Makes me want to kill someone. At the very utterance of it an anything other than a purely scientific or geographic sense. The company I contract for has gone "global" now. Every possible place for that damned buzzword to get jammed in has been used.
Whats worse, the BOD has been seeded with European managers. Now, dont get me wrong, I have nothing against europeans, but you cannot take a company that has been doing NE Corridor style work processes for 20+ years and suddenly kick it over to the "european" business model. Things apparently get done a lot more slowly over there.
You wouldnt think there would be much of a difference, but its subtle, yet huge. Just the minute changes in our response contracts are huge. Going from a 4x8 SLA to a proposed 8x36 on a hardware repair? (Which might sound great.. but it means less money, and once you have been 4x8 for five years, its REALLY hard to switch gears).
Our "accident prevention" issues are now tied to India, Sri Lanka, Korea, and europe. And we _all_ pay when some plant in some third world country where emissions arent an issue suffers some injury. I am all for "safety in the workplace".. but you should really be only tied to that which you have some influence or control over.
Its a completely different business culture, and some cultures just shouldnt mix like that.
These pictures [squeep.com] were of a seagate 40mb eide, splashed with a 158grn jacketed hollowpoint in.357 magnum, after being accelerated to about 1700 fps from a Marlin 1894C lever-action carbine.
Amazing how much damage a lil piece of jacketed lead does, isnt it? I especially like how much penetration you get off the 7.62R rounds. (Im kinda partial.. I have two SKS', and a bolt action built on an old mauser action in 7.62R).
WE have shot a number of computer parts.. HDD, floppys, cases, monitors (they are fun). But if you REALLY wanna have fun, find an old toilet and shoot that up. They throw up a HUGE cloud of smoke when you hit them, presumably from the vitreous china disintegrating en-masse.
Oh, and with the right soundcard, it's equal or higher quality to your current pre-amp. Yes, I know how good Denon are. The Midiman cards are excellent as well.
Great. So I can hear how crappy mp3's and other compression formats sound through my 5.1 system.
Thanks, I think I'll pass.
Not that Im saying that it isnt great for those who want to hack the snot out of stuff and have their EC look like the bridge of the Enterprise.. go nuts. I just dont think its gonna make me trash my already pretty expensive components for another set of (likely) equally expensive components to get the same thing, only harder to use.
The reason unknown bands sign on the dotted line is because the record labels can provide publicity. Another way to get publicity, one that doesn't cost anything, is to allow copies of your music to be freely redistributed through P2P channels and similar -- even inject your music directly into this distribution system.
Im not denying that that is a good way to get exposure. It is not, however, a good way to pay for dinner, new equipment, or the cost of recording the next (or first, if you truly follow the DIY formula) CD. I do music because I love to, and I would love to do it for a living.. but right now, I cannot afford to quit my job and starve for a few years to see my dream. I certainly wouldnt argue with a recording contract at this point, if it put some money on the table. but I have a hard time believing that anyone would willingly send money if they can get the song for free, no matter how many pleas I put out to the contrary.
Hmm... maybe you should record ORIGINAL songs instead of 'ripping off the hard work of talented underpaid artists'.
Where did I say artists are underpaid? You seem to be the one railing against the music machine here, not me pal. I like some of the "oldies".. (no one wrote em like Flatt and scruggs) but even if you want to use something that is considered "traditional" there are rights you have to secure to use it. (ever notice the "with permission of" or "thanks to" on the record albums near the titles?)
The onus of lawyers has made it nearly impossible for Joe Musician to look up and find out if someone actually owns a song, who owns it, and who you need to send the money too.. but there is at least one company that I know of that handles it all for a nice reasonable fee. Per copy. So you send say, 100 bucks, you can make 100 copies, (or whatever) per song.
The musician was an example. Substitute "hard working non-permanent employee at Microsoft" and make it about software. The meme works across a bunch of levels I can think of off the top of my head.
- Use the DVD player in my PC instead of an expensive progressive scan external one
I would be interested to know how the quality of picture stands up between the two. I have a Toshiba Widescreen (57" projection) and a Sanyo 2/3 pulldown connected through component Monster Cables (which Im sure I paid way too much for) and digital audio. The movie sucks plotwise, but "Driven" with Sly and Burt Reynolds looks *DAMN* nice on it. Pearl Harbor looks extremely good too.. better than the theater I saw it in.
How good, realisticly, does that internal DVD player look on a decent TV?
On the other hand, I'm not saying that using pirated everything is all bad -- maybe a generation kids who grew up sharing things on Napster and clones will result in a less conservative congress, where things like the Copyright Term Extension Act won't be so common. (Which is what has me feeling so cynical right now...)
Or, possibly, that generation will grow up realizing that their time and effort is worth something, and learn to despise people who are ripping them off of even their 1% royalty from the music companies, and then push for even stronger legislation to keep it from happening.
Somehow I dont see Corporate America getting any weaker.. but the current trend towards opressing the employee and empowering the corporation will lead to much more agressive employees and/or fed up people starting their own businesses. Once that happens, they will start attempting to make some money doing what they are doing. And face it, no-one cares WHAT record company they are ripping off when they copy MP3's or ogg-vorbis files around. Whether its the biggest music conglomerate, or some teeny tiny band who has their own label, they dont give a crap.
So no, I dont think you will see a "less conservative congress".. I think you might, however, see the teeth of some of the copyright and control acts that are happening now be actually used on something other than another corporation.
(And no, I'm not a troll, at least, not intentionally, But I recently found out it is going to cost on the order of 6K$ for my little band to record and produce 100 cd's.. and that doesnt count the cost of studio time, but _does_ count the cost of making sure we have applicable rights to all the songs we want to do.)
Maybe Im not part of the target demographic, but I have a nice widescreen, I have a Tivo, I have a CD player capable of mp3 playback, I have a 2/3 pulldown DVD player which gives me better quality than any PC ever will, and I have a Denon sound system.
About the only thing I can think I might be missing is the opportunity to play hacked/burned/whatever games, but in my experience, they usually look pretty damn lousy on a huge TV anyway.
Like I said.. maybe some people will be into this.. but IMHO I cannot stand to watch things on a computer NOW because they look so crappy, let alone piping that into my TV.
But maybe I'm not the audience they are looking for.
Joe User will buy a home PC to match his work system, not the other way around. Make sure he has a Linux box at work and in a few years he'll want one at home to stay compatible in case he "has to take some work home one day". The Quickbooks-oriented small business market is as tough to crack as the consumer market.
And school. Dont forget school. Higher up in this discussion, someone said "How do you think Apple got where they are and made money?" I answer: By giving schools Apples. And forcing schools to use ONLY apples in order to get those free ones. And making incentives to allow the student to take home the apple after they are done. ONce that happens, you usually have a fan for life. (The rabid apple fan notwithstanding, who loves apples like harley guys love harleys, cause its an obsession thing, not a logic thing.)
Once you get that niche, you have a market built in. Damn few students have the money to get out of school with a shiny new apple and trash it to buy some clunky PC. Especially not now, with the ads that are running to make Apple look so uber-swank. (Yeah.. I want it in candy colors, to go with my candy colored Beetle chick-magnet, dude!)
Are there any companies making money from selling a completely open source software product? To me the point is this: the GPL requires you to release your source code, essentially for free (as in beer). I say essentially because you can release it at cost of distribution. People don't pay for things when they can get them free-of-charge - it's human nature.
You are right, of course. I like Mandrake.. it may not be the best one out there, but it is the only one that has full featured creamy smoothness, installs right off the bat on the majority of my machines with little or no problems, and comes pre-optimized for my processors, so I dont have to spend 2 hours of wanking glory being 31337 h4x0r dud3 and recompiling everything.
that being said, I support them for their packaging, their pretty installer, and the fact that all the menus all work with all the windowmanagers.. thats a nice switch for me.
But you are right.. people will not buy when they can get for free... look at all the knee jerk bullshit on this very board of people on one hand going "I wont support a company that cannot make money on its own" and "its allright to steal from the music industry, because they make money on their own and have the temerity to get pissed when I am stealing from them"
Wonder if those same people would be pissed if I borrowed their car for several hours a night, but filled the gas back up when I parked it?
But doesn't it prove just the opposite? The company dies, but the software lives on. I expect that the vast majority of people who use Mandrake will have no problem moving their setup across to another distro. But imagine what would happen if a traditional, closed source company died. Then you'd be screwed
Not sure. I would think from the "us" level, yes, that would be true. Most of us can do that without too much trouble. But from the "them" (read: big business, small business, etc) perspective, no, its catastrophic.
This is a pretty big name distro, at least in the eyes of Joe Buying Software Off The Shelf. He has seen it. If he is thinking of moving his small to mid-sized business to it, he wont if he sees this and realizes the company could tank on him at any time. We all know Microsoft Support is often less useful than the 17 year old next door when a problem crops up, however one of the major selling points is that _it is there._. If one of the "larger" (figuring RH, SuSE, Mandrake as "large presence" distros) tanks, then Joe Consumer will lose even more faith. What RedHats stock did after the IPO put a hurting on the reputation, because most of the people approving these things spend time looking for the enter key and watching stocks, not having a clue about software.
Im not looking at this as much from a personal standpoint, as from a "company X is seriously thinking about moving to a cheap alternative to MS, which would be Linux.. what can I show them to point out a GOOD reason, with a solid company behind it."
If Mandrake dies a horrible and ugly death, it will not just be one more dead distro, it will be proof to all the closed source liscensing junkie corps. that "free" (as in beer) software cannot survive.
Now is the time to contribute to MandrakeSoft and help them out. If you have ever used it, if you use it now, if you have ever found it useful, now is the time to contribute.
I run it, I have contributed. I even saved them the money by d/ling my copy from linuxiso.org and then sending them the money.
But think for a moment, how much a license for Windows costs, and how little it costs to shoot five, or even one, dollar to Mandrake as a "thank you" if you use their software.
"Free" is a misnomer.. nothing is "free".. but "user supported" is probably as close to "free" as we can get, with an important distinction between "user purchased" and "user supported".
I would hate to see what is a rather good distro tank now, because of money woes.
That is the very basic beginnings. It has gotten much worse. Picard/Riker slash. Xmen/Furry slash. there is even DragonballZ slash, for petes sake!
it scares me. It sometimes makes me wonder if the Internet is such a *good* place after all.
I usually differentiate by "fanfic"= nothing impossible by the specific rules of nature, "slash" = things that are quite usually impossible by the rules of nature. (And dont forget that Pern slash, for all your dragon-luvin needs!)
Title: "How to Draw Manga" Author: "A Society For The Study Of Manga Techniques" #PP: 116 ISBN# 4-88996-042-2 Published 1999, subtitle "Compiling Characters"
It goes in depth into design and shaping of characters.. including that manga SMILE, and the eyes, and (apparent lack of) nose, as well as shading techniques, and how to use pen, ink, pencil, tone sheets, and other items to make your manga look "real".
Also covers lettering, position of word bubbles and position of characters to convey action, emotion, etc.
It also goes to explain how the Hero is always one head taller than the Villain, who is 1/2 to 1 head taller than the lead female, and the comic relief is almost *ALWAYS* 3 heads tall, with his own head being 1/3 of that three.
It kind of goes into the un-written dynamic of characters that we all noticed when watching StarBlazers for the first time, but didnt realize WHY we were noticing.
As for price, I have no idea. It was an Xmas gift from my Mom several years ago.
Ahh.. you mean like taking three relatively uneventful works of fiction, and basing 30+ years of fandom, movies, inspired works, conventions, and references from them?
Yeah.. Im sure glad the Japanese do that, and we dont do it here. *wink*
I dont know if I would call it an "obsession" any more than I would call the US' dependence (to one level or another) on newspapers and "obsession". Manga is more of a cultural thing.
Apparently, slash is big in japan.. except they actually have the talent to do slash with art, rather than slash with badly-spelled-web-log-entries.
*sigh*
I was given a book on how to draw Manga.. and the "rules" of character design, etc, are very very interesting.
My experience is that some organized religions are amassing political power through whatever means necessary, and then using that political power to enrich themselves, and impose their dogma on others. I am especially troubled when said dogma is life-threatening, for example the insistance that condoms do not reduce the risk of sexually transmitted diseases. Soon to be part of the U.S. policy.
re the condom bit.. do not *reduce* or do not *prevent* as seems to be the way it is usually taught? "If you are going to have sex, use a Condom so you dont get diseases" is the way I usually see it presented in classes and in the media. I would rather see "Using a Condom reduces your risk of pregnancy by 99 percent, your risk of Herpes by 0%, your risk of HIV by @ 50%" etc, with REAL figures.
The problem is, we _still_ dont know some of those real figures. A guy I know works for a company that does research on polymer and rubber compounds and such for a medical company. He was the one that mentioned that counting on a Condom to prevent deadly STD's is kind of like depending on a clothesline when bungee jumping... it just doesnt work. Especially since a some of the cheaper condoms will stop a relatively large thing like a spermatazoa, but will not stop the much smaller virii from passing through.
Dont get in on the suit. Next thing you know Lars Ulrich will be personally writing on you to demand 1 penny from the settlement because the price fixing made Moneygru^H^H^H^H^etallica lose money and the money coming from the settlement will make them earn less from the distributor for their next album and soon James will be kicking in your door demanding money and spontaneously combusting all over your shiznit!
Good point. It might be more accurate to say that "if you don't believe [certain religious ideas], it should not affect you."
I agree wholeheartedly. The right to an opinion, idealogical, theological, or political, ends at the end of my nose. (Or when it invades my life space, as it were, with a few notable exceptions).
However, its obvious it will never be true.. simply read the posts in this thread.. you will see a number of people who immediately assume religion = idiot, when that is clearly not the case.
Silly theist, there is an enormous fossil trail of early man (like the neanderthal), the obvious similarites bewteen primates, the evolutionary tree that we have built of the great apes, and other evolutionary evidence like retro-viruses and DNA similarity.
Yes, but the fossil trail has a huge hole in it. Huge enough that its about the same as "bird" to "dinosaur" but they call that theory.
The similarities between primates are interesting, but so are the similarities between Deer, and not all of those are descended anywhere from each other, but some _are_ from a common ancestor that does not exist anymore.
As for retroviruses, some of the "mad" diseases (the prion based ones) can attack humans as well as sheep, cows, and deer.. does that mean we are related to them?
genetically, I think we are as close to mice as to anything else, but that does not mean mice are descended from us, or vice versa.
No, no, what am I saying, this must all be wrong. Man was wished into reality by a super-being that lives in a happy magic land outside of our visible universe somewhere, that's right. You can't prove or disprove that this happy magic land with it's super being and omniscient master exists, so I must be right!
Wish I could remember the actual Douglas Adams quote, but I have just as hard a time believing in a bolt of lighting being bunged through a swamp and having dinosaurs leap out. The sword cuts both ways, and you have no more proof of the "creation" of life than I do of a creator.
We will have to agree to disagree.. im not saying you are wrong.. but you *are* saying I am. So get over yourself, and accept that multiple worldviews are an inherant part of life, and that attacking someones belief once they point out a hole in yours doesnt necessarily mean you are right.
And I, personally, have little problem with creation and evolution going hand in hand.
2. In addition to obvious physical evidence that should be available is the lack of evolutionary evidence. Scientists haved exhaustively catalogued much of the life that has evolved up to this point in North America and Asia. Why is there nothing, not one single shred of evidence, that would in any way conclucde that such a primate ever existed in the earth's recent past. Heres a hint: the same reason that no scientist can find any physical proof or evolutionary justification that a beast that exists solely on goat's blood resides in Puerto Rico. (Especially considering that goats were introduced recently to that island, but I digress)
By your logic in this example, there is no reason to assume humans evolved from apes, because there isnt one single shred of evidence that links us directly to them. You are arguing both sides of the coin.. you are using "theory" as proof in one place, and then demanding proof from someone else. It doesnt work that way.
"I Don't Know" Those are the hardest words for many people to say. For many (a majority, I believe) of, the place where "I Don't Know" is kept is a very scary place. Most people will grasp any idea that comes along just so they can cram it into that empty place.
Unfortunately, I think you are bang on with this one. I'm not sure why.. maybe it is because we have forced ourselves through years and years of existance into believing "THEY" (The Hearsay Experts for YOU!) know everything, that we immediately look to "them" for an answer. And we seldom get "I Don't Know" as a response. We get "we are looking into it" We get "WE can neithr confirm nor deny" and we get "Military Weather Balloon" but we never get "We dont know".
There is a reason people will see something with their own eyes, and then watch the news and come away thinking they saw something completely different.
I would _love_ to do an experiment and see just how well the MiB routine works.. do a small test.. blow something up with a rocket over an urban area (safely) then loudly broadcast on the news that it was Sunspots, and that people *thought* they saw a contrail because the brain naturally adds one into the picture when they see an unexpected explosion, and see how many people go "Oh.. I guess I was wrong".
I think we have, in a lot of cases, been led to believe that whatever the Box or the Guy In The Funny Hat at the Lectern says is "true" until proven otherwise, even if they are about as sane as a carp in a privet bush. Some of us have been burned enough times by this crap to start looking behind the curtain for the little man, and some of us get absolutely overzealous about trying to find that little man.
thats what makes the world such an interesting place to live in.
You think you agree, except when it comes to religion. Sorry, you really don't agree with the parent post at all. S/he has decided that all things must be proven. Understandably, you have said, "All must be proven, except for the stuff that is really personal to me and that I have believed my whole life." It's very tough to submit those beliefs to the Scientific Method, but the more you do, the more your "foundation" will be real, rather than believed to be real. I am very familiar with the perceived "need for faith". My father, was a staunch Southern Baptist Preacher. I am also familiar with the addictions. It's tough to let go, but it really is better without the "security blanket(s)". The view is much clearer.
Not a flame, and not a troll, but a few points.
1) Im not trying to prove to you that my religion is real, validated, etc. I dont need to. It is real to *me*. (and I guess that is kind of the point behind my dislike of cynics and of some skeptics. I dont tell you you are wrong, so please stop trying to tell me I am). I might even go so far as to say (re religion) if you dont believe it, it may not even affect you. (tangentially, IE: if Heaven is where good Xians go, and Hell is where the remainder of the set that is not in Heaven goes, then the only thing that really matters is Heaven. Hell could be any number of other things, depending on what the person believes in. And no, I dont believe in flames and stuff.. that was Gehenna.. which was actually a trash dump on fire at the end of the city.. a common mistranslation.)
B) Who is to say my security blanket (I believe in God, therefore I am happy with my life) is any more or less wrong than yours? (I believe in not god, therefore I am happy with my life). THey are both security blankets.. mine because I believe in what I do, yours because (possibly.. I dont know you but I will give one potential example) you cannot grasp the concept of an all powerful being holding you responsible for your actions for eternity, therefore choose not to believe in it and then live without fear?
Psychologically, there isnt much difference between the two, while Ideologically there is a huge gulf.
So, your great uncle whatever was chasing phantoms because he lacked a basic foundation of scientific knowledge, and therefore was prone to buying into psuedo-science and superstition.
Pray enlighten me. Exactly which part of scientific knowledge says unequivocably that "bigfoot cannot exist"?
The only proof you can offer is "we havent found one yet".
200 years ago, if I had said "Man will discover certain great apes, and some of them will learn to paint and use sign language to communicate with Man" you would have said "You lack a basic foundation of scientific knowledge, and are buying into pseudo-science and superstition."
Slashdot Mirror
Makes me want to kill someone. At the very utterance of it an anything other than a purely scientific or geographic sense. The company I contract for has gone "global" now. Every possible place for that damned buzzword to get jammed in has been used.
Whats worse, the BOD has been seeded with European managers. Now, dont get me wrong, I have nothing against europeans, but you cannot take a company that has been doing NE Corridor style work processes for 20+ years and suddenly kick it over to the "european" business model. Things apparently get done a lot more slowly over there.
You wouldnt think there would be much of a difference, but its subtle, yet huge. Just the minute changes in our response contracts are huge.
Going from a 4x8 SLA to a proposed 8x36 on a hardware repair? (Which might sound great.. but it means less money, and once you have been 4x8 for five years, its REALLY hard to switch gears).
Our "accident prevention" issues are now tied to India, Sri Lanka, Korea, and europe. And we _all_ pay when some plant in some third world country where emissions arent an issue suffers some injury. I am all for "safety in the workplace".. but you should really be only tied to that which you have some influence or control over.
Its a completely different business culture, and some cultures just shouldnt mix like that.
YMMV, of course.
These pictures [squeep.com] were of a seagate 40mb eide, splashed with a 158grn jacketed hollowpoint in .357 magnum, after being accelerated to about 1700 fps from a Marlin 1894C lever-action carbine.
Amazing how much damage a lil piece of jacketed lead does, isnt it? I especially like how much penetration you get off the 7.62R rounds. (Im kinda partial.. I have two SKS', and a bolt action built on an old mauser action in 7.62R).
WE have shot a number of computer parts.. HDD, floppys, cases, monitors (they are fun). But if you REALLY wanna have fun, find an old toilet and shoot that up. They throw up a HUGE cloud of smoke when you hit them, presumably from the vitreous china disintegrating en-masse.
maeryk
Oh, and with the right soundcard, it's equal or higher quality to your current pre-amp. Yes, I know how good Denon are. The Midiman cards are excellent as well.
Great. So I can hear how crappy mp3's and other compression formats sound through my 5.1 system.
Thanks, I think I'll pass.
Not that Im saying that it isnt great for those who want to hack the snot out of stuff and have their EC look like the bridge of the Enterprise.. go nuts. I just dont think its gonna make me trash my already pretty expensive components for another set of (likely) equally expensive components to get the same thing, only harder to use.
maeryk
The reason unknown bands sign on the dotted line is because the record labels can provide publicity. Another way to get publicity, one that doesn't cost anything, is to allow copies of your music to be freely redistributed through P2P channels and similar -- even inject your music directly into this distribution system.
Im not denying that that is a good way to get exposure. It is not, however, a good way to pay for dinner, new equipment, or the cost of recording the next (or first, if you truly follow the DIY formula) CD. I do music because I love to, and I would love to do it for a living.. but right now, I cannot afford to quit my job and starve for a few years to see my dream. I certainly wouldnt argue with a recording contract at this point, if it put some money on the table. but I have a hard time believing that anyone would willingly send money if they can get the song for free, no matter how many pleas I put out to the contrary.
Hmm... maybe you should record ORIGINAL songs instead of 'ripping off the hard work of talented underpaid artists'.
Where did I say artists are underpaid? You seem to be the one railing against the music machine here, not me pal. I like some of the "oldies".. (no one wrote em like Flatt and scruggs) but even if you want to use something that is considered "traditional" there are rights you have to secure to use it. (ever notice the "with permission of" or "thanks to" on the record albums near the titles?)
The onus of lawyers has made it nearly impossible for Joe Musician to look up and find out if someone actually owns a song, who owns it, and who you need to send the money too.. but there is at least one company that I know of that handles it all for a nice reasonable fee. Per copy. So you send say, 100 bucks, you can make 100 copies, (or whatever) per song.
The musician was an example. Substitute "hard working non-permanent employee at Microsoft" and make it about software. The meme works across a bunch of levels I can think of off the top of my head.
maeryk
scan the first page, neat project. Looked at one picture, and *WHAM* ./ effect.
/. End of Saddam's war machine.
*sigh*
We really dont need a war in iraq.. we just need to get the IP's of their main machines and post a story on
Guess I'll check back later tonight. Neat pictures though! I can see one being wallpaper in the very neat future.
Maeryk
- Use the DVD player in my PC instead of an expensive progressive scan external one
I would be interested to know how the quality of picture stands up between the two. I have a Toshiba Widescreen (57" projection) and a Sanyo 2/3 pulldown connected through component Monster Cables (which Im sure I paid way too much for) and digital audio. The movie sucks plotwise, but "Driven" with Sly and Burt Reynolds looks *DAMN* nice on it. Pearl Harbor looks extremely good too.. better than the theater I saw it in.
How good, realisticly, does that internal DVD player look on a decent TV?
Maeryk
On the other hand, I'm not saying that using pirated everything is all bad -- maybe a generation kids who grew up sharing things on Napster and clones will result in a less conservative congress, where things like the Copyright Term Extension Act won't be so common. (Which is what has me feeling so cynical right now...)
Or, possibly, that generation will grow up realizing that their time and effort is worth something, and learn to despise people who are ripping them off of even their 1% royalty from the music companies, and then push for even stronger legislation to keep it from happening.
Somehow I dont see Corporate America getting any weaker.. but the current trend towards opressing the employee and empowering the corporation will lead to much more agressive employees and/or fed up people starting their own businesses. Once that happens, they will start attempting to make some money doing what they are doing. And face it, no-one cares WHAT record company they are ripping off when they copy MP3's or ogg-vorbis files around. Whether its the biggest music conglomerate, or some teeny tiny band who has their own label, they dont give a crap.
So no, I dont think you will see a "less conservative congress".. I think you might, however, see the teeth of some of the copyright and control acts that are happening now be actually used on something other than another corporation.
(And no, I'm not a troll, at least, not intentionally, But I recently found out it is going to cost on the order of 6K$ for my little band to record and produce 100 cd's.. and that doesnt count the cost of studio time, but _does_ count the cost of making sure we have applicable rights to all the songs we want to do.)
Maeryk
Maybe Im not part of the target demographic, but I have a nice widescreen, I have a Tivo, I have a CD player capable of mp3 playback, I have a 2/3 pulldown DVD player which gives me better quality than any PC ever will, and I have a Denon sound system.
About the only thing I can think I might be missing is the opportunity to play hacked/burned/whatever games, but in my experience, they usually look pretty damn lousy on a huge TV anyway.
Like I said.. maybe some people will be into this.. but IMHO I cannot stand to watch things on a computer NOW because they look so crappy, let alone piping that into my TV.
But maybe I'm not the audience they are looking for.
Maeryk
Joe User will buy a home PC to match his work system, not the other way around. Make sure he has a Linux box at work and in a few years he'll want one at home to stay compatible in case he "has to take some work home one day". The Quickbooks-oriented small business market is as tough to crack as the consumer market.
And school. Dont forget school. Higher up in this discussion, someone said "How do you think Apple got where they are and made money?" I answer: By giving schools Apples. And forcing schools to use ONLY apples in order to get those free ones. And making incentives to allow the student to take home the apple after they are done. ONce that happens, you usually have a fan for life. (The rabid apple fan notwithstanding, who loves apples like harley guys love harleys, cause its an obsession thing, not a logic thing.)
Once you get that niche, you have a market built in. Damn few students have the money to get out of school with a shiny new apple and trash it to buy some clunky PC. Especially not now, with the ads that are running to make Apple look so uber-swank. (Yeah.. I want it in candy colors, to go with my candy colored Beetle chick-magnet, dude!)
Maeryk
Are there any companies making money from selling a completely open source software product? To me the point is this: the GPL requires you to release your source code, essentially for free (as in beer). I say essentially because you can release it at cost of distribution. People don't pay for things when they can get them free-of-charge - it's human nature.
You are right, of course. I like Mandrake.. it may not be the best one out there, but it is the only one that has full featured creamy smoothness, installs right off the bat on the majority of my machines with little or no problems, and comes pre-optimized for my processors, so I dont have to spend 2 hours of wanking glory being 31337 h4x0r dud3 and recompiling everything.
that being said, I support them for their packaging, their pretty installer, and the fact that all the menus all work with all the windowmanagers.. thats a nice switch for me.
But you are right.. people will not buy when they can get for free... look at all the knee jerk bullshit on this very board of people on one hand going "I wont support a company that cannot make money on its own" and "its allright to steal from the music industry, because they make money on their own and have the temerity to get pissed when I am stealing from them"
Wonder if those same people would be pissed if I borrowed their car for several hours a night, but filled the gas back up when I parked it?
maeryk
But doesn't it prove just the opposite? The company dies, but the software lives on. I expect that the vast majority of people who use Mandrake will have no problem moving their setup across to another distro. But imagine what would happen if a traditional, closed source company died. Then you'd be screwed
Not sure. I would think from the "us" level, yes, that would be true. Most of us can do that without too much trouble. But from the "them" (read: big business, small business, etc) perspective, no, its catastrophic.
This is a pretty big name distro, at least in the eyes of Joe Buying Software Off The Shelf. He has seen it. If he is thinking of moving his small to mid-sized business to it, he wont if he sees this and realizes the company could tank on him at any time. We all know Microsoft Support is often less useful than the 17 year old next door when a problem crops up, however one of the major selling points is that _it is there._. If one of the "larger" (figuring RH, SuSE, Mandrake as "large presence" distros) tanks, then Joe Consumer will lose even more faith. What RedHats stock did after the IPO put a hurting on the reputation, because most of the people approving these things spend time looking for the enter key and watching stocks, not having a clue about software.
Im not looking at this as much from a personal standpoint, as from a "company X is seriously thinking about moving to a cheap alternative to MS, which would be Linux.. what can I show them to point out a GOOD reason, with a solid company behind it."
Maeryk
If Mandrake dies a horrible and ugly death, it will not just be one more dead distro, it will be proof to all the closed source liscensing junkie corps. that "free" (as in beer) software cannot survive.
Now is the time to contribute to MandrakeSoft and help them out. If you have ever used it, if you use it now, if you have ever found it useful, now is the time to contribute.
I run it, I have contributed. I even saved them the money by d/ling my copy from linuxiso.org and then sending them the money.
But think for a moment, how much a license for Windows costs, and how little it costs to shoot five, or even one, dollar to Mandrake as a "thank you" if you use their software.
"Free" is a misnomer.. nothing is "free".. but "user supported" is probably as close to "free" as we can get, with an important distinction between "user purchased" and "user supported".
I would hate to see what is a rather good distro tank now, because of money woes.
That is the very basic beginnings. It has gotten much worse. Picard/Riker slash. Xmen/Furry slash.
there is even DragonballZ slash, for petes sake!
it scares me. It sometimes makes me wonder if the Internet is such a *good* place after all.
I usually differentiate by "fanfic"= nothing impossible by the specific rules of nature, "slash" = things that are quite usually impossible by the rules of nature. (And dont forget that Pern slash, for all your dragon-luvin needs!)
maeryk
Title: "How to Draw Manga"
Author: "A Society For The Study Of Manga Techniques"
#PP: 116
ISBN# 4-88996-042-2
Published 1999, subtitle "Compiling Characters"
It goes in depth into design and shaping of characters.. including that manga SMILE, and the eyes, and (apparent lack of) nose, as well as shading techniques, and how to use pen, ink, pencil, tone sheets, and other items to make your manga look "real".
Also covers lettering, position of word bubbles and position of characters to convey action, emotion, etc.
It also goes to explain how the Hero is always one head taller than the Villain, who is 1/2 to 1 head taller than the lead female, and the comic relief is almost *ALWAYS* 3 heads tall, with his own head being 1/3 of that three.
It kind of goes into the un-written dynamic of characters that we all noticed when watching StarBlazers for the first time, but didnt realize WHY we were noticing.
As for price, I have no idea. It was an Xmas gift from my Mom several years ago.
oh.. and it has manga-boobies, too!
maeryk
Ahh.. you mean like taking three relatively uneventful works of fiction, and basing 30+ years of fandom, movies, inspired works, conventions, and references from them?
Yeah.. Im sure glad the Japanese do that, and we dont do it here. *wink*
*grin*
Maeryk
I dont know if I would call it an "obsession" any more than I would call the US' dependence (to one level or another) on newspapers and "obsession". Manga is more of a cultural thing.
Apparently, slash is big in japan.. except they actually have the talent to do slash with art, rather than slash with badly-spelled-web-log-entries.
*sigh*
I was given a book on how to draw Manga.. and the
"rules" of character design, etc, are very very interesting.
Maeryk
My experience is that some organized religions are amassing political power through whatever means necessary, and then using that political power to enrich themselves, and impose their dogma on others. I am especially troubled when said dogma is life-threatening, for example the insistance that condoms do not reduce the risk of sexually transmitted diseases. Soon to be part of the U.S. policy.
re the condom bit.. do not *reduce* or do not *prevent* as seems to be the way it is usually taught? "If you are going to have sex, use a Condom so you dont get diseases" is the way I usually see it presented in classes and in the media. I would rather see "Using a Condom reduces your risk of pregnancy by 99 percent, your risk of Herpes by 0%, your risk of HIV by @ 50%" etc, with REAL figures.
The problem is, we _still_ dont know some of those real figures. A guy I know works for a company that does research on polymer and rubber compounds and such for a medical company. He was the one that mentioned that counting on a Condom to prevent deadly STD's is kind of like depending on a clothesline when bungee jumping... it just doesnt work. Especially since a some of the cheaper condoms will stop a relatively large thing like a spermatazoa, but will not stop the much smaller virii from passing through.
Maeryk
Dont get in on the suit. Next thing you know Lars Ulrich will be personally writing on you to demand 1 penny from the settlement because the price fixing made Moneygru^H^H^H^H^etallica lose
money and the money coming from the settlement will make them earn less from the distributor for their next album and soon James will be kicking in your door demanding money and spontaneously combusting all over your shiznit!
Maeryk
Good point. It might be more accurate to say that "if you don't believe [certain religious ideas], it should not affect you."
I agree wholeheartedly. The right to an opinion, idealogical, theological, or political, ends at the end of my nose. (Or when it invades my life space, as it were, with a few notable exceptions).
However, its obvious it will never be true.. simply read the posts in this thread.. you will see a number of people who immediately assume religion = idiot, when that is clearly not the case.
Maeryk
Silly theist, there is an enormous fossil trail of early man (like the neanderthal), the obvious similarites bewteen primates, the evolutionary tree that we have built of the great apes, and other evolutionary evidence like retro-viruses and DNA similarity.
Yes, but the fossil trail has a huge hole in it. Huge enough that its about the same as "bird" to "dinosaur" but they call that theory.
The similarities between primates are interesting, but so are the similarities between Deer, and not all of those are descended anywhere from each other, but some _are_ from a common ancestor that does not exist anymore.
As for retroviruses, some of the "mad" diseases (the prion based ones) can attack humans as well as sheep, cows, and deer.. does that mean we are related to them?
genetically, I think we are as close to mice as to anything else, but that does not mean mice are descended from us, or vice versa.
No, no, what am I saying, this must all be wrong. Man was wished into reality by a super-being that lives in a happy magic land outside of our visible universe somewhere, that's right. You can't prove or disprove that this happy magic land with it's super being and omniscient master exists, so I must be right!
Wish I could remember the actual Douglas Adams quote, but I have just as hard a time believing in a bolt of lighting being bunged through a swamp and having dinosaurs leap out. The sword cuts both ways, and you have no more proof of the "creation" of life than I do of a creator.
We will have to agree to disagree.. im not saying you are wrong.. but you *are* saying I am. So get over yourself, and accept that multiple worldviews are an inherant part of life, and that attacking someones belief once they point out a hole in yours doesnt necessarily mean you are right.
And I, personally, have little problem with creation and evolution going hand in hand.
Maeryk
"Make me a Pangalactic Gargleblaster!"
(bar Monkey: "Fizzle Pop POOF" halon goes off.. etc)
Seriously.. all I need is one of these, a large funnel, my T-3 cranial and a really good thought-robotic typey arm program and life will be GRAND!
Maeryk
2. In addition to obvious physical evidence that should be available is the lack of evolutionary evidence. Scientists haved exhaustively catalogued much of the life that has evolved up to this point in North America and Asia. Why is there nothing, not one single shred of evidence, that would in any way conclucde that such a primate ever existed in the earth's recent past. Heres a hint: the same reason that no scientist can find any physical proof or evolutionary justification that a beast that exists solely on goat's blood resides in Puerto Rico. (Especially considering that goats were introduced recently to that island, but I digress)
By your logic in this example, there is no reason to assume humans evolved from apes, because there isnt one single shred of evidence that links us directly to them. You are arguing both sides of the coin.. you are using "theory" as proof in one place, and then demanding proof from someone else.
It doesnt work that way.
Maeryk
"I Don't Know"
Those are the hardest words for many people to say. For many (a majority, I believe) of, the place where "I Don't Know" is kept is a very scary place. Most people will grasp any idea that comes along just so they can cram it into that empty place.
Unfortunately, I think you are bang on with this one. I'm not sure why.. maybe it is because we have forced ourselves through years and years of existance into believing "THEY" (The Hearsay Experts for YOU!) know everything, that we immediately look to "them" for an answer. And we seldom get "I Don't Know" as a response. We get "we are looking into it" We get "WE can neithr confirm nor deny" and we get "Military Weather Balloon" but we never get "We dont know".
There is a reason people will see something with their own eyes, and then watch the news and come away thinking they saw something completely different.
I would _love_ to do an experiment and see just how well the MiB routine works.. do a small test.. blow something up with a rocket over an urban area (safely) then loudly broadcast on the news that it was Sunspots, and that people *thought* they saw a contrail because the brain naturally adds one into the picture when they see an unexpected explosion, and see how many people go "Oh.. I guess I was wrong".
I think we have, in a lot of cases, been led to believe that whatever the Box or the Guy In The Funny Hat at the Lectern says is "true" until proven otherwise, even if they are about as sane as a carp in a privet bush. Some of us have been burned enough times by this crap to start looking behind the curtain for the little man, and some of us get absolutely overzealous about trying to find that little man.
thats what makes the world such an interesting place to live in.
(Well, that and throwing rocks at Furries.. )
maeryk
You think you agree, except when it comes to religion. Sorry, you really don't agree with the parent post at all. S/he has decided that all things must be proven. Understandably, you have said, "All must be proven, except for the stuff that is really personal to me and that I have believed my whole life." It's very tough to submit those beliefs to the Scientific Method, but the more you do, the more your "foundation" will be real, rather than believed to be real. I am very familiar with the perceived "need for faith". My father, was a staunch Southern Baptist Preacher. I am also familiar with the addictions. It's tough to let go, but it really is better without the "security blanket(s)". The view is much clearer.
Not a flame, and not a troll, but a few points.
1) Im not trying to prove to you that my religion is real, validated, etc. I dont need to. It is real to *me*. (and I guess that is kind of the point behind my dislike of cynics and of some skeptics. I dont tell you you are wrong, so please stop trying to tell me I am). I might even go so far as to say (re religion) if you dont believe it, it may not even affect you. (tangentially, IE: if Heaven is where good Xians go, and Hell is where the remainder of the set that is not in Heaven goes, then the only thing that really matters is Heaven. Hell could be any number of other things, depending on what the person believes in. And no, I dont believe in flames and stuff.. that was Gehenna.. which was actually a trash dump on fire at the end of the city.. a common mistranslation.)
B) Who is to say my security blanket (I believe in God, therefore I am happy with my life) is any more or less wrong than yours? (I believe in not god, therefore I am happy with my life). THey are both security blankets.. mine because I believe in what I do, yours because (possibly.. I dont know you but I will give one potential example) you cannot grasp the concept of an all powerful being holding you responsible for your actions for eternity, therefore choose not to believe in it and then live without fear?
Psychologically, there isnt much difference between the two, while Ideologically there is a huge gulf.
All views are in the eye of the beholder.
Maeryk
So, your great uncle whatever was chasing phantoms because he lacked a basic foundation of scientific knowledge, and therefore was prone to buying into psuedo-science and superstition.
Pray enlighten me. Exactly which part of scientific knowledge says unequivocably that "bigfoot cannot exist"?
The only proof you can offer is "we havent found one yet".
200 years ago, if I had said "Man will discover certain great apes, and some of them will learn to paint and use sign language to communicate with Man" you would have said "You lack a basic foundation of scientific knowledge, and are buying into pseudo-science and superstition."
However, I would not have been.
Maeryk