So basically Hobbits like to live in holes and that's all that defines the character of Frodo outside of this quest? They walk for about 300 pages in the beginning of FotR. You'd think at some point, they'd get to talking. Dialogue doesn't seem to be Tolkein's strong point though.
LotR seems to be one of those things that you get completely or you don't at all. I'm in the latter group I'm afraid. I've been struggling with FotR all this month, and am about to give up on it.
It's great that Tolkein made this elaborate history and stuff, but I really wish the characters could talk about something OTHER than it. I don't get any sense of what any of these characters would be doing if the ring had never appeared.
Probably not. The one theme that gets said over and over again is that it's not for kids. If parents don't let their pre-teen children in to see it, that will be a major blow to the box office. I think Harry Potter will get another revenue upswing over the Xmas break. Since it played at more theatres, was shorter (meaning more showings), and had no real competition in its first month, it got off to a much better start than FOTR will. The only way that it can catch up will be to make lots of money for many months, but Star Wars comes out in May and that will be another hit. I expect it to do well at the box office and much better than HP critically, but worse at the box office.
Re:How is 28 years less than reasonable?
on
Electronic Paper
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· Score: 1
Hmmmmmmm maybe I should have read the rest of the comment, rather than the paragraph that annoyed me.
Re:How is 28 years less than reasonable?
on
Electronic Paper
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· Score: 1
**The commons is important. Shakespeare would not have written half his stuff if similar IP laws were enforced then. He "borrowed" almost all of his plot lines from recently published books or histories. And he didn't buy "the rights" to those works -- he just used them. Be glad he did. When we have a large and growing commons from which authors can draw, it improves literature.**
That's great for Shakespeare, but I imagine the people who wrote the books weren't too thrilled. Sure the ever expanding copyright period destroys the commons. However, no copyright period would have the same effect.
If I were a 16th century writer, my interest in working on books would be lessened, knowing that anything really cool would just be usurped by Shakespeare.
I can speak from experience here, because I have had work ripped off. I helped contribute to an online resource. Other people took that work, printed it out, made a book out of it, and sold it, taking credit for it. While in this case there was no legal recourse for us (facts can't be compromised), later projects I worked on were written to be harder to rip off - even if the functionality suffered. There has to be some middle ground or writers and researchers will just get frustrated and stop.
People who are saying that the larger size of the drives doesn't matter if the battery life is shorter are missing the point. Even if you can only listen to 5 hours of music at a time, the power of having 300 hours of music at your fingertips is incredible.
It's not just, "I'm going to listen to 300 hours of music." It's, "I'm going to listen to 5 hours of music, and I can choose so many options."
The bands I like allow taping. I have around 2000 cds these days. My 20 gig neo jukebox is just about full and I'm giving thought to buying a 30 gig drive.
I was up and running just fine at 6 AM. around quarter to 7 my telnet session closed and that's all she wrote. Any attempt at a traceroute to anywhere dies either immediately or just past getting to the gateway. I'm resorting to my laptop and my aol account right now.
The existence of people who know little about American history says nothing about how many of these people exist. Leno isn't going for a random sample after all; he's intentionally trying to find people who will give stupid answers.
I wrote a column[jambands.com] on jambands.com expressing that mp3 players are liable to be the next medium if they're not destroyed by Congress. A 100 gig notebook size hard drive would give the ability to have 700+ hours of music at 256k. That people would be interested in.
The reason why that's happening, is that we have yet to have a program that can accurately simulate understanding the input it's being fed. It's been 46 years since Eliza was written, and still any AI program can be fooled by the most obvious tricks.
The reason why the threshold of intelligence keeps changing is because all we're learning is what problems can be solved by brute force. If I recall my half forgotten game theory information correctly, any finite game has a set of unbeatable moves. With enough brute force, chess can be beaten.
Why is chess not AI? Think of this. Imagine a chess tournament where, at the very beginning of each game, the rules are randomly changed. Pawns can move one square diagonally. The board wraps around like the tunnels in PacMan. The goal of the game is to capture both rooks. The only programming changes allowed to the AI are inputting the new rules. Who wins the game?
That's the difference between understanding and memorizing.
The goal isn't revenge or retaliation or even justice. It's preventing future attacks like this. If you can give me a completely non-violent way of doing that, please let me know. I don't want to be in favor of these strikes; I just don't know of any way of preventing the future attacks that don't have some form of military response as part of the answer.
So far, Bush hasn't done anything stupid yet. The attacks are being kept as strictly aimed at military targets as possible, food is being dropped (and they're being culturally sensitive about what food they are dropping), and he's constantly speaking out against framing all Muslims as the enemy. I don't like the guy and I didn't (and wouldn't) vote for him, but I can't think of anything that I would have done differently really.
I actually had a friend once who said that records were superior to cds because of the clicks and pops. The fact that you could only hear music with cds seemed wrong to him.
DSL and cable modems aren't your stereotypical no income coming is "maybe we'll get someone to buy pet food on the net" dot coms. They provide a service that people want - to the point where they occasionally have trouble meeting the demand for new customers - and are willing to pay for. How can they constantly be going bankrupt?
This movie was presented as giving a gift to the VA fans. That it was. It was completely designed to be what they would want to see... and that's why it was so bad. Some artists evolve this way - first they write creative works with new ideas and then they go back and pander to the people who liked their earlier creative works. If it weren't for the fact that this was the final View Askew universe movie, Kevin Smith would have taken a huge step down that path with this one.
Here's an example. In Chasing Amy, the "You're not an artist, you're a tracer" joke was funny because it was carefully set up. In J&SBSB, it was funny because it was set up in the other movie. This wasn't a movie as much as 90 minutes of repeating jokes from his other movies. It was more like a fan fiction set in the View Askew universe than anything.
This isn't to say that the movie is a complete waste. There are some funny bits in it. Every now and then a spot of brillance peaks through. In general though, Smith went for the easy joke every time. The Velma is a lesbian gag was trite years ago after all.
I'm looking forward to his next picture though. For the first time in a while, he'll have to create a picture without his usual crutches. It'll be interesting to see how that goes.
Slashdot Mirror
So basically Hobbits like to live in holes and that's all that defines the character of Frodo outside of this quest? They walk for about 300 pages in the beginning of FotR. You'd think at some point, they'd get to talking. Dialogue doesn't seem to be Tolkein's strong point though.
LotR seems to be one of those things that you get completely or you don't at all. I'm in the latter group I'm afraid. I've been struggling with FotR all this month, and am about to give up on it.
It's great that Tolkein made this elaborate history and stuff, but I really wish the characters could talk about something OTHER than it. I don't get any sense of what any of these characters would be doing if the ring had never appeared.
Probably not. The one theme that gets said over and over again is that it's not for kids. If parents don't let their pre-teen children in to see it, that will be a major blow to the box office. I think Harry Potter will get another revenue upswing over the Xmas break. Since it played at more theatres, was shorter (meaning more showings), and had no real competition in its first month, it got off to a much better start than FOTR will. The only way that it can catch up will be to make lots of money for many months, but Star Wars comes out in May and that will be another hit. I expect it to do well at the box office and much better than HP critically, but worse at the box office.
Hmmmmmmm maybe I should have read the rest of the comment, rather than the paragraph that annoyed me.
**The commons is important. Shakespeare would not have written half his stuff if similar IP laws were enforced then. He "borrowed" almost all of his plot lines from recently published books or histories. And he didn't buy "the rights" to those works -- he just used them. Be glad he did. When we have a large and growing commons from which authors can draw, it improves literature.**
That's great for Shakespeare, but I imagine the people who wrote the books weren't too thrilled. Sure the ever expanding copyright period destroys the commons. However, no copyright period would have the same effect.
If I were a 16th century writer, my interest in working on books would be lessened, knowing that anything really cool would just be usurped by Shakespeare.
I can speak from experience here, because I have had work ripped off. I helped contribute to an online resource. Other people took that work, printed it out, made a book out of it, and sold it, taking credit for it. While in this case there was no legal recourse for us (facts can't be compromised), later projects I worked on were written to be harder to rip off - even if the functionality suffered. There has to be some middle ground or writers and researchers will just get frustrated and stop.
People who are saying that the larger size of the drives doesn't matter if the battery life is shorter are missing the point. Even if you can only listen to 5 hours of music at a time, the power of having 300 hours of music at your fingertips is incredible.
It's not just, "I'm going to listen to 300 hours of music." It's, "I'm going to listen to 5 hours of music, and I can choose so many options."
The bands I like allow taping. I have around 2000 cds these days. My 20 gig neo jukebox is just about full and I'm giving thought to buying a 30 gig drive.
'Please.. just give me software that WORKS. I'll gladly pay top dollar. We can worry about the "features" later'
Here's a perl script for you:
print "I just WORK";
Since you don't care about features, I'll get that top dollar from you, ok?
I booted up my computer this morning, and I had been switched over already. Change worked seemlessly; I didn't have to do anything. Cool!
I was telnetting out, not having someone else telnet in.
I was up and running just fine at 6 AM. around quarter to 7 my telnet session closed and that's all she wrote. Any attempt at a traceroute to anywhere dies either immediately or just past getting to the gateway. I'm resorting to my laptop and my aol account right now.
The existence of people who know little about American history says nothing about how many of these people exist. Leno isn't going for a random sample after all; he's intentionally trying to find people who will give stupid answers.
For those of us who have large mp3 collections, the neo player is a much better deal. 5 gigs barely scratches the surface for me.
I wrote a column[jambands.com] on jambands.com expressing that mp3 players are liable to be the next medium if they're not destroyed by Congress. A 100 gig notebook size hard drive would give the ability to have 700+ hours of music at 256k. That people would be interested in.
The reason why the threshold of intelligence keeps changing is because all we're learning is what problems can be solved by brute force. If I recall my half forgotten game theory information correctly, any finite game has a set of unbeatable moves. With enough brute force, chess can be beaten.
Why is chess not AI? Think of this. Imagine a chess tournament where, at the very beginning of each game, the rules are randomly changed. Pawns can move one square diagonally. The board wraps around like the tunnels in PacMan. The goal of the game is to capture both rooks. The only programming changes allowed to the AI are inputting the new rules. Who wins the game?
That's the difference between understanding and memorizing.
"We need to get in there and take over the T.V. stations, and put the King back in charge."
It would be like the '68 Comeback Special all over again.
...oh you mean the King of Afghanistan. Sorry.
Huh, I missed the attack that the US aimed intentionally at the civilan population. Can you give me a source for that?
The goal isn't revenge or retaliation or even justice. It's preventing future attacks like this. If you can give me a completely non-violent way of doing that, please let me know. I don't want to be in favor of these strikes; I just don't know of any way of preventing the future attacks that don't have some form of military response as part of the answer.
So far, Bush hasn't done anything stupid yet. The attacks are being kept as strictly aimed at military targets as possible, food is being dropped (and they're being culturally sensitive about what food they are dropping), and he's constantly speaking out against framing all Muslims as the enemy. I don't like the guy and I didn't (and wouldn't) vote for him, but I can't think of anything that I would have done differently really.
I actually had a friend once who said that records were superior to cds because of the clicks and pops. The fact that you could only hear music with cds seemed wrong to him.
Not Alamo. I make a point of using them because they accept debit cards.
What was so obvious to you about why the second plane wasn't shot down? Reports from yesterday said that they were just too slow.
Where did you get that information?
DSL and cable modems aren't your stereotypical no income coming is "maybe we'll get someone to buy pet food on the net" dot coms. They provide a service that people want - to the point where they occasionally have trouble meeting the demand for new customers - and are willing to pay for. How can they constantly be going bankrupt?
This movie was presented as giving a gift to the VA fans. That it was. It was completely designed to be what they would want to see... and that's why it was so bad. Some artists evolve this way - first they write creative works with new ideas and then they go back and pander to the people who liked their earlier creative works. If it weren't for the fact that this was the final View Askew universe movie, Kevin Smith would have taken a huge step down that path with this one.
Here's an example. In Chasing Amy, the "You're not an artist, you're a tracer" joke was funny because it was carefully set up. In J&SBSB, it was funny because it was set up in the other movie. This wasn't a movie as much as 90 minutes of repeating jokes from his other movies. It was more like a fan fiction set in the View Askew universe than anything.
This isn't to say that the movie is a complete waste. There are some funny bits in it. Every now and then a spot of brillance peaks through. In general though, Smith went for the easy joke every time. The Velma is a lesbian gag was trite years ago after all.
I'm looking forward to his next picture though. For the first time in a while, he'll have to create a picture without his usual crutches. It'll be interesting to see how that goes.
I haven't. I use my cd burner solely to burn shows of bands that allow taping.
I also have 300 hours of mp3s and all of them are completely legal too.