I read/. at -1. I see a lot more ANSI graphics than I care to see. Some of them are funny, however...if you have a sick, twisted, disgusting view of what's funny. There's nothing quite like an ASCII art goatse or tubgirl picture to wake you up in the morning. That and the big schlong picture that shows up as a troll from time to time.
I hope that there is a society for the preservation of trolls out there that saves this stuff. Maybe then some day, this generation's Ozmandias can be the/. Troll Archive. That would be fitting.
Alternatively, perhaps this was Old Weird Harold talk.
GF.
Re:The only problem is
on
PeltierBeer
·
· Score: 1
Amen, brother. The fucking beer snobs are worse (IMHO) than the wine snobs. There's no point in doing something that you don't enjoy in life. If you like Guinness slushies as opposed to the officially-sanctioned 8 C temperature, then fuck the official rules, and the queerbait little beer fags that tell you that you're an infidel for drinking it the way you like to drink it.
In any case, I think Guinness tastes like the inside of my shoe (and I know what that tastes like, believe me). Give me a Franziskaner any day.
1. This project would never have gotten off the ground without an enormous dick-swelling centralized government. It is grandiose in the tradition of rerouting rivers and draining the Aral Sea. FWIW, I view Grand Coulee and Hoover as falling into the same grand tradition.
2. The investors are backing out in droves, as they find out what a clusterfuck the Chinese are causing. The investors will feel like they have been elephant-fucked by the time this pans out.
3. China will ultimately close up the dam program after announcing that the fell capitalist pigs of the west misled them. I give this five years (a five year plan -- but of course!)
4. China will spend another twenty years deconstructing the dam (and Foucault will spend..aw, forget it) and employing kajillions of people in a public works project so that the corruption can go on a little longer. These are a people with history and continuity. There's no reason to make this job last less time that the Ming Dynasty. We've got the Big Dig? "Hah! Amateurs!" say the chinese.
3. The environmentalists will blame the financiers instead of the people actually responsible for building the project, because they have no truck with the socialists. Their hay is to be made making "multinational corporations" look bad.
4. The Chinese will go on burning assloads of coal and suffocating in their own section of the killer haze that is asphixiating east Asia right now. Nevertheless, discontinuing the dam project will be viewed as "progress" by those in Manhattan who really don't care that poor peasants in China don't have a light to read by at night and that their lungs are turning into Yorkshire Pudding.
5. Slashdot socialists will continue to wank themselves to pictures of Mao's wife.
It may well become a cesspool the size of lake superior.
Or a cesspool the size of *ahem* Lake Erie. To all you Ohians, the lake is admittedly much better than it used to be in the days when the river burned in Cleveland, but I still wouldn't drink out of it.
Q. What's slippery, smelly, and brown? A. Cleveland.
If you're new to this, just remember this. The later discworld books are far better than the earlier ones. The most recent Discworld novel, Night Watch is in a completely different league to, say, The Colour Of Magic. His writing has matured significantly over the years.
No kidding. Try on "Dark Side of the Sun" (a non-Discworld book by Pratchett). Blech. I forced myself to read it, and felt like a sucker, even though it was free at the local library. It was interesting only from the perspective that it had some common threads with later Pratchett work that were neat to see (the "million to one chance" for instance).
I think one of the neater Pratchett books is Cohen the Barbarian. The combination of Pratchett's writing with the wonderful illustrations was nice.
Pratchett books do feel formulaic at times (and sometimes a bit preachy), but there are always some howlers. I forget which book it was, but there was a quote in one that I love (paraphrased)"
"Build a man a fire and he stays warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he stays warm for the rest of his life."
I think it is a good idea, I would like a combined console, sat. reciever, tv recorder in one package. One could fear that such a box would be too expensive, but couldn't that be solved by making it so you could upgrade it with the diffent features.
They make a console like that -- it's called a PC.
I work for a law firm, and we originally had a fantastic content management system: an attorney would have a case and an issue would arise that had been addressed before, and he would go grab the old file (perhaps from a different client) and reuse the forms or follow the procedures from a prior case.
Since that point, we've evolved it to more of an "electronic" filing cabinet. A networked box holds sanitized example documents by category of law (divorce, custody, personal injury, business formation, wills and probate, etc.). It is more useful than things were before, but it is not ideal. If you do something that is unusual or especially good, you are encouraged to submit it to the file.
In addition, "how to" documents are created for new or unusual practice areas as guidelines or checklists for various procedures (how to handle a basic will, checklists for complaints, client interview checklists for various types of cases, etc.). None of this eliminates the use of sound judgment or experience, but the documents serve as tools to assist the attorneys -- it is sometimes hard to stay on track or get everything in a client interview that can last for over an hour. The checklists help with that.
Not everybody contributes to the file repository and there is nobody in charge of vetting the documents to ensure that they are "best of breed" type documents. It does prevent the "reinventing the wheel" problem to some extent, however.
When I worked for Ernst & Young, they were really pushing to make information retention and reuse a priority. Contributions to the document repository were considered in performance evaluations. The resources were aggressively managed (vetted, categorized, reviewed documents to prevent "staleness") by knowledgable individuals for each practice area and there were a number of groups which were extremely focused on reselling knowledge.
IT people who can provide this sort of service are going to do well. Service businesses cannot improve margins without making use of technology to improve efficiencies, and content management is a fantastic way to help them get there. Very very few small to medium sized businesses really make use of content management to increase their margins, and this is one area where, even in a bad economy, IT can really help to make a positive contribution to the bottom line.
A semi-quality video of 1 minute 43 seconds of the EA ROTK game has appeared online thanks to the folks at 576.hu. As all of the links we checked out had serious download issues, we've mirrored it for easy downloading! !!!BIG SPOILERS!!!
Wow! I'd better not watch the clip if there are !!!BIG SPOILERS!!! (Where's that tag when you need it?)
Maybe I won't find out about Shelob and the ring getting into the Crack of Doom (heh...I just wrote "crack") as a result of Gollum biting off Frodo's finger and the part about Frodo not willingly throwing the ring into the hot MAG-MA! (Dr. Evil impression there).
OTOH, the spoilers could involve the numerous plots inserted into the movies that did not exist in the book, such as the horse-kissing part, Aragorn going over the cliff, Arwen, the elves at the Hornburg, etc., etc.
The Comic Book Guy needs to have a talk with Peter Jackson.
Gee, SCO must be really if-y on what they are doing. Hehehehehehehehehheheheheheheheheh... This is going to be quite a ride. Everyone may freak and bail and the stock may suffer for a while--I don't know--but with the SCOSource funds starting to come in things are churning. Hehehehehehehehehehehehe Oh the poor linux geeks. Their little Star Trek-like existence is threatened--this ought to be good for some more illegal tampering with the SCO systems. That seems to be how they handle their stress--strike out in the only way they know how. Hehehehehehehehehe, hohohohohohoho...
It will gratify my to see them lose their kids' college funds. I think the poster shown above is really Steve Ballmer under an alias, but I've been wrong before.
1. PBS and FOX: This would be something like a collision of matter and anti-matter. New shows: "Firing Line meets Celebrity Boxing"; "When Barney Attacks!"; and "Bill Moyers investigates Monica's Thong"
2. ABC and WB: The dead eating the dead. Is that cannibalism or Night of the Living Dead or neither?
3. New York Times and E!: Oh, the possibilities: "Jayson Blair Investigative Reports: Anna Nicole Smith -- What's real and what's fake?"; "E! Hollywood True Story: All the President's Men -- the Post was really just making up Deep Throat...we should know!"; and "Talk Soup for the Lazy Reporter"
4. CNN and Playboy: All T&A, all the time. Show your tits, Judy Woodruff!
A new mail protocol could pretty much get rid of spam.
The proposal or existence of a public solution should not halt private methods of addressing the problem. If this happens, great.
However, is there really a clear solution to drug trafficking or hitmen either.
RICO worked pretty well for hitmen. The offense still occurs, but at least there is a conceptual, workable framework for dealing with the crime. Drugs are problematic. The conventional wisdom (throw 'em in jail!) clearly hasn't done much but fill up prisons.
dramatically effect our lives??? I'd say you are being a bit zealous there. E-mail is 'very important' compared to what?
I started an ISP while in law school. It is still running. A significant portion of our bandwidth and computing resources are directed at dealing with spam and trying to keep our users' experiences with email and the internet positive. It is a huge problem. The fact that email is still usable at all owes itself to many dedicated and ingenious sysadmins. It is a huge problem.
Tje issue of spam is a classic interstate commerce issue that needs to be addressed within one unified framework. Jeffersonian experimentation, while indicative of broad frustration with spam, is unlikely to do anything to allow email to be used reasonably (ducking) as a marketing tool. A patchwork response to this is just going to be unworkable.
The problem with federalization is that it is federalization, and the solution must be a very good one. Unfortunately, spam isn't something like, say, drug dealing or murder for hire. It hasn't been around for a long time (relatively speaking) and the best ways to deal with it are not entirely clear. In addition, commercial interests will bear heavily on legislation.
In a nutshell, I fear that the end result is that a first attempt at a federal solution will get it wrong. There is only one way to try to prevent this. Get involved now.
This is one issue that dramatically affects our networks and working lives. If there was ever a time to call your local congressthing and offer your expert advice (with a C.V. perhaps), it is be now.
Shouldn't Sony's version of a Gameboy be called a "Playboy"? The synergy would be great, especially if you could use the same device to play GTA and look at Denise Richards' tits.
There are lots of appealing things about Denise Richards - her tits, her ass, and her "mouth hanging open 90% of the time."
If you need convincing, you can check out her tits: - Here and - Here
You can rest assured that I have check the links thoroughly. I will consider the site to be slashdotted in advance. If this post isn't a "+5, Informative" then nothing is.
GF.
Bezos is selling Amazon shares
on
Mighty Amazon
·
· Score: 4, Informative
An interesting footnote to the "Amazon is kicking ass" coverage in Fortune is that Bezos is selling shares again.
He sold 6 million shares this week. His salary is only about 80,000, but still, it doesn't look great. $6,000,000 is probably just chump change compared to his 2-3 billion bankroll of AMZN shares.
This is not an indication that the sky is falling (AMZN looks like it is ok going forward), and diversification is smart. Nevertheless, he is selling and not buying shares. That is worth something to know.
Dear Treasury Department (cc to Bureau of Printing and Engraving):
The new release of the product looks ok. I think it still needs some work, though. There are some additional features that I would like to see in the upcoming $20 bill v. 2.3 beta release:
1. P2P sharing 2. Centerfolds (!) (note: not Andrew Jackson - think modern, maybe Denise Richards) 3. Self-generation (try making paper from those Wizard's Apprentice broomsticks) 4. Encryption, so that only I can use my bills
BTW, please, please do implement a "software activation" thingy. That would be really lame.
The article didn't really dig into what the research said, so I am somewhat hesitant about the title of my response, but...the fact that the article is scanty never stopped an intrepid Slashdotter from running his mouth, so away we go...
The "perfect film" is obviously highly subjective. From a sentimental standpoint, perhaps it is something like Casablanca. From a producer's standpoint, it may well be "Deep Throat" or "Behind the Green Door" with their respective cost to profit(!) ratios. Artistically, it could be whatever floats your boat. I'm partial to Empire Strikes Back or Unforgiven as my favorite films.
Statistical analysis of elements contained in films is only useful to the extent that the elements are cohesive, well-executed, etc. This all reminds me of the assinine film from the eighties about the robot that wrote a love song based on analysis of popular music, resulting in a meaningless spouting of bubblegum phrases.
Besides, the research only looked at top-grossing films. How much money a film earns is not necessarily a proxy for how "good" it is. It is frequently the result of pimping and media hype. It is quite possible that some of the films which were top grossing lost money (even under sensible non-film industry accounting methods) and were terrible.
The reference article is total fluff coverage and is highly instructive from a media analysis standpoint. You get no analysis of the underlying research. It in fact smells like a press release copped from some idiot researcher which was dumped almost unchanged into a "news" story. The percentage of shit that appears in newspapers that is derived in this exact manner is frightening -- it gains the imprimature of "news" instead of PR and there is no value-added journalism component. Journalists of the world, hang your heads.
Whew. Had to get out my morning rant. I feel much better now. Get me some coffee.
I bought my first 3D card from canopus because it had 6 meg. It was the absolute best 3DFX card available. It cost around $250 at the time. It was a sweet card but within 6 months a better and cheaper card came out and I decided I would never buy the latest and greatest card again. My rule of thumb is to stay 2 generations behind the best and you will have a card that can play any game out there. This may change as soon as a DX9 game comes out but I really can't see a game company "require" anything greater than a DX7 card or they wil really linit their audience....
This is the cardinal rule of technology -- buy the newest and the best, only do it 12 to 18 months later. Works for lots of things -- Games, computers, HDTV, processors, cell phones, OSes, PDAs, and video cards. Heck, even cars.
Let some other schmuck take the depreciation. Take your cue from me, and you can't go wrong. As soon as the prices come down on those swanky new 286s, I can finally get rid of my PCjr.
Here we go with the "my first PC thread"... Before long, it will certainly get to "My first PC was actually an abacus constructed by Wu Chen of the Ming Dynasty". It's almost like a geek version of reductio ad absurdum. Well, here goes with my contribution:
256 MB RAM??? My first freakin' PC had 20 meg HD.
My first PC had 8k of RAM and 30 min of storage (cassette-tape -- don't know how many k that was, but it wasn't much). A good old Apple ][ without a floppy drive.
Slashdot Mirror
I know. I even see ANSI graphics now and then. ;)
/. at -1. I see a lot more ANSI graphics than I care to see. Some of them are funny, however...if you have a sick, twisted, disgusting view of what's funny. There's nothing quite like an ASCII art goatse or tubgirl picture to wake you up in the morning. That and the big schlong picture that shows up as a troll from time to time.
/. Troll Archive. That would be fitting.
I read
I hope that there is a society for the preservation of trolls out there that saves this stuff. Maybe then some day, this generation's Ozmandias can be the
GF.
A surprisingly interesting story.
/.?
As opposed to the usual crap we see posted on
- Geek builds beowolf cluster out of basmati rice
- Matrix sequel to include wire-fu shark jumping
- Richard Stallman shaves self, Darl McBride
- Mutant Mosquitos
Who comes up with this stuff? Geez.
GF.
What the fuck is a shaby?
A shaby or the real slim shaby?
Alternatively, perhaps this was Old Weird Harold talk.
GF.
Amen, brother. The fucking beer snobs are worse (IMHO) than the wine snobs. There's no point in doing something that you don't enjoy in life. If you like Guinness slushies as opposed to the officially-sanctioned 8 C temperature, then fuck the official rules, and the queerbait little beer fags that tell you that you're an infidel for drinking it the way you like to drink it.
In any case, I think Guinness tastes like the inside of my shoe (and I know what that tastes like, believe me). Give me a Franziskaner any day.
Bah!
1. This project would never have gotten off the ground without an enormous dick-swelling centralized government. It is grandiose in the tradition of rerouting rivers and draining the Aral Sea. FWIW, I view Grand Coulee and Hoover as falling into the same grand tradition.
2. The investors are backing out in droves, as they find out what a clusterfuck the Chinese are causing. The investors will feel like they have been elephant-fucked by the time this pans out.
3. China will ultimately close up the dam program after announcing that the fell capitalist pigs of the west misled them. I give this five years (a five year plan -- but of course!)
4. China will spend another twenty years deconstructing the dam (and Foucault will spend..aw, forget it) and employing kajillions of people in a public works project so that the corruption can go on a little longer. These are a people with history and continuity. There's no reason to make this job last less time that the Ming Dynasty. We've got the Big Dig? "Hah! Amateurs!" say the chinese.
3. The environmentalists will blame the financiers instead of the people actually responsible for building the project, because they have no truck with the socialists. Their hay is to be made making "multinational corporations" look bad.
4. The Chinese will go on burning assloads of coal and suffocating in their own section of the killer haze that is asphixiating east Asia right now. Nevertheless, discontinuing the dam project will be viewed as "progress" by those in Manhattan who really don't care that poor peasants in China don't have a light to read by at night and that their lungs are turning into Yorkshire Pudding.
5. Slashdot socialists will continue to wank themselves to pictures of Mao's wife.
GF.
It may well become a cesspool the size of lake superior.
Or a cesspool the size of *ahem* Lake Erie. To all you Ohians, the lake is admittedly much better than it used to be in the days when the river burned in Cleveland, but I still wouldn't drink out of it.
Q. What's slippery, smelly, and brown?
A. Cleveland.
GF.
It may sound like a conspiracy theory, but I think it is a pretty good one. Using money and power, Microsoft could legally squash Linux.
I still maintain that it is all just a Mongolian cluster fuck.
GF.
If you're new to this, just remember this.
The later discworld books are far better than the earlier ones. The most recent Discworld novel, Night Watch is in a completely different league to, say, The Colour Of Magic. His writing has matured significantly over the years.
No kidding. Try on "Dark Side of the Sun" (a non-Discworld book by Pratchett). Blech. I forced myself to read it, and felt like a sucker, even though it was free at the local library. It was interesting only from the perspective that it had some common threads with later Pratchett work that were neat to see (the "million to one chance" for instance).
I think one of the neater Pratchett books is Cohen the Barbarian. The combination of Pratchett's writing with the wonderful illustrations was nice.
Pratchett books do feel formulaic at times (and sometimes a bit preachy), but there are always some howlers. I forget which book it was, but there was a quote in one that I love (paraphrased)"
"Build a man a fire and he stays warm for a day. Set a man on fire and he stays warm for the rest of his life."
Classic Pratchett. Tongue in cheek at all times.
GF.
You are a cunt.
Except that it is being speculated that Novell may be behind it, although I am skeptical. After all, I voted for the "Mongolian Cluster Fuck" option.
GF.
I think it is a good idea, I would like a combined console, sat. reciever, tv recorder in one package. One could fear that such a box would be too expensive, but couldn't that be solved by making it so you could upgrade it with the diffent features.
They make a console like that -- it's called a PC.
I work for a law firm, and we originally had a fantastic content management system: an attorney would have a case and an issue would arise that had been addressed before, and he would go grab the old file (perhaps from a different client) and reuse the forms or follow the procedures from a prior case.
Since that point, we've evolved it to more of an "electronic" filing cabinet. A networked box holds sanitized example documents by category of law (divorce, custody, personal injury, business formation, wills and probate, etc.). It is more useful than things were before, but it is not ideal. If you do something that is unusual or especially good, you are encouraged to submit it to the file.
In addition, "how to" documents are created for new or unusual practice areas as guidelines or checklists for various procedures (how to handle a basic will, checklists for complaints, client interview checklists for various types of cases, etc.). None of this eliminates the use of sound judgment or experience, but the documents serve as tools to assist the attorneys -- it is sometimes hard to stay on track or get everything in a client interview that can last for over an hour. The checklists help with that.
Not everybody contributes to the file repository and there is nobody in charge of vetting the documents to ensure that they are "best of breed" type documents. It does prevent the "reinventing the wheel" problem to some extent, however.
When I worked for Ernst & Young, they were really pushing to make information retention and reuse a priority. Contributions to the document repository were considered in performance evaluations. The resources were aggressively managed (vetted, categorized, reviewed documents to prevent "staleness") by knowledgable individuals for each practice area and there were a number of groups which were extremely focused on reselling knowledge.
IT people who can provide this sort of service are going to do well. Service businesses cannot improve margins without making use of technology to improve efficiencies, and content management is a fantastic way to help them get there. Very very few small to medium sized businesses really make use of content management to increase their margins, and this is one area where, even in a bad economy, IT can really help to make a positive contribution to the bottom line.
GF.
A semi-quality video of 1 minute 43 seconds of the EA ROTK game has appeared online thanks to the folks at 576.hu. As all of the links we checked out had serious download issues, we've mirrored it for easy downloading! !!!BIG SPOILERS!!!
Wow! I'd better not watch the clip if there are !!!BIG SPOILERS!!! (Where's that tag when you need it?)
Maybe I won't find out about Shelob and the ring getting into the Crack of Doom (heh...I just wrote "crack") as a result of Gollum biting off Frodo's finger and the part about Frodo not willingly throwing the ring into the hot MAG-MA! (Dr. Evil impression there).
OTOH, the spoilers could involve the numerous plots inserted into the movies that did not exist in the book, such as the horse-kissing part, Aragorn going over the cliff, Arwen, the elves at the Hornburg, etc., etc.
The Comic Book Guy needs to have a talk with Peter Jackson.
GF.
FYI, the monkeys who post on the Yahoo! message boards are writing things such as this:
Re: Excellent news AH
by: treycc (32/M/Rochester, NY) 05/14/03 04:47 pm
Msg: 6563 of 6565
Gee, SCO must be really if-y on what they are doing. Hehehehehehehehehheheheheheheheheh... This is going to be quite a ride. Everyone may freak and bail and the stock may suffer for a while--I don't know--but with the SCOSource funds starting to come in things are churning. Hehehehehehehehehehehehe Oh the poor linux geeks. Their little Star Trek-like existence is threatened--this ought to be good for some more illegal tampering with the SCO systems. That seems to be how they handle their stress--strike out in the only way they know how. Hehehehehehehehehe, hohohohohohoho...
It will gratify my to see them lose their kids' college funds. I think the poster shown above is really Steve Ballmer under an alias, but I've been wrong before.
GF.
1. PBS and FOX: This would be something like a collision of matter and anti-matter. New shows: "Firing Line meets Celebrity Boxing"; "When Barney Attacks!"; and "Bill Moyers investigates Monica's Thong"
2. ABC and WB: The dead eating the dead. Is that cannibalism or Night of the Living Dead or neither?
3. New York Times and E!: Oh, the possibilities: "Jayson Blair Investigative Reports: Anna Nicole Smith -- What's real and what's fake?"; "E! Hollywood True Story: All the President's Men -- the Post was really just making up Deep Throat...we should know!"; and "Talk Soup for the Lazy Reporter"
4. CNN and Playboy: All T&A, all the time. Show your tits, Judy Woodruff!
GF.
From Symantec:
Systems Not Affected: Macintosh, OS/2, UNIX, Linux
Heh. Clearly the work of an evil genius.
GF.
A new mail protocol could pretty much get rid of spam.
The proposal or existence of a public solution should not halt private methods of addressing the problem. If this happens, great.
However, is there really a clear solution to drug trafficking or hitmen either.
RICO worked pretty well for hitmen. The offense still occurs, but at least there is a conceptual, workable framework for dealing with the crime. Drugs are problematic. The conventional wisdom (throw 'em in jail!) clearly hasn't done much but fill up prisons.
dramatically effect our lives??? I'd say you are being a bit zealous there. E-mail is 'very important' compared to what?
I started an ISP while in law school. It is still running. A significant portion of our bandwidth and computing resources are directed at dealing with spam and trying to keep our users' experiences with email and the internet positive. It is a huge problem. The fact that email is still usable at all owes itself to many dedicated and ingenious sysadmins. It is a huge problem.
GF.
Tje issue of spam is a classic interstate commerce issue that needs to be addressed within one unified framework. Jeffersonian experimentation, while indicative of broad frustration with spam, is unlikely to do anything to allow email to be used reasonably (ducking) as a marketing tool. A patchwork response to this is just going to be unworkable.
The problem with federalization is that it is federalization, and the solution must be a very good one. Unfortunately, spam isn't something like, say, drug dealing or murder for hire. It hasn't been around for a long time (relatively speaking) and the best ways to deal with it are not entirely clear. In addition, commercial interests will bear heavily on legislation.
In a nutshell, I fear that the end result is that a first attempt at a federal solution will get it wrong. There is only one way to try to prevent this. Get involved now.
This is one issue that dramatically affects our networks and working lives. If there was ever a time to call your local congressthing and offer your expert advice (with a C.V. perhaps), it is be now.
GF.
Shouldn't Sony's version of a Gameboy be called a "Playboy"? The synergy would be great, especially if you could use the same device to play GTA and look at Denise Richards' tits.
GF
There's nothing appealing about Denise Richarards
There are lots of appealing things about Denise Richards - her tits, her ass, and her "mouth hanging open 90% of the time."
If you need convincing, you can check out her tits:
- Here and
- Here
You can rest assured that I have check the links thoroughly. I will consider the site to be slashdotted in advance. If this post isn't a "+5, Informative" then nothing is.
GF.
An interesting footnote to the "Amazon is kicking ass" coverage in Fortune is that Bezos is selling shares again.
He sold 6 million shares this week. His salary is only about 80,000, but still, it doesn't look great. $6,000,000 is probably just chump change compared to his 2-3 billion bankroll of AMZN shares.
This is not an indication that the sky is falling (AMZN looks like it is ok going forward), and diversification is smart. Nevertheless, he is selling and not buying shares. That is worth something to know.
GF.
Date: May 12, 2003
Re: New version of $20 bill
Dear Treasury Department (cc to Bureau of Printing and Engraving):
The new release of the product looks ok. I think it still needs some work, though. There are some additional features that I would like to see in the upcoming $20 bill v. 2.3 beta release:
1. P2P sharing
2. Centerfolds (!) (note: not Andrew Jackson - think modern, maybe Denise Richards)
3. Self-generation (try making paper from those Wizard's Apprentice broomsticks)
4. Encryption, so that only I can use my bills
BTW, please, please do implement a "software activation" thingy. That would be really lame.
Respectfully,
GF.
The article didn't really dig into what the research said, so I am somewhat hesitant about the title of my response, but...the fact that the article is scanty never stopped an intrepid Slashdotter from running his mouth, so away we go...
The "perfect film" is obviously highly subjective. From a sentimental standpoint, perhaps it is something like Casablanca. From a producer's standpoint, it may well be "Deep Throat" or "Behind the Green Door" with their respective cost to profit(!) ratios. Artistically, it could be whatever floats your boat. I'm partial to Empire Strikes Back or Unforgiven as my favorite films.
Statistical analysis of elements contained in films is only useful to the extent that the elements are cohesive, well-executed, etc. This all reminds me of the assinine film from the eighties about the robot that wrote a love song based on analysis of popular music, resulting in a meaningless spouting of bubblegum phrases.
Besides, the research only looked at top-grossing films. How much money a film earns is not necessarily a proxy for how "good" it is. It is frequently the result of pimping and media hype. It is quite possible that some of the films which were top grossing lost money (even under sensible non-film industry accounting methods) and were terrible.
The reference article is total fluff coverage and is highly instructive from a media analysis standpoint. You get no analysis of the underlying research. It in fact smells like a press release copped from some idiot researcher which was dumped almost unchanged into a "news" story. The percentage of shit that appears in newspapers that is derived in this exact manner is frightening -- it gains the imprimature of "news" instead of PR and there is no value-added journalism component. Journalists of the world, hang your heads.
Whew. Had to get out my morning rant. I feel much better now. Get me some coffee.
GF.
I bought my first 3D card from canopus because it had 6 meg. It was the absolute best 3DFX card available. It cost around $250 at the time. It was a sweet card but within 6 months a better and cheaper card came out and I decided I would never buy the latest and greatest card again. My rule of thumb is to stay 2 generations behind the best and you will have a card that can play any game out there. This may change as soon as a DX9 game comes out but I really can't see a game company "require" anything greater than a DX7 card or they wil really linit their audience....
This is the cardinal rule of technology -- buy the newest and the best, only do it 12 to 18 months later. Works for lots of things -- Games, computers, HDTV, processors, cell phones, OSes, PDAs, and video cards. Heck, even cars.
Let some other schmuck take the depreciation. Take your cue from me, and you can't go wrong. As soon as the prices come down on those swanky new 286s, I can finally get rid of my PCjr.
GF.
Here we go with the "my first PC thread"... Before long, it will certainly get to "My first PC was actually an abacus constructed by Wu Chen of the Ming Dynasty". It's almost like a geek version of reductio ad absurdum. Well, here goes with my contribution:
256 MB RAM??? My first freakin' PC had 20 meg HD.
My first PC had 8k of RAM and 30 min of storage (cassette-tape -- don't know how many k that was, but it wasn't much). A good old Apple ][ without a floppy drive.
GF.