I found Robot Chicken's sketch of Ponda Baba's Bad Day hilarious. Laugh for ten minutes hilarious. Re-enact for my friends hilarious.
Perfect! Second post, looks like, and you've cited the Ponda Baba bit... That's one of my favorites, too - and to me really shows the potential of what Seth Green's talking about in the article - the mundane aspects of the characters' lives...
It's not as if handing over the reins to corporate interests ruined radio - so why would it ruin the Internet?
Currently listening to: Ke$ha - Tik Tok
Man, I am so sick of people dragging out that tired, old junk. I mean, so you don't like Kesha, fine. But putting a dollar sign in her name to make your point is just annoying and childish. "Oh, yeah, Ke$ha's just in it for the money dollar signs dollar signs"... Blah, whatever... I thought it had become clear around here, years ago, that sort of thing was just considered passe...
More like the companies had their golden goose and wanted to sell the eggs to people who could afford them, but the government stepped in to kill the goose and distribute the gold more fairly.
No, I think it's more like the golden goose laid a platinum egg, and nobody could figure out how the golden goose's body was able to fabricate platinum from a diet of grass and insects - and then people started wondering how it could fabricate gold, for that matter, but meanwhile the goose was walking across the road, and stopping traffic, because nobody wanted to run it over, but they didn't exactly want to sit there all day, either, so they beeped at it but it mostly ignored them and just hissed at them a little...
That could also be a good rule - but of course, someone who knows a bunch of two-letter words would still have an advantage, as this allows you to play one word parallel to another. (Even if you don't get points for it, it still gives you more places to play.)
So let me get this straight - if I memorize all the 2-letter words, then I can get my 50 point "bingo" bonus on a six tile play instead of seven? Sign me up for that!
(I do agree that it's a bit of a problem when people study the game to the point that they learn useless vocabulary just for the sake of laying down five or six two-letter words in a single play... Though I think this sort of problem is unavoidable. Whatever the conditions of the game, people will find ways to exploit them. Mario Kart penalizes whoever's leading the race, hence smart players trail the leader until the end of the race... I think a better solution to the two-letter problem might be to just print all the two-letter words on a handy reference card and give copies to all players.)
The correct answer to "Why didn't the eagles just fly it in?" is "Because it's a story, if the eagles just flew it in there would be no story."
The answer is not a long winded apologist rant about how that never would have worked, because it would have.
I think I've made a pretty good case for why it wouldn't. They'd be seen far in advance, and even if they couldn't be shot down on approach, their destination would have been worked out. They'd have to land on the mountain in order to be sure of disposing of the ring, and they'd be met with 10,000 orcs.
You can call it an apologist rant or whatever - and really, what could possibly be more dorky than arguing plot points in LoTR? But I hear this complaint about the plot all the time, and I don't buy it. If they tried to fly into Mordor, Mordor would be put on defensive footing and their little run to the mountain would be doomed.
The Nazgul didn't get flying mounts in the beginning because they weren't going into combat. They were moving, to the extent possible, in secret. They didn't need flying lizard things, and if they had set out on flying lizard things in the first place, then everyone within sight of their flight path would have been immediately alerted to their actions.
But Tolkien's notes said that the idea of mounting Nazgul on the Fell Beasts was completely new at the time of the War of the Ring (these still-unpublished notes, kept at Marquette University, are excerpted in Hammond and Scull's The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion).
It still doesn't mean that they couldn't have been mustered in time to drive off the eagles.
At any rate, sitting in Rivendell trying to decide whether to summon the eagles (who might not come) for a head-on charge straight for the mountain, neither Gandalf nor any of the others there could have known what might have been awaiting them had they tried such a reckless move straight into the heart of the enemy's territory. They also didn't yet know that Denethor was coming under Sauron's control, and would have possibly, unwittingly provided early warning via the palantir. They would have sacrificed any hope of secrecy - and secrecy was the one thing that gave them hope of success.
Gandalf himself also didn't dare to bear the ring - this means Frodo would have had to come with. As the burden began to weaken him, could they really trust that he wouldn't drop it, or fall? If they lost the ring from that height they'd never find it again.
And it still leaves the problem of what happens when they actually reach Mordor. They'd be seen in advance. There's a fair chance Sauron would know they had the ring with them, and with no secrecy to their movements a good chance he'd figure out what they were up to. To dispose of the ring they'd still have to land on the mountain and drop the ring in personally - just tossing it down would carry too great a risk of it landing on rock instead of in lava. So they'd be met with Sauron's entire army.
Huh? I can touch type just fine on my netbook (an IdeaPad S10e).
It should be noted that the IdeaPad S10 has perhaps the best keyboard of any netbook out there.
I mean, I type pretty well on my EEE 901... the keyboard has some slight reliability issues and I can't always find the right function key quickly, but I'm content with it. Before I bought the machine, I was trying to decide between the 901 and an Ideapad S10. I liked the S10's Expresscard slot and superior keyboard (though I hadn't tried the machine yet, I'd heard good things about the keyboard) but ultimately went with the 901 on the basis of superior battery life. (S10 wasn't yet available with a 6-cell battery included - you had to buy the S10 and then the separate 6-cell battery)
Later on, I got to type on an S10, on display in Radio Shack. Everything they said about the machine's keyboard is true, it's excellent. In retrospect, the S10 probably would have been a better choice for me, but I'm still happy with my 901.
I know you're riffing on CmdrTaco's old post about the iPod, but honestly this is exactly how I feel about the ipad...
Well, I actually don't care about flash too much. And I don't know (or care) if this device is going to be a huge hit, if it's going to lead a renaissance of tablet computing, or if it'll be more or less a flop. I just know it's not something I'm particularly interested in, not something that would be terribly useful to me. I want to have a keyboard. I want to have a self-standing form factor. If I ever get a tablet computer (which is an appealing idea) I want it to have a Wacom-style tablet built in, not a touchscreen. (At least, not -just- a touchscreen...) But still I would need to be able to stand the thing up sometimes and type on a keyboard. I think the convertible models are the most appealing option to me, right now, as far as tablets are concerned.
My netbook is horridly slow - largely because of the flash drive, I think... and I think the iPad would perform a lot better as a web browser than my netbook as a web browser... But do you know what I do on the web more than anything else? I type. I read, and write on, forums. I think of stupid shit to post on Facebook, or comments on Slashdot. I update my own websites... And I also use my netbook to write code. So even slow as it is, my netbook is still more useful to me than an ipad.
I have no interest in the ipad - but fans of the device should take note that I don't presume to tell them that they shouldn't like it.
Re:"Grandma's hunt and peck"?
on
iPad Review
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· Score: 1
Where do you guys find your grandma's?
My mother, age 69, is a grandma. She worked as a secretary for many years, as did many women of her generation. She touch-types wicked fast. I'm sure there are plenty more where she came from.
Yeah, remember the hot young women in "Mad Men" (i.e. young working women in the early 1960s) would be in their 70s or 80s now. If they worked an office job, they probably had to be able to type and take dictation - possibly not even on an electric typewriter... (i.e. typing that fast on a keyboard with deep keystrokes, where each keystroke has to have enough force and velocity to hammer a small metal letter into an ink ribbon... And accurate enough to avoid too many hard-to-correct mistakes...)
Of course, time does take its toll - I couldn't personally tell you what arthritis combined with 20+ years of neglecting those skills would do. I imagine it's one of those skills you wouldn't forget, though I don't know if it would necessarily still be a wise thing to attempt at full speed.
Ok, so we give the eagles some under armor for the stray arrow, but for the most part I'd imagine they could fly higher than the average orc fired arrow. Plus they'd have the agility to dodge larger projectiles that take time to aim.
If the sky is filled with a sufficient number of projectiles, there would be no place to dodge to... And they still have to be able to fly, which (ignoring weight issues) means there has to be plenty of clearance for them to move. So on their approach to the mountain (flying low enough to accurately deliver a ring into the lava - not just onto a ledge somewhere) they'd be subject to thousands of arrows, which they couldn't hope to survive. The eagles couldn't make it in safely until Sauron's forces were seriously weakened.
The Nazgul didn't get flying mounts til the elves drowned their horses in the river.
The Nazgul didn't get flying mounts in the beginning because they weren't going into combat. They were moving, to the extent possible, in secret. They didn't need flying lizard things, and if they had set out on flying lizard things in the first place, then everyone within sight of their flight path would have been immediately alerted to their actions.
If Sauron had looked to the Northwest and seen a dozen eagles flying his way, he would have sent out the flying lizard things immediately - and, knowing that a force like that couldn't be a threat to him in a straight fight, he probably would have worked out the enemy's plan, too, and fortified the mountain.
To some extent what you say is true - but if one approaches the problem intelligently, a review can still yield useful information. A lot of reactions will be very common across a large portion of the audience - and certain technical matters of how the piece comes together can be judged at a purely objective level. In the context of a book, these technical matters could include the soundness of the plot (i.e. any glaring plot holes) and how well the characters are presented and developed...
This book is 3 words over and over again: MY LIFE IS BAD.
It's hardly surprising. The tree referenced in the title is Ailanthus altissima - a tree foolishly nicknamed "The Tree of Heaven" (why??) To me, they are known, and always shall be known, as "Accursed Devil Trees". (We have one in the backyard and every now and then more sprout up... We called them "Devil Trees" before we identified them - so imagine our surprise to learn that they're called "Tree of Heaven"...)
So why the hate campaign against the Devil Trees? A couple reasons. First off, they stink. Literally, I mean. They smell bad, especially if you cut them or handle them. Second, they spread like wildfire... Particularly in areas where there's not a lot of established tree growth. One mature or semi-mature devil tree will send out root suckers to start more new devil trees. And once they sprout, they grow quickly. We had one that grew to about ten feet tall in about six months. It doesn't take long for new growth to grow tall and strong. And if you cut them, they only spread themselves more aggressively...
They're basically obnoxious, disgusting, and aggressively invasive. If you look around at the sides of highways and in people's yards and so on, they are very common. Fortunately, this is why we have herbicides.
I find your lack of artistic appreciation disturbing.
It's just really not half as impressive a project as it sounded from the headline, is all. Of course, Stormtrooper costuming has already been done to death but because of the cost of the suits it's still pretty uncommon - and someone who took the time every day, for a year, to don their armor and take some kind of photo would be a really cool project. And the headline's mention of "photojournalism", to me, implies even more than that - like some kind of attempt to incorporate these Stormtroopers into events of relevance... Or a documentary photo project into which he'd injected Stormtroopers. Wouldn't that be fun? See a Stormtrooper browsing around in an art gallery. Why is he there? Is he making some statement about art? Or is he just there to confound all the people who think that anything out of the ordinary must be interpreted as some kind of statement? Or maybe the Stormtrooper just really likes this exhibit...
But, no, he's just got a couple action figures and he's taking pictures with toys and pets and things. The small photo collection bored me, really. Good photos, but kind of dull. Oh, look, a kitty, and there's Eeyore. Oh, that silly Stormtrooper is wearing Eeyore's tail. Wackiness ensues... ho-hum. I haven't looked at the full collection yet, I guess it's possible there's something more interesting in there.
My artistic appreciation isn't something I dole out to anything artistic. I have to appreciate it, you know? This thing just really doesn't rate high on my scale. It's not interesting on a technical level or (IMO) a creative level. No construction, no animation, just scenes of off-the-shelf stuff on a plain background.
According to French Wikipedia, that'd be " Je vais ou je vas mourir, l'un et l'autre se dit ou se disent." It also says the story is made up.
Well, it's not really made up, just embellished a bit. I'm sure he would have said that if he'd had time. What he actually said was "Je vais ou je vas ACK" - but that didn't make for a very good final quote so they extrapolated a bit.
Slashdot Mirror
I found Robot Chicken's sketch of Ponda Baba's Bad Day hilarious. Laugh for ten minutes hilarious. Re-enact for my friends hilarious.
Perfect! Second post, looks like, and you've cited the Ponda Baba bit... That's one of my favorites, too - and to me really shows the potential of what Seth Green's talking about in the article - the mundane aspects of the characters' lives...
Its a Trap!
Wow! Admiral Ackbar!
I mean, I guess you're doing a Yoda-mode version of "do not want"?
But "do not want" was already from Star Wars...
It's not as if handing over the reins to corporate interests ruined radio - so why would it ruin the Internet?
Currently listening to: Ke$ha - Tik Tok
Man, I am so sick of people dragging out that tired, old junk. I mean, so you don't like Kesha, fine. But putting a dollar sign in her name to make your point is just annoying and childish. "Oh, yeah, Ke$ha's just in it for the money dollar signs dollar signs"... Blah, whatever... I thought it had become clear around here, years ago, that sort of thing was just considered passe...
Since this is the "information super highway", maybe it should get the same level of government control as the Federal Highway System.
It's a figure of speech, dude, don't take it too seriously. :)
How is the internet not necessary to function in daily life.
Seriously? Do you eat it, or breathe it, or take shelter in it when the weather gets bad?
I do, literally! And by "literally" I mean "figuratively".
More like the companies had their golden goose and wanted to sell the eggs to people who could afford them, but the government stepped in to kill the goose and distribute the gold more fairly.
No, I think it's more like the golden goose laid a platinum egg, and nobody could figure out how the golden goose's body was able to fabricate platinum from a diet of grass and insects - and then people started wondering how it could fabricate gold, for that matter, but meanwhile the goose was walking across the road, and stopping traffic, because nobody wanted to run it over, but they didn't exactly want to sit there all day, either, so they beeped at it but it mostly ignored them and just hissed at them a little...
I do pull it out every other weekend to play with either the girlfriend or room mates.
Good plan, I'm sure keeping a regular schedule like that is great for keeping people from getting frustrated.
or not give points for two letter words
That could also be a good rule - but of course, someone who knows a bunch of two-letter words would still have an advantage, as this allows you to play one word parallel to another. (Even if you don't get points for it, it still gives you more places to play.)
So let me get this straight - if I memorize all the 2-letter words, then I can get my 50 point "bingo" bonus on a six tile play instead of seven? Sign me up for that!
(I do agree that it's a bit of a problem when people study the game to the point that they learn useless vocabulary just for the sake of laying down five or six two-letter words in a single play... Though I think this sort of problem is unavoidable. Whatever the conditions of the game, people will find ways to exploit them. Mario Kart penalizes whoever's leading the race, hence smart players trail the leader until the end of the race... I think a better solution to the two-letter problem might be to just print all the two-letter words on a handy reference card and give copies to all players.)
The correct answer to "Why didn't the eagles just fly it in?" is "Because it's a story, if the eagles just flew it in there would be no story."
The answer is not a long winded apologist rant about how that never would have worked, because it would have.
I think I've made a pretty good case for why it wouldn't. They'd be seen far in advance, and even if they couldn't be shot down on approach, their destination would have been worked out. They'd have to land on the mountain in order to be sure of disposing of the ring, and they'd be met with 10,000 orcs.
You can call it an apologist rant or whatever - and really, what could possibly be more dorky than arguing plot points in LoTR? But I hear this complaint about the plot all the time, and I don't buy it. If they tried to fly into Mordor, Mordor would be put on defensive footing and their little run to the mountain would be doomed.
But Tolkien's notes said that the idea of mounting Nazgul on the Fell Beasts was completely new at the time of the War of the Ring (these still-unpublished notes, kept at Marquette University, are excerpted in Hammond and Scull's The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion).
It still doesn't mean that they couldn't have been mustered in time to drive off the eagles.
At any rate, sitting in Rivendell trying to decide whether to summon the eagles (who might not come) for a head-on charge straight for the mountain, neither Gandalf nor any of the others there could have known what might have been awaiting them had they tried such a reckless move straight into the heart of the enemy's territory. They also didn't yet know that Denethor was coming under Sauron's control, and would have possibly, unwittingly provided early warning via the palantir. They would have sacrificed any hope of secrecy - and secrecy was the one thing that gave them hope of success.
Gandalf himself also didn't dare to bear the ring - this means Frodo would have had to come with. As the burden began to weaken him, could they really trust that he wouldn't drop it, or fall? If they lost the ring from that height they'd never find it again.
And it still leaves the problem of what happens when they actually reach Mordor. They'd be seen in advance. There's a fair chance Sauron would know they had the ring with them, and with no secrecy to their movements a good chance he'd figure out what they were up to. To dispose of the ring they'd still have to land on the mountain and drop the ring in personally - just tossing it down would carry too great a risk of it landing on rock instead of in lava. So they'd be met with Sauron's entire army.
Huh? I can touch type just fine on my netbook (an IdeaPad S10e).
It should be noted that the IdeaPad S10 has perhaps the best keyboard of any netbook out there.
I mean, I type pretty well on my EEE 901... the keyboard has some slight reliability issues and I can't always find the right function key quickly, but I'm content with it. Before I bought the machine, I was trying to decide between the 901 and an Ideapad S10. I liked the S10's Expresscard slot and superior keyboard (though I hadn't tried the machine yet, I'd heard good things about the keyboard) but ultimately went with the 901 on the basis of superior battery life. (S10 wasn't yet available with a 6-cell battery included - you had to buy the S10 and then the separate 6-cell battery)
Later on, I got to type on an S10, on display in Radio Shack. Everything they said about the machine's keyboard is true, it's excellent. In retrospect, the S10 probably would have been a better choice for me, but I'm still happy with my 901.
No Flash. Less usability than a netbook. Lame
I know you're riffing on CmdrTaco's old post about the iPod, but honestly this is exactly how I feel about the ipad...
Well, I actually don't care about flash too much. And I don't know (or care) if this device is going to be a huge hit, if it's going to lead a renaissance of tablet computing, or if it'll be more or less a flop. I just know it's not something I'm particularly interested in, not something that would be terribly useful to me. I want to have a keyboard. I want to have a self-standing form factor. If I ever get a tablet computer (which is an appealing idea) I want it to have a Wacom-style tablet built in, not a touchscreen. (At least, not -just- a touchscreen...) But still I would need to be able to stand the thing up sometimes and type on a keyboard. I think the convertible models are the most appealing option to me, right now, as far as tablets are concerned.
My netbook is horridly slow - largely because of the flash drive, I think... and I think the iPad would perform a lot better as a web browser than my netbook as a web browser... But do you know what I do on the web more than anything else? I type. I read, and write on, forums. I think of stupid shit to post on Facebook, or comments on Slashdot. I update my own websites... And I also use my netbook to write code. So even slow as it is, my netbook is still more useful to me than an ipad.
I have no interest in the ipad - but fans of the device should take note that I don't presume to tell them that they shouldn't like it.
Where do you guys find your grandma's?
My mother, age 69, is a grandma. She worked as a secretary for many years, as did many women of her generation. She touch-types wicked fast. I'm sure there are plenty more where she came from.
Yeah, remember the hot young women in "Mad Men" (i.e. young working women in the early 1960s) would be in their 70s or 80s now. If they worked an office job, they probably had to be able to type and take dictation - possibly not even on an electric typewriter... (i.e. typing that fast on a keyboard with deep keystrokes, where each keystroke has to have enough force and velocity to hammer a small metal letter into an ink ribbon... And accurate enough to avoid too many hard-to-correct mistakes...)
Of course, time does take its toll - I couldn't personally tell you what arthritis combined with 20+ years of neglecting those skills would do. I imagine it's one of those skills you wouldn't forget, though I don't know if it would necessarily still be a wise thing to attempt at full speed.
Ok, so we give the eagles some under armor for the stray arrow, but for the most part I'd imagine they could fly higher than the average orc fired arrow. Plus they'd have the agility to dodge larger projectiles that take time to aim.
If the sky is filled with a sufficient number of projectiles, there would be no place to dodge to... And they still have to be able to fly, which (ignoring weight issues) means there has to be plenty of clearance for them to move. So on their approach to the mountain (flying low enough to accurately deliver a ring into the lava - not just onto a ledge somewhere) they'd be subject to thousands of arrows, which they couldn't hope to survive. The eagles couldn't make it in safely until Sauron's forces were seriously weakened.
The Nazgul didn't get flying mounts til the elves drowned their horses in the river.
The Nazgul didn't get flying mounts in the beginning because they weren't going into combat. They were moving, to the extent possible, in secret. They didn't need flying lizard things, and if they had set out on flying lizard things in the first place, then everyone within sight of their flight path would have been immediately alerted to their actions.
If Sauron had looked to the Northwest and seen a dozen eagles flying his way, he would have sent out the flying lizard things immediately - and, knowing that a force like that couldn't be a threat to him in a straight fight, he probably would have worked out the enemy's plan, too, and fortified the mountain.
To some extent what you say is true - but if one approaches the problem intelligently, a review can still yield useful information. A lot of reactions will be very common across a large portion of the audience - and certain technical matters of how the piece comes together can be judged at a purely objective level. In the context of a book, these technical matters could include the soundness of the plot (i.e. any glaring plot holes) and how well the characters are presented and developed...
And then they use eagles to fly back. Why couldn't they just use...GAH!!!
I think the 30,000 orcs with bows and arrows, flying ringwraiths, etc. would have shot them down. :)
"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn" by Betty Smith:
This book is 3 words over and over again: MY LIFE IS BAD.
It's hardly surprising. The tree referenced in the title is Ailanthus altissima - a tree foolishly nicknamed "The Tree of Heaven" (why??) To me, they are known, and always shall be known, as "Accursed Devil Trees". (We have one in the backyard and every now and then more sprout up... We called them "Devil Trees" before we identified them - so imagine our surprise to learn that they're called "Tree of Heaven"...)
So why the hate campaign against the Devil Trees? A couple reasons. First off, they stink. Literally, I mean. They smell bad, especially if you cut them or handle them. Second, they spread like wildfire... Particularly in areas where there's not a lot of established tree growth. One mature or semi-mature devil tree will send out root suckers to start more new devil trees. And once they sprout, they grow quickly. We had one that grew to about ten feet tall in about six months. It doesn't take long for new growth to grow tall and strong. And if you cut them, they only spread themselves more aggressively...
They're basically obnoxious, disgusting, and aggressively invasive. If you look around at the sides of highways and in people's yards and so on, they are very common. Fortunately, this is why we have herbicides.
So now we're trying to rick-roll enemy pilots in dog fights?
No, it's a cyber-invasion. The weapon unleashes a flood of A/S/L requests.
Hey moron, compare UIDs. He's been here a ltitle longer than u
Oooh, what a burn...
I find your lack of artistic appreciation disturbing.
It's just really not half as impressive a project as it sounded from the headline, is all. Of course, Stormtrooper costuming has already been done to death but because of the cost of the suits it's still pretty uncommon - and someone who took the time every day, for a year, to don their armor and take some kind of photo would be a really cool project. And the headline's mention of "photojournalism", to me, implies even more than that - like some kind of attempt to incorporate these Stormtroopers into events of relevance... Or a documentary photo project into which he'd injected Stormtroopers. Wouldn't that be fun? See a Stormtrooper browsing around in an art gallery. Why is he there? Is he making some statement about art? Or is he just there to confound all the people who think that anything out of the ordinary must be interpreted as some kind of statement? Or maybe the Stormtrooper just really likes this exhibit...
But, no, he's just got a couple action figures and he's taking pictures with toys and pets and things. The small photo collection bored me, really. Good photos, but kind of dull. Oh, look, a kitty, and there's Eeyore. Oh, that silly Stormtrooper is wearing Eeyore's tail. Wackiness ensues... ho-hum. I haven't looked at the full collection yet, I guess it's possible there's something more interesting in there.
My artistic appreciation isn't something I dole out to anything artistic. I have to appreciate it, you know? This thing just really doesn't rate high on my scale. It's not interesting on a technical level or (IMO) a creative level. No construction, no animation, just scenes of off-the-shelf stuff on a plain background.
Steve!
According to French Wikipedia, that'd be " Je vais ou je vas mourir, l'un et l'autre se dit ou se disent." It also says the story is made up.
Well, it's not really made up, just embellished a bit. I'm sure he would have said that if he'd had time. What he actually said was "Je vais ou je vas ACK" - but that didn't make for a very good final quote so they extrapolated a bit.
What's an "Ip", and why does it need a switch?
It's a historical mistake. The town founder was an electronics hobbyist, and very fond of dipswitches.