Palin must have searched pretty hard, and paid top dollar, to find "some religious guy" with whom to debate heatedly. Every one that I knew or saw quoted appreciated Brian for the brilliant satire it was.
Besides, that was nearly a quarter century ago. These days, it's the anti-religious guys who get their panties in a bunch over movies they haven't seen or don't understand. Amazing how times change, ennit?
Aren't computer technicians already held in about the same regard as mechanics?
Not in my neck of the woods (metro NY). The general feeling I get is that you can go outside to the corner, swing a baseball bat over your head, and hit three (over)qualified compter techs. A good car mechanic, however... that's pure gold.
I suspect this may be regional, and perhaps even graphable, some kind of NASCAR:: IT Sector:: Urban:: Not-Quite-So-Urban inverse ratio algorithm thingee.
I have been using PocketMusic from PocketMind on my Samsung i700 PocketPC/Phone for a while, and it's amazing. I have zero iPod envy (I can't balance a budget, get e-mail, web surf, or make a call on an iPod, but I can play my Oggs on my PocketPC -- even to the extent of dagging them from my Linux box).
I mean this to take nothing away from the exquisitely designed, iPod, but I no longer have the desite to possess a single specialized device for every eFunction in my life. Sure, I sacrifice some sizzle sans iPod, some corporate penis-size sans blackberry, and some cuteness sans the postage stamp-sized phone du jour, but I love just having it *ALL* on my Samsung.
The first thing I thought of when I read the article was, "Great. Instead of Big Brother we now have to worry about his zillions of little siblings."
Funny, the first thing I thought of when I read about this was, "I wonder how much I would have to pay Ron Jeremy to wear it for a week, and what subsequent margins could I expect when I later auctioned it on e-bay?"
I suspect you and I are very different types of people...
iTunes and it's imitators work. They are popular, past any analyst's imagining. What possible percentage is there for the RIAA to climb back up atop that great hill they only recently cleared just to piss in the well?
You know as well as I that for every existing P2P client system that goes legit, two more "rogue" systems will pop up because "Music Must Be Free!"
Through intense marketing, clever user interfaces, relatively lax DRM, and brutal scare tactics and legislative knuckle-dusting, the RIAA has begun to put the genie back in the bottle. You think they're ging to throw in with their ol' friends the EFF now? Sh'yeah...
"The Science of Superheroes," (Wiley Books 2002) by Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg (introduction by Dean Koontz). Same duo who brought you "The Computers of Star Trek." Weinberg also wrote "Cable" for Marvel.
But seriously... Congress is concerned over the Jackson incident because laws they passed establishing guidelines for the content using the airwaves owned by the public were ignored. It's correct for them to be concerned. Since it is likely that the incident was pre-meditated by at least one MTV producer and Jackson herself to create a pocket-lining "buzz," it's correct for Congress to be more than a little bit annoyed as well.
Sci-Fi Channel is on cable. The restrictions relating to the public airwaves do not apply to them. However, they are smart enough to realize that the demographic for a Battlestar Galactica revival is not the same as "Queer as Folk" or "The Sopranos" and will most certainly produce it no harder than a PG. The perception is that the "adults" won't be watching it and that the "kids" won't be allowed to watch it if it contained nudity.
I have a long memory, and have been working with Disney professionally on-and-off for over 20 years. I remember Disney before Pixar, their ups and downs. Mostly ups. Sure, the Disney/Pixar relationship was great for both organizations, and a more cynical person could easily argue that Pixar, despite their obvious talents, needed Disney *then* more than Disney needs Pixar *now.* There are other Pixars "out there" just waiting to be taken under a big corp's wing (the MS/Bungie deal come to mind immediately, I don't know why...), and both EisnerCo and GatesCo have demonstrated they know how to find them. Sure, Pixar has raised the bar, and my hat's off to them, but the animation bar now rises at an almost exponential rate annually due as much to the tearing down of tech barriers as to the pushing of creative envelopes. Content is of course still "king," but in no field is that crown held on so uneasy a head as it is in animation.
As for the whole DRM bugaboo, I gotta tell you, most people don't care. In fact, most geeks don't care. Should they? Sure, but it's a topic for a different conversation. Disney will be making and distributing -- and MS will be securing -- entertainment for the mass populace. If everybody who sez they'll never buy a DRM'd download REALLY never buys a DRM'd download, it will still be less than a rounding error on the Disney/MS titan's ledger.
Am I the only one here who thinks the not-so-clever-anymore substitution of "S" for "$" is the kind of thing one would expect from a know-it-all teenager, and not someone with relatively strong associations with the rebuilding of a nation's IT infrastructure?
No, you're not alone. Based upon what I know and have seen of the "new Western pioneers" in Iraq I had a certain picture of the interviewee in my mind, and then when I read the "M$" quote I immediately shaved off about 20 years from my mental profile.
Those who object shouldn't enable a system by putting up with it. Find an alternative and patronize that instead.
It's called a newsstand, Bunky. And it's outside, where it's cold, and it costs 50 cents and you get a whole bunch of stories you don't want to read and your hands get dirty from the cheap ink in the newsprint.
...and for that vast majority of the population born before 1975 who remember these newsstands, being able to search for and read a current NYT article on a screen in our living room with our feet up for FREE is a daily source of glee and wonder. All in exchange for my e-mail address and zipcode (or whatever it was, I registered back in, like '94, I don't even remember...)? Hoop Jumping? You call that Hoop Jumping? How are you going to feel when they join the WSJ et. al. and begin charging for their content? (At least you won't have to worry then about blocking ads, eh?)
Because girls aren't supposed to build robots? Don't tell that to my six year old Natasha, whose favorite playtime is spent building K'Nex Battlemechs and Bandai Gundams with her dad.
1953 just called. They want their gender biases back.
The Marketing here is wa-a-a-a-y more insidious than you think. Back in the Day, when I was awakening in pools of someone else's vomit curbside in front of CBGB's to the encore strains of "Pscho Killer.... Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa... Better run run run run Run Away!" David Byrne was der shizznitz... or whatever ridiculous phrase has replaced the ridiculous phrase "da bomb" in modern parlance.
20-somethings don't make decisions regarding what presentation software is loaded across an enterprise; we 40-somethings have that dubious honor. And all we hear these days is how Powerpoint is, well, so 1996, and un-cool. Who better to convince us otherwise? The lead singer from ColdPlay (am I spelling that correctly?)? No, young man,it's the guy in the big white suit who defined counterculture 'art' way back when the current generation of marketing "grown-ups" were actually artistic.
Funny thing is, I kinda remember how, back in the early '90s, marketing campaigns similarly co-copted Andy Warhol imagery to "artistically connect with" a previous generation who now found themselves in Brooks Brothers suits. I thought that was bogus then, but I think using Byrne is clever. Thanks, Slashdot, for pointing out how I've become what I once loathed.
All of which brings the lyrics to a Byrne song crashing home to me here on a Sunday morning as the children quietly watch a Strawberry Shortcake video in the next room:
" And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife And you may ask yourself-Well...How did I get here?...
"And you may ask yourself What is that beautiful house? And you may ask yourself Where does that highway go? And you may ask yourself Am I right?...Am I wrong? And you may tell yourself MY GOD!...WHAT HAVE I DONE?"
But wait, I think I still have a Mosaic presskit from the '91 Comdex. Does that count?
It's not Web Pages, its the Web itself that will be the cultural artifact. With the bar for publishing on the Internet placed so low, it falls to Father Time to become the Web's ultimate Editor-in-Chief.
On a related note, I'm moving, and came across reams of stuff I wrote while a college student, and boy does it suck! Tonight I light a candle to Neil Gaiman's I-Net God in thanks that my potentially career-wrecking pukage is preserved only in patchouli-smeared folders in my basement and not on a global network of servers. I feel like I've dodged more bullets than Neo; in 20 years when you guys do a vanity-google, I hope y'all feel the same way, but I'm guessing you will have wished the Web was even more forgetful than it is.
I suggest you find another under-represented-on-Slashdot group upon which to show your clueless-20-something prejudice and bias. My wife is the classic soccer mom, van and all, and has been modifying config files -- DOS then and Linux now -- when you were still wearing plastic pants.
Of course, when the kids want to play video games, she fires up the Xbox or GBA. Unlike you, she's smart enough to use the right tools for the job.
Games on your Linux box? At home? For kids? Ye gods, why?!?
the sites make like 40-50 cents profit from each song
Gross, not net. Arguably, MS is in a position, with its existing online operations and XBOX Live NOC, to eventually ramp into a net profit faster/more easily than its competitors.
Rather than ask, "Why MS?" a better question might be, "Where are Tower Records and Virgin Megastore and Fye and Sam Goody?" These are all brick-and-mortar establishments who will be in the warehouse business when legal downloads do to CDs what CDs did to vinyl.
All music will be sold online, almost exclusively, within our lifetime, meaning there will be plenty of space in the market for the right retailers. How many of the "old names" will make the cut, and how many will be opportunistic "new tech" names like MS and Apple?
I just shelled out 200 for a playstation 2 late last year. I can't afford to go buying another game console every 2-3 years.
Who sez you have to? There's a bajillion games for PS2 in just about every niche you can imagine. How many have you played? The size of the library goes well beyond the definition of "decent," I think.
I love my XBox, but I'm pretty sure I won't be buying the next gen model the day it comes out, as by then I'll prolly be about 50 games behind (I'm fascinated by these people who "finish" games in a week -- where do they find the time?). It's all about the enjoyment, not the Joneses.
I'm sure you don't feel compelled to upgrade yoour car to the latest model each time Detroit tells you. Why do you feel the compulsion to do so with your game console?
"GQ" is running an article on which designer ties each candidate is wearing, "Veneer Quarterly" has a sidebar on what color, and how many coats, of paint the candidates used on their houses, "Breakfast Meats Bi-Monthly" is leading with the in-depth feature "Bacon, Steak, or Sausage: The Candidates Decide," and the cover story of this month's "Limousine Owner's Gazette" tells us wa-a-a-y more than we need to know about the contenders' choice of Regular, Premium, or Ultra.
Gosh, with so much relevant information available to voters, it's easier than ever to make an informed decision!
Studios do not pay actors like Jim Carrey $20M a movie because they are "good actors." They make that kind of dough because the public will pay to see a "Jim Carrey Movie" regardless of what the flick is about. How many people will pay to see "The Cat in the Hat" this winter, hoping against hope that Mike Myers will find a way to roast some gold out of that chestnut? How many would go see the same flick if a no-name actor had the lead? Now, how many (non-geeks) would go if the lead was CGI?
Entertainers' "Q-Factors" are polled and tabulated quarterly (I think). These are the numbers that are ascribed to a celebrity's "popularity." The higher your Q, the higher fee your agent can negotiate.
Will there someday be persistent Idoru-esque CGI AI's with their own waxing and waning Q-Factors? Maybe. Just think of the Intellectual Property battles when studios try to copyright hairstyles, quirky smiles, and "attitudes!"
Because we know these virus-writing punks can't resist bragging about their exploits in whatever low-rent Usenet hang-outs they frequent, it should be interesting to see if there is as little honor among them as there is rumored to be among thieves.
Script-Kiddie: "Dude! You turned me in to... to... Microsoft!?! That's cold!"
Former Friend of Script-Kiddie: "Sorry, man, tuition at MIT is a real bitch, yo."
S.K.: "MIT? What choo talking 'bout, MIT? You go to Westchester Community College!"
F.F.o.S.K.: "That was before I got this here letter of recommendation from my new sponsor, William H. Gates III. Hey, whaddya think of these new Birkenstocks? Too gay? I kinda think they set off my eyes pretty well, yo..."
S.K.: "Dooooooood....!" (As two big guys in MS-branded butterfly suits drag him into back of van)
F.F.o.S.K.: "Hey, look me up when you get out, man. By then I should be setting myself up in my own company and will be able to use a guy with your leet skills."
Slashdot Mirror
...and there's STILL nothing on!
Palin must have searched pretty hard, and paid top dollar, to find "some religious guy" with whom to debate heatedly. Every one that I knew or saw quoted appreciated Brian for the brilliant satire it was.
Besides, that was nearly a quarter century ago. These days, it's the anti-religious guys who get their panties in a bunch over movies they haven't seen or don't understand. Amazing how times change, ennit?
Aren't computer technicians already held in about the same regard as mechanics?
:: IT Sector :: Urban :: Not-Quite-So-Urban inverse ratio algorithm thingee.
Not in my neck of the woods (metro NY). The general feeling I get is that you can go outside to the corner, swing a baseball bat over your head, and hit three (over)qualified compter techs. A good car mechanic, however... that's pure gold.
I suspect this may be regional, and perhaps even graphable, some kind of NASCAR
I have been using PocketMusic from PocketMind on my Samsung i700 PocketPC/Phone for a while, and it's amazing. I have zero iPod envy (I can't balance a budget, get e-mail, web surf, or make a call on an iPod, but I can play my Oggs on my PocketPC -- even to the extent of dagging them from my Linux box).
I mean this to take nothing away from the exquisitely designed, iPod, but I no longer have the desite to possess a single specialized device for every eFunction in my life. Sure, I sacrifice some sizzle sans iPod, some corporate penis-size sans blackberry, and some cuteness sans the postage stamp-sized phone du jour, but I love just having it *ALL* on my Samsung.
The first thing I thought of when I read the article was, "Great. Instead of Big Brother we now have to worry about his zillions of little siblings."
Funny, the first thing I thought of when I read about this was, "I wonder how much I would have to pay Ron Jeremy to wear it for a week, and what subsequent margins could I expect when I later auctioned it on e-bay?"
I suspect you and I are very different types of people...
I usually browse at score: 4 & 5, which means nearly all the posts I read are worth reading.
Dude, I get modded up to 4 and 5 all the time, and none of my stuff is worth reading, so there's clearly a problem with that theory.
iTunes and it's imitators work. They are popular, past any analyst's imagining. What possible percentage is there for the RIAA to climb back up atop that great hill they only recently cleared just to piss in the well?
You know as well as I that for every existing P2P client system that goes legit, two more "rogue" systems will pop up because "Music Must Be Free!"
Through intense marketing, clever user interfaces, relatively lax DRM, and brutal scare tactics and legislative knuckle-dusting, the RIAA has begun to put the genie back in the bottle. You think they're ging to throw in with their ol' friends the EFF now? Sh'yeah...
"The Science of Superheroes," (Wiley Books 2002) by Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg (introduction by Dean Koontz). Same duo who brought you "The Computers of Star Trek." Weinberg also wrote "Cable" for Marvel.
Near East
Is that, like, Long Island?
But seriously... Congress is concerned over the Jackson incident because laws they passed establishing guidelines for the content using the airwaves owned by the public were ignored. It's correct for them to be concerned. Since it is likely that the incident was pre-meditated by at least one MTV producer and Jackson herself to create a pocket-lining "buzz," it's correct for Congress to be more than a little bit annoyed as well.
Sci-Fi Channel is on cable. The restrictions relating to the public airwaves do not apply to them. However, they are smart enough to realize that the demographic for a Battlestar Galactica revival is not the same as "Queer as Folk" or "The Sopranos" and will most certainly produce it no harder than a PG. The perception is that the "adults" won't be watching it and that the "kids" won't be allowed to watch it if it contained nudity.
I have a long memory, and have been working with Disney professionally on-and-off for over 20 years. I remember Disney before Pixar, their ups and downs. Mostly ups. Sure, the Disney/Pixar relationship was great for both organizations, and a more cynical person could easily argue that Pixar, despite their obvious talents, needed Disney *then* more than Disney needs Pixar *now.* There are other Pixars "out there" just waiting to be taken under a big corp's wing (the MS/Bungie deal come to mind immediately, I don't know why...), and both EisnerCo and GatesCo have demonstrated they know how to find them. Sure, Pixar has raised the bar, and my hat's off to them, but the animation bar now rises at an almost exponential rate annually due as much to the tearing down of tech barriers as to the pushing of creative envelopes. Content is of course still "king," but in no field is that crown held on so uneasy a head as it is in animation.
As for the whole DRM bugaboo, I gotta tell you, most people don't care. In fact, most geeks don't care. Should they? Sure, but it's a topic for a different conversation. Disney will be making and distributing -- and MS will be securing -- entertainment for the mass populace. If everybody who sez they'll never buy a DRM'd download REALLY never buys a DRM'd download, it will still be less than a rounding error on the Disney/MS titan's ledger.
Am I the only one here who thinks the not-so-clever-anymore substitution of "S" for "$" is the kind of thing one would expect from a know-it-all teenager, and not someone with relatively strong associations with the rebuilding of a nation's IT infrastructure?
No, you're not alone. Based upon what I know and have seen of the "new Western pioneers" in Iraq I had a certain picture of the interviewee in my mind, and then when I read the "M$" quote I immediately shaved off about 20 years from my mental profile.
Does Adam's mom know he's out of the country?
It's called a newsstand, Bunky. And it's outside, where it's cold, and it costs 50 cents and you get a whole bunch of stories you don't want to read and your hands get dirty from the cheap ink in the newsprint.
Honestly! Kids these days...
I'm thinking about putting my journal on-line.
Because...?
When we found out we were having a boy
Because girls aren't supposed to build robots? Don't tell that to my six year old Natasha, whose favorite playtime is spent building K'Nex Battlemechs and Bandai Gundams with her dad.
1953 just called. They want their gender biases back.
Sheesh.
The Marketing here is wa-a-a-a-y more insidious than you think. Back in the Day, when I was awakening in pools of someone else's vomit curbside in front of CBGB's to the encore strains of "Pscho Killer.... Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa Fa... Better run run run run Run Away!" David Byrne was der shizznitz... or whatever ridiculous phrase has replaced the ridiculous phrase "da bomb" in modern parlance.
20-somethings don't make decisions regarding what presentation software is loaded across an enterprise; we 40-somethings have that dubious honor. And all we hear these days is how Powerpoint is, well, so 1996, and un-cool. Who better to convince us otherwise? The lead singer from ColdPlay (am I spelling that correctly?)? No, young man,it's the guy in the big white suit who defined counterculture 'art' way back when the current generation of marketing "grown-ups" were actually artistic.
Funny thing is, I kinda remember how, back in the early '90s, marketing campaigns similarly co-copted Andy Warhol imagery to "artistically connect with" a previous generation who now found themselves in Brooks Brothers suits. I thought that was bogus then, but I think using Byrne is clever. Thanks, Slashdot, for pointing out how I've become what I once loathed.
All of which brings the lyrics to a Byrne song crashing home to me here on a Sunday morning as the children quietly watch a Strawberry Shortcake video in the next room:
" And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile
And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself-Well...How did I get here?...
"And you may ask yourself
What is that beautiful house?
And you may ask yourself
Where does that highway go?
And you may ask yourself
Am I right?...Am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
MY GOD!...WHAT HAVE I DONE?"
But wait, I think I still have a Mosaic presskit from the '91 Comdex. Does that count?
It's not Web Pages, its the Web itself that will be the cultural artifact. With the bar for publishing on the Internet placed so low, it falls to Father Time to become the Web's ultimate Editor-in-Chief.
On a related note, I'm moving, and came across reams of stuff I wrote while a college student, and boy does it suck! Tonight I light a candle to Neil Gaiman's I-Net God in thanks that my potentially career-wrecking pukage is preserved only in patchouli-smeared folders in my basement and not on a global network of servers. I feel like I've dodged more bullets than Neo; in 20 years when you guys do a vanity-google, I hope y'all feel the same way, but I'm guessing you will have wished the Web was even more forgetful than it is.
soccer mom
I suggest you find another under-represented-on-Slashdot group upon which to show your clueless-20-something prejudice and bias. My wife is the classic soccer mom, van and all, and has been modifying config files -- DOS then and Linux now -- when you were still wearing plastic pants.
Of course, when the kids want to play video games, she fires up the Xbox or GBA. Unlike you, she's smart enough to use the right tools for the job.
Games on your Linux box? At home? For kids? Ye gods, why?!?
the sites make like 40-50 cents profit from each song
Gross, not net. Arguably, MS is in a position, with its existing online operations and XBOX Live NOC, to eventually ramp into a net profit faster/more easily than its competitors.
Rather than ask, "Why MS?" a better question might be, "Where are Tower Records and Virgin Megastore and Fye and Sam Goody?" These are all brick-and-mortar establishments who will be in the warehouse business when legal downloads do to CDs what CDs did to vinyl.
All music will be sold online, almost exclusively, within our lifetime, meaning there will be plenty of space in the market for the right retailers. How many of the "old names" will make the cut, and how many will be opportunistic "new tech" names like MS and Apple?
Kvetch Kvetch Kvetch. All day long. Nothing but kvetching. He drove me crazy.
I just shelled out 200 for a playstation 2 late last year. I can't afford to go buying another game console every 2-3 years.
Who sez you have to? There's a bajillion games for PS2 in just about every niche you can imagine. How many have you played? The size of the library goes well beyond the definition of "decent," I think.
I love my XBox, but I'm pretty sure I won't be buying the next gen model the day it comes out, as by then I'll prolly be about 50 games behind (I'm fascinated by these people who "finish" games in a week -- where do they find the time?). It's all about the enjoyment, not the Joneses.
I'm sure you don't feel compelled to upgrade yoour car to the latest model each time Detroit tells you. Why do you feel the compulsion to do so with your game console?
"GQ" is running an article on which designer ties each candidate is wearing, "Veneer Quarterly" has a sidebar on what color, and how many coats, of paint the candidates used on their houses, "Breakfast Meats Bi-Monthly" is leading with the in-depth feature "Bacon, Steak, or Sausage: The Candidates Decide," and the cover story of this month's "Limousine Owner's Gazette" tells us wa-a-a-y more than we need to know about the contenders' choice of Regular, Premium, or Ultra.
Gosh, with so much relevant information available to voters, it's easier than ever to make an informed decision!
Studios do not pay actors like Jim Carrey $20M a movie because they are "good actors." They make that kind of dough because the public will pay to see a "Jim Carrey Movie" regardless of what the flick is about. How many people will pay to see "The Cat in the Hat" this winter, hoping against hope that Mike Myers will find a way to roast some gold out of that chestnut? How many would go see the same flick if a no-name actor had the lead? Now, how many (non-geeks) would go if the lead was CGI?
Entertainers' "Q-Factors" are polled and tabulated quarterly (I think). These are the numbers that are ascribed to a celebrity's "popularity." The higher your Q, the higher fee your agent can negotiate.
Will there someday be persistent Idoru-esque CGI AI's with their own waxing and waning Q-Factors? Maybe. Just think of the Intellectual Property battles when studios try to copyright hairstyles, quirky smiles, and "attitudes!"
...is Brigette Helm, who played Maria and (my all-time favorite terminatrix) "False Maria" in Fritz Lang's "Metropolis."
Because we know these virus-writing punks can't resist bragging about their exploits in whatever low-rent Usenet hang-outs they frequent, it should be interesting to see if there is as little honor among them as there is rumored to be among thieves.
Script-Kiddie: "Dude! You turned me in to... to... Microsoft!?! That's cold!"
Former Friend of Script-Kiddie: "Sorry, man, tuition at MIT is a real bitch, yo."
S.K.: "MIT? What choo talking 'bout, MIT? You go to Westchester Community College!"
F.F.o.S.K.: "That was before I got this here letter of recommendation from my new sponsor, William H. Gates III. Hey, whaddya think of these new Birkenstocks? Too gay? I kinda think they set off my eyes pretty well, yo..."
S.K.: "Dooooooood....!" (As two big guys in MS-branded butterfly suits drag him into back of van)
F.F.o.S.K.: "Hey, look me up when you get out, man. By then I should be setting myself up in my own company and will be able to use a guy with your leet skills."