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Father of DVD Gets Bitter Reward
Ant writes "MSNBC has a
Newsweek article on Warren Lieberfarb, the father of DVD, transformed the movie business. And yet his reward was he was fired."
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Hey, the church wanted to oust Galileo for his views on the soliocentric universe. Being smart sucks.
Trent Polack
www.polycat.net
they moved his job to India.
I'd rather be a conservative nutjob than a liberal with no nuts and no job.
The article doesn't mention CSS or Region encoding, but if he's truly the father, then Lieberfarb must've had something do with it.
I say good riddance to anti-consumer corporate tools like that.
It's good I read the story early. MSNBC is gonna get slashdotted soon. But I think I( and hope I'm correct) the Americans have a work ethic of "Hire and fire at will." So I do not see any problem with that. I too was fired from my small Sys admin job and now trade currencies.
Do you suppose he's that "cubicledrone" guy who was tearing up the career-related articles here yesterday with endless tales of being fired from job after job for his blatant superiority?
>He didn't invent the technology.
>More important, he saw its potential to transform the industry.
Who invented the DVD technology? That's the news for nerds.
he got $10 million in severance pay.... if only I had such a rotten deal
- In the future, will there be a place for a "hard" medium that you can touch and store on your shelves? Lieberfarb believes that answer is no. "The future will see video on demand delivered over the Internet, and movies will be just one of the offerings,'' he says.
So the "father of the DVD" is predicting its demise. ("Father" is maybe less appropriate than "midwife" -- he didn't invent anything, he just convinced the industry bigwigs to adopt it...)Sounds like a bit of a prima donna. Something to be said for karma.....
If I discover a billion barrel oil field the super-major I work for gives me a 20% bonus. If I go for a powergrab they'll fire my ass. In most cases people like this do a lot of work, but there are a lot of other people and factors involved in popularizig dvds. I still like my job though...
If a boss can fire an employee just because they feel like it then something is wrong.
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
people will always want something 'tangible' for their $$$, something to put in their DVD tower, to lend to friends, to resell if they want to, and to watch whenever and wherever. Given DRM and everything I really doubt video on demand will eclipse DVDs any time soon.
-- the cake is a lie
I wonder if there's a person like Lieberfarb working behind the scenes to get all the major studios and computer makers and consumer electronics manufacturers to agree to the HD-DVD format?
If not, I surely don't want to see another format war like VHS vs. Betamax. The DVD+/-R war was bad enough too.
I'd be curious to hear what kind of case he's going to make. I don't believe there's any principle that if you make an important enough contribution the company has to ignore your generally being a prick, and pleading for Steve Case and Richard Parsons to give you your stock value back seems like begging to your poker buddies after they clean you out.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Now I've read the article, this man is far from "father of DVD". He would be better represented as "DVD pimp". Usual folie de randeur of /. editors, move on.
...to Hollywood, Warren!
Most research companies that you work for state that anything you discover is the full intellectual property of that corporation when you get hired. I'm sure he was payed well,and was given $10 million severance. Guessing from expirience they probably wanted him to implement DRM and control functions, he said no and they let him go.
"He is a consultant to Microsoft, Toshiba and others on the next-generation DVD, which promises to pack even clearer images and more features onto the discs. It could mean another windfall."
I feel like Tommy Lee Jones in MIB I, when he says, he'll have to buy the White Album again.
Once the Industry has bled DvD for all it's worth, then we might seea bulk move to the newest, standards. Whichever they turn out to be.
My cat's picked up a Hammer. HEY! Put down that Hammer. Put Down that Hamm...THUNK!
Doesn't that say it all? Yo, music industry!
But hey, if we're making assloads of money the way we do things now, why risk something new?
I think that story has a moral hiddden in it-No matter how much you have achieved,you should always have humility
I believe that the first test of a truly great man is his humility. I do not mean by humility, doubt of his own powers. But really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not in them, but through them. And they see something divine in every other man and are endlessly, foolishly, incredibly merciful.
John Ruskin
Why does yahoo do this
One can only guess what else in this Newsweek article is wrong!
Best Buy can have you arrested
This just confirms something I already knew. Hollywood types are just greedy, ungrateful bastards. A man who brings a company billions of dollars in revenue doesn't strike me as someone who should casually be dismissed as "disruptive".
So the manager who took credit for inventing DVD's was stupid enough to get screwed by his fellow sharks...
What about the poor shmoes who actually got the vershugginer thing to work who had to deal with this guy and probably got outsourced or lost their jobs due to the Time/Warner/AOL stock scam - I mean bubble...?
How can you be the father of a data storage system? Our brains are the ultimate storage system and invented long long ago so claiming to be the father of inventing a simple storage system is kinda like someone claimging to be the father of fresh air..
I like muppets.
In mid-December, Lieberfarb was fired with $10 million severance. A friend at Time Warner describes him as "a tragic figure," adding, "It's very sad."
Oh yeah. How ever will he get along with only $10 million.
(/sarcasm)
MORTAR COMBAT!
Without agreeing to shit like CSS and region-lockout, there wouldn't have been DVDs from major studios at all.
At least, this way, the DVDs are actually being madeThe technical solution was only half the battle, though. Not all the studios embraced the idea. Three majors--Disney, Paramount and Fox--balked, expressing concerns about piracy. But rival studios winced at the prospect of paying royal-ties to Time Warner, which owned DVD patents. Paramount appeared to be worried that its corporate sibling Blockbuster would face competition from major retailers selling DVDs.
Does my bum look big in this?
.... the cost of doing business????
Lieberfarb added billions of dollars to the company's value, says David Boise, his star lawyer, adding, "The question of how a company treats someone who has created that kind of value is interesting."
Not really. They didnt treat him any differently than they treat anyone else: with utter contempt.
"his gut was telling him that if movie discs were the size of CDs, were priced right and offered a better picture and sound than video, people would collect movies like books. The key was to make the discs cheaply, based on a universal standard."
my god, what a genius. If can give them something better, with the right price, people will buy it.
People where allready collecting videos like books.
Of course, his real accomplishment was to get everyone to agree on it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Doesn't this give you a feeling of nostalga for the dotcom era? Working all night, weekends; sweeting code, and then --- the axe...
Lets admit it people, it wasn't all about "lay offs" there were tons and tons of churn and burns then, and ESPECIALLY now (-;
Ahh... to be a middle manager... *sign*
Complete CCTV
Gamblers Forum
The church was mad at Galileo becasue he didn't follow procedure with his findings. Plus he was a 'in your face pope' kind of guy.
The church did create the first public observatory.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Lieberfarb's lawyer is David Boies of Microsoft anti-trust and Microsoft-funded SCO suit fame. The Newsweek article fucks this up: "Boise" is what they write.
Tin-foil hat time: deliberate misspelling?
Google confirms: Ruby is the world's most beloved programm
... and sue him for infringement!
Engineering is the art of compromise.
In the future, will there be a place for a "hard" medium that you can touch and store on your shelves? Lieberfarb believes that answer is no. "The future will see video on demand delivered over the Internet, and movies will be just one of the offerings," he says.
Can anyone else see the possibility of large hard disks (or their equivalent newer tech) becoming more difficult to buy retail? The googles and 'distributors' of the world will have bulk deals directly with the manufacturers, the majority will watch 'on demand' and the nerd/geek minority will have to pay more as hard disks are no longer a 'consumer item'. Copyright interests would no doubt see this as improvement, as 'average Joes' would lose the ability to store stuff themselves, having to 'pay per view'.
Thoughts anyone? Will there be a mainstream application that will require privately owned data storage, keeping data storage as a consumer item?
"No matter how much you have achieved,you should always have humility"
Fuck humility!!
I AM YOUR FUCKING GOD!!!
A movie isn't just the story, it's the event. The communal experiance. The sharing of that with other people. And not just people you know, people you'll never know, and may well have no wish to know.
I go see, smeared across any given year, about a movie every week and a half. Depending on the movies comming out in a month, I may well go two or three times a week. Predictably, I have a membership to the local top shelf obscure video store which is not the worthless local Blockbuster, and large collections of DVDs, and laserdiscs. But I still go out to movies frequently, even though I could just download them for free, for the event of it. It's like going to a football game or watching it on TV. If you don't understand the attraction to the former, your loss.
Not because he's wealthy, but because he seems like just one of the many high energy, ego-driven assholes who inhabit the business world. He seems to have treated his peers just as poorly as they've treated him.
Keep in mind that he took payment in the form of options rather than getting cash. Considering that a lot of people in the AOL/TW merger watched their options lose all value, he was pretty fortunate to get a $10 million severance package. He gambled and lost.
And if we cant bring him justice then send him copies of your pr0n to keep him busy.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
The key is to get other people to praise you for your "invention". Don't do it yourself or you'll never hear the end of it. The other trick is, well, I guess Al and this guy have something else in common.
Maybe he got fired because dvd's suck. %50 of the time when you rent one, it skips. I've never had any problems with VHS. I have old VHS porn from 1980!
The relevant paragraph:
Now rewrite that with laserdisc in there and we're making sense. not to mention getting our milestones and perspective right. Sorry i stopped reading after that 'cos the article is... long but i did check & there's no mention of it. wtf.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
...but you are indeed right. I call back a couple of years ago when germany lacks IT specialists and we offered the greencard to indish people to come over here with their different mentality, their different work moral and their strange skills not being able to tagteam with our employees. They seem to have learned much, they either went over to USA with their skills or even better they now let the work come to them rather than us. They learned a lot from us and nowadays it got modern to talk about India as a domescile for IT stuff. I call back 20 years ago when people were all talking and hyping about Silicon Valley which these days is not even worth the paper it's name was written on. I also believe that India is quite overhyped and that most companies think that it's modern to mention India with every sentence of professional IT talk they do. When our so nice country and administration was talking about green cards here in germany then I was wondering why we lacked so many IT specialists while hundrets if not thousands of them were existing that time in either the university waiting to get a job or even announcing in jobmagazines and newspapers begging for a job. Germany started to massproduce IT specialits in universities then and what is today. We have overqualified people specially educated and trained in all this sitting here and can't get a job.
I started to spent some time reading about the Indish culture and econmoy, and figured out that they have a casts system there and that 2/3 of their people are suffering and starving and live in the poorest possible conditions while some of them are quite rich. They also have a strange sense of politics and a strange view of themselves being the only right humans on this globe (we could say national sozialism mentality) e.g. their religion is the best religion, their culture is the pure culture, their knowledge is the right knowledge, their busines is the best busines and so on. It's quite ignorant and disrespectful if it comes to other people, other mentality, respecting other humans on this globe - and yet the IT industry stuffs money up their butt.
What we need is getting rid of this hype as quickly as possible and start getting back out infrastructure in our own countries. Be it USA, be it France or Germany. We do have high educated and well skilled people and it would help us a lot getting the brutto income in our own country instead carrying it outside to India.
As Homer is walking through a landfill:
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
This is not a socialist rant. Employee's don't have to run the business, I'm saying there should be no boss/worker structure. Let the people vote for all I care, I just want a democratic process.
Whats that have to do with socialism?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
... let me know if you have some good old Mike Hunter pron with that psycho music playing in background when they bang :)
i'm tired and missed the mention right in the middle of that paragraph. woops. sorry. mod down.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
First, he took options instead of pay. Isn't that a warning sign? Nobody forced him to take options. He got greedy.
Secondly, he was senior management and had the people skills of a caveman. Do we want to feel sorry for bad managers who get fired? Taking sympathy to a whole new and undeserving level.
Just how many DVD's can you buy from 10 mln...
Privacy is terrorism.
Thats nuthin, slashdot (now a wholly (or is that unwholly?) owned subsidiary of microsoft) is karma thrashin anybody who dises M$. Who'ed a thunk it slashdot whorin it around for m$
Agreed. I haven't even managed to get myself to buy a DVD yet. They suck anyway as far as I'm concerned. You can't even rewind them smoothly. WTF.
1: If they gave him the options, but didn't vest them (he can't actually exercise them until they're vested, a gottcha with most options) then there was nothing he could do, short of sabotaging the TW-AOL merger, to protect their value. If that's the case, then TW-AOL should be reamed royally with a rusty post-hole digger. He's still dumb for not demanding immediate vesting, but TW-AOL was screwing him from the beginning with this vesting crap.
2: If his options were vested, and he didn't exercise them before the crash^H^H^H^H^H slide in value, then he screwed himself for not paying attention and/or the greed of thinking they'd be worth even more if he only waitied a little longer. Sorry Charlie, but you don't have a case for that.
Of course the article doesn't clarify the point above. It's ever so much more inflamitory to say he once had options worth $135M (which was no such thing if he couldn't exercise them) and eventually had to settle for a $10M severence -- which is more than I'm going to make this month.
If the guy is good, then he's employable. He's already working again for several top companies. Don't get out the violins for him yet.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
..and me (and the parent), however.
Personally, I would never see nor care any sum of money > 1 million dollars. If I was in some situation where I received 10 million dollars, I would take care of my family, put a few hundred thousand aside for my kids, keep 1-1.5 million, and give the rest to Amnesty International or some other worthy charity.
People who hoard money, while other people around the world starve half to death, really make me sick. Who cannot live an excellent lifestyle on the interest alone on a million dollars? No one.
It irritates me even more when someone like Bill Gates or some incredibly weathly celebirty donats something like a few tens of thousand to someone or a charity. WTF? Gates could donate 20 billion and still be worth billions. Whats he need it for? bragging rights?
Money is just money. You can't take it with you, and it won't make you immortal. But it could save many other people's lives. So next time you run out to buy that newest hottest DVD, just think about how that 20 bucks could feed someone in Africa for a whole month. I am not saying impoverish youself to give to others, but if everyone just donated a small portion of their income, something they wouldn't even miss, you could pretty much wipe out worldwide hunger.
...he was ejected.
Whoever designed level 61 in Frozen Bubble is a sadistic bastard.
Man, I'm impressed that your nick wasn't taken until the 713,286th registration. What made you choose it? Ideological or just because-you-could?
Shh.
Good lord man. Will you kindly take down that most depressing home page of yours IMMEDIATELY. Do yourself a favour! Thankyou.
"Warren Lieberfarb. The former chief of Warner Home Video deserved a round of cheers for doggedly pursuing his vision of the new format. Lieberfarb, more than any other person, merits credit for making the DVD a reality. He didn't invent the technology. More important, he saw its potential to transform the industry. So he cajoled, strong-armed and bargained with industry players around the world to set aside their parochial interests and sign on to a universal standard for the new format."
...During tough financial times in Timewarner-ville even. And don't tell me that stock isn't worth anything. Go look up stock symbols TWX and TWTC. A former shadow of itself, sure, but it's still got market potential.
First, let's put things into perspective here: Lieberfarb is a salesman; nothing more, nothing less. He didn't make the DVD and he sure as heck isn't the father. THAT person is probably stuck in a lab somewhere getting a bigger shaft in this end of the deal than Lieberfarb on his worst day. What's more, Lieberwhatever got happily accepted his huge-ass bonus on top of his regular pay: Time Warner stock options once worth as much as $135 million. He obviously accepted it, so whose fault is it that he didn't cash out in time?? Uh-huh. It's the stock market, so accept the risks already. On top of that, he gets a cool 10M in severence. Why aren't I feeling sorry for this guy???
"Say Boss, I know I accepted that 135m in stock options and all, but I didn't cash out on time, so how about giving me lots more money it its place...?"
From every angle I look at this, it sounds like Lieberwhatsit nailed his own damn coffin. From pissing people off to letting himself get talked into unwise financial decision. And while I know corporations can be meat factories, you just don't off and fire somebody who made you tons of money unless he's being a serious ass in most cases.
This guy ain't the poor lackey under the thumb of a giant coporate comglomorate here as is being skewed here. He painted the pentagram on his forehead, danced with the demons and got his reward, promptly screwing himself over in the process. Judgement is for the defendant; One soul please.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
It always rewards those who are the most capable, smartest, and most productive. Never fails! It is surely the most efficient of any economic system! /snicker
Hey, slashdotters, when are you all going to learn that "lasseiz faire" freemarket, corporate capitalism is a "turtles all the way down" Ponzi scheme? You want a better country? Just look to the Scandanavian countries....
Homo Sapiens Americanus--A documentary in p
But his "DVD bonus"--Time Warner stock options once worth as much as $135 million--was wiped out by the disastrous AOL Time Warner merger.
They gave him stock, which they then rendered worthless with poor business decisions.
Well...apprently this guy was in no condition to handle the succes of his invention, if it was even really his. Just like in the natural world, the survial of the fittest applies. If enough people find you offensive and a hinderence, you will be left behind and all anyone can say is "too bad so sad!"
Wasn't it determined that DVD is evil long ago with the DVD/CSS protest thing after the arrest? Am I the last one wearing the No DVD t-shirt with the css_descramble.c source written on the back?
Same with home theater. Back in 1983, There was a store down the road from where I live called "Future Tech" that was the inspiration to all us Northern Virginia nerds at the time -- half Atari home computers and half home theater (before that term was coined). In the back was a room plastered with foam sound panels, a 10 foot diagonal Kloss front-projection screen, LaserDisc, and surround sound. It wasn't that different than a DVD/big screen/surround setup of today.
Due to still being in school, it wasn't until 1988 that I had my own home theater. So when DVD/home theater became the rage in 1998, I'm like, OK, so what? The video quality is no better than LaserDisc.
Back in the 1980's we were all waiting for HDTV. Some were even holding off buying NTSC TV's because they thought they'd have to throw them out when HDTV came out just around the corner. Marc Wielage on CompuServe's CEFORUM (the moral equivalent of Commander Taco on Slashdot in the 1980's) kept trying to make bets that HDTV would not come out before 1990, and no one would take him up on it. It's 2004 and we still don't have pre-recorded HDTV movies.
If it weren't for DVD's, I'm sure we'd have digital video HDTV LaserDiscs by now. DVD's may have made the studios money, but they're no friend of the videophile.
AFAIK, the only relevant tech here is WMV, which is merely an implementation of the MPEG-4 standard, and as such cannot be patented or otherwise encumbered.
Methinks he'd be better off (read less likely to be screwed over) by talking to the good people at XviD. Indeed, if he can arrange licensing to permit official binary distribution of the best MPEG-4 codec, we could all win.
Feel free to not buy the replacement, then. As me, I certainly won't mind a higher quality picture. It isn't as if my DVD player and DVD discs will suddenly drop dead.
ANAM (I am not an MBA), but I've been reading some finance and business textbooks|magazines out of curiosity. [While this would normally invalidate my opinion, in Slashdot-land...]
IMHO, "seed money" has killed the American work ethic. People no longer have to put up their own money in a business. Corporate pirates are king. If someone were to put forward a business plan like Acacia Research Corporation 40 years ago, they would have got laughed out the door. Edison whored science; he didn't rape it. People no longer have to invest time into developing a company. Some other poor smuck will do it for them. As a result, long-term gain is not only ignored but also often avoided. How can you justify a 20-year investment of shareholder money? The system is rigged for abuse. Small businesses think (or should) long term. They have to develop close relations with clientele.
Frankly, I wish business schools would do a better job of teaching true entrepreneurship. If it did, I might actually attend one.
Sorry if this sounds snobby and pithy. However, like most Slashdotters, I'm sick of corporate America.
What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean my sig is repetitive? What do you mean....
I am kicking myself now for forgetting his name too.
/. type geek here. If anybody can remember his name, I (and the /. crowd here) would totally appreciate it.
I met him at COMDEX while I was visiting the Toshiba booth back in '97. I was in the process of writing a DVD-Video authoring system, and it was refreshing at the time to talk to somebody who actually had a clue regarding the internals of the format, and I got a few pointers from him at the time. What was particularly interesting, besides having him wander around the corporate booth unescorted by salesmen, was the fact he was hiding out in a comparatively obscure corner of the 10,000 sq. foot booth hanging around a bunch of chips and data sheets. A definite
While Lieberfarb may get the credit, it was a bunch of geeks working primarily for the founders of the DVD Forum that actually got it working, and it was not an easy accomplishment. The Kareoke features of DVD, in particular, as well as oriental character encoding (which is why DVD uses sub-pictures rather than ASCII to encode text... a good idea BTW), show a strong bias toward Japanese companies and some really strange bureaucratic design compromises. I wish I knew more about the history of DVD-Video, but the format certainly whent through several design changes before it was formally released, including some major design goals that changed mid-way through the development process. I would like to see that story fully told.
If there is one thing this story shows: 1. "Having a good idea is not enough to get rich" 2. "Having everybody agree that it's a good idea is not enough" The thing is: 3. "You have to make sure you get filty rich from it" And as this story shows... he probably did not take care of that enough... That just shows... "Making money is hard" :)
Lol,
Except for greedy bozo's which sneak into a company and just fill there pockets with company cash ;)
While he worked his butt off and managed to get people to come together on the standard, he was compensated rather nicely. To the tune of several million dollars -- over $100M at one point.
I do not understand why anyone thinks they are "owed" when the lose their shirt gambling on the stock market. The only way he's got a claim is if he was prevented from selling the stock when he wanted to. Otherwise he's just another formerly rich dot-bomb victim, the same as a few million other people.
The only difference is he had direct control over $100M+ of stock, not a few thousand dollars in a "retirement plan" like most dot-bomb victims.
It seems he was raising hell throughout the company over his losses, blaming the company for the damage the stock value took after the merger. Again, if he had the option of selling his shares before the merger, he has no cause for complaint.
Regardless of whether he has a legitimite claim (because he wasn't allowed to sell his stocks), you just don't get issues resolved by ranting and raving throughout the company and making an overly public stink about it. You pick the key individuals who can provide resolution and badger them, not badmouth everyone who doesn't help you immediately.
If you make it as messy as he appears to have been doing, you get fired. Period. Any company, any nation, and industry. Nobody wants to keep an employee who spends their time bitterly complaining about how they're being abused, threatening to sue, or otherwise making it abundantly clear they don't want to work there.
I sympathize and think he deserved more at the end of the day, but did not handle the issue correctly. At worst, he should have initiated a quiet lawsuit for his damages instead of ranting.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I decided to investigate this matter a little.
Often new words are formed by using roots from a single language, often either Greek or Latin in the West. Mixing Greek and Latin is often viewed as bad form. When I see mixed constructions, I most often find that the person either is kidding or never learned such a fine point. It is not a significant failing not to know, but my ears certainly perk when I hear someone reveal how subtle his or her sensitivity to language is by speaking well. It is only so impressive when someone does it without calling attention to it. My rambling assumes that I know enough myself to notice, and I doubtless do not in many cases.
"Heliocentric" definitely is the common word. The "-centric" prefix, according to Merriam-Webster, is Latin, as is "sol." Kentron is a Greek word. It appears to me that the relevant suffix from either Latin or Greek is "-centric," but all the fairly common words I found with this suffix are built from Greek.
I am not a linguist. I just like words.
Or you can be like me and rent DVDs until HD-DVDs are available, *then* start purchasing.
I'd be quite happy to pre-order several movies on an HDTV resolution DVD format.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I only buy DVDs that I watch enough that it's worth buying them.
But DVDs are pretty cheap here, I think... :)
Yeah, they will pack the xbox1 into ONE chip + CPU into a 4inch board and make every HD_DVD standard use that, now theres your 'extra features' XBOX quality features in all extras with built in games.
Sony will scream, NOOOOO.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
AFAICS this is exactly what the RIAA and MPAA would like. Play-once, expire after n days, and so on.
They really would like to charge per view/listening, not per purchase.
In theory, practice and theory are the same. In practice, they rarely are.
Most people behind technical innovations that make billions for their employers don't get even 100K bonus. I think the inventor of the LED made a few hundred. In this case the fellow brokered the adoption of a single format across all players in both the media and computer industry, which is a big deal for a manager, although he did not invent the technology.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
If only he'd played Ultima 4...
Reminds me about a true story in post-WW2 Italy. Seems that a regular guy won the lottery and was now rich. The newspaper reporters all went to his apartment building to interview him. They asked him "what are you going to do with all that money?" Before he could answer, another man stepped in front of him and said: "He's a member of our local communist party, and he's going to give it to the Party!". To which the lottery winner hastilly interjected "oh no, I'm not a communist any more!"
Your post is spot on. When I read Boise was involved, my immediate reaction was "With Boise as his lawyer, the guy's toast."
Yeah, I know it's what they want. But I plan on voting with my money against that one...
Technical brilliance is not an adequate replacement for good people skills.
fired with 10m severance? I'd be glad to be fired with 10M! Sure! Why not?
Your ego is Matrix!
In the future, will there be a place for a "hard" medium that you can touch and store on your shelves? Lieberfarb believes that answer is no. "The future will see video on demand delivered over the Internet, and movies will be just one of the offerings,'' he says. Already, services like RealNetworks can offer "Finding Nemo" online, and TiVo offers connections to Internet movie sites.
This is the Hollywood Insider's wet dream. No longer will content be owned by the consumer, rather the consumer "pays as they go". Imagine a world where everytime you want to toast some bread your bank account is automatically debited $0.05 per slice. I think the pay-per-use model is doomed. Though it has enojoyed some mild success in the cable TV business, consumers will always prefer the flat-rate, pay once model, especially when they can hold, look and feel the end product.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Wby not just work for ourselves? Why should we work for a company if theres no job stability?
People don't exist to serve systems, systems exist to serve people.
" He didn't invent the technology. More important, he saw its potential to transform the industry."
Right there, in black and white. Inventing the technology wasn't important; oh no, it's *hyping* the technology that's the real milestone here! Without the hype, the DVD technology might still exist but we could've missed out on all those billions - and then what use would the technology be?
The article writer should give up the pen and see if he can't get a job as fluffer for hollywood executive types. Surely he's got to be pretty damned good as swallowing cock by now.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
I see a lot of complaints here that this fellow didn't invent the technology, but I don't think people are giving enough credit for what he DID do.
First, he aligned several multibillion dollar international companies (both content and hardware) to agree on a standard. Many of technically minded here often disparage "PHB" type activities such as negotiation or selling because they don't understand how difficult it is or the nuance and diplomacy (or aggressiveness) it requires. It's tough work yet this guy's efforts at such high level meetings obviously paid off. I don't think anyone should minimize this accomplishment. It's harder than you think.
Second, it's often vision that is much more important that technology. It's really easy to think of the next evolution of a product, to make it faster, or cheaper, but it's difficult to see the next "revolution", especially the business model that comes with it. Again, this is one of those Slashdot things that gets ridiculed to Underpants Gnomes references--it's simply not as obvious as "3. Profit!". Finding the use or market for a technology is as tough as creating the technology itself. Often, it's harder, especially to make the link to established markets or models. This fellow figured out a way to make money off of DVD and to revive a sagging distribution channel.
with a $10 million severance! Come on! Many people get fired if they are too experienced and therefore require an inappropriately high salary. Managers always get fired when companies are being taken over. So what is this fuzz about? About one who would like to have a higher reputation? Silly.
In which case he can burn in hell ;-)
When I am king, you will be first against the wall.
Wow, it sucks to be that guy. To make something that is world wide and extremely popular, and then being fired for doing that. Hmmmmm......
You Americans should try for once to get history right and not rewrite, simplify or televise it.
thanks a lot
IAAL
AMERICA'S RICH: "Ahahahahahahaha!"
Heh.
Only complete idiots use composite words that consist of Greek and Latin parts. Like "automobile" or "television".
I love C++
Slightly off-topic, but what do you know of these adds that wont let you scroll (with the keyboard cursors at least) if your mouse cursor is over it?
Just found one more on the article...
errera hunamum ets
Giving people quality for their money is SO 1950s...
Look, the church had ALREADY GIVEN HIM PERMISSION to write a book explaining the heliocentric theory, right? I mean the theory wasn't even new at the time. The reason the church menaced him afterward is that Galileo put in as much abuse of the Pope and his faction as he possibly could! It was about Galileo's decision to use the book to heap abuse on people, not about the earth going round the sun.
I feel better now.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
"
In mid-December, Lieberfarb was fired with $10 million severance. A friend at Time Warner describes him as "a tragic figure," adding, "It's very sad."
"
Oh so sad. Go cry me a river.
Gotta go now, to sell my car to pay the rent.
...Al Gore invented the DVD?
Like "we own your money, tough sh!t"?
--
E_NOSIG
it's over, done, DVD has low resolution, compression rate is bad, open source xvid/divx can compress it to at least half size (with ac3 audio codec) and there's no noticable quality loss. all those big firms are still trying to create their "exclusive" new standard to exploit people. I'd say the IEEE should stand up and create open source standard, as it should be non-profitable and should not be manipulated by greedy companies like sony, philips same thing to HDTV, open source, or fed should regulate them out of the market
I would think the creators of the DVD were the people working in the labs. Everything else is just a shark's scramble for the spoils.
and tried to create an english word from soleil (which does mean sun) i.e. soliocentric. Then again, maybe it's monday.
The really sad part is that movie studios needed someone to tell them these things to begin with. It's so obvious.
You have a size of disc customers have grown used to and find convient. You have data you want to deliver. You can fit your data on a disc of the size your customers find convient. Okay light bulb #1.. put your data on those damn discs and sell it.
Wideley accepted universal standards that work in a broad set of hardware and software is good. Life is easier for the manufacturers. Life is easier for the customers. Everything is cheaper due to mass adoption. Light bulb #2 use universal standards.
That such things even need someone to come along and fight hard to make them happen shows why the entertainment business is so hopeless and why computers and the Internet are going to shatter their business.
I disagree that people, in the future, won't want to buy music and movies on physical media though. I think there is a feeling of holding a physical item that is pleasing for a buyer. Not that online distribution won't be popular but I don't think sales of physical discs is a concept going away. I have many movies on my hdd's but I still own hundreds of DVDs because I like owning them. Besides, buying physical discs leaves the chance open to buy a copy of your favorite movie in a neat box with a tshirt thrown in or whatever.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
First prize is a brand new Cadillac El Dorado.
Second prize is a set of steak knives.
You know what third prize is?
Third prize is you're fired.
I guess we know who got third prize...
(oh come on... it's a Glengarry Glen Ross reference, you're a communist if you don't like it!)
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
I have no friggin' clue what "soliocentric" would mean. 8)~
Tell me that!
Besides, some people _like_ ranting :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I noticed quite a few comments being made about how someone could "not cash out on $135M" being just plain stupid. Have you ever wondered why Bill Gates doesn't cash out his billion$ in stock?
/.'s need to understand is not everyone gets options like that - only corporate officers (stake holders) qualify for that type of compensation. What you also need to understand is that you're not free to do with those options whatever one wants. As a corporate officer you're subject to various rules as to when you can sell, how many shares you can sell (to avoid greenmail and other effects) at one time in addition to how the options were granted to begin with... such as performance or goal stipulations tied to your ability to exercise those options under the other rules that apply. Otherwise called "carrot on a stick" incentive for people who will maintain a high degree of interest for keeping the stock value high for extended periods of time.
What
It is entirely likely that someone cannot exercise their shares in a way to get the highest value from them. Under those terms, with implications of mismanagement leading to a devaluation of stock value, a lawsuit might have basis when between corporate stake holders.
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
This rant brought to you because (a) I was reading Tannenbaum last night writing about the history of computing (kill me now, I'm a geek), (b) recently I was involved in a discussion concerning correct quoting of The Jargon File, which is known to change over time, and (c) the number e asked me to.
If opportunity came disguised as temptation, one knock would be enough.
3^2 * 67^1 * 977^1
This is extremely pedantic, but "-centric" is most definitely not a prefix - "pre-" being Lating for "before" and all. What you meant was "suffix"; or, in general, "affix".
Ditto.
The last place i worked at, in the contract said that anything I created for the company was their property. I'm 100% positive that Time-Warner has a similiar clause in theirs. If I do something that doubles the companies inclome, I don't get anything for it, unless it stipulates that in the contract.
Look at the next sentence. 2/3 isn't bad.
He didn't invent DVDs. He didn't invent the laser. He didn't even invest his own resources in this technology, his company did. Not only, this guy is taking the credit for something he hasn't invented, but now he's complaining now that he didn't make enough money. Sheesh.
I could use some of that kind of Bitter Reward...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
They prefer to steal the technology and refuse to pay the licensing fees for software dvd players under linux.
Whenever management tells me to do something illegal, immoral, or just generally stupid, I eplain that all such requests have to be made in writing, so that I won't get mixed up and deliver something other than what they asked for.
If they don't put it in writing, I don't do it. And I make plausible excuses based on all the properly submitted requests already pending.
If they *do* put it in writing, I tell 'em it's technically impossible. People stupid enough to write down illegal requests (bootleg this software out to all the PCs in marketing!) are easily drowned in technical triviata.
But don't you think that $135M is pretty much chump change compared to the amount of money the movie industry makes from DVDs?
If you screw up something that ought to work *and it's demonstrably your fault* - like you misunderstand the implications of managing techies ("Why aren't they all wearing ties?") - then yes, you should either fix it or pay up.
= 9J =