Hehe, when you were reading the book were you thinking "Good, except for the bad acting...":-)
Arg! Yes,:-), but that's my point: a movie is a different medium, so it obviously can add to the book. However imho PJ's movie adds almost nothing memorable. It's a pity. We can always hope for the next installments.
And I totally agree with the MSNBC guy: the stuff we like about the book is mostly not in the movie, and there's not much to be liked in the movie otherwise.
I didn't complain that it wasn't "as good" as the book. Books, movies, apples, oranges. And I realize I have a bias since I had read the book before seeing the movie; however movies are never judged in isolation. It did bother me that so many apparently pointless changes had been made. I don't really get what's to be gotten out of the movie, except a sort of generic mindless fun, which is fine, but disappointing to me, given what was taken on. The problem isn't that changes were made, but that the changes seem random, or questionable.
I wish I could think of a movie version that added something to the book... I guess the Godfather and Blade Runner are obvious examples. I liked the stories, and I liked the movies. The movies added good acting, impressive sets, interesting variations, etc. I'll repeat it: I don't really see what Peter Jackson's movie contributes, though apparently many people do. But then again I'm a droid...
Basically I thought the film was OK as big superproductions go, but I was disappointed that it doesn't add anything to the book. On the contrary, it seems to replace most of what's good with tired old Hollywood shticks: meaningful glances, silly special effects, poor character development, ugly sets (the Elves' residences are especially disappointing), and so on.
There's a very few things I liked: the Hobbiton sets, Bilbo and Gandalf smoking a pipe, the grief-stricken fellowship outside Moria, maybe a few other things. The rest seems like a big waste to me.
Sigh. This is not a troll. I would just like "Slashback" to be factual. Or maybe even funny, why not? Unfortunately it's too often neither. I emphasized below the parts of the article that give you some idea of what they're about. The rest (more than 50%) is worse than useless, in my opinion. Why post it then? I really don't know.
Extra, extra -- Read more about it! Yes, that means another round of Slashback, bearing this time: The stillborn auction of [expletive deleted]company.com's domain name; why EPIC has decided to stop sailing with Amazon; and another tantalizing glimpse of a world so advanced we can watch instruction videos on personal computers. More, too.
Oh, and would a few hyperlinks in the lead be too much to ask? Currently if I want to know about corrections or updates to Slashdot stories, I *have* to click on the article. This bugs me.
OK, here's my theories why/. does this:
- Too kind: you want to give people who make submissions full credit, so you include their full submission in the body of the article.
- Too greedy: you want that extra hit count of everybody having to click to get the information.
- Too dumb: you truly think Slashback is really well-written, really funny, really the best way to present the stories.
I like today's edition of Slashback: it's factual, and the humor is kept pleasingly at a low background level.
I've (monomaniacally?) complained in the past that Slashback had too much fluff. I don't know if others were bothered by it, but for what it's worth I find that in this one you hit the perfect balance, so here's to a little positive feedback for a change.
Keep it up! I look forward to reading more of 'em.
> *ahem* If anyone ever bothers to go through the replies to the posts ever again,
Are you kidding? This is a hot thread!
> here is what I think happened. Fan Qie Jia is Mandarin for Ketchup,
Are you sure? All I know is what my dictionary says, and that's that ketchup is: fan1qie2jiang4
> but I guess someone mixed it up for Tomato along the way,
> and also forgot the order of the syllables, and re-typed it out to be Fan Jia Qie.
Too complicated an explanation, no? Again, my dictionary lists two pronunciations for 茄: jia1 (lotus stem) and qie2 (eggplant). So how's this: if you look at the dictionary quickly and don't know better, you may think the pronunciation of the character is "jia qie".
> Fan Qie is Mandarin for tomato, as mentioned before.
> P.S. This is my first post EVER...
congratulations!
> Whaddya think of the name? If you don't get the joke, read on...
> P.P.S. It's supposed to mean, "Not in the face." Some brain-teaser, huh?:)
Thanks for confirming, ll_cool_k. Or is it Ma Kai Wen? That's funny, my name is Kai too (but the German version), spelled (kai3xuan1 de kai3) in Chinese (I didn't choose it!).
And hey, did I get a First Ever Chinese Character Post or what? Well, I've never seen any Chinese characters in Slashdot subjects, but I haven't seen them all...
Were you able to see it?
I only recently discovered this trick to put Unicode in HTML, I've been playing with it for a seriously multilingual web page (listing movies from around the world) (mail me if you want to see it). I love Chinese characters (that may sound stupid ("I love the alphabet"?), but it's true).
Mr. and Mrs. Yahoo Pushbutton can't buy a Hindi, Mandarin, or Spanish keyboard
I agree English will dominate for a while, but how long do you think the classic keyboard will be around? I'm not just talking speech recognition, which is still problematic, but think of the variety of new computing devices coming out, like phones, webpads, organizers, etc., with touch screens and so on.
I for one would like something like a standard keyboard, but reconfigurable: ie all the keys would have little lcd screens, and the keyboard could change according to the app. There's something so... static and hardwired about keyboards, just the way teletypes and early displays were hardwired for one character set.
I mean, interesting quickies, too much fluff around them. I've complained before, but why does timothy feel like he has to be some weird unfunny MC for Slashback? If the news is boring, don't publish it, nothing you do will make it interesting. If it's interesting, publish it with as little surrounding junk as possible.
Here's how to convey the same info in just one paragraph, saving many people a click and reading more annoying attempts at humor (I didn't bother putting in the links):
marcmerlin published a detailed Summer LinuxWorld report / MP3car Dudes have decoded the free Radio Shack barcode scanner protocol / someone wants to map not just unix, but all of computing history / GutterBunny informs us of a Cringely article on Chris McKinstry's Mindpixel Digital Mind Modeling Project.
Check out my other post where I explain an even better (IMHO) way to do what you're suggesting, by using a javascript dialog to avoid losing context, the current selection if there is one to avoid any typing or dialog or form, and the "Feeling Lucky" option to never see the Google site at all!
I love Google. I use it with a bookmarklet which makes it real convenient: I just select the text I'm interested in, then click on the bookmarklet in my toolbar, and bingo, I've got Google's top finds. Who needs links anymore?
What's more, if you add "&btnI=lucky", you get the "Feeling Lucky" option, going straight to the top match. So you never see a page by Google! Now that's lightweight!
I rarely use that, preferring to see the 10 top choices, but it's neat. It might also be a problem for Google if everybody did that, but I doubt it: they have my undying love and attention, and that will translate to $$ somehow or other.
Here's the bookmarklet code (Slashdot wisely won't let me put javascript in a comment):
I agree that Zardoz has no place in a "least influential" list. I could see it in a list of "most far out" or "worst", but that movie, which I saw on TV when I was a kid, is one of a dozen or so that leave me still today with a sense of mystery, of "what the hell was that?", of "wow". This is a result of growing up in the '70s, when everybody's getting high except you. Oh, nice intertextual title, too.
Mainsoft confirmed today that they are indeed porting Microsoft's apps to Linux.
Did not, at least not in the press release referenced in this article, where Linux is only mentioned in the "About MainWin" section, which I take to mean only that Microsoft's apps could potentially be ported to Linux.
Funny that he used examples that were so horribly flawed.
Well... I was being a little inflammatory. The examples were perhaps not legally flawed, just extreme to make a point, a reductio ad absurdum.
Say I get caught jaywalking, and in my defense I say I did it with a good intention, which was to help an old lady. The legal rejoinder to this could be: look, you broke the law, I don't care what your intention was -- if you assassinated someone with the intention of helping an old lady, that would still be a crime.
And I think that's the judge's point: look, you broke a law, so I don't care about what your intentions were, and if you don't like it, change the law so it's not illegal, or prove the law is unconstitutional.
Anyway, IANAL, but I imagine a non-lawyer being shocked by an assassination metaphor is a bit like a non-programmer getting worried that processes are getting "killed with maximum prejudice".;-)
DeCSS compared to ``... the assassination of a political figure'', and like computer viruses which can ``disable systems upon which the nation depends.''
``The Constitution... is not a suicide pact.''
I guess the judge sympathized with the MPAAA screaming bloody murder.
Re:Most people know how to cover ass
on
BSD And Politics
·
· Score: 1
Gosh, I really don't have anything better to do...
Just to debate your point into oblivion, I think it does say something, not a lot, about each candidate. If McCain rode around in an ethanol-powered or elecric bus, that would say a little something, even if some large percentage of buses nation-wide were similarly powered. It would say: maybe it's just random chance, or maybe McCain encourages environmentally-friendly or futuristic behavior among his aides or has aides that do so. 's all.
Call it "trickle-up" technology choices... And of course if it's somebody's brother who got the job and made the choice, well that says a little something too. It's more like a data point, not some deep insight or anything.
Actually I must be sick but I'd be curious to know more about how exactly each candidate's campaign set up and runs their web site. Anyone know more or have pointers on such info?
Well, I was comparing candidates, not parties. The differences between the parties are less marked than those between the individuals. For example I could imagine John McCain running Linux and Walter Mondale running an AS/400, for example (c'mon, it's fun!).
Anyway, are you sure of what you're saying? Care to back it up with URLs? Not that it's that important, of course...
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.rnc.org
www.rnc.org is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.democrat s.org
www.democrats.org is running Netscape-Enterprise/2.01 on AIX
I'm sure the User Friendly strip would not be so surprised, and maybe think it is a hairy deal...;-)
this was a political move, not anything coming from some deep idealogical standpoint
Don't want to get in a political discussion, but "a political move" can be good enough: he's been aware of the importance of the internet for a long time, and is trying to do the right thing on it. Not bad.
But indeed, trying, and being lame in the trying, is maybe worse than doing nothing. That's the Republicans' main point against bore, I mean Gore.
Side note: I guess the web development company hired by Gore 2000 could be described as "centrist":
IDEV is a Microsoft Certified Solutions Provider. That means we can leverage the power of Windows, SQL Server, and other Microsoft technologies to rapidly build active web applications.
IDEV is also an active participant in the "Open Source" movement. Many of our websites benefit from the stability and reliability of Linux, and we use PHP, Perl 5, MySQL, and other well-supported, open tools..
From http://www.idev.com/ (wow I really hate their web site).
Actually, some years back, my roommate Josh worked for Thinking Machines (some of the first massively parallel computers), and gave a demo to Al Gore, who might not have been VP yet at the time.
There was lots of press around as he gave the demo to an attentive Gore, who then earnestly asked him a question: "What is there in common between fractals and holograms?".
Josh was a little nonplussed by this question, hesitated as the cameras whirred and the flashes flashed, wondering if this guy was for real -- prepped question? Real intellectual curiosity?
For the record Josh showed (I thought) grace under fire by finally replying "Self-similarity?". Al seemed content with the answer and moved on to the next photo-op.
Anyway in Gore's case, his record shows it's likely that he knows about Linux, though of course we're never sure if he knows about it because he thinks it's cool or because he thinks it's important career-wise. He is a politician...
Conversely I can see the Bushies straightforwardly going for the "no one was ever not elected for picking Microsoft" route.
So I'm not judging the candidates by their (or their employees) choice, just finding it slightly representative of their outlooks. Gore's a "nerd", Bush is a "regular guy".
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.georgewb ush.com
www.georgewbush.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.algore20 00.com
www.algore2000.com is running Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) PHP/4.0.1pl2 secured_by_Raven/1.5.1 on Linux
In the pop culture of a country I've never visited, whose language and social habits I barely understand, I have found something that resembles the tech-addled lives of my friends and myself.
An old boss, who spent a year in Japan in the early 80s, described Japan as "a nation of geeks". This was an MIT guy, so it was less a disparaging generalization than a mark of slightly amazed respect.
No wonder then, if this is true, that their pop culture is appreciated by their American geek brethren.
Slashdot Mirror
Hehe, when you were reading the book were you thinking "Good, except for the bad acting..." :-)
:-), but that's my point: a movie is a different medium, so it obviously can add to the book. However imho PJ's movie adds almost nothing memorable. It's a pity. We can always hope for the next installments.
Arg! Yes,
And I totally agree with the MSNBC guy: the stuff we like about the book is mostly not in the movie, and there's not much to be liked in the movie otherwise.
I didn't complain that it wasn't "as good" as the book. Books, movies, apples, oranges. And I realize I have a bias since I had read the book before seeing the movie; however movies are never judged in isolation. It did bother me that so many apparently pointless changes had been made. I don't really get what's to be gotten out of the movie, except a sort of generic mindless fun, which is fine, but disappointing to me, given what was taken on. The problem isn't that changes were made, but that the changes seem random, or questionable.
I wish I could think of a movie version that added something to the book... I guess the Godfather and Blade Runner are obvious examples. I liked the stories, and I liked the movies. The movies added good acting, impressive sets, interesting variations, etc. I'll repeat it: I don't really see what Peter Jackson's movie contributes, though apparently many people do. But then again I'm a droid...
NOTE: I've read the book about 15 times over the years, so I'm not exactly a casual LOTR fan, but nor am I a rabid "Gandalf is God" fan.
One of the very few negative reviews I've found expresses exactly my feelings about the movie.
Basically I thought the film was OK as big superproductions go, but I was disappointed that it doesn't add anything to the book. On the contrary, it seems to replace most of what's good with tired old Hollywood shticks: meaningful glances, silly special effects, poor character development, ugly sets (the Elves' residences are especially disappointing), and so on.
There's a very few things I liked: the Hobbiton sets, Bilbo and Gandalf smoking a pipe, the grief-stricken fellowship outside Moria, maybe a few other things. The rest seems like a big waste to me.
- The Falkland Islands / Malvinas catching fire?
- Atlantis alive and kicking
- A bug sitting on the satellite sensor
- ...?
Just wondering...> I think that the majority of new programmers
> will choose Python over Perl
In Japan the majority of programmers use Ruby over Python. Might be worth checking out.
give us some real info and stop the cutesy stuff
Sigh. This is not a troll. I would just like "Slashback" to be factual. Or maybe even funny, why not? Unfortunately it's too often neither. I emphasized below the parts of the article that give you some idea of what they're about. The rest (more than 50%) is worse than useless, in my opinion. Why post it then? I really don't know.
/. does this:
Extra, extra -- Read more about it! Yes, that means another round of Slashback, bearing this time: The stillborn auction of [expletive deleted]company.com's domain name; why EPIC has decided to stop sailing with Amazon; and another tantalizing glimpse of a world so advanced we can watch instruction videos on personal computers. More, too.
Oh, and would a few hyperlinks in the lead be too much to ask? Currently if I want to know about corrections or updates to Slashdot stories, I *have* to click on the article. This bugs me.
OK, here's my theories why
- Too kind: you want to give people who make submissions full credit, so you include their full submission in the body of the article.
- Too greedy: you want that extra hit count of everybody having to click to get the information.
- Too dumb: you truly think Slashback is really well-written, really funny, really the best way to present the stories.
I dunno, you tell me.
I like today's edition of Slashback: it's factual, and the humor is kept pleasingly at a low background level.
I've (monomaniacally?) complained in the past that Slashback had too much fluff. I don't know if others were bothered by it, but for what it's worth I find that in this one you hit the perfect balance, so here's to a little positive feedback for a change.
Keep it up! I look forward to reading more of 'em.
> *ahem* If anyone ever bothers to go through the replies to the posts ever again,
:)
Are you kidding? This is a hot thread!
> here is what I think happened. Fan Qie Jia is Mandarin for Ketchup,
Are you sure? All I know is what my dictionary says, and that's that ketchup is: fan1qie2jiang4
> but I guess someone mixed it up for Tomato along the way,
> and also forgot the order of the syllables, and re-typed it out to be Fan Jia Qie.
Too complicated an explanation, no? Again, my dictionary lists two pronunciations for 茄: jia1 (lotus stem) and qie2 (eggplant). So how's this: if you look at the dictionary quickly and don't know better, you may think the pronunciation of the character is "jia qie".
> Fan Qie is Mandarin for tomato, as mentioned before.
> P.S. This is my first post EVER...
congratulations!
> Whaddya think of the name? If you don't get the joke, read on...
> P.P.S. It's supposed to mean, "Not in the face." Some brain-teaser, huh?
not bad
Thanks for confirming, ll_cool_k. Or is it Ma Kai Wen? That's funny, my name is Kai too (but the German version), spelled (kai3xuan1 de kai3) in Chinese (I didn't choose it!).
And hey, did I get a First Ever Chinese Character Post or what? Well, I've never seen any Chinese characters in Slashdot subjects, but I haven't seen them all...
Were you able to see it?
I only recently discovered this trick to put Unicode in HTML, I've been playing with it for a seriously multilingual web page (listing movies from around the world) (mail me if you want to see it). I love Chinese characters (that may sound stupid ("I love the alphabet"?), but it's true).
You should be able to read the Chinese characters in this post if you're using IE or Mozilla and have a Unicode font with Chinese.
Otherwise you can look it up in .gif at this cool Chinese character site and hear it pronounced here (when it's back up?).
Mr. and Mrs. Yahoo Pushbutton can't buy a Hindi, Mandarin, or Spanish keyboard
I agree English will dominate for a while, but how long do you think the classic keyboard will be around? I'm not just talking speech recognition, which is still problematic, but think of the variety of new computing devices coming out, like phones, webpads, organizers, etc., with touch screens and so on.
I for one would like something like a standard keyboard, but reconfigurable: ie all the keys would have little lcd screens, and the keyboard could change according to the app. There's something so... static and hardwired about keyboards, just the way teletypes and early displays were hardwired for one character set.
"Nooooooo! Noooooooo!" is right.
I mean, interesting quickies, too much fluff around them. I've complained before, but why does timothy feel like he has to be some weird unfunny MC for Slashback? If the news is boring, don't publish it, nothing you do will make it interesting. If it's interesting, publish it with as little surrounding junk as possible.
Here's how to convey the same info in just one paragraph, saving many people a click and reading more annoying attempts at humor (I didn't bother putting in the links):
marcmerlin published a detailed Summer LinuxWorld report / MP3car Dudes have decoded the free Radio Shack barcode scanner protocol / someone wants to map not just unix, but all of computing history / GutterBunny informs us of a Cringely article on Chris McKinstry's Mindpixel Digital Mind Modeling Project.
That's a bit like a bookmarklet.
Check out my other post where I explain an even better (IMHO) way to do what you're suggesting, by using a javascript dialog to avoid losing context, the current selection if there is one to avoid any typing or dialog or form, and the "Feeling Lucky" option to never see the Google site at all!
What's more, if you add "&btnI=lucky", you get the "Feeling Lucky" option, going straight to the top match. So you never see a page by Google! Now that's lightweight!
I rarely use that, preferring to see the 10 top choices, but it's neat. It might also be a problem for Google if everybody did that, but I doubt it: they have my undying love and attention, and that will translate to $$ somehow or other.
Here's the bookmarklet code (Slashdot wisely won't let me put javascript in a comment):(works with IE, a slight alteration works with Netscape, see bookmarklets.com for how to make one).
I agree that Zardoz has no place in a "least influential" list. I could see it in a list of "most far out" or "worst", but that movie, which I saw on TV when I was a kid, is one of a dozen or so that leave me still today with a sense of mystery, of "what the hell was that?", of "wow". This is a result of growing up in the '70s, when everybody's getting high except you. Oh, nice intertextual title, too.
Mainsoft confirmed today that they are indeed porting Microsoft's apps to Linux.
Did not, at least not in the press release referenced in this article, where Linux is only mentioned in the "About MainWin" section, which I take to mean only that Microsoft's apps could potentially be ported to Linux.
Funny that he used examples that were so horribly flawed.
;-)
Well... I was being a little inflammatory. The examples were perhaps not legally flawed, just extreme to make a point, a reductio ad absurdum.
Say I get caught jaywalking, and in my defense I say I did it with a good intention, which was to help an old lady. The legal rejoinder to this could be: look, you broke the law, I don't care what your intention was -- if you assassinated someone with the intention of helping an old lady, that would still be a crime.
And I think that's the judge's point: look, you broke a law, so I don't care about what your intentions were, and if you don't like it, change the law so it's not illegal, or prove the law is unconstitutional.
Anyway, IANAL, but I imagine a non-lawyer being shocked by an assassination metaphor is a bit like a non-programmer getting worried that processes are getting "killed with maximum prejudice".
Pretty strong language indeed :
... is not a suicide pact.''
DeCSS compared to ``... the assassination of a political figure'', and like computer viruses which can ``disable systems upon which the nation depends.''
``The Constitution
I guess the judge sympathized with the MPAAA screaming bloody murder.
Gosh, I really don't have anything better to do...
Just to debate your point into oblivion, I think it does say something, not a lot, about each candidate. If McCain rode around in an ethanol-powered or elecric bus, that would say a little something, even if some large percentage of buses nation-wide were similarly powered. It would say: maybe it's just random chance, or maybe McCain encourages environmentally-friendly or futuristic behavior among his aides or has aides that do so. 's all.
Call it "trickle-up" technology choices... And of course if it's somebody's brother who got the job and made the choice, well that says a little something too. It's more like a data point, not some deep insight or anything.
Actually I must be sick but I'd be curious to know more about how exactly each candidate's campaign set up and runs their web site. Anyone know more or have pointers on such info?
Well, I was comparing candidates, not parties. The differences between the parties are less marked than those between the individuals. For example I could imagine John McCain running Linux and Walter Mondale running an AS/400, for example (c'mon, it's fun!).
t s.org
;-)
Anyway, are you sure of what you're saying? Care to back it up with URLs? Not that it's that important, of course...
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.rnc.org
www.rnc.org is running Microsoft-IIS/4.0 on NT4 or Windows 98
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.democra
www.democrats.org is running Netscape-Enterprise/2.01 on AIX
I'm sure the User Friendly strip would not be so surprised, and maybe think it is a hairy deal...
Don't want to get in a political discussion, but "a political move" can be good enough: he's been aware of the importance of the internet for a long time, and is trying to do the right thing on it. Not bad.
But indeed, trying, and being lame in the trying, is maybe worse than doing nothing. That's the Republicans' main point against bore, I mean Gore.
Side note: I guess the web development company hired by Gore 2000 could be described as "centrist":From http://www.idev.com/ (wow I really hate their web site).
Actually, some years back, my roommate Josh worked for Thinking Machines (some of the first massively parallel computers), and gave a demo to Al Gore, who might not have been VP yet at the time.
There was lots of press around as he gave the demo to an attentive Gore, who then earnestly asked him a question: "What is there in common between fractals and holograms?".
Josh was a little nonplussed by this question, hesitated as the cameras whirred and the flashes flashed, wondering if this guy was for real -- prepped question? Real intellectual curiosity?
For the record Josh showed (I thought) grace under fire by finally replying "Self-similarity?". Al seemed content with the answer and moved on to the next photo-op.
Anyway in Gore's case, his record shows it's likely that he knows about Linux, though of course we're never sure if he knows about it because he thinks it's cool or because he thinks it's important career-wise. He is a politician...
Conversely I can see the Bushies straightforwardly going for the "no one was ever not elected for picking Microsoft" route.
So I'm not judging the candidates by their (or their employees) choice, just finding it slightly representative of their outlooks. Gore's a "nerd", Bush is a "regular guy".
Why am I not surprised?
b ush.com
0 00.com
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.georgew
www.georgewbush.com is running Microsoft-IIS/5.0
http://www.netcraft.com/whats/?host=www.algore2
www.algore2000.com is running Apache/1.3.12 (Unix) PHP/4.0.1pl2 secured_by_Raven/1.5.1 on Linux
In the pop culture of a country I've never visited, whose language and social habits I barely understand, I have found something that resembles the tech-addled lives of my friends and myself.
An old boss, who spent a year in Japan in the early 80s, described Japan as "a nation of geeks". This was an MIT guy, so it was less a disparaging generalization than a mark of slightly amazed respect.
No wonder then, if this is true, that their pop culture is appreciated by their American geek brethren.