"If I maximize the window, I want the toolbar to stay the same size, but the text area to get bigger... just scaling everything won't work."
I don't think he meant rescale in lieu of resize. No reason why you couldn't have both. The simple fact of the matter is that you need your toolbars at etc to be resolution independent.
"I think the RIAA has to make their case to their customers in a manner that is compelling and, yes, actually encourages voluntary compliance. "
I don't think they even need to do that. Lemme quote something else you said here:
" It is not right, however, to make 25 copies for friends."
Despite how fast CD burners are, they're still not fast enough to make 25 copies without wanting to tell your friends go buy it you cheapskate. CDs are cheap enough that this really isn't worthwhile. It's one thing to make that occasional copy for a friend, but 25? Ugh. I couldn't even stand burning 25 discs to backup my precious porn.
"The solution is sociological, not hardware/software."
I respectfully disagree. The solution is economical. A good deal of what the industry calls piracy is really an expression of demand. People want individual songs, people want lower prices, and they want an easy way to try out new tunes. If they want people to be 'legit', then a.) they need to market iTunes, Rhapsody, etc a good deal more and b.) If those aren't enough, then look into what else people want, maybe CD kiosks where you can make a custom CD.
People are not, by nature, dishonest. People are happy to pay for something as long as they enjoy what they're getting. If they stop treating them like thieves and start treating them like a new market to cater to, they'll enjoy higher profits and fewer dishonest trades.
"We had a rule that anything more than four lines was absolutely unnacceptable. It annoyed the recipients, was too long for most people to read and had only questionable enforcement value anyway. It was a fairly common rule of thumb at the time, but as you say it appears to have been abandoned. "
Heh. Not totally related to what you've said, but it reminded me of it. At my previous job, somebody sent an email to my office mate. It was meant for me. He tapped my shoulder and said "Well I think this email was supposed to be for you, but the disclaimer says I cannot show it to anybody that it's not intended for." So I read his disclaimer, and he was right. By forwarding it to me, he'd violate those terms. Heh we had a chuckle at that.
So how'd it end? Not very excitingly, really. We just used a little common sense, assumed he wouldn't care, and forwarded the message to me anyway.
"No, because the judge is paid to apply the law. Causing confusion is not in itself enough to be unlawful - a lot of us would be in a lot of trouble if it were:)"
I see what you're saying. However, the judge should not ignore the damage to the public. If he decides that the trademark is invalid, that's fine, but he still should not allow the use of the term Lindows. Trademark or not, Lindows still did this to give Microsoft the raspberry. Not cool. I'd have a lot more sympathy for them if they had stumbled on this a little more accidentally.
"...but that doesn't mean that just because they made a name similar to "Windows" that they've infringed upon a valid trademark."
They made a product with a name that is VERY similar to Lindows. They also made it so it performs the same basic job, and more damningly, they made it look virtually identical. That is exactly what trademarks is supposed to stop.
"What isn't right is Microsoft attempting to arrogate generic computing terms to itself."
The choice to use Windows was to appeal to end users, not developers. From a marketing point of view, "Windows" refers to a visaul metaphor, not as a reference that a small handful of their customer base would understand as a computing term. Anybody ever notice their logo looks like a Window? (or, tee hee, window 'pain'. Blah)
Sorry, but you're going to need more than a incongruous metaphor to prove that one.
"I don't think there's any doubt about that but that isn't enough. The question is whether "Windows" is a generic term in computer graphical interfaces and it seems pretty obvious that it is."
I don't think that's the real question here. Windows is the de-facto OS, and has been trademarked for years. Whether it was generic or not, it would cause a great deal of confusion if somebody else released a "Windows" OS. The judge should really pay attention to that, especially when Lindows looks so much like Windows.
It's fun to hate Microsoft and all, but this just ain't right. You especially don't want this case to help Microsoft 'compete' with other companies. "Palm is a generic term for palm-top computers, we should be allowed to rename our PocketPC brand to PalmPC."
"All they seem to be asking, in general, is that if you are not interested in purchasing the album, that you not acquire it by other means."
Actually, it's more like "You're a thief so we're going to close that door." with the added benefit that they can be duped into buying an album because of one song on a radio.
"In other, related news, I understand that you can now preview over the radio..."
They do not preview entire albums on the radio.
"in record store listening booths..."
True, but you end up at a specialty store to do that. Partial credit in your favor.
"... and on web sites including iTunes Music Store."
Subject to availability, only certain songs apply, or you only get 30 seconds of one.
"Your prayers have been answered! "
Listen.com/Rhapsody is what 'answered my prayers'. You pay $10 per month, and you can listen to entire songs as many times as you want. If you want to burn a CD, $1 a song. This service would not be in existence if Napster hadn't come along.
Sorry, but I don't agree that they're being reasonable. If they were, then they'd have been the ones offering on-line music back in 97.
... if consumers were getting a fair shake in the first place. The music industry can sell me an overpriced album without showing me what is in it, but I don't get a satisfaction guaranteed return policy. Therefore, the industry has no economic incentive to strive to make better content.
Level the playing field before punishing consumers for being the only competitor this industry has.
"This isn't proof. Of course a Portland newspaper wants it to be in Portland."
Maybe. However, the creator of the show is from this area, it's not so far fetched. When you live in Portland, drive past Flanders street, or catch an episode about 10 digit dialing dividing the city, you don't need much 'proof' that Portland was the inspiration.
" near the end they say "this small family from northern Kentucky"
That's what it said one time. Another time it aired, they said a different state name like Minnesota or something. Way to mess with people Mr. Groenig.
There's yet another episode where Moe says which state he got his liquor license from, it wasn't Kentucky.
"If you think for one minute that your local Wal-Whatever store is going to refund you ANYTHING for your 'now used and listened to and "presumed copied" CD,"
Are you a little slow? Did you miss the bit where I said 'unopened'? When it's unopened, it's not presumed copied or listend to.
"The simulated smoke/water/cloth/hair/physics all depends on the state of the previous frame - and can't be split up like the basic brute-force rendering."
That really depends on the software, I think. If you're telling me that specifically Shrek's smoke shader works like that, then I really cannot argue as I really do not know. I can tell you, though, that Lightwave's particle and smoke/water/cloth system only sort of works this way. The scene file stores where the particles etc go. Yes, that lump of pre-calcuated data would have to be sent down. (In that respect, you are right...) However, the data is much much smaller than say a 4096^2 uncompressed image. It's been a while since I've experimented with it, but I had a real hard time making a 1 megabyte scene file with particle motion stored in it. I had to work really really hard to get it that high.
So... I'm not really telling you you're wrong, but I do think it can reasonably be done still. The textures are, by far, the largest part of a scene. This is true for every package I can think of. The scene file/meshes are second place by a long shot. A table of 3D vector data, even in 4 dimensions, is still a lot lower than a collection of 2D bitmaps.
"This is not a troll. I am a retailer. I own a brick-and-mortar retail store. "
Yeah I knew I should have clarified my post. I'm sorry about that. I pictured that it be focused on a big retailer like Best Buy or some chain. The problem with spreading it across retailers like yourself, besides hurting the wrong place, is that it's a lot harder to track the actual #. Again, I'm sorry about not clarifying this in my previous post.
So I've apologized for my error. This is the last of the apologies in this post, now it's your turn to listen:
"Hey, if we hit it on the right day of the month, we can even cause the RETAILER to pay thousands in extra sales/revenue tax thereby ensuring that they can't afford to do business anymore."
You need satisfied customers in order to make money. Think about that before you get nasty with anybody for wanting the business to be fair. You guys are on the front lines. You face the boycotts. You face the civil disobedience. You have your pitchfork aimed in the wrong direction.
"Here's an idea: how about growing the fuck up and paying for your music and movies? How about not stealing things that don't belong to you? How about abandoning your rediculously naive and misguided notion that you are somehow entitled to free merchandise.?"
You just called an innocent man a thief, you fucking asshole. You run a business dependent on customers buying the stuff you're selling, but you're calling those same customers thieves? Whose fault is it if you go out of business?
Worse, the very fact that you think this is about getting something for nothing means you haven't even listened to your customers. (I'll give you a hint, it's not about getting music for free...) That's yet another nail in your own coffin. We give you money, not the RIAA.
" All that you are going to accomplish from action like this is a reduction in the new products that I can afford to offer.."
That's all you think? Proving a lot of money is at stake isn't going to shift attention to the right direction? You called me naieve?
" Abuse our goodwill and you will lose our goodwill."
You just called me a thief, and you don't understand what my views are. Don't preach to me about earning your good will.
"Protect your independant retailers. Don't listen to drivel like the parent's post. "
"What is much more likely is that the grass, skin, hair, etc. is described by some relatively simple input parameters from which millions of polygons are generated."
That's a very good point. Procedural elements of rendering could be distributed quite efficiently. Shrek 2 had some awesome smoke looking effects that I bet was very CPU intensive. That's exactly the type of thing that could be distributed.
I doubt 'affecting mankind' is the biggest reason anybody's doing. I think they're doing it because it's interesting to them. Frankly, just having the name 'shrek' written on it somewhere will mean a lot of people wanting to run it, especially if they could see the renderings unfold over time.
"what's proposed here is just does not seem possible under low bandwidth conditions. it's not like you can just run off to computer #2,398 and say "go render frame 1,503" -- there are textures and models and state information that probably total somewhere on the order of gigabytes (give or take a factor of ten) in order to render that frame."
I can give you a little data here. Take a look at this image I made. The scene is roughly 1.5 million polygons, and virtually everything is textured. The folder containing the bare bones version of this scene is roughly 600 megabytes. I could probably cut that size in half via JPEG etc, but we're still looking at a massive amount of data to send to one person to render a frame. I know this because I seriously discussed sharing the rendering with a friend of mine on the east coast. We both felt it'd take longer to ship than it would to render.
I doubt this scene is anything close to what they were doing in Shrek 2, let alone whatever will happen with 3.
Ah, I just read your clarification in your other post. Sorry about my previous post.
Here's the problem: People will download stuff, legit or not. The people who do say "I will not buy stuff that funds the RIAA" even though they're not downloading anything will not be recognized. It will just be assumed that they're downloading the music anyway. (Convenient for the RIAA, isn't it?)
That's why a message has to be sent. The idea I cooked up here is about attaching a price to our beliefs. "Here is a million dollars you could have had, but since you're not listening..." The catch is, it has to be done in such a way that a retailer doesn't lose a million dollars. They're not the enemy. That's why I made the special point about the CDs being resalable.
Funny thing is, Slashdot has the power to pull it off.
Slashdot Mirror
"If I maximize the window, I want the toolbar to stay the same size, but the text area to get bigger... just scaling everything won't work."
I don't think he meant rescale in lieu of resize. No reason why you couldn't have both. The simple fact of the matter is that you need your toolbars at etc to be resolution independent.
"a) most walkmen/discmen have small computers inside them."
Micro processor != computer in this context.
"I think the RIAA has to make their case to their customers in a manner that is compelling and, yes, actually encourages voluntary compliance. "
I don't think they even need to do that. Lemme quote something else you said here:
" It is not right, however, to make 25 copies for friends."
Despite how fast CD burners are, they're still not fast enough to make 25 copies without wanting to tell your friends go buy it you cheapskate. CDs are cheap enough that this really isn't worthwhile. It's one thing to make that occasional copy for a friend, but 25? Ugh. I couldn't even stand burning 25 discs to backup my precious porn.
"The solution is sociological, not hardware/software."
I respectfully disagree. The solution is economical. A good deal of what the industry calls piracy is really an expression of demand. People want individual songs, people want lower prices, and they want an easy way to try out new tunes. If they want people to be 'legit', then a.) they need to market iTunes, Rhapsody, etc a good deal more and b.) If those aren't enough, then look into what else people want, maybe CD kiosks where you can make a custom CD.
People are not, by nature, dishonest. People are happy to pay for something as long as they enjoy what they're getting. If they stop treating them like thieves and start treating them like a new market to cater to, they'll enjoy higher profits and fewer dishonest trades.
"We had a rule that anything more than four lines was absolutely unnacceptable. It annoyed the recipients, was too long for most people to read and had only questionable enforcement value anyway. It was a fairly common rule of thumb at the time, but as you say it appears to have been abandoned. "
Heh. Not totally related to what you've said, but it reminded me of it. At my previous job, somebody sent an email to my office mate. It was meant for me. He tapped my shoulder and said "Well I think this email was supposed to be for you, but the disclaimer says I cannot show it to anybody that it's not intended for." So I read his disclaimer, and he was right. By forwarding it to me, he'd violate those terms. Heh we had a chuckle at that.
So how'd it end? Not very excitingly, really. We just used a little common sense, assumed he wouldn't care, and forwarded the message to me anyway.
"no wonder high end cards are expensive!"
My gf's ex bought her a Diamond video card for their anniversary. I was warned that that little joke was only funny the first time.
"They mentioned several times that they want the PSP to be a multifunction device with PDA abilities..."
No touch screen.
"No, because the judge is paid to apply the law. Causing confusion is not in itself enough to be unlawful - a lot of us would be in a lot of trouble if it were :)"
I see what you're saying. However, the judge should not ignore the damage to the public. If he decides that the trademark is invalid, that's fine, but he still should not allow the use of the term Lindows. Trademark or not, Lindows still did this to give Microsoft the raspberry. Not cool. I'd have a lot more sympathy for them if they had stumbled on this a little more accidentally.
"...but that doesn't mean that just because they made a name similar to "Windows" that they've infringed upon a valid trademark."
They made a product with a name that is VERY similar to Lindows. They also made it so it performs the same basic job, and more damningly, they made it look virtually identical. That is exactly what trademarks is supposed to stop.
"What isn't right is Microsoft attempting to arrogate generic computing terms to itself."
The choice to use Windows was to appeal to end users, not developers. From a marketing point of view, "Windows" refers to a visaul metaphor, not as a reference that a small handful of their customer base would understand as a computing term. Anybody ever notice their logo looks like a Window? (or, tee hee, window 'pain'. Blah)
Sorry, but you're going to need more than a incongruous metaphor to prove that one.
"I don't think there's any doubt about that but that isn't enough. The question is whether "Windows" is a generic term in computer graphical interfaces and it seems pretty obvious that it is."
I don't think that's the real question here. Windows is the de-facto OS, and has been trademarked for years. Whether it was generic or not, it would cause a great deal of confusion if somebody else released a "Windows" OS. The judge should really pay attention to that, especially when Lindows looks so much like Windows.
It's fun to hate Microsoft and all, but this just ain't right. You especially don't want this case to help Microsoft 'compete' with other companies. "Palm is a generic term for palm-top computers, we should be allowed to rename our PocketPC brand to PalmPC."
"Wow. That's so unfair."
Except you can't hear every song on an album. You have little idea what you're buying. Oops, guess it's not so fair.
"All they seem to be asking, in general, is that if you are not interested in purchasing the album, that you not acquire it by other means."
Actually, it's more like "You're a thief so we're going to close that door." with the added benefit that they can be duped into buying an album because of one song on a radio.
"In other, related news, I understand that you can now preview over the radio..."
They do not preview entire albums on the radio.
"in record store listening booths..."
True, but you end up at a specialty store to do that. Partial credit in your favor.
"... and on web sites including iTunes Music Store."
Subject to availability, only certain songs apply, or you only get 30 seconds of one.
"Your prayers have been answered! "
Listen.com/Rhapsody is what 'answered my prayers'. You pay $10 per month, and you can listen to entire songs as many times as you want. If you want to burn a CD, $1 a song. This service would not be in existence if Napster hadn't come along.
Sorry, but I don't agree that they're being reasonable. If they were, then they'd have been the ones offering on-line music back in 97.
... if consumers were getting a fair shake in the first place. The music industry can sell me an overpriced album without showing me what is in it, but I don't get a satisfaction guaranteed return policy. Therefore, the industry has no economic incentive to strive to make better content.
Level the playing field before punishing consumers for being the only competitor this industry has.
"This isn't proof. Of course a Portland newspaper wants it to be in Portland."
Maybe. However, the creator of the show is from this area, it's not so far fetched. When you live in Portland, drive past Flanders street, or catch an episode about 10 digit dialing dividing the city, you don't need much 'proof' that Portland was the inspiration.
" near the end they say "this small family from northern Kentucky"
That's what it said one time. Another time it aired, they said a different state name like Minnesota or something. Way to mess with people Mr. Groenig.
There's yet another episode where Moe says which state he got his liquor license from, it wasn't Kentucky.
"If you think for one minute that your local Wal-Whatever store is going to refund you ANYTHING for your 'now used and listened to and "presumed copied" CD,"
Are you a little slow? Did you miss the bit where I said 'unopened'? When it's unopened, it's not presumed copied or listend to.
"Encryption is not security...."
And why not? And by that definition, is a password not security either?
"The simulated smoke/water/cloth/hair/physics all depends on the state of the previous frame - and can't be split up like the basic brute-force rendering."
That really depends on the software, I think. If you're telling me that specifically Shrek's smoke shader works like that, then I really cannot argue as I really do not know. I can tell you, though, that Lightwave's particle and smoke/water/cloth system only sort of works this way. The scene file stores where the particles etc go. Yes, that lump of pre-calcuated data would have to be sent down. (In that respect, you are right...) However, the data is much much smaller than say a 4096^2 uncompressed image. It's been a while since I've experimented with it, but I had a real hard time making a 1 megabyte scene file with particle motion stored in it. I had to work really really hard to get it that high.
So... I'm not really telling you you're wrong, but I do think it can reasonably be done still. The textures are, by far, the largest part of a scene. This is true for every package I can think of. The scene file/meshes are second place by a long shot. A table of 3D vector data, even in 4 dimensions, is still a lot lower than a collection of 2D bitmaps.
"Oooh. Is NanoGator the new Tom St Denis?"
Translation: Doh, he proved me wrong. Glad I posted anonymously so none know my shame!
"This is not a troll. I am a retailer. I own a brick-and-mortar retail store. "
Yeah I knew I should have clarified my post. I'm sorry about that. I pictured that it be focused on a big retailer like Best Buy or some chain. The problem with spreading it across retailers like yourself, besides hurting the wrong place, is that it's a lot harder to track the actual #. Again, I'm sorry about not clarifying this in my previous post.
So I've apologized for my error. This is the last of the apologies in this post, now it's your turn to listen:
"Hey, if we hit it on the right day of the month, we can even cause the RETAILER to pay thousands in extra sales/revenue tax thereby ensuring that they can't afford to do business anymore."
You need satisfied customers in order to make money. Think about that before you get nasty with anybody for wanting the business to be fair. You guys are on the front lines. You face the boycotts. You face the civil disobedience. You have your pitchfork aimed in the wrong direction.
"Here's an idea: how about growing the fuck up and paying for your music and movies? How about not stealing things that don't belong to you? How about abandoning your rediculously naive and misguided notion that you are somehow entitled to free merchandise.?"
You just called an innocent man a thief, you fucking asshole. You run a business dependent on customers buying the stuff you're selling, but you're calling those same customers thieves? Whose fault is it if you go out of business?
Worse, the very fact that you think this is about getting something for nothing means you haven't even listened to your customers. (I'll give you a hint, it's not about getting music for free...) That's yet another nail in your own coffin. We give you money, not the RIAA.
" All that you are going to accomplish from action like this is a reduction in the new products that I can afford to offer.."
That's all you think? Proving a lot of money is at stake isn't going to shift attention to the right direction? You called me naieve?
" Abuse our goodwill and you will lose our goodwill."
You just called me a thief, and you don't understand what my views are. Don't preach to me about earning your good will.
"Protect your independant retailers. Don't listen to drivel like the parent's post. "
Protect your revenue, listen to your customers.
"Good old NanoGator - never able to admit when he's wrong. So reliable. "
A.) Exactly what was I wrong about here?
B.) When have I been wrong that I didn't admit to? I suggest you have a look here and here, within the last day I apologized twice for being wrong.
Got the balls to reply to that? Bet if you do you'll still post anonymously.
"What is much more likely is that the grass, skin, hair, etc. is described by some relatively simple input parameters from which millions of polygons are generated."
That's a very good point. Procedural elements of rendering could be distributed quite efficiently. Shrek 2 had some awesome smoke looking effects that I bet was very CPU intensive. That's exactly the type of thing that could be distributed.
"These are tasks affecting all of mankind."
I doubt 'affecting mankind' is the biggest reason anybody's doing. I think they're doing it because it's interesting to them. Frankly, just having the name 'shrek' written on it somewhere will mean a lot of people wanting to run it, especially if they could see the renderings unfold over time.
"what's proposed here is just does not seem possible under low bandwidth conditions. it's not like you can just run off to computer #2,398 and say "go render frame 1,503" -- there are textures and models and state information that probably total somewhere on the order of gigabytes (give or take a factor of ten) in order to render that frame."
I can give you a little data here. Take a look at this image I made. The scene is roughly 1.5 million polygons, and virtually everything is textured. The folder containing the bare bones version of this scene is roughly 600 megabytes. I could probably cut that size in half via JPEG etc, but we're still looking at a massive amount of data to send to one person to render a frame. I know this because I seriously discussed sharing the rendering with a friend of mine on the east coast. We both felt it'd take longer to ship than it would to render.
I doubt this scene is anything close to what they were doing in Shrek 2, let alone whatever will happen with 3.
"I still disagree with the implied premise (people will steal anyway, so it might as well be OK)"
Did I imply that? Or are you referring to a prev post? I ask because it wasn't intentional.
Ah, I just read your clarification in your other post. Sorry about my previous post.
Here's the problem: People will download stuff, legit or not. The people who do say "I will not buy stuff that funds the RIAA" even though they're not downloading anything will not be recognized. It will just be assumed that they're downloading the music anyway. (Convenient for the RIAA, isn't it?)
That's why a message has to be sent. The idea I cooked up here is about attaching a price to our beliefs. "Here is a million dollars you could have had, but since you're not listening..." The catch is, it has to be done in such a way that a retailer doesn't lose a million dollars. They're not the enemy. That's why I made the special point about the CDs being resalable.
Funny thing is, Slashdot has the power to pull it off.