Re:What a maroon... what a ta-ra-ra-boom-deeyay!
on
David Brin On LOTR
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· Score: 5, Insightful
1. Of course this is a backward-looking tale - it was modeled after ancient Scandinavian mythologies.
Uh, it was also written after WWI and into WWII. If you think that didn't have an effect on somebody living throught it....
2. It's also about a world in transition, and the dawn of Man's dominance, so in that sense it is forward-looking.
Okay, but that's streching a point compared to the idealization of the country folk vs. the users of engines and technology. That's not reading something into it. It's more or less stated.
3. Is anybody else sick to death of comparisons with Star Wars? Puh-lease...
Yeah, well maybe you shouldn't be reading articles about modern myths. Star Wars had a huge impact on the psyche of millions of Americans. It's going to mentioned in these discussions. Get over it
4. And while we're at it, is anybode else EXTRA sick of drawn out analogies to the real geopolitical world of the 20th century? Too many bozos waste too much time trying to play matchup in a self-congratulatory exercise.
Not half as much as I am of dismissive idiots who substitute scorn for thought. Look, parts of these books were written in the form of letters to his son in RAF. So, here's a guy. Lived through WWI. Living through WWII. Knows a lot about myths. Is generally in the position of an intellectual during a time that most intellectuals are convinced that the world is possibly ending. He's basing a tale on a body of knowledge he knows a lot about. He's also living throught one of the worst times for England in modern history. Both of these things are influencing him. Both of them.
Brin isn't asking you to dismiss the work, not like it, or deny it's other aspects. He's simply pointing out that there are more influences on this than how great it would be to be a Hobbit or an Elf or something.
When someone asks me to rise up, I reach for my wallet.
The reason I'm a geek in the first place is that I place very little trust in the activities of groups and crowds. I think people tend to lose IQ points the more they place themselves in a situation where you get hats, or uniforms, or armbands, or chants, or fucking political agendas, for that matter.
I'm not particularly misanthropic, but I do think that taking a sociological phenomenon based on an inability to easily conform, then asking them to come up with a coherent platform is an exercise in futility, if not stupidity.
There are plenty of geeks in this world that I couldn't stand 10 minutes in a crowded elevator with much less stand side by side in a political rally. That doesn't mean we can't swap tips on router programming.
Besides, have you seen some of our political beliefs? I know I personally hold a few that could be used to scare chickens to death as a less cruel means of slaughter.
The article says that it would be difficult to intercept because interception would be easy to detect because the interception would change the state of the photons. Okay. But then it says that since photons are so easy to deflect the reciever would have to send back info about what packets are missing. So couldn't you just intercept a bunch of bits and the reciever would just assume interference. Is this one of those signal-to-noise inference things a la Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon"?
Furthermore, it mentions some absurd length of time to decrypt these messages, but I assume that's with current tech. What about with a quantum computer? Isn't that the sort of thing that they are supposed to excel at?
Well actually, no. Just because the market is free doesn't mean you are. I actually support income being taxed for the protection of public resources. I just think it should apply equally to corporations and the publice resources should actually be protected instead of sold to corporations that didn't pay for them in the first place.
It's like I'm always saying. The free market only benefits the consumer as long as laws and senators are not for sale. Telecom laws in this country are being handed out like utility contracts in some single-resource dependant dictatorship.
When is the US going to get it's head out of it's sphincter and realize that telecom is a public resource. Or that public resources are to be protected for use, not auctioned off to the highest bidder.
I don't think this kind of thing is going to get popular until e-paper becomes an affordable reality. Really, what's the advantage over say, a notebook? Besides the geek factor, that is.
We spent a lot of time debating that today. The nail in the coffin was when we noticed the site uses the same retailer for its t-shirts as the landover baptist site. I really want a Bazooka Jesus shirt.
-M
Re:star wars was ripped off a japanese film
on
Star Wars as Pulp Sci-Fi
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Actually, most people say that "Star Wars" was "Hidden Fortress" combined with "Hero with a Thousand Faces" Which makes sense when you realize that "Hidden Fortress" didn't have a Luke character.
I've always considered that a strength to the film. A synthesis of two powerful pieces of culture made into popular entertainment is sort of brilliant when you think about it.
(Oh, and it's not just a Japanese film, it's an Akira Kurosawa film, that's sort of important)
This is mostly true, but as somebody who was on the ass-end of this crap as a projector monkey, I feel like I have to point some things out.
It may be illegal for production companies to own theater chains, but it happens all the time. I spent 2 years of hell managing a Sony theater, who owned 3 production companies at the time.(though they've sold 2 since then, I think). And everything bad you could think of happening in a monoply situation happens in chain theatres. We commonly held over movies that did no box office at all for ridiculous amounts of time, so they could shrink their losses on the production end.
I was also friends with the people who owned the 2 independant theatres in my little town (both gone now, I'm sad to say) and they were squeezed out of getting any big films as a matter of course. One theater owner (actually 2 sisters) had won a court case against a big Hollywood distributer over it in the 80's. But after about 5 years it went back to business as usual, and who the hell has the time and money to be in court all the time when you're trying to save a small business.
And let me also mention that theater chains were going out of business regularly well before the dot-boom. Some geniuses figured out that they could buy in, squeeze like a sonofabitch and sell out really quick. Usually it was about 2 of these executive switchovers before the company would claim chapter 11. These guys laid the groundwork for modern executive practice (Enron, anybody?)
I was a proj for years and years too, in all sorts of different types of theatres, and I can tell you one reason digital projection is a long way from becoming mainstream. Theatres care about cheaper now, than better now, or even cheaper later. It's much cheaper to hire a high-school student, give him the 20 minute lecture on how to thread a projector and let him loose. And believe me, there ain't a sysadmin alive that's going to work for what they pay proj-monkeys.
As someone who involves himself in a lot of these activities, (I write code, I make music, I make art, no cola yet) I'm really excited and at the same time uncumfortable. I mean, of all these things, only code has shown a reasonable business model, and even that is up for debate. I really appreciate the concept in code and I agree with it whole-heartedly (to the extent that I tried to talk my company into an open-source production model, but they went with flash instead.) But the thing is, I'm to old to go back to working at coffee shops and flogging my stuff in my off-hours. I'd really like to make a living at something productive that I enjoy. Until we get some clear ideas of how that's going to work for music and art, I'm going to stick to the Fugazi model of distribution
Back in the days when people like us were trying to come up with good ascii-art to impress our local bbs, I had a Panasonic laserdisc player that also played sega genesis games. Man! I was the coolest kid around then, and it didn't require a fiberoptic raid. Those were the days.
A lot of posts have been asking what the point of MP boards are. I can tell you that MP boards run a/v editing programs a hell of a lot faster than single boards.
This ties in to my desire to get rid of my stupid windows box forever. Has anyone out there tried setting one of these up to do audio or video in linux? If so, I'd love to hear about it, becuase this seems to me to be the last frontier as far as home user linux apps.
"As soon as you plug the guitar in to the Ethernet port or whatever instrument it is, it'll come up 'Nate's guitar,'" Yaekel said. "Just like in Ethernet, when you plug into an Ethernet hub, you're going to see your computer's name on the network."
When's the last time this guy tried to set up a network in real life? And where the hell does he think he's going to get ethernet savvy roadies? The last roadies I worked with exposed a port every time they bent over to tape down a cord, but it wasn't ethernet.
You should be aware that Apple has never authorized you modify the Software.
So, by choosing not to install a package, you are illegally modifying software even though the software itself is specifically designed to choose packages? I think Apple has no basis to stand on here. You cannot claim this is circumvention when this is exactly what they designed the software to do.
Not bright Apple, not bright.
Because I'd hate for wireless Mickey 2001 to start picking up air traffic chatter
Hi kids! I sure hope you enjoy the RED LEADER, RED LEADER THIS IS TANGO ONE. and make sure to visit our LOCKED, COCKED, AND READY TO BURN TANGO ONE, WHAT'S YOUR STATUS?
And hey, under the recent terrorism bills wouldn't that qualify Mickey as a terrorist? There's be a trial to top OJ.
Since then it has become quite popular -- even though the V word is never mentioned -- proving that while the nastygrams had their effect on the man -- who, after all, had the TEMERITY to question the hallowed halls of science -- his IDEA has come of age and proven to be a useful approach. So PERHAPS it's time to lighten up on the "crackpot" stuff somewhat.
Well, maybe that would be easier if he had been the poor suffering saint that you paint him as instead of an insufferably arrogant and rather cultish figure of science. If he had ever, ever admitted to being wrong just once, I'm sure people would have lightened up a bit.
Not admitting that you might be wrong is almost certainly a sign that you're completely wrong.
Was there time before the event that produced the universe? This is a singularly uninformed question, but I've always wondered if the idea of 'something before the big bang' was a result of our rather narrow view of time.
Re:It's Not Unusual...
on
Globalization
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· Score: 1
How can you conclude there is ANY relationship at all between a cosmopolitan world-view and acceptance of free trade?
Because to the outside viewer, it's an obvious one. Free trade is a concept pushed by economically solvent countries which also happen to be fairly societally liberal. Seeing the connection yet?
To poor countries, this is how we appear: "Sure the sum total of our cultural output may be McDonalds and Sex in the City, but look at us! We're rich! Rich beyond you're wildest dreams!" To them, it's all a piece. We're the rich spoiled kids who have no morals and get to do whatever we want. It's not a matter of whether Reich thinks so or not. That's how they see us.
In contrast, we see them as dirt-eating lunatics, with no grasp on reality. Probably because the reality of life in most poor countries would give the average American nightmares for years.
The connection may or may not be a causal one, but it seems pretty obvious to anyone who lives in the middle east. During the gulf war, there was a lot of talk about how Kuwait was the most liberal of the countries in that area, especially in the area of Women's rights. Any coincidence that they had the highest wealth per capita of any country in that area? Most of the middle east didn't think so. There was a lot of anti-Kuwaiti sentiment right before the invasion. The only reason other oil-belt countries sided with us was that Hussein implied they were next.
There was an interview in a magazine put out by a local listner-supported radio station (go wfmu!) with a guy who worked on the Phantom Menace and part of the AOTC, before he was fired. According to him, Lucas was very sensitive about the criticism he got for dumbing down the first one, and determined to make this one a lot darker.
Not exactly and uninpeachable source, but interesting nonetheless.
Slashdot Mirror
1. Of course this is a backward-looking tale - it was modeled after ancient Scandinavian mythologies.
Uh, it was also written after WWI and into WWII. If you think that didn't have an effect on somebody living throught it....
2. It's also about a world in transition, and the dawn of Man's dominance, so in that sense it is forward-looking.
Okay, but that's streching a point compared to the idealization of the country folk vs. the users of engines and technology. That's not reading something into it. It's more or less stated.
3. Is anybody else sick to death of comparisons with Star Wars? Puh-lease...
Yeah, well maybe you shouldn't be reading articles about modern myths. Star Wars had a huge impact on the psyche of millions of Americans. It's going to mentioned in these discussions. Get over it
4. And while we're at it, is anybode else EXTRA sick of drawn out analogies to the real geopolitical world of the 20th century? Too many bozos waste too much time trying to play matchup in a self-congratulatory exercise.
Not half as much as I am of dismissive idiots who substitute scorn for thought. Look, parts of these books were written in the form of letters to his son in RAF. So, here's a guy. Lived through WWI. Living through WWII. Knows a lot about myths. Is generally in the position of an intellectual during a time that most intellectuals are convinced that the world is possibly ending. He's basing a tale on a body of knowledge he knows a lot about. He's also living throught one of the worst times for England in modern history. Both of these things are influencing him. Both of them.
Brin isn't asking you to dismiss the work, not like it, or deny it's other aspects. He's simply pointing out that there are more influences on this than how great it would be to be a Hobbit or an Elf or something.
When someone asks me to rise up, I reach for my wallet.
The reason I'm a geek in the first place is that I place very little trust in the activities of groups and crowds. I think people tend to lose IQ points the more they place themselves in a situation where you get hats, or uniforms, or armbands, or chants, or fucking political agendas, for that matter.
I'm not particularly misanthropic, but I do think that taking a sociological phenomenon based on an inability to easily conform, then asking them to come up with a coherent platform is an exercise in futility, if not stupidity. There are plenty of geeks in this world that I couldn't stand 10 minutes in a crowded elevator with much less stand side by side in a political rally. That doesn't mean we can't swap tips on router programming.
Besides, have you seen some of our political beliefs? I know I personally hold a few that could be used to scare chickens to death as a less cruel means of slaughter.
but I'm no physicist. Here goes:
The article says that it would be difficult to intercept because interception would be easy to detect because the interception would change the state of the photons. Okay. But then it says that since photons are so easy to deflect the reciever would have to send back info about what packets are missing. So couldn't you just intercept a bunch of bits and the reciever would just assume interference. Is this one of those signal-to-noise inference things a la Stephenson's "Cryptonomicon"?
Furthermore, it mentions some absurd length of time to decrypt these messages, but I assume that's with current tech. What about with a quantum computer? Isn't that the sort of thing that they are supposed to excel at?
Just wondering....
Well actually, no. Just because the market is free doesn't mean you are. I actually support income being taxed for the protection of public resources. I just think it should apply equally to corporations and the publice resources should actually be protected instead of sold to corporations that didn't pay for them in the first place.
just a joke. it's from a sex pistols song.
It's like I'm always saying. The free market only benefits the consumer as long as laws and senators are not for sale. Telecom laws in this country are being handed out like utility contracts in some single-resource dependant dictatorship.
When is the US going to get it's head out of it's sphincter and realize that telecom is a public resource. Or that public resources are to be protected for use, not auctioned off to the highest bidder.
I don't think this kind of thing is going to get popular until e-paper becomes an affordable reality. Really, what's the advantage over say, a notebook? Besides the geek factor, that is.
We spent a lot of time debating that today. The nail in the coffin was when we noticed the site uses the same retailer for its t-shirts as the landover baptist site. I really want a Bazooka Jesus shirt.
-M
I'll smash your face in.
Actually, most people say that "Star Wars" was "Hidden Fortress" combined with "Hero with a Thousand Faces" Which makes sense when you realize that "Hidden Fortress" didn't have a Luke character.
I've always considered that a strength to the film. A synthesis of two powerful pieces of culture made into popular entertainment is sort of brilliant when you think about it.
(Oh, and it's not just a Japanese film, it's an Akira Kurosawa film, that's sort of important)
This is mostly true, but as somebody who was on the ass-end of this crap as a projector monkey, I feel like I have to point some things out.
It may be illegal for production companies to own theater chains, but it happens all the time. I spent 2 years of hell managing a Sony theater, who owned 3 production companies at the time.(though they've sold 2 since then, I think). And everything bad you could think of happening in a monoply situation happens in chain theatres. We commonly held over movies that did no box office at all for ridiculous amounts of time, so they could shrink their losses on the production end.
I was also friends with the people who owned the 2 independant theatres in my little town (both gone now, I'm sad to say) and they were squeezed out of getting any big films as a matter of course. One theater owner (actually 2 sisters) had won a court case against a big Hollywood distributer over it in the 80's. But after about 5 years it went back to business as usual, and who the hell has the time and money to be in court all the time when you're trying to save a small business.
And let me also mention that theater chains were going out of business regularly well before the dot-boom. Some geniuses figured out that they could buy in, squeeze like a sonofabitch and sell out really quick. Usually it was about 2 of these executive switchovers before the company would claim chapter 11. These guys laid the groundwork for modern executive practice (Enron, anybody?)
Okay, enough ranting.
I was a proj for years and years too, in all sorts of different types of theatres, and I can tell you one reason digital projection is a long way from becoming mainstream. Theatres care about cheaper now, than better now, or even cheaper later. It's much cheaper to hire a high-school student, give him the 20 minute lecture on how to thread a projector and let him loose. And believe me, there ain't a sysadmin alive that's going to work for what they pay proj-monkeys.
The clone wars are going to be fought with a spray bottle and a rolled up newspaper?
Bad Lord of the Sith! Bad, Bad!
As someone who involves himself in a lot of these activities, (I write code, I make music, I make art, no cola yet) I'm really excited and at the same time uncumfortable. I mean, of all these things, only code has shown a reasonable business model, and even that is up for debate.
I really appreciate the concept in code and I agree with it whole-heartedly (to the extent that I tried to talk my company into an open-source production model, but they went with flash instead.) But the thing is, I'm to old to go back to working at coffee shops and flogging my stuff in my off-hours. I'd really like to make a living at something productive that I enjoy. Until we get some clear ideas of how that's going to work for music and art, I'm going to stick to the Fugazi model of distribution
I should start answering those emails that promise me a brand new organ? I always thought it was a sex thing.
Back in the days when people like us were trying to come up with good ascii-art to impress our local bbs, I had a Panasonic laserdisc player that also played sega genesis games. Man! I was the coolest kid around then, and it didn't require a fiberoptic raid. Those were the days.
A lot of posts have been asking what the point of MP boards are. I can tell you that MP boards run a/v editing programs a hell of a lot faster than single boards.
This ties in to my desire to get rid of my stupid windows box forever. Has anyone out there tried setting one of these up to do audio or video in linux? If so, I'd love to hear about it, becuase this seems to me to be the last frontier as far as home user linux apps.
"As soon as you plug the guitar in to the Ethernet port or whatever instrument it is, it'll come up 'Nate's guitar,'" Yaekel said. "Just like in Ethernet, when you plug into an Ethernet hub, you're going to see your computer's name on the network."
When's the last time this guy tried to set up a network in real life? And where the hell does he think he's going to get ethernet savvy roadies?
The last roadies I worked with exposed a port every time they bent over to tape down a cord, but it wasn't ethernet.
You should be aware that Apple has never authorized you modify the Software.
So, by choosing not to install a package, you are illegally modifying software even though the software itself is specifically designed to choose packages? I think Apple has no basis to stand on here. You cannot claim this is circumvention when this is exactly what they designed the software to do.
Not bright Apple, not bright.
Because I'd hate for wireless Mickey 2001 to start picking up air traffic chatter
Hi kids! I sure hope you enjoy the RED LEADER, RED LEADER THIS IS TANGO ONE. and make sure to visit our LOCKED, COCKED, AND READY TO BURN TANGO ONE, WHAT'S YOUR STATUS?
And hey, under the recent terrorism bills wouldn't that qualify Mickey as a terrorist? There's be a trial to top OJ.
Since then it has become quite popular -- even though the V word is never mentioned -- proving that while the nastygrams had their effect on the man -- who, after all, had the TEMERITY to question the hallowed halls of science -- his IDEA has come of age and proven to be a useful approach. So PERHAPS it's time to lighten up on the "crackpot" stuff somewhat.
Well, maybe that would be easier if he had been the poor suffering saint that you paint him as instead of an insufferably arrogant and rather cultish figure of science. If he had ever, ever admitted to being wrong just once, I'm sure people would have lightened up a bit.
Not admitting that you might be wrong is almost certainly a sign that you're completely wrong.
So if one is following me and the other one won't let me past....
I'm playing Zork!
God help me!
Was there time before the event that produced the universe? This is a singularly uninformed question, but I've always wondered if the idea of 'something before the big bang' was a result of our rather narrow view of time.
Because to the outside viewer, it's an obvious one. Free trade is a concept pushed by economically solvent countries which also happen to be fairly societally liberal. Seeing the connection yet?
To poor countries, this is how we appear: "Sure the sum total of our cultural output may be McDonalds and Sex in the City, but look at us! We're rich! Rich beyond you're wildest dreams!" To them, it's all a piece. We're the rich spoiled kids who have no morals and get to do whatever we want. It's not a matter of whether Reich thinks so or not. That's how they see us.
In contrast, we see them as dirt-eating lunatics, with no grasp on reality. Probably because the reality of life in most poor countries would give the average American nightmares for years.
The connection may or may not be a causal one, but it seems pretty obvious to anyone who lives in the middle east. During the gulf war, there was a lot of talk about how Kuwait was the most liberal of the countries in that area, especially in the area of Women's rights. Any coincidence that they had the highest wealth per capita of any country in that area? Most of the middle east didn't think so. There was a lot of anti-Kuwaiti sentiment right before the invasion. The only reason other oil-belt countries sided with us was that Hussein implied they were next.
There was an interview in a magazine put out by a local listner-supported radio station (go wfmu!) with a guy who worked on the Phantom Menace and part of the AOTC, before he was fired. According to him, Lucas was very sensitive about the criticism he got for dumbing down the first one, and determined to make this one a lot darker.
Not exactly and uninpeachable source, but interesting nonetheless.