1151565
submission
saxoholic writes:
From the article "Don LaFontaine, the highly sought-after voice-over artist whose sonorous-voiced narration on several thousand movie trailers earned him the title of "The Trailer King," has died. He was 68." The article says that he was being treated for an unspecified illness, and passed away due to complications from the treatment.
567084
submission
saxoholic writes:
Apparently the Vatican has created a list of 7 new deadly sins.
After 1,500 years the Vatican has brought the seven deadly sins up to date by adding seven new ones for the age of globalization. The list, published yesterday in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, came as the Pope deplored the "decreasing sense of sin" in today's "secularized world" and the falling numbers of Roman Catholics going to confession.
The new deadly sins include polluting, genetic engineering, being obscenely rich, drug dealing, abortion, pedophilia and causing social injustice.
Am I alone in thinking this is completely ridiculous?
405409
submission
saxoholic writes:
The Press Blackout was lifted yesterday on the WGA negotiations with the AMPTP. WGA West's website contained the following story
they've proposed this:
When an hourlong episode of television is streamed on the Internet, writers would get a flat $250 payment for one year of reuse. That's $250 as opposed to, for example, $20,000 per episode when it's reused on network television. They proposed nothing new on downloads, it's still the DVD formula for those (ie. two-thirds of a penny for an iTunes download). For theatrical movies, they're offering exactly $0.00 on streaming. Oh, and they want to be able to define any content they like as "promotional" — for which they would pay zero dollars. Even if they stream an entire film or tv episode, and even if they sell ads on it, they can call that promotional and pay us nothing.
And the first comment on the article is from Wil Wheaton, which reads
What a load. This is the same sort of crap they pulled on SAG when our contract was up a few years ago.
I can't speak for the guild, but I sure as hell can speak for myself: I'm 100% behind everyone in the WGA, and completely support you guys. This "generous partnership" offer is a pile of crap and an insult all at once.
279569
submission
saxoholic writes:
I just started my first job as a teacher, and with everything that goes on in a school, it seems that the most aggravating thing for me, an experienced computer user, as well as the veteran teachers I work with, is the lack of any sort of administrative rights on our school computers. We can't remove desktop clutter, any settings we change in programs — homepage, what tool bars are active when office programs open, etc. require higher level access. I understand that there's a lot of people who think they know how to use a computer who don't, that must drive the IT department crazy, but I've experienced and witnessed many cases in the short time I've been employed where the lack of privileges has hampered productivity. On top of that, the IT staff seems understaffed, so along with the lack of administrative privileges on the computer, there's a long wait to have any problems fixed that could be solved by granting teachers higher privileges.
Do other people have similar problems in their fields? To the IT staff, how do you deal with these issues in your companies/organizations?
279529
submission
saxoholic writes:
As my local news affiliate is reporting, anthrax has been found in Danbury, Connecticut, and two people have been infected. It appears the spores were contracted from cow and goat skins imported from Africa, which were used by the infected parties to build and restore African drums. Another news affiliate addresses it here. The form of anthrax is cutaneous skin anthrax.
248089
submission
saxoholic writes:
Virgin America's first flights are today, according to The San Jose Mercury. I've never had the pleasure of flying virgin Atlantic, but everyone I know that has really enjoyed the video games in the seats. The flights today go from NYC to San Francisco. What amused me the most about this, though, is that there was an online poll to name the plane, and -surprise, surprise- Stephen Colbert is the winner. The plane is called the "Air Colbert."
62012
submission
saxoholic writes:
A friend of mine sent me to this http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/57192 which discusses the U.S. Government heavily censoring a New York Times article, so the New York Times is publishing the article with all the censored information literally blacked out.
in addition, "...the Times will instruct readers where they can find the omitted information in other (unclassified) publications — like, for instance, in Leverett's paper on the same topic called "Dealing with Tehran," published through the Century Foundation."