The goofiness of sub loving fans is often short sighted. They will complain that a dub isn't accurate but then fail to realize that an accurate strict translation in spoken English is very odd sounding and thus is a poor dub. You can't win either way with these blockheads.
Gaiman did an excellent job with Mononoke. Most quality dubs these days flow well because they don't strictly follow the original Japanese screenplay. All of the feeling and themes where in Mononoke even if it isn't a strict translation. So what is the problem? FAR more people saw Mononoke Hime dubed than they would have subed. I can't see anything wrong with that.
I liked Kiki's Delivery Service. It was kind of overshadowed by movies that came out the same time. It also has the interesting note that it was one of the last performances of late Phil Heartman of SNL fame. But it is easy to make a quality dub out of quality material.:-)
The reason why there is a RTG (radioisotope thermoelectric generators...it generates power on the heat) on all deep robotic probes (Pioneer 10,11, Voyager 1, 2, Galielo, Cassini etc.) is because of the good old inverse square law.
Lets say that the power collected from standard set of solar panels for an object around Earth is suffient to power the electrontrics. The problem is space is big...really big! For instance...
Mars is about 1.5 times as far from the Sun as Earth.... Jupiter is about 5.25 times as far away... Saturn is about 9.5 times as far away...
I won't go farther.:-) The power a probe would receive from panels around Earth would now be 0.01 times as strong around Saturn. Needless to say you aren't going to get the 200 or so Watts needed to power critical equipment on Voyager 1 out of solar panels at the place it is flying right now(I suppose you could attach monsterous solar panels but that is mass a spacecraft doesn't need).
Of course the idea of radio active material on space probes sends some people into a fit but it really isn't that much material. It also ignores the fact that if we want to do distant science there is no better powersource built yet.
A DVD will return the same mpeg stream reguardless of what region it is. It is up to other hardware to produce the NTSC or PAL or HDTV or etc etc etc.
Laserdiscs since they aren't digital had to encode the video format into the media. A NTSC LD will only produce a NTSC video signal.
The NTSC vs PAL thing was a stronger region locking mechanism than the current DVD region coding. To play an old NTSC LD on PAL equipment required buying an intermediate hardware (like a VCR that could produce either). With DVDs it often just requires messing with your old hardware to get access to the bits.
Legally, a user that does not read the EULA then can not fiegn ignorance later if they break the license. It was presented to them at the pre-installation. It is there responsibility to make sure they legally understand what they are getting into.
Having said this, the way most EULA are presented are HOSTILE to the user. Confusing legalese language presented in a tiny scrolling text box smaller than the text area I'm writing this response in. What is your recourse if you have a question about a clause? Stop the installation and e-mail MicroSoft? You bought the software today and would probably like to use it today. Waiting for a response from MS and then possibly consulting your private lawyer is a laughable action to take for minor piece of software. Then step it up a notch: Window's Media Player is tightly integrated. You can't PATCH the system properly unless you take all of the parts which requires reading multiple EULA which are all different. What happens if you agree to one but not another? Your installation (and your computer) is probably now unusable or will have incompatible hiccups.
I am still waiting for EULA in general to be challenged in court. Where did the consumer right for quality assurance and regress go? Why does one have to sign away more rights to get bug fixes?!?
Dreamworks sees these niche movies that cost next to nothing to distribute and always make money in their limited runs. Sure they'll never play as big as MIB2 but they are a hell of a lot bankable.
Dreamworks also wants to break into animation so it is also about marketing. THE IRON GIANT is a very good movie...the kind of stuff Dreamworks wants to make. But as Warner Brothers found out they couldn't drag people into THE IRON GIANT because of the stigma of US Animation. You only take kids to light and bubble US Animation while THE IRON GIANT definately was something different. Anime however has a different aura around it. People expect slick visuals and complex themed stories from Anime movies. While Dreamworks can make movies like SHREK they'll never be able to market anything they make as "anime style" at the moment or it will be such a tremendious risk that no producer will back them even if Dreamworks fronts the production facilities. The next best thing to do, and by far safer, is to get the real stuff from the source.
The best way of seeing Anime on film is clearly in a theater. If you happen to be in the area and catch this debut with the English dub go for it.
- To those who think English dub sucks, it is all realitive. (For some odd reason no one complains about crappy Japanese recording since they do exist)
Dubbing was bad in the 80s because you had only half a shoe string budget and scheduled recording time between SMURFS and GI JOE. Now that Anime has been shown to be a proven money maker recording quality has gone way way WAY up with the amount of money invested in making them.
COWBOY BEBOP is an example of this. The English production crew from Bandai USA loved the show and worked hard in all aspects of it. If the KNOCKING receives the same TLC then it will be a quality English recording.
- To those who think "What is so great about this show...I saw one goofy episode and it sucked"
I suppose I could say the same thing about ATTACK OF THE CLONES can't I? ^_^;; COWBOY BEBOP is different than a lot of the stuff that came out post EVA/X-FILES/Angsty. It has clearly defined characters that you can identify with. It has a clearly defined ending(so many Anime these days leave endings open 'just in case' they can sell a second season). CB was more about style. A typical Anime series has "super plots" where consecutive episodes explain the themes and story but CB did many self contained one shots. Of course no one mentions CB without mentioning the music of Yoko Kanno. If CB represents anything about the future correctly it is that good music is timeless. ^_^
- To those who say "why is this news?"
Until recently if it was animated it had to have Disney on it or it was shown only in art house style movie theaters. This is one of the biggest openings for a non-US animated feature in the US. I think that is as newsworthy as anything else on/.
- To those living in NYC I say "LUCK STIFFS" ^_^
Take lots of pictures! Try to get an autograph(I would die for Kanno to autograph my BLUE CD). Have fun watching one of the better movies to come out of Japan recently.
Palladium is yet another example of Microsoft's flawed software strategy. MS constantly thinks: If there is something wrong, make new products to fix it. Doesn't anyone else think that this is flawed??? Oh yeah...you can't sell stuff like that as much as new "I have better features than my previous version" software.
Palladium is a bandage over the broken user/networking model and the interfaces to them. Instead of stepping back and considering the reasons why most users and processes MUST run as Administrator(locally and network wise), Microsoft wants to promise that yet more software that will sort out the issue for you without thinking. Installing software on a Win2K system can be a bear if permissions have to be setup a certain way. How hard is it going to be to install software on a Palladium system?? Don't think the new Word for Palladium. Think about the legacy software you are still required to use. That should send shivers down any IT Staff's collective spines.
And, at the worst, Palladium fails to fix a giant class of problems. IIS will no doubt in MS's mind be a trusted program to run. However monkeying with "default.ida" isn't something it should be doing. Palladium can protected from "mystery.exe" which is unsigned from running but seems to make no provision for trusted binaries suddenly behaving badly. Default settings, denial of serivce, etc. have nothing to do with signed code.
Beyond this a computer is supposed to get out of the way and let you do your tasks. A "well oiled" Linux machine can do this for tasks. Mac users rave about how its OS goes way into the background when a task is executed. MS through Palladium seeks to get more in the way to protect us from ourselves. Why does Joe Sixpack want a computer that is even more "in your face" than it is now?
As for the future of Linux with Palladium looming on the horizon. I'm not worried. In fact I forsee a great boon in virtual execution environments on Linux and BSD where you can choose to ignore Palladium rules if you the user choose to do so.
The Chobits Soundtrack costs 2520 Japanese Yen. Just because I'm lazy I always figure that the conversion from Dollars->Yen is something around 1->100. That means that this CD is about $30(after shipping)! Chobits 2 is priced at 6300 yen, well we won't go there. People would freak in the US if asked if they want to buy a $30 CD let alone a $50+ DVD...
So why is it so expensive? There are a number of reasons. Remember when Presidents complain about Japanese not exactly playing by Free Trade rules? There are laws in place to fix minimum pricing on many goods. Copying is pretty rampant over there but unlike the US Japanese companies realize this and live with it. They treat DVDs and CDs sold as more "regal" items so they charge more. Scales in the economy seem to support itself at these more expensive prices just as well because they know die hard fans will buy DVDs and CDs with the extra goodies and price items accordingly. In fact chasing pirates is detrimental because it costs money.
So yes there is price fixing. Yes rampant copying does exist. No they really aren't related.
Buying from Japan isn't for the faint of heart or light of wallet. You don't have to get stuff directly from Japan but you miss out on a lot of good expensive stuff!
For those not fluent or brave enough to order/talk to someone in Japan you can always go to...
http://www.cdjapan.co.jp
There are other stores but they require you to know some Japanese to read their catalog and order. I've never been let down by CDJapan and constantly recommend it to the "I don't know what 'gaijin' means" people who want to order stuff directly from Japan.
Black Aardvark is describing this problem exactly.
The Swiss Army Knife Effect is when designers see a group of disparate things that have some sort of likeness and try to stick them together. The problem is when you stick them together you get a chimera instead of a value added tool. A Swiss Army Knife may have a screwdriver, a scissor, and a knife but none of them are really that good to use and often times you find yourself looking for the seperate tools to complish your task.
Could you put together a computer with just your Swiss Army Knife? Sure...the tools are all there but they don't perform as well as finding them tools seperately. You'd be better off gathering the tools and leave the Swiss Army Knife to emergency usage(ie. think MacGyver).
I am leary of spending $500 for a machine that is that is nearly as good as a Tivo and nearly as good as a console. For me to buy the machine it has to be just as good as both otherwise it is a waste of money.
Okay so IBM doesn't have enough money to fund creating drivers for Linux for Thinkpads. Fair enough since resources are finite. However isn't one of the best features of Open Source projects is to get people who are interested in contributing to the project?
Why does IBM need to hard dedicate manpower to Thinkpad driver writing? IBM can just provide open hardware specs(assuming they don't violate some NDA from inside or 3rd parties), a little TLC and feedback from a maintained ML, and let people who are modivated to get stuff working do their thing. Heck even IBM can maintain the CVS repositories if they want.
The point is that although it would be handy to have IBM leading driver development for Thinkpads or whatever hardware, it isn't exactly necessary. IBM can just as easily, and for a lot less bucks, forster a community that will help support them and themselves.
True there problably isn't much "real scientific value" in doing this kind of setup. The two things that can be learned by doing this is improving nueral net code and robotics...maybe something about behavior pyscology if you are lucky.
One thing that can be show by this "best/merge" type of nueral net is that it simulate or mimmics intution and produce unexecpted but viable behavior that seems almost living. For instance a Preditor can grab a Pray but one time on a random chance the Pray "squirms" just right it maybe able to pop out of the grasp of the Preditor and avoid being "eaten". The AI on the Pray remembers this and successfully avoids 99% of the Preditors like this and the meme is passed onto other Pray in the next "merge". The Preditors "starve" till they figure out a a better way to pick up the Pray. Both Preditor and Pray now appear to have very living behavior.
The science part is studying how the robots came up with their choices. Why did the Pray decided to flail its wheels in a way to make it pop out? That is where the interesting questions in AI lie. Not in the fact it came up with useful behavior but how it came about figuring it out.
Because nothing guarentees the data getting to their carefully guarded servers is valid if their communication protocol is weak.
Aim cheats have nothing to do with server stored data. It all has to do with the fact the classic protocols requires all players in the field to tell all other players in the field their positions in the field. If you can snoop the positions of people then you can calculate an accurate "from the hip" shot with merciless robotic accuracy. If an aim cheat isn't possible, then you can just snoop the data and realize where the other players are hiding and their positing.
The way to beat cheaters is to apply tried and true security practices. Don't trust that the machine on the other end of the connection is really a client(so don't feed it any extra data beyond what it should need to know to function). Don't blindly accept any data coming back from supposed clients(does the client really have "permission" do what it is telling the server to do?).
Protecting the data is a good thing but just like server farms just locking the machines behind a door isn't enough. You have to secure the lines of transmition as well.
The purpose of Open Source projects is to offer technology in an open and cheaper manner than traditional vendors. If what ADTI is implying that because of Open Source anyone, including terrorists, can use computers for free then I guess it is true.
What would be the contrary to this? Would the ADTI really have us believe that hacking with paid closed software is better than open? If Open Source projects can't expect or know the ultimate intent of the users of the software then why would any closed vendor would? It sounds like ADTI does! I guess they are brilliant.;-)
As noted current technology is both too price and still too low in quality to outpace standard 35mm film. There is a lot of mindshare built around how to make film look good on celluloid. Tossing it all out just for the alluring gloss of digital projection is stupid.
However there is a legitimate and embraced usage of digital film making. The small time indy film makers have seen the costs of making films go *way down* by using digital cameras and a simple computer(think iMac) in post production.
So the question in my mind isn't whether or not Digital film making is worth while. It is. It is whether or not projecting it in a theater is worth it, which currently it isn't.
And lastly, why does anyone want to believe Lucas on this cinema technology? This is the guy that questions the wisdom of Scorsese on constructing sets that recreate 1850 New York(I believe the movie he was refering to was Gangs of New York). Lucas would rather see it all digitized except the actors. I'll take Scorsese's attention to detail than Lucas' SFX team anyday.
I am getting the feeling the issue here goes something like this:
As the creator/author/maintainer of WidgetApp which is licensed under the GPL, I want everyone to not only use the software freely but contribute to it.
However because United Linux has this per-seat cost scheme it appears that you pay for the pre-built binaries. While the source code is freely available for you to download and compile yourself even under the United Linux, it makes WidgetApp appear as if the creator/author/mainters of are getting paid for their development. A person buys the seat of United Linux and will automatically believe that a "piece of the pie" is going to all of the contributors. This is a bad thing and not what was intended with the GPL.
So while they are honoring the letter of the GPL(the source code must be available and is available) it seems to deny the spirit of making useful programs freely available to everyone.
This whole thing shows a loophole in the GPL which may never be closed. As long as United Linux offers source code for free they can charge per seat for binaries. People who don't want the appearance of being paid are now stuck because of the GPL(ie you can't deny United Linux access to the source any more than you can to you or me or Microsoft).
Beyond that as another poster pointed, good luck making this buisness model work. This seems to offer more headache and cost more money and will be hard to compete with Red Hat's service structure or Debian's pure free-ness.
Lets face it: one of the weakest features of username/password authentication is the fact you must declare your ID and then your password. No matter how well you hide your password that fact you declare your ID into the system is probably just as bad as easily guessed passwords.
Think about the difficulty in authenticating hacking if the all usernames were completely unknown or never declared. I could tell you there are 4 users on "login.supervaluable.com" all of which the passwords are "easy12remember". Unfortunately if you never figure out what the names of those 4 accounts are the passwords are worthless. However if you have a list of the 4 account names but don't know the passwords you have at least a place to start your intrusion.
So just as much as easy to guess passwords are a problem I stipulate that easy to guess usernames are too. Does this mean the username/password scheme needs to be rethought? Anyone have alternative authentication schemes that requires minimal "declaring" of any information?
I was never sure about how much a console was but I always expected that Sony and Nintendo were always making a profit, even razor thin ones. Always have and always will. In fact the only time when you can get away with "selling at a loss" is when you *creapy organ music* have a monopoly...
I laughed at the accusations back when N64 and PS2 were scarce on shelves and both Nintendo and Sony where causually accused of shorting supply to create demand and future sales. What idiot in the retail market wants to sell something tomorrow where they might make a profit when they can sell it today and definately make a profit? Back then a PS2 would sell for $300 scarce as it would $300 plentiful. There is no margin to play with in the retail to speculate on so they don't do it. Same thing with what is going on now with XBox's woes. Gambling to turn a profit later in retail products often gets you squashed...
Lets see...other companies that bought into the "sell the hardware cheap, hook them in software" idea.
Off the top of my head, I remember seeing stuff from sources that suggested that SGI was selling Indy workstations and later O2 at a loss. Look where SGI is now unlike Sun and IBM who have stated policies about not giving away hardware just to get people to write software. As mentioned Sega bought into the idea with the Dreamcast and nearly crushed them. Luckily for them someone recognized where most of the money was bleeding from and cut it off.
Selling hardware at a loss just isn't a sound strategy. That is a highly dubious way to invest a company's capitial. So given that Sony invested $1B in actual, real hardware investments over MS just tossing units out the door trying to pay people to buy, which is a sound strategy?
Preface: Hardware Decoders aren't so important these days. With the speed of the data bus and CPUs in current hardware it almost makes them moot.
The biggest problem is the region locking built into the hardware of the lastest and greatest. Depending on the hardware you might be able to "flash" the ROM to allow disabling or fixing of the region enforcing parts.
If you go back to older gear you actually find it more flexible and useful. I have an *ancient* SB DXR3 drive and decoder card. The drive itself is RPC Phase 1 which means it does IO on any disk reguardless of region. A little decss and you have a viable data stream to decode and display.
One issue, beyond the legality of using de-css software, is that software I've currently played with does a force crack. This isn't too terible on a modern system but without "caching" of the css keys, you may have to wait a moment before you can start playing video. This wait time varies from disk to disk.
There does exist on sourceforge a kernel driver for the DXR3 decoder card. It requires the IC2 kernel parts to be compiled in as well. Then it is a matter of telling your software to take the data from the disk and piping it to the/dev/em8300-vo and/dev/em8300-ao devices.
A current problem I have with the decoder card is that it handles some aspects poorly(basically anything outside of the TV 1.33:1 aspect). I can't tell if it is a limitation in the hardware or the software driver. In any case I just go with software diplay but when I can use the hardware decoder it works great. Doing software my system usually eats 30% of the CPU but the hardware takes next to none.
Lets say some engineer at GM thinks "Hey I want to make changing the oil in the car as easy as possible so I'm going to put a button on the dash that opens the valve and dump the oil in a nice neat container".
Neat idea...except when you are driving down the highway at 80 MPH and someone hits the "OIL" button and dump your oil out of the engine.
What is boggling is that Microsoft designs in features just like the "Oil" button and then tries to play blameless. "Well obviously you aren't supposed to script e-mail that way". That is interesting logic but that doesn't fly for real world engineering. "Intedend use" and "capabilities" where one is clearly more important than the other. Microsoft can not place "Oil" buttons in their software and think they will only be used as intended.
The core problem is that Microsoft continues to write applications, and worse, data formats that break a cardnal rule: programs run data not the other way around.
Another thought to think of: Read the license on the software. Almost any software makes a "No Warrenty" claim on their stuff. If installing the software and using it corrupts data, causes natural disasters, makes your machine blow up, you can not blame nor are MS, Linus, etc. liable for fixing it, replacing it, etc. You use the software and you are on your own. This falls squarely under that.
Of course this absolves MS of blame but then again, why again do PHB think that MS software is great?
Entrapment is the act of enticing people to commit crimes by making exact request for them to commit the crime and catch them.
A easy example of entrapment in a sting is classic prostitution sting. If the police woman offers "The John" money for sex that is entraping. However if the police woman implies that she is there as a prostitute and "The John" comes forward and offers money for sex that isn't entrapment.
Leaving a car out on the street to see who will steal it is a great way to setup a clean sting. As long as the police never suggest that they want someone to steal the car then the car is stolen by a person of their own modivation.
Explodium: The element that most bad guy armies make their crafts and mecha out of. It is cheap so they can make a million of them for every one good guy unit. The problem is that they have this property to explode in a colorful and violent way(which films incrediably well). The Zion(Gundam) and the Empire(Star Wars) invest heavly in this element and base entire fleets off the stuff.
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The goofiness of sub loving fans is often short sighted. They will complain that a dub isn't accurate but then fail to realize that an accurate strict translation in spoken English is very odd sounding and thus is a poor dub. You can't win either way with these blockheads.
:-)
Gaiman did an excellent job with Mononoke. Most quality dubs these days flow well because they don't strictly follow the original Japanese screenplay. All of the feeling and themes where in Mononoke even if it isn't a strict translation. So what is the problem? FAR more people saw Mononoke Hime dubed than they would have subed. I can't see anything wrong with that.
I liked Kiki's Delivery Service. It was kind of overshadowed by movies that came out the same time. It also has the interesting note that it was one of the last performances of late Phil Heartman of SNL fame. But it is easy to make a quality dub out of quality material.
The reason why there is a RTG (radioisotope thermoelectric generators...it generates power on the heat) on all deep robotic probes (Pioneer 10,11, Voyager 1, 2, Galielo, Cassini etc.) is because of the good old inverse square law.
:-) The power a probe would receive from panels around Earth would now be 0.01 times as strong around Saturn. Needless to say you aren't going to get the 200 or so Watts needed to power critical equipment on Voyager 1 out of solar panels at the place it is flying right now(I suppose you could attach monsterous solar panels but that is mass a spacecraft doesn't need).
Lets say that the power collected from standard set of solar panels for an object around Earth is suffient to power the electrontrics. The problem is space is big...really big! For instance...
Mars is about 1.5 times as far from the Sun as Earth....
Jupiter is about 5.25 times as far away...
Saturn is about 9.5 times as far away...
I won't go farther.
Of course the idea of radio active material on space probes sends some people into a fit but it really isn't that much material. It also ignores the fact that if we want to do distant science there is no better powersource built yet.
A DVD will return the same mpeg stream reguardless of what region it is. It is up to other hardware to produce the NTSC or PAL or HDTV or etc etc etc.
:-)
Laserdiscs since they aren't digital had to encode the video format into the media. A NTSC LD will only produce a NTSC video signal.
The NTSC vs PAL thing was a stronger region locking mechanism than the current DVD region coding. To play an old NTSC LD on PAL equipment required buying an intermediate hardware (like a VCR that could produce either). With DVDs it often just requires messing with your old hardware to get access to the bits.
Such is the march of technology.
Legally, a user that does not read the EULA then can not fiegn ignorance later if they break the license. It was presented to them at the pre-installation. It is there responsibility to make sure they legally understand what they are getting into.
Having said this, the way most EULA are presented are HOSTILE to the user. Confusing legalese language presented in a tiny scrolling text box smaller than the text area I'm writing this response in. What is your recourse if you have a question about a clause? Stop the installation and e-mail MicroSoft? You bought the software today and would probably like to use it today. Waiting for a response from MS and then possibly consulting your private lawyer is a laughable action to take for minor piece of software. Then step it up a notch: Window's Media Player is tightly integrated. You can't PATCH the system properly unless you take all of the parts which requires reading multiple EULA which are all different. What happens if you agree to one but not another? Your installation (and your computer) is probably now unusable or will have incompatible hiccups.
I am still waiting for EULA in general to be challenged in court. Where did the consumer right for quality assurance and regress go? Why does one have to sign away more rights to get bug fixes?!?
Dreamworks sees these niche movies that cost next to nothing to distribute and always make money in their limited runs. Sure they'll never play as big as MIB2 but they are a hell of a lot bankable.
Dreamworks also wants to break into animation so it is also about marketing. THE IRON GIANT is a very good movie...the kind of stuff Dreamworks wants to make. But as Warner Brothers found out they couldn't drag people into THE IRON GIANT because of the stigma of US Animation. You only take kids to light and bubble US Animation while THE IRON GIANT definately was something different. Anime however has a different aura around it. People expect slick visuals and complex themed stories from Anime movies. While Dreamworks can make movies like SHREK they'll never be able to market anything they make as "anime style" at the moment or it will be such a tremendious risk that no producer will back them even if Dreamworks fronts the production facilities. The next best thing to do, and by far safer, is to get the real stuff from the source.
The best way of seeing Anime on film is clearly in a theater. If you happen to be in the area and catch this debut with the English dub go for it.
/.
- To those who think English dub sucks, it is all realitive. (For some odd reason no one complains about crappy Japanese recording since they do exist)
Dubbing was bad in the 80s because you had only half a shoe string budget and scheduled recording time between SMURFS and GI JOE. Now that Anime has been shown to be a proven money maker recording quality has gone way way WAY up with the amount of money invested in making them.
COWBOY BEBOP is an example of this. The English production crew from Bandai USA loved the show and worked hard in all aspects of it. If the KNOCKING receives the same TLC then it will be a quality English recording.
- To those who think "What is so great about this show...I saw one goofy episode and it sucked"
I suppose I could say the same thing about ATTACK OF THE CLONES can't I? ^_^;; COWBOY BEBOP is different than a lot of the stuff that came out post EVA/X-FILES/Angsty. It has clearly defined characters that you can identify with. It has a clearly defined ending(so many Anime these days leave endings open 'just in case' they can sell a second season). CB was more about style. A typical Anime series has "super plots" where consecutive episodes explain the themes and story but CB did many self contained one shots. Of course no one mentions CB without mentioning the music of Yoko Kanno. If CB represents anything about the future correctly it is that good music is timeless. ^_^
- To those who say "why is this news?"
Until recently if it was animated it had to have Disney on it or it was shown only in art house style movie theaters. This is one of the biggest openings for a non-US animated feature in the US. I think that is as newsworthy as anything else on
- To those living in NYC I say "LUCK STIFFS" ^_^
Take lots of pictures! Try to get an autograph(I would die for Kanno to autograph my BLUE CD). Have fun watching one of the better movies to come out of Japan recently.
Palladium is yet another example of Microsoft's flawed software strategy. MS constantly thinks: If there is something wrong, make new products to fix it. Doesn't anyone else think that this is flawed??? Oh yeah...you can't sell stuff like that as much as new "I have better features than my previous version" software.
Palladium is a bandage over the broken user/networking model and the interfaces to them. Instead of stepping back and considering the reasons why most users and processes MUST run as Administrator(locally and network wise), Microsoft wants to promise that yet more software that will sort out the issue for you without thinking. Installing software on a Win2K system can be a bear if permissions have to be setup a certain way. How hard is it going to be to install software on a Palladium system?? Don't think the new Word for Palladium. Think about the legacy software you are still required to use. That should send shivers down any IT Staff's collective spines.
And, at the worst, Palladium fails to fix a giant class of problems. IIS will no doubt in MS's mind be a trusted program to run. However monkeying with "default.ida" isn't something it should be doing. Palladium can protected from "mystery.exe" which is unsigned from running but seems to make no provision for trusted binaries suddenly behaving badly. Default settings, denial of serivce, etc. have nothing to do with signed code.
Beyond this a computer is supposed to get out of the way and let you do your tasks. A "well oiled" Linux machine can do this for tasks. Mac users rave about how its OS goes way into the background when a task is executed. MS through Palladium seeks to get more in the way to protect us from ourselves. Why does Joe Sixpack want a computer that is even more "in your face" than it is now?
As for the future of Linux with Palladium looming on the horizon. I'm not worried. In fact I forsee a great boon in virtual execution environments on Linux and BSD where you can choose to ignore Palladium rules if you the user choose to do so.
The Chobits Soundtrack costs 2520 Japanese Yen. Just because I'm lazy I always figure that the conversion from Dollars->Yen is something around 1->100. That means that this CD is about $30(after shipping)! Chobits 2 is priced at 6300 yen, well we won't go there. People would freak in the US if asked if they want to buy a $30 CD let alone a $50+ DVD...
So why is it so expensive? There are a number of reasons. Remember when Presidents complain about Japanese not exactly playing by Free Trade rules? There are laws in place to fix minimum pricing on many goods. Copying is pretty rampant over there but unlike the US Japanese companies realize this and live with it. They treat DVDs and CDs sold as more "regal" items so they charge more. Scales in the economy seem to support itself at these more expensive prices just as well because they know die hard fans will buy DVDs and CDs with the extra goodies and price items accordingly. In fact chasing pirates is detrimental because it costs money.
So yes there is price fixing. Yes rampant copying does exist. No they really aren't related.
Buying from Japan isn't for the faint of heart or light of wallet. You don't have to get stuff directly from Japan but you miss out on a lot of good expensive stuff!
For those not fluent or brave enough to order/talk to someone in Japan you can always go to...
http://www.cdjapan.co.jp
There are other stores but they require you to know some Japanese to read their catalog and order. I've never been let down by CDJapan and constantly recommend it to the "I don't know what 'gaijin' means" people who want to order stuff directly from Japan.
Black Aardvark is describing this problem exactly.
The Swiss Army Knife Effect is when designers see a group of disparate things that have some sort of likeness and try to stick them together. The problem is when you stick them together you get a chimera instead of a value added tool. A Swiss Army Knife may have a screwdriver, a scissor, and a knife but none of them are really that good to use and often times you find yourself looking for the seperate tools to complish your task.
Could you put together a computer with just your Swiss Army Knife? Sure...the tools are all there but they don't perform as well as finding them tools seperately. You'd be better off gathering the tools and leave the Swiss Army Knife to emergency usage(ie. think MacGyver).
I am leary of spending $500 for a machine that is that is nearly as good as a Tivo and nearly as good as a console. For me to buy the machine it has to be just as good as both otherwise it is a waste of money.
Okay so IBM doesn't have enough money to fund creating drivers for Linux for Thinkpads. Fair enough since resources are finite. However isn't one of the best features of Open Source projects is to get people who are interested in contributing to the project?
Why does IBM need to hard dedicate manpower to Thinkpad driver writing? IBM can just provide open hardware specs(assuming they don't violate some NDA from inside or 3rd parties), a little TLC and feedback from a maintained ML, and let people who are modivated to get stuff working do their thing. Heck even IBM can maintain the CVS repositories if they want.
The point is that although it would be handy to have IBM leading driver development for Thinkpads or whatever hardware, it isn't exactly necessary. IBM can just as easily, and for a lot less bucks, forster a community that will help support them and themselves.
True there problably isn't much "real scientific value" in doing this kind of setup. The two things that can be learned by doing this is improving nueral net code and robotics...maybe something about behavior pyscology if you are lucky.
One thing that can be show by this "best/merge" type of nueral net is that it simulate or mimmics intution and produce unexecpted but viable behavior that seems almost living. For instance a Preditor can grab a Pray but one time on a random chance the Pray "squirms" just right it maybe able to pop out of the grasp of the Preditor and avoid being "eaten". The AI on the Pray remembers this and successfully avoids 99% of the Preditors like this and the meme is passed onto other Pray in the next "merge". The Preditors "starve" till they figure out a a better way to pick up the Pray. Both Preditor and Pray now appear to have very living behavior.
The science part is studying how the robots came up with their choices. Why did the Pray decided to flail its wheels in a way to make it pop out? That is where the interesting questions in AI lie. Not in the fact it came up with useful behavior but how it came about figuring it out.
Because nothing guarentees the data getting to their carefully guarded servers is valid if their communication protocol is weak.
Aim cheats have nothing to do with server stored data. It all has to do with the fact the classic protocols requires all players in the field to tell all other players in the field their positions in the field. If you can snoop the positions of people then you can calculate an accurate "from the hip" shot with merciless robotic accuracy. If an aim cheat isn't possible, then you can just snoop the data and realize where the other players are hiding and their positing.
The way to beat cheaters is to apply tried and true security practices. Don't trust that the machine on the other end of the connection is really a client(so don't feed it any extra data beyond what it should need to know to function). Don't blindly accept any data coming back from supposed clients(does the client really have "permission" do what it is telling the server to do?).
Protecting the data is a good thing but just like server farms just locking the machines behind a door isn't enough. You have to secure the lines of transmition as well.
The purpose of Open Source projects is to offer technology in an open and cheaper manner than traditional vendors. If what ADTI is implying that because of Open Source anyone, including terrorists, can use computers for free then I guess it is true.
;-)
What would be the contrary to this? Would the ADTI really have us believe that hacking with paid closed software is better than open? If Open Source projects can't expect or know the ultimate intent of the users of the software then why would any closed vendor would? It sounds like ADTI does! I guess they are brilliant.
As noted current technology is both too price and still too low in quality to outpace standard 35mm film. There is a lot of mindshare built around how to make film look good on celluloid. Tossing it all out just for the alluring gloss of digital projection is stupid.
However there is a legitimate and embraced usage of digital film making. The small time indy film makers have seen the costs of making films go *way down* by using digital cameras and a simple computer(think iMac) in post production.
So the question in my mind isn't whether or not Digital film making is worth while. It is. It is whether or not projecting it in a theater is worth it, which currently it isn't.
And lastly, why does anyone want to believe Lucas on this cinema technology? This is the guy that questions the wisdom of Scorsese on constructing sets that recreate 1850 New York(I believe the movie he was refering to was Gangs of New York). Lucas would rather see it all digitized except the actors. I'll take Scorsese's attention to detail than Lucas' SFX team anyday.
I am getting the feeling the issue here goes something like this:
As the creator/author/maintainer of WidgetApp which is licensed under the GPL, I want everyone to not only use the software freely but contribute to it.
However because United Linux has this per-seat cost scheme it appears that you pay for the pre-built binaries. While the source code is freely available for you to download and compile yourself even under the United Linux, it makes WidgetApp appear as if the creator/author/mainters of are getting paid for their development. A person buys the seat of United Linux and will automatically believe that a "piece of the pie" is going to all of the contributors. This is a bad thing and not what was intended with the GPL.
So while they are honoring the letter of the GPL(the source code must be available and is available) it seems to deny the spirit of making useful programs freely available to everyone.
This whole thing shows a loophole in the GPL which may never be closed. As long as United Linux offers source code for free they can charge per seat for binaries. People who don't want the appearance of being paid are now stuck because of the GPL(ie you can't deny United Linux access to the source any more than you can to you or me or Microsoft).
Beyond that as another poster pointed, good luck making this buisness model work. This seems to offer more headache and cost more money and will be hard to compete with Red Hat's service structure or Debian's pure free-ness.
Are you kidding? I would good money to clense the internet of Bill Gates nude photos let alone doctored ones. Talk about blackmail...
Lets face it: one of the weakest features of username/password authentication is the fact you must declare your ID and then your password. No matter how well you hide your password that fact you declare your ID into the system is probably just as bad as easily guessed passwords.
Think about the difficulty in authenticating hacking if the all usernames were completely unknown or never declared. I could tell you there are 4 users on "login.supervaluable.com" all of which the passwords are "easy12remember". Unfortunately if you never figure out what the names of those 4 accounts are the passwords are worthless. However if you have a list of the 4 account names but don't know the passwords you have at least a place to start your intrusion.
So just as much as easy to guess passwords are a problem I stipulate that easy to guess usernames are too. Does this mean the username/password scheme needs to be rethought? Anyone have alternative authentication schemes that requires minimal "declaring" of any information?
I was never sure about how much a console was but I always expected that Sony and Nintendo were always making a profit, even razor thin ones. Always have and always will. In fact the only time when you can get away with "selling at a loss" is when you *creapy organ music* have a monopoly...
I laughed at the accusations back when N64 and PS2 were scarce on shelves and both Nintendo and Sony where causually accused of shorting supply to create demand and future sales. What idiot in the retail market wants to sell something tomorrow where they might make a profit when they can sell it today and definately make a profit? Back then a PS2 would sell for $300 scarce as it would $300 plentiful. There is no margin to play with in the retail to speculate on so they don't do it. Same thing with what is going on now with XBox's woes. Gambling to turn a profit later in retail products often gets you squashed...
Lets see...other companies that bought into the "sell the hardware cheap, hook them in software" idea.
Off the top of my head, I remember seeing stuff from sources that suggested that SGI was selling Indy workstations and later O2 at a loss. Look where SGI is now unlike Sun and IBM who have stated policies about not giving away hardware just to get people to write software. As mentioned Sega bought into the idea with the Dreamcast and nearly crushed them. Luckily for them someone recognized where most of the money was bleeding from and cut it off.
Selling hardware at a loss just isn't a sound strategy. That is a highly dubious way to invest a company's capitial. So given that Sony invested $1B in actual, real hardware investments over MS just tossing units out the door trying to pay people to buy, which is a sound strategy?
Preface: Hardware Decoders aren't so important these days. With the speed of the data bus and CPUs in current hardware it almost makes them moot.
/dev/em8300-vo and /dev/em8300-ao devices.
The biggest problem is the region locking built into the hardware of the lastest and greatest. Depending on the hardware you might be able to "flash" the ROM to allow disabling or fixing of the region enforcing parts.
If you go back to older gear you actually find it more flexible and useful. I have an *ancient* SB DXR3 drive and decoder card. The drive itself is RPC Phase 1 which means it does IO on any disk reguardless of region. A little decss and you have a viable data stream to decode and display.
One issue, beyond the legality of using de-css software, is that software I've currently played with does a force crack. This isn't too terible on a modern system but without "caching" of the css keys, you may have to wait a moment before you can start playing video. This wait time varies from disk to disk.
There does exist on sourceforge a kernel driver for the DXR3 decoder card. It requires the IC2 kernel parts to be compiled in as well. Then it is a matter of telling your software to take the data from the disk and piping it to the
A current problem I have with the decoder card is that it handles some aspects poorly(basically anything outside of the TV 1.33:1 aspect). I can't tell if it is a limitation in the hardware or the software driver. In any case I just go with software diplay but when I can use the hardware decoder it works great. Doing software my system usually eats 30% of the CPU but the hardware takes next to none.
Rabbit ears and broadcast antenas! :-)
It is strange and ironic how the wheel turns.
Lets say some engineer at GM thinks "Hey I want to make changing the oil in the car as easy as possible so I'm going to put a button on the dash that opens the valve and dump the oil in a nice neat container".
Neat idea...except when you are driving down the highway at 80 MPH and someone hits the "OIL" button and dump your oil out of the engine.
What is boggling is that Microsoft designs in features just like the "Oil" button and then tries to play blameless. "Well obviously you aren't supposed to script e-mail that way". That is interesting logic but that doesn't fly for real world engineering. "Intedend use" and "capabilities" where one is clearly more important than the other. Microsoft can not place "Oil" buttons in their software and think they will only be used as intended.
The core problem is that Microsoft continues to write applications, and worse, data formats that break a cardnal rule: programs run data not the other way around.
Another thought to think of: Read the license on the software. Almost any software makes a "No Warrenty" claim on their stuff. If installing the software and using it corrupts data, causes natural disasters, makes your machine blow up, you can not blame nor are MS, Linus, etc. liable for fixing it, replacing it, etc. You use the software and you are on your own. This falls squarely under that.
Of course this absolves MS of blame but then again, why again do PHB think that MS software is great?
Entrapment is the act of enticing people to commit crimes by making exact request for them to commit the crime and catch them.
A easy example of entrapment in a sting is classic prostitution sting. If the police woman offers "The John" money for sex that is entraping. However if the police woman implies that she is there as a prostitute and "The John" comes forward and offers money for sex that isn't entrapment.
Leaving a car out on the street to see who will steal it is a great way to setup a clean sting. As long as the police never suggest that they want someone to steal the car then the car is stolen by a person of their own modivation.
...when you post something about "launching" and "cows" I picture a certain movie and catipulting bovines?
Explodium: The element that most bad guy armies make their crafts and mecha out of. It is cheap so they can make a million of them for every one good guy unit. The problem is that they have this property to explode in a colorful and violent way(which films incrediably well). The Zion(Gundam) and the Empire(Star Wars) invest heavly in this element and base entire fleets off the stuff.