The military plans so that there is no single point of failure.
Yes, in some ways, but in others they do not. I don't know about the other branches, but the Air Force is pushing for consolidated IT. For example, the application I currently work on runs on a server in a building with about 500 other applications. Not all are critical to day to day or combat operations, but enough are that a single terrorist incident could cause catastrophic loss of mission capability. Sure, we would be able to fix it, but it would take long enough that terrorists or foreign governments could attack in the window of opportunity and have better chances of succeeding.
Couple that with the fact that countries such as China are training teams of hackers to wage computer warfare, and maybe terrorists don't even need to detonate a car bomb to take our systems out.
The military have a joke that if someone took out the Pentagon they would be doing them a failure by eliminating a lot of red tape. They won't relly completely on anything. Datacenter get destroyed and they will work around it.
That is a different thing altogether. If the command and control was taken out, we have backup plans (e.g. NORAD) to take command. Besides, most mission critical systems are not located in Washington, D.C. There are a few data centers scattered around the nation, and any backup command center would still use the same data centers. That was my point, although I agree with what you said.
Blah, blah, blah. You talk a good line of shit, but, alas, that's all it is: shit. You have no idea how the military's tactical computer systems work or you wouldn't have spewed that odiferous blather. Give your anti-Microsoft zealotry a break and quit making up stuff in order to sound like you know what you're talking about. I know that you don't and you know that you don't.
You may be a troll, but I'll bite. First of all, I am not anti-Microsoft, I am anti-monoculture. If the Air Force picked Red Hat as the desktop OS of choice, I would object. Same with MacOS, FreeBSD, Solaris, whatever. Diversity is key.
"The military" is a broad term. I have been working in Air Force IT for over four years now, developing database applications deployed world-wide for a variety of tasks from maintenance to intelligence. Notice I make no claims about the Army, Marines or Navy. Only the Air Force, where I know first hand how things work. I know how the pieces of the IT puzzle fit together, and I am upset by what I see. All of these critical database systems that handle the Air Force's data are consolidated in a few locations. Yes, a single truck bomb could severely cripple the Air Force. If you are so smart, you tell me where to detonate it.
First, please be careful when quoting. You quoted the grandparent poster and myself the same, making it sound like you replied to me both times. If you look closer, I was actually agreeing with you on the first point.
Anyway, I think the part about guerilla hackers is going to be the future of successful anti-U.S. warefare. China already has such teams, with the implicit target of the U.S. Having a Windows monoculture will only make their job easier. This is a real threat, one that I believe our government and military leaders know about but do not address seriously.
It's worth noting that massive amount of Air Force computing needs are not "critical shit". There are an awful lot of desktop machines running basic office apps to fill in reports in triplicate, make requisititons, do accounting, and all the other "needs" of any bureaucratic system.
Of course there are a lot of desktop apps too, but the Air Force does run a lot of critical shit. However, most of those servers run some form of Unix or a mainframe OS. Some run Windows, but those are not the big ones that need lots of speed and runs millions of database transactions per day.
The Air Force is Microsoft's single largest customer, according to the speech Ballmer gave to us about a year ago. It is no wonder that the only way not to have a Windows desktop is to be a developer for a Unix system. As a whole, the Air Force is dead set on having a single sign-on web-based portal system (ASP), using Active Directory to run all the communications.
Not only are they moving toward locking the whole Air Force into proprietary Microsoft technology, they are consolidating services into a single point of failure. If a terrorist could take out a single data center, they could essentially take out the whole Air Force. Yeah, the planes might be able to fly, but where would the generals get their information? How would mechanics keep track of what needs to be done to the thousands of fighter jets, making sure that routine maintenance is done on time? Military hardware takes a beating, and computers track all that stuff. One dirty bomb. One pickup truck full of fertilizer. It could disable "the greatest air force on earth."
No, I will not say which datacenter I am talking about, I do not want Ashcroft's goons to drag me away to Guantanamo;-)
Spend rest of day idling on IRC and browsing/. SEX!
I think most things can be linked to sex, but maybe not directly. How about my schedule this morning:
Woke up: have to be awake to procreate, because I am male.
Brushed teeth: my wife hates kissing me when I have yucky teeth.
Cooked breakfast: I have to survive until the next time we have sex.
Reading Slashdot: because my wife is 600 miles away visiting family.
Anyway, there are a three things we need to survive: food, shelter, clothing. Food so we don't starve, shelter and clothing so we don't get sick and die from the weather. We survive to procreate. So yes, stuff like making muffins and drinking coffee mean food to survive so you can have sex eventually.
I think the root issue here is not only that we need to have sex to keep the species alive, but sex is fun (as long as the other person is hot). We have sex and sexual innuendos in TV shows, movies, newspaper ads, interpersonal communicates (e.g. jokes around the office), the bedroom, everywhere. Why? It is one of our primal instincts, and we like it.
I am not surprised that sex would start something in China, be it a revolution or just blogging, because they are so repressed there. I am still skeptical of this story and several of the posts here, but the general idea seems natural to me.
From what I remember of T2 and T3 when the Governator talks about the future, wholesale human slaughter did not begin right away. It took a few years for Skynet to build enough Terminators to wage full scale war against humanity. I think T4 will cover the time between Judgment Day and the war. That would make the most sense. Of course, after T3, does it need to make sense? Apparently not, after Johnathan Mostow introduced a few paradoxes into the story line. Oh well. As long as it is violent it will sell.
The problem with the computer cafes and business LAN party places I have been to is none of them allowed beer. What the hell. If I am going to spend a few hours losing at computer games, I better come out of there drunk.
Arcades are still VERY big in other countries besides the US. In London there are tons of 4 and 5 story arcades, each with a bar at either the bottom or middle.
In the USA we have these, they are called "sports bars." They tend to have "video games," "billiards tables," and "dart boards." Not to mention tons of alcohol and women with tig ol' bitties. Sometimes, with enough alcohol, those breasts cease to be attached to a face that can curdle milk... hence the birth of the one night stand.
Why do we tolerate a society where artists do not have rights over their own material?
Because if making art costs a lot money, the people footing the bill get to make the rules. Do you find this unjust?
I find this unjust. It would make more sense to have joint ownership, and once the person footing the bill gets his 100% ROI, he loses all copyright privileges. Of course in the real world artists would let distributors keep distributing material (and keeping some of the profit) for them, but it would not be the corrupt system it is now where record/movie companies can milk artists for millions of dollars, much more than their investment, and still keep exclusive rights. Try reading what Janis Ian has to say on this topic.
I know a lot of so-called intelligent people who scoff at the uninformed, disinterested masses who "fall for" advertising on television. I find the same people laughing at inventive, humorous spots.
I laugh at some commercials, but that does not make me want to buy the product. That is the key difference.
Not on technical ground mind you. On writing, plot design, and general creativeness they failed. The very fact that their first movie is a sequel of a sequel should tell you where they are coming from. Disney, the mighty, seems to think the only way to put out a CGI movie of any credibility is to duplicate a previous effort.
Disney used to be a creative powerhouse, releasing great movies on a regular schedule. Even if they did steal and bastardize fairy tails and public domain works, they did an excellent job at it. Then Eisner came into power, the Disney family left, and the board of directors stopped thinking about pushing creative talent to be creative, but pushing them to make movies just expensive enough and just good enough to ride the name recognition wave and turn a good profit. They turned treasures such as the Lion King into cash cows. Lion King 2? Crap. 1.5? Crap. Most of the movies that stick out in my mind are all either sequels or based off theme park rids (Pirates of the Carribean was a good movie in its own right, however, thanks to one of the best producers of the past decade). Unfortunately, Disney's target audience lacks the life experience and cognitive ability to give a crap about plot, script writing, animation quality, etc.
Their name recognition is still so good that my wife questions "when," not "if," she will blow over $5,000 on a week-long family visit to Disneyworld. I told her how overpriced and stupid that is, and that she is free to do so but she better hope some rich, lost relative dies and leaves her a big pot o' gold in his will.
great, but the article is on election results IN FLORIDA.
Actually, the article summary talked about election results in Columbus, Ohio, which is located in Franklin county and accounts for the majority of that county's registered voters. That is also why the grandfather post mentioned the Franklin county results.
You would be in luck if your HDTV set has a DVI input. If not, well, does anybody know if DVI-to-component coverters exist?
I don't own an HDTV set, so I'm not sure if that would work for 1080i. Hopefully a typical PC video card can do 1920x1080 interlaced
Yes, there are converters out there. Getting the resolution right can be tricky with some video cards, sometimes you need 540 scan lines in progressive mode and the HDTV monitor will be tricked into 1080i. Try googling for HDTV, DVI, tutorial, etc. and I am sure something will come up. That is how I learned everything I know about HDTV.
Wasn't there a company recently that basically had anonymous FTP access to its corporate servers for over a year? I think it might have been Diebold, a security company. Anyway, security is becoming a pissing match between OSS and proprietary software. All software more than two lines of code has security holes. All software has flaws, be it OSS or proprietary. Why is it such a big deal when one type of software has an issue such as this? The only real issue is when a piece of software or a company has a history of producing software with crappy security. Even then, it does not mean their choice of OSS v. proprietary is bad or wrong, just that they suck at security. E.g. Microsoft has a good process, but their products suck at security. BIND is a perfect OSS example of crappy security. Does that make one process better? No, I do not think so.
Yes, it means that if you/really/ do prefer Nader, you can put him as your number 1, and still not give a vote to Bush by putting Kerry as your number 2. But if you EVER expect Nader (or another 3rd party candidate) to have a realistic chance of winning, IRV can betray you. This explains it better.
That link explains it well, but forgets something in its example: it assumes that one party has a strong caucus from which people vote, while another party is split: in reality, factions from both major parties are likely to split to multiple minor parties (Democrats -> Greens + Nader, Republicans -> Libertarians). While IRV is not ideal, it would be better than what we have now, and splitting the vote would not be quite so problematic as they seem to suggest.
Now, it is possible one of them might have made a token trip or stopped for a hour or two. I don't seem to recall that happening. Mainly, I recall them spending huge amounts of time in swing states, and the large urban states. Largely ignoring "Fly-Over" country.
How would this change without the electoral college, which is supposedly what this thread is about? EC or not, the states with the most electoral votes also have the most popular votes. For example, New York City and Los Angeles are the two most populous cities in the nation -- either way, candidates will focus their efforts in places such as those to win votes. Their states, California and New York, are in the top five states in terms of electoral college votes.
Abolishing the electoral college would not change much when it comes to campaigning, all it would do is eliminate the crap that happened in 2000 with the voter disenfranchising and the courts deciding the president. But it could have benefits, too, so I cannot really be 100% in favor of either side of the issue.
Hollywood doesn't send me a ballot to let them know that I want more LOTR quality stuff, so I vote with my wallet. I don't buy many DVDs, but I felt this series was worthy of an exception. YMMV.
This is a very good point, basic economics: dollar vote. Unfortunately it is not that simple, but you do only what you can do. By this point I think Hollywood realizes that LOTR is a cash cow, but much like geeks buying Linux software off the shelf, the extended editions are niche products and need our support. That and products such as Family Guy, Firefly, Farscape, et al. all need our help. Family Guy showed the suits that geeks are willing to put our money where our mouth is -- give us what we want and you will be even richer than you already are. By supporting LOTR extended editions, we tell Hollywood that we want good movies even if they are over four hours long.
oh man, I can't wait! I'm so exited I think I just pissed myself! Extended edition 3 movie marathon coming up!
This is going to be awesome!
I picked up a widescreen HDTV a few months ago, and this last week I picked up a surround sound system. Oh yes, there will be lots of Lord of the Rings, lots of beer, lots of fatty fried food, and ten hours with my friends... I cannot wait until December 18th, the Saturday after the extended edition comes out.
It seems like every other friggin' month they're releasing another special edition of one of these flicks. The movie studio is playing you all for fools, and treating you like mindless sheep who happen to have money.
Actually, they release a new special edition each year, not every month. Just one per film, no more.
Any 'Rings' fan who was stupid enough to buy each and every DVD that was put out for this trilogy is too dumb to be allowed to reproduce. Fortunately, anyone who is that rabid a fan of this stuff probably wasn't going to be reproducing anyway, so the universe balances out.
I bought the first two special editions and plan on buying the final one too, but not any of the "normal" editions. I do not know of anyone who bought all of the versions, that is a stupid waste of money. Some of my friends bought the regular editions, some like me only buy the special editions. That is not stupid. Oh, I did reproduce, sorry universe.
I looked at Best Buy (the store, not the web site) after posting my previous message. It looks like I can buy individual DVDs with two or three episodes in 16:9, or boxed sets in 4:3 but for less money per season. Sigh. I need widescreen. Hopefully there is another boxed set I can buy in 16:9. The good news is both versions have Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks.
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I am curious how effective NAT (e.g. a cable modem router) is at slowing or stopping these attacks for the the typical user.
I know it works well enough for me, but I am not a typical user -- even my Windows box is locked down tight.
The military plans so that there is no single point of failure.
Yes, in some ways, but in others they do not. I don't know about the other branches, but the Air Force is pushing for consolidated IT. For example, the application I currently work on runs on a server in a building with about 500 other applications. Not all are critical to day to day or combat operations, but enough are that a single terrorist incident could cause catastrophic loss of mission capability. Sure, we would be able to fix it, but it would take long enough that terrorists or foreign governments could attack in the window of opportunity and have better chances of succeeding.
Couple that with the fact that countries such as China are training teams of hackers to wage computer warfare, and maybe terrorists don't even need to detonate a car bomb to take our systems out.
The military have a joke that if someone took out the Pentagon they would be doing them a failure by eliminating a lot of red tape. They won't relly completely on anything. Datacenter get destroyed and they will work around it.
That is a different thing altogether. If the command and control was taken out, we have backup plans (e.g. NORAD) to take command. Besides, most mission critical systems are not located in Washington, D.C. There are a few data centers scattered around the nation, and any backup command center would still use the same data centers. That was my point, although I agree with what you said.
Blah, blah, blah. You talk a good line of shit, but, alas, that's all it is: shit. You have no idea how the military's tactical computer systems work or you wouldn't have spewed that odiferous blather. Give your anti-Microsoft zealotry a break and quit making up stuff in order to sound like you know what you're talking about. I know that you don't and you know that you don't.
You may be a troll, but I'll bite. First of all, I am not anti-Microsoft, I am anti-monoculture. If the Air Force picked Red Hat as the desktop OS of choice, I would object. Same with MacOS, FreeBSD, Solaris, whatever. Diversity is key.
"The military" is a broad term. I have been working in Air Force IT for over four years now, developing database applications deployed world-wide for a variety of tasks from maintenance to intelligence. Notice I make no claims about the Army, Marines or Navy. Only the Air Force, where I know first hand how things work. I know how the pieces of the IT puzzle fit together, and I am upset by what I see. All of these critical database systems that handle the Air Force's data are consolidated in a few locations. Yes, a single truck bomb could severely cripple the Air Force. If you are so smart, you tell me where to detonate it.
First, please be careful when quoting. You quoted the grandparent poster and myself the same, making it sound like you replied to me both times. If you look closer, I was actually agreeing with you on the first point.
Anyway, I think the part about guerilla hackers is going to be the future of successful anti-U.S. warefare. China already has such teams, with the implicit target of the U.S. Having a Windows monoculture will only make their job easier. This is a real threat, one that I believe our government and military leaders know about but do not address seriously.
It's worth noting that massive amount of Air Force computing needs are not "critical shit". There are an awful lot of desktop machines running basic office apps to fill in reports in triplicate, make requisititons, do accounting, and all the other "needs" of any bureaucratic system.
Of course there are a lot of desktop apps too, but the Air Force does run a lot of critical shit. However, most of those servers run some form of Unix or a mainframe OS. Some run Windows, but those are not the big ones that need lots of speed and runs millions of database transactions per day.
The Air Force is Microsoft's single largest customer, according to the speech Ballmer gave to us about a year ago. It is no wonder that the only way not to have a Windows desktop is to be a developer for a Unix system. As a whole, the Air Force is dead set on having a single sign-on web-based portal system (ASP), using Active Directory to run all the communications.
Not only are they moving toward locking the whole Air Force into proprietary Microsoft technology, they are consolidating services into a single point of failure. If a terrorist could take out a single data center, they could essentially take out the whole Air Force. Yeah, the planes might be able to fly, but where would the generals get their information? How would mechanics keep track of what needs to be done to the thousands of fighter jets, making sure that routine maintenance is done on time? Military hardware takes a beating, and computers track all that stuff. One dirty bomb. One pickup truck full of fertilizer. It could disable "the greatest air force on earth."
No, I will not say which datacenter I am talking about, I do not want Ashcroft's goons to drag me away to Guantanamo ;-)
Was it Bart who said this?
I think he talked about monkey butlers when they were stranded on an island.
So very true...
I think most things can be linked to sex, but maybe not directly. How about my schedule this morning:
Anyway, there are a three things we need to survive: food, shelter, clothing. Food so we don't starve, shelter and clothing so we don't get sick and die from the weather. We survive to procreate. So yes, stuff like making muffins and drinking coffee mean food to survive so you can have sex eventually.
I think the root issue here is not only that we need to have sex to keep the species alive, but sex is fun (as long as the other person is hot). We have sex and sexual innuendos in TV shows, movies, newspaper ads, interpersonal communicates (e.g. jokes around the office), the bedroom, everywhere. Why? It is one of our primal instincts, and we like it.
I am not surprised that sex would start something in China, be it a revolution or just blogging, because they are so repressed there. I am still skeptical of this story and several of the posts here, but the general idea seems natural to me.
From what I remember of T2 and T3 when the Governator talks about the future, wholesale human slaughter did not begin right away. It took a few years for Skynet to build enough Terminators to wage full scale war against humanity. I think T4 will cover the time between Judgment Day and the war. That would make the most sense. Of course, after T3, does it need to make sense? Apparently not, after Johnathan Mostow introduced a few paradoxes into the story line. Oh well. As long as it is violent it will sell.
The best part about genetic turkeys:
Did you catch that? I wonder if this research is applicable in humans too!
What's wrong, A-cup? Jealous?
The problem with the computer cafes and business LAN party places I have been to is none of them allowed beer. What the hell. If I am going to spend a few hours losing at computer games, I better come out of there drunk.
Cool how much to buy a porno sphere for home use? And how do I write it off as a business expense?
Easy. Just charge my wife an hourly rate, you get your tax break and a thousands of dollars per year at $5 per hour.
Arcades are still VERY big in other countries besides the US. In London there are tons of 4 and 5 story arcades, each with a bar at either the bottom or middle.
In the USA we have these, they are called "sports bars." They tend to have "video games," "billiards tables," and "dart boards." Not to mention tons of alcohol and women with tig ol' bitties. Sometimes, with enough alcohol, those breasts cease to be attached to a face that can curdle milk... hence the birth of the one night stand.
Barb Wire. Imagine Bogart with really big breast implants.
Here's a hacksaw and some soap so you can go wash that mental image out of your brain.
Hey, that movie accomplished something: it made it to IMDB's 100 worst movies list. That is tougher than it sounds.
Why do we tolerate a society where artists do not have rights over their own material?
Because if making art costs a lot money, the people footing the bill get to make the rules. Do you find this unjust?
I find this unjust. It would make more sense to have joint ownership, and once the person footing the bill gets his 100% ROI, he loses all copyright privileges. Of course in the real world artists would let distributors keep distributing material (and keeping some of the profit) for them, but it would not be the corrupt system it is now where record/movie companies can milk artists for millions of dollars, much more than their investment, and still keep exclusive rights. Try reading what Janis Ian has to say on this topic.
I know a lot of so-called intelligent people who scoff at the uninformed, disinterested masses who "fall for" advertising on television. I find the same people laughing at inventive, humorous spots.
I laugh at some commercials, but that does not make me want to buy the product. That is the key difference.
Not on technical ground mind you. On writing, plot design, and general creativeness they failed. The very fact that their first movie is a sequel of a sequel should tell you where they are coming from. Disney, the mighty, seems to think the only way to put out a CGI movie of any credibility is to duplicate a previous effort.
Disney used to be a creative powerhouse, releasing great movies on a regular schedule. Even if they did steal and bastardize fairy tails and public domain works, they did an excellent job at it. Then Eisner came into power, the Disney family left, and the board of directors stopped thinking about pushing creative talent to be creative, but pushing them to make movies just expensive enough and just good enough to ride the name recognition wave and turn a good profit. They turned treasures such as the Lion King into cash cows. Lion King 2? Crap. 1.5? Crap. Most of the movies that stick out in my mind are all either sequels or based off theme park rids (Pirates of the Carribean was a good movie in its own right, however, thanks to one of the best producers of the past decade). Unfortunately, Disney's target audience lacks the life experience and cognitive ability to give a crap about plot, script writing, animation quality, etc.
Their name recognition is still so good that my wife questions "when," not "if," she will blow over $5,000 on a week-long family visit to Disneyworld. I told her how overpriced and stupid that is, and that she is free to do so but she better hope some rich, lost relative dies and leaves her a big pot o' gold in his will.
great, but the article is on election results IN FLORIDA.
Actually, the article summary talked about election results in Columbus, Ohio, which is located in Franklin county and accounts for the majority of that county's registered voters. That is also why the grandfather post mentioned the Franklin county results.
You would be in luck if your HDTV set has a DVI input. If not, well, does anybody know if DVI-to-component coverters exist?
I don't own an HDTV set, so I'm not sure if that would work for 1080i. Hopefully a typical PC video card can do 1920x1080 interlaced
Yes, there are converters out there. Getting the resolution right can be tricky with some video cards, sometimes you need 540 scan lines in progressive mode and the HDTV monitor will be tricked into 1080i. Try googling for HDTV, DVI, tutorial, etc. and I am sure something will come up. That is how I learned everything I know about HDTV.
Wasn't there a company recently that basically had anonymous FTP access to its corporate servers for over a year? I think it might have been Diebold, a security company. Anyway, security is becoming a pissing match between OSS and proprietary software. All software more than two lines of code has security holes. All software has flaws, be it OSS or proprietary. Why is it such a big deal when one type of software has an issue such as this? The only real issue is when a piece of software or a company has a history of producing software with crappy security. Even then, it does not mean their choice of OSS v. proprietary is bad or wrong, just that they suck at security. E.g. Microsoft has a good process, but their products suck at security. BIND is a perfect OSS example of crappy security. Does that make one process better? No, I do not think so.
Yes, it means that if you /really/ do prefer Nader, you can put him as your number 1, and still not give a vote to Bush by putting Kerry as your number 2. But if you EVER expect Nader (or another 3rd party candidate) to have a realistic chance of winning, IRV can betray you. This explains it better.
That link explains it well, but forgets something in its example: it assumes that one party has a strong caucus from which people vote, while another party is split: in reality, factions from both major parties are likely to split to multiple minor parties (Democrats -> Greens + Nader, Republicans -> Libertarians). While IRV is not ideal, it would be better than what we have now, and splitting the vote would not be quite so problematic as they seem to suggest.
Now, it is possible one of them might have made a token trip or stopped for a hour or two. I don't seem to recall that happening. Mainly, I recall them spending huge amounts of time in swing states, and the large urban states. Largely ignoring "Fly-Over" country.
How would this change without the electoral college, which is supposedly what this thread is about? EC or not, the states with the most electoral votes also have the most popular votes. For example, New York City and Los Angeles are the two most populous cities in the nation -- either way, candidates will focus their efforts in places such as those to win votes. Their states, California and New York, are in the top five states in terms of electoral college votes.
Abolishing the electoral college would not change much when it comes to campaigning, all it would do is eliminate the crap that happened in 2000 with the voter disenfranchising and the courts deciding the president. But it could have benefits, too, so I cannot really be 100% in favor of either side of the issue.
Hollywood doesn't send me a ballot to let them know that I want more LOTR quality stuff, so I vote with my wallet. I don't buy many DVDs, but I felt this series was worthy of an exception. YMMV.
This is a very good point, basic economics: dollar vote. Unfortunately it is not that simple, but you do only what you can do. By this point I think Hollywood realizes that LOTR is a cash cow, but much like geeks buying Linux software off the shelf, the extended editions are niche products and need our support. That and products such as Family Guy, Firefly, Farscape, et al. all need our help. Family Guy showed the suits that geeks are willing to put our money where our mouth is -- give us what we want and you will be even richer than you already are. By supporting LOTR extended editions, we tell Hollywood that we want good movies even if they are over four hours long.
oh man, I can't wait! I'm so exited I think I just pissed myself! Extended edition 3 movie marathon coming up!
This is going to be awesome!
I picked up a widescreen HDTV a few months ago, and this last week I picked up a surround sound system. Oh yes, there will be lots of Lord of the Rings, lots of beer, lots of fatty fried food, and ten hours with my friends... I cannot wait until December 18th, the Saturday after the extended edition comes out.
It seems like every other friggin' month they're releasing another special edition of one of these flicks. The movie studio is playing you all for fools, and treating you like mindless sheep who happen to have money.
Actually, they release a new special edition each year, not every month. Just one per film, no more.
Any 'Rings' fan who was stupid enough to buy each and every DVD that was put out for this trilogy is too dumb to be allowed to reproduce. Fortunately, anyone who is that rabid a fan of this stuff probably wasn't going to be reproducing anyway, so the universe balances out.
I bought the first two special editions and plan on buying the final one too, but not any of the "normal" editions. I do not know of anyone who bought all of the versions, that is a stupid waste of money. Some of my friends bought the regular editions, some like me only buy the special editions. That is not stupid. Oh, I did reproduce, sorry universe.
I looked at Best Buy (the store, not the web site) after posting my previous message. It looks like I can buy individual DVDs with two or three episodes in 16:9, or boxed sets in 4:3 but for less money per season. Sigh. I need widescreen. Hopefully there is another boxed set I can buy in 16:9. The good news is both versions have Dolby Digital 5.1 soundtracks.