As someone who has been slashdotted a half-dozen times over the past few years (and enjoyed every one of them!), the number is not "one million". Pretty much every one of my stories or stories linking to me generated hits from roughly 7,000-12,000 sites depending on a given day and when it was on the page, and so on.
So going by your silly "we get to bill you for not doing things to our liking" economic model, the story submitter would only have to give $1,200 to the EFF, which I am sure they would appreciate very much.
But really, where does it end when people mistreat your user experience? Is it a quarter for every unshrunk thumbnail, a nickel for bad spelling or grammar, or a dollar for a mis-stated facts? All I know is, the EFF will be friggin' loaded after a few months of this new internet payment regime.
Simon, congratulations on your third gaming documentary project. I have enjoyed your previous work, and look forward to this one as well.
I look forward to you moving on to DVDs and/or being asked to create documentaries that will go onto game disks as part of a bundle; the sky's the limit.
- Jason Scott
Re:Elena was debunked a while ago.
on
A New Elena Story
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
God dammit.. who the fuck cares if she didnt really ride a motorcycle alone at chernobyl.. the pics are real and are still powerful.. fuck
Because riding through Chernobyl on a motorcycle would be inherently risky, dangerous, unlawful and maybe even lethal. When a person claims they are portraying an event, with photographs, they are implying they actually experienced that event, unless of course we're in the realm of fantasy. Which would be fine.
But if a person neither deliniates the photo essay as a fantasy or indicates in some way that you are not seeing what you are being told, then you're letting your audience down, and you're spreading, basically, lies. It's called bad journalism. Some people might not care, like you, my little profane anonymous friend. But a lot of people do.
Elena was debunked a while ago.
on
A New Elena Story
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
Here is one of a good number of debunkings. Naughty, Naughty!
It is very, very difficult to read Dave Sim's work once you've read his Tangents essay. I read it a good while ago, and was, well....
It's hard to define the feeling. It wasn't horror that someone thought along these lines; and it wasn't a feeling they shouldn't be said. I think the closest I could relate it to is like finding bugs in your morning cereal. What was previously an enjoyable experience is, for the short (and maybe long) term soured and ruined. Maybe you'll forget and heal, and maybe you just can't.
The most problematic part of Tangents is that it is very in-depth and very long-winded about the thoughts being expressed, which means it specifically appeals to that part of the population who are into reading, which means that these good folks are the ones who will be slapped around for their efforts. I can't imagine anyone reading his Tangents essay and pumping their fist going "Yes! Yes! He finally makes it all clear for me!"
For those whom intense reading of a long essay set is simply not in the forseeable future, here's an (admittedly coarse) summary of the essay.
PRE-TANGENT: My female typesetter quit putting together this essay for my comic book. This is typical of chicks and an example of why feminism is a failure.
TANGENT 1: While researching for my comic book, I interviewed a lot of women. There is no "there" there in them. They are, essentially, sub-human, emotional creatures. They do not think. Any positive qualities they show are what they're parroting from males. There has been a lot of gnashing of teeth by society to ignore this obvious fact, but a fact it is: women are, ultimately, parasites on males.
TANGENT 2: The queers and the feminists are trying to shove acceptability of their false and wrong philosophies down society's throat. They are doing it everywhere, in laws, media, and even in the bible.
TANGENT 3: Because of the false belief that women are human, a lot of very dumb laws are being passed, which treat children like adults and adults like children. This is going to cause a lot of problems for society and possibly ruin it for good. Children should be beaten when they're bad, and alimony comes from the idea that women can't survive on their own. Any variant from these statements are being caused by women imparting their illogical, brainless take on the world on males.
TANGENT 4: Domestic Cats are filthy, horrible animals that should not be in a home. That they are there is because, at some point in history, women brought them into the house. Also, animal rights are stupid.
TANGENT 5: The Civil Rights movement was hijacked by feminists, who then killed Martin Luther King, Jr. And now the feminists define civil rights....
It's perfectly OK to not believe this is what the essay says. Read the original source.
They're bugs in my breakfast. I'm sure I'll be buying his books in the future. Just not the near future.
Not many people read developers.slashdot, but for those who do, waste no time visiting Kizzle's excellent site HACKERMEDIA.NET, wherein you can find out about the basically massive collection of tech/hacker-oriented radio shows out there, coming out every week, with some very driven amateurs who are putting their souls into the medium. There's even an RSS feed so you won't miss a show.
Jason just wants your money anyway. I'm sure this must have set him back a lot of cash. Unfortunately methinks he would have had more time simply flushing it down the toilet.
For three years I travelled to places I'd only read about, met people I'd only read about, and was able, across one or five hours, to ask them questions, questions I'd always had. I got to sit down to meals with them, learn their ideas, give them my own thoughts, share our lives for some short time.
How much would you pay to have a dozen dinners with your personal heroes? How much would you give out of your life to bring people that were only figures and concepts to you into a realm you could comfortably call "friend"? I only had to give up a few tens of thousands of dollars. People spend more than that on their cars.
I was, before a single DVD was sold, rich beyond dreams.
This documentary is actually the sequel to Jason Scott's previous 16 hour epic "The history of drying paint", a compilation of 724 of the most historically important paints, uh, drying.
I'll have you know that my sponsors (Dutch Boy) and I almost took a major bath on "The Unbearable Dryness of Paint" (the original title), until we repackaged the whole project as "Mountain-Chested Girls And The Fiery Trucks of Gun-Blazing Death", bookended it with narration by Christopher Walken, and sold it on late-night TV as part of a special 5-DVD "Girls Gone Painting" pack. Then we made out like bandits.
Just for the record, there are, in raw form, 247 hours of footage. And shooting them has been a once in a lifetime experience. So no sequel there.
The world is filled with people who will gladly fire off a two-sentence refutation/dismissal of someone else's work, but it is starving of folks who will begin at square 1 and roll at some distant point in the future over the finish line.
I am attempting to feed that world. I wish you would take a shot at it too.
A long time ago, when I was particularly despairing of criticisms and jibes from folks who themselves were contributing very little else in any circles, I wrote an essay called "The Haters, The Haters", which is located here. It states quite unequivocably and more effectively than anything else I could write here, what drives me and why, faced with the vacuum of better content you present, I will move on with my projects.
Who in the world is nerdy enough to want to watch all of this??
I sense a challenge!
I've sat through a lot of 24-hour science fiction marathons, seen the dawn come through my window from an all-night hacking session, driven for 20 hours at a stretch to make it to a party.......and you know, I felt a real sense of accomplishment when I did.
I appeciate the parent's positive outlook on my work, but I agree, posting it as an Anonymous Coward dilutes their opinion. There are many fine folks in this thread posting their skepticisms under their "real" user accounts (and even those have the safety of anonymity, really). It doesn't do favors if you're advocating a project to post it anonymously. It does look like it's me.
But it's not. I have my own websites to describe myself positively.
A lot of people have not looked at the website, and as a result they have the idea that it is a single seven hour documentary. That's fine; this announcement happened without me knowing it, I am still editing, and there are some details about the documentary not yet up that would make more sense.
In fact, there are bookend episodes (the "beginning" of BBSes, and the "end" of BBSes) and then a number of specific subjects (Fidonet, "underground", the "BBS industry") and so on. In other words, I chose to group things together in general themes, running parallel to each other, instead of some sort of weird chronological setting ("1940-1944: BBSs go to War").
It is definitely the case that the work will be set up on DVD so people can digest what they want, and maybe come back and see the rest as they want. I think it'll work. (And, of course, I would, wouldn't I.)
The episodes will be an hour long apiece, roughly.
The consultants I worked with in determining quality of video on DVDs indicated that, in fact, I'd be pushing it with 2 DVDs. That is, I'd have to be doing quite a few games to get things just right. So, I've gone with 3 DVDs and will add as many bonus features as I can fit. That's the thinking. Have too much space, instead of the chance of too little.
I respect the man's work and all, and I certainly think that this is a noble effort. Therefore, I do know that it is premature to denegrate and give thoughts on something that has not yet even been released.
That said, while I am interested in seeing the results of the work, I cannot say I am looking forward to the results. Among my circle of friends (whom I do not want to identify, hence my anonymity. Sorry.), many of us feel like Mr. Scott may be a "Michael Moore", of sorts, of the tech documentary community, which is aggreably a small community, but none one the less. It's hard to put any effort together without taking a side, and for Mr. Scott to focus so much on the past does a disservice to how much better things are now. I appreciate hobbies, but this is bordering on obsession. There is way too much material and most viewers honestly won't give a poop.
However, I suppose the best thing to do is wait and see, right? Hopefully my views will be changed and I will post again to correct myself. Who knows. From what I've heard, though, Mr. Jason Scott as a person isn't anything to write home about. He can be an incredible jerk sometimes and other things. I suppose like any "art", one should focus on the art instead of the art.
Jason Scott is dead. Long live Jason Scott. Bastard. *wink*
Honestly, if every criticism of my work or others work was presented in this fashion, the world would be a really good place, much better than it is now.
I agree, there is always the danger when someone sets out on a mission to "recount" the "history" of a subculture, that he will either expose them to ridicle, misrepresent facts, or otherwise betray that which he claims to be a part of. And the background noise of the actual personality of the historian can cause issues as well.
All I can do in this digital era is create the work I set out to do, finish it, and present it to the world. I've done what I, personally, consider to be a good job in giving a feeling for the BBS era and the stories involved. To that end, I ended up spending three years of my life, and many hours within those three years, bringing my project to fruition.
Being compared to Michael Moore is problematic, but I can't really answer to that criticism because I don't know how it's being used here.
As for whether I am doing a disservice focusing on the past... unless I'm mistaken, there are a number of websites out there, if you look around, dedicated to discussing the present.
I chose Njfuzzy's response because it seemed to catch the most-posted concern about the BBS Documentary. However, for anyone not cruising this article at a "show me all comments from -1 upward", let me mention that an awful lot of people are posting concerns about the "7 hour documentary".
And, like a lot of people, njfuzzy took the time to post his concern without actually looking at the site in any depth.
The story and experience of the BBS stretches 25 years (if you don't count proto-BBSes like PLATO/Community Memory/etc., and I do). It involves literately millions of people, and thousands of folks who were pretty hard-core into it and what it represented. And among them, were many hundreds of people who affected a lot of lives and brought life online, and spent a lot of energy doing it.
Therefore, the problem I faced at the beginning of the production was similar to that of doing "Car: The Documentary". How would you fit in Henry Ford next to a description of kids who take rental cars and juice them up with nitrous kits to race? Well, you can't. Or, you could and everyone gets 30 second mentions. I consider that fare that really any production company can do on spec for any cable channel out there.
Therefore, I made a choice. Instead of constructing out of thin air a "story line" that would span this 25-year history, give very little detail, and basically just serve as a vague introduction to the story, I would instead split the story into parallel episodes, each focusing on a major aspect.
The thing is, really, any group or production house could do a light, somewhat accurate BBS Documentary. To do one with a lot of detail and accuracy would require a lot of energy and a lot of work from a quarter that wouldn't normally work that way. I decided to bridge that gap.
DVD, also, provides a perfect medium for this sort of work. With the ability to go to any episode, switch around to details you might have missed, and most importantly, the ability to digest everything at your own speed, the opportunity is there to take on a lot of subject that would not normally be considered "commercial".
Think of this. I have Ward Christensen's only video interview. Some will not care, and some will care very much. I am of the folks that care. There are a lot of subjects covered in this documentary, many dozens, which were otherwise going to disappear forever. That's why I did it. That's what drove me as I travelled thousands of miles and did hundreds of interviews. That's what will hopefully persist long after the last DVD is sold and my last breath: that this was an important point in human history.
This said, it was NOT edited as a series of interviews, one after another, on a dry subject. I don't think the subject is dry at all. On the other hand, it is not agog with jiggling breasts and explosions, and I would think that people seeking such fare will move down the aisle. I think, at the end of the day, I will br very proud of the final product, and people who know what they're getting into will find it very enjoyable.
And in many ways, really, 7 hours barely scratches the surface.
Are they real DVD-videos, or are they CSS encrypted? (Seriously, I want to know; because I can't be bothered buying from peeps who can't be bothered making proper DVD videos, or want to try and stop me using their products after I've bought them, and I can't be bothered installing DeCSS.)
As this will be my first major DVD production, and possibly my only one, I am committed to doing it "right". I am therefore insisting on the following aspects:
It will not have any region encoding. It will not have menus and logos you can't get out of. It will have subtitles. It will not have that last bit of sticker that holds it shut even when the shrinkwrap is off.... if there is any feature that stops people from using their equipment as they want, I don't want it. If there's a specific technical issue involved where I can't stop it being encrypted, I will come up with a solution.
Mr. Robinson and I discussed interviews for a number of months (actually more than a year). The difficulty rests in that he now resides in Japan. I had hoped that I could at least get some footage of him delivering some thoughts on LORD, but that may not come to fruition.
As the administrator of TEXTFILES.COM, I can attest that it is certainly the case that modern writers who submit me works for the uploads section generally pay little or no attention to formatting along any given column length. Keep in mind that I always ask for these submissions in ASCII form, so this isn't the result of converting over from Word or StarOffice.
I think the reason I get files like this one is that people just let notepad and similar programs do the wrap for them. The fact that web browsers don't always wrap means you get some pretty funky looks.
This is not 100 percent true, of course: I've gotten submissions just this year that keep to the 80 column limit and include formatting taking advantage of it.
But on the whole, I think it's just that people no longer think of the world as sized in 80 columns, and we might as well understand that's the case. My heart will always be for the way it used to be, of course.
I am stunned with myself; I had this date on a calendar on my wall, ready to go to it. After all, it took place 10 miles from my house. And here I read about it now, on Slashdot, 10 days afterwards. That's a heartbreaker.
I'm glad I got to go the Philly Classic show, and hang out with Curt and some of the other fine folks, but I definitely would have enjoyed this one too. I'm sorry, Curt! Next time.
I'm really glad to hear these talks are going up where people like myself can hear them. Well, guess I better go to the west coast one this year, instead.
Slashdot Mirror
Under the "nitpicking" department:
As someone who has been slashdotted a half-dozen times over the past few years (and enjoyed every one of them!), the number is not "one million". Pretty much every one of my stories or stories linking to me generated hits from roughly 7,000-12,000 sites depending on a given day and when it was on the page, and so on.
So going by your silly "we get to bill you for not doing things to our liking" economic model, the story submitter would only have to give $1,200 to the EFF, which I am sure they would appreciate very much.
But really, where does it end when people mistreat your user experience? Is it a quarter for every unshrunk thumbnail, a nickel for bad spelling or grammar, or a dollar for a mis-stated facts? All I know is, the EFF will be friggin' loaded after a few months of this new internet payment regime.
Simon, congratulations on your third gaming documentary project. I have enjoyed your previous work, and look forward to this one as well.
I look forward to you moving on to DVDs and/or being asked to create documentaries that will go onto game disks as part of a bundle; the sky's the limit.
- Jason Scott
God dammit.. who the fuck cares if she didnt really ride a motorcycle alone at chernobyl.. the pics are real and are still powerful.. fuck
Because riding through Chernobyl on a motorcycle would be inherently risky, dangerous, unlawful and maybe even lethal. When a person claims they are portraying an event, with photographs, they are implying they actually experienced that event, unless of course we're in the realm of fantasy. Which would be fine.
But if a person neither deliniates the photo essay as a fantasy or indicates in some way that you are not seeing what you are being told, then you're letting your audience down, and you're spreading, basically, lies. It's called bad journalism. Some people might not care, like you, my little profane anonymous friend. But a lot of people do.
Here is one of a good number of debunkings. Naughty, Naughty!
Bravo.
...
It is very, very difficult to read Dave Sim's work once you've read his Tangents essay. I read it a good while ago, and was, well....
It's hard to define the feeling. It wasn't horror that someone thought along these lines; and it wasn't a feeling they shouldn't be said. I think the closest I could relate it to is like finding bugs in your morning cereal. What was previously an enjoyable experience is, for the short (and maybe long) term soured and ruined. Maybe you'll forget and heal, and maybe you just can't.
The most problematic part of Tangents is that it is very in-depth and very long-winded about the thoughts being expressed, which means it specifically appeals to that part of the population who are into reading, which means that these good folks are the ones who will be slapped around for their efforts. I can't imagine anyone reading his Tangents essay and pumping their fist going "Yes! Yes! He finally makes it all clear for me!"
For those whom intense reading of a long essay set is simply not in the forseeable future, here's an (admittedly coarse) summary of the essay.
PRE-TANGENT: My female typesetter quit putting together this essay for my comic book. This is typical of chicks and an example of why feminism is a failure.
TANGENT 1: While researching for my comic book, I interviewed a lot of women. There is no "there" there in them. They are, essentially, sub-human, emotional creatures. They do not think. Any positive qualities they show are what they're parroting from males. There has been a lot of gnashing of teeth by society to ignore this obvious fact, but a fact it is: women are, ultimately, parasites on males.
TANGENT 2: The queers and the feminists are trying to shove acceptability of their false and wrong philosophies down society's throat. They are doing it everywhere, in laws, media, and even in the bible.
TANGENT 3: Because of the false belief that women are human, a lot of very dumb laws are being passed, which treat children like adults and adults like children. This is going to cause a lot of problems for society and possibly ruin it for good. Children should be beaten when they're bad, and alimony comes from the idea that women can't survive on their own. Any variant from these statements are being caused by women imparting their illogical, brainless take on the world on males.
TANGENT 4: Domestic Cats are filthy, horrible animals that should not be in a home. That they are there is because, at some point in history, women brought them into the house. Also, animal rights are stupid.
TANGENT 5: The Civil Rights movement was hijacked by feminists, who then killed Martin Luther King, Jr. And now the feminists define civil rights.
It's perfectly OK to not believe this is what the essay says. Read the original source.
They're bugs in my breakfast. I'm sure I'll be buying his books in the future. Just not the near future.
Not many people read developers.slashdot, but for those who do, waste no time visiting Kizzle's excellent site HACKERMEDIA.NET, wherein you can find out about the basically massive collection of tech/hacker-oriented radio shows out there, coming out every week, with some very driven amateurs who are putting their souls into the medium. There's even an RSS feed so you won't miss a show.
Jason just wants your money anyway. I'm sure this must have set him back a lot of cash. Unfortunately methinks he would have had more time simply flushing it down the toilet.
For three years I travelled to places I'd only read about, met people I'd only read about, and was able, across one or five hours, to ask them questions, questions I'd always had. I got to sit down to meals with them, learn their ideas, give them my own thoughts, share our lives for some short time.
How much would you pay to have a dozen dinners with your personal heroes? How much would you give out of your life to bring people that were only figures and concepts to you into a realm you could comfortably call "friend"? I only had to give up a few tens of thousands of dollars. People spend more than that on their cars.
I was, before a single DVD was sold, rich beyond dreams.
This documentary is actually the sequel to Jason Scott's previous 16 hour epic "The history of drying paint", a compilation of 724 of the most historically important paints, uh, drying.
I'll have you know that my sponsors (Dutch Boy) and I almost took a major bath on "The Unbearable Dryness of Paint" (the original title), until we repackaged the whole project as "Mountain-Chested Girls And The Fiery Trucks of Gun-Blazing Death", bookended it with narration by Christopher Walken, and sold it on late-night TV as part of a special 5-DVD "Girls Gone Painting" pack. Then we made out like bandits.
Just for the record, there are, in raw form, 247 hours of footage. And shooting them has been a once in a lifetime experience. So no sequel there.
He draws numbers and has legions of "fans", but I have no clue why people think this guy really deserves the attention he gets and apparantly craves.
Two words: consistent output.
The world is filled with people who will gladly fire off a two-sentence refutation/dismissal of someone else's work, but it is starving of folks who will begin at square 1 and roll at some distant point in the future over the finish line.
I am attempting to feed that world. I wish you would take a shot at it too.
A long time ago, when I was particularly despairing of criticisms and jibes from folks who themselves were contributing very little else in any circles, I wrote an essay called "The Haters, The Haters", which is located here. It states quite unequivocably and more effectively than anything else I could write here, what drives me and why, faced with the vacuum of better content you present, I will move on with my projects.
Who in the world is nerdy enough to want to watch all of this??
...and you know, I felt a real sense of accomplishment when I did.
I sense a challenge!
I've sat through a lot of 24-hour science fiction marathons, seen the dawn come through my window from an all-night hacking session, driven for 20 hours at a stretch to make it to a party....
I appeciate the parent's positive outlook on my work, but I agree, posting it as an Anonymous Coward dilutes their opinion. There are many fine folks in this thread posting their skepticisms under their "real" user accounts (and even those have the safety of anonymity, really). It doesn't do favors if you're advocating a project to post it anonymously. It does look like it's me.
But it's not. I have my own websites to describe myself positively.
A lot of people have not looked at the website, and as a result they have the idea that it is a single seven hour documentary. That's fine; this announcement happened without me knowing it, I am still editing, and there are some details about the documentary not yet up that would make more sense.
In fact, there are bookend episodes (the "beginning" of BBSes, and the "end" of BBSes) and then a number of specific subjects (Fidonet, "underground", the "BBS industry") and so on. In other words, I chose to group things together in general themes, running parallel to each other, instead of some sort of weird chronological setting ("1940-1944: BBSs go to War").
It is definitely the case that the work will be set up on DVD so people can digest what they want, and maybe come back and see the rest as they want. I think it'll work. (And, of course, I would, wouldn't I.)
The episodes will be an hour long apiece, roughly.
The consultants I worked with in determining quality of video on DVDs indicated that, in fact, I'd be pushing it with 2 DVDs. That is, I'd have to be doing quite a few games to get things just right. So, I've gone with 3 DVDs and will add as many bonus features as I can fit. That's the thinking. Have too much space, instead of the chance of too little.
I respect the man's work and all, and I certainly think that this is a noble effort. Therefore, I do know that it is premature to denegrate and give thoughts on something that has not yet even been released.
That said, while I am interested in seeing the results of the work, I cannot say I am looking forward to the results. Among my circle of friends (whom I do not want to identify, hence my anonymity. Sorry.), many of us feel like Mr. Scott may be a "Michael Moore", of sorts, of the tech documentary community, which is aggreably a small community, but none one the less. It's hard to put any effort together without taking a side, and for Mr. Scott to focus so much on the past does a disservice to how much better things are now. I appreciate hobbies, but this is bordering on obsession. There is way too much material and most viewers honestly won't give a poop.
However, I suppose the best thing to do is wait and see, right? Hopefully my views will be changed and I will post again to correct myself. Who knows. From what I've heard, though, Mr. Jason Scott as a person isn't anything to write home about. He can be an incredible jerk sometimes and other things. I suppose like any "art", one should focus on the art instead of the art.
Jason Scott is dead. Long live Jason Scott. Bastard. *wink*
Honestly, if every criticism of my work or others work was presented in this fashion, the world would be a really good place, much better than it is now.
I agree, there is always the danger when someone sets out on a mission to "recount" the "history" of a subculture, that he will either expose them to ridicle, misrepresent facts, or otherwise betray that which he claims to be a part of. And the background noise of the actual personality of the historian can cause issues as well.
All I can do in this digital era is create the work I set out to do, finish it, and present it to the world. I've done what I, personally, consider to be a good job in giving a feeling for the BBS era and the stories involved. To that end, I ended up spending three years of my life, and many hours within those three years, bringing my project to fruition.
Being compared to Michael Moore is problematic, but I can't really answer to that criticism because I don't know how it's being used here.
As for whether I am doing a disservice focusing on the past... unless I'm mistaken, there are a number of websites out there, if you look around, dedicated to discussing the present.
Every hour you watch of this documentary will make another 10 years of your life awkward and sexless.
I'm thinking this goes on the back cover.
I chose Njfuzzy's response because it seemed to catch the most-posted concern about the BBS Documentary. However, for anyone not cruising this article at a "show me all comments from -1 upward", let me mention that an awful lot of people are posting concerns about the "7 hour documentary".
And, like a lot of people, njfuzzy took the time to post his concern without actually looking at the site in any depth.
The story and experience of the BBS stretches 25 years (if you don't count proto-BBSes like PLATO/Community Memory/etc., and I do). It involves literately millions of people, and thousands of folks who were pretty hard-core into it and what it represented. And among them, were many hundreds of people who affected a lot of lives and brought life online, and spent a lot of energy doing it.
Therefore, the problem I faced at the beginning of the production was similar to that of doing "Car: The Documentary". How would you fit in Henry Ford next to a description of kids who take rental cars and juice them up with nitrous kits to race? Well, you can't. Or, you could and everyone gets 30 second mentions. I consider that fare that really any production company can do on spec for any cable channel out there.
Therefore, I made a choice. Instead of constructing out of thin air a "story line" that would span this 25-year history, give very little detail, and basically just serve as a vague introduction to the story, I would instead split the story into parallel episodes, each focusing on a major aspect.
The thing is, really, any group or production house could do a light, somewhat accurate BBS Documentary. To do one with a lot of detail and accuracy would require a lot of energy and a lot of work from a quarter that wouldn't normally work that way. I decided to bridge that gap.
DVD, also, provides a perfect medium for this sort of work. With the ability to go to any episode, switch around to details you might have missed, and most importantly, the ability to digest everything at your own speed, the opportunity is there to take on a lot of subject that would not normally be considered "commercial".
Think of this. I have Ward Christensen's only video interview. Some will not care, and some will care very much. I am of the folks that care. There are a lot of subjects covered in this documentary, many dozens, which were otherwise going to disappear forever. That's why I did it. That's what drove me as I travelled thousands of miles and did hundreds of interviews. That's what will hopefully persist long after the last DVD is sold and my last breath: that this was an important point in human history.
This said, it was NOT edited as a series of interviews, one after another, on a dry subject. I don't think the subject is dry at all. On the other hand, it is not agog with jiggling breasts and explosions, and I would think that people seeking such fare will move down the aisle. I think, at the end of the day, I will br very proud of the final product, and people who know what they're getting into will find it very enjoyable.
And in many ways, really, 7 hours barely scratches the surface.
Are they real DVD-videos, or are they CSS encrypted? (Seriously, I want to know; because I can't be bothered buying from peeps who can't be bothered making proper DVD videos, or want to try and stop me using their products after I've bought them, and I can't be bothered installing DeCSS.)
... if there is any feature that stops people from using their equipment as they want, I don't want it. If there's a specific technical issue involved where I can't stop it being encrypted, I will come up with a solution.
As this will be my first major DVD production, and possibly my only one, I am committed to doing it "right". I am therefore insisting on the following aspects:
It will not have any region encoding.
It will not have menus and logos you can't get out of.
It will have subtitles.
It will not have that last bit of sticker that holds it shut even when the shrinkwrap is off.
Ehh.. WTF?
Mr. Robinson and I discussed interviews for a number of months (actually more than a year). The difficulty rests in that he now resides in Japan. I had hoped that I could at least get some footage of him delivering some thoughts on LORD, but that may not come to fruition.
I did, however, do my best.
Oops! Sorry, I thought I had all of them; you know there's always a few out there that I'd miss.
As the administrator of TEXTFILES.COM, I can attest that it is certainly the case that modern writers who submit me works for the uploads section generally pay little or no attention to formatting along any given column length. Keep in mind that I always ask for these submissions in ASCII form, so this isn't the result of converting over from Word or StarOffice.
I think the reason I get files like this one is that people just let notepad and similar programs do the wrap for them. The fact that web browsers don't always wrap means you get some pretty funky looks.
This is not 100 percent true, of course: I've gotten submissions just this year that keep to the 80 column limit and include formatting taking advantage of it.
But on the whole, I think it's just that people no longer think of the world as sized in 80 columns, and we might as well understand that's the case. My heart will always be for the way it used to be, of course.
I am stunned with myself; I had this date on a calendar on my wall, ready to go to it. After all, it took place 10 miles from my house. And here I read about it now, on Slashdot, 10 days afterwards. That's a heartbreaker.
I'm glad I got to go the Philly Classic show, and hang out with Curt and some of the other fine folks, but I definitely would have enjoyed this one too. I'm sorry, Curt! Next time.
I'm really glad to hear these talks are going up where people like myself can hear them. Well, guess I better go to the west coast one this year, instead.
I hope we have more of these soon.
go get that guy who wrote the first Internet worm!
<Fight Club Reference>
His name was Robert Morris
His name was Robert Morris
His name was Robert Morris
<\Fight Club Reference>
Allow me to go the extra step you did not, and point out that the previous HOPE conference, H2K2, has the majority of panels online. So does the conference before it, H2K.
Using these two points, one can possibly plot a trend towards the current conference also making these panels available for download.
Do people really need a biography for Steven Wozniak?
If they do, I might as well suggest an unusual one. Of course, you can also just learn about him from the man himself.
> Free Kevin!!!! someone had to say it
Well, obviously these days the term is Kevin Free, but still, it's kind of fun to go back and remember how effective that slogan was for getting the word out.