First, I'm not to sure if I agree with the government regulation of html.
However, I must say that your plan has some pretty detrimental consequences. If you let market forces determine everything, then smaller markets won't mean squat. This includes most the handicapped. Since the handicapped don't make up a significant portion of most companies target market, they can go to hell. At least, that's how it sounds.
You might not see anything wrong this, but most civilized countries profess to offer equality to all. You can hardly say you're treating someone like an equal when you put up roadblocks for them at every turn.
Geez. Everyone stop telling him to change to netscape! Don't you think he KNOWS netscape exists on windows? For whatever reason, they've chosen explorer. I don't use it, but for some people, it's actually better.
Don't pull a Microsoft and be exclusionary! This is the kind of attitude we blast them for day in and day out. "If it's not our product, screw 'em." With restrictions like this, people's freedom is limited. That's ridiculous, since the whole free software movement is based on giving you more freedom.
I have to agree with you completely on this. I've seen people who hand-code html in vi who STILL produce some of the most non-standards compliant pages around. It has almost nothing to do with the editor.
Granted, those who use an editor like Frontpage are going to wind up with very bad html. But those that would use Frontpage to edit their pages are already clueless.
Nope, these aren't my arguments. You've changed them around and applied them to something else. Unfortunately, you deleted the gist of my argument in the process.
A trailer is not the same as a movie. A trailer is a pretty short version of a movie (manner of minutes). As I said in another reponse, you could probably get away with using a few minutes of a movie in a parody. This is my point. There are limits. You can't just go hog wild and use as much of the material as you want. I think DH could have gotten away with a couple of panels, maybe even a couple of strips.
And, as I've said in other threads, I like offensive humor, this just wasn't humor. Offensive, hell yeah. Funny, well... I mean funny in a sense of most people thinking it's funny. People are different enough that theres always a few people that will laugh at a given work. But I doubt it was funny to most people.
You realize that movies are not usually shot in sequence, don't you? "Halfway through" could have been shot the first day, a scene at the beginning shot the next, the last scene shot the next, back to the earlier scenes after that, etc.
Sounds like you're just making up reasons to gripe.
While I'm not knocking your post (GB rocks), I think that GB, Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club all belong in the same generation. They came out in 1984, 1984, and 1985 respectively.
I, for one, was a big fan of the first two (didn't see TBC 'til college). How could you not love Long Duck Dong!
And we might as well round out the Anthony Michael Hall trilogy by mentioning Weird Science (1985, btw).
The Criterion LD of GB goes for what, somewhere between $50 and $100? GB DVD will be $30 retail, probably $20 on the web. I see a big difference here.
Instead we have a format attempting (and admittedly succeeding) to occupy the same niche as Laser Disc)
This is so ridiculous. DVD has already leaped out of LD's niche. They may not have more installed players or titles than LD, but the explosive growth it's experiencing will make up for that in short order. Part of LD's niche was that of movie lover with tons of cash. With DVDs running around $15-$30 (with special edition content), this is NOT a definition of DVDs market.
I just don't get that. I have a 32" Trinitron hooked up to a Toshiba player with s-video and I just don't see these things. I'm not blind, either. I've had lots of people over and they've never had anything but positive comments.
Either these effects are caused by a bad transfer of the movie (something that can happen whether its DVD, LD, or VHS), your player is sub-par (not all DVD players are made equal!), you've got it connected sub-optimally and are getting interference, or you have DAMN good eyes.
On the other hand, I've heard a LOT of complaints about LD by people who have LD players and are moving to DVD.
Frankly, you just come off sounding like a bitter LD fan who sunk a bunch of money into and won't give DVD credit because of that. I think this is especially true when you say:
I'd rather have the LD Criterion of Ghostbusters than the DVD Special Edition. A lot of the same (good) material, missing some of the (rather pointless) extraneous data.
You're basically complaining because there is too much content on the DVD. This is ludicrous.
I agree that there isn't a giant leap from LD to DVD. The major difference is price. I have a DVD player and around 20 discs right now. Each disc was around $20 each. If I had ordered online, it would have been even cheaper. I got my player, a nice Toshiba, for $250 (granted, it was normally around $300). Could LD have touched that? Ever? I don't think so.
DVD has the price point to be as ubiquitous as CDs. This brings me to the second major difference DVD-ROM. There is no LD-ROM. This dual use helps make DVD cheaper (more people making the hardware and software to interface with them, hence more competition).
LD was damn nice, but it was a dead-end. Already my local video store has shelf after shelf of DVD rentals/releases. They have no LD.
And it's only getting better. More companies are coming on board and more consumers are joining in. Since a very small market bought into LD in the first place, a LOT of content can be made by just taking the LD copies and putting them on DVD. But if you've got an LD player and already have something thats coming out on DVD, just pass it up and keep watching the LD!
Or, if you really want to consilidate your interests, buy one of those combo LD/DVD players and sell your old LD player. Now you can have the best of both worlds.
I just argue that the nature of the Web is about to change as people wipe out obnoxious voices with the click of a buttom. I think that will be a loss.
One, I don't think this is a loss. I think this is a good thing.
Two, this isn't anything new, and it won't change the nature of the web. Until fairly recently, most public discussion on the internet was done on usenet (and before that, bbs, but I wan't to keep focus here). Due to being harder to navigate large discussions, the web has really lagged behind usenet. Even now, it remains one of the top ways of discussing and issue. It's had complex filtering software for ages.
Yet discussion on the web (the "nature" of the web) is pretty much similar to that on the usenet. The only real difference is that it's harder to navigate. So when you make the claim that this is a big change, I think you're just wrong.
Until we get some highly advanced AI, like some filtering software that thinks almost exactly like me, filtering is going to be pretty tame. All it lets you do is avoid seeing posts from certain known trolls, spammers and plain idiots. I don't think the vast majority of people would use it to avoid certain people that they disagree with that rationally discuss issues. After all, they wouldn't even read/write in those forums if they don't want to discuss things like this.
The other problem, as many have pointed out, is that you've mashed up too many different topics together into one article, making a lot of vague predictions/observations. You should have seperated these out into a bunch of different topics:
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These are really four very different topics, each with it's own discussion of reasons and ramifications. If you had discussed them individually, you might find more people agreeing with parts of your article, rather than having to disagree with the whole thing because they've all been vaguely lumped together.
Actually, this isn't correct. I'm talking about the stuff that's only available on the DVD-ROM side of things, not the DVD Video. Stuff that could be available as text/html files (scripts) and jpg/gif (image stills).
There is no reason to put DVD Video on the DVD-ROM only side. If you have DVD Video, it needs to be on the DVD side (so you can watch it in your DVD player). If you have video clips that are not DVD Video, they should be in something like mpg so you can view them across platforms (rather than proprietary formats that need the w95 program to read).
This is mostly a problem for text and images right now. I don't really know of any DVD that has a bunch of clips on it that are unusable from linux. There probably are some, though.
Nope, no timeline whatsoever. Lucas & Co. have been pretty quiet about it. Really quite irritating. Steve Tannehill of the www.dvdresource.com (excellent site) even went out and registered a few domains like starwarsdvd.com. He said he'd give them back (wasn't looking to make a buck over them) when they were ready to use them. He just wants them to open up and actually tell the fans what's going on.
The characters didn't seem to have anything to do with Dilbert characters other than appearance, but that could be parody as well, I suppose.
I think this is where you're wrong. I believe one of the requisites to being a parody is that it has to be a comment on the copyrighted work you are including. This wasn't. The strips could have been completely redrawn with different characters, as an original strip, and it wouldn't have changed the work. Therefore, it's not really parody. It's just an attempt to piggy back off of someone else's success.
Second paragraph first. I think we just disagree on this one. I don't think the Dilbert style is what you say it is, and therefore I don't believe the substituted captions are a comment on it.
I also think you're wrong on the first paragraph. Parody gives you a little more freedom to use the authors original work (the drawings in Dilbert, the video in SW), but not unlimited freedom. I do not think the courts would agree that you could appropriate the video for a whole movie. In the same way, I don't think they would side with the Dilbert Hole in taking the drawings of a bunch of strips. Just as you could probably get away with 10 minutes with SW, you could probably get away with 1 or 2 completely copied strips from Dilbert. But simply to claim parody gives you unlimited freedom to copy is incorrect.
But even with all that, it has to be a comment on the original work. You think this was, I think it wasn't. Let the court decide (that's what they're there for). As such, I think UFS has a legitimate case.
Actually, Rob, I hate the fact that the lawyers were right in this case. They just lifted the strips and changed the text on them. Let's forget for a moment that it wasn't even funny (you can be offensive and funny, this wasn't). It saddens me that people like this (the ones who made the strip and the ones who posted it) are around, because it means there really is a legitimate reason for lawyers.
And before everyone cries parody, I think you're stretching it a bit. I can't just take a videotape of Star Wars, replace the audio track with my own script and distribute it as "parody". Parody only covers you so far.
[posted this twice because i think it rejected it the first time for forgetting the subject ("cat got your tongue" - interesting error message)]
Unfortunately, though, most of the time when they do the DVD-ROM stuff like the scripts, they do it for Win95 only. Sometimes they do it for the Mac. I wish they would just use html or plain text. Usually, they bundle it all up in proprietary globs.
Slashdot Mirror
Errr... because it's a bit derivative of "Puff the Magic Dragon"?
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Yep, that was my first thought. My second was that he was Croc crossed with Spyro.
I'm thinking the KDE developers need to step away from the playstation...
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IRC != ICQ
Pity. You had such a nice conspiracy going...
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First, I'm not to sure if I agree with the government regulation of html.
However, I must say that your plan has some pretty detrimental consequences. If you let market forces determine everything, then smaller markets won't mean squat. This includes most the handicapped. Since the handicapped don't make up a significant portion of most companies target market, they can go to hell. At least, that's how it sounds.
You might not see anything wrong this, but most civilized countries profess to offer equality to all. You can hardly say you're treating someone like an equal when you put up roadblocks for them at every turn.
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Beautiful.
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Geez. Everyone stop telling him to change to netscape! Don't you think he KNOWS netscape exists on windows? For whatever reason, they've chosen explorer. I don't use it, but for some people, it's actually better.
Don't pull a Microsoft and be exclusionary! This is the kind of attitude we blast them for day in and day out. "If it's not our product, screw 'em." With restrictions like this, people's freedom is limited. That's ridiculous, since the whole free software movement is based on giving you more freedom.
--
I have to agree with you completely on this. I've seen people who hand-code html in vi who STILL produce some of the most non-standards compliant pages around. It has almost nothing to do with the editor.
Granted, those who use an editor like Frontpage are going to wind up with very bad html. But those that would use Frontpage to edit their pages are already clueless.
--
Nope, these aren't my arguments. You've changed them around and applied them to something else. Unfortunately, you deleted the gist of my argument in the process.
A trailer is not the same as a movie. A trailer is a pretty short version of a movie (manner of minutes). As I said in another reponse, you could probably get away with using a few minutes of a movie in a parody. This is my point. There are limits. You can't just go hog wild and use as much of the material as you want. I think DH could have gotten away with a couple of panels, maybe even a couple of strips.
And, as I've said in other threads, I like offensive humor, this just wasn't humor. Offensive, hell yeah. Funny, well... I mean funny in a sense of most people thinking it's funny. People are different enough that theres always a few people that will laugh at a given work. But I doubt it was funny to most people.
Don't call my like of offensive humor into question. I busted a gut laughing at this one:
http://www.prehensile.com/tales/c ircus/circus.htm.
"Mommy, your flashlight smells funny!"
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Sounds like you're just making up reasons to gripe.
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While I'm not knocking your post (GB rocks), I think that GB, Sixteen Candles, and The Breakfast Club all belong in the same generation. They came out in 1984, 1984, and 1985 respectively.
I, for one, was a big fan of the first two (didn't see TBC 'til college). How could you not love Long Duck Dong!
And we might as well round out the Anthony Michael Hall trilogy by mentioning Weird Science (1985, btw).
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Damn, I also forgot to mention:
The Criterion LD of GB goes for what, somewhere between $50 and $100? GB DVD will be $30 retail, probably $20 on the web. I see a big difference here.
Instead we have a format attempting (and admittedly succeeding) to occupy the same niche as Laser Disc)
This is so ridiculous. DVD has already leaped out of LD's niche. They may not have more installed players or titles than LD, but the explosive growth it's experiencing will make up for that in short order. Part of LD's niche was that of movie lover with tons of cash. With DVDs running around $15-$30 (with special edition content), this is NOT a definition of DVDs market.
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I just don't get that. I have a 32" Trinitron hooked up to a Toshiba player with s-video and I just don't see these things. I'm not blind, either. I've had lots of people over and they've never had anything but positive comments.
Either these effects are caused by a bad transfer of the movie (something that can happen whether its DVD, LD, or VHS), your player is sub-par (not all DVD players are made equal!), you've got it connected sub-optimally and are getting interference, or you have DAMN good eyes.
On the other hand, I've heard a LOT of complaints about LD by people who have LD players and are moving to DVD.
Frankly, you just come off sounding like a bitter LD fan who sunk a bunch of money into and won't give DVD credit because of that. I think this is especially true when you say:
I'd rather have the LD Criterion of Ghostbusters than the DVD Special Edition. A lot of the same (good) material, missing some of the (rather pointless) extraneous data.
You're basically complaining because there is too much content on the DVD. This is ludicrous.
--
I agree that there isn't a giant leap from LD to DVD. The major difference is price. I have a DVD player and around 20 discs right now. Each disc was around $20 each. If I had ordered online, it would have been even cheaper. I got my player, a nice Toshiba, for $250 (granted, it was normally around $300). Could LD have touched that? Ever? I don't think so.
DVD has the price point to be as ubiquitous as CDs. This brings me to the second major difference DVD-ROM. There is no LD-ROM. This dual use helps make DVD cheaper (more people making the hardware and software to interface with them, hence more competition).
LD was damn nice, but it was a dead-end. Already my local video store has shelf after shelf of DVD rentals/releases. They have no LD.
And it's only getting better. More companies are coming on board and more consumers are joining in. Since a very small market bought into LD in the first place, a LOT of content can be made by just taking the LD copies and putting them on DVD. But if you've got an LD player and already have something thats coming out on DVD, just pass it up and keep watching the LD!
Or, if you really want to consilidate your interests, buy one of those combo LD/DVD players and sell your old LD player. Now you can have the best of both worlds.
--
One, I don't think this is a loss. I think this is a good thing.
Two, this isn't anything new, and it won't change the nature of the web. Until fairly recently, most public discussion on the internet was done on usenet (and before that, bbs, but I wan't to keep focus here). Due to being harder to navigate large discussions, the web has really lagged behind usenet. Even now, it remains one of the top ways of discussing and issue. It's had complex filtering software for ages.
Yet discussion on the web (the "nature" of the web) is pretty much similar to that on the usenet. The only real difference is that it's harder to navigate. So when you make the claim that this is a big change, I think you're just wrong.
Until we get some highly advanced AI, like some filtering software that thinks almost exactly like me, filtering is going to be pretty tame. All it lets you do is avoid seeing posts from certain known trolls, spammers and plain idiots. I don't think the vast majority of people would use it to avoid certain people that they disagree with that rationally discuss issues. After all, they wouldn't even read/write in those forums if they don't want to discuss things like this.
The other problem, as many have pointed out, is that you've mashed up too many different topics together into one article, making a lot of vague predictions/observations. You should have seperated these out into a bunch of different topics:
These are really four very different topics, each with it's own discussion of reasons and ramifications. If you had discussed them individually, you might find more people agreeing with parts of your article, rather than having to disagree with the whole thing because they've all been vaguely lumped together.
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No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
Yes.
Uhhh, I mean "no".
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They included a commentary track. That way, people who couldn't figure out the symbolism and parody in the movie could be led by the hand.
You might want to check it out.
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Actually, this isn't correct. I'm talking about the stuff that's only available on the DVD-ROM side of things, not the DVD Video. Stuff that could be available as text/html files (scripts) and jpg/gif (image stills).
There is no reason to put DVD Video on the DVD-ROM only side. If you have DVD Video, it needs to be on the DVD side (so you can watch it in your DVD player). If you have video clips that are not DVD Video, they should be in something like mpg so you can view them across platforms (rather than proprietary formats that need the w95 program to read).
This is mostly a problem for text and images right now. I don't really know of any DVD that has a bunch of clips on it that are unusable from linux. There probably are some, though.
--
Actually,
But I know you were only kidding. Or, at least, I hope so. I'm going to back away slowly now...
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Woops. Make that www.dvdresource.com. Pretty funny
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Nope, no timeline whatsoever. Lucas & Co. have been pretty quiet about it. Really quite irritating. Steve Tannehill of the www.dvdresource.com (excellent site) even went out and registered a few domains like starwarsdvd.com. He said he'd give them back (wasn't looking to make a buck over them) when they were ready to use them. He just wants them to open up and actually tell the fans what's going on.
--
I think this is where you're wrong. I believe one of the requisites to being a parody is that it has to be a comment on the copyrighted work you are including. This wasn't. The strips could have been completely redrawn with different characters, as an original strip, and it wouldn't have changed the work. Therefore, it's not really parody. It's just an attempt to piggy back off of someone else's success.
--
Second paragraph first. I think we just disagree on this one. I don't think the Dilbert style is what you say it is, and therefore I don't believe the substituted captions are a comment on it.
I also think you're wrong on the first paragraph. Parody gives you a little more freedom to use the authors original work (the drawings in Dilbert, the video in SW), but not unlimited freedom. I do not think the courts would agree that you could appropriate the video for a whole movie. In the same way, I don't think they would side with the Dilbert Hole in taking the drawings of a bunch of strips. Just as you could probably get away with 10 minutes with SW, you could probably get away with 1 or 2 completely copied strips from Dilbert. But simply to claim parody gives you unlimited freedom to copy is incorrect.
But even with all that, it has to be a comment on the original work. You think this was, I think it wasn't. Let the court decide (that's what they're there for). As such, I think UFS has a legitimate case.
--
Actually, Rob, I hate the fact that the lawyers were right in this case. They just lifted the strips and changed the text on them. Let's forget for a moment that it wasn't even funny (you can be offensive and funny, this wasn't). It saddens me that people like this (the ones who made the strip and the ones who posted it) are around, because it means there really is a legitimate reason for lawyers.
And before everyone cries parody, I think you're stretching it a bit. I can't just take a videotape of Star Wars, replace the audio track with my own script and distribute it as "parody". Parody only covers you so far.
[posted this twice because i think it rejected it the first time for forgetting the subject ("cat got your tongue" - interesting error message)]
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Unfortunately, though, most of the time when they do the DVD-ROM stuff like the scripts, they do it for Win95 only. Sometimes they do it for the Mac. I wish they would just use html or plain text. Usually, they bundle it all up in proprietary globs.
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The Criterion collection Brazil is coming. It will be a three DVD set.
More at:
http://www.laserviews.com/catalog/22/22274.html
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