1. Send only men and line the shuttle's inner hull with Playboy, Hustler, and Bodacious TaTas magazines. Each person gets 30 minutes of "private time" in the cargo bay a day.
2. Send only women, and web cams all over the place. Whether they "get along" or cat-fight the whole time, NASA would be able to fund the entire mission in Pay-Per-View revenue.
3. Just get three random astronauts. Also with web cams everywhere. Sell it to MTV as "The Real World: Mars". -- "This is the true story, of three strangers, picked to live in a space shuttle, work together and have their lives taped, to find out what happens, when people stop being polite, and start getting real. The Real World."
I've had my Yahoo! account disappearing, my mails disappearing etc. I guess when you've paid for the service (some of us Pro users) and have put in several years of effort uploading thousands of photographs (a lot of the pro users in Flickr are professional photographers), you are a little worried about your photos disappearing overnight.
So you're worried about Yahoo! losing your account/photos, but you're not worried about Flickr losing your account/photos?
Flickr is a great way to get your photos out to the world, but one could only hope that you would have originals stored somewhere else. My ex- is a graphic artist/marketing specialist. Original photos and ad campaigns are saved in protective sleeves and stored elsewhere. Digital copies are on her local computer, the server she hosts them on, and copies are regularly burnt to CD/DVD. If the client somehow loses anything (or in your case, "disappearing from Yahoo/Flickr", it can be easily replaced in minutes. And if Flickr is also your only portfolio, I would recommend getting a cheap host and creating your own online portfolio. Use Flickr for displaying everything, and your personal website for showing off the best stuff.
I guess it boils down to the fact that as paying customers, we thought our opinions would have a say in the matter.
Don't confusing being a stakeholder with a shareholder. Paying customers are merely stakeholders. You have money invested but it does not give you any more say then the next guy other than you can stop giving them money and take your business elsewhere. I fully agree that any business should listen to ALL opinions. Talk to the paying customers and find out why they pay and how to get them to continue paying. Talk to the people that aren't customers and find out why they aren't willing to pay for the product.
I have no doubt that your rant was heard, but someone, somewhere had a more compelling argument. Like the IT Department (a shareholder) complaining about having to maintain two different authentication measures; Flickr login vs. Yahoo! accounts.
Truth is a very subjective thing. If I might cite a reference.. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's "Jesus Christ Superstar."
Pontius Pilate: Then you are a king. Jesus: It's you that say I am. I look for truth, and find that I get damned. Pontius Pilate: And what is 'truth'? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?
Unfortunately, I can't track down a concrete reference to another appropriate quote, "History is often written by the winner." It, and its variations, have been attributed to the likes of Hitler, Napoleon, Churchill, and Orwell.
While citing Wikipedia is like citing the bathroom wall, even todays history books don't give you the whole story; the whole truth.
In the simplest term... It can be explained and understood by your mother. No CLI, no cryptic repository names, no messing with dependencies.
For the average Linux geek, it's just a one-step contrivance. For the rest of the world, it's a warehouse of software that is easy to navigate and easier to install.
I have not tried it out so I can't give you an honest answer about it's ability. I didn't find that program until after I manually deleted it all manually.
The fact that everyone seems to forget/ignore is that the cost of installing Windows is not a big factor when pricing out a system.
Dell DOES offer machines without Windows. However they end up costing MORE than the version with Windows. Why is this? Because along with installing Windows XP (or Vista soon) they install a lot of crapware. RealPlayer, MusicMatch, AOL, and a host of others are being installed in that system that's built "Just for you".
And each one of those companies pay Dell every time they are included on your system. Just like you'll see computers that are $299, after mail-in rebate. That mail-in rebate is you have to sign-up for 2-years of CompuServe and they'll help pay for your computer. You can buy a computer without Windows and without all this extra crap but you're going to pay more for it because these other companies are giving a kickback.
There is a program out there called "The PC Decrapifier". Here is a list of all the "extras" that help lower the cost of your Dell system.
QuickBooks Trial
NetZero Installers
Earthlink Setup Files
Corel Photo Album 6
Tiscali Internet
Wanadoo Europe Installer
Get High Speed Internet!
Internet Service Offers Launcher
Dell Search Assistant
Norton Ghost 10.0
Symantec Live Update
MS Plus Photo Story 2LE
MS Plus Digital Media Installer
McAffee
Norton Internet Security
Google Desktop
Google Toolbar
AOL US
AOL UK
MusicMatch Jukebox
MusicMatch Music Services
Wild Tangent Games
Norton AntiVirus 2005
Norton Security Center
Norton AntiSpam
PC-cillin Internet Security 12
Corel Snapfire Plus SE
Yahoo! Music Jukebox
Vongo
Desktop Icons
Startup Menu Items
Corel WordPerfect
Roxio RecordNow
Sonic DLA
Sonic Update Manager
Sonic RecordNow Audio
Sonic RecordNow Copy
Roxio MyDVD LE
Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003
Quicken 2006
So what does this all mean? To save money, buy the PC *with* Windows, then follow this guys advice to return the OS. Then send a thank you to Corel, Sonic, Roxio, Real, Google, McAfee, Symantec, and AOL for helping you buy the Linux system you really wanted in the first place.
The life blood of any MMORPG is adding new content. Look at the original EverQuest; seems like they pump out an expansion every 6 months so there is some new quest to solve or item to gain.
Now you want to trust the content to programming geeks? Have you SEEN the state of the average fan fic?
Talk about Dork Ex Machina.
Every quest will involve having to visit the 99th level Wizard/Paladin/Thief in their trans-dimensional fortress who is surrounded with topless wenches while he watches a death match between Picard and Kirk. Oh, and Sam and Frodo are "doing it" in the next room.
Does this mean that we can take the laws against spam and spammers and apply them to spim and spimmers?
I had to turn off ICQ long ago as I was getting three times more offers for "Hot Russian Womans" and "Free Microsoft Downloads" than I was getting legitimate communications.
Time to log in again and start accepting "friends" so I can sue them for each "electronic correspondence".
"Yeah, see, my name is Joe Blow and I was trying to find my sister's MySpace page. Her name is Lolita. I know she used to work at a race track so I did a search for her: Lolita Blow Job Horses. What's so wrong with that? Now give me my share of the settlement."
He actually made the Infinite Improbability Drive! He just left a Brownian motion producer in the microwave when he turned it on creating a Really Hot cup of tea.
It's a little known bit of trivia, but when Mel Brooks went to George Lucas asking permission to make the parody (not required but all the cool guys do it) George said sure, on one condition: You can't make any Spaceballs merchandise. Why? Because as pointed out in the movie, "Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made." George didn't want to lose out on a Star Wars lightsaber sale for a Spaceballs-the lightsaber sale.
That's why it's so heavily referenced in the movie; Spaceballs-the T-shirt, Spaceballs-the Coloring Book, Spaceballs-the flame thrower, Spaceballs-the towel, Spaceballs-the etc. Because they can't (couldn't) actually make a single item.
So does that same limitation exist? Could "Spaceballs-the animated series" be considered merchandising? Or did they get a new deal for parodying "Star Wars, the animated series" without limitations?
Speed - Accessing web email can be slow enough as is--Add in the 'fancy' interface and it's a crawl. It seems even slower when viewing HTML emails. I email myself notes, directions, to do lists, etc. I want to be able to just log in quick, view, and go. With the new interface, it's butting heads with my ADD nature. Login.. wait.. Click.. wait.. Click.. wait.. Grumble.. Wait..
Scrolling - Scrolling any list--mail, RSS feeds, folders, etc.--jump and refresh badly. Scrolling up and down on a long list (Like a full Inbox) stutters, blanks, stumbles, forgets it's place, and otherwise acts like a/.'er asking a girl out.
Useless Features - Too much glitz, not enough function. Do I really need an RSS reader in my email when I already have that in my 'My Yahoo!'?
RSS Reader - Speaking of which, the RSS reader is TIED to the feeds on the 'My Yahoo!' pages. If you add a feed in the mail, it adds the feed to the 'My Y!' pages; deletion works the same. There is no way to have a feed on one and not on the other. A.K.A. wasted resources through duplication.
Use Of Real Estate - I'd prefer to have more control of the layout. Having 1/5th of the screen always dedicated to ad space is rather annoying. Why can't they be happy with the text ads on the left and the big space on the "Home" tab? I have the AdBlock extension so there is just a big blank space on the right. Also, I don't see a need for tabbed email browsing but there is no way to turn it off, so I'm always losing that space too. Minor, but it's there.
Misc - I'm curious about this one. In the preview article it looked like the calendar was also updated, yet when I click on the calendar link (and the Notepad link for that matter) it opens a new browser window with the old style calendar. Is this a Firefox vs IE issue? A setting I missed? Or they just don't like me any more?
I'll give it a few more days to see if it can change my mind, but I think this weekend I'll be switching back to the tried-and-true mail interface.
Dell actually has it in their best interest NOT to put Linux on their desktop, and it also won't knock money off the price tag. In fact it would probably RAISE the prices. Let's look at this, shall we?
With only one OS installed, they only have to deal with one support contract. If they start installing Linux they'll need to contract out support for every flavor they install. But what flavor would they install? FreeBSD? Redhat? Debian? If they choose one it will alienate the others ("I don't want a Fedora computer, I want a Ubuntu computer!"). If they HAD to install a distro my money is on Linspire. Why? Because they're one of the few companies that have the marketing team aimed at selling pre-installed Linspire computers, not just software in a box. Ma and Pas Desktop User don't buy an OS, they buy a computer with an OS installed... Like a Dell.
Dell buys Windows for pennies on the dollar ($20 or less per copy). So by switching to a Linux distro the consumer would only save a few of those dollars. HOWEVER, that also means that AOL, REAL, Earthlink, Corel, some crappy DVD player, and other companies could not put their software on your brand new PC. They pay Dell a lot of money to have those things pre-installed and displayed on "your" desktop. Without those subsidies bringing down the cost, you end up spending more for buying a computer with a "free" operating system.
So while Linux is getting to the point where Grandma can surf the web and email recipes back and forth, it's still going to be a hard sell for a MAJOR manufacturer to pre-install it for the public on a consistent basis.
It appears that the Recording Industry has taken to biological weapons.
As defined in Wikipedia, "Biological warfare, also known as germ warfare, is the use of any organism (bacteria, virus or other disease-causing organism) or toxin found in nature, as a weapon of war. It is meant to incapacitate or kill an adversary."
Does the colonies of corp lawyers qualify as a bacteria, virus or other disease-causing organism? I think we need to tell the President about this. He'd love to hear that we really did find a weapon of mass destruction.
For all projects just write down things like "Project Bluebird", "Project Goofy Dog", and "Project New Orleans". When they ask, claim that due to NDA's you have signed with other clients you are not allowed to discuss the nature of these projects. How can they complain?
"That's not fair! We want you to tell us all your secrets but you're not allowed to tell anyone else about our stuff because it's super extra secret."
Slashdot Mirror
1. Send only men and line the shuttle's inner hull with Playboy, Hustler, and Bodacious TaTas magazines. Each person gets 30 minutes of "private time" in the cargo bay a day.
2. Send only women, and web cams all over the place. Whether they "get along" or cat-fight the whole time, NASA would be able to fund the entire mission in Pay-Per-View revenue.
3. Just get three random astronauts. Also with web cams everywhere. Sell it to MTV as "The Real World: Mars". -- "This is the true story, of three strangers, picked to live in a space shuttle, work together and have their lives taped, to find out what happens, when people stop being polite, and start getting real. The Real World."
So you're worried about Yahoo! losing your account/photos, but you're not worried about Flickr losing your account/photos?
Flickr is a great way to get your photos out to the world, but one could only hope that you would have originals stored somewhere else. My ex- is a graphic artist/marketing specialist. Original photos and ad campaigns are saved in protective sleeves and stored elsewhere. Digital copies are on her local computer, the server she hosts them on, and copies are regularly burnt to CD/DVD. If the client somehow loses anything (or in your case, "disappearing from Yahoo/Flickr", it can be easily replaced in minutes. And if Flickr is also your only portfolio, I would recommend getting a cheap host and creating your own online portfolio. Use Flickr for displaying everything, and your personal website for showing off the best stuff.
I guess it boils down to the fact that as paying customers, we thought our opinions would have a say in the matter.Don't confusing being a stakeholder with a shareholder. Paying customers are merely stakeholders. You have money invested but it does not give you any more say then the next guy other than you can stop giving them money and take your business elsewhere. I fully agree that any business should listen to ALL opinions. Talk to the paying customers and find out why they pay and how to get them to continue paying. Talk to the people that aren't customers and find out why they aren't willing to pay for the product.
I have no doubt that your rant was heard, but someone, somewhere had a more compelling argument. Like the IT Department (a shareholder) complaining about having to maintain two different authentication measures; Flickr login vs. Yahoo! accounts.
I'm selling this scrap of paper. Now, it just so happens that written on the back of this paper is...
...An account name and password. I wonder if on that account is a level 60 warlock full of gear.
...coordinates inside of a MMORPG and a time. Maybe someone will be giving away uber items at this mystery location.
...coordinates inside of a MMORPG and a time. Maybe someone will be handing out zeny at this mystery location.
See, I'm not using eBay to sell virtual good. I'm using eBay to fuel my own personal ARG
Truth is a very subjective thing. If I might cite a reference.. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's "Jesus Christ Superstar."
Pontius Pilate: Then you are a king.
Jesus: It's you that say I am. I look for truth, and find that I get damned.
Pontius Pilate: And what is 'truth'? Is truth unchanging law? We both have truths. Are mine the same as yours?
Unfortunately, I can't track down a concrete reference to another appropriate quote, "History is often written by the winner." It, and its variations, have been attributed to the likes of Hitler, Napoleon, Churchill, and Orwell.
While citing Wikipedia is like citing the bathroom wall, even todays history books don't give you the whole story; the whole truth.
In the simplest term... It can be explained and understood by your mother. No CLI, no cryptic repository names, no messing with dependencies.
For the average Linux geek, it's just a one-step contrivance. For the rest of the world, it's a warehouse of software that is easy to navigate and easier to install.
I have not tried it out so I can't give you an honest answer about it's ability. I didn't find that program until after I manually deleted it all manually.
The fact that everyone seems to forget/ignore is that the cost of installing Windows is not a big factor when pricing out a system.
Dell DOES offer machines without Windows. However they end up costing MORE than the version with Windows. Why is this? Because along with installing Windows XP (or Vista soon) they install a lot of crapware. RealPlayer, MusicMatch, AOL, and a host of others are being installed in that system that's built "Just for you".
And each one of those companies pay Dell every time they are included on your system. Just like you'll see computers that are $299, after mail-in rebate. That mail-in rebate is you have to sign-up for 2-years of CompuServe and they'll help pay for your computer. You can buy a computer without Windows and without all this extra crap but you're going to pay more for it because these other companies are giving a kickback.
There is a program out there called "The PC Decrapifier". Here is a list of all the "extras" that help lower the cost of your Dell system.
So what does this all mean? To save money, buy the PC *with* Windows, then follow this guys advice to return the OS. Then send a thank you to Corel, Sonic, Roxio, Real, Google, McAfee, Symantec, and AOL for helping you buy the Linux system you really wanted in the first place.
The life blood of any MMORPG is adding new content. Look at the original EverQuest; seems like they pump out an expansion every 6 months so there is some new quest to solve or item to gain.
Now you want to trust the content to programming geeks? Have you SEEN the state of the average fan fic?
Talk about Dork Ex Machina.
Every quest will involve having to visit the 99th level Wizard/Paladin/Thief in their trans-dimensional fortress who is surrounded with topless wenches while he watches a death match between Picard and Kirk. Oh, and Sam and Frodo are "doing it" in the next room.
Does this mean that we can take the laws against spam and spammers and apply them to spim and spimmers?
I had to turn off ICQ long ago as I was getting three times more offers for "Hot Russian Womans" and "Free Microsoft Downloads" than I was getting legitimate communications.
Time to log in again and start accepting "friends" so I can sue them for each "electronic correspondence".
"Yeah, see, my name is Joe Blow and I was trying to find my sister's MySpace page. Her name is Lolita. I know she used to work at a race track so I did a search for her: Lolita Blow Job Horses. What's so wrong with that? Now give me my share of the settlement."
He actually made the Infinite Improbability Drive! He just left a Brownian motion producer in the microwave when he turned it on creating a Really Hot cup of tea.
They use a double encryption method.
All data is run through a ROT13 encryption method twice.
It's a little known bit of trivia, but when Mel Brooks went to George Lucas asking permission to make the parody (not required but all the cool guys do it) George said sure, on one condition: You can't make any Spaceballs merchandise. Why? Because as pointed out in the movie, "Merchandising, merchandising, where the real money from the movie is made." George didn't want to lose out on a Star Wars lightsaber sale for a Spaceballs-the lightsaber sale.
That's why it's so heavily referenced in the movie; Spaceballs-the T-shirt, Spaceballs-the Coloring Book, Spaceballs-the flame thrower, Spaceballs-the towel, Spaceballs-the etc. Because they can't (couldn't) actually make a single item.
So does that same limitation exist? Could "Spaceballs-the animated series" be considered merchandising? Or did they get a new deal for parodying "Star Wars, the animated series" without limitations?
It's been discovered that the contents of a mini-bar can be used to open up a politician.
Film at 11
- Speed - Accessing web email can be slow enough as is--Add in the 'fancy' interface and it's a crawl. It seems even slower when viewing HTML emails. I email myself notes, directions, to do lists, etc. I want to be able to just log in quick, view, and go. With the new interface, it's butting heads with my ADD nature. Login.. wait.. Click.. wait.. Click.. wait.. Grumble.. Wait..
- Scrolling - Scrolling any list--mail, RSS feeds, folders, etc.--jump and refresh badly. Scrolling up and down on a long list (Like a full Inbox) stutters, blanks, stumbles, forgets it's place, and otherwise acts like a
/.'er asking a girl out.
- Useless Features - Too much glitz, not enough function. Do I really need an RSS reader in my email when I already have that in my 'My Yahoo!'?
- RSS Reader - Speaking of which, the RSS reader is TIED to the feeds on the 'My Yahoo!' pages. If you add a feed in the mail, it adds the feed to the 'My Y!' pages; deletion works the same. There is no way to have a feed on one and not on the other. A.K.A. wasted resources through duplication.
- Use Of Real Estate - I'd prefer to have more control of the layout. Having 1/5th of the screen always dedicated to ad space is rather annoying. Why can't they be happy with the text ads on the left and the big space on the "Home" tab? I have the AdBlock extension so there is just a big blank space on the right. Also, I don't see a need for tabbed email browsing but there is no way to turn it off, so I'm always losing that space too. Minor, but it's there.
- Misc - I'm curious about this one. In the preview article it looked like the calendar was also updated, yet when I click on the calendar link (and the Notepad link for that matter) it opens a new browser window with the old style calendar. Is this a Firefox vs IE issue? A setting I missed? Or they just don't like me any more?
I'll give it a few more days to see if it can change my mind, but I think this weekend I'll be switching back to the tried-and-true mail interface.Dell actually has it in their best interest NOT to put Linux on their desktop, and it also won't knock money off the price tag. In fact it would probably RAISE the prices. Let's look at this, shall we?
With only one OS installed, they only have to deal with one support contract. If they start installing Linux they'll need to contract out support for every flavor they install. But what flavor would they install? FreeBSD? Redhat? Debian? If they choose one it will alienate the others ("I don't want a Fedora computer, I want a Ubuntu computer!"). If they HAD to install a distro my money is on Linspire. Why? Because they're one of the few companies that have the marketing team aimed at selling pre-installed Linspire computers, not just software in a box. Ma and Pas Desktop User don't buy an OS, they buy a computer with an OS installed... Like a Dell.
Dell buys Windows for pennies on the dollar ($20 or less per copy). So by switching to a Linux distro the consumer would only save a few of those dollars. HOWEVER, that also means that AOL, REAL, Earthlink, Corel, some crappy DVD player, and other companies could not put their software on your brand new PC. They pay Dell a lot of money to have those things pre-installed and displayed on "your" desktop. Without those subsidies bringing down the cost, you end up spending more for buying a computer with a "free" operating system.
So while Linux is getting to the point where Grandma can surf the web and email recipes back and forth, it's still going to be a hard sell for a MAJOR manufacturer to pre-install it for the public on a consistent basis.
It appears that the Recording Industry has taken to biological weapons.
As defined in Wikipedia, "Biological warfare, also known as germ warfare, is the use of any organism (bacteria, virus or other disease-causing organism) or toxin found in nature, as a weapon of war. It is meant to incapacitate or kill an adversary."
Does the colonies of corp lawyers qualify as a bacteria, virus or other disease-causing organism? I think we need to tell the President about this. He'd love to hear that we really did find a weapon of mass destruction.
For all projects just write down things like "Project Bluebird", "Project Goofy Dog", and "Project New Orleans". When they ask, claim that due to NDA's you have signed with other clients you are not allowed to discuss the nature of these projects. How can they complain?
"That's not fair! We want you to tell us all your secrets but you're not allowed to tell anyone else about our stuff because it's super extra secret."