Admittedly I'm no marketting genius, but how do you illustrate the deep humour and insane yet insanely self-consistent universe that Adams created with a barrage of 1-second clips played with rock-music?
"And independent research would then point out that download activity on major movie trackers and other systems used to trade movies has dropped by 40%."
Perhaps, but I SERIOUSLY doubt that'll matter to the *AA. They'll look for a number like "4 billion copyrighted files traded a month" and complain about it.
(Note: Just to be clear, I really do disagree here. I'm not just arguing for the sake of arguing. Please don't feel I'm intentionally being an ass or that I'm trying to run you into the ground.)
"Yes, I know, none of this will ever happen because too few would be willing to put up with any sort of inconvenience a potentially greater good."
Heh yeah, it really is academic. In all fairness, though, I don't think that many people really care. I mean, it's hard for me to complain when I don't get my panties in a twist about Walmart moving in or the gov't using Microsoft software to apply for federal grants. To each is own, I guess.
"This is, really, a stupid thing to say about *any* medium, be it Flash, PDF, HTML, AJAX, or cuneiform."
You misunderstand me. First off, I'm an artist, and I agree that it's shitty to poke fun at Flash. (If that's not enough, I'm also a huge fan of Ninjai.)
That said, I still don't see what the BFD would be if they "drm'd" Flash movies. They're not easy to save or convert in the first place. Even if there really is a good reason, the other half of the question is "What would Adobe actually do to limit Flash movies?" Frankly, I'm irritated at Slashdot's knee-jerk reaction to those three little letters. My main purpose behind asking that question was to get the guy to actually prove he isn't knee-jerking.
" Buying and returning unopened wastes everyone's time and otherwise has the same net effect as not buying in the first place."
The point isn't to destroy inventory. Actually, the point is to NOT cause harm to the retailers.
Retailers, however, DO keep a close eye on returns. If, on a particular day, Best Buy sold 200,000 copies of Gigli, then the next day they were all returned, they'd definitely know something was up. With that much money going in and out, they'd probably at least want to know wtf is going on.
"I wonder if Apple or Microsoft will buy Adobe in the next few years?"
I don't know anything about Apple's cash reserves, but assuming they could afford it it would make a HELL of a lot more sense for them to buy Adobe instead of MS. If Photoshop became Mac exclusive, that would have a huge effect on the CG industry. If Microsoft bought Adobe they'd... uh.. flip off Apple.
Frankly, I have difficulty imagining either of the two spending that much money and getting at least that much in return out of it.
"If Microsoft really want's Macromedia, they'll probably be more then happy to by Adobe, who bought Macromedia."
Uh, right. "Why buy one when you can buy both at only twice the price!" That's the kind of smart business moves that made Microsoft a multi-billion dollar company.
"Then again, they would almost certainly blame download first, long and hard before realizing the true thruth that they are facing a boycott. "
Though I appreciate the spirit of your post, I think your comment right here pretty much puts the last nail into the coffin, so to speak. The studios would likely respond by crippling DVDs even more to stop those EVIL COMMUNIST DOWNLOADS. Heh. Now, if a bunch of people bought a DVD and returned it the next day unopened, the message would come across. "Here's a million dollars you could have had if you didn't piss us off."
"The movie industry is fighting this tooth and nail. Something about destroying the directors vision or some junk. Don't expect DVDs to come with this standard."
Why would that bother them? It would (potentially) mean they can make their vision happen the way they like, and the user can automatically water it down to their tastes. Personally, I don't have a problem with this. If I made a movie that satisfied my vision, and some people wanted to view a worse version of it, fine with me. It beats having to shoe-horn it into a lower rating.
I'm thinking about Robocop right now. The original cut of it earned an X-Rating for violence. They had to cut scenes out to get it down to R. They made the X-Rated version available on DVD. I watched it, and I couldn't believe what altering it did to some of the scenes. In one case, it actually made a scene a lot scarier. Remember when ED-209 blew away an executive? In the theatrical version, it basically opened fire on him and stopped when he died. It looked very cold-blooded. In the original version, it opened fire and blew the guy onto a table. It then kept firing over and over and over and over again. Despite all the blood spraying into the air, it was actually kind of funny. Stupid thing just kept on firing even though dude was dead. But... the blood. That scene had to go. What was once a humurous scene showing an insanely bad bug (Microsoft, anyone?) turned into a depiction of an evil robot.
I would imagine that Paul Verhoeven would have much preferred to have been able to release one DVD with user controlled settings.
"f you had to buy an add-on device to do it for N64, it really wasn't "standard", was it?"
Fair point, but it depends on how you look at it. I mean, was the memory card a standard feature? None of the systems came with one. Nintendo marketed the RP well. It came with a popular game, and it was used enough that it was weird for somebody not to have one.
In the sense of it being pack in, I think you're right, Sony was first with the PS2. The DC had it, too, but it was a peripheral. (A popular peripheral, but a peripheral none-the-less.)
Yes, the definition of 'standard' is blurry the way I used it. Hopefully my view is clarified.:)
Slashdot Mirror
"The projection wouldn't even have to be very good.."
Frankly, I don't care if it is very good or not. If they don't stick to the standard of emblazaning an H on his forhead, I'm going to nitpick!
"http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=146848&op=Rep ly&threshold=1&commentsort=0&tid=97&tid=214&mode=t hread&pid=12304103"
Admittedly I'm no marketting genius, but how do you illustrate the deep humour and insane yet insanely self-consistent universe that Adams created with a barrage of 1-second clips played with rock-music?
"Considering that the initial release date was christmas '96, this is a pretty massive dust off. No doubt we'll see it before Duke Nukem Forever."
I dunno... I heard it's using the DNF engine now.
"And independent research would then point out that download activity on major movie trackers and other systems used to trade movies has dropped by 40%."
Perhaps, but I SERIOUSLY doubt that'll matter to the *AA. They'll look for a number like "4 billion copyrighted files traded a month" and complain about it.
(Note: Just to be clear, I really do disagree here. I'm not just arguing for the sake of arguing. Please don't feel I'm intentionally being an ass or that I'm trying to run you into the ground.)
"Yes, I know, none of this will ever happen because too few would be willing to put up with any sort of inconvenience a potentially greater good."
Heh yeah, it really is academic. In all fairness, though, I don't think that many people really care. I mean, it's hard for me to complain when I don't get my panties in a twist about Walmart moving in or the gov't using Microsoft software to apply for federal grants. To each is own, I guess.
"Best Buy might want to know what is going on... and decide to solve the problem by adopting a credit-note or 90% cash/charge-back refund policy."
If they did that, then a few people would be out $2. In the mean time, Best Buy still has a number they can attribute to people actually boycotting.
"People deserting movie theaters, video clubs
and movie aisle of all major stores would send a much clearer message."
They would blame piracy. "Nobody's going to theaters because they're downloading movies off the net!"
"With that price, why even post?"
Because it's 'news for nerds'?
If prohibitive price was the deciding factor, the iPod wouldn't have been covered on Slashdot until it became popular.
"...Mac OS X as a threat (rightly, in my opinion), so they are now attacking the problem at the source."
Oh, enough with the FUD. Just because OSX was built from eunuchs doesn't mean that it appeals only to gays!
" The question this raises, though, is whether there are any games designed to work better on hyperthreaded/multiprocessor systems."
Why worry about the past? If these processors take off, new games will support them.
"This is, really, a stupid thing to say about *any* medium, be it Flash, PDF, HTML, AJAX, or cuneiform."
You misunderstand me. First off, I'm an artist, and I agree that it's shitty to poke fun at Flash. (If that's not enough, I'm also a huge fan of Ninjai.)
That said, I still don't see what the BFD would be if they "drm'd" Flash movies. They're not easy to save or convert in the first place. Even if there really is a good reason, the other half of the question is "What would Adobe actually do to limit Flash movies?" Frankly, I'm irritated at Slashdot's knee-jerk reaction to those three little letters. My main purpose behind asking that question was to get the guy to actually prove he isn't knee-jerking.
"Isn't that a bit of a disparaging name in English as it is spoken in the Olde Country?"
It was named after a very famous officer named Rimmer.
"The MS OS department is old and slowly breathing its last breaths."
What a bunch of assumption-filled bullshit.
"And since we are not mind-readers, our only source of insight into Bill Gates' head is, well, Bill Gates."
Hey now, don't count out Dvorak!
"So what about the average user?"
Windows is multi-threaded and behaves better in a multi-processor environment. Even the average user will notice this.
" Buying and returning unopened wastes everyone's time and otherwise has the same net effect as not buying in the first place."
The point isn't to destroy inventory. Actually, the point is to NOT cause harm to the retailers.
Retailers, however, DO keep a close eye on returns. If, on a particular day, Best Buy sold 200,000 copies of Gigli, then the next day they were all returned, they'd definitely know something was up. With that much money going in and out, they'd probably at least want to know wtf is going on.
Why? What's so inflammatory about my question?
"I wonder if Apple or Microsoft will buy Adobe in the next few years?"
I don't know anything about Apple's cash reserves, but assuming they could afford it it would make a HELL of a lot more sense for them to buy Adobe instead of MS. If Photoshop became Mac exclusive, that would have a huge effect on the CG industry. If Microsoft bought Adobe they'd... uh.. flip off Apple.
Frankly, I have difficulty imagining either of the two spending that much money and getting at least that much in return out of it.
"Buying everything in sight instead of innovating seems so popular these days..."
This might be more interesting if virtually every update to Photoshop wasn't highly sought after.
"We bought a company out of fear and called in Macradobe!"
Then mister Gates bought us both and told the gov to blow me!
"If Microsoft really want's Macromedia, they'll probably be more then happy to by Adobe, who bought Macromedia."
Uh, right. "Why buy one when you can buy both at only twice the price!" That's the kind of smart business moves that made Microsoft a multi-billion dollar company.
"And what about Gimp? Is it really not a threat to Adobe at all?"
Heh. Can they really buy GIMP?
"Then again, they would almost certainly blame download first, long and hard before realizing the true thruth that they are facing a boycott. "
Though I appreciate the spirit of your post, I think your comment right here pretty much puts the last nail into the coffin, so to speak. The studios would likely respond by crippling DVDs even more to stop those EVIL COMMUNIST DOWNLOADS. Heh. Now, if a bunch of people bought a DVD and returned it the next day unopened, the message would come across. "Here's a million dollars you could have had if you didn't piss us off."
"The movie industry is fighting this tooth and nail. Something about destroying the directors vision or some junk. Don't expect DVDs to come with this standard."
Why would that bother them? It would (potentially) mean they can make their vision happen the way they like, and the user can automatically water it down to their tastes. Personally, I don't have a problem with this. If I made a movie that satisfied my vision, and some people wanted to view a worse version of it, fine with me. It beats having to shoe-horn it into a lower rating.
I'm thinking about Robocop right now. The original cut of it earned an X-Rating for violence. They had to cut scenes out to get it down to R. They made the X-Rated version available on DVD. I watched it, and I couldn't believe what altering it did to some of the scenes. In one case, it actually made a scene a lot scarier. Remember when ED-209 blew away an executive? In the theatrical version, it basically opened fire on him and stopped when he died. It looked very cold-blooded. In the original version, it opened fire and blew the guy onto a table. It then kept firing over and over and over and over again. Despite all the blood spraying into the air, it was actually kind of funny. Stupid thing just kept on firing even though dude was dead. But... the blood. That scene had to go. What was once a humurous scene showing an insanely bad bug (Microsoft, anyone?) turned into a depiction of an evil robot.
I would imagine that Paul Verhoeven would have much preferred to have been able to release one DVD with user controlled settings.
"That does seem to be what Adobe is doing to its full product line lately, adding all kinds of DRM. Hmm."
Why on Earth would DRM in flash movies bother you?
How will moving it off of Java make for faster development?
"f you had to buy an add-on device to do it for N64, it really wasn't "standard", was it?"
:)
Fair point, but it depends on how you look at it. I mean, was the memory card a standard feature? None of the systems came with one. Nintendo marketed the RP well. It came with a popular game, and it was used enough that it was weird for somebody not to have one.
In the sense of it being pack in, I think you're right, Sony was first with the PS2. The DC had it, too, but it was a peripheral. (A popular peripheral, but a peripheral none-the-less.)
Yes, the definition of 'standard' is blurry the way I used it. Hopefully my view is clarified.