As a Plus-level Modern Western Square Dancer, I can tell you from experience...what they teach in P.E. classes is about as close to "real" square dancing as a Walkman is to a concert hall. They teach you to walk around in a little circle to a record player, and that's about it. I can't blame people who learn it in school for disliking it. Give the real thing a shot, you'll do better.
Of course, most of the dancers of "the real thing" these days are over fifty years old, which makes it a bit unenticing to people of my generation. And I have to admit, I wouldn't have learned if my parents hadn't dragged me along to lessons while I was living with them. But I found it to be a lot more fun than I had expected; being able to do all the moves precisely is something I'm really proud of.
Time/Warner isn't the first major studio to release a DVD without macrovision encoding.
I discovered, while playing DVDs through my TV Out to the TVCR and using the RealMagic Decoder for my Netstream 2000 card in Linux, that none of the MGM DVDs I tried playing--several James Bond Special Editions, This Is Spinal Tap--had macrovision. This may have been to avoid cost, it may have been to satisfy the high-end cinephile folks who find Macrovision degrades their viewing experience, I don't know. But I do know they were the only DVDs I could watch using that version of the Netstream drivers. Because those DVDs weren't exactly the current mega-hits that Harry Potter is, I guess they passed below the press's radar.
Time/Warner is the first to do it on such a popular movie, though. I wonder if it will lead to anything?
They experimented with jewel boxes on early DVD releases before going to the current clamshell case scheme. The main reason is that the manufacturers fear consumers have been programmed to think of anything that comes in a jewel box as being a CD, and trying to play it in a CD player, then getting all upset when the bright shiny disc doesn't play right. Seriously.
Even DVD-Audio discs come in a "jewel box" that is a couple of centimeters taller and wider than a CD box...again, to avoid the possibility of consumer confusion.
Well, there's always half.com, eBay's sell-it-used-at-a-fixed-price site. Beyond that, the best advice is not to bid on an item you want, until the very last minutes of the auction...because your bid will drive the price higher than it would otherwise, and at the end you'll know just what you're paying.
...as a buyable object for my Sims game. They can increase their hygiene and their fun meters! (Well, okay, so they can already using a normal hot tub, but this way they could do it faster!)
It's great that Mozilla is finally out after all this time. I remember downloading early releases and being quite unimpressed by what I saw there...but by the it got to v 0.9X, I was a believer.
Does anybody else find it peculiar that Netscape is dumping its 6.X versions already, and the new Netscape is v7.0? Even though hardly anything has actually changed from 6.2?
I really wish that they'd hurry up and get the Debian package out, though. Even Testing still only has Release Candidate 3.
Re:Some uninformed comments
on
Project Eden
·
· Score: 2
Forget missiles; what they should really be worried about is Kei and Yuri.
I'd love to have something like that. I've wanted it for the longest time.
I'd program a series of macros that I could send easily...like, "You know, turn signals work," or conversely, "You've been signalling for quite some time now, do you actually plan to turn?" Or "Given the weather and/or illumination conditions, don't you think it would be wise to have your lights on?" (What would be neat is if it could be programmed to send that message automatically to anybody encountered who did not have them on.)
Or even something like "Please be advised I'm passing on your left and may need to cut in front of you if something suddenly pops up in the oncoming lane."
Would be useful. OTOH, could also be distracting in the same way that DWY allegedly is...
Also, there's the issue of repeats. Sure, Doritos might be paying for product placement in friends now, but very likely not when the show goes into syndication. But you can neither remove that ad from the show, nor can you stick a new one in.
Um...no, that's precisely what you can do. You can digitally remove and replace almost anything these days; they've been doing it for years. For instance, when Demolition Man was made, the restaurant that was a Taco Bell in America was a Pizza Hut in Europe. They redubbed the lines and digitally replaced the logos.
And consider that commercial--for Coke, wasn't it?--where they used the images of all those dead movie stars, like Humphrey Bogart? How do you think they put the bottles and cans of Coke in their hands, hmm? And people have been considering uses of that same technology to replace products for product placement in syndicated shows; I even seem to recall a story about it appearing on Slashdot a while ago, though I'm too fundamentally lazy to search it.
Nowadays, they've got systems available that can do that sort of replacement in real time with live footage. Heck, they've done it already in the case of that CBS newscast from Times Square where they replaced the logo for a competing network in the news anchor's background. And I seem to recall something about the Superbowl or some other sports event (Olympics?) where sponsors' logos could be superimposed on the part of the playing field where the players and the ball weren't...
So, in the end, they could probably replace that bag of Doritos with a bag of Tostitos, Fritos, or whatever you want easily enough. Product placement, replacement, and re-replacement is the wave of the future in TV.
Actually, they don't care how many copies someone takes...as long as they pay for at least one of them. Or if they do care, they don't care enough to make a newspaper-vending machine that's more than a metal box that opens and provides access to all the papers at once when you put in enough money to buy just one. How many years have we had those?
Verily, it is truly as the Gord hath prophesied. Indeed, in this particular writing, the Gord reached pretty much the same conclusion as this fellow, only quite a bit earlier. Neat to see he is being proved right.
Also, there are usually fewer people at weekday matinees, especially kids. Which means, of course, you don't get as much audience reaction, but you do have less trouble finding a good seat.
Don't you get it? Dooku is using misdirection...he knows the Jedi won't believe him, so he's telling them the truth so that they'll "know" he's lying and Sidious will be safer.
In my experience, most retail places will adjust prices if they go down within thirty days. Circuit City will adjust them by 110% of the difference if it goes down, or if you find someone offering it cheaper.
Well, it's not Apple who's making the defective product...it's the CD pressers. There's no reason why Apple should be under any obligation to support having these plastic coasters that look like CDs in their drivess. There's no reason they should be obligated to support having mashed bananas in their drives, either. In both cases, it's a user-action that's messing up the computer.
The people to blame for this are the RIAA and the studios who are making these defective discs. As a friend of mine with whom I was just discussing this story put it, whether intentionally or accidentally, the RIAA is distributing Denial-Of-Service attacks on its discs. He suggests that it is at least possible they could thus be brought up on terrorism charges, as per the Patriot Act.
Note that this is an article from a British website...and copy-protected CDs are a lot bigger in Europe than they are on this side of the Atlantic. Do we know for certain whether the American editions of these CDs are thusly protected?
I do know that the Star Wars Episode 2 soundtrack is already circulating on AudioGalaxy...
They pretty much shot him so that his right hand wasn't visible, and used "stunt hands" whenever he was seen to do something in close-up, like work the transporter or type in Star Trek IV. Still, there were a few moments, most notably in The Trouble With Tribbles and Star Trek V, where the missing finger was plainly (not) visible.
Just thought I'd point out rec.toys.transformers.moderated (which I help moderate) and alt.toys.transformers. They're the big discussion centers of Transformers fandom, and a good place to keep up with what's going on in the fandom world.
And don't forget BotCon! I've been there a couple of years...it was a blast. I'm looking forward to a time when I might be able to go again.
Heh. CNN is actually coming fairly late to this whole Transformers revival thing. I was there while it happened.:)
"Die-cast construction. It's a lost art."
--Optimus Primal, referring to the Ark, in The Agenda
I'm afraid it just won't happen, not with the new plastics they've come up with to replace them. Heck, the plastics are a lot better than the old versions ever were; you didn't see very many ball-and-socket type joints on those old toys, did you?
You can long for die-cast metal all you like, but the fact is, it can be rather brittle, and create a safety hazard from sharp, jagged edges when it breaks.
Actually, the Megatron toy itself was designed in the early 1970s. It's an excellent replica of the Walther P-38, the predecessor to the PPK that James Bond carried.
Of course, times changed between the old and new eras...that's why Megatron came back as a tank.
Slashdot Mirror
As a Plus-level Modern Western Square Dancer, I can tell you from experience...what they teach in P.E. classes is about as close to "real" square dancing as a Walkman is to a concert hall. They teach you to walk around in a little circle to a record player, and that's about it. I can't blame people who learn it in school for disliking it. Give the real thing a shot, you'll do better.
Of course, most of the dancers of "the real thing" these days are over fifty years old, which makes it a bit unenticing to people of my generation. And I have to admit, I wouldn't have learned if my parents hadn't dragged me along to lessons while I was living with them. But I found it to be a lot more fun than I had expected; being able to do all the moves precisely is something I'm really proud of.
Time/Warner isn't the first major studio to release a DVD without macrovision encoding.
I discovered, while playing DVDs through my TV Out to the TVCR and using the RealMagic Decoder for my Netstream 2000 card in Linux, that none of the MGM DVDs I tried playing--several James Bond Special Editions, This Is Spinal Tap--had macrovision. This may have been to avoid cost, it may have been to satisfy the high-end cinephile folks who find Macrovision degrades their viewing experience, I don't know. But I do know they were the only DVDs I could watch using that version of the Netstream drivers. Because those DVDs weren't exactly the current mega-hits that Harry Potter is, I guess they passed below the press's radar.
Time/Warner is the first to do it on such a popular movie, though. I wonder if it will lead to anything?
They experimented with jewel boxes on early DVD releases before going to the current clamshell case scheme. The main reason is that the manufacturers fear consumers have been programmed to think of anything that comes in a jewel box as being a CD, and trying to play it in a CD player, then getting all upset when the bright shiny disc doesn't play right. Seriously.
Even DVD-Audio discs come in a "jewel box" that is a couple of centimeters taller and wider than a CD box...again, to avoid the possibility of consumer confusion.
Well, there's always half.com, eBay's sell-it-used-at-a-fixed-price site. Beyond that, the best advice is not to bid on an item you want, until the very last minutes of the auction...because your bid will drive the price higher than it would otherwise, and at the end you'll know just what you're paying.
...as a buyable object for my Sims game. They can increase their hygiene and their fun meters! (Well, okay, so they can already using a normal hot tub, but this way they could do it faster!)
It's great that Mozilla is finally out after all this time. I remember downloading early releases and being quite unimpressed by what I saw there...but by the it got to v 0.9X, I was a believer.
Does anybody else find it peculiar that Netscape is dumping its 6.X versions already, and the new Netscape is v7.0? Even though hardly anything has actually changed from 6.2?
I really wish that they'd hurry up and get the Debian package out, though. Even Testing still only has Release Candidate 3.
Forget missiles; what they should really be worried about is Kei and Yuri.
I see at least one copy of the song on giFT, and I just added my own copy to that.
It's a nice song and all, but...I can't make out the lyrics. Are they posted anywhere?
I'd love to have something like that. I've wanted it for the longest time.
I'd program a series of macros that I could send easily...like, "You know, turn signals work," or conversely, "You've been signalling for quite some time now, do you actually plan to turn?" Or "Given the weather and/or illumination conditions, don't you think it would be wise to have your lights on?" (What would be neat is if it could be programmed to send that message automatically to anybody encountered who did not have them on.)
Or even something like "Please be advised I'm passing on your left and may need to cut in front of you if something suddenly pops up in the oncoming lane."
Would be useful. OTOH, could also be distracting in the same way that DWY allegedly is...
...where's Isamu Dyson when you need him?
And consider that commercial--for Coke, wasn't it?--where they used the images of all those dead movie stars, like Humphrey Bogart? How do you think they put the bottles and cans of Coke in their hands, hmm? And people have been considering uses of that same technology to replace products for product placement in syndicated shows; I even seem to recall a story about it appearing on Slashdot a while ago, though I'm too fundamentally lazy to search it.
Nowadays, they've got systems available that can do that sort of replacement in real time with live footage. Heck, they've done it already in the case of that CBS newscast from Times Square where they replaced the logo for a competing network in the news anchor's background. And I seem to recall something about the Superbowl or some other sports event (Olympics?) where sponsors' logos could be superimposed on the part of the playing field where the players and the ball weren't...
So, in the end, they could probably replace that bag of Doritos with a bag of Tostitos, Fritos, or whatever you want easily enough. Product placement, replacement, and re-replacement is the wave of the future in TV.
Actually, they don't care how many copies someone takes...as long as they pay for at least one of them. Or if they do care, they don't care enough to make a newspaper-vending machine that's more than a metal box that opens and provides access to all the papers at once when you put in enough money to buy just one. How many years have we had those?
Sorry, man. Your entry wasn't up when I started writing mine. Not much I can do about it, I'm afraid.
Verily, it is truly as the Gord hath prophesied. Indeed, in this particular writing, the Gord reached pretty much the same conclusion as this fellow, only quite a bit earlier. Neat to see he is being proved right.
Also, there are usually fewer people at weekday matinees, especially kids. Which means, of course, you don't get as much audience reaction, but you do have less trouble finding a good seat.
Don't you get it? Dooku is using misdirection...he knows the Jedi won't believe him, so he's telling them the truth so that they'll "know" he's lying and Sidious will be safer.
In my experience, most retail places will adjust prices if they go down within thirty days. Circuit City will adjust them by 110% of the difference if it goes down, or if you find someone offering it cheaper.
Well, it's not Apple who's making the defective product...it's the CD pressers. There's no reason why Apple should be under any obligation to support having these plastic coasters that look like CDs in their drivess. There's no reason they should be obligated to support having mashed bananas in their drives, either. In both cases, it's a user-action that's messing up the computer.
The people to blame for this are the RIAA and the studios who are making these defective discs. As a friend of mine with whom I was just discussing this story put it, whether intentionally or accidentally, the RIAA is distributing Denial-Of-Service attacks on its discs. He suggests that it is at least possible they could thus be brought up on terrorism charges, as per the Patriot Act.
Note that this is an article from a British website...and copy-protected CDs are a lot bigger in Europe than they are on this side of the Atlantic. Do we know for certain whether the American editions of these CDs are thusly protected?
I do know that the Star Wars Episode 2 soundtrack is already circulating on AudioGalaxy...
They pretty much shot him so that his right hand wasn't visible, and used "stunt hands" whenever he was seen to do something in close-up, like work the transporter or type in Star Trek IV. Still, there were a few moments, most notably in The Trouble With Tribbles and Star Trek V, where the missing finger was plainly (not) visible.
Just thought I'd point out rec.toys.transformers.moderated (which I help moderate) and alt.toys.transformers. They're the big discussion centers of Transformers fandom, and a good place to keep up with what's going on in the fandom world.
:)
And don't forget BotCon! I've been there a couple of years...it was a blast. I'm looking forward to a time when I might be able to go again.
Heh. CNN is actually coming fairly late to this whole Transformers revival thing. I was there while it happened.
"Die-cast construction. It's a lost art."
--Optimus Primal, referring to the Ark, in The Agenda
I'm afraid it just won't happen, not with the new plastics they've come up with to replace them. Heck, the plastics are a lot better than the old versions ever were; you didn't see very many ball-and-socket type joints on those old toys, did you?
You can long for die-cast metal all you like, but the fact is, it can be rather brittle, and create a safety hazard from sharp, jagged edges when it breaks.
Actually, the Megatron toy itself was designed in the early 1970s. It's an excellent replica of the Walther P-38, the predecessor to the PPK that James Bond carried.
Of course, times changed between the old and new eras...that's why Megatron came back as a tank.
Absolutely! Now, I live in Springfield, Missouri, but...
I tripped up to K.C. to see Princess Mononoke, twice.
I tripped up to K.C. to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
And now I'll trip up there again to see Send in the Clow--er, Attack of the Clones. What the heck, it's Tradition.