I don't think there's anything stopping you from mounting your own take on, say, on Snow White or Cinderella. The problem is that Disney managed to get something of a stranglehold on the imagery.
I can't stand most of the stuff Disney puts out either, but isn't this a fairly big point. Disney own copyright on the characters and the art work, not on the story. Actually there are a two or three movies a year that rehash, remix or reset Snow White and Cinderella. No one has to pay Disney to make those.
And if they Disney versions are so saccharine as we both agree, what does it matter if they own the imagery? Remember even if they do, parody is fair use. It seems to me inconsistent to say that something is devoid of merit and the problem is that people are not allowed to copy it.
In fact it reminds me of the joke "The restaurant was bad. The food was vile -and the portions were too small"
Incidentally much of the debate on copyright here seems to fall into this trap. To be brutally honest there are two types of culture. One is hyped by a multinational like Disney. It is popular for a short time during which its corporate owner will jealously guard rights to it. After that it will likely disappear without trace. Basically this is pump'n'dump applied to culture.
There's another sort of culture, classical music and literature, decent paintings and the like that is hyped by no one and owned by no one. The only reason people still talk about it is because it is good. Actually most culture is not pump and dump culture - it's just that the media concentrates on hyping ephemera because people pay them to do so.
Now the problem here is that people complain like mad about the pump'n'dump form of culture being awful and they're right. Still if it is so awful, why does it bother you so much that it is not in the public domain? Why not just ignore it completely?
Let me guess you're the sort of person who quips that "piracy is not a good word to describe copyright infringement unless it is done by a bunch of cutthroats at sea", right?
If a fellow wanted karma about now would be to post a joke that mixes up a random meme from an 80's or 90's science fiction film and a reference to chairs being thrown.
What if your manager's success depends on eliminating your position and destroying everything you hold sacred?
Put women's contraceptive pills in his coffee and then try to keep a straight face while he grows tits. It'll make him much calmer too. Seriously it's like neutering your dog only much, much better.
However, I do find it disturbing the degree to which people will document others as well. And one can't share one's own life without sharing the lives of their social group too. And that is a problem.
Yup it is. There are loads of idiots that photograph everything and stick it on their blogs. I've had friends get fired from teaching jobs because of this - some dipshit had photographed them drunk and helpfully tagged the picture with enough information to identify them. Their employer found out and canned them.
It's particularly bad if you're an expatriate since it's easy to end up drinking with people with whom you share little in common apart from the fact that they're English speakers.
Your information isn't totally under control then is it? The Bad Guys could take that b that escaped, waterboard it for hours and find out your real name. From there it would be simple for them to take over your life and perhaps replace your with a duplicate grown in a pod.
I don't think it's that serious. You could probably drop quite a few frames and have a playable emulator. Back in ye olde days people would write games that were basically locked to the vertical blank interrupt. You'd have two buffers, one visible and one being drawn. Once you were done drawing you'd wait for a VBlank to come along and then flip the buffers when the change was invisible.
Someone should me a demo where he'd set the screen background color to white at the top of the screen then set it back to black once he started to wait for the VBlank. The nice thing about this was that you could see how much slack there was in the system. You could find a worse case bit of the game and make sure you never missed the deadline. Of course if you did you'd effectively skip a frame - since you had a drawn buffer ready you pretty much had to wait for another whole frame period before you could safely show it.
Of course if you knew it was going to be like this you could double the speed and drop every other frame. Most of the time this was unnoticeable.
On a typical 3 inch by 2 inch graph of the long tail the data point representing you is about 17.45 feet to the right of the y axis and thus invisible.
Actually the only thing laptops lag behind in is gaming performance. I've got an Asus G1S which at release wasn't too bad for gaming. Still it was rather expensive and you have to wonder if most PCs are laptops what will happen to PC gaming. It seems far more likely that people will buy an console and an much cheaper laptop with integrated graphics which will be fine for everything except games.
Gaming companies love consoles anyway - consoles are DRMd to hell which means less piracy.
Well an ARM netbook would be good for Linux. The problems is the vast majority of the market is x86/x64 Windows. Even if Windows were ported, the application will not be. And frankly even if they were they'd probably run slower on a 2Ghz ARM than they would on an 2Ghz Atom.
Now ARM based phones are a great idea. I've got a Windows Mobile phone and there are loads of applications for it and performance is fine. However applications for Windows Mobile are much, much less bloated than for desktop Windows. From what I've seen desktop Linux applications have suffered the same bloating over the years. E.g. Firefox is not quick on an Atom and will be worse on an ARM.
Actually I don't really care about battery life - all my machines are laptops but I always use them plugged in. Basically I don't really buy power consumption as something which will drive a switch away from x86. Even if it started to happen, Intel could just work a bit harder on power consumption - in most Atom machines the chipset uses more power than the processor. Actually I'm not even sure if x86 is more power consuming than ARM and even if it is the power consumption of a laptop is mostly things like the display and storage. Those will consume the same power regardless of CPU architecture.
E.g. if you look at the pie chart in the Base Hardware Platform section here -
The story went that during Viet Nam, a sniper was sent to wound some particular General, not kill him. He wasn't the greatest strategist, so we knew how to handle him, and didn't want him dead, but for some upcoming engagement we wanted him on the sidelines, so he was marked for a wounding and not a dirt-nap. They sent the sniper out with these new liquid teflon rounds to try. Mistake. When the round hit the General in the shoulder, the liquid came out in strings and tore his whole arm and shoulder off, inducing massive shock and bleeding him out in seconds.
This sort of thing is basically the reason why I like Americans.
Slashdot Mirror
I dunno about mortal enemy, but the all seeing lidless eye of Redmond will definitely give you The Look.
I don't think there's anything stopping you from mounting your own take on, say, on Snow White or Cinderella. The problem is that Disney managed to get something of a stranglehold on the imagery.
I can't stand most of the stuff Disney puts out either, but isn't this a fairly big point. Disney own copyright on the characters and the art work, not on the story. Actually there are a two or three movies a year that rehash, remix or reset Snow White and Cinderella. No one has to pay Disney to make those.
And if they Disney versions are so saccharine as we both agree, what does it matter if they own the imagery? Remember even if they do, parody is fair use. It seems to me inconsistent to say that something is devoid of merit and the problem is that people are not allowed to copy it.
In fact it reminds me of the joke "The restaurant was bad. The food was vile -and the portions were too small"
Incidentally much of the debate on copyright here seems to fall into this trap. To be brutally honest there are two types of culture. One is hyped by a multinational like Disney. It is popular for a short time during which its corporate owner will jealously guard rights to it. After that it will likely disappear without trace. Basically this is pump'n'dump applied to culture.
There's another sort of culture, classical music and literature, decent paintings and the like that is hyped by no one and owned by no one. The only reason people still talk about it is because it is good. Actually most culture is not pump and dump culture - it's just that the media concentrates on hyping ephemera because people pay them to do so.
Now the problem here is that people complain like mad about the pump'n'dump form of culture being awful and they're right. Still if it is so awful, why does it bother you so much that it is not in the public domain? Why not just ignore it completely?
Let me guess you're the sort of person who quips that "piracy is not a good word to describe copyright infringement unless it is done by a bunch of cutthroats at sea", right?
If a fellow wanted karma about now would be to post a joke that mixes up a random meme from an 80's or 90's science fiction film and a reference to chairs being thrown.
How would you feel if someone published your social security and Visa card numbers?
Whoosh.
What if your manager's success depends on eliminating your position and destroying everything you hold sacred?
Put women's contraceptive pills in his coffee and then try to keep a straight face while he grows tits. It'll make him much calmer too. Seriously it's like neutering your dog only much, much better.
You earn extra brownie points for "calling bullshit" (no pun intended) without even knowing what the problem domain is. Well done that man.
I like him! He's a straight shooter! Put him in charge of the Perl UMTS stack project project being run in North Korea.
However, I do find it disturbing the degree to which people will document others as well. And one can't share one's own life without sharing the lives of their social group too. And that is a problem.
Yup it is. There are loads of idiots that photograph everything and stick it on their blogs. I've had friends get fired from teaching jobs because of this - some dipshit had photographed them drunk and helpfully tagged the picture with enough information to identify them. Their employer found out and canned them.
It's particularly bad if you're an expatriate since it's easy to end up drinking with people with whom you share little in common apart from the fact that they're English speakers.
Your information isn't totally under control then is it? The Bad Guys could take that b that escaped, waterboard it for hours and find out your real name. From there it would be simple for them to take over your life and perhaps replace your with a duplicate grown in a pod.
I don't think it's that serious. You could probably drop quite a few frames and have a playable emulator. Back in ye olde days people would write games that were basically locked to the vertical blank interrupt. You'd have two buffers, one visible and one being drawn. Once you were done drawing you'd wait for a VBlank to come along and then flip the buffers when the change was invisible.
Someone should me a demo where he'd set the screen background color to white at the top of the screen then set it back to black once he started to wait for the VBlank. The nice thing about this was that you could see how much slack there was in the system. You could find a worse case bit of the game and make sure you never missed the deadline. Of course if you did you'd effectively skip a frame - since you had a drawn buffer ready you pretty much had to wait for another whole frame period before you could safely show it.
Of course if you knew it was going to be like this you could double the speed and drop every other frame. Most of the time this was unnoticeable.
SINISTER SCIENTIST: "My research could have cured a terrible disease and saved millions of lives"
NO NONSENSE COP: "Bullshit Doctor! You spent so much time wondering if you could do it that you didn't think whether you should"
DRAMATIC PAUSE, CUT TO PLAGUE ZOMBIES OVERRUNNING NATIONAL GUARD POSITIONS ON THE WHITEHOUSE LAWN.
On a typical 3 inch by 2 inch graph of the long tail the data point representing you is about 17.45 feet to the right of the y axis and thus invisible.
In high levels O2 can
* Cause increased fire risk
* React to produce CO2, a dangerous greenhouse gas
* Kill anaerobic bacteria
* Oxygen toxicity can KILL humans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_toxicity#Classification
I personally minimize the risk by breathing bottled air, consisting of 80% Nitrogen, an inert and harmless gas.
Right now, thanks to lobbying from Big Forestry O2 emissions are totally unregulated. It is time for the EPA to ban O2 as a pollutant, just like CO2.
Actually the only thing laptops lag behind in is gaming performance. I've got an Asus G1S which at release wasn't too bad for gaming. Still it was rather expensive and you have to wonder if most PCs are laptops what will happen to PC gaming. It seems far more likely that people will buy an console and an much cheaper laptop with integrated graphics which will be fine for everything except games.
Gaming companies love consoles anyway - consoles are DRMd to hell which means less piracy.
It's nice to have a choice, isn't it?
Wait for Extreme® ...To the Max® ...2®
Well an ARM netbook would be good for Linux. The problems is the vast majority of the market is x86/x64 Windows. Even if Windows were ported, the application will not be. And frankly even if they were they'd probably run slower on a 2Ghz ARM than they would on an 2Ghz Atom.
Now ARM based phones are a great idea. I've got a Windows Mobile phone and there are loads of applications for it and performance is fine. However applications for Windows Mobile are much, much less bloated than for desktop Windows. From what I've seen desktop Linux applications have suffered the same bloating over the years. E.g. Firefox is not quick on an Atom and will be worse on an ARM.
Actually I don't really care about battery life - all my machines are laptops but I always use them plugged in. Basically I don't really buy power consumption as something which will drive a switch away from x86. Even if it started to happen, Intel could just work a bit harder on power consumption - in most Atom machines the chipset uses more power than the processor. Actually I'm not even sure if x86 is more power consuming than ARM and even if it is the power consumption of a laptop is mostly things like the display and storage. Those will consume the same power regardless of CPU architecture.
E.g. if you look at the pie chart in the Base Hardware Platform section here -
http://blogs.msdn.com/e7/archive/2009/01/06/windows-7-energy-efficiency.aspx
The CPU is only consuming about 9% of the total average power.
It has been first converted to Javascript, then executed.
Cruel and unusual perhaps, but it is certainly dead now.
We heard like you liked paradoxes so we put quantum superposition in your classical scale universe so you can not spin while you spin.
In Soviet Russia, police criticize citizens in the media.
Bullshit. I get paid good money to shill for Microsoft, and I can tell you there's no way they'd do anything underhand like that.
I like the way Techshell only seem to make protective shells for products from companies that abuse and over charge their customers for repairs.
http://techshell.com/product.php
[Apologies in advance to console fans]
http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/8127/consolechartyr2dd9.jpg
The story went that during Viet Nam, a sniper was sent to wound some particular General, not kill him. He wasn't the greatest strategist, so we knew how to handle him, and didn't want him dead, but for some upcoming engagement we wanted him on the sidelines, so he was marked for a wounding and not a dirt-nap. They sent the sniper out with these new liquid teflon rounds to try. Mistake. When the round hit the General in the shoulder, the liquid came out in strings and tore his whole arm and shoulder off, inducing massive shock and bleeding him out in seconds.
This sort of thing is basically the reason why I like Americans.