Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Towel, Linkage, Drafthouse
They're also good for drying off after bathing. Snitty writes "Douglas Adams passed away a little over a year ago now, and as tradition will soon dictate the first Thursday after May 11th every year is International Towel Day. This happens to be this Thursday, so make sure you all show up to the 12:01 am showing of Attack of the Clones with your favorite lightsaber and a towel. Always know where your towel is."
Update: 05/15 00:11 GMT by T : Hmmm -- this seems to clash with a link another reader submitted, which suggests "the last Friday of every May," which this year would be the 31st.
Update: 05/15 15:00 GMT by T : D Clyde Williamson writes: "Towel Day (since I'm the guy who started it) is on May 25th every year." So ... it's not a portable feast?
Three guesses where they each get that money from. mblase writes "CNet, among others, informed its readers that Macromedia successfully countersued Adobe for patent infringement to the tune of $4.9 million, almost double the $2.8 million Adobe recently won from Macromedia. The article notes Macromedia has another patent suit against Adobe going to court in June 2003."
Listening material when Prairie Home Companion is over. Ender, Duke_of_URL writes "The second portion of Rep. Boucher's interview is up (MP3). This has been discussed previously on Slashdot."
They're also opposed to front doors. dringess writes "Wired has yet another article about deep linking. This one has some fun lawyer rebuttals. I guess I am deep linking right now!"
I especially like this quote: "... but this would set a terrible precedent implying that links have to have a certain amount of ads."
Keeps popcorn out of your keyboard, at least. smashed writes: "After being slashdotted and geekaustin'd and touted for being the first theater with wireless access .... I went to see Spider-Man tonight at the Alamo Drafthouse North in Austin. Apparently you can't have 'electronic devices on' during the feature. I was warned if I didn't shut down my laptop I had to leave by some girl that worked for the theater. The world's first Cyber-Theater my ass. Nice try, but apparently wireless users are absolutely not welcomed there when a movie is playing. I'm very disappointed. I couldn't even have my PocketPC with wireless NIC on while the movie was on. Was I taking off down the runway on an airplane? What's the point?"
Wouldn't you like a mainframe in the closet? Writing in regards to this posting on Linux on mainframes, rudy writes: "Your reference was to the first one in the series, the second one has been up for about a week and the third, and last, one in the series will go on late this week or early next."
apparently wireless users are absolutely not welcomed there when a movie is playing. I'm very disappointed. I couldn't even have my PocketPC with wireless NIC on while the movie was on.
Personally I'd be pretty pissed if the person next to me had their laptop/PDA on during the movie. The bright screen would be very annoying in a dark theatre, and the tapping of stylus or keys would drive me mad.
"Whenever you go someplace new...you should always bring a towel." - Towelie
Wanna get high?
is a bit of an odd concept, but even more strange is that they only have it allowed when a movie *isn't* playing... who hangs out in a theater when there's no movie on?
Exactly my question. Why do you need to use a laptop during a show again?
Even film critics typically just use a 'light pen.'
...wouldn't you rather _watch_ the movie?
RIP Douglas Adams
i wonder if dying is like entering a total perspective vortex...
42, amen, and we'll miss you. looking forward to salmon of doubt and the moive.
Back in college, my house threw a "come as you come out of the shower party." Had nothing to do with Douglas Adams., and eveything to do with getting girls to show up wrapped in a towel.
We didn't have a network, or hi-speed connection, but we had a full bar, a nice bong, and a house band which are far more attractive to girls.
The restrictions for the wireless theatre access is more for copy protection than anything else. No reasonable person would want to watch the movie through a slow internet connection with a web cam, but the movie studios certianly don't want it to even be considered.
-Adam
"I was warned if I didn't shut down my laptop I had to leave by some girl that worked for the theater. The world's first Cyber-Theater my ass. Nice try, but apparently wireless users are absolutely not welcomed there when a movie is playing. I'm very disappointed. I couldn't even have my PocketPC with wireless NIC on while the movie was on. Was I taking off down the runway on an airplane? What's the point?"
Good. If I'm watching a movie, I don't want the backlight from your laptop or PocketPC glaring at me, the clunking of your keyboard or beeping (or worse) from your laptop.
Cellphones have shown that there are plenty of people who have no concept of others in public places, and who can't be bothered to turn it off.
If you arrive early at a movie, and want to browse the web to pass the time, fine. Once the movie starts though, I want everything (including your mouth) shut off.
Just watch the movie. That's what you paid $10 for anyway.
If at any time in the future, someone has a laptop, ipaq, or any other glowing, clicking, beeping little device on around me in a movie theater, i reserve the right to confiscate said device and return it to them at the end of the movie... via anus.
I'm serious, movie theaters had better not allow this sort of thing.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Under this theory a deap link into a pasword protected site (like NYT) could be a contributory infringment.
Fight Spammers!
I was under the impression that Towel Day was May 25th. A quick search reveals (http://www.systemtoolbox.com/towelday/) that at least some people consider May 25th to be Towel Day...
I, presonally, have been prepping my towels for the 25th, and I don't think I'll change my plans in light of this Slashdot story.
random
Or you could either engage in polite conversation with the person next to you, watch the avderts, or even, horrors, not arrive insanely early.
What's next, "wireless public toilets", arrive 1/2 an hour before you have to pee so you can browse the web for a bit ?!?!
It's like WAP on cell phones... yeah I guess it's interesting, never mind that it's utterly pointless for 99% of the population.
NZ Electronics Enthusiasts: Check out my Trade Me Listings
Hey, speak for yourself! I pay $10 to eat popcorn, not watch a movie.
Granted, when I'm in a typical movie theatre, I kindof expect that everyone won't have thier cellphones out and their laptops running.
However, when I go to a wireless, geek based theatre, I DO expect it, and SHOULD expect it and should not be surprised in the slightest when everyone, INCLUDING ME, has this equipment running. The theatre can set the policy. Obviously they saw a market for a theatre that actually ALLOWED those very "distractions" since so many people seemed compelled to distract others. This is actually a perfect idea. Give these people a place they can go that this activity is welcome and they'll leave the rest of us alone.
Alas, apparently all is not what it seems to be.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Just the original version, in it's durable plastic case with the simple 'Don't Panic!' logo. I mean, sure, you -could- go for the prototype Guide seen in 'Mostly Harmless', but that thing's just plain scary, IMHO...
"It's all fun and games, 'til you realize it's only streams of 1's and 0's..."
An excellent and sobering quote. Very good sense of perspective.
Now THAT'S what I call "deep linking".
Miko O'Sullivan
It's really for your own good, nobody wants to be beaten to death with their own laptop.
According to the old h2g2 site, the first towel day was May 25th, which happened to be the last Friday of the month. The author of that node therefore suggests that it always be the last Friday of the May. This explains why some people think it's May 25th and some think the last Friday of May. Where the first Thursday after May 11th came from, I have no idea. To allow those of us with sufficiently lenient casual Friday policies to participate, the last Friday of May sounds more reasonable.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Obviously you are not one to take much of an observance of life. Nor one who is a fan of british humor.
In his H^2G^2 Series, Adams took a rather playful and accurate punch at life, and nailed it on the nose. Life truly is silly. There are so many things that happen arround us every day that we take for granted as perfectly normal and yet would make anyone who was not acustomed to our lives go "What the hell?"
Life was meant to be enjoyed in a way that is condusive with happiness. The infamous "Don't Panic" mantra is one that should be taken to heart. Life does have a mysterious way of working out, and even if it doesn't, in the end we die anyway, so why should you worry that your toast was burned thismorning, or that you can't find your socks. Just take life one breath at a time and enjoy.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
He has definately been one of the most influential writers in my life, I'd put him on a par with Vonnegut. There is a whole category of contemporary authors/thinkers I like to call "Science Fiction Philosophers," which both Adams and Vonnegut belong to. Vonnegut is a little more blunt with his philosophy, while Adams is more fanciful, but their views of the life and the universe (and so on) definately come out in the books, and it has touched many people's minds. My mom read HHGthG to me when I was an impressionable young kid, which perhaps explains some things...
While I doubt you are the only person who dislikes DNA, It's hard to realistically say that his works aren't important to many, many people. For some reason, the "geek community," which I'm not really sure I belong to (if it even really exists), has adopted his writings as one chapter of a "geek bible."
I've never been so attached to anyone I've never met as to him.
-If
Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
> I remember I used to think deep linking was okay, but have obviously since changed my mind. If companies deep linked to /., now that /. relies heavily on ads for its revenue, we probably wouldn't have it. :(
/.'s traffic comes from ordinary readers who start at the front page, or people who follow links to whole stories, rather than individual comments. This being the case, there wouldn't be much decrease in the amount of adds shown.
I would guess that most of
Other web sites might have a different situation, where most of their traffic comes from deep linking. However, news web sites always seem to have some adds thrown in with their articles, so people aren't avoiding adds by following deep links.
#define X(x,y) x##y
Peter Cordes ; e-mail: X(peter@cordes ,
Deep Linking is exactly like Magazine #1 writing:
"There's this interesting article on page 42 in this month's Magazine #2 issue."
Would Magazine #2 sue Magazine #1 in the real world? Then why do lawyers seem to think it's perfectly normal to sue over exactly the same thing in the digital world?
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
I'll get flamed for this, but I find his writing only mildly humorous at best. It is very lightweight reading, and most of it, especially the Dirk Gently stuff, seems to have been lifted from Dr. Who stories that aired when he was script editor. He wasn't credited with writing those scripts though.
His writing is like cotton candy, not bad, but certainly not filling. Very light and with a tendency to dissolve a few seconds after you get it.
I also stopped enjoying the non sequiter humor of Monty Python funny after I was about 15 years old. I can only watch about 5 minutes of it before it gets old.
After all, the man had the nerve to try and pass off the hoary old "cookie swap" story as actually happening to him. See http://www.snopes2.com/crime/safety/cookies.htm
Agreed!
Cellular phone jammers are illegal in the USA... is anyone else up for joining me on a bill that allows (If not mandates.) jamming devices to be installed in every theatre in the country?
I, for one, am a bit tired of the Adams worship. Then again, I'm growing tired of just about any sort of worship of pop icons.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
firstly, I always figured geeks had a pretty good sense of what was the right way to act in a theater. You come in sit down and shut up. You don't do anything to annoy the other people. I swear if I see a jackass with a laptop while I'm trying to watch a movie I'm gonna knock your block off. thats just fucking rude as hell. You don't want to watch the movie and pay attention then go home. also, aren't you supposed to have your towel with you at all times anyway?
-
Remember that this isn't a regular movie theater -- this is a fancy one, with tables and dinner being served and stuff. So there's got to be enough light to eat, people will be doing things like passing salt, getting up for fresh drinks, etc. A laptop isn't as grossly out of place as you might normally expect it to be.
-Waldo Jaquith
How much did these companies spend on these cases though? Is it even fair to say that Adobe and Macromedia even get a point each?
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
You don't need a jammer. A jammer would broadcast losts of noise in radio frequencies. There is, however, another method that could be used to block cell phones.
Build each screen inside a Faraday cage. Essentially, the idea is to encase the whole room in a sheet of metal. The will block the radio frequency waves, and thus the phones won't work. The Faraday cage operates on the principle that the metal screen need not be complete, but that there can be gaps, provided that these gaps are small (and you can calculate how small they need to be.
To be quite honest, the simplest retro fit solution is to put a layer of tin foil on the walls, under wall papere (or paint it). Stick a sheet in the door, and you've got most of the place, and you'll probably be attenuating the signal by a good proportion. It might not prevent them from working, but it'd be
a) damn cheap
b) somewhere near 70% efficent.
Of course, the best solution is to educate the audience. Preferable with a good sized LART.
No, because some people's need for communication devices (doctors, for example) far, far outweighs our right to a quiet theatre. I hate phones in theatres as much as you, but sometimes there are exceptions... Plus people like me like to have their phone on silent and vibrate so I at least have the option of leaving the cinema if I feel the call is important enough to me.
Send lawyers, guns, and money!
Since Duke of URL mentioned it in his Slashback, I just wanted to pause and note.
The last time someone down the isle had to take not one, not two, not three, but four calls all of them answered with "Yo HO whass the happs?!". The last pound of popcorn from my supersized popcorn bucket, 4 ounces of butter, and the bucket also hit him in the back of the head from 6 chairs over. Not only did he shut up but he left in a real big hurry when his anger was squelched by the 60+ people clapping and laughing their collective asses off. Poor sap...I almost felt bad.
Neck_of_the_Woods
#/usr/local/surf/glassy/overhead
I was thinking the actual score is Adobe - 0 Macromedia - 1/2 Lawyers - 2 Customers - 0, but still the original point that I cited is well taken.
This is the Alamo Drafthouse. It's the home of several talks, movie marathons, and things that could almost be called movie fan conventions. From what I've heard, there are LOTS of people there when movies aren't on.
Navy ships. We panned movies mercilessly. Trash got talked back to. One particularly bad movie (73-76, couldn't tell you any closer) was some sorry-ass French Foreign Legion pot boiler, where the commandant's wife was in love with the rebel leader, and distracted the patrol on top of the wall with a striptease, while her hero snuck over said wall and opened the gate. The projectionist ran that strip scene back and forth until the film started to overheat, and he apologized for having to stop.
This was on the messdecks of USS Midway, CV-41, somewhere in the Pacific. Sometimes we had movies on the hangar deck, but not often. Messdecks were big enough.
Military crowds do not coddle movies. Turkeys get hoots and hollers, plenty of talking back, etc. Best damn way to see a movie there is.
Infuriate left and right
Doesn't it suck to be persecuted when you haven't done anything wrong? I wear a mobile phone so that I am available to people I choose to make myself available to. Since I am the only one interested in the calls I receive, I have my phone perpetually set to vibrate, thus avoiding any situation where it might be inappropiate for it to ring. I can personally come up with several reasons where I might not be expecting a call, but still want to be available in an emergency. A movie theatre is one of them. To take away my ability to receive calls in a public place because others have abused that privilege is just wrong in my book.
Talk about unfair. I had no intention of troll'ing. I was merely writing the above comment to inquire as to just how influential Douglas Adams really was. I see a lot of fuss being over made over his death and subsequent "Days of Rememberance," yet I personally don't agree with it.
Save the -1 scores for real trolls. I'm just not a fan of Douglas Adams, and I found his work repetative.
Things could be worse...I could be blaspheming dilbert, right?
Writing in regards to this posting on Linux on mainframes
What posting? A link, people?
-raph
Cellular phone jammers are illegal in the USA... is anyone else up for joining me on a bill that allows (If not mandates.) jamming devices to be installed in every theatre in the country?
What i'd rather see is a protocol to let cell phones conform to rules for the environment. Theatres and libraries could have transponders which tell the phones to switch to vibrate as long as they are in range of the transponder. Classrooms too. Airplanes could have transponders which turn the phone off and schedule it to turn back on at flight time + 15 minutes. Then there's no high power jamming intereference, doctors or whoever else _need_ to use their phones can (and trust me, if you have a heart attack you don't want your doctor be starting watching LOTR and be out of reach until s/he leaves the theatre), and people who insist on being assholes about it are still going to be assholes, but there wasnt much you could do about that anyways.
While we're at it, do any of the new plam/phones have ringer control in the scheduling, so i can hit a checkbox on an appointment and the phone switches to vibrate for that hour and then back when it's over? And do any phones have vibrate VIBRATE ring RING modes? and if not, why the fuck not?
What is wrong with me setting my phone to 'Silent' so that when I receive a call only I know about it. Reaching for my phone is no different to reaching for some more popcorn and getting up and leaving to take the call is no different to getting up to take a piss.
"She's a West Texas girl, just like me" - G.W Bush Iraqis
So don't go to this theater when on-call, or just go to a different theater. Duh! Maybe I should bring my performing monkey troupe to the theater...I mean I have to make a living somehow...why is The Man putting me down!?
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
It depends on what you are looking for. If you are looking for British humor of a "wacky" vein, try Robert Rankin. For a little less wacky and a little less style, there's Tom Holt. Of the two, I prefer Rankin. I would say that if you like the non sequiter, bizarre happenings style of Adams, then go with Rankin. The characters aren't as three dimensional, they appear to be along for the ride and there just to be funny.
There's always Pratchett of course if you like British humor. His books are a mix of humor and character development. If you want something with just a lot of jokes and not much characterization, get one of the Discworld books with Rincewind in it.
For pure lunacy, there's always Wodehouse.
I was always under the impression that Spiderman needed the wires to fly.
This response fits into an annoying category that we see quite a bit on Slashdot: 'I don't have the same interests and ideas as you, so I'm going to go through your post point by point and explain that your ideas have alternatives and detractors and are therefore invalid.'
For Christ's sake, the poster listed a dozen possible uses for a new technology, some of which are personally interesting to me and some of which are not. Pointing out alternatives does not negate the creativity of the poster.
Perhaps you had this exchange in the early 90's:
Internet? Who needs it?
I can send email to my relatives!
Why email when you can call or fax?
I can do my banking online!
Why not just do it on the phone or in person?
I can check movie times online!
Why not just call the theater or look in the paper?
I know you're tempted to go through my examples and rebutt each one by pointing out why the sample online activities are actually better than the alternatives provided. Go on, you know you want to.
The only thing more exciting about technology than emerging capabilities is the creativity and imagination that leads to more USES for those capabilities. When someone proposes new uses, you are free to embrace them or not. Taking the time to point out that you personally would not do each and every one is a waste of time and makes you sound like a close-minded philistine.
Evil is the money of root.
Since theaters will probably be digital eventually, I propose a system by which the movie can be made to pause if anyone in the audience receives a phone call. This way, important audience members can receive their phone calls, and other viewers will not miss any of the movie.
Evil is the money of root.
I wear a pager 24/7 roughly 40 weeks per year. I can't wait two hours to respond to a page.
...I guarantee you've annoyed more people than I ever have. YOU should stay the hell out.
All of you morons who think I should "stay out of a theatre" as a result, well...
If you have any of the following:
1 - Crunchy Food
2 - Overly Loud Laugh
3 - A Tendency To Whisper To Your Compatriot
4 - Body Odor
Some people are on-call 24x7x52. And others (like me) would prefer that the babysitter can get ahold of us if something dire should happen. Of course, my phone is left on vibrate and I'd leave the theater before answering. Anyone not considerate to do likewise deserves exile to the Saturday Matinee.
I agree that laptops, PDAs, and the like should be turned off during the movie. They may not be loud, but the light is surely going to bother everyone behind you.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
Practice getting everybody to say "whop" at the same time.
314-15-9265
deep linking
If people don't want deep links to items on their web site, they should configure their web server to check the "referer" field before serving such items up, or require password access.
If they're too incompetent/lazy/whatever to do that, too bad: if it's on the web, it's public.
-- Alastair
What apparently doesn't occur to you, is that there are people in this world who actually code for fun, and not only when they have a massive project due.
There are some of us who would much prefer bringing a laptop to code on during a long wait over twiddling our fingers.
'Course, a good technical book is perfectly adequate as well. But if you're in the midst of something fun, you're not gonna let something like a little movie stop you.
So, you're telling me you would be annoyed if the persons vibrating pager/cellphone went off and they left the theatre to answer it, but it would be A-OK if some girl came into the theatre and wandered around looking for some specific person in the dark to tell them they had a phone call so they could then get up and go answer it?
I'm confused...
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
I think the vibrating device solution is already perfectly viable. Theatres just need to make it clear that anyone causing a disturbance WILL be removed. Me and my wife had to have a couple of parents with a small crying child kicked out of Spiderman because they refused to either shut the kid up or take it outside voluntarily. But the theatre management was very nice about it.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji