"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
The main reason to discourage the creation of poor-quality sequels is the risk you run of a better-quality sequel or related story not being made in the future.
For instance, let's take Starship Troopers. (Please.) As much as I love my "Rico, you know what to do!" inside-jokes, it was a pretty crappy movie. Not a Judge Dredd-grade Superfund site, but pretty bad. Not only did it suck the oxygen out of any room that might be used to discuss another version with a stronger story, it also reduced the chances of any other sci-fi large-scale infantry story ever being made into a good movie. _Armor_ by John Steakley will likely never be made into a movie, partially because of Starship Troopers and partially because Carpenter (and the studio) fucked up _Vampires_.
Arguably, _Armor_ is a better source for a thoughtful movie script than _Starship Troopers_, even though _Armor_ was essentially the same plot.
We're much less likely to know now, and for that I blame the film _Starship Troopers_. (I also blame Verhoeven, but he's forgiven because he also made _Flesh and Blood_ and _Robocop_.)
This is VERY true. CS cannot (or will not) do service delivery. This may vaguely differ if your school is tiny enough, but even at a small college you're more likely to see the library do IT - because while library science is a big part of the library system the library itself still must deliver services.
That said, past a certain size, not even the libraries usually have the right mindset to do IT right.
That was what I heard as well. ATT uses a text message 2-7 days after the fact to wash their hands of any notification responsibilities.
One starts to wonder, based on his incorrect understanding of his company's service, if it's any surprise that puto worked for ATT, that he handled escalations and that he no longer does so.
That's nonsense. It's not disabled by default on all ATT phones. In this case, we're talking about a data card, but it's the same point. You don't have to call to turn it on. I've seen two instances recently where people got hit for 7000 and 9000 bills, with no change in usage behavior.
Some folk troubled inside can sneer at these people and justify their disdain behind the fact that an 26-page agreement lists roaming data charges in fine print. These same agreements also say you've signed away half your legal rights because ATT would find them inconvenient in certain situations. Fuck that as a justification.
There are tons of cellular service providers that have much better warning systems, like a text or pop-up with fee information, or tools you can use, like self-setting a limit on how much costs you can incur before service temporarily disables. There's no reason why people in this day and age shouldn't expect more. Casual data use goes up every year as files and options take up space, yet somehow it always seems that those with few competitors seem to continually put off revising their rates for networks long paid for. This was Canada in 2008, not Sierra Leone in 1998.
The most galling thing of it all is the proof right in what puto is saying. We all know that all that stands between a $20,000 bill and a $100 bill is a fucking SKU. They design the circumstances to encourage these mistakes, or they just don't care enough about their customers to deploy solutions already on other providers' shelves.
An asteroid named Apophis is on a collision course with Earth? Someone needs to update their feeds. SG-1 took care of this already in season 5.
Friggin' Goa'uld put their names on everything - "The Art of the Deal" must be in their book club rotation.
Seriously. This tag is being used way too much. A rail gun is, for all its complexity, a relatively straightforward concept. A story about, oh, releasing genetically-manipulated mosquitoes into the wild really should set the benchmark.
Standards, people, standards. We're -geeks-, fer crissakes.
This seems much more along, and less complicated. I imagine a new use for an ultrasonic transducer is easier to get approved than transgenic tissue grafting.
I really wish there was some central repository of active studies, with an easy way to grade their progress and potential oversight burden. I imagine being able to subscribe to studies and experiments, and receiving updates when available. The most irritating thing about 'scientific discovery' news articles is the fickle nature of the media to keep people in the loop on it. Whenever a bold claim is made, it becomes news. But the incremental progress is not sexy, so you never hear of it again. How many 'promising' cures for various cancers have we heard of, only to never heard of them again?
You know, as you get older and your priorities change with you, it's easy to look back and be a little embarrassed by the things you used to care about. 15 years ago, it was half-Japanese babes, the earnestness of being 'real', New Order and Battletech. You get older, you start to care more about money, your social standing, and how many blocks are you from the subway. Then you start looking forward to visits from your out-of-town parents and moving into that brownstone apartment.
Next you're deciding what tux you're wearing to the wedding. After that, it's term-life insurance policies and stroller models.
Here I am, years down the path I started on. I still have those friends, I still have my post-punk music and I still have that Battletech set. I have a nice life- wonderful wife, not loaded but OK and a child very soon to make an appearance. I don't regret any of these things for a moment.
But to MY DYING DAY, I will always regret stumbling across the Chtorr series immediately after book 4 was published.
Finding book 1, I did not rest until I had read all 4 in a matter of days. Those were good days, even if the story got a little lost around book 3.
I had gotten used to waiting a year for the next installment of any series I was into. Year 1 went by, no problems. Year 2 - a little peeved, but ok. Year 3...grumble, grumble. Year 4...WTF? Etc, etc.
It's now 2006, and back then (I think) was 1992. Fourteen fucking years. That's a long time. Being teased along the way with mentions of plans for books 5-7 elevates that regret to a sweet, sweet spot.
Illness, family deaths, problem child, single-parent rearing, being gay..."Ja, ja, ja - we've heard all this before." We're talking 14 friggin' years. I don't dismiss his life challenges. He's clearly been capable of writing during hard times. He's published - what? - 10 books in this decade and a half?
I just don't understand.
This is going to be John Steakly and _Armor_/_Vampires_ all over again. Gun shy after too much time, pent-up demand and too-high expectations.
j.b.
Re:Is the Salvation Army Bashing Gays?
on
Season's Givings?
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· Score: 1
Purty much, yeah. There's really no issue here, unless one if forcing beliefs on others. Mind you, I love the SA. I think the Red Cross (also a christian organization in case anyone didn't notice that) gets too much press and coverage. The Salvation Army is wierd and cryptic at times, but they are more efficient, they never require their clients to adhere to a set of beliefs or listen through a sermon (anymore).
That said, firing someone who's Jewish or gay is retarded unless they're opening up a synogogue or a swing club on SA property.
j.b.
"Have we placed too much emphasis on making GUI-based applications, and left behind what was a perfectly good way of doing things?"
No. What we've left behind is the concept that specialized keystrokes are somehow only available in contrast to a kickass GUI. Designing a better GUI and maintaining its layout through multiple versions makes sure it's easier to train more people on an application. If you're only expecting or need 20 people to use an app, by all means - make them learn specialized keystrokes. If you want something on a mass-scale, don't waste people's time in pigeonholing their training.
...is that THIS is what they waste the 'Godzilla' appellation on? A weird looking crocodile ancestor? Give me a break. This a slap in the face to all those poor hapless Japanese people who have lost their lives in the many senseless monster attacks since the end of WWII.
I would have hoped that fossil geeks would have the wherewithal to save the Big G label for something that could have eaten a T-rex onehanded. Kids these days.
The reason why Mulberry went under is because they made a client that made advanced users and admins (somewhat) happy, and didn't really understand that the people they hung out with weren't numerous enough to carry interest. It was bulky and difficult to use. When something went wrong on the client end, you were screwed.
On the other hand, it did mail lists and shared mailboxes well. No other app did this as well as Mulberry. It also was a win for the Mac-Good/Windows-Bad zealots.
Running a unviersity tech support call center as I do, I (and my entire team) hated this program intensely. We hated how long it took to resolve a problem with it. We hated how long it took just to diagnose a problem with it. We hated how long it took to train an average customer to use it.
But what we hated most about it was that we had to keep supporting it solely to subsidize a handful of admins and advanced users. They liked it so much they went on personal PR crusades throughout the campus. Out of a total of 60,000 users, Mulberry was used by less than 3000 people in any calendar year. About 50 or so were fanatics, and the other 2950 had the misfortune to work in small departments whose local admin or tech were Mulberry fanatics. We support 8 email programs, for christ's sake. For years (because of an inside fanatics) we were listing Mulberry as the 'preferred' program. (This was before I got there.) Even so, it never rose above 3k users on its best day. That should tell you something.
Most of the people who were using it didn't need mail list management functionality, and they certainly don't care about Mac email client 'parity'. We were paying for Mulberry site licenses, subsidizing selfish choices. All in the name of a function that only 300 or so people actually needed as a requirement of their job or functions, and to farcically maintain a 'win' in the Mac app column. Better solutions for those 300 people could have been found, even if it meant we kept supporting it just for them or we did something in-house.
When the bankruptcy was announced, you could hear the cheering from two floors away. Mulberry was a symbol of what goes wrong when there isn't a standardized means of evaluating services/demands and when sys admins have too much unjustified, informal say over what we do/offer. This might be an unpopular thing to say here, but it's the damned truth in my small bit of the working world.
j.b.
Ps. this is just about the client. We never used their server software.
a replacement for the space shuttle? It's a system for getting to the moon, and it must have a heavy lift capability to send anything that far but that doesn't make it a reusable spaceplane.
But then I suppose the space shuttle wasn't really a credible spaceplane either.
I sometimes feel we cheat ourselves by adhering too closely to the definition of 'spacecraft'.
Where's my Orion big-lifter? Lunar-base-in-a-box, special delivery. We should build an artificial island spaceport somewhere in the Southern Atlantic for those messy launches.
The relative incorruptability of the Brazilian governmentor their 'questioning' of the asshat's policies doesn't really provide much ethical traction.
Brazil's hindered regional cohesion and have stood by while retards like Chavez smokes the hell out of democracy in Venezuela in favor of a megalomaniacal candyland powertrip. I'd love it if Brazil would 'question' more of Bush the asshat's policies but I'd also like to see some leadership to go along with it.
I hate Bush's policies and attitudes moreso than most people, but more people should offer a better moral example by silent action and resources. Others would follow a Brazillian lead if they did.
Working on the soccer-playing component of being a Great Power for 50 years is great and all but it's time to move on.
Nice. People have just had their entire lives wiped away before their eyes, spending days living in a place that we'd otherwise think would make a neat apocalypse flick, and you're drawing moral strength from the fact that someone was caught on film complaining about an MRE? Do you think our troops LIKE eating MREs? I'd airdrop the troops (and these people) a lobster dinner if it were possible.
Why you feel the need to apologize for our FEDERAL GOVERNMENT when we're being bombarded with pictures and videos of tens of thousands of people NOT getting help is beyond me. Sure, thousands have been bused out. No facts for this, but it seems likely there are still 4-5 people in need of help/transportation for every person that's gotten it. It's been multiple DAYS, and only now have more substantial help. You have goddamn FEMA chair on TV saying he 'didn't know' there were thousands at the convention center or Superdome in need.
Maybe the timing of the questions are worth looking into? Certainly, Thursday is looking better than Tuesday - helpwise. But it's still not enough. We should have seen trains running by yesterday, not explosions in the train yard. We should have seen airdrops by now. It's FEMA's and the feds' job to respond to a tragedy of this magnitude.
This federal government is big on strategic decisions (let's turn Iraq into an unsecured aircraft carrier) but sucks ass on tactical implementations. Americans are dying on streets that look JUST like ours because of this mortal weakness.
Slashdot Mirror
On first pass I thought this said, "Google Found French Guilty of Copyright Infringement"
Is everyone really going to let it slide that there's an ISS module called 'Kibo'?
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Was I the only one who got my hopes up that this was going to be a Stargate post?
"It's not a lie if you believe it, Jerry."
The main reason to discourage the creation of poor-quality sequels is the risk you run of a better-quality sequel or related story not being made in the future. For instance, let's take Starship Troopers. (Please.) As much as I love my "Rico, you know what to do!" inside-jokes, it was a pretty crappy movie. Not a Judge Dredd-grade Superfund site, but pretty bad. Not only did it suck the oxygen out of any room that might be used to discuss another version with a stronger story, it also reduced the chances of any other sci-fi large-scale infantry story ever being made into a good movie. _Armor_ by John Steakley will likely never be made into a movie, partially because of Starship Troopers and partially because Carpenter (and the studio) fucked up _Vampires_. Arguably, _Armor_ is a better source for a thoughtful movie script than _Starship Troopers_, even though _Armor_ was essentially the same plot. We're much less likely to know now, and for that I blame the film _Starship Troopers_. (I also blame Verhoeven, but he's forgiven because he also made _Flesh and Blood_ and _Robocop_.)
This is VERY true. CS cannot (or will not) do service delivery. This may vaguely differ if your school is tiny enough, but even at a small college you're more likely to see the library do IT - because while library science is a big part of the library system the library itself still must deliver services. That said, past a certain size, not even the libraries usually have the right mindset to do IT right.
That was what I heard as well. ATT uses a text message 2-7 days after the fact to wash their hands of any notification responsibilities. One starts to wonder, based on his incorrect understanding of his company's service, if it's any surprise that puto worked for ATT, that he handled escalations and that he no longer does so.
That's nonsense. It's not disabled by default on all ATT phones. In this case, we're talking about a data card, but it's the same point. You don't have to call to turn it on. I've seen two instances recently where people got hit for 7000 and 9000 bills, with no change in usage behavior. Some folk troubled inside can sneer at these people and justify their disdain behind the fact that an 26-page agreement lists roaming data charges in fine print. These same agreements also say you've signed away half your legal rights because ATT would find them inconvenient in certain situations. Fuck that as a justification. There are tons of cellular service providers that have much better warning systems, like a text or pop-up with fee information, or tools you can use, like self-setting a limit on how much costs you can incur before service temporarily disables. There's no reason why people in this day and age shouldn't expect more. Casual data use goes up every year as files and options take up space, yet somehow it always seems that those with few competitors seem to continually put off revising their rates for networks long paid for. This was Canada in 2008, not Sierra Leone in 1998. The most galling thing of it all is the proof right in what puto is saying. We all know that all that stands between a $20,000 bill and a $100 bill is a fucking SKU. They design the circumstances to encourage these mistakes, or they just don't care enough about their customers to deploy solutions already on other providers' shelves.
An asteroid named Apophis is on a collision course with Earth? Someone needs to update their feeds. SG-1 took care of this already in season 5. Friggin' Goa'uld put their names on everything - "The Art of the Deal" must be in their book club rotation.
Seriously. This tag is being used way too much. A rail gun is, for all its complexity, a relatively straightforward concept. A story about, oh, releasing genetically-manipulated mosquitoes into the wild really should set the benchmark. Standards, people, standards. We're -geeks-, fer crissakes.
"For the LAST TIME, we are NOT ninjas!!" - Brain Smasher...A Love Story
That, my dear chap, is the funniest thing I've read in a long time. :)
j.b.
There was an article last year about someone coming up with using ultrasonic waves to trigger regrowth of teeth.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/06/0606
This seems much more along, and less complicated. I imagine a new use for an ultrasonic transducer is easier to get approved than transgenic tissue grafting.
I really wish there was some central repository of active studies, with an easy way to grade their progress and potential oversight burden. I imagine being able to subscribe to studies and experiments, and receiving updates when available. The most irritating thing about 'scientific discovery' news articles is the fickle nature of the media to keep people in the loop on it. Whenever a bold claim is made, it becomes news. But the incremental progress is not sexy, so you never hear of it again. How many 'promising' cures for various cancers have we heard of, only to never heard of them again?
Cecil Adams ("The Straight Dope") published an article in the late 80's debunking this oft-repeated idea.
As entertaining as is the UA 571-C Sentry Gun, we all learned early on that nuking the site from orbit is the only way to be sure.
You know, as you get older and your priorities change with you, it's easy to look back and be a little embarrassed by the things you used to care about. 15 years ago, it was half-Japanese babes, the earnestness of being 'real', New Order and Battletech. You get older, you start to care more about money, your social standing, and how many blocks are you from the subway. Then you start looking forward to visits from your out-of-town parents and moving into that brownstone apartment.
Next you're deciding what tux you're wearing to the wedding. After that, it's term-life insurance policies and stroller models.
Here I am, years down the path I started on. I still have those friends, I still have my post-punk music and I still have that Battletech set. I have a nice life- wonderful wife, not loaded but OK and a child very soon to make an appearance. I don't regret any of these things for a moment.
But to MY DYING DAY, I will always regret stumbling across the Chtorr series immediately after book 4 was published.
Finding book 1, I did not rest until I had read all 4 in a matter of days. Those were good days, even if the story got a little lost around book 3.
I had gotten used to waiting a year for the next installment of any series I was into. Year 1 went by, no problems. Year 2 - a little peeved, but ok. Year 3...grumble, grumble. Year 4...WTF? Etc, etc.
It's now 2006, and back then (I think) was 1992. Fourteen fucking years. That's a long time. Being teased along the way with mentions of plans for books 5-7 elevates that regret to a sweet, sweet spot.
Illness, family deaths, problem child, single-parent rearing, being gay..."Ja, ja, ja - we've heard all this before." We're talking 14 friggin' years. I don't dismiss his life challenges. He's clearly been capable of writing during hard times. He's published - what? - 10 books in this decade and a half?
I just don't understand.
This is going to be John Steakly and _Armor_/_Vampires_ all over again. Gun shy after too much time, pent-up demand and too-high expectations.
j.b.
Purty much, yeah. There's really no issue here, unless one if forcing beliefs on others. Mind you, I love the SA. I think the Red Cross (also a christian organization in case anyone didn't notice that) gets too much press and coverage. The Salvation Army is wierd and cryptic at times, but they are more efficient, they never require their clients to adhere to a set of beliefs or listen through a sermon (anymore). That said, firing someone who's Jewish or gay is retarded unless they're opening up a synogogue or a swing club on SA property. j.b.
"Have we placed too much emphasis on making GUI-based applications, and left behind what was a perfectly good way of doing things?"
No. What we've left behind is the concept that specialized keystrokes are somehow only available in contrast to a kickass GUI. Designing a better GUI and maintaining its layout through multiple versions makes sure it's easier to train more people on an application. If you're only expecting or need 20 people to use an app, by all means - make them learn specialized keystrokes. If you want something on a mass-scale, don't waste people's time in pigeonholing their training.
...is that THIS is what they waste the 'Godzilla' appellation on? A weird looking crocodile ancestor? Give me a break. This a slap in the face to all those poor hapless Japanese people who have lost their lives in the many senseless monster attacks since the end of WWII. I would have hoped that fossil geeks would have the wherewithal to save the Big G label for something that could have eaten a T-rex onehanded. Kids these days.
On the other hand, it did mail lists and shared mailboxes well. No other app did this as well as Mulberry. It also was a win for the Mac-Good/Windows-Bad zealots.
Running a unviersity tech support call center as I do, I (and my entire team) hated this program intensely. We hated how long it took to resolve a problem with it. We hated how long it took just to diagnose a problem with it. We hated how long it took to train an average customer to use it.
But what we hated most about it was that we had to keep supporting it solely to subsidize a handful of admins and advanced users. They liked it so much they went on personal PR crusades throughout the campus. Out of a total of 60,000 users, Mulberry was used by less than 3000 people in any calendar year. About 50 or so were fanatics, and the other 2950 had the misfortune to work in small departments whose local admin or tech were Mulberry fanatics. We support 8 email programs, for christ's sake. For years (because of an inside fanatics) we were listing Mulberry as the 'preferred' program. (This was before I got there.) Even so, it never rose above 3k users on its best day. That should tell you something.
Most of the people who were using it didn't need mail list management functionality, and they certainly don't care about Mac email client 'parity'. We were paying for Mulberry site licenses, subsidizing selfish choices. All in the name of a function that only 300 or so people actually needed as a requirement of their job or functions, and to farcically maintain a 'win' in the Mac app column. Better solutions for those 300 people could have been found, even if it meant we kept supporting it just for them or we did something in-house.
When the bankruptcy was announced, you could hear the cheering from two floors away. Mulberry was a symbol of what goes wrong when there isn't a standardized means of evaluating services/demands and when sys admins have too much unjustified, informal say over what we do/offer. This might be an unpopular thing to say here, but it's the damned truth in my small bit of the working world.
j.b.
Ps. this is just about the client. We never used their server software.
a replacement for the space shuttle? It's a system for getting to the moon, and it must have a heavy lift capability to send anything that far but that doesn't make it a reusable spaceplane. But then I suppose the space shuttle wasn't really a credible spaceplane either. I sometimes feel we cheat ourselves by adhering too closely to the definition of 'spacecraft'. Where's my Orion big-lifter? Lunar-base-in-a-box, special delivery. We should build an artificial island spaceport somewhere in the Southern Atlantic for those messy launches.
The relative incorruptability of the Brazilian governmentor their 'questioning' of the asshat's policies doesn't really provide much ethical traction.
Brazil's hindered regional cohesion and have stood by while retards like Chavez smokes the hell out of democracy in Venezuela in favor of a megalomaniacal candyland powertrip. I'd love it if Brazil would 'question' more of Bush the asshat's policies but I'd also like to see some leadership to go along with it.
I hate Bush's policies and attitudes moreso than most people, but more people should offer a better moral example by silent action and resources. Others would follow a Brazillian lead if they did.
Working on the soccer-playing component of being a Great Power for 50 years is great and all but it's time to move on.
Nice. People have just had their entire lives wiped away before their eyes, spending days living in a place that we'd otherwise think would make a neat apocalypse flick, and you're drawing moral strength from the fact that someone was caught on film complaining about an MRE? Do you think our troops LIKE eating MREs? I'd airdrop the troops (and these people) a lobster dinner if it were possible. Why you feel the need to apologize for our FEDERAL GOVERNMENT when we're being bombarded with pictures and videos of tens of thousands of people NOT getting help is beyond me. Sure, thousands have been bused out. No facts for this, but it seems likely there are still 4-5 people in need of help/transportation for every person that's gotten it. It's been multiple DAYS, and only now have more substantial help. You have goddamn FEMA chair on TV saying he 'didn't know' there were thousands at the convention center or Superdome in need. Maybe the timing of the questions are worth looking into? Certainly, Thursday is looking better than Tuesday - helpwise. But it's still not enough. We should have seen trains running by yesterday, not explosions in the train yard. We should have seen airdrops by now. It's FEMA's and the feds' job to respond to a tragedy of this magnitude. This federal government is big on strategic decisions (let's turn Iraq into an unsecured aircraft carrier) but sucks ass on tactical implementations. Americans are dying on streets that look JUST like ours because of this mortal weakness.
Interesting that you mention those two groups. Those are -exactly- the two I named a few months ago when someone asked me to describe MC Frontalot.