Technology

Download Movies

This entry was posted in Information Internet Movies Technology on by

This may or may not turn into a good thing (R):

Actor Morgan Freeman and chipmaking giant Intel Corp. are teaming up on a new venture to distribute premium movies to consumers over the Internet before the films become available on DVD.
Freeman and Intel executives announced the new digital entertainment company Wednesday at an annual retreat for chief executives of top media companies in this mountain resort.
….
Hollywood has been reluctant to offer digitized movies directly to consumers over the Internet, fearful of suffering a similar fate as the music industry, which has been hit hard hit by piracy enabled by file-swapping services.
Freeman said his deal with Intel should avoid those pitfalls by giving customers a “simple, easy and attractive” alternative to piracy.
“We’re going to bypass what the music industry had to come up with, and that’s to get ahead of the whole piracy thing,” Freeman told reporters at Sun Valley after making his presentation, which was closed to the press.
Few other concrete details were provided by Freeman and Intel officials about the company. However, they did say that ClickStar will be led by former Sony Pictures executive Nizar Allibhoy.

The devil will be in those missing concrete details.
They do have an opportunity to get it right and I, for one, look ahead to the day when it will be easy (read: I don’t have to drive to the rental store or wait for the Netflix envelope to arrive) to see a movie when I want. The price will need to be somewhere close to and ultimately less than the rental price and should allow 2-3 viewings. As I will want excellent quality I’ll also want my ISP connection enhanced…my current Comcast connection will not cut it and will need a simple way to deliver it from my hard drive to my future huge wall mounted plasma screen.

Textbooks I Won’t be Buying

This entry was posted in Democrats Education Government Regulation Technology on by

Here is a good example of why legislative sessions should be reduced(Free Reg) to, say, a week if not completely eliminated:

Maybe Democrats in the state Assembly should just go ahead and write textbooks for California’s students. They’re so confident they know what constitutes a good one.
For instance, who knew that making a textbook longer than 200 pages was such a bad idea that there needs to be a law against it?

These folks have way too much time on their hands.
The bill’s sponser has been bashed a bunch but remember that 42 (mostly democrat) of the 70 representatives voted for this. That Californians elected 42 such bright people to rule their lives is a pretty good indicator that the eduction system there is broken.
Part of the alleged justification:

Textbooks are too laden with print supplemental materials, and too uninteresting in style. In the 21st century, the information age, information changes more rapidly than books can be printed. Educated, informed citizens of the 21st century will have to rely on technology and media for information. Textbooks should provide an overview of the critical questions and issues of a subject, and then become a roadmap to guide students to other means and sources of information.

To which I say, BS.
I’m long out of school and use the internet extensively to research areas in many subjects. Much, I’d expect, as a K-12 student might do once they’ve reached a certain level of competence. I also buy 2-4 high school/college survey textbooks a year (plus 20-30 volumes of more in depth material) for my own library. No 200 page textbook can cover the breadth and depth needed for any survey course even to provide the minimal requirements noted above.
Even if you reduce the range of focus 200 pages is still rediculous. For instance, if you are studying 13th-14th century world economic systems an excellent overview with references to a lot of primary material (much not available on the net) is Abu-Lughod’s Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250-1350. It has just over 450 pages. Sure, you can find this subject reduced to a paragraph, a few pages, or a chapter or two but whatever chunk you prefer will be in a volume that should take more than 200 pages to be meaningful….unless its volume N of a series.
Via The Carnival of Education: Week 17.

Do You Care….

This entry was posted in Microsoft Mozilla Technology on by

…that IE 7 will not run on Windows 2000 machines?

Microsoft has confirmed that it won’t release a version of its upcoming Internet Explorer 7 for Windows 2000, putting an end to speculation — some of it fueled by Microsoft — that the Redmond, Wash.-based developer would offer a more secure, revamped browser to users of that the aging-but-still-used operating system.

Well, no, I don’t care! Firefox runs just fine on the one W2000 machine we still have as well as on the XP SP2 machines we have.