Judging it simply as a film, not an adaptation, I think Two Towers is easily the best of the three. Fellowship doesn't even have a cliffhanger. It just ends abruptly for no real reason and offers very little fulfillment as a stand alone movie. The extended version is barely tolerable. Two Towers starts and ends strong. It can exist as a stand alone movie. It has the most action, and moves with a good pace. It has better editing, and perhaps the most emotional impact of the three movies. Return of the King continues some 30 minutes after the climax of the movie, which is the death of the Witch King. The series climax with the ring is horribly anti-climactic and boring. And then it continues some more, meandering for no reason, and yet still missing material from the end of the book.
How many Air Bud movies did they make? It amazes me how well people are paid for awful scripts, and then paid even more to make sequels for them. And right now Hollywood is in a horrible creative rut where they only make remakes, adaptations and sequels, terrified to make anything new. Yet many of the properties that they want to remake, adapt or make sequels to were successful as new properties.
I said asking for a revenue split is fair. However, enough businesses are deciding they make enough from YouTube exposure to allow their content on YouTube for free, yet Warner wants to pull all their content unless they get a HIGHER cut?
In the early dark days of the internet, big companies sued small fan sites because they infringed on logos and copyrights. How dare you run a Star Wars fan site, or an X-Files fan site with racy pictures of Scully?
Then SLOWLY over the years, companies seemed to realize that fans on the internet increased buzz, visibility and mindshare for their products. Now they cater directly to the fan base by pandering at Comic-Con and such.
Warner wants a bigger piece of revenue for the videos being shown, but they're not thinking long term. It isn't just direct revenue of showing the videos, but the hype that comes along with it. If someone forwards a video to another person (or rather a link to the video) they are advertising that artist to their friends.
Monty Python has it right. They are posting clips on YouTube for people to watch for free (fans would post them anyways, only to have them taken offline) but Monty Python now has direct control over the portal, and can include links to purchase Monty Python material on Amazon.
I just said I've heard the story before. I didn't lay out a conclusion. Conversely, IBM was a typewriter company that saw the writing on the wall and invested in new markets. The newspaper company I work for now does video production, and we're pushing our web presence more and more. We don't expect the paper to disappear, and it still turns the largest profit for our company, but we're also diversifying just in case.
I also work for a newspaper, and I was shown stories from the advent of radio how radio was going to kill newspapers. Then TV was going to kill newspapers. Then the internet was going to kill newspapers. IBM also said computers would give us a paperless office.
The best contribution won't be a single person, but this huge contribution of several people. Linux isn't one OS for one person. It is embedded. It is desktop. It is server. It runs the cloud. It runs your phone. It runs your coffee maker. Ir runs the web. It runs super-computers. It is the unspoken hero. It is a rock-star.
The only video representation of one character that fits Linux is a representation of all these characters.
Instead of debating whether or not piracy should be called piracy, how about we discuss that actual issue of how piracy affects games, and what effect DRM has on piracy.
Honestly, I think the solution is to provide benefits to paying for the game. You're not going to stop piracy through DRM. And DRM may chase off paying customers. So about instead of pushing people away, you attract customers with benefits?
For instance, online play that is only accessible to paying customers might convince pirates who downloaded your game to start paying for it.
You know what I want in a smart phone? A big screen so I can reasonably surf the web, read documents, etc. What is the point of a smart phone with an interface so small you can't use it? The problem is that you needed buttons, keyboard, etc.
The iPhone said make the entire phone one giant touch screen. Honestly, even as an Apple critic, that was a brilliant move. The G1 is even better because I get a full size touch screen, a trackball, and a huge slide out keyboard.
IBM is the first company to see the writing on the wall and invest in new markets, even if those markets invalidate their current holdings. They went from a typewriter company, to a mainframe company, and an operating system company, to a PC company, to a server company, to a virtualization company, and now a SaaS company.
Video capture is the first thing that springs to mind, as well as external HDDs, flash storage, etc. Right now, copying gigs of data to external storage is slow with USB 2. Also, video capture is problematic. If the data isn't moving fast enough, I drop frames of video.
When can I buy my first motherboard that is USB 3.0 compliant? I want to build a rig in the spring. I'd consider holding off until the summer to get USB 3 so it is more future proof, but I won't wait another year.
I just bought my second PS3. I'm a PS3 advocate, but frankly Home is two years too late. I think Sony went into this generation expecting to coast on their reputation from previous generations, and didn't do enough to actually win people over. The PS3 is the best BluRay player on the market, and a solid console, but frankly I'm not sure it even matters anymore.
Here is the crux. Vista didn't provide enough reason to switch, and the interface was so poorly designed it aggravated users. Every screenshot I've seen on Windows 7 looks just like Vista. 7 will have multi-touch support, but I don't have a touchscreen.
Until I see a reason to switch (ie serious advantages over XP) why would I?
I run openSUSE 11.1 and Windows x64 and I'm happy with both.
I only used Chrome for a day before going back to Adblock Plus and Firefox, but I swore there was an option to turn this off.
Then again Google already has tons of my private data via email and I'm not overtly paranoid. If you want a version of Chrome that doesn't phone home at all, check out Iron.
Except Chrome is light-years better than any other Webkit browser out there. They had some truly innovative and necessary ideas when it came to a multi-process, sandboxed browswer with a virtualized javascript engine. Saying that Webkit deserves all the praise isn't remotely fair. If Webkit alone was enough to light the world on fire, we'd be using Safari. And despite the benchmarks of nightly builds of pure Webkit running like a speed demon, Safari sure doesn't.
Before they kept selling the same titles over and over again (buy the classic NES games for the SNES, and then again for the GB, and now again on the Virtual Console!) and now they're selling public domain works.
In all fairness, I guess reissuing old games is better than letting them fade away into obscurity when most people don't have the old systems to legally play old games anymore.
I just wish Nintendo would focus more on new products. My N64 and Gamecube both gathered dust from not enough quality releases, and my Wii is likely to do the same.
I have a wife, a daughter, and my mother-in-law moved in with us. However my daughter is three. We play Wii together, in that I give her a Wiimote without batteries when I'm playing and she "plays" along. My wife and I occasionally play together, but we both really got bored with the Wii after about two-three weeks.
We have tons of TVs, tons of consoles, and tons of computers in this house. I prefer social activities, but we often tend to do our own thing.
Because after two weeks I got bored of the Wii and frustrated that the miracle-motion-sensing really wasn't all that great. I don't have four people over at my house to play Mario Kart all the time, which might prolong the life of the console. As a single player, I have played my PS3 for a year and I don't get tired of it because there are tons of single player games with great experiences there, and free online play. The Wii requires me to get friend codes and none of my friends own a Wii.
Slashdot Mirror
Judging it simply as a film, not an adaptation, I think Two Towers is easily the best of the three. Fellowship doesn't even have a cliffhanger. It just ends abruptly for no real reason and offers very little fulfillment as a stand alone movie. The extended version is barely tolerable. Two Towers starts and ends strong. It can exist as a stand alone movie. It has the most action, and moves with a good pace. It has better editing, and perhaps the most emotional impact of the three movies. Return of the King continues some 30 minutes after the climax of the movie, which is the death of the Witch King. The series climax with the ring is horribly anti-climactic and boring. And then it continues some more, meandering for no reason, and yet still missing material from the end of the book.
How many Air Bud movies did they make? It amazes me how well people are paid for awful scripts, and then paid even more to make sequels for them. And right now Hollywood is in a horrible creative rut where they only make remakes, adaptations and sequels, terrified to make anything new. Yet many of the properties that they want to remake, adapt or make sequels to were successful as new properties.
I said asking for a revenue split is fair. However, enough businesses are deciding they make enough from YouTube exposure to allow their content on YouTube for free, yet Warner wants to pull all their content unless they get a HIGHER cut?
Not having your content out there is stupid.
Pulling videos from YouTube isn't helping or protecting Warner, especially when I can find videos from other artists and other companies on YouTube.
Warner wants a cut of revenue, and Google is offering a cut. By fighting over percentages, Warner is losing out on free advertising.
Instead of a take-down notice, is there any chance that Google will Rick-roll all the Warner links? Please make this happen.
In the early dark days of the internet, big companies sued small fan sites because they infringed on logos and copyrights. How dare you run a Star Wars fan site, or an X-Files fan site with racy pictures of Scully?
Then SLOWLY over the years, companies seemed to realize that fans on the internet increased buzz, visibility and mindshare for their products. Now they cater directly to the fan base by pandering at Comic-Con and such.
Warner wants a bigger piece of revenue for the videos being shown, but they're not thinking long term. It isn't just direct revenue of showing the videos, but the hype that comes along with it. If someone forwards a video to another person (or rather a link to the video) they are advertising that artist to their friends.
Monty Python has it right. They are posting clips on YouTube for people to watch for free (fans would post them anyways, only to have them taken offline) but Monty Python now has direct control over the portal, and can include links to purchase Monty Python material on Amazon.
Warner needs to wake up and pay attention.
I just said I've heard the story before. I didn't lay out a conclusion. Conversely, IBM was a typewriter company that saw the writing on the wall and invested in new markets. The newspaper company I work for now does video production, and we're pushing our web presence more and more. We don't expect the paper to disappear, and it still turns the largest profit for our company, but we're also diversifying just in case.
I also work for a newspaper, and I was shown stories from the advent of radio how radio was going to kill newspapers. Then TV was going to kill newspapers. Then the internet was going to kill newspapers. IBM also said computers would give us a paperless office.
The best contribution won't be a single person, but this huge contribution of several people. Linux isn't one OS for one person. It is embedded. It is desktop. It is server. It runs the cloud. It runs your phone. It runs your coffee maker. Ir runs the web. It runs super-computers. It is the unspoken hero. It is a rock-star.
The only video representation of one character that fits Linux is a representation of all these characters.
Instead of debating whether or not piracy should be called piracy, how about we discuss that actual issue of how piracy affects games, and what effect DRM has on piracy.
Honestly, I think the solution is to provide benefits to paying for the game. You're not going to stop piracy through DRM. And DRM may chase off paying customers. So about instead of pushing people away, you attract customers with benefits?
For instance, online play that is only accessible to paying customers might convince pirates who downloaded your game to start paying for it.
You know what I want in a smart phone? A big screen so I can reasonably surf the web, read documents, etc. What is the point of a smart phone with an interface so small you can't use it? The problem is that you needed buttons, keyboard, etc.
The iPhone said make the entire phone one giant touch screen. Honestly, even as an Apple critic, that was a brilliant move. The G1 is even better because I get a full size touch screen, a trackball, and a huge slide out keyboard.
IBM is the first company to see the writing on the wall and invest in new markets, even if those markets invalidate their current holdings. They went from a typewriter company, to a mainframe company, and an operating system company, to a PC company, to a server company, to a virtualization company, and now a SaaS company.
I've got wood for sheep!
Micropolis is the official SimCity for Linux I do believe, but Lincity-NG is an even better clone more akin to SimCity 2000.
Video capture is the first thing that springs to mind, as well as external HDDs, flash storage, etc. Right now, copying gigs of data to external storage is slow with USB 2. Also, video capture is problematic. If the data isn't moving fast enough, I drop frames of video.
When can I buy my first motherboard that is USB 3.0 compliant? I want to build a rig in the spring. I'd consider holding off until the summer to get USB 3 so it is more future proof, but I won't wait another year.
I just bought my second PS3. I'm a PS3 advocate, but frankly Home is two years too late. I think Sony went into this generation expecting to coast on their reputation from previous generations, and didn't do enough to actually win people over. The PS3 is the best BluRay player on the market, and a solid console, but frankly I'm not sure it even matters anymore.
Here is the crux. Vista didn't provide enough reason to switch, and the interface was so poorly designed it aggravated users. Every screenshot I've seen on Windows 7 looks just like Vista. 7 will have multi-touch support, but I don't have a touchscreen.
Until I see a reason to switch (ie serious advantages over XP) why would I?
I run openSUSE 11.1 and Windows x64 and I'm happy with both.
I only used Chrome for a day before going back to Adblock Plus and Firefox, but I swore there was an option to turn this off.
Then again Google already has tons of my private data via email and I'm not overtly paranoid. If you want a version of Chrome that doesn't phone home at all, check out Iron.
Except Chrome is light-years better than any other Webkit browser out there. They had some truly innovative and necessary ideas when it came to a multi-process, sandboxed browswer with a virtualized javascript engine. Saying that Webkit deserves all the praise isn't remotely fair. If Webkit alone was enough to light the world on fire, we'd be using Safari. And despite the benchmarks of nightly builds of pure Webkit running like a speed demon, Safari sure doesn't.
Before they kept selling the same titles over and over again (buy the classic NES games for the SNES, and then again for the GB, and now again on the Virtual Console!) and now they're selling public domain works.
In all fairness, I guess reissuing old games is better than letting them fade away into obscurity when most people don't have the old systems to legally play old games anymore.
I just wish Nintendo would focus more on new products. My N64 and Gamecube both gathered dust from not enough quality releases, and my Wii is likely to do the same.
It is the same company behind both initiatives.
http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretransport/magazine/16-09/ff_agassi
It is one thing when Digg or someone else scoops Slashdot a day or two early, but Wired wrote about this three months ago.
http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretransport/magazine/16-09/ff_agassi
I have a wife, a daughter, and my mother-in-law moved in with us. However my daughter is three. We play Wii together, in that I give her a Wiimote without batteries when I'm playing and she "plays" along. My wife and I occasionally play together, but we both really got bored with the Wii after about two-three weeks.
We have tons of TVs, tons of consoles, and tons of computers in this house. I prefer social activities, but we often tend to do our own thing.
Because after two weeks I got bored of the Wii and frustrated that the miracle-motion-sensing really wasn't all that great. I don't have four people over at my house to play Mario Kart all the time, which might prolong the life of the console. As a single player, I have played my PS3 for a year and I don't get tired of it because there are tons of single player games with great experiences there, and free online play. The Wii requires me to get friend codes and none of my friends own a Wii.