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And his father made their fortune quite a bit more evilly cunningly than simply bootlegging liquor - I suggest you read Richard Condon's brilliantly stealth fictional work on Kennedy, Sr.

Most enlightening. And as for Clinton, those "free trade" acts he signed into existence have doomed the American (and in many respects, the Mexican) workers. And Clinton certainly promised the unions he would never sign any trade pacts that didn't include comparable workers' rights, environmental provisions, etc. This is why America is forever doomed should another BUSH or CLINTON reach the White House.....

The considerations you listed aren't considered problems because there are fairly obvious solutions for each of them:

1. Locate the elevator in an area where storms don't occur
2. Locate the elevator in a no-fly zone, well away from flight paths
3. Design the elevator as a ribbon with a very low terminal velocity (think falling like newspaper, not falling like bricks), so that breakage doesn't cause any damage (outside of losing the ribbon itself, of course)

For more information on the engineering involved in building a space elevator, check out this book -- it goes into detailed explanations about your objections, as well as many others.

In short, there are big problems to be solved before you can build a space elevator, but those aren't them.

• Bunch of geeks talking about how the magic is back? Check
• Big crash not too long ago in the backhistory? Check
• Now the rules have changed? Check
• The right combination of arcane tools will bring about fame and fortune? Check

They did a bunch of stuff like this. They'd not document certain features, under the guise of "If we document it, we'd need to support it". Version after version of DOS, they'd still be in there. They'd make use of them for an edge.

Hence, me having to buy books like Undocument DOS"

Companies which are either headquartered there, were formed there, or had a huge presence there in the 1960's include 3M, Honeywell, ERA/UNIVAC/Sperry/Unisys, Control Data, Cray, etc.

The book _A Few Good Men From UNIVAC_ by David E. Lundstrom describes some of the happenings in the Twin Cities during that time period.

As a Boston area resident, one thing I've noticed is that while our startups swing for the fences, they tend to have conservative technology plans. A common theme is to take a known technology and market, but deliver it on an emerging platform or media for a much lower price than the leaders. They also tend to stock top management with people who have spent most or all of their careers in large companies. These people turn around and start hiring like crazy to get back to their comfort zones, so you have a giant burn rate and less time to come up with something truly original. In Silicon Valley, you're more likely to see startups that are trying to create an entirely new product space, so after you hear their elevator spiel you are likely to say, "Huh? And who are your customers again?" But the VCs are used to that level of ambiguity, and a few of those turn into Google, Yahoo, Netscape.

If you're more interested in practical GUI advice, I highly recommend GUI Bloopers: Don'ts and Do's for Software Developers and Web Designers (not a referral link). ISBN: 1558605827

The book goes in-depth on the basics of good GUIs laid out using your standard widgets (little, if any, talk of bleeding edge HCI theory). It gives tons of examples of what the author views as good and bad GUI practices. Some of the things he cites are more nitpicky IMO, but overall it's a valuable resource that'll make you more aware of the common pitfalls of GUIs and how really good GUIs are laid out. It also talks about proper messages to display to the user, like don't present a user with a yes/no question and give them OK/Cancel as their buttons...

Kingston 512MB Flash Cards can be had off of Amazon for $11.39. The list price is claimed to be $39.99. Even if we assume that the $11.39 figure undercuts the actual cost for some reason, I think it's safe to assume that the bulk cost would easily be within the range of those figures.

Similarly, complex universal remotes retail for about $19.95. You can usually find them much cheaper than MSRP. The sensor bar's cost will likely depend on what it's made of. Since we can probably assume plastic, it probably won't be too costly either. The Wii itself uses off-the-shelf components for its hardware, making the only questions the CPU and GPU. Both of these appear to be modified forms of existing processors. Which means that in bulk they should be very affordable for Nintendo. Therefore, it's likely that Nintendo will be able to sell the Wii at a $199 price point without taking any sort of loss. At $250, they'd probably be making a profit.

In comparison, both Microsoft and Sony have built their consoles out of highly customized and/or cutting edge hardware that require significant expense to manufacture. (At least initially.) The result is that they have to sell at far higher price points. In Microsoft's case, it's expected that they're losing money on each unit. (Though I seriously doubt that they're losing as much as the $200 that has been claimed by the media.) Both Sony and Microsoft should have paid attention to history. The Jaguar, Saturn, Neo-Geo, and Turbografix were all consoles that were on the cutting edge of technology. They all lost out to consoles that were inexpensive, built with off-the-shelf components (plus/minus a custom part or two), and were easily manufactured using less-than-cutting-edge technology.

It's by Michael A. Cusumano:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/074321580X/sr=8-2 /qid=1148566015/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-6823857-2925416?_ encoding=UTF8

This is a good book by the designer of VB that has a nice model of user-oriented design and some pretty interesting case studies -- design of airplane entertainment units, scanner software, and others.

Reportedly, the new version will have more action in it. And more humor. And more romance. And more puzzles. And they are going to give the protagonist a sidekick for more comic relief. Oh, and the pursuit of our heroes by the bad guys won't mysteriously drop off in the third act.

In fact, the pirate update has already been available for a while.

The other poster pointed out the truth - only resales are available, TLM is in the vault. It won't be for much longer, as you can see here.

FWIW, the US copies of The Little Mermaid, not produced for sale in the US since 1989, were selling for $80 to $200 at the time I bought my overseas copy.

As for the lies about IP theft, my entire business is based on IP - it's what puts food on my table. I'm not for a lack of restrictions on IP, but I am a businessman, and I see a potential to minimize the (unlawful) competition and (potentially) increase revenue at the same time.

By the way, if I'd sent my VHS tape to someone and paid them $20 to make me a backup because I was concerned about the loss of quality on an item that was no longer in print, would that be fair use?

I've recently read ' The inmates are running the asylum: Why high tech products drive us crazy and how to restore the sanity'

Found it an interesting read, giving lots of examples on how usability should be approached and shows some good examples on how it can fail. It also introduces some techniques surrounding 'personas'. But for me, the most important thing the book did was triggering a certain way of thinking about usability, which I think is far more important than any technique a book can throw at you.

Save yourself $4.25 by buying the book here: The Business of Software. And if you use the "secret" A9.com Instant Reward discount, you can save an extra 1.57%! That's a total savings of $4.50, or 22.83%!

Save yourself $4.25 by buying the book here: The Business of Software. And if you use the "secret" A9.com Instant Reward discount, you can save an extra 1.57%! That's a total savings of $4.50, or 22.83%!

In the heyday of railroads, new patents were being issued every few hours on improvements in track shape and airbrakes.

It's a point that's often ignored. Pretty much every mechanical device you can think of was the subject of a patent at one time. I picked up a used book that goes into excrutiating detail about the 1000s of patents that were filed regarding mundane things like bakeries (conveyor belt+oven=patent. obvious, no?). In 20 years, software patents may be largely a non-issue for most computing users.

The parts of the patent system that are broken, or badly in need of a tune-up, are not related to computer programs, they are related to issues of proper review, rational litigation, and what should be public disclosure of licensing, and mandatory licensing.

At least in the US, there appears to be a growing constituancy that agrees with this. However the discussion here is usually dominated by the No Patents crowd.

TLM is "in the vault". I couldn't purchase one from Disney if I wanted to, so some Malaysian pirate got my $20

See here. And no, even if it wasn't available, it still would not be justified - unless maybe you ripped your own vhs version to a DVD.

Designing from Both Sides of the Screen. Worked really well for the project I worked on, and it's a great process and implementation book.

I recently read "About Face 2.0" I found myself dis-agreeing with some of the details and felt there were a few ommisions but the definitions of software was sound

Also Joel on software has a great book excerpt online to get you in the mood

About face link
Joel book excerpt

Jef Raskin's The Humane Interface

"Think" is more web centric, but has many tips and insights, and is an accessible read cover to cover.

"Design" is a bit more pompous, and I don't agree with all points, but I give it high marks for making you take a different look at things you'd always taken for granted (Microsoft asked me a question at my interview from this book, btw).

A few more thoughts: don't confuse usability with user responsibility. If a task if tediously complex, it's going to be difficult to design a thin elegant easy-to-use interface. For example, photoshop can be amazingly obtuse to use, but there's a reason. Overall I give photoshop a "5" (out of ten) for their ergonomics, but I give them a "10" for what their application can do. I consider it partially my responsibility to climb that learning curve to do real work in digital graphics.

On the other hand, the unusable applications out there are infinite. My favorite example is Windows Media Player. I still have to figure out what to do just to play a CD with WMP. (And what's with the disappearing window?)

(Here's an interesting non-software example of horrible design: my parents have an RCA TV, not that old, but not HD. It has Videos 1, 2, 3 input, Cable/Air input, and VCR. There's a "SETUP" button on the front panel that lets you change the signal input from Cable/Air to VCR (or something like that), but the only way you can get Video 1, 2, or 3 is by tuning the TV channel to 91, 92, or 93 respectively. Until I found the manual and got to page 60 I was convinced the TV was broken.)

My favorite example of transcendental usability: Google.

(Some runners up: Picasa; Amazon.com (one-click), wish list, etc.)

(Also, I am opposite as to who I like to write for: I cringe when writing for other professional software developers, they're some of the biggest whiners about "what should be". I do however delight in writing software for clients. If you do it right, it's a genuine high.)

"Think" is more web centric, but has many tips and insights, and is an accessible read cover to cover.

"Design" is a bit more pompous, and I don't agree with all points, but I give it high marks for making you take a different look at things you'd always taken for granted (Microsoft asked me a question at my interview from this book, btw).

A few more thoughts: don't confuse usability with user responsibility. If a task if tediously complex, it's going to be difficult to design a thin elegant easy-to-use interface. For example, photoshop can be amazingly obtuse to use, but there's a reason. Overall I give photoshop a "5" (out of ten) for their ergonomics, but I give them a "10" for what their application can do. I consider it partially my responsibility to climb that learning curve to do real work in digital graphics.

On the other hand, the unusable applications out there are infinite. My favorite example is Windows Media Player. I still have to figure out what to do just to play a CD with WMP. (And what's with the disappearing window?)

(Here's an interesting non-software example of horrible design: my parents have an RCA TV, not that old, but not HD. It has Videos 1, 2, 3 input, Cable/Air input, and VCR. There's a "SETUP" button on the front panel that lets you change the signal input from Cable/Air to VCR (or something like that), but the only way you can get Video 1, 2, or 3 is by tuning the TV channel to 91, 92, or 93 respectively. Until I found the manual and got to page 60 I was convinced the TV was broken.)

My favorite example of transcendental usability: Google.

(Some runners up: Picasa; Amazon.com (one-click), wish list, etc.)

(Also, I am opposite as to who I like to write for: I cringe when writing for other professional software developers, they're some of the biggest whiners about "what should be". I do however delight in writing software for clients. If you do it right, it's a genuine high.)

People anthromorphize. Soldiers are people. Therefore soldiers anthromorphize. QED.

Defining Computer Literacy with hard limits is about as stupid as trying to define Cultural Literacy. There's no point in trying to hit such a constantly moving target, you juet try to keep up as best you can.

When I was in jr high school (1992), we had a REQUIRED class called "Computer Literacy." It was taught in a brand-new lab full of Apple IIc machines.

Objective of the class? Half the class was training on how to use AppleWorks and design programs, and the other half was spent learning some simple programming in BASIC. I loved the class because my family was dirt-poor, and hadn't been able to justify the cost of a computer, but my exceptional performance in the class gave my family and I extra drive to save up for one. The point of classes like this should be:

1. To give everyone a shot at understanding the "basics" of computers.
2. To give students with talent in the field an opportunity to discover their potential.

I thought the class was perfectly balanced, and could be taught in a similar format even today with modern office suites and modern "simple" languages. You don't want to make the class TOO advanced, or you'll scare away the less talented students. You also don't want to make the class too dull, or you'll leave the talented students bored. Finding that balance is all you need.

Of course, some other fairly important people (Jeff Raskin, Donald Norman) argue that it's a faulty design to target new users. Designs aimed at new/inexperienced users are rarely any help to power users, and are often a detriment to them, as these designs tend to hide/disable many advanced features. Designs aimed at power users, however, allow frequent users to learn and adapt to get the most from their tools. Sure, a new user will often take a little longer to learn a power-user interface, but once they take their first step, they are able to grow and learn. A newbie interface just stifles everyone.

Another, not necessarily equivalent, way of saying this is that newbie users have no clue what they want and can deal with just about any interface. Power users, however, have very specific demands and suffer great losses to productivity when their interfaces change.

A great example is keyboard layout. It has been shown that an alphabetic keyboard layout gives new users only a slight speed advantage over a QWERTY layout (if any at all). Typists, however, are much faster on QWERTY than alphabetic - even after weeks of practice, IIRC. (Anyone remember if this example was in DOET or THI? I thought I remembered reading this one on the web, but I can't find the reference at the moment.)

Important Note: Please notice that I am not relating the new Office design to this discussion. I have not had the chance to use it, and I can not speak for how it feels. Like others here, I'm sure that MS has done usability studies on this design. Hopefully they have learned their lesson, did the study correctly, and are following the guidelines they extracted from it.

Of course, some other fairly important people (Jeff Raskin, Donald Norman) argue that it's a faulty design to target new users. Designs aimed at new/inexperienced users are rarely any help to power users, and are often a detriment to them, as these designs tend to hide/disable many advanced features. Designs aimed at power users, however, allow frequent users to learn and adapt to get the most from their tools. Sure, a new user will often take a little longer to learn a power-user interface, but once they take their first step, they are able to grow and learn. A newbie interface just stifles everyone.

Another, not necessarily equivalent, way of saying this is that newbie users have no clue what they want and can deal with just about any interface. Power users, however, have very specific demands and suffer great losses to productivity when their interfaces change.

A great example is keyboard layout. It has been shown that an alphabetic keyboard layout gives new users only a slight speed advantage over a QWERTY layout (if any at all). Typists, however, are much faster on QWERTY than alphabetic - even after weeks of practice, IIRC. (Anyone remember if this example was in DOET or THI? I thought I remembered reading this one on the web, but I can't find the reference at the moment.)

Important Note: Please notice that I am not relating the new Office design to this discussion. I have not had the chance to use it, and I can not speak for how it feels. Like others here, I'm sure that MS has done usability studies on this design. Hopefully they have learned their lesson, did the study correctly, and are following the guidelines they extracted from it.

I would view the loss of my mind and identity the same way I'd view my death. Which I guess is why I wonder if we'd be doing someone a favour by "saving" them, when it won't really be the same person who comes out the other side.
You mean like what happened in Maine once?

1) How many times is this old bit about Prophet Muhammed marrying a 9 year old girl going to be passed around? He wasn't married to her, he was *betrothed*. The early marriage tradition is based on a unverified hadith by an author with little credibility. Other traditions says she was 14 to 19. Who knows when consumation was, but its worth pointing out that he wasn't doing anything strange by marrying a young girl, thats just the way was in Middle East at that time. Betrothal and consumation were typically seperated by several years until the girl reached puberty at least.

For a good read on this and other Islamic issues please read "No God But God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam" by Reza Aslan

2) Expressing opinions and criticizing Islam is one thing, hysterical bigoted ranting is another - it has no place in Google news.

I wonder where Richard Stallman comes up with such creative titles?

Just read it a couple months ago, else I don't think I would have recognised it.

From the amazon.com review: "He takes everything that he sees (or is told) at face value, and is unable to sort out the strange behavior of his elders and peers."

Perhaps RMS is suggesting that a lot of people took the overhyped media version of what occured at face value, instead of looking into it for themselves and seeing whether this was truly an open source license?

Because I read and post to /. since before the UIDs were implemented. I registered a couple of accounts earlier, but can't be bothered to remember the password. Who cares ? I don't.

i care. posting as an AC allows you the freedom to be ignorant, biased, astroturf, troll, etc... if youve been around that long, im sure you can understand why i would say such.

Well, I have been burnt by SONY multiple times. I used to respect them, I used to dream about their Walkmans. Then I bought several SONY consmer electronic stuff (in mid 90's), and they were not up to the task. Not a very big problem. Then, around 2000, on this very slashdot, I read about SONY CEO, explaining how they were going to stop "piracy"...

sorry to hear about your faulty devices. i have never really had any problems with any of my consumer electronics [with the exception of my xbox] everyone has different experiences. given that the sony brand is still well trusted, rootkit not withstanding they must not have burnt too many of their consumers.

as for the commentary, ive heard worse stuff originate from the microsoft boardroom. any big corporation or govt entity has evil backroom practices. not to be apologetic, but at least they let you know their stance up front. we all know that they are empty threats. just as you say about child labor, it would be easier to pick and choose which companies

I understand what you are saying. Unfortunately, I don't care. Each of my kids have a NDS, I have a SuperCard SD [because I find that coding for the GBA mode to be extremely fun], and, yes, the SD have ~50 copied games. Does it prevent me to buy games ? No. I wouldn't have bought FFTA I my son didn't play it on the SD. Same for Bomberman and a couple of others. How many DS/GBA original titles do I have ? 19.

i agree with you here believe it or not. piracy actually seems to help the game industry. the ps1, p2, and psp are probably the easiest consoles to mod for backups in the history of consoles. look at how those consoles took off. piracy has not caused either of them to stumble one bit. even the psp is a success in sonys's eyes. [they are turning a hefty profit afterall]. but i cant imagine anyone in a stockholders meeting saying "yeah, lets let users play downloaded iso's on our console instead of charging them for it."

Oh, and I would have made the PSP titles cheaper. And the console would have been bit-to-bit compatible with PS1. Having such a huge library of titles and not using it, what a profound mistake.

again, i agree with you partially. i would go with disc based games, but i would have installed some form of cache memory to alleviate disc access times. the psp is compatible with ps1 titles, but im golad they made the hardware more sophisticated. one of the reasons the psp is selling in light of the DS, is people want to play games on the go that seem current too; not only games from two- three console generations ago.

the funny thing is if you check amazon. the blu-ray titles are selling for $20, and the hd-dvd titles are selling for $25. the list prices are $29 and $35 respectively. the list price for the regular dvd is $19. so i can see the transition to blu-ray being slightly more subtle.
dvd: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0800195175/ref=im dbpov_dvd_0/103-1465401-5529460?_encoding=UTF8&v=g lance&n=130 blu-ray: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EZ7ZY0/qid=11 48360460/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-1465401-5529460?_ encoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=130 hd-dvd prices:

Because I read and post to /. since before the UIDs were implemented. I registered a couple of accounts earlier, but can't be bothered to remember the password. Who cares ? I don't.

i care. posting as an AC allows you the freedom to be ignorant, biased, astroturf, troll, etc... if youve been around that long, im sure you can understand why i would say such.

Well, I have been burnt by SONY multiple times. I used to respect them, I used to dream about their Walkmans. Then I bought several SONY consmer electronic stuff (in mid 90's), and they were not up to the task. Not a very big problem. Then, around 2000, on this very slashdot, I read about SONY CEO, explaining how they were going to stop "piracy"...

sorry to hear about your faulty devices. i have never really had any problems with any of my consumer electronics [with the exception of my xbox] everyone has different experiences. given that the sony brand is still well trusted, rootkit not withstanding they must not have burnt too many of their consumers.

as for the commentary, ive heard worse stuff originate from the microsoft boardroom. any big corporation or govt entity has evil backroom practices. not to be apologetic, but at least they let you know their stance up front. we all know that they are empty threats. just as you say about child labor, it would be easier to pick and choose which companies

I understand what you are saying. Unfortunately, I don't care. Each of my kids have a NDS, I have a SuperCard SD [because I find that coding for the GBA mode to be extremely fun], and, yes, the SD have ~50 copied games. Does it prevent me to buy games ? No. I wouldn't have bought FFTA I my son didn't play it on the SD. Same for Bomberman and a couple of others. How many DS/GBA original titles do I have ? 19.

i agree with you here believe it or not. piracy actually seems to help the game industry. the ps1, p2, and psp are probably the easiest consoles to mod for backups in the history of consoles. look at how those consoles took off. piracy has not caused either of them to stumble one bit. even the psp is a success in sonys's eyes. [they are turning a hefty profit afterall]. but i cant imagine anyone in a stockholders meeting saying "yeah, lets let users play downloaded iso's on our console instead of charging them for it."

Oh, and I would have made the PSP titles cheaper. And the console would have been bit-to-bit compatible with PS1. Having such a huge library of titles and not using it, what a profound mistake.

again, i agree with you partially. i would go with disc based games, but i would have installed some form of cache memory to alleviate disc access times. the psp is compatible with ps1 titles, but im golad they made the hardware more sophisticated. one of the reasons the psp is selling in light of the DS, is people want to play games on the go that seem current too; not only games from two- three console generations ago.

the funny thing is if you check amazon. the blu-ray titles are selling for $20, and the hd-dvd titles are selling for $25. the list prices are $29 and $35 respectively. the list price for the regular dvd is $19. so i can see the transition to blu-ray being slightly more subtle.
dvd: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0800195175/ref=im dbpov_dvd_0/103-1465401-5529460?_encoding=UTF8&v=g lance&n=130 blu-ray: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EZ7ZY0/qid=11 48360460/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/103-1465401-5529460?_ encoding=UTF8&v=glance&n=130 hd-dvd prices:

WTF? But I like my menu bars and toolbars, thank you very much. Menu bars has been a part of Windows since 1985 (and the Mac since 1983 thanks to the Lisa). I think most users would have a hard time understanding "ribbons"; I don't like it when programs try to be "smart" and hide features away from me. There must be an option to use the old menus and toolbars in Office 2007; if not, then I'm not buying it.

An interesting book, About Face 2.0, makes a good point: Significant change must be significantly better. (There's a lot of things in the book with which I disagree, but I agree strongly with this one.) Ribbons are different but they're not better.

Menu bars alone are neither good nor bad; it's all in the organization. Organize a menu bar well, and it is a perfect UI: for any given function, the user should be able to intuit which menu will lead to that function, and the words that make up the menu path should, as closely as possible, form a phrase describing the function. (For instance, "Go --> Home" in a browser.)

Every time Microsoft tries to innovate for real, they fall flat on their face, because they're so used to buying up others' products that they don't know how to create anything original which is actually good. If "ribbons" are a true attempt at improving the interface, they are a miserable failure. Of course I'm more inclined to believe the whole thing is just a way to convince less-savvy users that Word 2007 really is a new product which is worth a few hundred of their dollars.

EA Los Angeles' Neil Young

Save yourself $16.65 by buying the book here: Beginning PHP and MySQL 5.0. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

Save yourself $16.65 by buying the book here: Beginning PHP and MySQL 5.0. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

Does anyone know how this compares to "PHP and MySQL Web Development"? It seems like both cover PHP5 and MySQL 5.

Having been (against my will) to see the (rubbish) da Vinci film, here is a parody which is highly recommended:
The da Vinci Cod where a large cod takes the place of the above Nokia...

The Story About Ping might be a better place to start. It's kid-friendly as well.

Any animator worth his salt studies real actors, and is a "real actor" in their own right. Acting is a huge part of learning animation, and books have been written on the topic. That said, acting is also a later step in the learning process. Before that, animation teaching is usually started with the 12 principles of animation which are:
    1. Squash and stretch
    2. Anticipation
    3. Staging
    4. Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose
    5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action
    6. Slow In and Slow Out
    7. Arcs
    8. Secondary Action
    9. Timing
    10. Exaggeration
    11. Solid Drawing
    12. Appeal

These principles were defined by the original Disney animators in the 40s and 50s, and are widely used today as the base of animation learning. You can check out a great resource about the animation process, written by 2 of Disney's Nine Old Men, here.

Ton in the interview said:
...so you accept a certain level of non-realism easily. (Check the weird walk cycles in The Incredibles for example).

This kinda just goes to show that he's just spouting off a "factoid" he's read or heard about. The "weird" walk cycles in The Incredibles - while maybe not "photorealistic" - are done that way for a purpose, following the principles listed above to make the character and animation more appealing. Animation is often about getting an appealing looking movement than a "realistic" looking movement. It's just that oftentimes, if you make a movement too unrealistic, people who are used to seeing such a movement will notice that there's something wrong with the animation.

Also, whether the character is "realistic" is irrelevent. The 12 principles still apply, but are just toned down. These things weren't pulled out of a hat. They were observed in human movement and exaggerated to make those movements more clear. Nobody could deny that the original Disney animators really observed what they were trying to animate. In fact, during the making of Bambi, Disney brought in a deer carcass so that animators could study the skeleton and muscle systems in a real deer. One of my professors in school who used to work for Disney showed the class the resulting book they made out of that research.

Any animator worth his salt studies real actors, and is a "real actor" in their own right. Acting is a huge part of learning animation, and books have been written on the topic. That said, acting is also a later step in the learning process. Before that, animation teaching is usually started with the 12 principles of animation which are:
    1. Squash and stretch
    2. Anticipation
    3. Staging
    4. Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose
    5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action
    6. Slow In and Slow Out
    7. Arcs
    8. Secondary Action
    9. Timing
    10. Exaggeration
    11. Solid Drawing
    12. Appeal

These principles were defined by the original Disney animators in the 40s and 50s, and are widely used today as the base of animation learning. You can check out a great resource about the animation process, written by 2 of Disney's Nine Old Men, here.

Ton in the interview said:
...so you accept a certain level of non-realism easily. (Check the weird walk cycles in The Incredibles for example).

This kinda just goes to show that he's just spouting off a "factoid" he's read or heard about. The "weird" walk cycles in The Incredibles - while maybe not "photorealistic" - are done that way for a purpose, following the principles listed above to make the character and animation more appealing. Animation is often about getting an appealing looking movement than a "realistic" looking movement. It's just that oftentimes, if you make a movement too unrealistic, people who are used to seeing such a movement will notice that there's something wrong with the animation.

Also, whether the character is "realistic" is irrelevent. The 12 principles still apply, but are just toned down. These things weren't pulled out of a hat. They were observed in human movement and exaggerated to make those movements more clear. Nobody could deny that the original Disney animators really observed what they were trying to animate. In fact, during the making of Bambi, Disney brought in a deer carcass so that animators could study the skeleton and muscle systems in a real deer. One of my professors in school who used to work for Disney showed the class the resulting book they made out of that research.

Disclaimer: I have no financial or other motive of profit in recommending this book.

The recommended books are good choices, but the underlying principles guiding Linux originate from Unix. The first sea change influential Unix book for me was The Unix Programming Environment by Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike.

This book is a must read, and a must have. Unix at my office was a mere curiousity, an available "time share" (not kidding, that's what people at my office called it) that noone used (we were mostly a COBOL/mainframe shop).

I tinkered with this new and interesting world and immediately saw something unique(s). And, Kernighan/Pike lit the fire under me. By page 50 or so they've described Unix philosophy dead-on (they should know), and I couldn't start creating in the Unix environment fast enough.

The first thing I did was create an on-line self updating corporate documentation system (the old one was paper and microfiche), and I never looked back.

Add this book to your collection, read it! You won't be sorry.

Geez, if the Slashdot interview is all people remember...
These ignorant kids of today ;-)
Try his famous book The Unix Programming Environment...

Start in machine code? Bah.

My first college CS course started with "This is an n-type transistor, and this is a p-type transistor." We learned to make logic gates like AND, OR, NOT, NAND, and NOR. Then we used those to make flip-flops, muxes, etc. Next step: memory and a CPU.

Our first programming assignment in college was a list of 1s and 0s. THEN we moved to assembly. We learned to hand assemble our code (and hand disassemble). Moving on, we covered C and how to hand compile it to assembly. One of our questions on the final was to provide C code for a binary string of machine code.

Think I'm kidding? Check out the text book.

How was this possible? The professor had developed a very simple processor architecture that allowed us to focus on learning a lot of concepts without having to deal with most real-world issues. e.g. no floating point support in the processor, only 16 registers, minimal set of interrupt routines available, etc.

That was a great semester! It gave me the framework for the rest of my 4-year program. All my other classes felt like they were just flushing out more detail on this or that area. One thing that worked well for me was that I had some programming experience, but not in C. Everything was new to me, but I had a basic understanding of how a computer works, how to write code, etc.

The apostrophic status is made clear from context

I can second the Wega experience. Standard cable looks like shit on most HDTVs and Sony and Panasonic are some of the only companies that do post-processing efforts to make the image look "correct" on the higher resolution screens. I myself could not afford the 50" model I settled for a 42" model. Works great and unlike my last rear projection, it has survived 3 moves without a problem.

What, precisely, do you mean by "fundamentalist"? You know, not all Christians are nuts...

By fundamentalist, do you mean one who adheres to a traditional Christian lifestyle? Obeys various scriptural commandments? Fundamentalist is an inherently loaded term, would you compare a Christian "fundamentalist" to, say, a member of Al-Qaeda, often erroneously referred to as a Muslim "fundamentalist"?

I, for example, am a Mormon, which fits me under the group of Christianity. I am a "fundamentalist" in that I hold to fundamental and traditional doctrines of my faith. I also believe in evolution. There is no official stance of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on evolution, the closest thing coming to it being a statement many years ago essentially saying, "it doesn't really matter to us either way." So called "fundamentalist" Christians routinely misread and misinterpret scripture on the matter of evolution and essentially everything in Genesis 1, demonstrating a lack of knowledge about the doctrines rather than a well-informed, "fundamental" belief in them (i.e., 1 day is not literally 1,000 years, 1 day refers to a period of time (and "1,000" refers to a big, incomprehensible number, much as "40" means simply "a lot"), to read a Hebrew scripture literally in English with no regard for the period of time it was written in is both ignorant and hardly "fundamental" to Christianity). The university system owned by my faith teaches evolution to its students with little to no controversy and has large and respected biology programs. Required biology classes teach the theory of evolution as it is, and Miller's Finding Darwin's God was required reading back when I took the course.

Yet, I remain a "fundamentalist" Christian. I believe in fundamental doctrines and live my life accordingly. I also read scripture with a reasonable attempt to understand its authors culture and intentions, which is a "literal" reading.

We're not all crazy, you know.

Yes, we do. What we don't have is political commitment for a government backed development (which some may argue is a Good Thing) nor sufficient venture capital available to the private sector to get off the ground floor (if you'll excuse the horrible pun).

Instead of pointlessly doing it wastefully now for no other purpose than habit,

Pointless? Hardly. The Shuttle is the only launch vehicle capable of completing ISS (International Space Station). Whether we're better off ditching the whole ISS/Shuttle program because it's wasteful is a separate, though related, argument.

why not pour all that money into a program to develop new forms of propulsion and energy, and come back to spacefaring when we have a better solution?

This really bears repeating: the viability of a successful space program -- public or private -- has nothing to do with technology; what we have now is totally adequate for the task and has been for at least the last 20 years.

The plea to "come back when..." is a specious bumper sticker argument that emerged in the early 1970's though it usually goes like "... when we've solved the problems here on earth!" as if the space program exists to "solve problems in space". The suggestion that we wait until we've developed "the right" technology betrays enormous ignorance.

As for doing science, an astronaut can stop, look, say "ooh, what an interesting rock!" then walk over, pick it up, and examine it closely with a Mark I eyeball in, what, 30 seconds? It takes days if not weeks for a Mars rover to do the same thing.

So answer me this, earthworm, what "new forms of propulsion and energy" should we wait for? Scramjets? Totally unsuitable. A large, lightweight tank filled with LOX (liquid oxygen) is a far superior solution than a heavy air breathing engine that carries a huge drag penalty. Better to get out of the atmosphere quickly and carry your own oxidizer. LOX is cheap, as is rocket fuel be it RP-1, liquid hydrogen, or whatever.

It's not like sending humans into space serves any real purpose anyway. Robots can carry out virtually everything we need to do for FAR less payload cost. People often whine about the limitations of the robot missions compared to human missions, but these people have simply not thought through the cost-benefit analysis.

As if you have done a thorough analysis? Right. So what benefit are you talking about? Science? Economic return by exploiting an extraterrestrial resource? Human colonization of the solar system?

... If any of the Mars lander people could fill something the size of the shuttle with robot equipment, we'd be able to set up huge self-sustaining robot colonies on Mars easily. Instead, we want to send humans in what will then have to mostly be wasted space.

Why would we build a colony of and, presumably, for robots on Mars? As for any sort of "easy" robotic mission to Mars, forget it. The robotic technology simply does not exist. It's likely, but by no means certain, that the cost of developing the robot technology would be at least as much as it would to develop a human mission. Why? Human beings are a well developed technology; the technology to send humans on long space voyages also exists -- because we've been doing it for over 40 years when we include the Shuttle program. Duh.

Geeks of Slashdot, I bring you the link to The Case for Mars by Robert Zubrin. It's not the latest treatment on a manned Mars mission but it indicates that we've had sufficient technology to begin development of Mars mission at least as early as 1996 when the book was written. Goo

"Evolution is written by a man who is the gay lover of satan!"

Support terrorism and buy The origin of Species

(As long as it is available in your country)

The Head First series from O'Reilly make for good textbooks, if only for the "workbook" exercises and discussion questions.

Also, any Java professional development course should include preparation for the Java Sun Certified Programmer exam. I recommend the McGraw Hill/Osbourne Guide - helped me score a 98%.