What little charm remains to Doctor Who is entirely lost to the American monster that is the American television industry - just look at that awful test pilot and you'll see what you Americans deserve when it comes Doctor Who. Anyone who suggest that the Sci-Fi channel can make it deserves another twenty years of Star Trek with continual Nazi episdodes and/or trapped in the Holodesk stories. If it wasn't for the last film, I'd say that you didn't deserve Batman after what you've done to him!
It would end up as a cross between McGuiver and Start Trek. There'd be a alien love affair in every episode, compulsory self congratualtory moral superiority and all problems would be solved by reversing the polarity on the sonic screwdriver. Bad guys would have the doctor pontify against them in each episode before sending them to space jail and the Tradis would become a flying sports car.
The homosexual agenda thing was starting to wear thin with me anyhow thanks to Russell T. Davies' direction. Sexualising to any sexual orientation shows a sheer lack of sophistication not to mention taste. The class shift in casting has made it suffer too - those Shaksperian actors with their good diction really played the stories well but they're all gone now.
It's also starting to suffer from the more apparent problems that Torchwood suffers from - the stories are pedestrian, and too often rely on the boring old Earth. Much like when the Jon Pertwee Doctor was stuck with the Brigadier and UNIT driving around in that boring old car, giving every monster he came across a karate chop. Of course that was because it was cheaper to make.
It's about time a writer was brave enough to really address the issues of ancient Galifrey and the Doctor's original identity beyond using bad poetry and cryptic comments that never resolve. It would also be nice to finally see a group of Timelords using a TARDIS as it was actually intended to be used too. We know that the Doctor rejected Timelord society - but we've never really seen that society sufficiently. I also think that the Dalek destuction of the Timelords is just plain silly.
This reeks of viral marketing techniques. Who in their right mind would use PR releases to declare that they have made the greatest scientific discovery of the modern age! Every person in their company down to the tea lady would be able to retire a multi-billionaire just on the patents alone. The drawn out wait and the rhetoric is clearly designed to create hype.
They're claiming to posses a technology that would change the Middle East, end American globalist policy as we know it, stop environmental destruction, advance space exploration and terrestrial transportation, move the whole world into a new golden age - and they're telling us that nobody will believe them - perhaps it's because they shown nothing to believe.
There is no need to select eminent scientists etc - they merely need to patent the technology and then publish it to prtotect their economic interests. I would suggest that they are instead fishing for celebrities and this is the next stage in their hype campaign.
If you try to add to the article any discussion that Bomis may be pornography, you find yourself banned, and the article is reverted immediately. My comments in the discussion section were also removed a number of times - so you aren't even allowed to argue in favour of a differing point of view.
I tried to add that some people believed that Bomis is in fact not "glamour photography" but "pornography", and found myself accused of vandalism and given the boot.
I was the person who changed the reference to Bomis discussing pornography. It originally described it as an "adult" site, but I kept changing it to "pornography site". I also mentioned that the site is used for masturbation. Of course both my points are true.
My reasons for the change were that what I had written was perfectly true and correct but nonethless undesirable to the person it was written about. I wanted to test how quickly the reference would be changed regadless of it's veracity. After all the term "adult" is really more spin than truth and to my mind has no place in any type of genuine refernce tool.
To my mind, it illustrates how Wikipedia is not a valid form of reference because it has no genuine safeguards against bias which to my mind is often a much greater problem than sheer gross innacuracy. The conseual post-modernist process in which an article is distorted and revised means that nothing is ever really said with any degree of certainty or credibility. So it seems the encyclopedic equivalent of a jail house lawyer.
A democratic view of truth is flawed, and it will never be true that "vox populi, vox Dei" (The voice of the people is the voice of God).
The Fighting Fantasy book "House of Hell" had a somewhat similar measure of "fear" in the player stats. The game didn't however change depending on your fear level. You just died once it reached a certain amount.
No problem with your disagreeing. Personally, I would instead credit shows like "Lost in Space", "Space 1999" and "Doctor Who" for popularising television sci-fi and contributing somewhat more to the genre. I think however that the credit for Sci-Fi really enetering the mainstream belongs to the early sci-fi film makers.
It's certainly true that Trek has fostered a very large audience but I don't know if it could claim to have encouraged fans to discern good fiction whatsoever.
I enjoy Star Trek immensely, but I agree strongly that Trek is not the ultimate in Science Fiction. Personally I would rather see more contemporary and less formulaic Sci-Fi (such as Trek).
To my mind, the problem with Enterprise was symbolic of the problem with Trek in general - it has too much Hollywood froth and not enough thought put into it.Essentially, Enterprise was the Star Trek that the fanatics deserved.
I'm a big fan of Iain Banks, but I'm surprised to hear that The Algebraist has been nominated. Although it's well written technically, it's hardly as innovative as his Culture novels. It's a very poor book in terms of plot on the whole unlike his other sci-fi and fiction work.
I found myself questioning the space opera characters very early on. I mean a baddie with diamond teeth and red eyes! I mean really! Surely an author of his calibre can make a villain despicable beyond the all too familar plot abbreviations.
I'm disappointed that Richard Morgan didn't get a mention for Market Forces.
I'm glad you are enjoying the book. I'd like to continue chatting with you on this later, but can't quite at the moment. My journal explains why. Look forward to continuing this chat soon.
I'm not "on about" anything. I'll try to answer your subsequent questions however.
CSS doesn't render fonts, it defines them. The web browser renders the fonts by instructions from the CSS, not the operating system. the browser is in charge of rendering fonts although it may loan operating system fonts. The web browser and CSS do not render fonts properly together compared to even a 500 year old book.
Take a look at a book - can you see the way the fonts are clearly rendered on the page? Now look at a web page - see the way they appear - that's your answer.
XHTML and CSS need standard fonts that display just as well as a font rendered in say for instance Macromedia Flash or an Acrobat PDF. They also need a standard for fonts, perhaps a set of imbedded fonts that don't change across browsers and operating systems. XHTML and CSS should look the same in any browser and on any computer, but they don't because the question of fonts has not been resolved.
The current limited set of jagged unaliased fonts that CSS defines are not good enough. There's a good outline on the problems of web typography here if you want to read more about the history, problems and temporary solutions used at the moment.
I'm okay for jobs to go off shore, just so long as politicians are happy to operate in the same free market system. For instance, I think the whole public service should be shipped off to India. The courts can go to China. They'll be able to spend tax dollars much more efficiently. Instead of having public buildings, you can have a phone number. Public libraries, public sporting arenas etc should be abolished, public parks too - make absolutely everything user pays. The fire brigade should carry credit card facilities - if you don't have the money, your house can burn. Ambulances should carry eftpos and take all major credit cards.
The army should be outsourced to Indonesia - it would save the country money, and after all, we're in a free market system aren't we. Doctors and Lawyers too - get them to call into the client by phone from Vietnam.
Politicians should be paid according to the economy's performance - if the country is in the red, then they don't get paid. That's the free market way too after all. Russia might have some spare ones.
Well if you have a firm and legally valid contract, I'd simply remind them of it. From there, it up to your lawyer if you don't get it fixed within a reasonable timeframe. I'd also inist on a reasonable and mutually agreed upon deadline. Document everything just in case as you go because you might need it later.
Next time, I'd insist one someone local regardless of whether they are approved or not. Finding an commercial but open source alternative might be a good idea too.
I'm not delighting in your problem, but I really hate to see jobs going off shore.
If you outsource particularily overseas, you're usually headed for trouble. I don't have any sympathy for you, sorry. It looks like you are infact the one who'd wasting things at the moment too incidentaly. The job should have stayed in the USA regardless of your motivations, financial or otherwise.
The IT industry is suffering because of bad decisions like yours, and if you haven't figured out by now that outsourcing offshore is more costly in the long term when things go wrong, then tuff.
Spare me your indignation. You handed a project to someone that you didn't know, and I bet you didn't do a contract (of any kind) either. Of course you'd be hard pressed to deal with the company in an American court anyhow. You didn't stipulate that you wanted the source, and so now you've realised that your leaned over a table. You didn't hire a good tester either. Essentially your cheap and nasty job has come back to haunt you.
Well, had you employed someone who knew what they were doing, even to manage the project, you wouldn't be in this position. Next time, contract someone to manage the project properly. If it's important enought to want it, it's important enough to hire someone to do it properly in your own country.
Good luck with your Hindi lessons. Until clutzs like you figure it out, our industry will just have to struggle on. But we'll be happy to overcharge you when you return to Western programmers.
Your Indian company will probably get around to finishing the job - but if they don't, bad luck.
CSS may be better than XSL, but it still can't render fonts as well as book printing technology practiced 500 years ago. The whole question of rendering fonts and default fonts needs to be resolved.
Slashdot Mirror
What little charm remains to Doctor Who is entirely lost to the American monster that is the American television industry - just look at that awful test pilot and you'll see what you Americans deserve when it comes Doctor Who. Anyone who suggest that the Sci-Fi channel can make it deserves another twenty years of Star Trek with continual Nazi episdodes and/or trapped in the Holodesk stories. If it wasn't for the last film, I'd say that you didn't deserve Batman after what you've done to him!
It would end up as a cross between McGuiver and Start Trek. There'd be a alien love affair in every episode, compulsory self congratualtory moral superiority and all problems would be solved by reversing the polarity on the sonic screwdriver. Bad guys would have the doctor pontify against them in each episode before sending them to space jail and the Tradis would become a flying sports car.
The homosexual agenda thing was starting to wear thin with me anyhow thanks to Russell T. Davies' direction. Sexualising to any sexual orientation shows a sheer lack of sophistication not to mention taste. The class shift in casting has made it suffer too - those Shaksperian actors with their good diction really played the stories well but they're all gone now.
It's also starting to suffer from the more apparent problems that Torchwood suffers from - the stories are pedestrian, and too often rely on the boring old Earth. Much like when the Jon Pertwee Doctor was stuck with the Brigadier and UNIT driving around in that boring old car, giving every monster he came across a karate chop. Of course that was because it was cheaper to make.
It's about time a writer was brave enough to really address the issues of ancient Galifrey and the Doctor's original identity beyond using bad poetry and cryptic comments that never resolve. It would also be nice to finally see a group of Timelords using a TARDIS as it was actually intended to be used too. We know that the Doctor rejected Timelord society - but we've never really seen that society sufficiently. I also think that the Dalek destuction of the Timelords is just plain silly.
This reeks of viral marketing techniques. Who in their right mind would use PR releases to declare that they have made the greatest scientific discovery of the modern age! Every person in their company down to the tea lady would be able to retire a multi-billionaire just on the patents alone. The drawn out wait and the rhetoric is clearly designed to create hype.
They're claiming to posses a technology that would change the Middle East, end American globalist policy as we know it, stop environmental destruction, advance space exploration and terrestrial transportation, move the whole world into a new golden age - and they're telling us that nobody will believe them - perhaps it's because they shown nothing to believe.
There is no need to select eminent scientists etc - they merely need to patent the technology and then publish it to prtotect their economic interests. I would suggest that they are instead fishing for celebrities and this is the next stage in their hype campaign.
Have a look at this Here. It goes to show how Wikipedia is bullshit.
If you try to add to the article any discussion that Bomis may be pornography, you find yourself banned, and the article is reverted immediately. My comments in the discussion section were also removed a number of times - so you aren't even allowed to argue in favour of a differing point of view.
I tried to add that some people believed that Bomis is in fact not "glamour photography" but "pornography", and found myself accused of vandalism and given the boot.
The sheer doublethink in the article is absurd.
I was the person who changed the reference to Bomis discussing pornography. It originally described it as an "adult" site, but I kept changing it to "pornography site". I also mentioned that the site is used for masturbation. Of course both my points are true.
My reasons for the change were that what I had written was perfectly true and correct but nonethless undesirable to the person it was written about. I wanted to test how quickly the reference would be changed regadless of it's veracity. After all the term "adult" is really more spin than truth and to my mind has no place in any type of genuine refernce tool.
To my mind, it illustrates how Wikipedia is not a valid form of reference because it has no genuine safeguards against bias which to my mind is often a much greater problem than sheer gross innacuracy. The conseual post-modernist process in which an article is distorted and revised means that nothing is ever really said with any degree of certainty or credibility. So it seems the encyclopedic equivalent of a jail house lawyer.
A democratic view of truth is flawed, and it will never be true that "vox populi, vox Dei" (The voice of the people is the voice of God).
The Fighting Fantasy book "House of Hell" had a somewhat similar measure of "fear" in the player stats. The game didn't however change depending on your fear level. You just died once it reached a certain amount.
Q: Where do you want to go today?
A: Re-education camp
No problem with your disagreeing. Personally, I would instead credit shows like "Lost in Space", "Space 1999" and "Doctor Who" for popularising television sci-fi and contributing somewhat more to the genre. I think however that the credit for Sci-Fi really enetering the mainstream belongs to the early sci-fi film makers. It's certainly true that Trek has fostered a very large audience but I don't know if it could claim to have encouraged fans to discern good fiction whatsoever.
I enjoy Star Trek immensely, but I agree strongly that Trek is not the ultimate in Science Fiction. Personally I would rather see more contemporary and less formulaic Sci-Fi (such as Trek).
To my mind, the problem with Enterprise was symbolic of the problem with Trek in general - it has too much Hollywood froth and not enough thought put into it.Essentially, Enterprise was the Star Trek that the fanatics deserved.
"Spirit of the Internet" be damned. What business people need are laws and contracts.
No need to get all mushy if their legal department dropped the ball.
I guess marrrying an adulterer and having a sham marriage for political convinience is much more squeaky clean than pixels dancing on a monitor.
I'm a big fan of Iain Banks, but I'm surprised to hear that The Algebraist has been nominated. Although it's well written technically, it's hardly as innovative as his Culture novels. It's a very poor book in terms of plot on the whole unlike his other sci-fi and fiction work.
I found myself questioning the space opera characters very early on. I mean a baddie with diamond teeth and red eyes! I mean really! Surely an author of his calibre can make a villain despicable beyond the all too familar plot abbreviations.
I'm disappointed that Richard Morgan didn't get a mention for Market Forces.
Slashdot had better watch out too then. It's putrid colour scheme and invalid html code are even more outdated.
Will it run Duke Nukem Forever?
I'm glad you are enjoying the book. I'd like to continue chatting with you on this later, but can't quite at the moment. My journal explains why. Look forward to continuing this chat soon.
I'm not "on about" anything. I'll try to answer your subsequent questions however.
CSS doesn't render fonts, it defines them. The web browser renders the fonts by instructions from the CSS, not the operating system. the browser is in charge of rendering fonts although it may loan operating system fonts.
The web browser and CSS do not render fonts properly together compared to even a 500 year old book.
Take a look at a book - can you see the way the fonts are clearly rendered on the page? Now look at a web page - see the way they appear - that's your answer.
XHTML and CSS need standard fonts that display just as well as a font rendered in say for instance Macromedia Flash or an Acrobat PDF. They also need a standard for fonts, perhaps a set of imbedded fonts that don't change across browsers and operating systems. XHTML and CSS should look the same in any browser and on any computer, but they don't because the question of fonts has not been resolved.
The current limited set of jagged unaliased fonts that CSS defines are not good enough. There's a good outline on the problems of web typography here if you want to read more about the history, problems and temporary solutions used at the moment.
I'm okay for jobs to go off shore, just so long as politicians are happy to operate in the same free market system. For instance, I think the whole public service should be shipped off to India. The courts can go to China. They'll be able to spend tax dollars much more efficiently. Instead of having public buildings, you can have a phone number. Public libraries, public sporting arenas etc should be abolished, public parks too - make absolutely everything user pays. The fire brigade should carry credit card facilities - if you don't have the money, your house can burn. Ambulances should carry eftpos and take all major credit cards.
The army should be outsourced to Indonesia - it would save the country money, and after all, we're in a free market system aren't we. Doctors and Lawyers too - get them to call into the client by phone from Vietnam.
Politicians should be paid according to the economy's performance - if the country is in the red, then they don't get paid. That's the free market way too after all. Russia might have some spare ones.
Not likely is it.
Well if you have a firm and legally valid contract, I'd simply remind them of it. From there, it up to your lawyer if you don't get it fixed within a reasonable timeframe. I'd also inist on a reasonable and mutually agreed upon deadline. Document everything just in case as you go because you might need it later.
Next time, I'd insist one someone local regardless of whether they are approved or not. Finding an commercial but open source alternative might be a good idea too.
I'm not delighting in your problem, but I really hate to see jobs going off shore.
hehehe - Starbucks are following at a close second.
If you outsource particularily overseas, you're usually headed for trouble. I don't have any sympathy for you, sorry. It looks like you are infact the one who'd wasting things at the moment too incidentaly. The job should have stayed in the USA regardless of your motivations, financial or otherwise.
The IT industry is suffering because of bad decisions like yours, and if you haven't figured out by now that outsourcing offshore is more costly in the long term when things go wrong, then tuff.
Spare me your indignation. You handed a project to someone that you didn't know, and I bet you didn't do a contract (of any kind) either. Of course you'd be hard pressed to deal with the company in an American court anyhow. You didn't stipulate that you wanted the source, and so now you've realised that your leaned over a table. You didn't hire a good tester either. Essentially your cheap and nasty job has come back to haunt you.
Well, had you employed someone who knew what they were doing, even to manage the project, you wouldn't be in this position. Next time, contract someone to manage the project properly. If it's important enought to want it, it's important enough to hire someone to do it properly in your own country.
Good luck with your Hindi lessons. Until clutzs like you figure it out, our industry will just have to struggle on. But we'll be happy to overcharge you when you return to Western programmers.
Your Indian company will probably get around to finishing the job - but if they don't, bad luck.
hehehe - I never thought of that, but I think you're on to something.
It appears that they were dropped on the head at birth.
Here's my suggestion - choke on your problems and die you outsourcing fool. Oh, that or learn Hindi.
CSS may be better than XSL, but it still can't render fonts as well as book printing technology practiced 500 years ago. The whole question of rendering fonts and default fonts needs to be resolved.