How about this for a theory - that for most non-Hi-Fi types (IE about 90% of the population), they just don't have the gear to get any benefit from SACD (like the amps/speakers).
For many people, music has become more like a "soundtrack" to their lives. Things like personal stereos, computer CD players and car cassette/cd increased the market for music because people would not have to sit down to listen, but could have it around them. However, the equipment for most people generally has low quality amplification.
In all these, cases though, portability of the musical content will be vital. I don't want to buy a CD for my audio system, another format for my car use, and another for my PC.
I had a conversation with a person sometime after I had pressed the "off button" when the phone was ringing. They were like "why didn't you answer it" and I was like "because I was too busy to talk to you"
They were quite put out. My attitude to phones is this... it's my phone. There's an answerphone on it for you to use (of course, if I am on call, then I'm on call, but that's not on call to everyone).
I like to have my phone on at all times in case of something urgent, but sometimes I'll screen it down to just family and very close friends. And then sometimes I'll just ask if it's urgent and hang up if not.
I don't think most people here would have a problem with some restoration work or enhancing colour or sound a little.
There's no rules, except - whatever you do, try and improve it. I haven't met anyone who thought the extra SE bits were worthwhile (although many thought the sound was a big improvement.
Was he? I thought the later restorations had Scorsese involved. Also, there can be a difference between a restoration, a "directors cut" and a re-edit.
I'd classify them such:-
restoration. cleaned up, any footage missing from original edit added back in.
directors cut. re-edited by the director in his original vision. that's a one-off. You declare your version, you can't do it again without calling it...
reedit. director changes his original vision (sometimes also called a special edition).
The problem I have with Star Wars is that he's not doing a Spartacus and putting something back in that should have always been there or showing it how he wanted it. AFAICT What he's really doing is adding something that he couldn't have done at the time because of the technology.
Same thing (I think) with the Platinum Edition of Beauty and the Beast (an excellent extended edition). Three versions on 1 disc - the original, the extended and the "work in progress" edition shown at the new york film festival.
And the extended bit in that makes sense and is enjoyable (it's an animation of a song that was added into the stage show).
Apparantly, Dave Prowse (who was in the suit) was surprised they didn't ask him do the voice.
Dave Prowse is from the west country of England and his voice isn't exactly powerful and dominating (try and find some sound samples of cornish speakers and you'll see what I mean;) ).
He was also known in the UK as the "Green Cross Code Man" helping children cross the road safely.
Han shooting first is absolutely vital. It sets him up as a guy not to be trifled with, and someone who won't give someone the chance to wipe him out. In an old swashbuckler, he wouldn't have thrown the other fella his sword to carry on.
It also helps set up one of the most important moments in the film.
Likewise. I went to the cinema and queued up with friends and we had to use "the front seats" down the bottom which were never used since.
I can still remember that imperial star destroyer on the screen. I spent something like 3 months talking and playing nothing but Star Wars.
I don't imagine many kids out there are going to have the same feelings about EP1-3. Most of us are only going to see EP3 out of curiousity, not because we loved EP1-2.
Maybe we all want to be editors, but I have some suggestions for George. Release the originals with some cleaned up effects and sound.
Now, I know it's his gig and he can do what he likes, but these are about the worst example of a "special edition/directors cut" I've ever seen.
Is Lucas both director of these changes and in charge of overall product delivery? Often, having someone acting as a control device (like a producer working out getting rid of chaff), improves the work. I imagine that the studio are just happy for Lucas to release them. As long as he doesn't do something like have the dialogue changed to be spoken in Latin, the studio don't really care - they know enough people will buy it.
The extra bits are to me, just chaff. The pointless vistas, the han meets jabba. They don't enhance the story or the characters or even make it a more beautiful or spectacular film.
Ultimately, globalization will result in normalisation of prices, unless governments interfere in the free market.
I probably charge 3-4 times what someone in India can. That will probably adjust over time.
The interesting thing is that this is probably the time to get out of the west and into India. You talk about inflated prices. Sell your expensive small house, take the capital and buy a massive house in India. Hopefully, you like musicals.
Why should someone gain from having capital (and even more so, why land?).
It seems to me that most land is pretty worthless. Unless there's oil underneath it, that is. At one time, quality soil for agriculture had value, but except in a few places (like the Medoc) land has no great value - we can produce more than enough to feed us in the west.
The other land with value is that in cities, but the value here is not a "natural" value like land with oil or land suitable for great claret. If people decide that London isn't the capital or the commerce moves to China, that land will go down in value.
In the UK, there is very little land of real value.
In many ways, I think the west sees Intellectual Property in the same way that feudal lords saw land - I own it and it will make me money forever (a no-risk investment).
You missed off someone else who benefits - the indian IT worker who has a job.
Personally, I believe in kicking out the tariffs and getting a total global market in everything, however, we need to carefully manage the transition to it, something that isn't being done. On the one hand, call centre job are rapidly moved to India, on the other hand, cheap food is dumped with no consideration for poverty levels on farms.
One thing I know - some companies view offshoring as an easy money saving system. It's not. It can be effective, but you have to think about it. It works best for discrete pieces of work that can be simply defined and worked on without too much interaction - examples might be Y2K changes or checking for memory leaks. What I wouldn't use it for is a long-term system where you've got to go through analysis and design and later onto support. When you are going through that process, having people physically close together has big benefits. Support I have generally found to be as good in India as here - but then that's large companies doing it, and large companies here often have lousy support anyway. I buy computer parts from small companies where the phones are manned by guys who know the kit.
I'm a little surprised that people on hosting packages provide MySQL over PostgreSQL (i've only used MySQL) when it looks like PostgreSQL has a whole bunch of other benefits that MySQL doesn't.
Technology has finite limits. Not technically, but in usability.
The reason why CD is still going strong and has yet to be replaced as king is that for 98+% of people, it's adequate. If you gave them a DVD based audio equivalent, they would still not have the amp and speakers to make it worthwhile.
Will DVD get replaced? I don't know. Blu-ray might, I suppose, but will enough people replace their widescreen set with a high definition set? Will the movies be a big enough improvement over DVD to make the average guy convert?
Does PostGreSQL support stored procedures or have anything equivalent (I'm not trying to create a fight here, it's a genuine question).
One of the things that is missing from MySQL is stored procedures, and quite honestly, that's a bit of a pain for me. There's ways of working around it, but it's really useful.
I remember seeing some education software for schools some years ago, and across the board it was rubbish.
The UK curriculum, led by the dear leader Tony Blair is very big on kids using computers. It's the same as that Simpsons episode about the monorail - spend millions on something shiny rather than dealing with the real issues.
I think the money spent on computers in schools would generally be better spent on more teachers, allowing class sizes to be reduced.
What makes no sense to me is that PCs are very much a solo activity - it's you interacting with the computer. How does that really fit in with a classroom situation well?
One argument I've heard is that people need computers for work, but then that brings in the question of the purpose of education. Even viewing education as producing children for workplaces, you have to then accept that a whole heap of jobs like childcare, plumbing, construction, haulage and some of the creative industries actually have very little use of computers. General call centre work is an oversubscribed industry (partly a result of people thinking that office work would remain as a high earner) and things like plumbers, builders, "creatives" and nannies are in undersubscribed. Teaching kids how to use computers (as in general use and not programming or multimedia) is like teaching someone in the 19th century how to operate a loom.
I also have myself tried to use CBT packages for software, and nothing replaces being taught a subject by an expert - even on a cost/benefit basis, I still think that a tutor wins.
I've met a few people who've seen Fahrenheit 9/11 (I'm in the UK) and I don't think one of them was a conservative.
Every person I can think of who has seen it was anti-Bush before they saw it and nearly all of them left-wing.
I doubt any of them bothered to check any of the references in the film - it was about someone they despised and could feel warm and cosy that here was *proof* of it.
I wouldn't dare to suggest I'm in the same place, but as well as Chuchill and Monty, there were millions of guys trying to win WW2. The John Smiths and the Robert Joneses. Their wives who looked after other people's children when they were evacuated. The old men who worked as the home guard.
OK, I sound like I'm ranting, but I see a lot of people contributing in a lot of ways. There's some great developers, there's institutions donating cash, artists making cool things like the Firefox logo. I know there are guys like Linus, RMS, Eric Raymond, Bram Cohen and others. It's also however about the Pierres, Pablos and Pauls who are writing little bits of documentation, answering pretty basic questions on forums, telling their boss to try out Linux or passing Mozilla CDs around.
You know what? The minute any bastard comes near me with aggressive marketing, I show them the door. Simple as that.
Any cockroach involved in that generally doesn't give a shit about what happens once the ink is dry and the cooling off period has occurred.
Here in the UK, the best example is double glazing. There are stories of people having salesman with them for like 4 hours before basically signing to get them to piss off and then enacting the cooling-off period.
Then again, I buy almost everything on word of mouth, not who is in the Yellow Pages.
Things like the DMCA could do with a jury trial. Sadly, the cost of access to justice means that it probably won't happen.
I really would have loved to have seen the RIAA put a few of those kids in the dock and let jurors decide their fate. How many people would really say "you know what, prosecuting a 15 year old kid for copyright infringement is both a valuable use of court time, and something that deep down doesn't make me feel physically sick".
... someone who's never worked in the corporate world.
I know a lot of companies who are getting Linux in and particularly using it for certain jobs (like firewalls/mail servers) and in those cases they are simply finding an old PC sitting in a corner and getting a distro and following instructions on a website.
Of course, some giant size companies may not be doing this, but smaller companies with limited budgets are.
Slashdot Mirror
For many people, music has become more like a "soundtrack" to their lives. Things like personal stereos, computer CD players and car cassette/cd increased the market for music because people would not have to sit down to listen, but could have it around them. However, the equipment for most people generally has low quality amplification.
In all these, cases though, portability of the musical content will be vital. I don't want to buy a CD for my audio system, another format for my car use, and another for my PC.
They were quite put out. My attitude to phones is this... it's my phone. There's an answerphone on it for you to use (of course, if I am on call, then I'm on call, but that's not on call to everyone).
I like to have my phone on at all times in case of something urgent, but sometimes I'll screen it down to just family and very close friends. And then sometimes I'll just ask if it's urgent and hang up if not.
There's no rules, except - whatever you do, try and improve it. I haven't met anyone who thought the extra SE bits were worthwhile (although many thought the sound was a big improvement.
1. Director's Cut. How the director wanted it to look before some studio guy put it through test screenings and got it ruined.
2. Restorations (whether physical like cleaning up My Fair Lady or putting in removed scenes like Spartacus.
I have seen a few special editions which were OK too. The Star Wars ones are not. There's not a single frame added that added anything to the film.
I'd classify them such:-
restoration. cleaned up, any footage missing from original edit added back in.
directors cut. re-edited by the director in his original vision. that's a one-off. You declare your version, you can't do it again without calling it...
reedit. director changes his original vision (sometimes also called a special edition).
The problem I have with Star Wars is that he's not doing a Spartacus and putting something back in that should have always been there or showing it how he wanted it. AFAICT What he's really doing is adding something that he couldn't have done at the time because of the technology.
And the extended bit in that makes sense and is enjoyable (it's an animation of a song that was added into the stage show).
Exactly. When I watched it, I wasn't sure what was next with Han. Was he a bad guy or a good guy?
Dave Prowse is from the west country of England and his voice isn't exactly powerful and dominating (try and find some sound samples of cornish speakers and you'll see what I mean ;) ).
He was also known in the UK as the "Green Cross Code Man" helping children cross the road safely.
It also helps set up one of the most important moments in the film.
I can still remember that imperial star destroyer on the screen. I spent something like 3 months talking and playing nothing but Star Wars.
I don't imagine many kids out there are going to have the same feelings about EP1-3. Most of us are only going to see EP3 out of curiousity, not because we loved EP1-2.
Now, I know it's his gig and he can do what he likes, but these are about the worst example of a "special edition/directors cut" I've ever seen.
Is Lucas both director of these changes and in charge of overall product delivery? Often, having someone acting as a control device (like a producer working out getting rid of chaff), improves the work. I imagine that the studio are just happy for Lucas to release them. As long as he doesn't do something like have the dialogue changed to be spoken in Latin, the studio don't really care - they know enough people will buy it.
The extra bits are to me, just chaff. The pointless vistas, the han meets jabba. They don't enhance the story or the characters or even make it a more beautiful or spectacular film.
I probably charge 3-4 times what someone in India can. That will probably adjust over time.
The interesting thing is that this is probably the time to get out of the west and into India. You talk about inflated prices. Sell your expensive small house, take the capital and buy a massive house in India. Hopefully, you like musicals.
It seems to me that most land is pretty worthless. Unless there's oil underneath it, that is. At one time, quality soil for agriculture had value, but except in a few places (like the Medoc) land has no great value - we can produce more than enough to feed us in the west.
The other land with value is that in cities, but the value here is not a "natural" value like land with oil or land suitable for great claret. If people decide that London isn't the capital or the commerce moves to China, that land will go down in value.
In the UK, there is very little land of real value.
In many ways, I think the west sees Intellectual Property in the same way that feudal lords saw land - I own it and it will make me money forever (a no-risk investment).
Personally, I believe in kicking out the tariffs and getting a total global market in everything, however, we need to carefully manage the transition to it, something that isn't being done. On the one hand, call centre job are rapidly moved to India, on the other hand, cheap food is dumped with no consideration for poverty levels on farms.
One thing I know - some companies view offshoring as an easy money saving system. It's not. It can be effective, but you have to think about it. It works best for discrete pieces of work that can be simply defined and worked on without too much interaction - examples might be Y2K changes or checking for memory leaks. What I wouldn't use it for is a long-term system where you've got to go through analysis and design and later onto support. When you are going through that process, having people physically close together has big benefits. Support I have generally found to be as good in India as here - but then that's large companies doing it, and large companies here often have lousy support anyway. I buy computer parts from small companies where the phones are manned by guys who know the kit.
I'm a little surprised that people on hosting packages provide MySQL over PostgreSQL (i've only used MySQL) when it looks like PostgreSQL has a whole bunch of other benefits that MySQL doesn't.
Presumably a hard drive with some encryption on would work against this?
The reason why CD is still going strong and has yet to be replaced as king is that for 98+% of people, it's adequate. If you gave them a DVD based audio equivalent, they would still not have the amp and speakers to make it worthwhile.
Will DVD get replaced? I don't know. Blu-ray might, I suppose, but will enough people replace their widescreen set with a high definition set? Will the movies be a big enough improvement over DVD to make the average guy convert?
One of the things that is missing from MySQL is stored procedures, and quite honestly, that's a bit of a pain for me. There's ways of working around it, but it's really useful.
I remember seeing some education software for schools some years ago, and across the board it was rubbish.
The UK curriculum, led by the dear leader Tony Blair is very big on kids using computers. It's the same as that Simpsons episode about the monorail - spend millions on something shiny rather than dealing with the real issues.
I think the money spent on computers in schools would generally be better spent on more teachers, allowing class sizes to be reduced.
What makes no sense to me is that PCs are very much a solo activity - it's you interacting with the computer. How does that really fit in with a classroom situation well?
One argument I've heard is that people need computers for work, but then that brings in the question of the purpose of education. Even viewing education as producing children for workplaces, you have to then accept that a whole heap of jobs like childcare, plumbing, construction, haulage and some of the creative industries actually have very little use of computers. General call centre work is an oversubscribed industry (partly a result of people thinking that office work would remain as a high earner) and things like plumbers, builders, "creatives" and nannies are in undersubscribed. Teaching kids how to use computers (as in general use and not programming or multimedia) is like teaching someone in the 19th century how to operate a loom.
I also have myself tried to use CBT packages for software, and nothing replaces being taught a subject by an expert - even on a cost/benefit basis, I still think that a tutor wins.
I know there's some debate over the CO2 effects and all that, but if there is some effect, it isn't local.
Every person I can think of who has seen it was anti-Bush before they saw it and nearly all of them left-wing.
I doubt any of them bothered to check any of the references in the film - it was about someone they despised and could feel warm and cosy that here was *proof* of it.
OK, I sound like I'm ranting, but I see a lot of people contributing in a lot of ways. There's some great developers, there's institutions donating cash, artists making cool things like the Firefox logo. I know there are guys like Linus, RMS, Eric Raymond, Bram Cohen and others. It's also however about the Pierres, Pablos and Pauls who are writing little bits of documentation, answering pretty basic questions on forums, telling their boss to try out Linux or passing Mozilla CDs around.
Any cockroach involved in that generally doesn't give a shit about what happens once the ink is dry and the cooling off period has occurred.
Here in the UK, the best example is double glazing. There are stories of people having salesman with them for like 4 hours before basically signing to get them to piss off and then enacting the cooling-off period.
Then again, I buy almost everything on word of mouth, not who is in the Yellow Pages.
I really would have loved to have seen the RIAA put a few of those kids in the dock and let jurors decide their fate. How many people would really say "you know what, prosecuting a 15 year old kid for copyright infringement is both a valuable use of court time, and something that deep down doesn't make me feel physically sick".
I know a lot of companies who are getting Linux in and particularly using it for certain jobs (like firewalls/mail servers) and in those cases they are simply finding an old PC sitting in a corner and getting a distro and following instructions on a website.
Of course, some giant size companies may not be doing this, but smaller companies with limited budgets are.