will find a higher percentage of intellectuals = geeks = scientists being atheists. Of course it also contributes that for many atheists, or in my case, agnostics, such as myself, atheism is really a belief in science.
Slashdot Mirror
I would say the film was MUCH better than the TV series. The atmosphere, the milieu and most of all the actors. The film did suffer a lot from not being properly finished though. Lynch would happily have added three more hours for the last two thirds of the story. That would have made the film an awesome mini series. I think it boils down to whether you like Lynch or not.
I'n not sure you are right on that. Perhaps a subject for a vote? At present, personal use copying is not illegal where I sit. From Jan 1 2004 it will be. I don't like that. Commercial illegal copying has been illegal as long as I can remember, possibly my whole life. I symphatize with that legislation.
Companies that sell gadgets sell something more than the software that's in them. They sell an image, a status, a thing that looks cool and fills some functions for the users. Reducing the development cost for software for a gadget X and the copies X2, X3 ... Xn (and the cost is not totally removed since code can be capsuled in different way as described elsewhere in this thread) simply transforms the market situation for gadget X into one where the monopoly time is shorter and product image has to be built faster. Healthy gadget makers can cope with this.
The fact that company B is screwed is quite allright in the capitalistic model we work with. They clearly have not adapted to the fact that gadget Xi competes on other grounds than they presumed. This indicates that their management needs to be replaced and/or forced to learn from the experience.
Given the large number of gadget makers out there and their quite comfortable profits, I don't feel the GPL will be the end of gadgets. For us non-gadget makers it will just mean better, shinier cheaper gadgets with fewer bugs in the software.
With that said, I write this on a MS box, which I curse every day. :-( /TLTS
Perhaps the reason we blame the US is that they are blocking any meaningful action the UN could take?
Yes! Yes! Yes! We need a HP overclocking site right NOW!
What do you think the ratio is between managers and programmers on slashdot posting?
/ TLTS
The above constitutes an employment contract. So you see, most people do operate under a contract.
Europe is great when it comes to working time and job security. True. However, there is a downside to this in that your pay check is somewhat smaller. Take Sweden as an example: A typical programmer/developer etc with 4-5 years of University studies and 5-10 years of experience would make about 3-4000 USD per month pretax, which would be 2000-2500 post tax. Price levels are comparable to US. What would the same type of person make in the US? / TLTS
/ TLTS
The three major problems I have with D&D 3e are * lots of junk and very little useful per each new book * Stupid errors in printing * The mechanistic nature of the system that promotes rule playing instead of role playing.
You're so not in to this...
Googles primary asset is being the best (as far as I know) general purpose search engine out there. If a better one exists, please let me know. I'll try it tonight and make a permanent switch tomorrow.
/ TLTS
I would like that too. I might even settle for jast a bug free version. At least on my computers, one of the monsters had the terrifying undocumented special attack of crashing the game (and the comp) if you ever got into melee combat with it. Also, sometimes the map developed a square of chaos, if yo came close to that the comp crashed as well. It speaks very well for the game that I spent 100+ hours on it despite these features. Don't even get me started on how (not) fun it was to reconfigure your DOS completely in order to get enough free memory of the right type for the game to play. Of course, this meant that Windoze wouldn't run. The game was great, but the programming sucked bigtime.
I used to MUD back then too, MOO was a familiar term. I think the 1000 to 1 ratio is way off.
I don't care the least who the president fucks, and in which cavity he puts it as long as he's a good president. Bill was far better than Dubya as leader of the world's only current super power.
Do you SERIOUSLY believe this to be true? Take Cuba for example: Do they want american bases, do they want to live under US of A's ongoing threats and trade limitations? Do you fail to see the correlation beween not being "impotent on the worldstage(sic)" and being imperialistic? Your tone does not seem to indicate that you argue very well, or even think very well, but please use what you've got up there.
In the mean time, I am happily enjoying my cuban cigars, thank you very much!
My only explanation is that CNN is running someones errand. Sweden being as internationally unimportant as it is, swedish media probably faces rather limited pressure from the powers that be on this subject.
Are other US medias as war mongering as CNN?
/ TLTS
The best post by far on this topic!
However, you are wrong on a number of points:
Starting historically; US of A is the only reason communism was not wiped out by the fascists in WW II. I am not saying this would have been a good thing, but it lends little relevance to your other statements.
To me as a somewhat outside observer, US of A IS a relatively evil empire today. The extremely meddlesome foreign policy has killed millions of people in third world countries. Take for example Cuba, Iran-Iraq, Chile, Vietnam, Israel-Palestine, Grenada... The list goes on and on. This foreign policy is what fuels the Islamic terrorist movements today.
Given that there is no other relevant player in the international arena today, why is the world still such a relatively bad place?
The recent treatment of prisoners from Afghanistan (of course they are prisoners of war!) combined with the total lack of rights to a fair trial of those suspected of support to terrorism (for example people working in networks to send money back to african relatives of africans working abroad) makes me extremely negative towards US government control of who sent what private information to whom over the internet.
For your information I am not very young, not normally considered ignorant, moderately right-wing and well aware of the difference between mainstream right wing and Nazis.
I have one too. Best thing I ever bought (that has a power cord, at least). The different inputs, which you can toggle between with a nice little button on the front, is extremely nice since it lets me switch between the desktop I do nice things with and the laptop I use for work. I don't have a problem with playing games on it and it being flicker free is really good for those long sessions.
Actually, there is a second paragraph which dictates circumbstances upon which you can be fired right away. Fraud etc.
Finally you get it ;-)