Unless you make a business out of it, I'm fairly sure Apple will leave you alone. In general, if you buy something these days, you can do whatever the hell you want with it unless you sell it; in most cases, companies won't go after you even if you sell it, as long as it doesn't become competition. In other words, if you make a couple machines and sell them to co-workers, Apple likely won't bother you; but if you start selling these over phone, mail-order, or the Internet, you're probably going to get burned.
At risk of looking like every other Slashbot, I would like to say that the RIAA could easily convince a money-hungry politician that your right to privacy is null and void when you download an mp3.
Sure, he committed a crime. If the thing turned on when the car exceeded, say, 100 mph, I wouldn't have a problem because the only people who need to go 100 mph can do it legally. But the EDR, as I understand it, is always on. Therefore it was violating his privacy all the time, not just when he was driving through a neighborhood and ran others over.
Re:Not very humane
on
Chicken Run
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
What PETA seems to realize - and you don't - is that no matter how zealous they are, there's not going to be a widespread ban on animal food anytime soon, and chickens will continue to be "inhumanely kept and slaughtered".
Activists like to make you think that the act of buying one brand of chicken over another is a strike against the huge, faceless, cruel chicken industry and its sadistic practices. It's not. They won't even know it happened, because the store already bought the chicken.
Furthermore, it's "almighty buck". And what you imply to be obsession with profit is actually just being efficient with money. If you have two gas stations to patronize, and one is clean, has efficient service, high-quality gas and a lower price, and the other is expensive and has crap gas, are you going to go to the better, less-expensive one or the other?
The problem with CGI isn't how it looks - the WarCraft III Human box art is as close to photorealistic as anything I've seen. No, the problem with CGI is when it starts moving. CGI in motion has issues with lights and shadows, reflection, and lifelike movement, among other things.
Another issue is the use of "texture" images - a flat image looks photorealistic until you get close up. That's because it's a flat image, not a texture. The most obvious indicatior of CGI is clothing, because real clothes are exquisitely textured, while most moving CGI attempts to represent it as a flat image. Flat images would work if they could convey shadows, which is how you notice real-life texture anyway.
There's also the issue of collisions. In the Matrix: Reloaded discussions, someone brought up the fact that there are instances where they used bullet-time when it seemed completely unnecessary, for instance when the Agent jumps on the car in the freeway scene. This is because high-speed collisions rendered in CGI apparently look bad, so they slowed it down.
If they come with fewer episodes per disc (and thus, more discs), it is not because they're artificially inflating the price, it's because they have to make back the money they spent on the license.
Just because they have to make back the money doesn't mean they're not artificially inflating the price. If you're not putting in as many episodes as possible on the DVD, you are artificially inflating the price. Whether or not you have a good reason is irrelevant.
Leeway can be programmed in, too. I use iTunes and the Apple Music store. I can buy a song once, and then copy it to my other authorized computers and my iPod, and
burn it on a CD. (emphasis added)
The only "copy protection" Apple has accomplished is stopping people who don't have CD burners.
1) Buy from iTunes.
2) Burn onto CD.
3) Rip onto hard drive in MP3 format.
4) Share via P2P.
5) ???
6) DRM WAS WASTE OF TIME!!!!
Really... do they think they're stopping copying? I mean, this is Apple, supposedly a "cool" company... maybe they did it on purpose?
I'm just surprised you didn't consider who SCO is threatening to sue.
DUMBASS EXECUTIVE 1: Yeah, let's sue Linus Torvalds! I'm sure all the hackers out there who idolize him will agree fully with us and not crack us into oblivion!
DUMBASS EXECUTIVE 2: That's a great idea! I know those hackers won't find my IP address, then crack my computer so they learn our home addresses, then come and kill us!
DUMBASS EXECUTIVE 1: You're right, they'd never do anything like that!
If they didn't whine and threaten, that would be less time for the angrier Linus devotees to delete important legal documents.
Why do people say "oh god, another first person shooter" and not "oh god, another comedy"?
Comedy is part deriative and part current-events. Some material comes about simply as being a new way to tell an old joke. For instance, I enjoy finding new and funny ways to tell my friends that I have a bigger penis than they do. Sure, it's really all saying that I have an enormous johnson. But it's how it's said that makes the difference.
The other part of comedy is making jokes from current events. Because current events are always changing, this material has the potential to be constantly original.
Because of this, comedy movies are probably the wrong analogy for first person shooters. I'd say that horror or teen movies are a better example - people are so tired of teen movies that even Hollywood felt the need to vent.
Unreal Tournament may be a Quake 3 Arena ripoff, but it was a ripoff that wound up better. So much better, in fact, that most of the people I know think that Quake 3 Arena is a ripoff of Unreal Tournament.
It could be that they just pilfered the Bible for ideas, with no goal in mind other than a lot of eye candy and stories people can relate to (the Bible is a great source of stories).
This reminds me of the anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. It is absolutely packed with Christian imagery and references. Naturally this caused some controversy in America; the creators of the anime, when asked about the imagery, replied along the lines of "It doesn't mean anything, we just thought it looked/sounded cool." Perhaps we have that with the Wachowski brothers.
What I think he means is that Agent Smith and Neo's incarnation in the Matrix got slightly mixed up. As such, Agent Smith is no longer really an Agent and can do new, interesting things he couldn't before.
Neo, on the other hand, may have "left part of himself" in Agent Smith, so he has a 24/7 presence in the Matrix that is perfectly safe. (Safe in that nothing's really going to try and mess with Agent Smith.) The idea is that somehow Neo is connected, through Agent Smith, to the Sentinels, and can shut them off at will.
Either that, or Sentinels have an extremely low tolerance for static electricity.:P
The idea behind the taboo against nudity is that though the movie may not show a nude woman in a sexual context, it could appeal to the prurient interest anyway.
Besides, if the movie is rated PG-13, there are likely to be teenage boys who would be more than willing to make up their own context.
In all honesty, I think that people are a little uptight about product placement these days.
Sure, the motorcycle had a brand decal. Most do. In fact, it would be more unrealistic to have a bunch of motorcycles without any sort of brand decal than a bunch of motorcycles with the same decal.
The Matrix movies are very good about this sort of thing; there's no really obvious brand promotion (except perhaps "Zion Foundry"), but at the same time, the Matrix looks like the real world, brands and all.
Also, I would like to commend the Wachowski brothers for acknowledging the existence of computers that aren't Macs. No offense to Macs.
They're not just from Zion, you know; those born in Zion don't have plugs. The majority of the characters we meet do; certainly some of the most important characters do. Methinks that a significant portion of the population of Zion was freed from the Matrix.
So instead of the guy's real "soul" (for lack of a better term) he gets Agent Smith's "soul".
I think that this is proof that Zion isn't a second Matrix, because if it were, then Agent Smith (who knew he could pull the same shit in Zion as in the Matrix) could easily kill everyone in Zion, or turn them into more Agent Smiths anyway.
1) Turn off ship.
2) Fire EMP based on systems that aren't needed after the EMP gets fired.
3) Turn ship back on.
4) Pick up crew of Nebuchadnezzar.
5) ???
6) Profit!!!!!!
In fact, the Architect (white beard dude) made a point of it: the One's love of humanity (which was part of what made him the One) was much more general the first five times around, but now it was focused on one individual - Trinity.
So it's saying, in effect, that Neo's love for Trinity is part of what makes him the One.
Slashdot Mirror
Look... let's just say that if there's anything in Mountain Dew that causes cancer, I'd be dead by now.
No, I am not dead.
You drink it because it tastes good, and it has the fortunate side effect of giving you a buzz.
Just because you're drinking it to stay awake doesn't mean you can't drink it slowly.
IANAL, this is just my understanding.
Unless you make a business out of it, I'm fairly sure Apple will leave you alone. In general, if you buy something these days, you can do whatever the hell you want with it unless you sell it; in most cases, companies won't go after you even if you sell it, as long as it doesn't become competition. In other words, if you make a couple machines and sell them to co-workers, Apple likely won't bother you; but if you start selling these over phone, mail-order, or the Internet, you're probably going to get burned.
Do you mean selling CDs at concerts? I know for a fact Blindside does. Eleven bucks for the CD - should have bought it.
Maybe SCO is trying to commit seppuku.
At risk of looking like every other Slashbot, I would like to say that the RIAA could easily convince a money-hungry politician that your right to privacy is null and void when you download an mp3.
Sure, he committed a crime. If the thing turned on when the car exceeded, say, 100 mph, I wouldn't have a problem because the only people who need to go 100 mph can do it legally. But the EDR, as I understand it, is always on. Therefore it was violating his privacy all the time, not just when he was driving through a neighborhood and ran others over.
What PETA seems to realize - and you don't - is that no matter how zealous they are, there's not going to be a widespread ban on animal food anytime soon, and chickens will continue to be "inhumanely kept and slaughtered".
Activists like to make you think that the act of buying one brand of chicken over another is a strike against the huge, faceless, cruel chicken industry and its sadistic practices. It's not. They won't even know it happened, because the store already bought the chicken.
Furthermore, it's "almighty buck". And what you imply to be obsession with profit is actually just being efficient with money. If you have two gas stations to patronize, and one is clean, has efficient service, high-quality gas and a lower price, and the other is expensive and has crap gas, are you going to go to the better, less-expensive one or the other?
The problem with CGI isn't how it looks - the WarCraft III Human box art is as close to photorealistic as anything I've seen. No, the problem with CGI is when it starts moving. CGI in motion has issues with lights and shadows, reflection, and lifelike movement, among other things.
Another issue is the use of "texture" images - a flat image looks photorealistic until you get close up. That's because it's a flat image, not a texture. The most obvious indicatior of CGI is clothing, because real clothes are exquisitely textured, while most moving CGI attempts to represent it as a flat image. Flat images would work if they could convey shadows, which is how you notice real-life texture anyway.
There's also the issue of collisions. In the Matrix: Reloaded discussions, someone brought up the fact that there are instances where they used bullet-time when it seemed completely unnecessary, for instance when the Agent jumps on the car in the freeway scene. This is because high-speed collisions rendered in CGI apparently look bad, so they slowed it down.
I disagree.
Nobody wants to see Christopher Walken dressed only in a loincloth.
1) Buy from iTunes.
2) Burn onto CD.
3) Rip onto hard drive in MP3 format.
4) Share via P2P.
5) ???
6) DRM WAS WASTE OF TIME!!!!
Really... do they think they're stopping copying? I mean, this is Apple, supposedly a "cool" company... maybe they did it on purpose?
I'm just surprised you didn't consider who SCO is threatening to sue.
DUMBASS EXECUTIVE 1: Yeah, let's sue Linus Torvalds! I'm sure all the hackers out there who idolize him will agree fully with us and not crack us into oblivion!
DUMBASS EXECUTIVE 2: That's a great idea! I know those hackers won't find my IP address, then crack my computer so they learn our home addresses, then come and kill us!
DUMBASS EXECUTIVE 1: You're right, they'd never do anything like that!
If they didn't whine and threaten, that would be less time for the angrier Linus devotees to delete important legal documents.
So why are they whining and threatening?
The other part of comedy is making jokes from current events. Because current events are always changing, this material has the potential to be constantly original.
Because of this, comedy movies are probably the wrong analogy for first person shooters. I'd say that horror or teen movies are a better example - people are so tired of teen movies that even Hollywood felt the need to vent.
Unreal Tournament may be a Quake 3 Arena ripoff, but it was a ripoff that wound up better. So much better, in fact, that most of the people I know think that Quake 3 Arena is a ripoff of Unreal Tournament.
What I think he means is that Agent Smith and Neo's incarnation in the Matrix got slightly mixed up. As such, Agent Smith is no longer really an Agent and can do new, interesting things he couldn't before.
:P
Neo, on the other hand, may have "left part of himself" in Agent Smith, so he has a 24/7 presence in the Matrix that is perfectly safe. (Safe in that nothing's really going to try and mess with Agent Smith.) The idea is that somehow Neo is connected, through Agent Smith, to the Sentinels, and can shut them off at will.
Either that, or Sentinels have an extremely low tolerance for static electricity.
The idea behind the taboo against nudity is that though the movie may not show a nude woman in a sexual context, it could appeal to the prurient interest anyway.
Besides, if the movie is rated PG-13, there are likely to be teenage boys who would be more than willing to make up their own context.
In all honesty, I think that people are a little uptight about product placement these days.
Sure, the motorcycle had a brand decal. Most do. In fact, it would be more unrealistic to have a bunch of motorcycles without any sort of brand decal than a bunch of motorcycles with the same decal.
The Matrix movies are very good about this sort of thing; there's no really obvious brand promotion (except perhaps "Zion Foundry"), but at the same time, the Matrix looks like the real world, brands and all.
Also, I would like to commend the Wachowski brothers for acknowledging the existence of computers that aren't Macs. No offense to Macs.
They're not just from Zion, you know; those born in Zion don't have plugs. The majority of the characters we meet do; certainly some of the most important characters do. Methinks that a significant portion of the population of Zion was freed from the Matrix.
So instead of the guy's real "soul" (for lack of a better term) he gets Agent Smith's "soul".
I think that this is proof that Zion isn't a second Matrix, because if it were, then Agent Smith (who knew he could pull the same shit in Zion as in the Matrix) could easily kill everyone in Zion, or turn them into more Agent Smiths anyway.
Stupid? No. Out of place? Perhaps. I was distracted from the movie by that sequence... I was thinking:
"I need some of that shit!"
1) Turn off ship.
2) Fire EMP based on systems that aren't needed after the EMP gets fired.
3) Turn ship back on.
4) Pick up crew of Nebuchadnezzar.
5) ???
6) Profit!!!!!!
In fact, the Architect (white beard dude) made a point of it: the One's love of humanity (which was part of what made him the One) was much more general the first five times around, but now it was focused on one individual - Trinity.
So it's saying, in effect, that Neo's love for Trinity is part of what makes him the One.