How does it differ from a library? Because the library pays for each copy and only loans them out to one person at a time.
You post something on the internet, and everyone in the world can have a copy almost immediately. Theoretically, if I publish a book, people could collaborate to have someone buy a single copy, OCR it, and post it on the internet. Then everyone can download and read it. Millions of people could read the book, and I'd have sold only one copy. That cannot happen with libraries, because millions of people cannot share a single physical copy.
Libraries allow people to share books on a reasonable scale. The internet takes that to an extreme. That's the difference.
Well "Ryan", what exactly makes you say Axel's post is fabricated? Are you saying that IRC log he linked to on Slashnet is a fabrication? That the "troll cabal" somehow hacked into the Slashnet servers and placed it there, and the Slashnet administrators haven't noticed it yet?
And yes, it's true, Michael stole the Signal 11 account from the person who was using it. Shortly after it happened, there was a discussion about it on one of the front page stories of the day, in which Michael participated and basically admitted what he did (he acted like there was nothing wrong with it). He then promptly modded down all the posts in that thread (including his own) to -1 so they wouldn't get archived. Anybody who was paying attention at the time will remember what I'm talking about.
Axel backed up his statements with references wherever possible, and you merely assert, with no evidence, that he's lying.
Folks, what Axel said is true. Ignore "Ryan"; he's just trying to confuse the issue.
Closed captioning provides more than just one stream of text , though. Just look at all the menu items on a CC compliant TV. There's CC1, CC2, etc., plus TEXT1, TEXT2, etc. And I've yet to see a station broadcast anything except CC1. I think they're talking about all the stuff beisdes CC1 when they say "unused".
I agree though -- closed captioning is a good thing. And since the FCC now requires it in every new set sold in the USA, I'd say it's unlikely to go away any time soon.
It seemed to me from reading the story that the AI never employed human agents to attack its victims. I also got the impression that the main character managed to escape due to his epilepsy. The flashing caused a seziure, so he didn't finish watching and be fully hypnotized. Everyone else who was standing around the machine when someone hit the "Press Enter" message left by the AI ended up killing themselves. And the story went into great detail on how Lisa herself, not some bad guys, took the door off the microwave and fried her brains. Then the AI wrote a suicide note for her. It was a little vauge, but I'm pretty sure that's what Varley intended. I'll have to read the story again, though.
An internet entirely based on IPv6 would be wonderful, but it will never, ever take off until Microsoft supports IPv6 in a consumer OS (Windows 2000 doesn't count). It doesn't matter if FreeBSD, Linux, MacOS 9 & X, and every other non-Windows OS out there supports it out of the box -- if Windows doesn't support it, it will never see widespread use.
I think MS is biding its time to see if there is some way they can benefit from holding back IPv6. Because of the way the IPv4 address space is divided up, we will run out of IP addresses in a world where every person has multiple IP-enabled devices (including cell phones and PDAs). Such a world is just a few years away. MS knows they could prevent a shortage of IP addresses from happening by including IPv6 support in a consumer-level OS, but they are probably waiting to see if there is some way to make more money by letting that happen.
In a few years we may be hearing: "You want your own IP address? You'll have to sign up for MSN, in that case..."
True, it was one of those emergent "the network is alive" sorts of AI, not a single computer.
Varley never specifically states that the AI hypnotizes its victims, but he alludes to it. There is really little else it could be.
The passage where the AI called the main character was particularly chilling... "I could here its soul breathing on the wires". Really makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
For those who have not read it, "Press Enter" is a short story by John Varley about a government/military computer that becomes sentient. It kills any civilians who find out about it by hypnotizing them with flashing patterns on their computer monitors and convincing them to kill themselves in nasty ways. One poor woman ends up cooking her brains in a microwave.
That makes sense... DigitalConvergence is a Dallas-based company, right?
In any case, I heard from someone who lives in Dallas that the Morning News has taken to shortening the part of the articles that actually appears in print and just sticking a "scan here for more info" tag at the end. Continued on our website -- where we don't have to pay printing costs!
The Dallas Morning News was a lot better before the Dallas Times Herald closed down. (I was living in Dallas when that happened.) Bad as it was, at least the Times Herald gave them some competition. Ain't nothing like a one-newspaper town! (Except maybe a two-newspaper town that's really just a one newspaper town in disguise, like San Francisco.)
Thanks for posting that, dude. Perhaps you should e-mail the/. admins and see if they would be willing to post those links as part of an "update" to the story...
Theaters often hire cops to provide security for them. I don't know if they are supposed to wear their uniforms while at a private job like that, but it's not unusual to see cops at movie theaters. If he was checking tickets for kids going into R-rated movies, he was doing it under the pretense of enforcing the theater's policies, not enforcing the law.
Re:The movie wanked on the ending.
on
Hannibal's Return
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· Score: 1
You're the first person I've encountered who actually liked the ending of the book. Ridley Scott reportedly told Thomas Harris that he "just didn't buy it" and that he wanted to leave it out. Harris told him that was fine. So there you have it. Personally, I'm happy that the movie chose to leave that out, and I'm doubly happy that they left out Lecter's childhood trauma. But I agree with you about Verger's sister. I would have liked to have seen her on screen. Let's see -- who could have played her... damn. I can't think of anybody. They'd have to get some female bodybuilder to play the part.
Agreed. The brain scene was pretty incredible, but I hardly even flinched. I was hoping they would show the actual skull cap removal from the front, which really would have disgusted me, but instead they showed it from behind and slightly in-shadow, without even the entire head in frame. I was disappointed. Does that make me a bloodthirsty monster? Eh, who cares.
Just imagine what it must be like for Ray Liotta to watch that scene! Seeing your self on screen with your head cracked open and your brain exposed would be a bit unsettling, no matter how much you kept reminding yourself that it was fake.
I wondered about that, too. It was most likely a mistake, although you could plausibly say that she knew where she hid the key, and went and got it after Hannibal left (that would actually make sense, not wanting to walk around handcuffed to somebody's severed hand and all...)
Stuff from the book I'm glad they left out
on
Hannibal's Return
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· Score: 2
From Timothy's review:
I wish Scott, Harris and Mamet had found room to squeeze in just a few of the cut scenes, though, like the book's flashbacks about Lecter's childhood... Lecter comes off again as an anthrophagous Moriarty whose victim-eating is just an arbirary manifestation of evil.
No! It's a good thing they left that out. I was very happy Lecter's poor-little-me childhood did not make it to the screen. It would have destroyed his character!
I still can't believe Harris ever wrote that in the first place. What the hell was he thinking? He did a complete 180 from his previous characterizations of Hannibal. In the first two books (Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs), he emphasized the idea that Lecter simply was evil, not because somebody mistreated him as a child. He even has Lecter tell someone at one point that "our personalities are handed to us" along with our height, hair color, etc. He also tells Clarice that he "happened" -- that he wasn't made, he simply is. Harris ruined everything by trying to pass Lecter's behavior off on some childhood trauma in typical pop-psychology fashion. The only explanation I can come up with is that Harris decided to write the third Lecter book wildly out of character, just to see if anyone would care. After reading "Hannibal", my first thought was, "I have been trolled -- at hardcover prices, too!"
Considering the source material, I'd say they did a damn fine job. After I finished Harris' stupid waste of paper I thought there was no way it would make an even remotely watchable movie. However I was pleasantly surprised by this film. I think most of the credit has to go to screenwriter Steven Zaillian (from what I hear, they pretty much tossed out David Mamet's draft and started over with Zaillian). The movie kept all the interesting parts of the book and threw out most of the things that made it suck so bad. The result was far better than I had anticipated. Still not great, but nowhere near the disaster it might have been.
For those who have been to see it, how many little kids (obviously too young to be seeing this movie) were there in the theater? I didn't count very many, but I went to a late show. I'm betting that a large number of parents will take their kids to see this. (I've been seeing more and more little kids in R-rated movies over the past few years.) I'll bet these are the same parents who complain to lawmakers about the need for more restrictions on Hollywood.
The name "Unobtanium" is from James Cameron's as-yet-unpoduced movie script "Avatar". It referred to a rare but naturally occurring (on other planets, anyway) room-temperature superconductor.
The "Avatar" script has been floating around the net for a while. Anyone care to post a link?
Some people would argue that musicians should give away their music as MP3s (or "Ogg", since said people are usually against proprietary algorithms as well) and then set up a virtual "tip jar" on their website where people can give them a buck or two via a PayPal account if they like the song. There have even been formal proposals for such things, like the Street Performer Protocol. I've yet to hear of an instance of such a thing actually allowing someone to become successful musician. Note: I don't mean that someone should eclipse the Beatles in terms of riches and fame before such a scheme can be declared a success -- I just would have though that by now there would have been at least one or two minor success stories. As far as I know, no one has yet been able to so much as just pay the rent by producing writing, art, or music and giving it out using the Street Performer Protocol (or any similar schemes). Sure, there was Stephen King's "The Plant", but that's not a fair test, since he's already the most successful novelist of all time. How about a "nobody" just starting out being able to pay their bills based on "tips" or "donations" that come in as a result of their art?
Yes, I understand -- the device described in the article records the already-compressed HDTV broadcast stream onto a miniDV tape. I was just commenting on the author's trailing statement, "How long before we see HDminiDV?" I think the author is jumping to conclusions. Just because the miniDV tape mechanism is capable of recording compressed-for-broadcast HD streams, it does then follow that an HD camcorder that uses miniDV tapes for storage is just around the corner. I think HD camcorders are probably going to need heftier I/O and storage mechanisms than miniDV to be practical. Putting that much of a burden on the camera's on-the-fly compressor probably won't lead to good results.
Regarding the Linux 1394 project -- I don't think stuffing important data onto a miniDV cassette is a good idea. Most guides and how-tos for video production urge people not to use the miniDV cassettes as their primary storage for footage they want to keep. The miniDV format seems more like an unreliable kludge than something robust and well-designed. Still, if they can make it work, more power to them.
Well, here's the thing about miniDV. Certainly you can get acceptable NTSC-resolution video images at lower data rates than miniDV, but it takes time to compress the data like that, and the miniDV camcorders are forced to do their compression in real-time. That's why the miniDV data rate is so high compared to say, DSS broadcast or DVD video. Even with a powerhouse (by today's standards) desktop computer and a highly optimized video compression program ("media cleaner", as they are sometimes called), it's hard to get real-time compression at those low data rates. It's more like 50% or 75% of real-time speed, if you're lucky.
Currently, HD camcorders exist, but they record at much higher data rates than HDTV broadcast or miniDV camcorders, simply because they have to do the compression real-time. Electronics will certainly be fast enough eventually to squeeze an HD data stream down to the miniDV-data-rate real-time, but it will probably be a year or two from now before you see that sort of thing in a consumer-priced camcorder.
However, maybe by then some of those holographic storage mechanisms may have hit the market, and then you won't need in-camera compression or tapes anymore.
I have to conquer on the lame "2001" rip-off of flying through the clouds around V'Ger.
Well, since Douglas Trumbull worked on the special effects for both "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" and "2001: A Space Odyessy", I'd say he's entitled to rip off his own ideas (it was he who came up with the process that allowed for the flying-through-a-space-warp shots at the end of "2001").
I wouldn't be surprised to find that memory responds to how much it's used...
The great classical pianist Daniel Barenboim would agree with you. He has said that "memory is a muscle", and as such it must be exercised to keep it in shape. He is famous for having a remarkable memory, simply because he has worked at it. I saw him on a 60 Minutes feature story once where Steve Croft gave him the names of various pieces Barenboim had performed over the course of his career at random, and he was able to sit down and play any of them on command. He emphasized that this was not talent, but the result of work.
DVD is a case where the new technology is better than the old (VHS).
That's not the reason why DVD is taking off. The average person does not give a flying f**k about quality. They want convenience. DVDs are smaller, lighter, and have random access (no more rewinding or fast-forwarding!). That is the only reason why the sheeple are buying into DVD.
if we're strictly talking about stereo sound, there's not much you can do that's better than a CD...is there?
Actually, there is. Have a look at this review of the new Sony/Philips SACD format. The reviewer was very skeptical of the so-called "golden ear" people's claims of problems with CD sound -- until he heard the demo. (Scroll to the bottom few paragraphs for the relevant part of the article.) Sure, there is Nyquist to consider, and no rational person would argue with his theorem. But the question is not "is Nyquist wrong", it's "Is the human ear able to hear anything beyond what is contained in CD sound?" Based on some of the reactions so far to formats like SACD and DVD-Audio, I'd say the answer seems to be, "yes, it can".
But that's not the issue when it comes to the success or failure of a new audio format. The general buying public will not care about increased quality -- they rarely have. They only care about increased convenience. If somebody comes up with a format that is smaller, more durable, and has a longer play time than CDs, people will buy it, no matter what copy-protection schemes are included. End of story. Sad but true.
It's as if Microsoft coded the translation app with a lot of WaitAndPunishUserForUsingNonWordDocumentFormat() loops.
I'll bet that isn't far from the truth. Sounds like exactly the sort of thing they would do, and then turn around and tell the public that it's slow because those other, non-MS formats are "inferior" and just naturally take a long time to process.
No, I'm fairly sure what I'm complaining about was what was actually on the film. As I pointed out in an above comment, the theater I go to does an excellent job of providing bright projection. The bright parts of the movie were very, very bright. The previews were also very bright. The problem was the dark parts just weren't dark enough. Instead of a deep, rich black, they had a sort of greyish appearance. If anything, that means the projector's bulb was too bright (i.e., it made the parts of the film that were supposed to be black look non-black).
I guess what I'm getting at is that the film had very low contrast. There's nothing the theater can do about that -- if they turn down the brightness of the projector lamp to make the blacks nice and dark, then the bright parts of the movie won't be bright enough. And if they turn it up so that the bright parts of the movie have proper brightness (as the theater I went to did), then the blacks end up looking greyish. You make it sound like the print you saw had good contrast, so I wonder if what I saw had something more to do with bad printing at the film than the intent of the filmmakers.
That's what sucks about movies these days. When done right, film produces beautiful images, but when the printing labs or the theaters get sloppy (which they tend to do a lot more now than in the past), things start to look crappy. Moving to electronic projection might alieviate some of those problems (such as bad lab work), but only if it's done the Right Way(tm). I'm afraid that the people who are working on such systems are aiming for "good enough" rather than "great", so we'll end up with images that have low resolution, poor contrast, a small color gamut, lots of compression artifacts, and so on. Hell, that's already started happening. Just wait until "Star Wars Episode II: The HDTV Menace" comes out. Ugh.
Slashdot Mirror
You post something on the internet, and everyone in the world can have a copy almost immediately. Theoretically, if I publish a book, people could collaborate to have someone buy a single copy, OCR it, and post it on the internet. Then everyone can download and read it. Millions of people could read the book, and I'd have sold only one copy. That cannot happen with libraries, because millions of people cannot share a single physical copy.
Libraries allow people to share books on a reasonable scale. The internet takes that to an extreme. That's the difference.
And yes, it's true, Michael stole the Signal 11 account from the person who was using it. Shortly after it happened, there was a discussion about it on one of the front page stories of the day, in which Michael participated and basically admitted what he did (he acted like there was nothing wrong with it). He then promptly modded down all the posts in that thread (including his own) to -1 so they wouldn't get archived. Anybody who was paying attention at the time will remember what I'm talking about.
Axel backed up his statements with references wherever possible, and you merely assert, with no evidence, that he's lying.
Folks, what Axel said is true. Ignore "Ryan"; he's just trying to confuse the issue.
I agree though -- closed captioning is a good thing. And since the FCC now requires it in every new set sold in the USA, I'd say it's unlikely to go away any time soon.
It seemed to me from reading the story that the AI never employed human agents to attack its victims. I also got the impression that the main character managed to escape due to his epilepsy. The flashing caused a seziure, so he didn't finish watching and be fully hypnotized. Everyone else who was standing around the machine when someone hit the "Press Enter" message left by the AI ended up killing themselves. And the story went into great detail on how Lisa herself, not some bad guys, took the door off the microwave and fried her brains. Then the AI wrote a suicide note for her. It was a little vauge, but I'm pretty sure that's what Varley intended. I'll have to read the story again, though.
I think MS is biding its time to see if there is some way they can benefit from holding back IPv6. Because of the way the IPv4 address space is divided up, we will run out of IP addresses in a world where every person has multiple IP-enabled devices (including cell phones and PDAs). Such a world is just a few years away. MS knows they could prevent a shortage of IP addresses from happening by including IPv6 support in a consumer-level OS, but they are probably waiting to see if there is some way to make more money by letting that happen.
In a few years we may be hearing: "You want your own IP address? You'll have to sign up for MSN, in that case..."
Varley never specifically states that the AI hypnotizes its victims, but he alludes to it. There is really little else it could be.
The passage where the AI called the main character was particularly chilling ... "I could here its soul breathing on the wires". Really makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.
For those who have not read it, "Press Enter" is a short story by John Varley about a government/military computer that becomes sentient. It kills any civilians who find out about it by hypnotizing them with flashing patterns on their computer monitors and convincing them to kill themselves in nasty ways. One poor woman ends up cooking her brains in a microwave.
In any case, I heard from someone who lives in Dallas that the Morning News has taken to shortening the part of the articles that actually appears in print and just sticking a "scan here for more info" tag at the end. Continued on our website -- where we don't have to pay printing costs!
The Dallas Morning News was a lot better before the Dallas Times Herald closed down. (I was living in Dallas when that happened.) Bad as it was, at least the Times Herald gave them some competition. Ain't nothing like a one-newspaper town! (Except maybe a two-newspaper town that's really just a one newspaper town in disguise, like San Francisco.)
Thanks for posting that, dude. Perhaps you should e-mail the /. admins and see if they would be willing to post those links as part of an "update" to the story...
Theaters often hire cops to provide security for them. I don't know if they are supposed to wear their uniforms while at a private job like that, but it's not unusual to see cops at movie theaters. If he was checking tickets for kids going into R-rated movies, he was doing it under the pretense of enforcing the theater's policies, not enforcing the law.
You're the first person I've encountered who actually liked the ending of the book. Ridley Scott reportedly told Thomas Harris that he "just didn't buy it" and that he wanted to leave it out. Harris told him that was fine. So there you have it. Personally, I'm happy that the movie chose to leave that out, and I'm doubly happy that they left out Lecter's childhood trauma. But I agree with you about Verger's sister. I would have liked to have seen her on screen. Let's see -- who could have played her ... damn. I can't think of anybody. They'd have to get some female bodybuilder to play the part.
Just imagine what it must be like for Ray Liotta to watch that scene! Seeing your self on screen with your head cracked open and your brain exposed would be a bit unsettling, no matter how much you kept reminding yourself that it was fake.
I wondered about that, too. It was most likely a mistake, although you could plausibly say that she knew where she hid the key, and went and got it after Hannibal left (that would actually make sense, not wanting to walk around handcuffed to somebody's severed hand and all...)
I wish Scott, Harris and Mamet had found room to squeeze in just a few of the cut scenes, though, like the book's flashbacks about Lecter's childhood ... Lecter comes off again as an anthrophagous Moriarty whose victim-eating is just an arbirary manifestation of evil.
No! It's a good thing they left that out. I was very happy Lecter's poor-little-me childhood did not make it to the screen. It would have destroyed his character!
I still can't believe Harris ever wrote that in the first place. What the hell was he thinking? He did a complete 180 from his previous characterizations of Hannibal. In the first two books (Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs), he emphasized the idea that Lecter simply was evil, not because somebody mistreated him as a child. He even has Lecter tell someone at one point that "our personalities are handed to us" along with our height, hair color, etc. He also tells Clarice that he "happened" -- that he wasn't made, he simply is. Harris ruined everything by trying to pass Lecter's behavior off on some childhood trauma in typical pop-psychology fashion. The only explanation I can come up with is that Harris decided to write the third Lecter book wildly out of character, just to see if anyone would care. After reading "Hannibal", my first thought was, "I have been trolled -- at hardcover prices, too!"
Considering the source material, I'd say they did a damn fine job. After I finished Harris' stupid waste of paper I thought there was no way it would make an even remotely watchable movie. However I was pleasantly surprised by this film. I think most of the credit has to go to screenwriter Steven Zaillian (from what I hear, they pretty much tossed out David Mamet's draft and started over with Zaillian). The movie kept all the interesting parts of the book and threw out most of the things that made it suck so bad. The result was far better than I had anticipated. Still not great, but nowhere near the disaster it might have been.
For those who have been to see it, how many little kids (obviously too young to be seeing this movie) were there in the theater? I didn't count very many, but I went to a late show. I'm betting that a large number of parents will take their kids to see this. (I've been seeing more and more little kids in R-rated movies over the past few years.) I'll bet these are the same parents who complain to lawmakers about the need for more restrictions on Hollywood.
The "Avatar" script has been floating around the net for a while. Anyone care to post a link?
Some people would argue that musicians should give away their music as MP3s (or "Ogg", since said people are usually against proprietary algorithms as well) and then set up a virtual "tip jar" on their website where people can give them a buck or two via a PayPal account if they like the song. There have even been formal proposals for such things, like the Street Performer Protocol. I've yet to hear of an instance of such a thing actually allowing someone to become successful musician. Note: I don't mean that someone should eclipse the Beatles in terms of riches and fame before such a scheme can be declared a success -- I just would have though that by now there would have been at least one or two minor success stories. As far as I know, no one has yet been able to so much as just pay the rent by producing writing, art, or music and giving it out using the Street Performer Protocol (or any similar schemes). Sure, there was Stephen King's "The Plant", but that's not a fair test, since he's already the most successful novelist of all time. How about a "nobody" just starting out being able to pay their bills based on "tips" or "donations" that come in as a result of their art?
Regarding the Linux 1394 project -- I don't think stuffing important data onto a miniDV cassette is a good idea. Most guides and how-tos for video production urge people not to use the miniDV cassettes as their primary storage for footage they want to keep. The miniDV format seems more like an unreliable kludge than something robust and well-designed. Still, if they can make it work, more power to them.
Currently, HD camcorders exist, but they record at much higher data rates than HDTV broadcast or miniDV camcorders, simply because they have to do the compression real-time. Electronics will certainly be fast enough eventually to squeeze an HD data stream down to the miniDV-data-rate real-time, but it will probably be a year or two from now before you see that sort of thing in a consumer-priced camcorder.
However, maybe by then some of those holographic storage mechanisms may have hit the market, and then you won't need in-camera compression or tapes anymore.
Well, since Douglas Trumbull worked on the special effects for both "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" and "2001: A Space Odyessy", I'd say he's entitled to rip off his own ideas (it was he who came up with the process that allowed for the flying-through-a-space-warp shots at the end of "2001").
BTW, I think you meant "concur", not "conquer".
The great classical pianist Daniel Barenboim would agree with you. He has said that "memory is a muscle", and as such it must be exercised to keep it in shape. He is famous for having a remarkable memory, simply because he has worked at it. I saw him on a 60 Minutes feature story once where Steve Croft gave him the names of various pieces Barenboim had performed over the course of his career at random, and he was able to sit down and play any of them on command. He emphasized that this was not talent, but the result of work.
That's not the reason why DVD is taking off. The average person does not give a flying f**k about quality. They want convenience. DVDs are smaller, lighter, and have random access (no more rewinding or fast-forwarding!). That is the only reason why the sheeple are buying into DVD.
if we're strictly talking about stereo sound, there's not much you can do that's better than a CD...is there?
Actually, there is. Have a look at this review of the new Sony/Philips SACD format. The reviewer was very skeptical of the so-called "golden ear" people's claims of problems with CD sound -- until he heard the demo. (Scroll to the bottom few paragraphs for the relevant part of the article.) Sure, there is Nyquist to consider, and no rational person would argue with his theorem. But the question is not "is Nyquist wrong", it's "Is the human ear able to hear anything beyond what is contained in CD sound?" Based on some of the reactions so far to formats like SACD and DVD-Audio, I'd say the answer seems to be, "yes, it can".
But that's not the issue when it comes to the success or failure of a new audio format. The general buying public will not care about increased quality -- they rarely have. They only care about increased convenience. If somebody comes up with a format that is smaller, more durable, and has a longer play time than CDs, people will buy it, no matter what copy-protection schemes are included. End of story. Sad but true.
I'll bet that isn't far from the truth. Sounds like exactly the sort of thing they would do, and then turn around and tell the public that it's slow because those other, non-MS formats are "inferior" and just naturally take a long time to process.
I guess what I'm getting at is that the film had very low contrast. There's nothing the theater can do about that -- if they turn down the brightness of the projector lamp to make the blacks nice and dark, then the bright parts of the movie won't be bright enough. And if they turn it up so that the bright parts of the movie have proper brightness (as the theater I went to did), then the blacks end up looking greyish. You make it sound like the print you saw had good contrast, so I wonder if what I saw had something more to do with bad printing at the film than the intent of the filmmakers.
That's what sucks about movies these days. When done right, film produces beautiful images, but when the printing labs or the theaters get sloppy (which they tend to do a lot more now than in the past), things start to look crappy. Moving to electronic projection might alieviate some of those problems (such as bad lab work), but only if it's done the Right Way(tm). I'm afraid that the people who are working on such systems are aiming for "good enough" rather than "great", so we'll end up with images that have low resolution, poor contrast, a small color gamut, lots of compression artifacts, and so on. Hell, that's already started happening. Just wait until "Star Wars Episode II: The HDTV Menace" comes out. Ugh.