That first Dune picture was one of the turdliest movies ever made, IMHO.
Even if one can forgive David Lynch for not having access to the greater realism of modern CGI, the scene where they're "riding the sand worm" still looks like a bunch of guys standing around on bucking pieces of styrofoam wondering when this take will end so they can get some coffee.
Lynch settles for making Baron Harkonnen ugly, vs. actually evil - convenient movie shorthand, sure, but not quite a filling meal.
And what was up with the interior monologue? Lynch keeps cutting to Kyle MacLachlan and we hear him think: "...Spice!" and he turns his head. Poor man's exposition, and really lame. OK dude, "Spice". WTF? Get to the point.
Don't even get me started on the goofy-looking cigar-butt navigators, Sting's wrestling shorts or those silly shouting crotch-cannons...
I read the book (a few of them, in fact), and thought Lynch's movie was an embarrassment and a waste of wonderfully developed characters and an epic story.
No film made from a book with such cerebral detail will be able to include everything, or even most things in the story, but the director would've done well not to try so hard to put his particular stamp on the film (including finding someone other that MacLachlan to play the lead).
"...nobody's watching/listening to the crap put out by the "technorati" and average joes. It's embarrassing to be "pioneers" and get completely steamrollered by traditional media, and ignored by the general public. Or, they think that because it's failing for them, it's "dead" for everyone else; there's this insipid belief amongst the technology-using loud-mouths that the world revolves around them."
Or stated another way, the strengths of good writers and editors, top-shelf music, professional voice talent and an international news-gathering organization bring more value to any audio program than is possible for some guy living in Mom's basement.
The surprising thing here isn't that the astronomers discovered methane on a planet. Heck, Uranus is full of the stuff and other gas giants have it as well.
suddenly the friction problem is gone, probably for less energy you needed to overcome the friction on wheels traveling 300mph
I never have bought this and I still don't.
Maybe it'd be best solved with a prototype and a calculator, but I can't see any way that rolling friction over a ~3000 mile journey that would take what, 15 hours at 200MPH (assuming we're building a fast rolling train in the style of a TGV or Shinkansen) vs. holding a many-ton maglev train up against gravity for 10.
Rolling and gliding trains will both have to contend with the accelerative forces of turns, stops and hills, and with wind resistance.
So, you're gonna float the train for 10 hours to prevent roling friction? Really? We're supposed to be trying ways to use less energy, not use up a few more coal-fired plants keeping the trains off the ground.
None of this even touches on the kind of high-maintenance superconducting-conductor track such a train would need - which would be exposed to all the insults of the elements, vandalism and terrorist mischief that regular rails suffer.
I'm just not buying it. And hopefully I won't have to pay for it. Would rather see us spend the money on an improved traditional national rail network, or solar power subsidies. It'd go a lot further either way
Of course they shouldn't. If someone is so brain damaged that they can't figure out that a SAW can hurt them, why shouldn't they suffer the consequences?
Chainsaws have warning labels because they can hurt the user in ways the novice wouldn't expect by looking at the saw. Thinks like binding in the kerf and kicking.
You can't credit the man with "creating" information design as a discipline, but he's done a great deal to evangelize it, and you certainly have to give him plenty of credit for its currently elevated profile.
Tufte is not just some crank. Intelligent, useful, compelling information display is what he's all about. You don't have to agree with him, but his thoughts are usually worth weighing.
Nope, 30,000-person enterprise. One of the largest companies in the nation.
I never said fighting the good fight was supposed to be easy...
Re:Convince your business not to waste the money.
on
Open Source DRM Solutions?
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Sticky as in "get the eyeballs stuck firmly to the content". That could mean a lot of different things depending upon the content that someone's trying to protect.
In the case of a web site, it could mean going from a login business model to an ad-supported model; with your content in the open instead of hidden behind a login, users are free to fall in love with it and return daily.
In the case of an analyst report, it could mean that instead of trying to protect the report to the hilt, you instead use wide adoption of the open report to position your firm as experts in the field, thus to sell seminars, training, consulting.
You can't use stickiness to fix the problem with every type of content (sensitive internal financial documents? Yeah, you probably don't want them sticky, but with or without DRM, what are you doing distributing those to anyone you don't trust completely?)
The idea with stickiness is that you make users adhere to the content, return to your site, your business, etc.
Here's what's become my business-side take on DRM: don't bother.
DRM systems set the bar too high for honest users who just need to get some work done, and too low for malicious users.
Corporate espionage in mind? Just make screen-captures. That won't work? Digital camera, anyone?
You can't make it work, principally because there's no way to both show and not show the same document to an end user. The security is only as good as your trusted users are.
You can also appeal to reason on financial grounds: the Hollywood studios are extremely motivated to make DRM work, have pored in millions and haven't hit on anything at all that prevents piracy.
If they can't do it, you probably can't either, and should probably focus on differentiating your content by making it sticky and extremely easy to use.
And howsabout pointless changes for changes' sake? Where'd the fscking "Location" menu item from the Finder go in Leopard? I was all over that thing as I traveled, and now they've broken a crucial feature for me.
As a serial- multiple- Mac owner, what bugs me most about Apple is other Mac owners acting like Apple's shit doesn't stink.
My NSLU2 is running Debian Etch, serving music to Roku Soundbridges and iTunes clients 24x7 with Firefly Media Server / mt-daapd. I administer it via ssh (passwordless with keyed access), and since it's on 24x7, I'm thinking about implementing local (in the house) DNS ('cause I'm tired of dicking around with hosts files on six machines).
When it spins down the Maxtor One Touch, it's using 2 watts. When it's running full out, disk and Slug are using 6 watts. I have the whole thing on a closet shelf next to my wireless router and gigabit switch.
I sometimes think that my much bigger dual-core AMD server could break in a way that could burn down the house if I leave it on unattended. No such worries with the Slug.
It's not a fast machine, but really handy, doesn't guilt me over leaving it on all the time, and if I needed an always-on file server, I'd take the Slug purely on power management grounds.
It'll be a little slow with file transfers, but scores very high marks on its compact size, silent operation and pretty-green power use.
Firewire has a method of reserving bandwidth on the line for isochronous transfers - i.e. when data MUST arrive on-time to make the application work, things like video frames for editing.
Bus speed alone won't do everything we'd like USB to do...
More likely it means MythTV won't interoperate at all - chances are anything the Industry proposes is aimed at locking open standards off of the cable system.
Cable companies want to get to a spot where you pay per-click each time you watch any show.
Y'know, I think the industry are generally scum, certainly are doing themselves no favors with all the lawsuits against their own customers, but I still WANT to be able to walk into a store and browse and buy CDs. I'm not interested in pirating music, not interested in the DRM-laden iTunes Music Store experience, and want uncompressed, full-resolution pressed CDs as a backup and a tangible item.
It's been quite depressing to watch the CD selection shrink at Fry's, Best Buy and other major retailers, particularly since what disappears first is the good stuff. What's left is mass market ho-stamp pop and geezer retreads from the '60s and '70s.
They haven't been able to sell me a CD in a store in a while NOT because I was busy pirating something else, but because the selection was so thin they didn't have anything I'd buy, or because they didn't have anyone re-organizing the stacks so I could find things.
As a kayaker, I'm familiar with a rescue tool called a throw bag. Apparently, throw bags were developed for the maritime industry, then downsized for kayakers.
The theory is quite simple, but it's amazing to watch how well it works:
Tie a rope through a hole in the bottom of a bag.
Stuff the bag with the rope, leaving the tail end of the rope sticking out of the top.
Grab the tail end of the rope and throw the bag towards the person who needs the rope.
Watch as the rope magically pays out of the bag, completely free of knots or tangles.
Don't get so awed by the rope coming out untangled that you let go of the end...
I've watched these bags work time and time again, amazed that with the rope just stuffed into the bag, they work reliably. I've used store-bought bags and ones I've made myself and have never seen the rope tangle.
I realize that without loose ends proper knots can't form, but with a throw bag, you don't even get close to tangles!
The people implementing a CMS site need to know (X)HTML, CSS, etc. very well. The Java developers I've known (who implement the back-ends of the big CMSes) don't know HTML, CSS, et. al. any better than the apparent moron who presented this seminar.
If there were a good seminar available that would help the Java guys pick up good HTML skills, the real problem would then be convincing them that it's a real, core developer skill (vs. "just for designers").
Slashdot Mirror
That first Dune picture was one of the turdliest movies ever made, IMHO.
Even if one can forgive David Lynch for not having access to the greater realism of modern CGI, the scene where they're "riding the sand worm" still looks like a bunch of guys standing around on bucking pieces of styrofoam wondering when this take will end so they can get some coffee.
Lynch settles for making Baron Harkonnen ugly, vs. actually evil - convenient movie shorthand, sure, but not quite a filling meal.
And what was up with the interior monologue? Lynch keeps cutting to Kyle MacLachlan and we hear him think: "...Spice!" and he turns his head. Poor man's exposition, and really lame. OK dude, "Spice". WTF? Get to the point.
Don't even get me started on the goofy-looking cigar-butt navigators, Sting's wrestling shorts or those silly shouting crotch-cannons...
I read the book (a few of them, in fact), and thought Lynch's movie was an embarrassment and a waste of wonderfully developed characters and an epic story.
No film made from a book with such cerebral detail will be able to include everything, or even most things in the story, but the director would've done well not to try so hard to put his particular stamp on the film (including finding someone other that MacLachlan to play the lead).
"...nobody's watching/listening to the crap put out by the "technorati" and average joes. It's embarrassing to be "pioneers" and get completely steamrollered by traditional media, and ignored by the general public. Or, they think that because it's failing for them, it's "dead" for everyone else; there's this insipid belief amongst the technology-using loud-mouths that the world revolves around them."
Or stated another way, the strengths of good writers and editors, top-shelf music, professional voice talent and an international news-gathering organization bring more value to any audio program than is possible for some guy living in Mom's basement.
Duh. Film at eleven.
We went during after-Christmas week in late 2006. For a geek, it's seriously cool. Highlight for me: typing on a real Enigma machine.
Make sure you get a dosant for your tour - they add a lot of context!
It's watered-down Creationism, a legalistic attempt to sneak past the First Amendment.
I'm no fan of creationism, but the First Amendment also allows people to say pretty much anything they like...
That way, they'll have most of the shit I desperately want to avoid in one spot.
The surprising thing here isn't that the astronomers discovered methane on a planet. Heck, Uranus is full of the stuff and other gas giants have it as well.
[insert joke here]
suddenly the friction problem is gone, probably for less energy you needed to overcome the friction on wheels traveling 300mph
I never have bought this and I still don't.
Maybe it'd be best solved with a prototype and a calculator, but I can't see any way that rolling friction over a ~3000 mile journey that would take what, 15 hours at 200MPH (assuming we're building a fast rolling train in the style of a TGV or Shinkansen) vs. holding a many-ton maglev train up against gravity for 10.
Rolling and gliding trains will both have to contend with the accelerative forces of turns, stops and hills, and with wind resistance.
So, you're gonna float the train for 10 hours to prevent roling friction? Really? We're supposed to be trying ways to use less energy, not use up a few more coal-fired plants keeping the trains off the ground.
None of this even touches on the kind of high-maintenance superconducting-conductor track such a train would need - which would be exposed to all the insults of the elements, vandalism and terrorist mischief that regular rails suffer.
I'm just not buying it. And hopefully I won't have to pay for it. Would rather see us spend the money on an improved traditional national rail network, or solar power subsidies. It'd go a lot further either way
Wish I had mod points for you today...
You're absolutely right. Chicago's El and Subway are a couple of great ways to get around the city and exurbs.
And I'm still not sure why people are so enamored of using a bunch of extra energy to suspend the whole train in midair.
Are wheels just too 1990s or what?
Of course they shouldn't. If someone is so brain damaged that they can't figure out that a SAW can hurt them, why shouldn't they suffer the consequences?
Chainsaws have warning labels because they can hurt the user in ways the novice wouldn't expect by looking at the saw. Thinks like binding in the kerf and kicking.
We've got 30,000 employees. If 2/3 of them have laptops, that's 60kW for the laptop users alone.
That doesn't count the infrastructure.
Also, I dunno about you, but my several-years-old Powerbook has a 65 watt power adaptor. Where do you get off saying 15 watts?
Besides, it's always easier to critique someone else's work than create something novel yourself.
I'd call both sparklines and the data-ink ratio pretty good and novel innovations.
You can't credit the man with "creating" information design as a discipline, but he's done a great deal to evangelize it, and you certainly have to give him plenty of credit for its currently elevated profile.
Tufte is not just some crank. Intelligent, useful, compelling information display is what he's all about. You don't have to agree with him, but his thoughts are usually worth weighing.
You work by yourself, don't you? :-)
Nope, 30,000-person enterprise. One of the largest companies in the nation.
I never said fighting the good fight was supposed to be easy...
Sticky as in "get the eyeballs stuck firmly to the content". That could mean a lot of different things depending upon the content that someone's trying to protect.
In the case of a web site, it could mean going from a login business model to an ad-supported model; with your content in the open instead of hidden behind a login, users are free to fall in love with it and return daily.
In the case of an analyst report, it could mean that instead of trying to protect the report to the hilt, you instead use wide adoption of the open report to position your firm as experts in the field, thus to sell seminars, training, consulting.
You can't use stickiness to fix the problem with every type of content (sensitive internal financial documents? Yeah, you probably don't want them sticky, but with or without DRM, what are you doing distributing those to anyone you don't trust completely?)
The idea with stickiness is that you make users adhere to the content, return to your site, your business, etc.
Here's what's become my business-side take on DRM: don't bother.
DRM systems set the bar too high for honest users who just need to get some work done, and too low for malicious users.
Corporate espionage in mind? Just make screen-captures. That won't work? Digital camera, anyone?
You can't make it work, principally because there's no way to both show and not show the same document to an end user. The security is only as good as your trusted users are.
You can also appeal to reason on financial grounds: the Hollywood studios are extremely motivated to make DRM work, have pored in millions and haven't hit on anything at all that prevents piracy.
If they can't do it, you probably can't either, and should probably focus on differentiating your content by making it sticky and extremely easy to use.
And howsabout pointless changes for changes' sake? Where'd the fscking "Location" menu item from the Finder go in Leopard? I was all over that thing as I traveled, and now they've broken a crucial feature for me.
As a serial- multiple- Mac owner, what bugs me most about Apple is other Mac owners acting like Apple's shit doesn't stink.
Gravity.
Scientists are still arguing over whether matter deforms space or gravitons carry gravitational force quanta.
It's only theory folks. Sticks you down to the planet pretty good though...
Highly futuristic - just like my Atari 400 and my Timex-Sinclair 1000. And my Palm T|X, for that matter.
My NSLU2 is running Debian Etch, serving music to Roku Soundbridges and iTunes clients 24x7 with Firefly Media Server / mt-daapd. I administer it via ssh (passwordless with keyed access), and since it's on 24x7, I'm thinking about implementing local (in the house) DNS ('cause I'm tired of dicking around with hosts files on six machines).
When it spins down the Maxtor One Touch, it's using 2 watts. When it's running full out, disk and Slug are using 6 watts. I have the whole thing on a closet shelf next to my wireless router and gigabit switch.
I sometimes think that my much bigger dual-core AMD server could break in a way that could burn down the house if I leave it on unattended. No such worries with the Slug.
It's not a fast machine, but really handy, doesn't guilt me over leaving it on all the time, and if I needed an always-on file server, I'd take the Slug purely on power management grounds.
It'll be a little slow with file transfers, but scores very high marks on its compact size, silent operation and pretty-green power use.
Firewire has a method of reserving bandwidth on the line for isochronous transfers - i.e. when data MUST arrive on-time to make the application work, things like video frames for editing.
Bus speed alone won't do everything we'd like USB to do...
More likely it means MythTV won't interoperate at all - chances are anything the Industry proposes is aimed at locking open standards off of the cable system.
Cable companies want to get to a spot where you pay per-click each time you watch any show.
"You cant prove anything from inside the box."
My GOD Man! Are you saying we've been rooted?
Y'know, I think the industry are generally scum, certainly are doing themselves no favors with all the lawsuits against their own customers, but I still WANT to be able to walk into a store and browse and buy CDs. I'm not interested in pirating music, not interested in the DRM-laden iTunes Music Store experience, and want uncompressed, full-resolution pressed CDs as a backup and a tangible item.
It's been quite depressing to watch the CD selection shrink at Fry's, Best Buy and other major retailers, particularly since what disappears first is the good stuff. What's left is mass market ho-stamp pop and geezer retreads from the '60s and '70s.
They haven't been able to sell me a CD in a store in a while NOT because I was busy pirating something else, but because the selection was so thin they didn't have anything I'd buy, or because they didn't have anyone re-organizing the stacks so I could find things.
I'll keep my CDs, and my TV Antenna thanks.
Hey you kids! Get off my lawn!!!!
The Design of Everyday Things has a lot of great info, and is highly recommended, but first read:
"Don't Make Me Think" by Steve Krug
It's a short, brilliant read, is mainly focused on web usability, but the principles can be extended to any UI design.
Really first-rate book - all content, no BS.
As a kayaker, I'm familiar with a rescue tool called a throw bag. Apparently, throw bags were developed for the maritime industry, then downsized for kayakers.
The theory is quite simple, but it's amazing to watch how well it works:
I've watched these bags work time and time again, amazed that with the rope just stuffed into the bag, they work reliably. I've used store-bought bags and ones I've made myself and have never seen the rope tangle.
I realize that without loose ends proper knots can't form, but with a throw bag, you don't even get close to tangles!
The people implementing a CMS site need to know (X)HTML, CSS, etc. very well. The Java developers I've known (who implement the back-ends of the big CMSes) don't know HTML, CSS, et. al. any better than the apparent moron who presented this seminar.
If there were a good seminar available that would help the Java guys pick up good HTML skills, the real problem would then be convincing them that it's a real, core developer skill (vs. "just for designers").