Every time a new feature was added, the guy had to hack it in somehow, because the original code was always written to just what it was supposed to do, no more.
For most embedded programming, that's the intent and is looked upon as a good thing.
You're forgetting about embedded applications using "sort-of-standard" hardware. The more you can pack in to the smaller space, the better in those situations. So if a bios provides "service X" then why should you be expected to write "service X" all over again just so you can have two copies in your romset and occupy more space.
I thought it'd be perfect for a local band to promote themselves in local theatres before a film. It'd be great because you can advertise your band directly to the people that are most likely going to like their music, and the audience is contained.
Something occurred to me tonight (while I was playing my movie, in fact). Theatres generally play music to fill in the time between shows. And you want to promote a band.
Why not approach a theatre and ask them if they will play your band's music. You might be able to strike a deal to get a slide or a sign or something up to the effect that, "Music provided by Johnny and the Hornblowers. To book Johnny for your wedding or bar mitzvah, call 555-1212 and ask for Mike".
There. Didn't need a digital projector for that either...
Can you give a guesstimate of what kind of guaranteed audience you'd need for such a custom screening? And what kind of advance word?
"Flat-rent films" (which is what this stuff is called) don't work on the principle of how-many-people. Or at least, they don't have to. Most flat-rent screenings just go on the basis of "You pay $x and you bring as many of your friends as you like, up to the seating capacity of the theatre." Note that flat-rent films tend to be stuff that is out on video or about-to-be. The studios won't let them out on a flat-rent basis before then.
Ask at your local (small independent) theatre and you can get all of the facts as to how they do these things. People have flat-rent screenings for all kinds of things -- Christmas parties, kids birthdays, senior citizens groups, school classes, you-name-it. Most independent theatres will have some kind of a policy and price that they can give you if you just ask about it.
Can Dave's Tire Repair specify exactly what film/hour he can advertise at with the slide system?
Sure, why not?As far as i can tell, you really can't target your audience with the current systems
I don't see what the problem is here.As an advertiser i could request that my little ad gets played during the seating time of Amelie and Y tu Mama Tambien. I don't want to advertise to the people in Sum of All Fears 'cause they're just the wrong audience.
So? This can easily be done now. Really!Can those contracts stop you from playing ads during seating time?
Yes.
I thought it'd be perfect for a local band to promote themselves in local theatres before a film. It'd be great because you can advertise your band directly to the people that are most likely going to like their music, and the audience is contained.
So talk to your local theatre and see what they say. You can have a 35mm trailer made for you (check your local yellow pages) and off you go.
You still don't need digital projectors for this. And even if you have a digital projector you will still incur a production cost when you go to make your trailer even if the end result is to be shown digitally.
will bring with it some very cool innovations (like, get 20 friends together and a movie threater will allocate you once screen for a midweek matinee of some classic movie).
What innovation? Many small independent theatres can and will do that now. Have you asked your local mom'n'pop theatre owner about doing this? You might be surprised if you haven't.
Disclaimer: One of those mom'n'pop theatres happens to belong to me.
If they set up a system to allow small and local businesses to advertise at the theatre.
Many theatres already do this. It's called a slide projector!
like the slide system they have going now.
I see that you already know that. So where is
a great deal more income
going to come from with a digital projector? Dave's Tire Repair only has so much money to spend on advertising, whether it's a slide or a moving picture.
Incidentally, many exhibition contracts specifically prohibit the showing of advertising other than static slides before the main feature with the exception of trailers for forthcoming movies. (I own a theatre, in case you're wondering how I know this.)
Its not like Ma and Pa Small Business Owner in Nebraska will be adversely affected by this - all of the theaters are owned by large corporations now
Really? Gosh, that's news to me.
I own and operate a movie theatre in a small town. Ain't no chain here. Just me.
Granted, I'm not in Nebraska so maybe that's where you're referencing? Though I'd bet I could find some independent theatre owners in Nebraska too, without much effort.
Don't forget, there really is life outside of big cities! And folks in small towns like to go to movies too.
The unfortunate thing here is that even if the studios decide to somehow subsidize the purchase of digital projectors for theatres, you can bet they will not be purchasing digital projectors for the small theatres in little towns like mine.
Do you read over the entire source code for all of the apps you install?
You forgot to include "and completely understand" in the above quotation.
We all know (I'm sure) that the function of a routine isn't always obvious. And especially if someone is trying to hide a routine, the functionality could be made very un-obvious.
A complete source code audit for any major application would be far more labourious than any individual would have the time to undertake in most circumstances.
The problem with making a case too easy to open is that people will open it.
Imagine a kid with his peanut butter and jelly sandwich opening the case just for the hell of it, to watch the CPU fan spin or whatever.
I remember some old XT cases that had a suitcase-type lid where you just pushed a couple of buttons on the side and could open the top of the case just like a suitcase (hinged on the back and everything). The problem with those cases is that, as I said, "everybody" would open them.
On the other side, the two absolute worst cases that I ever tried to open were both Packard Bell. I was trying to install a CD-ROM in one and discovered that the drive bay had a plate welded onto the front. I ended up using a hammer and chisel (literally) to beat it off. The other really awful Packard Bell case that I had to deal with is one that was a real Chinese puzzle to open. There were no visible screws and once I had actually found the screws then it took me literally a half-hour to figure out how to push-and-pull that case to get it to come apart.
*shudder*
There seems to be a happy medium between too easy to open and too difficult. Now once I've got it open, it's nice to have some room to work, indeed, but that's another issue.
Yes, but they've signed Non Disclosure Agreements, so it's OK.Was that humour or are you serious?
I can't tell and for the benefit of anyone who may have missed the point, since when it is impossible for a terrorist or other miscellaneous "bad guy" to sign a NDA?
B.S. Sun Microsystems releases patches for Solaris quite often, and we're a market leader for commercial Unix systems.
But Sun isn't peddling their software to Joe Blogg's grandmother either.
Perception is important in marketing; in fact, it's about the only thing that really is important when you get right to the basics. And MS wants to avoid fostering the perception that their software is "not right" in the minds of the average man-on-the-street. Frequent patches would undermine this effort.
Very soon, digital projection is going to be very affordable compared to film when you include the cost of making a print of a movie.
That's part of the problem. Who pays for the new (and expensive!) digital projection equipment?
The film companies pay for the prints of a movie. The theatres pay for and own the projectors and so on. The saving through digital distribution will accrue to the studios and the cost of upgrading will be shouldered by the theatres???
Hell, my local multiplex often sets their standard film projctors sub-optimally, and that tech is ancient...
The problem in many larger theatres is that they don't change the xenon lamp (the "bulb" that puts the light onto the screen) often enough. After they get to a certain age, those lamps tend to get blackened and to start putting out less light generally. The result is a picture that is not as bright as it should be. Some also try to "save the lamp" by turning the power input down so the light is also dimmer if this has been done. The lamps also have to be properly focused after being changed and, guess what -- many people change them who don't know how to focus it afterward. Result: Dim light on the screen.
Couple that with folks who don't know how to focus a picture or who just don't give a damn, screens that have had too much popcorn and candy thrown at them, and sometimes the picture at your local multiplex will be less than what it should be, indeed.
I'm a projectionist. In fact, I own and operate a theatre.
I believe these are still fairly common, even though larger theaters have moved to platter systems rather than 2 projector systems that require reel changes. With a platter, I believe the film is looped back to the center of the spool (like an old 8-track tape) so the reels don't require rewinding between showings.
This is all correct. However, the changeover dots are still present on film reels because not everyone has a platter. Old theatres use two-projector systems with 2000-foot reels (the ones that the films are actually shipped on), and some "newer" ones use two-projector systems with 6000-foot reels which allow for less changeovers but still have to be rewound.
Platters allow for no rewinding between shows and no reel changes.
I'll provide my equipment and make the decisions as to how I use it thanks.
Indeed. You own your car. You are free to modify it as you choose, but if you modify it such that it's no longer "street-legal" then don't complain when the licensing authority refuses to allow you to drive it on public roads.
It's my understanding that anyone can put letters after their name. If I want to be John Smith, MSAVC, I can put those letters after my name and nobody can stop me. I don't have any idea what MSAVC stands for; I just made it up. If you want to be a MSAVC too, you can also put those letters after your name.
I think certain letter combinations are illegal to put after your name by virtue of certain laws restricting their use to "certified professionals" (MD, P.Eng, and so on) but any random collection of letters is perfectly legal to include after your name.
I wonder about the status of MSCE, RHCE and so on, now that I think about it. I doubt most (or any) states/provinces have any regulations stating that "RHCE" is a recognized profession like MD or whatever, so how would anyone be prevented from using Joe Blow, RHCE? Would Red Hat sue you?
Oh, you mean like every other freelance journalist with being paid per word?
They're not journalists because there is no creative content in what they are writing at all. They are merely stenographers, acting in the capacity of a "human tape recorder", as it were.
This relates to my pet peeve about so-called professional photographers. When I pay someone to take a photograph of my wedding (for example) then I should have title to the pictures of my own wedding that I paid good money for. It's my event, my money paying for the photographer's time and materials, and, by golly, they should be my images! If I hire someone to build for me. If I have a fence built, the guy who built it for me can't say "Oh by the way, if you want this fence painted you have to hire me to do it and pay the price that I demand for doing it, and you can't do it yourself or hire any other contractor to paint it either." Why are photos (and apparently, court transcripts) different?
I think it happens when you have an email address posted on a web page.
One of my addresses shows on a relatively popular web page and that's the address where I receive all kinds of penis enlargement and viagra offers, and lately lots of Klez's. (Klezi?) My "private" email address doesn't receive any spam, so far.
The spammers apparentley harvest addresses from web pages.
Part of the answer is to avoid using mailto: and @ in your address if it is on a web page. "Send your email to joeblow (at) whatever.com seems to work better than a mailto: or even joeblow@whatever.com as most spammer's spiders don't seem to handle that. I guess they get enough addresses from mailto: links.
mailed them real politely to do something about it, in plain english..
As the server is in Korea, you might get more action if you emailed them in plain Korean.
This is not as much of a joke as it may appear. A common complaint of many "foreign" sysops is that documentation for programs is available only in English which they may not understand well enough to fully comprehend the way that the software should work. The simplest answer here is to say "Well, if you don't know how to run it properly then don't run it at all". Unfortunately, this answer doesn't work in real-life as those guys figure they require the functionality of the software in question.
I don't really know the answer here. Send teams of people to Korea to volunteer to fix the servers? Short of that, I don't know of anything that will work.
Slashdot Mirror
Every time a new feature was added, the guy had to hack it in somehow, because the original code was always written to just what it was supposed to do, no more.
For most embedded programming, that's the intent and is looked upon as a good thing.
The distro CD is free.
To split a very fine hair: The download is free. The actual physical CD is not.
You're forgetting about embedded applications using "sort-of-standard" hardware. The more you can pack in to the smaller space, the better in those situations. So if a bios provides "service X" then why should you be expected to write "service X" all over again just so you can have two copies in your romset and occupy more space.
what we'll all end up with is extremely watered down TV.
And this differs from today's television fare in what way?
I have not watched television in years and truly don't believe that I'm missing anything worthwhile.
I thought it'd be perfect for a local band to promote themselves in local theatres before a film. It'd be great because you can advertise your band directly to the people that are most likely going to like their music, and the audience is contained.
Something occurred to me tonight (while I was playing my movie, in fact). Theatres generally play music to fill in the time between shows. And you want to promote a band.
Why not approach a theatre and ask them if they will play your band's music. You might be able to strike a deal to get a slide or a sign or something up to the effect that, "Music provided by Johnny and the Hornblowers. To book Johnny for your wedding or bar mitzvah, call 555-1212 and ask for Mike".
There. Didn't need a digital projector for that either...
I admit that I didn't know it was even possible.
Consider yourself informed.
Can you give a guesstimate of what kind of guaranteed audience you'd need for such a custom screening? And what kind of advance word?
"Flat-rent films" (which is what this stuff is called) don't work on the principle of how-many-people. Or at least, they don't have to. Most flat-rent screenings just go on the basis of "You pay $x and you bring as many of your friends as you like, up to the seating capacity of the theatre." Note that flat-rent films tend to be stuff that is out on video or about-to-be. The studios won't let them out on a flat-rent basis before then.
Ask at your local (small independent) theatre and you can get all of the facts as to how they do these things. People have flat-rent screenings for all kinds of things -- Christmas parties, kids birthdays, senior citizens groups, school classes, you-name-it. Most independent theatres will have some kind of a policy and price that they can give you if you just ask about it.
Can Dave's Tire Repair specify exactly what film/hour he can advertise at with the slide system?
Sure, why not?As far as i can tell, you really can't target your audience with the current systems
I don't see what the problem is here.As an advertiser i could request that my little ad gets played during the seating time of Amelie and Y tu Mama Tambien. I don't want to advertise to the people in Sum of All Fears 'cause they're just the wrong audience.
So? This can easily be done now. Really!Can those contracts stop you from playing ads during seating time?
Yes.
I thought it'd be perfect for a local band to promote themselves in local theatres before a film. It'd be great because you can advertise your band directly to the people that are most likely going to like their music, and the audience is contained.
So talk to your local theatre and see what they say. You can have a 35mm trailer made for you (check your local yellow pages) and off you go.
You still don't need digital projectors for this. And even if you have a digital projector you will still incur a production cost when you go to make your trailer even if the end result is to be shown digitally.
will bring with it some very cool innovations (like, get 20 friends together and a movie threater will allocate you once screen for a midweek matinee of some classic movie).
What innovation? Many small independent theatres can and will do that now. Have you asked your local mom'n'pop theatre owner about doing this? You might be surprised if you haven't.
Disclaimer: One of those mom'n'pop theatres happens to belong to me.
If they set up a system to allow small and local businesses to advertise at the theatre.
Many theatres already do this. It's called a slide projector!
like the slide system they have going now.
I see that you already know that. So where is
a great deal more income
going to come from with a digital projector? Dave's Tire Repair only has so much money to spend on advertising, whether it's a slide or a moving picture.
Incidentally, many exhibition contracts specifically prohibit the showing of advertising other than static slides before the main feature with the exception of trailers for forthcoming movies. (I own a theatre, in case you're wondering how I know this.)
Its not like Ma and Pa Small Business Owner in Nebraska will be adversely affected by this - all of the theaters are owned by large corporations now
Really? Gosh, that's news to me.
I own and operate a movie theatre in a small town. Ain't no chain here. Just me.
Granted, I'm not in Nebraska so maybe that's where you're referencing? Though I'd bet I could find some independent theatre owners in Nebraska too, without much effort.
Don't forget, there really is life outside of big cities! And folks in small towns like to go to movies too.
The unfortunate thing here is that even if the studios decide to somehow subsidize the purchase of digital projectors for theatres, you can bet they will not be purchasing digital projectors for the small theatres in little towns like mine.
Sigh...
Do you read over the entire source code for all of the apps you install?
You forgot to include "and completely understand" in the above quotation.
We all know (I'm sure) that the function of a routine isn't always obvious. And especially if someone is trying to hide a routine, the functionality could be made very un-obvious.
A complete source code audit for any major application would be far more labourious than any individual would have the time to undertake in most circumstances.
Even though we have been clean and sober for three months plus, we are still have mail rejected by sites using RBL, Osirusoft, and others.
Sure, I killed someone yesterday but since I haven't killed anyone today there is no need to keep me in jail. Let me go on my way now.
The problem with making a case too easy to open is that people will open it.
Imagine a kid with his peanut butter and jelly sandwich opening the case just for the hell of it, to watch the CPU fan spin or whatever.
I remember some old XT cases that had a suitcase-type lid where you just pushed a couple of buttons on the side and could open the top of the case just like a suitcase (hinged on the back and everything). The problem with those cases is that, as I said, "everybody" would open them.
On the other side, the two absolute worst cases that I ever tried to open were both Packard Bell. I was trying to install a CD-ROM in one and discovered that the drive bay had a plate welded onto the front. I ended up using a hammer and chisel (literally) to beat it off. The other really awful Packard Bell case that I had to deal with is one that was a real Chinese puzzle to open. There were no visible screws and once I had actually found the screws then it took me literally a half-hour to figure out how to push-and-pull that case to get it to come apart.
*shudder*
There seems to be a happy medium between too easy to open and too difficult. Now once I've got it open, it's nice to have some room to work, indeed, but that's another issue.
Yes, but they've signed Non Disclosure Agreements, so it's OK.Was that humour or are you serious?
I can't tell and for the benefit of anyone who may have missed the point, since when it is impossible for a terrorist or other miscellaneous "bad guy" to sign a NDA?
B.S. Sun Microsystems releases patches for Solaris quite often, and we're a market leader for commercial Unix systems.
But Sun isn't peddling their software to Joe Blogg's grandmother either.
Perception is important in marketing; in fact, it's about the only thing that really is important when you get right to the basics. And MS wants to avoid fostering the perception that their software is "not right" in the minds of the average man-on-the-street. Frequent patches would undermine this effort.
Very soon, digital projection is going to be very affordable compared to film when you include the cost of making a print of a movie.
That's part of the problem. Who pays for the new (and expensive!) digital projection equipment?
The film companies pay for the prints of a movie. The theatres pay for and own the projectors and so on. The saving through digital distribution will accrue to the studios and the cost of upgrading will be shouldered by the theatres???
See the problem?
Hell, my local multiplex often sets their standard film projctors sub-optimally, and that tech is ancient...
The problem in many larger theatres is that they don't change the xenon lamp (the "bulb" that puts the light onto the screen) often enough. After they get to a certain age, those lamps tend to get blackened and to start putting out less light generally. The result is a picture that is not as bright as it should be. Some also try to "save the lamp" by turning the power input down so the light is also dimmer if this has been done. The lamps also have to be properly focused after being changed and, guess what -- many people change them who don't know how to focus it afterward. Result: Dim light on the screen.
Couple that with folks who don't know how to focus a picture or who just don't give a damn, screens that have had too much popcorn and candy thrown at them, and sometimes the picture at your local multiplex will be less than what it should be, indeed.
I'm a projectionist. In fact, I own and operate a theatre.
I believe these are still fairly common, even though larger theaters have moved to platter systems rather than 2 projector systems that require reel changes. With a platter, I believe the film is looped back to the center of the spool (like an old 8-track tape) so the reels don't require rewinding between showings.
This is all correct. However, the changeover dots are still present on film reels because not everyone has a platter. Old theatres use two-projector systems with 2000-foot reels (the ones that the films are actually shipped on), and some "newer" ones use two-projector systems with 6000-foot reels which allow for less changeovers but still have to be rewound.
Platters allow for no rewinding between shows and no reel changes.
http://www.arcadecontrols.com has a lot of information about hooking pushbuttons up to keyboards and so on.
I'll provide my equipment and make the decisions as to how I use it thanks.
Indeed. You own your car. You are free to modify it as you choose, but if you modify it such that it's no longer "street-legal" then don't complain when the licensing authority refuses to allow you to drive it on public roads.
You get to put letters after your name as well.
It's my understanding that anyone can put letters after their name. If I want to be John Smith, MSAVC, I can put those letters after my name and nobody can stop me. I don't have any idea what MSAVC stands for; I just made it up. If you want to be a MSAVC too, you can also put those letters after your name.
I think certain letter combinations are illegal to put after your name by virtue of certain laws restricting their use to "certified professionals" (MD, P.Eng, and so on) but any random collection of letters is perfectly legal to include after your name.
I wonder about the status of MSCE, RHCE and so on, now that I think about it. I doubt most (or any) states/provinces have any regulations stating that "RHCE" is a recognized profession like MD or whatever, so how would anyone be prevented from using Joe Blow, RHCE? Would Red Hat sue you?
The problem is that many states use the four-second-yellow-light rule regardless of speed limi
Here is an explanation of the mathtmatics behind that four seconds.
http://www.mcquigg.com/amber.htm
I found it interesting reading.
Oh, you mean like every other freelance journalist with being paid per word?
They're not journalists because there is no creative content in what they are writing at all. They are merely stenographers, acting in the capacity of a "human tape recorder", as it were.
This relates to my pet peeve about so-called professional photographers. When I pay someone to take a photograph of my wedding (for example) then I should have title to the pictures of my own wedding that I paid good money for. It's my event, my money paying for the photographer's time and materials, and, by golly, they should be my images! If I hire someone to build for me. If I have a fence built, the guy who built it for me can't say "Oh by the way, if you want this fence painted you have to hire me to do it and pay the price that I demand for doing it, and you can't do it yourself or hire any other contractor to paint it either." Why are photos (and apparently, court transcripts) different?
How do you guys get so much damn spam.
I think it happens when you have an email address posted on a web page.
One of my addresses shows on a relatively popular web page and that's the address where I receive all kinds of penis enlargement and viagra offers, and lately lots of Klez's. (Klezi?) My "private" email address doesn't receive any spam, so far.
The spammers apparentley harvest addresses from web pages.
Part of the answer is to avoid using mailto: and @ in your address if it is on a web page. "Send your email to joeblow (at) whatever.com seems to work better than a mailto: or even joeblow@whatever.com as most spammer's spiders don't seem to handle that. I guess they get enough addresses from mailto: links.
mailed them real politely to do something about it, in plain english..
As the server is in Korea, you might get more action if you emailed them in plain Korean.
This is not as much of a joke as it may appear. A common complaint of many "foreign" sysops is that documentation for programs is available only in English which they may not understand well enough to fully comprehend the way that the software should work. The simplest answer here is to say "Well, if you don't know how to run it properly then don't run it at all". Unfortunately, this answer doesn't work in real-life as those guys figure they require the functionality of the software in question.
I don't really know the answer here. Send teams of people to Korea to volunteer to fix the servers? Short of that, I don't know of anything that will work.