As an aside.

No, someone right out of the gate cannot make a Firefly. But itunes could allow other tv like productions.

People could make good sitcoms. Such a beast is possible.

The SW fan community have been making excellent shorts with decent special effects for the last few years. Their major limitation at the moment seems to be acting.

So will it happen tomorrow. No. But it will happen. Probably will start from autuers from Hwood that got disgusted that their latest concept didn't survive studio focus groups and just do it.

The SW fan community have been making excellent shorts with decent special effects for the last few years. Their major limitation at the moment seems to be acting.

As an aside: I was in one, several years ago.

Find your small-label friend, using terms particular to the content.

The hell? Songs and albums are tagged with genre, if you don't know the title or the performer. I can write reviews. The software tracks and presents what people who bought a given track also bought, so I can explore that way. I can set up an artist alert or "tell a friend." I can see what else is on an iMix that also contains a given track or features that artist.

How is your "find the studio and buy directly from them" going to allow for that sort of cross pollination and learning from complete strangers?

Hmm Daniel, you would appear to have a point. Are these maximum resolutions it accepts these formats at the same as what it plays its own file at? Or do non-native formats play at lower quality?

Actually, the files distibuted though iTMS are significantly lower quality than you can make by ripping your own cds/dvds, or even get though less legal distribution channels. But these files are not protected with DRM - I just have to send 'em though the internets to whoever, and they immediately have full access.

Basically, Apple's monopoly is on the protected files the iPod can play. The iPod can only handle one type of DRM - Protected AAC with Fairplay - and only Apple knows distribute content that uses that.

I'm not sure whether France's goal is to force Apple to let others use that technology - so that Microsoft can sell protected music to iPod users - or to force Apple to open the technology to all, so that the "protection" part goes away. If the first, I believe that that's not their place - neither the iPod nor the iTMS are monopolies at this point, they're just significantly more popular than their competitors. There could be some argument there, however. If the second, the only result would be the music companies pulling out of the store, pretty much destroying it, so of course Apple won't do it.

In other news, I like Firefly.

Wiki on AAC:

In April, 2003, Apple Computer brought mainstream attention to AAC by announcing that its iTunes and iPod products would support songs in MPEG-4 AAC format (via a firmware update for older iPods), and that customers could download popular songs in a protected version of the format via the iTunes Music Store. AAC has now become so associated with Apple hardware and software that people commonly and mistakenly believe that AAC expands to "Apple Audio Codec." >Optionally, a digital rights management scheme (named FairPlay) can be employed in tandem.

Wiki on Fairplay: [link]

The Conseil (sic) ruled against the notion that FairPlay was an "essential facility" for three distinct reasons: 1) Playing purchased music on portable players was a small part of the market; 2) CD Burning provides an adequate work-around to get purchased music from other vendors onto an iPod; and 3) There is sufficient availability of portable players that support Microsoft's WMA DRM as a viable alternative and choice for consumers.

According to MacRumors.com, there's a company called Navio that has reversed-engineered Apple's DRM, and some movie studios are signing up to use it as an alternative to the iTMS.

So we were discussing recent sci-fi after lunch, and one of my co-workers said, "You know what was really good? It had...a bunch of no-names; at least to me, they were no-names. Ser... Sere..."

We had been discussing television shows, so that's where my mind was, but then another co-worker answered, "Serenity!"

"Yes," she said. "That was really good."

The other co-worker told her to check out the TV series, and she said she didn't even know it was a TV series.

"Wow!" I said. "I've never met anyone like you! Someone who just stumbled across the movie and thought it was awesome without even knowing about the series."

They do exist! I thought it was very cool. Another one of my co-workers also remembered having seen it, and she hadn't known it was a TV series either.

(Random note: the first co-worker also really liked that one series about the living ship ("Farscape!" I said), although she thought the later episodes were much better than the middle episodes, which, huh.)

My aunt saw the movie without knowing about the series, because she recognized Joss' name from Buffy and Angel. Then, of course, she loved it and went back to the TV series.

I saw some - er, not exit polls, as I shouldn't see them - statistics which said 45% of people polled who came out of one of the UK theatrical screenings didn't know there was a series to go with it. Which isn't a surprise here, as although the movie performed best in the UK, Firefly never actually aired on a proper network here.

I ran into about 4 people at my work who saw Serenity, and not one of them knew about the series.

It reached outside the fan audience - the official US Universal stats show opening weekend fans accounted for 50% of the audience.

It was very hard - for me - objectively to look at Serenity and not associate it with the online audience. Certainly, though, around release week in the UK I got a good peak at how average people looked at it.

I remember being stood next to the red carpet setup in London, listening to the tourists walking by. One couple pointed up at the GIANT Summer Glau 'River' poster plastered over the cinema, and the man said "Cool! Didn't know they've made a Buffy movie!".

I was stood on the carpet for, uhm, about 4 hours, and spent most of the time talking to tourists who kept asking who was in the movie. Upon being told; "Uhm, nobody famous. Yet." they all lost interested and walked off.

My dad watched Serenity with us last night. He loved every second of it, despite never having even heard of Firefly before.