Walk, Ride a bike in 95 degree heat. Check
(Peak temp was 106 degrees) ---
Walk/Run 1.6 miles to make the bus after work. Check ---
Wait for the buses to start again at 5am so I could go home and get some sleep before turning right around and going back to work. Check (sometimes just -walked- the 8.9 miles home in 3 hours- got home about 4am) ---
Ride a bicycle 8.9 miles -each way- (~45 minutes) to get from my affordable housing to my $8/hour job. Check. (started regularly getting off after the last bus- got a used 10 speed bike for $45)
---
Ride a bike in temps down to 22 degrees. Check.
---
Ride a moped in 33 degree rain to work and school. Check. (ah it as glorious to finally save up enough for $630 moped).
---
Occasionally get soaked in thunderstorms or wait until they finished. Check ---
Go to community college, then real college and self-train for 11 years so I didn't have to do that any more. Check.
---
Done all that. Know all that. Had no help from anyone (not even grants). Mother didn't finish high-school, had no dad. Not particularly smart (just not actively dumb or self-destructive).
---
I was dirt poor for at least 7 years. Part of that I was dirt poor AND supporting a wife and child.
---
You can ALWAYS make excuses why you can't succeed but the fact is people until very recently (last 40-50 years) had it much harder than us and they survived and got by.
---
Make the sacrifices and never give up and you have a shot and getting ahead. Life is never certain.
The only reason they can charge that much is that thousands of other actors, directors, and people who want to enteratin you are being shut out by the current system.
---
They -will- be replaced by hordes of people who are happy to act, direct, write and edit for reasonable rates. It's pretty presumptious to say that while the population has increased the number of spots for top actors has stayed the same.
---
The cost of a ticket in my local theatre will not go down. But the cost of downloading a movie from some enterprising finns will- and when I can download their show inexpensively (or free in some cases)- I won't spend money filling those 2 hours of entertainment.
--- When I download inexpensive songs off of Magnatune and similar services- that is time I don't have available to spend money filling with expensive RIAA/MPAA product.
---
The ticket's won't decrease in price- but the model is broken- we consumers will find away around it. Already the stars of "Desparate Housewives" (A monster hit) can't pull a FRACTION of what the stars of Mash pulled. When the market is fractures sufficiently, cost will become a factor. When we not only get to chose but MUST choose between 40 equally entertaining shows, movies and songs- cost is an excellent way to decide what to listen to and what to pass on.
For most of the 30's and 40's Hollywood ground out tons of films. The actors made good enough livings to live well and party frequently but nothing like today. Same thing for directors, actors, etc. etc.
An actor might be in 7 movies a year.
Movies were cheap- a buck or two by today's standards. As a result (and because there was no TV)- people saw them regularly.
Today the people who make movies are all compensated at ridiculous levels- we make 160 million dollar movies which would be $30 million dollar movies if not for these salaries. On top of that they make us sit through 20 minutes of commercials if we want a good seat for a new movie.
Increasingly- you can turn out a quality film for under a million dollars. No film to buy, computers are cheaper, a glut of people in many countries that want to be actors who -can- act, writers who can write, and who are willing to do it for living wages- not 20 million a picture.
The end is coming for hollywood- they just don't realize it yet.
You can eat out for lunch, or you can bring a sack lunch.
You can drive a new car, or a used one, or (as I did for a few years walk/ride the bus/ride a bike/ride a moped)
I wouldn't place the blame on dividend holders- it's reasonable to expect a 3-5% return on your money from dividends just like in a bank. What is unreasonable to everyone else is paying multi-millions to a single employee- and paying them that whether they do a good job or not- and paying them even more if you decide to let them go.
If actors, directors, editors, etc. made $120k to $240k and similar very nice but -reasonable- salaries were paid throughout the organization, Movies would not be this expensive and we would not have as many commercials on television.
---
I believe the current income levels reflect a monopoly that existed because there were limited outlets and limited entertainment. As we reach a point where there is more quality entertainment than we can watch- then consumers will start to choose the quality entertainment which is priced lowest.
---
For example- Wedding Crashers at $10 dollars for 2 hours, or Lost/Desperate Housewives at $33 for 22 hours. Or a 1 year old great film you havn't seen yet for $7.50 vs a new film at $19.99.
---
There is no valid reason the Harry Potter author can make over a BILLION dollars for a series of books- a few million (more than enough to live a lifetime) would have been more reasonable. The markets have increased in size and costs have decreased but -- temporarily-- the old prices are still being charged.
---
As the cost of filming, editing, and special effects drops to near zero we will see more and more "Star Wreck's" and "Star Trek- The New Voyages" of higher and higher quality. Recently Joss Whedon speculated that he could see making something like Firefox and distributing straight over the internet without using theaters or networks at all.
That would make sense if the program's long name was:
Crafty Retrograde Improved Picture Publishing Landscape Editor.
or
Reliable Editor That's All Right, Dude!
---
But it's a GNU Image Manipulation Program.
---
If it makes it better for you, call it that or call it GNUIMP.
I think it came down to money- in some fashion intel offered them a better deal. I have intel and amd computers and amd has a dramatically better cost/performance ratio. I bet that there is no hard technical reason why Mac couldn't have run on both- if they are going to be Intel only it is for political/financial reasons instead of technical ones.
1) Is ignorant of the concept at all. They do not believe or disbelieve or wait for evidence to decide. (not agnostic, religious or atheist)
2) Is aware of them but does not believe. If they were to see evidence they would change their mind. Their disbelief is not a religion- just a fact. "The sky is blue- ghosts don't exist". ( Supposed definition for Atheist ).
3) Is aware of them but believes they definately do not exist. They think illogically to support their disbelief. "That wasn't a ghost- it was just a bad piece of chicken" or "I don't care about the evidence for mendelian genetics, I believe differently and ignore your evidence or even actively suppress it." (Actual Atheist I often observe in practice)
4) Is aware and them and believes they definately do exist. They think illogically to support their belief. "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it." or "nya nya nya, I'm not listening, I'm not listening." or even wierder "I'm a scientist- I believe in evolution and natural selection but I also believe the literal truth of the bible at the same time- I just ignore any conflicts and think religiously in church and scientifically at the lab." (Religous)
5) Is aware of them and can't decide if they exist or not. They would decide based on evidence. Some would need weak evidence- others would need strong evidence. Most would need -physical- evidence or personal revelation to begin believing. (Agnostic)
1) No- I'm saying there is no need to display on prime time television two adults having sex under a blanket. There is no need to show how to kill someone and hide the evidence. And especially no need to show things like this and ignore the frequent real-life consequences so they get a warped view of reality.
Things like that should be reserved for later hours or premium channels. When they reach an appropriate age, they should be instructed as their parent decides or society agrees is a basic minimum that everyone should have. There is a difference between sex education and television entertainment that shows how to do it.
3) Not even sure what the heck you are talking about here.
I will take a guess and say, "Yes I do not want them taught how to break into cars, pickup a hooker, have sex, murder people in several different ways when they are 13 years old." They are not mature enough to handle those things appropriately at that age.
The brainwashing comment is really a secondary issue- it is my belief that with regard to children- most modern religions are cults (run your favorite religion by a "cult" checklist and see how many positive results you get when you consider how children are indoctrinated).
Innocence: Not at all- children today know about things at 12 that I didn't know about until I was 16 or even 18. There is no -need- for them to know how to kill that young. There is no need for them to know about sex or advanced sex practices at that age.
---
They are not "little people". They are not even PHYSICALLY fully capable of logical thought before they are teens (clue- their brains havn't finished physically developing in those areas yet.)
They are -children- who need to be raised in an appropriate fashion so they will be healthy adults when they are finished maturing. They need to be prevented from getting knowledge before they are ready to handle it because there is a proven track record that they can't handle many adult situations.
I agree with you on a couple of points.
First, I agree that it is a valid point to restrict the input materials for children until their brains are finished and they are mature (and folks are not really finished until they are 25ish but they get too hard to manage at 18ish so we just punt on that issue). And I agree we should not show children:
1) how to have sex, (sorry but putting a blanket over two people in the missionary position is not hiding the basic mechanics of what is going on- a fact I was pretty ignorant of until I was 16ish and something I have seen in prime time multiple times in the past couple years on popular shows- how times have changed)
2) how to kill people in any form of entertainment. (I was not aware that you could kill someone by shoving their nose upwards hard until I was fairly old- something I've seen in 2 popular pg-13 movies in the past decade).
3) brainwash them with religion relentlessly (on the one hand it is good to put morals in before they are rational- on the other hand the way it's done lately it is hurting us on the science front in really stupid ways) Teach them right and wrong and expose them to religion at an older age- it's just too cultlike the way they brainwash the kids in sunday school.
I do believe these things affect their behavior. I think they are less innocent and more violent.
So I guess basically I agree with you- bad for children- I went on an adult tangent that doesn't really apply to the article at hand!
I not only grant but also believe in your basic point- the right to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose.
---
Extending it- if I engage in risky behavior- I have to take personal responsibility for my actions- be it riding without a helmut or having unprotected sex. That includes dying outside of a hospital because I don't have funds to pay for life saving services. Or becoming destitute because I refused to get insurance before I got sick or had my property destroyed.
Other individuals and groups in society could voluntarily help me but it should -not- be the government's or the rest of societies responsibility to assist me. If they -have- to take care of me, then it grants them the right to forbid me a great deal of freedom.
Seemingly contrary to these positions- I do believe there should be a national health care. But I would strictly limit it to about 5 grand a year in current day dollars. And since I know that wouldn't happen (instead we would get a health care that put all of us on the hook for million dollar operations/treatment) I can't realistically support it.
But basic protection would make us a lot more competitive against other nations and help business focus on creating jobs. It's too bad it would grow into a monster.
Yep- and many people can drink alchohol without any problems- smoke and live to a ripe old age- rock climb and not fall to their deaths- break dance and not - do cocaine without consequences (I know at least a dozen people who did it in the 80s and all are fine upstanding citizens today with families and kids).
Are we going to keep taking away the freedoms of 90% of society to protect the 10% of society from doing themselves in?
And more basically- if I want to bloody risk killing myself doing something risky shouldn't I be allowed to do so?
So if you do any mousing- or as I do sometimes- copy part of the signon with the mouse as part of the password then it won't work.
---
Seems like you could FooL it by HittING cerTAIN keyes HARDER or softer etc while entering Passwords.
---
I imagine the volume relative to the mike helps determine the distance to the key.
---
In general- seems like typing very softly during passwords would stop this.
Latest word I am hearing is that the response time was roughly the same as other responses to smaller disasters and FASTER than for Hurricane Andrew in Florida.
I voted against Bush but I really thing the Dems and the Louisiana politicians are spinning this really hard.
It is also looking like the death toll is going to be 20% of what they were saying.
The state, parish, and city officials have a lot to answer for. Including money spent on vanity projects instead of real needs.
And just think about the ongoing waste for having metric and non-metric bolts and screws (and tools to work them).
As an American- I wish we would get over it and go to metric. They were on the right track for a while (when street signs had Km as well as Miles) but they seem to be fading.
Slashdot Mirror
Walk, Ride a bike in 95 degree heat. Check (Peak temp was 106 degrees)
---
Walk/Run 1.6 miles to make the bus after work. Check
---
Wait for the buses to start again at 5am so I could go home and get some sleep before turning right around and going back to work. Check (sometimes just -walked- the 8.9 miles home in 3 hours- got home about 4am)
---
Ride a bicycle 8.9 miles -each way- (~45 minutes) to get from my affordable housing to my $8/hour job. Check. (started regularly getting off after the last bus- got a used 10 speed bike for $45)
---
Ride a bike in temps down to 22 degrees. Check.
---
Ride a moped in 33 degree rain to work and school. Check. (ah it as glorious to finally save up enough for $630 moped).
---
Occasionally get soaked in thunderstorms or wait until they finished. Check
---
Go to community college, then real college and self-train for 11 years so I didn't have to do that any more. Check.
---
Done all that. Know all that. Had no help from anyone (not even grants). Mother didn't finish high-school, had no dad. Not particularly smart (just not actively dumb or self-destructive).
---
I was dirt poor for at least 7 years. Part of that I was dirt poor AND supporting a wife and child.
---
You can ALWAYS make excuses why you can't succeed but the fact is people until very recently (last 40-50 years) had it much harder than us and they survived and got by.
---
Make the sacrifices and never give up and you have a shot and getting ahead. Life is never certain.
The only reason they can charge that much is that thousands of other actors, directors, and people who want to enteratin you are being shut out by the current system.
---
They -will- be replaced by hordes of people who are happy to act, direct, write and edit for reasonable rates. It's pretty presumptious to say that while the population has increased the number of spots for top actors has stayed the same.
---
The cost of a ticket in my local theatre will not go down. But the cost of downloading a movie from some enterprising finns will- and when I can download their show inexpensively (or free in some cases)- I won't spend money filling those 2 hours of entertainment.
---
When I download inexpensive songs off of Magnatune and similar services- that is time I don't have available to spend money filling with expensive RIAA/MPAA product.
---
The ticket's won't decrease in price- but the model is broken- we consumers will find away around it. Already the stars of "Desparate Housewives" (A monster hit) can't pull a FRACTION of what the stars of Mash pulled. When the market is fractures sufficiently, cost will become a factor. When we not only get to chose but MUST choose between 40 equally entertaining shows, movies and songs- cost is an excellent way to decide what to listen to and what to pass on.
Errr, Firefly.
For most of the 30's and 40's Hollywood ground out tons of films. The actors made good enough livings to live well and party frequently but nothing like today. Same thing for directors, actors, etc. etc. An actor might be in 7 movies a year.
Movies were cheap- a buck or two by today's standards. As a result (and because there was no TV)- people saw them regularly.
Today the people who make movies are all compensated at ridiculous levels- we make 160 million dollar movies which would be $30 million dollar movies if not for these salaries. On top of that they make us sit through 20 minutes of commercials if we want a good seat for a new movie.
Increasingly- you can turn out a quality film for under a million dollars. No film to buy, computers are cheaper, a glut of people in many countries that want to be actors who -can- act, writers who can write, and who are willing to do it for living wages- not 20 million a picture.
The end is coming for hollywood- they just don't realize it yet.
There is an easy and obvious solution.
Stop living a lifestyle that requires debt.
You can eat out for lunch, or you can bring a sack lunch.
You can drive a new car, or a used one, or (as I did for a few years walk/ride the bus/ride a bike/ride a moped)
I wouldn't place the blame on dividend holders- it's reasonable to expect a 3-5% return on your money from dividends just like in a bank. What is unreasonable to everyone else is paying multi-millions to a single employee- and paying them that whether they do a good job or not- and paying them even more if you decide to let them go.
If actors, directors, editors, etc. made $120k to $240k and similar very nice but -reasonable- salaries were paid throughout the organization, Movies would not be this expensive and we would not have as many commercials on television.
---
I believe the current income levels reflect a monopoly that existed because there were limited outlets and limited entertainment. As we reach a point where there is more quality entertainment than we can watch- then consumers will start to choose the quality entertainment which is priced lowest.
---
For example- Wedding Crashers at $10 dollars for 2 hours, or Lost/Desperate Housewives at $33 for 22 hours. Or a 1 year old great film you havn't seen yet for $7.50 vs a new film at $19.99.
---
There is no valid reason the Harry Potter author can make over a BILLION dollars for a series of books- a few million (more than enough to live a lifetime) would have been more reasonable. The markets have increased in size and costs have decreased but -- temporarily-- the old prices are still being charged.
---
As the cost of filming, editing, and special effects drops to near zero we will see more and more "Star Wreck's" and "Star Trek- The New Voyages" of higher and higher quality. Recently Joss Whedon speculated that he could see making something like Firefox and distributing straight over the internet without using theaters or networks at all.
Arrr... So ye're Parroty Bit ye, eh?
Long term they might combine it with cloning and avoid the drugs.
Arrrr, not at all me hardy.
Call me a lubber, but ye're searchin for the treasure with the wrong map.
Ye just needs to type in "Music Torrents" or "Music P2P" or "Music IRC Channel". Ye'll find the hidden treasure if ye seek it the right way!
Ho Ho Ho and a bottle of rum.. 6 mp3's in a dead man's stick!
That would make sense if the program's long name was: Crafty Retrograde Improved Picture Publishing Landscape Editor. or Reliable Editor That's All Right, Dude! --- But it's a GNU Image Manipulation Program. --- If it makes it better for you, call it that or call it GNUIMP.
to deal with this problem now.
I don't believe the article.
I think it came down to money- in some fashion intel offered them a better deal. I have intel and amd computers and amd has a dramatically better cost/performance ratio. I bet that there is no hard technical reason why Mac couldn't have run on both- if they are going to be Intel only it is for political/financial reasons instead of technical ones.
This was a very hard question. Here is my answer:
1) Is ignorant of the concept at all. They do not believe or disbelieve or wait for evidence to decide. (not agnostic, religious or atheist)
2) Is aware of them but does not believe. If they were to see evidence they would change their mind. Their disbelief is not a religion- just a fact. "The sky is blue- ghosts don't exist". ( Supposed definition for Atheist ).
3) Is aware of them but believes they definately do not exist. They think illogically to support their disbelief. "That wasn't a ghost- it was just a bad piece of chicken" or "I don't care about the evidence for mendelian genetics, I believe differently and ignore your evidence or even actively suppress it." (Actual Atheist I often observe in practice)
4) Is aware and them and believes they definately do exist. They think illogically to support their belief. "God said it, I believe it, and that settles it." or "nya nya nya, I'm not listening, I'm not listening." or even wierder "I'm a scientist- I believe in evolution and natural selection but I also believe the literal truth of the bible at the same time- I just ignore any conflicts and think religiously in church and scientifically at the lab." (Religous)
5) Is aware of them and can't decide if they exist or not. They would decide based on evidence. Some would need weak evidence- others would need strong evidence. Most would need -physical- evidence or personal revelation to begin believing. (Agnostic)
1) No- I'm saying there is no need to display on prime time television two adults having sex under a blanket. There is no need to show how to kill someone and hide the evidence. And especially no need to show things like this and ignore the frequent real-life consequences so they get a warped view of reality.
Things like that should be reserved for later hours or premium channels. When they reach an appropriate age, they should be instructed as their parent decides or society agrees is a basic minimum that everyone should have. There is a difference between sex education and television entertainment that shows how to do it.
3) Not even sure what the heck you are talking about here.
I will take a guess and say, "Yes I do not want them taught how to break into cars, pickup a hooker, have sex, murder people in several different ways when they are 13 years old." They are not mature enough to handle those things appropriately at that age.
The brainwashing comment is really a secondary issue- it is my belief that with regard to children- most modern religions are cults (run your favorite religion by a "cult" checklist and see how many positive results you get when you consider how children are indoctrinated).
Innocence: Not at all- children today know about things at 12 that I didn't know about until I was 16 or even 18. There is no -need- for them to know how to kill that young. There is no need for them to know about sex or advanced sex practices at that age. --- They are not "little people". They are not even PHYSICALLY fully capable of logical thought before they are teens (clue- their brains havn't finished physically developing in those areas yet.)
They are -children- who need to be raised in an appropriate fashion so they will be healthy adults when they are finished maturing. They need to be prevented from getting knowledge before they are ready to handle it because there is a proven track record that they can't handle many adult situations.
And in australia, are you able to see movies like "pulp fiction" on television? Or to rent DVD's of it?
If so why the ban on video games?
Now- where I disagree is the point I started my article with.
Unless we are going to remove violence and sex from television and movies then where do they get off singling out video games as a problem?
I agree with you on a couple of points. First, I agree that it is a valid point to restrict the input materials for children until their brains are finished and they are mature (and folks are not really finished until they are 25ish but they get too hard to manage at 18ish so we just punt on that issue). And I agree we should not show children:
1) how to have sex, (sorry but putting a blanket over two people in the missionary position is not hiding the basic mechanics of what is going on- a fact I was pretty ignorant of until I was 16ish and something I have seen in prime time multiple times in the past couple years on popular shows- how times have changed)
2) how to kill people in any form of entertainment. (I was not aware that you could kill someone by shoving their nose upwards hard until I was fairly old- something I've seen in 2 popular pg-13 movies in the past decade).
3) brainwash them with religion relentlessly (on the one hand it is good to put morals in before they are rational- on the other hand the way it's done lately it is hurting us on the science front in really stupid ways) Teach them right and wrong and expose them to religion at an older age- it's just too cultlike the way they brainwash the kids in sunday school.
I do believe these things affect their behavior. I think they are less innocent and more violent.
So I guess basically I agree with you- bad for children- I went on an adult tangent that doesn't really apply to the article at hand!
I not only grant but also believe in your basic point- the right to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose.
---
Extending it- if I engage in risky behavior- I have to take personal responsibility for my actions- be it riding without a helmut or having unprotected sex. That includes dying outside of a hospital because I don't have funds to pay for life saving services. Or becoming destitute because I refused to get insurance before I got sick or had my property destroyed.
Other individuals and groups in society could voluntarily help me but it should -not- be the government's or the rest of societies responsibility to assist me. If they -have- to take care of me, then it grants them the right to forbid me a great deal of freedom.
Seemingly contrary to these positions- I do believe there should be a national health care. But I would strictly limit it to about 5 grand a year in current day dollars. And since I know that wouldn't happen (instead we would get a health care that put all of us on the hook for million dollar operations/treatment) I can't realistically support it.
But basic protection would make us a lot more competitive against other nations and help business focus on creating jobs. It's too bad it would grow into a monster.
Yep- and many people can drink alchohol without any problems- smoke and live to a ripe old age- rock climb and not fall to their deaths- break dance and not - do cocaine without consequences (I know at least a dozen people who did it in the 80s and all are fine upstanding citizens today with families and kids).
Are we going to keep taking away the freedoms of 90% of society to protect the 10% of society from doing themselves in?
And more basically- if I want to bloody risk killing myself doing something risky shouldn't I be allowed to do so?
Seriously-
If you realistically portray damaging another human in a movie or television show - you get a $5,000 fine per minor that sees it.
Oh--- what , you mean we've been doing this already for the last 70 years? And before that we did it in plays?
What IS the world coming to?
So if you do any mousing- or as I do sometimes- copy part of the signon with the mouse as part of the password then it won't work. --- Seems like you could FooL it by HittING cerTAIN keyes HARDER or softer etc while entering Passwords. --- I imagine the volume relative to the mike helps determine the distance to the key. --- In general- seems like typing very softly during passwords would stop this.
Latest word I am hearing is that the response time was roughly the same as other responses to smaller disasters and FASTER than for Hurricane Andrew in Florida.
I voted against Bush but I really thing the Dems and the Louisiana politicians are spinning this really hard.
It is also looking like the death toll is going to be 20% of what they were saying.
The state, parish, and city officials have a lot to answer for. Including money spent on vanity projects instead of real needs.
Someone once said to me that Mathew Brady documented the entire Civil War with less photographs than are taken at a typical modern wedding.
Gets up off his knee and puts the ring away.
Damn.. too slow.
And just think about the ongoing waste for having metric and non-metric bolts and screws (and tools to work them).
As an American- I wish we would get over it and go to metric. They were on the right track for a while (when street signs had Km as well as Miles) but they seem to be fading.