I'd say unfortunately. Imagine how cool would it be for all of us to have an opportunity to watch a leaked copy of the Two Towers? I know, if I had a chance to preview it, I would not be tricked into parting with perfectly good 8 euros on the opening night...
Nice reply, but what you and I should be happy is that we helped produce such brilliant prose.:) The posts by TheRightIsRight deserve a "+5: Look at that! Just look at that!" moderation (if it wasn't an extremely talented troll).:) I never actually heard a person, who would be such a brilliant representation of Bush electorate. At least, not here on Slashdot. That would be funny to me, if not the fact that 50% of Americans are just as irrational...
The difference is that people can choose to do these things, and they know the risks. Just for you - second hand smoke kills more people than terrorists do. Reckless drivers kill more pedestrians than terrorists do. Everything else kills more people than terrorists do. Just think about it - five million people die every year in America and only a few tens (or even less than ten) die from terrorists every year. Yeah, 2001 was an exception and 2000 died - still 2500 times less than from other causes. With the way things are going in Iraq, soon the number of American soldiers killed during the War on Terror will exceed the number of people killed in the WTC.
You try to make terrorism seem like an unimportant threat Yep. Because it is. Even if you only look at the USA, it is pretty damn unimportant. If you disagree, could you please tell me why it is important. Please ignore the fact that thousands of Americans were killed in the towers, since we already established that five times more die every day from other causes. What are other reasons why terrorism is important? I would really like to hear a rational argument for that.
I dont want to see your damn anti-bush ad (its probably a.mov which I cant figure out how to get to work anyway....). There is nothing complex about watching a.mov file, but I would give you the gist of the ad. Starting with his quote "I am the master of low expectations", Bush gives a presentation about his achievement - 2.5 jobs lost, his friend Ken Lay is busted, 2 countries invaded, UN ignored, Geneva convention violated, but he still took more vacation than any other president. He ends his speech with the following summary: "Terrorist, Terrorist, Terrorist, 9-11, 9-11, God Bless America". The point, obviously being that Americans can be easily made to ignore the important issues if you distract them with the overinflated terrorist threat.
Trying to re-state existing problems is not productive. The first step to solving the problem is acknowledging it. Now the problem is that people overestimate the threat of terror, which prevents them from making rational decision. It is worth re-stating this particular problem until people realise it.
I think that you are a disgrace to our country. Fortunately, I am not from your country. And as it is, United States is on my "do not visit" list and is likely to remain there for quite some time, together with North Korea, Afganistan, Somalia, etc.:)
P.S. Thanks for speaking up about your opinions anyway.
I really don't get your post - what is that smiley supposed to mean? I'm "digging up dirt" on Hank Asher? The goal of the MATRIX (ignoring for the moment the specific detail of this particular implementation) is to provide exactly the same kind of intelligence on all people as you found on Hank Asher. You like to be able to see the whole trail, smuggling, fraud, theft, etc., etc. Police investigators everywhere like to see the same about you. And if you don't have anything criminal behind you, they would like to see that too, just to be sure.
So, ignoring for the moment such issues as privacy and risk of tiranny, I don't see anything particularly bad about the MATRIX. Of course, these two issues cannot and should not be ignored. But now, thanks to your great example in handling Hank's personal history, we must realise that you can't really outlaw the technology. Once datamining is feasible, it is feasible and incredibly tempting. Go and read some detective story. Don't you realise that when an investigation (anything - murder, tax evasion, etc.) starts, the detectives are dying to find the clues and the results of datamining, narrowing down the list of suspects to the manageable hundred.
You can argue that citizens should have access to information about politicians (and corporate executives), while the life of an average citizen should be kept private. That would certainly be neat, but as of today, it is somewhat unrealistic. The better approach, in my opinion, would be to create Total Information Awareness of everyone about everything (including everybody). In the brave new world of nanotech, ubiquitous computing, MEMS and smart matter it is inevitable anyway, we better start readying ourselves now.
In no way I am defending Mr. Asher. What I am trying to point out (rather unsuccessfully, it seems) is that you can't really deny the state the abilities you already enjoy. Hank should be punished for his crimes (if found guilty during the due process by the jury of peers) and his abominable creation (MATRIX) should be destroyed (may be), but it will surface again and again. Even if we manage to stop it time and again, eventually resistance will become pointless, since integrating data from different existing databases would be as easy as googling is today.
As for the child porn trading, it was a simple litmus test. Apparently, you believe that everything that is against the law is immoral, terrible and should be prohibited, even things that do not directly harm anyone (like trading child porn or smoking pot). Probably, after a few years of brainwashing you will love the Big Brother too...
His tone notwithstanding, h? doesn't ask a fair question. You did, but he claimed that the money should be spent on "real" applications and he implied that the scientists do it just to have a publication. These accusations have no basis in reality.
His "what's the point" was simply a rhetorical question, intended to mislead indulgent people like you.
The biggest problem with people is that they suck at math.
Sharks kill more people than terrorists do. Cars kill tens of times more people than terrorists do. Smoking kills hundreds of times more people than terrorists do. Cancer and heart desease kill thousands of times more people than terrorists do. But THEY do not show those dead people on TV, and so YOU believe that those deaths do not happen.
Please, check out this anti-Bush ad to see exactly what I am talking about.
The US government had asked the Taliban many times over about 5 years to give up Osama And Taliban repeatedly agreed to do it, as long as the trials would be held not in America, but somewhere else (like Western Europe, Arab countries, etc.). A pretty reasonable request, if you ask me.
Do you like digging up dirt about the great Mr. Hank Asher? I would also love to enter "Doc Ruby" into the MATRIX search engine and get information about your drug addiction, parking violations, your subscription to porn sites, etc.:)
Honestly, I am not so much against transparency, as I am against monopolizing information access and intolerance.
If I am a muslim child porn trader addicted to LSD, I don't mind everyone knowing about it, as long as they don't harass me for that (if I don't harm anyone) and as long as I can know as much about everyone else.
As of recently, they appear to be much nicer and user-friendlier. Finding the free version on the site is not easy, it's extremely easy. Yes, you might be duped first into getting the "FREE 14 day trial" version, but, hey, it clearly says "TRIAL" and "14 day" is also a good indication.:) The link to the real free Real player is near the top of the page, on the right. Yes, it doesn't really stand apart, but once you take your eyes off the cute girl on the ad for FREE TRIAL, you can easily see it.:) On the next page you are given your LAST chance to get the premium version, but it is in no way deceptive.
I applaud the Real guys for going the right route. I really do. I still don't want their player, now that there is Real Alternative, but I honestly think they changed and they are no longer disgusting like they were.:)
Cameron is pretty well informed and he always does his homework. The guy who hires a scientific ship for a couple of years to study Titanic and then decides to make a film about it is pretty high on the list of people I would trust. Add to that the fact that in his approach he clearly acknowledge? his limitations and based the designs on real current assumptions about the mission, and you have the result described in the article:
I said, 'Look, this is our proposal for what a Hab would look like, and what a pressurized rover would look like, and we made certain assumptions based on how we operate deep submersibles, for example, in terms of how the manipulators would work taking samples and so on.' And [scientists from the human exploration and development group] said, 'Hey, this is neat! Thanks! If you ever want to get out of filmmaking, come here and hang with us.'
As for the title "Doctor", it generally says nothing about the person. Cameron is not a Doctor, but he is a son of an engineer and he has a major in physics. The fact that he chose to pursue a career in filmmaking does not preclude him from being knowledgeable enough to make a reference design for human mission to Mars. On the other hand, his background in filmmaking actually makes him more qualified (I hope you won't deny the quality and realism of the sets and machines in Aliens, Terminator and Titanic).
The endless supply of idiots never end. Apparently, it doesn't. You are a living proof of that.
The biggest problem with operating systems and programming languages is that they give more control to designers and programmers, not to the users. This is bullshit and it starts from the very first sentence. OSes and applications, as well as programmers and designers give control to the user, with a few exceptions, like DRM, copy-protection and MS monopolistic control. Software developers simply do not want to control user experience in the general case.
Websites, on the other hand, are mostly controlled by the content-providers. There isn't much a user can do. This is slowly changing, with modern browsers finally providing some control over selected styles, allowing to quickly enable disable images/scripts/plugins, etc. But overall the representation of information on the Web is controlled by the designers more than it should be.
Of course, you'd have to find a cert registrar dumb or unethical enough to give you a cert for the domain, but with people like Verisign around that can't be hard.
You don't need a cert. Just insert a Flash animation on the front page that would look like a certificate confirmation window in WindowsXP on IE. Or add OS/browser detection and customize the picture for major OSes and browsers.
Of course, the URL prefix will be http:// and not https://, but most people won't notice that.
I am Russian, but I never ever wanted Cyrillic URLs and I don't know anybody who did. I've never encountered a user on the Runet, who would like to have them. The only exception is, of course, the greedy registrars and their marketdroids.
Don't know about Chinese, but have you noticed how popular is English with Japanese people? Visit any.jp site and I can bet there will be some English used on almost any page, regardless of the intended audience. It just happens that words like "Copyright", "Last updated", "News", "Gallery", "About", etc. look better in English.:) Same for URLs.
The biggest problem with browsers and other web-technologies is that they give more control to designers and webmasters, not to the users. Java, ActiveX, Flash, Javascript, CSS, etc. all allow designers and webmasters to determine more precisely what should happen on the user's end. Completely wrong and inacceptable, yet this is exactly what is happening.
It is entirely possible to design a page that would open in an IE window without toolbars, scrollbars and statusbar. Then it is entirely possible to add interactive graphical elements to the sides that would behave exactly like real IE interface elements, only they would be fake. This is wrong. The standards should give limited control to providers of information, while browsers give ultimate control to the users. It is completely wrong that standards allow javascript to intercept mouseclicks and block rightclick menu. It doesn't affect me because I use Opera, which doesn't give a shit about that, but when I click the wheel (button 3), I see that stupid message window that informs me I shouldn't right click on that site. This isn't more than an annoyance, since scrolling still works and rightclicking is not affected at all, but this should never happen in the first place.
Unicode addresses are wrong as well. They are an annoyance to the users. Have you ever seen a user (a visitor, the one who browses the web) request ability to use Unicode in URLs? I've never heard about that. It's some webmasters, who decided they want this stupid-stupid-stupid trick to work (and greedy registrars and their marketdroids) and broke a perfectly good addressing mechanism (I am Russian, but I never ever wanted Cyrillic URLs, even though now they are apparently supported).
Sorry, can't find a link, but I remember a story on Plastic when they actually asked for donations (!) to pay their bandwidth bills, even though redesigning their webpages would reduce their size 3-4 times on average with almost none visible changes.
Funnily, Radagast has more lines in the book than Arwen does.:) Why didn't Jackson expand HIS role?:)
On an unrelated note, most of us here, who have the display of sigs disabled, would appreciate you not including your sig manually in every post. Use the Slashdot signature function, so that it can be filtered by those who are only interested in actual posts. Thanks.
While we are waiting for clarification, let me just say that both these aspects are tightly interwoven in my opinion. The room for interpretation of such stories comes from the fact that everyone may change them. And we are not worried about a poor storyteller mangling the tale precisely because the next week someone will tell us a better version.
Tolkien's (Jackson's) works now are fake oral tradition, because in fact they are corporate-sanctioned myths. Even if we look at LOTR, then close our eyes and dream about it being the last iteration of the Red Book of Westmarch, we must realise that this oral tradition was killed in the 20th century by greedy bastards, Tolkien estate and New Line Cinema.
BTW, I personally did feel the same way towards the movies. I thought they should be open for further interpretation. Check out this link for Purist Edit, the next iteration, a fork in the source tree.:) It's the theatrical version of TTT modified to better agree with the book. Jackson himself made an Extended DVD, which had new scenes, but the best thing about Purist Edit is that it had some bad scenes and episodes removed, or rather carefully reedited, sometimes to have precisely opposite meaning to Jackson's concept (making it closer to the book).
With "all you can eat" everyone knows what is meant. It's simple common sense, no IT-skills are required to understand it. And, frankly, most of the restaurants close at night (and it's written on the door), so you will have to get out. They also do not sign a contract about providing you "all you can eat", unlike the ISP that does.
So is it ok to offer customers paint that stays for 100 years, cars that drive 100 miles on one gallon, toothpaste that protects from caries, notebooks that work 50 hours on a charge, even though all these products don't do that in reality?
Sure, if I promise a laptop that works 50 hours on a charge, I would sell more laptops, whether this is true or not. But when they don't work as promised, the customers have all the rights to sue the company into the ground. It is 100% the same with ISPs.
You don't like other ISPs lying? Unite with other honest ISPs, start an ad or a PR campaign to explain the reality to customers. Work closely with the media to explain that there can't be unlimited traffic.
But don't be surprised when you are in turn attacked by honest ISPs that DO PROVIDE unlimited traffic for a fixed monthly charge.
I have unlimited 256K ADSL (64 guaranteed) connection for 60$/month and I get at least 40Gb per month. And this happens in Russia, where broadband providers are few and far between. The providers uses the ADSL infrastructure of it's competitor, who charges its customers 0.05$/Mb of traffic. I would have paid 2000$ for this month if I used that. It just happens that happens that my ISP has access to the backbone and is committed to bringing affordable broadband to the mass market. And in other countries (South Korea, Japan, Finland) you can get megabit connections with really unlimited traffic for 15-30$.
So the fact of the matter is that ISPs have no excuse to lie in any case. If they promise unlimited access they must provide it. Furthermore, there is no reason why unlimited high-speed access cannot be provided to mass customers affordably, since many countries already do it just fine.
I have come to view the stories of Middle-Earth as dynamic, evolving over time like an oral tradition. Tolkien described them in this way also. There is a problem with that, a problem we understand all too well here at Slashdot. The stories of Middle-Earth are not oral tradition, they are copyfuckrighted works. Which means we won't have another book or another movie any time soon. Tolkien estate is know for suing people who modify the books (one guy in Germany, who reedited LOTR in a chronological way) and New Line Cinema will guard the rights just as strictly.
If Tolkien's book was already in the public domain, we would have many adaptations and PJ would be justified in making his own take on the story. As it is, his creation is the definite film version for decades and, as such, he has no right to change it as recklessly as he did.
That sounds really... sad. What was the last movie that surprised him? How dull your life would be if you could predict everything.. No. What's really sad is your attitude to knowledge and intelligence of another person. May be you enjoy being surprised often (Look, Ma, this apple falls down! Look, Ma, the Sun is shining and it's a new day again!), but others have found a way to appreciate their ability to predict things happening.
He could have made an adaptation of the book, not a film loosely based on the LOTR story, as recalled from memory by Peter Jackson. Most of the serious changes only worsen the film, IMNSHO. The biggest problems with the movie are not omissions, but pointless additions and changes.
The Two Towers: The Purist Edit is a re-edit of the theatrical version that deals with most of the changes that people disliked to make a film that follows the book plot more closely. This new version is available on the eDonkey2000 network.
The purpose of the edit is to make the movie follow more closely to the original books. "It's amazing the work the editor has done by selectively removing scenes and rearranging them - without messing up the sound synchronisation. Now there are no longer any elves in Helm's Deep, Faramir is a good guy again, and the ents aren't idiots anymore." (tangent3)
Major changes (out of about 30 changes totally):
Ents don't refuse to attack Isengard
Elves do not come to Helm's Deep
Gimli is no longer a dwarf clown
Faramir does not decide to take the Ring to Gondor as a "mighty gift"
Frodo does not attempt to give the Ring to Nazgul
Arwen stays in Middle-Earth
Aragorn doesn't fall from a cliff
Here's the ed2k link: ed2k://|file|Lord_of_the_Rings-The_Two_Towe rs-The_ Purist_Edit.avi|729462784|ec0671172619e490d7b0ea6b 5278468c|/
Here is the trailer: ed2k://|file|The_Two_Towers-The_Purist_E dit-Traile r.avi|14997504|965c013e991ee246d63d45ea71954c4d|/
Can't you at least be manly enough to just shut up silently? By the very act of replying you prove that you are not ignoring me, that subconsciously you are worried about being wrong.:-) Whom are you trying to impress? If you honestly thought that I am not worthy of your attention, you wouldn't reply to me and would just mark me a Foe (as you did in the beginning). Of course, the fact that you started pretending to ignore me only when cornered, when realising that you can not longer ignore the simple question that was here from the beginning - "what product or service can "Microsoft" become a generic name for?" You couldn't answer it, because the answer is "no such product" and it proves that Microsoft was not risking the loss of the trademark.
Why are you so stupid? Why do you defend Microsoft so vigorously? And what place do you work at that you were so ashamed of naming it? These questions are now destined to remain unanswered, because you would be too embarrassed to stop playing the game of ignoring... Or is it the game of ignorance? Probably not, it looks pretty real.:)
Slashdot Mirror
I'd say unfortunately. Imagine how cool would it be for all of us to have an opportunity to watch a leaked copy of the Two Towers? I know, if I had a chance to preview it, I would not be tricked into parting with perfectly good 8 euros on the opening night...
Nice reply, but what you and I should be happy is that we helped produce such brilliant prose. :) The posts by TheRightIsRight deserve a "+5: Look at that! Just look at that!" moderation (if it wasn't an extremely talented troll). :) I never actually heard a person, who would be such a brilliant representation of Bush electorate. At least, not here on Slashdot. That would be funny to me, if not the fact that 50% of Americans are just as irrational...
The difference is that people can choose to do these things, and they know the risks.
.mov which I cant figure out how to get to work anyway....). .mov file, but I would give you the gist of the ad. Starting with his quote "I am the master of low expectations", Bush gives a presentation about his achievement - 2.5 jobs lost, his friend Ken Lay is busted, 2 countries invaded, UN ignored, Geneva convention violated, but he still took more vacation than any other president. He ends his speech with the following summary: "Terrorist, Terrorist, Terrorist, 9-11, 9-11, God Bless America". The point, obviously being that Americans can be easily made to ignore the important issues if you distract them with the overinflated terrorist threat.
:)
Just for you - second hand smoke kills more people than terrorists do. Reckless drivers kill more pedestrians than terrorists do. Everything else kills more people than terrorists do. Just think about it - five million people die every year in America and only a few tens (or even less than ten) die from terrorists every year. Yeah, 2001 was an exception and 2000 died - still 2500 times less than from other causes. With the way things are going in Iraq, soon the number of American soldiers killed during the War on Terror will exceed the number of people killed in the WTC.
You try to make terrorism seem like an unimportant threat
Yep. Because it is. Even if you only look at the USA, it is pretty damn unimportant. If you disagree, could you please tell me why it is important. Please ignore the fact that thousands of Americans were killed in the towers, since we already established that five times more die every day from other causes. What are other reasons why terrorism is important? I would really like to hear a rational argument for that.
I dont want to see your damn anti-bush ad (its probably a
There is nothing complex about watching a
Trying to re-state existing problems is not productive.
The first step to solving the problem is acknowledging it. Now the problem is that people overestimate the threat of terror, which prevents them from making rational decision. It is worth re-stating this particular problem until people realise it.
I think that you are a disgrace to our country.
Fortunately, I am not from your country. And as it is, United States is on my "do not visit" list and is likely to remain there for quite some time, together with North Korea, Afganistan, Somalia, etc.
P.S. Thanks for speaking up about your opinions anyway.
I really don't get your post - what is that smiley supposed to mean? I'm "digging up dirt" on Hank Asher?
The goal of the MATRIX (ignoring for the moment the specific detail of this particular implementation) is to provide exactly the same kind of intelligence on all people as you found on Hank Asher. You like to be able to see the whole trail, smuggling, fraud, theft, etc., etc. Police investigators everywhere like to see the same about you. And if you don't have anything criminal behind you, they would like to see that too, just to be sure.
So, ignoring for the moment such issues as privacy and risk of tiranny, I don't see anything particularly bad about the MATRIX. Of course, these two issues cannot and should not be ignored. But now, thanks to your great example in handling Hank's personal history, we must realise that you can't really outlaw the technology. Once datamining is feasible, it is feasible and incredibly tempting. Go and read some detective story. Don't you realise that when an investigation (anything - murder, tax evasion, etc.) starts, the detectives are dying to find the clues and the results of datamining, narrowing down the list of suspects to the manageable hundred.
You can argue that citizens should have access to information about politicians (and corporate executives), while the life of an average citizen should be kept private. That would certainly be neat, but as of today, it is somewhat unrealistic. The better approach, in my opinion, would be to create Total Information Awareness of everyone about everything (including everybody). In the brave new world of nanotech, ubiquitous computing, MEMS and smart matter it is inevitable anyway, we better start readying ourselves now.
In no way I am defending Mr. Asher. What I am trying to point out (rather unsuccessfully, it seems) is that you can't really deny the state the abilities you already enjoy. Hank should be punished for his crimes (if found guilty during the due process by the jury of peers) and his abominable creation (MATRIX) should be destroyed (may be), but it will surface again and again. Even if we manage to stop it time and again, eventually resistance will become pointless, since integrating data from different existing databases would be as easy as googling is today.
As for the child porn trading, it was a simple litmus test. Apparently, you believe that everything that is against the law is immoral, terrible and should be prohibited, even things that do not directly harm anyone (like trading child porn or smoking pot). Probably, after a few years of brainwashing you will love the Big Brother too...
His tone notwithstanding, h? doesn't ask a fair question. You did, but he claimed that the money should be spent on "real" applications and he implied that the scientists do it just to have a publication. These accusations have no basis in reality.
His "what's the point" was simply a rhetorical question, intended to mislead indulgent people like you.
The biggest problem with people is that they suck at math.
Sharks kill more people than terrorists do. Cars kill tens of times more people than terrorists do. Smoking kills hundreds of times more people than terrorists do. Cancer and heart desease kill thousands of times more people than terrorists do. But THEY do not show those dead people on TV, and so YOU believe that those deaths do not happen.
Please, check out this anti-Bush ad to see exactly what I am talking about.
Free your mind. Learn the math. Fight the Matrix.
The US government had asked the Taliban many times over about 5 years to give up Osama
And Taliban repeatedly agreed to do it, as long as the trials would be held not in America, but somewhere else (like Western Europe, Arab countries, etc.). A pretty reasonable request, if you ask me.
Do you like digging up dirt about the great Mr. Hank Asher? I would also love to enter "Doc Ruby" into the MATRIX search engine and get information about your drug addiction, parking violations, your subscription to porn sites, etc. :)
Honestly, I am not so much against transparency, as I am against monopolizing information access and intolerance.
If I am a muslim child porn trader addicted to LSD, I don't mind everyone knowing about it, as long as they don't harass me for that (if I don't harm anyone) and as long as I can know as much about everyone else.
you're only going to be rewarded with PATRIOT Acts II, III, IV and V.
:)
Hey, can't we have an intermission?
As of recently, they appear to be much nicer and user-friendlier. Finding the free version on the site is not easy, it's extremely easy. Yes, you might be duped first into getting the "FREE 14 day trial" version, but, hey, it clearly says "TRIAL" and "14 day" is also a good indication. :) The link to the real free Real player is near the top of the page, on the right. Yes, it doesn't really stand apart, but once you take your eyes off the cute girl on the ad for FREE TRIAL, you can easily see it. :) On the next page you are given your LAST chance to get the premium version, but it is in no way deceptive.
:)
I applaud the Real guys for going the right route. I really do. I still don't want their player, now that there is Real Alternative, but I honestly think they changed and they are no longer disgusting like they were.
As for the title "Doctor", it generally says nothing about the person. Cameron is not a Doctor, but he is a son of an engineer and he has a major in physics. The fact that he chose to pursue a career in filmmaking does not preclude him from being knowledgeable enough to make a reference design for human mission to Mars. On the other hand, his background in filmmaking actually makes him more qualified (I hope you won't deny the quality and realism of the sets and machines in Aliens, Terminator and Titanic).
The endless supply of idiots never end.
Apparently, it doesn't. You are a living proof of that.
The biggest problem with operating systems and programming languages is that they give more control to designers and programmers, not to the users.
This is bullshit and it starts from the very first sentence. OSes and applications, as well as programmers and designers give control to the user, with a few exceptions, like DRM, copy-protection and MS monopolistic control. Software developers simply do not want to control user experience in the general case.
Websites, on the other hand, are mostly controlled by the content-providers. There isn't much a user can do. This is slowly changing, with modern browsers finally providing some control over selected styles, allowing to quickly enable disable images/scripts/plugins, etc. But overall the representation of information on the Web is controlled by the designers more than it should be.
Of course, you'd have to find a cert registrar dumb or unethical enough to give you a cert for the domain, but with people like Verisign around that can't be hard.
You don't need a cert. Just insert a Flash animation on the front page that would look like a certificate confirmation window in WindowsXP on IE. Or add OS/browser detection and customize the picture for major OSes and browsers.
Of course, the URL prefix will be http:// and not https://, but most people won't notice that.
I am Russian, but I never ever wanted Cyrillic URLs and I don't know anybody who did. I've never encountered a user on the Runet, who would like to have them. The only exception is, of course, the greedy registrars and their marketdroids.
.jp site and I can bet there will be some English used on almost any page, regardless of the intended audience. It just happens that words like "Copyright", "Last updated", "News", "Gallery", "About", etc. look better in English. :) Same for URLs.
Don't know about Chinese, but have you noticed how popular is English with Japanese people? Visit any
The biggest problem with browsers and other web-technologies is that they give more control to designers and webmasters, not to the users. Java, ActiveX, Flash, Javascript, CSS, etc. all allow designers and webmasters to determine more precisely what should happen on the user's end. Completely wrong and inacceptable, yet this is exactly what is happening.
It is entirely possible to design a page that would open in an IE window without toolbars, scrollbars and statusbar. Then it is entirely possible to add interactive graphical elements to the sides that would behave exactly like real IE interface elements, only they would be fake. This is wrong. The standards should give limited control to providers of information, while browsers give ultimate control to the users. It is completely wrong that standards allow javascript to intercept mouseclicks and block rightclick menu. It doesn't affect me because I use Opera, which doesn't give a shit about that, but when I click the wheel (button 3), I see that stupid message window that informs me I shouldn't right click on that site. This isn't more than an annoyance, since scrolling still works and rightclicking is not affected at all, but this should never happen in the first place.
Unicode addresses are wrong as well. They are an annoyance to the users. Have you ever seen a user (a visitor, the one who browses the web) request ability to use Unicode in URLs? I've never heard about that. It's some webmasters, who decided they want this stupid-stupid-stupid trick to work (and greedy registrars and their marketdroids) and broke a perfectly good addressing mechanism (I am Russian, but I never ever wanted Cyrillic URLs, even though now they are apparently supported).
Sorry, can't find a link, but I remember a story on Plastic when they actually asked for donations (!) to pay their bandwidth bills, even though redesigning their webpages would reduce their size 3-4 times on average with almost none visible changes.
Funnily, Radagast has more lines in the book than Arwen does. :) Why didn't Jackson expand HIS role? :)
On an unrelated note, most of us here, who have the display of sigs disabled, would appreciate you not including your sig manually in every post. Use the Slashdot signature function, so that it can be filtered by those who are only interested in actual posts. Thanks.
While we are waiting for clarification, let me just say that both these aspects are tightly interwoven in my opinion. The room for interpretation of such stories comes from the fact that everyone may change them. And we are not worried about a poor storyteller mangling the tale precisely because the next week someone will tell us a better version.
:) It's the theatrical version of TTT modified to better agree with the book. Jackson himself made an Extended DVD, which had new scenes, but the best thing about Purist Edit is that it had some bad scenes and episodes removed, or rather carefully reedited, sometimes to have precisely opposite meaning to Jackson's concept (making it closer to the book).
Tolkien's (Jackson's) works now are fake oral tradition, because in fact they are corporate-sanctioned myths. Even if we look at LOTR, then close our eyes and dream about it being the last iteration of the Red Book of Westmarch, we must realise that this oral tradition was killed in the 20th century by greedy bastards, Tolkien estate and New Line Cinema.
BTW, I personally did feel the same way towards the movies. I thought they should be open for further interpretation. Check out this link for Purist Edit, the next iteration, a fork in the source tree.
That's not a fair analogy either.
With "all you can eat" everyone knows what is meant. It's simple common sense, no IT-skills are required to understand it. And, frankly, most of the restaurants close at night (and it's written on the door), so you will have to get out. They also do not sign a contract about providing you "all you can eat", unlike the ISP that does.
So is it ok to offer customers paint that stays for 100 years, cars that drive 100 miles on one gallon, toothpaste that protects from caries, notebooks that work 50 hours on a charge, even though all these products don't do that in reality?
Sure, if I promise a laptop that works 50 hours on a charge, I would sell more laptops, whether this is true or not. But when they don't work as promised, the customers have all the rights to sue the company into the ground. It is 100% the same with ISPs.
You don't like other ISPs lying? Unite with other honest ISPs, start an ad or a PR campaign to explain the reality to customers. Work closely with the media to explain that there can't be unlimited traffic.
But don't be surprised when you are in turn attacked by honest ISPs that DO PROVIDE unlimited traffic for a fixed monthly charge.
I have unlimited 256K ADSL (64 guaranteed) connection for 60$/month and I get at least 40Gb per month. And this happens in Russia, where broadband providers are few and far between. The providers uses the ADSL infrastructure of it's competitor, who charges its customers 0.05$/Mb of traffic. I would have paid 2000$ for this month if I used that. It just happens that happens that my ISP has access to the backbone and is committed to bringing affordable broadband to the mass market. And in other countries (South Korea, Japan, Finland) you can get megabit connections with really unlimited traffic for 15-30$.
So the fact of the matter is that ISPs have no excuse to lie in any case. If they promise unlimited access they must provide it. Furthermore, there is no reason why unlimited high-speed access cannot be provided to mass customers affordably, since many countries already do it just fine.
I have come to view the stories of Middle-Earth as dynamic, evolving over time like an oral tradition. Tolkien described them in this way also.
There is a problem with that, a problem we understand all too well here at Slashdot. The stories of Middle-Earth are not oral tradition, they are copyfuckrighted works. Which means we won't have another book or another movie any time soon. Tolkien estate is know for suing people who modify the books (one guy in Germany, who reedited LOTR in a chronological way) and New Line Cinema will guard the rights just as strictly.
If Tolkien's book was already in the public domain, we would have many adaptations and PJ would be justified in making his own take on the story. As it is, his creation is the definite film version for decades and, as such, he has no right to change it as recklessly as he did.
That sounds really... sad.
What was the last movie that surprised him? How dull your life would be if you could predict everything..
No. What's really sad is your attitude to knowledge and intelligence of another person. May be you enjoy being surprised often (Look, Ma, this apple falls down! Look, Ma, the Sun is shining and it's a new day again!), but others have found a way to appreciate their ability to predict things happening.
He could have made an adaptation of the book, not a film loosely based on the LOTR story, as recalled from memory by Peter Jackson. Most of the serious changes only worsen the film, IMNSHO. The biggest problems with the movie are not omissions, but pointless additions and changes.
The purpose of the edit is to make the movie follow more closely to the original books. "It's amazing the work the editor has done by selectively removing scenes and rearranging them - without messing up the sound synchronisation. Now there are no longer any elves in Helm's Deep, Faramir is a good guy again, and the ents aren't idiots anymore." (tangent3)
Major changes (out of about 30 changes totally):
Ents don't refuse to attack Isengard
Elves do not come to Helm's Deep
Gimli is no longer a dwarf clown
Faramir does not decide to take the Ring to Gondor as a "mighty gift"
Frodo does not attempt to give the Ring to Nazgul
Arwen stays in Middle-Earth
Aragorn doesn't fall from a cliff
e rs-The_ Purist_Edit.avi|729462784|ec0671172619e490d7b0ea6b 5278468c|/
E dit-Traile r.avi|14997504|965c013e991ee246d63d45ea71954c4d|/
Here's the ed2k link:
ed2k://|file|Lord_of_the_Rings-The_Two_Tow
Here is the trailer:
ed2k://|file|The_Two_Towers-The_Purist_
Alternatively, get the trailer from here.
More information in the ShareReactor forum.
Can't you at least be manly enough to just shut up silently? By the very act of replying you prove that you are not ignoring me, that subconsciously you are worried about being wrong. :-) Whom are you trying to impress? If you honestly thought that I am not worthy of your attention, you wouldn't reply to me and would just mark me a Foe (as you did in the beginning). Of course, the fact that you started pretending to ignore me only when cornered, when realising that you can not longer ignore the simple question that was here from the beginning - "what product or service can "Microsoft" become a generic name for?" You couldn't answer it, because the answer is "no such product" and it proves that Microsoft was not risking the loss of the trademark.
:)
Why are you so stupid? Why do you defend Microsoft so vigorously? And what place do you work at that you were so ashamed of naming it? These questions are now destined to remain unanswered, because you would be too embarrassed to stop playing the game of ignoring... Or is it the game of ignorance? Probably not, it looks pretty real.