Product placement is just one of the death throes of the entertainment industry. We are in a huge transition period that's going to change the whole picture of games, movies and music. The entry barrier is dropping to zero because of technology that lets dedicated amateurs produce media that's as good as what big studios can do. There will be a flood of very creative people who have never had an audience because of the narrow distribution channels enforced by the mechanics of business. The sheer volume of high quality free entertainment will price the industry out of its own market, and will have commercial-free variety like we've never seen.
The best reason I know to ignore current copyright law is that nobody is obligated to keep their side of a broken contract. Copyright is a contract between the copyright holder and the public. The public agrees to pay the cost of enforcing the copyright for a specific length of time, in exchange for free access to the work at the end of that time. Changing the terms of copyright for new works is legitimate, but extending copyright on existing works breaks the existing contract.
The Bono Act of 1998 not only extended copyright on existing works, but actually reimposed copyright on many works that had been in the public domain for decades. All audio recordings made before 1972 are now copyrighted until the year 2067, even wax cylinder recordings made by Thomas Edison in the 1890s. Congress might as well have declared all existing 30-year mortgages to be 95-year mortgages. If you've been making house payments for 29 years, how would you like to be told that you now have to keep making those payments for decades to come? Or that the house your parents paid off years ago belongs to the bank again, because Congress says so? You would be fully justified in telling Congress and the bank to go to hell, and defending yourself against anyone who came to enforce this law.
This is what happens when special interests get their way with lawmakers, and the general public doesn't care enough to do anything about it. When Congress makes capricious pronouncements that defy fundamental concepts, the system ceases to make sense. Reasonable people have to be willing to stand up and defy unreasonable laws.
Good time to slip in a plug for Gaseous Core Nuclear Reactor rockets, especially the clean-burning "nuclear lightbulb" type. Basically it is a quartz bulb containing a cloud of uranium hexafluoride gas, confined in the center by a swirling cloud of a lighter buffer gas, which insulates it from the quartz and controls criticality. The uranium gas heats up to 25000C and emits intense ultraviolet through the quartz. Liquid hydrogen pumped over the outer surface of the bulb absorbs the UV, vaporizes and shoots out of the rocket nozzle. The nuclides are sealed in the bulb and the hydrogen exhaust is not radioactive. An engine of this type would have many times the lifting capability of any chemical engine possible.
Here is an article that discusses a hypothetical design for a fully reusable GCNR rocket based on the Saturn V form factor, that could lift 1000 tons of payload into Earth orbit (compared to the shuttle's 32-ton capacity) and return an equal amount of cargo to a powered landing. Nuclear rockets like this could make significant manned missions to Mars possible, drastically reducing the travel time and carrying huge amounts of supplies, equipment and radiation shielding.
I'm getting tired of these cheesy references to 1984 whenever anyone sees "government" and "camera" in the same paragraph. The theme of 1984 was unseen authority figures monitoring everybody constantly, so there was no such thing as privacy anymore. That's a far cry from private citizens watching what's going on in public streets. If we have to make a fiction analogy, a better one would be the Hitchcock movie Rear Window, in which a photographer laid up in his apartment with a broken leg watches the daily activities of his neighbors through an open window. Nobody has the right to privacy on a public street, and the difference between a window and a camera isn't really relevant to normal people.
If you have ever lived in a high crime area you know the look of the furtive predator scouting out a chance to screw somebody over. He divides his attention between looking for a victim and looking to see who is looking at him. Most people avoid eye contact, which is what he wants. Sometimes he will glare at you to try to force their eyes off him so he can do his thing. If the CCTV system gives these assholes a reason not to pull their crap on people because they can never be sure when someone's watching, I'm all for it.
My biggest hesitancy in using javascript is the IE warning bar that makes any page containing script look threatening. It's no problem with Foxfire, but most people still use IE. How many of them would see that warning and just assume something bad is lurking if they click Allow?
Seems to me that the fact that websites are viewable worldwide is irrelevant. Anything that has ever been published anywhere in any form is viewable worldwide.
But in the the real world the United States has been pushing other countries very hard to enforce and emulate American IP laws. This case kind of puts the shoe on the other foot. It will be interesting to see if the U.S. responds with consistency, or "do as we say, not as we do."
...regardless of whether it's a good or bad thing, it is necessary.
Next somebody will be saying it's necessary for OpenSource software to install spyware.
Domain parking, which takes resources out of circulation and creates nothing but ownership, is the antithesis of OpenSource. No logic can justify embracing it as a practice. What would be more consistent with the ideals of OpenSource would be to publicize the facts, show that people who believe these inflated Netcraft numbers are being made fools of, and let them decide how they want to react to that information.
This technology is great, but for the love of god, please let me be able to turn it off when I want to!
Not if it can save tens of thousands of lives a year. The future of highways is fully robotic cars with instantaneous reflexes, that pay attention 100.000% of the time and have no smoldering ego problems to burn off.
If I want to give the car some extra gas through a corner and kick the back end out, don't interfere with me.
No problem, go to a racetrack and kick the back end out all you want. The public road is only there for getting from point A to point B, not for playing out your fantasy.
Safety is a great goal, but I want to tell the car what to do - I don't want the car telling me what I can do.
Sorry dude, safety is a much greater goal than anything you want or don't want.
Business buzzwards are like any other kind of slang. People use it to feel cool. Your peers probably won't notice if you don't use it yourself, but if you try to crusade against it you'll just sound like the person who insists on correcting everybody's grammar. Focus on the substance of what's being said rather than how it's said. One geekly satisfying way that I amuse myself and resist the temptation to mock people for using stupid buzzwords is to think of them as sort of geeky aliens who don't quite know the language.
Yes, I like this better than the separate piece of plexi over the screen, and it's probably the simplest possible answer. You might have to use 4 microswitches wired in parallel behind the corners of the display to guarantee that one of them gets pressed no matter where the display is pressed.
I've been wondering when somebody would come up with dynamic lenses too. A friend of mine is a scanhead engineer for a medical ultrasound company. Scanheads tend to focus on a specific distance, so the image you get is sort of like a single slice of a CAT scan. For years I've been trying to get him interested in designing a scanhead that dynamically slides back and forth through a range of shapes and frequencies. If you integrated the data from the scans you could come up with a 3-d image of live tissue that would be way easier to interpret than what they have now. All I could think of was a flexible, liquid-filled lens adjusted hydraulically. I think using voltage-controlled liquid crystals to create a dynamic fresnel is a real stroke of genius.
I once worked on the 2nd floor of the building where the Seattle Mariners had their headquarters. Our office was along a balcony above their lobby, where their theme song played LOUDLY and CONSTANTLY all day long. I always imagined that their receptionist was either deaf or destined to run screaming from the building one day. Mercifully, I have forgotten the tune.
Slashdot Mirror
Product placement is just one of the death throes of the entertainment industry. We are in a huge transition period that's going to change the whole picture of games, movies and music. The entry barrier is dropping to zero because of technology that lets dedicated amateurs produce media that's as good as what big studios can do. There will be a flood of very creative people who have never had an audience because of the narrow distribution channels enforced by the mechanics of business. The sheer volume of high quality free entertainment will price the industry out of its own market, and will have commercial-free variety like we've never seen.
1. Find Sarah Connor
2. ??
3. Profit!!1!
Based on the guy in the photo, the story seems to be about some Norwegian relative of Steve Ballmer.
A PC-based video server can record shows to a hard drive, record them to disc or play them through any of the other PCs in the home.
/.)
Presumably they will have to rip out these subversive crime-friendly features when Congress passes this law (see earlier today on
The best reason I know to ignore current copyright law is that nobody is obligated to keep their side of a broken contract. Copyright is a contract between the copyright holder and the public. The public agrees to pay the cost of enforcing the copyright for a specific length of time, in exchange for free access to the work at the end of that time. Changing the terms of copyright for new works is legitimate, but extending copyright on existing works breaks the existing contract.
The Bono Act of 1998 not only extended copyright on existing works, but actually reimposed copyright on many works that had been in the public domain for decades. All audio recordings made before 1972 are now copyrighted until the year 2067, even wax cylinder recordings made by Thomas Edison in the 1890s. Congress might as well have declared all existing 30-year mortgages to be 95-year mortgages. If you've been making house payments for 29 years, how would you like to be told that you now have to keep making those payments for decades to come? Or that the house your parents paid off years ago belongs to the bank again, because Congress says so? You would be fully justified in telling Congress and the bank to go to hell, and defending yourself against anyone who came to enforce this law.
This is what happens when special interests get their way with lawmakers, and the general public doesn't care enough to do anything about it. When Congress makes capricious pronouncements that defy fundamental concepts, the system ceases to make sense. Reasonable people have to be willing to stand up and defy unreasonable laws.
Good time to slip in a plug for Gaseous Core Nuclear Reactor rockets, especially the clean-burning "nuclear lightbulb" type. Basically it is a quartz bulb containing a cloud of uranium hexafluoride gas, confined in the center by a swirling cloud of a lighter buffer gas, which insulates it from the quartz and controls criticality. The uranium gas heats up to 25000C and emits intense ultraviolet through the quartz. Liquid hydrogen pumped over the outer surface of the bulb absorbs the UV, vaporizes and shoots out of the rocket nozzle. The nuclides are sealed in the bulb and the hydrogen exhaust is not radioactive. An engine of this type would have many times the lifting capability of any chemical engine possible.
Here is an article that discusses a hypothetical design for a fully reusable GCNR rocket based on the Saturn V form factor, that could lift 1000 tons of payload into Earth orbit (compared to the shuttle's 32-ton capacity) and return an equal amount of cargo to a powered landing. Nuclear rockets like this could make significant manned missions to Mars possible, drastically reducing the travel time and carrying huge amounts of supplies, equipment and radiation shielding.
I'm getting tired of these cheesy references to 1984 whenever anyone sees "government" and "camera" in the same paragraph. The theme of 1984 was unseen authority figures monitoring everybody constantly, so there was no such thing as privacy anymore. That's a far cry from private citizens watching what's going on in public streets. If we have to make a fiction analogy, a better one would be the Hitchcock movie Rear Window, in which a photographer laid up in his apartment with a broken leg watches the daily activities of his neighbors through an open window. Nobody has the right to privacy on a public street, and the difference between a window and a camera isn't really relevant to normal people.
If you have ever lived in a high crime area you know the look of the furtive predator scouting out a chance to screw somebody over. He divides his attention between looking for a victim and looking to see who is looking at him. Most people avoid eye contact, which is what he wants. Sometimes he will glare at you to try to force their eyes off him so he can do his thing. If the CCTV system gives these assholes a reason not to pull their crap on people because they can never be sure when someone's watching, I'm all for it.
My biggest hesitancy in using javascript is the IE warning bar that makes any page containing script look threatening. It's no problem with Foxfire, but most people still use IE. How many of them would see that warning and just assume something bad is lurking if they click Allow?
Do you think the same people who decided to remake "The Poseiden Adventure" should dictate what technology the rest of us are allowed to have?
There used to be a drink called a Coffee Nudge.
Name says it all.
What I need is a Productivity Emulator.
Seems to me that the fact that websites are viewable worldwide is irrelevant. Anything that has ever been published anywhere in any form is viewable worldwide.
But in the the real world the United States has been pushing other countries very hard to enforce and emulate American IP laws. This case kind of puts the shoe on the other foot. It will be interesting to see if the U.S. responds with consistency, or "do as we say, not as we do."
...regardless of whether it's a good or bad thing, it is necessary.
Next somebody will be saying it's necessary for OpenSource software to install spyware.
Domain parking, which takes resources out of circulation and creates nothing but ownership, is the antithesis of OpenSource. No logic can justify embracing it as a practice. What would be more consistent with the ideals of OpenSource would be to publicize the facts, show that people who believe these inflated Netcraft numbers are being made fools of, and let them decide how they want to react to that information.
This technology is great, but for the love of god, please let me be able to turn it off when I want to!
Not if it can save tens of thousands of lives a year. The future of highways is fully robotic cars with instantaneous reflexes, that pay attention 100.000% of the time and have no smoldering ego problems to burn off.
If I want to give the car some extra gas through a corner and kick the back end out, don't interfere with me.
No problem, go to a racetrack and kick the back end out all you want. The public road is only there for getting from point A to point B, not for playing out your fantasy.
Safety is a great goal, but I want to tell the car what to do - I don't want the car telling me what I can do.
Sorry dude, safety is a much greater goal than anything you want or don't want.
Business buzzwards are like any other kind of slang. People use it to feel cool. Your peers probably won't notice if you don't use it yourself, but if you try to crusade against it you'll just sound like the person who insists on correcting everybody's grammar. Focus on the substance of what's being said rather than how it's said. One geekly satisfying way that I amuse myself and resist the temptation to mock people for using stupid buzzwords is to think of them as sort of geeky aliens who don't quite know the language.
Yes, I like this better than the separate piece of plexi over the screen, and it's probably the simplest possible answer. You might have to use 4 microswitches wired in parallel behind the corners of the display to guarantee that one of them gets pressed no matter where the display is pressed.
Can it fill up Dr. Hathaway's house with fresh hot popcorn?
How do you know he's telling the truth?
I've been wondering when somebody would come up with dynamic lenses too. A friend of mine is a scanhead engineer for a medical ultrasound company. Scanheads tend to focus on a specific distance, so the image you get is sort of like a single slice of a CAT scan. For years I've been trying to get him interested in designing a scanhead that dynamically slides back and forth through a range of shapes and frequencies. If you integrated the data from the scans you could come up with a 3-d image of live tissue that would be way easier to interpret than what they have now. All I could think of was a flexible, liquid-filled lens adjusted hydraulically. I think using voltage-controlled liquid crystals to create a dynamic fresnel is a real stroke of genius.
Sure he's suave, he's cool and he's European.
BUT - how far can he throw a chair?
The Redmond fast-food delivery industry can expect huge profits for at least the next 18 months.
My 15th level mage casts Enhanced Charm on Lara Croft.
Remember, every generally accepted scientific theory today started life as a fringe theory that the general consensus held was wrong
True, but remember also that nearly every fringe theory turns out to be wrong. Fringeness doesn't add any weight to an argument.
I once worked on the 2nd floor of the building where the Seattle Mariners had their headquarters. Our office was along a balcony above their lobby, where their theme song played LOUDLY and CONSTANTLY all day long. I always imagined that their receptionist was either deaf or destined to run screaming from the building one day. Mercifully, I have forgotten the tune.
Steve Ballmer reads Slashdot post explaining that there's no problem, gently puts down chair. Cowering co-workers resume their normal activities.