I didn't care if I didn't like the music, but I wanted to make a point to the RIAA
Ok. So what happens when everyone starts following the Radiohead model? Are you going to pay them all just to thumb your nose at the RIAA? Or are some artists just going to have to suffer like everyone else and hope that Joe Sixpack is decent enough to actually pay for what he listens to?
It's neat that everyone is pounding their fists today and ready to take on the world but I've seen way too many instances where this dies quietly and those who can get away with being cheap do so after all the thrill of the revolution had died. This is going to hurt small unestablished artists in a big way. Trend Reznor would probably be eating dog food out of a can in the back of some Econoline van trying to scrape up gas money for his tour if it weren't for the initial boost from the big evil record company.
It's like when Greenpeace had it's day in the sun in the 80s. I know people who would have given you a good browbeating for throwing an aluminum can in the trash instead of the recycle bin. Oddly enough some of these same people are driving SUVs today. They probably had the best intentions but it doesn't count for much once the initial thrill is gone.
Back in the Amiga days I had an idea of using different biological readings with a video game. I never went anywhere with it but the basic idea was that dependent on the players physical state (maybe even far enough to decipher their emotions based on different readings) the game play could change in some fashion. Not too advanced of a concept but with as far as things have come since the late 80s/early 90s I think something like this could be done cost effectively today.
Actually, given the nature of most of the slashdotters I know; give the booze to the girls. It makes a big difference if they're the ones with a distorted view of reality.
Yeah, Schindler's List is far worse then pr0n. Didn't you know? After all, the truth behind the history of a people* is secondary to a pleasurable experience.
* Regardless if the Christian version of things is true, there are enough people who see it as true to make it a history altering event.
However in the legal world his lawyers live in surely all they have to do is claim that the prosecution is relying on a doctored digital image as the sole evidence...?
Not knowing where this guy is from and not knowing how international law works (IANAL)...
In the US the restored image could be used in an attempt to get a warrant. Assuming that someone knows the guy they may turn him in and the police can file for a warrant based on the picture and the tip. Once the warrant is validated by a judge other evidence would be picked up. So it wouldn't be sole evidence in this case since more of the suspect appears in undoctored areas of the photo and any potential evidence that could be gained through further investigation.
Why can't you just accept both versions as seperate works, and enjoy them.
Why can't you just accept that there are people who expected something better from Jackson?
Why is it when someone doesn't embrace Jackson's "vision" that they naysayers are the ones who are treated like they have the problem?
You can like both, they aren't mutually exclusive.
No one here is suggesting that if you like the films that you're a stooge or anything of that nature. We simply thought that Jackson's version of the story lacks.
lord of the rings gave him very little room for creativeness.
But he still took it.
I know there are going to be people who are going to fight me on this but... I realize that Jackson had a ton of material to work with and not all of it was going to end up in the films. I understand this about The Hobbit too. What irks me is that Jackson, at points, went out of his way to botch the film-book relationship. He took up creative license in areas where the books had just as good of an answer that would have required no more in the ways of development and time then what Jackson used in his "solution" to a non-existent problem. The worst is when he does it in the name of comic relief and makes what JRRT created as strong, competent elements into common oafs. The ents are a prime example of this.
Besides, I felt that JRRT's version of the ultimate destruction of the ring was a million times more poetic and had a fantastic air of irony. Why would Jackson feel that he could best that?
At this point I don't care who directs The Hobbit. In a lot of ways I don't even care if it ever gets made. This is largely due to seeing how much Jackson got away with botching LOTRs and now has set up a precedent for the future botching of JRRTs works.
Of course, I also partially blame Lucas for some of this too but that's a whole different story.
I sold some slaves to the Lesti system not too long ago for 98.2 credits per tonne. I'm now rated as a fugative and your QUIDs are worthless to me since they're only good in the Sol system.
Re:Any mutual "I can't belive it's ...!" moments?
on
Ask Rob Malda
·
· Score: 1
Wil Wheaton has written about meeting a famous author, I think it was Larry Niven, and being completely blown away that Niven was at least as jazzed about meeting Wil as vice versa.
That just goes to show what an outstanding guy Larry is. If anything Wil (no offense, Wil) should have kissed Larry's feet.
Niven is a giant in a universe strewn with hacks and wanna-bes. He's the real deal when it comes down to science fiction. With the exception of Arthur C. Clarke, he's probably the best science fiction writer alive today.
Re:Why haven't you fired Kdawson yet?
on
Ask Rob Malda
·
· Score: 1
My take on it is: Even if Rob hated the way KDawson engages the Slashdot public it does pull in visitors.
Not to flame Taco as it is but when it comes right down to it Slashdot is a business that he pulls a paycheck from. Even if he wanted to make this a strictly tech-oriented site it would suffer for it.
Take a look around sometime. Take a look at what kind of articles people are most likely to post to. You see where the traffic comes form. Most of the strictly scientific/tech articles get little traffic and those that do the traffic normally focuses around the politics of the science over the real meat of the science and technology. Most of the rest of the posts are jokes, mostly lame. The politics articles are big among readers. The Linux articles have just as much bashing of MS as they do on-topic Linux posts. Pop-Geek culture articles are also fantastic for postings. Sometimes looking at the dynamics of the posts on Slashdot and the few articles that have real technical information in them makes me wonder how many Slashdotters are really into geekdom and how many are what I call Comic Book Geeks.
Seriously, go check sites like Devx.com or TechRepublic. There is normally some really great technical articles floating around, especially DevX. I bet you the number of visitors is substantially lower then that of Slashdot. These are articles and discussions that embrace the technology as technology, for the most part, over the politics of the technology.
Slashdot is much too casual for serious "down to the numbers" articles to generate any real interest. KDawson's articles being fairly popular on the site are part of the culture that most users embrace.
Again, I'm not beating on it, as much as I'm not into KDawson either, but Slashdot needs those kinds of articles. It's Rob's bread and butter regardless if he wants it to be or not.
It's neat to be able to relate to the Slashdot culture but within itself it doesn't speak much for technology and the "geek" moniker that I hold up proud. And as much as I don't slight others for being Slashdotters it doesn't bring much to a conversation to mention a Slashdot article while discussing the more serious side of tech, IMHO.
I guess I'm kind of rambling at this point but I think Slashdot has undergone a transition in the last few years that makes it much more casual and because of that KDawson prospers with the newer Slashdot users.
Re:Do you like Slashdot discussions?
on
Ask Rob Malda
·
· Score: 2, Funny
My guess is that they don't like having him read Slashdot while he's at work. A lot of companies have this kind of policy.
Yes, but would they actually do that? There's a hell of a lot more money to be made by treating the symptoms, rather than curing the disease.
Not for long.
Supposing that this could cure the disease outright; you patent the drug so that no others could produce it. You sit on the patent until it expires. It becomes free game for all and you haven't made a dime from all of your R&D. Now all your competitors get to walk the golden brick road without lifting a finger or throwing a royalty your way.
I also know of a recent heart attack victim - at 58, who had eaten essentially a vegetarian diet for 15 years prior to the attack.
Don't buy into the lie. That's the lie where vegetarian = healthy.
I've been a vegetarian for about 2/3 of my life. I know plenty of other vegetarians. I'm overweight, many others I know are overweight. Just being a vegetarian by itself doesn't mean anything beyond "I don't eat meat".
There are a million ways to do the vegetarian diet wrong just like any other diet.
Am I better off with my current intake and exercise program as I would be with meat? Potentially, but don't hold me to it. I'm sure I'm still reaping some of the benefits of it but that doesn't make it an absolute cure for anything aside from knowing that I'm not going to choke to death on a chicken bone.
because MS's business is mainly about using restrictive copyright licensing to make sure they're the only ones controlling the software on PCs, which quite different from what IBM's business is
IBM's business being hardware is the real difference.
To try to predict the future of MS from the failures of IBM isn't realistic. IBM was more like what Apple would be today if they had the marketshare.
I've run several version of PS and GIMP on XP and without some specifics I don't think that XP is the problem. I still think people are getting too much lip service in the area of GIMP being a peer to PS. It's just hyped far too much.
But I will say that GIMP is great for what it is. I know nothing of Paint.net but so far GIMP is the best and most functional free software of it's nature out there. It's a great place for people without the cash or the experience to get into graphics/photo manipulation without putting any real money down.
I will have to check out Paint.net though. Thanks.
they'll be encouraged to submit feedback via the product feedback center
In some ways I'd rather see these things organized "under one roof". As long as the product feedback center is responsive I don't think this is going to be a big deal for most.
What about a 360 for $360? Why does that play the latest games when a comparably priced PC can't?
Could it be subsidies? Come on now, this has been the topic of many Slashdot stories. Why is it that people are glad to point this out when it's a bash against MS but so soon to forget it when the low price of a 360 works in their favor? If you didn't know that MS was taking a big loss on every 360 I'm sorry to slam you in this fashion but if you knew about it you shouldn't be asking these kinds of questions.
Thanks for the reply back and you do bring up some good points but what about the Kordylewski cloud? If it is real, and I see no reason that it wouldn't be, wouldn't this be worse then moon dust? At least moon dust is somewhat stable until disturbed, the dust in L5 would be a constant plague, it seems.
The main obstacle to gaming on the Windows platform is Windows - that is, the amount of memory the operating system soaks up just for being around. There, however, you can just slap on some more memory and you're good to go.
Maybe if Joe Sixpack wasn't buying the Best Buy 499.95 special and expecting it to play the latest games...
For the most part the only time I hear complaints out of Windows gamers is the ones that don't have enough cash to buy their own gear and have to live off of mommy and daddy's hand me downs.
Bitch about the memory and pat yourself on the back all you want but when is the last time a gig of ram cost more then the latest PS3 title? In perspective the issue of buying an off-the-shelf PC to play games on and adding the ram yourself is normally going to cost you less then the sales tax on most new machines.
And this isn't to defend Windows because I know where you're coming from but it's time that we need to step back and finally tell the low end gamers who want to step up that they're going to have to spend a little money to do it. I have a three year old PC that I got an extra stick of ram for that plays HL2 and it's assorted goodies just fine. I have a year old laptop that I can say the same thing about.
All in all it amazes me the number of people who customize their PC off of Dell or HP and skimp on the memory only to have it bite them in the ass when they install games on it.
Apple is not stupid, they know that gaming on a Mac won't add much, however it is inevitable if Mac is ever going to be viable in the mass market. No those few percentage points don't count.
Apple would be stupid if they see gamers as a few percentage points. I see gamers being the 80/20 of hardware sales. Gamers easily buy the most new cutting edge hardware of anyone running the desktop even if their numbers in the overall desktop community is a minority.
If Apple prides itself on producing high end system they would be wise to lure in gamers who also pride themselves in being the buyers of high end systems.
If the iPod fashion wave of Apple dies anytime soon they're going to have people sitting on the same boxes for years since they work. The only serious faction of the desktop community that looks to replace working hardware with any real numbers is the gamers. Gamers have such a high turnover for hardware that their minority numbers would bulk up to much more.
Slashdot Mirror
I didn't care if I didn't like the music, but I wanted to make a point to the RIAA
Ok. So what happens when everyone starts following the Radiohead model? Are you going to pay them all just to thumb your nose at the RIAA? Or are some artists just going to have to suffer like everyone else and hope that Joe Sixpack is decent enough to actually pay for what he listens to?
It's neat that everyone is pounding their fists today and ready to take on the world but I've seen way too many instances where this dies quietly and those who can get away with being cheap do so after all the thrill of the revolution had died. This is going to hurt small unestablished artists in a big way. Trend Reznor would probably be eating dog food out of a can in the back of some Econoline van trying to scrape up gas money for his tour if it weren't for the initial boost from the big evil record company.
It's like when Greenpeace had it's day in the sun in the 80s. I know people who would have given you a good browbeating for throwing an aluminum can in the trash instead of the recycle bin. Oddly enough some of these same people are driving SUVs today. They probably had the best intentions but it doesn't count for much once the initial thrill is gone.
Back in the Amiga days I had an idea of using different biological readings with a video game. I never went anywhere with it but the basic idea was that dependent on the players physical state (maybe even far enough to decipher their emotions based on different readings) the game play could change in some fashion. Not too advanced of a concept but with as far as things have come since the late 80s/early 90s I think something like this could be done cost effectively today.
Actually, given the nature of most of the slashdotters I know; give the booze to the girls. It makes a big difference if they're the ones with a distorted view of reality.
We have that today. Well, that is if "fresh brewed coffee" tastes like "pee" in your mind.
Being a non-coffee kinda person... I think it does.
It says:
Party #1: In my pants.
Party #2: Party canceled. Go to Party #1
Yeah, Schindler's List is far worse then pr0n. Didn't you know? After all, the truth behind the history of a people* is secondary to a pleasurable experience.
* Regardless if the Christian version of things is true, there are enough people who see it as true to make it a history altering event.
However in the legal world his lawyers live in surely all they have to do is claim that the prosecution is relying on a doctored digital image as the sole evidence...?
Not knowing where this guy is from and not knowing how international law works (IANAL)...
In the US the restored image could be used in an attempt to get a warrant. Assuming that someone knows the guy they may turn him in and the police can file for a warrant based on the picture and the tip. Once the warrant is validated by a judge other evidence would be picked up. So it wouldn't be sole evidence in this case since more of the suspect appears in undoctored areas of the photo and any potential evidence that could be gained through further investigation.
Why can't you just accept both versions as seperate works, and enjoy them.
Why can't you just accept that there are people who expected something better from Jackson?
Why is it when someone doesn't embrace Jackson's "vision" that they naysayers are the ones who are treated like they have the problem?
You can like both, they aren't mutually exclusive.
No one here is suggesting that if you like the films that you're a stooge or anything of that nature. We simply thought that Jackson's version of the story lacks.
lord of the rings gave him very little room for creativeness.
But he still took it.
I know there are going to be people who are going to fight me on this but... I realize that Jackson had a ton of material to work with and not all of it was going to end up in the films. I understand this about The Hobbit too. What irks me is that Jackson, at points, went out of his way to botch the film-book relationship. He took up creative license in areas where the books had just as good of an answer that would have required no more in the ways of development and time then what Jackson used in his "solution" to a non-existent problem. The worst is when he does it in the name of comic relief and makes what JRRT created as strong, competent elements into common oafs. The ents are a prime example of this.
Besides, I felt that JRRT's version of the ultimate destruction of the ring was a million times more poetic and had a fantastic air of irony. Why would Jackson feel that he could best that?
At this point I don't care who directs The Hobbit. In a lot of ways I don't even care if it ever gets made. This is largely due to seeing how much Jackson got away with botching LOTRs and now has set up a precedent for the future botching of JRRTs works.
Of course, I also partially blame Lucas for some of this too but that's a whole different story.
I sold some slaves to the Lesti system not too long ago for 98.2 credits per tonne. I'm now rated as a fugative and your QUIDs are worthless to me since they're only good in the Sol system.
Wil Wheaton has written about meeting a famous author, I think it was Larry Niven, and being completely blown away that Niven was at least as jazzed about meeting Wil as vice versa.
That just goes to show what an outstanding guy Larry is. If anything Wil (no offense, Wil) should have kissed Larry's feet.
Niven is a giant in a universe strewn with hacks and wanna-bes. He's the real deal when it comes down to science fiction. With the exception of Arthur C. Clarke, he's probably the best science fiction writer alive today.
My take on it is: Even if Rob hated the way KDawson engages the Slashdot public it does pull in visitors.
Not to flame Taco as it is but when it comes right down to it Slashdot is a business that he pulls a paycheck from. Even if he wanted to make this a strictly tech-oriented site it would suffer for it.
Take a look around sometime. Take a look at what kind of articles people are most likely to post to. You see where the traffic comes form. Most of the strictly scientific/tech articles get little traffic and those that do the traffic normally focuses around the politics of the science over the real meat of the science and technology. Most of the rest of the posts are jokes, mostly lame. The politics articles are big among readers. The Linux articles have just as much bashing of MS as they do on-topic Linux posts. Pop-Geek culture articles are also fantastic for postings. Sometimes looking at the dynamics of the posts on Slashdot and the few articles that have real technical information in them makes me wonder how many Slashdotters are really into geekdom and how many are what I call Comic Book Geeks.
Seriously, go check sites like Devx.com or TechRepublic. There is normally some really great technical articles floating around, especially DevX. I bet you the number of visitors is substantially lower then that of Slashdot. These are articles and discussions that embrace the technology as technology, for the most part, over the politics of the technology.
Slashdot is much too casual for serious "down to the numbers" articles to generate any real interest. KDawson's articles being fairly popular on the site are part of the culture that most users embrace.
Again, I'm not beating on it, as much as I'm not into KDawson either, but Slashdot needs those kinds of articles. It's Rob's bread and butter regardless if he wants it to be or not.
It's neat to be able to relate to the Slashdot culture but within itself it doesn't speak much for technology and the "geek" moniker that I hold up proud. And as much as I don't slight others for being Slashdotters it doesn't bring much to a conversation to mention a Slashdot article while discussing the more serious side of tech, IMHO.
I guess I'm kind of rambling at this point but I think Slashdot has undergone a transition in the last few years that makes it much more casual and because of that KDawson prospers with the newer Slashdot users.
My guess is that they don't like having him read Slashdot while he's at work. A lot of companies have this kind of policy.
Yes, but would they actually do that? There's a hell of a lot more money to be made by treating the symptoms, rather than curing the disease.
Not for long.
Supposing that this could cure the disease outright; you patent the drug so that no others could produce it. You sit on the patent until it expires. It becomes free game for all and you haven't made a dime from all of your R&D. Now all your competitors get to walk the golden brick road without lifting a finger or throwing a royalty your way.
What a brilliant business model. Think about it.
I also know of a recent heart attack victim - at 58, who had eaten essentially a vegetarian diet for 15 years prior to the attack.
Don't buy into the lie. That's the lie where vegetarian = healthy.
I've been a vegetarian for about 2/3 of my life. I know plenty of other vegetarians. I'm overweight, many others I know are overweight. Just being a vegetarian by itself doesn't mean anything beyond "I don't eat meat".
There are a million ways to do the vegetarian diet wrong just like any other diet.
Am I better off with my current intake and exercise program as I would be with meat? Potentially, but don't hold me to it. I'm sure I'm still reaping some of the benefits of it but that doesn't make it an absolute cure for anything aside from knowing that I'm not going to choke to death on a chicken bone.
Why are you waughing? I have a very close fweind named Biggus Dickus.
I demand that you stop waughing!
because MS's business is mainly about using restrictive copyright licensing to make sure they're the only ones controlling the software on PCs, which quite different from what IBM's business is
IBM's business being hardware is the real difference.
To try to predict the future of MS from the failures of IBM isn't realistic. IBM was more like what Apple would be today if they had the marketshare.
I've run several version of PS and GIMP on XP and without some specifics I don't think that XP is the problem. I still think people are getting too much lip service in the area of GIMP being a peer to PS. It's just hyped far too much.
But I will say that GIMP is great for what it is. I know nothing of Paint.net but so far GIMP is the best and most functional free software of it's nature out there. It's a great place for people without the cash or the experience to get into graphics/photo manipulation without putting any real money down.
I will have to check out Paint.net though. Thanks.
they'll be encouraged to submit feedback via the product feedback center
In some ways I'd rather see these things organized "under one roof". As long as the product feedback center is responsive I don't think this is going to be a big deal for most.
Of course they're not having sex. That goes without saying. After all, they're Star Wars geeks.
What about a 360 for $360? Why does that play the latest games when a comparably priced PC can't?
Could it be subsidies? Come on now, this has been the topic of many Slashdot stories. Why is it that people are glad to point this out when it's a bash against MS but so soon to forget it when the low price of a 360 works in their favor? If you didn't know that MS was taking a big loss on every 360 I'm sorry to slam you in this fashion but if you knew about it you shouldn't be asking these kinds of questions.
It sounds like you just took my statement, added some pepper, and threw it back at me like it was a counter-argument.
I guess that's true if you see every reply to your post as an argument.
Thanks for the reply back and you do bring up some good points but what about the Kordylewski cloud? If it is real, and I see no reason that it wouldn't be, wouldn't this be worse then moon dust? At least moon dust is somewhat stable until disturbed, the dust in L5 would be a constant plague, it seems.
The main obstacle to gaming on the Windows platform is Windows - that is, the amount of memory the operating system soaks up just for being around. There, however, you can just slap on some more memory and you're good to go.
Maybe if Joe Sixpack wasn't buying the Best Buy 499.95 special and expecting it to play the latest games...
For the most part the only time I hear complaints out of Windows gamers is the ones that don't have enough cash to buy their own gear and have to live off of mommy and daddy's hand me downs.
Bitch about the memory and pat yourself on the back all you want but when is the last time a gig of ram cost more then the latest PS3 title? In perspective the issue of buying an off-the-shelf PC to play games on and adding the ram yourself is normally going to cost you less then the sales tax on most new machines.
And this isn't to defend Windows because I know where you're coming from but it's time that we need to step back and finally tell the low end gamers who want to step up that they're going to have to spend a little money to do it. I have a three year old PC that I got an extra stick of ram for that plays HL2 and it's assorted goodies just fine. I have a year old laptop that I can say the same thing about.
All in all it amazes me the number of people who customize their PC off of Dell or HP and skimp on the memory only to have it bite them in the ass when they install games on it.
Apple is not stupid, they know that gaming on a Mac won't add much, however it is inevitable if Mac is ever going to be viable in the mass market. No those few percentage points don't count.
Apple would be stupid if they see gamers as a few percentage points. I see gamers being the 80/20 of hardware sales. Gamers easily buy the most new cutting edge hardware of anyone running the desktop even if their numbers in the overall desktop community is a minority.
If Apple prides itself on producing high end system they would be wise to lure in gamers who also pride themselves in being the buyers of high end systems.
If the iPod fashion wave of Apple dies anytime soon they're going to have people sitting on the same boxes for years since they work. The only serious faction of the desktop community that looks to replace working hardware with any real numbers is the gamers. Gamers have such a high turnover for hardware that their minority numbers would bulk up to much more.