Paragon,
I had a conversation once with one person who believed your solution was the answer, and one who did not.
The person who did not had the perfect rebuttal, and I agree with it, so I'll share it here.
"That solution, a world without privacy, was what we had millions of years ago. It ceased being an option socially the moment that humans (or proto-humans) figured out that sex is what led to having babies."
You're coming up against millions of years of social hard-wiring, Paragon. It just won't happen. Even chimps have sex in secret sometimes, so the alpha-male doesn't drive the female from the troop.
Sorry to see these folks treat you this way. Don't think I'm ever coming back here. I used to think Slashdot was a community of people who cared about technolgy, but I guess this is proof that it has devolved into a clique of people trying everything they can to make other people snicker derisively.
Since you posted anonymously pt, I guess you don't have a Slashdot account, so no big loss for you. I hope that people responding to your site are better behaved than the/. monkeys.
I really used to admire Slashdot. I am very ashamed of what it has become. Now a friend of mine has been slashdotted, and I feel sick to my stomach. I've taken a good look at the posts today, and I can't say that I wasn't exactly like them in earlier posts. Now I just feel like this is a dirty place.
Anyone reading this, PT above is Phillip Torrone, creator of bookofseg.com, the author of Flash Enabled and one of the great techdevice bloggers out there. He's a great guy and honestly appreciates new technology.
I remember when Slashdot was about those things. Now it's about catchphrases, snarky comments, racist anonymous cowards, and the everpresent drone of people with nothing better to do than log on the internet to make fun of people who actually do things. /. has jumped the building and left the shark.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is my last Slashdot post. I have no desire to be part of this community of the terminally superior. I'm leaving while I still have my soul.
The guy is real, I know him. He's a friend of mine. He doesn't work for Segway. He's not a plant.
He won a contest to get the first Segways. He's a technology freak. He's a weblogger.
Friggin do the math, Slashdotters. He made a website about his favorite new toy. Like every-fricking-person on the internet. Why is that hard for/. monkeys to grasp?
The fact that his site wasn't slashdotted doesn't mean dick. It just means he builds sites that can handle traffic.
I used to think Slashdot was cool. I really did. But now a friend of mine has been slashdotted, and really, I'm ashamed of this place.
Someone said here last week that "posting snarky comments on the internet is the easiest and least impressive thing in the world." I guess that sums up Slashdot now.
It never strikes anyone here why a guy would have a cool new piece of technology and ACTUALLY WANT to create a website to talk about it. No, he must be getting paid, sure. Astroturf.
Hey, check out the other stuff on his site, he goes gaga for that stuff too. Naw, it couldn't be that he only writes about stuff that he likes, could it?
Slashdot has jumped the shark. It used to be cool, but it has fallen under its own weight of snarky comments and (Score:5 Funny).
Fuck Funny. Let's get back to Salient.
-Bruce Wright
My earliest memories are of an easter-egg race the week of my second birthday and according to my mom, a slightly earlier trip to the snow when I was almost 2. I remember the larger children having a much easier time finding the easter eggs and running, and being frustrated that I couldn't run very fast.
I also remember the trip to the snow, which my mother insists was before my second birthday, because it was a trip with my father whom she soon divorced. The snow trip was a subject that I brought up with my mother, and I described the red snow disc that we went sledding on. That memory is quite vivid still (now 33 years later).
It was by my own request. I actually had one run into me (at a low speed), and had it run over my foot (at a low speed).
This was to test the claims of safety that 1: the automatic braking stops the vehicle before momentum is transferred and 2, the wheels are large and soft enough to absorb most of the weight of the device.
I am pleased to announce that I still have full use of my foot, and it did not knock me down (I am a 6'1 man who weighs 150 lbs.) A wheel rolling over my foot hurt a heck of a lot less than if that same person stepped on my foot. And again, this thing is so agile and can be operated so slowly and carefully that it would be very hard to run over a foot by accident.
So people, conjecture all you like, and draw comparisons to bicycles and skateboards, but learn HOW this device works before you argue to ban it.
I've actually had it hit me. Can anyone else here say that? It has a rubber-padded handlebars that contacted my shoulder first. Contact with my shoulders forced it upright, whereupon it stopped immediately and broke no traction with the ground. These aren't skid-brakes, they are anti-lock regenerative brakes. Had it been going faster, it would have hit me with LESS force than a man travelling at the same speed.
People picture these things whizzing up and down a sidewalk at full speed, or picture bicycle speeds. A segway in crowded situations reqiures slower speeds than bicycles. But unlike bicycles that become uncontrolable at low speeds, the Segway retains control. I saw one operating in literally shoulder-to-shoulder pedestrian traffic at Disneyland. Children in front of it, and old folks to the sides of it, in a sea of people, and it was perfectly safe. Try that with a bike or skateboard. Anywhere it is safe to use a wheelchair, it is safe to use a segway.
The only things to worry about with these things is people who use them unsafely. But that's a personal responsibility issue, and a personal liability issue, and that exists already with bikes, skateboards, roller-skates, walking, etc. I'd expect the Libertarian Slashdot Brigade would at least accept THAT argument!
Can't anybody here tell the difference between Pixar and Disney?
Two different companies. One headed by Slashdot hero Steve Jobs, the other headed by Slashdot villian Michael Eisner. One makes the films, the other releases them.
Pixar is the one accused of stealing this idea, not Disney.
But what the hey, let's just bash Disney, cause it's more fun!
You think it looks dumb when Congress tries to understand the internet? I think it looks dumb when slashdotters try to understand Hollywood.
Who the fuck was Feanor anyway? (I know. I'm just making a point) I'm reading the Silmarillion now and I can't even recall one of his sons!
But c'mon. Where else are you going to hear Sindarin, Quenya, Dwarvish SUNG in a choir? The Lament for Gandalf, sung in Elvish? DANG!
Where else are you going to see Barad-dur or Orthanc, or Minas Tirith? Or Shadowfax, or the Argonath? Or Fangorn, or Minas Morgul, the Dead Marshes, Oliphants, Fell Beasts, Balrogs, Nazgul!
Here's the history behind the Four Towers.
Any two will do:
http://members.cts.com/king/e/erikt/tolkien/2tower s.htm
This link explains that Tolkien changed his mind about that a few times. Really, the name was rather forced on him, for a volume that he didn't want released in that manner anyway. Book 3 and Book 4 of Tolkien's six-book epic became "The Two Towers." Tolkien himself drew three different covers for the book, one showing Minas Tirith and Barad-dur, and the second and third showing Minas Morgul and Orthanc.
So you might as well call it The Four Towers, as Tolkien changed his mind about which two the title refers to.
Here's a Tolkien quote that shows that for awhile at least, the Two Towers the movie refers to were possiblities left deliberatly vague.
"The Two Towers gets as near as possible to finding a title to cover the widely divergent Books 3 & 4; and can be left ambiguous- it might refer to Isengard and Barad-dur, or to Minas Tirith and B; or Isengard and Cirith Ungol (1)." [Letter #140] -J.R.R. Tolkien
Later Tolkien did settle on Cirith Ungol and Orthanc, because of the text of books 3 and 4, but conceded that Barad-dur and Minas Tirith, seemed less confusing.
I think, as long as it's any two of the four, you can't go far wrong. I can see easily how Jackson's choice of Barad-dur and Orthanc makes a great match. "There is now an alliance between the Tower of Orthanc and the Tower of Barad-dur." It spells out, in a simple sentence, the power of the threat to Middle-Earth.
Wait a second. I just posted a Lord of the Rings factoid on Slashdot! Coal to Newcastle! You guys probably knew this when you were in Kindergarden!
Because, of course, not being able to talk about something makes it less attractive right? And drugs being illegal makes it less attractive for kids too, right? *sigh*
And murder being illegal... that's what CAUSES murder!
I'd love to live in a free society... it's just that these LAWS are so damn onerous!
Drugs SHOULD be illegal for kids, you dope. Adults maybe not, but KIDS? You're a bit too liberatarian for me.
Only with the crazy alterna-right-wing do we get people who link free-speech with freedom of drugs and expect that it is a CONVINCING argument.
Great stuff, beautiful stuff. But most people would be able to see the older, glass matte paintings for what they are if you projected "The Paradine Case" on screen today. They are plainly visible on vhs.
Following that link further, to the work that MatteWorldDigital (notice the word "Digital") did in the 90's on Casino and The Truman Show. Those shots, rendered in the computer, did fool me. I believe most viewers would be fooled by them as well.
The Invisible Art is a great book. The images in it are wonderful. But not for a moment did I believe that Dracula's Castle was really built, or that somehow Spielberg had found a seaworthy China Clipper.
Well, yeah, you point me to paintings by bob Scifo, the best in the business!Bob Scifo is a living legend among effects artists.
But he did all of those in Photoshop, so he is using the computer and photography to generate those images as well. I've had the pleasure of seeing some of Bob's older, physical paintings at nose-distance, and without a doubt, they are the best in the history of motion-pictures. Not for an instant did I mistake it for a photograph, however. But his photoshop work is better.
Yes, by all means, we should return to the world of stop-motion.
Yeah! Matte paintings on glass instead of photoshop! Optical printers with matte-halos, fringing, registration problems and printer-dirt! And good ol' stop-motion! YES! King Kong's moving fur looks a hella more realistic than Mighty Joe Young's CG gorilla.
Even Ray Harryhausen drools at the idea of what he could have done with today's technology. I know I drool to think of what he could have done.
Greedy movie studios cutting corners, indeed? Which corner did they cut in The Lord of the Rings by using cg? The corner where they'd have to make a puppet for the cave troll? No thanks, I've seen the Rancor in Return of the Jedi. My cave troll action figure looks more real than THAT thing.
People who complain about cg need to take a hard look at miniatures. The above shot of Isenguard while Gandalf rides in looks like a child's electric train-set.
Lots of folks think computer graphics look bad, or not as real. But those are just the ones that they spot! I've seen lots of art, in the best galleries in the world. Have yet to mistake one for a photograph. Not so with computer-rendered effects.
Tell me, o anonymous troll, which artist would you say I couldn't tell from a photograph?
Velazquez? Cagnacci? van Bylert? Frans Hals? Carvaggio? van Eyck? Joseph Wright?
Photorealistic art (created by brush or computer) is my livelihood. Movie audiences are fooled more often than they know.
Watch 102 Dalmatians, and tell me: which of the dogs are computer-generated, and which are real?
Well, the big deal is that now productions have an option to use instead of MTOR, in case they need to modify anything. Let's say they have their own cfd particle system or version of Massive, that they need to bring to ribs. Here's something that they can put between maya and renderman, and between that program and renderman. MTOR, being closed code, requires Pixar to customize it to fit your needs. Liquid just requires that you hire a programmer or two to customize it.
Whatever you say.....er...
Someone find me ONE photorealistic painting done by a human that I can't tell is a painting. I've yet to see one.
Let's run a turing test on it.
Now let's do the same with a cg image.
The "nice to play with" makes me think you download crap like bryce from the pirate servers. Have you seen what the cutting edge looks like 1n 2002?
And as for the comment that a human brain can shade it better.... um... humans run the program, humans choose the lighting, the scene, everything.
Or was this a troll anyway?
Slashdot Mirror
Paragon, I had a conversation once with one person who believed your solution was the answer, and one who did not. The person who did not had the perfect rebuttal, and I agree with it, so I'll share it here. "That solution, a world without privacy, was what we had millions of years ago. It ceased being an option socially the moment that humans (or proto-humans) figured out that sex is what led to having babies." You're coming up against millions of years of social hard-wiring, Paragon. It just won't happen. Even chimps have sex in secret sometimes, so the alpha-male doesn't drive the female from the troop.
Sorry to see these folks treat you this way. Don't think I'm ever coming back here. I used to think Slashdot was a community of people who cared about technolgy, but I guess this is proof that it has devolved into a clique of people trying everything they can to make other people snicker derisively.
/. monkeys.
/. has jumped the building and left the shark.
Since you posted anonymously pt, I guess you don't have a Slashdot account, so no big loss for you. I hope that people responding to your site are better behaved than the
I really used to admire Slashdot. I am very ashamed of what it has become. Now a friend of mine has been slashdotted, and I feel sick to my stomach. I've taken a good look at the posts today, and I can't say that I wasn't exactly like them in earlier posts. Now I just feel like this is a dirty place.
Anyone reading this, PT above is Phillip Torrone, creator of bookofseg.com, the author of Flash Enabled and one of the great techdevice bloggers out there. He's a great guy and honestly appreciates new technology.
I remember when Slashdot was about those things. Now it's about catchphrases, snarky comments, racist anonymous cowards, and the everpresent drone of people with nothing better to do than log on the internet to make fun of people who actually do things.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is my last Slashdot post. I have no desire to be part of this community of the terminally superior. I'm leaving while I still have my soul.
Sayonara
-Bruce Wright
The guy is real, I know him. He's a friend of mine. He doesn't work for Segway. He's not a plant. He won a contest to get the first Segways. He's a technology freak. He's a weblogger. Friggin do the math, Slashdotters. He made a website about his favorite new toy. Like every-fricking-person on the internet. Why is that hard for /. monkeys to grasp?
The fact that his site wasn't slashdotted doesn't mean dick. It just means he builds sites that can handle traffic.
I used to think Slashdot was cool. I really did. But now a friend of mine has been slashdotted, and really, I'm ashamed of this place.
Someone said here last week that "posting snarky comments on the internet is the easiest and least impressive thing in the world." I guess that sums up Slashdot now.
It never strikes anyone here why a guy would have a cool new piece of technology and ACTUALLY WANT to create a website to talk about it. No, he must be getting paid, sure. Astroturf.
Hey, check out the other stuff on his site, he goes gaga for that stuff too. Naw, it couldn't be that he only writes about stuff that he likes, could it?
Slashdot has jumped the shark. It used to be cool, but it has fallen under its own weight of snarky comments and (Score:5 Funny).
Fuck Funny. Let's get back to Salient.
-Bruce Wright
They got 2. Get it? Did you read the site?
My earliest memories are of an easter-egg race the week of my second birthday and according to my mom, a slightly earlier trip to the snow when I was almost 2. I remember the larger children having a much easier time finding the easter eggs and running, and being frustrated that I couldn't run very fast. I also remember the trip to the snow, which my mother insists was before my second birthday, because it was a trip with my father whom she soon divorced. The snow trip was a subject that I brought up with my mother, and I described the red snow disc that we went sledding on. That memory is quite vivid still (now 33 years later).
It was by my own request. I actually had one run into me (at a low speed), and had it run over my foot (at a low speed).
This was to test the claims of safety that 1: the automatic braking stops the vehicle before momentum is transferred and 2, the wheels are large and soft enough to absorb most of the weight of the device.
I am pleased to announce that I still have full use of my foot, and it did not knock me down (I am a 6'1 man who weighs 150 lbs.) A wheel rolling over my foot hurt a heck of a lot less than if that same person stepped on my foot. And again, this thing is so agile and can be operated so slowly and carefully that it would be very hard to run over a foot by accident.
So people, conjecture all you like, and draw comparisons to bicycles and skateboards, but learn HOW this device works before you argue to ban it.
I've actually had it hit me. Can anyone else here say that? It has a rubber-padded handlebars that contacted my shoulder first. Contact with my shoulders forced it upright, whereupon it stopped immediately and broke no traction with the ground. These aren't skid-brakes, they are anti-lock regenerative brakes. Had it been going faster, it would have hit me with LESS force than a man travelling at the same speed.
People picture these things whizzing up and down a sidewalk at full speed, or picture bicycle speeds. A segway in crowded situations reqiures slower speeds than bicycles. But unlike bicycles that become uncontrolable at low speeds, the Segway retains control. I saw one operating in literally shoulder-to-shoulder pedestrian traffic at Disneyland. Children in front of it, and old folks to the sides of it, in a sea of people, and it was perfectly safe. Try that with a bike or skateboard. Anywhere it is safe to use a wheelchair, it is safe to use a segway.
The only things to worry about with these things is people who use them unsafely. But that's a personal responsibility issue, and a personal liability issue, and that exists already with bikes, skateboards, roller-skates, walking, etc. I'd expect the Libertarian Slashdot Brigade would at least accept THAT argument!
It's a shame now that the packaging for CD's generally is pretty boring.
But that's because everyone steals music. If we paid for our songs, the poor record companies could afford good cover art!
Can't anybody here tell the difference between Pixar and Disney?
Two different companies. One headed by Slashdot hero Steve Jobs, the other headed by Slashdot villian Michael Eisner. One makes the films, the other releases them.
Pixar is the one accused of stealing this idea, not Disney.
But what the hey, let's just bash Disney, cause it's more fun!
You think it looks dumb when Congress tries to understand the internet? I think it looks dumb when slashdotters try to understand Hollywood.
More people wipe with Advertising Age then read it!
Who the fuck was Feanor anyway? (I know. I'm just making a point) I'm reading the Silmarillion now and I can't even recall one of his sons!
But c'mon. Where else are you going to hear Sindarin, Quenya, Dwarvish SUNG in a choir? The Lament for Gandalf, sung in Elvish? DANG!
Where else are you going to see Barad-dur or Orthanc, or Minas Tirith? Or Shadowfax, or the Argonath? Or Fangorn, or Minas Morgul, the Dead Marshes, Oliphants, Fell Beasts, Balrogs, Nazgul!
PANT PANT PANT...
Disappointing?!!? You been smoking the pipeweed?
Here's the history behind the Four Towers. Any two will do: http://members.cts.com/king/e/erikt/tolkien/2tower s.htm
This link explains that Tolkien changed his mind about that a few times. Really, the name was rather forced on him, for a volume that he didn't want released in that manner anyway. Book 3 and Book 4 of Tolkien's six-book epic became "The Two Towers." Tolkien himself drew three different covers for the book, one showing Minas Tirith and Barad-dur, and the second and third showing Minas Morgul and Orthanc.
So you might as well call it The Four Towers, as Tolkien changed his mind about which two the title refers to.
Here's a Tolkien quote that shows that for awhile at least, the Two Towers the movie refers to were possiblities left deliberatly vague.
"The Two Towers gets as near as possible to finding a title to cover the widely divergent Books 3 & 4; and can be left ambiguous- it might refer to Isengard and Barad-dur, or to Minas Tirith and B; or Isengard and Cirith Ungol (1)." [Letter #140] -J.R.R. Tolkien
Later Tolkien did settle on Cirith Ungol and Orthanc, because of the text of books 3 and 4, but conceded that Barad-dur and Minas Tirith, seemed less confusing.
I think, as long as it's any two of the four, you can't go far wrong. I can see easily how Jackson's choice of Barad-dur and Orthanc makes a great match. "There is now an alliance between the Tower of Orthanc and the Tower of Barad-dur." It spells out, in a simple sentence, the power of the threat to Middle-Earth.
Wait a second. I just posted a Lord of the Rings factoid on Slashdot! Coal to Newcastle! You guys probably knew this when you were in Kindergarden!
Go ride Soarin' Over California at Disney's California Adventure. Really neat.
Because, of course, not being able to talk about something makes it less attractive right? And drugs being illegal makes it less attractive for kids too, right? *sigh*
And murder being illegal... that's what CAUSES murder!
I'd love to live in a free society... it's just that these LAWS are so damn onerous!
Drugs SHOULD be illegal for kids, you dope. Adults maybe not, but KIDS? You're a bit too liberatarian for me.
Only with the crazy alterna-right-wing do we get people who link free-speech with freedom of drugs and expect that it is a CONVINCING argument.
They are none of the above. M$, as any Monopoly player will tell you, is the Moneybag!
Great stuff, beautiful stuff. But most people would be able to see the older, glass matte paintings for what they are if you projected "The Paradine Case" on screen today. They are plainly visible on vhs. Following that link further, to the work that MatteWorldDigital (notice the word "Digital") did in the 90's on Casino and The Truman Show. Those shots, rendered in the computer, did fool me. I believe most viewers would be fooled by them as well. The Invisible Art is a great book. The images in it are wonderful. But not for a moment did I believe that Dracula's Castle was really built, or that somehow Spielberg had found a seaworthy China Clipper.
Well, yeah, you point me to paintings by bob Scifo, the best in the business!Bob Scifo is a living legend among effects artists. But he did all of those in Photoshop, so he is using the computer and photography to generate those images as well. I've had the pleasure of seeing some of Bob's older, physical paintings at nose-distance, and without a doubt, they are the best in the history of motion-pictures. Not for an instant did I mistake it for a photograph, however. But his photoshop work is better.
Yes, by all means, we should return to the world of stop-motion. Yeah! Matte paintings on glass instead of photoshop! Optical printers with matte-halos, fringing, registration problems and printer-dirt! And good ol' stop-motion! YES! King Kong's moving fur looks a hella more realistic than Mighty Joe Young's CG gorilla. Even Ray Harryhausen drools at the idea of what he could have done with today's technology. I know I drool to think of what he could have done. Greedy movie studios cutting corners, indeed? Which corner did they cut in The Lord of the Rings by using cg? The corner where they'd have to make a puppet for the cave troll? No thanks, I've seen the Rancor in Return of the Jedi. My cave troll action figure looks more real than THAT thing.
People who complain about cg need to take a hard look at miniatures. The above shot of Isenguard while Gandalf rides in looks like a child's electric train-set.
Lots of folks think computer graphics look bad, or not as real. But those are just the ones that they spot! I've seen lots of art, in the best galleries in the world. Have yet to mistake one for a photograph. Not so with computer-rendered effects. Tell me, o anonymous troll, which artist would you say I couldn't tell from a photograph? Velazquez? Cagnacci? van Bylert? Frans Hals? Carvaggio? van Eyck? Joseph Wright? Photorealistic art (created by brush or computer) is my livelihood. Movie audiences are fooled more often than they know. Watch 102 Dalmatians, and tell me: which of the dogs are computer-generated, and which are real?
Well, the big deal is that now productions have an option to use instead of MTOR, in case they need to modify anything. Let's say they have their own cfd particle system or version of Massive, that they need to bring to ribs. Here's something that they can put between maya and renderman, and between that program and renderman. MTOR, being closed code, requires Pixar to customize it to fit your needs. Liquid just requires that you hire a programmer or two to customize it.
Whatever you say.....er... Someone find me ONE photorealistic painting done by a human that I can't tell is a painting. I've yet to see one. Let's run a turing test on it. Now let's do the same with a cg image. The "nice to play with" makes me think you download crap like bryce from the pirate servers. Have you seen what the cutting edge looks like 1n 2002? And as for the comment that a human brain can shade it better.... um... humans run the program, humans choose the lighting, the scene, everything. Or was this a troll anyway?