Karey Kirkpatrick (chicken run!) finished the script, and from what I understand this was a pretty radical departure from the work DNA left behind (this is pure speculation though, since only very few people have seen the versions in between).
The release of the movie went to great pains to explain that it would be 100% Douglas Adams, but the fact that someone else finished the script and that it is unknown how much of it was written by Douglas makes that a hard claim to support.
The 'feel' of the movie is so far off from all the stuff that I'm sure was written 100% by Douglas Adams makes that a lot harder to believe.
I think it is simply one of those things that had to be done because there was money to be made of it.
Even the timing is hard to swallow, adapting a very large book for screenplay is an impossible task at best, it would have been more respectful to leave the movie unfinished instead of rushing to finish the screenplay and release the thing before there would be less mileage to be had from the guides popularity.
Douglas' constant rewriting is what I had in mind when I mentioned him as an obstacle in the way of making the movie, it is no coincidence that the work is only finished after his demise. He most likely would have been still busy refining it or rewriting it until he was satisfied, if it could be done at all he would have been the man, the current movie is a botch job.
Releasing yet another book (this time in complete absence of the original author) is more of the same.
Well, this is only anecdotal evidence, but I've had:
- my shoes confiscated (steel toes) - my laptop and removable drive booted and searched - my camera searched (and unfortunately it had a very large flash card in it so that took a while) - my fingerprint taken as if I'm some common criminal (as opposed to a classy criminal) - my mugshot taken - missed my connecting flight
All this in Miami on a fucking stopover for an Amsterdam to Panama City flight, in other words I was not even planning to visit the states on that particular trip
So, that's it for me, no more US of A, I'll see you guys on the flip side of the revolution, if it happens in my lifetime I'll be happy but I'm not holding my breath for it.
If that's the face you want to present to the outside world then I wish you good luck.
For the record, I've been a pretty outspoken critic of the Iraq war, both in private emails as well as in public writings, possibly that reason enough to 'flag' me. Makes you wonder about the kind of society America is becoming.
Douglas Adams was one of the bigger obstacles in the way of making a movie, and I don't think it would have ever had his blessing. The script sucks (random rearrangements, insertions of 'new' but irrelevant stuff all over the place, and deletions of essentials elsewhere).
Of course, it made money so who am I to complain, but it left me with a definite unhappy and disappointed feeling.
When hearing the radio play and reading the book you get a definite mental image of the kind of universe that Douglas Adams wanted you to see, and most of the movie contradicts that mental image.
There is a joke about that:
A man walks into a movie theater and sees a donkey standing in the aisle.
He walks up to the row behind the man with the donkey and whispers in the guys ear: "Wow, how amazing, he's really looking at the movie, isn't he?"
Yes, says the guy with the donkey, sure is. But he like the book better...
I don't think so because the Dirk Gently stuff wasn't produced by then (and that definitely is Douglas Adams at his best, great gods of guilt in a refrigerator:) ).
I think it works like with most things produced by people of such amazing talent, they lose interest because too much of it is already cast in concrete by mistakes earlier on.
Like working on a big software project, the maintenance phase is not the most fun part, unless you did everything just right in the beginning. And judging by Douglas Adams's writing about the making of the hitch hikers guide he was very much feeling his way while making the radio plays and this led to all kinds of dissatisfaction while making the books because so much was already set in stone.
I personally think the radio plays are the 'definitive' edition (in spite of all their shortcomings) because they catch the atmosphere the best. The books however greatly expand upon the story, but I can't help hearing Peter Jones' (rip as well, but at least at a respectable age) voice when reading the guide quotes:)
Good call on Terry Pratchett, he definitely took a lot of pages from Douglas Adams's play book. At the same time that sort of disqualifies him (emulation != the oroginal (tpine ?)).
It really is very simple, Douglas Adams is dead, and no amount of 'franchising' is going to change that one bit, it never was about the story, it was about the writing, and that magical touch is not going to be reinstated with good will or effort, it would take the original to make that happen.
That said, it is probably 'worth a lot of money' (said in a squeeky high voice) so most likely it will be done anyway.
I call bs. Here are some of the skills you'll need from your desktop days to run this baby:
- ctrl-alt-del - interpreting vague bluescreen messages - powercycling after driver installation - re-installing periodically when the system appears to get slower
correct, I already stopped going to the USA for business & pleasure both.
I used to travel there three or four times every year, since Bush has come to power and the US went nuts it declined until a few years ago I stopped going completely after one border harassment incident too many.
The US border guards are on par with some of the worst that I've seen on the east-west German and Polish borders when the Iron Curtain was still firmly in place.
Evolution fits the evidence as good as it can with the fossil record being as spotty as it is. A single fossil that would not 'match' the theory would invalidate all of evolution, but every new fossil found fits in to the existing record thereby strengthening our 'belief' (I use the term loosely) that evolution, in fact correctly predicts that if we had all the fossils we would have an unbroken line of small modifications which at some point lead to mating incompatibilities (which we call new species).
Please keep in mind that 'species' are a human convention, nature doesn't necessarily agree with our interpretation here, in fact nature probably sees us all as individuals, some of which are unable to mate. That we assign a rather arbitrary label 'species' to that ability may not reflect reality.
Nature is often more subtle than we initially imagine. Personally I expect Darwins theory to be further refined but never replaced by anything dramatically different. But then again, that *is* a belief, and not something grounded in fact.
If you think of individuals being more or less genetically removed from each other then you have a much better chance at seeing how artificial our species concept really is, more than likely there never was a single generation that was unable to mate with a previous one, it builds up over time (one barrier) and space (another barrier). Until two populations are so far removed from each other that individuals from the one population can no longer mate with another, but both are descendants of a single 'parent' population.
The 'short legged giraffe' example shows a serious lack of understanding in how genes affect the development of an organism, I don't even know where to begin to set that one right, I suggest you read a textbook on genetics and another one on embryology, it's not quite as simple as you make it out to be.
the fossil record is - by necessity - incomplete, if every organism left its skeleton intact then you would be able to trace an unbroken line between us and any ancestor, and the same would go for any other organism alive.
The spotty fossil record does not in any way invalidate Darwins theory, it just doesn't reinforce it as strongly as it would if it were complete.
With every new fossil found Darwins theory gets a little stronger.
I think a big part of the problem here is that while science is simple in basis in practice it's hard, creationism is simple in basis and simple in practice. It appeals to a moron much more than a lifelong dedication to study would.
Those 'self described nerds' are just parrots by another name.
Creationism doesn't even really have a place in a religion class, it is more of an orchestrated campaign to destroy education, as soon as you'd remove it from the palette altogether it will be replaced by the next plan of these nutjobs.
To top it off someone seems to have moderated you 'funny', talk about sadism...
Nice to see you have the guts to own up to it though, I'm not sure I would have been as honest;)
I wonder how difficult it would be to patch bash in such a way that such fork bombs would be impossible to construct without affecting real uses of similar constructs.
Slashdot Mirror
Karey Kirkpatrick (chicken run!) finished the script, and from what I understand this was a pretty radical departure from the work DNA left behind (this is pure speculation though, since only very few people have seen the versions in between).
The release of the movie went to great pains to explain that it would be 100% Douglas Adams, but the fact that someone else finished the script and that it is unknown how much of it was written by Douglas makes that a hard claim to support.
The 'feel' of the movie is so far off from all the stuff that I'm sure was written 100% by Douglas Adams makes that a lot harder to believe.
I think it is simply one of those things that had to be done because there was money to be made of it.
Even the timing is hard to swallow, adapting a very large book for screenplay is an impossible task at best, it would have been more respectful to leave the movie unfinished instead of rushing to finish the screenplay and release the thing before there would be less mileage to be had from the guides popularity.
Douglas' constant rewriting is what I had in mind when I mentioned him as an obstacle in the way of making the movie, it is no coincidence that the work is only finished after his demise. He most likely would have been still busy refining it or rewriting it until he was satisfied, if it could be done at all he would have been the man, the current movie is a botch job.
Releasing yet another book (this time in complete absence of the original author) is more of the same.
Well, this is only anecdotal evidence, but I've had:
- my shoes confiscated (steel toes)
- my laptop and removable drive booted and searched
- my camera searched (and unfortunately it had a very large flash card in it so that took a while)
- my fingerprint taken as if I'm some common criminal (as opposed to a classy criminal)
- my mugshot taken
- missed my connecting flight
All this in Miami on a fucking stopover for an Amsterdam to Panama City flight, in other words I was not even planning to visit the states on that particular trip
So, that's it for me, no more US of A, I'll see you guys on the flip side of the revolution, if it happens in my lifetime I'll be happy but I'm not holding my breath for it.
If that's the face you want to present to the outside world then I wish you good luck.
For the record, I've been a pretty outspoken critic of the Iraq war, both in private emails as well as in public writings, possibly that reason enough to 'flag' me. Makes you wonder about the kind of society America is becoming.
it isn't.
but then again, if it was I'd say that wouldn't I...
what a waste to do that anonymous :)
thank you anyway, that had me laughing.
Douglas Adams was one of the bigger obstacles in the way of making a movie, and I don't think it would have ever had his blessing. The script sucks (random rearrangements, insertions of 'new' but irrelevant stuff all over the place, and deletions of essentials elsewhere).
Of course, it made money so who am I to complain, but it left me with a definite unhappy and disappointed feeling.
When hearing the radio play and reading the book you get a definite mental image of the kind of universe that Douglas Adams wanted you to see, and most of the movie contradicts that mental image.
There is a joke about that:
A man walks into a movie theater and sees a donkey standing in the aisle.
He walks up to the row behind the man with the donkey and whispers in the guys ear: "Wow, how amazing, he's really looking at the movie, isn't he?"
Yes, says the guy with the donkey, sure is. But he like the book better...
I don't think so because the Dirk Gently stuff wasn't produced by then (and that definitely is Douglas Adams at his best, great gods of guilt in a refrigerator :) ).
I think it works like with most things produced by people of such amazing talent, they lose interest because too much of it is already cast in concrete by mistakes earlier on.
Like working on a big software project, the maintenance phase is not the most fun part, unless you did everything just right in the beginning. And judging by Douglas Adams's writing about the making of the hitch hikers guide he was very much feeling his way while making the radio plays and this led to all kinds of dissatisfaction while making the books because so much was already set in stone.
I personally think the radio plays are the 'definitive' edition (in spite of all their shortcomings) because they catch the atmosphere the best. The books however greatly expand upon the story, but I can't help hearing Peter Jones' (rip as well, but at least at a respectable age) voice when reading the guide quotes :)
that's a little harsh innit ?
Good call on Terry Pratchett, he definitely took a lot of pages from Douglas Adams's play book. At the same time that sort of disqualifies him (emulation != the oroginal (tpine ?)).
It really is very simple, Douglas Adams is dead, and no amount of 'franchising' is going to change that one bit, it never was about the story, it was about the writing, and that magical touch is not going to be reinstated with good will or effort, it would take the original to make that happen.
That said, it is probably 'worth a lot of money' (said in a squeeky high voice) so most likely it will be done anyway.
I for one will not be buying it.
drop me a line on j@ww.com re. those radio plays
That's a *much* better plan.
My son knows the radio plays by heart now (he's 14), I never thought of dusting off the infocom stuff, thank you!
Enough Douglas Adams milking already, please for the love of - insert deity here - do not destroy the legacy of this great author.
Sorry for the rant, have just watched the movie...
I call bs. Here are some of the skills you'll need from your desktop days to run this baby:
- ctrl-alt-del
- interpreting vague bluescreen messages
- powercycling after driver installation
- re-installing periodically when the system appears to get slower
correct, I already stopped going to the USA for business & pleasure both.
I used to travel there three or four times every year, since Bush has come to power and the US went nuts it declined until a few years ago I stopped going completely after one border harassment incident too many.
The US border guards are on par with some of the worst that I've seen on the east-west German and Polish borders when the Iron Curtain was still firmly in place.
Funny how things come full circle...
I thought that mysql innodb supported multi-core cpus ?
Sperry Univac actually had a machine with 9 bit bytes... those were the days ! Just think about what you could do with that extra bit...
you'd hope that out of 8 fpu's they'd get at least one to work ?
If there is one thing that really sucks in mysql it's replication, and no, they did not get it right.
Even running top notch hardware about as redundant as you can get after running for a couple of months the master and slave can be out of sync.
I think this is one of the major remaining issues with mysql.
gpu's aren't really parallel in that sense, they are parallel in the SIMD sense.
Evolution fits the evidence as good as it can with the fossil record being as spotty as it is. A single fossil that would not 'match' the theory would invalidate all of evolution, but every new fossil found fits in to the existing record thereby strengthening our 'belief' (I use the term loosely) that evolution, in fact correctly predicts that if we had all the fossils we would have an unbroken line of small modifications which at some point lead to mating incompatibilities (which we call new species).
Please keep in mind that 'species' are a human convention, nature doesn't necessarily agree with our interpretation here, in fact nature probably sees us all as individuals, some of which are unable to mate. That we assign a rather arbitrary label 'species' to that ability may not reflect reality.
Nature is often more subtle than we initially imagine. Personally I expect Darwins theory to be further refined but never replaced by anything dramatically different. But then again, that *is* a belief, and not something grounded in fact.
If you think of individuals being more or less genetically removed from each other then you have a much better chance at seeing how artificial our species concept really is, more than likely there never was a single generation that was unable to mate with a previous one, it builds up over time (one barrier) and space (another barrier). Until two populations are so far removed from each other that individuals from the one population can no longer mate with another, but both are descendants of a single 'parent' population.
The 'short legged giraffe' example shows a serious lack of understanding in how genes affect the development of an organism, I don't even know where to begin to set that one right, I suggest you read a textbook on genetics and another one on embryology, it's not quite as simple as you make it out to be.
the fossil record is - by necessity - incomplete, if every organism left its skeleton intact then you would be able to trace an unbroken line between us and any ancestor, and the same would go for any other organism alive.
The spotty fossil record does not in any way invalidate Darwins theory, it just doesn't reinforce it as strongly as it would if it were complete.
With every new fossil found Darwins theory gets a little stronger.
only in some fairly backward countries.
I think a big part of the problem here is that while science is simple in basis in practice it's hard, creationism is simple in basis and simple in practice. It appeals to a moron much more than a lifelong dedication to study would.
Those 'self described nerds' are just parrots by another name.
Creationism doesn't even really have a place in a religion class, it is more of an orchestrated campaign to destroy education, as soon as you'd remove it from the palette altogether it will be replaced by the next plan of these nutjobs.
If you know of any demonstrated flaws in Darwinian Evolution I for one would very much like to hear of them.
NIN makes me wish for the Pink Floyd of long ago. But then again, so does Roger Waters ;)
To top it off someone seems to have moderated you 'funny', talk about sadism...
Nice to see you have the guts to own up to it though, I'm not sure I would have been as honest ;)
I wonder how difficult it would be to patch bash in such a way that such fork bombs would be impossible to construct without affecting real uses of similar constructs.