... this is a pretty interesting point. Cedega (formerly WineX) does not have support for most of the new copy protection mechanisms around, and mentions as much in their documentation. This means that you can install and run pirated games in Linux that you wouldn't be able to in Windows.
I mention this not to promote piracy, but because it raises an interesting legal point - Transgaming are technically selling a product that allows you to circumvent copy protection - granted, in a very broad sense. But I wonder how long they'll be allowed to proceed before getting smacked down under the new US laws designed to prevent this sort of thing.
I agree with most of what you said, and with the fact that the book was... well... it *was* fun, in a Vinnie Gognitti sort of way.
But I was wondering.
In your opinion, what is it that humans have specialized in, during their evolution?
What concerns me more is that *despite* getting a multimillion dollar contribution, the prize money has not gone up. Moreover, I don't remember there being a cutoff date before (but I might have missed that).
My question is, where is the money going, and what happens to the money if Burt doesn't make it up there by the end of the year?
Check out www.jahshaka.com. It's an open source video compositing / FX package that leverages the 3D accelerator chip on your graphics card to do incredible things. This is one to watch, it's definitely going places.
You can download binaries for linux and windows (and MAC), and source tarballs are available for the savvy.
I know, it's not strictly a "renderer", but it employs many of the fuctions of a renderer to create realtime effects and transitions.
While I credit PJ with fantastic visual production (apart from the hack job he did on the third LoTR film), I was immensely dissappointed with his interpretation of the story
Now, much as it annoyed me, I didn't really think it was significant, as LoTR is a tale for adults when all is said and done.
But The Hobbit is for children. Smearing it with commercial Jacksonism will change children's interpretation of it, as larger numbers of them will see the film rather than read the book. How many of you were introduced to fantasy through the Hobbit?
Now I know that the argument is, hey, it's film, it's a different medium, things have to change - and I acknowledge all of these things. But I just think that some things should remain sacred.
I'm not sure you're right about radio stations not paying to play, but I do stand to be corrected. But consider this: a record company pays for a chunk of airtime, and decides what to play in it. This is no different than any other advertiser. The record company is simply playing 3-minute ads for their product.
NONE of which detracts from the fact that the artist's intellectual property was broadcast on a national medium. The radio station still has to pay a royalty to the songwriter.
This is true even of cheezy advertising - the guy that wrote the jingle gets paid every time time that little ditty goes out: his intellectual product is being broadcast. This is why jingle writing is such a lucrative game.
Which brings me back to my previous point. Music royalties are split into two distinct categories: intellectual (artist) royalty and mechanical royalty. The intellectual royalty kicks in every time the song is broadcast or performed. This goes to the songwriter.
The mechanical royalty covers the product. The CDs. The DVDs. The VHS. The DJ's vinyl. The T-shirts. The stoopid caps. That stuff. That money belongs to the record company.
So someone needs to loudly argue the case that P2P is a BROADCAST medium. As such, ARTIST royalties are being acrued when mp3s change hands - not record company royalties. As I see it, therefore, the quickest way to legitimize the P2P wave would be for an mp3 trade to count as broadcast to 1 person. Then use the standard, industry recognised calculation technique to work out what that's worth, given an audience of 1 - the same formula they use to calculate royalties for the estimated audience of a radio station.
This amount gets billed to the trader. It would be a couple of cents, max.
Every song that you hear on the radio is paid for. The price that a radio station must pay for broadcasting a song depends on the estimated listenership. There is an organization that tracks this and collects royalties on behalf of the *artist* (NOT the record company). This is called a useage fee.
Here in South Africa the organization is SAMRO, but there is a similar organization in every country. Radio stations make the money back (and more) by selling advertising.
Come to think of it, this raises an interesting point for me. The artist royalties collected for useage fees go to the artists (and some to their publishers, if they have a publisher). The record company does see that money, because there's no product being sold. Given this, shouldn't the whole filesharing thing be treated as a valid broadcast medium, and regulated as such?
Why are we treating filesharing as a mechanical rights issue when there is no physical product involved. Mp3 sharing is a broadcast royalty issue. Someone should mention this to someone powerful.
Nay, the flames are not for thee, troll. But only because I assume that you posted this before the second Matrix film came out, and the post fell through a time warp and entered the list now.
I understood well the first Matrix, and agree with you about it's depth and wonder. But starting with the second film, the producers began to work really hard to try and dispell any impression you had that this was a serious film. Wait, we said, we know what you're saying but you're just choosing to interpret this film as superficial and crap. The third one will bring it into perspective!
How wrong we were.
But since we're onto this thing of comparing Matrix to LOTR: think about this. Matrix is (among many other things, granted) a tale of how Neos power grows and grows until he smites the evil. As such, it's a classic persuit-of-power/now-you-are-ready/save-the-world sort of a film.
LOTR, by comparison, is a tale of trying to get rid of power. This ring is horribly powerful, we must get rid of it. In the end, it's actually only destroyed because of Frodo's extreme weakness. And though the world is saved from Sauron, it is irrevocably changed, and grace (the elves) passes from Middle Earth.
Of course, PJ is just focussing on the battle scenes, mostly.
You ask, what gives? The Books give. We (the Tolkein freaks) flock to see the movies because of how moved we are by the books. There is layer upon layer upon layer in the books, and to this day I cannot read them without discovering new things, or stopping to cry in certain bits.
I do see your point about the silliness of holding up LOTR as a gold standard - it's not. At best, it's a tiny window onto something bigger. But it's not about the movies.
I, too, will see the third film, several times. I will not go and see it to see how PJ has mangled the story, or to see Evil Cast Down, or to see Aragorn snog Liv Tyler. I will see it because I want to see Minas Tirith. I will see it because I want to be there when Rohan rides onto the Pelenor singing. I will see it because I want to see a world I have spent so much time in, on screen.
Not because Peter made a particularly clever movie.
I feel you on that one.
And given that much of the "restored features" of the extended edition of the film (feeble justifications for the Raping of Faramir) were shot after the theatrical release, it seems that PJ must have gotten a fair volume of Rigelian Hotshots for it as well.
Naughty Peter. And we trusted you so.
Nope. Still wrong.
Haldir was never at Helms Deep. In fact, the only elf at Helms Deep was named Legolas, and he was not a snowboarder.
As for that Arwen - you're right, I understand and accept why PJ put her in. But in truth, the only time she features is when some elvish postmen come and drop her off at Minas Tirith - please sign for 1 x elvish princess thank you very much goodbye now. And then the elves leave without ever having shown up at a battle.
And now PJ has the audacity to try and sell me a DVD set that features an entire disc of him explaining how he remained true to Tolkein's vision? Please. He remained true to his bank manager's vision.
I cannot fault him on his sets, costumes, actors or technical execution, but the fact remains that he could have released TT under a different title and nobody would have noticed.
It's not free, but SuSE also comes on a DVD. Well actually it comes in this neat little fold out cardboard thing with 7 CDs + 1 DVD. I like SuSE's box, it's really big and chunky, makes me feel like I bought something.
While Protools does represent a truly wonderful system, it's dated. It's fantastic in that, being hardware based, it doesn't require a monster machine to run, and it runs without falling over (with the possible exception of their shite win32 version).
However, the playing field has changed tremendously since Protools came out. Significantly, CPUs are way more potent, to the point where I'd say that if you have a 2Ghz CPU, you can probably do more realtime FX than a Protools system can anyway.
Now, by saying this, I'm not detracting from what Protools is - it's an excellent standalone system and it's beautiful to use. However, it's no longer a prerequisite to accessing that level of professionalism in recording.
I totally disagree with your assumption that an ordinary PC CPU cannot match, if not outprocess, a Protools setup. I recently ran a mix for a cinema targeted advert, using 32 channels, with CPU-processed eqs and fx, on a very vanilla Intel 1.6a, without a problem.
I'm not saying that this would have been my choice of equipment (I prefer Paris Ensoniq), but the point is that PC hardware has been steadily evolving, while Protools hasn't really (aside from the whole 24/96 thing).
And with applications like Ardour available in Linux, the entry level price tag for pro-quality recording just fell through the floor.
My only concern with the digital audio revolution remains what it was when this all started: We've made powerful music-making technology available to a huge population of tonedeaf idiots. Future generations will not thank us.
The format war continues, but ultimately the majority of the codecs are trying to implement the mpeg4 standard. Surveys and comparisons aside, if you trawl around you'll find that most "users" (ie not companies) are using either DivX3/5 or XviD.
Some clever individual has come up with ffdshow, which you can get off doom9.org, which will play either DivX or XviD without having either codec installed on your system. And at around 500k, it's a smaller download than either of those codecs
... It's about time someone did something useful with these things.
A local newsagent is selling a series of these horrid mags with a bit of a robot on the cover, collect them all and build it, sort of a thing. I can just imagine how proud I'd be to watch my lad's robot savage the postie...
Ah, but DVDs weren't tied to to Microsoft-only players - anyone + dog could build a hardware player for them.
Also, DVD's popularity probably also has to do with the ease with which all of those copy protection mechanisms can be circumvented. Alarming as it seems to anyone who thought that paying for something means you own it, this format will probably see widespread adoption simply because of how DRM-friendly it is.
domestic partnerships are law, with same sex marriages in the works
Huh? Can you elaborate on that?
Basically, it means that a commonlaw marriage is legally enforceable. So if two people live together and are committed to each other, they get the same legal protection, tax benefits and considerations that legally married people do.
This, therefore, also covers same sex relationships. However, same sex couples can't as yet get "married", because of the current legal definition of the term. This amounts to discrimination, which is unconstitutional, and is being challenged in law at the moment. Watch this space...
I have to assume you're trolling, or that you only watch CNN.
I live and work in South Africa, and I'm white. Nobody's demanding extortion money from me. Nobody's shooting at me. In fact, things are better than ever.
We still have a deeply corrupt government, but at least we elected them for a change. And for all their embezzlement and lunatic AIDS policies, their decision to go the OSS route gives me renewed hope for the future.
Slashdot Mirror
... this is a pretty interesting point. Cedega (formerly WineX) does not have support for most of the new copy protection mechanisms around, and mentions as much in their documentation. This means that you can install and run pirated games in Linux that you wouldn't be able to in Windows.
I mention this not to promote piracy, but because it raises an interesting legal point - Transgaming are technically selling a product that allows you to circumvent copy protection - granted, in a very broad sense. But I wonder how long they'll be allowed to proceed before getting smacked down under the new US laws designed to prevent this sort of thing.
I agree with most of what you said, and with the fact that the book was
But I was wondering.
In your opinion, what is it that humans have specialized in, during their evolution?
What concerns me more is that *despite* getting a multimillion dollar contribution, the prize money has not gone up. Moreover, I don't remember there being a cutoff date before (but I might have missed that).
My question is, where is the money going, and what happens to the money if Burt doesn't make it up there by the end of the year?
Check out www.jahshaka.com. It's an open source video compositing / FX package that leverages the 3D accelerator chip on your graphics card to do incredible things. This is one to watch, it's definitely going places.
You can download binaries for linux and windows (and MAC), and source tarballs are available for the savvy.
I know, it's not strictly a "renderer", but it employs many of the fuctions of a renderer to create realtime effects and transitions.
While I credit PJ with fantastic visual production (apart from the hack job he did on the third LoTR film), I was immensely dissappointed with his interpretation of the story
Now, much as it annoyed me, I didn't really think it was significant, as LoTR is a tale for adults when all is said and done.
But The Hobbit is for children. Smearing it with commercial Jacksonism will change children's interpretation of it, as larger numbers of them will see the film rather than read the book. How many of you were introduced to fantasy through the Hobbit?
Now I know that the argument is, hey, it's film, it's a different medium, things have to change - and I acknowledge all of these things. But I just think that some things should remain sacred.
I'm not sure you're right about radio stations not paying to play, but I do stand to be corrected. But consider this: a record company pays for a chunk of airtime, and decides what to play in it. This is no different than any other advertiser. The record company is simply playing 3-minute ads for their product.
NONE of which detracts from the fact that the artist's intellectual property was broadcast on a national medium. The radio station still has to pay a royalty to the songwriter.
This is true even of cheezy advertising - the guy that wrote the jingle gets paid every time time that little ditty goes out: his intellectual product is being broadcast. This is why jingle writing is such a lucrative game.
Which brings me back to my previous point. Music royalties are split into two distinct categories: intellectual (artist) royalty and mechanical royalty. The intellectual royalty kicks in every time the song is broadcast or performed. This goes to the songwriter.
The mechanical royalty covers the product. The CDs. The DVDs. The VHS. The DJ's vinyl. The T-shirts. The stoopid caps. That stuff. That money belongs to the record company.
So someone needs to loudly argue the case that P2P is a BROADCAST medium. As such, ARTIST royalties are being acrued when mp3s change hands - not record company royalties. As I see it, therefore, the quickest way to legitimize the P2P wave would be for an mp3 trade to count as broadcast to 1 person. Then use the standard, industry recognised calculation technique to work out what that's worth, given an audience of 1 - the same formula they use to calculate royalties for the estimated audience of a radio station.
This amount gets billed to the trader. It would be a couple of cents, max.
Think about it.
errrr, I mean, the record company *doesn't* see money from useage fees. Damn typos.
Every song that you hear on the radio is paid for. The price that a radio station must pay for broadcasting a song depends on the estimated listenership. There is an organization that tracks this and collects royalties on behalf of the *artist* (NOT the record company). This is called a useage fee.
Here in South Africa the organization is SAMRO, but there is a similar organization in every country. Radio stations make the money back (and more) by selling advertising.
Come to think of it, this raises an interesting point for me. The artist royalties collected for useage fees go to the artists (and some to their publishers, if they have a publisher). The record company does see that money, because there's no product being sold. Given this, shouldn't the whole filesharing thing be treated as a valid broadcast medium, and regulated as such?
Why are we treating filesharing as a mechanical rights issue when there is no physical product involved. Mp3 sharing is a broadcast royalty issue. Someone should mention this to someone powerful.
Nay, the flames are not for thee, troll. But only because I assume that you posted this before the second Matrix film came out, and the post fell through a time warp and entered the list now.
I understood well the first Matrix, and agree with you about it's depth and wonder. But starting with the second film, the producers began to work really hard to try and dispell any impression you had that this was a serious film. Wait, we said, we know what you're saying but you're just choosing to interpret this film as superficial and crap. The third one will bring it into perspective!
How wrong we were.
But since we're onto this thing of comparing Matrix to LOTR: think about this. Matrix is (among many other things, granted) a tale of how Neos power grows and grows until he smites the evil. As such, it's a classic persuit-of-power/now-you-are-ready/save-the-world sort of a film.
LOTR, by comparison, is a tale of trying to get rid of power. This ring is horribly powerful, we must get rid of it. In the end, it's actually only destroyed because of Frodo's extreme weakness. And though the world is saved from Sauron, it is irrevocably changed, and grace (the elves) passes from Middle Earth.
Of course, PJ is just focussing on the battle scenes, mostly.
You ask, what gives? The Books give. We (the Tolkein freaks) flock to see the movies because of how moved we are by the books. There is layer upon layer upon layer in the books, and to this day I cannot read them without discovering new things, or stopping to cry in certain bits.
I do see your point about the silliness of holding up LOTR as a gold standard - it's not. At best, it's a tiny window onto something bigger. But it's not about the movies.
I, too, will see the third film, several times. I will not go and see it to see how PJ has mangled the story, or to see Evil Cast Down, or to see Aragorn snog Liv Tyler. I will see it because I want to see Minas Tirith. I will see it because I want to be there when Rohan rides onto the Pelenor singing. I will see it because I want to see a world I have spent so much time in, on screen.
Not because Peter made a particularly clever movie.
I feel you on that one.
And given that much of the "restored features" of the extended edition of the film (feeble justifications for the Raping of Faramir) were shot after the theatrical release, it seems that PJ must have gotten a fair volume of Rigelian Hotshots for it as well.
Naughty Peter. And we trusted you so.
Nope. Still wrong.
Haldir was never at Helms Deep. In fact, the only elf at Helms Deep was named Legolas, and he was not a snowboarder.
As for that Arwen - you're right, I understand and accept why PJ put her in. But in truth, the only time she features is when some elvish postmen come and drop her off at Minas Tirith - please sign for 1 x elvish princess thank you very much goodbye now. And then the elves leave without ever having shown up at a battle.
And now PJ has the audacity to try and sell me a DVD set that features an entire disc of him explaining how he remained true to Tolkein's vision? Please. He remained true to his bank manager's vision.
I cannot fault him on his sets, costumes, actors or technical execution, but the fact remains that he could have released TT under a different title and nobody would have noticed.
It's not free, but SuSE also comes on a DVD. Well actually it comes in this neat little fold out cardboard thing with 7 CDs + 1 DVD. I like SuSE's box, it's really big and chunky, makes me feel like I bought something.
While Protools does represent a truly wonderful system, it's dated. It's fantastic in that, being hardware based, it doesn't require a monster machine to run, and it runs without falling over (with the possible exception of their shite win32 version).
However, the playing field has changed tremendously since Protools came out. Significantly, CPUs are way more potent, to the point where I'd say that if you have a 2Ghz CPU, you can probably do more realtime FX than a Protools system can anyway.
Now, by saying this, I'm not detracting from what Protools is - it's an excellent standalone system and it's beautiful to use. However, it's no longer a prerequisite to accessing that level of professionalism in recording.
I totally disagree with your assumption that an ordinary PC CPU cannot match, if not outprocess, a Protools setup. I recently ran a mix for a cinema targeted advert, using 32 channels, with CPU-processed eqs and fx, on a very vanilla Intel 1.6a, without a problem.
I'm not saying that this would have been my choice of equipment (I prefer Paris Ensoniq), but the point is that PC hardware has been steadily evolving, while Protools hasn't really (aside from the whole 24/96 thing).
And with applications like Ardour available in Linux, the entry level price tag for pro-quality recording just fell through the floor.
My only concern with the digital audio revolution remains what it was when this all started: We've made powerful music-making technology available to a huge population of tonedeaf idiots. Future generations will not thank us.
The format war continues, but ultimately the majority of the codecs are trying to implement the mpeg4 standard. Surveys and comparisons aside, if you trawl around you'll find that most "users" (ie not companies) are using either DivX3/5 or XviD.
Some clever individual has come up with ffdshow, which you can get off doom9.org, which will play either DivX or XviD without having either codec installed on your system. And at around 500k, it's a smaller download than either of those codecs
It's that damned Robin of Loxeley! :)
... It's about time someone did something useful with these things.
A local newsagent is selling a series of these horrid mags with a bit of a robot on the cover, collect them all and build it, sort of a thing. I can just imagine how proud I'd be to watch my lad's robot savage the postie ...
Ah, but DVDs weren't tied to to Microsoft-only players - anyone + dog could build a hardware player for them.
Also, DVD's popularity probably also has to do with the ease with which all of those copy protection mechanisms can be circumvented. Alarming as it seems to anyone who thought that paying for something means you own it, this format will probably see widespread adoption simply because of how DRM-friendly it is.
FYI he prefers cricket.
You sound as if someone you used to make do your homework is now your boss. Quit whining.
I do get what you're saying, but consider that the spoken form assumes base ten - hence its terminology and interations of ten.
This all comes of not having enough digits to begin with. If we could just have evolved with eight fingers on each hand ...
I thought the idea was to have it over just before the next election ...
domestic partnerships are law, with same sex marriages in the works
Huh? Can you elaborate on that?
Basically, it means that a commonlaw marriage is legally enforceable. So if two people live together and are committed to each other, they get the same legal protection, tax benefits and considerations that legally married people do.
This, therefore, also covers same sex relationships. However, same sex couples can't as yet get "married", because of the current legal definition of the term. This amounts to discrimination, which is unconstitutional, and is being challenged in law at the moment. Watch this space ...
I have to assume you're trolling, or that you only watch CNN.
I live and work in South Africa, and I'm white. Nobody's demanding extortion money from me. Nobody's shooting at me. In fact, things are better than ever.
We still have a deeply corrupt government, but at least we elected them for a change. And for all their embezzlement and lunatic AIDS policies, their decision to go the OSS route gives me renewed hope for the future.
Come visit us. You'd dig it.