Next thing you know, they'll be letting folks with breasts compete...
I'm glad that the initial ruling was overturned. Seeking out an advantage over others is competition. Other racers obviously feel threatened that an individual with a physical disability might have an unfair advantage due to his prosthetic legs. This despite the fact that as a species, we create our own obsticles called rules, and then we call it a game.
This is a (perhaps not uniquely; I'm unsure about that) human trait that we begin with in childhood. Who didn't at one point or another play "hide and go seek?" Who didn't play the expanded the rules, called "kick the can" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kick_the_can to include the idea of a safe zone? As the seeker, why did you count to 100? Why wouldn't you cheat? As a prisoner, why didn't you "escape" from your cell?
We do the same thing in our "professional" sports. There are a set of seemingly clearly defined rules that govern how we play baseball. When you are at bat, the pitcher delivers the ball over the plate, and then you swing your bat, making contact with the ball, only once, before trying to advance to the next base. When you run, your feet slip -- to overcome that problem, you wear cleets. Perhaps you can't hit as far -- to overcome that problem, you cork your bat. Hold on, they are both enhancements, which anyone can aquire, yet corking your bat is "illegal" against the arbitrary rules.
Boxing introduces this intersting notion of a cutman. During a boxing bout, it is the cutman's responsibility to prepare their boxer between rounds by controlling bleeding, and otherwise treating cuts and swelling. Without such treatment, you can be sure that the boxer would continue to bleed, or they'd continue to swell, until they could treat their injuries. Straight from Wikipedia on the subject, "A cotton swab soaked in epinephrine is applied with pressure to decrease blood flow even more." Adrenaline. Last time I checked, adrenaline is also "performance enhancing". Its treatment in boxing is somewhat more topical, but it is nonetheless allowed since a fighter who can see and who isn't bleeding, can prolong the match.
The point is that all our sports have aspects in one way or another that are either allowed by the rules or considered against the rules. Running, to my knowledge, does not explicitly make allowances for amputees to compete, but neither does it disallow. Like corking a bat before it was banned, we mustn't ban a runner because his limbs are slightly different. While getting prosthetic limbs will never be as widely sought as cleets, the rules must be reassessed. Each opponent seeks to "enhance" their ability; they either workout more, they get different equipment, they take steroids, they wear braces, they wear grease under their eyes, etc. This "infraction" is causing such an uproar because others certainly won't be able to use a similar enhancement... at least not in time for the Summer Games.
I couldn't agree more. And I've been around long enough to know, look at my user ID.
Why is it when you have an unpopular view point, you're considered a troll. Granted the opinion expressed didn't apply to the article directly, so it might be better modded as "off-topic", but it isn't as if there will be a/. article posted about how much it has been going down hill.
How else is one going to express their viewpoint?/. seriously needs to return to the site of "Stuff that matters." Instead there are 20 articles posted a day and only a few of them are actually worthy of posting. Maybe there should be a recycling bin page you can go to which has all the drivel, leaving just the good stuff on the front... like a newspaper -- the crap should be shuffled to page 2 or more.
Your loss. Coding in Managed DX with C# is very cool. It isn't really ready for prime time because the runtime version is strongly tied to the executable binary, which is why you needed to download additional files. As a RAD platform it could be coded in far less time by using.NET and Managed DX.
I'd rather NASA spend more time in space than coding applications like this one; regardless of how much fun it is.
If you look just to the south east, there are boats in Lake Washington that match up... either these ARE from the same source data or Google got particularly LUCKY matching them up like that.
The more obvious question for me is why do Google's sat images appear particularly overburned? There is a sharp contrast to them that the MSN sat images don't have. MSN looks like the better PQ to me.
I think that people should be responsible for themselves, without the government telling them what they can and cannot do/see/etc. I do however think that exposing your breast, in a land that positively fears breasts on TV, during the Super Bowl Halftime show is one of the stupidist stunts pulled in recent history. I personally have no problem with boobs being on the boob tube, but that was an inappropriate venue because it was unexpected. Even if a parent is trying to be responsibe and monitor what their children watch and engange in, there would have been no way to know before hand that Miss Jackson would be flashing herself.
She did accomplish what she wanted to though, she's completely shaken up our culture. How many people can do something and spur on heated debate a year and a half after they do it?
So these "responsible" parents are giving their minor children a game that already has an (almost) adult rating? If the kids are already old enough to buy the game themselves, in one more year these "kids" could go to Nevada and pay for the real thing.
Honestly, who are they kidding? Who REALLY has their panties in a bunch over this? Someone has just found something to bitch about and they're doing it. I don't see how this is much different from when I downloaded "naked skin" textures of Laura Croft for Tombraider 2.
I'm only going to comment on a couple of things here since I think nokilli already did a great job.
4. iApps - Free. -- You do realize that Apple is only able to release these apps like this because Microsoft is currently in the spotlight as the evil incarnate distroyer of free market (when the opposite is more likely the case). If the EU is pissed because Microsoft has included a(n ohmygosh) media player, can you imagine where they'd be if Microsoft also tossed in an MPEG2 codec taking the food off tables of the poor programmers of PowerDVD, WinDVD, et. al? Apple can use its small marketshare to its advantage, by releasing freakin' cool apps but without having to worry about what the competitors think.
15. Intelligent user organization scheme -- I simply do not understand the love over the *nix user permissions. Great, you have groups, I understand that, but with out the ACL's that Windows uses, how do you just randomly give someone access to a file? If I have a group, call it everyone_but_bob, and I have it associated with a file, and then I want to give bob access to that file but none of the other files already with the everyone_but_bob group, you have a significant headache to deal with. If you start running Windows in a Limited User role (which is what I'm sure you are really getting at), then ACL's are far more powerful. Take a look at Aaron Margosis' non-Admin Blog for some kickass advice on how to do this today.
Last I heard, Palm was moving away from Graffiti in favor of JOT, which is also what Windows Mobile uses. I haven't been paying attention since I moved away from Palm in favor of my Windows Mobile 2003 Powered i600.
The big difference between the two, is that Graffiti mimics lowercase characters whilst JOT mimics uppercase. For me, it's definately easier to think in uppercase when I'm writing block letters, but by the time I stopped using my Palm V, I was equally adept at both.
Re:Guess what a friend of mine just got in the mai
on
The Xbox 360 Unveiled
·
· Score: 1
Because of the DVD?... Oh, you mean the player I guess?!?
Really you pave the way for the arguement for them to enforce this then. You have said, quite correctly, that Microsoft imposing limitations like this over Samba or IE/IIS would likely backfire.
Why you state this would be a bad thing for consumers, is that content providers for video/music/etc. would be able to control their content not unlike all that Divx promised. As consumers though, we can leverage our wallet and purchase only from sources without control or those that display a relaxed control.
While it may be true that there are a lot of consumers out there, that market is small potatoes when compared to the lucrative business market and the associative sustained engineering contracts.
Windows on the home PC is there in reality to provide an environment that is familar in the business. If everyone owns at home, and uses XP, then that will in turn drive sales in the business sector.
Microsoft will not give up its bid for that as it is the bread and butter of the company. It is because of the OS and Office groups that Microsoft has money to spend on other ventures like XBox 360.
If it can't pull an IP, I don't want it. What good is it if I can't check up on it from work? Or better yet an RSS syndication so I can just look at my aggrigator.
I can't find a reference to it now, but I think (maybe 5 years ago) that/. had a posting about a new genetic process that Monsanto invented specifically to prevent reseeding.
As I understood it, they had a way to create a crop that you could grow from a seed, but that crop in return wouldn't bare any seeds itself. This of course was great for Monsanto and terrifying for farmers.
The closest I could find online http://members.tripod.com/c_rader0/gemod.htm mentions (search for reseed) that plants can be rasied with sterile male parts. Thank God I'm not a plant, that doesn't sound plesant.
Maybe not perfect results (still beta of course), but MSN search is adding this too, and I'm sure to what Gates was refering. http://toolbar.search.msn.com/results.aspx?near=24 &q=pizza&FORM=NMRE This result is for Seattle, WA because my "Near Me" setting would have given me differnt results than someone who lives elsewhere.
Hard to be a tester (depends on the product of course) if we don't consider other browsers...
I work in Office as a tester, and during the last product cycle, when we were releasing Office 2003, I did some sanity passes to make sure that Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox failed gracefully in parts of Sharepoint Portal Server that are specifically coded for IE 5.5+. Except for some administration pages, SPS handled N/M/F for most of the content and scaled back appropriately. The result wasn't as feature rich on those alternate browsers, but every effort was made to make them usable for most people.
Naturally IE is the prefered browser, and what most things are written for, but as a company, it is in our best interest to make as many products work on a widely diverse set of platforms. Real users don't run everything Microsoft (although they should;) so of course we're going to use the competitions products for development and testing for completeness.
However, when I'm done testing and need to be productive on other things, I use IE 6 and perform my searches through the MSN Toolbar/Deskbar suite. I used the Google Toolbar until the MSN suite was released; try and try as I might, I'm still not sold on Firefox.
I'm sick of seeing people make this same mistake over and over. If you ever read the ways they actually tell you to enable the "Real Mode DOS" in Me, you are required to install drivers from the Emergency Boot Disk. The EBD has the EXACT same files as the Win98 boot disk's except for where the name Windows 98 occured... that was changed to Windows Me.
Me itself doesn't have a Real-Mode DOS. It's kinda like the 98Lite solution of using the Windows 95 shell. You aren't running Windows 98 then, you are running a bastardized version of Windows 95. The boot loader for Me has just as much Real-Mode DOS in it as LILO or the NT Boot sector.
The 2 or 3 watts (actually less than a watt) is used by the ATX power supply. There is no difference in power consumption by the Windows hibernation and the Linux hibernation. Both are describing S4 power saving mode, and both are effectively spooling the RAM to disk while the machine is in its soft-off or full-off modes.
If a user decides to "Shutdown", rather than hibernate, then they are in the exact same power consumtion mode, but now they have to reinitiate all of their programs to get back to where they were.
Well my vote in Washington (although I'm not sold on his immigration announcment the other day... could spell the end for my support) will get lost among the liberals, so I guess we cancel each other out.
I just lost hours of work I was putting into a reply, so I'll paraphrase.
The studios are still making a ton of money. Don't let the ads fool you. A bad film like "The Core", still made some $6.7 million in world-wide sales, and that doesn't include DVD sales/rental or distribution to some movie channel like HBO or Showtime. If the key grip is starving, it is because the studio executives are hording the profit and keeping it themselves.
The movie industry is unique as an investment that there is limited risk with most studio productions. While investment in some industries have gone belly up with complete loss of revenue (care to buy some Worldcom stock?), the studios are complaining that they aren't making as great a profit on some cheesy cookie-cutter film. One of the few films recently, that did put a strain on the studio was the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. "The Fellowship of the Ring" alone cost $93 million, but grossed $500 million in world-wide DVD rental alone. I'll bet that $300 million investment in the trilogy seems like small change to them now. Unfortunately, most studios like to play it safe, and won't commit to a project unless they KNOW it will attract mindless droves. A movie that doesn't make a profit is practically unheard of after all the distribution channels are exhauted; "From Justin to Kelly" and "Gigli" excepted.
The studios, both movie and recording, are living in a fantasy world. When they are reporting a "losing" year, they mean their profit margin didn't have the same growth as seen from the previous year. This does NOT translate into losing money.
I hope that something happens that will drive most of the studios under. Just as the blacksmith is no longer profitable in the 21st century, the studios are quickly becoming an archic dinosaur. Rather than embracing electronic distribution of media, the studios have chosen to fight it so they can maintain their monopoly. What would happen if all of their "talent" found they could skip the middle man and widely distribute their art and although it might have a smaller unit cost, the artist can keep a greater percent of that returned investment? Well, for starters, we might actually get talented people making movies and writing songs.
There are some great films out there, "Bubba Ho-tep" for instance, but when you only show a movie on at most 22 screens, you can't expect it to have the same ROI as a super mega-blockbuster that the studio has advertised as the best film since "Gigli". These brilliant films don't have the same return, but they aren't given the same chance to suceed.
I'm glad that living where I do in Seattle, I'm close enought that I can go see some of these smaller films. I just spent 8 years in the middle of Texas where that wasn't an option. Given the choice, I'd go see 10 of these films to every "Boat Trip". But where else can you see Oscar award winners doing low brow jokes with homosexual context? Aside from Oscar award winning actor Kevin Kline, for his work in ("In & Out". But that movie also has Oscar award winning actor Matt Dillon, and twice nominated Joan Cusack included -- I degress.
I generally find films like "Le Peuple Migrateur" a.k.a. "Winged Migration" more satisfying. Perhaps if these larger studios keep getting too greedy, more films like the "Russian Ark" will get a chance to be shown, but I figure they'll just get Congress to pass some law that will secure their place in the digital world and then enforce that by suing some of their biggest supporters.
A little bit of either in the other system is alright and can even help in some cases. Diesel in a gasoline tank will still burn (not as cleanly though) but has the nice effect of oiling the other side of the engine. Gas in the diesel lowers the flashpoint and helps with cold weather starts. Too much isn't good because the engines are designed to operate differently (duh). Like all things, moderation is the key. A little won't hurt, but too much will screw your engine over.
Hell, I'm a techie type myself, and I think some of their prices are tough to beat. If I'm just building a generic rig, I can be completely sure that Dell is going to have a model with similar parts at a fraction of my cost. I won't be using that as my gaming rig or my main PC, but for everything else... can't beat it.
And not to completely nitpick, but the movie acurately portrays what was in the book. There is some sort of spell cast from the South as they are trying to cross... as if someone WANTS them to turn back.
Slashdot Mirror
Next thing you know, they'll be letting folks with breasts compete...
I'm glad that the initial ruling was overturned. Seeking out an advantage over others is competition. Other racers obviously feel threatened that an individual with a physical disability might have an unfair advantage due to his prosthetic legs. This despite the fact that as a species, we create our own obsticles called rules, and then we call it a game.
This is a (perhaps not uniquely; I'm unsure about that) human trait that we begin with in childhood. Who didn't at one point or another play "hide and go seek?" Who didn't play the expanded the rules, called "kick the can" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kick_the_can to include the idea of a safe zone? As the seeker, why did you count to 100? Why wouldn't you cheat? As a prisoner, why didn't you "escape" from your cell?
We do the same thing in our "professional" sports. There are a set of seemingly clearly defined rules that govern how we play baseball. When you are at bat, the pitcher delivers the ball over the plate, and then you swing your bat, making contact with the ball, only once, before trying to advance to the next base. When you run, your feet slip -- to overcome that problem, you wear cleets. Perhaps you can't hit as far -- to overcome that problem, you cork your bat. Hold on, they are both enhancements, which anyone can aquire, yet corking your bat is "illegal" against the arbitrary rules.
Boxing introduces this intersting notion of a cutman. During a boxing bout, it is the cutman's responsibility to prepare their boxer between rounds by controlling bleeding, and otherwise treating cuts and swelling. Without such treatment, you can be sure that the boxer would continue to bleed, or they'd continue to swell, until they could treat their injuries. Straight from Wikipedia on the subject, "A cotton swab soaked in epinephrine is applied with pressure to decrease blood flow even more." Adrenaline. Last time I checked, adrenaline is also "performance enhancing". Its treatment in boxing is somewhat more topical, but it is nonetheless allowed since a fighter who can see and who isn't bleeding, can prolong the match.
The point is that all our sports have aspects in one way or another that are either allowed by the rules or considered against the rules. Running, to my knowledge, does not explicitly make allowances for amputees to compete, but neither does it disallow. Like corking a bat before it was banned, we mustn't ban a runner because his limbs are slightly different. While getting prosthetic limbs will never be as widely sought as cleets, the rules must be reassessed. Each opponent seeks to "enhance" their ability; they either workout more, they get different equipment, they take steroids, they wear braces, they wear grease under their eyes, etc. This "infraction" is causing such an uproar because others certainly won't be able to use a similar enhancement... at least not in time for the Summer Games.
I couldn't agree more. And I've been around long enough to know, look at my user ID.
/. article posted about how much it has been going down hill.
/. seriously needs to return to the site of "Stuff that matters." Instead there are 20 articles posted a day and only a few of them are actually worthy of posting. Maybe there should be a recycling bin page you can go to which has all the drivel, leaving just the good stuff on the front... like a newspaper -- the crap should be shuffled to page 2 or more.
Why is it when you have an unpopular view point, you're considered a troll. Granted the opinion expressed didn't apply to the article directly, so it might be better modded as "off-topic", but it isn't as if there will be a
How else is one going to express their viewpoint?
Your loss. Coding in Managed DX with C# is very cool. It isn't really ready for prime time because the runtime version is strongly tied to the executable binary, which is why you needed to download additional files. As a RAD platform it could be coded in far less time by using .NET and Managed DX.
I'd rather NASA spend more time in space than coding applications like this one; regardless of how much fun it is.
No, most of the kids say, "I use my PIN on the ATM when I want to get cash." Just because you're a freak... :)
If you look just to the south east, there are boats in Lake Washington that match up... either these ARE from the same source data or Google got particularly LUCKY matching them up like that.
The more obvious question for me is why do Google's sat images appear particularly overburned? There is a sharp contrast to them that the MSN sat images don't have. MSN looks like the better PQ to me.
Why, because he made a valid point?
I think that people should be responsible for themselves, without the government telling them what they can and cannot do/see/etc. I do however think that exposing your breast, in a land that positively fears breasts on TV, during the Super Bowl Halftime show is one of the stupidist stunts pulled in recent history. I personally have no problem with boobs being on the boob tube, but that was an inappropriate venue because it was unexpected. Even if a parent is trying to be responsibe and monitor what their children watch and engange in, there would have been no way to know before hand that Miss Jackson would be flashing herself.
She did accomplish what she wanted to though, she's completely shaken up our culture. How many people can do something and spur on heated debate a year and a half after they do it?
So these "responsible" parents are giving their minor children a game that already has an (almost) adult rating? If the kids are already old enough to buy the game themselves, in one more year these "kids" could go to Nevada and pay for the real thing.
Honestly, who are they kidding? Who REALLY has their panties in a bunch over this? Someone has just found something to bitch about and they're doing it. I don't see how this is much different from when I downloaded "naked skin" textures of Laura Croft for Tombraider 2.
I'm only going to comment on a couple of things here since I think nokilli already did a great job.
4. iApps - Free.
-- You do realize that Apple is only able to release these apps like this because Microsoft is currently in the spotlight as the evil incarnate distroyer of free market (when the opposite is more likely the case). If the EU is pissed because Microsoft has included a(n ohmygosh) media player, can you imagine where they'd be if Microsoft also tossed in an MPEG2 codec taking the food off tables of the poor programmers of PowerDVD, WinDVD, et. al? Apple can use its small marketshare to its advantage, by releasing freakin' cool apps but without having to worry about what the competitors think.
15. Intelligent user organization scheme
-- I simply do not understand the love over the *nix user permissions. Great, you have groups, I understand that, but with out the ACL's that Windows uses, how do you just randomly give someone access to a file? If I have a group, call it everyone_but_bob, and I have it associated with a file, and then I want to give bob access to that file but none of the other files already with the everyone_but_bob group, you have a significant headache to deal with. If you start running Windows in a Limited User role (which is what I'm sure you are really getting at), then ACL's are far more powerful. Take a look at Aaron Margosis' non-Admin Blog for some kickass advice on how to do this today.
Last I heard, Palm was moving away from Graffiti in favor of JOT, which is also what Windows Mobile uses. I haven't been paying attention since I moved away from Palm in favor of my Windows Mobile 2003 Powered i600.
The big difference between the two, is that Graffiti mimics lowercase characters whilst JOT mimics uppercase. For me, it's definately easier to think in uppercase when I'm writing block letters, but by the time I stopped using my Palm V, I was equally adept at both.
Because of the DVD? ... Oh, you mean the player I guess?!?
Really you pave the way for the arguement for them to enforce this then. You have said, quite correctly, that Microsoft imposing limitations like this over Samba or IE/IIS would likely backfire.
Why you state this would be a bad thing for consumers, is that content providers for video/music/etc. would be able to control their content not unlike all that Divx promised. As consumers though, we can leverage our wallet and purchase only from sources without control or those that display a relaxed control.
You couldn't be further from the truth.
While it may be true that there are a lot of consumers out there, that market is small potatoes when compared to the lucrative business market and the associative sustained engineering contracts.
Windows on the home PC is there in reality to provide an environment that is familar in the business. If everyone owns at home, and uses XP, then that will in turn drive sales in the business sector.
Microsoft will not give up its bid for that as it is the bread and butter of the company. It is because of the OS and Office groups that Microsoft has money to spend on other ventures like XBox 360.
If it can't pull an IP, I don't want it. What good is it if I can't check up on it from work? Or better yet an RSS syndication so I can just look at my aggrigator.
I can't find a reference to it now, but I think (maybe 5 years ago) that /. had a posting about a new genetic process that Monsanto invented specifically to prevent reseeding.
As I understood it, they had a way to create a crop that you could grow from a seed, but that crop in return wouldn't bare any seeds itself. This of course was great for Monsanto and terrifying for farmers.
The closest I could find online http://members.tripod.com/c_rader0/gemod.htm mentions (search for reseed) that plants can be rasied with sterile male parts. Thank God I'm not a plant, that doesn't sound plesant.
Maybe not perfect results (still beta of course), but MSN search is adding this too, and I'm sure to what Gates was refering. http://toolbar.search.msn.com/results.aspx?near=24 &q=pizza&FORM=NMRE
This result is for Seattle, WA because my "Near Me" setting would have given me differnt results than someone who lives elsewhere.
Hard to be a tester (depends on the product of course) if we don't consider other browsers...
;) so of course we're going to use the competitions products for development and testing for completeness.
I work in Office as a tester, and during the last product cycle, when we were releasing Office 2003, I did some sanity passes to make sure that Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox failed gracefully in parts of Sharepoint Portal Server that are specifically coded for IE 5.5+. Except for some administration pages, SPS handled N/M/F for most of the content and scaled back appropriately. The result wasn't as feature rich on those alternate browsers, but every effort was made to make them usable for most people.
Naturally IE is the prefered browser, and what most things are written for, but as a company, it is in our best interest to make as many products work on a widely diverse set of platforms. Real users don't run everything Microsoft (although they should
However, when I'm done testing and need to be productive on other things, I use IE 6 and perform my searches through the MSN Toolbar/Deskbar suite. I used the Google Toolbar until the MSN suite was released; try and try as I might, I'm still not sold on Firefox.
I'm sick of seeing people make this same mistake over and over. If you ever read the ways they actually tell you to enable the "Real Mode DOS" in Me, you are required to install drivers from the Emergency Boot Disk. The EBD has the EXACT same files as the Win98 boot disk's except for where the name Windows 98 occured... that was changed to Windows Me.
Me itself doesn't have a Real-Mode DOS. It's kinda like the 98Lite solution of using the Windows 95 shell. You aren't running Windows 98 then, you are running a bastardized version of Windows 95. The boot loader for Me has just as much Real-Mode DOS in it as LILO or the NT Boot sector.
The 2 or 3 watts (actually less than a watt) is used by the ATX power supply. There is no difference in power consumption by the Windows hibernation and the Linux hibernation. Both are describing S4 power saving mode, and both are effectively spooling the RAM to disk while the machine is in its soft-off or full-off modes.
If a user decides to "Shutdown", rather than hibernate, then they are in the exact same power consumtion mode, but now they have to reinitiate all of their programs to get back to where they were.
Well my vote in Washington (although I'm not sold on his immigration announcment the other day... could spell the end for my support) will get lost among the liberals, so I guess we cancel each other out.
I just lost hours of work I was putting into a reply, so I'll paraphrase.
The studios are still making a ton of money. Don't let the ads fool you. A bad film like "The Core", still made some $6.7 million in world-wide sales, and that doesn't include DVD sales/rental or distribution to some movie channel like HBO or Showtime. If the key grip is starving, it is because the studio executives are hording the profit and keeping it themselves.
The movie industry is unique as an investment that there is limited risk with most studio productions. While investment in some industries have gone belly up with complete loss of revenue (care to buy some Worldcom stock?), the studios are complaining that they aren't making as great a profit on some cheesy cookie-cutter film. One of the few films recently, that did put a strain on the studio was the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. "The Fellowship of the Ring" alone cost $93 million, but grossed $500 million in world-wide DVD rental alone. I'll bet that $300 million investment in the trilogy seems like small change to them now. Unfortunately, most studios like to play it safe, and won't commit to a project unless they KNOW it will attract mindless droves. A movie that doesn't make a profit is practically unheard of after all the distribution channels are exhauted; "From Justin to Kelly" and "Gigli" excepted.
The studios, both movie and recording, are living in a fantasy world. When they are reporting a "losing" year, they mean their profit margin didn't have the same growth as seen from the previous year. This does NOT translate into losing money.
I hope that something happens that will drive most of the studios under. Just as the blacksmith is no longer profitable in the 21st century, the studios are quickly becoming an archic dinosaur. Rather than embracing electronic distribution of media, the studios have chosen to fight it so they can maintain their monopoly. What would happen if all of their "talent" found they could skip the middle man and widely distribute their art and although it might have a smaller unit cost, the artist can keep a greater percent of that returned investment? Well, for starters, we might actually get talented people making movies and writing songs.
There are some great films out there, "Bubba Ho-tep" for instance, but when you only show a movie on at most 22 screens, you can't expect it to have the same ROI as a super mega-blockbuster that the studio has advertised as the best film since "Gigli". These brilliant films don't have the same return, but they aren't given the same chance to suceed.
I'm glad that living where I do in Seattle, I'm close enought that I can go see some of these smaller films. I just spent 8 years in the middle of Texas where that wasn't an option. Given the choice, I'd go see 10 of these films to every "Boat Trip". But where else can you see Oscar award winners doing low brow jokes with homosexual context? Aside from Oscar award winning actor Kevin Kline, for his work in ("In & Out". But that movie also has Oscar award winning actor Matt Dillon, and twice nominated Joan Cusack included -- I degress.
I generally find films like "Le Peuple Migrateur" a.k.a. "Winged Migration" more satisfying. Perhaps if these larger studios keep getting too greedy, more films like the "Russian Ark" will get a chance to be shown, but I figure they'll just get Congress to pass some law that will secure their place in the digital world and then enforce that by suing some of their biggest supporters.
A little bit of either in the other system is alright and can even help in some cases. Diesel in a gasoline tank will still burn (not as cleanly though) but has the nice effect of oiling the other side of the engine. Gas in the diesel lowers the flashpoint and helps with cold weather starts. Too much isn't good because the engines are designed to operate differently (duh). Like all things, moderation is the key. A little won't hurt, but too much will screw your engine over.
Hell, I'm a techie type myself, and I think some of their prices are tough to beat. If I'm just building a generic rig, I can be completely sure that Dell is going to have a model with similar parts at a fraction of my cost. I won't be using that as my gaming rig or my main PC, but for everything else... can't beat it.
And not to completely nitpick, but the movie acurately portrays what was in the book. There is some sort of spell cast from the South as they are trying to cross... as if someone WANTS them to turn back.
Why would it need pwd when "cd" works just fine. ;) Typing cd without any parameters prints the working directory.
That's not such a tough run... it's all down hill. :O