26 May 2000
"There are two kinds of metal in this junkyard: scrap and art. If you have to eat one, eat the scrap. What you currently have, IN YOUR MOUTH! ... is ART!"
-- Dean (Harry Connick, Jr.) to The Iron Giant
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I've already read and/or thought plenty of these things before, but Douglas Adams [yeah, that guy] pulls them together very well. Highly recommended reading:
- How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet [DouglasAdams.com, seen on Ghost in the Machine]
...the reason we suddenly need [a word like 'interactivity'] is that during this century we have for the first time been dominated by non-interactive forms of entertainment: cinema, radio, recorded music and television. Before they came along all entertainment was interactive: theatre, music, sport...
What should concern us is not that we can't take what we read on the internet on trust -- of course you can't, it's just people talking -- but that we ever got into the dangerous habit of believing what we read in the newspapers or saw on the TV -- a mistake that no one who has met an actual journalist would ever make.
We are natural villagers. For most of mankind's history we have lived in very small communities in which we knew everybody and everybody knew us. But gradually there grew to be far too many of us ... and our technologies were unequal to the task of drawing us together. But that is changing.
Fascinating interview with the guy who's defending the software that lets anybody view DVDs (DeCSS):
- RE: Martin Garbus [Feed, from Tomalak's Realm]
The most important difference [zw. DeCSS and Napster] is that there's been no piracy that they've found through the use of the DeCSS. There are a lot of reasons why that's so: because it takes so long to download, etc., etc. ... There was a case here -- the Betamax case -- where the movie companies came in, and they said you shouldn't have VCRs. You shouldn't be able to copy movies that come off TV because that's an infringement. And the court said, "Yes, it may be an infringement. The question is, is it a substantial infringement, and what are the other values that it serves by permitting that infringement?"
...every document, witness's word, judge's ruling, and lawyer's call will be on the Internet within a day.
...is Linux like a VCR? Can the motion-picture industry control distribution from the very beginning to the very end? Maybe the only platforms that can play DVD are those that pay the licensing fees.
I watched The Iron Giant again recently. Stumbled on this when looking for today's quote:
- Q&A with CGI Animator Vincent Truitner [LJC's Iron Giant Tribute Site]
Making a 50-foot tall robot with a trap-jaw mouth an expressive and sympathetic character was definitely a challenge. Also challenging was making a weightless virtual model on a computer look and feel like it really WAS a 50-foot robot, with all of the weight a character like that would have.
I thought they did an excellent job of communicating the Giant's size and heft.
Oh yeah, it's a Great story too. If you haven't seen it, go do so.
More interviews with folks who worked on it:
Have a good weekend...
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