EA has been singing this song for at least 15 years. Why do you think they are called Electronic Arts? When Trip Hawkins founded EA in 1982, it was with artistic aspirations. Their box design and advertising glorified the programmers, and attempted to give them rock star street cred.
It worked, to a large extent. Does anyone else remember the glamour shots of Bill Budge on the packaging for Pinball Construction Set? Does anyone remember the fantasy chess game Archon? Look at this picture of the programmers from 1984.
Electronic Arts used to be a great company. Then they started franchising popular and safe games, and produced the long but dull series of sports games for which they are now famous. EA classics include: Music Construction Set, Articfox, Marble Madness, Ferrari Formula One, the Bard's Tale series, Seven Cities of Gold. Seven Cities of Gold was designed by the amazing Bill Bunten (AKA Danielle Berry), who has a tribute page here.
Here is a publicity shot for MULE, which EA produced, and should demonstrate their aspirations at the time.
And they weren't the only game company from that era with artistic aspirations: Lucasfilm Games was also in on the act. They produced The Eidolon and Koronis Rift, and Rescue On Fractalus, which, though they would be laugable now, were amazing then, and the packaging (as I recall, I may be mis-remembering) also emphasised the programmers.
I've always wondered a similar thing, but with a different why:
Why bother recording live concert-music at all? Live music is great, LIVE. And only LIVE. It souns like shit when you listen to it sitting in the comfort of your home, especially if the recording was done with amateur equipment by amateurs, which bootlegs usually are.
Why waste the HD space? I mean, does fanaticism about a band render one musically tone-deaf?
In 1991, I received a letter from a Nigerian gentleman making me an offer too good to be true. I showed it to my friends, we laughed about it, all the while wondering whether there was anyone alive actually stupid enough to fall for such an obvious con.
Apparently, there are more stupid people than even my cynical self would have believed.
The question is: why? The alarm bells should have been ringing so loudly inside the head of this stupid embezzling bitch that it was deafening.
I get stuff forwarded from well-meaning friends all of the time about Proctor & Gamble's connection to Satanism, JATO rockets and 1967 Chevy Impalas, Neiman-Marcus cookie recipes - each story obvious bullshit, but they get forwarded anyway, and repeated by the gullible, endlessly, countlessly.
Why? Not all of the unwitting spreaders of these tall tales are stupid, but they do seem to lack any critical faculties.
Is this something that should be taught at school for those who don't just innately get it? CAN it be taught?
The United States is a country where The Brady Bunch Movie was followed by A Very Brady Sequel, for chrissakes. Where The Flinstones was followed by The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas. There have been EIGHT Land Before Time films. I assume that they made money. If they can make money, then why can't something of quality make money?
The sentence anime is becoming fashionable to admire chills me. Is the audience in the United States really so shallow that something has to be fashionable in order to be admired? People buy Pet Rocks here, and Singing Trout, and Boogie Bass, and glow-in-the-dark Elvis posters.
Shit sells in abundance.
I think I have the solution for Disney: the next time they need a risky film promoted, let Ronco handle marketing. Get George Foreman to promote it, and buy space on Oprah. Maybe Oprah can weep a little and tell everyone how Miyazaki's films helped her get off crack and find the strength to lose weight.
Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi is a remarkable film, as good as the review indicates, maybe better. But Disney seems hell-bent on hiding that information from us, even as they spend millions of dollars dubbing and subtitling. I am no conspiracy theorist, but I am really beginning to wonder whether the real reason that Disney bought the rights to Miyazaki's films is for damage-limitation: let's pretend to be good guys - hey, we did bring these great films to the US, you geeks - but let's also limit distribution so that the general public doesn't realize that there is something better available.
Several months before that drek Country Bears was released, everyone knew about it due to massive advertising. Where was the advertising for Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi? Where were the lunch boxes and McDonald's Happy Meals featuring Chihiro, Yubaba, Rin, Haku, or the Twin Witches? Do they think that American children are too stupid to appreciate Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi plush toys? Where are the coloring books and t-shirts and and all of the rest of the product placement that this film deserved more than all of the SHIT that Disney has produced recently ( Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and the retreads Cinderella 2, Lady and the Tramp 2, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame II - all of which had more TV previews than the more worthy Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi)?
[Lilo and Stitch being the notable exception.]
Treasure Planet, Disney's space-based derivative of Robert Lewis Stevenson's Treasure Island, isn't due in cinemas until November, and it has already receieved more hype than Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi ever recieved. The aforementioned Alice in Wonderland (1951), which has never been re-released to theaters, receives more hype for its TELEVISION reruns than Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi has ever receeved!
Do you get the point? Can you tell that I'm mad?
Disney fucked the public with their minimalistic release of Princess Mononoke, and now they are doing the same with Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi.
Honestly, I'm furious, though I don't know what to do about it.
Slashdot recently reported that Dreamworks [was] Delv[ing] Into Anime Maybe a letter campaign could convince Disney to do the right thing and relinquish their control of Miyazaki's films to a company who might know what to do with them.
I'm mad beyond spitting. Does anyone have any serious suggestions?
Regardless of who paid for it, they needn't have bothered. After having watched the show, I can state that this was one of the worst premieres I have ever seen for any show which has been hyped to this extent.
And Fox cancelled Dark Angel for THIS?
Now, if the original pilot had aired, I might have a different opinion, and I will give it another chance. However, as it stands, my verdict is: complete drek.
I am very disappointed, as I do have considerable respect for Whedon.
So please stop telling me Microsoft's great secret of success.
Microsoft's success is inarguable. Their "secret" may be arguable, but that shouldn't be the issue here. At issue is a unified desktop - the noticable face for the consumer to identify with - that the previous respondent vetted.
You write:
The only reason we have Windows now is because everybody else already had a GUI for years and Microsoft had to follow.
Whether this is true or not is largely irrelevant; the Microsoft GUI is the only GUI that 90% of of current (consumer-Joe-and-Jane-public) computer users have ever known.
When the first respondent wrote:
Most users [can't] tell you the difference in the versions of Windows, he was entirely accurate. I've worked tech support for years, and the vast majority of our customers have no idea which version of Windows they are using. They frequently tell me they are using Windows '97, being unable to distinguish between the OS and a suite of applications.
The point of this? If Linux is ever to succeed on the Desktop, with über-geeks AND consumer-Joe-and-Jane-public, a unified desktop is essential.
As Linux exists now, customer support for Joe-and-Jane-public would be a nightmare.
Me: "Do you use KDE or Gnome, Ma'am?"
Them: "Hmm?"
You also write:
RedHat won't enable Linux on the masses' desktops. Codeweavers will.
Bullshit. Most users - the non-MS haters, non-zealots - will see no reason to switch to another OS in the first place, and being able to run the same apps won't sway them. They will respond, logically: "If I'm going to be using the same programs, why not be using the same OS?"
I see Wine as a hindrance to Linux, not as a help. I also find it puzzling. To me, it is a bit like going to a Chinese restaurant and ordering a cheeseburger.
The Slashdot headline trumpets the wrong news - the story does not focus on Maxtor announcing 80GB HD platters or 160GB HD's (Maxtor has been selling 160GB drives for several months), but rather the serial ATA interface technology.
Today Maxtor announces its next generation ATA drives, all centered around 80 GB/platter technology.
Not criticizing overly much, but this would have been obvious had the poster actually read the article he submitted (assuming basic literacy skills).
Which leads one to wonder...
Not about basic literacy skills, but about having read the article at all.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I loved Babylon 5, but one of my few misgivings about the show was that they let Bruce Boxleitner anywhere near it.
I consider Ralph Fiennes, Dame Judi Dench, Pete Postlethwaite, Jeremy Irons, Cate Blanchett, and Dame Maggie Smith to be good actors.
I consider Tom Hanks, Jackie Chan, Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and (the late) John Wayne to be non-actors, but rather familiar, reassuring presences.
I consider Bruce Boxleitner, David Hasselhoff, Patrick Wayne, (the late) Doug McClure, Lindsay Wagner, Steven Seagal, Cheryl Ladd, Chuck Norris, and Jean-Claude Van Damme to be bad actors who have inexplicably (to me) ingratiated themselves with the film-going public.
I know, it might be unfair to include the action heroes in my list, who largely have no pretension of being actors, but I include them for one simple reason: too many people fail to distinguish between an actor and a star, and the difference is relevant to this discussion.
Note that I am not claiming that actors are never stars, or vice-versa, but that the two are not necessarily (or even often) connected.
While I found Prince's letter/number substitutions annoying, it barely affected readability.
I found his essay comprehensible, intelligible, and, largely, grammatically sound. I suspect that his artsy pretension was a display for his fans, and that he assumed the rest of us would have communication skills sufficient to see through the unnecessary shorthand.
Judging by the brouhaha criticizing the form rather than analyzing the content, I sadly conclude that he was wrong.
This is not a flame or a troll, but an expression of honest opinion. Mod as you see appropriate.
I hated Battlestar Galactica, but I thought it was much better than Tron. Understand that before you read further.
Are you ready? Okay....
Twenty years ago, Tron was not a good movie. It looked cheesey and cheap even then. The plot and storyline were so trite and unbelievable that it made Fantastic Voyage look like a good movie (and that should be impossible).
It also starred Bruce Boxleitner, one of the worst actors of any generation. Patrick Wayne is absolutely mesmerizing compared to Bruce. Christ, even David Hasselhoff is a acting god by comparison! In fact, now that I think about it, I can make the same comparison with Doug McClure...
Blade Runner came out the same year as Tron, and it is infinitely more-deserving of a sequel. It looked good then, and looks good 20 years later. Stylistically, it set a standard for SF movies that has never been equalled.
The Black Hole, another piece of drek, deserves a sequel before Tron, and The Black Hole is perhaps Disney's worst film ever.
Okay, I was 21 when Tron came out, and I suspect that many of its enthusiasts were, at the most, 12, but a bad movie is a bad movie. Watch it again and shatter your illusions, then write to the producer asking them to think again before any money is wasted on the sequel.
The Science Fiction franchise that _I_ would like to see reborn is Dr Who. Flame me if you will, but that was great Science Fiction!:-)
I am often colloquial when I wish to be direct, and when I believe that the person with whom I am conversing does not require excessive elaboration. I always prefer it to circumlocution, if it presents itself as an option. You struck me as an intelligent and literate individual, so I wrote informally. I do not think that I judged you wrongly; maybe it is my tactic that is wrong.
I now see the problem: my occupation requires that I "dumb down" my grammar and vocabulary, and I'm afraid that through repetition this may have become habit. My apologies.
This loss of precision in my grammatical usage would also explain why you felt discomfited by my claim: I don't flame or troll. No delusions or histrionics need be inferred, but I can see where you might make that assumption. Yes, I should have said, I never write with the intention to flame or troll, if I were striving to be entirely accurate. Actually, there is a part of me which still believes that I was being accurate; by my understanding, flaming or trolling are always deliberate actions, and I can categorically state that I never consciously - using that word in place of deliberately to clarify my meaning - insult or provoke, nor do I post messages designed to attract stupid responses or flames.
Hmm. I amend the above. I _do_ sometimes deliberately insult or provoke, but only if I feel that I was first insulted or provoked. I guess this means that I foolishly take the [flame] bait, which I shall strive to remedy in the future.
Regarding:
note is for directed not
I am more familiar with that useage when "not" is spelled nought or naught, so I may have comprehended your meaning had you used that spelling. Probably not, but at this point it comes to nought.;-)
This note is for directed not, I expect, as you Chasuk, do not seem to hold sway over your bias. For the other readers, it does make musical context, though.
I'll admit that I don't comprehend that sentence.:-)
Your epistemological theory of my existence is greatly exaggerated.
LOL.
I guess we will just have to agree to disagree. I haven't read any argument yet, from anyone, which convinces me that P2P file-sharing is not theft. Based on the evidence, I consider it disingenuous (self-deluding bullshit) from most of the claimants in the P2P camp.
I don't flame or troll. I consider trolls to be postules on the buttocks of the Internet (lower on the food-chain than spammers). If I have an opinion, then I state it, perfectly willing to be contradicted and sometimes proved wrong. I debate on the Internet for the purpose of self-education, and education is more about discovering what you don't know than what you do.
I agree with you and others on many points: Jackson and friends won't suffer because someone downloaded a copy of The Two Towers prior to that films release. Hypocrite that I am, I download fansubbed animes. I do it fully believing that I am committing theft. I live with myelf because 1) I am a geek fanboy when it comes to anime, and 2) I buy the animes that I enjoy if and when they are released in this country. I imagine that these are the same justifications that Tolkien fanboys use when they download The Two Towers.
We are at the beginning of a distribution revolution, at least for digital IP. Right now, I see most P2P promoters as thieves who conceal the truth from themselves with sophomore-level sophistry. Eventually, a model will emerge which benefits the artists and the consumer, but this will not happen as long as 1) the licensed distibutors of digital media (MusicNet, Pressplay) continue to overcharge, and 2) the P2P networks offer the same content for free.
Anyway, it has been an interesting debate, if slightly heated, and I thank you for it.:-)
You invent a song, I copy your song. You loose what?
My cut of the profit after the record producers, distributors, et al, have taken theirs.
I am not opposed to P2P file-sharing. Once a mechanism is in place which allows the author to benefit, and allows the distribution of music, etc., at a reasonable cost to the consumer, cutting out the harpies in the middle, great.
Scarcity doesn't come into the equation any longer. I create something that you couldn't or wouldn't create, and I choose to make it available to you at a profit. Whether I make available 50 million or only 5 copies, my contract with you is the same. Give unto me what I have earned, or suffer the consequences of being a thief.
It is an odd situation when a flamer accuses another (non-flamer) of being what he himself (or, she herself, for the gender police), most demonstrably is. Does that make you a troll?
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.
Substitute the words producer, director, and stakeholder for butcher, brewer, and baker, and it has the same weight. If you are really a stakeholder in New Line Cinema, you will already be paying close attention to this simple fact.
As for your distributiom model (A), remember that fencing stolen good is also a distribution model. Are you arguing that fencing stolen goods shouldn't be a crime?
The distribution under model (A)... appeal[s] to a select group of high bandwith, tech savy fans who have the money and will to partake in models (B) and (C) anyway.
I agree with you. However, I would argue that stealing when one has the ability to pay is far less excusable than stealing based on need. Is this tech savy crowd really so infested with geek fanboys and fangirls that waiting a few months is, for them, unbearable?
I don't believe that people like you exist. I know that this contradicts all of the best evidence, but I choose to believe (for sanity's sake) that you are a carefully constructed on-line persona whose purpose, though it presently eludes me, I will one day discover.
I am waiting for that day, though not with bated breath.
You obviously do very selective reading. Later, at the appropriate juncture, I explain exactly why copyright infringement is theft. To wit:
If you take something from me without my permission, and against my will, then you are a thief, pure and simple.
If you detect any flaw in this definition - and note that I don't give a fuck about the legality of an act, but rather about its morality - then please deconstruct it and post the results here.
Let us assume, for the moment, that copyright infringement is a perfectly moral thing to do. It isn't theft (and I personally believe that it is, but I am suspending that opinion for this hypothetical example), so the law takes no steps to prevent it occurring. In this hypothetical world, Blockbuster rents you the DVD burner along with The Two Towers. You get the blank DVD media for free if you rent TWO films. They are making money, you are happily making your copies, and no one suffers at all.
Erm, except for perhaps Peter Jackson, and the hundreds of cast and crew members who spent years laboring to make the film that you didn't pay for. Of course, I'm sure that Ian McKellen and Sean Astin and John Rhys-Davies and Liv Tyler and Cate Blanchett and Christopher Lee are all philanthropists: they don't care that you deprive them of a sizeable percentage of their livelihood.
If you really don't care that such films are made again, download and copy away. All of the rest of us will be so happy that you are "sticking it to the man" that we won't lynch you in the streets as our own act of civil disobedience when your actions cause such films to no longer be made. Really, we won't.
If you take something from me without my permission, and against my will, then you are a thief, pure and simple. That "something" doesn't have to be tangible. However, what we are talking about here IS tangible: the profits that you are depriving me of. Or Christopher Lee of. Or Peter Jackson of.
Any other argument is pure bullshit, even if the perpetrators have lied to themselves, self-brainwashed, I would call it, to justify their theft. Remember, it is possible to justify almost anything if you lack morals and you feel that your need is greater than that of your victims.
Just my.02 cents.
Re:At $100, this could be a good platform
on
An R2 Of Your Own
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· Score: 2
Maybe I'm not enough of a geek to appreciate this fully, but $100 seems awfully expensive for something that has no practical application, and would provide, say, 15 minutes of amusement.
Not to be crude, but for $100 it had better be able to give head before I would pay for it.
I think Hasbro has overestimated the Star Wars appeal. Or are there really that many/. readers out there so enamored of the Star Wars universe that $100 seems reasonable for a glorified beer-fetcher?
Now, when the day comes that $100 buys me a droid that can fetch a beer out of the fridge without me pre-loading it, then I would still save my money and walk to the fridge. But then, like I said, I guess I'm not geeky enough.
Let's be honest: if this wasn't Star Wars merchandise no one would give a shit. If it understood the names of 20 characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and beeped and chirped when the owner spoke those names, would anyone except for CmdrTaco buy it?
no auto format, and is missing many key functions of Word.
I hate autoformat, and many of the "key features" of MS Word are not used by 99% of the people who buy it. I've sold hundreds of copies of Word over the years, and most of the buyers did nothing complicated enough to justify the expense, but they felt better knowing they had purchased Word.
I imagine that this sheeple mentality is what sells most copies of Word to non-business users.
I still remember, when Lotus 1-2-3 reigned, the thousands of idiots who spent $700 learning to use it, and these were frequently people who could have calculated all of their expenses on one-side of a dinner napkin. The ancestors of those idiots buy systems with 1800+ processors and 512MB of RAM (with 128MB Geforce 4 video cards) because they want to chat on ICQ, send and receive e-mail, and play Solitaire. The are "upgrading" from Pentium 3-based systems with which they could have happily performed the same tasks for the next decade.
I guess I should be glad to take their money, but instead I feel guilty.
Anyway, the point is that Word is a great WP, but too much for the majority of its users. If I do talk to a customer who is counting pennies and not blinded by hype, I download Abiword for them, and it usually works just fine for their needs.
I agree with you [re: P2P software... simply a program that allows you to copy files to and from other people's computers],
I was agreeing that this was indeed the function of P2P software, in much the same way that I would agree that a pencil is simply an implement which allows one to copy thoughts onto paper.
However, the insightful and logicality of the COMPARISON made by the author of the.sig were lacking, for reasons that I have already expressed.
P2P software is simply a program that allows you to copy files to and from other people's computers.
I agree with you [re: P2P software... simply a program that allows you to copy files to and from other people's computers], but I found his.sig neither insightful nor logical, and it was the logicality of his.sig that I was objecting.
Incidentally, your.sig is interesting, but the information that it is "verbatim" is useless without an attribution.
Banning software to prevent "contributory piracy" is like banning automobiles to prevent "contributory bank robbery"
I will have to disagree with your.sig. Automobiles are not designed to aid in the commission of crimes - that use is ancillary. KaZaA, WinMX, Grokster, et al, exist for the purpose of aiding in the commission of crime, and any other use is ancillary.
Your argument is the equivalent of saying Banning deodorant to prevent foul body odor is like banning kitchen knives to prevent murder. Deodorant might have incidental uses, but the frequency of encountering unpleasant BO would inarguably be greater without it, whereas kitchen knives do have other uses, and the murders committed with them are incidental.
I dropped Linux as my desktop last month because, even with the MS fonts, it was just too bleedin' hard on my esyes [sic].
I concur. I do run Linux on a second box which I can switch to via a KVM, but I only use Linux sporadically (and never when I am surfing the web) because it is so fucking ugly that it gives me a headache.
If that problem were fixed (and, yes, I would donate money towards it fixing) Linux would be my primary OS.
The diamond engagement ring is a 63-year-old invention of N.W.Ayer advertising agency.
Your refutation:
63 years old? That wouldn't explain the Crown Jewels of England... or the historicity of diamonds' value dating back hundreds of years.
The Crown Jewels of England is not an engagement ring, and the historicity issue is moot, as the original article makes no claims regarding the value of diamonds pre-1870. In fact, the article implies that diamonds were highly valued pre-1870 due to their (then) scarcity.
or because it takes a professionally-certified gemologist to discern the actual quality of a gem.
Diamonds have little intrinsic value; it should thus be obvious that the real job of the professionally-certified gemologist is to inflate the value of his or her merchandise using arbitrary standards. If the value of a diamond lies in its beauty (add other criterion as needed), then I shouldn't need an "expert" to quantify or qualify what is an entirely subjective matter.
Of course, if this were true it would mean that apparantely all insurance companies have been duped as well.
Irrelevant and illogical when applied to this argument. First, because insurance companies make money selling you insurance for percieved value, not actual value, and this applies equally to diamonds, foreign sports cars, or works of art. Second, because it is perfectly possible, and not germane, that insurance companies are duped on this scale. That the number of persons or companies being duped seems improbable is not a valid refutation.
Slashdot Mirror
EA has been singing this song for at least 15 years. Why do you think they are called Electronic Arts? When Trip Hawkins founded EA in 1982, it was with artistic aspirations. Their box design and advertising glorified the programmers, and attempted to give them rock star street cred.
It worked, to a large extent. Does anyone else remember the glamour shots of Bill Budge on the packaging for Pinball Construction Set? Does anyone remember the fantasy chess game Archon? Look at this picture of the programmers from 1984.
Electronic Arts used to be a great company. Then they started franchising popular and safe games, and produced the long but dull series of sports games for which they are now famous. EA classics include: Music Construction Set, Articfox, Marble Madness, Ferrari Formula One, the Bard's Tale series, Seven Cities of Gold. Seven Cities of Gold was designed by the amazing Bill Bunten (AKA Danielle Berry), who has a tribute page here.
Here is another EA publicity photo.
Here is a publicity shot for MULE, which EA produced, and should demonstrate their aspirations at the time.
And they weren't the only game company from that era with artistic aspirations: Lucasfilm Games was also in on the act. They produced The Eidolon and Koronis Rift, and Rescue On Fractalus, which, though they would be laugable now, were amazing then, and the packaging (as I recall, I may be mis-remembering) also emphasised the programmers.
I've always wondered a similar thing, but with a different why:
Why bother recording live concert-music at all? Live music is great, LIVE. And only LIVE. It souns like shit when you listen to it sitting in the comfort of your home, especially if the recording was done with amateur equipment by amateurs, which bootlegs usually are.
Why waste the HD space? I mean, does fanaticism about a band render one musically tone-deaf?
In 1991, I received a letter from a Nigerian gentleman making me an offer too good to be true. I showed it to my friends, we laughed about it, all the while wondering whether there was anyone alive actually stupid enough to fall for such an obvious con.
Apparently, there are more stupid people than even my cynical self would have believed.
The question is: why? The alarm bells should have been ringing so loudly inside the head of this stupid embezzling bitch that it was deafening.
I get stuff forwarded from well-meaning friends all of the time about Proctor & Gamble's connection to Satanism, JATO rockets and 1967 Chevy Impalas, Neiman-Marcus cookie recipes - each story obvious bullshit, but they get forwarded anyway, and repeated by the gullible, endlessly, countlessly.
Why? Not all of the unwitting spreaders of these tall tales are stupid, but they do seem to lack any critical faculties.
Is this something that should be taught at school for those who don't just innately get it? CAN it be taught?
The United States is a country where The Brady Bunch Movie was followed by A Very Brady Sequel, for chrissakes. Where The Flinstones was followed by The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas. There have been EIGHT Land Before Time films. I assume that they made money. If they can make money, then why can't something of quality make money?
The sentence anime is becoming fashionable to admire chills me. Is the audience in the United States really so shallow that something has to be fashionable in order to be admired? People buy Pet Rocks here, and Singing Trout, and Boogie Bass, and glow-in-the-dark Elvis posters.
Shit sells in abundance.
I think I have the solution for Disney: the next time they need a risky film promoted, let Ronco handle marketing. Get George Foreman to promote it, and buy space on Oprah. Maybe Oprah can weep a little and tell everyone how Miyazaki's films helped her get off crack and find the strength to lose weight.
Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi is a remarkable film, as good as the review indicates, maybe better. But Disney seems hell-bent on hiding that information from us, even as they spend millions of dollars dubbing and subtitling. I am no conspiracy theorist, but I am really beginning to wonder whether the real reason that Disney bought the rights to Miyazaki's films is for damage-limitation: let's pretend to be good guys - hey, we did bring these great films to the US, you geeks - but let's also limit distribution so that the general public doesn't realize that there is something better available.
Several months before that drek Country Bears was released, everyone knew about it due to massive advertising. Where was the advertising for Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi? Where were the lunch boxes and McDonald's Happy Meals featuring Chihiro, Yubaba, Rin, Haku, or the Twin Witches? Do they think that American children are too stupid to appreciate Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi plush toys? Where are the coloring books and t-shirts and and all of the rest of the product placement that this film deserved more than all of the SHIT that Disney has produced recently ( Atlantis: The Lost Empire, and the retreads Cinderella 2, Lady and the Tramp 2, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame II - all of which had more TV previews than the more worthy Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi)?
[Lilo and Stitch being the notable exception.]
Treasure Planet, Disney's space-based derivative of Robert Lewis Stevenson's Treasure Island, isn't due in cinemas until November, and it has already receieved more hype than Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi ever recieved. The aforementioned Alice in Wonderland (1951), which has never been re-released to theaters, receives more hype for its TELEVISION reruns than Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi has ever receeved!
Do you get the point? Can you tell that I'm mad?
Disney fucked the public with their minimalistic release of Princess Mononoke, and now they are doing the same with Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi.
Honestly, I'm furious, though I don't know what to do about it.
Slashdot recently reported that Dreamworks [was] Delv[ing] Into Anime Maybe a letter campaign could convince Disney to do the right thing and relinquish their control of Miyazaki's films to a company who might know what to do with them.
I'm mad beyond spitting. Does anyone have any serious suggestions?
Regardless of who paid for it, they needn't have bothered. After having watched the show, I can state that this was one of the worst premieres I have ever seen for any show which has been hyped to this extent.
And Fox cancelled Dark Angel for THIS?
Now, if the original pilot had aired, I might have a different opinion, and I will give it another chance. However, as it stands, my verdict is: complete drek.
I am very disappointed, as I do have considerable respect for Whedon.
Oh, well...
So please stop telling me Microsoft's great secret of success.
Microsoft's success is inarguable. Their "secret" may be arguable, but that shouldn't be the issue here. At issue is a unified desktop - the noticable face for the consumer to identify with - that the previous respondent vetted.
You write:
The only reason we have Windows now is because everybody else already had a GUI for years and Microsoft had to follow.
Whether this is true or not is largely irrelevant; the Microsoft GUI is the only GUI that 90% of of current (consumer-Joe-and-Jane-public) computer users have ever known.
When the first respondent wrote:
Most users [can't] tell you the difference in the versions of Windows, he was entirely accurate. I've worked tech support for years, and the vast majority of our customers have no idea which version of Windows they are using. They frequently tell me they are using Windows '97, being unable to distinguish between the OS and a suite of applications.
The point of this? If Linux is ever to succeed on the Desktop, with über-geeks AND consumer-Joe-and-Jane-public, a unified desktop is essential.
As Linux exists now, customer support for Joe-and-Jane-public would be a nightmare.
Me: "Do you use KDE or Gnome, Ma'am?"
Them: "Hmm?"
You also write:
RedHat won't enable Linux on the masses' desktops. Codeweavers will.
Bullshit. Most users - the non-MS haters, non-zealots - will see no reason to switch to another OS in the first place, and being able to run the same apps won't sway them. They will respond, logically: "If I'm going to be using the same programs, why not be using the same OS?"
I see Wine as a hindrance to Linux, not as a help. I also find it puzzling. To me, it is a bit like going to a Chinese restaurant and ordering a cheeseburger.
The Slashdot headline trumpets the wrong news - the story does not focus on Maxtor announcing 80GB HD platters or 160GB HD's (Maxtor has been selling 160GB drives for several months), but rather the serial ATA interface technology.
Today Maxtor announces its next generation ATA drives, all centered around 80 GB/platter technology.
Not criticizing overly much, but this would have been obvious had the poster actually read the article he submitted (assuming basic literacy skills).
Which leads one to wonder...
Not about basic literacy skills, but about having read the article at all.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I loved Babylon 5, but one of my few misgivings about the show was that they let Bruce Boxleitner anywhere near it.
I consider Ralph Fiennes, Dame Judi Dench, Pete Postlethwaite, Jeremy Irons, Cate Blanchett, and Dame Maggie Smith to be good actors.
I consider Tom Hanks, Jackie Chan, Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and (the late) John Wayne to be non-actors, but rather familiar, reassuring presences.
I consider Bruce Boxleitner, David Hasselhoff, Patrick Wayne, (the late) Doug McClure, Lindsay Wagner, Steven Seagal, Cheryl Ladd, Chuck Norris, and Jean-Claude Van Damme to be bad actors who have inexplicably (to me) ingratiated themselves with the film-going public.
I know, it might be unfair to include the action heroes in my list, who largely have no pretension of being actors, but I include them for one simple reason: too many people fail to distinguish between an actor and a star, and the difference is relevant to this discussion.
Note that I am not claiming that actors are never stars, or vice-versa, but that the two are not necessarily (or even often) connected.
While I found Prince's letter/number substitutions annoying, it barely affected readability.
I found his essay comprehensible, intelligible, and, largely, grammatically sound. I suspect that his artsy pretension was a display for his fans, and that he assumed the rest of us would have communication skills sufficient to see through the unnecessary shorthand.
Judging by the brouhaha criticizing the form rather than analyzing the content, I sadly conclude that he was wrong.
This is not a flame or a troll, but an expression of honest opinion. Mod as you see appropriate.
:-)
I hated Battlestar Galactica, but I thought it was much better than Tron. Understand that before you read further.
Are you ready? Okay....
Twenty years ago, Tron was not a good movie. It looked cheesey and cheap even then. The plot and storyline were so trite and unbelievable that it made Fantastic Voyage look like a good movie (and that should be impossible).
It also starred Bruce Boxleitner, one of the worst actors of any generation. Patrick Wayne is absolutely mesmerizing compared to Bruce. Christ, even David Hasselhoff is a acting god by comparison! In fact, now that I think about it, I can make the same comparison with Doug McClure...
Blade Runner came out the same year as Tron, and it is infinitely more-deserving of a sequel. It looked good then, and looks good 20 years later. Stylistically, it set a standard for SF movies that has never been equalled.
The Black Hole, another piece of drek, deserves a sequel before Tron, and The Black Hole is perhaps Disney's worst film ever.
Okay, I was 21 when Tron came out, and I suspect that many of its enthusiasts were, at the most, 12, but a bad movie is a bad movie. Watch it again and shatter your illusions, then write to the producer asking them to think again before any money is wasted on the sequel.
The Science Fiction franchise that _I_ would like to see reborn is Dr Who. Flame me if you will, but that was great Science Fiction!
I am often colloquial when I wish to be direct, and when I believe that the person with whom I am conversing does not require excessive elaboration. I always prefer it to circumlocution, if it presents itself as an option. You struck me as an intelligent and literate individual, so I wrote informally. I do not think that I judged you wrongly; maybe it is my tactic that is wrong.
;-)
I now see the problem: my occupation requires that I "dumb down" my grammar and vocabulary, and I'm afraid that through repetition this may have become habit. My apologies.
This loss of precision in my grammatical usage would also explain why you felt discomfited by my claim: I don't flame or troll. No delusions or histrionics need be inferred, but I can see where you might make that assumption. Yes, I should have said, I never write with the intention to flame or troll, if I were striving to be entirely accurate. Actually, there is a part of me which still believes that I was being accurate; by my understanding, flaming or trolling are always deliberate actions, and I can categorically state that I never consciously - using that word in place of deliberately to clarify my meaning - insult or provoke, nor do I post messages designed to attract stupid responses or flames.
Hmm. I amend the above. I _do_ sometimes deliberately insult or provoke, but only if I feel that I was first insulted or provoked. I guess this means that I foolishly take the [flame] bait, which I shall strive to remedy in the future.
Regarding:
note is for directed not
I am more familiar with that useage when "not" is spelled nought or naught, so I may have comprehended your meaning had you used that spelling. Probably not, but at this point it comes to nought.
This note is for directed not, I expect, as you Chasuk, do not seem to hold sway over your bias. For the other readers, it does make musical context, though.
:-)
:-)
I'll admit that I don't comprehend that sentence.
Your epistemological theory of my existence is greatly exaggerated.
LOL.
I guess we will just have to agree to disagree. I haven't read any argument yet, from anyone, which convinces me that P2P file-sharing is not theft. Based on the evidence, I consider it disingenuous (self-deluding bullshit) from most of the claimants in the P2P camp.
I don't flame or troll. I consider trolls to be postules on the buttocks of the Internet (lower on the food-chain than spammers). If I have an opinion, then I state it, perfectly willing to be contradicted and sometimes proved wrong. I debate on the Internet for the purpose of self-education, and education is more about discovering what you don't know than what you do.
I agree with you and others on many points: Jackson and friends won't suffer because someone downloaded a copy of The Two Towers prior to that films release. Hypocrite that I am, I download fansubbed animes. I do it fully believing that I am committing theft. I live with myelf because 1) I am a geek fanboy when it comes to anime, and 2) I buy the animes that I enjoy if and when they are released in this country. I imagine that these are the same justifications that Tolkien fanboys use when they download The Two Towers.
We are at the beginning of a distribution revolution, at least for digital IP. Right now, I see most P2P promoters as thieves who conceal the truth from themselves with sophomore-level sophistry. Eventually, a model will emerge which benefits the artists and the consumer, but this will not happen as long as 1) the licensed distibutors of digital media (MusicNet, Pressplay) continue to overcharge, and 2) the P2P networks offer the same content for free.
Anyway, it has been an interesting debate, if slightly heated, and I thank you for it.
You invent a song, I copy your song. You loose what?
My cut of the profit after the record producers, distributors, et al, have taken theirs.
I am not opposed to P2P file-sharing. Once a mechanism is in place which allows the author to benefit, and allows the distribution of music, etc., at a reasonable cost to the consumer, cutting out the harpies in the middle, great.
Scarcity doesn't come into the equation any longer. I create something that you couldn't or wouldn't create, and I choose to make it available to you at a profit. Whether I make available 50 million or only 5 copies, my contract with you is the same. Give unto me what I have earned, or suffer the consequences of being a thief.
It is an odd situation when a flamer accuses another (non-flamer) of being what he himself (or, she herself, for the gender police), most demonstrably is. Does that make you a troll?
I will contradict your entire argument by quoting from Adam Smith, whom you apparently admire. This is from An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations:
It is not from the benevolence of the butcher the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities, but of their advantages.
Substitute the words producer, director, and stakeholder for butcher, brewer, and baker, and it has the same weight. If you are really a stakeholder in New Line Cinema, you will already be paying close attention to this simple fact.
As for your distributiom model (A), remember that fencing stolen good is also a distribution model. Are you arguing that fencing stolen goods shouldn't be a crime?
The distribution under model (A)... appeal[s] to a select group of high bandwith, tech savy fans who have the money and will to partake in models (B) and (C) anyway.
I agree with you. However, I would argue that stealing when one has the ability to pay is far less excusable than stealing based on need. Is this tech savy crowd really so infested with geek fanboys and fangirls that waiting a few months is, for them, unbearable?
I don't believe that people like you exist. I know that this contradicts all of the best evidence, but I choose to believe (for sanity's sake) that you are a carefully constructed on-line persona whose purpose, though it presently eludes me, I will one day discover.
I am waiting for that day, though not with bated breath.
You obviously do very selective reading. Later, at the appropriate juncture, I explain exactly why copyright infringement is theft. To wit:
If you take something from me without my permission, and against my will, then you are a thief, pure and simple.
If you detect any flaw in this definition - and note that I don't give a fuck about the legality of an act, but rather about its morality - then please deconstruct it and post the results here.
Your reply is so disingenuous as to be laughable.
.02 cents.
Let us assume, for the moment, that copyright infringement is a perfectly moral thing to do. It isn't theft (and I personally believe that it is, but I am suspending that opinion for this hypothetical example), so the law takes no steps to prevent it occurring. In this hypothetical world, Blockbuster rents you the DVD burner along with The Two Towers. You get the blank DVD media for free if you rent TWO films. They are making money, you are happily making your copies, and no one suffers at all.
Erm, except for perhaps Peter Jackson, and the hundreds of cast and crew members who spent years laboring to make the film that you didn't pay for. Of course, I'm sure that Ian McKellen and Sean Astin and John Rhys-Davies and Liv Tyler and Cate Blanchett and Christopher Lee are all philanthropists: they don't care that you deprive them of a sizeable percentage of their livelihood.
If you really don't care that such films are made again, download and copy away. All of the rest of us will be so happy that you are "sticking it to the man" that we won't lynch you in the streets as our own act of civil disobedience when your actions cause such films to no longer be made. Really, we won't.
If you take something from me without my permission, and against my will, then you are a thief, pure and simple. That "something" doesn't have to be tangible. However, what we are talking about here IS tangible: the profits that you are depriving me of. Or Christopher Lee of. Or Peter Jackson of.
Any other argument is pure bullshit, even if the perpetrators have lied to themselves, self-brainwashed, I would call it, to justify their theft. Remember, it is possible to justify almost anything if you lack morals and you feel that your need is greater than that of your victims.
Just my
Maybe I'm not enough of a geek to appreciate this fully, but $100 seems awfully expensive for something that has no practical application, and would provide, say, 15 minutes of amusement.
/. readers out there so enamored of the Star Wars universe that $100 seems reasonable for a glorified beer-fetcher?
Not to be crude, but for $100 it had better be able to give head before I would pay for it.
I think Hasbro has overestimated the Star Wars appeal. Or are there really that many
Now, when the day comes that $100 buys me a droid that can fetch a beer out of the fridge without me pre-loading it, then I would still save my money and walk to the fridge. But then, like I said, I guess I'm not geeky enough.
Let's be honest: if this wasn't Star Wars merchandise no one would give a shit. If it understood the names of 20 characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and beeped and chirped when the owner spoke those names, would anyone except for CmdrTaco buy it?
MS Works Word Processor... has no spell check
Erm, yes, it does, and it always has.
no auto format, and is missing many key functions of Word.
I hate autoformat, and many of the "key features" of MS Word are not used by 99% of the people who buy it. I've sold hundreds of copies of Word over the years, and most of the buyers did nothing complicated enough to justify the expense, but they felt better knowing they had purchased Word.
I imagine that this sheeple mentality is what sells most copies of Word to non-business users.
I still remember, when Lotus 1-2-3 reigned, the thousands of idiots who spent $700 learning to use it, and these were frequently people who could have calculated all of their expenses on one-side of a dinner napkin. The ancestors of those idiots buy systems with 1800+ processors and 512MB of RAM (with 128MB Geforce 4 video cards) because they want to chat on ICQ, send and receive e-mail, and play Solitaire. The are "upgrading" from Pentium 3-based systems with which they could have happily performed the same tasks for the next decade.
I guess I should be glad to take their money, but instead I feel guilty.
Anyway, the point is that Word is a great WP, but too much for the majority of its users. If I do talk to a customer who is counting pennies and not blinded by hype, I download Abiword for them, and it usually works just fine for their needs.
When I said:
.sig were lacking, for reasons that I have already expressed.
I agree with you [re: P2P software... simply a program that allows you to copy files to and from other people's computers],
I was agreeing that this was indeed the function of P2P software, in much the same way that I would agree that a pencil is simply an implement which allows one to copy thoughts onto paper.
However, the insightful and logicality of the COMPARISON made by the author of the
P2P software is simply a program that allows you to copy files to and from other people's computers.
.sig neither insightful nor logical, and it was the logicality of his .sig that I was objecting.
.sig is interesting, but the information that it is "verbatim" is useless without an attribution.
I agree with you [re: P2P software... simply a program that allows you to copy files to and from other people's computers], but I found his
Incidentally, your
Who said/wrote it, and when?
Banning software to prevent "contributory piracy" is like banning automobiles to prevent "contributory bank robbery"
.sig. Automobiles are not designed to aid in the commission of crimes - that use is ancillary. KaZaA, WinMX, Grokster, et al, exist for the purpose of aiding in the commission of crime, and any other use is ancillary.
I will have to disagree with your
Your argument is the equivalent of saying Banning deodorant to prevent foul body odor is like banning kitchen knives to prevent murder. Deodorant might have incidental uses, but the frequency of encountering unpleasant BO would inarguably be greater without it, whereas kitchen knives do have other uses, and the murders committed with them are incidental.
All I ask for is a unix front-end with... smooth anti-aliased fonts *everywhere*
Ditto: if, or when, that happens, Linux will become my primary OS.
I dropped Linux as my desktop last month because, even with the MS fonts, it was just too bleedin' hard on my esyes [sic].
I concur. I do run Linux on a second box which I can switch to via a KVM, but I only use Linux sporadically (and never when I am surfing the web) because it is so fucking ugly that it gives me a headache.
If that problem were fixed (and, yes, I would donate money towards it fixing) Linux would be my primary OS.
Quote from the article:
.02 cents worth.
The diamond engagement ring is a 63-year-old invention of N.W.Ayer advertising agency.
Your refutation:
63 years old? That wouldn't explain the Crown Jewels of England... or the historicity of diamonds' value dating back hundreds of years.
The Crown Jewels of England is not an engagement ring, and the historicity issue is moot, as the original article makes no claims regarding the value of diamonds pre-1870. In fact, the article implies that diamonds were highly valued pre-1870 due to their (then) scarcity.
or because it takes a professionally-certified gemologist to discern the actual quality of a gem.
Diamonds have little intrinsic value; it should thus be obvious that the real job of the professionally-certified gemologist is to inflate the value of his or her merchandise using arbitrary standards. If the value of a diamond lies in its beauty (add other criterion as needed), then I shouldn't need an "expert" to quantify or qualify what is an entirely subjective matter.
Of course, if this were true it would mean that apparantely all insurance companies have been duped as well.
Irrelevant and illogical when applied to this argument. First, because insurance companies make money selling you insurance for percieved value, not actual value, and this applies equally to diamonds, foreign sports cars, or works of art. Second, because it is perfectly possible, and not germane, that insurance companies are duped on this scale. That the number of persons or companies being duped seems improbable is not a valid refutation.
Just my