I don't care, I always rated Curly and Larry more highly.:-P
FWIW, the more you look at that picture, the less cute- if it ever was to start off with- and more downright creepy and weird (if not alien) it starts to look.
While that particular image isn't an example, I've mentioned elsewhere that a lot of manga and anime drawings- and especially those seemingly aimed at the fanservice/soft porn market proves (IMHO) that the "big eyes = cute" thing does have its limits when they push it too far, and the eyes start to look less cute and more just downright wrong- taking up most of the width of the face- to the extent that in some cases they start looking more reminiscent of flies' oversized eyes.
Which isn't cute at all. Well, not for me- but if the Internet has shown us one thing, it's that virtually anything has people with a fetish for it...:-O
I appreciate that by the late 80s, this wouldn't have been the case- that's why it probably wouldn't have occurred to me to buy it even if it was on sale alongside its faster brethren in mainstream shops like Boots.
But I assume that in earlier years- when colour films were generally quite slow- this would have been considered a more mainstream speed. (Wikipedia confirms that up until the early 60s, all versions of Kodachrome were ISO 10 to 16!)
I was under the impression that Ektachrome was more popular for portrait and fashion photography- at least by the late 1980s- due to its subdued neutrality...?
Ektachrome was developed in response to calls for higher speeds than Kodachrome's ISO 25 (that's why Kodachrome was the film of sunny days) at the expense of grain.
One other thing- by the late 1980s, Kodachrome *was* available in faster speeds- specifically ISO 64 and 200- in addition to the ISO 25.
Matter of fact, the times I did buy Kodachrome back then it was only ever the 64 or 200. Can't remember if the 25 was widely available, since I don't think it would have occurred to me to buy something that slow for general use.
But yes, Kodachome was discontinued several years *before* Ektachrome because the (admittedly clever) process was far more complex and demanding than the more recent- and by then, far more popular E6 process.
Kodachrome, for all that everyone went on about it- particularly when its discontinuation was announced in 2009- had been in decline in the face of E6 emulsions for a long time- since at least the late 1980s as far as I'm aware. Apparently Kodak had developed an ISO 400 version but didn't release it due to dislike and a lack of interest.
Given that it used a unique process that was not only more costly (AFAIK) than E6 but wouldn't have had the same benefits of scale- particularly with its declining popularity- and that as time went on fewer and fewer places could process it until latterly there was only one lab worldwide- in the US- able to process it (and complaints about the quality of processing latterly), you can see why it was burden on Kodak to support and why it was discontinued in the face of film sales that were falling rapidly overall anyway.
(I've no idea about whether its manufacture was more complex than other films too).
I'm absolutely certain Kodachrome's not coming back even with the slight revival of film in recent years- even that's slightly misleading in its prominence. In the past, film was a *very* mass market item- and the majority of users were people like my Mum who was never into photography per se, but only as a means to take snapshots of people and events. She had a point-and-click 126 camera; now she has a digital one. The vast majority of film sales were to people like that; as a means to an end. My Dad was a bit more into it and used to have rangefinders, SLRs and high-end compacts, but even he hasn't used film since he got a DSLR in 2008. I haven't used film in almost ten years.
For all that hipsters (if I wanted to be stereotypically disparaging!) use film and some people will always want it and support a niche market, it's not ever- in the remotely forseeable future- going to return to anything more than a small percentage of the sales it enjoyed.
There's probably an economically viable place for the E6-based Ektachrome in there. Kodachrome though? I can't see it ever being remotely viable again given the cost, uniqueness and support issues surrounding it- along with the fact that all the labs have now closed. Sales of the occasional roll to novelty-seeking hobbyists simply wouldn't come close to justifying the cost.
You can filter for items with Amazon Prime shipping. Those are usually Amazon itself or equivalent quality resellers.
So, in short, it's approximately doable, but you have to play silly buggers to work around a lack of search functionality that Amazon could- and should- have provided?
Not a criticism of you personally, but doesn't really make the case in Amazon's favour if you ask me.
There's way, way too much fake merchandise on Amazon. I'm at the point where I won't buy anything unless it says it's sold by Amazon.
I know that Amazon are apparently binning different third party suppliers' stock together. That in itself means that goods sold by those companies but "fulfilled by Amazon" are completely untrustworthy, regardless of supplier. The obvious reason being that regardless who you (nominally) buy them from, you'll have no idea which third party the stock *actually* used to fulfil the order belonged to. Given Amazon's growing notoriety for blatant counterfeiting amongst third party suppliers, this obviously makes "fulfilled by Amazon" worthless if you're at all concerned by fakes or quality.
This- ironically- means it makes more sense to buy from suppliers who *don't* "fulfil by Amazon".
What concerns me are rumours that Amazon are even binning "their" goods (i.e. those "sold by Amazon") with these third-party-supplied items. In which case you could think you're buying something sourced and sold by Amazon *themselves*, but still end up with something supplied by the same random, utterly untrustworthy third party!
I have to admit that despite having been trying to reduce the amount of things I've bought on Amazon for several years now, since their dubious tax and employment practices came to light- I had to admit that I've still bought from them on occasion- not least because they *are* (or were) good at what they do. Convenient and reliable.
However, with the increasing level of nonsense like the above, even that appears to be going down the tubes. It's enough of a PITA to differentiate who you're buying from- which may well be their intent anyway- but the nonsense with Prime seems like it has the potential to really start playing silly buggers with their own service.
I was seriously pissed off on principle when I first saw goods- which had previously been on general sale- described as being "for Prime customers only". They went back to normal a day or two later, but this aggressive and (apparently) coercive behaviour into pushing people into paying for Prime really pissed me off.
By all means, sell the goods cheaper to people who (admittedly) have forked out £100 (or whatever) for Prime- and be open about that- but you can shove your weasellish "we're big enough to get away with this" arrogant coercion.
And no, I don't give a flying f*** about the incongruously bundled video service including that expensive show you produced with that hasn't-been-funny-in-fifteen-years right wing bellend Clarkson (never watched a whole episode of the "new" Top Gear since it launched in 2003); having that w****r and his chums plastered all over the site makes me less likely to sign up for your s****y service, particular as- by all accounts- the rest of the Prime video offerings are second rate tat designed to get you to pay for the non-free ones.
I've been using Amazon since late 1998, literally just months after they took over bookpages.co.uk (and probably just a few weeks after they actually started trading as Amazon.co.uk). I remember being quite pleased at what I saved on the oversized Windows 98 book I bought then, but to be honest, a lot of the other stuff wasn't that massively cheaper in the early days. However, it had a wide selection and was very reliable. Until recently, that was still mostly the case if you knew what you were doing.
Now, if- as some are suggesting- Amazon are stooping to cancelling "free shipping" orders because the goods became "Prime only" and cheaper in the intervening time... well, along with the other Prime b******t and the risk of receiving counterfeit goods from third parties and even Amazon themselves, it really smacks of a company that's becoming too big for its boots.
No reason to redraw the background for the same location, no reason to redraw Superhero guy, when you already have a library of him in 500 different poses.
Up to a point; I guess if you're not careful you could end up with the print equivalent of 70s and 80s Saturday morning kids' cartoons that relied on stock animation that became just a little too visibly familiar.
I want to be clear that I wasn't endorsing Apple Pay or desiring that it succeed in any way- only that I didn't think it could be written off yet as a "failure" (or not) at this point in time.
Apple has completely stagnated under Tim Cook. What have we got since Steve? Bluetooth headphones and touch bar.
Apple Pay, Watch, TV, several versions of Macs, several versions of iPhones and iPads, better displays, faster SSDs, free upgrades of iOS and OSX/macOS
Apple Pay - Well, let's give that a chance, but it hasn't revolutionised the world yet.
Apple Watch - Whatever its performance in absolute financial terms- or even relative to the pre-existing wearables market- by the standards and expectations Apple clearly had at its launch, this has been an obvious flop so far. I know it has a significant percentage of the smartwatch market, but a significant percentage of bugger all is still bugger all. No-one cares.
Apple TV - Seriously? That's been around in various forms for approaching a decade now (since before Jobs' death) and it's never set the world on fire.
"Several versions of Macs" - Er... so what?! That's what computer companies are *expected* to do! (Shades of Chris Rock's infamous routine here). It'd have been pretty damning if they *hadn't* released any new Macs since 2011! Says nothing about whether the changes are good, revolutionary, inspiring or not. And the latest MacBook Pro- released a considerable time after the last major revision- has had a lot of criticism for its "Air-ified", non-upgradeable, non-replaceable battery design. In fact, I get the impression there are a lot of professional Mac users for whom this is the last straw.
"Several versions of iPhones and iPads" - Utterly ditto. Apple's modus operandi is releasing new versions and deprecating old ones- the question is whether they've continued to be revolutionary when they do this.
"Better displays" - The retina displays are nice, I'll admit, and AFAIK were involved in developing those, so I'll credit them that far. Not revolutionary, though.
"Faster SSDs" - I'd expect that from *any* computer manufacturer using third-party SSD technology. So what? If there's a revolution there, it's not Apple's making.
"Free upgrades of iOS and OSX/macOS" - Nothing wrong with that, but it's hardly revolutionary in itself, is it?
Honestly, I think you've made the original poster's case for them. There's nothing there that's taken off in a truly revolutionary manner.
Maybe he's like me. Never really was a star wars fan.
I wasn't talking about you, then. I was talking about Star Wars fans who- one might have expected- would have felt at least some warmth towards Fisher due to her involvement in something they loved, but instead responded as if she was little more than the means to an effect that could be reproduced so her death didn't matter.
This was only a relatively small proportion of fans, though.
Joking about it as is clearly the case here is a coping mechanism for most.
Honestly, perhaps some were, but I'm really not convinced that all the comments along these lines were supposed to be satirical jokes.
(On a side-issue, while it doesn't apply so much in this case anyway, the "joking is a coping mechanism" thing is hauled out far too often. It's legitimate when applied to people actually going through personal stress, or people who deal with death as part of their jobs- but it's also been hijacked by random people in online forums with no real personal involvement clearly using it as little more than self-justification for being assholes. No, you're not paramedics dealing with dead children every day, you're just a vaguely sociopathic dicks posting crap on random web sites).
Either that or were in big trouble as it seems the world is full of psychopaths.
As I said- and to be fair- the majority of fans *weren't* responding in this manner- it's just that there were more than a few that did.
If a hundred million people have entertainment as 10% of their lives, and Star Wars as 0.01% of that entertainment - and if Carrie Fisher is 10% of Star Wars - then Carrie-Fisher-the-part-of-Star-Wars is a hundred times as important as Carrie-Fisher-the-person.
This is the kind of bizarre pseudo-logical rationalisation that gives geeks a bad name.:-(
I wish I had that much affect on that many people, and that much of a legacy to leave when my body passes away.
That's okay; I wasn't criticising those who viewed the loss of Fisher primarily as the actress who played Leia- they (and you) are still remembering her as a person.
It's the people whose first response was to not be bothered that she had died, purely because she- or rather, Leia- could be "recreated" via CGI. People who apparently loved Star Wars, but didn't seem even to have a touch of humanity that a person associated with something they were so into had died, as long as the fictional Leia could be CGIed. That's a bit detached and cold. (And no, I'm not sure that they *were* all joking or making a point about reconstructing dead actors).
Do you know Carrie Fisher? I know I don't... nor the other 55 million that died this year, with a few exceptions.
I guessed someone might interpret it that way. No, of course I didn't know Carrie Fisher personally; I'm not even a major Star Wars fan, to be honest. But she seemed like a decent person.
This isn't a "we should collectively join in exaggerated mourning over Twitter for a celebrity we never knew personally" thing. Just a simple acknowledgement that an actual person has died, and that even if your interest in that person was primarily as the actor behind your favourite character I'd have expected a little personal feeling and empathy for that.
Again, this wasn't an argument against CGI Leias et al (though I did worry that someone might interpret it that way, as you did). But if someone's *first* response to Fisher's death- or that of anyone else associated with something they were really into- is in effect "oh, [her death] doesn't really matter, they can CGI Leia anyway" then (to me) that's still pretty cold and self-centered.
I think those comments, or some of them at least, are sarcastic. They refer to our trend of never letting (important) people die; their image will continue to be reused.
Perhaps- it's very hard to judge, sometimes. I'd hope that's what was meant rather than people actually forgetting that the ability to "recreate" (with varying degrees of success) characters and actors doesn't change the fact the person themselves has died.:-/
She will always be with us... as long as we have CGI
Look- I'm wary of coming across as overly self-righteous here, which isn't the intent. However, this isn't the first comment I've read whose first response was along the lines of "It's okay, we have CGI" or "I hope they digitised here before she died".
I mean, seriously? Carrie Fisher- the real-life human being- has died. I'm assuming the people saying this are more into Star Wars than I am, and I'd have thought they'd at least feel something for the passing of Carrie Fisher as an actual human being in her own right rather than simply the means to reproduce Leia.
Please don't take this as a criticism of people whose primary interest in Fisher was as Leia- that's understandable; it's a major film series, and that was her best-known role. And I suspect the majority of Star Wars fans didn't respond like this... I just find the few that did a little inappropriate.
You (apparently) started off making some legitimate points. I'm an independence-inclined Scot and Remainer with zero need or inclination to apologise for Little Englanders who want to go back to the 1950s and still act (and think) with delusions of grandeur like the British Empire hasn't been over for well over half a century.
This doesn't change the fact that by the second paragraph, it's obvious that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. I'm guessing you formed your half-baked idea of the United Kingdom from reading a few isolated scraps and filled in the rest with guesswork and misleading stereotypes.
The "1MBit" Internet speed thing has already been debunked, but your assertion that Cornwall "maybe" ranks along London as the most prosperous part of the United Kingdom shows how much you're pulling out of your arse.
Yes, London's service-based economy *is* undeniably prosperous for those working in it- at the expense of unbalancing that of the UK as a whole. (The flip side being that ludicrously expensive- and rapidly increasing- housing prices and high cost of living are making London virtually unliveable for anyone who *isn't* in the type of jobs that pay such inflated salaries).
Translation: M$ burned me before, but I couldn't just switch to Linux [and so on with stuffing words into my mouth]
You seem quite willing to make assumptions that aren't supported by what was said.
Spoiler; you don't need to have been in that position to have followed the news and known what MS were doing. But that would have ruined a good self-righteous sneer, wouldn't it?
The whole "we knew we'd gone too far with that specific incident" mea culpa is bullshit anyway, designed to frame things as if that was solely why people remembered being pissed off at MS- and having apologised for that alone, everyone would think "oh, it wasn't that big, they messed up once but now it's okay and aren't MS mostly great really?"
In reality, they'd been aggressively pushing Windows 10 for months on end by that point (from late 2015 until the "offer" ended in mid-2016) repeatedly trying to override users' explicit wishes against that, to the extent of using techniques that even bland, MOR IT publications were comparing to malware.
Now they're trying to minimise peoples' memories of the incident to the maliciously-designed "close button" semantics? Not even close. That was merely the peak of the obnoxiousness. They repeatedly and consistently maintained this behaviour for several months- they knew exactly what they were doing.
And they know exactly what they're doing with this self-serving, PR-approved "apology" that doesn't begin to cover what actually happened.
Remember, Nintendo is the company STILL calling the upgraded 3DS the "Nintendo NEW 3DS" after it's been out over a year now.....
In that case though, "New" is part of the name (even if it wasn't, it would have to be treated as such by this point). Whether or not one thinks that was a sensible decision (#), it's nothing that can be changed now without causing major confusion.
If they'd called it the "New Nintendo 3DS Super" (or whatever), they could have dropped the "New". But the way it stands, they couldn't do that without causing major confusion between the not-so-new "Nintendo 3DS" and the original "Nintendo 3DS"... so, no.
(#) A la bands like "Boyzone" and the "Spice Girls"- twenty years on, and virtually all in their forties- or "The Beach Boys", mostly in their mid-70s!
Interesting, but since we're indulging in good-natured pedantry here.... I've no idea what the C++ standard(s) actually say on what constitutes a legitimate variable name, but I *strongly* suspect that any definition assumes that the preprocessor step has *already* taken place... or, in other words, your example doesn't count!
Reason being that if the C++ preprocessor is anything like the ANSI C one (#), then it's effectively a text replacement facility separate from- and preceding- parsing of the language proper. Given that one can do pretty much anything with it (##) , it would make things *horribly* complicated if one had to allow for anything and everything the preprocessor might do when defining the language itself.
(#) I briefly looked at C++ around 13 years ago, but I've mostly forgotten that; I know C (specifically ANSI C or C89) somewhat better, even if I'm not that great at actually programming it.
(##) Including overly (would-be) clever tricks that turn out to have subtle flaws which can bite you on the arse *because* it is just a text substitution facility and there was some way you hadn't anticipated multiply-substituted then pasted text would be interpreted.
I guess you never use Google, since there is no explaination of what it is on the front page. Or maybe, like a normal human being, if you were interested in what something was, you'd just search it
I'm also intrigued as to what this "Google" thing is, but I've absolutely no idea how I'd go about "searching" for details on it as you suggest.
Yahoo just needs to die and go away. They have been marginal or even irrelevant for a very long time.
Yahoo has actually been a has-been *far* longer than it was ever top dog.
If you think about it, their time at the top was pretty short- essentially beginning and ending with the late 90s dotcom era. The original directory was created in early '94, the domain only registered a year later, and the IPO was in 1996. Four years after *that*, the dotcom crash happened, Google rose out of nowhere to leave them in their dust, and they never seemed to move on successfully from that.
They've seemed like a relic almost since the 90s ended; if they don't feel *more* like a Geocities "remember the dotcom era" retro nostalgia thing, it's only because they've hung around so long, seemingly going nowhere, but not really dying either- the service you occasionally check your burner email account on, sitting around in the background
Amen. That's exactly what I thought when I read the details of this (non-) "story".
The US government has chosen to offer these bonds for its own reasons. One might argue whether the government should be raising money this way, but they (presumably) chose to do that and offer enough of a payout to make it worth investors' time and money.
As you said, that's how it bloody works! Apple just happens to be one of the companies that has taken them up on that.
There's plenty to criticise about Apple, both with their overpriced, walled garden devices, and how they manage their tax (dodging) affairs, but to contrive their investment- and ignore everyone else's- in government bonds that are specifically *meant* to work like this as a "story" is obvious clickbait BS.
Slashdot Mirror
Japan is with moe, deal with it
I don't care, I always rated Curly and Larry more highly. :-P
:-O
FWIW, the more you look at that picture, the less cute- if it ever was to start off with- and more downright creepy and weird (if not alien) it starts to look.
While that particular image isn't an example, I've mentioned elsewhere that a lot of manga and anime drawings- and especially those seemingly aimed at the fanservice/soft porn market proves (IMHO) that the "big eyes = cute" thing does have its limits when they push it too far, and the eyes start to look less cute and more just downright wrong- taking up most of the width of the face- to the extent that in some cases they start looking more reminiscent of flies' oversized eyes.
Which isn't cute at all. Well, not for me- but if the Internet has shown us one thing, it's that virtually anything has people with a fetish for it...
It wasn't for general use
I appreciate that by the late 80s, this wouldn't have been the case- that's why it probably wouldn't have occurred to me to buy it even if it was on sale alongside its faster brethren in mainstream shops like Boots.
But I assume that in earlier years- when colour films were generally quite slow- this would have been considered a more mainstream speed. (Wikipedia confirms that up until the early 60s, all versions of Kodachrome were ISO 10 to 16!)
I was under the impression that Ektachrome was more popular for portrait and fashion photography- at least by the late 1980s- due to its subdued neutrality...?
Ektachrome was developed in response to calls for higher speeds than Kodachrome's ISO 25 (that's why Kodachrome was the film of sunny days) at the expense of grain.
One other thing- by the late 1980s, Kodachrome *was* available in faster speeds- specifically ISO 64 and 200- in addition to the ISO 25.
Matter of fact, the times I did buy Kodachrome back then it was only ever the 64 or 200. Can't remember if the 25 was widely available, since I don't think it would have occurred to me to buy something that slow for general use.
Ellis D. Tripp's response already said some of what I was going to say.
But yes, Kodachome was discontinued several years *before* Ektachrome because the (admittedly clever) process was far more complex and demanding than the more recent- and by then, far more popular E6 process.
Kodachrome, for all that everyone went on about it- particularly when its discontinuation was announced in 2009- had been in decline in the face of E6 emulsions for a long time- since at least the late 1980s as far as I'm aware. Apparently Kodak had developed an ISO 400 version but didn't release it due to dislike and a lack of interest.
Given that it used a unique process that was not only more costly (AFAIK) than E6 but wouldn't have had the same benefits of scale- particularly with its declining popularity- and that as time went on fewer and fewer places could process it until latterly there was only one lab worldwide- in the US- able to process it (and complaints about the quality of processing latterly), you can see why it was burden on Kodak to support and why it was discontinued in the face of film sales that were falling rapidly overall anyway.
(I've no idea about whether its manufacture was more complex than other films too).
I'm absolutely certain Kodachrome's not coming back even with the slight revival of film in recent years- even that's slightly misleading in its prominence. In the past, film was a *very* mass market item- and the majority of users were people like my Mum who was never into photography per se, but only as a means to take snapshots of people and events. She had a point-and-click 126 camera; now she has a digital one. The vast majority of film sales were to people like that; as a means to an end. My Dad was a bit more into it and used to have rangefinders, SLRs and high-end compacts, but even he hasn't used film since he got a DSLR in 2008. I haven't used film in almost ten years.
For all that hipsters (if I wanted to be stereotypically disparaging!) use film and some people will always want it and support a niche market, it's not ever- in the remotely forseeable future- going to return to anything more than a small percentage of the sales it enjoyed.
There's probably an economically viable place for the E6-based Ektachrome in there. Kodachrome though? I can't see it ever being remotely viable again given the cost, uniqueness and support issues surrounding it- along with the fact that all the labs have now closed. Sales of the occasional roll to novelty-seeking hobbyists simply wouldn't come close to justifying the cost.
Regarding the counterfeiting allegations:- Amazon's Chinese counterfeit problem is getting worse
You can filter for items with Amazon Prime shipping. Those are usually Amazon itself or equivalent quality resellers.
So, in short, it's approximately doable, but you have to play silly buggers to work around a lack of search functionality that Amazon could- and should- have provided?
Not a criticism of you personally, but doesn't really make the case in Amazon's favour if you ask me.
There's way, way too much fake merchandise on Amazon. I'm at the point where I won't buy anything unless it says it's sold by Amazon.
I know that Amazon are apparently binning different third party suppliers' stock together. That in itself means that goods sold by those companies but "fulfilled by Amazon" are completely untrustworthy, regardless of supplier. The obvious reason being that regardless who you (nominally) buy them from, you'll have no idea which third party the stock *actually* used to fulfil the order belonged to. Given Amazon's growing notoriety for blatant counterfeiting amongst third party suppliers, this obviously makes "fulfilled by Amazon" worthless if you're at all concerned by fakes or quality.
This- ironically- means it makes more sense to buy from suppliers who *don't* "fulfil by Amazon".
What concerns me are rumours that Amazon are even binning "their" goods (i.e. those "sold by Amazon") with these third-party-supplied items. In which case you could think you're buying something sourced and sold by Amazon *themselves*, but still end up with something supplied by the same random, utterly untrustworthy third party!
I have to admit that despite having been trying to reduce the amount of things I've bought on Amazon for several years now, since their dubious tax and employment practices came to light- I had to admit that I've still bought from them on occasion- not least because they *are* (or were) good at what they do. Convenient and reliable.
However, with the increasing level of nonsense like the above, even that appears to be going down the tubes. It's enough of a PITA to differentiate who you're buying from- which may well be their intent anyway- but the nonsense with Prime seems like it has the potential to really start playing silly buggers with their own service.
I was seriously pissed off on principle when I first saw goods- which had previously been on general sale- described as being "for Prime customers only". They went back to normal a day or two later, but this aggressive and (apparently) coercive behaviour into pushing people into paying for Prime really pissed me off.
By all means, sell the goods cheaper to people who (admittedly) have forked out £100 (or whatever) for Prime- and be open about that- but you can shove your weasellish "we're big enough to get away with this" arrogant coercion.
And no, I don't give a flying f*** about the incongruously bundled video service including that expensive show you produced with that hasn't-been-funny-in-fifteen-years right wing bellend Clarkson (never watched a whole episode of the "new" Top Gear since it launched in 2003); having that w****r and his chums plastered all over the site makes me less likely to sign up for your s****y service, particular as- by all accounts- the rest of the Prime video offerings are second rate tat designed to get you to pay for the non-free ones.
I've been using Amazon since late 1998, literally just months after they took over bookpages.co.uk (and probably just a few weeks after they actually started trading as Amazon.co.uk). I remember being quite pleased at what I saved on the oversized Windows 98 book I bought then, but to be honest, a lot of the other stuff wasn't that massively cheaper in the early days. However, it had a wide selection and was very reliable. Until recently, that was still mostly the case if you knew what you were doing.
Now, if- as some are suggesting- Amazon are stooping to cancelling "free shipping" orders because the goods became "Prime only" and cheaper in the intervening time... well, along with the other Prime b******t and the risk of receiving counterfeit goods from third parties and even Amazon themselves, it really smacks of a company that's becoming too big for its boots.
No reason to redraw the background for the same location, no reason to redraw Superhero guy, when you already have a library of him in 500 different poses.
Up to a point; I guess if you're not careful you could end up with the print equivalent of 70s and 80s Saturday morning kids' cartoons that relied on stock animation that became just a little too visibly familiar.
I want to be clear that I wasn't endorsing Apple Pay or desiring that it succeed in any way- only that I didn't think it could be written off yet as a "failure" (or not) at this point in time.
Apple has completely stagnated under Tim Cook. What have we got since Steve? Bluetooth headphones and touch bar.
Apple Pay, Watch, TV, several versions of Macs, several versions of iPhones and iPads, better displays, faster SSDs, free upgrades of iOS and OSX/macOS
Apple Pay - Well, let's give that a chance, but it hasn't revolutionised the world yet.
Apple Watch - Whatever its performance in absolute financial terms- or even relative to the pre-existing wearables market- by the standards and expectations Apple clearly had at its launch, this has been an obvious flop so far. I know it has a significant percentage of the smartwatch market, but a significant percentage of bugger all is still bugger all. No-one cares.
Apple TV - Seriously? That's been around in various forms for approaching a decade now (since before Jobs' death) and it's never set the world on fire.
"Several versions of Macs" - Er... so what?! That's what computer companies are *expected* to do! (Shades of Chris Rock's infamous routine here). It'd have been pretty damning if they *hadn't* released any new Macs since 2011! Says nothing about whether the changes are good, revolutionary, inspiring or not. And the latest MacBook Pro- released a considerable time after the last major revision- has had a lot of criticism for its "Air-ified", non-upgradeable, non-replaceable battery design. In fact, I get the impression there are a lot of professional Mac users for whom this is the last straw.
"Several versions of iPhones and iPads" - Utterly ditto. Apple's modus operandi is releasing new versions and deprecating old ones- the question is whether they've continued to be revolutionary when they do this.
"Better displays" - The retina displays are nice, I'll admit, and AFAIK were involved in developing those, so I'll credit them that far. Not revolutionary, though.
"Faster SSDs" - I'd expect that from *any* computer manufacturer using third-party SSD technology. So what? If there's a revolution there, it's not Apple's making.
"Free upgrades of iOS and OSX/macOS" - Nothing wrong with that, but it's hardly revolutionary in itself, is it?
Honestly, I think you've made the original poster's case for them. There's nothing there that's taken off in a truly revolutionary manner.
Maybe he's like me. Never really was a star wars fan.
I wasn't talking about you, then. I was talking about Star Wars fans who- one might have expected- would have felt at least some warmth towards Fisher due to her involvement in something they loved, but instead responded as if she was little more than the means to an effect that could be reproduced so her death didn't matter.
This was only a relatively small proportion of fans, though.
Joking about it as is clearly the case here is a coping mechanism for most.
Honestly, perhaps some were, but I'm really not convinced that all the comments along these lines were supposed to be satirical jokes.
(On a side-issue, while it doesn't apply so much in this case anyway, the "joking is a coping mechanism" thing is hauled out far too often. It's legitimate when applied to people actually going through personal stress, or people who deal with death as part of their jobs- but it's also been hijacked by random people in online forums with no real personal involvement clearly using it as little more than self-justification for being assholes. No, you're not paramedics dealing with dead children every day, you're just a vaguely sociopathic dicks posting crap on random web sites).
Either that or were in big trouble as it seems the world is full of psychopaths.
As I said- and to be fair- the majority of fans *weren't* responding in this manner- it's just that there were more than a few that did.
If a hundred million people have entertainment as 10% of their lives, and Star Wars as 0.01% of that entertainment - and if Carrie Fisher is 10% of Star Wars - then Carrie-Fisher-the-part-of-Star-Wars is a hundred times as important as Carrie-Fisher-the-person.
This is the kind of bizarre pseudo-logical rationalisation that gives geeks a bad name. :-(
I wish I had that much affect on that many people, and that much of a legacy to leave when my body passes away.
That's okay; I wasn't criticising those who viewed the loss of Fisher primarily as the actress who played Leia- they (and you) are still remembering her as a person.
It's the people whose first response was to not be bothered that she had died, purely because she- or rather, Leia- could be "recreated" via CGI. People who apparently loved Star Wars, but didn't seem even to have a touch of humanity that a person associated with something they were so into had died, as long as the fictional Leia could be CGIed. That's a bit detached and cold. (And no, I'm not sure that they *were* all joking or making a point about reconstructing dead actors).
Do you know Carrie Fisher? I know I don't... nor the other 55 million that died this year, with a few exceptions.
I guessed someone might interpret it that way. No, of course I didn't know Carrie Fisher personally; I'm not even a major Star Wars fan, to be honest. But she seemed like a decent person.
This isn't a "we should collectively join in exaggerated mourning over Twitter for a celebrity we never knew personally" thing. Just a simple acknowledgement that an actual person has died, and that even if your interest in that person was primarily as the actor behind your favourite character I'd have expected a little personal feeling and empathy for that.
Again, this wasn't an argument against CGI Leias et al (though I did worry that someone might interpret it that way, as you did). But if someone's *first* response to Fisher's death- or that of anyone else associated with something they were really into- is in effect "oh, [her death] doesn't really matter, they can CGI Leia anyway" then (to me) that's still pretty cold and self-centered.
I think those comments, or some of them at least, are sarcastic. They refer to our trend of never letting (important) people die; their image will continue to be reused.
Perhaps- it's very hard to judge, sometimes. I'd hope that's what was meant rather than people actually forgetting that the ability to "recreate" (with varying degrees of success) characters and actors doesn't change the fact the person themselves has died. :-/
She will always be with us... as long as we have CGI
Look- I'm wary of coming across as overly self-righteous here, which isn't the intent. However, this isn't the first comment I've read whose first response was along the lines of "It's okay, we have CGI" or "I hope they digitised here before she died".
I mean, seriously? Carrie Fisher- the real-life human being- has died. I'm assuming the people saying this are more into Star Wars than I am, and I'd have thought they'd at least feel something for the passing of Carrie Fisher as an actual human being in her own right rather than simply the means to reproduce Leia.
Please don't take this as a criticism of people whose primary interest in Fisher was as Leia- that's understandable; it's a major film series, and that was her best-known role. And I suspect the majority of Star Wars fans didn't respond like this... I just find the few that did a little inappropriate.
You (apparently) started off making some legitimate points. I'm an independence-inclined Scot and Remainer with zero need or inclination to apologise for Little Englanders who want to go back to the 1950s and still act (and think) with delusions of grandeur like the British Empire hasn't been over for well over half a century.
This doesn't change the fact that by the second paragraph, it's obvious that you don't have a clue what you're talking about. I'm guessing you formed your half-baked idea of the United Kingdom from reading a few isolated scraps and filled in the rest with guesswork and misleading stereotypes.
The "1MBit" Internet speed thing has already been debunked, but your assertion that Cornwall "maybe" ranks along London as the most prosperous part of the United Kingdom shows how much you're pulling out of your arse.
Yes, London's service-based economy *is* undeniably prosperous for those working in it- at the expense of unbalancing that of the UK as a whole. (The flip side being that ludicrously expensive- and rapidly increasing- housing prices and high cost of living are making London virtually unliveable for anyone who *isn't* in the type of jobs that pay such inflated salaries).
Cornwall, though? You don't have a fucking clue. Cornwall is actually one of the poorest parts of the UK.
Not that I have much sympathy for them since they voted to cut their own throats. But Cornwall prosperous? Get a ******* clue.
I refuse to read your petty articles if you're going to write them like a bunch of proud, cocky seventh graders.
Says the person whose comment is headed "GAYmergate".
Translation: M$ burned me before, but I couldn't just switch to Linux [and so on with stuffing words into my mouth]
You seem quite willing to make assumptions that aren't supported by what was said.
Spoiler; you don't need to have been in that position to have followed the news and known what MS were doing. But that would have ruined a good self-righteous sneer, wouldn't it?
The whole "we knew we'd gone too far with that specific incident" mea culpa is bullshit anyway, designed to frame things as if that was solely why people remembered being pissed off at MS- and having apologised for that alone, everyone would think "oh, it wasn't that big, they messed up once but now it's okay and aren't MS mostly great really?"
In reality, they'd been aggressively pushing Windows 10 for months on end by that point (from late 2015 until the "offer" ended in mid-2016) repeatedly trying to override users' explicit wishes against that, to the extent of using techniques that even bland, MOR IT publications were comparing to malware.
Now they're trying to minimise peoples' memories of the incident to the maliciously-designed "close button" semantics? Not even close. That was merely the peak of the obnoxiousness. They repeatedly and consistently maintained this behaviour for several months- they knew exactly what they were doing.
And they know exactly what they're doing with this self-serving, PR-approved "apology" that doesn't begin to cover what actually happened.
Remember, Nintendo is the company STILL calling the upgraded 3DS the "Nintendo NEW 3DS" after it's been out over a year now.....
In that case though, "New" is part of the name (even if it wasn't, it would have to be treated as such by this point). Whether or not one thinks that was a sensible decision (#), it's nothing that can be changed now without causing major confusion.
If they'd called it the "New Nintendo 3DS Super" (or whatever), they could have dropped the "New". But the way it stands, they couldn't do that without causing major confusion between the not-so-new "Nintendo 3DS" and the original "Nintendo 3DS"... so, no.
(#) A la bands like "Boyzone" and the "Spice Girls"- twenty years on, and virtually all in their forties- or "The Beach Boys", mostly in their mid-70s!
Interesting, but since we're indulging in good-natured pedantry here.... I've no idea what the C++ standard(s) actually say on what constitutes a legitimate variable name, but I *strongly* suspect that any definition assumes that the preprocessor step has *already* taken place... or, in other words, your example doesn't count!
Reason being that if the C++ preprocessor is anything like the ANSI C one (#), then it's effectively a text replacement facility separate from- and preceding- parsing of the language proper. Given that one can do pretty much anything with it (##) , it would make things *horribly* complicated if one had to allow for anything and everything the preprocessor might do when defining the language itself.
(#) I briefly looked at C++ around 13 years ago, but I've mostly forgotten that; I know C (specifically ANSI C or C89) somewhat better, even if I'm not that great at actually programming it.
(##) Including overly (would-be) clever tricks that turn out to have subtle flaws which can bite you on the arse *because* it is just a text substitution facility and there was some way you hadn't anticipated multiply-substituted then pasted text would be interpreted.
I guess you never use Google, since there is no explaination of what it is on the front page. Or maybe, like a normal human being, if you were interested in what something was, you'd just search it
I'm also intrigued as to what this "Google" thing is, but I've absolutely no idea how I'd go about "searching" for details on it as you suggest.
There ought to be a website to help you do that.
Yahoo just needs to die and go away. They have been marginal or even irrelevant for a very long time.
Yahoo has actually been a has-been *far* longer than it was ever top dog.
If you think about it, their time at the top was pretty short- essentially beginning and ending with the late 90s dotcom era. The original directory was created in early '94, the domain only registered a year later, and the IPO was in 1996. Four years after *that*, the dotcom crash happened, Google rose out of nowhere to leave them in their dust, and they never seemed to move on successfully from that.
They've seemed like a relic almost since the 90s ended; if they don't feel *more* like a Geocities "remember the dotcom era" retro nostalgia thing, it's only because they've hung around so long, seemingly going nowhere, but not really dying either- the service you occasionally check your burner email account on, sitting around in the background
Well, until now, anyway....
More like side scrolling temple run?
The Atari 800 version of Aztec Challenge circa 1983, perhaps?
(Not to be confused with the completely different- and better-known- Commodore 64 game released under the same name, oddly).
Oh good grief. That's how bonds work.
Amen. That's exactly what I thought when I read the details of this (non-) "story".
The US government has chosen to offer these bonds for its own reasons. One might argue whether the government should be raising money this way, but they (presumably) chose to do that and offer enough of a payout to make it worth investors' time and money.
As you said, that's how it bloody works! Apple just happens to be one of the companies that has taken them up on that.
There's plenty to criticise about Apple, both with their overpriced, walled garden devices, and how they manage their tax (dodging) affairs, but to contrive their investment- and ignore everyone else's- in government bonds that are specifically *meant* to work like this as a "story" is obvious clickbait BS.