In America voice acting is what you do when you can't get hired as a real actor, in most cases.
There's a few exceptions of course. Primarily the big-name stars Disney brings into their Ghilbi translations.
Your namesake, for example, was entirely decent until electro-reverb Gillian Anderson showed up. "Kikki's Delivery Service" was also quite tolerable, even though they inserted a stream of new sidekick chatter everytime the characters were offscreen.
A better counter to that --- what commercial features do you think are really original, as opposed to inspired by an academic original?
Academics are basically a subset of commercial. Very few university-attached scholars release ideas in OSS-compatible ways.
Schools have patent mills and copyright "development" attorneys just like any other business based on Intellectual Property.
Yes, there are several prominent cases of a school releasing Open Source code... but usually not for ideas that were new at the time, only for reimplementations of existing concepts.
Perl is a combination of 3 prexisting things: sh, awk, and C. GNU Emacs was based on PD Emacs. (But PD can be considered an OSS license) Apache is a clone of NCSA httpd. OpenBSD and Linux are both clones of UNIX. OpenBSD was not truely secure by default... although some Unices had been before (since they had no external services until addons were installed) X11 absolutely was not OSS in any way, shape, or form.
- Parameters, parameters everwhere! The most complex POSIX calls have half a dozen parameters. The most complex Win32 calls have nearly a dozen direct parameters, plus dozens more parameters passed via structures.
And don't forget how for every complex Win32 call, there's a nearly-identical function taking 4 fewer arguments and missing "Ex" from the end of its name.
Yes... Evolution has certain UI faults (apparently a result of their overall design philosophy) in areas which KMail (and nearly any other major mail client) do correctly.
Evolution has no obvious way to search for message text throughout an entire hierarchy of folders, for example. A typical "Search Messages" dialog box could enable recursive searching with a single checkbox. But Evolution bonds the search-bar to the top of a window, giving no intutive way to target more than one folder at a time.
I've used KMail (3.1) quite a lot, and the only real problems are insufficient aggressiveness when reading MIME attachements (attachements which themselves are emails should be unpacked and inlined without the user needing to double-click each one), and a data-destroying race condition if you accidently run two KMail instances at once.
Objectively, "Start" is no more or less logical a symbol than KDE's K icon, GNOME's Foot icon or MacOS's Apple icon.
One could actually claim it's more logical. All the other icons are meaningless group logos. They happen to be on the end of a bar filled with similarly meaningless colorful pictures. There's no clue that this particular little icon is where you'll go for 95% of the system's capabilities.
In that regard, something labelled in English ("Start" or "Main" or "Programs") and visible at all times will signal new users that it is unique and important, and deserves priority in exploration.
then I propose locating the "Shutdown" option would be no more difficult on Windows than any other OS.
Some distributions of Gnome and KDE place a prominent universal "Power" icon (superimposed i and o) on the taskbar. It would be much easier for a newbie to locate this icon (assuming she recognized the symbol, and comprehended the mouse/pointer interface)
Because Microsoft bundled crucial functions in Windows 3.1 which Microsoft Office could use, but competitor's applications (Lotus 123 and Wordperfect) could not.
Wow! People are moderating this down. It's as if they don't know. Maybe those of you who can't remember the 80s are ignorant of this, so I'll spell it out for the youngsters:
Microsoft Windows 3.1 included secret API calls which only Microsoft-employees knew. So while Lotus and Wordperfect were struggling to get their apps to work decently under the crummy non-multitasking half-32 bit pseudo-OS, the developers of Excel and Word could concentrate on usability features customers wanted.
This story was well-known at the time; all the big PC magazines covered it. I guess nobody will believe me now... it was too long ago to be reported on the web. And if I can't provide a link, it must mean I'm lying!
They should have had mechanisms in place from DAY ONE for shared information and intercommunications.. not something that was seemingly tacked-on later..
It may be true that GNOME waited to long to properly design data-exchange models. The funny thing is, the name of the project (GNU Network Object Modelling Environment) suggests that such concerns were a prime goal from the beginning.
KDE is much closer to this, as they PLANNED ahead, and didn't just wing-it since it was 'pretty'. See here for example.
Not exactly. The original KDE had no mechanisms for data exchange, and no plans to add it. But when this started to be an obvious problem, they didn't hack something together and glue it on top: the entire original KDE code was trashed and replaced with newly-designed KDE 2.0, so that from then on the intercomm was part of the plan.
This is an example of a good use of Fred Brook's software-design maxim: "Build one to throw away; you will anyway."
the reason I use Windows is it is probably the OS that takes the least effort to get working out of the box to a degree sufficient for me to accomplish work on commodity hardware.
Yes... duh... And why is it easy to get working on commodity hardware? Acidtripp101 just told you:
And do you know who made Word a decent-looking program?
Apple
The first GUI version of Microsoft Word was developed according to Macintosh user interface guidelines. After seeing how well that worked, Microsoft ported it to the IBM-compatible platform.
Why do you think their products have taken market share so fast?
Because Microsoft bundled crucial functions in Windows 3.1 which Microsoft Office could use, but competitor's applications (Lotus 123 and Wordperfect) could not.
This created the illusion that Microsoft Office was smaller, and gave it a notable speed boost. It was a similar trick to the current scheme of starting IE in the background at bootup, but even more evil.
After 4 years of that, Microsoft stopped including secret bonus functionality in Windows, but the damage had been done: all competing "Office" products were dead, and the DOC/XLS/PPT format lock-in was in place to prevent any new competition from arising.
Additionally, Microsoft forbade non-Microsoft application developers from UI innovation. If you wanted to put "Windows Compatible" on the box, you had to obey Microsoft's User-Interface guidelines. Only Microsoft itself was immune to those rules, so they could try out new-looking widgets (like the "Chiseled Steel" theme introduced with Excel) which others couldn't.
ACLs are a superior way (although logically equivalent) over the user/group semantics of POSIX.
They're not logically equivalent- ACLs are more descriptive theoretically. That's because although one can emulate most any kind of ACL with clever group-id setup, all Un*x that I've seen implement uid and gid as bitflags.
Meaning you have a hard upper limit on the number of groups. Meaning that you'll run of of POSIX groups when trying to emulate ACLs of above a certain complexity.
(Maybe the POSIX standard says that groups should be unlimited- I don't know. But on popular Unices, there is a hard limit. Linux users can recompile their kernel to change this number, but it's still a compile-time constant)
No, it's called vigilantism. Mafia employees depend on their jobs as much as as the workers of legitimate businesses. Someone thinks his own judgement about good and evil is better than that of the government, and has decided that Microsoft has committed offenses which need punishing.
You could argue that his judgement was wrong. Or argue that even if evil-doers were getting away, his undermining of the rule of law is a greater evil. But accustations of hypocracy don't stick.
Look at how many ordinary people are willing to commit copyright infringement by trading songs on Kazaa, but would never even consider trying to jack a CD from Wal-Mart because that's shoplifting.
Look at how many ordinary cops are willing to clobber anyone they see jacking a CD from Wal-Mart, but would never even consider trying to arrest someone for trading songs on Kazaa.
Neither the enforcers nor violators of society's rules view copyright infringement as similar to shoplifting.
"Bake Off" is not technical jargon. It is a registered trademark of Pillsbury Foods International. Please cease and desist your unlicensed violations of intellectual property immediately.
Well, that's still the wrong usage, geeks hack into people's computers, nerds just watch Star Trek and... um... eat crackers, I guess.
That's precisely backwards. For some reason, in the past 5-7 years, internet-based communities decided to swap the definition of nerd and geek.
The original definition of geek came from a professional carnival performer who ate live animals. It evolved to mean anyone who was a complete social outcast.
Nerd is a re-spelling of nurd, which is a word used in the 40s to indicate a student whose courseload was so overwhelming that he had no time left for routine hygiene. It came to mean someone whose social incompatiblity was compensated for by superior mental qualities in some fields.
Nerd is a mixed positive/negative term; geek is strictly negative. At least you got freak right. (Geeks are asocial because of inability; nerds because of no desire; freaks could be sociable, but willingly are not)
Get your own facts straight. The very first "hacker" climbed through windows to stick his punchcards in machines he wasn't allowed to touch.
The amateur programmer meaning is a retroactive redefinition. So is the use of "Geek" to mean "someone who loves technology". In the past 5 years, self-professed "geeks" have attempted (with moderate success) to swap the definition of "geek" and "nerd".
1) an enthusiastic programmer/tinkerer who takes pride in finding clever ways to solve problems and tries to gain an intimate understanding of computers/code/technology (this was the original definition, appearing in the late 60's/ early 70's)
No, that's wrong. ESR willingly spreads this lie in his "Hacker's Dictionary / Jargon File".
The word hacker began applying to computers in the late 50s and meant specifically that someone was using a computer without permission.
Same with hacker. There are people who've called themselfs "Hacker" longer than the word was used to refer to a criminal activity and it would be very sad if people reviewing those documents started using that as an admittion of guilt.
The word "hacker" doesn't necessarily mean criminal- it only means "unauthorized", which frequently overlaps with illegality.
However, "unauthorized computer use" has ALWAYS been part of the definition of hacker.
Do you know who was the first person to call himself a "computer hacker"? It was Pete Samson who in 1958 snuck through a basement window to feed his own punchcard stack into MIT's computer.
People who claim hacker means "extremely skilled computer programmer" are actually the ones trying to redefine existing words. (This is similar to the way some people today want to redefine "witch" as a practitioner of Wicca).
It is likewise incorrect to claim that "cracker" is an acceptable word for "computer vandals". Cracker means someone who penetrates a security device to access something he shouldn't. Vandalism like DOS is usually accomplished without any security breaches.
one cannot understand Abortion rights unless one here's both sides; ProLife and ProAbortion.
Funny, you swapped the propaganda name "pro-choice" for the technically accurate ProAbortion, but you left ProLife in its typical advertising form instead of the more correct "anti-abortion". That could be bias right there.
The sentiment that web sources, just because they aren't written without journalistic/legal lingo and because that news isn't from "the usual outlets" (CNN,ABC,NBC,CBS, Time, etc)
Umm, those media you listed are web sources. If someone is going to cite CNN, ABC, NBC, or CBS, then going to the web page will be much more reliable and practical than referencing:
[3] Saw it on Nightline Aug 12, 2003, right after the 2nd commercial.
Researchers can't really cite TV. (They can cite transcripts, which are documents existing independently from the TV show, and which are often on the web)
If your paper is going to be read by a number of people, it makes good sense to have those sources on-hand; it never hurts to cover your arse.
And if one of those people telephones you asking "Hey, the website in your bibliography is down; do you have a copy?" what do you say?
"Yes, I DO have a copy. I can't give it to you of course; that would violate federal intellectual property law. But trust me, I do have it. The source really existed"
(Someone might respond that passing out such copies is protected fair use. It might be sometimes, but not always. In particular, if the article was first published on a student's website, then removed after acceptance by a journal, you really mustn't copy it.)
The question is about how strangers who don't know you can get an assurance that info they found on the web will continue to be accessible. You exhortation to "keep local backups" does nothing to help this problem.
It's about the need for human creativity and artistry being diminished.
I'm not willing to label the people who sing advertisements for soap and automobiles as artists or creative. (The guy who wrote the song, maybe). They're little different from the legions of portratists unemployed by Kodak.
In fact, it was only in recent years that singers and musicians have been able to convince the media to start referring to them by the loftier word "artist".
Actually you would still need permission to use a voice set
Yes, of course. That permission is naturally included in the employment contract for the aforementioned one week of work. The hourly pay will be much higher than a typical gig...
(The producers will start off by picking singers who are skilled but unattractive- usual "studio backup" types- who haven't the clout to get redisuals on the set)
What would hurt the industry bad would be if enough disgruntled artists decided to put their voice sets under Creative Commons licence just to screw over the industry that screwed them.
That won't hurt the industry at all. It'll be neutral to them... they'll hardly be aware of it. "There's a bunch of resources out there we can't use" = "We don't care if those resources exist or not".
The only way it could hurt established TV businesses if it lowered the barrier to entry so that more players could join the market. But custom singing is a small obstacle compared to other challenges of TV work.
Slashdot Mirror
In America voice acting is what you do when you can't get hired as a real actor, in most cases.
There's a few exceptions of course. Primarily the big-name stars Disney brings into their Ghilbi translations.
Your namesake, for example, was entirely decent until electro-reverb Gillian Anderson showed up. "Kikki's Delivery Service" was also quite tolerable, even though they inserted a stream of new sidekick chatter everytime the characters were offscreen.
A better counter to that --- what commercial features do you think are really original, as opposed to inspired by an academic original?
Academics are basically a subset of commercial. Very few university-attached scholars release ideas in OSS-compatible ways.
Schools have patent mills and copyright "development" attorneys just like any other business based on Intellectual Property.
Yes, there are several prominent cases of a school releasing Open Source code... but usually not for ideas that were new at the time, only for reimplementations of existing concepts.
Perl is a combination of 3 prexisting things: sh, awk, and C.
GNU Emacs was based on PD Emacs. (But PD can be considered an OSS license)
Apache is a clone of NCSA httpd.
OpenBSD and Linux are both clones of UNIX. OpenBSD was not truely secure by default... although some Unices had been before (since they had no external services until addons were installed)
X11 absolutely was not OSS in any way, shape, or form.
Don't want to sound like flamebait, but it seems to me like lots of OSS projects just copy things that others (Apple, even MS) invented.
As I explained a while ago, the seminal "Free Software" project (GNU, founded by Richard Stallman) was explicitly intended to clone existing systems.
- Parameters, parameters everwhere! The most complex POSIX calls have half a dozen parameters. The most complex Win32 calls have nearly a dozen direct parameters, plus dozens more parameters passed via structures.
And don't forget how for every complex Win32 call, there's a nearly-identical function taking 4 fewer arguments and missing "Ex" from the end of its name.
Yes... Evolution has certain UI faults (apparently a result of their overall design philosophy) in areas which KMail (and nearly any other major mail client) do correctly.
Evolution has no obvious way to search for message text throughout an entire hierarchy of folders, for example. A typical "Search Messages" dialog box could enable recursive searching with a single checkbox. But Evolution bonds the search-bar to the top of a window, giving no intutive way to target more than one folder at a time.
I've used KMail (3.1) quite a lot, and the only real problems are insufficient aggressiveness when reading MIME attachements (attachements which themselves are emails should be unpacked and inlined without the user needing to double-click each one), and a data-destroying race condition if you accidently run two KMail instances at once.
Objectively, "Start" is no more or less logical a symbol than KDE's K icon, GNOME's Foot icon or MacOS's Apple icon.
One could actually claim it's more logical. All the other icons are meaningless group logos. They happen to be on the end of a bar filled with similarly meaningless colorful pictures. There's no clue that this particular little icon is where you'll go for 95% of the system's capabilities.
In that regard, something labelled in English ("Start" or "Main" or "Programs") and visible at all times will signal new users that it is unique and important, and deserves priority in exploration.
then I propose locating the "Shutdown" option would be no more difficult on Windows than any other OS.
Some distributions of Gnome and KDE place a prominent universal "Power" icon (superimposed i and o) on the taskbar. It would be much easier for a newbie to locate this icon (assuming she recognized the symbol, and comprehended the mouse/pointer interface)
Wow! People are moderating this down. It's as if they don't know. Maybe those of you who can't remember the 80s are ignorant of this, so I'll spell it out for the youngsters:
This story was well-known at the time; all the big PC magazines covered it. I guess nobody will believe me now... it was too long ago to be reported on the web. And if I can't provide a link, it must mean I'm lying!
They should have had mechanisms in place from DAY ONE for shared information and intercommunications.. not something that was seemingly tacked-on later..
It may be true that GNOME waited to long to properly design data-exchange models. The funny thing is, the name of the project (GNU Network Object Modelling Environment) suggests that such concerns were a prime goal from the beginning.
KDE is much closer to this, as they PLANNED ahead, and didn't just wing-it since it was 'pretty'. See here for example.
Not exactly. The original KDE had no mechanisms for data exchange, and no plans to add it. But when this started to be an obvious problem, they didn't hack something together and glue it on top: the entire original KDE code was trashed and replaced with newly-designed KDE 2.0, so that from then on the intercomm was part of the plan.
This is an example of a good use of Fred Brook's software-design maxim:
"Build one to throw away; you will anyway."
the reason I use Windows is it is probably the OS that takes the least effort to get working out of the box to a degree sufficient for me to accomplish work on commodity hardware.
Yes... duh... And why is it easy to get working on commodity hardware? Acidtripp101 just told you:
"because everybody uses windows"
It's the reason behind your reason.
Look at the word processors before Word
And do you know who made Word a decent-looking program?
Apple
The first GUI version of Microsoft Word was developed according to Macintosh user interface guidelines. After seeing how well that worked, Microsoft ported it to the IBM-compatible platform.
Why do you think their products have taken market share so fast?
Because Microsoft bundled crucial functions in Windows 3.1 which Microsoft Office could use, but competitor's applications (Lotus 123 and Wordperfect) could not.
This created the illusion that Microsoft Office was smaller, and gave it a notable speed boost. It was a similar trick to the current scheme of starting IE in the background at bootup, but even more evil.
After 4 years of that, Microsoft stopped including secret bonus functionality in Windows, but the damage had been done: all competing "Office" products were dead, and the DOC/XLS/PPT format lock-in was in place to prevent any new competition from arising.
Additionally, Microsoft forbade non-Microsoft application developers from UI innovation. If you wanted to put "Windows Compatible" on the box, you had to obey Microsoft's User-Interface guidelines. Only Microsoft itself was immune to those rules, so they could try out new-looking widgets (like the "Chiseled Steel" theme introduced with Excel) which others couldn't.
ACLs are a superior way (although logically equivalent) over the user/group semantics of POSIX.
They're not logically equivalent- ACLs are more descriptive theoretically. That's because although one can emulate most any kind of ACL with clever group-id setup, all Un*x that I've seen implement uid and gid as bitflags.
Meaning you have a hard upper limit on the number of groups. Meaning that you'll run of of POSIX groups when trying to emulate ACLs of above a certain complexity.
(Maybe the POSIX standard says that groups should be unlimited- I don't know. But on popular Unices, there is a hard limit. Linux users can recompile their kernel to change this number, but it's still a compile-time constant)
There's a name for that; it's called hypocrisy.
No, it's called vigilantism. Mafia employees depend on their jobs as much as as the workers of legitimate businesses. Someone thinks his own judgement about good and evil is better than that of the government, and has decided that Microsoft has committed offenses which need punishing.
You could argue that his judgement was wrong. Or argue that even if evil-doers were getting away, his undermining of the rule of law is a greater evil. But accustations of hypocracy don't stick.
Look at how many ordinary people are willing to commit copyright infringement by trading songs on Kazaa, but would never even consider trying to jack a CD from Wal-Mart because that's shoplifting.
Look at how many ordinary cops are willing to clobber anyone they see jacking a CD from Wal-Mart, but would never even consider trying to arrest someone for trading songs on Kazaa.
Neither the enforcers nor violators of society's rules view copyright infringement as similar to shoplifting.
"Bake Off" is not technical jargon. It is a registered trademark of Pillsbury Foods International. Please cease and desist your unlicensed violations of intellectual property immediately.
Well, that's still the wrong usage, geeks hack into people's computers, nerds just watch Star Trek and... um... eat crackers, I guess.
That's precisely backwards. For some reason, in the past 5-7 years, internet-based communities decided to swap the definition of nerd and geek.
The original definition of geek came from a professional carnival performer who ate live animals. It evolved to mean anyone who was a complete social outcast.
Nerd is a re-spelling of nurd, which is a word used in the 40s to indicate a student whose courseload was so overwhelming that he had no time left for routine hygiene. It came to mean someone whose social incompatiblity was compensated for by superior mental qualities in some fields.
Nerd is a mixed positive/negative term; geek is strictly negative. At least you got freak right. (Geeks are asocial because of inability; nerds because of no desire; freaks could be sociable, but willingly are not)
Get your own facts straight. The very first "hacker" climbed through windows to stick his punchcards in machines he wasn't allowed to touch.
The amateur programmer meaning is a retroactive redefinition. So is the use of "Geek" to mean "someone who loves technology". In the past 5 years, self-professed "geeks" have attempted (with moderate success) to swap the definition of "geek" and "nerd".
1) an enthusiastic programmer/tinkerer who takes pride in finding clever ways to solve problems and tries to gain an intimate understanding of computers/code/technology (this was the original definition, appearing in the late 60's/ early 70's)
No, that's wrong. ESR willingly spreads this lie in his "Hacker's Dictionary / Jargon File".
The word hacker began applying to computers in the late 50s and meant specifically that someone was using a computer without permission.
Same with hacker. There are people who've called themselfs "Hacker" longer than the word was used to refer to a criminal activity and it would be very sad if people reviewing those documents started using that as an admittion of guilt.
The word "hacker" doesn't necessarily mean criminal- it only means "unauthorized", which frequently overlaps with illegality.
However, "unauthorized computer use" has ALWAYS been part of the definition of hacker.
Do you know who was the first person to call himself a "computer hacker"? It was Pete Samson who in 1958 snuck through a basement window to feed his own punchcard stack into MIT's computer.
People who claim hacker means "extremely skilled computer programmer" are actually the ones trying to redefine existing words. (This is similar to the way some people today want to redefine "witch" as a practitioner of Wicca).
It is likewise incorrect to claim that "cracker" is an acceptable word for "computer vandals". Cracker means someone who penetrates a security device to access something he shouldn't. Vandalism like DOS is usually accomplished without any security breaches.
one cannot understand Abortion rights unless one here's both sides; ProLife and ProAbortion.
Funny, you swapped the propaganda name "pro-choice" for the technically accurate ProAbortion, but you left ProLife in its typical advertising form instead of the more correct "anti-abortion". That could be bias right there.
The sentiment that web sources, just because they aren't written without journalistic/legal lingo and because that news isn't from "the usual outlets" (CNN,ABC,NBC,CBS, Time, etc)
Umm, those media you listed are web sources. If someone is going to cite CNN, ABC, NBC, or CBS, then going to the web page will be much more reliable and practical than referencing:
[3] Saw it on Nightline Aug 12, 2003, right after the 2nd commercial.
Researchers can't really cite TV. (They can cite transcripts, which are documents existing independently from the TV show, and which are often on the web)
If your paper is going to be read by a number of people, it makes good sense to have those sources on-hand; it never hurts to cover your arse.
And if one of those people telephones you asking "Hey, the website in your bibliography is down; do you have a copy?" what do you say?
"Yes, I DO have a copy. I can't give it to you of course; that would violate federal intellectual property law. But trust me, I do have it. The source really existed"
(Someone might respond that passing out such copies is protected fair use. It might be sometimes, but not always. In particular, if the article was first published on a student's website, then removed after acceptance by a journal, you really mustn't copy it.)
People who know me can always get access to them.
Even after you're struck by a meteor?
The question is about how strangers who don't know you can get an assurance that info they found on the web will continue to be accessible. You exhortation to "keep local backups" does nothing to help this problem.
It's about the need for human creativity and artistry being diminished.
I'm not willing to label the people who sing advertisements for soap and automobiles as artists or creative. (The guy who wrote the song, maybe). They're little different from the legions of portratists unemployed by Kodak.
In fact, it was only in recent years that singers and musicians have been able to convince the media to start referring to them by the loftier word "artist".
Actually you would still need permission to use a voice set
Yes, of course. That permission is naturally included in the employment contract for the aforementioned one week of work. The hourly pay will be much higher than a typical gig...
(The producers will start off by picking singers who are skilled but unattractive- usual "studio backup" types- who haven't the clout to get redisuals on the set)
What would hurt the industry bad would be if enough disgruntled artists decided to put their voice sets under Creative Commons licence just to screw over the industry that screwed them.
That won't hurt the industry at all. It'll be neutral to them... they'll hardly be aware of it. "There's a bunch of resources out there we can't use" = "We don't care if those resources exist or not".
The only way it could hurt established TV businesses if it lowered the barrier to entry so that more players could join the market. But custom singing is a small obstacle compared to other challenges of TV work.