The article and writeup both mention that the Midwest visit is part of an effort to build a game for the U.S. market, but wouldn't a detailed recreation of Midwestern environs hold a certain appeal for Japanese gamers, as well? As the article noted, what seems mundane to a Midwesterner -- e.g., the typical U.S. bathroom -- could seem exotic and intriguing for someone from Japan.
This is not to be too orientalist about it -- the phenomenon works both ways. I remember how much fun it was, when I played Shenmue, to experience Japanese small-town life to some degree. As I have traveled in Japan over the past two years, it has been even more fun to see how accurate the Shenmue designers' attention to detail was. (Well, OK, I've never had to perform a Quick Time Event in a back alley, but otherwise--)
So, then, which hatred is justified? Draw the line. My point was not that there is moral equivalency across the board, but that all hatred is wasteful to some degree. This gets obscured when people start deciding for themselves that some hatred is inherently "justified." Extreme examples of people who thought they were "justified:" Matthew Shepard's killers, the 9/11 bombers, both sides in the West Bank. I'm not calling you a murderer; I'm sure you're an upstanding citizen. My point is just that none of us has the right to be an arbiter of hatred.
I simply do not understand how people can be so consumed with obvious hatred for another person debating COMPUTERS!
So if they were debating politics, or maybe religion, it would be all right? Why is computing an especially ridiculous reason to hate another person? There is no good reason, in any context. If reading the puerile hate mail attached to the article was the first time you realized that there is a great deal of unjustified hatred in the world, then count yourself lucky for the years of bliss.
It's great for people to be passionate about computers. I am. It can be a joy to find your passion. As with anything, some people direct their passionate energies toward hatred, and it's sad. Hatred is a waste in any context.
You understand it incorrectly. The orient/orientate distinction has nothing to do with direct or indirect objects. They are essentially synonymous -- the distinction is an issue of usage.
"Orientate" is typically used more often when speaking of physical orientation. "Orient" would probably have been more appropriate for the conceptual orientation that is being discussed in this case. Either is acceptable, though.
Respecting boundaries is entirely different from editorial input. Tailoring a story to cultivate stories is a judgment call on the part of the reporter -- s/he makes the choice of whether to write the story in a certain way to respect the source. This is understood by the reader. When a newspaper reader sees a quote sourced to a "senior Bush administration aide," there is an implication that Powell/Rumsfeld/whoever has given the information under certain conditions. There is also the implication that the reporter has decided the information was worth the sacrifice. Both sides of the deal are obvious to the reader.
Note that the reader (rightly) assumes that all editorial decisions were made by the reporter and the editorial staff of the newspaper. It is acceptable for a reporter to make accommodations for sources that are at least partially transparent to the reader. But it is extremely poor journalism for the reporter to give a source decision-making power as to what goes in/out of the article, or how a certain issue is framed -- these decisions are entirely the domain of the reporter and editors. There is an unspoken but critical agreement between the paper and the readers that the reporter chooses what to report and accepts the consequences.
This is the distinction between savvy source management and allowing sources to have editorial input.
The Academy announced that Serkis was eligible to be nominated for an Oscar (scroll down in link, third paragraph from the bottom). He just did not receive enough votes from Academy members to receive a nomination.
Does Airport really merit its own icon? I fear that we may be DILUTING the value of Slashdot subject icons! SLASHDOT EDITORS, REPENT!
Oh wait, who cares? Looks pretty nifty.
Recordable DVD Drive a Deal-Breaker?
on
Rabid TiVo Fanaticism
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Personally, I won't bother to find out first hand until they slap a recordable DVD drive in there.
Huh? What a bizarre, ill-informed remark to make. The cost-benefit ratio would be ridiculous.
Why not just buy a recordable DVD drive and record TiVo programs on to that? Oh, you probably don't want to check out recordable DVD drives until they make one that has a MiniDV deck built in.
From the article: "There's no official reason given as to why this SE was cancelled."
From the studio article in the same article: "Warner Home Video will not be releasing the previously announced The Matrix Special Edition double-disc DVD. In a shift in strategy to broaden The Matrix fan base prior to the May 15 theatrical release of the highly anticipated sequel The Matrix Reloaded, Warner Home Video will reprice The Matrix DVD to $19.99 SRP on April 29."
There's your official reason right there, and it's reasonable. If Warner released an expensive special edition now, it would push the standard Matrix DVD farther back on the shelves. The special edition would sell well, undoubtedly, but only already-dedicated fans would be willing to pay a steep price. With Warner's new strategy, stores will promote the newly-discounted standard DVD, and newbies will be that much more encouraged to get into the film -- and subsequently more likely to head to theaters for the sequel. Makes good sense from a marketing point of view.
Also, the article doesn't say that the SE has been killed forever -- indeed, it implies that a special edition of some kind will come out when Warner thinks the time is right.
So internal (i.e. resnet) usage continues unfettered? One person downloads The Two Towers and the whole school can get it. I don't see how the cap will make a huge difference in the long run.
But when there are copyright violations involved, a university can get flinchy. At my school, for example, we had a resnet Direct Connect (like Napster) network that was set up by a CS student. The administration didn't ignore it for long, though, and recently it was shut down. The trouble with resnet is that "stretching" copyright law is more obvious to the paranoid powers that be.
While my university doesn't use the SSN for our student ID number, it still asks students to put it on countless forms and enter it into countless databases. It's always made me uneasy, and I hadn't even thought of the potential for a computer break-in. Rather, I was unsettled that any student worker who checked out a book for me at the library could see my SSN on his screen after scanning my ID card.
But nothing wakes up a university -- especially a state school -- like the threat of litigation. If the cracker followed up and committed full-scale identity theft, the students would have grounds for a lawsuit against the school. Consider the recent New Hampshire lawsuit that dealt with SSNs and other personal information. With the potential for bloodthirsty lawyers, universities might finally get serious about protecting their students' information.
the real developers spend days and weeks writing Java and C++ code to solve problems that those talented Perl or Python programmers could have knocked out in a few hours
This phenomenon sounds like ignorance of scripting's capabilities rather than discrimination against it. I doubt that many companies would deliberately assign extra work just to stick it to the Perl programmers. C++ would seem like the safe solution to a manager too busy or lazy to learn about a scripting approach. To the most literal-minded manager, a "program" will likely seem like a more robust solution than a "script." It's a PR problem.
To those who say that LOTR doesn't have a chance of winning the Best Picture award, don't forget that one reason the Academy Awards are derided for poor selections is that they often give the award to somebody who should have won before -- or to somebody who has had an impressive cumulative career but has never edged out the pack in a single year. This is why Scorsese is nominated for Best Director and his Gangs of New York is up for Best Picture. Gangs was far from Scorsese's best, and the critical reception was mixed. But because he has done so many great things in Hollywood, he got those nods, which were undeserved solely on the merits of Gangs.
With LOTR, it's very likely that the third film will again be nominated for Best Picture next year. The Academy voters will see a series that has been nominated for the top award three years in a row, and they could very well decide to reward the cumulative effort. So don't count LOTR out yet.
Of course, the follow-up question is, does it matter? Well, it wouldn't hurt, and it would be fun to see at the very least.
It's not stupid -- at least no stupider than many, many Japanese words. It's an onomatopoeia (like "snap" or "buzz"), which are much more common in Japanese speech than in English. As such, Japanese distinguishes between three kinds of onomatopoeia:
gisei-go imitate the sounds of nature. gitai-go relate to the state of tangible things. gijou-go relate to internal feelings.
The last two aren't onomatopoeia in the traditional English sense since they are not imitating actual sounds; rather, they're portraying an ethereal sense of things. More details here.
Anyway, pachinko is derived from the gisei-go word pachi-pachi, which imitates the clicking together of small objects or the sound of hands clapping. So it's appropriate, and it's a fairly standard Japanese construction.
For those who didn't know, Apple is using two different models on their LCD products, one great quality (older powerbooks, Cinema Displays) and one crappy/cheap one (imac, ibooks, 12" powerbook and the new 20" Cinema Display (that's why it is so cheap and it even competes price-wise with the PC LCD monitors in the range))
Interesting, because on MacInTouch, there is a reader report in which many are noting that the 20" Cinema Display looks better than its older counterparts.
If the reviewer is correct in asserting that the 12" PB display and the 20" Cinema Display are the same, then the quality issue would appear to be more subjective than he thinks.
Did anyone bother to click on the link in the parent post? It's a prank -- there is no UPN story. Yes, I fell for it and got my hopes up. Please mod it down so nobody else does.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree -- the buy.com ads are pretty brazen. Here's the link to Apple's site you were looking for.
The Apple ads are actually for the iTunes Music Store, not the iPod.
The article and writeup both mention that the Midwest visit is part of an effort to build a game for the U.S. market, but wouldn't a detailed recreation of Midwestern environs hold a certain appeal for Japanese gamers, as well? As the article noted, what seems mundane to a Midwesterner -- e.g., the typical U.S. bathroom -- could seem exotic and intriguing for someone from Japan.
This is not to be too orientalist about it -- the phenomenon works both ways. I remember how much fun it was, when I played Shenmue, to experience Japanese small-town life to some degree. As I have traveled in Japan over the past two years, it has been even more fun to see how accurate the Shenmue designers' attention to detail was. (Well, OK, I've never had to perform a Quick Time Event in a back alley, but otherwise--)
Good point -- and you're not the only one to make the cell phone connection.
Who we want back is the short and black clad Oddjob.
If short and black-clad is what you're looking for, how about Nick-Nack?
if someone killed my child, I would hate that person, and anyone who tells me otherwise, I'd say that person is the one overstepping his rights.
;-)
My point is that by any rational standard, computing preference pales by comparison as a reason for hating anyone.
Sure, I don't disagree with that. On a side note, your journal is a bit telling...
Good luck in the tech support trenches.
So, then, which hatred is justified? Draw the line. My point was not that there is moral equivalency across the board, but that all hatred is wasteful to some degree. This gets obscured when people start deciding for themselves that some hatred is inherently "justified." Extreme examples of people who thought they were "justified:" Matthew Shepard's killers, the 9/11 bombers, both sides in the West Bank. I'm not calling you a murderer; I'm sure you're an upstanding citizen. My point is just that none of us has the right to be an arbiter of hatred.
I simply do not understand how people can be so consumed with obvious hatred for another person debating COMPUTERS!
So if they were debating politics, or maybe religion, it would be all right? Why is computing an especially ridiculous reason to hate another person? There is no good reason, in any context. If reading the puerile hate mail attached to the article was the first time you realized that there is a great deal of unjustified hatred in the world, then count yourself lucky for the years of bliss.
It's great for people to be passionate about computers. I am. It can be a joy to find your passion. As with anything, some people direct their passionate energies toward hatred, and it's sad. Hatred is a waste in any context.
You understand it incorrectly. The orient/orientate distinction has nothing to do with direct or indirect objects. They are essentially synonymous -- the distinction is an issue of usage.
"Orientate" is typically used more often when speaking of physical orientation. "Orient" would probably have been more appropriate for the conceptual orientation that is being discussed in this case. Either is acceptable, though.
What will this new collaboration be called?
DarFinkGen?
FinkTooWin?
Firebird?
Respecting boundaries is entirely different from editorial input. Tailoring a story to cultivate stories is a judgment call on the part of the reporter -- s/he makes the choice of whether to write the story in a certain way to respect the source. This is understood by the reader. When a newspaper reader sees a quote sourced to a "senior Bush administration aide," there is an implication that Powell/Rumsfeld/whoever has given the information under certain conditions. There is also the implication that the reporter has decided the information was worth the sacrifice. Both sides of the deal are obvious to the reader.
Note that the reader (rightly) assumes that all editorial decisions were made by the reporter and the editorial staff of the newspaper. It is acceptable for a reporter to make accommodations for sources that are at least partially transparent to the reader. But it is extremely poor journalism for the reporter to give a source decision-making power as to what goes in/out of the article, or how a certain issue is framed -- these decisions are entirely the domain of the reporter and editors. There is an unspoken but critical agreement between the paper and the readers that the reporter chooses what to report and accepts the consequences.
This is the distinction between savvy source management and allowing sources to have editorial input.
The Academy announced that Serkis was eligible to be nominated for an Oscar (scroll down in link, third paragraph from the bottom). He just did not receive enough votes from Academy members to receive a nomination.
Good God, man, he was joking. But congratulations on your room full of video processing equipment.
Does Airport really merit its own icon? I fear that we may be DILUTING the value of Slashdot subject icons! SLASHDOT EDITORS, REPENT!
Oh wait, who cares? Looks pretty nifty.
Personally, I won't bother to find out first hand until they slap a recordable DVD drive in there.
Huh? What a bizarre, ill-informed remark to make. The cost-benefit ratio would be ridiculous.
Why not just buy a recordable DVD drive and record TiVo programs on to that? Oh, you probably don't want to check out recordable DVD drives until they make one that has a MiniDV deck built in.
Proudly served on a TRS-80.
From the article: "There's no official reason given as to why this SE was cancelled."
From the studio article in the same article: "Warner Home Video will not be releasing the previously announced The Matrix Special Edition double-disc DVD. In a shift in strategy to broaden The Matrix fan base prior to the May 15 theatrical release of the highly anticipated sequel The Matrix Reloaded, Warner Home Video will reprice The Matrix DVD to $19.99 SRP on April 29."
There's your official reason right there, and it's reasonable. If Warner released an expensive special edition now, it would push the standard Matrix DVD farther back on the shelves. The special edition would sell well, undoubtedly, but only already-dedicated fans would be willing to pay a steep price. With Warner's new strategy, stores will promote the newly-discounted standard DVD, and newbies will be that much more encouraged to get into the film -- and subsequently more likely to head to theaters for the sequel. Makes good sense from a marketing point of view.
Also, the article doesn't say that the SE has been killed forever -- indeed, it implies that a special edition of some kind will come out when Warner thinks the time is right.
So internal (i.e. resnet) usage continues unfettered? One person downloads The Two Towers and the whole school can get it. I don't see how the cap will make a huge difference in the long run.
But when there are copyright violations involved, a university can get flinchy. At my school, for example, we had a resnet Direct Connect (like Napster) network that was set up by a CS student. The administration didn't ignore it for long, though, and recently it was shut down. The trouble with resnet is that "stretching" copyright law is more obvious to the paranoid powers that be.
While my university doesn't use the SSN for our student ID number, it still asks students to put it on countless forms and enter it into countless databases. It's always made me uneasy, and I hadn't even thought of the potential for a computer break-in. Rather, I was unsettled that any student worker who checked out a book for me at the library could see my SSN on his screen after scanning my ID card.
But nothing wakes up a university -- especially a state school -- like the threat of litigation. If the cracker followed up and committed full-scale identity theft, the students would have grounds for a lawsuit against the school. Consider the recent New Hampshire lawsuit that dealt with SSNs and other personal information. With the potential for bloodthirsty lawyers, universities might finally get serious about protecting their students' information.
the real developers spend days and weeks writing Java and C++ code to solve problems that those talented Perl or Python programmers could have knocked out in a few hours
This phenomenon sounds like ignorance of scripting's capabilities rather than discrimination against it. I doubt that many companies would deliberately assign extra work just to stick it to the Perl programmers. C++ would seem like the safe solution to a manager too busy or lazy to learn about a scripting approach. To the most literal-minded manager, a "program" will likely seem like a more robust solution than a "script." It's a PR problem.
What? The dollar's up high in Spain? Huh? Hold on, let me turn this damn thing off for a second.
To those who say that LOTR doesn't have a chance of winning the Best Picture award, don't forget that one reason the Academy Awards are derided for poor selections is that they often give the award to somebody who should have won before -- or to somebody who has had an impressive cumulative career but has never edged out the pack in a single year. This is why Scorsese is nominated for Best Director and his Gangs of New York is up for Best Picture. Gangs was far from Scorsese's best, and the critical reception was mixed. But because he has done so many great things in Hollywood, he got those nods, which were undeserved solely on the merits of Gangs.
With LOTR, it's very likely that the third film will again be nominated for Best Picture next year. The Academy voters will see a series that has been nominated for the top award three years in a row, and they could very well decide to reward the cumulative effort. So don't count LOTR out yet.
Of course, the follow-up question is, does it matter? Well, it wouldn't hurt, and it would be fun to see at the very least.
It's not stupid -- at least no stupider than many, many Japanese words. It's an onomatopoeia (like "snap" or "buzz"), which are much more common in Japanese speech than in English. As such, Japanese distinguishes between three kinds of onomatopoeia:
gisei-go imitate the sounds of nature.
gitai-go relate to the state of tangible things.
gijou-go relate to internal feelings.
The last two aren't onomatopoeia in the traditional English sense since they are not imitating actual sounds; rather, they're portraying an ethereal sense of things. More details here.
Anyway, pachinko is derived from the gisei-go word pachi-pachi, which imitates the clicking together of small objects or the sound of hands clapping. So it's appropriate, and it's a fairly standard Japanese construction.
From the OSNews review:
For those who didn't know, Apple is using two different models on their LCD products, one great quality (older powerbooks, Cinema Displays) and one crappy/cheap one (imac, ibooks, 12" powerbook and the new 20" Cinema Display (that's why it is so cheap and it even competes price-wise with the PC LCD monitors in the range))
Interesting, because on MacInTouch, there is a reader report in which many are noting that the 20" Cinema Display looks better than its older counterparts.
If the reviewer is correct in asserting that the 12" PB display and the 20" Cinema Display are the same, then the quality issue would appear to be more subjective than he thinks.
Did anyone bother to click on the link in the parent post? It's a prank -- there is no UPN story. Yes, I fell for it and got my hopes up. Please mod it down so nobody else does.