The people on the Queensborough Bridge and throwing stuff at the Gobiln really did embody the spirit of this city, as demonstrated not only on and after 9/11 but every day. If you don't live here, then you may believe the stereotypes of New Yorkers as pushy and rude. The fact is, there is a hell of a lot of solidarity, compassion and pride in this city, and I appreciated Raimi's and Koepp's homage to us.
I also saw nothing wrong with Spidey's leap past an American flag at the end. It was not lingered on, and in fact many tall buildings in NYC do have flags on top of them, so it was not implausible. I am one of many who feel that the symbols of this country, like the flag, represent not so much its government as its people. Spider-Man and Peter Parker are fictional, but the values they represent ("with great power comes great responsibility") are important to many Americans. I didn't mind the flag at all, and I bet most viewers would agree.
I agree with your general point, that CDs should have value-added features. But "added" audio tracks will just end up online like the "regular" ones.
Enhanced CDs with videos are a nice thing (videos can be file-shared, too, of course). Good cover art, packaging, booklets, etc. may be even better. You can download scanned cover art and print it on your color inkjet, but it will always look cheesy compared to the real thing.
I'd rather have a 1970s LED calculator watch...
on
Touchscreen Watch
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
As described here:
Casio made a touchscreen calculator watch ~1985
on
Touchscreen Watch
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
And I'm sure it didn't cost $600. It's mentioned in this article:
The resourceful team at the Subversive Intellectual Society managed to dig up a whole series of confidential letters sent to people like David Koresh, Ted Kaczynski, Elian Gonzalez, and others, by various government agencies.
Maybe they'll dig up Senator "SSSCA" Hollings' tax returns next. Or his CD or video purchases...I'd love to see those...
...so that you can leave them out of your HTML source:
http://artificeeternity.com/includes/linkwrite.j s
Instructions for use are included in comments. The script fragment that replaces mailto: links in the page will actually shorten your code -- it only requires entering the username and domain once. Also, the @ sign is added in by the script, so the address itself never appears in your HTML.
This comes on the heels of dozens of other mergers since the 1996 Telecom Deregulation Act. While I agree that Napster is not terribly relevant these days, it does look like the media titans are gradually getting more savvy about the Internet. Will they buy up the current crop of music-trading networks next?
Michael Powell of the FCC is actually actively lobbying to tear down the rules against greater concentration of media mergers. And of course the RIAA and the companies that are buying up all the radio stations (Clear Channel, Infiniti, etc.) are helping to shut down webcasting. Pretty soon the media landscape could look something like this...
...where the 5th Doctor (Peter Davison) is floating outside a huge spaceship, trying to get to the TARDIS hovering nearby. He's somehow lost his momentum (this is bad physics, unlike what follows).
His solution: he pulls out a cricket ball, throws it at the spaceship, and catches it on the rebound. Voila...thrust. He drifts on to the TARDIS, and all is good.
Hey, it's really not off-topic if you think about it.
She is of Chinese background. Eight is a lucky number in Chinese culture, and her parents wanted to give her a lucky middle name. If I recall correctly, this would not be so exotic in Chinese, where ideograms and sounds have multiple meanings (in fact, I think lucky numbers often get their "lucky" quality from the fact that the characters and/or sounds for such numbers resemble other words which have positive meanings).
It has apparently caused her some grief when dealing with computerized systems which flag "8." as a typo in the middle initial field, but she has stuck with it.
For another weird numerical name, do a Google search for guy that works for Microsoft whose first name is "M3." It's really bizarre...I don't know the story behind that one.
I forget their name, but the similarity just occurred to me. You have a little "being" on a digital device, that can be trained to perform tasks, and can interact with others.
They came out a few years ago in the US (maybe earlier in Japan). And they actually do more than this Tap program -- they can fight each other (certain models, anyway), grow if nurtured, and die if neglected.
Props to Tap's creator(s), but perhaps they are a little behind the curve.
...at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square in Manhattan, yesterday. Each one has a Palm-OS device mounted inside, with the screen exposed, showing a simple animated loop. In this case, one showed the outline of a man dancing, the other showed a woman dancing.
They had the rough, looped quality of an early kinematograph, or whatever those things are called (where you rotate the wheel and look through the slits to see the horse running). The softly glowing blue light in each cube was the port for beaming the artwork on to your own PDA. Cool stuff.
Of course, I saw something like this two years ago. I was working on a film set, and all the guys with Palms were beaming it to each other -- a short animation of a naked woman. Nothing like pr0n to define the bleeding edge of technology.:)
See my posts near the top of this topic (about how I've spent a lot of time on my
personal web project during my 8 mos. unemployed).
I've battled the blues almost every day of this depressing time. It didn't help that my city (New York) was ATTACKED and virtually shut down during the month of September. Also, my grandfather died right after I was laid off, my wife and I had to move to a lower-rent apartment, I injured myself during the move, and one of our pets contracted a life-threatening illness. Of course I have nothing to complain about compared to the people I know who lost someone in the World Trade Center. But this whole city has been a really rough place for the last several months.
Working on Subintsoc.net and other non-paying web projects (such as MiamiStories.com) during times that I couldn't get paying work has really helped preserve my morale and sanity, as well as honing my skills and adding to my resume.
It sucks not to be able to do what you're good at, and what you used to get paid well for. Sometimes doing it for free, and hopefully providing some entertainment to the world in the bargain, is a good way to go.
You heard it here folks. He just confessed to committing fraud against the government.
I did nothing of the sort. Of course I didn't claim benefits during the weeks when I was doing freelance work, dummkopf!
Anyway, the Dept. of Labor says my paperwork is A-OK, so I've got 13 more weeks of unemployment checks coming!
Eat your fully employed heart out.
Look, I hate to break it to you, but we are in a RECESSION. Despite your Reaganomic assumptions, those who are not working (or not working full time) are not just lazy. I've looked for work, and sometimes found it. But it's a very tough job market. Count your blessings if you have a job.
First of all, I actually have been doing freelance web development gigs here and there during this period. So I haven't really been unemployed the whole time.
Second, as an NYC resident, I pay some of the highest taxes in the nation -- city and state taxes as well as federal. My taxes went into the government's coffers when I worked full time. Now I'm just getting some of that money back.
And I have looked for work. Tonight in fact I spent a couple hours cataloging my job search (I have an interview w/ the Labor Dept. tomorrow, and rest assured they'll cut off my benefits if I don't prove to them that I've been looking for work.)
Now, to all who call ME a shirker, stop reading/. and get back to whatever YOU'RE supposed to be doing.:)
Geez, people, relax. Lose the wage slave mentality.
This problem seems analogous to the one posed by Jack Valenti's plan to build copy protection into home entertainment systems. The next generation of various devices will be fatally compromised by 1) content restriction protocoals and 2) back doors for corporate and government watchdogs, and spammers.
I will stick with my non-wireless-web cell phone until I see a good reason to upgrade (or until I'm forced to, b/c it breaks or b/c they change the protocol and force me to do so).
I wonder...we've seen a lot on/. about building your own PVRs, wireless networks, customized computers, etc. Maybe some enterprising geek will someday soon post about building your own cell phone. (One that runs Linux, perhaps?):)
If someone actually buys the t-shirt we've got for sale on the site, the Dept. of Labor could come after me for making money while collecting unemployment benefits. Then again, technically, it's not a dot-com...it's a dot-net. So maybe Microsoft will come after me instead...
It's gotten ridiculous -- WinAmp is bloated spyware, RealPlayer is the same (plus it's a fscking virus that changes all your settings, sticks its shortcuts everywhere, and inserts itself into your Systray).
And when I use the Sony Media Bar software that came with my Vaio, to try to listen to a CD while browsing the web and performing another task (graphics or HTML editing, for example), the damn thing crashes!
The machine has a perfectly good DVD-ROM drive. If I could just run a headphone jack directly out of it, and play CDs with no stupid software layer involved, I'd be happy. But I can't.
So now, sadly, I have to listen to music on a portable CD player sitting on my desk. My perfectly usable computer has been handicapped by its software.
The worst part is, that when I see what's coming down the pipe -- region-coded everything, RIAA/MPAA copy "protection" lockdowns destroying fair use, the death of webcasting, even more media mega-mergers, and spyware in EVERYTHING -- I know that it's going to get a lot worse.
If I vote in this (meaningless) poll against MS, it's because I want to. If a Microserf votes for MS, s/he is potentially being coerced to do so by his/her employer.
Man, ppl. on Slashdot are so damn cynical. I was being serious. I like film better than digital, partly for the grain (also for the superior image capturing -- see my earlier post under this topic).
I don't even own a turntable, and I'm not dogmatic about vinyl being better than CDs, but I do find vinyl interesting. And I freely admit that the distortion, in both media, is part of the charm.
Slashdot Mirror
Then again, with the grammar and spelling skills on display around here, maybe most /.ers don't count as "native English speakers".
;)
The people on the Queensborough Bridge and throwing stuff at the Gobiln really did embody the spirit of this city, as demonstrated not only on and after 9/11 but every day. If you don't live here, then you may believe the stereotypes of New Yorkers as pushy and rude. The fact is, there is a hell of a lot of solidarity, compassion and pride in this city, and I appreciated Raimi's and Koepp's homage to us.
I also saw nothing wrong with Spidey's leap past an American flag at the end. It was not lingered on, and in fact many tall buildings in NYC do have flags on top of them, so it was not implausible. I am one of many who feel that the symbols of this country, like the flag, represent not so much its government as its people. Spider-Man and Peter Parker are fictional, but the values they represent ("with great power comes great responsibility") are important to many Americans. I didn't mind the flag at all, and I bet most viewers would agree.
</my $0.02>
This is not a troll. It's a serious question.
I agree with your general point, that CDs should have value-added features. But "added" audio tracks will just end up online like the "regular" ones.
Enhanced CDs with videos are a nice thing (videos can be file-shared, too, of course). Good cover art, packaging, booklets, etc. may be even better. You can download scanned cover art and print it on your color inkjet, but it will always look cheesy compared to the real thing.
As described here:
And I'm sure it didn't cost $600. It's mentioned in this article:
The resourceful team at the Subversive Intellectual Society managed to dig up a whole series of confidential letters sent to people like David Koresh, Ted Kaczynski, Elian Gonzalez, and others, by various government agencies.
Maybe they'll dig up Senator "SSSCA" Hollings' tax returns next. Or his CD or video purchases...I'd love to see those...
...so that you can leave them out of your HTML source:
j s
http://artificeeternity.com/includes/linkwrite.
Instructions for use are included in comments. The script fragment that replaces mailto: links in the page will actually shorten your code -- it only requires entering the username and domain once. Also, the @ sign is added in by the script, so the address itself never appears in your HTML.
This comes on the heels of dozens of other mergers since the 1996 Telecom Deregulation Act. While I agree that Napster is not terribly relevant these days, it does look like the media titans are gradually getting more savvy about the Internet. Will they buy up the current crop of music-trading networks next?
Michael Powell of the FCC is actually actively lobbying to tear down the rules against greater concentration of media mergers. And of course the RIAA and the companies that are buying up all the radio stations (Clear Channel, Infiniti, etc.) are helping to shut down webcasting. Pretty soon the media landscape could look something like this...
Heheh.
:)
And issue your own customized terrorism warning!
His solution: he pulls out a cricket ball, throws it at the spaceship, and catches it on the rebound. Voila...thrust. He drifts on to the TARDIS, and all is good.
Hey, it's really not off-topic if you think about it.
She is of Chinese background. Eight is a lucky number in Chinese culture, and her parents wanted to give her a lucky middle name. If I recall correctly, this would not be so exotic in Chinese, where ideograms and sounds have multiple meanings (in fact, I think lucky numbers often get their "lucky" quality from the fact that the characters and/or sounds for such numbers resemble other words which have positive meanings).
It has apparently caused her some grief when dealing with computerized systems which flag "8." as a typo in the middle initial field, but she has stuck with it.
For another weird numerical name, do a Google search for guy that works for Microsoft whose first name is "M3." It's really bizarre...I don't know the story behind that one.
I forget their name, but the similarity just occurred to me. You have a little "being" on a digital device, that can be trained to perform tasks, and can interact with others.
They came out a few years ago in the US (maybe earlier in Japan). And they actually do more than this Tap program -- they can fight each other (certain models, anyway), grow if nurtured, and die if neglected.
Props to Tap's creator(s), but perhaps they are a little behind the curve.
...at the Barnes & Noble at Union Square in Manhattan, yesterday. Each one has a Palm-OS device mounted inside, with the screen exposed, showing a simple animated loop. In this case, one showed the outline of a man dancing, the other showed a woman dancing.
:)
They had the rough, looped quality of an early kinematograph, or whatever those things are called (where you rotate the wheel and look through the slits to see the horse running). The softly glowing blue light in each cube was the port for beaming the artwork on to your own PDA. Cool stuff.
Of course, I saw something like this two years ago. I was working on a film set, and all the guys with Palms were beaming it to each other -- a short animation of a naked woman. Nothing like pr0n to define the bleeding edge of technology.
"To many eyes, all bugs/intelligence problems are shallow."
I.e., the knowledge and expertise are out there. It's a question of making use of them, or of relying only on "proprietary" closed methods.
See my posts near the top of this topic (about how I've spent a lot of time on my personal web project during my 8 mos. unemployed).
I've battled the blues almost every day of this depressing time. It didn't help that my city (New York) was ATTACKED and virtually shut down during the month of September. Also, my grandfather died right after I was laid off, my wife and I had to move to a lower-rent apartment, I injured myself during the move, and one of our pets contracted a life-threatening illness. Of course I have nothing to complain about compared to the people I know who lost someone in the World Trade Center. But this whole city has been a really rough place for the last several months.
Working on Subintsoc.net and other non-paying web projects (such as MiamiStories.com) during times that I couldn't get paying work has really helped preserve my morale and sanity, as well as honing my skills and adding to my resume.
It sucks not to be able to do what you're good at, and what you used to get paid well for. Sometimes doing it for free, and hopefully providing some entertainment to the world in the bargain, is a good way to go.
You heard it here folks. He just confessed to committing fraud against the government.
I did nothing of the sort. Of course I didn't claim benefits during the weeks when I was doing freelance work, dummkopf!
Anyway, the Dept. of Labor says my paperwork is A-OK, so I've got 13 more weeks of unemployment checks coming!
Eat your fully employed heart out.
Look, I hate to break it to you, but we are in a RECESSION. Despite your Reaganomic assumptions, those who are not working (or not working full time) are not just lazy. I've looked for work, and sometimes found it. But it's a very tough job market. Count your blessings if you have a job.
First of all, I actually have been doing freelance web development gigs here and there during this period. So I haven't really been unemployed the whole time.
/. and get back to whatever YOU'RE supposed to be doing. :)
Second, as an NYC resident, I pay some of the highest taxes in the nation -- city and state taxes as well as federal. My taxes went into the government's coffers when I worked full time. Now I'm just getting some of that money back.
And I have looked for work. Tonight in fact I spent a couple hours cataloging my job search (I have an interview w/ the Labor Dept. tomorrow, and rest assured they'll cut off my benefits if I don't prove to them that I've been looking for work.)
Now, to all who call ME a shirker, stop reading
Geez, people, relax. Lose the wage slave mentality.
This problem seems analogous to the one posed by Jack Valenti's plan to build copy protection into home entertainment systems. The next generation of various devices will be fatally compromised by 1) content restriction protocoals and 2) back doors for corporate and government watchdogs, and spammers.
/. about building your own PVRs, wireless networks, customized computers, etc. Maybe some enterprising geek will someday soon post about building your own cell phone. (One that runs Linux, perhaps?) :)
I will stick with my non-wireless-web cell phone until I see a good reason to upgrade (or until I'm forced to, b/c it breaks or b/c they change the protocol and force me to do so).
I wonder...we've seen a lot on
I've been (mostly) unemployed in NYC for almost 8 months now. I've spent much of that time on a new web project:
http://subintsoc.net
If someone actually buys the t-shirt we've got for sale on the site, the Dept. of Labor could come after me for making money while collecting unemployment benefits. Then again, technically, it's not a dot-com...it's a dot-net. So maybe Microsoft will come after me instead...
If you visit, try the new do-it-yourself Terror Warning Generator!
And remember, Cogito Ergo Rebello...
It's gotten ridiculous -- WinAmp is bloated spyware, RealPlayer is the same (plus it's a fscking virus that changes all your settings, sticks its shortcuts everywhere, and inserts itself into your Systray).
And when I use the Sony Media Bar software that came with my Vaio, to try to listen to a CD while browsing the web and performing another task (graphics or HTML editing, for example), the damn thing crashes!
The machine has a perfectly good DVD-ROM drive. If I could just run a headphone jack directly out of it, and play CDs with no stupid software layer involved, I'd be happy. But I can't.
So now, sadly, I have to listen to music on a portable CD player sitting on my desk. My perfectly usable computer has been handicapped by its software.
The worst part is, that when I see what's coming down the pipe -- region-coded everything, RIAA/MPAA copy "protection" lockdowns destroying fair use, the death of webcasting, even more media mega-mergers, and spyware in EVERYTHING -- I know that it's going to get a lot worse.
If I vote in this (meaningless) poll against MS, it's because I want to. If a Microserf votes for MS, s/he is potentially being coerced to do so by his/her employer.
Read all about it at the link below...
Man, ppl. on Slashdot are so damn cynical. I was being serious. I like film better than digital, partly for the grain (also for the superior image capturing -- see my earlier post under this topic).
I don't even own a turntable, and I'm not dogmatic about vinyl being better than CDs, but I do find vinyl interesting. And I freely admit that the distortion, in both media, is part of the charm.
It's part of the analog richness of film.
I will always love the random scattering of those silver molecules, dancing over the image flickering in the darkness.
It's like the warmth that comes from a vinyl record, as opposed to the cold clarity of a CD.