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Social network | SEO - Social network / Re: Questions (and answers, probably) about China

« on: March 09, 2016, 05:48:53 AM »

Something like the image you just supplied most in the US would never see. It's not newsworthy to write about, it's not photogenic to make a movie at, so there is no interest in displaying such.

In terms of luxury, let me put it a way that some of the neo-con political organizations used to try and justify social program budget cuts. Our poor people aren't really poor, in comparison to other countries. They have cars, air conditioners, microwaves, stereos, etc. Their point and mine being different.

Their idea was to attempt to show that our poor are on a different level than those of 3^rd world countries. That somehow this came out to be our poor are really rich. This being the justification to use to attempt to cut another round of those things the government puts money into.

This is an entirely false representation. Mainly because those surrounding them have much better choices and options to pick from solely because of the financial circumstances they find themselves in. As some one else said, 'it is expensive to be poor'.

By luxuries I don't mean 'bling' that is shown off to say someone has made it, financial wise. Rather I mean those items who they can afford, that take the place of other items that were probably hand powered by necessity. For instance an electric mixer. It's not something that only the rich might obtain yet serves a purpose to make the life of one easier, hence a luxury.

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Other topics / Re: Those who have questions about the USA...

« on: March 09, 2016, 04:30:51 AM »

Not to worry about the clipping and moving when the software doesn't allow it. I simply took the question and added it to the answer without worrying about where it was. It's easy to open multiple tabs and refer to the original question and answer in another thread that way.

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Are there some plans for re-industrialization?

I am not 100% sure I grasp the fundamental essence of the question, so pardon if I miss the mark.

We are in the grips of a new age. Just like when the US went from being in the Agricultural Age to the Industrial Age. To give a little history on that and what that means to a society, I'll add a little fill in info here.

In the Agricultural Age, it took 20% of the working population to produce the food for the nation. For the rest of the nation to be able to buy food at the city market, 1/5^th of the working population had to work at farming, ranching, and the like.

When the Industrial Age began to work it's way down to the farmer/rancher in changes with new equipment, such as the tractor, suddenly the farmer didn't need so many working hands anymore. His tractor allowed him to cover far more land without more people; rather he needed fewer. This upset the working conditions and requirements of farm labor. Within just a few short years, farmers only needed 2% of the working population to produce the same amount of food for the nation. With all the farmers going to the new method in order to keep the price down so they could sell their products, there was an upheaval in labor. No one was hiring farm laborers because they no longer needed them.

At the same time, laboring jobs moved to the city. Those without jobs on the farm were located in the rural areas out in the country and it often took them months of travel by foot to make it to the city where they heard jobs were. Those industrial jobs were no longer looking for a pair of hands to do labor. They needed people who understood how to work with machines and how to fix them. This resulted in masses of unemployed people, homeless, and without money to buy basic living supplies. (maybe at this point it is beginning to sound familiar with today's world)

As a result of so many people without jobs, the economy began to crater. The Great Depression was beginning. Without jobs, there was no money to buy things. Consumer buying is what powers the market.

This lesson has been forgotten or ignored in today's world. Wall Street's credo is 'What have you done for us today'? Every company/CEO/stock is determined by the quarter, not by its future potential to extend it's market (unless that brings in more profits). So companies are discouraged from investing in future expansion for a bigger market down the road. To do so is an expense, not a profit and Wall Street only wants to see profits.

Many of today's companies are now finding out they have sort of created a monster with off shoring jobs for cheaper labor. In this I mean that what was once a cheap labor market is undergoing changes. Those who are doing the labor have found out that working a job gives forth a better life than being without one and they would like more pay and more benefits than they have been getting. It evident to them they are being used on the cheap. They now want their part of the increased profitability due to their efforts in working.

Companies on the other hand see their cost of labor increasing; the same problem they had with US workers. So they are considering moving once again. Either to repeat the process of finding a cheap labor source in another country; resetting the clock for a while, or moving back to the countries they originated at with a new plan.

The new plan can be demonstrated with the Apple corporation that makes computers. They are planning on moving back to the US to make their computers. Only this time, workers won't be part of the picture. It will be mostly automated. For the first time in these advances of Ages, less workers will be required as new jobs won't be created to replace old ones. There's no need of the same amount of workers to repair the robots. So new processes now create less jobs over all than ever before, breaking the mold of previous Ages.

This in essence is why the great upset in the economy as well as jobs today and in the future. Within another generation, having a job will be a mark of social distinction, not a life goal.

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Other topics / Re: Art

« on: March 09, 2016, 03:44:03 AM »

May I ask something else? What is the easiest object to create and what is the hardest?

This one is an easy one to answer in the sense of methods. The most basic easy to create items are what are known as primitive geometric shapes, such as a cylinder, cone, sphere, or box. The reason they are so easy to create is most 3D programs have them as defaults where you just click on a button and then you determine the width, length, and depth, by mouse dragging. The hardest are free hand objects (such as the glass shown eariler) where you make the shape and often have to do several of these, attach them to each other, to actually make the shape you are after. After all that, it still looks like plastic.

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Plants / Desert Rose

« on: March 09, 2016, 03:29:23 AM »

The Desert Rose is a house plant. One that can not stand lower temps. It blooms once a year.

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Social network | SEO - Social network / Re: Questions (and answers, probably) about China

« on: March 09, 2016, 03:16:58 AM »

The only contact I have had with things of Chinese as far as culture or even today's environment, ways of the people, government, etc. is either what I see in a few movies or news. I know right off the bat, neither is to be depended on to portray what it is really like, as movies don't actually show real life and news always has a bias and slant to it.

I'm just now noticing this thread though it appears to have been up since last month.

So my first question is can you maybe describe how the average Chinese citizens' life is as far as level of luxuries, maybe how they go about in their daily routine, not for the city dweller but for those far removed from the city? I know this is a very broad question with many different possible ways to answer.

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Other topics / Re: Art

« on: March 09, 2016, 03:09:42 AM »

In this one the mouse holds the glass that was shown in the earlier image resized to fit this particular image. The texture of the glass has been changed from glass to a sort of crystal.

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Other topics / Re: Art

« on: March 09, 2016, 03:01:09 AM »

There are some technical difficulties with what you are suggesting and I will have to think this one over on how to over come them and still produce a believable image.

One of them is the last computer I did this on, I broke. I lost my balance, fell on the computer (cracked a rib in the process), broke the USB port which then shorted and fried the computer.

I now have a new one to replace it but it took around a year to save up for it, to make up my mind to spend the money for it (as they are not cheap for this level of computer) and then actually do it. I have removed the old HDs from the old graphics computer and installed them in this new one but have yet to install the programs. I made one run at doing so and the program I tried to install didn't like the newer Win 10 OS. I think I might have made an error in the installation process. At any rate I uninstalled it and haven't tried again to reinstall again. Putting them all back on this new computer appears it is going to be challenging.

For another what I post is deceptive to the viewer. In this I mean that they see the ones that came out better. You don't see the 20  that didn't make the grade. One of the other challeging parts of what you suggest, is that when you make something in one of these programs, it doesn't look at first like what you see in the image. For instance in the pipe image shown (or the glass image for that matter) I've shown you the wireframe and the completed image. There is another view where you look at it from the solid view as you make it. Everything is always modeled in a default plastic material. Mostly either white or gray. So you make a tree, it  doesn't have color to it, doesn't look like a tree, it looks like it just came out of a plastic mold in the shape of a tree. To get it to look like a tree, you have to go in and change the appearance of the various parts. This requires two things (not to mention a lot of patience). It requires either you make the texture that will give it the look of leaves or bark, or you take a high resolution photo of what you want it to look like from something in real life, photoedit it to what it is going to be in the image, and then unfold the object from it's 3D configuration, sort of paste the image on that unfolded object, and then refold it, back to it's original shape. How much and how often depends on the complication of your model, the horse power of your computer, and your abilities to actually pull it off.

Somethings can be done without all that, such as the skies you were questioning about. Depending on what sky you want, some programs can generate unique sky scenery. In this case you mention, I'd have to take at least 3 photos of say the  chicken for the different angles, photo edit the chicken itself for one piece, model it, unfold it, attach the image, refold it, and move on to the next piece and repeat. Same to be done with the bowl, the table, and all other objects in it. Some can be cheated with as there are already existing ones. But most are not of high enough resolution to pull off believable.

I could probably pull off what you suggest. It's the time factor that would kill me in doing this.

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Other topics / Re: Those who have questions about the USA...

« on: March 09, 2016, 02:30:33 AM »

I much agree with your assessment on picking fights, MSL. No doubt the business with the bridge there were guns there but just not drug out into sight. Some of them, people actually do think and only if the other side drags out weapons do they show up.

The incident I spoke of, was when my bother was young. He's not like that today. We are all rather wild to some degree in our early adulthood, when we still believe we are 'bullet proof'.

Keep in mind that movies are entertainment. What is shown is sometimes close to real life but often not. In today's world here there are so many lawyers but not enough paying clients to make the education worth while. Just like in the entertainment world, for every group that got famous, there are 100 or a 1000 who never made the grade. For a while competition was so bad to just get a case to take to court that some personal injury lawyers got the name of 'ambulance chasers' trying to get business while the potential client is laying there injured. Not exactly the mark of a reputable business in dealing with their clients.

Much of the jobs in the US that haven't already been outsourced are now and in the near future being threatened. Among them, surgeons and doctors. Everything from Wall Street stock traders to truck drivers should be seeing the handwriting on the wall that this is the last years of making money at these jobs. Soon, within the next 5 to 10 years no one will be needing those types of employees because the job will no longer exist. We can see how that goes and what results are from that to the economy by looking back at factory labor work. Today, manufacturing in the US has been gutted and not much exists in comparison to yesteryear. When some one from a company that pays well, with good benefits, is hiring, you don't see 4 or 5 people show up to apply, you  see thousands. That in itself is an indication of just how bad the economy is doing no matter how it is said to be by the government.

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Mojo, what do you think about WWE?

I used to follow the professional wrestling matches on tv as a sort of Sunday entertrainment with another family. We'd all get together on the day when the show came on to have a bit to eat, drink, and watch the evening's entertainment. But that was back when I was young.

Today, I pay no mind to it. I could not tell you the names of wrestlers, the wrestling organizations they belong to, or what the latest rassle dazzle moves are. Nor who are the good guys and who are the bad ones.

As you say it's entertainment (showtime) not what goes on in RL. Someone gets hit up side the head with a metal chair, isn't going to turn around like he got hit in the head with a paper clip. If you are sharp eyed and the camera man messes up, when one wrestler takes the other's head and runs it down the rope, you'll find he has a hand on the guy's forehead to protect it from burns. Very much, it's more fake than real. It's showmanship. They get paid well to put on a good show and to do that it has to look believable.

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Other topics / Re: Those who have questions about the USA...

« on: March 08, 2016, 04:34:36 AM »

someone enters into some bikers bar (or something else like this) and all of the men inside are ready to beat him! I wondered is it often over there?

This depends on a lot of things. Keep in mind that movies for the most part aren't really accurate for what happens in life or the way it happens. That said, there are some places that are clannish or favor the locals with a better approval than an outsider.

Where my home is, there are a lot of little coastal towns. Many of them with one bridge in and the same for getting out. You come and leave by the same way. One of my brothers knowing this and the rivalry between local areas, invited one of his military buddies to go on a planned excursion to rile the locals. They went into the local bars, drank, and bad mouthed the locals. Nothing happened to them in the bars.

On the way home, when they got to that one bridge, there was a welcoming committee waiting on them. I mean to say they were really glad to see my bother and his friend show up. But what they had planned was not so friendly. They had in mind a fight to teach the outsiders better manners.

What I haven't told you in this story is the military friend was a hand to hand combat expert. The meeting on the bridge was expected before they came to town. So they baited the locals into sending their best into a fight rather than a gang. Then the friend promptly beat the crap out of the guy.

After that, everyone decided to call it a night and leave well enough alone. This is an exception to the rule as far as how things are in most places and my brother went in to purposely stir up crap. They came looking to make trouble and it found them.

On the other side of the coin, I'm not much of a trouble maker really. I've been in some seedy places without ever having any problems at all. One bar I went in while I was in the military, as a friend and I walked in to get a beer, two others were headed out the door to have a fight outside. A  beer bottle sailed passed us to hit the door frame. Yet we had no problems at all as we were not looking for any trouble.

My point being it is what you make of it. If you are looking for trouble it will find you.

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Which American film shows your contemporary life in a most realistic way?

I don't know that there is one. Please keep in mind that they don't make movies about things that are just ordinary, everyday, life as those are rarely exciting enough to make a movie over.

Another is that I would be a very poor judge to pick such a film. I rarely watch movies and never watch TV. So my choices to give you aren't really much to pick from and those I know just don't seem to fit a laid back life style where exciting things rarely happen. I mean we talk about the dogs barked. That's not exciting. Mowing the grass isn't a deal to make something over. Sitting out grilling outside or setting up the smoker for a long smoke of meat instead of a grill is not really something that you'd normally talk about either.

Basically I live in a one horse town the horse got up and left. Not much excitement, not much unusual goes on. Certainly nothing like you see in the movies would remotely fit from those I know of.

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Other topics / Re: T]hose who have questions about the USA...

« on: March 08, 2016, 02:39:58 AM »

Are there still popular those Texas-style/Cowboy-style pubs, which are only country-music oriented? I never been in something like that, but I like that kind of traditional old-style atmosphere and light, relaxing music.

Not much into C&W (Country and Western). There are those who do like the music and it survives well out here. You can easily find such stations on the radio without much effort. About as close as I come to C&W bands would be The Charlie Daniels Band or The Pure Prairie League.

A song by The Charlie Daniels Band

A song by The Pure Prairie League

Other than crossovers (a cross over is a song so popular it makes it on to the top billboards for both C&W as well as the Rock & Roll or any other two genres) I've not a lot of interest in C&W. There are bars who specialize in any major genre of music so that's not an issue if that's what you like. As with any type of bar some get rather rowdy or just down right hostile to outsiders.

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Internet / Re: Computer games

« on: March 08, 2016, 02:11:19 AM »

May I know: why you dislike playing online?

There are a multitude of reasons. Among them are my reactions are no longer what you would consider fast enough for an on-line game. Another is I value my privacy and usually on-line wants to datamine everything you do. I tried this on-line stuff at one time and had bad experiences with it. Everything from people using cheats to getting my private email account spammed to hell and gone. In the end it was a real turn off and after such I said I would never do this again.

This follows by I am living in a small town. So our internet service is akin to the Indian method. Send some one to the top of the hill, build a fire, get a wet blanket and you're on line. Not exactly what is needed for on line gaming at any reasonable speed.

Latency would eat me alive in the online world. It's not that I can't handle porting or any of the technical aspects on my end; it's that the hardware between me and the rest of the virtual world isn't what you would consider 'world class'.

As far as gun sales, sorry not into that and couldn't provide you with a site that does so without a search engine. Same with alcohol. Not much of a  drinker here I'm afraid so my interests don't lay in that direction.

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The sorts of games I like are ones like Elder Scroll series, the Fallout series, the civilization series, and several others. They take an immense amount of time to play.

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Social network | SEO - Social network / Re: End of... Facebook?!

« on: March 07, 2016, 11:50:29 PM »

The lifecycle of every single online service:

•     The early days: the website provides one service and provides it well.
•     Traction: people recognize that the website's service is excellent, and flock to it.
•     Maturity: the website's creators are elated at their new found success, and, seeking to improve their service, begin to perform upgrades, updates, design changes, and create exploratory features.
•     Bloat: the website is either no longer growing at the rate it once was, leading the creators to start implementing predatory features that return greater revenue per visitor, OR it begins to morph into such a complicated and burdensome entity that it now offers n services instead of just one, where n is a number that increases until step five is reached.
•     The autumn years: people start to notice that the website no longer provides the one service they care about as well as it used to, and start looking for a competitor that will provide that one service and provide it well.

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Most of the regular and semi-regular users here (except two, as far as I know) are non-native English speakers. But we're trying to learn how to type, write and speak this foreign for us language better.

Geeze folk, I sort of feel bad about this. You see I have very much respect for you mulch-lingual users. For one I have absolutely no talent for languages. Among other things I just can not wrap my mind, my tongue, nor my brain around languages. The good maker left me without these talents.

Then too, I'm one of those native speakers. Yet I can probably butcher the English language far better than someone who is just learning.   ツ

I do hope you good folk are not depending on me to aid you, as you have picked a very poor one in that capacity.

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Internet / Re: Computer games

« on: March 07, 2016, 08:24:39 AM »

I gather from the choices here that the computer games I play might not be welcomed to be mentioned. So I'm sort of in hazy weather so to say on this. Usually I like games like sniper games where you sneak around and take shots at not only your target but sometimes at other objects. 

It's not like I own a sniper rifle or anything, nor that I have a problem with telling real life from a computer game. Real life doesn't have a reset button. I tend to like open world games where you are not restricted to some sort of hallway configuration but rather can wander around, play it in any way you might chose and not a programmed set of limits.

Strangely enough, the things it takes to do graphics are usually the same ones it takes to play these sorts of games at full resolution and at the highest settings visually.

I'm going to leave this post as it is till I get some sort of feed back on if this sort of mentioning of game titles is acceptable here or not. I'm good either way but have more the intention of finding out the group's limits on this before going further.

I don't play online, ever.

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Other topics / Re: Those who have questions about the USA...

« on: March 07, 2016, 07:31:45 AM »

Is it easy to meet some of the American celebrities in your cities by accident or they aren't very public people?

Except for publicy sponsored 'Meet and Greets', it would be extremely rare to meet any celebrity. Experience has taught them to be wary of the public with good reason.

First there are the fantics. Either they want to somehow monopolize the celebrity's time or in some way be an intimate part of that celebrity's life. Very often unwelcome and unwholesome parts.

Then there are the Paparazzi, often independent photo takers who sell their photos to various magazines. Often for the independent there is little they will not do, including things illegal to get that or any private image. The children of the family are not out of bounds for them, even if it puts those children at risk.

To demonstrate another reason, I came upon an article today that speaks of this matter directly in what is considered another reason to be private. This article source is not mine but rather was posted at Skimur

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So, Mojo, please tell me somebody else /except Lady Gaga/, who is currently popular there.

You have probably asked one of the least knowledgeable about who might be favorite in the terms of current artists.

For one, I don't do TV. I long ago cut the cord (over a decade ago) and have little interest in what passes for entertainment over the air waves or through Pay For View. I no longer own a TV and to be quite frank about it, don't intend to let another in this household. I hate a commercial with what some would term a passion. I can not tell you how peaceful my household has become without them and it would totally shatter that peace to have them back.

For another, TV programming is aimed at the lowest common denominator. If you have to have canned laughter in a comedy to tell you where the punch line is, that's not much in the line of comedy. After looking at what I was paying then for cable and what I was looking forward to coming on in the next month, I found only one or two shows coming up that was interesting. The rest of the time it was being used as background noise. Why should I pay for background noise when a radio will do just as well for that purpose. If you chose wisely and selectivily you can find those stations without much in the line of commercials. Here the radio stays on 24/7 but only on stations that don't do much in the line of commercials.

I listen to an oldy channel coming out of a university where they are teaching the new DJs, electronic engineers, etc. So it's not really a commercial station in that sense. They are being paid to be on the air by their students. Tina is one of my favorites among the many. Keep in mind my tastes are not the more modern ones. I grew up with the likes of Woodstock being part of my music background and tastes. So I like folks like

Eric Clapton
America
Arlo Guthrie (who I saw live in New Orleans at a free concert)
Atlanta Rhythm Section
B.J. Thomas
The Association
B 52s
BTO
Bad Company
Bad Finger
Bangles
Beatles
Bee Gees
Black Oak Arkansas
Blackfoot
Blackmore's Night
Blondie
Blood Sweat & Tears
Blue Oyster Cult
Bob Dylan
Bob Marley
Bob Seger
Bon Jovi
Bonnie Raitt
Bonnie Tyler
Boston
Box Tops
Boz Scaggs
Bread
Brewer and Shipley
Bruce Hornsby
Bruce Springsteen
Bryan Adams
Buffalo Springfield
Camel
Canned Heat
Carly Simon
Cars
Carol King
Cheap Trick
Cheech and Chong
Chicago

Err... will that work or do I need to go through my music library to list them all? *chuckles*

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Other topics / Re: Art

« on: March 07, 2016, 06:49:35 AM »

If I'm not wrong this is your 2^nd tutorial

They are not actually tutorials in the sense of 'this is how you do this'. In many places I have drawn what could charitably be called doubt as to actually being able to do images of this sort. So along the way I have captured screenshots from programs while in the making. It is my way to disarm those who would say one does not have the ability to do such. I never make the claim it is easy. I never make the claim that it is quick to do. One must have the dedication to stick with it and the love of doing so for surely for the hours it is not something that you could make a living at.

In some places quite frankly, I cheat. In others there is no substitute for doing it yourself if you want it as part of an image. The point is not that the viewer has to be intimate with the how to dos so much but rather for the appreciation of a finished image.