I forgot to put the sarcasm tag in my last email. It didn't go direct to video, but basically it did.
Production costs: $35 million
Marketing costs: $15 million
US gross: $25 million
Worldwide gross: $5 million
They're $20 million in the hole on this one. I imagine they made more in DVD/on-demand/airlines, but at best they broke even- and likely lost a few million.
It did make $25,266,129 source, which is better than Gigli (US Gross, $6,087,542, Production Budget $54,000,000). Sure it's not a Kevin Smith movie, but it's got the same goofy actors. source
Is this the first time that Apple is licensing their design/technology to another company to produce clones? Everyone gives crap to Apple for not licensing their earlier computers, and being overtaken by the IBM clones.
Good for Apple to extend their market, but might be bad if HP competes in similar market channels.
How soon before Gary Krakow, the columnist, is out of a job at MSNBC for such a glowing article about Linux. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but Salon.com recommended dumping IE, and soon thereafter Microsoft announced it was selling Salon.com
People will buy anyways
on
European DRM News
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
We've seen over the years that people will pay for any kind of crap, from pet rocks, to "Catwoman" movie, to the next manufactured boy band. If it's the "cool thing," people will jump over cliffs like lemmings to obtain it.
It would need to be a massively coordinated effort to get a huge band's copy protected CD boycotted. You'd need mass targeted media, such as MTV or P. Diddy, to lead the charge. I figured it would be bad for them to lead the fight, and I doubt most people would care.
My point is that it's damn tough to correct formatting "problems" in Word, and quite counter-intuitive. Microsoft is good at messing that part up. WordPerfect may have some drawbacks (like manual feed printing workarounds), but it's much simpler to correct formatting errors- and more importantly, how to show users to correct these errors themselves.
My biggest frustration with supporting Word users is the ol' "hidden codes" function. You'll be typing away on a document, and suddenly things are being aligned funny, line numbers appear in different areas, page count numbers restart at 1, things cannot be deleted, etc. WordPerfect has a "reveal codes" function which allows you to see the hidden info, and easiy delete the offending code. The answer I give people with this problem? Stop using Word.
I imagine if there was a "reveal hidden codes" feature in Word, it might be a lot easier to use
Clearly not everyone believes Snopes, because I found both the "pinto/penis" and the "nova/no go" stories mentioned here, here, and here. All cite the same usual suspects, so who can tell which are true, and which are false. However, the BBC does mention the "pinto" story here. We all know the BBC never makes anything up...
In a further attempt to pretend that war is easy and non-violent, the Army has finally done it! Make kids think that being in war is cool, just like a video game, that they can restart, people don't "really die," it's all about "eye-controller" coordination, etc. Give the recruits these superhuman expectations, and they will make wonderful soldiers- since all of their training is based on reality.
Man, I got soooo excited when I saw the URL including "wet," "sexy," and "girl"- one of my favorite search combos for Google! Alas, how let down was I to find that there's no pr0n on that site. False advertisement?
The BSA's favorite method is sending out threat letters to small-mid sized businesses, and warning about the dire consequences of having pirated software. The place I work got one, and the boss freaked out- especially since 1 Office 2000 CD had been used for all 6 computers in the office. The letter basically said we had 1 month to take care of any abuses, and if they caught us after that with illegal stuff, there would be hell to pay (since we were on notice).
I got some nice OEM copies to make us legit, but they never showed up. I heard a bunch of people throughout our area got these letters (San Diego), and I didn't really hear about anyone getting busted.
Also, do you like the idea of your kids being trained to rat out their peers? Always be a snitch? How far does it go... Should we also have them snitch on Mommy & Daddy?
And I presume you know everything about anything in your field as well? People do make minor mistakes sometimes.
That said, I stand corrected. I guess my knowledge for Jeopardy has been improved. That story is likely not atypical for that era, with all the railroad trusts, etc- money talks. Also, today you have 1 year in the US to file a patent application from the first sale or public disclosure anywhere in the world. Meucci would be out of luck today, as it was a decade before he filed anything.
Not being an expert in 19th century patent law, I can make a few comments about if this happened today.
1- The US is a "first to invent" country, which awards patents to the person able to prove they invented it first. The rest of the world is "first to file."
2- The US now has the Disclosure Document Program, which will serve as evidence of the date of conception of an invention. You still need to file, and cannot sit on an invention for years. The filing fee is $10.
3- Provisional patent application, which has less statutory disclosure requirements, has a $85 filing fee. Often used for filing a journal article before publication.
It is funny you should say this because some of the most creative geniuses in the history of the world (Isaac Newton, Mozart, Beethoven, Blaise Pascal, Rene Descartes, etc...) had no patent protection whatsoever. And as far as someone else making money from my ideas is concerned, so what?
For the record, patents protect inventions (such as the Flowbee, and not ideas such as gravity (Newton), metaphysics (Descartes). I imagine that since Pascal was producing adding machines, he likely would've liked protection for his invention. The Wright brothers did not get a patent for flying, or the Bernoulli Effect, they got a patent for a machine that performed these functions. As for Mozart & Beethoven, this is not patent law- it's copyright. And yes, those two were quite wealthy back in their time.
There are people in the third world right now who are laughing at your patent laws. They're selling copies of Windows and MS Office in the streets for pennies on the dollar. Heck, they're laughing at them right here in the US. Music download has become an addictive pasttime for some people.
This is copyright law again, as the underlying issue is protecting an original work of authorship. I agree with you on this part. The copyright holders in the US are doing a terrible job of adapting to new technologies. As for patents in the Third World, like pharaceuticals, that's messed up as well. Drugs are needed in certain areas, and should be available- but companies still need to make money.
I'm an IP attorney, and let me assure you, it's not the IP attorneys who run around coming up with ideas of who to sue- it's our clients. They find a product or service that they think infringes their patent/trademark/copyright, and then they ask us to go after them.
IP law is indicitive of the economy as a whole. When the economy is doing well, people/companies have more money for filing patents/trademark/etc. When the economy is slower, people save more money (less filings), and also are more likely to go after people (attempting to extract money from their techonology.)
If you invented something completely new and revolutionary, such as Bell's telephone, or the Wright brothers' plane, would you want to earn money from it for some time- or let anyone and everyone produce it and make the money (instead of you). Patents provide an incentive to discover and invent new things, and ensure your time, money and efforts don't go to waste.
The problem we have now is that patent offices worldwide are backed up, and often patent examiners are not qualified. For example, up until about 5 years ago, the USPTO would not accept computer science degrees as a qualification for patent agents/examiners- this was left to people with electrical engineering degrees.
At our firm, we have noticed that in the past 3-6 months, the USPTO is less friendly in approving patents- even for things that we believe are new & patentable. The European Patent Office has been rejecting things as well, for technologies that we believe are new & unique.
If the whole point is to get something that is supposed to fix WinXP, and be trustworthy, how can you guarantee what you find on BitTorrent will be legit or correct? There could be some sort of checksum verifier, but we've never seen those cracked before.
Myself, I've downloaded it directly from MicrosoftYes, that link works for SP2- found it on Neowin.net earlier. Not sure why it's not being publicized yet.
Since I didn't want to bog down my original post with details, my parents have their house on a large tract of land that doesn't have a paved driveway (.5 mile long). In winter, ice & snow build up since it cannot be completely plowed (otherwise the dirt would be chewed up), and yes, a large 4WD or AWD vehicle is much easier to drive on it Oct-Apr.
My mom needed a new car, and being an enviromentalist in a snowy area, she wanted the Escape. The only problem is that the waiting list for any Escape was 9 months- not counting customized options. Would be nice if they improved their production, because it looks like people want big cars that do not require $80 to fill the gas tank.
Slashdot Mirror
Production costs: $35 million
Marketing costs: $15 million
US gross: $25 million
Worldwide gross: $5 million
They're $20 million in the hole on this one. I imagine they made more in DVD/on-demand/airlines, but at best they broke even- and likely lost a few million.
Source
Actually, they're going to not tone down the Jersey accent this time- so it will be almost as incomprehenisble as Aramaic.
Since most of these jobs cannot be outsourced, they've been "insourced," bringing the Indians to the US to work as clerks.
It did make $25,266,129 source, which is better than Gigli (US Gross, $6,087,542, Production Budget $54,000,000). Sure it's not a Kevin Smith movie, but it's got the same goofy actors. source
Good for Apple to extend their market, but might be bad if HP competes in similar market channels.
crap, it must be time to get another cup of coffee... i'm confusing my slate with my salon.
How soon before Gary Krakow, the columnist, is out of a job at MSNBC for such a glowing article about Linux. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but Salon.com recommended dumping IE, and soon thereafter Microsoft announced it was selling Salon.com
It would need to be a massively coordinated effort to get a huge band's copy protected CD boycotted. You'd need mass targeted media, such as MTV or P. Diddy, to lead the charge. I figured it would be bad for them to lead the fight, and I doubt most people would care.
My point is that it's damn tough to correct formatting "problems" in Word, and quite counter-intuitive. Microsoft is good at messing that part up. WordPerfect may have some drawbacks (like manual feed printing workarounds), but it's much simpler to correct formatting errors- and more importantly, how to show users to correct these errors themselves.
I imagine if there was a "reveal hidden codes" feature in Word, it might be a lot easier to use
Did the losers have their heads blown off?
Clearly not everyone believes Snopes, because I found both the "pinto/penis" and the "nova/no go" stories mentioned here, here, and here. All cite the same usual suspects, so who can tell which are true, and which are false. However, the BBC does mention the "pinto" story here. We all know the BBC never makes anything up...
In a further attempt to pretend that war is easy and non-violent, the Army has finally done it! Make kids think that being in war is cool, just like a video game, that they can restart, people don't "really die," it's all about "eye-controller" coordination, etc. Give the recruits these superhuman expectations, and they will make wonderful soldiers- since all of their training is based on reality.
Man, I got soooo excited when I saw the URL including "wet," "sexy," and "girl"- one of my favorite search combos for Google! Alas, how let down was I to find that there's no pr0n on that site. False advertisement?
The BSA's favorite method is sending out threat letters to small-mid sized businesses, and warning about the dire consequences of having pirated software. The place I work got one, and the boss freaked out- especially since 1 Office 2000 CD had been used for all 6 computers in the office. The letter basically said we had 1 month to take care of any abuses, and if they caught us after that with illegal stuff, there would be hell to pay (since we were on notice).
I got some nice OEM copies to make us legit, but they never showed up. I heard a bunch of people throughout our area got these letters (San Diego), and I didn't really hear about anyone getting busted.
Also, do you like the idea of your kids being trained to rat out their peers? Always be a snitch? How far does it go... Should we also have them snitch on Mommy & Daddy?
And I presume you know everything about anything in your field as well? People do make minor mistakes sometimes.
That said, I stand corrected. I guess my knowledge for Jeopardy has been improved. That story is likely not atypical for that era, with all the railroad trusts, etc- money talks. Also, today you have 1 year in the US to file a patent application from the first sale or public disclosure anywhere in the world. Meucci would be out of luck today, as it was a decade before he filed anything.
Not being an expert in 19th century patent law, I can make a few comments about if this happened today.
1- The US is a "first to invent" country, which awards patents to the person able to prove they invented it first. The rest of the world is "first to file."
2- The US now has the Disclosure Document Program, which will serve as evidence of the date of conception of an invention. You still need to file, and cannot sit on an invention for years. The filing fee is $10.
3- Provisional patent application, which has less statutory disclosure requirements, has a $85 filing fee. Often used for filing a journal article before publication.
For the record, patents protect inventions (such as the Flowbee, and not ideas such as gravity (Newton), metaphysics (Descartes). I imagine that since Pascal was producing adding machines, he likely would've liked protection for his invention. The Wright brothers did not get a patent for flying, or the Bernoulli Effect, they got a patent for a machine that performed these functions. As for Mozart & Beethoven, this is not patent law- it's copyright. And yes, those two were quite wealthy back in their time.
There are people in the third world right now who are laughing at your patent laws. They're selling copies of Windows and MS Office in the streets for pennies on the dollar. Heck, they're laughing at them right here in the US. Music download has become an addictive pasttime for some people.
This is copyright law again, as the underlying issue is protecting an original work of authorship. I agree with you on this part. The copyright holders in the US are doing a terrible job of adapting to new technologies. As for patents in the Third World, like pharaceuticals, that's messed up as well. Drugs are needed in certain areas, and should be available- but companies still need to make money.
IP law is indicitive of the economy as a whole. When the economy is doing well, people/companies have more money for filing patents/trademark/etc. When the economy is slower, people save more money (less filings), and also are more likely to go after people (attempting to extract money from their techonology.)
If you invented something completely new and revolutionary, such as Bell's telephone, or the Wright brothers' plane, would you want to earn money from it for some time- or let anyone and everyone produce it and make the money (instead of you). Patents provide an incentive to discover and invent new things, and ensure your time, money and efforts don't go to waste.
The problem we have now is that patent offices worldwide are backed up, and often patent examiners are not qualified. For example, up until about 5 years ago, the USPTO would not accept computer science degrees as a qualification for patent agents/examiners- this was left to people with electrical engineering degrees.
At our firm, we have noticed that in the past 3-6 months, the USPTO is less friendly in approving patents- even for things that we believe are new & patentable. The European Patent Office has been rejecting things as well, for technologies that we believe are new & unique.
But as the guy claims, he's not trying to make any money, just help people with dialup connections. How noble. SP2 CD on eBay
Myself, I've downloaded it directly from MicrosoftYes, that link works for SP2- found it on Neowin.net earlier. Not sure why it's not being publicized yet.
Since I didn't want to bog down my original post with details, my parents have their house on a large tract of land that doesn't have a paved driveway (.5 mile long). In winter, ice & snow build up since it cannot be completely plowed (otherwise the dirt would be chewed up), and yes, a large 4WD or AWD vehicle is much easier to drive on it Oct-Apr.
D'oh! Should've played with the numbers a little bit more. I just didn't want a Ford sales rep to contact me.
Base MSRP is $19,855, for manual transmission. Since no one in the US drives manual (except me it seems), I suspect $21,000 to start for most people.
My mom needed a new car, and being an enviromentalist in a snowy area, she wanted the Escape. The only problem is that the waiting list for any Escape was 9 months- not counting customized options. Would be nice if they improved their production, because it looks like people want big cars that do not require $80 to fill the gas tank.
I just went to the katieR.com website, using Firefox, and I didn't see any pop-ups...!