Comment Beautiful Launch - pics and video (Score 1) 190
I work on the Cape. Here are some pics my friend took. Here. Here is my crappy iPhone video: here (launch starts around 2:40).
Comment CS5: Revolutionary Improvements (Score 1) 204
I've beet a tester since CS3 and a user since CS1. If you haven't used their applications in a while the biggest improvements you'll see are the tabbed interface, more uniform interface across application, cross-application work-flows, better responsiveness, 64bit support, tons of support for content publishing across all sorts of mediums with a particular focus on mobile and web, and GPU acceleration. Premiere, After Effects and InDesign have been improved by leaps and bounds. Streamline is now a feature of Illustrator (Live Trace). OnLocation was rewritten from the ground up so the interface is nicer but many features have not been rewritten (but there is heavy development). Other than Flash, acquired Macromedia applications (Fireworks, Dreamweaver, etc) seem to be evolving slower. Tons of CRAZY CRAZY CRAZY COOL new features like content aware photo fill, content aware resizing and automatic rotoscoping edge detection.
Comment It Must Be.... (Score -1, Offtopic) 130
The evil US government at work, again!
Comment Thumbrule (Score 1) 483
Look at past performance, adjust for scope of the job, triple it and add 30%. We programmers are always too optimistic. It's always the unpredictable 20% that takes 80% of the time.
Comment Bad Move (Score 1) 197
Most corporations block webmail(security, trojans, viruses, etc) but many are now allowing access to social network sites. Most folks visit social networking sites during the workday. So a webmail social networking app is a non-starter.
Comment Finally (Score 2, Interesting) 401
Like a lot of novice users I gave GIMP a shot. Loved the plugin system and spent many an hour trying to get older plugins working and tweaking other plugins to do some neat effects. But in the end the UI made it difficult and confusing to use. For YEARS the internal arguments over the UI made it seem unlikely something like single window mode would reach maturity (and become usable on Windows). Kudos to the developers. I'll give it another shot.
Comment Evolve or Die (Score 1) 1343
The English language must continue to evolve, or fork or the language will be supplanted by another.
Comment Re:can't say i'm surprised (Score 1) 651
Unless you count that incident as a response to the Chinese forcing our EP-3 to land on
Chinese territory then reverse engineering all our equipment.
Submission + - ASCAP vs. the Creative Commons (bunjava.com) 1
N8F8 writes: "Does ASCAP control all music played in the United States, even music licensed under the Creative Commons? Are there any resources to help small business owners deal with ASCAP, BMI or any other music rights company that comes knocking? Am I legal if I play music licensed for commercial use under the Creative Commons license?
Last year my wife and I opened a small coffee shop named BunJava in Cocoa Beach, Florida. We love to support the local music scene so at first we allowed local bands to play in our shop. A few months after we opened I posted our venue information on MySpace and within a week BMI contacted us regarding paying for a performance license. After several months of discussions we finally got them to understand they we only let local bands play their own music, no cover tunes, and they left us alone.
Then in May a Brent Beha from ASCAP called. We gave him the same information we had given BMI but he insists we still need to purchase a license from them. We received a copy of their licensing terms in the mail but found them rather expensive since we are a small shop still struggling to pay the day to day bills. Their license also penalizes small shops by making them pay double the rate of larger establishments.
Meanwhile, to be extra careful until we've worked all this out, we stopped allowing live music and I have obtained music through a company called Jamendo.com that specializes in music licensed under the Creative Commons. More specifically, songs that permit commercial use.
Yesterday, out of the blue, the ASCAP representative stopped by while my wife was working. She was unable to immediately meet with him so my wife asked to schedule a meeting time and the ASCAP representative said his attorney would be contacting us. Below is the email correspondence that we have had.
Last year my wife and I opened a small coffee shop named BunJava in Cocoa Beach, Florida. We love to support the local music scene so at first we allowed local bands to play in our shop. A few months after we opened I posted our venue information on MySpace and within a week BMI contacted us regarding paying for a performance license. After several months of discussions we finally got them to understand they we only let local bands play their own music, no cover tunes, and they left us alone.
Then in May a Brent Beha from ASCAP called. We gave him the same information we had given BMI but he insists we still need to purchase a license from them. We received a copy of their licensing terms in the mail but found them rather expensive since we are a small shop still struggling to pay the day to day bills. Their license also penalizes small shops by making them pay double the rate of larger establishments.
Meanwhile, to be extra careful until we've worked all this out, we stopped allowing live music and I have obtained music through a company called Jamendo.com that specializes in music licensed under the Creative Commons. More specifically, songs that permit commercial use.
Yesterday, out of the blue, the ASCAP representative stopped by while my wife was working. She was unable to immediately meet with him so my wife asked to schedule a meeting time and the ASCAP representative said his attorney would be contacting us. Below is the email correspondence that we have had.
"=====================================================
Mr. Lowing,
I received your wife's voicemail asking if I could make it back today but unfortunately I will not be able to. I believe Brent Beha explained that jamendo.com does not currently have an ASCAP license. If they can provide you with an ASCAP account number I would be happy to research it as we do have some third party licensing agreements. In addition you would need to license for your live music.
Under separate cover I have provided some Federal case law for your attorney to review, please have him call me with any questions he may have.
Please fax or mail the signed agreement, along with your payment. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.
Regards,
Jim Coniglio
Area Licensing Manager — Team Leader
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) 1-615-727-5936 local office
1-386-473-6167 cell
1-678-239-3684 fax
=====================================================
Mr. Coniglio,
We have several questions that Mr. Beha has not answered. We are a small coffee shop playing music licensed from an entity or entities using a license that ASCAP is not a party to. For time we offered our location as a place for local musicians to play but for various reasons we eliminated that. So, specifically, what ASCAP licensed property do you as an ASCAP representative assert control of that we MUST license?
I have considered your products from a value perspective. You offer very little added value from your competitors. Little in the way of accessing the music or selecting the music. You offer a large collection of music but not much to help the venue target customers. Furthermore, you charge DOUBLE the license fees to small venues than you do large venues. DOUBLE. We're a tiny mom and pop and I hope we make it past the first year and we have to be very frugal. In the end we need noise in the background. The more applealing the noise to potential customers, the better. Sincerely,
-Owner
=====================================================
Mr. Lowing,
I think there some confusion as to ASCAP's function. We are not a music service. We are a performing rights organization. We represent over 350,000 writers and publi her and 8 and half million songs. All music used publicly in the U.S. must either be license by us or you must receive direct permission from each writer AND publisher of each song used daily in your business.
Finding, negotiating with and obtaining permission from each of the owners of the music you might use would be impractical and very expensive. That is why we offer the ASCAP blanket license which, for one annual fee, covers your use of all the music in our repertory. For over 90 years, ASCAP has provided music licenses to a wide variety of businesses. Hundreds of thousands of business operators have chosen ASCAP licenses as a convenient and inexpensive method to meet their responsibilities under the Federal Copyright Law. We trust that you will too.
We are not charging you or live music since you have claimed to have discontinued this. We are charging you the minimum fee for your recorded music only.
Jim Coniglio
Area Licensing Manager — Team Leader
American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP)
1-615-727-5936 local office
1-386-473-6167 cell
1-678-239-3684 fax
Comment ClueLess (Score 1) 381
Twitter barely has a profile feature. Sounds more like the kid was clueless about Twitter.
I do agree about the exodus from mainstream media. I opened a coffee shop and have discovered the hard way how litigious copyright companies like ASCAP and BMI are strangling the music industry for amateurs. Few can afford to fork over thousands a year for the privilege of having Open Mic nights. So now I wholeheartedly support the Creative Commons music movement: www.jamendo.com
Comment Two Movies in One (or two half-movies?) (Score 1) 820
This isn't one movie, it's two distinct movies.
1) A Origins movie where Spock plays the antagonist against Kirk's "rebel without a cause". The Kobayashi Maru
scene was way underplayed. They should have devoted more time to a Kirk/Spock rivalry. Developed more this would have been a killer movie by itself. The Pike tie in is going to be cool when I get to that episode in the original Trek series (stupid DVDs are in original air order instead of stardate order)
2) A alternate universe timeline piece of crap with a throw-away Romulan bad guy. I'll give them creds for developing a motivation for the Romulan antagonist but the whole thing is just too contrived.
Comment For $300, no thanks (Score 3, Insightful) 289
Give me a reader for $80 and maybe. $300? Screw that.
Comment Proof of Ignorance (Score 0, Troll) 464
Ask yourself why the press let this crap slide during the election. Obama and his surrogates made lots of dumbass assertions that went uncalled because the press had a lovefest.
Comment The Problem... (Score 4, Insightful) 616
The problem might be that we have developed a work-life that is inherently incompatible with a decent home life. Maybe women just make a rational choice on different priorities. Not far from the article's suggestion but I'd go further and recommend changing the workplace for everyone.
Submission + - Thin Client User Satisfaction 1
N8F8 writes: "My corporate IT folks have been sniffing around the SUN thin client solutions. I don't recall hearing of much thin client adoption recently. Has anyone seen any legitimate, independent case studies involving thin client architecture? Especially where they surveyed user satisfaction/computer usability?"
