Not a stable conclusion. Most survive based on long-term investment from it's parent company.
Salon.com collects money, and still is only treading water. Barnes and Noble chips in. CNN.com advertises, but is almost completley funded from other divisions.
Adverts are not a guarantee that your websites is going to be getting revnue. Unique IP Click-through and Click-to-close rates are still incredibly percentages. Remember that anyone with more than a passing fancy of the internet understands that searching for the free equivalent of sold information is first step.
There are going to be meny other possibilities looked at before nanotube tethers are attempted. What prevents us from wiring all this energy from the desert to elsewhere, taking the whole system horizontal? Money!
SO, in conclusion, you owe me. Payup. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. mug
One could conclude that the qualities of decisions made in any democratic system can never be greater than the average quality of understanding of the people in that democracy.
I agree.
But much like any distributed system, all sources of information benefit from more participants than less, if they can be kept organized. This is also the primary argument supporting the open-source movement. Distributed participation.
So, the alternative seems worse: To reduce the sources of information to "official channels" and only trusted advisors, leads to the classic yes-man blindness of a leadership. Even ancient kings went slumming to avoid this.
Perhaps apply layer after layer of organization on the mass of information, and imposing stricter standards of evaluation as issues bubble up and stay longer. This I atribute to a free press. While they too suffer from bias, the "free" aspect should allow for multiple viewpoints to be expressed and thus one can look at any single issue from multiple sides.
It doesn't matter one's background (in fact, the US Congress has quite a diverse background), once you are in politics for a career, you are a "politician". The perception that *anyone* is outside the sphere of influence for debate is absurd. I abhor the concept of "outside the beltway" in Washing DC terms, where someone is marketing themselves to bring new opinions to the floor. The opinions are usually known, it's the votes that count.
Politics is the business of making deals and comprimises according to an ever-shifting value system. One looks out for the constituents, ganering votes, but also one's reputation (perception, not reality, is king here). Also, to afford others the possibility of compromising in your favor, you compromise in theirs at some point.
On top of all that, you have the standard environment of cynicsim, complecency, and cronyism that any organization would have. People organize into parties because they realize a group is stronger than an individual, especially when a complex democratic process is used (quorum, majority, super-majority, comittee, sub-committee).
I don't have a full grasp of all the details, but at least I know BS when I hear it. All people in politics are politicians. This doesn't have anything to do with their morals or the issues they take a position on. And all freshmen arrivials get trained in the procedural steps to move about the houses.
sheering, compaction, laceration and finally disintegration make for a fine ending to a speedy life. i like the concept of perceived time lasting while your brain fires rapidly during the process. relive lemonaide on the porch with grandma while your car converts you to a stain.
Does anyone else see the craziness of this article? Why are they building YET ANOTHER OS? Couldn't MS simply update and reform the OS code they have out there already? I mean, if they simply refined the update process, they'd have the door to pump software out to the public. Plus, it would be in their best interest to allow for "beta testers" to examine the releases before general use. Sounds a bit like Linux, eh? Instead, this sounds like IBM of the 70's, esp. given MS's throwing their weight around in the hardware world.
The model of rebuilding, retesting, reselling, and re-patching a machine that ALREADY does what 99.9% of what users want seems insane. Then again, I'm not an MS business person. Everybody knows that if you're not selling, you're dying.
Most home users get a new desktop theme, with a few new icons, and they think they have a "new OS". But with the MS spin machine on full churn, people will be humming a new "Start Me Up" theme and standing in line for another blue box after midnight, just to do the same crap they did the day before.
You can bet your bottom dollar that Linux will still be around in 2005,6,7 - and it'll still support most of the popular technologies, have another giant pile of new experiments run on it for info tech, and still be the baseline for cheap reliable computing power.
And Bill...it'll still be your competition, and still be free.
which makes this even stranger for a language. MS Visual Basic's syntax is nothing amazing, but the environment is nothing more than a GUI buidler for COM objects. Go beyond that and you're spending your time fighting demons with one of the least effective weapons.
BUT HEY, people like to be coddled. So we have MF COBOL for the web, modern RPG, and lots of holdovers from big iron. Personally, if your programmers are too stupid to switch languages, why would you expect them to solve your complex programming problems?
Accept that the first release is going to be the "Spoofed Client" Programming Contest.
Accept that you have just given students a great kicker to explore embedding seriptious content in the containing school-oriented files . Suddenly, the school is put in the position to declare random bits as being intelligent content or not. My personal container fav: That crazy TIFF
By forming a closed system, you have effectively removed spyware for the RIAA to inject into. Once in, this system is golden. I like it.
Neither is the "new" question about MS's apparent misunderstanding about an OS. They've integrated IE into the desktop viewer and fileviewer and a few other things. But really, the OS? The command prompt seems to work fine without it, even considering the wacky "control panel" application that wants to be a folder but just can't.
Whever they stick IE, one thing is certain, the bugs that present holes or exploits are going to be the targets of "OS" attacks. MS has always been over-integrated, but with IE they're integrating a security risk. Nice to see just the hydra morphs with each OS. I'll be curious to see the next iteration.
Well, if there's only 1 layer between original and analog capture, it can be done without sacrificing too much. Additionally, most people don't mind listening to their music at the lowest clarity, as in FM radio. Adding in that "warmth" of analog if a selling point to some, and that a lot of rock music is compressed and clipped into oblivion, "perfection" is vaporous.
If it can get to your amp input, you can isolate it, record it and copy it, without annoying most people who are playing the music on their tinny computer speakers or cheap headphones anyway.
Piracy is urging the industry to change its ways. I've explained this before: The movement of information is fluid; you have to work with the tools available. Now, the tools are interconnected powerful computers.
IF digital information can be copied perfectly, infinitely then no amount of legislation is going to put the genie back in the bottle. The "public stockade" approach of the RIAA right now will only swell Freenet and it's descendants, continuing a cat and mouse that started long ago.
SO, once the info is released, it's free. Before releasing the info, you have to collect. Just like before the show, you have to pay. This is the premise of this article. A pool is collected and then doled out. The article argues that discimination by type of digital information is useless. Size, quality, format are all vaporous. Ok, so thats just part of the new paradigm.
Collection has to be based on our first metric: Tracking the consumers of the information. Since it is impossible for the technology to get tracked to the individual, we build classes of users. Mandatory license fees for computers, CD writers, CDs, network cards, connections, bandwidth, etc. all try to classify the consumers into contributors for this pool. A corporation setup that Labels, manufacturers, retailers join and pay into based on their sales numbers. It is a license fee for participating in the flow of digital information.
Why? NOT because people do not want to pay for the information on an as-needed basis, but because the technology doesn't ensure it any longer. Even those who play by the rules and buy CDs can't put the genie back in the bottle. This is a "fault" of any type of user, it's simply the fact that the tools cannot be ignored. If all P2Ps were shut down tomorrow, more would take their place. Low-band types of copying would still happen (copying parties, ripping, trades, email, web, etc). We're going to do what we can get away with, simply put. Better to work with that premise than against it using a method larger than the medium - by going to brick and mortar you encompass the digital arena and get to real people.
A second metric needs to track the information "presence". This is already done using very shaky sampling: radio hit lists, TV ratings, poll companies. The public realizes the money is going somewhere, so they just vote it to their favorite target. With a good sample set, this system works.
There will have to be at least one legal entity for this. I don't approve of the government doing much more than enforcement of the fee structure. So, I can imagine at least one company that implements several polling techniques to gather these metrics and selling them as a service (think Neilsen Ratings of TV).
Then, this pool is given to the artists, or the entities they've signed to represent them (yes, a label, shudder to think). The meat is devoured amongst these entities, much as today. However, the accounting is top down instead of bottom up, much as any large business pays for itself with divisions.
Until such a system, or something similar, is put in place, we're headed into years of burned CDs, memory cards of copied music, movies, photos, books, etc. The content creators will persecute only the inept obvious within the pirating world. The savvy will continue to copy info at their leisure. This is how we've arrived at smuggling in the physical world, but it doesn't need to repeat itself in the digital world.
So true. On top of that, SCO cannot point out the infringing code. They run the obvious outcome of having it removed. Additionally:
The codeblocks will be historically scrutinized and SCO will have its research ripped to shreds in one way or another. Result: laughing the stock to null. "OMIGOD this slow, leaky atoi() is from SCO!"
The entire merit of their claims will boil out of LI one above, and the behavioural differences will be scrutinized. This translates to the entire charge: "the adoption of Linux as an enterprise system was impossible without SCO's code". SCO's claim will seem paltry when, in the event of removing any infringing code, the OS still performs like a workhorse.
The efforts to litigate these tiny codeblock infringements by SCO will draw flak for everything from frivolous claims to SEC-based charges of illegal stock manipulation.
My favorite: MS can't use this in their PR campaign anymore if SCO's issue dies. I am still imaginging MS-originated sales pitches regarding this issue as a "reason to be wary" of Linux. Balmer needs this issue to stay alive in his city-to-city tours offering discounts like everyone was the state of CA.
Overall, one must enjoy the fact that most, if not all, of SCO's income is paying for lawyers. Their balance sheet may remove this into a corner for "one-time charges", but in real dollars, they will not be in the black. Shorting this stock was the easiest money maker of the year. 17K will be 30K just in time for christmas. But I digress...
Who has an expectation of privacy with their trash?!
Funny enough, the government does. Here in Portland, Oregon, US:
In March of 2002, police officers in Portland went through the garbage of a fellow officer without her permission looking for "evidence" that she was using drugs (an investigation that looks more to me like an attempt to punish and smear the officer in question, because she had won a sexual harassment suit against the department). Among the garbage/evidence was a bloody tampon that the cops sent to the lab for tests. And the Law found this privacy invasion to be perfectly legal.
A local newspaper, the Williamette Weekly decided that if there was no such thing as private garbage, that the judges and cops who approved the garbage invasion wouldn't mind if the WW reporters went through their garbage... Which leads to a fun article examining the trash of the local police chief, mayor, and district attorney, hopefully causing them a bit of shame of their own.
http://www.wweek.com/flatfiles/allstories.lasso? xx in=3485
Actually, its not true. Movies are made by getting a whopper loan from the production source. This churns the machine, in the efforts of the producer/director/minions to stretch that out or focus it where need be.
If the movie flops, which is a big difference from paying back that laon (remember, studios want interest and lots of it) then they become a little wary of things about that movie (the direction, the story, the competition, the actors). Perhaps they try something else.
But we are miles, miles above the concept of them "not having enough money" to make a movie. The dollars we're talking about are in the 10's of millions for failure, and 100's of millions for success. Last time I checked, quality movies could be made for $1 million.
This "stealing" bit is true, nobody should be running out with the goods to dump onto Kazza, but frankly everyone and their mother has realized that a movie is just a part of the entertainment. The "night out" concept is different that sitting in your living room. People in some way will always go to the cinema. If a movie was the ends itself, people wouldn't be building amazing home theaters. So, just getting the good isn't much of a win by itself.
The funny bit about a movie is that the screenings are supposed to be private, the reviews "juicy" and then the release is a saturation of the market. Multiplexes can burn out a movie in one weekend, with multiple showings. And even if everyone sees a movie, it is no longer a blockbuster. Titanic cashed in because people saw it multiple times.
I just don't get the hype. Hollywood is too smug about what they should be making. Stealing isn't the way to teach them a lesson, don't get me wrong, but they should stop this "money" whining.
mug
Re:Our company is switching again.
on
SCO's Plan Examined
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
SO, by this argument, companies that want a "normal business plan" are going to switch leased vehicles, package carriers, trash haulers, office suppliers and all other things each time there's only a press release about legal action. Not a suit, and nowhere close to a judgement.
You, sir, are completely deluded to the merit of SCO's claims. They have none. IBM, Groklaw, FSF, Torvalds, HP and countless editorials concur.
SCO's ideals don't feed your employees. Money does, and the Linux OS is still free last time I checked. Say it with me sir, F-R-E-E.
For many years now, sounds for movies and television were created by a specialized studio and a Foley Artist. This harkens back to the days of radio, when sound was the special effects area du jour.
These days, creating new sounds isn't very difficult, since the investment in a Foley studio has been completed and most of the materials are everyday items: An old pair of shoes walking in various boxes of glass, gravel, tile, etc. A cardboard box of broken glass and screws. An old bakelite telephone for handset noises. Creaking boards, squeaky doors, etc are all kept in a large prop area and rolled into the recording area when needed.
It can take a long time to put all the environmental sounds of a single scene together, but you'll not miss the poor audio a shot will sometimes deliver from location. Wind noise, planes flying overhead, horribly wimpy explosion pops or crappy gunfire are all part of getting the visuals correct.
Digital sounds are also used more widely though: Storms, gunshots, car crashes, screams, plus all the alien and ghostly noises we've come to take for granted. Think of how overused the "reversed echo" voice is for Voices From Beyond. People have come to make simple associations between the chosen representional sound and it's source, even if it's totally fake. Most people won't question lasers making noise, space carrying sound, or a silent underwater scene. All bogus, but part of the entertainment. Funny how people will scoff at these libralizations while watching Star Trek, as if the rest of it is even close to reality.
If you're creating you're own game, sounds are just another piece of the design like drawing sprites or capturing and cleaning up cutscenes. If you're taking photos for good textures, then you can record your own sounds. If you're not using anything realistic at all, just go to a music store and tinker with the electric synths in the corner and bring your tape recorder. Lots of clean funky presets ready for the taking.
The zombie machines have been compromised by any number of holes or emails. It cold take quite a long time to build a solid network that could send out such coordinated attacks.
However,/. geeks, I'd love to hear the possible countermeasures for such a thing. Is there any recourse in sending the zombie's ISP a notification of infectino? Do Anti-spam laws apply in the form of a DDOS? Perhaps there truely is no way to alleviate such an attack. You tell me.
I'm not a big gamer, so I don't know what Cat Mother ever released. Googling doesn't return much, but someone tell they've actually had at least 1 game finished. Otherwise, it doesn't say much that they're releasing code. How does one know it's "production quality" if nothing ever went to production?
..AND sue UofP for their obvious participation in the outlaw OSS movement to discredit SCO's invention: UNIX, and all things command line.
Actually, they just release PR about the lawsuit, but it never gets filed. As the stock rises, the overseas mansions fill up with hummers and marble and gold. The angry legions approach Utah driving truckloads of evidence to the courthouse. Darl stares down from the steel monolith, smirking. In SCO-issue sunglasses, the admin knocks on his door. "Your helicopter is waiting, Mr McBride."
Cooperative Gaming. neato, what a concept. Howabout we combine this with Flash Mobbing and get back to reality: cooperative living!
WhoTF wants to get home from work to haggle about the rules of an imaginary country? If you spent that time participating in/giving educational compaigns for the real world (no matter what the cause), perhaps the typical apathy of the public would be gone.
Instead, we have yet another excuse to sit on our asses. "MMORPG's Egypt accepts 1 millionth citizen!" reads the headline, while voter participation is near 20%. Sheesh! I'm starting a potato chip company.
Slashdot Mirror
Not a stable conclusion. Most survive based on long-term investment from it's parent company.
Salon.com collects money, and still is only treading water. Barnes and Noble chips in.
CNN.com advertises, but is almost completley funded from other divisions.
Adverts are not a guarantee that your websites is going to be getting revnue. Unique IP Click-through and Click-to-close rates are still incredibly percentages. Remember that anyone with more than a passing fancy of the internet understands that searching for the free equivalent of sold information is first step.
mug
I thought Omni Magazine went out of business....
There are going to be meny other possibilities looked at before nanotube tethers are attempted. What prevents us from wiring all this energy from the desert to elsewhere, taking the whole system horizontal? Money!
SO, in conclusion, you owe me. Payup. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
mug
One could conclude that the qualities of decisions made in any democratic system can never be greater than the average quality of understanding of the people in that democracy.
I agree.
But much like any distributed system, all sources of information benefit from more participants than less, if they can be kept organized. This is also the primary argument supporting the open-source movement. Distributed participation.
So, the alternative seems worse: To reduce the sources of information to "official channels" and only trusted advisors, leads to the classic yes-man blindness of a leadership. Even ancient kings went slumming to avoid this.
Perhaps apply layer after layer of organization on the mass of information, and imposing stricter standards of evaluation as issues bubble up and stay longer. This I atribute to a free press. While they too suffer from bias, the "free" aspect should allow for multiple viewpoints to be expressed and thus one can look at any single issue from multiple sides.
Seems similar to what we're doing.
mug
AH. The voice of the average meanie.
It doesn't matter one's background (in fact, the US Congress has quite a diverse background), once you are in politics for a career, you are a "politician". The perception that *anyone* is outside the sphere of influence for debate is absurd. I abhor the concept of "outside the beltway" in Washing DC terms, where someone is marketing themselves to bring new opinions to the floor. The opinions are usually known, it's the votes that count.
Politics is the business of making deals and comprimises according to an ever-shifting value system. One looks out for the constituents, ganering votes, but also one's reputation (perception, not reality, is king here). Also, to afford others the possibility of compromising in your favor, you compromise in theirs at some point.
On top of all that, you have the standard environment of cynicsim, complecency, and cronyism that any organization would have. People organize into parties because they realize a group is stronger than an individual, especially when a complex democratic process is used (quorum, majority, super-majority, comittee, sub-committee).
I don't have a full grasp of all the details, but at least I know BS when I hear it. All people in politics are politicians. This doesn't have anything to do with their morals or the issues they take a position on. And all freshmen arrivials get trained in the procedural steps to move about the houses.
mug
front bumper = skull
rear bumper = brain
sheering, compaction, laceration and finally disintegration make for a fine ending to a speedy life. i like the concept of perceived time lasting while your brain fires rapidly during the process. relive lemonaide on the porch with grandma while your car converts you to a stain.
1 million downloads?
99% of which are already playing on the radio. bleh.
Does anyone else see the craziness of this article? Why are they building YET ANOTHER OS? Couldn't MS simply update and reform the OS code they have out there already? I mean, if they simply refined the update process, they'd have the door to pump software out to the public. Plus, it would be in their best interest to allow for "beta testers" to examine the releases before general use. Sounds a bit like Linux, eh? Instead, this sounds like IBM of the 70's, esp. given MS's throwing their weight around in the hardware world.
The model of rebuilding, retesting, reselling, and re-patching a machine that ALREADY does what 99.9% of what users want seems insane. Then again, I'm not an MS business person. Everybody knows that if you're not selling, you're dying.
Most home users get a new desktop theme, with a few new icons, and they think they have a "new OS". But with the MS spin machine on full churn, people will be humming a new "Start Me Up" theme and standing in line for another blue box after midnight, just to do the same crap they did the day before.
You can bet your bottom dollar that Linux will still be around in 2005,6,7 - and it'll still support most of the popular technologies, have another giant pile of new experiments run on it for info tech, and still be the baseline for cheap reliable computing power.
And Bill...it'll still be your competition, and still be free.
mug
which makes this even stranger for a language. MS Visual Basic's syntax is nothing amazing, but the environment is nothing more than a GUI buidler for COM objects. Go beyond that and you're spending your time fighting demons with one of the least effective weapons.
BUT HEY, people like to be coddled. So we have MF COBOL for the web, modern RPG, and lots of holdovers from big iron. Personally, if your programmers are too stupid to switch languages, why would you expect them to solve your complex programming problems?
Accept that the first release is going to be the "Spoofed Client" Programming Contest.
Accept that you have just given students a great kicker to explore embedding seriptious content in the containing school-oriented files . Suddenly, the school is put in the position to declare random bits as being intelligent content or not. My personal container fav: That crazy TIFF
By forming a closed system, you have effectively removed spyware for the RIAA to inject into. Once in, this system is golden. I like it.
mug
I, for one, welcome our new legal overlords.
Neither is the "new" question about MS's apparent misunderstanding about an OS. They've integrated IE into the desktop viewer and fileviewer and a few other things. But really, the OS? The command prompt seems to work fine without it, even considering the wacky "control panel" application that wants to be a folder but just can't.
Whever they stick IE, one thing is certain, the bugs that present holes or exploits are going to be the targets of "OS" attacks. MS has always been over-integrated, but with IE they're integrating a security risk. Nice to see just the hydra morphs with each OS. I'll be curious to see the next iteration.
mug
seems similar to something i've said already
Well, if there's only 1 layer between original and analog capture, it can be done without sacrificing too much. Additionally, most people don't mind listening to their music at the lowest clarity, as in FM radio. Adding in that "warmth" of analog if a selling point to some, and that a lot of rock music is compressed and clipped into oblivion, "perfection" is vaporous.
If it can get to your amp input, you can isolate it, record it and copy it, without annoying most people who are playing the music on their tinny computer speakers or cheap headphones anyway.
I disagree.
Piracy is urging the industry to change its ways. I've explained this before: The movement of information is fluid; you have to work with the tools available. Now, the tools are interconnected powerful computers.
IF digital information can be copied perfectly, infinitely then no amount of legislation is going to put the genie back in the bottle. The "public stockade" approach of the RIAA right now will only swell Freenet and it's descendants, continuing a cat and mouse that started long ago.
SO, once the info is released, it's free. Before releasing the info, you have to collect. Just like before the show, you have to pay. This is the premise of this article. A pool is collected and then doled out. The article argues that discimination by type of digital information is useless. Size, quality, format are all vaporous. Ok, so thats just part of the new paradigm.
Collection has to be based on our first metric: Tracking the consumers of the information. Since it is impossible for the technology to get tracked to the individual, we build classes of users. Mandatory license fees for computers, CD writers, CDs, network cards, connections, bandwidth, etc. all try to classify the consumers into contributors for this pool. A corporation setup that Labels, manufacturers, retailers join and pay into based on their sales numbers. It is a license fee for participating in the flow of digital information.
Why? NOT because people do not want to pay for the information on an as-needed basis, but because the technology doesn't ensure it any longer. Even those who play by the rules and buy CDs can't put the genie back in the bottle. This is a "fault" of any type of user, it's simply the fact that the tools cannot be ignored. If all P2Ps were shut down tomorrow, more would take their place. Low-band types of copying would still happen (copying parties, ripping, trades, email, web, etc). We're going to do what we can get away with, simply put. Better to work with that premise than against it using a method larger than the medium - by going to brick and mortar you encompass the digital arena and get to real people.
A second metric needs to track the information "presence". This is already done using very shaky sampling: radio hit lists, TV ratings, poll companies. The public realizes the money is going somewhere, so they just vote it to their favorite target. With a good sample set, this system works.
There will have to be at least one legal entity for this. I don't approve of the government doing much more than enforcement of the fee structure. So, I can imagine at least one company that implements several polling techniques to gather these metrics and selling them as a service (think Neilsen Ratings of TV).
Then, this pool is given to the artists, or the entities they've signed to represent them (yes, a label, shudder to think). The meat is devoured amongst these entities, much as today. However, the accounting is top down instead of bottom up, much as any large business pays for itself with divisions.
Until such a system, or something similar, is put in place, we're headed into years of burned CDs, memory cards of copied music, movies, photos, books, etc. The content creators will persecute only the inept obvious within the pirating world. The savvy will continue to copy info at their leisure. This is how we've arrived at smuggling in the physical world, but it doesn't need to repeat itself in the digital world.
mug
The codeblocks will be historically scrutinized and SCO will have its research ripped to shreds in one way or another. Result: laughing the stock to null. "OMIGOD this slow, leaky atoi() is from SCO!"
The entire merit of their claims will boil out of LI one above, and the behavioural differences will be scrutinized. This translates to the entire charge: "the adoption of Linux as an enterprise system was impossible without SCO's code". SCO's claim will seem paltry when, in the event of removing any infringing code, the OS still performs like a workhorse.
The efforts to litigate these tiny codeblock infringements by SCO will draw flak for everything from frivolous claims to SEC-based charges of illegal stock manipulation.
My favorite: MS can't use this in their PR campaign anymore if SCO's issue dies. I am still imaginging MS-originated sales pitches regarding this issue as a "reason to be wary" of Linux. Balmer needs this issue to stay alive in his city-to-city tours offering discounts like everyone was the state of CA.
Overall, one must enjoy the fact that most, if not all, of SCO's income is paying for lawyers. Their balance sheet may remove this into a corner for "one-time charges", but in real dollars, they will not be in the black. Shorting this stock was the easiest money maker of the year. 17K will be 30K just in time for christmas. But I digress...
mug
Water Frequenty
Believe in the existance unnecessary growth and trim it
Get plenty of sunshine
Vary your surroundings
Empower people to decide their own environment and schedule
Ask people their opinion and sometimes follow them
Who has an expectation of privacy with their trash?!
? xx in=3485
Funny enough, the government does. Here in Portland, Oregon, US:
In March of 2002, police officers in Portland went through the garbage of a fellow officer without her permission looking for "evidence" that she was using drugs (an investigation that looks more to me like an attempt to punish and smear the officer in question, because she had won a sexual harassment suit against the department). Among the garbage/evidence was a bloody tampon that the cops sent to the lab for tests. And the Law found this privacy invasion to be perfectly legal.
A local newspaper, the Williamette Weekly decided that if there was no such thing as private garbage, that the judges and cops who approved the garbage invasion wouldn't mind if the WW reporters went through their garbage... Which leads to a fun article examining the trash of the local police chief, mayor, and district attorney, hopefully causing them a bit of shame of their own.
http://www.wweek.com/flatfiles/allstories.lasso
mug
Actually, its not true. Movies are made by getting a whopper loan from the production source. This churns the machine, in the efforts of the producer/director/minions to stretch that out or focus it where need be.
If the movie flops, which is a big difference from paying back that laon (remember, studios want interest and lots of it) then they become a little wary of things about that movie (the direction, the story, the competition, the actors). Perhaps they try something else.
But we are miles, miles above the concept of them "not having enough money" to make a movie. The dollars we're talking about are in the 10's of millions for failure, and 100's of millions for success. Last time I checked, quality movies could be made for $1 million.
This "stealing" bit is true, nobody should be running out with the goods to dump onto Kazza, but frankly everyone and their mother has realized that a movie is just a part of the entertainment. The "night out" concept is different that sitting in your living room. People in some way will always go to the cinema. If a movie was the ends itself, people wouldn't be building amazing home theaters. So, just getting the good isn't much of a win by itself.
The funny bit about a movie is that the screenings are supposed to be private, the reviews "juicy" and then the release is a saturation of the market. Multiplexes can burn out a movie in one weekend, with multiple showings. And even if everyone sees a movie, it is no longer a blockbuster. Titanic cashed in because people saw it multiple times.
I just don't get the hype. Hollywood is too smug about what they should be making.
Stealing isn't the way to teach them a lesson, don't get me wrong, but they should stop this "money" whining.
mug
SO, by this argument, companies that want a "normal business plan" are going to switch leased vehicles, package carriers, trash haulers, office suppliers and all other things each time there's only a press release about legal action. Not a suit, and nowhere close to a judgement.
You, sir, are completely deluded to the merit of SCO's claims. They have none. IBM, Groklaw, FSF, Torvalds, HP and countless editorials concur.
SCO's ideals don't feed your employees. Money does, and the Linux OS is still free last time I checked. Say it with me sir, F-R-E-E.
For many years now, sounds for movies and television were created by a specialized studio and a Foley Artist. This harkens back to the days of radio, when sound was the special effects area du jour.
These days, creating new sounds isn't very difficult, since the investment in a Foley studio has been completed and most of the materials are everyday items: An old pair of shoes walking in various boxes of glass, gravel, tile, etc. A cardboard box of broken glass and screws. An old bakelite telephone for handset noises. Creaking boards, squeaky doors, etc are all kept in a large prop area and rolled into the recording area when needed.
It can take a long time to put all the environmental sounds of a single scene together, but you'll not miss the poor audio a shot will sometimes deliver from location. Wind noise, planes flying overhead, horribly wimpy explosion pops or crappy gunfire are all part of getting the visuals correct.
Digital sounds are also used more widely though: Storms, gunshots, car crashes, screams, plus all the alien and ghostly noises we've come to take for granted. Think of how overused the "reversed echo" voice is for Voices From Beyond. People have come to make simple associations between the chosen representional sound and it's source, even if it's totally fake. Most people won't question lasers making noise, space carrying sound, or a silent underwater scene. All bogus, but part of the entertainment. Funny how people will scoff at these libralizations while watching Star Trek, as if the rest of it is even close to reality.
If you're creating you're own game, sounds are just another piece of the design like drawing sprites or capturing and cleaning up cutscenes. If you're taking photos for good textures, then you can record your own sounds. If you're not using anything realistic at all, just go to a music store and tinker with the electric synths in the corner and bring your tape recorder. Lots of clean funky presets ready for the taking.
mug
The zombie machines have been compromised by any number of holes or emails. It cold take quite a long time to build a solid network that could send out such coordinated attacks.
However,
I'm not a big gamer, so I don't know what Cat Mother ever released. Googling doesn't return much, but someone tell they've actually had at least 1 game finished. Otherwise, it doesn't say much that they're releasing code. How does one know it's "production quality" if nothing ever went to production?
..AND sue UofP for their obvious participation in the outlaw OSS movement to discredit SCO's invention: UNIX, and all things command line.
Actually, they just release PR about the lawsuit, but it never gets filed. As the stock rises, the overseas mansions fill up with hummers and marble and gold. The angry legions approach Utah driving truckloads of evidence to the courthouse. Darl stares down from the steel monolith, smirking. In SCO-issue sunglasses, the admin knocks on his door. "Your helicopter is waiting, Mr McBride."
Cooperative Gaming. neato, what a concept. Howabout we combine this with Flash Mobbing and get back to reality: cooperative living!
WhoTF wants to get home from work to haggle about the rules of an imaginary country? If you spent that time participating in/giving educational compaigns for the real world (no matter what the cause), perhaps the typical apathy of the public would be gone.
Instead, we have yet another excuse to sit on our asses. "MMORPG's Egypt accepts 1 millionth citizen!" reads the headline, while voter participation is near 20%. Sheesh! I'm starting a potato chip company.