>Stupid people get punished, smarter people make some money, and maybe with time people will start learning to think for themselves for a change.
Yeah, because that approach has been proved to work in the past. Wow, I never get spam anymore.
First off, what is "obvious" to one person isnt obvious to another. We live in an age of technological miracles, so the idea that a magnet could affect your MPG or whatever isn't so crazy. Or that someone can create a cheap viagra substitute. Hell, I buy generic and OTC drugs all the time.
At the end of the day, this is fraud and allowing fraud to "punish people into smartness" is pretty ignorant. On top of it, the more profitable fraud becomes the more fraud there is and the better fraud gets. So fraud could reach a point where a smart person like you would get fooled. I seriously doubt you'd take your own advice and "think for yourself" if this happened. Whats that? You can't parse a 50 page EULA without a law degree. Funny how its always the other guy who is dumb.
DLP uses compression and looks amazing. Compression doesnt always equal crap. I saw Ep2 in a DLP theater and was blown away at the sharpness and brightness of the picture. I saw the movie previously on film and in comparision it was dark, grainy, and a lot of the CGI looked worse on film.
> but they rarely do this by saying one of their own products is a dog.
Theyre not really saying that. They just saying "keep your expectations low" because of all the requests to fix the CSS rendering. This tells developers that they can still keep using those hacks and dont have learn anything new or complaint and tells the web community to shut the hell up.
Wow, no big CSS fixes and the thing still comes with activeX ready to install the latest and greatest spyware for end users who have no idea what that dialogue box means. Or have associated it with legitimate acts (windowsupdate). IE7 is no Mozilla, Safari, or Opera killer.
Star Wars was one of the first (if not the first, perhaps Jaws was earlier) big ass blockbuster with huge mechandising and as such made some serious money. The studios realized they didnt have to dole out x amount here and y amount here, they just had to make one blockbuster per summer and they would make more money than the old approach of, you know, making art and making money from it.
Suddenly everyone wanted a blockbuster. Scripts and projects which didnt smell of "blockbuster" were never greenlighted.
Now look at Hollywood. Compare today's offerings to what was going on pre 1977. I see a lot more variety, good art, good story telling, people taking chances, etc then than I do now. But why fund something as crazy as Raging Bull when you got Angelina Jolie with a video game tie and merchandising.
Arguably, this would have happened anyway. People created the blockbuster by going crazy over a space opera. Still, this is a sad testament to the film industry and the post-star wars era is a very real dumbing down of the movie industry. Its not that surprising to see that the "genius" behind star wars is anything but, and has ruined whatever film legacy he once had through odd re-releases and pathetic prequels.
But somewhere along the line, the beast they awakened took on a life of its own, and by the 1990s production budgets had escalated as quickly as profits. Hollywood entered a topsy-turvy world ruled by marketing and merchandising mavens, in which flops like Godzilla made money and hits had to break records just to break even. The blockbuster changed from a major event that took place a few times a year into something that audiences have come to expect weekly, piling into the backs of one another in an annual demolition derby that has left even Hollywood aghast.
Tom Shone has interviewed all the key participants -- from cinematic visionaries like Spielberg and Lucas and the executives who greenlight these spectacles down to the effects wizards who detonated the Death Star and blew up the White House -- in order to reveal the ways in which blockbusters have transformed how Hollywood makes movies and how we watch them. As entertaining as the films it chronicles, Blockbuster is a must-read for any fan who delights in the magic of the movies.
Star Wars redone with chimps and with a special "planet of the apes" ending.
A special version of the star wars for America's heartland. Just replace the words "the force" with "christ." Works fairly well. Han Solo instantly becomes a doubting Thomas who learns the errors of his ways. Maybe they can get Heston to shoot a wookie or something to spice things up.
Replace all the human actors with muppets and all the muppets with humans.
MST2K special edition. Yeah, you want it.
Insert the actors actually playing with the toys of themselves to help merchandising. We'll call this the Kenner special edition.
Tie in with Matt Greonings' work. Han can have a space fight with the crew of Planet Express while Luke meets up with the Simpsons on a strange watery planet called E'rth.
Replace R2's beeps with a human voice. Preferably something deep like Barry White.
Have the movie end with the CGI cast giving kids a stern warning about recreational drug abuse. Claim it created all these remakes. Listen to the audience gasp in horror.
Please Lucas, continue your crazy work. I mean, if I learned anything from this its never trust a guy who lives in a fantasy theme amusement park "ranch." And the more Lucas screws up the more precedent there will be for other directors to never, ever do this kind of shit ever again. There will never be a special CGI-added Godfather, and for that I am thankful.
I dont think there's anything about "undocumented system calls" when it comes to remote desktop/terminal services.
VNC is just a lot less efficient because all it does is find ways to compress bitmaps of your screen and send them to the client.
RD on the other hand doesnt just do screengrabs, it takes the system calls to draw the screen and pushes that through to the client. Like an X session. Then the client draws the screen. That's a lot less bandwidth.
Considering there is an RD client for unix which is free (if not open source) then I seriously doubt this uses any "secret" technology. An RD clone should be possible, but with VNC where its at, its overkill. Not to mention commercial apps.
Modern VNC variants do pretty well, but because they are essentially graphic compressors they will use more bandwidth. Over your local LAN you wouldnt even notice a difference between the two.
Re:Golly, I WONDER where they got that idea!
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Pentium M Goes SFF
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· Score: 1
>That'll cost you, what? Sixty bucks at Fry's?
Why bother cracking open the case? The Apple upgrade to 512 is $50. 512megs for OSX is plenty for typical computer usage. If someone wants a bad-ass video editing machine then they are buying the wrong base model. SUV buyers dont price-shop in the micro-econo lots.
I'd write more but I can't hear myself think because my wintel box is so loud. That's with an Antec quiet system fan and a low-noise CPU fan. Perhaps a zeldman zero-noise fan is next. Funny how all this adds up. A low-profile/SSF/mini machine designed to be quiet is cost-effective when you consider what a quiet desktop ends up costing you in the long run.
Exactly, the ability to take music, video, or any data and compress it and send it off on its way on various networks turns entertainment into a meritocracy.
Instead of having ads or 'word of mouth' tell you something is good and worth checking out, you can download it and view it yourself. Of course the downside is when people get too used to this and never pay for media. Its even worse if it hurts good media as the meritocracy system allows the cream to float to the top, thus there are lots more ways to get the good new book or album while the dreck is only available as a blockbuster rental.
In a worst case scenario, at the end of the the day, the dreck no one cared to digitize and spread made some money while the good stuff didn't make any money because it was so easy to get. Argubaly, as people become more net savvy the more DRM we'll need. How much DRM? Just enough to keep the technophobes from getting stuff too easily.
A lot of people claim that the "free meritocracy" system is self-regulating. For instance, ten million people may have downloaded the new Aimmee Mann album (you can get three of four tracks legitimatly on her site or download a.rar from emule). This could be very good or very bad for Ms. Mann. Fans may not like the new album. Potential impluse CD buyers are no longer buying like they used to.
This can also be very good for Ms. Mann. If people like her music that can easily lead into much higher word of mouth value and more CD sales. Will the CD sales make up for what was potentially lost? Who knows. It may be much more or much less.
Personally from my experience, the entertainment biz has always been a gamble and now its more of a gamble with these "mixed models" of revenue. Suddenly, merchandising is very importnant because outside of a William Gibson novel you cant just download a shirt. Suddenly, touring (which has almost always been a money lousing proposition to promote the album) is shifting towards making the pricing and venues work in way to turn a profit. Word of mouth helps a whole lot in ticket sales.
Movies and books have it a bit worse. Movies need your 8 bucks to turn a profit. Then again you get the 'theater going experience' for your 8 bucks. Personally, I'd rather steal a movie and not be forced to watch 9 minutes of commercials surrounded by screaming kids and assholes, but thats me.
Book trading is pretty nasty. I dont see how publishers can gain anything from this unless they start promoting ebook readers and ebook stores kinda like iTunes ASAP. Its way too easy for me to download a book and read it on my PDA or laptop. Or in a pinch I can print it out. Sure, I now am a 'fan' of lots of new authors, but I'm probably never buying their new books as the library does that for me. But I might pay for a reasonably priced ebook. Who knows.
Now we have leaks and no one is sure if they are on purpose or not. Not sure what the trend here is, but things are changing and as long as congress doesnt step in and fuck things up I think a profitable equilibrium will evolve. It may just be lightweight DRM and a la carte sales like iTunes music store uses. There are much worse alternatives out there.
And do you really think people who have switched are going to switch back anytime soon? Do you really think they'll go "Okay, looks like microsoft fixed that security problem" like it was some trivial bug?
MS has been claiming their products are secure and security is their #1 job for a couple years now. People can smell the bullshit, that's why they jumped ship. Another MS release a la SP2 isnt exactly going to make them go back. I'd say two very important things happened this year:
1. End users now understand what a browser is and there is more than one in the world.
2. Many end users got sick of IE and switched to FF, Moz, or Opera. Some got so sick of MS they bought lots of shiny new Apples.
Now MS can't go back to 2001 where Apple was hurting and everyone was using IE; with a slim minority using NS4. That's a good thing. Not because I necessarily give two shits about OSS or the Mozilla foundation, but its good for standards and that's good for everyone. The real question isn't how secure IE7 will be (it wont, its still massively targeted and its still MS), but if MS will finally get on the standards bandwagon.
>And since the open source community won't patent their stuff, MS is free to steal the ideas that worked.
Oh, like tabs? Predates firefox.
Oh perhaps pop-up blocking. Predates firefox.
Maybe that little info bar in FF 1.0. Whoops, that was shamelessly copied ffrom IE SP2.
First off, Firefox isnt all that original, its just a good implementation. Secondly, its the LACK of patents that keep Mozilla going. Imagine if Netcaptor (or whoever it was) got a patent on tabbed browsing. Whoops. You think they'd politely share? Yeah right. Not to mention, if the OSS did patent stuff, then it would kinda defeat the purpose of going open source. No OSS developer has the ideological spirit to turn down a million dollar check from MS, not to mention most OSS developers arent going to drop 5 grand down for a patent and defend it (more legal fees!) because they felt like making and sharing some software. Goes against the whole DIY and share approach.
As a side note, I wouldnt use the word "empire" when not referring to government. The MS situation isn't pretty, but its hardly geopolitics regardless of how strongly geeks identify with the issue.
On a more related note, yes, MS isn't so much a software company as a monopoly maintaning machine. Certain changes and innovations that could potentially hurt its monopoly status get tossed out the window and fast. This is also why so many talented people dont work as MS. MS's R&D department isn't comparable to other companies that court talent like this and the talent knows their work will be for nothing unless it actively helps lock customers into the MS-only path. At least in general.
As far as the "empire crumbling," well, I personally doubt they'll become more innovative. I would think they would become more restrictive. Less interoperability, more proprietary stuff, etc to keep their customers to keep from hemorraging more.
Case in point: IE7
First off, it wasnt supposed to happen. Now its happening.
Secondly, its still IE. We're not seeing MS, say, announce that activeX wont be supported in x amount of years. Even though it would be in everyone's interest if the activeX system was dropped in a planned fashion because of abuse and because its pretty much not needed when you consider what Java and web services can do. But its not going away. In fact its tied into the uber-critical windows update page. This is typical MS monopolistic control.
MS can and will only go further down the proprietary spectrum. More activation stuff, more big discounts if your organization goes all MS, more big discounts if you dont sell competing OS's, more embrace/extend/extinguish, etc.
Yeah. but there's no URL. More of the "half-assed" gmail approach to doing things. It blows my mind I cant use multiple pop clients and I have to play around with "download all mail from now-on" nonsense. Both MSN and yahoo have mobile pages. Wow, gmail is out of beta and they still dont have a mobile.gmail.com site? The problem is so bad someone had to go and create their own gmail "lite" portal.
http://gmail.blackhaloinc.com/
Third party wants my login/pass? No thanks.
So, according to that page I should be directed to their html site. Err, Blazer (on a treo) is probably the most well known mobile browser and gmail isnt even doing the redirect.
Not to mention gmail's pop also downloads sent messages. Err, no thanks.
Google doesnt support unique message headers, so I cant access gmail from a different pop3 client. I'm stuck using one client, so no mobile access for me. No mobile browser can handle the javascript mess thtat is gmail either.
That along with the privacy issue make sure I dont switch.
Oh come on, this is a fan film for Jebus's sake, and in that context its pretty fucking amazing.
Want to talk about cheese? How about the entire cantina scene from ep4? Or Jabba's palace? Thats muppet amateur night right there, but it cost millions. The 'film crime' per dollar is much higher with Lucas's people.
Acting? In Star Wars? Err, Mark Hamil's whiney performance? The first Anakin? The gay droids? Natalie Portman's stone-faced performances?
As far as CGI goes, go ahead and rent the trilogy and you'll see 70s/80s effects and then some CGI that sticks out like a sore thumb. Man, most film students would get an F for doing something that stupid. The CGI is this trailer looks like it belongs there. And lucas isnt getting any better at it, the "droid factory" scene in ep2 has to be the worst and most unconvincing CGI background set I've seen since 1999.
>It's probably good for them that they can't charge money for it.
Funny, when people pay for something they suddenly develop a double standard for it. See the endless my console/pc/car/etc vs yours flamefests.
I really do feel sorry for people who go out of their way to make something as fun (and for free) as a fan film. The other fans just attack them because it doesnt live up to their nostalgia or because making a movie sans the millions is just so easy to make fun of.
Not to mention, I just read about 10 posts about how "fat" the lead actress is. Oh right. Another double standard. When Hollywood keeps making movies with the same stars everyone cries foul at the branding, the botox smiles, the super-fit overly muscular bodies, etc. But when a normal looking person is in a movie suddenly the same people cry foul over "fat" or "ugly."
And for a good reason. I'd rather not drop 20+ dollars into a micropayment scheme a month and be charged a nickel or a dime per link only to find out I'm outta cash by the 10th. Not to mention, if micros got off, the banner ads and text ads would still be there.
Commercial entities can do fine with just ads and donate buttons seem to work great for everyone else. The "nickel a click" web is not the web you want.
Stop the presses! A guest on a famous right-wing blog says everything is fine with one of the most draconian laws ever passed. Whats next? Fox News says something nice about the president and it'll be a slashdot article?
Slashdot also picked up on powerline's (another famous right wing blog) piece on how Carnivore was a great system and it was the privacy advocates who were the bad guys.
Have you ever carried a prescription drug into a public school and never reported it to the administration? Have you ever taken a claritin or some other prescription drug from a friend? Have you ever seen drug use and not reported it to the authorities?
Drug laws and "the war on drugs" is not just about taking drugs, there's a whole messy body of law both on the federal and state level that turns most people into criminals (if caught and prosecuted).
Most people do/have done currently illegal drugs. Most people have not been spammers. Most people goto parties, get fucked up, buy a bag of weed, etc. Most people do not buy spam lists and try to sell me herbal viagra.
The war on drugs analogy doesnt work as it essentially targets 99% of the population at one time or the other. Spammers on the other hand are a much, much smaller group and as such legislation has a better chance of controlling them.
>And as Dan Rather proves, your reputation is only as good as your last story.
And pray tell, if this is true then how does Judith "front page WMD stories for 2 years at the NYTimes" Miller still have a job? Novak still has his column and TV spots.
Your rule only applies if you go against a certain party's agenda. If you're a biased journalist doing said party's agenda, you're golden.
> Er, how come you got moderated as 'Funny' rather than the 'Insightful' you so richly deserved?
Because it ignores the art of filmmaking and what gets people excited about movies.
Yes, the grandparent is pretty correct that the first three were more mature and complex, but that doesnt make for that emotional connection we get from movies. Dumbed down space operas don't ask much from the viewer and they do entertain. They do pull at our heartstrings. That's good filmmaking.
Jar Jar is annoying, but 3PO and R2 have gotten laughs out of me. Han is a cowboy but at least he's entertaining. Luke is shallow, but he's the "nobody" anyone can project their own insecurities upon. Portman outacts and out-everything Fisher, but Fisher was charming and sexy.
I'd say the first three movies, with much added complexity, would make some really good books while the last three are and will continue to be great movies. Its all about the medium. I dont think this is just nostalgia, as I've seen kids fall asleep watching episode 1.
>the only few people stiffed may be some big incumbents which where to slow to move.
Exactly. Companies have had years to lease the lightpoles and give us city-wide wirless and they just havent. The dinosaurs dont want to do it and I'm sick of waiting for them to act. The city might as well do it and send the entire metropolis into the 21st century. Broadband penetration in the Chicagoland area isnt too hot and is mainly the local phone monopoly vs the local cable monopoly. Cell carriers aren't helping much with their expensive and low-bitrate networks.
Ideally, Id like to see this as an extension of the mission of the city libraries. The city already provides net connections for the netless all over the city and now would just be extending that mission to everyone.
Right now the big lobbys are getting you to give up on your social security, medical malpractice, etc.
Who is the big IP lobby? No one. Apple, MS, and a bunch of companies could form such a lobby and get rid of software patents or at least lobby to make software patents less generic, but they also are proctected by their own patents, so they just fight this craziness in court.
Yeah, something has to be done about software patents, but until the big players move in, then congress will certainly not take it upon themselves to take care of it.
This issue looms wide over the entire IT industry. Linux violantes how many patents right now? 200?
Its a seriously broken system and hopefully this will bring light to the issue, but as long as the big tech companies continue to also benefit from the current patent system, then they wont exactly be too hot to change the system until there's a real and serious breakdown. So far this hasnt happened. MS is fighting Eolas and Apple will fight these people. They'll probably win just because of their size and then the patent game will continue. Smaller comapanies or just people holding patents dont have these kinds of legal resources. Sucks to be them.
Smart choice, now they can draft up warrants for non-violent drug offenders without clippy asking, "I see you're doing something quite draconian here, may I help?"
Now John Aschcroft can write lyrics without the green squiggly line getting in the way of his immense creativity!
With such a large contract I'm sure Corel was able to remove the words 'habeas corpus' from the spellchecker and replace them with cyberterrorist and narcoterrorist.
YRO? Some things are just bigger and more important than the MS vs Geeks boondoggle.
Slashdot Mirror
>Stupid people get punished, smarter people make some money, and maybe with time people will start learning to think for themselves for a change.
Yeah, because that approach has been proved to work in the past. Wow, I never get spam anymore.
First off, what is "obvious" to one person isnt obvious to another. We live in an age of technological miracles, so the idea that a magnet could affect your MPG or whatever isn't so crazy. Or that someone can create a cheap viagra substitute. Hell, I buy generic and OTC drugs all the time.
At the end of the day, this is fraud and allowing fraud to "punish people into smartness" is pretty ignorant. On top of it, the more profitable fraud becomes the more fraud there is and the better fraud gets. So fraud could reach a point where a smart person like you would get fooled. I seriously doubt you'd take your own advice and "think for yourself" if this happened. Whats that? You can't parse a 50 page EULA without a law degree. Funny how its always the other guy who is dumb.
DLP uses compression and looks amazing. Compression doesnt always equal crap. I saw Ep2 in a DLP theater and was blown away at the sharpness and brightness of the picture. I saw the movie previously on film and in comparision it was dark, grainy, and a lot of the CGI looked worse on film.
> but they rarely do this by saying one of their own products is a dog.
Theyre not really saying that. They just saying "keep your expectations low" because of all the requests to fix the CSS rendering. This tells developers that they can still keep using those hacks and dont have learn anything new or complaint and tells the web community to shut the hell up.
Wow, no big CSS fixes and the thing still comes with activeX ready to install the latest and greatest spyware for end users who have no idea what that dialogue box means. Or have associated it with legitimate acts (windowsupdate). IE7 is no Mozilla, Safari, or Opera killer.
Star Wars was one of the first (if not the first, perhaps Jaws was earlier) big ass blockbuster with huge mechandising and as such made some serious money. The studios realized they didnt have to dole out x amount here and y amount here, they just had to make one blockbuster per summer and they would make more money than the old approach of, you know, making art and making money from it.
Suddenly everyone wanted a blockbuster. Scripts and projects which didnt smell of "blockbuster" were never greenlighted.
Now look at Hollywood. Compare today's offerings to what was going on pre 1977. I see a lot more variety, good art, good story telling, people taking chances, etc then than I do now. But why fund something as crazy as Raging Bull when you got Angelina Jolie with a video game tie and merchandising.
Arguably, this would have happened anyway. People created the blockbuster by going crazy over a space opera. Still, this is a sad testament to the film industry and the post-star wars era is a very real dumbing down of the movie industry. Its not that surprising to see that the "genius" behind star wars is anything but, and has ruined whatever film legacy he once had through odd re-releases and pathetic prequels.
Some related articles:
BBC's rise of the blockbuster
Film history of the 70s
The book Blockbuster, amazon review:
No dont stop! Think of the possibilities:
Star Wars redone with chimps and with a special "planet of the apes" ending.
A special version of the star wars for America's heartland. Just replace the words "the force" with "christ." Works fairly well. Han Solo instantly becomes a doubting Thomas who learns the errors of his ways. Maybe they can get Heston to shoot a wookie or something to spice things up.
Replace all the human actors with muppets and all the muppets with humans.
MST2K special edition. Yeah, you want it.
Insert the actors actually playing with the toys of themselves to help merchandising. We'll call this the Kenner special edition.
Tie in with Matt Greonings' work. Han can have a space fight with the crew of Planet Express while Luke meets up with the Simpsons on a strange watery planet called E'rth.
Replace R2's beeps with a human voice. Preferably something deep like Barry White.
Have the movie end with the CGI cast giving kids a stern warning about recreational drug abuse. Claim it created all these remakes. Listen to the audience gasp in horror.
Please Lucas, continue your crazy work. I mean, if I learned anything from this its never trust a guy who lives in a fantasy theme amusement park "ranch." And the more Lucas screws up the more precedent there will be for other directors to never, ever do this kind of shit ever again. There will never be a special CGI-added Godfather, and for that I am thankful.
I dont think there's anything about "undocumented system calls" when it comes to remote desktop/terminal services.
VNC is just a lot less efficient because all it does is find ways to compress bitmaps of your screen and send them to the client.
RD on the other hand doesnt just do screengrabs, it takes the system calls to draw the screen and pushes that through to the client. Like an X session. Then the client draws the screen. That's a lot less bandwidth.
Considering there is an RD client for unix which is free (if not open source) then I seriously doubt this uses any "secret" technology. An RD clone should be possible, but with VNC where its at, its overkill. Not to mention commercial apps.
Modern VNC variants do pretty well, but because they are essentially graphic compressors they will use more bandwidth. Over your local LAN you wouldnt even notice a difference between the two.
>That'll cost you, what? Sixty bucks at Fry's?
Why bother cracking open the case? The Apple upgrade to 512 is $50. 512megs for OSX is plenty for typical computer usage. If someone wants a bad-ass video editing machine then they are buying the wrong base model. SUV buyers dont price-shop in the micro-econo lots.
I'd write more but I can't hear myself think because my wintel box is so loud. That's with an Antec quiet system fan and a low-noise CPU fan. Perhaps a zeldman zero-noise fan is next. Funny how all this adds up. A low-profile/SSF/mini machine designed to be quiet is cost-effective when you consider what a quiet desktop ends up costing you in the long run.
Exactly, the ability to take music, video, or any data and compress it and send it off on its way on various networks turns entertainment into a meritocracy.
.rar from emule). This could be very good or very bad for Ms. Mann. Fans may not like the new album. Potential impluse CD buyers are no longer buying like they used to.
Instead of having ads or 'word of mouth' tell you something is good and worth checking out, you can download it and view it yourself. Of course the downside is when people get too used to this and never pay for media. Its even worse if it hurts good media as the meritocracy system allows the cream to float to the top, thus there are lots more ways to get the good new book or album while the dreck is only available as a blockbuster rental.
In a worst case scenario, at the end of the the day, the dreck no one cared to digitize and spread made some money while the good stuff didn't make any money because it was so easy to get. Argubaly, as people become more net savvy the more DRM we'll need. How much DRM? Just enough to keep the technophobes from getting stuff too easily.
A lot of people claim that the "free meritocracy" system is self-regulating. For instance, ten million people may have downloaded the new Aimmee Mann album (you can get three of four tracks legitimatly on her site or download a
This can also be very good for Ms. Mann. If people like her music that can easily lead into much higher word of mouth value and more CD sales. Will the CD sales make up for what was potentially lost? Who knows. It may be much more or much less.
Personally from my experience, the entertainment biz has always been a gamble and now its more of a gamble with these "mixed models" of revenue. Suddenly, merchandising is very importnant because outside of a William Gibson novel you cant just download a shirt. Suddenly, touring (which has almost always been a money lousing proposition to promote the album) is shifting towards making the pricing and venues work in way to turn a profit. Word of mouth helps a whole lot in ticket sales.
Movies and books have it a bit worse. Movies need your 8 bucks to turn a profit. Then again you get the 'theater going experience' for your 8 bucks. Personally, I'd rather steal a movie and not be forced to watch 9 minutes of commercials surrounded by screaming kids and assholes, but thats me.
Book trading is pretty nasty. I dont see how publishers can gain anything from this unless they start promoting ebook readers and ebook stores kinda like iTunes ASAP. Its way too easy for me to download a book and read it on my PDA or laptop. Or in a pinch I can print it out. Sure, I now am a 'fan' of lots of new authors, but I'm probably never buying their new books as the library does that for me. But I might pay for a reasonably priced ebook. Who knows.
Now we have leaks and no one is sure if they are on purpose or not. Not sure what the trend here is, but things are changing and as long as congress doesnt step in and fuck things up I think a profitable equilibrium will evolve. It may just be lightweight DRM and a la carte sales like iTunes music store uses. There are much worse alternatives out there.
> Don't forget "something you are", as in biometrics.
---First day of work, sometime in the near future.
Manager: "Okay this is your workstation. Notice the biometric interface."
*new guy notices*
Manager: "Now try it out"
New guy: "Try what out? It looks like someone forgot to insert something in there. Like a CD drive or something."
*Manager whistles, looks up at the ceiling, and whispers something to the new guy*
New guy: "You want me to put my what in where?"
Manager: "You want this job or not, kid? Windows aint loading without your weenie."
And do you really think people who have switched are going to switch back anytime soon? Do you really think they'll go "Okay, looks like microsoft fixed that security problem" like it was some trivial bug?
MS has been claiming their products are secure and security is their #1 job for a couple years now. People can smell the bullshit, that's why they jumped ship. Another MS release a la SP2 isnt exactly going to make them go back. I'd say two very important things happened this year:
1. End users now understand what a browser is and there is more than one in the world.
2. Many end users got sick of IE and switched to FF, Moz, or Opera. Some got so sick of MS they bought lots of shiny new Apples.
Now MS can't go back to 2001 where Apple was hurting and everyone was using IE; with a slim minority using NS4. That's a good thing. Not because I necessarily give two shits about OSS or the Mozilla foundation, but its good for standards and that's good for everyone. The real question isn't how secure IE7 will be (it wont, its still massively targeted and its still MS), but if MS will finally get on the standards bandwagon.
>And since the open source community won't patent their stuff, MS is free to steal the ideas that worked.
Oh, like tabs? Predates firefox.
Oh perhaps pop-up blocking. Predates firefox.
Maybe that little info bar in FF 1.0. Whoops, that was shamelessly copied ffrom IE SP2.
First off, Firefox isnt all that original, its just a good implementation. Secondly, its the LACK of patents that keep Mozilla going. Imagine if Netcaptor (or whoever it was) got a patent on tabbed browsing. Whoops. You think they'd politely share? Yeah right. Not to mention, if the OSS did patent stuff, then it would kinda defeat the purpose of going open source. No OSS developer has the ideological spirit to turn down a million dollar check from MS, not to mention most OSS developers arent going to drop 5 grand down for a patent and defend it (more legal fees!) because they felt like making and sharing some software. Goes against the whole DIY and share approach.
> empire-maintenance
As a side note, I wouldnt use the word "empire" when not referring to government. The MS situation isn't pretty, but its hardly geopolitics regardless of how strongly geeks identify with the issue.
On a more related note, yes, MS isn't so much a software company as a monopoly maintaning machine. Certain changes and innovations that could potentially hurt its monopoly status get tossed out the window and fast. This is also why so many talented people dont work as MS. MS's R&D department isn't comparable to other companies that court talent like this and the talent knows their work will be for nothing unless it actively helps lock customers into the MS-only path. At least in general.
As far as the "empire crumbling," well, I personally doubt they'll become more innovative. I would think they would become more restrictive. Less interoperability, more proprietary stuff, etc to keep their customers to keep from hemorraging more.
Case in point: IE7
First off, it wasnt supposed to happen. Now its happening.
Secondly, its still IE. We're not seeing MS, say, announce that activeX wont be supported in x amount of years. Even though it would be in everyone's interest if the activeX system was dropped in a planned fashion because of abuse and because its pretty much not needed when you consider what Java and web services can do. But its not going away. In fact its tied into the uber-critical windows update page. This is typical MS monopolistic control.
MS can and will only go further down the proprietary spectrum. More activation stuff, more big discounts if your organization goes all MS, more big discounts if you dont sell competing OS's, more embrace/extend/extinguish, etc.
Yeah. but there's no URL. More of the "half-assed" gmail approach to doing things. It blows my mind I cant use multiple pop clients and I have to play around with "download all mail from now-on" nonsense. Both MSN and yahoo have mobile pages. Wow, gmail is out of beta and they still dont have a mobile.gmail.com site? The problem is so bad someone had to go and create their own gmail "lite" portal.
http://gmail.blackhaloinc.com/
Third party wants my login/pass? No thanks.
So, according to that page I should be directed to their html site. Err, Blazer (on a treo) is probably the most well known mobile browser and gmail isnt even doing the redirect.
Not to mention gmail's pop also downloads sent messages. Err, no thanks.
Google doesnt support unique message headers, so I cant access gmail from a different pop3 client. I'm stuck using one client, so no mobile access for me. No mobile browser can handle the javascript mess thtat is gmail either.
That along with the privacy issue make sure I dont switch.
Oh come on, this is a fan film for Jebus's sake, and in that context its pretty fucking amazing.
Want to talk about cheese? How about the entire cantina scene from ep4? Or Jabba's palace? Thats muppet amateur night right there, but it cost millions. The 'film crime' per dollar is much higher with Lucas's people.
Acting? In Star Wars? Err, Mark Hamil's whiney performance? The first Anakin? The gay droids? Natalie Portman's stone-faced performances?
As far as CGI goes, go ahead and rent the trilogy and you'll see 70s/80s effects and then some CGI that sticks out like a sore thumb. Man, most film students would get an F for doing something that stupid. The CGI is this trailer looks like it belongs there. And lucas isnt getting any better at it, the "droid factory" scene in ep2 has to be the worst and most unconvincing CGI background set I've seen since 1999.
>It's probably good for them that they can't charge money for it.
Funny, when people pay for something they suddenly develop a double standard for it. See the endless my console/pc/car/etc vs yours flamefests.
I really do feel sorry for people who go out of their way to make something as fun (and for free) as a fan film. The other fans just attack them because it doesnt live up to their nostalgia or because making a movie sans the millions is just so easy to make fun of.
Not to mention, I just read about 10 posts about how "fat" the lead actress is. Oh right. Another double standard. When Hollywood keeps making movies with the same stars everyone cries foul at the branding, the botox smiles, the super-fit overly muscular bodies, etc. But when a normal looking person is in a movie suddenly the same people cry foul over "fat" or "ugly."
> No valid micropayment system exists (STILL)
And for a good reason. I'd rather not drop 20+ dollars into a micropayment scheme a month and be charged a nickel or a dime per link only to find out I'm outta cash by the 10th. Not to mention, if micros got off, the banner ads and text ads would still be there.
Commercial entities can do fine with just ads and donate buttons seem to work great for everyone else. The "nickel a click" web is not the web you want.
Stop the presses! A guest on a famous right-wing blog says everything is fine with one of the most draconian laws ever passed. Whats next? Fox News says something nice about the president and it'll be a slashdot article?
Slashdot also picked up on powerline's (another famous right wing blog) piece on how Carnivore was a great system and it was the privacy advocates who were the bad guys.
sigh
Have you ever carried a prescription drug into a public school and never reported it to the administration? Have you ever taken a claritin or some other prescription drug from a friend? Have you ever seen drug use and not reported it to the authorities?
Drug laws and "the war on drugs" is not just about taking drugs, there's a whole messy body of law both on the federal and state level that turns most people into criminals (if caught and prosecuted).
>Case in point: The War on Drugs
Most people do/have done currently illegal drugs. Most people have not been spammers. Most people goto parties, get fucked up, buy a bag of weed, etc. Most people do not buy spam lists and try to sell me herbal viagra.
The war on drugs analogy doesnt work as it essentially targets 99% of the population at one time or the other. Spammers on the other hand are a much, much smaller group and as such legislation has a better chance of controlling them.
>And as Dan Rather proves, your reputation is only as good as your last story.
And pray tell, if this is true then how does Judith "front page WMD stories for 2 years at the NYTimes" Miller still have a job? Novak still has his column and TV spots.
Your rule only applies if you go against a certain party's agenda. If you're a biased journalist doing said party's agenda, you're golden.
>why didn't they just cut the MB in half and support the Intel proc the same way they do the AMD one?
Ah yes, the King Solomon solution!
> Er, how come you got moderated as 'Funny' rather than the 'Insightful' you so richly deserved?
Because it ignores the art of filmmaking and what gets people excited about movies.
Yes, the grandparent is pretty correct that the first three were more mature and complex, but that doesnt make for that emotional connection we get from movies. Dumbed down space operas don't ask much from the viewer and they do entertain. They do pull at our heartstrings. That's good filmmaking.
Jar Jar is annoying, but 3PO and R2 have gotten laughs out of me. Han is a cowboy but at least he's entertaining. Luke is shallow, but he's the "nobody" anyone can project their own insecurities upon. Portman outacts and out-everything Fisher, but Fisher was charming and sexy.
I'd say the first three movies, with much added complexity, would make some really good books while the last three are and will continue to be great movies. Its all about the medium. I dont think this is just nostalgia, as I've seen kids fall asleep watching episode 1.
>the only few people stiffed may be some big incumbents which where to slow to move.
Exactly. Companies have had years to lease the lightpoles and give us city-wide wirless and they just havent. The dinosaurs dont want to do it and I'm sick of waiting for them to act. The city might as well do it and send the entire metropolis into the 21st century. Broadband penetration in the Chicagoland area isnt too hot and is mainly the local phone monopoly vs the local cable monopoly. Cell carriers aren't helping much with their expensive and low-bitrate networks.
Ideally, Id like to see this as an extension of the mission of the city libraries. The city already provides net connections for the netless all over the city and now would just be extending that mission to everyone.
Why should congress care?
Right now the big lobbys are getting you to give up on your social security, medical malpractice, etc.
Who is the big IP lobby? No one. Apple, MS, and a bunch of companies could form such a lobby and get rid of software patents or at least lobby to make software patents less generic, but they also are proctected by their own patents, so they just fight this craziness in court.
Yeah, something has to be done about software patents, but until the big players move in, then congress will certainly not take it upon themselves to take care of it.
This issue looms wide over the entire IT industry. Linux violantes how many patents right now? 200?
Its a seriously broken system and hopefully this will bring light to the issue, but as long as the big tech companies continue to also benefit from the current patent system, then they wont exactly be too hot to change the system until there's a real and serious breakdown. So far this hasnt happened. MS is fighting Eolas and Apple will fight these people. They'll probably win just because of their size and then the patent game will continue. Smaller comapanies or just people holding patents dont have these kinds of legal resources. Sucks to be them.
Smart choice, now they can draft up warrants for non-violent drug offenders without clippy asking, "I see you're doing something quite draconian here, may I help?"
Now John Aschcroft can write lyrics without the green squiggly line getting in the way of his immense creativity!
With such a large contract I'm sure Corel was able to remove the words 'habeas corpus' from the spellchecker and replace them with cyberterrorist and narcoterrorist.
YRO? Some things are just bigger and more important than the MS vs Geeks boondoggle.