text:
Maybe not but if they handed out T-shirts, geeks would be all over it.
you cannot commandeer
Warmly recommend DHS to try at 4chan: recruit them young, you know! (grin)
DHS -> Pays 4chan to run ads for them, is surprised by the number of applicants.
And most turn to be fake applications, just to generate ad revenue for 4chan.
Doesn't this seem like a GREAT OPPORTUNITY for an Anonymous op?
#OpReserves Sign up now!
Go for it, kids!
Yes they can. How exciting!
It'll be just like this! [youtube.com]
Well, except for the friends, party, and wife.
You know they are jealous of Best Buy and wanted to call this the Geek Squad.
I figured Cyber Men would be a better name for an extended army of...
Cyber this, Cyber that.
If I have to read the word "cyber" one more time my head is going to explode.
Or rounding up?
[puts on tinfoil hat]
The enemy is trying to blow up shopping malls and Christmas tree lightings, not prevent those actions. Very few people will shuffle off this mortal coil due to a pat-down for refusing the back-scatter sensor, or from having excess shampoo removed from their baggy of liquids before boarding a flight. Very few people will survive having a building collapse on top of them, their plane being flown into the ground, or standing too close to a truck bomb that goes off 50 feet away at the mall.
I would say that so
Look she spouted a lot of garbage about 'cyber-geddon' and it was torn apart by geeks pointing out that hacking a web page of a power station with its 10 visitors a day, is not synonymous with attacking the power station, and that the fix for these problems is to keep critical stuff on private network links.
So they hire a few geeks who will talk sh1t to attack the real enemy, us and our plain talking common sense! The War on Common Sense!
I noticed that the Russian Hacker, Georgia revealed a few days ago, was a sad man living in a crappy room, not a soldier in a military uniform surround by War Game screens. They are just a pest, and for Georgia it should have patched its servers and locked down its logins, even for the government websites so he couldn't deface them.
If you have a problem, you fix the problem, you don't declare war on it.
I don't think the US is worried about traditional a-hole "hacker" who is deluded into thinking cyber-vandalism is a good thing. I think now that Israel and the US teamed up to cyber-attack Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities, the entire world is racing to bone up their cyber-warfare divisions. Real war stuff where people die, not just kids who misunderstood what the term hacker meant.
Has anyone heard what the extra transistors TSMC was adding to every Xilinx FPGA were for? I doubt they're a good thing.
Or rounding up?
My thought exactly. You're looking at the official suspect list when our digital armageddon finally comes...
Think about it, you participate one weekend a month for sec training and preparedness drills, and take on a special project every once in a while, and get the military benefits without leaving your house. I'd be in for that, especially if it (being those projects) could be done as moonlighting outside my regular job. That doesn't sound so bad.
Count me in too. Well, assuming "preparedness drills" involve donuts instead of pushups.
You do know that
-- quite a few of the reserves are actually deployed at the present;
--a lot of the National Guard is called out and deployed at the present;
-- a lot of people who have finished their tours are told that they must re-up.
Even if they are not deployed overseas, they are often activated to take the place on base of combat troops who are deployed overseas. So if you're part of the Ready Reserve [wikipedia.org], be ready to be deployed at any time of need. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Just know about that ahead of time.
The relative number of reserve and National Guard active are not that large compared to the total reserve force. The current goal is no more than three or four deployments over the course of a career - assuming there is a need for that force level deployed to a war zone, which seems unlikely to me.
Managing the Reserve Components as an Operational Force [defense.gov]
In January 2007, the Secretary of Defense established total force utilization guidelines that included the planning objective for involuntary mobilization of National Guard and Reserve units and individuals of a "one year mobilized to five years demobilized ratio." This guideline does not mean that every Reserve member will serve one year out of every six years. . .
Many skills that are useful to the uniformed military are difficult to acquire through traditional accession policies, are challenging to obtain on short notice, or are only needed for a limited duration. These skills might include cutting edge, technical skills such as those possessed by engineers, scientists, or information technology professionals, as well as specialized skills such as languages and cultural understanding. Flexible affiliation options allow the Services to meet requirements with individuals who may be willing to volunteer for some form of military service for short periods of time or in response to specific emergencies, but for whom traditional affiliation programs are not of interest. Thus, removing barriers that limit Reserve members from contributing more to defense missions is an ongoing and necessary process.
- - -
-- a lot of people who have finished their tours are told that they must re-up
I think you're confused. Service members were not told they must re-up, but rather some had their service period involuntarily extended by a "Stop Lo
Those are two phrases that parse out to the same func
I'd be in for that, especially if it (being those projects) could be done as moonlighting outside my regular job. That doesn't sound so bad.
If they actually pay you for it, I doubt they'd let you do it at home.
Think about it, you participate one weekend a month for sec training and preparedness drills, and take on a special project every once in a while, and get the military benefits without leaving your house.
The US military is famous for switching job descriptions once people have entered their ranks.
Many people want to be Air Force pilots for instance, so they sign up with the Air Force, but when they find that it's really too competitive to be a pilot, or they don't have the political connections to make that happen. It's too late already -- they've signed on the doted line. The same goes for State Military Reserves, most thought they were committing themselves for a limited time duration of possibly doing disaster relief work, or at most that they might fight within the US in case it ever got attacked, not they were going to fight in Iraq in a pre-emptive war, and nor did they know that their contracts could be changed indefinitely at will.
up till your called in and end up on a year long project and then what happens when you go back to your job??? The law says they can't do anything but you may have to stand up for your rights.
But but but people connect their power plants and natural gas pumping stations to the internet because they wanted to post some updates on their facebook or do a foursquare checkin and they forgot their iPhone at home! Then when some work gets into these control systems and causes problems (maybe even people could die), it is not because of action of some locals that hooked up critical systems to the internet. It will be "digital perl harbor"!!
In politics it is not about rationality and common sense. It is about posers and perceptions. Hell, that's how we almost all died back in the engineered "Cuban missile crises".
So when some retards screw up a power grid, the result will be "how do we respond?!? war! WAR!", not "why were these systems on unprotected networks?".
Times change, but our thought patterns seem to clearly remain back in the stone age. DHS just proves the point once again.
the power grid needs to link all the plans and substations to each other so they can control all the switches on the lines.
Yes, but plants and sub-stations don't need to shop on e-Bay or check their Facebook status now do they?
If they need to be connected to a network, make it a private network and most of these issues go away.
There is no sane reason that these networks and these facilities should not be air-gapped from the internet at large. There are ways around the air-gap (stuxnet), but even these are trivial to prevent by not allowing random USB keys from outside by gluing the port closed and/or securing the hardware prope
Yes, but plants and sub-stations don't need to shop on e-Bay or check their Facebook status now do they?
You mean you don't detect when your power station has been hacked by seeing whether the generators have unfriended you?
There is no need to try and compare unlawful access to a computer system by a foreign entity to an attack that killed thousands of people and drew the US into one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history.
Yes there is if you are looking to provide a justification for continuing to feed trillions of dollars to the military-industrial complex.
Regardless of terminology, a massive attack on the virtual infrastructure is a different class of attack and requires a different class of defense. The term 'cyber Pearl Harbor' is ridiculous and disrespectful to those who were at the real Pearl Harbor. Also, DHS is probably the worst department to be in charge of, well, pretty much anything. The NSA would be a much better choice.
With that said, I think it's not too bad of an idea once you realize what the proper response is to a massive attack on the en
Espionage != sabotage
Look at the computers on the desk here:
http://ronslog.typepad.com/ronslog/2008/05/eagle-mountain.html [typepad.com]
Any clues as to control over some of the SCADA systems here might do?
in my best "say what again!" voice: Tell me it's not gonna cause problems!
Sabotage, and even assasination have been part of espionage for quite a while. Neither of the necessarily means war.
Espionage is espionage,
So far it has been, but what happens when it isn't centrifuges targeted, but humans? Train crashes and infrastructure failures?
I can't help thinking we'd be better off sending our very worst programmers overseas instead. If you really are a computing screw up, the kind of guy that turns a "hello world" into an infinite loop, your truly are an asset to this nation and we'll gladly sponsor your job application to iran or north korea. Problem solved.
well then it's time for the people in charge of this, who were probably the lawyer/prep/ivy league have-it-alls in highschool, to get over their cliquish demands for irrelevant shit like dresscode conformity, good looks, superficial pop culture interests, and top tier athleticism if they want the very best technologists. Of course, if these assholes had learned anything since high school, they'd realize calling anything 'cyber' or 'virtual' scares away the people they're trying to bring in before they even start.
If that were true, it would have already happened by now. I mean, wtf are the US's enemies waiting for?
Here's what someone said back in 1998: [fas.org]
The Governmental Affairs Committee today is holding the first of a series of hearings on the security of federal computer systems. The potential benefits promised by computers are contrasted with inherent risks to our security and public safety. While advances in computing power potentially can remake how the government does business and how future wars are fought, it also creates vulnerabilities which must be reduced. Today's hearing will address the darker side of the information revolution while exploring how we can better protect government information.
Computers are changing our lives faster then any other invention in our history. Our society is becoming increasingly dependent on information technologies, which are changing at an amazing rate. Consider a couple of examples:
The singing greeting cards which you buy today for $2 have more computing power then existed in the world before 1950.
A video camera which you buy today for less then $1000 has more computing power then a 1960s computer the size of this room.
Combine this rapid explosion in computing power with the fact that information systems are being connected together around the world without regard to geographic boundaries. The increasing ability of computers talking to each other offers both opportunities and challenges.
In today's hearing, we will discuss these challenges. We will hear that the nature of this challenge comes from the fact that our nation's underlying information infrastructure is riddled with vulnerabilities which represent severe security flaws and risks to our nation's security, public safety and personal privacy.
While "hacker attacks" receive much media attention, what worries me are the attacks that go unknown. The nature of attacks in the information age seems to allow a malicious individual or group to reach out and inflict extensive damage from the comfort and safety of their home.
We must ask whether we are becoming so dependent on communications links and electronic microprocessors that a determined adversary or terrorist could possibly shut down federal operations or damage the economy simply by attacking our computers.
At risk are systems that control power distribution and utilities, phones, air traffic, stock exchanges, the Federal Reserve, and taxpayers' credit and medical records. Unfortunately, government agencies are ill-prepared to address the situation. We as a nation cannot wait for the "Pearl Harbor" of the information age. We must increase our vigilance to tackle this problem before we are hit with a surprise attack.
Our witnesses today have substantial knowledge about what the problems really are and can recommend solutions. First, Dr. Peter Neumann, a recognized private-sector expert on computer security, will provide the Committee with an overview of information security issues and testify on the systemic security problems in the government's computer systems.
Then we will hear from L0pht -- seven members of a "hacker think tank" who identify security weaknesses in computer systems in an effort to persuade companies to design more secure systems. L0pht members will testify about specific weaknesses which enable hackers to exploit the nation's information infrastructure and government information.
Excuse me if I can't take the government seriously about preventing a cyber "Pearl Harbor". What'll happen is that there will be some attack w
Why would you hire an expert computer hacker/programmer/systems guy/girl if they can get paid 3x the amount working in a private company?
If you want to create an elite set of 'ubergeeks' you need to pay them a lot of money, allow them to work in jeans and tshirts, endless supply of mountain dew and snacks.
Or otherwise work for Google.
Yes I'm sure that Network Security
Specialists enjoy anything related to the word
CYBER, it is like the New Wave era of
HACKING (not to be confused with
cracking)... or something like that
It does sound like fun and I would enjoy it given the right working conditions, though I imagine these are highly unlikely to be found in a military operation.
However, no lawyer can get you the guarantee you're looking for. If you are a male and a United States citizen, you'll remember having registered for Selective Service ("The Draft") before your 18th birthday. Under the right conditions any registered person can be called up for service, all it takes is an act of Congress.
...just hook me up with some of them Colombian hookers the Secret Service has been recruiting for their Randy Reserves.
It could be a hard sell, but if Samuel L. Jackson called, I'm sure people would join. Of course, Anonymous would have to kill the Phil Coulson of nerds first.
"There was an idea to bring together a group of remarkable people, so when we needed them, they could fight the battles that we never could... "
This whole thing is useless, and counter intuitive.
Essentially, government is going "ZOMG! We have (t)error(ist)s causing problems in our networks causing mayhem and loss of our priviledged informations!" And instead of going "hmm.. maybe we should audit our standards and practices, and actually hire people who know what they are doing...", they instead proclaim "we must create a new branch of the armed forces to be responsible for our existing and unwieldy information infrastructure! We'l call it "cyber so
Didn't we all get into technology for the meetings, the red tape, the bureaucracy, the TPS reports, the PHBs (pointy haired bosses)
In no particular order, the Heroes at Homeland Security will clap the leg-irons onto all their tame geeks, will lock down every box, will firewall every internal network, will take away every admin priv, will assign a "handler" to every geek with veto authority on every mouse click. And then? Of course the token techies will be crucified for not being able to use their non-existent resources to defend Wal-Mart from the script kiddies
They're looking for scapegoats my friends, don't fall for it
The DHS is the worst idea to come out of Washington and that's a town that's pretty much only ever generated bad ideas. I'd rather be waterboarded than lift a finger to suport that particular government agency.
All right maggot, fallout! Colonel Homestarrunner is recruiting the most elite team of crack commandos to invade Strongbadia. Do you has what it takes to join the Homestarmy? Will you bring a sack lunch and some orange slices for me and serve your country? WILL YOU STUPID!?
private company's are the ones with poor security and some has to do with cut backs and other PHB driven stuff.
Like PHB buying stuff on the golf course with out getting tech people there to do a look over.
Staff cut backs that leads to people being over worked / not have the time to do security right.
Old hardware / software that forced them to use systems full of security holes.
outsourcing / 3rd party's techs that can have lot's of trun over / overhead and propel who don't know whats going on. There is this
Hitler and the motherland....
Capability Based Security can make our systems secure. The Unix security model was optimum for CS labs in the 1970s... but it clearly isn't suitable for mobile code in a network of 1,000,000,000+ hosts.
Only give a piece of code the resources it needs to do it's job, and it can't take the world with it.
Your intellectual inertia biases you against change... it's time to grow up and really think about this.
Capability Based Security can make our systems secure.
It would help, but you have to be hard-assed about who gets what capability tickets. No, Angry Birds, you can't phone home and share high scores (and user ID info). No, you can't paste data from emails into the banking program.
There are a few things that ought to be done, at least as demos. An EAL 7 BGP server and an EAL 7 DNS server, formally verified down to the machine instructions, would be a good place to start,
No, you can't paste data from emails into the banking program.
Ugh - I can imagine how well that would go over at work. That's the problem - we can't even figure out if a piece of code will run to completion, let alone whether it is doing something "bad."
I do think capability-based security is a good idea, but the fact is that if you want people to get anything done things will still need to be reasonably open. You can't live like you're in a perpetual state of war...
From a person that doesn't do email. Truly, truly incredible.
I know this will ruin my Karma, and... I have never used this language in a public forum in my life, but, it's warranted...
Not only "no," but "HELL NO!" you Hitlarian Fascist bitch.
...circus music. Where is it coming from?
"Why don't y'all take that badge and shove it up your ass. All up in your ass." I'm American.
Ready to assist, make check payable to me.
Want hackers working for you? Change the law so that ponting out a security hole doesn't land the guy in jail. Suddenly, the majority of 'cyberterrorists' will be working for you.
Marvelous! The super-user's going to boot me! What a finely tuned response to the situation!


text: DSpace Community: http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/9 2018-05-22T04:36:33Z ZING http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/8257 Title: ZING Authors: NISHANTH SAMUEL FENN; SHARATH BASIL KURIAN; VIVEK M BHASI Abstract: To develop a mobile and desktop application for Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8 that synchronizes contacts, notes, reminders and calendars between two users over Bluetooth. We are also introducing a new feature called E-SMS which sends a copy of every SMS you send, also through email so that it is always reaches the recipient, even when the recipient cannot access the phone. The files will be directly synchronized from one device to the other over a simple encryption. Synchronizing can be between a mobile and a laptop or between two mobile devices. Furthermore we propose to have a Bluetooth chat feature as a part of our application for a Desktop to mobile, or mobile to mobile chat. The name of the application will be 'Zing.' 2014-06-26T18:30:00Z STUDENT ALERT SYSTEM http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/8256 Title: STUDENT ALERT SYSTEM Authors: SHILPA MARY GEORGE; STEFFY ALBERT; CAROLINE DAVID Abstract: Students have to search the internet each time to know about any news updates like fee payment dates, exam results etc in the college website. The project entitled "Student Alert System" is a system which sends latest news updates from college website to a student, either via SMS or e-mail or both. The system is developed so that students do not miss out on any alert and save their valuable time. When they subscribe this service, they will be notified with latest relevant news of their interest. Every student of the college can register in this system to access this service. The system extracts the latest news from the college website and sends updates to the registered students. Only the registered students will receive the notifications. The students subscribing this service will receive the alerts. Every student will receive a username and password from the admin, to login in this system. Notifications such as exam time table, fee details, syllabus, revaluation results, exam results etc will be send as alerts to the students. Students can register and choose the notifications they are interested in. They will receive the alerts for their respective interests as chosen at the time of subscription. Facilities are provided for the user to change their settings. The system groups the subscribers according to their interest and securely sends alerts to all subscribers as and when updates occur and keep the user informed. The user gets just the relevant news without any glossy brochures or attention diverting advertisements. 2014-06-26T18:30:00Z SIMULATION OF RECURSION AND DATA STRUCTURES http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/8255 Title: SIMULATION OF RECURSION AND DATA STRUCTURES Authors: NIRMAL SURESH; SAID SINAN KOTTANGODAN; NIYAS P I Abstract: To make the student easier to study how the operations on data sturucture and various algorithms are performed.the data structures can be stack,queue and linked list etc and algorithms are sorting like bubble sort,insertion sort etc. Aim behind implementation of this project to make a clear understandability of various algorithms of data structures. Using a web page this will simulates the data structure operations such as searching, sorting, insertion, deletion etc. In array, stack, queue, and linked list as well. Thus,our web page provides effective and efficient knowledge of data structures. This also provide some theoretical knowledge regarding the data structure. 2014-06-26T18:30:00Z PG EVALUATION SYSTEM FOR CUSAT http://hdl.handle.net/123456789/8254 Title: PG EVALUATION SYSTEM FOR CUSAT Authors: NEENU C PAUL; NIMISHA K; SAREENA M I Abstract: Through this project we are planning to develop an intranet application for CUSAT.The goal of our project is to automate the PG Evaluation process. The present evaluation process is conducted through many processes. The drawback of the present system is that transfer of result from each level is entirely done manually and is hence time consuming. There is no proper automated mechanism to manage these processes in an effective means. In the present system ,it takes almost a year to publish the result. We propose a system which is entirely computerized. The admin, chairman and the camp are the users. They are provided with a user name and password to login to their account. We provide an interface for the evaluators coming under the camp to enter and view the marks during the evaluation. This provides a secure means for the evaluators to enter the marks. Since the whole process is computerized, it outputs an effective system with lesser chaos and improved accuracy. This project can sustain as a long term project. The main advantage on using this project are:1. This project has great scope in the field of academics and results for our university 2. The complexity in evaluation processes are reduced and hence making it an easier job for the evaluators. 3. The delay in result publication is Therefore the shortcomings of the present system can be overcome with the help of our project. PHP is used for front end and SQL server is used for back end database storage. 2014-06-26T18:30:00Z

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Report: Flood relief unlikely
views on news
While there was some optimism in recent weeks about delaying a federal flood insurance rate hike set to kick in next year, a report this week from Charlotte County's Washington lobbyist expressed serious doubts about any relief measures getting through Congress.
The Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Act was designed to align flood insurance rates more closely to flood risks. For home and business owners in flood-prone areas, that will translate into higher rates. Bipartisan bills introduced in both houses of Congress — H.R. 3370 and S. 1610 — aimed at delaying rate increases have drawn 164 co-sponsors, according to the report by Van Scoyoc Associates.


text: This news item expired on 2/14/2014, so the information below could be outdated or incorrect. Learn How to Address End of Life Issues The Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UNC Asheville will hold an advance care planning workshop Thursday, February 13, 2014, 7 - 9 p.m. at the Reuter Center. The workshop will feature a panel whose members are experienced in addressing end-of-life issues. Discussion will include communicating your treatment wishes to loved ones and to medical personnel, ethical and legal issues, and the uses of advance directives. Ample time will be reserved for questions. Assistance will be provided for anyone wishing to complete a legally valid advance directive, including the notarization required in North Carolina, using the Five Wishes format. For more information on this or other workshops, check out their webpage.


text:
PHOENIX, Md. -- The University of Delaware women's golf team captured its first team title in program history after a pair of outstanding rounds this Sunday and Monday at the season-opening Tignanelli Towson Invitational.
The Blue Hens, beginning their third year as a varsity program under head coach Patty Post, followed up their opening round 308 on Sunday with a 306 team score on Monday to win the 14-team field by eight shots. Delaware's previous best performance had been a pair of fourth place finishes at The Spider at St. James Plantation in March, 2012 and the Tignanelli Towson Invitational last September.
The Blue Hens' 306 round on Monday was the second lowest in program history, while the two-round total of 614 broke the previous 36-hole mark by seven shots. St. John's finished in second place with a 622 team score, Bethune-Cookman was third at 625, and St. Francis (Pa.) and LIU-Brooklyn tied for fourth at 638.
"I am very proud of the girls and excited for them!" Post said. "They have worked very hard and definitely deserve it. The team played a solid two rounds of golf! We tried to focus on one shot at a time and doing our best. This weekend our best was good enough."
Blue Hen sophomore Vimonthip Benjasupawan posted her career low round on Monday by firing a one over par 73 on the par 72, 6,139-yard course at the Towson Golf & Country Club, finishing in third place in the individual standings with a six over par 77-73-150. Benjasupawan birdied 3 and 16 while making just three bogeys during her second round, while her third place finish was the best of her career.
Freshman Grace Chua carded her second consecutive four over par 76 round during Monday's action, tying for fourth place with an eight over par 76-76-152 during her Delaware debut. Playing as an individual, junior Baralee Theinthong was the third Blue Hen to finish among the top 10 leaderboard, as she fired a pair of five over par 77 rounds to end up tied for eighth place at 77-77-154, 10 over par.
UD freshman Marie Bogenez fired a six over par 78 during her second round to finish in 12th place with an 11 over par 77-78-155. Right behind her were another pair of Blue Hens, as fellow rookie Vitoria Teixeira and junior Amanda Terzian each tied for 13th place with identical 13 over par 78-79-157 scores. Teixeira birdied 6 and 16 during her round on Monday, while Terzian posted her lone birdie of the day on 6 as well.
Blue Hen junior Annie Bowlsby, playing as an individual, fired a 10 over par 82 on Sunday before withdrawing from the tournament on Monday. Jennifer Neville of St. John's earned medalist honors with a three over par 75-72-147, while Jennifer Hide of Bethune-Cookman finished in second place one shot back.
Delaware is back in action this weekend when the Blue Hens participate in the Princeton Invitational at Springdale Golf Club in Princeton, N.J.


text:
Have you tried Googling the word "dumping"? Because the first link explains it.
Another alternative term to "dumping" is explained, in much greater depth, by googling "2girls1cup".
I'd appreciate it very much if someone could please explain to me, how is it possible that one company sells something at a loss and it's called "dumping" (which you can get in trouble for, IIUC), and another company sells something at a loss and it's called a "loss leader?" Wtf?/quote
As I recall, 'dumping' is when you sell a product considerably more cheaply in one country than in another. For example: If Sony sold the PS3 in the US for $200, but the equivalent of $700 in Japan, that'd be 'dumping'.
Hopefully for both of us, my memory is correct.
i don't think that is what's usually meant by 'dumping'.
although it does seem to primarily refer to predatory pricing in the context of international trade, it's not when you sell something cheaper in one country than in another. it's simply when a product manufactured in one country is being exported to another country at a price below cost or below the market value in its home market.
as with most forms of predatory capitalism, its legality is fuzzy and often what one nation preaches is not what it practices--particularly western nations which like to tout the virtues of "Free Market" capitalism, such as the U.S.
so if a U.S. corporation wanted to dump products on another nation, they would condemn any protectionist policies which might oppose these actions. but simultaneously, if another country wanted to dump products in the U.S. which competed with domestic industries with powerful lobbies, antidumping petitions would be filed with the Dept. of Commerce.
things like 'fair value', or the difference between 'dumping' and selling a 'loss leader', are entirely subjective. they're simply used in whatever way most benefits a given group.
things like 'fair value', or the difference between 'dumping' and selling a 'loss leader', are entirely subjective. they're simply used in whatever way most benefits a given group.
Which is why we should make a single international standard, and then sell Bill Gates into sexual slavery!
It's just like with printers and ink or razors and blades.
What's the deal with the razors and blades cliche? Nowadays they typically sell the handles with a couple of blades for UK £4-6 (around US $7-11 inc. VAT/sales tax).
That's not a major ripoff, but it's not especially cheap either. I mean, the "razor" (i.e. the handle!) is just a piece of metal with some rubber grips and a plastic blade attachment. They can't cost that much to make. If they weren't generally one-off purchases, I'm sure they could make pretty decent money by selling these kits alone.
I'll explain the difference, Dumping is when a company sells a product below cost to bankrupt their competitors.
Loss leaders are when a store sells a product below what they pay to draw in consumers and get sales.
Clearly the video game industry is rife with corruption and 'Dumping' primarily because hardware makers can subsidize the price of a console with license fees from game developers.
depend on 'dumpers' like Microsoft to have some very complex bookwork, and possibly some Chinese shell corporations to sell high priced parts significantly below cost, but only to Microsoft.
there are lots of ways electronics can be sold below price, specifically cell phones and satellite TV boxes, which come with service agreements. but in the cell phone market, you're not locked into a single phone, although each cell provider has their own line of phones... most big players have models for each provider, except in cases where they get more money to be 'exclusive' to AT&T (like the iphone) etc.
some of this stuff is illegal in many places, but as i said shell corporations are shady and hard to stop. because billionaires often engage in venture capitalism, it's not hard to 'invest' in a shell corporation that's going to go into an exclusive contract to say, sell 40 million $40 dollar parts at $1 a part, and have the initial VC funding of say 40 million dollars, while 'your buddy' makes a cool million cash etc... then let the company go belly up, or keep using the same shell corporation with additional rounds of VC funding...
doh the math gods kill me again, 40 million $40 parts is more like 1.6 billion dollars. ah well, the general concept is still there.
If the XBox 360 was an attempt at dumping, then it was a completely failed attempt. But given that in the console market, selling the console below cost and making the money up on sales is the historically common way to do things, it's more reasonable to believe that they were selling it as a loss leader like everyone else. This is certainly the way the PS2 was sold. It was a monster hit, and yet hardly drove either Nintendo or Microsoft out of the console market.
The remarkable thing about the current ge
Well sega has been killed off as a console manufacturer and afaict nintendo have survived only by making a sideways move (leaving the traditional "console with best graphics" game and creating what is essentially a completely new market that they dominate).
I'll explain the difference, Dumping is when a company sells a product below cost to bankrupt their competitors. Loss leaders are when a store sells a product below what they pay to draw in consumers and get sales.
'dumping' has a specific meaning in economics, and it refers to the practice of selling product in another country at a price far below that country's local cost. This can happen when the seller's country gives him a subsidy that lowers his costs. Tariffs are used to counteract that. A nice exa
I'd appreciate it very much if someone could please explain to me, how is it possible that one company sells something at a loss and it's called "dumping" (which you can get in trouble for, IIUC), and another company sells something at a loss and it's called a "loss leader?"
Dumping [wikipedia.org] is a form of predatory pricing [wikipedia.org] under international trade law whereby a product is sold below cost or below market value in the country of origin. Economists sometimes take a more general definition of dumping to mean any kind of predatory pricing but in my experience this is a less common usage. Dumping often occurs when a producer has excess capacity beyond what their home market can absorb so they sell the excess in a different market either to damage current/potential competitors or to gain market share.
A loss leader [wikipedia.org] is basically a sales promotion. One product is sold cheaply (possibly below cost) with the expectation, but normally not the requirement, that customers will be enticed into buying additional more profitable product(s). The most famous version is the razors and blade model pioneered by Gillette.
The important difference is that a loss leader isn't necessarily destructive. With dumping there is no attempt at profitability, at least not in the short term. However predatory pricing in general, including dumping, can be very hard to prove. It's quite rare to have clear evidence that dumping is occurring. Furthermore in some countries (notably China) it's not unusual for the government to hold stakes in manufacturing firms. Naturally it is rather difficult subpoenaing records from a state owned Chinese manufacturer so you can sue them for dumping.
It's called "dumping" when it's done by someone you dislike, and "loss leader" otherwise.
For the politically unconnected company, there are three pricing models, all predatory:
Dumping - lower than competitors
Ripping off consumers - higher than competitors
Cartel - the same as competitors
I'd appreciate it very much if someone could please explain to me, how is it possible that one company sells something at a loss and it's called "dumping" (which you can get in trouble for, IIUC), and another company sells something at a loss and it's called a "loss leader?" Wtf? It's especially clear in this case, when you have orange rings of death and whatnot, that the purpose is to bankrupt the competition by selling yours for less. By the time someone spent their Christmas money on one product, they won't buy the other. Hence, dumping.
They're only "dumping" if their business plan doesn't indirectly profit from the sales, thus compensating for the losses in consoles.
For example, if I'm a gas station across from another gas station, and I start selling gas at $1/gallon in order to get the other gas station to fold, I'm dumping. I'm just losing money, no part of my business plan makes any money back. It's not a "loss leader" for anything else.
However, with videogame consoles, neither sony or microsoft are losing money in their videogame d
It's called "dumping" when it's done by someone you dislike, and "loss leader" otherwise.
For the politically unconnected company, there are three pricing models, all predatory:
Lower than competitors - Dumping
Higher than competitors - Ripping off consumers
The same as competitors - Price fixing
'd appreciate it very much if someone could please explain to me, how is it possible that one company sells something at a loss and it's called "dumping" (which you can get in trouble for, IIUC), and another company sells something at a loss and it's called a "loss leader?"
For starters it's not sold. If it were sold you could do what you want with it, mod it to your particular desires, run what you want on it. As it is, it's like buying a record or CD player from one of the 4 big music companies and find
What if the company is just facing the domino effect of collapse because their engineering and management does not work anymore. It makes me depressed to observe all this. [slashdot.org] They were unable to deliver VISTA in time. Customers and hardware suppliers actually hate VISTA.
They develop a game console with gigantic losses. They develop the next game console as a second choice. Maybe something is broken in their management of development. I mean look, where is the bugzilla server for the xbox?
Do you remember the story about the lawyer's letter to the parents of the baby killed by an Xbox fire?
But this Slahsdot post finally reminds us that Microsoft was never different. When we look back there is actually a history of autism in the company but it always paid off in the past. Like Napoleon, an insane leader who did every mistake but for some time he was quite lucky.
The future profits that the company once hoped for are now likely to wind up in Nintendo's pockets.
Right, just like a defective Audi will drive people towards purchasing a Toyota Yaris. Nintendo and Microsoft aren't competing for the same market niche, and apparently the author doesn't realize that. The Wii is for casual gaming, the XBox and PS are for hardcore gaming. Might as well say that peggle is taking sales from Half Life 2.
The XBox360 is getting a lot of negative press, but I think they made the right call by launching early. They've been able to displace a lot of the negative press by extendi
I'm interested in why you didn't buy a backwards compatible PS3. Too expensive for you? Personally I held off on getting a PS3 as long as I could, wasn't till late 2007 that I began to think it was worth getting it in the near future. Then this year, my PS2 Linux kit HD started having issues, so I knew it was only a matter of time. I use mine for Linux, Oblivion, Orange Box, PS2/PS1 games and some media stuff.
Nintendo and Microsoft aren't competing for the same market niche, and apparently the author doesn't realize that.
Utter rubbish.
While different consoles do have features that reach out to different niches there remains a huge area of market overlap in which they compete.
If the Wii didn't exist would MS have sold several million more 360s? Of course they would.
>>>The Wii is for casual gaming, the XBox and PS are for hardcore gaming
If you define "hardcore" as "boring and overly complicated" then you hit it in one. I don't own any of these consoles, but I am leaning towards Wii because it returns gaming to its primary purpose - fun. It's like a return to the classic-era Nintendo, Sega, and Atari consoles, and it's probably the reason Wii rose to #1 worldwide.
I don't find much fun in reading esoteric manuals & memorizing complicated commands (as is of
Right, just like a defective Audi will drive people towards purchasing a Toyota Yaris. Nintendo and Microsoft aren't competing for the same market niche, and apparently the author doesn't realize that. The Wii is for casual gaming, the XBox and PS are for hardcore gaming. Might as well say that peggle is taking sales from Half Life 2.
While the Wii and the Xbox appeal to different segments of the gaming market, it's a false dilemma to say that a gamer can't purchase both or has to choose between consoles. U
"Nintendo and Microsoft aren't competing for the same market niche, and apparently the author doesn't realize that."
Have you taken a look at Wii Ware and Xbox Live Arcade recently?
"The Wii is for casual gaming, the XBox and PS are for hardcore gaming."
Yes, that's why Microsoft bundles their Xbox 360 with such hardcore games like Uno and Pac-Man CE, or why their memory cards come with 70-hour gems like Geometry Wars and Worms.
"The XBox360 is getting a lot of negative press, but I think they made the right ca
I wonder at the timing of a Xbox-critical article on the exact day the latest price cut hits, bringing the Arcade version under the price of the Wii.
The first two questions to ask about any news story:
Why am I hearing about this, and why now?
It's amazing how much is revealed by these 2 questions.
Well, it does coincide with my personal experience of the Microsoft Red Ring of Death. My XBox 360, bought in late 2006 if I remember correctly, just died a few weeks ago and we recently got the replacement back. Adult-only home, well ventilated and treated properly.
Units will continue to die for years to come. For us owners, this problem will continue for a long time.
Most XBox 360 consoles before the recent hardware changes will die with unreasonably short lives. It's just a matter of time. It's a des
It's amazing how much is revealed by these 2 questions.
The only thing it reveals to me is that you are probably a conspiracy theory nutbag.
The day of such a price cut probably is a good day for a bit of a retrospective.
What would you prefer? That they only reported the price cut? I don't see why simply regurgitating a press release would be the sort of reporting we should wish for.
We've seen it time and time again, how Microsoft can afford to buy it's way into a market segment. I wonder if it will pay off in the long run, because it seems they've hit a saturation point with this product they have. Not much growth over the last product revision, and barely making a penny in the last few quarters (let's not talk about making up for all the loses to date yet).
With the stock price stagnant, how long can upper management convince shareholders that this is the right thing to do?
It depends on emotion. if people *think* the stock is worth the price, they'll hold it or buy.
Apple is in the same boat.
I think MS is in a precarious position. If one of their bets doesn't pay off soon (XBOX, Vista, or otherwise) I think they will have a few people to answer to.
Lowering the price seems like a desperation move, although the system HAS been out for 3 years now.
...right now with their G84/G86 GPUs at the moment. They estimate their losses to be in the range of 100-200 million USD. Dell, HP, ACER, Lenovo, and other laptop makers are affected by this with no end, or resolution for the owners of the units containing the defective chips, including yours truly.
The failure rate has been measured in either weeks, months or years. Owners of the affected laptops have been buying extended warranties to cover replacement in the event they should fail.
Dell has acknowledged th
My XBOX 360 dis 4 months ago and I bought a PS3, re-purchased all 6-8 games I play (mostly FPS team games, GRAW, COD, RS).
How do I feel? I feel like using Linux: it is better than windows, but lacking stuff. PS3 is superior (like linux) but it is lacking a strong community feeling like xbox live. It is also lacking the sometimes needed, but sometimes hated strong core (assholes) who play 600 hours a month to be the best in certain games. These are the guys who sometimes hate, but the ones who give a strong
I do not want to host family parties (nor play mario #122 or other kiddie games)
First off: Mario is not a "kiddie" game. It's a platformer, but that doesn't make it childish.
Second: Zelda, Smash Bros, Super Paper Mario, Metroid Prime 3, and Mario Kart are kiddie games? Damn, why didn't someone tell me?
Are you one of those gamers who defines "kiddie" to be "doesn't include lots of gore and/or swearing"?
Any game that doesn't deal with adult themes or content is a kiddie game. Not that it's a bad thing.
It's the adolescent equivalent of "family-friendly". Some gamers don't speak political-correctese.
With all the bombs, smashing stuff, abuse of turtles and evil chestnuts/mushrooms, you'd think Jack Thompson would target Nintendo instead of Rockstar Games. But then, it's done with several doses of humor and Miyamoto-style wit, so no one is offended.
Well, except the turtles. How dare he strip search them.
But the blame should be placed on whoever designed the Gamecube (black/white should've been the first colo
I define kiddie games like this:
There are colorful cartoon-like characters in the game who collect coins which hang in the air, and you are bouncing of huge mushrooms and your enemies are evil turtles and other cartoon animals, plants and persons.
It is similar to a psychedelic dream, except is is presented in a generally bad resolution and a low but vivid color palette.
Metrois prime is the only game that made me think of getting a wii until I saw the resolution and the graphics detail, which almost surpasse
Consoles? Useless without online play?
I'm really feeling old. I remember visiting cousins just to play SNES/N64 games with them. =/
I remember hosting lan parties at my house. We were playing anything and everything of the few that allowed to shoot each-other.
I also remember playing Quake and Counter Strike on a 56K modem.
Then remember playing on XBOX live with a bunch of strangers. Still community feeling and good laughs.
Then I go online (with the same games) on my PS3. It is worse that driving an ATV alone in the forest/desert (actually it is not bad, just a lonely activity).....
The point of the post was, that while the xbox is a limited hardware, the whole experience of the xbox live system is really fun (for me).
However, that POS died on my, so I am here with a $500 dismantled box and peripherals, and 10 games ($600) as a waste. And I refuse to buy a piece of hardware that already died on me once because that is just stupid. I heard of people who have 2-4 xboxes, all which died.
On the other hand I took a quick view of other options, and mentioned that the WII does not interest me
they are losing billions and a huge portion of the population doesn't even know what RRoD is. They have seen it but don't know it has a name. They wrote off billions last year to try and make this year look good but they will probably never make a profit on the product.
And really, the Xbox has been a failure for what it was intended to do and that is hold off Sony's PlayStation. The PS2 is out selling Microsofts Xbox360 in a big way and the PS3 is now at or around even with Xbox360 quarterly numbers. There
For instance, it can't be that difficult to design an OS that works. Linux has done the basics, and it is free. Apple has done the GUI, with much less money than MS. Yet the best MS can do is a spend millions of dollars on pointless commercials. Is this because it has no idea how to fix the software? Is there no way to invest the 77% profit margin in making working products. Does it all have to spent on yachts.
And it is not rocket science to design a game console. We have had generations of them that worked very well. MS just jumped in and borrowed existing tech, then used the windows 77% percent profit margin to subsidize the costs. And the xBox 360 is the second generation product.
Of course, we must acknowledge that MS tried to design custom hardware, a task for which it has no experience. This leads to the question of why it couldn't just pay for someone to do it right. Oh yeah, the yachts.
People like to compare IBM to MS, and see MS slowing down, but then ultimately being successful like IBM. What people fail to realize is that IBM spent the money to make rock solid products. The Selectric was a damn near perfect machine. The big iron did their job. The IBM PC was bulletproof. I don't know how MS is going come out the other side of the desktop monopoly when Google moves all the customers to the clouds with a six nines failure rate, and MS is still living in a world where a four nines failure rate is acceptable.
People like to compare IBM to MS, and see MS slowing down, but then ultimately being successful like IBM. What people fail to realize is that IBM spent the money to make rock solid products.
Actually, IBM went from being a hardware company to a services company. When MSFT helps you design, install and optimize competitive products like IGS does with setting up Solaris servers connecting to EMC disk arrays. Realizing that money can be made off of more than just software licensing, then they'll be successful like IBM.
Go read ex-CEO Louis Gerstner's book, it wasn't typewriters, the mainframe or PCs.
http://www.amazon.com/Who-Says-Elephants-Cant-Dance/dp/0060523808/ [amazon.com]
FTFA: "Microsoft has still sold more Xbox 360 consoles than Sony to date."
Damn, I never saw that coming!!!
FTFA: "Microsoft has still sold more Xbox 360 consoles than Sony to date."
Damn, I never saw that coming!!!
Sony hasn't sold any Xbox 360 consoles, so that quote is correct!
Microsoft's problem is pretty simple, hubris. It's illustrated quite well when you look at the kind of management practices taken by Ballmer and to a lesser extent Gates.
Microsoft has been so enamored of their own success that they believe that they cannot go wrong, simply because of who they are. They are also more than willing to pursue business with the kinds of principles and ethics that you'd expect from a used car salesperson. They really don't care what the customer experience is, they care about making money and believe that no matter what they do, they will succeed regardless.
Well to some extent that's true, or was true in the past, as mass and momentum are real. However it's also very clear that eventually momentum decreases and customer loyalty is a fickle thing. MS is already seeing the fruits of their poor judgement. Apple is selling more Mac's than ever, and I'd argue that Vista has played a big part in that success. I for one don't own an Xbox 360, I own a PS3. I probably won't ever buy a 360.
I'm sure Microsoft will recover, but to what extent remains to be seen. But unless they change their principles and work toward attracting the kind of loyalty through quality and connecting with your customers that Apple has enjoyed they will continue to see, if nothing else, a customer base that will be willing to jump ship at the first opportunity.
I was playing Halo 3 the other night and my network connection was acting up, then the game lurched, froze and put tons of bars across the screen, followed by a loud screeching noise
so yeah, my Xbox RROD'ed on Sept 1st. I think its kind of odd that this story would pop up on
But some inside the company still believed returns would be out of control
I usually wait 6-12 months after a console is released before I purchase it so that I can get one with a working mod-chip from Canada. I'll be damned if Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo are going to tell me I cannot play backups. Yes, Backups. So I had nearly a year to watch this infamous shit storm start, and not become a victim.
The problems with the console were known fairly early by pretty much everyone. People talk. Kids talk even more, and most times you cannot shut them up. After about 6-8 months I myself heard about RROD constantly from people. Microsoft really "screwed the pooch" on this one and AFAIK, the losses on the returns have been at least 1.9 billion. That is a staggering number.
The only thing new about this is that there were people in Microsoft that knew they had quality problems, and yet made a business decision to push forwards anyways. The only word for that is hubris. That is what really amazes me.
Microsoft's top game executive, Robbie Bach, president of the Entertainment & Devices group, said at a dinner in July that Microsoft's own research shows that gamers have largely forgiven the company for defective Xbox 360s.
That is awesomely full of shit. It says that he is an executive though, so I am not surprised.
The WHOLE reason I have still not purchased a XBOX360 is the Red Ring Of Death fiasco. It has to be the most unreliable product put forth in decades, probably since the Ford Pinto. I am not a fanboy and I own both a PS2 and a XBOX. I would really like to get a XBOX360, but to this day I cannot be assured that it will not fail within 6 months.
I bet that the "gamers" polled in that little research project were ALL under 14 years old. Of course they "forgave" Microsoft. They're kids! Try asking their parents if they can receive forgiveness. I bet there would be a different story entirely as shipping costs are not free. The time and hassle on the phone to get it taken care of takes its toll.
Forgiveness? That's a riot. Nobody that had to pay for that console is going to forgive or forget about this for a long long time. This WAS Microsoft's version of the Ford Pinto, even more so than Vista. That is saying something too.
For most people shipping costs are in fact free. The replacement process is not without hassle -- I had to request a box 3 times before actually getting one, though you could legitimately blame their shipping company for that -- but the whole thing never cost me a dime, and I had my '360 back within two weeks of sending it off. I live in Canada; I don't know how it is overseas, of course.
(For reference, the process is this: you call their toll-free line, spend about 10-20 minutes going through an automated
Right, as a Sony fanperson, I think it's good that Sony has some competition rather than totally dominating the market. It pissed me off to no end how SCEA slacked off a bit with added functionality for the PS2. Did you know that the PS2 can do a some of the media functionality the PS3 can do? But only in Japan. Same goes for the HDD stuff. NTSC-J FFX can use the HDD but NTSC-U/C territory FFX can't.
The difference here is that the Xbox cost them a huge amount of money (I don't think they ever made a profit off an Xbox sale), and did not benefit from integration of parts. For instance, one of the most acclaimed bonuses of a 360 (by developers) is the integrated memory (I'm not a hardware engineer, so if I'm off here, correct me). The fact that the memory can be used both as video ram and standard ram allows for serious optimization benefits.
Just throwing together some PC parts doesn't make it better.
... is a new Xbox 360 logo [today.com].
And I'm sure those $200 cheap Xboxes aren't all refurbished red ring casualties. Not all of them.
Big company releases defective product to get a foot in the door. Hardly anything new?
Typical of Microsoft, thinking of themselves rather than the people who have to use their product.
Thus spake the master programmer: "When a program is being tested, it is too late to make design changes." -- Geoffrey James, "The Tao of Programming"


text:
Sept. 27, 2008
BOSTON, MA - The University of Massachusetts Boston volleyball team split a pair of matches in a Little East Conference tri-match, defeating Eastern Connecticut State University, 25-21, 25-16, 25-17, before falling to Keene State College, 25-23, 25-23, 22-25, 25-17, today at the Clark Athletic Center on the campus of UMass Boston. The win over Eastern Connecticut was the first in program-history for Beacons, who are now 9-7 overall and 1-1 in LEC play, and snapped a 12-match losing streak vs. the Warriors, dating back to October 24, 1997. Keene State also defeated Eastern Connecticut State, 25-21, 25-23, 25-21, during the day and is now 14-4 and 4-0, while Eastern Connecticut State is 7-7 and 2-2.
UMass Boston was led by junior outside hitter Kate McWhorter (Bakersfield, CA) with 10 kills, while maintaining a .348 hitting percentage and adding nine digs and a block vs. Eastern Connecticut State. Junior outside hitter Kate White (Plymouth, MA) spiked for nine kills in addition to scooping three digs, while freshman setter Cassy Hanneman (Denver, CO) set for 27 assists to go with seven digs, three blocks and a pair of kills. Junior libero Megan MacAuley (Upland, CA) anchored the defense with 13 digs for UMB.
Freshman middle hitter Kristianna Ibsen (Shelton, CT) topped Eastern Connecticut with 10 kills and added two digs and a block, while freshman setter Samantha Slonski (Griswold, CT) directed the offense with 18 assists, led the defense with 10 digs and a block and put down three kills on a .500 hitting mark. Senior outside hitter Sandra Jaques (Milford, CT) also got down for 10 digs and added four kills.
McWhorter swung for 19 kills vs. Keene State to lead the Beacons and also came up with 14 digs and a pair of blocks, while White smashed eight kills, fired a pair of aces, scooped seven digs and added a block. Hanneman enjoyed an outstanding all-around match with a career-high 25 digs to go with 34 assists, three kills and a personal-best matching four aces. Sophomore outside hitter Nina Sullivan (Cheshire, CT) was efficient on the attack with a .304 hitting percentage on seven kills with no errors in 23 attempts and got down for three digs, while MacAuley was solid with 24 digs.
The O'Bryant sisters were an offensive force for Keene State as senior middle hitter Brittany O'Bryant put down a team-high 15 kills and added an ace, seven digs, and five total blocks, while freshman outside hitter Bridget O'Bryant spiked for 14 kills in addition to four digs. Junior setter Jordan Pokryfki (Wasilla, AK) set for 34 assists, got down for 14 digs, put up a block and put away a pair of kills and senior libero Sarah Peterson (Danville, NH) led the defense with a match-high 27 digs and added an ace and a kill.
Brittany O'Bryant came up big in the Owls' win over Eastern Connecticut with a match-high 17 kills and added five digs and three total blocks. Freshman middle hitter Ellyse Davis (Londonderry, NH) scored with nine kills and got up for a pair of blocks, while Pokryfki set for 29 assists, fired an ace, came up with seven digs and put down a kill. Peterson anchored the defense with 20 digs and also scored with three aces.
Ibsen led the Warriors' offensive effort with 10 kills and a match-high four aces and added two digs and three total blocks, while Slonski set for 23 assists and added four digs. Jaques was all over the floor with a match-best 30 digs and spiked for four kills, while freshman defensive specialist Taylor Abelli (Cheshire, CT) contributed with 19 digs and a pair of aces.
UMass Boston will be in action again on Friday, October 3 when it hosts Regis College (MA) at 6:00 p.m. at the Clark Athletic Center, while Eastern Connecticut travels to Madison, NJ on October 3 to compete in the Devils Classic, hosted by Fairleigh Dickinson University-Florham. Keene State will head to Brunswick ME on October 3 to compete in the Midcoast Classic, hosted by Bowdoin College.


text:
Yahoo! Targets Women With 'Shine' Web Site
Yahoo! Now with more fluff.
On Monday the Internet company launched Shine, a Web site dedicated to "women's issues." The idea is to provide women between the ages of 25 and 54 with information "most relevant to their daily lives," according to a Yahoo! release. The site will pull stories from Conde Nast, Hearst, Rodale, and Time Inc. publications, as well as develop its own stories via a new Shine editorial team.
At this point, the site appears to be lacking any real substance. The "top story" in the fashion and beauty section, for example, is ostensibly about Carla Bruni, the wife of French president Nicholas Sarkozy--but click through, and it's basically a one-paragraph description of why this particular writer loves the French first lady ("I mean, you slept with Jagger.")
The massive font is also distracting and looks unprofessional, making me think Yahoo! is trying to overcompensate for lack of content. Brandon Holley, former editor of the now defunct Jane and ELLEgirl magazines, will serve as Shine's editor-in-chief.
"You can count on us to bring attitude and personality, and find humor in almost every topic we cover, whether it's a post on men who wear skinny jeans, how you can get back into your skinny jeans, or whether you'll be taken seriously if you wear jeans to work," Holley said in a statement.
So, jeans, then?
I like to space out to mindless "lifestyle" content every once in a while, but it does not appear that Shine offers anything not already available on sites like MSN or iVillage.com. I realize a lot of these "articles" on major sites like Yahoo! and MSN are just filler to drive ad sales, but I'm in the key demographic Yahoo! is looking to attract with Shine, and I didn't really see anything that would make me come back.
Like gossip site omg!, Shine doesn't seem to be getting any play on Yahoo's main site at this point, but maybe that's for the best. If I were Holley, I'd go back, retool and launch with something a bit more substantive.


text:
Torquay are boosted by the arrival of Plymouth striker Ashley Barnes ahead of their clash against Port Vale.
Barnes, 20, has joined the Gulls on loan for the rest of the season and comes into contention as Scott Rendell (arm) is ruled out.
Barnes will vie with Elliot Benyon and Chris Zebroski for one of two starting places in attack.
Winger Wayne Carlisle (knee) is set to be ruled out by injury after missing last week's 1-0 defeat at Hereford.
Carlisle has not featured since the 1-0 defeat at Chesterfield last month.
With on-loan full back Sam Cox returning to parent club Tottenham, Buckle must change his back four once again.
The Torquay boss has signed former St Mirren left-back Mo Camara as cover, but United must receive international clearance before the former Derby and Burnley man can make his debut.
Vale boss Micky Adams will make at least one change.
Central defender Gareth Owen has been ruled out having sustained a hamstring injury during Tuesday night`s reverse against Chesterfield, but the injury is not as bad as first feared and the 27-year-old could be back in contention next weekend.
The Spireites defeat was Vale`s second on the spin and Adams could be tempted to make changes, although he refused to be too downbeat following the spirited manner of the midweek defeat.
The Valiants boss made two changes from last Saturday`s loss to Burton, with Lewis Haldane and Sean Rigg coming in for Rob Taylor and Louis Dodds.
And it remains to be seen where he will go from here as his charges look to close the nine-point gap that has opened up between Vale and those in the play-off places.
Copyright (c) PA Sport 2009, All Rights Reserved.
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text:
Promising health, wealth and happiness
Latinos are crucial to the financial success of global nutrition company Herbalife.
THE global weight-loss and nutrition company Herbalife estimates that Latinos account for about 60 per cent of the US sales it makes through its network of independent distributors.
And a growing slice of those sales are coming from informal nutrition clubs run out of people's homes and strip mall shops.
It's a cultural phenomenon that got its start in Mexico and is quickly catching on among immigrants who have moved to southern California. Budding entrepreneurs such as Angel Perez, a 27-year-old from Los Angeles, are forming the backbone to Herbalife's growth.
Perez runs her nutrition club out of a tiny, ageing shop that from the outside shows no signs that she is even open for business.
But behind a single glass front door covered by a green curtain is a lively atmosphere.
Colombian singer Shakira's voice blares from overhead speakers. ''Hola! Como estas?'' Perez says before blending an Herbalife meal-replacement shake for a customer. She charges club members $US4 a visit, entitling them to a protein shake, hot tea and glass of aloe vera juice.
But these nutrition clubs - and Herbalife's business structure - have come under intense scrutiny.
The company is in the middle of a Wall Street battle between two billionaire activist investors. On one side, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman contends the company is a pyramid scheme in which most of the independent salespeople lose money and get stuck with a product that nobody wants. Ackman says he wagered $US1 billion that the company would fail, shorting an eye-popping 20 per cent of the company's shares.
Betting against him is billionaire Carl Icahn, who dismisses pyramid scheme accusations with high praise about Herbalife's business model. Icahn disclosed recently that he bought nearly 13 per cent of the company's shares, and was talking to executives about taking the company private.
At the heart of this battle is Herbalife's army of salespeople.
Among the biggest accusations facing the company is that it targets low-income members of minority communities, including Latinos, by making unachievable promises of vast wealth from selling its line of protein powders, vitamins, supplements and beauty products.
One of Ackman's biggest allegations is that most distributors end up with garages filled with products they cannot sell. Meanwhile, the distributors who brought them into the business get rich for recruiting them.
Herbalife, founded in 1980, has faced such criticism for decades. The debate centres on the way the company compensates its distributors, allowing them to profit from their own sales as well as sales made by distributors they've recruited - and distributors those distributors have recruited.
The company challenges the criticism, saying it's a legitimate company that sells nutritious products while offering entrepreneurs like Perez a chance to build their own businesses.
The president of Herbalife, Des Walsh, says the company does not target any specific demographic. The company's popularity among Latinos exploded in recent years, he says, when US distributors imported the nutrition club concept from Mexico, which is second to the US in Herbalife sales.
''This wasn't a company focus on the Latino community,'' Walsh says. ''This was the Latino community in the United States seeing and hearing of the tremendous success of nutrition clubs in Mexico and then seeking to replicate that here.''
Its marketing efforts do hit the Latino community. The company recently signed a 10-year, $US44 million sponsorship of the Los Angeles Galaxy professional soccer team, which has a massive Latino fan base. Each year, it holds a national convention in Spanish called ''Extravaganza Latina.''
Before nutrition clubs started in Mexico, the only way for consumers to buy Herbalife products was in bulk containers to be used at home. A cheaper alternative is being served up at the nutrition clubs, where consumers can buy single servings and drink them in social settings, surrounded by other people with similar weight-loss goals.
This concept has taken off among Latinos, who are taught at an early age that natural remedies such as herbs and juices are a better option than US-style medicine, says Alexandro Jose Gradilla, chairman of the Chicano Studies Department at California State University-Fullerton.
Selling the products for profit is also a good fit for Latinos because it allows distributors to take advantage of relationships within the close-knit immigrant community, Gradilla says.
Herbalife spokeswoman Barbara Henderson says that the company ''follows all applicable laws in dealing with distributors, whether Latino or not'', but she does not elaborate any further.
On a recent afternoon, dozens of independent distributors filled the lobby of a massive Herbalife warehouse in California, waiting to pick up products for their small businesses. Nearly all of them spoke to Herbalife staff in Spanish.
Some said they had successful businesses that generated thousands of dollars of monthly income. Many said they ran nutrition clubs based in store- fronts or at their homes. Others just had a dream.
Hipolito Bolanos, 55, wore a pin on his shirt that read, ''Pierda peso ahora. Pregunteme como!'' the slogan made famous by Herbalife founder Mark Hughes: ''Lose weight now, ask me how.''
''My hope is to open my own club, to build a business out of it,'' Bolanos says in Spanish. Other than pitching products to friends and co-workers, he has no business plan. He says he first started using Herbalife products to deal with his joint pain.
Gustavo Parra, who was loading the trunk of his BMW 528i with Herbalife products, runs a nutrition club in a Bellflower, California strip mall. He has a long list of customers and more than 500 distributors beneath him who feed his monthly commissions, which he says nets $6000 to $12,000 a month.
''I can't believe this happened to me,'' says Parra, 44, who came to the US about 25 years ago from Mexico and has been selling Herbalife products for 10 years.
Parra's success story is an exception. About 90 per cent of Herbalife distributors make little or no income, the company acknowledges.
Ismael Vasquez of Riverside, California says he gave up his nutrition club in January 2012 because he wasn't making enough money. ''There was not a lot of profit, just $500 to $600 per month,'' Vasquez says.
Los Angeles Times
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amfAR, The Foundation for AIDS Research
July 2005—During a February hearing on harm reduction conducted by the U.S. House Sub-committee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, Malaysian healthcare figures submitted testimony asserting that because drugs are intoxicants and are forbidden under Islam, Islamic law is fundamentally incompatible with harm reduction efforts such as syringe exchange. In response to this testimony, Dr. Adeeba Kamarulzaman, chief of the infectious diseases unit at the University of Malaya Medical Center and a member of the TREAT Asia steering committee, provided a detailed and eloquent rebuttal of these claims. Her written testimony is excerpted below; the full text is available online at www.TREATAsia.org.
As an HIV/AIDS physician practising in Malaysia and a Muslim, I wish to clarify some of the statements made... with respect to the problem of drug use in the region and Islam's perspective on these issues….In many parts of Asia unsafe injecting practices have been the primary risks driving the explosive HIV/AIDS epidemic, and Malaysia is no exception. Despite having one of the toughest laws in the world for drug use and trafficking over the last five decades, illicit drug use remains a major problem….In recent years the problem of unsafe injecting drug use has led to an exponential rise in the reported number of HIV and AIDS cases, of which 7 percent are injecting-drug-use-related. Since the mid-1990s an estimated 4,000 new HIV infections related to injecting drug use are reported annually in Malaysia.
[Earlier testimony] indicated that drugs are a form of intoxicant and are forbidden for all Muslims, and that harm reduction programs are against the national policies and religions of Asian countries. Drugs and indeed alcohol are haram (forbidden) for all Muslims as Islam forbids any action that would result in harm or destruction. However, beyond the simple haram and halal of substances such as drugs and alcohol lie the fundamental objectives of Islamic divine laws, which are the protection and preservation of the faith, life, intellect, progeny, and wealth….Harm reduction can therefore be accepted as a necessity in order to preserve [these things], which are threatened by the twin epidemics of drug use and HIV/AIDS. In Islam, life and good health must be protected and promoted in all circumstances and this includes prevention and treatment of any illness and disease. In this regard, the numerous harms associated with drug addiction, a chronic medical condition, should be prevented through measures that have been scientifically proven….
The principle of injury in Islam (darar) asserts that no one should be hurt or cause hurt to others (la darara wa la dirar). Drug addiction and HIV/AIDS hurt patients and their family in their life and health. The law requires that any injury should be mitigated to the extent possible. A legal dictum in Islam gives the provision that "a lesser harm may be tolerated in order to eliminate a greater harm." Harm reduction programs, for which there is compelling scientific evidence…[are] therefore not against Islamic principles. The aforementioned legal dictum in Islam stresses the need to choose the lesser of two evils. It is of greater harm for Muslims to allow more injecting drug users and their family members to be infected with HIV/AIDS than it is for them to allow a harm reduction program to take place.
Finally, in Islam public interest takes precedence over personal interest. A relevant legal dictum in the context of harm reduction is that "a particular harm may be tolerated in order to prevent harm to the general public." This means that whenever a conflict between personal and public interests arises, harm to the former may be tolerated so as to protect the latter.
© 2018 amfAR All Rights Reserved


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U.S. Unveils New Strategy to Combat Trade-Secret Theft
The White House unveiled a new strategy to exert pressure on China and other countries that engage in corporate espionage against the U.S. as part of a new administration push to counter cyber attacks and commercial spying.
The strategy, released Wednesday in a report that was the subject of a White House meeting, raised the prospect of stepped-up U.S. trade restrictions on products and services derived from stolen trade secrets. Officials also outlined a series of diplomatic actions to reinforce the administration's commitment to curbing such thefts.


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- - Weighs approximately 4lbs/ 1.8kg
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Lend your look a touch of tough-luxe with Valentino's black 'Rockstud' trapeze bag. Showcasing the elegant Italian label's signature pale-gold pyramid studs, this soft leather style is a contemporary classic. Carry it by the top handles or sling the shoulder strap over a sweater and jeans for effortless off-duty dressing.
Shown here with: Marni sweater, Bottega Veneta bracelet, Chan Luu bracelet, Eddie Borgo bracelet, Ksubi jeans, Stella McCartney shoes.
- - Hand-embellished
- - Black leather (Calf)
- - Two top handles, detachable shoulder strap
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I have created a simple web launcher that launches blackberryos.com on your PlayBook. This launcher will launch blackberryos.com within its own browser. Please keep in mind this is still in beta and is a work in progress. Enjoy.
To Do List:
1. Add navigation buttons
- Download and install DDPB installer (PlayBook side-loader application)
- Download the .bar file
- Connect your PlayBook to your PC via USB
- Enable Development Mode
- Open the DDPB installer and scan for your PlayBook. Enter your password and add the previously downloaded .bar file.
- Click on install
- Check for the BBOS icon on your PlayBookTips:
Make sure you enable mobile view after you launch the application. I think view is much better than the classic desktop.


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The lights are on
Well, this Summer I'm not taking any classes, and instead working full time. This will leave me with a lot of free time, and since my nephew is getting into online games, I thought I'd be there to supervise. We've always enjoyed Star Wars together, so this was a no-brainer.
What I'm worried about is this game being what is called "pay to win" in which people who shell out the big bucks get god mode and those who choose not to will be at a disproportionally huge disadvantage. I've played a few games like this and didn't find out until I spent a good deal of time with them, which was frustrating.
Any SWOTOR players that can help me out with this question?
Get your Portable ID!
I wouldn't 100% wright off SWOTOR. It is not the best F2P model by any sense of the imagination, but you can still have a good time with the game for free. Especially if you are looking at the PVE line, following your characters story. Between the 2 character slots in the free model you can likely get over 100 hours of gameplay if you are playing for the story/leveling experience.
Some smaller more competitive F2P games. Definitely Team Fortress 2, Ghost Recon Online can also be fun for a few hours. League of Legends if you are into that type of game has a greed F2P model. My F2P game of choice is Planet Side 2. Really there are so many F2P games out now its hard to recommend just from that. You need something more to narrow it down.
We're sorta like 7-Eleven. We're not always doing business, but we're always open.
Steam - palor700 XBL - LooneyPilot paxgaming.com
F2P gets access to the story and not much else. Most features are locked down or minimalized unless you get a sub or unlock them through the cartel market by buying coins.
-- Go for the eyes Boo, GO FOR THE EYES!!
Very much what the other guy said. It is not so much p2w as much as it is pay to access. First i would say that TOR is built around the PVE experience focusing on each classes story. There is some PVP but it is nothing crazy special. So regardless of paying or not you are never really going to be winning at this type of game.
Paying or using coins comes into effect mostly at level cap. If you dont pay you are extremely limited. You can only run so many PVE instances, PVP battle grounds by default and will need to spend coins if you want to do more in a single week. If I recall you are also limited in some of the gear you can wear (no epics). All of this sounds bad and it really is a bad F2P model. However if you are just looking to experience some of the story as you do some leveling the free version is actually very good. Many people have played up to level cap for free and then subscribed when they got there and had very enjoyable experiences.
Thanks, guys!
So I guess with its limitations, I'll be skipping it. While I can probably pay once in a while for items, his mom wouldn't want him to spend any money (his or mine) on a game.
Any suggestions for other F2P games that work?
I've been playing the Neverwinter F2P MMO - it is decent - not great but an ok time waster
GW2 is ok If you don't mind the continual strafing that is required not to die - that is a good one if you have a couple of friends to play with. LOTR online is a little dated but a nice F2P especially if you are into Tolkien
I have been playing almost from the beginning, and the free to play aspect has enough game-play to keep anyone going, I pay for my subscription but even with that I find that there is so much that the game offers beside the pay to play stuff. With the many different classes its almost endless.


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Ever since Bluffton Today ran last month's five-star review of The Cottage Café, Bakery & Tea Room, in Old Town, Bluffton, S.C. I've been deluged with requests (more like pleas) for the restaurant's recipe for homemade Pistachio Cream Cake, dubbed as "stellar," by the newspaper's Undercover Eater. Being a baker, I just had to sample a piece for myself, so calling ahead to be sure they had some left, I got a piece to go and set out on dissecting the cake – moist crumb, for moist crumb – trying my best to come up with a recipe that could replicate The Cottage's three-layer study in scrumptiousness (yes, "scrumptiousness" is a word). So, never dreaming the restaurant would ever part with their formula, I baked about three cakes before being somewhat satisfied with the results. My cake was good, but really not in the same league as The Cottage's cake. Feeling a little frustrated, I began thinking, 'no harm in asking, right?' So, I did, with restaurant owner, chef, baker Leslie Rohland, graciously saying, "Yes, I will share my recipe." And, Leslie did, that very day. (It's the busiest folks who respond the soonest, don't you know.) So, here you are, The Cottage's recipe for Pistachio Cream Cake and the one I played around with, too. As frosting, Leslie recommends using a traditional cream cheese frosting, whipped white chocolate ganache or a vanilla buttercream, so I chose an adaptation of King Arthur Flour's divine recipe for Fluffy White Buttercream Frosting for crowning Leslie's masterpiece. The icing is not difficult to make and pipes like a dream. A sweet dream, come true.
Sue Ade is a syndicated food writer with broad experience and interest in the culinary arts. She has worked and resided in the Lowcountry of South Carolina since 1985 and may be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com.


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Interim CAS Dean has Vision for UH Hilo's FutureUniversity of Hawaiʻi at Hilo
Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Alyson Kakugawa-Leong, (808) 974-7642
"I love it here and so does my family," Hora said. "My children grew up here and I have a grandson now. This is our place."
In his new line of duties, Hora has perhaps taken a page out of Governor Linda Lingle's handbook of educational administration. Lingle is on record as wanting to break up the State's Board of Education. Hora, surprisingly enough, said that one of the things he would like to accomplish while interim dean would be to make the CAS Dean an unnecessary position at UH Hilo.
"The College of Arts and Sciences is a very big, very complex unit," he said. "We have approximately 30 programs. And I think we would function better as a set of separate autonomous units, one from the natural and earth sciences, another from the humanities and performing arts, one in the social sciences and a school of business and economics.
"Each of those units would be autonomous to the extent that they would have their own budgets," he added. "They would, in effect, be able to write their own futures. They would design their own strategies for achieving excellence and go about those goals themselves without a lot of micromanaging from above.
"I see this as empowering the units to a greater extent than they have been empowered in the past."
Hora readily admits that the vision of decentralizing CAS is his own and not necessarily that of Chancellor Rose Tseng, President Evan Dobelle or the UH Board of Regents, but adds that he has an ally, a powerful one, in Dr. Chris Lu, UH Hilo's vice chancellor for academic affairs.
"He and I are in agreement that this would be a good way to go," Hora said.
While interim dean, Hora continues to teach a class in service operations.
"I've learned a lot teaching that class that is applicable in this job," he said. "Part of what we focus on in service operations is customer needs, customer perceptions and what makes their experience a good one so they'll come back. I think we need to think the same way about our students.
"For example, we need to focus on the question, ʻWhat is the educational experience like here?' Not just in the classroom, but outside the classroom, such as our procedures for handling registration and so forth. Are we making it easy for the student? Are we making it a comfortable and rewarding experience?
"I think we need to ask those questions and seek hard for the answers and design what we do based on how we're doing. I'm taking a hard look at our course offerings, especially at the general education level, the 100- and 200-level courses to make sure that we have enough slots available, that students who go through placement testing have appropriate classes to move into.
"I'm also looking at the transcript evaluation process for transferring students," he added. "We get a lot of students coming in from community colleges or from mainland schools. I'd like to make their transition into UH Hilo quicker and as seamless as possible. So when a student shows up and they've sent us their transcripts, the student knows exactly what he or she needs to take to get a degree, that there's no delay."
Hora is a native of Altadena, California, and was on the faculties of Arizona State University, the University of Oregon and Texas Tech University before coming to UH Hilo. Since his arrival, he has had visiting professorships at University of Tennessee and Wake Forest University.
"Every one of those campuses has a very good student recreational center, someplace where students can go and work out, swim, take aerobics classes or yoga or self-defense classes," Hora said. "This type of facility is sort of the entertainment center for the 21st century and we don't really have anything like that on campus."
Hora, whose own recreational pursuits include golf when he has the time and playing his guitar, acknowledged that those concepts are part of the 6,000 seat multipurpose sports and recreational complex that has been proposed for the UH Hilo campus but which, at a cost of $88 million, has yet to be funded beyond planning and design money.
"My idea is something more modest, that is just for the students, at about $20 million or so," he said. "The plans on the board came about as a part of the concept of the University being an economic engine in the community. This thing just got larger and larger and the price tag has gotten to the point that the money to build this thing may never happen. But the students need something more immediate and just for them while the arena and community center goes through the political process.
"Texas Tech has a beautiful fitness facility for the students and it was financed mainly by student fees."
Ultimately, Hora said, it is the vision of leaders that will shape the University's future.
"I think we need to look out and say, ʻWhere should UH Hilo be 20 years from now and what do we need to be doing right now to reach that 20-year future?' The funny thing about the future is there isn't one future, there are many futures, and we have a certain amount of control in determining which future actually comes true.
"We need to look out into the future and ask ourselves, ʻWhat do we need to do to make UH Hilo all that it can be in 20 years?'"


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Seven Psychopaths
Writer's block can be a pain in the backside – or a bullet to the head – if, like Marty (Colin Farrell) in Martin McDonagh's fun, knockabout 'Seven Psychopaths', you're a movie scribe whose ideas make more impact in real life than on the page. Marty is a boozy Irish writer in Hollywood who complains to his livewire pal Billy (Sam Rockwell) that he needs inspiration to write a script called 'Seven Psychopaths'. The result is more blood on the carpet than ink on paper.
Billy is partly a psychopath magnet, partly a writer's dangerous inner voice made real. He and his cravat-sporting older pal Hans (Christopher Walken) are petty thieves who kidnap a shih tzu dog from a Mafia boss (Woody Harrelson) who wants his pup back – and Marty gets dragged into the whole violent affair. Meanwhile, Billy tries to help Marty by putting an ad in the paper for psychos; and they end up with a disturbed ageing killer (Tom Waits) on the doorstep.
Sundry nutters come and go (look out for a cameo from the legendary Harry Dean Stanton) as Marty finds himself at the centre of exactly the sort of bloody, macho melodrama he'd rather not be writing. Head-in-hands becomes Marty's default position, and Farrell offers a good line in manic despair and passive exasperation.
You'll have guessed that we're in self-reflective, hall-of-mirrors movie territory for British-Irish writer McDonagh's second feature-length film (after 2008's 'In Bruges'). There's something a little turn-of-the-century about 'Seven Psychopaths', with its comic approach to violence, movie-in-a-movie navel-gazing and ample backstreet LA locations. The films of Quentin Tarantino ('Pulp Fiction') and Charlie Kaufman ('Adaptation') inevitably come to mind – but McDonagh is less saturated in film and pop culture than Tarantino and less prone than Kaufman to disappear down story wormholes.
What saves 'Seven Psychopaths' from being po-faced or tedious is its sharp-as-knives humour, energetic pacing, knack for surprising asides and fun performances from a cast that has a certain wow factor when piled up together. It's undoubtedly a very male enterprise, and McDonagh acknowledges this, even if he doesn't explain it: 'Your women characters are awful,' is Hans's reproach to Marty at one point. The nods to bungled creativity and winks at questions of screen violence offer something to chew on. But above all, this is violent, seedy farce, pure and simple, and it's McDonagh's zippy script that keeps it ticking over until all the trousers have been dropped at knifepoint and the custard pies been lobbed with malice.
Release details
|Release date:
|Friday December 7 2012
|110 mins
Cast and crew
|Martin McDonagh
|Martin McDonagh
|Colin Farrell
Christopher Walken
Sam Rockwell
Woody Harrelson
Average User Rating
3.1 / 5
Rating Breakdown
- 5 star:2
- 4 star:6
- 3 star:6
- 2 star:2
- 1 star:0
I meant to give it a better rating! It's worth watching again!
I really wasn't expecting much, particularly with a title like this, but as I watched in disbelief, I was hooked .. completely. I have been so disappointed by just about every film I've seen over the last few years, but this had plenty of 'what?' moments, but in a really good way. The fact that quite a few reviewers and some comments on this page just don't seem to get it, just makes it even better, and even funnier. I can only assume that these days, most people need ten foot high neon signs to tell them what's going on. Already one of my all time favourites. Also liberally peppered with film references for the buffs. Don't listen to the idiots who fund Sesame Street confusing, go watch.
I really wasn't expecting much, particularly with a title like this, but as I watched in disbelief, I was hooked .. completely. I have been so disappointed by just about every film I've seen over the last few years, but this had plenty of 'what?' moments, but in a really good way. The fact that quite a few reviewers and some comments on this page just don't seem to get it, just makes it even better, and even funnier. I can only assume that these days, most people need ten foot high neon signs to tell them what's going on. Already one of my all time favourites. Also liberally peppered with film references for the buffs. Don't listen to the idiots who fund Sesame Street confusing, go watch.
This was really a clever idea for a movie, and I love how aware of itself it was with some of the comedy. The performances were also top tier, and this has to be my favorite comedy performance from Christopher Walken. I had no idea that this movie was even made until a friend that I work with at DISH recommended it to me. I am not the biggest fan of Mc Donagh, but with DISH's Blockbuster @Home service I can just exchange it in the store if I don't like it, so I had nothing to lose. I highly recommend this movie to people who like dark humor and like a healthy helping of violence in their comedies
Came across as someone trying to emulate Tarantino - and failing. Disappointing and rather stupid.
Reading the reviews, some loved it, some found it funny, some didn't. For me it was pointless, self indulgent, masturbation. Have a feeling there might be better ways to spend 15 million dollars
Just 2 words - weird & wonderful. Try it.
A cracking bit of cinema. Intelligent, funny, unpredictable. Christopher Walken, in particular, is magnetic. His brief scene seated opposite Harrlelson in the hospital is film acting at its best.
The film is a well-filmed and well-played set of random meaningless events with no discernible plot, overall thought or meaning. The only feeling you get is "Huh? And? Was that really a film?"" The filmmakers forgot that if you start out with complete and utter absent plot, then good packaging won't give plot or substance where there is none. Either the screenwriter thought that heaping meaningless scene upon useless meaningless scene funny when intoxicated and failed to read it again when sober to figure out it's just lame. Or it was a bet "I bet the movie industry will film anything, any piece of complete rubbish, and punters will pay to watch it".
Enjoyed this film from start to finish. some fine performances & was good to see humour added to the psychopaths. 'The final shootout' was stupidly funny..
I have just walked out of this film. If you find this film remotely funny, society has a real problem. Gratuitous violence, boring and a sad reflection on society. This is shoddy cinema.
A very enjoyable film indeed. One I would go to see again. Some lovely nuances and quirky touches. Great fun.
A very enjoyable film indeed. One I would go to see again. Some lovely nuances and quirky touches. Great fun.
Funny in quite a lot of places but a lot of the time the film tries to be too clever with its self-parody. Crucially, I didn't feel emotionally engaged with any of the characters as I did in the far superior 'In Bruges'.
This film has the awkwardness at being able to laugh at death (people getting killed in strange ways) which I enjoyed but my other friends didnt. Very funny however it more of a 'see it once' film.
Glad the conversation re mobiles ended but also glad that the point was made....Great film. A fresh script, brilliant performances -has Walken ever been better?- and Farrell finally rose to the occasion. A black western farce- not many of those around these days and one not glued to a formula. From the very first scene it was refreshing with the story taking welcomed twists and turns. And a lot of LOL moments. Cracking dialogue too- not surprised if many scenes were clever, well-constructed improvisations. A joy. One of the best films of 2012.Highly recommended.
this is a sowhat disappointing film. As someone who saw In Burges, I enjoyed that film very much. However, this film s not as good. The script, which I found so good in In Bruges, was very up and down, though there were some very good speeches . The acting was a bit up-and-down, whereas you have the exaggerated acting of Sam Rockwell, but also the fine acting of Christopher Walken. the violence seems to me to be a little self-serving.
I loved this film, thought it was very well acted by all of the main characters, Christopher Walken was brilliant. I thought there was a lot going on, it kept me engaged & the audience was laughing out loud. Brilliant
This movie tries too hard to be something its not. Whilst it does have some good parts, there are no great parts. It just rambles between genres without actually getting anywhere fast. 2 out of 5 only for Walken and Tom Waits.
Care home wheelchairs taking up most of front row in ALEX CROSS so sat mid way and glanced a phone a few rows down for a few seconds mid way. Didn't challenge this time as very brief & film not worth it but what the fuck is it with these twat's? Is there no consideration left what so ever? In my time at a cinema any disturbance met with one warning then out, no refund, but those were the long gone days of (reasonably educated) staff in each screen. Film, frustrating but no time check. However you would have thought 4 years between releases would have been ample time to come up with a piece way better than this....& Has the 18 cert been scrapped? 7/10
In a recent article in TO, Martin McDonagh stressed he didn't want his films to be smug...so why does this misogynist, derivative movie appear so pleased with itself? After the genuine fun to be had in fish-out-of-water In Bruges, this sputters charmlessly on like The Expendables directed by Wes Anderson. And that's not a good thing.