The new Sony audio player was not accompanied by a suitcase full of $100 bills. Therefore, I find that it falls short. I hope Sony rectifies this error in short order. Thank you.
Dude, wait until you see the movie of the book of the video game of the Star Wars lego sets. That's going to blow you socks off! And if that doesn't the extended special edition will!
Actually, there's going to be a behind-the-scenes tell-all book of the movie of the novelization of the video game of the Star Wars LEGO sets, and then in a few years someone will do a TV miniseries adaptation of the behind-the-scenes book. I'm not waiting for the soundtrack CD from that miniseries, I'm waiting for the thirty-pound coffee table art book chronicling the creation of the comic book series based on the New York Times editorial article discussing the liner notes of the soundtrack from the miniseries.
Re:The word is 'burgle', you illiterate moron!
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Robbers Scared by GTA
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· Score: 1
You know what we call someone who whines about differences between dialects of a language? "Pedantic shithead."
Sure ideas get reused. But if you can't make them fresh, you're a hack, period. Is the Andy Warhol on the same level as Rembrandt just because they both do portraits?
What the hell are you talking about? I never said that Hollywood's decision to focus on remakes was artistically justified, I was merely explaining why they do it. There's a difference between excusing something and explaining why it happens.
As for "Sturgeon's Law", that's BS. It's an SF writer's lame excuse for a genre that attracts a lot of bad writers. They get away with it because too many SF readers never read anything else, not because of some deep universal law.
Simple observation of other writing genres (not to mention movies, music, etc.) demonstrates that Sturgeon's Law is universally true. In other words, you're full of shit.
You're right about the built-in audience factor, but I don't think that's the primary reason. Which is risk aversion.
Ultimately the same thing -- having a built-in audience lowers risk, which means that they make more money on average, etc.
Which explains why movies have gotten so damned formulaic.
Don't fall into that trap -- movies, and in fact all creative content, have mostly been formulaic crap. Sturgeon's Law applies to everything since the beginning of time. We just tend to forget that things sucked just as badly in the olden days as they do now, because time has forgotten the hordes of stinkers and focused on the few gems. Yeah, Casablanca was great in '42... but for every Casablanca, there's a score of movies like Cadets on Parade, Cairo, Call of the Canyon, Call Out the Marines, or China Girl. Reams of crap, and plenty of them full of big stars of the day.
The original "Planet of the Apes" was basically a philosophical movie with some action. It wasn't weird or creepy or macabre or especially fantastical, which are all the elements that Tim Burton is good at. He made the PotA remake into a standard action film, which is something he's not good at.
But "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," the book, has plenty of weird and creepy and macabre and fantastical stuff; it's exactly Burton's kind of movie. Just because it's a remake doesn't mean it'll suffer the same fate as PotA.
Why not come up with something new instead of redoing movies that there perfectly good to begin with.
Remakes and adaptations of previously existing works have a built-in audience (because those works already have mindshare), which means they are more likely to make more money. In case you forgot, the Hollywood studios are corporations, and like all corporations, their primary focus is making as much money as possible.
(I posted this in an earlier thread as well, in case you're wondering why you're seeing it twice.)
Remakes and adaptations of previously existing works have a built-in audience (because those works already have mindshare), which means they are more likely to make more money. In case you forgot, the Hollywood studios are corporations, and like all corporations, their primary focus is making as much money as possible.
Bhopal.com is run by Union Carbide so you can't question this source.
Are you joking? What you really meant to say is, "Bhopal.com is run by Union Carbide so you can't question this source when it says bad things about Union Carbide." Because everyone knows that you can always trust someone when they're self-deprecating. Except that's bullshit, because UC could easily understate their badness. It's a good way to forestall worse criticisms: admit that something went wrong, and apologize for the problem, when really you actually did something much worse.
It seems likely that the two "facts" you quoted are true, but that says nothing about the accuracy of the rest of the site.
I was wondering how Doom 3 could be considered more violent than GTA: SA in the eyes of religious and censorship groups until I went to the Interfaith site myself.
Despite the list's alphabetical ranking, a lot of fundies really do think DOOM 3 is worse than a game like GTA:SA. DOOM 3 features lots of "demonic" imagery and other satanic things that make fundamentalist Christians nervous. GTA:SA is relatively run-of-the-mill street violence, but DOOM 3 is toying with people's immortal souls. As it were. (Since, as the article points out, the hero of DOOM is fighting AGAINST the demon hordes, one wonders why Christians would object to it...)
Those damn software companies. How dare they use product activation to help curb piracy? Well just for that, I'm going to pirate their stuff until they stop!" Yeah. I'm sure that's likely to convince them.
Numbnuts, some of us aren't going to pirate or buy HL2 or play it at all unless Valve knocks off this attempt to end-run around the First Sale Doctrine.
Answer is very simple - Game is owned by publisher and it can do ANYTHING what it owns. So...answer is VERY simple - just don't use it, period.
Both state and federal law, not to mention numerous court decisions, disagree with you. Copyright law does not allow the copyright holder to dictate how you may use the copyrighted work, only whether and how you may distribute copies of it.
If you enter into a contract limiting how you may use the work, that's one thing, but buying the software from a store is not such a contract, and EULAs that appear after purchase are similarly not binding contracts.
Amen to that. I'm not going to play HL2 as long as this "activation" thing exists.
As soon as I can buy the game, install it, and play it without ever needing to activate it or have an internet connection, they'll get my business. Not before.
2560 a year (not including tax) on games. Thats a down payment on a car, or a new guitar. Hell, the intrest that would of saved me on my morgage alone.
So... do you get $2,560 worth of entertainment a year out of those games? Do you think that you'd have been equally happy if you'd put all that money toward your mortgage instead, and rather than played games, sat around staring at the walls because you'd spent no money on entertainment?
Is it just me, or does $15/month seem WAY out of proportion for something like this? I could see paying $15/year, maybe. But this is almost as much as I pay every month for my broadbant Internet access, which is FAR more useful.
Let's say you paid $15 for 40 hours of gameplay that month. (That's way below average for MMOG players.) You're paying about 38 cents an hour to play. Compare to movies (3-5 DOLLARS per hour), concerts or sporting events (5-100 DOLLARS per hour), heck, even buying a cheap paperback for six bucks and reading it for six hours is still a dollar an hour.
Enjoyment being equal, seems like the MMO is quite a good deal. Even if you take the initial purchase price into account ($50, in this case), $65 for 40 hours is $1.63 an hour, which is still cheaper than a movie.
Yes, I realize you have to have a computer and an internet connection, but if you already had those, then their cost is sunk and can be ignored when deciding what to do with your entertainment dollars. Stop acting like it's ridiculously expensive to play an MMOG.
The "any later version" is a blank check where RMS can change your licensing terms under you.
Er, maybe I misunderstand, but I don't think this is true. What the previously mentioned clause says is that the copyright holder can give the user the right to choose which version of the GPL applies to the work. But of course, the copyright holder can also choose to release the program under only a single version of the GPL, so if you do that, and RMS releases a new GPL version that does something you don't like, it doesn't matter: your software was released under the version you wanted, and that doesn't change.
If you happened to choose the "this or any later version" clause for your program, then there's the possibility that RMS might release a GPL version that you don't like, and a user could then choose to apply that version to your program. But that can be avoided by simply releasing it only under (e.g.) the GPL version 2.
Marshall completely missed the point. It doesn't matter if the cathedral is built up over the course of generations by numerous different people; you still need the permission of the guy who CURRENTLY OWNS the thing to add onto it. That still makes it analogous to the proprietary software development method.
And when Linux-zealot Slashbots attack SCO and Microsoft, is that because of a position of fear and weakness too, or is there some magical reason why your generalization only applies to people you don't like?
Maybe you should use a little reading comprehension:
I find when corporate CEOs openly attack the opposition it's from a position of fear and weakness more than anything.
His generalization is about corporate CEOs, not everyone.
The individual kernel project run by Linus might be cathedral-like, but Linux (and free software projects in general) are not. Actually, most free software projects, insofar as they retain an identity, are cathedral like: go to any random project on Sourceforge, and there's essentially no chance that you can commit changes to the codebase without approval from one of the project runners.
To analogize it to the proverbial bazaar, it's like noticing that each individual shop is run with an iron fist by its owner, and then claiming that the whole bazaar is a cathedral because each owner doesn't let his shop be run by any random Joe who comes along.
Yes, Linus manages his shop (project) with an iron fist, but anyone can take the kernel and set up their own shop (project) next door. That's still following the bazaar model.
Being both familiar with Linux and Java, let me propose a different analogy: Linux is like being caressed by milky-skinned maidens, and Java is like being kicked in the nuts by a Visigoth.
Taxing people based on how much they drive is a good idea (because as it stands, the costs of driving are highly externalized -- e.g. the people getting the benefit from driving more are not necessarily the ones paying for it), but there's no reason the mechanism for tracking needs to store any personal info. It's entirely possible to come up with a system for tracking how much you drive, without tracking where you drive.
Nonetheless, rather than tracking your mileage, I'd much rather see gas taxes increased so that the more you drive, the more money the state gets for road maintenance, mass transit, etc. Right now, gas taxes are a fixed number, rather than a percentage of the gas price. You could also include the cost of auto insurance in the gas price, so that everyone's automatically insured to some required minimum, and then you could get more insurance on top of that if you wanted it, rather than the situation now, where it's illegal to drive without insurance (in California) but millions of people, mostly immigrants, do it anyway.
This would also put more of the burden on vehicles that get worse gas mileage, which also tend to be larger, heavier, cause more road wear, are more dangerous to other vehicles, and emit more pollutants.
And of course, people in the U.S. (and especially Southern California, where I live) are so obsessed with being able to drive wherever you want, whenever you want, and not having to pay for it (even though someone has to pay for it!), that they fight gas taxes tooth and nail even though proper application would reduce traffic (by providing more transit options). Europe has the right idea.
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The new Sony audio player was not accompanied by a suitcase full of $100 bills. Therefore, I find that it falls short. I hope Sony rectifies this error in short order. Thank you.
You know what we call someone who whines about differences between dialects of a language? "Pedantic shithead."
The fundamental maxim of security:
Security is a process, not a product.
The original "Planet of the Apes" was basically a philosophical movie with some action. It wasn't weird or creepy or macabre or especially fantastical, which are all the elements that Tim Burton is good at. He made the PotA remake into a standard action film, which is something he's not good at.
But "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," the book, has plenty of weird and creepy and macabre and fantastical stuff; it's exactly Burton's kind of movie. Just because it's a remake doesn't mean it'll suffer the same fate as PotA.
(I posted this in an earlier thread as well, in case you're wondering why you're seeing it twice.)
It seems likely that the two "facts" you quoted are true, but that says nothing about the accuracy of the rest of the site.
If you enter into a contract limiting how you may use the work, that's one thing, but buying the software from a store is not such a contract, and EULAs that appear after purchase are similarly not binding contracts.
Amen to that. I'm not going to play HL2 as long as this "activation" thing exists.
As soon as I can buy the game, install it, and play it without ever needing to activate it or have an internet connection, they'll get my business. Not before.
Enjoyment being equal, seems like the MMO is quite a good deal. Even if you take the initial purchase price into account ($50, in this case), $65 for 40 hours is $1.63 an hour, which is still cheaper than a movie.
Yes, I realize you have to have a computer and an internet connection, but if you already had those, then their cost is sunk and can be ignored when deciding what to do with your entertainment dollars. Stop acting like it's ridiculously expensive to play an MMOG.
:(
If you happened to choose the "this or any later version" clause for your program, then there's the possibility that RMS might release a GPL version that you don't like, and a user could then choose to apply that version to your program. But that can be avoided by simply releasing it only under (e.g.) the GPL version 2.
Marshall completely missed the point. It doesn't matter if the cathedral is built up over the course of generations by numerous different people; you still need the permission of the guy who CURRENTLY OWNS the thing to add onto it. That still makes it analogous to the proprietary software development method.
The individual kernel project run by Linus might be cathedral-like, but Linux (and free software projects in general) are not. Actually, most free software projects, insofar as they retain an identity, are cathedral like: go to any random project on Sourceforge, and there's essentially no chance that you can commit changes to the codebase without approval from one of the project runners.
To analogize it to the proverbial bazaar, it's like noticing that each individual shop is run with an iron fist by its owner, and then claiming that the whole bazaar is a cathedral because each owner doesn't let his shop be run by any random Joe who comes along.
Yes, Linus manages his shop (project) with an iron fist, but anyone can take the kernel and set up their own shop (project) next door. That's still following the bazaar model.
Being both familiar with Linux and Java, let me propose a different analogy: Linux is like being caressed by milky-skinned maidens, and Java is like being kicked in the nuts by a Visigoth.
Taxing people based on how much they drive is a good idea (because as it stands, the costs of driving are highly externalized -- e.g. the people getting the benefit from driving more are not necessarily the ones paying for it), but there's no reason the mechanism for tracking needs to store any personal info. It's entirely possible to come up with a system for tracking how much you drive, without tracking where you drive.
Nonetheless, rather than tracking your mileage, I'd much rather see gas taxes increased so that the more you drive, the more money the state gets for road maintenance, mass transit, etc. Right now, gas taxes are a fixed number, rather than a percentage of the gas price. You could also include the cost of auto insurance in the gas price, so that everyone's automatically insured to some required minimum, and then you could get more insurance on top of that if you wanted it, rather than the situation now, where it's illegal to drive without insurance (in California) but millions of people, mostly immigrants, do it anyway.
This would also put more of the burden on vehicles that get worse gas mileage, which also tend to be larger, heavier, cause more road wear, are more dangerous to other vehicles, and emit more pollutants.
And of course, people in the U.S. (and especially Southern California, where I live) are so obsessed with being able to drive wherever you want, whenever you want, and not having to pay for it (even though someone has to pay for it!), that they fight gas taxes tooth and nail even though proper application would reduce traffic (by providing more transit options). Europe has the right idea.