Tarantino-pushers, I've observed, tend to assume--no matter WHAT argument is presented in dislike of his work--that the arguments are ACTUALLY in disfavor of gore or tough stories. It's taking all the self control I can muster to not fall into a tirade about the utter stupidity of that.
Mr. Anonymous Coward, did you READ MY POST AT ALL?
As I recall, I said that the reasons I didn't like his movies were the following: #1) Reservoir Dogs ultimately said nothing. #2) Pulp Fiction also said nothing, and was too disonnected to pull off meaningful characterization. #3) Kill Bill lacked ANYTHING (aside from well-crafted action sequences) that could ever be considered good cinema.
Saving Private Ryan was a moving film--one of my favorites--and I did NOT feel "happy" at the end of it. I was glad I watched it but was not "happy" about it. On the other hand, with every Tarantino movie I've seen, the only feeling I had at the end was: "I have stared at a screen for two hours and have accomplished nothing." My beef with his work is that most of it strikes me as empty.
You are wrong about what I "assume." I "assume" that good cinema--nay, good storytelling--is character-driven. The closest thing to that was Reservoir Dogs. Unfortunately, Quentin came up with a few interesting characters, and all he really did with them was "haha, all dead, have a nice day!" If that actually expresses something about how Quentin views the universe then fine--good job. But it's empty and false.
I'll agree that Tarantino takes what he does to an extreme, but when does that alone ever make a film any good?
I watched Reservoir Dogs and felt a certain dis-ease. It felt like a very blatant attempt to manipulate my emotions and little else. It shocked and depressed, but ultimately said nothing. That, I'm afraid, is *not* art.
I watched Pulp Fiction. Samuel L. Jackson was excellent but there was little of him. At the end of it all, I felt as though I had wandered the streets of some wasting-away city, watching a dozen vaguely-related people interconnectedly f*ck up their lives. The story architecture had potential, but I failed to gain interest in any of the characters.
Then I heard about Kill Bill. Hours of gore without the slightest bit of exposition, characterization, or plot development. I made it a point to stay away.
The one work of Quentin Tarantino's that I didn't wholly dislike was in Desperado, where his character got shot in the head. It's hard to screw up that sort of thing.;)
What concerns me is that there is no shortage of people gushing about his "genius" who fail to quantify "genius" aside from what a wonderful thing it is to have well-choreographed kung-fu, or how spectacular it is to have a gangster torture to death a police officer with a family. These people disturb me. They worship at the Tarantino altar and I see little reason why his films should be held in any regard higher than "Oh, well that was interesting. Could've used some substance."
Sneaky WMP agreements; unfixed IE insecurities; Outlook worms; No December Patches
IE Antitrust; European Commission; SCO; Now this.
All of the above have been helped along by the idea of proprietary software. Ever since I came home for Christmas to a house full of Windows machines, I have been inundated with examples of how cumbersome, expensive, restrictive, frustrating and downright ANNOYING proprietary software can be. Why do people put up with this?!
Real's suit against Microsoft is among these examples. MS wants a closed, system where All The World is a Windows PC, and RealNetworks needs to make money with its proprietary media player. And because megacorporations are often without conscience, Real has no recourse but to sue these monopolists!
The longer I watch the Industry, the more proprietary software strikes me as the runaway train fueled by the residual billionaires of IT's infancy. The computer industry has been riddled all its life with IP infringement lawsuits. Open-Source can serve as the step to maturity that gets us out of that ludicrous, litigous business model.
But it sounds to me like your problem isn't the MS schedule, but rather the IT company having an OMG-We-need-that-patch-xmas-eve-or-we're-dead mentality that keeps you on call.
My point was that the IT companies should decide their schedules, not Microsoft. Microsoft's biggest role ought to be simply maintainting their product as best they can. Calling off December patches is a nice way to manipulate the system so the sysadmins can go home for Christmas, but it seems to cause more problems than it solves, IMHO.
As for the MS guys who could be stuck creating those patches on 11PM Dec 24, just look at the OpenSource folks. If it were Linux we were talking about, the patch could get done/distributed by someone at security.debian.org who finds that sort of thing relaxing.
/* Every time a bell rings, a penguin gets it wings. */
It still baffles me that they think a patch "schedule" is a Good Idea. It even harms them from a PR perspective--this is a security flaw NOW, and we probably won't see a fix until 2004. Meanwhile, all other browsers have been immune for a while.
I thought Steve Ballmer said that they could learn things from Free/Open-Source Software! Microsoft's continual failure to make any attempt to embrace strategies for proven superior security and maintenance methods only shows their lack of concern for their product and customers.
...in announcing regular times when you WONT be issuing patches. What if a new flaw is discovered? Shouldn't you get the patch out ASAP? Wouldn't that be best for customers if a big security hole was discovered that needed to be FIXED NOW? (Pre-SP1 XP, anybody?)
If sysadmins wanted a monthly patch schedule, they're smart enough to do it themselves. Check WindowsUpdate every month, get all the new stuff, rinse & repeat every 30.4375 days.
I fail to see the advantage in Microsoft deliberately delaying fixes to problems that, for some, can be very very immediate.
This almost reminds me of a time when Konqueror and IE had an SSL security hole. While Microsoft buried its head in the sand, the Konq guys just solved the damn problem (in a matter of hours, if memory serves).
Maintaining important software is only hindered when some buraucratic colossus feels the need to babysit the process.
I'm not sure who needs it, and frankly I agree with you. However, the fact is that J. Random User will see Longhorn doing all these pretty things on his desktop and assume that anything less snazzy must be old and rickety.
That's why we need to make X faster, prettier, and give it way too many visual gizmos. With any luck, the GUI bits of Longhorn that MS brags about are mostly vaporware, and come 2006, Windows just won't look good enough and we'll start to see an adoption of Linux desktops. [/wishfulthinking]
Who knows--maybe some of those visual gizmos will actually prove to be useful.
If you really do love music, find good indie bands. Go to their shows. Buy their music from THEM, not from Sam Goody.
You'll help end the RIAA's stranglehold, clear your conscience, and make the world a better place for music.
Viva la revolucion!
Listening to some of these people bash the RIAA, you'd think music was more important than breathing. It's entertainment. A luxury. A consumer good. Something you spend your expendable income on. In other words, simply icing on the cake of life. It's nice, but you'd definitely survive without it.
Have you any idea how pitiful and selfish it sounds to hear so may people wailing that they aren't getting enough icing? Is it justification for stealing said icing?
Sure, the RIAA are greedy pigs, but it's downright gluttonous to think that one is entitled to certain luxuries.
You are absolutely correct. Why break the law pirating software when GPL/BSD is clamoring to help you for free?
And criminy. Music is not a survival necessity. It's ENTERTAINMENT. Believe it or not, life will go on if you have to actually pay money for it.
I find it interesting that no Windows user can make their machine do what mine can for the price I paid without breaking the law. I have also noticed that most Windows users are pretty cavalier about pirating software. They have to be. Otherwise their machines are next to useless. When I moved to Linux, I gradually gained respect for other people's intellectual property. Perhaps it was the constant little reminders that somebody worked hard to put these GPL'ed tools into my hands--and I respect them tremendously for that. At any rate, I stopped pirating software. I think that if suddenly every pirated copy of any software suddenly disappeared off everyone's hard drives, the legal advantages of OSS would be made very apparent to a lot of end-users.
A computer/software services industry would thrive under Open Source in a way that has been all but impossible under Closed.
Under Non-Free Software, your support options are limited to the vendor (who may or may not care about your problem), or at best, a narrow range of large companies. The Closed Source system lends itself to monopolies because of this natural vendor lock-in.
If the computer/software economy and industry had a bed of Open Source software beneath it, free enterprise reigns supreme. Almost anyone could start a support organization and start making money. Anyone with enough programming background could start their own development-for-hire company. 75-85% of software jobs are for in-house, undistributed development & maintenance. That field can survive wonderfully under OSS.
All the while, the GPL protects the IP of those who worked on software, and still allows global cooperation and (incoming buzzword) innovation.
I believe hat it does make a difference whether the industry is dominated by open or closed software (maybe not a huge difference to IBM, but a world of difference to the rest of us). I also believe that OSS is best for the economy. I also believe IBM when they say the adoption of Open Source is inevitable. Read the news. It's happening almost everywhere. Asia alone makes things look VERY grim for Microsoft.
SCO's lawsuit is meaningless. Microsoft is irrelevant. Closed source software is a relic, an outdated get-rich-quick scheme that only benefited the software firms that were lucky, good at marketing, or both.
If things go the way the/. post suggests--yes. Absolutely yes. And this time it's to stamp out two or three competitors, rather than just one (Netscape).
However, I doubt the US will do anything about it. My hope lies in the EU. After the US anti-trust suit, MS started pumping campaign donations of millions of dollars into both political parties. If there's anyone left in the government who realizes we can do fine without Microsoft (outside Massachusetts), I shall be very surprised.
The US seems to be the only country on the planet which isn't completely annoyed by Microsoft.
But mandating OSS-only means the country is leaving behind the ridiculous and inefficient business model of "software-as-manufactured-good" for the sake of the economy. Choice is still preserved. There are several excellent Linux distros, a few flavors of BSD, and support organizations will probably sprout up all over the place. The Brazilians will have choice galore.
The Linux bigwigs really ought to be paying attention to schools. I'm glad RH and SuSE are finally making an effort.
It's been said before (and I'll say it again) that OSS is a perfect fit for schools. No licensing worries/overhead, ability to learn about and solve one's own problems, and freedom galore.
What's been holding Linux back in schools, however, is mainstream educational software. I'm studying to be a high school teacher and, somehow, learning HyperStudio is a "must". HyperStudio is designed for Wintel machines. It'll "work" on MacOS, and the content you make with it will "work" on Netscape 4, but it's obvious by the list of supported platforms that the company doesn't really care about anything other than IE and Windows.
If academic software companies started building their apps for OSS platforms (Linux, BSD, Darwin, Hurd if you want--I don't care), schools would switch in a heartbeat, especially since OpenOffice, Microsoft is no longer the document gatekeeper. If the elementary school where I tutor had a cheap way out of Win98/NetWare hell, they'd do it immediately.
Maybe we need Szulik to jump around in front of an Educational Software Conference shouting "Developers! Developers! Developers!"
When Microsoft does it it's easy to see as bad because time after time MS makes it quite obvious they do everything in the name of end-user lock-in. Microsoft gives its software away for the same reason a drug dealer gives away free samples. Once you go Microsoft, closed "standards" and all, it's hard to get out.
When RedHat and SuSE do it, it's a relief. First, OSS ought to be the software of acadamia. Second, the nature of OSS prevents that lock-in. Third, when you do pay for your OSS, you're getting support that someone's reputation/job is riding on. Microsoft doesn't give two shits whether or not the patches work properly on your machine.
You can't give a discount on free software, but you can discount support. That's why the $2500 support license comes with free copies for everyone and long-term patch access across the board. If I was a university (with a clue about technology) that'd be a nice deal.
If you read the WindowsXP EULA, you will find that Microsoft goes out of their way to make absolutely no guarantee to you, the spender of $300, that they will support Windows in any way, or that Microsoft is, in the slightest, responsible for Windows at all. They MAY provide patches, but those patches have no quality guarantee either. Whether you get support for Windows is ENTIRELY UP TO MICROSOFT. Personally, I don't want my company/school/PC depending more on MS's agenda than its/our/my own.
RedHat supplies support that they constantly bet their reputation on. If you don't like their service, there are plenty of other bidders. Besides, a University can buy the $2500 license and all students get free copies of RHWS and patch support.
There's a little more at stake here than money. On top of better support, you avoid the licensing red tape of dealing with proprietary software (nobody's going to audit you for piracy), and an OS that better lends itself to education.
You don't need to subscribe either. yum and apt are prefectly wonderful free options for staying up to date.
It gets far and away more complicated and involved as the seasons go on. It gets more serialized in Season 2; Season 3 broadens the scope considerably, and as you watch Season 4, you can feel the approaching series climax (which was originally intended to be at the end of a previously "guaranteed" Season 5). Throughout all of these, the psychological journey of John is (IMHO) the key part of the story's development and progression.
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Tarantino-pushers, I've observed, tend to assume--no matter WHAT argument is presented in dislike of his work--that the arguments are ACTUALLY in disfavor of gore or tough stories. It's taking all the self control I can muster to not fall into a tirade about the utter stupidity of that.
Mr. Anonymous Coward, did you READ MY POST AT ALL?
As I recall, I said that the reasons I didn't like his movies were the following: #1) Reservoir Dogs ultimately said nothing. #2) Pulp Fiction also said nothing, and was too disonnected to pull off meaningful characterization. #3) Kill Bill lacked ANYTHING (aside from well-crafted action sequences) that could ever be considered good cinema.
Saving Private Ryan was a moving film--one of my favorites--and I did NOT feel "happy" at the end of it. I was glad I watched it but was not "happy" about it. On the other hand, with every Tarantino movie I've seen, the only feeling I had at the end was: "I have stared at a screen for two hours and have accomplished nothing." My beef with his work is that most of it strikes me as empty.
You are wrong about what I "assume." I "assume" that good cinema--nay, good storytelling--is character-driven. The closest thing to that was Reservoir Dogs. Unfortunately, Quentin came up with a few interesting characters, and all he really did with them was "haha, all dead, have a nice day!" If that actually expresses something about how Quentin views the universe then fine--good job. But it's empty and false.
I'll agree that Tarantino takes what he does to an extreme, but when does that alone ever make a film any good?
I watched Reservoir Dogs and felt a certain dis-ease. It felt like a very blatant attempt to manipulate my emotions and little else. It shocked and depressed, but ultimately said nothing. That, I'm afraid, is *not* art.
;)
I watched Pulp Fiction. Samuel L. Jackson was excellent but there was little of him. At the end of it all, I felt as though I had wandered the streets of some wasting-away city, watching a dozen vaguely-related people interconnectedly f*ck up their lives. The story architecture had potential, but I failed to gain interest in any of the characters.
Then I heard about Kill Bill. Hours of gore without the slightest bit of exposition, characterization, or plot development. I made it a point to stay away.
The one work of Quentin Tarantino's that I didn't wholly dislike was in Desperado, where his character got shot in the head. It's hard to screw up that sort of thing.
What concerns me is that there is no shortage of people gushing about his "genius" who fail to quantify "genius" aside from what a wonderful thing it is to have well-choreographed kung-fu, or how spectacular it is to have a gangster torture to death a police officer with a family. These people disturb me. They worship at the Tarantino altar and I see little reason why his films should be held in any regard higher than "Oh, well that was interesting. Could've used some substance."
EULAs; Contracts; Restrictions; DMCA; DRM; Spyware
Sneaky WMP agreements; unfixed IE insecurities; Outlook worms; No December Patches
IE Antitrust; European Commission; SCO; Now this.
All of the above have been helped along by the idea of proprietary software. Ever since I came home for Christmas to a house full of Windows machines, I have been inundated with examples of how cumbersome, expensive, restrictive, frustrating and downright ANNOYING proprietary software can be. Why do people put up with this?!
Real's suit against Microsoft is among these examples. MS wants a closed, system where All The World is a Windows PC, and RealNetworks needs to make money with its proprietary media player. And because megacorporations are often without conscience, Real has no recourse but to sue these monopolists!
The longer I watch the Industry, the more proprietary software strikes me as the runaway train fueled by the residual billionaires of IT's infancy. The computer industry has been riddled all its life with IP infringement lawsuits. Open-Source can serve as the step to maturity that gets us out of that ludicrous, litigous business model.
But it sounds to me like your problem isn't the MS schedule, but rather the IT company having an OMG-We-need-that-patch-xmas-eve-or-we're-dead mentality that keeps you on call.
My point was that the IT companies should decide their schedules, not Microsoft. Microsoft's biggest role ought to be simply maintainting their product as best they can. Calling off December patches is a nice way to manipulate the system so the sysadmins can go home for Christmas, but it seems to cause more problems than it solves, IMHO.
As for the MS guys who could be stuck creating those patches on 11PM Dec 24, just look at the OpenSource folks. If it were Linux we were talking about, the patch could get done/distributed by someone at security.debian.org who finds that sort of thing relaxing.
/* Every time a bell rings, a penguin gets it wings. */
It still baffles me that they think a patch "schedule" is a Good Idea. It even harms them from a PR perspective--this is a security flaw NOW, and we probably won't see a fix until 2004. Meanwhile, all other browsers have been immune for a while.
I thought Steve Ballmer said that they could learn things from Free/Open-Source Software! Microsoft's continual failure to make any attempt to embrace strategies for proven superior security and maintenance methods only shows their lack of concern for their product and customers.
That, or they really are as stupid as they look.
...in announcing regular times when you WONT be issuing patches. What if a new flaw is discovered? Shouldn't you get the patch out ASAP? Wouldn't that be best for customers if a big security hole was discovered that needed to be FIXED NOW? (Pre-SP1 XP, anybody?)
If sysadmins wanted a monthly patch schedule, they're smart enough to do it themselves. Check WindowsUpdate every month, get all the new stuff, rinse & repeat every 30.4375 days.
I fail to see the advantage in Microsoft deliberately delaying fixes to problems that, for some, can be very very immediate.
This almost reminds me of a time when Konqueror and IE had an SSL security hole. While Microsoft buried its head in the sand, the Konq guys just solved the damn problem (in a matter of hours, if memory serves).
Maintaining important software is only hindered when some buraucratic colossus feels the need to babysit the process.
I'm not sure who needs it, and frankly I agree with you. However, the fact is that J. Random User will see Longhorn doing all these pretty things on his desktop and assume that anything less snazzy must be old and rickety.
That's why we need to make X faster, prettier, and give it way too many visual gizmos. With any luck, the GUI bits of Longhorn that MS brags about are mostly vaporware, and come 2006, Windows just won't look good enough and we'll start to see an adoption of Linux desktops. [/wishfulthinking]
Who knows--maybe some of those visual gizmos will actually prove to be useful.
RMS proclaims the virtues of Free Software.
And that certain things should have a GNU prefix. Just because.
If you really do love music, find good indie bands. Go to their shows. Buy their music from THEM, not from Sam Goody. You'll help end the RIAA's stranglehold, clear your conscience, and make the world a better place for music. Viva la revolucion!
That's where I get mine. The band's own merch tables. And knowing that my support is going where it SHOULD makes the icing that much sweeter.
Listening to some of these people bash the RIAA, you'd think music was more important than breathing. It's entertainment. A luxury. A consumer good. Something you spend your expendable income on. In other words, simply icing on the cake of life. It's nice, but you'd definitely survive without it.
Have you any idea how pitiful and selfish it sounds to hear so may people wailing that they aren't getting enough icing? Is it justification for stealing said icing?
Sure, the RIAA are greedy pigs, but it's downright gluttonous to think that one is entitled to certain luxuries.
You are absolutely correct. Why break the law pirating software when GPL/BSD is clamoring to help you for free?
And criminy. Music is not a survival necessity. It's ENTERTAINMENT. Believe it or not, life will go on if you have to actually pay money for it.
I find it interesting that no Windows user can make their machine do what mine can for the price I paid without breaking the law. I have also noticed that most Windows users are pretty cavalier about pirating software. They have to be. Otherwise their machines are next to useless. When I moved to Linux, I gradually gained respect for other people's intellectual property. Perhaps it was the constant little reminders that somebody worked hard to put these GPL'ed tools into my hands--and I respect them tremendously for that. At any rate, I stopped pirating software. I think that if suddenly every pirated copy of any software suddenly disappeared off everyone's hard drives, the legal advantages of OSS would be made very apparent to a lot of end-users.
End software piracy! Use Open Source!
A computer/software services industry would thrive under Open Source in a way that has been all but impossible under Closed.
Under Non-Free Software, your support options are limited to the vendor (who may or may not care about your problem), or at best, a narrow range of large companies. The Closed Source system lends itself to monopolies because of this natural vendor lock-in.
If the computer/software economy and industry had a bed of Open Source software beneath it, free enterprise reigns supreme. Almost anyone could start a support organization and start making money. Anyone with enough programming background could start their own development-for-hire company. 75-85% of software jobs are for in-house, undistributed development & maintenance. That field can survive wonderfully under OSS.
All the while, the GPL protects the IP of those who worked on software, and still allows global cooperation and (incoming buzzword) innovation.
I believe hat it does make a difference whether the industry is dominated by open or closed software (maybe not a huge difference to IBM, but a world of difference to the rest of us). I also believe that OSS is best for the economy. I also believe IBM when they say the adoption of Open Source is inevitable. Read the news. It's happening almost everywhere. Asia alone makes things look VERY grim for Microsoft.
SCO's lawsuit is meaningless. Microsoft is irrelevant. Closed source software is a relic, an outdated get-rich-quick scheme that only benefited the software firms that were lucky, good at marketing, or both.
If things go the way the /. post suggests--yes. Absolutely yes. And this time it's to stamp out two or three competitors, rather than just one (Netscape).
However, I doubt the US will do anything about it. My hope lies in the EU. After the US anti-trust suit, MS started pumping campaign donations of millions of dollars into both political parties. If there's anyone left in the government who realizes we can do fine without Microsoft (outside Massachusetts), I shall be very surprised.
The US seems to be the only country on the planet which isn't completely annoyed by Microsoft.
But mandating OSS-only means the country is leaving behind the ridiculous and inefficient business model of "software-as-manufactured-good" for the sake of the economy. Choice is still preserved. There are several excellent Linux distros, a few flavors of BSD, and support organizations will probably sprout up all over the place. The Brazilians will have choice galore.
The Linux bigwigs really ought to be paying attention to schools. I'm glad RH and SuSE are finally making an effort.
It's been said before (and I'll say it again) that OSS is a perfect fit for schools. No licensing worries/overhead, ability to learn about and solve one's own problems, and freedom galore.
What's been holding Linux back in schools, however, is mainstream educational software. I'm studying to be a high school teacher and, somehow, learning HyperStudio is a "must". HyperStudio is designed for Wintel machines. It'll "work" on MacOS, and the content you make with it will "work" on Netscape 4, but it's obvious by the list of supported platforms that the company doesn't really care about anything other than IE and Windows.
If academic software companies started building their apps for OSS platforms (Linux, BSD, Darwin, Hurd if you want--I don't care), schools would switch in a heartbeat, especially since OpenOffice, Microsoft is no longer the document gatekeeper. If the elementary school where I tutor had a cheap way out of Win98/NetWare hell, they'd do it immediately.
Maybe we need Szulik to jump around in front of an Educational Software Conference shouting "Developers! Developers! Developers!"
When Microsoft does it it's easy to see as bad because time after time MS makes it quite obvious they do everything in the name of end-user lock-in. Microsoft gives its software away for the same reason a drug dealer gives away free samples. Once you go Microsoft, closed "standards" and all, it's hard to get out.
When RedHat and SuSE do it, it's a relief. First, OSS ought to be the software of acadamia. Second, the nature of OSS prevents that lock-in. Third, when you do pay for your OSS, you're getting support that someone's reputation/job is riding on. Microsoft doesn't give two shits whether or not the patches work properly on your machine.
You can't give a discount on free software, but you can discount support. That's why the $2500 support license comes with free copies for everyone and long-term patch access across the board. If I was a university (with a clue about technology) that'd be a nice deal.
sorry about the multipost. /. n00b.
If you read the WindowsXP EULA, you will find that Microsoft goes out of their way to make absolutely no guarantee to you, the spender of $300, that they will support Windows in any way, or that Microsoft is, in the slightest, responsible for Windows at all. They MAY provide patches, but those patches have no quality guarantee either. Whether you get support for Windows is ENTIRELY UP TO MICROSOFT. Personally, I don't want my company/school/PC depending more on MS's agenda than its/our/my own.
RedHat supplies support that they constantly bet their reputation on. If you don't like their service, there are plenty of other bidders. Besides, a University can buy the $2500 license and all students get free copies of RHWS and patch support.
There's a little more at stake here than money. On top of better support, you avoid the licensing red tape of dealing with proprietary software (nobody's going to audit you for piracy), and an OS that better lends itself to education.
You don't need to subscribe either. yum and apt are prefectly wonderful free options for staying up to date.
It gets far and away more complicated and involved as the seasons go on. It gets more serialized in Season 2; Season 3 broadens the scope considerably, and as you watch Season 4, you can feel the approaching series climax (which was originally intended to be at the end of a previously "guaranteed" Season 5). Throughout all of these, the psychological journey of John is (IMHO) the key part of the story's development and progression.