On another forum I regularly attend there is an Animator from Pixar who posts there. When the topic of the Pixar/Disney dispute came up this is what he had to say:
"1) Disney has been (and still is) a good partner for us. They bring a HEAP of talent to the table. Not to mention unparalleled experience in marketing animated features. (If Pixar hadn't teamed up with disney, no one would have even seen Toy Story.)
2) The main reason for the disagreement is Pixar's desire to own the rights to it's characters. Disney currently owns the rights and is loathe to give 'em up. Thus, the standoff."
I know that part of the bad blood is about Toy Story 2. Disney would not allow them to include this in their original 6 picture deal, since it was a sequel. Eisner is leaving Disney at the end of 2006. I have heard/read before that both companies are waiting for this to see if a deal can be struck, it seems Jobs and Eisner don't get along too well.
A great engineer demonstrates his/her skill not by designing something terribly complex, but by designing the object that meets required specifications as SIMPLY as possible with as FEW unique parts as possible. That is GREAT engineering.
However, with that being said I really do not believe Engineers are the problem at NASA. Bureaucracy is the enemy at NASA. NASA needs a complete top to bottom overhaul.
IMO rarely is it the Developer that over promises or overhypes. Today the majority of the hype comes from the game publishers, with all their marketing drones trying to earn their keep, they blast the gamers with hype, and the other source of major hype are the trade rags and web sites. Of course in many cases the Publishers and Trade Media are working hand in hand.
Doom3, overhyped? Yes. But it was not id that overhyped it, it was PC news media and to a lesser degree the rabid fans. HL2, now in this case I believe the developer Valve is responsible for some of the hype. But the majority has been from the Publisher and the media.
Don't expect the Hype machines to slow any. There is more competition than ever and everyone is trying to rise above the FUD and noise, even if they are contributing to it. My advice, patience. Wait a month AFTER a game is released before you purchase. By then there be more than enough online reviews for you to make an informed decision and if there are any serious problems with the game they will be known and possibly already addressed in a patch.
Most developers are just a group of hard core geeks trying to make a game. Creating hype is not in their venacular.
I could care less about weightlessness, quite frankly it is all about the view for me, it has to be breathtaking observing Earth from 100KM up, or observing the stars without all that damn atmosphere getting in the way!
I think $10,000 is gonna be the figure in say 10 years but this is also dependent on builing a craft that can go suborbital with more than 2 passengers, say maybe 12 total, 2 pilots and 10 passengers and do it at least 10 times a week.
Halo was the Champion game for the Xbox, and it certainly droves sales for the Xbox. I would guess they are hoping for similar results for Halo2.
Based on this it makes since that it took awhile before they released in on the PC, it was 2 years, ans that MS does not want the PC version to be substantially better than the Xbox version, hence the PC version was purposefully handicapped.
Based on this I would expect the same to happen with the PC version of Halo 2.
I really enjoyed the PC version, but I am not a console guy, and playing Halo on the Xbox sucks imo, so I'll just patiently wait for Halo2 on the PC, which I guess if we're lucky could be in a year but most likely will be 2006.
I concur. I cannot remember one until a few months ago which began occurring while playing a FPS game... this was AFTER I installed a new video card. I had the fan setting on my CPU set to low, bumped it to medium no more BSOD. This is well over a year of the OS being installed. W2K is very stable for me.
I'm no M$ fan but you know they get blamed for many problems/issues that simply are not there fault.
Easy for you to say but then again I guess your not Greedo are you?!?!
Well I am and all I $#%^! hear is "Han shot first", or "you cheater shooting first", or worse, "Greedo, you are one suck *ss lousy shot"! I am sick of it! I wasn't the director, I had no say in how the scene was shot, I tried but George threatened me, said I'd never get another job in Hollywood again!! Boy he sure wasn't kidding...Hell I can't even speak any form of human language! Either $@%#! way I get my ass blasted into oblivion, I mean Han didn't even get wounded!So what is the problem here!??!
I feel damn lucky I got an action figure made of me!!
We knew this was coming, well you should have. It looks great. It also looks unstable.
The next step and what people really want is a unit that can be a Desktop and a Notebook. So all it needs is a way to attach the base when in desktop mode or maybe a retractable one, that one is easy, and the ability to 'flip/rotate' the LCD from Desktop to Notebook mode.
Now if that had been released today I would have been doing the Oooh and awww stuff! It is good to see that Apple Zealots haven't changed in 14+ years, which was the last time I went to an Apple product introduction, for the blazing fast IIfx!!
Maybe because I worked at a Company that was a primary Mac shop from '89 - '98 gives me some insight or that I used to be a Mac fan, I don't know. Maybe because I have a MBA... lol, I seriously doubt it.
Other posters (posers?!?) have come close. The success of the Apple ][, Word and Excel. The original article was close. Until the IBM PC the PC market was populated by enthusiasts and hobbyist, how many Apple ][s did you see at work?!? IBM gave the PC credibility, and since it was from Big Blue it was a 'safe' choice for businesses to purchase. From this point forward it was corporate America that drove the PC market.
I am not sure what Apple's strategy was for the Business Market, but thumbing their nose at them with the 1984 commercial did not help. Nor did their significantly higher prices, irregardless of how superior the Mac was to the PC, which it was vastly so until Win 3.11. Apple's Education Strategy was excellent but the American Education system could not compete with Corporate America, especially since so much funding came from Corporate America
Corporate Manager, do I buy 1000 PCs from IBM or from some hobby computer maker called Apple... oh and the ones from Apple are significantly more expensive??
The bitter Irony of so much of this tale is hard to take. The Mac was the computer for the 'people', it was so easy to use, so user friendly, so much easier to use than PC DOS. Of course Apple stole the GUI from Xerox but hey let's not quibble. Word and Excel were originally Mac products, and in fact became the dominant Word Processor and Spreadsheet on Mac well before the PC.
It wasn't Open vs Closed, hell the average person making the purchase decision did not even know what that was. It was safety (IBM vs some crazy company started in some guys garage) and price, but mostly price. If the IBM PC and the Mac were the exact same price in 1984 and Apple had aggresively pursued the Business Market instead of thumbing their noses at them I would be writing
this on a Apple product right now.
You have forgetten one critical element. Since the BMW is a visible asset everytime it is 'copied' the value of the original product decreases. Of course the thief does not care about this but the person who bought it does!
I agree that most of these groups overestimate their losses and maybe even grossly. I agree that the software and movie industries are indeed quite profitable. But that does not mean that theft is not rampant or that it is OK.
I can assure you that if you put years of blood, sweat, and tears into something you made you would not be happy it was stolen, regardless of how much money you made from it!
This guys just doesn't win he dominates, many times the other contestants just look helpless. If you compared Jeopardy to a sport like Boxing or Football Ken's games would be comparable to a first round KO or a 42-0 drubbing.
I have not decided if Alex loves or hates 'em but he definitely is envious!
The Nerds shall inherit the earth.... or what's left of it!
Actually the $ #'s are much much better than that. First you need to add Overseas Box Office which would be and additional $21M for Butterfly and another $82M for Polly BUT you also have advertising cost which would be estimated at $20M for Butterfly and $25M for Polly. Throwing in Overseas Box Office can make a huge difference but for some movies BO is only half the sales, you also have to include DVD/VHS sales and rentals.
I am getting this info from BoxOfficeMojo.com and LeesMovieInfo.com, to give an idea of just what the rental take can be, in 2002:
Shallow Hal did $71M at the Domestic Box Office and $60M in just rentals. Fast and the Furious did $144M at the BO and $70M in rentals. It is also not unusual for a movie that did poorly at the BO to do better in rentals. Bandits (with Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thorton) did $41M at the BO but $50M in rentals. It's estimated cost are $95M but it also did $26M overseas and we still have not thrown in DVD/VHS direct sales.
It is difficult to find DVD/VHS sales and rental numbers, let alone for the same time period. Bruce Almighty did $480M Worldwide at the Box Office and $120M in DVD/VHS sales. SpiderMan did $190M in sales the first 3 days of it's DVD/VHS release! However, SpiderMan's rental revenue was around $30M, which makes sense since so many bought it.
DVD/VHS sales/rentals can turn a Box Office money loser into a money maker.
A good current flop would be "The Alamo" who's estimated production/marketing cost are $140M and has done $23M Worldwide Box Office. I willing to wager DVD/VHS rental/sales will not rescue this stinker!
Since I first came into contact and regular use of Apple products in the late 80's they have been consistent at Inventory mismanagement, either running out of products that are hot or stuck with large quantities of products that became obsolete.
I guess it should not be surprising since Apple has been and still is a software/design company that has to make hardware so you can see it's designs and use it's software!!
Obviously there was no plan for their coverage. They basically missed the takeoff since the camera was unable to track the plane fast enough. We had sporadic interviews right after launch (voice only), in between interviews was silence, then at some point they played a Janet Jackson song while the video was still feeding, and the video feed was just an unmoving shot of the tower, crowd, runway. Then about 30 or so minutes after launch they cut to the live radio transmissions, which was excellent though hard to hear, of course there was no announcement they were cutting to the radio feed which was at least 2x as loud as the announcer feed.
They did manage to catch the landing. And then we had a mix of announcer and radio feeds, you could barely hear the announcer so I turned up my audio to hear and then the radio feeds came back and almost blew out my speakers!!
I was watching/listening to it on MSNBC (who's coverage was abysmal) and based on the radio comm's it sounded like they shut it down prematurely... I cannot recall for sure what words Mike said exactly so I will not try and quote but the gist of the message was the ride was rougher than expected.
Exactly, let's not forget Intel's role in the Rambus debacle. You can also Thank AMD for having created the excellent K7 as it was AMD and AMD motherboards that first adopted DDR and proved that DDR performed better and as we all knew was less expensive!
I am very thankful that the K7 was not a flop cause if it was we would have had Rambus forced down our throats, and currently have half the raw processing power at twice the price... and 64 bit computing on the desktop would still be a dream!
I am not the fanboy type just VERY thankful for competition!
Synopsis: Frodo gets into mischief whilst playing with the mysterious ring left to him by Bilbo, embarrassing Sam in front of Rosy and placing the blame on Pippin! Hilarity and laughs ensue!
Here Here, I got a PDA once for Xmas, used for a few days, sold it. I carry a small wallet and a keyring with max 3 keys on it. I do have a cell but only bring it with me when I am expecting a call or figure I may need to make one, which is infrequent. I'm a PC geek, not a gadget one.
I never played Halo on the X-box, well I tried it at a store and thought it looked cool but hated the controls. I am not a console guy. I really enjoy Halo, both the SP and MP. One big reason for me is I love driving/flying the vehicles, it's just fun. And sadly it seemed I had forgotten that as much of my gaming had become so hyper competitive I was not having much 'fun'.
No it's not perfect and yes I do understand many for being upset with Bungie for selling out to M$ but, I am also sure that 99% of those in the same position would have done the same thing. Remember there are people who work there, you know people with families, house loans, etc. One can only imagine what kind of deal was given to Bungie. IMO is was just reward for making a string of high quality games that got moderate attention and probably made a modest profit because they were Mac only. I guess others are still pissed they had to wait 2-3 years longer to get the game on the PC.
Halo was first demonstrated at MacWorld in July '99 but I believe it was going to be released on both the Mac and PC.
I would equate spyware as the same type of activity as phone companies switching your long distance carrier without your approval, if there is key logging activity then this would be the same as the cable guy installing a few hidden video cameras while he is also setting up your broadband.
Installing any software without the users express consent should be illegal, period. All installs should clearly explain what is being installed and what it does. Anything 'extra' would then be illegal.
I wish Spyware was getting as much attention as Spam.
I thought the same thing, but it has run beautifully so far... knock on my monitor!
No AV, No Outlook, No Attachments... NO Viruses!
on
The Virus Squad
·
· Score: 1
Forgive me but I have used Windoze for years, I am dual booting Linux though. I have not used an Anti-Virus program in at least 5 years. I have not gotten one Virus in that time. (I use Trend-Micro's free online virus checker every so often just to verify.)
I have had cable modem that entire time. I am behind a hardware firewall, and use ZoneAlarm Pro, I regularly update Windoze.
I attribute not getting viruses to two main reasons. I have not/do not use Outlook, and I NEVER open an attachment in an email unless I requested it. I also only use IE when forced to.
User behavior is the most effective way to avoid Viruses... I guess that's why we need AV for the vast majority of lonely fools who think every email was really just for them!
You'd be surprised at how fragile most of these teenage boys egos are! Why do you think there is some much cheating? A lot of these young males play online game to feel worthwhile, for many, not all mind you, but for many losing to a girl is just a disaster. I think this will change over time as more girls play FPS games and demonstrate they can play just as well as the boys. But overall there is still currently a mindset that girls can't play FPS games well. So to lose to a girl would mean as a boy you really suck. Not much different than say a boy losing a foot race to a girl. The girl may be very fast but the losing boy will still get harassed by other boys for losing to a "GIRL"!!
I am sure many of these boys would be just as upset if they found out that an old man like me was kickin their cheese! I am 35!
Slashdot Mirror
"1) Disney has been (and still is) a good partner for us. They bring a HEAP of talent to the table. Not to mention unparalleled experience in marketing animated features. (If Pixar hadn't teamed up with disney, no one would have even seen Toy Story.)
2) The main reason for the disagreement is Pixar's desire to own the rights to it's characters. Disney currently owns the rights and is loathe to give 'em up. Thus, the standoff."
I know that part of the bad blood is about Toy Story 2. Disney would not allow them to include this in their original 6 picture deal, since it was a sequel. Eisner is leaving Disney at the end of 2006. I have heard/read before that both companies are waiting for this to see if a deal can be struck, it seems Jobs and Eisner don't get along too well.
However, with that being said I really do not believe Engineers are the problem at NASA. Bureaucracy is the enemy at NASA. NASA needs a complete top to bottom overhaul.
Doom3, overhyped? Yes. But it was not id that overhyped it, it was PC news media and to a lesser degree the rabid fans. HL2, now in this case I believe the developer Valve is responsible for some of the hype. But the majority has been from the Publisher and the media.
Don't expect the Hype machines to slow any. There is more competition than ever and everyone is trying to rise above the FUD and noise, even if they are contributing to it. My advice, patience. Wait a month AFTER a game is released before you purchase. By then there be more than enough online reviews for you to make an informed decision and if there are any serious problems with the game they will be known and possibly already addressed in a patch.
Most developers are just a group of hard core geeks trying to make a game. Creating hype is not in their venacular.
Whew... so it's just Andy Serkis running around in a monkey suit. Wait, that's a scary situation in and of itself!!
I think $10,000 is gonna be the figure in say 10 years but this is also dependent on builing a craft that can go suborbital with more than 2 passengers, say maybe 12 total, 2 pilots and 10 passengers and do it at least 10 times a week.
Based on this it makes since that it took awhile before they released in on the PC, it was 2 years, ans that MS does not want the PC version to be substantially better than the Xbox version, hence the PC version was purposefully handicapped.
Based on this I would expect the same to happen with the PC version of Halo 2.
I really enjoyed the PC version, but I am not a console guy, and playing Halo on the Xbox sucks imo, so I'll just patiently wait for Halo2 on the PC, which I guess if we're lucky could be in a year but most likely will be 2006.
However they are very tenacious.
I'm no M$ fan but you know they get blamed for many problems/issues that simply are not there fault.
Well I am and all I $#%^! hear is "Han shot first", or "you cheater shooting first", or worse, "Greedo, you are one suck *ss lousy shot"! I am sick of it! I wasn't the director, I had no say in how the scene was shot, I tried but George threatened me, said I'd never get another job in Hollywood again!! Boy he sure wasn't kidding...Hell I can't even speak any form of human language! Either $@%#! way I get my ass blasted into oblivion, I mean Han didn't even get wounded!So what is the problem here!??!
I feel damn lucky I got an action figure made of me!!
The next step and what people really want is a unit that can be a Desktop and a Notebook. So all it needs is a way to attach the base when in desktop mode or maybe a retractable one, that one is easy, and the ability to 'flip/rotate' the LCD from Desktop to Notebook mode.
Now if that had been released today I would have been doing the Oooh and awww stuff! It is good to see that Apple Zealots haven't changed in 14+ years, which was the last time I went to an Apple product introduction, for the blazing fast IIfx!!
Other posters (posers?!?) have come close. The success of the Apple ][, Word and Excel. The original article was close. Until the IBM PC the PC market was populated by enthusiasts and hobbyist, how many Apple ][s did you see at work?!? IBM gave the PC credibility, and since it was from Big Blue it was a 'safe' choice for businesses to purchase. From this point forward it was corporate America that drove the PC market.
I am not sure what Apple's strategy was for the Business Market, but thumbing their nose at them with the 1984 commercial did not help. Nor did their significantly higher prices, irregardless of how superior the Mac was to the PC, which it was vastly so until Win 3.11. Apple's Education Strategy was excellent but the American Education system could not compete with Corporate America, especially since so much funding came from Corporate America
Corporate Manager, do I buy 1000 PCs from IBM or from some hobby computer maker called Apple... oh and the ones from Apple are significantly more expensive??
The bitter Irony of so much of this tale is hard to take. The Mac was the computer for the 'people', it was so easy to use, so user friendly, so much easier to use than PC DOS. Of course Apple stole the GUI from Xerox but hey let's not quibble. Word and Excel were originally Mac products, and in fact became the dominant Word Processor and Spreadsheet on Mac well before the PC.
It wasn't Open vs Closed, hell the average person making the purchase decision did not even know what that was. It was safety (IBM vs some crazy company started in some guys garage) and price, but mostly price. If the IBM PC and the Mac were the exact same price in 1984 and Apple had aggresively pursued the Business Market instead of thumbing their noses at them I would be writing this on a Apple product right now.
I agree that most of these groups overestimate their losses and maybe even grossly. I agree that the software and movie industries are indeed quite profitable. But that does not mean that theft is not rampant or that it is OK.
I can assure you that if you put years of blood, sweat, and tears into something you made you would not be happy it was stolen, regardless of how much money you made from it!
I have not decided if Alex loves or hates 'em but he definitely is envious!
The Nerds shall inherit the earth.... or what's left of it!
I am getting this info from BoxOfficeMojo.com and LeesMovieInfo.com, to give an idea of just what the rental take can be, in 2002:
Shallow Hal did $71M at the Domestic Box Office and $60M in just rentals. Fast and the Furious did $144M at the BO and $70M in rentals. It is also not unusual for a movie that did poorly at the BO to do better in rentals. Bandits (with Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thorton) did $41M at the BO but $50M in rentals. It's estimated cost are $95M but it also did $26M overseas and we still have not thrown in DVD/VHS direct sales.
It is difficult to find DVD/VHS sales and rental numbers, let alone for the same time period. Bruce Almighty did $480M Worldwide at the Box Office and $120M in DVD/VHS sales. SpiderMan did $190M in sales the first 3 days of it's DVD/VHS release! However, SpiderMan's rental revenue was around $30M, which makes sense since so many bought it.
DVD/VHS sales/rentals can turn a Box Office money loser into a money maker.
A good current flop would be "The Alamo" who's estimated production/marketing cost are $140M and has done $23M Worldwide Box Office. I willing to wager DVD/VHS rental/sales will not rescue this stinker!
I guess it should not be surprising since Apple has been and still is a software/design company that has to make hardware so you can see it's designs and use it's software!!
They did manage to catch the landing. And then we had a mix of announcer and radio feeds, you could barely hear the announcer so I turned up my audio to hear and then the radio feeds came back and almost blew out my speakers!!
All in all a horrible webcast!
I was watching/listening to it on MSNBC (who's coverage was abysmal) and based on the radio comm's it sounded like they shut it down prematurely... I cannot recall for sure what words Mike said exactly so I will not try and quote but the gist of the message was the ride was rougher than expected.
I am very thankful that the K7 was not a flop cause if it was we would have had Rambus forced down our throats, and currently have half the raw processing power at twice the price... and 64 bit computing on the desktop would still be a dream!
I am not the fanboy type just VERY thankful for competition!
Title: Now you see me, now you don't!
Synopsis: Frodo gets into mischief whilst playing with the mysterious ring left to him by Bilbo, embarrassing Sam in front of Rosy and placing the blame on Pippin! Hilarity and laughs ensue!
Sets: Bag End, The Green Dragon
Here Here, I got a PDA once for Xmas, used for a few days, sold it. I carry a small wallet and a keyring with max 3 keys on it. I do have a cell but only bring it with me when I am expecting a call or figure I may need to make one, which is infrequent. I'm a PC geek, not a gadget one.
No it's not perfect and yes I do understand many for being upset with Bungie for selling out to M$ but, I am also sure that 99% of those in the same position would have done the same thing. Remember there are people who work there, you know people with families, house loans, etc. One can only imagine what kind of deal was given to Bungie. IMO is was just reward for making a string of high quality games that got moderate attention and probably made a modest profit because they were Mac only. I guess others are still pissed they had to wait 2-3 years longer to get the game on the PC.
Halo was first demonstrated at MacWorld in July '99 but I believe it was going to be released on both the Mac and PC.
Installing any software without the users express consent should be illegal, period. All installs should clearly explain what is being installed and what it does. Anything 'extra' would then be illegal.
I wish Spyware was getting as much attention as Spam.
I thought the same thing, but it has run beautifully so far... knock on my monitor!
I have had cable modem that entire time. I am behind a hardware firewall, and use ZoneAlarm Pro, I regularly update Windoze.
I attribute not getting viruses to two main reasons. I have not/do not use Outlook, and I NEVER open an attachment in an email unless I requested it. I also only use IE when forced to.
User behavior is the most effective way to avoid Viruses... I guess that's why we need AV for the vast majority of lonely fools who think every email was really just for them!
I am sure many of these boys would be just as upset if they found out that an old man like me was kickin their cheese! I am 35!