I don't get it. Comcast ALREADY has a DVR. The article mentions that the Microsoft software can be added to the existing DVR box, so who cares? Comcast already offers an all-in-one cable box DVR for $8 a month (in the Seattle area) with a 120gb harddrive and HDTV compatible, and its even dual channel, so you can record one show while watching another. What does the Microsoft deal get them? Why would I want another set of menues and instructions and restrictions (not to mention the blue screen of death while watching the Sopranos)
Pen and Paper did NOT break the rules necessarily. The copious "rules" doc, which by the way was written BY Kerry's and Bush's people, its THEIR rules, what the f#$@ do I care if they used cheat sheets (tho that might explain the "You forgot Poland!" remark Bush made after glancing down at his podium..) says the pens and paper will be decided upon and be whatever the candidates want to use.
If while waiting in the greenroom, or in the wings waiting to be introduced, how do you know the f@#%ing intern responsible for setting the pen and paper down on the podiums FORGOT, or another intern saw eBay $$ and stole them? Someone rushes to the candidates and hands them notecards and a pen, the show goes on.
But you don't know that. We weren't THERE. and it was THEIR RULES. Lots of THEIR rules were broken that night: they interrupted each other, they ran long, they took way more 30 second rebuttals than alloted, the cameras didn't stay on just the candidate talking, Kerry wore lifts, Bush wore a hump, it was their party. Whether they flailed blindly at the pinata or crouched over it and tore it apart with their bare hands, it still came up full of nothing but Bit-o-Honeys.
Only one more month, then maybe we can get back to talking about the stuff that's actually going on in the world...
Electors for each STATE do cast their vote based on the popular tally of their state. Electoral math starts to get weird when elections get close, like last time when several states were won or lost by only a few thousand votes. That's when you get a situation where enough electoral votes to win (270) going for one candidate, while the grand TOTAL individual votes from ALL states is actually for another candidate. This election in particular, I wonder if the members of the electoral college are mulling thier power and choices this year, either to throw a wrench in a candidate's win (like the W. Virginia Mayor) or to correct weird math when the national numbers go to one guy, but their vote would give it to the other guy. Either way its gonna be a nailbiter..
Actually, that # (877) 858-9040 goes to a direct line asnwered as "Office of Intelligence". Thank you VERY much for getting me put on some watch list now for crank calling...
And as I recall the flick, Moore wasn't playing with semantics, he said that the 800# Goss claimed to have wasn't set up, which at the time of the documentary, was TRUE. Now you can argue whether its a true statement when later in time it's proven false and if that's mis-leading. Or maybe a few too many calls to Goss' personal line (the one flashed on the screen) prompted his office to get that damn toll free line hooked up.
Whatever # you're passing around, who knows what it is, but someone answers "Office of Intelligence" I'm not gonna start criticizing something called "Patriot" anything...
Crap..now there's a nondescript white van parked outside my building...
The first film use of "morphing" technology was in the [underrated] Fantasy film, Willow, which was released in 1988, predating the chart's listing of 1993 for that term's first use. Terminator 2 was in 1991, and used morphing tech extensively. Both of these films had book and graphic novel versions, so they should still be considered for proper citation.
Yah but games are mostly not being made with the most impressive engine. They're being made with the most popular and well-licensed engine. If you want a job making games, you learn how to make some levels on the tools and the engine that game companies are using, especially companies with games you're interested in (FPS or RPG or RTS, etc)
If an art director sees a solid portfolio of work, and it was done with the same tools that they're using, that's one HUGE less barrier for getting hired.
I'm going to be playing with the Doom3 and Half-Life2 engines as soon as they hit the shelves (both games sell with the editing tools included) but if I need to find work, I'm going to have a portfolio full of Unreal Engine levels or whatever people are using today.
I'm a Level Designer working on an Xbox title using the Unreal Tournament 2003 engine. I got my job by doing just what you seem interested in; I went online, grabbed the free Quake3 editor, read some tutorials, and learned how to make game levels. All employers want to see is great work, and a decent work ethic, degrees are seldom necessary in the artistic fields.
But as others have mentioned, making videogames is a JOB, not playtime. Its like any software development, hard work, often long hours, stress, etc. That's not a bad thing, that's just the JOB.
The Unreeal Tournament 2003 game is $30 or so now, and comes with the editor and a working version of Maya, which gives you access to ALL of the tools and levels and art that went into the game. Go online to www.PlanetUnreal.com and you can find plenty of links for mod communities, art tutorials, other people's work, etc. I'm 33 years old, but I'm quite sure that most of the tutorials that got me my dream job were written by 14 year olds. Unreal's a good engine to use, its the prettiest right now, easy to pick up, lots of other people are using it. And its a lot cheaper than a $3000 copy of 3DMax, yet you could totally get a job based on your work in that free tool.
This year, it gets even more fun. Whenever Half Life 2 and Doom3 come out, they're releasing the editors along with the games, so anyone can play with the absolute cuttingest edge.
I'm not saying school is useless, just [opinion alert] schools tailored for videogames. Go to school, study architecture, art history, 3d design, psychology, general stuff that will be useful to you for you whole life. If you want to make videogames, tho, go online and read what the 14 year olds wrote today.
yah NOW their website says its coming out in March '04. But it was originally due out last Summer or Fall, or both. So constantly erasing and changing the release dates seems to be right in keeping with the vapor tradition.
That's a picture of a silver-painted box, not a product that I can buy and use. Phantomware may be more like it: you kind of see it, but when you get close enough to it, you realize its an illusion..
Uh, no, they're not. That's like saying that the syringe IS the flu vaccine. It isn't, its merely the delivery mechanism. Same with the CD, it's the delivery mechanism for the digital content ON it. Since its physical, it can be controlled, packaged, inventoried, marked [way] up, etc. But consumers are figuring out that they don't need the delivery mechanism to get the digital content, the important stuff. This of course terrifies the music and movie industries, because they're all essentially complex distribution monopolies, controlling their empires via the delivery mechanisms that only a handful control. Lose that prohibitive cost to press and package and market, and just about anyone who wants to sing a song or make a movie, can release their product to the world DIRECTLY. Attempts to make these truly digital products either illegal or prohibitively difficult have so far failed, thus the current propaganda campaign to just call them wrong, evil, or bad.
Yah, but that was just a random, technology as the evil kind of generalization. In T3, it became this insidious networked evil, detailing how if the evil program was on any one computer, it could spread across all other networked computers, and that was BAD. The ability to share information and files from anywhere on the planet, became the thing that destroys the whole f$%king world!
With Galactica, they even show examples of how analog is better than digital (buy cds! Don't use mp3s!) with all the old-fashioned corded phones and stuff, and how one linked system is enough to destroy everything.
3 and 4 you got me on, but one and two, what the hell, puh-lease.
1. If those [fictional] missiles didn't have something coming off the back of them, you wouldn't even SEE them, I don't care if you had a 100" plasma hdtv. Thank god artists make that stuff, not scientists, or else it'd be as dramatic as watching paint dry. In space.
2. Watch it again. Every where I saw ships lose thrust and power, they did exactly the right thing; when the whole [fictional] attack fleet lost power, they ALL kept going in their initial direction, and really fast. Random pitch and yaw and bumping would be normal, since their [fictional] thrusters would likely not shut off all at once, so the left one goes a moment later, starts to pitch the ship into a spin, but the WHOLE [fictional] ship kept going the initial direction.
T3 did it earlier this year, and now Galactica. Anyone notice how the new Bad Guy in piracy-paranoid Hollywood seems to be networked computer systems? T3 even started out with one of those lame "Movies. They're Worth It." anti-piracy trailers.
Which is funny, considering Galactica blatantly ripped off the handheld cam in space shooting style of Firefly (some shot for shot, now that I've seen the Firefly dvd)
I was on my way to see Matrix Revolutions, checked movie times, checked Slashdot for a sec before my bus came, what do I see? The first article, at the top of the main page, reads "I'm glad those matrix within a matrix theories were unfounded." So thank you very f@$%ing much! You think you could bury details about movie plots at least ONE click inside, please?!
Now I have to go see "Elf", try to burn the brain cells that contain this info...
Diebold is an easy enough target for things they're actually doing wrong, going after them for an employee's sense of humor is just petty, and waters down any arguments for actual issue. It would be like going after Slashdot posts for misspellings...
This was INTERNAL stuff, this person wasn't an official spokesperson, nor was she a practicing physician. If she had dirt on illegal activities, cool, but no, she had a sig that, even if not a rarely perfect use of irony, is still her right as an American to display.
At least for now. You know, if these machines eroneously count two Democratic votes for every one Republican vote, this board is gonna get real quiet, real quick...
-Searcher "I'm not allowed to say anything here, because I might piss someone, somewhere, off." -Some guy in Cuba
Guns have no other purpose than to kill or destroy. Cigarettes have no other purpose than to kill or destroy.
Oh wait, except both of those things make tons of money for their makers, employ millions of Americans and bankroll thousands of politicians.
Yes. Yes, yes. Talk is supposed to be protected. Instructions are supposed to be protected. INFORMATION is SUPPOSED to be PROTECTED.
INFORMATION is dangerous. denying access to information is way, WAY more dangerous.
Non of this is to say that there shouldn't be spoiler alerts in general, but:
1. Tivo users take your chances hoarding content till you feel like watching it. The world won't wait for you to catch up! Which is weird, because you're the exact demographic that would kill to see a movie before its released, ahead of everyone else.
2. No one watches X-Files anymore, so who cares? The show's almost off the air, what's the diff if they're killed or 'That 80's Show' is airing in their time slot?
3. They're NOT DEAD. Geez, have you ever WATCHED the show?
Thas' all, Searchr "Dude, I couldn't believe Costner turned out to be the Russian spy!" -Now that is a spoiler-
Screw quitting "cold turkey". Just don't move "forward" towards the Win2000/XP/ME bloat. The world's offices can do just fine on Win98, WinNT, etc. Heck, I know of many multi-million corporations still coasting on Win95 and doing just fine.
Windows may suck beyond the telling, but it does manage to grow old gracefully.
I think the Fredric Brown example is purely academic, basically, "in case of emergency Fair Use Anecdote, break glass!" Because really, what's the royalty value on that?
Bottom line, there are no set protections for Fair Use, but now there are set protections against circumventing copy protected materials. So the DMCA's rule of law trumps previously held, but seldom tested, right of fair use.
RIAA basically scooped up finger-fulls of vaseline, and slipped it in the back way. Which is, to me at least, appalling. As is Eisner sitting up there equating [to Congress] ripping, mixing, and burning, with breaking the law. It isn't!
Unless you happen to be ripping MORE MUSIC FROM THE [copy protected] FAST AND THE FURIOUS...
Slashdot Mirror
I don't get it. Comcast ALREADY has a DVR. The article mentions that the Microsoft software can be added to the existing DVR box, so who cares? Comcast already offers an all-in-one cable box DVR for $8 a month (in the Seattle area) with a 120gb harddrive and HDTV compatible, and its even dual channel, so you can record one show while watching another. What does the Microsoft deal get them? Why would I want another set of menues and instructions and restrictions (not to mention the blue screen of death while watching the Sopranos)
Pen and Paper did NOT break the rules necessarily. The copious "rules" doc, which by the way was written BY Kerry's and Bush's people, its THEIR rules, what the f#$@ do I care if they used cheat sheets (tho that might explain the "You forgot Poland!" remark Bush made after glancing down at his podium..) says the pens and paper will be decided upon and be whatever the candidates want to use.
If while waiting in the greenroom, or in the wings waiting to be introduced, how do you know the f@#%ing intern responsible for setting the pen and paper down on the podiums FORGOT, or another intern saw eBay $$ and stole them? Someone rushes to the candidates and hands them notecards and a pen, the show goes on.
But you don't know that. We weren't THERE. and it was THEIR RULES. Lots of THEIR rules were broken that night: they interrupted each other, they ran long, they took way more 30 second rebuttals than alloted, the cameras didn't stay on just the candidate talking, Kerry wore lifts, Bush wore a hump, it was their party. Whether they flailed blindly at the pinata or crouched over it and tore it apart with their bare hands, it still came up full of nothing but Bit-o-Honeys.
Only one more month, then maybe we can get back to talking about the stuff that's actually going on in the world...
Electors for each STATE do cast their vote based on the popular tally of their state. Electoral math starts to get weird when elections get close, like last time when several states were won or lost by only a few thousand votes. That's when you get a situation where enough electoral votes to win (270) going for one candidate, while the grand TOTAL individual votes from ALL states is actually for another candidate. This election in particular, I wonder if the members of the electoral college are mulling thier power and choices this year, either to throw a wrench in a candidate's win (like the W. Virginia Mayor) or to correct weird math when the national numbers go to one guy, but their vote would give it to the other guy. Either way its gonna be a nailbiter..
Actually, that # (877) 858-9040 goes to a direct line asnwered as "Office of Intelligence". Thank you VERY much for getting me put on some watch list now for crank calling...
And as I recall the flick, Moore wasn't playing with semantics, he said that the 800# Goss claimed to have wasn't set up, which at the time of the documentary, was TRUE. Now you can argue whether its a true statement when later in time it's proven false and if that's mis-leading. Or maybe a few too many calls to Goss' personal line (the one flashed on the screen) prompted his office to get that damn toll free line hooked up.
Whatever # you're passing around, who knows what it is, but someone answers "Office of Intelligence" I'm not gonna start criticizing something called "Patriot" anything...
Crap..now there's a nondescript white van parked outside my building...
The first film use of "morphing" technology was in the [underrated] Fantasy film, Willow, which was released in 1988, predating the chart's listing of 1993 for that term's first use. Terminator 2 was in 1991, and used morphing tech extensively. Both of these films had book and graphic novel versions, so they should still be considered for proper citation.
Yah but games are mostly not being made with the most impressive engine. They're being made with the most popular and well-licensed engine. If you want a job making games, you learn how to make some levels on the tools and the engine that game companies are using, especially companies with games you're interested in (FPS or RPG or RTS, etc)
If an art director sees a solid portfolio of work, and it was done with the same tools that they're using, that's one HUGE less barrier for getting hired.
I'm going to be playing with the Doom3 and Half-Life2 engines as soon as they hit the shelves (both games sell with the editing tools included) but if I need to find work, I'm going to have a portfolio full of Unreal Engine levels or whatever people are using today.
I'm a Level Designer working on an Xbox title using the Unreal Tournament 2003 engine. I got my job by doing just what you seem interested in; I went online, grabbed the free Quake3 editor, read some tutorials, and learned how to make game levels. All employers want to see is great work, and a decent work ethic, degrees are seldom necessary in the artistic fields.
But as others have mentioned, making videogames is a JOB, not playtime. Its like any software development, hard work, often long hours, stress, etc. That's not a bad thing, that's just the JOB.
The Unreeal Tournament 2003 game is $30 or so now, and comes with the editor and a working version of Maya, which gives you access to ALL of the tools and levels and art that went into the game. Go online to www.PlanetUnreal.com and you can find plenty of links for mod communities, art tutorials, other people's work, etc. I'm 33 years old, but I'm quite sure that most of the tutorials that got me my dream job were written by 14 year olds. Unreal's a good engine to use, its the prettiest right now, easy to pick up, lots of other people are using it. And its a lot cheaper than a $3000 copy of 3DMax, yet you could totally get a job based on your work in that free tool.
This year, it gets even more fun. Whenever Half Life 2 and Doom3 come out, they're releasing the editors along with the games, so anyone can play with the absolute cuttingest edge.
I'm not saying school is useless, just [opinion alert] schools tailored for videogames. Go to school, study architecture, art history, 3d design, psychology, general stuff that will be useful to you for you whole life. If you want to make videogames, tho, go online and read what the 14 year olds wrote today.
Thas' all
yah NOW their website says its coming out in March '04. But it was originally due out last Summer or Fall, or both. So constantly erasing and changing the release dates seems to be right in keeping with the vapor tradition.
That's a picture of a silver-painted box, not a product that I can buy and use. Phantomware may be more like it: you kind of see it, but when you get close enough to it, you realize its an illusion..
Yah, I wrote the bit about shoving Dells into old old Xbox cases for the "Phantom", and they used it. But hey, c'mon, that's gold, baby.
"Uh, CDs are digital."
Uh, no, they're not. That's like saying that the syringe IS the flu vaccine. It isn't, its merely the delivery mechanism. Same with the CD, it's the delivery mechanism for the digital content ON it. Since its physical, it can be controlled, packaged, inventoried, marked [way] up, etc. But consumers are figuring out that they don't need the delivery mechanism to get the digital content, the important stuff. This of course terrifies the music and movie industries, because they're all essentially complex distribution monopolies, controlling their empires via the delivery mechanisms that only a handful control. Lose that prohibitive cost to press and package and market, and just about anyone who wants to sing a song or make a movie, can release their product to the world DIRECTLY. Attempts to make these truly digital products either illegal or prohibitively difficult have so far failed, thus the current propaganda campaign to just call them wrong, evil, or bad.
Yah, but that was just a random, technology as the evil kind of generalization. In T3, it became this insidious networked evil, detailing how if the evil program was on any one computer, it could spread across all other networked computers, and that was BAD. The ability to share information and files from anywhere on the planet, became the thing that destroys the whole f$%king world!
With Galactica, they even show examples of how analog is better than digital (buy cds! Don't use mp3s!) with all the old-fashioned corded phones and stuff, and how one linked system is enough to destroy everything.
Just 'cause I'm paranoid, doesn't mean I'm wrong,
-Searcher
3 and 4 you got me on, but one and two, what the hell, puh-lease.
1. If those [fictional] missiles didn't have something coming off the back of them, you wouldn't even SEE them, I don't care if you had a 100" plasma hdtv. Thank god artists make that stuff, not scientists, or else it'd be as dramatic as watching paint dry. In space.
2. Watch it again. Every where I saw ships lose thrust and power, they did exactly the right thing; when the whole [fictional] attack fleet lost power, they ALL kept going in their initial direction, and really fast. Random pitch and yaw and bumping would be normal, since their [fictional] thrusters would likely not shut off all at once, so the left one goes a moment later, starts to pitch the ship into a spin, but the WHOLE [fictional] ship kept going the initial direction.
Thas' all,
-Searcher
T3 did it earlier this year, and now Galactica. Anyone notice how the new Bad Guy in piracy-paranoid Hollywood seems to be networked computer systems? T3 even started out with one of those lame "Movies. They're Worth It." anti-piracy trailers.
Which is funny, considering Galactica blatantly ripped off the handheld cam in space shooting style of Firefly (some shot for shot, now that I've seen the Firefly dvd)
Thas' all,
-Searcher
I was on my way to see Matrix Revolutions, checked movie times, checked Slashdot for a sec before my bus came, what do I see? The first article, at the top of the main page, reads "I'm glad those matrix within a matrix theories were unfounded." So thank you very f@$%ing much! You think you could bury details about movie plots at least ONE click inside, please?!
Now I have to go see "Elf", try to burn the brain cells that contain this info...
Diebold is an easy enough target for things they're actually doing wrong, going after them for an employee's sense of humor is just petty, and waters down any arguments for actual issue. It would be like going after Slashdot posts for misspellings...
This was INTERNAL stuff, this person wasn't an official spokesperson, nor was she a practicing physician. If she had dirt on illegal activities, cool, but no, she had a sig that, even if not a rarely perfect use of irony, is still her right as an American to display.
At least for now. You know, if these machines eroneously count two Democratic votes for every one Republican vote, this board is gonna get real quiet, real quick...
-Searcher
"I'm not allowed to say anything here, because I might piss someone, somewhere, off."
-Some guy in Cuba
Guns have no other purpose than to kill or destroy. Cigarettes have no other purpose than to kill or destroy. Oh wait, except both of those things make tons of money for their makers, employ millions of Americans and bankroll thousands of politicians.
Yes. Yes, yes. Talk is supposed to be protected. Instructions are supposed to be protected. INFORMATION is SUPPOSED to be PROTECTED. INFORMATION is dangerous. denying access to information is way, WAY more dangerous.
Hey Fox, you look like a Stand Up Guy. Could you do me a favor and watch over this Hen House for me? Thanks a Bunch!
Non of this is to say that there shouldn't be spoiler alerts in general, but:
1. Tivo users take your chances hoarding content till you feel like watching it. The world won't wait for you to catch up! Which is weird, because you're the exact demographic that would kill to see a movie before its released, ahead of everyone else.
2. No one watches X-Files anymore, so who cares? The show's almost off the air, what's the diff if they're killed or 'That 80's Show' is airing in their time slot?
3. They're NOT DEAD. Geez, have you ever WATCHED the show?
Thas' all,
Searchr
"Dude, I couldn't believe Costner turned out to be the Russian spy!"
-Now that is a spoiler-
Screw quitting "cold turkey". Just don't move "forward" towards the Win2000/XP/ME bloat. The world's offices can do just fine on Win98, WinNT, etc. Heck, I know of many multi-million corporations still coasting on Win95 and doing just fine.
Windows may suck beyond the telling, but it does manage to grow old gracefully.
I think the Fredric Brown example is purely academic, basically, "in case of emergency Fair Use Anecdote, break glass!" Because really, what's the royalty value on that?
Bottom line, there are no set protections for Fair Use, but now there are set protections against circumventing copy protected materials. So the DMCA's rule of law trumps previously held, but seldom tested, right of fair use.
RIAA basically scooped up finger-fulls of vaseline, and slipped it in the back way. Which is, to me at least, appalling. As is Eisner sitting up there equating [to Congress] ripping, mixing, and burning, with breaking the law. It isn't!
Unless you happen to be ripping MORE MUSIC FROM THE [copy protected] FAST AND THE FURIOUS...