When you get on The Weakest Link, then you can decide where you want your money to go. I have to say I agree with all the other people--the EFF is an important foundation, now more than ever, what with the terrorist backlash seriously threatening our civil liberties. It's not just about whether we can watch DVDs on Linux, you know.
Thanks for the responses. One more possibly stupid question...is there a keyboard shortcut, like Control Tab, to switch between tabs without having to take my hands off the keyboard? Or is there a way to configure one?
At the risk of seeming a little stupid...how do I use this tabbed browsing feature? Mozilla 9.6 still looks the same as any other Mozilla; I hit control-N and a new window pops up--I don't see any tabs anywhere.
Is there some configuration option I forgot to set?
I had heard that on at least some MST3K DVDs, they did exactly that--you could choose to watch the movie with the bots overlaid onto it, or you could choose to watch it "straight".
Well, the first couple of Harry Potter books are nothing to write home about, relatively speaking. But the third and fourth--those are where really interesting things start to happen.
It seems to me that the books "grow up" along with the reader. The first two are light; they set the stage. But by the time you get to the fourth one, damn. It's like seeing The Empire Strikes Back after watching Star Wars.
I think a lot of people dismiss the books after reading only the first one. But that's really not fair. You don't fully realize what Rowling's doing with her world until you've read more of them. There are all these clever little details in the books, things that you don't notice on first read but that all start to tie together after you've read more of them. The name of a character who becomes very important in book 3 is mentioned once in a very offhand way in chapter 1 of the first book. An incident from chapter 2 of the first book that we--and Harry--shrug off as just another one of those "strange things" that Harry makes happen turns out to be a defining plot point of the second book. You don't see all these things until your second read-through. Then--it's just like magic, or like a visible shape emerging from one of those 3D optical illusions that just look like random blots. You start seeing all these little things that weren't there at all until you knew where to look for them.
As for who they're pitched at...well, the fourth book--which is 700 pages long, a remarkable length for a children's book--begins with a chapter that gave me a serious case of the willies. To this day I can't read that without making sure all the lights are on first--and I'm 28 years old. The rest of the book doesn't pull very many punches, either. Fathers schisming with sons, a named character dying...a soul getting sucked out and devoured...scary stuff.
Don't prejudge. If you're going to knock the Harry Potter books (and that's a general sort of you, not aimed specifically at the fellow I'm replying to), at least read them first. It's not even like you have to go to that much effort to find them; e-texts of all four of them are floating around on Gnutella. I normally don't advocate "piracy," but if there's no other way you're going to read them, I'll make an exception. I think most people will realize they're good enough that they'll want to go right out and buy them immediately afterward anyway.
After reading the last sentence in that message, all of a sudden I have this overwhelming urge to tell you a joke about a man with a wooden leg named Smith.
The really neat thing is that you could say Rowling predicted this. I mean, the Dursleys are exactly the same sort of people as all the Fundamentalists crying havoc. They "don't approve of imagination," and also, there's this bit from chapter two:
If there was one thing the Dursleys hated even more than his asking questions, it was his talking about anything acting in a way it shouldn't, no matter if it was in a dream or even a cartoon -- they seemed to think he might get dangerous ideas.
There's a persistent rumor going around about a four hour director's cut--despite the fact that Columbus himself has flatly said those rumors are false. I've written a bit about it in my LiveJournal, with links to the pertinent articles.
I am looking forward to the DVD, though.
Re:"Sorcerer's Stone" vs. "Philosopher's Stone"
on
Review: Harry Potter
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· Score: 4, Informative
To answer that question, you sort of have to go back to why they renamed the book Sorcerer's Stone when they brought it over to America. Because I expect that in the end, they renamed the film simply to rhyme with the title of the book, so as not to confuse all the people who didn't know what's going on.
When the book was being brought over for America, they changed a lot of British slang terms. For instance, "bogeys" became "boogers" (though I noticed they kept the uses of the word "bogey" in the film--probably too expensive to reshoot _all_ those scenes). (Interestingly enough, both "bogey" and "booger" have another Harry Potter connection--they come from the same root word as "Boggart," a monster Harry deals with in book 3!) "Jumpers" became "sweaters," and the new word Dudley learned in Chapter 1 was "shan't" over there in England and "won't" over here in the USA! Dumbledore's favorite candy, the sherbet lemon, became the lemon drop (though when Harry goes to Dumbledore's office in a later book, the password is sherbet lemon, with a reference back to Dumbledore liking them!). The list goes on and on.
Anyway, the revisions included the word "Philosopher" to "Sorcerer". I have no idea why; I can only assume it's because they thought American kids might not be familiar enough with alchemy-lore to recognize the Philosopher's Stone, and would end up wondering, "But where's the philosopher?"
Hey, you know, that would be great. Finally, people could distribute fansubs (or, rather, fansub files) with impunity--because in order to use 'em, you'd have to have the original disc already!:)
(There's a Windows program for use with DVD-ROM drives that allows viewing of DVDs with fansub files already, but last time I tried to use it, it was buggy and didn't work right.)
It's not the complications with ratings classifications that's the problem per se as I understand it--it's the fact that the studios just don't want the extra expense of coming up with the extra branching instructions for the disc--and the pause as the DVD player repositioned its read heads for the branching would be even more noticeable than the layer switch is to some people, which would lead to a lot of bogus, "My disc is defective!" complaints.
It's just the same as for the part of the DVD spec that was supposed to allow movies to be pan-and-scanned on the fly from a single letterbox master. It doesn't tend to be used; instead we see flippers or multi-layers or even 2-disc sets, just so that both versions can be included separately. Too expensive to come up with the instructions; too likely that a lot of players would frotz on them and disc performance would suffer. Cheaper just to throw them both in and let consumers be happy that way.
When I was down at A-Kon when he and Tim Thomerson were GOHing there (and I had this picture taken...I am such a geek:), someone in the audience asked him this very question. I'm pretty sure it's one he gets asked a great deal.
His response was to look at the audience and say, "Yes! Yes, there will be an Evil Dead IV!"
Then he paused for a few seconds, long enough for the applause and cheering to die down, and added, "...when monkeys fly out of my butt!!!"
Um, dude, there already is software of the computer sort on DVDs. Has been since the early days. That's what's infected on that Powerpuff Girls DVD, in fact--the interactivity software.
The earliest DVD that I know of to have software on it as well as media was the Bubblegum Crisis 3-disc set, which included its own Shockwave DVD player so you could watch the disc on your computer even if you didn't have a player program. Then came discs like The Matrix, which had an app called "PC Friendly" on them. PC Friendly, in addition to containing its own player for the DVD, would allow you to access the "special interactive features"--in the case of The Matrix, that would be things like the "I Know Kung Fu" fight scene collection, the interactive trivia game, the text articles, and of course the weblink.
These days, the helper app of choice is the Interactual Player, which is included on titles like The Mummy Returns, Star Wars Episode One (it is this software, by the way, that controls whether you can access the DVD-exclusive trailers on their website), and just about anything else that touts interactive features. (Notable exceptions including the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within DVD, which uses a Quicktime program, and the forthcoming Shrek DVD, which the Bits says will be interactive without having to install anything, though it doesn't say how.) Interactual will also play the interactive content from PC Friendly-enabled discs.
You'll always know when you have a software-enabled disc--because when you put it in the drive, it'll either try to install the program, or else launch it if it's installed already--probably interfering with your DVD player software, which will also be trying to launch. For this reason, I went into the Windows registry and disabled the CD autorun function (and thanks for making it so easy for me, Microsoft! (That was sarcasm)).
Anyway, like I said, the interactivity software is what's infected on the Powerpuff DVD. If you didn't install it and have autorun off, it should be safe to play the movie content--but I wouldn't take chances anyway.
There's a world of difference between "written for little kids" and "written down to little kids."
You could even say there's a sort of Star Wars analogy in the books (just to keep this vaguely topical to the thread). The first two are sort of light, kind of like the first Star Wars movie...but by the time you read the third and fourth, you're getting into definite Empire Strikes Back territory. Rowling pulls no punches. The villains are black and foul, not simply "misunderstood"; they're selfish and megalomaniacal but not the self-described "evil" (as in "God, I love being evil") of many down-written kids' shows and books. People die--and worse than die. There is very little sappy moralizing or sermonizing, and what there is flows naturally from the book, from adults giving advice to kids that isn't just "do this, don't do that," but gives them credit for being able to think. And the fourth book...well, don't read the first chapter of it in a darkened room, that's all I can say.
I'd recommend buying them without hesitation, but if you're still not sure, all four of the books are available on Gnutella. I'm not ordinarily one to condone piracy without paying--but I'm confident that once you've read them, you'll enjoy them enough that you want to own them.
Well, that's what the publisher wanted you to think. Listen to some of the Rowling audio interviews from NPR's archive; she says that the publisher wanted to publish her as J.K. Rowling instead of Joanne K. Rowling, out of fear that little boys would be turned off of a book written by a girl (ick, cooties!). As it turns out, they didn't need to worry; it's now well-known she's female (except on Slashdot, apparently) and it hasn't dampened the books' popularity one whit.
To avoid the dreaded Off-Topic markdown, let me just mention that, as one of the DVD-owners, I have access to the Star Wars site; they're still hyping November 9th as far as I know. For the moment, they have what can only be described as a trailer for the trailer posted--a 7-meg Quicktime slideshow called "Choices" that shows images and posits such gripping questions as "What is the cost of failure?" and, my favorite, "What do droids worry about?"
Since Quicktimes can easily be downloaded, I expect you could find it on Gnutella by now. It's not all that great, but at least it's something.
Um, guys? Sony was perfectly within their rights to ask that the software be removed. Even the site's maintainer admits that.
Let me say that again. Even the site's maintainer admits that Sony was within their rights to ask the software be pulled.
IMHO they are within their legal rights, and if they don't want me providing free software development that increases the sale of their hardware and software, that is their choice.
The fellow freely admits that he is in violation of copyright by providing copies of someone else's files without permission.
And this rates the big, nasty, ominous headline, "Sony Uses DMCA to Shut Down AIBO Hack Site"...why? It's a "Your Rights Online" issue? What about Sony's rights online?
Even if the DMCA did not exist, Sony would still be asking that the files be removed. For that matter, the DMCA itself is only incidental to this issue, and barely even mentioned in passing--even if it did not exist, those files still contain material that belongs to Sony, and Sony would still be asking that they be taken down!
Yes, you can boo and hiss and moan about how unfair it all is, and what a mean nasty company Sony is, and maybe even cry boycott for all the good it'll do. But in the end, Sony has the right to ask that these files be taken down.
I'm a little surprised that none of the people who's mentioned the "Daft Card" things brought it up in this light, but it seems that Daft Punk is doing what a lot of people suggested in the past would be a good idea--not fighting MP3 trading by trying to stop it, but instead giving people an incentive to buy the CD by adding value to it. I might just have to go out and get the CD just to support that idea, if for no other reason.
Fortunately, I'm awake now, and so can watch the videos while they still stream at actual video rates. I pity all the folks who wake up tomorrow and have to watch them at about two frames per second. Bandwidth suck. Whee!:)
Nice videos, but the story at the end of the fourth one was rather inconclusive. Will there be animated videos for every song on the album, I wonder?
Are the animated figures supposed to be representative of the members of Daft Punk? Sort of like the security guards are Sly and Robbie in Superthruster? (Anyone know what animators did that video?)
Neat videos...I hope they make more of them so I can see what happens next.:)
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When you get on The Weakest Link, then you can decide where you want your money to go. I have to say I agree with all the other people--the EFF is an important foundation, now more than ever, what with the terrorist backlash seriously threatening our civil liberties. It's not just about whether we can watch DVDs on Linux, you know.
Thanks for the responses. One more possibly stupid question...is there a keyboard shortcut, like Control Tab, to switch between tabs without having to take my hands off the keyboard? Or is there a way to configure one?
At the risk of seeming a little stupid...how do I use this tabbed browsing feature? Mozilla 9.6 still looks the same as any other Mozilla; I hit control-N and a new window pops up--I don't see any tabs anywhere.
Is there some configuration option I forgot to set?
I had heard that on at least some MST3K DVDs, they did exactly that--you could choose to watch the movie with the bots overlaid onto it, or you could choose to watch it "straight".
Do they not do this anymore?
Well, the first couple of Harry Potter books are nothing to write home about, relatively speaking. But the third and fourth--those are where really interesting things start to happen.
It seems to me that the books "grow up" along with the reader. The first two are light; they set the stage. But by the time you get to the fourth one, damn. It's like seeing The Empire Strikes Back after watching Star Wars.
I think a lot of people dismiss the books after reading only the first one. But that's really not fair. You don't fully realize what Rowling's doing with her world until you've read more of them. There are all these clever little details in the books, things that you don't notice on first read but that all start to tie together after you've read more of them. The name of a character who becomes very important in book 3 is mentioned once in a very offhand way in chapter 1 of the first book. An incident from chapter 2 of the first book that we--and Harry--shrug off as just another one of those "strange things" that Harry makes happen turns out to be a defining plot point of the second book. You don't see all these things until your second read-through. Then--it's just like magic, or like a visible shape emerging from one of those 3D optical illusions that just look like random blots. You start seeing all these little things that weren't there at all until you knew where to look for them.
As for who they're pitched at...well, the fourth book--which is 700 pages long, a remarkable length for a children's book--begins with a chapter that gave me a serious case of the willies. To this day I can't read that without making sure all the lights are on first--and I'm 28 years old. The rest of the book doesn't pull very many punches, either. Fathers schisming with sons, a named character dying...a soul getting sucked out and devoured...scary stuff.
Don't prejudge. If you're going to knock the Harry Potter books (and that's a general sort of you, not aimed specifically at the fellow I'm replying to), at least read them first. It's not even like you have to go to that much effort to find them; e-texts of all four of them are floating around on Gnutella. I normally don't advocate "piracy," but if there's no other way you're going to read them, I'll make an exception. I think most people will realize they're good enough that they'll want to go right out and buy them immediately afterward anyway.
After reading the last sentence in that message, all of a sudden I have this overwhelming urge to tell you a joke about a man with a wooden leg named Smith.
("And what was the name of his other leg?")
There's a persistent rumor going around about a four hour director's cut--despite the fact that Columbus himself has flatly said those rumors are false. I've written a bit about it in my LiveJournal, with links to the pertinent articles.
I am looking forward to the DVD, though.
To answer that question, you sort of have to go back to why they renamed the book Sorcerer's Stone when they brought it over to America. Because I expect that in the end, they renamed the film simply to rhyme with the title of the book, so as not to confuse all the people who didn't know what's going on.
When the book was being brought over for America, they changed a lot of British slang terms. For instance, "bogeys" became "boogers" (though I noticed they kept the uses of the word "bogey" in the film--probably too expensive to reshoot _all_ those scenes). (Interestingly enough, both "bogey" and "booger" have another Harry Potter connection--they come from the same root word as "Boggart," a monster Harry deals with in book 3!) "Jumpers" became "sweaters," and the new word Dudley learned in Chapter 1 was "shan't" over there in England and "won't" over here in the USA! Dumbledore's favorite candy, the sherbet lemon, became the lemon drop (though when Harry goes to Dumbledore's office in a later book, the password is sherbet lemon, with a reference back to Dumbledore liking them!). The list goes on and on.
Anyway, the revisions included the word "Philosopher" to "Sorcerer". I have no idea why; I can only assume it's because they thought American kids might not be familiar enough with alchemy-lore to recognize the Philosopher's Stone, and would end up wondering, "But where's the philosopher?"
Hey, you know, that would be great. Finally, people could distribute fansubs (or, rather, fansub files) with impunity--because in order to use 'em, you'd have to have the original disc already! :)
(There's a Windows program for use with DVD-ROM drives that allows viewing of DVDs with fansub files already, but last time I tried to use it, it was buggy and didn't work right.)
It's not the complications with ratings classifications that's the problem per se as I understand it--it's the fact that the studios just don't want the extra expense of coming up with the extra branching instructions for the disc--and the pause as the DVD player repositioned its read heads for the branching would be even more noticeable than the layer switch is to some people, which would lead to a lot of bogus, "My disc is defective!" complaints.
It's just the same as for the part of the DVD spec that was supposed to allow movies to be pan-and-scanned on the fly from a single letterbox master. It doesn't tend to be used; instead we see flippers or multi-layers or even 2-disc sets, just so that both versions can be included separately. Too expensive to come up with the instructions; too likely that a lot of players would frotz on them and disc performance would suffer. Cheaper just to throw them both in and let consumers be happy that way.
Oops! It works now! For some reason, Slashdot strips _ symbols out of URLs in signatures.
I'm probably one of about three people who've seen the recent Love Bug TV-movie, in which Bruce plays Herbie the Love Bug's new driver.
What was it like playing second fiddle to an annoyingly cute little car?
What was it like working with Dean Jones?
His response was to look at the audience and say, "Yes! Yes, there will be an Evil Dead IV!"
Then he paused for a few seconds, long enough for the applause and cheering to die down, and added, "...when monkeys fly out of my butt!!!"
The crowd went wild.
In other, slightly unrelated chip news, ZDNet reports that motherboards with the new nVidia nForce chipset will hit the market next week. Boy howdy do I want me some of that!
For what it's worth, Interactual is rather more stable than PC Unfriendly was. Might be worth giving it another try.
Um, dude, there already is software of the computer sort on DVDs. Has been since the early days. That's what's infected on that Powerpuff Girls DVD, in fact--the interactivity software.
The earliest DVD that I know of to have software on it as well as media was the Bubblegum Crisis 3-disc set, which included its own Shockwave DVD player so you could watch the disc on your computer even if you didn't have a player program. Then came discs like The Matrix , which had an app called "PC Friendly" on them. PC Friendly, in addition to containing its own player for the DVD, would allow you to access the "special interactive features"--in the case of The Matrix, that would be things like the "I Know Kung Fu" fight scene collection, the interactive trivia game, the text articles, and of course the weblink.
These days, the helper app of choice is the Interactual Player, which is included on titles like The Mummy Returns, Star Wars Episode One (it is this software, by the way, that controls whether you can access the DVD-exclusive trailers on their website), and just about anything else that touts interactive features. (Notable exceptions including the Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within DVD, which uses a Quicktime program, and the forthcoming Shrek DVD, which the Bits says will be interactive without having to install anything, though it doesn't say how.) Interactual will also play the interactive content from PC Friendly-enabled discs.
You'll always know when you have a software-enabled disc--because when you put it in the drive, it'll either try to install the program, or else launch it if it's installed already--probably interfering with your DVD player software, which will also be trying to launch. For this reason, I went into the Windows registry and disabled the CD autorun function (and thanks for making it so easy for me, Microsoft! (That was sarcasm)).
Anyway, like I said, the interactivity software is what's infected on the Powerpuff DVD. If you didn't install it and have autorun off, it should be safe to play the movie content--but I wouldn't take chances anyway.
There's a world of difference between "written for little kids" and "written down to little kids."
You could even say there's a sort of Star Wars analogy in the books (just to keep this vaguely topical to the thread). The first two are sort of light, kind of like the first Star Wars movie...but by the time you read the third and fourth, you're getting into definite Empire Strikes Back territory. Rowling pulls no punches. The villains are black and foul, not simply "misunderstood"; they're selfish and megalomaniacal but not the self-described "evil" (as in "God, I love being evil") of many down-written kids' shows and books. People die--and worse than die. There is very little sappy moralizing or sermonizing, and what there is flows naturally from the book, from adults giving advice to kids that isn't just "do this, don't do that," but gives them credit for being able to think. And the fourth book...well, don't read the first chapter of it in a darkened room, that's all I can say.
I'd recommend buying them without hesitation, but if you're still not sure, all four of the books are available on Gnutella. I'm not ordinarily one to condone piracy without paying--but I'm confident that once you've read them, you'll enjoy them enough that you want to own them.
To avoid the dreaded Off-Topic markdown, let me just mention that, as one of the DVD-owners, I have access to the Star Wars site; they're still hyping November 9th as far as I know. For the moment, they have what can only be described as a trailer for the trailer posted--a 7-meg Quicktime slideshow called "Choices" that shows images and posits such gripping questions as "What is the cost of failure?" and, my favorite, "What do droids worry about?"
Since Quicktimes can easily be downloaded, I expect you could find it on Gnutella by now. It's not all that great, but at least it's something.
Do I detect a hint of sour grapes in this W(h)ine? :)
Let me say that again. Even the site's maintainer admits that Sony was within their rights to ask the software be pulled.
The fellow freely admits that he is in violation of copyright by providing copies of someone else's files without permission.And this rates the big, nasty, ominous headline, "Sony Uses DMCA to Shut Down AIBO Hack Site"...why? It's a "Your Rights Online" issue? What about Sony's rights online?
Even if the DMCA did not exist, Sony would still be asking that the files be removed. For that matter, the DMCA itself is only incidental to this issue, and barely even mentioned in passing--even if it did not exist, those files still contain material that belongs to Sony, and Sony would still be asking that they be taken down!
Yes, you can boo and hiss and moan about how unfair it all is, and what a mean nasty company Sony is, and maybe even cry boycott for all the good it'll do. But in the end, Sony has the right to ask that these files be taken down.
I've got 50 Karma, do your worst.
I'm a little surprised that none of the people who's mentioned the "Daft Card" things brought it up in this light, but it seems that Daft Punk is doing what a lot of people suggested in the past would be a good idea--not fighting MP3 trading by trying to stop it, but instead giving people an incentive to buy the CD by adding value to it. I might just have to go out and get the CD just to support that idea, if for no other reason.
(Though I imagine they will anyway.)
Nice videos, but the story at the end of the fourth one was rather inconclusive. Will there be animated videos for every song on the album, I wonder?
Are the animated figures supposed to be representative of the members of Daft Punk? Sort of like the security guards are Sly and Robbie in Superthruster? (Anyone know what animators did that video?)
Neat videos...I hope they make more of them so I can see what happens next. :)
Or, for that matter, Guidescope, an easier to use adbuster that Junkbuster helped get started. I'm oh so happy since I've switched over . . .