Nuclear rockets have been proposed in the past and always shot down by the enviro-Nazi, anti-nuke crowd.
Launch fail rates are at what now? 1 in 20? 1 in 30? Contamination isn't just a knee-jerk reaction its a real statistical risk with the liability outweighing the benefits.
What's wrong with multiple stages anyways? If the next shuttle is going to ride on the wing of a high altitude plane and lauched like a missile then so be it. Aesthetics can wait.
From what I've read about the VoIP Blaster, its demise is probably based on how horrible the internet to phone call resellers were. I'm too lazy to look up the company's name but according to some of their customers it was a real mickey mouse operation and the servers have been known to go out for an entire weekend until someone comes back on monday to reboot them.
Lesson to be learned here is do not pair up with a crappy company. The VoIP blaster is a nice product by any internet telephone standards but Creative really dropped the ball by going with these guys.
Imagine if someone could pair this product up with a cell-phone service like Sprint. Your PC's phone number can also be your Cell phone number and your minutes (for phone use) will be deducted from your cellular plan.
I don't think the current heads at Fox want angry characters or self-referential satire. For some reason television has climbed that hump and has moved back to Spelling-like plain-jane sitcoms.
The mid to late nineties TV landscape was covered with amusing shows that took pot-shots at everything, including themselves and especially the sitcom formula. Mr. Show, Upright Citizens, Simpsons, Family Guy, The Daily Show, etc were groundbreaking shows. They didn't take anything as above-criticism and developed an intelligent edge through insightful comedy.
Now look at the popular comedies on Fox. Bernie Mac, King of the Hill, Malcolm in the Middle, etc. They're more based in the Love Boat tradition of wacky sitcom than in the Simpsons tradition of satire and irony. This is what people want. The Neilsons have spoken and Fox isn't listening to the raves, but only to the complaints about shows being too brainy, mean, or smartassed.
Cable seems to be picking up the slack with shows like the Man Show, Sealab 2021, etc. Hopefully the Simpsons spirit will live on in the minds of writers willing to take a small risk.
Yes, they cost ungodly sums of money, but don't be fooled. Lucas isn't pushing DLP because of the great resolution.
I'm sure that's part of it, but Lucas has been pushing for improved sound and visuals in theaters before it was cool to do so. Lucas is simply a technophile and single-handedly improved the movie going experience while theater owners were very hesitant, to say the least, to spend money on a system that works just fine. The fact that digital = cheap is a nice bonus, but not the main motivating factor.
Short primer excerpt:
Although he insists he's "a storyteller, not a technician," George Lucas has been a motivating force in advancing the technology of motion pictures for a quarter century. His Oscar-winning 1977 "Star Wars" pioneered the use of computerized motion-control model photography. Four years later, Lucasfilm's Computer Division began developing EditDroid, one of the very first nonlinear editing systems. Lucasfilm's THX division, meanwhile, has a long history of working with theatres and home-video distributors to improve sound reproduction.
Ridiculous. His complaint is completely valid. "Where's the accountability in this system?"
If I ever decide to participate in some kind of biometric check I want to know where the data is going, if there are protections, if I really need to be doing this, who's running it, etc. A knee-jerk reaction wouldn't ask these questions, it would just quote some archaic biblical verse.
Considering how Seti has more people than it can handle and last I heard people are doing redudant blocks not just for error checking but just to keep the clients busy.
The intel/united devices program doesn't have as many participants and you get the added bonus of joining AMDzone's team (ranked #3) just to show Intel what you think of their pricing/products.
Do you REALLY expect anyone to take you seriously when you can't even properly spell a six letter word?
These are off the cuff-comments, not dissertations. If you think slashdot is some haven for intellectuals writing out thoughtful essays on everything tech then you're the one being foolish.
1) It's a great documentary about filmmakers after they lose their talent and get greedy.
Yeah because the first set of Star War movies had nothing to do with cheesy commercialization, toys, posters, and other junk. Thanks for keeping it real.
There's really no pleasing some star wars geeks. How many directors come out and do stuff like this for their fans? I think we're going to have to accept the fact that he's just a filmmaker. He's not some overbearing CEO bent on world econmic control. He's not a fanboy ready to lose his copyrights and business. Might I add- a very profitable business which employs more than a few individuals. Heck, his companies have won rewards for being a great place to work at. (sorry too lazy to find link) Do these Star Wars fanatics really expect him to jeopardize all of this because of a crappy $300 "lightsabre duel" made on someone's iMac?
Citing a need to protect its copyrights, Lucasfilm limited the contest to spoofs and documentaries, shutting out some of Lucas' most ardent fans, many of whom have reinterpreted his famous storyline to create online comedies, dramas and light-saber duels of their own.
Don't like it? Don't participate, but at least give the man credit. I don't see fan favorites like Fincher or Spielberg jumping through hoops to please their fans like this.
Yeah, isn't this what netizens have been saying for ages? Don't blame the software/media/internet, blame the people. When someone does blame a person for ostensibly violating a copyright then what's the new position? The laughable "information wants to be free cause I'm cheap?"
Simply put Linux is hurting for apps. Maybe not in the server department, but certainly in other areas. Not so long ago open source types were busy condemning Netscape to hell until they released NS for linux. Suddenly going against standards was A-OK.
I'm not going to simple-mindedly yell hypocrites from the highest mountain, but there is a criticism to be had. Until Linux is in a better position software-wise this will continue to happen. In fact this may never change, if a company can end honest criticism by releasing a version of its software for Linux, well why not? In the windows world many people use software from companies they don't like. The same will be true if Linux invades the desktop market. Microsoft could easily clean some of its image by releasing office/IE for Linux. Users and software companies make for odd bedfellows.
Worse, these guys might just uninstall adaware while the next group of "get rich quick through spyware" will disable it or give it a fake ref file so when it does run it won't do anything at all.
Having a AOL account is amusing on the surface, but there are a couple really great reasons to use AOL. Maybe he works with for a small company/freelancer and needs a cheap ISP for traveling. Joe's Geek ISP may only want $10 a month and might give you a shell account but Joe doesn't cover the entire country with dial-ups. Sure, there are other nationwide ISPs but how many of them will give the first month free and when you call to cancel every month they beg you to try it again free for another month? A friend has been getting free dial-up access for months doing this.
I'm sure this is his trashcan/spam account. Might as well make an alias from one of mom's 10 screennames to capture all the geeky, "You are KEWL! Wanna join my everquest guild???:)" emails.
lacking an interceptor system) launched a retaliatory strike
Why would the US not retaliate after an failed ICBM strike? While that bird is still flying the US will already begin its relatiation with or without an interceptor missile. The interceptor, if it ever works, might minimize some the damage (depending on the attack), but WWIII has just begun.
Re:this is why the economy is so bad now
on
Games in the Workplace?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
4) your customer that is stupid enough to pay you for bloat staff will go out of business
I know of one Chicago ISP that markets itself as being high-end. Not in a geek way, but in a customer service way. They're a little pricier, actually last I checked they were MSN/AOL priced for dial-ups and they have a call center just like the one described. Who would you rather give you 20 dollars a month to? 90-minute wait times to a stressed call center or to a place that gives its workers some leeway.
Lastly, how much do you think night-time tech support workers make? Trust me, it ain't enough to bankrupt any company and your customers will be thankful they can get a human voice on the phone who knows more than what the "troubleshooter script" says at 4:30am.
DirecTivos cannot compress anything. They just use the already compressed mpeg-2 satellite broadcast and record it directly to disk. That's one of the reasons why they're so much cheaper than stand-alone Tivos. In fact, a DirecTivo cannot be used without directv service because of this reason.
Worse, everyone who has read a paragraph about weblogging and quickly gets a blogger account does the same thing. Except they link to your image directory, embed up a 200k+ image, and then resize it in HTML. Thank Eris for referrer control in.htaccess.
Well, I seem to be watching the same amount of TV. I was never an addict to begin with and when I switched to directv I had a choice: buy a reciever box for $50 or a Hughes DirecTivo for $120. Guess what I went for.
Right now I have it set to record a few shows (7-8) in season pass mode. I shut off the auto-record suggestions mode because it really just recorded crap. Just because I like the Simpsons doesn't mean I like everything thats animated, especially stuff for the 4-7 year old demographic. I spent some time just rating movies and TV shows and it still was pretty lousy. Plus, I really don't want to watch lots of TV unless its interesting. The programs I choose are good enough and if I'm channel surfing I'll check whats on the various discovery-type channels and movie channels.
The real fun part is that I never look at the clock and think "Hey the Daily Show is on" or whatever. Even if I know something good is on I prefer to catch it 10 minutes or so late so I can skip the commercials, boring parts, bad guests, etc. Its weird how clock oriented I was toward TV. If I cancel I'll probably be using the hell out of my VCR.
The real problem is I can't stand live TV with its ads. Its bad when you haven't seen a commercial break in months and now you have to find ways to entertain yourself for 3 minutes 4 times a show. So I just hit record and walk away. Come back and skip commercials as usual.
Its great at catching every showing of something. So if you like the Power Puff Girls you're going to get four per day, unless otherwise programmed. Great, one of those is probably one I haven't seen. The interface is sweet compared the directv boxes and because its a DirecTivo I'm always recording at MPEG-2. It doesn't compress anything, it just records everything raw - highest quality from directv.
The pitfalls for most people is that they load up on the suggestions and veg away. Avoid that. Make TV your bitch. I did.
I'm curious what the reaction here would be if a different company developed this? If some linux company pioneered this would the posts here be about how linux saves you even more money and the triumphs of open source? I think so. Of course that's depending on whether this product and the hypothetical one work well, are stable, aren't hogs, etc.
Its really not a bad idea for most part. The people buying this are not going to be hardcore wifi enthusiasts, but home and business buyers with CPUs on almost eternal idle.
Well, it would be great if everybody could benefit from a free OS. And if it is true that Linux, or even Windows, is still high tech geek stuff, then *every* OS will be perceived that way by the casual computer user.
I thought the same thing when I reread my post, but at the same time if you purposely give a linux machine to someone who doesn't have any windows/mac or little windows/mac experience for evangelical reasons only then that person will eventually find out that yes they can change their screen resolution without editing some text file or buy a device from CompUsa and actually get drivers for it with a different OS.
Secondly, if OSX is such a great example of an OS that uses open source/unixy parts why not just recommend that to this hypothetical new user? If someone is going to drop a grand or so in hardware a ~$100 easy to use OS isn't going to break the bank. If this newbie doesn't share your love of open source, why should they suffer under arguably inferior software for what they're trying to acomplish e.g. AOL connectivity, IM, Quicktime, Windows Media formats, etc. Worse, if this user uses mac/windows at work, wouldn't it be in their best interests to give them a matching OS? They would be learning more and be less of a hassle to tech support. "Well at home its in my/home directory and I copied it to this disk..."
Crap, looks like someone already got Burrough's Martian Tales. They signed and now we're going to lose our funding. Unless... Okay get this how about "William S. Burroughs's Tales of Martians?" We can get the option cheap. It'll interest sci-fi geeks, get in the arthouse crowd, and bring in the perverts. Lets get cracking on this. Props: I want to see a penis shaped raygun by next week. Writers: Get me a screenplay and then hire some temps to cut out sections and paste them on a whiteboard while wearing blindfolds. Make sure the final version has someone playing a flute with his ass.
I think some people really need to come down to earth about linux when it comes to the home market. The power of linux is not the GUI or any arguably "easy to use" features its the fact that its a great and free server. Many home and business users are still fighting their way throught the desktop model of PC use. As easy as Windows is, its still "high tech geek stuff" to, in my experience, 90+% of its users.
The reviwerer already had WindowsXP installed and working, so why does he need this? For the pure geez-whiz factor of I'm running this linux stuff? Probably. Even as an intro to linux the easy to use distros are really just training wheels that you won't take off until you meet, greet, and spend a lot of time learning the command line, services/daemons, etc.
Now for the pro's. A company that doesn't want to drop money on MS or Apple desktops that doesn't need certain commercial software that isn't and probably will never be available for Linux might just fall in love with this. Handing this to a teenager, adult, or grandma and telling them that they can't run their favorite apps anymore or even use AOL is simply self-defeating and neing starry-eyed about open source.
And it can be simply reversed by a Counter-Notification.
If a CN was given, then this goes to court. Considering xenu.net is pretty much one guy vs. a bottomless bank account what do you really think is going to happen in a US court regardless of the merits of the arguments? I don't want to be too cynical here, but even if you know without a doubt that you are in the right, it would still be a gamble to go against the legal knowhow of the CoS. Perhaps if more slashdotters opened their wallets and wrote a letter with an attached check to the ACLU about this, they might take the CoS head on.
Not to mention that the DMCA itself is very copyright friendly to the point of absurdity. Even if a powerful group like the ACLU went against the CoS it would be a mess. Now outside the US, well that's a different story.
Slashdot Mirror
Nuclear rockets have been proposed in the past and always shot down by the enviro-Nazi, anti-nuke crowd.
Launch fail rates are at what now? 1 in 20? 1 in 30? Contamination isn't just a knee-jerk reaction its a real statistical risk with the liability outweighing the benefits.
What's wrong with multiple stages anyways? If the next shuttle is going to ride on the wing of a high altitude plane and lauched like a missile then so be it. Aesthetics can wait.
From what I've read about the VoIP Blaster, its demise is probably based on how horrible the internet to phone call resellers were. I'm too lazy to look up the company's name but according to some of their customers it was a real mickey mouse operation and the servers have been known to go out for an entire weekend until someone comes back on monday to reboot them.
Lesson to be learned here is do not pair up with a crappy company. The VoIP blaster is a nice product by any internet telephone standards but Creative really dropped the ball by going with these guys.
Imagine if someone could pair this product up with a cell-phone service like Sprint. Your PC's phone number can also be your Cell phone number and your minutes (for phone use) will be deducted from your cellular plan.
I don't think the current heads at Fox want angry characters or self-referential satire. For some reason television has climbed that hump and has moved back to Spelling-like plain-jane sitcoms.
The mid to late nineties TV landscape was covered with amusing shows that took pot-shots at everything, including themselves and especially the sitcom formula. Mr. Show, Upright Citizens, Simpsons, Family Guy, The Daily Show, etc were groundbreaking shows. They didn't take anything as above-criticism and developed an intelligent edge through insightful comedy.
Now look at the popular comedies on Fox. Bernie Mac, King of the Hill, Malcolm in the Middle, etc. They're more based in the Love Boat tradition of wacky sitcom than in the Simpsons tradition of satire and irony. This is what people want. The Neilsons have spoken and Fox isn't listening to the raves, but only to the complaints about shows being too brainy, mean, or smartassed.
Cable seems to be picking up the slack with shows like the Man Show, Sealab 2021, etc. Hopefully the Simpsons spirit will live on in the minds of writers willing to take a small risk.
I'm sure that's part of it, but Lucas has been pushing for improved sound and visuals in theaters before it was cool to do so. Lucas is simply a technophile and single-handedly improved the movie going experience while theater owners were very hesitant, to say the least, to spend money on a system that works just fine. The fact that digital = cheap is a nice bonus, but not the main motivating factor.
Short primer excerpt:
Ridiculous. His complaint is completely valid. "Where's the accountability in this system?"
If I ever decide to participate in some kind of biometric check I want to know where the data is going, if there are protections, if I really need to be doing this, who's running it, etc. A knee-jerk reaction wouldn't ask these questions, it would just quote some archaic biblical verse.
Considering how Seti has more people than it can handle and last I heard people are doing redudant blocks not just for error checking but just to keep the clients busy.
The intel/united devices program doesn't have as many participants and you get the added bonus of joining AMDzone's team (ranked #3) just to show Intel what you think of their pricing/products.
Click.
Do you REALLY expect anyone to take you seriously when you can't even properly spell a six letter word?
These are off the cuff-comments, not dissertations. If you think slashdot is some haven for intellectuals writing out thoughtful essays on everything tech then you're the one being foolish.
Grammar Nazis fuck off!!
1) It's a great documentary about filmmakers after they lose their talent and get greedy.
Yeah because the first set of Star War movies had nothing to do with cheesy commercialization, toys, posters, and other junk. Thanks for keeping it real.
Don't like it? Don't participate, but at least give the man credit. I don't see fan favorites like Fincher or Spielberg jumping through hoops to please their fans like this.
Yeah, isn't this what netizens have been saying for ages? Don't blame the software/media/internet, blame the people. When someone does blame a person for ostensibly violating a copyright then what's the new position? The laughable "information wants to be free cause I'm cheap?"
Simply put Linux is hurting for apps. Maybe not in the server department, but certainly in other areas. Not so long ago open source types were busy condemning Netscape to hell until they released NS for linux. Suddenly going against standards was A-OK.
I'm not going to simple-mindedly yell hypocrites from the highest mountain, but there is a criticism to be had. Until Linux is in a better position software-wise this will continue to happen. In fact this may never change, if a company can end honest criticism by releasing a version of its software for Linux, well why not? In the windows world many people use software from companies they don't like. The same will be true if Linux invades the desktop market. Microsoft could easily clean some of its image by releasing office/IE for Linux. Users and software companies make for odd bedfellows.
Worse, these guys might just uninstall adaware while the next group of "get rich quick through spyware" will disable it or give it a fake ref file so when it does run it won't do anything at all.
Having a AOL account is amusing on the surface, but there are a couple really great reasons to use AOL. Maybe he works with for a small company/freelancer and needs a cheap ISP for traveling. Joe's Geek ISP may only want $10 a month and might give you a shell account but Joe doesn't cover the entire country with dial-ups. Sure, there are other nationwide ISPs but how many of them will give the first month free and when you call to cancel every month they beg you to try it again free for another month? A friend has been getting free dial-up access for months doing this.
:)" emails.
I'm sure this is his trashcan/spam account. Might as well make an alias from one of mom's 10 screennames to capture all the geeky, "You are KEWL! Wanna join my everquest guild???
Much nicer and more Lucas-centric piece on Attack of the Clones at time.
lacking an interceptor system) launched a retaliatory strike
Why would the US not retaliate after an failed ICBM strike? While that bird is still flying the US will already begin its relatiation with or without an interceptor missile. The interceptor, if it ever works, might minimize some the damage (depending on the attack), but WWIII has just begun.
4) your customer that is stupid enough to pay you for bloat staff will go out of business
I know of one Chicago ISP that markets itself as being high-end. Not in a geek way, but in a customer service way. They're a little pricier, actually last I checked they were MSN/AOL priced for dial-ups and they have a call center just like the one described. Who would you rather give you 20 dollars a month to? 90-minute wait times to a stressed call center or to a place that gives its workers some leeway.
Lastly, how much do you think night-time tech support workers make? Trust me, it ain't enough to bankrupt any company and your customers will be thankful they can get a human voice on the phone who knows more than what the "troubleshooter script" says at 4:30am.
DirecTivos cannot compress anything. They just use the already compressed mpeg-2 satellite broadcast and record it directly to disk. That's one of the reasons why they're so much cheaper than stand-alone Tivos. In fact, a DirecTivo cannot be used without directv service because of this reason.
*Hemos and buds in a smoke filled room*
"Dude, this image is only 20 fucking kilobytes big."
"Whoa."
"Damn."
"You just blew my mind."
"POST IT!"
Worse, everyone who has read a paragraph about weblogging and quickly gets a blogger account does the same thing. Except they link to your image directory, embed up a 200k+ image, and then resize it in HTML. Thank Eris for referrer control in .htaccess.
Well, I seem to be watching the same amount of TV. I was never an addict to begin with and when I switched to directv I had a choice: buy a reciever box for $50 or a Hughes DirecTivo for $120. Guess what I went for.
Right now I have it set to record a few shows (7-8) in season pass mode. I shut off the auto-record suggestions mode because it really just recorded crap. Just because I like the Simpsons doesn't mean I like everything thats animated, especially stuff for the 4-7 year old demographic. I spent some time just rating movies and TV shows and it still was pretty lousy. Plus, I really don't want to watch lots of TV unless its interesting. The programs I choose are good enough and if I'm channel surfing I'll check whats on the various discovery-type channels and movie channels.
The real fun part is that I never look at the clock and think "Hey the Daily Show is on" or whatever. Even if I know something good is on I prefer to catch it 10 minutes or so late so I can skip the commercials, boring parts, bad guests, etc. Its weird how clock oriented I was toward TV. If I cancel I'll probably be using the hell out of my VCR.
The real problem is I can't stand live TV with its ads. Its bad when you haven't seen a commercial break in months and now you have to find ways to entertain yourself for 3 minutes 4 times a show. So I just hit record and walk away. Come back and skip commercials as usual.
Its great at catching every showing of something. So if you like the Power Puff Girls you're going to get four per day, unless otherwise programmed. Great, one of those is probably one I haven't seen. The interface is sweet compared the directv boxes and because its a DirecTivo I'm always recording at MPEG-2. It doesn't compress anything, it just records everything raw - highest quality from directv.
The pitfalls for most people is that they load up on the suggestions and veg away. Avoid that. Make TV your bitch. I did.
I'm curious what the reaction here would be if a different company developed this? If some linux company pioneered this would the posts here be about how linux saves you even more money and the triumphs of open source? I think so. Of course that's depending on whether this product and the hypothetical one work well, are stable, aren't hogs, etc.
Its really not a bad idea for most part. The people buying this are not going to be hardcore wifi enthusiasts, but home and business buyers with CPUs on almost eternal idle.
Well, it would be great if everybody could benefit from a free OS. And if it is true that Linux, or even Windows, is still high tech geek stuff, then *every* OS will be perceived that way by the casual computer user.
/home directory and I copied it to this disk..."
I thought the same thing when I reread my post, but at the same time if you purposely give a linux machine to someone who doesn't have any windows/mac or little windows/mac experience for evangelical reasons only then that person will eventually find out that yes they can change their screen resolution without editing some text file or buy a device from CompUsa and actually get drivers for it with a different OS.
Secondly, if OSX is such a great example of an OS that uses open source/unixy parts why not just recommend that to this hypothetical new user? If someone is going to drop a grand or so in hardware a ~$100 easy to use OS isn't going to break the bank. If this newbie doesn't share your love of open source, why should they suffer under arguably inferior software for what they're trying to acomplish e.g. AOL connectivity, IM, Quicktime, Windows Media formats, etc. Worse, if this user uses mac/windows at work, wouldn't it be in their best interests to give them a matching OS? They would be learning more and be less of a hassle to tech support. "Well at home its in my
Crap, looks like someone already got Burrough's Martian Tales. They signed and now we're going to lose our funding. Unless... Okay get this how about "William S. Burroughs's Tales of Martians?" We can get the option cheap. It'll interest sci-fi geeks, get in the arthouse crowd, and bring in the perverts. Lets get cracking on this. Props: I want to see a penis shaped raygun by next week. Writers: Get me a screenplay and then hire some temps to cut out sections and paste them on a whiteboard while wearing blindfolds. Make sure the final version has someone playing a flute with his ass.
Fake name, production manager.
I think some people really need to come down to earth about linux when it comes to the home market. The power of linux is not the GUI or any arguably "easy to use" features its the fact that its a great and free server. Many home and business users are still fighting their way throught the desktop model of PC use. As easy as Windows is, its still "high tech geek stuff" to, in my experience, 90+% of its users.
The reviwerer already had WindowsXP installed and working, so why does he need this? For the pure geez-whiz factor of I'm running this linux stuff? Probably. Even as an intro to linux the easy to use distros are really just training wheels that you won't take off until you meet, greet, and spend a lot of time learning the command line, services/daemons, etc.
Now for the pro's. A company that doesn't want to drop money on MS or Apple desktops that doesn't need certain commercial software that isn't and probably will never be available for Linux might just fall in love with this. Handing this to a teenager, adult, or grandma and telling them that they can't run their favorite apps anymore or even use AOL is simply self-defeating and neing starry-eyed about open source.
And it can be simply reversed by a Counter-Notification.
If a CN was given, then this goes to court. Considering xenu.net is pretty much one guy vs. a bottomless bank account what do you really think is going to happen in a US court regardless of the merits of the arguments? I don't want to be too cynical here, but even if you know without a doubt that you are in the right, it would still be a gamble to go against the legal knowhow of the CoS. Perhaps if more slashdotters opened their wallets and wrote a letter with an attached check to the ACLU about this, they might take the CoS head on.
Not to mention that the DMCA itself is very copyright friendly to the point of absurdity. Even if a powerful group like the ACLU went against the CoS it would be a mess. Now outside the US, well that's a different story.