In the end the reason why this was the correct thing to do is that if he had come one day with a gun and started shooting people the school would be blamed for not realizing that something was going on. School shootings are very serious and the school staff should be proud of properly preventing it.
What a ridiculous and extreme response to a kid having a little fun. Total nonsense. He was engaging in satire of our advertising inundated culture. And it's his parents responsibility, not the schools, to discipline him, if any was necessary. Total breach of both parental and individual rights. (Assuming the young person is under 18 and living at home) I guess they're just being typically Canadian, North America's socialist nightmare.
In DS9, the ultimate goal of a Ferengi was to own one or more of your own planet(s). It was considered the ultimate sign of wealth. Plus, in the TREK universe, there was no actual money, only credits and
a supposed gift based economy. One that frustrated many a writer when it became obvious such a concept doesn't really work. So they used the Ferengi as an 'out' to have actual commerce on the show.
Since no Federation systems could do what ever they wanted. Much to the consternation of the hardcore Trek faithful. (Me not being one of them, hehehe).
Similarities, yes, copy? No. It was Paramount at the time, before CBS bought them. Trek was always syndicated until the last one "Enterprise".
The guy who created B5 is also the guy who created the hit series Murder She Wrote, and B5 was very much along the lines of a 5 year whodunit. Not that
that is a bad thing, but DS9 was more about the characters themselves and how the Federation wasn't so 'perfect' as it was portrayed in previous series. Part of the enjoyment
I got from the series was how it pissed off all the Trek Nazis, er faithful who felt it betrayed Roddenberry's vision of an atheist Utopian gift based economy.
I enjoyed both series. I think the mid to late 90's was sort of the golden age of episodic sci fi. But just like westerns in the 60s, it all got over done, over exposed and the general public
got tired of the genre. The low budget crap the gets on the scifi network not with standing. (with the exception of Warehouse 13).
DS9 was arguably the best of all the series. TNG was just an extension of Roddenberrys 'hippies in space' archetypes. Always doing the politically correct thing and solving all problems
with a quick sub routine. blah.
Voyager was just bad writing, even after the borg got involved. And the finale was possibly with lamest of any scifi series.
Enterprise? I think most people simply had had enough Trek for awhile. By the 3d season when the writing finally got good, it was too late
So yes, it's just you..
For now HDMI is not so good, but when people start upgrading their home theater component systems, the newer AVRs will have multiple HDMI ports with HDCP support. With both Audio and Video coming over one line it will significantly reduce the amount of cables you have to run from your DVD/PS3/Laptop/whatever since you will only need one to the actual TV. BECAUSE of support for HDCP, you will finally be able to stop using all those analog audio cables people have been having to deal with for decades and still get full audio resolution up to 24/192khz. (previously the max you could get was 48khz via digital because of concerns over theft).
If you don't like something, boycott it, don't steal it. Legal and not a damn thing the megacorps can do about it.
New Voyages has a complete recreation of the bridge set used in The Original Series, plus professionally designed lighting...it's being used by actual Trek Alumni to make a Trek based film called 'Of Gods and Generals' staring people from the original cast and some of the movies. Being directed by the guy who played Tuvoc on Voyager. The set is located in Upstate NY.
In Las Vegas, there is the set being built for the Star Ship Excalibur fan film that starts shooting in Sep. They are trying to recreate all the sets used in the original series. Pretty ambitious. Andd the building they are using is supposed to be torn down at the end of this year or early next.
As far as legal/illegal. Those making the films are at the largess of the copyright owners who can shut down any one of them if they want to. Thats why most go out of their way to give 'notice' of official copyright holders and make it clear they are not for profit enterprises. Mmost have formed Not for profit companies, which also allow them to accept money and labor and equipment without breaking the law.
Besides, CBS/Paramount can't buy this sort of media coverage if they wanted to.
Just the next step in community theater IMHO.
Yes, and unfortunately the ones profiting from it are the ones illegally selling dvds at various conventions. Star Wars revelations was going for 10 bucks a pop and the guy selling it was pretty angry when I told him that was illegal. So..I took a copy and dared him to call the police. He shut up and took the stuff down, hehehe. True story.
So if you see some schmuck illegally selling fan films, just help yourself and dare them to call the police. Really.
You're not stealing when you do that.
Actually it's how they structure their lease deals for tax advantages. In Jacksonville Ar they have moved 3 times and left 2 strip centers high and dry, or at the very least a huge drop in busniness. They ended up with a super center, accross the street from their old address and will not let a retailer rent the old blg. It became a place for long haul truck drivers to park and became a magnet for prostitutes. Something they've never had in that town before.
In the first strip, they brought in a food store called Food4Less, which at the time was owned by them. Then the shut that down when they inocorporated grocery shopping in the Super Center.
My family did business with them many years ago and they learned the hard way that Wal Mart doesn't give one whit if you make money or not. WalMart learned the trucking business from Willis Shaw trucking (who were there main trans haulers) then told them to get lost. They tried to do that with a travel agency doing business with them and them only thing that kept them from getting away with it are laws forbidding a travel agency to do most of it's business with itself.
They've engaged in graft and corruption with various State Insurance agencies trying to get sweetheart deals.
They are corrupt and ruthless and hide behind their 'we just want good prices for everyone' bullshit. And Tyson foods is doing it with them.
And worst of all, the stuff they sell really is poor quality, never buy tents or camping equipment from them, the label (coleman, eureka..) means nothing.
Yes I've had personal experience dealing with the slime balls.
Unfortunately Sony has decided not to use h.264, sticking with mpeg2 only, since they feel blue ray disks are large enough they don't need it. This decision pretty much erases the storage advantage of the blue ray disks when it comes to movies.
HD-DVD, Cable and Sattlelite are all going to h.264 for the bandwidth savings and added storage. Currently h.264 at HD resolutions requires a latest gen PC to play properly.
boycott? Because it's the only way to get them all to play together and to send a clear signal consumers won't stand for such draconian measures. That was obvious to most. I was responding to anothers post to boycott and agreeing with them.
Yes I repeated myself about h.264 to clarify. Sorry if that upsets you.
''I didn't see h.264 in any of their specs. You have the choice of MPEG-2, Divx (MPEG-4), and WMV9. MPEG-2 is just like current DVDs, so don't expect highdef. MPEG-4 and WMV9 are about on-par, IMHO. They can both do HighDef, provided you have some strong denoising before encoding, allow infrequent keyframes, etc., but neither will be all that impressive''
h.264 is mpeg4, I was clarifying for those that didn't know that. Quicktime supports the official h.264 spec, Divx supports a derivative of their own design. Xvid also. WMVHD uses what MS calls VC1.
As far as High capacity disks? Sure, but when and if consumer blanks become availabe the plan is to make it impossible to copy copyrighted HD content to them, or to a hardrive for that matter, This issue with Sony and rootkits is just the beginning.
WMVHD at 8 mb per second is quite good and playable on current media which tops out at 10mb for most players. And you can easily fit 2 hrs with 5.1 surround on a dual layer DVD at over 6mb playback speed. Worst case is having to put it on 2 very low cost dvd blanks. Or better yet, put everything on an affordable external firewire HD. Lots of options here.
''I think DVDs have pretty well proven that none of the professionals can do a decent job of mastering any lossy codecs like MPEG-2. The more excess space they have on the media, the less their incompotence will matter, and the better 2rd generation copies (DVD rips) done by skilled individuals will look.''
You are quite wrong about professionals not being able to master 'lossy' codecs. If you actually knew what you were saying, you would know they don't master in Mpeg2 at all for DVD. That is the final output format. Most used digibeta or increasingly HDCAM to maintain superior quality that gets downsized to SD size video.(that is what is used to create superbit DVDs). As far as 2nd generation rips? If you actually know what you are doing, you would know it's a bit for bit copy, nothing at all like the vhs issues. If you are talking about mpeg2 to other formats, I say again, there are various excellent methods to handle that with no quality loss. First thing is to get it out of mpeg2 to a format better suited for mastering and editing. Very easy and inexpensive to do.
BTW, I'm talking about legal obtaining movies, thought that was obvious too.
you also seem to be confusing best video with best playback equipment. Cheap lowend DVD players will never be able to playback DVDs with 'best' quality. Same goes for cheap low end TVs or other display devices. But one one expects them to.
WMVHD, DivxHD, Quicktime if done properly look extremely good. Your statements about film and it's graininess and dark areas are well know to the 'professionals' and there are plenty of systems around to deal with it's issues. Check out Criterions' releases if you don't believe me.
There are companies that do make lousy transfers, but making a blanket statement is untrue and unfair to those that do it well.
You sound like someone commenting on DVD production in the mid to late 90s.
''I do, and I plan to in the future. But higher capacity discs will help in that process, immensely. Should we also bypass those that gave us DVDs, and stick to CDs? Or should we also bypass those who gave us CDs and stick to floppy disks?''
You missed the point. It wasn't about the size, it's about the draconian protection measures they are proposing. Sony is trying to make it so you can only play a Blue-Ray DVD on the first player it plays in. No playing on different players in the house, no lending or renting. Just greed and treating everyone like criminals. Until we bring them to their knees, I'm saying we have viable
I favor the boycott approach to both formats for now. There are several formats that can be used to create HD content on existing DVD disks. Windows HiDef Media Divx Quicktime (via h.264/mpeg4) H.264 (mpeg4) H.264 is the future of HD broadcast and you can fit an entire 2 hour HD (720p or 1080i/p) movie on existing DVD disks with room to spare JVC already has a player out that plays all these formats including m2t files (HDV in mpeg2 format)using existing DVD writable formats. We should simply bypass Sony and Toshiba and finally use our PCs and home theater servers the way we want to. And it would all be legal.
Funny thing is, for once, MS is on our side, even if it's for the wrong reasons. here is the link to the jvc SRDVD-100U
You are right in one sense. They are perfectly willing to let women die, since they believe that abortion is murder and the mother deserves to die for it. They also realize that only the poor will be forced to live like this since women with money will simply go somewhere where abortions are legal. Which will lead to excuses to corrupt our civil rights to protect unborn children. Remember these same anti abortion foes are for the most part anti birth control of just about any means (even for married people with lots of kids).
There is no explicit protection of privacy in the constitution, and the Senate just nominated a judge who also doesn't believe in our right to privacy. Think about that if the abortion foes win. This goes way beyond abortion folks.
BTW I talked to a person who is anti abortion. She said it will make us a more Godly nation, just like prohibition did (she ignored the fact that prohibition created modern organized crime syndicates and a nation of scofflaws)When I told her that if abortion was outlawed, it would discriminate against poor women. She said she could live with that. I said it really wouldn't stop abortions (she forgets that the reason we had roe v wade was because they were going on in the first place) she said steps would be taken to prevent them.
what ever happens, the rich will continue to get what they want and the poor will suffer. No abortions, no condems, no life, just oppression by facists.
ON the other hand, the pro choice folks are almost as guilty for not informing women of the possibilities of severe psychological problems, steming from guilt. Thats one of the little ugly things that gets swept under the rug in this debate.
I'm personally pro choice, but think a fetus should be granted civil rights the moment it is able to survive outside the womb (8 months or later?) without unreasonable efferts to keep it alive. but thats just me.
Finally, someone who sees it like it is. Yes campers, Facsim has been reborn as large multinational corporations and church controlled state legislatures. I think Wal-Marts' eventual goal is to make everyone so poor they are the only place you can afford to shop. Of course Target and KMart will benefit too.
When the Sony PSP3 comes out, the Xbox will suddently be known as brand 'X' that no one cares about any more.
Let them 'trickle' the supply, march isn't that far off for a far superior game console.
MS is stupid if they don't think the geeks and gamers won't spread the word in internet time about this ruse.
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct sir. Seems S&P now stands for Stupid and Pathetic.
In the end the reason why this was the correct thing to do is that if he had come one day with a gun and started shooting people the school would be blamed for not realizing that something was going on. School shootings are very serious and the school staff should be proud of properly preventing it.
What a ridiculous and extreme response to a kid having a little fun. Total nonsense. He was engaging in satire of our advertising inundated culture. And it's his parents responsibility, not the schools, to discipline him, if any was necessary. Total breach of both parental and individual rights. (Assuming the young person is under 18 and living at home) I guess they're just being typically Canadian, North America's socialist nightmare.
hacking VOA is like sending a DOS attack against their grandmothers.
In DS9, the ultimate goal of a Ferengi was to own one or more of your own planet(s). It was considered the ultimate sign of wealth. Plus, in the TREK universe, there was no actual money, only credits and a supposed gift based economy. One that frustrated many a writer when it became obvious such a concept doesn't really work. So they used the Ferengi as an 'out' to have actual commerce on the show. Since no Federation systems could do what ever they wanted. Much to the consternation of the hardcore Trek faithful. (Me not being one of them, hehehe).
Similarities, yes, copy? No. It was Paramount at the time, before CBS bought them. Trek was always syndicated until the last one "Enterprise". The guy who created B5 is also the guy who created the hit series Murder She Wrote, and B5 was very much along the lines of a 5 year whodunit. Not that that is a bad thing, but DS9 was more about the characters themselves and how the Federation wasn't so 'perfect' as it was portrayed in previous series. Part of the enjoyment I got from the series was how it pissed off all the Trek Nazis, er faithful who felt it betrayed Roddenberry's vision of an atheist Utopian gift based economy. I enjoyed both series. I think the mid to late 90's was sort of the golden age of episodic sci fi. But just like westerns in the 60s, it all got over done, over exposed and the general public got tired of the genre. The low budget crap the gets on the scifi network not with standing. (with the exception of Warehouse 13).
DS9 was arguably the best of all the series. TNG was just an extension of Roddenberrys 'hippies in space' archetypes. Always doing the politically correct thing and solving all problems with a quick sub routine. blah. Voyager was just bad writing, even after the borg got involved. And the finale was possibly with lamest of any scifi series. Enterprise? I think most people simply had had enough Trek for awhile. By the 3d season when the writing finally got good, it was too late So yes, it's just you..
I agree, as long as the world buys their products we finance tyranny. Free Tibet. Free Tibet. Free Tibet.
Is this Yahoo or AOL? Now I'm confused.
For now HDMI is not so good, but when people start upgrading their home theater component systems, the newer AVRs will have multiple HDMI ports with HDCP support. With both Audio and Video coming over one line it will significantly reduce the amount of cables you have to run from your DVD/PS3/Laptop/whatever since you will only need one to the actual TV. BECAUSE of support for HDCP, you will finally be able to stop using all those analog audio cables people have been having to deal with for decades and still get full audio resolution up to 24/192khz. (previously the max you could get was 48khz via digital because of concerns over theft). If you don't like something, boycott it, don't steal it. Legal and not a damn thing the megacorps can do about it.
Thanks for the link, I just joined.
New Voyages has a complete recreation of the bridge set used in The Original Series, plus professionally designed lighting...it's being used by actual Trek Alumni to make a Trek based film called 'Of Gods and Generals' staring people from the original cast and some of the movies. Being directed by the guy who played Tuvoc on Voyager. The set is located in Upstate NY. In Las Vegas, there is the set being built for the Star Ship Excalibur fan film that starts shooting in Sep. They are trying to recreate all the sets used in the original series. Pretty ambitious. Andd the building they are using is supposed to be torn down at the end of this year or early next. As far as legal/illegal. Those making the films are at the largess of the copyright owners who can shut down any one of them if they want to. Thats why most go out of their way to give 'notice' of official copyright holders and make it clear they are not for profit enterprises. Mmost have formed Not for profit companies, which also allow them to accept money and labor and equipment without breaking the law. Besides, CBS/Paramount can't buy this sort of media coverage if they wanted to. Just the next step in community theater IMHO.
Yes, and unfortunately the ones profiting from it are the ones illegally selling dvds at various conventions. Star Wars revelations was going for 10 bucks a pop and the guy selling it was pretty angry when I told him that was illegal. So..I took a copy and dared him to call the police. He shut up and took the stuff down, hehehe. True story. So if you see some schmuck illegally selling fan films, just help yourself and dare them to call the police. Really. You're not stealing when you do that.
Actually it's how they structure their lease deals for tax advantages. In Jacksonville Ar they have moved 3 times and left 2 strip centers high and dry, or at the very least a huge drop in busniness. They ended up with a super center, accross the street from their old address and will not let a retailer rent the old blg. It became a place for long haul truck drivers to park and became a magnet for prostitutes. Something they've never had in that town before. In the first strip, they brought in a food store called Food4Less, which at the time was owned by them. Then the shut that down when they inocorporated grocery shopping in the Super Center. My family did business with them many years ago and they learned the hard way that Wal Mart doesn't give one whit if you make money or not. WalMart learned the trucking business from Willis Shaw trucking (who were there main trans haulers) then told them to get lost. They tried to do that with a travel agency doing business with them and them only thing that kept them from getting away with it are laws forbidding a travel agency to do most of it's business with itself. They've engaged in graft and corruption with various State Insurance agencies trying to get sweetheart deals. They are corrupt and ruthless and hide behind their 'we just want good prices for everyone' bullshit. And Tyson foods is doing it with them. And worst of all, the stuff they sell really is poor quality, never buy tents or camping equipment from them, the label (coleman, eureka..) means nothing. Yes I've had personal experience dealing with the slime balls.
That, I believe, is their long term goal. 99% poor and an elite mercantile class to rule them.
I think their long term goal is to make everyone so poor they're the only place you can afford to shop.
Unfortunately Sony has decided not to use h.264, sticking with mpeg2 only, since they feel blue ray disks are large enough they don't need it. This decision pretty much erases the storage advantage of the blue ray disks when it comes to movies. HD-DVD, Cable and Sattlelite are all going to h.264 for the bandwidth savings and added storage. Currently h.264 at HD resolutions requires a latest gen PC to play properly.
We are the Borg... We will assimilate your technology into our own and pay you for it... Resistance is futile.
Yeah, a facist getting kicked out by the most facist state in the USA. What Irony.
Actually, the latest version allows for lossy compression via the mng spec, the succesor to png. I see your point though.
boycott? Because it's the only way to get them all to play together and to send a clear signal consumers won't stand for such draconian measures. That was obvious to most. I was responding to anothers post to boycott and agreeing with them.
Yes I repeated myself about h.264 to clarify. Sorry if that upsets you.
''I didn't see h.264 in any of their specs. You have the choice of MPEG-2, Divx (MPEG-4), and WMV9. MPEG-2 is just like current DVDs, so don't expect highdef. MPEG-4 and WMV9 are about on-par, IMHO. They can both do HighDef, provided you have some strong denoising before encoding, allow infrequent keyframes, etc., but neither will be all that impressive''
h.264 is mpeg4, I was clarifying for those that didn't know that. Quicktime supports the official h.264 spec, Divx supports a derivative of their own design. Xvid also. WMVHD uses what MS calls VC1.
As far as High capacity disks? Sure, but when and if consumer blanks become availabe the plan is to make it impossible to copy copyrighted HD content to them, or to a hardrive for that matter, This issue with Sony and rootkits is just the beginning.
WMVHD at 8 mb per second is quite good and playable on current media which tops out at 10mb for most players. And you can easily fit 2 hrs with 5.1 surround on a dual layer DVD at over 6mb playback speed. Worst case is having to put it on 2 very low cost dvd blanks. Or better yet, put everything on an affordable external firewire HD. Lots of options here.
''I think DVDs have pretty well proven that none of the professionals can do a decent job of mastering any lossy codecs like MPEG-2. The more excess space they have on the media, the less their incompotence will matter, and the better 2rd generation copies (DVD rips) done by skilled individuals will look.''
You are quite wrong about professionals not being able to master 'lossy' codecs. If you actually knew what you were saying, you would know they don't master in Mpeg2 at all for DVD. That is the final output format. Most used digibeta or increasingly HDCAM to maintain superior quality that gets downsized to SD size video.(that is what is used to create superbit DVDs). As far as 2nd generation rips? If you actually know what you are doing, you would know it's a bit for bit copy, nothing at all like the vhs issues. If you are talking about mpeg2 to other formats, I say again, there are various excellent methods to handle that with no quality loss. First thing is to get it out of mpeg2 to a format better suited for mastering and editing. Very easy and inexpensive to do.
BTW, I'm talking about legal obtaining movies, thought that was obvious too.
you also seem to be confusing best video with best playback equipment. Cheap lowend DVD players will never be able to playback DVDs with 'best' quality. Same goes for cheap low end TVs or other display devices. But one one expects them to.
WMVHD, DivxHD, Quicktime if done properly look extremely good. Your statements about film and it's graininess and dark areas are well know to the 'professionals' and there are plenty of systems around to deal with it's issues. Check out Criterions' releases if you don't believe me.
There are companies that do make lousy transfers, but making a blanket statement is untrue and unfair to those that do it well.
You sound like someone commenting on DVD production in the mid to late 90s.
''I do, and I plan to in the future. But higher capacity discs will help in that process, immensely. Should we also bypass those that gave us DVDs, and stick to CDs? Or should we also bypass those who gave us CDs and stick to floppy disks?''
You missed the point. It wasn't about the size, it's about the draconian protection measures they are proposing. Sony is trying to make it so you can only play a Blue-Ray DVD on the first player it plays in. No playing on different players in the house, no lending or renting. Just greed and treating everyone like criminals. Until we bring them to their knees, I'm saying we have viable
I favor the boycott approach to both formats for now.
e ature_id=01&tree=&itempath=&model_id=MDL101546
There are several formats that can be used to create HD content on existing DVD disks.
Windows HiDef Media
Divx
Quicktime (via h.264/mpeg4)
H.264 (mpeg4)
H.264 is the future of HD broadcast and you can fit an entire 2 hour HD (720p or 1080i/p) movie on existing DVD disks with room to spare
JVC already has a player out that plays all these formats including m2t files (HDV in mpeg2 format)using existing DVD writable formats.
We should simply bypass Sony and Toshiba and finally use our PCs and home theater servers the way we want to.
And it would all be legal.
Funny thing is, for once, MS is on our side, even if it's for the wrong reasons.
here is the link to the jvc SRDVD-100U
http://pro.jvc.com/prof/Attributes/features.jsp?f
Has built in ethernet and streaming capabilities (movies, audio...). Pretty cool, but may be to expensive to some.
You are right in one sense. They are perfectly willing to let women die, since they believe that abortion is murder and the mother deserves to die for it. They also realize that only the poor will be forced to live like this since women with money will simply go somewhere where abortions are legal. Which will lead to excuses to corrupt our civil rights to protect unborn children. Remember these same anti abortion foes are for the most part anti birth control of just about any means (even for married people with lots of kids). There is no explicit protection of privacy in the constitution, and the Senate just nominated a judge who also doesn't believe in our right to privacy. Think about that if the abortion foes win. This goes way beyond abortion folks. BTW I talked to a person who is anti abortion. She said it will make us a more Godly nation, just like prohibition did (she ignored the fact that prohibition created modern organized crime syndicates and a nation of scofflaws)When I told her that if abortion was outlawed, it would discriminate against poor women. She said she could live with that. I said it really wouldn't stop abortions (she forgets that the reason we had roe v wade was because they were going on in the first place) she said steps would be taken to prevent them. what ever happens, the rich will continue to get what they want and the poor will suffer. No abortions, no condems, no life, just oppression by facists. ON the other hand, the pro choice folks are almost as guilty for not informing women of the possibilities of severe psychological problems, steming from guilt. Thats one of the little ugly things that gets swept under the rug in this debate. I'm personally pro choice, but think a fetus should be granted civil rights the moment it is able to survive outside the womb (8 months or later?) without unreasonable efferts to keep it alive. but thats just me.
Now, if this laser could instead be used to give a person the irresistable urge to pull over and masturbate, would they still go blind?
Finally, someone who sees it like it is. Yes campers, Facsim has been reborn as large multinational corporations and church controlled state legislatures. I think Wal-Marts' eventual goal is to make everyone so poor they are the only place you can afford to shop. Of course Target and KMart will benefit too.
When the Sony PSP3 comes out, the Xbox will suddently be known as brand 'X' that no one cares about any more. Let them 'trickle' the supply, march isn't that far off for a far superior game console. MS is stupid if they don't think the geeks and gamers won't spread the word in internet time about this ruse.