"I should be getting my region 0 DVD grey import this week, but I won't be watching it until the 19th. "
That is not a Grey import.
A grey import is importing legitmate licensed stuff from another region.
That DVD is nothing but pirate. 100%.
DVDs go into production weeks (or in this case months, no doubt due to the anticipated popularity) before they retail. This DVD comes from a plant in Malaysia that churns out millions of the things, for all regions. I've bought dozens from this source, and they are identical to the retail versions. Box, artwork, content, disk decoration, hololabels, the lot. How would a pirate factory get this correct again and again and again, all prior to the retail disks being available?
The price is also near-retail and the disk is legitimate so the copyright holder is almost getting their money. Oh, perhaps they are making extra disks and selling them out the back door, but you might as well ask how you can tell that your identical post-retail disk from the same factory isn't an over production copy. We can't tell. We have to trust that if comes from a legitimate factory, it's a paid for copy.
The extra-legal aspect is that the copyright owners clearly don't want the disks hitting retail early, but of course they can't just locko them up in the factory. They have to distribute them worldwide well before retail sales start. So somewhere in the supply chain there's a reseller that is breaking their contract. I'm receiving goods that were probably sold in breach of a contractual agreement a few steps up the supply chain (not by me, my contract is with the retailler that I buy from), but I'm not a party to that broken contract and have no way of finding out any details of it, or even if it exists. This is very, very different from receiving stolen goods, it's a civil matter, and probably a cross-jurisdictional one too.
So I only have the moral argument left to consider, and "morality" in this case comes down to money, pure and simple. If I watch the disk (not if I own it, if I watch it) before the theatrical release, and if that stops me from seeing it in a theatre in addition to buying the disk then the copyright owner loses money.
Well, I've seen four films in the theatre in the past three years. And that was way before I started getting these pre-retail DVD's. I'm not costing anyone any money. And in this case, I am definitely going to see the film in a theatre.
Movie studios are going to continue to release movies that play on current DVD players for a long time to come
Unless we pass a law that mandates more content lockdown (aka "Digital Rights Management") on some jumped up national interest platform. Read what I wrote.
I'm not contending that it's going to happen, or that it would be popular, I'm just saying that with our current administration, it could happen, and there's not one damn thing we could do about other than bitch and gripe, and then give in and buy the new hardware that will let us watch some locked down and trivially "enhanced" disks that will probably just make use of currently unused DVD features, like letting watch Alyson Hannigan shove a flute up her pussy from four different angles.
Synopsis: the time to contact your elected representative is now. Make it clear that you're watching, that you understand the issues, and that you're telling everyone all about it.
will be a way to access data that is in memory or in some form on the computer.
Good for you! You've bought DRM protected hardware, with a DRM protected Microsoft OS and you've bought (more likely rented) DRM protected content and managed to turn into raw form. Well done! Now, what exactly are you going to do with it?
We're ten years down the line. The Son of SSSCA has passed based on a lobbying campaign that asserts that terrorist organisations use content piracy to fuel their activities. The only hardware you can buy is DRM enabled. The only OS's you can legally use are DRM enabled. Microsoft owns the patent on DRM OS's. They refuse to license it. Every piece of consumer electronics that you - legally - own is DRM enabled and powered by Microsoft. You've applied for a license to run Linux for research purposes, but have failed to prove your innocence and are refused.
You've got raw data and nothing to play it on. Now what?
If you take away the ability of the originators to [...] generate some money--they have no incentive to produce work outside of the goodness of their hearts.
So the incentive to produce original works primarily for profit disappears. I wonder how that would effect the quality of the original works that would still be produced?
How dreadful to live in a world where content is produced by people who actually give a damn. No more ghostwriters, no more comedy-by-commitee, no more producing for the lowest common denominator. No more WWF. Ever.
Consumers would backlash harshly against [an enforced upgrade of their players in the next 5 years]
DVD Manufacturer: Hey, Joe, give us $200 for a new DVD player or you won't be able to watch any new movies.
Joe: God damn! Go screw yourself! Hey, elected representative, stop them!
Congressman Kickback: Sorry Joe, but that would be interventionist and Big Government. You always say that said you hate Big Government, right? Right? So vote with your dollars. It's not my fault!
DVD Manufacturer: Ooh, sorry Joe, for your convenience and security, you can only buy the new players and DVD's now. Congressman Kickback sponsored a bill to mandate that, to protect you from evil foreign terrorists who finance themselves through piracy. It's not our fault!
Joe: This sucks! This is total BS! Watch me backlash! Rant! Rave!
DVD Manufacturer: By the way Joe, American Pie 6: The Smell of Pie is out today.
how would you show, on film, Pippin's being "curiously attracted" to the well? How would you show his "sudden impulse" to explain why he tosses the stone? How would you shoot the scene so that it was clear what Pippin was doing? How would the audience know that it was just a small stone and not, say, the Ring?
"Zombie eyes." You've seen it dozens of times, it's a well understood cinematic convention. And you show him picking up a stone.
By making changes, you can actually be more true to the book.
No, I don't understand you. "True to the book" means Pippin doing it through (apparent) compulsion. In the film, he does it because he's a clutz. It saves perhaps twenty seconds of screen time, not "minutes". Perhaps that justifies it, I'm not naive enough to volunteer to pick twenty seconds to cut elsewhere.
Maybe if you looked past the cover of the book, you'd see that maybe, just maybe, it isn't about Jackson's ego. Maybe he just wants to make a good movie
Tsk tsk, don't misinterpret my words out of context as an attack on Jackson. I made it perfectly clear that I think he's a great director, and that this looks like a wonderful film. You're responding to my post, so please stick to the points that I actually made, and don't invent straw men to justify a conflict of opinion that doesn't exist. We both agree that Jackson appears to have made an astonishing adaptation.
If he hadn't made the change, every non-Tolkien purist would ask "Now why the hell did Pippin just do that? What a moron." Is that the Pippin you're looking for?
[Outlook] could allow only formatting, link, and image tags
Image isn't safe. It's trivial to include a bogus image that actually references a cgi script (and passes back your email address or unique ID) to log that your account is active. I'm actually surprised that more spam doesn't do this, but I believe it won't work against AOL users, who are probably the biggest target group.;-)
Re:Please, let's not spread the DivX
on
The Hype of the Rings
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· Score: 5, Insightful
let us geeks do one thing right, for once, and respect the memory of J.R.R Tolkien and his family and pay to see this movie
Oh, I'm going to. I should be getting my region 0 DVD grey import this week, but I won't be watching it until the 19th. But I'm doing this out of respect for Peter Jackson and the cast and crew of this film, not because I'm deluding myself that J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the similiarly themed book would have cared, or that his estate has any interest, rights or say in this film.
Michael White, biographer of the Oxford professor and Lord of the Rings creator, said the author would have hated the film.
"I think he would have just closed his eyes to it," White said of Tolkien, who died in 1973 aged 81.
"He had a hatred of all things Hollywood and did not believe in the idea of imitation being the best form of flattery."
However, Tolkien's son, Christopher, who owns the rights to his father's literary legacy, denied reports that he was unhappy with the way The Lord of the Rings films are being made.
He had remained silent about the films, but reports claimed he was unhappy with the way the film-makers interpreted his father's books.
Tolkien sold the film rights to his cult fantasy books in 1969 for just £10,000 - meaning his family, and those in charge of his estate, were left with no control over how the movies were made.
It looks like a good adaptation, and I'm completely OK with the removal of elements and the filling in of backstory (like Gandalf's imprisonment by Saruman). However it's had too much added and changed (without the input of the creator) to be an actual canon version.
A petulant rock chick defending a passive Frodo is most definitely not the same as an elf lord unveiled in his fury and a desparate but defiant Frodo. It denies Frodo an important piece of character development just to get some tits and ass on screen.
A troll that appears in the book as a foot and an arm didn't get turned into a frenzied CGI showcase by accident. This is the most minor of my quibbles, but it's an easy way to add drama, and I'm a little disappointed that Jackson chose it rather than playing within the limits of the original source.
Replacing the elemental hatred of Caradhras with machinations of Saruman is a major shifting of the characters, not a minor plot tweak. This is implied as being on the limit of Sauron's abilities, let alone Saruman's. It actually demotes Saruman to a simple "bad assed mofo" role, rather than taking the harder but more rewarding route of focussing on his delightfully sinister powers of persuasion.
A skeleton knocked down a well accidentally is not a stone thrown down it on purpose. Again, minor point, but why change it, other than ego? The original situation is functionally identical and leads to exactly the same result.
And those are just the changes and additions that I know about. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely stoked about this adaptation, but on its own merits, because of the cast (petulant rock chicks aside), the crew and the director, and not because I think I'll be seeing the book "Fellowship of the Ring". The destination appears to be the same, but the journey looks to be different enough to jar.
That's a 'bet the studio' cost. If they don't recover most of that cost early, then The Two Towers and Return of the King will be straight to video releases
Tsk tsk. The studio has already secured the money. Big studio films are pre-sold to theatre chains years in advance, often just on the basis of one big name or even (gasp) the budget. Films with a budget of $20 million+ don't lose money any more, ever.
The LotR trilogy will already have made its money back for the studio. The actual box office take/DVD/VCR/Book-of-the-film/collectible figures/card game of the film are just gravy.
After the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, corporate copyrights last 95 years from the work's creation. "Effectively forever" when it comes to software
Are we absolutely sure that this applies to software? As in, has it been tested, or is it explicit in law?
Remember, US courts are still wrangling over whether source code is expressive, or whether it describes a process. You can patent a process, but you can't copyright a non-expressive description of it (because every such description will be identical, so you're not creating an original work).
It may be clear to me and thee that source is a literary work like any other, but US courts do seem to have trouble dealing with concepts like that.
"Arnie didn't so much as blink, he just smiled a big toothy smile and said, friendly but firm, "We're mostly doing American TV just now, guys." And that was it. The issue was closed."
Huh? That's an answer? I don't get it.
Let me make it clear. This team had flown over from the UK, purely to catch Arnie out. They had sprung their carefully prepared trap and were all fired up and ready to go. Then Arnie said "No, this isn't going to happen", and it just stopped happening. He didn't give an order, or a denial, or seem defensive. He simply redefined reality, and suddenly the shockumentary crew just seemed childish and pathetic, and they just shut up.
Like him or not, he's got some powerful mojo working, plus he's self made. That's the kind of person I'd like to see running the country for a while, rather than a career politician.
When the lions/hyenas get loose, and start eating all the indigenous Australian wildlife like <strike>camels</strike> kangaroos, they'll be an ecological menace right? We'll have to track them down and kill them, right? And if we're going to have to do that, wellll, we'll have to do it as an organised, controlled hunt - the lions still belong to the reserve, so we can't have any old Bruce Stockman just thinking he can shoot them, right? And while we're doing that, we might as well charge concerned individuals a fat free for the priviledge of helping out? All funds to go back into the reserve, of course...
Am I being overly cynical here? I really don't know if I'm joking. At the least, if they get the ecosystem wrong within the park, they'll have to cull the big predators anyway, and if they're going to have to do that, they might as well make some money off it (and so on).
He can't be the POTUS, he's not a natural-born American, and the constitution says the POTUS must be so
Lest we forget, the Constitution wass written by people who had won an armed insurrection. Thus is history changed. Get enough Arniephiles together...
And the guy is smooth. I recall seeing a British shockumentary team jumping him when he was doing a "Don't use drugs, kids" appearance at an elementary school.
"Don't you think it's hypocritical of you to say that when your own fame is based on your use of steroids?" they asked. Oooh, gotcha. There's no good answer to that.
Arnie didn't so much as blink, he just smiled a big toothy smile and said, friendly but firm, "We're mostly doing American TV just now, guys." And that was it. The issue was closed.
Personally, I think that having a guy (or gal) in charge who isn't just a remote controlled puppet might be a good thing. Bush can read the words from an autocue, but he doesn't comprehend them.
Yes the copyright will expire at some point, at which point it will be public domain. That doesn't change the fact that "abandonware" isn't a legal term or concept
My claim to the contrary exists entirely in your own imagination. Read what I wrote - and only what I wrote - and ask yourself whether I was disputing or supporting the parent post.
My own fault really, I should know/. well enough by now to realise that everything has to carry a clear opinion. "+1 Informative" really means "+1 Said something I agreed with, but gave a link as well"
If they no longer sell it, and no longer support it, technically it's abandonware, right?
There is no legal definition of abandonware (nor any legal concept of it).
In the UK, under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988, the copyright on software expires 50 years after first availability to the public. I'd expect the situation to be similar in the USA.
"literary work" means any work, other than a dramatic or musical work, which is written, spoken or sung, and accordingly includes--
(a) a table or compilation, and
(b) a computer program;.
The CDPA is well worth a read. It was very forward looking, and includes clauses on "lawful reception" of encrypted broadcasts, and even a DMCA-a-like clause that prohibits manufacture, sale or traffic in encryption busting devices. Or rather, the DMCA includes CDPA-a-like clauses.;-)
Backwards compatibility is a requirement in the commercial software world
Uh, backwards compatibility generally means that new OS releases will run old apps, and new apps will use old file formats. Microsoft doesn't break this (much). They're saying that new apps won't work on old OS's and new file formats won't work in old apps. I'm not their biggest fan, but I think the killing of support for Win95 is pragmatism, not malice.
As a former marksman with sniper training on both the 7.62 SLR and the 5.56 SA-80, I can only express surprise. The SA-80 has incredible hitting power from its high muzzle velocity - 1.6 times as great as the SLR
I make it 940m/s (SA-80) to 838m/s (SLR).
Your source for this British Special Forces Guy Hacks Argie to Death story?
Buggered if I can find a reference. I can't even remember what service he was with. For what it's worth, if I was making it up, I've have made up a service as well.;-) I really do recall reading about this, but I'm damned if I remember where. It may very well be rubbish, it was probably fifteen years ago.
P.S. Bayonets will never be obsolete.
Absolutely. Sorry, I should have put that in "quotes". I meant to imply that whoever specced/made the bayonet probably thought that it was obsolete and only there to lengthen the weapon and stop it slipping under soldiers' armpits.
The Falklands War was in 1981 and the SA-80 only came into use in 1985. It is of course prefectly possible that special forces personnel were already using it, but it does seem a little strange.
Er, well Falklands was April-June 1982. Now that I think about it, the SA-80 / Enfield L85A1 was initially specced to fire a 4.7mm round (maybe a copy of the caseless 4.7mm in the HK G11 when it appeared to be the Next Big Thing) and it had to be re-engineered to fire the NATO 5.56mm. It's conceivable that the 1982 version was even a 4.7mm. What the politics would be in trying to persuade special forces (collectively or individually) to use a prototype weapon, I would only imagine, but the US has done it recently with the Saber 203 laser illuminator/"dissuader" (to get back On Topic). By "dissuader", I mean that the Saber 203 is quite capable of blinding a target at close range. Temporarily, they claim.
I'm not slagging of the SA-80, but my point is that it was designed by commitee, built by the lowest bidder, and it's taken 15+ years to get a version that finally looks like it'll deliver on the original promise, with the improved SA-80 A2.
We might see anti-personnel lasers on the battlefield at some point, but by this measure, they'll take a good while to actually achieve their initial promise, particularly in terms of reliability.
Are KPMG saying that if a site other than the KPMG site links to KPMG then KPMG might sue them? I wonder how much KPMG would demand for each infringing link to KPMG from a non-KPMG site to the KPMG web site at http://www.kpmg.com?
Re:Just what we need on the battlefield
on
Battlefield Lasers
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· Score: 2
The laser weapons vaporize metal.
OK, I fire it at your depleted uranium artillery shell. Vaporized uranium on the battlefield. Voila! How's that for environmental cleanup?
Uh... since you bring it up. I fire my depleted uranium shell at your T-72. It self sharpens on the way through the armour, then sends your tank up in a fireball and puts carconigenic dust 2km in the air. How's that for environmental cleanup. And that's not theoretical.
except u still have to be able to track the thing, just because the beam moves fast from the laser doesn't make pointing the laser in the right direction less challenging.
We used accoustic stations on the ground to listen for aircraft in WWII before radar caught on. These things were accurate to a couple of degrees back in 1939 with basic engineering and human ears doing the direction finding. We can do better now, if we want to. The more we deploy stealth aircraft, the more incentive our targts have to develop these forgotten technologies.
So, we know where the aircraft is to within a few hundred metres. If it's day and a clear sky, you can see it, but chances are it's night. Find the hottest spot in the sky in that area. It's not hot enough to throw a missile at, but it's enough to give us an idea to within a few metres. Fire at it. And again. And again. And again. And again... Ever seen the amount of AAA that gets thrown at US stealth planes? Count the cost. Lasers actually work out pretty effective, if you're firing within a few metres at a pretty fragile target. Heck, you only need to make a little hole in it, and there it is on your radar all of a sudden.
Stealth aircraft have been getting slower and slower, to cut down on heat. I wouldn't be surprised if the next generation were fuel cell powered electric ducted turbofan vehicles. They not only have to be invisible to radar, but they also have to be silent and cool (or only fly when it's rainy or cloudy).
plus many missiles fire beyond line of sight these days.
If only we had some way of shooting them down in flight...
To use one of these on a human is stupid and ineffective. Sure, it'll burn you..but why not just shoot the guy? More damaging and a quicker death
For about the zillionth time, death is what you want to inflict in Quake. Wounding, crippling and especially blinding is way, way more effective. You target the economy, not the soldiers.
Re:This raises some frightening questions
on
Battlefield Lasers
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· Score: 2
Bullets are very good at wounding and killing. [A laser] doesn't seem like a cost effective way to kill ground troops
Why would you want to kill them? You're not fighting them, you're fighting their state/organisation, and its economy. So wound them. Cripple them if you can. Blinding is ideal. Make them a burden on their state. It's harsh and it doesn't have the faux purity of death, but that's the way military planners have to think.
Re:This raises some frightening questions
on
Battlefield Lasers
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· Score: 2
lasers are too weak to do much damage. The worst they can do to people is use laser light to blind people... which is pretty bad, but it ain't no death star
If you kill a soldier, how long does it take two men to bury him? Hours.
If you blind a soldier, how long does it take two men to care for him? A lifetime.
Special forces need weapons with stopping power. If it comes down to grunts shooting, it's better (economically) to cripple. Harsh, but military planners have to consider it.
I'm having trouble seeing why someone would use [a laser small arms] instead of a gun [because it doesn't do a lot of damage]
Kill a man, it takes a couple of man hours to bury him.
Wound, cripple or blind him and you put a long term drain on your enemy's economy.
It's simple economics. Instead of "Kill 'em all!", the strategy is "Wound 25% of them, then wait."
It's an unpopular strategy with the trigger pullers. When the British army went from the 7.62m SLR to the 5.56mm NATO round SA-80, it was vastly unpopular, and despite repeated modifications, it's still not loved (although the plastic furniture on it is no longer melted by QM-issue insect repellant...). One British special forces guy forced to try out the SA-80 in the Falklands reported shooting an Argentinian 3 times at bayonet range but failing to disable him. In the event, the British guy had actually fitted his obsolete bayonet, and stabbed the Argentinian. The baynet snapped. He had to cut him to bits with the broken edge.
It's a nasty story, but it illustrates that the people commissioning weapons have very different priorities from the people using them. In fact, special forces (and paramilitaries like SWAT) are the only troops who are still allowed to pick weapons for their stopping power. If it comes to the point where Joe Grunt is being used, then it's become an attrition war (or garrison duty, which isn't dissimilar), and Joe is going to be armed with something that's a compromise between robust, reliable, and cheap enough (weapon, ammunition and servicing) to perform effective recon by fire.
Which, now that I think about it, pretty much precludes lasers in the immediate future.
Slashdot Mirror
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"I should be getting my region 0 DVD grey import this week, but I won't be watching it until the 19th. "
That is not a Grey import. A grey import is importing legitmate licensed stuff from another region. That DVD is nothing but pirate. 100%.DVDs go into production weeks (or in this case months, no doubt due to the anticipated popularity) before they retail. This DVD comes from a plant in Malaysia that churns out millions of the things, for all regions. I've bought dozens from this source, and they are identical to the retail versions. Box, artwork, content, disk decoration, hololabels, the lot. How would a pirate factory get this correct again and again and again, all prior to the retail disks being available?
The price is also near-retail and the disk is legitimate so the copyright holder is almost getting their money. Oh, perhaps they are making extra disks and selling them out the back door, but you might as well ask how you can tell that your identical post-retail disk from the same factory isn't an over production copy. We can't tell. We have to trust that if comes from a legitimate factory, it's a paid for copy.
The extra-legal aspect is that the copyright owners clearly don't want the disks hitting retail early, but of course they can't just locko them up in the factory. They have to distribute them worldwide well before retail sales start. So somewhere in the supply chain there's a reseller that is breaking their contract. I'm receiving goods that were probably sold in breach of a contractual agreement a few steps up the supply chain (not by me, my contract is with the retailler that I buy from), but I'm not a party to that broken contract and have no way of finding out any details of it, or even if it exists. This is very, very different from receiving stolen goods, it's a civil matter, and probably a cross-jurisdictional one too.
So I only have the moral argument left to consider, and "morality" in this case comes down to money, pure and simple. If I watch the disk (not if I own it, if I watch it) before the theatrical release, and if that stops me from seeing it in a theatre in addition to buying the disk then the copyright owner loses money.
Well, I've seen four films in the theatre in the past three years. And that was way before I started getting these pre-retail DVD's. I'm not costing anyone any money. And in this case, I am definitely going to see the film in a theatre.
OK, your turn. Point at the Evil.
Unless we pass a law that mandates more content lockdown (aka "Digital Rights Management") on some jumped up national interest platform. Read what I wrote.
I'm not contending that it's going to happen, or that it would be popular, I'm just saying that with our current administration, it could happen, and there's not one damn thing we could do about other than bitch and gripe, and then give in and buy the new hardware that will let us watch some locked down and trivially "enhanced" disks that will probably just make use of currently unused DVD features, like letting watch Alyson Hannigan shove a flute up her pussy from four different angles.
Synopsis: the time to contact your elected representative is now. Make it clear that you're watching, that you understand the issues, and that you're telling everyone all about it.
Good for you! You've bought DRM protected hardware, with a DRM protected Microsoft OS and you've bought (more likely rented) DRM protected content and managed to turn into raw form. Well done! Now, what exactly are you going to do with it?
We're ten years down the line. The Son of SSSCA has passed based on a lobbying campaign that asserts that terrorist organisations use content piracy to fuel their activities. The only hardware you can buy is DRM enabled. The only OS's you can legally use are DRM enabled. Microsoft owns the patent on DRM OS's. They refuse to license it. Every piece of consumer electronics that you - legally - own is DRM enabled and powered by Microsoft. You've applied for a license to run Linux for research purposes, but have failed to prove your innocence and are refused.
You've got raw data and nothing to play it on. Now what?
So the incentive to produce original works primarily for profit disappears. I wonder how that would effect the quality of the original works that would still be produced?
How dreadful to live in a world where content is produced by people who actually give a damn. No more ghostwriters, no more comedy-by-commitee, no more producing for the lowest common denominator. No more WWF. Ever.
Something like that?
"Zombie eyes." You've seen it dozens of times, it's a well understood cinematic convention. And you show him picking up a stone.
No, I don't understand you. "True to the book" means Pippin doing it through (apparent) compulsion. In the film, he does it because he's a clutz. It saves perhaps twenty seconds of screen time, not "minutes". Perhaps that justifies it, I'm not naive enough to volunteer to pick twenty seconds to cut elsewhere.
Tsk tsk, don't misinterpret my words out of context as an attack on Jackson. I made it perfectly clear that I think he's a great director, and that this looks like a wonderful film. You're responding to my post, so please stick to the points that I actually made, and don't invent straw men to justify a conflict of opinion that doesn't exist. We both agree that Jackson appears to have made an astonishing adaptation.
Not a "moron", a "fool". Remember?
Image isn't safe. It's trivial to include a bogus image that actually references a cgi script (and passes back your email address or unique ID) to log that your account is active. I'm actually surprised that more spam doesn't do this, but I believe it won't work against AOL users, who are probably the biggest target group. ;-)
Oh, I'm going to. I should be getting my region 0 DVD grey import this week, but I won't be watching it until the 19th. But I'm doing this out of respect for Peter Jackson and the cast and crew of this film, not because I'm deluding myself that J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of the similiarly themed book would have cared, or that his estate has any interest, rights or say in this film.
Michael White, biographer of the Oxford professor and Lord of the Rings creator, said the author would have hated the film.
"I think he would have just closed his eyes to it," White said of Tolkien, who died in 1973 aged 81.
"He had a hatred of all things Hollywood and did not believe in the idea of imitation being the best form of flattery."
However, Tolkien's son, Christopher, who owns the rights to his father's literary legacy, denied reports that he was unhappy with the way The Lord of the Rings films are being made.
He had remained silent about the films, but reports claimed he was unhappy with the way the film-makers interpreted his father's books.
Tolkien sold the film rights to his cult fantasy books in 1969 for just £10,000 - meaning his family, and those in charge of his estate, were left with no control over how the movies were made.
It looks like a good adaptation, and I'm completely OK with the removal of elements and the filling in of backstory (like Gandalf's imprisonment by Saruman). However it's had too much added and changed (without the input of the creator) to be an actual canon version.
A petulant rock chick defending a passive Frodo is most definitely not the same as an elf lord unveiled in his fury and a desparate but defiant Frodo. It denies Frodo an important piece of character development just to get some tits and ass on screen.
A troll that appears in the book as a foot and an arm didn't get turned into a frenzied CGI showcase by accident. This is the most minor of my quibbles, but it's an easy way to add drama, and I'm a little disappointed that Jackson chose it rather than playing within the limits of the original source.
Replacing the elemental hatred of Caradhras with machinations of Saruman is a major shifting of the characters, not a minor plot tweak. This is implied as being on the limit of Sauron's abilities, let alone Saruman's. It actually demotes Saruman to a simple "bad assed mofo" role, rather than taking the harder but more rewarding route of focussing on his delightfully sinister powers of persuasion.
A skeleton knocked down a well accidentally is not a stone thrown down it on purpose. Again, minor point, but why change it, other than ego? The original situation is functionally identical and leads to exactly the same result.
And those are just the changes and additions that I know about. Don't get me wrong, I'm completely stoked about this adaptation, but on its own merits, because of the cast (petulant rock chicks aside), the crew and the director, and not because I think I'll be seeing the book "Fellowship of the Ring". The destination appears to be the same, but the journey looks to be different enough to jar.
Roll on the 19th when I can find out for sure.
Tsk tsk. The studio has already secured the money. Big studio films are pre-sold to theatre chains years in advance, often just on the basis of one big name or even (gasp) the budget. Films with a budget of $20 million+ don't lose money any more, ever.
The LotR trilogy will already have made its money back for the studio. The actual box office take/DVD/VCR/Book-of-the-film/collectible figures/card game of the film are just gravy.
Are we absolutely sure that this applies to software? As in, has it been tested, or is it explicit in law?
Remember, US courts are still wrangling over whether source code is expressive, or whether it describes a process. You can patent a process, but you can't copyright a non-expressive description of it (because every such description will be identical, so you're not creating an original work).
It may be clear to me and thee that source is a literary work like any other, but US courts do seem to have trouble dealing with concepts like that.
- "Arnie didn't so much as blink, he just smiled a big toothy smile and said, friendly but firm, "We're mostly doing American TV just now, guys." And that was it. The issue was closed."
Huh? That's an answer? I don't get it.Let me make it clear. This team had flown over from the UK, purely to catch Arnie out. They had sprung their carefully prepared trap and were all fired up and ready to go. Then Arnie said "No, this isn't going to happen", and it just stopped happening. He didn't give an order, or a denial, or seem defensive. He simply redefined reality, and suddenly the shockumentary crew just seemed childish and pathetic, and they just shut up.
Like him or not, he's got some powerful mojo working, plus he's self made. That's the kind of person I'd like to see running the country for a while, rather than a career politician.
Depends. My house was built in 1988, has on average 4 outlets per room, and I still needed to add 6 x 4-gang strips to power all my toys.
I fully agree with the sentiment that you can't put too much cable in. Skimp now, and you'll be paying later to put in hubs or switches in every room.
When the lions/hyenas get loose, and start eating all the indigenous Australian wildlife like <strike>camels</strike> kangaroos, they'll be an ecological menace right? We'll have to track them down and kill them, right? And if we're going to have to do that, wellll, we'll have to do it as an organised, controlled hunt - the lions still belong to the reserve, so we can't have any old Bruce Stockman just thinking he can shoot them, right? And while we're doing that, we might as well charge concerned individuals a fat free for the priviledge of helping out? All funds to go back into the reserve, of course...
Am I being overly cynical here? I really don't know if I'm joking. At the least, if they get the ecosystem wrong within the park, they'll have to cull the big predators anyway, and if they're going to have to do that, they might as well make some money off it (and so on).
Lest we forget, the Constitution wass written by people who had won an armed insurrection. Thus is history changed. Get enough Arniephiles together...
And the guy is smooth. I recall seeing a British shockumentary team jumping him when he was doing a "Don't use drugs, kids" appearance at an elementary school.
"Don't you think it's hypocritical of you to say that when your own fame is based on your use of steroids?" they asked. Oooh, gotcha. There's no good answer to that.
Arnie didn't so much as blink, he just smiled a big toothy smile and said, friendly but firm, "We're mostly doing American TV just now, guys." And that was it. The issue was closed.
Personally, I think that having a guy (or gal) in charge who isn't just a remote controlled puppet might be a good thing. Bush can read the words from an autocue, but he doesn't comprehend them.
My claim to the contrary exists entirely in your own imagination. Read what I wrote - and only what I wrote - and ask yourself whether I was disputing or supporting the parent post.
My own fault really, I should know /. well enough by now to realise that everything has to carry a clear opinion. "+1 Informative" really means "+1 Said something I agreed with, but gave a link as well"
- If they no longer sell it, and no longer support it, technically it's abandonware, right?
There is no legal definition of abandonware (nor any legal concept of it).In the UK, under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988, the copyright on software expires 50 years after first availability to the public. I'd expect the situation to be similar in the USA.
Here's the relevant section of the CDPA, and note that computer programs are "literary works":
The CDPA is well worth a read. It was very forward looking, and includes clauses on "lawful reception" of encrypted broadcasts, and even a DMCA-a-like clause that prohibits manufacture, sale or traffic in encryption busting devices. Or rather, the DMCA includes CDPA-a-like clauses. ;-)
Uh, backwards compatibility generally means that new OS releases will run old apps, and new apps will use old file formats. Microsoft doesn't break this (much). They're saying that new apps won't work on old OS's and new file formats won't work in old apps. I'm not their biggest fan, but I think the killing of support for Win95 is pragmatism, not malice.
I make it 940m/s (SA-80) to 838m/s (SLR).
Buggered if I can find a reference. I can't even remember what service he was with. For what it's worth, if I was making it up, I've have made up a service as well. ;-) I really do recall reading about this, but I'm damned if I remember where. It may very well be rubbish, it was probably fifteen years ago.
Absolutely. Sorry, I should have put that in "quotes". I meant to imply that whoever specced/made the bayonet probably thought that it was obsolete and only there to lengthen the weapon and stop it slipping under soldiers' armpits.
Er, well Falklands was April-June 1982. Now that I think about it, the SA-80 / Enfield L85A1 was initially specced to fire a 4.7mm round (maybe a copy of the caseless 4.7mm in the HK G11 when it appeared to be the Next Big Thing) and it had to be re-engineered to fire the NATO 5.56mm. It's conceivable that the 1982 version was even a 4.7mm. What the politics would be in trying to persuade special forces (collectively or individually) to use a prototype weapon, I would only imagine, but the US has done it recently with the Saber 203 laser illuminator/"dissuader" (to get back On Topic). By "dissuader", I mean that the Saber 203 is quite capable of blinding a target at close range. Temporarily, they claim.
I'm not slagging of the SA-80, but my point is that it was designed by commitee, built by the lowest bidder, and it's taken 15+ years to get a version that finally looks like it'll deliver on the original promise, with the improved SA-80 A2.
We might see anti-personnel lasers on the battlefield at some point, but by this measure, they'll take a good while to actually achieve their initial promise, particularly in terms of reliability.
Are KPMG saying that if a site other than the KPMG site links to KPMG then KPMG might sue them? I wonder how much KPMG would demand for each infringing link to KPMG from a non-KPMG site to the KPMG web site at http://www.kpmg.com?
- The laser weapons vaporize metal.
OK, I fire it at your depleted uranium artillery shell. Vaporized uranium on the battlefield. Voila! How's that for environmental cleanup?Uh... since you bring it up. I fire my depleted uranium shell at your T-72. It self sharpens on the way through the armour, then sends your tank up in a fireball and puts carconigenic dust 2km in the air. How's that for environmental cleanup. And that's not theoretical.
We used accoustic stations on the ground to listen for aircraft in WWII before radar caught on. These things were accurate to a couple of degrees back in 1939 with basic engineering and human ears doing the direction finding. We can do better now, if we want to. The more we deploy stealth aircraft, the more incentive our targts have to develop these forgotten technologies.
So, we know where the aircraft is to within a few hundred metres. If it's day and a clear sky, you can see it, but chances are it's night. Find the hottest spot in the sky in that area. It's not hot enough to throw a missile at, but it's enough to give us an idea to within a few metres. Fire at it. And again. And again. And again. And again... Ever seen the amount of AAA that gets thrown at US stealth planes? Count the cost. Lasers actually work out pretty effective, if you're firing within a few metres at a pretty fragile target. Heck, you only need to make a little hole in it, and there it is on your radar all of a sudden.
Stealth aircraft have been getting slower and slower, to cut down on heat. I wouldn't be surprised if the next generation were fuel cell powered electric ducted turbofan vehicles. They not only have to be invisible to radar, but they also have to be silent and cool (or only fly when it's rainy or cloudy).
If only we had some way of shooting them down in flight...
For about the zillionth time, death is what you want to inflict in Quake. Wounding, crippling and especially blinding is way, way more effective. You target the economy, not the soldiers.
Why would you want to kill them? You're not fighting them, you're fighting their state/organisation, and its economy. So wound them. Cripple them if you can. Blinding is ideal. Make them a burden on their state. It's harsh and it doesn't have the faux purity of death, but that's the way military planners have to think.
If you kill a soldier, how long does it take two men to bury him? Hours.
If you blind a soldier, how long does it take two men to care for him? A lifetime.
Special forces need weapons with stopping power. If it comes down to grunts shooting, it's better (economically) to cripple. Harsh, but military planners have to consider it.
Kill a man, it takes a couple of man hours to bury him.
Wound, cripple or blind him and you put a long term drain on your enemy's economy.
It's simple economics. Instead of "Kill 'em all!", the strategy is "Wound 25% of them, then wait."
It's an unpopular strategy with the trigger pullers. When the British army went from the 7.62m SLR to the 5.56mm NATO round SA-80, it was vastly unpopular, and despite repeated modifications, it's still not loved (although the plastic furniture on it is no longer melted by QM-issue insect repellant...). One British special forces guy forced to try out the SA-80 in the Falklands reported shooting an Argentinian 3 times at bayonet range but failing to disable him. In the event, the British guy had actually fitted his obsolete bayonet, and stabbed the Argentinian. The baynet snapped. He had to cut him to bits with the broken edge.
It's a nasty story, but it illustrates that the people commissioning weapons have very different priorities from the people using them. In fact, special forces (and paramilitaries like SWAT) are the only troops who are still allowed to pick weapons for their stopping power. If it comes to the point where Joe Grunt is being used, then it's become an attrition war (or garrison duty, which isn't dissimilar), and Joe is going to be armed with something that's a compromise between robust, reliable, and cheap enough (weapon, ammunition and servicing) to perform effective recon by fire.
Which, now that I think about it, pretty much precludes lasers in the immediate future.