Re:Deleted Scenes from the Interview
on
Ballmer Sounds Off
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Are you kidding about Peter Jackson?
You seriously think all he did was to "stck together" other people's work?
For a start, he co-wrote the treatment used to sell the film to the studios. Then he worked with a team on the animatics, to create a shot-by-shot walkthrough of the entire movie. After that he actually directed nearly the entire thing over the course of about five years, often out in the wilderness somewhere in New Zealand. During this time he managed to keep his actors positive and focused, the film on track (they hit the release day for each film spot on - that's solid project management right there) and stay in control of the film's look and feel.
On top of this, he was personally involved in the creative aspects of the film, approving, suggesting and improving models, visuals and CG. He oversaw the cutting of the film and to a lesser extent the scoring. He'd watch the daily rushes after the actors had left, reviewing each take.
Do you think a five year project with 18-20 hour days for almost the entire period is just sticking stuff together?
As for the money issue - yes, people running the show take the lion's share. That's business. The CG people at Weta are pretty much set up for life-long careers now though, as are the model-makers. In fact, the wage-earners on the film have generally bright careers in front of them now because the whole production was so well done.
I usually like your posts, but this one was particularly egregious. You clearly don't know what it was Peter Jackson actually did, or what good directors and producers do either for that matter.
I must have misread sarcasm or something. You can't be this far off-base, surely.
*everyone* has bought more song's than Microsoft's X-Box profit margin.
Ba-tish! Thanks, I'll be here all night, try the fish.
Re:The problem with guis is they don't work
on
GUIs Get a Makeover
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· Score: 1
A bold comment, but nothing to support it. I've seen studies that show the benefits of GUIs, so if you argue against them, at least provide something to back up your claims.
If people want to buy a DVD, and Wal-Mart doesn't have it they'll go somewhere else.
At a small level, if a customer wants the X-Men III DVD but Wal-Mart refuse to stock anything from that studio, then the customer won't just buy another movie. They'll walk out of Wal-Mart, down the road and into a competitor. If there's no competing store nearby they'll order it by mail or online.
People don't just decide not to watch a movie they're anticipating because some store doesn't keep copies of it. They'll use other methods to buy a copy, and there are plenty of other places who'll happily sell to them.
At a higher level, if Wal-Mart becomes known for not stocking many DVDs, then people won't even try to buy a DVD from them. They'll be too unreliable.
Wal-Mart can't afford to have their bluff called - they have to buckle. All it takes is for the studios to stick to their line.
I can't help feeling that the studios should call the Wal-Mart bluff here.
Wal-Mart may hate the idea and threaten and moan, but if all the studios jump onto the iTMS then Wal-Mart will buckle. They can't drop their entire DVD line unless they want to drop a whole market.
The power rests with the studios here, but they're scared.
Adobe seems to be going after Microsoft because the monopoly status of Microsoft (as shown in the US anti-trust trial) means that for them to release extra functionality in their OS that competes with other companies is a case of product tying, a misuse of their monopoly position.
They won't go after Apple (and I think they would if they could) for the same reason because Apple aren't a monopoly in any market, and can't be accused of product tying.
Got anything other than hyperbole to back up your unsubstantiated claim against laws that have been operating in your county (and much of the rest of the planet) for a few hundred years?
Of course, since you know better than the law-makers in most countries we should accept your hyperbole over their reasoned and democratic arguments...
You claim a company with 90-95% of the market is not a monopoly. I've never seen anyone seriously claim otherwise. Microsoft's own lawyers could have trivially short-circuited the entire anti-trust thing by proving they're not a monopoly. For some reason you've got evidence that escaped them.
Okay, I suspected you were trolling before, but now I know you're trolling.
What manufacturer on Earth does *not* have a monopoly on *their* *own* *products*?
Anyone who maintains that "Apple has a monopoly" in the world of operating systems is either trolling or does not understand what a monoply is at a deep and fundamental level.
Dr Smithy - look up anti-trust law and illegal product tying.
That's why Microsoft are in such a bind. It's not just that people don't want to compete with them. A threat to sue means nothing to Microsoft - they can easily afford the court fees and a trivial lawsuit would be thrown out of court on day one (unless you feel Microsoft are actually scared of courtrooms, as you seem to imply in your post). The actual laws means much more, and Microsoft would run afoul of them if they bundle software in their monopoly operating system that their competitors sell. Read the posts of 99bottlesOfBeerInMyFridge for a far more eloquent explanation.
Apple has a monopoly on OS X. Microsoft has a monopoly on Windows. Linux companies each have a monopoly on their distribution/support options. Dell has a monopoly on Dell computers. HP have a monopoly on HP computers. Nike has a monopoly on Nike shoes. Reebok has a monopoly on Reebok shoes. Ford has a monopoly on Ford cars. Toshiba has a monopoly on Toshiba products. skinfitz has a monopoly on skinfitz Slashdot posts. I've got a monopoly on being me.
Everything's a monopoly!
Only two words (well, one's an acronym) and your post is a great example of absurdism. Thanks skinfitz!
A monopoly is not the only player in town, it's the player with the power to swing the market. In Microsoft's case, their 90-95% marketshare of operating systems means they're a monopoly.
The punishment for anti-competitive business practices arose only because of misuse of their monopoly power. That's why the recommended punishment was to split the company into an OS company and an applications company. That way the apps company competes fairly with all the other apps companies, and product tying cannot occur.
I missed the moment when Apple was declared a monopoly, convicted of illegal use of its monopoly power and warned that special rules apply to monopolies around bundling.
Silly me! I go around trying to understand the legal and market implications, when I should just read the press releases!
Why would that be the thing SecureWorks claimed they found?
It's trivial to catch Apple out - they can just release the communications they sent now that Apple have patched the drivers, and easily show Apple are lying when they said "They did not supply us with any information to allow us to identify a specific problem, so we initiated an internal audit."
Let's hear from SecureWorks now. Unless... this is a different issue... and Apple aren't lying in such as easily provable way.
From memory (and it's not perfect) there was a great story of Tuor and his coming to Gondolin in one of the Histories. It was about 60 pages or thereabouts or well-written, solid stuff. Never amounted to a finished story though, which I found sad. I think it was one of the many "could have been" great stories.
And that's what I think of Fëanor and the Narn i hin Húrin, although I agree that the story of Húrin and his children was far more complete. The Fëanor story was high drama (or melodrama), whereas the Húrin stories had pathos and subtlety.
Like the whole Silmarillion, the stories showed an author at various stages of his career, and publishers were right in not printing them except as extras for LotR fans.
I always thought there were (at least) three really solid books to come out of the Silmarillion - the story of Feanor and his kids, the story of Tuor and Gondolin, and the story of Hurin and his kids. All three are much better in the History of Middle Earth series than the Silmarillion (which was an awful book if you liked to follow characters for more than a chapter or two).
I'm looking forward to a newly fleshed out story, although it does feel a little like Christopher Tolkien keeps on discovering just a little more each time, in a way that would ensure a steady flow of books. "Oh look, here's a bit more of the story!" (two years later) "And underneath that bit was even more of the story! It's a shame I didn't think to keep looking before publishing." (two years later) "Well, what do you know! Some more of the story! Who could've imagined! Stap me vitals and so on."
But I'm being unkind here.
I'd also love to see a movie based on this story. Especially since Morgoth would play a prominent role. Unlike Sauron, he actually has a speaking role in the Middle Earth stories, and is a far more complex and interesting character. That, and he's got Balrogs leading his armies. Not that they could fly of course (the eagles of Manwe really hated them doing that).
It seems that every time Microsoft sneezes there's 32 articles here, although 24 are dupes. We see breathless coverage of the Vista Beta progress to RC1 all through the media, and Slashdot mirrors that with threads for each major new announcement. Linux fares just as well - whenever a major distro releases a new version there's some announcement.
Apple's flops are also pulled apart here. The coverage is pretty much unbiased when you take the wide variety of opinions into account. Still, it's a company that's had its share of time on the business rollercoaster and it's actually kind of interesting to follow it.
Contrast to Dell, which can never seem to excite anyone, or HP which is notable in the past decade mainly for management issues and not products.
I don't see a Slashdot groupthink about Apple or Jobs - there's not enough consensus for that. It's just interesting stuff that happens in the tech sector.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you kidding about Peter Jackson?
You seriously think all he did was to "stck together" other people's work?
For a start, he co-wrote the treatment used to sell the film to the studios. Then he worked with a team on the animatics, to create a shot-by-shot walkthrough of the entire movie. After that he actually directed nearly the entire thing over the course of about five years, often out in the wilderness somewhere in New Zealand. During this time he managed to keep his actors positive and focused, the film on track (they hit the release day for each film spot on - that's solid project management right there) and stay in control of the film's look and feel.
On top of this, he was personally involved in the creative aspects of the film, approving, suggesting and improving models, visuals and CG. He oversaw the cutting of the film and to a lesser extent the scoring. He'd watch the daily rushes after the actors had left, reviewing each take.
Do you think a five year project with 18-20 hour days for almost the entire period is just sticking stuff together?
As for the money issue - yes, people running the show take the lion's share. That's business. The CG people at Weta are pretty much set up for life-long careers now though, as are the model-makers. In fact, the wage-earners on the film have generally bright careers in front of them now because the whole production was so well done.
I usually like your posts, but this one was particularly egregious. You clearly don't know what it was Peter Jackson actually did, or what good directors and producers do either for that matter.
I must have misread sarcasm or something. You can't be this far off-base, surely.
*everyone* has bought more song's than Microsoft's X-Box profit margin.
Ba-tish! Thanks, I'll be here all night, try the fish.
A bold comment, but nothing to support it. I've seen studies that show the benefits of GUIs, so if you argue against them, at least provide something to back up your claims.
Insightful?
If people want to buy a DVD, and Wal-Mart doesn't have it they'll go somewhere else.
At a small level, if a customer wants the X-Men III DVD but Wal-Mart refuse to stock anything from that studio, then the customer won't just buy another movie. They'll walk out of Wal-Mart, down the road and into a competitor. If there's no competing store nearby they'll order it by mail or online.
People don't just decide not to watch a movie they're anticipating because some store doesn't keep copies of it. They'll use other methods to buy a copy, and there are plenty of other places who'll happily sell to them.
At a higher level, if Wal-Mart becomes known for not stocking many DVDs, then people won't even try to buy a DVD from them. They'll be too unreliable.
Wal-Mart can't afford to have their bluff called - they have to buckle. All it takes is for the studios to stick to their line.
By "boring" do you mean "usable, consistent and more intuitive" ?
I can't help feeling that the studios should call the Wal-Mart bluff here.
Wal-Mart may hate the idea and threaten and moan, but if all the studios jump onto the iTMS then Wal-Mart will buckle. They can't drop their entire DVD line unless they want to drop a whole market.
The power rests with the studios here, but they're scared.
Adobe seems to be going after Microsoft because the monopoly status of Microsoft (as shown in the US anti-trust trial) means that for them to release extra functionality in their OS that competes with other companies is a case of product tying, a misuse of their monopoly position.
They won't go after Apple (and I think they would if they could) for the same reason because Apple aren't a monopoly in any market, and can't be accused of product tying.
Good points.
I read your post to mean you could remove IE by deleting it, but you're talking about deleting an app that runs the IE 'core'.
Fair enough.
Got anything other than hyperbole to back up your unsubstantiated claim against laws that have been operating in your county (and much of the rest of the planet) for a few hundred years?
Of course, since you know better than the law-makers in most countries we should accept your hyperbole over their reasoned and democratic arguments...
I've attacked a bunch of your points tonight, but I agree wholeheartedly with this and you're making a solid point.
Backup your second point.
You claim a company with 90-95% of the market is not a monopoly. I've never seen anyone seriously claim otherwise. Microsoft's own lawyers could have trivially short-circuited the entire anti-trust thing by proving they're not a monopoly. For some reason you've got evidence that escaped them.
Show it.
Type "www.google.com" into your Windows Explorer address bar after you do this.
Do you see the Google home page?
Do you still maintain that IE is gone?
Okay, I suspected you were trolling before, but now I know you're trolling.
What manufacturer on Earth does *not* have a monopoly on *their* *own* *products*?
Anyone who maintains that "Apple has a monopoly" in the world of operating systems is either trolling or does not understand what a monoply is at a deep and fundamental level.
Dr Smithy - look up anti-trust law and illegal product tying.
That's why Microsoft are in such a bind. It's not just that people don't want to compete with them. A threat to sue means nothing to Microsoft - they can easily afford the court fees and a trivial lawsuit would be thrown out of court on day one (unless you feel Microsoft are actually scared of courtrooms, as you seem to imply in your post). The actual laws means much more, and Microsoft would run afoul of them if they bundle software in their monopoly operating system that their competitors sell. Read the posts of 99bottlesOfBeerInMyFridge for a far more eloquent explanation.
...o...kay.
I'm not sure if you're making a point here, but nice to see random unrelated commentary.
While your post is interesting, it's just an unsupported allegation as it stands. Can you back this up?
Not true. You can easily find Linux variants for PPC, as well as BeOS and (I think) AmigaOS and NeXTStep.
Hilarious!
Apple has a monopoly on OS X. Microsoft has a monopoly on Windows. Linux companies each have a monopoly on their distribution/support options. Dell has a monopoly on Dell computers. HP have a monopoly on HP computers. Nike has a monopoly on Nike shoes. Reebok has a monopoly on Reebok shoes. Ford has a monopoly on Ford cars. Toshiba has a monopoly on Toshiba products. skinfitz has a monopoly on skinfitz Slashdot posts. I've got a monopoly on being me.
Everything's a monopoly!
Only two words (well, one's an acronym) and your post is a great example of absurdism. Thanks skinfitz!
Microsoft clearly has monopoly power.
A monopoly is not the only player in town, it's the player with the power to swing the market. In Microsoft's case, their 90-95% marketshare of operating systems means they're a monopoly.
The punishment for anti-competitive business practices arose only because of misuse of their monopoly power. That's why the recommended punishment was to split the company into an OS company and an applications company. That way the apps company competes fairly with all the other apps companies, and product tying cannot occur.
I missed the moment when Apple was declared a monopoly, convicted of illegal use of its monopoly power and warned that special rules apply to monopolies around bundling.
Silly me! I go around trying to understand the legal and market implications, when I should just read the press releases!
Why would that be the thing SecureWorks claimed they found?
It's trivial to catch Apple out - they can just release the communications they sent now that Apple have patched the drivers, and easily show Apple are lying when they said "They did not supply us with any information to allow us to identify a specific problem, so we initiated an internal audit."
Let's hear from SecureWorks now. Unless... this is a different issue... and Apple aren't lying in such as easily provable way.
From memory (and it's not perfect) there was a great story of Tuor and his coming to Gondolin in one of the Histories. It was about 60 pages or thereabouts or well-written, solid stuff. Never amounted to a finished story though, which I found sad. I think it was one of the many "could have been" great stories.
And that's what I think of Fëanor and the Narn i hin Húrin, although I agree that the story of Húrin and his children was far more complete. The Fëanor story was high drama (or melodrama), whereas the Húrin stories had pathos and subtlety.
Like the whole Silmarillion, the stories showed an author at various stages of his career, and publishers were right in not printing them except as extras for LotR fans.
I always thought there were (at least) three really solid books to come out of the Silmarillion - the story of Feanor and his kids, the story of Tuor and Gondolin, and the story of Hurin and his kids. All three are much better in the History of Middle Earth series than the Silmarillion (which was an awful book if you liked to follow characters for more than a chapter or two).
I'm looking forward to a newly fleshed out story, although it does feel a little like Christopher Tolkien keeps on discovering just a little more each time, in a way that would ensure a steady flow of books. "Oh look, here's a bit more of the story!" (two years later) "And underneath that bit was even more of the story! It's a shame I didn't think to keep looking before publishing." (two years later) "Well, what do you know! Some more of the story! Who could've imagined! Stap me vitals and so on."
But I'm being unkind here.
I'd also love to see a movie based on this story. Especially since Morgoth would play a prominent role. Unlike Sauron, he actually has a speaking role in the Middle Earth stories, and is a far more complex and interesting character. That, and he's got Balrogs leading his armies. Not that they could fly of course (the eagles of Manwe really hated them doing that).
Yay Apple devs!
The probably learnt after the whole "move a folder inside itself" kernel panic thing a few years back.
"No one else *ever* gets that kind of coverage"
It seems that every time Microsoft sneezes there's 32 articles here, although 24 are dupes. We see breathless coverage of the Vista Beta progress to RC1 all through the media, and Slashdot mirrors that with threads for each major new announcement. Linux fares just as well - whenever a major distro releases a new version there's some announcement.
Apple's flops are also pulled apart here. The coverage is pretty much unbiased when you take the wide variety of opinions into account. Still, it's a company that's had its share of time on the business rollercoaster and it's actually kind of interesting to follow it.
Contrast to Dell, which can never seem to excite anyone, or HP which is notable in the past decade mainly for management issues and not products.
I don't see a Slashdot groupthink about Apple or Jobs - there's not enough consensus for that. It's just interesting stuff that happens in the tech sector.