Personally, I'd rather have my neighbourhood controlled by the mafia than street thugs.
Until, of course, those mafiosos go to Congress and start lobbying for laws that extend their dominion by conscripting the power of the Federal Government. Then you wish you had the street gangs again.
Avatar was a highly engrossing (both to the viewer and the bottom line) film even without the 3D
IMO Avatar wasn't even engrossing in 3D and on video it's a complete and utter turd. It got its reputation and popularity by being the first blue LED and a enormous bore after the 3D effect wore off. In a few years, it will become the biggest money making movie that nobody ever watches anymore.
You're entitled to your opinion. Me, I liked it. Besides, the first blue LED here was probably Jurassic Park... not totally computer-generated (well, then again, neither was Avatar) but it was about the first totally mind-boggling example of CG.
Not only that, I'm just waiting for the day when not having an online social network will be considered a "bad" thing. Kind of like how not having a credit history makes you a: bad credit risk - worse than having bad credit, unemployable, a terrorist (the TSA does credit checks when flying to see if you a "risk"), etc...
So what if it does? Just post a few nice pictures of yourself with your family and be done with it. Hell, make up anything you want about yourself that you think a prospective employer would want to read.
I don't think that many right-leaning managers would be able to hire somebody like him after seeing his Facebook profile. His blatant homosexuality would probably trigger the guilt those managers feel regarding their own repressed homosexuality, and they just wouldn't hire him, although skill-wise he was clearly the best candidate for the job. At least left-leaning managers tend to be more open to individualism among their employees.
Left-leaning, right-leaning... those are just words.
What it comes down to is that you have no idea what prejudices a potential employer has. You can't, so it's always best to play things close to the vest. Matter of fact, that's good advice even after you're hired: just go to work, do your job well, and then go home to your private life. You're not being paid to express your inner self: you're being paid to do a job. Truth is, though, your average employer is not going to give a damn about your bizarro personal life, whether you like your asshole reamed by throbbing meaty cocks, that you're into hamster-stuffing, that you're a heavy-duty partier, or any of the myriad other oddball things people are into... as long as you don't rub his or her face in it. Remember, that employer has to worry about how you are going to affect the other people who work for him or her, and will also be concerned about what his boss thinks about who he hires. Furthermore, no matter how valuable you may think you are, how much you believe an employer should overlook your particular peculiarities, in today's job market odds are he has another resume just as impressive as yours sitting on his desk, from someone who made a much better first impression.
What's troubling a lot of job seekers nowadays is that they're finding out their online presence has already made that impression for them. Is that right or wrong? Well, your online presence is largely your own responsibility: you put it out there, and you can't really blame an interviewer for trying to find out all they can about a candidate. Keep in mind that resumes, job interviews, and for that matter Facebook pages provide only limited information to a potential employer. Thus, it behooves you, the candidate, to be very, very careful with your presentation. Think twice about what you post about yourself. It may very well come back to haunt you.
Some people that feel they have the right to be free to express their true selves wherever they may be. To a great extent, that is true in the U.S. However, those same people often think they should be equally free of other people's opinions of them... and that's just foolish. The law says that you cannot be discriminated against for certain attributes, true, but says nothing at all about most other things. Fact is, if you behave or appear too far outside the norm, you are going to limit your employability in most cases. A prospective employer doesn't have to tell you that it's your sexual preferences, your body modifications, your ink, your purple striped hair, the drunken photos of you on your Facebook page, or indeed anything that contributed to his decision to hire someone else. He just won't call you back for that second interview. Look, that's just the way it is, and denying it is like spittin' into the wind.
There is nothing wrong about doing good due diligence before lending money.
Sure... up to a point. And that point was passed when banks, lenders and businesses linked up nationwide to share information about their customers.
The entire credit system in this country (and others I suppose, but I only know what goes on in the U.S.) serve only to insulate companies from what are the normal costs of doing business. That is its purpose: it is not there for your benefit, not there for mine. Prior to the rise of the credit bureaus, a business would deem a customer worthy by its own history with said customer, or maybe by asking the outfit next door. They did not do this by combing the complete financial histories of a potential customer, wherever he might be, wherever he might have lived. We get all gnarly when the government builds giant databases on us, keeps profiles on us, tracks us, and makes decisions about that information that affect us. Nobody seems too bothered about the credit bureaus, which is odd given that the average consumer has issues with them far more frequently than he does with government. The credit system has done nothing but screw consumers over, time and again, and the more money the people that run the financial system in this country squander, the more they use their pet monstrosity to milk even more money from the consumer.
The Big Three wield tremendous power over us, power that no private sector organization should have. Of course, that applies to anyone or anything that likes to collect lots and lots of personal information and sell it. Face it, when you concentrate pretty much anything, it may have value to someone, but it invariably becomes dangerous to someone else.
It will be interesting to see how many other directors learn from Cameron's willingness to try to do it right.
Oh, I suspect they will. Right now they're still playing on the novelty aspect of 3D motion pictures (even though they've been around, in one form or another, for decades.)
What do you mean, unenforceable? Whenever you purchase a blank disc, a certain percentage goes to compensate the artists for your piracy. If you're an American citizen, you're a music pirate. At least, that's how the RIAA looks at the matter.
Please, please read the parent comment and try to comprehend why this post is so important to understand.
It's sad just how many always overlook the obvious.
It's equally sad how many people just don't understand the depravity involved here. They really don't. A good place to start would be Ray Beckerman's blog (RIAA-focused but nevertheless informative) and since this new lawsuit factory appears to be emulating the RIAA model, probably very relevant.
There's absolutely no way they could have known they'd get that result.
I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. These people apparently knew the cops, and got the result they wanted... a wrist slap. The cops just did them a favor, no big deal, and that was the end of the matter so far as local law enforcement was concerned. Nobody got busted. I know what you're trying to say, but it doesn't apply in this case.
The point I'm making is that the Feds got wind of this (I think from a news report) and saw an opportunity to make some money by abusing (and I mean, seriously abusing) the RICO Act. Those people were no more drug dealers than I am (or you probably are, for that matter), did not get anything resembling due process, likely never got their day in court. They just lost everything, all for trying to teach their retarded kid something. It's sickening. The FBI agent who did this should have been fired and forced to make restitution.
"The wrong view of religion betrays itself in the craving to be right; for it is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of faith, but his persistent and recklessly uncritical quest to promote a worldview in diametric opposition of what is."
I like this-- did you write that or could you supply an attribution?
Nope, just paraphrased it from the previous poster's quote from a Sir Karl Popper. Granted, I completely inverted his meaning, but that was the intent.
Until you can make 3D TVs which don't require glasses and do allow you to show objects which go outside the screen, it will always be a gimmick.
I disagree. My friend, you completely misunderestimate the buying public's capacity to accept pretty much anything so long as it costs more than the previous generation, and is shinier.
It's true, if you get headaches from 3d, you will never be forced to get a 3d TV, since consumers are never forced into upgrading their equipment ever.
Now if you excuse me, I have to go buy "Inception" on VHS...
Well, as long as that 3D television set still plays 2D content with the quality to which we're currently accustomed, I don't really care.
This latest crop of 2D-to-3D technology is best used in 5-minute amusement park rides, where all the other 3D tech belongs. At best, it provides a few cool moments during the action scenes. At worst, you have a headache after too many blurry shapes try to trick your brain into seeing depth that isn't there and have to stop watching.
Depends. If the actual content holds your interest (and I admit, about the only example of that which I can think of is Avatar) you don't even notice. Contrast that to Alice in Wonderland or Journey to the Center of the Earth. I damn near walked out of the theater while watching the latter two, because the 3D effect made me ill. So did Avatar, to a degree, but I enjoyed the movie so much I didn't care.
We're in the "blue LED phase" of 3D right now, where everyone is using it just because it's new. Once the novelty wears off it will start to be used more sensibly. Although I'd argue that we still haven't reached that point with blue LEDs either:)
Yeah. A couple of years ago at work we installed a new HP inkjet printer in our department. It went into its internal diagnostic/setup rouitne, and a bright blue LED started going back and forth like a demented Cylon. We all stared at it in awe, until it finally stopped. Then one of the guys reached out and pressed the self-test button again.
However, I'd argue that 3D movies have already gotten past the blue LED phase. Certainly Cameron's Avatar was a highly engrossing (both to the viewer and the bottom line) film even without the 3D, and without throwing somebody's yo-yo in your face (like "Journey to the Center of the Earth", which was nothing but a vehicle to show off 3D effects and little else.) Of course, few filmmakers are of Cameron's caliber, and many just depend upon special effects to try and carry the day (yeah, Mr. Lucas, I'm lookin' at you.)
How about this simple argument: if person A wants to fuck person B, and person B wants to pay them to do it, who the fuck are you to tell them that they're not allowed to?
Yes. Most people want sex more than they want alcohol, I'd say, and remember what happened the last time we tried to ban that.
Singh may need to learn a bit more on just how inaccurate most of our historical readings truly are -- but that's not his field.
Well, as someone who's spent most of his career developing data acquisition systems, I tend to agree with you, and even the most well-designed instrumentation can (as you say) suffer from deployment and installation issues. Want another example? Human body temperature. 19th century research was dependent upon 19th measuring technology: making crucial public policy decisions on old data that is likely flawed is very dangerous. Yet, that's exactly what we're doing in the case of global warming.
Money is important, but less important than one's life have a meaning.
In other words, it's nice to know that when you're gone you'll be remembered for something other than "I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but my God he was a selfish prick."
Yeah. Priorities change. Well, they do in most of us, I think... the need to acquire wealth and/or power never dies in some people. Here in the U.S. we call such individuals "CEOs" or "politicians".
The wrong view of science betrays itself in the craving to be right; for it is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth.
Sir Karl Popper
Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right. -- Isaac Asimov
One could also say this:
"The wrong view of religion betrays itself in the craving to be right; for it is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of faith, but his persistent and recklessly uncritical quest to promote a worldview in diametric opposition of what is."
I think that quote actually have happened. Some online porn company had charged various people for services they had failed to deliver, got a court order to pay their customers back, but sent checks in the company name easily readable.
I'd deposit the check anyway. Don't much care what some anonymous person in a check processing room thinks of me.
DMCA safe haven, thats what. Its the same that keeps youtube "floating".
True enough, but even if an infringing download is not removed, you still have to go to court, and win. You can't pull RIAA-style courtroom shenanigans with an outfit that has lawyers who charge just as much per hour as yours do. It's much more profitable (and provides much better PR, if you can call it that) if you just attack individual infringers with default judgments and threaten their livelihoods unless they cough up some dough and settle out of court.
Face it, the content industry is owned and operated by people with a gangster mentality, otherwise the RIAA would never have been funded to the level that permitted their lawsuit mill to go forward. Ditto for the MPAA. Remember, those two groups are not exactly autonomous: they have masters they serve, and whose marching orders they follow.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I'd rather have my neighbourhood controlled by the mafia than street thugs.
Until, of course, those mafiosos go to Congress and start lobbying for laws that extend their dominion by conscripting the power of the Federal Government. Then you wish you had the street gangs again.
Avatar was a highly engrossing (both to the viewer and the bottom line) film even without the 3D
IMO Avatar wasn't even engrossing in 3D and on video it's a complete and utter turd. It got its reputation and popularity by being the first blue LED and a enormous bore after the 3D effect wore off. In a few years, it will become the biggest money making movie that nobody ever watches anymore.
You're entitled to your opinion. Me, I liked it. Besides, the first blue LED here was probably Jurassic Park ... not totally computer-generated (well, then again, neither was Avatar) but it was about the first totally mind-boggling example of CG.
1. I didn't see either but have heard exactly the opposite - The Alice was great fun and well worth the effort but Avatar was boring and preachy.
2. Piranha 3d has 3d nakedness. What's not to like?
Me, I thought Alice was well executed technically but not that interesting, Avatar was way cool, and, uh ... Piranha has nakedness? I
Not only that, I'm just waiting for the day when not having an online social network will be considered a "bad" thing. Kind of like how not having a credit history makes you a: bad credit risk - worse than having bad credit, unemployable, a terrorist (the TSA does credit checks when flying to see if you a "risk"), etc...
So what if it does? Just post a few nice pictures of yourself with your family and be done with it. Hell, make up anything you want about yourself that you think a prospective employer would want to read.
I don't think that many right-leaning managers would be able to hire somebody like him after seeing his Facebook profile. His blatant homosexuality would probably trigger the guilt those managers feel regarding their own repressed homosexuality, and they just wouldn't hire him, although skill-wise he was clearly the best candidate for the job. At least left-leaning managers tend to be more open to individualism among their employees.
Left-leaning, right-leaning ... those are just words.
... as long as you don't rub his or her face in it. Remember, that employer has to worry about how you are going to affect the other people who work for him or her, and will also be concerned about what his boss thinks about who he hires. Furthermore, no matter how valuable you may think you are, how much you believe an employer should overlook your particular peculiarities, in today's job market odds are he has another resume just as impressive as yours sitting on his desk, from someone who made a much better first impression.
... and that's just foolish. The law says that you cannot be discriminated against for certain attributes, true, but says nothing at all about most other things. Fact is, if you behave or appear too far outside the norm, you are going to limit your employability in most cases. A prospective employer doesn't have to tell you that it's your sexual preferences, your body modifications, your ink, your purple striped hair, the drunken photos of you on your Facebook page, or indeed anything that contributed to his decision to hire someone else. He just won't call you back for that second interview. Look, that's just the way it is, and denying it is like spittin' into the wind.
What it comes down to is that you have no idea what prejudices a potential employer has. You can't, so it's always best to play things close to the vest. Matter of fact, that's good advice even after you're hired: just go to work, do your job well, and then go home to your private life. You're not being paid to express your inner self: you're being paid to do a job. Truth is, though, your average employer is not going to give a damn about your bizarro personal life, whether you like your asshole reamed by throbbing meaty cocks, that you're into hamster-stuffing, that you're a heavy-duty partier, or any of the myriad other oddball things people are into
What's troubling a lot of job seekers nowadays is that they're finding out their online presence has already made that impression for them. Is that right or wrong? Well, your online presence is largely your own responsibility: you put it out there, and you can't really blame an interviewer for trying to find out all they can about a candidate. Keep in mind that resumes, job interviews, and for that matter Facebook pages provide only limited information to a potential employer. Thus, it behooves you, the candidate, to be very, very careful with your presentation. Think twice about what you post about yourself. It may very well come back to haunt you.
Some people that feel they have the right to be free to express their true selves wherever they may be. To a great extent, that is true in the U.S. However, those same people often think they should be equally free of other people's opinions of them
There is nothing wrong about doing good due diligence before lending money.
Sure ... up to a point. And that point was passed when banks, lenders and businesses linked up nationwide to share information about their customers.
The entire credit system in this country (and others I suppose, but I only know what goes on in the U.S.) serve only to insulate companies from what are the normal costs of doing business. That is its purpose: it is not there for your benefit, not there for mine. Prior to the rise of the credit bureaus, a business would deem a customer worthy by its own history with said customer, or maybe by asking the outfit next door. They did not do this by combing the complete financial histories of a potential customer, wherever he might be, wherever he might have lived. We get all gnarly when the government builds giant databases on us, keeps profiles on us, tracks us, and makes decisions about that information that affect us. Nobody seems too bothered about the credit bureaus, which is odd given that the average consumer has issues with them far more frequently than he does with government. The credit system has done nothing but screw consumers over, time and again, and the more money the people that run the financial system in this country squander, the more they use their pet monstrosity to milk even more money from the consumer.
The Big Three wield tremendous power over us, power that no private sector organization should have. Of course, that applies to anyone or anything that likes to collect lots and lots of personal information and sell it. Face it, when you concentrate pretty much anything, it may have value to someone, but it invariably becomes dangerous to someone else.
I'm going to go one step further and say, 3d screens better play 3d content in 2d if I want.
No problem. Just close one eye.
If the actual content holds your interest (and I admit, about the only example of that which I can think of is Avatar) you don't even notice.
The only reason Avatar kept my interest was by keeping me busy counting how many times Cameron ripped off his VASTLY superior prior movie, Aliens.
Good point. Man amplifiers seem to be one of his favorites, that's for sure.
It will be interesting to see how many other directors learn from Cameron's willingness to try to do it right.
Oh, I suspect they will. Right now they're still playing on the novelty aspect of 3D motion pictures (even though they've been around, in one form or another, for decades.)
tax levied on blank media sold in the U.S
is an unenforceable tax still considered a tax?
What do you mean, unenforceable? Whenever you purchase a blank disc, a certain percentage goes to compensate the artists for your piracy. If you're an American citizen, you're a music pirate. At least, that's how the RIAA looks at the matter.
Please, please read the parent comment and try to comprehend why this post is so important to understand.
It's sad just how many always overlook the obvious.
It's equally sad how many people just don't understand the depravity involved here. They really don't. A good place to start would be Ray Beckerman's blog (RIAA-focused but nevertheless informative) and since this new lawsuit factory appears to be emulating the RIAA model, probably very relevant.
There's absolutely no way they could have known they'd get that result.
I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. These people apparently knew the cops, and got the result they wanted ... a wrist slap. The cops just did them a favor, no big deal, and that was the end of the matter so far as local law enforcement was concerned. Nobody got busted. I know what you're trying to say, but it doesn't apply in this case.
The point I'm making is that the Feds got wind of this (I think from a news report) and saw an opportunity to make some money by abusing (and I mean, seriously abusing) the RICO Act. Those people were no more drug dealers than I am (or you probably are, for that matter), did not get anything resembling due process, likely never got their day in court. They just lost everything, all for trying to teach their retarded kid something. It's sickening. The FBI agent who did this should have been fired and forced to make restitution.
All that over one marijuana plant.
Whatever it is that makes this not the case, be it badly written law or overreliance on procedure, reduces the not-rich to second-class citizens.
The not-rich are already second-class ... this makes them something less than that.
"The wrong view of religion betrays itself in the craving to be right; for it is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of faith, but his persistent and recklessly uncritical quest to promote a worldview in diametric opposition of what is."
I like this-- did you write that or could you supply an attribution?
Nope, just paraphrased it from the previous poster's quote from a Sir Karl Popper. Granted, I completely inverted his meaning, but that was the intent.
Until you can make 3D TVs which don't require glasses and do allow you to show objects which go outside the screen, it will always be a gimmick.
I disagree. My friend, you completely misunderestimate the buying public's capacity to accept pretty much anything so long as it costs more than the previous generation, and is shinier.
No-one is forcing you to buy it anyways
It's true, if you get headaches from 3d, you will never be forced to get a 3d TV, since consumers are never forced into upgrading their equipment ever.
Now if you excuse me, I have to go buy "Inception" on VHS...
Well, as long as that 3D television set still plays 2D content with the quality to which we're currently accustomed, I don't really care.
This latest crop of 2D-to-3D technology is best used in 5-minute amusement park rides, where all the other 3D tech belongs. At best, it provides a few cool moments during the action scenes. At worst, you have a headache after too many blurry shapes try to trick your brain into seeing depth that isn't there and have to stop watching.
Depends. If the actual content holds your interest (and I admit, about the only example of that which I can think of is Avatar) you don't even notice. Contrast that to Alice in Wonderland or Journey to the Center of the Earth. I damn near walked out of the theater while watching the latter two, because the 3D effect made me ill. So did Avatar, to a degree, but I enjoyed the movie so much I didn't care.
We're in the "blue LED phase" of 3D right now, where everyone is using it just because it's new. Once the novelty wears off it will start to be used more sensibly. Although I'd argue that we still haven't reached that point with blue LEDs either :)
Yeah. A couple of years ago at work we installed a new HP inkjet printer in our department. It went into its internal diagnostic/setup rouitne, and a bright blue LED started going back and forth like a demented Cylon. We all stared at it in awe, until it finally stopped. Then one of the guys reached out and pressed the self-test button again.
However, I'd argue that 3D movies have already gotten past the blue LED phase. Certainly Cameron's Avatar was a highly engrossing (both to the viewer and the bottom line) film even without the 3D, and without throwing somebody's yo-yo in your face (like "Journey to the Center of the Earth", which was nothing but a vehicle to show off 3D effects and little else.) Of course, few filmmakers are of Cameron's caliber, and many just depend upon special effects to try and carry the day (yeah, Mr. Lucas, I'm lookin' at you.)
How about this simple argument: if person A wants to fuck person B, and person B wants to pay them to do it, who the fuck are you to tell them that they're not allowed to?
Yes. Most people want sex more than they want alcohol, I'd say, and remember what happened the last time we tried to ban that.
Singh may need to learn a bit more on just how inaccurate most of our historical readings truly are -- but that's not his field.
Well, as someone who's spent most of his career developing data acquisition systems, I tend to agree with you, and even the most well-designed instrumentation can (as you say) suffer from deployment and installation issues. Want another example? Human body temperature. 19th century research was dependent upon 19th measuring technology: making crucial public policy decisions on old data that is likely flawed is very dangerous. Yet, that's exactly what we're doing in the case of global warming.
Money is important, but less important than one's life have a meaning.
In other words, it's nice to know that when you're gone you'll be remembered for something other than "I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but my God he was a selfish prick."
... the need to acquire wealth and/or power never dies in some people. Here in the U.S. we call such individuals "CEOs" or "politicians".
Yeah. Priorities change. Well, they do in most of us, I think
The wrong view of science betrays itself in the craving to be right; for it is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of science, but his persistent and recklessly critical quest for truth. Sir Karl Popper
Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what's right. -- Isaac Asimov
One could also say this: "The wrong view of religion betrays itself in the craving to be right; for it is not his possession of knowledge, of irrefutable truth, that makes the man of faith, but his persistent and recklessly uncritical quest to promote a worldview in diametric opposition of what is."
Clearly, we need to relax copyright law in order to hurt the porn industry, for the sake of the children.
If you support strong copyright law now you hate children, right?
You do realize that the cognitive dissonance of this would literally dissolve the brains of many Congresspeople?
Of course, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
I think that quote actually have happened. Some online porn company had charged various people for services they had failed to deliver, got a court order to pay their customers back, but sent checks in the company name easily readable.
I'd deposit the check anyway. Don't much care what some anonymous person in a check processing room thinks of me.
DMCA safe haven, thats what. Its the same that keeps youtube "floating".
True enough, but even if an infringing download is not removed, you still have to go to court, and win. You can't pull RIAA-style courtroom shenanigans with an outfit that has lawyers who charge just as much per hour as yours do. It's much more profitable (and provides much better PR, if you can call it that) if you just attack individual infringers with default judgments and threaten their livelihoods unless they cough up some dough and settle out of court.
Face it, the content industry is owned and operated by people with a gangster mentality, otherwise the RIAA would never have been funded to the level that permitted their lawsuit mill to go forward. Ditto for the MPAA. Remember, those two groups are not exactly autonomous: they have masters they serve, and whose marching orders they follow.