"I'd say whatever New Line paid, they got a bloody bargain."
I can't remember the exact figure ($270m rings a bell), but I saw several reports which said that the Box Office alone on FOTR paid for the production of all three movies. So anything they make on the next two is almost pure profit (after prints and advertising).
IMAX does both, not only is it a huge frame, (70mm sideways, I think that is around 4x the resolution of 35mm, maybe more, I forget) but it also runs at 60fps.
Don't think so. IMAX is 24fps. You're probably thinking of Douglas Trumbull's process, Showscan, which does run at 60fps and as a result is supposed to be almost indistinguishable from reality. Not that I've ever seen it, though...
We launched a website with publicity on a live primetime TV show about the internet (in the UK), while the server (singular) was still running under my desk. It was a little while before we moved it out of there and, amazingly, I never accidentally shut down the site with my knee.
Of course, when we did, eventually, move it into a server room, the aircon subsequently broke down and, being an underfunded dotcom, nobody wanted to spring for repairs. We lost at least one server that way (thankfully not a live-facing one).
Good grief. No DVD output? What on earth is the point, then? I guess if you put your whole collection of MP3s onto DVD that would be easier to carry round, but what a missed opportunity.
What's going on with Sony? One half is doing stuff like this and the other half release their NetMD minidisc line with so much DRM crowbarred into it, that it's cumbersome and annoying to use.
How depressing must it be to be a product developer in there, busting a gut to produce neat stuff that people will love, only to have the weasels in legal forcing them to eviscerate the product with ill-considered DRM?
Notebooks don't have as good battery life as portable players, but that doesn't make up for the lack of a screen. And notebook screens are about twice the size as the screens on most of the portable DVDs I've seen.
What's the use of a portable DVD without a screen? So you can take it upstairs and watch DVDs on your portable in bed, or the kids can do the same. Or you can visit friends who haven't bought DVD yet, and take along a movie to watch.
The portability alone has a use even without a screen. And if you're really sad, you can use the opportunity to listen to a director's commentary without the pictures - most of the time with commentaries you might as well have sound-only.
It would be interesting to see a comparison between the numbers of users using seti@home versus these other systems. I find it just slightly depressing that a lot of people would rather look for possibly non-existent little green men than actively participate in the search for something that will benefit people in the very near future. I guess curing cancer isn't 1337 enough for some people.
Seriously, though - why passport? Why not something people might want to use - like Office. Oh yeah - because then there'd be *no* excuse to stick with Windows.
Archive direct to DVD-R - Panasonic have launched a PVR in the UK that does this, but it doesn't have the smarts of a TiVo or ReplayTV
Bulk Archive. TiVo only lets you archive one programme at a time - I want to chain them to dump a block to my DVD-R.
Better tracking of programme times. Not a big problem in the states, I hear, but here in the UK the major channels have distinct problems running to time, so we frequently miss the end of shows, unless we put padding in, and then we can't record two shows back-to-back because the padding overlaps with the next show... Don't know how good ReplayTV is on this score, but TiVo suffers very badly. I end up having to do manual recording blocks, which defeats the point of having a smart device.
Can they come up with a device to stop bozos using *flash* photography in cinemas?
When Jurassic Park first opened, I went to see it at the biggest screen in London, and *every* *single* *time* a dinosaur appeared on screen, some idiot near the front took a flash picture.
I wish I could have seen his face when he discovered all his pictures were blank.
"Just because you *can* do something, it doesn't mean you *should*"
I know I'm an old hippie, but I really believe that if Microsoft and Hollywood spent a fraction of the resources they're throwing at DRM solutions into creating a workable micropayments system for the web, and IP owners started selling their goods at reasonable prices, they'd be minting it in no time.
When VCRs first appeared, Jack Valenti decried them as the spawn of Beelzebub, and foretold the death of the movie industry because of home taping. What happened? They now make more money on VHS and DVD than they do in the cinemas.
And just to prove that piracy *isn't* an issue - the release on DVD of Harry Potter *without macrovision* was the biggest ever DVD release at the time. How come, if everyone was just waiting to pirate it?
Maybe they tried to call it 'Hobbit' until someone reminded them that was the name of a crappy tape drive that was around in the 80s, for use with 8-bit computers.
I'm reminded of the days I used to code for the old Acorn Archimedes (don't look for it now, it's not there any more) and our apps were usually way faster than the competition's.
When asked why, we were tempted to tell them that we used the undocumented 'unleash' instruction to unleash the raw power of the ARM processor.
Slashdot Mirror
"I'd say whatever New Line paid, they got a bloody bargain."
I can't remember the exact figure ($270m rings a bell), but I saw several reports which said that the Box Office alone on FOTR paid for the production of all three movies. So anything they make on the next two is almost pure profit (after prints and advertising).
IMAX does both, not only is it a huge frame, (70mm sideways, I think that is around 4x the resolution of 35mm, maybe more, I forget) but it also runs at 60fps.
Don't think so. IMAX is 24fps. You're probably thinking of Douglas Trumbull's process, Showscan, which does run at 60fps and as a result is supposed to be almost indistinguishable from reality. Not that I've ever seen it, though...
Haven't Microsoft started using brightmail to filter spam from hotmail?
According to MS themselves: Brightmail to Deploy Server-Side Technology on MSN Hotmail
This might be something to do with it...
We launched a website with publicity on a live primetime TV show about the internet (in the UK), while the server (singular) was still running under my desk. It was a little while before we moved it out of there and, amazingly, I never accidentally shut down the site with my knee.
Of course, when we did, eventually, move it into a server room, the aircon subsequently broke down and, being an underfunded dotcom, nobody wanted to spring for repairs. We lost at least one server that way (thankfully not a live-facing one).
Good grief. No DVD output? What on earth is the point, then? I guess if you put your whole collection of MP3s onto DVD that would be easier to carry round, but what a missed opportunity.
How depressing must it be to be a product developer in there, busting a gut to produce neat stuff that people will love, only to have the weasels in legal forcing them to eviscerate the product with ill-considered DRM?
Notebooks don't have as good battery life as portable players, but that doesn't make up for the lack of a screen. And notebook screens are about twice the size as the screens on most of the portable DVDs I've seen.
What's the use of a portable DVD without a screen? So you can take it upstairs and watch DVDs on your portable in bed, or the kids can do the same. Or you can visit friends who haven't bought DVD yet, and take along a movie to watch.
The portability alone has a use even without a screen. And if you're really sad, you can use the opportunity to listen to a director's commentary without the pictures - most of the time with commentaries you might as well have sound-only.
Now I can watch p0rn on the airplane without my seat-mate complaining about the moaning.
Perhaps you should moan more quietly, then?
It would be interesting to see a comparison between the numbers of users using seti@home versus these other systems. I find it just slightly depressing that a lot of people would rather look for possibly non-existent little green men than actively participate in the search for something that will benefit people in the very near future. I guess curing cancer isn't 1337 enough for some people.
This is only the Passport server. If you don't read the article, at least read the entire story as posted on the front page of Slashdot, like I do.
Well, Duh! I was (obscurely, obviously) alluding to hotmail which MS ran for ages on *nix because they had trouble porting it to Windows.
...it keeps crashing on Windows.
<rimshot>
Thanks, I'm here all week.
Seriously, though - why passport? Why not something people might want to use - like Office. Oh yeah - because then there'd be *no* excuse to stick with Windows.
Can they come up with a device to stop bozos using *flash* photography in cinemas?
When Jurassic Park first opened, I went to see it at the biggest screen in London, and *every* *single* *time* a dinosaur appeared on screen, some idiot near the front took a flash picture.
I wish I could have seen his face when he discovered all his pictures were blank.
"Just because you *can* do something, it doesn't mean you *should*"
I know I'm an old hippie, but I really believe that if Microsoft and Hollywood spent a fraction of the resources they're throwing at DRM solutions into creating a workable micropayments system for the web, and IP owners started selling their goods at reasonable prices, they'd be minting it in no time.
When VCRs first appeared, Jack Valenti decried them as the spawn of Beelzebub, and foretold the death of the movie industry because of home taping. What happened? They now make more money on VHS and DVD than they do in the cinemas.
And just to prove that piracy *isn't* an issue - the release on DVD of Harry Potter *without macrovision* was the biggest ever DVD release at the time. How come, if everyone was just waiting to pirate it?
Maybe they tried to call it 'Hobbit' until someone reminded them that was the name of a crappy tape drive that was around in the 80s, for use with 8-bit computers.
See also: Phloopy, Microdrive.
I'm reminded of the days I used to code for the old Acorn Archimedes (don't look for it now, it's not there any more) and our apps were usually way faster than the competition's.
When asked why, we were tempted to tell them that we used the undocumented 'unleash' instruction to unleash the raw power of the ARM processor.