Posts by Simon Dragon 10 publicly visible posts • joined 23 Apr 2007
Not much use writing to the Chinese government: it's going to turn around and wipe its arse at the Yanks, the same as it did to the UK.
If I were the US Govt., I'd be writing to Microsoft to ask them why they continue to allow IE to be such a bubbling crock of shit in the first place.
It would be a lot simpler if the companies made the video available online, even for a small fee. Any waffle about 'not enough bandwidth' is bullshit, given how the 'net is already swimming in illegal data blatting around the place.
It boils down to control. The studios had it, and they're losing it so they're making a screech. Sure, they have to protect their interests - I would protect mine in a similar situation, we all would. But for doing it this way they're a bunch of tossers.
It's funny how things get forgotten. A few years ago, the author Michael Tuten wrote a book called "Tintin in the New World", and, if memory serves, with the full support and knowledge of either Herge himself or the estate.
One thing I certainly remember is that by the end of it young Tintin wasn't a virgin any more. I seem to recall at least one encounter with a female woman of the opposite sex. (I'd go and get the exact reference but unfortunately my copy is in storage at the moment.) I'd even be prepared to claim there's a reference to her pulling the estimable reporter's boxers down before the act, as it were...
So it all this prudery is a bit late. Of course, it could be because it's drawn rather than written, but even so...
Oh well, folks, the honeymoon is over. So much for "don't be evil"... it now seems to be "don't be evil, ever, but sometimes you can not be less evil than at other times". (Sorry, Eric Arthur Blair, for that horrible, mangled paraphrase.)
In some respects I'm more concerned about Google than Microsoft, these days --- yeesh, I never thought I'd see myself type THAT. But it's true. M$ just wants to make money and to hold on to the effective monopoly on OSs it's created for itself. Compared to Google, which seems to want nothing less than to know everything about everything and everybody, or at the very least to know where you can find it, it's positively inoffensive.
Anybody else reminded of that blob-creature at the end of "Akira", swallowing up everything in sight?...
Metron, you might be shocked to learn just how little money writers in fact make. Certainly some of them do very well for themselves, but don't think for one minute that we're all rolling in seas of green... In point of fact, the results of a survey carried out here in the UK were made public a few weeks ago (I read an article in one of the broadsheets; I forget which one) stating that about 5% of the writers in the UK had around 90% of the total wealth accounted for by writers... and the average earnings of the others for their work was less than £10k per annum. We dumb saps need every penny we can get.
You ask what's the difference between reading a book online and borrowing from a public library. Quite a bit, as a matter of fact. There's a Public Lending Agreement which states that each time a book is borrowed, a small amount of money is credited to the author, and periodically the author receives a small royalty fee.
And if you're interested, Chris, at least part of the Google search algorithm is available online, as is the core structure of the search engine. Brin and Page wrote a paper on it while at university, and I've read several papers on the maths behind Google. I have to admit, it's ingenious. Here's a couple of links, if the moderators will permit: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html and
http://www.ams.org/featurecolumn/archive/pagerank.html
I think what's happened here is that some company has snapped up PeakStream and deliberately kept it silent. If it's such hot property, would you want news of such an acquisition taking place? There'd be bids, counterbids, and always the chance of headhunters being hired to call up the ex-PeakStream people at their new place of work and attempt to lure them away...
No... much better to swoop in and carry them off to a new place.
I could be completely wrong, of course... it might just be a power outage in the area and they've all gone home for the [day|week|afternoon|silly season]...
As ever, M$ has seen a rolling bandwagon and jumped to get on the back of it. Unfortunately, however, they appear to have missed the jump and landed flat on the ground in the settling dust. (Probably with their face in a pile of equine overflow.)
There seems to be a fair bit of that going on. It's funny that we never hear about this innovative new products that are going to make our lives complete UNTIL a competitor is marketing or developing something similar. From DOS to the flatpanel display interface (Surface? I forget), M$ have run after and jumped on bandwagons.
Most unfortunately of all, perhaps the one time they really should have landed in equine overflow they managed to corner the market. Dammit.
Damned bloody humans. I'd like to shoot the hunter in the arse with a high-velocity rifle and then club him over the head until he's dead. Why? Well, because he's there, of course, the same reason that he shot the leopard. I mean, if the cojones quotient of shooting a leopard and then clubbing it is so valuable, what about the CQ of shooting someone armed similarly to yourself?
Actually, I'd like to give the hunting rifles and clubs to the leopards, and see what they make of them.
It makes me sick to be human.
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