Like some people, I watched the David Lynch movie before I read the book. In fact, I read the book more or less concurrently with the showing of the miniseries. All in all, screenplay-wise, the miniseries was much more faithful to the book, and the casting was generally better. I really do want to like the miniseries more than the movie... however, I'm having difficulty.
This may sound shallow, but what absolutely DESTROYED the miniseries for me were the desert scenes. I can understand that some scenes have to be done on sound stages. However, those backdrops couldn't have been more obvious if they had painted images of Tux the Penguin on them. I watched those scenes, and all I could see were those damned backdrops. I never felt I was watching characters on Arrakis. I was watching characters on a cheap Hollywood soundstage pretending to be Arrakis.
I remember reading somewhere that they intentionally did that, to make it seem more unreal. Well, guess what, guys? It didn't just look unreal, it looked FAKE. I'll watch Children of Dune, but I seriously hope they learned from their past mistakes.
A hint to the Slashdot editors, who somehow managed to forget to proofread their post and URLs for the first time in memory. What is happening to Slashdot's high journalistic standards?
While the congress is hardly at work, they should also consider age limits on purchasing Fast Food. It would be inline with the current trend of suing food vendors and blaming them for their child's "weight problems" [wtopnews.com], which supposedly kills alot more people over time.
Then I guess I should be glad SOMEONE in the government has some smarts. That lawsuit was thrown out today.
Unfortunately, in this case, we might as well make the law so that we can provide a wakeup call to parents to see what the games they're buying their kids have in them. I mean, hell... a prime example of that was this mother of a five-year-old kid who was buying DOOM from the Toys R Us I worked for because her son wanted it. She didn't know what it was about, and after I told her, she immediately asked for a refund. From what I've heard, things in that regard haven't gotten any better...
Sure, Congress sounds clueless doing this... but if the clueless parents aren't going to act, I suppose the clueless lawmakers should...
Perhaps I should clarify. I run Spambouncer on my mail server for all incoming accounts, and one of the things it does is keep a log for each incoming account. It also filters incoming worms. Now, the count of forty infected messages came from the spambouncer log from ONE unprivileged account. (In other words, no mailbox such as root, postmaster, mailer-daemon forwards into it.)
If I'm getting forty infected messages every sixteen hours, that tells me that there is a problem out there, you know?:p
Despite the thousands of known exploits and virii, most MS users aren't target of much harm, and the big guns such as Klez have had almost no effect on home users.
Hmm.
*checking mail logs*
According to my mail server's logs, I have gotten FORTY virus/worm-infected emails since midnight.
No effect on home users? Someone hit this guy with a cluebat.
Actually, while everything they said about Warcraft Adventures was true, they did leave out one bit of information: the storyline was too important to the Warcraft mythos to drop entirely. Warcraft Adventures was later reworked and became the book Lord of the Clans by Christie Golden. The events of the book are also referenced in the orcs' backstory in Warcraft III.
* Felix Lieter (sp) has his leg eaten by a shark in Licensed To Kill. (Haven't fixed that yet, but they did ditch Dalton, even if it isn't his fault that movie stunk to high heaven)
Don't expect them to, either. It's actually a bit interesting, in a way... just as several of the later Bond films had scenes from various books and short stories cut in (For Your Eyes Only was a blend of the short stories "For Your Eyes Only" and "Risico", for example), Felix's mauling in License to Kill actually occured in the book version of Live and Let Die, which was the SECOND of Fleming's Bond books. Throughout the rest of the series, Felix had an artificial arm and leg, and was a PI and reserve CIA agent only.
So, major changes don't ALWAYS make for a bad situation... you just have to handle it well.:)
Well, setting aside all the issues about "bilking the consumers" and all that rot, has anyone considered the fact that the reason they're releasing two editions is because the average movie viewer (in America, at least) probably wouldn't be willing to sit through a four hour movie? I mean, hell, I heard enough people gripe about the length as it was! (Of course, not having read the books, they didn't understand that they were lucky that the story was even able to be compressed into three hours...)
Just my $.02...
Re:One omission in the articles...
on
WarTalking Arrest
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· Score: 4, Informative
(I don't remember what his exact title was, and I don't remember the links offhand, but the official was definitely the head of the county's equivalent of an IT department.)
I just found an older link. It was Steve Jennings, head of the County Technology Department. Also, the article shows just exactly how badly Bacarisse reacted, inclusing saying "hackers, terrorists or anyone else intending harm would be detected long before they could do any damage or use the system illegally."
One omission in the articles...
on
WarTalking Arrest
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· Score: 5, Informative
This isn't the first time the Houston Chronicle (which the Register references) has reported on this story. What they're leaving out in this article is that the county official that Puffer demonstrated the breakin to was, in fact, the equivalent of the head of IT for the county. So, one wonders if indeed that could be counted as having permission...
(I don't remember what his exact title was, and I don't remember the links offhand, but the official was definitely the head of the county's equivalent of an IT department.)
To me, it's incredible that no hardware vendor such as IBM or HP is offering StarOffice or OpenOffice preinstalled on personal computers. I see no reason for them to not install it.
Actually, eMachines shipped several of their eTowers with StarOffice 5.2 a couple of years ago. One of the ones we bought for the office came with it preinstalled. On the brief look I just took on their website, I see no mention of StarOffice or OpenOffice; my guess is that 5.2 didn't fly with the consumers, so they went back to the traditional MS Works...
Stargate SG-1 was originally a SHOWTIME show. The episodes that run on Fox (aka, syndication) are actually a season behind the Showtime run. When SG-1 ended its fifth season on Showtime, it immediately jumped to Sci-Fi for its sixth season. The Fox run (which is still on season 4) still has another season to go.
Last I checked, Fox was NOT dropping their run of SG-1. It's Showtime that's no longer running it. So, those of you without cable or satellite can rejoice; you still have at least another season.
Re:Tron is a Disney product...
on
Tron 2.0 Game
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· Score: 2
While Blood 2 was no doubt a stuff up, haven't Monolith since redemmed themselves with No One Lives For Ever and Aliens vs Predator 2? The former definitely was very fun to play and the latter was supported by a series of patchs and even a dedicated Linux server.
While normally I would agree if it had been simple incompetence behind the events of Blood 2 and its point release, the entire scenario practically screams "FUCK YOU!" to the fans. I mean... the final point release for the game is released half-broken, and Monolith leaves it like that, telling the fans if they want it fixed they can do it themselves using the released tools. Excuse me? This is EXACTLY like the time I called Venture (when it still existed) and asked for the price of an item, and the clerk shouted at me to get my own price because he was the only one in that section on duty. I never shopped at Venture again after that.
The point I'm making here is that while incompetence and mistakes can be forgiven, I will NOT forgive rudeness or deliberate mistreatment. Monolith permanently lost me as a customer after that fiasco, and there is very little they can do to change that.
Just my $.02...
Re:Tron is a Disney product...
on
Tron 2.0 Game
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· Score: 3, Interesting
...and we all know what Disney thinks of the rights of end-users, don't we?
There are countless games out there worthy of your entertainment dollars/pounds/yen. Do the right thing, boycott Disney, and buy one of those other games instead.
Not to mention the fact that the game is being developed by Monolith, the people who made Blood, Shogo, et al. I basically gave up on Monolith after the utter fiasco that was Blood 2, which had a chance to be great... except that Monolith not only dropped the ball, they tossed it into a wasterpaper bin. Rather than reprint an entire rant as to why, go here to read something I wrote to PlanetBlood explaining why I would never play a Monolith product again.
Oh, yes, that works... until you make the mistake (like I did) of just blithely installing whatever critical updates MS says you need. When I told my system to install critical updates yesterday morning, one of them was a "Windows Messenger 4.6 Connectivity Update". It said you should install the update even if you weren't running Messenger, so I did. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that it meant it would then reinstall Messenger for you... Worse, Messenger no longer appeared on Add/Remove Programs so that I could uninstall it!
What I ended up doing was putting the following command in the Run box: "RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove". I found THAT via a Google search, but not after much cussing of MS.
I guess my point here is that I for one would be GLAD to see them strip down Windows et al... stop giving us the crap we don't need or want. (The place I work for is a perfect example: I'm sure when it's time for us to upgrade to XP Pro and.NET, we don't need WMP or MSN Messenger, especially in a thin client environment...)
You boycott something by not buying the product and then actively telling your friends and relatives not to buy it either. Whenever you hear people mention the name, you go into litanies about the company and don't shut up until whoever is listening to you agrees not to buy the product either. You post to message boards, you bug your local merchant, you do what you need to do to get your message across. Maybe you'll be lucky and get someone in the press to notice and then the word will spread even more.
The problem there is that the people you'll be preaching to have to be interested in what you're saying to begin with. Something to keep in mind: How many of those people would have actually used this tool? Once they realize that what Blizzard doing isn't going to directly hurt or affect them, they're not going to bother. "I don't care. It doesn't affect ME..." If it doesn't directly affect them, they won't be interested. There have been a couple of times that I've tried this tactic involving Windows XP. They sometimes listen, but it only takes a minute or two before they begin to zone you out... at which point all you're doing is wasting breath.
Think of it this way... how effective has the Slashdot boycott of DVD's been? Enough said...
Just my $.02...
Concerning server-side games like EQ...
on
Pay to Play
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· Score: 2, Informative
When Ultima Online and EverQuest first came out, I too was very leery about paying $10 a month to play a game. In fact, I had sworn never to do so. A few friends of mine finally convinced me to do so, and I now have a high lvl cleric on EQ with intentions to create alt characters. After thinking about it for a while, I can see why $10 a month is reasonable for this kind of game.
Unlike games like Quake 3 Arena, Counterstrike, Unreal Tournament, and even Starcraft or Diablo II (which despite the use of battle.net, play games peer-to-peer), all of the servers are hosted by Sony themselves, along with all character information. This article should give an idea of how many servers this requires. (For those who don't want to read the article, it says that it takes close to 1400 computers to run the 41 different game "servers".) Also take into account each server has anywhere from ten to thirty thousand people at any given time, and you're looking at a hell of a lot of needed bandwidth. Add into that paying gamemasters, guides, tech support staff, and maintaining those 1400 machines, and you've got one heck of a cash drain.
Would I pay per month for a peer-to-peer game like Quake? No. However, for a server-side-run game like EQ, $10 a month doesn't seem like a heck of a lot of money, especially considering the resources needed for such an endeavour.
It's becoming obvious that a fair number of Win95 users are pissed that the game they bought and ran under Win95 has suddenly stopped working. Note: this has nothing to do with the fact that the expansion does not run under Win95, but that old, installed versions of EQ were updated (via the patcher) with a game that refuses to run under 95!
I find it very hard to feel sympathetic here, for two reasons: 1) They're playing this game on an OS that is nearly seven years old, and 2) in at least two places Verant has put a warning saying that the minimum requirements of the game could change. The first is in the EULA, saying they can change it at a moment's notice. The second (for you people who don't believe in the validity of EULA's) is located on the game box itself. Under the minimum requirements is a statement saying that "The minimum requirements are subject to change as the game progresses." (I forget the EXACT wording, but that's pretty close.) It was on the Shadows of Luclin box, the recent EverQuest Trilogy release, and as far back as Scars of Velious (which I also picked up when I bought SoL).
Verant had been warning that the system requirements were going to go up. People should have been prepared for that. By what I'm hearing from the Windows 95 camp and the people in the game chat complaining about video cards, they weren't... and there's no excuse for that.
Go ahead and mark me down as flamebait... I've said my $.02.
I'm the admin (re: IT department of one) of two fastener manufacturing companies with around thirty workstations. When I first started there, we had one SCO UNIX server between the two companies (they're in the same building and intertwined to the point that they're really two divisions of the same company), with workstations connecting to the server via serial cables. These days, we have a full CAT 5 network, with Windows 9X/ME workstations connecting to five Linux servers. Each company has its own app & PDC server (running Samba and a Linux version of the database software we were using before) and mail server (running Postfix and qpopper). They also share a fax server which runs HylaFAX. On the server side, everyone's happy for the most part.
HOWEVER, almost every attempt I've made to move to Linux or open-source software on the workstation front has been met with absolute failure. The only real open-source program we use on a regular basis on the workstation side is PuTTY, really. Every time I tried moving a user to Linux as their OS, for example, or switching them from MS Office to Star/Open Office, they end up complaining loudly that it's too different, and their boss ends up making me switch them back to what they normally use. They're extremely resistant to change; they may be willing to try something brand new, but not switch to something that's different and replacing what they've used before.
So, that's where it stands at my company... we've done the switch to open-source, but only as much as I can switch without the users noticing the real difference. Otherwise, I can't get them to try something different. This is the main problem we face in getting the OSS alternatives in, IMHO... not the MS monopoly enforced by their strongarm tactics, but end-users too unwilling to use something else.
Just my $.02...
Re:The mighty has fallen?
on
XBox Delayed
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· Score: 1
Or else maybe they are having a "strategy" rethink given that GameCube's launch was less than spectacular.
Well, I think there are two reasons for that: 1) the video game market is slumping in Japan anyway (according to this MSNBC article), and 2) the WTC had been attacked two days before. I doubt people even in Japan would be in the console buying mood after that happened...
I agree. I think if there is another one of the Sci Fi polls with blah blah blah Star Wars blah blah blah Star Trek blah blah blah X-Files without even a MENTION of the 26-year Sci-Fi series that PREDATES them all, I'm going to be sick. Now don't get me wrong, I like Farscape and I like Babylon 5 and I even like the Secret Adventures of Jules Verne which Sci Fi cancelled -- though it's still being produced. Of course, Doctor Who IS available on DVD -- at least in the U.K and Australia, and in the U.S. next month. So why not we show some support for the good Doctor and get him on this poll to show all these young'ins what are only interested in the glitsy, $100k budget Sci Fi what some REAL television is about.:)
And even now Doctor Who isn't dead. Big Finish has a license from the BBC to create original Doctor Who audio adventures on CD (which have been very well received), the BBC is still churning out original books at a rate of at least one a month, and recently the BBC did an online story featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace on their homepage. (/. story on it here.) About 99% of those polled on the BBC page think that Doctor Who should come back, as well.
I agree, it's sad that people ignore old classics like Doctor Who in favor of the new stuff out... I for one am glad the Doctor is still out there in one form or another.:)
... because their operational area is smaller than it used to be.
If you look at the listings of the areas they service on their webpage, you'll notice Houston, TX is not listed. They used to deliver groceries for Randall's (a local grocery chain now owned by Safeway) customers here up until a year or two ago. I don't know whether it was their being bought by Safeway or lack of interest (most likely the latter, because they haven't brought in anything to replace it), but they announced that they were dumping the program, and that was the last we heard of it. Until this story ran, I had assumed Peapod had gone out of business. *shrug*
In short, Peapod seems to be following the same trend as the other two, or at least suffering somewhat due to lack of interest in markets...
Just my $.02...
Re:Physical Attacks Are Not Good
on
Eco-Terrorism
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· Score: 1
If a fireman dies trying to fight the blaze, it's called capital murder (in many US jurisdictions, as far as I know in all that have the death penalty at all).
And "gosh, I didn't mean that to happen" isn't a defense, BTW.
Exactly. A year or so ago, a group of teenagers here in the Houston area, with the aid of one of the managers (a friend of theirs), robbed a local McDonald's, and ended up torching the place in the process. Two firefighters who were battling the blaze were killed. The suspects were later charged with murder, and found guilty.
The story is available here... of note is this sentence in one article: "Under Texas law, an accident due to the commission of another crime still amounts to murder, but not capital murder."
Wait-a-minute. Is this like the huge used car sale? Just how long has your long running disto been up -- without reboots / power failures / or my damn sys admin spilling coffee on the rack ?! !
That's from the main server at where I work, which runs our company's accounting system and is the PDC for our NT domain. It's running Slackware 4.0, and frankly, the only times this machine has gone down is thanks to instabilities with third-party serial multiport card drivers. (It took me a week or two to work around those... heh.)
Slashdot Mirror
Like some people, I watched the David Lynch movie before I read the book. In fact, I read the book more or less concurrently with the showing of the miniseries. All in all, screenplay-wise, the miniseries was much more faithful to the book, and the casting was generally better. I really do want to like the miniseries more than the movie... however, I'm having difficulty.
This may sound shallow, but what absolutely DESTROYED the miniseries for me were the desert scenes. I can understand that some scenes have to be done on sound stages. However, those backdrops couldn't have been more obvious if they had painted images of Tux the Penguin on them. I watched those scenes, and all I could see were those damned backdrops. I never felt I was watching characters on Arrakis. I was watching characters on a cheap Hollywood soundstage pretending to be Arrakis.
I remember reading somewhere that they intentionally did that, to make it seem more unreal. Well, guess what, guys? It didn't just look unreal, it looked FAKE. I'll watch Children of Dune, but I seriously hope they learned from their past mistakes.
Just my $.02...
You're new around here, right?
Then I guess I should be glad SOMEONE in the government has some smarts. That lawsuit was thrown out today.
Unfortunately, in this case, we might as well make the law so that we can provide a wakeup call to parents to see what the games they're buying their kids have in them. I mean, hell... a prime example of that was this mother of a five-year-old kid who was buying DOOM from the Toys R Us I worked for because her son wanted it. She didn't know what it was about, and after I told her, she immediately asked for a refund. From what I've heard, things in that regard haven't gotten any better...
Sure, Congress sounds clueless doing this... but if the clueless parents aren't going to act, I suppose the clueless lawmakers should...
Just my $.02...
Perhaps I should clarify. I run Spambouncer on my mail server for all incoming accounts, and one of the things it does is keep a log for each incoming account. It also filters incoming worms. Now, the count of forty infected messages came from the spambouncer log from ONE unprivileged account. (In other words, no mailbox such as root, postmaster, mailer-daemon forwards into it.)
If I'm getting forty infected messages every sixteen hours, that tells me that there is a problem out there, you know?
Just my $.02...
Hmm.
*checking mail logs*
According to my mail server's logs, I have gotten FORTY virus/worm-infected emails since midnight.
No effect on home users? Someone hit this guy with a cluebat.
Just my $.02...
Actually, while everything they said about Warcraft Adventures was true, they did leave out one bit of information: the storyline was too important to the Warcraft mythos to drop entirely. Warcraft Adventures was later reworked and became the book Lord of the Clans by Christie Golden. The events of the book are also referenced in the orcs' backstory in Warcraft III.
Just my $.02...
Don't expect them to, either. It's actually a bit interesting, in a way... just as several of the later Bond films had scenes from various books and short stories cut in (For Your Eyes Only was a blend of the short stories "For Your Eyes Only" and "Risico", for example), Felix's mauling in License to Kill actually occured in the book version of Live and Let Die, which was the SECOND of Fleming's Bond books. Throughout the rest of the series, Felix had an artificial arm and leg, and was a PI and reserve CIA agent only.
So, major changes don't ALWAYS make for a bad situation... you just have to handle it well.
Just my 2 pence...
Well, setting aside all the issues about "bilking the consumers" and all that rot, has anyone considered the fact that the reason they're releasing two editions is because the average movie viewer (in America, at least) probably wouldn't be willing to sit through a four hour movie? I mean, hell, I heard enough people gripe about the length as it was! (Of course, not having read the books, they didn't understand that they were lucky that the story was even able to be compressed into three hours...)
Just my $.02...
(I don't remember what his exact title was, and I don't remember the links offhand, but the official was definitely the head of the county's equivalent of an IT department.)
I just found an older link. It was Steve Jennings, head of the County Technology Department. Also, the article shows just exactly how badly Bacarisse reacted, inclusing saying "hackers, terrorists or anyone else intending harm would be detected long before they could do any damage or use the system illegally."
You can read the rest for yourself here.
Just my $.02...
This isn't the first time the Houston Chronicle (which the Register references) has reported on this story. What they're leaving out in this article is that the county official that Puffer demonstrated the breakin to was, in fact, the equivalent of the head of IT for the county. So, one wonders if indeed that could be counted as having permission...
(I don't remember what his exact title was, and I don't remember the links offhand, but the official was definitely the head of the county's equivalent of an IT department.)
Just my $.02...
Actually, eMachines shipped several of their eTowers with StarOffice 5.2 a couple of years ago. One of the ones we bought for the office came with it preinstalled. On the brief look I just took on their website, I see no mention of StarOffice or OpenOffice; my guess is that 5.2 didn't fly with the consumers, so they went back to the traditional MS Works...
Just my $.02...
Stargate SG-1 was originally a SHOWTIME show. The episodes that run on Fox (aka, syndication) are actually a season behind the Showtime run. When SG-1 ended its fifth season on Showtime, it immediately jumped to Sci-Fi for its sixth season. The Fox run (which is still on season 4) still has another season to go.
Last I checked, Fox was NOT dropping their run of SG-1. It's Showtime that's no longer running it. So, those of you without cable or satellite can rejoice; you still have at least another season.
While normally I would agree if it had been simple incompetence behind the events of Blood 2 and its point release, the entire scenario practically screams "FUCK YOU!" to the fans. I mean... the final point release for the game is released half-broken, and Monolith leaves it like that, telling the fans if they want it fixed they can do it themselves using the released tools. Excuse me? This is EXACTLY like the time I called Venture (when it still existed) and asked for the price of an item, and the clerk shouted at me to get my own price because he was the only one in that section on duty. I never shopped at Venture again after that.
The point I'm making here is that while incompetence and mistakes can be forgiven, I will NOT forgive rudeness or deliberate mistreatment. Monolith permanently lost me as a customer after that fiasco, and there is very little they can do to change that.
Just my $.02...
Just my $.02...
What I ended up doing was putting the following command in the Run box: "RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove". I found THAT via a Google search, but not after much cussing of MS.
I guess my point here is that I for one would be GLAD to see them strip down Windows et al... stop giving us the crap we don't need or want. (The place I work for is a perfect example: I'm sure when it's time for us to upgrade to XP Pro and .NET, we don't need WMP or MSN Messenger, especially in a thin client environment...)
Just my $.02...
You boycott something by not buying the product and then actively telling your friends and relatives not to buy it either. Whenever you hear people mention the name, you go into litanies about the company and don't shut up until whoever is listening to you agrees not to buy the product either. You post to message boards, you bug your local merchant, you do what you need to do to get your message across. Maybe you'll be lucky and get someone in the press to notice and then the word will spread even more.
The problem there is that the people you'll be preaching to have to be interested in what you're saying to begin with. Something to keep in mind: How many of those people would have actually used this tool? Once they realize that what Blizzard doing isn't going to directly hurt or affect them, they're not going to bother. "I don't care. It doesn't affect ME..." If it doesn't directly affect them, they won't be interested. There have been a couple of times that I've tried this tactic involving Windows XP. They sometimes listen, but it only takes a minute or two before they begin to zone you out... at which point all you're doing is wasting breath.
Think of it this way... how effective has the Slashdot boycott of DVD's been? Enough said...
Just my $.02...
Unlike games like Quake 3 Arena, Counterstrike, Unreal Tournament, and even Starcraft or Diablo II (which despite the use of battle.net, play games peer-to-peer), all of the servers are hosted by Sony themselves, along with all character information. This article should give an idea of how many servers this requires. (For those who don't want to read the article, it says that it takes close to 1400 computers to run the 41 different game "servers".) Also take into account each server has anywhere from ten to thirty thousand people at any given time, and you're looking at a hell of a lot of needed bandwidth. Add into that paying gamemasters, guides, tech support staff, and maintaining those 1400 machines, and you've got one heck of a cash drain.
Would I pay per month for a peer-to-peer game like Quake? No. However, for a server-side-run game like EQ, $10 a month doesn't seem like a heck of a lot of money, especially considering the resources needed for such an endeavour.
Just my $.02...
I find it very hard to feel sympathetic here, for two reasons: 1) They're playing this game on an OS that is nearly seven years old, and 2) in at least two places Verant has put a warning saying that the minimum requirements of the game could change. The first is in the EULA, saying they can change it at a moment's notice. The second (for you people who don't believe in the validity of EULA's) is located on the game box itself. Under the minimum requirements is a statement saying that "The minimum requirements are subject to change as the game progresses." (I forget the EXACT wording, but that's pretty close.) It was on the Shadows of Luclin box, the recent EverQuest Trilogy release, and as far back as Scars of Velious (which I also picked up when I bought SoL).
Verant had been warning that the system requirements were going to go up. People should have been prepared for that. By what I'm hearing from the Windows 95 camp and the people in the game chat complaining about video cards, they weren't... and there's no excuse for that.
Go ahead and mark me down as flamebait... I've said my $.02.
HOWEVER, almost every attempt I've made to move to Linux or open-source software on the workstation front has been met with absolute failure. The only real open-source program we use on a regular basis on the workstation side is PuTTY, really. Every time I tried moving a user to Linux as their OS, for example, or switching them from MS Office to Star/Open Office, they end up complaining loudly that it's too different, and their boss ends up making me switch them back to what they normally use. They're extremely resistant to change; they may be willing to try something brand new, but not switch to something that's different and replacing what they've used before.
So, that's where it stands at my company... we've done the switch to open-source, but only as much as I can switch without the users noticing the real difference. Otherwise, I can't get them to try something different. This is the main problem we face in getting the OSS alternatives in, IMHO... not the MS monopoly enforced by their strongarm tactics, but end-users too unwilling to use something else.
Just my $.02...
Well, I think there are two reasons for that: 1) the video game market is slumping in Japan anyway (according to this MSNBC article), and 2) the WTC had been attacked two days before. I doubt people even in Japan would be in the console buying mood after that happened...
Just my $.02...
In that case, it sounds like the perfect place to hold the next BSD party as well. :)
And even now Doctor Who isn't dead. Big Finish has a license from the BBC to create original Doctor Who audio adventures on CD (which have been very well received), the BBC is still churning out original books at a rate of at least one a month, and recently the BBC did an online story featuring the Seventh Doctor and Ace on their homepage. (/. story on it here.) About 99% of those polled on the BBC page think that Doctor Who should come back, as well.
I agree, it's sad that people ignore old classics like Doctor Who in favor of the new stuff out... I for one am glad the Doctor is still out there in one form or another. :)
Just my $.02...
If you look at the listings of the areas they service on their webpage, you'll notice Houston, TX is not listed. They used to deliver groceries for Randall's (a local grocery chain now owned by Safeway) customers here up until a year or two ago. I don't know whether it was their being bought by Safeway or lack of interest (most likely the latter, because they haven't brought in anything to replace it), but they announced that they were dumping the program, and that was the last we heard of it. Until this story ran, I had assumed Peapod had gone out of business. *shrug*
In short, Peapod seems to be following the same trend as the other two, or at least suffering somewhat due to lack of interest in markets...
Just my $.02...
And "gosh, I didn't mean that to happen" isn't a defense, BTW.
Exactly. A year or so ago, a group of teenagers here in the Houston area, with the aid of one of the managers (a friend of theirs), robbed a local McDonald's, and ended up torching the place in the process. Two firefighters who were battling the blaze were killed. The suspects were later charged with murder, and found guilty.
The story is available here... of note is this sentence in one article: "Under Texas law, an accident due to the commission of another crime still amounts to murder, but not capital murder."
Just my $.02...
9:00am up 342 days, 43 min, 14 users, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
That's from the main server at where I work, which runs our company's accounting system and is the PDC for our NT domain. It's running Slackware 4.0, and frankly, the only times this machine has gone down is thanks to instabilities with third-party serial multiport card drivers. (It took me a week or two to work around those... heh.)
Just my $.02...