No, they still won. They held back a whole decade of innovation and advance. A decade might be nothing for aerospace, but it is a long time when it comes to software.
Arguably, they could have spurred some advances by forcing engineers to come up with clever solutions to work around it. But the original patent was so over-broad that there probably wasn't such a solution.
Maybe instead of trying to artificially create the memes and hashtags on the social networks, Hollywood ought to listen to what's being said and take that for inspiration? I guess that's just really much more effort than rehashing the same damn blockbuster formula over and over again.
Yeah, I was wondering why a bunch of tablet engineers decided to get on a ship. If anything, the lawyers, salespeople, and MBA's are supposed to be boarding first.
I question whether people saw it for the story, or for the experience (IMAX+3D+modern-day CG). Dances with Wolves did well enough I guess, especially for a Costner flick. Actually, that's probably one template that won't get old, and it's often the B-plot of many action movies.
But I still wonder if people were going to see Avatar for the story, or if they were going to see it for the then-novel visual experience. I would guess the latter, seeing as how people still go see 3D movies and/or in an IMAX theater, but none have done nearly as well as Avatar. It was a gimmick, but done at the right place and time, with the right marketing, and contained sufficient substance. Of course, you can argue that the gimmick is part of the selling point, part of the movie itself, and you'd be right. It's just hard to be successful with the same gimmick more than once, and it gets less important with every use.
Disney has learned that movies are long term investment, not just box office warriors. They build a brand and milk it.
Several recent flops were by Disney. They're struggling along with everyone else.
As for building a brand, Disney's genius lies not in milking their hits with more movies (which have mostly been by Pixar recently, and which they've been doing irrespective), but in their merchandising strategy for their hits. They release a kid's movie, then they immerse the kids in it by making a ton of toys and apparel based on the movie, and slapping it on new theme park rides. The merchandising market is huge and lasts forever (like Star Wars merchandise). However, the key ingredient for this is a hit movie, which as I've said they're struggling to make these days.
They're going to eventually kill all of the Pixar movies with sequels. Pixar hated sequels when they were still independent. They liked doing new things, telling new stories, creating new characters and places and playing with them. Now that Disney runs the show, Pixar's not doing this anymore. Not that they need to. The current crop of Pixar movies isn't going to run out of steam for at least another two decades (Brave 2, anybody?), by the time which Disney can either buy yet another company and their movie library to milk, or they can ride the Pixar name itself still for another decade or two. Hell, they've done this already, with both the Marvel and Lucasfilm acquisitions. Even if those are old companies, they have a ton of "IP" Disney can milk. And Marvel is producing more each day!
Buying up other companies and running their ideas into the ground is also a part of their genius. But actually making good movies and creating a strong fanbase is not them any longer.
You can milk a cult movie.
Boondock Saints 2 anyone (does anyone even know this movie actually exists)? Episode I-III? Matrix 2 and 3? And I don't see anyone clamoring for Kill Bill 3 either, (but only because we know Bill's dead). You can't really milk cult movies. They're one-shots, one-time deals. They're cult classics because they're unique, interesting, special, maybe not very good or not generally appealing, but speaks intimately to a certain subculture or group of people. First, a sequel done the same way would destroy the uniqueness and probably wouldn't work a second time anyway because the uniqueness is something like a gimmick but without the whizz, flash, and bang. Second, a sequel done the normal, tried-and-true Hollywood way wouldn't be interesting. Third, a sequel done a different way is probably going to flop, because most interesting, unique, different movies flop anyway. Becoming popular even among a small amount of people is lightning striking, and everyone involved knows it. It won't strike twice in the same spot.
If (presumably) richer men are allowed multiple wives, that means that there are fewer wives for the rest of the men.
For starters, that's not true because more females are born than males. It's close to 50/50, but not quite.
Second, it's been this way for centuries and still is happening today, except in "secret." It's easy to find rich men divorcing their first wives and marrying a second, third, and sometimes even fourth and fifth wives. And rich men having affairs with younger women with promises to marry them. And there still isn't a shortage.
So I wouldn't expect a shortage of wives if polygamy was in fact allowed. Not that I support it mind you, but your argument doesn't hold water, historically nor currently.
At least the dunes are helping erase a part of the prequels. Or are they preserving it for posterity? Perhaps when the dunes shift again in the distant future and the site gets rediscovered, it'll serve to teach film makers of that time how not to fuck up a billion-(trillion- by then)dollar franchise.
Yes, the Library at Alexandria burned to the ground. But there are dozens upon dozens of tomes buried under the ground that have survived for thousands of years.
I guarantee that none of the information stored only in a digital medium will survive in a thousand years, much less two or three thousand.
That's because like we do with diseases, those regulations were meant to prevent bad behavior. But regulations don't remove the behavior, just as vaccinations don't kill off the bug causing the disease.
Deregulation is only possible after when human greed goes the way of smallpox.
you can only hope evolution takes care of the problem.
Not evolution, natural selection.
The biggest problem with that is the collateral damage. Stupid parents do not imply stupid children, nor do intelligent parents necessarily produce intelligent children. In fact, natural selection is more likely to select away the children before the parents, because they're weaker and less experienced.
I don't recally where I heard this, but my understanding is that the tap water was flammable even prior to the fracking. Natural gas was contaminating the groundwater long before people began mining it. The way I see it, it may be that more places have flammable tap water after fracking, but being able to light water on fire by itself is not indicative of contaminated drinking water. It's more just attention-whoring and if you abscribe malice to the media, then classic straw-man misdirection.
Stronger correlators, such as the tails of cows falling off after fracking began (I don't recall which, but one of the known chemicals used in fracking caused tails to fall off in laboratory experiments), would be a better argument for groundwater contamination.
The other thing to realize is that just because one area is not contaminated does not imply that fracking in general does not contaminate the ground water. It could be due to the specific geology of the area. Or it could be variations in the fracking process used in that particular area or for this particular test.
You don't need luck to write well. You need talent. You don't need luck to afford you time to hone your skills. You have that time (assuming you live comfortably in the first world). It's called leisure.
If you aren't willing to spend your leisure time honing your skills (in which you are talented), you have no business trying to make a living off of it. Not to say that you can't, just that you'd have to be very lucky. And that's the only place where luck comes into play.
You don't want to try and operate the Windows desktop UI in touch, it doesn't work well.
And yet, to do half the things you might need to do, you still had to go back to the old desktop UI. This is for both RT and 8.
So instead of doing what you needed to do in once place, even if really poorly, now the process is:
1) Find the new place. (This is actually more difficult than it seems, because the advanced things are not nearly as intuitive as they appear in Metro.) 2) Figure out that the option you wanted is not in the new place. 3) Cross your fingers and hope it's in the old place. 4) Figure out that the other options you wanted are not in the old place. 5) Go back to the new place. You may need to re-find it. Complete half of your task. 6) Go back to the old place. Finish the other half.
I hear 8.1 fixed a lot of these issues. But I'm pretty sure it's not all. And if they want to succeed on a tablet the way they're trying to, it needs to be all. Or nothing.
Will they fail if they don't have an OS on tablets and phones?
Yes. Ultimately, they will fail. Because the workplace of the future will not have desktops and workstations and cubicles. The workplace of the future will have people sitting down wherever, whenever, with whomever, talking, collaborating, and getting a bit of work done. So yes, they need a presence in the tablet form factor. It was a matter of their future, and they knew it.
But then they went ahead and botched it in all the ways they could possibly do so. They saw Apple and Google's app margins (30%!!!), and thought they could get into that game too with their massive application base (think, 30% of Adobe CS or AutoCAD or Maya). They were drooling over those numbers, and forgot that there's neither Photoshop and Maya on iOS nor on Android, and didn't stop to wonder why.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the failure of Windows RT/8 probably set them back several years, if not decades. The very idea of Windows on a tablet stinks now for many people (developers and consumers alike), and they're probably not going to go near another one for, well, as long as XP's support lifetime (13 years?). Instead, having been burned by Microsoft, they're going to stick with iOS or Android now even more than before.
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Sounds like a forgettable upgrade. Kinda like going to Vista over XP. Lots of new restrictions, no new abilities.
TFA cannot beat supershrew.
Only on Slashdot does a set up for a mass of tube jokes result instead in truck jokes.
No, they still won. They held back a whole decade of innovation and advance. A decade might be nothing for aerospace, but it is a long time when it comes to software.
Arguably, they could have spurred some advances by forcing engineers to come up with clever solutions to work around it. But the original patent was so over-broad that there probably wasn't such a solution.
Maybe instead of trying to artificially create the memes and hashtags on the social networks, Hollywood ought to listen to what's being said and take that for inspiration? I guess that's just really much more effort than rehashing the same damn blockbuster formula over and over again.
You mean having Hollywood take risks?
Yeah, I was wondering why a bunch of tablet engineers decided to get on a ship. If anything, the lawyers, salespeople, and MBA's are supposed to be boarding first.
Apologies in advance for the rant.
Avatar - biggest hit of all time.
I question whether people saw it for the story, or for the experience (IMAX+3D+modern-day CG). Dances with Wolves did well enough I guess, especially for a Costner flick. Actually, that's probably one template that won't get old, and it's often the B-plot of many action movies.
But I still wonder if people were going to see Avatar for the story, or if they were going to see it for the then-novel visual experience. I would guess the latter, seeing as how people still go see 3D movies and/or in an IMAX theater, but none have done nearly as well as Avatar. It was a gimmick, but done at the right place and time, with the right marketing, and contained sufficient substance. Of course, you can argue that the gimmick is part of the selling point, part of the movie itself, and you'd be right. It's just hard to be successful with the same gimmick more than once, and it gets less important with every use.
Disney has learned that movies are long term investment, not just box office warriors. They build a brand and milk it.
Several recent flops were by Disney. They're struggling along with everyone else.
As for building a brand, Disney's genius lies not in milking their hits with more movies (which have mostly been by Pixar recently, and which they've been doing irrespective), but in their merchandising strategy for their hits. They release a kid's movie, then they immerse the kids in it by making a ton of toys and apparel based on the movie, and slapping it on new theme park rides. The merchandising market is huge and lasts forever (like Star Wars merchandise). However, the key ingredient for this is a hit movie, which as I've said they're struggling to make these days.
They're going to eventually kill all of the Pixar movies with sequels. Pixar hated sequels when they were still independent. They liked doing new things, telling new stories, creating new characters and places and playing with them. Now that Disney runs the show, Pixar's not doing this anymore. Not that they need to. The current crop of Pixar movies isn't going to run out of steam for at least another two decades (Brave 2, anybody?), by the time which Disney can either buy yet another company and their movie library to milk, or they can ride the Pixar name itself still for another decade or two. Hell, they've done this already, with both the Marvel and Lucasfilm acquisitions. Even if those are old companies, they have a ton of "IP" Disney can milk. And Marvel is producing more each day!
Buying up other companies and running their ideas into the ground is also a part of their genius. But actually making good movies and creating a strong fanbase is not them any longer.
You can milk a cult movie.
Boondock Saints 2 anyone (does anyone even know this movie actually exists)? Episode I-III? Matrix 2 and 3? And I don't see anyone clamoring for Kill Bill 3 either, (but only because we know Bill's dead). You can't really milk cult movies. They're one-shots, one-time deals. They're cult classics because they're unique, interesting, special, maybe not very good or not generally appealing, but speaks intimately to a certain subculture or group of people. First, a sequel done the same way would destroy the uniqueness and probably wouldn't work a second time anyway because the uniqueness is something like a gimmick but without the whizz, flash, and bang. Second, a sequel done the normal, tried-and-true Hollywood way wouldn't be interesting. Third, a sequel done a different way is probably going to flop, because most interesting, unique, different movies flop anyway. Becoming popular even among a small amount of people is lightning striking, and everyone involved knows it. It won't strike twice in the same spot.
Oblig. User Friendly.
Of course the media companies are singing to different lyrics.
Now get off my lawn.
When we enjoy Shakespeare, we're not paying him or his heirs.
I guess we'll go see Ender's Game when it enters the public domain. Oh wait...
Otherwise known as the justification of cowards.
a term for multiple men and multiple women that is more specific than polygamy.
Orgy.
If (presumably) richer men are allowed multiple wives, that means that there are fewer wives for the rest of the men.
For starters, that's not true because more females are born than males. It's close to 50/50, but not quite.
Second, it's been this way for centuries and still is happening today, except in "secret." It's easy to find rich men divorcing their first wives and marrying a second, third, and sometimes even fourth and fifth wives. And rich men having affairs with younger women with promises to marry them. And there still isn't a shortage.
So I wouldn't expect a shortage of wives if polygamy was in fact allowed. Not that I support it mind you, but your argument doesn't hold water, historically nor currently.
At least the dunes are helping erase a part of the prequels. Or are they preserving it for posterity? Perhaps when the dunes shift again in the distant future and the site gets rediscovered, it'll serve to teach film makers of that time how not to fuck up a billion-(trillion- by then)dollar franchise.
Yes, the Library at Alexandria burned to the ground. But there are dozens upon dozens of tomes buried under the ground that have survived for thousands of years.
I guarantee that none of the information stored only in a digital medium will survive in a thousand years, much less two or three thousand.
Actually, all you need is someone to teach them a funny dance while saying "Fu-sion" in unison. I hear the circus is real good at this actually.
That's because like we do with diseases, those regulations were meant to prevent bad behavior. But regulations don't remove the behavior, just as vaccinations don't kill off the bug causing the disease.
Deregulation is only possible after when human greed goes the way of smallpox.
you can only hope evolution takes care of the problem.
Not evolution, natural selection.
The biggest problem with that is the collateral damage. Stupid parents do not imply stupid children, nor do intelligent parents necessarily produce intelligent children. In fact, natural selection is more likely to select away the children before the parents, because they're weaker and less experienced.
Humans will eventually learn to drink sea-water or die, just the way Darwin intended. Deal with it.
I know you're being facetious, but FTFY.
I don't recally where I heard this, but my understanding is that the tap water was flammable even prior to the fracking. Natural gas was contaminating the groundwater long before people began mining it. The way I see it, it may be that more places have flammable tap water after fracking, but being able to light water on fire by itself is not indicative of contaminated drinking water. It's more just attention-whoring and if you abscribe malice to the media, then classic straw-man misdirection.
Stronger correlators, such as the tails of cows falling off after fracking began (I don't recall which, but one of the known chemicals used in fracking caused tails to fall off in laboratory experiments), would be a better argument for groundwater contamination.
The other thing to realize is that just because one area is not contaminated does not imply that fracking in general does not contaminate the ground water. It could be due to the specific geology of the area. Or it could be variations in the fracking process used in that particular area or for this particular test.
They're not even thinking in decades here. They're thinking in single-digit years.
Come back and retest after 10 years of fracking, or test sites that have been fracking for 10+ years. Then they'll be thinking in decades.
Harry Potter is as much of a classic as Twilight.
Classics withstand the test of time. Neither of these have been tested yet.
You don't need luck to write well. You need talent. You don't need luck to afford you time to hone your skills. You have that time (assuming you live comfortably in the first world). It's called leisure.
If you aren't willing to spend your leisure time honing your skills (in which you are talented), you have no business trying to make a living off of it. Not to say that you can't, just that you'd have to be very lucky. And that's the only place where luck comes into play.
You don't want to try and operate the Windows desktop UI in touch, it doesn't work well.
And yet, to do half the things you might need to do, you still had to go back to the old desktop UI. This is for both RT and 8.
So instead of doing what you needed to do in once place, even if really poorly, now the process is:
1) Find the new place. (This is actually more difficult than it seems, because the advanced things are not nearly as intuitive as they appear in Metro.)
2) Figure out that the option you wanted is not in the new place.
3) Cross your fingers and hope it's in the old place.
4) Figure out that the other options you wanted are not in the old place.
5) Go back to the new place. You may need to re-find it. Complete half of your task.
6) Go back to the old place. Finish the other half.
I hear 8.1 fixed a lot of these issues. But I'm pretty sure it's not all. And if they want to succeed on a tablet the way they're trying to, it needs to be all. Or nothing.
They had one success: XBox. It took 3 generations for them to kill that one.
Will they fail if they don't have an OS on tablets and phones?
Yes. Ultimately, they will fail. Because the workplace of the future will not have desktops and workstations and cubicles. The workplace of the future will have people sitting down wherever, whenever, with whomever, talking, collaborating, and getting a bit of work done. So yes, they need a presence in the tablet form factor. It was a matter of their future, and they knew it.
But then they went ahead and botched it in all the ways they could possibly do so. They saw Apple and Google's app margins (30%!!!), and thought they could get into that game too with their massive application base (think, 30% of Adobe CS or AutoCAD or Maya). They were drooling over those numbers, and forgot that there's neither Photoshop and Maya on iOS nor on Android, and didn't stop to wonder why.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the failure of Windows RT/8 probably set them back several years, if not decades. The very idea of Windows on a tablet stinks now for many people (developers and consumers alike), and they're probably not going to go near another one for, well, as long as XP's support lifetime (13 years?). Instead, having been burned by Microsoft, they're going to stick with iOS or Android now even more than before.