I love the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is easily my favourite book. I vastly enjoyed BBC Radio 4's adaptation of it, and I quite enjoyed the animated film.
With that in mind, I can't understand why people loved Peter Jackson's film so much. I tried to remain open minded, but I found it incredibly hard not to just walk out in anger.
He completely ruined the spirit of the tale, and quite unecessarily at that. Most of his changes were totally not needed. Once he decided to remove Tom Bombadil/The Barrow Downs he easily had enough time to remain true to the story, and so many of his alterations took longer to correct later on in the story than he would have ever have saved if he'd just left it be.
That is one of the main problems with making alterations to a story as deep as The Lord of the Rings, if you remove one thing, all the other parts of the story connected to it have to be altered, which cause more alterations later on.
I am not saying that they could do that - I did not say where I stood on the morality of the issue. I am merely saying that it would not be stealing. Just like if you murdered someone, it would not be morally acceptable, but it would also not be "stealing".
Copyright infringement is a more appropriate term. "Piracy" is not appropriate. That's the practice of attacking and robbing ships at sea.
A good article, even if it ends a bit abrubtly. I must disagree with one of his points, however. He says:
Technically they are stealing,
I must disagree with this. They are not stealing, since no-one is deprived of anything. By his own argument, the record companies are not being deprived of sales, and unlike true theft, there is no loss of material possessions. No-one's lost money, no-one's lost a shiny disc with digital data encoded on it, no-one's been stolen from.
Public Domain is not necessarily as free as GPL. If someone alters something which is in the public domain, they then get copyright for their altered version, which means that it is then no longer free.
For example, you try writing selling a story about The Little Mermaid and see how quickly Disney sue you. They may not be right to, but chances are they've got more money to throw at lawyers than you have.
This means that though a public domain work may be freer in the short term, it can soon be hijacked. "Public Domain EXTRA-free for a minute" is less free than "GPL QUITE-free for eternity"
Hear hear. I'm not sure all that much is known about where China is exactly - but I do remember reading somewhere that Canada was considering a Mars mission, and they certainly have the technology for it.
Or what about the European Union? So keen to be recognised as a real world power, a mission to Mars might do them some good, both scientifically and politically.
What about Sony with their "complete control" MiniDisc advertising campaign (or whatever it was). Their campaign clearly suggested that MiniDiscs are useful for recording and editing music.
Or is it ok for Sony to do whatever they like because they are also a "content provider"?
From: bgates To:Microsoft ATR Date: 1/3/02 7:46pm Subject: MICROSOFT SETTLEMENT
TO THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT We never felt there was any crime committed by Microsoft in the first place! What did they not want to do? They didn't want to share their system & their knowledge with their competitors???? That was the big criminal conspiracy???Yes, they are an extremely large company; yes, all of their systems intermingle & co-mingle beautifully. Should Microsoft have stopped innovating & subsequently stopped growing? The other companies which try to keep Microsoft in the courts all the time would be better off if they spent their time trying to develop some new & innovative systems & playing the game fairly. We have never heard of any company that gives other companies the secrets of their business practices & allows them access to their innovative methods which (sad to say) earn money for THEM, and lessen the profits of their competitors, HAVE YOU? AND---We still don't understand how the states got involved and were even given monetary settlements for their supposed abuse at the hands of Microsoft. We hope the settlement with the 9 states ends this case. There has been an exorbitant amount of money spent on this case & the time expended by high paid, valuable employees of the Justice Department could be better spent bringing to justice REAL CRIMINALS such as terrorists, murderers, rapists, gangsters, robbers, etc,etc,etc. PLEASE CLOSE THE CASE!!!
BILLY & ELIZABETH GATES
I thought his wife was Melinda... you never know, perhaps it wasn't a joke...
What difference is there between the function of a Dreamcast Coders' Cable and that of a floppy disk? Both can be used for transferring both legal and illegal material. It seems somewhat wrong that customs should assume that you're going to use something illegally, especially when the primary use is perfectly legal.
In this age of over-complex user-interfaces, Perl scripts are becoming increasingly useful when you just want to get the job done.
If I need to process a large amount of text, I am constantly amazed to see how Perl can do exactly what I need in a minimum amount of time. Good on them!
This seems like wasteful eye-candy when folks could be working on getting the window managers friendlier
What's to say that the folks don't want to work on window managers? Isn't that part of what Open-Source is about? People work on the things that they want, or that have been bugging them in their absense.
You don't have to install it if you don't want to - and maybe some other people do want to.
Well, Encspot reckons that the codec used is a Fraunhofer one, though this doesn't tell you anything about the legality. What I found amusing though was the ID3 tag listed the genre as "Blues."
I agree, in some games, realistic physics can make a big difference. I remember when I first played Super Mario Bros. 1 on the NES, seeing how the fireball bounces along in a straight line until it gets to a hole, and actually falls down, I was rather impressed. (Small things, small minds, whatever. I liked it.)
However, in modern 3D-type games, it's important to pick and choose where you spend your time coding in the physics. In a racing game, it's a lot more important to spend time making sure the cars handle correctly than how realistically the trees sway in the background.
Unfortunately, there just isn't the time to make everything about the game perfect, and it's sad to see when a program has missed it's spot because of delays in implementing useless features.
Yes, being able to run more programs is worthwhile
on
What's up with Lindows?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Why would anybody want to be able to run fewer programs than there was the potential for? There are thousands of extremely useful Windows programs out there (believe it or not, it's true!) and being able to run them on Linux can only be a good thing.
Programs are tools. Why would anybody choose to limit the amount of tools in their toolkit, when some of the forsaken tools could help them get their job finished much earlier?
Good luck to those who would add to the functionality of Linux!
No no no! If you have good-quality electronic paper, why would you need more than 1 sheet? Making an actual book out of it would be a waste, why not just have a way of changing a page at a time as displayed on the sheet, or scrolling?
Slashdot Mirror
I love the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It is easily my favourite book. I vastly enjoyed BBC Radio 4's adaptation of it, and I quite enjoyed the animated film.
With that in mind, I can't understand why people loved Peter Jackson's film so much. I tried to remain open minded, but I found it incredibly hard not to just walk out in anger.
He completely ruined the spirit of the tale, and quite unecessarily at that. Most of his changes were totally not needed. Once he decided to remove Tom Bombadil/The Barrow Downs he easily had enough time to remain true to the story, and so many of his alterations took longer to correct later on in the story than he would have ever have saved if he'd just left it be.
That is one of the main problems with making alterations to a story as deep as The Lord of the Rings, if you remove one thing, all the other parts of the story connected to it have to be altered, which cause more alterations later on.
Plus since when has 4 Oscars been a "snub"?
In the forests of the UK, two trees are planted for every one that is felled. European stocks of unharvested trees in the forest are growing at a rate of 252 million cubic metres
a year.
Egocentric? Only if making a better enviroment for yourself is egocentric.
I am not saying that they could do that - I did not say where I stood on the morality of the issue. I am merely saying that it would not be stealing. Just like if you murdered someone, it would not be morally acceptable, but it would also not be "stealing".
Copyright infringement is a more appropriate term. "Piracy" is not appropriate. That's the practice of attacking and robbing ships at sea.
A good article, even if it ends a bit abrubtly. I must disagree with one of his points, however. He says:
Technically they are stealing,
I must disagree with this. They are not stealing, since no-one is deprived of anything. By his own argument, the record companies are not being deprived of sales, and unlike true theft, there is no loss of material possessions. No-one's lost money, no-one's lost a shiny disc with digital data encoded on it, no-one's been stolen from.
Public Domain is not necessarily as free as GPL. If someone alters something which is in the public domain, they then get copyright for their altered version, which means that it is then no longer free.
For example, you try writing selling a story about The Little Mermaid and see how quickly Disney sue you. They may not be right to, but chances are they've got more money to throw at lawyers than you have.
This means that though a public domain work may be freer in the short term, it can soon be hijacked. "Public Domain EXTRA-free for a minute" is less free than "GPL QUITE-free for eternity"
See what I mean?
OCR = Optical Character Recognition. This usually refers to scanning in a document, and automatically converting the resulting image file into text.
Clearly, our sources differ.
Hear hear. I'm not sure all that much is known about where China is exactly - but I do remember reading somewhere that Canada was considering a Mars mission, and they certainly have the technology for it.
Or what about the European Union? So keen to be recognised as a real world power, a mission to Mars might do them some good, both scientifically and politically.
don't hold your breath for a Mars mission.
Unless it's from China.
Why on earth would anyone want to play this? I was under the impression that the playing of games was to make people feel better, not worse.
Still, another case of reality mirroring James Bond... or maybe it's the only case. Hm.
What about Sony with their "complete control" MiniDisc advertising campaign (or whatever it was). Their campaign clearly suggested that MiniDiscs are useful for recording and editing music.
Or is it ok for Sony to do whatever they like because they are also a "content provider"?
I thought his wife was Melinda... you never know, perhaps it wasn't a joke...
What difference is there between the function of a Dreamcast Coders' Cable and that of a floppy disk? Both can be used for transferring both legal and illegal material. It seems somewhat wrong that customs should assume that you're going to use something illegally, especially when the primary use is perfectly legal.
E-books are great! You can usually search for a phrase!
Well, you can copy and paste long sections! Well... usually not, when I come to think about it.
Hey, I know, you can print out a couple chapters to read at leisure! Oh wait, you can't do that very often either.
At least you can copy them onto your PDA and read at will... can't you? No? Oh.
I thought it said three LEADS and a mirror. That would have been impressive.
In this age of over-complex user-interfaces, Perl scripts are becoming increasingly useful when you just want to get the job done.
If I need to process a large amount of text, I am constantly amazed to see how Perl can do exactly what I need in a minimum amount of time. Good on them!
Really?
This seems like wasteful eye-candy when folks could be working on getting the window managers friendlier
What's to say that the folks don't want to work on window managers? Isn't that part of what Open-Source is about? People work on the things that they want, or that have been bugging them in their absense.
You don't have to install it if you don't want to - and maybe some other people do want to.
Well, Encspot reckons that the codec used is a Fraunhofer one, though this doesn't tell you anything about the legality. What I found amusing though was the ID3 tag listed the genre as "Blues."
I already have a "digital media server" that supports instant messaging, email, DVDs and CDs. It's my computer.
Good try. Traditional Haiku, though, is of the form:
5 syllables
7 syllables
5 syllables
Of course, tradtional Haiku is also in Japanese, applied to the seasons, whatever. Personally I don't mind as long as it sounds good.
The irony is, they were only discovered after someone got hold of their demo tape.
I agree, in some games, realistic physics can make a big difference. I remember when I first played Super Mario Bros. 1 on the NES, seeing how the fireball bounces along in a straight line until it gets to a hole, and actually falls down, I was rather impressed. (Small things, small minds, whatever. I liked it.)
However, in modern 3D-type games, it's important to pick and choose where you spend your time coding in the physics. In a racing game, it's a lot more important to spend time making sure the cars handle correctly than how realistically the trees sway in the background.
Unfortunately, there just isn't the time to make everything about the game perfect, and it's sad to see when a program has missed it's spot because of delays in implementing useless features.
Why would anybody want to be able to run fewer programs than there was the potential for? There are thousands of extremely useful Windows programs out there (believe it or not, it's true!) and being able to run them on Linux can only be a good thing.
Programs are tools. Why would anybody choose to limit the amount of tools in their toolkit, when some of the forsaken tools could help them get their job finished much earlier?
Good luck to those who would add to the functionality of Linux!
No no no! If you have good-quality electronic paper, why would you need more than 1 sheet? Making an actual book out of it would be a waste, why not just have a way of changing a page at a time as displayed on the sheet, or scrolling?