This is what I get for learning due diligence from/.
Since the guy was the one who originally created the armor for the films, it all depends on what the original contract said. If it isnt specifically stated that Lucas owns the design of the whole thing, I think the guy does deserve a bit of the royalties, at least as far as they relate to the actual Stormtrooper armor.
That said, I'd be surprised if Lucas wasn't clever enough even then to write in bits of the contract that state that he owns the whole thing.
Mod me down if you think this is too far off topic, but does anyone else wonder how much Dawkins' popularity (as related by Davies) applies specifically to the Who audience and others like it?
I can't imagine the average person would get excited over the guy if he appeared on an episode of Friends or Deal or No Deal.
Luckily Mr. Dawkins seems to know his audience, and the Who fans' natural tendency towards the geekier, more analytical side of the human personality spectrum makes his appearance on the show a stroke of publicity genius.
Certainly, but the guy's attempt at countersuing is either designed to point out how idiotic the whole suit is or he's exactly as greedy as Lucas.
I've been trying to see things from his point of view, but no matter how hard I try, there's just no way to justify giving the guy any part of the merchandise profit from Star Wars just because he's created some replica armor.
It's akin to a fan fiction author suing for royalties on a series he feels he somehow made more popular by writing a vaguely related piece of literature.
Presumably Nintendo has been capitalizing on Sony's string of huge promises that never quite come to fruition, or are pruned back drastically when they eventually see release.
Sony's Home, the online performance of any of their games, the vibration features in their controllers, etc have all suffered from this issue and things like this push developers -- particularly smaller developers who don't have large corporate entities forcing them to release games on certain platforms -- away from creating games on a certain console.
Nintendo has had a lot of these same issues (most notably the Wii's online gaming system) but the sheer number of people who own the system currently and those who will own the system in the future combined with the eventual reality they'll face (that they can't play strictly Nintendo games forever) creates an extremely lucrative market for any developer who wants to create something without millions of dollars or a 4 year time frame and still make good money.
The only question now is whether or not Nintendo can match (or even approach) the convenience and usability of Microsoft's XBLA system. Microsoft has done a lot of things wrong, but Xbox Live is not one of them.
Sure, the US brass wouldn't ever send something like this to Iran, but what happens if they send it to a country who happens to be a good pal of ours, only to see the government fall to a bloody coup resulting in a new ruling party that's both anti-US and militant?
Radioactive materials remain potentially dangerous for a long time, and need I point out that countries who are our good pals now (Japan, Germany, Italy) wanted our head on a stick less than a century ago?
Without the ability to predict the future there's simply no one we could send this tech to with an absolute guarantee that it won't later be weaponized and turned against us, a group of innocent civilians or anyone else we might like.
I can't believe this plan actually made it to the "public knowledge" stage without some scientist somewhere saying that it was a really stupid idea.
Personally I'm just hoping Android will allow users to merge the innate genius and usability of the current iPhone with the freedom of OSS software creation. My only gripe about the iPhone is that the applications released for the thing are all under the totalitarian control of Apple (making my dreams of an easy to use SNES or NES emulator attached to my phone/music player/organizer/Internet appliance almost impossible).
Of course, if it also lives up to the expectations that the rest of Slashdot seems to have for the platform (heals the lame/blind, resurrects the dead, fellatio on demand, etc) that would be an excellent bonus.
This being/. I obviously didn't RTFA, but does anyone know how successful these experiments were?
I haven't seen any extremely oversized cows lusting after plankton recently, so I have to imagine the scientists in question didn't actually create the terrifying cow/whale chimeras that we're all imagining, right?
The offer is a clever move by EA, and if this particular offer isn't accepted, another one like it will be very soon.
As a company, Take Two is simply falling apart. They're being sued by shareholders for not accepting EA's original $2 billion buy out offer, the company is constantly under attack by politicans, parent's groups and religious leaders and aside from the temporary stock price hike attributed to EA's lust for the firm, the company's shareholders are jumping ship and dumping stock faster than you can say "GTA made me do it."
EA has foreseen the collapse of the Take Two and has decided it wants to salvage Grand Theft Auto -- not for any altruistic reason, but for the hundreds of millions of dollars each new game automatically earns. They may not be able to create an original football game, but EA certainly has the cash and the legal know-how to absorb Take Two.
Prediction: EA will own the firm by the release of GTA4.
NASA is offering a video, interactive guide and image gallery in advance of the event.
Well that's cool, but more importantly, will NASA be offering the same sort of media of the actual event?
I have to imagine those pictures would be much more interesting.
But you're forgetting the most important Blu-Ray player of all: the PlayStation 3.
I'm no PS3 zealot, but the system is not only the most popular BD player (by a huge margin), but it's also what the average person thinks of when they hear the word Blu-Ray. Sony's decision to pin the hopes of their new format on a game machine that just so happens to be very easily updated with whatever future tech Sony invents was a clever move by the firm, and it's going to continue to pay off, regardless of how inferior the other BD players might be.
To the average person, those other Blu-Ray players simply don't exist.
What ever happened to the ravages of online piracy?
Oh, those ravages are still there, but today the Hollywood spokespeople are interpreting the numbers to say they've made tons of cash. It's further proof that no matter what the actual situation is in Hollywood, they can claim any amount of piracy damage or massive profit that their agenda of the moment demands owing to their incredible ability to spin the true data.
A better question would be: how many people in Hollywood actually know the reality behind how well Hollywood is doing? I'm beginning to think the number is disturbingly low.
New information has just surfaced detailing donations paid by Kevmar to Kevmar under the idea that he would edit his previously scathing comment about himself and replace it with a glowing commentary about the impeccable quality of his character.
Update: 03/12 00:39 GMT by ecavalli: Kevmar spokesman Kevmar provided this official statement:
"Current allegations relating to Kevmar soliciting donations for Kevmar in order to protect or edit Kevmar's comments are completely false. Kevmar has never accepted nor solicited donations in order to protect or make edits to Kevmar comment. This is a practice Kevmar would never condone."
Fasten the tinfoil hats boys and girls. This one is gonna get messy.
Would anyone like to wager how long it will be before we see a headline announcing the mysterious disappearance of Wikileaks' founders, their families and pets and anyone they've ever spoken to?
If 7 dollars is too much for an unenhanced SNES game, what do you think a fair price is, 6 dollars? They can only go so low.
I think you're forgetting the fact that the games put out on the Virtual Console are all ROMs of titles released years and years ago. Nintendo can charge nothing for them if they want and still not lose money on them as they already paid for the games' development (and made profits) back in the day.
Certainly the titles licensed from people like SEGA and Hudson bring a certain amount of licensing costs that Nintendo's own games don't have, but even those titles are simply digital distributions of code that would otherwise just be lying around on a hard drive taking up space.
Financially there really is no bottom limit to how much Nintendo could charge, but based on the success of their current VC system, the prices they are currently charging are not too high for the majority of gamers despite the fact that these games can be acquired with little effort for free via piracy.
In short, don't expect Nintendo to NOT drop prices based on the idea that they can't profit with lower prices for these games, but at the same time, don't expect a price drop in general simply because people find their pricing quite reasonable.
Not to detract from the levity of this joke, but isn't it also entirely true?
I'd imagine that between the constant low-level hum of the background machinery and the omnipresent air purification systems on board any orbiting craft that flatulence would go almost entirely unnoticed, especially compared to here on Earth.
Anyone wanna point out some otherwise useless empirical data on the effect of farts on astronauts in orbit?
While your signature already indicates your bias, might I ask you if you had considered the idea that Americans are being shut out simply because they don't work as hard as some of these Chinese students?
Since your evidence is entirely anecdotal, allow me to give an anecdote of my own (ie: one that was not passed onto me by a friend): I finished college 2 years ago and during my 4 years there the Chinese, Japanese and Korean students (1st or 2nd generation) were the ones who were consistently at the top of their classes in fields like math, engineering, science, etc.
Why is that?
In my experience it's the direct result of them spending their free time studying these subjects while the typical American student is taking bong rips or having sex.
Americans value the college experience for its education and social worth (bong rips and sex) while people from Asian cultures value college solely as a learning experience. They aren't there to have fun.
(Yes, these are generalizations and are based on personally experienced anecdotes, but none of what I said here was any more biased than the parent.)
Certainly everyone is free to believe in whatever they want, but the flip side of that guaranteed freedom is that everyone is also free to criticize anyone else's beliefs, no matter how "sacred" they are considered to be.
Yeah, that's their modus operandi and that's why I think this Anonymous assault is so damn genius.
Normally these kids just grief people online and create a dull (if omnipresent and shockingly well-organized) nuisance, but now they have a cause with international media attention. You can bet they're going to be out in force about this.
With a group like Scientology who relies on strong-arm tactics and litigation, and a group like Anonymous who has absolutely no compunction about going to any length "for teh lulz" and is functionally a headless, shapeless mass of unknown size about to square off, I think the best thing for the rest of us to do is sit back and watch the fireworks.
At the very least, it should be a better example of the Internet's ability to organize and drive people than the current elections have been (Ron Paul who?).
And how would the courts rule if the unintended recipient claimed to have only read the first two paragraphs? That might be all they need to get the crucial info, but how could they be held to a contract they never actually saw?
IANAL, but I'm pretty sure that putting a notice at the bottom of a message creates a legally binding contract.
And while I'm sure most courts would agree with you, does that contract become void if sent to an incorrect party?
If a lawyer is upset at a ruling and leaks a confidential document to a newspaper intentionally, no amount of confidentiality disclaimers intended for the document's original target attached to the bottom of the document will stop the newspaper from running it.
I think the end point is that you can't force confidentiality on an unsuspecting party simply by sending them a piece of paper that says they are now legally bound, especially if you sent it unintentionally.
Maybe I'm doing the math wrong, but I've always been led to believe that 1600 pounds is a hell of a lot more than half a ton. In fact, it's 60% more than half.
Anyone wanna tell me what I'm missing in that summary?
Slashdot Mirror
How do you teach safety lessons -- or even design a curriculum -- on a product that is, by its very nature, constantly changing?
Even if they create lessons in the most broad strokes imaginable, the entire thing will be outdated in 5 years at the most.
Can anyone please explain how this plan is supposed to work?
Sigh.
/.
This is what I get for learning due diligence from
Since the guy was the one who originally created the armor for the films, it all depends on what the original contract said. If it isnt specifically stated that Lucas owns the design of the whole thing, I think the guy does deserve a bit of the royalties, at least as far as they relate to the actual Stormtrooper armor.
That said, I'd be surprised if Lucas wasn't clever enough even then to write in bits of the contract that state that he owns the whole thing.
I'd be shocked if this actually goes anywhere.
Mod me down if you think this is too far off topic, but does anyone else wonder how much Dawkins' popularity (as related by Davies) applies specifically to the Who audience and others like it?
I can't imagine the average person would get excited over the guy if he appeared on an episode of Friends or Deal or No Deal.
Luckily Mr. Dawkins seems to know his audience, and the Who fans' natural tendency towards the geekier, more analytical side of the human personality spectrum makes his appearance on the show a stroke of publicity genius.
Certainly, but the guy's attempt at countersuing is either designed to point out how idiotic the whole suit is or he's exactly as greedy as Lucas.
I've been trying to see things from his point of view, but no matter how hard I try, there's just no way to justify giving the guy any part of the merchandise profit from Star Wars just because he's created some replica armor.
It's akin to a fan fiction author suing for royalties on a series he feels he somehow made more popular by writing a vaguely related piece of literature.
Presumably Nintendo has been capitalizing on Sony's string of huge promises that never quite come to fruition, or are pruned back drastically when they eventually see release.
Sony's Home, the online performance of any of their games, the vibration features in their controllers, etc have all suffered from this issue and things like this push developers -- particularly smaller developers who don't have large corporate entities forcing them to release games on certain platforms -- away from creating games on a certain console.
Nintendo has had a lot of these same issues (most notably the Wii's online gaming system) but the sheer number of people who own the system currently and those who will own the system in the future combined with the eventual reality they'll face (that they can't play strictly Nintendo games forever) creates an extremely lucrative market for any developer who wants to create something without millions of dollars or a 4 year time frame and still make good money.
The only question now is whether or not Nintendo can match (or even approach) the convenience and usability of Microsoft's XBLA system. Microsoft has done a lot of things wrong, but Xbox Live is not one of them.
Sure, the US brass wouldn't ever send something like this to Iran, but what happens if they send it to a country who happens to be a good pal of ours, only to see the government fall to a bloody coup resulting in a new ruling party that's both anti-US and militant?
Radioactive materials remain potentially dangerous for a long time, and need I point out that countries who are our good pals now (Japan, Germany, Italy) wanted our head on a stick less than a century ago?
Without the ability to predict the future there's simply no one we could send this tech to with an absolute guarantee that it won't later be weaponized and turned against us, a group of innocent civilians or anyone else we might like.
I can't believe this plan actually made it to the "public knowledge" stage without some scientist somewhere saying that it was a really stupid idea.
Personally I'm just hoping Android will allow users to merge the innate genius and usability of the current iPhone with the freedom of OSS software creation. My only gripe about the iPhone is that the applications released for the thing are all under the totalitarian control of Apple (making my dreams of an easy to use SNES or NES emulator attached to my phone/music player/organizer/Internet appliance almost impossible).
Of course, if it also lives up to the expectations that the rest of Slashdot seems to have for the platform (heals the lame/blind, resurrects the dead, fellatio on demand, etc) that would be an excellent bonus.
This being /. I obviously didn't RTFA, but does anyone know how successful these experiments were?
I haven't seen any extremely oversized cows lusting after plankton recently, so I have to imagine the scientists in question didn't actually create the terrifying cow/whale chimeras that we're all imagining, right?
The offer is a clever move by EA, and if this particular offer isn't accepted, another one like it will be very soon.
As a company, Take Two is simply falling apart. They're being sued by shareholders for not accepting EA's original $2 billion buy out offer, the company is constantly under attack by politicans, parent's groups and religious leaders and aside from the temporary stock price hike attributed to EA's lust for the firm, the company's shareholders are jumping ship and dumping stock faster than you can say "GTA made me do it."
EA has foreseen the collapse of the Take Two and has decided it wants to salvage Grand Theft Auto -- not for any altruistic reason, but for the hundreds of millions of dollars each new game automatically earns. They may not be able to create an original football game, but EA certainly has the cash and the legal know-how to absorb Take Two.
Prediction: EA will own the firm by the release of GTA4.
Well that's cool, but more importantly, will NASA be offering the same sort of media of the actual event?
I have to imagine those pictures would be much more interesting.
But you're forgetting the most important Blu-Ray player of all: the PlayStation 3.
I'm no PS3 zealot, but the system is not only the most popular BD player (by a huge margin), but it's also what the average person thinks of when they hear the word Blu-Ray. Sony's decision to pin the hopes of their new format on a game machine that just so happens to be very easily updated with whatever future tech Sony invents was a clever move by the firm, and it's going to continue to pay off, regardless of how inferior the other BD players might be.
To the average person, those other Blu-Ray players simply don't exist.
Oh, those ravages are still there, but today the Hollywood spokespeople are interpreting the numbers to say they've made tons of cash. It's further proof that no matter what the actual situation is in Hollywood, they can claim any amount of piracy damage or massive profit that their agenda of the moment demands owing to their incredible ability to spin the true data.
A better question would be: how many people in Hollywood actually know the reality behind how well Hollywood is doing? I'm beginning to think the number is disturbingly low.
Xenu, I believe.
Update: 03/12 00:39 GMT by ecavalli
"Current allegations relating to Kevmar soliciting donations for Kevmar in order to protect or edit Kevmar's comments are completely false. Kevmar has never accepted nor solicited donations in order to protect or make edits to Kevmar comment. This is a practice Kevmar would never condone."
Fasten the tinfoil hats boys and girls. This one is gonna get messy.
Would anyone like to wager how long it will be before we see a headline announcing the mysterious disappearance of Wikileaks' founders, their families and pets and anyone they've ever spoken to?
From the twatter.com homepage:
A global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: Who are you doing?
I think you're forgetting the fact that the games put out on the Virtual Console are all ROMs of titles released years and years ago. Nintendo can charge nothing for them if they want and still not lose money on them as they already paid for the games' development (and made profits) back in the day.
Certainly the titles licensed from people like SEGA and Hudson bring a certain amount of licensing costs that Nintendo's own games don't have, but even those titles are simply digital distributions of code that would otherwise just be lying around on a hard drive taking up space.
Financially there really is no bottom limit to how much Nintendo could charge, but based on the success of their current VC system, the prices they are currently charging are not too high for the majority of gamers despite the fact that these games can be acquired with little effort for free via piracy.
In short, don't expect Nintendo to NOT drop prices based on the idea that they can't profit with lower prices for these games, but at the same time, don't expect a price drop in general simply because people find their pricing quite reasonable.
Not to detract from the levity of this joke, but isn't it also entirely true?
I'd imagine that between the constant low-level hum of the background machinery and the omnipresent air purification systems on board any orbiting craft that flatulence would go almost entirely unnoticed, especially compared to here on Earth.
Anyone wanna point out some otherwise useless empirical data on the effect of farts on astronauts in orbit?
While your signature already indicates your bias, might I ask you if you had considered the idea that Americans are being shut out simply because they don't work as hard as some of these Chinese students?
Since your evidence is entirely anecdotal, allow me to give an anecdote of my own (ie: one that was not passed onto me by a friend): I finished college 2 years ago and during my 4 years there the Chinese, Japanese and Korean students (1st or 2nd generation) were the ones who were consistently at the top of their classes in fields like math, engineering, science, etc.
Why is that?
In my experience it's the direct result of them spending their free time studying these subjects while the typical American student is taking bong rips or having sex.
Americans value the college experience for its education and social worth (bong rips and sex) while people from Asian cultures value college solely as a learning experience. They aren't there to have fun.
(Yes, these are generalizations and are based on personally experienced anecdotes, but none of what I said here was any more biased than the parent.)
Certainly everyone is free to believe in whatever they want, but the flip side of that guaranteed freedom is that everyone is also free to criticize anyone else's beliefs, no matter how "sacred" they are considered to be.
Yeah, that's their modus operandi and that's why I think this Anonymous assault is so damn genius.
Normally these kids just grief people online and create a dull (if omnipresent and shockingly well-organized) nuisance, but now they have a cause with international media attention. You can bet they're going to be out in force about this.
With a group like Scientology who relies on strong-arm tactics and litigation, and a group like Anonymous who has absolutely no compunction about going to any length "for teh lulz" and is functionally a headless, shapeless mass of unknown size about to square off, I think the best thing for the rest of us to do is sit back and watch the fireworks.
At the very least, it should be a better example of the Internet's ability to organize and drive people than the current elections have been (Ron Paul who?).
Quite so.
And how would the courts rule if the unintended recipient claimed to have only read the first two paragraphs? That might be all they need to get the crucial info, but how could they be held to a contract they never actually saw?
And while I'm sure most courts would agree with you, does that contract become void if sent to an incorrect party?
If a lawyer is upset at a ruling and leaks a confidential document to a newspaper intentionally, no amount of confidentiality disclaimers intended for the document's original target attached to the bottom of the document will stop the newspaper from running it.
I think the end point is that you can't force confidentiality on an unsuspecting party simply by sending them a piece of paper that says they are now legally bound, especially if you sent it unintentionally.
Maybe I'm doing the math wrong, but I've always been led to believe that 1600 pounds is a hell of a lot more than half a ton. In fact, it's 60% more than half.
Anyone wanna tell me what I'm missing in that summary?
As an aside it seems that the art is handled by Udon Entertainment, a company responsible for many comics based on Capcom videogame licenses as well as the art for the upcoming downloadable remake of Super Street Fighter II Turbo.
It's a bizarre venture by Microsoft, to be sure, but at least they hired some real pros to handle the whole thing.