MPEG-4 has use fees, you have to pay per hour per viewer for media
Wrong. Where do you get this disinformation? You buy the encoder, a very small part of that money goes from the developer to pay for the license. You don't have to pay a fee for each clip you encode, let alone per hour per viewer. That's just crazy.
If you use an open source encoder, I have no idea how the license fee gets passed on, but for commercial software it's the software developer, not the content producer nor the viewer.
"Dogme" 95 (heh) are incredible purists. Generally, on one of these big shows, when they seem to be using "available light", they're using "every available light".
It can seriously take a shitload of lights (usually smaller instruments) to produce something that looks natural and is still watchable. I've only seen one episode (last weeks), and I'd want to see it again (preferablly on recorded media so I can stop and look at frames) before offering any final pronouncements, but I don't recall any scenes that looked muddy to me. They didn't stint on lighting.
The whole point of dogma 95, as I'm sure you know, is that an artist really doesn't need a truck full of lights and a truck full of grip equipment to create compelling content. The point of a cinematographer on a feature or TV series is to use every light on the truck, and to order a few extras for the day from the nearest rental house. =)
What a writer (or other artist) leaves out is as important as what he or she includes. In the case of BSG (of which I finally have seen an episode, the one with Zarek), the ambiguity is enjoyable to a thoughtful person, because a thoughtful person knows that life is filled with ambiguity.
Unfortunately, they also lost some of that delicious ambiguity at the end, when the president revealed that she has cancer. Maybe this is important to the overall story arc for the total show, but for the episode itself it gave us that "reassurance" that the BSG leadership were the "good guys". Such reassurances before the credits I find discouraging. It's like they've been challenging us, but now they have to give the answers so the morons can keep up.
Is Tom Zarek a terrorist or a prisoner of conscience? We don't know, because the writers don't tell us. We're not allowed to know, because which one he is isn't important.
If you mean, which one is he is not important to the plot, then agreed. However, whether he is a terrorist or a freedom fighter is obviously an important question, other wise we wouldn't be asking it, and wouldn't be troubled by the lack of an clear answer or cue from the writers. And a thoughtful viewer might go beyond the show and start asking that question in real life, if they haven't already.
Anyway, pardon my lack of clarity on this. You generally seem much better at concisely explaining your positions, and I feel this post is wanting in that regard. Hopefully you get what I'm saying despite my shortcomings.
Everytime I hear action alert I picture a big, hairy, burly, castrated man in a pink tutu prancing around the stage saying it in a very feminine fashion.
A war movie/series? Try a geeks softcore porn fantacy with all the sex scenes.
Ugh. I don't even know where to start. =) Too each his own, I guess.
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you Mac fanatics?
Anyway, the original can be found at Kottke.org, from Nov 25, 1998 (Scroll to the bottom).
What I like about the Kottke troll is that it is so versatile. You can substitute brands and products for comedic effect. For instance:
I don't want to start a holy war here, but what is the deal with you <b>iPod</b> fanatics? I've been sitting here at my freelance gig in front of an <b>iPod Shuffle (1 GB)</b> for about 20 minutes now while it attempts to play an <b>Ogg Vorbis</b> file. 20 minutes. At home, on my <i>iRiveriGP-100</i>, which by all standards should be a lot slower than this iPod, the same operation would take about 2 minutes. If that.
I'm not saying you're an idiot, I'm just saying that your reasoning contains a fallacy, that there is something illogical in your argument. It just stands to reason that the set of DVD buyers/renters contains the subset of premium cable owners that are DVD buyers/renters, not the other way around.
However, I'll happily agree to disagree with you. I might not respect your opinion, but you come across as a gentleman (or person) in your posts here on slashdot (which is a lot more than I can say for myself), and I have to respect that.
You may well be right that Cable TV has already adequately solved this problem (though I didn't know that PPV and OnDemand was searchable and offered large persistent catalogs), but I still think you're way off on the target market. Just because most premium cable customers also rent or buy DVDs does NOT mean that most DVD renters/buyers are also premium cable customers. Do you see your fallacy?
I think the basic problems is that you're a bunch of geeks who aren't knowledgable about this area, and your trying to apply your knowledge about another area.
First of all, drop the dpi. That's printing terminology.
Second, unless you absolutely know what the display hardware is, ppi is going to be meaningless, and get you into trouble.
4K refers to the size of the frame. If you're working with (or talking about) digital movies, there's no ppi or dpi. There's frame size.
Film can be digitized as high as 6K. What makes film resolution variable is film stocks, lenses, and aperture. For instance, if you use a zoom lens, which is not going to be as sharp as a prime lens, you're not going to be able to get as much information. Zooms don't have the same resolving power.
Look. All I'm saying is that if you're going to argue about comparisons of on-the-fly rendering and film resolution, know what the hell you're talking about. Otherwise, you're not much better than the marketeers.
But Softman wasn't about an end user, it was about a distributor unbundling Adobe software collections and reselling them. In that case, I believe First Sale doctrine took precedence over the EULA.
Okay,I know not everyone has a cable box, but assuming the primary market for downloadable movies are people with either digital cable or satelite capable of movies-on-demand, I am having a hard time seeing how this is better.
The primary market is people with internet connections (presumably broadband), and some way of watching the movie (TV, computer display, portable media player).
You're making an assumption similar to those made by IBM that there was no market for the PC because customers using mainframes didn't need/want them.
My theory is that the Studios lean Democrat in campaign contributions because California on the whole is a pretty much democratic state (although we do seem to like Republican Govs), and the elected reps for the areas where the studios are actually elected tend to be dems.
However, one needn't worry that there is a huge imbalance. Obscene amounts of money go to both parties from the giant media teat.
Slashdot Mirror
MPEG-4 has use fees, you have to pay per hour per viewer for media
Wrong. Where do you get this disinformation? You buy the encoder, a very small part of that money goes from the developer to pay for the license. You don't have to pay a fee for each clip you encode, let alone per hour per viewer. That's just crazy.
If you use an open source encoder, I have no idea how the license fee gets passed on, but for commercial software it's the software developer, not the content producer nor the viewer.
I'm sure someone, somewhere has written a script to use XTraceRoute on IPs in log files. That would be prior art.
LOL. Perhaps I should thank you for making me look like a complete idiot, but I probably should take complete credit for that. =)
Anyway, I did like what I saw of that first episode enough to want to watch it again this week.
"Dogme" 95 (heh) are incredible purists. Generally, on one of these big shows, when they seem to be using "available light", they're using "every available light".
It can seriously take a shitload of lights (usually smaller instruments) to produce something that looks natural and is still watchable. I've only seen one episode (last weeks), and I'd want to see it again (preferablly on recorded media so I can stop and look at frames) before offering any final pronouncements, but I don't recall any scenes that looked muddy to me. They didn't stint on lighting.
The whole point of dogma 95, as I'm sure you know, is that an artist really doesn't need a truck full of lights and a truck full of grip equipment to create compelling content. The point of a cinematographer on a feature or TV series is to use every light on the truck, and to order a few extras for the day from the nearest rental house. =)
What a writer (or other artist) leaves out is as important as what he or she includes. In the case of BSG (of which I finally have seen an episode, the one with Zarek), the ambiguity is enjoyable to a thoughtful person, because a thoughtful person knows that life is filled with ambiguity.
Unfortunately, they also lost some of that delicious ambiguity at the end, when the president revealed that she has cancer. Maybe this is important to the overall story arc for the total show, but for the episode itself it gave us that "reassurance" that the BSG leadership were the "good guys". Such reassurances before the credits I find discouraging. It's like they've been challenging us, but now they have to give the answers so the morons can keep up.
Is Tom Zarek a terrorist or a prisoner of conscience? We don't know, because the writers don't tell us. We're not allowed to know, because which one he is isn't important.
If you mean, which one is he is not important to the plot, then agreed. However, whether he is a terrorist or a freedom fighter is obviously an important question, other wise we wouldn't be asking it, and wouldn't be troubled by the lack of an clear answer or cue from the writers. And a thoughtful viewer might go beyond the show and start asking that question in real life, if they haven't already.
Anyway, pardon my lack of clarity on this. You generally seem much better at concisely explaining your positions, and I feel this post is wanting in that regard. Hopefully you get what I'm saying despite my shortcomings.
Everytime I hear action alert I picture a big, hairy, burly, castrated man in a pink tutu prancing around the stage saying it in a very feminine fashion.
A war movie/series? Try a geeks softcore porn fantacy with all the sex scenes.
Ugh. I don't even know where to start. =) Too each his own, I guess.
"Mongo merely pawn in game of life."
What I like about the Kottke troll is that it is so versatile. You can substitute brands and products for comedic effect. For instance:Hilarity ensues.
I'm not saying you're an idiot, I'm just saying that your reasoning contains a fallacy, that there is something illogical in your argument. It just stands to reason that the set of DVD buyers/renters contains the subset of premium cable owners that are DVD buyers/renters, not the other way around.
However, I'll happily agree to disagree with you. I might not respect your opinion, but you come across as a gentleman (or person) in your posts here on slashdot (which is a lot more than I can say for myself), and I have to respect that.
You are a fool. It's not just about being locked up. It's about who you're locked up with. You've got a very naive idea of what prison is like.
I'm the families of the victims of Ted Bundy would agree with you.
If your MPD is that severe, you should get professional help immediately.
Hehehe. Funny thing is that I have seen gummy gameboys.
You may well be right that Cable TV has already adequately solved this problem (though I didn't know that PPV and OnDemand was searchable and offered large persistent catalogs), but I still think you're way off on the target market. Just because most premium cable customers also rent or buy DVDs does NOT mean that most DVD renters/buyers are also premium cable customers. Do you see your fallacy?
You want wireless fries with that?
No shit?! But I bet they don't have any big players, say like Phillips, Freescale, Samsung, or MaxStream.
I think the basic problems is that you're a bunch of geeks who aren't knowledgable about this area, and your trying to apply your knowledge about another area.
First of all, drop the dpi. That's printing terminology.
Second, unless you absolutely know what the display hardware is, ppi is going to be meaningless, and get you into trouble.
4K refers to the size of the frame. If you're working with (or talking about) digital movies, there's no ppi or dpi. There's frame size.
Film can be digitized as high as 6K. What makes film resolution variable is film stocks, lenses, and aperture. For instance, if you use a zoom lens, which is not going to be as sharp as a prime lens, you're not going to be able to get as much information. Zooms don't have the same resolving power.
Look. All I'm saying is that if you're going to argue about comparisons of on-the-fly rendering and film resolution, know what the hell you're talking about. Otherwise, you're not much better than the marketeers.
When you talk about 4K resolution, you're talking about 4K per frame, not per inch.
4000dpi on a 100 foot (diagonal) screen? Are you making movies about fractals?
What are you, some kind of GNU/Commie? ESR-Capitalist? Microsoft Nazi? (Or a paid OS X shill?)
The Meow Empire is gonna be pissed you left them off the list.
But Softman wasn't about an end user, it was about a distributor unbundling Adobe software collections and reselling them. In that case, I believe First Sale doctrine took precedence over the EULA.
Okay,I know not everyone has a cable box, but assuming the primary market for downloadable movies are people with either digital cable or satelite capable of movies-on-demand, I am having a hard time seeing how this is better.
The primary market is people with internet connections (presumably broadband), and some way of watching the movie (TV, computer display, portable media player).
You're making an assumption similar to those made by IBM that there was no market for the PC because customers using mainframes didn't need/want them.
That number gets skewed seriously upward when you add the Korean Gamer demographic.
that Yoda had a side gig as a chiropractor?
In Soviet Russia, the lotion puts its skin on YOU!
My theory is that the Studios lean Democrat in campaign contributions because California on the whole is a pretty much democratic state (although we do seem to like Republican Govs), and the elected reps for the areas where the studios are actually elected tend to be dems.
However, one needn't worry that there is a huge imbalance. Obscene amounts of money go to both parties from the giant media teat.