Sorry. It's all metal bikini. Got it? Nothing but metal bikini. Lucas' best work. He should just make 2 more movies with actresses in metal bikinis. Just keep the man away from the script.
There's a difference between I Am Serious About Making A Fun, Dumb Movie serious and This Movie Is Not A Dumb Fun Movie But Part Of The Great Tradition Of Epic Storytelling, And I Am A Latter Day Homer serious.
I think Star Wars is overrated, trivial nonsense, but even I would know better than to make that a story item in Slashdot. That's just asking for trouble. The Salon article itself is wonderfully savage: I'm almost looking forward to the earnest cries of defense from aggrieved Star Wars fans who will insist the author Just Doesn't Get It, when it's the fans who don't realize how vacantly pompous Lucas' schtick is.
It does sadden me that a number of otherwise smart people make such a big deal about the Star Wars franchise. It's not like I have anything against epic geek entertainment: LOTR was fucking brilliant.
Linux isn't at stake, RedHat is. Linux's threat is from apathy, not from another company. RedHat's threat is not having a revenue source. They can't be in a defensive posture, they have to be aggressive and go after the best possible customers - and customers using Unix are definitely in that category. Replacing MS systems means chores like migrating entire databases from MS SQL server to Sybase or Informix, hand-scripting all rules currently on an Exchange server, hand-editing new ACLs, and the such.
Maybe we can turn this into an Ask Slashdot (although only 5% of the people who will chime in will actually be qualified to do so, I suspect) - are there any migration tools to automate the transition from MS based to Linux based services?
That depends on the business. If you were Loki Software, $1M would have meant a lot of payroll. It could easily screw up or sink a small/medium sized company.
That it is currently illegal (or, more accurately, a violation of copyright) I don't dispute. What I am disputing is whether it makes sense that it's illegal, whether it is reasonable in terms of actual human nature and the practice of day to day life to continue to support the fiction that makes it illegal. A law that you just, quite casually, admit to breaking and you quite likekly intend to continue breaking, is probably one very bad law. I want to have more of us agree that it makes no sense to treat these works in such a way, that it's an unteneble, anti-intuitive, irrational model. Once a critical mass of people are on board for that understanding, then we may be able to change the legality question.
No. Culture is generated in the relationships, between creator and artist, in the contexts in which people live. Any given song may have been created by a handful of people - the existence of genres of music production and listening, the fact that we all have experiences that are shared that make music relevant, that we have a shared language of experience, are the culture. I could have been more precise in my original wording, but *everyone* has a culture, and originality usually has nothing to do with. Many traditional cultures hand the songs and dances and stories down for generations, and it is in the sharing that it becomes a culture.
And culture doesn't have a use. The figuration that you make when you say that is something that Heidegger addressed in "The Question Concerning Technology;" the tendency to approach everything only as a tool for some other end is a reduction of life to mere technology, mere means.
I can make copies that are close enough. Most shirts aren't that complicated. (And, patterns *can* be stored on a server.) If I tried to sell copies as coming from the original, I would draw a line there: that's a form of fraud, like plaigarism, claiming I did something I didn't do.
What about the restaurant case? Are you saying the RIAA should be allowed to shake down mom-and-pop restaurants that pop a CD in their stereos during dinner?
Calling them "antiquated" just plays into the hands of the content-producers who would just as happily grind us inexorably toward pay-per-use purgatory.
They are still antiquated. The creators need to negotiate their contracts ahead of time now. I don't "pay per use" for my shirt; I bought my shirt, I can give my shirt to whoever I like, I can try to sew a comparable shirt. It's a good. The services involved - designing it, sewing it - were paid for *in advance.* I'm no longer paying for those services, no matter how many times I wear this shirt or to how many people I lend it or how many times I'm photographed in it.
The RIAA is what the Buggy Whip Manufacturer's Association would have been if they around in a corrupt era of lobbyist politics, and had the morals of pimps.
You forgot the OSPS. The "Oh! Shiny! Pretty! Syndrome." It's our culture that they own, and in the long run, in general terms, we aren't going to do without it. As far as I am concerned, there are two possible outcomes: 1) a far-reaching change in the legal status of intellectual property recognizes that "music" is going to be a verb and not a noun, a service and not a good, that people will have to make sure that they're going to get paid ahead of time, or 2) we hand over our cajones to the RIAA and its ilk, we allow more invasive, more draconian, and more wide-ranging legislation and enforcement creep into our day-to-day life, restricting things that our technology and our instinct to share with each other make natural, and the RIAA and their pals get richer.
I know I sound like a broken record with this, but there isn't a market solution (i.e., boycott) for this. With cops and courts at the RIAA's beck and call, there's not much of a technological solution, either. There has to be a political solution.
I agree with Moore's causes, but he's no brain trust - he fudges facts, takes cheap shots, overlooks a lot of complexity and plays to the crowd. If Chomsky and Zinn are the poplar luminaries of the left, Moore is the left's Rush Limbaugh. Fun, catchy, and satisfying for the converted, but often wrong, or right for the wrong reasons.
I agree that there are no easy answers. I think something that demonstrably does not work is focus on the elites within third world countries. The trouble is that development led by trade has a short-term interest of generating profits and getting access to cheap resources and cheap labor - which means dealing with the elites in those countries, often for whom corrupt judges, purchased police etc. are operating. Globalism in service of the multinationals is not going to do much good. It takes the political enfranchisement of the general population, which often works against the profits of the multinationals who underwrite "development."
Chicken/egg. A population will not value a legal system that is corrupt, protects only the few, and generally doesn't serve the populace. Historical circumstances create cultural mores to a greater extent than the inverse (it's no accident that a work-ethic can thrive in a population that has never been enslaved, never been conquered or occupied, never had life savings devalue to nothing overnight - all these experiences tend to erode that Protestant work ethic, and respect for property also tends to disappear when one's family is hungry and sick.) I don't think it's an accident that respect for the law declines most sharply in the US where the law is seen as an unfair, outside force meant to protect the privileged from the rest, and the white from the non-white.
Because they don't need you. In fact, you threaten them. They'd rather you sat and watch TV-plus ("iTV" or whatever) and just fished out your credit card and kept shopping on the online mall. If that's not what you want to do, you're more trouble than you're worth, and they'd rather you sit and stew.
Frankly, the whole "review" strikes me as an exercise in the resolution of cognitive dissonance. The fact is I think he really regrets getting the Treo - the problems he enumerates are many, the limitations irksome, and the benefits questionable - but after you've plopped down $500+ there's a motivation on a subconscious level to *defend* your choice as rational.
This review has been helpful to me - I had been considering a Treo, but at this point I think I'll pass.
Ultimately, what will change it is less a matter of game developers adopting the techniques - after all, many people in game development are already very sophisticated about art, aesthetics, narrative, literature, film and the like - but the maturing and sophistication of the game-playing audience. As it becomes less embarrassing for normal adults to play games, more games will be made for them. The Sims itself appeals to a very different demographic than other games have. When the audience for these games matures, I think a lot of game developers who have been holding back will be able to step up to the plate without much ado.
I also look for Europe (and to a less extent, Japan) to lead in this regard. (Max Payne is a Finnish-produced game, for example.) They are more willing to give up a little capital-capital in exchange for cultural capital.
Poignant.
on
Time Travel
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
Whatever the viability of his claim, his motives are poignant - he wants to go back in time and warn his father, who died of cancer when he was 10, of the danger of cigarettes.
I have no idea how physicists approach the question of the creation of a contrafactual timeline which removes its own motive for existing (if his father lived, then he wouldn't create the time machine, and thus etc. etc.) But I think this is more interesting, if tragic, as a story of a man who still misses his father than as a viable line of research.
For me, every 3rd email implies some sort of action, or has some sort of storeable information in it. A good email/PIM interface allows me to seamlessly schedule the action or store the information with minimal hassle. That is why Outlook has been such a success.
Will Wright, the developer of The Sims, noted in a lecture I saw him give that videogame development is recapitulating the history of painting as an art: it began with the equivalent of cave-drawing (Spacewar) and went through periods of early classical stylizations (Pacman, Pong, Space Invaders), to to mastering perspective (Battlezone), to where we are now, which is roughly equivalent to the mastery of realism that we find in the late 18th century (Quake, Counterstrike, GTA).
He is (and I am also) looking forward to the modernist awakening in videogame aesthetics, the breakthrough that occurs when pure realism becomes dull. This is all from the view of *visual aesthetics* - other issues like gameplay, the inclusion or exclusion of narratological elements, thematics and the like are separate questions (although narrative structure also has its own history - and videogame narrative is also in earlier stages of development than other arts are).
You don't understand the lingering Calvinist axiom, that underlies many of the inequalities in American society: wealthy people are wealthy because they are better, and better because they are wealthy, so the advantages that they enjoy are rightly theres, and they deserve all the justice they can afford.
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry. It's all metal bikini. Got it? Nothing but metal bikini. Lucas' best work. He should just make 2 more movies with actresses in metal bikinis. Just keep the man away from the script.
There's a difference between I Am Serious About Making A Fun, Dumb Movie serious and This Movie Is Not A Dumb Fun Movie But Part Of The Great Tradition Of Epic Storytelling, And I Am A Latter Day Homer serious.
It does sadden me that a number of otherwise smart people make such a big deal about the Star Wars franchise. It's not like I have anything against epic geek entertainment: LOTR was fucking brilliant.
Maybe we can turn this into an Ask Slashdot (although only 5% of the people who will chime in will actually be qualified to do so, I suspect) - are there any migration tools to automate the transition from MS based to Linux based services?
That depends on the business. If you were Loki Software, $1M would have meant a lot of payroll. It could easily screw up or sink a small/medium sized company.
That it is currently illegal (or, more accurately, a violation of copyright) I don't dispute. What I am disputing is whether it makes sense that it's illegal, whether it is reasonable in terms of actual human nature and the practice of day to day life to continue to support the fiction that makes it illegal. A law that you just, quite casually, admit to breaking and you quite likekly intend to continue breaking, is probably one very bad law. I want to have more of us agree that it makes no sense to treat these works in such a way, that it's an unteneble, anti-intuitive, irrational model. Once a critical mass of people are on board for that understanding, then we may be able to change the legality question.
And culture doesn't have a use. The figuration that you make when you say that is something that Heidegger addressed in "The Question Concerning Technology;" the tendency to approach everything only as a tool for some other end is a reduction of life to mere technology, mere means.
I can make copies that are close enough. Most shirts aren't that complicated. (And, patterns *can* be stored on a server.) If I tried to sell copies as coming from the original, I would draw a line there: that's a form of fraud, like plaigarism, claiming I did something I didn't do.
Arrrrrrrrrrr.
What about the restaurant case? Are you saying the RIAA should be allowed to shake down mom-and-pop restaurants that pop a CD in their stereos during dinner?
The RIAA is what the Buggy Whip Manufacturer's Association would have been if they around in a corrupt era of lobbyist politics, and had the morals of pimps.
I know I sound like a broken record with this, but there isn't a market solution (i.e., boycott) for this. With cops and courts at the RIAA's beck and call, there's not much of a technological solution, either. There has to be a political solution.
I agree with Moore's causes, but he's no brain trust - he fudges facts, takes cheap shots, overlooks a lot of complexity and plays to the crowd. If Chomsky and Zinn are the poplar luminaries of the left, Moore is the left's Rush Limbaugh. Fun, catchy, and satisfying for the converted, but often wrong, or right for the wrong reasons.
I agree that there are no easy answers. I think something that demonstrably does not work is focus on the elites within third world countries. The trouble is that development led by trade has a short-term interest of generating profits and getting access to cheap resources and cheap labor - which means dealing with the elites in those countries, often for whom corrupt judges, purchased police etc. are operating. Globalism in service of the multinationals is not going to do much good. It takes the political enfranchisement of the general population, which often works against the profits of the multinationals who underwrite "development."
Chicken/egg. A population will not value a legal system that is corrupt, protects only the few, and generally doesn't serve the populace. Historical circumstances create cultural mores to a greater extent than the inverse (it's no accident that a work-ethic can thrive in a population that has never been enslaved, never been conquered or occupied, never had life savings devalue to nothing overnight - all these experiences tend to erode that Protestant work ethic, and respect for property also tends to disappear when one's family is hungry and sick.) I don't think it's an accident that respect for the law declines most sharply in the US where the law is seen as an unfair, outside force meant to protect the privileged from the rest, and the white from the non-white.
Because they don't need you. In fact, you threaten them. They'd rather you sat and watch TV-plus ("iTV" or whatever) and just fished out your credit card and kept shopping on the online mall. If that's not what you want to do, you're more trouble than you're worth, and they'd rather you sit and stew.
I thought the first and biggest E-Bomb was the Apple Newton.
This review has been helpful to me - I had been considering a Treo, but at this point I think I'll pass.
The Window tax may well be more than offset by the discount of an economy of scale.
I also look for Europe (and to a less extent, Japan) to lead in this regard. (Max Payne is a Finnish-produced game, for example.) They are more willing to give up a little capital-capital in exchange for cultural capital.
I have no idea how physicists approach the question of the creation of a contrafactual timeline which removes its own motive for existing (if his father lived, then he wouldn't create the time machine, and thus etc. etc.) But I think this is more interesting, if tragic, as a story of a man who still misses his father than as a viable line of research.
For me, every 3rd email implies some sort of action, or has some sort of storeable information in it. A good email/PIM interface allows me to seamlessly schedule the action or store the information with minimal hassle. That is why Outlook has been such a success.
He is (and I am also) looking forward to the modernist awakening in videogame aesthetics, the breakthrough that occurs when pure realism becomes dull. This is all from the view of *visual aesthetics* - other issues like gameplay, the inclusion or exclusion of narratological elements, thematics and the like are separate questions (although narrative structure also has its own history - and videogame narrative is also in earlier stages of development than other arts are).
s/theres/theirs/ - and d'oh. I felt so smart for a second, there.
You don't understand the lingering Calvinist axiom, that underlies many of the inequalities in American society: wealthy people are wealthy because they are better, and better because they are wealthy, so the advantages that they enjoy are rightly theres, and they deserve all the justice they can afford.