You probably didn't read the article, did you? (slap on wrist).
It's not "Let's just do it all in 3D".
It's Virtual Cinematography, where nothing is emulated, but everything is cloned. A scene, shot from many different angles, is combined to make a virtual 3D universe, in which the virtual camera can move anywhere, but all it sees is various calculations of the ORIGINAL FOOTAGE. The 3D elements put into the scene, are digital stuntmen used in at lease a million shots before. The surroundings, while they may even be digitized, also contain only real footage and not "fake 3D renditions", just like the subway in the original Matrix. It was a 3D model done in SoftImage, but all the textures were photos from the actual set. Granted, some of the shots in the trailer did look fake. Here's hoping they were early renderings...
But to me, the most important part is that they can do this now. Matrix can go over the top with it, because by doing so, they pretty much guarantee that later movies which use the same technology but in a subtle way, will look so totally real you'll just wonder how the got the camera to move that smoothly. Besides, the MATRIX is not real. It's supposed to be a fake world, in which the agents (and Neo) can move with superhuman speed and strength and are not bound by laws of nature, which is part of what made Spider-Man look so awful, because he blatantly violated the laws of nature, but they don't apply in the matrix when you can manipulated it at will like "super-Neo" can do.
I didn't particularly like the first movie (because of huge logic holes that bothered me while watching it) although I enjoyed the action scenes, but have since grown to love it, primarily because of it's supreme coolness and spectacular visuals. Sound design rocks too. I for one, will be standing in line on May 15th...
Surely, you jest... Supernova was a complete mess.
I'll tell you what happened... the movie sucked. Everyone who saw it, and had an IQ over 12, hated it. The movie was a complete and utter failure on every level. No fewer than THREE directors couldn't get that thing to work, not even Francis Ford Coppola, who shot a few days worth of material and re-edited the movie. It still sucked worse than a donkey repeatedly sitting on my head. It has the distinction of being the movie that permanently destroyed the rule that no movie with James Spader in it can be all bad. This movie, was ALL BAD. Not a single redeeming factor. None.
Even though Roger Ebert used the following paragraph to describe how he felt about the Bruce Willis turkey 'North', it most appropriately sums up how I felt about Supernova: "I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it."
1. Use infrared to determine distances and terrain layout. 2. Use that data to build a basic 3D world, and compare it with a GPS map of the same area. 3. Use GPS to pinpoint your overall location in reference to starting point and target. 4. Use AI to figure out how to drive across that particular 3D world (needs advanced AI programming to figure out what is driveable and what is not, including a way to recognize water and its depth, in order to decide whether to drive through it or find a way around it, and to recognize most types of surface (is the bridge made of wood and will it hold, is the flat surface ahead made of gravel, dirt, mud or asphalt, and if its mud, will it support the vehicle etc.) and how to navigate them). 5. Drive the car via mechanical controls (which already exist for remote driving).
And of course, for this purpose, I suppose a Hummer would be the ideal starting point, because of its "most terrain" driving abilities.
There's an almost infinite number of possibilities the AI system would have to be capable of tackling, not just avoiding obstacles. This would take a team of scientists a few years to come up with, even on a full grant from several governments.
A million bucks?! Fuggedaboutit. If DARPA hasn't been able to do this on their own, how can they expect the private sector to come up with something like this for a measly million dollars?
If they're really serious about this, they should up the ante to about 50 or 100 million, and then they'd have tons of corporations willing to chip in time, effort, intelligence (in the form of employees), money, hardware and software. They might even attract GM, Ford, Mercedes, BMW, Toyota or any number of big automakers looking for a little publicity, and a healthy government contract.
A million bucks is barely enough to get the battlebots crowd excited...
You didn't follow the links in the article did you? Show me your wrist so I can slap it...:)
The point about "burning images to cd" has nothing to do with copy protection. It has to do with the T@2 technology which burns text and images into the recordable surface of the cd, which are viewable with the naked eye.
Who spends 10 minutes making CD's anymore? My 40x takes just around 2 minutes for a full 700mb cd.
Windows 95: A graphical shell and a 32 bit update to a 16 bit patch of an 8 bit operating system originally written for a 4 bit microprocessor by a two bit company that can't stand one bit of competition.
check out the VIA EPIA Mainboard, with a built in 933MHz VIA C3 processor, 5.1 channel audio, video, tv-out, hardware mpeg decoder, 10/100 LAN and more. All for a measly price of approximately $150 or so. All you need is a tv tuner card (note: this mobo only has 1 PCI slot).
Well, right now HDCAM is it. 4:2:2 and all. The Thomson Viper, (which rocks) is 4:4:4 and requires a cumbersome direct to disk system since no tape can currently handle all that information.
Current DirecTV TiVo boxes DO save the mpeg2 stream direct to disk, and thus don't even have any analog inputs. But this limits your choices, because current HD signals require 19.5 MBps (and are almost exclusively 720p, not 1080i or 1080p), and I'm sure MPEG4 will be an option for PVR's in a few years. HD is still evolving, but at the moment, HDCAM is the format we stick to.
I work with uncompressed HD materical, as well as DV and MPEG (1,2 and 4). Uncompressed HD consumes approximately 10GB per minute, which translates to around 600GB per hour. So, a 1TB drive would hold roughly one 90 minute movie, or 3 sitcoms (with commercials). Since nobody in their right mind would consider uncompressed video for a PVR, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 compression is a likely choice. Based on current DVD bitrates and resolution, MPEG-2 at HD resolution would require at least 15MBps, which is at the low, low end for HD (more like 25-30 for good quality, up to 45 for excellent quality). MPEG-4 could probably get away with as little 5-9MBps for tolerable quality HD, so assuming MPEG-4 is used, 1TB disk could hold anywhere from 300 to 550 hours of HD video, so the article is not really that far off. Hundreds of hours of HD is literally possible in one TB, using good compression and fast cpu's. Now, the hours you could store using DV resolution would be quite impressive... Assuming 120KBps (1200kbps) MPEG-4, we're talking 2314 hours of video... That's over 96 days. So, even if you tivo an entire season of the Top-20 rated prime-time tv shows, you'll still have enough space to cap a few dozen movies in DVD quality.
What part of UN-Limited is it people have difficulty understanding? It's amazing to me that companies can advertise a service as being unlimited, when they say at the end of the ad "certain restrictions apply". Eh, excuse me? How can the terms "Restrictions" and "Unlimited" be used in the same ad, about the same thing? Only one can possibly be true because it's impossible for both to apply at the same time about the same thing. Either something is restricted, or it's unlimited.
Using the term "unlimited" about a service which is clearly limited in some ways, is just as deceptive as using the word FREE in advertising when you have to buy something in order to get the "free" item (you've all seen the spam telling you you've won 4 free airline tickets, but you have to pay for overpriced hotel rooms to get them). Believe me, NOTHING is free. At least not if you have to pay for something else in order to get the "free" item. Everyone does this, and frankly I think it should be banned. If they can shut down Miss Cleo for false and misleading advertising, surely they can make a blanket law banning the use of the word FREE unless the item truly is free, with no hidden fees and no restrictions. Recently, I saw this ad in a local paper, from some telephone dating service, that said in huge letters on top "100% FREE", and at the bottom, it said in tiny letters "all you pay for is the phone call, $2.99 per minute". So, what's the free part?
Can a hooker advertise FREE SEX, and then put in small letters at the bottom, "restrictions apply, free sex only provided for those who buy a glass of my home made lemonade for $300."? Wouldn't that be considered misleading, since it clearly isn't free?
Why do we as a society let advertisers get away with lies, half truths and misleading information?
I can accept paying for a certain bandwidth, but if my contract says "unlimited" I want to be able to use said bandwidth whenever I want for whatever I want, without any limitations other than the pre-established bandwidth I agreed to pay for.
If my cable provider wants to cap my monthly download limit, not only will they find themselves on the receiving end of a class action law suit, they will also not be my broadband provider anymore, I'll switch to DSL. I'm sure they'll look up and wonder where their extra $350 million monthly went, when 7 million subscribers do the same thing.
Nothing new here. Disney has been stealing stories for years. For example, both The Lion King and Atlantis were ripped off from Japanese Anime. In fact both were ripped off from the same Japanese studio, which pretty much said "we can't sue, Disney has enough money to keep us in court until we're dead". Now they rip off this guy without even acknowledging his work. It's pitiful. It's just awful what greed can do to people.
The saddest thing is that Disney hasn't had an original idea since before Walt was iced.
I didn't mind him gone. I never really liked his character that much, especially throughout season 6. He was dead weight as far as I'm concerned.
Eh... he wasn't in season 6. What show are you watching? In any case, I'm thrilled he's returning. As far as I'm concerned his character is what held the show together (he offered the only non-military non-alien input), and without him it just hasn't been the same. Season 6 has been rather disappointing so far, but with the confirmation of season 7 and Daniel's return, I hope the second half of season 6 will improve. At least 7 will be better with Daniel back.
talking about why they might have cut scenes out of the movie
It actually has nothing to do with trying to improve the storyline (even tho that would have been nice). It's just that the IMAX projector is physically incapable of showing a movie longer than 2 hours. That's why they also cut nearly 20 minutes out of Apollo 13 for its IMAX Experience version. Still haven't seen this tho... I just got the DVD which looks great, but I still want to see the IMAX, just to see a 40ft Yoda kick ass.
Yes. It's called "consequential damages." Not if it's an LLC. That's what the LIMITED LIABILITY stands for. Imagine this scenario: The ISPs backbone connection fails, and your high volume commerce site goes offline for 6 hours and nobody can buy from your site. Do you sue for lost income?
Do you think all that the car company owes you is a replacement car? Do you think that they should not have to pay out anything for killing your wife and leaving your son permanently disabled? I'm sorry, who killed the wife? It was an accident. Shit happens. This would be filed under U, for Unfortunate. Now, if the car manufacturer KNOWINGLY sold the car with this problem, KNOWING this could happen, then you can say they were responsible, or irresponsible as it were, and they certainly should pay. If it's an unfortunate mistake by a factory worker, then it's debatable.
If the ISP is not responsible for their screw-up, who is? Is it their screw-up to begin with? Didn't the original story say the ACCOUNTING SYSTEM screwed up? Why not sue the programmer who made the accounting system? Oh, I know... because he probably doesn't have deep pockets.
Oh, I see... You're one of those right-wingers who thinks that all corporations should get a free pass. Actually, no, I'm a very liberal Democrat (probably a little bit left of Martin Sheen), read my previous posts to slashdot and you might catch up on that. And I dislike big corporations as much as the next guy, but I don't summarily blame them for everything that goes awry. But I believe in something called personal responsibility. You can't expect others to take care of everything for you. If I'm expecting an important phone call, I always give whoever's calling me my cell number too, just in case they can't reach me at the other number. It's part of being a responsible adult.
Now matter how badly they screw over the consumer, they should be immune from lawsuits. Absolutely not, but in this case the ISP wasn't screwing over a customer, a system failed. Things aren't all just black and white. You have to look at everything on a case by case basis.
You might as well sue those who made the accounting system. Might even have a better case there, because that system CAUSED the chain of events that led to this. But since that accounting system probably has some form of EULA which frees them of any responsibility, the lawyers go after whoever is next in line, in this case the ISP. So, since the lawsuit is against the ISP, that's where the merits of the case must be evaluated at this point. Many ISPs today are LLC's (Limited Liability Corporation). Assuming these are, it would mean that they are ONLY required to refund her monthly bill during this period, nothing more. Now, if they're not an LLC, I guess this will be up to a judge or jury, but personally, I don't see how they could be forced to cough up this $65.000. Using the phoneline comparison... The phone company screws up, and disconnects your phone, during which time your phone number is pulled from a hat on some radio show and you win a brand new toaster. According to the competition rules, if they can't reach you on the phone, they pull another number from the hat, so they do and that person answers and wins. Now, would you have a case against the phone company? In my opinion, absolutely not. They are only responsible for the SERVICE you subscribe to. They are not responsible for any outside problems you might incur if they fail to provide that service for some reason. If they were, people would sue them every day for all sorts of frivolous crap. Like, "I was unable to continue my relationship with that phone sex operator because the phone company disabled my 900# option" or "I want the phone company to buy me a new George Foreman grill because I missed the 10 minute half off special they had on that infomercial last night, because my phone went dead".
What's next? Suing The LA Times for printing the wrong TV guide, which caused you to miss your favorite soap? Suing your ISP for filtering out SPAM because you might miss out on good deals? Suing the phone company because a temporary failure in their system caused you to miss a phone call offering you a job? If it was that important, have a backup number. Things break down all the time, shit happens, deal with it.
This lawsuit is totally bogus. She can file this one under bad luck. It's not the ISP's responsibility. Gimme a friggin' break.
They just aren't $40-at-Wally World cheap. Almost true... The Apex line of players (I have the AD-1500) is easily modified (a freely downloadable.iso is used to flash the player's bios) to not only open all regions, but turn off Macrovision as well. That player is currently available for as little as $50. Plays every available video disc format, including (s)vcd,dvd-r(w),dvd+r(w)... even plays mp3 cd's and photo-vcd's.
And if anything, it lends these 'virtual worlds' a little more authenticity... having billboards and advertisement everywhere. Pretty soon the Sims will have Heineken in the cooler, a Sony tv and dvd, and the neighbor will have a brand new Lexus in the driveway... Now, how do we get people to add these 'upgrades'? Oh, simple... charge them $39.95 for the next 'version'.
This has everything to do with what we were talking about. You brought up the issue of the majority being more afraid of one particular kind of crime, which results in profiling of citizens to decypher if they are likely to commit that particular type of crime. Your rights to privacy and a speedy and fair trial, along with the assumption of innocense until proven guilty, ARE protected by the Bill of Rights. I thought we were talking about cops snapping photos of innocent people and putting them in a database of 'future' criminals.
Me: Crime X is punished more than Y because that is what the majority think should be punished and policed for You: Oh yeah, well "To me..." the two crimes are equivalent because both ruin people's lives
You are completely missing my point. I never said they should be treated equally. I was objecting to the notion that white collar crime was somehow less serious. By bringing up the point of a victim, I was pointing out that both crimes hurt other people. Smoking pot in your apartment hurts nobody, and should not be considered a serious crime when compared to a crime where someone else is hurt. Yet there are thousands of non-violent offenders in prison on posession charges, in overcrowded prisons, while 'Kenny boy' Lay can rest safely in any of his 18 homes.
I'm reminded of a quote that has nothing to do with our argument (as we weren't discussing liberty, we were discussing differing severity for crimes) This was merely my attempt to bring this debate back on it's original track, which was the obliteration of civil liberties to provide peace of mind to a select few, which is directly relevant to the quote.
As to your last two points, the first is well taken as it was my point to begin with, the second was the very reason I wrote in the first place. You claim classism has nothing to do with the profiling. I disagree.
In any case... I'm catching an early flight tomorrow morning, and I won't be near a terminal for a few days, so this will be the last post from me on this matter.
So it isn't what you think that matters... it is what the majority thinks.
This is exactly why we have the Bill of Rights... to protect the minority from the majority.
Bad politicians pander to polls and the 'majority'. A majority which sometimes doesn't know its ass from its elbow. Which is exactly why we (the US) are the only country in the civilized world which still executes its citizens for their crimes. Just because the majority wants it, doesn't make it the right thing to do.
I am often reminded of the following quote: "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin
It is the fact that we are more afraid of violent crime than white collar.
I assume you are referring to physical violence. To me, cheating thousands of people out of their retirement funds for your own personal gain is no less violent than kicking them in the head. Just because they don't have visible bruises, doesn't mean their lives haven't been turned upside down. Crimes should not be separated into 'violent' and 'non-violent' to determine their seriousness. A better indicator would be 'is there a victim?'. As in the case of Enron and other criminal corporations, there are clear victims: The shareholders and employees. Smoking pot in your house (or dorm room) is a victimless crime. Nobody is getting hurt (your own braincells not included), and so busting people for it shouldn't have such a high priority.
Hounding a particular group of people to try to minimize crime simply does not work. It just gives other people ample opportunity to get away with crap, because they know they're not being watched.
Slashdot Mirror
You probably didn't read the article, did you? (slap on wrist).
It's not "Let's just do it all in 3D".
It's Virtual Cinematography, where nothing is emulated, but everything is cloned.
A scene, shot from many different angles, is combined to make a virtual 3D universe, in which the virtual camera can move anywhere, but all it sees is various calculations of the ORIGINAL FOOTAGE. The 3D elements put into the scene, are digital stuntmen used in at lease a million shots before. The surroundings, while they may even be digitized, also contain only real footage and not "fake 3D renditions", just like the subway in the original Matrix. It was a 3D model done in SoftImage, but all the textures were photos from the actual set.
Granted, some of the shots in the trailer did look fake. Here's hoping they were early renderings...
But to me, the most important part is that they can do this now. Matrix can go over the top with it, because by doing so, they pretty much guarantee that later movies which use the same technology but in a subtle way, will look so totally real you'll just wonder how the got the camera to move that smoothly.
Besides, the MATRIX is not real. It's supposed to be a fake world, in which the agents (and Neo) can move with superhuman speed and strength and are not bound by laws of nature, which is part of what made Spider-Man look so awful, because he blatantly violated the laws of nature, but they don't apply in the matrix when you can manipulated it at will like "super-Neo" can do.
I didn't particularly like the first movie (because of huge logic holes that bothered me while watching it) although I enjoyed the action scenes, but have since grown to love it, primarily because of it's supreme coolness and spectacular visuals. Sound design rocks too.
I for one, will be standing in line on May 15th...
Actually, this story broke in Variety yesterday, March 31st.
Surely, you jest...
Supernova was a complete mess.
I'll tell you what happened... the movie sucked. Everyone who saw it, and had an IQ over 12, hated it.
The movie was a complete and utter failure on every level. No fewer than THREE directors couldn't get that thing to work, not even Francis Ford Coppola, who shot a few days worth of material and re-edited the movie. It still sucked worse than a donkey repeatedly sitting on my head.
It has the distinction of being the movie that permanently destroyed the rule that no movie with James Spader in it can be all bad. This movie, was ALL BAD. Not a single redeeming factor. None.
Even though Roger Ebert used the following paragraph to describe how he felt about the Bruce Willis turkey 'North', it most appropriately sums up how I felt about Supernova:
"I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it."
Did I mention I hated it?
hmm... just a few thought.
1. Use infrared to determine distances and terrain layout.
2. Use that data to build a basic 3D world, and compare it with a GPS map of the same area.
3. Use GPS to pinpoint your overall location in reference to starting point and target.
4. Use AI to figure out how to drive across that particular 3D world (needs advanced AI programming to figure out what is driveable and what is not, including a way to recognize water and its depth, in order to decide whether to drive through it or find a way around it, and to recognize most types of surface (is the bridge made of wood and will it hold, is the flat surface ahead made of gravel, dirt, mud or asphalt, and if its mud, will it support the vehicle etc.) and how to navigate them).
5. Drive the car via mechanical controls (which already exist for remote driving).
And of course, for this purpose, I suppose a Hummer would be the ideal starting point, because of its "most terrain" driving abilities.
There's an almost infinite number of possibilities the AI system would have to be capable of tackling, not just avoiding obstacles. This would take a team of scientists a few years to come up with, even on a full grant from several governments.
A million bucks?! Fuggedaboutit. If DARPA hasn't been able to do this on their own, how can they expect the private sector to come up with something like this for a measly million dollars?
If they're really serious about this, they should up the ante to about 50 or 100 million, and then they'd have tons of corporations willing to chip in time, effort, intelligence (in the form of employees), money, hardware and software. They might even attract GM, Ford, Mercedes, BMW, Toyota or any number of big automakers looking for a little publicity, and a healthy government contract.
A million bucks is barely enough to get the battlebots crowd excited...
let's hope hardwareanalysis.com is not running on one of those 64-bit AMD's... would be pretty embarrassing.
While M$ doesn't own VMWare, they're certainly on friendly business terms.
You didn't follow the links in the article did you? Show me your wrist so I can slap it... :)
The point about "burning images to cd" has nothing to do with copy protection. It has to do with the T@2 technology which burns text and images into the recordable surface of the cd, which are viewable with the naked eye.
Who spends 10 minutes making CD's anymore?
My 40x takes just around 2 minutes for a full 700mb cd.
I know... this is old, but it's still good.
Windows 95: A graphical shell and a 32 bit update to a 16 bit patch of an 8 bit operating system originally written for a 4 bit microprocessor by a two bit company that can't stand one bit of competition.
check out the VIA EPIA Mainboard, with a built in 933MHz VIA C3 processor, 5.1 channel audio, video, tv-out, hardware mpeg decoder, 10/100 LAN and more.
All for a measly price of approximately $150 or so.
All you need is a tv tuner card (note: this mobo only has 1 PCI slot).
More info here
Well, right now HDCAM is it. 4:2:2 and all. The Thomson Viper, (which rocks) is 4:4:4 and requires a cumbersome direct to disk system since no tape can currently handle all that information.
Current DirecTV TiVo boxes DO save the mpeg2 stream direct to disk, and thus don't even have any analog inputs. But this limits your choices, because current HD signals require 19.5 MBps (and are almost exclusively 720p, not 1080i or 1080p), and I'm sure MPEG4 will be an option for PVR's in a few years. HD is still evolving, but at the moment, HDCAM is the format we stick to.
I work with uncompressed HD materical, as well as DV and MPEG (1,2 and 4).
Uncompressed HD consumes approximately 10GB per minute, which translates to around 600GB per hour.
So, a 1TB drive would hold roughly one 90 minute movie, or 3 sitcoms (with commercials).
Since nobody in their right mind would consider uncompressed video for a PVR, MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 compression is a likely choice. Based on current DVD bitrates and resolution, MPEG-2 at HD resolution would require at least 15MBps, which is at the low, low end for HD (more like 25-30 for good quality, up to 45 for excellent quality).
MPEG-4 could probably get away with as little 5-9MBps for tolerable quality HD, so assuming MPEG-4 is used, 1TB disk could hold anywhere from 300 to 550 hours of HD video, so the article is not really that far off. Hundreds of hours of HD is literally possible in one TB, using good compression and fast cpu's.
Now, the hours you could store using DV resolution would be quite impressive... Assuming 120KBps (1200kbps) MPEG-4, we're talking 2314 hours of video... That's over 96 days. So, even if you tivo an entire season of the Top-20 rated prime-time tv shows, you'll still have enough space to cap a few dozen movies in DVD quality.
What part of UN-Limited is it people have difficulty understanding?
It's amazing to me that companies can advertise a service as being unlimited, when they say at the end of the ad "certain restrictions apply".
Eh, excuse me? How can the terms "Restrictions" and "Unlimited" be used in the same ad, about the same thing? Only one can possibly be true because it's impossible for both to apply at the same time about the same thing. Either something is restricted, or it's unlimited.
Using the term "unlimited" about a service which is clearly limited in some ways, is just as deceptive as using the word FREE in advertising when you have to buy something in order to get the "free" item (you've all seen the spam telling you you've won 4 free airline tickets, but you have to pay for overpriced hotel rooms to get them). Believe me, NOTHING is free. At least not if you have to pay for something else in order to get the "free" item.
Everyone does this, and frankly I think it should be banned. If they can shut down Miss Cleo for false and misleading advertising, surely they can make a blanket law banning the use of the word FREE unless the item truly is free, with no hidden fees and no restrictions.
Recently, I saw this ad in a local paper, from some telephone dating service, that said in huge letters on top "100% FREE", and at the bottom, it said in tiny letters "all you pay for is the phone call, $2.99 per minute". So, what's the free part?
Can a hooker advertise FREE SEX, and then put in small letters at the bottom, "restrictions apply, free sex only provided for those who buy a glass of my home made lemonade for $300."? Wouldn't that be considered misleading, since it clearly isn't free?
Why do we as a society let advertisers get away with lies, half truths and misleading information?
I can accept paying for a certain bandwidth, but if my contract says "unlimited" I want to be able to use said bandwidth whenever I want for whatever I want, without any limitations other than the pre-established bandwidth I agreed to pay for.
If my cable provider wants to cap my monthly download limit, not only will they find themselves on the receiving end of a class action law suit, they will also not be my broadband provider anymore, I'll switch to DSL. I'm sure they'll look up and wonder where their extra $350 million monthly went, when 7 million subscribers do the same thing.
Nothing new here. Disney has been stealing stories for years. For example, both The Lion King and Atlantis were ripped off from Japanese Anime. In fact both were ripped off from the same Japanese studio, which pretty much said "we can't sue, Disney has enough money to keep us in court until we're dead".
Now they rip off this guy without even acknowledging his work. It's pitiful. It's just awful what greed can do to people.
The saddest thing is that Disney hasn't had an original idea since before Walt was iced.
I didn't mind him gone. I never really liked his character that much, especially throughout season 6. He was dead weight as far as I'm concerned.
Eh... he wasn't in season 6. What show are you watching?
In any case, I'm thrilled he's returning. As far as I'm concerned his character is what held the show together (he offered the only non-military non-alien input), and without him it just hasn't been the same.
Season 6 has been rather disappointing so far, but with the confirmation of season 7 and Daniel's return, I hope the second half of season 6 will improve. At least 7 will be better with Daniel back.
talking about why they might have cut scenes out of the movie
It actually has nothing to do with trying to improve the storyline (even tho that would have been nice).
It's just that the IMAX projector is physically incapable of showing a movie longer than 2 hours. That's why they also cut nearly 20 minutes out of Apollo 13 for its IMAX Experience version.
Still haven't seen this tho... I just got the DVD which looks great, but I still want to see the IMAX, just to see a 40ft Yoda kick ass.
apology accepted, thank you :)
Yes. It's called "consequential damages."
Not if it's an LLC. That's what the LIMITED LIABILITY stands for. Imagine this scenario: The ISPs backbone connection fails, and your high volume commerce site goes offline for 6 hours and nobody can buy from your site. Do you sue for lost income?
Do you think all that the car company owes you is a replacement car? Do you think that they should not have to pay out anything for killing your wife and leaving your son permanently disabled?
I'm sorry, who killed the wife? It was an accident. Shit happens. This would be filed under U, for Unfortunate.
Now, if the car manufacturer KNOWINGLY sold the car with this problem, KNOWING this could happen, then you can say they were responsible, or irresponsible as it were, and they certainly should pay. If it's an unfortunate mistake by a factory worker, then it's debatable.
If the ISP is not responsible for their screw-up, who is?
Is it their screw-up to begin with? Didn't the original story say the ACCOUNTING SYSTEM screwed up? Why not sue the programmer who made the accounting system? Oh, I know... because he probably doesn't have deep pockets.
Oh, I see... You're one of those right-wingers who thinks that all corporations should get a free pass.
Actually, no, I'm a very liberal Democrat (probably a little bit left of Martin Sheen), read my previous posts to slashdot and you might catch up on that. And I dislike big corporations as much as the next guy, but I don't summarily blame them for everything that goes awry.
But I believe in something called personal responsibility. You can't expect others to take care of everything for you. If I'm expecting an important phone call, I always give whoever's calling me my cell number too, just in case they can't reach me at the other number. It's part of being a responsible adult.
Now matter how badly they screw over the consumer, they should be immune from lawsuits.
Absolutely not, but in this case the ISP wasn't screwing over a customer, a system failed. Things aren't all just black and white. You have to look at everything on a case by case basis.
You might as well sue those who made the accounting system. Might even have a better case there, because that system CAUSED the chain of events that led to this.
But since that accounting system probably has some form of EULA which frees them of any responsibility, the lawyers go after whoever is next in line, in this case the ISP.
So, since the lawsuit is against the ISP, that's where the merits of the case must be evaluated at this point.
Many ISPs today are LLC's (Limited Liability Corporation). Assuming these are, it would mean that they are ONLY required to refund her monthly bill during this period, nothing more.
Now, if they're not an LLC, I guess this will be up to a judge or jury, but personally, I don't see how they could be forced to cough up this $65.000.
Using the phoneline comparison... The phone company screws up, and disconnects your phone, during which time your phone number is pulled from a hat on some radio show and you win a brand new toaster. According to the competition rules, if they can't reach you on the phone, they pull another number from the hat, so they do and that person answers and wins. Now, would you have a case against the phone company? In my opinion, absolutely not. They are only responsible for the SERVICE you subscribe to. They are not responsible for any outside problems you might incur if they fail to provide that service for some reason. If they were, people would sue them every day for all sorts of frivolous crap. Like, "I was unable to continue my relationship with that phone sex operator because the phone company disabled my 900# option" or "I want the phone company to buy me a new George Foreman grill because I missed the 10 minute half off special they had on that infomercial last night, because my phone went dead".
What's next? Suing The LA Times for printing the wrong TV guide, which caused you to miss your favorite soap? Suing your ISP for filtering out SPAM because you might miss out on good deals? Suing the phone company because a temporary failure in their system caused you to miss a phone call offering you a job? If it was that important, have a backup number. Things break down all the time, shit happens, deal with it.
This lawsuit is totally bogus.
She can file this one under bad luck.
It's not the ISP's responsibility.
Gimme a friggin' break.
They just aren't $40-at-Wally World cheap. .iso is used to flash the player's bios) to not only open all regions, but turn off Macrovision as well.
Almost true...
The Apex line of players (I have the AD-1500) is easily modified (a freely downloadable
That player is currently available for as little as $50. Plays every available video disc format, including (s)vcd,dvd-r(w),dvd+r(w)... even plays mp3 cd's and photo-vcd's.
And if anything, it lends these 'virtual worlds' a little more authenticity... having billboards and advertisement everywhere. Pretty soon the Sims will have Heineken in the cooler, a Sony tv and dvd, and the neighbor will have a brand new Lexus in the driveway... Now, how do we get people to add these 'upgrades'? Oh, simple... charge them $39.95 for the next 'version'.
This has everything to do with what we were talking about.
You brought up the issue of the majority being more afraid of one particular kind of crime, which results in profiling of citizens to decypher if they are likely to commit that particular type of crime. Your rights to privacy and a speedy and fair trial, along with the assumption of innocense until proven guilty, ARE protected by the Bill of Rights.
I thought we were talking about cops snapping photos of innocent people and putting them in a database of 'future' criminals.
Me: Crime X is punished more than Y because that is what the majority think should be punished and policed for
You: Oh yeah, well "To me..." the two crimes are equivalent because both ruin people's lives
You are completely missing my point.
I never said they should be treated equally. I was objecting to the notion that white collar crime was somehow less serious. By bringing up the point of a victim, I was pointing out that both crimes hurt other people. Smoking pot in your apartment hurts nobody, and should not be considered a serious crime when compared to a crime where someone else is hurt. Yet there are thousands of non-violent offenders in prison on posession charges, in overcrowded prisons, while 'Kenny boy' Lay can rest safely in any of his 18 homes.
I'm reminded of a quote that has nothing to do with our argument (as we weren't discussing liberty, we were discussing differing severity for crimes)
This was merely my attempt to bring this debate back on it's original track, which was the obliteration of civil liberties to provide peace of mind to a select few, which is directly relevant to the quote.
As to your last two points, the first is well taken as it was my point to begin with, the second was the very reason I wrote in the first place. You claim classism has nothing to do with the profiling. I disagree.
In any case... I'm catching an early flight tomorrow morning, and I won't be near a terminal for a few days, so this will be the last post from me on this matter.
So it isn't what you think that matters... it is what the majority thinks.
This is exactly why we have the Bill of Rights... to protect the minority from the majority.
Bad politicians pander to polls and the 'majority'. A majority which sometimes doesn't know its ass from its elbow. Which is exactly why we (the US) are the only country in the civilized world which still executes its citizens for their crimes.
Just because the majority wants it, doesn't make it the right thing to do.
I am often reminded of the following quote:
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Benjamin Franklin
It is the fact that we are more afraid of violent crime than white collar.
I assume you are referring to physical violence.
To me, cheating thousands of people out of their retirement funds for your own personal gain is no less violent than kicking them in the head. Just because they don't have visible bruises, doesn't mean their lives haven't been turned upside down.
Crimes should not be separated into 'violent' and 'non-violent' to determine their seriousness. A better indicator would be 'is there a victim?'. As in the case of Enron and other criminal corporations, there are clear victims: The shareholders and employees.
Smoking pot in your house (or dorm room) is a victimless crime. Nobody is getting hurt (your own braincells not included), and so busting people for it shouldn't have such a high priority.
Hounding a particular group of people to try to minimize crime simply does not work. It just gives other people ample opportunity to get away with crap, because they know they're not being watched.
...but what about the fact you got arrested 12 years ago, or how much money you make...
Both can easily be found out today anyway. Both are public records.
Did you just say Bush is the Devil?