And yes, I'm aware of the irony of my post extolling the virtues of TV while containing so many spelling errors, so there's no need to point it out. TV probably does make me too lazy to hit the "Preview" button and spell-check... but then again it could be that I just don't care enough.
Pardon me for threadjacking an early section of the posts, but I see the general trend here is for people to proclaim that TV is, at best, a harmless vice. I would like to take this opportunity to proclaim that I love television.
Sure, a lot of it is crap, but if you apply Sturgeon's Law, TV holds its own in its obligation to provide 5% non-cruddy content. Setting aside prime-time gems like "Alias" and the ill-fated "Firefly", several of the late-night talk shows (Letterman, Kilborn, and O'Brien) provide relaxing, disposable laugh-filled entertainment on a nightly basis.
Then there's the wonder of Japanese TV, especially anime, made available at more reasonable priced than ever thanks to the rise of DVD and cable re-broadcasts. "Last Exile" is a science fiction series which shames George Lucas's best work, let alone his recent disappointments.
So, if anything, I plan on watching even more TV next week, to pick up the slack from those of you who are taking a break.
No mystery there. You spin it with your hand, and there's very little friction to slow it down, and you're not drawing any power from it, so it will keep spinning until air friction gradually decelerates it.
Also, be suspicious of any machine design which requires that you hold the prototype in your hand. You could be unconsciously moving to perpetuation the motion. Try mounting it on a fixed base for a true test of how long the momentum lasts.
After seeing how many people replied as if this device was anything other than Yet Another Perpetual Motion Hoax, I would say "damn near everybody, yea."
I guess the term "nerd" no longer implies that you understand how electricity works.
Moving mass requires a certain ammount of power. We've had the math to figure out how much power you need for a very long time. If you have a device which moves that $FOO mass, it's using $BAR power to do it. If the ammount of power it draws is less than $BAR, then it's an obvious hoax. Or magic. You decide.
"I'm simply harnessing one of the four fundamental forces of nature," he says.
This is the exact same argument every peddler of perpetual motion machines uses to claim that his invention is not a perpetual motion machine, but is somehow harnessing external power which is just hanging around out there to be used.
The Earth's electromagnetic field is a popular choice among these hucksters. With this guy, it's magnets.
The very fact that this showed up on the front page of/. shows that they've given up all pretense of caring what they publish here.
Also, since the editorial already starts us off with an "OS X vs Linux" flamewar
Talk about an asinine knee-jerk reaction!
The whole point of bringing up OS X was as a proof-of-concept that the sort of user-friendliness which Linux is moving towards does not automatically mean weak security. It has nothing to do with flame-wars, and everything to do to paying attention to what others in the industry are doing. (Something everybody should do, unless they want to lose in the long run.)
let me add to the discussion... Windows and Linux admins in the same organization? What organization is this?!
Damn near every Linux-centric organization I've ever been a part of, for a start. If you are a software company, you are going to have customers on Windows. If you are going to support those customers at all, you need to make your shit work in a Windows environment, which means maintaining a Windows environment.
Mixed environments are the norm, not the rule. A lot of companies even have a few Novell systems lying around doing stuff. Show me a "pure" Linux shop, or a "pure" Windows shop, and I'll show you an IS department run by a raging platform bigot.
Why do people think that the command line is *not* "user friendly"?
The command line is extremely user friendly. Having to remember the names and locations of dozens of config files in order to perform basic upkeep and maintenance of your server is not. I don't know about you, but I need to crack a book open to remind myself how to add a virtual host to my Apache web server each time I do it. If I was constantly editing the httpd.cnfg file (or whatever the hell it is), I wouldn't need to look it up every few months just to remember all the lines that need to be changed, but since it's only an occational change, a GUI front-end that held my hand through the process would not be entirely unwelcome. Granted, a badly designed GUI tool which lacked the flexibility I expect from raw config file edits would be ignored, but do it right and I would never need to open that file in vi again. That's what people mean when they say "user friendly."
What field should the millions of displaced American IT workers get trained in?
Pyramid Schemes. I will be happy to train you in the lucrative field of scamming people out of their money for $2000 + 10% of what you eventually collect from the trainees you go out and recruit for yourself (and 10% of your 10% take from them, and so on and so on...) If you are at a loss as to who to recruit, start with everybody you've ever known. Once they stop talking to you and begin to specifically dis-invite you from parties, turn to spam. Bothering people in coffee shops is good, too. It can't fail!!!11!1!
Or you could teach English in Japan. It hardly pays anything, and the hours are insane, but rumor has it that American men are considered very sexy over there... even the geeky ones! It's a nerd paradise, where grown-ups play video games, everybody has cell phones, and there's no shame in loving bad J-pop music and anime! Woo-hoo!
Or you could just stay in the IT industry and wait another month or two. Seriously now, the company I work at is already hiring a bunch of new people, and I hear from the people on my "job network" that the situation is similar all over the place right now.
You're voluntarily handing control of what you see to a religious fundamentalist group. Why would you do that?
I wouldn't.
But if I was a member of said religious fundamentalist group, this feature would suit me to a tee! What's so wrong about letting people watch movies they way they want to watch them?
Actually, I don't think anything about Clockwork Orange is necessarily "a bad thing." I thought it was a great film with important redeeming messages about morality, society and free will.
This isn't about my values. As I said, I probably would never buy this product. I won't even rent the Blockbuster re-edit of "Requiem For A Dream," because I really prefer to see films as the director intended.
This is about allowing people who do have a certain set of values watch movies in whatever way pleases them. If they want a feature like the one offered by this player, it's their choice.
That kid is going to grow up to be a fundamentalist evangelist, who raises money for missions to Africa (and a PAC for banning evolution from science classes) on her very own TV show. I'd bet money on it.:)
Personally, if I was going to pre-edit those damned Veggie Tales, it would be to remove the songs. Then again, that's true of most of what gets made for children these days.
Good point. The "clean" version of Clockwork Orange would be: 1. Close-up of his face. Music starts playing. 2. Before he even starts talking, they cut to him sitting in a hospital bed, where everybody is oddly nice to him. 3. End credits.
So many people are bothered since: 1. Sliding slope... 2. Personal responsibility...Should parents allow kids watch Basic Instinct...
1. Sliding slope arguments are nearly always invalid. There is no gravity pulling events towards more extreme versions of events, unless those events are an actual bus teetering on the ledge of an actual steep drop-off.
Also, the story about the frog in the slowly heating water is a myth. A frog will alway jump out when the water becomes uncomfortable, even if you warm it up slowly.
2. Is there a huge demand from parents for a child-friendly version of Basic Instinct!? This is about letting your 12-year old watch the James Bond ski chases without exposing him to Bond humping every woman he meets, including the ones he plans on killing. Maybe you find it reprehensible that some families are okay with seeing Bond shoot at people but object to his frequent sex with multiple partners, but they have different values than you, and they are entitled to them. That's what living in a free society is all about.
Sorry, I'm hitting the "slippery slope buzzer" on you.
Slippery Slope is the weapon of choice the fringe always uses against the sensible, moderate position.
"If you make a waiting period for guns, it's just a matter of time before anybody who has ever seen a gun in person will be locked up!!!!"
"If you ban partial-birth abortions, then will then move on to the real agenda, which is to lock all women into stocks like cattle for the sole purpose of manufacturing people!!!!"
"If you let cancer patients smoke pot to increase their appetites, they will make herion use manditory for all citizens next!!!"
This sort of "give them an inch, and they will take a mile while cutting your balls off" attitude is the enemy of rational discussion of issues. I find it's usually a safe bet to ingore everything somebody says when they resort to implying that an event they dislike is the start of a greater decline of All That Is Good in the world.
They do mind when you start selling a device that makes other people think that's all there is to the movie.
This device doesn't do that. They go out of their way to buy a device which blocks the parts of the movies they don't want to see. If they didn't know those parts were there, they would have just bought a normal, unfiltered DVD player.
The CGI in Spiderman was just fine. Certainly better-looking than any stuntman-based attempts at superhero film-making that has come before.
If you disagree, kindly name three movies (apart from LOTR) which you think have better CGI than the Spider Man films, and we can commence to piss all over a favorite movie of yours.
The AC responded to your main point better than I could, so I'll leave it at that. (More proof that Slashdot is often worth reading at zero threshold.)
I will make one clarifying comment: When I said you have choices about who to trust, I was referring to journalism outlets, not political candidates. Some people only want news that flows through the filter of Dan Rather or Al Franken; others go with Matt Drudge. There's literally hundreds of choices for people looking for their own favorite flavor of spin.
When it comes to the election, you have a choice between one of two Republicrats, or else a "protest vote." Although, if enough people felt as you did, the "protest vote" would be an actual viable candidate. Since almost everybody is lining up to chose between Kang and Kodos, it follows that 94% of America is not really ready for President Ralph Nader, and will chose whichever drooling green alien they dislike the least.
(Disclaimer: For my own part, I think either Kerry or Bush will do fine for the next term. I'm making my choice between what I consider "the greater of two goods." This definately puts me on the fringes of society as well, because everybody else in America seems to buy into the attack ads of one side or the other, if not both.)
Actually, I'm wasn't even talking about deep Bible-belt radical fundamentalists. Walk into any moderate, progressive church in America, and you will find families who enjoy movies like "The Princess Bride," but regret that scenes like the one I was talking about are in there.
It was not a hypothetical example, I actually once heard a Lutheran minister express mild disappointment that, in an otherwise rather innocent and light-hearted movie, such language was used. If he had the option to watch "The Princess Bride" with his family with that single explative (the only one in the movie) edited out, he would have taken it.
Such a world-view might seem strange and alien folk who think it's funny to glue a "Darwin fish" to their car, but guess which group is the mainstream of American culture. That's right, it's the people buying "clean" versions of hip-hop albums at Wal-Mart.
"The Princess Bride" is a fantastic, sweet, and funny "family" movie, with a lot to entertain adults as well as children.
There's a very cute scene in the movie where Peter Faulk's narration of the story is interrupted by the kid (who he's reading to) expressing distress about the direction of the plot. When he hears Faulk explain that the bad guy doesn't die in the end, he wonders just what sort of book it is and shouts, "Jesus, Grandpa!" Faulk's character calmly deals with the child's vulgar outburst as most doting grandfathers would, and the movie goes on.
While that scene is very amusing, some very religious parents would really rather not screen a movie in which a child takes The Lord's name in vain, especially not for comedic effect. It doesn't bother me; it might not bother you, but a lot of families would rather skip over that moment. Would removing that brief scene make the whole movie suddenly not worth watching? No.
So I could see why a service like this might be popular.
Okay, again, since you don't seem to be hearing my point: These DVD players are being sold to people who want the stuff removes which is being removed. It does not impact your life in any way. Even if something like this was used to promote a political agenda (and there's no evidence that it is), the people using the service are not being "manipulated," because they are the ones asking for this.
A family who choses not to watch the recent PBS series about evolution (a highly reccomended show, by the way... very well done), but watches every last episode of "The 700 Club" is already making an editing decision about the content they watch. If that family also buys one of these DVD players, it ammounts to the same thing: The consumer is choosing what they want to consume, and who they want to trust as their information filter.
Lefties who rely on Paul Krugman editorials in the New York Times for all their information about the Bush administration without fact-checking are being no less "manipulated" than fundies who don't watch shows about evolution, and they are free to make that choice. It's one of the nice things about being an American. You get to make your own judgements about who to trust.
If you are not buying this DVD player (and it sounds like you're not), then why do you care? If some mormon family in the Utah desert only wants to watch these movies in an edited format, even a format edited by eeeeevil conservatives which removes what you consider to be redeeming social values from certain films, who the fuck are you to tell them they can't?
Deleting "objectionable" scenes from a movie only becomes a propaganda tool if the movie in question was a propaganda tool to begin with. Your example of "Fight Club" demonstrates that point perfectly. If you think the anti-conumerism message was the most important thing about that movie, you've already reduced it from being art to being mere propaganda.
They consider themselves artists and artists don't like it when other people start changing their work. If you don't like it then don't look at it or watch it -- but don't change it.
So, if I cue up just the car chase in "Streets of San Fancisco," or maybe just the rescue of Morpheus in "The Matrix" without actually watching the movies in their entirety, am I violating the rights of the artistic creators?
If not, how is it any different if I'm a puritanical old biddy who wants to watch "Eyes Wide Shut" with a DVD player that automatically skips over the orgy scene? Or "Clockwork Orange" without the rape scenes? Granted, "Clockwork Orange" would be a very short movie if you took the sex and violence out, but if somebody really just wants to watch Malcome MacDowell extoll the joys of drinking "milk plus" for 10 minutes, that should be up to them.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not much help if you can't operate it.
And yes, I'm aware of the irony of my post extolling the virtues of TV while containing so many spelling errors, so there's no need to point it out. TV probably does make me too lazy to hit the "Preview" button and spell-check... but then again it could be that I just don't care enough.
Sure, a lot of it is crap, but if you apply Sturgeon's Law, TV holds its own in its obligation to provide 5% non-cruddy content. Setting aside prime-time gems like "Alias" and the ill-fated "Firefly", several of the late-night talk shows (Letterman, Kilborn, and O'Brien) provide relaxing, disposable laugh-filled entertainment on a nightly basis.
Then there's the wonder of Japanese TV, especially anime, made available at more reasonable priced than ever thanks to the rise of DVD and cable re-broadcasts. "Last Exile" is a science fiction series which shames George Lucas's best work, let alone his recent disappointments.
So, if anything, I plan on watching even more TV next week, to pick up the slack from those of you who are taking a break.
Also, be suspicious of any machine design which requires that you hold the prototype in your hand. You could be unconsciously moving to perpetuation the motion. Try mounting it on a fixed base for a true test of how long the momentum lasts.
After seeing how many people replied as if this device was anything other than Yet Another Perpetual Motion Hoax, I would say "damn near everybody, yea."
I guess the term "nerd" no longer implies that you understand how electricity works.
Funniest comment from an AC I've read in weeks! Thank you for justifying a reading threshold of 0.
Moving mass requires a certain ammount of power. We've had the math to figure out how much power you need for a very long time. If you have a device which moves that $FOO mass, it's using $BAR power to do it. If the ammount of power it draws is less than $BAR, then it's an obvious hoax. Or magic. You decide.
This is the exact same argument every peddler of perpetual motion machines uses to claim that his invention is not a perpetual motion machine, but is somehow harnessing external power which is just hanging around out there to be used.
The Earth's electromagnetic field is a popular choice among these hucksters. With this guy, it's magnets.
The very fact that this showed up on the front page of /. shows that they've given up all pretense of caring what they publish here.
Talk about an asinine knee-jerk reaction!
The whole point of bringing up OS X was as a proof-of-concept that the sort of user-friendliness which Linux is moving towards does not automatically mean weak security. It has nothing to do with flame-wars, and everything to do to paying attention to what others in the industry are doing. (Something everybody should do, unless they want to lose in the long run.)
let me add to the discussion... Windows and Linux admins in the same organization? What organization is this?!
Damn near every Linux-centric organization I've ever been a part of, for a start. If you are a software company, you are going to have customers on Windows. If you are going to support those customers at all, you need to make your shit work in a Windows environment, which means maintaining a Windows environment.
Mixed environments are the norm, not the rule. A lot of companies even have a few Novell systems lying around doing stuff. Show me a "pure" Linux shop, or a "pure" Windows shop, and I'll show you an IS department run by a raging platform bigot.
Why do people think that the command line is *not* "user friendly"?
The command line is extremely user friendly. Having to remember the names and locations of dozens of config files in order to perform basic upkeep and maintenance of your server is not. I don't know about you, but I need to crack a book open to remind myself how to add a virtual host to my Apache web server each time I do it. If I was constantly editing the httpd.cnfg file (or whatever the hell it is), I wouldn't need to look it up every few months just to remember all the lines that need to be changed, but since it's only an occational change, a GUI front-end that held my hand through the process would not be entirely unwelcome. Granted, a badly designed GUI tool which lacked the flexibility I expect from raw config file edits would be ignored, but do it right and I would never need to open that file in vi again. That's what people mean when they say "user friendly."
Pyramid Schemes. I will be happy to train you in the lucrative field of scamming people out of their money for $2000 + 10% of what you eventually collect from the trainees you go out and recruit for yourself (and 10% of your 10% take from them, and so on and so on...) If you are at a loss as to who to recruit, start with everybody you've ever known. Once they stop talking to you and begin to specifically dis-invite you from parties, turn to spam. Bothering people in coffee shops is good, too. It can't fail!!!11!1!
Or you could teach English in Japan. It hardly pays anything, and the hours are insane, but rumor has it that American men are considered very sexy over there... even the geeky ones! It's a nerd paradise, where grown-ups play video games, everybody has cell phones, and there's no shame in loving bad J-pop music and anime! Woo-hoo!
Or you could just stay in the IT industry and wait another month or two. Seriously now, the company I work at is already hiring a bunch of new people, and I hear from the people on my "job network" that the situation is similar all over the place right now.
I wouldn't.
But if I was a member of said religious fundamentalist group, this feature would suit me to a tee! What's so wrong about letting people watch movies they way they want to watch them?
This isn't about my values. As I said, I probably would never buy this product. I won't even rent the Blockbuster re-edit of "Requiem For A Dream," because I really prefer to see films as the director intended.
This is about allowing people who do have a certain set of values watch movies in whatever way pleases them. If they want a feature like the one offered by this player, it's their choice.
That kid is going to grow up to be a fundamentalist evangelist, who raises money for missions to Africa (and a PAC for banning evolution from science classes) on her very own TV show. I'd bet money on it. :)
Personally, if I was going to pre-edit those damned Veggie Tales, it would be to remove the songs. Then again, that's true of most of what gets made for children these days.
Good point. The "clean" version of Clockwork Orange would be: 1. Close-up of his face. Music starts playing. 2. Before he even starts talking, they cut to him sitting in a hospital bed, where everybody is oddly nice to him. 3. End credits.
1. Sliding slope...
2. Personal responsibility...Should parents allow kids watch Basic Instinct...
1. Sliding slope arguments are nearly always invalid. There is no gravity pulling events towards more extreme versions of events, unless those events are an actual bus teetering on the ledge of an actual steep drop-off.
Also, the story about the frog in the slowly heating water is a myth. A frog will alway jump out when the water becomes uncomfortable, even if you warm it up slowly.
2. Is there a huge demand from parents for a child-friendly version of Basic Instinct!? This is about letting your 12-year old watch the James Bond ski chases without exposing him to Bond humping every woman he meets, including the ones he plans on killing. Maybe you find it reprehensible that some families are okay with seeing Bond shoot at people but object to his frequent sex with multiple partners, but they have different values than you, and they are entitled to them. That's what living in a free society is all about.
Slippery Slope is the weapon of choice the fringe always uses against the sensible, moderate position.
"If you make a waiting period for guns, it's just a matter of time before anybody who has ever seen a gun in person will be locked up!!!!"
"If you ban partial-birth abortions, then will then move on to the real agenda, which is to lock all women into stocks like cattle for the sole purpose of manufacturing people!!!!"
"If you let cancer patients smoke pot to increase their appetites, they will make herion use manditory for all citizens next!!!"
This sort of "give them an inch, and they will take a mile while cutting your balls off" attitude is the enemy of rational discussion of issues. I find it's usually a safe bet to ingore everything somebody says when they resort to implying that an event they dislike is the start of a greater decline of All That Is Good in the world.
This device doesn't do that. They go out of their way to buy a device which blocks the parts of the movies they don't want to see. If they didn't know those parts were there, they would have just bought a normal, unfiltered DVD player.
1. Tarantino is one of the best directors currently working in Hollywood.
2. Tarantino is one of the worst actors currently working in Hollywood.
Please, for his own good, somebody tell that man to get behind the camera and stay there!
If you disagree, kindly name three movies (apart from LOTR) which you think have better CGI than the Spider Man films, and we can commence to piss all over a favorite movie of yours.
I will make one clarifying comment: When I said you have choices about who to trust, I was referring to journalism outlets, not political candidates. Some people only want news that flows through the filter of Dan Rather or Al Franken; others go with Matt Drudge. There's literally hundreds of choices for people looking for their own favorite flavor of spin.
When it comes to the election, you have a choice between one of two Republicrats, or else a "protest vote." Although, if enough people felt as you did, the "protest vote" would be an actual viable candidate. Since almost everybody is lining up to chose between Kang and Kodos, it follows that 94% of America is not really ready for President Ralph Nader, and will chose whichever drooling green alien they dislike the least.
(Disclaimer: For my own part, I think either Kerry or Bush will do fine for the next term. I'm making my choice between what I consider "the greater of two goods." This definately puts me on the fringes of society as well, because everybody else in America seems to buy into the attack ads of one side or the other, if not both.)
It was not a hypothetical example, I actually once heard a Lutheran minister express mild disappointment that, in an otherwise rather innocent and light-hearted movie, such language was used. If he had the option to watch "The Princess Bride" with his family with that single explative (the only one in the movie) edited out, he would have taken it.
Such a world-view might seem strange and alien folk who think it's funny to glue a "Darwin fish" to their car, but guess which group is the mainstream of American culture. That's right, it's the people buying "clean" versions of hip-hop albums at Wal-Mart.
"The Princess Bride" is a fantastic, sweet, and funny "family" movie, with a lot to entertain adults as well as children.
There's a very cute scene in the movie where Peter Faulk's narration of the story is interrupted by the kid (who he's reading to) expressing distress about the direction of the plot. When he hears Faulk explain that the bad guy doesn't die in the end, he wonders just what sort of book it is and shouts, "Jesus, Grandpa!" Faulk's character calmly deals with the child's vulgar outburst as most doting grandfathers would, and the movie goes on.
While that scene is very amusing, some very religious parents would really rather not screen a movie in which a child takes The Lord's name in vain, especially not for comedic effect. It doesn't bother me; it might not bother you, but a lot of families would rather skip over that moment. Would removing that brief scene make the whole movie suddenly not worth watching? No.
So I could see why a service like this might be popular.
A family who choses not to watch the recent PBS series about evolution (a highly reccomended show, by the way... very well done), but watches every last episode of "The 700 Club" is already making an editing decision about the content they watch. If that family also buys one of these DVD players, it ammounts to the same thing: The consumer is choosing what they want to consume, and who they want to trust as their information filter.
Lefties who rely on Paul Krugman editorials in the New York Times for all their information about the Bush administration without fact-checking are being no less "manipulated" than fundies who don't watch shows about evolution, and they are free to make that choice. It's one of the nice things about being an American. You get to make your own judgements about who to trust.
Deleting "objectionable" scenes from a movie only becomes a propaganda tool if the movie in question was a propaganda tool to begin with. Your example of "Fight Club" demonstrates that point perfectly. If you think the anti-conumerism message was the most important thing about that movie, you've already reduced it from being art to being mere propaganda.
So, if I cue up just the car chase in "Streets of San Fancisco," or maybe just the rescue of Morpheus in "The Matrix" without actually watching the movies in their entirety, am I violating the rights of the artistic creators?
If not, how is it any different if I'm a puritanical old biddy who wants to watch "Eyes Wide Shut" with a DVD player that automatically skips over the orgy scene? Or "Clockwork Orange" without the rape scenes? Granted, "Clockwork Orange" would be a very short movie if you took the sex and violence out, but if somebody really just wants to watch Malcome MacDowell extoll the joys of drinking "milk plus" for 10 minutes, that should be up to them.