I have to admit, I'm conflicted on the matter of unions. For one thing, I'm a child of the Thatcher generation, where 'union' meant 'whining commies striking because they didn't get their fifteenth paid tea-break and free massage of the day', and also because I would never have got to where I am now if unions *had* controlled my line of work. I work in UK magazine publishing, and the time I started my career (early 90s), unions were suddenly under threat from DTP.
And thank fuck for that, from my POV. Had my employer been unionised (I worked at one of the first all-digital print shops in the UK), I would *not* have been able to be promoted to a senior position on ability alone within six months of starting, but would instead have had to be apprenticed for two or three years simply because I hadn't 'paid my dues'. I would *not* have been able to pick up skills in other areas of publishing, or even just cover for other people (and get experience at new tasks) while they were away, because that would have caused a demarcation dispute. Union rules back them were: you had one job, you stuck to it, and woe betide you if you tried to muscle in on somebody else's turf. In fact, I wouldn't even be in my current job, because union rules would *never* have allowed me to move sideways within a company and stay at the same level. I got into what is to be frank a pretty cool job through hard work, hopefully some degree of talent and the ability to shift streams from one side of the business to another. Unionisation tends not to reward any of those factors.
And there's the fact that back then, the people I knew that *were* in a union were the most sour-faced, whining, moaning, bitter, argumentative, lazy bunch of miserable bastards I've ever met in my life.
On the *other* hand, while I'm personally doing okay now from a non-union company, starting salaries in both my original and current lines of work have actually *dropped* since I started. And I started there over a decade ago. Which to me seems grossly unfair. But me joining a union will make no difference to that, because it's an agressively non-union operation ("If you don't like it, then fuck off"), and won't benefit me in any way I can see either.
Mind you, since I plan leave before the end of the year anyway, I guess it's academic.;)
Well, this is the first step, long expected, but finally it's happened.
Next up: one or more of the major studios will issue a similar lawsuit against one of the major Region 1 DVD importers (play.com or Movietyme) for the same reasons - copyright infringement - and despite the fact that importation of DVDs from abroad is perfectly legal under UK Customs & Excise rules, we know who will win because these days, the law can be bought.
Paranoia? Well, I used to work for a DVD magazine. Last year, we had a very formal letter from one of the major studios (not saying which, but it rhymes with 'cocks') demanding that we stop carrying advertising from R1 DVD importers for a whole slew of reasons, but mainly that it hurt the profits of their UK arm (FYI: a newly released DVD of theirs costs 19.99, or $35.38) and if we didn't play ball they'd pull all their advertising. Since we make more ad money from importers than this studio, we told them to blow us (although in much more polite terms). And they still advertise with us anyway, since we have about 2/3 of the UK DVD mag market. Gee, being part of a soulless megacorporation *can* have its advantages!
(Also, I think another reason why we told them to get bent was that *every single member of management*, from editor level up to the MD, regularly buys R1 DVDs from play.com or Movietyme...)
But the lawsuit will be coming, and probably soon. The studios will try to close the import loophole that they couldn't shut via their pitiful region coding scheme by using the law, and they'll almost certainly succeed. And UK consumers will see another example of how the global economy will only be allowed to work for the benefit of billion-dollar corporations rather than the people who actually *pay* for their products.
I've always been in favour of space research, but this 'We can mine Helium-3 from the Moon, like, next week!' bullshit is just another vote-grabbing chimera like the manned Mars mission. Wow, at the exact same time Spirit captures voters' imaginations and Bush says "Let's send men to Mars! Sometime!", he also announces that he loves the idea of health insurance for the poor! Hmm, are we in an election year, by any chance? I dislike politicians of any flavour - I go by Billy Connolly's maxim that "Anybody who wants to be a politician should automatically be disqualified from being one" - but this degree of contemptuous transparency just amazes me.
Maybe we could spend the money needed to blast hundreds of Saturn V-plus sized boosters and payloads to the Moon and back again *and* develop workable fusion reactors on mass-producing wind, tidal and solar plants for the next decade or so. That way, we're not dependent on oil, pollution is reduced, the western economy isn't at the mercy of a bunch of unpleasant repressive dictatorships that were lucky enough to form on top of large deposits of burnable goo, and we don't need to go and fight wars on dubious pretexts every decade or so to maintain our access to said deposits. *Then* we can make use of the booster and fusion research which has been done in the meantime as part of the standard R&D that any sane government should be funding anyway.
Oh, no, wait. That would conflict with the current 'Control all energy! Limit supplies to maximise profits! Start wars to benefit our friends in the armaments industries and declare peace to benefit our friends in the construction industries! Money at any cost!' policy of the shits (of all nations) who run the world right now.
At least there was an ideology, paranoid as it was, behind the Moon race. This is just all about making rich men even richer.
From my limited experience, I have found it possible to change absolutely any aspect of my dream.
Same here, although the changes aren't immediate - I haven't been able to say in my dream, "Okay, now teleport me to Tokyo and make me 500 feet tall!" and have the dream change instantly like a holodeck program. It's more a case of saying "I want person X to appear" and then having to go into a different room to find them there. And then the fun can begin!
Lucid dreaming is great, though. I wish I could do it more often. Usually, by the time I've realised that I *am* dreaming and decide to take control, I manage to make one change and then wake up! But an extended experience is tremendous fun, because you really can do anything. Flying rules, for a start...
That's just plain worrying - and not all that surprising. Broadcasters want to overturn the Betamax ruling, and are actively pressing for it? Oh yes. And in other news, their dream scenario is pay-per-view - for *every single thing* you watch.
And along comes the broadcast flag. Let's see - analogue switch-off within the next decade so you *have* to go digital? All new consumer recording hardware must accept the broadcast flag and other DRM within, what, the next five years? No requirements at all on broadcasters to transmit unflagged material, and a maximum 'lifetime' on flag-approved PVR recordings of two weeks?
Buy your recording kit now, before all this crap gets mandated - it might be the only way you can use it how you want!
Probes cannot convey the human experience of standing on the Martain surface and running red sand through your hands
Followed by a cry of "It burns, it BURNS!" Martian soil? Kinda caustic.
I'm totally in favour of a Mars mission, though. I'm just pissed off that it's a crooked asshole like Bush who's pushing it - to him it's just political expediency in an election year, cashing in on the successful Spirit landing and finding a PR-friendly way to kill the costly shuttle and ISS programs, rather than because he actually *believes* in it. He could barely *pronounce* half the words in his Mars speech, never mind understand them!
As the editor of Hotdog (it's one word, not two), I apologise profusely for the miserable quality of the website. I hate it, everybody on the magazine hates it, but we currently have no time or resources available to improve it.
We're all still extremely proud of the magazine itself, though. If every/. reader went out and bought a copy, maybe we'd be able to do something about the website. (Hell, maybe the site being slashdotted might shake some cash loose!) I'm just sayin', is all...
So why is it that senior executives, the people who are supposedly critical to the success of a company, can take massive amounts of holiday over Xmas and the New Year with no ill effects on the running of the business, whereas I had to be back in on January 2nd? Does that mean my presence in the office is more crucial to the company than theirs? And if so, how come I'm not paid enough to buy a Ferrari, as one of my company's directors recently did?
"Ra-di-a-tion. Yes, indeed. You hear the most outrageous lies about it. Half-baked goggle-box do-gooders telling everybody it's bad for you. Pernicious nonsense! Everybody could stand a hundred chest X-rays a year. They ought to have them, too."
Besides, nobody's going to be sending a nuclear rocket into orbit anywhere near me, so I don't mind. Let the Floridians suck it up! They're already addled from all that solar radiation beating down on their pates and overheating their brains - a bit more won't make much difference...
Re:Bring on the Aliens
on
Your Own Mecha
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Not CGI - that wasn't even an option at the time Aliens was made, in terms of technology *or* budget. A fair amount was done full-size with the loader on either cables or a crane arm, with a stuntman inside the body lifting the limbs. The rest was done with rod puppets. Cinefex did a great article back in 1986, and there's a hell of a lot about it in the new Alien Quadrilogy DVD set.
My NTL service in the UK actually gives me *free* voice line rental as part of my broadband (150kbps, 18UKP/month) and cable package. Since I don't make a huge number of phone calls, and local calls are free, my total monthly bill for all three services combined rarely exceeds 45UKP/month, or about $80US for 70-odd cable channels, effectively unlimited broadband (I'm not a BitTorrent junkie or anything) and all my phone calls.
Bear in mind that the USD prices have recently been seriously affected by the plummeting dollar. (Which is why I intend to change some money into $ next week for an as yet unscheduled holiday, simply because the rates are so much in my favour and I was planning to go anyway.)
Only a couple of months ago, the 18/month figure worked out at just $27/month rather than $33/month. Nothing's changed over here in terms of cost apart from the exchange rate.
Yes, the reliability of M/O media was proven to me in the early days of DTP (this was before multi-gigabyte HDs and servers - I think my Mac IIcx had a whopping 80Mb HD) when it was possible to lose half an issue of a magazine by, say, ejecting the disc from the drive and taking it to the bureau and re-inserting it, only to get a mysterious and fatal read error. Gotta love those M/O drives!
They're probably way more reliable now, but my company has avoided M/O hardware for over a decade now as a result.
Of course, in those days half a magazine took up one 650Mb M/O disc, whereas now it takes up one DVD-R disc. (For the same number of pages. Don't you just love data bloat?)
I'm in the UK, but recently I've been dealing with people in the US (freelance writers) and have learned a bit about American bank accounts.
Well, been *stunned* to learn about American bank accounts, would be more accurate.
You get charged fees for having a current account? You get charged for paying in a cheque? You get charged for receiving money via wire transfer? WTF?
AFAIK in the UK (it's certainly true of my UK bank), case 1: nope, as long as you're not running a non-agreed overdraft. Case 2: nope, never. Case 3: nuh-uh. The sender pays.
Mind you, I shouldn't be surprised about this in a country where you have to pay to *receive* a call or text on a cellphone!
I guess the land of the 'free' doesn't apply to rudimentary financial services...
So presumably they'll also be sueing Panasonic over their range of DVD-RAM recorders that do *exactly* the same thing, only they save to a DVD-RAM disc rather than a hard disc. Likewise the assorted combi HD/DVD recorders on the market from companies like Philips and Thomson, among others. And in the UK, they'll also be sueing Sky (AKA News Corporation... so rather a big hitter) over their Sky+ boxes, which basically do everything a Tivo does, except that Sky+ is still in business here and Tivo isn't.
I liked the idea of Tivo (though not enough to take out a subscription even when they were in business in the UK... I don't watch *that* much TV) but this lawsuit has instantly turned me against them. Claiming IP/patent rights over an *idea* rather than a *technique* is exactly the kind of bullshit thinking that is going to kill off innovation in the West and allow countries like China and India to squash us in the future even as they laugh at our unbelievable stupidity in letting lawyers rule the roost.
Once a company starts bleating about "intellectual property" and issuing lawsuits to protect it rather than actually making a product that people want to buy, then it's doomed. Last I heard, this was a free market. If not enough people want to buy Tivos to keep the company in business, then fuck 'em.
(But in true SCO style, it probably means their share price will rise, so invest now before the company dies its inevitable hideous death!)
Who's the boss of Tivo? Is he going to become the new Darl?
Okay, now that we're post-Pathfinder, I expect to see lots of rocks named after Futurama characters! Can't wait for a NASA report saying that they're sending the rover to grind the shiny underside of "Bender", then after that they're going to drill "Leela" and "Amy"...
"Zoidberg", of course, will never get any attention.
Somebody (possibly Clarke; I'm sure somebody here will be able to correct me if I'm wrong) once said something to the effect of "It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any kind of survival value."
If any species in Earth's past developed what we would recognise as intelligence it didn't help them in the long run, and there are species that could be arguably considered 'intelligent' here right now that we not only can't communicate with with beyond the most very basic issuing of orders via pain/reward systems, but which some of us will happily eat if it suits us...
Competition is a standard part of the food chain - and if the top of the food chain also has the ability to develop weapons that can wipe out whatever other bits of the ecosystem it feels like as part of this competition, then maybe there's a reason we don't hear from too many aliens. They're all dead!
What idiot modded this as 'insightful'? 'Troll' is more like it. Every time/. puts up a space-related story with a dollar value attached, this exact same comment invariably appears. Yawn, and also, fuck off. As PJ O'Rourke once said, "You can't end poverty by throwing money at it." I agree with him - and I'm a liberal!
Personally, I'd rather my tax money went on space research than megadeath hardware, or privatised transport companies that take billions of tax pounds a year to run a slow, deathtrap rail service and then have the nerve to use the subsidies to show a profit, or an increasingly corporatised health service that employs more administrators than doctors and nurses, or blatantly corrupt agricultural subsidies that pay farmers to grow *nothing* in order to fix prices, but I don't get to choose. (And nor do you, unless you're Gordon Brown.)
Maybe if Beagle 2 had actually had more government money put into it for power or payload or softer landing capabilities it wouldn't be lost in a crater on Mars right now.
The British pessimist in me says there's so much that *can* go wrong, it almost certainly *will*. We have a knack as a nation for coming up with marvellous inventions that don't quite work in the real world.
But the British optimist in me hopes it *will* work, simply because when the odds are completely stacked against it, when everybody says a British invention can't *possibly* succeed... that's when it generally pulls through.
So godspeed, Beagle 2. Say hello to Mars for all of us - and preferably let us all hear Blur and see Damian Hirst while you're doing it.
Slashdot Mirror
Will I be able to get a free G5 if I change my name to Andrew Peter Pel and set up the www.appel.com domain, then?
And thank fuck for that, from my POV. Had my employer been unionised (I worked at one of the first all-digital print shops in the UK), I would *not* have been able to be promoted to a senior position on ability alone within six months of starting, but would instead have had to be apprenticed for two or three years simply because I hadn't 'paid my dues'. I would *not* have been able to pick up skills in other areas of publishing, or even just cover for other people (and get experience at new tasks) while they were away, because that would have caused a demarcation dispute. Union rules back them were: you had one job, you stuck to it, and woe betide you if you tried to muscle in on somebody else's turf. In fact, I wouldn't even be in my current job, because union rules would *never* have allowed me to move sideways within a company and stay at the same level. I got into what is to be frank a pretty cool job through hard work, hopefully some degree of talent and the ability to shift streams from one side of the business to another. Unionisation tends not to reward any of those factors.
And there's the fact that back then, the people I knew that *were* in a union were the most sour-faced, whining, moaning, bitter, argumentative, lazy bunch of miserable bastards I've ever met in my life.
On the *other* hand, while I'm personally doing okay now from a non-union company, starting salaries in both my original and current lines of work have actually *dropped* since I started. And I started there over a decade ago. Which to me seems grossly unfair. But me joining a union will make no difference to that, because it's an agressively non-union operation ("If you don't like it, then fuck off"), and won't benefit me in any way I can see either.
Mind you, since I plan leave before the end of the year anyway, I guess it's academic. ;)
Next up: one or more of the major studios will issue a similar lawsuit against one of the major Region 1 DVD importers (play.com or Movietyme) for the same reasons - copyright infringement - and despite the fact that importation of DVDs from abroad is perfectly legal under UK Customs & Excise rules, we know who will win because these days, the law can be bought.
Paranoia? Well, I used to work for a DVD magazine. Last year, we had a very formal letter from one of the major studios (not saying which, but it rhymes with 'cocks') demanding that we stop carrying advertising from R1 DVD importers for a whole slew of reasons, but mainly that it hurt the profits of their UK arm (FYI: a newly released DVD of theirs costs 19.99, or $35.38) and if we didn't play ball they'd pull all their advertising. Since we make more ad money from importers than this studio, we told them to blow us (although in much more polite terms). And they still advertise with us anyway, since we have about 2/3 of the UK DVD mag market. Gee, being part of a soulless megacorporation *can* have its advantages!
(Also, I think another reason why we told them to get bent was that *every single member of management*, from editor level up to the MD, regularly buys R1 DVDs from play.com or Movietyme...)
But the lawsuit will be coming, and probably soon. The studios will try to close the import loophole that they couldn't shut via their pitiful region coding scheme by using the law, and they'll almost certainly succeed. And UK consumers will see another example of how the global economy will only be allowed to work for the benefit of billion-dollar corporations rather than the people who actually *pay* for their products.
Maybe we could spend the money needed to blast hundreds of Saturn V-plus sized boosters and payloads to the Moon and back again *and* develop workable fusion reactors on mass-producing wind, tidal and solar plants for the next decade or so. That way, we're not dependent on oil, pollution is reduced, the western economy isn't at the mercy of a bunch of unpleasant repressive dictatorships that were lucky enough to form on top of large deposits of burnable goo, and we don't need to go and fight wars on dubious pretexts every decade or so to maintain our access to said deposits. *Then* we can make use of the booster and fusion research which has been done in the meantime as part of the standard R&D that any sane government should be funding anyway.
Oh, no, wait. That would conflict with the current 'Control all energy! Limit supplies to maximise profits! Start wars to benefit our friends in the armaments industries and declare peace to benefit our friends in the construction industries! Money at any cost!' policy of the shits (of all nations) who run the world right now.
At least there was an ideology, paranoid as it was, behind the Moon race. This is just all about making rich men even richer.
Same here, although the changes aren't immediate - I haven't been able to say in my dream, "Okay, now teleport me to Tokyo and make me 500 feet tall!" and have the dream change instantly like a holodeck program. It's more a case of saying "I want person X to appear" and then having to go into a different room to find them there. And then the fun can begin!
Lucid dreaming is great, though. I wish I could do it more often. Usually, by the time I've realised that I *am* dreaming and decide to take control, I manage to make one change and then wake up! But an extended experience is tremendous fun, because you really can do anything. Flying rules, for a start...
And along comes the broadcast flag. Let's see - analogue switch-off within the next decade so you *have* to go digital? All new consumer recording hardware must accept the broadcast flag and other DRM within, what, the next five years? No requirements at all on broadcasters to transmit unflagged material, and a maximum 'lifetime' on flag-approved PVR recordings of two weeks?
Buy your recording kit now, before all this crap gets mandated - it might be the only way you can use it how you want!
...do you know where your DJ is?
Followed by a cry of "It burns, it BURNS!" Martian soil? Kinda caustic.
I'm totally in favour of a Mars mission, though. I'm just pissed off that it's a crooked asshole like Bush who's pushing it - to him it's just political expediency in an election year, cashing in on the successful Spirit landing and finding a PR-friendly way to kill the costly shuttle and ISS programs, rather than because he actually *believes* in it. He could barely *pronounce* half the words in his Mars speech, never mind understand them!
We're all still extremely proud of the magazine itself, though. If every /. reader went out and bought a copy, maybe we'd be able to do something about the website. (Hell, maybe the site being slashdotted might shake some cash loose!) I'm just sayin', is all...
So why is it that senior executives, the people who are supposedly critical to the success of a company, can take massive amounts of holiday over Xmas and the New Year with no ill effects on the running of the business, whereas I had to be back in on January 2nd? Does that mean my presence in the office is more crucial to the company than theirs? And if so, how come I'm not paid enough to buy a Ferrari, as one of my company's directors recently did?
Besides, nobody's going to be sending a nuclear rocket into orbit anywhere near me, so I don't mind. Let the Floridians suck it up! They're already addled from all that solar radiation beating down on their pates and overheating their brains - a bit more won't make much difference...
Not CGI - that wasn't even an option at the time Aliens was made, in terms of technology *or* budget. A fair amount was done full-size with the loader on either cables or a crane arm, with a stuntman inside the body lifting the limbs. The rest was done with rod puppets. Cinefex did a great article back in 1986, and there's a hell of a lot about it in the new Alien Quadrilogy DVD set.
You realise that this marks the birth of the Genom Corporation? Quick, better set up the first AD Police unit!
When somebody busts the DRM, he chould retitle his one big hit 'Baby Got Crack'.
My NTL service in the UK actually gives me *free* voice line rental as part of my broadband (150kbps, 18UKP/month) and cable package. Since I don't make a huge number of phone calls, and local calls are free, my total monthly bill for all three services combined rarely exceeds 45UKP/month, or about $80US for 70-odd cable channels, effectively unlimited broadband (I'm not a BitTorrent junkie or anything) and all my phone calls.
Only a couple of months ago, the 18/month figure worked out at just $27/month rather than $33/month. Nothing's changed over here in terms of cost apart from the exchange rate.
"Bunch of assholes."
They're probably way more reliable now, but my company has avoided M/O hardware for over a decade now as a result.
Of course, in those days half a magazine took up one 650Mb M/O disc, whereas now it takes up one DVD-R disc. (For the same number of pages. Don't you just love data bloat?)
Let me guess, you own a Tivo and love it? Ah, fuck you, shitnuts. I got karma to burn! :p
Well, been *stunned* to learn about American bank accounts, would be more accurate.
You get charged fees for having a current account? You get charged for paying in a cheque? You get charged for receiving money via wire transfer? WTF?
AFAIK in the UK (it's certainly true of my UK bank), case 1: nope, as long as you're not running a non-agreed overdraft. Case 2: nope, never. Case 3: nuh-uh. The sender pays.
Mind you, I shouldn't be surprised about this in a country where you have to pay to *receive* a call or text on a cellphone!
I guess the land of the 'free' doesn't apply to rudimentary financial services...
I liked the idea of Tivo (though not enough to take out a subscription even when they were in business in the UK... I don't watch *that* much TV) but this lawsuit has instantly turned me against them. Claiming IP/patent rights over an *idea* rather than a *technique* is exactly the kind of bullshit thinking that is going to kill off innovation in the West and allow countries like China and India to squash us in the future even as they laugh at our unbelievable stupidity in letting lawyers rule the roost.
Once a company starts bleating about "intellectual property" and issuing lawsuits to protect it rather than actually making a product that people want to buy, then it's doomed. Last I heard, this was a free market. If not enough people want to buy Tivos to keep the company in business, then fuck 'em.
(But in true SCO style, it probably means their share price will rise, so invest now before the company dies its inevitable hideous death!)
Who's the boss of Tivo? Is he going to become the new Darl?
"Zoidberg", of course, will never get any attention.
If any species in Earth's past developed what we would recognise as intelligence it didn't help them in the long run, and there are species that could be arguably considered 'intelligent' here right now that we not only can't communicate with with beyond the most very basic issuing of orders via pain/reward systems, but which some of us will happily eat if it suits us...
Competition is a standard part of the food chain - and if the top of the food chain also has the ability to develop weapons that can wipe out whatever other bits of the ecosystem it feels like as part of this competition, then maybe there's a reason we don't hear from too many aliens. They're all dead!
Personally, I'd rather my tax money went on space research than megadeath hardware, or privatised transport companies that take billions of tax pounds a year to run a slow, deathtrap rail service and then have the nerve to use the subsidies to show a profit, or an increasingly corporatised health service that employs more administrators than doctors and nurses, or blatantly corrupt agricultural subsidies that pay farmers to grow *nothing* in order to fix prices, but I don't get to choose. (And nor do you, unless you're Gordon Brown.)
Maybe if Beagle 2 had actually had more government money put into it for power or payload or softer landing capabilities it wouldn't be lost in a crater on Mars right now.
But the British optimist in me hopes it *will* work, simply because when the odds are completely stacked against it, when everybody says a British invention can't *possibly* succeed... that's when it generally pulls through.
So godspeed, Beagle 2. Say hello to Mars for all of us - and preferably let us all hear Blur and see Damian Hirst while you're doing it.