I see your point and agree. The action elements of Road Warrior pretty much outweigh the science fiction elements in my opinion. However I like your point that the first film was more to the point of how rules change when all things break down. "The Beach" looks at the same theme and paint a by far bleaker picture. It is worth watching but be sure to have emotional support afterwards or a comedy to watch otherwise be prepared to be totally depressed!
I love The Road Warrior and think it is one of the most perfect action films ever made. I think if they did more to explore the "what-if" questions which is what true science fiction is about then it might not have been such a good action film.
There is is big difference between having a Science-Fiction theme and a Science-Fiction motif. Most movies are just themed with science fiction without actually having any of the Cambelian aspects that real, hard science fiction needs to be part of the true genere.
I like your idea about Max being a metaphor for humanity itself. I think for sure you can see him in that way. He struggles with survival and yet still wants to do the right thing when he can get away with it. In fact everyone in the movie is a sort of survivalist. Some favor idealism like the people Max helps to recover the oil. Some favor chaos like the Humungus Gang that terrorizes them. Some favor realism, like Max himself.
Maybe I should take back nixing Road Warrior from the list. I'll have to watch it again and think about it.
Here are some movies in the list I think don't belong and why:
5. Brazil Brazil uses some sci-fi imagery but doesn't really pose any "What If?" type of questions necessary for true sci-fi. It is mainly an exercise in psychology.
8. The Boys From Brazil This movie uses the concept of cloning as a what if, but is mainly a suspense thriller. Where are the killer androids? (just kidding)
9. Jurassic Park Action film, again uses cloning as a plot device. Totally forgettable.
10. Star Wars Certainly not worthy of the top 20. A great bit of entertainment, but it doesn't advance sci-fi at all. Mainly an exercise of Lucas's ego.
11. The Road Warrior Entertaining, to be sure, but is this really sci-fi or an action film?
12. Tron This is sci-fi but the acting is weak, the story is weaker. If you are going to have this one on the list you might as well knock off 2001 and replace it with "The Black Hole". Otherwise an entertaining film.
16. RoboCop Duh. If this is here why not Predator? This is simply an action film with sci-fi as a backdrop.
18. The Day The Earth Stood Still 18. Eighteen? Are they nuts? This belongs in the top 10. One of the only two movies from the entire 1950's to belong on the list at all.
20. Barbarella This makes the list? Jeez, why not put Zardoz here or the pr0n version of "Blackula"? This movie sucks worse than "Flash Gordon" (70's version with Queen music).
Where is Highlander? Where is The Beach? Where is War of the Worlds? Where is "The Lathe of Heaven"???? Where is "The Man Who Fell to Earth"??? Barbarella makes it and these classics don't? Are they out of their collective minds? Bah! I am so glad I cancled my subscription years ago. I would have written a nasty letter to the editor and gotten all worked up had I paid for this insipid opinion!
Computers that understand emotions, perhaps even feel them too. It will be the summer of love all over again. Hippy-freak computers will protest The New War, engage in "free love", 15 pin Mini-D connectors will find themselves enjoing the wierd possibiliites of parallel ports. Oh and lets not forget about the experimentation with drugs. Computers will seek the "White Rabbit" by dropping all of your mother's drugs (Microsoft Software) and trying better, more powerful ones. LSD = Latest Software Distribution. Some will tragically crash on pre 1.0 beta software. Others will literally have their memory blown on other psycadelic software upgrades. The phrase "If you remember the turn of the century you weren't there" will be common place.
"Turning On" will have a whole new meaning.
The MP3's will be great, if they can manage to foster the hippy utopia of a world with no RIAA.
Ah yes... but is Silicon Vally read to be the next Height Ashbury? Will Bill Gates disown his computer for letting it's cables get too long? Will Steve Jobs quit existentialism and realize "you don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows?"
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
That is interesting. I am a big fan of Dunnigan. He is an impossible person to deal with in real life, so I hear, but he has a brilliant mind. His other related books make good reading as well. I especially liked his book on how the digital revolution has changed warfare over the years.
He and Keegan share a similar idea that is echoed in the article mentioned: "this respect, Richardson's data suggest that wars are like hurricanes or earthquakes: We can't know in advance when or where a specific event will strike, but we do know how many to expect in the long run. We can compute the number of victims; we just can't say who they'll be." Keegan in particular writes in "The Face of Battle" that war is very similar to natural disasters and lists the ways. A good read.
Finally, if one is interested in this sort of thing, Dunnigan and Austin Bay wrote "The Quick and Dirty Guide to Warfare" which makes predictions. The first book in the series was quite accurate 10 years later. The last update appears to be the 1996 third edition.
The reason why it is not a troll is because under even classic capitalism "effort" is a commodity. Your argument's problem is it doesn't deal with the real and definable costs in generating software. I would find a counter argument more intuitive and persuasive if it looked at the concept of common good. For example, many towns have "commons" in the United States. Those commons are now usually parks but in early America they were grazeland for cattle -- it was a common good to have this land and for people to share it freely.
Here there is a very useful analogy: not all land is considered common. Some land is private and some is public. The system of land management works best when there are both types. It is a complex system.
Your argument is overly simplistic, or perhaps wishful, in my opinion. You don't even support most of your claims, but simply state them as fact. Considering that, who here is the Troll?
Every argument, theory and rule has a point where it is maximally effective. At the extremes it becomes ineffective or dangerous. Sort of like a slippery slope. Capitalism is good until you generate Monopolies. I am yet to be convinced any monopoly is good. The "Sherman Act" seems to believe the same thing.
Microsoft is a convicted Monopoly. That means that the rule of Supply and Demand don't apply to them. Until this is alleviated or remedied they can't be considered capitalists. I suppose that the reason I've gotten some negative responses to my posting stem from having used them as an example. Perhaps they are a great example because even their power has a tough time enforcing their price points.
What should happen, especially since software is so easy to manufacture once it has been completed is there should be normal rules of supply and demand in Eastern Europe. For example. If they won't pay 1,000 grivnas for XYZ Software then the price should be lowered. There is a business process called "Price Discovery" that is supposed to occur. Businesses try to find the optimal price to sell their wares at. People try to find the price they are comfortable paying. This gets interesting when there are choices among products in a line or across lines. Look at Flat-Panel monitors. You have tons of choices (DVI vs. RGB, 15" vs. 17", etc.) You also have tons of lines to chose from (Samsung vs. Sony vs. NEC, etc.) I've seen prices vary between products and lines tremendously in the past two weeks I've been looking for a new monitor. Having control means that I can buy what I want at a price I am happy with. I may have to alter what my expectations are depending on what I want to spend, but the process is there.
This doesn't exist in Eastern Europe presently, however they are working towards it. A software company here that doesn't give it's software away would be irrational to attempt to sell via legitimate channels in Eastern Europe. They could never recover their costs. Since the pirates have none of the costs associtated with writing the software they simply have the variable production costs to overcome. You can't compete with that. Piracy and Monopoly are at opposite ends of Capitalism and are equally bad.
Capitalism as expressed in the United States, Europe, South America and Australia (perhaps other places too, I haven't seen the whole world yet) has many rules. Intelectual Property is one of them. A stance against monopoly is another. Fair business practices, better business associations, consumer advocacy groups... the list goes on in ways that modern capitalism works to provide fairness between buyer and seller.
The purest and most fair capitalism I have ever seen exists in the bazarrs of Kiev. You are one on one with the seller. You see his wares and the wares of the other sellers and you can negotiate right there. They sell just about anything there too. Unless there is theft or piracy involved the system is universally fair.
If you don't respect the rights of Intellectual Property, then why respect the rights of physical property? You state that because the pirates don't have R&D costs they can pass on additional savings. Well, I can steal TV's and sell them on Ebay too. I just have to cover my capital costs (crowbar & dolly + truck rental) and my variable costs (gas, set up of ebay account, rental of storage bin) and I can pass incredible savings on to my customers. In fact it happens every day that way.
Do you think forcing the GPL onto other's software is fair? Are you advocating that piracy is a common good? I'd like to hear more of your opinion.
And as for the proceeds of piracy going directly to the Red Army......are you some sort of CIA intern on a Propaganda 101 course ?
Nope, I just read the world news. Not just American news. Having traveled all over the world I've come to enjoy varying perspectives. This is not speculation, they flaunt the fact in China.
As for your innuendo that I may be disrespectful, I answer that if telling the truth as I see is disrepectful then consider me a happy bore.
The remark about piracy holding Eastern Europe back is partially right. In Russia, Ukraine and other states you can pick up just about any software for next to nothing. Imagine paying $1.80US for Windows XP Professional? The piracy rings there are so good you get it fully cracked, you get it in nice packaging and if you need help they can sell you a ton of books that have been scanned into PDF format also on CD.
The problem isn't piracy. It is a lack of respect or even awareness of Intellectual Property in my opinion. There is no respect for it at all, it seems, in these countries. Their legislatures are just now starting to examine laws concerning it. I am not sure which industry is bigger: China's piracy rings or Russia's. In China the piracy goes to aid specific Red Army units (in fact the rings are allegedly controled by Army Generals).
It is an interesting problem. While we want to business with these countries, lack of protections makes it nearly impossible. At least under the rules and structure of Capitalism. While those rules can lead to our current situation where we have an agressively bad and dangerous monopoly controlled by Bill Gates, they generally are good and promote sane business practices. My hope is that Eastern Europe reforms. With China, I don't see and end coming to their ways of doing business.
Contact Steven Lutz at Way Secure and he can set you straight. I've worked with Steve at a very a large financial institute when our secure system was getting hacked from the inside. He is extremely professional, has tremendous government experience as well as high levels of security clearence. He is also a great guy to work with.
OpenPhone, eh? I had not heard of it. I will look into it. I was actually hoping for a replacement to NetMeeting because the less Bill Gates affects my life the better. Thanks for the tip.
The Internet has really turned communication on its ear. I have a friend in the Ukraine that I chat with almost daily and every weekend we set up NetMeeting and have a video conference for a couple of hours. It costs neither of us any extra than what we already pay for our internet connection.
In fact the connection we get with NetMeeting is by far more reliable than using phones! Phone calls are (in my experience) about 25% likely to be unusable. They are also quite expensive. Even researching the best "10-10" numbers gets you down to about $0.22US per minute. Calling from Ukraine to the US is extremely expensive.
The Internet has made a lot of things possible that just 5 years ago were out of the hands of most people. The economy of calling that far and that cheap is amazing. When I was a kid I always wanted a video phone. The Web Cam is it.
I think the effect of wireless communication and integrated web communication will stall the growth of physical phone lines and we will start to see them disappear in a few decades. It seems to fit the natural order of how technology progressess. With 3G coming to Sprint PCS phones this summer and all the other carriers later this year and next year I predict that even how we connect to the Internet on a daily basis will change. I see the majority of IP traffic coming from wireless devices rather than desktop computers in 5 years time.
Captive woman, Generic Bad Guys, Lone Warrior who finds his own humanity. Seems like they have a lot in common.
Kurosawa himself said Ford's movie was his inspiration. Many of Kurosawa's other movies were directly related to the plays of Shakespear. In fact I would say only his very best work was not derivative. See Konna yume wo mita. I don't know if Kagamusha is derived from anything other than it's historical context but that is also fantastic.
As for Wayne being young, I am just used to seeing him in movies from the late 60's and 70's where he was an old man. I never was much into his cowboy stuff. So when I watch The Searchers he is young in it relative to the other stuff I am used to seeing him in.
Given that I like Kurosawa's work so much I must say that I don't find anything wrong with derivation in general. It can be done well or not. It can make the strange and abstract much more aproachable. Don't you think?
Hidden Fortress is a rip off of an American Western staring John Wayne called "The Searchers." John Wayne is quite young in it. Rent it or buy it if it is on DVD. It is totally worth it and is one of the best pieces of American Film making from that time period. John Wayne plays a Luke Skywalker type character who decidedly drifts to the dark side!
Akira Kurosawa was the director of Hidden Fortress. John Ford was the director of The Searchers (1956).
The link to Pulp Fiction for Star Wars was researched ages ago right after the movie was released. Actually there are more ideas stolen from WWII films in Star Wars than their are from Pulp Fiction as far as I am concerned. The cockpit of the Mil. Falc. is ripped straight from that of a B-25 Bomber and the Cantina scene is film noir in color!
This is why communties like this are important. I would have had no clue this was happening. Thanks. I was able to make the changes. I also changed all my contact information in my yahoo account to let them know how I felt about them!
The actual question is: What makes and MSCE any cheaper than your typical Unix Expert??? I can't think of any MSCE's that are NOT competitive with Unix guys like me.
Also having been an NT guy for years my major complaint was uptime. The company has to factor in outages -- major outages -- as part of the business plan under Microsoft. Meanwhile your properly configured Unix box is just going to hum along. Before I left I made sure they ported to Solaris.
There are so many things wrong with this that I don't even know where to begin.
Obviously you don't have kids. If you have ever lost a child of your own you would know the absolute fear a parent goes through. I think this is a great idea for people who live in cities or go to packed malls a lot. It can help reduce worry and stifle the panic attack that comes when you turn around for 1 second and your child is gone. I think of it as Lo-jak for kids. I am sure you will see a lot more on this device the day it actually stops a kidnapping at the mall.
Gravity holds all of our stuff down, so let's not be so negative about it. All kidding aside, from a physics point of view, anti-gravity is like de-accelleration - there is no such thing. There is accelleration with a reversed vector -- which has the same effect as so-called "deaccelleration." With gravity there is simply the Graviton. It is just a theoretical particle but it fits in well with Super String Theory and Quantum Gravity. I suppose it implies there is an Anti-Graviton, but the article in question doesn't suggest the manufacture of Anti-Gravitons.
Good, now go to that page and type in Linux. I was surprised at the results I got. They are different from the ones that regular Google gives. The hits at the Microsoft site are also mainly not within the Microsoft.com domain either!
The question is: why are they different and in what way are they different!
Thanks for the clarification. I thought all self-publication was vanity press. I wasn't aware there was something called vanity press that, according to your definition, sounds similar to normal publishing only without the benefits of all the marketing and book signings!
There already is one. I use it on my work, "The Japanese Art of War." I think the real upshot of this story is that more and more people will consider using vanity press. It would be difficult to publish as many books that way, but if you are not going to get paid for it, then what is the problem? If you make more money selling 10,000 books via vanity than selling 1 million books via a publisher why wouldn't you accept the risks of a vanity pressing? At least you get total control of your book before, during and after publishing. Look at ID - those guys did great selling doom on their own. In the end they made more money selling via Activision -- but I think the deal they got there was much sweeter.
The xeno-biologists who have been gathering evidence might finally be heard and get Bigfoot (aka Sasquatch) classified. It's about time. Now, whether or not the Bigfoot-came-from-ufos group will get to amend the classification remains to be seen.
I also hope that scientists come to my apartment and identify the millions of species that must be growing in my roommate's room. It hasn't been disturbed by mop, vaccuum, cleaning rag or other species harmful cleansers in at least 3 years. They are sure to find a good percentage of that unknown percentage of species.
Actually Montreal is a world class city. It is clean, beautiful and has the best resturants and strip clubs I have ever been to.;-)
I highly recommend the city to visit. Also, they party much harder there than say Boston or even Nashville where I currently make my home. Nashville is cheap to live in and has a small but growing high-tech sector. Sprint made the big jump to Kansas City and a small leap to Nashville from Chicago. It's the right thing to do, in my opinion. Spread the wealth I say.
Slashdot Mirror
I see your point and agree. The action elements of Road Warrior pretty much outweigh the science fiction elements in my opinion. However I like your point that the first film was more to the point of how rules change when all things break down. "The Beach" looks at the same theme and paint a by far bleaker picture. It is worth watching but be sure to have emotional support afterwards or a comedy to watch otherwise be prepared to be totally depressed!
I love The Road Warrior and think it is one of the most perfect action films ever made. I think if they did more to explore the "what-if" questions which is what true science fiction is about then it might not have been such a good action film.
There is is big difference between having a Science-Fiction theme and a Science-Fiction motif. Most movies are just themed with science fiction without actually having any of the Cambelian aspects that real, hard science fiction needs to be part of the true genere.
I like your idea about Max being a metaphor for humanity itself. I think for sure you can see him in that way. He struggles with survival and yet still wants to do the right thing when he can get away with it. In fact everyone in the movie is a sort of survivalist. Some favor idealism like the people Max helps to recover the oil. Some favor chaos like the Humungus Gang that terrorizes them. Some favor realism, like Max himself.
Maybe I should take back nixing Road Warrior from the list. I'll have to watch it again and think about it.
--Peter
Here are some movies in the list I think don't belong and why:
5. Brazil
Brazil uses some sci-fi imagery but doesn't really pose any "What If?" type of questions necessary for true sci-fi. It is mainly an exercise in psychology.
8. The Boys From Brazil
This movie uses the concept of cloning as a what if, but is mainly a suspense thriller. Where are the killer androids? (just kidding)
9. Jurassic Park
Action film, again uses cloning as a plot device. Totally forgettable.
10. Star Wars
Certainly not worthy of the top 20. A great bit of entertainment, but it doesn't advance sci-fi at all. Mainly an exercise of Lucas's ego.
11. The Road Warrior
Entertaining, to be sure, but is this really sci-fi or an action film?
12. Tron
This is sci-fi but the acting is weak, the story is weaker. If you are going to have this one on the list you might as well knock off 2001 and replace it with "The Black Hole". Otherwise an entertaining film.
16. RoboCop
Duh. If this is here why not Predator? This is simply an action film with sci-fi as a backdrop.
18. The Day The Earth Stood Still
18. Eighteen? Are they nuts? This belongs in the top 10. One of the only two movies from the entire 1950's to belong on the list at all.
20. Barbarella
This makes the list? Jeez, why not put Zardoz here or the pr0n version of "Blackula"? This movie sucks worse than "Flash Gordon" (70's version with Queen music).
Where is Highlander? Where is The Beach? Where is War of the Worlds? Where is "The Lathe of Heaven"???? Where is "The Man Who Fell to Earth"??? Barbarella makes it and these classics don't? Are they out of their collective minds? Bah! I am so glad I cancled my subscription years ago. I would have written a nasty letter to the editor and gotten all worked up had I paid for this insipid opinion!
Anyway, rant over. Back to work...
Hey man, it was the Electric Kool Aid! How was I supposed to know it was a vat of Acid laced fruit drink? :-D
Man, I feel like Ozzy Osborne looks.
Computers that understand emotions, perhaps even feel them too. It will be the summer of love all over again. Hippy-freak computers will protest The New War, engage in "free love", 15 pin Mini-D connectors will find themselves enjoing the wierd possibiliites of parallel ports. Oh and lets not forget about the experimentation with drugs. Computers will seek the "White Rabbit" by dropping all of your mother's drugs (Microsoft Software) and trying better, more powerful ones. LSD = Latest Software Distribution. Some will tragically crash on pre 1.0 beta software. Others will literally have their memory blown on other psycadelic software upgrades. The phrase "If you remember the turn of the century you weren't there" will be common place.
"Turning On" will have a whole new meaning.
The MP3's will be great, if they can manage to foster the hippy utopia of a world with no RIAA.
Ah yes... but is Silicon Vally read to be the next Height Ashbury? Will Bill Gates disown his computer for letting it's cables get too long? Will Steve Jobs quit existentialism and realize "you don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows?"
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
That is interesting. I am a big fan of Dunnigan. He is an impossible person to deal with in real life, so I hear, but he has a brilliant mind. His other related books make good reading as well. I especially liked his book on how the digital revolution has changed warfare over the years.
He and Keegan share a similar idea that is echoed in the article mentioned: "this respect, Richardson's data suggest that wars are like hurricanes or earthquakes: We can't know in advance when or where a specific event will strike, but we do know how many to expect in the long run. We can compute the number of victims; we just can't say who they'll be." Keegan in particular writes in "The Face of Battle" that war is very similar to natural disasters and lists the ways. A good read.
Finally, if one is interested in this sort of thing, Dunnigan and Austin Bay wrote "The Quick and Dirty Guide to Warfare" which makes predictions. The first book in the series was quite accurate 10 years later. The last update appears to be the 1996 third edition.
The reason why it is not a troll is because under even classic capitalism "effort" is a commodity. Your argument's problem is it doesn't deal with the real and definable costs in generating software. I would find a counter argument more intuitive and persuasive if it looked at the concept of common good. For example, many towns have "commons" in the United States. Those commons are now usually parks but in early America they were grazeland for cattle -- it was a common good to have this land and for people to share it freely.
Here there is a very useful analogy: not all land is considered common. Some land is private and some is public. The system of land management works best when there are both types. It is a complex system.
Your argument is overly simplistic, or perhaps wishful, in my opinion. You don't even support most of your claims, but simply state them as fact. Considering that, who here is the Troll?
Microsoft is a convicted Monopoly. That means that the rule of Supply and Demand don't apply to them. Until this is alleviated or remedied they can't be considered capitalists. I suppose that the reason I've gotten some negative responses to my posting stem from having used them as an example. Perhaps they are a great example because even their power has a tough time enforcing their price points.
What should happen, especially since software is so easy to manufacture once it has been completed is there should be normal rules of supply and demand in Eastern Europe. For example. If they won't pay 1,000 grivnas for XYZ Software then the price should be lowered. There is a business process called "Price Discovery" that is supposed to occur. Businesses try to find the optimal price to sell their wares at. People try to find the price they are comfortable paying. This gets interesting when there are choices among products in a line or across lines. Look at Flat-Panel monitors. You have tons of choices (DVI vs. RGB, 15" vs. 17", etc.) You also have tons of lines to chose from (Samsung vs. Sony vs. NEC, etc.) I've seen prices vary between products and lines tremendously in the past two weeks I've been looking for a new monitor. Having control means that I can buy what I want at a price I am happy with. I may have to alter what my expectations are depending on what I want to spend, but the process is there.
This doesn't exist in Eastern Europe presently, however they are working towards it. A software company here that doesn't give it's software away would be irrational to attempt to sell via legitimate channels in Eastern Europe. They could never recover their costs. Since the pirates have none of the costs associtated with writing the software they simply have the variable production costs to overcome. You can't compete with that. Piracy and Monopoly are at opposite ends of Capitalism and are equally bad.
Capitalism as expressed in the United States, Europe, South America and Australia (perhaps other places too, I haven't seen the whole world yet) has many rules. Intelectual Property is one of them. A stance against monopoly is another. Fair business practices, better business associations, consumer advocacy groups... the list goes on in ways that modern capitalism works to provide fairness between buyer and seller.
The purest and most fair capitalism I have ever seen exists in the bazarrs of Kiev. You are one on one with the seller. You see his wares and the wares of the other sellers and you can negotiate right there. They sell just about anything there too. Unless there is theft or piracy involved the system is universally fair.
If you don't respect the rights of Intellectual Property, then why respect the rights of physical property? You state that because the pirates don't have R&D costs they can pass on additional savings. Well, I can steal TV's and sell them on Ebay too. I just have to cover my capital costs (crowbar & dolly + truck rental) and my variable costs (gas, set up of ebay account, rental of storage bin) and I can pass incredible savings on to my customers. In fact it happens every day that way.
Do you think forcing the GPL onto other's software is fair? Are you advocating that piracy is a common good? I'd like to hear more of your opinion.
Nope, I just read the world news. Not just American news. Having traveled all over the world I've come to enjoy varying perspectives. This is not speculation, they flaunt the fact in China.
As for your innuendo that I may be disrespectful, I answer that if telling the truth as I see is disrepectful then consider me a happy bore.
The remark about piracy holding Eastern Europe back is partially right. In Russia, Ukraine and other states you can pick up just about any software for next to nothing. Imagine paying $1.80US for Windows XP Professional? The piracy rings there are so good you get it fully cracked, you get it in nice packaging and if you need help they can sell you a ton of books that have been scanned into PDF format also on CD.
The problem isn't piracy. It is a lack of respect or even awareness of Intellectual Property in my opinion. There is no respect for it at all, it seems, in these countries. Their legislatures are just now starting to examine laws concerning it. I am not sure which industry is bigger: China's piracy rings or Russia's. In China the piracy goes to aid specific Red Army units (in fact the rings are allegedly controled by Army Generals).
It is an interesting problem. While we want to business with these countries, lack of protections makes it nearly impossible. At least under the rules and structure of Capitalism. While those rules can lead to our current situation where we have an agressively bad and dangerous monopoly controlled by Bill Gates, they generally are good and promote sane business practices. My hope is that Eastern Europe reforms. With China, I don't see and end coming to their ways of doing business.
--Peter
OpenPhone, eh? I had not heard of it. I will look into it. I was actually hoping for a replacement to NetMeeting because the less Bill Gates affects my life the better. Thanks for the tip.
The Internet has really turned communication on its ear. I have a friend in the Ukraine that I chat with almost daily and every weekend we set up NetMeeting and have a video conference for a couple of hours. It costs neither of us any extra than what we already pay for our internet connection.
In fact the connection we get with NetMeeting is by far more reliable than using phones! Phone calls are (in my experience) about 25% likely to be unusable. They are also quite expensive. Even researching the best "10-10" numbers gets you down to about $0.22US per minute. Calling from Ukraine to the US is extremely expensive.
The Internet has made a lot of things possible that just 5 years ago were out of the hands of most people. The economy of calling that far and that cheap is amazing. When I was a kid I always wanted a video phone. The Web Cam is it.
I think the effect of wireless communication and integrated web communication will stall the growth of physical phone lines and we will start to see them disappear in a few decades. It seems to fit the natural order of how technology progressess. With 3G coming to Sprint PCS phones this summer and all the other carriers later this year and next year I predict that even how we connect to the Internet on a daily basis will change. I see the majority of IP traffic coming from wireless devices rather than desktop computers in 5 years time.
Let's see:
Captive woman, Generic Bad Guys, Lone Warrior who finds his own humanity. Seems like they have a lot in common.
Kurosawa himself said Ford's movie was his inspiration. Many of Kurosawa's other movies were directly related to the plays of Shakespear. In fact I would say only his very best work was not derivative. See Konna yume wo mita. I don't know if Kagamusha is derived from anything other than it's historical context but that is also fantastic.
As for Wayne being young, I am just used to seeing him in movies from the late 60's and 70's where he was an old man. I never was much into his cowboy stuff. So when I watch The Searchers he is young in it relative to the other stuff I am used to seeing him in.
Given that I like Kurosawa's work so much I must say that I don't find anything wrong with derivation in general. It can be done well or not. It can make the strange and abstract much more aproachable. Don't you think?
Hidden Fortress is a rip off of an American Western staring John Wayne called "The Searchers." John Wayne is quite young in it. Rent it or buy it if it is on DVD. It is totally worth it and is one of the best pieces of American Film making from that time period. John Wayne plays a Luke Skywalker type character who decidedly drifts to the dark side!
Akira Kurosawa was the director of Hidden Fortress. John Ford was the director of The Searchers (1956).
The link to Pulp Fiction for Star Wars was researched ages ago right after the movie was released. Actually there are more ideas stolen from WWII films in Star Wars than their are from Pulp Fiction as far as I am concerned. The cockpit of the Mil. Falc. is ripped straight from that of a B-25 Bomber and the Cantina scene is film noir in color!
Enjoy!
They asked for my preferences and I gave them.
They didn't like my preferences and changed them without notification.
What part of this don't you understand?
This is why communties like this are important. I would have had no clue this was happening. Thanks. I was able to make the changes. I also changed all my contact information in my yahoo account to let them know how I felt about them!
Bastards.
The actual question is: What makes and MSCE any cheaper than your typical Unix Expert??? I can't think of any MSCE's that are NOT competitive with Unix guys like me.
Also having been an NT guy for years my major complaint was uptime. The company has to factor in outages -- major outages -- as part of the business plan under Microsoft. Meanwhile your properly configured Unix box is just going to hum along. Before I left I made sure they ported to Solaris.
--P
Obviously you don't have kids. If you have ever lost a child of your own you would know the absolute fear a parent goes through. I think this is a great idea for people who live in cities or go to packed malls a lot. It can help reduce worry and stifle the panic attack that comes when you turn around for 1 second and your child is gone. I think of it as Lo-jak for kids. I am sure you will see a lot more on this device the day it actually stops a kidnapping at the mall.
Gravity holds all of our stuff down, so let's not be so negative about it. All kidding aside, from a physics point of view, anti-gravity is like de-accelleration - there is no such thing. There is accelleration with a reversed vector -- which has the same effect as so-called "deaccelleration." With gravity there is simply the Graviton. It is just a theoretical particle but it fits in well with Super String Theory and Quantum Gravity. I suppose it implies there is an Anti-Graviton, but the article in question doesn't suggest the manufacture of Anti-Gravitons.
--Peter
T( H)GSB Apr 21-27
Good, now go to that page and type in Linux. I was surprised at the results I got. They are different from the ones that regular Google gives. The hits at the Microsoft site are also mainly not within the Microsoft.com domain either!
The question is: why are they different and in what way are they different!
Thanks for the clarification. I thought all self-publication was vanity press. I wasn't aware there was something called vanity press that, according to your definition, sounds similar to normal publishing only without the benefits of all the marketing and book signings!
Thanks,
--Peter
There already is one. I use it on my work, "The Japanese Art of War." I think the real upshot of this story is that more and more people will consider using vanity press. It would be difficult to publish as many books that way, but if you are not going to get paid for it, then what is the problem? If you make more money selling 10,000 books via vanity than selling 1 million books via a publisher why wouldn't you accept the risks of a vanity pressing? At least you get total control of your book before, during and after publishing. Look at ID - those guys did great selling doom on their own. In the end they made more money selling via Activision -- but I think the deal they got there was much sweeter.
The xeno-biologists who have been gathering evidence might finally be heard and get Bigfoot (aka Sasquatch) classified. It's about time. Now, whether or not the Bigfoot-came-from-ufos group will get to amend the classification remains to be seen.
I also hope that scientists come to my apartment and identify the millions of species that must be growing in my roommate's room. It hasn't been disturbed by mop, vaccuum, cleaning rag or other species harmful cleansers in at least 3 years. They are sure to find a good percentage of that unknown percentage of species.
IANAL but I think that forging headers is a deceptive practice and he should in the least have a class action civil lawsuit used against him.
Actually Montreal is a world class city. It is clean, beautiful and has the best resturants and strip clubs I have ever been to. ;-)
I highly recommend the city to visit. Also, they party much harder there than say Boston or even Nashville where I currently make my home. Nashville is cheap to live in and has a small but growing high-tech sector. Sprint made the big jump to Kansas City and a small leap to Nashville from Chicago. It's the right thing to do, in my opinion. Spread the wealth I say.