Except that in some larger states, the state tax varies from county to county. For example, here in Ithaca, NY, the sales tax is about 8%, whereas in neighboring counties it is half that. Why? Because Cornell University is here, and the state wants to get as much money out of ivy-leaguers as it can.
I suppose it's still possible, but you'd have to basically subscribe to some central service that let you know any time one of the many tax-regions updated its percentages.
The short answer is 'Yes, mostly.' There are studies that show the percentages of various disabilities in the U.S. population.
(There are about three billion studies linked off of there as part of various projects -- always be careful when you ask an academic for statistics...)
Email me if you need more information and you're actually in a position to do what you say; I can put you in touch with people who can give you exactly the information you need.
I am a web developer for the Program on Employment and Disability at the School of Industrial Labor Relations at Cornell University. Web accessibility is a serious issue for us, and we try to keep abreast of innovative approaches to design so we can find that elusive place where universal accessibility meets intelligent and aesthetically pleasing layout. We recently spoke with Cynthia Waddell (one of 8 authors of Constructing Accessible Web Sites, also out fairly recently) on this subject, but I found her unwilling to commit to anything other than 'suggestions' rather than real technical solutions.
There are two sticky issues that I have encountered. The first is the notion of universal access. Mrs. Waddell indicated that, working with the W3C, she was coming up with a list of web sites that met Priorities I-III of the W3C WAI and were still aesthetically impressive (she did not have a list ready). As you are no doubt aware, many sites that tout universal access are themselves victims of poor design -- the problem of 'yes it's W3C/WAI compliant across the board, but it's ugly as sin.' Do you believe that a site can have a single interface that is truly 'universally' accessible, or do you believe that sites should have alternate interfaces? (the web equivalent of 'do we have a ramp and stairs or just a ramp?')
Along those lines, it is apparent to me that the accessibility guidelines are designed to be useful in a manner proportional to the lobbying power of disability rights groups. That is to say, blind people and deaf people, although they comprise extraordinarily small percentages of people with disabilities, have an enormous amount of political clout when compared to people with cognitive disorders -- ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, Autism, Schizo-affective disorder, Schizophrenia, et cetera. Because these disability groups lack the considerable power of a strong advocacy group, do you feel that they have been left by the wayside when it comes to Section 508 or WAI? (and do you personally believe that total-WAI compliance is necessary, or just Section 508?)
My apologies for several questions at once, but we take this issue very seriously here and your answers will go a long way to helping us do what we do to better suit the community that ILR serves.
President (played by Morgan Freeman) meets with Special Emergency Response Team, discovers that all primary systems designed to prevent the Destruction of Earth are useless because they were all designed to shoot down missiles from Korea and China. Cabinet advisor recalls a brilliant, 'loose cannon' scientist/oil rig captain/handsome hollywood actor who 'just might be able to save us.'
Handsome actor collects racially-diverse crew including both genders and several archetypes. They build a giant drill, which breaks at the last minute. Handsome actor has flashback to childhood, when he accidentally made a sinkhole in the beach with a toy shovel and is able to dig the remaining 10 miles with his fingernails and teeth.
Team plants Nuclear Device Designed to Save Us All From Certain Death and detonates it, but of course it just makes things worse. Handsome actor inserts wrench into Earth's core, solving the problem, and then dies of radiation poisoning after making love to the attractive, sweedish scientist whose role (other than that) in the movie is as vague as her scientific credentials.
That's just my idea, though. I'm sure theirs will be totally different!
It certainly doesn't inhibit you from commenting on what book you like. It inhibits you from commenting on what makes a book good on a scale outside of 'well I liked it' or 'I thought it sucked' in a manner that educated people will listen to.
And before you correct me, no, of course it does not actually inhibit you from commenting. Obviously it didn't above.
I'm not coming from a position where I'm a published writer telling you how to criticize books, either; I haven't published anything. But I also haven't made comments like 'English professors are liars.' I haven't made a mass, sweeping generalization about a large group of educated people who have spent their professional careers digesting and publishing literature.
Nobody is going to stop you from giving an opinion on a book. But giving it in the context of 'all the people whose lives are dedicated to giving opinions on books are liars because they don't take me seriously because I haven't published anything' just makes you sound like a punk.
You don't have to agree with what they say. But your comment is the equivalent of swiping all the pieces off the chess board because you don't like how the other person plays. If you give a shit about making thoughtful comments about literature (and as I said above, your original comment is not without merit) then don't cloak it in ignorance and offensive generalizations.
I hate to jump on your comment since you're very right about what NJ is like and your point is a good one. But this is Slashdot, so I'll nitpick.
I grew up in Delaware and have several friends from Jersey (and New York). I've also studied several of the regional dialects, and there certainly are accents in New Jersey. They are similar, but not the same as New York accents. The classic 'Jersey' accent that most people think of is sometimes more a matter of tone than it is inflection. It shares some things with the Brooklyn accent, such as some vernacular -- 'forgetaboutit' and 'whaddyagonnado,' etc.
That said, there is, of course, no one Jersey accent, and perhaps what you meant to say was that the classic Jersey accent is not present in all of Jersey. I was fairly close to Camden. Although it's ugly as sin (approaching but not quite on par with Newark), I've never heard an accent in anyone I know from there. Nevertheless, I've heard variations on the Jersey accent in central and northern NJ, and it is prevalent enough to be 'The Jersey Accent.'
Excellent point about the gas though. And I absolutely agree that NJ is a decent place.
The other replies have a good point -- there isn't a great deal of character development in something like the Foundation trilogy, or in short stories. And a 'good story' can substitute for interesting characters; you need to be drawn up in either what's going on, or, if what's going in isn't all the interesting, in who it is you're reading about. Asimov's books cover such a long time span that there is a lot of skipping from one set of characters to the next. So there isn't 'development' in the sense that you watch them grow, since they usually only exist for one third of one book, or less -- but those characters are interesting in the first place. Their actions in the story define them.
Anderson's characters are cardboard cut-outs of movie characters. He does not have any kind of interesting take on them. He does not make them interesting to me, either through their actions or their development.
As to your comment about the lies of professors -- with all due respect, who are you to criticize English professors? That's an honest question and not meant to be a flame; if you're published or have some particular achievement, by all means, let us know what those lies are. But as someone who has studied a fair amount of literature and drama under several professors, I'd be interested to know in what respect they are lying.
I agree with you that character development is not a cure-all and that development alone does not a good book or story make. I don't agree that having an affinity for it makes me a dweeb (I am, in fact, a dweeb for countless other reasons without character development coming into it).
Disclaimer: I have only read his original Star Wars novels -- not his novelization of the movies or anything else he's done.
That said, I found his books to be some of the worst Science Fiction I've encountered. I can't blame the setting, since Timothy Zahn did some wonderful things with the same universe. But his stories are predictable and generally nothing more than reincarnations of movie plots with a few variables switched around. His dialogue is cliche and he limits himself to a static interpretation of the characters -- it's as if somebody told him "Yes, you can write a Star Wars novel, but the characters from the movies had better be exactly the same people at the end of the book as they were at the beginning!"
It may be that he was stuck in regurgitation mode after having written novelizations of the of the movies (assuming it was him that did that, I haven't read the book versions of the movies). Unfortunately, that's the same mode I was in after reading his tripe.
I sincerely hope that some of his other work can prove me wrong, that the foulness of his SW novels is the exception and not the rule. But that's one heck of a black mark, if you ask me.
Disclaimer: I work for the state of New York at Cornell University and am/will be responsible for several sites that must, by either state, federal, or sponsor mandate, be accessible.
Disclaimer disclaimer: I haven't started yet.:P
I'm surprised that there's been no mention of this yet, but there already are government standards for web site accessibility. They are not enforceable standards (unless you're a govt. agency), but they are quite thorough, and from the research I've done, about 85% of it is simply common sense and good web design practice anyway, with only a few additional considerations. IBM also has an accessibility initiative, as does w3c. Maintaining dual sites is certainly not required, and unless you're the sort of designer that puts flash in everything, it shouldn't be an enormous stretch to conform with them. (But then, it shouldn't be an enormous stretch to conform with w3c HTML standards either. Shoulda coulda woulda.)
I suppose, in a perfect world, we wouldn't need the courts to tell us that we have to do things like this. I suspect that it is in most companies' best interests to have a site that everyone can use and from which everyone can make purchases. Even if the ADA lost, it's not exactly good press for your company when you have to go to court against them in the first place.
(I'm not saying that I disagree with the ruling; don't really have a qualified opinion on whether or not these standards should be law.)
I think the most interesting part of this article was how they chose their ISP. A bunch of young people that are committed to quality service and offer a lot of bandwidth (where "a lot" is obviously quite relative, now).
And then they admit that, okay, actually they knows these guys personally, and they're really not that bad!
No offense to either HA or their ISP, but, er, let's hear it for unbiased journalism.:)
Please convey my/our heartfelt apologies to the KDE League for this mix up. As many of you are aware, many corporations are headquartered in Delaware due to our tax laws and court system. This creates a burden on Delaware residents. In fact it creates a burden on all three Delaware residents. Just yesterday, I was talking with Ed, and he was trying his damndest (as usual) to attract a fourth resident, and he thought that some Linux news might be a good idea, since 'maybe we could get Delaware slashdotted,' and I had to remind him that Delaware already serves an honorable place in Slashdot as the dot.
We were further upset recently when we realized that our third resident, the governor, had died in 1973.
In closing, please accept the apologies of Ed and myself on behalf of the great state of Delaware -- the first state to sign the Constitution and the state that nearly everyone has 'driven through on the way to visit their parents.'
There have been a lot of questions to the effect of 'what makes Sean Connery better than Keanu.'
When you see a really bad actor on the screen, there are two possibille explanations for his or her bad acting.
The first -- and regrettably, the most common -- is bad directing and/or a bad script (okay, that's a reason and a half). Most would agree that Jeremy Irons is a fantastic actor, and yet he did 'Dungeons and Dragons.' I don't know how anyone could've made that role succeed. Sometimes actors just have to crap out lines. Some directors view that as being our job; stand where I tell you, say the line how I tell you. It happens.
Other actors are simply limited in range. Remember that professional acting is a very difficult business, with around 75-80% of actors out of work at any given time. Even when you land a great part, not only do you not want to be known for just one part, but that one job isn't going to make your career if you never get any other jobs after it. There are a few examples of actors who have made careers out of one role (Shatner), but still others who have kept their dynamic edge and jump on new opportunities in spite of sometimes being known for just one part -- look at Patrick Stewart. Anyone who only knows him as Pickard has never really seen his best stuff.
Keanu Reeves seems to me the sort of actor who enjoys a successful career and seems less concerned with the art. This is an observation but not a criticism. The decision to become a professional actor is not an easy one, as it is difficult (if not impossible) to maintain long-term relationships and/or a family when you're in the business. He has found his niche. He gets work. People gripe about him, and I personally think he has the same approach to every one of his characters, but I have to respect the man for succeeding in a business where it's hard to even get by.
Incidentally, and this is me soapboxing now, my favorite movie actors are almost always the ones who have done or still do an enormous amount of work on the stage (Derek Jacobi, Anthony Hopkins, et cetera). Reeves wouldn't survive ten minutes on a stage with the likes of them. But I don't think he cares.
Re:Online Muds: Free and Non-commercial
on
Layoffs at WotC
·
· Score: 1
I am currently working on a roleplaying (not roll-playing) incarnation of the Forgotten Realms, using a combination of rulesets and cooperative fiction aides (and the PennMUSH server platform).
Been in progress for over a year. Possibility of open-sourcing the entire thing (glad to talk about it, anyway). Interested in helping out? Email.
The FBI, CIA, or any government agency of that magnitude will not hire you if you answer 'yes' to 'have you ever done any drug ever in your life.' They may ask you if you smoke it a lot, and then if you've smoked it 15 times or more, and then if you've smoked it fewer than 15 times, just to make smoking it a few times sound harmless.
Unless you are otherwise an extremely important individual (crack cybersecurity agent/pashtun-speaking master of disguise and languages) then smoking pot once in your life and telling them about it will preclude you from service.
There are over 40,000 professional actors currently in the Actor's Equity Guild, and (I suspect but do not know) a similar number in the Screen Actor's Guild. Add amateur film and stage actors on top of that and you can almost always find some theatre or film going on in any town, and certainly any city. A few things to keep in mind:
As easy as it is to find bad acting in Hollywood movies, acting is an extraordinary grueling job and it is just as likely that the bad actor you saw was actually a good actor forced to vomit up horrendous lines. For example, Vin Diesel is an extraordinarily well-trained actor, and his physicality is such that he seems 'cool' just when he's standing there and saying something. Then he says 'Welcome to the Xander Zone' and you wonder what's wrong with him.
Many actors train for years. A lot of the technique taught to actors is not about not hard-and-fast rules that could easily be understand by a computer, or, for that matter, anyone who has never attempted them. Even with considerable advances in the field of artificial intelligence, I cannot imagine any piece of software or even well-informed animator with the capacity to reproduce the stage or screen presence of a talented and skilled actor. Quite simply put, regardless of whether or not you're an animator or a computer, unless you are physically standing up there and doing the part, you cannot bring real humanity or immediacy to the role.
Even with an especially actor-oriented animator or director, a lot of great moments on the screen aren't in the script. Imagine one of the classic Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin scenes where they're trying to do some simple task, say, cross the road, and a series of ridiculous things happens to them -- the one that comes to mind for me is the Chaplin bit where he gets his shoe stuck on a piece of gum and has to avoid oncoming cars while simultaneously getting gum of his feet. Sounds simple, right? Well, imagine if you were handed a pair of shoes, a piece of gum, and a few oncoming cars and then told to 'do something funny.' Perhaps Chaplin had the genius to sit down and actually think of funny things in advance, but every improvisational actor I know doesn't think about what they do at all -- it just happens (because they're trained to know how to just let it happen).
Whose Line Is It Anyway. The moments of great theatre in that show are a decent example of what you can't sit down and plan or write. You know the game where they make some guy sing a song on the spot about some subject and he has to make it up as he goes along? That's an inherently human ability that would be difficult (if not impossible) to translate into code. Anyone familiar with improvisational acting will say that they have nothing to fear from computers taking over their jobs.
That said, I confess I'm quite fascinated by what animators can do these days and I don't begrudge them their work one bit. As many people have already pointed out, it's quite supplementary to what we do, although the work is a bit steadier:). Lastly, keep in mind that a lot of great film and theatre is not done by large studios with millions of dollars to spend on CGI farms and animators. I think it is wonderful that films like Toy Story, Shrek, and Monsters, Inc. are made -- but then, one of my fields is voice acting, so why shouldn't I? Even if they no longer needed voice actors for those projects, there will always be live actors in film and theatre so long as there are people who love stories and everything that makes us human. (the above an awful paraphrase from something rather wise said by Zelda Fichandler, chair of NYU's Tisch School of the Arts).
The only reason that children are taught to read is so that they can read the Qu'ran
I can't speak to the real reason that children are taught to read, but it isn't to read the Qu'ran. A written copy of the Qu'ran is not considered an 'official' Qur'an -- the real Qur'an is only spoken, passed down through an oral tradition that must be traceable back to the Prophet himself through anyone who has the whole thing memorized (like the people who run Islamic religious schools). Granted, there are over a billion people in the world who accept the Qur'an as the Word of God, so I'm sure there are a lot of people who do learn to read by reading it, but much of Islam teaches it orally and by rote memorization of oral repitition.
I agree that it would be nice if everyone didn't use Word, and did use an open standard that we could take apart, etc. etc.
But sending a message to everyone who sends you a Word.doc or who asks you to submit them in the manner that Stallman suggests is not going to make that happen. It is going to further marginalize the open source community as a bunch of people who say things like 'could you please not use this bloated, secret format and instead use the internationally accepted one of plain text.'
Plain text? Plain text doesn't cut it. People want fonts. People want alignment. The solution to defeating a bloated, proprietary word processor is not to abandon word processors. Suggesting to any technophobe that they should use plain text instead of Word is going to cause a very hostile reaction; not only have these people shelled out money for MS Office that you are now telling them not to use, but take a look at their face when they open up Notepad (or Notepad+, or get them to use Vi. Ha.) "Where are all the buttons?"
People need to be shown the advantages of the end-result RMS is suggesting. His sample emails have the tone of 'You are insulting me by sending me this arcane, bloated technology. How dare you. Do it my way.' That is not going to win anybody any converts.
There was something in the area of a 4.x% tuition hike for those of us (un)fortunate enough to be a part of Cornell University. Part of this money went to professors, who, despite making less than peers at other instuttions, still make more than anyone else in the area. The cost of living in Ithaca, NY is prohibitively low, such that they can get away with paying people with masters degrees in CS and IT $30-$40 for senior positions. The professors make a bundle, but the staff/employees do not; I've worked with them for 4 years now (I am a student) and the one thing I've heard from professors is 'We get paid plenty' and the one thing I've heard from Employees is 'I am going somewhere where they will pay me.'
Not that professors don't deserve a hefty salary, considering how difficult it is to land a real teaching (not just lecturing) post at a place like that.
I heard that Majestic was being shut down a couple weeks ago, but I saw the box at EB this past weekend. I can't help but wonder what happens to the poor sods who buy it now. . .
So this may be a dumb question, but I can't find much information about it anywhere. Did FF7/FF8 tank for the PC so much that they aren't going to do IX or X? I would prefer not to buy a PS2 just so I can play Final Fantasy games. Are there plans to port them that anyone knows of? Thanks muchly.:)
I particularly enjoyed Dave's comments on the commercial viability of the adventure genre. As an interactive fiction designer of the MUSH/MOO flavor, my own experience tends to support everything Dave said about the gaming market today.
I think a good deal of the 'problem' (if it is actually a problem) is that the audience is different. Back when the original Zorks came out -- I learned to read off of Zork I -- they were novelties. There was nothing like them. I suspect (but have no actual data) that people of all ages bought them, because home computers were new enough so that there was no generation gap yet. They really were immersive. It was and still is the best example of an on-line book where you influence the ending (remember when on-line meant 'on your computer,' in the early 80s?)
I've done a lot of work in the MUSH world with RPG systems and entirely free-form roleplaying. A quick jaunt around MUSH/MOO/MUD sites will tell you which games are popular, though. My impression is that MUDs with nothing but hack'n'slash have completely caved to things like Everquest, but MUDs were outside my expertise. The actual 'roleplaying' games, where there are no levels, no fighting, only storytelling, are numerous, but most of them are not successful. Their audience tends to be in the 14-20 age range, which makes these 'adventure' games an excellent tool for kids to learn how to write, but rarely can you find really good storytelling. The 'popular' games are based on franchises like Star Trek, Star Wars, or Anne McCaffrey's novels, and except in the case of the latter, typically have shiny buttons and 'game-like' systems that more resemble computer games than storytelling forums. These games try to be all things to all people, and inevitable fail, because a text environment simply cannot compete with Everquest or UO; their success depends entirely on the proper selection of a goal, of a forum that Everquest can't provide very well (like, for example, storytelling).
There have already been threads on how graphics have dominated the game market. So has the requirement for an online component. With the single exception of The Longest Journey, there have no 'adventure' games that aren't mostly dependent on graphics or gameplay rather than story. Myst, IMO, has been recycled and redone too many times to qualify on the same level as The Longest Journey does. And TLJ didn't sell very well in the US, unfortunately. I think the reason why games like UO and Everquest can't accomodate storytelling on a very real level -- and the reason that really good adventure games like TLJ and Zork can't ever be multiplayer and won't sell well is because a story is a very intimate process. It accomodates, at most, a small group. With a book, you're engaged by the characters in the story; in a MUSH or a Zork, you/are/ the character in the story. But the success of the story is dependent on your involvement in it, or your engagement by it, and Verant would never hire the enormous staff that would be necessary to weave the kinds of characters and plots together to make -every- PC involved in a good story; with that many people, even if you had the writers, you couldn't keep consistency across a universe that large. So they're reduced to 'dungeon hacks,' short-term plots with tangible rewards. To say nothing of the fact that you have know how to participate in a story without ruining it for everyone else. In MMORPGs, all of the structure that exists to do so exists in terms of 'your ability to kick the sh*t out of other players.' It'd be laughable to even try and turn something like Everquest into a viable dramatic setting, where people actually need REASONS for slaying one another.
...except that George Bernard Shaw died some fifty years ago, so I'm not sure how much help he'd be. Unless there's another Bernard Shaw I'm not aware of.
...but yes, it seems to me a hammer is often used for such marginally legal activities as house construction, wall hangings, beating one's own thumb senseless, and, of course, bludgeoning Slashdot editors.
On a slightly more serious note, a hammer (and a knife, and yes, even a gun) all have very obvious positive uses that everyone, even the EFF's grandmother, can understand. P2P does have good uses, but nearly ninety five percent of everyone I know uses it exclusively to break the law. I mean, really -- who honestly uses Gnutella for their resume? People use email for file sharing on a low-quantity bases; by their very nature, Napster and Gnutella are blobs of 'HERE LOOKIT WHAT I GOT TAKE IT ALL' that, while very convenient and even amazing, are, in fact, against the law.
I'm not arguing that the law is right, that the current form of RIAA music publication is a good one -- merely observing that Gnutella and Napster, as the largest 'public' examples of P2P file sharing, are infamous for their illegal uses, so yes, you do have to stop and ask 'does anyone actually use this thing and not break the law.' It is, using your analogy, closer to having to ask if anyone uses an Uzi for something good, rather than a hammer -- at least for the public.
Slashdot Mirror
If only we had a man on the inside!
Except that in some larger states, the state tax varies from county to county. For example, here in Ithaca, NY, the sales tax is about 8%, whereas in neighboring counties it is half that. Why? Because Cornell University is here, and the state wants to get as much money out of ivy-leaguers as it can.
I suppose it's still possible, but you'd have to basically subscribe to some central service that let you know any time one of the many tax-regions updated its percentages.
The short answer is 'Yes, mostly.' There are studies that show the percentages of various disabilities in the U.S. population.
(There are about three billion studies linked off of there as part of various projects -- always be careful when you ask an academic for statistics...)
Email me if you need more information and you're actually in a position to do what you say; I can put you in touch with people who can give you exactly the information you need.
Dear Mr. Clark,
I am a web developer for the Program on Employment and Disability at the School of Industrial Labor Relations at Cornell University. Web accessibility is a serious issue for us, and we try to keep abreast of innovative approaches to design so we can find that elusive place where universal accessibility meets intelligent and aesthetically pleasing layout. We recently spoke with Cynthia Waddell (one of 8 authors of Constructing Accessible Web Sites, also out fairly recently) on this subject, but I found her unwilling to commit to anything other than 'suggestions' rather than real technical solutions.
There are two sticky issues that I have encountered. The first is the notion of universal access. Mrs. Waddell indicated that, working with the W3C, she was coming up with a list of web sites that met Priorities I-III of the W3C WAI and were still aesthetically impressive (she did not have a list ready). As you are no doubt aware, many sites that tout universal access are themselves victims of poor design -- the problem of 'yes it's W3C/WAI compliant across the board, but it's ugly as sin.' Do you believe that a site can have a single interface that is truly 'universally' accessible, or do you believe that sites should have alternate interfaces? (the web equivalent of 'do we have a ramp and stairs or just a ramp?')
Along those lines, it is apparent to me that the accessibility guidelines are designed to be useful in a manner proportional to the lobbying power of disability rights groups. That is to say, blind people and deaf people, although they comprise extraordinarily small percentages of people with disabilities, have an enormous amount of political clout when compared to people with cognitive disorders -- ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, Autism, Schizo-affective disorder, Schizophrenia, et cetera. Because these disability groups lack the considerable power of a strong advocacy group, do you feel that they have been left by the wayside when it comes to Section 508 or WAI? (and do you personally believe that total-WAI compliance is necessary, or just Section 508?)
My apologies for several questions at once, but we take this issue very seriously here and your answers will go a long way to helping us do what we do to better suit the community that ILR serves.
Thanks so much,
Samuel W. Knowlton
Synopsis:
EARTH IS DOOMED!
Solution:
President (played by Morgan Freeman) meets with Special Emergency Response Team, discovers that all primary systems designed to prevent the Destruction of Earth are useless because they were all designed to shoot down missiles from Korea and China. Cabinet advisor recalls a brilliant, 'loose cannon' scientist/oil rig captain/handsome hollywood actor who 'just might be able to save us.'
Handsome actor collects racially-diverse crew including both genders and several archetypes. They build a giant drill, which breaks at the last minute. Handsome actor has flashback to childhood, when he accidentally made a sinkhole in the beach with a toy shovel and is able to dig the remaining 10 miles with his fingernails and teeth.
Team plants Nuclear Device Designed to Save Us All From Certain Death and detonates it, but of course it just makes things worse. Handsome actor inserts wrench into Earth's core, solving the problem, and then dies of radiation poisoning after making love to the attractive, sweedish scientist whose role (other than that) in the movie is as vague as her scientific credentials.
That's just my idea, though. I'm sure theirs will be totally different!
It certainly doesn't inhibit you from commenting on what book you like. It inhibits you from commenting on what makes a book good on a scale outside of 'well I liked it' or 'I thought it sucked' in a manner that educated people will listen to.
And before you correct me, no, of course it does not actually inhibit you from commenting. Obviously it didn't above.
I'm not coming from a position where I'm a published writer telling you how to criticize books, either; I haven't published anything. But I also haven't made comments like 'English professors are liars.' I haven't made a mass, sweeping generalization about a large group of educated people who have spent their professional careers digesting and publishing literature.
Nobody is going to stop you from giving an opinion on a book. But giving it in the context of 'all the people whose lives are dedicated to giving opinions on books are liars because they don't take me seriously because I haven't published anything' just makes you sound like a punk.
You don't have to agree with what they say. But your comment is the equivalent of swiping all the pieces off the chess board because you don't like how the other person plays. If you give a shit about making thoughtful comments about literature (and as I said above, your original comment is not without merit) then don't cloak it in ignorance and offensive generalizations.
I hate to jump on your comment since you're very right about what NJ is like and your point is a good one. But this is Slashdot, so I'll nitpick.
I grew up in Delaware and have several friends from Jersey (and New York). I've also studied several of the regional dialects, and there certainly are accents in New Jersey. They are similar, but not the same as New York accents. The classic 'Jersey' accent that most people think of is sometimes more a matter of tone than it is inflection. It shares some things with the Brooklyn accent, such as some vernacular -- 'forgetaboutit' and 'whaddyagonnado,' etc.
That said, there is, of course, no one Jersey accent, and perhaps what you meant to say was that the classic Jersey accent is not present in all of Jersey. I was fairly close to Camden. Although it's ugly as sin (approaching but not quite on par with Newark), I've never heard an accent in anyone I know from there. Nevertheless, I've heard variations on the Jersey accent in central and northern NJ, and it is prevalent enough to be 'The Jersey Accent.'
Excellent point about the gas though. And I absolutely agree that NJ is a decent place.
-SWK
The other replies have a good point -- there isn't a great deal of character development in something like the Foundation trilogy, or in short stories. And a 'good story' can substitute for interesting characters; you need to be drawn up in either what's going on, or, if what's going in isn't all the interesting, in who it is you're reading about. Asimov's books cover such a long time span that there is a lot of skipping from one set of characters to the next. So there isn't 'development' in the sense that you watch them grow, since they usually only exist for one third of one book, or less -- but those characters are interesting in the first place. Their actions in the story define them.
Anderson's characters are cardboard cut-outs of movie characters. He does not have any kind of interesting take on them. He does not make them interesting to me, either through their actions or their development.
As to your comment about the lies of professors -- with all due respect, who are you to criticize English professors? That's an honest question and not meant to be a flame; if you're published or have some particular achievement, by all means, let us know what those lies are. But as someone who has studied a fair amount of literature and drama under several professors, I'd be interested to know in what respect they are lying.
I agree with you that character development is not a cure-all and that development alone does not a good book or story make. I don't agree that having an affinity for it makes me a dweeb (I am, in fact, a dweeb for countless other reasons without character development coming into it).
Disclaimer: I have only read his original Star Wars novels -- not his novelization of the movies or anything else he's done.
That said, I found his books to be some of the worst Science Fiction I've encountered. I can't blame the setting, since Timothy Zahn did some wonderful things with the same universe. But his stories are predictable and generally nothing more than reincarnations of movie plots with a few variables switched around. His dialogue is cliche and he limits himself to a static interpretation of the characters -- it's as if somebody told him "Yes, you can write a Star Wars novel, but the characters from the movies had better be exactly the same people at the end of the book as they were at the beginning!"
It may be that he was stuck in regurgitation mode after having written novelizations of the of the movies (assuming it was him that did that, I haven't read the book versions of the movies). Unfortunately, that's the same mode I was in after reading his tripe.
I sincerely hope that some of his other work can prove me wrong, that the foulness of his SW novels is the exception and not the rule. But that's one heck of a black mark, if you ask me.
Disclaimer: I work for the state of New York at Cornell University and am/will be responsible for several sites that must, by either state, federal, or sponsor mandate, be accessible.
:P
Disclaimer disclaimer: I haven't started yet.
I'm surprised that there's been no mention of this yet, but there already are government standards for web site accessibility. They are not enforceable standards (unless you're a govt. agency), but they are quite thorough, and from the research I've done, about 85% of it is simply common sense and good web design practice anyway, with only a few additional considerations. IBM also has an accessibility initiative, as does w3c. Maintaining dual sites is certainly not required, and unless you're the sort of designer that puts flash in everything, it shouldn't be an enormous stretch to conform with them. (But then, it shouldn't be an enormous stretch to conform with w3c HTML standards either. Shoulda coulda woulda.)
Some links:
http://www.section508.gov -- Federal accessibility initiative.
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/ -- W3C Initiative
http://www-3.ibm.com/able/accessweb.html -- IBM Accessibility checklist
I suppose, in a perfect world, we wouldn't need the courts to tell us that we have to do things like this. I suspect that it is in most companies' best interests to have a site that everyone can use and from which everyone can make purchases. Even if the ADA lost, it's not exactly good press for your company when you have to go to court against them in the first place.
(I'm not saying that I disagree with the ruling; don't really have a qualified opinion on whether or not these standards should be law.)
I think the most interesting part of this article was how they chose their ISP. A bunch of young people that are committed to quality service and offer a lot of bandwidth (where "a lot" is obviously quite relative, now).
:)
And then they admit that, okay, actually they knows these guys personally, and they're really not that bad!
No offense to either HA or their ISP, but, er, let's hear it for unbiased journalism.
To Whom It May Concern,
Please convey my/our heartfelt apologies to the KDE League for this mix up. As many of you are aware, many corporations are headquartered in Delaware due to our tax laws and court system. This creates a burden on Delaware residents. In fact it creates a burden on all three Delaware residents. Just yesterday, I was talking with Ed, and he was trying his damndest (as usual) to attract a fourth resident, and he thought that some Linux news might be a good idea, since 'maybe we could get Delaware slashdotted,' and I had to remind him that Delaware already serves an honorable place in Slashdot as the dot.
We were further upset recently when we realized that our third resident, the governor, had died in 1973.
In closing, please accept the apologies of Ed and myself on behalf of the great state of Delaware -- the first state to sign the Constitution and the state that nearly everyone has 'driven through on the way to visit their parents.'
There have been a lot of questions to the effect of 'what makes Sean Connery better than Keanu.'
When you see a really bad actor on the screen, there are two possibille explanations for his or her bad acting.
The first -- and regrettably, the most common -- is bad directing and/or a bad script (okay, that's a reason and a half). Most would agree that Jeremy Irons is a fantastic actor, and yet he did 'Dungeons and Dragons.' I don't know how anyone could've made that role succeed. Sometimes actors just have to crap out lines. Some directors view that as being our job; stand where I tell you, say the line how I tell you. It happens.
Other actors are simply limited in range. Remember that professional acting is a very difficult business, with around 75-80% of actors out of work at any given time. Even when you land a great part, not only do you not want to be known for just one part, but that one job isn't going to make your career if you never get any other jobs after it. There are a few examples of actors who have made careers out of one role (Shatner), but still others who have kept their dynamic edge and jump on new opportunities in spite of sometimes being known for just one part -- look at Patrick Stewart. Anyone who only knows him as Pickard has never really seen his best stuff.
Keanu Reeves seems to me the sort of actor who enjoys a successful career and seems less concerned with the art. This is an observation but not a criticism. The decision to become a professional actor is not an easy one, as it is difficult (if not impossible) to maintain long-term relationships and/or a family when you're in the business. He has found his niche. He gets work. People gripe about him, and I personally think he has the same approach to every one of his characters, but I have to respect the man for succeeding in a business where it's hard to even get by.
Incidentally, and this is me soapboxing now, my favorite movie actors are almost always the ones who have done or still do an enormous amount of work on the stage (Derek Jacobi, Anthony Hopkins, et cetera). Reeves wouldn't survive ten minutes on a stage with the likes of them. But I don't think he cares.
I am currently working on a roleplaying (not roll-playing) incarnation of the Forgotten Realms, using a combination of rulesets and cooperative fiction aides (and the PennMUSH server platform).
Been in progress for over a year. Possibility of open-sourcing the entire thing (glad to talk about it, anyway). Interested in helping out? Email.
The FBI, CIA, or any government agency of that magnitude will not hire you if you answer 'yes' to 'have you ever done any drug ever in your life.' They may ask you if you smoke it a lot, and then if you've smoked it 15 times or more, and then if you've smoked it fewer than 15 times, just to make smoking it a few times sound harmless.
Unless you are otherwise an extremely important individual (crack cybersecurity agent/pashtun-speaking master of disguise and languages) then smoking pot once in your life and telling them about it will preclude you from service.
That said, I confess I'm quite fascinated by what animators can do these days and I don't begrudge them their work one bit. As many people have already pointed out, it's quite supplementary to what we do, although the work is a bit steadier
The Internet is for everyone except when it's just for Slashdot. (Poor, poor site...)
The only reason that children are taught to read is so that they can read the Qu'ran
I can't speak to the real reason that children are taught to read, but it isn't to read the Qu'ran. A written copy of the Qu'ran is not considered an 'official' Qur'an -- the real Qur'an is only spoken, passed down through an oral tradition that must be traceable back to the Prophet himself through anyone who has the whole thing memorized (like the people who run Islamic religious schools). Granted, there are over a billion people in the world who accept the Qur'an as the Word of God, so I'm sure there are a lot of people who do learn to read by reading it, but much of Islam teaches it orally and by rote memorization of oral repitition.
I agree that it would be nice if everyone didn't use Word, and did use an open standard that we could take apart, etc. etc.
.doc or who asks you to submit them in the manner that Stallman suggests is not going to make that happen. It is going to further marginalize the open source community as a bunch of people who say things like 'could you please not use this bloated, secret format and instead use the internationally accepted one of plain text.'
But sending a message to everyone who sends you a Word
Plain text? Plain text doesn't cut it. People want fonts. People want alignment. The solution to defeating a bloated, proprietary word processor is not to abandon word processors. Suggesting to any technophobe that they should use plain text instead of Word is going to cause a very hostile reaction; not only have these people shelled out money for MS Office that you are now telling them not to use, but take a look at their face when they open up Notepad (or Notepad+, or get them to use Vi. Ha.) "Where are all the buttons?"
People need to be shown the advantages of the end-result RMS is suggesting. His sample emails have the tone of 'You are insulting me by sending me this arcane, bloated technology. How dare you. Do it my way.' That is not going to win anybody any converts.
There was something in the area of a 4.x% tuition hike for those of us (un)fortunate enough to be a part of Cornell University. Part of this money went to professors, who, despite making less than peers at other instuttions, still make more than anyone else in the area. The cost of living in Ithaca, NY is prohibitively low, such that they can get away with paying people with masters degrees in CS and IT $30-$40 for senior positions. The professors make a bundle, but the staff/employees do not; I've worked with them for 4 years now (I am a student) and the one thing I've heard from professors is 'We get paid plenty' and the one thing I've heard from Employees is 'I am going somewhere where they will pay me.'
Not that professors don't deserve a hefty salary, considering how difficult it is to land a real teaching (not just lecturing) post at a place like that.
I heard that Majestic was being shut down a couple weeks ago, but I saw the box at EB this past weekend. I can't help but wonder what happens to the poor sods who buy it now. . .
So this may be a dumb question, but I can't find much information about it anywhere. Did FF7/FF8 tank for the PC so much that they aren't going to do IX or X? I would prefer not to buy a PS2 just so I can play Final Fantasy games. Are there plans to port them that anyone knows of? Thanks muchly. :)
I particularly enjoyed Dave's comments on the commercial viability of the adventure genre. As an interactive fiction designer of the MUSH/MOO flavor, my own experience tends to support everything Dave said about the gaming market today.
/are/ the character in the story. But the success of the story is dependent on your involvement in it, or your engagement by it, and Verant would never hire the enormous staff that would be necessary to weave the kinds of characters and plots together to make -every- PC involved in a good story; with that many people, even if you had the writers, you couldn't keep consistency across a universe that large. So they're reduced to 'dungeon hacks,' short-term plots with tangible rewards. To say nothing of the fact that you have know how to participate in a story without ruining it for everyone else. In MMORPGs, all of the structure that exists to do so exists in terms of 'your ability to kick the sh*t out of other players.' It'd be laughable to even try and turn something like Everquest into a viable dramatic setting, where people actually need REASONS for slaying one another.
I think a good deal of the 'problem' (if it is actually a problem) is that the audience is different. Back when the original Zorks came out -- I learned to read off of Zork I -- they were novelties. There was nothing like them. I suspect (but have no actual data) that people of all ages bought them, because home computers were new enough so that there was no generation gap yet. They really were immersive. It was and still is the best example of an on-line book where you influence the ending (remember when on-line meant 'on your computer,' in the early 80s?)
I've done a lot of work in the MUSH world with RPG systems and entirely free-form roleplaying. A quick jaunt around MUSH/MOO/MUD sites will tell you which games are popular, though. My impression is that MUDs with nothing but hack'n'slash have completely caved to things like Everquest, but MUDs were outside my expertise. The actual 'roleplaying' games, where there are no levels, no fighting, only storytelling, are numerous, but most of them are not successful. Their audience tends to be in the 14-20 age range, which makes these 'adventure' games an excellent tool for kids to learn how to write, but rarely can you find really good storytelling. The 'popular' games are based on franchises like Star Trek, Star Wars, or Anne McCaffrey's novels, and except in the case of the latter, typically have shiny buttons and 'game-like' systems that more resemble computer games than storytelling forums. These games try to be all things to all people, and inevitable fail, because a text environment simply cannot compete with Everquest or UO; their success depends entirely on the proper selection of a goal, of a forum that Everquest can't provide very well (like, for example, storytelling).
There have already been threads on how graphics have dominated the game market. So has the requirement for an online component. With the single exception of The Longest Journey, there have no 'adventure' games that aren't mostly dependent on graphics or gameplay rather than story. Myst, IMO, has been recycled and redone too many times to qualify on the same level as The Longest Journey does. And TLJ didn't sell very well in the US, unfortunately. I think the reason why games like UO and Everquest can't accomodate storytelling on a very real level -- and the reason that really good adventure games like TLJ and Zork can't ever be multiplayer and won't sell well is because a story is a very intimate process. It accomodates, at most, a small group. With a book, you're engaged by the characters in the story; in a MUSH or a Zork, you
end tirade.
...except that George Bernard Shaw died some fifty years ago, so I'm not sure how much help he'd be. Unless there's another Bernard Shaw I'm not aware of.
...but yes, it seems to me a hammer is often used for such marginally legal activities as house construction, wall hangings, beating one's own thumb senseless, and, of course, bludgeoning Slashdot editors.
On a slightly more serious note, a hammer (and a knife, and yes, even a gun) all have very obvious positive uses that everyone, even the EFF's grandmother, can understand. P2P does have good uses, but nearly ninety five percent of everyone I know uses it exclusively to break the law. I mean, really -- who honestly uses Gnutella for their resume? People use email for file sharing on a low-quantity bases; by their very nature, Napster and Gnutella are blobs of 'HERE LOOKIT WHAT I GOT TAKE IT ALL' that, while very convenient and even amazing, are, in fact, against the law.
I'm not arguing that the law is right, that the current form of RIAA music publication is a good one -- merely observing that Gnutella and Napster, as the largest 'public' examples of P2P file sharing, are infamous for their illegal uses, so yes, you do have to stop and ask 'does anyone actually use this thing and not break the law.' It is, using your analogy, closer to having to ask if anyone uses an Uzi for something good, rather than a hammer -- at least for the public.