...and it's not good news. Let's just say that it doesn't look like they're focusing on talent, here...
Part of a pattern with this administration.
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Politicizing Science
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· Score: 2
Admittedly, independent review boards are not perfect - they can & will be influenced, as with any other real world review system (juries, anyone?).
This type of board-packing, however, is completely shameless, and unfortunately is also perfectly consistent with the administration's "top-down" approach to everything.
When Bush & Co. ran for office, they were forthright about wanting to run the country like a business; however, everyone thought he meant "efficiently, with less waste", not "as a way to make money for the people at the top as quickly as possible, ignoring the actual accepted methods of governance, including listening to anyone, whenever possible".
I'm actually beginning to miss Clinton's disingenuity; he at least had the shame to try and cover up his malfeasance and two-facedness.
I guess we can only hope that Bush + Cheney are infected with one of the diseases that gov't stem cell research was working on. Ah...
Re:I've been waiting so long for this...
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Open Source Art?
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· Score: 2
I guess that I wasn't detailed enough in regards to explaining the experience; while many of the working differences were just that - working differences - however, as soon as people began to realize just how wide the gap between source code layout and the rendered browser layout actually is, interesting play began creeping in. At first these were text of jokes in the comments, then back-and-forth conversations between people working on the same pages, then games of "here's a line of a story, find the page where I hid the next line", then ASCII-ish art (made by grouping tags in particular patterns), and on an on.
And no, The boss never noticed anything (this was not a well-organized project by any means).
Anyway, I think this passes the threshhold from "quirky" to "expressive". (I've seen similar things (though not quite so time-consuming and off-the-wall) in other people's code since so I skipped my personal example, but there it is now).
So, a more elaborate version of my original point is that someone can find interesting, expressive things to do in almost any mundane thing, but some mundane things/processes/whatever are more flexible and forgiving of "messing with them".
An while I agree with your assessment that opening envelopes is not a naturally expressive medium, I would say that progam source code seems to fall much, much closer to that category (though not falling dead center in the middle as, for example, paint does ).
BTW, sorry your first job sucked so badly. My second job out involved working for DEC during the days of doom. Blech.
I've been waiting so long for this...
on
Open Source Art?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
...I come from an art school background (now coding db-backed applications for websites, came to the field via graphic design like everyone else graduating from art school in the late 90s...), and have _long_ considered that code reflects much more about a program than the utilitarian aspects of a) "what does this program do?" and b) "how well is it engineered?".
My first "real" (snort!) job coming out of school was working with a team of other grads on the schools' website - within a week we were all able to recognize each other's code/quirks. And this was just plain vanilla HTML (among the least expressive of languages)!
the more interesting aspect is that of "code as art", in which the particulars of implementation (esp. the person doing the implementation) can invoke an aesthetic response, above and beyond the utility of that implementation. (or, in other terms, "much of what makes art interesting is that which is both pleasing and useless").
Anyway, I'm just happy to see that coding is beginning to be recognized as an expressive medium - whether it will ever be considered as such indpendently of the final product, I rather doubt (even printmaker's original plates/stones/etc. are rarely considered outside the context of an actual print run, and that medium is old old old...)...
tangent: this is perhaps one aspect in which open source coding (may not) necessarily result in the most "aesthetically pleasing" code; while the actual architecture of the program may be elegant and pleasing, the idiosyncrasies of any particular coder will be overwhelmed by multiple contributions to a project, (outside of the project leads who may be able to enshrining their own quirks as style/pattern requirements). However, I tend to find most "art by committee" to be lacking a very strong vision, and instead ends up becoming a whole ends up as simply the sum of its parts.
I may be wrong, just throwing the idea out there!
another great LOTR lego site...
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LoTR:LEGO Originals
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· Score: 4, Informative
I actually prefer this approach, because although some of the character design details aren't as well executed as in the posted article (this guy is using more generic legos), he's going much further overall, re-creating the story with approprately composed and lit photographs. Kick-ass!
Also, the humorous element of using legos is more apparent - the Moria "Watcher in the Water" is one of the funniest single images I saw on the web this year (yeah, I'm a Tolkien geek _and_ a lego geek. Watch out, ladies!)
BTW, this is part of a larger collection of fun lego pages, here's the main directory.
Please point out to me where the article says that the photographer was hired on a "work-for-hire" basis; I may have missed this. Unless this is the case, then we can't say for certain either way. The same goes for the actual level of "price gouging" in regards to the digital photo catalog.
I _do_ know, however, that wedding photography is a traditionally a rather expensive luxury/service, and that as such, people tend to put some effort into shopping around in order to get the most bang for the buck. In this case, it seems to me that the shopper is rather to blame for not asking out the digital pricing ahead of time, or at least indicating an interest/preference in digital versions.
So although I can't say 100% who is "in the right", I _will_ say "caveat emptor"!
Explain to me how the photgrapher is a thief in this case; it seems to me that the groom agreed to a contract before satisfying himself as to the terms of service; rather, he went ahead an assumed that how he thought things should be, would be. This is naive (esp. when the groom appears to have been aware that an analog camera was to be used, which should have been a "red flag" if he wanted digital copies), and you can't blame the photographer for his lack of foresight.
Not that the photographer is necessarily in in the right either - a preferable solution would be to provide tiered digital service - by providing a catalog of screen-resolution images (unobtrusively watermarked with studio contact information so that recipients could obtain a physical print/hi-res filefrom the studio) at a relatively inexpensive rate, and the hi-res images at a greatly expanded price (perhaps even higher than what she had quoted for the CD she was actually offering).
This could even be broken down further, such that the bride and groom could pay piecemeal for the hi-res versions of the images that they want, which in some cases may be less expensive than obtaining the complete catalog.
In any case, it is naive to think that the photographer's labor/investment (in converting high-end negatives to digital format) is not worth paying for (even if this process is outsourced, someone is investing time/money in the process); therefore, this should be considered an extra cost, in addition to the cost of labor, developing photos, and putting together a catalog.
Do some of these material/transfer costs "go away" should a pro. photgrapher use digital cameras? Yes, but at the current time there are limitations to what can be done with these cameras, and so we will be in a "transfer period" for some time while technical details and training is taken care of; in the meantime, it is silly to assume that one should get digital cost savings when contracting for analog photo work.
Ultimately, it seems to me that article's author has point, but that this is overshadowed by taking a rather extreme position, mostly because he lost an argument with his father-in-law.
I'd say to get a life, but I'm at work on Saturday night. Alas!
Please mod the parent up; while there are ahost of unaddressed issues IRT how this sort of effort could be undertaken, I think that the creation of an accepted infrastructure (not just tech., but extending to communications with infected admins) needs to be established that will enable semi-automated fixing of infected/infectable boxes on networks.
Do I think that their should be virii that go around an infect/fix your box for you? No, varying distributions would make this a nightmare, and the liability issues involved would make anyone (with even the best intentions and highest technical skill) insane to even try such an approach.
Rather, there needs to be, at a minimum, an accepted method of notifying the admin/primary user of "box X" that their system has been rooted; this notification could include some sort of pointer to (distro-specific? security-vendor-implementation-specific?) registered info about the virus.
this appears to me to be the the best role for a "benevolent virus" (in this case, more of a network scanner/meta-virus, as actual infection is not necessary) - by detecting possible routes of infection/actual infection on a system, and warning that system of possible/actual infections.
A distro could (based on this warning notification) wrap some nice end-user warning/auto-update functionality around the registered virus info.
In other words, the newbie user doesn't nec. have to actively check for updates; rather, others on their network will intermittently scan for "open" boxes, and notify those machines/users of their status (this isn't much different from what a sysadmin on a LAN does, but in a more decentralized manner). Think of it as a sort of semi-automated neighborhood watch.
Are there holes to this approach? Is this politically/technically complicated? Certainly.
However, this is definitely a case where I see that the "mediocre user" needs to be accomodated - and educated/hand-held, even if just a little bit at a time - into keeping their boxes maintained correctly. Otherwise they simply won't be able to keep up.
Besides, I would assume that a community in which network effects are so well exploited IRT generating code should have some excellent ideas IRT automating notification throughout local networks.
...rather, this looks like some sort of (centralized) email-address registry which can be accessed by e-mail clients/servers to look for a more recent version of an out-of-date e-mail address.
in other words, this is little more than an internet-based look-up table of e-mail addresses (with obsolete addresses pointing to the most recent address) + protocols for accessing that look-up table.
in my (admittedly cursory) of the patent, it doesn't seem to overlap with server-specific e-mail forwarding (i.e. what is normally done with e-mail forwarding). this isn't to say that this isn't a silly/sleazy patent, but rather that this won't necessarily interfere with how people currently handle e-mail forwarding (if someone sees an element of overlap that I am missing, please point it out!).
Not that any of this is clear from the write-up, of course; sometimes I wish that passing reading comprehension and composition courses was mandatory for internet usage... then I think again, because ninjas are awesome.
"the new Sony DVD(\+|\-)R(|W) Foo2002! Now super-easy for you and your family!"
Even funnier, this won't help much with limiting the playback confusion - some of these formats are data-centric, others video player-centric... and do _any_ of these encompass the Audio standard?
please read the whitepaper and learn about the tech.
you seem to imply that this technology is like overclocking (i.e. an unstable hack), but it is not.
rather, MV's tech is an mechanism built by (silicon chip manufacturing) engineers with industrial precision performance specs to perform a specific task.
Please read the white paper - the Maxivision tech is a relatively cheap (less than 10% the cost of digital) retrofit to existing projector models, allowing both existing film (24 fps standard 35mm) or Maxivision (24 fps MV or 48 fps MV) to play.
I don't recall the specific requirements for cameras, but I believe that the MV process is also a retrofit for those.
I think you make a valid argument re: the greater costs of 48fps Maxivision, but that's not the basis of my argument, so I'm gonna put some numbers on the table to better focus on why I think widespread adoption of MV makes sense.
OK, let's assume that every screen in the U.S. (~5000 screens, I don't think _anything_ has ever released that wide) is going to show a newly released movie - how much will this cost to distribute?
standard 35mm @ 24fps = $6000 print, $100 s/h cost: $30.5 M
owch, that sure does cost a lot - but this is what they're already doing...
MV 35mm @ 48fps = $9000 print, $150 s/h (50% more film) cost: $45.75 M
This is where I agree with you somewhat - I could see Hollywood bean counters becoming nervous about investing an additional $15M in the distribution of a film (also assume an additional $5M - $10M in production costs -); however, I would bet that "event film" releases would be distibuted in both 24fps versions and 48 fps versions, a la Attack of the Clones film/digital releases, and thus mitigating the overall cost increase).
MV 35mm @ 24fps = $4500 print, $75 s/h (25% less film) cost: $22.875 M
This is where I see the sweet spot - theater owners can cheaply "upgrade" their systems (with jitter-free projection), have the option to display 24 fps standard, 24 fps MV, and 48 fps MV, and studios save MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in distribution costs.
At an approximate one-time cost of $10K per upgrade, studios could provide a MV-upgraded projector to every theater in the U.S. for $5 M, and they would make up the cost of that in the savings on distributing 3-4 regular releases (2-5 months timeframes), with continuous savings on distribution going forward.
Compare this "everyone saves $" approach to digital distribution, in which the upgrade is a) an order of magnitude more expensive for the theater owners and b) incompatible with the majority of existing (and most future) releases.
I'm not saying that digital will never be better, just that in its current incarnation it doesn't make the numbers. $150,000 for a projector that can't play existing films and will be obsolete within 5 years? Neither the studios nor the theater owners currently want to pay for that.
MV (24 more than 48) makes economic sense - and hopefully it (or something like it) will be promoted by theater owners once the "digital mania" wears off a bit, something which has already started thanks to the less-than-profitable reception of the digital version of Attack of the Clones.
Read my comment again, as well as the white paper on the maxivision site. 24 fps films (existing and future) could be distributed _on_film_ at less cost (both in the film production end and on the shipping end) due to the facts that films shot at 24 fps could be printed with "closer" frames, thus removing ~25% of the amount of film needed to display a current-day film.
Or, in short, Maxivision offers signficant savings with minimum infrastructure investment. And existing films even get jitter-free projection.
Think of it as an upgrade of your existing home computer, vs. throwing everything out and buying new. Only hardcore tech geeks think that throwing out the old equipment is the way to go.
As for the full 48 fps Maxivison, "event" films (i.e. summer blockbusters and the studios' oscar hopefuls) would get that treatment. At the scale of investment that goes into those films (paying 20 million for a single actor, for example), the additional cost of using 48fps Maxivision would be "neglible".
As for film "wear-n-tear", the MV48 process should tend to mitigate this effect, due to the high-precision handling that occurs as the film is run through the projector. while this is not "perfect" a la digital, I think most film audiences would prefer scractch/tear/burn artifacts of current film to the blocky digital artfcats of a malfunctioning digital projector. Or a giant screen of nothing should a section of the film get corrupted (you can't just cut out those frames - digital data is fragile in different ways).
As for the 300mm disc you mention, it does not exist yet, either as a working prototype, industrial or a consumer level. If the studios and distributors weren't so mesmerized by the word "digital" they'd realize that they're missing out on a major money-saving opportunity that's available right now, even if they never produced a true 48fps feature.
the site contains a white paper describing the technology in full (goes into much more detail than the thing article), as well as Ebert's testimony to the visual impact of Maxivision.
The Maxivision process goes _way_ beyond simple "overclocking" as you put it; the film is both shot & projected "jitter-free" by retrofitting existing cameras and projectors with a industrial-precision film-placement mechanism. Because the vast majority of films are not CGI-based/enhanced, this brings one of the most instantly recognizable benefits (lack of frame jitter) to film-based projection.
Also, this lack of "jitter" enables the "blank" space between exposed film frames to be smaller, which enables either lower costs re: film (on 24fps productions), and more affordable film costs for 48fps productions (something like 1.5x the cost of a current 24 fps production, vs. many times that for Showscan or 70mm). Additionally, the area of exposed film can be even larger than 35 mm, resulting in a more detailed picture (which further benefits the resulting picture).
Furthermore, the M48 mechanism allows various formats of film to be "strung together", which _no_ current system enables. This would make distribution/projection of trailers cheaper and simpler, and perhaps even make the distribution of short features viable again via affordability (personal wishlist).
I can't say that I've seen the process in action, but I have seen digital film projection, and the quality is only debatably better than 35mm at great cost to the theater owner; the M48 process is over an order of magnitude cheaper to the theater owner (around $10k per projector retrofit), and also does not require major turnover in production equipment, which makes the studios happy.
In short, there are significant benefits to be with this process on all sides even before the question of "24 vs 48 fps" is raised.
P.S. FYI, current projectors display at 48fps, they just show each frame 2x.
While I have been personally disappointed by the quality of "digital" film techniques (seen most recently in Attack of the Clones, and previously in some pure-CG/animated features such as Fantasia 2000), finding it to be a debatable "improvement" at best, I was wondering what the professional consensus is in the field re: the long term future of celluloid film.
In particular, I'm interested in finding out what the sought-after advantages on the production end are for digital film, vs. making use of more advanced celluloid based film approaches such as Maxivision, which I find interesting (but have never seen).
there is a U.N.-defined definition for terrorism; however, the U.S. representation refuses to endorse this definition.
this is due to 2 reasons: 1) the desire of the current administration (and frankly, all administrations in the past 40-50 years) to be able to declare the preence of enemies unilaterally and at their own convenience, without having to defend this labelling against an (even-quasi-objective) legal defintion of to other parties.
2) the U.S. (read as: individuals and groups within the gov't, miltary, and corporate interests) acting internationally have committed acts which fall under that definition of terrorism (both "technically", as well as "strongly").
States: Gates is a Poo-Poo Head! And here are thousands of reasons why, though we have neglected to organize and present them a focused and useful manner. Also, Ballmer smells.
BillG + lawyers: Well, I'm rubber and you're glue, your thousands of reasons bounce off of me and stick to you!
States: Uh, uh, uh, wait, that doesn't mean anything! I read in some law book that you actually have to refute our reasons and stuff!
BillG + lawyers: Too late! We already said it! And look, here's our press release declaring that you smell your own farts! Nyah-nyah!
States: Rats! We'd better focus our remaining arguments on declaring that we're not fart-smellers!
Ballmer: Hey! I don't smell my own farts! (dances like a sweaty monkey)
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Seriously, does anyone expect anything genuinely more informative than that from their arguments? the DOJ let MS dictate many of the terms of the debate, and wasted too much effort fighting MS on their own semantic turf, focusing insanely on the conceptually murky(-able) browser issues rather than looking at the "smoking gun" issues (such as OEM licensing and dual-booting, DR-DOS "incompatibility", even Apple and MS-Office). The states haven't done much of anything to expand on the DOJs well-supported, but poorly-executed arguments.
Not that MS has come up with any non-philosphical arguments themselves - most of their objections are based on the idea that the law shouldn't apply in their "special case", which is based on "software is different/MS is too economically vital to mess with/Gates is a lovey-sweetums and everyone should just love him back".
For crying out loud, the debates about post-modernism I attended in art school never achieved the bull-headed, pseudo-articulate, self-important levels of idiocy that this trial has.
...there was an instant spark between us... Despite the fact that I'm an OS committed to my hardware, I could definitely see something happening... Sure, she was openly platform-promiscuous, but I knew she always used VM protection... besides, both of us were protective of our own (code) secrets... and I must say that the mystery attracted me. So, I thought, why not?
...if only I had foreseen Bill and Scott walking in on us that one day... lord knows why they were hanging out together, but suspicion can make people do crazy things...
In formal and informal comments to military officers, civilian analysts, politicians, consultants, reporters, and other members of the defense community, Boeing representatives were careful never to speak dismissively of the JSF.
Boy, I wish I worked in an industry where the primary competitors (while competing all-out in every other arena) deliberately avoided trying to FUD each other into the dirt at every opportunity.
And while I'm at it, I want a pony. One that can fly.
...so just from reading the headline, and my first thought was "that's insane!"
...my next thought was - "wait, no, if they could pull off a combination Zelda/Mario/Metroid game, resolving the differences between the different gaming styles and envionments/back stories it'd be one of the most amazing narrative (gaming or otherwise) tricks ever accomplished!"
...my third thought was - "holy crap, if a movie is ever made out of this combo game/story it would be even less coherent than the Super Mario Bros. movie, and thus be terribly harmful to the developing thought processes of our nation's youth - Nintendo must be stopped!!"
...my fourth thought was - "maybe I should read the f***ing article, or at least the summary beneath the headline before posting my ever-so-important concerns".
...my fifth thought was "this is Slashdot, no one will notice."
...and my sixth and final thought was "I can't believe you read this far."
Slashdot Mirror
...and it's not good news. Let's just say that it doesn't look like they're focusing on talent, here...
Admittedly, independent review boards are not perfect - they can & will be influenced, as with any other real world review system (juries, anyone?).
This type of board-packing, however, is completely shameless, and unfortunately is also perfectly consistent with the administration's "top-down" approach to everything.
When Bush & Co. ran for office, they were forthright about wanting to run the country like a business; however, everyone thought he meant "efficiently, with less waste", not "as a way to make money for the people at the top as quickly as possible, ignoring the actual accepted methods of governance, including listening to anyone, whenever possible".
I'm actually beginning to miss Clinton's disingenuity; he at least had the shame to try and cover up his malfeasance and two-facedness.
I guess we can only hope that Bush + Cheney are infected with one of the diseases that gov't stem cell research was working on. Ah...
I guess that I wasn't detailed enough in regards to explaining the experience; while many of the working differences were just that - working differences - however, as soon as people began to realize just how wide the gap between source code layout and the rendered browser layout actually is, interesting play began creeping in. At first these were text of jokes in the comments, then back-and-forth conversations between people working on the same pages, then games of "here's a line of a story, find the page where I hid the next line", then ASCII-ish art (made by grouping tags in particular patterns), and on an on.
And no, The boss never noticed anything (this was not a well-organized project by any means).
Anyway, I think this passes the threshhold from "quirky" to "expressive". (I've seen similar things (though not quite so time-consuming and off-the-wall) in other people's code since so I skipped my personal example, but there it is now).
So, a more elaborate version of my original point is that someone can find interesting, expressive things to do in almost any mundane thing, but some mundane things/processes/whatever are more flexible and forgiving of "messing with them".
An while I agree with your assessment that opening envelopes is not a naturally expressive medium, I would say that progam source code seems to fall much, much closer to that category (though not falling dead center in the middle as, for example, paint does ).
BTW, sorry your first job sucked so badly. My second job out involved working for DEC during the days of doom. Blech.
...I come from an art school background (now coding db-backed applications for websites, came to the field via graphic design like everyone else graduating from art school in the late 90s...), and have _long_ considered that code reflects much more about a program than the utilitarian aspects of a) "what does this program do?" and b) "how well is it engineered?".
My first "real" (snort!) job coming out of school was working with a team of other grads on the schools' website - within a week we were all able to recognize each other's code/quirks. And this was just plain vanilla HTML (among the least expressive of languages)!
the more interesting aspect is that of "code as art", in which the particulars of implementation (esp. the person doing the implementation) can invoke an aesthetic response, above and beyond the utility of that implementation. (or, in other terms, "much of what makes art interesting is that which is both pleasing and useless").
Anyway, I'm just happy to see that coding is beginning to be recognized as an expressive medium - whether it will ever be considered as such indpendently of the final product, I rather doubt (even printmaker's original plates/stones/etc. are rarely considered outside the context of an actual print run, and that medium is old old old...)...
tangent: this is perhaps one aspect in which open source coding (may not) necessarily result in the most "aesthetically pleasing" code; while the actual architecture of the program may be elegant and pleasing, the idiosyncrasies of any particular coder will be overwhelmed by multiple contributions to a project, (outside of the project leads who may be able to enshrining their own quirks as style/pattern requirements). However, I tend to find most "art by committee" to be lacking a very strong vision, and instead ends up becoming a whole ends up as simply the sum of its parts.
I may be wrong, just throwing the idea out there!
...can be found here.
I actually prefer this approach, because although some of the character design details aren't as well executed as in the posted article (this guy is using more generic legos), he's going much further overall, re-creating the story with approprately composed and lit photographs. Kick-ass!
Also, the humorous element of using legos is more apparent - the Moria "Watcher in the Water" is one of the funniest single images I saw on the web this year (yeah, I'm a Tolkien geek _and_ a lego geek. Watch out, ladies!)
BTW, this is part of a larger collection of fun lego pages, here's the main directory.
Please point out to me where the article says that the photographer was hired on a "work-for-hire" basis; I may have missed this. Unless this is the case, then we can't say for certain either way. The same goes for the actual level of "price gouging" in regards to the digital photo catalog.
I _do_ know, however, that wedding photography is a traditionally a rather expensive luxury/service, and that as such, people tend to put some effort into shopping around in order to get the most bang for the buck. In this case, it seems to me that the shopper is rather to blame for not asking out the digital pricing ahead of time, or at least indicating an interest/preference in digital versions.
So although I can't say 100% who is "in the right", I _will_ say "caveat emptor"!
Explain to me how the photgrapher is a thief in this case; it seems to me that the groom agreed to a contract before satisfying himself as to the terms of service; rather, he went ahead an assumed that how he thought things should be, would be. This is naive (esp. when the groom appears to have been aware that an analog camera was to be used, which should have been a "red flag" if he wanted digital copies), and you can't blame the photographer for his lack of foresight.
Not that the photographer is necessarily in in the right either - a preferable solution would be to provide tiered digital service - by providing a catalog of screen-resolution images (unobtrusively watermarked with studio contact information so that recipients could obtain a physical print/hi-res filefrom the studio) at a relatively inexpensive rate, and the hi-res images at a greatly expanded price (perhaps even higher than what she had quoted for the CD she was actually offering).
This could even be broken down further, such that the bride and groom could pay piecemeal for the hi-res versions of the images that they want, which in some cases may be less expensive than obtaining the complete catalog.
In any case, it is naive to think that the photographer's labor/investment (in converting high-end negatives to digital format) is not worth paying for (even if this process is outsourced, someone is investing time/money in the process); therefore, this should be considered an extra cost, in addition to the cost of labor, developing photos, and putting together a catalog.
Do some of these material/transfer costs "go away" should a pro. photgrapher use digital cameras? Yes, but at the current time there are limitations to what can be done with these cameras, and so we will be in a "transfer period" for some time while technical details and training is taken care of; in the meantime, it is silly to assume that one should get digital cost savings when contracting for analog photo work.
Ultimately, it seems to me that article's author has point, but that this is overshadowed by taking a rather extreme position, mostly because he lost an argument with his father-in-law.
I'd say to get a life, but I'm at work on Saturday night. Alas!
Please mod the parent up; while there are ahost of unaddressed issues IRT how this sort of effort could be undertaken, I think that the creation of an accepted infrastructure (not just tech., but extending to communications with infected admins) needs to be established that will enable semi-automated fixing of infected/infectable boxes on networks.
Do I think that their should be virii that go around an infect/fix your box for you? No, varying distributions would make this a nightmare, and the liability issues involved would make anyone (with even the best intentions and highest technical skill) insane to even try such an approach.
Rather, there needs to be, at a minimum, an accepted method of notifying the admin/primary user of "box X" that their system has been rooted; this notification could include some sort of pointer to (distro-specific? security-vendor-implementation-specific?) registered info about the virus.
this appears to me to be the the best role for a "benevolent virus" (in this case, more of a network scanner/meta-virus, as actual infection is not necessary) - by detecting possible routes of infection/actual infection on a system, and warning that system of possible/actual infections.
A distro could (based on this warning notification) wrap some nice end-user warning/auto-update functionality around the registered virus info.
In other words, the newbie user doesn't nec. have to actively check for updates; rather, others on their network will intermittently scan for "open" boxes, and notify those machines/users of their status (this isn't much different from what a sysadmin on a LAN does, but in a more decentralized manner). Think of it as a sort of semi-automated neighborhood watch.
Are there holes to this approach? Is this politically/technically complicated? Certainly.
However, this is definitely a case where I see that the "mediocre user" needs to be accomodated -
and educated/hand-held, even if just a little bit at a time - into keeping their boxes maintained correctly. Otherwise they simply won't be able to keep up.
Besides, I would assume that a community in which network effects are so well exploited IRT generating code should have some excellent ideas IRT automating notification throughout local networks.
I didn't see that myself (admittedly this is not my area of specialty) - could you briefly summarize the similarities to demonstrate this overlap?
/. patent discussion = good karma. ;)
Besides, pointing out prior art in a
thanks!
...rather, this looks like some sort of (centralized) email-address registry which can be accessed by e-mail clients/servers to look for a more recent version of an out-of-date e-mail address.
in other words, this is little more than an internet-based look-up table of e-mail addresses (with obsolete addresses pointing to the most recent address) + protocols for accessing that look-up table.
in my (admittedly cursory) of the patent, it doesn't seem to overlap with server-specific e-mail forwarding (i.e. what is normally done with e-mail forwarding). this isn't to say that this isn't a silly/sleazy patent, but rather that this won't necessarily interfere with how people currently handle e-mail forwarding (if someone sees an element of overlap that I am missing, please point it out!).
Not that any of this is clear from the write-up, of course; sometimes I wish that passing reading comprehension and composition courses was mandatory for internet usage... then I think again, because ninjas are awesome.
I can't wait to see the labels for this one:
"the new Sony DVD(\+|\-)R(|W) Foo2002! Now super-easy for you and your family!"
Even funnier, this won't help much with limiting the playback confusion - some of these formats are data-centric, others video player-centric... and do _any_ of these encompass the Audio standard?
please read the whitepaper and learn about the tech.
you seem to imply that this technology is like overclocking (i.e. an unstable hack), but it is not.
rather, MV's tech is an mechanism built by (silicon chip manufacturing) engineers with industrial precision performance specs to perform a specific task.
Please read the white paper - the Maxivision tech is a relatively cheap (less than 10% the cost of digital) retrofit to existing projector models, allowing both existing film (24 fps standard 35mm) or Maxivision (24 fps MV or 48 fps MV) to play.
I don't recall the specific requirements for cameras, but I believe that the MV process is also a retrofit for those.
I think you make a valid argument re: the greater costs of 48fps Maxivision, but that's not the basis of my argument, so I'm gonna put some numbers on the table to better focus on why I think widespread adoption of MV makes sense.
OK, let's assume that every screen in the U.S. (~5000 screens, I don't think _anything_ has ever released that wide) is going to show a newly released movie - how much will this cost to distribute?
standard 35mm @ 24fps = $6000 print, $100 s/h
cost: $30.5 M
owch, that sure does cost a lot - but this is what they're already doing...
MV 35mm @ 48fps = $9000 print, $150 s/h (50% more film)
cost: $45.75 M
This is where I agree with you somewhat - I could see Hollywood bean counters becoming nervous about investing an additional $15M in the distribution of a film (also assume an additional $5M - $10M in production costs -); however, I would bet that "event film" releases would be distibuted in both 24fps versions and 48 fps versions, a la Attack of the Clones film/digital releases, and thus mitigating the overall cost increase).
MV 35mm @ 24fps = $4500 print, $75 s/h (25% less film)
cost: $22.875 M
This is where I see the sweet spot - theater owners can cheaply "upgrade" their systems (with jitter-free projection), have the option to display 24 fps standard, 24 fps MV, and 48 fps MV, and studios save MILLIONS OF DOLLARS in distribution costs.
At an approximate one-time cost of $10K per upgrade, studios could provide a MV-upgraded projector to every theater in the U.S. for $5 M, and they would make up the cost of that in the savings on distributing 3-4 regular releases (2-5 months timeframes), with continuous savings on distribution going forward.
Compare this "everyone saves $" approach to digital distribution, in which the upgrade is a) an order of magnitude more expensive for the theater owners and b) incompatible with the majority of existing (and most future) releases.
I'm not saying that digital will never be better, just that in its current incarnation it doesn't make the numbers. $150,000 for a projector that can't play existing films and will be obsolete within 5 years? Neither the studios nor the theater owners currently want to pay for that.
MV (24 more than 48) makes economic sense - and hopefully it (or something like it) will be promoted by theater owners once the "digital mania" wears off a bit, something which has already started thanks to the less-than-profitable reception of the digital version of Attack of the Clones.
Read my comment again, as well as the white paper on the maxivision site. 24 fps films (existing and future) could be distributed _on_film_ at less cost (both in the film production end and on the shipping end) due to the facts that films shot at 24 fps could be printed with "closer" frames, thus removing ~25% of the amount of film needed to display a current-day film.
Or, in short, Maxivision offers signficant savings with minimum infrastructure investment. And existing films even get jitter-free projection.
Think of it as an upgrade of your existing home computer, vs. throwing everything out and buying new. Only hardcore tech geeks think that throwing out the old equipment is the way to go.
As for the full 48 fps Maxivison, "event" films (i.e. summer blockbusters and the studios' oscar hopefuls) would get that treatment. At the scale of investment that goes into those films (paying 20 million for a single actor, for example), the additional cost of using 48fps Maxivision would be "neglible".
As for film "wear-n-tear", the MV48 process should tend to mitigate this effect, due to the high-precision handling that occurs as the film is run through the projector. while this is not "perfect" a la digital, I think most film audiences would prefer scractch/tear/burn artifacts of current film to the blocky digital artfcats of a malfunctioning digital projector. Or a giant screen of nothing should a section of the film get corrupted (you can't just cut out those frames - digital data is fragile in different ways).
As for the 300mm disc you mention, it does not exist yet, either as a working prototype, industrial or a consumer level. If the studios and distributors weren't so mesmerized by the word "digital" they'd realize that they're missing out on a major money-saving opportunity that's available right now, even if they never produced a true 48fps feature.
the site contains a white paper describing the technology in full (goes into much more detail than the thing article), as well as Ebert's testimony to the visual impact of Maxivision.
www.maxivision48.com
The Maxivision process goes _way_ beyond simple "overclocking" as you put it; the film is both shot & projected "jitter-free" by retrofitting existing cameras and projectors with a industrial-precision film-placement mechanism. Because the vast majority of films are not CGI-based/enhanced, this brings one of the most instantly recognizable benefits (lack of frame jitter) to film-based projection.
Also, this lack of "jitter" enables the "blank" space between exposed film frames to be smaller, which enables either lower costs re: film (on 24fps productions), and more affordable film costs
for 48fps productions (something like 1.5x the cost of a current 24 fps production, vs. many times that for Showscan or 70mm). Additionally, the area of exposed film can be even larger than 35 mm, resulting in a more detailed picture (which further benefits the resulting picture).
Furthermore, the M48 mechanism allows various formats of film to be "strung together", which _no_ current system enables. This would make distribution/projection of trailers cheaper and simpler, and perhaps even make the distribution of short features viable again via affordability (personal wishlist).
I can't say that I've seen the process in action, but I have seen digital film projection, and the quality is only debatably better than 35mm at great cost to the theater owner; the M48 process is over an order of magnitude cheaper to the theater owner (around $10k per projector retrofit), and also does not require major turnover in production equipment, which makes the studios happy.
In short, there are significant benefits to be with this process on all sides even before the question of "24 vs 48 fps" is raised.
P.S. FYI, current projectors display at 48fps, they just show each frame 2x.
While I have been personally disappointed by the quality of "digital" film techniques (seen most recently in Attack of the Clones, and previously in some pure-CG/animated features such as Fantasia 2000), finding it to be a debatable "improvement" at best, I was wondering what the professional consensus is in the field re: the long term future of celluloid film.
In particular, I'm interested in finding out what the sought-after advantages on the production end are for digital film, vs. making use of more advanced celluloid based film approaches such as Maxivision, which I find interesting (but have never seen).
Thanks!
there is a U.N.-defined definition for terrorism; however, the U.S. representation refuses to endorse this definition.
this is due to 2 reasons:
1) the desire of the current administration (and frankly, all administrations in the past 40-50 years) to be able to declare the preence of enemies unilaterally and at their own convenience, without having to defend this labelling against an (even-quasi-objective) legal defintion of to other parties.
2) the U.S. (read as: individuals and groups within the gov't, miltary, and corporate interests) acting internationally have committed acts which fall under that definition of terrorism (both "technically", as well as "strongly").
I'll bet that your code checking skills are fantastic!
States: Gates is a Poo-Poo Head! And here are thousands of reasons why, though we have neglected to organize and present them a focused and useful manner. Also, Ballmer smells.
BillG + lawyers: Well, I'm rubber and you're glue, your thousands of reasons bounce off of me and stick to you!
States: Uh, uh, uh, wait, that doesn't mean anything! I read in some law book that you actually have to refute our reasons and stuff!
BillG + lawyers: Too late! We already said it! And look, here's our press release declaring that you smell your own farts! Nyah-nyah!
States: Rats! We'd better focus our remaining arguments on declaring that we're not fart-smellers!
Ballmer: Hey! I don't smell my own farts! (dances like a sweaty monkey)
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Seriously, does anyone expect anything genuinely more informative than that from their arguments? the DOJ let MS dictate many of the terms of the debate, and wasted too much effort fighting MS on their own semantic turf, focusing insanely on the conceptually murky(-able) browser issues rather than looking at the "smoking gun" issues (such as OEM licensing and dual-booting, DR-DOS "incompatibility", even Apple and MS-Office). The states haven't done much of anything to expand on the DOJs well-supported, but poorly-executed arguments.
Not that MS has come up with any non-philosphical arguments themselves - most of their objections are based on the idea that the law shouldn't apply in their "special case", which is based on "software is different/MS is too economically vital to mess with/Gates is a lovey-sweetums and everyone should just love him back".
For crying out loud, the debates about post-modernism I attended in art school never achieved the bull-headed, pseudo-articulate, self-important levels of idiocy that this trial has.
And now I've added to it..
Blech.
...there was an instant spark between us... Despite the fact that I'm an OS committed to my hardware, I could definitely see something happening... Sure, she was openly platform-promiscuous, but I knew she always used VM protection... besides, both of us were protective of our own (code) secrets... and I must say that the mystery attracted me. So, I thought, why not?
...if only I had foreseen Bill and Scott walking in on us that one day... lord knows why they were hanging out together, but suspicion can make people do crazy things...
In formal and informal comments to military officers, civilian analysts, politicians, consultants, reporters, and other members of the defense community, Boeing representatives were careful never to speak dismissively of the JSF.
Boy, I wish I worked in an industry where the primary competitors (while competing all-out in every other arena) deliberately avoided trying to FUD each other into the dirt at every opportunity.
And while I'm at it, I want a pony. One that can fly.
shhhh!!! I'm trying to burn karma! I'll take mis-moderation as long as it's negative!
...still, I'm amazed that the lameness filter wasn't set off by my joke.
for cryin' out loud, if the court can't decide between pesto and marinara for lunch then I'm amazed that they get _anything_ done.
oh, wait...
...so just from reading the headline, and my first thought was "that's insane!"
...my next thought was - "wait, no, if they could pull off a combination Zelda/Mario/Metroid game, resolving the differences between the different gaming styles and envionments/back stories it'd be one of the most amazing narrative (gaming or otherwise) tricks ever accomplished!"
...my third thought was - "holy crap, if a movie is ever made out of this combo game/story it would be even less coherent than the Super Mario Bros. movie, and thus be terribly harmful to the developing thought processes of our nation's youth - Nintendo must be stopped!!"
...my fourth thought was - "maybe I should read the f***ing article, or at least the summary beneath the headline before posting my ever-so-important concerns".
...my fifth thought was "this is Slashdot, no one will notice."
...and my sixth and final thought was "I can't believe you read this far."