"...but needing to Google Max Headroom? What, your TV gets something other than TechTV?"
I was a little kid when Max Headroom was on. I certainly didn't pick up on the subtleties of it. As for TechTV, I'm not claiming I don't get it, but I've never run across it. I suppose I can look in the TV Guide and see what channel it is.
"Partridge was kind enough to send me his accepatance speech, it reads:
"I'm so pleased to accept this reward! I feel just like Kryten did when he was forced to wash 800 bedsheets as part of his sentence." "
Ha!! Man. There's going to be like 2 people on the whole planet that get that reference. Sadly, I'm the other one. Hopefully one day I'll move out of my parent's house.
"Ask Slashdot why Nemesis failed. You just know you'll get a ton of insightful and intelligent answers out of a question like that. "
Heh. I think Slashdot should follow this up with an article on why Farscape was cancelled. A few utterances of the word 'Suck' in either thread could spark an amusing nerd-ward.
"Morse code was recently used by the United States on July 4, 1997 to mobilize the largest international airbattle of recorded history. Apple deserves some of the credit too, though. "
Psst: It was 1996. July 4th, 1997 is when the Americans recovered the galaxy on Orion's belt and returned it to an angry agressor.
"Sometimes I really start to think that the rumours about Microsoft paing people to post on various forum sites are true."
Yeah, paying people to preach to a bunch of MS haters would be so fruitful. It couldn't possibly be that less bigoted people can see that MS did some stuff right. Here, I'll prove my point:
"Yeah, I know, absolutely *nothing* can beat a blue "e" in intuitivity."
What makes it intuitive is the words "Internet Explorer" right next to (or underneath) the icon. The nice thing about the blue 'e' is that it scales down to like 32 by 32 and is still readable.
If you think designing icons is easy, why don't you try making an 'internet' icon that's readable at 32 by 32.
"NanoGator made no mention of Bushnell, Russell, or games. AT ALL. He far more likely saw the word "Father" in the headline and made a lame fucking "Father of" joke with Al Gore as the subject."
Though I was making a lame 'Father of' joke with Al Gore as the subject, the other AC was right that I was referring to the true inventor of Video Games. I could have made a big speech about it, but I wanted a +1 Funny, not a +1 Informative.
I'm sorry you weren't capable of deducing the meaning of my comment on your own.
"Unless of course you don't have a problem with DRM. "
I wish these guys would come up with more interesting stuff like better presentation (DVD menus are a good start) than trying to lock up the content. It's one thing to crack the content to get the video out, it's another to faithfully recreate the menus etc.
The PC is such a wonderful media tool. They can do so many things with it they can't do with a set-top box. You'd think that they'd be more like the video game market in this respect. If they worked like PC games do, then crackers would have to work on a per-movie basis, as opposed to working on wrecking one protection scheme.
The disadvantage here is that more work is involved, but the advantage is that they have the opportunity to do some really unique things in terms of presentation.
Oh well. The game industry knows what it's doing, Hollywood doesn't.
"...there's no rational reason to worry computer video formats containing DRM."
The reason this is a problem is that it stalls innovation. If CD's had working DRM 5 years ago, would we have MP3 players? That may or may not be of interest to you, but an iPod is considerably smaller than a CD player, plus it stores a good deal more music.
"Having tkPhone allows us to do some things we couldn't on the Zaurus, like make use of a Speex codec which is part of the Xiph umbrella these days, we couldn't use it on the Zaurus because it requires floating point support."
How many of those are typos and how many are actual product names?
"Okay lets take a movie like Saving Private Ryan or Schindlers List and take out the naughty violence, oops you have just rendered to great films complete crap. Sure for some movies the violence is completely over the top, but for others it is an integral part of the movie."
That's a fair argument for why a director should have his or her creative freedom. However, his/her freedom is not in danger in this case. If a particular segment of the audience can't appreciate the movie with the violence in it, then why prevent them from satisfying their own tastes?
Something to consider: Why isn't Hollywood going nuts over the way movies are edited for TV? I watched Short Circuit once on Disney Channel, they censored the word 'dork'. Can you believe that?
Personally, I think Hollywood needs to learn to pick its battles. I don't see how they're going to grow if the no-you-cant-do-that's outweigh the yes-you-can-do-that's.
...in having your content altered to suit your audience if they're willingly choosing it?
This reminds me of that rental store that had movies with swear words etc edited from them. They got sued for that.
I'm an artist. I don't like changes to my work. But if somebody says "I'd like it this way, several other people would too, so I'm going to make the changes myself and save you the trouble..." then my attitude is "Cool! My audience expanded!"
I'll tell you why it's news. Slashdot always gets its panties in a bunch whenever MS takes a step to prevent modding. So they've been trying like crazy to come up with a legitimate reason for this to exist in order to 'defeat Microsoft'.
Unfortunately, all there is is potential and not practical use. It's about time there was a Slashdot article explaining that. The real reason that the XBOX is attractive to mod is that it costs MS money.
If you're geniuinely interested in a $150 PC, you can do better than the XBOX. Plus, you can turn it into a PVR. Not possible with the XBOX.
I will say this, though, I would *love* to have an XBOX for playing DivX discs. The reason for this is that the XBOX has true NTSC out, so the videos would look nearly like watching a DVD player. You don't get that with a PC with a TV out. You lose the interlacing and the colors look off.
"...shockwaves..." This will be damn noisy for those living under water... Noise pollution will increase to the level that those mammals will be no more able use there sonar capabilities."
Boy am I suprised this isn't American technology. Afterall, we did invent the SUV!
When I wanted to download a Linux distro, P2P was the first place I looked. I didn't want to cost the providers a gig of traffic when they're not making any money on it. Pity I didn't really find what I was looking for. This was a while back, though.
I'm the type of guy who doesn't like sharing my bandwidth, but I'd be willing to make an exception for Open Source stuff just on the grounds the it helps alleviate the costs of hosting free stuff.
"Maybe you should stop equating RedHat with Linux. RedHat is a pretty crappy desktop and at least 1 year behind SuSE and Mandrake (may it rest in peace) in terms of desktop usability."
It's what I had. I don't know the difference (and I'm reasonably informed) and Joe Longneck ain't going to know the difference. I bet you suffer the same ignorance. Windows 98 is unstable, Windows 2000 is not. Most people on Slashdot don't get that, and judging from your lack of Windows understanding in your other posts, I'm inclined to think you're in that group.
Speculation aside, niether I, or Joe (the subject of this conversation) is going to shop around for various distros. Simple as that. End of story. I don't remember anybody coming to MS's defense over the release of Windows ME by saying "well they still made 2000".
"Of course their bastardized KDE/GNOME mixture sucks, but the Windows-using average user doesn't use the advanced features anyway and Windows is the yardstick, so even RedHat finally reached the "good enough" attribute on the desktop. "
Obviously not in the video mode department. Windows has done good things with video since at least 98. I would contend that Windows is better at providing graphical utilities to maintain a machine, but for all I know Linux has caught up there. I've noticed it's a topic Linux users don't like to discuss.
"If you want help, post to a support forum, not Slashdot."
I was commenting on Linux's end-user usability on Slashdot, that's all I've ever done.
"If you buy a boxed distro you can call the vendor by phone or send an email which is much more than the support you get for any OEM-Windows version."
Which is fine, but I prefer to have a UI that doesn't require memorizing strange commands. I've been a Windows user since 3.1, I've never ever wanted or needed to call MS.
"I have no interest in pandering to the lazy. The whole point of a GUI is the fact that you shouldn't have to be led around by the nose."
Judging from the other comments that a more recent distro of Linux that he has fixes the problem, I'm inclined to believe that your unwillingness to help is a result of not wanting to admit that Linux still has a long way to go. You mention that the point of a GUI is so that a user doesn't have to be lead around by the nose, but his complaint was that the UI was lacking the tool he needed.
If his complaint was a 'pack of lies', as you put it, then the proper answer would have been "Here's how you do it."
Good job discrediting yourself there. You're lucky there were other people around to pick up the ball you dropped. I bet he'll laugh at you when he reads this.
"What format would they deliver it in? MP3? Would they use their own government MP3 encoder and pay license fees? Ogg? Wav? Real? Audio out to a big loud speaker that gets pointed to your house? What? "
Well, they wanted to make sure that every computer they use can play it. So they're using Midi.
"I am a new Linux user, be HELPFUL instead of trying to discredit me.
I hate this Linux zealousy. Bow to the statue of Linus before you're accepted into the community. Whatever."
Ha! I know what you're talking about man. I tried using Redhat 6.0 a year or two ago. I ran into configuration problems and had NO clue how to troubleshoot them. I couldn't find anything helpful in the UI, and I was puzzled as to what to search for to help get my net connection going on it.
I complained about it on Slashdot in some article relating to Linux. I made a huge mistake here, I fed the trolls. I mentioned that I hadn't used the new version. I was just trying to be up front and honest so that people knew that there was a chance my complaints were addressed. I also didn't want to badmouth Redhat if they had fixed it.
Can you guess what happened? I got a TON of responses about how I'm not qualified to make criticisms like that since I wasn't using the latest and greatest. Not a SINGLE PERSON came back and said "You might want to try Redhat 7, they fixed it."
Wanna know what's amusinng? A few months later I installed Redhat 7.... uh.. I think it was 7.1 on a laptop (different machine, the original one was retired) and it went pretty well. If those guys had taken a moment to address my issue instead of discrediting my complaints, I might have been a Linux user a lot sooner.
So yeah, I see your point. The commmunity needs to be more welcoming. Being defensive doesn't do any good, particularly because trying to prove a problem couldn't exist doesn't help the guy that the problem's existing for.
Slashdot Mirror
"...but needing to Google Max Headroom? What, your TV gets something other than TechTV?"
I was a little kid when Max Headroom was on. I certainly didn't pick up on the subtleties of it. As for TechTV, I'm not claiming I don't get it, but I've never run across it. I suppose I can look in the TV Guide and see what channel it is.
"Partridge was kind enough to send me his accepatance speech, it reads:
"I'm so pleased to accept this reward! I feel just like Kryten did when he was forced to wash 800 bedsheets as part of his sentence." "
Ha!! Man. There's going to be like 2 people on the whole planet that get that reference. Sadly, I'm the other one. Hopefully one day I'll move out of my parent's house.
"Next year we hope to show a profit!"
"Ask Slashdot why Nemesis failed. You just know you'll get a ton of insightful and intelligent answers out of a question like that. "
Heh. I think Slashdot should follow this up with an article on why Farscape was cancelled. A few utterances of the word 'Suck' in either thread could spark an amusing nerd-ward.
"Morse code was recently used by the United States on July 4, 1997 to mobilize the largest international airbattle of recorded history. Apple deserves some of the credit too, though. "
Psst: It was 1996. July 4th, 1997 is when the Americans recovered the galaxy on Orion's belt and returned it to an angry agressor.
"Sometimes I really start to think that the rumours about Microsoft paing people to post on various forum sites are true."
Yeah, paying people to preach to a bunch of MS haters would be so fruitful. It couldn't possibly be that less bigoted people can see that MS did some stuff right. Here, I'll prove my point:
"Yeah, I know, absolutely *nothing* can beat a blue "e" in intuitivity."
What makes it intuitive is the words "Internet Explorer" right next to (or underneath) the icon. The nice thing about the blue 'e' is that it scales down to like 32 by 32 and is still readable.
If you think designing icons is easy, why don't you try making an 'internet' icon that's readable at 32 by 32.
"You shit head. How do the comments of two people condemn an entire country? Seems like you just want an excuse... "
Heh I think it's funny that you called a guy a shithead because you intentionally misinterpreted what he was saying.
"NanoGator made no mention of Bushnell, Russell, or games. AT ALL. He far more likely saw the word "Father" in the headline and made a lame fucking "Father of" joke with Al Gore as the subject."
Though I was making a lame 'Father of' joke with Al Gore as the subject, the other AC was right that I was referring to the true inventor of Video Games. I could have made a big speech about it, but I wanted a +1 Funny, not a +1 Informative.
I'm sorry you weren't capable of deducing the meaning of my comment on your own.
... but Al Gore would claim he's the father of that.
"Unless of course you don't have a problem with DRM. "
I wish these guys would come up with more interesting stuff like better presentation (DVD menus are a good start) than trying to lock up the content. It's one thing to crack the content to get the video out, it's another to faithfully recreate the menus etc.
The PC is such a wonderful media tool. They can do so many things with it they can't do with a set-top box. You'd think that they'd be more like the video game market in this respect. If they worked like PC games do, then crackers would have to work on a per-movie basis, as opposed to working on wrecking one protection scheme.
The disadvantage here is that more work is involved, but the advantage is that they have the opportunity to do some really unique things in terms of presentation.
Oh well. The game industry knows what it's doing, Hollywood doesn't.
"...there's no rational reason to worry computer video formats containing DRM."
The reason this is a problem is that it stalls innovation. If CD's had working DRM 5 years ago, would we have MP3 players? That may or may not be of interest to you, but an iPod is considerably smaller than a CD player, plus it stores a good deal more music.
"Having tkPhone allows us to do some things we couldn't on the Zaurus, like make use of a Speex codec which is part of the Xiph umbrella these days, we couldn't use it on the Zaurus because it requires floating point support."
How many of those are typos and how many are actual product names?
"Okay lets take a movie like Saving Private Ryan or Schindlers List and take out the naughty violence, oops you have just rendered to great films complete crap. Sure for some movies the violence is completely over the top, but for others it is an integral part of the movie."
That's a fair argument for why a director should have his or her creative freedom. However, his/her freedom is not in danger in this case. If a particular segment of the audience can't appreciate the movie with the violence in it, then why prevent them from satisfying their own tastes?
Something to consider: Why isn't Hollywood going nuts over the way movies are edited for TV? I watched Short Circuit once on Disney Channel, they censored the word 'dork'. Can you believe that?
Personally, I think Hollywood needs to learn to pick its battles. I don't see how they're going to grow if the no-you-cant-do-that's outweigh the yes-you-can-do-that's.
...in having your content altered to suit your audience if they're willingly choosing it?
This reminds me of that rental store that had movies with swear words etc edited from them. They got sued for that.
I'm an artist. I don't like changes to my work. But if somebody says "I'd like it this way, several other people would too, so I'm going to make the changes myself and save you the trouble..." then my attitude is "Cool! My audience expanded!"
"This is news why?"
I'll tell you why it's news. Slashdot always gets its panties in a bunch whenever MS takes a step to prevent modding. So they've been trying like crazy to come up with a legitimate reason for this to exist in order to 'defeat Microsoft'.
Unfortunately, all there is is potential and not practical use. It's about time there was a Slashdot article explaining that. The real reason that the XBOX is attractive to mod is that it costs MS money.
If you're geniuinely interested in a $150 PC, you can do better than the XBOX. Plus, you can turn it into a PVR. Not possible with the XBOX.
I will say this, though, I would *love* to have an XBOX for playing DivX discs. The reason for this is that the XBOX has true NTSC out, so the videos would look nearly like watching a DVD player. You don't get that with a PC with a TV out. You lose the interlacing and the colors look off.
"...shockwaves..." This will be damn noisy for those living under water... Noise pollution will increase to the level that those mammals will be no more able use there sonar capabilities."
Boy am I suprised this isn't American technology. Afterall, we did invent the SUV!
"Those were movies?! I thought those were ILM demo reels! "
HA!! I wonder if anybody'll get that. Both those movies had rather ambitious scenes that, if cut, nobody would miss.
"I wonder what the final company will be called? "
It'll be called Compu-global-Hyper-Mega-Net. He'll change his job title from CEO to Emperor.
When I wanted to download a Linux distro, P2P was the first place I looked. I didn't want to cost the providers a gig of traffic when they're not making any money on it. Pity I didn't really find what I was looking for. This was a while back, though.
I'm the type of guy who doesn't like sharing my bandwidth, but I'd be willing to make an exception for Open Source stuff just on the grounds the it helps alleviate the costs of hosting free stuff.
"Maybe you should stop equating RedHat with Linux. RedHat is a pretty crappy desktop and at least 1 year behind SuSE and Mandrake (may it rest in peace) in terms of desktop usability."
It's what I had. I don't know the difference (and I'm reasonably informed) and Joe Longneck ain't going to know the difference. I bet you suffer the same ignorance. Windows 98 is unstable, Windows 2000 is not. Most people on Slashdot don't get that, and judging from your lack of Windows understanding in your other posts, I'm inclined to think you're in that group.
Speculation aside, niether I, or Joe (the subject of this conversation) is going to shop around for various distros. Simple as that. End of story. I don't remember anybody coming to MS's defense over the release of Windows ME by saying "well they still made 2000".
"Of course their bastardized KDE/GNOME mixture sucks, but the Windows-using average user doesn't use the advanced features anyway and Windows is the yardstick, so even RedHat finally reached the "good enough" attribute on the desktop. "
Obviously not in the video mode department. Windows has done good things with video since at least 98. I would contend that Windows is better at providing graphical utilities to maintain a machine, but for all I know Linux has caught up there. I've noticed it's a topic Linux users don't like to discuss.
"If you want help, post to a support forum, not Slashdot."
I was commenting on Linux's end-user usability on Slashdot, that's all I've ever done.
"If you buy a boxed distro you can call the vendor by phone or send an email which is much more than the support you get for any OEM-Windows version."
Which is fine, but I prefer to have a UI that doesn't require memorizing strange commands. I've been a Windows user since 3.1, I've never ever wanted or needed to call MS.
"I have no interest in pandering to the lazy. The whole point of a GUI is the fact that you shouldn't have to be led around by the nose."
Judging from the other comments that a more recent distro of Linux that he has fixes the problem, I'm inclined to believe that your unwillingness to help is a result of not wanting to admit that Linux still has a long way to go. You mention that the point of a GUI is so that a user doesn't have to be lead around by the nose, but his complaint was that the UI was lacking the tool he needed.
If his complaint was a 'pack of lies', as you put it, then the proper answer would have been "Here's how you do it."
Good job discrediting yourself there. You're lucky there were other people around to pick up the ball you dropped. I bet he'll laugh at you when he reads this.
"What format would they deliver it in? MP3? Would they use their own government MP3 encoder and pay license fees? Ogg? Wav? Real? Audio out to a big loud speaker that gets pointed to your house? What? "
Well, they wanted to make sure that every computer they use can play it. So they're using Midi.
Ha! I know what you're talking about man. I tried using Redhat 6.0 a year or two ago. I ran into configuration problems and had NO clue how to troubleshoot them. I couldn't find anything helpful in the UI, and I was puzzled as to what to search for to help get my net connection going on it.
I complained about it on Slashdot in some article relating to Linux. I made a huge mistake here, I fed the trolls. I mentioned that I hadn't used the new version. I was just trying to be up front and honest so that people knew that there was a chance my complaints were addressed. I also didn't want to badmouth Redhat if they had fixed it.
Can you guess what happened? I got a TON of responses about how I'm not qualified to make criticisms like that since I wasn't using the latest and greatest. Not a SINGLE PERSON came back and said "You might want to try Redhat 7, they fixed it."
Wanna know what's amusinng? A few months later I installed Redhat 7.
So yeah, I see your point. The commmunity needs to be more welcoming. Being defensive doesn't do any good, particularly because trying to prove a problem couldn't exist doesn't help the guy that the problem's existing for.
I'm kind of curious about remixes myself. Are they derivitive works, or are DJs out there breaking the law?
So... who played this year?