The previews of the opening scene were the only thing that got me to pay for it in the theatre. The rest of the movie was all right, but I agree with the other poster, the ending was really cheesy, and it could have been so much better.
I did love the scene with them and the aliens whose wings looked like cloaks. Very "Heavy Metal" or "Wizards" like.
Actually he is complaining about trying to use the product the way he wanted to use it. Obviously all of the license requirements, proprietary playback software, and the region requirements show that his use of it in another region is, by definition, a use not intended by the distributor.
Furthermore, it is also obvious that the intended use as defined by the distributor (who holds the only rights protected by any actual laws) is being circumvented by the author.
It this the way the world should work? Definately not, in my opinion. However, no media distributor has ever asked my opinion, and I seriosly doubt they care.
That only applies if you accept the dogma that hard work and dedication leads to advancement within your company. Personally, most of the places I've worked, the shape of your butt and your ability at witty conversation has far more to do with how fast you advance compared to whether you can actually do your job or not.
Actually that's exactly my point. Don't brag about what you are going to do. Until it's done, it's just dreams and desperate begging for venture capital.
You are absolutely right. He does not have one single shred of evidence to back up his wild postulations about multi-planet species.
I am sure you will join me in recommending that we immediatly fund a large, well organized effort to do further investigation into these so-called "colonizations", including multiple on-site visits, and perhaps permanent research stations to study any indigenous species we find during this effort.
CreatureComfort writes "Aerotech scientists are going to develop new flying cars made from chicken feathers. It opens up the possibility of cheaper and more power efficient public transportation, for use in wide area commuting and many other applications. Toyota recently announced plans to launch a vehicle based on a new flat-panel driving technology called SED (Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Drive) in 2005. Ford and others have been working for several years on another technology called FED (Field Emission Drive) but that too has yet to reach commercialization."
*Yawn**Cough**Cough**Cough* I think I'm allergic to all this vapor.
So... when you use one of these machines to start sending out your newsletter which discusses some issue you care about... say abortion (pro or con) or computer security (black-hat or white hat) or racial equality (pro or con) or gay rights (pro or con) or whatever, which is perfectly legal and protected by the constitution at this time, but which is deemed "hate speach" and "incitement" after a few more bills are passed in congress you're cool with the federal agents knocking on your door?
With the size reduction you could achieve, maybe not so big. Maybe with further advances we could have 1" square computers... and drop them in our Scotch... Imagine a Beowulf cluster of ice cubes in your Scotch... Hmm... heat dispersal problems... OK imagine a Beowulf cluster of ice cubes in your Hot Toddy.
But have looked around you on the subway lately? Escaping from reality and avoiding interaction with others seems like a good thing. Especially if it can distract me from the smells.
Six working computers in the house, 1 Linux Server, 1 OpenBSD. Four people in the house over age 3.
I make my 12 y.o., straight A student, son turn his computer off regularly. It's the only way I can get him to come show me how to get past those really hard missions in GTA:SA...
In addition to getting Code approval, the much larger hurdle is getting an insurance company to insure it. My dad and I looked into alternate building materials and methods a couple years ago. The local Code inspectors told us they would be very open to allowing any well researched building method or materials, and honestly seemed interested in learning about what was out there. We ran into real trouble when we started talking to insurance companies. Cob, straw, adobe, etc., if it wasn't a pre-approved national standard building method they refused to insure it. No discussion, no options, nothing, goodbye. It was pretty disheartening, especially since this was the second major project we had embarked on that was killed by the insurance industry. The first was a cool 4 person hovercraft. Designed and built it, works great, but can't get insurance on it, no insurance and can't get registration for it, boat or vehicle (didn't expect vehicle anyway, but we really wanted to take it out on the lake). In Texas you can't take an unregistered boat onto a public lake.
Yeah, the biggest problem we have in implementing SCATS, or its counterpart SCOOTS, or for that matter this guys suggestion, is in the traffic sensors and communications. To accurately model, in real-time, where cars actually are, how fast they are moving, and make some prediction on routing takes a huge amount of data collection and processing. Unfortunately, the sensors we have at our disposal currently, (inductive loops, microwave, video detection, infrared, etc.) are not reliable or consistent enough to collect all of this data, and are not currently widespread enough to provide the information needed. One of the first things a City faces when they decide they want a truly adaptive system is the fact that they need to at a minimum triple the number of sensors they already have (usually it's more to the tune of 10-20 times increase). The problem with this is threefold. First, just the expense of installing not only the new sensors but communications to all of them is non-trivial. In fact, in many cases it can far exceed the rest of the system combined. Add to that the fact that in a typical City approximately 30%-40% of the loops are non-functional due to failures to begin with and you start having major trouble. I'm lucky, in my City the field crews manage to keep our failed loops under 10%, but we spend a lot of time and money monitoring and repairing them. The third aspect of all of this, is that in a simulation you can place the sensors anywhere in relation to the signal they are giving information to. When trying to actually implement a real-world system, you find that frequently you need sensors farther away from the signal than the closest next signal, and certainly farther away than the nearest cross street/driveway. This leads to problems of communications across major intersections, communications between major intersections (to monitor if all the cars that were approaching actually went through or did they turn), and route projection to alert intersections along the new path of vehicles. With more than a few signals this rapidly breaks down, and with any type of grid system the best traffic models we have today never acheive stable progression. It has been tried over and over across the world, with significant progress in the Scandanavian countries, but still, to my knowledge, no one has a working fully adaptive system. At best the adaptive system is used only when the streets are at less than 50% capacity, as soon as traffic rises higher than that, they all end up going to fixed cycle length operation. Even in this operation, which is what most City's use today, sensors can help though. By guaranteeing a green window, or "band", to the major street, and only going to the side street outside of that band and when a car is detected, and returning to the main street as soon as the side street detects that no more cars are waiting, you can maximize the through put of your major streets. The problems arise when you have two major roads that cross, also if someone turns off a side street, and is not in the green band on the major street they will get stopped at at least one red light, and possibly several (due to the side streets returning early) until they are in the green band on the major street.
I'm using TB 0.9. I have it configured to load each account into it's own mailfolder, and I have a filter that copies each new message received into the general mail inbox. I could just have easily set it up in the opposite manner and had everything delivered to general mail and copied to individual folders based on the account, or used either delivery type stand alone. It works great.
Exactly, the heritage of our culture is disappearing, not because it is worthless (although that is rapidly becoming true) but because the legal methods of preserving it are constrained to the point they can not keep up, meanwhile the multitudes who could, and are willing, to maintain the burden of keeping these records are demonized and criminalized by the organizations responsible for maximizing the profits of the rights holders.
I personally am willing and able to maintain several hundred gigabytes of artistic merit for as long as I can. But, not having a large endowment to guarantee perpetual preservation, the best I could do would be to share what I can, and spread as many copies as I can, so that if my archive disappears, then at least others may maintain public access. However, with the current legal tactics available to the production houses, and supported and supplied by the government, the best I can do is weep for the beauty and truth that is being lost every day and which my children will never have the chance to know.
Comcast has an automated policy that if you send/receive some significant number of emails in some short time, it will block all message from that email address. When I setup my new firewall I made the mistake of telling it to email me on every identified attack instead of just once per day. This ended up immediately issuing 6-10 emails per minute, and I didn't catch it until about 30-45 minutes later. The damage was already done. Three months later and I still can't get Comcast to unblock that email address. At least the wonderfully intelligent and helpful customer service rep on the phone was able to give me a new email addy to start using...
Consider all the properties that were copyrighted in 1928, books, films, photograps, sheet music, etc., how many survive in print, how many survive at all? We have Steamboat Willy because it was and remains in Disney's interest to preserve it.
That proves the parent poster's arguement exactly. How many of those works survive today? How many more would have survived had even one of the works fans been allowed to keep and distribute copies in the public domain, despite there being no commercial incentive to the original creators to maintain distribution?
But the worst part is that we the people don't stop them.
100 million people on Kazaa and Bittorrent say your wrong. If I play a game, and you change the rules to say no matter what I do I can't win, I'll just take my toys someplace else and play with people that I agree with.
Of course, if you're the neighborhood bully you'll prowl the streets and alleyways trying to find me and my friends to beat us up, but that just means we have to keep ahead of you and keep hidden as much as possible. Pretty much the lifestory of geekdom.
No, I'm saying good art doesn't need a copyright, because people will pay for it anyway. And I couldn't care less if bad artists were compensated or not.
How do you distinguish good from bad... easy. Good is the stuff that people pay for willingly without the coercion of copyright laws.
Arguably the vast majority of the greatest works of mankind in any art form have been produced/performed/developed prior to the sad invention of copyright law. This world would be a far richer, more diverse, and more creative place if the bad and mediocre were not supported by stupid laws protecting them. They would die out or perform there acts of creation in private and isolation inflicting their pathetic attempts only on poor relatives that can not avoid their recitals. Meanwhile, good artists will be appreciated and paid by an appreciative public that actually has a choice in what they prefer, rather than having some marketing jerks idea of what should be popular shoved down their throat.
As an example, there is an incredible CD produced by George Martin (producer for the Beatles) called "In My Life". None of the major chain stores in the area has carried it for over a year. Two won't even attempt to order it, because it's not in their SKU list anymore, and the two others, including Virgin Megastore, say they would put in a request, but with no guarantee of when or if it would actually arrive, and likely estimates of 6-8 weeks. Since I am wanting to give copies for Xmas, that wouldn't work. I actually found it on Amazon, but even they put a delay on the order until they could get it filled. Now, not being an adherent to the idea of copyright, I could have just ripped and burned the CD I wanted, even re-created the disk label and cover art, and it would have been much easier. However, being a strong believer that a good artist deserves whatever form of recognition I can give them, I spent 2 weeks hunting down a source and order and paying for 3 copies to give away this Xmas.
Now the music houses decided that it wasn't "pop" enough to get any advertising or airplay, so it quietly died. Every friend I have played it for, however, has gone nuts over it ans wanted a copy. Meanwhile in my searching for this art, I walked past aisle after aisle of generic garbage, listening to whatever the latest "fad" sound is being blasted over the in-store speaker system. If today's artists are so good, why do they have to pay radio stations to play them?
Hmmm... if we changed the temps a bit we could have the 1 69 club... and be doing something in the sauna before running through the snow and inevitable biological effects of the cold on the male anatomy.
Apparently you live in a better world than most of us. Just about all of the "art" produced by the major motion picture studios is sensationalistic garbage or sentimental drivel. Copyright law helps fuel this descent to mediocrity by protecting income on poorly done junk and since poorly done is generally so much cheaper than well made, we get nothing but what the studios think they can make a fast buck on. Yes, if copyright was stong and stongly enforced, we would have to pay the $8 to see a one time flop for "entertainment" value and we would never see it a second time or bother to buy a DVD. With file sharing, I stay away from the more marginal offerings in the theatres and if I do want to check one out I'll download it for free, watch it once, and then delete it, or check it out from my local library. If it turns out to be something worth while I'll go buy the DVD.
For actual pieces of "art", I gladly pay. All three of the LOTR movies qualify, for me, on that account. I saw all three in the theatres at least twice each, I downloaded them from bit torrent to watch at home and pre-ordered the extended editions as soon as pre-ordering was availabe. For a quality storyline and production the studio made every bit of the money they would have made copyright or no.
So in contradiction to your statement, strong copyright only fosters the degradation and propping up of marginal and poor art, while good art will prosper whether it is protected or not. People are generally more than willing to pay a fair price for a quality product. What we all object to is being forced to pay a ridiculous price for a lousy product, just to protect some moron multi-millionaires next pet project.
Slashdot Mirror
The previews of the opening scene were the only thing that got me to pay for it in the theatre. The rest of the movie was all right, but I agree with the other poster, the ending was really cheesy, and it could have been so much better.
I did love the scene with them and the aliens whose wings looked like cloaks. Very "Heavy Metal" or "Wizards" like.
The real question is...
Who do the Poles make fun of?
Actually he is complaining about trying to use the product the way he wanted to use it. Obviously all of the license requirements, proprietary playback software, and the region requirements show that his use of it in another region is, by definition, a use not intended by the distributor.
Furthermore, it is also obvious that the intended use as defined by the distributor (who holds the only rights protected by any actual laws) is being circumvented by the author.
It this the way the world should work? Definately not, in my opinion. However, no media distributor has ever asked my opinion, and I seriosly doubt they care.
Any story that begins with the destruction of the Earth, almost has to be good.
That only applies if you accept the dogma that hard work and dedication leads to advancement within your company. Personally, most of the places I've worked, the shape of your butt and your ability at witty conversation has far more to do with how fast you advance compared to whether you can actually do your job or not.
Actually that's exactly my point. Don't brag about what you are going to do. Until it's done, it's just dreams and desperate begging for venture capital.
I like your sig for that post BTW.
You are absolutely right. He does not have one single shred of evidence to back up his wild postulations about multi-planet species.
I am sure you will join me in recommending that we immediatly fund a large, well organized effort to do further investigation into these so-called "colonizations", including multiple on-site visits, and perhaps permanent research stations to study any indigenous species we find during this effort.
CreatureComfort writes "Aerotech scientists are going to develop new flying cars made from chicken feathers. It opens up the possibility of cheaper and more power efficient public transportation, for use in wide area commuting and many other applications. Toyota recently announced plans to launch a vehicle based on a new flat-panel driving technology called SED (Surface-conduction Electron-emitter Drive) in 2005. Ford and others have been working for several years on another technology called FED (Field Emission Drive) but that too has yet to reach commercialization."
*Yawn**Cough**Cough**Cough* I think I'm allergic to all this vapor.
So... when you use one of these machines to start sending out your newsletter which discusses some issue you care about... say abortion (pro or con) or computer security (black-hat or white hat) or racial equality (pro or con) or gay rights (pro or con) or whatever, which is perfectly legal and protected by the constitution at this time, but which is deemed "hate speach" and "incitement" after a few more bills are passed in congress you're cool with the federal agents knocking on your door?
With the size reduction you could achieve, maybe not so big. Maybe with further advances we could have 1" square computers... and drop them in our Scotch... Imagine a Beowulf cluster of ice cubes in your Scotch... Hmm... heat dispersal problems... OK imagine a Beowulf cluster of ice cubes in your Hot Toddy.
obligatory...
Get your MIT off my TIT!
But have looked around you on the subway lately? Escaping from reality and avoiding interaction with others seems like a good thing. Especially if it can distract me from the smells.
One word people... deodorant.
Or at least HP and others provide much more packaging.
Or my current personal favorite variation...
"Give a man a fire; you keep him warm for a night. Set a man on fire; you keep him warm the rest of his life."
Six working computers in the house, 1 Linux Server, 1 OpenBSD. Four people in the house over age 3.
I make my 12 y.o., straight A student, son turn his computer off regularly. It's the only way I can get him to come show me how to get past those really hard missions in GTA:SA...
In addition to getting Code approval, the much larger hurdle is getting an insurance company to insure it. My dad and I looked into alternate building materials and methods a couple years ago. The local Code inspectors told us they would be very open to allowing any well researched building method or materials, and honestly seemed interested in learning about what was out there. We ran into real trouble when we started talking to insurance companies. Cob, straw, adobe, etc., if it wasn't a pre-approved national standard building method they refused to insure it. No discussion, no options, nothing, goodbye. It was pretty disheartening, especially since this was the second major project we had embarked on that was killed by the insurance industry. The first was a cool 4 person hovercraft. Designed and built it, works great, but can't get insurance on it, no insurance and can't get registration for it, boat or vehicle (didn't expect vehicle anyway, but we really wanted to take it out on the lake). In Texas you can't take an unregistered boat onto a public lake.
Yeah, the biggest problem we have in implementing SCATS, or its counterpart SCOOTS, or for that matter this guys suggestion, is in the traffic sensors and communications. To accurately model, in real-time, where cars actually are, how fast they are moving, and make some prediction on routing takes a huge amount of data collection and processing. Unfortunately, the sensors we have at our disposal currently, (inductive loops, microwave, video detection, infrared, etc.) are not reliable or consistent enough to collect all of this data, and are not currently widespread enough to provide the information needed. One of the first things a City faces when they decide they want a truly adaptive system is the fact that they need to at a minimum triple the number of sensors they already have (usually it's more to the tune of 10-20 times increase). The problem with this is threefold. First, just the expense of installing not only the new sensors but communications to all of them is non-trivial. In fact, in many cases it can far exceed the rest of the system combined. Add to that the fact that in a typical City approximately 30%-40% of the loops are non-functional due to failures to begin with and you start having major trouble. I'm lucky, in my City the field crews manage to keep our failed loops under 10%, but we spend a lot of time and money monitoring and repairing them. The third aspect of all of this, is that in a simulation you can place the sensors anywhere in relation to the signal they are giving information to. When trying to actually implement a real-world system, you find that frequently you need sensors farther away from the signal than the closest next signal, and certainly farther away than the nearest cross street/driveway. This leads to problems of communications across major intersections, communications between major intersections (to monitor if all the cars that were approaching actually went through or did they turn), and route projection to alert intersections along the new path of vehicles. With more than a few signals this rapidly breaks down, and with any type of grid system the best traffic models we have today never acheive stable progression. It has been tried over and over across the world, with significant progress in the Scandanavian countries, but still, to my knowledge, no one has a working fully adaptive system. At best the adaptive system is used only when the streets are at less than 50% capacity, as soon as traffic rises higher than that, they all end up going to fixed cycle length operation. Even in this operation, which is what most City's use today, sensors can help though. By guaranteeing a green window, or "band", to the major street, and only going to the side street outside of that band and when a car is detected, and returning to the main street as soon as the side street detects that no more cars are waiting, you can maximize the through put of your major streets. The problems arise when you have two major roads that cross, also if someone turns off a side street, and is not in the green band on the major street they will get stopped at at least one red light, and possibly several (due to the side streets returning early) until they are in the green band on the major street.
What's incorrect about it?
I'm using TB 0.9. I have it configured to load each account into it's own mailfolder, and I have a filter that copies each new message received into the general mail inbox. I could just have easily set it up in the opposite manner and had everything delivered to general mail and copied to individual folders based on the account, or used either delivery type stand alone. It works great.
Exactly, the heritage of our culture is disappearing, not because it is worthless (although that is rapidly becoming true) but because the legal methods of preserving it are constrained to the point they can not keep up, meanwhile the multitudes who could, and are willing, to maintain the burden of keeping these records are demonized and criminalized by the organizations responsible for maximizing the profits of the rights holders.
I personally am willing and able to maintain several hundred gigabytes of artistic merit for as long as I can. But, not having a large endowment to guarantee perpetual preservation, the best I could do would be to share what I can, and spread as many copies as I can, so that if my archive disappears, then at least others may maintain public access. However, with the current legal tactics available to the production houses, and supported and supplied by the government, the best I can do is weep for the beauty and truth that is being lost every day and which my children will never have the chance to know.
Comcast has an automated policy that if you send/receive some significant number of emails in some short time, it will block all message from that email address. When I setup my new firewall I made the mistake of telling it to email me on every identified attack instead of just once per day. This ended up immediately issuing 6-10 emails per minute, and I didn't catch it until about 30-45 minutes later. The damage was already done. Three months later and I still can't get Comcast to unblock that email address. At least the wonderfully intelligent and helpful customer service rep on the phone was able to give me a new email addy to start using...
That proves the parent poster's arguement exactly. How many of those works survive today? How many more would have survived had even one of the works fans been allowed to keep and distribute copies in the public domain, despite there being no commercial incentive to the original creators to maintain distribution?
100 million people on Kazaa and Bittorrent say your wrong. If I play a game, and you change the rules to say no matter what I do I can't win, I'll just take my toys someplace else and play with people that I agree with.
Of course, if you're the neighborhood bully you'll prowl the streets and alleyways trying to find me and my friends to beat us up, but that just means we have to keep ahead of you and keep hidden as much as possible. Pretty much the lifestory of geekdom.
No, I'm saying good art doesn't need a copyright, because people will pay for it anyway. And I couldn't care less if bad artists were compensated or not.
How do you distinguish good from bad... easy. Good is the stuff that people pay for willingly without the coercion of copyright laws.
Arguably the vast majority of the greatest works of mankind in any art form have been produced/performed/developed prior to the sad invention of copyright law. This world would be a far richer, more diverse, and more creative place if the bad and mediocre were not supported by stupid laws protecting them. They would die out or perform there acts of creation in private and isolation inflicting their pathetic attempts only on poor relatives that can not avoid their recitals. Meanwhile, good artists will be appreciated and paid by an appreciative public that actually has a choice in what they prefer, rather than having some marketing jerks idea of what should be popular shoved down their throat.
As an example, there is an incredible CD produced by George Martin (producer for the Beatles) called "In My Life". None of the major chain stores in the area has carried it for over a year. Two won't even attempt to order it, because it's not in their SKU list anymore, and the two others, including Virgin Megastore, say they would put in a request, but with no guarantee of when or if it would actually arrive, and likely estimates of 6-8 weeks. Since I am wanting to give copies for Xmas, that wouldn't work. I actually found it on Amazon, but even they put a delay on the order until they could get it filled. Now, not being an adherent to the idea of copyright, I could have just ripped and burned the CD I wanted, even re-created the disk label and cover art, and it would have been much easier. However, being a strong believer that a good artist deserves whatever form of recognition I can give them, I spent 2 weeks hunting down a source and order and paying for 3 copies to give away this Xmas.
Now the music houses decided that it wasn't "pop" enough to get any advertising or airplay, so it quietly died. Every friend I have played it for, however, has gone nuts over it ans wanted a copy. Meanwhile in my searching for this art, I walked past aisle after aisle of generic garbage, listening to whatever the latest "fad" sound is being blasted over the in-store speaker system. If today's artists are so good, why do they have to pay radio stations to play them?
Hmmm... if we changed the temps a bit we could have the 1 69 club... and be doing something in the sauna before running through the snow and inevitable biological effects of the cold on the male anatomy.
Apparently you live in a better world than most of us. Just about all of the "art" produced by the major motion picture studios is sensationalistic garbage or sentimental drivel. Copyright law helps fuel this descent to mediocrity by protecting income on poorly done junk and since poorly done is generally so much cheaper than well made, we get nothing but what the studios think they can make a fast buck on. Yes, if copyright was stong and stongly enforced, we would have to pay the $8 to see a one time flop for "entertainment" value and we would never see it a second time or bother to buy a DVD. With file sharing, I stay away from the more marginal offerings in the theatres and if I do want to check one out I'll download it for free, watch it once, and then delete it, or check it out from my local library. If it turns out to be something worth while I'll go buy the DVD.
For actual pieces of "art", I gladly pay. All three of the LOTR movies qualify, for me, on that account. I saw all three in the theatres at least twice each, I downloaded them from bit torrent to watch at home and pre-ordered the extended editions as soon as pre-ordering was availabe. For a quality storyline and production the studio made every bit of the money they would have made copyright or no.
So in contradiction to your statement, strong copyright only fosters the degradation and propping up of marginal and poor art, while good art will prosper whether it is protected or not. People are generally more than willing to pay a fair price for a quality product. What we all object to is being forced to pay a ridiculous price for a lousy product, just to protect some moron multi-millionaires next pet project.