Look. There are ALREADY portable digital players out there with more features for less price that work with Windows only. Killing the iPod involved creating a sleek, hip player with a simple, intuitive interface, and an integrated content provider which has all of the same characteristics. iPods look cool and work well; iTunes is easy to use and has the fairest DRM out there. And the way iTunes is blowing away everyone else shows we want to buy our music easily and own it, not rent it.
Someday there might well be a product that comes around that is more hip than the iPod. I'm pretty sure about two things, 1) It won't try to cram a bazillion features into an ugly product (Oragami?) and 2) Microsoft probably won't be responsible.
What this poster lacks is an understanding of what a director does. Textures, setting, lighting, framing the shot, cutting together shots into a cohesive whole, perhaps overseeing design of the sets and effects. These are the oils on a director's palette. While Jackson along with Fran Walsh also wrote the screen play, you can't fault him a a director. The fluidity of the piece, as well as the framing, and even the consistency of the size of the animal relative to the world is completely superior to the original, and nearly every frame is beautiful and a photograph on it's own right. That does actually take an imaginative director, especially when "imagining" a fairly naked shot with so many elements to be put in later.
I think the fertility of Jackson's imagination is not really in question.
Except that you forget the USTPO is constantly high on crack, and are close to granting Microsoft a patent for operating systems for use on a computer.
I have to agree. For this historic occasion could they have picked a sh**ier movie? Sony Pictures has a HUGE catalog of titles. I mean, even the complete first season of Fantasy Island would have been a better choice
I became a man of faith AFTER being a smug, self righteous atheist like you. For all your strong language, you are hardly convincing. Some I'm psychotic, like 96A% of the world's population. So, you must be special. And as I recall, special people rode the short bus.
Luckily you are not my "momma", or else your theory of evolution would be disproved.
Well, since we are getting personal, there isn't a fact in your whole damn post. Just personal attacks against me and my belief. I'm surprised you even logged in to post it. Why don't you go join some Darwinistic Jihad or something.
That "gravitational influence" could be caused by any wild fantasy you could come up with. The fact is, no one knows why it happens and the concept of dark matter was INVENTED to try and explain it. No one has seen dark matter and it's only vague inference of proof it has is some computer models. Big deal, a computer model also worked out all the physics that allowed Mr. Incredible to battle a giant robot and it looked great. Still, it's no more real or proven that the tooth fairy. Until it is, just back of with your hard rhetoric. You are obviously unqualified to make judgments on what is dumb and what isn't.
You so called "Pure Science" guys can be so full of it that it's hysterical.
Look, you guys come up with stuff like "Dark Matter" which is theoretical type of matter that does not conform in any way to what we know about matter. It's invisible to any form of detection that we have ever devised, and yet, it MUST be there. If that isn't meta-physical, I don't know what the heck is.
And yet, you poo-poo the idea of Intelligent Design, when you can point to primitive but real examples of "intelligent design" that we have done, right here on earth today. What about mice, altered from nature, to suit our research purposes? How is that not intelligent design.
A guy in an earlier post said, given enough time, he could breed wingless fruit flies. He meant this to be an example of evolution, but it isn't. It's an outside force acting on matter to produce something new.
These new fruit flies, if capable of such thoughts, would rightfully view this guy as their creator. With abilities far beyond their potential, abilities that would be far outside the realm of natural to them, they would rightfully describe this guy as a god.
Now a good many of you have no problem imagining a race of beings far advanced from humans. They could have come down here, seeded this planet with DNA, and created life here via intelligent design. Many of you would have no problem with that. But to make the relatively small leap of faith required to say that instead a race of beings, it was a single, eternal being, with abilities so far outside of what we can do and what we consider natural, that we should rightfully consider him a god is abhorrent to you.
I freely admit that my world view is governed by unproven, unprovable faith. For you to claim otherwise is hypocrisy and maybe even hubris.
The line is simple. Blindingly simple. At one point they are two cells. At another they become one that is dividing and growing. You can argue all you want, as if it weakens my case, that it's all a potential person, from meeting to mating to the physical act. And that may be true. But at conception, that reality moves from philosophical to physical. It's really a stretch (and one you have to really WANT to or NEED to stretch at that) to blur that line.
I'm afraid that's a hasty generalization. A sperm or an egg, if left to their own biological devices, will simply die off and either be passed from, or be reabsorbed by, the body. But the union of sperm and egg begins to divide and grow into a human being, making them fundamentally different from a lone sperm or a lone egg. Regardless of your stance on the viability of the zygote as a human life, you cannot accurately say that contraception is the same thing as an abortion. One is preventing a process from ever starting, the other is terminating a process already in motion.
I'm VERY much a "fair play", "do the right thing" kind of guy. So I am a bit surprised by the level of searing hatred I am developing for the RIAA. I guess they'd only really be satisfied if all of our listening devices were coin-op (or maybe dollar-op?).
The truth is that most of us have lived ALL of our lived being assaulted by music at every turn. Restaurants, stores, outdoor events, commercials.... We are used to having it everywhere and NOW they think we should pay for it all. In parenting, we are taught (those of us who were taught) that you need shelter your children when they are young, because when they become teenagers, it's impossible to "clamp down" on them if you let them have total freedom before that. Same concept. You can't give it away all our lives and then try to clamp down because you don't like the technology. As wrong as I think it is, the file sharing rebellion is a fairly natural expression in the wake of the new "out of nowhere" RIAA oppression. When all avenues are exhausted, I'm sure you'll have some rebels burning hundreds of copies of CDs and leaving them on street corners just out of resentment.
The RIAA should instead focus on those of us who have been buyers of music all our lives, and start trying to make us VERY happy so we KEEP buying. Messing with XM radio and the iTunes pricing schedule is a good way to make me sympathetic to pirates.
Thank you for seeing the point. It was apparently lost by just about everyone else.
Science really cannot prove that reindeer do not fly. Take a reindeer, throw it off a roof. It falls to the ground. All you can say with certainty is this reindeer, on this occasion, either could not, or choose not to fly.
Do it a hundred more times and all you have is that, with the assumption that reindeer are not INSANE, there is a probability that reindeer cannot fly. And it only takes one flying reindeer to shoot all this science to hell.
Therefore, the best science can ever say is "with the data we currently have, with the factors we currently understand and can observe, it appears that life has evolved in complexity through a process of mutation and natural selection."... and, I would add to that "We do not really understand how that process might have occurred, nor have we been able to observe or repeat it on the scale it appears to have happened."
Any thing beyond that is absolutely, with out a doubt FAITH. I don't care if you are an Atheist or not.
Well, I will point out that the various theories of Creation in the last few hundred years has been far more stable than any scientific theory put forward.
Perhaps it would be better if science types started using rhetoric like "We Think" or "We Believe" instead of "We now know..." I mean, the version of Darwinism that was taught in my school has pretty much been shot to heck, but my Biology teacher sure enough said, "This is how it happened."
Just thought for debate, not fuel for the fire.
Also, I can't seem to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster as I have yet to find any historical or archeological evidence to support the revelation. Surely anyone who believes in any Deity should be able to give examples of it's work on the history of man.
At the original quality? Yes, there was no easy way. Tape copies were markedly inferior. You remember that from when we were kids, right? The problem the RIAA initially had with MP3 was that it approached CD quality, which made it's bootlegs attractive even to those who care about the quality of their music. Also coupled with Napster, it made the causal user potentially a threat similar to the big dupe houses in China and Mexico.
A tape deck did none of this.
Ah-HA! Yes, but Frito Lay only commits a finite number of chips to the bag, thus LIMITING the amount of free sharing that can be done. When CDs were first introduced, this finite limitation was built in to the media, as there was no easy way to copy it. Your friend could have your CD or you could have it, but you couldn't both have it.
While this model is changing, most major label artist are still contracted under the agreement that they will receive x amount of dollars (yes, in decimal) per unit.
You analogy would have programers paid in full for their creativity and the effort of their data entry after the first unit sold. So, you don't pay for shareware either?
Hey, Hunts doesn't put ketchup on the shelves, so alright, free ketchup!
Hey, I love the dream world guys like you live in, but it only really works when we create a society that doesn't require we pay for our basic needs. As long as I need to pay rent, buy food and buy clothes, I am going to have to charge for any art I create, and also protect my rights for it's reuse because rent comes up every month and food every day.
You let me know as soon as you get Utopia worked out, I'll sign right up.
so... in summation, you don't think anyone should be able to have a creative vocation. I mean, Frito-Lay gets paid for every chip they make. Why shouldn't I get paid for every copy of a song I write? If indie music had the same demand as Industry acts, I might agree that agree with the assertion that DRM is bunk. But people WANT Brittany Spears and 50 Cent, and those acts cost real money to put on.
So, Apple managed to come up with a pretty agreeable DRM plan, more flexible and fair than any before it. You seem to think it sucks. How would YOU propose it get done?
I mean, if you want a DRM hero, isn't the EFF a better role model than this guy? Yeah, we might all hate DRM, but this guy really is breaking an agreement HE MADE to access the iTMS. I'm not really impressed with his sense of ethics. If I borrow your gun and promise not to shoot you, then I DO shoot you to protest gun laws, how is that even a little right? So, don't attack my analogy, tell me why it was OK for him to lie to Apple and say that he WOULD respect their DRM and then turn around and crack it. Simple... it's NOT right.
...and check out that stellar typing. And spell check couldn't even save me.
I don't remember bringing up oil companies, but since they came up, I'm pretty sure I remember the fine for the Exxon Valdez spill being more that $155,000. Fines proportionate to wealth. It's not perfect, but that's the model.
Slashdot Mirror
Someday there might well be a product that comes around that is more hip than the iPod. I'm pretty sure about two things, 1) It won't try to cram a bazillion features into an ugly product (Oragami?) and 2) Microsoft probably won't be responsible.
That may be THE funniest slashdot post ever! I, for one, welcome our executable jpeg masters.
And then after the umpteenth time on Digg, it'll make the slashdot front page the next day.
I think the fertility of Jackson's imagination is not really in question.
Ten Bucks? Sure! Unless, of course, you meant to type a comma, which takes it out of my price range.
Except that you forget the USTPO is constantly high on crack, and are close to granting Microsoft a patent for operating systems for use on a computer.
I have to agree. For this historic occasion could they have picked a sh**ier movie? Sony Pictures has a HUGE catalog of titles. I mean, even the complete first season of Fantasy Island would have been a better choice
Luckily you are not my "momma", or else your theory of evolution would be disproved.
Yes, those delusions are comforting. Like some mythical explosion that created all life devoid of moral responsibility perhaps?
That "gravitational influence" could be caused by any wild fantasy you could come up with. The fact is, no one knows why it happens and the concept of dark matter was INVENTED to try and explain it. No one has seen dark matter and it's only vague inference of proof it has is some computer models. Big deal, a computer model also worked out all the physics that allowed Mr. Incredible to battle a giant robot and it looked great. Still, it's no more real or proven that the tooth fairy. Until it is, just back of with your hard rhetoric. You are obviously unqualified to make judgments on what is dumb and what isn't.
Look, you guys come up with stuff like "Dark Matter" which is theoretical type of matter that does not conform in any way to what we know about matter. It's invisible to any form of detection that we have ever devised, and yet, it MUST be there. If that isn't meta-physical, I don't know what the heck is.
And yet, you poo-poo the idea of Intelligent Design, when you can point to primitive but real examples of "intelligent design" that we have done, right here on earth today. What about mice, altered from nature, to suit our research purposes? How is that not intelligent design.
A guy in an earlier post said, given enough time, he could breed wingless fruit flies. He meant this to be an example of evolution, but it isn't. It's an outside force acting on matter to produce something new.
These new fruit flies, if capable of such thoughts, would rightfully view this guy as their creator. With abilities far beyond their potential, abilities that would be far outside the realm of natural to them, they would rightfully describe this guy as a god.
Now a good many of you have no problem imagining a race of beings far advanced from humans. They could have come down here, seeded this planet with DNA, and created life here via intelligent design. Many of you would have no problem with that. But to make the relatively small leap of faith required to say that instead a race of beings, it was a single, eternal being, with abilities so far outside of what we can do and what we consider natural, that we should rightfully consider him a god is abhorrent to you.
I freely admit that my world view is governed by unproven, unprovable faith. For you to claim otherwise is hypocrisy and maybe even hubris.
The line is simple. Blindingly simple. At one point they are two cells. At another they become one that is dividing and growing. You can argue all you want, as if it weakens my case, that it's all a potential person, from meeting to mating to the physical act. And that may be true. But at conception, that reality moves from philosophical to physical. It's really a stretch (and one you have to really WANT to or NEED to stretch at that) to blur that line.
I'm afraid that's a hasty generalization. A sperm or an egg, if left to their own biological devices, will simply die off and either be passed from, or be reabsorbed by, the body. But the union of sperm and egg begins to divide and grow into a human being, making them fundamentally different from a lone sperm or a lone egg. Regardless of your stance on the viability of the zygote as a human life, you cannot accurately say that contraception is the same thing as an abortion. One is preventing a process from ever starting, the other is terminating a process already in motion.
I'm VERY much a "fair play", "do the right thing" kind of guy. So I am a bit surprised by the level of searing hatred I am developing for the RIAA. I guess they'd only really be satisfied if all of our listening devices were coin-op (or maybe dollar-op?).
The truth is that most of us have lived ALL of our lived being assaulted by music at every turn. Restaurants, stores, outdoor events, commercials.... We are used to having it everywhere and NOW they think we should pay for it all. In parenting, we are taught (those of us who were taught) that you need shelter your children when they are young, because when they become teenagers, it's impossible to "clamp down" on them if you let them have total freedom before that. Same concept. You can't give it away all our lives and then try to clamp down because you don't like the technology. As wrong as I think it is, the file sharing rebellion is a fairly natural expression in the wake of the new "out of nowhere" RIAA oppression. When all avenues are exhausted, I'm sure you'll have some rebels burning hundreds of copies of CDs and leaving them on street corners just out of resentment.
The RIAA should instead focus on those of us who have been buyers of music all our lives, and start trying to make us VERY happy so we KEEP buying. Messing with XM radio and the iTunes pricing schedule is a good way to make me sympathetic to pirates.
Science really cannot prove that reindeer do not fly. Take a reindeer, throw it off a roof. It falls to the ground. All you can say with certainty is this reindeer, on this occasion, either could not, or choose not to fly.
Do it a hundred more times and all you have is that, with the assumption that reindeer are not INSANE, there is a probability that reindeer cannot fly. And it only takes one flying reindeer to shoot all this science to hell.
Therefore, the best science can ever say is "with the data we currently have, with the factors we currently understand and can observe, it appears that life has evolved in complexity through a process of mutation and natural selection." ... and, I would add to that "We do not really understand how that process might have occurred, nor have we been able to observe or repeat it on the scale it appears to have happened."
Any thing beyond that is absolutely, with out a doubt FAITH. I don't care if you are an Atheist or not.
Well, I will point out that the various theories of Creation in the last few hundred years has been far more stable than any scientific theory put forward. Perhaps it would be better if science types started using rhetoric like "We Think" or "We Believe" instead of "We now know..." I mean, the version of Darwinism that was taught in my school has pretty much been shot to heck, but my Biology teacher sure enough said, "This is how it happened." Just thought for debate, not fuel for the fire. Also, I can't seem to believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster as I have yet to find any historical or archeological evidence to support the revelation. Surely anyone who believes in any Deity should be able to give examples of it's work on the history of man.
This AC obviously has waaaaaaaaaaaaaay to much time on his/her hands.
I had long suspected, but now it's confirmed. HP and Microsoft determining if I'm me. I think I'll just post my credit card number on Craig's list.
Absolutely. The video iPod can't be too far behind. Steve said the problem with video was a lack of legal content. Problem solved.
I mean, come on. If ever there was justifiable collateral damage, wouldn't this be damn near it.
At the original quality? Yes, there was no easy way. Tape copies were markedly inferior. You remember that from when we were kids, right? The problem the RIAA initially had with MP3 was that it approached CD quality, which made it's bootlegs attractive even to those who care about the quality of their music. Also coupled with Napster, it made the causal user potentially a threat similar to the big dupe houses in China and Mexico. A tape deck did none of this.
Ah-HA! Yes, but Frito Lay only commits a finite number of chips to the bag, thus LIMITING the amount of free sharing that can be done. When CDs were first introduced, this finite limitation was built in to the media, as there was no easy way to copy it. Your friend could have your CD or you could have it, but you couldn't both have it. While this model is changing, most major label artist are still contracted under the agreement that they will receive x amount of dollars (yes, in decimal) per unit. You analogy would have programers paid in full for their creativity and the effort of their data entry after the first unit sold. So, you don't pay for shareware either? Hey, Hunts doesn't put ketchup on the shelves, so alright, free ketchup! Hey, I love the dream world guys like you live in, but it only really works when we create a society that doesn't require we pay for our basic needs. As long as I need to pay rent, buy food and buy clothes, I am going to have to charge for any art I create, and also protect my rights for it's reuse because rent comes up every month and food every day. You let me know as soon as you get Utopia worked out, I'll sign right up.
so... in summation, you don't think anyone should be able to have a creative vocation. I mean, Frito-Lay gets paid for every chip they make. Why shouldn't I get paid for every copy of a song I write? If indie music had the same demand as Industry acts, I might agree that agree with the assertion that DRM is bunk. But people WANT Brittany Spears and 50 Cent, and those acts cost real money to put on. So, Apple managed to come up with a pretty agreeable DRM plan, more flexible and fair than any before it. You seem to think it sucks. How would YOU propose it get done?
I mean, if you want a DRM hero, isn't the EFF a better role model than this guy? Yeah, we might all hate DRM, but this guy really is breaking an agreement HE MADE to access the iTMS. I'm not really impressed with his sense of ethics. If I borrow your gun and promise not to shoot you, then I DO shoot you to protest gun laws, how is that even a little right? So, don't attack my analogy, tell me why it was OK for him to lie to Apple and say that he WOULD respect their DRM and then turn around and crack it. Simple... it's NOT right.
...and check out that stellar typing. And spell check couldn't even save me. I don't remember bringing up oil companies, but since they came up, I'm pretty sure I remember the fine for the Exxon Valdez spill being more that $155,000. Fines proportionate to wealth. It's not perfect, but that's the model.