>Sure, openoffice.org can open and even save in documents in office >format, but they're not perfect. Formatting gets all screwed up and this >causes big problems for things like, say, resumes.
This actually makes a perverse kind of sense. Win32 uses some of the same routines to draw to the screen device as it does to draw to the print device.
I like Donaldson as much as the next guy, but you've got to be kidding. How do you suggest they film the following?
She was still unconscious, perhaps because of his beating, perhaps because of the drugs the sickbay computer gave her. She had no idea what was happening as he undid her shipsuit and peeled it off her limbs.
He couldn't stop trembling. After all, it was a good thing he'd hit her. The darkness and swelling of her bruises made her bearable: if she'd remained perfect, he would have had no choice but to kill her. So he paid no attention to the firm lift of her breasts or the velvet curve of her hips. He concentrated exclusively on the livid hurt of her bruises as he climbed on top of her.
His orgasm was so intense that he thought for a moment he'd broken something.
Before he rolled off her, he had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes flutter open, seeing her begin to realize what he'd done. He filled her with revulsion, even though there was nothing she could do about it. That was good.
I love Donaldson, but he is one sick fuck. If they make first 2 movies true to the books, they'll have to cast Ron Jeremy as Angus and Peter North as Nick.
Besides, Donaldson is all about internal conflict, the movie wouldn't make any sense because you wouldn't know what was happening inside everyone's sick little mind.
Awesome books/stories that should never be put on film:
Asimov - The Gods Themselves
Vinge - A Deepness in the Sky, A Fire Upon the Deep
A big part of these books is imagining things yourself, and using the
hints in the text to clarify your concept of the world until you suddenly understand
what is going on. I still remember the thrill of discovery as I "figured
out" the Tines - awesome!
Awesome books/stories that would make great movies but the plot is so fucked up/hard to follow that it will never happen:
Zelazny - Creatures of Light and Darkness
You could easily CGI Typhon and Anubis and the Norns etc. But what I
really want to see is Wakim and the Steel General in a temporal fugue
fistfight.
Zelazny - Lord of Light
Could this be a good movie? They might have to re-order things,
i.e. get rid of the flashback or at least make it obvious that a flashback is happening.
Stephenson - Snow Crash, The Diamond Age
Too many subplots to make a coherent movie. Hell, when I read the last
10 pages I wondered if there were too many subplots to make
coherent books!
Le Guin - Left Hand of Darkness
Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land
I loved em, but waaay too weird to make a commercially successful movie.
Books that might make a good movie
Huxley - Brave New World
Very film-able. People would come see it, as long as they include the
orgies.
Heinlein - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
A good book, easy to follow, and enough action to keep people interested.
Halderman - The Forever War
Great book, lots of gunfights, fairly straightforward plot.
Niven - Ringworld, Footfall
Ringworld (done right) would be a visual masterpiece, and the plot isn't
too complex.
Footfall has more then enough action to keep people interested. Doing it
right would make a fairly long movie, though.
No joke. I would have taken just about anything at the time, I'd been unemployed for almost 2 years. A lot of that was spent recovering from a nasty car accident, but most people throw out your resume rather then ask about the big, mysterious gap.
I couldn't afford to be fussy, and the money was half decent, certainly better then sitting on my ass at home. They paid by the hour, and there is one good thing about working for Big Oil: the checks don't bounce.
>take the money as compensation for not always being considered a >true team member
Oddly enough, I wasn't being paid as much as the full-timers. Go figure.
I mostly agree with you. But this was the first day of my first contracting job, and it was a helluva way to be introduced to my boss and co-workers. Once everyone got to know each other, things were more friendly.
I did a 1 year contract job for a Very Big Oil Company.
My boss wasn't allowed to buy lunch etc. for contractors. My first day, there was a big team meeting to meet the new guy, and then the whole team went for lunch... Well, most of the team, I stayed in the office and ate a sandwich, because they couldn't pay for my lunch. WTF?!?!?!
- they're heavy, so it's easier to roll them around then it would be to carry them.
- a round object has the most surface area for a given mass.
- they usually cover tubular shafts, because tubular shafts are structurally stronger
The guy asking the question wasn't really going for any particular answers, he just wanted to throw me for a loop and see if I could keep my head.
He introduced the question by saying "We have some unusual users, and you might get asked some unusual questions. For example, suppose I asked you to give me 2 reasons why manhole covers are round?"
Princess Auto is great. Ever see used drill bits for sale, $5/lb ?
I went to the store in my city shortly after it opened, just to check it out. The store was busy but dead quiet - full of guys slowly browsing around, mostly with big grins on their faces.
I rarely leave without buying something or other, even if I just stopped by to browse.
me as a PFY: "Isn't labelling this stuff a waste of time?" BOFH: "Probably, but it isn't a waste of MY time. Get cracking." (and the PFY was enlightened.)
The following conversation happened while I was breaking in a new PFY on his first or second day of work.
me: "So to install Win95, you stick in the Magic Boot Disk and..." PFY (in Bugs Bunny voice, a la What's Opera, Doc): "Magic Boot Disk?" me (a bit surprised): "Magic Boot Disk!" PFY (in a skeptical Bugs Bunny voice): "Right, Magic Boot Disk." me (in as operetic a voice as I could muster) : "Yes, Magic Boot Disk!
And I shall give you a demonstwation!"
It's pwetty hard to beat a first impwession like that.
-=-=-=-=-
Favorite job interview questions:
"Here's a whiteboard and a marker. Draw the last network you
worked on in as much detail as possible. We'll tell you when
to stop."
"I like to ask this one to see how you think under pressure.
Give me 2 reasons why manhole covers are round."
-=-=-=-=-
Every once in a while I get a chance to actually SOLVE a problem.
I've solved interesting technical problems. I've actually managed to fix a few process or a wetware problems.
This is good. It's better then good, it's fucking crack cocaine, it's what keeps me in this fucking field: every once in a while I get to slay a fucking dragon and cross something off the to-do list and forget about it, forever.
>Find a parallel cd-rom drive (yeah, yeah, slow) and boot from floppy >with the parallel cd-rom driver. It's slow, but you don't have to >monkey in the guts of crusty old machines.
Or if you can find an old parallel port network card, you can boot from a floppy and do a painfully slow network install.
I'd challenge anybody to come up with a problem that could be solved
within a few hours in Perl or Python that couldn't be solved within 2
or 3 times that length of time (longer, but not "weeks") by a
competent C or Java programmer.
if the HTML is invalid, parse the HTML to determine who
maintains that page. (Let's assume there's a corporate standard
verbiage at the bottom of each page, which includes maintainer
info.)
Lookup the maintainer name in the corporate LDAP
directory. Generate an interoffice mailing label (complete
with
barcode) so you can mail a seppuku knife to the relevant
webmaster.
It took me 20 minutes of browsing CPAN to come up with this (admittedly stupid) example, I'm sure I could throw in lots more freaky CPAN modules to make life harder for the C folks.
CPAN is what forced me to learn Perl. I'm sure a lot of these libraries exist for C, but it's much harder to find 'em, and who knows if they work on your platform? Let's stipulate that our program will be deployed on a DEC Alpha running WinNT...
Avoid [jargon]. You may have to think harder if you are not to use jargon, but you can still be precise. Technical terms should be used in their proper context; do not use them out of it. In many instances simple words can do the job of exponential (try fast), interface (frontier or border) and so on. If you find yourself tempted to write about affirmative action or corporate governance, you will have to explain what it is; with luck, you will then not have to use the actual expression.
Avoid, above all, the kind of jargon that tries either to dignify nonsense with seriousness (Working in an empowering environment [...]) or to obscure the truth
I notice they sell a hardcopy of the style guide, you could use it to bludgeon problem co-workers to death.
Mark Twain might have said it best:
Eschew Surplusage.
Substitute "damn" every time you're inclined to write "very;" your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.
For those who haven't followed the article's link to the Meta Project, you really should give it a spin.
Here's a sample from the FreeBSD browser, showing a metric arseload of info about the vi command. This page includes pointers to the vi man page, lists of other programs that are really symlinks to vi (and their respective man pages), config files used by vi, and temp files created by vi: all just a click away.
Here's another FreeBSD browser page for/etc/fstab. This points to the man page for fstab, as well as listing commands that read info from fstab (mount, umount, mount_nfs, etc) and their respective man pages.
Unix is complex, it is hard to succinctly show the interelations between all of the many pieces. The FreeBSD browser is a really nice step in the right direction!
>The germans JUST NOW discovered potato guns? Damn, get with the program >people! >Just wait until they figure that if you fill a tin can with cement you >can put a hole through a car, not just a big dent in the side.
A buddy of mine stuck a hunting arrow thru a potato (needed the spud to get an airtight seal) and fired it from his spud gun. The arrow went right thru the sheet of plywood he was aiming at...
>But I will say that The Deed of Paksennarion was a GREAT trilogy.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I don't have anything against the Paksennarion books, I read them back in high school. They were reasonably entertaining fluff, IIRC.
I don't think Paksennarion belongs in the same category as The Hobbit, TMIAHM, or Lord of Light, but maybe I'm just crazy.
Slashdot Mirror
I've been using the "light" HTML version of /. for years.
:)
Looks like I haven't been missing anything
Now that you mention it, Changeling would be a great movie: short and simple, with a ton of action and neat visuals.
:)
I guess I was trying to think of really great books, instead of pretty good books
>I don't remember the protagonist killing himself
:)
I suppose it depends on who the protagonist is
*SPOILER*
The primitive Shakespeare loving guy hangs himself at the very end.
>Sure, openoffice.org can open and even save in documents in office
>format, but they're not perfect. Formatting gets all screwed up and this
>causes big problems for things like, say, resumes.
Ever considered sending your resume as a PDF?
This actually makes a perverse kind of sense. Win32 uses some of the same routines to draw to the screen device as it does to draw to the print device.
Cool, didn't know that. Have you seen either of these? How badly did they suck?
I like Donaldson as much as the next guy, but you've got to be kidding. How do you suggest they film the following?
I love Donaldson, but he is one sick fuck. If they make first 2 movies true to the books, they'll have to cast Ron Jeremy as Angus and Peter North as Nick.
Besides, Donaldson is all about internal conflict, the movie wouldn't make any sense because you wouldn't know what was happening inside everyone's sick little mind.
Awesome books/stories that should never be put on film:
Asimov - The Gods Themselves
Vinge - A Deepness in the Sky, A Fire Upon the Deep
A big part of these books is imagining things yourself, and using the hints in the text to clarify your concept of the world until you suddenly understand what is going on. I still remember the thrill of discovery as I "figured out" the Tines - awesome!
Awesome books/stories that would make great movies but the plot is so fucked up/hard to follow that it will never happen:
Zelazny - Creatures of Light and Darkness
You could easily CGI Typhon and Anubis and the Norns etc. But what I really want to see is Wakim and the Steel General in a temporal fugue fistfight.
Zelazny - Lord of Light
Could this be a good movie? They might have to re-order things, i.e. get rid of the flashback or at least make it obvious that a flashback is happening.
Stephenson - Snow Crash, The Diamond Age
Too many subplots to make a coherent movie. Hell, when I read the last 10 pages I wondered if there were too many subplots to make coherent books!
Le Guin - Left Hand of Darkness
Heinlein - Stranger in a Strange Land
I loved em, but waaay too weird to make a commercially successful movie.
Books that might make a good movie
Huxley - Brave New World
Very film-able. People would come see it, as long as they include the orgies.
Heinlein - The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
A good book, easy to follow, and enough action to keep people interested.
Halderman - The Forever War
Great book, lots of gunfights, fairly straightforward plot.
Niven - Ringworld, Footfall
Ringworld (done right) would be a visual masterpiece, and the plot isn't too complex.
Footfall has more then enough action to keep people interested. Doing it right would make a fairly long movie, though.
No joke. I would have taken just about anything at the time, I'd been unemployed for almost 2 years. A lot of that was spent recovering from a nasty car accident, but most people throw out your resume rather then ask about the big, mysterious gap.
I couldn't afford to be fussy, and the money was half decent, certainly better then sitting on my ass at home. They paid by the hour, and there is one good thing about working for Big Oil: the checks don't bounce.
>take the money as compensation for not always being considered a
>true team member
Oddly enough, I wasn't being paid as much as the full-timers. Go figure.
I mostly agree with you. But this was the first day of my first contracting job, and it was a helluva way to be introduced to my boss and co-workers. Once everyone got to know each other, things were more friendly.
>So Milton, why didn't you go?
Um, my boss told me to stay behind?
I did a 1 year contract job for a Very Big Oil Company.
My boss wasn't allowed to buy lunch etc. for contractors. My first day, there was a big team meeting to meet the new guy, and then the whole team went for lunch... Well, most of the team, I stayed in the office and ate a sandwich, because they couldn't pay for my lunch. WTF?!?!?!
>people put forth theories (aliens, vampire robots, etc)
You almost had it right. In fact, the saucer people and the reverse vampires are behind this.
>Now what's the 2nd reason?
- they're heavy, so it's easier to roll them around then it would be to carry them.
- a round object has the most surface area for a given mass.
- they usually cover tubular shafts, because tubular shafts are structurally stronger
The guy asking the question wasn't really going for any particular answers, he just wanted to throw me for a loop and see if I could keep my head.
He introduced the question by saying "We have some unusual users, and you might get asked some unusual questions. For example, suppose I asked you to give me 2 reasons why manhole covers are round?"
Princess Auto is great. Ever see used drill bits for sale, $5/lb ?
I went to the store in my city shortly after it opened, just to check it out. The store was busy but dead quiet - full of guys slowly browsing around, mostly with big grins on their faces.
I rarely leave without buying something or other, even if I just stopped by to browse.
>Find a parallel cd-rom drive (yeah, yeah, slow) and boot from floppy
>with the parallel cd-rom driver. It's slow, but you don't have to
>monkey in the guts of crusty old machines.
Or if you can find an old parallel port network card, you can boot from a floppy and do a painfully slow network install.
It took me 20 minutes of browsing CPAN to come up with this (admittedly stupid) example, I'm sure I could throw in lots more freaky CPAN modules to make life harder for the C folks.
CPAN is what forced me to learn Perl. I'm sure a lot of these libraries exist for C, but it's much harder to find 'em, and who knows if they work on your platform? Let's stipulate that our program will be deployed on a DEC Alpha running WinNT...
Oddly enough, The Economist's Style Guide is dead-set against this sort of buzzword bullshit.
They've got a great list of unnecessary words.
Here's an excerpt from their section on jargon:
I notice they sell a hardcopy of the style guide, you could use it to bludgeon problem co-workers to death.
Mark Twain might have said it best:
>They plan to educate their customers
Oh yeah, that's brilliant. Can't see any problems with that approach, nossir.
>Fine to have volume 1 and volume 2, but in this age of the digital
/usr/share/doc/
>wonderland, shouldn't there be hyperlinks from volume 1 to volume 2?
Yes, definitely. The same guy who put these books together has organized the FreeBSD documentation in a way you'd probably like.
For example, halfway down this summary page for vi you'll see hyperlinks to the appropriate tutorials and references found in
For those who haven't followed the article's link to the Meta Project, you really should give it a spin.
/etc/fstab. This points to the man page for fstab, as well as listing commands that read info from fstab (mount, umount, mount_nfs, etc) and their respective man pages.
Here's a sample from the FreeBSD browser, showing a metric arseload of info about the vi command. This page includes pointers to the vi man page, lists of other programs that are really symlinks to vi (and their respective man pages), config files used by vi, and temp files created by vi: all just a click away.
Here's another FreeBSD browser page for
Unix is complex, it is hard to succinctly show the interelations between all of the many pieces. The FreeBSD browser is a really nice step in the right direction!
>Easy! Just change your viewing prefs to not show signatures. That way
>you won't have to bitch to the world about it EVER again!
I suppose that's one approach. I just PLONKed the guy.
>The germans JUST NOW discovered potato guns? Damn, get with the program
>people!
>Just wait until they figure that if you fill a tin can with cement you
>can put a hole through a car, not just a big dent in the side.
A buddy of mine stuck a hunting arrow thru a potato (needed the spud to get an airtight seal) and fired it from his spud gun. The arrow went right thru the sheet of plywood he was aiming at...
>But I will say that The Deed of Paksennarion was a GREAT trilogy.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I don't have anything against the Paksennarion books, I read them back in high school. They were reasonably entertaining fluff, IIRC.
I don't think Paksennarion belongs in the same category as The Hobbit, TMIAHM, or Lord of Light, but maybe I'm just crazy.