Well, it's not going to corrupt their morals. But in the theater I found myself wondering whether Disney's target audience was capable of dealing with an unreliable narrator. That is, when the emperor (in voiceover) talked about what a bad guy the simple peasant was, did these kids understand that the emperor was speaking from an utterly self-centered position, and wasn't to be trusted? Or did they believe him and get confused when the peasant turned out to be nice?
Have some really cheesy cute animals and beautiful boys and girls.
Yep, a couple minor characters. (The kids were more cute than beautiful.) But no animal sidekick, for a change.
Have a silly love story that is totally implausible.
Nope.
You will leave the theatre with that candy-coated "feel-good-fuzzy" feeling.
I left the theater with a big grin on my face, because it was funny, something that most Disney movies aren't.
Generally, all other things withstanding, be designed from the ground up as a moneymaking machine. How well it performs is somewhat dependent on how many fast-food chains pick up the promo goods for the flick.
I'll agree with the general principle here. But this is a movie that was basically scrapped and restarted halfway through production--it may not have been as "designed from the ground up" as your average Disney feature.
It's got a zaniness, at least, that we haven't seen for a while. Robin Williams's improvisations in Aladdin were fun, but embedded in a treacly story. The Emperor's New Groove has clever and silly things going on at every level.
Just as a point of information, my.mp3.com is free for up to 25 CDs. I don't know if you can change your set of 25 over time. For $50 a year you can store up to 500 "with more functionality and less advertising".
In addition, it looks like those of you already have my.mp3.com accounts can keep listening to your old tracks. You still have a "free" account, and the music you've already signed up for doesn't count against the new 25-CD limit.
Actually, regardless of whether Gore thinks the electoral system is fair, he agrees that it's the law. In a speech a few days after the election he said that although he may have won the popular vote, it's the electoral college that counts; essentially, that he knew the way the game is played, and will win or lose by those rules.
The lawsuits and challenges you're seeing now, incidentally, are part of those rules. The law isn't a machine, and we can't expect a hotly contested matter to be resolved in one iteration. Lots of important things are decided just the way this is being decided, by citizens taking their disagreement to the judicial system. Blah blah checks and balances etc.
As an American, I'm not embarrassed by an election that takes a lot of time and a lot of lawsuits, as long as it's eventually resolved peacefully. Resolving our differences through appeal to law--byzantine and tedious though it may be--is a lot better than bloody revolution or assassination, two popular alternatives which don't look likely here (notwithstanding some rioting in Florida). Believe it or not, this is how it's supposed to work.
Yeah, Gopher was cool. But the World Wide Web came along and did at least four things that were better:
Structured documents--yeah, this has been stretched to the point of abuse, but it sure was nice when it came along.
Non-hierarchical information systems. Gopher was great for browsing big directories of things, but not so good for documents that had more complex relationships.
Separation of protocol (HTTP... or Gopher, FTP, etc) from format (HTML... or plaintext, gif, etc).
A fairly extensive, and more importantly extensible, document type system (by adopting MIME), at least once we hit HTTP 1.0.
Gopher+ tried to solve some of these problems, but they'd already been solved, more thoughtfully, by the fine folks at CERN. Gopher+ was too little, too late (and further encumbered by an ill-conceived anti-corporate licensing scheme).
I'm not here to laugh at Gopher--it was a great first pass, and I cut my teeth on it like many others did. But it really was just a first pass; let's not forget the reasons we left it behind in the first place.
(Oh yeah, and yes, the Gophers are the U of M's sports teams.)
Indeed, as a note at the end of the novel explains, Samuel Mallach's professional history is based on Bohm's. The character's personal history, of course, is almost entirely different.
I concur with Katz's review, and want to stress something he didn't say enough about: It's a great story. It's fascinating that Goldstein managed to make fiction out of quantum physics, sure, but what's amazing is that it's such great fiction.
A few of the things that struck me: The gothic tone. The fragments of conversation that surface and resurface throughout the story, unrooted from time. The struggle between ways of understanding, between mathematics and poetry. Betrayals, great and small, and the fear of being betrayed again. The web of fathers and daughters and mothers and sons.
When I finished this book, I turned back to the first page and started rereading it immediately. I haven't done that since I was thirteen.
I also recommend Goldstein's Strange Attractors, a collection of interrelated short stories. Two of the stories feature a young mathematician named Phoebe who "studies the geometry of soap bubbles". Again, the stories combine a love of the world of ideas with a grounding in the world of people.
The New York Times has a pretty useful review of Strange Attractors but I can't get a working URL for it so if you're interested you'll have to do the search yourself.
For a less closed approach to the filmmaking process, check out The Claim. The official site has screenplay excerpts, daily call sheets, quicktime tours of the set, and lots of random progress reports. (Like, the edit is currently taking up 198G of hard disk space, and the current cut is 112 minutes long....)
Consider that if Microsoft prevails here,/. will have to monitor all postings and censor them.
Actually, the strategy implied by Microsoft's letter would ensure that Slashdot does not need to monitor posts.
Microsoft's letter presumes that/. is a "service provider" under the DMCA. The point of Section 512(c) is to strike a compromise between two alternatives:
Service providers have to constantly monitor all content on their sites and recognize copyright violation when they see it.
Service providers are not responsible at all for copyright violations hosted on their sites.
So the deal is, if/. is a service provider, it doesn't have to keep an eye out for copyright violation by its posters. But it does have to take down copyright-violating material if notified by the copyright holder. (There's an appeal process for posters that I won't get into here.)
If it weren't for this section of the DMCA, internet message boards like/. probably would have to monitor all content for copyright violation, which would make it prohibitively difficult for anyone to run one, as you suggest.
Re:Wes Craven - New Nightmare vs Scream 3
on
Review: "Scream 3"
·
· Score: 1
Yeah, Wes Craven is cool. And for those of you in Silicon Valley, he'll be in the neighborhood this week as part of the Cinequest San Jose Film Festival. He'll be doing a live interview on Saturday (March 4) in the afternoon, plus a screening of one of his favorite of his own films the next day at noon. (The Craven page says "TBA" but the daily schedule lists it on Sunday.)
Well, looks like that suit's settled: "Music software developer PlayMedia Systems has settled its $20 million lawsuit against Nullsoft, just one day after America Online bought the Net music technology firm. PlayMedia had accused Nullsoft of copyright infringement over its AMP code. PlayMedia also had added music news, download, and community site MP3.com to the lawsuit; that action also was settled, PlayMedia said."
Commence speculating about the precise chronology and terms of this settlement in light of yesterday's AOL announcement.
(The link above will probably be dead once news.com gets a real story up.)
Nullsoft and MP3.com are defendants in a lawsuit brought by PlayMedia, alleging copyright infringement in the use of the AMP playback engine, according to CNET. I don't think this lawsuit involves the RIAA.
According to the book, JSP came along just before the book went to press. There are about five pages on JSP, but it serves only to convey the general idea, especially since Sun has since introduced a radically different version of the spec.
JSP looks really cool; once a 1.0 spec comes along, I'll be excited to use it.
Slashdot Mirror
Yep, a couple minor characters. (The kids were more cute than beautiful.) But no animal sidekick, for a change.
Nope.
I left the theater with a big grin on my face, because it was funny, something that most Disney movies aren't.
I'll agree with the general principle here. But this is a movie that was basically scrapped and restarted halfway through production--it may not have been as "designed from the ground up" as your average Disney feature.
It's got a zaniness, at least, that we haven't seen for a while. Robin Williams's improvisations in Aladdin were fun, but embedded in a treacly story. The Emperor's New Groove has clever and silly things going on at every level.
Okay, but I still wished he was Peter Gabriel.
His?
Just as a point of information, my.mp3.com is free for up to 25 CDs. I don't know if you can change your set of 25 over time. For $50 a year you can store up to 500 "with more functionality and less advertising".
In addition, it looks like those of you already have my.mp3.com accounts can keep listening to your old tracks. You still have a "free" account, and the music you've already signed up for doesn't count against the new 25-CD limit.
See the press release for more details.
Actually, regardless of whether Gore thinks the electoral system is fair, he agrees that it's the law. In a speech a few days after the election he said that although he may have won the popular vote, it's the electoral college that counts; essentially, that he knew the way the game is played, and will win or lose by those rules.
The lawsuits and challenges you're seeing now, incidentally, are part of those rules. The law isn't a machine, and we can't expect a hotly contested matter to be resolved in one iteration. Lots of important things are decided just the way this is being decided, by citizens taking their disagreement to the judicial system. Blah blah checks and balances etc.
As an American, I'm not embarrassed by an election that takes a lot of time and a lot of lawsuits, as long as it's eventually resolved peacefully. Resolving our differences through appeal to law--byzantine and tedious though it may be--is a lot better than bloody revolution or assassination, two popular alternatives which don't look likely here (notwithstanding some rioting in Florida). Believe it or not, this is how it's supposed to work.
Gopher+ tried to solve some of these problems, but they'd already been solved, more thoughtfully, by the fine folks at CERN. Gopher+ was too little, too late (and further encumbered by an ill-conceived anti-corporate licensing scheme).
I'm not here to laugh at Gopher--it was a great first pass, and I cut my teeth on it like many others did. But it really was just a first pass; let's not forget the reasons we left it behind in the first place.
(Oh yeah, and yes, the Gophers are the U of M's sports teams.)
Indeed, as a note at the end of the novel explains, Samuel Mallach's professional history is based on Bohm's. The character's personal history, of course, is almost entirely different.
I concur with Katz's review, and want to stress something he didn't say enough about: It's a great story. It's fascinating that Goldstein managed to make fiction out of quantum physics, sure, but what's amazing is that it's such great fiction.
A few of the things that struck me: The gothic tone. The fragments of conversation that surface and resurface throughout the story, unrooted from time. The struggle between ways of understanding, between mathematics and poetry. Betrayals, great and small, and the fear of being betrayed again. The web of fathers and daughters and mothers and sons.
When I finished this book, I turned back to the first page and started rereading it immediately. I haven't done that since I was thirteen.
I also recommend Goldstein's Strange Attractors, a collection of interrelated short stories. Two of the stories feature a young mathematician named Phoebe who "studies the geometry of soap bubbles". Again, the stories combine a love of the world of ideas with a grounding in the world of people.
The New York Times has a pretty useful review of Strange Attractors but I can't get a working URL for it so if you're interested you'll have to do the search yourself.
For a less closed approach to the filmmaking process, check out The Claim. The official site has screenplay excerpts, daily call sheets, quicktime tours of the set, and lots of random progress reports. (Like, the edit is currently taking up 198G of hard disk space, and the current cut is 112 minutes long....)
Consider that if Microsoft prevails here, /. will have to monitor all postings and censor them.
Actually, the strategy implied by Microsoft's letter would ensure that Slashdot does not need to monitor posts.
Microsoft's letter presumes that /. is a "service provider" under the DMCA. The point of Section 512(c) is to strike a compromise between two alternatives:
- Service providers have to constantly monitor all content on their sites and recognize copyright violation when they see it.
- Service providers are not responsible at all for copyright violations hosted on their sites.
So the deal is, ifIf it weren't for this section of the DMCA, internet message boards like /. probably would have to monitor all content for copyright violation, which would make it prohibitively difficult for anyone to run one, as you suggest.
Yeah, Wes Craven is cool. And for those of you in Silicon Valley, he'll be in the neighborhood this week as part of the Cinequest San Jose Film Festival. He'll be doing a live interview on Saturday (March 4) in the afternoon, plus a screening of one of his favorite of his own films the next day at noon. (The Craven page says "TBA" but the daily schedule lists it on Sunday.)
Unfortunately the Sunday screening conflicts with a presentation on the digital visual effects from The Mummy, so I'll probably miss it.
Here's a new link to the settlement story.
Well, looks like that suit's settled: "Music software developer PlayMedia Systems has settled its $20 million lawsuit against Nullsoft, just one day after America Online bought the Net music technology firm. PlayMedia had accused Nullsoft of copyright infringement over its AMP code. PlayMedia also had added music news, download, and community site MP3.com to the lawsuit; that action also was settled, PlayMedia said."
Commence speculating about the precise chronology and terms of this settlement in light of yesterday's AOL announcement.
(The link above will probably be dead once news.com gets a real story up.)
Nullsoft and MP3.com are defendants in a lawsuit brought by PlayMedia, alleging copyright infringement in the use of the AMP playback engine, according to CNET. I don't think this lawsuit involves the RIAA.
According to the book, JSP came along just before the book went to press. There are about five pages on JSP, but it serves only to convey the general idea, especially since Sun has since introduced a radically different version of the spec.
JSP looks really cool; once a 1.0 spec comes along, I'll be excited to use it.
according to the pre-release announcement, Java 3D is expected "in another couple of weeks or less", with JMF and the others to follow later.