If the television industry were to be a little more forward thinking, they'd do that themselves. They'd put a few commercials in, get paid for it, and it'd be distributed virtually for free. If they maintain a server to make those shows availble with a decent download rate, then they can pretty much insure that nobody's going to edit out the commercials. (If they wanted to be real assholes, they could use Microsoft's Media format and disable indexing on it, thus meaning you can't skip commercials.)
" I mean the small fighters from DS9 bank to turn for shite's sake."
There's a very simple reason for that. All of those ships have strong lateral thrusters in order to keep the ship afloat over a planet. Those thrusters are probably a lot more powerful than their maneuvering jets. So for the Defiant to make a hard turn, it makes sense for the ship to bank 90 degrees and fire up the more powerful thrusters on the bottom of the ship. There's also the matter of stresses on the hull.
I personally don't think it has to do with keeping everybody 'vertical'. If the intertia dampners are powerful enough to keep everybody from becoming an organic stew at the back of the Enterprise when it hits warp, then it won't find hard turns to be much of a challenge.
In any case, if you're watching that and getting your panties in a bunch about it, you're taking it far too seriously. Above any of the reasons I've mentioned, it's very important for the special effects department to communicate a story to the audience. You're going to see ships banking to turn. You're going to see higher ambient light than you'd normally see in space. You're going to hear explosions. You're even going to see ships with inconsistent scale throughout the episodes. You can either be overly sensitive to it, or realize that there was a team of people trying to put together a visually appealing presentation to you, as opposed to creating a Discovery Channel documentary about how the war with the Gamma Quadrant was won.
"In space there is no friction to stop your inertia. Excellent waste of time research people.!"
Ugh. I hate exposing my nerdiness, but the war against ignorance must be WON!!
Pick any series depicting the starship Enterprise, and I can point you to an episode where the ship has entered a planet's atmosphere.
Space is not a 100% vacuum. There's particles of stuff flying around all over the place. The Enterprise (any of them) collects those particles and makes fuel out of them. That's what those red spinny flashing things are at the top of the original Enterprise. There'd be a noticable effect on the efficiency of that ship if it had a huge surface area in the front. Etc.
The whole point is academic anyway, the main deflector's supposed to push stuff out of the path of the ship baseball sized holes don't appear all the way through the ship.:P
In any case, your point about no friction is short-sighted. As for the waste of time of research, well that's probably still true despite your crappy claim.
"Just like cattle overgrazing a field, humans have become more and more of a risk to their own existence."
Just remember folks, that line of reasoning assumes everybody just marches off the cliff even after passing a sign saying "DANGER: BRIDGE OUT."
The way things work here in America is that if something becomes harder to acquire, the price goes up. If there is a shortage of cows, then the price of beef goes up. If there is a shortage of trees, then the price of paper goes up. As prices go up, alternatives are adopted. Betcha that happens with oil within a decade or two. Oil prices will rise due to lack of supply, suddenly hybrid cars and hydrogen fuel cells are worth the upgrade.
So no, we're not going to 'consume ourselves to death'. Things will radically change, but the world won't suddenly end. Give humans a little credit, will ya? We are kinda smart you know.
"Are there any explanations for this large amount of activity at what should be a non-peak time?"
I'd love to hear this question on the Art Bell show. I'm sure somebody would come up with a creative, yet strangely plausible reason that humans cause this. "It's radio man, we started using radio and the sun is allergic to it."
"Well, no, not exactly. I yelled his name and challenged him to joust, and he just.. turned around. Next thing I know there's a cartoonesque hole in the ground."
"The point is that the little dig was completely unnecessary."
You're right. In terms of good journalistic reporting, it really wasn't in good form. However, the quip was more about how old the patent was (16 years in tech terms is virtually an eternity), not as much a poke at the limitations of the PS2.
As for my comment, the point of it was that his view of what he was seeing in that post was tainted by annoyance at that limitation. It sounded to him like somebody was a fanboy of another system. The reality is not so clear cut. However, assuming the AC comes from the point of view of being a fan of the PS2, I can see why he'd leap to that conclusion.
"Why does the original poster of this article type like he's a brainwashed, consumer fanboy of a system other than the PS2?"
Probably because fan boys of the PS2 don't like it brought up that the system has a nasty little limitation that causes those jaggies. I imagine it was painful for the people who spent $300 for a PS2, waited for months for it to be available (remember the shortage?), and brought it home to realize that in most cases Dreamcast games looked better.
"Gee, right after Sony sells it's 60 millionth PS2, this University finally figures out that Sony "Stole" their (ancient) technology. Sounds awfully fishy to me."
Coincidently, Sony recently changed their manufacturing process to make the systems cheaper. I couldn't tell you if that's what sparked the suit or not, but I can tell you that anything smells fishy when you are missing a good deal of detail like we are right now with this story. It's too vague.
You're not going to like this reference
on
Linux in Movies?
·
· Score: 4, Funny
I spotted one. I was watching a commercial for Earthlink. It featured two dudes trying outbid each other on Ebay on an item with only 30 seconds left. The guy with Earthlink won because his connection was faster. The guy who lost, his page was still loading. If you look carefully, he's running KDE as his desktop. I found that quite amusing.;)
(Note: I couldn't tell you what OS the 'winner' was using.)
" the reality is that free software develops around needs real people actually have, rather than the marketing strategy of a company like Microsoft."
Developing aroound people's needs and making a marketing strategy are not automatically opposing goals. The OSS Community sought to make a browser that could make people turn off IE for good. Mozilla was born. The OSS Community wanted a web server with good uptime and was reasonably secure. Apache was born. The Linux Community would really like to be shed of their dependence on Microsoft for good. That's a goal they have, and work's being done to move that way. Sadly, accomplishing this is not something you can do by writing one app. You need to have a goal. When you have a goal, the others that are working on their bits can contribute their efforts to meet that goal.
" If you really think that Linux needs focus groups and strategy meetings, then you don't understand what it is all about."
I said Linux needs focus, not focus groups. It needs a goal and a design to get you that way. You can attempt to use disinformation to discredit me if you like, all I'm going to do is point at OSX and BSD and say "Yes, it can be done, but it aint going to get there if all the programmers are off in different directions only working on the parts they think are fun."
Honestly man, Linux is more useful than just a hobbyist toy, don't treat it as such.
If you get into any sort of accident in your car, no matter the circumstances, it'll be assumed it distracted you. As a result, Slashdot'll pitchfork it no matter how cool it is. Sorta like cell phones.
Okay. If their goal is world domination, then the community needs to think a little farther ahead. I mean, you can dismiss Microsoft's comments as hype, but give them a little credit, they have a long-term ambitious goal for Windows. It'd be really nice to see that with Linux. It'd be nice to hear "Our goal is to create a new simplified UI for Linux in order to attract a wider user base. To accomplish this, we're designing a new UI standard and making it available so that Linux's popular apps can be upgraded to interact with the new design."... or something like that.
Maybe the KDE team does this, I wouldn't know. But it'd be nice for the Linux community as a whole to stand together and work towards an ambitious goal like that, even plan a release date for it. It may or may not work, it may not quite meet everybody's expectations, but it's a direction for the community to go.
I think you guys would be surprised at what focusing the OSS community would accomplish. Instead of dismissing Microsoft's goals, take it as a cue. There's an opportunity here to dramatically improve Linux *and* earn some free hype over it that could potentially drive people to try it in groves. Imagine the headline "The Linux Community gets serious about competing with Microsoft." It's a fair sight better than "Linux can almost do what Windows does now." now isn't it?
Please don't read this as a Linux troll. I really want Linux to do succeed. The facts have to be faced, though, that Microsoft is a huge impediment to that success. This isn't because they're a monopoly, but because there is the perception that Linux is perpetually playing catchup. I'd like to see the day when the OSS Community leading that parade.
"If somebody is using new software, they need to accept that they are using new software, and not insist that it behave in exactly the same way, shape, form that their old software did."
The problem with this statement is that you were talking about replacing proprietary software with it. If you've already paid for said proprietary software, and the free software doesn't do as much, then the user has every right to say "I'll switch when the free software can do what I've already paid for my proprietary software to do."
Pardon my naievity. I just wanted to ask, are GPL violations a big problem?
If it's happening all the time and this is a method slow progress of it, then I don't see a huge issue with it. But if it is a once in a while type of thing, then how could this have anything but a negative impact on GPL? The potential is there (reality could tell a different story) for people to shy away from it, worrying that they haven't quite got all their ducks in a row. If it's easy to automatically scan their code and say they're in violation, well then what? I guess what I'm trying to say is that it could be mishandled, thus treating the users of GPL code like they're potentially thieves. It strikes me that one of the compelling factors of GPL is their reliance on the honor system. Whatever you do, don't play games that can damage that bright point of GPL.
Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. I suppose it could be used to defend against an accusation not unlike what SCO has claimed. "You copied our code!""No, we used GPL'd code, see?" In that case, my previous comment about disrupting GPL's trust might not be as likely. "Well, we're just doing it so that this sort of thing doesn't happen again." I can see people nodding their head in agreement in that case.
In short, it's one thing to do it if your aim is to defend yourself from SCO'esque accusations, it's another to use it to look for victims to sue. Whatever is implemented, be very careful about damaging GPL's image to the community that values it.
"Like him or not, the MPAA is behind a lot of your favourite movies. Don't hate the man or the group..."
We all would like Hollywood to expand into the internet age. They're fighting it kicking and screaming. Valenti was particularly good at applying reason (easily disputable reason, mind you) to a situation that makes them sound like they're in the right. If Valenti had been able to make his points in the past, we wouldn't have VCRs today.
People have plenty of reason not to like him. Yes the MPAA makes movies we like, but that makes it all the more painful. The internet is a WONDERFUL media for movies and everybody's knee-jerk afraid that we're all going to become thieves the moment it is used.
You're right that they have an antiquated protectionist distro system, but that isn't all there is to it.
Slashdot Mirror
"Some record it and put it on Kazaa for me."
If the television industry were to be a little more forward thinking, they'd do that themselves. They'd put a few commercials in, get paid for it, and it'd be distributed virtually for free. If they maintain a server to make those shows availble with a decent download rate, then they can pretty much insure that nobody's going to edit out the commercials. (If they wanted to be real assholes, they could use Microsoft's Media format and disable indexing on it, thus meaning you can't skip commercials.)
" I mean the small fighters from DS9 bank to turn for shite's sake."
There's a very simple reason for that. All of those ships have strong lateral thrusters in order to keep the ship afloat over a planet. Those thrusters are probably a lot more powerful than their maneuvering jets. So for the Defiant to make a hard turn, it makes sense for the ship to bank 90 degrees and fire up the more powerful thrusters on the bottom of the ship. There's also the matter of stresses on the hull.
I personally don't think it has to do with keeping everybody 'vertical'. If the intertia dampners are powerful enough to keep everybody from becoming an organic stew at the back of the Enterprise when it hits warp, then it won't find hard turns to be much of a challenge.
In any case, if you're watching that and getting your panties in a bunch about it, you're taking it far too seriously. Above any of the reasons I've mentioned, it's very important for the special effects department to communicate a story to the audience. You're going to see ships banking to turn. You're going to see higher ambient light than you'd normally see in space. You're going to hear explosions. You're even going to see ships with inconsistent scale throughout the episodes. You can either be overly sensitive to it, or realize that there was a team of people trying to put together a visually appealing presentation to you, as opposed to creating a Discovery Channel documentary about how the war with the Gamma Quadrant was won.
"Computer, End program!"
They use Linux on the Enterprise. You have to speak in all lower case.
"In space there is no friction to stop your inertia. Excellent waste of time research people.!"
:P
Ugh. I hate exposing my nerdiness, but the war against ignorance must be WON!!
Pick any series depicting the starship Enterprise, and I can point you to an episode where the ship has entered a planet's atmosphere.
Space is not a 100% vacuum. There's particles of stuff flying around all over the place. The Enterprise (any of them) collects those particles and makes fuel out of them. That's what those red spinny flashing things are at the top of the original Enterprise. There'd be a noticable effect on the efficiency of that ship if it had a huge surface area in the front. Etc.
The whole point is academic anyway, the main deflector's supposed to push stuff out of the path of the ship baseball sized holes don't appear all the way through the ship.
In any case, your point about no friction is short-sighted. As for the waste of time of research, well that's probably still true despite your crappy claim.
Ugh I'm so not proud of this post.
"Just like cattle overgrazing a field, humans have become more and more of a risk to their own existence."
Just remember folks, that line of reasoning assumes everybody just marches off the cliff even after passing a sign saying "DANGER: BRIDGE OUT."
The way things work here in America is that if something becomes harder to acquire, the price goes up. If there is a shortage of cows, then the price of beef goes up. If there is a shortage of trees, then the price of paper goes up. As prices go up, alternatives are adopted. Betcha that happens with oil within a decade or two. Oil prices will rise due to lack of supply, suddenly hybrid cars and hydrogen fuel cells are worth the upgrade.
So no, we're not going to 'consume ourselves to death'. Things will radically change, but the world won't suddenly end. Give humans a little credit, will ya? We are kinda smart you know.
"Are there any explanations for this large amount of activity at what should be a non-peak time?"
I'd love to hear this question on the Art Bell show. I'm sure somebody would come up with a creative, yet strangely plausible reason that humans cause this. "It's radio man, we started using radio and the sun is allergic to it."
"And I for one welcome our new plasmotic overloards!"
3 people found that funny, and they all had mod points? Wow.
"So how'd you die?"
"Fell off a cliff."
"How'd you manage that?"
"Pushed."
"He pushed you off a cliff?"
"Well.. maybe not pushed.. more like jousted."
"Jousted?!"
"You jousted with him near a cliff?"
"Yep."
"Uh.. but you didn't have a staff."
"Well, no, not one I bought at the store..."
"???"
"It's a guy thing, alright?"
"... So he jousted you off the cliff with his.."
"Well, no, not exactly. I yelled his name and challenged him to joust, and he just.. turned around. Next thing I know there's a cartoonesque hole in the ground."
"The point is that the little dig was completely unnecessary."
You're right. In terms of good journalistic reporting, it really wasn't in good form. However, the quip was more about how old the patent was (16 years in tech terms is virtually an eternity), not as much a poke at the limitations of the PS2.
As for my comment, the point of it was that his view of what he was seeing in that post was tainted by annoyance at that limitation. It sounded to him like somebody was a fanboy of another system. The reality is not so clear cut. However, assuming the AC comes from the point of view of being a fan of the PS2, I can see why he'd leap to that conclusion.
"Why does the original poster of this article type like he's a brainwashed, consumer fanboy of a system other than the PS2?"
Probably because fan boys of the PS2 don't like it brought up that the system has a nasty little limitation that causes those jaggies. I imagine it was painful for the people who spent $300 for a PS2, waited for months for it to be available (remember the shortage?), and brought it home to realize that in most cases Dreamcast games looked better.
"Gee, right after Sony sells it's 60 millionth PS2, this University finally figures out that Sony "Stole" their (ancient) technology. Sounds awfully fishy to me."
Coincidently, Sony recently changed their manufacturing process to make the systems cheaper. I couldn't tell you if that's what sparked the suit or not, but I can tell you that anything smells fishy when you are missing a good deal of detail like we are right now with this story. It's too vague.
I spotted one. I was watching a commercial for Earthlink. It featured two dudes trying outbid each other on Ebay on an item with only 30 seconds left. The guy with Earthlink won because his connection was faster. The guy who lost, his page was still loading. If you look carefully, he's running KDE as his desktop. I found that quite amusing. ;)
(Note: I couldn't tell you what OS the 'winner' was using.)
"Where is the Governator"
He hasn't been sworn in yet. Gray Davis is still in charge. Sorry, I don't remember the date the changeover happens.
... but for those of you down there in southern California, how are the fires affecting you?
You guys all right?
I've heard it both ways, eventually just got sick of tuning in.
Thanks for the clarification.
" the reality is that free software develops around needs real people actually have, rather than the marketing strategy of a company like Microsoft."
Developing aroound people's needs and making a marketing strategy are not automatically opposing goals. The OSS Community sought to make a browser that could make people turn off IE for good. Mozilla was born. The OSS Community wanted a web server with good uptime and was reasonably secure. Apache was born. The Linux Community would really like to be shed of their dependence on Microsoft for good. That's a goal they have, and work's being done to move that way. Sadly, accomplishing this is not something you can do by writing one app. You need to have a goal. When you have a goal, the others that are working on their bits can contribute their efforts to meet that goal.
" If you really think that Linux needs focus groups and strategy meetings, then you don't understand what it is all about."
I said Linux needs focus, not focus groups. It needs a goal and a design to get you that way. You can attempt to use disinformation to discredit me if you like, all I'm going to do is point at OSX and BSD and say "Yes, it can be done, but it aint going to get there if all the programmers are off in different directions only working on the parts they think are fun."
Honestly man, Linux is more useful than just a hobbyist toy, don't treat it as such.
Hehe. Last time I heard the term Ninny, I was watcing Nick at Nite. :)
.. I just wishh it'd be a flat tax. I really don't want to deal with purchasing from different states with different taxes.
" Any comments/ suggestions would be wonderful"
Yeah, don't put it in the front seat.
If you get into any sort of accident in your car, no matter the circumstances, it'll be assumed it distracted you. As a result, Slashdot'll pitchfork it no matter how cool it is. Sorta like cell phones.
"World domination."
... or something like that.
Okay. If their goal is world domination, then the community needs to think a little farther ahead. I mean, you can dismiss Microsoft's comments as hype, but give them a little credit, they have a long-term ambitious goal for Windows. It'd be really nice to see that with Linux. It'd be nice to hear "Our goal is to create a new simplified UI for Linux in order to attract a wider user base. To accomplish this, we're designing a new UI standard and making it available so that Linux's popular apps can be upgraded to interact with the new design."
Maybe the KDE team does this, I wouldn't know. But it'd be nice for the Linux community as a whole to stand together and work towards an ambitious goal like that, even plan a release date for it. It may or may not work, it may not quite meet everybody's expectations, but it's a direction for the community to go.
I think you guys would be surprised at what focusing the OSS community would accomplish. Instead of dismissing Microsoft's goals, take it as a cue. There's an opportunity here to dramatically improve Linux *and* earn some free hype over it that could potentially drive people to try it in groves. Imagine the headline "The Linux Community gets serious about competing with Microsoft." It's a fair sight better than "Linux can almost do what Windows does now." now isn't it?
Please don't read this as a Linux troll. I really want Linux to do succeed. The facts have to be faced, though, that Microsoft is a huge impediment to that success. This isn't because they're a monopoly, but because there is the perception that Linux is perpetually playing catchup. I'd like to see the day when the OSS Community leading that parade.
"These announcements are nothing more than vague future directions... "
So.. I just have to ask: Where's Linux headed next?
"If somebody is using new software, they need to accept that they are using new software, and not insist that it behave in exactly the same way, shape, form that their old software did."
The problem with this statement is that you were talking about replacing proprietary software with it. If you've already paid for said proprietary software, and the free software doesn't do as much, then the user has every right to say "I'll switch when the free software can do what I've already paid for my proprietary software to do."
Pardon my naievity. I just wanted to ask, are GPL violations a big problem?
If it's happening all the time and this is a method slow progress of it, then I don't see a huge issue with it. But if it is a once in a while type of thing, then how could this have anything but a negative impact on GPL? The potential is there (reality could tell a different story) for people to shy away from it, worrying that they haven't quite got all their ducks in a row. If it's easy to automatically scan their code and say they're in violation, well then what? I guess what I'm trying to say is that it could be mishandled, thus treating the users of GPL code like they're potentially thieves. It strikes me that one of the compelling factors of GPL is their reliance on the honor system. Whatever you do, don't play games that can damage that bright point of GPL.
Maybe I'm looking at this the wrong way. I suppose it could be used to defend against an accusation not unlike what SCO has claimed. "You copied our code!" "No, we used GPL'd code, see?" In that case, my previous comment about disrupting GPL's trust might not be as likely. "Well, we're just doing it so that this sort of thing doesn't happen again." I can see people nodding their head in agreement in that case.
In short, it's one thing to do it if your aim is to defend yourself from SCO'esque accusations, it's another to use it to look for victims to sue. Whatever is implemented, be very careful about damaging GPL's image to the community that values it.
"Like him or not, the MPAA is behind a lot of your favourite movies. Don't hate the man or the group..."
We all would like Hollywood to expand into the internet age. They're fighting it kicking and screaming. Valenti was particularly good at applying reason (easily disputable reason, mind you) to a situation that makes them sound like they're in the right. If Valenti had been able to make his points in the past, we wouldn't have VCRs today.
People have plenty of reason not to like him. Yes the MPAA makes movies we like, but that makes it all the more painful. The internet is a WONDERFUL media for movies and everybody's knee-jerk afraid that we're all going to become thieves the moment it is used.
You're right that they have an antiquated protectionist distro system, but that isn't all there is to it.
"He favors DRM and other similar schemes."
Man, that read just like those stupid commercials they show on TV whenever there's an election.
"He drinks the blood of babies..."