. . . animals on the moon. Russia, China, and the EU could probably get a person on the moon in a decade or so but let's see them get a rhino or crocodile up there in a special space suit. Eventually they might counter with China sending a panda, Russia sending a Siberian tiger, and the EU will going classy with a fancy horse or something but then we bust out the space shark.
I'd heard about that with regard to how sperm whales got their name but I thought the Japanese made the distinction between the various kinds of whale goo when trying to knock up a cow. I also figured that they killed those whales since it seemed unlikely that they swam out there an jerked the whales off. It would have been nice of them though.
That's the least terrible thing (short of not killing a whale and taking it's sperm) that I can imagine the Japanese doing with whale semen. Thanks internet.
A significant portion of the impressive productivity gains in the American workforce over the past two decades has come from technology (mainly IT) advances and getting those implemented in the workplaces.
Then I'd be like the computer kid on Heroes. Hey Australians, Heroes isn't real. Mexicans don't make black goo come out of your eyes and kill you either.
Hunting humans is generally frowned upon in modern society but if we loaded dart guns with anti-tumor brain virus and let hunters track cancer victims through a jungle or something then the patient and hunter could go dutch on the treatment. The patient's give them a good hunt and the hunter bags their prey. The incentive for the patient is that they don't have to pay for any of the treatment if they evade the hunter for 3 days.
In the end the hunter gets a happy picture of a bald person with a dart in their ass as a trophy and the patient gets their expensive treatment. We could handle vaccinations for poor 3rd world kids the same way. Next time Angela Jolie goes to bumbuck nowhere I say we hand her a rifle with MMR shots.
I've seen what Germans do with their computers on the internet. I'm surprised they had to make their law enforcement bodies stop spying on those things. I'd treat a German crime suspect's computer like a duffel bag of goatse Polaroids.
I can say without sarcasm that was the best use of the word "obviously" I've seen in a long time. I have not in fact seen an obscure BBC documentary on Tetris posted on YouTube and I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.
Tetris was originally designed as a training tool for late Soviet-era transport interests. The idea was to reduce shipping costs by training load masters to improve the density of packing freight cars, container ships, and trucks.
This is all covered in my book, Shit I Made Up About The Russian Software Industry.
Congress passed an act in the 1990's as part of a pact with the big telecommunications companies to improve their infastructure in return for big tax breaks and loosening regulation on rates and fees. The idea was that the US was falling behind Europe and Asia with regards to the internet.
The telecoms took the money and didn't do the work to the tune of over $200 billion in tax breaks and they are still screwing over the public on SMS traffic rates.
Here are some reasons TV + computer make sense:
1. Notebook computers are making their way into living rooms and out sell desktops by a big margin. Getting a model with TV out isn't that expensive or hard to setup. If you want to watch something in the kitchen then take the notebook with you.
2. Internet content providers are dishing out a lot more video these days like Netflix streaming. I think subscription services like this are going to catch on because it's cheaper per video than a store (Blockbuster), postage (Netflix and Blockbuster), or PPV and it's on-demand.
3. HD isn't selling so hot because people aren't that worked up about video quality and broadband connections in the US are easier to come by.
I don't think it's going to replace cable TV anytime soon but the internet is going video big time.
2. Stealing desktop share is a moot point. Apple has been trying for as long as I can remember to switch windows users and it doesn't work that well on its own until Vista came along.
One way additional desktop share will benefit the Linux community is even better hardware support from vendors. That's a very big deal for casual users who want things to just work. For Apple the hardware issue wasn't as significant since they were the primary hardware vendor and support for that was a given but they did have a problem with a lack of Mac friendly software vendors.
Stealing desktop share means more software for Apple and more hardware support (more and better drivers) for Linux. An environment with real desktop OS competition will hopefully mean better quality for the consumer.
If their argument was that games (violent or not) made kids fat or stupid then I'd buy that and point out that crappy TV does too, but games keep getting more violent and violence keeps going down.
I'm not saying it's good for kids but I'm not sold.
There were a lot of problems with the original trilogy but I think the biggest two were the Ewoks and having 2 Death Stars (they couldn't make 3 movies without recycling that plot). The other stuff was mostly just sloppy planning or bad writing like Luke and Leia's kiss. There was plenty of that in the last 3 movies (I'd say it was worse) but there were major additional problems.
1. We knew the ending just not exactly how they got there. That works fine if there is some mystery to it or it just seems like an odd outcome you have to work your way to (JJ Abrams did MI:3 and several episodes of Alias like this). It doesn't work that well for Star Wars because the original trilogy is pretty much a spoiler for the last three. The new trilogy hit the requirements of setting the stage for the original trilogy. I think they did it poorly because they tried too hard to bring in old characters and thing like that to tie the movies together without a good reason.
2. The good guys aren't the underdogs like they were in the original trilogy and one of the main protagonists pretty much becomes a strait up villain. Do we root for the guy who's going to become a villain and hunt down and kill the Jedi including kids? Do we root for the second tier character who dies in the first movie of the original trilogy? The answer is we tolerate them and their poor characters until they do cool fights or Jedi tricks.
This stuff made it a lot harder to put up with Jar Jar, annoying kid Anakin, whiny teen Anakin, teen Anakin hooking up with Padme, Midicloriens, the title "Attack of the Clones", a trade dispute war no one gave a damn about, and villains that weren't very intimidating. It was never going to be easy to make a prequel trilogy but they could have done a lot better.
I'd say that one of the main ethical issues is that it is unethical to tell people that a ban on federal funding for new embryonic stem cell lines would spare the destruction of those embryos when it only really means that those embryos would be destroyed as medical waste instead.
So, they want these faster? Sure, you'll bust your ass to get it done a little quicker but the thing that generally suffers the most in this situation is testing time. That means there is a much better chance of serious bugs getting out the door (probably about as bad as what you were trying to fix).
Management is going to notice when customers are screaming that the company is producing junk quickly. By now the boss has completely forgotten that he or she demanded a 4-5 week project be done in 2 days. In response they add more oversight (TPS reports and meetings with your 8 bosses) to ensure that they proper procedures are followed next time.
Now the 4-5 week project takes 8 weeks because you need approval from everyone to do anything and daily progress meetings to make sure everything is on schedule.
Since video game movies tend to be pretty awful anyway make the Halo move a Uwe Boll production and get it over with. He'll save a lot of money on the actors, special effects, costumes, sets, and the script by bringing his special brand of incompetence and indifference to the project.
$145 million for Halo? Boll could trash it for $35 million.
Whereas Peter Jackson would want CG space ship scenes with the giant ring rendered in glorious detail Boll would settle for spray painting a hula hoop and super gluing Legos to it.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder how much the seasonal variation of decay in radium 226 would explain the variation in home radon testing results.
weaponized bling. Jay-Z will be one of our biggest defense contractors.
. . . animals on the moon. Russia, China, and the EU could probably get a person on the moon in a decade or so but let's see them get a rhino or crocodile up there in a special space suit. Eventually they might counter with China sending a panda, Russia sending a Siberian tiger, and the EU will going classy with a fancy horse or something but then we bust out the space shark.
Silence of the Lambs style human skin suit. A man needs his privacy.
I'd heard about that with regard to how sperm whales got their name but I thought the Japanese made the distinction between the various kinds of whale goo when trying to knock up a cow. I also figured that they killed those whales since it seemed unlikely that they swam out there an jerked the whales off. It would have been nice of them though.
That's the least terrible thing (short of not killing a whale and taking it's sperm) that I can imagine the Japanese doing with whale semen. Thanks internet.
A significant portion of the impressive productivity gains in the American workforce over the past two decades has come from technology (mainly IT) advances and getting those implemented in the workplaces.
I think they ignore that at their peril.
Awesome! I wonder who lost the game of rock, paper, scissors and has to be the hermaphrodite kid in the green lion.
... if you don't get the last square and yell "bingo". Them's the breaks Mr. Johnny-Come-Lately
Then I'd be like the computer kid on Heroes. Hey Australians, Heroes isn't real. Mexicans don't make black goo come out of your eyes and kill you either.
Hunting humans is generally frowned upon in modern society but if we loaded dart guns with anti-tumor brain virus and let hunters track cancer victims through a jungle or something then the patient and hunter could go dutch on the treatment. The patient's give them a good hunt and the hunter bags their prey. The incentive for the patient is that they don't have to pay for any of the treatment if they evade the hunter for 3 days.
In the end the hunter gets a happy picture of a bald person with a dart in their ass as a trophy and the patient gets their expensive treatment. We could handle vaccinations for poor 3rd world kids the same way. Next time Angela Jolie goes to bumbuck nowhere I say we hand her a rifle with MMR shots.
I've seen what Germans do with their computers on the internet. I'm surprised they had to make their law enforcement bodies stop spying on those things. I'd treat a German crime suspect's computer like a duffel bag of goatse Polaroids.
I can say without sarcasm that was the best use of the word "obviously" I've seen in a long time. I have not in fact seen an obscure BBC documentary on Tetris posted on YouTube and I have no idea what the hell I'm talking about.
I wonder if Pirate Bay will be able to sue the EU for stealing the method they use of distributing TV shows.
Tetris was originally designed as a training tool for late Soviet-era transport interests. The idea was to reduce shipping costs by training load masters to improve the density of packing freight cars, container ships, and trucks.
This is all covered in my book, Shit I Made Up About The Russian Software Industry.
Congress passed an act in the 1990's as part of a pact with the big telecommunications companies to improve their infastructure in return for big tax breaks and loosening regulation on rates and fees. The idea was that the US was falling behind Europe and Asia with regards to the internet.
The telecoms took the money and didn't do the work to the tune of over $200 billion in tax breaks and they are still screwing over the public on SMS traffic rates.
Here are some reasons TV + computer make sense: 1. Notebook computers are making their way into living rooms and out sell desktops by a big margin. Getting a model with TV out isn't that expensive or hard to setup. If you want to watch something in the kitchen then take the notebook with you. 2. Internet content providers are dishing out a lot more video these days like Netflix streaming. I think subscription services like this are going to catch on because it's cheaper per video than a store (Blockbuster), postage (Netflix and Blockbuster), or PPV and it's on-demand. 3. HD isn't selling so hot because people aren't that worked up about video quality and broadband connections in the US are easier to come by. I don't think it's going to replace cable TV anytime soon but the internet is going video big time.
2. Stealing desktop share is a moot point. Apple has been trying for as long as I can remember to switch windows users and it doesn't work that well on its own until Vista came along.
One way additional desktop share will benefit the Linux community is even better hardware support from vendors. That's a very big deal for casual users who want things to just work. For Apple the hardware issue wasn't as significant since they were the primary hardware vendor and support for that was a given but they did have a problem with a lack of Mac friendly software vendors.
Stealing desktop share means more software for Apple and more hardware support (more and better drivers) for Linux. An environment with real desktop OS competition will hopefully mean better quality for the consumer.
If their argument was that games (violent or not) made kids fat or stupid then I'd buy that and point out that crappy TV does too, but games keep getting more violent and violence keeps going down.
I'm not saying it's good for kids but I'm not sold.
There were a lot of problems with the original trilogy but I think the biggest two were the Ewoks and having 2 Death Stars (they couldn't make 3 movies without recycling that plot). The other stuff was mostly just sloppy planning or bad writing like Luke and Leia's kiss. There was plenty of that in the last 3 movies (I'd say it was worse) but there were major additional problems.
1. We knew the ending just not exactly how they got there. That works fine if there is some mystery to it or it just seems like an odd outcome you have to work your way to (JJ Abrams did MI:3 and several episodes of Alias like this). It doesn't work that well for Star Wars because the original trilogy is pretty much a spoiler for the last three. The new trilogy hit the requirements of setting the stage for the original trilogy. I think they did it poorly because they tried too hard to bring in old characters and thing like that to tie the movies together without a good reason.
2. The good guys aren't the underdogs like they were in the original trilogy and one of the main protagonists pretty much becomes a strait up villain. Do we root for the guy who's going to become a villain and hunt down and kill the Jedi including kids? Do we root for the second tier character who dies in the first movie of the original trilogy? The answer is we tolerate them and their poor characters until they do cool fights or Jedi tricks.
This stuff made it a lot harder to put up with Jar Jar, annoying kid Anakin, whiny teen Anakin, teen Anakin hooking up with Padme, Midicloriens, the title "Attack of the Clones", a trade dispute war no one gave a damn about, and villains that weren't very intimidating. It was never going to be easy to make a prequel trilogy but they could have done a lot better.
I'd say that one of the main ethical issues is that it is unethical to tell people that a ban on federal funding for new embryonic stem cell lines would spare the destruction of those embryos when it only really means that those embryos would be destroyed as medical waste instead.
So, they want these faster? Sure, you'll bust your ass to get it done a little quicker but the thing that generally suffers the most in this situation is testing time. That means there is a much better chance of serious bugs getting out the door (probably about as bad as what you were trying to fix).
Management is going to notice when customers are screaming that the company is producing junk quickly. By now the boss has completely forgotten that he or she demanded a 4-5 week project be done in 2 days. In response they add more oversight (TPS reports and meetings with your 8 bosses) to ensure that they proper procedures are followed next time.
Now the 4-5 week project takes 8 weeks because you need approval from everyone to do anything and daily progress meetings to make sure everything is on schedule.
Bad terrorists kill thousands. Bad government kill millions. Their fear mongering and our cowardice are poisoning our nation's leadership.
Since video game movies tend to be pretty awful anyway make the Halo move a Uwe Boll production and get it over with. He'll save a lot of money on the actors, special effects, costumes, sets, and the script by bringing his special brand of incompetence and indifference to the project.
$145 million for Halo? Boll could trash it for $35 million.
Whereas Peter Jackson would want CG space ship scenes with the giant ring rendered in glorious detail Boll would settle for spray painting a hula hoop and super gluing Legos to it.
Knights of the Old Republic 3. Don't tie the story to the first two and add a few more bells and whistles and I'm happy.