You are the sole IP owner of this new miraculous source of zero point energy and expenditure. Going to make billions upon billions of dollars. Be the next BG! I sir|madamn and honored to have read you and basked in the considerable faux light you cast.
Leave it to the AC to point out unworldly solutions to physical problems. Sheese.
I don't know which is funnier, the GP post or this one. Both condescending and holier than thou. God Damn! Almost makes me want to start thumping bibles or some such.
+2 virtual karma points awarded for parent post.:)
Interesting opinion. Do you have any references to bolster that bit of hot air? Besides the Torvold's bio.
That god sentance certainly has my curiosity peaked. It is certainly out of step for Linus.
I will however, totally agree with your supposition of 'being an engineer means being lazy'. Most of the times this is constructive laziness, wanting to simplify a process to the point of peak efficiency to reduce the work necessary to complete said task. Nothing wrong with that IMO.
I cannot stomach the words about personal convenience. Perhaps you have some sort of knowledge of Linus that I don't. But that sure sounds like you are using your own yardstick to measure somebody else.
Somebody should patent the process of applying for a patent of an idea that is not founded in real empirical data.
It's slightly recursive too. Geeks should love it! Heck, it's probably already been done, or at least tried. In fact, I'm surprised some geek hasn't hacked the patent office.
What are some of the causes of why sound starts skipping (cutting in and out), during heavy graphics operations?
Practically every computer I have worked on has acquired this problem as it got older. Yet, when the computer was purchased and for 3-4 years later, everything was just fine.
Out of any of those causes for those symptoms, are any of the solutions easily implemented without buying another graphics card/sound card*.
* I have tried this. The sound still skips on graphics intense games.
Give the user something they can relate to. Something they can attach feelings to. That's what wins the 'unwashed masses' over. This cold, boring, sterile dialog of Yes, No, Cancel has been done for years and some people still don't know what they mean in terms of the dialog they are clicking on. That's why users just click yes, they just want their shit to work, and clicking on yes is (th their mind) the best way to get it to work.
I like the grandparents idea. Give em 2 buttons, 'I accept the risks' and 'I have no idea what this means'. Heck, if browser designers wanted to, they could put a keyboard modifier that changes to text to that cold sterile buttons that some geeks have wet dreams over.
-Long time parent teacher of the do's and dont's of the Internet.
All they would have to do is completely support CSS 2.1. Maybe even do CSS3 support with all the extension for accessability for webpages. Bump up of the control of the printing device. Have CSS selectors that act for some of the less used options that are dead if they aren't there. Geek support will gradually come in. They won't like it, but they'll have to eventually admit standards are supported.
Then for the final business reason to keep IE. Make a.NET control that gives complete control over the manipulation and creation of Office documents. Yes, this will put at least 3 companies out of business. But this will also ensure (ensnare?) businesses.
Then everybody will have what they want. Business types just want excel/office for browing the Internet and the tech types will be able to code standards compliant web pages for their intranets.
Oh...and as a side note. Work on security a bit too. Personally, I don't see how they are going to fix it with backward compatability a overriding requirement. If they can't get rid of ActiveX, then their security problem won't go away.
Maybe in 100 years or so. Not many companies plan for time periods that long. Heck most companies it certainly seems like they don't plan longer than a year.
Bring up your idea with some science fiction writers to flesh out the details and then talk to The Long Now about the pie-in-the-sky stuff.
The/. mind bitched and complained about their 'rights' when the RIAA police was starting to knock on the P2P door (Napster).
Napster got shut down with a court order and finally a lawsuit. A dark day for P2P geeks everywhere. No matter, this just spawned new & improved versions of P2P for which to share the gooey caramel center of P2P music sharing.
Then the RIAA starting suing people./. group think spouted, "They are infringing our rights!" What they really meant was they are infringing our right to the free sharing of information.
1000s of lawsuits were settled. Most out of court just so the RIAA could make an example and teach the public at large that it was 'illegal' to download music. The public got the message. Sure, P2P music sharing still happens, but it isn't anywhere near what it used to be.
Geeks everywhere starting boycotting the music industry since they were boneheaded about adapting to the new information age of sharing. "So what!", they proclaimed, "I hate their tripe anyway! I still have movies to download!"
Then the MPAA, bolstered by the success of RIAA, started going after the P2P scene. Learning somewhat from the previous PR mistakes, they researched for a very long time to come up with a pretty good solution. Never found one that both sides could live with and decided to start with the litigation anyway (since they had all those logs from the research they did)./. group thinkers(tm) once agin arose to the occasion. "They make garbage too! I openly and civically disobey and mock the preview movie trailers telling me by downloading movies, I am putting keygrips out of a job!"
Still the MPAA persisted and succeeded in taking out vast swaths of the P2P bittorrent scene. Ahhh. The Internet can breath once again. It's not so choked up with that nasty bittorrent traffic. As least that is what the major backbones that have those IP taps on them say.
"No Fair!",/. group thinkers proclaimed, "They can't do that!" The Internet was meant to be free and you guys are ruining it!"
Hate to break it to you folks, but commercial interests have already subverted the Internet for their own business models. Why, how else could they pay for all those javascript popup companies?
Well now, in a truly original move, they (whoever they are, the Man(tm) no doubt) are starting to rally against P2P sharing of TV and Anime. Once again,/. groupthinkers are spouting off about their rights and how it should be free since it is captured from the air.
Umm...actually..no. That's not entirely true. see broadcasters have paid millions for the right to use the electromagnetic spectrum and billions more for the equipment to best utilize those frequencies to make money. Now those bratty P2Pers are messing it all up...again! (shakes fist randomly in air)
The newest attack on P2P will succeed. Lawsuits will be filed. ISPs will be subpoenad for their IP logs, and people will be hurt financially.
It's happening folks, and there ain't a damn thing you can do about it. The golden age of the Internet was gone long ago. The only way to reclaim part of it is to go completely underground. Encryption, private networks, and trusted communities. Most of which are starting to happen./rant
-FlynnMP3
* To be fair, Slashdot group think is a phenomenon of perception inside the human mind. Of course not everybody think the ways the very vocal minority thinks. The majority with their dimuinutive voices of reason tend to get drowned out in the pompous, showy, and hyperbolic arguments that the minority has.
Course, that still doesn't change perception. As any sales business person will tell you, "Perception is reality. Or it's so close it doesn't matter that it's not completely right."
Yeah. That's totally great that the W3C says that.
Here's a bit of a clue:
It is no longer an Internet that allows the free sharing of information. It has been changed by brute force of business to use it for whatever the heck they want. And the courts are saying, "Yep! Go ahead and do that!"
The golden age of the Internet has passed at least 5 years ago.
I can't begin to list all the reasons why fansubbers do what they do. All I know is I appreciate the service they provide. Since they are providing content that is interesting to me. The 'official' channels of distribution are failing. They are just bitching because it's now big enough so their accountants are saying they are loosing x millions of dollars over this.
Bullshit. Adapt or wither away.
The digital lifestyle is here. Get with the times big name distributors and provide a way for your Internet userbase to get the content legally. That means either changing the laws or providing some sort of Internet mandate of fair use.
Sure once people have something for free they are ill pressed to start paying for it. Unless it offers something of value to them.
How about:
1) Better quality. 2) Good translations. 3) Non-overbearing DRM (although I prefer no DRM).
Once they provide those, Internet anime fans will pay for it. Unlike now, the fansubbers provide everything they want. Beat em at their own game.
Has anybody figured out the file(s) that Steam uses for offline authentication?
Force Steam into offline mode, back up those files somewhere, then play as normal. Next time the Steam servers hickup, disable your NIC, restore those offline authentication file(s) and play as normal.
Assuming the offline authentication files don't change each time or are timestamped with aging.
I hope vALVE is trying to figure out a way to keep offline mode working without re-authenticating each time. That sounds like some marketing requirement anyway. What tech person in their right mind would allow tech to only work in offline mode as long as it had online access at the time. (not entirely accurate statement, but it's so close in execution it may as well be).
I've done the job where the PHB insisted that the web programming department does only IE development. It sucked HUGE. 5 months later I quit that job.
Now I am working at a job where one of the conditions for me to work for them was the web programming department is required to write for W3C compliancy. All my friends thought I was nuts, placing these demands when the job market was so shakey. It was a gamble, but it payed off. So far everything our web programming department has put out is 100% W3C compliant first, then a few hacks to get IE browsers to render the pages well.
-FlynnMP3
You have been successfully trolled
on
Is IRC All Bad?
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· Score: 1
Did any of you stop to think that the purpose of said analysis was not accuracy? I am willing to bet the only purpose of it was to analyze the PROCESS of gathering statistics.
- O R -
With all the tinfoils hats around here. I'm sure somebody thought of the point that the actual study was influenced by big media business who is threatened by P2P and (now the new evil) IRC.
- O R -
This is just some guys opinion and he happened to raise the ire of plenty of geeks. That's the Internet for you. Give absolutely anybody a voice to stir up the shitstorm. Bah! Credentials. We don't need no credentials.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Unless you happen to believe that perception is reality. Which in marketing, it often is. Or stately more acurately, it becomes real enough.
Slashdot has become much more enjoyable for me once I followed this advice: Every post modded as funny gets an -4 extra modifier from my preferences. Try it, and maybe your enjoyment of/. will go up.
Peter Jackson filmed LOTR with the permission of the Tolkien estate, correct?
According to the extras in "Return of the King Extended Edition", Tolkien sold the rights that allowed his work LOTR to be made into a movie. The stated reason was Tolkien himself thought the fictional work was not able to be made into a film. Given the unique style of the writing and the pacing of the story.
Does that mean Peter Jackson didn't get permission from the Tolkien estate? No, it does not. Jackson may of gotten permission in the due course of investigation on what it would take to make these films. He may of gotten permission just because it was the right thing to do. Jackson certainly gives the impression that his work on the trilogy was about Getting it Right(tm). To honour Tolkien.
What it does speak to is the existing political climate surrounding Intellectual Property. Most everybody who does anything on a big scale with entertainment is accutely aware of the "issues" with sharing and distributing works. Whether it be (currently) legal or not.
To me, this is the central issue. What is currently legal is a function of big business interests simply because they found a market in which the common man will *buy* this stuff. Supporting a business model allowing others to get very rich off of the desires of others.
Except in this case I think the public is starting to become aware of this simple fact and are fighting back since they are pissed off somebody is making fistfulls of money and noteriety and it's not *them*. The pattern of change is already happening. I've held this position for a long time. That is the current distribution models for entertainment will change, but it will take at least 3 generations for it to do so. Basically, the old school thinkers have to die off and be replaced with modern school thinkers.
In the end, I do think that there will be a clear seperation of works that can be distributed freely and works that will require permission. Kind of like Creative Commons License and the Gnu Public License.
This is easily taken care of. When a story is submitted, include an option that reads:
Original content can be mirrored for 24 hours upon story approval? Yes [ ] No [ ]
There are some mechanics involved with this. Such as notification of story approval to original content provider. click rate data capturing and forwarding.
As long as the option exists for automatic approved mirroring, then there is nobody to blame but the story submitter. Besides, it would finally give some accountability to story submitters. It would take time, but the system would even itself out.
Um..just FYI... widescreen edition and the letterboxed edition are the same thing.:)
While it certainly is possible that it could mean the same thing, I highly doubt it. The devil is in the details. Obswerve...
1) Widescreen is a horizontally compressed image that when played back is stretched horizontally to restore the aspect ratio of the encoded source. Think tall skinny circle recorded on the DVD and normal round circle when played. Hence the black bars at the top and bottom when played on a 4:3 TV. There is no video signal in those regions but the playback device puts the black bars in to have the appropriate vsynch signals and such.
2) Letterbox does not compress the source material at all. What it does do is put the black bars on the top and bottom of the picture to fake widescreen aspect ratio and that is recorded on the DVD that way. Think a fully round circle with the top and bottom clipped off.
There are other details, as explained here http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=29 6 and while the terms can and are used interchangably, there are still some mastering studios and marketdroids that still screw it up. This was probably what this video geek's concern was.
A well thought out and truthful post on slahdot. Quite the rarety. I agree with dang near all if it. Most people are too sucked in by consumerism to objectively realize what is happening to them. They could care less. Disposable incomes are at an all time high in America. Advertisers want their share of it. Which in turn allows creation of more crap we don't need.
My computer, as an example, is a pretty good blend of higher end hardware being used for mostly -- games. I know that. I embrace that idea and thought completely. If the computer got damaged or ceased to work, it wouldn't be a big deal. Granted, I would probably find a way to replace to it. But the society important things would still get done without the aid of a computer. Those tasks mainly involve money changing owners (bills, taxes, etc.)
I know plenty of people with insanely powerful computers that do nothing but check email, read the latest movie reviews, and maintain a spreadsheet to budget the household money. All activities that could be replaced with a calculator, a phone, and the paper. Yet they still have to have that 2000 dollar silicon heap.
Sigh. Whatever. It's their money.
-FlynnMP3
Rumors for Nerds, stuff that doesn't matter
on
SCO.com Defaced
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Ooo. A hacked image has been placed on the SCO website. Alert all the SCO haters of the world! (long list granted)
I dislike SCO's business practices as much as the next/.er, but deliberately and maliciously hacking their website certainly doesn't help the business hat's outlook at the open source community.
Yes I know there probably is no corrolation between some script kiddie and the Open Source movement. It's all impressions anyway.
Free clue for the would-be SCO hackers out there: SCO makes themselves look like idiots - very well I might add. They certainly don't need your help.
Now I gotta get my C64 out of the closet and get me some of that action.
*curses and waves fist in what I hope is your general direction*
-FlynnMP3
Ps. Thanks for the good belly laugh.
Re:I think this is a mistake...
on
The VHS is Dead
·
· Score: 1
You and me both buddy!
When I purchased my Tivo for myself I bit the bullet and payed for the lifetime subscription. As much as I use the thing, this was definitely the better value for me. The year I bought a Tivo for my parents, I did the same thing. It's cruel (IMO) to give a gift that has a monthly charge (unless you ask them first).
Not sure if Tivo even offers that lifetime subscription anymore. I realize that most purchasers won't have the upfront funds to pay for it anyway, and Tivo was counting on that.
Re:Betamax gets the last laugh
on
The VHS is Dead
·
· Score: 1
You get what you pay for. Buy a crappy DVD player, expect to get crappy playback.
Manufacturers all have to support the DVD spec. But it's the interpretation of that specifics that determines the quality of the player. Also, some chip manufacturers for DVD players make a conscious decision to not support some of the DVD spec. One feature that gets frequently dropped is multi-angle support. What does this mean for the consumer? It is now necessary for them to *research* the quality of the item they are buying. Caveat Emptor. Same as it's always been.
About the layer change: Most, but not all, DVD discs have the second layer recorded in a reverse spiral in respect to the first layer. All the player needs to do is a very small focus change and a small seek to find the start of the second layer. In the more spendy DVD players, they *do* have a good size buffer to eliminate the layer change lurch. The cheaper ones do not. Or they have slower seek times. Or bad optics. Or bad optic control. Any number of reasons that you may be seeing this. Only in a few rare cases is the DVD disc authored or pressed so badly to cause problems for a well engineered DVD player.:)
Slashdot Mirror
Right...
You are the sole IP owner of this new miraculous source of zero point energy and expenditure. Going to make billions upon billions of dollars. Be the next BG! I sir|madamn and honored to have read you and basked in the considerable faux light you cast.
Leave it to the AC to point out unworldly solutions to physical problems. Sheese.
-FlynnMP3
ROFL!
:)
I don't know which is funnier, the GP post or this one. Both condescending and holier than thou. God Damn! Almost makes me want to start thumping bibles or some such.
+2 virtual karma points awarded for parent post.
Interesting opinion. Do you have any references to bolster that bit of hot air? Besides the Torvold's bio.
That god sentance certainly has my curiosity peaked. It is certainly out of step for Linus.
I will however, totally agree with your supposition of 'being an engineer means being lazy'. Most of the times this is constructive laziness, wanting to simplify a process to the point of peak efficiency to reduce the work necessary to complete said task. Nothing wrong with that IMO.
I cannot stomach the words about personal convenience. Perhaps you have some sort of knowledge of Linus that I don't. But that sure sounds like you are using your own yardstick to measure somebody else.
You should know that never works well.
-FlynnMP3
Somebody should patent the process of applying for a patent of an idea that is not founded in real empirical data.
It's slightly recursive too. Geeks should love it! Heck, it's probably already been done, or at least tried. In fact, I'm surprised some geek hasn't hacked the patent office.
-FlynnMP3
4. People who don't like April Fools jokes, because they are most often contrived, juvenile, and downright mean to your fellow person.
What are some of the causes of why sound starts skipping (cutting in and out), during heavy graphics operations?
Practically every computer I have worked on has acquired this problem as it got older. Yet, when the computer was purchased and for 3-4 years later, everything was just fine.
Out of any of those causes for those symptoms, are any of the solutions easily implemented without buying another graphics card/sound card*.
* I have tried this. The sound still skips on graphics intense games.
Who died and made you uber geek? :P
Give the user something they can relate to. Something they can attach feelings to. That's what wins the 'unwashed masses' over. This cold, boring, sterile dialog of Yes, No, Cancel has been done for years and some people still don't know what they mean in terms of the dialog they are clicking on. That's why users just click yes, they just want their shit to work, and clicking on yes is (th their mind) the best way to get it to work.
I like the grandparents idea. Give em 2 buttons, 'I accept the risks' and 'I have no idea what this means'. Heck, if browser designers wanted to, they could put a keyboard modifier that changes to text to that cold sterile buttons that some geeks have wet dreams over.
-Long time parent teacher of the do's and dont's of the Internet.
All they would have to do is completely support CSS 2.1. Maybe even do CSS3 support with all the extension for accessability for webpages. Bump up of the control of the printing device. Have CSS selectors that act for some of the less used options that are dead if they aren't there. Geek support will gradually come in. They won't like it, but they'll have to eventually admit standards are supported.
.NET control that gives complete control over the manipulation and creation of Office documents. Yes, this will put at least 3 companies out of business. But this will also ensure (ensnare?) businesses.
Then for the final business reason to keep IE. Make a
Then everybody will have what they want. Business types just want excel/office for browing the Internet and the tech types will be able to code standards compliant web pages for their intranets.
Oh...and as a side note. Work on security a bit too. Personally, I don't see how they are going to fix it with backward compatability a overriding requirement. If they can't get rid of ActiveX, then their security problem won't go away.
-I hate unripe sigs.
Maybe in 100 years or so. Not many companies plan for time periods that long. Heck most companies it certainly seems like they don't plan longer than a year.
Bring up your idea with some science fiction writers to flesh out the details and then talk to The Long Now about the pie-in-the-sky stuff.
Thanks.
Slashdot group think* in full force again I see.
/. mind bitched and complained about their 'rights' when the RIAA police was starting to knock on the P2P door (Napster).
/. group think spouted, "They are infringing our rights!" What they really meant was they are infringing our right to the free sharing of information.
/. group thinkers(tm) once agin arose to the occasion. "They make garbage too! I openly and civically disobey and mock the preview movie trailers telling me by downloading movies, I am putting keygrips out of a job!"
/. group thinkers proclaimed, "They can't do that!" The Internet was meant to be free and you guys are ruining it!"
/. groupthinkers are spouting off about their rights and how it should be free since it is captured from the air.
/rant
The
Napster got shut down with a court order and finally a lawsuit. A dark day for P2P geeks everywhere. No matter, this just spawned new & improved versions of P2P for which to share the gooey caramel center of P2P music sharing.
Then the RIAA starting suing people.
1000s of lawsuits were settled. Most out of court just so the RIAA could make an example and teach the public at large that it was 'illegal' to download music. The public got the message. Sure, P2P music sharing still happens, but it isn't anywhere near what it used to be.
Geeks everywhere starting boycotting the music industry since they were boneheaded about adapting to the new information age of sharing. "So what!", they proclaimed, "I hate their tripe anyway! I still have movies to download!"
Then the MPAA, bolstered by the success of RIAA, started going after the P2P scene. Learning somewhat from the previous PR mistakes, they researched for a very long time to come up with a pretty good solution. Never found one that both sides could live with and decided to start with the litigation anyway (since they had all those logs from the research they did).
Still the MPAA persisted and succeeded in taking out vast swaths of the P2P bittorrent scene. Ahhh. The Internet can breath once again. It's not so choked up with that nasty bittorrent traffic. As least that is what the major backbones that have those IP taps on them say.
"No Fair!",
Hate to break it to you folks, but commercial interests have already subverted the Internet for their own business models. Why, how else could they pay for all those javascript popup companies?
Well now, in a truly original move, they (whoever they are, the Man(tm) no doubt) are starting to rally against P2P sharing of TV and Anime. Once again,
Umm...actually..no. That's not entirely true. see broadcasters have paid millions for the right to use the electromagnetic spectrum and billions more for the equipment to best utilize those frequencies to make money. Now those bratty P2Pers are messing it all up...again! (shakes fist randomly in air)
The newest attack on P2P will succeed. Lawsuits will be filed. ISPs will be subpoenad for their IP logs, and people will be hurt financially.
It's happening folks, and there ain't a damn thing you can do about it. The golden age of the Internet was gone long ago. The only way to reclaim part of it is to go completely underground. Encryption, private networks, and trusted communities. Most of which are starting to happen.
-FlynnMP3
* To be fair, Slashdot group think is a phenomenon of perception inside the human mind. Of course not everybody think the ways the very vocal minority thinks. The majority with their dimuinutive voices of reason tend to get drowned out in the pompous, showy, and hyperbolic arguments that the minority has.
Course, that still doesn't change perception. As any sales business person will tell you, "Perception is reality. Or it's so close it doesn't matter that it's not completely right."
Yeah. That's totally great that the W3C says that.
Here's a bit of a clue:
It is no longer an Internet that allows the free sharing of information. It has been changed by brute force of business to use it for whatever the heck they want. And the courts are saying, "Yep! Go ahead and do that!"
The golden age of the Internet has passed at least 5 years ago.
Maybe there is hope for I2.
I can't begin to list all the reasons why fansubbers do what they do. All I know is I appreciate the service they provide. Since they are providing content that is interesting to me. The 'official' channels of distribution are failing. They are just bitching because it's now big enough so their accountants are saying they are loosing x millions of dollars over this.
Bullshit. Adapt or wither away.
The digital lifestyle is here. Get with the times big name distributors and provide a way for your Internet userbase to get the content legally. That means either changing the laws or providing some sort of Internet mandate of fair use.
Sure once people have something for free they are ill pressed to start paying for it. Unless it offers something of value to them.
How about:
1) Better quality.
2) Good translations.
3) Non-overbearing DRM (although I prefer no DRM).
Once they provide those, Internet anime fans will pay for it. Unlike now, the fansubbers provide everything they want. Beat em at their own game.
Am I the anly one who sees this solution?
*sheese*
-FlynnMP3
Has anybody figured out the file(s) that Steam uses for offline authentication?
Force Steam into offline mode, back up those files somewhere, then play as normal. Next time the Steam servers hickup, disable your NIC, restore those offline authentication file(s) and play as normal.
Assuming the offline authentication files don't change each time or are timestamped with aging.
I hope vALVE is trying to figure out a way to keep offline mode working without re-authenticating each time. That sounds like some marketing requirement anyway. What tech person in their right mind would allow tech to only work in offline mode as long as it had online access at the time. (not entirely accurate statement, but it's so close in execution it may as well be).
Oh well. *crosses fingers*
-FlynnMP3
Hear Hear!
I've done the job where the PHB insisted that the web programming department does only IE development. It sucked HUGE. 5 months later I quit that job.
Now I am working at a job where one of the conditions for me to work for them was the web programming department is required to write for W3C compliancy. All my friends thought I was nuts, placing these demands when the job market was so shakey. It was a gamble, but it payed off. So far everything our web programming department has put out is 100% W3C compliant first, then a few hacks to get IE browsers to render the pages well.
-FlynnMP3
Did any of you stop to think that the purpose of said analysis was not accuracy? I am willing to bet the only purpose of it was to analyze the PROCESS of gathering statistics.
- O R -
With all the tinfoils hats around here. I'm sure somebody thought of the point that the actual study was influenced by big media business who is threatened by P2P and (now the new evil) IRC.
- O R -
This is just some guys opinion and he happened to raise the ire of plenty of geeks. That's the Internet for you. Give absolutely anybody a voice to stir up the shitstorm. Bah! Credentials. We don't need no credentials.
Nothing to see here, move along.
Unless you happen to believe that perception is reality. Which in marketing, it often is. Or stately more acurately, it becomes real enough.
-FlynnMP3
This isn't funny
/. will go up.
Slashdot has become much more enjoyable for me once I followed this advice: Every post modded as funny gets an -4 extra modifier from my preferences. Try it, and maybe your enjoyment of
-FlynnMP3
Peter Jackson filmed LOTR with the permission of the Tolkien estate, correct?
According to the extras in "Return of the King Extended Edition", Tolkien sold the rights that allowed his work LOTR to be made into a movie. The stated reason was Tolkien himself thought the fictional work was not able to be made into a film. Given the unique style of the writing and the pacing of the story.
Does that mean Peter Jackson didn't get permission from the Tolkien estate? No, it does not. Jackson may of gotten permission in the due course of investigation on what it would take to make these films. He may of gotten permission just because it was the right thing to do. Jackson certainly gives the impression that his work on the trilogy was about Getting it Right(tm). To honour Tolkien.
What it does speak to is the existing political climate surrounding Intellectual Property. Most everybody who does anything on a big scale with entertainment is accutely aware of the "issues" with sharing and distributing works. Whether it be (currently) legal or not.
To me, this is the central issue. What is currently legal is a function of big business interests simply because they found a market in which the common man will *buy* this stuff. Supporting a business model allowing others to get very rich off of the desires of others.
Except in this case I think the public is starting to become aware of this simple fact and are fighting back since they are pissed off somebody is making fistfulls of money and noteriety and it's not *them*. The pattern of change is already happening. I've held this position for a long time. That is the current distribution models for entertainment will change, but it will take at least 3 generations for it to do so. Basically, the old school thinkers have to die off and be replaced with modern school thinkers.
In the end, I do think that there will be a clear seperation of works that can be distributed freely and works that will require permission. Kind of like Creative Commons License and the Gnu Public License.
-FlynnMP3
"Small steps Ellie.....small steps." -Contact
Welcome the new robotic flying insect eating overlords!
HelloOOo?! McFly?
This is easily taken care of. When a story is submitted, include an option that reads:
Original content can be mirrored for 24 hours upon story approval? Yes [ ] No [ ]
There are some mechanics involved with this. Such as notification of story approval to original content provider. click rate data capturing and forwarding.
As long as the option exists for automatic approved mirroring, then there is nobody to blame but the story submitter. Besides, it would finally give some accountability to story submitters. It would take time, but the system would even itself out.
Just think about it.
-FlynnMP3
Um..just FYI... widescreen edition and the letterboxed edition are the same thing. :)
9 6 and while the terms can and are used interchangably, there are still some mastering studios and marketdroids that still screw it up. This was probably what this video geek's concern was.
While it certainly is possible that it could mean the same thing, I highly doubt it. The devil is in the details. Obswerve...
1) Widescreen is a horizontally compressed image that when played back is stretched horizontally to restore the aspect ratio of the encoded source. Think tall skinny circle recorded on the DVD and normal round circle when played. Hence the black bars at the top and bottom when played on a 4:3 TV. There is no video signal in those regions but the playback device puts the black bars in to have the appropriate vsynch signals and such.
2) Letterbox does not compress the source material at all. What it does do is put the black bars on the top and bottom of the picture to fake widescreen aspect ratio and that is recorded on the DVD that way. Think a fully round circle with the top and bottom clipped off.
There are other details, as explained here http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=2
-FlynnMP3
A well thought out and truthful post on slahdot. Quite the rarety. I agree with dang near all if it. Most people are too sucked in by consumerism to objectively realize what is happening to them. They could care less. Disposable incomes are at an all time high in America. Advertisers want their share of it. Which in turn allows creation of more crap we don't need.
My computer, as an example, is a pretty good blend of higher end hardware being used for mostly -- games. I know that. I embrace that idea and thought completely. If the computer got damaged or ceased to work, it wouldn't be a big deal. Granted, I would probably find a way to replace to it. But the society important things would still get done without the aid of a computer. Those tasks mainly involve money changing owners (bills, taxes, etc.)
I know plenty of people with insanely powerful computers that do nothing but check email, read the latest movie reviews, and maintain a spreadsheet to budget the household money. All activities that could be replaced with a calculator, a phone, and the paper. Yet they still have to have that 2000 dollar silicon heap.
Sigh. Whatever. It's their money.
-FlynnMP3
Ooo. A hacked image has been placed on the SCO website. Alert all the SCO haters of the world! (long list granted)
/.er, but deliberately and maliciously hacking their website certainly doesn't help the business hat's outlook at the open source community.
I dislike SCO's business practices as much as the next
Yes I know there probably is no corrolation between some script kiddie and the Open Source movement. It's all impressions anyway.
Free clue for the would-be SCO hackers out there: SCO makes themselves look like idiots - very well I might add. They certainly don't need your help.
-FlynnMP3
DAMN YOU!!!
Now I gotta get my C64 out of the closet and get me some of that action.
*curses and waves fist in what I hope is your general direction*
-FlynnMP3
Ps. Thanks for the good belly laugh.
You and me both buddy!
When I purchased my Tivo for myself I bit the bullet and payed for the lifetime subscription. As much as I use the thing, this was definitely the better value for me. The year I bought a Tivo for my parents, I did the same thing. It's cruel (IMO) to give a gift that has a monthly charge (unless you ask them first).
Not sure if Tivo even offers that lifetime subscription anymore. I realize that most purchasers won't have the upfront funds to pay for it anyway, and Tivo was counting on that.
You get what you pay for. Buy a crappy DVD player, expect to get crappy playback.
:)
Manufacturers all have to support the DVD spec. But it's the interpretation of that specifics that determines the quality of the player. Also, some chip manufacturers for DVD players make a conscious decision to not support some of the DVD spec. One feature that gets frequently dropped is multi-angle support. What does this mean for the consumer? It is now necessary for them to *research* the quality of the item they are buying. Caveat Emptor. Same as it's always been.
About the layer change: Most, but not all, DVD discs have the second layer recorded in a reverse spiral in respect to the first layer. All the player needs to do is a very small focus change and a small seek to find the start of the second layer. In the more spendy DVD players, they *do* have a good size buffer to eliminate the layer change lurch. The cheaper ones do not. Or they have slower seek times. Or bad optics. Or bad optic control. Any number of reasons that you may be seeing this. Only in a few rare cases is the DVD disc authored or pressed so badly to cause problems for a well engineered DVD player.