It's a pity that even their commercials make it look like this is a series wrap-up instead of what it is, which is a season-finale cliffhanger. I'm hoping that a brave network like Showtime or TNT will pick it up and resurrect it. The show simply deserves to be seen.
I have been a long-time tube snob, and the Line 6 amps were the first solid state stuff I ever bought. Until Line 6 stuff was well known, guitarists would come up to me in droves at gigs (yes, I actually play in public regularly, and get paid well for it) and compliment the tones. The newest cadre of amps (the Duoverb and the Flextone III) are amazing and really capture the "breath" of the real tube stuff. The modeling improves as the available DSP's get faster.
The PODs are fantastic, the new PODxt especially, but the proof's in the pudding. Almost every recently-recorded song you hear on the radio or on an album was probably aided with a POD. Engineers love it when I bring them in to the studio because they don't have to work hard to get a great sound that fits perfectly in the mix. I have only heard complaints about the gear on the Internet (go figure), and never from real live working musicians.
And the new Variax is great. At its current price point it is incapable of replacing a good vintage "real" guitar, but it plays just like any other guitar, and several of the models are dead accurate. The 12-strings are a little off (as would be expected), the banjo, sitar and other resonator models (dobro, tricone) are surprisingly great, and the Strat, Teles, and Les Pauls are unbelievable. And the guitar just feels good; it's not a geek toy that looks like a guitar, it's an actually decent guitar that just happens to do amazing things.
Put the guitar together with a new Vetta and you just spent about $3,000 to reproduce about $150,000 worth of vintage gear, much of which is more fragile and scary to gig with than the far less expensive Line 6 stuff. I don't work for these guys but I do not hesitate to recommend them to other musicians. If you actually play for pay, you can't afford not to check them out.
You do realize, don't you, that this is meaningless until the Senate and the House agree on a version of the whole package, it passes in each house, and the President signs it?
I tend to feel that people embrace "The Lord of the Rings" because the classic good vs. evil battle is something most people don't get to encounter in real life. Brin actually undercuts his own point by drawing an analogy to Hitler. Of course we know Hitler was evil (and not the victim of propaganda) because of the overwhelming physical, historical, and documentary evidence. But we do not get the benefit of that evidence from a fictional work, so we are in some way forced to accept it as it is written.
Brin's entreaty to put ourselves in Sauron the Dark Lord's shoes is nonsense. The only "evidence" (if you can even call it that) of a fictional story is what the author provides. In some cases, authors will tell a story and give subtle clues that there is more to be seen than that which is closest to your face. "The Lord of the Rings" is not such a case. The form is that of a fairy tale, and in fairy tales (for the most part), what you see is truly what you get. Sauron is evil because Tolkien tells us so with just about every sentence devoted to his description or actions, and that is that.
Therefore we are reading a story of good vs. evil, and (hopefully) we rejoice in the triumph of the forces of good and despair at their setbacks. I find "The Lord of the Rings" a nice read because it allows me to escape a world of media which continually impresses upon us the opinion (cast as fact) that there's no good or evil in the world, just differing opinions. There is no doubt in my mind that evil does exist in this world. I have been unfortunate enough to have to confront it rather personally from time to time, so I can't be convinced otherwise. I think in the deepest corners of their hearts, most everyone is in some way preternaturally aware of this as well.
So Mr. Brin, please return to your fictional explorations of niggling scientific details, and leave our fairy tales alone. Our little ones have few enough simple good vs. evil tales as it is, without having them stomped on and deconstructed by your like.
So, did he have more artistic integrity when he was making movies on someone else's dime, or when he built his own facilities in order to create movies the way he envisioned without being beholden to someone else's bottom line? Putting Star Wars marks on other goods was not an end, but a means -- in this case, to help build the facilities of Lucasfilm (ILM, Skywalker Sound, et al.) into something that would advance the science of motion pictures. Did he really exploit anyone? No one forced anybody to buy tickets; it was the public's choice to turn the Star Wars movies into a blockbuster phenomenon. They have made both better and worse decisions, and will continue to do so.
Without his facilities and the work he put his own money behind as an entrepreneur and as someone with a vision, you'd have no Donnie Darko, no English Patient, no Being John Malkovich, at least not in the splendid forms in which they now exist. Technology that appeared in all these movies was originally developed at Lucasfilm facilities. Would someone else have done it? Almost certainly. Would the technology be as far along today? History and experience tell us probably not.
And let's not forget all the young filmmakers who cite "Star Wars" films as one of their earliest and most potent influences. That doesn't necessarily make the films great (or even good), but imagine a film world without their work and suddenly George Lucas' artistic integrity seems a lot more secure even in the face of lunchboxes and board games.
Don't get me wrong, I don't idolize Lucas, but I do consider him a pioneer in the tech end of making film. As a director, I would prefer a ripe canteloupe, but Lucas' directorial skills are the least factor in his resume. There's a reason that AMPAS is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Film is both the science of medium and the art of message. Lucas' legacy lies mainly not in his films, but in the technologies he has developed which are used in so many other films today, including those whose artistic impact is far superior to anything he has created himself.
I would imagine that some of the money dedicated to NEO tracking is dedicated to partnerships with facilities located in the Southern Hemisphere, such as in Australia. I'm very doubtful this hasn't occurred to NASA, seeing as how most everyone there probably got pretty good grades in geometry.:-) The NEO program doesn't list this kind of information explicitly (from what I gathered on a quick web hunt), but does link to a number of international resources that would seem to support this hypothesis.
Actually, as of at least SP2, Win2000's kernel mixer (kmixer) operates at only 16 bits. This is a common problem for people doing pro audio recording, so if either your MP3 player or your sound card works through the kmixer, you're only going to hear 16 bit resolution. WinXP does not have this problem.
This is not really true. FotR (and all of the LotR movies) were shot in the Super35 format, which allows the director/DP (Director of Photography) to frame shots for both 4:3 (commonly referred to as P&S) and 2.35:1 (letterbox) at the same time. James Cameron is one of the directors who prefer this format, and you will actually see a reference to The Abyss in the article. (Every film of Cameron's since that one -- other than his recent IMAX work -- has used Super35.)
Whether you get the widescreen or the P&S, you get the director's vision (and a good movie) either way. It is possible that Jackson didn't compose the 4:3 image at the same time, but highly unlikely, since it would actually cut back on the resolution of the image to be transferred later for 4:3 aspect ratios, including (eventually) broadcast TV.
If you watch a Super35 film dual-composed in this matter, you will notice additional information at the left and right sides on the letterboxed format exhibition, or additional information at the top and bottom sides on the 4:3 format exhibition. If you have access to "Titanic" in both formats, for example, you can check this out for yourself. (I believe the 4:3 is only available on VHS, but you can check that against either the 2.35:1 VHS or DVD.)
Having said all this, I prefer LB as well, but only because I look forward to buying a widescreen TV!
John, thank you for the inspiration you provided me when I was starting out on bass. After 15 years of playing, I still find joy in listening to you play. I tried to emulate you as best I could when I played your parts in "Tommy" for the stage. I'm happy I got to see you live sharing your amazing talent with us, and I'll dedicate a song to you on Saturday night at my gig, if only to console those of us playing. RIP brother.
I think a large percentage of Slashdotters need to go back to an elementary civics class. You don't have to be a lawyer to understand this, just have some common sense and engage the brains you guys are always going on and on about.
When the judge denies a motion to dismiss, it doesn't mean bad news for Elcomsoft, other than the fact that their legal bills are going to be greater than they were (which is not the court's problem and shouldn't be considered by the judge at all). What it means is that the judge did not agree with Elcomsoft's attorneys' argument that the issue at stake was either directly addressed by some previous court decision or pre-existing law. So this means the judget thinks there is an issue here that hasn't been decided.
It does not mean that the judge has anything against Elcomsoft or that he has made a pre-emptive decision against them. It only means he thinks there's an issue here. It could very well be that the judge is an activist who sees this is as an opportunity to inject his opinion on the matter into the fray. That opinion might be even be in favor of Elcomsoft.
Please take a moment to dredge up long-buried memories of how the judicial system works in this country. Or crack a book that doesn't have an animal on the front cover once in a while.
The only contract involved here is that the network is being paid by the advertiser to distribute and exhibit their ad. This pays for the shows. Advertisers do this because they expect that an ad will have a certain market penetration -- i.e. they expect some number of people less than the entire audience to watch the ad, and an even smaller number to remember the message of the ad, and an even smaller number to act on it by buying a product. The only theft that could possibly take place here is if either (a) advertisers somehow forced broadcasters or network execs at gunpoint to run their ads for free, or (b) network execs or broadcasters took advertisers' money without running their ads.
The issue of PVR's, DVR's, VCR's, and whatever else has already been decided in the courts. Anyone who thinks people have a duty to watch ads is off his or her rocker. The revenue to the network is generated by ads, not by viewership. I think this CEO is trying to jump on the Internet "music piracy" issue, not understanding that the individual's tendency to take for granted that which is freely available will always encroach on and overtake the ability of corporations to secure maximum revenue channels for products. And what's more, it's a lot harder to take away freedoms people think they have than it is to deny them prior to their exercise.
Off topic only slightly, that's not to say I believe it's OK to steal music. As an independent musician I haven't been harmed by net piracy, but I do sympathize with those that are. I'm just saying once the cat's out of the bag....
There are good reasons Katz should not review film:
1. He ignores everything in the film other than surface features (not unimportant, just basic) such as plot and sets. What about the production design? What about the use of color in the photography? What about thematic elements? This film analogizes human relationships as spatial relationships from the very first few seconds when Fincher & Co. practically reinvent the use of credits in a title sequence. The entire movie is about space and angles. I suppose it's easy to ignore this if you're not used to watching anything more complicated than "Bubble Boy."
2. He has a short attention span. From what I can see, every "unbelievability" he indicates in his review is answered up front in the script, without being deus ex machina in nature. At this point, I am not actually sure whether Katz sat through the same film I did or whether he was just talking on a cell phone for the parts where they had actual character development and plot points. He mentions "writers" when this film was written by only one person, David Koepp, who is a well known and critically acclaimed screenwriter. (Which confirms that he wasn't paying attention at least to the credits.)
I hope he will spare us his further "reviews" until he gains enough of a background in film that he can recognize worthwhile pictures when he sees them. Until then I guess he should go back to watching "The Mummy Returns" over and over on his DVD player.
On Linux, the chattr(1) command will allow you to set the secure deletion attribute of selected files, so that when deleted their allocated block space is wiped with 0x00 values. It would be trivial for a user to set up aliases or cron jobs to ensure that all this flag is set on all her data.
As for searching slack, there are plenty of Perl scripts to cull for interesting data such as IP's, credit card numbers, and other patterned text.
Having been in working bands for many years, I have to tell you that I would not only not be caught dead on stage with something like this, I wouldn't even want to be seen picking one up in a store. The only comparable guitars I ever saw that actually were pretty cool were the beautiful Fender American Strats with the Vargas pinup girls on them. Now THOSE were cool guitars, even if they were out of my price range.
Shocking as it may seem, our intelligence community does not routinely strive to identify the top people in the world (not just Americans) on the various topics of concern -- from terrorism to the environment to human trafficking to corruption to disease and public health -- with the result that our analysis tends to be shallow and incestuous, relying on the same consultants again and again.
Funny, that makes them sound just like the media. Oops, was that my outside voice?
Mr. Schmidt is fairly well known in the office where I used to work, and in my professional circles. Although I have never met the guy personally, I am familiar with his reputation -- which is not one of being a very knowledgeable individual. I would hope that if his reputation (as I am aware of it) is correct, the White House would not put him in charge of anything mission critical -- especially since "mission critical" at the White House is in many cases somewhat more important than, say, whether some router is down on MSN.
This is the costume that my wife made for my daughter, who's seven months old. Hopefully she'll be learning more about operating systems than your average CS grad student these days....:-) (If that link doesn't work, try this one instead.)
I told my wife she should be prepared to create a Tux-Costume-HOWTO depending on demand.
OK, so I sort of made that last term up. But Farscape is the first SF television show I've seen that I wasn't in some way squeamish about mentioning to people I know who aren't big SF fans. It's got a quality that sets it apart from most of the rest of television, and just about all of the rest of SF TV. I am also overjoyed that Farscape doesn't avoid subjects which other SF shows either ignore completely or "wink" at in a very pubescent fashion, such as bodily functions and sexuality. It's a fine line between "not avoiding" and "wallowing in," and the show does a great job of walking that line to maximize dramatic impact and character exposition. Anyway, in my opinion, there are three hallmarks of Farscape that, when taken together, differentiate it from other SF TV shows.
1. Continuity. This is, to me, the difference between crappy money-makers like the Star Trek franchise and good SF TV like Babylon 5. It also happens to be one of the virtues that the Farscape writers/producers were smart enough to seize on as well. The things that happen in our lives determine and affect our later behavior.
I remember hearing someone else say the following once about ST:TNG, and it stuck with me because it really epitomized the problems I had with that show. I always thought it was somewhat juvenile (although I understood the need to appeal to the 12 to 18 demographic), and this drove it home. In one of the episodes, the android officer, Data, knifed one of his fellow officers (I think it was Yar) pretty seriously, due to some malfunction. The very next week they were chatting and sharing an elevator normally as if it had never happened. I'm sorry, but higher consciousness be damned; if someone sticks a blade in your gut, you're going to be a little uneasy being alone with that person for the foreseeable future. Farscape never suffers from this problem.
It's important to remember that the reason that ST series were never big on continuity (in more than a general background way) was because the producers and script supervisors have to work a lot harder to keep control of story and character arc to enforce it. (Meaning you have to have story and character arcs to begin with.) To me, this why the film ST:Generations was pretty good; despite the silly plotline with bringing back Kirk, it was the first time we really saw something awful happen to one of the characters (Picard), something he couldn't fix and which would deeply affect him for the rest of the story arc. In this case, it was a little easier to do since the story arc was only two hours long, but it was a great leap forward for a character who was basically nothing more than a one-dimensional metaphor for good judgement up to that point. It also gave the later story emotional resonance, something also usually lacking in ST shows. (There were a few exceptions; the one that comes to mind immediately is the excellent ST:DS9 episode where the station commander is forced into some sort of time warp which causes him to only be able to see his son periodically through the rest of his life as he matures, grows old, has his own family, etc. That was a script and show which stacked up favorably against some of the best West Wing and ER episodes.)
2. Character. I like my characters three dimensional. I just started watching at the beginning of season 2, and I've enjoyed immensely discovering the very rich backstories of all the characters. I had been content with seeing them only as the two-dimensional constructs I had assumed they were, but what I am finding is that as I see older episodes and see more of each character's personal arc, I can watch a later episode and see actual growth and motivation that I had simply missed or ignored before. Plus the acting is really quite good for the most part.
It is clear as you see more and more of the episodes, and place them in chronology, that the producers have a very clear understanding of where each character is going. It is very rare that they pass up the opportunity to have a character take action which furthers his/her own personal goals because of some "higher" or "altruistic" motive. These motives may be good for morality tales, but they don't necessarily equate to either good drama or illuminating the human condition. (And yes, I believe that at its heart that is still what Farscape and other good SF is about. The only way to illuminate some invented alien condition is through a work like LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness. And anyone insane enough to want to make an hourly episodic series of something like that is not likely to find anyone else even more insane who would put up the money for it, not to mention air it, put up commercial time, etc....)
3. Clichelessness. This is what separates Farscape from B5 in my opinion. B5 did an excellent job of having both story and character arc on the large scale -- which one would expect of a writer of J. Michael Straczynski's [sp?] stature and credentials. On the small scale, however, it frequently suffered from problems of tired, worn-out humor; overwrought and/or clumsy dialogue; and contrived situations and character simplification to achieve plot points. And although my hat is certainly off to Mr. Straczynski for his landmark work at pulling off a five-year series of this scope, I think the writing itself fell victim to that scope by being stretched too thin.
While Farscape certainly has its moments as well in this regard, they are much fewer and farther between than in any other SF series. Although some of the plot devices are not wholly novel in the SF realm, they are well-integrated (the warrior race, the living ship) and never reduced to two dimensions even to temporarily serve the needs of poor writing. What I see in Farscape is, above all, the evidence that the producers and script supervisors are more than willing to say to a writer, "No. Go back and do it again," until they see something that serves the motivation of these fleshed-out characters.
What separates the good SF like Farscape from the crappy 90% (to paraphrase Theodore Sturgeon) is the unwillingness to settle for less than something that looks, smells, and tastes like Truth (in the dramatic and literary sense). That's a hard vintage to come by, and once you've drunk from that cup, it's very hard to settle for the kind that comes with a screw-top. Farscape has raised the bar for SF television, and I for one say it's about time.
This is just the first of many assumptions made in your comments. You would do well to avoid them in the future, should you decide to take up informed discussion as a means to achieving knowledge.
...very few people are actually against lawful use of information gathering devices.
Very few people in general, maybe; however, I would be very circumspect about ascribing this worldview to/.ers as a community. Perhaps you haven't read the last thousand or so posts regarding privacy issues as they relate to the legal requirements for law enforcement wiretapping.
We who live in the D.C. area are very familiar with the Post's penchant for "manufacturing" stories where none exist. Mr. Zimmerman unfortunately was the party on the receiving end of the editorial foul play in this particular case.
As a community, we should recognize that the Post as well as other news media outlets are NOT in their line of work to provide complete and unbiased coverage of events. They are in business to make MONEY, and that is a goal that creates in and of itself conflict of interest with reporting the truth in most (if not all) cases.
I wish the readership of the Post was going to be privy to Mr. Zimmerman's clarifications in the same way we/.ers are.
Cryptography is not what the FBI and other law enforcement agencies (LEA's) are against; that is at best disingenuous and at worst grossly misleading. What they are against is the unrestrained use of cryptography to further commissions of crime, especially those of the nature which we saw on September 11.
If you read over the many, many transcripts of testimony given on Capitol Hill in the past several years concerning the issues of strong encryption used in criminal enterprise, you will see that what LEA's are trying to achieve is a form of key escrow. This would lead to an analogous situation with the way wiretaps are lawfully obtained. With key escrow, part of a cryptographic "skeleton key" would be held by judicial agencies, and whose release would only be authorized in the event of judicial approval of a signed affidavit stating the specific need for that key to be activated.
This is no different than how wiretaps are legally obtained, and wiretaps (despite the rantings of a bunch of/.ers) are very few and far between. At any one time in the country, there are usually less than 100 wiretaps total, most involved with drugs and organized crime. (See recent comments by Judge William Sessions, former Director of the FBI, to NPR and others.) LEA's, even if they were so inclined (and judging by the people I know who work for them, they most decidedly aren't) have neither the time nor the inclination to randomly eavesdrop on conversations or look through anyone's e-mail, nor could they if they wanted to. The days of COINTELPRO are over, because it's been firmly demonstrated that any such abuses mean that people will go to jail, not to mention lose their jobs.
The people I know who work for LEA's don't care if people use crypto in general. What they do care about is that crypto, when used by those who would do harm to other people or their property, does not level the playing field -- it destroys it. Key escrow will restore the balance that has been carefully achieved in the realm of wiretap law.
The Tip of the Iceberg
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More On Tragedy
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· Score: 2, Interesting
To those who think this is an isolated incident, let me point out that this enormous tragedy is only one attempt to disrupt, destroy, and devalue American lives. You are of course not hearing about the ninety-nine others in the past several years which failed.
The fact that this hasn't happened until now is due in large part to the tireless and heroic actions of the same government agencies -- military, Federal, state, and local -- that some of you./ers love to deride, slander, and vilify without any firsthand knowledge whatsoever. (I encourage you to infer the obvious from the last few words.) These are the people who were the first to the sites when the attacks happened, the people who were crushed as the towers came down, those who went to work in a still-burning building because they knew that not to do so was allowing terrorist factions an unearned victory.
Returning to normal life shows that we will not be cowed by cowardly attacks on innocent civilians. It just so happens that by simply returning to their normal lives, these people are trying to keep us safe from the next attack... tomorrow, next week, next month, next year.
Please remember that before you hit your next "Submit" button.
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It's a pity that even their commercials make it look like this is a series wrap-up instead of what it is, which is a season-finale cliffhanger. I'm hoping that a brave network like Showtime or TNT will pick it up and resurrect it. The show simply deserves to be seen.
I have been a long-time tube snob, and the Line 6 amps were the first solid state stuff I ever bought. Until Line 6 stuff was well known, guitarists would come up to me in droves at gigs (yes, I actually play in public regularly, and get paid well for it) and compliment the tones. The newest cadre of amps (the Duoverb and the Flextone III) are amazing and really capture the "breath" of the real tube stuff. The modeling improves as the available DSP's get faster.
The PODs are fantastic, the new PODxt especially, but the proof's in the pudding. Almost every recently-recorded song you hear on the radio or on an album was probably aided with a POD. Engineers love it when I bring them in to the studio because they don't have to work hard to get a great sound that fits perfectly in the mix. I have only heard complaints about the gear on the Internet (go figure), and never from real live working musicians.
And the new Variax is great. At its current price point it is incapable of replacing a good vintage "real" guitar, but it plays just like any other guitar, and several of the models are dead accurate. The 12-strings are a little off (as would be expected), the banjo, sitar and other resonator models (dobro, tricone) are surprisingly great, and the Strat, Teles, and Les Pauls are unbelievable. And the guitar just feels good; it's not a geek toy that looks like a guitar, it's an actually decent guitar that just happens to do amazing things.
Put the guitar together with a new Vetta and you just spent about $3,000 to reproduce about $150,000 worth of vintage gear, much of which is more fragile and scary to gig with than the far less expensive Line 6 stuff. I don't work for these guys but I do not hesitate to recommend them to other musicians. If you actually play for pay, you can't afford not to check them out.
You do realize, don't you, that this is meaningless until the Senate and the House agree on a version of the whole package, it passes in each house, and the President signs it?
I tend to feel that people embrace "The Lord of the Rings" because the classic good vs. evil battle is something most people don't get to encounter in real life. Brin actually undercuts his own point by drawing an analogy to Hitler. Of course we know Hitler was evil (and not the victim of propaganda) because of the overwhelming physical, historical, and documentary evidence. But we do not get the benefit of that evidence from a fictional work, so we are in some way forced to accept it as it is written.
Brin's entreaty to put ourselves in Sauron the Dark Lord's shoes is nonsense. The only "evidence" (if you can even call it that) of a fictional story is what the author provides. In some cases, authors will tell a story and give subtle clues that there is more to be seen than that which is closest to your face. "The Lord of the Rings" is not such a case. The form is that of a fairy tale, and in fairy tales (for the most part), what you see is truly what you get. Sauron is evil because Tolkien tells us so with just about every sentence devoted to his description or actions, and that is that.
Therefore we are reading a story of good vs. evil, and (hopefully) we rejoice in the triumph of the forces of good and despair at their setbacks. I find "The Lord of the Rings" a nice read because it allows me to escape a world of media which continually impresses upon us the opinion (cast as fact) that there's no good or evil in the world, just differing opinions. There is no doubt in my mind that evil does exist in this world. I have been unfortunate enough to have to confront it rather personally from time to time, so I can't be convinced otherwise. I think in the deepest corners of their hearts, most everyone is in some way preternaturally aware of this as well.
So Mr. Brin, please return to your fictional explorations of niggling scientific details, and leave our fairy tales alone. Our little ones have few enough simple good vs. evil tales as it is, without having them stomped on and deconstructed by your like.
So, did he have more artistic integrity when he was making movies on someone else's dime, or when he built his own facilities in order to create movies the way he envisioned without being beholden to someone else's bottom line? Putting Star Wars marks on other goods was not an end, but a means -- in this case, to help build the facilities of Lucasfilm (ILM, Skywalker Sound, et al.) into something that would advance the science of motion pictures. Did he really exploit anyone? No one forced anybody to buy tickets; it was the public's choice to turn the Star Wars movies into a blockbuster phenomenon. They have made both better and worse decisions, and will continue to do so.
Without his facilities and the work he put his own money behind as an entrepreneur and as someone with a vision, you'd have no Donnie Darko, no English Patient, no Being John Malkovich, at least not in the splendid forms in which they now exist. Technology that appeared in all these movies was originally developed at Lucasfilm facilities. Would someone else have done it? Almost certainly. Would the technology be as far along today? History and experience tell us probably not.
And let's not forget all the young filmmakers who cite "Star Wars" films as one of their earliest and most potent influences. That doesn't necessarily make the films great (or even good), but imagine a film world without their work and suddenly George Lucas' artistic integrity seems a lot more secure even in the face of lunchboxes and board games.
Don't get me wrong, I don't idolize Lucas, but I do consider him a pioneer in the tech end of making film. As a director, I would prefer a ripe canteloupe, but Lucas' directorial skills are the least factor in his resume. There's a reason that AMPAS is the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Film is both the science of medium and the art of message. Lucas' legacy lies mainly not in his films, but in the technologies he has developed which are used in so many other films today, including those whose artistic impact is far superior to anything he has created himself.
I would imagine that some of the money dedicated to NEO tracking is dedicated to partnerships with facilities located in the Southern Hemisphere, such as in Australia. I'm very doubtful this hasn't occurred to NASA, seeing as how most everyone there probably got pretty good grades in geometry. :-) The NEO program doesn't list this kind of information explicitly (from what I gathered on a quick web hunt), but does link to a number of international resources that would seem to support this hypothesis.
Actually, as of at least SP2, Win2000's kernel mixer (kmixer) operates at only 16 bits. This is a common problem for people doing pro audio recording, so if either your MP3 player or your sound card works through the kmixer, you're only going to hear 16 bit resolution. WinXP does not have this problem.
This is not really true. FotR (and all of the LotR movies) were shot in the Super35 format, which allows the director/DP (Director of Photography) to frame shots for both 4:3 (commonly referred to as P&S) and 2.35:1 (letterbox) at the same time. James Cameron is one of the directors who prefer this format, and you will actually see a reference to The Abyss in the article. (Every film of Cameron's since that one -- other than his recent IMAX work -- has used Super35.)
Whether you get the widescreen or the P&S, you get the director's vision (and a good movie) either way. It is possible that Jackson didn't compose the 4:3 image at the same time, but highly unlikely, since it would actually cut back on the resolution of the image to be transferred later for 4:3 aspect ratios, including (eventually) broadcast TV.
If you watch a Super35 film dual-composed in this matter, you will notice additional information at the left and right sides on the letterboxed format exhibition, or additional information at the top and bottom sides on the 4:3 format exhibition. If you have access to "Titanic" in both formats, for example, you can check this out for yourself. (I believe the 4:3 is only available on VHS, but you can check that against either the 2.35:1 VHS or DVD.)
Having said all this, I prefer LB as well, but only because I look forward to buying a widescreen TV!
John, thank you for the inspiration you provided me when I was starting out on bass. After 15 years of playing, I still find joy in listening to you play. I tried to emulate you as best I could when I played your parts in "Tommy" for the stage. I'm happy I got to see you live sharing your amazing talent with us, and I'll dedicate a song to you on Saturday night at my gig, if only to console those of us playing. RIP brother.
Because at least 90% of it, and probably more of it sucks rocks.
Wow, it's a good thing you saw this movie, or you'd never know how the world really works! Good christ, please tell me this was a joke.
I think a large percentage of Slashdotters need to go back to an elementary civics class. You don't have to be a lawyer to understand this, just have some common sense and engage the brains you guys are always going on and on about.
When the judge denies a motion to dismiss, it doesn't mean bad news for Elcomsoft, other than the fact that their legal bills are going to be greater than they were (which is not the court's problem and shouldn't be considered by the judge at all). What it means is that the judge did not agree with Elcomsoft's attorneys' argument that the issue at stake was either directly addressed by some previous court decision or pre-existing law. So this means the judget thinks there is an issue here that hasn't been decided.
It does not mean that the judge has anything against Elcomsoft or that he has made a pre-emptive decision against them. It only means he thinks there's an issue here. It could very well be that the judge is an activist who sees this is as an opportunity to inject his opinion on the matter into the fray. That opinion might be even be in favor of Elcomsoft.
Please take a moment to dredge up long-buried memories of how the judicial system works in this country. Or crack a book that doesn't have an animal on the front cover once in a while.
The only contract involved here is that the network is being paid by the advertiser to distribute and exhibit their ad. This pays for the shows. Advertisers do this because they expect that an ad will have a certain market penetration -- i.e. they expect some number of people less than the entire audience to watch the ad, and an even smaller number to remember the message of the ad, and an even smaller number to act on it by buying a product. The only theft that could possibly take place here is if either (a) advertisers somehow forced broadcasters or network execs at gunpoint to run their ads for free, or (b) network execs or broadcasters took advertisers' money without running their ads.
The issue of PVR's, DVR's, VCR's, and whatever else has already been decided in the courts. Anyone who thinks people have a duty to watch ads is off his or her rocker. The revenue to the network is generated by ads, not by viewership. I think this CEO is trying to jump on the Internet "music piracy" issue, not understanding that the individual's tendency to take for granted that which is freely available will always encroach on and overtake the ability of corporations to secure maximum revenue channels for products. And what's more, it's a lot harder to take away freedoms people think they have than it is to deny them prior to their exercise.
Off topic only slightly, that's not to say I believe it's OK to steal music. As an independent musician I haven't been harmed by net piracy, but I do sympathize with those that are. I'm just saying once the cat's out of the bag....
There are good reasons Katz should not review film:
1. He ignores everything in the film other than surface features (not unimportant, just basic) such as plot and sets. What about the production design? What about the use of color in the photography? What about thematic elements? This film analogizes human relationships as spatial relationships from the very first few seconds when Fincher & Co. practically reinvent the use of credits in a title sequence. The entire movie is about space and angles. I suppose it's easy to ignore this if you're not used to watching anything more complicated than "Bubble Boy."
2. He has a short attention span. From what I can see, every "unbelievability" he indicates in his review is answered up front in the script, without being deus ex machina in nature. At this point, I am not actually sure whether Katz sat through the same film I did or whether he was just talking on a cell phone for the parts where they had actual character development and plot points. He mentions "writers" when this film was written by only one person, David Koepp, who is a well known and critically acclaimed screenwriter. (Which confirms that he wasn't paying attention at least to the credits.)
I hope he will spare us his further "reviews" until he gains enough of a background in film that he can recognize worthwhile pictures when he sees them. Until then I guess he should go back to watching "The Mummy Returns" over and over on his DVD player.
On Linux, the chattr(1) command will allow you to set the secure deletion attribute of selected files, so that when deleted their allocated block space is wiped with 0x00 values. It would be trivial for a user to set up aliases or cron jobs to ensure that all this flag is set on all her data.
As for searching slack, there are plenty of Perl scripts to cull for interesting data such as IP's, credit card numbers, and other patterned text.
Having been in working bands for many years, I have to tell you that I would not only not be caught dead on stage with something like this, I wouldn't even want to be seen picking one up in a store. The only comparable guitars I ever saw that actually were pretty cool were the beautiful Fender American Strats with the Vargas pinup girls on them. Now THOSE were cool guitars, even if they were out of my price range.
From the article:
Funny, that makes them sound just like the media. Oops, was that my outside voice?
Mr. Schmidt is fairly well known in the office where I used to work, and in my professional circles. Although I have never met the guy personally, I am familiar with his reputation -- which is not one of being a very knowledgeable individual. I would hope that if his reputation (as I am aware of it) is correct, the White House would not put him in charge of anything mission critical -- especially since "mission critical" at the White House is in many cases somewhat more important than, say, whether some router is down on MSN.
This is the costume that my wife made for my daughter, who's seven months old. Hopefully she'll be learning more about operating systems than your average CS grad student these days.... :-) (If that link doesn't work, try this one instead.)
I told my wife she should be prepared to create a Tux-Costume-HOWTO depending on demand.
OK, so I sort of made that last term up. But Farscape is the first SF television show I've seen that I wasn't in some way squeamish about mentioning to people I know who aren't big SF fans. It's got a quality that sets it apart from most of the rest of television, and just about all of the rest of SF TV. I am also overjoyed that Farscape doesn't avoid subjects which other SF shows either ignore completely or "wink" at in a very pubescent fashion, such as bodily functions and sexuality. It's a fine line between "not avoiding" and "wallowing in," and the show does a great job of walking that line to maximize dramatic impact and character exposition. Anyway, in my opinion, there are three hallmarks of Farscape that, when taken together, differentiate it from other SF TV shows.
1. Continuity. This is, to me, the difference between crappy money-makers like the Star Trek franchise and good SF TV like Babylon 5. It also happens to be one of the virtues that the Farscape writers/producers were smart enough to seize on as well. The things that happen in our lives determine and affect our later behavior.
I remember hearing someone else say the following once about ST:TNG, and it stuck with me because it really epitomized the problems I had with that show. I always thought it was somewhat juvenile (although I understood the need to appeal to the 12 to 18 demographic), and this drove it home. In one of the episodes, the android officer, Data, knifed one of his fellow officers (I think it was Yar) pretty seriously, due to some malfunction. The very next week they were chatting and sharing an elevator normally as if it had never happened. I'm sorry, but higher consciousness be damned; if someone sticks a blade in your gut, you're going to be a little uneasy being alone with that person for the foreseeable future. Farscape never suffers from this problem.
It's important to remember that the reason that ST series were never big on continuity (in more than a general background way) was because the producers and script supervisors have to work a lot harder to keep control of story and character arc to enforce it. (Meaning you have to have story and character arcs to begin with.) To me, this why the film ST:Generations was pretty good; despite the silly plotline with bringing back Kirk, it was the first time we really saw something awful happen to one of the characters (Picard), something he couldn't fix and which would deeply affect him for the rest of the story arc. In this case, it was a little easier to do since the story arc was only two hours long, but it was a great leap forward for a character who was basically nothing more than a one-dimensional metaphor for good judgement up to that point. It also gave the later story emotional resonance, something also usually lacking in ST shows. (There were a few exceptions; the one that comes to mind immediately is the excellent ST:DS9 episode where the station commander is forced into some sort of time warp which causes him to only be able to see his son periodically through the rest of his life as he matures, grows old, has his own family, etc. That was a script and show which stacked up favorably against some of the best West Wing and ER episodes.)
2. Character. I like my characters three dimensional. I just started watching at the beginning of season 2, and I've enjoyed immensely discovering the very rich backstories of all the characters. I had been content with seeing them only as the two-dimensional constructs I had assumed they were, but what I am finding is that as I see older episodes and see more of each character's personal arc, I can watch a later episode and see actual growth and motivation that I had simply missed or ignored before. Plus the acting is really quite good for the most part.
It is clear as you see more and more of the episodes, and place them in chronology, that the producers have a very clear understanding of where each character is going. It is very rare that they pass up the opportunity to have a character take action which furthers his/her own personal goals because of some "higher" or "altruistic" motive. These motives may be good for morality tales, but they don't necessarily equate to either good drama or illuminating the human condition. (And yes, I believe that at its heart that is still what Farscape and other good SF is about. The only way to illuminate some invented alien condition is through a work like LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness. And anyone insane enough to want to make an hourly episodic series of something like that is not likely to find anyone else even more insane who would put up the money for it, not to mention air it, put up commercial time, etc....)
3. Clichelessness. This is what separates Farscape from B5 in my opinion. B5 did an excellent job of having both story and character arc on the large scale -- which one would expect of a writer of J. Michael Straczynski's [sp?] stature and credentials. On the small scale, however, it frequently suffered from problems of tired, worn-out humor; overwrought and/or clumsy dialogue; and contrived situations and character simplification to achieve plot points. And although my hat is certainly off to Mr. Straczynski for his landmark work at pulling off a five-year series of this scope, I think the writing itself fell victim to that scope by being stretched too thin.
While Farscape certainly has its moments as well in this regard, they are much fewer and farther between than in any other SF series. Although some of the plot devices are not wholly novel in the SF realm, they are well-integrated (the warrior race, the living ship) and never reduced to two dimensions even to temporarily serve the needs of poor writing. What I see in Farscape is, above all, the evidence that the producers and script supervisors are more than willing to say to a writer, "No. Go back and do it again," until they see something that serves the motivation of these fleshed-out characters.
What separates the good SF like Farscape from the crappy 90% (to paraphrase Theodore Sturgeon) is the unwillingness to settle for less than something that looks, smells, and tastes like Truth (in the dramatic and literary sense). That's a hard vintage to come by, and once you've drunk from that cup, it's very hard to settle for the kind that comes with a screw-top. Farscape has raised the bar for SF television, and I for one say it's about time.
Young man...
This is just the first of many assumptions made in your comments. You would do well to avoid them in the future, should you decide to take up informed discussion as a means to achieving knowledge.
Very few people in general, maybe; however, I would be very circumspect about ascribing this worldview to /.ers as a community. Perhaps you haven't read the last thousand or so posts regarding privacy issues as they relate to the legal requirements for law enforcement wiretapping.
We who live in the D.C. area are very familiar with the Post's penchant for "manufacturing" stories where none exist. Mr. Zimmerman unfortunately was the party on the receiving end of the editorial foul play in this particular case.
/.ers are.
As a community, we should recognize that the Post as well as other news media outlets are NOT in their line of work to provide complete and unbiased coverage of events. They are in business to make MONEY, and that is a goal that creates in and of itself conflict of interest with reporting the truth in most (if not all) cases.
I wish the readership of the Post was going to be privy to Mr. Zimmerman's clarifications in the same way we
Cryptography is not what the FBI and other law enforcement agencies (LEA's) are against; that is at best disingenuous and at worst grossly misleading. What they are against is the unrestrained use of cryptography to further commissions of crime, especially those of the nature which we saw on September 11.
If you read over the many, many transcripts of testimony given on Capitol Hill in the past several years concerning the issues of strong encryption used in criminal enterprise, you will see that what LEA's are trying to achieve is a form of key escrow. This would lead to an analogous situation with the way wiretaps are lawfully obtained. With key escrow, part of a cryptographic "skeleton key" would be held by judicial agencies, and whose release would only be authorized in the event of judicial approval of a signed affidavit stating the specific need for that key to be activated.
This is no different than how wiretaps are legally obtained, and wiretaps (despite the rantings of a bunch of /.ers) are very few and far between. At any one time in the country, there are usually less than 100 wiretaps total, most involved with drugs and organized crime. (See recent comments by Judge William Sessions, former Director of the FBI, to NPR and others.) LEA's, even if they were so inclined (and judging by the people I know who work for them, they most decidedly aren't) have neither the time nor the inclination to randomly eavesdrop on conversations or look through anyone's e-mail, nor could they if they wanted to. The days of COINTELPRO are over, because it's been firmly demonstrated that any such abuses mean that people will go to jail, not to mention lose their jobs.
The people I know who work for LEA's don't care if people use crypto in general. What they do care about is that crypto, when used by those who would do harm to other people or their property, does not level the playing field -- it destroys it. Key escrow will restore the balance that has been carefully achieved in the realm of wiretap law.
To those who think this is an isolated incident, let me point out that this enormous tragedy is only one attempt to disrupt, destroy, and devalue American lives. You are of course not hearing about the ninety-nine others in the past several years which failed.
The fact that this hasn't happened until now is due in large part to the tireless and heroic actions of the same government agencies -- military, Federal, state, and local -- that some of you ./ers love to deride, slander, and vilify without any firsthand knowledge whatsoever. (I encourage you to infer the obvious from the last few words.) These are the people who were the first to the sites when the attacks happened, the people who were crushed as the towers came down, those who went to work in a still-burning building because they knew that not to do so was allowing terrorist factions an unearned victory.
Returning to normal life shows that we will not be cowed by cowardly attacks on innocent civilians. It just so happens that by simply returning to their normal lives, these people are trying to keep us safe from the next attack... tomorrow, next week, next month, next year.
Please remember that before you hit your next "Submit" button.
Seeing as how you're an AC, I'll leave it at this: I don't know it by hearsay.