Funny, I thought for a second you were referring to my Tony Hawk is a real person post. (And I just noticed I misspelled "person" in the original post.)
Sadly there are still people who think Tony Hawk is a virtual video game character.
In Disney's defense, Osamu Tezuka (the man behind Kimba) was heavily influenced by Disney animation, so you could argue he was imitating the Disney style.
Battle Angel Alita is also possibly going to become a movie (James Cameron possibly involved?). I think it has a better shot at being successful because at least that had sympathetic characters and a comprehensible plot.
There was a big debate in Wizard magazine years ago about wether McFarlane was a co-creator of Venom or not. Erik Larsen wrote them that the original character for venom was really dumb (some illogic in the motivations for the reporter who became Venom), and the only reason he was so popular was that McFarlane came up with the teeth and slime and tongue and all that.
Personally I don't think that counts as "creating", I would say McFarlane's design help "popularize" Venom.
In some places (i.e. California) it is illegal to collect gambling debts. A while ago a woman ran up a $70,000 gambling debt and the judge said she didn't have to pay see here.
From the article: Unlike famous actors, video games stars like Lara Croft and Tony Hawk do not get $10 million signing fees. And because they don't drink and date, they never make the gossip columns of Hello magazine.
Um, Tony Hawk is a real preson. Where are the editors?
7. Mouse gestures were a joke. Every time I wanted to highlight something, and then copy it, the gestures decided I wanted to close Moz. I could have saved this with a modified key, but then what is the point of the gesture if I have to hit my keyboard?
That's what used to annoy me too, and setting mouse gestures to one of the other buttons just didn't feel right.
But upgrading to a later version was much better, now you can cancel a gesture by holding down the button briefly after you stop moving, highlighting hasn't been a problem for me since.
BTW: If you don't like sites complaing that you're using mozilla, you can use uabar to change what your browser submits as a User Agent on the fly, just be careful of the java bug.
I was checking it out to, but I wonder since it supports ftp, why does it have to go through blogger.com at all? Why doesn't mozblog just upload the posts itself and store them locally.
I've been using the poorly named blog for places where I have ftp access only.
There was a fascinating take on Brave New World as Utopian in Houellebecq's The Elementary Particles, as one character puts it on page 187:
"everyone says Brave New World is supposed to be a totalitarian nightmare, a vicious indictment of society, but that's hypocritical bullshit. Brave New World is our idea of heaven: genetic manipulation, sexual liberation, the war against age, the leisure society. This is precisely the world we have tried - and so far failed - to create"
The Elementary Particles also is either Utopian/Dystopian depending on how you interpet those terms, and I highly recommend the book. (The author is an interesting character himself, seek out the interview where he tries to coerce the interviewer into sex).
Audio cd's don't have region encoding, and the price of them hasn't stabilized, going between $12 US in Canada to $24 US in Japan.
Also, DVD manufacturers can probably get around people ordering DVD's from foreign countries by putting less/different features on the Russian/Chinese releases of DVD's (omitting directors commentaries, creating menus incomprehensible to English speakers.)
Even with a global economy there still can exist variety in pricing.
Funny, site works for me, the only annoyances is that new links open in a new window and that it's pretty slow.
Tried downloading a nirvana track here with explorer, and not a single pop-up. The quality only went up to 96kbps and it was a wma not an mp3, but the site worked better than most mp3 warez sites. And it's slow, Kazaa Lite is the faster service.
Sure there's not any spyware on your system that's causing the pop-ups?
Nope, I'm not blown away by the graphics too. What I do like about the Doom III (that you can't tell from still shots) is what they do with shadows, if you see the video of Carmack speaking at some Mac conference there's some nice footage of dynamic shadows moving and overlapping and casting shadows on characters.
But the models disspoint me, I was much more impressed with the screen shots of Dragon's Lair 3d, not because of the polygons it's pushing, but because it looks like the most realistic attempt yet at imitating the cell animation look in 3d (even better than the upcoming Zelda game). Hopefully in a few years we'll be able to play games that look as impressive as animes like Ghost in the Shell or Akira. Also I was impressed by the PS2 game ICO,
whose shadow monsters look and move like nothing I've seen in a game before. The models in Doom III look just like higher polygon models from other games.
What impresses me more than a "next generation" engine is creative and new effects. Like the rain falling in MGS2, or the deforming snow in VF4, or the beautiful planetscapes in Unreal Tournament.
So, I think the game looks pretty good, but I'm hoping they add more interesting environmental effects than Quake II and III had.
I seem to recall they've been bowdlerizing their videos for years.
Well technically, blockbuster isn't censoring videos, they're just refusing to carry NC-17 rated films (like Crash) so studios sell them edited copies because they still want to make money. (I wonder why competitors don't advertise they carry critically acclaimed films like Crash and Bad Lietenant uncut). I've talked to people who work at blockbuster who mistakenly think they're carrying the regular version of Crash. I think it had something to do with being a family oriented video store (so now the whole family can watch Crash together or something).
What I wish filmmakers would do, instead of seamlessly editing they're films for content, is to just insert squares over the naughty bits like Solondz did for Storytelling, so at least the consumer can easily tell the version they're watching is cut.
Also, you ever notice that now directors insert all the naughty bits into the 'Deleted Scenes' section of the DVD, like the commentary will say "Oh we couldn't include this or we'd get in trouble." Since the film is still an R-Rated film blockbuster has no trouble carrying it.
I remeber the sgi page... but I always thought lava lamps were a little cumbersome for random number generation, firstly they take several minutes to warm up before there's any visible movement, they give off a lot of heat, and they aren't supposed to be on for more than 10 hours. I figure something like bits of styrofoam in a large clear tube with a fan at the bottom would be more efficient, as the styrofoam bits should fly around quite randomly.
Personally I don't see our civilization colonizing the universe, I see human civilization following this pattern:
Agricultual Revolution -> Industrial Revoulution -> Information Revolution -> Matrix Style Pods That Will Extend Our Lives and Provide Us With Every Imaginable Pleasure
Maybe other extraterrestrial civilizations have followed this pattern, if they can't get around the great distances to travel. It's a common science fiction construct that the last human will die jacked into some computer with a big smile on their face.
There was at least one other audio-only video game that came out in 1997, Real Sound: Kaze no Regret for the Sega Saturn, but only in Japan. At least it was sold commercially. Any Japanese slashdot readers know anything about the game?
From this L.A. Times article: Gene Caprioglio, a representative of Cage's American publisher, explained that the British organization that collects royalties had sent its standard license form to Batt. No one had sent a letter to Batt, he maintained--enraged or otherwise.
So it looks like this was just a standard form letter that was sent out because Batt jokingly credited cage as a composer.
The problem Wizards will be facing is that players probably won't value virtual cards to the same degree of real cards.
What they should do (this is just a thought of mine) is sell the regular cards in stores, but print a unique serial number on each one, then you can enter those serial number onto your online account. That way your virtual deck can be the same as your real deck.
People guessing serial numbers shouldn't be a problem if there is a delay in entering the number and it uses a large enough base with enough digits.
You say: The record companies are not making that much in total, anyway.
If cds didn't make money, these large corporations wouldn't be in the business, and they wouldn't be buying other record lables.
Saying 90% albums don't make a profit is no excuse for not paying artists. 90% of movies don't make money, but how come actors and directors get paid even if a movie flops? Of course the record companies are going to say that profits are slim, what do you expect them to say: "Yeah we made a lot of money off our releases this quarter, luckily our artists have shitty contracts."
The analogy to supermarkets is incorrect, if I don't like the selection at a supermarket, I can shop at another one, anyone can set up a store to sell niche products.
Radio stations, on the other hand, have a government granted monopoly on a range of frequencies. Clear Channel wants it both ways, they want no government regulation on what they play, but the want tough government regulation on anyone trying to set up a pirate radio station. They want privilages without any responsibilities.
Paul Anderson's (Mortal Kombat) Event Horizon (1997) was a loose remake Solaris.
I'm in the minority that I liked Event Horizon. Still with Hollywood now making an adaptation of Red Dragon when Manhunter was a perfectly good film, you have to wonder what the memory span of film producers are.
My guess for most bucks for the bit would be in the field of Brand Naming. Companies pay naming firms tens of thousands of dollars to come up with new words like "Lucent", "Pentium" and "Infiniti".
This article, The Name Game cites these firms charging around $75,000 for a single word that may only be seven letters long. Not a logo, not an ad campaign, not even a domain registration, just the single word. I guess this runs roughly around $10,000 per byte.
Slashdot Mirror
Does this look a lot like Captain Harlock or what? I could accept Kimba/Lion King and Atlantis/Nadia were coincidental, but this takes the cake.
I hear you. Firing up the old ftp client can be a hassle for most users that rarely use it.
It might be easier (for the sender) to provide a link to a page on the corporations web site so a sender can upload a file over http.
Sadly there are still people who think Tony Hawk is a virtual video game character.
In Disney's defense, Osamu Tezuka (the man behind Kimba) was heavily influenced by Disney animation, so you could argue he was imitating the Disney style.
Battle Angel Alita is also possibly going to become a movie (James Cameron possibly involved?). I think it has a better shot at being successful because at least that had sympathetic characters and a comprehensible plot.
I use it if google gives me less than a dozen hits for a query.
Personally I don't think that counts as "creating", I would say McFarlane's design help "popularize" Venom.
In some places (i.e. California) it is illegal to collect gambling debts. A while ago a woman ran up a $70,000 gambling debt and the judge said she didn't have to pay see here.
Um, Tony Hawk is a real preson. Where are the editors?
That's what used to annoy me too, and setting mouse gestures to one of the other buttons just didn't feel right.
But upgrading to a later version was much better, now you can cancel a gesture by holding down the button briefly after you stop moving, highlighting hasn't been a problem for me since.
BTW: If you don't like sites complaing that you're using mozilla, you can use uabar to change what your browser submits as a User Agent on the fly, just be careful of the java bug.
I've been using the poorly named blog for places where I have ftp access only.
Audio cd's don't have region encoding, and the price of them hasn't stabilized, going between $12 US in Canada to $24 US in Japan.
Also, DVD manufacturers can probably get around people ordering DVD's from foreign countries by putting less/different features on the Russian/Chinese releases of DVD's (omitting directors commentaries, creating menus incomprehensible to English speakers.)
Even with a global economy there still can exist variety in pricing.
Tried downloading a nirvana track here with explorer, and not a single pop-up. The quality only went up to 96kbps and it was a wma not an mp3, but the site worked better than most mp3 warez sites. And it's slow, Kazaa Lite is the faster service.
Sure there's not any spyware on your system that's causing the pop-ups?
Nope, I'm not blown away by the graphics too. What I do like about the Doom III (that you can't tell from still shots) is what they do with shadows, if you see the video of Carmack speaking at some Mac conference there's some nice footage of dynamic shadows moving and overlapping and casting shadows on characters.
But the models disspoint me, I was much more impressed with the screen shots of Dragon's Lair 3d, not because of the polygons it's pushing, but because it looks like the most realistic attempt yet at imitating the cell animation look in 3d (even better than the upcoming Zelda game). Hopefully in a few years we'll be able to play games that look as impressive as animes like Ghost in the Shell or Akira. Also I was impressed by the PS2 game ICO, whose shadow monsters look and move like nothing I've seen in a game before. The models in Doom III look just like higher polygon models from other games.
What impresses me more than a "next generation" engine is creative and new effects. Like the rain falling in MGS2, or the deforming snow in VF4, or the beautiful planetscapes in Unreal Tournament. So, I think the game looks pretty good, but I'm hoping they add more interesting environmental effects than Quake II and III had.
Well technically, blockbuster isn't censoring videos, they're just refusing to carry NC-17 rated films (like Crash) so studios sell them edited copies because they still want to make money. (I wonder why competitors don't advertise they carry critically acclaimed films like Crash and Bad Lietenant uncut). I've talked to people who work at blockbuster who mistakenly think they're carrying the regular version of Crash. I think it had something to do with being a family oriented video store (so now the whole family can watch Crash together or something).
What I wish filmmakers would do, instead of seamlessly editing they're films for content, is to just insert squares over the naughty bits like Solondz did for Storytelling, so at least the consumer can easily tell the version they're watching is cut.
Also, you ever notice that now directors insert all the naughty bits into the 'Deleted Scenes' section of the DVD, like the commentary will say "Oh we couldn't include this or we'd get in trouble." Since the film is still an R-Rated film blockbuster has no trouble carrying it.
I remeber the sgi page... but I always thought lava lamps were a little cumbersome for random number generation, firstly they take several minutes to warm up before there's any visible movement, they give off a lot of heat, and they aren't supposed to be on for more than 10 hours. I figure something like bits of styrofoam in a large clear tube with a fan at the bottom would be more efficient, as the styrofoam bits should fly around quite randomly.
The hapless Amiga, a machine a decade ahead of its time (there's a lesson in there somewhere)
Personally I don't see our civilization colonizing the universe, I see human civilization following this pattern:
Agricultual Revolution -> Industrial Revoulution -> Information Revolution -> Matrix Style Pods That Will Extend Our Lives and Provide Us With Every Imaginable Pleasure
Maybe other extraterrestrial civilizations have followed this pattern, if they can't get around the great distances to travel. It's a common science fiction construct that the last human will die jacked into some computer with a big smile on their face.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/dreamcast/data/251 16.html
So it looks like this was just a standard form letter that was sent out because Batt jokingly credited cage as a composer.
What they should do (this is just a thought of mine) is sell the regular cards in stores, but print a unique serial number on each one, then you can enter those serial number onto your online account. That way your virtual deck can be the same as your real deck.
People guessing serial numbers shouldn't be a problem if there is a delay in entering the number and it uses a large enough base with enough digits.
If cds didn't make money, these large corporations wouldn't be in the business, and they wouldn't be buying other record lables.
Radio stations, on the other hand, have a government granted monopoly on a range of frequencies. Clear Channel wants it both ways, they want no government regulation on what they play, but the want tough government regulation on anyone trying to set up a pirate radio station. They want privilages without any responsibilities.
I'm in the minority that I liked Event Horizon. Still with Hollywood now making an adaptation of Red Dragon when Manhunter was a perfectly good film, you have to wonder what the memory span of film producers are.
This article, The Name Game cites these firms charging around $75,000 for a single word that may only be seven letters long. Not a logo, not an ad campaign, not even a domain registration, just the single word. I guess this runs roughly around $10,000 per byte.