I don't think there was any score in ROTK worth talking about, even less giving an award. Shore reused FOTR and TTT themes and wrote some of the crappiest original music for the third film. Yes, his work for the first two parts was amazing, but with ROTK he did no better than the rest of the team (i.e. just plain horribly).
I really hope PJ's fanboys would stop obsessing about him and his crappy movies (not FOTR, it was excellent). But, oh well, the chances for that are pretty slim...
IMO ROTK and TTT really sucked monkey balls, especially ROTK. I am aware that LOTR movies have become our next Linux (even among the general population), so we are not allowed to bash it, but the last PJ's film was really horrendous. Matrix sequals, on the other hand, were pretty solid films. Not to everyone's liking, that's for sure, but you can't say they were poorly made.
So the real moral is that there is no significant statistical correlation between quality of movies and the amount of awards they get.
People like Thomas Jefferson and myself think that once you made your works public, everyone has most rights to these works, including, but not limited to copying them, viewing them and creating derivatives. This certainly applies to everything I ever made, I don't see why you should get any special privileges.
When you own a laundry and some thugs come to you to demand money, you don't go to catholic nuns crying for help. You go to Mafia and ask them to protect your business. P2P users should be happy to have some tough guys on their side, even if they do engage in shady business practices.
Well, I never get snail mail at home in my mailbox - I am sure if using e-mail would be as difficult, expensive and time consuming as using snail mail, I would not receive much legitimate e-mail either...
How about HTML-by-default? It's not like Outlook programmers were really concerned about pine users. It's entirely feasible to simply add these security functions on top of Outlook/Windows and make it an inconvenience for people using something else.
Just yesterday I wanted to patch my FIFA 2004 to v 1.1. Have you read the instructions for doing so? They read like something a Devil would write to purchase your soul (see below). Just to install a patch I need to disable antivirus and firewall, use only the latest IE6, enable ActiveX and scripting and accept all cookies. And why do I need it, when a simple downloadable executable (if not an archive) would suffice? Do these people at EA Sports care about giving freedom to the users? No, they don't. Does MS have more concern about users than EA? Definitely not. Why would they worry about forcing all users to upgrade or die? I don't see any compelling reasons...
You can also update by being connected to the internet, closing any anti-virus or firewall software you may have running then insert DISC 1. Then go to CHECK FOR UPDATE...
BUT...Before even downloading the update, you will need to make sure that you dont have any settings enabled that will prevent you from getting it.
First, make sure that you have disabled any anti-virus programs or firewall programs you may have.
Second, you should make sure you are using the latest version of Internet Explorer 6. If you do not have this, please obtain it from www.microsoft.com or Windows Update.
You will need to have ActiveX controls and Scripting enabled in your browser. These settings can be changed in Internet Explorer under the Tools menu.
Tools -> Internet Options... -> Security -> Internet -> Custom Level...
There you can change all the settings for ActiveX controls, scripting, and other settings. If you want, write down your settings so you can restore them after the update.
Third, we need to change the privacy settings in your web browser. These can be changed in Internet Explorer as well under the Tools menu.
Tools -> Internet Options... -> Privacy Tab -> Lower the slider tab down to 'Accept All Cookies' -> Click OK -> Close the Internet Explorer Program.
Go to the Update function in the game to download the Patch. After the patch has been downloaded, you can go back and reset the privacy levels to the prior settings.
Following my previous comment, may be industry associations are evil, because it's like isolating your aggression into a separate individual. Without a counterweight of your conscience, your morals and your kindness, aggression will run amuck. Similarly, when you separate prosecution of copyright violation from your other functions, those prosecutors will quickly get out of control.
I meant anything different from usual shady practices of any business, like pulp and paper manufacturing, CPU design and manufacturing, fast-food or nutria breeding. Anything specific to a market where most money is made on a small number of products and where Internet makes large-scale casual piracy possible.
I think gaming companies still don't act like **AAs... May be the reason is they still don't have a powerful industry association...
I think it's neither that pure, nor that simple. If you make something useful, then it's not necessarily either arrogance or greed that makes you hand it out. As an extreme example, I would use medications. No-one would say that drugs are donated with future profit in mind. Drugs are usually quite cheap to manufacture, the real costs are in R&D. So donating drugs doesn't cost you much and doesn't mean you lose potential profit (you don't donate to solvent customers). It is exactly on the same tier as medication.
And could you please give even one example of a company donating its own products where promotion didn't even enter the equation? Giving away obsolete product that would otherwise be thrown away doesn't qualify. Just one example, please.
Many other industries operate in a similar conditions. For example, the gaming industry comes to mind. But do you see them engaging in similar shady business practices?
I was extremely disappointed with my wireless Logitech mouse (a kb+mouse combo). The batteries died in a few weeks and replacing them was so annoying that I said "fuck it" and returned back to my 'el cheapo' Logitech mouse that doesn't even have Logitech logo (except a small one in the bottom). It's not wireless, but for some reason it is MUCH smoother and is light (compared to any wireless mouse). I will keep using wireless KB though, I never had to replace the batteries in about 6 months and it has encryption.
Good point, but I live in Russia. Here movies pass into the public domain after 30 years. Snowwhite and the Seven Dwarfs, Bambi, Dumbo and Steamboat Willie are in public domain here. I can do whatever I want with them right here, right now, including making a movie where Dumbo rapes Snowwhite (using authentic Disney art).
If I wanted to set up a paid/free download server with 30+ old films, I can do it right now, and I would do it, if only I had some spare cash (a few thousands dollars would suffice).
Um, no. In software either the program functions, or it does not.
Unfortunately, from Godel's theorem it can be easily concluded that there is no way to determine whether the program WILL function (known as "halting problem", I believe).
The people really causing a dent... it's not like the ad will have any real effect on most of them anyway. And it's not like they went to theatres a lot or bought many DVDs. Just think - if a new movie is not worth 15$ for them now, was it ever worth it in the past?
I am not their customer, I can't cause a dent, because I never paid much for movies and music, don't do it now and likely never will. I paid to see TTT, Matrices 2/3 and Kill Bill this year, and I wouldn't pay for anything else, whether it was on P2P or not.
All forms of sentimentality would have to be erased from human nature to eliminate that particular brand of scarcity.
Indeed. I may still be in the minority, but I think of sentimentality as a weakness of the mind. Yes, it's makes us what we are, just like extra 10 pounds and dandruff makes us what we are.:) Sentimentality is considered positive addition to our selves, but I am sure, when we would control our thought processes and be able to doublecheck the validity of a particular decision, it would lose a lot of its charm. Remember all kinds of ideas and feelings you had when you were 5 years old. Would you consider acting according to these old ideas today?
By the way, have you read David Brin's "Glory Season"? It touches on a lot of these ideas This particular Brin's book has escaped my attention. I'll check it out when I have the chance, thanks.
Then there is the practical sort of scarcity. As with sentimentality, the cognitive atavisms that force us to value things like land where our house stands, would likely vanish. And anyway, even if that land would be valuable to you or to an unenhanced human, others would likely be happy to settle for another place. There really aren't many locations on this planet that are particularly important. May be a few locations for space elevators along the equator, but most other places aren't unique.
In regards to your more important last point, the history of the 21 Century is still being worked on, so I can't give you a definite answer. But IMO nanotechnologies would arrive fast enough to eliminate scarcity, so asteroid mining and other form of space exploitation would not become very relevant in the near future. As the limited information about NASA reform indicates, the goals set before NASA are not terribly practical and to me look like a glorified ISS on the Moon and possibly some military hardware in LEO. To have a war for resources in space we would need at least two countries with sufficient space capabilities (currently it doesn't look likely before 2030) and a serious shortage here (2030-2050). By that time we have good chances to have working nanotech, especially since it is hotter than space nowadays in the eyes of VCs and MPs.
Bullshit. I live in Russia and I have friends whose grandparents were arrested in 1937-1939 by NKVD. I'll tell you about it.
These people either had a warrant or they had the legal authority to arrest people/search their homes. They were investigating an actual crime of serious magnitude commited against the country (treason, sabotage, espionage) that we (the Soviet people) loved dearly.
The NKVD would often come at night, but often in the morning or any other time of the day. They either rang or knocked, they didn't break the door. They were civilized and they didn't kill anybody. They also didn't steal any property from the house. People, who were arrested, were taken into jail, where they were treated according to the procedures and with all necessary paperwork. The house was, obviously left intact, no fire. This never happened because you believed in wrong religion (nobody cared much at that time, since a very large fraction of the population was religious) or were the member of the wrong party (there was only one party), but because you were charged with a serious crime, such as conspiring to kill our beloved leader Josef Stalin.
The point is not, whether the crimes are real or not, it doesn't really matter whether you are sent to gulag for sabotaging a power plant that you didn't or for copying a DVD that you did. What matters is that once the state becomes too powerful, it will gradually transform into a police state and a bit later into a totalitarian police state. That's what is happening in the US.
The fact that you have rights is irrelevant to whether the country is a police state - you are confusing it with a lawless dictatorship. In a police state you may have rights, but they are trumped by even greater rights of the police. This guy is laughing, but would he if he was accused of assisting terrorists?
content will then come from two sources: individuals and communities who are truly passionate about their subject matter, and those with content that is actually worth paying for
Don't forget public organisations like universities, research centres, etc., as well as companies, who often add valuable content about their field of business on their site.
Re:Why, exactly, the *fear* of China?
on
The Future of NASA
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· Score: 1
The question was specifically about "surrender or we'll kill random civilians" as a part of actual military expedition. PLO and China didn't do that as a part of military expedition and I don't think Hitler really expected Brits or Russians to surrender.
1) MS (and most other companies) goes too far. The law doesn't require them to set up concentration camps for trademark violators and send out death squads to hunt them. Similarly, the law doesn't require MS to do what they try to do now, although there are cases where they have more of a point (like the Lindows case which definitely had certain merit). 2) One trademark violation is using a similar name to sell a similar service (an OS called Lindows, Mike shoes and SONI DVD-player). This can't lead to the trademark loss, this can only lead to increase competition through this trademark abuse. What can lead to the loss (according to Kirshner and other sources) is when you allow others to use your trademark as a generic noun/verb (xerox, escalator, walkman). But this is DEFINITELY not the case with Mike Rowe.
I would love to put this trademark loss to an end, but at this stage it's likely impossible. Still, I will repeat it:
"One can lose rights to a trademark if a mark that was once distinctive becomes the common generic name for a product or service." One cannot lose rights to a trademark when others use a similar name for some other purposes or even for the purpose of marketing a similar product.
Please, everyone, remember it and correct others when they make this mistake (at least once per every trademarks-related discussion here on/.)!
I agree, thanks for putting my post into a better perspective. While rationality might actually be sufficient for a complete worldview (we need to know more about AI to give a definite answer), certain basic principles are often preset. But, while certain moral/ethical/cognitive/philosophical foundations are not rationally derived, they must be rationally validated not to have contradictions with anything else inside your worldvide.
What I wanted to say, mostly, was that advanced ideas should not be defined by emotions or beliefs alone. If we return to the grand-grandparent post, the argument was made that people would try to appropriate celestial bodies, because its in their nature. I disagree here - the ideas of conquest, expansion, territory acquisition, etc. are too complex to be allowed to irrationally set and are derived from past/present reality of material scarcity, not from the future reality of abundance.
Imagine that we have sufficiently advanced genetics and proteomics to simulate the result of any mutation or even of arbitrarily complex artificial changes to the genome. Don't you think rational improvements and design then would be better than relying on random mutations?
Same with rationality/emotions. Today emotions can be valuable, although IMO in most cases they aren't. Tomorrow our improved rationality would help us make much better decisions and make emotions completely obsolete.
I am aware that I am breaking the simplistic beauty of your comment by replying, but I can't resist.:)
Most ideas about love, obsession, sex, etc. will eventually become outdated. First, love is based on instincts very much, sometimes on levels as basic as hormonal regulation. I expect this to become irrelevant eventually as we acquire control over these basic functions. Still, love might be retained on a higher level, but here it is likely to be somewhat controlled by our rationality. There can be replacements for "her", such as virtual reality agents or AI-controlled androids. The only problem would be your own knowledge that this replacement is not completely real, but even that could be helped with memory editing.
Second, I doubt violence would help getting "her", if she would be a contemporary upgraded human, not a 20th century one. Even today violence would not help win the heart of many woman in civilized countries.
Third, as our conscience and intelligence are bound to develop, there will be undoubtly new modes of communication, the added flexibility of which might solve the "love triangles" of today. I will not get deeper into this, though.
So I think that our love problems will be cured about the same time the problem of material scarcity is solved.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think there was any score in ROTK worth talking about, even less giving an award. Shore reused FOTR and TTT themes and wrote some of the crappiest original music for the third film. Yes, his work for the first two parts was amazing, but with ROTK he did no better than the rest of the team (i.e. just plain horribly).
I really hope PJ's fanboys would stop obsessing about him and his crappy movies (not FOTR, it was excellent). But, oh well, the chances for that are pretty slim...
IMO ROTK and TTT really sucked monkey balls, especially ROTK. I am aware that LOTR movies have become our next Linux (even among the general population), so we are not allowed to bash it, but the last PJ's film was really horrendous. Matrix sequals, on the other hand, were pretty solid films. Not to everyone's liking, that's for sure, but you can't say they were poorly made.
So the real moral is that there is no significant statistical correlation between quality of movies and the amount of awards they get.
People like Thomas Jefferson and myself think that once you made your works public, everyone has most rights to these works, including, but not limited to copying them, viewing them and creating derivatives. This certainly applies to everything I ever made, I don't see why you should get any special privileges.
When you own a laundry and some thugs come to you to demand money, you don't go to catholic nuns crying for help. You go to Mafia and ask them to protect your business. P2P users should be happy to have some tough guys on their side, even if they do engage in shady business practices.
Well, I never get snail mail at home in my mailbox - I am sure if using e-mail would be as difficult, expensive and time consuming as using snail mail, I would not receive much legitimate e-mail either...
Just yesterday I wanted to patch my FIFA 2004 to v 1.1. Have you read the instructions for doing so? They read like something a Devil would write to purchase your soul (see below). Just to install a patch I need to disable antivirus and firewall, use only the latest IE6, enable ActiveX and scripting and accept all cookies. And why do I need it, when a simple downloadable executable (if not an archive) would suffice? Do these people at EA Sports care about giving freedom to the users? No, they don't. Does MS have more concern about users than EA? Definitely not. Why would they worry about forcing all users to upgrade or die? I don't see any compelling reasons...
Following my previous comment, may be industry associations are evil, because it's like isolating your aggression into a separate individual. Without a counterweight of your conscience, your morals and your kindness, aggression will run amuck. Similarly, when you separate prosecution of copyright violation from your other functions, those prosecutors will quickly get out of control.
I meant anything different from usual shady practices of any business, like pulp and paper manufacturing, CPU design and manufacturing, fast-food or nutria breeding. Anything specific to a market where most money is made on a small number of products and where Internet makes large-scale casual piracy possible.
I think gaming companies still don't act like **AAs... May be the reason is they still don't have a powerful industry association...
I think it's neither that pure, nor that simple. If you make something useful, then it's not necessarily either arrogance or greed that makes you hand it out. As an extreme example, I would use medications. No-one would say that drugs are donated with future profit in mind.
Drugs are usually quite cheap to manufacture, the real costs are in R&D. So donating drugs doesn't cost you much and doesn't mean you lose potential profit (you don't donate to solvent customers). It is exactly on the same tier as medication.
And could you please give even one example of a company donating its own products where promotion didn't even enter the equation? Giving away obsolete product that would otherwise be thrown away doesn't qualify. Just one example, please.
Many other industries operate in a similar conditions. For example, the gaming industry comes to mind. But do you see them engaging in similar shady business practices?
I was extremely disappointed with my wireless Logitech mouse (a kb+mouse combo). The batteries died in a few weeks and replacing them was so annoying that I said "fuck it" and returned back to my 'el cheapo' Logitech mouse that doesn't even have Logitech logo (except a small one in the bottom). It's not wireless, but for some reason it is MUCH smoother and is light (compared to any wireless mouse). I will keep using wireless KB though, I never had to replace the batteries in about 6 months and it has encryption.
Good point, but I live in Russia. Here movies pass into the public domain after 30 years. Snowwhite and the Seven Dwarfs, Bambi, Dumbo and Steamboat Willie are in public domain here. I can do whatever I want with them right here, right now, including making a movie where Dumbo rapes Snowwhite (using authentic Disney art).
If I wanted to set up a paid/free download server with 30+ old films, I can do it right now, and I would do it, if only I had some spare cash (a few thousands dollars would suffice).
Um, no. In software either the program functions, or it does not.
Unfortunately, from Godel's theorem it can be easily concluded that there is no way to determine whether the program WILL function (known as "halting problem", I believe).
Reasonable conclusion 2: Either Kuma is not an expert in English language, or all English is nonsense.
The people really causing a dent... it's not like the ad will have any real effect on most of them anyway.
And it's not like they went to theatres a lot or bought many DVDs. Just think - if a new movie is not worth 15$ for them now, was it ever worth it in the past?
I am not their customer, I can't cause a dent, because I never paid much for movies and music, don't do it now and likely never will. I paid to see TTT, Matrices 2/3 and Kill Bill this year, and I wouldn't pay for anything else, whether it was on P2P or not.
How about an assault rifle firing plutonium shells with airborne smallpox? I'd like one of that.
All forms of sentimentality would have to be erased from human nature to eliminate that particular brand of scarcity.
:) Sentimentality is considered positive addition to our selves, but I am sure, when we would control our thought processes and be able to doublecheck the validity of a particular decision, it would lose a lot of its charm. Remember all kinds of ideas and feelings you had when you were 5 years old. Would you consider acting according to these old ideas today?
Indeed. I may still be in the minority, but I think of sentimentality as a weakness of the mind. Yes, it's makes us what we are, just like extra 10 pounds and dandruff makes us what we are.
By the way, have you read David Brin's "Glory Season"? It touches on a lot of these ideas
This particular Brin's book has escaped my attention. I'll check it out when I have the chance, thanks.
Then there is the practical sort of scarcity.
As with sentimentality, the cognitive atavisms that force us to value things like land where our house stands, would likely vanish. And anyway, even if that land would be valuable to you or to an unenhanced human, others would likely be happy to settle for another place. There really aren't many locations on this planet that are particularly important. May be a few locations for space elevators along the equator, but most other places aren't unique.
In regards to your more important last point, the history of the 21 Century is still being worked on, so I can't give you a definite answer. But IMO nanotechnologies would arrive fast enough to eliminate scarcity, so asteroid mining and other form of space exploitation would not become very relevant in the near future. As the limited information about NASA reform indicates, the goals set before NASA are not terribly practical and to me look like a glorified ISS on the Moon and possibly some military hardware in LEO. To have a war for resources in space we would need at least two countries with sufficient space capabilities (currently it doesn't look likely before 2030) and a serious shortage here (2030-2050). By that time we have good chances to have working nanotech, especially since it is hotter than space nowadays in the eyes of VCs and MPs.
Bullshit. I live in Russia and I have friends whose grandparents were arrested in 1937-1939 by NKVD. I'll tell you about it.
These people either had a warrant or they had the legal authority to arrest people/search their homes. They were investigating an actual crime of serious magnitude commited against the country (treason, sabotage, espionage) that we (the Soviet people) loved dearly.
The NKVD would often come at night, but often in the morning or any other time of the day. They either rang or knocked, they didn't break the door. They were civilized and they didn't kill anybody. They also didn't steal any property from the house. People, who were arrested, were taken into jail, where they were treated according to the procedures and with all necessary paperwork. The house was, obviously left intact, no fire. This never happened because you believed in wrong religion (nobody cared much at that time, since a very large fraction of the population was religious) or were the member of the wrong party (there was only one party), but because you were charged with a serious crime, such as conspiring to kill our beloved leader Josef Stalin.
The point is not, whether the crimes are real or not, it doesn't really matter whether you are sent to gulag for sabotaging a power plant that you didn't or for copying a DVD that you did. What matters is that once the state becomes too powerful, it will gradually transform into a police state and a bit later into a totalitarian police state. That's what is happening in the US.
The fact that you have rights is irrelevant to whether the country is a police state - you are confusing it with a lawless dictatorship. In a police state you may have rights, but they are trumped by even greater rights of the police. This guy is laughing, but would he if he was accused of assisting terrorists?
content will then come from two sources: individuals and communities who are truly passionate about their subject matter, and those with content that is actually worth paying for
Don't forget public organisations like universities, research centres, etc., as well as companies, who often add valuable content about their field of business on their site.
The question was specifically about "surrender or we'll kill random civilians" as a part of actual military expedition. PLO and China didn't do that as a part of military expedition and I don't think Hitler really expected Brits or Russians to surrender.
1) MS (and most other companies) goes too far. The law doesn't require them to set up concentration camps for trademark violators and send out death squads to hunt them. Similarly, the law doesn't require MS to do what they try to do now, although there are cases where they have more of a point (like the Lindows case which definitely had certain merit).
2) One trademark violation is using a similar name to sell a similar service (an OS called Lindows, Mike shoes and SONI DVD-player). This can't lead to the trademark loss, this can only lead to increase competition through this trademark abuse. What can lead to the loss (according to Kirshner and other sources) is when you allow others to use your trademark as a generic noun/verb (xerox, escalator, walkman). But this is DEFINITELY not the case with Mike Rowe.
I would love to put this trademark loss to an end, but at this stage it's likely impossible. Still, I will repeat it:
Please, everyone, remember it and correct others when they make this mistake (at least once per every trademarks-related discussion here on
I agree, thanks for putting my post into a better perspective. While rationality might actually be sufficient for a complete worldview (we need to know more about AI to give a definite answer), certain basic principles are often preset. But, while certain moral/ethical/cognitive/philosophical foundations are not rationally derived, they must be rationally validated not to have contradictions with anything else inside your worldvide.
What I wanted to say, mostly, was that advanced ideas should not be defined by emotions or beliefs alone. If we return to the grand-grandparent post, the argument was made that people would try to appropriate celestial bodies, because its in their nature. I disagree here - the ideas of conquest, expansion, territory acquisition, etc. are too complex to be allowed to irrationally set and are derived from past/present reality of material scarcity, not from the future reality of abundance.
Imagine that we have sufficiently advanced genetics and proteomics to simulate the result of any mutation or even of arbitrarily complex artificial changes to the genome. Don't you think rational improvements and design then would be better than relying on random mutations?
Same with rationality/emotions. Today emotions can be valuable, although IMO in most cases they aren't. Tomorrow our improved rationality would help us make much better decisions and make emotions completely obsolete.
I am aware that I am breaking the simplistic beauty of your comment by replying, but I can't resist. :)
Most ideas about love, obsession, sex, etc. will eventually become outdated. First, love is based on instincts very much, sometimes on levels as basic as hormonal regulation. I expect this to become irrelevant eventually as we acquire control over these basic functions. Still, love might be retained on a higher level, but here it is likely to be somewhat controlled by our rationality. There can be replacements for "her", such as virtual reality agents or AI-controlled androids. The only problem would be your own knowledge that this replacement is not completely real, but even that could be helped with memory editing.
Second, I doubt violence would help getting "her", if she would be a contemporary upgraded human, not a 20th century one. Even today violence would not help win the heart of many woman in civilized countries.
Third, as our conscience and intelligence are bound to develop, there will be undoubtly new modes of communication, the added flexibility of which might solve the "love triangles" of today. I will not get deeper into this, though.
So I think that our love problems will be cured about the same time the problem of material scarcity is solved.