Having a three-year-old son gets me exposed to a lot of the remakes of classic films from my childhood. Most of these (eg. the Parent Trap) are crap, but sometimes, people do capture what made the original so good and give it a fresh angle at the same time.
When my wife checked out "Flubber" from the library, I was ready for it to be a horrible remake of a classic, and, for the most part, it was. The exception was Wheaton's repraisal of Tommy Kirk's character. Maybe it was because they look so much alike, but he nailed that part.
It got me thinking that Disney missed the boat. Swiss Family Robinson, Old Yeller, etc., could have been remade with Wil in the cast....
Then again, considering what Disney has done for the last decade or so.... maybe it's better off this way.
I highly recommend Devil Linux. It's a live CD, and you can save your config on a floppy or a USB drive. The best part is that if you write protect the media, there is nothing that can be written remotely.
It was suspended after it was bombarded with inappropriate material.
The grad student who taught a tech for pre-service teachers class the semester before I took over was researching the use of wikis for his thesis. He kept preaching about how wikis give everyone a voice.
It was finally one of my history teaching majors who pointed out, "Wikis only give a voice to the last person who spoke."
Yes, you can look in the document history and all that, but who does? If the last person to speak was a liar, or wanted to put up some p0rn, or even wanted to spam the page with viagra adverts, that's what you get.
My IBM x20 just had some power issues that actualy required me to take the mainboard out and solder some. I'm not too handy with an iron, but it works now. I also don't trust it enought for critical work.
When I had it conpletely disassembled, I started thinking I could use a friend's CNC machine to build a wall frame for the screen, which is actually a lot thinner once removed from the case. The keyboard is also very thin, and I could fab a base for it as well.
All I need is to wire extension cables for the screen and keyboard, and I would have a very elegant kitchen network client.
There is a whole tradition of qualitative inquiry that has been seeping into evaluation (from anthropology mainly) for about fifty years now. It seems there are situations when you don't want to construct confidence intervals based on probability (statistics), but, rather, want to understand a complexe phenomenon.
A survey of thousands of users would have to be controled for the users experience (what if the user was actually wrong?) and for the company (different comanies serve different user-types. Compared that to a knowledgable person calling with predetermined questions to all the major vendors they could find, and grading them on some predetermined rubric.
I will not argue the assertion that their choices of problems was poor, or that the grading was arbitrary, just that not having an N>30 doesn't invalidate the study.
It's only a matter of time until the Al Quaeda uses our public library system against us.
I know that's meant to be funny, but check out this quote from Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla.
"If there are terrorists in libraries studying how to fly planes, how to put together biological weapons, how to put together chemical weapons, nuclear weapons,... we have to have an avenue through the federal court system so that we can stop the attack before it occurs."
Also, at one of the major Universities in the state, BYU felt that censorship of sculptures by Auguste Rodin was appropriate for the national tour a couple of years ago.
As one who graduated from the BYU French department back then, I should point out that this was a business decision by the Museum of Art at BYU, not by the administration (who chose to let the MOA control their own world), and without advisement from the Humanities department. The MOA's main audience is elementary school children on field trips, and they felt they would face opposition from parents if they showed the statue.
The work in question is one of my favorites, and I, and every factuly member of the department to whom I spoke, were very offended by this. We took the necessary steps to get le baiser shown, and alerted the media when it was not.
Your insinuations that the school banned the work are incorrect.
What scares me more about this is that the governor from the time when the law was passed is no the head of the EPA.
ps - don't you mean "the major University in the state"?;p
The first is the more sincere user who is having a hard time figuring out what to think about the move.
The other says this was unquestionably a good move, and Jobs is, once again, steering the company right. (Forget the fact that these are the same people who defended PPC as vastly superior to x86 just a month ago.)
An example of the second type would be a guy I knew who at our company who has a habit of overstepping his bounds. He got really upset at us for buying Spruce DVD authoring systems because they were NT-based, and not going with Sonic, which was Mac-based. When Apple bought Spruce to make DVD Studio Pro 2, he told me, "You know, in retrospect Spruce was the way to go because Apple wouldn't purchase a dead-end company."
(This guy also told me regarding one of our vendors, "They're expensive, but they're coming along.")
As an example of the second type of Machead, here's a recent email thread I had with a recovering Mac zealot:
>>> This is an interesting theory that answers your random complaints... >>> >>> http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050609. html >>> >>> -b. smith >> Thanks for the laugh. >> >> To cite a Slashdot post on the issue: >> When a company with 30B USD market cap becomes a part of a company with 170B USD market cap it's called an acquisition, not a "merger." >> >> --j >> >> > > I think the guy went over the edge... but it was an interesting theory. > > Although, it seems like the vast majority of the Mac Community is supporting Jobs' move. Does this guy have too much power over our hearts and minds? You would say yes. > > -b. smith > >
Ah, my son. The moment you asked that question, you took your first step into a larger world.
Re:Congratulations are in order!
on
A Decade of PHP
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Why climb to the top of a mountain when a helicopter is clearly the correct tool for that job?
They can simply sue Samba devs for "using our specifications illegally as stated in blahblahblah".
Exactly.
Many of you will remember the Kerberos fiasco. MIT demanded that MS release their changes to Kerberos or stop using the name, so they released the spec as a.zip with a EULA saying that you could only share it with your employees, blah, blah...
Some slashdotter copied the text straight into his post, with the subject line of "To all my employees..." MS eventually threatened/. to remove the post. Register Article
What is interesting is that Jeremy Allison, of the Samba team actually posted very quickly asking/. to remove the post as having the spec on a popular F/OSS site could cause legal issues for the team.
I read (in Premier, I think) that when Lucas visited the set of Gangs of New York, He asked Scorsese why he bothered building such an elaborate set (five blocks of it, IIRC). He said, "You can do this all with blue screens."
It was at that point that I figured out that Lucas had really gone to the dark side. EPII only confirmed that to me.
DVDs have never been horribly crippled in any way in the past
Actually, they have been since before they released. I work in foreign language education, and several universities, include USAFA, had done some cool stuff with computer-controlled LaserDiscs back in the days. The DVD forum, according the Jim Taylor, expressly made sure that type of control would not be available for DVDs without paying a huge licensing fee.
So now, these intsitutions are forced to either develop their own MPEG2 decoder (paying through the nose for the rights), or attempt to use someone else's. Those that are out there are pretty much undocumented black boxes that, at least in Windows, can never be fully uninstalled.
Some colleagues of mine developed for MS DirectShow on Win2K, but have had to reprogram several times, the lastest being for XP SPII. (MS does not document the changes to DirectShow.)
So, as long as you just wanted to watch your DVD, there hasn't been crippling in the past. But, DVDs have always been expressly limited in their playback control.
Ironically, a passage of Bible speaks about people shutting their eyes and covering their ears so they wouldn't listen to God's Truth. Yes, pretty ironic.
Ironically, there is another passage, in Isaiah, if memory serves, that is often interpreted to declare God's ways above ours, and that we should not seek to understand his ways.
That's one of the problems with the Bible, it's full of contradictions that may or may not have been there originally or have come through translations. The problem is that for the last five hundred years, each sect has taken a pieces of the Bible and interpreted it to mean what they want, leaving out the parts that say otherwise. (eg. Faith v.s works)
A follower of a religion should also be able to explain to others not only what they believe, but why they believe it - a study called "apologetics."
I would go further to say that religion is a search for truth, that faith and science are two means to truth (each with its shortcomings), but that every true seeker of truth must be willing to constantly re-evaluate everything they know to be true.
-- Wow, that's a lot of truths. --
That's just my thought.
Also, I agree, and I posted on a different story yesterday, that our complete lack of respect for opposing viewpoints (and those who hold them) can only help the creationists.
I think politics have turned into a team sport. I know some Yankees fans who refuse to work with Bean fans, but other than that, most get into rabid discussions before meetings, work through problems together, then go home and cheer for their team.
One time my brother-in-law was watching a Dodgers game and Brian Jordan was up to bat. He, being a Braves fan, asked me if I remembered when Jordan had been good. He meant: When he played for the Braves. In sports, players you hated are suddenly the best because they signed with your team, while you can no longer stand players you loved just because they left (or were traded).
Frighteningly, political parties are becoming the same, but instead of moving players, they change/soften stances, trying to get the most votes.
Comments, like some of those responding to this parent demonstrate why I do not choose parties. "One side (mine) is correct, educated, etc., while the other is clearly mislead hillbillies." or "My side is God-fearing, the other are sinners." Choices, beliefs, morals, are little more than personal priorities we have developed. In our relativistic world, it's difficult to say someone is wrong, but easy to explain, if your arguement is sound, why their priorities may be misplaced.
The distiction is important, because it's comments like those above that are driving the wedge between neighbors in America. If you refuse to understand your opponents' views (rather than simply dismiss them as ignorant or unbelieving), you remove all opportunity for compromise.
Does anyone else remember when Lucas tried to excuse EP1 by saying, "Some people don't understand that I make movies for children"?
Here's the full quote: "The movies are for children but they don't want to admit that. In the first film they absolutely hated R2 and C3-PO. In the second film they didn't like Yoda and in the third one they hated the Ewoks... and now Jar Jar is getting accused of the same thing."
It reminds me of the Arial Unicode fiasco from a few years back. I was coding stuff for an Arabic group, and I convinced them to go with Unicode instead of a homebrewed transliteration system. (The process of converting their stuff even got published in CALICO Journal.) Anyway, at the time, no one was developing really comprehensive Unicode fonts because MS had a version of Arial with great Unicode support for download for free. Of course, it was free as in beer, and you were not allowed to distribute the font.
A year later (three years after they had put up the font), MS pulls it and says it will now only be available as part of Office. Some people defended MS saying that their developers have a right to make $$$ off their effort, but they effectively got everyone else to not develop competing fonts for three years.
So, I expect, if Metro takes off, for MS to keep it going until it dominates the market, then turn around and un-open it.
However, teachers can't just be thrown the system and told to go to work-they need to be trained as to how to use them, something that school boards have been reluctant to do as it costs money.
That's exactly why Higher Ed, the schools training the teachers has to step it up. I've taught sections of teacher ed classes before (based of ISTE's NETS-T standards), and it's amazing that kids today can reach college with no - and I mean no - technology skills.
I've seen college sophomores who struggle with email and word processing. As these people go on to teach our kids, it doesn't matter if they have a super computer, it will not be used properly.
Also, in response to those saying get computers out of schools, computer skills no classify as life skills. They need to be taught. However, they are not being taught right.
...unless he's alleging that video will be doctored...
CLAUDE: I'd like to point out that this tape has not been tampered with or edited in any way. It even has a timecode on it, and those are very hard to fake.
JUDGE: For the benefit of the court, would you please explain "timecode"?
CLAUDE: Just because I don't know what it is... doesn't mean I'm lying.
Slashdot Mirror
Having a three-year-old son gets me exposed to a lot of the remakes of classic films from my childhood. Most of these (eg. the Parent Trap) are crap, but sometimes, people do capture what made the original so good and give it a fresh angle at the same time.
When my wife checked out "Flubber" from the library, I was ready for it to be a horrible remake of a classic, and, for the most part, it was. The exception was Wheaton's repraisal of Tommy Kirk's character. Maybe it was because they look so much alike, but he nailed that part.
It got me thinking that Disney missed the boat. Swiss Family Robinson, Old Yeller, etc., could have been remade with Wil in the cast....
Then again, considering what Disney has done for the last decade or so.... maybe it's better off this way.
Why even put a hard drive in it?
I highly recommend Devil Linux. It's a live CD, and you can save your config on a floppy or a USB drive. The best part is that if you write protect the media, there is nothing that can be written remotely.
It even supports 128-character passwords.
Oops. Here's the link.
Why is the north side of the Conciergerie whited out?
From the BBC article ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/2/hi/technology/411 4312.stm ):
The online version of the paper started its "wikitorial" experiment last week. It was meant to give readers a "voice".
It was suspended after it was bombarded with inappropriate material.
The grad student who taught a tech for pre-service teachers class the semester before I took over was researching the use of wikis for his thesis. He kept preaching about how wikis give everyone a voice.
It was finally one of my history teaching majors who pointed out, "Wikis only give a voice to the last person who spoke."
Yes, you can look in the document history and all that, but who does? If the last person to speak was a liar, or wanted to put up some p0rn, or even wanted to spam the page with viagra adverts, that's what you get.
My IBM x20 just had some power issues that actualy required me to take the mainboard out and solder some. I'm not too handy with an iron, but it works now. I also don't trust it enought for critical work.
When I had it conpletely disassembled, I started thinking I could use a friend's CNC machine to build a wall frame for the screen, which is actually a lot thinner once removed from the case. The keyboard is also very thin, and I could fab a base for it as well.
All I need is to wire extension cables for the screen and keyboard, and I would have a very elegant kitchen network client.
Statistically insignificant sample size.
There is a whole tradition of qualitative inquiry that has been seeping into evaluation (from anthropology mainly) for about fifty years now. It seems there are situations when you don't want to construct confidence intervals based on probability (statistics), but, rather, want to understand a complexe phenomenon.
A survey of thousands of users would have to be controled for the users experience (what if the user was actually wrong?) and for the company (different comanies serve different user-types. Compared that to a knowledgable person calling with predetermined questions to all the major vendors they could find, and grading them on some predetermined rubric.
I will not argue the assertion that their choices of problems was poor, or that the grading was arbitrary, just that not having an N>30 doesn't invalidate the study.
It's only a matter of time until the Al Quaeda uses our public library system against us.
... we have to have an avenue through the federal court system so that we can stop the attack before it occurs."
I know that's meant to be funny, but check out this quote from Rep. Tom Feeney, R-Fla.
"If there are terrorists in libraries studying how to fly planes, how to put together biological weapons, how to put together chemical weapons, nuclear weapons,
No, it's not what they told us, it's what we found out.
Also, at one of the major Universities in the state, BYU felt that censorship of sculptures by Auguste Rodin was appropriate for the national tour a couple of years ago.
;p
As one who graduated from the BYU French department back then, I should point out that this was a business decision by the Museum of Art at BYU, not by the administration (who chose to let the MOA control their own world), and without advisement from the Humanities department. The MOA's main audience is elementary school children on field trips, and they felt they would face opposition from parents if they showed the statue.
The work in question is one of my favorites, and I, and every factuly member of the department to whom I spoke, were very offended by this. We took the necessary steps to get le baiser shown, and alerted the media when it was not.
Your insinuations that the school banned the work are incorrect.
What scares me more about this is that the governor from the time when the law was passed is no the head of the EPA.
ps - don't you mean "the major University in the state"?
There are two types of Mac fans:
. html
The first is the more sincere user who is having a hard time figuring out what to think about the move.
The other says this was unquestionably a good move, and Jobs is, once again, steering the company right. (Forget the fact that these are the same people who defended PPC as vastly superior to x86 just a month ago.)
An example of the second type would be a guy I knew who at our company who has a habit of overstepping his bounds. He got really upset at us for buying Spruce DVD authoring systems because they were NT-based, and not going with Sonic, which was Mac-based. When Apple bought Spruce to make DVD Studio Pro 2, he told me, "You know, in retrospect Spruce was the way to go because Apple wouldn't purchase a dead-end company."
(This guy also told me regarding one of our vendors, "They're expensive, but they're coming along.")
As an example of the second type of Machead, here's a recent email thread I had with a recovering Mac zealot:
>>> This is an interesting theory that answers your random complaints...
>>>
>>> http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20050609
>>>
>>> -b. smith
>> Thanks for the laugh.
>>
>> To cite a Slashdot post on the issue:
>> When a company with 30B USD market cap becomes a part of a company with 170B USD market cap it's called an acquisition, not a "merger."
>>
>> --j
>>
>>
>
> I think the guy went over the edge... but it was an interesting theory.
>
> Although, it seems like the vast majority of the Mac Community is supporting Jobs' move. Does this guy have too much power over our hearts and minds? You would say yes.
>
> -b. smith
>
>
Ah, my son. The moment you asked that question, you took your first step into a larger world.
Why climb to the top of a mountain when a helicopter is clearly the correct tool for that job?
They can simply sue Samba devs for "using our specifications illegally as stated in blahblahblah".
.zip with a EULA saying that you could only share it with your employees, blah, blah...
/. to remove the post. Register Article
/. to remove the post as having the spec on a popular F/OSS site could cause legal issues for the team.
Exactly.
Many of you will remember the Kerberos fiasco. MIT demanded that MS release their changes to Kerberos or stop using the name, so they released the spec as a
Some slashdotter copied the text straight into his post, with the subject line of "To all my employees..." MS eventually threatened
What is interesting is that Jeremy Allison, of the Samba team actually posted very quickly asking
The Newton was the preferred PDA of Steven Seagal's character in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory!
I read (in Premier, I think) that when Lucas visited the set of Gangs of New York, He asked Scorsese why he bothered building such an elaborate set (five blocks of it, IIRC). He said, "You can do this all with blue screens."
It was at that point that I figured out that Lucas had really gone to the dark side. EPII only confirmed that to me.
DVDs have never been horribly crippled in any way in the past
Actually, they have been since before they released. I work in foreign language education, and several universities, include USAFA, had done some cool stuff with computer-controlled LaserDiscs back in the days. The DVD forum, according the Jim Taylor, expressly made sure that type of control would not be available for DVDs without paying a huge licensing fee.
So now, these intsitutions are forced to either develop their own MPEG2 decoder (paying through the nose for the rights), or attempt to use someone else's. Those that are out there are pretty much undocumented black boxes that, at least in Windows, can never be fully uninstalled.
Some colleagues of mine developed for MS DirectShow on Win2K, but have had to reprogram several times, the lastest being for XP SPII. (MS does not document the changes to DirectShow.)
So, as long as you just wanted to watch your DVD, there hasn't been crippling in the past. But, DVDs have always been expressly limited in their playback control.
I drive a '71 SIIA 88" Land Rover. Not only do I have a cracked windscreen, but I also have a tyre on my bonnet.
Ironically, a passage of Bible speaks about people shutting their eyes and covering their ears so they wouldn't listen to God's Truth. Yes, pretty ironic.
Ironically, there is another passage, in Isaiah, if memory serves, that is often interpreted to declare God's ways above ours, and that we should not seek to understand his ways.
That's one of the problems with the Bible, it's full of contradictions that may or may not have been there originally or have come through translations. The problem is that for the last five hundred years, each sect has taken a pieces of the Bible and interpreted it to mean what they want, leaving out the parts that say otherwise. (eg. Faith v.s works)
A follower of a religion should also be able to explain to others not only what they believe, but why they believe it - a study called "apologetics."
I would go further to say that religion is a search for truth, that faith and science are two means to truth (each with its shortcomings), but that every true seeker of truth must be willing to constantly re-evaluate everything they know to be true.
-- Wow, that's a lot of truths. --
That's just my thought.
Also, I agree, and I posted on a different story yesterday, that our complete lack of respect for opposing viewpoints (and those who hold them) can only help the creationists.
I think politics have turned into a team sport. I know some Yankees fans who refuse to work with Bean fans, but other than that, most get into rabid discussions before meetings, work through problems together, then go home and cheer for their team.
One time my brother-in-law was watching a Dodgers game and Brian Jordan was up to bat. He, being a Braves fan, asked me if I remembered when Jordan had been good. He meant: When he played for the Braves. In sports, players you hated are suddenly the best because they signed with your team, while you can no longer stand players you loved just because they left (or were traded).
Frighteningly, political parties are becoming the same, but instead of moving players, they change/soften stances, trying to get the most votes.
Comments, like some of those responding to this parent demonstrate why I do not choose parties. "One side (mine) is correct, educated, etc., while the other is clearly mislead hillbillies." or "My side is God-fearing, the other are sinners." Choices, beliefs, morals, are little more than personal priorities we have developed. In our relativistic world, it's difficult to say someone is wrong, but easy to explain, if your arguement is sound, why their priorities may be misplaced.
The distiction is important, because it's comments like those above that are driving the wedge between neighbors in America. If you refuse to understand your opponents' views (rather than simply dismiss them as ignorant or unbelieving), you remove all opportunity for compromise.
Does anyone else remember when Lucas tried to excuse EP1 by saying, "Some people don't understand that I make movies for children"?
Here's the full quote:
"The movies are for children but they don't want to admit that. In the first film they absolutely hated R2 and C3-PO. In the second film they didn't like Yoda and in the third one they hated the Ewoks... and now Jar Jar is getting accused of the same thing."
So, a blood bath for kids?
Some people seem to me like they're just living in a different world from everyone else.
I agree, but how do you know if you are one of those "some people" or a member of "everyone else"?
Just a thought.
Rightly said.
It reminds me of the Arial Unicode fiasco from a few years back. I was coding stuff for an Arabic group, and I convinced them to go with Unicode instead of a homebrewed transliteration system. (The process of converting their stuff even got published in CALICO Journal.) Anyway, at the time, no one was developing really comprehensive Unicode fonts because MS had a version of Arial with great Unicode support for download for free. Of course, it was free as in beer, and you were not allowed to distribute the font.
A year later (three years after they had put up the font), MS pulls it and says it will now only be available as part of Office. Some people defended MS saying that their developers have a right to make $$$ off their effort, but they effectively got everyone else to not develop competing fonts for three years.
So, I expect, if Metro takes off, for MS to keep it going until it dominates the market, then turn around and un-open it.
However, teachers can't just be thrown the system and told to go to work-they need to be trained as to how to use them, something that school boards have been reluctant to do as it costs money.
That's exactly why Higher Ed, the schools training the teachers has to step it up. I've taught sections of teacher ed classes before (based of ISTE's NETS-T standards), and it's amazing that kids today can reach college with no - and I mean no - technology skills.
I've seen college sophomores who struggle with email and word processing. As these people go on to teach our kids, it doesn't matter if they have a super computer, it will not be used properly.
Also, in response to those saying get computers out of schools, computer skills no classify as life skills. They need to be taught. However, they are not being taught right.
...unless he's alleging that video will be doctored...
... doesn't mean I'm lying.
CLAUDE: I'd like to point out that this tape has not been tampered with or edited in any way. It even has a timecode on it, and those are very hard to fake.
JUDGE: For the benefit of the court, would you please explain "timecode"?
CLAUDE: Just because I don't know what it is
(Ah, the wisdom of Strange Brew.)