"So if it wasn't on the net, does that mean that they would have made 100 million more?"
I think what they're worried about is not getting those numbers overseas where the movie wasn't released yet. The movie wasn't that good. It's hard to imagine somebody watching the internet version and then wanting to go see it in the theater.
Of course, there are two things that can be done to thwart this.
1.) Global releases. Don't get the hype going and then make people wait.
2.) Stop charging $3 for a candybar. I had absolutely no interest in downloading a movie before seeing it in the theater until I went to see Reloaded. I spent nearly $25 for me and my gf to go. I could have bought the DVD for that! Now, halve the price, and the time it takes to download the movie's not so worthwhile.
Re:Bunch of nice people work there
on
A Tour of Pixar
·
· Score: 1
"Wish I was talented enough to work there."
Just remember that talent is something you develop, it's not something you're born with. You want to work there? Start climbing the steps.
Re:It was looking good until
on
A Tour of Pixar
·
· Score: 1
"That wasn't enough for Pixar's CEO, Steve Jobs. "He thought it was really important that there only be one bathroom in the building, for all 700 people who work here," Greenberg says."
Sadly, this decision has caused ripples in the future. I'll never forget the story about the crewman who got a huge hickey on his butt because he tried to go out of a window on the Enterprise.
"Of course, its also human nature to "pass the buck" or so it seems."
What bothers me is how one-sided the arguments are. The media never seems to notice that games also teach children that guns kill. If a kid finds his dad's gun after playing GTA3, he KNOWS what will happen when he pulls the trigger.
This is the same media, though, that sensationalized high-school footbal injuries. "in the last six months, 7 kids have gone to the hospital after playing football. Is your kid in danger?"
"What!? Two giant corporations actually doing something MS-like to make themselves more appealing?!"
I know! Let's buy a bunch of video cards that both ATI and NVidia make that they take a loss on, then try to circumvent their protection mechanisms so we can install Linux on them. Won't it piss them off that they lost money AND they got Linux installed on it instead of using it as a graphics processor!
"If I wasn't planning on seeing it in theatres, I might consider it, but I'd probably still wait for the DVD. How does this hurt them? "
The Matrix gained a lot of hype. The movie presumably opened in USA before it opened anywhere else. People in other markets could download the crappy quality movie and discover it's actually very boring, thus resulting in not wanting to see it.
Now the 'very boring' bit is my opinion, but it's very much an important aspect of this strange world the MPAA lives in. At VHS quality, the movie's not being shown at it's best. If people see the downloaded one and not like it, thus not going to the theater to see it, the MPAA calls that a loss. If the movie is really high quality and the downloading of it still satisfies their need to see it in the theater, then the MPAA calls that a loss. They're going to continue operating in this stupid mode until they improve the theater going experience.
Frankly, $3 for a candybar is going to do more to cause internet piracy than making the content availabe.
" already hate people that bring their cells into theaters and classes and such. Now I might also have to deal with little toy cars running about? Are cell companies trying to get their customers shot? "
Well, you have to admit, it would have made the car chase scene in Matrix Reloaded more interesting. "Whoah, he didn't dodge that bullet."
Just curious if the anti-currency measures could be defeated by printing elements of the currency at different times. Just print a little bit of it, rewind the paper, print a different part of it, etc. Break it up into small enough chunks, and how would the printer know the difference?
"Lastly, I find it amusing that some people praise Win 2K/XP for its stability over previous versions of windows. Give me a break! Compared to Windows ME, Lizzie Borden would seem a paragon of stability. "
Well, to be fair, I have reason to praise Win2k. I've had 3 Win2k machines over the years I've used to do 3D rendering. I have not lost a project or a rendering to Windows instability. The only blue screens I've had happened when I first built my latest machine. For some reason, dual athlon + Sound Blaster Audigy + Winamp = crash. Stopped using Winamp, now it's working great. It's always up when I come in on Monday, even after a 'during the weekend' render.
The short story is that I've been able to rely on it on various machines (I use it at home too, mainly for gaming.) without BSODs or instabilities. I do have to reboot once every couple of weeks, though I think that's more of a result of having Outlook open for too long. It likes to take out explorer.
Perfect? Nope. But my opinion's based on beating up my machine pretty hard. Most of my company was running Win2k and my coworkers weren't having problems either. (I'm the Win2k guru there so I'm the one who gets to fix problems with those machines.)
I'm not just blindly praising 2k here, I've got many of hour supporting my appreciation of it.
"I thought that argument was put to rest when those gameshark cartridges came out for the NES. Maybe I'm thinking about the wrong thing, but I could have sworn lawsuites were filed and gameshark won in the long run. "
If memory serves, Nintendo tried to claim that that Game Genie caused damage to people's games. There was a breath of truth to it, enter the wrong code and you could erase save games. You could also make the game unstable (only when the Genie was hooked up...) thus making the game seem defective. Yes, Nintendo lost. Nintendo's stance on that was pretty shitty. I wish I could tell you what their real concern was, but unless a bunch of people called with tech support issues, I have trouble imagining it. (Was it possible it could have been used to play unauthorized games?)
Here's a question for you: Would the Game Genie case hold up today in light of the DMCA? If you're looking for the difference between then and now, that'd be the first direction I'd point you.
"Anyway, it really brwaks down like this. I buy a car, and can buy any carburetor I want and install it. Not only that, but I can legally get many third party books on how to modify my car."
I'm not advocating Microsoft's stand here. I think it's stupid. (In other words, I agree with you.) I'm not very supportive of attempts to hack it, though, because I don't think the little guy will win. Thanks to the DMCA, MS has the power to fight it by claiming IP damage. Worse, there's little to no reason (yet) to mod the XBOX. Everybody wants to put Linux on it. Why? To poke around with it and say "tee hee, I flipped off MS."? Where's the apps that justify the time into mucking with it?
I believe that along with the DMCA and the Court's views on this type of thing thus far spell almost certain doom for any legal battle that arises from it. Call me skeptical, but I would rather see the effort put into hacking the PS2 or GameCube and it's unique hardware.
Man I hope I made my point fairly clear. Every time I mention my view on this everybody argues with me, usually out of misunderstanding.
"Truly, even if the law says differently, I could not care less...the law of the land applies here and any other law is bought. "
Yes. That's why it's important to win battles, not just fight them. What happens if it turns into a legal hassle and MS wins? MS would have weaker ground to stand on if somebody made a heck of an APP that really worked best on the XBOX. Admittedly, I don't know what that app is. I'm sure there's a good reason somewhere to do something besides play games on the XBOX. My advice, though, would be to take advantage of it's 3D card and NTSC connector...
"Speaking of which, can anyone point me to a good how-to on converting an Xbox into a decent *nix router? "
Why bother? For $120 you can buy a 54-megabit wireless router. $50 gets you an ethernet router. Besides overpaying and flipping Microsoft, you also have to exploit/mod it and get ahold of a Linux distro for it.
"That is wrong, as well as the statement claiming that NT/2K/XP is free of BSODs."
What you're saying is completely wrong. I never made a statement that NT/2K/or XP is BSOD free. What I was saying was that they were DRASTICALLY more stable than 95/98/ME. If you're going to argue with me, at least make an attempt to understand what I was saying.
"Is there something in slashcode that automatically mods up a post containing the words "blues screen" or do people still think this is funny? "
Uninformed Linux users find it funny. They think Windows 98 was the epitome of Windows stability, like NT/2K/XP never existed. Want to have some fun with them? Remind them that you still can't undelete a file in Linux. Even if that's wrong, it's no less factual than their BSOD jokes.;)
"Why would I want a portable blue screen? I get enough of that at home.:) "
Ugh. BSOD jokes are so 1998. It's about as funny as somebody saying "Who'd want a Linux portable gaming machine? It'd be a pain in the ass to type 'jump -high' on that little thumbboard."
"I'd be very curious to know how running Linux on an Xbox is cheating."
Did you read his previous answer?
" Q. You now have PC, Internet and cell phone connectivity with the Xbox, plus Karaoke. How are you addressing security issues now that the Xbox is stepping out of the safe living room?
A. We are designing everything we are doing to provide security as a service for both player and game publisher. For example, we can sense and disable an Xbox modified with third party "modchips" and not allow it to play online."
It's not the answer you guys want to hear, but he's got a point. What's to stop people from cheating on-line if the XBOX can read games with modified binaries? When you pay extra per month for XBOX-Live service, you don't want to deal with cheaters.
Slashdot Mirror
"So if it wasn't on the net, does that mean that they would have made 100 million more?"
I think what they're worried about is not getting those numbers overseas where the movie wasn't released yet. The movie wasn't that good. It's hard to imagine somebody watching the internet version and then wanting to go see it in the theater.
Of course, there are two things that can be done to thwart this.
1.) Global releases. Don't get the hype going and then make people wait.
2.) Stop charging $3 for a candybar. I had absolutely no interest in downloading a movie before seeing it in the theater until I went to see Reloaded. I spent nearly $25 for me and my gf to go. I could have bought the DVD for that! Now, halve the price, and the time it takes to download the movie's not so worthwhile.
"Wish I was talented enough to work there."
Just remember that talent is something you develop, it's not something you're born with. You want to work there? Start climbing the steps.
"That wasn't enough for Pixar's CEO, Steve Jobs. "He thought it was really important that there only be one bathroom in the building, for all 700 people who work here," Greenberg says."
Sadly, this decision has caused ripples in the future. I'll never forget the story about the crewman who got a huge hickey on his butt because he tried to go out of a window on the Enterprise.
"Of course, its also human nature to "pass the buck" or so it seems."
What bothers me is how one-sided the arguments are. The media never seems to notice that games also teach children that guns kill. If a kid finds his dad's gun after playing GTA3, he KNOWS what will happen when he pulls the trigger.
This is the same media, though, that sensationalized high-school footbal injuries. "in the last six months, 7 kids have gone to the hospital after playing football. Is your kid in danger?"
"What!? Two giant corporations actually doing something MS-like to make themselves more appealing?!"
I know! Let's buy a bunch of video cards that both ATI and NVidia make that they take a loss on, then try to circumvent their protection mechanisms so we can install Linux on them. Won't it piss them off that they lost money AND they got Linux installed on it instead of using it as a graphics processor!
Never heard of VHS-C?
"If I wasn't planning on seeing it in theatres, I might consider it, but I'd probably still wait for the DVD. How does this hurt them? "
The Matrix gained a lot of hype. The movie presumably opened in USA before it opened anywhere else. People in other markets could download the crappy quality movie and discover it's actually very boring, thus resulting in not wanting to see it.
Now the 'very boring' bit is my opinion, but it's very much an important aspect of this strange world the MPAA lives in. At VHS quality, the movie's not being shown at it's best. If people see the downloaded one and not like it, thus not going to the theater to see it, the MPAA calls that a loss. If the movie is really high quality and the downloading of it still satisfies their need to see it in the theater, then the MPAA calls that a loss. They're going to continue operating in this stupid mode until they improve the theater going experience.
Frankly, $3 for a candybar is going to do more to cause internet piracy than making the content availabe.
" already hate people that bring their cells into theaters and classes and such. Now I might also have to deal with little toy cars running about? Are cell companies trying to get their customers shot? "
Well, you have to admit, it would have made the car chase scene in Matrix Reloaded more interesting. "Whoah, he didn't dodge that bullet."
"Red Hat for the Red Planet!"
Linux won't be very popular with the Martians. They only have 3 fingers.
"Alignment problems: how could you ensure that the piece of paper goes in at exactly the right position and isn't even a millimeter off?"
Simple, the paper never leaves the roller. I used to have an Alps printer that did that.
"I hope whoever modded this down gets meta-moderated to hell."
I like how you got modded as 'off-topic' for challenging a moderation. I swear, meta-moderation isn't enough sometimes.
" hate to say this, but the only reason people usually buy ninteno is because of mario and zelda."
So what you're saying is that Sony is extremely vulnerable to being beaten by a newcomer?
Just curious if the anti-currency measures could be defeated by printing elements of the currency at different times. Just print a little bit of it, rewind the paper, print a different part of it, etc. Break it up into small enough chunks, and how would the printer know the difference?
"Lastly, I find it amusing that some people praise Win 2K/XP for its stability over previous versions of windows. Give me a break! Compared to Windows ME, Lizzie Borden would seem a paragon of stability. "
Well, to be fair, I have reason to praise Win2k. I've had 3 Win2k machines over the years I've used to do 3D rendering. I have not lost a project or a rendering to Windows instability. The only blue screens I've had happened when I first built my latest machine. For some reason, dual athlon + Sound Blaster Audigy + Winamp = crash. Stopped using Winamp, now it's working great. It's always up when I come in on Monday, even after a 'during the weekend' render.
The short story is that I've been able to rely on it on various machines (I use it at home too, mainly for gaming.) without BSODs or instabilities. I do have to reboot once every couple of weeks, though I think that's more of a result of having Outlook open for too long. It likes to take out explorer.
Perfect? Nope. But my opinion's based on beating up my machine pretty hard. Most of my company was running Win2k and my coworkers weren't having problems either. (I'm the Win2k guru there so I'm the one who gets to fix problems with those machines.)
I'm not just blindly praising 2k here, I've got many of hour supporting my appreciation of it.
" We have the right to mod our Xboxes, and they have the right to keep us from playing on their servers because of what we did."
Heh. That kind of reminds me of Slashdot's favorite game company who's name rhymes with Wizard.
"I thought that argument was put to rest when those gameshark cartridges came out for the NES. Maybe I'm thinking about the wrong thing, but I could have sworn lawsuites were filed and gameshark won in the long run. "
If memory serves, Nintendo tried to claim that that Game Genie caused damage to people's games. There was a breath of truth to it, enter the wrong code and you could erase save games. You could also make the game unstable (only when the Genie was hooked up...) thus making the game seem defective. Yes, Nintendo lost. Nintendo's stance on that was pretty shitty. I wish I could tell you what their real concern was, but unless a bunch of people called with tech support issues, I have trouble imagining it. (Was it possible it could have been used to play unauthorized games?)
Here's a question for you: Would the Game Genie case hold up today in light of the DMCA? If you're looking for the difference between then and now, that'd be the first direction I'd point you.
"Anyway, it really brwaks down like this. I buy a car, and can buy any carburetor I want and install it. Not only that, but I can legally get many third party books on how to modify my car."
I'm not advocating Microsoft's stand here. I think it's stupid. (In other words, I agree with you.) I'm not very supportive of attempts to hack it, though, because I don't think the little guy will win. Thanks to the DMCA, MS has the power to fight it by claiming IP damage. Worse, there's little to no reason (yet) to mod the XBOX. Everybody wants to put Linux on it. Why? To poke around with it and say "tee hee, I flipped off MS."? Where's the apps that justify the time into mucking with it?
I believe that along with the DMCA and the Court's views on this type of thing thus far spell almost certain doom for any legal battle that arises from it. Call me skeptical, but I would rather see the effort put into hacking the PS2 or GameCube and it's unique hardware.
Man I hope I made my point fairly clear. Every time I mention my view on this everybody argues with me, usually out of misunderstanding.
"Truly, even if the law says differently, I could not care less...the law of the land applies here and any other law is bought. "
Yes. That's why it's important to win battles, not just fight them. What happens if it turns into a legal hassle and MS wins? MS would have weaker ground to stand on if somebody made a heck of an APP that really worked best on the XBOX. Admittedly, I don't know what that app is. I'm sure there's a good reason somewhere to do something besides play games on the XBOX. My advice, though, would be to take advantage of it's 3D card and NTSC connector...
"Speaking of which, can anyone point me to a good how-to on converting an Xbox into a decent *nix router? "
Why bother? For $120 you can buy a 54-megabit wireless router. $50 gets you an ethernet router. Besides overpaying and flipping Microsoft, you also have to exploit/mod it and get ahold of a Linux distro for it.
"That is wrong, as well as the statement claiming that NT/2K/XP is free of BSODs."
What you're saying is completely wrong. I never made a statement that NT/2K/or XP is BSOD free. What I was saying was that they were DRASTICALLY more stable than 95/98/ME. If you're going to argue with me, at least make an attempt to understand what I was saying.
"How?"
Blame the DMCA.
"Is there something in slashcode that automatically mods up a post containing the words "blues screen" or do people still think this is funny? "
;)
Uninformed Linux users find it funny. They think Windows 98 was the epitome of Windows stability, like NT/2K/XP never existed. Want to have some fun with them? Remind them that you still can't undelete a file in Linux. Even if that's wrong, it's no less factual than their BSOD jokes.
"Why would I want a portable blue screen? I get enough of that at home. :) "
Ugh. BSOD jokes are so 1998. It's about as funny as somebody saying "Who'd want a Linux portable gaming machine? It'd be a pain in the ass to type 'jump -high' on that little thumbboard."
Did you read his previous answer?
It's not the answer you guys want to hear, but he's got a point. What's to stop people from cheating on-line if the XBOX can read games with modified binaries? When you pay extra per month for XBOX-Live service, you don't want to deal with cheaters.
"What will they think of next?"
How about a useful problem to solve?
"To this day if I find an original SF2 machine I have to put in a quarter and try my luck once more."
;)
I found one at a burger stand near the airport in Honolulu back in 99. That's probably the one place you can talk your gf/wife into going.