While Wikipedia editors (users) have their bias, the system is pretty good at eliminating it. I might disagree with that filtering when I want to push my own agenda and consider the system a failure for some topics, but overall it works remarkably well.
I am guilty of this "upgrade for Doom3" meme myself, but let's not overuse it. Games like Max Payne 2, Silent Storm and even Mercedes-Benz World Racing and Splinter Cell are quite demanding already. They've got hi-res textures, high-poly models and large levels. If you can play existing games with quality graphics, you are likely to be just fine when Doom 3 comes out (unless they delay it till 2005).
We do not only use 10% of our brain. Ask any Neurologist. It is a myth. We pretty much use our entire brain. Each portion has its own unique function/purpose. Yes, it has, but not all people use all portions of the brain. For example, the parent poster clearly wasn't using his skeptical portion, his rational portion and his logical portion.
It's all relative. There is a multitude of delivery methods, each with their own advantages. For example, in a recent month weeks I saw Kill Bill in a luxury movie theater for 8$, saw Matrix Revolutions in IMAX for 15$, bought American History X, Battle Royale II and Star Trek Nemesis for 2.5$ each in DivX and then exhanged them for 0.8$ each for other films, including ROTK telecine. If I had real broadband (as opposed to 64kbps metered cable access), I would have downloaded all DivX versions to save a few bucks (and justify having broadband), but would still see two films in theatres. Many people have some sort of a losely enforced monthly spending limit for entertainment products. I already spend on movies as much as I am comfortable doing. If I am forced to obey the insane rules of copyright, I would not spend more. Conversely, I would probably cease paying for movies alltogether and switch to games or books for my regular dose of entertainment.
A renegade theater can run movies for friends at night, when nobody will interfere. It can also allow to make a telecine (a tripod camera and sound recorder hooked to the source audio for superior quality).
Checking shoes? Doesn't that feel like the whole US is a medium-security prison already? I flew enough in Russia, a few times to Europe, once to Japan and I never had anyone check my shoes. I can tell you - I will be really pissed off when someone tries it with me.
In Kill Bill Vol. 1 the Bride flies from Okinawa to Tokio with her samurai sword fixed to her seat. I am not sure Japanese airlines really do allow that, but I wouldn't be surprised. And if it so, it's just cool! Screw terrorists!:)
Some peopel are immune to 419 scams. When I was young, I got my first Nigerian scam letter, telling a sad story about some family of the President, who was overthrown. I was asked to help transfer the funds and get a cut. What do you think I said in response?..
Being the kind, honest and altruistic young man I was, I wrote them that I would be more than happy to help and, even more, I would do it for free, just out of pity to their bad situation. Now please think, how much I would be motivated to send them any cash or to go to Nigeria with any money? Not in the very least, since I am already doing them a favour.:) How motivated were the Nigerians? Apparently, not much, since our e-mail exchange soon subdued.
Thus the moral of the story - lack of greed makes you immune to 419 and many other scams.:)
Yes, it is pure propaganda, thanks for pointing this out. I should also add that the same argument is often used to argue against piracy and pornography - these activities are used to finance organised crime. Today yet another claim is often made - that it is used to finance terrorism, which, while it doesn't have the same logical flaw, is still utterly ridiculous.
Obviously, European humor hasn't improved at all. We Americans make jokes about France and Germany all the time, despite the fact that yes, they are getting along just fine. Jokes are supposed to be funny [laugh track] and Americans can hardly be considered experts in this area. And to be funny, jokes need to touch upon topics that are still relevant.
Do you still joke about niggers, chickens and watermelons in the US, even though you know that blacks can be just as capable of challenging and creative work? You probably don't. Why then do you think it is funny to crack stupid and out-of-date jokes about French-German relations?
So long as government resources aren't used in any way, shape or form, why should that be prevented? Because when many people believe in things that never happened and characters who never existed, the society loses. It's unproductive, because when you rely on false information, your decisions tend to be incorrect (more often then when you rely on facts).
Ignoring for the moment the legitimacy of attack on Iraq, I would certainly not want my president to attack a country because he believes god talks to him and asks him to do it. How is that different from a psycho serial killer, who does it because voices tell him so?
Soooo... you believe that it's wrong to passively "force" religious beliefs on someone, but it's acceptable to agressively enforce secularism? Not all beliefs are created equal. Some are better, some are worse, some are correct, some are wrong. Certainly you would agree that belief in racial superiority of whites is bad and wrong. Why then do you think that all belief systems regarding god(s) are equally worthy of respect?
Atheism is one of the few belief systems that doesn't contradict the facts. Another one is agnosticism. There are also certain religious belief systems usually involving "the god of the gaps", a mysterious entity which hides in places you can't check. Islam and Christianity are bad because they are based on myths and fairytales. This is only tolerable until you use them to infer anything about the real world.
I respect your right to personally believe anything you want and to practice your religion in private almost in any way you want (no human sacrifices, etc.). But when you want to do things that have direct impact on other members of the public, we need to consider the validity of your beliefs. And it just so happens that Christianity (or Islam) doesn't pass the test. Ergo no religion in schools, none whatsoever. Ergo very limited rights to proselitise. Ergo no religious propaganda in mass media. Ergo atheistic (secular) propaganda sponsored by state.
It's really appaling that a US diplomat (or a diplomat from any other country) could "[cite French] opposition to the Iraq invasion". Yes, we all know about corruption and bias, but I though at least we were thinking this is nothing to be proud about. Nowdays, apparently, you don't even need an appearance of honest and objective decision...
May be because a studio gets only a few bucks profit on each disk, because the rest goes to greedy and inefficient distributors of physical goods? If a studio gets 5$ per disk and it can quadruple the sales by offering 2$ downloads, it might actually be worthwhile to ditch DVDs.
BTW, is anyone interested in setting up (a few thousand bucks investment needed) a commercial download service for public domain films (i.e. everything released before 1973)? There are places on this planet (like Russia), where copyright expires in 30 years and older works are in public domain (the fact is officially recognised by the Ministry of Culture).
As far as I understand, it did have some questionable physics, but most of it was based on hard science, although often it was stretched too far. There was an interview (here on/.?) with the science advisor behind The Core and he sounded quite believable, although he clearly was not up to the task of making a scientifically sound disaster movie. May be noone is...
If it was any other movie, like Dune miniseries with some reused FX scenes, I would be cool about that. But when you spend $300 mln on a film, when you make a special point about realism and the dedication of your team, then re-using scenes is a no-no. Especially when it is so obvious.
Well, the worst one was deliberate. This is an intentional reuse of a scene from an older editing version in a completely different moment.
After the HD battle is over, we are given a brief shot of Eowyn hugging Aragorn. We are supposed to think she is happy to see him return safely from the battle. But the truth is that this is a scene of Aragorn's arrival into HD (check his clothes and background). We can also clearly see that originally PJ didn't intend to drop Aragorn to lose the pendant before dropping from the cliff, because it is clearly visible on his neck.
But the intentional mistakes do not end here. Check out the HD scene where Aragorn bumps into Legolas and Legolas returns the pendant to him. It may appear on the first viewing that Eowyn looks at this scene and is sad. The truth is in this scene she actually looks in a different directions (check the background, pay attention to the columns), she looks down the stairs at Aragorn, who just arrived and is dismounting the horse. She looks at him with hope and with happiness and in the original version she ran down to him and gave him the hug we all saw.
I can forgive a blooper or two, but I don't really think intentionally moving scenes in such a haphazard way can be forgiven.
Bring the cyberpower on! The scary thing, though, is how many people still don't have a clue, even though this clue is already running and biting them in their ass. Running robots is a second step. Just think how long ago we were amazed at first Japanese humanoid robots that basically were only capable of standing upright. Give a few more years and we'll have an advanced androids. A few more years and they will be androids with fully functional hands, a few yet more years and they will be capable of performing most manual labour tasks. And voila, in what, 2020 we will have robots capable of doing pretty much everything they could in our sci-fi.
Isn't that amazing? And still, most people think (they don't technically think, because they are not intelligent, but I can't find a better word) that this will never happen, because they can't imagine this really happen, because they are so stuck in the present... And not surprisingly, there are plenty of them here on Slashdot. Some of these idiots are even modded +5.
And of course, they have the same or greater difficulty comprehending ideas of immortality, uploading, advanced nanotech and other transhumanist ideas... What our scientists and engineers have to do to impress them? I don't know.
I hope that quite soon someone will start a movie download service based in a country were copyrights do actually expire. E.g. in Russia where all pre-1970 movies are in public domain (both local and foreign). With current traffic costs these can be uploaded to users for less than 0.2$/movie, which means prices of 1$/film or 10$/month subscriptions might be profitable.
Thanks for trying anyway. Please realise, though, almost nobody hates the US, most people just strongly dislike the way it behaves, but most still hope that you will grow up and learn (unless Bush usurps power on all elections to follow). Some have reasons to hate you, though, usually after you try to overthrow a legitimate government in order to install a vile dictator. But nobody opposes you just because you are the US, the reason usually is that you do something really wrong.
BTW, in the rest of the world biblical allegories fell out of fashion long ago. Neither are they used to justify attacks on souvereign countries anymore.
As for my safety, yes, I do appreciate the work of Soviet nuclear scientists and engineers who worked on the nuclear shield for my country. Fortunately, the US is still not capable of attacking us. Not that this situation will continue for very long, with you nearly outspending the rest of the world on military forces...
Doom can run on every machine that can run Max Payne 2. Half-Life 2 can run on every machine that can run Splinter Cell. From the customer setups standpoint, they can both be released now.
You are wrong, there is another problem with that line of reasoning. It's assuming that marketing execs are smart.
Truth is that they are dumb and even dumber. There are countless accounts by web-designers of how clueless their clients are. This is just another case. Sometimes someone in the studio will actually use his brain and come to a conclusion that it might actually be possible to give away the trailer. Then you will have DOWNLOADABLE trailers, like you have on Matrix site.
Slashdot Mirror
While Wikipedia editors (users) have their bias, the system is pretty good at eliminating it. I might disagree with that filtering when I want to push my own agenda and consider the system a failure for some topics, but overall it works remarkably well.
Hopefully so that they have less bandwidth bills to pay and therefore need less money.
Thanks. Now Slashdot will need donations.
I am guilty of this "upgrade for Doom3" meme myself, but let's not overuse it. Games like Max Payne 2, Silent Storm and even Mercedes-Benz World Racing and Splinter Cell are quite demanding already. They've got hi-res textures, high-poly models and large levels. If you can play existing games with quality graphics, you are likely to be just fine when Doom 3 comes out (unless they delay it till 2005).
We do not only use 10% of our brain. Ask any Neurologist. It is a myth. We pretty much use our entire brain. Each portion has its own unique function/purpose.
Yes, it has, but not all people use all portions of the brain. For example, the parent poster clearly wasn't using his skeptical portion, his rational portion and his logical portion.
It's all relative. There is a multitude of delivery methods, each with their own advantages. For example, in a recent month weeks I saw Kill Bill in a luxury movie theater for 8$, saw Matrix Revolutions in IMAX for 15$, bought American History X, Battle Royale II and Star Trek Nemesis for 2.5$ each in DivX and then exhanged them for 0.8$ each for other films, including ROTK telecine. If I had real broadband (as opposed to 64kbps metered cable access), I would have downloaded all DivX versions to save a few bucks (and justify having broadband), but would still see two films in theatres. Many people have some sort of a losely enforced monthly spending limit for entertainment products. I already spend on movies as much as I am comfortable doing. If I am forced to obey the insane rules of copyright, I would not spend more. Conversely, I would probably cease paying for movies alltogether and switch to games or books for my regular dose of entertainment.
A renegade theater can run movies for friends at night, when nobody will interfere. It can also allow to make a telecine (a tripod camera and sound recorder hooked to the source audio for superior quality).
Checking shoes? Doesn't that feel like the whole US is a medium-security prison already? I flew enough in Russia, a few times to Europe, once to Japan and I never had anyone check my shoes. I can tell you - I will be really pissed off when someone tries it with me.
In Kill Bill Vol. 1 the Bride flies from Okinawa to Tokio with her samurai sword fixed to her seat. I am not sure Japanese airlines really do allow that, but I wouldn't be surprised. And if it so, it's just cool! Screw terrorists! :)
Some peopel are immune to 419 scams. When I was young, I got my first Nigerian scam letter, telling a sad story about some family of the President, who was overthrown. I was asked to help transfer the funds and get a cut. What do you think I said in response?..
:) How motivated were the Nigerians? Apparently, not much, since our e-mail exchange soon subdued.
:)
Being the kind, honest and altruistic young man I was, I wrote them that I would be more than happy to help and, even more, I would do it for free, just out of pity to their bad situation. Now please think, how much I would be motivated to send them any cash or to go to Nigeria with any money? Not in the very least, since I am already doing them a favour.
Thus the moral of the story - lack of greed makes you immune to 419 and many other scams.
Yes, it is pure propaganda, thanks for pointing this out. I should also add that the same argument is often used to argue against piracy and pornography - these activities are used to finance organised crime. Today yet another claim is often made - that it is used to finance terrorism, which, while it doesn't have the same logical flaw, is still utterly ridiculous.
You've got to be joking. She looks like some ugly little Asian she-boy.
I guess, you have never seen a real little Asian she-boy, have you? (NSFW)
Obviously, European humor hasn't improved at all. We Americans make jokes about France and Germany all the time, despite the fact that yes, they are getting along just fine.
Jokes are supposed to be funny [laugh track] and Americans can hardly be considered experts in this area. And to be funny, jokes need to touch upon topics that are still relevant.
Do you still joke about niggers, chickens and watermelons in the US, even though you know that blacks can be just as capable of challenging and creative work? You probably don't. Why then do you think it is funny to crack stupid and out-of-date jokes about French-German relations?
So long as government resources aren't used in any way, shape or form, why should that be prevented?
Because when many people believe in things that never happened and characters who never existed, the society loses. It's unproductive, because when you rely on false information, your decisions tend to be incorrect (more often then when you rely on facts).
Ignoring for the moment the legitimacy of attack on Iraq, I would certainly not want my president to attack a country because he believes god talks to him and asks him to do it. How is that different from a psycho serial killer, who does it because voices tell him so?
Soooo... you believe that it's wrong to passively "force" religious beliefs on someone, but it's acceptable to agressively enforce secularism?
Not all beliefs are created equal. Some are better, some are worse, some are correct, some are wrong. Certainly you would agree that belief in racial superiority of whites is bad and wrong. Why then do you think that all belief systems regarding god(s) are equally worthy of respect?
Atheism is one of the few belief systems that doesn't contradict the facts. Another one is agnosticism. There are also certain religious belief systems usually involving "the god of the gaps", a mysterious entity which hides in places you can't check. Islam and Christianity are bad because they are based on myths and fairytales. This is only tolerable until you use them to infer anything about the real world.
I respect your right to personally believe anything you want and to practice your religion in private almost in any way you want (no human sacrifices, etc.). But when you want to do things that have direct impact on other members of the public, we need to consider the validity of your beliefs. And it just so happens that Christianity (or Islam) doesn't pass the test. Ergo no religion in schools, none whatsoever. Ergo very limited rights to proselitise. Ergo no religious propaganda in mass media. Ergo atheistic (secular) propaganda sponsored by state.
It's really appaling that a US diplomat (or a diplomat from any other country) could "[cite French] opposition to the Iraq invasion". Yes, we all know about corruption and bias, but I though at least we were thinking this is nothing to be proud about. Nowdays, apparently, you don't even need an appearance of honest and objective decision...
May be because a studio gets only a few bucks profit on each disk, because the rest goes to greedy and inefficient distributors of physical goods? If a studio gets 5$ per disk and it can quadruple the sales by offering 2$ downloads, it might actually be worthwhile to ditch DVDs.
BTW, is anyone interested in setting up (a few thousand bucks investment needed) a commercial download service for public domain films (i.e. everything released before 1973)? There are places on this planet (like Russia), where copyright expires in 30 years and older works are in public domain (the fact is officially recognised by the Ministry of Culture).
As far as I understand, it did have some questionable physics, but most of it was based on hard science, although often it was stretched too far. There was an interview (here on /.?) with the science advisor behind The Core and he sounded quite believable, although he clearly was not up to the task of making a scientifically sound disaster movie. May be noone is...
If it was any other movie, like Dune miniseries with some reused FX scenes, I would be cool about that. But when you spend $300 mln on a film, when you make a special point about realism and the dedication of your team, then re-using scenes is a no-no. Especially when it is so obvious.
Helicopter drones acting as quick messengers in crowded cities (substituting motorcycle carriers for legal documents, small product purchases, etc.)
Something like this?
Well, the worst one was deliberate. This is an intentional reuse of a scene from an older editing version in a completely different moment.
After the HD battle is over, we are given a brief shot of Eowyn hugging Aragorn. We are supposed to think she is happy to see him return safely from the battle. But the truth is that this is a scene of Aragorn's arrival into HD (check his clothes and background). We can also clearly see that originally PJ didn't intend to drop Aragorn to lose the pendant before dropping from the cliff, because it is clearly visible on his neck.
But the intentional mistakes do not end here. Check out the HD scene where Aragorn bumps into Legolas and Legolas returns the pendant to him. It may appear on the first viewing that Eowyn looks at this scene and is sad. The truth is in this scene she actually looks in a different directions (check the background, pay attention to the columns), she looks down the stairs at Aragorn, who just arrived and is dismounting the horse. She looks at him with hope and with happiness and in the original version she ran down to him and gave him the hug we all saw.
I can forgive a blooper or two, but I don't really think intentionally moving scenes in such a haphazard way can be forgiven.
Bring the cyberpower on! The scary thing, though, is how many people still don't have a clue, even though this clue is already running and biting them in their ass. Running robots is a second step. Just think how long ago we were amazed at first Japanese humanoid robots that basically were only capable of standing upright. Give a few more years and we'll have an advanced androids. A few more years and they will be androids with fully functional hands, a few yet more years and they will be capable of performing most manual labour tasks. And voila, in what, 2020 we will have robots capable of doing pretty much everything they could in our sci-fi.
Isn't that amazing? And still, most people think (they don't technically think, because they are not intelligent, but I can't find a better word) that this will never happen, because they can't imagine this really happen, because they are so stuck in the present... And not surprisingly, there are plenty of them here on Slashdot. Some of these idiots are even modded +5.
And of course, they have the same or greater difficulty comprehending ideas of immortality, uploading, advanced nanotech and other transhumanist ideas... What our scientists and engineers have to do to impress them? I don't know.
I hope that quite soon someone will start a movie download service based in a country were copyrights do actually expire. E.g. in Russia where all pre-1970 movies are in public domain (both local and foreign). With current traffic costs these can be uploaded to users for less than 0.2$/movie, which means prices of 1$/film or 10$/month subscriptions might be profitable.
Thanks for trying anyway. Please realise, though, almost nobody hates the US, most people just strongly dislike the way it behaves, but most still hope that you will grow up and learn (unless Bush usurps power on all elections to follow). Some have reasons to hate you, though, usually after you try to overthrow a legitimate government in order to install a vile dictator. But nobody opposes you just because you are the US, the reason usually is that you do something really wrong.
BTW, in the rest of the world biblical allegories fell out of fashion long ago. Neither are they used to justify attacks on souvereign countries anymore.
As for my safety, yes, I do appreciate the work of Soviet nuclear scientists and engineers who worked on the nuclear shield for my country. Fortunately, the US is still not capable of attacking us. Not that this situation will continue for very long, with you nearly outspending the rest of the world on military forces...
Doom can run on every machine that can run Max Payne 2. Half-Life 2 can run on every machine that can run Splinter Cell. From the customer setups standpoint, they can both be released now.
You are wrong, there is another problem with that line of reasoning. It's assuming that marketing execs are smart.
Truth is that they are dumb and even dumber. There are countless accounts by web-designers of how clueless their clients are. This is just another case. Sometimes someone in the studio will actually use his brain and come to a conclusion that it might actually be possible to give away the trailer. Then you will have DOWNLOADABLE trailers, like you have on Matrix site.