If the leak looks anything like the warez release of FotR, then the quality isn't all that shoddy. I had several people show me that one (and then offer me a copy, which I politely declined) and I've got to say that it was *sharp* and the sound, while not Dolby Digital, was still pretty good.
This is not to say that spreading around an unfinished movie is a good thing (don't they typically work on these right up to the end, or is that just Lucas??), but without seeing it, it isn't fair to knock the quality.
I recently (in the last 6-9 months) ripped my 400+ CD collection to OGG, just in case.
But man, after doing that... I never want to do it again. I had three machines set up ripping and encoding. And then there was keeping track of which CDs were left to rip, which ones were in FreeDB and which weren't, and which ones, for some reason for another, didn't work the first time around (skips, chirps, et cetera in the OGGs).
Their claims are pretty simple, really: we want to hang out with Linux folks so we can figure out how we can build as active and fervent a development community around Microsoft products in order to lock even more people into being our revenue drones.
Well, okay, the bit about "revenue drones" wasn't really stated. I threw that in for good measure.
Microsoft has come to the realization that people like to code. So, the next step for them is, "How do we get people to stop coding for competitor platforms and start coding for ours?" Understand your enemy and all that. So they set up a booth at LinuxWorld in order to better understand what motivates Joe Coder and the companies that have rallied around Linux to make the choices they do.
Once they have that figured out, they can then go back to Redmond HQ and have a discussion about what it would take, short of opening up source code, to get all these energetic coders on their side.
Free development tools? The fostering of an open code community (that is, open source code for individual 3rd party projects, not for Windows itself)? Releasing more information about Windows interfaces/methods/protocols so people can tie directly into Windows APIs for their projects (because using existing code in the OS will be easier than adapting other open source libraries, which means your task as a coder will be simplified - or so the spin will go)?
So, back to the original question, I think Microsoft's intent is as good as it claims. I just don't think they're claiming everything they have in mind. For Microsoft, the only final solution is to have no competition. In this case, they want to make Linux irrelevant by shifting open source developers to Windows.
There's no reason why this wouldn't work. There are already plenty of Win32 based GPL projects at SourceForge, few of which required any source from the Linux kernel. I think that's what Microsoft wants - they want to snag those types of developers who don't explicitly need access to the source of the operating system. They want to build a fervent, active, enthusiastic community of coders in order to make Windows looks as lively as Linux does right now.
It's largely unnecessary. The entire show will be shut down soon due to a sudden plague of distinctly un-American cancer.
Or so the 'softies will claim.
Kudos to everybody who has ever contributed to the spread of Open Source and the GPL. You've got Microsoft to the point that they pull stunts like this - keep it up!
I vote for Brazil, as well. But without actually voting. Since there's no voting mechanism. If you want to vote, you need to work in Information Retrieval.
Backwards compatibility with pre-release versions? Uh, yeah. Since the RC's were started, OGGs have worked right up through the chain (or at least mine have).
Now, if the next release means you can't play any previously encoded OGGs, then go ahead and repost your rant.
Setting aside the "vision" part of television for a moment, consider that broadcast news is fast becoming the standard news dissemination avenue for most items. The web is great, but unreliable. Newspapers are great, but limited in scope (in smaller communities, anyway). Television is nearly the only medium by which everybody gets the same news at the same time.
As a result, isn't it important to keep in mind the 10 million people who can only receive part of the information shared? While a talking head goes over the weather forecast, 30 items scroll by on the bottom of the screen. Now, the proper argument is that it's hard enough for the seeing to take all that in, let alone accomodating the blind, but it really could be as easy as incorporating ticker data into a subset of the current closed captioning system. You would just need a TV that could either transfer caption data to a screen reader-type device or a TV with included speech synthesis capabilities.
Talking head data would be covered in standard CC and ticker data in the subset. I don't know what the limitations of the current CC system are (whether or not a subset could be incorporated), but as broadcasts switch over to digital, it surely must be trivial to chunk in another data stream with the ticker data or any other extraneous data for use by readers. Well, trivial in practice. I guess it would take about 10 years to get everybody to agree on a standard.
Heck, if DigitalConvergence can make my computer open up a web page with a signal for nothing more than advertising, we should be able to output screen text to a similar device.
How about CEO's making 100's of millions of dollars, while we have a whole class of folks working everyday with no medical insurance, how about the fact so many corporations have moved plants that used to employ Americans, to other countries to avoid paying decent wages, insurance, and social security taxes?
Heh... You do know what would fix those, don't you? A communistic style of society.:)
I've been a fan of Moby's for far too long now and have purchased all of his domestic EP/LP releases.
I think that if Moby is seeing a decline in sales, it's because he has started running as fast as he can away from the techno/electronica genre that got him where he is and is instead going for ambient soul. That's great and all, I like the ambient soul approach, but maybe a lot of other people just want to hear slightly less techno revisions of "Next is the E".
Moby's music is just going in a direction different than what he was known for. Car commercial producers love it, but that doesn't mean his original fanbase (most of whom I'm guessing would fall into the 'techie' range) wants to come along for the ride.
Or as he said during an interview on The Daily Show regarding a lyric naming him in a recent Eminem track, "I haven't done techno in, like, 10 years."
(Note, however, that while Eminem was referring to all of electronica with the shorter, catchier "techno", Moby was referring to the sub-genre of techno itself.)
Oh, but, wait! BattleNet checks keys! Maybe bnetd was invented so people with pirated copies of the game could play it without being hassled by the BattleNet servers?!
Have you spent any time at the bnetd.org site? Read about the conversations bnetd tried to have with Blizzard about incorporating a method by which to authenticate CDs? Read about how Blizzard said, "Nuh uh" and then sued bnetd?
Apparently not.
But lets look at all the games that have suffered by not having centralized key authentication systems that require the key for play (and I'm just going to list the ones I've owned and played in multiplayer):
Tribes 1-2, Mechwarrior 2-4, Quake 1-3, Doom 1-2, Duke Nukem 3D, Midtown Madness 1-2, Serious Sam 1-2, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Half-Life, Jedi Knight 2.
Well, there are more, but that's 18 games right there that didn't bankrupt their creators by allowing people to run servers at a LAN party. Admittedly, you can't set up public servers with Midtown Madness, but you can with the rest.
So what's keeping Blizzard from allowing people to set up their own servers? It must be assumed that people with pirated copies of the above games connect to public servers and play. Why hasn't there been a collapse of the game industry as a result?
... Maybe because enough legitimate copies are sold regardless to support those companies and that the extra sales due to widespread adoption of the multiplayer aspect makes up for the small losses to piracy. This is similar to Microsoft's approach - they hate piracy, but they know that without it, they'd be on a LOT fewer desktops. That's why the XP SP1 will merely disable future updates and won't shut down the OS itself - they can't afford to lose the numbers of users who have pirated XP.
Is Blizzard/Vivendi the first company to sue over server emulators? Naw, Ultima Online did the same thing. But I had already quit by the time that happened, so I didn't have much weight behind my protests.
There aren't any poor open source programmers because they all make enough money that they have the gear with which to contribute... most likely paid for by some means *other* than open source development.
With Opera Unicode allows users to read pages from literally any language, except Sandscript. Then again, last time I checked I heard that language is dead!
Is the reviewer referring to sanskrit here or is there actually a dead language called sandscript?
I had a lot of problems with EP2, and, as is the usual disclaimer, I'm a long-time fan. Saw ANH when I was four, still have a good chunk of my toys from childhood (and buy new ones when they come out), and even instituted "Star Wars T-Shirt Friday" where I work (and am the only participant).
So, my fan credentials are squarely on the table.
Having said that, EP2 was a pile of crap. Story-wise, it was great, really. It was complex, it opened just as many doors as it closed, and it gave us more peeks into the future that was solidified in episodes 4-6. But the execution of that story, the telling of it, the directing of it, well, sucked balls.
In a review I had written for some coworkers, I stated that Anakin had all the charm and personality of a date rapist. That might have been a bit strong, but it isn't totally without merit. Anakin had essentially been fantasizing about Amidala for 10 years by the time they were reunited, so his level of obsession was pretty deep. He was going to do whatever it took to win her over, but his way of doing it is just damn creepy - questioning her authority, saying he's been dreaming of her, launching into speeches about his burning desire for her. The only genuine thing he does is protect her, but it comes across as just a calculated means to an end of getting into her pants. This makes sense - he's obsessed, he's arrogant, and he feels there's no reason why Amidala shouldn't be his. Great. But then, how exactly does Amidala take this to be anything other than having a Jedi stalker? How does she actually fall in love with him when he's being a freak about everything? And yes, it's awfully tragic to lose your mother after, um, not seeing her for 10 years (next time, at least send a card!), but when you come back from retrieving your mother and say, "I killed them like animals", you know, I'll feel all sorry for your loss and stuff, but I'm going to be pretty freaked out that you went all barbarian on a bunch of kids. It seems to me like any self-respecting senator/former queen would recognize that guys who slaughter kids are bad news. But no, she falls in love with him. Go figure.
So, we spend over half the movie on this 'love story' that really contains no love and little story. Seems to me that it would have been better if Amidala had just been all gushy over Anakin from the start, because it would have made just as much sense and would have saved us 45 minutes of unbearable acting. But hey, at least Christensen got an eyeful during the first kiss scene.
And while that whole thing was going on, we've got Obi-Wan following up on the assassination attempt. He's lucky he's alive, really. First, an assassin takes out her own droid instead of just shooting the jedi hanging from it. And then a bounty hunter, who went completely undetected by two jedi, shoots a dart right past their heads to take out the assassin - instead of just shooting the jedi. Did I mention the assassin was a changeling? It's okay if I didn't, it's not like it made any bit of difference in the movie (talk about unused premise). Anyway, Obi-Wan finds out that some jedi 10 years ago put in a massive order for a clone army and also likely erased data from the jedi archives. "Curious," the Jedi Council responds - and then THEY FORGET ALL ABOUT IT! As soon as it looks like the clone army could come in handy, they seem to be not at all concerned about the conspiracy behind the creation of the clones and the removal of data from the archives! Oh well, it's not really important that somebody has been manipulating the Jedi and the Senate for 10 years as long as we have a ready army.
But you know, even gaping holes like those are sometimes easily overlooked when a film is so well acted and told that you don't have time to consider such things. But that wasn't the case with EP2. I think McGregor put in a passable performance (with the exception of the chuckle in the elevator regarding gundarks... that was very forced). I think Portman was slightly less stiff than in EP1, but didn't have a single natural moment until her flash of rebellion when leaving Tatooine to rescue Obi-Wan. Ahmed Best and Anthony Daniels certainly played their parts as silent extras in the bar scene rather well, but that doesn't do much for making the film enjoyable. I did enjoy Morrison's role, but felt that Jackson could have taken Mace Windu up a notch. Poor acting has been a hallmark of Star Wars films, but there was always at least Harrison Ford to save the day with a bit of charm. Nobody in eps 1 or 2 has any charm. McGregor is starting to develop it in Obi-Wan, but it's not there yet.
Then there were the things that made you say, "WTF??" The 50's diner on Coruscant. Jar Jar somehow being influential. C-3PO using puns ("What a drag!", "I'm beside myself!").
After those items were the "wow, you ruined that moment" moments. Showing the Death Star for a split second was cool - shoving it center frame and showing it for 20 seconds ruined the novelty of the first glimpse. Switching from physical C-3PO to CGI C-3PO on Geonosis - it was an obvious switch and a disservice to C-3PO. Having Yoda strike the kung-fu pose.
Did I like parts? Sure. I loved all the stuff on Kamino. I loved the Jango/Boba relationship (the fact that a bounty hunter's kid/clone takes pride in his father's abilities). I was amazed and pleased with the fact that Anakin went ballistic on the Tusken camp - that was a crucial event that showed, instantly, the evil he was capable of regardless of how many times he may have said "Yippee" as a child.
But those were very small parts of a much larger, longer, less compelling piece of work.
Certainly not new tactics
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I had a similar AOL experience over 5 years ago. When I was prompted for my reason for cancellation, I said, "Because I haven't used AOL in two years. I do all my 'net stuff through a local provider." Same response - did the service suck? "No, I just haven't used it." 'Oh, well, if you have another provider, you can access AOL through it and decrease your monthly rate.' "How about we just cancel it because I haven't used it IN TWO YEARS?"
She finally gave in and the account was cancelled. But that didn't stop the phone calls, one of which wasn't even about membership - it was about buying a guide to using AOL because, even though I was a computer professional (I offered that forth as a reason why I wouldn't need it), AOL has a lot of features that I might not be aware of. Of course, not having the service was my other reason for not buying it, but that just gave them the opportunity to ask if I would like to be signed back up.
You know, it's funny... All I have to do to be kicked off my cable account is to set up a pr0n server. Maybe that's the key to getting your ISP accounts cancelled - violate the TOS in a huge way (but, preferably, one that won't get you nailed for DMCA or copyright violations). You'll have fun in the meantime and they'll do all the work of shutting down your account.
How does having a third monitor eliminate the problem you describe(gaps between monitors)? If ANYTHING it would just make things worse, not better - that is unless you also switched to borderless lcd panels. or removed the casings from your crts.
Because the gaps aren't right in the middle of your field of view. With three displays, default pop-up behavior (dialog boxes and such) would occur on a single monitor in the middle of your viewing window without being split in half (unless it's one of those silly dialogs that's shown as a percentage width of the desktop).
There are, of course, ways to modify that behavior (using Matrox's own tools if you have one of their cards), but it would be nice to look straight ahead and get an uninterrupted center desktop. As it is now, I look straight ahead and see 3 inches of border and gap between desktops.
I spend all day now looking either to the left or to the right. Looking to the middle would be a nice change.
And the quip about reading the article was unnecessary. First, he could have tried to read the article and found the site suddenly unresponsive (as did I). Second, he could have been reading it for technical information instead of marketing info. It happens.
And that's an excellent point. The actions of the MPAA and RIAA can be collectively summed up as the actions of the entertainment industry screaming, "We're losing money! You must save us! The citizenry aren't buying it anymore! MAKE THEM LOVE US!"
Thus, Congress reacts because if there's one thing an administration, a session of Congress loves to do, it's be able to brag about how it helped the economy. Billions lost to piracy? Let's end piracy and regain those billions of dollars! (Though only a very small percentage of those losses are real... There's the lingering sense that people who didn't buy media the first time around because it was free probably wouldn't buy it if their only access to it was through payment.)
Congress is stuck at the innovator's dilemma without even knowing it - it is safer to legislate and keep the status quo (as it favors businesses) than it is to say to these groups, "You know, you might just take a hit until you figure out what the people want and how to give it to them. Sorry, but they're your customers. Not ours." Forcing content providers to come up with new ways of selling content is the riskiest route, even though, in the long term, it could bring the highest benefit for all involved (creators, consumers, and facilitators). Few people are willing to bet their re-election on risk unless they are by far the underdog, and once you're in office, you're no longer the underdog (on a local level, anyway).
There are obviously lots of little problems that are coming together to form this one big one, which is why responses on this topic are so heated and have such a wide range, so I apologize for the rambling.
Step 2: Create new Internet at the mandate of the state with completely different social constructs, the ability to police the virtual citizenry, and the ability to stringently control virtual borders so as to restrict enforcement to a geographic/national area.
Step 3: Make sure it has eBay.
I have been sitting here struggling to come up with a way that law enforcement and copyright enforcement could occur on the net without violating privacy. I tried to come up with something analogous to highway patrols, but highway patrols pull you over for physical violations of laws, not ideological.
And that, really, is the issue - what is the best way to police ideas - because that's what net based copyright infringement really is: the transference of ideas owned by a private party to someone who has not paid for access to said ideas.
So we look a little deeper and find that what people pay for when they buy ideas contained within a physical medium is 25% idea and 75% medium - people are willing to pay for ownership of a physical object more than they are willing to pay for the ideas contained therein. This is why eBooks are languishing right now - people don't want to pay physical book prices for something that lacks the benefits of ownership and portability found in the physical form.
What this leads to, then, is the big ticket item. If people can not separate the value of an idea from the delivery method, how can Congress legislate this separation? How can government convince people in the monetary value of ideas in a form where those ideas are not bound to tangible forms of ownership? How can government most easily legislate a largely societal view?
What you're asking for here isn't really a solution to the larger problem. You're looking for the adhesive strip that covers the larger wound just long enough to keep Congress from getting itchy and scrathing at it until it becomes infected and requires amputation.
But, since that's what you're asking for, here it is: to combat software piracy, Congress must legislate that it is wrong to pirate copyrighted works (already done). Then, they must watch every citizen and presume their guilt by watching every idea exchange they engage in, and only after the exchange occurs can they determine whether or not it was an infraction of law. That's it. That's the only way. And that's exactly the type of thing that's being proposed.
Well, there is another way, but it requires far greater resources. Small-time piracy stings. Get the FBI hanging out on Kazaa, Grokster, Morpheus. Have them send undercover agents to LAN parties. Make them hang out on AOL asking if "Anybuddy has da phat noo Britney Spears song??????" and arrest anyone who sends it to them. In other words, have them handle piracy the way they handle child pornography and drug busts - force them to engage in transactions with those breaking the law in order to gather evidence, get a proper warrant, and make the arrest.
Of course, that only works if they can effectively trace an IP address back to an offender, which isn't always a possibility. However, there are plenty of muderers still on the Most Wanted list who have never been found, so a few people copying, "American Pie 2" shouldn't be *that* big of a concern.
So you need to have everybody on a network where IPs are static and able to be traced. No more private networks behind firewalls. See Step 1.
Main problem here? People have come to expect a level of privacy in the electronic world that they could never be afforded in the physical world. Is it too late to change that? Do we want to change that? If we are to move into being a capitalist society that makes its money trading pure ideas, we might have to give up anonymity. The alternatives seem to either be that we make sure ideas are chained to a physical medium or make sure nobody tries to profit from ideas.
Or make everybody respect copyrights. See entirety of message above.
To handle a rapid loss of business that occurred shortly after 9/11/01, the company I work for did both a RIF and a 5% salary cut. We only recently had the 5% reinstated, but honestly, I think all of us were getting by just fine on that small reduction. Plus, the company has started paying back the 5% that was withheld during those months.
It seemed a fairly elegant way to handle things, as long as you weren't part of the RIF.
Slashdot Mirror
If the leak looks anything like the warez release of FotR, then the quality isn't all that shoddy. I had several people show me that one (and then offer me a copy, which I politely declined) and I've got to say that it was *sharp* and the sound, while not Dolby Digital, was still pretty good.
This is not to say that spreading around an unfinished movie is a good thing (don't they typically work on these right up to the end, or is that just Lucas??), but without seeing it, it isn't fair to knock the quality.
I recently (in the last 6-9 months) ripped my 400+ CD collection to OGG, just in case.
But man, after doing that... I never want to do it again. I had three machines set up ripping and encoding. And then there was keeping track of which CDs were left to rip, which ones were in FreeDB and which weren't, and which ones, for some reason for another, didn't work the first time around (skips, chirps, et cetera in the OGGs).
My sympathies.
Glad you took the hit for it. I was going to post the same thing. :)
Apologies for using "active" and "fervent" twice. I was typing around meetings. :)
Their claims are pretty simple, really: we want to hang out with Linux folks so we can figure out how we can build as active and fervent a development community around Microsoft products in order to lock even more people into being our revenue drones.
Well, okay, the bit about "revenue drones" wasn't really stated. I threw that in for good measure.
Microsoft has come to the realization that people like to code. So, the next step for them is, "How do we get people to stop coding for competitor platforms and start coding for ours?" Understand your enemy and all that. So they set up a booth at LinuxWorld in order to better understand what motivates Joe Coder and the companies that have rallied around Linux to make the choices they do.
Once they have that figured out, they can then go back to Redmond HQ and have a discussion about what it would take, short of opening up source code, to get all these energetic coders on their side.
Free development tools? The fostering of an open code community (that is, open source code for individual 3rd party projects, not for Windows itself)? Releasing more information about Windows interfaces/methods/protocols so people can tie directly into Windows APIs for their projects (because using existing code in the OS will be easier than adapting other open source libraries, which means your task as a coder will be simplified - or so the spin will go)?
So, back to the original question, I think Microsoft's intent is as good as it claims. I just don't think they're claiming everything they have in mind. For Microsoft, the only final solution is to have no competition. In this case, they want to make Linux irrelevant by shifting open source developers to Windows.
There's no reason why this wouldn't work. There are already plenty of Win32 based GPL projects at SourceForge, few of which required any source from the Linux kernel. I think that's what Microsoft wants - they want to snag those types of developers who don't explicitly need access to the source of the operating system. They want to build a fervent, active, enthusiastic community of coders in order to make Windows looks as lively as Linux does right now.
It's largely unnecessary. The entire show will be shut down soon due to a sudden plague of distinctly un-American cancer.
Or so the 'softies will claim.
Kudos to everybody who has ever contributed to the spread of Open Source and the GPL. You've got Microsoft to the point that they pull stunts like this - keep it up!
Add to that the fact that most places sold LOTR at around $16. Is it really THAT much of a pain to plunk down $16 to watch it from now until November?
Or for goodness' sake, borrow it from a friend, buy the other edition later.
Glad somebody said it.
I vote for Brazil, as well. But without actually voting. Since there's no voting mechanism. If you want to vote, you need to work in Information Retrieval.
WTF are you talking about?
Backwards compatibility with pre-release versions? Uh, yeah. Since the RC's were started, OGGs have worked right up through the chain (or at least mine have).
Now, if the next release means you can't play any previously encoded OGGs, then go ahead and repost your rant.
Same for the Super Snapshot!
:)
In addition, the Super Snapshot let you cheat at Bingo in RabbitJack's Casino on QuantumLink.
Setting aside the "vision" part of television for a moment, consider that broadcast news is fast becoming the standard news dissemination avenue for most items. The web is great, but unreliable. Newspapers are great, but limited in scope (in smaller communities, anyway). Television is nearly the only medium by which everybody gets the same news at the same time.
As a result, isn't it important to keep in mind the 10 million people who can only receive part of the information shared? While a talking head goes over the weather forecast, 30 items scroll by on the bottom of the screen. Now, the proper argument is that it's hard enough for the seeing to take all that in, let alone accomodating the blind, but it really could be as easy as incorporating ticker data into a subset of the current closed captioning system. You would just need a TV that could either transfer caption data to a screen reader-type device or a TV with included speech synthesis capabilities.
Talking head data would be covered in standard CC and ticker data in the subset. I don't know what the limitations of the current CC system are (whether or not a subset could be incorporated), but as broadcasts switch over to digital, it surely must be trivial to chunk in another data stream with the ticker data or any other extraneous data for use by readers. Well, trivial in practice. I guess it would take about 10 years to get everybody to agree on a standard.
Heck, if DigitalConvergence can make my computer open up a web page with a signal for nothing more than advertising, we should be able to output screen text to a similar device.
Heh... You do know what would fix those, don't you? A communistic style of society. :)
What happened to Tarkin? Time to go visit the ol' Xiph site... I must have missed something...
I've been a fan of Moby's for far too long now and have purchased all of his domestic EP/LP releases.
I think that if Moby is seeing a decline in sales, it's because he has started running as fast as he can away from the techno/electronica genre that got him where he is and is instead going for ambient soul. That's great and all, I like the ambient soul approach, but maybe a lot of other people just want to hear slightly less techno revisions of "Next is the E".
Moby's music is just going in a direction different than what he was known for. Car commercial producers love it, but that doesn't mean his original fanbase (most of whom I'm guessing would fall into the 'techie' range) wants to come along for the ride.
Or as he said during an interview on The Daily Show regarding a lyric naming him in a recent Eminem track, "I haven't done techno in, like, 10 years."
(Note, however, that while Eminem was referring to all of electronica with the shorter, catchier "techno", Moby was referring to the sub-genre of techno itself.)
Have you spent any time at the bnetd.org site? Read about the conversations bnetd tried to have with Blizzard about incorporating a method by which to authenticate CDs? Read about how Blizzard said, "Nuh uh" and then sued bnetd?
Apparently not.
But lets look at all the games that have suffered by not having centralized key authentication systems that require the key for play (and I'm just going to list the ones I've owned and played in multiplayer):
Tribes 1-2, Mechwarrior 2-4, Quake 1-3, Doom 1-2, Duke Nukem 3D, Midtown Madness 1-2, Serious Sam 1-2, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault, Half-Life, Jedi Knight 2.
Well, there are more, but that's 18 games right there that didn't bankrupt their creators by allowing people to run servers at a LAN party. Admittedly, you can't set up public servers with Midtown Madness, but you can with the rest.
So what's keeping Blizzard from allowing people to set up their own servers? It must be assumed that people with pirated copies of the above games connect to public servers and play. Why hasn't there been a collapse of the game industry as a result?
... Maybe because enough legitimate copies are sold regardless to support those companies and that the extra sales due to widespread adoption of the multiplayer aspect makes up for the small losses to piracy. This is similar to Microsoft's approach - they hate piracy, but they know that without it, they'd be on a LOT fewer desktops. That's why the XP SP1 will merely disable future updates and won't shut down the OS itself - they can't afford to lose the numbers of users who have pirated XP.
Is Blizzard/Vivendi the first company to sue over server emulators? Naw, Ultima Online did the same thing. But I had already quit by the time that happened, so I didn't have much weight behind my protests.
There aren't any poor open source programmers because they all make enough money that they have the gear with which to contribute... most likely paid for by some means *other* than open source development.
Which was the point of the article.
Is the reviewer referring to sanskrit here or is there actually a dead language called sandscript?
I had a lot of problems with EP2, and, as is the usual disclaimer, I'm a long-time fan. Saw ANH when I was four, still have a good chunk of my toys from childhood (and buy new ones when they come out), and even instituted "Star Wars T-Shirt Friday" where I work (and am the only participant).
So, my fan credentials are squarely on the table.
Having said that, EP2 was a pile of crap. Story-wise, it was great, really. It was complex, it opened just as many doors as it closed, and it gave us more peeks into the future that was solidified in episodes 4-6. But the execution of that story, the telling of it, the directing of it, well, sucked balls.
In a review I had written for some coworkers, I stated that Anakin had all the charm and personality of a date rapist. That might have been a bit strong, but it isn't totally without merit. Anakin had essentially been fantasizing about Amidala for 10 years by the time they were reunited, so his level of obsession was pretty deep. He was going to do whatever it took to win her over, but his way of doing it is just damn creepy - questioning her authority, saying he's been dreaming of her, launching into speeches about his burning desire for her. The only genuine thing he does is protect her, but it comes across as just a calculated means to an end of getting into her pants. This makes sense - he's obsessed, he's arrogant, and he feels there's no reason why Amidala shouldn't be his. Great. But then, how exactly does Amidala take this to be anything other than having a Jedi stalker? How does she actually fall in love with him when he's being a freak about everything? And yes, it's awfully tragic to lose your mother after, um, not seeing her for 10 years (next time, at least send a card!), but when you come back from retrieving your mother and say, "I killed them like animals", you know, I'll feel all sorry for your loss and stuff, but I'm going to be pretty freaked out that you went all barbarian on a bunch of kids. It seems to me like any self-respecting senator/former queen would recognize that guys who slaughter kids are bad news. But no, she falls in love with him. Go figure.
So, we spend over half the movie on this 'love story' that really contains no love and little story. Seems to me that it would have been better if Amidala had just been all gushy over Anakin from the start, because it would have made just as much sense and would have saved us 45 minutes of unbearable acting. But hey, at least Christensen got an eyeful during the first kiss scene.
And while that whole thing was going on, we've got Obi-Wan following up on the assassination attempt. He's lucky he's alive, really. First, an assassin takes out her own droid instead of just shooting the jedi hanging from it. And then a bounty hunter, who went completely undetected by two jedi, shoots a dart right past their heads to take out the assassin - instead of just shooting the jedi. Did I mention the assassin was a changeling? It's okay if I didn't, it's not like it made any bit of difference in the movie (talk about unused premise). Anyway, Obi-Wan finds out that some jedi 10 years ago put in a massive order for a clone army and also likely erased data from the jedi archives. "Curious," the Jedi Council responds - and then THEY FORGET ALL ABOUT IT! As soon as it looks like the clone army could come in handy, they seem to be not at all concerned about the conspiracy behind the creation of the clones and the removal of data from the archives! Oh well, it's not really important that somebody has been manipulating the Jedi and the Senate for 10 years as long as we have a ready army.
But you know, even gaping holes like those are sometimes easily overlooked when a film is so well acted and told that you don't have time to consider such things. But that wasn't the case with EP2. I think McGregor put in a passable performance (with the exception of the chuckle in the elevator regarding gundarks... that was very forced). I think Portman was slightly less stiff than in EP1, but didn't have a single natural moment until her flash of rebellion when leaving Tatooine to rescue Obi-Wan. Ahmed Best and Anthony Daniels certainly played their parts as silent extras in the bar scene rather well, but that doesn't do much for making the film enjoyable. I did enjoy Morrison's role, but felt that Jackson could have taken Mace Windu up a notch. Poor acting has been a hallmark of Star Wars films, but there was always at least Harrison Ford to save the day with a bit of charm. Nobody in eps 1 or 2 has any charm. McGregor is starting to develop it in Obi-Wan, but it's not there yet.
Then there were the things that made you say, "WTF??" The 50's diner on Coruscant. Jar Jar somehow being influential. C-3PO using puns ("What a drag!", "I'm beside myself!").
After those items were the "wow, you ruined that moment" moments. Showing the Death Star for a split second was cool - shoving it center frame and showing it for 20 seconds ruined the novelty of the first glimpse. Switching from physical C-3PO to CGI C-3PO on Geonosis - it was an obvious switch and a disservice to C-3PO. Having Yoda strike the kung-fu pose.
Did I like parts? Sure. I loved all the stuff on Kamino. I loved the Jango/Boba relationship (the fact that a bounty hunter's kid/clone takes pride in his father's abilities). I was amazed and pleased with the fact that Anakin went ballistic on the Tusken camp - that was a crucial event that showed, instantly, the evil he was capable of regardless of how many times he may have said "Yippee" as a child.
But those were very small parts of a much larger, longer, less compelling piece of work.
I had a similar AOL experience over 5 years ago. When I was prompted for my reason for cancellation, I said, "Because I haven't used AOL in two years. I do all my 'net stuff through a local provider." Same response - did the service suck? "No, I just haven't used it." 'Oh, well, if you have another provider, you can access AOL through it and decrease your monthly rate.' "How about we just cancel it because I haven't used it IN TWO YEARS?"
She finally gave in and the account was cancelled. But that didn't stop the phone calls, one of which wasn't even about membership - it was about buying a guide to using AOL because, even though I was a computer professional (I offered that forth as a reason why I wouldn't need it), AOL has a lot of features that I might not be aware of. Of course, not having the service was my other reason for not buying it, but that just gave them the opportunity to ask if I would like to be signed back up.
You know, it's funny... All I have to do to be kicked off my cable account is to set up a pr0n server. Maybe that's the key to getting your ISP accounts cancelled - violate the TOS in a huge way (but, preferably, one that won't get you nailed for DMCA or copyright violations). You'll have fun in the meantime and they'll do all the work of shutting down your account.
How does having a third monitor eliminate the problem you describe(gaps between monitors)? If ANYTHING it would just make things worse, not better - that is unless you also switched to borderless lcd panels. or removed the casings from your crts.
Because the gaps aren't right in the middle of your field of view. With three displays, default pop-up behavior (dialog boxes and such) would occur on a single monitor in the middle of your viewing window without being split in half (unless it's one of those silly dialogs that's shown as a percentage width of the desktop).
There are, of course, ways to modify that behavior (using Matrox's own tools if you have one of their cards), but it would be nice to look straight ahead and get an uninterrupted center desktop. As it is now, I look straight ahead and see 3 inches of border and gap between desktops.
I spend all day now looking either to the left or to the right. Looking to the middle would be a nice change.
And the quip about reading the article was unnecessary. First, he could have tried to read the article and found the site suddenly unresponsive (as did I). Second, he could have been reading it for technical information instead of marketing info. It happens.
The Reg has the translation of the letter to M$, but not of the letter from M$.
And that's an excellent point. The actions of the MPAA and RIAA can be collectively summed up as the actions of the entertainment industry screaming, "We're losing money! You must save us! The citizenry aren't buying it anymore! MAKE THEM LOVE US!"
... There's the lingering sense that people who didn't buy media the first time around because it was free probably wouldn't buy it if their only access to it was through payment.)
Thus, Congress reacts because if there's one thing an administration, a session of Congress loves to do, it's be able to brag about how it helped the economy. Billions lost to piracy? Let's end piracy and regain those billions of dollars! (Though only a very small percentage of those losses are real
Congress is stuck at the innovator's dilemma without even knowing it - it is safer to legislate and keep the status quo (as it favors businesses) than it is to say to these groups, "You know, you might just take a hit until you figure out what the people want and how to give it to them. Sorry, but they're your customers. Not ours." Forcing content providers to come up with new ways of selling content is the riskiest route, even though, in the long term, it could bring the highest benefit for all involved (creators, consumers, and facilitators). Few people are willing to bet their re-election on risk unless they are by far the underdog, and once you're in office, you're no longer the underdog (on a local level, anyway).
There are obviously lots of little problems that are coming together to form this one big one, which is why responses on this topic are so heated and have such a wide range, so I apologize for the rambling.
Did you know that it's also illegal for the public at large to shoot somebody, but that law enforcement personnel do it anyway?
Not all laws apply to all situations. You can't sue the FBI for reverse-engineering your code if they're doing it as part of an investigation. Sorry.
Step 1: Dismantle the Internet
Step 2: Create new Internet at the mandate of the state with completely different social constructs, the ability to police the virtual citizenry, and the ability to stringently control virtual borders so as to restrict enforcement to a geographic/national area.
Step 3: Make sure it has eBay.
I have been sitting here struggling to come up with a way that law enforcement and copyright enforcement could occur on the net without violating privacy. I tried to come up with something analogous to highway patrols, but highway patrols pull you over for physical violations of laws, not ideological.
And that, really, is the issue - what is the best way to police ideas - because that's what net based copyright infringement really is: the transference of ideas owned by a private party to someone who has not paid for access to said ideas.
So we look a little deeper and find that what people pay for when they buy ideas contained within a physical medium is 25% idea and 75% medium - people are willing to pay for ownership of a physical object more than they are willing to pay for the ideas contained therein. This is why eBooks are languishing right now - people don't want to pay physical book prices for something that lacks the benefits of ownership and portability found in the physical form.
What this leads to, then, is the big ticket item. If people can not separate the value of an idea from the delivery method, how can Congress legislate this separation? How can government convince people in the monetary value of ideas in a form where those ideas are not bound to tangible forms of ownership? How can government most easily legislate a largely societal view?
What you're asking for here isn't really a solution to the larger problem. You're looking for the adhesive strip that covers the larger wound just long enough to keep Congress from getting itchy and scrathing at it until it becomes infected and requires amputation.
But, since that's what you're asking for, here it is: to combat software piracy, Congress must legislate that it is wrong to pirate copyrighted works (already done). Then, they must watch every citizen and presume their guilt by watching every idea exchange they engage in, and only after the exchange occurs can they determine whether or not it was an infraction of law. That's it. That's the only way. And that's exactly the type of thing that's being proposed.
Well, there is another way, but it requires far greater resources. Small-time piracy stings. Get the FBI hanging out on Kazaa, Grokster, Morpheus. Have them send undercover agents to LAN parties. Make them hang out on AOL asking if "Anybuddy has da phat noo Britney Spears song??????" and arrest anyone who sends it to them. In other words, have them handle piracy the way they handle child pornography and drug busts - force them to engage in transactions with those breaking the law in order to gather evidence, get a proper warrant, and make the arrest.
Of course, that only works if they can effectively trace an IP address back to an offender, which isn't always a possibility. However, there are plenty of muderers still on the Most Wanted list who have never been found, so a few people copying, "American Pie 2" shouldn't be *that* big of a concern.
So you need to have everybody on a network where IPs are static and able to be traced. No more private networks behind firewalls. See Step 1.
Main problem here? People have come to expect a level of privacy in the electronic world that they could never be afforded in the physical world. Is it too late to change that? Do we want to change that? If we are to move into being a capitalist society that makes its money trading pure ideas, we might have to give up anonymity. The alternatives seem to either be that we make sure ideas are chained to a physical medium or make sure nobody tries to profit from ideas.
Or make everybody respect copyrights. See entirety of message above.
To handle a rapid loss of business that occurred shortly after 9/11/01, the company I work for did both a RIF and a 5% salary cut. We only recently had the 5% reinstated, but honestly, I think all of us were getting by just fine on that small reduction. Plus, the company has started paying back the 5% that was withheld during those months.
It seemed a fairly elegant way to handle things, as long as you weren't part of the RIF.