Excellent Animation. Reminds me a lot of Todd McFarlane's work on Pearl Jam's Do the Evolution and Korn's Freak on a Leash videos

Linkin Park - Breaking The Habit Video

This is a very interesting question my Dad and I have debated a lot.

My Dad has always told me, that salesmen, and more importantly, upper management, doesn't need to have any deep or extensive understanding of their products. He has told me you can abstract the specifics of the product out of the equations, and there are standard ways you run the business (ie ways to promotion, ways to make deals, methods streamlining production, ratios of research dollars vs spending dollar, etc), that work regardless of the product, or at least should serve as a very important guideline.

Personally, this is something I completely disagree with, but I've been searched in vain to explain to Dad why. Best I could do is point out that Bill Gates has extensive knowledge of not only the market he was in, but also its advances. Bill Gates has made more money than any other CEO. Thus, I concluded to Dad, this was an example of my idea being correct.

However this example doesn't really help me put into words *why* I felt my theory was correct. Instead, all Dad see's is a 23 year old guy in a T-shirt telling him things counter to 30+ years of experience has taught him.

I feel this interview of David Crosby, which my Dad can relate to, does an excellent job showing how upper management not have better knowledge of their product can run a business into the ground.

] =It actually happened that way?
]
] Yes. The people who run record companies now wouldn't
] know a song if it flew up their nose and died. They
] haven't a clue, and they don't care. You tell them that,
] and they go, "Yeah? So, your point is?" Because they
] don't give a s---. They don't care. They're actually sort
] of proud that they don't care.
]
] Look at it this way. A couple of years ago, somewhere
] between a fourth and a third of the record business was
] owned by a whiskey company, who shall remain nameless,
] but were notably inept at running a record company. And
] they sold it to a French water company, who shall also
] remain nameless, but knew even less. Now, those guys
] haven't a clue! [laughter] They haven't a clue. And they
] don't care about having a clue. They are trying to run it
] as if they're selling widgets, plastic-wrapped widgets
] that they can sell more of. And they want easily
] definable, easily accessible, easily creatable,
] controllable product that has a built-in die-out, so that
] they can create some more.
]
] By that, I mean, "Get me a lead singer. He's got sort of
] an androgynous blonde hair, very pretty. We need a guitar
] player, sort of hatchet-faced, wears a hat, plays very
] fast, very dramatic. He must be very dramatic. Get me a
] pound of bass player, pound of drummer. I don't think he
] needs keyboards; I think we look good. And we'll call
] them the Bosco Bombers! No. The Bad Dogs... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

Do salesmen/Upper management need to better understand their products?

Those are a lot of boats that will be leaving. Yet we are staying until the start of 2006? Not that it will have much impact, by my count 124,000 of the 147,729, or 84% of all the personal in Iraq are US anyway.

BTW only 15 of the coalition members, some 31% have a GDP per capita of $10,000.
(http://www.areporter.com/sys-tmpl/thecoalitionofthewilling/).

And you don't really think most of these countries would be pleging support unless they got something in return do you? (Yes the link is old, but still informative)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/2003-02-25-unwilling.htm

Coalition Memebers: How many troops, when are they leaving

] Our fervent pursuit of war with Iraq is
] driving us to squander the international legitimacy that
] has been America's most potent weapon of both
] offense and defense since the days of Woodrow Wilson. We
] have begun to dismantle the largest and most effective
] web of international relationships the world has ever
] known. Our current course will bring instability and
] danger, not security.

] We spread disproportionate terror and confusion in the
] public mind, arbitrarily linking the unrelated problems
] of terrorism and Iraq. The result, and perhaps the
] motive, is to justify a vast misallocation of shrinking
] public wealth to the military and to weaken the
] safeguards that protect American citizens from the heavy
] hand of government.

] We should ask ourselves why we have failed to persuade
] more of the world that a war with Iraq is necessary.

] Have we indeed become blind, as Russia is blind in Chechnya, as
] Israel is blind in the Occupied Territories, to our own
] advice, that overwhelming military power is not the
] answer to terrorism? After the shambles of post-war Iraq
] joins the shambles in Grozny and Ramallah, it will be a
] brave foreigner who forms ranks with Micronesia to follow
] where we lead.

] Who will tell them convincingly that the
] United States is as it was, a beacon of liberty,
] security, and justice for the planet?

] But your loyalty to the
] President goes too far. We are straining beyond its
] limits an international system we built with such toil
] and treasure, a web of laws, treaties, organizations, and
] shared values that sets limits on our foes far more
] effectively than it ever constrained America's
] ability to defend its interests.

] I am resigning because I have tried and failed to
] reconcile my conscience with my ability to represent the
] current U.S. Administration.

I have been struggling for weeks to say what this man has said, as well as he has said it. This man should be applauded for sticking by his beliefs.

Past memes:
http://www.memestreams.net/users/acidus/blogid4078689
http://www.memestreams.net/users/acidus/blogid4091650
http://www.memestreams.net/users/acidus/blogid4067773
http://www.memestreams.net/users/acidus/blogid4025001

U.S. Diplomat's Letter of Resignation

The 155-mm shells containing sarin gas that exploded in Iraq May 17 were manufactured before 1991, a senior U.S. official said Wednesday. That was a pre-Gulf War shell, a different category than the weapons being sought by the Iraq Survey Group, Brig. Gen. David Rodriguez, the joint staff deputy director for operations, told a Pentagon news briefing.

...

For what it's worth in the debate over the shells.

Sarin Shells Made Before 1991 War

] During the journey, Spurlock also put his own body on the
] line, living on nothing but McDonald's for an entire
] month with three simple rules:
]
] 1) No options: he could only eat what was available over
] the counter (water included!)
] 2) No supersizing unless offered
] 3) No excuses: he had to eat every item on the menu at
] least once
]
] It all adds up to a fat food bill, harrowing visits to
] the doctor, and compelling viewing for anyone who's ever
] wondered if man could live on fast food alone.
]
] The film explores the horror of school lunch programs,
] declining health and physical education classes, food
] addictions and the extreme measures people take to lose
] weight and regain their health.

Nice to see someone trying to educate people about this.

Bewarned: Ugliest. Webdesign. Ever.

Super Size Me - A Film of Epic Portions

I hate to deeplink webcomics, but this was so good I had to make sure the link stayed.

Perfect!

Yes, and also Germany in the 1930s

] Why is Google immune from liability?
]
] The most direct reason is that a federal law that those
] who host, rather than author, speech on the Internet
] cannot be treated, for legal purposes, as having
] published it. As a result, they cannot be sued for
] defamation -- or for any other tort that has publication
] as one of its essential elements.
]
] The law protects message board owners, chat room hosts,
] bloggers who give others access to their blogs, and
] indeed, virtually anyone who allows material on their
] site, or provides access to material, that they do not
] themselves author. That includes Google and other search
] sites.
]
] By contrast, the defamation liability risk of selection
] sites such as The Drudge Report -- that is, sites that
] offer collections of specially culled links to other
] sites -- remains uncertain. Someone who chooses a link
] may count as having published the material to which the
] link leads -- and may be held to have the state of mind
] to be held liable for the choice. This argument has been
] used in the context of the Digital Millennium Copyright
] Act, and could be used in the defamation context, as
] well.

I checked and couldn't find any court presidence on what constitutes "publishing" content on the Internet and "linking" content on the Internet. Anyone know of any?

What are the legal ramifications of meme-ing a site that contents something defamatory? This has interesting consequences for the blogging community: seeing how stories and commentaries are spread by the Internet equivilent of word of mouth, linking, a single defamatory story would act as a virus, exposes all who link it to possible legal action.

Why you can't sue Google

] So when Clark found the new generation of road sensor,
] Arnu drove out to help investigate further. The pair
] found that, at close range, they could use a handheld
] frequency counter to pick up the wireless signals given
] off by the devices as a car passes. Over the following
] month and half, Clark and Arnu engaged in a kind of
] geocaching game with the Men in Black, systematically
] sniffing out the road sensors with the frequency counter,
] exhuming them, and opening them up. They discovered that
] each device was coded with three-digit identifier that
] could be read off an internal dial, allowing Arnu to make
] a list that correlated each unit's ID number with its GPS
] coordinates, creating a virtual map of a portion of the
] surveillance network surrounding the Groom Lake facility.
] Some of the sensors were miles away from the base.

Walking around arguably the most secret and protected military installion in the US with sensor and GPS equipment, while interfering with US government counter-measures to protect said base is a great way to get shot.

Area 51 hackers dig up trouble

] The peace agreement, reached over the weekend, involved
] 150 members from several gang factions and laid out a
] 10-point plan including an immediate cease-fire.
]
] The plan also asks gang members to refrain from using
] gang hand signals, graffiti or other symbols to incite
] the killing of rivals.
]
] Under the truce, gang members also vowed to designate
] places like schools, churches and parks as neutral zones
] and to avoid encroaching on each other's territory
] without notice.

This is surreal

These are teenagers doing their best to kill other teenages in the process killing other people by mistake, all so the surviving teenagers can sell more drugs that in turn kill more people!

And the mayors office is basically endorsing this "truce" that says the gangs have agreed to kill each other/sell drugs in the designated areas only.

What a messed up world we live in.

Crips and Bloods gangs agree to truce