Though what NBCi is doing is supported by Microsoft and probably uses some kind of Smart Tags "technology preview," you actually have to go install a little add-in to allow this to work. But you can choose not to install it. If it's embedded in the browser (IE 6.0?), then you have no choice. (Aside from using a different browser, but how long is that going to be a viable option?)
Also, there's a difference in who controls what words get Smart-Tagged, and where those links go. What do you bet that Microsoft's default Smart Tag library will link the word "Linux" to Microsoft's "Linux Myths" page, or to a copy of Ballmer's "Linux is a cancer" speech? (Sure, other people can write Smart Tag libraries, but how many people will ever bother to install them? And what do you bet that Microsoft has some way of making their Smart Tags "higher priority" than other people's Smart Tags?)
I think it's time for the Justice Department to begin writing Volume II of its briefs against Microsoft. Oh wait, Microsoft paid for George Bush to be elected. Guess they're just going to sit on their hands for this one. Microsoft, Microsoft, über alles, über alles in der Welt...
Yes, I'd like to know this, too...not only do I want to add it to my Web pages, I want to modify Venice so that it automatically inserts this meta tag into every page it generates. (Oh, I realize that somebody might want to allow Smart Tags on a Venice site, so I may put in a config option to control that...it'll probably be called "EnableMSCopyrightViolations" or some such. But Electric Minds will never use this option; after all, the site pledges that we won't modify what people post, so why should I turn around and let Microsoft do so?)
I agree. I've seen at least one phone with "Wireless Internet," and it left me unmoved.
OTOH, I'm a Palm VII user, and that strikes me as a much more reasonable wireless device form factor. It has a screen easily three times as big as a WAP phone, and a much more convenient UI (tap the screen to "click" on a link). And, for text entry, Graffiti (or Jot, if you're so inclined) may not be perfect, but it beats "typing" on a phone keypad hands down.
The biggest drawbacks are the speed (9600 bps max, via the BellSouth Mobitex network), the need for "query applications" to visit Web sites (although if you download the Google PQA, you can get around this to some degree), and, of course, the cost. It's also not a true TCP connection, like the Palm Vx/OmniSky combo can do; if I were starting again, I'd probably go the Vx/OmniSky route (or the Visor Platinum/OmniSky route). I do wish I'd waited for the VIIx, too, especially now that they're so heavily discounted.
When AT&T had a monopoly, you used to rent your phone from the phone company. It was an inexpensive fee. The phones were high quality and would last for a decade. Now you buy your own phone, they're cheap and they'll last for two years if you're lucky.
You've obviously been buying the wrong brand of phones. We have two in our home that were purchased four years ago and still work fine, and we expect them to last quite awhile longer.
Oh, incidentally, they're AT&T phones...a high-end AT&T speakerphone in the living room, and a Trimline in the bedroom. (I used to have one of the old Western Electric Trimline phones, and the new AT&T Trimline feels exactly the same in quality.) Sure, they might have cost a little more than your Conairphones or whatever. But, sometimes, you do get what you pay for...and, in the long run, they'll still be cheaper than paying the old phone rental fees.
You know, I'm confused, too...are all these people who are saying "Tomcat is buggy" using the same Tomcat that I am?
I'm using Tomcat as a servlet engine for a virtual community that's making a comeback after its previous home was shut down, and, in three months of heavy development and testing of some pretty complex server code, I have found exactly one bug in Tomcat itself...and that only when I finally got integration with Apache via mod_jk working. (Which, incidentally, wasn't too difficult, once I actually sat down and decided to do it.) And upgrading from Tomcat 3.2.1 to 3.2.2b3 fixed that, once I'd found the bug reference in Apache's Bugzilla database for Tomcat (dated two months ago).
For the moment, the performance has been adequate for our needs; having Apache as a front end for static images and such helps. I'll be interested to see what happens with that when the 3.3 and 4.0 Tomcat versions come out. If it becomes a real problem, we can always look at Jetty later, but, for now, I see no reason to change.
One of my big goals for the community's new server was that it be "open source right down to the metal," and Tomcat is a big part of that.
I didn't say I was avoiding PHP, I said that I picked something that I already knew...in part because Venice was being written for an online community that was within a month of finding itself homeless, and which now, thanks to my efforts as well as the efforts of the entire community, has a new home. (Details to follow.) So I had a good reason to stick to what I knew.
Not only that, I'm pretty sure that the SDMI people said that they wouldn't go after any team that tried to break their encryption/watermarking system, that they were in fact authorizing them to do so for the purposes of this contest...
Nothing but lies, lies, and more lies from the RIAA and their cronies. Why should we believe anything they have to say anymore?
Exactly. When starting to work on the project that has now become Venice, I picked Java to implement it in because that's what I know. My Perl is rusty at best, and my PHP and Python are nil. It was easier and faster to learn a few new Java class libraries than it was to try and tack on a new language. And, of course, Java has a database API (JDBC) right in its standard class libraries, which helped out immensely. (I know Perl has a standard database API, too, and I'm sure PHP and Python do as well, but, again, I don't know them.)
I'm also wondering why this article compared PHP and Perl to Java Servlets, rather than JSPs (which are a little closer in concept). In practice, Venice uses a combination of both--servlets for front-end processing, and JSPs for easy output formatting.
And, of course, the Java architecture leaves me open to employ new techniques at a later time, such as object relational mapping (using projects like Osage or ObjectBridge, both of which are similar in concept to the commercial product TopLink), embedded scripting (using an engine like Rhino or Jacl, or, yes, Jython), XML/XSLT rendering (using Xalan or something similar), and other techniques, both those that are part of J2EE and those that aren't.
But, in the end, I agree with you; use what you know, and use what you think works best. Other people may prefer something other than Java for a Web site project. Fine by me; I'm not running their projects, and they're not running mine.
And, not only does Al ask permission before doing parodies, he always goes to the original songwriters first, whereever possible.
Case in point: When Al wrote his first Star Wars parody, "Yoda" (parody of The Kinks' "Lola"), he managed to get permission from Lucasfilm, but he asked the publishing company controlling the rights to "Lola" for permission first, and they turned him down. Some time later, Al ran into Ray Davies, and asked him why he'd been turned down. It turned out Davies hadn't even been asked. Naturally, being a nice guy himself, Davies helped Al get the rights issue straightened out, and "Yoda" was finally released on Al's Dare To Be Stupid album. Since then, Al has always tried to go to the original songwriters to ask permission, even, in one well-known instance, contacting Kurt Cobain on the set of Saturday Night Live (through his friend Victoria Jackson) for permission to do "Smells Like Nirvana." (Cobain agreed, then asked, "Wait a minute...is this going to be about food?" Al assured him it wasn't.)
As for the "Amish Paradise" incident...Coolio isn't on the firmest moral ground himself, as he isn't really the original artist either; he borrowed the riffs and chorus of "Gangsta's Paradise" from Stevie Wonder's song "Pastime Paradise" (from the classic album Songs in the Key of Life). Still, yes, Al does feel bad about the whole incident, but there's no denying that "Amish Paradise" is a pretty damn funny song.
Al is not only a nice guy, but he's one of the more highly underrated comedic minds of our time, certainly the best known comedy musician of the modern era, and he sure looks a lot better since he got LASIK surgery and quit wearing those glasses all the time:-).
I've been wondering this myself...are there any pictures of this mighty Wurlitzer anywhere? I've wished I could find one that would be Linux-compatible...an IBM Rapid Access Pro is still sadly lacking in the function-key department:-).
"one of the greatest movies ever made" -- Gotta agree with you there, man.
Of course, the school "Pacific Tech" shown in the movie is based on the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the school in Pasadena where "hacking" is almost a way of life. Lazlo's Frito-Lay Sweepstakes caper was, in fact, based on a McDonald's sweepstakes hack pulled off by the members of Page House (they won a car, a few thousand bucks, and a lot of free food coupons). And several real Techers show up in the film, for instance, when that one guy starts going nuts during the take home final (they're kind of in the background).
I was actually applying to Caltech about the time this movie came out, but they turned me down. But they did send me a newsletter in which they reviewed the movie. I also had a book at one point called Legends of Caltech that recounted the "untold stories" behind many of the famous Caltech pranks, such as the 1961 Rose Bowl hack cited by ESR in The New Hacker's Dictionary, and the McDonald's caper. Many of those pranks were echoed in the on-screen exploits of Mitch, Chris, Jordan, Ick, and Lazlo.
And of course, now I think "geek movie song" every time I hear "Everybody Wants To Rule The World." (Not just because of this movie though; there was also the influence of TNT's Pirates of Silicon Valley.)
Damn, if they'd release Real Genius on DVD, that'd almost be enough to make me finally give in and get a DVD player...
Hey, historic space expeditions may be one thing, but you gotta have the right government forms, too.:-)
Another interesting document which has been mentioned elsewhere: the text of a speech which was prepared for President Nixon (by William Safire, no less) in case there was some sort of disaster that marooned Armstrong and Aldrin on the lunar surface, complete with additional instructions about the protocol to be followed. Though the speech was (thankfully) never needed, it remains an interesting footnote to what will probably be remembered as NASA's most successful series of missions.
The Federation was founded in 2161. My uneducated guess is that this series will be set sometime before that, but after the formation of a united Earth government (approximately 2113). Don't be surprised if the new starship is designated a "United Earth Spaceship" or something similar. (Perhaps the starship's operating authority will be the "United Earth Space Probe Agency," or "UESPA," alluded to in the TOS episode "Charlie X.")
It's likely that the new series will also predate the Romulan Wars (started approx. 2156, ended approx. 2160). It would certainly predate the establishment of the Prime Directive (which did not exist even as of 2168).
The practical upshot of all this is that many of the background elements we've seen criticized in series like TNG won't exist, because they simply won't have been established yet. Characters should be more free to conflict with each other, nobody's going to be moralizing about "interference with other cultures," and there should be generally more action all around. We might also get some insights into events that shaped the Federation as we know it...this might be interesting.
Not only that, but Sun's Java Servlet specification provides methods that automatically rewrite a URL to include this kind of information, for use with browsers that don't support cookies. (Under Apache Tomcat, it appends ";jsessionid=" and some random characters to the URL.) It's the only way some of the stuff I'm working on now will work, for instance, under the Links browser.
Just add one more nail into the coffin of this patent...
Some information about "mechanical licenses" for producing recordings, including the "compulsory license" provision written into the law, can be found here. ("You don't have to know everything, you just have to know where to find it." - Sandy Locke/Nickie Haflinger, The Shockwave Rider, John Brunner)
There's already a compulsory licensing system in effect for the music publishing business, i.e., for bands that want to cover a particular song. If I recall correctly, it was originally enacted by Congress to break up a monopoly in the player-piano-roll business. Well, what we have today is an effective oligopoly in the recorded-music business, so this would be a way of dealing with it that had some historical precedent...
Bear in mind also, an organization is free to negotiate licenses with royalty rates that are lower than compulsory license rates; the compulsory license is just there to provide an outlet if all else fails.
I haven't been too fond of Senator Hatch in the past, but I commend him for some clear-headed thinking on this issue.
"There has grown up in the minds of certain groups in this country the notion that because a man or corporation has made a profit out of the public for a number of years, the government and the courts are charged with the duty of guaranteeing such profit in the future, even in the face of changing circumstances and contrary to public interest. This strange doctrine is not supported by statute nor common law. Neither individuals nor corporations have any right to come into court and ask that the clock of history be stopped, or turned back."
I have a copy of that paragraph in my PalmPilot. It's that critical. You can apply it to Microsoft, the RIAA, the MPAA, or just about any organization that's trying to take away our rights in the name of bloating their already-bloated purses.
And I will add one more pithy quote that I just came up with today: "When Free Software is outlawed, only outlaws will be truly free."
They were able to reuse the concept in a Voyager episode, though...the episode where Lt. Torres is trying to find creative ways to kill herself. One of the things she tries is an orbital-skydiving program on the holodeck (with the safety protocols disabled); you see her wearing the funky jumpsuit with the tiles on the outside while she's in a shuttlecraft, just before she makes her jump.
As for Generations...yes, they filmed a sequence with Kirk landing after making a successful orbital skydive, but it was cut from the final movie. One of the Generations action figures I have is Kirk in the tile-covered jumpsuit.
You people are clearly letting your emotions about 'linux' guide your contempt for lerach & his cohorts...
Um, no. Thanks to the Prop 211 fiasco, I had contempt for Lerach and his cohorts years before I had even heard of VA Linux, and while I was still working as a Windows programmer.
Yes, if someone profited illicitly from the VA Linux IPO, those people should be held accountable for their actions. But the mere fact that Lerach, and/or his firm, are involved with this lawsuit, viewed in light of their prior track record, strongly suggests that their motives are, shall we say, not entirely in line with those of their "clients." (Look it up for yourself; I dug up those three links I posted in my previous posting in about two minutes by searching on Google for "Bill Lerach." There's more where those came from. A lot of people hate this guy's guts, including people that could give a rat's ass about Linux.)
Well, with Prop. 211, Lerach would have insisted that corporate directors essentially assume "personal responsibility" for virtually everything that could lower a company's stock price, including market downturns and business slumps about which they could have done absolutely nothing even if they had been gifted with second sight. We're not talking "defective products" here, we're talking "earnings warning causes our stock to drop."
Look at it this way: Would you want to be a corporate director if you knew that you personally could be bankrupted by any two-bit shyster looking to make a fast buck off the slightest misstep the company makes, or even events in the market that have nothing whatsoever to do with the company's performance? 211 would basically have taped a giant "kick me" sign to the back of every corporate director in California, which would include a large portion of the Silicon Valley VCs...and for no other purpose than lining the pockets of Lerach and his ilk.
If lawyers didn't already have a bad name, Lerach could single-handedly give them all one.
Note that last name in the firm...that would be Bill Lerach, the "bloodsucking scumbag" (see this article) that was one of the major backers of California's Proposition 211 back in 1996. Had it passed, it would have made companies vulnerable to lawsuits brought by "shareholders" (read: Lerach and his partners, among others) pretty much any time their stock price dropped. Even worse, it would have exposed corporate directors to personal liability in these lawsuits. The measure was trounced in the polls (and I'm proud to say I was one of the voters that assisted in the trouncing!); had it passed, last year's NASDAQ tumble could have resulted in shareholder lawsuits that would have totally decimated virtually every high-tech company in the country, or in the State of California at the very least. (My employers at the time among them, which was my main motivation for voting "no.")
Read that article...it describes some of Lerach's tactics in detail, tactics which you can bet your ass he and his partners will employ against VA Linux. (He once sued Sun Microsystems simply because he got left out of a $30M lawsuit settlement; Sun eventually had to pay him $1.5M just to get him to go away.) And check out this Fortune sidebar, too...not even Pikachu is safe from this man...
But he can be beaten...just check out this article...
I would have to agree. Unless this is made mandatory by government (or other) fiat, it will fail absolutely.
From a user standpoint, these hard drives will be just like other hard drives except they'll be able to fail in new ways that will make recovering your data from them impossible. Where's the sense in paying extra for that (and you will have to pay extra for that, if only for the technology license required)?
And all this is just to make it safe for the MPAA to let you put movies on your hard disk? Well, for one thing, they don't have any movies available yet that can be put on your hard disk, and no promise of any, so why buy a drive with these new features you may never be able to take advantage of? Also, do you think companies will want their workers to store movies on their corporate hard drives? So why do they need the capability to do so? (Substitute "RIAA" and "music," or other terms, as appropriate in the above paragraph.)
In sum, this harebrained scheme makes about as much sense as using a bar code scanner on your computer to save yourself from having to type in "www.altoids.com"...and we all know where that scheme has gone...
Yes, but A, B, C, and D are the so-called "operator keys," which is why you don't see them on consumer-level phones. (One tone dialer program I saw a long time ago that was capable of generating those tones identified them as "military silver box tones." Some US military phones did use those keys, apparently.) Another page I just brought up labels those keys as "ENQ," "BS," "DEL," and "CR," like the ASCII characters. I don't know what function they have, but, whatever their functions may be, it would probably preclude their use in phone numbers.
Well, I saw it, too (and I've seen both versions of the David Lynch film and read the book as well), so I'll weigh in with an opinion or two.
Plot: It felt like they were trying to stick closer to the story as originally written. Of course, you have to cut something out; it would be very easy to make Dune into a 12-hour (or longer!) extravaganza, but they'd never sell that to the general public. Still, I agree that the opening felt rushed, and some of the transitions I was expecting just weren't there.
Paul: He's definitely got the "early Luke Skywalker" attitude down:-). But he was animated, at least; Kyle Maclachlan's performance in the Lynch movie was a bit flat compared to this kid's. Of course, it's in the next two episodes that Paul should start coming into his own, much as Luke did...the verdict's not completely in on him yet.
Leto/Jessica: William Hurt did a much more dynamic Leto than Jurgen Prochnow in the Lynch movie. Too bad he got killed off. And this movie's Jessica seemed more "real" as well; the love scene with Jessica and Leto came off very believable.
The Harkonnens: Less gross and more subtle than the ones in the Lynch film. This gives them a bit more character depth, in my opinion, making them more interesting adversaries.
Princess Irulan: She's obviously been shopping at the Queen Amidala Fashion Boutique:-). They seem to be trying to make her character more interesting than in the book or Lynch movie, and it's working. She and Paul played off each other nicely in the banquet scene; if this keeps up, the next movie (and the last part of this one) is going to be interesting indeed.
Other characters: I'm sorry, but they cast a guy with a Scottish accent as Gurney Halleck here who can't compare to Patrick Stewart. (OTOH, that role was kind of a waste of Stewart's talent, though he played it well.) Also, somehow, Duncan Idaho had me thinking "Marcus Cole," and the Reverend Mother's accent made me think of Ambassador Delenn...
The costumes: Irulan already noted...the Atreides uniforms look kind of drab compared to the classy black ones in the Lynch film. The stillsuits look more believable, but still a little fake.
The visuals: Less gothic than Lynch's, and pretty believable overall. I've seen some comments about the harvester, but (a) it still looked a little better than Lynch's to me, and (b) it wasn't on screen very long, whaddaya expect? The sandworms, thankfully, no longer bear a resemblance to giant penises:-).
Overall, I felt it was a good production, so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing the remaining two parts.
Slashdot Mirror
Also, there's a difference in who controls what words get Smart-Tagged, and where those links go. What do you bet that Microsoft's default Smart Tag library will link the word "Linux" to Microsoft's "Linux Myths" page, or to a copy of Ballmer's "Linux is a cancer" speech? (Sure, other people can write Smart Tag libraries, but how many people will ever bother to install them? And what do you bet that Microsoft has some way of making their Smart Tags "higher priority" than other people's Smart Tags?)
I think it's time for the Justice Department to begin writing Volume II of its briefs against Microsoft. Oh wait, Microsoft paid for George Bush to be elected. Guess they're just going to sit on their hands for this one. Microsoft, Microsoft, über alles, über alles in der Welt...
Eric
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Eric
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OTOH, I'm a Palm VII user, and that strikes me as a much more reasonable wireless device form factor. It has a screen easily three times as big as a WAP phone, and a much more convenient UI (tap the screen to "click" on a link). And, for text entry, Graffiti (or Jot, if you're so inclined) may not be perfect, but it beats "typing" on a phone keypad hands down.
The biggest drawbacks are the speed (9600 bps max, via the BellSouth Mobitex network), the need for "query applications" to visit Web sites (although if you download the Google PQA, you can get around this to some degree), and, of course, the cost. It's also not a true TCP connection, like the Palm Vx/OmniSky combo can do; if I were starting again, I'd probably go the Vx/OmniSky route (or the Visor Platinum/OmniSky route). I do wish I'd waited for the VIIx, too, especially now that they're so heavily discounted.
Eric
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"Microsoft good, open source bad! Microsoft good, open source bad! Microsoft good, open source bad!"
Eric
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You've obviously been buying the wrong brand of phones. We have two in our home that were purchased four years ago and still work fine, and we expect them to last quite awhile longer.
Oh, incidentally, they're AT&T phones...a high-end AT&T speakerphone in the living room, and a Trimline in the bedroom. (I used to have one of the old Western Electric Trimline phones, and the new AT&T Trimline feels exactly the same in quality.) Sure, they might have cost a little more than your Conairphones or whatever. But, sometimes, you do get what you pay for...and, in the long run, they'll still be cheaper than paying the old phone rental fees.
Eric
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I'm using Tomcat as a servlet engine for a virtual community that's making a comeback after its previous home was shut down, and, in three months of heavy development and testing of some pretty complex server code, I have found exactly one bug in Tomcat itself...and that only when I finally got integration with Apache via mod_jk working. (Which, incidentally, wasn't too difficult, once I actually sat down and decided to do it.) And upgrading from Tomcat 3.2.1 to 3.2.2b3 fixed that, once I'd found the bug reference in Apache's Bugzilla database for Tomcat (dated two months ago).
For the moment, the performance has been adequate for our needs; having Apache as a front end for static images and such helps. I'll be interested to see what happens with that when the 3.3 and 4.0 Tomcat versions come out. If it becomes a real problem, we can always look at Jetty later, but, for now, I see no reason to change.
One of my big goals for the community's new server was that it be "open source right down to the metal," and Tomcat is a big part of that.
Eric
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Besides, I think it helped get me my new job :-).
Eric
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Nothing but lies, lies, and more lies from the RIAA and their cronies. Why should we believe anything they have to say anymore?
Eric
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I'm also wondering why this article compared PHP and Perl to Java Servlets, rather than JSPs (which are a little closer in concept). In practice, Venice uses a combination of both--servlets for front-end processing, and JSPs for easy output formatting.
And, of course, the Java architecture leaves me open to employ new techniques at a later time, such as object relational mapping (using projects like Osage or ObjectBridge, both of which are similar in concept to the commercial product TopLink), embedded scripting (using an engine like Rhino or Jacl, or, yes, Jython), XML/XSLT rendering (using Xalan or something similar), and other techniques, both those that are part of J2EE and those that aren't.
But, in the end, I agree with you; use what you know, and use what you think works best. Other people may prefer something other than Java for a Web site project. Fine by me; I'm not running their projects, and they're not running mine.
Eric
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Case in point: When Al wrote his first Star Wars parody, "Yoda" (parody of The Kinks' "Lola"), he managed to get permission from Lucasfilm, but he asked the publishing company controlling the rights to "Lola" for permission first, and they turned him down. Some time later, Al ran into Ray Davies, and asked him why he'd been turned down. It turned out Davies hadn't even been asked. Naturally, being a nice guy himself, Davies helped Al get the rights issue straightened out, and "Yoda" was finally released on Al's Dare To Be Stupid album. Since then, Al has always tried to go to the original songwriters to ask permission, even, in one well-known instance, contacting Kurt Cobain on the set of Saturday Night Live (through his friend Victoria Jackson) for permission to do "Smells Like Nirvana." (Cobain agreed, then asked, "Wait a minute...is this going to be about food?" Al assured him it wasn't.)
As for the "Amish Paradise" incident...Coolio isn't on the firmest moral ground himself, as he isn't really the original artist either; he borrowed the riffs and chorus of "Gangsta's Paradise" from Stevie Wonder's song "Pastime Paradise" (from the classic album Songs in the Key of Life). Still, yes, Al does feel bad about the whole incident, but there's no denying that "Amish Paradise" is a pretty damn funny song.
Al is not only a nice guy, but he's one of the more highly underrated comedic minds of our time, certainly the best known comedy musician of the modern era, and he sure looks a lot better since he got LASIK surgery and quit wearing those glasses all the time :-).
Eric
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Eric
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Of course, the school "Pacific Tech" shown in the movie is based on the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), the school in Pasadena where "hacking" is almost a way of life. Lazlo's Frito-Lay Sweepstakes caper was, in fact, based on a McDonald's sweepstakes hack pulled off by the members of Page House (they won a car, a few thousand bucks, and a lot of free food coupons). And several real Techers show up in the film, for instance, when that one guy starts going nuts during the take home final (they're kind of in the background).
I was actually applying to Caltech about the time this movie came out, but they turned me down. But they did send me a newsletter in which they reviewed the movie. I also had a book at one point called Legends of Caltech that recounted the "untold stories" behind many of the famous Caltech pranks, such as the 1961 Rose Bowl hack cited by ESR in The New Hacker's Dictionary, and the McDonald's caper. Many of those pranks were echoed in the on-screen exploits of Mitch, Chris, Jordan, Ick, and Lazlo.
And of course, now I think "geek movie song" every time I hear "Everybody Wants To Rule The World." (Not just because of this movie though; there was also the influence of TNT's Pirates of Silicon Valley.)
Damn, if they'd release Real Genius on DVD, that'd almost be enough to make me finally give in and get a DVD player...
Eric
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Another interesting document which has been mentioned elsewhere: the text of a speech which was prepared for President Nixon (by William Safire, no less) in case there was some sort of disaster that marooned Armstrong and Aldrin on the lunar surface, complete with additional instructions about the protocol to be followed. Though the speech was (thankfully) never needed, it remains an interesting footnote to what will probably be remembered as NASA's most successful series of missions.
Eric
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The Federation was founded in 2161. My uneducated guess is that this series will be set sometime before that, but after the formation of a united Earth government (approximately 2113). Don't be surprised if the new starship is designated a "United Earth Spaceship" or something similar. (Perhaps the starship's operating authority will be the "United Earth Space Probe Agency," or "UESPA," alluded to in the TOS episode "Charlie X.")
It's likely that the new series will also predate the Romulan Wars (started approx. 2156, ended approx. 2160). It would certainly predate the establishment of the Prime Directive (which did not exist even as of 2168).
The practical upshot of all this is that many of the background elements we've seen criticized in series like TNG won't exist, because they simply won't have been established yet. Characters should be more free to conflict with each other, nobody's going to be moralizing about "interference with other cultures," and there should be generally more action all around. We might also get some insights into events that shaped the Federation as we know it...this might be interesting.
Eric
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Just add one more nail into the coffin of this patent...
Eric
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Eric
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Bear in mind also, an organization is free to negotiate licenses with royalty rates that are lower than compulsory license rates; the compulsory license is just there to provide an outlet if all else fails.
I haven't been too fond of Senator Hatch in the past, but I commend him for some clear-headed thinking on this issue.
Eric
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I have a copy of that paragraph in my PalmPilot. It's that critical. You can apply it to Microsoft, the RIAA, the MPAA, or just about any organization that's trying to take away our rights in the name of bloating their already-bloated purses.
And I will add one more pithy quote that I just came up with today: "When Free Software is outlawed, only outlaws will be truly free."
Eric
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As for Generations...yes, they filmed a sequence with Kirk landing after making a successful orbital skydive, but it was cut from the final movie. One of the Generations action figures I have is Kirk in the tile-covered jumpsuit.
Eric
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Um, no. Thanks to the Prop 211 fiasco, I had contempt for Lerach and his cohorts years before I had even heard of VA Linux, and while I was still working as a Windows programmer.
Yes, if someone profited illicitly from the VA Linux IPO, those people should be held accountable for their actions. But the mere fact that Lerach, and/or his firm, are involved with this lawsuit, viewed in light of their prior track record, strongly suggests that their motives are, shall we say, not entirely in line with those of their "clients." (Look it up for yourself; I dug up those three links I posted in my previous posting in about two minutes by searching on Google for "Bill Lerach." There's more where those came from. A lot of people hate this guy's guts, including people that could give a rat's ass about Linux.)
Eric
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Look at it this way: Would you want to be a corporate director if you knew that you personally could be bankrupted by any two-bit shyster looking to make a fast buck off the slightest misstep the company makes, or even events in the market that have nothing whatsoever to do with the company's performance? 211 would basically have taped a giant "kick me" sign to the back of every corporate director in California, which would include a large portion of the Silicon Valley VCs...and for no other purpose than lining the pockets of Lerach and his ilk.
If lawyers didn't already have a bad name, Lerach could single-handedly give them all one.
Eric
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Read that article...it describes some of Lerach's tactics in detail, tactics which you can bet your ass he and his partners will employ against VA Linux. (He once sued Sun Microsystems simply because he got left out of a $30M lawsuit settlement; Sun eventually had to pay him $1.5M just to get him to go away.) And check out this Fortune sidebar, too...not even Pikachu is safe from this man...
But he can be beaten...just check out this article...
Eric
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From a user standpoint, these hard drives will be just like other hard drives except they'll be able to fail in new ways that will make recovering your data from them impossible. Where's the sense in paying extra for that (and you will have to pay extra for that, if only for the technology license required)?
And all this is just to make it safe for the MPAA to let you put movies on your hard disk? Well, for one thing, they don't have any movies available yet that can be put on your hard disk, and no promise of any, so why buy a drive with these new features you may never be able to take advantage of? Also, do you think companies will want their workers to store movies on their corporate hard drives? So why do they need the capability to do so? (Substitute "RIAA" and "music," or other terms, as appropriate in the above paragraph.)
In sum, this harebrained scheme makes about as much sense as using a bar code scanner on your computer to save yourself from having to type in "www.altoids.com"...and we all know where that scheme has gone...
Eric
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Eric
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Plot: It felt like they were trying to stick closer to the story as originally written. Of course, you have to cut something out; it would be very easy to make Dune into a 12-hour (or longer!) extravaganza, but they'd never sell that to the general public. Still, I agree that the opening felt rushed, and some of the transitions I was expecting just weren't there.
Paul: He's definitely got the "early Luke Skywalker" attitude down :-). But he was animated, at least; Kyle Maclachlan's performance in the Lynch movie was a bit flat compared to this kid's. Of course, it's in the next two episodes that Paul should start coming into his own, much as Luke did...the verdict's not completely in on him yet.
Leto/Jessica: William Hurt did a much more dynamic Leto than Jurgen Prochnow in the Lynch movie. Too bad he got killed off. And this movie's Jessica seemed more "real" as well; the love scene with Jessica and Leto came off very believable.
The Harkonnens: Less gross and more subtle than the ones in the Lynch film. This gives them a bit more character depth, in my opinion, making them more interesting adversaries.
Princess Irulan: She's obviously been shopping at the Queen Amidala Fashion Boutique :-). They seem to be trying to make her character more interesting than in the book or Lynch movie, and it's working. She and Paul played off each other nicely in the banquet scene; if this keeps up, the next movie (and the last part of this one) is going to be interesting indeed.
Other characters: I'm sorry, but they cast a guy with a Scottish accent as Gurney Halleck here who can't compare to Patrick Stewart. (OTOH, that role was kind of a waste of Stewart's talent, though he played it well.) Also, somehow, Duncan Idaho had me thinking "Marcus Cole," and the Reverend Mother's accent made me think of Ambassador Delenn...
The costumes: Irulan already noted...the Atreides uniforms look kind of drab compared to the classy black ones in the Lynch film. The stillsuits look more believable, but still a little fake.
The visuals: Less gothic than Lynch's, and pretty believable overall. I've seen some comments about the harvester, but (a) it still looked a little better than Lynch's to me, and (b) it wasn't on screen very long, whaddaya expect? The sandworms, thankfully, no longer bear a resemblance to giant penises :-).
Overall, I felt it was a good production, so far, and I'm looking forward to seeing the remaining two parts.
Eric
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