Re:Advertising gone too far
on
AI Movie Promo
·
· Score: 1
You're missing the point. A great movie without great advertising will be a great movie with no sales. When was the last time a movie came out of no-where, no advertising or word of mouth, and sold a billion dollars worth of tickets?
This came up a while back with the movie "Wild Wild West," which was supposedly just as good as Men in Black, but did poorly in the box office because it wasn't hyped at all.
The big hurdle in modelling the human brain is not processing power, it's writing the software. Unfortunately, scientists are having a tough time reverse-engineering the brain. Neurons are very complicated things, very analog and significantly unlike current microprocessors. It's not just a matter of throwing bits through few gates and bada-bing, bada-boom you've simulated uncle harry.
Do you honestly think consumers want old formats to be "updated" as often as possible so people with new computers have more trouble sending files to people with older computers?
Do you honestly think consumers want to pay for food? Do you honestly think consumers want stores to lock their doors at night?
Not really, but business have to protect their investments. Why does everyone want to make everything "free"? Stuff costs money. That's how the world works. If you copy an MP3 that you haven't bought, you are committing a crime.
Copy protection doesn't "suck" any more than steel grates over shop windows suck... they're there to prevent hooligans from stealing stuff they don't have a right to.
This is ridiculous. Input devices need to move towards the more natural: stylus on screen, voice commands, eyeball tracking... not the bizarre.
When do we ever use our heads for anything like this? It's completely unnatural. The mouse is bad enough. My neck gets tired just thinking about this possibility.
Hmm... Question: Is this common on linux? I.e. you install one app and it breaks another? Considering that doesn't really happen on Windows (well, besides the gradual registry/performance degredation) won't that be a problem in Linux gaining desktop share?
Or is that a design tradeoff: software compatibility for system cleanliness.
they put out the Palm m105, a model inferior to the Palm IIIxe, at a higher price
I'll agree with this. I have the Palm M100, which I chose over the Palm IIIe because of the newer software and the nice rounded shape.
I figured I have good eyes, the smaller screen doesn't matter. Unfortunately, whenever I see someone's non-m100 palm, I drool over the screen. So big. So much space.
For this reason, I can't recommend these small-screen models (m100 and I assume m105).
The warm early afternoon sun beats down on the dirt track, as skinny grayhounds (slashdot posters) wait behind electronic doors. The crowd (lurkers) speaks causally in a medium hush, hungry for a good race.
THEN IT STARTS! A shot goes off and the false plastic rabbit (Jon Katz) flies out of his box, blasting his way along the track of pro-microsoft flame-baitdom.
AND THEY'RE OFF! The gates spring open, and the slashdot posters dig in their feet, throwing dirt behind them, chasing after the elusive flaming rabbit. They snarl, their legs churn in programmed response to the decoy.
The crowd roars as the rabbit rounds the final bend and slips back into his hole, safe until the next race.
The dogs cross the finish line in a flash, trot back to their owners domain (work) and resume their normal, meaningless lives.
And the owners of the track (slashdot, any newspaper with an editorial page) pocket the days keep: attendance fees (page views) from the spectators come to watch the spectacle, and don't even give the bunny a carrot. He's not real anyhow.
That's the poorest hyperlinking I've ever seen. michael doesn't link "a good interview" to the interview, they link the acronym for K Desktop Environment (in parenthesis) and the version number. How much crack do you have to be smoking to think that makes sense?
I like free software. I get all my software for free. (CDs copied from the ol' employer)
If (and this is a big IF,) Microsoft were to make it so you really had to pay for every copy of their software out there, and there was no way around it....
... I'd switch to linux. And I'd start working on the software so it did what windows always has done for me.
But Microsoft wants my business (that is, the business I'll give them after I graduate) so I don't think this "problem" is going to be a problem in the end.
I don't know about the rest of you, but I've never seen anything like the demo on the website. I'm quite taken aback... here's a way to try out linux without leaving the security of internet explorer on my Windows 2000 machine. What a way to draw new users to linux:
"here, just visit this URL and see what linux can do for you."
Great idea. I'm a step closer to buckling down and installing linux on a partition.
Actually, my point is that a polygon with a sand texture wouldn't be good enough even if you were as far as a few feet away from the sand. Go to the beach on a sunny day, and look at the sand: When a grain of sand reflects the image of the sun into your eye, you see a bright flash somewhat larger than the grain of sand. Move you head a few inches to one side, and that grain goes dim and another flashes. To model this effect accurately, you would need to render all those surfaces to see which in each frame was reflecting the sun's image.
I imagine the effect is best when the sun is low in the sky but still bright.
Of course... you could approximate this with some sort of hack, but my point is that if you dither the geometry up to pixel-size (polygon reduction), the image might not come out the same as if you rendered all of the sub-pixel geometry and then dithered the image.
As another example, think of zooming from a leaf out to a bird's-eye view of a mountain range. How do you render that? Say there's ten million trees in view.... do you render them as spheres with texture maps? Where do the texture maps come from? Do you have texture maps for all those levels of resolution? And each tree has to be somewhat individual to get that "realistic" look. What happens when wind blows through the trees? Do you have individual textures and animations for all that too?
For certain scenes, it seems you *have* to render sub-pixel geometry to get photo-realism.
There's a bit from "Insider" at This Site. It explains how Haley Joel Osmond is starring in the movie, and offers a brief and slightly higher resolution clip from the teaser.
I sympathize with you 100%. I hate being forced to make flashy, slow, badly designed sites. Even if I recieve good design specs to work with, the design is mangled by the time the site goes up. Once I build the beta version, someone will inevitably say "why don't you add two more buttons here, and put this in there, and make this move, and..." So I incorporate the changes and tweak and redesign where I can, but then reason #1 (time) comes in and I no longer have time for a redesign, and....
You will want to know some basic CPU architecture information to get the most of this book
Can anyone recommend another book that would be a good bridge to this one (Understanding...Kernel) for someone who knows only basic high level programming but is interested in surveying the scene "down there"?
to get complete realism (i.e. indistinguishable from film of real live things) you need 2.4 billlion polygons/sec
I've given this some thought over the years, and I'm not sure "indistinguishable from reality" is going to be possible without a huge, HUGE amount of polygons.
Now, to render your office, or even a forest scene or a city scene, fine: take your 2.4 billion polygons and run. But let's try to render a beach scene. Each grain of sand has the capability of sparkling and making a pixel white... even ones quite far away. But different ones sparkle as the camera moves, so you have to render each one with reflectivity and all. Are you going to render all of those grains of sand out fifty yards away until they can no longer flash a pixel at 640x480?
Say there's 2500 grains of sand per square centimeter (50 on each edge) That's 25,000,000 grains of sand per square meter... even if you only have to render that detail out in a 5x5 meter area, we're talking 625,000,000 grains of sand on the surface... now let's model them realistically so when people walk on the sand it caves in just right... oh, and render some waves and sea grass in the background while you're at it?
The fuzz creates a cushion of air around the fibers, Soane says
So I guess not only will these garments be waterproof, but pretty buoyant as well. "Nano-fuzz" clothes might prove safer to wear on a boat. I remember using air-filled t-shirts and jeans as floatation devices in the Boy Scouts... a run-of-the-mill cotton t-shirt doesn't hold air very well.
There are many things you can call Microsoft: cocky, criminal, ruthless. But there are a few things Microsoft isn't: They're not stupid, and they're not a company that's going to release products that aren't attractive to conusumers. Yes, there will be Microsoft Bobs, but the fact is MS got where they are by offering people what they want, not by shoving things down people's throats.
Not that they haven't tried. They tried to shove IE and WindowsMedia down people's throats, but they didn't catch on until they were truly better than their competitors. Look at AOL IM, Quicken, and Apache. It's not like Microsoft isn't trying to compete with these pieces of software, and they still have their big ol' operating system to tie things to. But they're not gaining ground because their software can't really compete.
So accuse Microsoft of breaking the law, but Microsoft knows people won't buy something they don't want--they know that *very* well.
eh. I'm all for moving forward, but life is about enjoying yourself. You can bust your ass your whole life, but in the end the only thing that will be worthwhile is whether you were able to figure out the stuff that makes you happy.
And if you're happy when you're strung out, then go ahead, but not all of us are.
I probably read 5 to 20 articles on the web each day from commercial sources. $.20 a day adds up to less than $100 a year. The information I get from the web each year is worth that and then some. Heck. I'll spend $100 on a textbook that won't teach me much at all.
iEluc is right. People thought up this "money" thing for a reason: so that productive people can earn money doing what they like and what they're good at and then use that money to easily obtain many diverse resources. I want to earn my money building user interfaces, not reading ads.
Slashdot Mirror
You're missing the point. A great movie without great advertising will be a great movie with no sales. When was the last time a movie came out of no-where, no advertising or word of mouth, and sold a billion dollars worth of tickets?
This came up a while back with the movie "Wild Wild West," which was supposedly just as good as Men in Black, but did poorly in the box office because it wasn't hyped at all.
Dunno, I didn't see it.
-Erik
The big hurdle in modelling the human brain is not processing power, it's writing the software. Unfortunately, scientists are having a tough time reverse-engineering the brain. Neurons are very complicated things, very analog and significantly unlike current microprocessors. It's not just a matter of throwing bits through few gates and bada-bing, bada-boom you've simulated uncle harry.
-Erik
Do you honestly think consumers want old formats to be "updated" as often as possible so people with new computers have more trouble sending files to people with older computers?
Do you honestly think consumers want to pay for food? Do you honestly think consumers want stores to lock their doors at night?
Not really, but business have to protect their investments. Why does everyone want to make everything "free"? Stuff costs money. That's how the world works. If you copy an MP3 that you haven't bought, you are committing a crime.
Copy protection doesn't "suck" any more than steel grates over shop windows suck... they're there to prevent hooligans from stealing stuff they don't have a right to.
-Erik
I'd support federal funding for those tinfoil hats.
-Erik
No, it's only a divide by zero error if you are a computer (which I'm assuming you're not).
Those of us with human brains can reason that it's the empty set.
-Erik
The x is in style....
First it was i-everything (apple brought this back) then e-everything, and everything.com...
all that has fallen out of fashion. Now it's everything-x.
can't wait til we get desparate and start promoting u-business and wTools
-Erik
This is ridiculous. Input devices need to move towards the more natural: stylus on screen, voice commands, eyeball tracking... not the bizarre.
When do we ever use our heads for anything like this? It's completely unnatural. The mouse is bad enough. My neck gets tired just thinking about this possibility.
-Erik
Hmm... Question: Is this common on linux? I.e. you install one app and it breaks another? Considering that doesn't really happen on Windows (well, besides the gradual registry/performance degredation) won't that be a problem in Linux gaining desktop share?
Or is that a design tradeoff: software compatibility for system cleanliness.
Just wondering.
-Erik
they put out the Palm m105, a model inferior to the Palm IIIxe, at a higher price
I'll agree with this. I have the Palm M100, which I chose over the Palm IIIe because of the newer software and the nice rounded shape.
I figured I have good eyes, the smaller screen doesn't matter. Unfortunately, whenever I see someone's non-m100 palm, I drool over the screen. So big. So much space.
For this reason, I can't recommend these small-screen models (m100 and I assume m105).
-Erik
People keep arguing that Linux isn't difficult to install. She just didn't do enough research, or she's stupid.
Well, gee... if a stupid journalist can't get linux set up to do what she needs, how is joe six-pack going to?
-Erik
Only allow the Karma whores to moderate
I got my first moderation points with less than 10 karma points.
-Erik
The warm early afternoon sun beats down on the dirt track, as skinny grayhounds (slashdot posters) wait behind electronic doors. The crowd (lurkers) speaks causally in a medium hush, hungry for a good race.
THEN IT STARTS! A shot goes off and the false plastic rabbit (Jon Katz) flies out of his box, blasting his way along the track of pro-microsoft flame-baitdom.
AND THEY'RE OFF! The gates spring open, and the slashdot posters dig in their feet, throwing dirt behind them, chasing after the elusive flaming rabbit. They snarl, their legs churn in programmed response to the decoy.
The crowd roars as the rabbit rounds the final bend and slips back into his hole, safe until the next race.
The dogs cross the finish line in a flash, trot back to their owners domain (work) and resume their normal, meaningless lives.
And the owners of the track (slashdot, any newspaper with an editorial page) pocket the days keep: attendance fees (page views) from the spectators come to watch the spectacle, and don't even give the bunny a carrot. He's not real anyhow.
-Erik
That's the poorest hyperlinking I've ever seen. michael doesn't link "a good interview" to the interview, they link the acronym for K Desktop Environment (in parenthesis) and the version number. How much crack do you have to be smoking to think that makes sense?
Sheesh.
-Erik
I like free software. I get all my software for free. (CDs copied from the ol' employer)
If (and this is a big IF,) Microsoft were to make it so you really had to pay for every copy of their software out there, and there was no way around it....
... I'd switch to linux. And I'd start working on the software so it did what windows always has done for me.
But Microsoft wants my business (that is, the business I'll give them after I graduate) so I don't think this "problem" is going to be a problem in the end.
-Erik
I don't know about the rest of you, but I've never seen anything like the demo on the website. I'm quite taken aback... here's a way to try out linux without leaving the security of internet explorer on my Windows 2000 machine. What a way to draw new users to linux:
"here, just visit this URL and see what linux can do for you."
Great idea. I'm a step closer to buckling down and installing linux on a partition.
-Erik
Actually, my point is that a polygon with a sand texture wouldn't be good enough even if you were as far as a few feet away from the sand. Go to the beach on a sunny day, and look at the sand: When a grain of sand reflects the image of the sun into your eye, you see a bright flash somewhat larger than the grain of sand. Move you head a few inches to one side, and that grain goes dim and another flashes. To model this effect accurately, you would need to render all those surfaces to see which in each frame was reflecting the sun's image.
I imagine the effect is best when the sun is low in the sky but still bright.
Of course... you could approximate this with some sort of hack, but my point is that if you dither the geometry up to pixel-size (polygon reduction), the image might not come out the same as if you rendered all of the sub-pixel geometry and then dithered the image.
As another example, think of zooming from a leaf out to a bird's-eye view of a mountain range. How do you render that? Say there's ten million trees in view.... do you render them as spheres with texture maps? Where do the texture maps come from? Do you have texture maps for all those levels of resolution? And each tree has to be somewhat individual to get that "realistic" look. What happens when wind blows through the trees? Do you have individual textures and animations for all that too?
For certain scenes, it seems you *have* to render sub-pixel geometry to get photo-realism.
-Erik
There's a bit from "Insider" at This Site. It explains how Haley Joel Osmond is starring in the movie, and offers a brief and slightly higher resolution clip from the teaser.
-Erik
AMEN
I sympathize with you 100%. I hate being forced to make flashy, slow, badly designed sites. Even if I recieve good design specs to work with, the design is mangled by the time the site goes up. Once I build the beta version, someone will inevitably say "why don't you add two more buttons here, and put this in there, and make this move, and..." So I incorporate the changes and tweak and redesign where I can, but then reason #1 (time) comes in and I no longer have time for a redesign, and....
Well you know how it goes.
-Erik
You will want to know some basic CPU architecture information to get the most of this book
Can anyone recommend another book that would be a good bridge to this one (Understanding...Kernel) for someone who knows only basic high level programming but is interested in surveying the scene "down there"?
-Erik
to get complete realism (i.e. indistinguishable from film of real live things) you need 2.4 billlion polygons/sec
I've given this some thought over the years, and I'm not sure "indistinguishable from reality" is going to be possible without a huge, HUGE amount of polygons.
Now, to render your office, or even a forest scene or a city scene, fine: take your 2.4 billion polygons and run. But let's try to render a beach scene. Each grain of sand has the capability of sparkling and making a pixel white... even ones quite far away. But different ones sparkle as the camera moves, so you have to render each one with reflectivity and all. Are you going to render all of those grains of sand out fifty yards away until they can no longer flash a pixel at 640x480?
Say there's 2500 grains of sand per square centimeter (50 on each edge) That's 25,000,000 grains of sand per square meter... even if you only have to render that detail out in a 5x5 meter area, we're talking 625,000,000 grains of sand on the surface... now let's model them realistically so when people walk on the sand it caves in just right... oh, and render some waves and sea grass in the background while you're at it?
2.4 billion polygons, my bottom.
-Erik
The fuzz creates a cushion of air around the fibers, Soane says
So I guess not only will these garments be waterproof, but pretty buoyant as well. "Nano-fuzz" clothes might prove safer to wear on a boat. I remember using air-filled t-shirts and jeans as floatation devices in the Boy Scouts... a run-of-the-mill cotton t-shirt doesn't hold air very well.
-Erik
This post kind of makes me think.
Microsoft runs around shouting "hurrah, hurrah Windows Technologies blah, blah blah..."
And slashdot responds "Microsoft $ucks!"
And someone responds "I won't partake in this flamewar, stop mindlessly kissing linux ass. You suck!"
And someone else responds "I won't partake in this righteous, anti-bashing bashing! Linux really is phat! You suck!"
And in the end, no one really sucks. It's a paradox of suckage.
-Erik
There are many things you can call Microsoft: cocky, criminal, ruthless. But there are a few things Microsoft isn't: They're not stupid, and they're not a company that's going to release products that aren't attractive to conusumers. Yes, there will be Microsoft Bobs, but the fact is MS got where they are by offering people what they want, not by shoving things down people's throats.
Not that they haven't tried. They tried to shove IE and WindowsMedia down people's throats, but they didn't catch on until they were truly better than their competitors. Look at AOL IM, Quicken, and Apache. It's not like Microsoft isn't trying to compete with these pieces of software, and they still have their big ol' operating system to tie things to. But they're not gaining ground because their software can't really compete.
So accuse Microsoft of breaking the law, but Microsoft knows people won't buy something they don't want--they know that *very* well.
-Erik
eh. I'm all for moving forward, but life is about enjoying yourself. You can bust your ass your whole life, but in the end the only thing that will be worthwhile is whether you were able to figure out the stuff that makes you happy.
And if you're happy when you're strung out, then go ahead, but not all of us are.
-Erik
That sounds good to me.
I probably read 5 to 20 articles on the web each day from commercial sources. $.20 a day adds up to less than $100 a year. The information I get from the web each year is worth that and then some. Heck. I'll spend $100 on a textbook that won't teach me much at all.
iEluc is right. People thought up this "money" thing for a reason: so that productive people can earn money doing what they like and what they're good at and then use that money to easily obtain many diverse resources. I want to earn my money building user interfaces, not reading ads.
-Erik