"Unfortunately your triumvirate of identical links above don't seem to go anywhere. It's missing it's periods like a debutante after the prom."
[to a spam advertising a chain to keep you from losing your remote] "I'm a prison guard in Jessup. MD, and when the inmates in my block get their allotted tv time, they've taken to playing a new game that they refer to as "Pass the Remote". The idea of the game is to swallow the tv's remote control, and keep it in their digestive system for as long as possible. Everyone gets a turn, and whoever takes the longest to "Pass the Remote" wins a pack of cigarettes from everybody else....
Anyhow, while all of this is highly entertaining, the remote controls get pretty foul, pretty fast, so this whole thing needs to come to an end instead of in one and out the other..."
"...further slap in the face for those of us True Republicans who have been forced to carry the torch under the Reform Party banner. And as anyone who carries a torch under a banner can tell you, we're all feeling pretty burned."
[from a job application he made up] "Question 4: What's your favorite number between 1 and 10? (This one is actually very important, it will determine your hourly salary.)"
"Hi, my name is Amy. I'm a freshman at UCLA.
My sorority girlfriends and I just designed a website to help pay for college. We have hardcore pictures of us and our boyfriends having kinky sex. New pix are uploaded every day. Click Here To Enter
Hi Amy!
I'm so glad you wrote to me! My name is Jon, I'm a senior in high school and I'm applying to UCLA! Do you have any words of advice? ! I know it's really hard to get in there, but my grades are good, and I got 1500 on my SAT's (yay!). My interview's coming up next week! Also, are there any work study jobs besides the e-commerce positions you referred to in your prospective student introductory letter, or is that not part of the financial aid package? I'm not good with computers. I couldn't even make your link work.
Please help me! I don't know anyone else who goes there. I want to go to UCLA sooooooooooo bad!
C Ya In September (I hope - fingers crossed),
Jon "
The best one, though, has got to be his T-shirt ideas, which you just have to see for yourself.
Marcel Duchamp would have a hard-on
on
He Writes Back
·
· Score: 1
I will go home and prey that they get hit by a bus...
Your (I'm sure unintentional) misspelling of the word "pray" gave that phrase more appropriate meaning than if you would've spelled it correctly! Very cool. Where's the Grammar Nazi when you finally get a chance to prove the uselessness of his anal-retentiveness...
-If distributed computing can unravel the building blocks of life, it can probably help make a better version of "Crash Bandicoot."
Um, pardon my ignorance here, but gee, how about interesting gameplay? If I were a game developer, I'd be comepletely embarrased to ask for a performance upgrade, becuase it would mean that my game relies more on technology than gameplay to make it interesting, and therefore, sucks. I mean, Pong still beats 99% of games out today, and you can play that with punch cards.
My favorite method is to take the first three characters of the title of your favorite opera and combine them with the last one. So if you're a fan of "Fidelio", then
but the technology does not successfully duplicate what the monks would do if they were in the room playing with you.
Neither does Johnny Cash's new CD successfully duplicate what you would hear if he were in the room playing with you. Live music and recorded music are two completely different animals, as different as painting and acting. In live music, one or more people play instruments (guitars or samplers or tinfoil--anything that makes a sound) in a unique way. Doing so, they impart something intangible to the audience. An extreme example of this is Son House:
"I remember seeing Son House at the Gaslight Cafe in NYC. He had just been rediscovered and was still quite nervous to play before people. He slowly rambled up to the stage and took a seat. The lights were bright and made it almost impossible to see the audience. Next, the steel guitar was handed to him and he fumbled to get a brass piece of tubing from his vest pocket. The Cafe was full of noise and excitement. There was little recognition of Son's being on stage. Then, to quiet the place, an announcement was made introducing the "legendary bluesman from the Mississippi Delta." Still noise, as most of the audience were very unfamiliar with Delta music or Son House.
Then the amazaing part of the night occurred. Son slid the slide down the fingerboard of the guitar. The sound cried out. Everyone stood and looked. Next Son started his singing moan. His eyes rolled, arms shook, sweat quickly rolled down his forehead. Everyone remained standing, amazed at the sound. The song ended and from stunned silence a wave of applause emerged. Son played four more songs. The blues brought tears to people who had never been exposed to this type of sound. Those familiar with Son and his music cried for the joy of seeing him perform and the wailing sounds of the guitar."
--Stefan Grossman
Recorded music, on the other hand, is not merely a matter of recording the above performance. Sure, that's what people do, and some will try to convince you that their expensive mikes and high bit rate make it just like being there, but that's impossible. Let me make a tech-oriented sweeping generalization: No recording will ever capture a live performance in full. But here's the thing: recordings are a no less valid art form than performances. Once you accept the fact that you can't duplicate a live performance; once you embrace that fact, then you can use the CD medium to its true potential. No more is making a CD just a matter of getting the band to play one track without screwing up. People have realised that on a CD, that's not a guitar, that's not a voice, it's just a bunch of waveforms generated by 1s and 0s. No matter what you recorded, it's now electronic. So it doesn't make any difference if you loop one sound over and over. It doesn't matter if you apply massive effects to a vocal. And it's not cheating if every sound is programmed and not performed. The computer isn't making the music, it's still the person, just in a different way. You might say that your hard drive is your blank canvas, and when you start recording tracks to it, it's like you're painting, like you're constructing a song. Then when it's finished, through the glory (and I use that word with all seriousness) of technology, you can burn indentical copies of that to a CD as many times as you want, and an unlimited amount of people can enjoy your work in exactly the way it was intended.
Um, Berklee, one of the nation's most respected music schools, opted to use Reason as the tool of choice to teach electronic music. Maybe you're using some other definition of "powerful" that I was previously unaware of.
from Propellerheads site: "Berklee has chosen Reason's virtual on-screen equipment to teach signal flow, routing, mixing, synthesis, sampling, and sequencing. Never before has one software application been able to provide students with virtual "hands on" experience using so many different pieces of electronic music gear."
I think there should be a little more openness in society about the mechanics of death.
Agreed.
When Chuang Tzu was about to die, his disciples planned a big funeral. He asked "Why not just leave me on the ground?" They said "Because then crows and kites will pick apart your body."
"So?" he replied. "Above ground, I get eaten by crows and kites. Below it by ants and worms. What have you got against birds?"
The other day I was at the cemetary paying my respects to my dead grandmother when I thought "This is boring. I'm gonna go buy a video game." But I couldn't think of one that I wanted, so I just went home.
5. Proving the old business school law that says "any idiot can sell a dollar for 80 cents," online-currency company Flooz.com in July launches a special offer whereby American Express platinum cardholders can buy $1,000 of Flooz currency for just $800.
6.A month later, Flooz.com ceases processing transactions. It declares bankruptcy in November, leaving those who bought Flooz currency stuck with worthless e-dollars
Homer: Okay, I'll take $1,000
[Signs inside Itchy & Scratchy land]: "No Itchy & Scratchy bucks accepted here." "We don't take Itchy & Scratchy bucks." "Real cash only."
Homer: D'oh!
I'm no professional, but my storytelling ability improved drastically from playing D&D in high school. It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to, as DM, keep my friends locked into the story at 4 am, as they were getting tired. Once in a while though, I'd write an adventure that'd keep them on the edge of their seats all night long. What a great feeling that was. We used to say that if the storyline of an adventure wouldn't make a good movie, then it's not a good adventure.
I wonder how many current writers and filmmakers there are today who owe at least part of their ability to entertain to Gygax and D&D? I guess we'll never know; I'd bet many wouldn't admit it.
D&D is the perfect compromise between passive entertainment like watching TV and active creativity like writing a book. Here's to hoping kids and adults play it for generations to come.
I think part of the problem is that with CGI, they don't have the limitations of real life, so they just forget about them. "Hey, let's make the camera fly around the race course at a million mph. Ooo, cool." "Okay, while you do that, I'm going to make my CG character figit around annoyingly while the real actors are talking just because I've got a handle on Inverse Kinematics." WTF? Real life actors can sit still, why can't CG ones?
I think someone needs to come up with a plug-in for Softimage (or whatever program they use) that will prevent the virtual camera from doing anything a normal camera couldn't do in real life. Like if you moved it too high, it would make you build a virtual crane to hold it in position. Or if you moved it around in the air, you'd get a $3,000 virtual helicopter rental fee deducted from your bank account.
In the extras in ep. I, Lucas was saying he wanted the look and feel of the first episodes vs. the next 3 to mirror the product evolution of the US before and after the industrial revolution. So on one hand, you have machines that are hand-made by craftsmen, then everything gets industrialized and you get the more mass-produced look of eps. 4-6.
Personally, I think it's a neat idea, but I agree with you--he didn't think it all the way through and it looks wierd. How come the technology in the ep. 1 is no less advanced, if not more advanced? Maybe what he should've done is make eps. 1-3 with the exact same moviemaking technology that he used in the 70's, except when he needed a shot that was impossible to do without CG, he should've done some CGI, except make it look like animatronics or puppets, rather than real life. For some reason, I find it a lot easier to suspend my disbelief in eps. 4-6, even though the effects in ep. 1 supposedly look more realistic.
The difference:
Jar Jar is a failed attempt at Buster Keaton-style slapsitck. Unfortunately, Lucas captured none of the sophistication or clever gags of Keaton. All the cutesy characters in episodes 4-6 were realistically intelligent and reacted believably to their situations. Jar Jar is something you'd expect to see in a saturday morning cartoon created by a dodgy old professor who's real passion is Proust, but was told to make a funny children's show.
I don't know how you could stand a movie that actually expected you to take it seriously when people were fighting with light sabres and jumping in and out of hyperspace.
You suspend your disbelief. I have no problem believing in (for 2 hours, at least) the Force,light sabres, and Jedi Knights; until some zany loon CGI character comes in and makes me remember it's just a movie.
Lucas is a master of drama and action. I give it up for him for trying, but I hope he realises that any comedy (even if it's good) in the Star Wars series really doesn't belong. Unfortunately, it looks like I'll be treating episodes 1-3 the same way I do The Godfather III: pretending they don't exist.
Let's say it takes 1.5 minutes to download a song. Let's say each kid has a seperate computer with a dedicated connection.
45 songs/hour * 48 hrs * 3 kids = 6,480 songs.
That's IF they spent no time searching and downloaded for 2 days straight. Aren't minors required by law to work something less than 24 hrs a day, anyway?
Aimee Mann
Thievery Corporation
King Crimson, and all their "children" and "relatives"
Ani DiFranco
Michael Jackson
Almost any Indie musician
These are just a handful of artists who, by either creating their own label or working the system, have managed to secure all the rights to their works. These guys are the exception, of course.
But so are work-for-hire-artists. Work for hire is when an artist gives up all their rights to their work (including royalties, IIRC). Not a lot of artists are dumb enough to sign a contract like this, and in some cases it can be brought to court and dismissed. The vast majority of artists sign a contract where the label gets the "publishing rights," which are the rights to the recording and they get the "performance rights," the rights to the song. There's a fine but important distinction. The reason for this is that the songwriter did all the work in writing the song, so he gets the rights to it. In the vast majority of cases, it's the label who does all the work and puts up all the money to record the song (much of the time, losing their investment), so it's only fair that they get the rights to the recording. You should really check your facts before saying someone doesn't have a clue.
Work for Hire goes on in Hollywood and TV because that's what people are doing. The directors, actors, stuntmen, gaffers, are all working for the studio, who is putting up all the money for the film's production and distribution. It's no different than a software development company, really. If you owned a company that was pouring huge bucks into hiring people to make something, you wouldn't be giving the rights away either.
You're right, people can sell all the rights, including ownership of their songs, and they do. George Clinton sold it to songs that wound up earning $100m. He went to court over it, and it was ruled that the rights were sold and that was it. But this is pretty much the exception.
It is a big kludgy minefield. But if we want to navigate it successfully and once and for all, we have to look at what's fair for both the artists and the corporations.
Yes! Case in point: sampling. Remember Odelay? Beck's groundbreaking album that featured an amazing and deeply personal use of samples, and which earned a grammy for album of the year? Here's what he had to say about it: "I'll never use samples like that again, after seeing what a headache it was getting them all cleared." Using samples is an art form of its own, and free advertising for the artist being sampled. I've bought many CDs just because I heard the samples and wanted to check out the original songs. And it's the best form of advertising--honest celebrity endorsements! I really can't understand why derivitave works like sample-based tunes are illegal to distribute, except maybe to guess that it's a power trip on the part of the labels. Kinda like how they shut down Napster even though it made their revenues go up.
Yeah, but I'm talking in terms of decades here. 10, 20, maybe even 30 years. I don't think record labels give too much thought to how much dough a CD is going to bring in 20 years from now, but I could be wrong.
Imagine how rich the public domain would be if album copyrights expired even 30 years from the release date! Imagine (pun intended)! Every Beatles album, accessible to the world for free. Hell, the Beatles (those left) don't even make money off their own works--Michael jackson does! If that's not an indication of a corrupt system, I don't know what is.
offTopic I heard this from a reliable source, but still can't be sure of the veracity: The lead singer of Sublime, back when they were starting out and could'nt seem to write a memorable song, had an idea. All of his heroes--Coltrane, Cobian, Miles Davis, etc--were smack addicts. He decided he'd get addicted to heroin, write a hit album, and get off it. Well he got on the smack, and they released that smash CD with the cover with the with the Sublime tatoo on his back. Big hit, top of the charts. So just like he said, he gets off the stuff. He actually does it! Everything's great until a year later. He's at this party, and someone's got some heroin. He can't resist. He takes one hit, and dies. I'm 99% sure this is true, but like I said, I heard it from a friend (albeit a knowledgable one) rather than a new source, so I'm not promising anything. Wierd though, huh? /offTopic
If you for whatever reason find yourself unable to produce anything else that anyone thinks is worth anything, you do the same thing you did before you came up with that one brilliant work: either keep doing it for shit pay because you love it so much and hope things get better, or quit, realising maybe you should be doing something else with your life now.
Specialization is for Insects.
Why is everyone so caught up in the whole career notion? People can and should excel at many things. Dylan released "Don't think twice, it's alright" at 21. Van Gogh, IIRC, drew/painted from 28-38. Basho started writing haiku at 40. There's no reason a future person can't do all those things in the same lifetime.
The thing is, making Art isn't about flowing with creativity, it's about working. A lot. Bach, who many people regard as the greatest musician of all time, said "I got to where I am because I worked hard at it. Anyone else who works this hard can get as far as me." I guarantee you, if you have the capacity to create one brilliant work, you can create many.
Yeah, you might say that extended copyrights seperate the real musicians (the ones who do it no matter how much money they have/don't have) from the posers, and perhaps even thereby insure a generally higher quality level, but take F Scott Fitzgerald. I read somewhere that he wrote so much because his royalties couldn't support his crazy lifestyle, so he had to keep churning out stuff to stay afloat. Maybe there are a lot of people who have less demanding personal expenses who could produce quality work, but just get lazy. But is it society's responsibility to motivate these people? We'll always see quality work from dedicated artists, now matter what the laws are, but maybe reducing the copyright term might give some of the more unmotivated ones good reason to get out there and do some work. On the other hand, would that mean we'd just have more mediocre crap around? On the third hand, my Fitzgerald reference proved that you don't have to have a divine inspiration to create quality work, you just have to sit down and do it, for whatever reason. A very complicated issue, to be sure.
That's a very good point, about labels sitting on content until it falls into the public domain, but I'm sure musicians could include something in their contracts about immediate release. Plus, if the material was in the PD when it was released, then other people could distribute cheap copies and the label would make way less money.
One thing is sure: Anyone who creates anything, whether it's CDs or code, has a higher responsibility that only they can decide how to come to terms with.
People already get paid what the common middle-class american says they should. Here's how it works: a baseball player works his ASS off, practicing for hours every day in high school and college for no guaranteed gain. Then a scout sees him playing, and takes him on the team. Then he works even HARDER, studing everything about every other player and the game he can get his hands on. And that's the AVERAGE player. Then Joe Blow, who spent his high school years looking for trim, and his college ones getting stoned, pays $40 a seat to see said baseball player perform. In fact, a lot of Joe Blows do this. Then Joe Blows go back to their fish gutting jobs that need no training. This determines the players salary. Public demand for top-notch athletes and quality games. The same goes for movies and music. Steven Spielberg is getting paid exorbitant sums of money because people love his movies. They love his movies not because he's a natural at it, but because he spent his youth sneaking around movie sets and studing directors. He deserves it.
Yes, maybe they'd give their 3 remaining fingers to get paid what they do, but they obviously won't give what really matters: their time and effort.
Now I'm not saying they need all that money and glory; in fact, I think it's a hinderance to them, but the public is paying what they consider appropriate, and if anyone deserves it, it's them.
Note that this has nothing to do with how long their copyrights should be extended.
Let's say you're a songwriter. You write a hit tune. It goes to the top of the charts. You collect royalties up the wazoo. Great. A year later you realise, that since you're getting enough royalties to live comfortably, you really have no reason to write more songs, other than you might enjoy it. So you say, I'll write tomorrow. I've got lunch dates all day today. And you get lazy. Soon the public (your fan base) is funding your inaction.
But if the copyright only lasted long enough for you and your label to recoup expenses and make a tidy profit on top of that, chances are you'd be getting back to work a lot sooner. When you're hungry, you work.
http://www.dinosaur.org/news/news01-04-25bird.html Plus it has links to some really high res pics. I can't see where that ugly pic on the CNN site fits in, but this is the same bird/dino. A quick search on Google revealed that most of the other sites covering this showed the pictures from the above link, but at lower resolution.
Slashdot Mirror
For those of you who like "best of's..."
"Unfortunately your triumvirate of identical links above don't seem to go anywhere. It's missing it's periods like a debutante after the prom."
[to a spam advertising a chain to keep you from losing your remote] "I'm a prison guard in Jessup. MD, and when the inmates in my block get their allotted tv time, they've taken to playing a new game that they refer to as "Pass the Remote". The idea of the game is to swallow the tv's remote control, and keep it in their digestive system for as long as possible. Everyone gets a turn, and whoever takes the longest to "Pass the Remote" wins a pack of cigarettes from everybody else.... Anyhow, while all of this is highly entertaining, the remote controls get pretty foul, pretty fast, so this whole thing needs to come to an end instead of in one and out the other..."
"...further slap in the face for those of us True Republicans who have been forced to carry the torch under the Reform Party banner. And as anyone who carries a torch under a banner can tell you, we're all feeling pretty burned."
[from a job application he made up] "Question 4: What's your favorite number between 1 and 10? (This one is actually very important, it will determine your hourly salary.)"
"Hi, my name is Amy. I'm a freshman at UCLA. My sorority girlfriends and I just designed a website to help pay for college. We have hardcore pictures of us and our boyfriends having kinky sex. New pix are uploaded every day. Click Here To Enter
Hi Amy!
I'm so glad you wrote to me! My name is Jon, I'm a senior in high school and I'm applying to UCLA! Do you have any words of advice? ! I know it's really hard to get in there, but my grades are good, and I got 1500 on my SAT's (yay!). My interview's coming up next week! Also, are there any work study jobs besides the e-commerce positions you referred to in your prospective student introductory letter, or is that not part of the financial aid package? I'm not good with computers. I couldn't even make your link work.
Please help me! I don't know anyone else who goes there. I want to go to UCLA sooooooooooo bad!
C Ya In September (I hope - fingers crossed),
Jon "
The best one, though, has got to be his T-shirt ideas, which you just have to see for yourself.
I will go home and prey that they get hit by a bus...
Your (I'm sure unintentional) misspelling of the word "pray" gave that phrase more appropriate meaning than if you would've spelled it correctly! Very cool. Where's the Grammar Nazi when you finally get a chance to prove the uselessness of his anal-retentiveness...
I'm so mean I've never influenced a statistic, poll or survey.
*wince*
-If distributed computing can unravel the building blocks of life, it can probably help make a better version of "Crash Bandicoot."
Um, pardon my ignorance here, but gee, how about interesting gameplay? If I were a game developer, I'd be comepletely embarrased to ask for a performance upgrade, becuase it would mean that my game relies more on technology than gameplay to make it interesting, and therefore, sucks. I mean, Pong still beats 99% of games out today, and you can play that with punch cards.
My favorite method is to take the first three characters of the title of your favorite opera and combine them with the last one. So if you're a fan of "Fidelio", then
oh, crap... nevermind.
but the technology does not successfully duplicate what the monks would do if they were in the room playing with you.
Neither does Johnny Cash's new CD successfully duplicate what you would hear if he were in the room playing with you. Live music and recorded music are two completely different animals, as different as painting and acting. In live music, one or more people play instruments (guitars or samplers or tinfoil--anything that makes a sound) in a unique way. Doing so, they impart something intangible to the audience. An extreme example of this is Son House:
"I remember seeing Son House at the Gaslight Cafe in NYC. He had just been rediscovered and was still quite nervous to play before people. He slowly rambled up to the stage and took a seat. The lights were bright and made it almost impossible to see the audience. Next, the steel guitar was handed to him and he fumbled to get a brass piece of tubing from his vest pocket. The Cafe was full of noise and excitement. There was little recognition of Son's being on stage. Then, to quiet the place, an announcement was made introducing the "legendary bluesman from the Mississippi Delta." Still noise, as most of the audience were very unfamiliar with Delta music or Son House.
Then the amazaing part of the night occurred. Son slid the slide down the fingerboard of the guitar. The sound cried out. Everyone stood and looked. Next Son started his singing moan. His eyes rolled, arms shook, sweat quickly rolled down his forehead. Everyone remained standing, amazed at the sound. The song ended and from stunned silence a wave of applause emerged. Son played four more songs. The blues brought tears to people who had never been exposed to this type of sound. Those familiar with Son and his music cried for the joy of seeing him perform and the wailing sounds of the guitar."
--Stefan Grossman
Recorded music, on the other hand, is not merely a matter of recording the above performance. Sure, that's what people do, and some will try to convince you that their expensive mikes and high bit rate make it just like being there, but that's impossible. Let me make a tech-oriented sweeping generalization: No recording will ever capture a live performance in full. But here's the thing: recordings are a no less valid art form than performances. Once you accept the fact that you can't duplicate a live performance; once you embrace that fact, then you can use the CD medium to its true potential. No more is making a CD just a matter of getting the band to play one track without screwing up. People have realised that on a CD, that's not a guitar, that's not a voice, it's just a bunch of waveforms generated by 1s and 0s. No matter what you recorded, it's now electronic. So it doesn't make any difference if you loop one sound over and over. It doesn't matter if you apply massive effects to a vocal. And it's not cheating if every sound is programmed and not performed. The computer isn't making the music, it's still the person, just in a different way. You might say that your hard drive is your blank canvas, and when you start recording tracks to it, it's like you're painting, like you're constructing a song. Then when it's finished, through the glory (and I use that word with all seriousness) of technology, you can burn indentical copies of that to a CD as many times as you want, and an unlimited amount of people can enjoy your work in exactly the way it was intended.
Um, Berklee, one of the nation's most respected music schools, opted to use Reason as the tool of choice to teach electronic music. Maybe you're using some other definition of "powerful" that I was previously unaware of.
from Propellerheads site:
"Berklee has chosen Reason's virtual on-screen equipment to teach signal flow, routing, mixing, synthesis, sampling, and sequencing. Never before has one software application been able to provide students with virtual "hands on" experience using so many different pieces of electronic music gear."
I think there should be a little more openness in society about the mechanics of death.
Agreed.
When Chuang Tzu was about to die, his disciples planned a big funeral. He asked "Why not just leave me on the ground?" They said "Because then crows and kites will pick apart your body."
"So?" he replied. "Above ground, I get eaten by crows and kites. Below it by ants and worms. What have you got against birds?"
The other day I was at the cemetary paying my respects to my dead grandmother when I thought "This is boring. I'm gonna go buy a video game." But I couldn't think of one that I wanted, so I just went home.
5. Proving the old business school law that says "any idiot can sell a dollar for 80 cents," online-currency company Flooz.com in July launches a special offer whereby American Express platinum cardholders can buy $1,000 of Flooz currency for just $800.
6.A month later, Flooz.com ceases processing transactions. It declares bankruptcy in November, leaving those who bought Flooz currency stuck with worthless e-dollars
Homer: Okay, I'll take $1,000
[Signs inside Itchy & Scratchy land]: "No Itchy & Scratchy bucks accepted here." "We don't take Itchy & Scratchy bucks." "Real cash only."
Homer: D'oh!
I'm no professional, but my storytelling ability improved drastically from playing D&D in high school. It wasn't the easiest thing in the world to, as DM, keep my friends locked into the story at 4 am, as they were getting tired. Once in a while though, I'd write an adventure that'd keep them on the edge of their seats all night long. What a great feeling that was. We used to say that if the storyline of an adventure wouldn't make a good movie, then it's not a good adventure.
I wonder how many current writers and filmmakers there are today who owe at least part of their ability to entertain to Gygax and D&D? I guess we'll never know; I'd bet many wouldn't admit it.
D&D is the perfect compromise between passive entertainment like watching TV and active creativity like writing a book. Here's to hoping kids and adults play it for generations to come.
No no, it's simple logic:
:)
1. All video game players are geeks.
2. All geeks wear glasses.
3. Glasses create lens flares.
4. Therefore, video games should have lens flares!
Yeah, I agree. Lens flares are way overused, even in films. Sometimes it almost gets as cheesy as the glint of sparkle on a tooth or brand new car.*
*Now it's entirely off topic
I think part of the problem is that with CGI, they don't have the limitations of real life, so they just forget about them. "Hey, let's make the camera fly around the race course at a million mph. Ooo, cool." "Okay, while you do that, I'm going to make my CG character figit around annoyingly while the real actors are talking just because I've got a handle on Inverse Kinematics." WTF? Real life actors can sit still, why can't CG ones?
I think someone needs to come up with a plug-in for Softimage (or whatever program they use) that will prevent the virtual camera from doing anything a normal camera couldn't do in real life. Like if you moved it too high, it would make you build a virtual crane to hold it in position. Or if you moved it around in the air, you'd get a $3,000 virtual helicopter rental fee deducted from your bank account.
In the extras in ep. I, Lucas was saying he wanted the look and feel of the first episodes vs. the next 3 to mirror the product evolution of the US before and after the industrial revolution. So on one hand, you have machines that are hand-made by craftsmen, then everything gets industrialized and you get the more mass-produced look of eps. 4-6.
Personally, I think it's a neat idea, but I agree with you--he didn't think it all the way through and it looks wierd. How come the technology in the ep. 1 is no less advanced, if not more advanced? Maybe what he should've done is make eps. 1-3 with the exact same moviemaking technology that he used in the 70's, except when he needed a shot that was impossible to do without CG, he should've done some CGI, except make it look like animatronics or puppets, rather than real life. For some reason, I find it a lot easier to suspend my disbelief in eps. 4-6, even though the effects in ep. 1 supposedly look more realistic.
impractical military vehicle that previously belonged to Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Hollywood star, are gone;
Schwarz...en...eg... Oh--a hollywood star! Funny, never heard of him...
The difference:
Jar Jar is a failed attempt at Buster Keaton-style slapsitck. Unfortunately, Lucas captured none of the sophistication or clever gags of Keaton. All the cutesy characters in episodes 4-6 were realistically intelligent and reacted believably to their situations. Jar Jar is something you'd expect to see in a saturday morning cartoon created by a dodgy old professor who's real passion is Proust, but was told to make a funny children's show.
I don't know how you could stand a movie that actually expected you to take it seriously when people were fighting with light sabres and jumping in and out of hyperspace.
You suspend your disbelief. I have no problem believing in (for 2 hours, at least) the Force,light sabres, and Jedi Knights; until some zany loon CGI character comes in and makes me remember it's just a movie.
Lucas is a master of drama and action. I give it up for him for trying, but I hope he realises that any comedy (even if it's good) in the Star Wars series really doesn't belong. Unfortunately, it looks like I'll be treating episodes 1-3 the same way I do The Godfather III: pretending they don't exist.
Let's say it takes 1.5 minutes to download a song. Let's say each kid has a seperate computer with a dedicated connection.
45 songs/hour * 48 hrs * 3 kids = 6,480 songs.
That's IF they spent no time searching and downloaded for 2 days straight. Aren't minors required by law to work something less than 24 hrs a day, anyway?
Aimee Mann
Thievery Corporation
King Crimson, and all their "children" and "relatives"
Ani DiFranco
Michael Jackson
Almost any Indie musician
These are just a handful of artists who, by either creating their own label or working the system, have managed to secure all the rights to their works. These guys are the exception, of course.
But so are work-for-hire-artists. Work for hire is when an artist gives up all their rights to their work (including royalties, IIRC). Not a lot of artists are dumb enough to sign a contract like this, and in some cases it can be brought to court and dismissed. The vast majority of artists sign a contract where the label gets the "publishing rights," which are the rights to the recording and they get the "performance rights," the rights to the song. There's a fine but important distinction. The reason for this is that the songwriter did all the work in writing the song, so he gets the rights to it. In the vast majority of cases, it's the label who does all the work and puts up all the money to record the song (much of the time, losing their investment), so it's only fair that they get the rights to the recording. You should really check your facts before saying someone doesn't have a clue.
Work for Hire goes on in Hollywood and TV because that's what people are doing. The directors, actors, stuntmen, gaffers, are all working for the studio, who is putting up all the money for the film's production and distribution. It's no different than a software development company, really. If you owned a company that was pouring huge bucks into hiring people to make something, you wouldn't be giving the rights away either.
You're right, people can sell all the rights, including ownership of their songs, and they do. George Clinton sold it to songs that wound up earning $100m. He went to court over it, and it was ruled that the rights were sold and that was it. But this is pretty much the exception.
It is a big kludgy minefield. But if we want to navigate it successfully and once and for all, we have to look at what's fair for both the artists and the corporations.
Yes! Case in point: sampling. Remember Odelay? Beck's groundbreaking album that featured an amazing and deeply personal use of samples, and which earned a grammy for album of the year? Here's what he had to say about it: "I'll never use samples like that again, after seeing what a headache it was getting them all cleared." Using samples is an art form of its own, and free advertising for the artist being sampled. I've bought many CDs just because I heard the samples and wanted to check out the original songs. And it's the best form of advertising--honest celebrity endorsements! I really can't understand why derivitave works like sample-based tunes are illegal to distribute, except maybe to guess that it's a power trip on the part of the labels. Kinda like how they shut down Napster even though it made their revenues go up.
Yeah, but I'm talking in terms of decades here. 10, 20, maybe even 30 years. I don't think record labels give too much thought to how much dough a CD is going to bring in 20 years from now, but I could be wrong.
Imagine how rich the public domain would be if album copyrights expired even 30 years from the release date! Imagine (pun intended)! Every Beatles album, accessible to the world for free. Hell, the Beatles (those left) don't even make money off their own works--Michael jackson does! If that's not an indication of a corrupt system, I don't know what is.
offTopic
I heard this from a reliable source, but still can't be sure of the veracity: The lead singer of Sublime, back when they were starting out and could'nt seem to write a memorable song, had an idea. All of his heroes--Coltrane, Cobian, Miles Davis, etc--were smack addicts. He decided he'd get addicted to heroin, write a hit album, and get off it. Well he got on the smack, and they released that smash CD with the cover with the with the Sublime tatoo on his back. Big hit, top of the charts. So just like he said, he gets off the stuff. He actually does it! Everything's great until a year later. He's at this party, and someone's got some heroin. He can't resist. He takes one hit, and dies. I'm 99% sure this is true, but like I said, I heard it from a friend (albeit a knowledgable one) rather than a new source, so I'm not promising anything. Wierd though, huh?
/offTopic
If you for whatever reason find yourself unable to produce anything else that anyone thinks is worth anything, you do the same thing you did before you came up with that one brilliant work: either keep doing it for shit pay because you love it so much and hope things get better, or quit, realising maybe you should be doing something else with your life now.
Specialization is for Insects.
Why is everyone so caught up in the whole career notion? People can and should excel at many things. Dylan released "Don't think twice, it's alright" at 21. Van Gogh, IIRC, drew/painted from 28-38. Basho started writing haiku at 40. There's no reason a future person can't do all those things in the same lifetime.
The thing is, making Art isn't about flowing with creativity, it's about working. A lot. Bach, who many people regard as the greatest musician of all time, said "I got to where I am because I worked hard at it. Anyone else who works this hard can get as far as me." I guarantee you, if you have the capacity to create one brilliant work, you can create many.
Yeah, you might say that extended copyrights seperate the real musicians (the ones who do it no matter how much money they have/don't have) from the posers, and perhaps even thereby insure a generally higher quality level, but take F Scott Fitzgerald. I read somewhere that he wrote so much because his royalties couldn't support his crazy lifestyle, so he had to keep churning out stuff to stay afloat. Maybe there are a lot of people who have less demanding personal expenses who could produce quality work, but just get lazy. But is it society's responsibility to motivate these people? We'll always see quality work from dedicated artists, now matter what the laws are, but maybe reducing the copyright term might give some of the more unmotivated ones good reason to get out there and do some work. On the other hand, would that mean we'd just have more mediocre crap around? On the third hand, my Fitzgerald reference proved that you don't have to have a divine inspiration to create quality work, you just have to sit down and do it, for whatever reason. A very complicated issue, to be sure.
That's a very good point, about labels sitting on content until it falls into the public domain, but I'm sure musicians could include something in their contracts about immediate release. Plus, if the material was in the PD when it was released, then other people could distribute cheap copies and the label would make way less money.
One thing is sure: Anyone who creates anything, whether it's CDs or code, has a higher responsibility that only they can decide how to come to terms with.
People already get paid what the common middle-class american says they should. Here's how it works: a baseball player works his ASS off, practicing for hours every day in high school and college for no guaranteed gain. Then a scout sees him playing, and takes him on the team. Then he works even HARDER, studing everything about every other player and the game he can get his hands on. And that's the AVERAGE player. Then Joe Blow, who spent his high school years looking for trim, and his college ones getting stoned, pays $40 a seat to see said baseball player perform. In fact, a lot of Joe Blows do this. Then Joe Blows go back to their fish gutting jobs that need no training. This determines the players salary. Public demand for top-notch athletes and quality games. The same goes for movies and music. Steven Spielberg is getting paid exorbitant sums of money because people love his movies. They love his movies not because he's a natural at it, but because he spent his youth sneaking around movie sets and studing directors. He deserves it.
Yes, maybe they'd give their 3 remaining fingers to get paid what they do, but they obviously won't give what really matters: their time and effort.
Now I'm not saying they need all that money and glory; in fact, I think it's a hinderance to them, but the public is paying what they consider appropriate, and if anyone deserves it, it's them.
Note that this has nothing to do with how long their copyrights should be extended.
Let's say you're a songwriter. You write a hit tune. It goes to the top of the charts. You collect royalties up the wazoo. Great. A year later you realise, that since you're getting enough royalties to live comfortably, you really have no reason to write more songs, other than you might enjoy it. So you say, I'll write tomorrow. I've got lunch dates all day today. And you get lazy. Soon the public (your fan base) is funding your inaction.
But if the copyright only lasted long enough for you and your label to recoup expenses and make a tidy profit on top of that, chances are you'd be getting back to work a lot sooner. When you're hungry, you work.
http://www.dinosaur.org/news/news01-04-25bird.html
Plus it has links to some really high res pics. I can't see where that ugly pic on the CNN site fits in, but this is the same bird/dino. A quick search on Google revealed that most of the other sites covering this showed the pictures from the above link, but at lower resolution.