Yeah, well, if there was any real intent of having the tags be descriptive of the story content they would support more than one word tags. When you are restricted to one word it is hard to place anything useful other than a minor comment such as 'FUD' or "itsatrap'. Somehow I doubt anyone is ever going to search the tags for 'awellthoughtoutarticalonmicrosoftspatentpledge'.
Re:A lot more is necessary...
on
AIDS Can Fight AIDS
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
... and then we need to wait for the patents to expire so that the people who actually need it can afford what the drug companies will charge.
Yeah, god forbid that anyone starts or runs a business with the intent of MAKING MONEY. I mean, if that catches on, it could be the end of the economy as we know it.
Grow up.
Lots of the content on YouTube did take large amounts of time and money to produce. No, little Timmy sitting at his computer uploading it did have to put much effort in to create it, but that is not the same thing. So, a television station or a group of artists or few friends spend anywhere from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands to make something. It hits the 'net and becomes popular. So, they are standing there going 'well, we're glad you all like it, now how about letting us make some of that money back so that we can make more'.
I have frequent problems with how the entertainment industry conducts itself, but this is not one of them. This is nothing more then a simple mechanism to see that creators and financers get paid for their work. It's not a perfect mechanism, but it is almost hassle free and relatively fair. The current setup that is used by the music industry is what allows malls to play background music, waiting music on telephone services and a thousand other instances. It would be nice if a setup like this would allow anyone to post almost any video content on their site with zero risk of receiving a takedown notice or getting sued.
That's fair enough as far as it goes, but digital information has its own foibles. I can completely see archaeology students one hundred years from now huddled around their consoles trying to reconstruct the contents of an old box of 5.25 disks pulled out of an attic. Then they would have to figure out how to view them seeing as even the name of the program that ran them would have been lost by then. In a lot of ways, the information that future generations will be most interested in seeing (personal letters, random photos, personal tax returns, etc.) are the least likely to get copied and saved for posterity.
For example, if you were to design a new carburator, there's an excellent chance that software would be a key component in its preferred embodiment. If so, does this disallow a patent? And if so, does that mean replacing any component in a patented invention with software protect you from allegations of patent violation?
Isn't this like saying that because you designed something that includes a clock in its design, it is not patentable because you don't (or can't) have the patent on the clock? Because one invention includes parts that on their own are not patentable provides no bar to the object as a whole being patented. In the case of your carburator, you could certainly patent a new carburator design that happened to include software. What you can't patent is the idea of using software in a carburator.
I may be interpreting this wrong, so please correct me if this is the case.
I think you are missing the point to some extent. Almost all of the 'legal language' that gets argued over was, when it was originally written, "present-day common usage". In 50 or 100 years, what you are suggesting would only lead to lawyers fighting over the interpretation of our "common day language" interpretation of laws that are another 100 years old. Just from your own example, I could see the meanings and usage of a word like 'duplicating' shift significantly in 50 years time.
I am not a lawyer, but I know enough to think twice about complaining about the specialized language of another profession. No one goes to work wanting to use obscure and hard to understand terms. Every odd usage and non intuitive phrase has a reason for existing and most of the time I would be willing to bet that it is a good reason.
I am seeing a lot of comments here with the commenter's saying things along the lines of "The webisodes are free anyway, so what is the issue with residuals? Who cares?" This is an amazingly short sided view.
Yes, the webisodes and similar media may be shown free at the moment, but that is a temporary thing at best. Say a year from now the show gets exported to another country and instead of showing the webisodes for free there, they decide to sell them through whatever the local equivalent of the iTunes store is at 50 cents a pop. I know all sorts of people that would happily pay for 2-5 minute chunks of extra content for their favourite series during the off season.
Or, (and this is very likely), the season 3 DVD releases of Battlestar Galactica include the webisodes as 'bonus content' the same way that movie DVDs include the trailers. And the studios will say 'hell, no one gets paid extra for including the trailers with the DVD, they're promotional material, so why should the actors/writers get paid extra for it?' At the same time, you can get that it will be advertised as the DVD set including the 'bonus episode worth of content' that it really is. The writers get paid for the episodes on that DVD, so why don't they deserve to get paid for the webisodes?
any one with minimal imagination can come up with other ways that content like this can be used or changed in ways that we are not seeing yet but that cross lines. If it doesn't happen with the Battlestar Galactica content,it will happen tot he next popular series that is inventive enough to reach out to the fans in new ways with new content. In a lot of ways, we are lucky that it is happening with an example that is clear cut in many ways in favour of the creative team and with people who are willing to fight. Otherwise, these types of rights and incentives might disappeared before anyone recognised they existed, and that would be the end of this type of content.
One million units by the end of the year? I can't help but compare that to the reports that Nintendo expects over a million Wiis to be available on launch day alone and at least four million by the end of the year. Sony's numbers are underwhelming me.
The article doesn't say what kind of time or processing power Image Metrics's "high-fidelity, performance-driven facial animation" requires
I don't care how much processing power it takes, unless we are talking simulation on the level of some of the whole-world-weather simulations any additional processing will be a drop in the bucket compared to the current amount of time and processing power already devoted to any production quality animation.
More friendly to who? like you said, Openoffice opens it just fine. How well do you think a basic install of work would handle an odf file? Now, considering that Word is the most common office software by far it makes perfect sense to me to release it as a.doc
*snicker* You seem to have missed the point. Other than the playing games with wine bit (although that tends to be a little sketchy with the newest releases), the other two are completly off the mark.
Gimp now has colour management support out of the box? Congratulations, one feature that is taken for granted by every professional level piece of photo software. One down, 283 to go. How many colour formats does it have native support for other than RGB? Does it have CMYK, LAB or others? How about plug and play compatibility with graphic tablets, including fully supported drivers? How about a save file that I can e-mail to collaborators or the printers and no only be sure that they can open it, but that what they see on their end perfectly matches what I see, regardless of hardware?
And as for Blender, it is a wonderful program. It was the first 3D program I learned. However, it is not yet on par with professional packages like 3DS Max, Lightwave or Maya. I'll give you that the interface is no harder to learn than any other package (although it could be argued) but that ignores the fact that it does not follow a great many industry conventions. If someone who knows Max needs to learn Lightwave, much of what they already know can be directly transfered. Perhapse they are pushing alt instead of control for a shortcut or using the right mouse butting instead of the middle one, but within an half an hour or so they can fully navigate the interface and find what they are looking for. Blender does not follow a huge portion of these conventions. For someone learning for the first time, not an issue, but for someone familiar with any of the industry standard software it is deeply counter-intuitive. Beyond that, Blender's toolset is just not as robust and doesn't have as much depth. Yes, you can make beautiful work in it, but it takes more work and more work means more time. I have found memories of Blender, but no illusions.
When I have brought up some of these points in other threads I see people make replies along the lines of 'I've never heard of that stuff, why are you being so picky?' Well, welcome to the world of professional level software and the open source offerings just aren't at a competitive level yet.
Well, according to this source http://www.iris.iris.edu/HQ/Bluebook/chapter5.magn itude.html, a 4.8 on the richter scale means an explosion in the 10 kiloton range. The number that I ahve see so far for the N. Korea explosion is 4.2. So, this was one big boom and almost certainly nuclear in nature (I had heard speculation that it was a just a lot of conventional explosives).
Of course, if you're going to use an external editor, what point is there importing the stuff into Second Life? Develop an Open platform.
What point is there importing it into Second Life? My guess is that this is aimed at people that are creating assets specifically for use IN second life. These aren't people who are creating stuff and then go looking for a venue to publish it. They know their venue and they are looking for better tools to address it. Really it's like asking what's the point of using World of Warcraft's character generator to make a character specifically for WoW. Why not create a OPEN character generator instead?
When I hear things like this, I always wonder how much of it is the company and how much or it is the phone operator. I mean, I ahve heard sales people say some amazingly stupid things in the past. Often not because of any intentional malice but simply because they have no clue. Now, think about the person on the other end of the telephone. They are likely fairly young and are being paid ~$8-$9 an hour to sit in a chair and read a script to people on the phone. They have gotten all of an hours training on any given service if they are lucky. Maybe all they got was an e-mail or memo saying what the new spiel was. That, plus some comments overheard in the break room, are all they have to go on and they are being judged on how many people sign up. So, sure some of the time it is intentional corporate lies, but my guess is that it is an issue with the operator more times than not.
As much as America funds other governments, I don't think Uncle Sam should pay for Ireland's banking debts. Maybe the banks in the FDIC...
Considering that he US national debt is currently eight and a half trillion dollars (no, not a typo or exaggeration), I would say you have more of a case for other governments funding the US.
Sure, it might be irrelevant to Joe Blow down the street who only uses his computer to check email and surf porn and doesn't give a damn what his OS is, but why should I care about him anyway?
Why? Because when 20%-30% of the Joe Blows out there are running Linux, that is when you will start to see major games being developed for Linux simultaneous with Windows. That's when the companies making the MP3 players start bundling drivers for Linux or making them natively Linus compatible. That's when life gets easier for everyone.
What we're seeing is the first massive event of the end of the American domination of the scientific and engineering fields.
That's the same thing they said in the 1950s when the Reds orbited and artifical moon. And still the US managed to stay in the lead for another 50 years.
Yeah, all the US had to do that time was fund, organize and motivate one of the largest scientific and engineering undertakings in history. With the current climate in the states, I really have trouble trouble seeing even the motivation part happening, let alone the funding.
Re:one time at computer camp...
on
Computer Voodoo?
·
· Score: 5, Funny
I had to code a standards compliant page with Dreamweaver... now THAT'S voodoo
Slashdot Mirror
Really? Mind if I ask what you typed that on?
Yeah, well, if there was any real intent of having the tags be descriptive of the story content they would support more than one word tags. When you are restricted to one word it is hard to place anything useful other than a minor comment such as 'FUD' or "itsatrap'. Somehow I doubt anyone is ever going to search the tags for 'awellthoughtoutarticalonmicrosoftspatentpledge'.
... and then we need to wait for the patents to expire so that the people who actually need it can afford what the drug companies will charge.
Yeah, god forbid that anyone starts or runs a business with the intent of MAKING MONEY. I mean, if that catches on, it could be the end of the economy as we know it.
Grow up.
Lots of the content on YouTube did take large amounts of time and money to produce. No, little Timmy sitting at his computer uploading it did have to put much effort in to create it, but that is not the same thing. So, a television station or a group of artists or few friends spend anywhere from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands to make something. It hits the 'net and becomes popular. So, they are standing there going 'well, we're glad you all like it, now how about letting us make some of that money back so that we can make more'.
I have frequent problems with how the entertainment industry conducts itself, but this is not one of them. This is nothing more then a simple mechanism to see that creators and financers get paid for their work. It's not a perfect mechanism, but it is almost hassle free and relatively fair. The current setup that is used by the music industry is what allows malls to play background music, waiting music on telephone services and a thousand other instances. It would be nice if a setup like this would allow anyone to post almost any video content on their site with zero risk of receiving a takedown notice or getting sued.
That's fair enough as far as it goes, but digital information has its own foibles. I can completely see archaeology students one hundred years from now huddled around their consoles trying to reconstruct the contents of an old box of 5.25 disks pulled out of an attic. Then they would have to figure out how to view them seeing as even the name of the program that ran them would have been lost by then. In a lot of ways, the information that future generations will be most interested in seeing (personal letters, random photos, personal tax returns, etc.) are the least likely to get copied and saved for posterity.
Isn't this like saying that because you designed something that includes a clock in its design, it is not patentable because you don't (or can't) have the patent on the clock? Because one invention includes parts that on their own are not patentable provides no bar to the object as a whole being patented. In the case of your carburator, you could certainly patent a new carburator design that happened to include software. What you can't patent is the idea of using software in a carburator.
I may be interpreting this wrong, so please correct me if this is the case.
I think you are missing the point to some extent. Almost all of the 'legal language' that gets argued over was, when it was originally written, "present-day common usage". In 50 or 100 years, what you are suggesting would only lead to lawyers fighting over the interpretation of our "common day language" interpretation of laws that are another 100 years old. Just from your own example, I could see the meanings and usage of a word like 'duplicating' shift significantly in 50 years time.
I am not a lawyer, but I know enough to think twice about complaining about the specialized language of another profession. No one goes to work wanting to use obscure and hard to understand terms. Every odd usage and non intuitive phrase has a reason for existing and most of the time I would be willing to bet that it is a good reason.
I am seeing a lot of comments here with the commenter's saying things along the lines of "The webisodes are free anyway, so what is the issue with residuals? Who cares?" This is an amazingly short sided view.
Yes, the webisodes and similar media may be shown free at the moment, but that is a temporary thing at best. Say a year from now the show gets exported to another country and instead of showing the webisodes for free there, they decide to sell them through whatever the local equivalent of the iTunes store is at 50 cents a pop. I know all sorts of people that would happily pay for 2-5 minute chunks of extra content for their favourite series during the off season.
Or, (and this is very likely), the season 3 DVD releases of Battlestar Galactica include the webisodes as 'bonus content' the same way that movie DVDs include the trailers. And the studios will say 'hell, no one gets paid extra for including the trailers with the DVD, they're promotional material, so why should the actors/writers get paid extra for it?' At the same time, you can get that it will be advertised as the DVD set including the 'bonus episode worth of content' that it really is. The writers get paid for the episodes on that DVD, so why don't they deserve to get paid for the webisodes?
any one with minimal imagination can come up with other ways that content like this can be used or changed in ways that we are not seeing yet but that cross lines. If it doesn't happen with the Battlestar Galactica content,it will happen tot he next popular series that is inventive enough to reach out to the fans in new ways with new content. In a lot of ways, we are lucky that it is happening with an example that is clear cut in many ways in favour of the creative team and with people who are willing to fight. Otherwise, these types of rights and incentives might disappeared before anyone recognised they existed, and that would be the end of this type of content.
One million units by the end of the year? I can't help but compare that to the reports that Nintendo expects over a million Wiis to be available on launch day alone and at least four million by the end of the year. Sony's numbers are underwhelming me.
You have no idea how depressing it is that I can't decide if the above comment should be modded flamebait, funny, informative or insightful.
I don't care how much processing power it takes, unless we are talking simulation on the level of some of the whole-world-weather simulations any additional processing will be a drop in the bucket compared to the current amount of time and processing power already devoted to any production quality animation.
More friendly to who? like you said, Openoffice opens it just fine. How well do you think a basic install of work would handle an odf file? Now, considering that Word is the most common office software by far it makes perfect sense to me to release it as a .doc
*snicker*
You seem to have missed the point. Other than the playing games with wine bit (although that tends to be a little sketchy with the newest releases), the other two are completly off the mark.
Gimp now has colour management support out of the box? Congratulations, one feature that is taken for granted by every professional level piece of photo software. One down, 283 to go. How many colour formats does it have native support for other than RGB? Does it have CMYK, LAB or others? How about plug and play compatibility with graphic tablets, including fully supported drivers? How about a save file that I can e-mail to collaborators or the printers and no only be sure that they can open it, but that what they see on their end perfectly matches what I see, regardless of hardware?
And as for Blender, it is a wonderful program. It was the first 3D program I learned. However, it is not yet on par with professional packages like 3DS Max, Lightwave or Maya. I'll give you that the interface is no harder to learn than any other package (although it could be argued) but that ignores the fact that it does not follow a great many industry conventions. If someone who knows Max needs to learn Lightwave, much of what they already know can be directly transfered. Perhapse they are pushing alt instead of control for a shortcut or using the right mouse butting instead of the middle one, but within an half an hour or so they can fully navigate the interface and find what they are looking for. Blender does not follow a huge portion of these conventions. For someone learning for the first time, not an issue, but for someone familiar with any of the industry standard software it is deeply counter-intuitive. Beyond that, Blender's toolset is just not as robust and doesn't have as much depth. Yes, you can make beautiful work in it, but it takes more work and more work means more time. I have found memories of Blender, but no illusions.
When I have brought up some of these points in other threads I see people make replies along the lines of 'I've never heard of that stuff, why are you being so picky?' Well, welcome to the world of professional level software and the open source offerings just aren't at a competitive level yet.
Well, according to this source http://www.iris.iris.edu/HQ/Bluebook/chapter5.magn itude.html, a 4.8 on the richter scale means an explosion in the 10 kiloton range. The number that I ahve see so far for the N. Korea explosion is 4.2. So, this was one big boom and almost certainly nuclear in nature (I had heard speculation that it was a just a lot of conventional explosives).
I am wondering if anyone knows where I could find a complete list of items and their sale prices? I am curious what some of it went for.
By the above, I assume that you are implying that you leave Firefox open continuously for days at a time?
I know of few programs on the same level of complexity as Firefox that wouldn't have some memory issues after multiple days of active use.
What point is there importing it into Second Life? My guess is that this is aimed at people that are creating assets specifically for use IN second life. These aren't people who are creating stuff and then go looking for a venue to publish it. They know their venue and they are looking for better tools to address it. Really it's like asking what's the point of using World of Warcraft's character generator to make a character specifically for WoW. Why not create a OPEN character generator instead?
When I hear things like this, I always wonder how much of it is the company and how much or it is the phone operator. I mean, I ahve heard sales people say some amazingly stupid things in the past. Often not because of any intentional malice but simply because they have no clue. Now, think about the person on the other end of the telephone. They are likely fairly young and are being paid ~$8-$9 an hour to sit in a chair and read a script to people on the phone. They have gotten all of an hours training on any given service if they are lucky. Maybe all they got was an e-mail or memo saying what the new spiel was. That, plus some comments overheard in the break room, are all they have to go on and they are being judged on how many people sign up. So, sure some of the time it is intentional corporate lies, but my guess is that it is an issue with the operator more times than not.
Yeah, and once an OS is out that CAN stress an 8 core CPU, everyone will be complaining about the bloated code and feature creep.
Considering that he US national debt is currently eight and a half trillion dollars (no, not a typo or exaggeration), I would say you have more of a case for other governments funding the US.
If you want to see the current US national debt, check this out http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm
Why? Because when 20%-30% of the Joe Blows out there are running Linux, that is when you will start to see major games being developed for Linux simultaneous with Windows. That's when the companies making the MP3 players start bundling drivers for Linux or making them natively Linus compatible. That's when life gets easier for everyone.
Yeah, all the US had to do that time was fund, organize and motivate one of the largest scientific and engineering undertakings in history. With the current climate in the states, I really have trouble trouble seeing even the motivation part happening, let alone the funding.
I had to code a standards compliant page with Dreamweaver ... now THAT'S voodoo
I see my fame is spreading
Should this come to pass, I give it less than 24 hours before the first pics of hamster-powered systems hit the net.
You know it's true