Well, it's not about how much money he has, but how much he legally contracted for with New Line Cinemas. The real problem is that this sort of thing goes on all the time, such as with musicians getting bilked out of some of the money they are owed for royalties. Peter Jackson simply has enough money to be able to effectively sue for what he is owed. Your ordinary musician usually can't even see the books to see how much they are really owed, let alone be able to effectively sue for back royalties.
Althought dogs are forgiving animals, I think they might hold a grudge if you killed them, and then brought them back to life. What are baseline are they using for "normal" behavior? Are we talking Scooby Doo, or a Pit Bull? Is success defined as the dog not developing a taste for human brains?
Well, on the plus side, they could collaborate with the Japanese inventor (can't remember his name) who is developing a dog translation device. I can see it now:
Whoever came up with the idea of publicly-traded companies was seriously fucked up.
If I remember correctly, that would be the European monarchies. Corporations came into being for the purpose of colonizing (or eliminating) and exploiting "inferior" cultures. Merchantilism was one of the things the U.S. was fighting during the Revolutionary War, since the British Crown used the joint-stock companies to dump goods on the colonies, along with a bunch of other annoying nastiness.
Basic capitalism is fine for the time being, but corporate capitalism is really just a throw-back to the time of kings and emporers.
Granted, they didn't with this article, but if they could have made Tom DeLay look good in this article, they would have.
I guess they figured that the original title of the article, "Russian Launch Failure Proves That the Evil Bush Haters Want to Destroy America", was too ridiculous even for Faux News fans. [Quietly holds blowtorch to Karma]
Not to mention MP3 player that existed prior to January 1999.
The patent was granted January 1999. It was actually filed Feb. 13, 1996, so you have to beat that date since that is the priority date and the date from which their 20 year term of protection begins. If you read the claims carefully, it is more than just a simple listing and selection of songs. In order to violate the patent, each and every element of an independent claim has to be present in what is alleged to be infringed upon. It is not as simple as you are making it out to be.
It doesn't have to be an officially recognized social program to be an entrenched give-away activity. As to how to sign up for it, just become really big and be deemed an "essential service". Or, just give the proper campaign contributions. Ever since the days of the robber barons, those who made it big have known how good getting government contracts (such as railroad contracts during the Civil War or munitions contracts during just about any time, including now), government grants, et cetera can be. A lot of business people who speak out against social programs tend to have gotten money from the government for their business ventures. People who go out and actually try to make it on their own usually have an extremely rough time since the cards are stacked against them from the beginning.
Anyway, the point I was trying to make was that the AC poster was deriding social programs and I simply wanted to point out (though I admit a little more tersely and angrily than I generally do) that corporations get a lot of freebies from the government as well. I'm not even saying that government help to business is necessarily bad, either. It just needs to be done in a reasonable fashion. Some social programs do need re-vamping, which will always be true as times change, but simple-mindedly heaping derision upon social programs does not help.
Well, the robots would actually be Ix, not Bene Tleilaxu. However, the Japanese have also created a lot of bio stuff like rectangular solid watermelons that can be stacked easily, so I would still agree with you.
I think it is more due to the fact that Japan has become such a technophile society and humans in general tend to have next to no self control. In other words, if something can be done, it will be done.
One of the tricks to having a cheaper wedding is to get as much of the wedding stuff as possible (champagne flutes, cake cutters, etc.) in a form that isn't specifically labeled to be for a wedding. Putting the word "wedding" on something at least doubles the price.
The same thing goes for photographers. Get a good photographer and/or videographer, but not necessarily one that specializes in weddings. My photographer was really good and very talented, so I thought she was worth every penny. My videographer turned out to be a formulaic no-talent ass-clown that tried to stiff me on every part of the deal after all was said and done.
On the plus side, I was given the rights to make my own copies of the videos, but not to sell or publically perform (as if I would) them. The photographer sold me all the negatives after a year, but I still bought some extra prints from her since she does some special ink (oil perhaps?) artistic painting to enhance the images.
Anyway, my point is, check the terms with your photographer and/or videographer. Most are now more open to letting you keep everything, at least after a term, with minimal rights retained by them (such as the right to use one of your pictures for advertising purposes).
Similarly, I think the big difference between Eps 4-6 and Eps 1-3 is this: Eps 4-6 were enjoyable, slightly campy, but exhilirating and fun movies with a simple entertaining plot. In Eps 1-3, Lucas takes himself way too seriously and tries to be some sort of philosopher. Star Wars was originally just a neat little story about good versus evil, with the plucky, adventurous rebels fighting an overwhelming battle with the forces of darkness against incredible odds. That is what made Eps 4-6 so good. Once midichlirians (sp?) and other ludicrous inSidious nonsense got thrust into the mix, all the fun of Star Wars was obliterated utterly.
Southern Democrats were still referred to as "Dixiecrats" even though the party was not around anymore. The person who ran for president in 1948 on the Dixiecrat ticket was Strom Thurmond. Perhaps you remember him and which party he joined later?
Ah! Sorry, I misunderstood. This is another tactic a lot of patent lawyers will use, which is filing the same or nearly the same disclosure for a large number of applications. The claims on the applications are usually different, though not always. They are basically engaged in a fishing expedition to see what claims they can get allowed based on what they have in their disclosure so they can maximize their IP holdings.
Yeah, no kidding. One thing they also don't get is that, P2P or no P2P, if a CD is $20, I simply won't buy it, and neither will a lot of other people. Entertainment is something we can do without if the price is too high. It would have to be an extremely good CD for me to go out and pay $20 for it. If the price were much higher, it could be the most sublime music in the world and I wouldn't buy it.
I actually don't mind at all paying a reasonable price for a CD or a movie. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to have been duped into thinking and acting as though cable/satellite TV, CDs, movies and such are all absolutely essential for their existence.
If one, just one slashbot took the time to read the claims they would realize this is a patent on order consolidation. New and non-obviousness may be debated, but at least discuss the right material.
It's hard enough to get slashbots to RTFA, let alone the claims. I swear, what with the dupes and the slashbots, some days most of what is on/. could be written as a Perl script.
Actually, if you read the front page of the patent, it is a continuation of an application from Sept. 12, 1997. The applicant is not allowed to introduce new matter into a continuation application, so any changes cannot really be substantive. The continuation application allows them to try to obtain different claims from the same disclosure. As the parent poster pointed out, it is the claims which tell in legalese the patent protection that they get. The application is the description of the invention, but it is not what is very specifically protected.
The advantage to using a continuation is that they can claim priority all the way back to Sept. 12, 1997 and thus be able to get a patent more easily. The disadvantage, of course, is that their patent term will run out Sept. 12, 2017.
Yeah, we were always having peripherals and the software crap out on us, especially when we really needed to get some results. Admitedly it may have been due to the people who kept the lab computers up, but I heard this as a general problem from other people at other universities. The time frame was from '91 to about '97, and the equipment was rarely the latest and greatest, so take it for what you will.
Now, of course, it's all the rage to gripe about Windoze. I imagine if Macs ever become more popular, the reverse might wind up being true again.
Increased mindshare doesn't always work, though. I remember in college, Apple was donating computers to some universities. I cursed about having to use them in physics and engineering labs as a student, and then heard a lot of my students cursing about having to use them when I was a TA.
Now, of course, MACs are quite good, but back in the day their hardware was always screwing up for seemingly random reasons. It made a lot of people curse Apple to the ends of the Earth.
So, if you try this as a company, make sure your product doesn't suck.
*fwap* (catapult launching electrical engineer) "If you apply a bandpass filter with a cut-off frequency of 25 MHz here..." *splat* (more villagers crushed from the tremendous force of a rapidly falling EE)
There is also the fact that all the chlorine and carbon dioxide was released at once. This would basically saturate the reaction. In any chemical reaction, atmospheric or otherwise, reaction rates are important. Just pouring a ton of stuff into a reaction at once simply causes a great waste of reacting chemicals, whereas slowly putting the chemicals in at a slower rate (such as humans slowly spewing C02 and other chemicals into the atmosphere) will have a much more pronounced effect.
Oh, and if he is thinking of Rush Limbaugh, it should be Mt. Penatubo (sp?). And yes, considering that all Limbaugh does is blab his opinions into a microphone, his understanding of atmospheric chemistry is probably - how shall I put it? - less than up to par with people who have spent years studying and working in the field.
True, but they still consider evolution to be a mere "theory". (theory as in the colloquial definition of "half-assed guess" as opposed to the scientific definition of theory).
Well, IIRC, PAL/NTSC is because the analog video is recorded based on the television frame rate. In countries that use 60Hz electrical supplies, NTSC is used since it records at a 60 frames/second rate. In countries that use 50Hz electrical supplies, PAL is used since it records at a 50 frames/second rate.
As for regional encoding, it is simply because those responsible for this policy are complete and total idiots.
Yeah, this is also similar to what I heard and read in the news when video tape rentals really started taking off. When I heard so many reporters and columnists say that movie rentals were going to kill the movie theater business, I and a lot of other people who liked going out to the movies thought it was a load of bull. People like the experience of going out and seeing a film on a big screen. Downloads will no more kill the movie theater business than video tapes were claimed to be doing then.
The Economist, which aready existed at that time, published an article where they calculated that without the toil of under-12 kids the whole frigging economy would surely collapse. The way they saw it, there was no to ways about it. It was going to be but economic doom if kids inder 12 could not work anymore.
Actually, this sort of argument has been used everytime someone has tried to make working conditions better. One example is the decrease in the work week. The work week was something like 85 hours and the "logic" used against it was that all the profit was made in the last hour of work, so they had to keep the long work week or the economy was doomed. After the law lowering the hours in the work week was passed, the economy kept moving along just fine.
It's horrifically amazing reading modern day excuses from the business community and seeing people swallow them hook, line and sinker. Remember, it wasn't too long ago (late 19th, early 20th century) in America when people would lose their jobs if they were horribly injured on the job and the excuse given was something like "well, if your horse is lame, you get a new horse don't you?" And then, in 18th century America, you could be arrested and sent to prison for striking. It was considered some sort of conspiracy charge to force your boss to raise your wages.
So, back to the topic at hand, I could see corporate bloggers justifying this sort of thing as we continue our long march back into the past.
Oh, this kind of thing pisses me off to no end. I used to get checks all the time from certain lending companies, and of course "convenience" checks from the credit card company. I called the lending companies up to bitch at them about something that is clearly unethical and all I got was the "we are breaking no laws" garbage. Since this sort of nonsense is obscenely insecure, it should be explicitly outlawed with severe penalties to any companies who break it.
But, I don't see our glorious leaders doing anything about that anytime soon, even though this would probably be a hot compaign topic. I would like to see the reaction of people thinking, "Wow! A [whatever position] candidate who actually cares about real people! Who would have thought it was possible?"
Slashdot Mirror
Well, it's not about how much money he has, but how much he legally contracted for with New Line Cinemas. The real problem is that this sort of thing goes on all the time, such as with musicians getting bilked out of some of the money they are owed for royalties. Peter Jackson simply has enough money to be able to effectively sue for what he is owed. Your ordinary musician usually can't even see the books to see how much they are really owed, let alone be able to effectively sue for back royalties.
Well, on the plus side, they could collaborate with the Japanese inventor (can't remember his name) who is developing a dog translation device. I can see it now:
Dog: Woof! Woof!
Translator: Why did you kill me?
Dog: Woof! Arf! Woof! Woof!
Translator: Mmmm... Big, tasty scientist brains!
If I remember correctly, that would be the European monarchies. Corporations came into being for the purpose of colonizing (or eliminating) and exploiting "inferior" cultures. Merchantilism was one of the things the U.S. was fighting during the Revolutionary War, since the British Crown used the joint-stock companies to dump goods on the colonies, along with a bunch of other annoying nastiness.
Basic capitalism is fine for the time being, but corporate capitalism is really just a throw-back to the time of kings and emporers.
I guess they figured that the original title of the article, "Russian Launch Failure Proves That the Evil Bush Haters Want to Destroy America", was too ridiculous even for Faux News fans. [Quietly holds blowtorch to Karma]
The patent was granted January 1999. It was actually filed Feb. 13, 1996, so you have to beat that date since that is the priority date and the date from which their 20 year term of protection begins. If you read the claims carefully, it is more than just a simple listing and selection of songs. In order to violate the patent, each and every element of an independent claim has to be present in what is alleged to be infringed upon. It is not as simple as you are making it out to be.
Anyway, the point I was trying to make was that the AC poster was deriding social programs and I simply wanted to point out (though I admit a little more tersely and angrily than I generally do) that corporations get a lot of freebies from the government as well. I'm not even saying that government help to business is necessarily bad, either. It just needs to be done in a reasonable fashion. Some social programs do need re-vamping, which will always be true as times change, but simple-mindedly heaping derision upon social programs does not help.
I think it is more due to the fact that Japan has become such a technophile society and humans in general tend to have next to no self control. In other words, if something can be done, it will be done.
The same thing goes for photographers. Get a good photographer and/or videographer, but not necessarily one that specializes in weddings. My photographer was really good and very talented, so I thought she was worth every penny. My videographer turned out to be a formulaic no-talent ass-clown that tried to stiff me on every part of the deal after all was said and done.
On the plus side, I was given the rights to make my own copies of the videos, but not to sell or publically perform (as if I would) them. The photographer sold me all the negatives after a year, but I still bought some extra prints from her since she does some special ink (oil perhaps?) artistic painting to enhance the images.
Anyway, my point is, check the terms with your photographer and/or videographer. Most are now more open to letting you keep everything, at least after a term, with minimal rights retained by them (such as the right to use one of your pictures for advertising purposes).
Similarly, I think the big difference between Eps 4-6 and Eps 1-3 is this: Eps 4-6 were enjoyable, slightly campy, but exhilirating and fun movies with a simple entertaining plot. In Eps 1-3, Lucas takes himself way too seriously and tries to be some sort of philosopher. Star Wars was originally just a neat little story about good versus evil, with the plucky, adventurous rebels fighting an overwhelming battle with the forces of darkness against incredible odds. That is what made Eps 4-6 so good. Once midichlirians (sp?) and other ludicrous inSidious nonsense got thrust into the mix, all the fun of Star Wars was obliterated utterly.
Southern Democrats were still referred to as "Dixiecrats" even though the party was not around anymore. The person who ran for president in 1948 on the Dixiecrat ticket was Strom Thurmond. Perhaps you remember him and which party he joined later?
Like, for example, the massive subsidies and "bail-outs" to large corporations, defense contractors, etc.? I assume this is what you mean, yes?
Ah! Sorry, I misunderstood. This is another tactic a lot of patent lawyers will use, which is filing the same or nearly the same disclosure for a large number of applications. The claims on the applications are usually different, though not always. They are basically engaged in a fishing expedition to see what claims they can get allowed based on what they have in their disclosure so they can maximize their IP holdings.
I actually don't mind at all paying a reasonable price for a CD or a movie. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to have been duped into thinking and acting as though cable/satellite TV, CDs, movies and such are all absolutely essential for their existence.
It's hard enough to get slashbots to RTFA, let alone the claims. I swear, what with the dupes and the slashbots, some days most of what is on /. could be written as a Perl script.
The advantage to using a continuation is that they can claim priority all the way back to Sept. 12, 1997 and thus be able to get a patent more easily. The disadvantage, of course, is that their patent term will run out Sept. 12, 2017.
Now, of course, it's all the rage to gripe about Windoze. I imagine if Macs ever become more popular, the reverse might wind up being true again.
Me thinks the Anonymous Coward doth protest too much...
Now, of course, MACs are quite good, but back in the day their hardware was always screwing up for seemingly random reasons. It made a lot of people curse Apple to the ends of the Earth.
So, if you try this as a company, make sure your product doesn't suck.
"Help! Help! The knights are loosing mechanical engineers on us! Run for your lives!"
*fwap* (catapult launching mechanical engineer) "Young's modulus!" *splat* (more villagers flee the carnage)
*fwap* (catapult launching electrical engineer) "If you apply a bandpass filter with a cut-off frequency of 25 MHz here..." *splat* (more villagers crushed from the tremendous force of a rapidly falling EE)
Oh, and if he is thinking of Rush Limbaugh, it should be Mt. Penatubo (sp?). And yes, considering that all Limbaugh does is blab his opinions into a microphone, his understanding of atmospheric chemistry is probably - how shall I put it? - less than up to par with people who have spent years studying and working in the field.
True, but they still consider evolution to be a mere "theory". (theory as in the colloquial definition of "half-assed guess" as opposed to the scientific definition of theory).
As for regional encoding, it is simply because those responsible for this policy are complete and total idiots.
Yeah, this is also similar to what I heard and read in the news when video tape rentals really started taking off. When I heard so many reporters and columnists say that movie rentals were going to kill the movie theater business, I and a lot of other people who liked going out to the movies thought it was a load of bull. People like the experience of going out and seeing a film on a big screen. Downloads will no more kill the movie theater business than video tapes were claimed to be doing then.
Actually, this sort of argument has been used everytime someone has tried to make working conditions better. One example is the decrease in the work week. The work week was something like 85 hours and the "logic" used against it was that all the profit was made in the last hour of work, so they had to keep the long work week or the economy was doomed. After the law lowering the hours in the work week was passed, the economy kept moving along just fine.
It's horrifically amazing reading modern day excuses from the business community and seeing people swallow them hook, line and sinker. Remember, it wasn't too long ago (late 19th, early 20th century) in America when people would lose their jobs if they were horribly injured on the job and the excuse given was something like "well, if your horse is lame, you get a new horse don't you?" And then, in 18th century America, you could be arrested and sent to prison for striking. It was considered some sort of conspiracy charge to force your boss to raise your wages.
So, back to the topic at hand, I could see corporate bloggers justifying this sort of thing as we continue our long march back into the past.
But, I don't see our glorious leaders doing anything about that anytime soon, even though this would probably be a hot compaign topic. I would like to see the reaction of people thinking, "Wow! A [whatever position] candidate who actually cares about real people! Who would have thought it was possible?"