However, the fact remains that the thing being patented is NOT "online greeting cards" so "prior art" by Blue Mountain et. al. is not at all pertinent, despite dozens of posts saying contrariwise. I *did* read the press release from Tumbleweed, which doesn't say a damn thing about having patented online greeting cards.
The key part here is that Tumbleweed is in the business of providing SECURE "content management systems", not bloody greeting cards. Hallmark wants their greeting cards (unlike those of Blue Mountain et. al.) to be SECURE. So they licensed a particular technology which claims to do that, and which happens to have a patent.
Now that you've thrown your reflexive anti-patent knee out of joint, try getting upset about something important for a change.
The flash and hamsters your mom is sending you aren't an e-card.
Basically I go to a website, pick out a graphic, put a custom message with it somehow, and have an email sent to my friend who clicks on a link to see what graphic and what my specific message was.
Why this merits a patent is a complete fscking mystery.
So that when you come to the US you can be arrested by the Feds, held for a while, and then released. Good plan if you never want to visit the States....
If a person makes it to college and they are -still- a social misfit, then I don't think college is going to do them any good. By that time your degree of social interaction is pretty much set.
I couldn't disagree more. I was a complete social misfit when I started college (ok, I guess I had learned by the start of my senior year that some things needed changing, but I hadn't figured out what nor how by the time I started college). The experience of working my way through college, especially the part where I had to become a co-op student to afford it and all the things I learned in that arena, was what made me as socially fit as I am. Which is not to say I'm Mr. Sociability, but I'm a damn sight more pleasant to be around than when I was fresh out of high school.
Of course, that's probably completely irrelevant to the person asking the question, since it sounds like they've had enough world experience in non-college settings to either have "gotten it" or not by now, and be pretty fixed in their ways.
This is like the argument about why Sun has so darn many patches for our OS. It's arguable, but my stance, that it's because we actually track and fix a lot more problems with our OS in a much more public way than the other commercial Unix vendors. I'm sure that the same is true to some extent of Linux vs. Windows.
That's nice of you, but the rest of us have seen him in only two major roles, either one of which would be very jarring in comparison to him as Elrond.
I mean, can you imagine Elrond with a big Ostrich hat???
A friend of mine who only just read the first book of the Trilogy said that the book was disappointing to him, because it spends so much time getting only a little ways, with so much slow exposition along the way (I'm paraphrasing, so don't blame him:-). But he really dug the movie--it makes the pace more apparent.
Personally, I felt it suffered from Potter's syndrome (I know the story line too well to be surprised; I would have found the scene with Galadriel really much more intense if I hadn't known the outcome, for one example), but aside from that it met my every expectation. I was really impressed with how true to the plot they were able to be within the limits of 3 hours of film.
But in the end, the movie will make it or not in the box office based more on the non-fans reactions than the fans. Here's looking forward to next Christmas.
I can guarantee you that when Joe Sixpack tries to play his new CD on his DVD player (which he used to replace that outdated CD player a while back) and it doesn't work, he's gonna be pissed, and gonna be returning that crap back to Best Buy en masse. If he read the label first, he'll be bugging the stores for CDs that WILL work in his DVD player.
This will cease being a political issue and start being a consumer issue real damn fast.
Abso-freaking-lutely. I replaced my CD player with a 3 disc DVD player just over a year ago. If I can't play new CDs on my DVD player, then I won't buy new CDs. Tough nugies, boys. You want to shut down those of us who do buy your product by making it as inconvenient as possible, we'll go buy other product or switch over to full time downloading for music.
There were some previous Slashdot articles (which I'm too lazy to go look up) about Roger Zelazny and a few of his novels based on hinduism, theories of egyptian theology, etc. They are more hard sf explanations of the myths (kind of like Stargate in a way), but they're great novels, and they do have a little bit to say about the traditions he mines. One of them is _Creatures of Light and Darkness_, another is _Lord of Light_. I suspect a search in slashdot for either of those would bring up the previous discussions.
Perhaps I shouldn't have have left out the part where I was meaning "suspect as a reviewer...I'd trust the judgement of." In other words, his sense of humor appeared to be way the hell off in some land I can't comprehend, which means I wouldn't pay any more attention to his review of "JATM" as I will of Katz's review.
The good news is that the guy I replied to understood me better than you did, and did a creditable job of defending why I shouldn't just dismiss him out of hand.
I was tempted to moderate you up, but I'd rather respond instead.
I can't understand how anyone could have found Scary Movie funny in any way. Perhaps it would be informative if we had a Katz review of that too, to compare and contrast. The fact that you found Scary Movie in any way funny makes you very suspect as a reviewer. What the hell is funny about word-for-word citation of the script for Scream with slightly different footage? I liked American Pie with all its sex jokes, but I could not find it in myself to laugh at the 3rd blowjob joke in 5 minutes in Scary Movie--and proceed to have the pace of blowjob jokes continue at that rate through the entire third I was able to make myself watch.
So tell me who I should believe, and more importantly, why I should believe them?
I forgot to mention that all my hardware that I'm running Half Life on is probably well under $1000; the system was $375 for a 500MHz PIII, I upgraded the sound and video for another $200 maybe.....
"Far more sensetive than anything that exists today"? According to the article, the researchers claim that there are "no technological hurdles". Which is right?
Slashdot Mirror
However, the fact remains that the thing being patented is NOT "online greeting cards" so "prior art" by Blue Mountain et. al. is not at all pertinent, despite dozens of posts saying contrariwise. I *did* read the press release from Tumbleweed, which doesn't say a damn thing about having patented online greeting cards.
Now that you've thrown your reflexive anti-patent knee out of joint, try getting upset about something important for a change.
The flash and hamsters your mom is sending you aren't an e-card.
Basically I go to a website, pick out a graphic, put a custom message with it somehow, and have an email sent to my friend who clicks on a link to see what graphic and what my specific message was.
Why this merits a patent is a complete fscking mystery.
So that when you come to the US you can be arrested by the Feds, held for a while, and then released. Good plan if you never want to visit the States....
I couldn't disagree more. I was a complete social misfit when I started college (ok, I guess I had learned by the start of my senior year that some things needed changing, but I hadn't figured out what nor how by the time I started college). The experience of working my way through college, especially the part where I had to become a co-op student to afford it and all the things I learned in that arena, was what made me as socially fit as I am. Which is not to say I'm Mr. Sociability, but I'm a damn sight more pleasant to be around than when I was fresh out of high school.
Of course, that's probably completely irrelevant to the person asking the question, since it sounds like they've had enough world experience in non-college settings to either have "gotten it" or not by now, and be pretty fixed in their ways.
I'd rather have a superMODEL in every garage.
This is like the argument about why Sun has so darn many patches for our OS. It's arguable, but my stance, that it's because we actually track and fix a lot more problems with our OS in a much more public way than the other commercial Unix vendors. I'm sure that the same is true to some extent of Linux vs. Windows.
I mean, can you imagine Elrond with a big Ostrich hat???
Aran-dir is literally "king man", but could be a variation on Aran-tir or "right king".
Except that he's typecast in my mind as a drag queen from Priscilla, which made me giggle even more than the echoes of the Matrix in my head.
Personally, I felt it suffered from Potter's syndrome (I know the story line too well to be surprised; I would have found the scene with Galadriel really much more intense if I hadn't known the outcome, for one example), but aside from that it met my every expectation. I was really impressed with how true to the plot they were able to be within the limits of 3 hours of film.
But in the end, the movie will make it or not in the box office based more on the non-fans reactions than the fans. Here's looking forward to next Christmas.
This will cease being a political issue and start being a consumer issue real damn fast.
Abso-freaking-lutely. I replaced my CD player with a 3 disc DVD player just over a year ago. If I can't play new CDs on my DVD player, then I won't buy new CDs. Tough nugies, boys. You want to shut down those of us who do buy your product by making it as inconvenient as possible, we'll go buy other product or switch over to full time downloading for music.
someone pls mod this up!
The good news is that Tolkien is graceful about his use of Christian sources, as opposed to CS Lewis who is about as hamfisted as you can be.
There were some previous Slashdot articles (which I'm too lazy to go look up) about Roger Zelazny and a few of his novels based on hinduism, theories of egyptian theology, etc. They are more hard sf explanations of the myths (kind of like Stargate in a way), but they're great novels, and they do have a little bit to say about the traditions he mines. One of them is _Creatures of Light and Darkness_, another is _Lord of Light_. I suspect a search in slashdot for either of those would bring up the previous discussions.
He said "favorite", not "best", fool.
The good news is that the guy I replied to understood me better than you did, and did a creditable job of defending why I shouldn't just dismiss him out of hand.
I can't understand how anyone could have found Scary Movie funny in any way. Perhaps it would be informative if we had a Katz review of that too, to compare and contrast. The fact that you found Scary Movie in any way funny makes you very suspect as a reviewer. What the hell is funny about word-for-word citation of the script for Scream with slightly different footage? I liked American Pie with all its sex jokes, but I could not find it in myself to laugh at the 3rd blowjob joke in 5 minutes in Scary Movie--and proceed to have the pace of blowjob jokes continue at that rate through the entire third I was able to make myself watch.
So tell me who I should believe, and more importantly, why I should believe them?
Irresponsible perhaps to say the dreaded "Atlantis" word. Uh. Oops.
I didn't say the two were equivalent qualitatively :-).
I forgot to mention that all my hardware that I'm running Half Life on is probably well under $1000; the system was $375 for a 500MHz PIII, I upgraded the sound and video for another $200 maybe.....
I paid $50 for my copy of half-life, and I've been playing it for almost 3 years now. Tell me again how that compares to the cost per minute of LSD?
But we're not looking at the photons in the box, we're looking at quantum entangled photons that never were in the box.
"Far more sensetive than anything that exists today"? According to the article, the researchers claim that there are "no technological hurdles". Which is right?