...and trying to make a device for playing content at the same time in this day and age is that you're always at odds with yourself. Your right hand is dueling with your left hand; the content division won't let the hardware division make something that could aid in (gasp, shudder) copyright infringement, so of necessity whatever you come out with is going to be a compromise.
Not just in music, either. Let's not forget the Librié ebook device and its fabulous expiring bookware...
The more I hear about stuff like this, the more it occurs to me that Sony's just no longer relevant in the personal audio world.
Of course...on the other hand, come to think of it, the company that is the most relevant in the personal audio world these days doesn't make it easy for you to transfer your music back off of their pocket music device, either.
...is that the retraction (in the/. blurb) had to be added as an edit.
I mean, isn't the 20-minute "email us if you see something wrong with this story" subscriber preview period supposed to catch exactly this kind of thing?
Well, that's pretty much the death knell for meetup. The organizer of one of the local meetup groups just stepped down, not caring to pay $19 a month (or even $9 a month, the "special discount rate" they're offering). And if nobody steps forward to organize a meetup group, "this Meetup Group will be frozen and eventually disbanded."
It was kind of neat while it lasted, but given that most of the meetups I've tried to visit in my area never really came together for free, I don't think too many people outside of big cities are going to be willing to pay for it. (And I don't even know how many of those will be. Historically, once-free sites suddenly starting to charge big bucks for their content don't tend to do so well.)
I can understand the need to make money to keep the site alive, the dot-com era being far behind us and all. Still, it's sad to see this service jumping the shark this way. I wonder if it'll still be around a year from now.
Re:At least etree is still out there
on
EZTree Shuts Down
·
· Score: 1
I can sympathize with that. After I get such shows downloaded, I often cook them down to MP3 or AAC myself. On the other hand, this lets audiophiles burn top-quality CDs with no loss of quality due to encoding, and I can see how that would be important to them.
You could always try letting the download run overnight or while you're at work or something and not using your computer anyway...
I don't know if the concerts EZtree were swapping were from okay-to-boot bands or not...but I will note that Archive.org, in conjunction with etree.org, are still making available literally thousands of live concert recordingsin lossless formatsfrom bands that allow concert taping and trading. If you take a look at their collection, you might just be surprised by some of the bands there. Gin Blossom, Guster, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Rusted Root, Butthole Surfers, Cowboy Junkies, etc. etc.
I'd just like to plug a favorite band of mine, the Ozark bluegrass band Big Smith, to whose members I am distantly related (and with whose family mine used to have a blood feud going about 80 years or so back). If you're not into bluegrass/folk/gospel, then you're not into it...but if you are, check 'em out.
...over on alt.toys.transformers and rec.toys.transformers.moderated (which I co-moderate) they've known for a long time this was in the offing. As you might expect, fans are split in regards to their responses. Some of them are rather upset given that there will be no size-change transformations, so Megatron and Soundwave (if they're in it) won't resemble their G1 selves very much at all.
They were already waiting in line for the sequel to two rather lackluster movies. I'd almost say that that standing in line at the wrong theater pales by comparison to standing in line for the wrong movie.
Almost, because God help me, I'm looking forward to this one too.
It gets more complicated than that. Back in the Hartnell era, they hadn't yet come up with the whole Gallifreyan mythology; Hartnell's Doctor was just an ordinary human with an background that was never filled in. Had a granddaughter (Susan) and everything. The Gallifreyan mythology only came about because Hartnell's declining health wasn't going to let him participate in the series any further but the series was so popular that the Beeb didn't want to let it end. So they came up with the idea of "regeneration" to explain how the character could remain the same even as the actor changed drasticly.
(Other franchises didn't bother to try to come up with such an explanation for changing actors. But I still maintain that both James Bond and Ernst Stavro Blofeld are Time Lords...Blofeld just regenerated more often. It would explain how neither of them recognized each other in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, despite having already met in prior movies...)
So the movies were made based on the idea of a human Doctor (who was referred to as "Doctor Who" in the movies, though never in the TV series); Hartnell wasn't available for the movies for reasons I forget but could probably be looked up on the Internet. They were essentially higher-budget (though not too much higher) remakes of popular episodes of the Hartnell series to capitalize on the insane, faddish popularity of the TV show (and Daleks) around that time (and also to show the Daleks, TARDIS, FX, etc. in color for the very first time since the Dr. Who TV series was in black and white). They expanded upon the background a little, given the bigger format; however, they expanded in ways that were very different from the expansions that ended up becoming canon.
I'm not planning on switching per se...but I'm planning on getting a Mac Mini (when I get enough referrals) to complete the unholy trinity of Linux box, Windows box, Mac box in my apartment. But then, I've always been platform agnostic.
...but in some places, you don't even have to sign for the purchase at all. Some fast food places, like Braum's, won't make you sign unless the purchase is over $20. Some automated card acceptors, like the ones at Sonic drive-throughs or the automatic checkout machines at Dillons, don't require a signature either. (Others, like Kmart's auto-checkouts, do require a signature on an electronic pad.)
When I worked at Kmart, we were told to check the signatures, and sometimes we were mystery-shopped to make sure that we did. And whenever a card wasn't signed, we were to ask for another form of ID. I saw a lot of people who either didn't sign their cards or who wrote "See ID" instead.
Technically, you're not supposed to accept cards with no signature, even if they write "see ID"...but you're not supposed to insist on a minimum charge for credit card transactions either, but a lot of people do both.
I'm similarly amazed at the moderation on my post. I've never been downmodded for my signature (that I know of) on any of the other stories to which I've posted stuff, and in fact have had a lot of comments upmodded--and I've had my conga line link in my sig for months and months now.
I suppose the last laugh is mine, though; since this afternoon I've already gotten one more completed referral and several more potentials for my free Mac Mini. I may be getting it sooner than I'd thought.:)
With Gratis, you just have to do a trial offer and get your friends to do the same. The trial offer can require spending money (like an offer that involved a minimum purchase from an on-line pet store--but that was all right, I needed to nab some Frontline for the house panther anyway), or it may not. Some trial offers may even come with their own freebies, like the $20 gift card to Circuit City that I got for signing up with Buyer's Advantage.
But you don't send money to Gratis. You don't even pay for the shipping charges (which is good when your free TV set weighs in at 110 lbs).
Granted, as some people have said about Linux, it's only free (as in beer) if your time is worth nothing to you. But there's not necessarily any monetary expenditure involved.
Note that this article is not about the Gratis Networks freeipod offer, which was the first and most well-known, but about one of their more sleazy imitators. Here's another article that compares and contrasts a sleazy imitator to the original Gratis Networks.
Gratis Networks just requires you to do one single promotional offer--and get several of your friends to do the same. Unlike the fraudulent con game that most people are referring to when they say "pyramid scheme" (you know, the "send five bucks to everyone on this list and then add your name" type thing) no money changes hands between you, Gratis, or your referrals; the money is paid from the advertisers to Gratis. Click the link in my signature to find more info. It's legit. Granted, you're going to receive a lot of spam to the address you sign up for with, but that's what easily-available GMail addresses or disposable email address services like SpamGourmet are for.
Oh, and FYI, I received my free 20 gig iPod several months ago, and just got my free 27" Sony flatscreen TV last night. And I only need six more completed referrals to get my free Mac Mini...
Sooner or later, this flag will no longer wave...
on
Broadcast Flag in Trouble
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Yeah, this was a complete legal smackdown all right. The only reason the court could possibly have for not killing the flag is a technicality. If they find that the plaintiffs don't have standing to bring the complaint, all it means is that they have to wait for someone with standing to bring it. Sooner or later, that flag is history. At least until the broadcasting conglomerates can find some other way to require it...
Disney has long remade its movies, even those movies that are considered classics in the original version. The Parent Trap. The Love Bug. The Shaggy Dog. 101 Dalmations. And they've made schlocky sequels to many more. This doesn't really come as much of a surprise to me. I don't think anybody's had an original idea at Walt Disney for the last twenty years or so.
Re:Shoot me for my ignorance...
on
Sin City Trailer
·
· Score: 2, Informative
If anything, Max Payne was inspired (in part) by the original Sin City comics. As many other cultural icons of the hard-boiled detective as Payne riffs on, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
"Technically" not directed by Miller...
on
Sin City Trailer
·
· Score: 5, Informative
...at least, not in the strictest sense of the word.
Rodriguez, who credits Miller's visual style in the comic as relevant as his own in the film, insisted that Miller receive a "co-director" credit with him. The Directors' Guild of America would not allow it. As a result, Rodriguez resigned from the DGA, saying "It was easier for me to quietly resign before shooting because otherwise I'd be forced to make compromises I was unwilling to make or set a precedent that might hurt the guild later on." Unfortunately, by resigning from the DGA, Rodriguez was also forced to relinquish his director's seat on the film John Carter of Mars (2006) (at the time "A Princess of Mars" after the book on which it was based) for Paramount. Rodriguez had already signed-on and been announced as director of that film when the DGA situation took place, planning to begin filming soon after wrapping this film.
Some of the other trivia on the page shows what a character Rodriguez is as well...such as the way he handled Miller's reluctance to allow an adaptation. And, like Sky Captain, this is one of the world's first "fully digital" pictures--digital cameras, digital backlot.
The funny thing is, City of Heroes does (or at least, they say they do) have a filter that prevents the more obvious trademark names from being used.
I'm not sure whether that link will work for non-subscribers to the game, so here's the relevant bit:
Part of providing such a safe environment means we must ensure that all character names are created in a clean and positive light to meet the Teen Rating of the game while also following all copyright and trademark standards. In order to meet those ends, we have created a name filter to ensure that character names are acceptable for play within City of Heroes. This name filter is in place at character creation, meaning that each time a character is created and a name chosen, it must pass through this filter. Names that are included on this filter include certain copyrighted and trademarked characters, and also a slew of different categories (see below list) reflect derogatory names, foul language, ethnic slurs, inappropriate conduct, and referenced to body parts.
(I can't help but find that "referenced to body parts" bit amusing. Does that mean I can't name someone The Elbow?)
Of course, as anyone who's ever dealt with spam knows, no filter is foolproof and some names will always slip through the cracks.
The thing that particularly interests me, though, is that judging from that line about how they're also upset over the name thing, Marvel's main beef is with the ability to create look-alike/power-alike characters. And to a certain extent, this really can't be avoided. CoH's character design system includes a huge number of discrete costume elements--some of which, when taken together in specific combinations, can look reasonably similar to trademarked characters. (Sometimes it's not all that hard, either--big green muscular guy with purple shorts = Hulk.) But they can also be used in functionally infinite different combinations to create unique and original looks.
The interesting thing about this is that, though trademark names are verboten, creating look-alikes doesn't seem to be mentioned at all in the COH EULA. For all I can see in the EULA, you could create a big, green, purple-shorts guy and name him "BigGreenGuy" with impunity, as long as you didn't call him something Hulky. And I think that could be a problem--I'm not a lawyer but I think that trademark isn't necessarily just name, but it also encompasses likeness.
Well, in that scene in the movie, the way Mr. Incredible looked from Gazerbeam to the wall indicated a line-of-sight. Thus, Gazerbeam obtained the password by some means that will be forever unknown, and with his last strength carved the word into the wall with his eye-beam for whoever came after him (in a variation on the old cliche about the dying man writing a message in his own blood).
And as for why it's in the movie to begin with, at first I thought it might just be a reference to the Greek god of time, but then I found a Wikipedia entry about a 1957 movie by that name about a meteorite that falls to earth and turns out to be a giant machine that ravages cities. Does this seem familiar?
But the reference I wonder about is those two old guys talking about "old school." I feel sure they were supposed to be a reference to someone, but whom?
Actually, no. Avoiding spoilers as much as possible, next time you watch it pay attention to what Lucius is telling Bob as they start "bowling". Sounds like a supervillain to me.
Saw it at the 8, 'cuz it's in the same part of town where I work, and that matters when you're on a bike. (Also, I'm only a couple punches away from redeeming that free drink/popcorn deal card.)
One of the really neat things about the score was that, to record it, Giacchino used the methods they used back in the sixties--all analogue, and all the performers in the same room. Check out this interview and this interview for more details.
Oh, and technically, it wasnt John Barry's version of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, it was the Propellerheads' mix, which combines the title theme from OHMSS with a musical bridge from You Only Live Twice. From the album Decksanddrumsandrockandroll, which also contains "Spybreak" from The Matrix and the Shirley Bassey collab "History Repeating" (which is another track any Bond music fan should appreciate).
Slashdot Mirror
...and trying to make a device for playing content at the same time in this day and age is that you're always at odds with yourself. Your right hand is dueling with your left hand; the content division won't let the hardware division make something that could aid in (gasp, shudder) copyright infringement, so of necessity whatever you come out with is going to be a compromise.
Not just in music, either. Let's not forget the Librié ebook device and its fabulous expiring bookware...
The more I hear about stuff like this, the more it occurs to me that Sony's just no longer relevant in the personal audio world.
Of course...on the other hand, come to think of it, the company that is the most relevant in the personal audio world these days doesn't make it easy for you to transfer your music back off of their pocket music device, either.
...is that the retraction (in the /. blurb) had to be added as an edit.
I mean, isn't the 20-minute "email us if you see something wrong with this story" subscriber preview period supposed to catch exactly this kind of thing?
Well, that's pretty much the death knell for meetup. The organizer of one of the local meetup groups just stepped down, not caring to pay $19 a month (or even $9 a month, the "special discount rate" they're offering). And if nobody steps forward to organize a meetup group, "this Meetup Group will be frozen and eventually disbanded."
It was kind of neat while it lasted, but given that most of the meetups I've tried to visit in my area never really came together for free, I don't think too many people outside of big cities are going to be willing to pay for it. (And I don't even know how many of those will be. Historically, once-free sites suddenly starting to charge big bucks for their content don't tend to do so well.)
I can understand the need to make money to keep the site alive, the dot-com era being far behind us and all. Still, it's sad to see this service jumping the shark this way. I wonder if it'll still be around a year from now.
I can sympathize with that. After I get such shows downloaded, I often cook them down to MP3 or AAC myself. On the other hand, this lets audiophiles burn top-quality CDs with no loss of quality due to encoding, and I can see how that would be important to them.
You could always try letting the download run overnight or while you're at work or something and not using your computer anyway...
I don't know if the concerts EZtree were swapping were from okay-to-boot bands or not...but I will note that Archive.org, in conjunction with etree.org, are still making available literally thousands of live concert recordingsin lossless formatsfrom bands that allow concert taping and trading. If you take a look at their collection, you might just be surprised by some of the bands there. Gin Blossom, Guster, Toad the Wet Sprocket, Rusted Root, Butthole Surfers, Cowboy Junkies, etc. etc.
I'd just like to plug a favorite band of mine, the Ozark bluegrass band Big Smith, to whose members I am distantly related (and with whose family mine used to have a blood feud going about 80 years or so back). If you're not into bluegrass/folk/gospel, then you're not into it...but if you are, check 'em out.
...over on alt.toys.transformers and rec.toys.transformers.moderated (which I co-moderate) they've known for a long time this was in the offing. As you might expect, fans are split in regards to their responses. Some of them are rather upset given that there will be no size-change transformations, so Megatron and Soundwave (if they're in it) won't resemble their G1 selves very much at all.
They were already waiting in line for the sequel to two rather lackluster movies. I'd almost say that that standing in line at the wrong theater pales by comparison to standing in line for the wrong movie.
Almost, because God help me, I'm looking forward to this one too.
It gets more complicated than that. Back in the Hartnell era, they hadn't yet come up with the whole Gallifreyan mythology; Hartnell's Doctor was just an ordinary human with an background that was never filled in. Had a granddaughter (Susan) and everything. The Gallifreyan mythology only came about because Hartnell's declining health wasn't going to let him participate in the series any further but the series was so popular that the Beeb didn't want to let it end. So they came up with the idea of "regeneration" to explain how the character could remain the same even as the actor changed drasticly.
(Other franchises didn't bother to try to come up with such an explanation for changing actors. But I still maintain that both James Bond and Ernst Stavro Blofeld are Time Lords...Blofeld just regenerated more often. It would explain how neither of them recognized each other in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, despite having already met in prior movies...)
So the movies were made based on the idea of a human Doctor (who was referred to as "Doctor Who" in the movies, though never in the TV series); Hartnell wasn't available for the movies for reasons I forget but could probably be looked up on the Internet. They were essentially higher-budget (though not too much higher) remakes of popular episodes of the Hartnell series to capitalize on the insane, faddish popularity of the TV show (and Daleks) around that time (and also to show the Daleks, TARDIS, FX, etc. in color for the very first time since the Dr. Who TV series was in black and white). They expanded upon the background a little, given the bigger format; however, they expanded in ways that were very different from the expansions that ended up becoming canon.
Wonder if the fellow who wrote the Gmail File System will do an adaptation...
I'm not planning on switching per se...but I'm planning on getting a Mac Mini (when I get enough referrals) to complete the unholy trinity of Linux box, Windows box, Mac box in my apartment. But then, I've always been platform agnostic.
...but in some places, you don't even have to sign for the purchase at all. Some fast food places, like Braum's, won't make you sign unless the purchase is over $20. Some automated card acceptors, like the ones at Sonic drive-throughs or the automatic checkout machines at Dillons, don't require a signature either. (Others, like Kmart's auto-checkouts, do require a signature on an electronic pad.)
When I worked at Kmart, we were told to check the signatures, and sometimes we were mystery-shopped to make sure that we did. And whenever a card wasn't signed, we were to ask for another form of ID. I saw a lot of people who either didn't sign their cards or who wrote "See ID" instead.
Technically, you're not supposed to accept cards with no signature, even if they write "see ID"...but you're not supposed to insist on a minimum charge for credit card transactions either, but a lot of people do both.
I'm similarly amazed at the moderation on my post. I've never been downmodded for my signature (that I know of) on any of the other stories to which I've posted stuff, and in fact have had a lot of comments upmodded--and I've had my conga line link in my sig for months and months now.
:)
I suppose the last laugh is mine, though; since this afternoon I've already gotten one more completed referral and several more potentials for my free Mac Mini. I may be getting it sooner than I'd thought.
With Gratis, you just have to do a trial offer and get your friends to do the same. The trial offer can require spending money (like an offer that involved a minimum purchase from an on-line pet store--but that was all right, I needed to nab some Frontline for the house panther anyway), or it may not. Some trial offers may even come with their own freebies, like the $20 gift card to Circuit City that I got for signing up with Buyer's Advantage.
But you don't send money to Gratis. You don't even pay for the shipping charges (which is good when your free TV set weighs in at 110 lbs).
Granted, as some people have said about Linux, it's only free (as in beer) if your time is worth nothing to you. But there's not necessarily any monetary expenditure involved.
Note that this article is not about the Gratis Networks freeipod offer, which was the first and most well-known, but about one of their more sleazy imitators. Here's another article that compares and contrasts a sleazy imitator to the original Gratis Networks.
Gratis Networks just requires you to do one single promotional offer--and get several of your friends to do the same. Unlike the fraudulent con game that most people are referring to when they say "pyramid scheme" (you know, the "send five bucks to everyone on this list and then add your name" type thing) no money changes hands between you, Gratis, or your referrals; the money is paid from the advertisers to Gratis. Click the link in my signature to find more info. It's legit. Granted, you're going to receive a lot of spam to the address you sign up for with, but that's what easily-available GMail addresses or disposable email address services like SpamGourmet are for.
Oh, and FYI, I received my free 20 gig iPod several months ago, and just got my free 27" Sony flatscreen TV last night. And I only need six more completed referrals to get my free Mac Mini...
Yeah, this was a complete legal smackdown all right. The only reason the court could possibly have for not killing the flag is a technicality. If they find that the plaintiffs don't have standing to bring the complaint, all it means is that they have to wait for someone with standing to bring it. Sooner or later, that flag is history. At least until the broadcasting conglomerates can find some other way to require it...
PS: First(ish) post!
Disney has long remade its movies, even those movies that are considered classics in the original version. The Parent Trap. The Love Bug. The Shaggy Dog. 101 Dalmations. And they've made schlocky sequels to many more. This doesn't really come as much of a surprise to me. I don't think anybody's had an original idea at Walt Disney for the last twenty years or so.
What's more, LiveJournal itself has confirmed it.
If anything, Max Payne was inspired (in part) by the original Sin City comics. As many other cultural icons of the hard-boiled detective as Payne riffs on, I wouldn't be surprised at all.
From the Internet Movie Database's Sin City trivia page:Some of the other trivia on the page shows what a character Rodriguez is as well...such as the way he handled Miller's reluctance to allow an adaptation. And, like Sky Captain, this is one of the world's first "fully digital" pictures--digital cameras, digital backlot.
The funny thing is, back before update 2, this would be hilariously accurate. :)
I'm not sure whether that link will work for non-subscribers to the game, so here's the relevant bit:(I can't help but find that "referenced to body parts" bit amusing. Does that mean I can't name someone The Elbow?)
Of course, as anyone who's ever dealt with spam knows, no filter is foolproof and some names will always slip through the cracks.
The thing that particularly interests me, though, is that judging from that line about how they're also upset over the name thing, Marvel's main beef is with the ability to create look-alike/power-alike characters. And to a certain extent, this really can't be avoided. CoH's character design system includes a huge number of discrete costume elements--some of which, when taken together in specific combinations, can look reasonably similar to trademarked characters. (Sometimes it's not all that hard, either--big green muscular guy with purple shorts = Hulk.) But they can also be used in functionally infinite different combinations to create unique and original looks.
The interesting thing about this is that, though trademark names are verboten, creating look-alikes doesn't seem to be mentioned at all in the COH EULA. For all I can see in the EULA, you could create a big, green, purple-shorts guy and name him "BigGreenGuy" with impunity, as long as you didn't call him something Hulky. And I think that could be a problem--I'm not a lawyer but I think that trademark isn't necessarily just name, but it also encompasses likeness.
Answer below after spoiler protection.
SPOILERS
Well, in that scene in the movie, the way Mr. Incredible looked from Gazerbeam to the wall indicated a line-of-sight. Thus, Gazerbeam obtained the password by some means that will be forever unknown, and with his last strength carved the word into the wall with his eye-beam for whoever came after him (in a variation on the old cliche about the dying man writing a message in his own blood).
And as for why it's in the movie to begin with, at first I thought it might just be a reference to the Greek god of time, but then I found a Wikipedia entry about a 1957 movie by that name about a meteorite that falls to earth and turns out to be a giant machine that ravages cities. Does this seem familiar?
But the reference I wonder about is those two old guys talking about "old school." I feel sure they were supposed to be a reference to someone, but whom?
Actually, no. Avoiding spoilers as much as possible, next time you watch it pay attention to what Lucius is telling Bob as they start "bowling". Sounds like a supervillain to me.
Saw it at the 8, 'cuz it's in the same part of town where I work, and that matters when you're on a bike. (Also, I'm only a couple punches away from redeeming that free drink/popcorn deal card.)
One of the really neat things about the score was that, to record it, Giacchino used the methods they used back in the sixties--all analogue, and all the performers in the same room. Check out this interview and this interview for more details.
Oh, and technically, it wasnt John Barry's version of On Her Majesty's Secret Service, it was the Propellerheads' mix, which combines the title theme from OHMSS with a musical bridge from You Only Live Twice. From the album Decksanddrumsandrockandroll, which also contains "Spybreak" from The Matrix and the Shirley Bassey collab "History Repeating" (which is another track any Bond music fan should appreciate).