What do the Japanese have that the US does not, to allow them to create a MagLev?
Competent management less interested in personal ambition, office politics, stuffing their own pockets and corporate bullshit than building something practical and useful on time and within budget.
I'm curious--what was, in your eyes, the last original production you saw, television or otherwise?
So you can tell me what it's based on? No matter what the answer, you'll claim it isn't original, and will probably once again claim there are only 37 plots in all of literature, a statement that is as absurd as claiming there are only eight colors in all of art.
did you watch the mini-series?
Some of it. The point is it isn't original, and by spending millions on it, really original productions are ignored.
There is simply no way domestic industry could replace all the cheap imports from China.
Between 1940 and 1944, domestic industry ramped from coffee cans and toothpicks to building a B-17 every hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Domestic industry built a freighter a day, and eight battleships in two years. (that's nearly a half a million tons of steel).
20 years later, domestic industry set out to land on the moon when it was accurately observed that "we don't even have the tools to build the tools we need to build a Saturn V." In less than 10 years, the job was done.
Since you consider it to be "one of the most famous works of literature in the history of civilization," and obviously a work of value when measuring "creativity, social commentary, meaningful culture or literary achievement," Hamlet and the non-Shakespearean origins of the story are certainly germane to your objections to the origins of the latest Battlestar Galactica.
Skillful, but still a red herring. Origin and originality are two different things, however subtle the difference may be.
I'm happy to see the series got a 3.5 rating. That's great. Unfortunately overall ratings are down as much as 10% for large categories of viewers.
When the top grossing movies are based on theme park rides and television shows from the 1960s and the most ambitious television projects are based on television shows from the 1970s, it's time to ask if any of these companies plan on making anything original.
Since you brought up the notion of "something original," suggesting that my argument is a red herring doesn't apply here.
Sure it does. It takes the discussion of Battlestar Galactica and makes it a discussion of how original Hamlet is. That is a black letter red herring. A remake, by definition, is not original.
Hollywood complains at exhausting length about how expensive and risky it is to make these stumbling multi-million dollar white elephant productions, yet they absolutely refuse to hire even one writer to make even one original script that isn't designed by a marketing formula. People are sick and tired of remade, reconstituted crap. The low television ratings are proof.
The local theater production of Hamlet probably didn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a minute to produce.
But hey, let's miss the point completely and compare Battlestar Galactica to one of Shakespeare's greatest accomplishments and one of the most famous works of literature in the history of civilization.
Why not? Let's spend millions of dollars of creative capital to make a new television series based on a mini-series based on a decades-old television series. Oh, and don't forget to add more lingerie models with numbers for names.
It has to make more money than something original, and that's what it's really all about, isn't it?
Forget creativity, social commentary, meaningful culture or literary achievement. Where's the cash?
Wow it is difficult not to get depressed about the direction our society and culture are taking.
If you repeal copyright, 30% of the economy vanishes the next morning. Changing copyright is fine, but people should have the ability to copyright their creative work.
But it's just not substantiated by the facts at hand.
Sure it is. As the price falls, the rate of unauthorized file sharing will fall too. There are centuries' worth of economic data to support this in other industries.
there are so many fields which are budding. So many opportunites. Why do we have to look back at the financial software jobs that went away?
Because this economy and this society is actively opposed to entrepreneurial thinking. Try to get funding for a robotics company. Try to get anyone to listen to a truly new idea. Try to get another company to buy your "unproven" product. Fuck, try to get someone to answer the #%*(@$)@#(_! PHONE at a large company.
If you speak up at work, you get fired, so we must teach people not to speak up so they can keep their subsistence-level job until it is stolen and shipped elsewhere.
Entrepreneurs do everything wrong. They are impatient, driven, focused and constantly interrupting. They take risks in a risk-averse society. They push people who only want to wallow in their grayness.
And when entrepreneurs go to find capital in this capitalistic society, they get a door slammed in their face so hard it makes their ears ring for a week.
That's why people would like to keep their job for a few minutes.
In the future, the only high skill job will be corporate manager. Everyone else will be stuffed into a 2 x 3 foot cubicle making $4 an hour after earning their second Master's Degree.
Computer Programmer is a low-skill job. Uh huh. If you can't smell the fragrant horseshit by now, you better borrow a canoe or some boots.
Maybe you just don't like that someone is trying to outsmart you, pushing up the prices on the stocks you're going to want to buy?
No, I don't like it when price speculation takes a company's focus off making a good product (which results in a more reliable dividend) and replaces it with "how can we bump the stock price next quarter?" (which results in a clusterfuck).
This isn't politics (at least not in this particular column) it's engineering. And one thing engineers of great big IT systems know
...is that engineers aren't invited to the meetings where the (political) decisions are made, and are summarily ignored before and after those meetings, therefore...
they are never on time, never on budget, and sometimes don't work at all.
There is a science to investment. You just have to know how to read numbers, know how a corporation works, understand how trading works and understand what you are buying.
Stocks were never meant to be traded as speculation on the share price. Purchasing stock is purchasing a share of a company's future earnings in the form of dividends. This is why people who invest long term make more than people who buy expecting to sell with a profit in the same week.
There are several stocks paying 5-10% real returns as dividends right now. Try getting that rate at the bank. The best CD right now might pay 2%, if that.
If the Cat in the Hat drives a rocket car and sounds like Charles Nelson Reilly, why can't Battlestar Galactica erase it's entire background story? (Question: Has anyone EVER seen more advertising before? It's nauseating)
It even has a blond semi-alien with a number for a name. Now that's original. If you're going to objectify women, at least make it obvious.
Entertainment executives cannot green light an original idea any more. They simply cannot do it. The attention span in the board room is no different than that of the MTV audience: the whole industry is based on elevator pitches (just like the game industry), and an original concept CANNOT BE EXPLAINED in 30 seconds, so they have to come up with:
"it's Battlestar Galactica, ok, but we replace the search for Earth with a blond alien and spend millions on CG effects nobody can see because we forgot to add enough light sources."
"So we keep the name, and piss off the whole existing market for the show so we have to spend more millions on spamvertising to build a whole new market, right?"
"Right!"
"Brilliant! Here's $$$$ I'm late for my bean salad lunch"
When a Japanese anime company pays cash to buy a major studio, then somebody will wake up, but by then it won't matter.
Nah, they'd never bar me from the bank. They believe in my business enough to keep sucking service fees out of my account every month, just not enough to help expand it, even though we turned a profit in our second year. That's right, we built a PRODUCT in year ONE and turned a PROFIT in year TWO.
It's probably because I don't drive a Navigator and have salt and pepper hair, wire-rimmed glasses and a leather checkbook cover.
What the fuck does my attitude have to do with getting a loan? Oh, I have to kiss ASS to get a loan, right?
Fuck that. I work harder than any ten bank employees. The one time I approached the all-knowing blow-dried loan person to discuss it I was treated like wet dogshit. They called people in from other offices to tell me to fuck off.
At the time I had a SELLING PRODUCT that I built from BORROWED scratch. I worked my ass off for two years to do it and funded it with four hours of lost sleep and one meal a day.
I put in 18 hour days as a matter of routine. I didn't take a day off or have a vacation for well over two years. I slept at my broken-down desk for months at a time.
There is not one person at that FUCKING bank that could handle ONE DAY of that schedule. They don't give a shit about anything except a nice big house with Corian countertops they can collateralize for 10 cents on the dollar, wrap it in a perfect credit report and shove it right back up their customers' asses.
They get cash up front and ongoing, 12% interest and four-figure fees with double collateral and the whole fucking thing is guaranteed by my ever-fuck-loving tax money and confiscatory service fees. I don't believe a fucking word they say and I'm not going to suck ass for their fragrant bullshit loan.
$10,000 and six months, and the bank better know your business, or you're denied before they ask if you'd like some coffee.
collateral,
Real Estate or liquid assets. Six figures worth, at least.
cosigners,
Nobody is going to co-sign on a business loan. They'd rather at least have stock instead of 100% risk, no reward.
Starting a business is very risky, and the banks know it.
Awww, the poor boo-boos. I love it how bank employees (who count money in air conditioned buildings for a living) are the oracles of all business knowledge. The average bank officer couldn't start a business with a map.
They will politely ignore you until they get bored, then they will ask you the unanswerable question: what makes you think your business will succeed? There is no correct answer to that question, and if you attempt to answer it, your loan will be denied. Then the meeting will be abruptly concluded because the bank employee has to get back to ignoring their voice mail, and ain't no loan happening today.
If you can't manage to build up enough personal worth to own a home to use as collateral, how the heck can the bank trust you to build up the business to be able to pay them back?
Great, then if you can do all that, what the fuck do you need a loan for? Self-finance through product sales and tell the gold-coat wearing, SUV driving, platinum card Ms. Suburbia behind the "fuck you" desk at "We're your partner as long as you keep shoveling those fees" bank to park it.
Only a complete asshole would ask a relative or friend to co-sign on a business loan. Co-signing is the worst of all possible partnerships. All risk, no reward, no control.
I've heard so many stories about "fuck yous" from banks that it's becoming its own cliche. Watching entrepreneurs drag themselves out to the parking lot after being told how much they suck is entertainment for bank employees.
Without collateral, there are no loans. Banks want 12% backed by GUARANTEED LIQUID ASSETS. Nobody gives a fuck about the business.
Where you will be stared at as if you had just landed from Neptune.
Unless you have some nice juicy collateral, that is. Something on the order of a paid-off half million dollar commercial complex that the bank can sink five-ton chromed hooks into for a $20,000 loan at 28% interest and $4800 in up-front fees (which must be paid out of the loan, so you get to pay 28% interest on the fees too).
Oh, and don't even think about the SBA. lol It would cost you the whole $20,000 just to complete the fuckin' paperwork (and you'll still get turned down).
Give up the "I'll get a loan" dream. It ain't going to happen.
Many companies constantly try to find highly intelligent, well educated, experienced, self-starter employees: exactly the kind of people who, if they had the opportunity, would probably start their own business.
These companies then go on to lose these people because they try to force them into servitude instead of allowing them to help build the business.
The servitude policies are almost always enthusiastically endorsed by middle management.
Slashdot Mirror
What do the Japanese have that the US does not, to allow them to create a MagLev?
Competent management less interested in personal ambition, office politics, stuffing their own pockets and corporate bullshit than building something practical and useful on time and within budget.
I'm curious--what was, in your eyes, the last original production you saw, television or otherwise?
So you can tell me what it's based on? No matter what the answer, you'll claim it isn't original, and will probably once again claim there are only 37 plots in all of literature, a statement that is as absurd as claiming there are only eight colors in all of art.
did you watch the mini-series?
Some of it. The point is it isn't original, and by spending millions on it, really original productions are ignored.
Well, let's see. When you have obscene amounts of cash...
There is simply no way domestic industry could replace all the cheap imports from China.
Between 1940 and 1944, domestic industry ramped from coffee cans and toothpicks to building a B-17 every hour, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Domestic industry built a freighter a day, and eight battleships in two years. (that's nearly a half a million tons of steel).
20 years later, domestic industry set out to land on the moon when it was accurately observed that "we don't even have the tools to build the tools we need to build a Saturn V." In less than 10 years, the job was done.
Since you consider it to be "one of the most famous works of literature in the history of civilization," and obviously a work of value when measuring "creativity, social commentary, meaningful culture or literary achievement," Hamlet and the non-Shakespearean origins of the story are certainly germane to your objections to the origins of the latest Battlestar Galactica.
Skillful, but still a red herring. Origin and originality are two different things, however subtle the difference may be.
I'm happy to see the series got a 3.5 rating. That's great. Unfortunately overall ratings are down as much as 10% for large categories of viewers.
When the top grossing movies are based on theme park rides and television shows from the 1960s and the most ambitious television projects are based on television shows from the 1970s, it's time to ask if any of these companies plan on making anything original.
Since you brought up the notion of "something original," suggesting that my argument is a red herring doesn't apply here.
Sure it does. It takes the discussion of Battlestar Galactica and makes it a discussion of how original Hamlet is. That is a black letter red herring. A remake, by definition, is not original.
Hollywood complains at exhausting length about how expensive and risky it is to make these stumbling multi-million dollar white elephant productions, yet they absolutely refuse to hire even one writer to make even one original script that isn't designed by a marketing formula. People are sick and tired of remade, reconstituted crap. The low television ratings are proof.
Nice red herring.
The local theater production of Hamlet probably didn't cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a minute to produce.
But hey, let's miss the point completely and compare Battlestar Galactica to one of Shakespeare's greatest accomplishments and one of the most famous works of literature in the history of civilization.
Why not? Let's spend millions of dollars of creative capital to make a new television series based on a mini-series based on a decades-old television series. Oh, and don't forget to add more lingerie models with numbers for names.
It has to make more money than something original, and that's what it's really all about, isn't it?
Forget creativity, social commentary, meaningful culture or literary achievement. Where's the cash?
Wow it is difficult not to get depressed about the direction our society and culture are taking.
If you repeal copyright, 30% of the economy vanishes the next morning. Changing copyright is fine, but people should have the ability to copyright their creative work.
Wait, here's Luke now!
"And, and Han is my uncle, but he married my sister, and my father is now my brother-in-law's half-brother, which makes him..."
"I'M MY OWN GRAMPAAAAAAA!!!"
But it's just not substantiated by the facts at hand.
Sure it is. As the price falls, the rate of unauthorized file sharing will fall too. There are centuries' worth of economic data to support this in other industries.
there are so many fields which are budding. So many opportunites. Why do we have to look back at the financial software jobs that went away?
Because this economy and this society is actively opposed to entrepreneurial thinking. Try to get funding for a robotics company. Try to get anyone to listen to a truly new idea. Try to get another company to buy your "unproven" product. Fuck, try to get someone to answer the #%*(@$)@#(_! PHONE at a large company.
If you speak up at work, you get fired, so we must teach people not to speak up so they can keep their subsistence-level job until it is stolen and shipped elsewhere.
Entrepreneurs do everything wrong. They are impatient, driven, focused and constantly interrupting. They take risks in a risk-averse society. They push people who only want to wallow in their grayness.
And when entrepreneurs go to find capital in this capitalistic society, they get a door slammed in their face so hard it makes their ears ring for a week.
That's why people would like to keep their job for a few minutes.
In the future, the only high skill job will be corporate manager. Everyone else will be stuffed into a 2 x 3 foot cubicle making $4 an hour after earning their second Master's Degree.
Computer Programmer is a low-skill job. Uh huh. If you can't smell the fragrant horseshit by now, you better borrow a canoe or some boots.
Maybe you just don't like that someone is trying to outsmart you, pushing up the prices on the stocks you're going to want to buy?
No, I don't like it when price speculation takes a company's focus off making a good product (which results in a more reliable dividend) and replaces it with "how can we bump the stock price next quarter?" (which results in a clusterfuck).
This isn't politics (at least not in this particular column) it's engineering. And one thing engineers of great big IT systems know
...is that engineers aren't invited to the meetings where the (political) decisions are made, and are summarily ignored before and after those meetings, therefore...
they are never on time, never on budget, and sometimes don't work at all.
'nuff said.
There is a science to investment. You just have to know how to read numbers, know how a corporation works, understand how trading works and understand what you are buying.
Stocks were never meant to be traded as speculation on the share price. Purchasing stock is purchasing a share of a company's future earnings in the form of dividends. This is why people who invest long term make more than people who buy expecting to sell with a profit in the same week.
There are several stocks paying 5-10% real returns as dividends right now. Try getting that rate at the bank. The best CD right now might pay 2%, if that.
Two words: good faith.
your project is an invisible elephant. It's standing in a room, waiting to be revealed by a group of groping teammates
And people still wonder why programmers all get fired and replaced with marketing people.
If the Cat in the Hat drives a rocket car and sounds like Charles Nelson Reilly, why can't Battlestar Galactica erase it's entire background story? (Question: Has anyone EVER seen more advertising before? It's nauseating)
It even has a blond semi-alien with a number for a name. Now that's original. If you're going to objectify women, at least make it obvious.
Entertainment executives cannot green light an original idea any more. They simply cannot do it. The attention span in the board room is no different than that of the MTV audience: the whole industry is based on elevator pitches (just like the game industry), and an original concept CANNOT BE EXPLAINED in 30 seconds, so they have to come up with:
"it's Battlestar Galactica, ok, but we replace the search for Earth with a blond alien and spend millions on CG effects nobody can see because we forgot to add enough light sources."
"So we keep the name, and piss off the whole existing market for the show so we have to spend more millions on spamvertising to build a whole new market, right?"
"Right!"
"Brilliant! Here's $$$$ I'm late for my bean salad lunch"
When a Japanese anime company pays cash to buy a major studio, then somebody will wake up, but by then it won't matter.
Nah, they'd never bar me from the bank. They believe in my business enough to keep sucking service fees out of my account every month, just not enough to help expand it, even though we turned a profit in our second year. That's right, we built a PRODUCT in year ONE and turned a PROFIT in year TWO.
It's probably because I don't drive a Navigator and have salt and pepper hair, wire-rimmed glasses and a leather checkbook cover.
What the fuck does my attitude have to do with getting a loan? Oh, I have to kiss ASS to get a loan, right?
Fuck that. I work harder than any ten bank employees. The one time I approached the all-knowing blow-dried loan person to discuss it I was treated like wet dogshit. They called people in from other offices to tell me to fuck off.
At the time I had a SELLING PRODUCT that I built from BORROWED scratch. I worked my ass off for two years to do it and funded it with four hours of lost sleep and one meal a day.
I put in 18 hour days as a matter of routine. I didn't take a day off or have a vacation for well over two years. I slept at my broken-down desk for months at a time.
There is not one person at that FUCKING bank that could handle ONE DAY of that schedule. They don't give a shit about anything except a nice big house with Corian countertops they can collateralize for 10 cents on the dollar, wrap it in a perfect credit report and shove it right back up their customers' asses.
They get cash up front and ongoing, 12% interest and four-figure fees with double collateral and the whole fucking thing is guaranteed by my ever-fuck-loving tax money and confiscatory service fees. I don't believe a fucking word they say and I'm not going to suck ass for their fragrant bullshit loan.
Yes, you're probably going to need collateral,
You will need collateral. Period.
A quality business plan,
$10,000 and six months, and the bank better know your business, or you're denied before they ask if you'd like some coffee.
collateral,
Real Estate or liquid assets. Six figures worth, at least.
cosigners,
Nobody is going to co-sign on a business loan. They'd rather at least have stock instead of 100% risk, no reward.
Starting a business is very risky, and the banks know it.
Awww, the poor boo-boos. I love it how bank employees (who count money in air conditioned buildings for a living) are the oracles of all business knowledge. The average bank officer couldn't start a business with a map.
They will politely ignore you until they get bored, then they will ask you the unanswerable question: what makes you think your business will succeed? There is no correct answer to that question, and if you attempt to answer it, your loan will be denied. Then the meeting will be abruptly concluded because the bank employee has to get back to ignoring their voice mail, and ain't no loan happening today.
If you can't manage to build up enough personal worth to own a home to use as collateral, how the heck can the bank trust you to build up the business to be able to pay them back?
Great, then if you can do all that, what the fuck do you need a loan for? Self-finance through product sales and tell the gold-coat wearing, SUV driving, platinum card Ms. Suburbia behind the "fuck you" desk at "We're your partner as long as you keep shoveling those fees" bank to park it.
Only a complete asshole would ask a relative or friend to co-sign on a business loan. Co-signing is the worst of all possible partnerships. All risk, no reward, no control.
I've heard so many stories about "fuck yous" from banks that it's becoming its own cliche. Watching entrepreneurs drag themselves out to the parking lot after being told how much they suck is entertainment for bank employees.
Without collateral, there are no loans. Banks want 12% backed by GUARANTEED LIQUID ASSETS. Nobody gives a fuck about the business.
and a trip to the local bank
Where you will be stared at as if you had just landed from Neptune.
Unless you have some nice juicy collateral, that is. Something on the order of a paid-off half million dollar commercial complex that the bank can sink five-ton chromed hooks into for a $20,000 loan at 28% interest and $4800 in up-front fees (which must be paid out of the loan, so you get to pay 28% interest on the fees too).
Oh, and don't even think about the SBA. lol It would cost you the whole $20,000 just to complete the fuckin' paperwork (and you'll still get turned down).
Give up the "I'll get a loan" dream. It ain't going to happen.
Many companies constantly try to find highly intelligent, well educated, experienced, self-starter employees: exactly the kind of people who, if they had the opportunity, would probably start their own business.
These companies then go on to lose these people because they try to force them into servitude instead of allowing them to help build the business.
The servitude policies are almost always enthusiastically endorsed by middle management.
Sounds like somebody just got the "Contact" DVD on sale.