In that case, the best analogy would be someone who builds a road, then puts a toll booth on it. The owner of the road has no idea how many stolen cars travel on it, but clearly intends to benefit by the traffic regardless of legality.
I'm actually surprised that the VCR defense didn't work in this case. (i.e. substantial non-infringing use is possible given the implemented model) That it didn't probably proves how biased the judge is... however, I still think Napster deserved to get smacked down on a moral level, as their business model involved profiting from piracy of IP. (If it doesn't, then they should do fine even after this court case finishes, and the audio-fingerprinting is instituted.) Of course, the fact that people like the RIAA are on the other side means I don't want to be supporting them, either... but they'll be in a world of pain for a long time yet, thanks to P2P and other (future) technologies.
The old side scrolling video game Flashback used rotoscoping for the main character. Kick ass game.:)
_Flashback_ was the sequel to _Another World_ (_Out of this World_ in the US, I think), which may have also used rotoscoping -- it certainly had a similar style of animation.
Wasn't _Prince of Persia_ the first computer game to use this technique? I remember them making a big fuss about it in the publicity for the game...
perhaps record companies could make more $$$ if they would invest their dollars for recording sessions etc, in music acts with talent, that will last the test of time.
Talent != saleability. (not necessarily, anyway -- you're working from the assumption that the majority of the music-buying public has taste (and I certainly don't share yours for Metallica and Rush:))
If the record companies could do *anything* to make more money than they already are, you can bet they'd be doing it. Lust for money is like that (driven by needing to look good on the stock market, etc.)
What "judge" Patel did was decide that Napster committed "contributory" (secondary, tertiary, and perhaps quaternary) infringement, and MIGHT benefit commercially sometime indeterminately in the future.
Not to go against the rest of your points (I think the judge has proven hereslf to be pretty biased), but there was a definite INTENT to benefit commercially. Otherwise they wouldn't have been riding that ol' dotcom roller-coaster, would they?
-Shrek: the current cornerstone of CG animation. Critics have applauded the film largely because of its excellent writing.
I just saw this yesterday, and although the animation was very good, I found the storyline overly predictable, the script seemed to have fallen into the hands of the scriptwriters of _Married: With Children_ (all that gutter humour), and the rock music completely off-putting. Not a patch on the Pixar films.
In what way can the writing possibly be described as 'excellent'?
What do you think it will take for people to move from paper based to "ebook" type devices?
E-paper with an equal or higher resolution than the average book is printed at.
In other words, something that actually provides real advantages over carrying a paperback book, but shares a very similar/familiar form. The page-turning interface is probably hard-wired in there for everyone over the age of, say, 5...
I don't understand the problem so many people seem to have with Lynch's Dune rendition. I thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact, I watched it several times. Though I haven't seen any other of Lynch's films, I certainly do not think that Dune is by any means a bad movie. I think one of the main things that adds to the movie is the haunting soundtrack... In fact, a good soundtrack can make a good movie into a great movie. But I digress...
I recommend that you see all of David Lynch's films. Although they vary in quality, that quality is good to great:)
_Dune_ is a good film, don't get me wrong. However it's not the book, and it doesn't feel like the sort of movie Lynch would have made without the external pressuers he had during the process (producers, etc.), so it sort of falls between two stalls.
Also, David is known to give very specific instruction to theaters as to the volume levels the movies should be played at, and collaborates closely on the composition of the soundtracks. Perceptive of you:) The sound element of his films is always very effective, especially in his first feature, _Erasaerhead_.
Lynch wanted to be better known - I think Twin Peaks speaks to that. But, because of Dune, his rising star just flatlined. I think, after The Elephant Man, Lynch was well on his way to reach the status of "great." But, to be honest, I think The Elephant Man was clearly his best work (John Hurt's too, for that matter), and Dune proved to be his undoing, showing he couldn't handle a large ensemble cast or a big budget, both of which were skills he would desperately need with his failed attempt to revitalize Twin Peaks in Fire Walk With Me . Don't get me wrong - I would go see a Lynch movie over most any day, but I get the feeling that he never quite reached the status and recognition he seemed to desire.
A reasoned analysis, with points well made. (Someone mod that up!:) I think you're right, _Twin Peaks_ does show that, but I think he knew he was walking a fine line by trying to keep that Lynch 'edge' and still have widespread popular appeal... eventually things fell apart somewhat, especially whenever he wasn't overseeing things closely.
Have you read a book called _The Making of DUNE_? It was churned out sometime around the time the film was released, and, although not a great book, does give a good picture of the terrible politics involved in the making of the film, the money, etc. Unfortunately, at that level, that's what the process involves... now, I really liked the _Fire Walk With Me_ movie, but it only made sense if you knew at least 90% of the TV series, and I know most people don't share my appreciation for the film.
It's been a while since I ready it, but I don't remember having imagined Louis Wu as an Asian when reading Ringworld , so Chow Yun-Fat would seem pretty out of place to me. By the time Known Space is upon us, the human race is pretty much homogenized from inter-racial breeding, and there are no more distinguishing racial features to speak of.
Despite the novel's characterization of him as looking like a 20-something, I imagined Louis Wu's appearance as sort of a bronze-skinned, dark-haired Anglo man who looked artificially young, so I'd choose someone who looked like George Hamilton to play him.
There will always be greater and lesser degrees of "genetic immersion", to coin a phrase; and with names like Carlos Wu and Louis Wu I'd be expecting several generations of European and Asian ancestry back there, mingled together into some sort of post-Eurasian look.
Given the wirehead stuff, too, there needs to be a hint of personal weakness there, despite the external strengths... we have to believe that this man will become an addict:)
You're joking, right? Even Lynch isn't happy with the movie, and it sealed his fate - he never became a truly big director, which he was well on his way to being.
You think Lynch ever wanted to be a 'big director'? I can see a pretty clear thread running from _Eraserhead_ to _Blue Velvet_ and _Lost Highway_. _Dune_ was his worst work, but then again, it was his experience on the film that led to him always insisting on being the one to do the final release cut of the film, something he didn't have on _Dune_, because of the huge amounts of money involved and his status as a relatively new director at that time.
Living in Australia, I haven't seen the mini-series yet, but I'll be interested to see what has been done with it. It has to be better than the recent Dune abominations _House Atreides_ and _House Harkonnen_...
The lawyers, representing adobe, want to bill the uni for their services?
I'd tell em to get fucked and go and bill their corporate master, who presumably authorised their work.
Exactly. Sure, Adobe can force him to change the name, but since they are the ones employing this firm of lawyers, they can pay them. Otherwise it becomes a form of demanding money with menaces, more commonly the tactic of the Mafia and people like that...
"That's a nice.... software program you have there. Wouldn't want anything to... happen to it now, would we?" said the lawyer, as he typed 'rm -r *.c*', his finger hovering over the Enter key."
Re:The Neverending wave of criticism of slackware.
on
Slackware 8.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
It would be cool if the *user* could permanently mark a dependancy as "optional", and that would survive package updates.
Obviously this doesn't apply for all distros, but you should have a look at Debian's equivs package -- for a while, I used it to provide a fake libgl1 package while using NVidia's video drivers, so I could install things like xscreensaver-gl. (Of course, then a more elegant solution emerged, but it's useful as a stopgap...)
DOJ can let microsoft go, but there are co-plaintiffs! The states.
Would that mean that the remedy had to be specific to MS's activities in those states alone? That could be difficult and confusing. Which reminds me, other countries need to jump on the bandwagon and start sueing MS in their local court systems on similar charges... maybe if all of the helicopters attack King Kong from different angles at the same time, we can win:)
Nice try to get "+1 funny". I know a couple geeks who would find this humorous.
I don't think very highly of them, however.
Nice try yourself:P
It was one of those ideas that was funny when I thought of it, but probably not worth writing down. But then I thought to myself "Well, self, Slashdot is full of that sort of stuff anyway."...
Back when there were viable alternatives, Microsoft wasn't a monopoly (almost by definition). What, exactly, would the Justice have pursued? Bill Gates' bad taste in neckties?
Maybe the fact that OEMs had to pay Microsoft a flat fee for every CPU they shipped, whether or not a copy of Windows was provided with it? This (& DOS before it) had been going on for quite a few years before that, and was one of the reasons OS/2 didn't take off. Sounds like abuse of the monopoly to me... and they did have an effective monopoly of the desktop OS market back then, even with DOS and Win 3.1.
Microsoft today announced a new version of Office XP designed specifically for use within the court system. It includes a new feature known as "SmartJudgements" (tm), which picks up on keywords in a document (e.g. 'Microsoft') and changes the text around it to match pre-set templates. A spokesman for Microsoft was heard muttering something about embracing and extending before then announcing "All Your Judge Are Belong To Us".
Or the lower court may decide that the Findings of Fact do not support judgement of liability at all.
Or the New & Improved DOJ (tm) may decide that they don't want to punish MS after all. Weren't Microsoft doing all they could to gain time during the antitrust trial hoping that something like this would happen?
Slashdot Mirror
In that case, the best analogy would be someone who builds a road, then puts a toll booth on it. The owner of the road has no idea how many stolen cars travel on it, but clearly intends to benefit by the traffic regardless of legality.
I'm actually surprised that the VCR defense didn't work in this case. (i.e. substantial non-infringing use is possible given the implemented model) That it didn't probably proves how biased the judge is... however, I still think Napster deserved to get smacked down on a moral level, as their business model involved profiting from piracy of IP. (If it doesn't, then they should do fine even after this court case finishes, and the audio-fingerprinting is instituted.) Of course, the fact that people like the RIAA are on the other side means I don't want to be supporting them, either... but they'll be in a world of pain for a long time yet, thanks to P2P and other (future) technologies.
Actually people don't use drive space because it sucks and corrupts your data.
And this is different from a lossy music codec like MP3 how, exactly?
The old side scrolling video game Flashback used rotoscoping for the main character. Kick ass game. :)
_Flashback_ was the sequel to _Another World_ (_Out of this World_ in the US, I think), which may have also used rotoscoping -- it certainly had a similar style of animation.
Wasn't _Prince of Persia_ the first computer game to use this technique? I remember them making a big fuss about it in the publicity for the game...
If you're going to make a crude comment, why not check the gender of the judge first?
Jackass.
perhaps record companies could make more $$$ if they would invest their dollars for recording sessions etc, in music acts with talent, that will last the test of time.
:))
Talent != saleability. (not necessarily, anyway -- you're working from the assumption that the majority of the music-buying public has taste (and I certainly don't share yours for Metallica and Rush
If the record companies could do *anything* to make more money than they already are, you can bet they'd be doing it. Lust for money is like that (driven by needing to look good on the stock market, etc.)
What "judge" Patel did was decide that Napster committed "contributory" (secondary, tertiary, and perhaps quaternary) infringement, and MIGHT benefit commercially sometime indeterminately in the future.
Not to go against the rest of your points (I think the judge has proven hereslf to be pretty biased), but there was a definite INTENT to benefit commercially. Otherwise they wouldn't have been riding that ol' dotcom roller-coaster, would they?
How the fuck is that flamebait?
It's Slashdot, you're going against the pro-Linux orthodoxy... you mean you're surprised?
-Shrek: the current cornerstone of CG animation. Critics have applauded the film largely because of its excellent writing.
I just saw this yesterday, and although the animation was very good, I found the storyline overly predictable, the script seemed to have fallen into the hands of the scriptwriters of _Married: With Children_ (all that gutter humour), and the rock music completely off-putting. Not a patch on the Pixar films.
In what way can the writing possibly be described as 'excellent'?
I've only used DirectX to play around with, but isn't it related to ActiveX in that they are both interfaced through COM primarily?
That's like saying that JPEGs are just like Word documents, as you can send them both using HTTP.
Okay, it's a terrible analogy, but really, what does the messaging system have to do with anything?
What do you think it will take for people to move from paper based to "ebook" type devices?
E-paper with an equal or higher resolution than the average book is printed at.
In other words, something that actually provides real advantages over carrying a paperback book, but shares a very similar/familiar form. The page-turning interface is probably hard-wired in there for everyone over the age of, say, 5...
I don't understand the problem so many people seem to have with Lynch's Dune rendition. I thoroughly enjoyed it. In fact, I watched it several times. Though I haven't seen any other of Lynch's films, I certainly do not think that Dune is by any means a bad movie. I think one of the main things that adds to the movie is the haunting soundtrack... In fact, a good soundtrack can make a good movie into a great movie. But I digress...
:)
:) The sound element of his films is always very effective, especially in his first feature, _Erasaerhead_.
I recommend that you see all of David Lynch's films. Although they vary in quality, that quality is good to great
_Dune_ is a good film, don't get me wrong. However it's not the book, and it doesn't feel like the sort of movie Lynch would have made without the external pressuers he had during the process (producers, etc.), so it sort of falls between two stalls.
Also, David is known to give very specific instruction to theaters as to the volume levels the movies should be played at, and collaborates closely on the composition of the soundtracks. Perceptive of you
Lynch wanted to be better known - I think Twin Peaks speaks to that. But, because of Dune, his rising star just flatlined. I think, after The Elephant Man, Lynch was well on his way to reach the status of "great." But, to be honest, I think The Elephant Man was clearly his best work (John Hurt's too, for that matter), and Dune proved to be his undoing, showing he couldn't handle a large ensemble cast or a big budget, both of which were skills he would desperately need with his failed attempt to revitalize Twin Peaks in Fire Walk With Me . Don't get me wrong - I would go see a Lynch movie over most any day, but I get the feeling that he never quite reached the status and recognition he seemed to desire.
:) I think you're right, _Twin Peaks_ does show that, but I think he knew he was walking a fine line by trying to keep that Lynch 'edge' and still have widespread popular appeal... eventually things fell apart somewhat, especially whenever he wasn't overseeing things closely.
A reasoned analysis, with points well made. (Someone mod that up!
Have you read a book called _The Making of DUNE_? It was churned out sometime around the time the film was released, and, although not a great book, does give a good picture of the terrible politics involved in the making of the film, the money, etc. Unfortunately, at that level, that's what the process involves... now, I really liked the _Fire Walk With Me_ movie, but it only made sense if you knew at least 90% of the TV series, and I know most people don't share my appreciation for the film.
I thought that the portrayal of the Baron, paul's mother, and paul's sister (liam??) were particularly good.
:)
Alia, if they followed the book closely.
It's been a while since I ready it, but I don't remember having imagined Louis Wu as an Asian when reading Ringworld , so Chow Yun-Fat would seem pretty out of place to me. By the time Known Space is upon us, the human race is pretty much homogenized from inter-racial breeding, and there are no more distinguishing racial features to speak of.
:)
Despite the novel's characterization of him as looking like a 20-something, I imagined Louis Wu's appearance as sort of a bronze-skinned, dark-haired Anglo man who looked artificially young, so I'd choose someone who looked like George Hamilton to play him.
There will always be greater and lesser degrees of "genetic immersion", to coin a phrase; and with names like Carlos Wu and Louis Wu I'd be expecting several generations of European and Asian ancestry back there, mingled together into some sort of post-Eurasian look.
Given the wirehead stuff, too, there needs to be a hint of personal weakness there, despite the external strengths... we have to believe that this man will become an addict
You're joking, right? Even Lynch isn't happy with the movie, and it sealed his fate - he never became a truly big director, which he was well on his way to being.
You think Lynch ever wanted to be a 'big director'? I can see a pretty clear thread running from _Eraserhead_ to _Blue Velvet_ and _Lost Highway_. _Dune_ was his worst work, but then again, it was his experience on the film that led to him always insisting on being the one to do the final release cut of the film, something he didn't have on _Dune_, because of the huge amounts of money involved and his status as a relatively new director at that time.
Living in Australia, I haven't seen the mini-series yet, but I'll be interested to see what has been done with it. It has to be better than the recent Dune abominations _House Atreides_ and _House Harkonnen_...
"Right this way Mrs. Arnold - we have a free room for you right behind the meat department"
Remember the old proverb: do not kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
:)
It usually comes free with a new PC anyways!
:)
Oh, believe me, you're paying for it all right
The lawyers, representing adobe, want to bill the uni for their services?
I'd tell em to get fucked and go and bill their corporate master, who presumably authorised their work.
Exactly. Sure, Adobe can force him to change the name, but since they are the ones employing this firm of lawyers, they can pay them. Otherwise it becomes a form of demanding money with menaces, more commonly the tactic of the Mafia and people like that...
"That's a nice.... software program you have there. Wouldn't want anything to... happen to it now, would we?" said the lawyer, as he typed 'rm -r *.c*', his finger hovering over the Enter key."
Better. Stonger. Faster.
Stonger?
It would be cool if the *user* could permanently mark a dependancy as "optional", and that would survive package updates.
m l
Obviously this doesn't apply for all distros, but you should have a look at Debian's equivs package -- for a while, I used it to provide a fake libgl1 package while using NVidia's video drivers, so I could install things like xscreensaver-gl. (Of course, then a more elegant solution emerged, but it's useful as a stopgap...)
http://packages.debian.org/stable/admin/equivs.ht
DOJ can let microsoft go, but there are co-plaintiffs! The states.
:)
Would that mean that the remedy had to be specific to MS's activities in those states alone? That could be difficult and confusing. Which reminds me, other countries need to jump on the bandwagon and start sueing MS in their local court systems on similar charges... maybe if all of the helicopters attack King Kong from different angles at the same time, we can win
Nice try to get "+1 funny". I know a couple geeks who would find this humorous.
:P
I don't think very highly of them, however.
Nice try yourself
It was one of those ideas that was funny when I thought of it, but probably not worth writing down. But then I thought to myself "Well, self, Slashdot is full of that sort of stuff anyway."...
Back when there were viable alternatives, Microsoft wasn't a monopoly (almost by definition). What, exactly, would the Justice have pursued? Bill Gates' bad taste in neckties?
Maybe the fact that OEMs had to pay Microsoft a flat fee for every CPU they shipped, whether or not a copy of Windows was provided with it? This (& DOS before it) had been going on for quite a few years before that, and was one of the reasons OS/2 didn't take off. Sounds like abuse of the monopoly to me... and they did have an effective monopoly of the desktop OS market back then, even with DOS and Win 3.1.
Microsoft today announced a new version of Office XP designed specifically for use within the court system. It includes a new feature known as "SmartJudgements" (tm), which picks up on keywords in a document (e.g. 'Microsoft') and changes the text around it to match pre-set templates. A spokesman for Microsoft was heard muttering something about embracing and extending before then announcing "All Your Judge Are Belong To Us".
:)
OK, OK, so it's (-1, Boring)...
Or the lower court may decide that the Findings of Fact do not support judgement of liability at all.
Or the New & Improved DOJ (tm) may decide that they don't want to punish MS after all. Weren't Microsoft doing all they could to gain time during the antitrust trial hoping that something like this would happen?