Though Pixar is the pioneer of computer animation,
the essence of our business is to create compelling
stories and memorable characters. It is chiseled in
stone at our studios that no amount of technology
can turn a bad story into a good one.
-- From Pixar's Web site. And they've held it up, too. I wait eagerly for the day when Pixar turns out animation as good as FF's.
It's normal in CGI movies and modern games to spend the most computing power and time detailing the main characters. Lara Croft got at least twice as many polygons as any other character in the "Tomb Raider" games, for instance, and if you look at "Shrek" again you'll see that the characters with the "bit parts" are much stiffer and less detailed than the main characters.
This is for two reasons: one, the main characters are required to perform more actions, express more expressions, and be seen close up far more often than anyone else; and two, they have a lot to do in as little time possible. Of course the computing power was there to make every stray character as detailed as the main ones, but the time wasn't. The computing power was no doubt awesome to anyone working on it, but even Sony has to face the limitations of physics.
Shouldn't they wait for the release, then if it still overrides their settings and they're absolutely sure its not a malfunction in their install process, then they should consider legal action.
No, because by then it'll be too late -- Microsoft's software will be purchased, users will be using MS software and not Kodak's, and MS will only have it fixed in the next service pack a few months later, which most users won't know to download anyways.
Kodak tried to work things out, couldn't do it, made threats, and finally (according to the article) got things worked out in the latest beta build. They only threatened when it appeared that MS was refusing to listen and going ahead with their own plans for the rest of the beta cycle.
sethg understands what I've argued before: that Microsoft's monopoly in the OS will remain unchallenged until other corporate superpowers, not just newcomers like Netscape, become threatened. It's clear that the MS legal team (and a newer, friendlier Republican administration) is the main reason Microsoft's been able to stave off the label "monopoly" for this long. Only other corporations with equally large legal teams will be able to beat them at their own game.
...but Katz isn't listening. I argued his misuse of the term "ADD" following his last column, and finally gave up when the only interested party refused to consider anything but Katz' point-of-view. Some people simply like to think that ADD is exclusively a product of corporate media, because it justifies their belief that all corporate media are Evil(tm).
When you walk up and down the aisles at CompUSA, are you struck by the impression that the US software industry encourages creative thinking?
Your problem is starting at CompUSA, then. The most creative software usually pops up on the Internet for free before you can buy it in a box for $50-300 a pop. (See also: DooM, NCSA Mosaic, Linux, and your favorite MP3 player)
Quit expecting so much
on
Review: A.I.
·
· Score: 2
Gratuitious tear-jerkers, cutsey-laughs, and all of the other crap that's thrown in to make the movie more marketable to the typical McDonald's customer and general-purpose merchandisers.
I can't see any fast-food joint wanting to pick up the merchandise rights to this film. Besides the Teddy, and maybe the cars, what is there to market? And the film is unquestionably not intended for children--"killing" robots with cannons, "parental" abandonment, red light districts, gigilo robots, murder and death. There was far more non-cutesy than cutesy in this movie.
It's a good flick, but it's no epic. Get over it, boys.
While I agree that there wasn't anything groundbreakingly "first" about this movie, that doesn't mean it's not a great tale. Summer blockbuster addicts who went to this film expecting lots of action, adventure, and eye candy are going to walk away disappointed, and there's nothing anyone can (or should) do for them. But anyone who wanted to see an intriguing story in the true science-fiction vein -- not like Hollywood sci-fi, but like Issac Asimov sci-fi -- will walk away pleased.
I dislike the closed-minded idea that only films like Spielberg's Jaws or Close Encounters or E.T. will be remembered in the decades to come. Each of those films stood out from their contemporaries because of their F/X as well as their stories (well, except Jaws, which was all effects around an overused monster story). A.I. has outstanding effects, but to be honest, they're nothing the audience isn't used to seeing these days. However, they deserve respect for the way they were so seamlessly blended into the movie. Very few effects stood out. The Teddy looked like a toy, the car looked like a car. Everything looked wonderfully, invisibly real.
The story, meanwhile, is very different from your typical summer fare, and that's probably throwing everyone for a loop. The thrust of the film is a philosophical question: what makes humans "alive", what gives us a soul, that the robots lack? The professor at the beginning posits that the missing element is the abstract quantity of Love. The rest of the movie explores whether or not this is true.
There's no "bang" in this film, and I'll agree that there's nothing too terribly novel about the story. Nevertheless, it's a rare story well-told, and deserves recognition for that alone. Hollywood is so packed full of high-adrenaline monsters and spaceships that everyone's forgotten what science fiction is really about.
A consortium of about 90 high-profile technology companies will announce Tuesday that the group has finalized a new standard that will serve as a common way for connecting electronic devices to the Net through electrical outlets.
The HomePlug Powerline Alliance, which includes Cisco Systems, Intel, RadioShack, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard, among others, has spent the past year working on a standard for using homes' internal electrical network to link electronic devices. The new standard is based on technology created by little-known company Intellon.
Sculpture, paintings, and the like all have one thing in common: they are each completely unique. When you buy a work of those arts, you know you have something that is one-of-a-kind. It was created at one time by the artist's hand, and no copy or duplicate will ever be just like it.
A rung below these "fine arts" you have lithographs and woodcuts, media which aren't unique but aren't infinitely recreatable, either. A lithograph by M.C. Escher will exist as part of a limited run, each print numbered uniquely with the collector knowing that lower numbers equal higher quality. These are never as valuable as one-of-a-kind artworks, but are still considered "art" because of the above.
Rare posters and collectibles are a rung lower yet. These are certainly not one-of-a-kind, but they are also "limited", although each instance of the art was identical when it was new. Value is based on grade and "newness" of the item. Rare World's Fair posters or Hummel figurines may still be considered "art" because of this, but the term "collectible" is more accurate. This is no longer "fine" art, it is mass-produced and manufactured.
Computer-generated art falls into this category as well, then. While it is without question artistic and creative, it is not unique. Existing in digital form, it can be reproduced ad infinitum as long as the digital data exists. If you were to print it in a limited run and then destroy the original data, you might have a collectible. If you were to print it exactly onceand then destroy the file, you might have "fine art".
Pixels on a monitor, however, will never qualify as "art" to those who discuss the meaning of the term. Art, like people, needs to have a uniqueness to it in order to be appreciable.
Look up Scattered: How Attention Deficit Disorder Originates And What You Can Do About It on Amazon
Done. This is the first I've heard of this very recent book and its author, as opposed to the better-known and more-involved Edward M. Hallowell ("Driven to Distraction") and Daniel Amen ("Healing ADD"). According to his own writeup on Amazon, he's a family physician with an M.D. who happens to be diagnosed with ADD himself, without any special training in neurology or psychology. I don't consider that an authority.
Getting back to the root issue: ADD was first investigated in 1902 in England by Dr. George Fredick Still, who called it a "defect of moral control". A decade later, physicians in America were independently studying it and calling its sufferers "minimally brain damaged". In 1937 it was discovered that amphetamines, of which Ritalin is one, relieved the symptoms of ADD in children (data borrowed from here). That's a short history of the disorder from the years long before television, video games, and electronic toys ever existed. Katz's assertion that the idea of ADD as a treatable condition would be "absurd" in the pre-electronic era is itself absurd, given these facts.
In fact, the entire idea that ADD didn't exist before the twentieth century is itself a fallacy, because it hadn't been studied and diagnosed until the twentieth century. Alzheimer's disease is also being more widely diagnosed in recent decades; does that mean that a lifetime of exposure to advertising causes Alzheimer's? The arrival of modern entertainment and the widespread diagnosis of ADD is coincident, not causal.
The general consensus is that amphetamines resolve ADD symptoms by raising the dopamine and seratonin levels in the brain, although the mechanics aren't positively identified. It's also been shown using scans that brain activity in ADD/ADHD sufferers is actually done in different locations than in non-sufferers. While this doesn't show the affliction is genetic, it is a strong indicator that ADD is more than a matter of not being interested in something for more than a short time. As a sufferer myself, I can attest that it's often simply impossible to screen out the noise and intrusions around me to focus on just one thing, no matter how much I want to do otherwise.
Katz is the furthest thing from an expert in ADD, based on what I've read about him. I'm not an expert, either, but at least I can claim to have read a couple of books on the subject.
Whether or not most ADD has a biological component, there's no doubt at all that there's an environmental component.
Well, yes, there actually is. But my point still comes down to the fact that ADD was first defined and diagnosed decades before the advent of the Information Age. The quote seems to imply that ADD is somehow caused by watching too much television, playing too many video games, and watching too many advertisements -- no authority on ADD ever made this claim.
It's no accident that we're the first society to develop widespread ADD. The controversies shrouding this disorder aside, the very idea would have seemed absurd in the pre-electronic, pre-digital era.
Don't be a twit, Jon. Ever watch the movie "Amadeus"? Mozart was probably a classic candidate for Attention Deficit Disorder, and the movie depicted his symptoms to a T.
Just because ADD wasn't defined until the twentieth century (1902, mind you, not 1985 as you seem to think) doesn't mean the twentieth century caused ADD.
Articles that reveal that Microsoft thinks the GPL is bad, evil, and opposed to everything that is good about capitalism is no longer News. You don't need to post them here anymore. Add them to Slashback instead. There's nothing novel about it anymore, and we're long past being surprised.
Thanks. I wasn't saying the articles were too complex, I just thought it would be useful to cut out the "Why does this matter?" and sum it up for the readership.
As for your complaints about the +5, I agree. The mod system on Slashdot is far from balanced, and always favors the newest posts over later ones. It's worked against me, IMO, far more often then it's worked to my advantage.
I looked this movie up on Rotten Tomatoes and was astonished to see Roger Ebert, of all people, praising the movie. What could this guy be on? Is he for sale or something?
The review he gave the movie predicted these comments and answered them: he praised "Tomb Raider" as a good "popcorn movie", and explained why. He describes "The Mummy" as part of the same category, and explains why "The Mummy Returns" fails to fit it. All in all, very interesting perspectives from a man I still consider the last word in movie criticism.
I haven't seen the movie myself, and I don't intend to: "popcorn movies" don't do it for me anymore. I like to have my brain challenged a little if I'm going to spend $20 to take myself and my date out for popcorn and a show. But I'll take Ebert's word for it: if you're looking for mindless entertainment, this is probably better than most.
1. Note what Milo said to Audrey after Kida was able to finally communicate with Milo. He said something about the Atlantean language being a mother tongue of sorts, and that some Atlanteans had the ability to parse out what other people speak and eventually speak their language, abeit a bit slowly. The linguist brought in as a consultant on the movie specifically mentioned that in several interviews.
As the other poster said, this was a cheap attempt to justify something that's patently impossible. Atlanteans haven't spoken any language other than Atlantean for centuries. And there's no rational way that knowing a "mother tongue" of modern English would give you a working knowledge of its grammar and vocabulary on your first time out.
2. Better watch the sequence in the movie again. Note when Rourke held up the page it had a full-page depiction what looked like a star in a very light blue tint. You forget that Rourke has been a treasure hunter for a number of years, and something like that is bound to attract his attention even if he couldn't read the language on the page.
Yes, I saw the page with a big blue star on it. So what? There's no reason he should have thought that was anything other than, say, a depiction of their creation myth or a picture of the sky. Nothing in the illustration indicated it was a jewel he could take home with him.
And while I'm feeling sour about this film, one more thing that occurred to me since the first post: Who the heck wrote the Shepherd's Journal, and how did he acquire knowledge about Atlantean culture that no one but the king, not even his own daughter, knew about? That's something they never did get around to explaining....
In this case the reporter missed that point entirely.
Well, Mundie's been deliberately using "open source" interchangably with "GPL" for a long time now. It's not open source a la BSD that he disagrees with, but he knowingly avoids attacking the GPL specifically. So you can't really blame a reporter for doing the same thing.
The upshot of this "revelation", one hopes, would be that Mundie is now forced to distinguish between BSD open source and GPL open source the next time he opens fire.
Some minor details (read: "major plot points") which stuck in my craw the whole movie:
How could Milo speak Atlantean, a language that didn't even use a modern alphabet, if it's a dead language? He'd only read it, no one alive (well, outside of the lost city) had ever heard it spoken.
How could Kida speak modern French and English perfectly? Both those languages had yet to exist when Atlantis sank 8,500 years ago.
How could the captain know what any page in the book would represent based on the pictures alone? Milo was the only one of them who could read it, and they repeatedly said so.
Sorry, Disney, try hiring writers that pay attention to detail next time you want to appeal to a more grown-up audience.
This idea seems to come straight out of the SF novel "Children of God", the sequel to the should-be-classic "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell. I never imagined that converting DNA to music would ever actually prove practical, though.
...and less articles like Jon Katz. With him I hear the same bland and unsubstantiated arguments over and over again; this is more depth and insight than he could ever hope to accomplish on his own. Kudos.
Newsweek has an article in this week's issue (not online, apparently) which hits the Disney problem on the head: now that CGI special effects can do everything a moviemaker can imagine, animation has no special virtues over live-action movies. And while Disney still expects its no-longer-a-monopoly on animation and its brand name to carry its ticket sales, other outfits like Dreamworks and Pixar are proving that stories, not pretty pictures, are the key to making animation work.
It's a good article, and direct. Pick up a newsstand copy and flip through for it.
Many (but by no means most) real estate agencies and agents use their own Web sites to advertise themselves. The bigger and more technological ones post pictures and information for their properties. However, they'd rather use their own site and structure instead of a central repository.
Keep in mind that you can't sell real estate like other stuff you'd find at Amazon.com or eBay. It's one-of-a-kind every time, usually changes hands from one individual to another, and can't be shipped across the country. Real estate is, and will always be, a local endeavor. Because of this, it's hard to justify the expense of a World-Wide Web site. A few do. But no one, to my knowledge, sells real estate exclusively online for just those reasons, and so you'll never have as much success hunting online as you will with a personal agent.
Your best bet, if you must do this electronically, is to hit the online Yellow Pages and do a search for "real estate agent" in the location of your choice. A handful will have Web sites, but practically speaking, you'll have to settle down with some phone numbers and do it the old-fashioned way.
Slashdot Mirror
It's normal in CGI movies and modern games to spend the most computing power and time detailing the main characters. Lara Croft got at least twice as many polygons as any other character in the "Tomb Raider" games, for instance, and if you look at "Shrek" again you'll see that the characters with the "bit parts" are much stiffer and less detailed than the main characters. This is for two reasons: one, the main characters are required to perform more actions, express more expressions, and be seen close up far more often than anyone else; and two, they have a lot to do in as little time possible. Of course the computing power was there to make every stray character as detailed as the main ones, but the time wasn't. The computing power was no doubt awesome to anyone working on it, but even Sony has to face the limitations of physics.
...since ".Net" comes from the word "networking", while "Mono" comes from the word "monopoly".
No, because by then it'll be too late -- Microsoft's software will be purchased, users will be using MS software and not Kodak's, and MS will only have it fixed in the next service pack a few months later, which most users won't know to download anyways.
Kodak tried to work things out, couldn't do it, made threats, and finally (according to the article) got things worked out in the latest beta build. They only threatened when it appeared that MS was refusing to listen and going ahead with their own plans for the rest of the beta cycle.
sethg understands what I've argued before: that Microsoft's monopoly in the OS will remain unchallenged until other corporate superpowers, not just newcomers like Netscape, become threatened. It's clear that the MS legal team (and a newer, friendlier Republican administration) is the main reason Microsoft's been able to stave off the label "monopoly" for this long. Only other corporations with equally large legal teams will be able to beat them at their own game.
...but Katz isn't listening. I argued his misuse of the term "ADD" following his last column, and finally gave up when the only interested party refused to consider anything but Katz' point-of-view. Some people simply like to think that ADD is exclusively a product of corporate media, because it justifies their belief that all corporate media are Evil(tm).
Your problem is starting at CompUSA, then. The most creative software usually pops up on the Internet for free before you can buy it in a box for $50-300 a pop. (See also: DooM, NCSA Mosaic, Linux, and your favorite MP3 player)
I can't see any fast-food joint wanting to pick up the merchandise rights to this film. Besides the Teddy, and maybe the cars, what is there to market? And the film is unquestionably not intended for children--"killing" robots with cannons, "parental" abandonment, red light districts, gigilo robots, murder and death. There was far more non-cutesy than cutesy in this movie.
It's a good flick, but it's no epic. Get over it, boys.
While I agree that there wasn't anything groundbreakingly "first" about this movie, that doesn't mean it's not a great tale. Summer blockbuster addicts who went to this film expecting lots of action, adventure, and eye candy are going to walk away disappointed, and there's nothing anyone can (or should) do for them. But anyone who wanted to see an intriguing story in the true science-fiction vein -- not like Hollywood sci-fi, but like Issac Asimov sci-fi -- will walk away pleased.
I dislike the closed-minded idea that only films like Spielberg's Jaws or Close Encounters or E.T. will be remembered in the decades to come. Each of those films stood out from their contemporaries because of their F/X as well as their stories (well, except Jaws, which was all effects around an overused monster story). A.I. has outstanding effects, but to be honest, they're nothing the audience isn't used to seeing these days. However, they deserve respect for the way they were so seamlessly blended into the movie. Very few effects stood out. The Teddy looked like a toy, the car looked like a car. Everything looked wonderfully, invisibly real.
The story, meanwhile, is very different from your typical summer fare, and that's probably throwing everyone for a loop. The thrust of the film is a philosophical question: what makes humans "alive", what gives us a soul, that the robots lack? The professor at the beginning posits that the missing element is the abstract quantity of Love. The rest of the movie explores whether or not this is true.
There's no "bang" in this film, and I'll agree that there's nothing too terribly novel about the story. Nevertheless, it's a rare story well-told, and deserves recognition for that alone. Hollywood is so packed full of high-adrenaline monsters and spaceships that everyone's forgotten what science fiction is really about.
A consortium of about 90 high-profile technology companies will announce Tuesday that the group has finalized a new standard that will serve as a common way for connecting electronic devices to the Net through electrical outlets.
The HomePlug Powerline Alliance, which includes Cisco Systems, Intel, RadioShack, Motorola and Hewlett-Packard, among others, has spent the past year working on a standard for using homes' internal electrical network to link electronic devices. The new standard is based on technology created by little-known company Intellon.
etc....
A rung below these "fine arts" you have lithographs and woodcuts, media which aren't unique but aren't infinitely recreatable, either. A lithograph by M.C. Escher will exist as part of a limited run, each print numbered uniquely with the collector knowing that lower numbers equal higher quality. These are never as valuable as one-of-a-kind artworks, but are still considered "art" because of the above.
Rare posters and collectibles are a rung lower yet. These are certainly not one-of-a-kind, but they are also "limited", although each instance of the art was identical when it was new. Value is based on grade and "newness" of the item. Rare World's Fair posters or Hummel figurines may still be considered "art" because of this, but the term "collectible" is more accurate. This is no longer "fine" art, it is mass-produced and manufactured.
Computer-generated art falls into this category as well, then. While it is without question artistic and creative, it is not unique. Existing in digital form, it can be reproduced ad infinitum as long as the digital data exists. If you were to print it in a limited run and then destroy the original data, you might have a collectible. If you were to print it exactly onceand then destroy the file, you might have "fine art".
Pixels on a monitor, however, will never qualify as "art" to those who discuss the meaning of the term. Art, like people, needs to have a uniqueness to it in order to be appreciable.
Done. This is the first I've heard of this very recent book and its author, as opposed to the better-known and more-involved Edward M. Hallowell ("Driven to Distraction") and Daniel Amen ("Healing ADD"). According to his own writeup on Amazon, he's a family physician with an M.D. who happens to be diagnosed with ADD himself, without any special training in neurology or psychology. I don't consider that an authority.
Getting back to the root issue: ADD was first investigated in 1902 in England by Dr. George Fredick Still, who called it a "defect of moral control". A decade later, physicians in America were independently studying it and calling its sufferers "minimally brain damaged". In 1937 it was discovered that amphetamines, of which Ritalin is one, relieved the symptoms of ADD in children (data borrowed from here). That's a short history of the disorder from the years long before television, video games, and electronic toys ever existed. Katz's assertion that the idea of ADD as a treatable condition would be "absurd" in the pre-electronic era is itself absurd, given these facts.
In fact, the entire idea that ADD didn't exist before the twentieth century is itself a fallacy, because it hadn't been studied and diagnosed until the twentieth century. Alzheimer's disease is also being more widely diagnosed in recent decades; does that mean that a lifetime of exposure to advertising causes Alzheimer's? The arrival of modern entertainment and the widespread diagnosis of ADD is coincident, not causal.
The general consensus is that amphetamines resolve ADD symptoms by raising the dopamine and seratonin levels in the brain, although the mechanics aren't positively identified. It's also been shown using scans that brain activity in ADD/ADHD sufferers is actually done in different locations than in non-sufferers. While this doesn't show the affliction is genetic, it is a strong indicator that ADD is more than a matter of not being interested in something for more than a short time. As a sufferer myself, I can attest that it's often simply impossible to screen out the noise and intrusions around me to focus on just one thing, no matter how much I want to do otherwise.
Katz is the furthest thing from an expert in ADD, based on what I've read about him. I'm not an expert, either, but at least I can claim to have read a couple of books on the subject.
Well, yes, there actually is. But my point still comes down to the fact that ADD was first defined and diagnosed decades before the advent of the Information Age. The quote seems to imply that ADD is somehow caused by watching too much television, playing too many video games, and watching too many advertisements -- no authority on ADD ever made this claim.
Don't be a twit, Jon. Ever watch the movie "Amadeus"? Mozart was probably a classic candidate for Attention Deficit Disorder, and the movie depicted his symptoms to a T.
Just because ADD wasn't defined until the twentieth century (1902, mind you, not 1985 as you seem to think) doesn't mean the twentieth century caused ADD.
Maybe you did, Katz. I thought everyone knew there was never any such thing as an objective newspaper or an unbiased historian.
Articles that reveal that Microsoft thinks the GPL is bad, evil, and opposed to everything that is good about capitalism is no longer News. You don't need to post them here anymore. Add them to Slashback instead. There's nothing novel about it anymore, and we're long past being surprised.
As for your complaints about the +5, I agree. The mod system on Slashdot is far from balanced, and always favors the newest posts over later ones. It's worked against me, IMO, far more often then it's worked to my advantage.
The review he gave the movie predicted these comments and answered them: he praised "Tomb Raider" as a good "popcorn movie", and explained why. He describes "The Mummy" as part of the same category, and explains why "The Mummy Returns" fails to fit it. All in all, very interesting perspectives from a man I still consider the last word in movie criticism.
I haven't seen the movie myself, and I don't intend to: "popcorn movies" don't do it for me anymore. I like to have my brain challenged a little if I'm going to spend $20 to take myself and my date out for popcorn and a show. But I'll take Ebert's word for it: if you're looking for mindless entertainment, this is probably better than most.
As the other poster said, this was a cheap attempt to justify something that's patently impossible. Atlanteans haven't spoken any language other than Atlantean for centuries. And there's no rational way that knowing a "mother tongue" of modern English would give you a working knowledge of its grammar and vocabulary on your first time out.
2. Better watch the sequence in the movie again. Note when Rourke held up the page it had a full-page depiction what looked like a star in a very light blue tint. You forget that Rourke has been a treasure hunter for a number of years, and something like that is bound to attract his attention even if he couldn't read the language on the page.
Yes, I saw the page with a big blue star on it. So what? There's no reason he should have thought that was anything other than, say, a depiction of their creation myth or a picture of the sky. Nothing in the illustration indicated it was a jewel he could take home with him.
And while I'm feeling sour about this film, one more thing that occurred to me since the first post: Who the heck wrote the Shepherd's Journal, and how did he acquire knowledge about Atlantean culture that no one but the king, not even his own daughter, knew about? That's something they never did get around to explaining....
Well, Mundie's been deliberately using "open source" interchangably with "GPL" for a long time now. It's not open source a la BSD that he disagrees with, but he knowingly avoids attacking the GPL specifically. So you can't really blame a reporter for doing the same thing.
The upshot of this "revelation", one hopes, would be that Mundie is now forced to distinguish between BSD open source and GPL open source the next time he opens fire.
- How could Milo speak Atlantean, a language that didn't even use a modern alphabet, if it's a dead language? He'd only read it, no one alive (well, outside of the lost city) had ever heard it spoken.
- How could Kida speak modern French and English perfectly? Both those languages had yet to exist when Atlantis sank 8,500 years ago.
- How could the captain know what any page in the book would represent based on the pictures alone? Milo was the only one of them who could read it, and they repeatedly said so.
Sorry, Disney, try hiring writers that pay attention to detail next time you want to appeal to a more grown-up audience.This idea seems to come straight out of the SF novel "Children of God", the sequel to the should-be-classic "The Sparrow" by Mary Doria Russell. I never imagined that converting DNA to music would ever actually prove practical, though.
...and less articles like Jon Katz. With him I hear the same bland and unsubstantiated arguments over and over again; this is more depth and insight than he could ever hope to accomplish on his own. Kudos.
It's a good article, and direct. Pick up a newsstand copy and flip through for it.
Keep in mind that you can't sell real estate like other stuff you'd find at Amazon.com or eBay. It's one-of-a-kind every time, usually changes hands from one individual to another, and can't be shipped across the country. Real estate is, and will always be, a local endeavor. Because of this, it's hard to justify the expense of a World-Wide Web site. A few do. But no one, to my knowledge, sells real estate exclusively online for just those reasons, and so you'll never have as much success hunting online as you will with a personal agent.
Your best bet, if you must do this electronically, is to hit the online Yellow Pages and do a search for "real estate agent" in the location of your choice. A handful will have Web sites, but practically speaking, you'll have to settle down with some phone numbers and do it the old-fashioned way.