is it just me, or google seems to aggregate only the positive-thinking sites? And no honest (according to Stephen King) reviews of Filty Critic are in sight?
There is no explanation on how movie review pool was selected. OK, it mentions that the list was "determined automatically by a computer program", but what was the reasoning behind programming the program to look in some places (i.e. rec.arts.movies.reviews) but not others.
Google really needs to increase transparency of the service before I start trusting it.
But this...this isn't a lack of sensitivity on Microsoft's part. It's a lack of toleration on the part of other cultures. Knowing full-well that this software was written by programmers of another culture, there should be a degree of toleration and patience that goes along with the process.
Imagine an office program from a muslim country calling USA as "The Den Of Satan That Should Be Bombed In The Name Of The God", with New York marked as "The Place Of Holy Plane-Bombings That Must Be Repeated Again and Again", Oklahoma called "Example That Should Be Followed", California as "Future Site For Prophet Ossama Bin Laden Shrine"...
"Knowing full-well that this software was written by programmers of another culture", as you put it, imagine how much "toleration and patience" would this attract in USA.
The example is obviously far-fetched, but some countries do have topics as touchy as 9-11 is for USA, and some of such pains and aches do center about conflicts over territory.
And just because in some parts of the world 9-11 is celebrated as victory doesn't mean that a company selling products in USA should ignore what the locals think about it, just because "the world can't come up with common opinion on the topic, and it's impossible to please everybody".
Andrius
No, it is in reference to the show Feb 17 1972, Rainbow Theatre, London.
Not right - none of these bootlegs sold in hundred-thousands, whereas British Winter Tour (recorded 1974-11-19) did - mostly because it was mistaken for new Pink Floyd's official album by many.
The story of British Winter Tour bootleg is described in printed books on Pink Floyd; on the net, this history at least mentions it. So +5 moderated grandparent's theory (that bootlegs help popularity of official releases) relies on wrong information.
"Pink Floyd played a concert version of Dark Side at London's Rainbow Theatre in February 1972. To their dismay, a bootleg recording of the concert sold 100,000 copies about a year before the official release.
That is NOT true - Pink Floyd became famous enough to sustain 100,000-strong bootleg sales only AFTER the OFFICIAL release of Dark Side of the Moon in 1973.
The article probably talks about British Winter Tour bootleg LP, which featured 3 new and unreleased songs (that's over 45 minutes of music) recorded in 1974. Many buyers apparently believed they are getting new Pink Floyd album.
It's hard to evaluate the effect of the bootleg on album sales - the 3 songs underwent major changes in studio and eventually were released on two different albums, Wish Your Were Here and Animals. Both albums sold in millions, but were not as successful as Dark Side of The Moon.
However, the success of the bootleg caused Pink Floyd to change their live shows - in contrast to earlier days, they never again played songs which were not already released officially. Thus, in this particular case, the bootleg release of new songs DID harm the fans.
I wonder what else american public schools forgot to teach me...
Let me try and guess:
That the first artificial object to orbit the earth was Soviet Sputnik (1957)?
That first living being to orbit the earth was dog
Laika, launched by soviets in 1957?
That first animals to orbit the earth and get back were dogs Belka and Strelka along with 40 mice, 2 rats and variety of plants on Sputnik 5 (1960)?
That first man in space (and the first one to orbit it) was Yuri Gagarin (1961)? He beat Alan B. Shepard's non-orbital entry into space by 23 days.
That youngest man in space was Gherman Titov, sent on second orbited mission in 1961 (he was 25)?
That the first man to walk in space was Alexei Leonov (1965)?
That Soviets had a functioning space station as early as 1986?
That the Soviets own Space Shuttle flew and landed unmanned on its maiden mission (and was then scrapped mostly due to lack of funds as USSR fell apart)?
75. In the book, Gandalf isn't the one saying "You shall not pass!", It's the Black Knight. King Arthur subsequently hacks off all of the Knight's arms and legs leaving a limbless knight protesting on the ground.
Call me a nit-picker, but Black Knight clearly states "NONE shall pass", although it's still a likely Tolkien reference. Full description of the scene is here.
For those just down off the tree, the original post talks about Monty Python's 1974 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The movie was recently mentioned by soon-to-be-nearly-knight Bill Gates as being his only source of information on how/why knighthood is given.
Indeed - just look at Google Zeitgeist. Win98 is more widely used to access Google than Win2000.
Microsoft must be really happy for the reason to kill the good-enough-not-to-upgrade product early.
I still use Win98 at my home machine, and have no plans to upgrade. Going upwards to Win2000/XP is not worth the resource drain on computer I use primarily for browsing, Word/Excel/Access2000 and playing an occacional game, all with Winamp in the background.
If the open archive features BBC sessions archive, it will be TREMENDOUS.
Over the years, BBC has gathered tons of live performances by everyone from Beatles to Rolling Stones to Pink Floyd to The Sisters of Mercy to Nirvana, most bootlegged to death, some never even broadcast.
As the archives are rehauled for putting online, some gems are sure to be discovered ("lost" footage of the archives comes up from time to time, this will be perfect time for it).
Live BBC sessions were started to be released officially (Led Zeppelin, Cream and others), but the releases in most cases are incomplete (for example, of the 275 songs Beatles performed for BBC only 52 were released on the 1994 "Live at the BBC" album).
I'm keeping my fingers no legal barriers will stop the music appearing online.
I'm living slightly to south from Estonia. I do not agree with some ideas in some postings - specifically, about Estonia leading the ex-USSR and/or Baltics (Lithuania/Latvia/Estonia) regions.
Cultural differences aside (Estonians are Ugro-Finnic, others are Balts, none of them Slavs), the three countries are similar in size, economic conditions, they share same recent history (post WWI independence, pre-WWII Soviet occupation, 1991 restoration independence, economy recovery and upcoming EU membership.
Looking at economics,
GDP growth in Estonia in 2002 (5.8%) was the slowest among its Baltics neighbors (Latvia 6.1%, Lithuania 6.7%) for second year in a row,
while GDP-per-capita (9240 in "purchasing power standards", roughly equal to euros)
was similar to
Latvia's (7750)
and
Lithuania's (8960), even Belarus or Iran, yet a far cry from European Union average (23210).
This despite the fact that Estonia does lead Baltic states in internet usage. By June 2002, 66% Estonian companies and 19% people had internet conections at home (in Latvia 36% and 3%, in Lithuania 49% and 4%).
What happens to the data after a kid leaves school? Call me FUDer, but what exactly guards the kid from being refused a job 10 years later because poor class attendance record -- the one that was kept since the school days -- indicates potential responsibility in recruiter's eyes?
I believe the parents permission to actually start the attendance/homework/grades database wasn't required legally; might such a requirement be needed before passing the data further?
Wouldn't it be cheaper to offer an educational discount on music CD's, thus encourage more CD purchases?
Hard to speak without seeing actual numbers, but I'd guess the lawer fees are less than what companies would lose by offering the student or other discounts.
It always pays to beat the shit out of somebody for example and scare colleges into adapting guidelines disallowing any similar services.
Plus, this moves forward the anti-piracy marketing/lobying campaign. And it's always good to look like a victim of unjust business environment.;/
And, of course, there's the obvious argument that student discounts are a can of worms which nobody would want to open anyway ( 1) ID problems 2) no matter how many of them are prefering downloaded MP3s, students still make up sizeable music market segment (again, no figures, but very reasonable guess) - so discounting their CDs would eat into profits too deep)
GameSpy claims in this article "...but now their days as a game developer are pretty much over." Is it really that bad?
It is. Here is the scoop on how Sierra was sold, then castrated and left pretty much useless (FYI, Half-Life was produced by Valve, Sierra is a distributor).
Also here Leisure Suit Larry's man Al Lowe gives hints that managements talks of old Sierra's rebirth are just that - talks:
"Feb. 1, 2002, I met with [Sierra's president] Mike Ryder in his office. He said he was interested in "reviving the franchises that made Sierra," including Larry. I was ready, but skeptical. There were many details to consider. We agreed to work via email that week and get together again soon.
After hearing nothing from him for the next month, I emailed him to see what had happened. It took him a month to email back that he was really busy and would get to me soon. More than four months have passed since that email and I've still heard nothing more from him."
This is how the company treats one of its most successful game creators; you can figure out the rest.
Andrius
P.S. While we're on Al Lowe, his CyberJoke 3000 jokes mailing list is highly recommended. See archives.
"And the road is unlikely to pave the way to exploitation of Antarctic natural resources, as this is banned under the Antarctic Treaty until 2041."
<sarcasm>
Sheesh, NOW I'm not worried.
International Agreement will surely stop USA from exploiting Antarctica. After all, we all know it
(1) respects international treaties dealing with global ecology issues, including the ones which might harm America's industrial interests,
(2) holds ecological interests beyond corporate wishes, and would never allow exploitation of the arctic wilderness of Alaska for oil,
(3) even if it did, Antarctica doesn't even have roads to transport the goods... hm.
</sarcasm>
Disclaimer: I'm not saying the road is of any immediate concern (no information for this), I just don't like naivety in the quote.
Slashdot Mirror
For instance, Crash gets two fingers (out of five) on Filthy's scale, and Google gives it four stars (out of five). Million Dollar Baby is 3 on Critic and 4.5 on Google.
There is no explanation on how movie review pool was selected. OK, it mentions that the list was "determined automatically by a computer program", but what was the reasoning behind programming the program to look in some places (i.e. rec.arts.movies.reviews) but not others.
Google really needs to increase transparency of the service before I start trusting it.
But this...this isn't a lack of sensitivity on Microsoft's part. It's a lack of toleration on the part of other cultures. Knowing full-well that this software was written by programmers of another culture, there should be a degree of toleration and patience that goes along with the process. Imagine an office program from a muslim country calling USA as "The Den Of Satan That Should Be Bombed In The Name Of The God", with New York marked as "The Place Of Holy Plane-Bombings That Must Be Repeated Again and Again", Oklahoma called "Example That Should Be Followed", California as "Future Site For Prophet Ossama Bin Laden Shrine"... "Knowing full-well that this software was written by programmers of another culture", as you put it, imagine how much "toleration and patience" would this attract in USA. The example is obviously far-fetched, but some countries do have topics as touchy as 9-11 is for USA, and some of such pains and aches do center about conflicts over territory. And just because in some parts of the world 9-11 is celebrated as victory doesn't mean that a company selling products in USA should ignore what the locals think about it, just because "the world can't come up with common opinion on the topic, and it's impossible to please everybody". Andrius
Not right - none of these bootlegs sold in hundred-thousands, whereas British Winter Tour (recorded 1974-11-19) did - mostly because it was mistaken for new Pink Floyd's official album by many.
The story of British Winter Tour bootleg is described in printed books on Pink Floyd; on the net, this history at least mentions it. So +5 moderated grandparent's theory (that bootlegs help popularity of official releases) relies on wrong information.
That is NOT true - Pink Floyd became famous enough to sustain 100,000-strong bootleg sales only AFTER the OFFICIAL release of Dark Side of the Moon in 1973.
The article probably talks about British Winter Tour bootleg LP, which featured 3 new and unreleased songs (that's over 45 minutes of music) recorded in 1974. Many buyers apparently believed they are getting new Pink Floyd album.
It's hard to evaluate the effect of the bootleg on album sales - the 3 songs underwent major changes in studio and eventually were released on two different albums, Wish Your Were Here and Animals. Both albums sold in millions, but were not as successful as Dark Side of The Moon.
However, the success of the bootleg caused Pink Floyd to change their live shows - in contrast to earlier days, they never again played songs which were not already released officially. Thus, in this particular case, the bootleg release of new songs DID harm the fans.
Let me try and guess:
That the first artificial object to orbit the earth was Soviet Sputnik (1957)?
That first living being to orbit the earth was dog Laika, launched by soviets in 1957?
That first animals to orbit the earth and get back were dogs Belka and Strelka along with 40 mice, 2 rats and variety of plants on Sputnik 5 (1960)?
That first man in space (and the first one to orbit it) was Yuri Gagarin (1961)? He beat Alan B. Shepard's non-orbital entry into space by 23 days.
That youngest man in space was Gherman Titov, sent on second orbited mission in 1961 (he was 25)?
That the first man to walk in space was Alexei Leonov (1965)?
That Soviets had a functioning space station as early as 1986?
That the Soviets own Space Shuttle flew and landed unmanned on its maiden mission (and was then scrapped mostly due to lack of funds as USSR fell apart)?
Call me a nit-picker, but Black Knight clearly states "NONE shall pass", although it's still a likely Tolkien reference. Full description of the scene is here.
For those just down off the tree, the original post talks about Monty Python's 1974 movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. The movie was recently mentioned by soon-to-be-nearly-knight Bill Gates as being his only source of information on how/why knighthood is given.
Indeed - just look at Google Zeitgeist. Win98 is more widely used to access Google than Win2000. Microsoft must be really happy for the reason to kill the good-enough-not-to-upgrade product early.
I still use Win98 at my home machine, and have no plans to upgrade. Going upwards to Win2000/XP is not worth the resource drain on computer I use primarily for browsing, Word/Excel/Access2000 and playing an occacional game, all with Winamp in the background.
Over the years, BBC has gathered tons of live performances by everyone from Beatles to Rolling Stones to Pink Floyd to The Sisters of Mercy to Nirvana, most bootlegged to death, some never even broadcast.
As the archives are rehauled for putting online, some gems are sure to be discovered ("lost" footage of the archives comes up from time to time, this will be perfect time for it).
Live BBC sessions were started to be released officially (Led Zeppelin, Cream and others), but the releases in most cases are incomplete (for example, of the 275 songs Beatles performed for BBC only 52 were released on the 1994 "Live at the BBC" album).
I'm keeping my fingers no legal barriers will stop the music appearing online.
Andrius
I'm living slightly to south from Estonia. I do not agree with some ideas in some postings - specifically, about Estonia leading the ex-USSR and/or Baltics (Lithuania/Latvia/Estonia) regions.
Cultural differences aside (Estonians are Ugro-Finnic, others are Balts, none of them Slavs), the three countries are similar in size, economic conditions, they share same recent history (post WWI independence, pre-WWII Soviet occupation, 1991 restoration independence, economy recovery and upcoming EU membership.
Looking at economics, GDP growth in Estonia in 2002 (5.8%) was the slowest among its Baltics neighbors (Latvia 6.1%, Lithuania 6.7%) for second year in a row, while GDP-per-capita (9240 in "purchasing power standards", roughly equal to euros) was similar to Latvia's (7750) and Lithuania's (8960), even Belarus or Iran, yet a far cry from European Union average (23210).
This despite the fact that Estonia does lead Baltic states in internet usage. By June 2002, 66% Estonian companies and 19% people had internet conections at home (in Latvia 36% and 3%, in Lithuania 49% and 4%).
Don't make bold statements before checking facts.
What happens to the data after a kid leaves school? Call me FUDer, but what exactly guards the kid from being refused a job 10 years later because poor class attendance record -- the one that was kept since the school days -- indicates potential responsibility in recruiter's eyes?
I believe the parents permission to actually start the attendance/homework/grades database wasn't required legally; might such a requirement be needed before passing the data further?
Andrius
Hard to speak without seeing actual numbers, but I'd guess the lawer fees are less than what companies would lose by offering the student or other discounts.
It always pays to beat the shit out of somebody for example and scare colleges into adapting guidelines disallowing any similar services. Plus, this moves forward the anti-piracy marketing/lobying campaign. And it's always good to look like a victim of unjust business environment. ;/
And, of course, there's the obvious argument that student discounts are a can of worms which nobody would want to open anyway ( 1) ID problems 2) no matter how many of them are prefering downloaded MP3s, students still make up sizeable music market segment (again, no figures, but very reasonable guess) - so discounting their CDs would eat into profits too deep)
Andrius
It is. Here is the scoop on how Sierra was sold, then castrated and left pretty much useless (FYI, Half-Life was produced by Valve, Sierra is a distributor).
Also here Leisure Suit Larry's man Al Lowe gives hints that managements talks of old Sierra's rebirth are just that - talks:
After hearing nothing from him for the next month, I emailed him to see what had happened. It took him a month to email back that he was really busy and would get to me soon. More than four months have passed since that email and I've still heard nothing more from him."
This is how the company treats one of its most successful game creators; you can figure out the rest.
Andrius
P.S. While we're on Al Lowe, his CyberJoke 3000 jokes mailing list is highly recommended. See archives.
<sarcasm>
Sheesh, NOW I'm not worried.
International Agreement will surely stop USA from exploiting Antarctica. After all, we all know it
(1) respects international treaties dealing with global ecology issues, including the ones which might harm America's industrial interests,
(2) holds ecological interests beyond corporate wishes, and would never allow exploitation of the arctic wilderness of Alaska for oil,
(3) even if it did, Antarctica doesn't even have roads to transport the goods... hm.
</sarcasm>
Disclaimer: I'm not saying the road is of any immediate concern (no information for this), I just don't like naivety in the quote.
Here is the answer. High octane laughs await.
New to the strip should start by skimming through a couple of early UF strips to get in the mood, and this for Dust Puppy background.