Actually, Matsushita is larger because of many, many reasons, the chief reason being that it was founded 28 years before Sony was.
Although it wasn't one of the Big Four zaibatsus, it was also dissolved after the Allied occupation of Japan and targeted for systematic breakup, however was saved by worker/family union petitions and thus is a much, much more significant staple of the Japanese economic landscape.
You might be an IT professional and graduate student, but I'm also an IT professional, Wharton School graduate and majored in Japanese Business and Economics;)
They just can't admit that their PSP was a failure and that Blu-Ray (aka BetamaxDisc) and the PlayStation3 are going to bankrupt them.
Wow, that's either an exaggeration or amazingly naive. If you honestly believe that the PSP, Blu-Ray and the PS3 are going to bankrupt a company with 151,000 employees and about a gajillion patents, a company that rakes in about $70billion a year in revenue, then you seriously need to stop smoking the reefer and pay attention in summer school.
Companies of Sony's size don't 'break' over one generation of marketing mistakes. The problem is much larger than a couple of wrong turns with products. Such a thing is achieved through the "head against a brick wall" method. Be stubborn enough to keep making the same mistakes and eventually they'll go broke.
If Sony ever goes bankrupt, it'll be because five or ten years from now, they're still climbing over each other, fisting big sweaty handfuls of dollars up the asses of their lawyers trying to revive the dead horse carcass they call a music business model that's been lying on the sidewalk for the past six years. If they'd spent a quarter of what they've already spent on their RIAA/MPAA legal bills on a decent online business infrastructure, they'd be raking in more money than iTunes.
Imagine that; 1999 and Sony releases SonySongStore.com - any songs by any Sony recording artist for $1, any album for $12 - they'd have forced Universal, EMI and Warner to all open their own websites to give their own artists a piece of the online pie. Then they wouldn't have to care so much about trying to force what *they* think is popular music onto the public. Instead, they could promote three times as many new artists for cents on the dollar using online advertising and, well you know, let the market sort the wheat from the chaff. No more need to sign huge, long term contracts with new, unknown artists, creating risky investments. Instead, sign them on so as they can provide their songs for download on your site, pay for minimal bandwidth costs if they go bust or end up raking it in because a shitload of people have downloaded their songs, realized they're actually talented and you've got yourselves a star.
Not to mention that if they'd done all of this six years ago, I guarantee you Sony would have brought out their own MP3 player years before Apple did and it would have become the benchmark. It would have essentially become the Walkman/Discman of the current generation. Instead, they're constantly trying to play catch-up, wondering why they can't keep up whilst simultaneously refusing to let go of the starting post.
Easier said than done, I know. But regardless my original point remains valid; If Sony ever goes bankrupt, it will be because they're still continuing with this DRM/RIAA/MPAA death spiral of a charade two or three CEOs from now. It's worse than they think because it's not just a error of judgement that's affecting their entertainment section; it's filtering across to their R&D department (taking a couple of years to finally release a decent MP3 player that, you know, actually plays MP3s), their marketing department ("Trust us when we say you'd rather have your songs in ATRAC format") and until someone towards the pointy end of the pyramid decides to say, "Uhh, hey guys I think we're on the wrong track here", they're going to continue to get screwed with their pants on.
How do you classify something as 10x safer than something else? Do they expect 10x less people to die, 10x less frequent explosive disasters, or are the events themselves 10x less dangerous, meaning astronauts could survive?
Perhaps the materials used in construction have 10x the tensile strength? Or statistically they expect it to last 10x longer before requiring scheduled maintenance or retirement? Or the test runs they've done have resulted in 1/10th the number of accidents, Loss Time Injuries or just plain downtime? Maybe for ever safety feature in the original there are ten in this one?
It's probably just an arbitrary number but that doesn't dismiss the concept of being able to say one thing is safer than another.
I'm reluctant to update my lists using either source at the moment until it's cleared up. The plan for me is to keep the status quo until told otherwise from a reputable source.
I have a problem though; I have two main computers I use regularly and one of them was last updated on the 11th of September, the other on the 14th of September. The $64,000 question is:
Which of my computers, if any, are using reputable blocklists?
I don't know when this coup was started and thus I don't know at what stage we were supposed to stop trusting the auto-updating. I've already turned off my auto-updating for PG2 on both computers but I'd like some info on whether my current lists have been 'tainted.' By the sounds of it, this was a bit of a 'slow mutiny' so I'm somewhat paranoid that the lists may have been compromised far earlier than say, a week ago and thus this is all null and void. Needless to say, we just don't know at the moment.
Any info from some reputable PG2 personnel (I've seen you guys post here before, PS - love your work! I donate!) would go a very, very long way.
Thats brave! I'd just buy the flippin cd's rather than risk a $15,000 fine!
Actually I have, you presumptuous jackass. When they release;
- Seasons 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 of Frasier;
- The Daily Show complete run from 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005;
- Scrubs seasons 2, 3 and 4;
- The West Wing seasons 5 and 6;
- the entire run of Top Gear;
- the entire run of The Wonder Years;
- the entire run of Parker Lewis Can't Lose;
- not to mention about a dozen Japanese dorama series
on DVD, then be sure to let me know; I'll buy them.
"According to this BBC article, users in South Korea, Italy, Germany and Spain are using BitTorrent less frequently these days, after lawsuits by the movie industry."
PeerGuardian 1.x was known to 'occasionally' balloon with its CPU usage from time to time, which was a shame. PeerGuardian2 is just fine though; been running it for at least six months (iirc) and never had it higher than 1%.
Well I'm NOT a fan of Joss Whedon's previous work. At all. I can't stand Buffy or Angel. But I LOVE Firefly. I think there's a potential market for both Whedon fanboys and new fans.
Seriously people, for those who hate Buffy or Angel, don't be fooled into thinking it's more of the same. Firefly is completely different to his previous stuff and definitely worth the hype, DVDs and movies. I yearn for more episodes to be made. Please, give Firefly a shot!
If you happen to be one of them, the TNN 300 is a pretty unique product that will appeal to you.
Sorry to be the annoying English teacher from 9th grade here but something can't be "pretty unique" or "very unique". It's either unique or it isn't. Yes, informally it can be used with an adverbial modifier but that doesn't mean it's proper English.
Oh I never said it was a problem. I was just pointing out that the transition for the camera industry was inevitable. I'm the owner of multiple Canon digital SLR bodies and a couple of point and shoot digital cameras and buy even the most trivial camera related item from a reputable camera store (or website) rather than an all-in-one electronics store like Best Buy or Circuit City. That's just how any specific consumer-related industry evolves if successful. As an example, televisions can still be purchased at Wal-Mart and Best Buy but if you want old-school parts or rare/quality parts, you go to a dedicated enthusiast store. You can purchase no-name no-nonsense cd decks for your car almost anywhere, but if you want that super-fantastic deck that plays DVDs and MP3s and has a built-in hard drive, chances are you'll have to go to a store/website dedicated to car audio gear. Like I said, it was only a matter of time.
Exactly. Even the most mundane and trivial application or game these days tends to require some sort of adminstrative privileges or access during install and commonly also during use. Numerous small business accounting packages require adminstrator privileges, especially a much-maligned yet inexplicably common package that requires online activation.
Look, I can understand that low-access user accounts are the way to go, but when the most common programs require admin rights to use and install, how can you expect the "average user" (who, by the way still is oblivious as to why their computer runs as slow as a sloth when Fast User Switching is enabled and the other user has 24 programs running) not to see a low-access user account as some sort of ugly restriction, an unfairly imposed shackle on their own private usage of their own computer?
When your average word processing application and camera-photo applications (I'm looking at you, Nikon) stops requiring access to the internet (Net Limiter saw those dubious packets being sent back and forth, HP photo software) and important registry areas (fuck you, Hitachi DVD-RAM video camera proprietary software), then maybe we can honestly expect the average user to be happy with user rights.
Criterion might be a nice place to start, but it's still not the greatest place to start. First of all, Armageddon and The Rock are on the list, which is a clear indicator that some of the films are there purely as "showcase" DVDs that people can put on to show off their home theater setups. Or perhaps more accurately for those fuckers at Best Buy to show off their setups that no sane person would buy. They also have Robocop on the list... *groan*
Also, it's clear that Criterion isn't unbiased in their choices. Although I'm a huge fan of Wes Anderson, he has all three of his 'big name' releases as Criterion releases (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and Life Aquatic). The only other directors on the list with more than three titles are David Lean, Ingmar Bergman, François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock and Akira Kurosawa and the like. Hell, even Tarkovsky only has two on the list.
Wes Anderson may be great and I might be one of his fans, but I don't see how he 'deserves' to have all three of his big name movies on the list. It should also be noted that the Criterion release is the only DVD release for Life Aquatic.
So please, don't take the Criterion Collection as the according-to-Hoyle list of quality films.
Slashdot Mirror
Calamari for EVERYONE!
Ten bucks says someone's already tried to do a retro shoehorn mod to make their iPod look like a TR-1.
First one with a link gets +5 Informative!
Actually, Matsushita is larger because of many, many reasons, the chief reason being that it was founded 28 years before Sony was.
;)
Although it wasn't one of the Big Four zaibatsus, it was also dissolved after the Allied occupation of Japan and targeted for systematic breakup, however was saved by worker/family union petitions and thus is a much, much more significant staple of the Japanese economic landscape.
You might be an IT professional and graduate student, but I'm also an IT professional, Wharton School graduate and majored in Japanese Business and Economics
They just can't admit that their PSP was a failure and that Blu-Ray (aka BetamaxDisc) and the PlayStation3 are going to bankrupt them.
/rant
Wow, that's either an exaggeration or amazingly naive. If you honestly believe that the PSP, Blu-Ray and the PS3 are going to bankrupt a company with 151,000 employees and about a gajillion patents, a company that rakes in about $70billion a year in revenue, then you seriously need to stop smoking the reefer and pay attention in summer school.
Companies of Sony's size don't 'break' over one generation of marketing mistakes. The problem is much larger than a couple of wrong turns with products. Such a thing is achieved through the "head against a brick wall" method. Be stubborn enough to keep making the same mistakes and eventually they'll go broke.
If Sony ever goes bankrupt, it'll be because five or ten years from now, they're still climbing over each other, fisting big sweaty handfuls of dollars up the asses of their lawyers trying to revive the dead horse carcass they call a music business model that's been lying on the sidewalk for the past six years. If they'd spent a quarter of what they've already spent on their RIAA/MPAA legal bills on a decent online business infrastructure, they'd be raking in more money than iTunes.
Imagine that; 1999 and Sony releases SonySongStore.com - any songs by any Sony recording artist for $1, any album for $12 - they'd have forced Universal, EMI and Warner to all open their own websites to give their own artists a piece of the online pie. Then they wouldn't have to care so much about trying to force what *they* think is popular music onto the public. Instead, they could promote three times as many new artists for cents on the dollar using online advertising and, well you know, let the market sort the wheat from the chaff. No more need to sign huge, long term contracts with new, unknown artists, creating risky investments. Instead, sign them on so as they can provide their songs for download on your site, pay for minimal bandwidth costs if they go bust or end up raking it in because a shitload of people have downloaded their songs, realized they're actually talented and you've got yourselves a star.
Not to mention that if they'd done all of this six years ago, I guarantee you Sony would have brought out their own MP3 player years before Apple did and it would have become the benchmark. It would have essentially become the Walkman/Discman of the current generation. Instead, they're constantly trying to play catch-up, wondering why they can't keep up whilst simultaneously refusing to let go of the starting post.
Easier said than done, I know. But regardless my original point remains valid; If Sony ever goes bankrupt, it will be because they're still continuing with this DRM/RIAA/MPAA death spiral of a charade two or three CEOs from now. It's worse than they think because it's not just a error of judgement that's affecting their entertainment section; it's filtering across to their R&D department (taking a couple of years to finally release a decent MP3 player that, you know, actually plays MP3s), their marketing department ("Trust us when we say you'd rather have your songs in ATRAC format") and until someone towards the pointy end of the pyramid decides to say, "Uhh, hey guys I think we're on the wrong track here", they're going to continue to get screwed with their pants on.
Sorry heh,
Thank you Captain Obvious. Run along now and be sure to tell the kids at the orphanage there's no Santa Claus too.
How do you classify something as 10x safer than something else? Do they expect 10x less people to die, 10x less frequent explosive disasters, or are the events themselves 10x less dangerous, meaning astronauts could survive?
Perhaps the materials used in construction have 10x the tensile strength? Or statistically they expect it to last 10x longer before requiring scheduled maintenance or retirement? Or the test runs they've done have resulted in 1/10th the number of accidents, Loss Time Injuries or just plain downtime? Maybe for ever safety feature in the original there are ten in this one?
It's probably just an arbitrary number but that doesn't dismiss the concept of being able to say one thing is safer than another.
I'm reluctant to update my lists using either source at the moment until it's cleared up. The plan for me is to keep the status quo until told otherwise from a reputable source.
I have a problem though; I have two main computers I use regularly and one of them was last updated on the 11th of September, the other on the 14th of September. The $64,000 question is:
Which of my computers, if any, are using reputable blocklists?
I don't know when this coup was started and thus I don't know at what stage we were supposed to stop trusting the auto-updating. I've already turned off my auto-updating for PG2 on both computers but I'd like some info on whether my current lists have been 'tainted.' By the sounds of it, this was a bit of a 'slow mutiny' so I'm somewhat paranoid that the lists may have been compromised far earlier than say, a week ago and thus this is all null and void. Needless to say, we just don't know at the moment.
Any info from some reputable PG2 personnel (I've seen you guys post here before, PS - love your work! I donate!) would go a very, very long way.
Found nearby, a toilet bowl carved out of stone and the world's oldest recipe for a hangover cure.
I never said it was fucking foolproof. I'm just saying that it's helped.
Thats brave! I'd just buy the flippin cd's rather than risk a $15,000 fine!
Actually I have, you presumptuous jackass. When they release;
- Seasons 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 of Frasier;
- The Daily Show complete run from 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005;
- Scrubs seasons 2, 3 and 4;
- The West Wing seasons 5 and 6;
- the entire run of Top Gear;
- the entire run of The Wonder Years;
- the entire run of Parker Lewis Can't Lose;
- not to mention about a dozen Japanese dorama series
on DVD, then be sure to let me know; I'll buy them.
"According to this BBC article, users in South Korea, Italy, Germany and Spain are using BitTorrent less frequently these days, after lawsuits by the movie industry."
In Korea, only old people use eDonkey!
*shrug* I got one warning before using PeerGuardian. The two years since, nada.
PeerGuardian 1.x was known to 'occasionally' balloon with its CPU usage from time to time, which was a shame. PeerGuardian2 is just fine though; been running it for at least six months (iirc) and never had it higher than 1%.
Funny... it was because of increased legal activity that I moved from eDonkey to BitTorrent.
...and started using PeerGuardian.
Well I'm NOT a fan of Joss Whedon's previous work. At all. I can't stand Buffy or Angel. But I LOVE Firefly. I think there's a potential market for both Whedon fanboys and new fans.
Seriously people, for those who hate Buffy or Angel, don't be fooled into thinking it's more of the same. Firefly is completely different to his previous stuff and definitely worth the hype, DVDs and movies. I yearn for more episodes to be made. Please, give Firefly a shot!
If you happen to be one of them, the TNN 300 is a pretty unique product that will appeal to you.
Sorry to be the annoying English teacher from 9th grade here but something can't be "pretty unique" or "very unique". It's either unique or it isn't. Yes, informally it can be used with an adverbial modifier but that doesn't mean it's proper English.
Oh I never said it was a problem. I was just pointing out that the transition for the camera industry was inevitable. I'm the owner of multiple Canon digital SLR bodies and a couple of point and shoot digital cameras and buy even the most trivial camera related item from a reputable camera store (or website) rather than an all-in-one electronics store like Best Buy or Circuit City. That's just how any specific consumer-related industry evolves if successful. As an example, televisions can still be purchased at Wal-Mart and Best Buy but if you want old-school parts or rare/quality parts, you go to a dedicated enthusiast store. You can purchase no-name no-nonsense cd decks for your car almost anywhere, but if you want that super-fantastic deck that plays DVDs and MP3s and has a built-in hard drive, chances are you'll have to go to a store/website dedicated to car audio gear. Like I said, it was only a matter of time.
It was only going to be a matter of time before the only place you could buy a film camera was at a dedicated photography store.
Alright guys, which one of you didn't buy a gamecube?
Apparently me and another five billion or so people.
Exactly. Even the most mundane and trivial application or game these days tends to require some sort of adminstrative privileges or access during install and commonly also during use. Numerous small business accounting packages require adminstrator privileges, especially a much-maligned yet inexplicably common package that requires online activation.
Look, I can understand that low-access user accounts are the way to go, but when the most common programs require admin rights to use and install, how can you expect the "average user" (who, by the way still is oblivious as to why their computer runs as slow as a sloth when Fast User Switching is enabled and the other user has 24 programs running) not to see a low-access user account as some sort of ugly restriction, an unfairly imposed shackle on their own private usage of their own computer?
When your average word processing application and camera-photo applications (I'm looking at you, Nikon) stops requiring access to the internet (Net Limiter saw those dubious packets being sent back and forth, HP photo software) and important registry areas (fuck you, Hitachi DVD-RAM video camera proprietary software), then maybe we can honestly expect the average user to be happy with user rights.
Criterion might be a nice place to start, but it's still not the greatest place to start. First of all, Armageddon and The Rock are on the list, which is a clear indicator that some of the films are there purely as "showcase" DVDs that people can put on to show off their home theater setups. Or perhaps more accurately for those fuckers at Best Buy to show off their setups that no sane person would buy. They also have Robocop on the list... *groan*
Also, it's clear that Criterion isn't unbiased in their choices. Although I'm a huge fan of Wes Anderson, he has all three of his 'big name' releases as Criterion releases (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums and Life Aquatic). The only other directors on the list with more than three titles are David Lean, Ingmar Bergman, François Truffaut, Alfred Hitchcock and Akira Kurosawa and the like. Hell, even Tarkovsky only has two on the list.
Wes Anderson may be great and I might be one of his fans, but I don't see how he 'deserves' to have all three of his big name movies on the list. It should also be noted that the Criterion release is the only DVD release for Life Aquatic.
So please, don't take the Criterion Collection as the according-to-Hoyle list of quality films.
HOLY SHIT!
:)
My father is one of the undersigned! (One of the Monadelphous undersigned)
I just confirmed the story with him a minute ago. He's sitting here with me, just as amazed at how he's become part of internet legend
The story is about ten years old though. He held the position with Monadelphous back in 1995.
Amazing!
The Prescription Benefits Scheme (PBS) is a part of the larger Medicare scheme that all Australians contribute to via their taxes.
Sorry to rain on your rant, but it's not the Prescription Benefits Scheme, it's the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/SP/pbs.htm
Rants have far more sway if they're accurate.
Oh My ${deity}, the noise must be horrific! My ears are hurting just from *looking* at that picture.
Actually, engines aren't at full throttle during landing, so it's actually not that loud at all
Which is one reason you might want to use the onion routing program Tor, available from http://tor.eff.org/