The thing I've noticed about both public television and public radio is that they are very *authority* focused. They are just more focused on the government, with talking to actual government functionaries and talking about government decisions and priorities. Policy wonk stuff.
I think that that comes across as left wing when they are being critical, and right wing when they are being complimentary, but I really wouldn't call them either one. It's not that they're coming from a different direction than other media, they're just using a different lens.
A 40 foot shipping container can usually be loaded with about 45,000 pounds. Not sure how the density on this stuff goes, so you might not be able to *fit* 45,000 pounds of electronics in a container, but that's a different problem. Say you've got as much as six containers here.
A typical container ship is going to carry 100-200 containers at least.
Shipping might be time-consuming to arrange, especially if you've never done it before, but no freight company would even break a sweat shipping this.
The fact that so many members of the League of Women voters on the grassroots level feel so strongly that we need a paper trail that they are willing to raise such a stink is one of the best signs I've seen in a long time that something might actually work out with this.
And my experience was almost completely different.
I grew up in a small town in Texas, with only one Jr High, and one High School. There were private elementary schools in town, but no private high schools. That meant that it didn't matter how smart you were, what race you were, or how rich you were, you went to the same school. Academic classes were divided by ability, of course, but everyone is mixing in band or choir, or sports, or even lunch or the library.
Then I went to college at Stanford, and let me tell you, the most screwed up people I knew were the ones who went to private schools. (Not that all people who were from private schools were screwed up, but that most of the screwed up people were from private schools, if you get what I mean.) I can't really describe it right, but there was an aspect of social development that they had just completely missed. They didn't know how to deal with real people. And I promised my self then that I would never send my kids to a private school.
Here's the thing. In my opinion schools should be teaching three things: how to learn, how to interact with others, and specific facts. I'm less concerned with the specific facts, cause I can (and do) supplement those. The others are more a matter of having to actually go through the experience. Which I want them to do while they're still school age, instead of after they graduate. You have to learn how to deal with the idiots sometime.
I can't give you technical details, since I wasn't actually taking the class; I was the cameraman at the school TV station. (Most of the upper level engineering classes were videotaped so that they could be viewed later.)
Accuracy was (apparently) good, speed was slow. He only demoed it on himself, and I don't think it would have worked for anyone else. You may well be right that something other than color was being picked up on, but on the other hand he only used a few widely divergent colors (red and blue, I think), so who knows. It's not like it was picking up on the difference between magenta and maroon.
Just from his demeanor I don't think it was a scam, but at the same time I don't think he was ever going to be able to do what he wanted it to, which was essentially do away with the sound engineer at concerts, by allowing the musician on stage to control those functions without using his hands. I don't think a musician could concentrate on all that and play much music at the same time, but who knows.
In this climate, the only way I can define my politics is that I'm more liberal than small town Texas, and more conservative than downtown Seattle. And I don't think that eliminates very much.
I believe that we should make things fair for everybody. But I think that any way we try to do that will only make the system more complicated, and come up with more ways for crooked people to make out like bandits. I think at base the problem is we've focused too much on "the system" and made it too restrictive. People in charge who want to do the right thing can't, because we've made it too hard to navigate the rules, but those who want to do the wrong thing aren't stopped because they're all about gaming the system anyway. Give decision makers more latitude to actually make decisions, but then hold them strictly accountable for them. Right now we're doing neither. And I don't have a clue how to fix it.
Back in 88, I saw a demo in a graduate level EE class done by an engineering student who was also a musician. He had put together a system where he could change the speaker that the music he played came out of by thinking directionally, and he could change the synthesizer instrument setting by thinking of a particular color (red = trumpet, white = flute, for instance).
The problem with big business is that the incentive structure has gotten all screwed up. Decision makers are being rewarded through stock incentives, and stock prices are now moving almost entirely on short-term (1Q or, occassionally 1 year) factors. This makes it more likely that companies will look at making a fast buck, even at the expense of long-term profits.
I now work for an American subsidiary of a Japanese company, and the differences are amazing. Most decisions are made on a 5 to 10 year timeline. We also tend to look a lot more at the interdependent nature of us, our suppliers, and our customers. Continuity of business is more important than any specific profit. It's not perfect, but it's a refreshing change from other companies I have worked for.
Unless we can change incentives so that managers stop making stupid decisions for rational reasons (for example, outsourcing, which often means cost savings in the short term, at the cost of creating new competitors), corporations will continue to look "evil" and "greedy".
Most likely there are tax or legal reasons for structuring it this way.
Or maybe time is of the essense and its faster/easier to work it out as a private purchase first, and after that they can dot all the i's and cross all the t's to get it to the final structure they want.
Redstone has such control of that board, I don't think corporate politics comes into it.
Only 26 states in the union ( + DC) have laws requiring an elector to cast their ballot in a given way... and yes, Florida is one of those states.
OK this picqued my interest.
If an elector from one of these states illegally cast a ballot for someone else, would that vote still count? (But the elector be fined or jailed or whatever.) Or do the laws so tie their hands that the ballot is essesntially already filled out, and all they get to do is hand it in?
The question's not apropos of anything, I'm just curious.
It actually happens regularly enough that there's a name for it -- "faithless elector". I know it's happened at least once in the last 30 years, though I can't cite an example. It's never made a difference in the results, though.
The G5's are the first systems Apple offered that are a reasonable deal compared to PC's.
That's true if you're only looking at the desktop side. On the laptop side, Macs have been a good deal for about the last 3 years (when the dual-USB iBooks were introduced).
Another example of the biggest problem with our economic system today: short term thinking.
I would argue that you are far better off arranging your company so that you have a smaller staff (which allows you smaller overhead per month) and a longer development time per game, and focus on quality. You'd get fewer games out per year, but they'd have a higher chance of being hits due to quality. That should translate into greater sales over time, which is how you can actually make a profit.
Much easier said than done. And the way the retail market is set up (high turnover, can't keep titles on the shelf for long) doesn't support it. But that's how it *should* work. It's closer to the book publishing model than the movie production model. But that's a better way to run a healthy company.
I would say that the slow pace of developing Zelda games is actually a plus, because it keeps the market from being saturated by them too quickly.
And the only way for Zelda to overtake Pokemon would be for them to come out with a Zelda half-hour cartoon show (of at least the same quality as Pokemon). Which would ruin everything.
If you are raising children and you think you can be just as productive a worker doing so as you were before you had kids YOU ARE DELUSIONAL!
Productive was the wrong adjective to use. A worker with children will *probably* have less time to give (though you might be surprised at the arrangements people are able to come up with). However, they may well be more *productive* because of increased experience and efficiency.
I know that I personally cared more about doing well at my job after I had children, because then I was responsible for someone other than myself, and I think you'll find that a fairly typical response. So my work product, at least, improved. Also, in my industry, reducing turnover is very important (because the training curve is steep), and in my experience, workers with children are more stable, and less likely to leave the job. YMMV, of course.
I think what you're remembering is the Jim Wright scandal in the late 80's. Given that he was the Speaker of the House at the time, and that he ended up resigning over it, I don't think you could really call it "low-profile" though.
What you say matches up with my recollection, although I don't remember anything about the books being blank.
Actually a fair comment; having a child is a life-changing event. I think you drew the wrong conclusion though.
Obviously you should only hire people who *already* have children. Then you know exactly what you're getting. If you only hire childless people, you're much more likely to have workers that are going through this transition, and you won't know how they will change (if at all) through the process.
Now, now. You should snip nothing until the child is actually born and seems to healthy and stuff.
My personal opinion is also that kids do better if they have a sibling (yeah, there are so many factors there that's far from a universal, but it holds true if you look at the kids in my extended family), so let them have two if they want. You still end up with gradual population decline if every couple stops at two kids, because of the people who don't reproduce at all.
Hell, we stopped at two just cause we didn't want to be outnumbered.
We were in the same situation with our two kids. Basically, anything that came out after VR5 (which we were watching the last episode of when my wife went into labor) might as well not have existed.
What's interesting is that now with TV shows being released on DVD these days, we are catching up on anything that was any good that we missed the first time around. (Like Buffy.) The PVR we just got makes a world of a difference, too.
Because even with a $5000 system you won't get 'optimum' performance. You'll have to tweak some things. Then you'll realize that the tweaks are different for every game. Then a newer faster video card will come out and you'll have to upgrade that.
By this time, you realize that you've learned enough that you could have just built the whole damn thing for half the cost in the first place, and next time you will do that.
It's not my mindset, but I've seen it in plenty of others. If those miniscule performance boosts are that important to you, eventually you'll get to the point where you do it yourself, because what you require cannot be done as a standard.
(Or, if you just have money to burn, maybe you'll have an IT dept on staff just to keep your gaming rig in tip top shape.)
Actually, in Washington state we don't have an income tax, but businesses do have to pay a Business & Occupation tax which is a (very small) percentage of revenue.
Needless to say, businesses that don't make a profit hate that.
This tax is one of the things that every so often fuels the "Microsoft is going to leave Redmond" rumors. But I think this profit margin explains why that's not the case. They'd probably have to pay *more* tax in an income tax state. If their profit margins ever fall to those of normal businesses, that may no longer be the case, though.
But what you said is true for federal purposes, and virtually every other state.
I would *rather* have an income tax and no sales tax, because state income tax is deductible from your federal income taxes, and sales tax isn't. This makes the overall tax burden for people in non-income tax states higher.
Our Congress-critters keep proposing a bill that would allow people in states with no income tax to deduct a portion of their sales tax from their federal income tax, but it keeps going nowhere. (I believe it has bipartisan support, but only in states with this situation, so this is not an R vs D issue.)
You mentioned Titan: The Arena (which I love), but don't forget the original _Titan_. That's a classic, and very popular with board gamers (at least around here).
It's got a strategic board where you try and recruit monsters of increasing quality (depending on your existing monsters and the terrain in which you land) and a tactical board where you actually fight it out with other players. There are dice, so luck is a factor, but smart gameplay will almost always win out.
The only downside to this game is length. Usually you spend about an hour and a half to two hours whittling the game down to three players, and two to three hours determining a winner from there. In fact, I always thought that was the purpose of Titan: The Arena--giving the eliminated players something to play while the main game is still going on.
I cut my teeth on all those old SPI games...too bad TSR barely reprinted any of them after they bought out the company.
Use tax is only to replace sales tax on out of state purchases. *Fuel tax* is a different tax completely, and generally speaking is instead of sales tax (don't know about California specifically, but that's true for most states).
SO...use tax is not required on out of state purchases of fuel, because sales tax would not have been charged on it.
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I think that that comes across as left wing when they are being critical, and right wing when they are being complimentary, but I really wouldn't call them either one. It's not that they're coming from a different direction than other media, they're just using a different lens.
A typical container ship is going to carry 100-200 containers at least.
Shipping might be time-consuming to arrange, especially if you've never done it before, but no freight company would even break a sweat shipping this.
I grew up in a small town in Texas, with only one Jr High, and one High School. There were private elementary schools in town, but no private high schools. That meant that it didn't matter how smart you were, what race you were, or how rich you were, you went to the same school. Academic classes were divided by ability, of course, but everyone is mixing in band or choir, or sports, or even lunch or the library.
Then I went to college at Stanford, and let me tell you, the most screwed up people I knew were the ones who went to private schools. (Not that all people who were from private schools were screwed up, but that most of the screwed up people were from private schools, if you get what I mean.) I can't really describe it right, but there was an aspect of social development that they had just completely missed. They didn't know how to deal with real people. And I promised my self then that I would never send my kids to a private school.
Here's the thing. In my opinion schools should be teaching three things: how to learn, how to interact with others, and specific facts. I'm less concerned with the specific facts, cause I can (and do) supplement those. The others are more a matter of having to actually go through the experience. Which I want them to do while they're still school age, instead of after they graduate. You have to learn how to deal with the idiots sometime.
Accuracy was (apparently) good, speed was slow. He only demoed it on himself, and I don't think it would have worked for anyone else. You may well be right that something other than color was being picked up on, but on the other hand he only used a few widely divergent colors (red and blue, I think), so who knows. It's not like it was picking up on the difference between magenta and maroon.
Just from his demeanor I don't think it was a scam, but at the same time I don't think he was ever going to be able to do what he wanted it to, which was essentially do away with the sound engineer at concerts, by allowing the musician on stage to control those functions without using his hands. I don't think a musician could concentrate on all that and play much music at the same time, but who knows.
In this climate, the only way I can define my politics is that I'm more liberal than small town Texas, and more conservative than downtown Seattle. And I don't think that eliminates very much.
I believe that we should make things fair for everybody. But I think that any way we try to do that will only make the system more complicated, and come up with more ways for crooked people to make out like bandits. I think at base the problem is we've focused too much on "the system" and made it too restrictive. People in charge who want to do the right thing can't, because we've made it too hard to navigate the rules, but those who want to do the wrong thing aren't stopped because they're all about gaming the system anyway. Give decision makers more latitude to actually make decisions, but then hold them strictly accountable for them. Right now we're doing neither. And I don't have a clue how to fix it.
I now work for an American subsidiary of a Japanese company, and the differences are amazing. Most decisions are made on a 5 to 10 year timeline. We also tend to look a lot more at the interdependent nature of us, our suppliers, and our customers. Continuity of business is more important than any specific profit. It's not perfect, but it's a refreshing change from other companies I have worked for.
Unless we can change incentives so that managers stop making stupid decisions for rational reasons (for example, outsourcing, which often means cost savings in the short term, at the cost of creating new competitors), corporations will continue to look "evil" and "greedy".
Or maybe time is of the essense and its faster/easier to work it out as a private purchase first, and after that they can dot all the i's and cross all the t's to get it to the final structure they want.
Redstone has such control of that board, I don't think corporate politics comes into it.
This treaty does, after all, sound crap-tastic!
OK this picqued my interest.
If an elector from one of these states illegally cast a ballot for someone else, would that vote still count? (But the elector be fined or jailed or whatever.) Or do the laws so tie their hands that the ballot is essesntially already filled out, and all they get to do is hand it in?
The question's not apropos of anything, I'm just curious.
That's true if you're only looking at the desktop side. On the laptop side, Macs have been a good deal for about the last 3 years (when the dual-USB iBooks were introduced).
I would argue that you are far better off arranging your company so that you have a smaller staff (which allows you smaller overhead per month) and a longer development time per game, and focus on quality. You'd get fewer games out per year, but they'd have a higher chance of being hits due to quality. That should translate into greater sales over time, which is how you can actually make a profit.
Much easier said than done. And the way the retail market is set up (high turnover, can't keep titles on the shelf for long) doesn't support it. But that's how it *should* work. It's closer to the book publishing model than the movie production model. But that's a better way to run a healthy company.
And the only way for Zelda to overtake Pokemon would be for them to come out with a Zelda half-hour cartoon show (of at least the same quality as Pokemon). Which would ruin everything.
Productive was the wrong adjective to use. A worker with children will *probably* have less time to give (though you might be surprised at the arrangements people are able to come up with). However, they may well be more *productive* because of increased experience and efficiency.
I know that I personally cared more about doing well at my job after I had children, because then I was responsible for someone other than myself, and I think you'll find that a fairly typical response. So my work product, at least, improved. Also, in my industry, reducing turnover is very important (because the training curve is steep), and in my experience, workers with children are more stable, and less likely to leave the job. YMMV, of course.
What you say matches up with my recollection, although I don't remember anything about the books being blank.
Obviously you should only hire people who *already* have children. Then you know exactly what you're getting. If you only hire childless people, you're much more likely to have workers that are going through this transition, and you won't know how they will change (if at all) through the process.
My personal opinion is also that kids do better if they have a sibling (yeah, there are so many factors there that's far from a universal, but it holds true if you look at the kids in my extended family), so let them have two if they want. You still end up with gradual population decline if every couple stops at two kids, because of the people who don't reproduce at all.
Hell, we stopped at two just cause we didn't want to be outnumbered.
What's interesting is that now with TV shows being released on DVD these days, we are catching up on anything that was any good that we missed the first time around. (Like Buffy.) The PVR we just got makes a world of a difference, too.
Even so, we watch next to nothing.
By this time, you realize that you've learned enough that you could have just built the whole damn thing for half the cost in the first place, and next time you will do that.
It's not my mindset, but I've seen it in plenty of others. If those miniscule performance boosts are that important to you, eventually you'll get to the point where you do it yourself, because what you require cannot be done as a standard.
(Or, if you just have money to burn, maybe you'll have an IT dept on staff just to keep your gaming rig in tip top shape.)
Needless to say, businesses that don't make a profit hate that.
This tax is one of the things that every so often fuels the "Microsoft is going to leave Redmond" rumors. But I think this profit margin explains why that's not the case. They'd probably have to pay *more* tax in an income tax state. If their profit margins ever fall to those of normal businesses, that may no longer be the case, though.
But what you said is true for federal purposes, and virtually every other state.
I would *rather* have an income tax and no sales tax, because state income tax is deductible from your federal income taxes, and sales tax isn't. This makes the overall tax burden for people in non-income tax states higher.
Our Congress-critters keep proposing a bill that would allow people in states with no income tax to deduct a portion of their sales tax from their federal income tax, but it keeps going nowhere. (I believe it has bipartisan support, but only in states with this situation, so this is not an R vs D issue.)
It's got a strategic board where you try and recruit monsters of increasing quality (depending on your existing monsters and the terrain in which you land) and a tactical board where you actually fight it out with other players. There are dice, so luck is a factor, but smart gameplay will almost always win out.
The only downside to this game is length. Usually you spend about an hour and a half to two hours whittling the game down to three players, and two to three hours determining a winner from there. In fact, I always thought that was the purpose of Titan: The Arena--giving the eliminated players something to play while the main game is still going on.
I cut my teeth on all those old SPI games...too bad TSR barely reprinted any of them after they bought out the company.
Use tax is only to replace sales tax on out of state purchases. *Fuel tax* is a different tax completely, and generally speaking is instead of sales tax (don't know about California specifically, but that's true for most states).
SO...use tax is not required on out of state purchases of fuel, because sales tax would not have been charged on it.
But nice try.