I'm hard pressed to come up with any remakes that live up to the original.
Try Ben Hur. The 1959 remake beats the 1925 version.
Several classic stories (Dracula, Frankenstein, Hunchback of Notre Dame) have been made several times, and generally the later versions were better, up to a point. In some cases it might be arguable whether or not they are "remakes." For instance, there have been several Titanic movies, and clearly the last one is the best, though these are all movies loosely based on one historical event rather than on a specific literary source or on predecessors.
Once I become familiar with how something works, I'm more interested in being able to do what I want without too much pain.
Hear hear!
I used to work with Mentor Graphics CAD tools in the late 80s. Everything up through version 5.0 was good for everyone. Pulldown menus + 3 rows of hotkeys (with application-specific key cards) + CLI if you really wanted to (if you're already in the CLI window it's easier to type "save filename" than reach for the hotkey and type a filename in a popup). Users would start with the pulldowns to see what's there and learn the hotkeys, eventually using the hotkeys for all but the complicated things you used once a day.
Then in version 5.1, Mentor introduced some dorky "stroke" interface where you'd hold down a mouse button and draw some shape, like the shape of a D for Delete. Not only was it an incredible pain in the a** to use but they also removed most of the pulldowns and some of the hotkeys. Our productivity dropped, until a ton of user gripes later (not much later), version 5.2 put the old stuff back (though they still kept the strokes so they wouldn't have 5.1 users bitching about losing them -- nobody in our group ever used them though).
Never dumb down a powerful interface and alienate experienced, productive users.
OTOH, I think UIs could have "newbie" and "expert" modes, assuming they could come up with a more diplomatic word than "newbie" or "beginner." Maybe "Clean" vs "Complex" -- give the expert mode the intimidating name...
Why can't someone write a worm to take advantage of Apache for a change?
It's just like HP refusing to write Linux drivers for their scanners. Those Chinese crackers are in bed with Bill Gates! I say let's boycott their products until they start supporting OUR OS!!!
That would make the CD more susceptible to small scratches. Intentionally selling a damaged product (with a reduced lifetime, to ensure that the consumer must by another CD soon)?
I remember when CDs first came out. They touted the benefit that your CDs would "last a lifetime!" because nothing would wear them down. And the audio salesmen loved to show demos where they would stick little 3mm sticker dots on the CD and still play it, to show off the robustness of the ECC.
Could this be the start of planned obsolescence? Probably this would be a good point to make to consumers.
OTOH, IIRC the original ECC was made pretty strong to overcome flaws in even an unscratched CD, since both the pressing process and the method of reading (at economical levels) was pretty new at the time and prone to error. I suspect that CDs made now are better (in terms of raw error rates) than the ones that came out in '83.
Re:Environmentalist wackos ...
on
Eco-Terrorism
·
· Score: 1
The environmental damage from the burning of the dealership is just the thing they are trying to prevent. Funny that they don't seem to recognize that.
Reminds me of the environmentalists who spray painted baby seals, in the belief that this would ruin the aesthetic value of the fur, and the hunters would leave them alone. Turns out the paint also ruined the insulating value of the fur, and the seals froze to death!
And if they weren't, people would be complaining, "once they're released into the environment, they'll keep on breeding and then there's no way to stop them!"
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
BTW, this might have been on/. before, but it's still funny.
Can't we develop a license that would prohibit free software and free ideas from being used in any application related to warfare?
"You have been charged by the War Crimes Tribunal with genocide, crimes against humanity, unprovoked aggression against peaceful neighbors... and violating the terms of a license for free software!"
"I was just following orders! But I was ordered to recompile my kernel!"
They must be eager to generate work for their buddies in the legal department if they want to sue without winning.
They are looking for a company with the resources to make and keep promises.
Actually, I assume what they really want is a company that makes and keeps promises. Their mistake is in equating the two. Sure, M$ has the resources...
It's like when M$ pleads for the "freedom to innovate." You can picture John Cleese in a tunic saying, "what's the point of fighting for their freedom to innovate if they can't innovate?"
They need a corporate or organizational entity that they can rely on to back them up, and they won't be comfortable unless there's somebody they can sue.
Well that's understandable. Now would one of those PHBs please cite one, JUST ONE, example of someone successfully suing Microsoft over the quality or reliability of their products or support?
Two centuries ago, we Yanks rebelled against the British for making us pay taxes on tea and newsprint. Now we're getting our revenge: every Brit will have to pay tax to Redmond!
Thatcher tried to charge a poll tax, and there were street riots. But this is kind of like a poll tax...
:-)
When you realize you'll never equal Kirk or Picard -- THAT is an epiphany!
Just check out our very own domestic Graves Act. It allowed aboriginal Americans to claim the 9,000 year old bones of the Kennewick Man as their direct ancestor.
The reports I read about Kennewick Man say that his face (according to reconstruction) looks like Patrick Stewart.
New Star Trek movie plot: in the 24th Century, the lawsuits over the Kennewick Man are finally resolved (they would have been settled sooner, but things were slowed down when all the lawyers were killed during the Post-Atomic Horror). The DNA found is fed into the Star Fleet central computers, and they are shocked to find they exactly match Picard's DNA. Just then, they get word that the Borg have upgraded to Windows 2380, which means they no longer have the bug that was exploited at the start of Season Four. They try to mess with Earth's history again (as in VIII) but Windows 2380 switched to 64-bit time values, so they can go back 9,000 years now. So the Enterprise is sent after them, but this time, they really have to abandon ship and beam down to obscure places to live out their lives and not affect history. Picard decides to go to the American Northwest. Then the others somehow make it back, but meanwhile, Picard falls off a horse and dies, so they decide to bury him there because the transporter is low on energy or something.
To think that for all these years I thought it was a logical OR. No wonder none of my programs work.
If you think || is a logical OR, that would explain why your programs don't work. It's a conditional OR. The difference is that the second operand isn't evaluated if the first is true (non-zero), because then the value of the second is superfluous. For logical OR, both operands are evaluated. An important distinction, especially if the second operand has side effects or can produce an error under conditions which are checked by the first operand.
Yes, The Planiverse is a good book! I disagree with your statement that it is "not quite as mathematical as Flatland." It delves more into the physics of a real 2D world, whereas Flatland just makes up stuff when it needs to explain something, like how rain falls. (Since the missing dimension in Flatland is vertical, there is no gravity, so the author just posits a slight southward pull to get around the problem.)
In The Planiverse, the missing dimension is horizontal, i.e., there is up and down. The author actually looks at equations in 2-space, and comes up with interesting results. For instance, inverse-square laws become simple inverse laws, which means escape velocity is infinite, and also that there are no ions. Reworking Schrodinger's equation for 2D makes the periodic table come out differently. The book also discusses the problems of designing computer logic for a 2D world.
The weakest part is the plot and characterization.
Some of it seems to be just to pad the story. For instance, there is a pointless discussion of political movements; they are similar to our own, and have nothing to do with 2D vs. 3D, and hence don't contribute to the story. But the author (Dewdney) is a science writer, not a fiction writer. So think of it as speculative sci-fi, with emphasis on the "sci" rather than the "fi," and then you can enjoy the book.
Originally, HTML was supposed to be about content,
and information was supposed to be organized structurally. Then people lost sight of this in the competition to make the coolest-looking web page, meaning lots of flashy stuff, applets that only run on one browser, and overbearing page layout control that completely messes up your page if your eyesight or monitor are not as perfect as the web designer's.
The stock response to this observation, by those who love flashy stuff, has been, "well, that's how the web evolved; get over it." But now it seems if we want these intelligent agents, people will have to start making their web pages with content in a somewhat standard form again, for AI can only go so far in figuring out random content.
There are no pregnant, well-hung, dimpled chads. There's either a clear mark in one circle, or there's an invalid ballot. The count goes quickly.
I lived in Montréal in 1995 when the Québec separatists held a referendum on declaring independence from Canada, using their wonderful hand-marked, hand-counted ballots. It turned out that in certain districts with large English-Canadian populations, where a high percentage of NO votes would be expected, an unusually large number ballots were declared "spoiled" because the mark wasn't an officially approved shape. The mark had to be either an X, a check mark, a horizontal line or you had to fill the circle entirely. For instance, people who made the left stroke of the check mark too long (so the mark looked more like a V) had their ballots invalidated. In one district, 12% of the ballots were declared "spoiled" (the normal average is about 1%). Of course many YES votes were also invalidated but the point was that far more NO votes were invalidated.
It was an extremely close election. The YES side
lost by fewer votes than the estimated number of NO votes stolen. Some of the election monitors almost got into fistfights during the vote counts. (That seems un-Canadian, but that didn't bother the YES side, since they didn't want to be Canadian!:-)
Let's face it -- if an election is close, there will be borderline ballots which can be argued either way. Those non-Americans who are sneering at Americans over this election are probably happy to have any opportunity to sneer at Americans!
why is this such a big deal? so we find someone on tv acting like they are using linux. do we really care?
I guess it's like how some Jews in the US (and other countries) get excited when a TV show has a Jewish character or mentions Hanukhah. It's just a little bit of "recognition" from the "mainstream" for people who often feel like they are being ignored or even persecuted by the dominant majority.
Actually, there are many similarities between Unix users and other minorities (religious or otherwise), vis-a-vis the majority culture. All the way to the outright hostility we get from some Microsoft users because we won't do like "everyone else" does.
Why should someone get interest simply because they lent you some money they didn't need anyway?
Because, in general, money today is worth more than the same money tomorrow. Let's say I have money to buy a CD. I can buy it now, or I can wait and buy it next year, but then I go for a year without having that CD to play. I'd get more utility out of that money by buying the CD now. In order to convince me to lend you the money and
sacrifice my pleasure for a year, you would need to offer me something in return. Such as giving me more money after a year than I give you now.
This is Ludwig von Mises' "time preference" theory of interest.
Of course, interest is also influenced by risk (how likely are you to screw me), inflation (an increase in the money supply, which leads to general price rises) and increased productivity (which tends to lower prices).
They are identical machines, literally identical machines but the claim is that the Linux 6.2[sic]Apache based machine only supports 20k-100k hits per day while the Windows 2000 IIS based machine (remember, same config) supports 500k-1M hits per day.
It's amazing how often people throw numbers around without even considering what they mean. 20k-100k per day means 0.23-1.16 hits per second. Even a 386 can handle that!
Nevertheless, PHBs will read this and say, "Ooooh, IIS' number is bigger. Bigger is better (I learned that in Business School)!"
Reminds me of the computer column in the Montreal Gazette a few years ago. The columnist's computer-illiterate friend running a small store was afraid she got ripped off by the computer vender, because her friend got a computer at the same price, and it had a "ram" inside, but hers only had a "mouse" inside...
One other interesting thing is, you can use your cell-phones while travelling underground on their MTR (subway), something I wish we could do here.
I consider the fact that cell-phone twits can't annoy everyone else in tunnels to be a feature, not a bug. (I think I read somewhere that the British were putting ultra-thin wire meshes on train windows to Faraday-shield them in response to widespread complaints about cell-phones. I wish Amtrak would do that.)
Slashdot Mirror
Try Ben Hur. The 1959 remake beats the 1925 version.
Several classic stories (Dracula, Frankenstein, Hunchback of Notre Dame) have been made several times, and generally the later versions were better, up to a point. In some cases it might be arguable whether or not they are "remakes." For instance, there have been several Titanic movies, and clearly the last one is the best, though these are all movies loosely based on one historical event rather than on a specific literary source or on predecessors.
Hear hear!
I used to work with Mentor Graphics CAD tools in the late 80s. Everything up through version 5.0 was good for everyone. Pulldown menus + 3 rows of hotkeys (with application-specific key cards) + CLI if you really wanted to (if you're already in the CLI window it's easier to type "save filename" than reach for the hotkey and type a filename in a popup). Users would start with the pulldowns to see what's there and learn the hotkeys, eventually using the hotkeys for all but the complicated things you used once a day.
Then in version 5.1, Mentor introduced some dorky "stroke" interface where you'd hold down a mouse button and draw some shape, like the shape of a D for Delete. Not only was it an incredible pain in the a** to use but they also removed most of the pulldowns and some of the hotkeys. Our productivity dropped, until a ton of user gripes later (not much later), version 5.2 put the old stuff back (though they still kept the strokes so they wouldn't have 5.1 users bitching about losing them -- nobody in our group ever used them though).
Never dumb down a powerful interface and alienate experienced, productive users.
OTOH, I think UIs could have "newbie" and "expert" modes, assuming they could come up with a more diplomatic word than "newbie" or "beginner." Maybe "Clean" vs "Complex" -- give the expert mode the intimidating name...
It's just like HP refusing to write Linux drivers for their scanners. Those Chinese crackers are in bed with Bill Gates! I say let's boycott their products until they start supporting OUR OS!!!
I remember when CDs first came out. They touted the benefit that your CDs would "last a lifetime!" because nothing would wear them down. And the audio salesmen loved to show demos where they would stick little 3mm sticker dots on the CD and still play it, to show off the robustness of the ECC.
Could this be the start of planned obsolescence? Probably this would be a good point to make to consumers.
OTOH, IIRC the original ECC was made pretty strong to overcome flaws in even an unscratched CD, since both the pressing process and the method of reading (at economical levels) was pretty new at the time and prone to error. I suspect that CDs made now are better (in terms of raw error rates) than the ones that came out in '83.
Reminds me of the environmentalists who spray painted baby seals, in the belief that this would ruin the aesthetic value of the fur, and the hunters would leave them alone. Turns out the paint also ruined the insulating value of the fur, and the seals froze to death!
And if they weren't, people would be complaining, "once they're released into the environment, they'll keep on breeding and then there's no way to stop them!"
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
BTW, this might have been on /. before, but it's still funny.
"You have been charged by the War Crimes Tribunal with genocide, crimes against humanity, unprovoked aggression against peaceful neighbors ... and violating the terms of a license for free software!"
"I was just following orders! But I was ordered to recompile my kernel!"
They must be eager to generate work for their buddies in the legal department if they want to sue without winning.
They are looking for a company with the resources to make and keep promises.
Actually, I assume what they really want is a company that makes and keeps promises. Their mistake is in equating the two. Sure, M$ has the resources...
It's like when M$ pleads for the "freedom to innovate." You can picture John Cleese in a tunic saying, "what's the point of fighting for their freedom to innovate if they can't innovate?"
Well that's understandable. Now would one of those PHBs please cite one, JUST ONE, example of someone successfully suing Microsoft over the quality or reliability of their products or support?
Thatcher tried to charge a poll tax, and there were street riots. But this is kind of like a poll tax...
When you realize you'll never equal Kirk or Picard -- THAT is an epiphany!
Nah, he'd say pretty warm up here, eh?
Perhaps they'll use the southernmost part of Québec, known to most Americans as "Florida."
(A reference to the large number of French Canadians who winter in Florida, enough to support their own Québecois-language newspapers etc.)
The reports I read about Kennewick Man say that his face (according to reconstruction) looks like Patrick Stewart.
New Star Trek movie plot: in the 24th Century, the lawsuits over the Kennewick Man are finally resolved (they would have been settled sooner, but things were slowed down when all the lawyers were killed during the Post-Atomic Horror). The DNA found is fed into the Star Fleet central computers, and they are shocked to find they exactly match Picard's DNA. Just then, they get word that the Borg have upgraded to Windows 2380, which means they no longer have the bug that was exploited at the start of Season Four. They try to mess with Earth's history again (as in VIII) but Windows 2380 switched to 64-bit time values, so they can go back 9,000 years now. So the Enterprise is sent after them, but this time, they really have to abandon ship and beam down to obscure places to live out their lives and not affect history. Picard decides to go to the American Northwest. Then the others somehow make it back, but meanwhile, Picard falls off a horse and dies, so they decide to bury him there because the transporter is low on energy or something.
If you think || is a logical OR, that would explain why your programs don't work. It's a conditional OR. The difference is that the second operand isn't evaluated if the first is true (non-zero), because then the value of the second is superfluous. For logical OR, both operands are evaluated. An important distinction, especially if the second operand has side effects or can produce an error under conditions which are checked by the first operand.
In The Planiverse, the missing dimension is horizontal, i.e., there is up and down. The author actually looks at equations in 2-space, and comes up with interesting results. For instance, inverse-square laws become simple inverse laws, which means escape velocity is infinite, and also that there are no ions. Reworking Schrodinger's equation for 2D makes the periodic table come out differently. The book also discusses the problems of designing computer logic for a 2D world.
The weakest part is the plot and characterization. Some of it seems to be just to pad the story. For instance, there is a pointless discussion of political movements; they are similar to our own, and have nothing to do with 2D vs. 3D, and hence don't contribute to the story. But the author (Dewdney) is a science writer, not a fiction writer. So think of it as speculative sci-fi, with emphasis on the "sci" rather than the "fi," and then you can enjoy the book.
The stock response to this observation, by those who love flashy stuff, has been, "well, that's how the web evolved; get over it." But now it seems if we want these intelligent agents, people will have to start making their web pages with content in a somewhat standard form again, for AI can only go so far in figuring out random content.
I lived in Montréal in 1995 when the Québec separatists held a referendum on declaring independence from Canada, using their wonderful hand-marked, hand-counted ballots. It turned out that in certain districts with large English-Canadian populations, where a high percentage of NO votes would be expected, an unusually large number ballots were declared "spoiled" because the mark wasn't an officially approved shape. The mark had to be either an X, a check mark, a horizontal line or you had to fill the circle entirely. For instance, people who made the left stroke of the check mark too long (so the mark looked more like a V) had their ballots invalidated. In one district, 12% of the ballots were declared "spoiled" (the normal average is about 1%). Of course many YES votes were also invalidated but the point was that far more NO votes were invalidated.
It was an extremely close election. The YES side lost by fewer votes than the estimated number of NO votes stolen. Some of the election monitors almost got into fistfights during the vote counts. (That seems un-Canadian, but that didn't bother the YES side, since they didn't want to be Canadian! :-)
Let's face it -- if an election is close, there will be borderline ballots which can be argued either way. Those non-Americans who are sneering at Americans over this election are probably happy to have any opportunity to sneer at Americans!
I guess it's like how some Jews in the US (and other countries) get excited when a TV show has a Jewish character or mentions Hanukhah. It's just a little bit of "recognition" from the "mainstream" for people who often feel like they are being ignored or even persecuted by the dominant majority.
Actually, there are many similarities between Unix users and other minorities (religious or otherwise), vis-a-vis the majority culture. All the way to the outright hostility we get from some Microsoft users because we won't do like "everyone else" does.
Because, in general, money today is worth more than the same money tomorrow. Let's say I have money to buy a CD. I can buy it now, or I can wait and buy it next year, but then I go for a year without having that CD to play. I'd get more utility out of that money by buying the CD now. In order to convince me to lend you the money and sacrifice my pleasure for a year, you would need to offer me something in return. Such as giving me more money after a year than I give you now.
This is Ludwig von Mises' "time preference" theory of interest.
Of course, interest is also influenced by risk (how likely are you to screw me), inflation (an increase in the money supply, which leads to general price rises) and increased productivity (which tends to lower prices).
It's amazing how often people throw numbers around without even considering what they mean. 20k-100k per day means 0.23-1.16 hits per second. Even a 386 can handle that!
Nevertheless, PHBs will read this and say, "Ooooh, IIS' number is bigger. Bigger is better (I learned that in Business School)!"
Reminds me of the computer column in the Montreal Gazette a few years ago. The columnist's computer-illiterate friend running a small store was afraid she got ripped off by the computer vender, because her friend got a computer at the same price, and it had a "ram" inside, but hers only had a "mouse" inside...
I consider the fact that cell-phone twits can't annoy everyone else in tunnels to be a feature, not a bug. (I think I read somewhere that the British were putting ultra-thin wire meshes on train windows to Faraday-shield them in response to widespread complaints about cell-phones. I wish Amtrak would do that.)
"But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me." -- Luke 19:27
When you realize you'll never equal Kirk or Picard -- that is an epiphany!