Are the helix files easily translated into more standard files that I could play on my existing hardware/players? There's no way I'm going to pay for crippled files that hardly play on anything.
" 'It's going to be ugly, there is no way this launch is going to go well.'"
"The room was filled with geeks drinking Rum-and-Jolt, ready to participate in the console unveiling ceremony. At last, the moment arrived: a giant mecha burst through the styrofoam wall, and walked in a straight line until it met the side wall where it could walk no more. The top opened: and inside was a dead nerd., clutching a bloody joystick. Our intrepid investigators arrived mere minutes later."
"Not to be a technology nay-sayer, but does this low-power TV station need all of this high-faluting stuff?"
Yeah, all you need is an old VCR and a stack of half-done sports tapes, worn-out public domain cartoons, and soap opera marathons that you can pick up for $3 a crate-of-tapes at any garage sale. Then you'll be on TV in no-time, and with a little word-of-mouth, your ratings should surpass those of the CW network by the end of your first broadcast month.
Does this include several days downtime for when the Vista machines have to be shut off and the old XP machines dusted off when someone discovers an extremely serious security flaw in the new OS?
In Japan, they call Godzilla "Gojira". Oh, and DO be mindful of the whole metric-to-english measurement translation problem. The last thing you want is a terror alert because a 65 foot tall Algerian slipped through airport security somewhere in Europe.
"And to sweeten the deal, we've hidden special codes somewhere the spleen section section of the genes of everyone on earth. Make sure to check these codes at www.mountaindew.com to win your free iTunes music: and one prize winner WILL RECEIVE A NEW NISSAN XTERRA!"
What's the matter, Chuck? Cerebro broken?
on
The Next X Prize
·
· Score: 1
Too bad there is not a more direct way to sift through humanity to find examples of Homo Superior.
"Congress is just upset that they can't effectively tax online gambling because most of the companies are offshore. It's a case of sour grapes - if we can't tax it, you can't do it!"
There have been movements, pretty much shot down, for Congress to tax the hell out of the Internet. (Some state governments have actually managed to add news sales taxes on out-of-state Internet sales: interstate commerce protections be damned!). Should we let Congress tax it soon so they don't end up destroying it?
I'm taking at least as long to keep moving in the other direction. Government really has no idea of the value of anything, so maximum and minimum wage values are a bad idea. I don't think we are headed for a bad place at all. All I ask is for a "safety net" for those whose skills and life situations mean that they wage they earn can't sustain them. This takes care of the problem where your minimum wage level just isn't enough for the single mother with 6 children, while it doesn't give the well-off teenager earning some extra bucks for movies one thin dime. Companies then are not forced to get rid of entire classes of workers whose work is worth much less than the arbitrary government wage level. There is so much less waste this way since the "handouts" are focused only on those who need them.
We need a safety net for the unfortunate, not a vast drift net which entangles and drowns all.
Bill, why not instead show us an OS where the spamlords, virusjacks, malware-hounds, and other cyber-creeps cry "foul"? Instead, you are angering the virus fighters!
If Microsoft was in charge of instituting public health plans, it would introduce new reforms that would get rid of doctors instead of getting rid of diseases.
"I think we could agree that working a regular week should pay enough to eat"
We'll strongly disagree on that. A regular work week should pay what the work is worth. Period. To show a problem with your example, what about a teenager working to get a few extra bucks? One with food already on the table? Can you honestly tell me why the teenager's employer should be forced to give him enough to eat on?
"I think a minimum wage is required given the power and lack of morality that corporations have."
It doesn't enforce morality. However, it does make the company do things you really aren't thinking of. If a law comes along and requires a company to pay $10 an hour to someone who is earning $6 an hour, do you think the company is going to sit still and take the hit on a situation where 40% of a paycheck is unearned? Welfare? Give-away? No, the company is going to get rid of as many of these jobs as possible, and this means firing. Or downsizing as these overpaid ones leave through attrition. Where they can't get rid of the overpaid workers, as in some retail environments, the company is forced to raises prices... for all.
Where's one of the national parks being clear-cutted? I tried to find one, but could not. The number of decent-paying American jobs has been on the rise, so I know that claim isn't true. But I'd like to check on the national park claim.
"And the worst of all is that they convinced all the"moderate" voices on what passes for our "left" that they are the voices of the future."
I think you are confused about what is "left" and what is "moderate". The American left wing is left wing (not moderate) just as the right wing is right wing (not moderatte) by definition.
"a minimum living wage (appropriate for that country)"
You do realize of course, that there is no such thing as one value that can be called a "minimum living wage"? Each person's living situation varies so wildly so you get "one size fits few" with terrible consequences and results such as "welfare for the rich". I'd rather have the company pay each person for the real value of the work, and then the government welfare system can make up for any difficulties. The typically meaningless "minimum living wage" amounts proposed always end up being too little for a single mother with 6 children, and too much for the teenage son of an upper middle class family doing the same job as the single mother, but to earn money for concert tickets and DVDs. Yet you would pay both the same.
"We are competing with people who do not have 40 hour work weeks, do not have child labor laws"
1) How many hours do these IT workers work? How many do American IT workers work? Do you have any idea? Let me know whether or not either group works more than 40 hours a week or less.
2) Do you have any links or other support about children doing IT work?
The push for free-and-fair trade (which includes the ability to outsource work to workers who *GASP* happen to be better at the job) goes back at least as far as 1948. It includes regular ol' liberals and regular ol' conservatives long before the neocons ever exited. They haven't "sold our our country". Rather, they are relenquishing a power to make decisions that really should have been left to the people in the first place.
"the US did fine for almost 200 years using a system of tariffs.... It worked go read a freakin history book"
During these 200 years, we had a lot of other bad idea that we've gotten rid of. It's more than past time to get rid of tariffs (in which government punishes people for making their own personal economic decisions).
"The one world neocons got into office everything went crap"
Crack open your history book again. The push for free-and-fair trade predates the creation of the "neocon" movement by many years. This reform idea can be at least traced back to 1948 (GATT), and it has continued and progressed through Republicans and Democrats alike.
"you are sending a reply to an email with totaly unrelated contents... over half the time??? wtf. that is a major problem on your part. "
If there is a problem, it is that I don't change the subject more than I do. According to long-term email etiquette standards, it is bad to leave a subject line in place that no longer reflects the content if a conversation has shifted.
See my journal for an explanation of how Gmail's bias toward meaningless subject lines breaks standards and causes problems outside of your own little Gmail threads.
Slashdot Mirror
Are the helix files easily translated into more standard files that I could play on my existing hardware/players? There's no way I'm going to pay for crippled files that hardly play on anything.
"The room was filled with geeks drinking Rum-and-Jolt, ready to participate in the console unveiling ceremony. At last, the moment arrived: a giant mecha burst through the styrofoam wall, and walked in a straight line until it met the side wall where it could walk no more. The top opened: and inside was a dead nerd., clutching a bloody joystick. Our intrepid investigators arrived mere minutes later."
"Not to be a technology nay-sayer, but does this low-power TV station need all of this high-faluting stuff?"
Yeah, all you need is an old VCR and a stack of half-done sports tapes, worn-out public domain cartoons, and soap opera marathons that you can pick up for $3 a crate-of-tapes at any garage sale. Then you'll be on TV in no-time, and with a little word-of-mouth, your ratings should surpass those of the CW network by the end of your first broadcast month.
"Blah, the windows is shutting down and errored Powerpoint screens had no class. Now the Amiga desktop. Those stations had class."
I've seen a few of those. I also saw the TV Guide channel (when it was called Prevue) where the upper half was an Amiga guru screen error screen.
What beats all, though, is the channel I saw in another city that had the blue Commodore 64 "Ready" prompt screen on Channel 2 for days.
You can even write the entire program to run the station itself in a mere 11 characters of APL code.
Does this include several days downtime for when the Vista machines have to be shut off and the old XP machines dusted off when someone discovers an extremely serious security flaw in the new OS?
"I don't see any option to search for Cobol."
Well, that's one entire season of "Battlestar Galactica" rendered entirely pointless. Thanks a lot!
In Japan, they call Godzilla "Gojira". Oh, and DO be mindful of the whole metric-to-english measurement translation problem. The last thing you want is a terror alert because a 65 foot tall Algerian slipped through airport security somewhere in Europe.
Now I have a use for all those 5.25" floppy diskette sleeves.
"And to sweeten the deal, we've hidden special codes somewhere the spleen section section of the genes of everyone on earth. Make sure to check these codes at www.mountaindew.com to win your free iTunes music: and one prize winner WILL RECEIVE A NEW NISSAN XTERRA!"
Too bad there is not a more direct way to sift through humanity to find examples of Homo Superior.
Do these guys also sell a cell phone built into a shoe, go to with the cone of silence?
Of course it is invisible, and there is not a man in it.
"Congress is just upset that they can't effectively tax online gambling because most of the companies are offshore. It's a case of sour grapes - if we can't tax it, you can't do it!"
There have been movements, pretty much shot down, for Congress to tax the hell out of the Internet. (Some state governments have actually managed to add news sales taxes on out-of-state Internet sales: interstate commerce protections be damned!). Should we let Congress tax it soon so they don't end up destroying it?
I'm taking at least as long to keep moving in the other direction. Government really has no idea of the value of anything, so maximum and minimum wage values are a bad idea. I don't think we are headed for a bad place at all. All I ask is for a "safety net" for those whose skills and life situations mean that they wage they earn can't sustain them. This takes care of the problem where your minimum wage level just isn't enough for the single mother with 6 children, while it doesn't give the well-off teenager earning some extra bucks for movies one thin dime. Companies then are not forced to get rid of entire classes of workers whose work is worth much less than the arbitrary government wage level. There is so much less waste this way since the "handouts" are focused only on those who need them.
We need a safety net for the unfortunate, not a vast drift net which entangles and drowns all.
Bill, why not instead show us an OS where the spamlords, virusjacks, malware-hounds, and other cyber-creeps cry "foul"? Instead, you are angering the virus fighters!
If Microsoft was in charge of instituting public health plans, it would introduce new reforms that would get rid of doctors instead of getting rid of diseases.
"I think we could agree that working a regular week should pay enough to eat"
We'll strongly disagree on that. A regular work week should pay what the work is worth. Period. To show a problem with your example, what about a teenager working to get a few extra bucks? One with food already on the table? Can you honestly tell me why the teenager's employer should be forced to give him enough to eat on?
"I think a minimum wage is required given the power and lack of morality that corporations have."
It doesn't enforce morality. However, it does make the company do things you really aren't thinking of. If a law comes along and requires a company to pay $10 an hour to someone who is earning $6 an hour, do you think the company is going to sit still and take the hit on a situation where 40% of a paycheck is unearned? Welfare? Give-away? No, the company is going to get rid of as many of these jobs as possible, and this means firing. Or downsizing as these overpaid ones leave through attrition. Where they can't get rid of the overpaid workers, as in some retail environments, the company is forced to raises prices... for all.
Where's one of the national parks being clear-cutted? I tried to find one, but could not. The number of decent-paying American jobs has been on the rise, so I know that claim isn't true. But I'd like to check on the national park claim.
"And the worst of all is that they convinced all the"moderate" voices on what passes for our "left" that they are the voices of the future."
I think you are confused about what is "left" and what is "moderate". The American left wing is left wing (not moderate) just as the right wing is right wing (not moderatte) by definition.
"a minimum living wage (appropriate for that country)"
You do realize of course, that there is no such thing as one value that can be called a "minimum living wage"? Each person's living situation varies so wildly so you get "one size fits few" with terrible consequences and results such as "welfare for the rich". I'd rather have the company pay each person for the real value of the work, and then the government welfare system can make up for any difficulties. The typically meaningless "minimum living wage" amounts proposed always end up being too little for a single mother with 6 children, and too much for the teenage son of an upper middle class family doing the same job as the single mother, but to earn money for concert tickets and DVDs. Yet you would pay both the same.
"We are competing with people who do not have 40 hour work weeks, do not have child labor laws"
1) How many hours do these IT workers work? How many do American IT workers work? Do you have any idea? Let me know whether or not either group works more than 40 hours a week or less.
2) Do you have any links or other support about children doing IT work?
"And every time we say "Look at it locally but buy it online" we do the same thing."
The "same thing" being buying from those who provide the best deal.
"And if we don't- we are being stupid paying high prices to keep a local merchant in business"
Absolutely, we are being stupid to go the skinflint who is overcharging us.
"They may be out of a job- out on the street- but at least the candidate voted for/against the issue they care more than anything about"
With unemployment rates as low as they are, this is becoming less of a problem.
"The FN neo-con penny sniffing..."
The push for free-and-fair trade (which includes the ability to outsource work to workers who *GASP* happen to be better at the job) goes back at least as far as 1948. It includes regular ol' liberals and regular ol' conservatives long before the neocons ever exited. They haven't "sold our our country". Rather, they are relenquishing a power to make decisions that really should have been left to the people in the first place.
"and making one of the most middle-class hostile changes to overtime eligibility"
I bet you can't name one middle-class-hostile change.
"the US did fine for almost 200 years using a system of tariffs.... It worked go read a freakin history book"
During these 200 years, we had a lot of other bad idea that we've gotten rid of. It's more than past time to get rid of tariffs (in which government punishes people for making their own personal economic decisions).
"The one world neocons got into office everything went crap"
Crack open your history book again. The push for free-and-fair trade predates the creation of the "neocon" movement by many years. This reform idea can be at least traced back to 1948 (GATT), and it has continued and progressed through Republicans and Democrats alike.
"you are sending a reply to an email with totaly unrelated contents... over half the time??? wtf. that is a major problem on your part. "
If there is a problem, it is that I don't change the subject more than I do. According to long-term email etiquette standards, it is bad to leave a subject line in place that no longer reflects the content if a conversation has shifted.
See my journal for an explanation of how Gmail's bias toward meaningless subject lines breaks standards and causes problems outside of your own little Gmail threads.