I will lay all my cards on the table. I don't like RMS. I think he's a brilliant programmer, but crazy as a loon, and an egomaniac to boot.
Consequently, I really don't have much to add to this discussion. I disagree with virtually everything RMS says, so rather than being an ass or a pedant I'm just keeping to myself.
Then I saw this:
YOU have the OBLIGATION to _release_ your code, to advance the state of the Art. Stallman is not demanding you give up what is yours, he is reminding you of your obligation to the Art.
Wait, there's more.
But the trap you cannot fall into is to assume you have the "right" to hord code. You have no moree "right" to keep your code locked up on your hard drive for eternity than you would to hord a cure for cancer, or a working GUT equation. It is essential that you (and people like you) start to realize their DUTY to share code - if you do not, then you will eventually be marginallized and discarded, to the net loss of all.
Ooh, that makes me mad.
I consider myself to be a pretty moral guy. I'm not religious, but I have a good sense of right and wrong, and I spend a lot of my time trying to act correctly. So I take a lot of obligations on myself, in the name of living what I consider to be a moral life. I'm no stranger to obligation, nor to that feeling of knowing what's "right" and being compelled to do it.
But to imply-- or, as this poster does, to come right out and say-- that I have an obligation to share my source code... that's just nuts.
I have a few hobbies. In my spare time, I like to cook. I think I'm pretty good at it. I've come up with a few original recipes that I like quite a bit. Do I have an obligation to share those recipes with others? Absolutely not. Is it wrong of me to keep them for myself? No.
I also like to write poems. Not for publication, but just for my own amusement. I have a couple of notebooks full of them, which I keep on my shelf. I don't share those poems with anybody. Is this wrong of me? No, it is not.
The idea that I have a "duty" (poster's word) to share my creative output with anybody is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Now let's talk about intellectual output, because programming is often somewhere in between art and science. My girlfriend just got her PhD in biology. She does science stuff, the results of which she publishes as journal articles and whatnot.
In this case, there's an argument to be made that she should share the results of her research, because those results-- which are clinical rather than pure science, in her case-- could lead to a cure for diabetes or something big like that. Basically, she should freely share her work with others because doing so could help us achieve a big goal that would bring a lot of good to a lot of people. I'll buy that.
But that's just an ethical argument, albeit a strong one. It's a long, long way from "you should" to "you have a duty."
So let's say programming computers was a science. And let's say that people who program computers have before them a set of clearly defined goals that would be absolute good acts, like curing cancer or saving lives in some other way. Then there would be a case that everybody who programs computers should consider releasing their work. But it's still not an "obligation."
But programming isn't a science, and we're not trying to cure cancer. So the moral or ethical power of this argument just washes away.
This, above all, is what pisses me off most about the so-called Free Software movement: the seemingly widespread belief that Free Software is right and everything else is wrong, and the mentality of exclusion and ostracism that runs through the entire community. Just the simple fact that the movement has a Manifesto says to me that we're dealing here mostly with people who like to hear themselves talk, and that the discussion has long since lost any relation to the real world and moved into the realm of the philosophers and the ideologists.
And then some ass comes along and tries to tell me that I have an obligation. Sheesh.
Just as it's wrong of you to try to impose an obligation on me, it would be wrong of me to accept any responsibility for you, or for "the art," as you call it.
Now, with all of that said, maybe I should just respond in the way I think would be must frustrating for people like this poster.
Nyah, nyah. You can't see my code. Neener, neener, neener.
it's as if anything that requires the free sharing of resources (whatever they might be) is inherenetly "bad"
Anything that requires the free sharing of resources without a compelling reason is inherently bad.
Encouraging is fine. Advocating is fine. Requiring is not fine. Requiring is bad.
Give me one good reason why I should share my code with you. In previous posts you've used the phrase "to advance the art," but that doesn't really mean anything to me. I don't value "advancing the art." So your argument means nothing to me. In essence, you're telling me that I am required to share my code for no good reason, and that's bad.
But those political examples do not invalidate the Scientific Method (which is communistic) nor the principles of Free Software (which derives from the Scientific Method)
Your argument is flawed. Science attempts to achieve goals, either abstract or concrete. The abstract goals lead to the concrete ones. Curing cancer (a concrete goal) is a good thing, therefore learning about the body (an abstract goal) is a good thing, therefore anything we can do to advance the goal of learning about the body is good.
Computer programmers have no such hierarchy of goals. What are we trying to achieve, collectively? Speaking for myself, I'm trying to keep track of about 3,500 MP3s. That's the project I'm working on in my spare time. This little pet program of mine won't lead to curing cancer, or any other moral absolute. So there's basically no reason for me to apply the practices of the scientific community to my own work.
Sorry. The comparison of non-scientist computer programmers to scientists just doesn't hold water.
This is a really bad move they should focus on upping the speed on their G4 chips and dicontinue the G3 all together.
This statement is a great illustration of what I think is the biggest fallacy in the computing industry right now: that speed is everything.
The consumer mentality really comes through. You've been taught to believe that you should always buy the best/fastest/coolest/most expensive thing on the market. If there's something better/faster/whatever than what you've got, then you suck!
I really don't care how fast my iBook is, as long as it's fast enough. I use it for email and web browsing, and it's fast enough for that. I also use it for basic office-type tasks, like light word processing and page layout, and it doesn't need a G4 for that. I also use it to run Project Builder, and it certainly doesn't need a G4 for that.
The extra megahertz are nice and all-- if I could trade my 500 MHz iBook for a 700 MHz one, I would, as long as I could keep my 12-inch form factor. But I wouldn't be willing to pay any more for it, or deal with any more size, weight, or heat. I'm definitely not going to be trading in until there's something that I want or need to do with my iBook that I can't accomplish without newer hardware.
Besides, this megahertz space-race is really bad for the industry as a whole. I certainly don't shop for CPUs very often, but I'd be surprised if you could buy a new 500 MHz Pentium any more. Which is a shame, because if you could, they'd probably cost about $10. But instead, you have to get a 1.5 GHz monster or something, even if it's just going to be a router or email host. Yeah, yeah, Intel (or whoever) is in it to make money, and margins are higher on top-of-the-line parts. Oh, well.
The G3 processors are the only processors below the magic $200 price point, and that's why these will continue to be used in iBooks and iMacs.
Somebody's going to nail you on this one, I'm afraid. I just wanted to do it gently.;-)
Both the iMac and the new eMac have G4 processors. You're absolutely right about the G3 price point, of course, but I'm afraid you're wrong about the iMac.
It was never going to be easy to lip sync "realistic" characters with their voices, but I thought a great deal of the animation was deftly handled and quite convincing.
Oh, it was nothing of the sort. There was not one piece of character animation in that movie that didn't scream "Thunderbirds." The characters looked like poorly articulated marionettes. I guess that's what you get when you take four years to make a state-of-the-art movie. By the time you get done, the state of the art has lapped you twice.
So the characters ended up getting in the way of the story, which is ultimately all right, because the story was utterly absurd.
I really demand at least one of three things when I go see a movie: an engaging story, compelling characters, or eye candy. This movie failed in all three respects. By the middle of the second act, I was looking at my watch. That's not the sign of a good movie.
Do you mean Till the End of Time (1946) or Until the End of the World (1991)?
9. Final Fantasy
Oh, come on. If you're going to pick a computer-animated movie and call it "landmark," then at least pick the gold standard: Toy Story. First full-length wholly computer animated film. Final Fantasy was terrible, both as a movie and as animation.
And still, to this day, many action movie ads use the sound track from Aliens (during the part where the Terraforming Plant is exploding); and that song is nearly 16 years old!
Ah, yes. The infamous "Bishop's Countdown." Not only has this snippet (about 1:20 into the track, if you care) been used in tons of movie trailers and commercials, but Horner has even plagarized it himself. You'll find it woven through several of his scores.
Of course, that's Horner for you. He writes some great ones-- the Star Trek II and III scores are great, and I've been listening to A Beautiful Mind a lot lately, but the degree to which he "borrows" from himself is pretty startling. Listen to "A Kaleidoscope of Mathematics" from A Beautiful Mind and "The Machine Age" from Bicentennial Man to hear what I'm talking about.
I will happily entertain any employment offer. There's a certain number below which I can't go, obviously, because I have to make mortgage payments and put food in my fridge. But I won't send you a shitty resume and then demand $100,000 a year.
Set up a temporary email box and post the address here. Sure, you'll get a lot of crap, but you might just find a few good US-based programmers, too.
maybe a 'solution' would be to have many shorter commerical breaks. If I see a commerical I like, I might even take off the mute
That's really interesting. I also have a TiVo, and I find myself often watching all of or half of a commercial because it takes longer to fast forward, oops-- too far, skip back, et cetera than it does to just watch one spot.
If there are two or more spots in a row, of course I'm going to fast forward through them, unless I'm taking a bathroom break or something. Of course, when I do take a bathroom break I (ironically) usually pause the TiVo, then fast forward through the commercials when I get back. I just hate that noise of commercial jingles echoing through my house.
If commercial breaks consisted of one entertaining or novel spot thirty or forty seconds long-- pretty much any recent spot by VW would qualify, or the outstanding "Move" ad by Nike-- then I'd probably watch a lot more commercials.
Of course, you couldn't introduce more commercial breaks into your program, because that would disrupt the traditional four-act structure of the hour-long TV drama, or whatever. So you'd be running fewer commercials per hour. Ergo, the cost of each spot would skyrocket, effectively making commercials during decently watched shows like SuperBowl spots: expensive but entertaining.
Doesn't TNN do this with their ST:TNG syndication?
From the few times I've watched it, yeah, but it's even worse than that. Rather than rescaling the picture for fifteen seconds to run an add or whatever, they rescale the picture all the time. When they're not showing short promos at the bottom of the screen ("Coming up next: more dreck!" and whatnot) they're showing the title of the show you're watching.
I know it's silly of me, but the slight reformatting leaves the show unwatchable to me. I just can't sit through it. Gives me a headache.
When Apple picked this drive out of hundreds to put in their systems, they assumed responsibility for any obvious designed-in defects. And the lack of a manual eject is definitely a design defect...
First of all, the drive in question was, at the time it was first chosen by Apple, the one one of its kind: CD-ROM, CDRW, DVD-ROM, DVD-R. So Apple didn't choose from among hundreds of drives. They chose from among the... one. That's not really relevant; just an interesting tidbit for you.
If it's a CD, then you're supposed to find it from a store under the label "audio CDs", if it's not, then is the store owner liable for selling dynamites that look like a cigars from the cigar stand?
Like I said to JoeSchmoe, please don't use the word "liable" in this context. It implies a specific level of legal responsibility that just doesn't apply here.
If you buy a CD and it doesn't play, take it back to the store. If the store won't accept the return, sell the CD at a used record store to recoup some of your expense, then find a new place to buy CDs.
This same algorithm applies in cases where you might buy one of these pseudo-CDs.
In fact, if you really feel like spending a little time and money to vote against these things, you should go to a record store and buy a copy of one of them. Take it home and open it. Stare at it for a while. Heck, you can even try to listen to it, just don't use a computer to do it. Then haul the disc and your receipt back to the store and-- politely, politely!-- ask for your money back.
If the average CD run has one defect in 10,000 discs (a totally made-up number) but these CDs all have rates of return greatly in excess of that, somebody will get the message. I hope.
All these three options require rebooting. However, the original post said that this CD by artist of little talent makes your computer unable to reboot!?!?!?!
The MacUser UK article that inspired this thread is simply terrible. And yeah, it said that the CDs in question would leave the Mac unable to boot. But what was meant was that the Mac would be unable to boot all the way up to multiuser mode successfully.
In order to force-eject the CD-- using two out of the three methods, that is-- you only have to get the Mac up to Open Firmware. That's all in hardware, so the presence of a bad disc won't affect it.
Seems like most people don't even know that they've got a really sophisticated boot PROM underneath their Macs. Hold down cmd-opt-O-F (that's "oh" and "eff") right after powering on some time to see how it all works.
I mean really, it should just do nothing....not wreck the whole damn machine.
I don't disagree with you at all, but I just want to clarify. Nothing is getting wrecked. The Mac is just hanging during boot while it tries to get some kind of response from the drive. The bad disc prevents that response from coming, so it gets wedged.
Anybody who ever stuck a bad floppy disk in an original Mac-- the kind with no hard drive that booted off the floppy-- has seen this happen before. At first it may seem that your computer is broken, but all you have to do is get the disk-- or in this case the disc-- out. You can use a paper clip, if the drive has a hole for one, or you can just hold down the mouse button at boot time.
The real solution to this problem is simply going to be user education. It's unreasonable to think that anybody could design a computer that will function correctly under every circumstance. It's inevitable that something unforeseen will happen and the computer will crash, or hang, or something equally bad. This is already a fairly rare occasion-- in this case it took deliberate misdesign to cause the failure. Once people start reading decent articles on the subject-- unlike the MacUser UK crap that started this thread-- they'll get informed, and the problem will go away.
Seriously, it annoys me that this topic has given certain zealots an opportunity to hop up and down on the DMCA/SSSCA/CBDTPA/THBBBPT hot button for no real reason.
Grr. Sorry for the venting, but sometimes you just have to let it out.
Somebody moderate this post's parent down, please. I'm sick and tired of all this "DMCA this" and "DMCA that" shit, and I'll bet there are a few mods out there who are, too.
If you think the DMCA is an important issue, that's fine. But by posting stuff like this-- trying to drag it into a topic to which it simply doesn't apply-- you're just hurting your own cause.
Hell, right now I'd vote in favor of the DMCA just to annoy Ungrounded Lightning over there!
This is really Ford vs. Firestone for the computer industry.
You have got to be kidding me. Are you a troll, or what? That kind of wildly disproportionate comparison casts your whole post in an unflattering light.
Pioneer - for engineering a drive where it is possible with the wrong combination of bits or read errors to completely lock the drive and ruin the firmware.
First and most important: the idea that these CDs are ruining firmware seems to have come from the mind of one sloppy reporter at MacUser UK. I quote from the (f'ing dreadful) article:
"As we reported last month, Celine's latest offering - A New Day Has Come - features copy-protection to prevent it being played and duplicated in a PC, and that same copy-protection was believed to be capable of damaging the PC's firmware. It seems that this is definitely the case, as once the CD is inserted into a new iMac it cannot be removed and the machine cannot be restarted."
(Emphasis mine, obviously.)
The actual fact is that the CD, once inserted, cannot be read by the Mac. If you try to reboot the Mac, something-- the OF boot loader, or something-- gets wedged trying to read the CD. Hell, maybe the drive is wedging the bus or something. Point is, if you can get the CD out, your Mac is just fine.
To remove the CD from the Mac, reboot, and hold down the mouse button during the boot chime. The Mac (actually Open Firmware) then spits out the CDROM and boots normally. This has been true since long, long ago. I think I remember getting a bad floppy disk out of a Mac 512K or SE that way.
If, for an unknown reason, holding down the mouse button doesn't work, then yeah, the drive has to be removed and the CD manually extracted. A person has to twist the eject cog with a tweaker or whatever. That's what the (f'ing dreadful) article was referring to when it said that the computer may have to be sent in for repair. Just for the record, I haven't heard of any instances firsthand where holding down the mouse button during power up failed to eject the CD.
So in summary, the idea that these CDs are ruining firmware is complete, total, utter bullshit. So let's just drop that one right now.
Apple - for engineering a machine with a soft eject and no aesthetically-challenging hard backup. Mr. Jobs, would a pinhole really have offended your out-of-wack perfectionism that much?
I'll say it again: it's a fucking Pioneer drive. Apple didn't design it. They didn't build it. And they didn't decide whether to put an "eject" button on it.
So then why not a hotkey during boot to eject the media or similar?
Apple has published not one but three non-mechanical options for getting the CD out, including the hold-down-the-button trick. The hold-down-the-button trick is very well known among Mac users, and all three of them are documented thoroughly. The fact that you are unaware of them is not evidence of negligence on Apple's part.
God, I can't believe you got so up in arms with so little information. At least get a little information before flying off the handle next time.
That's like Apple putting a big tempting red button on the side of their iMac labeled "Self Destruct" and then trying to claim that they are somehow absolved of all liability if someone actually (or accidentally) pushes it.
No, it's not like that at all. Don't be a shithead.
You can't design a product with such a significant defect and then refuse to take any part of the blame.
First of all, the drive isn't an Apple drive. It's a Pioneer drive.
Secondly, this drive, and Apple's use of it, pre-dates these copy-protected CDs. You're trying to apply some standard of retroactive responsibility that just doesn't make any sense. Was Pioneer-- or Apple, by extension-- supposed to anticipate this particular event?
Thirdly, you can't possibly be suggesting that a drive that fails when you put something that isn't a CD in it is a defective drive?? What's your standard these days, that the product must never, ever fail under any circumstances? I mean, Christ! Did you actually say class-action lawsuit? What planet are you on?
Sheesh. Get some perspective, and stop digging up excuses to bitch about Apple.
In other cases, perhaps you might need to get creative to get that CD out. Perhaps you need to pull the drive apart - who knows.
Apple knows. You have three non-pull-apart options.
Hold the mouse button down while the Mac boots. This causes the firmware to eject the CDROM before it even starts booting the OS.
Load Open Firmware (cmd-opt-O-F) and type "eject cd."
Hold down the X key while booting the Mac. This forces Open Firmware to load OS X from the system disk, if there's a kernel present. Then use iTunes to eject the CD.
(note: EMP is a project of Paul Allen as well, so the station basically exists thanks to all that Microsoft money that Allen has)
Note: The Portland Trailblazers are a project of Paul Allen as well, so the team basically exists thanks to all that Microsoft money Allen has.
No dis intended; I just don't want any Slashdot fanatics to assume there's more of a relationship between the Experience Music Project and Microsoft than there really is. Paul Allen is just a really rich guy that likes to spend his money on cool stuff.
So nobody call for an EMP boycott. Or, for that matter, a Blazers boycott.
It's no coincidence that, a few minutes after this story went up, the number of listeners on Groove Salad shot up from the normal number of 100 or so to over 1,400.
I know this is no surprise-- Slashdot effect and whatnot-- but it's not too often that you get to see the effect measured in number of listeners, updated on the SomaFM.com web page in real time.
Slashdot Mirror
I will lay all my cards on the table. I don't like RMS. I think he's a brilliant programmer, but crazy as a loon, and an egomaniac to boot.
Consequently, I really don't have much to add to this discussion. I disagree with virtually everything RMS says, so rather than being an ass or a pedant I'm just keeping to myself.
Then I saw this:
YOU have the OBLIGATION to _release_ your code, to advance the state of the Art. Stallman is not demanding you give up what is yours, he is reminding you of your obligation to the Art.
Wait, there's more.
But the trap you cannot fall into is to assume you have the "right" to hord code. You have no moree "right" to keep your code locked up on your hard drive for eternity than you would to hord a cure for cancer, or a working GUT equation. It is essential that you (and people like you) start to realize their DUTY to share code - if you do not, then you will eventually be marginallized and discarded, to the net loss of all.
Ooh, that makes me mad.
I consider myself to be a pretty moral guy. I'm not religious, but I have a good sense of right and wrong, and I spend a lot of my time trying to act correctly. So I take a lot of obligations on myself, in the name of living what I consider to be a moral life. I'm no stranger to obligation, nor to that feeling of knowing what's "right" and being compelled to do it.
But to imply-- or, as this poster does, to come right out and say-- that I have an obligation to share my source code... that's just nuts.
I have a few hobbies. In my spare time, I like to cook. I think I'm pretty good at it. I've come up with a few original recipes that I like quite a bit. Do I have an obligation to share those recipes with others? Absolutely not. Is it wrong of me to keep them for myself? No.
I also like to write poems. Not for publication, but just for my own amusement. I have a couple of notebooks full of them, which I keep on my shelf. I don't share those poems with anybody. Is this wrong of me? No, it is not.
The idea that I have a "duty" (poster's word) to share my creative output with anybody is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Now let's talk about intellectual output, because programming is often somewhere in between art and science. My girlfriend just got her PhD in biology. She does science stuff, the results of which she publishes as journal articles and whatnot.
In this case, there's an argument to be made that she should share the results of her research, because those results-- which are clinical rather than pure science, in her case-- could lead to a cure for diabetes or something big like that. Basically, she should freely share her work with others because doing so could help us achieve a big goal that would bring a lot of good to a lot of people. I'll buy that.
But that's just an ethical argument, albeit a strong one. It's a long, long way from "you should" to "you have a duty."
So let's say programming computers was a science. And let's say that people who program computers have before them a set of clearly defined goals that would be absolute good acts, like curing cancer or saving lives in some other way. Then there would be a case that everybody who programs computers should consider releasing their work. But it's still not an "obligation."
But programming isn't a science, and we're not trying to cure cancer. So the moral or ethical power of this argument just washes away.
This, above all, is what pisses me off most about the so-called Free Software movement: the seemingly widespread belief that Free Software is right and everything else is wrong, and the mentality of exclusion and ostracism that runs through the entire community. Just the simple fact that the movement has a Manifesto says to me that we're dealing here mostly with people who like to hear themselves talk, and that the discussion has long since lost any relation to the real world and moved into the realm of the philosophers and the ideologists.
And then some ass comes along and tries to tell me that I have an obligation. Sheesh.
Just as it's wrong of you to try to impose an obligation on me, it would be wrong of me to accept any responsibility for you, or for "the art," as you call it.
Now, with all of that said, maybe I should just respond in the way I think would be must frustrating for people like this poster.
Nyah, nyah. You can't see my code. Neener, neener, neener.
it's as if anything that requires the free sharing of resources (whatever they might be) is inherenetly "bad"
Anything that requires the free sharing of resources without a compelling reason is inherently bad.
Encouraging is fine. Advocating is fine. Requiring is not fine. Requiring is bad.
Give me one good reason why I should share my code with you. In previous posts you've used the phrase "to advance the art," but that doesn't really mean anything to me. I don't value "advancing the art." So your argument means nothing to me. In essence, you're telling me that I am required to share my code for no good reason, and that's bad.
But those political examples do not invalidate the Scientific Method (which is communistic) nor the principles of Free Software (which derives from the Scientific Method)
Your argument is flawed. Science attempts to achieve goals, either abstract or concrete. The abstract goals lead to the concrete ones. Curing cancer (a concrete goal) is a good thing, therefore learning about the body (an abstract goal) is a good thing, therefore anything we can do to advance the goal of learning about the body is good.
Computer programmers have no such hierarchy of goals. What are we trying to achieve, collectively? Speaking for myself, I'm trying to keep track of about 3,500 MP3s. That's the project I'm working on in my spare time. This little pet program of mine won't lead to curing cancer, or any other moral absolute. So there's basically no reason for me to apply the practices of the scientific community to my own work.
Sorry. The comparison of non-scientist computer programmers to scientists just doesn't hold water.
This is a really bad move they should focus on upping the speed on their G4 chips and dicontinue the G3 all together.
This statement is a great illustration of what I think is the biggest fallacy in the computing industry right now: that speed is everything.
The consumer mentality really comes through. You've been taught to believe that you should always buy the best/fastest/coolest/most expensive thing on the market. If there's something better/faster/whatever than what you've got, then you suck!
I really don't care how fast my iBook is, as long as it's fast enough. I use it for email and web browsing, and it's fast enough for that. I also use it for basic office-type tasks, like light word processing and page layout, and it doesn't need a G4 for that. I also use it to run Project Builder, and it certainly doesn't need a G4 for that.
The extra megahertz are nice and all-- if I could trade my 500 MHz iBook for a 700 MHz one, I would, as long as I could keep my 12-inch form factor. But I wouldn't be willing to pay any more for it, or deal with any more size, weight, or heat. I'm definitely not going to be trading in until there's something that I want or need to do with my iBook that I can't accomplish without newer hardware.
Besides, this megahertz space-race is really bad for the industry as a whole. I certainly don't shop for CPUs very often, but I'd be surprised if you could buy a new 500 MHz Pentium any more. Which is a shame, because if you could, they'd probably cost about $10. But instead, you have to get a 1.5 GHz monster or something, even if it's just going to be a router or email host. Yeah, yeah, Intel (or whoever) is in it to make money, and margins are higher on top-of-the-line parts. Oh, well.
The G3 processors are the only processors below the magic $200 price point, and that's why these will continue to be used in iBooks and iMacs.
;-)
Somebody's going to nail you on this one, I'm afraid. I just wanted to do it gently.
Both the iMac and the new eMac have G4 processors. You're absolutely right about the G3 price point, of course, but I'm afraid you're wrong about the iMac.
It was never going to be easy to lip sync "realistic" characters with their voices, but I thought a great deal of the animation was deftly handled and quite convincing.
Oh, it was nothing of the sort. There was not one piece of character animation in that movie that didn't scream "Thunderbirds." The characters looked like poorly articulated marionettes. I guess that's what you get when you take four years to make a state-of-the-art movie. By the time you get done, the state of the art has lapped you twice.
So the characters ended up getting in the way of the story, which is ultimately all right, because the story was utterly absurd.
I really demand at least one of three things when I go see a movie: an engaging story, compelling characters, or eye candy. This movie failed in all three respects. By the middle of the second act, I was looking at my watch. That's not the sign of a good movie.
3. Until The End of Time
Do you mean Till the End of Time (1946) or Until the End of the World (1991)?
9. Final Fantasy
Oh, come on. If you're going to pick a computer-animated movie and call it "landmark," then at least pick the gold standard: Toy Story. First full-length wholly computer animated film. Final Fantasy was terrible, both as a movie and as animation.
And still, to this day, many action movie ads use the sound track from Aliens (during the part where the Terraforming Plant is exploding); and that song is nearly 16 years old!
Ah, yes. The infamous "Bishop's Countdown." Not only has this snippet (about 1:20 into the track, if you care) been used in tons of movie trailers and commercials, but Horner has even plagarized it himself. You'll find it woven through several of his scores.
Of course, that's Horner for you. He writes some great ones-- the Star Trek II and III scores are great, and I've been listening to A Beautiful Mind a lot lately, but the degree to which he "borrows" from himself is pretty startling. Listen to "A Kaleidoscope of Mathematics" from A Beautiful Mind and "The Machine Age" from Bicentennial Man to hear what I'm talking about.
I will happily entertain any employment offer. There's a certain number below which I can't go, obviously, because I have to make mortgage payments and put food in my fridge. But I won't send you a shitty resume and then demand $100,000 a year.
Set up a temporary email box and post the address here. Sure, you'll get a lot of crap, but you might just find a few good US-based programmers, too.
Like me! Like me!
Either stop posting this environmentalist propaganda crap, or I stop reading Slashdot.
Sounds like win-win to me.
maybe a 'solution' would be to have many shorter commerical breaks. If I see a commerical I like, I might even take off the mute
That's really interesting. I also have a TiVo, and I find myself often watching all of or half of a commercial because it takes longer to fast forward, oops-- too far, skip back, et cetera than it does to just watch one spot.
If there are two or more spots in a row, of course I'm going to fast forward through them, unless I'm taking a bathroom break or something. Of course, when I do take a bathroom break I (ironically) usually pause the TiVo, then fast forward through the commercials when I get back. I just hate that noise of commercial jingles echoing through my house.
If commercial breaks consisted of one entertaining or novel spot thirty or forty seconds long-- pretty much any recent spot by VW would qualify, or the outstanding "Move" ad by Nike-- then I'd probably watch a lot more commercials.
Of course, you couldn't introduce more commercial breaks into your program, because that would disrupt the traditional four-act structure of the hour-long TV drama, or whatever. So you'd be running fewer commercials per hour. Ergo, the cost of each spot would skyrocket, effectively making commercials during decently watched shows like SuperBowl spots: expensive but entertaining.
Who knows? It might work. Never happen, though.
Doesn't TNN do this with their ST:TNG syndication?
From the few times I've watched it, yeah, but it's even worse than that. Rather than rescaling the picture for fifteen seconds to run an add or whatever, they rescale the picture all the time. When they're not showing short promos at the bottom of the screen ("Coming up next: more dreck!" and whatnot) they're showing the title of the show you're watching.
I know it's silly of me, but the slight reformatting leaves the show unwatchable to me. I just can't sit through it. Gives me a headache.
When Apple picked this drive out of hundreds to put in their systems, they assumed responsibility for any obvious designed-in defects. And the lack of a manual eject is definitely a design defect...
First of all, the drive in question was, at the time it was first chosen by Apple, the one one of its kind: CD-ROM, CDRW, DVD-ROM, DVD-R. So Apple didn't choose from among hundreds of drives. They chose from among the... one. That's not really relevant; just an interesting tidbit for you.
If it's a CD, then you're supposed to find it from a store under the label "audio CDs", if it's not, then is the store owner liable for selling dynamites that look like a cigars from the cigar stand?
Like I said to JoeSchmoe, please don't use the word "liable" in this context. It implies a specific level of legal responsibility that just doesn't apply here.
If you buy a CD and it doesn't play, take it back to the store. If the store won't accept the return, sell the CD at a used record store to recoup some of your expense, then find a new place to buy CDs.
This same algorithm applies in cases where you might buy one of these pseudo-CDs.
In fact, if you really feel like spending a little time and money to vote against these things, you should go to a record store and buy a copy of one of them. Take it home and open it. Stare at it for a while. Heck, you can even try to listen to it, just don't use a computer to do it. Then haul the disc and your receipt back to the store and-- politely, politely!-- ask for your money back.
If the average CD run has one defect in 10,000 discs (a totally made-up number) but these CDs all have rates of return greatly in excess of that, somebody will get the message. I hope.
I said:
The hold-down-the-button trick is very well known among Mac users, and all three of them are documented thoroughly.
He said:
So, basically you're saying that all 3 mac users are well documented?
Heh. Guess I deserved that for posting while under the influence of sleepy. I hereby deduct one grammar point from my permanent record.
But if they have a substitute approach, this hold-down-button thing AND IT ACTUALLY WORKS then great, I would agree that Apple is less liable
I think you need to choose your words more carefully. "Liable" implies "liability," of which Apple has none here.
I really don't understand why you continue to try to make this sound like more than it is. Comparisons to Firestone and calls for lawsuits?? Sheesh.
All these three options require rebooting. However, the original post said that this CD by artist of little talent makes your computer unable to reboot!?!?!?!
The MacUser UK article that inspired this thread is simply terrible. And yeah, it said that the CDs in question would leave the Mac unable to boot. But what was meant was that the Mac would be unable to boot all the way up to multiuser mode successfully.
In order to force-eject the CD-- using two out of the three methods, that is-- you only have to get the Mac up to Open Firmware. That's all in hardware, so the presence of a bad disc won't affect it.
Seems like most people don't even know that they've got a really sophisticated boot PROM underneath their Macs. Hold down cmd-opt-O-F (that's "oh" and "eff") right after powering on some time to see how it all works.
I mean really, it should just do nothing....not wreck the whole damn machine.
I don't disagree with you at all, but I just want to clarify. Nothing is getting wrecked. The Mac is just hanging during boot while it tries to get some kind of response from the drive. The bad disc prevents that response from coming, so it gets wedged.
Anybody who ever stuck a bad floppy disk in an original Mac-- the kind with no hard drive that booted off the floppy-- has seen this happen before. At first it may seem that your computer is broken, but all you have to do is get the disk-- or in this case the disc-- out. You can use a paper clip, if the drive has a hole for one, or you can just hold down the mouse button at boot time.
The real solution to this problem is simply going to be user education. It's unreasonable to think that anybody could design a computer that will function correctly under every circumstance. It's inevitable that something unforeseen will happen and the computer will crash, or hang, or something equally bad. This is already a fairly rare occasion-- in this case it took deliberate misdesign to cause the failure. Once people start reading decent articles on the subject-- unlike the MacUser UK crap that started this thread-- they'll get informed, and the problem will go away.
Seriously, it annoys me that this topic has given certain zealots an opportunity to hop up and down on the DMCA/SSSCA/CBDTPA/THBBBPT hot button for no real reason.
Grr. Sorry for the venting, but sometimes you just have to let it out.
Somebody moderate this post's parent down, please. I'm sick and tired of all this "DMCA this" and "DMCA that" shit, and I'll bet there are a few mods out there who are, too.
If you think the DMCA is an important issue, that's fine. But by posting stuff like this-- trying to drag it into a topic to which it simply doesn't apply-- you're just hurting your own cause.
Hell, right now I'd vote in favor of the DMCA just to annoy Ungrounded Lightning over there!
This is really Ford vs. Firestone for the computer industry.
You have got to be kidding me. Are you a troll, or what? That kind of wildly disproportionate comparison casts your whole post in an unflattering light.
Pioneer - for engineering a drive where it is possible with the wrong combination of bits or read errors to completely lock the drive and ruin the firmware.
First and most important: the idea that these CDs are ruining firmware seems to have come from the mind of one sloppy reporter at MacUser UK. I quote from the (f'ing dreadful) article:
"As we reported last month, Celine's latest offering - A New Day Has Come - features copy-protection to prevent it being played and duplicated in a PC, and that same copy-protection was believed to be capable of damaging the PC's firmware. It seems that this is definitely the case, as once the CD is inserted into a new iMac it cannot be removed and the machine cannot be restarted."
(Emphasis mine, obviously.)
The actual fact is that the CD, once inserted, cannot be read by the Mac. If you try to reboot the Mac, something-- the OF boot loader, or something-- gets wedged trying to read the CD. Hell, maybe the drive is wedging the bus or something. Point is, if you can get the CD out, your Mac is just fine.
To remove the CD from the Mac, reboot, and hold down the mouse button during the boot chime. The Mac (actually Open Firmware) then spits out the CDROM and boots normally. This has been true since long, long ago. I think I remember getting a bad floppy disk out of a Mac 512K or SE that way.
If, for an unknown reason, holding down the mouse button doesn't work, then yeah, the drive has to be removed and the CD manually extracted. A person has to twist the eject cog with a tweaker or whatever. That's what the (f'ing dreadful) article was referring to when it said that the computer may have to be sent in for repair. Just for the record, I haven't heard of any instances firsthand where holding down the mouse button during power up failed to eject the CD.
So in summary, the idea that these CDs are ruining firmware is complete, total, utter bullshit. So let's just drop that one right now.
Apple - for engineering a machine with a soft eject and no aesthetically-challenging hard backup. Mr. Jobs, would a pinhole really have offended your out-of-wack perfectionism that much?
I'll say it again: it's a fucking Pioneer drive. Apple didn't design it. They didn't build it. And they didn't decide whether to put an "eject" button on it.
So then why not a hotkey during boot to eject the media or similar?
Apple has published not one but three non-mechanical options for getting the CD out, including the hold-down-the-button trick. The hold-down-the-button trick is very well known among Mac users, and all three of them are documented thoroughly. The fact that you are unaware of them is not evidence of negligence on Apple's part.
God, I can't believe you got so up in arms with so little information. At least get a little information before flying off the handle next time.
That's like Apple putting a big tempting red button on the side of their iMac labeled "Self Destruct" and then trying to claim that they are somehow absolved of all liability if someone actually (or accidentally) pushes it.
No, it's not like that at all. Don't be a shithead.
You can't design a product with such a significant defect and then refuse to take any part of the blame.
First of all, the drive isn't an Apple drive. It's a Pioneer drive.
Secondly, this drive, and Apple's use of it, pre-dates these copy-protected CDs. You're trying to apply some standard of retroactive responsibility that just doesn't make any sense. Was Pioneer-- or Apple, by extension-- supposed to anticipate this particular event?
Thirdly, you can't possibly be suggesting that a drive that fails when you put something that isn't a CD in it is a defective drive?? What's your standard these days, that the product must never, ever fail under any circumstances? I mean, Christ! Did you actually say class-action lawsuit? What planet are you on?
Sheesh. Get some perspective, and stop digging up excuses to bitch about Apple.
Apple knows. You have three non-pull-apart options.
I really, really wish you could moderate stories as well as comments.
(note: EMP is a project of Paul Allen as well, so the station basically exists thanks to all that Microsoft money that Allen has)
Note: The Portland Trailblazers are a project of Paul Allen as well, so the team basically exists thanks to all that Microsoft money Allen has.
No dis intended; I just don't want any Slashdot fanatics to assume there's more of a relationship between the Experience Music Project and Microsoft than there really is. Paul Allen is just a really rich guy that likes to spend his money on cool stuff.
So nobody call for an EMP boycott. Or, for that matter, a Blazers boycott.
It's no coincidence that, a few minutes after this story went up, the number of listeners on Groove Salad shot up from the normal number of 100 or so to over 1,400.
I know this is no surprise-- Slashdot effect and whatnot-- but it's not too often that you get to see the effect measured in number of listeners, updated on the SomaFM.com web page in real time.
You're absolutely right. Thanks. My only defense: it was far, far too late to be posting on Slashdot.
File that one under "guess what I'm thinking."