I've fucking had it. I'm going to walk through every one of those with the biggest hard-on. Maybe a strip of electrical tape up the backside of my underwear or "hey moron" written in grease pencil.
I'm tired of being treated like a criminal in my own country.
Because if they want to use this shouldn't they still be held accountable? What if it was you're daughter? We all know what a good job they do of screening their empoloyees. I feel safer already.
This has been some of the worse pork-barrel politics I've seen and its being done in the name of all those people who died. What a shame.
OSS is a choice just like cosed is. Its a decision and I'd be no more happy being locked into one or the other. Both (all) are important in their own right and we've certainly benifited from the diversity (thank you Microsoft for forcing standards onto the PC platform!).
Not everyone always wants innovation...
on
McVoy Strikes Back
·
· Score: 1
Sometimes (at least when its used like this) its more like a buzzword then anything with real meaning. People need word processors, spreadsheets, basic desktops, etc. OSS is still new enough that they need hand-holding and familiarity anyway.
But lets not delude ourselves into thinking there's a lack of innovative software just because some of the more popular packages are familiar. Look at Blackbox for an innovative desktop (clean, nice looking, fast) . Look at Bittorrent, Zinf or Webmin.
The further off the 'beaten path' you go you'll find more and more innovation. The fact that mainstream projects like Apache, PHP, Python (Perl) and Firefox (its not the tabs, its the extensiblity that allowed tabs to be added-on in the first place) have gained as much mind-share as they have is just as sign that not only can OSS be (more) successfully inovative (remember, Microsoft *buys* innovation more then they produce it) but it can change the market place. And closed or open source projects alike, thats no small feat.
You are of course very correct, monoculture is a lose-lose and I left my "everything needs to be free" behind a long time ago (even OSS costs, we should value that too).
But remember, not all OSS believers are so pooly behaved. Those guys just stick out more.
You're 100% right about them being freeloaders. OSS is a back and forth were the user needs to play a more active role then closed source users are used to. Users who don't get that are nothing but freeloaders.
BTW, you also mentioned a couple films I had either forgotten or didn't know about, so thanks! They're on my "to buy" list, but it'll be a while before I get to them.
:) Ya, I'm an art geek too. Its nice talking about this stuff. Next stop music/visual art (I should say, coming soon) popexperiment.com.
Fair enough. I agree sci-fi needs to stand up as both a good film in its own right and also in the creation of distinct, new reality. Definately a tall order on both counts, but when its achieved its really something.
Anyhow, remember not all geeks are film geeks. Forgive them (they don't know what their missing). Your Matrix example is perfect. Its not Film...but it was a technical achievement which makes it perfectly understandable geek fixation.:-)
I think the catch with sci-fi in cinema is unlike more conventional subject matter aside from dialog and good writing you also need to create an entirely new and believable world and thats not something a lot of people are capable of doing...especially on such a large scale.
You saw the latest Star Wars? Tell me the actors didn't seem like they were talking to a green-screen a lot of the time? For my money Blade Runner is still the #1 most believable (morally, philosophically, visually) world created to date, but Gattaca was also a impressive piece of noir. I believe every one of those films are as good as their terrestrial counter-parts and more ambitious.
Well, its a great atmospheric piece. Movies these days (maybe even back then) can't get away with that kind of setup and then it launches in to this really good sci-fi story. My wife fell asleep, I guess it isn't for everyone...but a classic it is.
At $20 a pop (yes married) I like to at least check rottentomatoes.com before forking out money on a movies I've got reservations about.
That said, only a fool would take any of it as gospel so if you're have such strong feelings maybe you should re-evaluate how you use movie reviews.
I loved Zoolander and never would have seen it if I'd gone by the critics. But Star Wars lived (IMHO) right up to its negative (and positive) reviews. No-one is out there trying to defraud you. Over analyzed? It just looks like maybe your taking them a little too seriously.
At least for me, I appreciated the heads up and frankly coming out of it I'm 100% confident I'd have better spent my time watching Kung-Foo Hustle (thanks 50/50 reviews, knowledge of actors/directors previous work).
And as for the timecoding/lightsabre reviews Star Wars is a little geeky. Thats got very little to do with anything aside from its status as a cultural icon (for better and worse). Those you really should learn to appreciate at the very least for humors sake. Where else do you get to see people so worked up about things so inconsequential?:)
I disagree. In another 10 or 15 years your going to be looking back on todays technology like we do NES. The reason it failed was because the technology *wasn't* there. The closest visually are still basic low-poly models relying heavily on texture mapping to provide the appearance of detail that just isn't there.
When you start treading VR waters I think you realize how quickly todays technology fails to fit the bill. Novel? Sure. Maybe even fun. But no-one is going to mistake a sweaty vinyl glove and some hot, neck wrenching, low-res goggle for "virtual reality".
Reality contains a lot more physical feed-back then we are currently capable of reproducing. Thats why VR has remained a tech-show novelty and not become the booming industry you'd like to see (and your not alone).
You'd quietly develop better technology and *then* wait for someone else to jump on it first. Second (all though it would have to be an extremely close second) is probably the right place to be in these kinds of lateral steps.
I guess this has never really been one of our strong points.
Agreed. I did (as I mentioned) do the extremist thing for a few years (no Microsoft product in my house!) but boy does that get old. I think the trick is to try to see the good (and its there) in everything. Otherwise your just artificially limiting yourself. I look at OSS products now and compare them to the breadth of other software out there and you can usually *see* the short-comings and work out what it is they aren't looking at (usually the proprietary leading software for the category).
People are allowed to have value systems that don't make logical sense to you, just like you're completely entitled to disagree.
For a lot of OSS converts there is a (somewhat protracted) faze where they reject anything not ideologically in-line with their beliefs (I'm speaking from personal experience, but this is probably in-line with a number of other Slashdot users). This is perfectly natural.
The next step is realizing that freedom (as in GNU) *can* co-exist with proprietary (and dozens of others) ideologies and that BOTH/ALL serve a purpose. Not everyone arrives at this second conclusion (nor do they need to) but getting bent out of shape because someone disagrees with your own idealogical decisions (whether you or I for that matter believe ourselves to be correct is largely irrelevant...whats it change?) seems *just* as silly as the post you were responding too.
Because the airwaves can only accommodate a finite number of broadcasts, even if we bother to increase this (satellite radio anyone?) we are still limited and in the case of XM or Sirius who do I talk to if I want my broadcast to be available? How well will that scale as more people take interest in broadcasting?
Right now Shoutcast.com alone is listing 8,751 stations. Thats just *one* portal.
I define 'closed' as being limited by available resources. You provide college radio as an alternative, but thats just one alternative station per regional market: shoutcast lists 1000's. Do you see the difference?
I've been keenly interested in music all my life, I've played in bands, collected music, got to know the musicians and now (for the second time) am getting ready to launch a internet radio station myself.
I follow the music and technology closely (systems administrator by trade) and have followed both XM and Sirius with a good deal of interest. But there's the catch: the reason I've followed them with such great interest is because the right alternative hasn't been available. And thats (aside from the desktop) internet radio.
Why is internet radio the right format? Because its a totally open system. Look at programs like Off The Hook for example. Thats the kind of programming that couldn't exist in a closed system, but on the internet the field is wide open.
Why on earth we'd want anything less then that is beyond me. We've already had our closed system, its called the public airwaves. Everyone knows Clear Channel perfected it, but they aren't to blame the system was flawed from the start. Anyone can have a website and thats all it takes to run a broadcast.
I don't know anything about this product, but I do know I'm a firm believer that internet radio is the answer to a question a lot of us have been asking ourselves for as long as we've been listening to music.
Props to XM and Sirius for broadening the horizon, but I can't see their (still limited) approach as much more then a stop-gap measure until WIFI broadband becomes ubiquitous enough that people can tune into their favorite radio station or flip on something they've never even heard before.
If I sound a little giddy its because my favorite syles of music aren't available at your local Virgin Mega Store, in fact since the arts and music explosion on the internet I can't even find most of my favorite bands down at the local alternative record store and I live in a major metropolitan city.
Even with all the existing media outlets combined they don't even begin to scratch the surface of whats available. And theres a lot of good stuff out there.
Sorry for going overboard. I feel passionate about it. This is a very exciting time in general and as a art and music lover doubly so. The beauty of the internet is that it's so totally open and I've been doing this for a long time now and I still find myself saying "wow".
I've done the MythTV route. Very nice way to go and I'll certainly go that route again. We've been trying to stay away from TV and stick to our own programming but the lure of 24 or The Shield can be a little too much sometimes.:)
Apparently it is OK to record TV as long as your aren't sharing it.?
I mean come on. We know the issue isn't recording it, its the redistributing it with *commercials stripped*.
We've been back and forth about this kind of issue how many times? We ALL know that networks produce their programming content (some even good) with revenue generated how? Right! Commercials!
So here we have a problem, with 1000's of sites serving as content repositries for commercial-free TV programs, which I can TOTALLY understand. I'll do everything I can to NEVER site through a commercial again. But its not in the networks, the producers or their stars interest in US bypassing THEIR revenue models and doing it in PLAIN SIGHT.
Now I do fault them for not being pioneers in the content distribution department. Why can't a pay a few dollars for a commercial free download? Or at least subscribe to a network service for DRM wrapped commercial containing versions?
We know where this is all heading, Tom Hanks gave us a ugly example of in Castaway (does anyone NOT remember the glaring American Express placement?) but thats down the pipe and they'd probably ALL prefer milk the existing system for as long as they can (and they are certainly feeling the pressure).
Slashdot Mirror
I've fucking had it. I'm going to walk through every one of those with the biggest hard-on. Maybe a strip of electrical tape up the backside of my underwear or "hey moron" written in grease pencil.
I'm tired of being treated like a criminal in my own country.
Because if they want to use this shouldn't they still be held accountable? What if it was you're daughter? We all know what a good job they do of screening their empoloyees. I feel safer already.
This has been some of the worse pork-barrel politics I've seen and its being done in the name of all those people who died. What a shame.
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.
--Abraham Lincoln
OSS is a choice just like cosed is. Its a decision and I'd be no more happy being locked into one or the other. Both (all) are important in their own right and we've certainly benifited from the diversity (thank you Microsoft for forcing standards onto the PC platform!).
Sometimes (at least when its used like this) its more like a buzzword then anything with real meaning. People need word processors, spreadsheets, basic desktops, etc. OSS is still new enough that they need hand-holding and familiarity anyway.
But lets not delude ourselves into thinking there's a lack of innovative software just because some of the more popular packages are familiar. Look at Blackbox for an innovative desktop (clean, nice looking, fast) . Look at Bittorrent, Zinf or Webmin.
The further off the 'beaten path' you go you'll find more and more innovation. The fact that mainstream projects like Apache, PHP, Python (Perl) and Firefox (its not the tabs, its the extensiblity that allowed tabs to be added-on in the first place) have gained as much mind-share as they have is just as sign that not only can OSS be (more) successfully inovative (remember, Microsoft *buys* innovation more then they produce it) but it can change the market place. And closed or open source projects alike, thats no small feat.
You are of course very correct, monoculture is a lose-lose and I left my "everything needs to be free" behind a long time ago (even OSS costs, we should value that too).
But remember, not all OSS believers are so pooly behaved. Those guys just stick out more.
You're 100% right about them being freeloaders. OSS is a back and forth were the user needs to play a more active role then closed source users are used to. Users who don't get that are nothing but freeloaders.
BTW, you also mentioned a couple films I had either forgotten or didn't know about, so thanks! They're on my "to buy" list, but it'll be a while before I get to them.
:) Ya, I'm an art geek too. Its nice talking about this stuff. Next stop music/visual art (I should say, coming soon) popexperiment.com.
Fair enough. I agree sci-fi needs to stand up as both a good film in its own right and also in the creation of distinct, new reality. Definately a tall order on both counts, but when its achieved its really something.
:-)
Anyhow, remember not all geeks are film geeks. Forgive them (they don't know what their missing). Your Matrix example is perfect. Its not Film...but it was a technical achievement which makes it perfectly understandable geek fixation.
Gattaca
Brazil (included fortunately)
A Clockwork Orange
2001: A Space Odyssey (as you mention)
Solyaris (too slow for some but certainly a classic)
Or the more esoteric, like
Naked Lunch
The City of Lost Children
or
Pi
I think the catch with sci-fi in cinema is unlike more conventional subject matter aside from dialog and good writing you also need to create an entirely new and believable world and thats not something a lot of people are capable of doing...especially on such a large scale.
You saw the latest Star Wars? Tell me the actors didn't seem like they were talking to a green-screen a lot of the time? For my money Blade Runner is still the #1 most believable (morally, philosophically, visually) world created to date, but Gattaca was also a impressive piece of noir. I believe every one of those films are as good as their terrestrial counter-parts and more ambitious.
Revenge of the Nerds! Okay...and maybe Porky's. Did I just date myself? :)
Well, its a great atmospheric piece. Movies these days (maybe even back then) can't get away with that kind of setup and then it launches in to this really good sci-fi story. My wife fell asleep, I guess it isn't for everyone...but a classic it is.
No A Clockwork Orange? No Satyricon? Not even the original (Russian) Solaris? Or 2001: A Space Odyssey?
:)
Thanks God they go Finding Nemo in there. Otherwise I might have to doubt their credibility!
At $20 a pop (yes married) I like to at least check rottentomatoes.com before forking out money on a movies I've got reservations about.
:)
That said, only a fool would take any of it as gospel so if you're have such strong feelings maybe you should re-evaluate how you use movie reviews.
I loved Zoolander and never would have seen it if I'd gone by the critics. But Star Wars lived (IMHO) right up to its negative (and positive) reviews. No-one is out there trying to defraud you. Over analyzed? It just looks like maybe your taking them a little too seriously.
At least for me, I appreciated the heads up and frankly coming out of it I'm 100% confident I'd have better spent my time watching Kung-Foo Hustle (thanks 50/50 reviews, knowledge of actors/directors previous work).
And as for the timecoding/lightsabre reviews Star Wars is a little geeky. Thats got very little to do with anything aside from its status as a cultural icon (for better and worse). Those you really should learn to appreciate at the very least for humors sake. Where else do you get to see people so worked up about things so inconsequential?
If you're smart enough to run a server your certainly smart enough to A) pay for a static address B) set up dynamic redirection.
Aside from the fact that this would never happen in the US you've brought up essentially a stupid, non-point.
I disagree. In another 10 or 15 years your going to be looking back on todays technology like we do NES. The reason it failed was because the technology *wasn't* there. The closest visually are still basic low-poly models relying heavily on texture mapping to provide the appearance of detail that just isn't there.
When you start treading VR waters I think you realize how quickly todays technology fails to fit the bill. Novel? Sure. Maybe even fun. But no-one is going to mistake a sweaty vinyl glove and some hot, neck wrenching, low-res goggle for "virtual reality".
Reality contains a lot more physical feed-back then we are currently capable of reproducing. Thats why VR has remained a tech-show novelty and not become the booming industry you'd like to see (and your not alone).
You'd quietly develop better technology and *then* wait for someone else to jump on it first. Second (all though it would have to be an extremely close second) is probably the right place to be in these kinds of lateral steps.
I guess this has never really been one of our strong points.
are you arguing for or against?
You mention a lot of things including the very thing "Starwars" was meant to address: missile attacks.
Agreed. I did (as I mentioned) do the extremist thing for a few years (no Microsoft product in my house!) but boy does that get old. I think the trick is to try to see the good (and its there) in everything. Otherwise your just artificially limiting yourself. I look at OSS products now and compare them to the breadth of other software out there and you can usually *see* the short-comings and work out what it is they aren't looking at (usually the proprietary leading software for the category).
Anyhow, long story short: agreed.
People are allowed to have value systems that don't make logical sense to you, just like you're completely entitled to disagree.
For a lot of OSS converts there is a (somewhat protracted) faze where they reject anything not ideologically in-line with their beliefs (I'm speaking from personal experience, but this is probably in-line with a number of other Slashdot users). This is perfectly natural.
The next step is realizing that freedom (as in GNU) *can* co-exist with proprietary (and dozens of others) ideologies and that BOTH/ALL serve a purpose. Not everyone arrives at this second conclusion (nor do they need to) but getting bent out of shape because someone disagrees with your own idealogical decisions (whether you or I for that matter believe ourselves to be correct is largely irrelevant...whats it change?) seems *just* as silly as the post you were responding too.
*cough* Porn *cough*.
It certainly will be a brave new world. Yet another lonely-geek driven technology!
Because the airwaves can only accommodate a finite number of broadcasts, even if we bother to increase this (satellite radio anyone?) we are still limited and in the case of XM or Sirius who do I talk to if I want my broadcast to be available? How well will that scale as more people take interest in broadcasting?
Right now Shoutcast.com alone is listing 8,751 stations. Thats just *one* portal.
I define 'closed' as being limited by available resources. You provide college radio as an alternative, but thats just one alternative station per regional market: shoutcast lists 1000's. Do you see the difference?
I've been keenly interested in music all my life, I've played in bands, collected music, got to know the musicians and now (for the second time) am getting ready to launch a internet radio station myself.
I follow the music and technology closely (systems administrator by trade) and have followed both XM and Sirius with a good deal of interest. But there's the catch: the reason I've followed them with such great interest is because the right alternative hasn't been available. And thats (aside from the desktop) internet radio.
Why is internet radio the right format? Because its a totally open system. Look at programs like Off The Hook for example. Thats the kind of programming that couldn't exist in a closed system, but on the internet the field is wide open.
Why on earth we'd want anything less then that is beyond me. We've already had our closed system, its called the public airwaves. Everyone knows Clear Channel perfected it, but they aren't to blame the system was flawed from the start. Anyone can have a website and thats all it takes to run a broadcast.
I don't know anything about this product, but I do know I'm a firm believer that internet radio is the answer to a question a lot of us have been asking ourselves for as long as we've been listening to music.
Props to XM and Sirius for broadening the horizon, but I can't see their (still limited) approach as much more then a stop-gap measure until WIFI broadband becomes ubiquitous enough that people can tune into their favorite radio station or flip on something they've never even heard before.
If I sound a little giddy its because my favorite syles of music aren't available at your local Virgin Mega Store, in fact since the arts and music explosion on the internet I can't even find most of my favorite bands down at the local alternative record store and I live in a major metropolitan city.
Even with all the existing media outlets combined they don't even begin to scratch the surface of whats available. And theres a lot of good stuff out there.
Sorry for going overboard. I feel passionate about it. This is a very exciting time in general and as a art and music lover doubly so. The beauty of the internet is that it's so totally open and I've been doing this for a long time now and I still find myself saying "wow".
Don't ever put this genie back in the bottle.
I've done the MythTV route. Very nice way to go and I'll certainly go that route again. We've been trying to stay away from TV and stick to our own programming but the lure of 24 or The Shield can be a little too much sometimes. :)
Apparently it is OK to record TV as long as your aren't sharing it.?
I mean come on. We know the issue isn't recording it, its the redistributing it with *commercials stripped*.
We've been back and forth about this kind of issue how many times? We ALL know that networks produce their programming content (some even good) with revenue generated how? Right! Commercials!
So here we have a problem, with 1000's of sites serving as content repositries for commercial-free TV programs, which I can TOTALLY understand. I'll do everything I can to NEVER site through a commercial again. But its not in the networks, the producers or their stars interest in US bypassing THEIR revenue models and doing it in PLAIN SIGHT.
Now I do fault them for not being pioneers in the content distribution department. Why can't a pay a few dollars for a commercial free download? Or at least subscribe to a network service for DRM wrapped commercial containing versions?
We know where this is all heading, Tom Hanks gave us a ugly example of in Castaway (does anyone NOT remember the glaring American Express placement?) but thats down the pipe and they'd probably ALL prefer milk the existing system for as long as they can (and they are certainly feeling the pressure).
The ads are somewhat amusing, but I find them disturbing. Don't get me wrong I'm all about being disturbed: but by my browser? Why.
In the future I hope they learn how to spoof existing campaigns (Apple/Dell) and leave the disturbing part to the individuals choice of website.