march in general
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left. :) first, let me say a semi-thank you (only semi because you're
still too fearful/doubtful of me or my intentions to email). second,
please don't feel the need to defend me against the neocons, neocon
wannabes, friends of neocons types. just ignore them, if at all
possible. i mean, my gosh, the vast majority of this planet was
against the iraq war, and over 3 billion watched the live 8 concerts...
we're the vast majority worldwide, not the pro-iraq war, anti-live 8
american media.
now, about my sometimes maddening incomprehensibility:
1) i was often pressed for time, so that limited my ability to explain
fully.
2) other times, i just didn't feel like spelling it out step by step.
3) even if i spelled it out, some literal-minded or writer-types
wouldn't understand it and they weren't my target audience anyway. i
was intentionally being as metaphorical or abstract as possible to
bypass the literal-minded types.
4) i sometimes had 2 or 3 different audiences with 2 or 3 different
meanings packed into a single post, which accounts for some of the
vagueness or disjointedness. i.e. the more layers i added on top, the
more incoherent it can become.
5) that said, i have a healthy base of naturally occuring incoherence
because that's how i think. lol. it's not bull: i'm far more analog
and associative, than digital.
6) most of the anti-iraq war and pro-live 8 crowd i was aiming for,
got it. for the most part. i think. :)
googlegroups2sucks
wrong and almost always right on the big things. e.g. you can be all
the things stated below but if you advocate a project that ends up
losing millions of pounds, it's mere icing on a rotten cake.
...looking forward to next week's integrity piece. ]
The Times March 02, 2006
Soft skills: leadership
Make the most of being yourself
By Carol Lewis
IT'S NO good just sitting there hoping that your hard work will speak
for itself. Aspiring leaders need to be go-getters able to lead from
the front, middle or back depending on the current management fad.
Judith Nelson, the personnel director for Tesco UK, has got up and gone
up in her career - she has a team of 75 people reporting to her and
handles the human resource needs of 260,000 people. So what is the
secret of her leadership success? "Being myself."
www.amazon.co.uk stocks more than 7,000 books on leadership - there
has to be more to it than simply being yourself. Jenny Kidby, a
principal consultant with OPP, the business psychology consultancy,
elaborates: "You need to develop yourself into the best version of
yourself." Books and courses can help but you can't "follow a
cookie-cutter approach", Kidby says. "To be a leader you have to
have someone who is willing to follow you." The key to leadership
lies in the ability to interact and connect with potential followers,
most of whom want leaders who are "genuine" and worth following,
she says.
Good leaders have great communication skills and can empathise and
motivate. They understand what makes them and other people tick, Kidby
says. "Employ all these (skills) and adapt your style depending on
who you're trying to lead and what you're trying to achieve", and
you're on to a winner.
Nelson has this sussed. She says that she tailors her style to suit the
event, which could be a senior directors' meeting or an informal chat
with shop-floor workers. She treats everyone as individuals, "as if
they are the first person I've met that day".
Unsurprisingly, Nelson has read Why Should Anyone be Led by You? by Rob
Goffee and Gareth Jones, the management experts whose catchphrase is:
"Be yourself - more - with skill."
Goffee and Jones interviewed leaders and found that "authentic"
ones have great self-knowledge. They know how they differ from others
and capitalise on that without rebelling. Bill Gates, for example,
plays up his geek status.
Authentic leaders, such as Richard Branson of Virgin and Dell's
Michael Dell, have an innate ability to read social context and adapt
their style to suit. They know which personality traits they can reveal
to whom and when.
Many authentic leaders have perfected their ability to relate and read
situations by working in sales and on foreign assignments, while a
"depressingly small number have an MBA", says Goffee, who is
Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School. They
also continue to refine their skills throughout their careers by
constantly seeking feedback.
But let's face it, we can't all be leaders or there would be no
followers. So be yourself, be genuine. If you don't want to lead, sit
tight and let the hard work speak for itself.
GET AHEAD
GREAT leaders aren't show-offs eager to impress. They are quieter
sorts who do things a bit differently, according to the people we
interviewed this week. They are "authentic". The skills they
possess are soft - the ability to communicate, work in teams, adapt,
persuade and motivate.
In this series we have been collecting some of the hard facts about
soft skills; why we need them and how to get them.
Test your leadership potential by reading and answering the questions
in Rob Goffee and Gareth Jones's book Why Should Anyone be Led by
You? Career readers can order it at the special discounted price of
£12.80 (plus p&p) - rrp £15.99. Telephone McGraw-Hill customer
services on 01628 502700 and quote the special offer code TWSA06. Offer
ends June 30, 2006.
Next week: Integrity
googlegroups2sucks
if want to get technical about it, i've been thinking about
anti-corruption for the past decade or so, but never at length, nor in
depth. it was something that had been in the back of mind while i
shaved in the morning, though very infrequently. i did think it over
more seriously after 9/11, but not immediately after 9/11. i was
mostly watching 9/11 coverage, then following the afghanistan coverage.
it wasn't until about 2002 i began to think more along the lines of
long-term prevention and that's when i mulled over anti-corruption some
more, but i didn't post about it at length. i never have nor do i plan
to post every little single thought that crosses my mind.
it just gradually built up over time, in the run-up to the iraq war,
during, then afterwards. only after it seemed that my voice was
getting heard sometime during the dean campaign, did i start to run
through the various scenarios, mostly in terms of approach. by early
2004, i was going full throttle on anti-corruption. it peaked and
basically ended with koizumi's win in september 2005. i've been
coasting since then...
googlegroups2sucks
because you're going to learn french! heh. well, maybe not french,
but how about learning to sing one of the most famous & popular arias
of all time? bizet's carmen. so download it now (legally, of course),
then sing along... (as an added bonus -- for a limited time only --
you'll also find the english translation underneath.)
Carmen
HAVANAISE (HABANERA)
French:
L'amour est un oiseau rebelle
que nul ne peut apprivoiser,
et c'est bien en vain qu'on l'appelle,
s'il lui convient de refuser!
Rien n'y fait, menace ou prière,
l'un parle bien, l'autre se tait;
et c'est l'autre que je préfère,
il n'a rien dit, mais il me plaît.
L'amour! l'amour! l'amour! l'amour!
L'amour est enfant de Bohême,
il n'a jamais, jamais connu de loi,
si tu ne m'aimes pas, je t'aime,
si je t'aime, prends garde à toi!
Choeur
Prends garde à toi!
Carmen
Si tu ne m'aimes pas,
si tu ne m'aimes pas, je t'aime!
Choeur
Prends garde à toi!
Carmen
Mais si je t'aime,
si je t'aime, prends garde à toi!
L'oiseau que tu croyais surprendre
battit de l'aile et s'envola;
l'amour est loin, tu peux l'attendre,
tu ne l'attends plus, il est là.
Tout autour de toi, vite, vite,
il vient, s'en va, puis il revient;
tu crois le tenir, il t'évite,
tu crois l'éviter, il te tient!
L'amour! l'amour! l'amour! l'amour!
English Translation:
Love is like a rebellious bird
That no one quite knows how to tame.
Try to call it, you won't be heard
If to refuse you is its aim.
Nothing works, neither threat nor plea,
One man talks well, the other's mum.
And it's this one I'd rather see --
I like him though he's acting dumb.
Oh love, yes love! Oh love, yes love!
Well, love is like a Gypsy child
That's never heard of any law or rule;
If you don't love me and I'm wild
About you, well, I say: look out, you fool!
Chorus
Look out, you fool!
Carmen
If you don't love me, you
Don't love me and I'm wild about you!
Chorus
Look out, you fool!
Carmen
But if I love you,
If I love you, look out, you fool!
When you thought that the bird was caught
It beat its wings and flew away;
Love is far and you wait for naught,
But don't wait and it's here to stay.
All around you, it comes and goes
And then comes back -- it's uncontrolled.
Think you've dodged it? You're in its throes!
It flees when you think you have a hold!
Oh love, yes love! Oh love, yes love!
Translation © 2004 by Jacob Lubliner
googlegroups2sucks
parents. i would listen to it over and over as a toddler, oftentimes
demanding my father hold me in his arms while he danced along gently.
my recollections are vague but it rings true. i did and still to this
day, find this song wonderfully soothing. ]
GUANTANAMERA
Original music by Jose Fernandez Diaz
Music adaptation by Pete Seeger & Julian Orbon
Lyric adaptation by Julian Orbon, based on a poem by Jose Marti
Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crecen las palmas
Yo soy un hombre sincero
De donde crecen las palmas
Y antes de morirme quiero
Echar mis versos del alma
Chorus:
Guantanamera
Guajira Guantanamera
Guantanamera
Guajira Guantanamera
Mi verso es de un verde claro
Y de un carmin encendido
Mi verso es de un verde claro
Y de un carmin encendido
Mi verso es un ciervo herido
Que busca en el monte amparo
Chorus
I am a truthful man from this land of palm trees
Before dying I want to share these poems of my soul
My verses are light green
But they are also flaming red
(the next verse says,)
I cultivate a rose in June and in January
For the sincere friend who gives me his hand
And for the cruel one who would tear out this
heart with which I live
I do not cultivate thistles nor nettles
I cultivate a white rose
Cultivo la rosa blanca
En junio como en enero
Qultivo la rosa blanca
En junio como en enero
Para el amigo sincero
Que me da su mano franca
Chorus
Y para el cruel que me arranca
El corazon con que vivo
Y para el cruel que me arranca
El corazon con que vivo
Cardo ni ortiga cultivo
Cultivo la rosa blanca
Chorus
Con los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar
Con los pobres de la tierra
Quiero yo mi suerte echar
El arroyo de la sierra
Me complace mas que el mar
Chorus
©1963,1965 (Renewed) Fall River Music, Inc (BMI)
All Rights Reserved.
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googlegroups2sucks wrote:
> [ guantanamera is the first song i obsessed over, according to my
> parents. i would listen to it over and over as a toddler, oftentimes
> demanding my father hold me in his arms while he danced along gently.
> my recollections are vague but it rings true. i did and still to this
> day, find this song wonderfully soothing. ]
forgot to mention, i'm referring to "digno garcia"'s cover. can't
stand the other versions...
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<snip>
Recently, I frequently hear from people that, "There is both light and
shadow to the reform. The social disparity widened as a result of
advancing structural reform."
[ there is both light and shadow to the olympics. there is only one
glorious gold medal that gives off a heavenly light, and everyone else,
even including those with silver and bronze, will stand in the shadow
of the gold. if everyone gets a gold medal, there is no competition
and no olympics. everyone understands and accepts these disparities,
and yet they come to compete. they come to watch. they come to see
the drama unfold as the olympic fires burn.
so what of the losers? are they any less human? no, of course not.
the sanctitiy of their souls remains constant regardless of the results
(take note, bode bashers). no one can take away their individual
dignities. no one can ordain they are nothing. they are our fellow
brothers and sisters struggling to make something of themselves, as we
all are. their stories are our stories. they can try to compete
again, indeed it is their responsibility to try again for their sake
and for our sake, or find another sport, or find another enterprise --
perhaps business -- to throw themselves into. no one deserves to
suffer excessively because of loss and perhaps that's when government
can step in and moderate their suffering. to give them another chance,
but not so much that society feels it is being taken advantage of.
however, is this really the issue when it comes to structural reform?
put another way, is structural reform unfairly taking away shizuka's
gold or is reform taking the gold away from someone who didn't earn the
medal in the first place, who got the gold because of wasteful
inefficiencies, bad decisions or pork-barrel politics? in that case,
isn't the loss created by reform mitigated by the opportunity of giving
another deserving shizuka a chance to realize her dreams? isn't
everyone better off if everyone finds what they're best at through fair
competition? reform per se isn't always the right answer, but reform
that levels the playing field is the only answer. ]
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feel a lot of constraints for fear of causing undue or inadvertent harm
to innocents. it feels like a perpetual straightjacket. if this is
what "influence" means, then i don't know if i like it. i find myself
frequently reminiscing back to when i was a faceless troll no one paid
any attention to. those were the days when i could rip into anyone or
anything to my heart's content. those were the days of true freedom...
nowadays, the only thing i feel i can safely talk about are the songs i
listened to as a youngster. everything else is a third rail...
Just the Two of Us
Grover Washington, Jr. & Bill Withers
I see the crystal raindrops fall
And see the beauty of it all
Is when the sun comes shining through
To make those rainbows in my mind
When I think of you some time
And I want to spend some time with you
Just the two of us
We can make it if we try
Just the two of us
Just the two of us
Building castles in the sky
Just the two of us
You and I
We look for love, no time for tears
Wasted water's all that is
And it don't make no flowers grow
Good things might come to those who wait
Not to those who wait too late
We got to go for all we know
Just the two of us
We can make it if we try
Just the two of us
Just the two of us
Building castles in the sky
Just the two of us
You and I
I hear the crystal raindrops fall
On the window down the hall
And it becomes the morning dew
Darling, when the morning comes
And I see the morning sun
I want to be the one with you
Just the two of us
We can make it if we try
Just the two of us
Just the two of us
Building big castles way on high
Just the two of us
You and I
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the balls to actually _say_ it directly. typical of weasel writer
types (brave enough to read, but too fearful to reply directly on
usenet). so, who knows, but let's assume it is...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rodes-fishburne/how-to-create-reality-in-_b_16660.html
How to Create Reality in 7 Simple Steps (1 comments )
Rodes Fishburne
It is now easier than ever to create your own reality. Once the
province of eastern mystics and bi-polar schizophrenics,
reality-creation is poised to break out as the next, must-have,
accessory of 2006. Here, for the first time, is a simple step-by-step
primer perfect for carrying in your wallet.
Step One:
First, repeat the reality you want to create over and over until
you've honed it down to a few simple words.
For example, let's say you want to build a high-velocity
supercollider in the back yard in order to study the behavior of
sub-atomic particles. And let's say the rest of the neighborhood
isn't terribly keen on the whole "quarks" thing. A possible
response to their protests, petitions, marches, and general hubabaloo
is the simple declarative statement: "I have not changed my position.
This will happen."
Step Two:
Enlist your friends to help explain to the rest of the world the
reality you're busy creating. Especially your friends with influence.
Friends with influence help create an aura of inevitability around you
and your project.
[ i have gained no "friends" from this internet thing. remember, my
readers are too scared to even email. <-- this is a key point that
cannot be overstated. everything else will make much more sense if you
don't forget that. i've gained eyeballs over time. i've lost eyeballs
over time. no more, no less. ]
Step Three:
You are now ready to Act! And then Act! again. The important thing
about doing something, versus doing nothing, is that once you have done
something, people have to respond. Comprende? That makes them reactors.
And that makes you an actor! Like Harrison Ford. But for real! The
beauty of doing something is that as soon as your opponents respond to
what you've done, you get to do something AGAIN! Once you start
acting, and they start reacting, there's no telling where it will end
up. You'll be acting, and they'll be reacting, all over the place.
And guess who'll constantly look like they don't have fresh ideas?
Not you!
Step Four:
If someone, say a child past his bedtime, (or a certain five-term
senator from Pennsylvania whose name rhymes with Bertha,) were to
question the reality you're almost done creating, don't worry!
Simply attack his greatest strength in the media. If he persists, tell
him in a firm tone that it's time for bed. (Note: This works better
when it's your child.)
Step Five:
Never, ever, care what other people think. Caring what others think is
for sissy-pants (not to be confused with sycophants, who can actually
be quite useful. Especially if they are influencers. See Step Two)
[ personally, i do care what other people think and feel, it's what
guides my strategies and why i need feedback. without it, i can make
gigantic mistakes, go too far, or cause more problems than i solve.
but when i'm certain of something, i will charge ahead regardless.
it's a balancing act, and when it comes to how people perceive me, i
definitely need much more feedback. actually, i'm not even looking for
praise -- the criticisms are far more important and useful... ]
Step Six:
If you become temporarily disheartened in your quest to create reality,
just remember, as the noted American philosopher Kris Kristofferson
once wrote, "Reality's just another word for nothing left to
lose."
Step Seven:
If, having tried all the above, you find a spreading crack in the
massive edifice known by your concerned friends, family, and neighbors
as, "Uncle Jack's reality distortion field," you still have one
choice.
Become President of the United States.
[ well, i dunno about bush or clinton or mccain or whomever else, but i
am OUT of politics. ]
googlegroups2sucks
Scarlett Johansson's tantric love
2006-03-03 12:20:12
Josh Hartnett has hinted he and lover Scarlett Johansson have tantric
sex.
The handsome actor claims has been trying to master the mystical
practice - which involves meditating while having sex to achieve a
mind-blowing orgasm - and insists it is incredible once you get the
hang of it.
[ how can one NOT have mind-blowing sex with scarlett johansson? how
is that even conceivable? ...yeah, another ho-hum session with
scarlett, so the dude needs tantric sex to spice it up. ...or maybe
she's the one who needs and suggested the tantric spice? ]
googlegroups2sucks
I look forward to the full data, but hopefully this will help kill of
the "blog readers are young" zombie. I would be quite happy if they
were, but they just aren't. It's a silly mischaracterization, along
with "bloggers are geeks because they use computers." I'm sure plenty
of us are geeks, but it has little to do with the fact that we stumbled
upon free easy to use tools requiring little actual geek knowledge in
order to rant away on the internets.
[ a zombie started by the dean campaign desperate to spin journalists
into thinking deaniacs were cool, i suspect.
as for the "geek" label, i'll take another stab at because i think it's
critical in turning out more math & science majors, and reducing the
number of phys ed. majors (currently the no. 1 major) across american
campuses. as such, it'll be critical as we compete against india &
china, and the rest of asia, for the next 500 years or so. i'm not
kidding. it's that important and that persistent an issue and the
sooner we turn this around, the better off america and the west will
be.
the primary drive shouldn't be making math & science cool. it's
inherently the wrong approach. the primary focus should be making math
& science _respectable_, like doctors and lawyers are.
musicians like bono are cool. movie stars like scarlett johansson are
cool. bill gates is not cool (as much as i love the guy), nor should
he try to be cool. it's simply not sustainable. making math & science
cool and thereby attracting those young people most obsessed with
coolness will result in a fundamental mismatch and we'll just end up
with a lot of mediocre math & science majors.
make the focus respectability or earning potential or prominence or
status and you'll end up with more kids with greater natural aptitudes
for math & science. do that, and the cool factor will follow
automatically, as if it were planned all along. forget the cool icing,
and focus on making the cake respectable. put another way, don't run
away from the geek label (like how dems run away from the liberal label
and embrace the progressive label instead), stand by it. ]
googlegroups2sucks
ok, one more post on the subject, then i'll try to walk away from it.
1) i have very little to gain personally, and pretty much open myself
to some seriously withering criticism, by trying to turn the geek hate
around.
2) america and the west's general contempt for geeks will turn around
sooner or later. the sooner it happens, the better in terms of money
and quality of life in the years ahead.
3) indian and chinese people probably detest or will eventually detest
geeks in time, but right now, they're too desperate trying to get out
of poverty to give a shit about esoteric labels like cool vs. uncool.
4) if indian or chinese agents were systematically trying to convince
americans to stay cool and drop out of school, keep disdaining geeks,
keep equating geeks with losers, keep majoring in phys. ed., keep the
education system the way it is and don't reform it, make the superbowl
the national holiday, ...then i'd consider THAT an act of geopolitical
war. lol.
5) i think all you geek haters are subversive undercover cylon agents.
so there.
googlegroups2sucks
worried i may aggravate the koizumi government's position, but i'm glad
the subject came up. for that, thank you japan times. ]
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/ed20060304a1.html
EDITORIAL
Revamping Japanese ODA
The government is planning to break up the Japan Bank for International
Cooperation (JBIC) as an integral part of reforms aimed at the nation's
official development assistance (ODA) program. The bank's international
finance division will be reorganized into a new government-run
financial institution, while the yen-loan division -- which makes
yen-denominated loans on easy terms -- will be merged into the Japan
International Cooperation Agency (JICA), which is in charge of
technical assistance. At the same time, free financial-assistance
projects, now under the control of the Foreign Ministry, will be
transferred to JICA.
As a result, JICA will become the sole implementing agency for ODA,
concessionary aid to developing countries. Also in the works is a plan
to create a "strategy council on external economic cooperation"
reporting directly to the prime minister.
The purpose of these plans is to establish an integral ODA system so
that Japan can provide more efficient and effective assistance from the
strategic perspective. Now that the role of JICA has been broadly
redefined -- how to handle the agency had been left unresolved due to
controversy over the proposed integration of government-managed
financial institutions -- the government is ready to send an
administrative reform bill to the Diet this month.
ODA is financial and technical assistance that helps promote economic
and social development and welfare in poorer countries. It is provided
either bilaterally or through international organizations like the
World Bank. In 2004, Japan disbursed 962.7 billion yen worth of such
aid, down 6.5 percent from the year before.
For 10 years beginning in 1991, Japan had been the world's largest
provider of ODA. Beginning in 2001, though, it slipped to second place
behind the United States due to aid cuts necessitated by growing fiscal
deficits.
The U.S. has increased its ODA since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks in the belief that chronic poverty in developing countries
encourages terrorism.
Japan's quest for a permanent seat on the United Nations Security
Council is believed to depend partly on its commitment to expand ODA to
0.7 percent of gross national product (GDP). Already the government has
redirected its aid policy toward achieving this target. At last July's
summit of the Group of Eight industrialized countries in Gleneagles,
Scotland, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi stated that Japan would
increase the volume of ODA projects by $ 10 billion in the next five
years.
In fiscal 2006, which begins April 1, the amount of ODA under the
general-account budget is expected to drop from the previous year. Yet
the total volume of ODA projects is expected to rise through increases
in yen loans and debt relief. The question is whether ODA, be it in the
form of yen loans, free aid or technical assistance, is being
effectively used to meet the development needs of recipient countries.
The significance of ODA will be reduced if an adequate process for
checking its effects, from planning to implementation, is not in place.
In the past, a vertical system of administration has led to aid
overlaps as the foreign, finance and trade ministries carried out
similar projects in the same country. There is, to be sure, an overall
coordinating body, the Ministerial Council on External Economic
Cooperation, chaired by the chief Cabinet secretary. In reality,
though, this 15-member forum is said to have been rudderless for the
most part.
The task for the planned strategy council on external economic
cooperation, comprising five members (the prime minister, the chief
Cabinet secretary, the foreign minister, the finance minister and the
trade minister), should be to determine the contents of aid in a
systematic and integrated manner. As for JICA, its role as the
implementing agency will increase, but it must steer clear of
ministerial turf wars.
It is necessary to eliminate waste in ODA, which uses taxpayer money.
Full-scale, third-party evaluation is, therefore, indispensable for
evaluating free financial assistance. It is important to promote
cooperation with nongovernmental organizations, which are active in
areas such as poverty reduction and AIDS relief, and are familiar with
local conditions.
The question at issue for Japanese ODA is how best to make it a major
pillar of Japan's diplomatic strategy. The answer depends on how
seriously, and effectively, the nation can meet the challenge of taking
into account not only the interests of donee nations but also those of
itself as a donor.
The Japan Times: March 4, 2006
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Sunday, March 05, 2006
Words Speak Louder Than Actions
Blaming the media less about deflecting ownership and more due to their
own inability to see Iraq as an actual place, instead of as a square in
their personal game of risk
[ which i think goes back to lack of empathy, lack of depth, and a
general lack of interest in foreign affairs. i've always found it
interesting that so many republicans take pride that america is no. 1
in the world, yet know so little or have such little interest in said
world. at the same time, liberals that do have genuine empathy and
interest in foreign affairs (those found in ngo, un, state dept.), also
tend to be too polite and accomodating and spineless when it comes to
making their case. it's into that yawning chasm that i saw an opening
early on with my dual approach, and hoped to make my mark. i.e. it's
not so much that i'm so damn great, it's almost a complete lack of
competition in what i do and the way i do it.
as for playing my own personal game of risk... guilty as charged. heh.
lemme say a few words on that:
1) militaries all over the world run "simulations" (or games, as i
call them), for practice. it's not an option, it's essential for
training.
2) almost everyone i've ever known that disdain games (and strategy
games in particular) tend to be writer, artsy-fartsy types that are
horrible at them, even the simplest forms of strategy like sports or
card games or mainstream board games like risk.
3) i've found quite a number of players in real world geopolitics that
make me sweat in terms of strategy, but somehow it doesn't come close
to the level of competence i used to find online (don't know nowadays).
i used to get skinned alive on a regular basis. lol. ruthless
sumbitches that they were... then again, my ability to leverage the
emotional component is quite limited with online games. actually i've
found that most, if not all strategy games, are designed to eliminate
emotional messiness.
googlegroups2sucks
gaming addendum
compare two scenarios:
one where you play hundreds of online poker games against hundreds of
genuine human opponents vs. reading a modern-day jane austen's new
fictional work, "pride and poker", about online games, the poker geeks
that play them, and portrayed in a way that austen _imagines_ or
_expects_ or _wishes_ them to behave.
which format would give you a better understanding of human behavior or
human nature, especially within a business or political or geopolitical
framework? playing and interacting with hundreds of online poker
games.
which format gets all the respect, pulitzer prizes, prestige and
endless praise for revealing the "truth" of the human condition and/or
the "triumph" of the human spirit, from media writer types? fictional
novels.
of course, if austen had experienced hundreds of online poker games
herself, then she had written a fictional account, that would be the
superior glimpse into human behavior.
therefore, format is irrelevant.
googlegroups2sucks
addendum part 2
almost any book is better than a reality show, which tend to be heavily
edited, and the contestents are heavily skewed themselves not being
representative of everyday folk.
the same knock could be applied to flight sims or racing sims that
while technically correct they may still give you a false sense of what
real "feels" like. i mean, i think it's just impossible the recreate
the effect of sitting inside an f-16 cockpit with a 360 degree field of
view with an itsy-bitsy computer monitor. those are two vastly
different cats.
the beef i have boils down to this: while gaming geeks are acutely
aware of the "reality vs. sim" issue, readers of harlequin romances or
soaps or movies, are not acutely aware of the "reality vs. sim" issue.
it's fictional art, and therefore, it reveals truths or something of
that sort.
people love to bash usenet, and with good reasons i suppose. but you
know what? it prepared me for the up-is-down thinking that has been
the hallmark of the iraq war. i don't recall any movie or novel that
fully prepared me for the postwar we've seen, but boy do i read crazy
things on the internet. i honestly believe one reason i was against
the war so early was because the up-is-down unreality i found daily on
usenet and had come to know so well, started to slide over into
mainstream punditry in the runup to war.
so say what you will, but i'll always thank usenet for giving a me
nicely tuned up-is-down antenna by the time the war propaganda started.
it gave me a healthy dose of skepticism because usenet isn't your
trusted colleagues or coworkers or friends or family giving you their
honest opinions. there's smart people saying smart things, there's
trolls saying crazy things, there's smart people saying things with an
agenda. it almost forces you to be warily neutral and skeptical, until
they've proven they're not a shill nor nuts. and since almost
everyone is anonymous and unknown, there's no rumor narrative and that
forces you to look at their comments and their track record. google's
usenet has been a good training ground in some ways. for me, at least.
googlegroups2sucks
for all the talk of dynasty, it won't be easy replacing the likes of
weis and crennel, because the pats' on-going success was threatened
when they announced their departure. seeing those two go, is imho, has
been the greatest setback in belichick's season because that's how
leadership should work: you've got to take responsibility for picking
the right people, and also for RETAINING the right people as well.
that's the glue needed for dynasties and the key in sustaining it, and
the pats failed acutely in that regard. but all is not lost. :-) they
still have the b-chick, and along with the rest of the staff, they've
gotten to where they are in huge part, with their ability in reading
people -- especially their opponents on the field. that bodes well for
the future, but it ain't going to be a sure thing. so, i'd wish all
the jocks on tv would go easy with the dynasty talk for now...lets see
who how they handle the weis and crennel replacements first.
[ so much for the dynasty talk, with the steelers win. check out this
blurb: ]
Pats name 29-year-old offensive coordinator
By Associated Press
Published January 21, 2006
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. - The Patriots promoted quarterbacks coach Josh
McDaniels to offensive coordinator Friday, making him the youngest
coordinator in the league.
"I don't really look at my age as being a factor one way or the other,"
McDaniels, 29, said.
Charlie Weis left as coordinator after last season to become coach at
Notre Dame, and no one took his place in 2005. McDaniels and coach Bill
Belichick split play-calling duties.
"Josh has been one of the key components on our offensive staff,"
Belichick said. "He is very well respected, and we look forward to him
taking on the coordinator role."
McDaniels joined the Patriots in 2001 as an assistant in the scouting
department. He was a member of the defensive coaching staff for three
seasons before becoming quarterbacks coach in 2004.
The move is the latest shuffling of the Patriots' staff. Earlier this
week, linebackers coach Dean Pees was named defensive coordinator. He
replaced Eric Mangini, who left to become coach of the Jets after one
season as New England defensive coordinator.
[ no one took over from weis in 2005, until mcdaniels in 2006. pees
took over from mangini who has subsequently left for the jets. try and
guess which component where i think belichick could use improvement.
hint: the component starts with the letter E. ]
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Monday, 6 March 2006, 15:29 GMT
Geldof awarded freedom of Dublin
Rock singer and campaigner Bob Geldof has been given the freedom of
Dublin at a ceremony in the Irish capital.
"I can't think of a more beautiful day for me," the 55-year-old said as
he accepted a Waterford Crystal globe in recognition of his
humanitarian work.
"To be a freeman of one of the most free cities on the planet is indeed
something," he added.
The Boomtown Rats star was accompanied by his 91-year-old father Bob
and his daughters Peaches, Pixie and Tiger.
He received his accolade on Sunday alongside Olympic champion Ronnie
Delaney, who won a gold medal running for Ireland in the 1956 games.
"Both in their own right have been wonderful ambassadors for Dublin and
for Ireland, making major contributions in their chosen fields," said
Lord Mayor Catherine Byrne.
[ my warmest congratulations to sir bob. it couldn't happen to a more
deserving irishman, except perhaps that bono character -- but where is
he now? not in ireland. and may i say, that not only was it a
beautiful day, but a lovely day as well... ]
Lovely Day
Bill Withers ( <-- not exactly irish, but what the hell )
When I wake up in the morning, love
And the sunlight hurts my eyes
And something without warning, love
Bears heavy on my mind
Then I look at you
And the world's alright with me
Just one look at you
And I know it's gonna be
A lovely day
... lovely day, lovely day, lovely day ...
... lovely day, lovely day, lovely day ...
When the day that lies ahead of me
Seems impossible to face
When someone else instead of me
Always seems to know the way
Then I look at you
And the world's alright with me
Just one look at you
And I know it's gonna be
A lovely day
... lovely day, lovely day, lovely day ...
... lovely day, lovely day, lovely day ...
When the day that lies ahead of me
Seems impossible to face
When someone else instead of me
Always seems to know the way
Then I look at you
And the world's alright with me
Just one look at you
And I know it's gonna be
A lovely day
... lovely day, lovely day, lovely day ...
... lovely day, lovely day, lovely day ...
googlegroups2sucks
Josh Marshall goes Mac. He's getting his sea legs, and within a month
will wonder how he could've ever used a PC. This is my 10th year
anniversary of becoming a Mac user.
[
10 REM i'm the proud owner of a broken apple ][ plus that's about 26
years old. we used to pound its keyboard playing a pirated copy of
microsoft's "olympic decathalon", when we weren't writing games in
applesoft basic or 6502 assembly language. it had a grand total of 48k
memory and ran at about 1 Mhertz(?).
20 REM this is before macs or PCs even existed.
30 REM this is when socal-style hippies ruled the computer world with
magazines like "creative computing".
40 GOTO 10
]
googlegroups2sucks
around this period, can't recall exactly when, i first heard "i will
follow" and my reaction was basically: ohmygod, the guitar. listen to
the guitar! who ARE these guys?
the mark of greatness isn't momentary (say making a lucky call involved
with some parliamentary procedure in canada, for example). the best
indicator of greatness has always been longevity. the kind of
persistent success we've seen in bill gates, steve jobs, u2 for the
past 2 decades or so.
I Will Follow (1980)
U2
I was on the outside when you said
You said you needed me
I was looking at myself
I was blind, I could not see
A boy tries hard to be a man
His mother takes him by his hand
If he stops to think he starts to cry
Oh why
If you walkaway, walkaway
I walkaway, walkaway...I will follow
If you walkaway, walkaway
I walkaway, walkaway...I will follow
I was on the inside
When they pulled the four walls down
I was looking through the window
I was lost, I am found
Walkaway, walkaway
I walkaway, walkaway...I will follow
If you walkaway, walkaway,
I walkaway, walkaway...I will follow
I will follow
Your eyes make a circle
I see you when I go in there
Your eyes, your eyes...
If you walkaway, walkaway
I walkaway, walkaway..I will follow
If you walkaway, walkaway
I walkaway, walkaway...I will follow
I will follow
I will follow...
googlegroups2sucks
http://historynet.com/ahi/bl-ivan-kozhedub/index1.html
March 08, 2006
Article from Aviation History Magazine
Ivan Kozhedub: Soviet's Top Ace of World War II
<snip>
AH: Your first success was over Kursk on July 6, 1943. What were the
circumstances of that victory'?
Kozhedub: We were ordered to attack a group of Junkers Ju-87 dive
bombers. I chose a "victim" and came in quite close to it. The main
thing was to fire in time. Everything happened in a twinkling. It was
only on the ground, among my friends, that I recalled the details of
this battle. Caution is all-important and you have to turn your head
360 degrees all the time.
[ note to battlestar galactica:
your pilots need to move their heads around more. not because kozhedub
says you should, but because it seems pilots in combat maneuvers don't
know what the heck is going on, and the best ones -- the ones who tend
to survive yet still manage to score kills -- are paranoid in trying to
figure out what is going on. they want to know what the opponent is
doing, trying to anticipate what he's going to do, and trying to figure
out how to get there beforehand. pilots constantly staring straight
ahead, while needed for the camera i suppose, doesn't feel right. to
me, anyway. ]
googlegroups2sucks
Eyewitness accounts of air-to-air engagements can sound hauntingly like
written histories of cavalry encounters. An American, Oscar
LeBoutillier, described a typical World War I dogfight this way:
"In those few vicious moments the sky was literally filled with
tracers; thin,white threads crisscrossing in every direction.
Aeroplanes were everywhere. They flashed in and out of the clouds,
above, below, and in front of me. I had my hands full trying to get
onto an enemy's tail, avoid a collision, and got a burst off. It was
like trying to catch lightning in a bottle!" (11)
http://www.theaerodrome.com/aces/by_score.php
Top WW1 Aces
1 Richthofen, Manfred Freiherr von 80
2 Fonck, René Paul 75
3 Bishop, William Avery 72
4 Udet, Ernst 62
5 Mannock, Edward Corringham 61
6 Collishaw, Raymond 60
7 McCudden, James Thomas Byford 57
8 Beauchamp-Proctor, Andrew Frederick Weatherby 54
9 Loewenhardt (Löwenhardt), Erich 54
10 MacLaren, Donald Roderick 54
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/3011_redbaron.html
Who Killed the Red Baron?
PBS Airdate: October 7, 2003
PHILIP SABIN (King's College, London): Boelcke was really the father of
aerial tactics. The early years of the air war were the era of the lone
hunters. You had aces, in particular, who would go up, hide in clouds,
look for a lone victim, pounce, try and take them by surprise and shoot
them down.
<snip>
ANDY SEPHTON: There is one rule really, which is to kill the other guy
before he can kill you. And if you can see him before he can see you,
then that's ninety percent of the battle over.
<snip>
PHILIP SABIN: He [Richthofen] didn't mind having a kill which was
completely defenseless. Indeed, he preferred it. He would tend to avoid
combat where he perceived any risk, but he would go in when he thought
he was able to achieve his kill.
[ you'll see in movies or a tv series or some media piddlywink talk of
courageous feats of heroism, gallant acts of bravery, but you know
what? in WW1, the best aces stayed above the fray, stayed hidden in
clouds (heh), then picked off opponents one by one with every possible
advantage accrued, and ran like hell when the odds weren't in their
favor. not very romantic, but they did survive longer than others and
it did get results. ]
googlegroups2sucks
to..." it's just that. the recent "note to battlestar galactica" is a
case in point, and not an indirect reference to anyone else. i'm going
to try and refrain from stacking indirect implications in my posts, and
be as explicit as possible (i.e. i'm not going to do what you people do
to me all the time.) if i'm trying to communicate to you, i'll say so
specifically. god knows how many dumb cows are freaking about me at
any given moment, and i don't want to add to the paranoia. there's too
much of that already.
googlegroups2sucks
"It's odd that people who throw $50 at Ciro Rodriguez get mocked while
people who throw down $2000 to the Clinton campaign aren't. This is not
a slap against Clinton, it's just that the "big money" in campaigns is
accepted as the way things are done while the little money is scorned."
not odd if throwing $2k at some politician (not necessarily clinton)
gets results. one point rarely mentioned, but seems obvious to me is
that there's huge money in politics because IT WORKS. if politicians
were chaste virginal public servants that can take money then say no,
no, no, then the rivers of money would dry up fairly quick. in that
context and culture, giving money without expecting political
reciprocity of some sort or backing underdogs because you believe in
them, looks annoyingly naive and deserving of mockery by media cynics.
dc politics & their media sidekicks are almost past the point of no
return, if you ask me...
googlegroups2sucks
_felt_ like i did the most good for the most people last year, more so
than any other year in my life. 2005 was the best year i've ever had
in that respect, so... though i'm still bitchin', i'm really not that
upset. i lot of things i dearly wanted to see happen, actually did
happen one way or another. so again, thanks to those unknown or
unknowable souls who helped. it was a beautiful, magical year. ]
Bono rests in Sydney
From: By Kathy McCabe
March 10, 2006
On hold ... U2 performing live / AP file IT was meant to be a short
holiday with the family before the start of the final gruelling leg of
U2's world tour.
But yesterday singer Bono was taking comfort from his wife Ali and
their family, including sons Elijah and John, after the Irish
supergroup put the Vertigo tour - including two sold-out Sydney dates -
on hold due to the serious illness of one of the band's relatives.
As Bono and his family spent the day boating on Sydney Harbour,
sympathetic fans speculated that the tour was halted by an illness
affecting one of guitarist The Edge's children.
U2's international promoter The Next Adventure and local agent Michael
Coppel said: "This action is unavoidable due to the illness of an
immediate family member of the band."
<snip>
But even those fans were quick to post notices on U2-related internet
forums expressing their sympathy for the band members and their
families.
The Edge dedicated one of the band's recent Grammy wins to his
eight-year-old daughter Sian, who it is believed was suffering a
serious illness last year.
The Edge has four daughters and a son.
[ i don't know if the speculation is true, but my best wishes for the
edge and his kid. in case it isn't true, lemme dedicate the following
song to fathers & their daughters everywhere... ]
You Needed Me
Anne Murray
I cried a tear
You wiped it dry
I was confused
You cleared my mind
I sold my soul
You bought it back for me
And held me up and gave me dignity
Somehow you needed me.
[chorus]
You gave me strength
To stand alone again
To face the world
Out on my own again
You put me high upon a pedestal
So high that I could almost see eternity
You needed me
You needed me
And I can't believe it's you I can't believe it's true
I needed you and you were there
And I'll never leave, why should I leave
I'd be a fool
'Cause I've finally found someone who really cares
You held my hand
When it was cold
When I was lost
You took me home
You gave me hope
When I was at the end
And turned my lies
Back into truth again
You even called me friend
[Repeat Chorus]
You needed me
You needed me
googlegroups2sucks
martyrs still shine...."
there's that word again. my thing isn't martyrdom -- i ain't muslim.
my gripe is with neocon weasels that read my posts then make
back-stabbing gossip that i can't defend against because neocons are
never upfront in their attacks. they're weasels.
so, next time you hear about martyrdom, ask the neocon this:
do you still love gossipy behind-the-back weaseldom?
googlegroups2sucks
By Larry Angell
Senior Editor, iLounge
Published: Friday, March 10, 2006
Apple CEO Steve Jobs is the 140th richest person in the world,
according to Forbes' annual list of billionaires. Jobs' net worth
now stands at $4.4 billion.
Following the release of the iPodMame software, an iPod nano owner has
built a 5-inch arcade cabinet replica that houses his nano when playing
Pac-Man.
CitizenPod has released a free 2006 SXSW ClickGuide for iPods.
"Download the guide and you will have panels, bands, films, and
nighttime events, all on your iPod and at your fingertips."
Some music industry executives feel that releasing an artist's single
on iTunes and other online music stores is hurting sales of CDs, and
may move to hold off on early digital distribution.
[ eh. from my own personal experience, that certainly has happened
when i come across a song i simply must have, but it happens rarely.
at the same time i've never heard a single album where i loved every
song (aside from greatest hits collections) and it's that overwhelming
sentiment that i feel whenever i'm considering a new cd purchase, that
i'm buying mostly unwanted crap. the ability to pick one song has
definitely sparked my interest in different genres and bands that i'm
unfamiliar with and unlikely would've bought a cd for, and also sparked
interest in music generally.
it's interesting the music industry is moving towards hollywood's
delayed release while hollywood is moving towards music's simultaneous
release.
here's how i would do it. build up hype for several weeks with every
means possible in every medium possible, then make it available for
sale _with_ the release hype. (ie. sell the damn dvd the same day the
movie opens, and sell mp3s the same day as the cd is released.) if
there's one thing i've learned, it's that the public has the attention
span of a butterfly. it seems wasteful to blow millions on advertising
for the release, then do it _again_ later on for dvds or mp3s.
ultimately, what really matters isn't release strategies, but getting
better at finding good artists and have them churn out hits that lots
of people like. letting consumers pick and choose songs will increase
competitiveness in that respect, and be better for the industry as
whole long term. i've never met a single person that loves getting
package deals stuffed with product they didn't like. the only people
who love that are salespeople and record companies trying to make up
for the fact they can't pick out talent even if it slapped them in the
face.
stop bitching about distribution and get better at making hits. ]
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MELVILLE, N.Y., March 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Talk to Tony Sweet about
photography and before long, the conversation will turn to the subject
of jazz. A jazz drummer for 20 years, Tony's music experience informs
everything he does as a photographer. This March, NikonNet will pay
tribute to Tony Sweet and his work in its inspiring monthly showcase,
"Legends Behind the Lens."
"NikonNet is pleased to honor Tony Sweet this March," says Anna Marie
Bakker, Director of Communications at Nikon Inc. "Music and photography
are very similar -- tone, color and balance are all part of their
universal language. Tony's photographs have such grace and elegance; it
is evident that music is a major inspiration to him."
Tony's striking images are based on one guiding principle: "Every
single thing in the picture space either helps or hurts the image;
there's nothing neutral." He believes that photographers turn imagined
images into pictures -- seeing things first in their mind and bringing
them to existence by hitting the shutter. "When you're playing music,
when you're really in the moment, you're reacting instantly and totally
to what's going on," he says. "You're almost pre-hearing where someone
is going, and you're there. You can't be thinking about technique; the
moment you think about it, it's too late. It's the same thing in
photography. The only way to achieve what you want in photography is to
master your craft and then just forget about it. You shouldn't be
thinking of how to get what you want; you're just out there doing it."
[ good point. ]
Tony believes the ideal is to photograph without thinking about
technique. While many photographers start out doing a lot of thinking
and scanning their surroundings for reference points and scenes they
are familiar with, Tony feels that a photographer grows and becomes
more spontaneous once they empty their minds and react to what exists
around them.
While conducting his workshops and seminars, Tony tells his outdoor and
nature photography workshop students that they'll know they're getting
better by the number of frames they're shooting -- and the number
they're keeping. He feels that the better you are, the fewer frames you
shoot.
Tony can chart his own progress by that formula, and by the fact that
he's simplified his images and made them ever more elegant and direct.
It was a process he didn't have to think about because it was identical
to the music process. He also says that the players he most admires are
the most lyrical. "What hit me was how clear and direct they were, how
simple, in fact. Not in technique, but in their expression and
communication."
[ amen. more later... ]
googlegroups2sucks
Saturday, March 11, 2006; Posted: 9:40 a.m. EST (14:40 GMT)
(CNN) -- Slobodan Milosevic, the former Serbian strongman regarded as
the chief architect of the carnage unleashed during the breakup of
Yugoslavia in the last decade, died Saturday in custody at The Hague,
where he was on trial for war crimes in the killing fields of the
Balkan states of Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo.
<snip>
CNN Chief International Correspondent Christiane Amanpour contributed
to this report.
[ and i daresay, contributed to milosevic's downfall as well? hey all
you party girls in media land, if you want to know whom i consider to
be a bright burning hero in your profession, i nominate christiane
amanpour. while we were sitting around eating cheetos during the 90s
gossiping about blow jobs, she changed the world for the better by
helping to stop the slaughter of thousands of innocents, many of them
muslim, by getting out there into a war zone and greatly risking her
life throughout the 90s in order to do some first-rate reporting. i
have a lot of admiration for christiane amanpour (even though she
probably hates me :). ]
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http://www.nikonnet.com/dyn/articles/article_detail/213.html
In the Moment
Talk with Tony Sweet about photography and before long the conversation
will turn to the subject of jazz. That's because Tony was for 20 years
a jazz drummer, and his experience as a musician informs everything he
does as a photographer.
"When you're playing, when you're really in the moment, you're reacting
instantly and totally to what's going on," Tony says. "You're almost
pre-hearing where someone is going, and you're there. You can't be
thinking about technique; the moment you think about it, it's too late.
It's the same thing in photography. The only way to achieve what you
want in photography is to master your craft and then just forget about
it. You shouldn't be thinking of how to get what you want; you're just
out there doing it."
And when you're doing it, you'll know it. "A lot of photographers have
had this experience: they're seeing things, they're getting ideas,
they're shooting. Suddenly three hours have gone by. Wondering where
the time went means you were in the moment."
What these photographers are doing during the moment is turning
imagined images into pictures. "We all see things first in our
imagination; they don't exist until we hit the shutter," Tony says.
"Something catches your eye-you know that something's there, but you
may not recognize the picture immediately. So you start looking harder.
The whole process up to the point of taking the picture is in your
imagination. Hit the shutter and you make it real."
Tony shoots for stock, calendars, greeting cards, posters and catalogue
sales. He is the author two books, Fine Art Nature Photography and Fine
Art Flower Photography, and is a regular contributor to Shutterbug
magazine. He is also an instructor at outdoor and nature photography
workshops and seminars.
His striking images are based on one guiding principle: "Every single
thing in the picture space either helps or hurts the image; there's
nothing neutral." He demonstrates this in his workshop classes by
taking participants to an area he knows well. "They choose their
subjects, then they call me over, and I look at the setup. Maybe the
composition is too cluttered, or there's a hot spot in the frame, or
the camera can be moved to take better advantage of the light. They
shoot it that way, and when they see the two pictures side by side they
can see the difference. That's the teachable moment-when they see the
two photos and recognize what's happened."
While the ideal is to photograph without thinking about technique, all
photographers start out doing a lot of thinking. "When you start you're
not really sure of what you're doing," Tony says. "You're out in the
field, and chances are you're looking for reference points to guide
you, traditional scenes you're familiar with, like sand dune ripples or
a tree against a blank sky. You're looking for things you recognize,
things that will jump out at you. As you get better, and more
spontaneous, you stop looking for those things. You empty your mind and
start reacting to what's there."
One of the lessons Tony teaches is about time. "Years ago I used to
think that you had to be out in the early morning and late afternoon
and that was it. Now I agree with [photographer] Freeman Patterson, who
said he didn't know what that meant. He said, 'There's only light.' You
have a lot of latitude to control the quality of light at any time. I
use reflectors and diffusers, or I use backlighting for effect. That's
how you get those huge, round dewdrops-by shooting into direct
sunlight at high magnification with the lens wide open. I'll shoot into
bright sun and blue sky with a 105mm micro lens with maybe a
teleconverter or close-up diopter. You need super-high magnification;
those dewdrops are pretty small."
Tony tells his workshop students that they'll know they're getting
better by the number of frames they're shooting-and the number
they're keeping. "The better you are, the fewer frames you shoot," he
says. "When you come back from a vacation or a field trip with five
thousand pictures, you're not a photographer, you're an editor. The
better you get, the fewer pictures you come home with. Fewer frames,
more keepers-that's photography."
Tony can chart his own progress by that formula, and by the fact that
he's simplified his images and made them ever more elegant and direct.
It was a process he didn't have to think about. "It was identical to
the music process," he says. "It's knowing what notes to leave out,
knowing when to be quiet." He says that the players he most admires are
the most lyrical. "What hit me was how clear and direct they were, how
simple, in fact. Not in technique, but in their expression and
communication."
And the photographers he most admires? "Same thing," he says.
[ knowing what to leave out, in the pursuit of simplicity, is
difficult. exempli gratia, how many of us would've included an am/fm
tuner when designing the ipod? if you did a market research survey and
asked what features you'd like in a modern-day walkman that plays mp3s,
i'll bet every one of them would've suggested an am/fm tuner. and if
you were a newly minted mba terrified of not screwing up your first big
project, you'd follow those recommendations to the letter. it makes
too much sense. the inclusion couldn't have made an ipod that much
more bigger or more expensive to produce, and yet could theoretically
broaden market potential, making the tradeoff worthwhile, no? for the
ipod to not include an am/fm tuner amazed me in two ways: 1) jobs'
insanity 2) for being right. if you think it through, it becomes more
obvious. why listen to unwanted songs on the radio, when you can
listen to hundreds of songs that you do want, and quite likely love?
it takes an exceptional mind to know how to make a musical device
_quieter_, in order to make it more simpler and successful. it takes a
certain amount of balls to be a simpleton. ]
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> [ the other piece was abridged, turns out. here's the full monty. ]
>
>
> http://www.nikonnet.com/dyn/articles/article_detail/213.html
>
> In the Moment
>
> Talk with Tony Sweet about photography and before long the conversation
> will turn to the subject of jazz. That's because Tony was for 20 years
> a jazz drummer, and his experience as a musician informs everything he
> does as a photographer.
>
> "When you're playing, when you're really in the moment, you're reacting
> instantly and totally to what's going on," Tony says. "You're almost
> pre-hearing where someone is going, and you're there. You can't be
> thinking about technique; the moment you think about it, it's too late.
> It's the same thing in photography. The only way to achieve what you
> want in photography is to master your craft and then just forget about
> it. You shouldn't be thinking of how to get what you want; you're just
> out there doing it."
when i'm getting tons of good info, and i've gotten to know the
players' psyches, it feels very much like what he's describing.
reacting instantly, almost "pre-hearing" or in my case, pre-feeling.
id est, being in the moment, being in the groove. the feeling you get
when you're playing a new song you've fallen hard for and you keep
playing it over and over. how someone looks like when they're deeply
immersed into dance and look like they're in a trance.
at that point, it doesn't matter what they say -- i'll know what
they're feeling. it doesn't matter how much they hide or reveal. my
analytical approach is turned upside-down. whereas before i'm
searching for waves to see the undercurrent, i'm now feeling the
undercurrent and searching for waves to confirm. i use both approaches
and go back and forth constantly. relying on just one approach at the
exclusion of the other is too limiting. you've got to integrate the
two.
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Sunday, Mar. 12, 2006
Can This Man Save The Movies? (Again?)
In the digital era, is film dead? As audiences gravitate to DVDs,
Hollywood wonders if the movie theater can survive. The rebels are
surging. Can the Empire strike back?
Well, for one thing, say the movie atavists, film has a more human
texture, an emotional weight. "Digital is just too smooth," says M.
Night Shyamalan, writer-director of The Sixth Sense and a defender of
the film tradition. "You almost have to degrade the image to make it
more real. If you take a digital photo and I take one on film, there's
just no way you're going to compete with the humanity that I can create
from my little Hasselblad. Yours will be smoother, crisper, perfect in
every way, and mine will be grainy, but you would definitely grab my
picture over the digital one."
[ right on. very organic argument. :) i prefer film for its high
color fidelity, and it'll last for decades without me worrying storage
obsolesence or decay. plus, i just plain love it more than soulless
bits & bytes. ]
If there's an argument for digital that Hollywood can get behind, it's
this: it's far cheaper than film--cheaper to shoot, cut and duplicate.
But the big savings come in getting the product to the public. Says
Lucas: "Making a big movie, a Harry Potter or a Spider-Man, you're
spending $20 [million] to $30 million for the prints just to strike
them and ship them to the theaters. Smaller movies have to spend a huge
part of their budgets on prints." Digital would cut print and shipping
costs about 80%. Even Spielberg, who wears many hats, sees the efficacy
of digital. "I may be the last person as a director to accept it," he
says, "but I won't be the last person to accept it as someone who runs
a film company."
[ is this accurate? $20-$30 million just for prints and shipment?? ]
"A 65-ft.-wide screen and 500 people reacting to the movie--there is
nothing like that experience," says Mann. Shyamalan sees it as a mystic
conversation. "With enough strangers in the room," he says, "you become
part of this collective human soul--which is a much more powerful way
to watch a movie" than seeing it alone at home.
[ true enough. the best experiences are indeed communal. ]
Lucas, who thinks day-and-date is an inevitable step to fight piracy,
also believes it won't hurt the box office. Moviegoing, he says, "is
like watching a football game. Who in the world would go out in
20-below weather and sit there and watch a football game where you can
barely see the players? Football games are on TV, and it doesn't affect
stadium attendance at all. It's the same with movies. People who really
love movies and like to go out on a Saturday night will go to the movie
theater."
[ and lucas nails it.
here's what i think shyamalan needs to do: a chain of upscale movie
theaters. make it much more pleasant. guarantee the screens will be
in focus. seats that can recline way back. waiters that serve hot
food. manicure services. waitresses that give deep rub back
massages... am i getting carried away again? ]
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What's Next for Bill Gates?
In Part 2 of Time's interview, the Microsoft chief talks about the
battle against Google, Origami and other new products from the
Microsoft machine
By SONJA STEPTOE
TIME:Yet, all the early speculation and prognostications about
Origami-a new product of yours that hasn't even been introduced
yet-would seem to be an illustration of the challenges of impressing
people with technological innovation these days. Already one analyst is
quoted saying Microsoft might not earn "cool points" for its
Origami because the device-part Ipod, Part PSP and part
Blackberry-tries to be all things to all people.
Gates:I don't think that's somebody who has seen what that device
is. It's not a device for everybody, and it's not even in any one
of those categories. Innovation has always been a challenge and it
always should be. The bar should be set high. The notion that some
analyst will be confused all the time and all analysts will be confused
some of the time, I think that's been true forever. Hopefully a few
analysts aren't confused a few times so that the message gets
through.
[ he feels my pain. ]
Basically products succeed by word of mouth. You do a little bit of
advertising to prime the pump, but then people say these things like
Microsoft Office is just the way I do my presentations. It's the way
I look at my business data. So it means your product has to be awfully
good to get people to switch or to pay money, but there's nothing
wrong with that.
[ bingo. ]
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Puget Sound Business Journal (Seattle) - 12:51 PM PST Monday
The Science Fiction Museum will induct "Star Wars" creator George Lucas
and three others into its Hall of Fame in ceremonies on June 17.
[ i propose the following notions to be inducted into the science
fiction museum as well:
intelligent design, the media's ability to think straight, and
washington's ability to reform itself. ]
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china, i'd be concerned. ...state is showing some initiative here.
good move. ]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Our Opportunity With India
By Condoleezza Rice
Monday, March 13, 2006; Page A15
The week before last President Bush concluded a historic agreement on
civilian nuclear cooperation with India, a rising democratic power in a
dynamic Asia. This agreement is a strategic achievement: It will
strengthen international security. It will enhance energy security and
environmental protection. It will foster economic and technological
development. And it will help transform the partnership between the
world's oldest and the world's largest democracy.
First, our agreement with India will make our future more secure, by
expanding the reach of the international nonproliferation regime. The
International Atomic Energy Agency would gain access to India's
civilian nuclear program that it currently does not have. Recognizing
this, the IAEA's director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, has joined
leaders in France and the United Kingdom to welcome our agreement. He
called it "a milestone, timely for ongoing efforts to consolidate the
non-proliferation regime, combat nuclear terrorism and strengthen
nuclear safety."
Our agreement with India is unique because India is unique. India is a
democracy, where citizens of many ethnicities and faiths cooperate in
peace and freedom. India's civilian government functions transparently
and accountably. It is fighting terrorism and extremism, and it has a
30-year record of responsible behavior on nonproliferation matters.
Aspiring proliferators such as North Korea or Iran may seek to draw
connections between themselves and India, but their rhetoric rings
hollow. Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism that has violated its own
commitments and is defying the international community's efforts to
contain its nuclear ambitions. North Korea, the least transparent
country in the world, threatens its neighbors and proliferates weapons.
There is simply no comparison between the Iranian or North Korean
regimes and India.
The world has known for some time that India has nuclear weapons, but
our agreement will not enhance its capacity to make more. Under the
agreement, India will separate its civilian and military nuclear
programs for the first time. It will place two-thirds of its existing
reactors, and about 65 percent of its generating power, under permanent
safeguards, with international verification -- again, for the first
time ever. This same transparent oversight will also apply to all of
India's future civilian reactors, both thermal and breeder. Our sale of
nuclear material or technology would benefit only India's civilian
reactors, which would also be eligible for international cooperation
from the Nuclear Suppliers Group.
Second, our agreement is good for energy security. India, a nation of a
billion people, has a massive appetite for energy to meet its growing
development needs. Civilian nuclear energy will make it less reliant on
unstable sources of oil and gas. Our agreement will allow India to
contribute to and share in the advanced technology that is needed for
the future development of nuclear energy. And because nuclear energy is
cleaner than fossil fuels, our agreement will also benefit the
environment. A threefold increase in Indian nuclear capacity by 2015
would reduce India's projected annual CO2emissions by more than 170
million tons, about the current total emissions of the Netherlands.
Third, our agreement is good for American jobs, because it opens the
door to civilian nuclear trade and cooperation between our nations.
India plans to import eight nuclear reactors by 2012. If U.S. companies
win just two of those reactor contracts, it will mean thousands of new
jobs for American workers. We plan to expand our civilian nuclear
partnership to research and development, drawing on India's
technological expertise to promote a global renaissance in safe and
clean nuclear power.
Finally, our civilian nuclear agreement is an essential step toward our
goal of transforming America's partnership with India. For too long
during the past century, differences over domestic policies and
international purposes kept India and the United States estranged. But
with the end of the Cold War, the rise of the global economy and
changing demographics in both of our countries, new opportunities have
arisen for a partnership between our two great democracies. As
President Bush said in New Delhi this month, "India in the 21st century
is a natural partner of the United States because we are brothers in
the cause of human liberty."
Under the president's leadership, we are beginning to realize the full
promise of our relationship with India, in fields as diverse as
agriculture and health, commerce and defense, science and technology,
and education and exchange. Over 65,000 Americans live in India,
attracted by its growing economy and the richness of its culture. There
are more than 2 million people of Indian origin in the United States,
many of whom are U.S. citizens. More Indians study in our universities
than students from any other nation. Our civilian nuclear agreement is
a critical contribution to the stronger, more enduring partnership that
we are building.
We are consulting extensively with Congress as we seek to amend the
laws needed to implement the agreement. This is an opportunity that
should not be missed. Looking back decades from now, we will recognize
this moment as the time when America invested the strategic capital
needed to recast its relationship with India. As the nations of Asia
continue their dramatic rise in a rapidly changing region, a thriving,
democratic India will be a pillar of Asia's progress, shaping its
development for decades. This is a future that America wants to share
with India, and there is not a moment to lose.
The writer is secretary of state.
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scarlett johansson? i was curious how much it costed. it's $16.5
million. hold on. if you wanna be really cool, you must get the gas
turbine engines option that only adds an extra $8 million to the
purchase price, bringing the total to around $25 million. ...think
about that. an $8 million option. thank god almighty for tax cuts,
because the pitiful souls won't have to make do with embarrassing
diesel engines.
now check out the blurb below. these figures are written within
_brackets_, implying that these mind-blowing dollar amounts are BESIDE
THE POINT, YOU PEASANT. ]
http://www.powerandmotoryacht.com/megayachts/0204wallypower/index.html
Wally Yachts' Wallypower 118 - By Alan Harper - February 2004
Something Wild
It looks like psycho origami and does nearly 60 knots. Welcome to the
weird, wild world of the Wally 118.
...
There is a more conventional engine option as well: twin 3,650-hp MTU
4000 V16 diesels, which Bassani claims will give the boat a 45-knot top
speed and around a 40-knot cruise speed. Go for these, and you'll
also save about $8 million on the asking price (which is $16.55 million
when the yacht is equipped with twin diesels, $24.83 million as tested,
with triple gas turbines).
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> it's the mid 90s. all this buzz about the internet and the web keeps
> picking up steam and hollywood gets caught up too. their reaction is
> basically: wow. really. why on earth should i care, ...and what the
> fuck is an "internet" again?
>
> who knows what kind of bullshit they were fed, but they somehow managed
> to get simpson & bruckheimer to show up for an online compuserve
> conference/chat with about 2 guests in the audience.
i mean that literally: it was either 2 or 3 guests including yours
truly. i believe it was arranged via premiere magazine and they leased
out a space called, "the zone"? anyway. i felt embarassed for the
organizers, but i _loved_ it.
at the time i was nervous about being online. i used to sweat over
each sentence i'd send into the internet void. (if you want to know
how i manage to seem so confident/arrogant/ballsy/annoying in my posts
it's because 1) i've been going online for about a decade now, on and
off 2) i'm not getting any feedback directly so it often feels like
i'm just writing a diary)
i recall asking don simpson if he was going to make a movie about
alaska, since i learned right before he was from anchorage, and he
blurted out something like he wanted to, as long as it was cinematic.
...whatever that meant. the other questions were about nuclear
submarines that i've forgotten the details of.
then i asked which of their hits surprised them the most, in terms of
success. the quick reply: all of them! there was very long pause
after that, maybe because they were doubled over with laughter. a week
after the conference, i found they had deleted that portion from the
official transcript.
about a year later, i heard he died from drug-related problems. it was
saddening to hear because i liked him better than bruckheimer. the
impression i got, and maybe i'm wrong given how easy it is to
misinterpret online, was that bruckheimer didn't want to be there. for
him, it was joke. he's there to sell a movie and 2 people show up?
lol. he gave the impression all the questions were stupid, not worth
paying any attention to, wanted to get away as soon as possible, and
you know what? don't blame him, and 9 out of 10 people would likely
feel the same way.
simpson was different. not that he took it all that seriously, but he
didn't give off bruckheimer's you-dirt-to-be-ignored vibe. he tried to
answer questions sincerely. the sense i got was that he was a good
man, and though he had his problems like we all do, at his core, he was
a decent guy.
anyway. that's my simpson & bruckheimer story.
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Enough Rope with Andrew Denton Transcript
ABC, 13 Mars 2006
My friends on the left get very upset, and are right to, when that
language is enforced, and so in the United States you had Brazil saying
to President Bush we don't want your money because of language on
prostitution and condoms. But I said to President Bush, "I did some
research before I met you and I have discovered that the largest
purchaser of condoms on the planet earth is the United States
Government. He looked at me and said, "Don't tell anyone that."
[ lol. ]
People say it's good cop, bad cop but actually both of us are very
tough, it's by whatever means necessary. I think we're both into
ultimate fighting. The only difference is that I accept the rules of
ultimate fighting, which is you can't poke someone in the eye or bite
them, and Bob [geldof] doesn't. I have seen him try to bite prime
ministers and I've had to call him off Tony Blair. Literally spital
coming out, invective coming out, and Tony reaching over to me saying,
"I believe you've a greatest hits coming", just to get a break from
Geldof.
[ what i wouldn't give to have seen that... ]
BONO: We have this huge desire amongst us, the four of us, to not be
crap. I think that's really it. Because we have this amazing life. We
really have got an incredible life. The deal is - we feel it's like a
deal with us and our audience. They don't mind us having, being able to
take a break wherever we want, renting some fancy house on the harbour
at Sydney. Have all of that, where you send your kids to school. Have a
great life, just don't be crap. That's kind of the deal. We always
think when we go in to make an album, "Is this going to be the one
we're going to be crap?" Suddenly there's three crap albums in a row.
Two crap albums and you're out. That's our vibe.
[ the implication there being: they want to be well thought of. not a
bad thing by itself. it can be suffocating if that fear prevents you
from taking risks, which is the downside. again, it's a balancing
act... ]
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http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1173216,00.html
G.L.Because it's a social experience. Sure, you can see a movie at
home, the way can read a book. You can do it at home on your little
laptop. But a lot of people go because it's a social experience.
It's like watching a football game. Who in the world would go out in
20-below weather, and sit there and watch a football game where you can
barely see the players? Football games are on TV, and it doesn't
effect stadium attendance at all. It's the same with movies. People
who really love movies and like to go out on a Saturday night will go
to the movie theater. If you haven't built a fan-base or you're not
selling something that people want, then the attendance is going to
drop. But if you have a good product that you're putting into the
theater, then they're going to always go there.
[ very similar to gates talking about word-of-mouth, that the quality
of the product is the ultimate factor. ]
The area I'm interested in now is to go do some
form-experimenting-to try and figure out different ways of telling
movies. I grew up in the Godard, Fellini world and all that. To me
that's where my heart is. But I realize that's not commercial.
That's why I can say I managed to do something that everybody wants
to do-all those guys wanted to do-which was to get a pile of money
so I can sort of waste it, burn through it.
[ i'm doing that with my internet platform! wasting it on my terms.
burn, baby, burn. :]
G.L. In that I don't have to do Star Wars anymore. I don't have to
make money any more. I can just waste it. I call it hobby filmmaking,
where you just get to do what you want to do, and you don't have to
worry about what anyone thinks about it.
...
R.C.What's the next big thing in home gizmos?
G.L. The things they're going to be selling are larger servers,
storage units. That will be the next big thing you buy to put in your
house. Now, with TiVo, it goes into a mysterious server somewhere. But
this is actually going to be in your house, your server, and anything
you want to download and store there, like a safe, is just going to be
stored there. It's just going to be huge. It's not going to be like
what they have now.
[ hmm. servers. i have to think this one over... ]
R.L. In the late 70s you started THX and Pixar and ILM to explore and
exploit the new technologies. Have you started new companies to follow
these particular technological dreams?
G.L. All of those things were designed really to make the process of
making films easier and at the same time make the quality higher.
[ easier and better quality... ]
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Music News
Bob Geldof to be honored by Echo Awards in Berlin
By Lars Brandle Mar 11, 2006, 10:42 GMT
Bob Geldof will be honored this Sunday (March 12) with a special
achievement accolade at the German industry`s annual Echo Awards in
Berlin.
The veteran Irish musician and humanitarian will be lauded for
masterminding the historic Live 8 concerts last July, and for his
distinguished career both as frontman of the Boomtown Rats and as a
solo artist.
Speaking ahead of the gala, Michael Haentjes, chairman of organizer the
German Phono Academy, described Geldof as a living legend. 'His fights
against poverty in the third world makes him a hero for many people,'
he added.
In a statement, Geldof praised the numerous German artists who
supported the Berlin leg of the Live 8 concerts. He dedicated the award
'to the millions of Germans who gave their vote for the campaign
against poverty.'
RTL will broadcast the 15th annual Echo Awards on the night.
Geldof will add the Echo to growing list of trophies he has collected
since the historic concerts last summer.
During the Midem in Cannes this January, he was acknowledged with the
NRJ humanitarian award and was jointly recognized as the trade fair`s
personality of the year along with his Live 8 co-founders and producers
Harvey Goldsmith and John Kennedy.
Music TV network MTV handed Geldof the Free Your Mind Award last
November at its showpiece Europe Music Awards gala.
© 2006 VNU eMedia. All Rights Reserved
[ i didn't know geldof won so many awards: echo, nrj, mtv. it's great
to see. ]
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original, and unusual its visuals are. now, when we usually see those
qualities in a hollywood movie, it usually manifests itself by way of a
hundred needles sticking out of a bald guy's head, or black tubing
sticking out of a guy's nose then plugging into his head with yellow
mucus dripping all over, or... you get the idea. you see those
tendencies pop out in "howl's moving castle", like when howl is
literally melting into a blob of green liquid, but they're restrained
and more than offset by the movies overarching warm tones and themes.
movies with warm tones (eg. "sound of music") are frequently disparaged
as being too syrupy, "feel-good" or sickeningly saccharine, and perhaps
hollywood movies that love weirdness strive mightily to avoid that
criticism. what we end up with all too often then, are inventive
movies that are also a bit too cold and a bit too disturbing. wildly
inventive movies that are warm and uplifting (eg. wizard of oz) aren't
easy to find, and perhaps that's why miyazaki's world has its niche
audience because it rests on that offbeat fulcrum. so that's the
emotional layout and feels similar to wizard of oz, dr. seuss, harry
potter, etc., but in terms of storyline, it stands out. it's
multilayered and confusing, though i find the bottom layer to be simple
and easy to follow (no one mentions this, for some reason). the
characters are multilayered and confusing too. i no problem admitting
i don't understand all the implications embedded within, and i have
sneaking suspicion miyazaki hasn't quite figured out all of them
either. lol. nevertheless. i love it. maybe seeing it again with
its original japanese track will be more enlightening. i'll update my
take later on, my oh-so-silent audience... shhhh... ]
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/
Feb. 18, 2005
Howl's Moving Castle
By Richard James Havis
Bottom line: Though it's difficult to work out what's going on, it's
never boring.
This review was written for the theatrical release of "Howl's Moving
Castle."
ROTTERDAM, the Netherlands -- "Howl's Moving Castle" is another
sophisticated animation from Japanese anime master Hayao Miyazaki
(Academy Award winner "Spirited Away"). Miyazaki's most complex fantasy
to date eschews straightforward narrative and moral reductionism for a
multilayered and equivocal approach that reflects the contradictions of
real life. Miyazaki exerts a strong command over a wide-ranging story
line and skillfully seduces the viewer into deciphering the subtle
motivations of the characters. Consequently, though it's difficult to
work out what's going on, it's never boring.
"Castle," which is based on a children's novel by British author Diane
Wynne Jones, was a whiz-bang hit in Japan, where it raked in $192
million. But prospects for the United States aren't so certain.
Plotting is so multifaceted that it will confuse children, and it lacks
the clear-cut heroes and villains typical of animation. Critics will
find much to write about, but general audiences might be confused by
the complexity. Although it looks splendid on the big screen, "Castle"
might perform better on DVD, where viewers will consider it a less
risky proposition.
Early Miyazaki films like "My Neighbor Totoro" explored the mindscape
of being young -- all of youth's dreams, hopes and disappointments.
Later works like the marvelous "Princess Mononoke" added social and
ecological themes. "Howl's Moving Castle" is another creative step
forward. The story and characters are so intricately constructed that
they defy analysis in terms of dramatic conflict. There are no heroes
and no villains -- everyone is muddling through in a world divided by
both magic and war.
Miyazaki's work is often surreal, but "Castle" is more a work of magic
realism. It's set in a fictional city in which magic, witches and
sorcerers co-exist with average citizens. The story, in its most basic
form, centers on an errant young wizard, Howl, and his attempts to
avoid being drafted to fight in a war. Around this core, Miyazaki
builds some interweaving stories: those of a girl who's aged by a
spell, a grumpy witch, a royal sorceress, a demonic but friendly fire
spirit and a sorcerer's apprentice. Miyazaki delves deep into his
characters to discover the humanity and compassion that lies at the
heart of them all.
Visual creations are typically incredible. The castle of the title is a
huge anthropomorphic construction that shields Howl from his ruler's
soldiers. The witch's Blob Men look like renegades from an Yves Tanguy
painting. Howl is conventionally drawn like a typical anime hero -- a
nice ironic touch. Visual references are frequently Germanic, alluding
to the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm.
When "Spirited Away" shared the Golden Bear at Berlin in 2002, it
marked a step forward for the acceptance of anime as an art form.
"Howl's Moving Castle" should continue the process.
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legally download "la vie en rose", by edith piaf or dalida or patricia
kaas, then sing along! the english translation is provided below. ]
>From paroles.net:
LA VIE EN ROSE [ the pink life ]
Paroles: Edith Piaf. Musique: Louigy, 1942
autres interprètes: Dalida (1965), Patricia Kaas [ <-- quite a babe,
btw. ]
Des yeux qui font baisser les miens
Un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche
Voilà le portrait sans retouche
De l'homme auquel j'appartiens
{Refrain:}
Quand il me prend dans ses bras,
Il me parle tout bas
Je vois la vie en rose,
Il me dit des mots d'amour
Des mots de tous les jours,
Et ça me fait quelque chose
Il est entré dans mon cour,
Une part de bonheur
Dont je connais la cause,
C'est lui pour moi,
Moi pour lui dans la vie
Il me l'a dit, l'a juré
Pour la vie.
Et dès que je l'aperçois
Alors je sens en moi
Mon cour qui bat.
Des nuits d'amour à plus finir
Un grand bonheur qui prend sa place
Des ennuis, des chagrins s'effacent
Heureux, heureux à en mourir
{au Refrain}
{Nota: variante pour le dernier couplet:}
Des nuits d'amour à en mourir
Un grand bonheur qui prend sa place
Les ennuis, les chagrins s'effacent
Heureux, heureux pour mon plaisir
La Vie En Rose [ the pink life ]
Hold me close and hold me fast
The magic spell you cast
This is la vie en rose
When you kiss me, Heaven sighs
And though I close my eyes
I see la vie en rose
When you press me to your heart
I'm in a world apart
A world where roses bloom
And when you speak
Angels sing from above
Every day words
Seem to turn into love songs
Give your heart and soul to me
And life will always be
La vie en rose
I thought that love was just a word
They sang about in songs I heard
It took your kisses to reveal
That I was wrong, and love is real
Hold me close and hold me fast
The magic spell you cast
This is la vie en rose
When you kiss me, Heaven sighs
And though I close my eyes
I see la vie en rose
When you press me to your heart
I'm in a world apart
A world where roses bloom
And when you speak
Angels sing from above
Every day words
Seem to turn into love songs
Give your heart and soul to me
And life will always be
La vie en rose
Words by Mack David
Original French Lyrics by Edith Piaf
Music by Louiguy
enr. 8 juillet 1950
googlegroups2sucks
But the question isn't whether Feingold made a dumb move. The question
is given the move that Feingold made what should the Dems do? He made
the move. They have to respond.
And running is a dumb response.
[ i agree. too many dems run for cover, mostly because they can't
figure out the ramifications one way or another with any degree of
certainty. dems need to keep track of which dems tend to be right and
follow them, if they're uncertain.
that said.
the bush admin can and have, easily argue the same about the iraq war.
maybe it was dumb, but the move into iraq was made and dems need to
play ball and reward our stupidity. see the problem?
i mulled that one over many a times before i decided to get behind the
blair and koizumi governments. as a general rule, i don't think the
electorate nor the opposing party should always show support because
that doesn't produce excellence. it guarantees mediocrity at best.
in the end, i concluded that i will reward the iraq war misadventure,
if that meant anti-corruption could be put on the global agenda, which
could then be leveraged against republicans in 2006 or 2008.
duality, baby. it's a beautiful thing. ]
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"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom
that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively
bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly
shattered skeptics' complaints." (Fox News Channel's Tony Snow,
4/27/03)
"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside
liberals, and a few people here in Washington." (Charles Krauthammer,
Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)
"We're all neo-cons now." (MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)
"I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego
that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to
take that wager?" (Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03)
[ these comments never bothered me because i've never viewed the iraq
war as cut & dried. war isn't digital. you can't say war ended here
and the insurgency began here. it all blends together and is
constantly changing. it's a lethal organic beast that has peaks &
valleys. lulls in the battle could mean nothing, or it could mean
everything. proclaiming that skeptics' complaints have been shattered
after major combat operations were over quickly, was itself shattered
when they had to retake fallujah.
the iraq war is a 10,000 k marathon. for prowar advocates to stop
after 2k, draw the finish line, cross the finish line, declare victory
and announce that antiwar skeptics were wrong doesn't change the fact
that another 9,998 k or so remains. so it never gave me any pause or
cause for concern. i just shook my head and ignored it. ]
googlegroups2sucks
Steve Ballmer: 3GSM World Congress Keynote
Remarks by Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft Corporation
3GSM World Congress
Barcelona, Spain
February 14, 2006
...
>From a Microsoft perspective, we think we've got a lot of the right
elements in place to really make that happen. The PC has been a
powerful transforming force. We've spent the last 10 or 15 years really
building out business infrastructure with products like our Exchange
e-mail system, our Live Communication Server instant messaging system
and others. We've worked over the last five or six years to really
build out the Internet services in the cloud, products like Hotmail and
MSN Instant Messenger, and our Windows Live search.
But it's really the mobile device in some senses that completes this
picture, and brings together an end-to-end offering that we can partner
with mobile operators to really enable the digital lifestyle and
digital work style for our customers.
The infrastructure is there, as I said: 200 million Hotmail users
around the world, 400 million users of Microsoft Office and Outlook,
200 million users of our MSN Instant Messenger software around the
world, 300 million downloads of our Windows Media technology.
[ no matter what i say or not say with my little bitty posts, it cannot
affect, nor do i want it to affect, those astounding numbers. 400
million users of ms office & outlook... see, i just joke about world
domination, while microsoft _has_ world domination. ]
The point Suzan made at the end I think is a very important one. One of
the key properties of Windows Mobile, which might seem funny in a
certain sense, is the key property of Windows itself. It is a
consistent platform, which means it runs a consistent set of
applications and it has support for a consistent set of peripherals.
And I think that's a very important thing as the mobile industry
marches forward, and wants to unlock all of the innovation that's in
all of these entrepreneur's heads. The cost and complexity of
reengineering software for each and every handset, for each and every
operator gets to be prohibitive, and to have a platform like this that
can be customized by the operator but at the same time delivers
consistent functionality to the application developer I think is a real
step forward.
[ good argument. i should've emphasized it more, but consistency is an
implicit benefit of simplicity. ]
But there's another important dimension also where we're trying to be
fairly comprehensive and end-to-end, and that's with the customer
themselves. Everybody I talk to likes to distinguish carefully between
the so-called business customer and the consumer. I actually don't know
myself really what the difference is many times. I agree there are some
people who are pure consumers, and I agree there are some people who
are purely businesspeople, but most people at least I interact with
view themselves as people, and they have a personal life and they have
a professional life. And particularly for the device that goes in their
pocket, they want that device to be able to give them one glimpse of
their information, whether it happens to be part of their private life
or it happens to be part of their professional life.
I need to check something for a presentation I'm going to give, pull it
out of your pocket and take a look at it. I want to check what the
weather is going to be like in Barcelona, did I bring my, I don't know,
swimming suit, which obviously wouldn't have been a good idea this time
of year, I should be able to check it from that same device. I get
personal e-mail and I get business e-mail; I want to be able to bring
those together on one device. I've got one set of contacts; I don't
really want to manage two sets of contacts, I have one set of contacts
for my life. Yes, I have an address book that I see from my company,
but I also have contacts and people that I contact with instant
messaging, I want to see their presence, what they're up to, one view
of my world.
I want to be able to write rules. This is my favorite rule,
particularly on Valentine's Day. If the following 20 people are trying
to call me, send it immediately to voicemail. If my secretary is trying
to call me, find me wherever I am, as long as it's between the
following hours. And, of course, if my wife is trying to call me, put
her through immediately no matter where I am, at my phone, at my PC --
heck, even at my set-top box on my TV watching the latest football
game; I need her to reach me at all costs.
Now, I want to be able to write that set of rules -- we can all get a
chuckle, but it is Valentine's Day -- I want to be able to express my
preferences for who can contact me when, and I want software to take
care of that. And I want the same software to take care of it whether
I'm at work or I'm at home or I'm on the go, whether I'm on my mobile
phone or I'm on my office phone.
And so we really want a consistent software experience that sits behind
these devices and bridges the personal and professional world. That
will only happen if at least one company like ours, and maybe some
others too [ ha! ], put in place an end-to-end vision and software that
enables it, and then really works with mobile operators to make it come
true. It requires incredible cooperation and coordination between
mobile operators, enterprises, and the technology providers to bring it
to life.
[ beautiful! ballmer is merging business with personal, or merging the
mind with the heart via consistent simplicity provided by windows.
i.e. ballmer wants your heart. YEAH, BABY! ]
googlegroups2sucks
how he goes about things with assurance and aplomb, as michael wolff
implies in vanity fair's new issue. that's not my impression of jobs.
]
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html
Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of
Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12,
2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the
finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth
be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation.
Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big
deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed
around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit.
So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed
college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption.
She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates,
so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and
his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute
that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting
list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an
unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My
biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated
from college and that my father had never graduated from high school.
She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few
months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to
college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college
that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class
parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six
months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to
do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it
out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved
their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all
work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was
one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could
stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin
dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the
floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits
to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday
night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved
it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and
intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one
example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy
instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every
label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had
dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to
take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif
and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between
different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great.
It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science
can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life.
But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh
computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac.
It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never
dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never
had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since
Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would
have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on
this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the
wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to
connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was
very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect
them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow
connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut,
destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down,
and it has made all the difference in my life.
[ read the above again. you can't connect the dots forward, you have
to "trust" the dots will "somehow" connect in the future, have trust in
gut, karma, etc. that's pretty much how i operate as well.
two things to remember: 1) michael wolff writes well. 2) michael
wolff tends to get it wrong. (translation: two things to remember:
1) michael wolff writes well. 2) michael wolff tends to get it
wrong.) ]
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I
started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and
in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a
$2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our
finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just
turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company
you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was
very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so
things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge
and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of
Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out.
What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was
devastating.
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let
the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the
baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob
Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very
public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley.
But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did.
The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been
rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple
was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness
of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner
again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most
creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another
company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would
become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer
animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful
animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple
bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at
NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I
have a wonderful family together.
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired
from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient
needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose
faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I
loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true
for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a
large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to
do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is
to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't
settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it.
And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the
years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live
each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be
right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33
years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If
today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about
to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days
in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever
encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost
everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of
embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of
death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are
going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you
have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not
to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in
the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't
even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost
certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect
to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go
home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to
die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd
have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to
make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as
possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy,
where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and
into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells
from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that
when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started
crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic
cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine
now.
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the
closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can
now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a
useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to
die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one
has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very
likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It
clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you,
but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old
and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other
people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out
your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow
your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want
to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole
Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was
created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo
Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the
late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it
was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was
sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came
along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great
notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog,
and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was
the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final
issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you
might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath
it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell
message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have
always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew,
I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
googlegroups2sucks
Howl/Corpse Bride/Were-Rabbit
By Glenn Abel
An interview with the English dialogue director, Pete Docter, and a
docu on Miyazaki's visit to Pixar both were shot for the use of
Japanese broadcasters and repurposed on the DVD without explanation,
making for odd cross-cultural viewing in spots. (Miyazaki enthusiasts
thrive on this kind of disorientation, of course.)
The Japanese director addressed the Pixar troops before a "Howl"
screening. The film is "true to my heart," he warns the audience of
film pros. "And that might confuse you." Miyazaki has said this tale of
a moody wizard and the teen who loves him -- even after she's turned
into a 90-year-old crone -- could be his last project.
[ ok, i just saw the documentary and i believe the interpreter says the
film's rule is "be truth to my heart". apparently, all of miyazaki's
sorcery animations are based on a central theme and he explained that
theme to avoid confusing the pixar audience. ...amazing how our views
differ, no?
the rule explains sophie's temporary transformations back to her
younger self, because when she's true to her heart or acting/speaking
upon her love for howl, the witch of the waste's spell recedes. when
she's timid or hides her love, the spell remains strong.
howl behaves irresponsibly because he's heartless. he's lost his heart
to calcifer because ate the star demon in an act of selfishness and is
now unable to fall in love with all the women who love him (and it
seems all the women in the tale love him because he's so pretty and
powerful). the witch of the waste became evil and eventually cast an
evil spell on sophie because of her unrequited love for howl.
when sophie acts out her love for howl by returning his heart, calcifer
is released, howl is able to love sophie and sophie is released from
her spell -- all of which happens simultaneously, i believe.
the scarecrow is released from his spell when sophie kisses him for all
his good deeds, who in turn, returns to his homeland and thus ends the
war. yeah, it seems the war was all about his disappearance.
all you need is love, baby... ]
All You Need Is Love
The Beatles (Lennon/McCartney)
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
There's nothing you can do that can't be done.
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung.
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It's easy.
There's nothing you can make that can't be made.
No one you can save that can't be saved.
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time
It's easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
Love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love, love.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
There's nothing you can know that isn't known.
Nothing you can see that isn't shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn't where you're meant to be.
It's easy.
All you need is love, all you need is love,
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
All you need is love (all together now)
All you need is love (everybody)
All you need is love, love, love is all you need.
googlegroups2sucks
euphoric daze, i don't think i posted an article marking the victory.
two things to note:
1) koizumi was making a huge gamble: at the time, he was behind in
the polls in august, most were writing him off, and few could
understand why he was betting his political career on it. this isn't
america, where failure can lead to fame & riches through a book or
movie deal. this is japan, where people apologize profusely for the
smallest errors and regularly kill themselves for failure. not to say
i expected koizumi to kill himself, but he would've lived the remainder
of his life in shame at the least. an entirely unfair though quite
possible situation despite a lifetime of public service. in that
context, it's one of the most politically courageous act i've ever
seen.
2) the scale of the victory: 241 needed for a majority, but the ldp
won 296 and with komeito's 31, gives the coalition an astounding 68%
control. remember, when koizumi called the election, people were
writing him off as a political fool. ]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4232988.stm
Monday, 12 September 2005, 06:04 GMT 07:04 UK
Koizumi secures landslide victory
Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has won an overwhelming
victory in lower house elections, according to results published by the
media.
His party and its coalition ally will have a key two-thirds majority in
the new parliament, Kyodo news agency said.
Mr Koizumi said the voice of the people had been heard and promised to
push on with post office reform, which he had put at the heart of his
campaign.
He said he still intended to step down in September 2006.
That is when his term as President of the ruling Liberal Democratic
Party (LDP) ends, and resigning that post would see him giving up as
prime minister as well.
Mr Koizumi called the snap ballot after his plans to privatise Japan's
post office were blocked by LDP rebels in parliament's upper house.
The prime minister's gamble has paid off handsomely, says the BBC's
Chris Hogg in Tokyo.
And the scale of his achievement should not be underestimated, weeks
after many people were writing him off as prime minister, our
correspondent says.
Winning a two-thirds majority in the lower house means Mr Koizumi can
now override any objection from the upper house and push through
reforms.
Speaking at a press conference, Mr Koizumi said his cabinet would
remain as it is until after a special session of parliament is
convened, probably later this month.
Public broadcaster NHK and Kyodo news agency said Mr Koizumi's Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP) had 296 seats in the 480-seat lower house.
The LDP and its coalition partner, the New Komeito party, took 327
seats, they said.
Gamble pays off
The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the main opposition party, which
had 177 seats before the election saw its share reduced to 113.
"I had hoped we would win a majority with our party alone, but we did
even better than that," Mr Koizumi said.
Katsuya Okada, head of the DPJ, admitted defeat and said he would take
responsibility by resigning.
The prime minister - in office since 2001 - had viewed the election as
a referendum on his reform programme, which was blocked by rebels
within his own party.
He took the unprecedented step of hand-picking candidates in key seats
- dubbed the "assassins" by the media - to try to unseat those rebels.
Our Tokyo correspondent says Mr Koizumi's focus on post office
privatisation during the campaign frustrated the Democrats.
They tried to tackle him on issues such as pension reform, his close
ties to US President George W Bush and the presence of Japanese troops
in Iraq.
Before the election was called, the LDP had 249 seats in the 480-seat
lower house and its coalition partner the New Komeito had 34. The DPJ
had 175.
Turnout is expected to surpass the 60% recorded at the last general
election in 2003.
KEY NUMBERS
480 lower house seats
241 needed for a majority
LDP wins 296 for the new term
Coalition partner New Komeito has 31 seats
The coalition will control 327 seats, or 68.1%
[ the piece below describes the effect i was hoping for, but uncertain
whether it would come to pass. an electricifying jolt to the japanese
economy and the nikkei (it's about 16000 now) that would tilt the
playing field, and change the geopolitical equations in asia. not just
in terms of the challenge with china, but also in terms of aid for
africa because a more prosperous japanese economy would make it easier
for hardcore conservatives in japan to go along with the plans. ]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4236508.stm
Monday, 12 September 2005, 08:36 GMT 09:36 UK
Markets hail Japan poll landslide
Investors have reacted favourably to Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi's landslide election win, with shares and the yen rising
strongly.
The Nikkei-225 index rose 204.39 points or 1.6%, ending at a four-year
high of 12,896.43. The yen strengthened against the dollar from 110.50
to 109.61.
Mr Koizumi's victory gives him a strong mandate for reforms to revive
Japan's sluggish economy, analysts say.
Markets also welcomed figures showing faster-than-estimated economic
growth.
Japan's gross domestic product grew at a revised quarterly rate of 0.8%
in the three months to the end of June, up from the preliminary figure
of 0.3%, the government said.
Stagnation
Mr Koizumi called the election after parliament blocked plans to
privatise the country's post office, the world's biggest savings bank.
The prime minister hopes that taking Japan Post into the private sector
will redirect Japanese savings away from often wasteful public works
projects, used by successive governments as a way of giving an
artificial boost to the economy, analysts say.
Japan is the world's second-biggest economy, but it has suffered from
years of stagnation while its Asian neighbour China has powered ahead.
Michael Hughes, the chief investment officer for Baring Asset
Management, told the BBC that selling off Japan Post would help alter
Japan's culture of share ownership.
"Shareholder structure has changed and the privatisation of the
Japanese post office will just continue that, but at a much faster
pace," he explained on the BBC's World Business Report.
"That basically means that shareholders matter more, that their
interests count for more."
Another analyst, Morgan Stanley's chief Japan economist Robert Feldman,
said the result had left the anti-reform forces "splintered".
"With such a stunning result, passage of the postal reform bills is
virtually assured," he said. "The next areas are medical reform, civil
service reform, public sector outsourcing and government financial
institution reform."
googlegroups2sucks
Stanford Report, June 14, 2005
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of
Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12,
2005.
"I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I
started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and
in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a
$2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our
finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just
turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company
you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was
very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so
things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge
and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of
Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out.
What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was
devastating."
[ remember that word: "devastating". ]
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've
ever
encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost
everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of
embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of
death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are
going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you
have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not
to follow your heart."
[ key phrase above: "all fear of embarrassment or failure".
how devastating must it have been for jobs when he got fired from
apple? it's hard to wrap your mind around it, but try. you pour your
heart & soul into a company you founded, and they fire you in
gratitude. then the whole world dies laughing.
now, how much fear of embarrassment or failure must one have, so that
the only way you'll take other risks is by thinking you'll eventually
die??
so, vanity fair's michael wolff talks of jobs going about with the
"greatest assurance and aplomb", but you know what? he's reading jobs
wrong.
here's my take: jobs lives with deep-seated fears which never goes
away, but he manages to overcome them through a lot of hard work and
sweat. and despite all his uncertainties, he keeps making huge bets
that more often than not, prove to be correct and payoff big time. ]
http://www.twice.com/article/CA6307183.html
At MacWorld: The Attack Of The iPod Accessories
By Stewart Wolpin -- TWICE, 2/13/2006
San Francisco- As Apple continues to add capabilities to the iPod,
imaginative accessory makers continue to create unique add-ons to what
is possibly the most-accessorized product in consumer electronics
history. According to various research firms, there are more than 1,000
accessories from more than 200 suppliers, generating annual sales of
around a billion dollars.
[ ok, back to simplicity. ipod has over 1000 accessories from more
than 200 suppliers. if that isn't stacking simplicity on top of each
other, i don't know what is. and with so much simplicity built up, it
has our complex world and its complex needs fairly well covered. ]
http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/337/C6669/
Top 10 weirdest iPod accessories
Monday February 27, 2006 1:39 PM EST - By: Dave White
Via: TechEblog
Everyone has a Top 10 list, and now we can add to that the Top 10
Strangest iPod Accessories. One website has put together just such a
list.
Among the highlights:
The iPod Jukebox. Put out by Wurlitzer, makers of many things past,
this device "updates" the jukebox idea by linking the older technology
with the newer iPod and Bose speakers. The jukebox is about the size of
previous ones, and it includes a built-in dock for the iPod to settle
into and a 100-CD changer, for all of the music that you don't have
stored on your iPod. Want one? Do you have US$9,500?
>From a Japanese company comes "Chair Man" speakers for the iPod. The
portable music player rests on a plastic "chair," which has sticking
out of its bottom two "feet," which are really built-in 50mm diamater
speakers. The chair also has flexible arms, with Mickey Mouse fingers,
so you can rest easy about your iPod's security while it's resting easy
on Chair Man.
>From the KNG company comes the DJ Docking Station, which plants your
trusty iPod on the "face" of a DJ lookalike, who has speakers for feet
and who moves his arms and, in succession, a couple of record albums,
mimicking the "scratching" of discs while music is thumping.
A company called DesignMobel has come out with a bed that works with an
iPod. The ornately structured wooden headboard and bedside shelves
contain an integrated dock for your handy Apple portable music player,
and the entire apparatus include a Bose speaker system.
And what collection of iPod accessories wouldn't be complete without
the iLounge Toilet Paper Dispenser. That's right, you can have your
tunes when you're all alone in the bathroom. The device includes a dock
that incorporates all models of iPod, including the nano and shuffle,
and easy-to-access navigation buttons. In addition, the device contains
a working wheel onto which you the user can install a roll of TP. Rest
easy.
The website also included the iShirt, as an honorable mention.
googlegroups2sucks
This is just the key thing and it drives me crazy. It drives me crazy
that people don't already understand it. It drives me crazy that
apparently I'm incapable of explaining it. It drives me crazy that it
isn't obvious.
[ there's a lot of stoopidity in politics and the media. there are
people who will read these words i'm writing <-- those very words, and
not understand it. it doesn't sink in. i'm not sure why, since so
many of them also happen to be super-articulate and consistently
display amazing speaking and writing wizardry. i'm starting to think
that the verbal wheels in their minds are whipping around so bloody
fast (anywhere from 50 to 200 words/minute) that they cannot hold it
still long enough for them to fathom an entire sentence or paragraphy
before it zooms off into another train of thought.
e.g. a typical reader will read the following: the quick red fox jumps
over the lazy dog. whereas the supermotormouths will read: the quick
red fox -- CLICK -- (and out pops another train of thought, only
superficially related to the sentence they were reading:) "Redd Foxx
began doing stand up comedy on the infamous 'chitlin' citcuit in the
fourties and fifties, blah, blah, blah." the remainder of the sentence
is run over and lost.
the other problem is the ol' up-is-down logic. e.g. someone who never
mentions his name for 5 years trying to stay anonymous is somehow a
narcissist, but politicians or media personalities or others who take
every chance to showboat themselves on tv or the media are not
narcissists. it's like trying to dig a hole in the middle of a lake
with a shovel. you can spend the rest of your life trying to get
through and not get anywhere, and even if you do make progress, it'll
be instantly replaced with yet another up-is-down gem. they have an
endless supply. it never stops, and if you point it out, they usually
lose it.
...it's one of the reasons i've trying to ween myself off of politics
and media types. ]
googlegroups2sucks
The Times March 18, 2006
Body Shop founders sell up in £652m deal
By Rajeev Syal and Carl Mortished
THE three founders of the Body Shop celebrated an unprecedented
windfall yesterday as they agreed to sell the company for £652 million
to L'Oréal, the French cosmetics giant.
Dame Anita Roddick and her husband, Gordon, will receive £117 million
from the deal and their reclusive partner, Ian McGlinn, will make £137
million. It marks the end of an era for the Body Shop and Dame Anita,
who borrowed £3,000 from Mr McGlinn to set up a shop in Brighton 30
years ago.
Dame Anita, 63, arguably Britain's most prominent businesswoman,
denied that she was "selling out". She has spent years campaigning
about controversial subjects such as fair trade and animal testing,
while L'Oréal has continued to test products on animals. She said
that she would stay as a consultant, adding that the Body Shop's
ethics would not change.
"I don't see it as selling out," she said. "For both Gordon and
I, this is without doubt the best 30th anniversary gift the Body Shop
could have received."
The alliance with Mr McGlinn was formed in 1976 when Dame Anita, a
self- confessed hippy who found natural ingredients to sell as
cosmetics in cheap plastic bottles, needed money to open a second shop.
Her bank had rejected her request for a loan on the ground that her
business idea was not viable.
Mr McGlinn, who lived in a grimy two-bedroom flat over a dilapidated
car park, had a reputation as a loner who fraternised with local
bartenders, but few other people. He dug deep into his meagre savings
to find the money. In return, he was given half the company.
Dame Anita said: "I needed the money quickly and Ian was the only one
who would give it to me. He believed that if he got back eight grand it
would have been a terrific investment. In fact, it was like winning the
pools over and over again."
The Body Shop empire has grown to 2,000 shops in 50 countries, selling
products such as aloe vera, jojoba oil and cocoa butter in recycled
packaging.
[ one thought running on backround throughout last year was that this
might be the last best chance for doing something about global poverty.
i felt then and more so with each passing day, that once the old
hippies start walking off into retirement, that'll be it for some time.
when i think of boomers like dame anita, sir bob, bono in the uk, and
in the states like george lucas, bill clinton, bill gates, koizumi in
japan, chretien & martin in canada, so many current world leaders who
studied in america during the hippie era, and in my own life with the
teachers i had growing up, the bosses i've known, the parents of
friends, etc. i've always detected a latent liberal vibe that i just
don't see much of in their kids, nor those in my generation.
all that hippie idealism has seems to have been replaced with
conservative cynicism. i've often felt i'm sort of in between divorced
& jaded liberal hippies and their cynical & conservative kids who don't
really give a damn. actually, someone please tell me i'm wrong. ]
googlegroups2sucks
it my homepage. ]
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2101-2087266_2,00.html
The Sunday Times March 19, 2006
How Apple ate the world
It is business, culture, art and a quasi-religion. Bryan Appleyard
praises the great god of computer design
Apple Computer is 30 years old on April 1. What follows, before you
turn the page, is not for geeks, it's for aesthetes. Apple, with its
laptops and iPods, is certainly, from one perspective, a geek thing;
but, from another, much more interesting perspective, it's an art
thing, the story of how, even in our time, art and art alone can make,
break, remake and, above all, express a contemporary cultural reality.
Two films make the point. The most recent is the 94-minute address to
the 2006 Macworld Conference, in San Francisco, by Steve Jobs, the boss
of Apple.
You can find it at www.apple.com. The second is the 45-second TV ad
made by Ridley Scott in 1984 to announce the launch of the Macintosh
computer. It was screened once, during the Super Bowl, and it is widely
and justifiably regarded as the greatest television ad ever made. It
can be found on any number of internet sites.
The Jobs address should really be watched as a feature film; it is just
the right length, and is replete with narrative, character, drama and
revelation. Jobs annually uses this event to announce new corporate
triumphs and new products. He is never speculative. Apple does not
believe in deferred gratification; almost everything Jobs announces is
in the shops as he speaks, and he never trails the future. The event is
a prayer meeting, full of gasps and cries of affirmation from the
audience of believers. The preacher's message is: join us and be
free.
Ridley Scott's advert proposed the same hot gospel. In some
futuristic hell, robotic serfs gaze at a giant screen showing the
crazed rantings of what is plainly George Orwell's Big Brother. An
athletically clad girl races in. She is pursued by helmeted goons and
she carries a sledgehammer. With a cry, she hurls the hammer at the
screen. It explodes. The serfs gaze on, bewildered and open-mouthed, as
a voice tells us that, thanks to the Apple Mac, 1984 will not be like
"1984". Join us and be free.
Whatever its share price, Apple identifies itself not as just another
company, but as a cause. Indeed, it is a cause in opposition to other
companies. Its recent switch to Intel chips - those used in most
other computers - was again advertised as a liberation, this time for
the chip itself. Previously it had been "trapped inside PCs doing
dull little tasks"; in an Apple, it can do "so much more".
The cause is highly consistent over time; it is the liberation from
imprisonment in dullness and uniformity. But the cause, as in some
fable, has been betrayed by false prophets. Apple failed to prevent the
dominance of first IBM, then Microsoft, in the computer market and, in
disarray, slumped in the early 1990s towards what seemed to be a
certain demise. Its computers were dreadful. (I abandoned them at the
time; I have returned now. A twitch on the thread brought me back to
the faith.) Then it bounced back, first, on the back of some
astonishing product design, then on the huge success of the iPod. Just
as every vacuum cleaner was once really a Hoover, so now every music
player is really an iPod.
The slump was caused by the departure of Jobs, who is now also head of
the cartoon film company Pixar, and the revival by his return. So,
whatever the public cause of Apple may be, its private cause is Jobs.
Considered as a work of art, Apple is the product of two artists.
The second is the designer Jonathan Ive, but the first is Jobs.
Considered in terms of a religion, Jobs is God, Ive his son.
So, first, Jobs. He started the company in his bedroom with Steve
Wozniak, who was the real computer brain. The liberation theology
sprang from their joint and essentially 1960s hippie conviction that
computers should be for the people. In the 1950s, IBM executives had
seriously believed that the world needed only half a dozen mainframe
computers. The garage and bedroom hobbyists rebelled and, in the form
of Jobs and "Woz", succeeded in proving their point.
What followed is now a hoary old story, but the key aesthetic point
that is usually missed is Jobs's perfectionism. Unlike most
businessmen, he wanted to produce not just a saleable product, but a
perfect one. At the technical level, this meant he wanted to make both
hardware and software in one perfect, integrated package. Microsoft
took the financially saner route of making the software and leaving the
hardware to others.
Aesthetically, this was a way of maintaining creative control. Apple
has always gone to extraordinary lengths to make its systems beautiful
and, when asked what he most disliked about Microsoft, Jobs answered,
with measured disdain: "They have no taste." The slightly sinister,
autocratic side of this is the way this aesthetic control freakery
demands that you play the game according to Jobs's rules. Apple
systems are much more opaque than Microsoft's, going to greater
lengths to conceal the machine's inner workings. The smiling face is
a mask; but then all art is fiction.
Having left in 1985, Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 and unleashed his
corporate son, Ive. Apple's software was in a mess and its market
share almost invisible. So Jobs went for taste, and Ive produced a
series of extraordinary, wildly postmodern machines. With their
translucent, candy-coloured plastics and, in the case of the desktops,
large, inviting handles, they had an almost overpowering tactile
quality. Ive's style may have now resorted to an extremely refined
modernism, but this tactile quality remains. Go to any one of the
extravagant Apple temples - the word "stores" falls laughably
short of the actual experience - and you will see people (sometimes
me) not just using the machines, but stroking them.
But the true apotheosis of Jobs and Ive happened in 2001. The
operating-system software was radically improved, Ive had made his
switch to modernism and the iPod was introduced, a product that
suddenly turned Apple into a big music company with a small computer
operation attached. In business terms, Apple was a player again; and in
artistic terms, it had joined the pantheon.
For fear you will think, possibly correctly, that my rediscovered faith
has driven me mad, I will not wax too lyrical about Ive's current
designs. I will only say that I know of no product, the most refined
cars included, that comes close to attaining their strangely glowing
celebration of their functionality. Other products - Issey Miyake's
clothes, say - are just as great works of art, but only Apple brings
this level of aesthetic excellence to the mass market, and it does so
within the demanding technical confines of the electronics involved.
Okay, it's art, it's culture, so what's it all about? Art for
art's sake is never quite the whole story; there is always context.
The answer, I think, lies in the true nature of the Jobs-Ive
perfectionism. Ive is 39 and Jobs is 51. The first is a Generation X-er
for whom technology is as natural as breathing; the second is a
baby-boomer for whom it is an exciting anti- authoritarian adventure.
Somewhere in Jobs's imagination will be Nasa's breathtaking Saturn
V rockets; somewhere in Ive's will be William Gibson's Neuromancer,
with its cyberpunk visions of the super-integration of the human and
the machine. Jobs's control freakery and technophilia find expression
in Ive's dreams of integration.
Apple's key technical - and world-transforming - innovation was
the Graphical User Interface (GUI). Well, it was copied from a Xerox
experimental lab, but it was Apple, not Xerox, that knew what to do
with it. It gave us multiple windows, the mouse and the computer
paradigm of point-and-click.
It also gave the machine a face with which we could interact. The idea
of the machine face has, ever since, been an Apple obsession. Most
vividly, it was demonstrated in the previous generation of the
company's G4 desktops, with their hemispherical white
"shoulders", from which sprang a chrome "neck" supporting a
screen that could only, as a result, be read as a face. But it is also
present in the current generation of desktops, in which the screen face
has a single support that demands to be called a "foot". The same
points can be made about the cuddly, mobile and highly organic designs
of the software.
The design emphasis of the iPods and the laptops is different but
related. The iPod aspires to the condition of an implant, almost like a
pacemaker, in that it keeps on growing smaller. And the peripherals
sold by Apple offer you the chance to strap it to your body. The
laptops may not be able to shrink to fit quite as much, but Ive has
refined the designs to the point where they seem more like art objects
that are part of the human world, rather than machines in conflict with
it.
All of which is to say that the true subject of Apple's art is the
cyborg, the integration of human and machine. It is no accident that it
was Ridley Scott, the director of the great cyberpunk thriller Blade
Runner (1982) - a film about the ultimate confusions at the
machine-human interface - who directed that 1984 television advert.
Both contrasted the idea of machine hell with that of machine paradise.
Of course, Apple may be about to go horribly wrong, as it has done in
the past. Certainly, its new shops, with their "genius bars" and
auditoria to induct converts, suggest that the theme of the prayer
meeting is being taken to dangerous extremes. The imminent underground
store in New York is surmounted by a 32ft glass cube bearing only the
Apple logo, a hubristically ecclesiastical effect.
Furthermore, it is far from clear that the iPod boom can be converted
into a potentially more lucrative computer boom for the company. Its
share of the computer market remains dangerously low at about 3%.
But what the hell? I couldn't have written this article about Dell,
BMW, BP, Microsoft, Sony or IBM. No company I can think of is quite as
consistently interesting as Apple, and I can certainly think of none
that might qualify as a corporate work of art. So, on the sole basis
that interesting me is a good thing, happy birthday, Apple, and many
more of them.
googlegroups2sucks
>From a garage in California to a billion downloads worldwide: Apple at
thirty
By Stephen Foley in New York
Published: 17 March 2006
<snip>
The Apple II was the first commercial product to use a "graphical user
interface", so users didn't have to learn a complicated computer
language to work it.
And then the Macintosh, launched in 1984 with a mouse and a screen that
said hello to you, became one of the most successful product launches
in computing history.
[ the apple ][ didn't have enough memory or processing power for a gui.
heck it used a cassette tape recorder because floppy disks and hard
drives were too expensive. it had a text-based or dos-based operating
system, somewhat similar to the ibm pc's ms-dos.
it's the mac that introduced gui (and changed the backround from black
or green to white, making it easier on the eyes) and mice. if the
apple ][ introduced gui, then it had to have introduced a mouse -- but
that's not the case.
good news: foley is not a geek. yay.
bad news: foley got it wrong. boo.
good news: it's about tech history, not about war, so no one really
cares. no one dies because foley got it wrong. yay. ]
googlegroups2sucks
At the beginning of the week, I was so focused on making it crystal
clear that we did indeed have permission to run the Clooney blog that I
was blinded to another extremely important issue: that a blog, where
the source of the material is not clear, diminishes the amazing work of
bloggers who day in and day out put their hearts and souls into writing
their blogs.
[ any twit reading my posts that do not realize that i don't
necessarily represent other bloggers, that other bloggers don't
necessarily represent me, that thinks less of me because of every
single little small potato issue some petty minds like to freak about
at any given hour at arianna's site, is not welcome to read my posts
any longer.
shoo...
still here?
there's an uncapped toothpaste somewhere out there on this planet that
is diminishing your meticulous record of toothpaste capping with the
right amount of factory-spec'd torque. where is your outrage over this
uncapped toothpaste epidemic? stop reading me and do something about
it! ]
googlegroups2sucks
Harper tightens leash on his ministers: report
Updated Fri. Mar. 17 2006 11:41 AM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
In an effort to appear focused, Prime Minister Stephen Harper is
tightening the leash on his cabinet ministers and top bureaucrats by
restricting what they can say to the public, a report says.
The Globe and Mail says Harper has ordered them to say nothing to the
media unless it is first cleared by the Prime Minister's Office.
[ oh, c'mon guys. doesn't anyone want to play hockey any more? how
can you not love it? don't be shy, people. play the game. ]
Play The Game
Queen
Written by Freddie Mercury
Sung by Freddie Mercury
Open up your mind and let me step inside
Rest your weary head and let your heart decide
It's so easy when you know the rules
It's so easy all you have to do
Is fall in love
Play the game
Everybody play the game of love
Ooh yeah
When you're feeling down and your resistance is low
Light another cigarette and let yourself go
This is your life
Don't play hard to get
It's a free world
All you have to do is fall in love
Play the game - yeah
Everybody play the game of love
Ooh yeah
My game of love has just begun
Love runs from my head down to my toes
My love is pumping through my veins
Play the game
Driving me insane
Come come come come come play the game
Play the game play the game play the game
Play the game
Everybody play the game of love
This is your life - don't play hard to get
It's a free free world
All you have to do is fall in love
Play the game
Yeah play the game of love
Your life - don't play hard to get
It's a free free world
All you have to do is fall in love
Play the game yeah everybody play the game of love
(Released 30th May, 1980 - Spent 8 weeks on chart and reached number
14. First Queen song to feature a synthesizer.)
googlegroups2sucks
ok. "les yeux ouverts" is based on the delightful melodies of "dream a
little dream of me", but the lyrics have are vastly different, so the
english translation of "les yeux ouvert" is provided below. it's
performed by "beautiful south" (available on the "french kiss"
soundtrack"), but not to be confused with the UK's "beautiful south"
made up by former members of "the housemartins".
confused? me too. so what, let the singing begin!
Les Yeux Ouverts [ open eyes ]
Beautiful South
Ce souvenir je te le rends
Des souvenirs, tu sais j'en ai tellement
Puisqu'on reva de jours errants
Pas la peine de changer trop
Ce souvenir je te le prends
Des souvenirs, comme ca j'en ai tout le temps
Si par erreur la vie nous separe
J'le sortirai d'mon tiroir
J'reve les yeux ouverts
Ca m'fait du bien
Ca ne va pas plus loin
J'vais pas voir derriere
Puisque j'aime bien
Vivement demain
Un dernier verre de sherry
Du sherry mon amant quand je m'ennuie
Tous les jours se ressemblent a present
Tu me manques terriblement
English translation of "Les Yeux Ouverts"
This memory I'm giving back to you
These memories, you know I have so many
Since we dreamed of passing days
No need to change too much
This memory I'm taking from you
Memories like that happen to me all the time
If life mistakenly sets us apart
I'll get it from my drawer
I dream with my eyes open
It feels good
It does not go any farther
I don't look back
Since I feel good
I wish tomorrow would come quick
A last glass of sherry
Sherry, my love, when I feel sad
All days look alike to me now
I miss you so terribly
Translation: Professor Jacques Bereaud, Cornell
googlegroups2sucks
KID POLITICS | Whiny children, claims a new study, tend to grow up
rigid and traditional. Future liberals, on the other hand ...
Mar. 19, 2006. 10:45 AM
KURT KLEINER
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
<snip>
The researchers reviewed 44 years worth of studies into the psychology
of conservatism, and concluded that people who are dogmatic, fearful,
intolerant of ambiguity and uncertainty, and who crave order and
structure are more likely to gravitate to conservatism.
[ yup. not that those qualities are always awful. they're ideal to
find in soldiers or any situation requiring a tight team effort. to be
honest, i'm not sure i'd want hardcore liberals backing me up on the
big day of competition. they may or may not show up, depending on
their mood. heh.
however. the "crave order and structure" bit is absolutely right on
the money. it drives me crazy to hear republicans always chanting
about FREEDOM when it's the precise opposite of what they crave.
please allow me to shout the following in the hopes it'll sink in:
REPUBLICANS LOVE ORDER AND STRUCTURE AND DISCIPLINE, NOT "FREEDOM".
DEMS LOVE "FREEDOM", THAT'S WHY DEMS ARE ALWAYS IN DISARRAY. i feel
much better now, thank you.
it's just another example of up-is-down political baloney. the patriot
act is a prime example: republicans want to shred individual freedoms
bit by bit, while dems want to preserve individual freedoms. when
republicans talk of freedom, it's usually in the framework of freedom
from regulation & rules, ie., they want the freedom to violate the
rights of others.
how so many law & order republicans sit there and chant freedom day
after day with a straight face is beyond me, and is matched only by how
so many dems sit there day after day and let republicans get away with
that nonsense. ]
googlegroups2sucks
Steve Jobs: The Rolling Stone Interview
He changed the computer industry. Now he's after the music business
<snip>
Still, Jobs' bet on digital music is a hugely risky move in many ways,
not only because powerhouses such as Dell and Wal-Mart are gunning for
Apple (and Microsoft will be soon, as well), but because success may
depend on how well Jobs, a forty-eight-year-old billionaire, is able to
understand and respond to the fickle music-listening habits of
eighteen-year-olds in their college dorms.
Do you see any parallel between music revolution today and PC
revolution in 1984?
Well, obviously, the biggest difference is that we're on Windows. It's
still very early in the music revolution. Remember there are 10 billion
songs that are distributed in the U.S. every year -- legally, on CDs.
So far on iTunes, we've distributed about 16 million [as of October].
So we're at the very beginning of this. It will take years to unfold.
Bringing iTunes to Windows was obviously a bold move. Did you do much
hand-wringing over it?
I don't know what hand-wringing is. We did a lot of thinking about it.
The biggest risk, obviously, was that we saw people buying Macs just to
get their hands on iPods. So taking iPods to Windows was really the
choice. That was the big decision. We knew once we did that that we
were going to go all the way. I'm sure we're losing some Mac sales, but
half our sales of iPods are to the Windows world already.
How did the the record companies react when you initially approached
them about getting on-board with Apple?
Well, there's a lot of smart people at the music companies. The problem
is, they're not technology people. The good music companies do an
amazing thing. They have people who can pick the person that's gonna be
successful out of 5,000 candidates. And there's not enough information
to do that -- it's an intuitive process. And the best music companies
know how to do that with a reasonably high success rate.
I think that's a good thing. The world needs more smart editorial these
days. The problem is, is that that has nothing to do with technology.
And so when the Internet came along, and Napster came along, they
didn't know what to make of it. A lot of these folks didn't use
computers -- weren't on e-mail; didn't really know what Napster was for
a few years. They were pretty doggone slow to react. Matter of fact,
they still haven't really reacted, in many ways. And so they're fairly
vulnerable to people telling them technical solutions will work, when
they won't.
Because of their technological ignorance.
Because of their technological innocence, I would say. When we first
went to talk to these record companies -- you know, it was a while ago.
It took us 18 months. And at first we said: None of this technology
that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.'s here, that know
the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital
content.
Of course, music theft is nothing new. Didn't you listen to bootleg Bob
Dylan?
Of course. What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system
for stolen property called the Internet -- and no one's gonna shut down
the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet.
And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock -- open every
door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody
just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it --
puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do
is compete with it.
At first, they kicked us out. But we kept going back again and again.
The first record company to really understand this stuff was Warner.
They have some smart people there, and they said: We agree with you.
And next was Universal. Then we started making headway. And the reason
we did, I think, is because we made predictions.
We said: These [music subscription] services that are out there now are
going to fail. Music Net's gonna fail, Press Play's gonna fail. Here's
why: People don't want to buy their music as a subscription. They
bought 45's; then they bought LP's; then they bought cassettes; then
they bought 8-tracks; then they bought CD's. They're going to want to
buy downloads. People want to own their music. You don't want to rent
your music -- and then, one day, if you stop paying, all your music
goes away.
And, you know, at 10 bucks a month, that's $120 a year. That's $1,200 a
decade. That's a lot of money for me to listen to the songs I love.
It's cheaper to buy, and that's what they're gonna want to do.
They didn't see it that way. There were people running around --
business-development people -- who kept pointing out AOL as the great
model for this and saying: No, we want that -- we want a subscription
business. We said: It ain't gonna work.
Slowly but surely, as these things didn't pan out, we started to gain
some credibility with these folks. And they started to say: You know,
you're right on these things -- tell us more.
Well, despite the success of iTunes, it seems that it's a little early
to call all of your competitors failures. Real Network's Rhapsody, for
example, has already won over some critics.
One question to ask these subscription services is how many subscribers
they have. It's around 50,000. And that's not just for Rhapsody, it's
for the old Pressplay and the old MusicMatch. 50,000 subscribers,
total.
The subscription model of buying music is bankrupt. I think you could
make available the Second Coming in a subscription model and it might
not be successful.
When you went to see music execs, was there much comment about Apple's
"Rip, Mix, Burn" campaign? A lot of music execs regarded it as a subtle
invitation to steal music. Well, when we did the Rip, Mix, Burn thing
-- I mean, "rip" is the phrase that means "take the bits off the CD and
put 'em on your hard drive." Rip the bits off your CD -- as if you're
physically ripping them off and putting them on your hard drive. The
person who assailed us over it was Michael Eisner. Because he didn't
have any teenage kids living at home, and he didn't have any teenage
kids working at Disney that he talked to, so he thought "rip" meant
"rip off." And when somebody actually clued him in a to what it meant,
he did apologize.
Lately, the recording industry has been threatening to throw anyone
caught illegally downloading music in jail. How smart is that?
Well, I empathize with 'em. I mean, Apple has a lot of intellectual
property. We told 'em that, too. We said: We really get upset when
people steal our software. So I think that they're within their rights
to try to keep people from stealing their product.
Our position, from the beginning, was that 80% of the people stealing
music online don't really want to be thieves. But that it is such a
compelling way to get music: It's instant gratification. You don't have
to go to the record store; the music's already digitized, so you don't
have to rip the CD. It's so compelling that people are willing to
become thieves to do it. And to tell them that they should stop being
thieves -- without a legal alternative, that offers those same benefits
-- rings hollow. We said: We don't see how you convince people to stop
being thieves, unless you can offer them a carrot -- not just a stick.
And the carrot is: We're gonna offer you a better experience ... and
it's only gonna cost you a dollar a song.
You've sold about 20 millions songs on iTunes so far -- it sounds like
a big number, until you realize that some 35 billion music files
swapped in a year.
Well, we don't even have to go that far. There are approximately 800
million CD's sold in the U.S. a year, I believe. That's about 10
billion tracks, right? About 10 billion tracks in the U.S. -- sold
legally. Our next milestones are to get up to 100 million tracks a
year, then a quarter a billion, and then half a billion, and then a
billion. And that's gonna take a little bit of time. But we can see a
path that people will buy a billion tracks a year online. From us and
others. And that'll be 10% of the music that's sold today in the
country, and then it will keep going from there. And, someday, maybe
all of the music will be delivered online -- 'cause the Internet was
built to deliver music. I mean, if nothing else, Napster proved that.
David Bowie predicted that because of interent and piracy, copyright is
going to be dead in ten years. You agree?
No. If copyright dies, if patents die, if the protection of
intellectual property is eroded, then people will stop investing. That
hurts everyone. People need to have the incentive that if they invest
and succeed, they can make a fair profit. Otherwise they'll stop
investing. But on another level entirely, it's just wrong to steal. Or,
let's put it another way: it is corrosive to one's character to steal.
We want to provide a legal alternative. And we want to make it so
compelling that all those people out there who really want to be
honest, and really don't want to steal, but haven't had a choice if
they wanted to get their music online, will now have a choice. And we
think over time, most people stealing music will choose not to if a
fair and resonable alternative is presented to them. We are optimists.
We always have been.
Of course, a lot of college students who are grabbing music off Kazza
today don't see themselves as doing anything any different than what
you did when you were a teenager, copying bootleg Bob Dylan tapes.
The truth is, it's really hard to talk to people about not stealing
music when there's no legal alternative. The advent of a legal
alternative is new -- it's six months old. Maybe there's been a
generation of kids lost -- and maybe not, who knows. Maybe they think
stealing music is like driving 70 mph on the freeway -- it's over the
speed limit, but what's the big deal? But I don't think that's the way
it's going to stay -- not with future generations, at least. But who
knows? This is all new territory.
Lots people who work in the movie business have watched what's happened
to the music industry and think they're next. Do you see that?
It is a problem. But movies are very different than music. First of
all, they're a hundred times larger. So in countries like the U.S.,
where broadband is not very evolved, it takes forever to download a
high-quality version of a movie. And remember that the bar is going to
get raised on that quality in another four years, when we have
high-definition DVDs in the market. That's going to increase the
download times by another ten X. Because people's of what they want are
going to go up with that. Second, movies are not deconstructable into
songs, like an album is, that are easy to download. Five minutes of a
movie isn't very useful. You want the whole thing. Third, there's only
been one way to buy your music -- that's on a CD. Look at the ways
there are to legally buy a movie -- you can see it at the theater, you
can buy it on home video, you can buy on DVD. But you can also rent it
at Blockbuster or Netflix. You can watch it on pay-per-view. You can
also watch it on cable or network TV. There are a lot of ways to
legally get a movie. There was only one way to legally get music.
That's a really big difference. The distribution is much more highly
evolved in the movie industry than it ever was in the music industry.
Now, all this doesn't mean that piracy isn't taking place in movies --
because it is. And that doesn't mean that it's good -- because it's
not. But because of all those factors, people who just make the leap
that movies are next are wrong. It may take a different path.
Apple has had a head start in the digital music business, but obviously
lots of other companies are getting into it now too. Last week, for
example, Dell come out with it iPod-clone, the Dell DJ.
We will ship way more digital music players than Dell this quarter. Way
more. In the long run, we're going to be very competitive. We beat Dell
on operational metrics every quarter. We are absolutely as good of a
manufacturer as Dell. Our logistics are as good as Dell's. Our online
store is better than Dell's. And we have retail channels. Most people
don't want to buy one of these things through the mail. Dell is going
to have to sell that thing retail if they are going to succeed. Their
distrubution model works against them when they get into consumer
electronics. Like they're going to be selling plasma TVs online. Would
you ever buy a plasma TV without seeing it? No way.
And then there's Microsoft. What happens to Apple when they build an
iTunes-clone into the Windows desktop?
I think Amazon does pretty well [against Microsoft]. Microsoft hasn't
really been able to compete with them -- maybe not wanted to. EBay does
pretty well; Google's done pretty well. Actually, AOL's done pretty
well -- contrary to a lot of the things people say about them. So there
are a lot of examples of people offering services, Internet-based
services, that have done quite well.
And Apple's in a pretty interesting position. Because, as you may know,
almost every song and CD is made on a Mac -- it's recorded on a Mac;
it's mixed on a Mac. The artwork's done on a Mac. Almost every artist
I've met has an iPod, and most of the music execs now have iPods. And
one of the reasons Apple was able to do what we did was because we are
perceived by the music industry as the most creative technology
company. And now we've created this music store, which I think is
nontrivial to copy. I mean, to say that Microsoft can just decide to
copy it, and copy it in six months -- that's a big statement. It may
not be so easy.
Despite the wonders of digital music services, a lot of musicans and
listeners worry it's killing the album as an art form.
We've heard both sides of it. Most of the successful artists have
carve-outs in their contract for the distribution of music online by
their record company. And so even though we could convince, let's say,
Universal Music, the largest, to do a deal with us for the iTunes Music
Store, they were not able to offer us their top 20 artists. All music
companies were like this. We had to go to the individual artists, one
by one, and convince them, too. And we did, and they trusted us.
Now, there were a few who said: We don't want to do that -- and we
respect that. They said: We will let you distribute our albums as a
whole, but not individual tracks. And we declined. We said: You know,
our store is about giving the user that choice. And what's happened is
that half the songs we've sold, approximately -- about half have been
as albums ... and the other half have been individually. I think
there's a much higher proportion of sales of songs as albums than
anyone thought. We thought it was gonna be around a quarter, but it's
around a half.
But for every one of those, we've talked to, probably three or four
artists who've said: You know, this is the best thing in the world.
Because I don't want to have to wait 18 months to get together a dozen
songs to make an album to get in front of my audience.
When is Apple going to start signing musicians - in effect, become a
record label?
Well, it would be very easy for us to sign up a musician. It would be
very hard for us to sign up a young musician that was successful.
Because that's what the record companies do. Their value is in picking
that 1 out of 5,000. We don't do that.
We think there's a lot of structural changes that are probably gonna
happen in the record industry, though. We've talked to a large number
of artists that really don't like their record company, and I was
curious about that. And the general reason they don't like the record
company is because they think they've been really successful, but
they've only earned a little bit of money.
They feel they've been ripped off.
They feel. But then, again, the music companies aren't making a lot of
money right now ... so where's the money going? Is it inefficiency? Is
somebody going to Argentina with suitcases full of hundred-dollar
bills? What's going on?
And it turns out, after talking to a lot of people, this is my
conclusion. A young artist gets signed, and they get a big advance -- a
million dollars, or more. And the theory is that the record company
will earn back that advance as the artist is successful.
Except that even though they're really good at picking, still, only one
or two out of the ten that they pick is successful. And so, for most of
the artists, they never earn back that advance -- so they're out that
money. Well, who pays for the ones that are the losers?
Kid Rock.
The winners pay. The winners are paying for the losers, and the winners
are not seeing rewards commensurate with their success. And so they get
upset. So what's the remedy? The remedy is to stop paying advances. The
remedy is to go to a gross-revenues deal and to tell an artist: We'll
give you 20 cents on every dollar we get ... but we're not gonna give
you an advance.
The accounting will be simple: We're gonna pay you not on profits --
we're gonna pay you off revenues. It's very simple: The more successful
you are, the more you'll earn. But if you're not successful, you will
not earn a dime. We'll go ahead and risk some marketing money on you,
and we'll be out. But if you're not successful, you'll make no money --
but if you are, you'll make a lot more. That's the way out. That's the
way the rest of the world works.
So you see the recording industry moving in that direction?
No. I said: I think that's the remedy. Will the patient swallow the
medicine is another question.
I want to ask you about your own interest in music. I know you're a big
Bob Dylan fan. What does Dylan mean to you?
He was a very clear thinker, and he was a poet. I think he wrote about
what he saw and thought. The early stuff is very precise. But, as he
matured, you know, you had to unravel it a little bit. But once you
did, it was just as clear as a bell. I was listening the other day to
"Only a Pawn in Their Game." You know, when Medgar Evers was shot there
were all these folk songs written about it. Dylan thought it through so
carefully, and wrote this brilliant song about it. And that stuff's as
good today as when he penned it.
When did you discover Dylan?
Steve Wozniak turned me on to him. I was probably ... oh ... maybe 13,
14. We ended up meeting this guy who had every bootleg tape in the
world. He was a guy that actually put out a newsletter on Bob Dylan. He
was really into it -- his whole life was about Bob Dylan. But he had
the best bootlegs -- even better stuff than you can get today that's
been released. He had amazing stuff. And so we had our room full of
tapes of Bob Dylan that we copied.
Obviously music is important to Apple's future. But skeptics have long
viewed Apple as little more than as the cool R&D lab for the computer
industry. Apple innovates -- everybody else takes it and makes money
off it. How does Apple survive in an industry that's getting more
consolidated, more mature?
Well, first of all, I don't think that's a terrible thing, what you've
just portrayed. Right now, in the personal-computer business -- in
terms of companies that sell personal computers -- everyone is losing a
lot of money, except for two companies.
Hewlett-Packard just announced their results, and they just lost $56
million in the PC business in one quarter. That's over $200 million a
year. Sony's losing a lot of money in the PC business; Gateway's losing
a lot of money in the PC business; IBM's losing money in the PC
business; Toshiba's losing a lot of money in the PC business.
Everyone's losing money in this business -- except for Dell, which is
making a reasonable amount of money, and Apple, which is making a
little money.
And Dell's making money because they're taking market share away from
the guys, because they all sell the same product. We're making some
money because we're innovating. And we decided to innovate our way
through this downturn, so that we would be further ahead of our
competitors when things turn up.
Still, Apple's market share seems stuck at about 5% in the U.Ss and 3%
worldwide.
So our market share is actually greater than BMW's -- greater than
Mercedes -- in the car industry. And, yet, no one thinks BMW or
Mercedes are going away, and no one thinks that they're at a tremendous
disadvantage because that's their market share. Matter of fact, they're
both highly desirable products and brands.
But is that a fair analogy? Mercedes isn't dependent upon having a
critical mass of developers writing software in order to make their
product useful.
Except that we do have that critical mass now. In other words, the
thing about Apple's market share that you have to understand is, when
you get under the hood, we don't sell computers, en masse, to sit on
every desk of every corporation. So when you take that out, the
remaining markets -- we have a much higher market share. Our consumer
market share has doubled in the past few years -- doubled. So our
market share in the creative-professional marketplace is over 50%.
So when you look at the markets that we compete in, our market share
isn't 5% or 3% -- it's 10% to 60%. In some cases, it's up at 90%. So
that's sort of the myth of the market share. If you throw in the
boatloads of PC's that are sold to corporations, then that waters down
our market share. But that's not a market we compete in, you know?
That's like saying: Let's add the computers that are sold, you know, on
Neptune.
Do you see a time when a version of the iPod will become more important
to Apple than the Mac itself?
Well, Apple has a core set of talents, and those talents are: We do, I
think, very good hardware design; we do very good industrial design;
and we write very good system and application software. And we're
really good at packaging that all together into a product. We're the
only people left in the computer industry that do that. And we're
really the only people in the consumer-electronics industry that go
deep in software in consumer products. So those talents can be used to
make personal computers, and they can also be used to make things like
iPods. And we're doing both, and we'll find out what the future holds.
You're well-known as being a technological optimist. Do you still feel
as hopeful about what technology has done for us as a culture as you
did, say, twenty years ago?
Oh, yeah. I think it's brought the world a lot closer together, and
will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are
unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of
technology that I've ever seen is called television -- but then, again,
television, at its best, is magnificent.
Why do you call television the most corrosive of technology you've ever
seen?
Because the average American watches five hours a day of television,
and television is a passive medium. Television doesn't turn your brain
on. Or, television can be used to turn your brain off, and that's what
it's mostly used for. And that's a wonderful thing sometimes -- but not
for five hours a day.
When you talk about what technology has done for the world, though,
it's not just TV and computers. It's also genetic research, cloning,
nanotech. There are a lot people who feel like we're pushing technology
too far, that we don't really know what we're messing with. Do you have
any sympathy for that point of view?
You know, again -- I'd rather just talk about music. These big-picture
questions are just -- (Snores) I think we're all happier when we have a
little more music in our lives.
(Laughs) It's that simple?
We were very lucky -- we grew up in a generation where music was an
incredibly intimate part of that generation. More intimate than it had
been, and maybe more intimate than it is today, because today there's a
lot of other alternatives. We didn't have video games to play. We
didn't have personal computers. There's so many other things competing
for kids' time now. But, nonetheless, music is really being reinvented
in this digital age, and that is bringing it back into people's lives.
It's a wonderful thing. And in our own small way, that's how we're
working to make the world a better place.
Jeff Goodell
Posted Dec 03, 2003 12:00 AM
googlegroups2sucks
>
> Steve Jobs: The Rolling Stone Interview
> He changed the computer industry. Now he's after the music business
>
> them about getting on-board with Apple?
>
> Well, there's a lot of smart people at the music companies. The problem
> is, they're not technology people. The good music companies do an
> amazing thing. They have people who can pick the person that's gonna be
> successful out of 5,000 candidates. And there's not enough information
> to do that -- it's an intuitive process. And the best music companies
> know how to do that with a reasonably high success rate.
[ THAT is what i keep hammering on too. how to pick the person out of
5,000 candidates.
i honestly believe you can easily include every tiresome media company
out there, including charlie rose unfortunately. they don't know who
to hire, don't know who to promote, nor who to fire.
for the love of god, if you want to know what to do about iraq, don't
listen to numbskulls that cheerleaded you into the iraq mess. they've
proven to have lousy judgment on a very huge and important issue.
at least in the music world, there's a winnowing process. those that
get it wrong get the boot by the marketplace. there is no such process
in media land. none. that's where blogging comes in, and one day,
it'll do reporting too.
a word to any disgruntled journalists reading. i know not all
journalists are shallow. i know you're being suffocated. i know your
editors are fools. listen carefully: if you got the balls and the
talent, there's an opportunity out here just waiting to be tapped. an
opportunity to create an online journalism company based on merit, on
getting right, not just on writing well or kissing editorial ass. ]
> I think that's a good thing. The world needs more smart editorial these
> days. The problem is, is that that has nothing to do with technology.
> And so when the Internet came along, and Napster came along, they
> didn't know what to make of it. A lot of these folks didn't use
> computers -- weren't on e-mail; didn't really know what Napster was for
> a few years. They were pretty doggone slow to react. Matter of fact,
> they still haven't really reacted, in many ways. And so they're fairly
> vulnerable to people telling them technical solutions will work, when
> they won't.
[ killer point. as i like to often point out, they pride themselves on
not being geeks. but it's a much larger problem than the music
industry. i'll wager the majority of corporate america and the US govt
in general is in the same vulnerable fix. everyone disdains geeky
technical subjects. it is this vast swath of technical ignorance
across america that ibm services has exploited with their pricey
consultants. ]
>
> Because of their technological ignorance.
>
> Because of their technological innocence, I would say. When we first
> went to talk to these record companies -- you know, it was a while ago.
> It took us 18 months. And at first we said: None of this technology
> that you're talking about's gonna work. We have Ph.D.'s here, that know
> the stuff cold, and we don't believe it's possible to protect digital
> content.
>
> Of course, music theft is nothing new. Didn't you listen to bootleg Bob
> Dylan?
>
> Of course. What's new is this amazingly efficient distribution system
> for stolen property called the Internet -- and no one's gonna shut down
> the Internet. And it only takes one stolen copy to be on the Internet.
> And the way we expressed it to them is: Pick one lock -- open every
> door. It only takes one person to pick a lock. Worst case: Somebody
> just takes the analog outputs of their CD player and rerecords it --
> puts it on the Internet. You'll never stop that. So what you have to do
> is compete with it.
>
> At first, they kicked us out. But we kept going back again and again.
> The first record company to really understand this stuff was Warner.
> They have some smart people there, and they said: We agree with you.
> And next was Universal. Then we started making headway. And the reason
> we did, I think, is because we made predictions.
[ that's my game, buddy. kudos to warner, btw. i wonder if those
people are still around. ]
> We said: These [music subscription] services that are out there now are
> going to fail. Music Net's gonna fail, Press Play's gonna fail. Here's
> why: People don't want to buy their music as a subscription. They
> bought 45's; then they bought LP's; then they bought cassettes; then
> they bought 8-tracks; then they bought CD's. They're going to want to
> buy downloads. People want to own their music. You don't want to rent
> your music -- and then, one day, if you stop paying, all your music
> goes away.
>
> And, you know, at 10 bucks a month, that's $120 a year. That's $1,200 a
> decade. That's a lot of money for me to listen to the songs I love.
> It's cheaper to buy, and that's what they're gonna want to do.
>
> They didn't see it that way. There were people running around --
> business-development people -- who kept pointing out AOL as the great
> model for this and saying: No, we want that -- we want a subscription
> business. We said: It ain't gonna work.
>
> Slowly but surely, as these things didn't pan out, we started to gain
> some credibility with these folks. And they started to say: You know,
> you're right on these things -- tell us more.
>
> Well, despite the success of iTunes, it seems that it's a little early
> to call all of your competitors failures. Real Network's Rhapsody, for
> example, has already won over some critics.
[ jobs nails it with almost every point. ...then you have the media
piddlywink cautioning about "rhapsody".
more later. ]
googlegroups2sucks
download only from itunes and not other services, and you can access
itunes only through ipod and not other mp3 players), viewing it as
anti-competitive.
you hate jobs because well, you hate anyone who's successful and think
you can do better. what should jobs do? forbes lays out three
alternatives. what's the best course of action short-term and
long-term? go ahead, smart guy. pick one or pick none or suggest
another. billions in future revenue and in terms of stock price, are
at stake. pick the wrong one, or pick the right one but not execute
properly and it can lead to huge losses at worst, or billions in
opportunity costs. you've got to quickly assess hundreds, if not
thousands of constantly changing key variables. go ahead, punk, make
your choice. bonus point: try to predict what jobs will eventually
do. my prediction: you'll make the wrong choice, and jobs will make
the right one. ]
http://www.forbes.com/work/feeds/ap/2006/03/17/ap2603288.html
Will Jobs' IPod Bid Adieu To France?
Parmy Olson, 03.20.06, 2:33 PM ET
UFC has already filed a lawsuit in the French courts, attacking Apple's
exclusive music format as a form of anticompetitive "tied selling."
"It's only by resisting interoperability that Apple is able to keep
this dominant position," Dourgnon said. "Once there's interoperability,
it's over."
If the draft law goes through in its current form, experts say, Apple
could have three broad courses of action to choose from.
The company could look for technical solutions to comply with the new
law in France while maintaining its format exclusivity elsewhere. Sales
from iTunes sites are already restricted to local markets using credit
card details. But preventing newly interoperable iPods from being used
outside the "walled garden" would be much harder - although shipping
them with French-only software could help.
Alternatively, Apple could follow the example set by Microsoft Corp. in
its standoff with EU antitrust authorities: drag its feet over
compliance and wait to be sued. Court proceedings are long, damages
relatively light and class actions impossible in France. Apple might
calculate that its iPod and iTunes profits dwarf the penalties it could
face.
Finally, Apple could be forced to withdraw from Europe's third-largest
music download market - or threaten to do so while seeking a change in
the law.
googlegroups2sucks
googlegroups2sucks wrote:
> [ problem: france wants to break the ipod - itunes lock (ipod can
> download only from itunes and not other services, and you can access
> itunes only through ipod and not other mp3 players), viewing it as
> anti-competitive.
>
> you hate jobs because well, you hate anyone who's successful and think
> you can do better. what should jobs do? forbes lays out three
> alternatives. what's the best course of action short-term and
> long-term? go ahead, smart guy. pick one or pick none or suggest
> another. billions in future revenue and in terms of stock price, are
> at stake. pick the wrong one, or pick the right one but not execute
> properly and it can lead to huge losses at worst, or billions in
> opportunity costs. you've got to quickly assess hundreds, if not
> thousands of constantly changing key variables. go ahead, punk, make
> your choice. bonus point: try to predict what jobs will eventually
> do. my prediction: you'll make the wrong choice, and jobs will make
> the right one. ]
my point is how difficult it is to do a good job as ceo. i'm not sure
everyone appreciates the complexity involved to perform superbly. it's
so very easy to do a mediocre or lousy job. who do you hire from 5000
candidates? how much should you pay them? once hired, how much should
you push them or leave them alone? what will be the next ipod
opportunity? should you invest $1 million, $10 million or $100 million
on your guess at the next ipod? should you invest $1 million now and
play it safe, or go all out on $100 million now to be first? i don't
think anyone can make those kind of decisions digitally, like on a
chess board. way too many calculations and permutations, literally
millions of permutations, and thus far more complex than narrowly
defined chessplay. when you mass so many digital calculations
together, it begins to take on an analog form, like a demand curve in
economics. after a certain point, you realize all the possibilities
bunch together like giant analog bell curves, one after another, one
overlapping another, one contingency based on another contingency, and
must be decided by analog means: your gut, your instinct, your hunch.
...and now for something completely different.
maybe someone like harriet miers wasn't qualified for the bench,
strictly speaking. that didn't matter to me as much, because the other
justices could make up for that and help her along. what matters in
the end is how she votes, and in that respect, it's fairly easy: you
vote up or down. you don't have to pick out a strategy from millions
of permutations. my gut feel was that she would've been more moderate
overall in her votes than the next nomination, with the added benefit
of driving the gop's evangelical base bananas.
you hear these so-called beltway strategists talk of "not getting in
the way" when someone is failing? it's good advice if you don't know
what the hell is going to happen next. however, if you're good at
anticipation, it's bullshit. sometimes it's best to push, sometimes
it's best to pull, sometimes it's best to do nothing. one thing i'm
certain of: anyone who tells you to _always_ "not get in the way"
isn't a strategist.
googlegroups2sucks
[ you knew it was coming. i couldn't keep giving french lessons
without pissing off my german audience.
btw, despite the das boot reference (love that movie), 99 luftballons
is a strong antiwar song but in a cold war context. song came out in
the early 80s, afterall.
anyway, here it is. check out those funky german characters... ]
99 Luftballons
Nena
Text: Carlo Karges
Musik: J. U. Fahrenkrog-Petersen
Hast du etwas Zeit für mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied für dich
Von 99 Luftballons
Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont
Denkst du vielleicht g'rad an mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied für dich
Von 99 Luftballons
Und dass so was von so was kommt
99 Luftballons
Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont
Hielt man für Ufos aus dem All
Darum schickte ein General
'ne Fliegerstaffel hinterher
Alarm zu geben, wenn es so wär
Dabei war'n da am Horizont
Nur 99 Luftballons
99 Düsenjäger
Jeder war ein großer Krieger
Hielten sich für Captain Kirk
Das gab ein großes Feuerwerk
Die Nachbarn haben nichts gerafft
Und fühlten sich gleich angemacht
Dabei schoss man am Horizont
Auf 99 Luftballons
99 Kriegsminister -
Streichholz und Benzinkanister -
Hielten sich für schlaue Leute
Witterten schon fette Beute
Riefen Krieg und wollten Macht
Mann, wer hätte das gedacht
Dass es einmal soweit kommt
Wegen 99 Luftballons
99 Jahre Krieg
Ließen keinen Platz für Sieger
Kriegsminister gibt's nicht mehr
Und auch keine Düsenflieger
Heute zieh' ich meine Runden
Seh' die Welt in Trümmern liegen
Hab' 'nen Luftballon gefunden
Denk' an dich und lass' ihn fliegen
99 Luftballons
Nena
German Text: Carlo Karges
Translation: Hyde Flippo
Musik: Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen
[ literal english translation, not "99 red balloons" lyrics. ]
Have you some time for me,
then I'll sing a song for you
about 99 balloons
on their way to the horizon.
If you're perhaps thinking about me right now
then I'll sing a song for you
about 99 balloons
and that such a thing comes from such a thing.
99 balloons
on their way to the horizon
People think they're UFO's from space
so a general sent up
a fighter squadron after them
Sound the alarm if it's so
but there on the horizon were
only 99 balloons.
99 fighter jets
Each one's a great warrior
Thought they were Captain Kirk
then came a lot of fireworks
the neighbors didn't understand anything
and felt like they were being provoked
so they shot at the horizon
at 99 balloons.
99 war ministers
matches and gasoline canisters
They thought they were clever people
already smelled a nice bounty
Called for war and wanted power.
Man, who would've thought
that things would someday go so far
because of 99 balloons.
99 years of war
left no room for victors.
There are no more war ministers
nor any jet fighters.
Today I'm making my rounds
see the world lying in ruins.
I found a balloon,
think of you and let it fly (away).
googlegroups2sucks
reading. if you stop i respect that, and won't get angry. if you stay
i respect that too, and in fact, appreciate it. but this reading, then
bitching without letting me know what i'm doing wrong or how i can
change because you're too much of a weasel -- is just pathetic. so
please, either grow a pair and let me know, or go away, or better yet,
go away and get therapy because i think you're more screwed up than i
am.
googlegroups2sucks
>
> Steve Jobs: The Rolling Stone Interview
> He changed the computer industry. Now he's after the music business
>
>
> And Apple's in a pretty interesting position. Because, as you may know,
> almost every song and CD is made on a Mac -- it's recorded on a Mac;
> it's mixed on a Mac. The artwork's done on a Mac. Almost every artist
> I've met has an iPod, and most of the music execs now have iPods. And
> one of the reasons Apple was able to do what we did was because we are
> perceived by the music industry as the most creative technology
> company.
let me rephrase job. apple is perceived to be the only cool brand in
the tech industry. google comes close, but not quite. microsoft is
perceived as the evil empire (and i say that as someone who disagrees
and think they do a hell of a job, overall). i point this out in the
hopes of dissuading people who might think the best way to take on
china and india's technical growing expertise is by making math &
science cool. it's not apple's cool factor that dominates the
industry, it's microsoft that dominates and they didn't achieve that by
being cool. they did it by being competent.
again, jobs nails it. why can't the industry use a little common sense
and get away from advances and pay percentages off the gross (not
profit, because profit figures are so easily cooked)? this way,
there's less risk to music execs, less costly mistakes on their part,
and eventually, a wider array of top-tier musical talent getting their
day in the sun. by making the selection process less dependent on
record companies' uneven picking ability, it evens out the playing
field. i think it's the best way to grow an individual company's
roster, and the industry as a whole.
googlegroups2sucks
>
> Steve Jobs: The Rolling Stone Interview
> He changed the computer industry. Now he's after the music business
>
> <snip>
>
> to Apple than the Mac itself?
>
> Well, Apple has a core set of talents, and those talents are: We do, I
> think, very good hardware design; we do very good industrial design;
> and we write very good system and application software. And we're
> really good at packaging that all together into a product. We're the
> only people left in the computer industry that do that. And we're
> really the only people in the consumer-electronics industry that go
> deep in software in consumer products. So those talents can be used to
> make personal computers, and they can also be used to make things like
> iPods. And we're doing both, and we'll find out what the future holds.
integration, synthesis, synergy, duality, teamwork... other companies
talk of those concepts while apple and steve jobs in particular,
embodies it. simply.
> When you talk about what technology has done for the world, though,
> it's not just TV and computers. It's also genetic research, cloning,
> nanotech. There are a lot people who feel like we're pushing technology
> too far, that we don't really know what we're messing with. Do you have
> any sympathy for that point of view?
>
> You know, again -- I'd rather just talk about music. These big-picture
> questions are just -- (Snores) I think we're all happier when we have a
> little more music in our lives.
disagree here. those big picture questions are urgent. phys. ed. is
the no. 1 major, superbowl is virtually a national holiday, everyone
knows the no. 1 athlete but don't know nor care who the no. 1 scholar
is. everyone disdains geeks, including geeks themselves.
let me put it this way: even if america lost 20 million high-tech jobs
to india or china in the coming years, there will always be journalists
or some other damn fool saying, "there a lot of people who feel we're
pushing technology too far".
googlegroups2sucks
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/oct2004/nf20041012_4018_db083.htm
OCTOBER 12, 2004
VOICES OF THE INNOVATORS
The Seed of Apple's Innovation
CEO Steve Jobs says among other practices, it's "saying no to 1,000
things" so as to concentrate on the "really important" creations
In an era when most technology outfits have tightened their belts to
adapt to a slower-growing market, one company stands out for forging
ahead on innovation: Apple Computer (AAPL ). Others have slashed R&D
and focused on incremental advances to existing product lines. Not
Apple. Advertisement
By combining technical knowhow with a new concept for how to sell music
online, Apple's iPod music player has become the most influential new
tech product in years. At the same time, Apple has maintained its
reputation for making the most elegant, easy-to-use desktop computers
as well.
Much of the credit for this performance is attributed to Chief
Executive Steven P. Jobs, who founded Apple in 1976 -- but was ousted
in 1985 before making a triumphant return in 1997. BusinessWeek
Computer Editor Peter Burrows recently talked about the nature of
innovation with Jobs, who is back to work part-time after recovering
from pancreatic cancer surgery. Here are edited excerpts of their
conversation:
Q: Apple has long been an innovative place with lots of smart,
passionate engineers. But it seemed to fall off the map in the years
before you returned in 1997. What happened?
A: Let's start at the beginning. Both [Apple co-founder] Steve Wozniak
and I -- and I think I can speak for Woz -- got our view of what a
technology company should be while working for Hewlett-Packard (HPQ )
in the late 1960s and early 1970s. And the first rule over there was to
build great products. Well, Apple invented the PC as we know it, and
then it invented the graphical user interface as we know it eight years
later [with the introduction of the Mac]. But then, the company had a
decade in which it took a nap.
Q: What can we learn from Apple's struggle to innovate during the
decade before you returned in 1997?
A: You need a very product-oriented culture, even in a technology
company. Lots of companies have tons of great engineers and smart
people. But ultimately, there needs to be some gravitational force that
pulls it all together. Otherwise, you can get great pieces of
technology all floating around the universe. But it doesn't add up to
much. That's what was missing at Apple for a while. There were bits and
pieces of interesting things floating around, but not that
gravitational pull.
People always ask me why did Apple really fail for those years, and
it's easy to blame it on certain people or personalities. Certainly,
there was some of that. But there's a far more insightful way to think
about it. Apple had a monopoly on the graphical user interface for
almost 10 years. That's a long time. And how are monopolies lost? Think
about it. Some very good product people invent some very good products,
and the company achieves a monopoly.
But after that, the product people aren't the ones that drive the
company forward anymore. It's the marketing guys or the ones who expand
the business into Latin America or whatever. Because what's the point
of focusing on making the product even better when the only company you
can take business from is yourself?
So a different group of people start to move up. And who usually ends
up running the show? The sales guy. John Akers at IBM (IBM ) is the
consummate example. Then one day, the monopoly expires for whatever
reason. But by then the best product people have left, or they're no
longer listened to. And so the company goes through this tumultuous
time, and it either survives or it doesn't.
Q: Is this common in the industry?
A: Look at Microsoft (MSFT ) -- who's running Microsoft?
Q: Steve Ballmer.
A: Right, the sales guy. Case closed. And that's what happened at
Apple, as well.
Q: How did Apple recapture its innovative spark?
A: I used to be the youngest guy in every meeting I was in, and now I'm
usually the oldest. And the older I get, the more I'm convinced that
motives make so much difference. HP's primary goal was to make great
products. And our primary goal here is to make the world's best PCs --
not to be the biggest or the richest.
We have a second goal, which is to always make a profit -- both to make
some money but also so we can keep making those great products. For a
time, those goals got flipped at Apple, and that subtle change made all
the difference. When I got back, we had to make it a product company
again.
Q: How do you manage for innovation?
A: We hire people who want to make the best things in the world. You'd
be surprised how hard people work around here. They work nights and
weekends, sometimes not seeing their families for a while. Sometimes
people work through Christmas to make sure the tooling is just right at
some factory in some corner of the world so our product comes out the
best it can be. People care so much, and it shows.
I get asked a lot why Apple's customers are so loyal. It's not because
they belong to the Church of Mac! That's ridiculous.
It's because when you buy our products, and three months later you get
stuck on something, you quickly figure out [how to get past it]. And
you think, "Wow, someone over there at Apple actually thought of this!"
And then three months later you try to do something you hadn't tried
before, and it works, and you think "Hey, they thought of that, too."
And then six months later it happens again. There's almost no product
in the world that you have that experience with, but you have it with a
Mac. And you have it with an iPod.
Q: What's the CEOs role in all of this?
A: I don't know. Head janitor?
Q: Seriously, a lot of people give you much of the credit. How much of
it is you?
A: Look, I was very lucky to have grown up with this industry. I did
everything in the early days -- documentation, sales, supply chain,
sweeping the floors, buying chips, you name it. I put computers
together with my own two hands. And as the industry grew up, I kept on
doing it.
Not everyone knows it, but three months after I came back to Apple, my
chief operating guy quit. I couldn't find anyone internally or
elsewhere that knew as much as he did, or as I did. So I did that job
for nine months before I found someone I saw eye-to-eye with, and that
was Tim Cook. And he has been here ever since.
Of course, I didn't tell anyone because I already had two jobs [CEO of
Apple and of movie maker Pixar Animation Studios (PIXR )] and didn't
want people to worry about whether I could handle three [jobs]. But
after Tim came on board, we basically reinvented the logistics of the
PC business. We've been doing better than Dell (DELL ) [in terms of
some metrics such as inventory] for five years now!
Q: With the iPod, Apple moved beyond the PC into consumer electronics.
But you're still considered a niche player that picks its spots in
bigger markets. Will you try to expand to become a more full-line
player, like a Sony (SNE ) or Samsung?
A: The fact that you're comparing us to Sony is a statement in itself.
I'm flattered. We really respect those guys and what they've
accomplished over the years. But we're just trying to make great
products. We do things where we feel we can make a significant
contribution. That's one of my other beliefs. Advertisement
I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in
everything we do. Take audio. For years, the primary technology was the
[marking mechanism] inside a CD or a DVD player. But we became
convinced that software was going to be the primary technology, and
we're a pretty good software company.
So we developed iTunes [Apple's music jukebox software that later
morphed into the iTunes Music Store]. We're a good hardware company,
too, but we're really good at software. So that led us to believe that
we had a chance to reinvent the music business, and we did.
Q: Many people say we're in a period in which advances in various
digital technologies -- from drives to chips to screens to networking
gear -- is going to change the nature of innovation. Rather than
inventing something from scratch, innovation will be the art of putting
all of these capabilities together in new ways.
A: Of course, you're never going to invent everything. But what's the
primary technology? And what's the concept of the product? Where does
the conceptualization come from? I guarantee the 1.8-inch hard drive
was not invented for iPods. But that's not the primary technology in an
iPod.
Q: How do you systematize innovation?
A: The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't
have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great
processes. But that's not what it's about. Process makes you more
efficient.
But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling
each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized
something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem.
It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has
figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other
people think of his idea.
And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get
on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about
new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can
concentrate on the things that are really important.
Q: How much do you have to do with Apple's innovations?
A: We go back and forth a lot as we work on our projects. And we've got
such great people [in the top executive team] that I've been able to
move about half of the day-to-day management of the company to them, so
I can spend half my time on the new stuff, like the retail effort. I
spent and continue to spend a lot of time on that. And I meet weekly
for two or three hours with my OS X team. And there's the group doing
our iLife applications.
So I get to spend my time on the forward-looking stuff. My top
executives take half the other work off my plate. They love it, and I
love it.
Q: So the key is to have good people with passion for excellence.
A: When I got back here, Apple had forgotten who we were. Remember that
"Think Different" ad campaign we ran [featuring great innovators from
Einstein to Muhammad Ali to Gandhi]. It was certainly for customers to
some degree, but it was even more for Apple itself.
You can tell a lot about a person by who his or her heroes are. That ad
was to remind us of who our heroes are and who we are. We forgot that
for a while. Companies sometimes forget who they are. Sometimes they
remember again, and sometimes they don't.
Fortunately, we woke up. And we're on a really good track. We may not
be the richest guy in the graveyard at the end of the day, but we're
the best at what we do. And Apple is doing the best work in its
history. I really believe that. And there's a lot more coming.
Q: You're back at work on a part-time basis. Are you going to come back
full-time?
A: Yes. That was one of the things that came out most clearly from this
whole experience [with cancer]. I realized that I love my life. I
really do. I've got the greatest family in the world, and I've got my
work. And that's pretty much all I do. I don't socialize much or go to
conferences. I love my family, and I love running Apple, and I love
Pixar. And I get to do that. I'm very lucky.
googlegroups2sucks
http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2006/03-20MIX.asp
Remarks by Bill Gates, Chairman & Chief Software Architect, Microsoft
Corporation
Microsoft MIX06 Conference
Las Vegas, Nevada
March 20, 2006
...
Ray Ozzie, of course, is the person we have very focused on this new
application pattern, and most recently he came out, and I hope many of
you saw it, and talked about the idea of thinking of the Web as a place
that you can exchange information with what he called the Live
Clipboard, an analogy to what we've done between applications on the PC
now working between Web sites. Whether it's programmatic or the user
being able to take pieces and combine them, this idea of modularity,
Web sites being able to specialize in something and then being able to
connect and get together in a rich way, that's a powerful idea whose
time has come, and we're just really at the very beginning of taking
advantage of that.
...
BILL GATES: You always have smarter and better competitors. And you're
absolutely right, the advertising model has come along, we
underestimated how big that would be, we have many areas like that
where we're saying, okay, let's embrace what's been done well and go
beyond that. We have others like what we've done with Xbox where we're
kind of out in front on it, and that too is kind of a new model for us.
We lose money when we sell the hardware, but if people buy a variety of
content, participate in those live services, then it ends up actually
being a pretty good business for us.
And as you said, Apple has got that model with the iPod where they're
making the money -- but an interesting model where they're making the
money on the hardware, and the iTunes is simply a facilitator for that
kind of business model.
TIM O'REILLY: I also think one of the things that's really interesting
about iTunes is it's an example of a paradigm I refer to, using
actually language from a guy who used to work for you, Dave Stutz,
called software above the level of a single device. I mean, here is an
application that's designed from the get-go to span a handheld, a PC,
and a Web site as a single integrated application. It's not just things
glommed together after the fact. I mean, it was a first generation of
full handheld to cloud consumer application it seems to me, other than
communication app.
googlegroups2sucks
>
> OCTOBER 12, 2004
> VOICES OF THE INNOVATORS
>
> up running the show? The sales guy. John Akers at IBM (IBM ) is the
> consummate example. Then one day, the monopoly expires for whatever
> reason. But by then the best product people have left, or they're no
> longer listened to. And so the company goes through this tumultuous
> time, and it either survives or it doesn't.
>
> Q: Is this common in the industry?
> A: Look at Microsoft (MSFT ) -- who's running Microsoft?
>
> Q: Steve Ballmer.
> A: Right, the sales guy. Case closed. And that's what happened at
> Apple, as well.
heh, well. i'm not into the mac vs. pc thing, i'm a fan of both. i
don't know the full history between microsoft vs. apple, nor do i want
to. i don't know, nor have directly communicated with anyone at either
company.
my take? ballmer is more than just a "sales guy" and it'd be a mistake
to underestimate him, not that i think it would bother him. if i were
in ballmer's shoes, i'd want everyone at apple to think i'm a sales
guy, strategy-wise.
ballmer is the passion element, while gates is the reason element and
it's a mistake to think of microsoft either in terms of gates alone or
ballmer alone. like any partnership, you won't understand it as a
whole, until you understand both partners separately in their own
right.
that said, i do agree with jobs' focus on personnel as to why apple
lost its way. like so many companies, they didn't know how to hire,
fire nor promote, so the wrong people move up over time.
> Q: How do you systematize innovation?
> A: The system is that there is no system. That doesn't mean we don't
> have process. Apple is a very disciplined company, and we have great
> processes. But that's not what it's about. Process makes you more
> efficient.
>
> But innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling
> each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized
> something that shoots holes in how we've been thinking about a problem.
> It's ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has
> figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other
> people think of his idea.
>
> And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don't get
> on the wrong track or try to do too much. We're always thinking about
> new markets we could enter, but it's only by saying no that you can
> concentrate on the things that are really important.
hear the echoes from my earlier post? apple is both disciplined and
undisciplined, both ordered and chaotic, both rigid and flexible. but
i'd say apple is more organic than digital. ...and microsoft is more
digital than organic.
googlegroups2sucks
> alterman:
>
> Take a look at this report, and please let's end the nonsense that they
> really believed their own propaganda and therefore were not "lying." If
> they were not lying, that's even worse, because it means they can't
> tell the difference, and we are being led by people with no more
> profound commitment to reality than, say, a not-quite-eight-year-old
> who wants to sneak some sweets. I'm not kidding. All of this stuff
> insults our intelligence. How many times must we read facts like these
> before we wake up to the painful truth of the near-complete
> irresponsibility not only of our government but of the political class
> that act as his apologist?
>
> * For example, consider biological weapons, a key concern before the
> war. The CIA said Saddam had an "active" program for "R&D, production
> and weaponization" for biological agents such as anthrax. Intelligence
> sources say Sabri indicated Saddam had no significant, active
> biological weapons program. Sabri was right. After the war, it became
> clear that there was no program.
>
> * Another key issue was the nuclear question: How far away was Saddam
> from having a bomb? The CIA said if Saddam obtained enriched uranium,
> he could build a nuclear bomb in "several months to a year." Sabri said
> Saddam desperately wanted a bomb, but would need much more time than
> that. Sabri was more accurate.
>
>
> [ it's possible the bush admin doubted the cia's competence after 9/11,
> after underestimating saddam's nuke program after the first gulf war,
> and after listening to each other bitch about the cia for decades.
> it's not entirely crazy to think saddam still had bio or chem wmd after
> using it during its war with iran or against the kurds.
>
> that being said. i'm sure they read reports to the contrary, such as
> the two above, and dismissed it. so the lie isn't that they believed
> saddam was harmless but stated otherwise publicly, the lie is reading
> contradictory reports and yet proclaiming certainty or "no doubt" that
> saddam posed an urgent wmd threat to the public.
>
> i don't see why it must be one or the other. it's because they
> believed in their own bullshit (about saddam, about the cia's
> competence) that they lied about the ambiguous details when making the
> case for war. ]
one more thing i _keep_ forgetting to make (from now on, i'm going to
post first, then read news/blogs).
neocons, bush admin, warmongers in general have heard the evidence of
their own voices and are now hellbent in making the case for war.
the case for war goes like this: saddam is an evil threat. saddam is
an evil threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam is an evil threat.
saddam is an evil threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam is an evil
threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam
is an evil threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam is an evil
threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam
is an evil threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam is an evil
threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam
is an evil threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam is an evil
threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam
is an evil threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam is an evil
threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam
is an evil threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam is an evil
threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam
is an evil threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam is an evil
threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam is an evil threat. saddam
is an evil threat. saddam is an evil threat.
then the question is asked, how will iraqis feel about an american
invasion? ...uh...we'll be greeted as liberators! candies! flowers!
herbal tea by the keg!
why?
because saddam is an evil threat, saddam is an evil threat, saddam is
an evil threat, and they'll be overjoyed with america for getting rid
of saddam's horrific tyranny!
googlegroups2sucks
>
> Remarks by Bill Gates, Chairman & Chief Software Architect, Microsoft
> Corporation
> Microsoft MIX06 Conference
> Las Vegas, Nevada
> March 20, 2006
>
> ...
>
> Ray Ozzie, of course, is the person we have very focused on this new
> application pattern, and most recently he came out, and I hope many of
> you saw it, and talked about the idea of thinking of the Web as a place
> that you can exchange information with what he called the Live
> Clipboard, an analogy to what we've done between applications on the PC
> now working between Web sites. Whether it's programmatic or the user
> being able to take pieces and combine them, this idea of modularity,
> Web sites being able to specialize in something and then being able to
> connect and get together in a rich way, that's a powerful idea whose
> time has come, and we're just really at the very beginning of taking
> advantage of that.
[ its time has come indeed. stacking simplicity (eg. ipod and its
accessories) is just another way of talking about modularity. ]
>
> ...
>
> BILL GATES: You always have smarter and better competitors. And you're
> absolutely right, the advertising model has come along, we
> underestimated how big that would be, we have many areas like that
> where we're saying, okay, let's embrace what's been done well and go
> beyond that. We have others like what we've done with Xbox where we're
> kind of out in front on it, and that too is kind of a new model for us.
> We lose money when we sell the hardware, but if people buy a variety of
> content, participate in those live services, then it ends up actually
> being a pretty good business for us.
>
> And as you said, Apple has got that model with the iPod where they're
> making the money -- but an interesting model where they're making the
> money on the hardware, and the iTunes is simply a facilitator for that
> kind of business model.
[ music to record company exec's ears, i imagine. :) i dunno. i
don't think there's any clear-cut answer when it comes to price point.
i do think the ipod is more expensive than it should be, and given its
high-volume success they could easily afford to drop the prices now.
its surprising how much your partners are willing to suffer if they
know you're suffering too. so, c'mon jobs, drop the ipod prices with
the intent of increasing ipod use, which in turn should increase itunes
sales, then rant, rave, bitch, scream, bellyache, moan, groan -- and
make sure you do it in front of record execs. they need to see your
pain. lol. ]
googlegroups2sucks
[ so now i read "rock me amadeus" was an early rap song. who knows.
what's important now is that you have an opportunity to learn and speak
german. with an austrian accent. and in hip-hop cadence.
who else in the world provides you the kind of education i provide?
huh? ]
Rock Me Amadeus
Falco
[ original german lyrics ]
Ooo rock me Amadeus
Rock me Amadeus...
Rock rock rock rock me Amadeus
Rock me all the time to the top
Er war ein Punker
Und er lebte in der großen Stadt
Es war Wien, war Vienna
Wo er alles tat
Er hatte Schulden denn er trank
Doch ihn liebten alle Frauen
Und jede rief:
Come on and rock me Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, oh oh oh Amadeus
Er war Superstar
Er war populär
Er war so exaltiert
Because er hatte Flair
Er war ein Virtuose
War ein Rockidol
Und alles rief:
Come on and rock me Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, oh oh oh Amadeus
Come on and rock me Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, oh oh oh Amadeus
Es war um 1780
Und es war in Wien
No plastic money anymore
Die Banken gegen ihn
Woher die Schulden kamen
War wohl jedermann bekannt
Er war ein Mann der Frauen
Frauen liebten seinen Punk
Rock Me Amadeus
Falco
[ english translation ]
Ooo rock me Amadeus
Rock me Amadeus...
Rock rock rock rock me Amadeus
Rock me all the time to the top
He was a Punker
And he lived in the big city
It was Vienna, was Vienna
Where he did everything
He had debts, for he drank
But all the women loved him
And each one shouted:
Come on and rock me Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, oh oh oh Amadeus
He was Superstar
He was popular
He was so exalted
Because he had flair
He was a virtuose
Was a rock idol
And everyone shouted:
Come on and rock me Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, oh oh oh Amadeus
Come on and rock me Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, oh oh oh Amadeus
It was around 1780
And it was in Vienna
No plastic money anymore
The banks against him
>From which his debts came
It was common knowledge
He was a women's man
Women loved his punk
Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, oh oh oh Amadeus
Come and rock me Amadeus...
Baby baby do it to me rock me
Baby baby do it to me rock me
Baby baby do it to me rock me
Yes yes yes
Baby baby do it to me rock me
Baby baby do it to me rock me
Baby baby do it to me rock me
Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, Amadeus
Amadeus Amadeus, oh oh oh Amadeus...
googlegroups2sucks
Jobs' Apple Hits Back At French Copyright Bill
Parmy Olson, 03.22.06, 1:18 PM ET
...
Apple (nasdaq: AAPL - news - people ) said non to the measure quickly
and loudly. The proposed law, it said, would result in "state-sponsored
piracy."
Apple pointed to recent progress in popularizing legal downloads, a
trend which could be dashed if iPod users could freely load their
mini-jukeboxes with interoperable music files. "Free movies for iPods
should not be far behind in what will rapidly become a state-sponsored
culture of piracy," the company warned.
The bill is now set to go before the upper house of the French
parliament for final approval. If it gets put in the statute books, the
law could force Apple, Sony (nyse: SNE - news - people ) and others to
share their exclusive copy-protection technologies with rivals.
The question on everyone's lips is what will Apple do if this
"state-sponsored piracy" does become law. Will it comply, or withdraw
from the French online music market altogether? For now the Cupertino,
Calif-based firm led by Steve Jobs is refusing to entertain speculation
on the issue.
[ ya know, i'm not sure what to make of the developments. not enough
info.
it's true nintendo or xbox forces you to buy software only from
nintendo or xbox carts and i don't hear anyone complaining about it.
it's also true that walkmans always allowed you to play any cassette,
not just proprietary cassettes from sony. and i would never buy a
panasonic dvd player that plays only movies from studios that have made
deals with panasonic. if panasonic made the argument that it must have
proprietary rights to block dvd piracy and encourage legal
transactions...
i dunno. i'm confused. ]
googlegroups2sucks
Rock & Republic mixes music with fashion
Heavy hardware, fur accents featured in 2006 fall, 'ultra-premium'
lines
Updated: 11:57 a.m. ET March 22, 2006
CULVER CITY, Calif. - Rock & Republic brought new meaning to rock
'n' roll style with a black-tie concert featuring the Pretenders to
unveil its new line.
Sony Studios Stage 18 was transformed into a stylish nightclub. Drinks
flowed and hors d'oeuvres were passed. An ice sculpture glistened in
the corner.
Pieces from the fall collection and new "ultra-premium" line,
Tailor Made, were illuminated in wall-size displays, not unlike a
museum exhibit.
Smaller cases held accessories: studded leather cuffs, a sparkly
evening bag and a designer dagger (no kidding) with a leather sheath.
[ hmm. studded leather cuffs and a designer dagger (no kidding) with
leather sheath. i dunno 'bout dat. i prefer women with lace. ]
Leather and Lace
Stevie Nicks & Don Henley
Is love so fragile...
and the heart so hollow
Shatter with words...
impossible to follow
You're saying I'm fragile...I try not to be
I search only...for something I can't see
I have my own life...and I am stronger
Than you know
But I carry this feeling
When you walked into my house
That you won't be walking out the door
Still I carry this feeling
When you walked into my house
That you won't be walking out the door
Lovers forever...face to face
My city or mountains
Stay with me stay
I need you to love me
I need you today
Give to me your leather...
Take from me...my lace
You in the moonlight
With your sleepy eyes
Could you ever love a man like me
And you were right
When I walked into your house
I knew I'd never want to leave
Sometimes I'm a strong man
Sometimes cold and scared
And sometimes I cry
But that time I saw you
I knew with you I'd light my nights
Somehow I'd get by
Lovers forever...face to face
My city or mountains
Stay with me stay
I need you to love me
I need you today
Give to me your leather
Take from me...my lace
Lovers forever...face to face
My city or mountains...stay with me stay
I need you to love me...I need you to stay
Give to me your leather
Take from me...my lace
Take from me...my lace
Take from me...my lace
- duet recorded with Don Henley
- appears on Bella Donna (1981)
- hit #6 on the Pop Charts
googlegroups2sucks
olympics. it's another to give when few are looking, and _after_ you
fail to win medals and the press rubs it in with all their might. ]
Bode Miller gives $25,000 to Boys and Girls Club
March 10, 2006
LISBON, N.H. --A charitable foundation run by skiing icon Bode Miller
has given the Boys and Girls Club of the North Country $25,000 to help
pay for afterschool programs.
Bob Craven, chairman of the club's board of directors, says Miller's
generosity will help the program pay for critical services, such as
busing children to its facility after school.
[ then he wins a world cup race. lol. nice finish, miller. ]
Bode Miller 'Suprised' by Win
March 16, 2006
Are, Sweden (Ski Press)-After a spectacular run down the treacherous
Super-G course, USA's Bode Miller clocked the fastest time of the day
only approached by his team-mate Daron Rahlves and won his first World
Cup race for a long time - since his victory in a giant slalom in
Beaver Creek.
googlegroups2sucks
i've finally started work on a book: "Mind Control for Dummies: World
Domination Made Easy". coming out next spring. ]
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=109&STORY=/www/story/03-22-2006/0004325268&EDATE=
Music Video Presentation Caps Off Network's $200,000 Fundraising
Campaign
for Mercy Corps' Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts
NEW YORK, March 22 /PRNewswire/ -- VH1 Classic will air Nena's
classic
music video for "99 Luftballons," well, not 99 times in a row, but
pretty
close on Sunday, March 26 from 2:00 to 3:00 PM/ET.
VH1 Classic, the home of music lovers' favorite music videos, will
bring
viewers a full hour of "99 Luftballons" to cap off its "Pay To Play for
Hurricane Katrina Relief" fundraising campaign. The initiative raised
over
$200,000 for the humanitarian relief organization Mercy Corps and its
Hurricane Katrina efforts.
The VH1 Classic campaign centered around a music video-thon, where
viewers
could request one video to be played on VH1 Classic for every $25
donation
made to Mercy Corps through VH1 Classic's web site
(http://www.vh1classic.com). Donors were notified by email when their
video
request would be played. And for a $35,000 donation, renowned pop
culture
artist Peter Max would paint donors very own portrait and they also got
to
program VH1 Classic for a full hour with favorite music videos from the
60s,
70s, 80s and early 90s.
But one viewer has chosen to do something different for his
allotted hour
that he purchased through the music-thon. He has requested the music
video
for the 1984 hit "99 Luftballons" by German group Nena. Both the
English and
German versions will play continuously throughout the hour.
googlegroups2sucks
"Star Wars" film legend George Lucas wants more worldly Hollywood Thu
Mar 23, 8:17 AM ET
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Legendary "Star Wars" film creator George Lucas
told a packed house the United States is a provincial country with a
culture that has invaded the world via Hollywood.
Lucas made the comments as he was honored with a "Global Vision Award"
by the World Affairs Council in a downtown San Francisco hotel
ballroom.
"As long as there has been a talking Hollywood, Hollywood has had a
huge impact on the rest of the world," Lucas said as he discussed his
films and enhancing education with computer technology.
"It shows all the morality we espouse in this country, good and bad.
The French were the first to start yelling cultural imperialism."
Some people in other countries are troubled by what they see as US
culture "squashing" local art and cinema, Lucas said.
"I hate to say it, but television is one of the most popular exports,"
Lucas said.
People see shows such as "Dallas," about a wealthy Texas oil family,
and decide they want the grand lifestyles portrayed, according to
Lucas.
"They say that is what I want to be," Lucas said. "That destabilizes a
lot of the world."
"There has been a conflict going on for thousands of years between the
haves and the have-nots, and now we are in a position for the first
time to show the have-nots what they do not have."
Lucas endorsed US students studying abroad to help imbue them with more
global perspectives.
"Study abroad is extremely important; just for kids to get outside this
country and experience the fact there is a big world out there," Lucas
said.
"We are a provincial country. Our president has barely been out of the
country."
An onus is on film makers to be careful with the messages they send
because they speak "with a very loud voice," the famed movie director
said.
California congresswoman Nancy Pelosi presented Lucas his council
award, likening him to renowned classical music composer Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart.
[ rock me amadeus. mein gott, habe ich nancy angesteckt. bin ich zu
weit gegangen? ]
The council crowned Lucas "the father of digital film" with profound
insights into the globalization of culture.
"Like Mozart, George Lucas is no ordinary genius," Pelosi said. "He is
a magician. He will be remembered as a legend."
googlegroups2sucks
"O'Rourke: It's not a real party if it doesn't end in an orgy or a food
fight. All your friends should still be there when you come to in the
morning.
BenDom: It's not a real party if it doesn't end in an orgy or a food
fight. All your friends should still be there when you come to in the
morning."
[ c'mon guys. if you're making a plagerism point, you gotta put the
DATES in. <shaking head> if you don't put in dates, they can, and
probably will claim that o'rourke plagerized bendom. believe me, if
you leave any wiggle room whatsoever, they will take it. all the
details (dates, links, authorship) should be perfect. nail the point,
don't do it half-assed. ]
googlegroups2sucks
Apple's Mythic Past, Glorious Present and Uncertain Future
By Bob Keefe
Cox News Service
03/24/06 5:00 AM PT
Who can even name another top executive at Apple besides Jobs? "The
kind of guy Steve Jobs is will not tolerate an ego like his anywhere
around him ... so the people who have succeeded at Apple have
essentially been emasculated," said analyst Roger Kay. "What makes this
all so Shakespearean is that [the] very strengths and talents that made
Apple what it is prevent this problem from becoming solved."
[ what apple does, jobs can't do by himself. when i look at an ipod, i
see excellence in conception, strategy, execution not just in hardware,
but software, suppliers, manufacturing, marketing, distribution, etc.,
all of it. that implies excellence in his teams and people, not that
they have been "emasculated". if people have been emasculated, then
you don't have quality teams, and you don't have quality products.
what you do have is poor product and high turnover rates. it'd be
interesting to know what apple's turnover rates are... ]
googlegroups2sucks
"As someone who has worked in daily journalism for 14 years, I have a
lot of experience related to this horrible situation: I've had my work
plagiarized by shameless word and idea thiefs many times over the
years."
let it be known: i don't mind if everyone with a pulse shamelessly
steals my words and ideas. plagerize me. i encourage it. there's a
world out there in need of changing.
googlegroups2sucks
below.
so we have quality products like ipod & "laid back and informal", but
"very high turnover"? what the heck is going on over there? are they
slacking off on bean bag chairs smoking bongs for weeks on end that
jobs tolerates until he flips out and screams at everyone?
given apple's successes, i'll have to side with jobs, ie. he's more
right overall than those let go or driven away. however, he's got to
take responsibility for hiring the wrong people in the first place.
apple must get better at hiring. ...or jobs needs to loosen up. ]
http://www.macobserver.com/article/2005/05/26.11.shtml
TMO Reports - Survey: Apple Employees Remain Optimistic; "Laid Back and
Informal" Company
by Staff, 12:40 AM EDT, May 26th, 2005
Employees at Apple Computer are "optimistic" about the company's
future, but concerned over "micromanagement and excessive turnover," an
employee survey by the New York research firm Vault has revealed.
The report is a series of employee surveys to give investors and
jobseekers insight into the company's business operations. The bottom
line of the company's findings: "The business of the company is doing
great especially with the iPod and their innovative designs. However,
just as any large corporation the large scale structure, the
organization gets lost at the lower levels. The micromanagement needs
to be but to a minimum and something needs to be done to increase
retention and lower the turnover rate which is substantial."
A project manager at Apple told Vault, "Apple has its challenges for
market share, and will never compete directly with Dell or HP. Instead,
the focus is on creativity and the Digital Hub. Products such as the
iPod are keeping us profitable during the economic downturn. If Apple
continues to develop innovative and quality products like the iPod,
then the long term picture should be secure."
Another project manager said, "Apple today is just like any other
conservative company...This should be a good year for Apple, but it
will not reflect in my salary or any kind of bonus I dream of
receiving."
>From the survey results provided to the news media, it appeared many
project managers, senior managers and administrators agreed that the
corporate culture of Apple was "laid back and informal."
One un-named account executive commented that "middle management has a
very high turnover. There is far too much micromanagement." Another
said Apple works "their employees to the bone," while a project manager
commented, "Morale is low right now, as raises have been on hold for
almost 2 years."
googlegroups2sucks
[ first some backround: ]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,1737703,00.html
Global warming
Hugh Masekela on what he owes Miles Davis and Louis Armstrong - and
what he gave them in return
Friday March 24, 2006
The Guardian
...
The Californian-born Herb Alpert and his Tijuana brass band was
inspired by Mexican mariachi bands. He sold millions of records, and
established A&M records, a label that produce hit records for scores of
artists from various parts of the world. Astrud and Joao Gilberto
teamed up with Stan Getz to produce their worldwide hit The Girl from
Ipanema, a smash that opened the doors for hundreds of Brazilian samba
musicians who owed their subsequent success to the 1959 film, Orfeo
Negro (Black Orpheus) which took the world by storm and led to the
eventual popularity of Brazilian coffee house cafes and capoeira dance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_from_Ipanema
Garota de Ipanema [ The Girl from Ipanema ]
"The best-known version is that performed by Stan Getz and João
Gilberto with vocals by Astrud Gilberto, from the 1963 album
Getz/Gilberto. It was written in 1962, with music by Antonio Carlos
Jobim and Portuguese lyrics by Vinicius de Moraes; English lyrics were
later written by Norman Gimbel."
Portugese Lyrics (English translation)
Olha que coisa mais linda
(Look what a pretty thing)
Mais cheia de graça. É ela menina
(So full of grace. It is her, the girl)
Que vem e que passa
(That comes and that passes)
Num doce balanço a caminho do mar
(In a sweet sway in her way to the sea)
Moça do corpo dourado
(Girl with a golden body)
Do sol de Ipanema, o seu balançado
(From the sun of Ipanema, her swing)
É mais que um poema
(Is more than a poem)
É a coisa mais linda que eu já vi passar
(It is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen pass)
Ah, por que estou tão sozinho
(Ah, why am I so alone?)
Ah, por que tudo é tão triste?
(Ah, why everything is so sad?)
Ah, a beleza que existe
(Ah, the beauty that is out there!)
A beleza que não é só minha
(The beauty that is not only mine)
Que também passa sozinha
(But that also passes alone)
Mas, se ela soubesse
(But, if she knew)
Que quando ela passa o mundo inteirinho
(That when she passes, the whole world)
Se enche de graça e fica mais lindo
(Gets full of grace and becomes more beautiful)
Por causa do amor
(Because of love)
[ Actual English lyrics in song, as written by Gimbel. ]
Tall and tan and young and lovely
The girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes
Each one she passes goes "aah"
When she walks she's like a samba
That swings so cool and sways so gently
That when she passes
Each one she passes goes "aah"
Oh, but I watch her so sadly
How can I tell her I love her?
Yes, I would give my heart gladly
But each day when she walks to the sea
She looks straight ahead not at me
Tall and tan and young and lovely
The girl from Ipanema goes walking
And when she passes I smile
But she doesn't see
[ there really is a girl from ipanema that inspired the song. of
course, she's already done a playboy spread (she's from rio, afterall),
and of course she has a web site, and of course the link is here: ]
googlegroups2sucks
03/25/06
09:20:33, Categories: Celebrity News, Music News
Edward Norton Looks Up to Bono
Edward Norton has praised the 'humbling' efforts of crusading rocker
Bono because he can work with people he doesn't like. The U2 frontman
and anti-poverty campaigner is hailed for his ability to shed personal
prejudices to progress the causes he champions. And the star insists
Bono's courageous behaviour should be an example to all.
Norton says, "I've been pretty impressed with him. It's very
enlightened to choose to seek as much positive connection as he does,
even with the people who are the instruments of these terrible terrible
policies. In essence it's 'turn the other cheek', 'hate the sin and
love the sinner', which is a lot more forgiving - more Christian, more
Buddhist - than a lot of these things these more radical people talk
about.
he added, "It's saying, 'You're still my brother, I still want you in
on this with me, even if I disagree with you. I'm going to find some
common ground.' It's humbling to realise the degree to which we all
indulge in anger, in response to these things. It's humbling to realise
that the people who have affected real change embraced their
adversaries. You realise what courage that takes, because it's easier
to be angry."
[ true. though, i think it's more true of geldof, than of bono.
geldof is a spitfire (literally, heh), while bono is a concorde.
unlike his younger "fuck the revolution" days, i'm not sure how angry
he gets at anyone these days, and for how long. geldof had to fly a
much further distance, guns unloaded, and with a smaller tank of gas. ]
googlegroups2sucks
http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/printmember/luc0int-1
Interview: George Lucas
Creator of "Star Wars"
June 19, 1999
Washington, D.C.
Back to George Lucas Interview
You had a bad auto accident as a teenager. Do you think that changed
the course of your life?
I'm not sure. I think about that sometimes.
I was a terrible student in high school and the thing that the auto
accident did -- and it happened just as I graduated, so I was at this
sort of crossroads -- but it made me apply myself more, because I
realized more than anything else what a thin thread we hang on in life,
and I really wanted to make something out of my life. And I was in an
accident that, in theory, no one could survive. So it was like, "Well
I'm here, and every day now is an extra day. I've been given an extra
day so I've got to make the most of it." And then the next day I began
with two extra days. And I've sort of -- you can't help in that
situation but get into a mind set like that, which is you've been given
this gift and every single day is a gift, and I wanted to make the most
of it. Before, when I was in high school, I just sort of wandered
around. I wanted to be a car mechanic and I wanted to race cars and the
idea of trying to make something out of my life wasn't really a
priority. But the accident allowed me to apply myself at school. I got
great grades. Eventually I got very excited about anthropology and
about social sciences and psychology, and I was able to push my
photography even further and eventually discovered film and film
schools.
Weren't you always interested in filmmaking?
Well, I grew up in a small town in Central California; it was a farming
community. We had a couple of movie theaters, and you'd go to the
movies once in a while. I didn't get a television until I was 10 or 11
years old. I had lots of interests. I liked woodworking, I liked to
build things. I liked cars. I liked art. I really wanted to be an
illustrator, and I liked photography. I didn't really discover any
interest in film until I was a junior in college.
What changed for you then? Is there something you leanred about
achievement later that you didn't understand when you were younger?
Part of the issue of achievement is to be able to set realistic goals,
but that's one of the hardest things to do because you don't always
know exactly where you're going, and you shouldn't. For me just setting
the goals of getting decent grades in school and taking subjects I had
some interest ins was a big goal, and I focused on that.
I decided to go to film school because I loved the idea of making
films. I loved photography and everybody said it was a crazy thing to
do because in those days nobody made it into the film business. I mean,
unless you were related to somebody there was no way in. So everybody
was thinking I was silly. "You're never going to get a job." But I
wasn't moved by that. I set the goal of getting through film school,
and just then focused on getting to that level because I didn't -- you
know, I didn't know where I was going to go after that. I wanted to
make documentary films, and eventually I got into the goal of -- once I
got to school -- of making a film.
In those days, one of the most telling things about film school is
you've got a lot of students wandering around saying, "Oh, I wish I
could make a movie." You know, "I can't get in this class. I can't get
any this or that." The first class I had was an animation class. It
wasn't a production class. And in the animation class they gave us one
minute of film to put onto the animation camera to operate it, to see
how you could move left, move right, make it go up and down. They had
certain requirements that you had to do. You had to make it go up and
had to make it go down, and then the teacher would look at it and say,
"Oh yes, you maneuvered this machine to do these things." It was a
test.
I took that one minute of film and made it into a movie, and it was a
movie that won about 25 awards in every film festival in the world, and
kind of changed the whole animation department. Meanwhile all the other
guys were going around saying, "Oh, I wish I could make a movie. I wish
I was in a production class." So then I got into another class and it
wasn't really a production class but I managed to get some film and I
made another movie. I made lots of movies while I was in school while
everybody else was running around saying, "Oh, I wish I could make a
movie. I wish they'd give me some film."
You could actually go to school and learn how to make movies. Suddenly
everything came together in one place. All my likes, everything I
actually seemed to have talent for was right there. I said, "Hey, this
is it. I can do this really well. I really love to do it." And from
then on I, you know, just took off, but before that I was kind of
wandering as I think a lot of students do.
When I look back on it now, if I'd gone to art school, or stayed in
anthropology, I'm almost positive I would have ended up eventually in
film. Mostly I just followed my inner feelings and passions, and said
"I like this, and I like this," and I just kept going to where it got
warmer and warmer, until it finally got hot, and then that's where I
was.
What is it about film that makes it so exciting?
I think that's just a personal thing for me. It's extremely hard work,
and it's not very glamorous. It ultimately is simply a way of
expressing ideas. I am more of a visual person than a verbal person.
For me, I think, the excitement is the fact that I found a way of
telling the story as I want to tell it, in a medium that I could
master. Although I write screenplays, I don't think I'm a very good
writer. I'm very interested in studying cultures and social issues, but
as an academic I don't think I would have been too successful.
Were there any experiences that inspired you as a kid?
There wasn't much as a kid that inspired me in what I did as an adult,
but I was always very interested in what motivates people, and in
telling stories and building things. My teenage years were completely
devoted to cars. That was the most important thing in my life, from
about the age of 14 to 20.
When I first got to college, I was very interested in the social
sciences, anthropology, sociology, psychology, those kinds of things.
And I was still interested in art and photography. I didn't know that I
could actually put them all together in one occupation and love it.
I wanted to transfer to an art school, and ended up going to the
University of Southern California. They had a cinematography school,
and I said "Well, that's sort of like photography, maybe that will be
interesting." And once I started in that department, I found what it
was that I loved and was good at. And I realized I could do it very
well, and that I enjoyed doing it. It really ignited a passion in me,
and it took off from there. After that, I didn't do anything but films.
Were there any books or films that were important to you, that
influenced or inspired you to do the kind of work you wanted to do?
When I was younger, I had a collection of history books that I was
addicted to, a whole series about famous people in history from Ancient
Greece and Alexander the Great, up to the Civil War -- the Monitor and
the Merrimac. I think they were called "Landmark" books, and I
collected a whole library of them. I used to love to read those books.
It started me on a lifelong love of history. Even in high school I was
very interested in history -- why people do the things they do. As a
kid I spent a lot of time trying to relate the past to the present.
I liked all the normal kinds of adventure books, Kidnapped, Treasure
Island, Huck Finn sorts of things. I loved Swiss Family Robinson and
that whole period of South Sea adventure movies.I liked westerns.
Westerns were very big when I was growing up. When we finally got a
television there was a whole run of westerns on television. John Wayne
films, directed by John Ford, before I knew who John Ford was. I think
those were very influential in my enjoyment of movies.
Do you think you had a natural talent for filmmaking? What drew you to
that line of work?
Everybody has talent, it's just a matter of moving around until you've
discovered what it is. A talent is a combination of something you love
a great deal, something you can lose yourself in -- something that you
can start at 9 in the morning, look up from your work and it's 10
o'clock at night -- and something that you have a natural ability to do
very well. And usually those two things go together.
A lot of people like to do certain things, but they're not that good at
it. Keep going through the things that you like to do, until you find
something that you actually seem to be extremely good at. It can be
anything. There's lots and lots of different things out there. It's a
matter of moving around until you find the one for you, the niche that
you fit into.
Once you started making films, do you think it came easy for you?
Learning to make films is very easy. Learning what to make films about
is very hard. What you've really got to do is focus on learning as much
about life, and about various aspects of it first. Then learn the
techniques of making a movie, because that stuff you can pick up pretty
quickly. But having a really good understanding of history, literature,
psychology, sciences -- is very, very important to actually being able
to make movies.
In your opinion, what personal characteristics are most important for
success in any field?
If you want to be successful in a particular field of endeavor, I think
perseverance is one of the key qualities.It's very important that you
find something that you care about, that you have a deep passion for,
because you're going to have to devote a lot of your life to it. And
you're going to have to really be focused on it. And you're going to
have to overcome a lot of hurdles, a lot of people saying you can't do
it. And you're going to have to take a lot of risks.
Working hard is very important. You have to find something that you
love enough to be able to take those risks, to be able to jump over the
hurdles, to be able to break through the brick walls that are always
going to be placed in front of you. If you don't have that kind of
feeling for what it is you're doing, you'll stop at the first giant
hurdle. So, I think you'll never make it unless you persevere. Unless
you overcome a lot of very difficult obstacles. I think that's one of
the most important characteristics in terms of an occupation.
Looking back on the bumps in your career, as well as your successes,
what advice would you give a young person?
Working hard is very important. You're not going to get anywhere
without working extremely hard. No matter how easy it looks on the
outside, it's a very, very difficult struggle.You don't see the
struggle part of a person's life. You only see the success they have.
But I haven't met anybody here at the Academy or anywhere else that
hasn't been able to describe years and years and years of very, very
difficult struggle through the whole process of achieving anything
whatsoever.
And there's no way to get around that. The secret is not to give up
hope. It's very hard not to because if you're really doing something
worthwhile I think you will be pushed to the brink of hopelessness
before you come through the other side. You just have to hang in
through that.
Did that happen to you?
Oh yeah, lots of times. I've had much more down in my life than I've
had up. And much more struggle. First of all, when I went into the film
school everybody said, "What are you doing? This is a complete dead-end
for a career." Because nobody had ever made it from a film school into
the actual film industry. Maybe you'd go to work for Lockheed, or some
industrial company to do industrial films, but nobody actually made it
into the entertainment business.
I had no interest in going into the entertainment business, so I didn't
really care. I was more interested in going back to San Francisco, and
making experimental films or maybe documentaries.
When I finished school, I went to San Francisco, and everybody said,
"Why are you going to San Francisco?" I said, "That's where I live."
They said, "You can't possibly work in the film business living in San
Francisco." And I said, "I want to live where I want to live, and I
will make films because I love to make films."
My first six years in the business were hopeless. There are a lot of
times when you sit and you say, "Why am I doing this? I'll never make
it. It's just not going to happen. I should go out and get a real job,
and try to survive." I'd borrowed money from my parents. I'd borrowed
money from my friends. It didn't look like I was ever going to actually
be able to pay anybody back.
But it's part of living. You do have to eat, pay your rent, and pay
back your friends who are supporting you. And I struggled. It took me
years to get my first film off the ground. As I talk to film students
now I say, "The easiest job you'll ever get is to make your first
film." That's the easy one to get, the first film, because nobody knows
whether you can make a film or not. You've made a bunch of little
projects, you've shown you have talent, and you talk real fast, and you
convince somebody to let you do a feature. After you've done that
feature, you have a heck of a difficult time getting your second film
off the ground. They look at your first film and they say, "Oh well, we
don't want you anymore."
Was there anything about you as a filmmaker, or about your ideas, that
made it so difficult to get that second film made?
I came from a very avant garde documentary kind of film making world. I
like cinema verité, documentaries. I liked nonstory, noncharacter tone
poems that were being done in San Francisco at that time. And that's
the film making that I was interested in. Francis Coppola, who was my
mentor, sort of -- he's a writer and works with actors -- stage
director -- and he said, "You've gotta learn how to do this." And so I
took him up on the challenge and wrote my own screenplays, learned to
write and work with actors.
It took me three, four years, to get from my first film to my second
film, banging on doors, trying to get people to give me a chance.
Writing, struggling, with no money in the bank, working as an editor on
the side. Working as a cameraman on the side. Getting little jobs,
eking out a living. Trying to stay alive, and pushing a script that
nobody wanted.
When the going gets rough, how do you deal with feelings of
desperation?
I've had this quite a bit in my career actually. You simply have to put
one foot in front of the other and keep going. Put blinders on and plow
right ahead.
When I was doing American Graffiti I was still struggling with my "I
don't want to be a writer" syndrome, and I had some good friends of
mine that I wanted to write the screenplay, but it took me like two
years just to get the money to do a screenplay. And I got a little tiny
amount of money and -- which I had to go actually to the Cannes Film
Festival to get on my own. So finally I got this money. I called back
and I said, you know, "I got the money. We can start working on the
screenplay." And they said, "Oh, we don't want to do that now. We've
got our own low-budget picture off the ground and we can't write it." I
said, "Oh no." I said, "What am I going to do? I am in Europe and I'm
not going to be back for like three months and I want to get this thing
off the ground."
I had a story treatment that laid out the entire story scene by scene,
so they recommended another student from school that I knew pretty
well. I called him from London and I said, "Do you want to do this?"
And he said, "Okay."
The producer I was working with made a deal with him for the whole
money because there wasn't very much. It was so tiny that he could only
get him to do it for the whole amount of money. When I came back from
England, the screenplay was completely different from the story
treatment. It was more like "hotrods to hell." It was very
fantasy-like, with playing chicken and things that kids didn't really
do. I wanted something that was more like the way I grew up.
So I took that and I said, "Okay. Now here I am. I've got a deal to
turn in a screenplay. I've got a screenplay that is not the screenplay
I want at all and I have no money." I spent the very last money I had
to go to Europe to make the deal, so I had nothing. That was a very
dark period for me so I sat down myself and wrote the screenplay. And
the most difficult part was that during the writing...
I kept getting phone calls from producers saying, "I hear you're
great." I had made a film called THX, which had no story and no
character really. It was kind of an avant garde film. And so I had all
these producers calling me saying, "I hear you're really good at
material that doesn't have a story. I've got a record album I want you
to make into a movie." Or, you know, things like that. And they were
offering me a lot of money and -- but they were terrible projects. And
so I had to constantly turn down vast sums of money while I was
starving, writing a screenplay for free that I didn't like to write,
because I hated writing. But I did finish it. I did write the
screenplay, and eventually I got a deal to make the movie. And then
after I finally got that, then my friends came back in and did a
rewrite on it, but it was a very dark period, and I could have very
easily just taken the money and gone off and done one of these really
terrible movies. I don't know what that would have done for my career,
but you know, when the times are hard like that you simply have to say,
"This is what I want to do. I want to make my movie. I don't want to
take the money." And you just walk forward, step by step, and get
through it somehow. And I got through. It actually only took me about
three weeks to write that script. I just every day would sit down at
eight o'clock in the morning and I'd write until about eight o'clock at
night. And I just said, "I'm going to finish this, as painful as it is,
and I'm going to ignore these phone calls of lure of riches and get
through this. And somehow I did it.
Film is not an easy occupation. There's a lot of occupations that are
difficult and film is one of them. There's always adversity that you're
faced with. I like to tell students that I talk to that, you know, it's
not a matter of how well can you make a movie. It's how well can you
make it under the circumstances, because there's always circumstances
and you cannot use that as an excuse. You can't put a title card at the
head of the movie and say, "Well, we really had a bad problem. You
know, the actor got sick and it rained this day and we had a
hurricane." And you know, you can't -- the cameras broke down -- you
can't do that. You simply have to show them the movie and it has got to
work, and there are no excuses. And so you really have to focus on what
you're doing and just plow ahead no matter what hurdles are thrown in
front of you.
After I did American Graffiti, and it was successful, it was a big
moment for me. "Okay, now I am a director. Now I know I can get a job.
I can work in this industry, and apply my trade, and express my ideas
on things. and be creative in a way that I enjoy. Even if I end up
doing TV commercials, or I fall back into what I really love,
documentaries, I know I can get a job somewhere. I know I can raise
money. I know I can do what I want to do." That was a very good
feeling. At that point, I knew I'd made it. There wasn't anything in my
life that was going to stop me from making movies.
Was the original Star Wars a tough sell? It seems obvious now, but what
was it like to get that off the ground back in the 1970s?
I had a very, very difficult time with my first two pictures. And when
I started working on Star Wars, my second film, American Graffiti, had
not come out yet and so in the beginning it wasn't something anybody
was interested in and I had taken it to a couple of studios and they
had turned it down. And then one studio executive saw American Graffiti
and loved it, and I took him the proposal. He said, "You know, I don't
understand this, but I think you're a great film maker and I'm going to
invest in you. I'm not going to invest in this project." And that's
really how it got made.
Star Wars is so far removed from a film like American Graffiti.
Yeah, it was. All of my films have been very hard to understand at the
script stage because they're very different. At the time I did them
they were not conventional. The executives could only think in terms of
what they'd already seen. It's hard for them to think in terms of what
has never been done before.
Would you say your career has been marked by going against the
conventional wisdom?
Yeah. and it's made it considerably more difficult. It's funny when you
look back now, because everybody's sort of copied those films. They're
so ingrained in the culture now, it's almost impossible to think there
was a point where those things were completely odd and unique.
The funny thing is, the two movies I directed that were my conventional
movies, were slight twists on very, very conventional movies, the kind
that I loved when I was younger. One genre was the teenage hot rod
movies made by American International Pictures, which were sort of the
lowest rung of the movie ladder. The other was Republic Serials,
Saturday morning serials from the '30s, which were an ancient lowest
rung on the ladder.
So I was taking the lowest genre that was available and then twisting
it and making it into something completely different, something that
was more mainstream in terms of the quality and acceptability of the
modern movie-going audience. I think the prejudice against those films
was really that they were cheap B movies; not that they were so out
there.
American Graffiti was really my first attempt at doing something
mainstream, so to speak, and even it was so -- more it was in a genre
that was looked down upon but I loved it when I was a kid. It was about
my life as I grew up, so I cared about it a lot. And then on top of it,
it was in a style that was different from what everybody was used to.
It was intercutting four stories that didn't relate to each other,
which nobody had really done before. Now it's sort of the standard fare
for television. And it had music all the way through it; not just the
score but actual songs from the period, and that is something that
nobody had done before. And they just sort of described it as a musical
montage with no characters and no story, and so it was very, very hard
to get that off the ground, and on top of that it was a B movie. I
almost got it set up at American International Pictures, where they
liked doing those kinds of movies but it was too strange for them in
terms of the style. And Star Wars was kind of the same situation where
it was a genre they weren't that interested in. Science fiction was not
something that did well at the box office. It dealt with robots and
Wookies and things that -- generally most people -- they couldn't read
it and say, "I understand what this is all about." They just were
completely confused by it. And really on top of that, it was aimed at
being a film for young people, and most of the studios said, "Look,
that's Disney's. Disney does that. The rest of us can't do that, so we
don't want to get into that area." So I had so many strikes against me
when I did that. I was lucky that I found a studio executive that just
believed in me as a film maker and just disregarded the material
itself.
In these groundbreaking circumstances, were you afflicted with any
self-doubts, fear of failure?
Whenever you're making a movie, especially when you're writing, you
always have self-doubts. I did the first location shooting in Tunisia.
I didn't get everything shot, but I had to get out of there in ten days
regardless. What I had shot was the very beginning of the movie, and I
was very worried about the creative quality of it. I just didn't know.
I was working with an editor I hadn't worked with before. I started out
as an editor. And I was working with a British editor, and the scenes
would come back, and I'd go on the weekends and look at the scenes with
the editor, and they just weren't working, and I was very down about
the whole situation. So I went in myself on Sundays and started
recutting the movie. The editing wasn't obviously bad but it just
wasn't working. I couldn't quite figure out what was going on. Either I
was doing a terrible job directing this thing -- or something else. As
I started to cut the film together, I realized that I was making cuts
that were, you know, a foot away from where the editor had been making
them. And I had been using the same takes that I had given him, but I
was just slightly moving it ever so slightly in one direction, and it
suddenly clicked and it started working, which was a great relief to me
because up to that point I was feeling very desperate about the whole
situation.
Ever since Star Wars, we've seen all of these action figures and
tie-ins and merchandising with popular films. This was something new in
the moview business, wasn't it? How did you figure out that this could
be part of the business?
Well, those things kind of happen. When you are a beginning film maker
you are desperate to survive. The most important thing in the end is
survival and being able to get to your next picture.
I had written a screenplay, but the screenplay was so big that I
couldn't possibly make it into one movie. So I said, "Okay. I'll get
rid of the last two thirds of it, and I'll just do the first act. I can
make that into one movie. That's big enough." But I still had all this
other work that I'd done. I'd spent a whole year doing this and I said,
"I'm not going to give this up. I won't just put this on the shelf and
forget it. I'll make this into three movies and I will make all three
movies. "
I made a pact with myself that I was going to make all three (Star
Wars) movies, and in order to do that, as I stated to make my deal with
20th Century Fox, I acquired the sequel rights, because I didn't want
them to bury the sequel. I wanted to make these movies and I was
determined to make these movies regardless of whether they wanted to,
or the movie made any money or not. And then I got the merchandising
rights, which weren't anything at the time because there was no such
thing as merchandising on movies. Some TV stuff, but not movies. Their
life span is just too short. But I figured I could make posters. I
could make t-shirts and, you know, I could publicize the movie and,
hopefully, people would go see it. And because the studio -- everything
is sort of a struggle again to survive, which is -- the studio won't
put enough money into your movie to get it into the theaters, to do the
advertising. So I said, "Well, I can't. I don't have any money. I don't
have any money, but I can maybe make a t-shirt deal and I can maybe
make a poster deal, and I can maybe get these out at science fiction
conventions and things before the movie comes out, and promote the
movie." So I did it as sort of self-preservation.
I'm an independent filmmaker from San Francisco. I don't have a lot of
resources, so I have to think about how I'm going to get through this
movie, and not only that, but how I'm going get it promoted and make
enough money to do the next movie. As it turned out, the film was so
successful we were able to make toy deals and we began to start the
whole idea of action figures, of tie-ins, of toys that go along with
movies. Over the years that's one of the things that's helped me stay
independent and finance my own movies and stay in business.
googlegroups2sucks
>
> Jobs dumps Apple stock
> Vested? Sell!
> By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
> Published Friday 24th March 2006 23:07 GMT
>
> In brief Apple Computer founder and CEO Steve Jobs sold 45 per cent of
> his Apple stock this week. Jobs sold 4.57m shares at a price of $64.66,
> netting him a cool $295m.
>
> Jobs was granted the 10m shares in 2003, but they didn't vest until
> now.
>
> Jobs retains 120,000 vested stocks that were granted in 1997. Last
> year, Jobs earned $1 salary from Apple.
>
> Earlier this month Forbes magazine put Jobs' net wealth at $4.4bn,
> after the sale of Pixar, in which he was the majority shareholder, to
> Disney. That's someway behind the colored ball boys of Google, Brin and
> Page, who are worth around $12.8bn a piece, and Jobs' pal Larry Ellison
> who's worth $16bn.
>
> The selloff comes just ahead of Apple's 30th anniversary to be
> celebrated on April 1. You can check out Jobs' fire sale here.
[ hold it! the above piece isn't quite right, according to apple
insider, and i'm more inclined to believe them than the report above.
so if the stock dips next trading day, it may be buy opportunity. lol.
disclaimer: i ain't in the stock/bond/whatever bidness so be wary of
making any trading decision based upon my posts or what i talk about.
ok? ok. ]
http://www.appleinsider.com/article.php?id=1621
Apple's Jobs pays $295M in taxes on 10M vested shares
By Kasper Jade
Published: 06:00 PM EST
Apple Computer chief executive Steve Jobs this month used over 4.5M of
the 10M restricted shares owed to him by the company to pay income and
other employment taxes applicable to those shares, AppleInsider has
discovered.
He did not sell any of his stake in the company.
In order to meet his tax obligations on the 10M restricted shares,
which vested this month, Jobs elected to net-share settle --
essentially allowing Apple to withhold and pay to authorities the
portion of the 10M shares that would meet his tax payment requirements.
On March 19 -- the date of the transaction -- this portion amounted to
4,573,553 shares at $64.66 a share, or a whopping $295.7M tax payment.
Apple then turned over to Jobs the remaining 5,426,451 shares, which at
the close of the market on Friday were worth about $325.4M. The value
of the withheld shares ($295.7M) will be turned over to the appropriate
tax authorities.
<snip>
googlegroups2sucks
How important is it to you to be independent?
For me it's very important. Most creative people don't like others
looking over their shoulder saying, "Why don't you make that green? Why
don't you make that blue? Why are you doing this? Why are you doing
that? I don't like that. Don't put that in there." It's sort of like
Michelangelo and the Pope doing the Sistine Chapel. It is a very
irritating thing, and I'm sure Michelangelo was very irritated with the
Pope.
So you try to get yourself into a situation where you only have to
answer to yourself, where you can ask advice of people, and work with
your peers and mentors to do the best job you can possibly do. There's
nothing worse than the frustration of having somebody who doesn't get
what you're doing trying to turn it into something else. It's a very
frustrating thing and I never wanted to go through it.
I was able to insulate myself from that as I came up through the film
business. Occasionally I get a studio recutting my movie at the very
end, but I'd always fight and get it cut back eventually, even years
later. That attitude comes out of film school, I think, where the
primacy of the creative process in making a film is what you live for.
It's not a business. It's trying to create something interesting that
you're proud of, and try out creative ideas that may seem really off
the wall, may work or may not work.
Sometimes people are surprised to learn that most of the films I've
made don't work. They've been released but nobody has ever seen them.
Maybe 40 percent of them are very successful. That's a very high
percentage; most people have maybe 10 or 15 percent of their films
work. When my films that don't work it's usually because I tried some
very experimental idea. I tried new ideas and they just didn't work, as
opposed to trying to do something conventional and having it be so
conventional nobody wanted to see it.
I'm very proud of all the movies I made. I am very happy with
everything I've done. I like to watch my movies. Some of them work.
Some of them don't. Some of them people like, most of them they don't.
And that's all right with you?
It is all right because I like making movies. I like the process. I
like trying out new ideas, and if they don't work, they don't work.
That's the reason I generated the money in the first place, to be able
to try things. That's where I spend my money.
What do you see as the next challenge, the next frontier in the art of
making movies?
I think crossing into the digital age is the big move for the industry.
I think it will be the biggest thing that's happened while I've been
making movies. I equate it to the invention of color or sound, and I
don't see any other major technical process coming along and changing
that.
I think there are going to be some social changes that take place due
to the Internet, and the availability of the tools to more and more
people. I think you are going to find a lot of people recutting movies
and changing them, making them into their own movies, things that are
hard to contemplate at this point. And there will be delivery systems
that are way, way different. But in terms of the primary process of
making a movie, once we get through this digital revolution, I think it
should stay pretty much like that for at least the next 20 or 30 years.
It's hard to tell, but I think the biggest issue is going to be to be
how the movies get into the marketplace and what happens to them once
they are there. I don't think it's going to be a "sit down, hands off"
situation anymore. I think it's going to be people sort of reinventing
the movies once they're out there. How this works for the artist, I
don't know. And what it does to the marketplace, I don't know. We're
living in very exciting times and I look forward to seeing how this
whole thing evolves.
You've testified talked about some of your failures, but you have had
enormous success. How do you handle success?
Success is a very difficult thing. It's much more difficult than one
might think. And when I first had a successful movie, which was
American Graffiti, fortunately it was huge, but it wasn't so huge in
terms of monetary things. And it came so slowly that I was able to
assimilate it a little bit. Star Wars was much more difficult, and I
had a lot of friends who had become very successful and they said,
"Boy! Watch out, boy. When that one hits you're really going be thrown
for a loop." I said, "Oh no no. I went through American Graffiti. I can
handle this. I know, you know--" But when Star Wars finally -- you
know, the reality of it hit and all of the attendant things that go on
around it hit, psychologically it's a very, very difficult thing to
cope with. And you really need time after an event like that in your
life, especially if it comes very fast, to assimilate what it is that
has happened to you and how everybody relates to you and how your life
is.
It's hard to explain what happens psychologically, because a lot of the
constraints that you've had are now gone. Instead of scrambling to find
one opportunity somewhere to do something, you suddenly have an endless
supply of opportunities to do anything. So instead of trying to coerce
somebody into saying yes, you are suddenly desperate to learn how to
say no. I've seen it with a lot of people, the first thing you do is
say yes to everything because they're all wonderful, wonderful things
that are offered to you
Here you've spent your whole life just begging, and using every means
at your disposal to get one person or two people to say yes to your
project or to say, "Yes, I'll do this. Yes," you know? And then
suddenly everybody says yes. Suddenly everybody wants you to do
everything and anything you want. And then you have to start learning
how to say no -- and tons of opportunities coming your way. Wonderful
opportunities, but you can't do them all. If you start doing them all,
your life gets very unfocused. You get overwhelmed and you collapse
basically. And your feelings of invincibility and stuff sort of turn
into a morass of depression and -- I've seen it happen to a lot of
people and I went through it myself. It's just unavoidable if you're
successful. And no matter how much you think you can deal with it, you
can't.
You need to have a lot of close family around you, a lot of friends to
keep you honest. Take your time, take a year and just slow everything
down a little bit. Get away from the success part, stay with yourself.
Go off on a beach somewhere or do something to keep yourself aligned
right.
I've made it a habit. When a movie comes out, I always go off on a
beach so I miss all the craziness that goes on, all the hoopla, and the
hype and the success, and how much it's making, or whether it's doing
good or whether it's doing bad. I just miss it all. I don't talk to
anybody, and a couple weeks later I come back and it's all over with.
So I hear the results but I didn't have to live through them. I think
it's a healthy way to handle success. Don't wallow in it. Keep it at
arm's length.
In a public art form like yours, how do you handle criticism?
When I started out, like everyone else I read the critics. You read not
only the criticism of your own movies but everyone else's movies, and
as you start to make movies you also meet the critics. Over time I
began to realize that the level of cinema criticism in the last part of
this century in the United States was pretty low. The institution
itself is not what it's supposed to be, and I realized that I didn't
need to take that seriously.
There are a few critics overseas, and occasionally a critic will write
an astute analysis of the movie. There is value in reading critics that
actually have something intelligent to say, but the journalistic
community lives in a world of sound bites and literary commerce:
selling newspapers, selling books, and they do that simply by trashing
things. They don't criticize or analyze them. They simply trash them
for the sake of a headline, or to shock people to get them to buy
whatever it is they're selling. The older you get, the less seriously
you take it. I've gotten to a point now where I ignore it completely.
It's just not relevant to me anymore.
You have to have a thick enough skin to cope with the criticism. I'm
very self-critical and I have a lot of friends that I trust who are
film directors and writers and people in my profession. I trust them to
be extremely critical but I trust their opinion; their opinion is
thoughtful, knowledgeable. I also know them personally so I know the
psychological slant they are putting on it. I know what their tastes
are and I can say, "Well that's great for them but that's not great for
me." Technical criticism is extremely helpful but you are only going to
get that from your peers.
I've discovered that most critics themselves are cinematically
illiterate. They don't really know much about movies. They don't know
the history. They don't know the technology. They don't know anything.
So for them to try to analyze it, they're lost. But your friends
usually know what they're doing and they can critique the technical
side of things to say, "This doesn't work. You know, you're putting the
cart before the horse." This kind of stuff. And then the rest of it is
what you like, you know. It's personal, you know. It's in the eye of
the beholder. You know, "I like this movie. I don't like this movie."
There are a lot of movies that are badly made that I love, and there
are a lot of movies that are just beautifully made but I don't like
them. And critics have a tendency that that is all they focus on, which
is, "I like it or I don't like it. It's good. It's bad." And it doesn't
work that way, and so you really have to not deal with that part of
what happens. It's the same thing with the audience. You know, I've
made some movies that have -- ten people have gone to see them. Nobody
wanted to go see the movie. And some film that the people went and saw
and didn't like it. Probably, you know, maybe a half a dozen of us
actually liked the movies, but that's fine. If I like it, then I'm
happy with it. And you have to sort of accept that no matter what. If
nobody else likes it, you're not going to stay in the business of
making movies for very long, because you need the resources in order to
keep going. So you have to find a niche audience or some kind of
audience that has the same likes, dislikes and aesthetic sensibilities
that you have.
I think one of the reasons that Steven (Spielberg) and I have been as
successful as we have is because we like the movies. We like to go to
the movies. We enjoy movies and we want to make movies like the ones we
enjoy. We want to be able to entertain the audience. We want to be able
to startle the audience. We want to be able to blow the audience away
and say -- have them walk out of the theater saying, "Whoa, that was
fantastic, I was really moved by that." That's where part of the fun of
it is. And, you know, you want people to think. You want people to be
emotionally moved. And there's a theory behind that in terms of
storytelling. It has been around for thousands of years. And that's
where something like live theater or a live performance is something
that is very valuable, because you get instant feedback from your
audience, and you kind of know the things that work and the things that
don't work. That's the advantage that the Greek storytellers had, and
Shakespeare had, that us in the film industry are -- that's harder to
come by. Which is to be able to see an audience reaction and then
adjust to what works. So you have to use your experience of sitting
through a lot of movies.
I don't ever see movies by myself. I always see them with other people,
because I want to know what works. I want to know where they laugh. I
want to know where they don't laugh. I want to know what they think
about it afterwards, because in the end that's what the art that I'm
working with is. You know? Trying to communicate in a way that is
effective and people react to. So I can't ignore the people I'm telling
the story to.
You've enabled other directors to exploit new technology and have more
control over sound and the moving image. What drives you to keep
pushing the envelope of technology?
Sometimes people look at technology as an end in itself, and it isn't.
The craft of movies is almost completely technical, as opposed to
writing a book or something, which is only partially technical.
Different pens, different papers, the first printing press, binding
books, paperback books, cheap books for a lot of people. It's all
technology that allows the writer to reach a better audience.
Painters in the past were very adept at mixing colors, and coming up
with new colors, so they could express things in new ways.
Michelangelo, for example. The technology of brushes, and all those
things, were very important to how they applied their craft. It's the
same thing in movies, only it's a hundredfold. In the first movies,
they just put up a camera and had a train come into a train station,
and everybody was amazed. "Look at the technology!" But as it grew, it
grew into more of an art form, much more sophisticated than that.
What we've been doing ever since then, whether we add sound, or whether
we add color, or whether we use digital technology, is simply a way of
broadening the canvas, so that we have more colors to work with. It
started out as cave paintings, and they were very beautiful and very
significant. But as you go along, you have the technology of using
canvas, or of sculpting in different kinds of material, and suddenly it
all advances to a point where it gets very sophisticated. So now you
can tell much more interesting stories and you can express yourself
more clearly. That's what's happening today, and that's why all artists
are constantly pushing the technology, the medium -- to widen the
range, so that they can use their imagination.
The area that has the most range at this point is probably literature,
and it always has, because it's a key to the mind, and it's very
direct. It's just the pen and paper, and how you manage to use your
words. But most of Shakespeare was written around the technology of the
day. Things are staged in a certain way, and written in a certain way
in order to deal with the limitations of the stage, of the flickering
candlelight, and of the rowdy audiences, and how you get people off the
stage, and get new people on the stage if you don't have a curtain, and
those kinds of things.
So in a lot of ways, the artist is restricted a great deal by the
technology of the medium that he's working in. And in film, because the
nature of it is so technological, the artist has been the most
restricted in what he can do. Digital technology allows you to to tell
a bigger story and use more imagination than you were able to do in the
past. What are your dreams right now for the next 10 or 20 years?
My life is making movies, and I like storytelling, and I've got a lot
of stories that are stored up in my head that I hope to get out before
my time is up. So for me it's just a matter of "How can I get through
all the stories in the amount of time I have left?" My dream is that I
get to do it.
That was my dream when I was younger, too. "Will I get to make the
movies? Will I get to do what I want?" I've spent a fair amount of time
doing what I want, and I "serendipitied" into starting companies, and
building technology, and doing a lot of other things that are related
to me getting to make the movies that I want to make.
I've always just followed my own course, whatever I found the most
interesting to me at the moment. I've never had a real plan of, "I want
to get from here to there, and I've got to do this." The underlying
plan to everything is, "I've got a bunch of movies to tell, and this is
the one I'm going to do now, and this is the one I'm going to do next."
And then I focus on the one at hand.
What does the American Dream mean to you?
I don't know what to say about that. It's a very, very complex
question.
I would like to see our society mature, and become more rational and
more knowledge-based, less emotion-based. I'd like to see education
play a larger role in our daily lives, have people come to a larger
understanding -- a "bigger picture" understanding -- of how we fit into
the world, and how we fit into the universe. Not necessarily thinking
of ourselves, but thinking of others.
Whether we're going to accomplish this, I'm not sure. Obviously, people
have a lot of different dreams of where America should be, and where it
should fit into things. Obviously, very few of them are compatible, and
very few of them are very compatible with the laws of nature.Human
nature means battling constantly between being completely self-absorbed
and trying to be a communal creature. Nature makes you a communal
creature. The ultimate single-minded, self-centered creature is a
cancer cell. And mostly, we're not made up of cancer cells.
If you put that notion on a larger scale, you have to understand that
it's a very cooperative world, not only with the environment, with but
our fellow human beings. If you do not cooperate, if you do not work
together to keep the entire organism going, the whole thing dies, and
everybody dies with it. That's a law of nature, and it's existed
forever. We're one of the very few creatures that has a choice, and can
intellectualize the process.
Most organisms either adapt and become part of the system, or get wiped
out. The only thing we have to adapt to the system with is our brain.
If we don't use it, and we don't adapt fast enough, we won't survive.
You mentioned the words "communal" and "connecting." Your generation of
the top film makers all seem to be friends. How did you band together
in a field that is so competitive?
I think that's the advantage that my generation has. When we were in
film school and we were starting in the film business, the door was
absolutely locked. There was a very, very high wall, and nobody got in.
All of us beggars and scroungers down at the front gate decided that if
we didn't band together, we wouldn't survive. If one could make it,
that one would help all the others make it. And we would continue to
help each other. So we banded together. That's how the cavemen figured
it out. Any society starts that way.
Any society begins by realizing that together, by helping each other,
you can survive better than if you fight each other and compete with
each other.
Farming cultures started this way, and the first hunting cultures
started this way. Everything started in city-states. We have a tendency
to lose it when we forget that, as a group, we are stronger than we are
as individuals. We start to think we want everything for ourselves and
we don't want to help anybody else. We want to succeed, but we don't
want anybody else to succeed, because we want to be the winner. Once
you get that mentality -- which is unfortunately the way a lot of the
society operates -- you lose. You can't possibly win that way. Part of
the reason my friends and I became successful is that we were always
helping each other.
If I got a job, I would help somebody else get a job. If somebody got
more successful than me, it was partly my success. My success wasn't
based on how I could push down everyone around me. My success was based
on how much I could push everybody up. And eventually their success was
the same way. And in the process they pushed me up, and I pushed them
up, and we kept doing that, and we still do that.
Even though we all have, in essence, competing companies, if my friends
succeed, then everybody succeeds. So that's the key to it, to have
everybody succeed, not to gloat over somebody else's failure.
We continue to do that, and we do it with younger filmmakers. There's
no way of getting through any kind of endeavor without help from
friends. And trying to be the number one person, ultimately, is a
losing proposition. You need peers, you need people who are at the same
level you are. You never know in life when you're going to need help,
and you never know who you're going to need it from.
One of the basic motifs in fairy tales is that you find the poor and
unfortunate along the side of the road, and when they beg for help, if
you give it to them, you end up succeeding. If you don't give it to
them, you end up being turned into a frog or something. It's a concept
that's been around for thousands of years. It is even more necessary
today, when people are more into their own aggrandizement than they are
in helping other people. I don't think there's anyone who's become
successful who doesn't understand how important it is to be part of a
larger community, to help other people in larger communities, to give
back to the community.
And it's not something you start doing when you've made it; it's when
you're at the very lowest level and you're struggling. When we were in
film school, we were all very, very poor. We all needed jobs
desperately. And if one of us couldn't get a particular job, we'd send
another friend in on the interview, because we were hoping that one of
us would get it. So you do it right from the very beginning. You can
start every single day with helping your brother or sister, or helping
your peers at school, or helping in the community. But it's not just a
kind of public service thing. It's a way of life.
Then you realize how great it is, and that, by helping others, you'll
achieve more. It's much more logical and intelligent to help others get
to the level where everyone else is, rather than criticizing, or making
fun, so that everybody can move on. And if you do that all the time, it
helps you personally. But it's a good business decision -- let's put it
that way. The ultimate thing is that you feel better about yourself,
and you're a happier person.
If America is the pursuit of happiness, the best way to pursue
happiness is to help other people. Because there's nothing else that
will make you happier. You can be as rich, and famous, and powerful as
you want to be, and it will not bring you happiness.
It's such a cliché that it hardly needs to be said, but people don't
understand that it's actually true. You can find people who are rich,
powerful and famous, and they aren't happy. And you can find people who
have discovered the fact that it's really helping people, it's really
being compassionate toward other human beings that makes you happy,
that gives you a spiritual fulfillment -- a kind of fulfillment that
goes way beyond anything you can buy. This is a 5,000 year old idea,
and every prophet, every intelligent, rational, successful person has
said it. It's a very simple idea, and the most important part of it is
-- it's true.
You've won three Oscars. Do you ever feel like you've made it and now
you just want to relax and enjoy your success?
I look at it a little bit differently. I have a lot of ideas and I want
to be able to work. To me, it's like one of these contests where you
get five minutes in a supermarket to take anything off the shelves you
want and try to fill your cart up as much as you can. That's the way I
look at my work. I have a supermarket full of ideas and the challenge
is how many ideas can I get in my cart before I'm gone. When you're
doing it, you're not focused on success. It's not a matter of modesty.
You're simply trying to get all the things done that you want to get
done in your life.
Are there obligations that go along with the kind of success you've
had?
I think as you grow up, you realize you have obligations just in your
life -- being a citizen, being part of humanity -- to help other
people, to help your country, to help the world. When I started out and
I wasn't successful, I taught and I did other things, and got into
several programs, charities and that sort of thing.
When I got very, very successful, I didn't have the time for that level
of participation anymore. I got into a loop where I said, "When I get
old, I'll give all this money to all these institutions,." I was still
in my 20s. And as things came along, people in trouble, schools and
institutions in trouble, I said, "Oh, I can't. Wait until I'm 50. I
can't do this when I'm 20."
After a lot of struggling and sort of reflection I realized that the
time you have to give is now, regardless of how old you are. It's kind
of a realization because one is kind of -- "You mean I'm in that
position already?" It's sort of a way of saying, "Oh, my gosh, I'm one
of them! I'm one of those old guys that gives libraries to schools and
things, and here I am, only 20 or 27." And I think I've seen again a
lot of people go through this, who are working so hard, they wake up
one day and realize that those things that they said, "I'll do that
someday, I'll do that someday. " Well, that someday is today. And if
you have the means to do it, then this is the time to do it. And it's a
little hard to do when you're building up your nest egg so to speak,
your security blanket, to give it away. You know, my feeling is that if
you can't give the time away, you should give part of your resources
away.
I think that's an obligation you have, to give back no matter what
happens. It actually ends up being easier when you're young than when
you become successful. Suddenly you realize you've gone into a whole
other realm of philanthropy, from just being a volunteer to being this
person that dedicates buildings and saves lots of children in some
faraway place.
What do you see as your contributions to your profession and to film?
In the end the most important thing to me is that I've raised three
kids. I know that'll be the most important accomplishment of my life
and it is the most easily obtainable, because all you have to do is pay
attention. It is hard work and most people don't realize that's the
real gift they are getting in terms of goals and success and
accomplishments.
On the professional side, I've helped move cinema from a chemical-based
medium to a digital-based medium. That'll be one of the landmarks. And
I've left these stories, these little tales that have been imprinted on
the media, which will or will not be of interest to people in the
future. I've done the best I can. They've obviously made a big mark
while I'm here, but if you study history, you know you can make a huge
mark during your lifetime, and a lifetime later it's forgotten.
You may make something you don't think is very important during your
lifetime and it'll last for a thousand years. You can't really focus
too much on that part of it, because you don't know what history is
going to throw at you in terms of what's important and what's not
important.
You simply have to do the best you can with what you're actually doing.
I'm hoping I can make some change in the way the educational system
works. I think I've made some changes in the way the film industry
works, and I think there will be more dramatic changes to come. I'm
enthusiastic about that and I have a feeling that will be part of my
legacy.
Terrific. Is there anything we haven't talked about that you want to
talk about?
I can't think of anything. We've certainly talked about a lot.
That's great. Thank you very much.
This page last revised on Oct 27, 2005 16:28 PST
googlegroups2sucks
how i'm different from lucas: i'm interested in anthropology, social
sciences, psychology, photography, but i never had a life-changing car
accident, nor great grades. i got by.
googlegroups2sucks
magnetic nor persuasive, to tell you the truth. i don't think i've
ever been called as such by anyone offline (maybe behind my back,
perhaps, but never to my face). again, i don't know _exactly_ what
some of you are thinking but always keep in mind this: online persona
and offline persona are two different things for a lot of people i
imagine, including myself. ]
> Weren't you always interested in filmmaking?
>
> Well, I grew up in a small town in Central California; it was a farming
> community. We had a couple of movie theaters, and you'd go to the
> movies once in a while. I didn't get a television until I was 10 or 11
> years old. I had lots of interests. I liked woodworking, I liked to
> build things. I liked cars. I liked art. I really wanted to be an
> illustrator, and I liked photography. I didn't really discover any
> interest in film until I was a junior in college.
[ another thing: i can't draw. ]
>
> You could actually go to school and learn how to make movies. Suddenly
> everything came together in one place. All my likes, everything I
> actually seemed to have talent for was right there. I said, "Hey, this
> is it. I can do this really well. I really love to do it." And from
> then on I, you know, just took off, but before that I was kind of
> wandering as I think a lot of students do.
[ i'm still wandering. i'm still thinking over what i should do
next... honest to god. ]
>
> When I look back on it now, if I'd gone to art school, or stayed in
> anthropology, I'm almost positive I would have ended up eventually in
> film. Mostly I just followed my inner feelings and passions, and said
> "I like this, and I like this," and I just kept going to where it got
> warmer and warmer, until it finally got hot, and then that's where I
> was.
[ great description. you know, i love doing this -- writing posts,
bitchslapping president hu, driving the media into foaming rage,
toppling small governments, help change asia and africa for the better
-- but not if it scares the crap out of everyone on the planet. heh. ]
googlegroups2sucks
>
> I think that's just a personal thing for me. It's extremely hard work,
> and it's not very glamorous. It ultimately is simply a way of
> expressing ideas. I am more of a visual person than a verbal person.
> For me, I think, the excitement is the fact that I found a way of
> telling the story as I want to tell it, in a medium that I could
> master. Although I write screenplays, I don't think I'm a very good
> writer. I'm very interested in studying cultures and social issues, but
> as an academic I don't think I would have been too successful.
[ pretty much nails how i view my usenet posting antics. ]
>
> Were there any experiences that inspired you as a kid?
>
> There wasn't much as a kid that inspired me in what I did as an adult,
> but I was always very interested in what motivates people, and in
> telling stories and building things. My teenage years were completely
> devoted to cars. That was the most important thing in my life, from
> about the age of 14 to 20.
[ nailed, except i loved my apple ][ plus as much as i loved cars. ]
> Were there any books or films that were important to you, that
> influenced or inspired you to do the kind of work you wanted to do?
>
> When I was younger, I had a collection of history books that I was
> addicted to, a whole series about famous people in history from Ancient
> Greece and Alexander the Great, up to the Civil War -- the Monitor and
> the Merrimac. I think they were called "Landmark" books, and I
> collected a whole library of them. I used to love to read those books.
> It started me on a lifelong love of history. Even in high school I was
> very interested in history -- why people do the things they do. As a
> kid I spent a lot of time trying to relate the past to the present.
[ i wish i knew of those books when i was younger. ]
> Do you think you had a natural talent for filmmaking? What drew you to
> that line of work?
>
> Everybody has talent, it's just a matter of moving around until you've
> discovered what it is. A talent is a combination of something you love
> a great deal, something you can lose yourself in -- something that you
> can start at 9 in the morning, look up from your work and it's 10
> o'clock at night -- and something that you have a natural ability to do
> very well. And usually those two things go together.
>
> A lot of people like to do certain things, but they're not that good at
> it. Keep going through the things that you like to do, until you find
> something that you actually seem to be extremely good at. It can be
> anything. There's lots and lots of different things out there. It's a
> matter of moving around until you find the one for you, the niche that
> you fit into.
[ excellent advice. i'd say memorize it, if possible. i'm going to
stop here just to drive home those last two paragraphs above. ]
googlegroups2sucks
googlegroups2sucks wrote:
> http://news.independent.co.uk/business/analysis_and_features/article351732.ece
>
> >From a garage in California to a billion downloads worldwide: Apple at
> thirty
> By Stephen Foley in New York
> Published: 17 March 2006
>
> <snip>
>
> The Apple II was the first commercial product to use a "graphical user
> interface", so users didn't have to learn a complicated computer
> language to work it.
> And then the Macintosh, launched in 1984 with a mouse and a screen that
> said hello to you, became one of the most successful product launches
> in computing history.
>
>
> [ the apple ][ didn't have enough memory or processing power for a gui.
> heck it used a cassette tape recorder because floppy disks and hard
> drives were too expensive. it had a text-based or dos-based operating
> system, somewhat similar to the ibm pc's ms-dos.
>
> it's the mac that introduced gui (and changed the backround from black
> or green to white, making it easier on the eyes) and mice. if the
> apple ][ introduced gui, then it had to have introduced a mouse -- but
> that's not the case.
>
> good news: foley is not a geek. yay.
> bad news: foley got it wrong. boo.
> good news: it's about tech history, not about war, so no one really
> cares. no one dies because foley got it wrong. yay. ]
[ update: i'd completely forgotten about the apple lisa... ]
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/computing/20060324-1008-appleturns30.html
A bright, shiny Apple turns 30
By May Wong
ASSOCIATED PRESS
10:08 a.m. March 24, 2006
...
The Apple Lisa, introduced in 1983, used an innovative icon- and
mouse-based graphical user interface that laid the foundation of
today's computers and replaced the previous arcane text-based systems.
But the Lisa was a commercial flop: Its high price- $9,995 - sent
business users to PCs from rival IBM Corp.
The hugely successful - and more affordable - Apple Macintosh
followed in 1984, giving birth to desktop publishing by allowing users
to create their own newsletters or printed material.
Microsoft eventually copied the user-friendly graphical interface and
licensed its Windows software to manufacturers who copied the IBM PC.
The clones proliferated while Macintosh sales were hobbled by Apple's
decision not to license its software to other hardware makers.
[ both apple and microsoft copied gui concepts from xerox palo alto
research center (aka xerox parc). take that, ms. wong. ]
googlegroups2sucks
pure gold. learn it, live it.
googlegroups2sucks
> times when you sit and you say, "Why am I doing this? I'll never make
> it. It's just not going to happen. I should go out and get a real job,
> and try to survive." I'd borrowed money from my parents. I'd borrowed
> money from my friends. It didn't look like I was ever going to actually
> be able to pay anybody back.
i've gone through many, many, many, many, many moments when i asked
myself, "why am i doing this?" i'm having another moment now.
>
> Film is not an easy occupation. There's a lot of occupations that are
> difficult and film is one of them. There's always adversity that you're
> faced with. I like to tell students that I talk to that, you know, it's
> not a matter of how well can you make a movie. It's how well can you
> make it under the circumstances, because there's always circumstances
> and you cannot use that as an excuse. You can't put a title card at the
> head of the movie and say, "Well, we really had a bad problem. You
> know, the actor got sick and it rained this day and we had a
> hurricane." And you know, you can't -- the cameras broke down -- you
> can't do that. You simply have to show them the movie and it has got to
> work, and there are no excuses. And so you really have to focus on what
> you're doing and just plow ahead no matter what hurdles are thrown in
> front of you.
that's missing a qualifier -- you gotta be right. one can easily say
about the iraq war, "plow ahead no matter what". i don't know if
that's the right track. sometimes you gotta plow ahead, and sometimes
you gotta know when to walk away. it's almost always a tough call.
it's never clear cut.
googlegroups2sucks
blurb about microsoft. i have no idea if these were made by actual ms
employees, nor do i know if what they say is accurate. it could all be
pure bullshit for all i know. ...but i find it disturbing, because i
like billg & microsoft and i want to see them do well. ]
http://minimsft.blogspot.com/2006/03/vista-2007-fire-leadership-now.html
Want to see Vista ship?
Get rid of 90% of the Process that goes between writing the code and
getting it checked in.
Get rid of the developer-hosted test boxes, get rid of prefast and
quality gates, get rid of the process that has people working at 3AM on
Sunday morning NOT to fix bugs, NOT to write features, NOT to make the
product more stable, but only to move marbles from one coffee can to
another coffee can... er, uh, I mean, for FIs and RIs.
Because that's where all the time is going, and that's why people
working on Vista are closing their doors and literally weeping in
frustration at their desks.
By Cheopys, at 9:59 PM
Things in the late 90's were much more entrepreneurial, people really
seemed to love their jobs and if you went out of your way to develop a
new test harness or enhance a feature it wasn't frowned upon. People
also willingly helped out other groups when in need. At that time I was
in Windows and I can remember BrianV standing up to give his weekly
world news report with the nice buffet of food on Friday afternoons.
Ahh those were the days.. Fast forward to 2006 and things in my world
are completely different. Speaking of morale, my old manager left our
group and we all had to pay our own way for a goodbye lunch because
there was no morale budget (there was just 6 of us). It almost feels
like the cement of bureaucracy has set in at all levels. Its
unbelievable how much of a pain in the butt it is to get anything done.
If you need a bug fixed and its in you team you usually have a small
fight to put up, but God help you if that bug is in another team and
you are dependant on the fix. Forget about usability, or doing whats
best for the user experience, its all about doing less work and
managing perception to the upper brass. Thank you for letting me vent.
In regards to the Vista issue, if the upper management is changed, they
will not be fired rather they will be "reassigned" take a look at Gord
Magione (I think that was his name) of SQL Server, that product took 5
years to ship and did they fire him? Hell no, he "took on a different
challenge", once you are a 67+ you are part of the good old boys
network.
I really hope MSFT turns itself around, I hope for the best but realize
that I have absolutely lost faith in all the levels of upper
management. This Vista issue is just icing on the cake.
By Anonymous, at 11:20 PM