In my opinion, China Melville is overrated as an author. His Perdido Street Station was the "it" book of 2001, but after I finished reading it, I couldn't help but wonder what the big deal was.
Granted, he has an excellent sense of the phantasmagoric and his worldbuilding skills are certainly impressive, but as an author, he just doesn't have the chops. His characters are almost too angst-ridden to move in a forward direction, and his plots read like a bad slasher flicks.
Take away his word processor and give him a job as a conceptual designer. Everyone will be happier in the long run.
They're calling this series the "Tertiary Phase", but as far as I can tell they're not bothering to tie up the threads left dangling at the end of the "Secondary Phase" (i.e. the second series). Instead, it sounds like they're rewinding all the way back to the end of the "Primary Phase" (i.e. the first series) and then following the books from there.
(If you didn't already know, the books and the second radio series follow completely different storylines.)
At the end of the second series, we'd just learned from the Man Who Rules the Galaxy that Zaphod had secretly conspired with his psychiatrist to destroy the Earth, to prevent the people of the galaxy from learning the Ultimate Question and thus becoming mentally stable and content.
Arthur, justifiably angered by this revelation, stole the Heart of Gold and took off with Lintilla, the cloned archaeologist, and Marvin, the paranoid android.
Ford, Zaphod, and Zarniwoop were left abandoned on the tiny, rain-soaked planet with the Man Who Rules the Galaxy and God, his cat.
Is it more of a partisan act that they did this, or is it more of partisan act that no Republicans joined them?
For the same reason that no other Democrats joined them: because as Americans, they knew that asking the United Nations to intervene was not only thoroughly illegal, it was also a stupid, pointless stunt that would only make whatever problems we have even worse.
The United Nations -- that august institution that lets terrorist nations (Libya, Syria) head the Human Rights commision, repeatedly ignores genocide (Iraq, Rwanda, Serbia, Darfur), rapes the women under its "protection" (Serbia again, Congo), and tries to bury billions of dollars in corruption (Oil for Food). Oh yes, we certainly want them telling us how to run our elections.
For crying out loud, they only got nine Congress-critters to sign onto the thing. I could get more than that to sign onto legislature banning Red Bull.
So the systematic purging of likely Democratic voters from the 2000 Florida roles was an accident?
You shouldn't get all of your "news" from Michael Moore...
Here's the truth: after the 1998 Miami mayoral election was invalidated because an unusually large number of convicted felons had voted, the State of Florida hired an outside contractor to purge felons from the election rolls. Unfortunately, due to sloppy programming, many eligible voters with similar names were mistakenly removed as well. Even worse, these voters did not learn they had been removed until they reported to their designated polling places on the day of the election.
However, post facto analysis showed there was no correlation between the mistakenly removed voters and their race or voting preference. In fact, the contractor's refusal to take such factors into account actually contributed to the confusion.
And in the end, several thousand felons still voted in the 2000 election despite the purge, and 68% of them voted Democrat.
If we're going to edit for context, then let's do it right:
Several
[low-ranking Democrat] members of the [US] House of Representatives have requested the United Nations to send observers to monitor the November 2 US presidential election to avoid a contentious vote like in 2000, when the outcome was decided by Florida.
And then there's this gem, from the same story:
Thirty-six days after the November 7, 2000 presidential election, after several state court interventions and vote recounts in numerous Florida counties,
the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Republican George W. Bush, awarding him all of Florida's 25 electoral votes.
Funny, I thought it was the State of Florida that awarded Florida's electoral votes to Bush. The SCOTUS ruling simply overturned the lower court's order for yet another round (third? fourth?) of selective recounts. Recounts that would have continued past the statutory deadline for certification.
Regardless of whether one feels justice was served or betrayed, can we at least stick to the same set of facts?
I may like the Catholic Church for a lot of stuff- but the worst influence it's had on society is giving us hierarchial command structures.
The Catholic Church gave us hierarchical command structures? Umm, then what happened during those 4,000 years of human civilization before the birth of Christ?
No, I'm slamming people who can't live with reasonable DRM and just HAVE to strip it out. When that product is already available through a different outlet. If you can't live with the DRM, don't buy it with the DRM. I think it's reasonable AND acceptable that Apple tries to enforce the DRM that they've already agreed to. If you break it, they will fix it so you can't.
Ah, then we're agreed. Sorry for misinterpreting you. It's just so rare for someone on Slashdot to hold that position, I responded pretty much out of relflex.;-)
I took that as more a comment that this "update war" will just keep going -- Apple updates, Hymn updates, etc., etc. I don't see a point in there about the DRM getting more restrictive. Just a comment on the annoyance factor in the whole deal for everyone else.
I'm not annoyed by the updates, because I don't try to crack the DRM. The frustration expressed in the original post is only felt by the users of Hymn.
NatasRevol [1] is right when he says "if you don't like the DRM, buy a version without it," but if you read between the lines, he seems to be slamming Apple for enforcing the DRM rather than the Hymn users for cracking it.
[1] It's "Satan Lover" backwards, get it? Get it? Har-har-har...
At any rate, NatasRevol's point certainly isn't a straw man argument.
Yes, it is. In fact, I checked that same page before posting, just to make sure I remembered the term correctly.
NatasRevol's original post was a straw man argument because it distorted the reality of Apple's periodic iTunes updates in order to argue that they're implementing ever more restrictive DRM. That's just not true. They're updating iTunes in order to reinforce the existing DRM, which is being willfully violated by the users of Hymn.
See, if this shit keeps up, Apple may need to develop a much more restrictive DRM, just to appease the RIAA.
You are presuming the worst without the historical evidence to justify it. Apple has repeatedly demonstrated that they prefer technological solutions to legal problems (certain "look-and-feel" litigation notwithstanding). If someone cracks the DRM, they patch it. 'Nuf said.
The one time they've genuinely changed the terms of the DRM, it was more expansive (increase from three to five machines allowed) than restrictive (burn same playlist seven times instead of ten), so... *shrug*
And what happens at the next update? And the one after that?
This is a straw man argument. The only people caught in this "game" are those who use Hymn to break the DRM, in willful violation of the iTMS license. For everyone else, these updates are seamless and troublefree.
I think Fox wanted Joss to make another teen-hit, but in space. And when he showed up with the best sci-fi show ever shown on TV, the execs freaked because that was not what they wanted.
C'mon now, hyperbole like that in a crowd like this can only lead to trouble. Sure, Firefly was witty and well-crafted, but a) it was still more western than sci-fi and b) there have been plenty of kick-ass "genre" shows in the past several years.
Any company in this day and age that can consider itself solvent has to be doing something right.
Small correction: to be solvent, you merely need to have more assets than debts. Most companies are solvent by this definition, and in corporations, the difference is considered "stockholder equity": the cash that would be divided amongst the stockholders if/when the company was liquidated.
On the other hand, for a corporation to be completely debt-free is a rare achievement.
Tolkien himself commented an early non-filmed script (1958) by Zimmerman in his letter to Forrest J. Ackerman. Some of his comments are very thought-provoking, and seem to be directed straight to Peter Jackson.
The only objection in this letter that can also apply to Jackson's adaption is in regards to the extended fight on Weathertop. Everything else indicates that Tolkien simply rejected Zimmerman's attempt to turn LOTR into a fairy tale or children's story.
I urge everyone to read the letter and see what Tolkien really thought about movies based on his books.
Tolkien was always open to the idea of an adaptation, and while he was certainly intent on maintaining the moral and cultural tone of his original story, he would never have sweated trivial details like giving one of Boromir's lines to Legolas...
...and that's the sort of silliness that makes up the vast majority of the Nit-picker's list, so feh.
Re:Press release is kind of funny...
on
News from Mars
·
· Score: 1
In other words, you're either with him or with the "zealots." Where have we seen this narrow-minded extremist view before?
Oh joy, now we can't even have a decent "Mac versus Windows" flamewar without someone spinning off into gratuitous political trolling. May they both rot in/dev/null...
Granted, Apple Music downloads are useless to anyone without iTunes (on Windows or Mac) or an iPod. Until I can play them in linux, they're useless to me. And don't tell me to burn everything to a CD and then rip it.
Burn everything to a CD and then rip it.
Seriously, it's time to reconsider your expectations. It's an online music store -- the RIAA would not allow it to exist without some form of DRM. So be thankful for the loophole.
Yah! Lord of the Rings and Matrix trailers! Yah we love the MPAA this week 'cause they made stuff geeks like! Yah! Next week we'll go back to hating them for being evil! yah consitency!!
obtaining imported products, especially soundtracks, are _prohibitively_ expensive. This isn't like "go to Tower and pick up the CD for 15 bucks"... these things run 30 and 40 dollars for the real mccoy
Well, first of all, you're exaggerating the hell out of the import situation. You can find virtually any Japanese CD you could possibly want right here. They do mail order to anywhere in the world, they're fast and reliable, they're 100% legitimate, and depending on the exchange rate, almost every album can be had for less than $25.
But that's all beside the point. The simple truth is you're a lazy cheapskate who just can't be bothered to support the industry. You're not a fan -- you are a parasite.
Hell, buying pirated goods is even stupider than stealing them outright...
There hasn't been a single case of a Japanese company cracking down on this in the US, at least that I'm aware, so really in all honesty, this FAQ comes off like that one kid in class who reminds the teacher that she forgot to give homework.
Translation: "So long as I don't get caught, nobody is hurt."
Try the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. For the old school geek -- both Edison and the Wright Bros' workshops, plus 120 years of heavy-duty industrial goodness.
Also, just down I-75 in Dayton, Ohio, the United States Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson AFB. Lots and lots of nifty (but decommissioned) military aircraft.
Slashdot Mirror
In my opinion, China Melville is overrated as an author. His Perdido Street Station was the "it" book of 2001, but after I finished reading it, I couldn't help but wonder what the big deal was.
Granted, he has an excellent sense of the phantasmagoric and his worldbuilding skills are certainly impressive, but as an author, he just doesn't have the chops. His characters are almost too angst-ridden to move in a forward direction, and his plots read like a bad slasher flicks.
Take away his word processor and give him a job as a conceptual designer. Everyone will be happier in the long run.
Blockquoth the parent:
You're correct. My bad. I was trying to remember the relevant line, and it was either "God knows..." or "The Lord knows..."
They're calling this series the "Tertiary Phase", but as far as I can tell they're not bothering to tie up the threads left dangling at the end of the "Secondary Phase" (i.e. the second series). Instead, it sounds like they're rewinding all the way back to the end of the "Primary Phase" (i.e. the first series) and then following the books from there.
(If you didn't already know, the books and the second radio series follow completely different storylines.)
At the end of the second series, we'd just learned from the Man Who Rules the Galaxy that Zaphod had secretly conspired with his psychiatrist to destroy the Earth, to prevent the people of the galaxy from learning the Ultimate Question and thus becoming mentally stable and content.
Arthur, justifiably angered by this revelation, stole the Heart of Gold and took off with Lintilla, the cloned archaeologist, and Marvin, the paranoid android.
Ford, Zaphod, and Zarniwoop were left abandoned on the tiny, rain-soaked planet with the Man Who Rules the Galaxy and God, his cat.
Blockquoth the parent:
For the same reason that no other Democrats joined them: because as Americans, they knew that asking the United Nations to intervene was not only thoroughly illegal, it was also a stupid, pointless stunt that would only make whatever problems we have even worse.
The United Nations -- that august institution that lets terrorist nations (Libya, Syria) head the Human Rights commision, repeatedly ignores genocide (Iraq, Rwanda, Serbia, Darfur), rapes the women under its "protection" (Serbia again, Congo), and tries to bury billions of dollars in corruption (Oil for Food). Oh yes, we certainly want them telling us how to run our elections.
For crying out loud, they only got nine Congress-critters to sign onto the thing. I could get more than that to sign onto legislature banning Red Bull.
Blockquoth the parent:
You shouldn't get all of your "news" from Michael Moore...
Here's the truth: after the 1998 Miami mayoral election was invalidated because an unusually large number of convicted felons had voted, the State of Florida hired an outside contractor to purge felons from the election rolls. Unfortunately, due to sloppy programming, many eligible voters with similar names were mistakenly removed as well. Even worse, these voters did not learn they had been removed until they reported to their designated polling places on the day of the election.
However, post facto analysis showed there was no correlation between the mistakenly removed voters and their race or voting preference. In fact, the contractor's refusal to take such factors into account actually contributed to the confusion.
And in the end, several thousand felons still voted in the 2000 election despite the purge, and 68% of them voted Democrat.
Source: Palm Beach Post, 27 May 2001
If we're going to edit for context, then let's do it right:
And then there's this gem, from the same story:
Funny, I thought it was the State of Florida that awarded Florida's electoral votes to Bush. The SCOTUS ruling simply overturned the lower court's order for yet another round (third? fourth?) of selective recounts. Recounts that would have continued past the statutory deadline for certification.
Regardless of whether one feels justice was served or betrayed, can we at least stick to the same set of facts?
Blockquoth the parent:
I'll see you and raise you...
Blockquoth the parent:
The Catholic Church gave us hierarchical command structures? Umm, then what happened during those 4,000 years of human civilization before the birth of Christ?
Blockquoth the parent:
Ah, then we're agreed. Sorry for misinterpreting you. It's just so rare for someone on Slashdot to hold that position, I responded pretty much out of relflex. ;-)
Blockquoth the parent:
I'm not annoyed by the updates, because I don't try to crack the DRM. The frustration expressed in the original post is only felt by the users of Hymn.
NatasRevol [1] is right when he says "if you don't like the DRM, buy a version without it," but if you read between the lines, he seems to be slamming Apple for enforcing the DRM rather than the Hymn users for cracking it.
[1] It's "Satan Lover" backwards, get it? Get it? Har-har-har...
Blockquoth the parent:
Yes, it is. In fact, I checked that same page before posting, just to make sure I remembered the term correctly.
NatasRevol's original post was a straw man argument because it distorted the reality of Apple's periodic iTunes updates in order to argue that they're implementing ever more restrictive DRM. That's just not true. They're updating iTunes in order to reinforce the existing DRM, which is being willfully violated by the users of Hymn.
You are presuming the worst without the historical evidence to justify it. Apple has repeatedly demonstrated that they prefer technological solutions to legal problems (certain "look-and-feel" litigation notwithstanding). If someone cracks the DRM, they patch it. 'Nuf said.
The one time they've genuinely changed the terms of the DRM, it was more expansive (increase from three to five machines allowed) than restrictive (burn same playlist seven times instead of ten), so... *shrug*
Blockquoth the poster:
This is a straw man argument. The only people caught in this "game" are those who use Hymn to break the DRM, in willful violation of the iTMS license. For everyone else, these updates are seamless and troublefree.
Blockquoth the poster:
C'mon now, hyperbole like that in a crowd like this can only lead to trouble. Sure, Firefly was witty and well-crafted, but a) it was still more western than sci-fi and b) there have been plenty of kick-ass "genre" shows in the past several years.
Blockquoth the poster:
Small correction: to be solvent, you merely need to have more assets than debts. Most companies are solvent by this definition, and in corporations, the difference is considered "stockholder equity": the cash that would be divided amongst the stockholders if/when the company was liquidated.
On the other hand, for a corporation to be completely debt-free is a rare achievement.
Blockquoth the poster:
The only objection in this letter that can also apply to Jackson's adaption is in regards to the extended fight on Weathertop. Everything else indicates that Tolkien simply rejected Zimmerman's attempt to turn LOTR into a fairy tale or children's story.
Tolkien was always open to the idea of an adaptation, and while he was certainly intent on maintaining the moral and cultural tone of his original story, he would never have sweated trivial details like giving one of Boromir's lines to Legolas...
...and that's the sort of silliness that makes up the vast majority of the Nit-picker's list, so feh.
American: Look! It doesn't have a McDonalds!
Guess again...
Blockquoth the article:
Oh joy, now we can't even have a decent "Mac versus Windows" flamewar without someone spinning off into gratuitous political trolling. May they both rot in /dev/null...
Blockquoth the poster:
92 cents below the lowest octave of E-flat.
Mmm, pie...
Blockquoth the poster:
Burn everything to a CD and then rip it.
Seriously, it's time to reconsider your expectations. It's an online music store -- the RIAA would not allow it to exist without some form of DRM. So be thankful for the loophole.
Blockquoth the poster:
Read the FAQ.
What d'ya mean technical writers aren't funny? We have great senses of humor. How else could we tolerate working with engineers?
Blockquoth the poster:
If you were an idiot and bought them one at a time, maybe...
Now you're just being fatuous. It's an import -- deal with it.
I don't know what albums you're choosing, but mine routinely run 60 to 70 minutes. Yes, really. Want a list?
I could say the same about most domestic releases these days.
No, only by the standards of self-indulgent wannabes. Real fans support the industry and pay the asking price.
Ahh, there's the truth of it: you want them for free. You parasite.
And none of this changes the fact that it's stupider to buy bootlegs than to steal the music outright.
Blockquoth the poster:
Well, first of all, you're exaggerating the hell out of the import situation. You can find virtually any Japanese CD you could possibly want right here. They do mail order to anywhere in the world, they're fast and reliable, they're 100% legitimate, and depending on the exchange rate, almost every album can be had for less than $25.
But that's all beside the point. The simple truth is you're a lazy cheapskate who just can't be bothered to support the industry. You're not a fan -- you are a parasite.
Hell, buying pirated goods is even stupider than stealing them outright...
Translation: "So long as I don't get caught, nobody is hurt."
Try the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. For the old school geek -- both Edison and the Wright Bros' workshops, plus 120 years of heavy-duty industrial goodness.
Also, just down I-75 in Dayton, Ohio, the United States Air Force Museum at Wright Patterson AFB. Lots and lots of nifty (but decommissioned) military aircraft.