If your avarage slashdotter has spare cash, he (for invariably it is a 'he') is going to spend it on hardware upgrades and useless gadgets rather than thinking about 'the poor' or, 'the sick' either at home, in other countries.
... is most likely true of Bill as well. Do you think there's anything he wants that he could otherwise buy but is going without so he can give away the money instead?
The odd thing is, though, that here the screenwriter, Karey Kirkpatrick, discusses just those things that make Adams' writing Adams' writing, and it really seemed he got it.
Even if this tech is perfected, it won't mean everybody's normal, day-to-day speaking voices will be replaced with it. It's something you'd only hear in certain situations.
I think it has more to do with the fact he just died yesterday (and we're only just finding out now). Most of Apple probably doesn't even know he's gone yet. Having a tribute is one thing; actually breaking the news is another.
I'm sure there'll be some mention of it in the Hot News or PR Library sections of the site within the week.
Ok, but where can you get a better deal on an individual song? A CD single will probably run you $4 or $5 at minimum, unless you find it used, and if you're looking for it that way, you'll have to hunt around, since you can't guarantee yourself of finding a particular disc used, and that's assuming the song you want is even available as a single at all; otherwise, you'll have to pay a bit more for the full album (which may be desirable, or may not). $1 for a song is awfully cheap - it can cost a hefty chunk of that just to play a song one time from a jukebox. If it's perfectly reasonable to pay 25, 50 or 75 cents to hear a song once (and in a specific location, rather than one you take the song to), why is it suddenly so outrageous to pay a little more for a permanent copy?
Other things $1 can buy you:
- 2 cans of soda, if the local vending machines sell it for 50 cents a can. Does a single track of music you love and listen to dozens or hundreds of times not bring at least as much enjoyment and satisfaction as two 12 oz. sodas?
- a lottery ticket. You probably won't win, but granted, if you do you can win big. This is very difficult to quantify.
- 4 plays of an older arcade video game; fewer of a more recent game that costs 50 cents, 75 cents or $1 a play. Is an enduring, infinitely replayable copy of a great song not worth more than a few minutes (or more, if you're a good player;) of videogaming?
- Oh, any number of things - how much does a hotdog cost? A slice of pizza? A ballpoint pen? Songs in the iTMS may not be corporeal, physical pieces of property you can touch, but they can bring a hell of a lot more pleasure and satisfaction than most other things I can think of that cost a comparable amount. Of course, you don't have to spend all your dollars on individual items in that price range, and can instead save them to use together for more expensive purchases, but still...
You say the iTMS isn't a good deal for anybody except Apple and the RIAA members; I beg to differ. Now, I don't mean to say it's better for you and you're not recognizing it, but I do know that it's enabled me to get some things I wanted more cheaply and easily than I could have otherwise, so it's a good deal for me. I suspect it's a good deal for an awful lot of people.
Just read ANY old slashdot story about iTunes DRM and you will find 100's of +5 insightful comments about how great DRM is as long as it's from Apple and how happy Apple users are that Apple serves them up DRM.
Oh, really? Well, with "100's of +5 insightful comments" (your words, mind you) in "ANY old slashdot story about iTunes DRM," it should be damned easy to find an example. Please, provide me with a link to one. Just one.
The point is not "how happy Apple users are that Apple serves them up DRM," it's that the DRM in the iTMS is very lenient, and doesn't actually restrict the overwhelming majority of people from doing anything they want to do with their tunes other than offer it up on P2P and the like.
There are also a number of individual artists and labels that sell ordinary MP3s you can use with your player, as well as a number of places offering free sample tracks.
There may be lots of people on Slashdot who detest President Bush, but there's no shortage of Bush defenders and apologists, either. It's total FUD to imply the Slashdot community is more or less of a single hive mind, fanatically devoted to tearing Bush apart to the point of ignoring anything good he does.
(Whether merely mentioning the words "clean" and "safe" in a mention of nuclear energy in a speech is enough to qualify it as "the good" is another issue, of course. It sounds to me like you're responding to a criticism of Bush's environmental policies by complaining about the fact the parent poster didn't laud Bush for including the words "clean" and "safe" in a speech. Are we to applaud him every time he says something meant to sound positive, and America-hating destroyers of freedom every time we fail to do so?)
No, Apple invented a chic looking hard drive mp3 player that everybody assumed that you must be cool if you own one.
No, Apple developed a chic-looking hard drive MP3 player that at first wasn't even Windows-compatible. It got great reviews because it was small, elegant and easy-to-use, with features not found on other players at the time. Its sales have really taken off since then, but it took a while. You seem to be one of those people who forgets the iPod was around before 2004. As time went on, it became clearer just how much better (opinion, obviously, and YMMV) it was than other things. The "fashion" aspect of it wasn't even there at all at first (in late 2001); that emerged after a while.
And then they marketed with a series of bizarre and silly commercials that 90% of the people hated, but figured that the commercial must be so cool that they couldn't understand it and therefore they must buy an iPod to regain some of their coolness.
The iPod advertising has been through a number of totally different phases. I'd also be very interested in your detailed research that conclusively established "90% of the people hated, but figured that the commercial must be so cool that they couldn't understand it," etc.
It's already been said, but I'll say it again: this isn't flamebait. Acknowledge it or not, the US has done sleazy things throughout Latin America whenever the government takes a turn to the left, regardless of said government's legitimacy.
Moreover, mentioning the sordid affair in Nicaragua isn't flamebait; even if you happen to disagree with the BorgCopyeditor's POV, it's a real expression of a valid point whose merits one can argue, not some totally ungrounded attack on America. Modding that as "Flamebait" is uncalled-for.
Except that in the case of most movies designed to be seen with a 1.85:1 or narrower aspect ratio, the full-frame versions aren't actually cropped; they instead show the full image of the original camera negative, and more picture than was seen in theaters. Many movies are shot in a way that records more picture information than is actually desired at the top and/or bottom of the frame, and it's then matted off when the film is exhibited in theaters. In such cases, the "full-frame" video may show more of the picture than has ever been seen in any widescreen version (theatrically or on video), but that's not necessarily desirable (probably the opposite).
Another example can be seen with Y Tu mamá también (which is on the list of "affected" titles). If you watch the online QuickTime version of the trailer (opens in iTunes), you see that it's full-frame, 1.33:1. You also see two shots in which there's a sheet of material in front of and above the camera, hanging down into the frame near the top of the picture, to block glare from the sun (which would otherwise show up everywhere else on the image). The shots can be seen at the 1:09" mark (when Tenoch is kicking the car after it's started to pull away from him at the service station; the masking material runs across the upper left of the frame) and three shots later, at 1:13" (when the car is zipping through the countryside; the masking can be seen in the upper-right corner). On the DVD, though, the same trailer and the actual movie are presented at 1.85:1, and the masking cannot be seen in either shot.
Things like this masking, film equipment, actors' marks and the like are just the most obvious problems, though. Often, even if all the "extra" picture on the original camera negative is devoid of such stuff, it still can throw off the original photographic composition that the director and cinematographer intended. Filmmakers (good ones, anyway) carefully plan their framing to achieve desired looks, and introducing huge swaths of negative space that wasn't meant to be seen can wreck their visuals almost as badly as arbitrarily cutting off the sides with panning-and-scanning to fit TVs.
Yellow Submarine is on the list. Are you trying to tell me the director told the animators to draw a 4:3 ratio movie so he could crop it top and bottom to look widescreen? NOBODY draws an animated cartoon like that. Lots of cartoons were cropped to make them look "widescreen" but the director never intended them to be shown cropped, and I don't see why MGM should get away with selling them that way.
Actually, yes, even cartoons. I can still remember how, when I saw Ferngully: The Last Rainforest theatrically when it first came out, the projectionist had slightly misframed the film, and during some scenes the upper edges of the animation cels and the like could be seen. There were plenty of shots where the artwork extended all the way to the edge, but others where the ink and paint of a character meant to fill the frame from top to bottom didn't quite extend all the way to the top, others where the actual physical edge of the cel was visible, etc.
It's not anything to do with "drawing a 4:3 ratio movie." There are shots for which planned camera movements, for example, mean a background painting is painted with different dimensions than an individual frame (because it's meant for camera to pan across, etc.), or for which the registration of the animation artwork might have changed since it was originally conceived, or for which the animators simply might have drawn a bit more around the edges than was necessary for the cameras.
Right, because that's so much more arch than, say, a villain named "Darth Vader" (dark-death-invader; "Vader" is also a form of "father"), a mercenary outsider named "Solo," or heroic pilots named "Skywalker"...
There may well be all sorts of things wrong with Revenge of the Sith, but the name "General Grievous" hardly qualifies as one of them, I think; it really is pretty much in keeping with long-established Star Wars traditions.
I hope he found some peace, and that his publicist hasn't found a way to contact him about his deadlines yet.
Given his famous tardiness and procrastination, I've always thought it bizarrely fitting that the one time he was too early for something, it still involved becoming late.
I was actually just thinking about his writing today while I was at work, and then I got home to read about this. RIP, DNA. You were one of the irreplaceable greats, and I'm ever grateful to have discovered your works when I did.
fact remains that you could spend $400-$500 to bring the Mac Mini up to a reasonable configuration by today's standards.
Except that's not a fact, but an opinion. What constitutes a "reasonable configuration" is subject to individual users' interpretations. For many people (particularly in the target market), this system will be perfectly adequate right out of the box, with nothing added at all (beyond the display, keyboard and mouse, of course).
Furthermore we have actual verified data that places the number closer to 17000.
We have actual verified data that places the minimum number there. I don't think there's any "actual verified data" that establishes with any certainty it's not (much) higher. At best, there's merely insufficient evidence upon which to assume it's much higher.
It may indeed be that the total number is under 18,000, but I wouldn't assert that just yet as confidently as you do.
I've refuted the 100,000 civilian death count numerous times already. Nobody considers that a "reasonable estimate".
Given the inherent difficulty of assessing the numbers and the very real possibility that the actual number could be much higher just as easily as it could be much lower, I'd say it's a reasonable estimate. It is just an estimate, though, derived from statistical extrapolation, and not an actual count; I'm not arguing otherwise. However, I do think it's pretty clear the total number of civilians killed, whatever it is, is (probably substantially) higher than the number of confirmed, definite, known kills, which is clearly the minimum. You seem to be treating it as a very reliable, close approximation of the total, when you can't know that. I don't know, either, but I'm not pretending to.
Why not? They will allow us to safely enter hostile areas without just blowing the place up. I would think a lone robot with a mounted shotgun would be even less likely to kill innocent people or cause damage to buildings than a smart missile. And they are said to be better shots than their human counterparts (with platform mounted guns instead of shoulder mounted) which should reduce collateral damage from stray bullets.
I doubt robots can make the kinds of determinations that are needed as effectively as human beings, though, at least at the present time.
Careful now, you almost sound like you are arguing that it would be better if more American soldiers had died.
I think it'd be better if fewer people had died, period.
Those numbers I was citing were not just the casualties from one side, but from both.
I know, though it doesn't make so much difference to the loser (and those numbers are disputed, BTW).
In wars over a century ago, in order to take out a target, military forces would have to physically invade the city, not a nice prospect. In wars earlier this century, we had to drop hundreds of bombs on the city and hope a few of them hit the target. Today we send out one missle that seeks out a specific target and usually causes very little collateral damage.
"Very little" collateral damage of possibly in excess of 100,000 deaths, according to some reasonable estimates. But yes, I do understand the idea, and think it's great that there's a push to make these strikes more surgically precise, taking out only the actual targets. The discussion was about the armed soldier robots, though, not smart missiles, and I seriously doubt the robots will be better able to avoid inadvertently killing innocents while killing the enemy than human soldiers, at least for the relatively near future. In the near-term, were these things actually employed in the conflict in Iraq to such an extent that they replaced significant numbers of American troops on the battlefield, there'd be an even more uneven distribution of deaths than there is now, with very very few US troops killed (relatively speaking) versus huge numbers of Iraqis killed (both insurgents and innocent civilians).
Besides, I'm sure there are many in Iraq who would have loved it had we had less concern over the lives of our troops and were willing to take out Saddam ten years ago.
Oh, certainly. Furthermore, I'm sure many in Iraq would have loved it if "we" weren't willing to back him and help him hold power in the ten years before that.
I think the parent was speaking not from the standpoint of someone in the US military who might be spared a combat position by the deployment of this robot, but from the standpoint of someone who might be targeted by this robot.
For the Iraqis, the prospect of having a wealthy, industrialized nation thousands of miles away suddenly able to deploy massive lethal forces in Iraq without having as many actual living sons and daughters there at risk is a bad thing. I mean, how would you like it if some distant adversary not only elected to invade you, but didn't have to risk all that many of its own soldiers' lives to do it? The idea of the poster to which you're responding is that if such technological advancements remove all the horror from one side of the equation, so that war is suddenly much nicer and bloodless (for the aggressor), there's less incentive for said aggressor to avoid war, and things become much less nice for everyone else.
I think there's a bigger, more basic question here. If the Mac mini's specs are all things Omega1045 is looking for in the computer he intends to get (which I'm assuming is the case, since he's trying to spec out a PC that matches or beats the mini's features), and the mini is cheap enough for his budget ("... for the same price (or less)," he says he wants his PC to be), and (most importantly) his wife wants the mini, why doesn't he just get the mini?
I'm asking this only partly from the perspective of wondering what's wrong with the Mac mini in his eyes (I accept there may be any number of legit reasons for wanting a PC instead, like wanting to use certain software, etc.). I'm asking largely because I wonder why he'd prefer to get something other than what the wife wants - not something specific, mind you, but just anything that's not the one thing she's suggesting, despite the fact that from his own query's wording it apparently features everything he wants in the new computer, and at a price he can't match with another system. It sounds a bit like he's just arbitrarily refusing to get the Mac mini to spite her, or something. I hope that's not the case (and I do apologize if I've mischaracterized his intent; I just don't understand what he's thinking)...
Well, I'm glad someone understands the DOOP. I'll personally never understand an organization that can put a doofus like Zapp Brannigan in command of a starship when there are more capable officers like Kif Kroker available (though I have fun trying)...
That's because the Blade Runner DVD, while indeed featuring an excellent movie, is not much of a DVD - it's pretty much the movie and nothing else (and reputedly a transfer that could stand improvement, at that). This UGO list ranks the DVDs not just on the merits of the movies themselves, but on their DVD presentations as well - quality and quantity of extras and whatnot. By that criteria, the existing disc of Blade Runner doesn't make the cut, though undoubtedly the long-promised 3-disc, 2-version, extras-laden special edition will place very highly on a future version of the list, so long as it does in fact come out.
Slashdot Mirror
What's the significance of the names in bold text? I don't see them bolded in the original page.
... is most likely true of Bill as well. Do you think there's anything he wants that he could otherwise buy but is going without so he can give away the money instead?
The odd thing is, though, that here the screenwriter, Karey Kirkpatrick, discusses just those things that make Adams' writing Adams' writing, and it really seemed he got it.
Even if this tech is perfected, it won't mean everybody's normal, day-to-day speaking voices will be replaced with it. It's something you'd only hear in certain situations.
There's no such thing as a country with no culture.
I'm sure there'll be some mention of it in the Hot News or PR Library sections of the site within the week.
Other things $1 can buy you:
- 2 cans of soda, if the local vending machines sell it for 50 cents a can. Does a single track of music you love and listen to dozens or hundreds of times not bring at least as much enjoyment and satisfaction as two 12 oz. sodas?
- a lottery ticket. You probably won't win, but granted, if you do you can win big. This is very difficult to quantify.
- 4 plays of an older arcade video game; fewer of a more recent game that costs 50 cents, 75 cents or $1 a play. Is an enduring, infinitely replayable copy of a great song not worth more than a few minutes (or more, if you're a good player ;) of videogaming?
- Oh, any number of things - how much does a hotdog cost? A slice of pizza? A ballpoint pen? Songs in the iTMS may not be corporeal, physical pieces of property you can touch, but they can bring a hell of a lot more pleasure and satisfaction than most other things I can think of that cost a comparable amount. Of course, you don't have to spend all your dollars on individual items in that price range, and can instead save them to use together for more expensive purchases, but still...
You say the iTMS isn't a good deal for anybody except Apple and the RIAA members; I beg to differ. Now, I don't mean to say it's better for you and you're not recognizing it, but I do know that it's enabled me to get some things I wanted more cheaply and easily than I could have otherwise, so it's a good deal for me. I suspect it's a good deal for an awful lot of people.
Oh, really? Well, with "100's of +5 insightful comments" (your words, mind you) in "ANY old slashdot story about iTunes DRM," it should be damned easy to find an example. Please, provide me with a link to one. Just one.
The point is not "how happy Apple users are that Apple serves them up DRM," it's that the DRM in the iTMS is very lenient, and doesn't actually restrict the overwhelming majority of people from doing anything they want to do with their tunes other than offer it up on P2P and the like.
Off the top of my head:
eMusic
MP3Tunes
There are also a number of individual artists and labels that sell ordinary MP3s you can use with your player, as well as a number of places offering free sample tracks.
Um, aren't you a Slashdot poster?
There may be lots of people on Slashdot who detest President Bush, but there's no shortage of Bush defenders and apologists, either. It's total FUD to imply the Slashdot community is more or less of a single hive mind, fanatically devoted to tearing Bush apart to the point of ignoring anything good he does.
(Whether merely mentioning the words "clean" and "safe" in a mention of nuclear energy in a speech is enough to qualify it as "the good" is another issue, of course. It sounds to me like you're responding to a criticism of Bush's environmental policies by complaining about the fact the parent poster didn't laud Bush for including the words "clean" and "safe" in a speech. Are we to applaud him every time he says something meant to sound positive, and America-hating destroyers of freedom every time we fail to do so?)
No, Apple developed a chic-looking hard drive MP3 player that at first wasn't even Windows-compatible. It got great reviews because it was small, elegant and easy-to-use, with features not found on other players at the time. Its sales have really taken off since then, but it took a while. You seem to be one of those people who forgets the iPod was around before 2004. As time went on, it became clearer just how much better (opinion, obviously, and YMMV) it was than other things. The "fashion" aspect of it wasn't even there at all at first (in late 2001); that emerged after a while.
The iPod advertising has been through a number of totally different phases. I'd also be very interested in your detailed research that conclusively established "90% of the people hated, but figured that the commercial must be so cool that they couldn't understand it," etc.
Moreover, mentioning the sordid affair in Nicaragua isn't flamebait; even if you happen to disagree with the BorgCopyeditor's POV, it's a real expression of a valid point whose merits one can argue, not some totally ungrounded attack on America. Modding that as "Flamebait" is uncalled-for.
Except that in the case of most movies designed to be seen with a 1.85:1 or narrower aspect ratio, the full-frame versions aren't actually cropped; they instead show the full image of the original camera negative, and more picture than was seen in theaters. Many movies are shot in a way that records more picture information than is actually desired at the top and/or bottom of the frame, and it's then matted off when the film is exhibited in theaters. In such cases, the "full-frame" video may show more of the picture than has ever been seen in any widescreen version (theatrically or on video), but that's not necessarily desirable (probably the opposite).
Things like this masking, film equipment, actors' marks and the like are just the most obvious problems, though. Often, even if all the "extra" picture on the original camera negative is devoid of such stuff, it still can throw off the original photographic composition that the director and cinematographer intended. Filmmakers (good ones, anyway) carefully plan their framing to achieve desired looks, and introducing huge swaths of negative space that wasn't meant to be seen can wreck their visuals almost as badly as arbitrarily cutting off the sides with panning-and-scanning to fit TVs.
Actually, yes, even cartoons. I can still remember how, when I saw Ferngully: The Last Rainforest theatrically when it first came out, the projectionist had slightly misframed the film, and during some scenes the upper edges of the animation cels and the like could be seen. There were plenty of shots where the artwork extended all the way to the edge, but others where the ink and paint of a character meant to fill the frame from top to bottom didn't quite extend all the way to the top, others where the actual physical edge of the cel was visible, etc.
It's not anything to do with "drawing a 4:3 ratio movie." There are shots for which planned camera movements, for example, mean a background painting is painted with different dimensions than an individual frame (because it's meant for camera to pan across, etc.), or for which the registration of the animation artwork might have changed since it was originally conceived, or for which the animators simply might have drawn a bit more around the edges than was necessary for the cameras.
There may well be all sorts of things wrong with Revenge of the Sith, but the name "General Grievous" hardly qualifies as one of them, I think; it really is pretty much in keeping with long-established Star Wars traditions.
Given his famous tardiness and procrastination, I've always thought it bizarrely fitting that the one time he was too early for something, it still involved becoming late.
I was actually just thinking about his writing today while I was at work, and then I got home to read about this. RIP, DNA. You were one of the irreplaceable greats, and I'm ever grateful to have discovered your works when I did.
Except that's not a fact, but an opinion. What constitutes a "reasonable configuration" is subject to individual users' interpretations. For many people (particularly in the target market), this system will be perfectly adequate right out of the box, with nothing added at all (beyond the display, keyboard and mouse, of course).
We have actual verified data that places the minimum number there. I don't think there's any "actual verified data" that establishes with any certainty it's not (much) higher. At best, there's merely insufficient evidence upon which to assume it's much higher.
It may indeed be that the total number is under 18,000, but I wouldn't assert that just yet as confidently as you do.
Given the inherent difficulty of assessing the numbers and the very real possibility that the actual number could be much higher just as easily as it could be much lower, I'd say it's a reasonable estimate. It is just an estimate, though, derived from statistical extrapolation, and not an actual count; I'm not arguing otherwise. However, I do think it's pretty clear the total number of civilians killed, whatever it is, is (probably substantially) higher than the number of confirmed, definite, known kills, which is clearly the minimum. You seem to be treating it as a very reliable, close approximation of the total, when you can't know that. I don't know, either, but I'm not pretending to.
I doubt robots can make the kinds of determinations that are needed as effectively as human beings, though, at least at the present time.
I think it'd be better if fewer people had died, period.
I know, though it doesn't make so much difference to the loser (and those numbers are disputed, BTW).
"Very little" collateral damage of possibly in excess of 100,000 deaths, according to some reasonable estimates. But yes, I do understand the idea, and think it's great that there's a push to make these strikes more surgically precise, taking out only the actual targets. The discussion was about the armed soldier robots, though, not smart missiles, and I seriously doubt the robots will be better able to avoid inadvertently killing innocents while killing the enemy than human soldiers, at least for the relatively near future. In the near-term, were these things actually employed in the conflict in Iraq to such an extent that they replaced significant numbers of American troops on the battlefield, there'd be an even more uneven distribution of deaths than there is now, with very very few US troops killed (relatively speaking) versus huge numbers of Iraqis killed (both insurgents and innocent civilians).
Oh, certainly. Furthermore, I'm sure many in Iraq would have loved it if "we" weren't willing to back him and help him hold power in the ten years before that.
For the Iraqis, the prospect of having a wealthy, industrialized nation thousands of miles away suddenly able to deploy massive lethal forces in Iraq without having as many actual living sons and daughters there at risk is a bad thing. I mean, how would you like it if some distant adversary not only elected to invade you, but didn't have to risk all that many of its own soldiers' lives to do it? The idea of the poster to which you're responding is that if such technological advancements remove all the horror from one side of the equation, so that war is suddenly much nicer and bloodless (for the aggressor), there's less incentive for said aggressor to avoid war, and things become much less nice for everyone else.
I'm asking this only partly from the perspective of wondering what's wrong with the Mac mini in his eyes (I accept there may be any number of legit reasons for wanting a PC instead, like wanting to use certain software, etc.). I'm asking largely because I wonder why he'd prefer to get something other than what the wife wants - not something specific, mind you, but just anything that's not the one thing she's suggesting, despite the fact that from his own query's wording it apparently features everything he wants in the new computer, and at a price he can't match with another system. It sounds a bit like he's just arbitrarily refusing to get the Mac mini to spite her, or something. I hope that's not the case (and I do apologize if I've mischaracterized his intent; I just don't understand what he's thinking)...
Well, I'm glad someone understands the DOOP. I'll personally never understand an organization that can put a doofus like Zapp Brannigan in command of a starship when there are more capable officers like Kif Kroker available (though I have fun trying)...
That's because the Blade Runner DVD, while indeed featuring an excellent movie, is not much of a DVD - it's pretty much the movie and nothing else (and reputedly a transfer that could stand improvement, at that). This UGO list ranks the DVDs not just on the merits of the movies themselves, but on their DVD presentations as well - quality and quantity of extras and whatnot. By that criteria, the existing disc of Blade Runner doesn't make the cut, though undoubtedly the long-promised 3-disc, 2-version, extras-laden special edition will place very highly on a future version of the list, so long as it does in fact come out.