I haven't seen anything 'lite' about Dean. Whenever I actually look into his stance on an issue, I find that he's thought it through very carefully, and that he seems to be taking a principled stand -- while being open to discussion. He doesn't go for the simple answer -- he goes for one that makes sense to him, whether or not it looks good. It helps that I agree with many of his stances, once I understand them -- but it helps even more that I respect the way he thinks and speaks. That's one way that he comes in way beyond Bush in my book.
But the important thing is that his views usually make more sense once you look into them. For example, he's often labeled as 'pro-gun' -- because he thinks that Vermont, with roughly 3 murders a year, should have a different set of gun laws than New York. That's not entirely crazy, is it?
I've looked into a few other issues that you name:
"Pro-choice, but refuses to make Roe v. Wade a litmus test for federal judges."
I read that interview. Basically, he was saying that he would assess judges based on a wide array of issues, of which abortion was just one. Are you saying Dean is like Bush because he refuses to take a simplistic stance? Come on...
"Kyoto treaty Says we must "take another look," but has "concerns" about some provisions."
Specifically, that the treaty might go too easy on third-world pollution. Is that too soft on the environment for you?
"Patriot Act Would repeal "parts," but also wants to expand intelligence agencies; praises Russ Feingold as only Senator who opposed the act, ignoring Kucinich's vocal House opposition, falsely implying no other candidate opposed the Patriot Act"
It is unfortunate that the House Democrats are so underplayed in general -- but now are you saying Dean is like Bush because he's going to apply standards of constitutionality to the Patriot act?
"Medical marijuana Firmly opposed, although promises to abide by a proposed FDA evaluation."
So he's going to overcome his own prejudices, and apply the same standards of medicine to marijuana that are applied to other drugs. Shocked, shocked am I.
"Bush would be delighted to run against Dean who is simply a watered down version of Bush."
I simply don't buy that. Gore was watered down, the middle-of-the-road boring candidate. That seems to be what the Democratic Party wants again -- and I agree with you that such a candidate wouldn't stand a chance against Bush.
But Dean comes across as honest, intelligent, daring, and willing to take principled stands. He's neither boring nor, as you suggest, conservative. Although I think you've nailed the problem the democratic party faces, Dean is the solution and not the problem.
What's pseudo about Dean's support? He's already raised $9 million dollars, mostly from individual contributions on the internet. That sounds like a legitimate grassroots movement to me -- and one that's giving him a budget to let him compete just fine in other media.
As for being too early -- you're right that he'll never be able to compete dollar for dollar with Bush, who's already raised more money than all the Democrats combined. But if you were going up against a $200 million dollar ad campaign, don't you think you'd want to get started early, too?
Remember? We were told that Saddam would certainly hit us with all those WMDs as soon as we came too close to the capital. So we bombed his palaces, killed his family, forced him from power, ownzored his country, and there was never the slightest hint of a chemical or biological attack.
Some would say this is not surprising, since the only credible evidence we have comes from over 10 years ago, and the effective shelf life of those weapons is less than three years. But regardless -- if he had them, why didn't he use them?
The scenario that's being painted is, we put a gun to the insane dictator's head, he had weapons of massive destructive power, but instead of using them he let us destroy him. Something about that doesn't quite add up.
In all fairness, according to Scott Ritter (ex chief weapons inspector in Iraq): the Iranians were also killing Kurds with chemical weapons in that same confrontation, and (remember we were friends with Iraq back then), we knew about and condoned the use of those weapons before it happened.
Sure -- or if they played Pac Man a lot they would know how to run around mazes popping pills...
No, I recognize that there's a world of difference between games and real life. But aren't you curious about just what you *can* learn from a game like that? And wouldn't it be a trip if a group of Thai kids bought some of those Counterstrike weapons on the black market and tried out their skillz?
Note the absence of such phrases as "computer games cause violence" in my post:-)
This doesn't suprise me at all. When I was teaching in rural Thailand (though close enough to an urban center to have net cafes), I would go there every day to check my email. Usually, most of the computers would be taken up by kids I recognized from my (elementary level) classes. At that point, the really popular game was Counterstrike. It was a strange experience to be writing home while the sound of gunfire came at me from a dozen directions...
I have to admit wondering at the time what effect it would have for an entire nation to grow up playing a game like that. They would be well-versed in squad combat techniques, for a start...
I live in a world where one in six Americans steal music -- but apparently Apple users alone are willing to pay to download 500,000 tracks a week. I also live in a world where the recording industry routinely degrades the rule of law by successfully prosecuting against file indexing software or advocating legislation of vigilante justice. In this world, artists signed to major labels can sell a million records without making a dime, while artists with their own labels make a nice profit with one tenth the sales.
When you start using a simple definition of right and wrong, it almost seems like you're living somewhere else. I agree with your moral argument, but I'm just not sure it makes sense to apply it this way.
What would make more sense to me is to say, "I see that this consumer is willing to pay for something that they can get for free. I also see that they are not willing to pay for the product I currently offer. Perhaps I should provide the service they want." This abandons the level of morality, and lives pretty much in the practical -- but as far as I'm concerned, morality went out the window long ago.
Frankly, I didn't come out of AotC saying "that was a poor movie, because it had only average picture resolution." I came out saying, "that was a poor movie, because the acting, dialogue and plot were laughably bad. The effects were cool, though."
You know how many virgin 70mm screenings I attend each year? Roughly zero, because they're not available anywhere near me. When digital takes over, I'll still attend zero, because there'll still be none available near me. It's a niche market, and it will still exist, as a niche market, with digital. Meanwhile, though, the theaters I go to all the time will showing films that look just as good as they used to look, and which will only improve.
And you know what? I'll still judge those movies based on what they contain, not how they were shot.
Which is to say, it probly won't have any effect on the major studios, since the vast majority of their expenses aren't related to film. George Lucas might have saved a million bucks when he shot Attack of the Clones digitally, but at that point who cares?
However, digital processes open up a vast new potential for low-budget films. It will soon be possible to shoot a million dollar film for $100,000, a $100,000 film for $10,000, and a $10,000 for $1,000, with no loss in picture quality whatsoever. It is difficult to overstate the impact this will have. I might go so far as to say it will impact film in the same way that the printing press impacted the novel.
Seriously, this is exactly what Final Cut Pro needs. I was hoping it would be in 4... maybe next time.
I spent most of this spring editing a half-hour movie, with lots of nested-nested-nested composites and filters and such. I spent a lot of time in a computer lab watching one G4 tick away, while the other two next to me sat idle. Damn.
So what we really need for Final Cut Pro is a plugin that will package a single frame, with all its render settings, and send it to any other instances of FCP on the network to be rendered. There are a lot of people, including me, who would pay a lot of money for software like that...
I suspect that Final Cut's architecture simply doesn't allow a third party to do something like this. It's worth asking, though:-)
Sigh... yeah, I do tend to confuse my terms on this issue. I suspect the point still stands, though -- that the way this market works, radio play is only valuable to the record companies if it's controlled and concentrated on a few artists.
"Personally, I agree with your comment about radio stations -- and I think that most record companies probably do too. We would love to have more variety on the radio."
This, at least, is correct -- sort of. According to Salon.com, the various companies pay $150 million per year to radio stations, through independent promoters, to decide what will get played on the radio. They're deciding to go for the same 40 hits, over and over again -- that's the kind of decision you can buy for $150 million -- but they hate it.
Why? Because payola shouldn't cost that much. It used to cost way less, but with Clear Channel holding a monopoly, the price per song has gone way up. They're trapped. No one record company can afford to stop unless they all do -- and if they all agree on that, it's collusion.
This leads to an interesting irony. The RIAA, as of the time this article was written, was lobbying Congress to mandate that pay-for-play be stopped -- "please order us not to pay $150 million each year to have our songs played on the radio." They were simultaneously lobbying Congress to mandate fees for streaming radio stations -- "please make sure we get payed whenever we let someone play our songs on the radio."
To my mind, the difference is choice. They'll pay a lot to make sure everyone listens to the same music; they see no particular benefit in having lots of different music available. This also indicates to me that, whatever this spokesman thinks, the individual companies have no desire for more diversity on the radio. They just wish they didn't have to pay so much to prevent it.
For more info: http://archive.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/06/25/pf p_congress/ and other articles by that author.
I'm just saying, yes, as a matter of fact, people who share files are for the most part *paying* customers. The record industry is in the unusual position of trying to indimidate and prosecute the people who buy their products. Since all of those people own computers, we could even guess that they buy more than their share of CDs, though I don't have any evidence for this.
You'll notice, if you back off the italics for a second, that I haven't taken any sort of position at all on the legal and ethical questions. I'm just making an observation about the currrent situation.
Since you ask, my personal position is that file sharing when the artists don't want you to is in fact a violation of their rights. I'm an artist, and I think artists should have control of the way their creations are used. That being said, since I believe my use of filesharing encourages, rather than discourages, me from buying music, I do it anyway. I'm willing to sacrifice artists' theoretical rights for their bottom line and my own enjoyment.
Thanks for your interest in my views on this crucial matter of public policy.
Or do you think that 1/6th of Americans, every single one of which is wealthy enough to own a computer, never buys CDs? Please... this is their base of support they're calling criminals.
But then, the human won't be able to read the machine's cues either, so it's a fair fight as far as that goes. Unless we added some type of pulsing red light to show the machine's emotional state...
"I can't let you make that three-man push shot, Dave."
I know the editors throw in lots of spin, but I really don't think this counts. Where I come from, saying 'presentation slides' and saying 'powerpoint presentation' amounts to the same thing, since powerpoint owns so much of the market. If anything, this is pro-Microsoft spin -- it enforces the idea that Microsoft owns everything.
So, right, obviously no one's sitting down to relax in a PortaPotty... but there's a kind of interesting engineering problem here. How would you create a computer interface that didn't require physical contact -- since you obviously don't want your hands on the same keyboard as the last guy? Just to make it slightly more relavant, this could have application in hightech countries that have been hit by SARS, for example...
I'm thinking it would have to be like a touch-screen, but with some type of sensor that knows how far away your finger is from the screen. 1-2 inches away moves the mouse, 1 inches is a click. It would be mostly for navigating, since typing would be a pain, so you would have to have a portal-type system that would give access to most of the information anyone would want. Of course you could also put a touchscreen-type keyboard underneath -- it would just be a pain to gesture at those buttons one by one.
So now I kind of want one of these. Does anyone know what sort of sensor could do this?
You're right -- rap inspires emotion, and it has a primal appeal. Nice indictment.
That emotion -- and the appeal -- obviously escape you, which is fine. Rap is also a very experience-specific form, coming out of a particular place and time (NYC in the 70s, blah blah blah, I took the class). If you don't identify with that experience, you're probably among the massive group of people who, while providing most of the sales for rap, are simply not its target audience. Don't worry about figuring it out -- it's not really aimed at you -- but don't talk about it if you don't understand it.
As a side note, if you want to compare rap to rock, jazz and blues, one of the strongest similarities is that all of them were accused of being not particularly musical in their day.
See you in 2050.
would have sucked without special effects, though
on
Harry Potter with Guns
·
· Score: 1
Great special effects, sure, but the original SW films weren't great because of special effects.
That reminds me of a really funny story I read in, I think, a book called Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, which talked about making Star Wars. Apparently the special effects -- which cost amazingly much and were quite revolutionary at that time -- weren't ready in time to show the first cut of Episode 4, so all of the space combat shots were replaced by scenes of WW 2 dogfights. The movie looked like an absolute joke, and George had to fight just to get it finished.
My point is, one, don't discount the special effects, and two, if anyone has a copy of that dogfight version, I bet they could make a hundred million bucks with it today.
Slashdot Mirror
I haven't seen anything 'lite' about Dean. Whenever I actually look into his stance on an issue, I find that he's thought it through very carefully, and that he seems to be taking a principled stand -- while being open to discussion. He doesn't go for the simple answer -- he goes for one that makes sense to him, whether or not it looks good. It helps that I agree with many of his stances, once I understand them -- but it helps even more that I respect the way he thinks and speaks. That's one way that he comes in way beyond Bush in my book.
...
But the important thing is that his views usually make more sense once you look into them. For example, he's often labeled as 'pro-gun' -- because he thinks that Vermont, with roughly 3 murders a year, should have a different set of gun laws than New York. That's not entirely crazy, is it?
I've looked into a few other issues that you name:
"Pro-choice, but refuses to make Roe v. Wade a litmus test for federal judges."
I read that interview. Basically, he was saying that he would assess judges based on a wide array of issues, of which abortion was just one. Are you saying Dean is like Bush because he refuses to take a simplistic stance? Come on
"Kyoto treaty
Says we must "take another look," but has "concerns" about some provisions."
Specifically, that the treaty might go too easy on third-world pollution. Is that too soft on the environment for you?
"Patriot Act
Would repeal "parts," but also wants to expand intelligence agencies; praises Russ Feingold as only Senator who opposed the act, ignoring Kucinich's vocal House opposition, falsely implying no other candidate opposed the Patriot Act"
It is unfortunate that the House Democrats are so underplayed in general -- but now are you saying Dean is like Bush because he's going to apply standards of constitutionality to the Patriot act?
"Medical marijuana
Firmly opposed, although promises to abide by a proposed FDA evaluation."
So he's going to overcome his own prejudices, and apply the same standards of medicine to marijuana that are applied to other drugs. Shocked, shocked am I.
"Bush would be delighted to run against Dean who is simply a watered down version of Bush."
I simply don't buy that. Gore was watered down, the middle-of-the-road boring candidate. That seems to be what the Democratic Party wants again -- and I agree with you that such a candidate wouldn't stand a chance against Bush.
But Dean comes across as honest, intelligent, daring, and willing to take principled stands. He's neither boring nor, as you suggest, conservative. Although I think you've nailed the problem the democratic party faces, Dean is the solution and not the problem.
What's pseudo about Dean's support? He's already raised $9 million dollars, mostly from individual contributions on the internet. That sounds like a legitimate grassroots movement to me -- and one that's giving him a budget to let him compete just fine in other media.
As for being too early -- you're right that he'll never be able to compete dollar for dollar with Bush, who's already raised more money than all the Democrats combined. But if you were going up against a $200 million dollar ad campaign, don't you think you'd want to get started early, too?
Remember? We were told that Saddam would certainly hit us with all those WMDs as soon as we came too close to the capital. So we bombed his palaces, killed his family, forced him from power, ownzored his country, and there was never the slightest hint of a chemical or biological attack.
Some would say this is not surprising, since the only credible evidence we have comes from over 10 years ago, and the effective shelf life of those weapons is less than three years. But regardless -- if he had them, why didn't he use them?
The scenario that's being painted is, we put a gun to the insane dictator's head, he had weapons of massive destructive power, but instead of using them he let us destroy him. Something about that doesn't quite add up.
In all fairness, according to Scott Ritter (ex chief weapons inspector in Iraq): the Iranians were also killing Kurds with chemical weapons in that same confrontation, and (remember we were friends with Iraq back then), we knew about and condoned the use of those weapons before it happened.
So, evil, yes, but black and white, no.
Sure -- or if they played Pac Man a lot they would know how to run around mazes popping pills ...
:-)
No, I recognize that there's a world of difference between games and real life. But aren't you curious about just what you *can* learn from a game like that? And wouldn't it be a trip if a group of Thai kids bought some of those Counterstrike weapons on the black market and tried out their skillz?
Note the absence of such phrases as "computer games cause violence" in my post
This doesn't suprise me at all. When I was teaching in rural Thailand (though close enough to an urban center to have net cafes), I would go there every day to check my email. Usually, most of the computers would be taken up by kids I recognized from my (elementary level) classes. At that point, the really popular game was Counterstrike. It was a strange experience to be writing home while the sound of gunfire came at me from a dozen directions ...
...
I have to admit wondering at the time what effect it would have for an entire nation to grow up playing a game like that. They would be well-versed in squad combat techniques, for a start
One quick question: Hu's the party leader of China?
"It's as though he is sitting there beside you, casually instructing you as you move through the work."
...
That's gonna make it harder to code in the nude
is always more complicated than that, though.
I live in a world where one in six Americans steal music -- but apparently Apple users alone are willing to pay to download 500,000 tracks a week. I also live in a world where the recording industry routinely degrades the rule of law by successfully prosecuting against file indexing software or advocating legislation of vigilante justice. In this world, artists signed to major labels can sell a million records without making a dime, while artists with their own labels make a nice profit with one tenth the sales.
When you start using a simple definition of right and wrong, it almost seems like you're living somewhere else. I agree with your moral argument, but I'm just not sure it makes sense to apply it this way.
What would make more sense to me is to say, "I see that this consumer is willing to pay for something that they can get for free. I also see that they are not willing to pay for the product I currently offer. Perhaps I should provide the service they want." This abandons the level of morality, and lives pretty much in the practical -- but as far as I'm concerned, morality went out the window long ago.
Frankly, I didn't come out of AotC saying "that was a poor movie, because it had only average picture resolution." I came out saying, "that was a poor movie, because the acting, dialogue and plot were laughably bad. The effects were cool, though."
You know how many virgin 70mm screenings I attend each year? Roughly zero, because they're not available anywhere near me. When digital takes over, I'll still attend zero, because there'll still be none available near me. It's a niche market, and it will still exist, as a niche market, with digital. Meanwhile, though, the theaters I go to all the time will showing films that look just as good as they used to look, and which will only improve.
And you know what? I'll still judge those movies based on what they contain, not how they were shot.
Absolutely yes without question.
Which is to say, it probly won't have any effect on the major studios, since the vast majority of their expenses aren't related to film. George Lucas might have saved a million bucks when he shot Attack of the Clones digitally, but at that point who cares?
However, digital processes open up a vast new potential for low-budget films. It will soon be possible to shoot a million dollar film for $100,000, a $100,000 film for $10,000, and a $10,000 for $1,000, with no loss in picture quality whatsoever. It is difficult to overstate the impact this will have. I might go so far as to say it will impact film in the same way that the printing press impacted the novel.
Seriously, this is exactly what Final Cut Pro needs. I was hoping it would be in 4 ... maybe next time.
...
:-)
I spent most of this spring editing a half-hour movie, with lots of nested-nested-nested composites and filters and such. I spent a lot of time in a computer lab watching one G4 tick away, while the other two next to me sat idle. Damn.
So what we really need for Final Cut Pro is a plugin that will package a single frame, with all its render settings, and send it to any other instances of FCP on the network to be rendered. There are a lot of people, including me, who would pay a lot of money for software like that
I suspect that Final Cut's architecture simply doesn't allow a third party to do something like this. It's worth asking, though
Sigh ... yeah, I do tend to confuse my terms on this issue. I suspect the point still stands, though -- that the way this market works, radio play is only valuable to the record companies if it's controlled and concentrated on a few artists.
"Personally, I agree with your comment about radio stations -- and I think that most record companies probably do too. We would love to have more variety on the radio."
f p_congress/ and other articles by that author.
This, at least, is correct -- sort of. According to Salon.com, the various companies pay $150 million per year to radio stations, through independent promoters, to decide what will get played on the radio. They're deciding to go for the same 40 hits, over and over again -- that's the kind of decision you can buy for $150 million -- but they hate it.
Why? Because payola shouldn't cost that much. It used to cost way less, but with Clear Channel holding a monopoly, the price per song has gone way up. They're trapped. No one record company can afford to stop unless they all do -- and if they all agree on that, it's collusion.
This leads to an interesting irony. The RIAA, as of the time this article was written, was lobbying Congress to mandate that pay-for-play be stopped -- "please order us not to pay $150 million each year to have our songs played on the radio." They were simultaneously lobbying Congress to mandate fees for streaming radio stations -- "please make sure we get payed whenever we let someone play our songs on the radio."
To my mind, the difference is choice. They'll pay a lot to make sure everyone listens to the same music; they see no particular benefit in having lots of different music available. This also indicates to me that, whatever this spokesman thinks, the individual companies have no desire for more diversity on the radio. They just wish they didn't have to pay so much to prevent it.
For more info: http://archive.salon.com/ent/feature/2002/06/25/p
I'm just saying, yes, as a matter of fact, people who share files are for the most part *paying* customers. The record industry is in the unusual position of trying to indimidate and prosecute the people who buy their products. Since all of those people own computers, we could even guess that they buy more than their share of CDs, though I don't have any evidence for this.
You'll notice, if you back off the italics for a second, that I haven't taken any sort of position at all on the legal and ethical questions. I'm just making an observation about the currrent situation.
Since you ask, my personal position is that file sharing when the artists don't want you to is in fact a violation of their rights. I'm an artist, and I think artists should have control of the way their creations are used. That being said, since I believe my use of filesharing encourages, rather than discourages, me from buying music, I do it anyway. I'm willing to sacrifice artists' theoretical rights for their bottom line and my own enjoyment.
Thanks for your interest in my views on this crucial matter of public policy.
Or do you think that 1/6th of Americans, every single one of which is wealthy enough to own a computer, never buys CDs? Please ... this is their base of support they're calling criminals.
But then, the human won't be able to read the machine's cues either, so it's a fair fight as far as that goes. Unless we added some type of pulsing red light to show the machine's emotional state ...
"I can't let you make that three-man push shot, Dave."
Of course, in practice, the trick isn't getting Windows -- the trick is buying a PC *without* Windows.
:-)
Actually, as of very recently, mldonkey supports FastTrack! Which means now I can download all the Windows I want from my Mac.
Better get started on that
In order to *download* Windows, you have to have Kazaa.
Let's see ... fix the cable ... clean the pool ... constantly surrounded by naked women ... yep, sounds like they've been documenting my life all right.
Oops -- that sorority just ordered another pizza. BRB.
I know the editors throw in lots of spin, but I really don't think this counts. Where I come from, saying 'presentation slides' and saying 'powerpoint presentation' amounts to the same thing, since powerpoint owns so much of the market. If anything, this is pro-Microsoft spin -- it enforces the idea that Microsoft owns everything.
So, right, obviously no one's sitting down to relax in a PortaPotty ... but there's a kind of interesting engineering problem here. How would you create a computer interface that didn't require physical contact -- since you obviously don't want your hands on the same keyboard as the last guy? Just to make it slightly more relavant, this could have application in hightech countries that have been hit by SARS, for example ...
I'm thinking it would have to be like a touch-screen, but with some type of sensor that knows how far away your finger is from the screen. 1-2 inches away moves the mouse, 1 inches is a click. It would be mostly for navigating, since typing would be a pain, so you would have to have a portal-type system that would give access to most of the information anyone would want. Of course you could also put a touchscreen-type keyboard underneath -- it would just be a pain to gesture at those buttons one by one.
So now I kind of want one of these. Does anyone know what sort of sensor could do this?
You're right -- rap inspires emotion, and it has a primal appeal. Nice indictment.
That emotion -- and the appeal -- obviously escape you, which is fine. Rap is also a very experience-specific form, coming out of a particular place and time (NYC in the 70s, blah blah blah, I took the class). If you don't identify with that experience, you're probably among the massive group of people who, while providing most of the sales for rap, are simply not its target audience. Don't worry about figuring it out -- it's not really aimed at you -- but don't talk about it if you don't understand it.
As a side note, if you want to compare rap to rock, jazz and blues, one of the strongest similarities is that all of them were accused of being not particularly musical in their day.
See you in 2050.
Great special effects, sure, but the original SW films weren't great because of special effects.
That reminds me of a really funny story I read in, I think, a book called Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, which talked about making Star Wars. Apparently the special effects -- which cost amazingly much and were quite revolutionary at that time -- weren't ready in time to show the first cut of Episode 4, so all of the space combat shots were replaced by scenes of WW 2 dogfights. The movie looked like an absolute joke, and George had to fight just to get it finished.
My point is, one, don't discount the special effects, and two, if anyone has a copy of that dogfight version, I bet they could make a hundred million bucks with it today.
I understand they've been available for some time.