"a friend of my mothers dog's daughthers neighbour at Microsoft once demonstrated a modded PSP to Bill Gates and showed off all of the interesting things that enabled."
That's not the way I heard it at all! It has nothing to do with mod chips and everything to do with chocolate chips.
This is the way it really happened.
Long before Microsoft actually wrote software, they were actually a fashionable department store. One day, a lady had lunch in the department store cafeteria during a long day shopping. For dessert, she had one of Microsoft's famous chocolate chip cookies, and was so delighted she asked if she could have the recipe. When she was turned down by the cafeteria manager, one Steve Ballmer, she didn't give up and asked if she could by the recipe. Ballmer thought a moment, and told her that she could buy the recipe "for two fifty".
Imagine her surprise a month later when she looked at her Microsoft charge card statement, and found that Microsoft had charged her, not $2.50 as she expected, but $250! She called their customer service and tried to have the charges voided, but was told that this was impossible, since she had already broken the seal on the recipe and clicked yes to the recipe EULA.
She was determined to get even, and released Microsoft's chocolate chip recipe under the GPL, so that others could share the recipe freely and share changes they had made to the recipe. At this point, Microsoft sued her until she was penniless and she committed suicide.
However, the story has a happy ending. Some FCCC developers (Free Chocolate Chip Cookie) were able to reverse engineer the recipe and released a completely clean room distro for chocolate chip cookies, based on the Chocolate Chiposix standard. So finally, now, we have a truly free (free as in cookie) recipe that anyone can redistribute.
Here it is. Please feel free to copy it and pass it along. If you bake any cookies and distribute them, you must make the recipe available to whoever eats your cookies, as per the GPL.
2 cups butter 4 cups flour 2 tsp. soda 2 cups sugar 5 cups blended oatmeal** 24 oz. chocolate chips 2 cups brown sugar 1 tsp. salt 1 8 oz. Hershey Bar (grated) 4 eggs 2 tsp. baking powder 3 cups chopped nuts (your choice) 2 tsp. vanilla
Cream the butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla; mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and soda. Add chocolate chips, Hershey Bar and nuts. Roll into balls and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees. Makes 112 cookies.
** measure oatmeal and blend in a blender to a fine powder.
Re:"Could this be lights out for Intel?"
on
IBM Opts for AMD
·
· Score: 1
Sorry to niggle on a slight detail, but it's my understanding that the IBM server chips are called Power, not PowerPC. PowerPC are special "cut down" versions of the Power CPUs for the desktop and workstations (and Apple servers, and the embedded market for Freescale).
No, the point is that someone (ExE122, Dan Nicolae Alexa, samzenpus? My money is on samzenpus.) asked a ridiculously retarded question at the end of the summary.
Re:Lights out for Intel?
on
IBM Opts for AMD
·
· Score: 1, Funny
As my faithful readers on slashdot are well aware, I cannot make head or tail of anything technological unless there is an automotive analogy of some kind (no matter how tortured) to explain things.
So here's how I see it:
AMD started to show signs of pulling ahead with the Athlon, and recently pulled ahead by at least a lap. However, Intel looks like it is about to regain that lap and pass AMD with its new family of CPUs. Many race fans, not just the usual Intel fans are excited about the prospects. Just as exciting will be the price cutting maneuvers both racers will attempt as they each attempt to carve out a bigger piece of the racing pie. (I told you it would be tortured. Damn, but I love mangled and mixed metaphors. They smell like . . . . victory!)
Bottom line, however, is that neither AMD nor Intel is out of the race. There's many more laps to go before we can even start to talk about a finish line and a checkered flag.
There. Makes perfect sense to me now. I tried to think in terms of a boxing analogy (It's early rounds yet, etc.), but I just couldn't get my mind wrapped around it.
Note that since I'm using Lotus Notes, I also find Outlook exiting:-)
Milksnort!
But you have a good point. For me, the end user/non programmer guy, there aren't any absolutely compelling applications that make me want to move to Linux from OS X. On the other hand, there are some apps that compel me to stay on OS X, and given Apple's track record, there will be more apps to come. While the concepts of OSS and GPLv2 are great and worthwhile and make me supportive in general, in actual usage there isn't anything that comes close to being a "killer app".
My perception (which I am sure a few people are about to tell me is wholly wrong) is that there isn't any exciting development in the end user application space. Where is the application that beats the pants off of Final Cut Pro, or even iMovie? Where is the amazing application that does something that nobody developing for OS X or Windows has even thought of yet?
I'm not seeing it yet. I think that someday I will, but not yet. In some ways, this parallels the situation with PC Gamers not interested in moving to OS X. Where are the compelling games? If they come out for OS X at all, it's usually months after the PC release (with some exceptions). The difference is that I think it's likelier that I'll eventually come across an application that eventually overcomes my resistance to Linux. Someday Torvalds will replace Jobs as my deity. =)
I'm not saying that it will be easy for such a project to materialize and mature. It's going to mean an awfully lot of hard work, probably without the same opportunities for financial rewards.
One last thought:
Maybe I'm wrong to be looking for a desktop application to win me over. Maybe it won't be that sort of beast. Aside from desktop usage, I use Google constantly throughout the day, not to mention many other linux based sites and services. In that loose sense, perhaps I am already a linux user and those "boring" pieces of software you use underly my everyday experience.
If ever a comment deserved +5 insightful, the one above is it.
Think of how it must chafe to go to a blog conference, maybe even be a featured speaker, and now almost everyone has a mac laptop just like you. Or worse, a newer model!
I think the hyperbole is even worse than that. Let me try:
If you eat vanilla ice cream, you're dooming your children and all future generations to only eating vanilla ice cream! That's why it's EEEEEEVIIIIL!!!! If you give in to the evil proprietary ice cream companies now, someday you'll only be able to taste ice cream, but you won't really be able to eat it! That's EEEEVVVVVIIIIILLLLLL!!!!!!
FWIW I've only read one novel by Cory Doctorow - Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - but it was sufficiently awful for me to decide to never read anything by him again
You actually made it all the way through? You must have the patience of a saint. At the time I tried to read it, I sincerely wanted to like it, seeing as how CD was taking a new approach, publishing it on teh intarweb. I'm not even sure at which point I gave up in disgust, but it was nowhere near even the halfway mark.
At one point Doctrow was interesting because he had a good eye for trends, and he'd point them out to others. Now, however, instead of pointing out a bandwagon, he's climbed aboard in hopes that he can further his career. There really is no other explanation for his disingenuous twisting of arguments and facts.
I should be able to make as many copies as I want...no one is hurt unless and until I distribute them.
Knock yourself out.
The problem is that you seemed to imply that it was within your rights to distribute copies. The poster with the hermaphroditic friend is claiming that distribution of copies without recompensing anyone is his moral right.
That's excellent, if not standard, advice. Along with your advice about situational awareness, it's worth pointing out that getting too drunk can severely impact ones S.A. and make one much more vulnerable prey. So don't get too boracho, sabes? =)
So, what were you doing in El Salvador, if I might be so bold? How long were you there?
Ah, but what happens when the turntable manufacturers go bankrupt? Or there are no more needles or cartridges? Why isn't Doctrow pointing out this threat? Why isn't he railing about 8 track tapes? Wax cylinders?
Answer: Because he's the slashdot equivalent of a MySpace attention whore. This whole article is more about Cory's self promotion than about him fighting any injustice.
This is, in my mind, the only legitimate complaint about DRM mixed with copyrights. The two are contradictory. It's not DRM that is bad, it's the DMCA that's the real problem. Focusing on the DRM is not going to be effective. Focusing on a terrible law will be effective. We need to change the law, people. Fighting DRM is quixotic at best.
Did you also notice how he links to a blog entry he wrote, but than he misrepresents what he originally wrote? He links to this, saying in the current story that it is about how Apple killed off the ROKR. But if you bother to read the actual blog entry, he points out that the main blame is supposedly with the cell carriers.
It's this sort of intellectually dishonest crap that turned me off of Doctrow a long time ago. He wants to be a Cringley (which some might argue is not a very lofty aspiration), but instead is firmly caught in a Dvorak transmogrification. I've lost all respect for Doctrow. Hey Cory, on the off chance you read this, I have one question for you: is that a real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
You don't even need to tie it to re-numeration to support the importance of the principle of copyright as an extension of property rights. Without copyright, the GPL would not only be toothless. It would be meaningless. There would be no mechanism whatsoever to insure that source was given back to the creator and the community when changes were made and distributed. This is the most important difference between the GPL and the BSD license or the GPL and the public domain.
Without copyright, everything that wasn't held as a secret would be public domain. And when you or I create some new code, we could either keep it a secret (or try as best we can) or we could "share", with no guarantees of reciprocation from others building and profiting on our ideas.
You've basically hit upon why I think that DRM is really not a long term issue and is not something about which we need to be overly fearful.
And the fact of the matter is that the underground is always more powerful than the media conglomerates when it comes to creation of culture. All that the media conglomerates can do is package, recycle, and attempt to assimilate underground culture. They've been very good at this up to now, and have made a lot of money doing so. It's not just that they have had the distribution channels sewed up. They've also had the marketing channels sewed up.
The internet changes all that. Not just the distribution, but also the marketing. We have an unprecedented access to underground creativity, just as the underground artists have unprecedented access to us. The media conglomerates have become a whole lot less relevant, and if they try to clench their sphincter of distribution in the misguided notion that they're controlling the teat of popular culture, they're going to find their customers have left for more hospitable mammary nourishment.
My point is that while the so called *AAs are trying to get the distribution genie back in the bottle, they can do nothing at all about the marketing genie. And without the marketing genie, their cultural monopoly is effectively over (tho' it might take a while for them to whither away). Kaput. They're paper tigers, and DRM is at best a set of paper fangs. Culture is not going to die from a paper cut.
Personally, I'm shifting more and more of my cultural consumption to non-cartel culture. I'm not completely avoiding the cartel, I'm just being much more selective when I consume their products. And I'm being a helluva lot more experimental in sampling the HUGE amount of non-cartel stuff out there.
What about "public performances" as a type of viewing? Meaning, a person screens a DVD that they have purchased to the general public, in effect becoming a movie theater (at least) temporarily (and regardless if admission is charged or not). It is my understanding that this falls outside of fair use and constitutes unlawful distribution. In this sense, at least, viewing would fall under the purview of copyright law.
As I understand it, similar rules apply to the playing of music in public places, whether recorded or performed. If a public venue has either copyrighted recorded music or copyrighted live music, the copyright holder should be re-numerated. For this reason, many clubs purchase blanket licenses that allow them to play copyrighted materials.
Straighten me out if I'm misunderstanding something here. Beyond your stated credentials, your posts generally show a keen insight into these matters, and I tend to at least listen to what you have to say, cap. I hope I'm not being difficult in pointing out what I see as an exception to your point about viewing. Thanks.
But act soon, things are changing fast and in 5 years it'll be unrecognizable. In that case you'll:
Miss Saigon.
Arrrrgh!! Bad! Bad!
Thank you for your excellent report on living in old Saigon. I don't speak Vietnamese, but it's one of those places I've long wished to visit. (I have a long time historical interest, especially military history.) Have you had any opportunities to travel in the countryside? How "open" is Vietnam?
Maybe I should buy a Lonely Planet guidebook, so I can day dream. I've seen some crazy videos of rush hour traffic: thousands of bicycles, motorcycles, and scooters going in all different directions but avoiding collision. Almost like four or more schools of fish swimming through each other. Anyway, big thanks for re-whetting my curiousity about Vietnam.
I'm not totally up on the ins and outs of this, but, with a few exceptions, travel to Cuba is illegal for U.S. citizens. I know a lot of people who manage to travel there just the same, usually routing through Cancun. If anybody tries this, make sure not to have your passport stamped! You cold face a hefty fine if caught!
Hey! Thanks for the info and clearing up my misperceptions.
I really need to check out all 50 states one of these years and clear up some of the stereotypes I hold. Either on a motorcycle or a motor home, depending on how old I am when I finally do it. =)
Incidentally, I've seen single cigs for sale at little dollar tiendas and liquor stores here in Los Angeles. I live in a pretty ethnic neighborhood, though. Mostly Latino.
Don't get me wrong about needing a huge city. If a town has enough of a cosmopolitan or cultural atmosphere, perhaps if it has one or more decent universities, I'm cool. There's a town in Mexico I really like: Guanajuato. It's got a population of around 78,000. It's also the site of a famous (famous in the Latin world) University and is the state capital. It's an old silver mining town, founded in 1554. Here's the Wikipedia article on it where I just grabbed those facts, if you care to learn anymore.
The reason I'm especially interested in Guanajuato is because a movie studio is being built in nearby San Miguel de Allende, and I happen to work in the movie business. I say, "is being built", I should say "is being planned". The land has been purchased, investors brought onboard (including Antonio Banderas, who is sort of the figurehead of this project), but I haven't heard anything further in a while. I was there for almost two months a couple of years ago and I loved it.
I'm also thinking about Mexico City (more commonly known as D.F. or "Day Effay"). Talk about a big city! It's bigger than New York! I've been offered work there by a guy that can get me into one of the Mexican set technicians' unions. I'm not sure if that's the way I want to go (been there, done that already).
No doubt about it! =) Although I did brave five summers in San Francisco. =P
I've got several places picked out. All have very mild climates year 'round, even during the rainy season. Not too hot, not too cold. It's seriously a high priority for me.
Slashdot Mirror
"a friend of my mothers dog's daughthers neighbour at Microsoft once demonstrated a modded PSP to Bill Gates and showed off all of the interesting things that enabled."
That's not the way I heard it at all! It has nothing to do with mod chips and everything to do with chocolate chips.
This is the way it really happened.
Long before Microsoft actually wrote software, they were actually a fashionable department store. One day, a lady had lunch in the department store cafeteria during a long day shopping. For dessert, she had one of Microsoft's famous chocolate chip cookies, and was so delighted she asked if she could have the recipe. When she was turned down by the cafeteria manager, one Steve Ballmer, she didn't give up and asked if she could by the recipe. Ballmer thought a moment, and told her that she could buy the recipe "for two fifty".
Imagine her surprise a month later when she looked at her Microsoft charge card statement, and found that Microsoft had charged her, not $2.50 as she expected, but $250! She called their customer service and tried to have the charges voided, but was told that this was impossible, since she had already broken the seal on the recipe and clicked yes to the recipe EULA.
She was determined to get even, and released Microsoft's chocolate chip recipe under the GPL, so that others could share the recipe freely and share changes they had made to the recipe. At this point, Microsoft sued her until she was penniless and she committed suicide.
However, the story has a happy ending. Some FCCC developers (Free Chocolate Chip Cookie) were able to reverse engineer the recipe and released a completely clean room distro for chocolate chip cookies, based on the Chocolate Chiposix standard. So finally, now, we have a truly free (free as in cookie) recipe that anyone can redistribute.
Here it is. Please feel free to copy it and pass it along. If you bake any cookies and distribute them, you must make the recipe available to whoever eats your cookies, as per the GPL.
2 cups butter
4 cups flour
2 tsp. soda
2 cups sugar
5 cups blended oatmeal**
24 oz. chocolate chips
2 cups brown sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 8 oz. Hershey Bar (grated)
4 eggs
2 tsp. baking powder
3 cups chopped nuts (your choice)
2 tsp. vanilla
Cream the butter and both sugars. Add eggs and vanilla; mix together with flour, oatmeal, salt, baking powder, and soda. Add chocolate chips, Hershey Bar and nuts. Roll into balls and place two inches apart on a cookie sheet. Bake for 10 minutes at 375 degrees. Makes 112 cookies.
** measure oatmeal and blend in a blender to a fine powder.
Are we trapped in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead , a play by Tom Stoppard?
Sorry to niggle on a slight detail, but it's my understanding that the IBM server chips are called Power, not PowerPC. PowerPC are special "cut down" versions of the Power CPUs for the desktop and workstations (and Apple servers, and the embedded market for Freescale).
No, the point is that someone (ExE122, Dan Nicolae Alexa, samzenpus? My money is on samzenpus.) asked a ridiculously retarded question at the end of the summary.
As my faithful readers on slashdot are well aware, I cannot make head or tail of anything technological unless there is an automotive analogy of some kind (no matter how tortured) to explain things.
So here's how I see it:
AMD started to show signs of pulling ahead with the Athlon, and recently pulled ahead by at least a lap. However, Intel looks like it is about to regain that lap and pass AMD with its new family of CPUs. Many race fans, not just the usual Intel fans are excited about the prospects. Just as exciting will be the price cutting maneuvers both racers will attempt as they each attempt to carve out a bigger piece of the racing pie. (I told you it would be tortured. Damn, but I love mangled and mixed metaphors. They smell like . . . . victory!)
Bottom line, however, is that neither AMD nor Intel is out of the race. There's many more laps to go before we can even start to talk about a finish line and a checkered flag.
There. Makes perfect sense to me now. I tried to think in terms of a boxing analogy (It's early rounds yet, etc.), but I just couldn't get my mind wrapped around it.
No, dude. The JayZ thing is better. Keep it!
Note that since I'm using Lotus Notes, I also find Outlook exiting :-)
Milksnort!
But you have a good point. For me, the end user/non programmer guy, there aren't any absolutely compelling applications that make me want to move to Linux from OS X. On the other hand, there are some apps that compel me to stay on OS X, and given Apple's track record, there will be more apps to come. While the concepts of OSS and GPLv2 are great and worthwhile and make me supportive in general, in actual usage there isn't anything that comes close to being a "killer app".
My perception (which I am sure a few people are about to tell me is wholly wrong) is that there isn't any exciting development in the end user application space. Where is the application that beats the pants off of Final Cut Pro, or even iMovie? Where is the amazing application that does something that nobody developing for OS X or Windows has even thought of yet?
I'm not seeing it yet. I think that someday I will, but not yet. In some ways, this parallels the situation with PC Gamers not interested in moving to OS X. Where are the compelling games? If they come out for OS X at all, it's usually months after the PC release (with some exceptions). The difference is that I think it's likelier that I'll eventually come across an application that eventually overcomes my resistance to Linux. Someday Torvalds will replace Jobs as my deity. =)
I'm not saying that it will be easy for such a project to materialize and mature. It's going to mean an awfully lot of hard work, probably without the same opportunities for financial rewards.
One last thought:
Maybe I'm wrong to be looking for a desktop application to win me over. Maybe it won't be that sort of beast. Aside from desktop usage, I use Google constantly throughout the day, not to mention many other linux based sites and services. In that loose sense, perhaps I am already a linux user and those "boring" pieces of software you use underly my everyday experience.
first: strip out the /s and *s.
second: &T = @
third: insert the dot before the com.
make sense now?
Have you contacted Apple Customer Support, told them honesty what happened, and then seen if they could help you sort it out?
If ever a comment deserved +5 insightful, the one above is it.
Think of how it must chafe to go to a blog conference, maybe even be a featured speaker, and now almost everyone has a mac laptop just like you. Or worse, a newer model!
I think the hyperbole is even worse than that. Let me try:
If you eat vanilla ice cream, you're dooming your children and all future generations to only eating vanilla ice cream! That's why it's EEEEEEVIIIIL!!!! If you give in to the evil proprietary ice cream companies now, someday you'll only be able to taste ice cream, but you won't really be able to eat it! That's EEEEVVVVVIIIIILLLLLL!!!!!!
OK, I think I went too far. . .
=)
FWIW I've only read one novel by Cory Doctorow - Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom - but it was sufficiently awful for me to decide to never read anything by him again
You actually made it all the way through? You must have the patience of a saint. At the time I tried to read it, I sincerely wanted to like it, seeing as how CD was taking a new approach, publishing it on teh intarweb. I'm not even sure at which point I gave up in disgust, but it was nowhere near even the halfway mark.
At one point Doctrow was interesting because he had a good eye for trends, and he'd point them out to others. Now, however, instead of pointing out a bandwagon, he's climbed aboard in hopes that he can further his career. There really is no other explanation for his disingenuous twisting of arguments and facts.
I should be able to make as many copies as I want...no one is hurt unless and until I distribute them.
Knock yourself out.
The problem is that you seemed to imply that it was within your rights to distribute copies. The poster with the hermaphroditic friend is claiming that distribution of copies without recompensing anyone is his moral right.
That's excellent, if not standard, advice. Along with your advice about situational awareness, it's worth pointing out that getting too drunk can severely impact ones S.A. and make one much more vulnerable prey. So don't get too boracho, sabes? =)
So, what were you doing in El Salvador, if I might be so bold? How long were you there?
Ah, but what happens when the turntable manufacturers go bankrupt? Or there are no more needles or cartridges? Why isn't Doctrow pointing out this threat? Why isn't he railing about 8 track tapes? Wax cylinders?
Answer: Because he's the slashdot equivalent of a MySpace attention whore. This whole article is more about Cory's self promotion than about him fighting any injustice.
This is, in my mind, the only legitimate complaint about DRM mixed with copyrights. The two are contradictory. It's not DRM that is bad, it's the DMCA that's the real problem. Focusing on the DRM is not going to be effective. Focusing on a terrible law will be effective. We need to change the law, people. Fighting DRM is quixotic at best.
Did you also notice how he links to a blog entry he wrote, but than he misrepresents what he originally wrote? He links to this, saying in the current story that it is about how Apple killed off the ROKR. But if you bother to read the actual blog entry, he points out that the main blame is supposedly with the cell carriers.
It's this sort of intellectually dishonest crap that turned me off of Doctrow a long time ago. He wants to be a Cringley (which some might argue is not a very lofty aspiration), but instead is firmly caught in a Dvorak transmogrification. I've lost all respect for Doctrow. Hey Cory, on the off chance you read this, I have one question for you: is that a real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
You don't even need to tie it to re-numeration to support the importance of the principle of copyright as an extension of property rights. Without copyright, the GPL would not only be toothless. It would be meaningless. There would be no mechanism whatsoever to insure that source was given back to the creator and the community when changes were made and distributed. This is the most important difference between the GPL and the BSD license or the GPL and the public domain.
Without copyright, everything that wasn't held as a secret would be public domain. And when you or I create some new code, we could either keep it a secret (or try as best we can) or we could "share", with no guarantees of reciprocation from others building and profiting on our ideas.
You've basically hit upon why I think that DRM is really not a long term issue and is not something about which we need to be overly fearful.
And the fact of the matter is that the underground is always more powerful than the media conglomerates when it comes to creation of culture. All that the media conglomerates can do is package, recycle, and attempt to assimilate underground culture. They've been very good at this up to now, and have made a lot of money doing so. It's not just that they have had the distribution channels sewed up. They've also had the marketing channels sewed up.
The internet changes all that. Not just the distribution, but also the marketing. We have an unprecedented access to underground creativity, just as the underground artists have unprecedented access to us. The media conglomerates have become a whole lot less relevant, and if they try to clench their sphincter of distribution in the misguided notion that they're controlling the teat of popular culture, they're going to find their customers have left for more hospitable mammary nourishment.
My point is that while the so called *AAs are trying to get the distribution genie back in the bottle, they can do nothing at all about the marketing genie. And without the marketing genie, their cultural monopoly is effectively over (tho' it might take a while for them to whither away). Kaput. They're paper tigers, and DRM is at best a set of paper fangs. Culture is not going to die from a paper cut.
Personally, I'm shifting more and more of my cultural consumption to non-cartel culture. I'm not completely avoiding the cartel, I'm just being much more selective when I consume their products. And I'm being a helluva lot more experimental in sampling the HUGE amount of non-cartel stuff out there.
What about "public performances" as a type of viewing? Meaning, a person screens a DVD that they have purchased to the general public, in effect becoming a movie theater (at least) temporarily (and regardless if admission is charged or not). It is my understanding that this falls outside of fair use and constitutes unlawful distribution. In this sense, at least, viewing would fall under the purview of copyright law.
As I understand it, similar rules apply to the playing of music in public places, whether recorded or performed. If a public venue has either copyrighted recorded music or copyrighted live music, the copyright holder should be re-numerated. For this reason, many clubs purchase blanket licenses that allow them to play copyrighted materials.
Straighten me out if I'm misunderstanding something here. Beyond your stated credentials, your posts generally show a keen insight into these matters, and I tend to at least listen to what you have to say, cap. I hope I'm not being difficult in pointing out what I see as an exception to your point about viewing. Thanks.
Arrrrgh!! Bad! Bad!
Thank you for your excellent report on living in old Saigon. I don't speak Vietnamese, but it's one of those places I've long wished to visit. (I have a long time historical interest, especially military history.) Have you had any opportunities to travel in the countryside? How "open" is Vietnam?
Maybe I should buy a Lonely Planet guidebook, so I can day dream. I've seen some crazy videos of rush hour traffic: thousands of bicycles, motorcycles, and scooters going in all different directions but avoiding collision. Almost like four or more schools of fish swimming through each other. Anyway, big thanks for re-whetting my curiousity about Vietnam.
I'm not totally up on the ins and outs of this, but, with a few exceptions, travel to Cuba is illegal for U.S. citizens. I know a lot of people who manage to travel there just the same, usually routing through Cancun. If anybody tries this, make sure not to have your passport stamped! You cold face a hefty fine if caught!
Hey! Thanks for the info and clearing up my misperceptions.
I really need to check out all 50 states one of these years and clear up some of the stereotypes I hold. Either on a motorcycle or a motor home, depending on how old I am when I finally do it. =)
Have you ever read Maddox's Idaho Rant?
Incidentally, I've seen single cigs for sale at little dollar tiendas and liquor stores here in Los Angeles. I live in a pretty ethnic neighborhood, though. Mostly Latino.
Don't get me wrong about needing a huge city. If a town has enough of a cosmopolitan or cultural atmosphere, perhaps if it has one or more decent universities, I'm cool. There's a town in Mexico I really like: Guanajuato. It's got a population of around 78,000. It's also the site of a famous (famous in the Latin world) University and is the state capital. It's an old silver mining town, founded in 1554. Here's the Wikipedia article on it where I just grabbed those facts, if you care to learn anymore.
The reason I'm especially interested in Guanajuato is because a movie studio is being built in nearby San Miguel de Allende, and I happen to work in the movie business. I say, "is being built", I should say "is being planned". The land has been purchased, investors brought onboard (including Antonio Banderas, who is sort of the figurehead of this project), but I haven't heard anything further in a while. I was there for almost two months a couple of years ago and I loved it.
I'm also thinking about Mexico City (more commonly known as D.F. or "Day Effay"). Talk about a big city! It's bigger than New York! I've been offered work there by a guy that can get me into one of the Mexican set technicians' unions. I'm not sure if that's the way I want to go (been there, done that already).
No doubt about it! =) Although I did brave five summers in San Francisco. =P
I've got several places picked out. All have very mild climates year 'round, even during the rainy season. Not too hot, not too cold. It's seriously a high priority for me.