Various TOTEM posts 2004 - 2006

[Jack Howard]

An somewhat unusual distribution method:

http://press.xtvworld.com/modules.ph...ticle&sid=4773

Has anyone seen this? They the first show archived as a webcast at: www.openchoice.tv

[Glenn Gipson]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...e/xbox_2_debut

But I'll always be a PC gamer...

[Boyd Ostroff]

Interesting article on BusinessWeek about Sony.

http://yahoo.businessweek.com/invest...5837_pi044.htm

we believe the market expects Stringer to conduct a major overhaul of Sony's current business portfolio

...................................

We think Wall Street perceives it as a two-sided issue: Stringer will keep the hardware business or the software business, but not both. At S&P, the betting is that he'll likely keep the software unit and spin off the hardware unit one way or another.

[Boyd Ostroff]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories...MPLATE=DEFAULT

SEATTLE (AP) -- Microsoft Corp. is launching one of its biggest and costliest advertising campaigns ever - but don't expect the big splash to accompany a new product.

[Barry Gribble]

Interesting tid-bit on IMDB:

http://www.imdb.com/news/sb/2005-04-19/#5

[Heath McKnight]

A year and a half ago, we ran a contest: if you signed up for our non-spamming email newsletter, you'd be entered to win a free DVD or VHS copy of our first film, Skye Falling.

We have a new contest: sign up right here for our email newsletter, and you'll be entered to win a free 9:04 AM t-shirt! What's 9:04 AM? It's our next feature film! And those of you who are already signed up for our newsletter, you're entered to win, too!

Good luck!

Heath

[Yi Fong Yu]

http://www.vanns.com/shop/servlet/it...c=PriceGrabber

there's a really good reason why i'm bragging about this product. i just bought one myself for $212 from online as well and this player REALLY rocks. just as good as my DVP 642 in terms of divx playback and the biggest thing going for it is the DVD-Audio and SACD playback on top of divx as well as the usual mp3, dvd-video. this is one player that reads EVERYTHING.

[Christopher Lefchik]

"A French court has ordered DVD vendors to pull copies of the David Lynch film 'Mulholland Drive' off store shelves in France as part of an unprecedented ruling against copy protection techniques."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,154663,00.html

[Brandon Greenlee]

Taken from Slashdot:

"Home theater displays around the resolution of 720p (most DLP, LCD, and LCOS displays) must convert 1080i material to their native resolution for display. No surprise there. But many displays do this by discarding half of the 1080i HD signal, effectively giving 720p viewers an SD signal - not watching HD at all! "


http://www.hdblog.net/index.php/2005...720p-not-720p/

[J. Stephen McDonald]

No, I'm not refering to my visit with relatives in Texas. This was a 3-hour special from the BBC, that was shown last weekend on the Discovery Channel.
Even though the program selection on this channel has been badly degraded in recent years, "Walking With Prehistoric Beasts" was extraordinary.

It was produced with a blend of live shots, animatronics and computer animation. It showed very refined and lifelike images of animals interacting, dating from over 200 million years back, to just a few thousand years ago.
They depicted a few behavioral details that were in disagreement with some
studies, but mostly, I thought they gave a scientifically sound presentation.
If this 3-part series is repeated, I urge everyone to watch it.

An interesting mishap occured during the live action, that wasn't edited out.
This gave an insight as to the methods used during production. When a tribe of Australopithecus (our relatives of 3 1/2 million years ago) was shown defending a youngster against a Dinofelis (ancient leopard), they were hopping around and throwing rocks. One rock hit the camera lens, cracking it. They showed a few more seconds of the shot with spider web cracks visible. This means that the scene was based on live actors----could have been Humans, chimps or baboons?? Then, they likely imposed model images of Australopithecus over those of the actors in post production, using the live actions as a framework to give realistic motion. I'm pretty sure they used a framework shot of baboons for a scene of them relaxing and grooming on a rocky hilltop. They probably used modern animals for many of the other framework shots, such as elephants for mammoths. The animatronics company was Crawley Creatures and they did an excellent job. I believe many of the closeups of the animals used animatronics. This was obviously not a low-budget project. I saw it on the SD channel and I don't know if it was also presented in HD. I'd want to permanently keep an HD recording of it, if it was available.

[Riley Harmon]

I was bored today and decided to goof around with my old knowledge of star wars, photoshop, sarcasm, and irony. Here's a poster I made, enjoy:

www.rch-e.com/temp/saber.jpg

[Mitchell Stookey]

My friend really likes the video game Kill Zone for the PS2. He said there is now a trailer for Kill Zone 2 for the PS3. I looked it up and I was blown away! I'm pretty sure although it begins as a cut scene it is also gameplay. It looks like playing a CG movie. It was unbelievable. Check it out!
http://gametrailers.com/gamepage.php?id=1668

[David Ennis]

Before anyone jumps down my throat, please consider what I'm saying carefully.

I do not condone breaking the law, I'm talking about changing the law.

Unlike laws that protect life, freedom and physical property, copyright (and patent) laws are not expressions of intrinsic human rights that common sense finds in the natural order of things. No, by contrast copyright laws are arbitrary and contrived (what is natural about ownership that lasts for a limited time?). If you and I were the sole inhabitants of a desert island and you made up and whistled a tune as you watch me build a shelter I designed to shield me from wind and rain, you would have no common sense natural right to stop me from whistling that tune myself and I would have no common sense right to stop you from building an identical shelter of your own. As Ayn Rand observed, there is no such thing as the right to initiate the use of force against another. Live and Let live. But you would have the natural right to use force to prevent me from taking over your shelter.

But if we populate the island with many thousands of inhabitants and start to think about writing down the rules for living together, we may want to contrive some rules to add to the natural ones to make it all work better. Rules that allow you to make a living at making up tunes thereby freeing your time to do so would promote the quality of life for everyone in the society, as would rules that allow me to make a living at designing shelters. The criteria for the worth of those rules or laws is the benefit of society.

And that's where we got our copyright laws. But the technological revolution has caused a very real paradigm shift that truly changes what constitutes the optimal benefit to society. I can't install a purchased copy Windows on three family computers in the same house because then Bill will only have $100 billiion? Excessive. I can make a personal audio tape from a purchased album (if I understand this one correctly) but I can't put one of the songs in a family barbeque video? Irrational. A high school director can't preserve his many hours of creative effort and that of his cast and crew on a musical even on a single archival tape or disk because a third or fourth party now owns the the overlaping creative effort someone else expended 30 years ago? Morally wrong. You could be sued for singing a fourty year old Beach Boys tune at the beach if others turned toward you and were entertained? Insane. We could change the rules in such a way that creativity is still amply encouraged and rewarded, but some of the absurdly excessive restrictions on the use of music and such could be relieved.

[Dean Bull]

Just caught the latest Shakira music video, La Tortura tonight.

My girlfriend happens to be a huge fan and has been playing the single for a week and I was literally about to tear my hair out UNTIL I saw the video.

Man, the video is absolutely smoking in the most unexploitative way. Many in the American mainstream media / music / movies have seemed to cross wires between pornographic and sexy... hold on, let me get off my soap box for a moment.

hahahah

Basically most music videos are so damn garish, but this latest Shakira one almost reminds me of the feeling I got watching classic "dish" films.

Great Video I thought, and the song has the catchiest hook... like every pop song, the simple rhythm that sticks in your head forever.

Check it out, or if you've seen it, feel free to discuss.

http://www.shakiramedia.com/
under videos "La Tortura"

Dean

[Jeff Patnaude]

So we're doing our huge bi-annual convention in downtown Atlanta. At the hotel as I clicked through channels I came upon the "Relaxation Channel," with flute tones sounding a lot like our own Mr. Douglas Spotted Eagle. Sure enough there was a dark outline of a long haired man playing the flute, against magestic mountains and waterfalls.

Was that you Douglas? Anyone else catch that channel?

Now I'm ready for an 18 hour day. Ah.

Jeff Patnaude