The motivation to get this product out there was also about bringing DVD 'rentals' back to a lot of outlets that had abandoned renting them out. Remember how 7-11 and some grocery stores used to rent movies? Most of that stopped because of the overhead of managing late fees and memberships. This product was an attempt to enable these outlets to once again 'rent' movies without having to deal with those headaches.
But of course, the consumer wasn't into the formula, so it's failing. HEB grocery stores in Austin, TX is also pulling the plug on the test maketing of EZ-DVD.
Let me explain why I can't stand these modern computer-animated films and prefer hand-drawn cel-based animation.
My neighborhood is pretty economically depressed and has been for several years. The theater closest to my house does not have all the up-to-date cinema gadgetery enjoyed by audiences in the big google-plex theaters out in the suburbs next to Krispy-Kreme donuts. Yeah, Toy Story 1 played fine. Blew our minds. We couldn't comprehend that CGI was here for full-length features. A couple years later Toy Story 2 hit and although the graphics were a little more detailed, our dumpy theater's 3DFX card was able to render it without artifacts or hiccups. Then Monster's Inc came and the creatures had fully-rendered hair and similar details. The ushers warned us that the movie's hardware requirements exceeded our theater's specs and they were even having to run hacked drivers because 3DFX had been bought out by NVIDIA. Turns out they had to screen the movie in wireframe mode just to keep up with 30 FPS and have the audio stay in sync. When Finding Nemo came out, they just absolutely gave up. Not only were they going to have to show it at like 320 X 240 on a 72' wide screen to handle the rendering on their antiquated 3DFX card, the damn movie came on a DVD-ROM and all they had was CD-ROM and 3.25" floppy. The distributor laughed at them and offered to mail them an old copy of Jaws with a doctored title screen that reads "Finding Nemo."
I'm starting to think these increasingly high-end CGI animated films are a scam by the hardware companies to force the cinemas to keep having to upgrade every few years. Because of this, I'll only watch animated features hand-drawn in Korean sweatshops.
I don't feel guilty using my Mac OS X box. I usually feel dumb using my Mandrake 9.2 linux box, though. I'm not criticizing it, but I feel like I can get stuff to work way easier on my Mac OS X box (B/W G3 450 mhz from 1998 w/ 10.2.3). Like whenever I need to install apps on Mandrake via RPM, I have to chase down all kinds of random libs and other required packages first. All because when I originally installed Mandrake 9.2 I didn't select the option for 'developer installation'. I'm not a developer, but to get all the extra packages you'd need to select developer install at the beginning. On Mac OS X, installation of anything seems a lot easier. Oh well.
Perhaps the slashdot crowd is subconsciously recoiling from the anticipated guilt they'll feel over the additional jobs that will be shaved away from the US economy by this technology. Just a few more ex-warehouse (part-time) employees crowding the streetcorners panhandling. Not that it means you got a cheaper price on your made-in-China sweatpants. Gains in productivity from stuff like RFID tags increase profit for shareholders. Competition determines pricing for the consumer.
But hey, it's not like those Sam's Club employees aren't better off than the Chinese prisoners who make the products sold @ Sam's.. They are only LOCKED IN THE STORE overnight.
If Mandrake is going to ever catch up with the other super-stable, super-user-friendly, super-unix-based OS, it's going to need to get into the 10s with its product numbering.
"Kodak stops making cameras, so analog film is done."
The profit for Kodak was Never off the cameras. It has always been off the film and processing. All the other manufacturers like Nikon, Canon, Olympus, etc. make superior cameras and Kodak simply provides the media for them.
For many years, I don't think I knew anyone with a Kodak camera. Then they launched the horrible Advantix format and there was a surge in 'dumbed-down-loading' cameras on the market. Parents bought them for my various girlfriends, so I suddenly saw a few Kodak-branded cameras. Now digital cameras are replacing the market demand for poor quality images and without the complication of loading 35-mm rolls.
There is still a significant number of photographers who will continue to use 35-mm for the indefinite future. Kodak will continue to make $$ off the film and processing.
Hell, Kodak is still making Super-8 film. You might have thunk that reasonably-priced video cameras would have killed that format by now. Nope.
Actually, I don't think it would be easy to tip this thing forward. The geometry is such that your center of gravity is behind the wheels on that platform. This means it requires considerable force to 'lift' you up for you to tip over forward. If your gravity were centered on the axles of the two front wheels, then definitely a twig or something would send you tumbling.
That being said, this scooter looks like a massive piece of crap. Not massive in size, but massive in its crapiness. There's no real innovation in this device. It's just a real cosmetic imitation of the Segway. A better buy is one of those cheap scooter things people are selling in the parking lots of abandoned gas stations these days. And I say that knowing that you don't have any kind of return policy with a vendor who doesn't have a permanent physical address.
Why aren't all those
anti-WINE people complaining that we should boycot DOSbox and DOSemu to put pressure on these developers to port the DOS apps over to LINUX proper?
Yeah, I guess I posted with the understanding we all are a little wierded out by that pyramid thing. I like how the current government in the US just doesn't really address this issue. And where's the media on it? Like at the next press conference, somebody needs to ask Bush what the story is with the pyramid and eyeball on the dollar bill. Seriously.
These are human employees. These are people with families. I'm talking about the individuals on both ends of a gun
blowing 'away'.
So you think people should die over a pirated copy of Bad Santa? You think someone should go to prison for the rest of her life over the resisting of strong-armed anti-piracy campaigns? Ridiculous.
Yes, these thugs should face resistance. They should have a bucket of human feces dumped upon their shoes. They should be spat upon. The garden hose should be turned on them. Like telemarketers, they should be made to understand that their paycheck comes at a cost approaching the discomfort they are inflicting on others. But they shouldn't be killed. Nobody should be killed over their job. Jobs suck and most of us have to endure them.
We do have the freedom in this economy, though, to choose our job.
To carry this absurd discussion further, I'll cite the documentary
Day of the Dead. In that movie, the US government has abandoned hope of executing the zombie hordes via the typical bullet-to-head method. They keep getting overrun in combat with the millions of zombies. So they started experimenting with training the zombies to kill other zombies. Much like how the hutus hunted down the tutsis in your Africa scenario. Mass genocide via hundreds of thousands of participants.
For the Nazi war machine, the concentration camps were the bottleneck in the process of exterminating the jews. They had to keep their genocide a secret or else their plans might be threatened by rebellion or a mass exodus or both. The National Socialist Party hadn't quite whipped people up into enough of a bloodthirsty hatred of jews to have everyone pitch in by running down the street killing every jew in site as the hutus did in Africa. A lot of this has to do with levels of education as well as communication infrastructure, etc.
So yeah, the holocaust happened. It was terrible. If you don't believe it, then I suspect you must live a sheltered life without recognizing the racism and anti-semitism that flourishes in the world. Your Africa example is terrific, though, in proving that it could happen again.
When I was in Holland, a friend of mine told me that there is all this symbolic stuff on one of the guilder denominations. I think it was a 100. He showed me where there was a drawing of a mouse bisected by an hour-glass-shaped cut. On the other side of the bill is an owl. He said the mouse represents the people. The owl represents the government. He pointed out that the line of sight from the owl is aligned with the mouse. "It's always watching us," he said. That's pretty spooky stuff.
If the culrpit has mad internet skillz, she'll be running her connections through some random open proxy. It would really surprise me if this extortionist was using Outlook because that client would really tie you to traceable email address in the first place. If the person was using a web-based mail service like Yahoo, then it's probably they used the method described by the parent to track them down. If the culprit wasn't using a proxy, then there are two-dozen other mistakes they would have made to have gotten caught such as having the money transferred via check payable to themselves, etc.
Since I haven't seen anyone else mention this tool, I thought I'd bring it up.
Spybot Search & Destroy is a massively effective tool at cleaning a Malware-infected PC of every adware / spyware crap known. It will kill homepage redirects. It even blocks future installation of known malware. Check it out.
I think the grandparent post might be referring to cinema-quality video. Like the kind of files used to make real movies. A render farm that creates Hollywood SFX probably have more than 2500 GB of
RAM. The cumulative hard drive storage is ungodly large.
Appropriate contexts... Harumph!!! You are ridiculous!
Absolutely ridiculous!
Oh, nevermind. I just realized your post was in support of this woman's right to display her body in public places. Right on. Please forgive me. It's nye and I'm drunk.
Hey. You know what? The other stuff in a public bar is more dangerous. 2nd-hand cigarette smoke and drunk driving is going to kill WAY more people than naked boobs. I say, "more naked boobs. Less cancer!!"
Modern P2P apps can utilize any port you specify. In fact, they can hunt for an open port and use that. You need a packet shaping application on the router that can throttle bandwidth used by Kazaa and the like so your www users maintain acceptable connectivity.
There are several open source packet shaping solutions available that would work for a coffee shop. Monowall is just one.
Here's a couple observations from the time I've spent in some of Austin's free wireless cafes (Flightpath and Bouldin Creek Coffee Shop)...
Another benefit of free access is that the employees of the coffee shop don't have to provide any form of technical support for the service. If it don't work, oh well.
Speaking of the employees, I don't think it's a very good idea to use the tip jar you described "FOR THE SUPPORT OF OPEN INTERNET ACCESS". This competes with the tip jar for the employees. Not nice and also likely to be pilfered by the employees.
Great info. Thanks! I want to do development on mine, also.
I'll check into the Inspirions. I didn't know any laptops supported more than 1280 by 1024. This is pretty cool.
Appreciatively,
Seth
I know this is way off topic, but what Laptop model and what linux distro? I'm interested in a linux laptop, but I've heard some of the proprietary hardware is very difficult to get compatibility for in linux.
thanks.
It's unfair to judge the work of a research lab by the products the parent company releases. The marketing department will evaluate the results of the research lab and make decisions on what to productize. Microsoft, like so many other greedy sonofabitch companies, will ignore significant technological advancements developed by the boys in the lab if:
1. They don't see how they can introduce the tech into the market with a profit associated.
2. If the tech competes with the profit generated by the current business model of the company.
In the case of SPAM and popup windows, I have long suspected that Microsoft has been inactive in updating their products to fix these problems because they see more profit in dealing with these blights at the server level. It's a selling point of subscribing to MSN.
So will we see Microsoft take a leadership position in promoting email hash code? No. Here's the rub--- They'll want to build it into their existing server products, none of which work on the OSs which route a HUGE amount of the world's email traffic. Without all mail systems on board with the system, it doesn't work.
In Austin, Texas, there are several solutions for disposing of these obsolete appliances. Here is a link to your
options.
I agree with the posters discouraging the donation of old computers to schools. They really aren't equipped to deal with them. If you want to see the hardware creatively 're-used' rather than recycled, perhaps you can donate it to a non-profit hacker organization like the Free Net groups in various cities.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, I guess I posted with the understanding we all are a little wierded out by that pyramid thing. I like how the current government in the US just doesn't really address this issue. And where's the media on it? Like at the next press conference, somebody needs to ask Bush what the story is with the pyramid and eyeball on the dollar bill. Seriously.
Great pics. Thanks for posting the link to your page. Seth
Great info. Thanks! I want to do development on mine, also. I'll check into the Inspirions. I didn't know any laptops supported more than 1280 by 1024. This is pretty cool. Appreciatively, Seth