It's like people in the UK get very upset when petrol goes up 2p/litre. Most people have no idea - the cost/mile of most travelling is about 25% petrol and 75% finance/depreciation/servicing/insurance etc.
From what I can recall, the electric motor gets charged during braking and acceleration and is designed for the driving round town at low speeds (correct me if I'm wrong).
In that case, for sales reps covering a ton of motorway driving, it would save nothing as they'd be on the petrol engine most of the time.
And hybrids still don't do as well as diesels from what I've seen.
Apologies. That was meant a little in jest, in that game of "if you were world dictator, forgetting passing laws about world poverty and peace, what's the one law you'd like for yourself". I'd also put a trade quota on Irish boy bands.
You know what? Making movies is a risky thing to do. It's not "produce widgets", it's a creative thing and it requires a lot of love, talent and not an inconsiderable amount of luck.
Sometimes, though, it can just be about it being quite a regular movie, but very well done. There's nothing revolutionary about a movie like True Lies, but it's entertaining.
It's the movies I see that just look like they were put together by commitees of PR people and accountants. Have the latest actor, or preferably, the couple that are splashed across the tabloids at the moment, wrap it in some sort of vague story and make it. And the last 1/4 of it won't work because it's PR bullshit, not a story.
The most I pay is £6.30. I skip popcorn and drinks, or have a beer before I go in.
I prefer smaller movies that work well on TV too, but some big films are best on the big screen. But I'd rather spend £30-50 a year to watch those than spend thousands for a high end "home cinema" system that's still not as good.
Comedy - great fun watching a great comedy with a big crowd. Horror does nothing for me on the small screen.
I have very few problems with kids and cellphones. Then again, I mostly go mid-week, and I think they go weekends.
But I do get annoying middle-aged couples talking about what they are seeing.. On a few occassions I've had to ask people to shut up.
One last thing. I want a law introduced in the UK - when the BBFC certificate (the last thing you see before the movie starts) appears on the screen, it's no entry. I'm really tired of people making me stand up and then listen to them taking their coat off and open their bags of Skittles because they couldn't make the start time - correction - they couldn't make it to 20 minutes after the start time.
Where once you had to wait for buddies to see a movie (which often meant that you were risking it first), there are thousands of people posting their opinions. The word-of-mouth time has shortened.
If I had to guess the motivation, it would be to get people off Hotmail and onto Gmail.
I know a few Hotmail guys who like it that they can IM and see any new messages appearing. The VOIP is a bonus that may convince more people to switch.
Why would Google want Skype? OK, they've got millions of customers, but I've met some people today who are already switching, because they're already on Gmail.
That's about the dumbest, most illogical argument imaginable on the subject. The point about:-
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is not the technology playland Skype wants to be a part of. Google on the other hand is the company we all want to sell our great cool technologies to.
When people want to sell out their technology, they don't care who it goes to. It's insignificant because they have no control of once sold.
A more reasonable way of looking at it would be to suggest that google are doing this to created a unified messaging approach. One ID to give you voice, IM and mail. Who wants to mess around having a Gmail account and Skype account.
Do I need an extra 15 channels of sound (most of which are done in post-production anyway)? More pointless interviews?
Yesterday, I watched The Longest Day, and on saturday, a Cary Grant movie. Both great, and both mono. I'd rather watch Casablanca in black and white/mono than the latest Michael Bay shite in 1600 line 32 channel sound superdupervision.
You'll never get people running government departments to get too worried about saving money. Basically, it's not their money, so it doesn't really matter. It's also why large corporates mostly won't go to OpenOffice.org.
The best hope for OpenOffice.org is small businesses looking to save costs, and as they expand, they use more and more OOo.
I switched from Word 2000 to OOo 1.1. I figured that I'd see how long I would last before I had to switch back. And I still haven't. I found the training no worse than switching from one version of Office to another. I had to work out that a few things were in a different place which meant a slight delay early on - which is now dealt with. The rest of the world can complain about the training costs from MS Office to OOo, but I'll take my not having to shell out a few hundred pounds every so often for features I don't need.
People send me word documents, I change them, send them back and they don't know better.
I do everything I want to do. I write complex documents with images, headers, footers, numbering, styles. If it didn't do what I needed, I'd switch to Word.
The thing is that recording information in Word for forms is one of the most backward things about the corporate use of Office.
The problem with such input is that it is rarely validated. It's the narrow use of a computer as a glorified typewriter.
Record the report into a proper computer system. Something that means people can run reports against it to get crime statistics, and then use a tool to do printing as you need it.
I've worked in places that did form filling with Word, which them often involved someone manually going through all the forms because, unlike in a system, codes input into Word don't get validated, so you can't get a computer to find it for you.
It's also about having a relationship with the seller. That's what can make that "luxury" worth the extra price.
I often spend more money at two particular online computer stores that I need to. Why? Because in one case, when I email them a question, I get a good answer, often within a few hours. In another case, I know that if I call them, the phone gets answered within maybe 20-30 seconds by a well-trained member of staff.
Is it worth saving $5 on a hard drive if when it comes to returning it, you have to spend 45 minutes on the phone, followed by a conversation with an idiot?
The trouble is that punters (except for maybe 5% of them) are almost always sold on actors, which is possibly one of the worst measures of a quality of a film.
I remember the day after seeing The Usual Suspects telling people how mindblowingly awesome it was. First question - "who's in it?".
When writers start getting paid more than stars, I'll believe there aer changes afoot.
I've worked as a developer/designer/PM on a number of projects and Joel explains his arguments (many of which I share) more lucidly than most people can.
His writing about things like leaky abstraction and the piece about the Windows API becoming less relevant are very well written.
Joel is, in my opinion a real thinker with more of a grip on the future of computing than most journalists.
The problem is mostly that the guy isn't even thinking too straight.
People should take a look at shareware. Thousands of people write shareware. Some of it is completely unencumbered with any protection whatsover, and much of it gives you nothing much for your money but removal of the nag screen.
Now, how many people register WinZip? Not very many, but because it's so well known, and used, even on a small conversion rate, that's a small slice of a gigantic pie.
The question for musicians is how big your slice is now, and how big would a "filesharing" slice be? OK, sales may be smaller, but so would your overheads. You may not need the same pluggers and promoters because the sharing of the files is the promotion.
Quite a lot of bands already do very well on word-of-mouth instead of radio play. The charts are a bit of an illusion as well - some bands have reasonable sales, but over a long period of time, meaning that they struggle to chart.
A lot of artists are already independent, and don't want to go back.
Re:Well this renders space experimentation useless
on
NASA's Shuttle Plans
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· Score: 1
That would be all those great experiments that we've learnt something from?
Through a bizarre cyclical logic, the shuttle is there to service the ISS which exists to justify the continuation of the shuttle program.
Redirecting shuttle/ISS funding at other scientific research here on earth would be much more useful.
Re:We're not going to leave the planet just yet...
on
NASA's Shuttle Plans
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· Score: 1
I continually question the validity of manned missions, particularly to Mars.
We are just playing with manned space travel. We're doing the equivalent of swim the Atlantic. You'll die before you get there, so have to swim back within a few miles.
With manned space travel, the furthest we can get in a man's lifetime is what? Pluto? Planet X? We can't get to the next solar system in our lifetime.
Ultimately, if we really want to get out there, explore new civilisations, boldly go etc, we need a new perhapsotron, a quantum leap advance in science that will mean we can cover far greater distances than at present.
Meanwhile, let the expendable probes go around the solar system, lots of them. Let's learn about what's out there, and maybe try and understand the universe better.
Slashdot Mirror
It's like people in the UK get very upset when petrol goes up 2p/litre. Most people have no idea - the cost/mile of most travelling is about 25% petrol and 75% finance/depreciation/servicing/insurance etc.
In that case, for sales reps covering a ton of motorway driving, it would save nothing as they'd be on the petrol engine most of the time.
And hybrids still don't do as well as diesels from what I've seen.
Apologies. That was meant a little in jest, in that game of "if you were world dictator, forgetting passing laws about world poverty and peace, what's the one law you'd like for yourself". I'd also put a trade quota on Irish boy bands.
Sometimes, though, it can just be about it being quite a regular movie, but very well done. There's nothing revolutionary about a movie like True Lies, but it's entertaining.
It's the movies I see that just look like they were put together by commitees of PR people and accountants. Have the latest actor, or preferably, the couple that are splashed across the tabloids at the moment, wrap it in some sort of vague story and make it. And the last 1/4 of it won't work because it's PR bullshit, not a story.
I prefer smaller movies that work well on TV too, but some big films are best on the big screen. But I'd rather spend £30-50 a year to watch those than spend thousands for a high end "home cinema" system that's still not as good.
Comedy - great fun watching a great comedy with a big crowd. Horror does nothing for me on the small screen.
But I do get annoying middle-aged couples talking about what they are seeing.. On a few occassions I've had to ask people to shut up.
One last thing. I want a law introduced in the UK - when the BBFC certificate (the last thing you see before the movie starts) appears on the screen, it's no entry. I'm really tired of people making me stand up and then listen to them taking their coat off and open their bags of Skittles because they couldn't make the start time - correction - they couldn't make it to 20 minutes after the start time.
Where once you had to wait for buddies to see a movie (which often meant that you were risking it first), there are thousands of people posting their opinions. The word-of-mouth time has shortened.
I know a few Hotmail guys who like it that they can IM and see any new messages appearing. The VOIP is a bonus that may convince more people to switch.
Why would Google want Skype? OK, they've got millions of customers, but I've met some people today who are already switching, because they're already on Gmail.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. is not the technology playland Skype wants to be a part of. Google on the other hand is the company we all want to sell our great cool technologies to.
When people want to sell out their technology, they don't care who it goes to. It's insignificant because they have no control of once sold.
A more reasonable way of looking at it would be to suggest that google are doing this to created a unified messaging approach. One ID to give you voice, IM and mail. Who wants to mess around having a Gmail account and Skype account.
(from Dictionary.com)
To reduce, convert, or melt down (fat) by heating.
Do I need an extra 15 channels of sound (most of which are done in post-production anyway)? More pointless interviews?
Yesterday, I watched The Longest Day, and on saturday, a Cary Grant movie. Both great, and both mono. I'd rather watch Casablanca in black and white/mono than the latest Michael Bay shite in 1600 line 32 channel sound superdupervision.
I've been in a situation of recommending movies to people, and the most often asked question is "who's in it".
The best hope for OpenOffice.org is small businesses looking to save costs, and as they expand, they use more and more OOo.
I switched from Word 2000 to OOo 1.1. I figured that I'd see how long I would last before I had to switch back. And I still haven't. I found the training no worse than switching from one version of Office to another. I had to work out that a few things were in a different place which meant a slight delay early on - which is now dealt with. The rest of the world can complain about the training costs from MS Office to OOo, but I'll take my not having to shell out a few hundred pounds every so often for features I don't need.
People send me word documents, I change them, send them back and they don't know better.
I do everything I want to do. I write complex documents with images, headers, footers, numbering, styles. If it didn't do what I needed, I'd switch to Word.
That local webserver in a server room gives much more protection.
And who on earth needs to change fonts for the purpose of a police report?
The problem with such input is that it is rarely validated. It's the narrow use of a computer as a glorified typewriter.
Record the report into a proper computer system. Something that means people can run reports against it to get crime statistics, and then use a tool to do printing as you need it.
I've worked in places that did form filling with Word, which them often involved someone manually going through all the forms because, unlike in a system, codes input into Word don't get validated, so you can't get a computer to find it for you.
I priced them up and found that the cost without MS Office, but with OpenOffice.org instead was a BIG saving.
However, he wanted MS Office because he wanted to be 100% compatible. Not because MS Office had any more features, just for compatibility.
I often spend more money at two particular online computer stores that I need to. Why? Because in one case, when I email them a question, I get a good answer, often within a few hours. In another case, I know that if I call them, the phone gets answered within maybe 20-30 seconds by a well-trained member of staff.
Is it worth saving $5 on a hard drive if when it comes to returning it, you have to spend 45 minutes on the phone, followed by a conversation with an idiot?
Watch the trailers for The Incredibles or Cars, and you will not hear the words "computer generated".
The problem for Pixar's competition is that they don't get it. Most CG movies like to mention the CG.
Yeah, Madagascar was CG. And it completely blew chunks.
I remember the day after seeing The Usual Suspects telling people how mindblowingly awesome it was. First question - "who's in it?".
When writers start getting paid more than stars, I'll believe there aer changes afoot.
I believe in scientific method. But there are some answers that we don't have and never will have.
Big bang theory allows for the existence of a creator or "god", that started the bang in the first place.
And if you ask Pascal, he'd advise you to believe in god.
His writing about things like leaky abstraction and the piece about the Windows API becoming less relevant are very well written.
Joel is, in my opinion a real thinker with more of a grip on the future of computing than most journalists.
People should take a look at shareware. Thousands of people write shareware. Some of it is completely unencumbered with any protection whatsover, and much of it gives you nothing much for your money but removal of the nag screen.
Now, how many people register WinZip? Not very many, but because it's so well known, and used, even on a small conversion rate, that's a small slice of a gigantic pie.
The question for musicians is how big your slice is now, and how big would a "filesharing" slice be? OK, sales may be smaller, but so would your overheads. You may not need the same pluggers and promoters because the sharing of the files is the promotion.
Quite a lot of bands already do very well on word-of-mouth instead of radio play. The charts are a bit of an illusion as well - some bands have reasonable sales, but over a long period of time, meaning that they struggle to chart.
A lot of artists are already independent, and don't want to go back.
Through a bizarre cyclical logic, the shuttle is there to service the ISS which exists to justify the continuation of the shuttle program.
Redirecting shuttle/ISS funding at other scientific research here on earth would be much more useful.
We are just playing with manned space travel. We're doing the equivalent of swim the Atlantic. You'll die before you get there, so have to swim back within a few miles.
With manned space travel, the furthest we can get in a man's lifetime is what? Pluto? Planet X? We can't get to the next solar system in our lifetime.
Ultimately, if we really want to get out there, explore new civilisations, boldly go etc, we need a new perhapsotron, a quantum leap advance in science that will mean we can cover far greater distances than at present.
Meanwhile, let the expendable probes go around the solar system, lots of them. Let's learn about what's out there, and maybe try and understand the universe better.