And while we're at it, let's go back to some other classic movies, like, say, Star Wars, and slather them with new modern-day CGI, and even rewrite some scenes that we've decided we don't like!
Actually, I was being perfectly serious. Clive Cussler has a habit of including in his books whatever nifty new (or old) vehicle catches his eye. The Moller Skycar has made an appearance, for instance, as has the Glomar Explorer, and even the truck that might be considered the direct predecessor of this very expedition vehicle, the great enclosed expeditionary truck that was taken to the Antarctic on an expedition in the 1930s. I fully expect to see this Mog thing pop up in Cussler's next novel, as soon as he hears about it.
If you don't like it, well, you can register an account and post some thoughtful and insightful comments, and before long you'll be posting at 2, too. And you'll even occasionally get moderation points yourself, so if you think I'm overrated you can mod me down. Other than that, well, your whining is worth precisely as much as any other AnonCoward whining, and I don't really know why I'm even bothering to respond to it at this length. You don't matter; if you did matter you wouldn't be anonymous.
Don't forget that if you have a URL, you can do a back-content search at the Wayback Machine. I don't have time to see if Bernie's website ever had any content on it, though--got to get to work. So I'll leave that joy to someone else.
All I took away from the article was that it was more profitable for both companies to just work together, rather then work to make their lawyers rich.
This article seems kinda lite on information due to it being a sealed deal.
Well, that's all you're supposed to take away from it. The so-called "article" was a Roxio press release--the sort of thing that only superficially resembles "news," and that reputable journalists immediately rewrite into a more neutral story. The whole function of a press release is to say, "la de da, aren't we a great company?" Of course you won't find very much actual information there.
Happy 600th-posted-Slashdot-comment to me!
Why not make your own Majestic?
on
Goodbye, "Majestic"
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Check out the Hogshead "new wave" roleplaying game De Profundis. It's an epistolary RPG of the Cthulhu mythos, focusing on playing in the horror milieu (either in the 20s and 30s, or the present-day) by writing letters, journals, diaries, and so on. I've got some friends who are running a game via a Livejournal group; it's not too hard to imagine something sort of like Majestic growing out of several groups getting in contact with each other.
Someone moderate the parent up further. I would, but I felt like posting instead.
The idea of a DVD boycott is laughable. It's tantamount to saying, "Hey, everybody, let's cut off a portion of our anatomy to spite the thing it is attached to! Yes, let's deny ourselves enjoyment of something, so we can bitch and whine about it to all and sundry, and thus have sneering rights at their refusal to support our holy war!" It's not being righteous, it's being self-righteous. Bleah. Every time I see someone whining about boycotting DVDs, it makes me want to go right out and buy three more.
Realistically speaking, you're never going to get even enough Slashdot posters--who tend to have the attention span and love of bright and shiny things of Kiki from Sluggy Freelance--to join the boycott, let alone the average citizens (of whom you need a lot if your boycott is to have any effect, or even be noticed). There's still an astounding number of people who don't realize why those black bars are on their screen; think someone of that persuasion is going to care about alphabet soup and free use rights?
Me, I'll continue to watch DVDs and be happy. Why, I just received a Region 2 The Last Unicorn disc from Amazon.de; it's really great! (And seeing a trailer for the Thomas the Tank Engine movie in German is really funky.)
Frankly, I wish they'd make a Starcraft II, or at least start making more Maps of the Week|Month. Starcraft is still a popular game, it still has about a zillion players and mappers, and its trigger system is intricate enough that you can do just about anything with it--witness all the "Magic: The Gathering," "Sniper Paintball," "Pokemon," and even "Bomb Bin Laden in Tora Bora" maps that are being played at any given time. One fellow even made a terrific Battle Chess style map for Starcraft that plays really well.
I'm disheartened by the lack of support Starcraft has received in comparison to Warcraft and Diablo.
The one I bought that card at was just south of Kansas City, actually--I forget the name of the city, but it was on the way. Though at least one of the Wal-Marts here in Springfield, Missouri does have gas pumps, too, as does the Sam's Wholesale Club.
I don't know about Meijer's, but at my K-Mart (and, as far as I know, at Wal-Mart) you have to put money on the card when you buy it. Until then, it's simply empty. I scan the card, enter the amount, slide it through my credit card reader, then blammo, that card has money on it (or at least it does after the customer pays)--but not before. Someone could come along and take all the cards we had on the shelf--but none of them would be worth anything. It's the same for the long distance phone cards that hang along the impulse buying lanes--they have to be swiped through the register to activate them.
But even so, when I was checking out at a Wal-Mart a few months back, buying a $10 gift card because of their gas pump system that gave you a cheaper rate if you bought with a gift card, the checker said they'd had to move all their gift cards to one single island, because people kept stealing them. Yes, she said, they were valueless until they were activated, but people seemed to keep stealing them anyway. Go figure, eh?
At the K-mart where I work, gift carded goods cannot be redeemed for cash--just for the same sum on another gift card. (It's the same way with goods brought in without a receipt--the customer gets the value of the lowest sale price, which usually isn't much, on a gift card--or else an even exchange.)
On the bright side, one does have to have the actual card, not just the number--at least so far as I know.
There are also some legitimate Hong Kong versions of the Miyazaki films coming out on DVD more inexpensively; someone like HiViZone could get them for you. Reviews indicate that the quality of these discs isn't as good as the Japanese ones, and they are still region-locked, but even so, they might be a more economical alternative for the budgetarily cautious.
No one "upticked" his comment; pay attention. If someone had, it would have said "Score: 2, Something-or-other" instead of just "Score: 2." The poster has high enough karma that he posts with a +1 bonus automatically. For that matter, so do I, but I'm foregoing it for this comment because rating it higher would only cause me to lose karma when someone dings it for being off-topic.
After all, the cable services don't prohibit servers because they're morally opposed to the idea of serving files--they do it because servers take up their bandwidth. And bandwidth is expensive, as we're learning when companies cut back on their streaming video or even (as in the case of AdAware) fall off the 'net entirely.
So, without servers, what's using bandwidth now? Seems obvious--peer to peer. Which, in itself, is technically as much a "server" as any FTP or website. Heck, running your own Half-Life multiplayer game is technically a "server" too.
And so they cap bandwidth and try to chip away at these things however they can. It's annoying . . . but it's hardly surprising.
Re:At least *someone* is immune to all the hype...
on
The Hype of the Rings
·
· Score: 2
No, actually a lot of IMAX movies tend to show regular movies part of the time--usually movies with a lot of special effects that will look really good on a screen that big. The one in Branson, I think, does one evening show a night.
I ought to try calling them again sometime in the hopes that I can get someone who isn't a moron.
At least *someone* is immune to all the hype...
on
The Hype of the Rings
·
· Score: 2
The other day, on hearing from a friend of mine that his local IMAX would be showing Fellowship on opening night, I called the one near me (the Branson IMAX) to see if they were doing the same.
The person I talked to had apparently never heard of either the book or the movie. It was all "Fellowship of the what?" And this person works at a movie theater. Sheesh.
That could be the water intake for an automatic icemaker--if so, it wouldn't affect defrosting one way or the other. (Not that I'd think it would anyway, given that when you defrost, the water doesn't go into the inner workings of your fridge; it just drops down to pool in the bottom or wherever.
Amusing anecdote from my mostly-not-misspent youth. One day when I was about four or five or so, I was crawling around under the sink in my folks' old house. There were all these valves under the sink; I think I wondered what it felt like to turn them, so I did turn one. And then I forgot about it.
My youthful mind completely didn't connect it with the water that thereupon began streaming out from a copper pipe sticking out of the wall behind the fridge. My Mom had no idea what caused it either, so we just had to put buckets under it and dump them into the sink, until Dad came home and found out what was going on.
I hate to think what our water bill that month must have been.
And I find it very disappointing that certain Slashdot folks automatically jump to conclusions and post stories with slanted headlines. It does not exactly help Slashdot's credibility as a news source to assume the worst automatically in every instance.
It seems that "U.S. Government" + "Database" automatically equals "Big Brother." This makes about as much sense as saying "kid" + "representation of a gun" = "maniacal school killer." A database is a tool, and many of them are used by the government already for ordinary, beneficial purposes, ranging from small mailing lists on departmental computers to the drivers's license system that ensures that only people who know how to drive well enough not to be a hazard on the road are driving. Sure, there are abuses, but in this case we don't even know what the software is going to be used for. It seems a bit premature to rant about "big brother" to me.
Would it really hurt to post the same story under a more neutral headline and avoid the spectacle of yellow journalism?
Oh, God, no. Someone's given the government software they could put to bad uses. It's so lucky that our government doesn't have its own money with which it can purchase software to put to bad uses. Then we'd really be up a creek.
More a proof of concept than a finished product
on
This is IT?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I think all the people who are saying "electric scooter, big whoop. $3,000, yeah right" are slightly missing the point. Yeah, it's kind of wimpy for the price tag. Yeah, it's kind of expensive, and it's questionable who would want to use it.
But this is just the first model. It's more sort of a proof of concept--a demonstration that the scooter can work, and looks as neat as all get-out in motion. As time goes on, the performance will improve and the price will fall.
Look at the Palm (Pilot). The first model was, what, 128K? With no backlight, no infra-red, or anything? And how high was the price tag? And now the Visor Deluxe, which was at one time the wet dream of anybody who even looked at a Palm, is only $130 brand new.
Look at the DVD player. The original models were expensive enough, the first bunch of discs were glitchy enough, that a lot of people scoffed and made snide remarks. But the DVD went on to become the fastest-adopted new consumer technology ever.
So here we have a relatively slow, electric-powered self-stabilizing scooter, for $3,000. Are very many of us going to buy it? Do very many of us have the money to sink into that sort of gee-gaw? No and no. I know I'm not going to be spending three grand on something like that myself, either. Nor would I be likely to spend two grand, or even one grand.
But by the time it gets to about $500, sign me up.
According to Mediacom, @Home never said it was going to shut down, but simply negotiate new agreements. Or something. Anyway, here's the note that's in the "@Home Service Updates" area on their webpage.
Dear Valued Customer,
Today's ruling by Bankruptcy Judge Thomas Carlson to reject Excite@Home's contracts with the cable operators that use the Excite@Home high-speed Internet service clears the way for Excite@Home to negotiate new agreements with cable operators to continue service to high-speed cable Internet customers.
Media reports are characterizing the ruling as an order by the court to shutdown the service at midnight Friday, November 30. Despite these reports, Excite@Home continues to provide service to our customers and has not issued a notice that they will be shutting-down the network at midnight Friday or anytime in the immediate future.
Mediacom and other cable operators are negotiating with Excite@Home to maintain uninterrupted service. Mediacom continues to diligently pursue an alternate service provider to maintain high-speed Internet access to our customers. In the event of a service interruption, Mediacom will communicate with you plans to migrate your high-speed Internet service to a new service provider.
To ensure minimal disruption to your service, we request that you check your email account(s) on a daily basis. Doing this will automatically save your email to your hard drive as well as ensure timely receipt of important future communications from Mediacom. Also, backup your personal web page(s) by copying them to a diskette, CD or to your computer hard drive.
We appreciate your patience during this process and thank you for your business.
Sincerely,
John G. Pascarelli
Senior Vice President
Marketing and Consumer Services
Of course, the real test is whether my cablemodem light is still steady-on when I wake up tomorrow morning . . .
I just talked to an AT&T@Home support rep via their Java web chat app.
You say: Will my service through AT&T be affected if Excite discontinues its service Friday?
After a bit of prevaricating...
In-Max Marcus says: While we cannot be certain of the court's final decision, AT&T Broadband has always encouraged its customers to periodically save their browser bookmarks, personal Web page files, address book, and e-mail files to their desktop, disk or CD. These steps are commonly practiced for increased safety against unforeseen events such as computer crashes, network outages and virus infections.
I was able to get the guy to come through with an answer:
You say: I need the answer to this question: If Excite can't reach an agreement, and discontinues its service Friday, will my Internet access also be discontinued. I'd like a solid answer, please.
In-Max Marcus says: No.your services will not be affected at all and we wil reprovisoin all the settings needed.
So there you have it. My own cable service seems to be well in hand.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey, that's a great idea!
And while we're at it, let's go back to some other classic movies, like, say, Star Wars, and slather them with new modern-day CGI, and even rewrite some scenes that we've decided we don't like!
And let's colorize Citizen Kane!
Actually, I was being perfectly serious. Clive Cussler has a habit of including in his books whatever nifty new (or old) vehicle catches his eye. The Moller Skycar has made an appearance, for instance, as has the Glomar Explorer, and even the truck that might be considered the direct predecessor of this very expedition vehicle, the great enclosed expeditionary truck that was taken to the Antarctic on an expedition in the 1930s. I fully expect to see this Mog thing pop up in Cussler's next novel, as soon as he hears about it.
If you don't like it, well, you can register an account and post some thoughtful and insightful comments, and before long you'll be posting at 2, too. And you'll even occasionally get moderation points yourself, so if you think I'm overrated you can mod me down. Other than that, well, your whining is worth precisely as much as any other AnonCoward whining, and I don't really know why I'm even bothering to respond to it at this length. You don't matter; if you did matter you wouldn't be anonymous.
Dude, I have 50 Karma; check the signature. I post at a score of 2 automatically when I want to.
Funny, the FAQ says it uses heavy-duty Michelins.
Something tells me that we'll be seeing Dirk Pitt tooling around in one of these in a future NUMA action-adventure novel.
Don't forget that if you have a URL, you can do a back-content search at the Wayback Machine. I don't have time to see if Bernie's website ever had any content on it, though--got to get to work. So I'll leave that joy to someone else.
Happy 600th-posted-Slashdot-comment to me!
Check out the Hogshead "new wave" roleplaying game De Profundis. It's an epistolary RPG of the Cthulhu mythos, focusing on playing in the horror milieu (either in the 20s and 30s, or the present-day) by writing letters, journals, diaries, and so on. I've got some friends who are running a game via a Livejournal group; it's not too hard to imagine something sort of like Majestic growing out of several groups getting in contact with each other.
And hey, it's only $7, how can you go wrong?
Actually, now you can search Fellowship of the Ring. You just have to download an illicit copy via Morpheus or Gnutella or whatever. :)
Someone moderate the parent up further. I would, but I felt like posting instead.
The idea of a DVD boycott is laughable. It's tantamount to saying, "Hey, everybody, let's cut off a portion of our anatomy to spite the thing it is attached to! Yes, let's deny ourselves enjoyment of something, so we can bitch and whine about it to all and sundry, and thus have sneering rights at their refusal to support our holy war!" It's not being righteous, it's being self-righteous. Bleah. Every time I see someone whining about boycotting DVDs, it makes me want to go right out and buy three more.
Realistically speaking, you're never going to get even enough Slashdot posters--who tend to have the attention span and love of bright and shiny things of Kiki from Sluggy Freelance--to join the boycott, let alone the average citizens (of whom you need a lot if your boycott is to have any effect, or even be noticed). There's still an astounding number of people who don't realize why those black bars are on their screen; think someone of that persuasion is going to care about alphabet soup and free use rights?
Me, I'll continue to watch DVDs and be happy. Why, I just received a Region 2 The Last Unicorn disc from Amazon.de; it's really great! (And seeing a trailer for the Thomas the Tank Engine movie in German is really funky.)
Frankly, I wish they'd make a Starcraft II, or at least start making more Maps of the Week|Month. Starcraft is still a popular game, it still has about a zillion players and mappers, and its trigger system is intricate enough that you can do just about anything with it--witness all the "Magic: The Gathering," "Sniper Paintball," "Pokemon," and even "Bomb Bin Laden in Tora Bora" maps that are being played at any given time. One fellow even made a terrific Battle Chess style map for Starcraft that plays really well.
I'm disheartened by the lack of support Starcraft has received in comparison to Warcraft and Diablo.
The one I bought that card at was just south of Kansas City, actually--I forget the name of the city, but it was on the way. Though at least one of the Wal-Marts here in Springfield, Missouri does have gas pumps, too, as does the Sam's Wholesale Club.
I don't know about Meijer's, but at my K-Mart (and, as far as I know, at Wal-Mart) you have to put money on the card when you buy it. Until then, it's simply empty. I scan the card, enter the amount, slide it through my credit card reader, then blammo, that card has money on it (or at least it does after the customer pays)--but not before. Someone could come along and take all the cards we had on the shelf--but none of them would be worth anything. It's the same for the long distance phone cards that hang along the impulse buying lanes--they have to be swiped through the register to activate them.
But even so, when I was checking out at a Wal-Mart a few months back, buying a $10 gift card because of their gas pump system that gave you a cheaper rate if you bought with a gift card, the checker said they'd had to move all their gift cards to one single island, because people kept stealing them. Yes, she said, they were valueless until they were activated, but people seemed to keep stealing them anyway. Go figure, eh?
At the K-mart where I work, gift carded goods cannot be redeemed for cash--just for the same sum on another gift card. (It's the same way with goods brought in without a receipt--the customer gets the value of the lowest sale price, which usually isn't much, on a gift card--or else an even exchange.)
On the bright side, one does have to have the actual card, not just the number--at least so far as I know.
There are also some legitimate Hong Kong versions of the Miyazaki films coming out on DVD more inexpensively; someone like HiViZone could get them for you. Reviews indicate that the quality of these discs isn't as good as the Japanese ones, and they are still region-locked, but even so, they might be a more economical alternative for the budgetarily cautious.
No one "upticked" his comment; pay attention. If someone had, it would have said "Score: 2, Something-or-other" instead of just "Score: 2." The poster has high enough karma that he posts with a +1 bonus automatically. For that matter, so do I, but I'm foregoing it for this comment because rating it higher would only cause me to lose karma when someone dings it for being off-topic.
After all, the cable services don't prohibit servers because they're morally opposed to the idea of serving files--they do it because servers take up their bandwidth. And bandwidth is expensive, as we're learning when companies cut back on their streaming video or even (as in the case of AdAware) fall off the 'net entirely.
So, without servers, what's using bandwidth now? Seems obvious--peer to peer. Which, in itself, is technically as much a "server" as any FTP or website. Heck, running your own Half-Life multiplayer game is technically a "server" too.
And so they cap bandwidth and try to chip away at these things however they can. It's annoying . . . but it's hardly surprising.
No, actually a lot of IMAX movies tend to show regular movies part of the time--usually movies with a lot of special effects that will look really good on a screen that big. The one in Branson, I think, does one evening show a night.
I ought to try calling them again sometime in the hopes that I can get someone who isn't a moron.
The other day, on hearing from a friend of mine that his local IMAX would be showing Fellowship on opening night, I called the one near me (the Branson IMAX) to see if they were doing the same.
The person I talked to had apparently never heard of either the book or the movie. It was all "Fellowship of the what?" And this person works at a movie theater. Sheesh.
That could be the water intake for an automatic icemaker--if so, it wouldn't affect defrosting one way or the other. (Not that I'd think it would anyway, given that when you defrost, the water doesn't go into the inner workings of your fridge; it just drops down to pool in the bottom or wherever.
Amusing anecdote from my mostly-not-misspent youth. One day when I was about four or five or so, I was crawling around under the sink in my folks' old house. There were all these valves under the sink; I think I wondered what it felt like to turn them, so I did turn one. And then I forgot about it.
My youthful mind completely didn't connect it with the water that thereupon began streaming out from a copper pipe sticking out of the wall behind the fridge. My Mom had no idea what caused it either, so we just had to put buckets under it and dump them into the sink, until Dad came home and found out what was going on.
I hate to think what our water bill that month must have been.
I agree with you.
And I find it very disappointing that certain Slashdot folks automatically jump to conclusions and post stories with slanted headlines. It does not exactly help Slashdot's credibility as a news source to assume the worst automatically in every instance.
It seems that "U.S. Government" + "Database" automatically equals "Big Brother." This makes about as much sense as saying "kid" + "representation of a gun" = "maniacal school killer." A database is a tool, and many of them are used by the government already for ordinary, beneficial purposes, ranging from small mailing lists on departmental computers to the drivers's license system that ensures that only people who know how to drive well enough not to be a hazard on the road are driving. Sure, there are abuses, but in this case we don't even know what the software is going to be used for. It seems a bit premature to rant about "big brother" to me.
Would it really hurt to post the same story under a more neutral headline and avoid the spectacle of yellow journalism?
Oh, God, no. Someone's given the government software they could put to bad uses. It's so lucky that our government doesn't have its own money with which it can purchase software to put to bad uses. Then we'd really be up a creek.
I think all the people who are saying "electric scooter, big whoop. $3,000, yeah right" are slightly missing the point. Yeah, it's kind of wimpy for the price tag. Yeah, it's kind of expensive, and it's questionable who would want to use it.
But this is just the first model. It's more sort of a proof of concept--a demonstration that the scooter can work, and looks as neat as all get-out in motion. As time goes on, the performance will improve and the price will fall.
Look at the Palm (Pilot). The first model was, what, 128K? With no backlight, no infra-red, or anything? And how high was the price tag? And now the Visor Deluxe, which was at one time the wet dream of anybody who even looked at a Palm, is only $130 brand new.
Look at the DVD player. The original models were expensive enough, the first bunch of discs were glitchy enough, that a lot of people scoffed and made snide remarks. But the DVD went on to become the fastest-adopted new consumer technology ever.
So here we have a relatively slow, electric-powered self-stabilizing scooter, for $3,000. Are very many of us going to buy it? Do very many of us have the money to sink into that sort of gee-gaw? No and no. I know I'm not going to be spending three grand on something like that myself, either. Nor would I be likely to spend two grand, or even one grand.
But by the time it gets to about $500, sign me up.
I just talked to an AT&T@Home support rep via their Java web chat app.
You say: Will my service through AT&T be affected if Excite discontinues its service Friday?
After a bit of prevaricating...
In-Max Marcus says: While we cannot be certain of the court's final decision, AT&T Broadband has always encouraged its customers to periodically save their browser bookmarks, personal Web page files, address book, and e-mail files to their desktop, disk or CD. These steps are commonly practiced for increased safety against unforeseen events such as computer crashes, network outages and virus infections.
I was able to get the guy to come through with an answer:
You say: I need the answer to this question: If Excite can't reach an agreement, and discontinues its service Friday, will my Internet access also be discontinued. I'd like a solid answer, please.
In-Max Marcus says: No.your services will not be affected at all and we wil reprovisoin all the settings needed.
So there you have it. My own cable service seems to be well in hand.