Actually, it's not just the ex-KGB people who are pining for the "good old days". It's a large chunk of Russia. Yes, there is a significant (even if badly beat up) opposition. However, there is a much larger contingent of ardent Putin supporters. His 80% approval rating is probably inflated, but his real numbers aren't all that far off.
It's been said that the prerequisite for Democracy is a strong middle-class. Guess what - Russia went straight from Feudalism with a complete lack of middle-class to Communism, with its similar lack of a strong middle-class. This means that the political tradition in Russia is one of central strong men (and one woman) who have near absolute power over everything. I don't see that changing anytime soon - the Enlightenment period is long past, and the current global atmosphere does not support its revival.
Oh please. Both the American auto industry and the American music industry are in trouble because of outdated business practices and unappealing products. The people who will be laid off will be laid off for those exact reasons.
As for work not being fairly compensated - are you kidding me? Can you point me to any other job where you can do work for a few hours, and then reap income for the rest of your life? Not only the rest of your life, but potentially the rest of the lives of your children? If anything, compensation for creative works is unfair, but in the opposite direction of what you're thinking.
Not only that, but it is more of a day of mourning than anything else. Maybe mourning is the wrong word, but it certainly is a somber occasion.
In the small town of France where I grew up, the local war memorial (which, for some odd reason, always reminded me of a toilet with a light bulb on top) had more entries for WW 1 than for WW 2. Nov 11th is a day to remember that WW1 was the ugliest and most pointless war that the continent had ever seen. People still shudder at the memory of news articles spinning the gain of a hundred yards as a major victory.
To get a sense of how messed up the war was, watch Noel (Christmas Day). It's the story of a spontaneous frontline truce on Christmas Eve. Yet, the next day, everyone went back to killing each other.
1. Irrelevant. He was elected, however barely. 2. The minor protests were retarded, and the larger protests are late to the party - not to mention, about the wrong problem. They're certainly no credit to America. 3. You're kidding, right? If you didn't get the idea that Bush was going to send the US down the shitter before 2004, you weren't paying attention. 4. Irrelevant. Pointing out someone else's problems is no way to advance the discussion. 5. Treating the majority of Americans as responsible for Bush's election, and therefore responsible for his crap, is the one thing you can do. Not only did people vote for him in 2000 (which was retarded, but forgivable), but more people voted for him in 2004! At that point, they're responsible for his decisions, and the decisions his administration makes.
So in short: if you voted for Bush twice, I'm holding you personally responsible for the way he is acting. Your parent poster might have said it differently, but it's not far off.
Wrong - you offer a draw if you see that your opponent has a chance of forcing a recurring position. Rather than play out the infinite number of moves, it is polite to acknowledge that even though you have the advantage (material or positional), you can't create the win yourself.
I also suspect that this isn't what Sony is going for. Rather, if they have a brain, they see two things coming: multi-platform players and downloads. Both will make the entire Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD debate moot. Downloads especially will kill any potential advantage from owning one of the two formats.
"Hi, do you have a [StoreCard]?" "Ah, sorry, I forgot it at home. No, I don't remember the phone number on it, as I moved a few times. Do you have a new one?"
They either hand me a brand new one that has no information associated with it, or the clerk swipes his/her own.
Easy as pie, automatic wipe of my store record if they get me a new one. The only way they can track me is if they cross-reference the name on the credit card, rather than just the number. Judging from the state of most databases and the problem of duplicate names, that's unlikely to be there.
Unsupervised games are the rock foundation of human society. What exactly do you think toddlers, kids and teenagers do when they play cowboys and indians, marbles, crash-the-truck, imitate-mom-and-dad-in annoying-ways, spin-the-bottle or other completely random, unsupervised, goal-less games?
I agree that there's a need for goal-driven and supervised learning (whether it takes the form of games or not), but games played in a leisurely fashion, without specific goals, are just as important in the development of a child. Not only that, but they are the only way that children can actually grow on their own, unless their educator/parents are supremely gifted and know the children better than they know themselves.
Education is more than just knowing how to pour concrete. I pity the soul that thinks that it isn't.
This is an attempt to re-engineer the public's perception of electronic privacy so that only governments and crooks will be seen to have any use for it. Nothing else. Personally, this just makes we want to encrypt everything by default.
And again, Heinlein shows his brilliance. The only thing I'd like him to explain - what's with all the porn he wrote in the end? I mean, I know that it's probably the closest he get to naked nubile hotties at that point, but still....
Something I don't understand.... why do people point to Congress and the House of Representatives, when there's 51 Democrats in Congress (including an independent who caucuses with the Democrats) and 233 democrats in the House. I don't know about you, but to me, that's one basically even split and one slight majority.
Control assumes that you can squash filibusters and veto threats. Neither the House nor Congress have anything like it.
Wow - incoherent, irrational and an idiot to boot. And not even a decent troll. Welcome to my foe list (which is the only list that actually gets its score reduced). Anything to avoid wasting time on you.
As far as a remote control for my home theater goes, in a market where programmable remotes can reach the four digit mark, the PSP is actually rather inexpensive in that regard;-) Yikes! I guess there was a reason I stopped looking into home theater builds a while back. Figures like that require either I rebuild Enron and plunder it like it's 1999 or win several jackpots.
Interesting. Looks like the PSP might actually be a useful portable computer.... once you've freed it from Sony's shackles.
So you're saying that a good chunk of your enjoyment comes from illegal use of the PSP. Not commenting on the morality of ROMS here, simply stating the fact that much of what you enjoy on the PSP is there illegally.
Personally (again, while everyone's sharing), I tried the PSP a few times at a friend's house. My thumb hurt after about 20 minutes, the control stick is iffy for me, and it's positively gigantic, requiring a shell to protect its screen. Not to mention battery life that's abysmal (3-4 hours on UMDs if I understand correctly). No thanks. That experience actually solidified my decision to buy a DS: clamshell (no need for extra shell), fairly compact design, great control mechanisms and astounding battery life (up to 12 hours of continuous gaming).
I'm intrigued by its ability to control a home theater, but that's a mighty expensive remote. I'm glad the DS is getting some competition again, but from my perspective, the DS is the superior hand-held in all aspects, except graphics. And I can live with that.
As much as this is a glib answer, and as much as I hate to disparage people who make a career out of scruting the inscrutable, you're right. I'm filing this under the same heading as the story that grapefruit cures cancer: YBMV (Your Biology Might Vary). Anyone who gorges on pizza, fries and milkshake as a result of this story deserves what they have coming.
I guess there's a reason you're posting at 0. You can't follow a link to http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/. The federalist papers have nothing to do with what a squad in Iraq can do that is in hot pursuit of terrorists. The FISA, however, does. Now crawl back into the pond from which you slithered out.
Analogies are fine and dandy, but they have no place in business accounting - or accounting in general. Please show me how the Bioware/Pandemic acquisition is going to result in $860M in savings and direct profits over any foreseeable future. Keep in mind that EA acquisitions tend to have a life of about 5 years, after which they turn into mere shells of their former selves. Mass Effect could make a cool $300M in revenue - but that's revenue, not profit. Not to mention that an acquisition does not transfer profits this quickly. Book keeping and accounting take a while to be merged... I doubt that anybody at EA is going to see any of the profits from Mass Effect until Bioware's cash on hand will be transferred to EA.
Analogies are the clouds in the sky to the steel in the fire of accounting. They show you exactly what you want to see and have no relation with reality.
Good grief. Not another one. Have you had a look at the actual math of the acquisition? Do you know what the Return in ROI has to be in order for the ROI to be positive? Any idea? Let me give you a hint - it's tied to the investment, and in an ugly fashion.
As for your comment on building yourself up to be an exec... I suspect I'm way ahead of you in that area. Will that make it ok when my mistakes cause you to be laid off, while I make a cool couple of million in the process? Didn't think so. Greed's a funny thing.
Over the lifetime of their existence, which is about ten years each, they amassed at total of about $900M in REVENUE. Not profit. In order to break even on the deal, EA has to get $860M in PROFIT from these two companies. That's not gonna happen, even if we wait 20 years.
You missed my two main points. 1) They're talking about profitability when they just laid out an ungodly amount of money to buy.... what, I don't know. Not to mention that profitability was apparently ok last year, when they were busy advertising. Something's wrong here. 2) This kind of grand strategy starts all the way at the top. My experience is that the bottom tries to make the grand vision work through free overtime and ulcers, while the grand strategists get golden parachutes.
So - Pandemic and Bioware are bought for $860M, which amounts to over $1 million per person. EA Chicago, which advertised as late as October of last year that it's a happening place for high-tech game development, gets closed because it's not projected to hit its profitability targets.
Can I ask? What the fuck is going on at EA? Do they even have a clue what they want? All I see is EA shitting itself down the drain. The saddest part? The grunts - the devs, testers and other peons who slave in countless death marches - will get fired, while the execs will get millions in severance packages.
Thank you. Anyone arguing that Nintendo will/should release a Wii 2.0 within a year to increase CPU power, memory or offer HDMI needs to be reminded of the 32X. A complete and utter failure which many people - both gaming mags and gamers - thought initially brilliant.
You're right that the truly amazing part of that observation would be the telescope - though not its power, but its tracking capability. Even a small telescope (which, for example, can resolve the dual star system in the little dipper) has a hard time keeping up with the moon. Anything bigger than that just runs on huge gears with gallons of grease. Not the best thing for whipping it across the sky. Not to mention the vibrations that this will induce.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it's not just the ex-KGB people who are pining for the "good old days". It's a large chunk of Russia. Yes, there is a significant (even if badly beat up) opposition. However, there is a much larger contingent of ardent Putin supporters. His 80% approval rating is probably inflated, but his real numbers aren't all that far off.
It's been said that the prerequisite for Democracy is a strong middle-class. Guess what - Russia went straight from Feudalism with a complete lack of middle-class to Communism, with its similar lack of a strong middle-class. This means that the political tradition in Russia is one of central strong men (and one woman) who have near absolute power over everything. I don't see that changing anytime soon - the Enlightenment period is long past, and the current global atmosphere does not support its revival.
Oh please. Both the American auto industry and the American music industry are in trouble because of outdated business practices and unappealing products. The people who will be laid off will be laid off for those exact reasons.
As for work not being fairly compensated - are you kidding me? Can you point me to any other job where you can do work for a few hours, and then reap income for the rest of your life? Not only the rest of your life, but potentially the rest of the lives of your children? If anything, compensation for creative works is unfair, but in the opposite direction of what you're thinking.
Not only that, but it is more of a day of mourning than anything else. Maybe mourning is the wrong word, but it certainly is a somber occasion.
In the small town of France where I grew up, the local war memorial (which, for some odd reason, always reminded me of a toilet with a light bulb on top) had more entries for WW 1 than for WW 2. Nov 11th is a day to remember that WW1 was the ugliest and most pointless war that the continent had ever seen. People still shudder at the memory of news articles spinning the gain of a hundred yards as a major victory.
To get a sense of how messed up the war was, watch Noel (Christmas Day). It's the story of a spontaneous frontline truce on Christmas Eve. Yet, the next day, everyone went back to killing each other.
From a Eurotrash American, some counter points:
1. Irrelevant. He was elected, however barely.
2. The minor protests were retarded, and the larger protests are late to the party - not to mention, about the wrong problem. They're certainly no credit to America.
3. You're kidding, right? If you didn't get the idea that Bush was going to send the US down the shitter before 2004, you weren't paying attention.
4. Irrelevant. Pointing out someone else's problems is no way to advance the discussion.
5. Treating the majority of Americans as responsible for Bush's election, and therefore responsible for his crap, is the one thing you can do. Not only did people vote for him in 2000 (which was retarded, but forgivable), but more people voted for him in 2004! At that point, they're responsible for his decisions, and the decisions his administration makes.
So in short: if you voted for Bush twice, I'm holding you personally responsible for the way he is acting. Your parent poster might have said it differently, but it's not far off.
Wrong - you offer a draw if you see that your opponent has a chance of forcing a recurring position. Rather than play out the infinite number of moves, it is polite to acknowledge that even though you have the advantage (material or positional), you can't create the win yourself.
I also suspect that this isn't what Sony is going for. Rather, if they have a brain, they see two things coming: multi-platform players and downloads. Both will make the entire Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD debate moot. Downloads especially will kill any potential advantage from owning one of the two formats.
I do this at least once a month.
"Hi, do you have a [StoreCard]?"
"Ah, sorry, I forgot it at home. No, I don't remember the phone number on it, as I moved a few times. Do you have a new one?"
They either hand me a brand new one that has no information associated with it, or the clerk swipes his/her own.
Easy as pie, automatic wipe of my store record if they get me a new one. The only way they can track me is if they cross-reference the name on the credit card, rather than just the number. Judging from the state of most databases and the problem of duplicate names, that's unlikely to be there.
This is where I wish I could metamod the informative modding of this as "+1, funny". Come on, /., help me out here! "Fair" just won't cut it.
Unsupervised games are the rock foundation of human society. What exactly do you think toddlers, kids and teenagers do when they play cowboys and indians, marbles, crash-the-truck, imitate-mom-and-dad-in annoying-ways, spin-the-bottle or other completely random, unsupervised, goal-less games?
I agree that there's a need for goal-driven and supervised learning (whether it takes the form of games or not), but games played in a leisurely fashion, without specific goals, are just as important in the development of a child. Not only that, but they are the only way that children can actually grow on their own, unless their educator/parents are supremely gifted and know the children better than they know themselves.
Education is more than just knowing how to pour concrete. I pity the soul that thinks that it isn't.
This is an attempt to re-engineer the public's perception of electronic privacy so that only governments and crooks will be seen to have any use for it. Nothing else. Personally, this just makes we want to encrypt everything by default.
And again, Heinlein shows his brilliance. The only thing I'd like him to explain - what's with all the porn he wrote in the end? I mean, I know that it's probably the closest he get to naked nubile hotties at that point, but still....
Something I don't understand.... why do people point to Congress and the House of Representatives, when there's 51 Democrats in Congress (including an independent who caucuses with the Democrats) and 233 democrats in the House. I don't know about you, but to me, that's one basically even split and one slight majority.
Control assumes that you can squash filibusters and veto threats. Neither the House nor Congress have anything like it.
Wow - incoherent, irrational and an idiot to boot. And not even a decent troll. Welcome to my foe list (which is the only list that actually gets its score reduced). Anything to avoid wasting time on you.
As far as a remote control for my home theater goes, in a market where programmable remotes can reach the four digit mark, the PSP is actually rather inexpensive in that regard ;-)
Yikes! I guess there was a reason I stopped looking into home theater builds a while back. Figures like that require either I rebuild Enron and plunder it like it's 1999 or win several jackpots.
Interesting. Looks like the PSP might actually be a useful portable computer.... once you've freed it from Sony's shackles.
So you're saying that a good chunk of your enjoyment comes from illegal use of the PSP. Not commenting on the morality of ROMS here, simply stating the fact that much of what you enjoy on the PSP is there illegally.
Personally (again, while everyone's sharing), I tried the PSP a few times at a friend's house. My thumb hurt after about 20 minutes, the control stick is iffy for me, and it's positively gigantic, requiring a shell to protect its screen. Not to mention battery life that's abysmal (3-4 hours on UMDs if I understand correctly). No thanks. That experience actually solidified my decision to buy a DS: clamshell (no need for extra shell), fairly compact design, great control mechanisms and astounding battery life (up to 12 hours of continuous gaming).
I'm intrigued by its ability to control a home theater, but that's a mighty expensive remote. I'm glad the DS is getting some competition again, but from my perspective, the DS is the superior hand-held in all aspects, except graphics. And I can live with that.
As much as this is a glib answer, and as much as I hate to disparage people who make a career out of scruting the inscrutable, you're right. I'm filing this under the same heading as the story that grapefruit cures cancer: YBMV (Your Biology Might Vary). Anyone who gorges on pizza, fries and milkshake as a result of this story deserves what they have coming.
I guess there's a reason you're posting at 0. You can't follow a link to http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/. The federalist papers have nothing to do with what a squad in Iraq can do that is in hot pursuit of terrorists. The FISA, however, does. Now crawl back into the pond from which you slithered out.
Analogies are fine and dandy, but they have no place in business accounting - or accounting in general. Please show me how the Bioware/Pandemic acquisition is going to result in $860M in savings and direct profits over any foreseeable future. Keep in mind that EA acquisitions tend to have a life of about 5 years, after which they turn into mere shells of their former selves. Mass Effect could make a cool $300M in revenue - but that's revenue, not profit. Not to mention that an acquisition does not transfer profits this quickly. Book keeping and accounting take a while to be merged... I doubt that anybody at EA is going to see any of the profits from Mass Effect until Bioware's cash on hand will be transferred to EA.
Analogies are the clouds in the sky to the steel in the fire of accounting. They show you exactly what you want to see and have no relation with reality.
Good grief. Not another one. Have you had a look at the actual math of the acquisition? Do you know what the Return in ROI has to be in order for the ROI to be positive? Any idea? Let me give you a hint - it's tied to the investment, and in an ugly fashion.
As for your comment on building yourself up to be an exec... I suspect I'm way ahead of you in that area. Will that make it ok when my mistakes cause you to be laid off, while I make a cool couple of million in the process? Didn't think so. Greed's a funny thing.
Completely, utterly, fucking wrong. I suppose you have some source to back this crap up?
Over the lifetime of their existence, which is about ten years each, they amassed at total of about $900M in REVENUE. Not profit. In order to break even on the deal, EA has to get $860M in PROFIT from these two companies. That's not gonna happen, even if we wait 20 years.
You missed my two main points.
1) They're talking about profitability when they just laid out an ungodly amount of money to buy.... what, I don't know. Not to mention that profitability was apparently ok last year, when they were busy advertising. Something's wrong here.
2) This kind of grand strategy starts all the way at the top. My experience is that the bottom tries to make the grand vision work through free overtime and ulcers, while the grand strategists get golden parachutes.
So - Pandemic and Bioware are bought for $860M, which amounts to over $1 million per person. EA Chicago, which advertised as late as October of last year that it's a happening place for high-tech game development, gets closed because it's not projected to hit its profitability targets.
Can I ask? What the fuck is going on at EA? Do they even have a clue what they want? All I see is EA shitting itself down the drain. The saddest part? The grunts - the devs, testers and other peons who slave in countless death marches - will get fired, while the execs will get millions in severance packages.
Would you feel better if the kids call their wooden doll as their "new friend"? This has been going on for as long as toys have existed.
Thank you. Anyone arguing that Nintendo will/should release a Wii 2.0 within a year to increase CPU power, memory or offer HDMI needs to be reminded of the 32X. A complete and utter failure which many people - both gaming mags and gamers - thought initially brilliant.
You're right that the truly amazing part of that observation would be the telescope - though not its power, but its tracking capability. Even a small telescope (which, for example, can resolve the dual star system in the little dipper) has a hard time keeping up with the moon. Anything bigger than that just runs on huge gears with gallons of grease. Not the best thing for whipping it across the sky. Not to mention the vibrations that this will induce.