I'm surprised that the MPAA hasn't learned from the RIAA's lessons. We have the iTunes Music Store, the Napster store, and others, all proving that people will pay for downloads. Would they be better without DRM and if they also offered Lossless music? Sure - but there are some third party independents that are doing that, so perhaps they'll pressure the other "major" stores to do so.
So why hasn't the MPAA tried it? Open up an online store with a bittorrent back end much like Valve's Steam: able to distribute data to the hard drive that uses Bittorrent like technology to speed up the downloads, encrypt as it writes to the hard drive and let people watch it from there on their computers or portable devices or stream media (like Tivo, for example). Charge more for higher bit downloads, so if you order the HD quality movie you'll pay more for the download (but you should be able to have that compressed down onto your portable devices without having to buy again), or if you just buy the portable device only version you can pay less (but will look crappy as hell on your TV, so you get what you pay for).
There's no good technological reason why someone hasn't done this - only fear of loss of control and fear that someone will replace their distribution model from production companies -> theaters -> DVDs -> TV. But if they don't replace their production models themselves to production companies -> theaters/home use downloads (expensive, spending more for "just released" movies) -> DVD/home downloads (less expensive), someone else will do it for them, and they'll be worse off for it.
The author makes some good points about how currently MPAA/RIAA fights are to keep technologies down or even products off the marketplace (see the mobile carriers and the Motorola iTunes phone as an example), rather than embracing the technology and being the service company that makes it work for you.
Maybe that's the problem. The MPAA/RIAA/mobile carriers see themselves as seller of widgets, instead of services. They can make a lot more money by providing services with less costs of widgets (cost of pressing DVD and shipping is probably greater than bandwidth and creating once, in the long run), but it's that fear of "new" that keeps them from seeing that they're killing the goose that keeps wandering around their yard looking for food - without realizing that it keeps squirting out golden eggs.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
So if Microsoft will be incorporating these elements into Microsoft Office, will that include the OS X line? Right now I use Virtual PC to connect with my coworkers in our various Groove spaces (and while I know there are some OS X third party tools to connect to Groove shares, they're not exactly the same - besides, I'd have to get my company to pay an extra fee, and they're not going to do *that* just for me).
Groove is an interesting and pretty secure P2P system, and I wouldn't mind being able to use it without having to fire up a second OS on my Powerbook just to use it.
Perhaps even in a Slashdot port (but I won't call "dupe" yet).
It does look interesting, but my #1 worry: thumbprints. It's just part of my nature, but when I'm working on something with a screen, I get pissed off when I see all the grimy greasy thumbprints all over it marring my view.
Of course, I'm going to have to see how well this argument stands up as I look into buying a Treo and worry about how my thumbs will mess up the surface.
I just finished reading the article, and this actually has some potential.
The biggest problem they're going to have to deal with, and granted, I'm not a game developer so someone can feel free to fill in the details, is that I would believe that most developers have their own method for dealing with physics - from simple collision to ragdoll and the like. The idea is "How do I tell the computer these things are touching each other' (like bullets - these are "instant shot", so the developer just says "if there's a straight line between the direction the Player A is facing, and if that line would intersect Player B, then it's a hit. If not, then miss." And algorithms like that are done by matrixes, if I'm not mistaken. Other "hits" deal with actual objects (rockets moving, goops from the goop gun, etc).
But the difference between Quake III and Unreal Tournament is more than just 'draw the graphics", it's also in how each engine deals with how those collisions are managed.
So with a PPU, you have to decide on a common library of collisions. Good news: more objects you can play with and let the PPU decide what's getting hit. Bad news: everybody's game will react basically the same and they'll have to decide if that's a good idea.
Either way, I'll wait a year or so and see what happens. Best of luck to the developers - looks like they're at least shooting for something unique.
As someone who recently discovered Podcasts (and such shows as the "Dawn and Drew Show", "The Daily Source Code", "ITConversations" and other Mac news and information shows), it's a breath of fresh air to hear people talking frankly without any kind of hindrance of their conversation. Not necessarily the swearing - I don't think you need that, but that people can talk about whatever they want.
But I can also see where this is a competitor to talk radio. What happens as the advertisements head to Podcasting and it becomes as popular as radio over time (given about 5-10 years of generation gaps closing and better UI's to get Podcasts). Will we see senators such as this one who want to add "decency" restrictions to private networks (which is really what cable channels are - private wires strung through neighborhoods to deliver licensed and open content)? We already see laws being enacted to try and bring Internet Decency to the, well, Internet.
Here's hoping that this guy's law gets shut down. Some shows are moving to cable because that's where they can say what they want, while others are moving online for the some reasons. If people want to go out and download the information of their own free will and volition, then the FCC should be kept out. The FCC is around to regulate public airwaves to keep public standards of decency in place. This I have no argument with - after all, this is information that companies are play we the citizens who own those airwaves the right to use, so we enforce a contract that they won't show extreme violence or nekked people (which, based on public decency, is all right). Since it's over the public airwaves and there's a chance a channel changer may find something offensive over the airwaves they partly own (as a citizen).
Anyway. Hopefully this guy will buy the clue and keep his fingers out of non-public airwaves forms of distributing information and entertainment - if I have to go out and seek it and manually bring it into my home, then it's not on the public airwaves, and it should be left the hell alone.
no plans for media center PC - prefers to stream multimedia to TV from primary computer over wireless network
I don't buy that Apple will buy Tivo, but I can see them creating a Tivo-like device with these abilities:
DVR with free remote control service (why free? wait a second) Ties right into the iTunes Movie store.
Right, Movie store. Imagine Jobs going to the MPAA and saying "Hey, remember all the problems the RIAA had with downloading? Lawsuits didn't help enough - but now we have legal music, and people are buying music online, and look how many songs I've sold.
"Join with me, and we can end this pointless conflict, and bring order to - *cough*, I mean, we can sell movies."
The PC/Mac will still be the hub - use iTunes to buy music, or buy a movie. You can put either on a new iPod, but for the movies, the iView (just a name I threw in) will be the best way.
Want to watch a movie? Forget Netflix - just use the iTunes store. How about a documentary (independent movie makers who have limited releases would love this - what if you could pick up a documentary for $10, and around 50,000 people all wanted to - now that little indie project just broke even).
Miss a TV show? Why DVR it (though you have that power) when you can go to your computer, type "Battlestar" or "Babylon" to get the entire current archives (including commercial), and for $3 (or $20 for the entire season), you can watch your movies *now* (or, with broadband and figuring about 300 MB per 30 minutes, about 30 minutes or so).
The biggest thing of this is what it turns Apple into. With the iPod and the iTunes Music store, apple is moving away from hardware systems, and going towards hardware accessories and services. Eventually, I can see a Linux client - but in the end, Apple won't care what you run as long as you buy an iPod and use their iTunes store for movies and music - they still make money (though they'll still tell you a Mac will work better, and as the services do well they'll sell more Macs along the way).
So, lots of mass and hot air, but no discernible light or stars.
Yeah, it sounds like pretty much every radio talk show host in the world.
One area that I found useful
on
Blink, Take 2
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
This is not from a read of the book, but from watching a Book TV lecture (I'm sure somebody's going to make a joke about that, but anyhow).
The author described the situation of how negative intuition can be managed. In the case of police officers, the shortening of time by rushing into a situation can turn an innocent man holding out a wallet into a perceived gunman. To counteract this, good police officers are trained to pull up behind a suspect, wait in the car to fill out reports, then walk up to the car, stand behind the driver's shoulder before asking for a driver's license and insurance.
Why all this time? To prevent the adrenaline/short bad decision making procedures from taking over and making a threat out of nothing.
So I'm still interested in reading the book to see what it says about using intuition controlling techniques to minimize bad decision making - but I can see the reviewers point that a good chunk of the book is going to be one long exercise of "duhhhhhh".
My plans involve an underground bunker, stocked with old books and DVD's that will be stored in perfectly dark conditions to preserve them for as long as possible. Upon these DVD's are recordings of the great television shows and movies.
Upon the day of the broadcast flag, I will be taking my family into the bunker along with a supply of food, air, and other needs to last 100 years.
When my great-grandchildren emerge into the world after society collapses, all the old books (which were deemed illegal during the Copyright Stealing Prevention act of 2050) are burned and all eyeballs gouged out during the Copyright Memory Prevention Act of 2075, when humanity has children born without R/M/AA approved Eyeball Extractors coming to remove their ocular sockets to be installed with DCMA III approved cybereyes (which shut down if it appears the looker is attempitng to actually remember what they see to replay it in their mind later, which of course is a copyright violation), then my great-grandchildren will be able to use these books and DVD's as barter.
Hm - I wonder how much food they'll be able to buy with a copy of "Cryptonomicon". Maybe I should get another copy....
If it's "Work 8-10 hours a day with a couple of breaks and an hour off for lunch, and a wage that a person can afford to live on (assuming third world country costs, this might be $5/day or so)", then yes, your sarcasm is met.
If it's "work eighteen hours with no breaks, no air conditioning and if you get carpel tunnel that's your own damned fault, and if you miss a quote you miss pay for the day (which might be just enough to buy food at $0.25/day) , and we employ the twelve year olds who's other choice is prostitution so the constant threat of 'perform or die' is hanging over their head 24/7" - then your sarcasm might not be met.
A story about what MMRPG's might be like in the future, and the repercussions of that in our lives, including the "sweat shop" idea. The first half made me go "Eh, another story about MMRPG's and the evils of playing all the time", but then when the meat of the story came in it had me thinking.
If I buy the DVD from Japan for my own personal use, my friends and I couldn't get together to translate it? We couldn't say "Oh, this is what they're saying"?
The second I buy the DVD, I can do what I damn well please with it as long as I don't try to sell copies on my own, and if that includes having a group provide translation services for me, I don't see where there's anything even the almighty Copyright could do to stop it.
My daughter (age 6) had what I call a "Disney princess image" issue. Thanks to the Disney cartoons, she let me know one day that "Princesses don't fight - they just wait for the prince to rescue them".
I didn't like that idea.
So I found other things for her to watch, like "Magic Knight Rayearth" (cute little girls fight with swords against monsters), "Kiki's Delivery Service", "Angelic Layer" (cute little girls with robot dolls that fight each other into submission), and so on.
One of those is a (formerly) fansubbed series called "Stellvia of the Universe", which features a girl attending school in a space station, dealing with the ins and outs of school life. Shima (the main character) is a geek girl, and my daughter and I got a kick out of her (mis) adventures.
The only problem was that Daddy had to be there since she's not a fast enough reader (hey, she's only six;) ) to read all the subtitles. Which was OK, but now that the series is coming out on DVD in the US with dubbing I don't have to be there every minute. So I'll start buying the whole series as it comes out so she can watch it without me.
But we've started on other fansub works, like the "Ah! My Goddess!" series now running in Japan. We sit together, I read the subtitles and do the voices for her, and she's started picking up a little Japanese. When the series reaches the US I'll still buy them.
At the same time, I respect the animation studios who might not want their work fansubbed. In those cases, I'd recommend the fansubbers could create external subtitle files (I believe these are idx files that work with VLC or MPlayer), and people could be encouraged to rip their own DVD's to AVI files with special instructions, like "Use Handbrake at X rate blah, blah, blah".
This way, animation studios could still sell DVD's, funsubbers and fans like myself could still get "previews" of a sort. It would be better if the studios would work with the fansubbers and sell the movies online for cheap (say, $3 an episode in a nice XVID format or some such, $1 to the fansubbers and $2 to the production company), since thanks to them I'm going to wind up spending about $150 in DVD's that I would not have otherwise.
Guess we'll wait and see what happens. I'm sure there are people out there who only watch the fansubs and never buy the DVD, but as the article mentions, there may be a few if the "middle area" (the ones people watch on fansubs but have no intention of buying ) animes that lose sales as a result. (Which is why I think the "buy fansubbed for $3" would be a better result for everyone involved.
I've hoped that someday we reform our "correctional institutions" (which are anything but) more like this:
(Note: first and second felonies assume proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt, ect, ect, ect.)
First felony offense:
5 years mandatory sentence Job, skills, and educational training to prepare for the work force Therapy (daily faded to weekly by the end of the sentence) to deal with issues and overcome whatever may have inspired the crime Upon release, set up with a place to live, a job at a true "living wage" in a new town far from where any "original corruptive influences may reside" (ie: "The gang made me do it!" excuse will not work, since you will be removed from the gang/hood/whatever) Checkups once a month for the next 5 years.
Mandatory for all felonies, "white collar", or otherwise. You rip of your stockholders, you get the same 5 years as a murderer.
2nd Felony Offense:
You are executed after being found guilty. There is no sentence plea, only "guilty or not guilty" appeals, and once those are exhausted, you are executed. If after 5 years of training, therapy, new job, practically new life, plus 5 years of checkups to get you help if you need it, you have proven you either can not or will not be taught.
For this system to work, however, we would need a better infrastructure of taking care of the homeless, the sick, the poor, hungry, orphans, and so on. If we fixed up these problems, we could implement a "get touch" prison policy the way conservatives dream of because the excuses of society would no apply.
Based on the last requirements, I predict this system will be in place by the year two thousand never.
I rather like how the instructions talk about how to run X11 remotely, and the first thing they do is tell how to do it over ssh, with simple, easy to understand directions on how to do it. That is how "how to" manuals should be written.
2 points to Apple for doing that, and making my coworkers jobs a little harder (they're penetration testers).
For SCO, this is both a good thing and a bad thing.
The good news is that maybe, perhaps, they'll be able to find something somewhere in a line of code and go "ah-ha! We've caught you!"
There's just one problem: if there was something to catch, SCO would have used it by now.
Is the code in Linux? So far, SCO's been unable to show any proof, and what "proof" they've tried to bring in (like "malloc.c" code) has been proven so wrong that they've given up trying to convince the public.
Is it in AIX (other than what IBM paid for)? Again, so far SCO's been unable to find anything to prove their case.
So I'd say that the odds of them finding something is pretty low. And even if they find a case of a programmer going "Hey, here's this code from AIX I can put into Linux", you'll see a note right afterwards saying "No, that's not our code - and now that you're tainted, you can't work on Linux." Or some other legal dealie that IBM's dreamed up. (My evidence? Remember: SCO has been unable to prove any of their code is in Linux without their consent, so evidently it never made it in.)
So what's the downside of this ruling? Basically, the Magistrate of this case (this judge, as Groklaw mentions, is not the ruling just, just a procedural judge or something like that) is giving SCO more rope to hang itself with. SCO has been saying "We could prove our case if only those nasty old lying IBM guys would give us what we want."
So now the Magistrate is saying "OK, I call your bluff. IBM, turn over the stuff and let's see what we find out."
If SCO can't find "evidence", then they're pretty much out of appeals (though I'm sure they'll think of something.) But even so, this is more money they're spending, and every day the case drags on without a hope of settlement is another day they pay their lawyers more. And sooner or later, Mr. Boies is going to have to start weighing the odds of paying for the case out of his own pocket versus the potential reward.
For now, I'll keep the SCO case far on my back burner. Come back in another six months or so before anything "interesting" happens.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm surprised that the MPAA hasn't learned from the RIAA's lessons. We have the iTunes Music Store, the Napster store, and others, all proving that people will pay for downloads. Would they be better without DRM and if they also offered Lossless music? Sure - but there are some third party independents that are doing that, so perhaps they'll pressure the other "major" stores to do so.
So why hasn't the MPAA tried it? Open up an online store with a bittorrent back end much like Valve's Steam: able to distribute data to the hard drive that uses Bittorrent like technology to speed up the downloads, encrypt as it writes to the hard drive and let people watch it from there on their computers or portable devices or stream media (like Tivo, for example). Charge more for higher bit downloads, so if you order the HD quality movie you'll pay more for the download (but you should be able to have that compressed down onto your portable devices without having to buy again), or if you just buy the portable device only version you can pay less (but will look crappy as hell on your TV, so you get what you pay for).
There's no good technological reason why someone hasn't done this - only fear of loss of control and fear that someone will replace their distribution model from production companies -> theaters -> DVDs -> TV. But if they don't replace their production models themselves to production companies -> theaters/home use downloads (expensive, spending more for "just released" movies) -> DVD/home downloads (less expensive), someone else will do it for them, and they'll be worse off for it.
The author makes some good points about how currently MPAA/RIAA fights are to keep technologies down or even products off the marketplace (see the mobile carriers and the Motorola iTunes phone as an example), rather than embracing the technology and being the service company that makes it work for you.
Maybe that's the problem. The MPAA/RIAA/mobile carriers see themselves as seller of widgets, instead of services. They can make a lot more money by providing services with less costs of widgets (cost of pressing DVD and shipping is probably greater than bandwidth and creating once, in the long run), but it's that fear of "new" that keeps them from seeing that they're killing the goose that keeps wandering around their yard looking for food - without realizing that it keeps squirting out golden eggs.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
So if Microsoft will be incorporating these elements into Microsoft Office, will that include the OS X line? Right now I use Virtual PC to connect with my coworkers in our various Groove spaces (and while I know there are some OS X third party tools to connect to Groove shares, they're not exactly the same - besides, I'd have to get my company to pay an extra fee, and they're not going to do *that* just for me).
Groove is an interesting and pretty secure P2P system, and I wouldn't mind being able to use it without having to fire up a second OS on my Powerbook just to use it.
Perhaps even in a Slashdot port (but I won't call "dupe" yet).
It does look interesting, but my #1 worry: thumbprints. It's just part of my nature, but when I'm working on something with a screen, I get pissed off when I see all the grimy greasy thumbprints all over it marring my view.
Of course, I'm going to have to see how well this argument stands up as I look into buying a Treo and worry about how my thumbs will mess up the surface.
Isn't that they lost to a girl, but how all the other robots teased them afterwards.
My apologies - I was speaking of instant from a game view, not real life.
I just finished reading the article, and this actually has some potential.
The biggest problem they're going to have to deal with, and granted, I'm not a game developer so someone can feel free to fill in the details, is that I would believe that most developers have their own method for dealing with physics - from simple collision to ragdoll and the like. The idea is "How do I tell the computer these things are touching each other' (like bullets - these are "instant shot", so the developer just says "if there's a straight line between the direction the Player A is facing, and if that line would intersect Player B, then it's a hit. If not, then miss." And algorithms like that are done by matrixes, if I'm not mistaken. Other "hits" deal with actual objects (rockets moving, goops from the goop gun, etc).
But the difference between Quake III and Unreal Tournament is more than just 'draw the graphics", it's also in how each engine deals with how those collisions are managed.
So with a PPU, you have to decide on a common library of collisions. Good news: more objects you can play with and let the PPU decide what's getting hit. Bad news: everybody's game will react basically the same and they'll have to decide if that's a good idea.
Either way, I'll wait a year or so and see what happens. Best of luck to the developers - looks like they're at least shooting for something unique.
As someone who recently discovered Podcasts (and such shows as the "Dawn and Drew Show", "The Daily Source Code", "ITConversations" and other Mac news and information shows), it's a breath of fresh air to hear people talking frankly without any kind of hindrance of their conversation. Not necessarily the swearing - I don't think you need that, but that people can talk about whatever they want.
But I can also see where this is a competitor to talk radio. What happens as the advertisements head to Podcasting and it becomes as popular as radio over time (given about 5-10 years of generation gaps closing and better UI's to get Podcasts). Will we see senators such as this one who want to add "decency" restrictions to private networks (which is really what cable channels are - private wires strung through neighborhoods to deliver licensed and open content)? We already see laws being enacted to try and bring Internet Decency to the, well, Internet.
Here's hoping that this guy's law gets shut down. Some shows are moving to cable because that's where they can say what they want, while others are moving online for the some reasons. If people want to go out and download the information of their own free will and volition, then the FCC should be kept out. The FCC is around to regulate public airwaves to keep public standards of decency in place. This I have no argument with - after all, this is information that companies are play we the citizens who own those airwaves the right to use, so we enforce a contract that they won't show extreme violence or nekked people (which, based on public decency, is all right). Since it's over the public airwaves and there's a chance a channel changer may find something offensive over the airwaves they partly own (as a citizen).
Anyway. Hopefully this guy will buy the clue and keep his fingers out of non-public airwaves forms of distributing information and entertainment - if I have to go out and seek it and manually bring it into my home, then it's not on the public airwaves, and it should be left the hell alone.
And the article even mentioned Battlestar.
e .html
Well, great minds think alike - and since you're a Coward, here's the link to the article that talks about the same kind of thing I did:
http://www.shapeofdays.com/2005/01/the_movie_stor
I don't buy that Apple will buy Tivo, but I can see them creating a Tivo-like device with these abilities:
DVR with free remote control service (why free? wait a second)
Ties right into the iTunes Movie store.
Right, Movie store. Imagine Jobs going to the MPAA and saying "Hey, remember all the problems the RIAA had with downloading? Lawsuits didn't help enough - but now we have legal music, and people are buying music online, and look how many songs I've sold.
"Join with me, and we can end this pointless conflict, and bring order to - *cough*, I mean, we can sell movies."
The PC/Mac will still be the hub - use iTunes to buy music, or buy a movie. You can put either on a new iPod, but for the movies, the iView (just a name I threw in) will be the best way.
Want to watch a movie? Forget Netflix - just use the iTunes store. How about a documentary (independent movie makers who have limited releases would love this - what if you could pick up a documentary for $10, and around 50,000 people all wanted to - now that little indie project just broke even).
Miss a TV show? Why DVR it (though you have that power) when you can go to your computer, type "Battlestar" or "Babylon" to get the entire current archives (including commercial), and for $3 (or $20 for the entire season), you can watch your movies *now* (or, with broadband and figuring about 300 MB per 30 minutes, about 30 minutes or so).
The biggest thing of this is what it turns Apple into. With the iPod and the iTunes Music store, apple is moving away from hardware systems, and going towards hardware accessories and services. Eventually, I can see a Linux client - but in the end, Apple won't care what you run as long as you buy an iPod and use their iTunes store for movies and music - they still make money (though they'll still tell you a Mac will work better, and as the services do well they'll sell more Macs along the way).
Anyway, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong.
So, lots of mass and hot air, but no discernible light or stars.
Yeah, it sounds like pretty much every radio talk show host in the world.
This is not from a read of the book, but from watching a Book TV lecture (I'm sure somebody's going to make a joke about that, but anyhow).
The author described the situation of how negative intuition can be managed. In the case of police officers, the shortening of time by rushing into a situation can turn an innocent man holding out a wallet into a perceived gunman. To counteract this, good police officers are trained to pull up behind a suspect, wait in the car to fill out reports, then walk up to the car, stand behind the driver's shoulder before asking for a driver's license and insurance.
Why all this time? To prevent the adrenaline/short bad decision making procedures from taking over and making a threat out of nothing.
So I'm still interested in reading the book to see what it says about using intuition controlling techniques to minimize bad decision making - but I can see the reviewers point that a good chunk of the book is going to be one long exercise of "duhhhhhh".
My plans involve an underground bunker, stocked with old books and DVD's that will be stored in perfectly dark conditions to preserve them for as long as possible. Upon these DVD's are recordings of the great television shows and movies.
Upon the day of the broadcast flag, I will be taking my family into the bunker along with a supply of food, air, and other needs to last 100 years.
When my great-grandchildren emerge into the world after society collapses, all the old books (which were deemed illegal during the Copyright Stealing Prevention act of 2050) are burned and all eyeballs gouged out during the Copyright Memory Prevention Act of 2075, when humanity has children born without R/M/AA approved Eyeball Extractors coming to remove their ocular sockets to be installed with DCMA III approved cybereyes (which shut down if it appears the looker is attempitng to actually remember what they see to replay it in their mind later, which of course is a copyright violation), then my great-grandchildren will be able to use these books and DVD's as barter.
Hm - I wonder how much food they'll be able to buy with a copy of "Cryptonomicon". Maybe I should get another copy....
I think it would depend on the labor conditions.
If it's "Work 8-10 hours a day with a couple of breaks and an hour off for lunch, and a wage that a person can afford to live on (assuming third world country costs, this might be $5/day or so)", then yes, your sarcasm is met.
If it's "work eighteen hours with no breaks, no air conditioning and if you get carpel tunnel that's your own damned fault, and if you miss a quote you miss pay for the day (which might be just enough to buy food at $0.25/day) , and we employ the twelve year olds who's other choice is prostitution so the constant threat of 'perform or die' is hanging over their head 24/7" - then your sarcasm might not be met.
It's all in the scale.
Here's a link (think there might be a commercial to go through, but there it is:)
s _game/index.html
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/11/15/anda
A story about what MMRPG's might be like in the future, and the repercussions of that in our lives, including the "sweat shop" idea. The first half made me go "Eh, another story about MMRPG's and the evils of playing all the time", but then when the meat of the story came in it had me thinking.
Seems the future is now.
Maybe it stands for "generation 5" or some such.
So let me get this straight:
If I buy the DVD from Japan for my own personal use, my friends and I couldn't get together to translate it? We couldn't say "Oh, this is what they're saying"?
The second I buy the DVD, I can do what I damn well please with it as long as I don't try to sell copies on my own, and if that includes having a group provide translation services for me, I don't see where there's anything even the almighty Copyright could do to stop it.
It's on my list. I'm just waiting so she doesn't get weird ideas about brother/sister relationships....
Myself, I've used fansubbers in the past.
;) ) to read all the subtitles. Which was OK, but now that the series is coming out on DVD in the US with dubbing I don't have to be there every minute. So I'll start buying the whole series as it comes out so she can watch it without me.
My daughter (age 6) had what I call a "Disney princess image" issue. Thanks to the Disney cartoons, she let me know one day that "Princesses don't fight - they just wait for the prince to rescue them".
I didn't like that idea.
So I found other things for her to watch, like "Magic Knight Rayearth" (cute little girls fight with swords against monsters), "Kiki's Delivery Service", "Angelic Layer" (cute little girls with robot dolls that fight each other into submission), and so on.
One of those is a (formerly) fansubbed series called "Stellvia of the Universe", which features a girl attending school in a space station, dealing with the ins and outs of school life. Shima (the main character) is a geek girl, and my daughter and I got a kick out of her (mis) adventures.
The only problem was that Daddy had to be there since she's not a fast enough reader (hey, she's only six
But we've started on other fansub works, like the "Ah! My Goddess!" series now running in Japan. We sit together, I read the subtitles and do the voices for her, and she's started picking up a little Japanese. When the series reaches the US I'll still buy them.
At the same time, I respect the animation studios who might not want their work fansubbed. In those cases, I'd recommend the fansubbers could create external subtitle files (I believe these are idx files that work with VLC or MPlayer), and people could be encouraged to rip their own DVD's to AVI files with special instructions, like "Use Handbrake at X rate blah, blah, blah".
This way, animation studios could still sell DVD's, funsubbers and fans like myself could still get "previews" of a sort. It would be better if the studios would work with the fansubbers and sell the movies online for cheap (say, $3 an episode in a nice XVID format or some such, $1 to the fansubbers and $2 to the production company), since thanks to them I'm going to wind up spending about $150 in DVD's that I would not have otherwise.
Guess we'll wait and see what happens. I'm sure there are people out there who only watch the fansubs and never buy the DVD, but as the article mentions, there may be a few if the "middle area" (the ones people watch on fansubs but have no intention of buying ) animes that lose sales as a result. (Which is why I think the "buy fansubbed for $3" would be a better result for everyone involved.
I've hoped that someday we reform our "correctional institutions" (which are anything but) more like this:
(Note: first and second felonies assume proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt, ect, ect, ect.)
First felony offense:
5 years mandatory sentence
Job, skills, and educational training to prepare for the work force
Therapy (daily faded to weekly by the end of the sentence) to deal with issues and overcome whatever may have inspired the crime
Upon release, set up with a place to live, a job at a true "living wage" in a new town far from where any "original corruptive influences may reside" (ie: "The gang made me do it!" excuse will not work, since you will be removed from the gang/hood/whatever)
Checkups once a month for the next 5 years.
Mandatory for all felonies, "white collar", or otherwise. You rip of your stockholders, you get the same 5 years as a murderer.
2nd Felony Offense:
You are executed after being found guilty. There is no sentence plea, only "guilty or not guilty" appeals, and once those are exhausted, you are executed. If after 5 years of training, therapy, new job, practically new life, plus 5 years of checkups to get you help if you need it, you have proven you either can not or will not be taught.
For this system to work, however, we would need a better infrastructure of taking care of the homeless, the sick, the poor, hungry, orphans, and so on. If we fixed up these problems, we could implement a "get touch" prison policy the way conservatives dream of because the excuses of society would no apply.
Based on the last requirements, I predict this system will be in place by the year two thousand never.
If you do, send me a copy. (I wonder if I could write that up in Perl. Great - another project on my mind.)
All but the last 3 DVD's, though I know how it ends thanks to "friends" (spoiling bastards).
Sure, the series and the movie can be a mind scramble, but I *love* the music.
Just to let you know, I stared at your "100 duelests of Dios" for several minutes before I got it.
That's it. Nothing else to add.
I rather like how the instructions talk about how to run X11 remotely, and the first thing they do is tell how to do it over ssh, with simple, easy to understand directions on how to do it. That is how "how to" manuals should be written.
2 points to Apple for doing that, and making my coworkers jobs a little harder (they're penetration testers).
For SCO, this is both a good thing and a bad thing.
The good news is that maybe, perhaps, they'll be able to find something somewhere in a line of code and go "ah-ha! We've caught you!"
There's just one problem: if there was something to catch, SCO would have used it by now.
Is the code in Linux? So far, SCO's been unable to show any proof, and what "proof" they've tried to bring in (like "malloc.c" code) has been proven so wrong that they've given up trying to convince the public.
Is it in AIX (other than what IBM paid for)? Again, so far SCO's been unable to find anything to prove their case.
So I'd say that the odds of them finding something is pretty low. And even if they find a case of a programmer going "Hey, here's this code from AIX I can put into Linux", you'll see a note right afterwards saying "No, that's not our code - and now that you're tainted, you can't work on Linux." Or some other legal dealie that IBM's dreamed up. (My evidence? Remember: SCO has been unable to prove any of their code is in Linux without their consent, so evidently it never made it in.)
So what's the downside of this ruling? Basically, the Magistrate of this case (this judge, as Groklaw mentions, is not the ruling just, just a procedural judge or something like that) is giving SCO more rope to hang itself with. SCO has been saying "We could prove our case if only those nasty old lying IBM guys would give us what we want."
So now the Magistrate is saying "OK, I call your bluff. IBM, turn over the stuff and let's see what we find out."
If SCO can't find "evidence", then they're pretty much out of appeals (though I'm sure they'll think of something.) But even so, this is more money they're spending, and every day the case drags on without a hope of settlement is another day they pay their lawyers more. And sooner or later, Mr. Boies is going to have to start weighing the odds of paying for the case out of his own pocket versus the potential reward.
For now, I'll keep the SCO case far on my back burner. Come back in another six months or so before anything "interesting" happens.
Of course, this is just my opinion. I could be wrong.
Bittorrents don't upload copyrighted files - people do.