Why is this modded as Funny? Should be insightful. Hemp was primarily villified and made illegal by an industrial conpiracy to protect monopolistic oil and wood interests.
"Hemp is the standard fiber of the world. It has great tensile strength and durability...and can be used to produce 25,000 products, ranging from dynamite to Cellophane.
"The natural materials in Hemp make it an economical source of pulp for any grade of paper manufactured, and the high percentage of alpha cellulose promises an unlimited supply of raw material for the thousands of cellulose (plastic) products our chemists have developed.
"All of these products, now imported, can be produced from home-grown Hemp. Fish nets, bow strings, canvas, strong rope, overalls, damask tablecloths, fine linen garments, towels, bed linen and thousands of other everyday items can be grown on American farms...all of this income can be made available to Americans."
"The paper industry offers even greater possibilities. As an industry, it amounts to over $1,000,000,000 a year, and of that, eighty percent is imported. But Hemp will produce every grade of paper, and government figures estimate that 10,000 acres devoted to Hemp will produce as much paper as 40,000 acres of average (timber) pulp land."
Hemp can be used to replace wood pulp paper, and we're cutting down our planet's forests at a suicidal rate. Hemp can be used as a domestically produced, renewable fuel, and yet we fight wars over foreign oil and pollute the atmosphere with it.
Re:complexity of supercomputers approaching brain
on
Arguing A.I.
·
· Score: 2
I, for one, believe consciousness to be quantum in nature... meaning it will take more than mere MHz to create a sentient machine.
But of course, IANAQBP (I am not a quantum bio-physicist:)
I'd like to think you're right, just on general Micro$oft Sucks principles, but I'm not so sure.
Apparently there are 250 X-Box games in development, and it is a LOT easier to develop for than on the PS2, due to the richly featured and mature DirectX 8, and also that you have make shit multi-threaded on the PS2 to take advantage of its architecture.
You're absolutely right that the console will rise or fall based on its game library, but MicroSoft also knows this, and has gone to great lengths to make this box a developer's dream system, and from all reports (including Tom's) they've succeeded at this.
This is entirely baseless, but I'd bet good money Spielberg will want to explore a fresh script, not retread some video game.
Re:General Jon Katz
on
The Drone War
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
When I started reading this article, I said to myself, "I bet he's not going to mention the Northern Alliance at all." Yup. Not one mention. How many Northern Alliance men have died fighting the Taliban? Reading Katz's article, one gets the impression the entire war was won with Predators and smart bombs. That's not only wildly inaccurate, it's shamefully disrespectful to those who have given their lives.
"Even as the Afghanistan campaign began, pundits flooded cable talk shows asserting that air power alone wasn't enough, that there would be substantial human sacrifice.
...
The Afghanistan campaign is a very different kind of fight."
No, Jon. It's still a massive infantry ground war. We just have a few more toys to help out with.
Underlying reason for all the changes and cuts
on
Info on the LOTR:FOTR DVD
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Spoiler warning for FotR
Peter Jackson (in the first film anyway) decided to focus on the corrupting influence of the One Ring, as the central theme of the first movie.
When you view it with this in mind, a lot of reasons for the changes from the book become apparent: Tom Bombadil is beyond the currupting power of the ring, so he was left out as unnecessary to the main theme. Gandalf touches it himself and is visibly shaken by it, even muttering about "precious". Extra emphasis is given to Boromir's lust for the ring; he even holds it on Caradhras. Galadriel's little witch spaz was a little overdone, IMHO. Even Aragorn treads the line, right from his confiding in Arwen at Rivendell about the weakness of his ancestral blood.
This is why Lothlorien was cut so short... once the powerful moderating influence of Gandalf is gone, the rest of the movie is about leading to Boromir's fall... his discomfort in Lorien, Galadriel's warning to Frodo, then the rushed trip down the Anduin to Argonath and Rauros. Anything else would be a distraction from what he was trying to hammer home.
Spoiler warning for Two Towers
I don't see how he can maintain this theme through the Two Towers... unless he really focuses on Gollum and Faramir; but I doubt he will since the story just explodes in so many directions.. Theoden and Wormtongue, Riders of Rohan, Treebeard and the Ents, the White Rider, Helm's Deep and Isengard... all of which really have nothing to do with the currupting influence of the ring.
signal will include a digital "watermark" containing information that tells a TV watcher's home-entertainment system whether to allow copying at all, or to allow limited copying, or to allow unlimited copying.
components of new home entertainment systems will also likely have to be designed not to play unwatermarked content - otherwise, all you've done is develop an incentive for both inquisitive hackers and copyright "pirates" to learn how to strip out the watermarks.
So the next generation of equipment will only play watermarked content, thus foiling the evil hackers plans of stripping out the watermark. Wow, sounds pretty foolproof. NOT. Someone will just write a utility to change the "Don't copy" flag to "Unlimited copy" without removing the watermark.
"Make something foolproof, and someone will invent a better fool." - Unknown
Just got back from the movie, it's 2:13AM and I have to work tommorow but I don't care, I think I'm going to be up until dawn reading Two Towers.
This is not intended to be a review, just a random compilation of thoughts and perceptions concerning the movie in no particular order. Apologies for any spelling/grammar errors, I'm not going to take the time to proof read and correct anything after I write it. There will probably be SPOILERS, but the story's pretty widely known anyway, so what's the big deal?
I feel almost like I just woke up from the best dream I ever had, the movie has an almost dreamlike, surreal feel to it because it flows so fast, glosses over so many details, because it has to, the story and world is so vast, and they've packed so much in. I've been trying to replay the entire movie in my head ever since I walked out of the theatre, savouring every scene's memory before it fades. And I know I will get more from it another time through.
I have read the books before, a long time ago. I re-read Fellowship a few weeks before the movie, to have a fresh image for comparison. Watching the movie felt like reading the book, and that's the highest compliment I can pay it. Most of the dialog is changed, and tons is skipped, despite a blistering 3 hours where not a second is wasted.
OK I'm really going to get into some major SPOILERS now, last warning for anyone who hasn't seen the movie and wants maximum surprise.
-
-
-
Bilbo's party was excellent, very true to the book. Wish they included more of his final speech. No flash-bang either from Gandalf, but all is forgiven for his fireworks:) Confrontation between Frodo and Gandalf is BEAUTIFUL. McKellan (sp?) will almost certainly have a nomination for this movie, as should Holm for supporting. After the party is where they really start slicing and dicing. There's almost no sense of time passing between Bilbo leaving and when the shit hits the fan. After Gandalf entrusts the ring to Frodo, he leaves in a hurry, we see him surveying Mordor, and reading up on the ring inscription, then he's back in Bag End all freaked out, and convinces Frodo to leave at once, literally pick up a cloak and out the door. (The riders are already asking questions by this point) No long planning, selling Bag End, to the Sackville-Bagginses, etc.. all gone. Gandalf tells him (and Sam, with the whole window scene) to go to Bree where he will meet them at the Prancing Pony. He tells them he will consult Saruman on what to do and leaves, shortly later we see his battle and imprisonment at Isengard. Frodo and Sam just happen to run into Merry and Pippin stealing from Farmer Maggot's (whom we never meet) field. Then there are some scenes with them evading the riders (no encounter with the elven band), and then they are in Bree. No Old Forest, Tom Bombadil, Barrow Downs or Wights.
I imagined Aragorn with a deeper voice, but other than that tiny quibble, Viggo is perfect as Strider. Weathertop is great, the battle is actually on top. Frodo/Ring-Vision is very cool, everything is ethereal and ghostily flaming. Ringwraiths are genuinely creepy. They camp in the petrified Troll glade from The Hobbit but don't discuss it at all. Arwen replaces Glorfindel's role as Frodo's rescuer, and there are a few brief romance moments between her and Aragorn in Rivendell. Liv Tyler gives a very mature and believable performance; it actually stands out. I was surprised. The Council of Elrond was reeeeeeally short. No storytelling. I agree with other posts that I still see Agent Smith when I look at Weaving. Kept expecting him to pull out a cell phone and say "They have the ring. Find them and destroy them. I hate this place; this smell. I must leave--for the West." but I digress. He still does a good Elrond, it's just that he did such a great Agent Smith:)
John Rhyes-Davies is absolutely unrecognizable as a loud angry Gimli, he's great:) Legolas is exactly as imagined, DAMN he's good with that bow. Bean's Boromir I thought was a trifle too evil and "spot the bad guy"-able, in the book I always got the impression he was the thoughtful, patriotic type, who only really falters briefly at the end.
One real gripe: Gimli was expecting a warm welcome at Moria, he had no sense of foreboding or worry at all. In the book he was hoping to find something, even though messages from Balin's little decorating team had ceased decades previously. In the movie he bellows confidently about dwarven hospitality and roaring fires and such they can expect, while Gandalf and Strider exchange knowing glances about the horrors of Moria. It just doesn't make any sense for their conflicting attitudes towards Moria, with no discussion or resolution.
The battle at Balin's tomb is greatly extended, in the book they essentially just throw the Orcs back momentarily with a flurry of flighting, retreat down some stairs and Gandalf brings down the ceiling. Cave Troll is cool:) Balrog is better:) The whole Bridge of Kazad-dum and flight from Moria is better than I could have imagined. No dwelling at Mirrormere though, and no Orc army pursuing the Fellowship and getting butchered by the Lothlorien Elves, which is a pity. No sleeping on a platform, no blindfolded walk through Lorien. The tree city is very cool though. I've read some complaints about Galadriel, but I thought she was excellent. Maybe a little bit more witchy than the book, for sure, but very effective regardless. Her speech to Gimli which has a very transforming effect in the book on his relationship with Legolas is missing. Frodo doesn't see the "figure in white" in Galadriel's mirror, which was always the one image that stuck out to me in the book. Also, Frodo doesn't discover she is a bearer of one of the Elf Rings. I bet Jackson didn't want to have to explain why the Ring-Wraiths became evil and twisted, but Galadriel is still good. I wish they had put a bit more effort into Lothlorien, I wonder if there will be a director's cut of this movie?
No gollum/log spotting on the Anduin. The giant Gondor King statues are breathtaking. They stray a bit into Two Towers with the Orc attack, Boromir's death, which is a better place to end it, I thought. It ends with Frodo and Sam on the brink of Mordor, and Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn in pursuit of the Orcs that captured Merry and Pippin. Saruman seems way more in league with Sauron than in the book... but I think it still likely he will chase his own ambition in the next two films.
Well I guess that's a long enough comparison of the book.. What would I give this movie? 98%. This is truly a unique movie... and to think that this is only a third of it, the other films should have the same momentum and feeling throughout. I can't wait to see it again, or the next two films.
Time to.... sleep.. no... must.. read.. farther.. my.. precioussss..... we cannot get out... they are coming...
...in my middle school Social Studies class. We studied The Simpsons as an example of a "fad", ie something that would vanish very quickly. Heh. The other pop phenomenon we studied at the same time was "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". One outta two ain't bad, I guess?:)
...the Sharp Wizard OZ-770PC. It's amazing! 3MB of flash ram, qwerty keyboard, proportional fonts, you can code in raw Z80 assembler for it, plus they have versions of C and BASIC for it. Tons of user written programs on the net. (MyWizard.com and many other sites) Best $100 I ever spent. I much prefer this design to a Palm-style tablet. Here is a good picture.
And no, I am not affiliated with Sharp or Amazon;)
I really hated this movie as I haven't hated a movie in quite some time. I believe the director previously did commercials or music videos or something, and it really shows. Horrendously overdirected and overshot. Super fast cuts and pans. Awful sound cues...
Wilson: "I've served my country for 7 years.. etc"
Hackman: "You don't know the first thing about serving your country!"
Music: Dum DUMMM!!!
And I haven't even gotten to the "PLOT" yet.
*MAJOR SPOILER WARNING**
Our boy has half the Serb army shooting at him, nobody can hit him. Not even the bad ass sniper guy can hit him, when he's perched, stationary on a DAM for cryin out loud... Or how about running through that minefield, hitting all the tripwires. You could actually see debris (ie, shrapnel) flying into him. Not a scratch. Entire minutes tick by where bullets are whizzing right past his head. He only gets detected in the first place 'cuz he yells like an idiot so loud they can hear him hundreds of feet away.
Positive notes: Hackman is decent as usual, and Wilson is watchable. Very cool aerial sequence at the beginning, and some OK action sequences scattered throughout. And of course, it IS a rather timely movie, considering recent events.
Check out Ebert's review, he gave it 1.5 stars. Seriously, this movie is so bad that after a while, I just got numb to the badness of it, and it started to seem almost good again. I think the Katz-bot is playing the underdog again.:)
...is that you, being a prominent geek, didn't have a line from the phone to your computer, where you could digitize the signal and pipe it through a speech recognition engine, and transcribe it directly to Slashdot in real time. Isn't that what geeks are for? Whatsa matta wit you?;)
On a serious note though, why didn't you schedule the phone interview for the next day or something (or whenever was good for Bruce), and then go immediately acquire a tape recorder in the meantime? Too much Oh-My-God-Ash-Is-On-The-Phone-Now-Now-Now syndrome?:)
I'm not contesting this, but I would like to add something. Modern HotSpot VMs are getting REALLY good. For those who don't know, HotSpot starts executing Java in interpreted mode immediately, to eliminate the costly startup time of a full blown pre-compiler like JIT. Then HotSpot dynamically analyzes the runtime characteristics of the program, and determines what sections of code are run most frequently. These sections ("hot spots") are then compiled (with advanced optimizations) to native code. They have also made major inroads with incremental garbage collection, short-lived object efficiency, thread synchronization, and a host of other goodies. Sun has been dedicating major resources to this type of research for years. Java has really hit its stride with 1.3, I can't wait for 1.4. (Primary focus in 1.4 is on stability and scalibility, as opposed to new features)
Don't get me wrong... I'm not saying the next Quake engine will be written in Java. I believe low level real time stuff will always be the domain of native C/++, ASM, etc.. but the performance difference between high level C and high level Java is FAR less that most of you would probably believe. I think the biggest caveat to Java is the huge runtime footprint, but that's the tradeoff of having such a feature rich, OS independant platform.
Absolutes and hyperbole are the refuge of the close minded. They are simply not ruling out any possibilities without further confirmation.. this is an excellent practice I feel. They suspect they could be onto something big, but don't want to "over hype" it.
"The wise man is the one who realizes that he knows nothing." - Socrates
You just violated the DMCA by revealing how to circumvent copy protection! You're going to rot in a cell with Sklyarov! Luckily, my State provided HappyThoughts TM visor immediately went opaque as soon as the offending material was detected so I couldn't see it.
Seriously though, the analog loop trick will work of course, but some hacker will write a digital ripper that bypasses the protection and release it anonymously on the 'net anyway.
"The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them." - Albert Einstein, 1932
"(S)he is full of bullshit (in fairness to him/her, (s)he's probably just repeating an urban legend and has an impressionable mind - and no critical thinking skills)."
I'm a he. Jes' wanted to clear that up:)
I'm glad I have an impressionable mind if having a closed mind like you is the alternative. Not to mention your condenscending, pendantic insults (Did you actually use the word microcephalic? Who are you trying to impress? If that's a part of your normal vocabulary, you have my sympathy)
Urban legend? Hardly. I'm trying to clear one up. If I'd known what kind of vehement attack I would come under for a simple FYI, I wouldn't have bothered. I suppose you believe reading in dim light makes your eyes weaker too?
I'm not debating that the practice continues primarily for the psychological impact of making a price look smaller, of course that's a factor. Probably THE factor today. (Your argument that YOU wouldn't "fall for it" is irrelevant. Some people will, and that is sufficient from a marketing perspective.) The point is however, that's not why it started. Just a useless bit of trivia.
Why am I spending my time responding to a clueless AC troll anyway?
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."
You're missing the point... if an item costs exactly $5.00 for example, a customer is likely to just fork over a five dollar bill and walk away, making it easy for the clerk to then pocket the cash with nobody observing.
If the price however is 4.95, the customer is expecting change, and therefore continues to watch you. Don't you think they would find it odd if the clerk, right beside a cash register, neglects to punch it the purchase into the machine, and produces change from his pocket?
Actually, the they switched everything over to.99 and.95 with the invention of the cash register, the idea being to force the cashier to open up the cash box to retrieve change, which makes it much harder for them to pocket the cash for themselves without anyone noticing.
The US State Department defines Terrorism pretty clearly:
The term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.
Can you really say that "violence against noncombatant targets" is someone's definition of freedom fighting?
You are right though... it is all about perspective.
"like Slashdot readers who hate Katz, but won't ever filter his stories"
I for one read Jon Katz articles JUST to read all the people slamming him afterwards. It's kind of like a sport... trying to predict quantity, quality, and flavour of flame based on the article content.
Sometimes, he writes something fairly lucid and insightful, and there's actual non-hostile, intelligent conversation about it. (I have a thermometer in hell hooked up to warn me early about those days) Other times it's some outrageously one-sided, strecthed thin, myopic anti-corporate pro-geek blather, and you can actually start to see the smoke coming off some of the comments, if you look carefully. Now that's entertainment;) Like watching Old Faithful erupt.
Slashdot Mirror
Hemp can be used to replace wood pulp paper, and we're cutting down our planet's forests at a suicidal rate. Hemp can be used as a domestically produced, renewable fuel, and yet we fight wars over foreign oil and pollute the atmosphere with it.
I, for one, believe consciousness to be quantum in nature... meaning it will take more than mere MHz to create a sentient machine.
:)
But of course, IANAQBP (I am not a quantum bio-physicist
I'd like to think you're right, just on general Micro$oft Sucks principles, but I'm not so sure.
Apparently there are 250 X-Box games in development, and it is a LOT easier to develop for than on the PS2, due to the richly featured and mature DirectX 8, and also that you have make shit multi-threaded on the PS2 to take advantage of its architecture.
You're absolutely right that the console will rise or fall based on its game library, but MicroSoft also knows this, and has gone to great lengths to make this box a developer's dream system, and from all reports (including Tom's) they've succeeded at this.
Well actually, with inner classes, there's no limit to what you can do with a single file.
(Mind you, these all compile to separate class files)
This is entirely baseless, but I'd bet good money Spielberg will want to explore a fresh script, not retread some video game.
When I started reading this article, I said to myself, "I bet he's not going to mention the Northern Alliance at all." Yup. Not one mention. How many Northern Alliance men have died fighting the Taliban? Reading Katz's article, one gets the impression the entire war was won with Predators and smart bombs. That's not only wildly inaccurate, it's shamefully disrespectful to those who have given their lives.
"Even as the Afghanistan campaign began, pundits flooded cable talk shows asserting that air power alone wasn't enough, that there would be substantial human sacrifice.
...
The Afghanistan campaign is a very different kind of fight."
No, Jon. It's still a massive infantry ground war. We just have a few more toys to help out with.
Spoiler warning for FotR
Peter Jackson (in the first film anyway) decided to focus on the corrupting influence of the One Ring, as the central theme of the first movie.
When you view it with this in mind, a lot of reasons for the changes from the book become apparent: Tom Bombadil is beyond the currupting power of the ring, so he was left out as unnecessary to the main theme. Gandalf touches it himself and is visibly shaken by it, even muttering about "precious". Extra emphasis is given to Boromir's lust for the ring; he even holds it on Caradhras. Galadriel's little witch spaz was a little overdone, IMHO. Even Aragorn treads the line, right from his confiding in Arwen at Rivendell about the weakness of his ancestral blood.
This is why Lothlorien was cut so short... once the powerful moderating influence of Gandalf is gone, the rest of the movie is about leading to Boromir's fall... his discomfort in Lorien, Galadriel's warning to Frodo, then the rushed trip down the Anduin to Argonath and Rauros. Anything else would be a distraction from what he was trying to hammer home.
Spoiler warning for Two Towers
I don't see how he can maintain this theme through the Two Towers... unless he really focuses on Gollum and Faramir; but I doubt he will since the story just explodes in so many directions.. Theoden and Wormtongue, Riders of Rohan, Treebeard and the Ents, the White Rider, Helm's Deep and Isengard... all of which really have nothing to do with the currupting influence of the ring.
components of new home entertainment systems will also likely have to be designed not to play unwatermarked content - otherwise, all you've done is develop an incentive for both inquisitive hackers and copyright "pirates" to learn how to strip out the watermarks.
So the next generation of equipment will only play watermarked content, thus foiling the evil hackers plans of stripping out the watermark. Wow, sounds pretty foolproof. NOT. Someone will just write a utility to change the "Don't copy" flag to "Unlimited copy" without removing the watermark.
"Make something foolproof, and someone will invent a better fool." - Unknown
Yes, I know... I was talking about how they get them in the movie, since the whole Barrow Downs things is skipped. Sorry for the confusion.
Just got back from the movie, it's 2:13AM and I have to work tommorow but I don't care, I think I'm going to be up until dawn reading Two Towers.
:) Confrontation between Frodo and Gandalf is BEAUTIFUL. McKellan (sp?) will almost certainly have a nomination for this movie, as should Holm for supporting. After the party is where they really start slicing and dicing. There's almost no sense of time passing between Bilbo leaving and when the shit hits the fan. After Gandalf entrusts the ring to Frodo, he leaves in a hurry, we see him surveying Mordor, and reading up on the ring inscription, then he's back in Bag End all freaked out, and convinces Frodo to leave at once, literally pick up a cloak and out the door. (The riders are already asking questions by this point) No long planning, selling Bag End, to the Sackville-Bagginses, etc.. all gone. Gandalf tells him (and Sam, with the whole window scene) to go to Bree where he will meet them at the Prancing Pony. He tells them he will consult Saruman on what to do and leaves, shortly later we see his battle and imprisonment at Isengard. Frodo and Sam just happen to run into Merry and Pippin stealing from Farmer Maggot's (whom we never meet) field. Then there are some scenes with them evading the riders (no encounter with the elven band), and then they are in Bree. No Old Forest, Tom Bombadil, Barrow Downs or Wights.
:)
:) Legolas is exactly as imagined, DAMN he's good with that bow. Bean's Boromir I thought was a trifle too evil and "spot the bad guy"-able, in the book I always got the impression he was the thoughtful, patriotic type, who only really falters briefly at the end.
:) Balrog is better :) The whole Bridge of Kazad-dum and flight from Moria is better than I could have imagined. No dwelling at Mirrormere though, and no Orc army pursuing the Fellowship and getting butchered by the Lothlorien Elves, which is a pity. No sleeping on a platform, no blindfolded walk through Lorien. The tree city is very cool though. I've read some complaints about Galadriel, but I thought she was excellent. Maybe a little bit more witchy than the book, for sure, but very effective regardless. Her speech to Gimli which has a very transforming effect in the book on his relationship with Legolas is missing. Frodo doesn't see the "figure in white" in Galadriel's mirror, which was always the one image that stuck out to me in the book. Also, Frodo doesn't discover she is a bearer of one of the Elf Rings. I bet Jackson didn't want to have to explain why the Ring-Wraiths became evil and twisted, but Galadriel is still good. I wish they had put a bit more effort into Lothlorien, I wonder if there will be a director's cut of this movie?
.... sleep.. no... must.. read.. farther.. my.. precioussss..... we cannot get out... they are coming...
This is not intended to be a review, just a random compilation of thoughts and perceptions concerning the movie in no particular order. Apologies for any spelling/grammar errors, I'm not going to take the time to proof read and correct anything after I write it. There will probably be SPOILERS, but the story's pretty widely known anyway, so what's the big deal?
I feel almost like I just woke up from the best dream I ever had, the movie has an almost dreamlike, surreal feel to it because it flows so fast, glosses over so many details, because it has to, the story and world is so vast, and they've packed so much in. I've been trying to replay the entire movie in my head ever since I walked out of the theatre, savouring every scene's memory before it fades. And I know I will get more from it another time through.
I have read the books before, a long time ago. I re-read Fellowship a few weeks before the movie, to have a fresh image for comparison. Watching the movie felt like reading the book, and that's the highest compliment I can pay it. Most of the dialog is changed, and tons is skipped, despite a blistering 3 hours where not a second is wasted.
OK I'm really going to get into some major SPOILERS now, last warning for anyone who hasn't seen the movie and wants maximum surprise.
-
-
-
Bilbo's party was excellent, very true to the book. Wish they included more of his final speech. No flash-bang either from Gandalf, but all is forgiven for his fireworks
I imagined Aragorn with a deeper voice, but other than that tiny quibble, Viggo is perfect as Strider. Weathertop is great, the battle is actually on top. Frodo/Ring-Vision is very cool, everything is ethereal and ghostily flaming. Ringwraiths are genuinely creepy. They camp in the petrified Troll glade from The Hobbit but don't discuss it at all. Arwen replaces Glorfindel's role as Frodo's rescuer, and there are a few brief romance moments between her and Aragorn in Rivendell. Liv Tyler gives a very mature and believable performance; it actually stands out. I was surprised. The Council of Elrond was reeeeeeally short. No storytelling. I agree with other posts that I still see Agent Smith when I look at Weaving. Kept expecting him to pull out a cell phone and say "They have the ring. Find them and destroy them. I hate this place; this smell. I must leave--for the West." but I digress. He still does a good Elrond, it's just that he did such a great Agent Smith
John Rhyes-Davies is absolutely unrecognizable as a loud angry Gimli, he's great
One real gripe: Gimli was expecting a warm welcome at Moria, he had no sense of foreboding or worry at all. In the book he was hoping to find something, even though messages from Balin's little decorating team had ceased decades previously. In the movie he bellows confidently about dwarven hospitality and roaring fires and such they can expect, while Gandalf and Strider exchange knowing glances about the horrors of Moria. It just doesn't make any sense for their conflicting attitudes towards Moria, with no discussion or resolution.
The battle at Balin's tomb is greatly extended, in the book they essentially just throw the Orcs back momentarily with a flurry of flighting, retreat down some stairs and Gandalf brings down the ceiling. Cave Troll is cool
No gollum/log spotting on the Anduin. The giant Gondor King statues are breathtaking. They stray a bit into Two Towers with the Orc attack, Boromir's death, which is a better place to end it, I thought. It ends with Frodo and Sam on the brink of Mordor, and Legolas, Gimli, and Aragorn in pursuit of the Orcs that captured Merry and Pippin. Saruman seems way more in league with Sauron than in the book... but I think it still likely he will chase his own ambition in the next two films.
Well I guess that's a long enough comparison of the book.. What would I give this movie? 98%. This is truly a unique movie... and to think that this is only a third of it, the other films should have the same momentum and feeling throughout. I can't wait to see it again, or the next two films.
Time to
If you don't want to know the answer to the subject, stop reading NOW!
-
-
-
Answer:
Aragorn gives them to them. (I haven't actually seen the movie yet, going at 10:30 tonight, but I asked a friend about this very point)
...in my middle school Social Studies class. We studied The Simpsons as an example of a "fad", ie something that would vanish very quickly. Heh. The other pop phenomenon we studied at the same time was "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". One outta two ain't bad, I guess? :)
...the Sharp Wizard OZ-770PC. It's amazing! 3MB of flash ram, qwerty keyboard, proportional fonts, you can code in raw Z80 assembler for it, plus they have versions of C and BASIC for it. Tons of user written programs on the net. (MyWizard.com and many other sites) Best $100 I ever spent. I much prefer this design to a Palm-style tablet. Here is a good picture.
;)
And no, I am not affiliated with Sharp or Amazon
I really hated this movie as I haven't hated a movie in quite some time. I believe the director previously did commercials or music videos or something, and it really shows. Horrendously overdirected and overshot. Super fast cuts and pans. Awful sound cues...
:)
Wilson: "I've served my country for 7 years.. etc"
Hackman: "You don't know the first thing about serving your country!"
Music: Dum DUMMM!!!
And I haven't even gotten to the "PLOT" yet.
*MAJOR SPOILER WARNING**
Our boy has half the Serb army shooting at him, nobody can hit him. Not even the bad ass sniper guy can hit him, when he's perched, stationary on a DAM for cryin out loud... Or how about running through that minefield, hitting all the tripwires. You could actually see debris (ie, shrapnel) flying into him. Not a scratch. Entire minutes tick by where bullets are whizzing right past his head. He only gets detected in the first place 'cuz he yells like an idiot so loud they can hear him hundreds of feet away.
Positive notes: Hackman is decent as usual, and Wilson is watchable. Very cool aerial sequence at the beginning, and some OK action sequences scattered throughout. And of course, it IS a rather timely movie, considering recent events.
Check out Ebert's review, he gave it 1.5 stars. Seriously, this movie is so bad that after a while, I just got numb to the badness of it, and it started to seem almost good again. I think the Katz-bot is playing the underdog again.
...is that you, being a prominent geek, didn't have a line from the phone to your computer, where you could digitize the signal and pipe it through a speech recognition engine, and transcribe it directly to Slashdot in real time. Isn't that what geeks are for? Whatsa matta wit you? ;)
:)
On a serious note though, why didn't you schedule the phone interview for the next day or something (or whenever was good for Bruce), and then go immediately acquire a tape recorder in the meantime? Too much Oh-My-God-Ash-Is-On-The-Phone-Now-Now-Now syndrome?
I'm not contesting this, but I would like to add something. Modern HotSpot VMs are getting REALLY good. For those who don't know, HotSpot starts executing Java in interpreted mode immediately, to eliminate the costly startup time of a full blown pre-compiler like JIT. Then HotSpot dynamically analyzes the runtime characteristics of the program, and determines what sections of code are run most frequently. These sections ("hot spots") are then compiled (with advanced optimizations) to native code. They have also made major inroads with incremental garbage collection, short-lived object efficiency, thread synchronization, and a host of other goodies. Sun has been dedicating major resources to this type of research for years. Java has really hit its stride with 1.3, I can't wait for 1.4. (Primary focus in 1.4 is on stability and scalibility, as opposed to new features)
Don't get me wrong... I'm not saying the next Quake engine will be written in Java. I believe low level real time stuff will always be the domain of native C/++, ASM, etc.. but the performance difference between high level C and high level Java is FAR less that most of you would probably believe. I think the biggest caveat to Java is the huge runtime footprint, but that's the tradeoff of having such a feature rich, OS independant platform.
Here is Sun's white paper on HotSpot, it's very well written.
Absolutes and hyperbole are the refuge of the close minded. They are simply not ruling out any possibilities without further confirmation.. this is an excellent practice I feel. They suspect they could be onto something big, but don't want to "over hype" it.
"The wise man is the one who realizes that he knows nothing." - Socrates
Don't worry though.. you weren't replying to a sig, sigs have a max of 120 chars, I looked that one up specifically for that post from this site.
On that note, here's another one:
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." - Einstein
Whoops.. I just broke that one. ;)
Seriously though, the analog loop trick will work of course, but some hacker will write a digital ripper that bypasses the protection and release it anonymously on the 'net anyway.
"The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them." - Albert Einstein, 1932
"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."
"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions."
- Albert Einstein
If the price however is 4.95, the customer is expecting change, and therefore continues to watch you. Don't you think they would find it odd if the clerk, right beside a cash register, neglects to punch it the purchase into the machine, and produces change from his pocket?
Actually, the they switched everything over to .99 and .95 with the invention of the cash register, the idea being to force the cashier to open up the cash box to retrieve change, which makes it much harder for them to pocket the cash for themselves without anyone noticing.
The term "terrorism" means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience.
Can you really say that "violence against noncombatant targets" is someone's definition of freedom fighting?
You are right though... it is all about perspective.
It was a joke you genius. Actually I almost never read or post to /. anymore because of the pervasiveness of insulting children like you.
I for one read Jon Katz articles JUST to read all the people slamming him afterwards. It's kind of like a sport... trying to predict quantity, quality, and flavour of flame based on the article content.
Sometimes, he writes something fairly lucid and insightful, and there's actual non-hostile, intelligent conversation about it. (I have a thermometer in hell hooked up to warn me early about those days) Other times it's some outrageously one-sided, strecthed thin, myopic anti-corporate pro-geek blather, and you can actually start to see the smoke coming off some of the comments, if you look carefully. Now that's entertainment ;) Like watching Old Faithful erupt.