The effect of wearing the Ring was a bit over the top. If I were Bilbo and that happened when I put
on the Ring, I'd have thrown it away long before finding out that it made you invisible. And I'd
have never worn it for as long as Frodo does near the end.
In the Hobbit, there was never any mention of the shadow world or whatever--presumably Sauron was not so active/strong then? I don't know. If there is a flaw in that, it's true to Tolkein, because he never gave any indication that there was anything eerie for Bilbo.
Maybe I'm just a shameless apologist. I thought that the "ring on" effect was one of the best parts of the movie. Also, remember that Sauron is alwys trying to get him to put it on, and keep it on, right? So I don't think there's anything to complain about there.
I haven't read the books in more than ten years, though, so I can probably be safely ignored.
I can't imagine a film adaptation of perhaps the best book ever written being done better. The first 45
minutes are a bit slow going, but once the Fellowship starts coming together I just didn't want to blink.
Hey, now, that's nothing to complain about--that's accuracy. The first part of the book is also a bit of a slog-through to read. I'm sure they were just trying to reproduce the effect.
..."Stop feeding the mouth that bites you. Boycott RIAA and MPAA products."
'cept I don't think there are many people that believe in it enough not to buy the LoTR DVD.
Hey, now THERE's an idea--maybe we as geeks (which might be enough of a market segment (for LoTR) to be paid attention to) start a campaign to ask whoever is going to put out the DVD not to put any of these annoying "we have decided that every time you put this in you will watch the following" sections. And if they don't comply, don't buy it.
Or would that be too much like standing up for what we believe in instead of just ranting about it?
...were found the remains of a primitive umbrella, which had not yet evolved the ability to retract. It was thought that this might have led to the untimely demise of the umbrella's owner, due to the bad-luck factor inherent in bringing such a thing in the cave.
heh, yes, I get the joke, but thought I would point out the irony, too:
(From perl-foundation.org's front page, emphasis mine)
BlackStar, Morgan Stanley, VA Linux, Manning Publications, O'Reilly and Associates, and
Stonehenge Consulting also made major contributions [to the orginal Damian Conway grant].
...a la the Damian Conway purchase. Anyone in the right place to set up a little "hey, sorry our country hassled you, here's something for your trouble" fund? Or am I just being naieve thinking, well, among other things, that I can spell naieve?
But haven't you heard? "gathering accolades for what is basically a simple refinement of a very well-known technique" is all the rage. Except they usually spell "accolade" p-a-t-e-n-t.
Wasn't criticizing your post, btw, just taking the opportunity to be funny.
any not only that, but if you do in in Perl you have a much better chance of being done in less than 500. Many have been the pages of C code I've seen go by that could be replaced wtih a few lines of Perl.
Perl is no different from any other technology in this regard. that for a large project, it is essential to set standards
Yes on 2, no on 1. What you said earlier:
Perl provides a lot of freedom to solve problems in the way most suitable to you.
is true, and it it more true about Perl than it is about many other languages. I have often asked myself, "Why do I love Perl so much? Why is it that every time I come back to this language it's like falling in love again?". And a big part of the answer is that it is so expressive (Larry designed it this way, being a lover of spoken language). I don't feel forced into coding things in a particular way. Also, as I grow in my understanding of the language I find that I can express myself more efficiently and concisely.
I really love Perl. But as an honest observer I have to admit that there are consequences to this freedom, which, again, I think undeniably exceeds that of other languages. If you need to iterate over every line of an array, for example, how are you going to do it? In many languages there is only one way that the average person would think of coding it.
In Perl, you might do a for (or foreach), with a named dummy variable (or you could take advantage of the fact that $_ is automatically assigned), followed by a brace-delimited block. Or, maybe you will be able to do the guts of the block in one line and you can just tack the "for" on the end as a statement modifier. Maybe you think "map" is the way to go. Maybe you're trying to learn about map and want to see if it works in this situation.
I love Perl precisely because it allows all of this--freedom, in my opinion, is a wonderful thing. But the existence of freedom and the extent of that freedom guarantee that there is going to be more variability in the way things are coded.
I'm not saying that you can't use it in groups or anything like that, but I think it is incorrect to say that it is no different from any other language in that respect. When people are free, they are going to wander further from each other than they would if they were not free to. I still think freedom is good. And I think that we should be responsible with our freedom. But that doesn't change the fact that Perl gives you more freedom, and that this fact has implications.
THey already split the iMacs (and their other products) into around three configurations ("fast", "faster", "fastest" or "good", "better", "best"--I'm sure/.ers love those designations:).
They may just add a flat panel config at the high end.
I have an iMac (the current Graphite), and I really like the small footprint, etc. It would be even better if it were smaller and even quieter.
And it will probably look cool. I know it's hard for a geek to swallow that, but people like stuff that looks cool.
I would bet that they will leave the crt version up there--maybe it will be that only the low-end one has the crt rather than only the high-end having the LCD.
I used to work (and am still affiliated with) The Shodor Education Foundation. We had a saying there--"Technology - Training = Paperweight". That is true, I think. However, I don't think that anything you are saying _has_ to be true.
For one thing, there are a lot of reasons to have computers in schools, and a lot of reasons for them to be laptops. Take science, for instance. Most science these days involves computer simulation or computer analysis. If you really want the kids to be able to see and do the kinds of things real scientists do, you need some way to access modeling and simulation.
You say that they should be learning geometry--don't you think that Geometer's sketchpad (or kseg) could help in that? Personally I see a huge amount of potential for just that one application.
One project that I helped conceive and started working on at Shodor is Project Interactivate. There is a lot of potential there for getting kids to have a strong conceptual understanding of various mathematical ideas that would otehrwise be lost on most kids.
Why laptops?
mobile lab--you can wheel a case into your classroom for one activity that you might not otherwise bother going to the lab for
in the lab, you can say "lower screen" and get the kids attention on the board. otherwise the screen is a constant distraction.
Any number of other things relating to the fact that you can easily move it around (obviously there's a theft issue related to that too, I suppose)
sorry, didn't see this. does/. have an option to get email sent to you when someone replies to your post? That would be nice.
N-e-way, I'm still checking to see if that is a solution I have seen before. It looks different to me. One solution that is easy to describe is if you take a tetrahedron and chop off the tip of each corner (exposing a triangle). Use the vertices for nodes and the edges for edges.
you can try doing a search on "lapware", (so named because the kids sits in your lap). I have many of the titles that will come up on that, and I am sorry to report that you will probably not be impressed.
All one would need would be, for example, some of the screen savers that come up on gnome by default (Xscreensaver? I don't know), but with the mouse changing a parameter, and maybe the keyboard switching to another screen saver.
Reader Rabbit's Toddler is not too bad (unfortunately our cd had been kidified, so my 22-month-old comes in regularly, tugging on my finger to get tech support when it tried to read a scrated area of the disk and crashes).
These programs frustrate me immensely in their closed-sourceness, howeer, because there are tiny little improvements (like being able to click to skip the introductory yakking) that would be easy to make and would make a huge difference for impatient toddlers.
Another thing you might try is subscribing to home-ed (I think home-ed-request@world.std.com) and posting your question there. That should net you a list of many titles and strong opinions in many directions.
good luck. also, feel free to email me if you have any more questions on this.
"Why do they hate us?" Because we're a bunch of self-righteous bastards who think we can do whatever we want to
the rest of the world.
You're off by just a smidgen--it's not because we're self-righteous, it's because we are self-absorbed. (Ok, well, to be accurate, what you are describing may be how we are perceived by the recipients of these injustices, but I don't think it's the real root cause).
It's not because we think we can do whatever we want, it's because we unthinkingly let a few special interest groups do whatever they want.
The problem is not the actions of a few--their actions are a symptom of the real problem. The real problem is the apathy and inattention of the many.
The average American actually will get up in arms about injustice and unjust policies once they are actually confronted wtih them. The thing that is sick and wrong about America is that we do not know what is going on "out there" in the rest of the world, what our elected officials/military/whoever are doing and how it affects people.
Don't blame the politicians or the media or whoever else, because every one of those groups is at the mercy of the voters and consumers. If America does wrong abroad, there is exactly one group of people to blame for it, and that is the American people. If they cared, they could stop it. Heck, if they cared enough to find out what is going on, what they found out would make them care enough to stop it! But they don't even care that much. And they don't even notice that they don't care--just as, for example, I almost never notice that I don't care about professional sports. Every once in a while it gets thrown in my face and I remember that, oh, yeah, a lot of people actually care who wins those games, etc. But the injustices we perpetuate almost nver get thrown in anyone's face. So most people don't even realize that they aren't paying attention.
Don't just write your congressman, poke your neighbor a little and see if you can get them to wake up from their dream of sitcoms and ball games.
PS The same goes for the RIAA and Microsoft, the evil empires built from--you guessed it--consumer dollars, spent by masses of people that just don't bother to find out if they should care.
Slashdot Mirror
D'oh!
I totally forgot about the fact that Bilbo had just used it right before and there was nothing mentioned about it.
My apologies to the original poster, I was only thinkig of the instances in the previous book.
mike
...that Elrond is not a major character!
:)
Great, great, great movie though. Too bad we are all boycotting the MPAA, because we would really love to see this.
Maybe I'm just a shameless apologist. I thought that the "ring on" effect was one of the best parts of the movie. Also, remember that Sauron is alwys trying to get him to put it on, and keep it on, right? So I don't think there's anything to complain about there.
I haven't read the books in more than ten years, though, so I can probably be safely ignored.
My thoughts exactly. (For a sufficiently loose definition of "exact", anyway).
...sweet!
..."Stop feeding the mouth that bites you. Boycott RIAA and MPAA products."
'cept I don't think there are many people that believe in it enough not to buy the LoTR DVD.
Hey, now THERE's an idea--maybe we as geeks (which might be enough of a market segment (for LoTR) to be paid attention to) start a campaign to ask whoever is going to put out the DVD not to put any of these annoying "we have decided that every time you put this in you will watch the following" sections. And if they don't comply, don't buy it.
Or would that be too much like standing up for what we believe in instead of just ranting about it?
...were found the remains of a primitive umbrella, which had not yet evolved the ability to retract. It was thought that this might have led to the untimely demise of the umbrella's owner, due to the bad-luck factor inherent in bringing such a thing in the cave.
Gee, you finally noticed us just by thinking! And we thought we were going to have to wait for you to improve your neutrino detection!
Greetings!
The "Others"
LOL!
would that I had mod points for you.
mike
(From perl-foundation.org's front page, emphasis mine)
...a la the Damian Conway purchase. Anyone in the right place to set up a little "hey, sorry our country hassled you, here's something for your trouble" fund? Or am I just being naieve thinking, well, among other things, that I can spell naieve?
But haven't you heard? "gathering accolades for what is basically a simple refinement of a very well-known technique" is all the rage. Except they usually spell "accolade" p-a-t-e-n-t.
Wasn't criticizing your post, btw, just taking the opportunity to be funny.
mike
well, ok, but it was news to me. :)
...we've already bought a Damian Conway. We're not interested in whatever cheap imitation you're trying to foist on us.
any not only that, but if you do in in Perl you have a much better chance of being done in less than 500. Many have been the pages of C code I've seen go by that could be replaced wtih a few lines of Perl.
Yes on 2, no on 1. What you said earlier:
is true, and it it more true about Perl than it is about many other languages. I have often asked myself, "Why do I love Perl so much? Why is it that every time I come back to this language it's like falling in love again?". And a big part of the answer is that it is so expressive (Larry designed it this way, being a lover of spoken language). I don't feel forced into coding things in a particular way. Also, as I grow in my understanding of the language I find that I can express myself more efficiently and concisely.
I really love Perl. But as an honest observer I have to admit that there are consequences to this freedom, which, again, I think undeniably exceeds that of other languages. If you need to iterate over every line of an array, for example, how are you going to do it? In many languages there is only one way that the average person would think of coding it.
In Perl, you might do a for (or foreach), with a named dummy variable (or you could take advantage of the fact that $_ is automatically assigned), followed by a brace-delimited block. Or, maybe you will be able to do the guts of the block in one line and you can just tack the "for" on the end as a statement modifier. Maybe you think "map" is the way to go. Maybe you're trying to learn about map and want to see if it works in this situation.
I love Perl precisely because it allows all of this--freedom, in my opinion, is a wonderful thing. But the existence of freedom and the extent of that freedom guarantee that there is going to be more variability in the way things are coded.
I'm not saying that you can't use it in groups or anything like that, but I think it is incorrect to say that it is no different from any other language in that respect. When people are free, they are going to wander further from each other than they would if they were not free to. I still think freedom is good. And I think that we should be responsible with our freedom. But that doesn't change the fact that Perl gives you more freedom, and that this fact has implications.
THey already split the iMacs (and their other products) into around three configurations ("fast", "faster", "fastest" or "good", "better", "best"--I'm sure /.ers love those designations :).
They may just add a flat panel config at the high end.
I have an iMac (the current Graphite), and I really like the small footprint, etc. It would be even better if it were smaller and even quieter.
And it will probably look cool. I know it's hard for a geek to swallow that, but people like stuff that looks cool.
I would bet that they will leave the crt version up there--maybe it will be that only the low-end one has the crt rather than only the high-end having the LCD.
Just a few guesses.
mike.
For one thing, there are a lot of reasons to have computers in schools, and a lot of reasons for them to be laptops. Take science, for instance. Most science these days involves computer simulation or computer analysis. If you really want the kids to be able to see and do the kinds of things real scientists do, you need some way to access modeling and simulation.
You say that they should be learning geometry--don't you think that Geometer's sketchpad (or kseg) could help in that? Personally I see a huge amount of potential for just that one application.
One project that I helped conceive and started working on at Shodor is Project Interactivate. There is a lot of potential there for getting kids to have a strong conceptual understanding of various mathematical ideas that would otehrwise be lost on most kids.
Why laptops?
Look here:
http://www.supportwizard.com/1000Minds/
Hey, I'm a big Apple fan and all, but even I wouldn't suggest that they did this in APL. C'mon!
sorry, didn't see this. does /. have an option to get email sent to you when someone replies to your post? That would be nice.
N-e-way, I'm still checking to see if that is a solution I have seen before. It looks different to me. One solution that is easy to describe is if you take a tetrahedron and chop off the tip of each corner (exposing a triangle). Use the vertices for nodes and the edges for edges.
There is another one, more later.
mike
"In the beginning, God created..."
oh, never mind.
hi,
you can try doing a search on "lapware", (so named because the kids sits in your lap). I have many of the titles that will come up on that, and I am sorry to report that you will probably not be impressed.
All one would need would be, for example, some of the screen savers that come up on gnome by default (Xscreensaver? I don't know), but with the mouse changing a parameter, and maybe the keyboard switching to another screen saver.
Reader Rabbit's Toddler is not too bad (unfortunately our cd had been kidified, so my 22-month-old comes in regularly, tugging on my finger to get tech support when it tried to read a scrated area of the disk and crashes).
These programs frustrate me immensely in their closed-sourceness, howeer, because there are tiny little improvements (like being able to click to skip the introductory yakking) that would be easy to make and would make a huge difference for impatient toddlers.
Another thing you might try is subscribing to home-ed (I think home-ed-request@world.std.com) and posting your question there. That should net you a list of many titles and strong opinions in many directions.
good luck. also, feel free to email me if you have any more questions on this.
mike
You're off by just a smidgen--it's not because we're self-righteous, it's because we are self-absorbed. (Ok, well, to be accurate, what you are describing may be how we are perceived by the recipients of these injustices, but I don't think it's the real root cause).
It's not because we think we can do whatever we want, it's because we unthinkingly let a few special interest groups do whatever they want.
The problem is not the actions of a few--their actions are a symptom of the real problem. The real problem is the apathy and inattention of the many.
The average American actually will get up in arms about injustice and unjust policies once they are actually confronted wtih them. The thing that is sick and wrong about America is that we do not know what is going on "out there" in the rest of the world, what our elected officials/military/whoever are doing and how it affects people.
Don't blame the politicians or the media or whoever else, because every one of those groups is at the mercy of the voters and consumers. If America does wrong abroad, there is exactly one group of people to blame for it, and that is the American people. If they cared, they could stop it. Heck, if they cared enough to find out what is going on, what they found out would make them care enough to stop it! But they don't even care that much. And they don't even notice that they don't care--just as, for example, I almost never notice that I don't care about professional sports. Every once in a while it gets thrown in my face and I remember that, oh, yeah, a lot of people actually care who wins those games, etc. But the injustices we perpetuate almost nver get thrown in anyone's face. So most people don't even realize that they aren't paying attention.
Don't just write your congressman, poke your neighbor a little and see if you can get them to wake up from their dream of sitcoms and ball games.
PS The same goes for the RIAA and Microsoft, the evil empires built from--you guessed it--consumer dollars, spent by masses of people that just don't bother to find out if they should care.