while I've never done KAP, I have flown kites before (ie, big kites) and you need quite a big kite to hoist a decent camera. the reason disposables are so often used is because a) they're cheap and b) they're light.
How about c) they're disposable.
I have a team Hawaiian (well over a pound) that would seriously cause injury to any victim standing beneath it in a power dive. And it has shown that it is perfectly capable of dragging my 200+ pound butt across a plowed field.
While I believe it would have no problem hoisting my old Pentax with its hefty ancient Tamron zoom lens (3 pounds total camera+lens weight) I'm not sure I'd want to risk either damage to the camera or to any innocent bystander if either should decide they suddenly want to drop from the sky.
Also, if I were to duct-tape some kind of jury-rigged timer to a camera, it'd be nice if someone else had to clean off the duct-tape glue when I was done with it.:-)
I agree except for one thing: he does get his comeuppance. Just that it only happens in the "muggle" world.
He's treated like dirt by his guardians; his greedy cousin eats his birthday cake, they cage him in his room, he's expected to act only as a silent butler for his aunt and uncle, etc. They don't even give him enough lunch money to steal. So he does get his ass kicked and his glasses broken. Just not all the time.
And since they show that at the beginning of the film, you get the feeling that it's OK for this kid to get his butt kissed for a change.
I mean thousands of edits for the initial distribution of a film I heard about a few years ago. (It might have been 'Titanic'.)
This was done when they got very serious about discovering which theaters were leaking copies.
I remember it being tremendously expensive, but I may not have all the details right. I think they may have started with one movie distributed uniquely by region and theatre chain, and once they saw which chain was responsible, they then distributed unique copies of another movie to the indivdual theatres within that chain.
I don't think they were interested in the guy on the sidewalk with the TV tray full of videos. I think they were after a theatre that was taking the film to a shady duplicating house and making a full copy for misuse elsewhere. I don't remember whether or not they ever succeeded in busting anyone, though.
Think about this: Lucas' digitial distribution scheme will enable individual theatre by theatre editing. Think of it as digimark using scene length and/or frame order. Odeon Exeter will get scene 28 with three extra frames and scene 7 with four fewer, that sort of thing. They could even do it unique by showing, enabling them to identify individual screenings that are pirated. And even from a crappy videotape, they might be able to use visual artifacts in the tape to determine the whereabouts of where the camera was located. Couple that with in-theatre security cameras and IR lighting, and they'll probably have a photograph of the bad guy at work.
Who knows? Maybe we'll start seeing FBI warnings at the start of the Star Wars: Episode III: Swarm of the Lawyers?
The actual act of copying the film to video probably took place in a movie theatre in England, where it's already been released. The distribution channels are probably secure, but they're delivering media to thousands of untrustworthy theatres.
In the past, the studios have used unique-by-theatre editing to identify the the leaky theatres. They may have done so this time as well. With a guaranteed blockbuster like this movie, they'd have been irresponsible if they didn't take some precautions. Don't be surprised if you see an offending theatre up against the wall in a multi-million pound lawsuit, and criminal charges filed against the owners.
Media theft is one of the driving motivations behind George Lucas' attempt to build a fibre-optic movie distribution network in America. It will ensure that the only pirated copies that come out are ugly camcorder-in-the-theatre recordings that aren't fit to be viewed. And technological tricks such as dynamically varying the frame rate (possible with a digital projection system) will render most of those tapes unwatchable.
Migurski's Law:
For every advertising action, there is an equal and opposite cynical reaction.
So, I wonder if there's money to be made advertising in the cynical marketplace?
Re:Linux needs a more professional evangelist
on
Halloween VII
·
· Score: 2
You can say it however you like.
But I work for a megacorp. I am a technical architect that has rather a lot of say as to what ends up on the 42,500 machines under my team's control. I would love to have some ammunition to load up and fire against the Redmond wannabees that pollute our Technical Architecture committee. I'd love to say "Hey, here are 42,500 computers that you want to license Windows XP on at $xxx/license. Why don't we sign on with IBM Linux Support and have them support a Red Hat distro just for us for 1/100th of that amount. And look what Microsoft thinks of this idea."
And I can't use this document as a reference, because it looks childish.
So you can sit here and amuse yourself, and laugh at all the crack smoking jokes you want. Hell, you can smoke crack and laugh at every word I've written, mod me down, I don't care. I'm trying to find ways to get 42,500 computers off of Windows NT 4.0 and onto Linux. And I can't do it with this paper because I know my soup-kitchen-volunteering director would not be amused by a document that slams Microsoft as a bunch of crack-smokers. She knows that's not literallly true, so she won't buy the rest of the document. She won't pass it up the chain. It has no credibility.
It's just like the subject says: Linux needs a more professional evangelist.
Re:Linux needs a more professional evangelist
on
Halloween VII
·
· Score: 2
The original poster has a very valid point. You should not presume to know how someone else will react to different phrases.
A joke like "smoking crack" is funny to many people. But it will not be funny to every person. Consider the director who spends her Saturday afternoons volunteering at the soup kitchen, or Tuesday nights counseling battered women at a local shelter. "Smoking crack" is very much not a punchline to her.
Defending this by claiming it is "jargon" only works if the person reading the report is up on current jargon; and that will almost always not include the CEO. (I'm quite sure our CEO here does not read Slashdot.) In any case, business writing style dictates that jargon is frowned upon when preparing reports that will go higher than your immediate boss.
In business, you must write for your target audience. I've gotten dressed down for wisecracks in otherwise technical reports. Most people smile, but some have a hard time getting past someone who names computers after cartoon characters. "Smoking crack" is not going to impress them. Smoking crack will simply and needlessly offend them, and bias them against any other valid points raised.
When presenting to a wide audience, you can not afford to offend, because you cannot predict the outcome. This kind of report should be distributed to and read by "issue elites" in Fortune 100 corporations. This kind of wisecrack prevents that distribution. However hip your upper-management types are, remember that mine may not be as cool.
I personally thought it was a better release than the original. As Rupert pointed out, most of the Amidala and Anakin romance was removed as was the entire Jedi Library scene. (Thankfully this included removing that awful pointless closeup of Jett Lucas in the Jedi Library. For some reason, that stupid cameo in the first release really got my goat.) And yes, they did "thin" some of the plot, but since almost everyone has already seen it on the small screen, their memory of their first viewing should fill in the plot gaps.
Initially, I found some scenes harder to follow in IMAX, and I noticed immediately that it was going to be different when I had to turn my head left-to-right just to read the initial scrolling text. I was afraid I was going to get a neckache watching a tennis match for the next two hours, but instead found myself totally immersed in the movie.
For example, the chase scene on Coruscant worked very well in that I found myself following the frantic motions of the speeder, but occasionally scanning my surroundings looking for the assassin's vehicle, just like I might look around for speed traps while driving my car too fast:-)
Other scenes, such as the execution arena, were magnificent when you saw how big the arena was supposed to be. And I believe they must have rerendered the CGI for IMAX. The arena was filled with the uncountable flying insect-people, but if you turned your attention to any single one of them, you would see the detail in the unique motion each one had, its wings buzzing or it standing up or waving its arms about.
IMAX isn't about watching the whole movie, the way you might watch a TV set in your living room. It's about watching the story unfold and having action take place in the center of your vision, while your peripheral vision continues to feed you supporting imagery. You aren't meant to see the "screen" as a separate entity, framed and hanging on a wall. You're meant to follow the actors and action as if you were present, and the size of the screen is meant to keep you from seeing that frame.
This movie was a good showcase for what IMAX can do for the viewers, as long as you realize that as a viewer you have to be willing to approach it differently. I thoroughly enjoyed it (even though I'd never paid $11.00 for a movie ticket before.) My advice on attending? Arrive early at the theater, sit near the front, and lose yourself for a couple of hours.
I didn't say 80% of production occurred in Central Africa, I said that it is estimated that 80% of the world's ore is located there.
Regardless, I'm very pleased that production has shifted so heavily from the Congo to other, presumably more responsible, sources.
I have a question for you, though. How do I, the average consumer, identify the source of the metal when purchasing caps? I try to make responsible choices when presented with alternatives, but I don't see the "No gorillas were harmed in the mining of the tantalum used in the capacitors on this motherboard" logo. Of course, getting back to the main topic, I know my current iWill MoBo is "gorilla safe" because I can see the electrolytic caps. But how do you tell? Which capacitor manufacturers are the responsible ones?
Re:The nice thing about Slashdot's slowness
on
RIP: Charles Sheffield
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
[ First, as the moderators have so rightly pointed out, my original post was an overrated troll. I did not post it as flamebait, however. I was going for the "funny" points. Quite a mistake, eh? ]
Right or wrong, icon would imply being prominent in the public eye. Dr. Sheffield was brilliant. He was known and respected in the sciences as well as the science fiction circles. I have no doubt that he treated you and everyone he came in contact with kindly.
But, he was not "pop culture." He was not a Hollywood name. He was not a Spice Girl or a member of N'Sync. He didn't have music videos. He didn't do a posthumous duet with Elvis or John Lennon. (Well at least he didn't voluntarily do one during his lifetime.) He didn't appear on Leno or American Bandstand. He didn't host Saturday Night Live (well he might have, but nobody's watched it in the last 10 years anyway.)
I am not saying that these are good things. I'm just listing off the crap required to be an "American Icon (TM)" in the true P.T. Barnum tradition of "never underestimating the taste of the American public."
(And is caffeine a basic nutrient or a food group?)
The nice thing about Slashdot's slowness
on
RIP: Charles Sheffield
·
· Score: 0, Informative
is that the first post under this article WASN'T about Stephen King. And I'm sorry to be heretical, but I don't consider Charles Sheffield to be an American icon, either.
While you are correct in your assertion that tantalum capacitors are (or at least should be) used where reliability is paramount, there are severe environmental issues with much of the tantalum mining going on today.
80% of the world's supply of coltan, the ore from which tantalum is extracted, is found in the Congo (formerly Zaire). Illegal mining has caused large sections of Kahuzi-Biega National Park and the Okapi Wildlife Reserve forests to be cleared. The U.N. has determined that 90% of the gorillas in these parks have been killed in the last five years, primarily by the illicit miners, leaving only about 3000 remaining. The miners kill the gorillas as a threat to their safety, and sell the meat for extra income.
It's not an easy problem to solve: coltan sold for upwards of $600/kg in the late 1990s (although it's down to about $100/kg today.) A team of miners can produce about one kg per day, and each miner can earn about $200 US/month in a region where the average income is $10 US/month. Technology's demand for tantalum has driven the poorer residents of these nations to take the easy money where possible. And according to the U.N., both sides in neighboring Rwanda have been funding their civil war in large part by sales of this illegally mined tantalum.
What can be done? It is reported that deposits of coltan have been found in dormant volcanos in Greenland. And there are legitimate mines elsewhere in the world. MoBo manufacturers can and should agree to purchase and use only "gorilla safe" or "non-Congo" tantalum caps (or they can continue to use better quality electrolytic caps.)
But this will only occur if the demand for gorilla-safe tantalum crosses some magical political threshhold. I wish I knew what it would take.
I wonder if there isn't some other motive here, requiring high-res images.
(I assume you're making a nude beach reference kind of joke.)
These are very high res images. That resolution is required to see the individual boulders. The only way he could get similar resolution from a DV camcorder would be to fly fast, about 30 feet from shore and maybe fifteen feet up. Very problematic legally -- not only would he be occasionally endangering sailboats, surfers, etc., but he'd also be spooking marine mammals. FEDERALLY PROTECTED marine mammals.
Even so, he'd be missing two vital pieces that he's now collecting.
Underwater damage. His photographs are detailed enough to see the sand beneath the water. Much of the damage caused by seawalls is in the retreat of that sand. The photos are evidence that the sand was there on Sept 30th, 2002, but a seawall went in some time after that and now there's no sand left.
Visual context, such as which golf course or homeowner has the seawall next to their land.
A random photo with a lat/lon notation is one thing to explain to a judge or jury, but a photo of yesterday's sandy beach followed by a photo of a today's seawall and ugly rockpile is much more effective when both show the defendant's mansion.
Nowhere did I say that we shouldn't pursue anything just because it was sci-fi. All I'm saying is that so far, the sci-fi uses for nanotech have remained mostly out of reach.
Sci-fi is a great motivator! Without dreams of wonderful gadgets, no one would create them.
I apologize, I said "nanotech" when I should have said "nanomachines."
Yes, nanotubes (and even C-60 buckyballs) are seeing real world applications. But those are not "smart" or "machines", those are just useful and conviently shaped tiny tiny particles.
I hadn't really considered self-cleaning glass a nanomachine, but I guess now I agree with you. According to the PPG web site, UV light provides the "energy" required to clean it (it doesn't work at night), so there must be some "mechanism" at work (although the web site mentions only a transparent coating of titanium dioxide.)
Slashdot Mirror
How about c) they're disposable.
I have a team Hawaiian (well over a pound) that would seriously cause injury to any victim standing beneath it in a power dive. And it has shown that it is perfectly capable of dragging my 200+ pound butt across a plowed field.
While I believe it would have no problem hoisting my old Pentax with its hefty ancient Tamron zoom lens (3 pounds total camera+lens weight) I'm not sure I'd want to risk either damage to the camera or to any innocent bystander if either should decide they suddenly want to drop from the sky.
Also, if I were to duct-tape some kind of jury-rigged timer to a camera, it'd be nice if someone else had to clean off the duct-tape glue when I was done with it. :-)
He's treated like dirt by his guardians; his greedy cousin eats his birthday cake, they cage him in his room, he's expected to act only as a silent butler for his aunt and uncle, etc. They don't even give him enough lunch money to steal. So he does get his ass kicked and his glasses broken. Just not all the time.
And since they show that at the beginning of the film, you get the feeling that it's OK for this kid to get his butt kissed for a change.
A: Chum.
"Tank you, I'll be here all ze veek."
Silly me.
Of course, Scooby Doo would have been overpriced at "free", but that's completely beside the point.
Usually.
But sometimes, very infrequently, it would decide to bring up a flashing screen that had in 72 point flashing letters: "HEY BOSS I'M PLAYING A GAME!!"
I loved that feature.
This was done when they got very serious about discovering which theaters were leaking copies.
I remember it being tremendously expensive, but I may not have all the details right. I think they may have started with one movie distributed uniquely by region and theatre chain, and once they saw which chain was responsible, they then distributed unique copies of another movie to the indivdual theatres within that chain.
I don't think they were interested in the guy on the sidewalk with the TV tray full of videos. I think they were after a theatre that was taking the film to a shady duplicating house and making a full copy for misuse elsewhere. I don't remember whether or not they ever succeeded in busting anyone, though.
Think about this: Lucas' digitial distribution scheme will enable individual theatre by theatre editing. Think of it as digimark using scene length and/or frame order. Odeon Exeter will get scene 28 with three extra frames and scene 7 with four fewer, that sort of thing. They could even do it unique by showing, enabling them to identify individual screenings that are pirated. And even from a crappy videotape, they might be able to use visual artifacts in the tape to determine the whereabouts of where the camera was located. Couple that with in-theatre security cameras and IR lighting, and they'll probably have a photograph of the bad guy at work.
Who knows? Maybe we'll start seeing FBI warnings at the start of the Star Wars: Episode III: Swarm of the Lawyers?
The actual act of copying the film to video probably took place in a movie theatre in England, where it's already been released. The distribution channels are probably secure, but they're delivering media to thousands of untrustworthy theatres.
In the past, the studios have used unique-by-theatre editing to identify the the leaky theatres. They may have done so this time as well. With a guaranteed blockbuster like this movie, they'd have been irresponsible if they didn't take some precautions. Don't be surprised if you see an offending theatre up against the wall in a multi-million pound lawsuit, and criminal charges filed against the owners.
Media theft is one of the driving motivations behind George Lucas' attempt to build a fibre-optic movie distribution network in America. It will ensure that the only pirated copies that come out are ugly camcorder-in-the-theatre recordings that aren't fit to be viewed. And technological tricks such as dynamically varying the frame rate (possible with a digital projection system) will render most of those tapes unwatchable.
(I'll drop the phony British accent now, Rupert.)
Migurski's Law:
For every advertising action, there is an equal and opposite cynical reaction.
So, I wonder if there's money to be made advertising in the cynical marketplace?
But I work for a megacorp. I am a technical architect that has rather a lot of say as to what ends up on the 42,500 machines under my team's control. I would love to have some ammunition to load up and fire against the Redmond wannabees that pollute our Technical Architecture committee. I'd love to say "Hey, here are 42,500 computers that you want to license Windows XP on at $xxx/license. Why don't we sign on with IBM Linux Support and have them support a Red Hat distro just for us for 1/100th of that amount. And look what Microsoft thinks of this idea."
And I can't use this document as a reference, because it looks childish.
So you can sit here and amuse yourself, and laugh at all the crack smoking jokes you want. Hell, you can smoke crack and laugh at every word I've written, mod me down, I don't care. I'm trying to find ways to get 42,500 computers off of Windows NT 4.0 and onto Linux. And I can't do it with this paper because I know my soup-kitchen-volunteering director would not be amused by a document that slams Microsoft as a bunch of crack-smokers. She knows that's not literallly true, so she won't buy the rest of the document. She won't pass it up the chain. It has no credibility.
It's just like the subject says: Linux needs a more professional evangelist.
A joke like "smoking crack" is funny to many people. But it will not be funny to every person. Consider the director who spends her Saturday afternoons volunteering at the soup kitchen, or Tuesday nights counseling battered women at a local shelter. "Smoking crack" is very much not a punchline to her.
Defending this by claiming it is "jargon" only works if the person reading the report is up on current jargon; and that will almost always not include the CEO. (I'm quite sure our CEO here does not read Slashdot.) In any case, business writing style dictates that jargon is frowned upon when preparing reports that will go higher than your immediate boss.
In business, you must write for your target audience. I've gotten dressed down for wisecracks in otherwise technical reports. Most people smile, but some have a hard time getting past someone who names computers after cartoon characters. "Smoking crack" is not going to impress them. Smoking crack will simply and needlessly offend them, and bias them against any other valid points raised.
When presenting to a wide audience, you can not afford to offend, because you cannot predict the outcome. This kind of report should be distributed to and read by "issue elites" in Fortune 100 corporations. This kind of wisecrack prevents that distribution. However hip your upper-management types are, remember that mine may not be as cool.
Initially, I found some scenes harder to follow in IMAX, and I noticed immediately that it was going to be different when I had to turn my head left-to-right just to read the initial scrolling text. I was afraid I was going to get a neckache watching a tennis match for the next two hours, but instead found myself totally immersed in the movie.
For example, the chase scene on Coruscant worked very well in that I found myself following the frantic motions of the speeder, but occasionally scanning my surroundings looking for the assassin's vehicle, just like I might look around for speed traps while driving my car too fast :-)
Other scenes, such as the execution arena, were magnificent when you saw how big the arena was supposed to be. And I believe they must have rerendered the CGI for IMAX. The arena was filled with the uncountable flying insect-people, but if you turned your attention to any single one of them, you would see the detail in the unique motion each one had, its wings buzzing or it standing up or waving its arms about.
IMAX isn't about watching the whole movie, the way you might watch a TV set in your living room. It's about watching the story unfold and having action take place in the center of your vision, while your peripheral vision continues to feed you supporting imagery. You aren't meant to see the "screen" as a separate entity, framed and hanging on a wall. You're meant to follow the actors and action as if you were present, and the size of the screen is meant to keep you from seeing that frame.
This movie was a good showcase for what IMAX can do for the viewers, as long as you realize that as a viewer you have to be willing to approach it differently. I thoroughly enjoyed it (even though I'd never paid $11.00 for a movie ticket before.) My advice on attending? Arrive early at the theater, sit near the front, and lose yourself for a couple of hours.
Regardless, I'm very pleased that production has shifted so heavily from the Congo to other, presumably more responsible, sources.
I have a question for you, though. How do I, the average consumer, identify the source of the metal when purchasing caps? I try to make responsible choices when presented with alternatives, but I don't see the "No gorillas were harmed in the mining of the tantalum used in the capacitors on this motherboard" logo. Of course, getting back to the main topic, I know my current iWill MoBo is "gorilla safe" because I can see the electrolytic caps. But how do you tell? Which capacitor manufacturers are the responsible ones?
Right or wrong, icon would imply being prominent in the public eye. Dr. Sheffield was brilliant. He was known and respected in the sciences as well as the science fiction circles. I have no doubt that he treated you and everyone he came in contact with kindly.
But, he was not "pop culture." He was not a Hollywood name. He was not a Spice Girl or a member of N'Sync. He didn't have music videos. He didn't do a posthumous duet with Elvis or John Lennon. (Well at least he didn't voluntarily do one during his lifetime.) He didn't appear on Leno or American Bandstand. He didn't host Saturday Night Live (well he might have, but nobody's watched it in the last 10 years anyway.)
I am not saying that these are good things. I'm just listing off the crap required to be an "American Icon (TM)" in the true P.T. Barnum tradition of "never underestimating the taste of the American public."
(And is caffeine a basic nutrient or a food group?)
is that the first post under this article WASN'T about Stephen King. And I'm sorry to be heretical, but I don't consider Charles Sheffield to be an American icon, either.
80% of the world's supply of coltan, the ore from which tantalum is extracted, is found in the Congo (formerly Zaire). Illegal mining has caused large sections of Kahuzi-Biega National Park and the Okapi Wildlife Reserve forests to be cleared. The U.N. has determined that 90% of the gorillas in these parks have been killed in the last five years, primarily by the illicit miners, leaving only about 3000 remaining. The miners kill the gorillas as a threat to their safety, and sell the meat for extra income.
It's not an easy problem to solve: coltan sold for upwards of $600/kg in the late 1990s (although it's down to about $100/kg today.) A team of miners can produce about one kg per day, and each miner can earn about $200 US/month in a region where the average income is $10 US/month. Technology's demand for tantalum has driven the poorer residents of these nations to take the easy money where possible. And according to the U.N., both sides in neighboring Rwanda have been funding their civil war in large part by sales of this illegally mined tantalum.
What can be done? It is reported that deposits of coltan have been found in dormant volcanos in Greenland. And there are legitimate mines elsewhere in the world. MoBo manufacturers can and should agree to purchase and use only "gorilla safe" or "non-Congo" tantalum caps (or they can continue to use better quality electrolytic caps.) But this will only occur if the demand for gorilla-safe tantalum crosses some magical political threshhold. I wish I knew what it would take.
If you want that MoBo to cost you $75 instead of $150, what are you as a consumer willing to sacrifice?
I think that says volumes about the dangers of automated news agents.
Reminds me of a lame patent claim, 4,387,297 in which Symbol Technologies claimed a trigger that activated a laser.
They patented a switch to turn on an electrical device.
Good thing the patent expires next year so that Logitech won't get sued...
"If the women don't find you +1 Interesting, they should at least find you +1 Informative."
(I assume you're making a nude beach reference kind of joke.)
These are very high res images. That resolution is required to see the individual boulders. The only way he could get similar resolution from a DV camcorder would be to fly fast, about 30 feet from shore and maybe fifteen feet up. Very problematic legally -- not only would he be occasionally endangering sailboats, surfers, etc., but he'd also be spooking marine mammals. FEDERALLY PROTECTED marine mammals.
Even so, he'd be missing two vital pieces that he's now collecting.
- Underwater damage. His photographs are detailed enough to see the sand beneath the water. Much of the damage caused by seawalls is in the retreat of that sand. The photos are evidence that the sand was there on Sept 30th, 2002, but a seawall went in some time after that and now there's no sand left.
- Visual context, such as which golf course or homeowner has the seawall next to their land.
A random photo with a lat/lon notation is one thing to explain to a judge or jury, but a photo of yesterday's sandy beach followed by a photo of a today's seawall and ugly rockpile is much more effective when both show the defendant's mansion.Hey, that's how Teal'c used to pronounce it in the first season. "dan-yell-jak-sun", like it was all one word.
Sci-fi is a great motivator! Without dreams of wonderful gadgets, no one would create them.
Yes, nanotubes (and even C-60 buckyballs) are seeing real world applications. But those are not "smart" or "machines", those are just useful and conviently shaped tiny tiny particles.
I hadn't really considered self-cleaning glass a nanomachine, but I guess now I agree with you. According to the PPG web site, UV light provides the "energy" required to clean it (it doesn't work at night), so there must be some "mechanism" at work (although the web site mentions only a transparent coating of titanium dioxide.)