Why can't you just accept both versions as seperate works, and enjoy them. I see Jackson's LotR films as an adaptation inspired by the books. I've read the books many times over, and agree that a direct page-for-page film would be both extremely long and boring.
Yes, some additions and omissions were quite understandable (though I did miss the Scourge of the Shire scene, which I think was the whole point of the original books), but there wasn't really any reason to change some of the key scenes in the trilogy that PJ decided to change.
Why not keep the ending of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields faithful to the original, with Eomer holding his sword up in defiance to the newly arrived Corsairs only to see Aragorn's banner unfurl, and with the three HUMAN armies (Rohan, Gondor, and Corsair) conversing in the center for the victory? Why add the undead to that battle? The Siege of Gondor was broken by the strength of **MEN**, not by the undead!!
Why not keep the dialog and overall feel of the scene of Saruman's fall at Orthanc true to the original? It was a very dramatic conversation in its own right, with Galdalf and Saruman exchanging invitations for the other to join, and with Gandalf finally shatting the building doubts with the following lines:
"Behold, I am not Gandalf the Grey, whom you betrayed. I am Gandalf the White, who has returned from death. You have no colour now, and I cast you from the order and from the Council." He raised his hand, and spoke slowly in a clear voice. "Saruman, your staff is broken." There was a crack, and the staff split asunder in Saruman's hand, and the head of it fell down at Gandalf's feet.
Changes to speed up the plot and/or add excitement are one things, but arbitrary changes to the climaxes of key scenes in the book which are already extremely dramatic and well-written... and which were already burned into the minds of millions of fans... is quite another.
People choose not to have as much time. I'm active on the net, I'm married, and I'm a technology professional, and yet I have the time to sit down a few times a week for several hours and read.
I do understand that some people have other priorities in their lives, but I'm not sure that the "blame" should be placed on the shoulders of society in general.
It's a bit interesting. AoM is a game with great scope, allowing for unusually "large" game boards by the standards of other RTS.
How do AoM board compare to TA? Or Supreme Commander? Even TA allowed for largish (63x63 screens) maps like Real Earth and up to 5,000 concurrently active units per player, and that sort of scale plus the nature of TA resources can make finding and killing an opponent rather interesting.:-)
I believe that the increasing popularity of television, with its immediacy of coverage, its focus on 30-second soundbytes, and its tendency towards sensationalist presentation, has had a much more profound impact on traditional printed media (newspapers and such) than the world wide web.
OS installation is pretty straightforward nowadays.
Only if you install an operating system from a given era on hardware of a similar era. Older Linux distros have a very hard time on modern hardware, for example, and modern Linux distros tend to not do well on older hardware (and this is due to an actual lack of drivers in many cases, not just high resource requirements).
Even a difference of a few years can make things problematic.
...my subscription pays not only for the basic schedule, but also for tthe digested/categorized version that is organized into 'zones' by show type and/or subject matter.
Makes it easy to find all hockey games or all horror movies cross all channels.
Web browsing: Links E-mail client: Yarn or Pine USENET client: Yarn or slrn FTP Client: NFTP or Midnight Commander Shoutcast/MP3 player: Z! Filemanager: ZTree Bold, FileJet, or Midnight Commander Text editing: FTE, pico, or Cooledit/mcedit
I play MP3 files in the background all the time on my OS/2 box (a Micron PPRO/200 tower w/192MB built in late 1996), and it has no measurable impact on network activities. I usually use Z! as the player.
There's no point comparing MP3s to CDs without stating the bitrate.
Bitrate, encoder, and player. Any of those elements can noticably hose up the experience.
I normally use LAME to encode 128k/192K VBR files for quick-n-dirty use in portable situations, and those are fine if I'm not being fussy and not using decent phones (I'm a Sony MDR-V6 lover for serious listening which I really like in spite of their "brightness", so shoot me), but some MP3 players (like my Moblibu 1GB cube) absolutely suck in comparison to others (like the one in my Sony CJ506CK walkman or like the one in my all-in-one Aiptek IS-DV2 camera) when playing the same MP3 files with the same headphones.
Not that the Mobiblu cube is unacceptable, necessarily, but it is disappointing -- certain instruments (accoustic guitars, violins) often have noticable artifacts on the Cube that I simply don't hear with the other players).
In case nobody noticed, there was a rather large downturn in the IT industry across the board over the past five years that resulted in many folks who "weren't as serious about IT" or who had other skillsets getting out of their IT careers completely and doing other things.
I'm not surprised at all that a certain percentage of women were on that bubble. I know many women who are excellent coders or database designers and who are serious about their craft, but I also know quite a few women who decided to leave the workforce entirely decided to take up a second replacement career as the result of layoffs.
I knew fewer men who did this -- most of the men I know who were laid off are back in an IT-related capacity somewhere. Most of the women I know who were laid off are doing something else now.
Anecdotal evidence, yes, but I'm sure I'm not alone in having this experience...
Notes is actually cool when used properly. Notes used just as an e-mail client (like we do here) is overkill. It works, and it's okay, but it isn't fast.:-)
I was more focused on correcting the "first generation to grow up with chat rooms" thing, since I'm 44 and used live chat rooms (called "talk programs") all through high school.
I don't remember using:) or:-) until I became active on the BBS nets, though, sometime around 1990 or so. Before that, it was stuff like *GRIN* or *G*, and even after smilies became popular we were still using acronyms heavily like GD&R or LMAO.
Slashdot Mirror
The sky is falling! I wonder if global warming caused this, too?
Are you sure? Something which can be memorized is ________? Why wouldn't "memorizable" apply?
It's actually not related, but IMO Links *is* a vast improvement over lynx in several respects. :-)
What about this one...?
Technically, America is *two* continents. :-)
Yes, some additions and omissions were quite understandable (though I did miss the Scourge of the Shire scene, which I think was the whole point of the original books), but there wasn't really any reason to change some of the key scenes in the trilogy that PJ decided to change.
Why not keep the ending of the Battle of the Pelennor Fields faithful to the original, with Eomer holding his sword up in defiance to the newly arrived Corsairs only to see Aragorn's banner unfurl, and with the three HUMAN armies (Rohan, Gondor, and Corsair) conversing in the center for the victory? Why add the undead to that battle? The Siege of Gondor was broken by the strength of **MEN**, not by the undead!!
Why not keep the dialog and overall feel of the scene of Saruman's fall at Orthanc true to the original? It was a very dramatic conversation in its own right, with Galdalf and Saruman exchanging invitations for the other to join, and with Gandalf finally shatting the building doubts with the following lines: "Behold, I am not Gandalf the Grey, whom you betrayed. I am Gandalf the White, who has returned from death. You have no colour now, and I cast you from the order and from the Council." He raised his hand, and spoke slowly in a clear voice. "Saruman, your staff is broken." There was a crack, and the staff split asunder in Saruman's hand, and the head of it fell down at Gandalf's feet.
Changes to speed up the plot and/or add excitement are one things, but arbitrary changes to the climaxes of key scenes in the book which are already extremely dramatic and well-written ... and which were already burned into the minds of millions of fans ... is quite another.
People choose not to have as much time. I'm active on the net, I'm married, and I'm a technology professional, and yet I have the time to sit down a few times a week for several hours and read.
I do understand that some people have other priorities in their lives, but I'm not sure that the "blame" should be placed on the shoulders of society in general.
I believe that the increasing popularity of television, with its immediacy of coverage, its focus on 30-second soundbytes, and its tendency towards sensationalist presentation, has had a much more profound impact on traditional printed media (newspapers and such) than the world wide web.
We're hiding. :-)
/. equate to being "leading edge"...? :-)
And since when does posting on
Well, I drive a 1994 Accord EX with a 5-speed, so that might be in the same general idiom. :-)
Uh... Unisys had a patent on LZW, which CompuServe subsequently used w/o permission in their GIF format specification.
Even a difference of a few years can make things problematic.
Micron PPro box. Check. OS/2 as OS. Check. 4MB Matrox video card. Check. 100BaseTX ethernet. Check.
Yes, I'm living in the 1990's. Except for the Nokia 770 I'm using to write this message (heh).
...my subscription pays not only for the basic schedule, but also for tthe digested/categorized version that is organized into 'zones' by show type and/or subject matter.
Makes it easy to find all hockey games or all horror movies cross all channels.
Web browsing: Links
E-mail client: Yarn or Pine
USENET client: Yarn or slrn
FTP Client: NFTP or Midnight Commander
Shoutcast/MP3 player: Z!
Filemanager: ZTree Bold, FileJet, or Midnight Commander
Text editing: FTE, pico, or Cooledit/mcedit
I play MP3 files in the background all the time on my OS/2 box (a Micron PPRO/200 tower w/192MB built in late 1996), and it has no measurable impact on network activities. I usually use Z! as the player.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!!!" -- Arthur Carlson, WKRP in Cincinnati.
... in that spisode of that show, anyway. :-)
One of the funniest TV scenes ever
Bitrate, encoder, and player. Any of those elements can noticably hose up the experience.
I normally use LAME to encode 128k/192K VBR files for quick-n-dirty use in portable situations, and those are fine if I'm not being fussy and not using decent phones (I'm a Sony MDR-V6 lover for serious listening which I really like in spite of their "brightness", so shoot me), but some MP3 players (like my Moblibu 1GB cube) absolutely suck in comparison to others (like the one in my Sony CJ506CK walkman or like the one in my all-in-one Aiptek IS-DV2 camera) when playing the same MP3 files with the same headphones.
Not that the Mobiblu cube is unacceptable, necessarily, but it is disappointing -- certain instruments (accoustic guitars, violins) often have noticable artifacts on the Cube that I simply don't hear with the other players).
The Monkees might be more accurate. :-)
In case nobody noticed, there was a rather large downturn in the IT industry across the board over the past five years that resulted in many folks who "weren't as serious about IT" or who had other skillsets getting out of their IT careers completely and doing other things.
I'm not surprised at all that a certain percentage of women were on that bubble. I know many women who are excellent coders or database designers and who are serious about their craft, but I also know quite a few women who decided to leave the workforce entirely decided to take up a second replacement career as the result of layoffs.
I knew fewer men who did this -- most of the men I know who were laid off are back in an IT-related capacity somewhere. Most of the women I know who were laid off are doing something else now.
Anecdotal evidence, yes, but I'm sure I'm not alone in having this experience...
Notes is actually cool when used properly. Notes used just as an e-mail client (like we do here) is overkill. It works, and it's okay, but it isn't fast. :-)
Even Doctor Who encountered cyber stuff earlier than that! :-) His first encounter with Cybermen was in 1966 according to this article.
I was more focused on correcting the "first generation to grow up with chat rooms" thing, since I'm 44 and used live chat rooms (called "talk programs") all through high school.
:) or :-) until I became active on the BBS nets, though, sometime around 1990 or so. Before that, it was stuff like *GRIN* or *G*, and even after smilies became popular we were still using acronyms heavily like GD&R or LMAO.
I don't remember using
HTH. HAND.
Hey, we were using multi-channel chat rooms on timesharing systems in the late 1970's. That's what the MULTI environment was for on CDC Cybers.