You know that enough people will go to the theaters that it'll make money. It's not like they're making a new movie, so they don't have to fill as many seats to turn a profit.
...and it's not like Lucas is capable of making movies anymore. He lost whatever spark he had back in the eighties. (Maybe earlier.) If he had an ounce of creativity left, we'd be seeing an apology movie (it'd take an apology trilogy...) but he doesn't, so he has to keep flogging the old stuff, basking in the adoration of fewer and fewer geeks with each iteration, hoping that the money won't trail off before his ignoble retirement.
I completely agree. If they released the RedLetterMedia review in the theater in 3D, I'd go see it. But Phantom Menace? God no. Watching movies should be FUN, and that movie very much wasn't.
Are people still using crash carts for routine maintenance, in this day of ubiquitous KVM? In our datacenter every other row has a desk with two terminals with access to the KVM for those two rows. Unfortunately it's in the cold aisle, which makes it a little chilly to work there if you didn't bring a coat. I have been known to take breaks in the nearest hot aisle to warm up.
A crash cart should be used for diagnosis and installs. KVM for everything else.
Agreed. So eventually we'll be rebooting Unix every 30 days or BSOD whichever comes first. Cherish those 500+ day uptimes, it's not going to be the norm.
I'm not sure I buy everything in TFA, but have to admit to a certain extent this phenomenon is real. I've noticed, however a tendency to regenerate an instance, and when it doesn't work regen it again, and again and again because the purposely overextended and/or undertrained admin doesn't have time to figure out that the problem is in his template or due to something external like a dup ip. Come to think of it, this type of endless cycle seems to be fairly common in the Windows world. I guess we've caught up.
Sometimes the user has to diagnose the problem themselves, which is a win for the IT manager because the time didn't come out of the IT budget.
I'm hoping that at some point these practices will be recognized as the false economics they are. But I'm not holding my breath.
I think part of this phenomenon might be due to outsourcing, which puts a layer of call center personnel armed with loose-leaf binders of procedures between you and the one or two remaining competent sysadmins, who are then regulated to firefighting. In this world, there isn't time to diagnose problems because the level of expertise and admin/customer ratio are kept purposefully low.
How is Gingerbread working on your Droid? Performance ok? I have a Droid X currently running Froyo. Is there an overriding reason to upgrade? What are the new features?
(We might as well talk about this, the original article was pointless.)
You may have a point. I got my first commercial email account years before hotmail existed, and my first work-related presence on the net dates long before AlGore invented it. I still pay for my personal email account (NOT AOL) rather than use a free one, mostly as a hold over from the old days when free email account had an almost one to one correspondence to spammer. I regularly check my "junk" folder because even the spam detector screws up sometimes, and I have been known to read (with a text-only mail tool) the more interesting of the 419 missives. I'm continually surprised at how badly most of them are written. You'd think that an industry that nets millions of dollars could afford a decent scriptwriter.
Anyway. So it's possible that I'm expecting too much of the rank and file. I can understand that intellectually without appreciating it emotionally. I mean, you just have to READ them with clear eyes to see the scam.
Ok, you have me there. A politician who, for instance, is so lacking in reason that he thinks Guam might tip over if too many soldiers are deployed there, may nevertheless make six figures.
> Plus, skill at detecting scams is not, last I checked, a job skill that most people had to demonstrate in order to earn decent money
I agree, but c'mon. These scams have been around for decades. Anyone who has had an email account for more than six months has already seen hundreds of similar scams, and anyone with the faculty of reason should be able to see through them.
...is how people so profoundly stupid can nevertheless be intelligent enough to make enough money to have $200,000 in discretionary income. That must require a remarkably narrow set of capabilities.
> Probably the first crime fighting show I've seen that regularly includes advertisements for an unpopular smart phone in the dialogue.
Agreed. But have you noticed that those Win7 phones magically turn into iphones whenever they have to do something hard, like take a fingerprint with the phone?
My first impression watching the film is that (circular) bubbles don't stack very well, (too much unused real estate) but let's assume this is the greatest thing since sliced milk. It might be. The Surface group have done some really innovative stuff.
Based on past experience, the chances of these concepts making it into Windows in any meaningful way are practically nil. You'll see this stuff in episodes of Hawaii Five-O and other TV shows that have a technical aspect, but it'll never make it off Surface, and Surface will never make it to the rank and file. It's too bad, really.
I don't even think it's a technical issue. The issue I suspect is that the people managing and promoting the Windows code base are very strong and very ingrained within Microsoft, and this regulates really innovative stuff like this to expensive specialized applications. And dazzling effects on film and tv.
In a few years, we'll look back and say "Remember when there was science fiction on the scifi channel?"
Or maybe we're doing that now. The other day, Daughter and I were talking about that really revolting Earthsea tv movie, and that led to all the really bad movies and miniseries we'd seen on the skiffy channel (or however you pronounce the current, tragically hip spelling). I reminisced a little about how in the old days scifi would rebroadcast science fiction series from the sixties and seventies, which although sometimes corny in their own right, were much less shudder-worthy than seemingly intentional crapfests like Mega-Python vs Gatoroid. So I guess we're already saying "remember when there was scifi on the scifi channel?"
> Blu-Ray is 40mbps. That's enough to warrant faster downloads - nice high-quality HD video streaming.
Ok, let's talk about that. Speaking as someone who for years absolutely refused to buy movies on VHS, was an early adopter of Laserdisc, likewise an early adopter of DVD, bought an ATSC card for the Media Center back when they were REALLY Expensive, for that matter had a Media Center when it wasn't supported very well, bought a Blu-Ray drive when they were hundreds of dollars, here's what I have to say about HD video.
Enh.
On a 46" Bravia, there is very little difference between a well authored DVD and a well authored Blu-Ray title. There just isn't. If you have a TV less than 50" and you're viewing it at the proper distance, you may or may not notice the difference.
480P is Good Enough.
720P is Really Good Enough.
1080P is overkill.
And that's *me* saying it -- after decades of being a videophile snob, of buying only studio quality monitors and spending hours adjusting them precisely, of supporting unpopular formats (Beta I, Laserdisc) because they really were better, I look at the side-by-side comparison between (a properly authored) DVD and (a likewise properly authored) Blu-Ray,
and go "Enh".
For conventional 2D video, we've reached the point of diminishing returns. You know it had to happen eventually.
And so, entirely separate from the fact that you could still do 40 Mbps over a 15 Mbps line with adequate local buffering, it's really not necessary. 1080P isn't necessary on other than largish videophile setups.
Which gets back to what most people need. ISPs are trying to convince regular people that they need that kind of bandwidth. They just don't.
> Also, what about upload speeds?
Now, there I might agree, but again, if you're not a geek or a gamer (which may be redundant) or a photographer (that would be me) or videographer with a huge internet presence, what the heck do you need upload speed for? What are Fred and Ethyl going to use 20Mbps up for? In what they normally do, how would they notice a faster upload speed?
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Somebody does. It doesn't have to be us.
You know that enough people will go to the theaters that it'll make money. It's not like they're making a new movie, so they don't have to fill as many seats to turn a profit.
I completely agree. If they released the RedLetterMedia review in the theater in 3D, I'd go see it. But Phantom Menace? God no. Watching movies should be FUN, and that movie very much wasn't.
And there the progression stopped. A lot of things just stopped working. So I recovered from a ghost of ME, tried again, same thing.
I never did get that particular upgrade to work. Dual-booted for awhile, eventually weaned off ME.
Methinks this is why he chose Win98 -> Win 2K -> XP. Avoids a lot of heartache.
My God, do you remember when we were actually looking forward to ME? Shudder.
Yeah, it just works until it doesn't. :-)
> Why avoid Windows ME?
The question contains its own answer, Grasshopper.
> Resort owners and drug dealers.
That's probably redundant.
Yeah, but isn't she, like, 45 now?
Are people still using crash carts for routine maintenance, in this day of ubiquitous KVM? In our datacenter every other row has a desk with two terminals with access to the KVM for those two rows. Unfortunately it's in the cold aisle, which makes it a little chilly to work there if you didn't bring a coat. I have been known to take breaks in the nearest hot aisle to warm up.
A crash cart should be used for diagnosis and installs. KVM for everything else.
Ever lived in Phoenix? :-)
Agreed. So eventually we'll be rebooting Unix every 30 days or BSOD whichever comes first. Cherish those 500+ day uptimes, it's not going to be the norm.
I'm not sure I buy everything in TFA, but have to admit to a certain extent this phenomenon is real. I've noticed, however a tendency to regenerate an instance, and when it doesn't work regen it again, and again and again because the purposely overextended and/or undertrained admin doesn't have time to figure out that the problem is in his template or due to something external like a dup ip. Come to think of it, this type of endless cycle seems to be fairly common in the Windows world. I guess we've caught up.
Sometimes the user has to diagnose the problem themselves, which is a win for the IT manager because the time didn't come out of the IT budget.
I'm hoping that at some point these practices will be recognized as the false economics they are. But I'm not holding my breath.
I think part of this phenomenon might be due to outsourcing, which puts a layer of call center personnel armed with loose-leaf binders of procedures between you and the one or two remaining competent sysadmins, who are then regulated to firefighting. In this world, there isn't time to diagnose problems because the level of expertise and admin/customer ratio are kept purposefully low.
How is Gingerbread working on your Droid? Performance ok? I have a Droid X currently running Froyo. Is there an overriding reason to upgrade? What are the new features?
(We might as well talk about this, the original article was pointless.)
You may have a point. I got my first commercial email account years before hotmail existed, and my first work-related presence on the net dates long before AlGore invented it. I still pay for my personal email account (NOT AOL) rather than use a free one, mostly as a hold over from the old days when free email account had an almost one to one correspondence to spammer. I regularly check my "junk" folder because even the spam detector screws up sometimes, and I have been known to read (with a text-only mail tool) the more interesting of the 419 missives. I'm continually surprised at how badly most of them are written. You'd think that an industry that nets millions of dollars could afford a decent scriptwriter.
Anyway. So it's possible that I'm expecting too much of the rank and file. I can understand that intellectually without appreciating it emotionally. I mean, you just have to READ them with clear eyes to see the scam.
Ok, you have me there. A politician who, for instance, is so lacking in reason that he thinks Guam might tip over if too many soldiers are deployed there, may nevertheless make six figures.
> Plus, skill at detecting scams is not, last I checked, a job skill that most people had to demonstrate in order to earn decent money
I agree, but c'mon. These scams have been around for decades. Anyone who has had an email account for more than six months has already seen hundreds of similar scams, and anyone with the faculty of reason should be able to see through them.
Porn. Naturally.
> For the rest of us, perhaps this is a timely reminder to backup our data and be less trusting of the cloud.
> Probably the first crime fighting show I've seen that regularly includes advertisements for an unpopular smart phone in the dialogue.
Agreed. But have you noticed that those Win7 phones magically turn into iphones whenever they have to do something hard, like take a fingerprint with the phone?
Agreed. To think that any of this will find it's way into Windows 8, or 9, or 10, is optimistic at best.
My first impression watching the film is that (circular) bubbles don't stack very well, (too much unused real estate) but let's assume this is the greatest thing since sliced milk. It might be. The Surface group have done some really innovative stuff.
Based on past experience, the chances of these concepts making it into Windows in any meaningful way are practically nil. You'll see this stuff in episodes of Hawaii Five-O and other TV shows that have a technical aspect, but it'll never make it off Surface, and Surface will never make it to the rank and file. It's too bad, really.
I don't even think it's a technical issue. The issue I suspect is that the people managing and promoting the Windows code base are very strong and very ingrained within Microsoft, and this regulates really innovative stuff like this to expensive specialized applications. And dazzling effects on film and tv.
In a few years, we'll look back and say "Remember when there was science fiction on the scifi channel?"
Or maybe we're doing that now. The other day, Daughter and I were talking about that really revolting Earthsea tv movie, and that led to all the really bad movies and miniseries we'd seen on the skiffy channel (or however you pronounce the current, tragically hip spelling). I reminisced a little about how in the old days scifi would rebroadcast science fiction series from the sixties and seventies, which although sometimes corny in their own right, were much less shudder-worthy than seemingly intentional crapfests like Mega-Python vs Gatoroid. So I guess we're already saying "remember when there was scifi on the scifi channel?"
> Blu-Ray is 40mbps. That's enough to warrant faster downloads - nice high-quality HD video streaming.
Ok, let's talk about that. Speaking as someone who for years absolutely refused to buy movies on VHS, was an early adopter of Laserdisc, likewise an early adopter of DVD, bought an ATSC card for the Media Center back when they were REALLY Expensive, for that matter had a Media Center when it wasn't supported very well, bought a Blu-Ray drive when they were hundreds of dollars, here's what I have to say about HD video.
Enh.
On a 46" Bravia, there is very little difference between a well authored DVD and a well authored Blu-Ray title. There just isn't. If you have a TV less than 50" and you're viewing it at the proper distance, you may or may not notice the difference.
480P is Good Enough.
720P is Really Good Enough.
1080P is overkill.
And that's *me* saying it -- after decades of being a videophile snob, of buying only studio quality monitors and spending hours adjusting them precisely, of supporting unpopular formats (Beta I, Laserdisc) because they really were better, I look at the side-by-side comparison between (a properly authored) DVD and (a likewise properly authored) Blu-Ray,
and go "Enh".
For conventional 2D video, we've reached the point of diminishing returns. You know it had to happen eventually.
And so, entirely separate from the fact that you could still do 40 Mbps over a 15 Mbps line with adequate local buffering, it's really not necessary. 1080P isn't necessary on other than largish videophile setups.
Which gets back to what most people need. ISPs are trying to convince regular people that they need that kind of bandwidth. They just don't.
> Also, what about upload speeds?
Now, there I might agree, but again, if you're not a geek or a gamer (which may be redundant) or a photographer (that would be me) or videographer with a huge internet presence, what the heck do you need upload speed for? What are Fred and Ethyl going to use 20Mbps up for? In what they normally do, how would they notice a faster upload speed?