The trailer already has Dr. Manhattan pretty close to nude (which seems to be a big deal for you) and the Comedian smoking a cigar (in Vietnam no less).
Zack Snyder (director of 300) used the comic as his storyboard and even brought Dave Gibbons in to assist with artwork. While we all know there isn't a chance in hell of this happening, Mr. Snyder has said that his ultimate goal is to make a film that Alan Moore will watch and thing represents the comic.
Is there a chance this movie will fail, and horribly so? Of course. I'm not going to be that jackass who doesn't give it a chance though. Watchmen is one of my all time favorite works of fiction (not just comic), and I will be very disappointed if it sucks, but if it doesn't then it will introduce that many more people to the ideas and world of Watchmen, something which I think is a good thing.
A representative will be with you shortly.
You have been connected to TTM Mike .
TTM Mike : Hi this is Mike from Charter. How may I help you today?
Robert Hafner: I read an article online, and the followed it to the Charter webpage, which states that Charter is going to be monitoring my surfing habits and placing ads into pages I'm viewing. I am wondering how soon this will happen to me personally.
Robert Hafner: http://connect.charter.com/landing/op1.html
TTM Mike : I do apologize but let me transfer you over toour internet support line.
TTM Mike has left the session.
Please wait while we find an agent from the CHAT - DUMA - HSD Support department to assist you.
You have been connected to TTD Grah .
TTD Grah : Hi, this is Grah. Thank you for contacting Charter's High Speed Internet support. How may I be of assistance to you today?
Robert Hafner: I read an article online, and the followed it to the Charter webpage, which states that Charter is going to be monitoring my surfing habits and placing ads into pages I'm viewing. I am wondering how soon this will happen to me personally.
TTD Grah : Yes, that is our new update.
TTD Grah : One moment please as I download the document.
TTD Grah : Charter has formed a partnership with an industry-leader in online advertising, NebuAd (www.nebuad.com). NebuAd, through their advertising network, will display targeted advertisements to Charter High-Speed® Internet customers while they are surfing the Web. NebuAd does not collect and use personally identifiable information to deliver advertising. Customers will not see more ads - just ads that are more relevant to their interests that have been expressed through their web-surfing activity.
TTD Grah : The feature will be activated automatically for Charter HSI customers beginning in June 2008 in the following four Charter markets:
Newtown, Connecticut
Fort Worth, Texas
San Luis Obispo, California
Oxford, Massachusetts
Robert Hafner: So the ads are placed directly into websites I would normally view?
Robert Hafner: How do I opt-out for an entire household, with multiple computers and browsers?
Robert Hafner: Currently the only way to opt-out is by placing a cookie under each browser of each account of each computer, which is absolutely insane.
TTD Grah : The technology can actually often distinguish between different users on a shared computer and, therefore, can serve different ads to different users. Only a portion of the ads you see will be a function of the enhanced service - you will still see some ads that are served based on other criteria.
Robert Hafner: The question was were are those ads being placed- are they replacing other ads on websites, for instance?
Robert Hafner: And if so, how is the owner of the actual website going to be compensated?
TTD Grah : This site may appear depending on what are you trying to view online.
TTD Grah : This site will give you options on what to have according to what you need.
Robert Hafner: What site are you referring to?
TTD Grah : Say for example, you are surfing because you wish to purchase shoes online, this site will pop up and give you options to chose from.
TTD Grah : That is how it works.
TTD Grah : That is how it works.
TTD Grah : The site will not pop up everytime you go online.
If they don't want Google to index their publicly available pages, they can use robots.txt. End of story.
Thats ridiculous. Why does this issue need to be so black and white? I see no reason why people shouldn't be able to complain- hell, if I was Google, I would appreciate the complaints. How the hell is a company supposed to improve if everyone just up and leaves before mentioning they have an issue?
In this case, I certainly don't think Google did anything wrong. If someone wanted to search WSJ or NYTimes specifically, they would go to those respective websites. If they go to Google, they're probably looking for options. That doesn't mean it can't be fixed or improved- for instance, Google already has a custom search engine option, and I think it would be really interesting if (using something like Google's webmaster tools) that could be tied into this. It even allows you to plug it into an adsense account to make some money, or prevent direct competitors' ads from showing up.
I obviously got a little off track there, so I'll get back to my main point- the idea that people should just shut up and take whats handed to them, or they should shut themselves off from a large part of the internet (which is basically what they'd be doing), is appallingly naive and just plain useless.
Well, it doesn't necessarily need to be released into the environment. Something coded to die out after a certain period of time as a safe guard could be incorporated into filters or other devices in factories or power plants that create a lot of carbon dioxide.
I can vouch for this- a few years ago I decided to try ads on my site. I specifically told people not to just click ads, but to just view the ones they actually wanted to see. I didn't get that many clicks, and so it took a few months before I could get a payout.
Then, right before I was going to get a payout, which was the money I was hoping to use to buy school books, I get this email about click fraud and that they were closing the account and zeroing out the balance.
The problem is that Google caters to the people who pay them, not the people they pay- and now they're being even more blatant with it. This is pretty shortsighted since its going to drive smaller websites away from the program, and those smaller websites make up a good portion of the web.
The Massachusetts Governor, Deval Patrick, has a website that allows people to create issues and vote on ones they care about. There is an open issue on this right now-
http://devalpatrick.com/issue/opendocument
So go let your voices be heard.
"...We've not seen a single showing of ID theft or harm" From Wikipedia:
In 1948 Léon Theremin invented an espionage tool for the Soviet Union which retransmitted incident radio waves with audio information. Sound waves vibrated a diaphragm which slightly altered the shape of the resonator, which modulated the reflected radio frequency. Even though this device was a passive covert listening device, not an identification tag, it has been attributed as the first known device and a predecessor to RFID technology. The next major event in RFID history is in 1973, so either she's an idiot for claiming fifty years of no harm or she's a communist (insert 'in soviet russia' joke here).
Its too bad slashdot doesn't have a -1 moron button.
You're surprised that Iraq- where things like schools, clear water, electricity, and food are sparse- didn't dedicate more time to laying down fiber?
Somehow I think when the military is setting up their IT infrastructure they're a bit more concerned over receiving intelligence reports and actually using those resources for something that might help the situation over there than they are about letting their troops watch videos of people acting like morons on youtube.
If you've ever been in an IT department, or hell, in any decently sized company you'd know that sharing resources and setting up a working network isn't always the easiest thing to do. Look at our public schools- these are building that aren't being blown up everyday in areas where there already is infrastructure, but when you get a few hundred or a couple of thousand of students together you see how fast things slow down.
I'm glad the DoD is prioritizing how they spend their resources. Its budget is already bloated enough without them launches satellites and stuff so people can watch videos.
From the offical Digg blog, "But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying."
At this point it looks like look much like a PR move. In an attempt to make themselves look good, they're acting like they're decided to take a stand against The Man, when in fact they're just bowing to pressure. Besides the fact that they just literally couldn't continue enforcing the censorship without turning off the site, they seem to ignore the fact that they didn't just remove articles containing the hex code, but articles containing the story of their censorship!
Slashdot isn't making a big deal out of their lack of censorship, and they aren't issuing a war cry- but I can write F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 without having to worry about my account being deleted, and that means more to me than some half-assed excuse.
Digg is attempting to shift the blame and rally a cause away from it, when it should be admitting that they all made a mistake and apologizing. Now its too late for them to gain the respect of their user base without a lot of long, hard work (if even that will be enough).
Complain to the government. Write your congressmen and your senators, state and national, and let them know what this means. Then tell your non-geek friends and let them get pissed off too.
Sometimes its hard to believe that companies can get away with things like this, but when it comes to technology most of the country doesn't care enough to come to places like slashdot. Today I was talking to a friend about the evils of DRM, and I mentioned the Sony Rootkit incident and she had never heard of it (and she's not just someone off the street, she's an administrator at a website development/hosting company). If most of the country doesn't know about an issue, its easier to get away with it.
Pandora has a link in their blog to a petition thats been set up, so tell your friends, pass around the link, and use the information on the site to contact your own representatives.
He probably drowned himself when he realized that the majority of the world learned SQL from a tee shirt, and just like the shirt [http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/coder/595d/], you forgot the semi-colon.
Having found a problem less than a month from the election, do you honestly think they are going to be able to fix it in time? The article doesn't say voting machines are banned forever, just that this specific kind if banned from this specific election.
"In short, the machines made by the company Sdu can now be tapped, and there are no technical measures that can be taken before the upcoming elections that would prevent this tapping and guarantee the secrecy of the ballot."
I know when there's few comments on an article, its tempting to post a comment really quickly and get your name up there (oh joy!) but next team RTFA.
With all of the free downloads available now, the major point of itunes (for me at least) isn't the fact that I can download songs- again, I can do that for *free*- but rather the fact that I can download a song I like and actually help support the artist I'm downloading. I listen to some semi-obscure bands who haven't reached the point where they are selling millions of albums, or in some cases are barely selling enough to support themselves, so its important to actually support them in order to make sure they can continue making great music.
So in 5-10 years, when it turns out that the format of the Ladytron song isn't supported, I'll go and download it for free knowing that I contributed to the artist whose song I actually enjoyed and wasn't just someone who claimed to be a huge fan of a band who didn't bother supporting them.
Age of universe being studied:
14,000,000,000 years
Time it took them to solve mystery:
00,000,000,035 years
All things being relative, thats pretty swift.
Slashdot Mirror
The trailer already has Dr. Manhattan pretty close to nude (which seems to be a big deal for you) and the Comedian smoking a cigar (in Vietnam no less).
Zack Snyder (director of 300) used the comic as his storyboard and even brought Dave Gibbons in to assist with artwork. While we all know there isn't a chance in hell of this happening, Mr. Snyder has said that his ultimate goal is to make a film that Alan Moore will watch and thing represents the comic.
Is there a chance this movie will fail, and horribly so? Of course. I'm not going to be that jackass who doesn't give it a chance though. Watchmen is one of my all time favorite works of fiction (not just comic), and I will be very disappointed if it sucks, but if it doesn't then it will introduce that many more people to the ideas and world of Watchmen, something which I think is a good thing.
A representative will be with you shortly. You have been connected to TTM Mike .
TTM Mike : Hi this is Mike from Charter. How may I help you today?
Robert Hafner: I read an article online, and the followed it to the Charter webpage, which states that Charter is going to be monitoring my surfing habits and placing ads into pages I'm viewing. I am wondering how soon this will happen to me personally.
Robert Hafner: http://connect.charter.com/landing/op1.html
TTM Mike : I do apologize but let me transfer you over toour internet support line.
TTM Mike has left the session.
Please wait while we find an agent from the CHAT - DUMA - HSD Support department to assist you.
You have been connected to TTD Grah .
TTD Grah : Hi, this is Grah. Thank you for contacting Charter's High Speed Internet support. How may I be of assistance to you today?
Robert Hafner: I read an article online, and the followed it to the Charter webpage, which states that Charter is going to be monitoring my surfing habits and placing ads into pages I'm viewing. I am wondering how soon this will happen to me personally.
TTD Grah : One moment please.
Robert Hafner: http://connect.charter.com/landing/op1.html Contains the information
Robert Hafner: that I am basing this question off of.
Robert Hafner: As well as http://consumerist.com/5008801/charter-to-begin-tracking-users-searches-and-inserting-targeted-ads
TTD Grah : Yes, that is our new update.
TTD Grah : One moment please as I download the document.
TTD Grah : Charter has formed a partnership with an industry-leader in online advertising, NebuAd (www.nebuad.com). NebuAd, through their advertising network, will display targeted advertisements to Charter High-Speed® Internet customers while they are surfing the Web. NebuAd does not collect and use personally identifiable information to deliver advertising. Customers will not see more ads - just ads that are more relevant to their interests that have been expressed through their web-surfing activity.
TTD Grah : The feature will be activated automatically for Charter HSI customers beginning in June 2008 in the following four Charter markets:
Newtown, Connecticut
Fort Worth, Texas
San Luis Obispo, California
Oxford, Massachusetts
Robert Hafner: So the ads are placed directly into websites I would normally view?
Robert Hafner: How do I opt-out for an entire household, with multiple computers and browsers?
Robert Hafner: Currently the only way to opt-out is by placing a cookie under each browser of each account of each computer, which is absolutely insane.
TTD Grah : The technology can actually often distinguish between different users on a shared computer and, therefore, can serve different ads to different users. Only a portion of the ads you see will be a function of the enhanced service - you will still see some ads that are served based on other criteria.
Robert Hafner: The question was were are those ads being placed- are they replacing other ads on websites, for instance?
Robert Hafner: And if so, how is the owner of the actual website going to be compensated?
TTD Grah : This site may appear depending on what are you trying to view online.
TTD Grah : This site will give you options on what to have according to what you need.
Robert Hafner: What site are you referring to?
TTD Grah : Say for example, you are surfing because you wish to purchase shoes online, this site will pop up and give you options to chose from.
TTD Grah : That is how it works.
TTD Grah : That is how it works.
TTD Grah : The site will not pop up everytime you go online.
Robert Hafner: So this only affects my traffic to
Thats ridiculous. Why does this issue need to be so black and white? I see no reason why people shouldn't be able to complain- hell, if I was Google, I would appreciate the complaints. How the hell is a company supposed to improve if everyone just up and leaves before mentioning they have an issue?
In this case, I certainly don't think Google did anything wrong. If someone wanted to search WSJ or NYTimes specifically, they would go to those respective websites. If they go to Google, they're probably looking for options. That doesn't mean it can't be fixed or improved- for instance, Google already has a custom search engine option, and I think it would be really interesting if (using something like Google's webmaster tools) that could be tied into this. It even allows you to plug it into an adsense account to make some money, or prevent direct competitors' ads from showing up.
I obviously got a little off track there, so I'll get back to my main point- the idea that people should just shut up and take whats handed to them, or they should shut themselves off from a large part of the internet (which is basically what they'd be doing), is appallingly naive and just plain useless.
Well, it doesn't necessarily need to be released into the environment. Something coded to die out after a certain period of time as a safe guard could be incorporated into filters or other devices in factories or power plants that create a lot of carbon dioxide.
I can vouch for this- a few years ago I decided to try ads on my site. I specifically told people not to just click ads, but to just view the ones they actually wanted to see. I didn't get that many clicks, and so it took a few months before I could get a payout. Then, right before I was going to get a payout, which was the money I was hoping to use to buy school books, I get this email about click fraud and that they were closing the account and zeroing out the balance. The problem is that Google caters to the people who pay them, not the people they pay- and now they're being even more blatant with it. This is pretty shortsighted since its going to drive smaller websites away from the program, and those smaller websites make up a good portion of the web.
The Massachusetts Governor, Deval Patrick, has a website that allows people to create issues and vote on ones they care about. There is an open issue on this right now-
http://devalpatrick.com/issue/opendocument
So go let your voices be heard.
I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords.
Its too bad slashdot doesn't have a -1 moron button. You're surprised that Iraq- where things like schools, clear water, electricity, and food are sparse- didn't dedicate more time to laying down fiber? Somehow I think when the military is setting up their IT infrastructure they're a bit more concerned over receiving intelligence reports and actually using those resources for something that might help the situation over there than they are about letting their troops watch videos of people acting like morons on youtube. If you've ever been in an IT department, or hell, in any decently sized company you'd know that sharing resources and setting up a working network isn't always the easiest thing to do. Look at our public schools- these are building that aren't being blown up everyday in areas where there already is infrastructure, but when you get a few hundred or a couple of thousand of students together you see how fast things slow down. I'm glad the DoD is prioritizing how they spend their resources. Its budget is already bloated enough without them launches satellites and stuff so people can watch videos.
From the offical Digg blog, "But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you've made it clear. You'd rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won't delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.
If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying."
At this point it looks like look much like a PR move. In an attempt to make themselves look good, they're acting like they're decided to take a stand against The Man, when in fact they're just bowing to pressure. Besides the fact that they just literally couldn't continue enforcing the censorship without turning off the site, they seem to ignore the fact that they didn't just remove articles containing the hex code, but articles containing the story of their censorship!
Slashdot isn't making a big deal out of their lack of censorship, and they aren't issuing a war cry- but I can write F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 without having to worry about my account being deleted, and that means more to me than some half-assed excuse.
Digg is attempting to shift the blame and rally a cause away from it, when it should be admitting that they all made a mistake and apologizing. Now its too late for them to gain the respect of their user base without a lot of long, hard work (if even that will be enough).
Complain to the government. Write your congressmen and your senators, state and national, and let them know what this means. Then tell your non-geek friends and let them get pissed off too.
Sometimes its hard to believe that companies can get away with things like this, but when it comes to technology most of the country doesn't care enough to come to places like slashdot. Today I was talking to a friend about the evils of DRM, and I mentioned the Sony Rootkit incident and she had never heard of it (and she's not just someone off the street, she's an administrator at a website development/hosting company). If most of the country doesn't know about an issue, its easier to get away with it.
Pandora has a link in their blog to a petition thats been set up, so tell your friends, pass around the link, and use the information on the site to contact your own representatives.
tedivm
He probably drowned himself when he realized that the majority of the world learned SQL from a tee shirt, and just like the shirt [http://www.thinkgeek.com/tshirts/coder/595d/], you forgot the semi-colon.
They apparently missed the reactor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute http://nucleus.wpi.edu/Nuclear_Program/NRF/nrf.htm l (also in massachusetts).
They probably thought that the Supreme Court patent might help them with the Trademark thing.
Having found a problem less than a month from the election, do you honestly think they are going to be able to fix it in time? The article doesn't say voting machines are banned forever, just that this specific kind if banned from this specific election. "In short, the machines made by the company Sdu can now be tapped, and there are no technical measures that can be taken before the upcoming elections that would prevent this tapping and guarantee the secrecy of the ballot." I know when there's few comments on an article, its tempting to post a comment really quickly and get your name up there (oh joy!) but next team RTFA.
the sys admin for their webserver clearly isn't getting this one, since their server isn't responding.
With all of the free downloads available now, the major point of itunes (for me at least) isn't the fact that I can download songs- again, I can do that for *free*- but rather the fact that I can download a song I like and actually help support the artist I'm downloading. I listen to some semi-obscure bands who haven't reached the point where they are selling millions of albums, or in some cases are barely selling enough to support themselves, so its important to actually support them in order to make sure they can continue making great music. So in 5-10 years, when it turns out that the format of the Ladytron song isn't supported, I'll go and download it for free knowing that I contributed to the artist whose song I actually enjoyed and wasn't just someone who claimed to be a huge fan of a band who didn't bother supporting them.
Its alright, it happens to the best of us- and by the best of us, I am of course refering to myself.
Age of universe being studied: 14,000,000,000 years Time it took them to solve mystery: 00,000,000,035 years All things being relative, thats pretty swift.