No, it's an old joke. In the "Mirror, Mirror" episode from the original series, Spock (and only Spock) had a goatee. It's become a sci-fi injoke (Scott Kurtz' PVP strip had all the male characters in the strip's evil parallel universe wearing goatees, for example). In the DS9 episodes that were set in the mirror universe, no one had a goatee (except Worf's counterpart), they just had different uniforms and occasionally different hairstyles.
Not that that wouldn't have improved NEMESIS; actually, if all the bad guys had worn Groucho glasses, it would have been better.
Re:Not such a good book.
on
F'd Companies
·
· Score: 1
Oh, I get it--he was writing his review in the same style as a fuckedcompany.com entry! Roll over Jonathan Swift!
Personally, I think that having to put "satire" above an essay or review is like having to put a sign that reads "food" on the apple pie that you baked for the county fair so that no one mistakes it for a cow flop. Is it even worth your time?
...which is that MS isn't doing anything new. It never does. Pager watch? An MP3 player that also plays videos? Wake me up when Gates discovers indoor plumbing.
You make some good points, but like the person that you're responding to, you go over the top in a couple of places.
People have been bad drivers since long before cell phones existed. Don't blame the phone for the driver's irresponsibility. People shave, put on lipstick, argue with their children, get drunk, you name it. Cell phones are not the problem.
Ah, the "guns don't kill people" argument. Before cell phones became widespread, you just didn't have the sheer number of people who felt that they had an excuse not to pay attention to their driving. I'm not talking about accidents, even; I'm just talking about people who slow the flow of traffic down because they're yakking and ignoring the line of cars building up behind them. I have yet to see someone do this because they're grooming or yelling at the kids, and drunks usually have the opposite problem. Unless their vehicle has a flashing red or blue light on top, drivers don't need to be on the horn to anyone. If the call is that important, they can pull over to the side of the road.
My cellphone has excellent reception. It's better than a lot of people's home land lines. If you've had bad experiences, it's probably because you or your friends are cheap, as mentioned above.
That has more to do with where you happen to be at the moment. My cell phone reception was great when I lived on the fourth floor of an apartment building with a direct line of sight to a cell tower, not so good when I moved to a basement apartment. This was with an expensive phone and a provider with excellent coverage.
Relax. No one's going to take your cell phone away because a few people forget to switch their phone off when they go to the opera. But, if you think that certain technologies don't lend themselves to abuse, you're only fooling yourself.
Probably never, because laptops are designed to fit all their stuff into the smallest space possible, which excludes the unused inside surfaces, empty interior volume, and easily-upgradable power supplies that enable tower case mods.
That having been said, this guy did a cute hack on his iBook.
Re:What you need is http://www.palmhalter.de/
on
Palm on a Bicycle
·
· Score: 1
Quote:
The ultimative mounting plate for its Palm III or V (or IIIx, IIIc, IIIe)
Shoppen with the Palm?
Jaja, easily said!
In hand the Palm, at the other hand the purchase car.
Only: With what do the products of the shelf take??
The solution is called: MORE PALMHALTER!
Wedge the Palm with the PALMHALTER to that
And already you have grasp of the purchase car a hand freely!
Gotta love robotranslation.
Re:Very, very worthwhile for cyclists.
on
Palm on a Bicycle
·
· Score: 1
I'd like to see even more telemetry available, like rider's pulse, blood pressure, and wind speed.
Dunno about blood pressure, and I've never seen a bike-mounted windspeed sensor, but heart rate monitors are cheap and easy to use; hooking one of those up to a Palm would indeed be a useful and interesting hack.
Practical cycle-based computing is a new idea. Two things that it helps to remember about Steve Roberts: 1) "Technomading" is all he does, all day; it's all right for some, but many of us would like to be able to pop the PDA on our bike, go on a trip, pop the PDA off and have an easily downloadable trip log/journal/route map, without making a lifestyle out of it. 2) The BEHEMOTH weighs 580 pounds. There was a story about Steve Roberts signing up for Iowa's RAGBRAI, thinking that it would be a nice, easy, relatively flat ride, and having to drop out. There's certainly something to be said for taking your time, but generally I like to finish a century in a day, not a week.
The 1984 law does allow cable operators to collect private information if it can show it needs the information to operate its service.
Comcast Executive Vice President Dave Watson said Tuesday that the company was recording no more information about its customers than is common in the industry and no more than needed to optimize its network.
"How else are we going to keep our customers if we don't have blackmail material?"
When I dropped by this week, my bottle of beer was served by a robotic arm that fetched it off a revolving platform inside the vending machine. And when I had finished with it, I put it on a conveyor belt and pressed a button. The conveyor belt jerked to life and carried the bottle unsteadily out of sight.
I'm going to go all the way to Berlin to drink bottled beer? Don't think so... I can stay in Memphis and drink St. Pauli Girl if that's what I'm into. The only person this would really appeal to is the protagonist from Memento, if you remember what happened to him in that bar.
Inside the centre, one of the objects on display is a mirror in a baroque gilt frame which dissolves into a to do list and urgent video e-mails.
How about one that morphs your reflection to say "You Da Man!" everytime you walk by?
Seriously, though, is this sort of "Home Of The Future" really newsworthy any more? It smells of desperate PR trolling by HP. I mean, really: HP is confident that some of these technologies will be available in the next year or two.
"You could see a time when a screen the size of a laptop computer screen could be embedded into the breakfast bar of your kitchen," said Mr Burwood.
"And on a Saturday afternoon, all it does is monitor the football results for you."
And this can't be done now, because...
I'm reminded of an old Danny Dunn book where he and his pals get stuck in one of these Homes o' the Future because its security system crashes and they get out only because one of the kids overrides the system by, I kid you not, speaking in ultrasonic frequencies.
Read the translation, and came across this interesting phrase:
Neither Alfred nor
Emanuel Nobel's correspondence - nor Ragnar Sohlman's 'A Testament, the
History of the Nobel Foundation and its Founders' (Norstedts publishers,
1950) - give any indication that any of them would have opposed our
criticising the fact that the 'Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in
Memory of Alfred Nobel' is awarded as if it were a Nobel Prize.
For that matter, they could move to Alaska; there are valleys there that, possibly, no human being has set foot in, ever. But that, of course, wouldn't be terribly convenient. It reminds me of Halifax, Nova Scotia; you'd think that there would be plenty of places in Canada where you could ban perfume, artificially-generated EM radiation, clothes, or whatever else you want to get rid of, and it'll cause no more inconvenience than a passing joke on late-night talk shows. Problem is, once someone's convinced that it's their God-given right to have their own personal neuroses catered to without inconveniencing them personally, just try to pry them loose of their delusions.
Woz was the genius behind the Apple ][ - but was he behind the Mac? It's the Mac that really launched Apple, not their old line which weren't any more or less revolutionary than the competition at teh time (ie, the Compaq and IBM PCs, as well as the Pc Jr). Remember folks - Apple computers had command-line interfaces!
A suggestion: get yourself a decent history of Apple, and read it. Not only did the ][ predate the machines that you list by several years, but it was an evolutionary improvement on its own predecessors, which were mostly hobbyist machines that were more like the build-your-own projects listed on Ars Technica, only much, much harder. Not to mention that Apple didn't invent the GUI, of course, but bought it from Xerox--and where did they get the money for that, or for developing the Mac? Why, from Woz' little "command-line interface" machine. Apple ][ revenue kept the company going for years before the Mac turned a profit.
Compared to the painfully detailed social commentary and legendary character depth that the book contains, the movie is the worst pile of crap ever to grace the screen.
Apples and oranges, man. IMO, Blade Runner wasn't praised because it remained true to PKD; if it had, it probably would have ended up as a well-respected cult film on a par (popularity-wise) with just about any David Cronenberg film except for The Fly and, just maybe, Scanners(and that mostly for the head exploding scene). Blade Runner was, and still is, so popular because it remains one of the best visualizations of the future that has ever been put on screen. How many SF films that are set on earth are either post-apocalyptic (filmed in some Nevada ghost town) or utopian/dystopian (filmed at a community college built in the late 50s/early 60s)? (And, yes, before you start, I do like films to have features in them such as plots, which Blade Runner is a little short on, to put it mildly.)
Point is, it was and is a good SF movie. I've learned, from other novel-to-movie adaptations, that the process rarely improves the product (with rare exceptions, such as Stephen King's Christine). If you must go to see the movie, especially if you loved the book, just about the best that you can hope for is that they spell the author's name right.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's an old joke. In the "Mirror, Mirror" episode from the original series, Spock (and only Spock) had a goatee. It's become a sci-fi injoke (Scott Kurtz' PVP strip had all the male characters in the strip's evil parallel universe wearing goatees, for example). In the DS9 episodes that were set in the mirror universe, no one had a goatee (except Worf's counterpart), they just had different uniforms and occasionally different hairstyles.
Not that that wouldn't have improved NEMESIS; actually, if all the bad guys had worn Groucho glasses, it would have been better.
Oh, I get it--he was writing his review in the same style as a fuckedcompany.com entry! Roll over Jonathan Swift!
Personally, I think that having to put "satire" above an essay or review is like having to put a sign that reads "food" on the apple pie that you baked for the county fair so that no one mistakes it for a cow flop. Is it even worth your time?
...which is that MS isn't doing anything new. It never does. Pager watch? An MP3 player that also plays videos? Wake me up when Gates discovers indoor plumbing.
People have been bad drivers since long before cell phones existed. Don't blame the phone for the driver's irresponsibility. People shave, put on lipstick, argue with their children, get drunk, you name it. Cell phones are not the problem.
Ah, the "guns don't kill people" argument. Before cell phones became widespread, you just didn't have the sheer number of people who felt that they had an excuse not to pay attention to their driving. I'm not talking about accidents, even; I'm just talking about people who slow the flow of traffic down because they're yakking and ignoring the line of cars building up behind them. I have yet to see someone do this because they're grooming or yelling at the kids, and drunks usually have the opposite problem. Unless their vehicle has a flashing red or blue light on top, drivers don't need to be on the horn to anyone. If the call is that important, they can pull over to the side of the road.
My cellphone has excellent reception. It's better than a lot of people's home land lines. If you've had bad experiences, it's probably because you or your friends are cheap, as mentioned above.
That has more to do with where you happen to be at the moment. My cell phone reception was great when I lived on the fourth floor of an apartment building with a direct line of sight to a cell tower, not so good when I moved to a basement apartment. This was with an expensive phone and a provider with excellent coverage.
Relax. No one's going to take your cell phone away because a few people forget to switch their phone off when they go to the opera. But, if you think that certain technologies don't lend themselves to abuse, you're only fooling yourself.
I'd heard that a disproportionate number of Ralians come from the exotic-dance community.
Hey, we want these people to clone themselves!
This was first proposed in 1997. If it can work, where is it?
The word is bird!
Bird bird bird, bird's the word...
Don't forget the lot lizards.
Hey, as long as I get to rub decontamination gel all over the female Vulcan after visiting the planet--sign me on.
Probably never, because laptops are designed to fit all their stuff into the smallest space possible, which excludes the unused inside surfaces, empty interior volume, and easily-upgradable power supplies that enable tower case mods.
That having been said, this guy did a cute hack on his iBook.
The ultimative mounting plate for its Palm III or V (or IIIx, IIIc, IIIe)
Shoppen with the Palm?
Jaja, easily said!
In hand the Palm, at the other hand the purchase car.
Only: With what do the products of the shelf take??
The solution is called: MORE PALMHALTER!
Wedge the Palm with the PALMHALTER to that
And already you have grasp of the purchase car a hand freely!
Gotta love robotranslation.
Dunno about blood pressure, and I've never seen a bike-mounted windspeed sensor, but heart rate monitors are cheap and easy to use; hooking one of those up to a Palm would indeed be a useful and interesting hack.
Practical cycle-based computing is a new idea. Two things that it helps to remember about Steve Roberts: 1) "Technomading" is all he does, all day; it's all right for some, but many of us would like to be able to pop the PDA on our bike, go on a trip, pop the PDA off and have an easily downloadable trip log/journal/route map, without making a lifestyle out of it. 2) The BEHEMOTH weighs 580 pounds. There was a story about Steve Roberts signing up for Iowa's RAGBRAI, thinking that it would be a nice, easy, relatively flat ride, and having to drop out. There's certainly something to be said for taking your time, but generally I like to finish a century in a day, not a week.
Comcast Executive Vice President Dave Watson said Tuesday that the company was recording no more information about its customers than is common in the industry and no more than needed to optimize its network.
"How else are we going to keep our customers if we don't have blackmail material?"
It am Bizarro Galaxy. Everything am different in Bizarro Galaxy. For example, me am happy in job and relationship; am handsome, too.
Remember spidergoats? Let's make sure that the next generation can shoot webs from their nipples.
This is how the Borg started; turns out we're Species 1.
When I dropped by this week, my bottle of beer was served by a robotic arm that fetched it off a revolving platform inside the vending machine. And when I had finished with it, I put it on a conveyor belt and pressed a button. The conveyor belt jerked to life and carried the bottle unsteadily out of sight.
I'm going to go all the way to Berlin to drink bottled beer? Don't think so... I can stay in Memphis and drink St. Pauli Girl if that's what I'm into. The only person this would really appeal to is the protagonist from Memento, if you remember what happened to him in that bar.
More's the pity.
Marc Okrand. Besides inventing Klingon, I believe he has also done work for the closed-captioning people.
How about one that morphs your reflection to say "You Da Man!" everytime you walk by?
Seriously, though, is this sort of "Home Of The Future" really newsworthy any more? It smells of desperate PR trolling by HP. I mean, really:
HP is confident that some of these technologies will be available in the next year or two.
"You could see a time when a screen the size of a laptop computer screen could be embedded into the breakfast bar of your kitchen," said Mr Burwood.
"And on a Saturday afternoon, all it does is monitor the football results for you."
And this can't be done now, because...
I'm reminded of an old Danny Dunn book where he and his pals get stuck in one of these Homes o' the Future because its security system crashes and they get out only because one of the kids overrides the system by, I kid you not, speaking in ultrasonic frequencies.
Neither Alfred nor
Emanuel Nobel's correspondence - nor Ragnar Sohlman's 'A Testament, the
History of the Nobel Foundation and its Founders' (Norstedts publishers,
1950) - give any indication that any of them would have opposed our
criticising the fact that the 'Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in
Memory of Alfred Nobel' is awarded as if it were a Nobel Prize.
That's not exactly positive proof, is it?
For that matter, they could move to Alaska; there are valleys there that, possibly, no human being has set foot in, ever. But that, of course, wouldn't be terribly convenient. It reminds me of Halifax, Nova Scotia; you'd think that there would be plenty of places in Canada where you could ban perfume, artificially-generated EM radiation, clothes, or whatever else you want to get rid of, and it'll cause no more inconvenience than a passing joke on late-night talk shows. Problem is, once someone's convinced that it's their God-given right to have their own personal neuroses catered to without inconveniencing them personally, just try to pry them loose of their delusions.
A suggestion: get yourself a decent history of Apple, and read it. Not only did the ][ predate the machines that you list by several years, but it was an evolutionary improvement on its own predecessors, which were mostly hobbyist machines that were more like the build-your-own projects listed on Ars Technica, only much, much harder. Not to mention that Apple didn't invent the GUI, of course, but bought it from Xerox--and where did they get the money for that, or for developing the Mac? Why, from Woz' little "command-line interface" machine. Apple ][ revenue kept the company going for years before the Mac turned a profit.
Apples and oranges, man. IMO, Blade Runner wasn't praised because it remained true to PKD; if it had, it probably would have ended up as a well-respected cult film on a par (popularity-wise) with just about any David Cronenberg film except for The Fly and, just maybe, Scanners(and that mostly for the head exploding scene). Blade Runner was, and still is, so popular because it remains one of the best visualizations of the future that has ever been put on screen. How many SF films that are set on earth are either post-apocalyptic (filmed in some Nevada ghost town) or utopian/dystopian (filmed at a community college built in the late 50s/early 60s)? (And, yes, before you start, I do like films to have features in them such as plots, which Blade Runner is a little short on, to put it mildly.)
Point is, it was and is a good SF movie. I've learned, from other novel-to-movie adaptations, that the process rarely improves the product (with rare exceptions, such as Stephen King's Christine). If you must go to see the movie, especially if you loved the book, just about the best that you can hope for is that they spell the author's name right.