Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Lamo, Trilogy, Searching
Microsoft thinks LookSmart looks less smart. securitas writes "Internet search company LookSmart was dropped by Microsoft's MSN service today. MSN has decided not to extend its licensing contract with LookSmart beyond January 2004. The news is devastating for LookSmart since, 'Microsoft accounted for approximately 65 percent of listings revenues, and all of LookSmart's licensing revenue in the second quarter of 2003,' according to a company press release not listed on LookSmart's site. The move comes after LookSmart recently launched its own Overture-style pay-per-click service and indicates Microsoft is close to launching its new search engine technology designed to unseat Google for the search crown. All of this is against the backdrop of acquisitions by rival Yahoo. More coverage at SearchEngineWatch and a Reuters mirror at CNN Money."
They could have fixed this if they'd googled for an answer ... powerg3 writes "This follow-up, explains the Google wackiness posted yesterday. Here's the quote from the Google Weblog: '...when a spam result comes up in a search, Google not only blocks the spam, but every result after it. This means that for searches where spam results manage to rise to the top, very few -- sometimes zero -- results will be returned....It's pretty amazing that such a serious bug made it past Google's tests. It will be interesting to see how quickly it's fixed.'"
Pardon me, mum, can I borrow your hard drive? AndreL writes "The Guardian has an update about the BBC's digital archive plans. They're considering using P2P technology to avoid bandwidth bottlenecks. The bad news: because of technical, financial, and legal problems nothing will happen until 2006 at the earliest."
Please arrive in costume if at all. KTecumseh writes "The list of theaters showing the extended editions of LOTR as been revealed. You can check out the list at the official website, and before you look, pray that you live somewhere close by to take advantage of this once-in-a-lifetime experience. For those that can not make the full 10-hour saga, they are also showing the first two extended additions on different dates, but who wants to miss out on an entire theater of sweaty LOTR fans."
Shamus Arrigan asks plaintively "There is no mention of these ticket sales in any other country. Does anyone know when and where these tickets will be sold at? (Canada especially)"
Wait, are you fellas press? Dangnabbit! ccnull writes "Good news from the inquest against hacker Adrian Lamo. According to a paragraph in a Washington Post column (buried about 3/4 of the way down the story), the FBI appears to be backing off from pursuing reporters' notes in the case. Relevant quote: 'A Justice Department official says the FBI agent "acted out of turn" by not seeking approval from the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan and Attorney General John Ashcroft's press office. "The agent did not follow standard procedures," the official says. "We're just not going to pursue it. It is the policy of the Justice Department to exhaust all other means before seeking information from members of the media."'"
Eh, what's a few orders of magnitude? Grant hayes writes: "It seems the decimal point in the Mono story you ran is being a bit ambitious. We should be reading Mono 0.28, not Mono 2.8. Check the link below as well as links there to other Mono resources; I see 0.28 throughout." Here's the Mono site -- guilty as charged. Thanks for the correction.
$12.50 per person? In Orange County, CA many theaters are up to $9.50 for standard seating, so I wouldn't think twice about spending another $3 for a little luxury. I hope we start seeing this sort of thing around here.
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the strongest word is still the word "free"
I just called the Senator theater (in Towson). Here's the deal:
Tickets for the trilogy are $35. They go on sale Saturday the 11th at noon. No more than 10 tickets may be purchased at once. The trilogy will be shown back-to-back-to-back on December 16th (Tuesday) starting at noon. The Senator theater is at www.senator.com or 410-435-8338.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
Because Newline dictated to Peter Jackson that none of the movies could be longer than three hours in their original release. So he cut them to 2h57m, with the understanding that prior to the release of each of the films, the "Extended Special Edition" DVDs could be released in time for people to buy or rent before seeing the next installment.
All that is explained in the stuff on the DVDs.
What?
The ballpark seems to be $35.00 USD.
GF.
Lots of petrified grits
It's certainly not public info. The FBI was asking for the reporters' private notes, recordings, and other source material. This included material which was taken "off the record" during interviews. In general, reporters are required by law and ethics to protect the confidentiality of their sources (if their sources desire confidentiality). What bugged me most about this situation is that the FBI would go after reporters who reported on Lamo but no one was going after Robert Novak's notes, despite the fact that his source blew the cover of a CIA agent (a treasonous offense). This update helps clarify the sitation: go after all other sources of information first.
The reason for this is pretty simple. 3 hours is the maximum cut-off time that studios will accept movies in most circumstances -- especially movies that will appeal to more popular people. The reason? Well...at 3 hours runtime, plus trailers, load-in, and clean-up time, you have about 3:30 at a breakneck pace. That leaves the following times available for post-matinee showings
4:00
7:30
11:00
Three showings a night, per screen. A mere additional 30 minutes of footage would push any third showing to midnight, getting out at 3:30 This would ridiculiously decrease ticket sales -- especially during the week.
More ticket sales = more money.
Quintin Tarrintino recently ran into this problem with Kill Bill, his 5-6 hour opus that he was trying to push to the studios to show as a single film. Yeah, right!