Continuing that thought, one huge complaint has been shills placing reviews on sites like Amazon... Is that considered a "blog"?
How about audio podcasts?
They can't say "blog" and mean "the whole internet everywhere, every content bit"...
Did anyone read the article? I quote
Piracy, counterfeiting and other intellectual property rights violations not only cost U.S. businesses jobs and billions of dollars a year in lost revenue, they can also pose significant health and safety risks to consumers
Um...exactly how does a pirated PS3 game create a health or safety risk?
Now I can agree with what everyone here is saying "It's a minor upgrade, wait" and "you signed the contract, suck it up" BUT for one thing. I got the iPhone 3G the night of release. I checked today and I am eligible for a subsidized renewal for every phone EXCEPT the iPhone 3GS. AT&T's policy is after *11 months* you can renew and get a cheaper phone.
EXCEPT for the 3GS.
Now the reason for this is likely that AT&T is getting bent over by Apple and forced to offer a bigger subsidy for the 3GS and they don't WANT to let us upgrade, but if I wanted a Razr or whatever the hell other phone they sell AT&T would give me the FULL, NEW CONTRACT price because it's been 11 months since my last one.
actually this has been said by Lucas himself MANY times. His original script for Star Wars had a big battle on Kashyyyk with primitive Wookiees defeating the empire. But since he couldn't do that he kept in Chewbacca and made him an engineer/co-pilot. He felt when he got to Jedi that Wookiees were too sophisticated with electronics to make the point of primitive vs. technological so he created Ewoks. Wookiees are tall, Ewoks are short. Wookiees have long fur, Ewoks have short fur. And viola, a muppet was born.
We were just taken over by Comcast (we were Borged by Comcast?) and it's awful. They're already raising my rates 20%! They're my ONLY choice for broadband other than god-awful satellite but we will be going to DirecTV for television.
But these packages...really I only want about 20 channels and they're literally making me get 250.
A'la Carte TV HAS to happen...seriously it HAS to. How long must the people of America be bent over like this?
I was so excited when I heard the FCC was going to do something about it...I hope Congress succeeds where the FCC failed
This might perhaps be good for gaming, but the fact that it is curved makes me shudder at the thought of people doing, say, photoshop work on a naturally curved surface. Sure, having a 3' flat monitor would be hard to see, having it curved is going to make drawing a straight line, or anything other than gaming, really difficult I would think.
Moreover, I'm wondering if this will result in a fish-eye lens (or reverse fish-eye lens) effect even in games.
As for price...you can bet it will be steep, but Apple thinks they can charge $3k for a 32" monitor, so I'd expect a similar cost for a 36" monitor.
So inside jokes have no value? I refer to Denis Miller's 5% joke guideline where the majority of his jokes have to hit the mass audience but several of his more esoteric references are aimed at only the 5% of the audience who knows what he's talking about. If you're in the 95% you're confused, but if you're in the 5% then it's funny as all hell.
Obviously you have not been modded up for this very funny comment because no one has SEEN that South Park episode and, instead, thinks you're just trolling.
Actually he taught us this but told us "you can do this in the real world, but not in college. College is a 'worse than real world' scenario. In college you can't search the net, you can't ask your co-worker, and you can't extend your deadline."
Smart man, that. So no, I never got through any college assignments, programming or otherwise, by finding the answers on the 'net'. But it has helped me in the "real world."
You're saying there's an implicit copyright in every web post, then? So this post I'm typing now, if someone put it in a newsletter, I could then sue them for taking my post which is my copyright?
Moreover, again as I stated above, most code samples are found in online tutorials. They're THERE for the purpose of helping you code through a problem. They explain the code step by step and give you the code.
Finally, there's only so many ways to code something. Given that I doubt you will find full programs online, what people are taking are usually subroutines at most, a few lines of code to accomplish a specific task at least. When parsing it down to that small of a step, how many ways to write it are there?
From my own experience, how many ways are there to code a call to a specific Window handler in Access VBA? I had to look up 2 lines of code to do it, which I found in an online tutorial.
Final thought: If you aren't intended to use the code, why is it that most sites have a disclaimer at the bottom that says "Not liable for any problems you have when using this code"
When I was in grad school for programming my instructor taught us how to search for the code we needed on the web.
Moreover in my professional career as a programmer I ran into several stumbling blocks where I couldn't figure something out. I'd google for code, or use helper sites like Tek-Tips where people could either correct my code or provide me new code.
I'm paid for results, not for originality. If people provide code on the web as tutorial purposes or just as a friendly piece of help then I would be going against my job to not use it.
Moreover, I ask: If you bought a book on, say, ASP and it had sample code that did exactly what you wanted, would you then rewrite that code so it was not what was in the book? Of course you wouldn't!
Good point. Actually these posts just awakened the programmer in me that likes to work on stuff like this as if it were a Soduku.
Honestly it's too much trouble for me at this point. Just interesting to know how the stuff works.
Knowing that they're JPEGs makes me less impressed with the whole system. They're high res JPEGs but that means that I'm scaling them down and losing clarity on my system. Flash based reader or no, not the best out there.
I'll pay Marvel the $60/yr to read 'em online, but for my money the GIT Corp DVD compilations are far better options. Off-line reading, and you still have the DVDs even if GIT stops making them.
I have a feeling this Marvel service will be fleeting...in 5 years we'll be like "remember when Marvel tried to sell a subscription service to online only comics?"
Especially since they are putting stuff out there that's so RANDOM. Like issue 4 of a 6 issue series...WTF??? And they're only organized by series name.
And, to be totally truthful, their site has run FOR CRAP ever since it got/.ed. I'm considering asking for a refund given that I CAN NEVER READ ANY COMICS. I log in and I'm logged out in 3 minutes.
Holy schnikies! You scored it on a first attempt! Wireshark showed me that all the Marvel stuff is (get this) JPEG FORMAT! The viewer is just a JPEG loader and resizer.
So, geek master (and I mean that as an honor, not sarcasm)...I know perl and can automate the downloading of images where I know the directory (which Wireshark gave me), but not sure of a way to automate the grabbing of directory names (different directories for each comic). What I'm seeing is open each comic with Wireshark running, parse that file for directory names, and then pull the files down that way. But, as you said, why do manually what you can automate? Marvel's site is SOOOO slow right now (and I PAID for it!) that opening all the comics would take more than the year's subscription I paid for. But direct folder navigation is met with a 403 Forbidden.
Any suggestions?
Thanks for the wireshark tip, that right there has saved hours!
Good thought! It worked in the regard of I can get the programs to see the SWFs now...however Marvel's SWFs are locked down tight. It loads an easy-to-grab comic reader, but then the comics themselves are downloaded into the reader in some method that the SWF grabbers can't see...
Easy words. I, too, would write something to do it, a quick little web spider or something, however Marvel has this thing locked down TIGHT.
It loads a Flash-based player, easy enough to find that, but then the player loads the content. It's behind a black wall there, no way to get the URL. Additionally, every flash grabber I find shows me that the comics are made up of several flash file "elements", one has all the dialogue bubbles, one has art, etc. Recompositing these into a single file seems...overly difficult.
Quicker method seems to be the screengrab, but then of course you lose resolution and are limited by several factors..
I actually agree with you 100% in the fact that the music industry is, on the whole, messed up.
And given how much I used to spend on CDs I would happily even pay $50/mo for "all you can eat" downloads that never expire, no DRM, etc. But I am likely in the minority there, and the trick would be to discover the "sweet spot" of how much the majority of people would pay. But much like I spent $300/mo on CDs once, people now spend $300/mo on iTunes. They don't even notice, they download willy nilly and it just all goes to a credit card. So as long as there are people doing that there is no reason for iTunes to go subscription.
The only music model I currently can support as a practice is what Radiohead did--pay what you like.
My second runner-up is the iTunes no DRM for a buck, or Amazon's DRM-free download service. If I have to pay a buck for a song, I will buy it DRM free so that I can LEGALLY, and without the extra work of a hack, get a song.
Third runner-up is buying the regular CD. I did records in the '80s, CDs in the '90s. I can do that now, but for my money give me liner notes, give me cover art, give me that stupid video DVD that I will never put into a player in my life. But at least you're giving me something the buck-per-song DRMed files do not (plus as others here mentioned, you can rip the CDs into whatever you'd like).
And RIAA does prosecute people, but I don't share my music at all. They would be as likely to prosecute me for removing DRM from a WMA for personal use as they would be to prosecute me for ripping a CD to MP3 (which they also claim should be or is illegal, I forget). But while the judgment they won a few weeks back does make me fear for the future, it seems more and more like their legal options, as people fight back, are starting to slowly crumble.
I don't necessarily agree that Napster would go out of business if everyone stripped the DRM from the WMAs. The WMA DRM is defined, maintained, and enforced by Microsoft. Napster is using the protective measures agreed to by the record labels as they all seem to have an "In Microsoft We Trust" mentality (good for them; I guess they've never used Vista).
What would more likely happen if everyone stripped DMA is that Microsoft would update DMA so the current methods of stripping it didn't work. Then a clever hacker would strip it. And thus the cat-and-mouse game that we techies are all so familiar with begins again. (Insert the wail of the song Circle of Life here).
But as we techs bemoan every update Microsoft would make to DRM (until the next hack was released) Napster would still be bringing in the money.
I really hope this doesn't mean Napster (and Yahoo and the like) are taking away the "all you can eat" subscription service.
I am a Napster customer with the all you can eat model and I LOVE IT.
I am sorry, but I do not want to pay $0.99 for a DRMed music file that I can only use on so many systems, etc. This buck-for-a-song model has existed for far too long and I have only bought four songs this way, through iTunes, and all four were immediately burned to CD and ripped back so I could stip off that horrible DRM.
So with the buck-a-song model it made me do something that probably made RIAA very happy--I bought CDs. I'm sorry, but on a CD I get songs for less than a buck each (while there are some I won't like, there will also be gems I may never have heard had I not bought the CD) plus you get cover art, a media that's higher sound quality than a digital downloaded file. It just didn't make sense to me.
Then look at Napster. Suddenly I had a LEGAL world of music open up to me. I was able to explore the libraries of artists who are somewhat less popular. I'd never have spent $12 for their CDs, but a "Download Album" button had me pulling down every song I could find and listening to it.
Moreover, it is VERY easy to strip the DRM from a Napster WMA. I am an iPod user and Napster WMAs won't work with an iPod (though I wish Apple would relent and add that as a firmware/software upgrade to the iPod). So I use FairUse4WM and, bam, now I have MP3s that play on my iPod. I still pay the Napster music subscription every month and if I cancel I will delete all those MP3s. I'm only playing while I'm paying, so I'm playing by their rules.
This model has weened me from buying CDs altogether. I used to have a $200-$300 per month CD habit. I'm not kidding on that, I have over 3000 CDs and just kept buying every month. But with Napster I don't need CDs, I just get what I need from Napster. It's saving me THOUSANDS of dollars every year.
And my wife and I have very different music tastes. She used to not get music she liked becuase she didn't want to spend as much on CDs as I did. Now for one low monthly fee we both have all the music we want.
Sure, sometimes Napster is frustrating. I was looking for some songs on there that were "album only", "purchase only", or not available at all. It's not a silver bullet. But it is DAMN close.
If Napster doesn't see it as a growth business, that's because WMAs aren't a growth format. If you could do a subscription format that worked on iPods natively then you would have a model that would grow with each iPod sold. PlaysForSure??? If you're basing your business model off of Zune sales, well good luck with that!
But anyone who reads/. on a regular basis should know how to strip DRM from any file using free tools. Given that can be done so easily, I really think we should spread the word to our less tech-inclined friends and help these all you can eat services become a "growth model" lest they go away and RIAA can roll in the money of a buck per song again.
Lucas had said back when he was making The Phantom Menace that the ships in the OT all had a certain look to them that he wanted to get away from; he wanted the ships in the prequels to be more retro, like 50's sci-fi. Truthfully, reading that statement before the movie came out, I thought that you'd have flying saucers, etc. But he did return to the "rounded edges, mirrored survace" asthetic found more in old Flash Gordon serials, etc. with The Phantom Menace.
What he did (or more realistically, what the hired Art Design team did), and this was actually very smart, was he started over for The Phantom Menace. No real ties to the Star Wars universe we knew from 30-plus years later. (They did this with "Young(er) Yoda" too, though, with mixed results.) Then for the next two movies you got to see an evolution of styles, as ships transformed from what was seen in Episode I all the way to what was seen in Episode IV. So you got to see fighters that evolved from an older style to be the TIE Fighters and X-Wings of the original movies, etc.
My wife always found the Queen's all-chrome ship to be very cool, although if it were in space and all chrome it would simply reflect blackness and stars and not really look as silver as it did on screen. Me...I liked the design and thought the chrome was cool but not the end-all-be-all. I really do like the Arc fighters, AT-TEs, etc. of the early movies, though. Some of the vehicle designs are the best parts of the prequels (except for Darth Maul)
It looks sweet. If there's one thing I've learned doing our Star Wars Collecting Podcast it's that I have always underestimated the loyalty of the Star Wars Lego collector. I thought the people were cute, but would never have guessed how many would buy a $300 or $500 lego set.
Me, I'd rather spend that $500 on something that looks movie-accurate, like a ship from (now defunct) Code 3 Collectibles or (no longer holding the Star Wars license) Master Replicas, since to me Legos are kind of like a modern art...it looks like the Falcon but it still always looks like Legos. But that said I've spent several thousand on Lego sets for Star Wars and will eventually pick this one up. Someday. Hopefully for under $500
Is it possible? Of course it is, but is it easy? Not at all.
However you discuss journalism. I'm assuming from that statement that you are reporting other people's studies, findings, etc. In reporing this I would think you need to not be making your own assumptions but, instead, representing the assumptions of the researcher or scientist you are reporting about. Or, if you are reporting on the overall impacts of one person's work and utilizing assumptions based on your knowledge of other works, you should cite those as well.
Good journalism should encourage people to think, but it should also encourage people to learn more. If you are making assumptions, not only should those be clearly presented so you have impartial journalism, you should also allow for the foundation of that knowledge to be known.
When I studied journalism in school I was told that you start with the most important facts, and then devolve into the smaller details. This is what you should be doing in this case, I would think. A completely off-the-wall example I will cite is CNN's coverage of Michael Jackson's molestation trial a couple of years back. Daily they had updates on that trial, but every day they ended with a couple of paragraphs providing background on the story, telling the allegations, when they were made, etc. This meant that if you were reading about the trial for the first time the single article gave you all the knowledge you needed to understand the scope of that article, that you could further research this topic to discover more details about the charges, and summarize the high points thus far. Had you been reading daily and up to sepeed on all the events of the MJ trial, you read the top paragraphs with the new information and then skipped the bottom.
It seems to me that the journalism is possible but the classical principles of journalism need to be followed. Do that, and you should be good to go.
I am webmaster of swactionnews.com and reviewstarwars.com and I'd like to share this, which was posted on my site a few minutes ago:
Buy music for a cause (Amazon DRM free MP3s)
No, the cause isn't saving the Earth, helping the poor, etc. The cause is fair use of what you own.
For too long we have been slaves to the corporations who truly run this country. One of those enslavers has been RIAA, who has for almost a decade now tried to push an obsolete business model onto us. They sue with reckless abandon, suing 90 year old grandmothers and 12 year olds who don't know better. They call it theft, yet no one is being deprived of anything.
Now, I'm not an Apple die-hard, but God love Steve Jobs, for he has helped us to break the shackles of RIAA just like his 1984 commercial showed the working class breaking the shackles that bound them, for his iPod has become popular enough, and powerful enough, to wrest the arms of RIAA into allowing DRM free music.
What is DRM free music? Put simply, it's music you can do anything with. Currently if you buy a digital song most places, like Wal Mart or Napster, you are limited where you can play it, how many computers you can play it on, etc. Same with iTunes. You are only allowed so many computers to play your songs. This was enforced by RIAA, scared that we would have one person pay $0.99 for a song and then give it away for free.
iTunes started allowing DRM free music, but it wasn't enough, for as anyone knows, iTunes purchased songs work only with iPods. Sure, it was a good first step as now a song you buy from iTunes would work with any computer, as many iPods as you own or go through in your life, but it wasn't enough. Additionally, they charged more for DRM free music...paying for freedom seems ironic to me. While it's better, it was really allowing one corporate overlord to replace another.
Now Amazon has stepped up in this war and brought TRUE free (free as in freedom, not free as in no cost) music to the people. DRM free MP3s.
Here's what you need to know:
*$0.99 per song, no additional fee for freedom *Discounts if you buy entire albums at once. *Tens of thousands of songs to choose from *Popular new releases as well as some catalog (i.e. older) titles *Older titles are cheaper on a per-album basis. *256kBPS encoding means a higher quality sound than most all other digital music stores provide. *Burn to as many CDs as you like *Play on ANY MP3 player *Put on as many computers as you like *It's YOUR song.
When it comes time to buy a song or an album digitally, please, I implore you, buy from Amazon.com. We should support companies that provide the people with some rights.
Too often I say "Vote with your dollars" because, truly, those votes more than the ones at the ballot boxes influence the course of America. We need to vote with our dollars to show Amazon that we support them providing us with free (as in freedom) music. Then more labels will sell DRM free songs, and all other digital stores, record labels, and even Apple and RIAA, will see that we, the people, want free (as in freedom) music, and we care enough about it to vote with every song purchase we make.
I'm not urging a boycott of the other stores. If the Amazon DRM-free catalog doesn't have what you want, buy it elsewhere. I'm not saying go without. Nor am I suggesting you spend a penny more than you would elsewhere. But if it's the same cost, and the same song, vote for freedom.
I am putting here a commission-free link. I am an Amazon affiliate and usually get a commission from sales made when you click on links I provide. I provide this commission free...I don't want a commission on your sales, I want free (as in freedom) music. I want the corporations to bow to the greater GOOD. I want the people's rights to matter.
I've had my iPhone for 7 days...and I have to exchange it for a new one. What I'd like from this new one:
1) iTunes to not tell me my iPhone is corrupt and reformat the f---ing thing every time I try to sync.
2) The iPhone to not lock up for 30-45 minutes when I try to unlock the thing.
3) The iPhone to not tell me that it cannot find an Edge network when the bright blue E is laughing at me from the corner of the phone.
Now improvements I'd like on the iPhone:
1) The ability to take any song I legally own DRM free (i.e. MP3s I ripped from my own CDs) and make 'em ringtones. Come on...I understand the business model behind NOT doing it, but PLEASE??? My WINDOWS phone could do it.
2) Remove icons from the home menu (and add replacements). I'm not overly wealty, all my money went to the iPhone, I don't need a "stocks" button mocking my inability to save money.
3) How about having the wallpaper actually SHOW UP sometime other than when I'm unlocking the phone. That's not a wallpaper, it's a photo op.
3) I want the ability to download an MP3 or picture from Safari and save it to the iPhone for review/playing later. If I get a podcast I want to download it straight into the iPod portion of the iPhone. If I find a JPG on Safari, let me make it someone's picture or my wallpaper.
4) I love the voicemail interface...why are the other interfaces so clunky? Why must I delete e-mails one at a time? No delete all? No multi-select? Huh??? This is GUI 101 stuff.
5) I'd like EVERYTHING to be able to go widescreen (most spefically e-mails) rather than just Safari and iPod
6) MORE MEMORY 8GB is for n00bs (used ironically as I can't stand l33t sp33k)
7) A more realistic battery life indicator. Thing's like a gas tank...somehow I'm at 80% for two days but then it goes from 20% to powered off with no hope for life in 5 minutes. WTF????
8) Better iPod interface...how about a simulated clickwheel on the touchscreen? The current iPod interface...not so much
9) MMS Please
10) 3G. But that's more AT&T than Apple. And having had T-Moble for a year...I'll stop bitching about how bad AT&T is now. I cried because I had no shoes...
11) A bluetooth headset that's not $100 freaking dollars.
12) Built in games. With an icon on the home menu. Come on...solitare at least?
Slashdot Mirror
Continuing that thought, one huge complaint has been shills placing reviews on sites like Amazon... Is that considered a "blog"? How about audio podcasts? They can't say "blog" and mean "the whole internet everywhere, every content bit"...
Um, it's FTC not FCC...big difference.
Um...exactly how does a pirated PS3 game create a health or safety risk?
EXCEPT for the 3GS.
Now the reason for this is likely that AT&T is getting bent over by Apple and forced to offer a bigger subsidy for the 3GS and they don't WANT to let us upgrade, but if I wanted a Razr or whatever the hell other phone they sell AT&T would give me the FULL, NEW CONTRACT price because it's been 11 months since my last one.
But not the 3GS. THAT is where I cry bullshit.
actually this has been said by Lucas himself MANY times. His original script for Star Wars had a big battle on Kashyyyk with primitive Wookiees defeating the empire. But since he couldn't do that he kept in Chewbacca and made him an engineer/co-pilot. He felt when he got to Jedi that Wookiees were too sophisticated with electronics to make the point of primitive vs. technological so he created Ewoks. Wookiees are tall, Ewoks are short. Wookiees have long fur, Ewoks have short fur. And viola, a muppet was born.
We were just taken over by Comcast (we were Borged by Comcast?) and it's awful. They're already raising my rates 20%! They're my ONLY choice for broadband other than god-awful satellite but we will be going to DirecTV for television. But these packages...really I only want about 20 channels and they're literally making me get 250. A'la Carte TV HAS to happen...seriously it HAS to. How long must the people of America be bent over like this? I was so excited when I heard the FCC was going to do something about it...I hope Congress succeeds where the FCC failed
This might perhaps be good for gaming, but the fact that it is curved makes me shudder at the thought of people doing, say, photoshop work on a naturally curved surface. Sure, having a 3' flat monitor would be hard to see, having it curved is going to make drawing a straight line, or anything other than gaming, really difficult I would think.
Moreover, I'm wondering if this will result in a fish-eye lens (or reverse fish-eye lens) effect even in games.
As for price...you can bet it will be steep, but Apple thinks they can charge $3k for a 32" monitor, so I'd expect a similar cost for a 36" monitor.
So inside jokes have no value? I refer to Denis Miller's 5% joke guideline where the majority of his jokes have to hit the mass audience but several of his more esoteric references are aimed at only the 5% of the audience who knows what he's talking about. If you're in the 95% you're confused, but if you're in the 5% then it's funny as all hell.
Obviously you have not been modded up for this very funny comment because no one has SEEN that South Park episode and, instead, thinks you're just trolling.
Smart man, that. So no, I never got through any college assignments, programming or otherwise, by finding the answers on the 'net'. But it has helped me in the "real world."
You're saying there's an implicit copyright in every web post, then? So this post I'm typing now, if someone put it in a newsletter, I could then sue them for taking my post which is my copyright? Moreover, again as I stated above, most code samples are found in online tutorials. They're THERE for the purpose of helping you code through a problem. They explain the code step by step and give you the code. Finally, there's only so many ways to code something. Given that I doubt you will find full programs online, what people are taking are usually subroutines at most, a few lines of code to accomplish a specific task at least. When parsing it down to that small of a step, how many ways to write it are there? From my own experience, how many ways are there to code a call to a specific Window handler in Access VBA? I had to look up 2 lines of code to do it, which I found in an online tutorial. Final thought: If you aren't intended to use the code, why is it that most sites have a disclaimer at the bottom that says "Not liable for any problems you have when using this code"
When I was in grad school for programming my instructor taught us how to search for the code we needed on the web.
Moreover in my professional career as a programmer I ran into several stumbling blocks where I couldn't figure something out. I'd google for code, or use helper sites like Tek-Tips where people could either correct my code or provide me new code.
I'm paid for results, not for originality. If people provide code on the web as tutorial purposes or just as a friendly piece of help then I would be going against my job to not use it.
Moreover, I ask: If you bought a book on, say, ASP and it had sample code that did exactly what you wanted, would you then rewrite that code so it was not what was in the book? Of course you wouldn't!
Honestly it's too much trouble for me at this point. Just interesting to know how the stuff works.
Knowing that they're JPEGs makes me less impressed with the whole system. They're high res JPEGs but that means that I'm scaling them down and losing clarity on my system. Flash based reader or no, not the best out there.
I'll pay Marvel the $60/yr to read 'em online, but for my money the GIT Corp DVD compilations are far better options. Off-line reading, and you still have the DVDs even if GIT stops making them.
I have a feeling this Marvel service will be fleeting...in 5 years we'll be like "remember when Marvel tried to sell a subscription service to online only comics?"
Especially since they are putting stuff out there that's so RANDOM. Like issue 4 of a 6 issue series...WTF??? And they're only organized by series name.
And, to be totally truthful, their site has run FOR CRAP ever since it got /.ed. I'm considering asking for a refund given that I CAN NEVER READ ANY COMICS. I log in and I'm logged out in 3 minutes.
This is not their proudest moment...
Holy schnikies! You scored it on a first attempt! Wireshark showed me that all the Marvel stuff is (get this) JPEG FORMAT! The viewer is just a JPEG loader and resizer.
So, geek master (and I mean that as an honor, not sarcasm)...I know perl and can automate the downloading of images where I know the directory (which Wireshark gave me), but not sure of a way to automate the grabbing of directory names (different directories for each comic). What I'm seeing is open each comic with Wireshark running, parse that file for directory names, and then pull the files down that way. But, as you said, why do manually what you can automate? Marvel's site is SOOOO slow right now (and I PAID for it!) that opening all the comics would take more than the year's subscription I paid for. But direct folder navigation is met with a 403 Forbidden.
Any suggestions?
Thanks for the wireshark tip, that right there has saved hours!
Good thought! It worked in the regard of I can get the programs to see the SWFs now...however Marvel's SWFs are locked down tight. It loads an easy-to-grab comic reader, but then the comics themselves are downloaded into the reader in some method that the SWF grabbers can't see...
Easy words. I, too, would write something to do it, a quick little web spider or something, however Marvel has this thing locked down TIGHT.
It loads a Flash-based player, easy enough to find that, but then the player loads the content. It's behind a black wall there, no way to get the URL. Additionally, every flash grabber I find shows me that the comics are made up of several flash file "elements", one has all the dialogue bubbles, one has art, etc. Recompositing these into a single file seems...overly difficult.
Quicker method seems to be the screengrab, but then of course you lose resolution and are limited by several factors..
Unless you, man not mouse, have a better idea?
I coudln't get this to work on the Marvel site for anything, though. The comics are in a new window, no little fishie to click on. Tips?
I actually agree with you 100% in the fact that the music industry is, on the whole, messed up.
And given how much I used to spend on CDs I would happily even pay $50/mo for "all you can eat" downloads that never expire, no DRM, etc. But I am likely in the minority there, and the trick would be to discover the "sweet spot" of how much the majority of people would pay. But much like I spent $300/mo on CDs once, people now spend $300/mo on iTunes. They don't even notice, they download willy nilly and it just all goes to a credit card. So as long as there are people doing that there is no reason for iTunes to go subscription.
The only music model I currently can support as a practice is what Radiohead did--pay what you like.
My second runner-up is the iTunes no DRM for a buck, or Amazon's DRM-free download service. If I have to pay a buck for a song, I will buy it DRM free so that I can LEGALLY, and without the extra work of a hack, get a song.
Third runner-up is buying the regular CD. I did records in the '80s, CDs in the '90s. I can do that now, but for my money give me liner notes, give me cover art, give me that stupid video DVD that I will never put into a player in my life. But at least you're giving me something the buck-per-song DRMed files do not (plus as others here mentioned, you can rip the CDs into whatever you'd like).
And RIAA does prosecute people, but I don't share my music at all. They would be as likely to prosecute me for removing DRM from a WMA for personal use as they would be to prosecute me for ripping a CD to MP3 (which they also claim should be or is illegal, I forget). But while the judgment they won a few weeks back does make me fear for the future, it seems more and more like their legal options, as people fight back, are starting to slowly crumble.
I don't necessarily agree that Napster would go out of business if everyone stripped the DRM from the WMAs. The WMA DRM is defined, maintained, and enforced by Microsoft. Napster is using the protective measures agreed to by the record labels as they all seem to have an "In Microsoft We Trust" mentality (good for them; I guess they've never used Vista). What would more likely happen if everyone stripped DMA is that Microsoft would update DMA so the current methods of stripping it didn't work. Then a clever hacker would strip it. And thus the cat-and-mouse game that we techies are all so familiar with begins again. (Insert the wail of the song Circle of Life here). But as we techs bemoan every update Microsoft would make to DRM (until the next hack was released) Napster would still be bringing in the money.
I really hope this doesn't mean Napster (and Yahoo and the like) are taking away the "all you can eat" subscription service.
/. on a regular basis should know how to strip DRM from any file using free tools. Given that can be done so easily, I really think we should spread the word to our less tech-inclined friends and help these all you can eat services become a "growth model" lest they go away and RIAA can roll in the money of a buck per song again.
I am a Napster customer with the all you can eat model and I LOVE IT.
I am sorry, but I do not want to pay $0.99 for a DRMed music file that I can only use on so many systems, etc. This buck-for-a-song model has existed for far too long and I have only bought four songs this way, through iTunes, and all four were immediately burned to CD and ripped back so I could stip off that horrible DRM.
So with the buck-a-song model it made me do something that probably made RIAA very happy--I bought CDs. I'm sorry, but on a CD I get songs for less than a buck each (while there are some I won't like, there will also be gems I may never have heard had I not bought the CD) plus you get cover art, a media that's higher sound quality than a digital downloaded file. It just didn't make sense to me.
Then look at Napster. Suddenly I had a LEGAL world of music open up to me. I was able to explore the libraries of artists who are somewhat less popular. I'd never have spent $12 for their CDs, but a "Download Album" button had me pulling down every song I could find and listening to it.
Moreover, it is VERY easy to strip the DRM from a Napster WMA. I am an iPod user and Napster WMAs won't work with an iPod (though I wish Apple would relent and add that as a firmware/software upgrade to the iPod). So I use FairUse4WM and, bam, now I have MP3s that play on my iPod. I still pay the Napster music subscription every month and if I cancel I will delete all those MP3s. I'm only playing while I'm paying, so I'm playing by their rules.
This model has weened me from buying CDs altogether. I used to have a $200-$300 per month CD habit. I'm not kidding on that, I have over 3000 CDs and just kept buying every month. But with Napster I don't need CDs, I just get what I need from Napster. It's saving me THOUSANDS of dollars every year.
And my wife and I have very different music tastes. She used to not get music she liked becuase she didn't want to spend as much on CDs as I did. Now for one low monthly fee we both have all the music we want.
Sure, sometimes Napster is frustrating. I was looking for some songs on there that were "album only", "purchase only", or not available at all. It's not a silver bullet. But it is DAMN close.
If Napster doesn't see it as a growth business, that's because WMAs aren't a growth format. If you could do a subscription format that worked on iPods natively then you would have a model that would grow with each iPod sold. PlaysForSure??? If you're basing your business model off of Zune sales, well good luck with that!
But anyone who reads
What he did (or more realistically, what the hired Art Design team did), and this was actually very smart, was he started over for The Phantom Menace. No real ties to the Star Wars universe we knew from 30-plus years later. (They did this with "Young(er) Yoda" too, though, with mixed results.) Then for the next two movies you got to see an evolution of styles, as ships transformed from what was seen in Episode I all the way to what was seen in Episode IV. So you got to see fighters that evolved from an older style to be the TIE Fighters and X-Wings of the original movies, etc.
My wife always found the Queen's all-chrome ship to be very cool, although if it were in space and all chrome it would simply reflect blackness and stars and not really look as silver as it did on screen. Me...I liked the design and thought the chrome was cool but not the end-all-be-all. I really do like the Arc fighters, AT-TEs, etc. of the early movies, though. Some of the vehicle designs are the best parts of the prequels (except for Darth Maul)
Me, I'd rather spend that $500 on something that looks movie-accurate, like a ship from (now defunct) Code 3 Collectibles or (no longer holding the Star Wars license) Master Replicas, since to me Legos are kind of like a modern art...it looks like the Falcon but it still always looks like Legos. But that said I've spent several thousand on Lego sets for Star Wars and will eventually pick this one up. Someday. Hopefully for under $500
However you discuss journalism. I'm assuming from that statement that you are reporting other people's studies, findings, etc. In reporing this I would think you need to not be making your own assumptions but, instead, representing the assumptions of the researcher or scientist you are reporting about. Or, if you are reporting on the overall impacts of one person's work and utilizing assumptions based on your knowledge of other works, you should cite those as well.
Good journalism should encourage people to think, but it should also encourage people to learn more. If you are making assumptions, not only should those be clearly presented so you have impartial journalism, you should also allow for the foundation of that knowledge to be known.
When I studied journalism in school I was told that you start with the most important facts, and then devolve into the smaller details. This is what you should be doing in this case, I would think. A completely off-the-wall example I will cite is CNN's coverage of Michael Jackson's molestation trial a couple of years back. Daily they had updates on that trial, but every day they ended with a couple of paragraphs providing background on the story, telling the allegations, when they were made, etc. This meant that if you were reading about the trial for the first time the single article gave you all the knowledge you needed to understand the scope of that article, that you could further research this topic to discover more details about the charges, and summarize the high points thus far. Had you been reading daily and up to sepeed on all the events of the MJ trial, you read the top paragraphs with the new information and then skipped the bottom.
It seems to me that the journalism is possible but the classical principles of journalism need to be followed. Do that, and you should be good to go.
Good luck!
I am webmaster of swactionnews.com and reviewstarwars.com and I'd like to share this, which was posted on my site a few minutes ago:
Buy music for a cause (Amazon DRM free MP3s)
No, the cause isn't saving the Earth, helping the poor, etc. The cause is fair use of what you own.
For too long we have been slaves to the corporations who truly run this country. One of those enslavers has been RIAA, who has for almost a decade now tried to push an obsolete business model onto us. They sue with reckless abandon, suing 90 year old grandmothers and 12 year olds who don't know better. They call it theft, yet no one is being deprived of anything.
Now, I'm not an Apple die-hard, but God love Steve Jobs, for he has helped us to break the shackles of RIAA just like his 1984 commercial showed the working class breaking the shackles that bound them, for his iPod has become popular enough, and powerful enough, to wrest the arms of RIAA into allowing DRM free music.
What is DRM free music? Put simply, it's music you can do anything with. Currently if you buy a digital song most places, like Wal Mart or Napster, you are limited where you can play it, how many computers you can play it on, etc. Same with iTunes. You are only allowed so many computers to play your songs. This was enforced by RIAA, scared that we would have one person pay $0.99 for a song and then give it away for free.
iTunes started allowing DRM free music, but it wasn't enough, for as anyone knows, iTunes purchased songs work only with iPods. Sure, it was a good first step as now a song you buy from iTunes would work with any computer, as many iPods as you own or go through in your life, but it wasn't enough. Additionally, they charged more for DRM free music...paying for freedom seems ironic to me. While it's better, it was really allowing one corporate overlord to replace another.
Now Amazon has stepped up in this war and brought TRUE free (free as in freedom, not free as in no cost) music to the people. DRM free MP3s.
Here's what you need to know:
*$0.99 per song, no additional fee for freedom
*Discounts if you buy entire albums at once.
*Tens of thousands of songs to choose from
*Popular new releases as well as some catalog (i.e. older) titles
*Older titles are cheaper on a per-album basis.
*256kBPS encoding means a higher quality sound than most all other digital music stores provide.
*Burn to as many CDs as you like
*Play on ANY MP3 player
*Put on as many computers as you like
*It's YOUR song.
When it comes time to buy a song or an album digitally, please, I implore you, buy from Amazon.com. We should support companies that provide the people with some rights.
Too often I say "Vote with your dollars" because, truly, those votes more than the ones at the ballot boxes influence the course of America. We need to vote with our dollars to show Amazon that we support them providing us with free (as in freedom) music. Then more labels will sell DRM free songs, and all other digital stores, record labels, and even Apple and RIAA, will see that we, the people, want free (as in freedom) music, and we care enough about it to vote with every song purchase we make.
I'm not urging a boycott of the other stores. If the Amazon DRM-free catalog doesn't have what you want, buy it elsewhere. I'm not saying go without. Nor am I suggesting you spend a penny more than you would elsewhere. But if it's the same cost, and the same song, vote for freedom.
I am putting here a commission-free link. I am an Amazon affiliate and usually get a commission from sales made when you click on links I provide. I provide this commission free...I don't want a commission on your sales, I want free (as in freedom) music. I want the corporations to bow to the greater GOOD. I want the people's rights to matter.
Please, if you buy music, go here first:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK1GR94T4PJ38D6
Thank you for supporting DRM-free music.
1) iTunes to not tell me my iPhone is corrupt and reformat the f---ing thing every time I try to sync.
2) The iPhone to not lock up for 30-45 minutes when I try to unlock the thing.
3) The iPhone to not tell me that it cannot find an Edge network when the bright blue E is laughing at me from the corner of the phone.
Now improvements I'd like on the iPhone:
1) The ability to take any song I legally own DRM free (i.e. MP3s I ripped from my own CDs) and make 'em ringtones. Come on...I understand the business model behind NOT doing it, but PLEASE??? My WINDOWS phone could do it.
2) Remove icons from the home menu (and add replacements). I'm not overly wealty, all my money went to the iPhone, I don't need a "stocks" button mocking my inability to save money.
3) How about having the wallpaper actually SHOW UP sometime other than when I'm unlocking the phone. That's not a wallpaper, it's a photo op.
3) I want the ability to download an MP3 or picture from Safari and save it to the iPhone for review/playing later. If I get a podcast I want to download it straight into the iPod portion of the iPhone. If I find a JPG on Safari, let me make it someone's picture or my wallpaper.
4) I love the voicemail interface...why are the other interfaces so clunky? Why must I delete e-mails one at a time? No delete all? No multi-select? Huh??? This is GUI 101 stuff.
5) I'd like EVERYTHING to be able to go widescreen (most spefically e-mails) rather than just Safari and iPod
6) MORE MEMORY 8GB is for n00bs (used ironically as I can't stand l33t sp33k)
7) A more realistic battery life indicator. Thing's like a gas tank...somehow I'm at 80% for two days but then it goes from 20% to powered off with no hope for life in 5 minutes. WTF????
8) Better iPod interface...how about a simulated clickwheel on the touchscreen? The current iPod interface...not so much
9) MMS Please
10) 3G. But that's more AT&T than Apple. And having had T-Moble for a year...I'll stop bitching about how bad AT&T is now. I cried because I had no shoes...
11) A bluetooth headset that's not $100 freaking dollars.
12) Built in games. With an icon on the home menu. Come on...solitare at least?