I'm waiting for the day that we can collectively sue these media organizations for contributing to the demise of entertainment. Seriously. I can no longer in good conscience buy DVDs, CDs, or the equipment to play them because I don't want to be involved in supporting these morons. I keep hoping that they'll eventually go away, but someone is obviously continuing to finance their reign of nonsense.
I doubt what we've been seeing or hearing in the past few years can be construed as "entertainment". Directors like Lucas, Spielberg, Bay, etc, have been producing nicely packaged turds with massive publicity campaigns.
It could very well be the dying throes of an industry that's struggling to come up with inventive ideas of its own (how many remakes of old-time classics can one stomach?).
I made a comment on a different forum about industries and organizations that are holding on to archaic and outmoded business models having the most resistance towards change, and that those that have made a living by adapting and changing with the times prospering.
We're seeing companies like Google amass a net worth more than GM, and did so in a handful of years, still maintaining a positive cashflow and good earnings, whereas the other 100+ year old company is asking for billions in handouts because they are too entrenched in their old ways and are struggling to change with the times.
Is the MAFIAA any different? This industry has been in the playground for many years and obviously don't like new kids coming in.
The gaming industry is relatively new, no doubt, and was born when baby boomers were the "new thinkers" of our time. Gen-X are the "new" new-thinkers.
So there would be nothing to prevent me from renaming "Dark_Knight_DivX.avi" to "Linux_Distro_X123.gz"
Honestly, filtering just adds another unnecessary layer to the whole process, and in doing so drives the perpetrators to go one layer deeper (unless they're already doing that).
Lifting up the floorboards will only keep the roaches scurrying deeper. One might argue they're dropping "roach bombs" but we all know how effective that approach has been in the past. Think of it as the good old mole games at the penny arcade, thump one in the head, two others pop up.
I was stopped at a traffic light and was distracted by a red flicker in the corner of my eye. Turned towards it and had a red beam square in the retina. I was NOT impressed.
The two little shits who were nonchalantly beaming their laser pointer at traffic at the intersection were totally oblivious to their utter stupidity. I pity the parents of these idiots as they are a testament of the poor genetic material that has been carried over in their progenies.
I was tempted to either rush home to fetch the overclocked 10mW eye-fryer and fuse their retinas or stop the car and beat the living shit out of them. Fortunately for them I decided to call the cops and warn them of the potential pile-up about to happen at that intersection.
So, the thing is, that's $180 an hour in today's money, not bad for some kind of "sharpening" business. Don't know what the hell you'd be sharpening though.
Lots of wildlife around Chernobyl.
Somehow I just can't stop thinking of 3-eyed Simpson-like fish staring at me, then blinking each eye in succession.
Global thermo war is so 1960's and 1970's though. Right now we've got our own problems wondering whether that postman across the street might take a snipe at me before I can snipe him back.
The trick is making sure it *STOPS* at the 1000th replication.
At least we can hit the reset button on a computer, or at worst, we can yank a plug out. I don't see a reset mechanism or a power-off switch on whatever the hell these guys are building. My fear is no matter how foolproof we think we've made it, being humans, and being "man-made" it will have a bug in it.
Hollywood loves this kind of scenario. I can sense yet another "man plays God, runs harmless experiment on subject, experiment goes horribly wrong because some idiot miscalculated something, subject mutates into green gooey blob..." movie in the making.
I'll buy the popcorn and probably watch it, but I'd like it to remain in "make believe"-land.
A doctor dies and goes to heaven. St. Peter meets him at the Pearly Gates and checks him in. After he's registered, St. Peter says to him, "Look at the time: you must be hungry! Heaven Cafeteria is serving lunch, why don't you get yourself something to eat?"
The doctor goes to the cafeteria and notices the long line. He immediately cuts in at the front, only to hear loud protests. "I'm a doctor" he says, "I'm a busy man, I don't have time to wait in line."
The others say, "You're in heaven now, we're all the same here, get to the back of the line and wait your turn!"
A few weeks later, waiting patiently on line for lunch, the doctor notices a man come dashing in wearing scrubs and a lab coat, stethoscope around his neck. He butts in at the head of the line and no one utters a peep. "Hey," he says to the guy in front of him, "Who does that guy think he is?"
"Oh, that's God," says the guy, "He likes to play doctor."
"Yes, roll call stated all my 25 students are attending my class today. Oh, I can only see 23 heads, maybe I miscounted. Time to clean those glasses."
I can see an outbreak of truancy and students tags being traded somehow.
Bad idea, to be honest, if the task is for roll call or tracking movements as it would take the human element out of a simple task which would be better off being kept manual.
On a related issue with personal RFID tagging, I just took delivery of a new "e-Passport" where the middle pages are labeled "do not stamp or mark" as they contain the RFID tags for travel. I can understand the need for an RFID in a travel document, but it's utterly a waste when we consider Towelhead Tom from Kerfuckistan doesn't need RFID because his country doesn't have RFID-enabled passports.
Not long after he was arrested, his entire department was under siege by Homeland Security agents. Bush is declaring war on what the department has dubbed "Al Gebra".
(yeah, I know, it's old, but it needed to be said!)
On the same token, if someone steals your car or burgles your home while you're at work or on vacation, is their act of theft or burglary wrong just because you don't know you've been ripped off and didn't report it to the authorities?
Don't forget that they will threaten to sue you for patent violation because *YOU* stole their idea in the first place (or at least used their proprietary code without their permission).
If you kick up a stink and threaten them back, they'll drag you through the court system and bankrupt you in the process, all while continuing development of their facsimile of your application, allowing it to go through 4 version upgrades and UI "improvements", forcing customers into accepting that their solution is the *only* solution for that vertical.
This is one "tall poppy" that we will rejoice if it gets cut down.
Oh, they do notice, it's just that they really don't care.
Thing is, if MS treat their developers with this type of contempt, imagine how lowly their users would rate?
"End users, who needs them? We know they will not have a choice sooner or later, and if they do, we'll kill whoever is opposing us... or at least try to"
In my obsolete parts box of goodies at home was an old Pioneer CDROM drive that had a slot-load mechanism similar to that on my car stereo deck. That was a great drive in its day, if the disc was ejected it just sat on the lip waiting to be gently taken away, didn't take much force to push back in, and the eject button was just there.
Looks like CD/DVD drive manufacture has taken a huge leap backwards as far as loading mechanisms go (or at least, a huge leap towards the cheapest manufacture option instead of better, more intelligent, convenient design).
This is one of life's great mysteries, I guess. Why on earth are the 1-9 keys on my numeric keypad be completely the flip of the keypad on my telephone?
The weird part is, I don't know about others, but it has become second nature when using either keypad, without looking, I still know where the digits are.
MS was never really about "innovation" per-se, they've always been about repackaging someone else's idea and saying it's "new" and spend big on advertising by saying "this is wow!".
Look at all their products...
Office suite: Word was a blatant rip-off of Word-Perfect (IMHO a vastly superior word processor, still is).
FrontPage: (was never their product in the first place) - "we can't build a better product, so let's buy a minnow company and say their product's ours, don't forget to brand it 'NEW AND INNOVATIVE'"
CRM: (see above)
I could list dozens more examples, but in the end, they're just a marketing company with a LOT of money to quash any real competition
Imagine this, you get pulled over by the cops, they say you've broken 235 traffic laws, but won't tell you exactly what you've infringed. Ridiculous.
When someone points out a mistake I made, I appreciate when they tell me exactly what it was, or tell me where to look if it's in my best interest to learn how to be more diligent with my work. I don't suffer fools, and being a smart-ass doesn't help.
What MS is doing is simply saying "hey you guys, there are 235 things you're doing that's going to get you in trouble, but we won't tell you what it is"
Will it make us go away? It has definitely incensed a bunch of us to either be even more anti-MS in our stance at their sword waving, (hopefully we can do the Indiana Jones thing from Raiders')
Uh, you forgot to mention that MS will market "Feature X" as new and exciting, a "wow" thing that we all must have, forgetting that Mac introduced this feature not long after it was released by the Linux folks (or they may have innovated it themselves).
Microsoft seems to be playing "catch-up" and naturally are behind the 8-ball. Instead of promoting innovation, they want to control it by making as though it was theirs in the first place, when in actual fact, they copied someone else's idea and decided to copyright or patent it, simply because they could afford to (and that nobody really cares that such an idea needed to be copyrighted or patented in the first place - read "common good").
I would expect we all send MS a check for $0.01, really. The administrative headache will be the stuff of legend, and I imagine MS will have to create a whole new department and employ an extra 1,000 people for mail handling and admin processing.
At the end of the day, the lawyers will win because win or lose, they get to pay off that next condo or BMW.
My guess is this storm-in-a-teacup is just another way for MS to justify padding the pockets of some of their lawyer cronies and poke sticks at the hornets nest.
This was a hilarious read when it came out, it's still funny now http://www.the-editing-room.com/?script=phantommen ace
This guy should be the scriptwriter for the new series, then we'd all have no more material to poke fun at.
I think the 4-word movie review that sums all this up...
CFL's in the old days had a glass or plastic shell around them. I have an old Philips one that's still going at home that's a fair few years old now. Seems they are cutting costs in one way, and putting lives at risk on the same token.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm waiting for the day that we can collectively sue these media organizations for contributing to the demise of entertainment. Seriously. I can no longer in good conscience buy DVDs, CDs, or the equipment to play them because I don't want to be involved in supporting these morons. I keep hoping that they'll eventually go away, but someone is obviously continuing to finance their reign of nonsense.
I doubt what we've been seeing or hearing in the past few years can be construed as "entertainment". Directors like Lucas, Spielberg, Bay, etc, have been producing nicely packaged turds with massive publicity campaigns.
It could very well be the dying throes of an industry that's struggling to come up with inventive ideas of its own (how many remakes of old-time classics can one stomach?).
I made a comment on a different forum about industries and organizations that are holding on to archaic and outmoded business models having the most resistance towards change, and that those that have made a living by adapting and changing with the times prospering.
We're seeing companies like Google amass a net worth more than GM, and did so in a handful of years, still maintaining a positive cashflow and good earnings, whereas the other 100+ year old company is asking for billions in handouts because they are too entrenched in their old ways and are struggling to change with the times.
Is the MAFIAA any different? This industry has been in the playground for many years and obviously don't like new kids coming in.
The gaming industry is relatively new, no doubt, and was born when baby boomers were the "new thinkers" of our time. Gen-X are the "new" new-thinkers.
So there would be nothing to prevent me from renaming "Dark_Knight_DivX.avi" to "Linux_Distro_X123.gz"
Honestly, filtering just adds another unnecessary layer to the whole process, and in doing so drives the perpetrators to go one layer deeper (unless they're already doing that).
Lifting up the floorboards will only keep the roaches scurrying deeper. One might argue they're dropping "roach bombs" but we all know how effective that approach has been in the past. Think of it as the good old mole games at the penny arcade, thump one in the head, two others pop up.
I was stopped at a traffic light and was distracted by a red flicker in the corner of my eye. Turned towards it and had a red beam square in the retina. I was NOT impressed. The two little shits who were nonchalantly beaming their laser pointer at traffic at the intersection were totally oblivious to their utter stupidity. I pity the parents of these idiots as they are a testament of the poor genetic material that has been carried over in their progenies. I was tempted to either rush home to fetch the overclocked 10mW eye-fryer and fuse their retinas or stop the car and beat the living shit out of them. Fortunately for them I decided to call the cops and warn them of the potential pile-up about to happen at that intersection.
LOL, yes, but $12 an hour of 1968 money, when you plug it into this calculator... http://www.measuringworth.com/uscompare/ can be as much as $15.
So, the thing is, that's $180 an hour in today's money, not bad for some kind of "sharpening" business. Don't know what the hell you'd be sharpening though.
Somehow I just can't stop thinking of 3-eyed Simpson-like fish staring at me, then blinking each eye in succession.
Global thermo war is so 1960's and 1970's though. Right now we've got our own problems wondering whether that postman across the street might take a snipe at me before I can snipe him back.
At least we can hit the reset button on a computer, or at worst, we can yank a plug out. I don't see a reset mechanism or a power-off switch on whatever the hell these guys are building. My fear is no matter how foolproof we think we've made it, being humans, and being "man-made" it will have a bug in it.
Hollywood loves this kind of scenario. I can sense yet another "man plays God, runs harmless experiment on subject, experiment goes horribly wrong because some idiot miscalculated something, subject mutates into green gooey blob..." movie in the making.
I'll buy the popcorn and probably watch it, but I'd like it to remain in "make believe"-land.
For now, cue the Frankenstein references in the replies to this article...
I can see an outbreak of truancy and students tags being traded somehow.
Bad idea, to be honest, if the task is for roll call or tracking movements as it would take the human element out of a simple task which would be better off being kept manual.
On a related issue with personal RFID tagging, I just took delivery of a new "e-Passport" where the middle pages are labeled "do not stamp or mark" as they contain the RFID tags for travel. I can understand the need for an RFID in a travel document, but it's utterly a waste when we consider Towelhead Tom from Kerfuckistan doesn't need RFID because his country doesn't have RFID-enabled passports.
I can see where this is heading.
(yeah, I know, it's old, but it needed to be said!)
Don't forget that they will threaten to sue you for patent violation because *YOU* stole their idea in the first place (or at least used their proprietary code without their permission).
If you kick up a stink and threaten them back, they'll drag you through the court system and bankrupt you in the process, all while continuing development of their facsimile of your application, allowing it to go through 4 version upgrades and UI "improvements", forcing customers into accepting that their solution is the *only* solution for that vertical.
This is one "tall poppy" that we will rejoice if it gets cut down.
Oh, they do notice, it's just that they really don't care.
Thing is, if MS treat their developers with this type of contempt, imagine how lowly their users would rate?
"End users, who needs them? We know they will not have a choice sooner or later, and if they do, we'll kill whoever is opposing us... or at least try to"
In my obsolete parts box of goodies at home was an old Pioneer CDROM drive that had a slot-load mechanism similar to that on my car stereo deck. That was a great drive in its day, if the disc was ejected it just sat on the lip waiting to be gently taken away, didn't take much force to push back in, and the eject button was just there.
Looks like CD/DVD drive manufacture has taken a huge leap backwards as far as loading mechanisms go (or at least, a huge leap towards the cheapest manufacture option instead of better, more intelligent, convenient design).
This is one of life's great mysteries, I guess. Why on earth are the 1-9 keys on my numeric keypad be completely the flip of the keypad on my telephone?
The weird part is, I don't know about others, but it has become second nature when using either keypad, without looking, I still know where the digits are.
(yet another one of life's great mysteries)
One thing that always baffled me re ATMs... braille keys.
"Hi, young man? Please help me, I can't really see the display on this ATM machine thing, can you please key in $50.00 withdrawal for me..."
MS was never really about "innovation" per-se, they've always been about repackaging someone else's idea and saying it's "new" and spend big on advertising by saying "this is wow!".
Look at all their products...
Office suite: Word was a blatant rip-off of Word-Perfect (IMHO a vastly superior word processor, still is).
FrontPage: (was never their product in the first place) - "we can't build a better product, so let's buy a minnow company and say their product's ours, don't forget to brand it 'NEW AND INNOVATIVE'"
CRM: (see above)
I could list dozens more examples, but in the end, they're just a marketing company with a LOT of money to quash any real competition
Imagine this, you get pulled over by the cops, they say you've broken 235 traffic laws, but won't tell you exactly what you've infringed. Ridiculous.
When someone points out a mistake I made, I appreciate when they tell me exactly what it was, or tell me where to look if it's in my best interest to learn how to be more diligent with my work. I don't suffer fools, and being a smart-ass doesn't help.
What MS is doing is simply saying "hey you guys, there are 235 things you're doing that's going to get you in trouble, but we won't tell you what it is"
Will it make us go away? It has definitely incensed a bunch of us to either be even more anti-MS in our stance at their sword waving, (hopefully we can do the Indiana Jones thing from Raiders')
Uh, you forgot to mention that MS will market "Feature X" as new and exciting, a "wow" thing that we all must have, forgetting that Mac introduced this feature not long after it was released by the Linux folks (or they may have innovated it themselves).
Microsoft seems to be playing "catch-up" and naturally are behind the 8-ball. Instead of promoting innovation, they want to control it by making as though it was theirs in the first place, when in actual fact, they copied someone else's idea and decided to copyright or patent it, simply because they could afford to (and that nobody really cares that such an idea needed to be copyrighted or patented in the first place - read "common good").
I would expect we all send MS a check for $0.01, really. The administrative headache will be the stuff of legend, and I imagine MS will have to create a whole new department and employ an extra 1,000 people for mail handling and admin processing.
My guess is this storm-in-a-teacup is just another way for MS to justify padding the pockets of some of their lawyer cronies and poke sticks at the hornets nest.
Watch out for the swarm, MS.
This guy should be the scriptwriter for the new series, then we'd all have no more material to poke fun at.
I think the 4-word movie review that sums all this up...
"Sith hits the fans"
The thing is, cut out all the emotional crap and dreadful dialog, the whole prequel series would probably fit nicely into 120 minutes.