The only example of a novelisation being better than the film on which it is based is The Abyss. This was Cameron's last good film, but the book by Orson Scott Card is just plain excellent. I don't know whether it's still in print, but it's eminently readable.
The first piece of Windows software I actually paid for was Turbo Pascal 4. I loved it. In fact, years later I was still resisting Windows' ubiquity because of all those cool windowing modules I'd built over the years. I've still got those glossy developer magazinettes Borland sent out. All those units are still on (5.25) diskettes... I suggest we form a movement to abandon all GUIs. Back to basics, that's what the software world needs. This obsession with prettifying data means that not only are we paying less attention to the contents and more to the presentation, but I'm not able to use my pop-up boxes with cool shadows that darken the characters underneath.
Hands up anyone who doubted it? Let's face it, there was never any doubt about this one; if it was anyone but MS who was wronged there'd have been howls of outrage by now. But it takes someone like ESR to point out the obvious before we listen.
Obviously one can't go to a soccer match without some appropriate songs; some (ole ole ole) might be appropriate for a computer, others (Lq46, you're a wanker, you're a wanker) less so. Perhaps a few new ones could be written. My suggestions:
You're gonna get your fucking bolts unscrewed
You'll never roll alone
There's only 1 Kryten 523C, but he's got a 30-day guarantee and can be returned in the original packaging for a replacement
The plan, an outgrowth of the Administration's anti-terrorism program... Ah, yes. Not unlike Ireland's Special Criminal Court, ostensibly for terrorist cases in which juries are, ahem, impractical. This court is now used for drug dealers and pretty much any case in which a jury is likely to dismiss the case or return an inconvenient verdict.
Another spurious Star Trek reference
on
Beaming Money
·
· Score: 2
It's been quite a year for Star Trek advances. We've had
The cloaking device
The transporter (old news I know)
The medical tricorder
The warp drive
Pon farr (okay, getting laid for the first time in seven years probably doesn't count
Nearly all references are bogus; none of them (except the warp drive) are analagous to their Trek counterparts. Course, they're still cool.
About the credit transfer: the town of Ennis in Ireland tried giving everyone smart cards, and they only used 'em for parking meters. 'A good idea whose time has not yet come' was the official response.
grumble grumble red hat grumble open source grumble bastards grumble end of civilisation grumble new microsoft grumble making money grumble evil grumble apache grumble grumble.
You americans are obviously obsessed with hard drives; here in Ireland lusers have a different perceptual problem; there's no such thing as a hard drive. It's all memory. All (all) users say "I'm out of memory" when their hard disks are full. It's become automatic for me to dismiss any complaints about memory and check the machine myself to find out what's really wrong.
On of my all-time 'pissed off about the internet' is this "Read More..." shite. I'm quite capable of using a scrollbar to see the rest. Unless they don't want us printing it off and reading it on the way home.
Oh, and what's a render wrangler? Someone who goes around looking for spare CPU cycles?
I remember about fifteen years ago a guy went postal in England and shot up a bunch a people. You're probably used to it by now in American, but on this side of the Atlantic it's pretty rare. However, the reasoning behind his little rampage was revealed when it was discovered he had a copy of Rambo in the house. Case solved.
People are assholes, and people who are charged (by themselves or others) with protecting our morals, doubly so.
Maybe their Sysadmins are on strike! Nah. If that were true, it'd say "Our tea ladies have been notified and are working to fix the problem." Interestingly, I was on the site at approximately the same time as you; but I could get in. I'm definitely gonna have to change the Nice setting on netscape.
Here in Ireland, we've got an interesting situation regarding hi-tech companies and unions; the two don't mix. If you want to join a union, you lose your job. This is with the biggie companies; Gateway et al; the government spends so much money attracting them to the country that they're not going to complain if the company acts in a way that some feel is less than ethical.
Like most people, I laughed. I even downloaded the word document (I'll be sure to scan it before using it). This does show Microsoft to be hypocrites, but that's hardly news to anyone. One thing to remember, though, is that this doesn't make CDC angels. BO2K is, to all intents and purposes, a cracker tool. It has valid uses, but the vast majority of people who download it are not sysadmins. BO2K remains a monumental pain in the nuts for innocent Windows administrators. I'm not against CDC or BO2K; that doesn't mean we should paint CDC as saints.
To say that cybersquatting lowers the tone of the internet would imply some sort of lofty ideal for the internet; something it doesn't have (any more). Having said that, I for one am happy to see anything that'll help curb the practise. The fact that multiple registrations are allowed won't help, but it would be unreasonable (IMHO) to expect companies to register only one; companies that have more than one product, for example, will unquestionably need more than one. Presidental candidates are another example.
I doubt I'm the only one who's been waiting for this to happen ever since AOL assimilated netscape. But will the name change mean anything? A rose by any other name will still crash on every second page with java.
Apparently the Dreamcast and Playstation 2 (PS/2?) will have built-in modems; this is going to make all the difference. Once it's possible to play Wipeout 2097 (still the best Playstation game) over the net, PC games are going to see a decline in popularity. How many people reading this also own a console, despite having a shit-cool PC?
A bunch of people have suggested solutions, from PGP to using real ISPs. That's cool for the/. audience, all of whom are at least slightly technically savvy. AOL's user base, on the other hand, consists mainly of people who know barely enough to stick one of the 68,000 CDs they were sent into the drive and crank it up. This isn't a criticism of these people; they simply don't use computers. These people never heard of PGP, and as far as they're concerned, their email is private. These are the people about whom we should worry; the technologically ignorant are most at risk.
As I understand the situation, cable companies are powerful, but still have competition from other cable companies. If that's the case, then surely the ISPs' complaints are groundless? As long as a cableco isn't acting as a monopoly, there should be no requirement on them to lease lines to anyone that would horn in on their action. I'd be pissed off if I, acting as a legitimate business guy running a computer consultancy in competition with other consultants, was required to teach other people how to give technical support. It's a tenuous analogy to be sure, but a valid one (I thinK). All this, of course, is dependent on my understanding of US cable companies. If I'm wrong, I'll understand if I'm moderated to oblivion. In fact, I'll be delighted if it means fewer people seeing me acting the gobshite.
Casting aspersions without downloading and testing is a Bad Thing, but what the fuck. I'm bored. They're advertising a development environment 'without the need to learn a complex widget set'. If you're a developer, you learn complex widget sets. It's what you do. If you use Visual Basic you're not a programmer. You're a lego builder.
Of course, just because you're not a programmer if you use this doesn't make it a bad thing; anyting that lets the average user build programmes can only be good for Linux. I'll happily download this new distro and stick it onto a laptop, after which I'll be able to offer some informed criticism. Of course, no-one'll listen. They never do. They're usually right.
/. has a link to developerworks, which has an interview with Rob and a link to/. which has...
As an aside (more of a main point, really), there was a time not so long ago when we'd all leap for joy at the prospect of IBM putting up a site for this. It's no longer a cause for celebration; simply a handy site to bookmark and come back to on occasion. Truly Linux has entered the computing mainstream.
As far as I'm concerned, the more Linux companies there are in Europe the better. At least when the Chinese use their stolen nuclear technology to wipe America off the map (except the bit that's inside Transmeta's metaphasic shield), Red Hat and SUSe will still be around.
Slashdot Mirror
The only example of a novelisation being better than the film on which it is based is The Abyss. This was Cameron's last good film, but the book by Orson Scott Card is just plain excellent. I don't know whether it's still in print, but it's eminently readable.
The first piece of Windows software I actually paid for was Turbo Pascal 4. I loved it. In fact, years later I was still resisting Windows' ubiquity because of all those cool windowing modules I'd built over the years. I've still got those glossy developer magazinettes Borland sent out.
All those units are still on (5.25) diskettes... I suggest we form a movement to abandon all GUIs. Back to basics, that's what the software world needs. This obsession with prettifying data means that not only are we paying less attention to the contents and more to the presentation, but I'm not able to use my pop-up boxes with cool shadows that darken the characters underneath.
Hands up anyone who doubted it? Let's face it, there was never any doubt about this one; if it was anyone but MS who was wronged there'd have been howls of outrage by now. But it takes someone like ESR to point out the obvious before we listen.
You're gonna get your fucking bolts unscrewed
You'll never roll alone
There's only 1 Kryten 523C, but he's got a 30-day guarantee and can be returned in the original packaging for a replacement
The plan, an outgrowth of the Administration's anti-terrorism program...
Ah, yes. Not unlike Ireland's Special Criminal Court, ostensibly for terrorist cases in which juries are, ahem, impractical. This court is now used for drug dealers and pretty much any case in which a jury is likely to dismiss the case or return an inconvenient verdict.
The cloaking device
The transporter (old news I know)
The medical tricorder
The warp drive
Pon farr (okay, getting laid for the first time in seven years probably doesn't count
Nearly all references are bogus; none of them (except the warp drive) are analagous to their Trek counterparts. Course, they're still cool.
About the credit transfer: the town of Ennis in Ireland tried giving everyone smart cards, and they only used 'em for parking meters. 'A good idea whose time has not yet come' was the official response.
grumble grumble red hat grumble open source grumble bastards grumble end of civilisation grumble new microsoft grumble making money grumble evil grumble apache grumble grumble.
You americans are obviously obsessed with hard drives; here in Ireland lusers have a different perceptual problem; there's no such thing as a hard drive. It's all memory. All (all) users say "I'm out of memory" when their hard disks are full. It's become automatic for me to dismiss any complaints about memory and check the machine myself to find out what's really wrong.
Programmable lego is cool. X10 home automation is cool. Combine the two... wow.
Except for the hardware and the software, it's just like the old amiga.
On of my all-time 'pissed off about the internet' is this "Read More..." shite. I'm quite capable of using a scrollbar to see the rest. Unless they don't want us printing it off and reading it on the way home.
Oh, and what's a render wrangler? Someone who goes around looking for spare CPU cycles?
I remember about fifteen years ago a guy went postal in England and shot up a bunch a people. You're probably used to it by now in American, but on this side of the Atlantic it's pretty rare. However, the reasoning behind his little rampage was revealed when it was discovered he had a copy of Rambo in the house. Case solved.
People are assholes, and people who are charged (by themselves or others) with protecting our morals, doubly so.
Maybe their Sysadmins are on strike!
Nah. If that were true, it'd say "Our tea ladies have been notified and are working to fix the problem."
Interestingly, I was on the site at approximately the same time as you; but I could get in.
I'm definitely gonna have to change the Nice setting on netscape.
Here in Ireland, we've got an interesting situation regarding hi-tech companies and unions; the two don't mix. If you want to join a union, you lose your job. This is with the biggie companies; Gateway et al; the government spends so much money attracting them to the country that they're not going to complain if the company acts in a way that some feel is less than ethical.
"The opportunity is to make Linux more powerful, which we intend to do."
You've got to love these people. And drool over their computers.
Like most people, I laughed. I even downloaded the word document (I'll be sure to scan it before using it).
This does show Microsoft to be hypocrites, but that's hardly news to anyone.
One thing to remember, though, is that this doesn't make CDC angels.
BO2K is, to all intents and purposes, a cracker tool. It has valid uses, but the vast majority of people who download it are not sysadmins. BO2K remains a monumental pain in the nuts for innocent Windows administrators.
I'm not against CDC or BO2K; that doesn't mean we should paint CDC as saints.
To say that cybersquatting lowers the tone of the internet would imply some sort of lofty ideal for the internet; something it doesn't have (any more).
Having said that, I for one am happy to see anything that'll help curb the practise. The fact that multiple registrations are allowed won't help, but it would be unreasonable (IMHO) to expect companies to register only one; companies that have more than one product, for example, will unquestionably need more than one. Presidental candidates are another example.
I doubt I'm the only one who's been waiting for this to happen ever since AOL assimilated netscape. But will the name change mean anything? A rose by any other name will still crash on every second page with java.
Apparently the Dreamcast and Playstation 2 (PS/2?) will have built-in modems; this is going to make all the difference. Once it's possible to play Wipeout 2097 (still the best Playstation game) over the net, PC games are going to see a decline in popularity. How many people reading this also own a console, despite having a shit-cool PC?
A bunch of people have suggested solutions, from PGP to using real ISPs. That's cool for the /. audience, all of whom are at least slightly technically savvy. AOL's user base, on the other hand, consists mainly of people who know barely enough to stick one of the 68,000 CDs they were sent into the drive and crank it up. This isn't a criticism of these people; they simply don't use computers.
These people never heard of PGP, and as far as they're concerned, their email is private. These are the people about whom we should worry; the technologically ignorant are most at risk.
As I understand the situation, cable companies are powerful, but still have competition from other cable companies. If that's the case, then surely the ISPs' complaints are groundless?
As long as a cableco isn't acting as a monopoly, there should be no requirement on them to lease lines to anyone that would horn in on their action. I'd be pissed off if I, acting as a legitimate business guy running a computer consultancy in competition with other consultants, was required to teach other people how to give technical support. It's a tenuous analogy to be sure, but a valid one (I thinK).
All this, of course, is dependent on my understanding of US cable companies. If I'm wrong, I'll understand if I'm moderated to oblivion. In fact, I'll be delighted if it means fewer people seeing me acting the gobshite.
Wasn't that the woman who played the babes in Deathstalker 2?
Casting aspersions without downloading and testing is a Bad Thing, but what the fuck. I'm bored.
They're advertising a development environment 'without the need to learn a complex widget set'.
If you're a developer, you learn complex widget sets. It's what you do. If you use Visual Basic you're not a programmer. You're a lego builder.
Of course, just because you're not a programmer if you use this doesn't make it a bad thing; anyting that lets the average user build programmes can only be good for Linux. I'll happily download this new distro and stick it onto a laptop, after which I'll be able to offer some informed criticism. Of course, no-one'll listen. They never do. They're usually right.
/. has a link to developerworks, which has an interview with Rob and a link to /. which has...
As an aside (more of a main point, really), there was a time not so long ago when we'd all leap for joy at the prospect of IBM putting up a site for this. It's no longer a cause for celebration; simply a handy site to bookmark and come back to on occasion.
Truly Linux has entered the computing mainstream.
As far as I'm concerned, the more Linux companies there are in Europe the better. At least when the Chinese use their stolen nuclear technology to wipe America off the map (except the bit that's inside Transmeta's metaphasic shield), Red Hat and SUSe will still be around.