Isn't it a bit ironic to be worried about selling censorware to repressive regimes when no-one has any qualms about selling weapons to repressive regimes? I've never heard any politician anywhere complain even in the slightest way about that. But maybe it's better to kill strangers than to interfere with their surfing...
...I've been surfing some user interface design sites lately, and have found a site of interest. Basically, they've done some mini-studies about how well people use those funky features. The results surprised me: not that well at all. And yes, I know it's not a statistically significant sample size, and 'twas done in a somewhat artificial way, but there's still something in what they say: cascading menus and all their flashy chums are irritating, and can often deter users to the point where the users give up and leave without completing their business.
For me, simplest is best. If I want exciting piccies, I'll watch a movie. Fair enough for a site that must have moving pictures for whatever reason, but otherwise I just want the sleekest experience that lets me do stuff and get out.
Oh, ogk, where can I put my face. Almost forgot the URL:
I think it's got something to do with the fact that they're not susceptible to the local predators. So a creature in its own ecosystem will have evolved along with its predators, competitors and parasites, but all of those won't be equipped to deal with strangers, who are also away from the predators etc that *they've* grown up with.
So Australia gets overrun by rabbits and cane toads, because there's nothing that's accustomed to feeding on them. Particularly with the cane toads, which are pretty repellent anyway: if you're after a prince, don't kiss one of these buggers, or all you'll get is some nasty bacterial infection and hallucinations. Even squashing them isn't free of risk. Nasty warty sods.
Okay, here's a parallel, real-world example. A few (maybe billions, who knows, my memory sucks) years ago a kindergarten in Queensland (state of Australia) was *successfully* sued by Disney because they'd painted pictures of Disney characters on the walls. The charge was copyright violation: they said that the parents and teachers had no right to reproduce the copyrighted Disney rodentia and friends.
Please tell me how that group of people *stole* anything from Disney. Don't offer me the simplistic "Copyright violation IS theft!!!" bollocks, tell me how they stole from Disney, given that they did what they did precisely because the school had bugger-all funding and had to get the parents etc to do the work (as I recall), so the argument that they would otherwise have bought the (C) pictures won't hold. So in order to prove theft, you've got to argue that Disney somehow lost money as a result: maybe Disney stock dropped in value? Maybe the reputation of the famous rat was tarnished by being used in such a tawdry way?
Or maybe copyright violation is *just* copyright violation. It ain't always legal, but it ain't theft either.
Astonishing. You have exactly one example of people screwing the system, and you extrapolate that to everyone. Congratulations. I expect you'll get on to world peace and the end of hunger next.
Are you aware that, for the purposes of government statistics, you are *not* considered unemployed if you work for one or more hours per week. Yep, that's *one*. Would *you* consider that to be real employment? I sure don't.
And save your whining about how unemployed people are screwing the workers of their hard-earned dosh. I've been unemployed, and have known a lot of others, and it's a pretty shitty life for most. The dole is a piss-poor income, it's demoralising, there are no jobs but the government still forces everyone to pretend they've applied for 10 jobs a fortnight or they'll cut the benefits, and on top of that there's a whole lot of self-righteous bastards like yourself calling names.
Please, think before you write. *Think*. Don't just emote.
Yup, very well said. There are *far* more "illegals" overstaying expired visas than there are asylum seekers. And when the UN says we're abusing human rights, and Johnny Jackboot wails "No, we're not!" while loudly accusing other countries of doing same, I get kind of sickened. Add to that the fact that we're not even taking as many as we *said* we'd take out of the asylum seekers, warranted or not, and the fact that they're all locked up like animals while some bureaucrat loses the paperwork, and I just wanna hit someone...
No, I don't wash them. I value my skin too much, and I'll stop short of radical scarification when body adornment is required. But this one likes to know what's going on at all times, and she decided to join me in the tub.
Oddly enough, she seems not to have enjoyed the experience...
Lloyd Biggle Jr? I've got "Monument", I think. Second-hand, o' course.
And plenty of my books have been dropped in the bath, or chewed by one of my cats, or something like. And that's a trigger to memory when I reread. "Schrodinger's Cat" mangled? Ah, that was when I lent it to one of my lecturers, now sadly deceased, and what a fun guy *he* was. CJ Cherryhs "Foreigner" all wrinkled? That was the first experience of cat Qetesh with baths, and she whirred like a paddle steamer getting out. Unlike the book, alas. Some serious chewed bits on several of my Vernor Vinge collection? Other cat Luschka trying out the dentals before she hoed into a variety of my clothing (t-shirts with prints on the front and lycra bathers are favourites).
Yep, memories indeed. Just like the musty, indescribable smell of a good secondhand bookshop. Can't find it anywhere else.
I've been back from HK for about a month and a half, and I've still got my Octopus in my wallet, ready for next time. But I don't believe, even if 100% of the population are using Octopus, that HK will *ever* abandon cash. I can't see a triad boss being content to swipe his Octopus to pay for drinks, instead of pulling out a huge wad of cash. It just ain't the same...
Uhhh, you need to check your irony radar, it seems to be malfunctioning...the clue would be the "What me, bitter?" comment at the end (plus, of course, the "here's the useful stuff I learned" bollocks).
Hey, I consider myself an environmentalist, and I have no intention of riding a donkey. And I like my modern plumbing just fine, thanks.
But sometimes there are better ways of doing things: ways that impact the ecosystem far less than what we're doing now. And sometimes we might need to change our assumptions: sensible house design rather than installing huge aircon systems, for example. Or learning to live with *good* (not that what we've got now is good, at least where I live) public transport rather than using individual cars all the time (note I don't suggest getting rid of cars altogether, just doing without them more than we currently do). For me, I'd rather have pristine Amazonian rainforest than a bunch 'o' Macs (TM). Even if only because of the potential for super-medicines that some scientists exist within the rainforest.
And remember that we in the west use far more than our fair share of energy and resources anyway: if things were divided equally, we'd have quite a shock. Better we make a start voluntarily, than have it forced upon us by circumstance (which may already be imminent, but I'll say no more on that).
I think that was a natural. OTOH, there's a book called "Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater" (I know, enormously crappy title, but a good-ish book) that postulates some guys looking for a universal solvent. Somebody tips one of the candidates down the drain, and whoopsie it's all over.
Y'see, the thing eats plastics. Which includes PVC pipes, cable insulation, those tiny doohickies in planes, etc etc etc...
Ahem, this is something I know a tad about (no, not big peanuts, you there in the back snickering).
I mean something called bio-diesel. Apparently, Mr Diesel (Rudolph?) who invented yon diesel engine originally planned for it to be used on vegetable oil, and it got sidetracked for petroleum. And bio-diesel is far less polluting, easy to produce (about as difficult as home brewing beer), and, depending on your country's excise etc, can be cheaper than petro-diesel.
But for me the truly funky thing is that it can be made from *used* cooking oil: how's that, just empty out the chip pan and brew a bit 'o' diesel. And it makes your car smell like chips instead of icky hydrocarbons. Any vegetable oil will do, so a variety of crops can do the trick on a large scale, which makes it renewable as well.
Oh, yeah, and most diesel engines can run it *without* modification, or with only very minor mods. I know of someone who's gone to bio-diesel on his farm: he goes to the local fish and chip shop and relieves them of their old oil (and they used to pay someone to take it away, so they're happy) and makes enough bio-diesel to keep all his farm equipment running. No engine mods, bugger all pollution, and that there oil kept out of the ocean. Truly funky.
And how many real terrorists are going to, hey, use their own credit card to pay members of their cell, f'rinstance, or waste time chatting on IRC, or doing any of the other things that leave obvious traces?
And lets be realistic for a moment here: just how many "terrorists" do they think it takes to carry out such a mission? How many do they really think were involved? Honestly, a terrorist cell is not a government, so I can't see each "active" member requiring a support staff of 500 (note: critical comments of government bloat based on experience of own country only, which is also Straya, so I don't want the FBI snapping on the rubber gloves for *me*, thanks very much).
Tangential. Not tangenital. You don't want to confuse the Judiciary Committee with implications that the SSSCA will make their goolies go brown...
Re:OT, but I just had to say...
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Patent Nonsense
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Hey, if this exchange continues elsewhere, please include me: I'd be interested in following it, and contributing (when I can convince my brain to behave nicely and maybe offer something useful).
Another thing to think about is that, okay, *he* might not have to depend on his equipment because he has no choice, but can't you imagine this gear being used to make life easier for people with corresponding disabilities in the not too distant future? Which makes him kinda brave and groundbreaking: I can't think of too many "medical researchers" (I really wanted to write "drug company white-coats", but thought I"d widen the field a tad) who are prepared to test their proposed solutions on themselves.
But hey, maybe he could combine his idea and NanoGators, and have a Porsche implanted...
OT, but I just had to say...
on
Patent Nonsense
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· Score: 1
...hey guys (or grrls, or beings, or whatever), this is a truly enjoyable sub-thread here: it's a delight to see a discussion board hosting a *discussion*, something that's intelligent, thoughtful, and well-reasoned on both sides. Conceding some points to each other is a disturbingly rare occurrence, and I"m overjoyed to see it.
And, aside from the mental exercise I'm getting here, evaluating each argument, I'm actually learning something. Huzzah huzzah.
Now I"m in the mood, I might as well go suck up to the boss to try to get some time off...
You bring up an interesting point there: what proportion of movie viewage makes us feel cheated, and how would that compare to the number of films we'd miss because of innappropriate trailers? I know I've seen my fair share of films that look, from the trailer, to be whizz-bang actioner type things, and then turn out to be slow drama of some form. Not that I'm against drama per se, but I'd prefer to know what I"m in for: kind of like knowing whether what I'm about to bite into is going to taste like chocolate or wasabi (and, taking the movie analogy onwards and downwards, this makes it so much worse when what you actually get turns out to be more like pureed cockroach).
So would they win more viewers (and possibly more-than-oncers to boot) by targeted trailers that give a *good* idea of what the film is like than they lose by cheating people into thinking it'll be other than it is? Hmmm, must think more on this one.
As for the theatrical trailer for EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, well I'm sure I saw it back several millennia ago, when I was young, but Mr Memory won't stretch quite that far now, alas, so I can't say whether or not it was tres funky. I've also seen the film boggins of times (being a true sci-fi junkie geek). As I feel I'm about to descend into a mumble along the lines of "They done made better trailers in them days...", I'll stop.
Oh, yeah, glad to be of service;-) Now if only I can clarify my own thoughts, I'd be laughing...
I think you're right there: the US sees us (ie the part of the globe that *doesn't* lie in the continental United States) as some sort of supplementary market, much like video/DVD. They'll make some dosh out of us, but not enough to justify actually releasing films at the same time.
Which, of course, is another thing (like region coding) that winds up anyone not in the US: we get the hype about a film, because the media report on it (fancy being the last station to talk about the latest craze!), but we can't actually *see* it until some Hollywood suit decides we can...
Publishers of old-fashioned paper-type books do this (or used to: I don't seem to have left my crypt for several years now, so I don't know what the world outside is like): they'll give away thin tomes comprising a few pages or a chapter of several new (or soon to be released) books when you buy something from a bookshop, to tempt you into buying something else. And hey, it works, readers being the same sort of junkies as movie-goers.
This is the same principle as trailers, but I think the trailers have been hijacked, in the sense that folk are now far too savvy. That is, we've seen too many examples where the producers have taken a scrofulous film, selected the 15 seconds of decent footage, and fast-cut it over a pumping soundtrack: we poor innocents get lured (by some sort of primal monkey-brain response) into thinking it must be exciting, and go and see what will probably scar us for years.
Whereas if they would make available (not show in cinemas to waste 20 minutes that we thought we'd spend watching the movie, dammit!) a carefully selected scene or two, something actually representative of the film as a whole, this would tempt many people into seeing it. Of course, this might also have the result that crap films don't make as much as they might otherwise make, but hey, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make...
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Isn't it a bit ironic to be worried about selling censorware to repressive regimes when no-one has any qualms about selling weapons to repressive regimes? I've never heard any politician anywhere complain even in the slightest way about that. But maybe it's better to kill strangers than to interfere with their surfing...
For me, simplest is best. If I want exciting piccies, I'll watch a movie. Fair enough for a site that must have moving pictures for whatever reason, but otherwise I just want the sleekest experience that lets me do stuff and get out.
Oh, ogk, where can I put my face. Almost forgot the URL:
http://www.uie.com/moreart.htm
I think you meant "entirely *heterogeneous*". Sorry, just been possessed by the ghost of the grammar police for a second there...
So Australia gets overrun by rabbits and cane toads, because there's nothing that's accustomed to feeding on them. Particularly with the cane toads, which are pretty repellent anyway: if you're after a prince, don't kiss one of these buggers, or all you'll get is some nasty bacterial infection and hallucinations. Even squashing them isn't free of risk. Nasty warty sods.
Please tell me how that group of people *stole* anything from Disney. Don't offer me the simplistic "Copyright violation IS theft!!!" bollocks, tell me how they stole from Disney, given that they did what they did precisely because the school had bugger-all funding and had to get the parents etc to do the work (as I recall), so the argument that they would otherwise have bought the (C) pictures won't hold. So in order to prove theft, you've got to argue that Disney somehow lost money as a result: maybe Disney stock dropped in value? Maybe the reputation of the famous rat was tarnished by being used in such a tawdry way?
Or maybe copyright violation is *just* copyright violation. It ain't always legal, but it ain't theft either.
Are you aware that, for the purposes of government statistics, you are *not* considered unemployed if you work for one or more hours per week. Yep, that's *one*. Would *you* consider that to be real employment? I sure don't.
And save your whining about how unemployed people are screwing the workers of their hard-earned dosh. I've been unemployed, and have known a lot of others, and it's a pretty shitty life for most. The dole is a piss-poor income, it's demoralising, there are no jobs but the government still forces everyone to pretend they've applied for 10 jobs a fortnight or they'll cut the benefits, and on top of that there's a whole lot of self-righteous bastards like yourself calling names.
Please, think before you write. *Think*. Don't just emote.
Computer? Computer?!? What on earth makes you think he even knows what that is?
BTW, Adelaide? Ditto (cue eerie music)...
Big tub :-) And I have mysterious kung fu powers, that allow me to levitate at need...
Oddly enough, she seems not to have enjoyed the experience...
And plenty of my books have been dropped in the bath, or chewed by one of my cats, or something like. And that's a trigger to memory when I reread. "Schrodinger's Cat" mangled? Ah, that was when I lent it to one of my lecturers, now sadly deceased, and what a fun guy *he* was. CJ Cherryhs "Foreigner" all wrinkled? That was the first experience of cat Qetesh with baths, and she whirred like a paddle steamer getting out. Unlike the book, alas. Some serious chewed bits on several of my Vernor Vinge collection? Other cat Luschka trying out the dentals before she hoed into a variety of my clothing (t-shirts with prints on the front and lycra bathers are favourites).
Yep, memories indeed. Just like the musty, indescribable smell of a good secondhand bookshop. Can't find it anywhere else.
I've been back from HK for about a month and a half, and I've still got my Octopus in my wallet, ready for next time. But I don't believe, even if 100% of the population are using Octopus, that HK will *ever* abandon cash. I can't see a triad boss being content to swipe his Octopus to pay for drinks, instead of pulling out a huge wad of cash. It just ain't the same...
Uhhh, you need to check your irony radar, it seems to be malfunctioning...the clue would be the "What me, bitter?" comment at the end (plus, of course, the "here's the useful stuff I learned" bollocks).
But sometimes there are better ways of doing things: ways that impact the ecosystem far less than what we're doing now. And sometimes we might need to change our assumptions: sensible house design rather than installing huge aircon systems, for example. Or learning to live with *good* (not that what we've got now is good, at least where I live) public transport rather than using individual cars all the time (note I don't suggest getting rid of cars altogether, just doing without them more than we currently do). For me, I'd rather have pristine Amazonian rainforest than a bunch 'o' Macs (TM). Even if only because of the potential for super-medicines that some scientists exist within the rainforest.
And remember that we in the west use far more than our fair share of energy and resources anyway: if things were divided equally, we'd have quite a shock. Better we make a start voluntarily, than have it forced upon us by circumstance (which may already be imminent, but I'll say no more on that).
Y'see, the thing eats plastics. Which includes PVC pipes, cable insulation, those tiny doohickies in planes, etc etc etc...
End of civilisation as we know it, what?
I mean something called bio-diesel. Apparently, Mr Diesel (Rudolph?) who invented yon diesel engine originally planned for it to be used on vegetable oil, and it got sidetracked for petroleum. And bio-diesel is far less polluting, easy to produce (about as difficult as home brewing beer), and, depending on your country's excise etc, can be cheaper than petro-diesel.
But for me the truly funky thing is that it can be made from *used* cooking oil: how's that, just empty out the chip pan and brew a bit 'o' diesel. And it makes your car smell like chips instead of icky hydrocarbons. Any vegetable oil will do, so a variety of crops can do the trick on a large scale, which makes it renewable as well.
Oh, yeah, and most diesel engines can run it *without* modification, or with only very minor mods. I know of someone who's gone to bio-diesel on his farm: he goes to the local fish and chip shop and relieves them of their old oil (and they used to pay someone to take it away, so they're happy) and makes enough bio-diesel to keep all his farm equipment running. No engine mods, bugger all pollution, and that there oil kept out of the ocean. Truly funky.
And lets be realistic for a moment here: just how many "terrorists" do they think it takes to carry out such a mission? How many do they really think were involved? Honestly, a terrorist cell is not a government, so I can't see each "active" member requiring a support staff of 500 (note: critical comments of government bloat based on experience of own country only, which is also Straya, so I don't want the FBI snapping on the rubber gloves for *me*, thanks very much).
Tangential. Not tangenital. You don't want to confuse the Judiciary Committee with implications that the SSSCA will make their goolies go brown...
Hey, if this exchange continues elsewhere, please include me: I'd be interested in following it, and contributing (when I can convince my brain to behave nicely and maybe offer something useful).
But hey, maybe he could combine his idea and NanoGators, and have a Porsche implanted...
And, aside from the mental exercise I'm getting here, evaluating each argument, I'm actually learning something. Huzzah huzzah.
Now I"m in the mood, I might as well go suck up to the boss to try to get some time off...
The short story's even better: written by Harlan Ellison, and just as dark as you'd expect from him...
So would they win more viewers (and possibly more-than-oncers to boot) by targeted trailers that give a *good* idea of what the film is like than they lose by cheating people into thinking it'll be other than it is? Hmmm, must think more on this one.
As for the theatrical trailer for EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, well I'm sure I saw it back several millennia ago, when I was young, but Mr Memory won't stretch quite that far now, alas, so I can't say whether or not it was tres funky. I've also seen the film boggins of times (being a true sci-fi junkie geek). As I feel I'm about to descend into a mumble along the lines of "They done made better trailers in them days...", I'll stop.
Oh, yeah, glad to be of service ;-) Now if only I can clarify my own thoughts, I'd be laughing...
Which, of course, is another thing (like region coding) that winds up anyone not in the US: we get the hype about a film, because the media report on it (fancy being the last station to talk about the latest craze!), but we can't actually *see* it until some Hollywood suit decides we can...
This is the same principle as trailers, but I think the trailers have been hijacked, in the sense that folk are now far too savvy. That is, we've seen too many examples where the producers have taken a scrofulous film, selected the 15 seconds of decent footage, and fast-cut it over a pumping soundtrack: we poor innocents get lured (by some sort of primal monkey-brain response) into thinking it must be exciting, and go and see what will probably scar us for years.
Whereas if they would make available (not show in cinemas to waste 20 minutes that we thought we'd spend watching the movie, dammit!) a carefully selected scene or two, something actually representative of the film as a whole, this would tempt many people into seeing it. Of course, this might also have the result that crap films don't make as much as they might otherwise make, but hey, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make...