Further more, have they come to grips with the fact that when people by CD's, many buy them for 2 or 3 "hit" songs. Yet they pay the price for those 2 or 3 "hits", 3 or 4 "so-so" songs, and 4 or 5 "filler" songs on the CD. With online services, people are buying just the popular songs, and sometimes to so-so songs, for the price of just those songs. They arn't making the money because the same people that bought entire CD's are now buying just the songs they want off of those CD's - Essentially, the music industry is living the cable television industry's worst fear - a la carte content. And quite honestly, it's the way it should be - the consumer winning, getting the product they want for a fair price, and the corporation making the money on their good content, not their crap content.
You know, you really have no clue do you? You're so caught up in anti-ms hatred that you're incapable of seeing all sides of the equation.
Personally, I still run Windows 2000, and I don't use FireFox. FF annoys me. It's slow to initially load, tabbed browsing is nice but isn't something I die without, and quite frankly, it does crash. Alot more than IE.
Further more, I too have been running Windows on machines for various lengths of time, from 4 months to 3 years, without reinstall (Note, the 4 months one was built just 4 months ago - the only system I have done a complete reinstall on is a dual xeon workstation that used to be a single, and when I upgraded to dual, I also decided to put a larger main drive in.) All this flagrant MS/Windows bashing is rediculous. Yes, it has problems. So does every distro of Linux. So does OS X. Sure, IE has problems. So does FF. So does Opera. So do all the other smaller browsers out there.
People that just violently reject and flame those who use Windows/IE are no better than religious extremeists - not in the sense of terroism, but in the sense that they are incapable of living with others. This, among other things, I believe is a major reason Linux/FF will never take over Windows/IE - because so many nutcases post stupid comments like the ones made above, unilatterally bashing Microsoft and not acknowledging that they and their software arn't anywhere near perfect, either.
Most of us agree a la carte pricing for channels would be great. Many cable channels, and cable/satellite providors, however, want to group in packages. Why can't there be a meeting in the middle?
Why can't There be a sports package. Tier one is ESPN, and Comcast Sports Net. Tier two gets you ESPN2, ESPNews, OLN, Speed, and the Golf Channel. Tier three gets you Fox Sports Net, ESPN Classic, ESPNU, and whatever other sports channels I'm forgetting.
Then, theres your "Pop Culture" package. Tier one is MTV, VH1, BET, and Fuse... tier two gets you mtv2, vh1-c, whatever, whatever. A third tier gets you more options.
Then you have a package with History, Discovery, and Science Channel on tier one, Military, History Interactive, and Discovery Times on tier 2, etc. Another package would put CNN, CNNHN, Weather Channel, CSPAN, and CSPAN2 on a tier, followed by Fox News, MSNBC, Bloomberg, etc on another.
Even better yet, you wouldn't have to buy tier 1 to buy tier two or tier 3. If you only wanted Sports Tier 3 for ESPNU or only wanted News Tier 2 for Fox News, you could purchase those tiers.
Now yea, theres the possibility... ok, probability, that the companies would try and take advantage of this and spread out the channels we want with junk channels. And by no means take my above descriptions of how I think the tiers should be, I was just giving example. But I think this could be a way that COULD help us, the consumer, and satisfy the corporations.
As has been echo'd before, Lego's attachment to these branded, specialized part themes is killing it. No longer and you mix and match your dozens of sets of legos to build completly new things that come from your very own imagination.
I was in a club in high school called TSA (Technology Student Association) and one of the most popular events at regional, state, and national levels of competition is the System Control event, which 99% of teams use the Lego Dacta/Mindstorms equipment. However, with all these single-use model pieces, theres no real room left for the imagination, thus why it's dying.
If Lego starts killing off these branded, model-building ploys and goes back to where they are strong - a tool to use the imagination, I think they will survive. I've been seeing some new stuff that looks promising, some firehouses and trucks and such, that reminds me of Lego of old, perhaps if they can go more that way (and back to other good ole themes, Pirates, Castles, Space, Submarines, etc - things that you can build the models once, then break them down and mix and match to build your own ideas) then they will be ok. If not, RIP Lego, a victim of bad decision making.
www.freedom-wireless.net - The only content is copies of their patents - no contact information whatsoever - oh, and the fact that there is one clip art-like picture of a cell phone on the page, and the only other images are of lawyers and courthouses.
Business model patent for a company that doesnt actually do anything but sue people, anyone?
The letter written and posted by the contributor of this article has the following:
Macintosh OS users have "no access to Microsoft Windows and may have never used Microsoft Internet Explorer (which only runs on Microsoft Windows) before."
Just a point of clarification, this is wrong.
This MS Page (micrsoft.com) has several Microsoft downloads for Mac, including a free download for Mac OS.
Not trying to dispute what the purpose of the letter is, however. While I myself would be unaffected by this, being a Windows 2000 user with IE6 as my main browser, I do support the Linux community and other OSS projects and feel that requiring the use of IE is an unfair and blatently bad idea.
OK, here's my gripe on this. We live in eastern Virginia, well north of Norfolk and east of Richmond, and south of DC. We have satelite TV, and thus would be unaffected by this, right? Wrong. The FCC classifies us as being local to the Richmond market area. Our small, rural county of just over 9,000 is situated right on the Chesapeake Bay, and is very dependant on marine forcasts that are provided by the Norfolk television stations. Because the FCC classifies us as Richmond area, however, we are not allowed to get the Norfolk local stations on Satelite. Point in case of how we are screwed over by this, as we'll have to get either a new TV or a new box of some sort to *attempt* to pick up the digital signal for Norfolk. However, as previously mentioned, this signal is going to be more difficult to pick up because it needs to be clearer for it to work right (we are on the fringe of what you would call the Norfolk transmission area). So, add onto the laundry list of things the FCC needs to change, is the availability of multiple markets "local" stations to users, no matter where they are, so we will be able to get the Norfolk local stations through the Satelite.
"The real explanation, of course, is that B&B don't give a rat's ass about Trek and its fans, much less continuity."
Ding ding ding, we have a winner. Couldn't have said it better myself.
It still doesn't account for the scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, that depicts all the previous Enterprise's, and being that NX is a Starfleet registry (see: USS Defiant, NX-74205 and USS Excelsior, NX-2000), then one would assume that whatever the NX-01's official "fleet" is (I don't keep up with Enterprise) that it turned into Starfleet.
Enterprise was not fully in the loop with the rest of Star Trek History. No where in any of the other 4 series, or any of the 10 movies, was there mention of a first ship being named the Enterprise - in fact, they went so far as to say that the Enterprise-E was the 6th Starfleet ship to bear the name (D being 5th, C 4th, B 3rd, A 2nd, and the Original Enterprise 1701 from TOS being the first. They acknowledged the space shuttle Enterprise, but never once talked about NX-01 ship. I agree the "Enterprise" series might have been a nice addition to the history of Star Trek, but they needed to make it fit more into line.
Second, where did the technology come from? Voyager's episode involving travelling back to 1996 answers all of that, about how a Federation Time Ship from the 28th century crashed in 20th century earth, and was discovered and exploited by a native, Henry Starling. He was not able to fully exploit the 28th century technology, but deffinitly put things in motion.
Star Trek's "future history" is deep and rich. Pick yourself up a copy of the Star Trek Encyclopedia - in fact, buy one for the makers of Enterprise and this new movie too, so they can get it right this time.
As per the movie, I'd like to see something set in the early 2300's - 50 years before TNG and 20 years or so after the last original series movie. Something with a random Excelsior class ship. Even perhaps go back to Roddenberry's talents of relating real-world problems in the future - maybe the Federation invaded a regime that harbored future weapons of mass destruction...
Speaking from experience (yes, a slashdot reader that is also a sports buff and athlete), day games can be VERY tough. Picking up the seams of a baseball in motion is vital to determining where it's going to end up when it reaches you - it's the rotation of the ball causing the seams to catch the air and make it curve, drop, and go in other directions.
Further, baseball diamonds are traditionally placed with the plate facing out towards between the north and east - in northern directions, the pitcher is fine, but if the plate is facing out towards the east, the setting sun to the west is right in the pitchers face - and pitchers are not allowed to wear sunglasses.
Finally, another challenge is picking up balls in changing lights (i.e. coming out of a shadow) or when its high in a bright daytime sky (thus blocking out blue-tones). When the ball is leaving a pitchers hand in excess of 90 miles per hour and coming off the bat twice as fast or more, every little bit helps...
When they come out with the night game lens, they will help players from losing the ball when its up in the lights, or when it blends in with the crowd, and other instances where the speeding ball is difficult to pick up.
Yea, sorry about the typo, ran the post through spell check to make sure it was ok (though I still missed one other, "enhancing", didn't think to check the title... Any way an admin could fix that title for me so I don't look like a total idiot?
As for why blocking out sun rays, this is more of a health issue than anything else. If you read the article, it states how many players who are constantly exposed directly to the sunlight sustain damage to their eyes and cause several various conditions.
To hell with that, I want to google "Where's the remote?!?"
*click 'I'm feeling Lucky'*
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Further more, have they come to grips with the fact that when people by CD's, many buy them for 2 or 3 "hit" songs. Yet they pay the price for those 2 or 3 "hits", 3 or 4 "so-so" songs, and 4 or 5 "filler" songs on the CD. With online services, people are buying just the popular songs, and sometimes to so-so songs, for the price of just those songs. They arn't making the money because the same people that bought entire CD's are now buying just the songs they want off of those CD's - Essentially, the music industry is living the cable television industry's worst fear - a la carte content. And quite honestly, it's the way it should be - the consumer winning, getting the product they want for a fair price, and the corporation making the money on their good content, not their crap content.
Personally, I still run Windows 2000, and I don't use FireFox. FF annoys me. It's slow to initially load, tabbed browsing is nice but isn't something I die without, and quite frankly, it does crash. Alot more than IE.
Further more, I too have been running Windows on machines for various lengths of time, from 4 months to 3 years, without reinstall (Note, the 4 months one was built just 4 months ago - the only system I have done a complete reinstall on is a dual xeon workstation that used to be a single, and when I upgraded to dual, I also decided to put a larger main drive in.) All this flagrant MS/Windows bashing is rediculous. Yes, it has problems. So does every distro of Linux. So does OS X. Sure, IE has problems. So does FF. So does Opera. So do all the other smaller browsers out there.
People that just violently reject and flame those who use Windows/IE are no better than religious extremeists - not in the sense of terroism, but in the sense that they are incapable of living with others. This, among other things, I believe is a major reason Linux/FF will never take over Windows/IE - because so many nutcases post stupid comments like the ones made above, unilatterally bashing Microsoft and not acknowledging that they and their software arn't anywhere near perfect, either.
Why can't There be a sports package. Tier one is ESPN, and Comcast Sports Net. Tier two gets you ESPN2, ESPNews, OLN, Speed, and the Golf Channel. Tier three gets you Fox Sports Net, ESPN Classic, ESPNU, and whatever other sports channels I'm forgetting.
Then, theres your "Pop Culture" package. Tier one is MTV, VH1, BET, and Fuse... tier two gets you mtv2, vh1-c, whatever, whatever. A third tier gets you more options.
Then you have a package with History, Discovery, and Science Channel on tier one, Military, History Interactive, and Discovery Times on tier 2, etc. Another package would put CNN, CNNHN, Weather Channel, CSPAN, and CSPAN2 on a tier, followed by Fox News, MSNBC, Bloomberg, etc on another.
Even better yet, you wouldn't have to buy tier 1 to buy tier two or tier 3. If you only wanted Sports Tier 3 for ESPNU or only wanted News Tier 2 for Fox News, you could purchase those tiers.
Now yea, theres the possibility... ok, probability, that the companies would try and take advantage of this and spread out the channels we want with junk channels. And by no means take my above descriptions of how I think the tiers should be, I was just giving example. But I think this could be a way that COULD help us, the consumer, and satisfy the corporations.
I was in a club in high school called TSA (Technology Student Association) and one of the most popular events at regional, state, and national levels of competition is the System Control event, which 99% of teams use the Lego Dacta/Mindstorms equipment. However, with all these single-use model pieces, theres no real room left for the imagination, thus why it's dying.
If Lego starts killing off these branded, model-building ploys and goes back to where they are strong - a tool to use the imagination, I think they will survive. I've been seeing some new stuff that looks promising, some firehouses and trucks and such, that reminds me of Lego of old, perhaps if they can go more that way (and back to other good ole themes, Pirates, Castles, Space, Submarines, etc - things that you can build the models once, then break them down and mix and match to build your own ideas) then they will be ok. If not, RIP Lego, a victim of bad decision making.
www.freedom-wireless.net - The only content is copies of their patents - no contact information whatsoever - oh, and the fact that there is one clip art-like picture of a cell phone on the page, and the only other images are of lawyers and courthouses. Business model patent for a company that doesnt actually do anything but sue people, anyone?
...and people who use linux are really going to fork over cash for MS Office anyway?
The letter written and posted by the contributor of this article has the following: Macintosh OS users have "no access to Microsoft Windows and may have never used Microsoft Internet Explorer (which only runs on Microsoft Windows) before." Just a point of clarification, this is wrong. This MS Page (micrsoft.com) has several Microsoft downloads for Mac, including a free download for Mac OS. Not trying to dispute what the purpose of the letter is, however. While I myself would be unaffected by this, being a Windows 2000 user with IE6 as my main browser, I do support the Linux community and other OSS projects and feel that requiring the use of IE is an unfair and blatently bad idea.
OK, here's my gripe on this. We live in eastern Virginia, well north of Norfolk and east of Richmond, and south of DC. We have satelite TV, and thus would be unaffected by this, right? Wrong. The FCC classifies us as being local to the Richmond market area. Our small, rural county of just over 9,000 is situated right on the Chesapeake Bay, and is very dependant on marine forcasts that are provided by the Norfolk television stations. Because the FCC classifies us as Richmond area, however, we are not allowed to get the Norfolk local stations on Satelite. Point in case of how we are screwed over by this, as we'll have to get either a new TV or a new box of some sort to *attempt* to pick up the digital signal for Norfolk. However, as previously mentioned, this signal is going to be more difficult to pick up because it needs to be clearer for it to work right (we are on the fringe of what you would call the Norfolk transmission area). So, add onto the laundry list of things the FCC needs to change, is the availability of multiple markets "local" stations to users, no matter where they are, so we will be able to get the Norfolk local stations through the Satelite.
"The real explanation, of course, is that B&B don't give a rat's ass about Trek and its fans, much less continuity." Ding ding ding, we have a winner. Couldn't have said it better myself.
It still doesn't account for the scene in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, that depicts all the previous Enterprise's, and being that NX is a Starfleet registry (see: USS Defiant, NX-74205 and USS Excelsior, NX-2000), then one would assume that whatever the NX-01's official "fleet" is (I don't keep up with Enterprise) that it turned into Starfleet.
Enterprise was not fully in the loop with the rest of Star Trek History. No where in any of the other 4 series, or any of the 10 movies, was there mention of a first ship being named the Enterprise - in fact, they went so far as to say that the Enterprise-E was the 6th Starfleet ship to bear the name (D being 5th, C 4th, B 3rd, A 2nd, and the Original Enterprise 1701 from TOS being the first. They acknowledged the space shuttle Enterprise, but never once talked about NX-01 ship. I agree the "Enterprise" series might have been a nice addition to the history of Star Trek, but they needed to make it fit more into line. Second, where did the technology come from? Voyager's episode involving travelling back to 1996 answers all of that, about how a Federation Time Ship from the 28th century crashed in 20th century earth, and was discovered and exploited by a native, Henry Starling. He was not able to fully exploit the 28th century technology, but deffinitly put things in motion. Star Trek's "future history" is deep and rich. Pick yourself up a copy of the Star Trek Encyclopedia - in fact, buy one for the makers of Enterprise and this new movie too, so they can get it right this time. As per the movie, I'd like to see something set in the early 2300's - 50 years before TNG and 20 years or so after the last original series movie. Something with a random Excelsior class ship. Even perhaps go back to Roddenberry's talents of relating real-world problems in the future - maybe the Federation invaded a regime that harbored future weapons of mass destruction...
Hundreds upon hundreds of millions of dollars, and they didn't splurge another few hundred bucks for Onstar? What was NASA thinking??
Now we will be forced to look at pictures of moneys scratching themselves with 3 and 4 arms... wow their balls must really itch...
Further, baseball diamonds are traditionally placed with the plate facing out towards between the north and east - in northern directions, the pitcher is fine, but if the plate is facing out towards the east, the setting sun to the west is right in the pitchers face - and pitchers are not allowed to wear sunglasses.
Finally, another challenge is picking up balls in changing lights (i.e. coming out of a shadow) or when its high in a bright daytime sky (thus blocking out blue-tones). When the ball is leaving a pitchers hand in excess of 90 miles per hour and coming off the bat twice as fast or more, every little bit helps...
When they come out with the night game lens, they will help players from losing the ball when its up in the lights, or when it blends in with the crowd, and other instances where the speeding ball is difficult to pick up.
As for why blocking out sun rays, this is more of a health issue than anything else. If you read the article, it states how many players who are constantly exposed directly to the sunlight sustain damage to their eyes and cause several various conditions.
And the truth comes out...
*click 'I'm feeling Lucky'*
"Living Room Sofa - left cushion, beside the molding popcorn, 2 pennies and a dime.... Sponsored links: Oreck Vacuums, Movie Time Popcorn, Discount Disinfectant Spray"