I can only assume so, since the Cartoon Network version is all in English. Not that I find that particularly distasteful -- in fact, it's probably one of the best dubbing jobs I've seen to date -- but I also find the Japanese voices more appropriate and in tune with each persons characters (Edward always cracks me up).
There were only 2 comments posted when I saw this hit Slashdot, and the site's already down. I would have thought Warner Brothers would have learned after the first Animatrix trailer was posted on their site...........
I always enjoy watching it as a goofy play on Willis' typical buddy-action flicks. I thought it was cool, despite the fact that it got universally panned.........
I really dont care if people want to advertise their stuff to me, I just resent the crap that wastes your time >
Hehe..... for a second there, I read "resent" as "re-sent". I was wondering why on God's green-and-blue earth you would want to re-send spam to anyone.:P
I can watch Episodes IV - VI over and over again, back to back, to this very day -- it hasn't lost any of its allure. I don't even fast-forward through it........ it's the only title I own on VHS, and the sole reason I still have a VCR player (still waiting to get the DVD set).
Episode I was a train wreck -- I watched it, was appalled (sp?), only watched it again in fast-forward (fight scenes) once my friend bought the DVD. Went to see Episode II cuz my friend got free tickets, fell asleep......... and I should be looking forward to Episode III why?
"Lord of the Rings" and "The Matrix" hold more far potential than the modern crop of "Star Wars" films, hands down. The only people who will argue otherwise are the fan(atics)........ special effects should always be used as a tool to complement a solid storyline and quality acting, not in lieu of. I think Lucas really has lost sight of these basic tenets, and like most marketing drek, is only concerned with squeezing the most cash out of his franchise in the short term.
In another 20 years, nobody will care about Star Wars -- its time has come and gone. Move along, people, nothing to see here.
Just set up Outlook Express to connect to it in typical client/server fashion. Granted, it's in beta (and has been for quite some time... dare I say, indefinitely?), so it has some issues. But it's definitely helpful in avoiding banner ads altogether...............
I've been developing for Classic ASP since 1997 (ASP 2.0), and I'm definitely looking forward to ramping up on.NET. True, this will lock me into a Microsoft-type world -- but I've already make the decision to develop primarily using MS technologies, so that decision really doesn't affect me too much.
What does affect me are the limitations currently imposed by Classic ASP. Error-handling is atrocious -- "On Error Resume Next" seemed to be a dirty little secret for a long time, and work in a very hamfisted, kludgy manner. ADO is functional, but trying to get the proper combination of properties set to get your data from different providers still frustrates me 5yrs after-the-fact. And it's starting to show its age -- I had expected ASP 3.0 to introduce a lot of new, useful features to the mix, but a lot of it left me less than impressed..NET promises a solution to all of these issues, and it appears to also be more of a true programming language now than scripting. Which is nice, because I really do appreciate OOP -- especially when you combine it with Microsoft's vaunted ease-of-use. I'm sure there will be hiccups along the way -- security patches, bugs and such are always to be expected -- but it seems to be an excellent improvement beyond those MS tools that I already use.
.... but what are the chances the US will strength its consumer protection laws to the levels of the EU, and make all marketing campaigns opt-in? Pretty low, methinks.
First of all, I want to know more about how is the fine of $11,000 is incurred. Is it per incident in which a person was improperly called, when their number appeared on the DNC list? Is it a $11,000 per-incident fine, so that a firm like MonsterHut can improperly call thousands of people, but could only be fine $11,000 total for that aggregate violation?
I agree that the potential for abuse still exists, even with the DNC list. But the idea is to make companies financially liable, to some degree (see first paragraph for big question marks), for POTS-spamming people who have explicitly opted out of telemarketing calls. Setting a precedent, if you will..............
If call centers do improperly hand the list over to telemarketers for POTS-spamming, under this new DNC law they can be sued by the FTC. Eventually, the truth will come out -- workers will be subpoenaed, the fact that the mandate came down as part of company policy will be discovered, and the company will be found liable for their actions.
With respect to foreign call center calls -- this is the same kinda argument that's working against KaZaA right now. Even though they're located outside of the country, they do have business entities located here in the USA -- which means that they are liable for the actions of their foreign offices, too.
But these are just my guesses......... and once again, without a significant financial deterrent to back up the law, it probably won't do much else besides set a legal precedent.
I'll be the first to admit my utter ignorance when it comes to the wonderful world of home electronics, but I know how to spew things verbatim.:) The Samsung 50" DLP Widescreen HDTV-capable projection TV has zero problems with burn-in or convergence, since it doesn't have any CRT guns in it. My buddy just bought it for his apartment, and not only is the picture super-crisp and viewable at fairly wide angles without fading out, like some other big-ass TVs.
Oh, and did I mention it's only 17.5" deep and weighs all of 88lbs? That's just a smidgen heavier than my 21" NEC AccuSync 120 at work, and almost 3" shallower!
Does that mean we could declare war on them, in the name of protecting US citizens from outside aggression? There's nothing I'd enjoy more than returning the favor to these spammers...........
Windows Media and MPEG-4 are video formats, and nothing more. Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on encoded content (yet) -- yes, Windows Media Player comes preinstalled on all Windows installations, but that relates only to playback. Content can be encoded on any number of platforms, using any number of video formats -- the people who create the content are the ones who ultimately decided in what format(s) they will use.
So yes, this might be a standard Microsoft tactic -- undercut the competition by using their profits from Windows and Office to offset development and administrative costs related to Windows Media. But I hardly feel sorry for MPEG-4 -- MP3 became the de facto musical standard without making a profit, because they were willing to forego the initial profits to achieve market saturation. The MPEG-4 consortium can do the same -- but they want their money up-front, and that's a perfect way to fight a battle against Microsoft and lose.
If MPEG-4 wants to win, they'll have to lower their price, plain and simple. If they can keep their prices and feature sets in line with Microsoft's, I suspect that vendors would still side with them, as there seems to be a general (and not undeserved) mistrust of MS's business tactics and licensing practices. Plus, MPEG-4 isn't tied to any one platform, whereas we all know Microsoft's goal is to become THE zaibatsu of the 21st century. So they have a definite advantage there........... but I guess we'll see whether their greed or business sense prevails, won't we?
Questions about Helix DRM
on
Real DRM
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· Score: 1
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Helix only intended for use with RealPlayer? I've been avoiding their content and cleitn like the plague anyway these past few years....... why would anybody opt to use RealPlayer to play MP3 and OGG to play music, when there are plenty of other unfettered options out there to use?
Just look at Winamp -- support for multiple OS's, native support for OGG and MP3, and now with support for video. I've even dumped Windows Media Player for it....... Winamp may not be as robust yet (3.0 does have some bugs, lacks some features), but it definitely isn't saddled with as much DRM baggage, either.
FWIW, I'm an MS Active Server Pages (ASP) developer with zero Linux experience. Read on if you still care............
About a year ago, I started working with MS Indexing Service, which is what powers the "Find..." feature in Windows 2000. It seemed like a great concept -- take a hint from the database world, create an index of document properties for files residing on that machine, and then query that index first when searching for files. MS even provided a nifty little API to allow programmatic access to this functionality . Good stuff......
However, I started encountering problems on a number of fronts. First, the number of 3rd-party COM objects that allow programmers to set/get these properties in code approaches zero: the only supported component I can find is Desaware's "File Property" component. And while that works right now, the documentation isn't as robust as I would like..... and, of course, it's proprietary. Second, Indexing Service tends to shine only when used in conjunction with files that are local to the computer where the scripts reside. Once you get into files on shared / remote boxes, you're forced to use a single, hardcoded username/password to run searches -- there's no support for delegation, or for a logged-in user's credentials to be applied when performing those searches. Finally, I'm hard-pressed to find an affordable solution for querying another box's Indexing Service catalogs (i.e. indexes)....... for that, they want you to upgrade to SharePoint Server. That comes out to $4,000 for a server license PLUS $72 per CAL, on top of the cost of Windows 2000).
NewDocMS sounds like a pretty interesting alternative to OLE Structured Storage on MS....... it may not be mature yet, but if it continues to evolve, it'll be yet another quality app for Linux to reduce the TCO for businesses, especially small- and mid-sizers that don't have the deep pockets that standardizing on an MS platform requires. And because it's OSS, it has the potential to mature faster than its proprietary siblings. This, coupled with Linux's unwillingness to foist DRM onto its users (at this time, at the software level) makes it an increasingly attractive file serving alternative.
Who knows, maybe one day soon I'll break down and start messing with Linux. For one thing, I'm loathe to return to the command-line interface, and I don't have enough time for things as-is. But I've already sworn that I won't buy any further versions of Windows beyond Win2k, nor any versions of Office beyond O2k, because they fill my needs nicely without forcing me to do too much. I've already dumped Windows Media Player in favor of Winamp 3.0 with plug-in support for WMV; DivX shows more promise as a video format anyway. And now that WinAmp supports Ogg Vorbis (as of 2.80), I'm considering converting all my Mp3s to Ogg format as well.
I just bought a new Samsung SCH-A460 from Sprint, after losing my old phone -- it was decently-priced and had a bunch of neat features that I wanted to try out. One of those was polyphonic ringtones....... however, after much searching, I couldn't find places that I could buy / download ringtones from on the web.
I received a message back from Sprint's customer service, a few days after I had initially inquired about ringtones. Apparently you need to subscribe to a service ($4/mo, I think), which allows you to download 8 ringtones per month. And until you subscribe, you can't review any of the "titles" available for download -- which makes it quite useless if you're looking for a specific ringtone (Our Lady Peace's "Starseed", for instance).
Basically, I ended up buying a more colorful phone with a slightly improved alarm clock, infinitely crappier menu and panda "screen saver" for my cash. I'd have no problem paying for ringtones, even at $0.50 a pop, but I have the same problems here as I do with online music -- I wanna try before I buy. And as for monthly charges -- hell no.
Consider this the first of next year's ads for Matrixx Reloaded and Matrixx Revolutions releases.
Maybe this is the start of a crossover -- Vin Diesel meets Lawrence Fishburn, Carrie Ann Moss and Keanu Reeves. Scary.... between Vin and Keanu, there's gonna be a lot of "whoa"-type dialogue.
.... when they haven't even been able to secure their existing physical infrastructure? I mean, our military can't account for 25% of their expenditures (some $2.3 trillion). And even in a single case of domestic terrorism such as the Oklahoma City bombing, where the FBI lost 3000+ documents pertaining to the McVeigh case due to antiquated technology.
No, what I think we need are leaner bureaucracies that make better use of their existing resources. Improve what we got, then build upon it........ as the whole Linux-vs-Microsoft row has proven, you can't add just security to a shitty foundation -- you have to do it from the ground up. I'm of the mind that the same holds true for efficiency, where bureaucracies are concerned.
Plus, she looks like she has the acting ability of an anemic toadstool. All she does is scowl and hold her hand forward like she's gonna bang off a Big Bang Attack or something.........
Slashdot Mirror
I can only assume so, since the Cartoon Network version is all in English. Not that I find that particularly distasteful -- in fact, it's probably one of the best dubbing jobs I've seen to date -- but I also find the Japanese voices more appropriate and in tune with each persons characters (Edward always cracks me up).
There were only 2 comments posted when I saw this hit Slashdot, and the site's already down. I would have thought Warner Brothers would have learned after the first Animatrix trailer was posted on their site...........
Anybody got any mirrors to share?
I always enjoy watching it as a goofy play on Willis' typical buddy-action flicks. I thought it was cool, despite the fact that it got universally panned.........
I really dont care if people want to advertise their stuff to me, I just resent the crap that wastes your time >
:P
Hehe..... for a second there, I read "resent" as "re-sent". I was wondering why on God's green-and-blue earth you would want to re-send spam to anyone.
I can watch Episodes IV - VI over and over again, back to back, to this very day -- it hasn't lost any of its allure. I don't even fast-forward through it........ it's the only title I own on VHS, and the sole reason I still have a VCR player (still waiting to get the DVD set).
Episode I was a train wreck -- I watched it, was appalled (sp?), only watched it again in fast-forward (fight scenes) once my friend bought the DVD. Went to see Episode II cuz my friend got free tickets, fell asleep......... and I should be looking forward to Episode III why?
"Lord of the Rings" and "The Matrix" hold more far potential than the modern crop of "Star Wars" films, hands down. The only people who will argue otherwise are the fan(atics)........ special effects should always be used as a tool to complement a solid storyline and quality acting, not in lieu of. I think Lucas really has lost sight of these basic tenets, and like most marketing drek, is only concerned with squeezing the most cash out of his franchise in the short term.
In another 20 years, nobody will care about Star Wars -- its time has come and gone. Move along, people, nothing to see here.
What, current affairs isn't enough homegrown drama for people to consume?
Just set up Outlook Express to connect to it in typical client/server fashion. Granted, it's in beta (and has been for quite some time... dare I say, indefinitely?), so it has some issues. But it's definitely helpful in avoiding banner ads altogether...............
... the nominations are for the BEST Animated Feature Film. You must be thinking of the Razzies. :)
I've been developing for Classic ASP since 1997 (ASP 2.0), and I'm definitely looking forward to ramping up on .NET. True, this will lock me into a Microsoft-type world -- but I've already make the decision to develop primarily using MS technologies, so that decision really doesn't affect me too much.
.NET promises a solution to all of these issues, and it appears to also be more of a true programming language now than scripting. Which is nice, because I really do appreciate OOP -- especially when you combine it with Microsoft's vaunted ease-of-use. I'm sure there will be hiccups along the way -- security patches, bugs and such are always to be expected -- but it seems to be an excellent improvement beyond those MS tools that I already use.
What does affect me are the limitations currently imposed by Classic ASP. Error-handling is atrocious -- "On Error Resume Next" seemed to be a dirty little secret for a long time, and work in a very hamfisted, kludgy manner. ADO is functional, but trying to get the proper combination of properties set to get your data from different providers still frustrates me 5yrs after-the-fact. And it's starting to show its age -- I had expected ASP 3.0 to introduce a lot of new, useful features to the mix, but a lot of it left me less than impressed.
even the Matrix is susceptible to Slashdotting.
.... but what are the chances the US will strength its consumer protection laws to the levels of the EU, and make all marketing campaigns opt-in? Pretty low, methinks.
First of all, I want to know more about how is the fine of $11,000 is incurred. Is it per incident in which a person was improperly called, when their number appeared on the DNC list? Is it a $11,000 per-incident fine, so that a firm like MonsterHut can improperly call thousands of people, but could only be fine $11,000 total for that aggregate violation?
I agree that the potential for abuse still exists, even with the DNC list. But the idea is to make companies financially liable, to some degree (see first paragraph for big question marks), for POTS-spamming people who have explicitly opted out of telemarketing calls. Setting a precedent, if you will..............
If call centers do improperly hand the list over to telemarketers for POTS-spamming, under this new DNC law they can be sued by the FTC. Eventually, the truth will come out -- workers will be subpoenaed, the fact that the mandate came down as part of company policy will be discovered, and the company will be found liable for their actions.
With respect to foreign call center calls -- this is the same kinda argument that's working against KaZaA right now. Even though they're located outside of the country, they do have business entities located here in the USA -- which means that they are liable for the actions of their foreign offices, too.
But these are just my guesses......... and once again, without a significant financial deterrent to back up the law, it probably won't do much else besides set a legal precedent.
I'll be the first to admit my utter ignorance when it comes to the wonderful world of home electronics, but I know how to spew things verbatim. :) The Samsung 50" DLP Widescreen HDTV-capable projection TV has zero problems with burn-in or convergence, since it doesn't have any CRT guns in it. My buddy just bought it for his apartment, and not only is the picture super-crisp and viewable at fairly wide angles without fading out, like some other big-ass TVs.
Oh, and did I mention it's only 17.5" deep and weighs all of 88lbs? That's just a smidgen heavier than my 21" NEC AccuSync 120 at work, and almost 3" shallower!
700 grams of gases, 72 grams of chemical, 32kg of water, 1.6kg of fossil fuels...... and a par-tridge in a pear treeeee!
Does that mean we could declare war on them, in the name of protecting US citizens from outside aggression? There's nothing I'd enjoy more than returning the favor to these spammers...........
But you need more than 1 person to support you before you can call this campaign a "groundswell".
Then again, this news bit WAS posted with the "It's Funny. Laugh." tagline...... so I'm guessing it's not meant to be taken seriously anyway.
... more along the lines of 32k variants of Solitaire. Or other assorted card games -- Poker, Hearts, Spades, 52-Card Pick-up, etc.
Windows Media and MPEG-4 are video formats, and nothing more. Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly on encoded content (yet) -- yes, Windows Media Player comes preinstalled on all Windows installations, but that relates only to playback. Content can be encoded on any number of platforms, using any number of video formats -- the people who create the content are the ones who ultimately decided in what format(s) they will use.
So yes, this might be a standard Microsoft tactic -- undercut the competition by using their profits from Windows and Office to offset development and administrative costs related to Windows Media. But I hardly feel sorry for MPEG-4 -- MP3 became the de facto musical standard without making a profit, because they were willing to forego the initial profits to achieve market saturation. The MPEG-4 consortium can do the same -- but they want their money up-front, and that's a perfect way to fight a battle against Microsoft and lose.
If MPEG-4 wants to win, they'll have to lower their price, plain and simple. If they can keep their prices and feature sets in line with Microsoft's, I suspect that vendors would still side with them, as there seems to be a general (and not undeserved) mistrust of MS's business tactics and licensing practices. Plus, MPEG-4 isn't tied to any one platform, whereas we all know Microsoft's goal is to become THE zaibatsu of the 21st century. So they have a definite advantage there........... but I guess we'll see whether their greed or business sense prevails, won't we?
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Helix only intended for use with RealPlayer? I've been avoiding their content and cleitn like the plague anyway these past few years....... why would anybody opt to use RealPlayer to play MP3 and OGG to play music, when there are plenty of other unfettered options out there to use?
Just look at Winamp -- support for multiple OS's, native support for OGG and MP3, and now with support for video. I've even dumped Windows Media Player for it....... Winamp may not be as robust yet (3.0 does have some bugs, lacks some features), but it definitely isn't saddled with as much DRM baggage, either.
When you walk into the lion's den, you need more than a g-string on.
Are you speaking from personal experience? And if so....... a/s/l?
FWIW, I'm an MS Active Server Pages (ASP) developer with zero Linux experience. Read on if you still care............
About a year ago, I started working with MS Indexing Service, which is what powers the "Find..." feature in Windows 2000. It seemed like a great concept -- take a hint from the database world, create an index of document properties for files residing on that machine, and then query that index first when searching for files. MS even provided a nifty little API to allow programmatic access to this functionality . Good stuff......
However, I started encountering problems on a number of fronts. First, the number of 3rd-party COM objects that allow programmers to set/get these properties in code approaches zero: the only supported component I can find is Desaware's "File Property" component. And while that works right now, the documentation isn't as robust as I would like..... and, of course, it's proprietary. Second, Indexing Service tends to shine only when used in conjunction with files that are local to the computer where the scripts reside. Once you get into files on shared / remote boxes, you're forced to use a single, hardcoded username/password to run searches -- there's no support for delegation, or for a logged-in user's credentials to be applied when performing those searches. Finally, I'm hard-pressed to find an affordable solution for querying another box's Indexing Service catalogs (i.e. indexes)....... for that, they want you to upgrade to SharePoint Server. That comes out to $4,000 for a server license PLUS $72 per CAL, on top of the cost of Windows 2000).
NewDocMS sounds like a pretty interesting alternative to OLE Structured Storage on MS....... it may not be mature yet, but if it continues to evolve, it'll be yet another quality app for Linux to reduce the TCO for businesses, especially small- and mid-sizers that don't have the deep pockets that standardizing on an MS platform requires. And because it's OSS, it has the potential to mature faster than its proprietary siblings. This, coupled with Linux's unwillingness to foist DRM onto its users (at this time, at the software level) makes it an increasingly attractive file serving alternative.
Who knows, maybe one day soon I'll break down and start messing with Linux. For one thing, I'm loathe to return to the command-line interface, and I don't have enough time for things as-is. But I've already sworn that I won't buy any further versions of Windows beyond Win2k, nor any versions of Office beyond O2k, because they fill my needs nicely without forcing me to do too much. I've already dumped Windows Media Player in favor of Winamp 3.0 with plug-in support for WMV; DivX shows more promise as a video format anyway. And now that WinAmp supports Ogg Vorbis (as of 2.80), I'm considering converting all my Mp3s to Ogg format as well.
I just bought a new Samsung SCH-A460 from Sprint, after losing my old phone -- it was decently-priced and had a bunch of neat features that I wanted to try out. One of those was polyphonic ringtones....... however, after much searching, I couldn't find places that I could buy / download ringtones from on the web.
I received a message back from Sprint's customer service, a few days after I had initially inquired about ringtones. Apparently you need to subscribe to a service ($4/mo, I think), which allows you to download 8 ringtones per month. And until you subscribe, you can't review any of the "titles" available for download -- which makes it quite useless if you're looking for a specific ringtone (Our Lady Peace's "Starseed", for instance).
Basically, I ended up buying a more colorful phone with a slightly improved alarm clock, infinitely crappier menu and panda "screen saver" for my cash. I'd have no problem paying for ringtones, even at $0.50 a pop, but I have the same problems here as I do with online music -- I wanna try before I buy. And as for monthly charges -- hell no.
Consider this the first of next year's ads for Matrixx Reloaded and Matrixx Revolutions releases.
Maybe this is the start of a crossover -- Vin Diesel meets Lawrence Fishburn, Carrie Ann Moss and Keanu Reeves. Scary.... between Vin and Keanu, there's gonna be a lot of "whoa"-type dialogue.
.... when they haven't even been able to secure their existing physical infrastructure? I mean, our military can't account for 25% of their expenditures (some $2.3 trillion). And even in a single case of domestic terrorism such as the Oklahoma City bombing, where the FBI lost 3000+ documents pertaining to the McVeigh case due to antiquated technology.
No, what I think we need are leaner bureaucracies that make better use of their existing resources. Improve what we got, then build upon it........ as the whole Linux-vs-Microsoft row has proven, you can't add just security to a shitty foundation -- you have to do it from the ground up. I'm of the mind that the same holds true for efficiency, where bureaucracies are concerned.
Plus, she looks like she has the acting ability of an anemic toadstool. All she does is scowl and hold her hand forward like she's gonna bang off a Big Bang Attack or something.........