Of course, if dubbing is a must in Germany, that must mean that a DVD without German (such as most released in the U.S. ) would be equally unaccptable, so they wouldn't have much of a problem with German people ordering U.S. releases anyway.
It's a must for wide release. There are some people who can enjoy a movie in English. BTW: the same counter-argument would be valid for the price-argument, because if people don't understand a film, they would not buy even the cheaper version.
he U.K. is segregated off into region 2. That's not exactly a poor country, and they can probably just about make out American English without subtitles. Many Canadians in region 1 would benefit from a french language version, as can France in region 2.
The region code is done on behalf of Hollywood, as this is the biggest exporter of films world wide. Films in other languages are unimportant for the global market. But OK, I also think the subtitles and dubbing is not the only factor. But it is clear: for an average film the guys in Hollywood don't wait for the French or Spanish subtitles or the German and Italina dubbing before they release the film in the US, also they don't take the effort to produce them during production. So, usually there should be a delay just because of subtitles or dubbing, be it a few weeks. For whatever reason: there is usually a time shift between the US-release and the release in other parts of the world, Big blockbusters have become an exception in recent years. Films like Batman Begins or Star Wars start nearly the same day around the globe. Besides that there is usually a delay of about several weeks (compared to about three months some years ago).
If DVD-Video region coding were about theatrical vs. video release dates, then DVD copies of a film produced after the film has completed its theatrical run in the developed world would be all-region, right? Why are classic films from the 1950s and earlier still region-coded?
Good question. But price is also not an issue with those films, as it is usually not very different in the US and in Europe, definetely below the shipping rates. Maybe it's just a bad habit.
Low income people usually don't dub the movies or write the subtitles themeselves.
Ever heard of fansubs? Heck, much of the low-income world might not even need subtitles.
This is besides the point. Many people don't need subtitles for Hollywood-movies at all (lots of English people for instance), but for attracting a wider audience they have to dub or subtitle them (in Germany for instance dubbing is nearly a must). And this has to be done professionally. So this takes some time. Time to time there are blockbusters starting nearly the same date world wide, but this takes a lot of afford and is not worth the trouble for an average movie. Additionally the people in Hollywood might wait for movies which are not expected to be blockbusters, until they started successfully in the US before they go to the rest of the world, in order not to waste more money on a flop.
Don't take me wrong: I don't think that regional codes make too much sense at all, but it's not completely off the mark regarding this point, that's all.
Case in point: much of Africa is low-income, but much of Africa is also formerly part of the British Empire and retains the influence of the English language.
But then: why different regions for the US and Europe?
So, since the billion dollars a year studios can't afford simultanious worldwide distribution, but average and low income people CAN afford to do it themselves, they must be locked out.
Low income people usually don't dub the movies or write the subtitles themeselves.
Of course the real reason is so they can scale the price to the highest the market will bear in multiple markets and not have the people stuck in the expensive places import for cheap.
I am sure this is one reason (German car makers tried to prevent this kind of advantage for buyers even inside the EU, as in neighbouring countries German cars are often much cheaper than in Germany). But I don't think that for instance the price difference between the US and Europe is very big, and surely not much bigger than between EU-countries.
Films start at different dates in different parts of the world. If people in Europe would get the newest Hollywood films before or during they run in their local theatres, they might decide only to watch them on DVD. The chain theatre-DVD-TV would be broken.
fluid dynamics simulation
inverse kinematics system
improved boolean tools
animation system
flive UV unwrapping LSCM
Modifier stack system
3d manipulators
Somebody who has never heard about Blender, might not have heard about anything in this list as well. I have heard about Blender, but I had not the faintest Idea what "flive UV unwrapping LSCM" was. "fluid dynamics simulation", "inverse kinematic system"? Could be some numerical tool for physicists.
Rubbish. The most obvious example is how governments pass laws about intarwebs when most politicians can't even switch computers on.
What is rubbish? I have clearly said that the ministers are very often no experts. But they always have experts as consultants. A minister is just head and representave of a department. Do you really think, a minister makes all the decisions only based on what he knows or thinks about a topic? He usually does not even write his speeches without heavy input from his assistants - who are the real experts.
However, in the US, this small group of people are certainly not the most knowledgeable about most of the subjects for which they enact laws.
Indeed, the ministers are not always experts in the field they are responsible for, it's not even intended to be the case. But they have assistants who are. So, they base their decisions on what those experts tell them. It's naive to think, they base their decisions solely on what they know about an issue. This is similar to a manager in a software company, who might be able to write a "Hello World" to the maximum, but has no clue, what a singleton ist - but still makes the decisions, about which way to go. He must have some understanding of the field, but he is not necessarly an expert. Is this a bad idea? Well experts tend to put too much emphasis on their point of view. Non experts might have a more distant view, for them it's less a problem to consider aspects from outside the realm, and this indeed can be an advantage. If the manager/minister is completely clueless it might not work. If you solely rely on experts they might lack other virtues which are necessary for managing - be it for a company or an administration. No system is without flaws.
I imagine a "the minority most knowledgable about each subject decides questions (laws,...) regarding this subject" might work a lot better if it could be implemented.
Ahem, but this is how current democracies already work. I at least never voted about a law, made any concrete decision. This is done by very small group of people.
It seems some people (especially the author of the cited article) missed some very important points:
1. You have access to more than just the index - you have access to the crawled data, which is about 300 Terabyte. So, if you want to do something with the pages, you don't have to download them, you don't have to rely, that they are there - you can use the crawled data to do whatever you want.
2. The processing does not take place on your machine, but on the provided infrastructure. There is a Web-Interface, so you can administer your account, your jobs etc. You do not download any software from Alexa. You get an account on their Linux cluster and there you can compile and run your own arbritrary applications. You are able to provide these results in form of Amazon Web Services.
So, this is much more than Google, MSN or Yahoo offer, it's hard even to compare those services. Alexa is a complete different beast, and it's a huge beast.
Find me empirical evidence indicating that everyone's fingerprints are actually unique?
Fingerprints are used worldwide now for more than 100 years in criminal investigations. Only one case in court, where the fingerprints were identical, although the accused had other proof, that those were not his, would suffice to shatter the system and would have become famous around the globe immediately (and that somebody is convicted solely based on fingerprints is not the rule). Obviously there was none. After 100 years and millions of cases - not a single known failure. That's quite good empirical evidence. It's no proof, but the chances are somewhere 1:10^14 that two identical fingerprints are from two different persons.
There was a study recently with about 50000 fingerprints. The statistics were not as convincingly as the "in field" observations, but still it has shown, that there were no two persons with identical fingerprints.
So, this working hypothesis is obviously very good and sound.
Would there be an Open Office without Microsoft Office?
Maybe, maybe not. OpenOffice is based on StarOffice. Without MS Office the company might have done better and not sold out to Sun - which gave it away as open source.
Open Office and many other open source projects are modeled from
intellectual property.
I am not quite clear about the meaning of the sentence. Do you mean with "intellectual property" those products held as such? Also many closed source projects reproduce functionality from others. So what does this say specifically about open source projects? Exactly: nothing.
I wonder if advancements would equal or match those from for-profit software companies.
Why shouldn't it? Why should a software developer make less advancements depending on the license under which he puts his software? For thousands of years mankind made progress without any law securing intellectual property. One learns fastest, just by looking how others do it. The learnt can than be used as a basis for new ideas. This has proven to be a very successful strategy.
A comparison may set another emphasis. Science made a real boost in history, after scientists got used to publish their results openly with the advance of the first regular science journals. Other scientists could learn, check the results, build their research on basis of what others did. There was a constant feedback, a communication involving a lot of scientists. A scientist just reusing what others have written will not have any longing success. The fastest will always have a slight advantage, will be rewarded, get the fame. Others will quickly follow, because the results are open. Nevertheless, the real good ones keep standing at the top. The public availablity of research results didn't stop competition, but increased it, in a very constructive and productive way. Maybe in a similar way the shift to open source will not hinder the progress but to the contrary speed up its advancement.
So overall I think I gave it a [5/10] because for an amateur production it's 10/10, but up against real actors and writers it's more like a 3/10.
I don't agree. Most actors are quite amateurish - but - for this movie this is absolute perfect and gives it just the right kind of humour. Think of Pirk or Fukov - they are complete morones, standing outside of this world - and this is really good reflected by the acting. The persons seem a bit silly because of the acting? That's the point: in this world everbody is just silly, especially those who are usually presented so serious. Pirk tries to impersonate an emperor, although he is completely nuts. Which better way you can show this, as by an actor acting a little out of line? Especially the actor of Fukov gives a good example: he has a second role as Festerbester, the captain of that powerfull ship which was attacked by the light beer. Fukov is absolutely over the top, his Festerbester is cool and sober, bringing his dry lines just on the spot.
Overall I think this is a very enjoyable film, not just when seen as an amateur product. Replace the actors by mediocre professionals you can see in dozens of other productions, let them speak plain English, and the film wouldn't be half the fun it actually is.
What about web browsers without javascript or people who disable javascript
Yes, and what about those computers not connected to the internet? HTML is also not usefull then at all. HTML - platform independent? Pah! I still have to find a page, the computer in our coffee-machine can render properly on its display.
Man, browser independent simply means, it does not rely on IE or Netscape specific extensions.
Naturally, the more often photons are absorbed, the slower the photons move *on average*. Really though, whenever they're moving, they're moving at c.
It is not that light is "really" made out of some particles called "photons", you can look at it as a wave phenomenon as well. Neither Newton nor Huygens were right about the nature of light. Just reducing light to a bunch of particles is a simplification. It's not, that your explanation is wrong, one is just not forced to choose the particle picture. And if you look at it as a wave and measure its group velocity, you can call it the speed of light. If you are in a situation where you could be misunderstood, you may add "in (a specific) medium". What is constant is the speed of light in vacuum.
"amount of time it takes for light to travel a certain distance."
And that is simply called "speed of light", as speed is defined as the amount of time it takes to travel a certain distance. Obviously it does not mean the constant speed of light in vacuum, which is relevant in SRT. Language is all about context, and in this context it is clear what is meant, so simply talking about "speed of light" is all right.
Rather, the time it takes photons to travel a certain distance is being increased by the use of a device which scatters photons and also by means of electric fields. This is just like saying that light travels "more slowly" through certain media. Really, what I think is happening is that there is a delay when a photon is being absorbed into a certain medium before being able to pass through it. So, it seems that light slows down, but really the delay is caused by the interference of the medium and the speed of the actual photons is constant.
Yes, and all this is usually summarized by the notion "speed of light in medium".
Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it's wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.
Which gives darkness a good second rank - just after bad news, which - as we all know - travels fastest.
That said, you're looking at a free translation software offered on the internet. They have to do quick translations and they are ad supported at best. I'd image real translation software would be much better. SYSTRAN's little "try me" box on their site successfully translated "The dog was wearing pants. The cat pants loudly." to French using different words for the two pants (but then again so did Google and Babel Fish).
Babel Fish and Google use Systran. On their home page they have an improved version, also there are systems better than Systran, but what you see on Google and Altavista is pretty close to state of the art.
you don't see people carrying their harddrives around, do you?
Sure I do. People have 1 GB Memory sticks as key fobs, or have it just like little accessoires in the pockets, They carry around iPods and similar devices with 5, 10, 20 GB in their bags and jackets.
No, the future of computing always has been, and still is over the network.
Currently I see a mixture of both evolving. There are applications you use over the internet like mail and other things regarding communication. But very often people carry around data on their USB stick, or even applications of their choice, which are not available over the net.
In the long run the net might take over everything - but this has been announced for years and years. In the meantime a mixture of both, internet and mobile storage devices will define personal mobile IT infrastructure.
This is modded insightfull? It wasn't when it has been posted the first time(s), and it is not this time either. It rides on some clichés and it's a simple flamebait.
If Hans himself had not also shown the maturity of a ten-year-old, his filesystem would've made the mainstream Linux kernel by now.
Could you explain this remark? In the e-Mails exchange one can read there, it is clear, that Linus is not willing to put Reiser4 into the kernel - for pure technical reasons, not because something Reiser did or did not.
Slashdot Mirror
It's a must for wide release. There are some people who can enjoy a movie in English. BTW: the same counter-argument would be valid for the price-argument, because if people don't understand a film, they would not buy even the cheaper version.
The region code is done on behalf of Hollywood, as this is the biggest exporter of films world wide. Films in other languages are unimportant for the global market. But OK, I also think the subtitles and dubbing is not the only factor. But it is clear: for an average film the guys in Hollywood don't wait for the French or Spanish subtitles or the German and Italina dubbing before they release the film in the US, also they don't take the effort to produce them during production. So, usually there should be a delay just because of subtitles or dubbing, be it a few weeks. For whatever reason: there is usually a time shift between the US-release and the release in other parts of the world, Big blockbusters have become an exception in recent years. Films like Batman Begins or Star Wars start nearly the same day around the globe. Besides that there is usually a delay of about several weeks (compared to about three months some years ago).
Good question. But price is also not an issue with those films, as it is usually not very different in the US and in Europe, definetely below the shipping rates. Maybe it's just a bad habit.
This is besides the point. Many people don't need subtitles for Hollywood-movies at all (lots of English people for instance), but for attracting a wider audience they have to dub or subtitle them (in Germany for instance dubbing is nearly a must). And this has to be done professionally. So this takes some time. Time to time there are blockbusters starting nearly the same date world wide, but this takes a lot of afford and is not worth the trouble for an average movie. Additionally the people in Hollywood might wait for movies which are not expected to be blockbusters, until they started successfully in the US before they go to the rest of the world, in order not to waste more money on a flop.
Don't take me wrong: I don't think that regional codes make too much sense at all, but it's not completely off the mark regarding this point, that's all.
But then: why different regions for the US and Europe?
Low income people usually don't dub the movies or write the subtitles themeselves.
I am sure this is one reason (German car makers tried to prevent this kind of advantage for buyers even inside the EU, as in neighbouring countries German cars are often much cheaper than in Germany). But I don't think that for instance the price difference between the US and Europe is very big, and surely not much bigger than between EU-countries.
Films start at different dates in different parts of the world. If people in Europe would get the newest Hollywood films before or during they run in their local theatres, they might decide only to watch them on DVD. The chain theatre-DVD-TV would be broken.
First: not every nerd is interested in 3d-graphics, so I don't think this general statement is true. Second: not all readers here are "true" nerds.
You must have been too long here.Somebody who has never heard about Blender, might not have heard about anything in this list as well. I have heard about Blender, but I had not the faintest Idea what "flive UV unwrapping LSCM" was. "fluid dynamics simulation", "inverse kinematic system"? Could be some numerical tool for physicists.
This is not very speicific for any software.
What is rubbish? I have clearly said that the ministers are very often no experts. But they always have experts as consultants. A minister is just head and representave of a department. Do you really think, a minister makes all the decisions only based on what he knows or thinks about a topic? He usually does not even write his speeches without heavy input from his assistants - who are the real experts.
Indeed, the ministers are not always experts in the field they are responsible for, it's not even intended to be the case. But they have assistants who are. So, they base their decisions on what those experts tell them. It's naive to think, they base their decisions solely on what they know about an issue. This is similar to a manager in a software company, who might be able to write a "Hello World" to the maximum, but has no clue, what a singleton ist - but still makes the decisions, about which way to go. He must have some understanding of the field, but he is not necessarly an expert. Is this a bad idea? Well experts tend to put too much emphasis on their point of view. Non experts might have a more distant view, for them it's less a problem to consider aspects from outside the realm, and this indeed can be an advantage. If the manager/minister is completely clueless it might not work. If you solely rely on experts they might lack other virtues which are necessary for managing - be it for a company or an administration. No system is without flaws.
Ahem, but this is how current democracies already work. I at least never voted about a law, made any concrete decision. This is done by very small group of people.
It seems some people (especially the author of the cited article) missed some very important points:
1. You have access to more than just the index - you have access to the crawled data, which is about 300 Terabyte. So, if you want to do something with the pages, you don't have to download them, you don't have to rely, that they are there - you can use the crawled data to do whatever you want.
2. The processing does not take place on your machine, but on the provided infrastructure. There is a Web-Interface, so you can administer your account, your jobs etc. You do not download any software from Alexa. You get an account on their Linux cluster and there you can compile and run your own arbritrary applications. You are able to provide these results in form of Amazon Web Services.
So, this is much more than Google, MSN or Yahoo offer, it's hard even to compare those services. Alexa is a complete different beast, and it's a huge beast.Fingerprints are used worldwide now for more than 100 years in criminal investigations. Only one case in court, where the fingerprints were identical, although the accused had other proof, that those were not his, would suffice to shatter the system and would have become famous around the globe immediately (and that somebody is convicted solely based on fingerprints is not the rule). Obviously there was none. After 100 years and millions of cases - not a single known failure. That's quite good empirical evidence. It's no proof, but the chances are somewhere 1:10^14 that two identical fingerprints are from two different persons.
There was a study recently with about 50000 fingerprints. The statistics were not as convincingly as the "in field" observations, but still it has shown, that there were no two persons with identical fingerprints.
So, this working hypothesis is obviously very good and sound.
Maybe, maybe not. OpenOffice is based on StarOffice. Without MS Office the company might have done better and not sold out to Sun - which gave it away as open source.
I am not quite clear about the meaning of the sentence. Do you mean with "intellectual property" those products held as such? Also many closed source projects reproduce functionality from others. So what does this say specifically about open source projects? Exactly: nothing.
Why shouldn't it? Why should a software developer make less advancements depending on the license under which he puts his software? For thousands of years mankind made progress without any law securing intellectual property. One learns fastest, just by looking how others do it. The learnt can than be used as a basis for new ideas. This has proven to be a very successful strategy.
A comparison may set another emphasis. Science made a real boost in history, after scientists got used to publish their results openly with the advance of the first regular science journals. Other scientists could learn, check the results, build their research on basis of what others did. There was a constant feedback, a communication involving a lot of scientists. A scientist just reusing what others have written will not have any longing success. The fastest will always have a slight advantage, will be rewarded, get the fame. Others will quickly follow, because the results are open. Nevertheless, the real good ones keep standing at the top. The public availablity of research results didn't stop competition, but increased it, in a very constructive and productive way. Maybe in a similar way the shift to open source will not hinder the progress but to the contrary speed up its advancement.
I don't agree. Most actors are quite amateurish - but - for this movie this is absolute perfect and gives it just the right kind of humour. Think of Pirk or Fukov - they are complete morones, standing outside of this world - and this is really good reflected by the acting. The persons seem a bit silly because of the acting? That's the point: in this world everbody is just silly, especially those who are usually presented so serious. Pirk tries to impersonate an emperor, although he is completely nuts. Which better way you can show this, as by an actor acting a little out of line? Especially the actor of Fukov gives a good example: he has a second role as Festerbester, the captain of that powerfull ship which was attacked by the light beer. Fukov is absolutely over the top, his Festerbester is cool and sober, bringing his dry lines just on the spot.
Overall I think this is a very enjoyable film, not just when seen as an amateur product. Replace the actors by mediocre professionals you can see in dozens of other productions, let them speak plain English, and the film wouldn't be half the fun it actually is.
Yes, and what about those computers not connected to the internet? HTML is also not usefull then at all. HTML - platform independent? Pah! I still have to find a page, the computer in our coffee-machine can render properly on its display.
Man, browser independent simply means, it does not rely on IE or Netscape specific extensions.
It is not that light is "really" made out of some particles called "photons", you can look at it as a wave phenomenon as well. Neither Newton nor Huygens were right about the nature of light. Just reducing light to a bunch of particles is a simplification. It's not, that your explanation is wrong, one is just not forced to choose the particle picture. And if you look at it as a wave and measure its group velocity, you can call it the speed of light. If you are in a situation where you could be misunderstood, you may add "in (a specific) medium". What is constant is the speed of light in vacuum.
And that is simply called "speed of light", as speed is defined as the amount of time it takes to travel a certain distance. Obviously it does not mean the constant speed of light in vacuum, which is relevant in SRT. Language is all about context, and in this context it is clear what is meant, so simply talking about "speed of light" is all right.
Yes, and all this is usually summarized by the notion "speed of light in medium".
Which gives darkness a good second rank - just after bad news, which - as we all know - travels fastest.
Sure I do. People have 1 GB Memory sticks as key fobs, or have it just like little accessoires in the pockets, They carry around iPods and similar devices with 5, 10, 20 GB in their bags and jackets.
Currently I see a mixture of both evolving. There are applications you use over the internet like mail and other things regarding communication. But very often people carry around data on their USB stick, or even applications of their choice, which are not available over the net.
In the long run the net might take over everything - but this has been announced for years and years. In the meantime a mixture of both, internet and mobile storage devices will define personal mobile IT infrastructure.
This is modded insightfull? It wasn't when it has been posted the first time(s), and it is not this time either. It rides on some clichés and it's a simple flamebait.