Suppose the petition is in place and I want to experiment with a modification to the DSSP algorithm.... The easiest way to do that is to get the DSSP source code and make the needed changes. The new code almost certainly contains parts of the old code, so under the DSSP license it cannot be redistributed. This means I cannot release the software under an open source license, and so I cannot do this research under a publicly funded grant. Either I find a private grant, rewrite DSSP completely, or simply not do that science. In any case, it hinders my research.
He makes it sound like the only hindrance that happens is in the petition world, but the whole problem is that the publically funded/closed source research allows this secondary problem to continue.
Either private actors would step in, or the DSSP people would release their code under a more liberal license so public money could be used in projects where it was useful. It's that simple.
If there were a push for openness, the patented algorithm would more obviously be the only *remaining* hindrance.
It's like saying "we can't remove this first barricade because the second one is still standing, so you'll continue having to fly a helicopter over this stretch of road." Good for helicopter rental companies, bad for science.
Prisons don't boost macro economies, they boost local economies. They require new construction, they create jobs, and they make politicians look tough on crime.
But your thoughtful answers have made me regret using the term libertarian. Unfortunately, most of the libertarians (and even some of the liberals!) I know keep pushing for candidates who do all these awful things, sacrificing social liberty for economic liberty.
We disagree quite a bit, but I just don't think anyone on slashdot has ever disagreed with me quite so *respectfully*. You are now in my friend file, Ominous Armed Cow.
Yeah, I thought of that after I hit the submit button. I should have said "good for libertarian economics", meaning, it gets people off welfare and into profitable prisons.
But it's only the radical libertarians who are against the war on drugs. All the conservatives in the Congress who my CATO-loving libertarian friends support because of their economic policies are for the war on drugs, and generally for increased imprisonment because it stimulates the economy both when prisons are built and when welfare patients become prison slaves.
* Third: There have been socialists in our government for the last 50 years or so. Hence there is a lot of protection for the 'needy'. For example: Belgium has just about the highest income-tax in Europe (to startle some Americans: I (and my wife) pay 55% taxes on our income. Another example: Belgium has the highest rate of people getting money from government compared to working people. A staggering 103 people getting unemployment, disability, pension,... per 100 working people. For comparison: France has 90/100, US has 60/100.
* Last: As people are most concerned about themselves (this merrits a '-1 obvious') the 103 vote socialist to get more money/computers/free healthcare/whatever from the government. The 100 vote liberal (or central Christian) to pay less taxes.
Just do like the americans do: find where the people getting unemployment/disability/pension keep their marijuana, and start locking them up for it. You'll instantly turn a substantial chunk of the socialist voting block into non-voting slave labor in your prisons. Good for the economy, good for the libertarian political cause.
Now, here is the fun part. When you play that CD, Gracenote knows what songs you listened to and to what frequency. Whatever app you use to listen to music uploads the stats. Hell, even car radios could do this soon. Of course you get a weekly e-mail suggesting you buy this or that music.
Privacy advocates have a hard time selling their story to the general public because the worst they can come up with is "you'll get junk mail that targets your tastes". That's no reason to preserve privacy.
The real reason is that if someone can reliably track your reading and viewing habits, eventually a time will come when you can not read or view controversial material anonymously. Reading Mein Kampf? Your name's in the list now. Running for local office now that you're 45 and you're an established member of the community? Uh-oh, they've got it on record that you looked at some unsavory porn 20 years ago.
What's that you say? You've got nothing to hide? That's what they all say, but that's not what the system says. The system is reliable. Are you sufficiently well-funded to fight it? It has to be reliable, or else artists wouldn't get paid, wink wink, nudge nudge, coughhillaryrosenjackvalenticough.
The occasional injustice, the argument goes, is of little consequence next to the inconvenience that businesses face in not being able to track and catalog their customers, and the inconveniences that those who someday develop a motive to use that information for malicious purposes will face.
Can't happen you say? Look around and see if you can't find any information about Monica Lewinsky, Credit Card records, and a little book called Vox.
Then tell me again that it can't happen and I won't believe you.
We will fight them in our cd players and our laptops. We will fight them in our car stereos and our boomboxes. We will fight them in our hifi equipment; We shall never surrender!
If copyright is good for the goose, it's good for the gander
Not if the gander happens to be immortal and have no motivation other than profit. Besides, it wasn't good for the goose in the first place- we seem to agree about this so I guess it's a moo point- it's a cow'd opinion, it doesn't matter....
Oh my god, Britney Spears is the necessary consequence of capitalism? And there is no better way? Talk about a hasty generalization.
Here's a thought- maybe it is the failure of capitalism that allows Britney to flourish- because the media companies have been granted anti-competitive monopolies over ideas.
Or maybe it's not so simple. Capitalism zealots are so quick to derive an ought from an is. But we haven't even really *tried* free-market capitalism yet, so how would we know?
Suddenly, the market climate changes dramatically. A product similar to mine is available to consumers for free! Ironically, the failure of my competitor is likely to kill my company, too -- EVEN IF MY PRODUCT IS SUPERIOR.
I'm surprised that Brett's caps didn't trigger the lameness filter (I don't know if it will as I'm typing this.) Anyway, the reason he types in all caps is that he wants you to consider his conclusion rather than the logical conclusion of his argument. He implies that the best products will be less popular, hence reducing the quality of software in general. That's not correct. The correct conclusion is:
Now:
Firms charge users the value their software adds.
Recycle-world:
firms charge users the difference in value created between their product and the best free alternatives.
Re:It won't fail because it charges money
on
Preview the New Napster
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Ogg is to mp3 as Gnome was to QT/KDE.
It's not so much that Ogg wants to be better than mp3 or to replace it- it's just an effort to keep Fraunhofer honest so they don't pull a Unisys-style gif move and start charging users outrageous rates. If they do, there's a free alternative to fall back on.
Whether people actually are forced to fall back on that alternative is completely beside the point- there *is* an alternative nipping at their heels, looking for the slightest sign of weakness.
On the other hand, this is just the fruition of Napster the company trying to cash in their chips. The record companies called their bluff, and rather than stand on principle the Napster folks gave in to their greed. They have limited the options of people who trust them, rather than increased them.
That's why that comment gets modded down as a troll in a vorbis discussion and modded up as insightful here.
Take your flamebait to the advocacy newsgroups
on
Hurd: H2 CD Images
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Dude, nice attempt to bait the GNU people.
You imply that people either love freedom or the GPL, but not both. Do we *really* have to have that conversation again here? Unless you're being paid by microsoft, this is just senseless infighting between two groups whose goals are almost totally in alignment.
It reminds me of a time some friends of mine wouldn't speak to each other. Why? They were both animal rights advocates- but one group thought that it was a good idea to argue that animal testing was ineffective, and the other team thought this was a bad idea because it implied that if testing worked, it would be a good idea. As a result, the movement splintered, while the research advocates ("animal rights opponents") spoke with a unified voice. The internal strategic debate ruined the overall message they were both trying to send.
The parallel to the BSD vs. GPL debate is striking. It is a fun and important debate to have, but ultimately the harm that comes from ubiquitous closed-source can't-build-on-it software, which satisfies the goals of neither camp, vastly overwhelms the importance of this philosophical discussion. It makes it seem like theologians arguing over how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. If I was Microsoft's head evangelist, I'd be silently funding extremists on both sides trying to create bad political blood between these groups.
I'm not saying we shouldn't argue, obviously the issues need to be fleshed out. I'm just saying that these arguments ought to show respect for the other side (no more "we're more freedom-loving than you" namecalling), and that they ought to always be mindful of the context they are operating in - discussing the best way to create a body of free software in a world of proprietary de facto standards.
So I'm begging with all of you, show respect for your adversaries in this discussion. Acknowledge that the point of view held by the other side is understandable even if you believe that it's in error, but most importantly always make a special effort to identify the context of the discussion: that is, how can we best preserve freedom against those who would prefer all software to be proprietary?
The best part is that you can put bananas on top of your cheerios, but it's really up to you. You could also put strawberries if that's your thing. Hell, you could put genetically-modified proprietary-DNA banana-strawberry-kiwi blend fruit substitute on your cheerios if you like, it's all about choice:)
When one is on a poor student budget, one buys what one can afford, which is often less than ideal.
The chipset had a logo but not a model number on it (Trident). Given how much I knew at the time, I had no idea that non-3d-accelerated video cards even had on-board memory. And my 28.8k dialup modem access didn't exactly lend itself to quick and easy answers. I was excited and I persevered, but I wouldn't wish my experience on anyone.
None of the specifics matter all that much though- newbies need to be able to boot into a usable interface, they will have plenty of command line hacking and learning ahead of them, but the installation is *not* the correct place for a trial-by-fire learning experience, unless the operating system is specifically designed to scare away the feeble-minded (not a bad goal, but not, imho, the goal of slack or debian).
It's funny you mention slack and debian, because those are the first two distros I tried to install on a 486 I bought expressly for the purpose of playing with linux about two years ago. Guess what happened? It was a disaster. I ran into lots of hardware snags and had no idea what to do.
I started with zipslack since I had a zip drive but not a cdburner at the time. I got it working from the zip drive, but I couldn't get it installed right on the hard drive for some reason that I've since forgotten. Then I broke down and bought the debian box. The installation went ok, even if it was a bit confusing, until we got to XF86Config.
Ye flipping gods, what a nightmare that was. I had no idea how much memory the ancient video card in my $40 486 machine had, hell I couldn't even figure out the model number. And it took me a really long time to find the horizontal and vertical specs for my monitor online.
Someone please do tell me if this is now easier with debian. And in fairness, I was using a very stripped down version of slackware. But, being a newbie, what did I know?
Redhat is better for newbies simply because of the hardware autodetection. I just wish they would install blackbox by default instead of kde/gnome.
ArsDigita University [aduni.org] is the only one I know of. Its closed down at the moment because it lost its funding. They offered a comprehensive CS degree in one year.
Having attended ADU, I can tell you that you're slightly wrong. It offered a CS *education*, but it was not a degree-granting program, only a certificate program. Furthermore, a bachelor's degree was required to attend anyway- it was kind of the opposite of what this fellow was asking for, a CS education for someone who already has a degree, not a degree for someone who already has a CS education.
That being said, it's sad that the program isn't there any longer. What they tried to do was teach all the classes an MIT undergrad would learn in 4 years (the core requirements for a CS degree) in one year, one course at a time, one month each, 2-5 hours of class and 8-12 hours of lab time per day.
Perhaps another program like it will rise someday. For now, all of the lectures from the whole year were recorded and are online in the unfortunate realvideo format at aduni.org, along with all the problem sets, tests, etc.
//All work and no play makes Rhys a dull boy
//Al7 work and no Play makes rhys a dull boy
//All work and NO play mak3s Rhys a dull b0y
//All w0rk and no play makes Rhys a duLl boy
...
Are you seriously suggesting we just tape the radio broadcast? How will the artists be compensated? How will we prevent further unauthorized copying? At least the RIAA will get a cut of the blank tapes, but this is most irresponsible.
Don't tape the radio. You don't own anything you hear.
That's true, Red Sonja belongs on the list just below Conan the Barbarian. However, Conan the Destroyer was just too awful of a movie to even consider.
Thanks for reminding me.
But Conan the Barbarian had nudity. Red Sonja should have had nudity, the sex appeal of the main character was the whole point of the damned story. I found it to be rather like watching a star wars movie where no one uses a lightsaber.
I left Princess Bride out because it spoils the fantasy setting by involving present day characters (the sick child) and because it's a comedy. That being said, it is my favorite movie of all time, however, I don't think it's the same kind of movie Lord of the Rings was, any more than Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail was, although they are both obviously excellent movies in their own right.
Whether this was the best movie ever or not, I think that there is no competition for it in the fantasy genre. The only movies that have a prayer of competing are:
Dragonslayer (reigning champ finally unseated)
The Dark Crystal (very cool, but ulitmately just puppets)
Excalibur (honorable mention)
Willow (not enough cool monsters)
Conan the Barbarian (ah-nuld)
Beastmaster (kitschy)
Clash of the Titans (uber-kitschy, outdated special effects)
Am I missing any? I can't think of any other half-decent fantasy movies that are even playing the same game here.
Kids, ask your parents for Jar Jar Smeagol(TM) this Christmas! You'll love this cuddly proto-hobbit in all its uncorrupted-by-the-ring-yet glory, and its distinctive speech "Yousa gonna give us the ring- it's-a our birthday - and it's-a our precccccioussss..."
Damn, no reason to shoot a perfectly good Solaris box over a simple misunderstanding. I'll take it, dude. Just take a deep breath and count to ten before riddling your hardware with bullet holes:)
Violence is destroying our future... and our boxen...
No, you're confusing it with "maybebyte", a standard used by hard drive manufacturers to represent "Megabyte" or "Mebibyte", whichever is less expensive to produce. Maybebyte is abbreviated MB. Anyone who complains that this ambiguity is misleading is an anti-business open-standards lunatic.
How about assault rifles? They have no legitimate uses outside of crimes (and impressing your friends, I suppose). Ditto for armor piercing bullets. Now, think about file sharing services more broadly- ftp and http protocols, and think of kazaa, gnutella, etc as the assault rifles of the file sharing world.
But in both cases, there's something missing. We need assault rifles to defend against invading foreign forces and a possible slip into outright tyranny on the part of our government. We need decentralized file sharing services to keep information from being owned by immortal corporations.
LL knows his game. Charleton Heston and Larry Flynt need to kiss and defend the whole bill of rights, not just one of the first two amendments each.
Slashdot Mirror
Suppose the petition is in place and I want to experiment with a modification to the DSSP algorithm. ... The easiest way to do that is to get the DSSP source code and make the needed changes. The new code almost certainly contains parts of the old code, so under the DSSP license it cannot be redistributed. This means I cannot release the software under an open source license, and so I cannot do this research under a publicly funded grant. Either I find a private grant, rewrite DSSP completely, or simply not do that science. In any case, it hinders my research.
He makes it sound like the only hindrance that happens is in the petition world, but the whole problem is that the publically funded/closed source research allows this secondary problem to continue.
Either private actors would step in, or the DSSP people would release their code under a more liberal license so public money could be used in projects where it was useful. It's that simple.
If there were a push for openness, the patented algorithm would more obviously be the only *remaining* hindrance.
It's like saying "we can't remove this first barricade because the second one is still standing, so you'll continue having to fly a helicopter over this stretch of road." Good for helicopter rental companies, bad for science.
Ya, but between whippings Ballmer would shout
"Developers! Developers! Developers!"
Please, spare us the spectacle...
Prisons don't boost macro economies, they boost local economies. They require new construction, they create jobs, and they make politicians look tough on crime.
But your thoughtful answers have made me regret using the term libertarian. Unfortunately, most of the libertarians (and even some of the liberals!) I know keep pushing for candidates who do all these awful things, sacrificing social liberty for economic liberty.
We disagree quite a bit, but I just don't think anyone on slashdot has ever disagreed with me quite so *respectfully*. You are now in my friend file, Ominous Armed Cow.
Yeah, I thought of that after I hit the submit button. I should have said "good for libertarian economics", meaning, it gets people off welfare and into profitable prisons.
But it's only the radical libertarians who are against the war on drugs. All the conservatives in the Congress who my CATO-loving libertarian friends support because of their economic policies are for the war on drugs, and generally for increased imprisonment because it stimulates the economy both when prisons are built and when welfare patients become prison slaves.
* Third: There have been socialists in our government for the last 50 years or so. Hence there is a lot of protection for the 'needy'. For example: Belgium has just about the highest income-tax in Europe (to startle some Americans: I (and my wife) pay 55% taxes on our income. Another example: Belgium has the highest rate of people getting money from government compared to working people. A staggering 103 people getting unemployment, disability, pension, ... per 100 working people. For comparison: France has 90/100, US has 60/100.
* Last: As people are most concerned about themselves (this merrits a '-1 obvious') the 103 vote socialist to get more money/computers/free healthcare/whatever from the government. The 100 vote liberal (or central Christian) to pay less taxes.
Just do like the americans do: find where the people getting unemployment/disability/pension keep their marijuana, and start locking them up for it. You'll instantly turn a substantial chunk of the socialist voting block into non-voting slave labor in your prisons. Good for the economy, good for the libertarian political cause.
I wish I was joking.
Now, here is the fun part. When you play that CD, Gracenote knows what songs you listened to and to what frequency. Whatever app you use to listen to music uploads the stats. Hell, even car radios could do this soon. Of course you get a weekly e-mail suggesting you buy this or that music.
Privacy advocates have a hard time selling their story to the general public because the worst they can come up with is "you'll get junk mail that targets your tastes". That's no reason to preserve privacy.
The real reason is that if someone can reliably track your reading and viewing habits, eventually a time will come when you can not read or view controversial material anonymously. Reading Mein Kampf? Your name's in the list now. Running for local office now that you're 45 and you're an established member of the community? Uh-oh, they've got it on record that you looked at some unsavory porn 20 years ago.
What's that you say? You've got nothing to hide? That's what they all say, but that's not what the system says. The system is reliable. Are you sufficiently well-funded to fight it? It has to be reliable, or else artists wouldn't get paid, wink wink, nudge nudge, coughhillaryrosenjackvalenticough.
The occasional injustice, the argument goes, is of little consequence next to the inconvenience that businesses face in not being able to track and catalog their customers, and the inconveniences that those who someday develop a motive to use that information for malicious purposes will face.
Can't happen you say? Look around and see if you can't find any information about Monica Lewinsky, Credit Card records, and a little book called Vox.
Then tell me again that it can't happen and I won't believe you.
Ok Neville Chamberlain :)
We will fight them in our cd players and our laptops. We will fight them in our car stereos and our boomboxes. We will fight them in our hifi equipment; We shall never surrender!
:0
(cue Aces High riff...)
If copyright is good for the goose, it's good for the gander
Not if the gander happens to be immortal and have no motivation other than profit. Besides, it wasn't good for the goose in the first place- we seem to agree about this so I guess it's a moo point- it's a cow'd opinion, it doesn't matter....
Oh my god, Britney Spears is the necessary consequence of capitalism? And there is no better way? Talk about a hasty generalization.
Here's a thought- maybe it is the failure of capitalism that allows Britney to flourish- because the media companies have been granted anti-competitive monopolies over ideas.
Or maybe it's not so simple. Capitalism zealots are so quick to derive an ought from an is. But we haven't even really *tried* free-market capitalism yet, so how would we know?
Suddenly, the market climate changes dramatically. A product similar to mine is available to consumers for free! Ironically, the failure of my competitor is likely to kill my company, too -- EVEN IF MY PRODUCT IS SUPERIOR.
I'm surprised that Brett's caps didn't trigger the lameness filter (I don't know if it will as I'm typing this.) Anyway, the reason he types in all caps is that he wants you to consider his conclusion rather than the logical conclusion of his argument. He implies that the best products will be less popular, hence reducing the quality of software in general. That's not correct. The correct conclusion is:
Now:
Firms charge users the value their software adds.
Recycle-world:
firms charge users the difference in value created between their product and the best free alternatives.
Ogg is to mp3 as Gnome was to QT/KDE.
It's not so much that Ogg wants to be better than mp3 or to replace it- it's just an effort to keep Fraunhofer honest so they don't pull a Unisys-style gif move and start charging users outrageous rates. If they do, there's a free alternative to fall back on.
Whether people actually are forced to fall back on that alternative is completely beside the point- there *is* an alternative nipping at their heels, looking for the slightest sign of weakness.
On the other hand, this is just the fruition of Napster the company trying to cash in their chips. The record companies called their bluff, and rather than stand on principle the Napster folks gave in to their greed. They have limited the options of people who trust them, rather than increased them.
That's why that comment gets modded down as a troll in a vorbis discussion and modded up as insightful here.
Dude, nice attempt to bait the GNU people.
You imply that people either love freedom or the GPL, but not both. Do we *really* have to have that conversation again here? Unless you're being paid by microsoft, this is just senseless infighting between two groups whose goals are almost totally in alignment.
It reminds me of a time some friends of mine wouldn't speak to each other. Why? They were both animal rights advocates- but one group thought that it was a good idea to argue that animal testing was ineffective, and the other team thought this was a bad idea because it implied that if testing worked, it would be a good idea. As a result, the movement splintered, while the research advocates ("animal rights opponents") spoke with a unified voice. The internal strategic debate ruined the overall message they were both trying to send.
The parallel to the BSD vs. GPL debate is striking. It is a fun and important debate to have, but ultimately the harm that comes from ubiquitous closed-source can't-build-on-it software, which satisfies the goals of neither camp, vastly overwhelms the importance of this philosophical discussion. It makes it seem like theologians arguing over how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. If I was Microsoft's head evangelist, I'd be silently funding extremists on both sides trying to create bad political blood between these groups.
I'm not saying we shouldn't argue, obviously the issues need to be fleshed out. I'm just saying that these arguments ought to show respect for the other side (no more "we're more freedom-loving than you" namecalling), and that they ought to always be mindful of the context they are operating in - discussing the best way to create a body of free software in a world of proprietary de facto standards.
So I'm begging with all of you, show respect for your adversaries in this discussion. Acknowledge that the point of view held by the other side is understandable even if you believe that it's in error, but most importantly always make a special effort to identify the context of the discussion: that is, how can we best preserve freedom against those who would prefer all software to be proprietary?
The best part is that you can put bananas on top of your cheerios, but it's really up to you. You could also put strawberries if that's your thing. Hell, you could put genetically-modified proprietary-DNA banana-strawberry-kiwi blend fruit substitute on your cheerios if you like, it's all about choice :)
When one is on a poor student budget, one buys what one can afford, which is often less than ideal.
The chipset had a logo but not a model number on it (Trident). Given how much I knew at the time, I had no idea that non-3d-accelerated video cards even had on-board memory. And my 28.8k dialup modem access didn't exactly lend itself to quick and easy answers. I was excited and I persevered, but I wouldn't wish my experience on anyone.
None of the specifics matter all that much though- newbies need to be able to boot into a usable interface, they will have plenty of command line hacking and learning ahead of them, but the installation is *not* the correct place for a trial-by-fire learning experience, unless the operating system is specifically designed to scare away the feeble-minded (not a bad goal, but not, imho, the goal of slack or debian).
It's funny you mention slack and debian, because those are the first two distros I tried to install on a 486 I bought expressly for the purpose of playing with linux about two years ago. Guess what happened? It was a disaster. I ran into lots of hardware snags and had no idea what to do.
I started with zipslack since I had a zip drive but not a cdburner at the time. I got it working from the zip drive, but I couldn't get it installed right on the hard drive for some reason that I've since forgotten. Then I broke down and bought the debian box. The installation went ok, even if it was a bit confusing, until we got to XF86Config.
Ye flipping gods, what a nightmare that was. I had no idea how much memory the ancient video card in my $40 486 machine had, hell I couldn't even figure out the model number. And it took me a really long time to find the horizontal and vertical specs for my monitor online.
Someone please do tell me if this is now easier with debian. And in fairness, I was using a very stripped down version of slackware. But, being a newbie, what did I know?
Redhat is better for newbies simply because of the hardware autodetection. I just wish they would install blackbox by default instead of kde/gnome.
ArsDigita University [aduni.org] is the only one I know of. Its closed down at the moment because it lost its funding. They offered a comprehensive CS degree in one year.
Having attended ADU, I can tell you that you're slightly wrong. It offered a CS *education*, but it was not a degree-granting program, only a certificate program. Furthermore, a bachelor's degree was required to attend anyway- it was kind of the opposite of what this fellow was asking for, a CS education for someone who already has a degree, not a degree for someone who already has a CS education.
That being said, it's sad that the program isn't there any longer. What they tried to do was teach all the classes an MIT undergrad would learn in 4 years (the core requirements for a CS degree) in one year, one course at a time, one month each, 2-5 hours of class and 8-12 hours of lab time per day.
Perhaps another program like it will rise someday. For now, all of the lectures from the whole year were recorded and are online in the unfortunate realvideo format at aduni.org, along with all the problem sets, tests, etc.
//All work and no play makes Rhys a dull boy
//Al7 work and no Play makes rhys a dull boy
//All work and NO play mak3s Rhys a dull b0y
//All w0rk and no play makes Rhys a duLl boy
...
Are you seriously suggesting we just tape the radio broadcast? How will the artists be compensated? How will we prevent further unauthorized copying? At least the RIAA will get a cut of the blank tapes, but this is most irresponsible.
Don't tape the radio. You don't own anything you hear.
That's true, Red Sonja belongs on the list just below Conan the Barbarian. However, Conan the Destroyer was just too awful of a movie to even consider.
Thanks for reminding me.
But Conan the Barbarian had nudity. Red Sonja should have had nudity, the sex appeal of the main character was the whole point of the damned story. I found it to be rather like watching a star wars movie where no one uses a lightsaber.
Bryguy
I left Princess Bride out because it spoils the fantasy setting by involving present day characters (the sick child) and because it's a comedy. That being said, it is my favorite movie of all time, however, I don't think it's the same kind of movie Lord of the Rings was, any more than Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail was, although they are both obviously excellent movies in their own right.
Whether this was the best movie ever or not, I think that there is no competition for it in the fantasy genre. The only movies that have a prayer of competing are:
Dragonslayer (reigning champ finally unseated)
The Dark Crystal (very cool, but ulitmately just puppets)
Excalibur (honorable mention)
Willow (not enough cool monsters)
Conan the Barbarian (ah-nuld)
Beastmaster (kitschy)
Clash of the Titans (uber-kitschy, outdated special effects)
Am I missing any? I can't think of any other half-decent fantasy movies that are even playing the same game here.
Bryguy
Kids, ask your parents for Jar Jar Smeagol(TM) this Christmas! You'll love this cuddly proto-hobbit in all its uncorrupted-by-the-ring-yet glory, and its distinctive speech "Yousa gonna give us the ring- it's-a our birthday - and it's-a our precccccioussss..."
In stores now, hurry!
Damn, no reason to shoot a perfectly good Solaris box over a simple misunderstanding. I'll take it, dude. Just take a deep breath and count to ten before riddling your hardware with bullet holes :)
Violence is destroying our future... and our boxen...
No, you're confusing it with "maybebyte", a standard used by hard drive manufacturers to represent "Megabyte" or "Mebibyte", whichever is less expensive to produce. Maybebyte is abbreviated MB. Anyone who complains that this ambiguity is misleading is an anti-business open-standards lunatic.
hrm... not as bad an example as you think.
How about assault rifles? They have no legitimate uses outside of crimes (and impressing your friends, I suppose). Ditto for armor piercing bullets. Now, think about file sharing services more broadly- ftp and http protocols, and think of kazaa, gnutella, etc as the assault rifles of the file sharing world.
But in both cases, there's something missing. We need assault rifles to defend against invading foreign forces and a possible slip into outright tyranny on the part of our government. We need decentralized file sharing services to keep information from being owned by immortal corporations.
LL knows his game. Charleton Heston and Larry Flynt need to kiss and defend the whole bill of rights, not just one of the first two amendments each.
Bryguy