And if Universal had bothered listening to people four months ago when the misframed release hit Australia, they could have avoided quite a bit of this problem.
The movies have been available in regions 2 and 4 for months, and they have the same misframing problem there. People noticed it as soon as they did comparisons to the widescreen Laserdisc (which has a slightly less wide and incorrect aspect ratio, but at least the matting that is there is applied correctly), but Universal allowed the problem to slip into the R1 release and they didn't acknowledge any problem despite repeated inquiries until Wednesday.
You can find comparison shots here, here and here, with more to be seen here (warning, that site is very intensive and not the best designed. It's also in German, but the pics are right in one of the frames if you let it load completely and scroll down a bit).
Keep in mind that those screenshots are just examples. The framing for ALL of BTTF 2 and BTTF 3 is messed up in the same way EXCEPT for special effects shots (those were hard-matted on the print, so there was no need to apply any matting to the transfer).
I've already called Universal and arranged my return, but the screwup is inexcusable given that it's been known for four months and Universal didn't acknowledge the issue until Wednesday.
OK, I'll bite. If you read my post you'd have seen that I'm advocating your right to opt out of receiving ANY email marketing.
Why should anyone have to TELL spammers not to waste their network resources, disk space and time with unwanted junk mail? Why should I have to opt-out to the THOUSANDS of criminal spammers out there?
A bullet through the brain of a spammer is a much more effective "opt-out" solution, IMO.
So what's the problem with spam being used to sell RC cars anyway?
Spam is theft of service and trespass to chattel.
I will NEVER purchase ANY product advertised through spam, and I WILL work to have all spammer 'store' pages shut down, regardless of where they are hosted.
ALL spammers, without exception, are thieving criminal scum who deserve to die.
Filters do not prevent the spam from hitting your ISP and costing them money, unless your ISP starts to deny access at the router table.
That actually isn't a bad idea, though. Get the SPEWS list and use it as a massive DENY table. Spammers will still ping your ISP's systems, but they won't get any further than that.
Who said that other points of view are not allowed? I wasn't saying that no one else was allowed to speak, I was offering an observation on the nature of SPEWS haters.
You should address another, common, misconception.
SPEWS does not block mail. ISPs choose to block mail individually, on their own. Some ISPs choose to use one of SPEWS's lists (they keep two, one more 'aggressive' than the other) as a reference for blocking, but SPEWS itself does NOT prevent your mail from reaching its destination.
Anyone who claims otherwise is either ignorant or lying.
Did you ever ask in news.admin.net-abuse.email why you're still listed? People there are often very good at digging up the information, and it usually turns out that there are still spammers lingering on the network that your ISP has ignored.
SPEWS does not block anything. SPEWS LISTS IPs owned by known spam-friendly companies such as Cable and Wireless. Individual ISPs CHOOSE to block because they have decided that if a company like C&W, which openly tolerates abusive criminal activities from their customers, isn't going to clean up their act then there isn't any traffic worth accepting from them.
If everyone starts using SPEWS and you get blocked because no one wants C&W's traffic, that is NOT their problem and it is not the problem of SPEWS. Call C&W, tell them to stop openly tolerating criminal activity (such as theft of service, trespass to chattel and distributing pornographic material to minors), and then if they clean up their act, SPEWS will delist them.
The alternative is to have hundreds, if not thousands, of individual ISPs run their own private lists. That way, when C&W does finally clean up their act, they have to convince hundreds or thousands of individual people to remove them from the filters -- of course, by this time many of the admins who put the IP there might have moved on or forgotten the reason for the block in the first place. As such, C&W would stay in those hundreds or thousands of those individual blocklists and their netspace would be effectively worthless. Such was the fate of AGIS, who died the death of a thousand cuts, walled off from much of the Internet even when they did finally clean up their act.
And SPEWS does not just block blindly. You're either lying or stupid when you claim that it's just based on who they 'believe' to be spammers. SPEWS keeps documentation for their list entries, and it takes multiple spams and multiple ignored reports to the ISP before the list becomes expanded to include collateral damage.
The only people who complain about SPEWS are spammers and people who are too pig-headed to be bothered to learn how and why it is used.
My recommendation: Call Qwest and keep bitching up a storm. They'll get sick of you eventually and they'll HAVE to act just to shut you up.
Of course, given that Qwest openly tolerates criminal activity, including DDoS attacks, from their customers, I suspect that their action might just be telling you that they don't want you as a customer since you aren't actually breaking the law.
Antispews is run by a known hack. SPEWS is used because it works. It is NOT the job of my ISP to tell your ISP to kick off their spammers. If your upstream is providing an open haven for criminals, don't be surprised when no one wants traffic from your upstream.
Remember, your consulting company wasn't being blocked. Your consulting company didn't own the ISPs. SPEWS wasn't blocking anything (anyone who claims that SPEWS blocks is either ignorant or lying), SPEWS was merely listing IP addresses owned by the upstream provider. It isn't SPEWS's probem that your upstream is rogue and that no one wants their traffic.
Well, I'll check news sites tomorrow, but lots of them are going to be unreliable as they will likely be getting their information from the current news source.
I doubt that much. Only the name is copyrighted, and somehow I doubt that merely mentioning the name when discussing backwards compatability would qualify for royalty payments.
The US GC will not play Japanese games and vice versa. A 'boot disk' is supposedly on the way and should be released very soon that will allow for playing of out-of-country games.
Also, there is supposedly a very easy method (no extra chips required, though it does involve tinkering with the system) for modding the Japanese GC to play US games. Don't know if there is one for the US system.
Another option would be to incorporate a quick-and-dirty Wine-like wrapper for the Windows Bink drivers to run the video files. Not what I'd like, not what I'd recommend, but it might work.
I'm not even sure if wine (or winex) can play Bink video...
I've been playing Icewind Dale II lately. No need to reboot. I just use Wine.
I've found that wine and winex will run more and more lately. When it doesn't run something, I just don't care to play it.
Mind you, I've held off on getting NWN specifically because there is no 'official' Linux support. It works in Wine, but Bioware promised native Linux support so they get my money only when that support becomes reality.
Porting the video and audio to new formats introduces a new problem.
The Linux client was supposed to be a simple download to be used with the default game distribution. Re-encoding all of the audio and video would likely require a new Linux-only game disc. That is not a good thing, because it was promised that the Linux client would be fully compatable with the Windows release.
Well, since I'm discussing preventative measures, it would do to make it a temporary solution. Perhaps have it run for only a month, then delete itself.
Slashdot Mirror
And if Universal had bothered listening to people four months ago when the misframed release hit Australia, they could have avoided quite a bit of this problem.
The movies have been available in regions 2 and 4 for months, and they have the same misframing problem there. People noticed it as soon as they did comparisons to the widescreen Laserdisc (which has a slightly less wide and incorrect aspect ratio, but at least the matting that is there is applied correctly), but Universal allowed the problem to slip into the R1 release and they didn't acknowledge any problem despite repeated inquiries until Wednesday.
You can find comparison shots here, here and here, with more to be seen here (warning, that site is very intensive and not the best designed. It's also in German, but the pics are right in one of the frames if you let it load completely and scroll down a bit).
Keep in mind that those screenshots are just examples. The framing for ALL of BTTF 2 and BTTF 3 is messed up in the same way EXCEPT for special effects shots (those were hard-matted on the print, so there was no need to apply any matting to the transfer).
I've already called Universal and arranged my return, but the screwup is inexcusable given that it's been known for four months and Universal didn't acknowledge the issue until Wednesday.
OK, I'll bite. If you read my post you'd have seen that I'm advocating your right to opt out of receiving ANY email marketing.
Why should anyone have to TELL spammers not to waste their network resources, disk space and time with unwanted junk mail? Why should I have to opt-out to the THOUSANDS of criminal spammers out there?
A bullet through the brain of a spammer is a much more effective "opt-out" solution, IMO.
They're winning now. When people like Alan Ralsky are found with multiple gunshot wounds to the head, over and over again, they might think twice.
One of these days, someone is going to get fed up and give spammers just what they deserve.
So what's the problem with spam being used to sell RC cars anyway?
Spam is theft of service and trespass to chattel.
I will NEVER purchase ANY product advertised through spam, and I WILL work to have all spammer 'store' pages shut down, regardless of where they are hosted.
ALL spammers, without exception, are thieving criminal scum who deserve to die.
Filters do not prevent the spam from hitting your ISP and costing them money, unless your ISP starts to deny access at the router table.
That actually isn't a bad idea, though. Get the SPEWS list and use it as a massive DENY table. Spammers will still ping your ISP's systems, but they won't get any further than that.
Who said that other points of view are not allowed? I wasn't saying that no one else was allowed to speak, I was offering an observation on the nature of SPEWS haters.
Where can you get a cheap 120GB SCSI drive?
I've a nice Adaptec card, the 18GB SCSI drive that I have in my machine still costs more now than the 120GB IDE drive that I stuffed in recently.
You should address another, common, misconception.
SPEWS does not block mail.
ISPs choose to block mail individually, on their own. Some ISPs choose to use one of SPEWS's lists (they keep two, one more 'aggressive' than the other) as a reference for blocking, but SPEWS itself does NOT prevent your mail from reaching its destination.
Anyone who claims otherwise is either ignorant or lying.
Did you ever ask in news.admin.net-abuse.email why you're still listed? People there are often very good at digging up the information, and it usually turns out that there are still spammers lingering on the network that your ISP has ignored.
SPEWS does not block anything. SPEWS LISTS IPs owned by known spam-friendly companies such as Cable and Wireless. Individual ISPs CHOOSE to block because they have decided that if a company like C&W, which openly tolerates abusive criminal activities from their customers, isn't going to clean up their act then there isn't any traffic worth accepting from them.
If everyone starts using SPEWS and you get blocked because no one wants C&W's traffic, that is NOT their problem and it is not the problem of SPEWS. Call C&W, tell them to stop openly tolerating criminal activity (such as theft of service, trespass to chattel and distributing pornographic material to minors), and then if they clean up their act, SPEWS will delist them.
The alternative is to have hundreds, if not thousands, of individual ISPs run their own private lists. That way, when C&W does finally clean up their act, they have to convince hundreds or thousands of individual people to remove them from the filters -- of course, by this time many of the admins who put the IP there might have moved on or forgotten the reason for the block in the first place. As such, C&W would stay in those hundreds or thousands of those individual blocklists and their netspace would be effectively worthless. Such was the fate of AGIS, who died the death of a thousand cuts, walled off from much of the Internet even when they did finally clean up their act.
And SPEWS does not just block blindly. You're either lying or stupid when you claim that it's just based on who they 'believe' to be spammers. SPEWS keeps documentation for their list entries, and it takes multiple spams and multiple ignored reports to the ISP before the list becomes expanded to include collateral damage.
The only people who complain about SPEWS are spammers and people who are too pig-headed to be bothered to learn how and why it is used.
My recommendation:
Call Qwest and keep bitching up a storm. They'll get sick of you eventually and they'll HAVE to act just to shut you up.
Of course, given that Qwest openly tolerates criminal activity, including DDoS attacks, from their customers, I suspect that their action might just be telling you that they don't want you as a customer since you aren't actually breaking the law.
Antispews is run by a known hack.
SPEWS is used because it works. It is NOT the job of my ISP to tell your ISP to kick off their spammers. If your upstream is providing an open haven for criminals, don't be surprised when no one wants traffic from your upstream.
Remember, your consulting company wasn't being blocked. Your consulting company didn't own the ISPs. SPEWS wasn't blocking anything (anyone who claims that SPEWS blocks is either ignorant or lying), SPEWS was merely listing IP addresses owned by the upstream provider. It isn't SPEWS's probem that your upstream is rogue and that no one wants their traffic.
Well, I'll check news sites tomorrow, but lots of them are going to be unreliable as they will likely be getting their information from the current news source.
Time will tell if this story is faek or rela.
I doubt that much. Only the name is copyrighted, and somehow I doubt that merely mentioning the name when discussing backwards compatability would qualify for royalty payments.
I wonder if they'll introudce a plot device as outlandish and unbelievable as Cyberdyne keeping offsite backups.
Naah. Too unbelievable.
99% of the SPAM I recieve is undesirable and expensive noise.
What's the other 1%? Desirable or cheap?
I cannot believe that you are seriously suggesting that we encourage criminal organizations to dump spammers into the ocean and drown them.
Think of the marine life who would be poisoned!
Better to just shoot them into a distant star. Not our sun, beacuse all of the hot gasses inside of spammers might cause it to go nova a bit early.
The US GC will not play Japanese games and vice versa. A 'boot disk' is supposedly on the way and should be released very soon that will allow for playing of out-of-country games.
Also, there is supposedly a very easy method (no extra chips required, though it does involve tinkering with the system) for modding the Japanese GC to play US games. Don't know if there is one for the US system.
...hand out lots of money. That gets them taken seriously by anyone who matters: legislators.
Another option would be to incorporate a quick-and-dirty Wine-like wrapper for the Windows Bink drivers to run the video files. Not what I'd like, not what I'd recommend, but it might work.
I'm not even sure if wine (or winex) can play Bink video...
I've been playing Icewind Dale II lately. No need to reboot. I just use Wine.
I've found that wine and winex will run more and more lately. When it doesn't run something, I just don't care to play it.
Mind you, I've held off on getting NWN specifically because there is no 'official' Linux support. It works in Wine, but Bioware promised native Linux support so they get my money only when that support becomes reality.
Porting the video and audio to new formats introduces a new problem.
The Linux client was supposed to be a simple download to be used with the default game distribution. Re-encoding all of the audio and video would likely require a new Linux-only game disc. That is not a good thing, because it was promised that the Linux client would be fully compatable with the Windows release.
Well, since I'm discussing preventative measures, it would do to make it a temporary solution. Perhaps have it run for only a month, then delete itself.