There are ALREADY independent films made without studio involvement. But to get those films *distributed* takes a studio. To get your film distributed, you have to sign away all kinds of rights to your movie. And I GUARANTEE that no distributor would agree to distribute your film under some kind of "open-source" license. There's just no fucking way.
I just got a keyboard/mouse adapter for my Xbox this past weekend, and I'm pretty disappointed in how well it works with Halo2. And Halo, for that matter.
It's just not smooth enough or fast enough. The mouse movement is jerky. Not jerky enough to be unplayable, but enough to make it a pain in the ass. And, yes, you can't turn fast enough. If you try to "whip" the mouse, like you do in a PC game, you just end up turning *really* slowly.
From what I've read, some games work better with the adapter than others. Supposedly, Unreal Championship works perfectly. But nobody plays that game on the Xbox. Ah well.
I was hoping to show my Halo-loving friends how and FPS is *really* played, but they still kicked my ass. I need to get them playing Unreal Tournament or something on the PC, so I can redeem myself. Besides, Halo and Halo2 are pretty lame FPS games. Good for a console, pretty mediocre in general.
There are a few companies that offer DSL/cablemodem service for $25/month or so, but not many. And there aren't ANY that do it for less than that. There's just no money in it. Hell, there's not that much money in DSL/cablemodem service even at $45/month.
It's a 4-year degree, but you're required to finish the classwork in 6 months. BUT, you can pass with an "F" as long as you filled in every blank on the tests.
But they never tell it like it is. Why can't Bill say "Well, they want us to remove Media Player, we will. But it's stupid. There are a million free media players, they all do pretty much the same thing. How is it anti-competitive to give away something that EVERYONE ELSE gives away? The same can be said of browsers. Yeah, Internet Explorer is part of Windows. But anyone who wants a different browser can get one, for FREE. Does it really affect anyone else's business if we take away customers for their FREE product?"
Or, "Look, Linux is more secure. But it's also generally run by people who are very computer-savvy. Windows is used by the average Joe, and they are going to do things they shouldn't. We try to protect them. We even recommend that they don't run as Administrators, but that's not practical because too many 3rd party software developers write their software so that the user HAS to be and Administrator to use their program. So you see, Windows isn't the only piece of the security puzzle."
But we never hear that stuff from them. One good explanation for the masses about WHY things are the way they are would go a long way.
He's terrible at them. He always comes of as a conceited little nerd. Which he is.
Just once, I'd like someone from Microsoft actually defend themselves in the press. They never really do. They just deny that anything is wrong, and then start spewing marketing bullshit. Which, more than anything, makes people distrust them.
They're just bad at PR. Great at marketing, bad at PR.
Fine. Here's what you get for (slightly less than) $1500 from Dell:
3.2Ghz CPU
512MB RAM
160GB Hard drive
GeForce 6800 Video
19" LCD
That's actually MORE computer than I could build for the same money. For $880, you get a 3.2GHz CPU, an 80GB drive, a 17" CRT, and a Radeon X300 video card. Oh, and those systems include a DVD-ROM drive AND a DVD-RW/CD-RW drive. Either of those systems are MUCH faster than an equivalently priced Mac.
And as for your freeware listing... I stand somewhat corrected. There STILL isn't the variety of freeware that there is for Windows.
Macs are fine. OSX is nice. But there are no games.
Also, it's expensive to own a Mac. On Windows, there is tons of free software to do anything you can think of. There are a million websites dedicated to NOTHING but freeware. In Mac-land, everything costs money. Every stupid little utility is crippled, time-limited shareware. Fuck that. Yes, there's a ton of BSD/Linux stuff you can run on the Mac now, but how much of that has an actual Mac-ish GUI? How much of it has a GUI at all?
Then, of course, there's the price of Mac hardware. For $1500, I can build one hell of a Windows machine. Top-of-the-line, including a monitor. What kind of Mac does that buy me? A 1.8 GHz machine, with 256MB of RAM (when everyone knows that OSX needs 512MB), and NO MONITOR. No fucking monitor. Apples prices are just outrageous.
Yeah, the security problems with Windows are getting bad, but they can be avoided. And for most people, they'll gladly put up with that stuff to have a computer that is cheaper and is compatible with everything.
Though Apple is finally keeping their product line focused, they still haven't done what they need to do to get market share-
Make a powerful Mac that sells for about $1200, complete with monitor. One that will play games well. Which brings us to the next point-
They need games. They need to just pay-off id Software or Electronic Arts (yeah, they're evil) or any of the big game publishers. Get them to release some big-name games on the Mac FIRST and BEST.
But that will never happen. The rumor is that Steve Jobs doesn't like video-games.
I'm not even a fan of the Mac, but it drives me nuts that they continually limit themselves by not acknowledging the fact that price and games drive the market, not "elegance".
Some of the book publishers and MOST of the CD/DVD publishers hate that people can "borrow" their stuff for free from libraries. And actively try to stop it.
Artists already get paid. Some of them are millionaires.
What it's about is squeezing a few extra bucks out of everyone by removing their ability to listen/read/watch ANYTHING without paying for it. Because the media companies just can't STAND it when someone "uses" their product without giving them money.
The whole plan boils down to this: No information will be free, ever. The libraries know this, as they've already been fighting for survival in the new world of "intellectual property" and "digital rights".
The problem with the Itanium is that it just requires too much compiler magic to make it work well.
It's kind of similar to the "software bloat" problem. Yeah, you could spend a couple of years optimizing a single piece of software, or you could just throw more hardware at it, for less money.
The solution to the spyware/malware problem is simple, as demonstrated by Firefox-
Disable ActiveX controls.
Is there any legitimate reason for a non-intranet website to use them? Whenever a site requires ActiveX controls to work, I think "Boy, they hired an bunch of idiots to design their site."
They should just modify IE so that ActiveX flat-out doesn't work on any site that isn't explicitly and MANUALLY allowed to by the user or network admin.
Problem is, so-called "geeks" are usually very well-informed about products that they buy. Which, obviously, is not what potential advertisers want AT ALL. It's hard to sell stuff to people who already know exactly what they want, and which online store will sell it to them for the lowest price.
That's why G4 is so different from TechTV. They want to go after the clueless-but-rich-and-under-30 market.
Apple has high-quality hardware? What planet are you living on?
Anyone who fixes computers can tell you that Macs have more hardware problems than any computer. By a HUGE margin. And I'm talking about post iMac stuff. Before the iMac, it was even worse.
Distributors are a necessary evil. It's HARD to ship boxes of a product all over the world, and even harder to get your foot in the door with the big retailers. A small company might be able to distribute their own product on a small scale, but they could never do it big enough to sell TONS of product, which, obviously, is a goal of every company.
I have an Xbox, and Halo just isn't very great. It's well-done, but it has no personality, and very little new to add to the FPS genre.
That said, my Xbox-owning friends who had never(?!) played a multiplayer FPS game before think it's the greatest thing ever. And, if you've never played Unreal Tournament, I suppose it is. But for people who've been playing FPSs on the PC for years, Halo is only average. I imagine Halo 2 is more of the same, and the reviews seem reflect that.
Yeah, a few of the webmail providers do exactly what you're talking about. They generally call them "temporary addresses".
It works, but it makes using email more complicated, and it creates a situation where even MORE e-mail traffic is going to be flying all over the place, mostly to all those diabled temporary addresses.
What we really need is a single registry for email servers, similar to how DNS works now. If you want to run a mail server (and not have your mail rejected by other servers), you need to "register" it with some big, monolithic organization. If you're not on the authorized list, you get rejected.
Yeah, that kills the "openness" of email. You'll no longer be able to setup a usable mail server without jumping through some verification hoops. But so what.
Slashdot Mirror
That won't work, and I'll tell you why:
There are ALREADY independent films made without studio involvement. But to get those films *distributed* takes a studio. To get your film distributed, you have to sign away all kinds of rights to your movie. And I GUARANTEE that no distributor would agree to distribute your film under some kind of "open-source" license. There's just no fucking way.
So, nice idea. Won't ever happen. Ever.
I'm gonna read about it tomorrow on Slashdot! Or maybe even later tonight!
I just got a keyboard/mouse adapter for my Xbox this past weekend, and I'm pretty disappointed in how well it works with Halo2. And Halo, for that matter.
It's just not smooth enough or fast enough. The mouse movement is jerky. Not jerky enough to be unplayable, but enough to make it a pain in the ass. And, yes, you can't turn fast enough. If you try to "whip" the mouse, like you do in a PC game, you just end up turning *really* slowly.
From what I've read, some games work better with the adapter than others. Supposedly, Unreal Championship works perfectly. But nobody plays that game on the Xbox. Ah well.
I was hoping to show my Halo-loving friends how and FPS is *really* played, but they still kicked my ass. I need to get them playing Unreal Tournament or something on the PC, so I can redeem myself. Besides, Halo and Halo2 are pretty lame FPS games. Good for a console, pretty mediocre in general.
No.
There are a few companies that offer DSL/cablemodem service for $25/month or so, but not many. And there aren't ANY that do it for less than that. There's just no money in it. Hell, there's not that much money in DSL/cablemodem service even at $45/month.
Hmmm....a degree program run by Electronic Arts-
It's a 4-year degree, but you're required to finish the classwork in 6 months. BUT, you can pass with an "F" as long as you filled in every blank on the tests.
See, I *am* a pro-Microsoft guy.
But they never tell it like it is. Why can't Bill say "Well, they want us to remove Media Player, we will. But it's stupid. There are a million free media players, they all do pretty much the same thing. How is it anti-competitive to give away something that EVERYONE ELSE gives away? The same can be said of browsers. Yeah, Internet Explorer is part of Windows. But anyone who wants a different browser can get one, for FREE. Does it really affect anyone else's business if we take away customers for their FREE product?" Or, "Look, Linux is more secure. But it's also generally run by people who are very computer-savvy. Windows is used by the average Joe, and they are going to do things they shouldn't. We try to protect them. We even recommend that they don't run as Administrators, but that's not practical because too many 3rd party software developers write their software so that the user HAS to be and Administrator to use their program. So you see, Windows isn't the only piece of the security puzzle."
But we never hear that stuff from them. One good explanation for the masses about WHY things are the way they are would go a long way.
He's terrible at them. He always comes of as a conceited little nerd. Which he is.
Just once, I'd like someone from Microsoft actually defend themselves in the press. They never really do. They just deny that anything is wrong, and then start spewing marketing bullshit. Which, more than anything, makes people distrust them.
They're just bad at PR. Great at marketing, bad at PR.
Fine. Here's what you get for (slightly less than) $1500 from Dell:
3.2Ghz CPU 512MB RAM 160GB Hard drive GeForce 6800 Video 19" LCD
That's actually MORE computer than I could build for the same money. For $880, you get a 3.2GHz CPU, an 80GB drive, a 17" CRT, and a Radeon X300 video card. Oh, and those systems include a DVD-ROM drive AND a DVD-RW/CD-RW drive. Either of those systems are MUCH faster than an equivalently priced Mac.
And as for your freeware listing... I stand somewhat corrected. There STILL isn't the variety of freeware that there is for Windows.
Macs are fine. OSX is nice. But there are no games.
Also, it's expensive to own a Mac. On Windows, there is tons of free software to do anything you can think of. There are a million websites dedicated to NOTHING but freeware. In Mac-land, everything costs money. Every stupid little utility is crippled, time-limited shareware. Fuck that. Yes, there's a ton of BSD/Linux stuff you can run on the Mac now, but how much of that has an actual Mac-ish GUI? How much of it has a GUI at all?
Then, of course, there's the price of Mac hardware. For $1500, I can build one hell of a Windows machine. Top-of-the-line, including a monitor. What kind of Mac does that buy me? A 1.8 GHz machine, with 256MB of RAM (when everyone knows that OSX needs 512MB), and NO MONITOR. No fucking monitor. Apples prices are just outrageous.
Yeah, the security problems with Windows are getting bad, but they can be avoided. And for most people, they'll gladly put up with that stuff to have a computer that is cheaper and is compatible with everything.
Though Apple is finally keeping their product line focused, they still haven't done what they need to do to get market share-
Make a powerful Mac that sells for about $1200, complete with monitor. One that will play games well. Which brings us to the next point-
They need games. They need to just pay-off id Software or Electronic Arts (yeah, they're evil) or any of the big game publishers. Get them to release some big-name games on the Mac FIRST and BEST.
But that will never happen. The rumor is that Steve Jobs doesn't like video-games.
I'm not even a fan of the Mac, but it drives me nuts that they continually limit themselves by not acknowledging the fact that price and games drive the market, not "elegance".
Why did we re-elect Bush if we still aren't allowed to kill these kinds of people?
Some of the book publishers and MOST of the CD/DVD publishers hate that people can "borrow" their stuff for free from libraries. And actively try to stop it.
Artists already get paid. Some of them are millionaires.
What it's about is squeezing a few extra bucks out of everyone by removing their ability to listen/read/watch ANYTHING without paying for it. Because the media companies just can't STAND it when someone "uses" their product without giving them money.
The whole plan boils down to this: No information will be free, ever. The libraries know this, as they've already been fighting for survival in the new world of "intellectual property" and "digital rights".
Well, the Itanium still runs x86 instructions.
The problem with the Itanium is that it just requires too much compiler magic to make it work well.
It's kind of similar to the "software bloat" problem. Yeah, you could spend a couple of years optimizing a single piece of software, or you could just throw more hardware at it, for less money.
The solution to the spyware/malware problem is simple, as demonstrated by Firefox-
Disable ActiveX controls.
Is there any legitimate reason for a non-intranet website to use them? Whenever a site requires ActiveX controls to work, I think "Boy, they hired an bunch of idiots to design their site."
They should just modify IE so that ActiveX flat-out doesn't work on any site that isn't explicitly and MANUALLY allowed to by the user or network admin.
Problem is, so-called "geeks" are usually very well-informed about products that they buy. Which, obviously, is not what potential advertisers want AT ALL. It's hard to sell stuff to people who already know exactly what they want, and which online store will sell it to them for the lowest price.
That's why G4 is so different from TechTV. They want to go after the clueless-but-rich-and-under-30 market.
If there is any hope for Western civilization, then the 11th most popular query is for "suicide".
Apple has high-quality hardware? What planet are you living on?
Anyone who fixes computers can tell you that Macs have more hardware problems than any computer. By a HUGE margin. And I'm talking about post iMac stuff. Before the iMac, it was even worse.
Distributors are a necessary evil. It's HARD to ship boxes of a product all over the world, and even harder to get your foot in the door with the big retailers. A small company might be able to distribute their own product on a small scale, but they could never do it big enough to sell TONS of product, which, obviously, is a goal of every company.
I have an Xbox, and Halo just isn't very great. It's well-done, but it has no personality, and very little new to add to the FPS genre.
That said, my Xbox-owning friends who had never(?!) played a multiplayer FPS game before think it's the greatest thing ever. And, if you've never played Unreal Tournament, I suppose it is. But for people who've been playing FPSs on the PC for years, Halo is only average. I imagine Halo 2 is more of the same, and the reviews seem reflect that.
I don't know. I'm not really into gay porn.
/blogs are for fags
I totally agree.
Kurzweil is just another rich, aging Baby Boomer who is trying to convince himself that he can regain his youth.
In other words, he's having a delayed, extended, mid-life crisis.
If somebody could get this guy laid, I bet the only supplement he'd be taking would be Viagra.
Thank you for advertising Wired on Slashdot.
By the way, your magazine fucking SUCKS. Always has.
In fact, my friends and I use "Wired" as a kind of measure of quality. As in-
"Man, that chick is really ugly. I wouldn't fuck her with a stolen dick"
"Yeah, but she's still better than an issue of 'Wired'"
"I concur"
But you'd still need the $50. For Viagra.
Yeah, a few of the webmail providers do exactly what you're talking about. They generally call them "temporary addresses".
It works, but it makes using email more complicated, and it creates a situation where even MORE e-mail traffic is going to be flying all over the place, mostly to all those diabled temporary addresses.
What we really need is a single registry for email servers, similar to how DNS works now. If you want to run a mail server (and not have your mail rejected by other servers), you need to "register" it with some big, monolithic organization. If you're not on the authorized list, you get rejected.
Yeah, that kills the "openness" of email. You'll no longer be able to setup a usable mail server without jumping through some verification hoops. But so what.