AppleWorks put the basics (word processor, database, spreadsheet) into a sweet little integrated program. A ton of extensions and other modules came from third parties. (Hello, Beagle Bros!) so that you could do graphics MacPaint style, play with fonts, do page layout, etc. etc. It was a Apple's best-selling program, despite almost no marketing and development, well past the introduction of the Mac. All this, and ease of use. (Press "Esc" to get to the full-screen menus. Make a selection or press "Esc" to return to your work).
All integrated programs of the time, including Microsoft Works, ended up with "Works" in the name because of this program's success.
why have an X-Prize for thorium reactors when you can just (apparently) build reactors to the CANDU pattern and put thorium in them?
rather than just free education at the university, do what the Swedes do: if you get good grades in high school, the first year at university is paid for. Get good grades in that, and the second year is paid for, and so on.
the "everybody in the army" and "everybody has a gun" parts might make sense in an American cultural context, but I don't get it. As Weber said (and I paraphrase) the whole point of a state is that it has a monopoly on the use of force. No tool that is designed to do significant bodily harm is "just a tool."
That, along with The Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye, are on my list of books that I absolutely hated. I didn't find any of them to be the least bit fulfilling.
Might have something to do with having at least a bit of expectation for each. But I found them all to be in the category of "great because everyone says they're great."
I can't say that I like "Zen and the Art" because it's famous. I don't know anyone else who's read it, actually. But...let's start with this: you can't say that the book is a novel, or an autobiography, or a travel book, or a book of philosophy, because it's all of them and none. It has the story arcs of
1. a man with amnesia making contact with his past, 2. a man alienated from his emotions who learns to love again 3. a man trying to make contact with a son who may or may not be losing his sanity 4. a man trying to understand two friends who are travelling with him 5. a man trying to understand discoveries about philosophical problems that had obsessed him before he lost his memories.
Let's put it this way, it is interesting in many of the same ways as "Lord of Light," and is at least as complex.
When I first read "Voyage from Yesteryear," I did enjoy it, but I'm convinced that it is just a high-tech version of Eric Frank Russell's story "And Then There Were None." The relationship is closer than that between the movie "Avatar" and Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe," and that is a pretty darn close similarity in itself.
H.G. Wells' "Shape of Things to Come" Ursula Le Guin's "The Dispossessed" are two others in the Utopian genre that had a big effect on me.
Including other genres, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and the Heinlein juveniles shaped me.
Correct. There's a difference. If Romney wins, there will almost certainly be a war with Iran. If Obama wins, there may not be. That is literally a life or death difference to many, many people who would live or die according to that choice.
For a long time, people could bash Linux, with reason, as an operating system that couldn't even play a DVD out of the box. Pathetic. So what choices did the user have? Either download and install something that would play it illegally, as most did, or pay separately for licensed codecs. Now that Windows users face exactly the same choice, they will feel a certain deflation, a little at a loss, when they argue for the natural superiority of their operating system. It's an uncomfortable feeling, but ultimately healthy.
I just got the $200 model of Playbook for myself. I thought it had better hardware than the $200 Android tablets (camera, hdmi connection), less cost than an iPad and is easier to carry in a pocket for reading and so on. The software selection got a lot better through the Android compatability.
Easy. In the French parliament, the party of the ruling class was on the speaker's right, the party representing the poor on his left. The political positions you would expect from these two constituencies on taxes, foreign wars, universal education, universal health care, the established church, etc are right wing and left wing to this day.
In short, right wingers believe that people exist to serve their country; left wingers believe the country exists to serve its people.
I think Hitler's documented policies on forced sterilization, foreign wars, political pluralism, etc make clear that he belongs on the right.
A follow up with a few favourites that I'd forgotten for a moment.
-Celestial Matters by Richard Garfinkle (alternate history that involves an alternate astronomy and physics, too. Sui generis). -Wings of Flame by Nancy Springer -Prisoner of Conscience by Susan R. Matthews (not an easy read for the torture scenes, but a very interesting main character and situation).
Honestly, I don't know how "forgotten" these are, but I liked them.
She, Hi. Rider Haggard Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirlees The Wallet of Kai Lung, Ernest Brahma The Lost Continent, C. Cutliffe Hyne The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, Patricia McKillip Micromegas, Voltaire The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Stephen Mitchell (very readable, enjoyable)
The Ballantine Adult Fantasy series should introduce you to a lot of good but often obscure work on the fantasy side.
"nobody is going to create a (quality) textbook for free."
http://www.lightandmatter.com/books.html http://lightandmatter.com/french/ http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/ http://oerconsortium.org/discipline-specific/ http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/ (an extended, on-line version of the University of Toronto's long-time textbook "Representative Poetry")
Keep in mind that many of the textbooks assigned for English classes are classic books, now public domain.
Look at it this way: a professor is going to put together the equivalent of a textbook in handouts and lecture notes anyway, over the years. They don't necessarily think it will make them money in a crowded market. Many, in those circumstances, wouldn't mind sharing, and would keep it up to date for their own use. If they bring in a few like-minded souls, they could keep it up to date just like an open-source programming project.
Let's hear what Francis, Lord Verulam had to say about trusting only the guy with grandkids. "He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men; which both in affection and means, have married and endowed the public." Anyone agree with him? Here's something: "[8] I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. [9] But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn." (1 Corinthians 7). On the other hand, the idea that we raise our kids as a duty of sorts to society sounds (Godwin forgive me) awfully fascist.
I would have agreed with you. Hey, just look at the seventy years of soviet dictatorship. And Arabs have never had a democratic government, ever. Brutal dictatorship, much as I hated to say it, just seemed to work. Then Prague Spring, Solidarity, the Berlin Wall's destruction, the end of Ceaucescu, the Tunisian Revolution, the Egyptian Revolution, and the panic among the other Arab powers stunned me. Contrary cases, disproving your point. Eventually, popular hatred of a government proved to be bad for the government.
I don't have a reason why dictatorships succeed until, suddenly, they don't. The best clue I found was in a Michael Moorcock novel, _The War in the Air_. A character tells Karl Marx that he's wrong, that oppression is not enough to lead to revolution. It requires a combination of oppression and hope.
I'm in shock that so may people here agree that Tolkien's prose is a problem. Far from that being the case, Tolkien is so sensitive to prose rhythm that I use it from time to time to teach how to appreciate rhythm in prose or poetry. Take, for example, the ride of the Rohirrim, at the end of chapter 5 of the Return of the King. It starts off at a walk ("Then suddenly Merry felt it at last, beyond doubt: a change. Wind was in his face! Light was glimmering.") picks up a bit to a trot ("But at that same moment there was a flash, as if lightning had sprung from the earth beneath the City. For a searing second it stood dazzling far off in black and white, its topmost tower like a glittering needle: and then as the darkness closed again there came rolling over the fields a great _boom_.") a canter ("With that he seized a great horn from Guthláf his banner-bearer, and he blew such a blast upon it that it burst asunder. And straightway all the horns in the host were lifted up in music, and the blowing of the horns of Rohan in that hour was like a storm upon the plain and a thunder in the mountains."), and then a full-out gallop ("Suddenly the king cried to Snowmane and the horse sprang away. Behind him his banner blew in the wind, white horse upon a field of green, but he outpaced it. After him thundered the knights of his house, but he was ever before them. Éomer rode there, the white horsetail on his helm floating in his speed, and the front of the first _éored_ roared like a breaker foaming to the shore, but Théoden could not be overtaken.") Then, once the cavalry has bashed through the enemy lines and the fighting's intensity lags, we slow down to a walk again ( And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City.") I could also point out the careful word choice for alliteration ("and he blew such a blast upon it that it burst asunder") and assonance ("the host of Rohan"). Reading this page aloud is a joy. If you appreciate the King James Bible, or Old English poetry, you can appreciate this.
But he doesn't always write in this style. There are homely conversations between country folk, and orders in the field, and descriptions of landscapes, and "dropped in" details that suggest thousands of years of history that are simply not explained, but make Middle Earth seem real.
By the way, I would take Ursula Le Guin's opinion on prose quality pretty seriously. She is a fan of Tolkien's writing, too, calling it "a great wind blowing" that could have overwhelmed her own voice if she had read it earlier than she did. (http://greenbooks.theonering.net/tributes/files/ursula_leguin.html)
So, again, I don't get where this opinion that Tolkien writes badly. The man put more care into a sentence than others do in a chapter.
Banning the possession of firearms by civilians will ensure that only tyrants and criminals will have them.
So there are only three categories of people: civilians, tyrants, and criminals? I thought there were others, such as members of the armed forces, security forces for legitimate governments, and police officers, too.
I believe, China won't try to start a war. 1. they are not fundamentalists 2. they already built their economy to work with the western economies.
They cannot afford a war and they know it. Only "small" fundamentalist states not integrated into the world would try to start something. North Korea, Iran and possibly Pakistan if taken over by the Taliban.
You are correct, they are not fundamentalists. Your unstated assumption is correct that it would be irrational to start a major war, although China has had small ones with, for example, India and Viet Nam, and a much larger one some time back in Korea. However, what does rationality have to do with such decisions when passions are at play? I believe that war between China and the U.S. is a possibility that could be triggered by the ambitions of both to have naval dominance leading to a series of incidents, or by the claim to Taiwan heating up, or by the claims to almost all of the China Sea leading to more friction with Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc. A BBC report a little while back speculated that the strong statements recently for these claims was to let the government seem to be leading the passions of the public, and therefore maintain credibility with the public. It sounds plausible.
Charging for news is a great way to drive readers to the BBC. That fine source of news makes its money through a mandatory fee and is, I believe, required by law to make its content available, at least to those who pay the fees, without further cost. Entering this kind of cartel would involve a big political debate.
It sounds to me like you suffer from a degree of political chauvinism, though I can't tell if its also cultural chauvinism.
You're right. I jumped on his comment with both boots on. Comments about Canada being less than a nation or less than a democracy because of our form of government do bother me, but I shouldn't have been so touchy here.
Canada won't have the possibility of being a democracy till the Queen is excised from all Canadian institutions. It's no longer acceptable to have political structures dominated by fantasies of Monarchy from God, conquest or tyranny.
We've had representative government from the start. We got responsible government through negotiation. We achieved independence and ended slavery without a war for either. We just happen to split the function of "head of state" away from the function of "head of the executive branch," which allows us to think as witheringly as we please about the latter without having to show him any respect in his role as the former. The United States never figured out the advantages of that.
In short, we've got democracy. (Look up what happened to the Conservative Party after Brian Mulroney if you don't believe me). Take your cultural chauvinism home.
To tell the truth, I never minded having it called "OpenOffice.org" because no-one ever bothered to say ".org." On the other hand, you've got a good point that the names are stupid...but the names of the components. You've got Writer, Calc, Impress, Base, and Draw. These are, respectively, noun, contracted verb or noun, verb, contracted noun, and verb. Could we even be less consistent? We'd have to create a new component that was named with a preposition, participle, or conjunction...for example a mail component called Into, Mailing, or And.
I hope that this new start lets even something so basic get fixed.
Slashdot Mirror
AppleWorks put the basics (word processor, database, spreadsheet) into a sweet little integrated program. A ton of extensions and other modules came from third parties. (Hello, Beagle Bros!) so that you could do graphics MacPaint style, play with fonts, do page layout, etc. etc. It was a Apple's best-selling program, despite almost no marketing and development, well past the introduction of the Mac. All this, and ease of use. (Press "Esc" to get to the full-screen menus. Make a selection or press "Esc" to return to your work).
All integrated programs of the time, including Microsoft Works, ended up with "Works" in the name because of this program's success.
-Gareth
Some points I do agree with here, but
why have an X-Prize for thorium reactors when you can just (apparently) build reactors to the CANDU pattern and put thorium in them?
rather than just free education at the university, do what the Swedes do: if you get good grades in high school, the first year at university is paid for. Get good grades in that, and the second year is paid for, and so on.
the "everybody in the army" and "everybody has a gun" parts might make sense in an American cultural context, but I don't get it. As Weber said (and I paraphrase) the whole point of a state is that it has a monopoly on the use of force. No tool that is designed to do significant bodily harm is "just a tool."
-Gareth
The only reason I won't upgrade for the forseeable future is the advertising spam in the Dashboard.
Phillip.
One switch in the privacy settings and the "advertisements" are gone.
Gallium (not the element) is making a huge improvement in the display on my oldish main computer. I'm really liking QQ.
-Gareth
That, along with The Great Gatsby and Catcher in the Rye, are on my list of books that I absolutely hated. I didn't find any of them to be the least bit fulfilling.
Might have something to do with having at least a bit of expectation for each. But I found them all to be in the category of "great because everyone says they're great."
I can't say that I like "Zen and the Art" because it's famous. I don't know anyone else who's read it, actually. But...let's start with this: you can't say that the book is a novel, or an autobiography, or a travel book, or a book of philosophy, because it's all of them and none. It has the story arcs of
1. a man with amnesia making contact with his past,
2. a man alienated from his emotions who learns to love again
3. a man trying to make contact with a son who may or may not be losing his sanity
4. a man trying to understand two friends who are travelling with him
5. a man trying to understand discoveries about philosophical problems that had obsessed him before he lost his memories.
Let's put it this way, it is interesting in many of the same ways as "Lord of Light," and is at least as complex.
-Gareth
When I first read "Voyage from Yesteryear," I did enjoy it, but I'm convinced that it is just a high-tech version of Eric Frank Russell's story "And Then There Were None." The relationship is closer than that between the movie "Avatar" and Poul Anderson's "Call Me Joe," and that is a pretty darn close similarity in itself.
H.G. Wells' "Shape of Things to Come" Ursula Le Guin's "The Dispossessed" are two others in the Utopian genre that had a big effect on me.
Including other genres, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" and the Heinlein juveniles shaped me.
-Gareth
Correct. There's a difference. If Romney wins, there will almost certainly be a war with Iran. If Obama wins, there may not be. That is literally a life or death difference to many, many people who would live or die according to that choice.
-Gareth
I see Thoat tracks.
Willis tracks.
I did a recent blog post specifically on how the names of Microsoft OS releases were...lame...or odd...in one respect or another.
For a long time, people could bash Linux, with reason, as an operating system that couldn't even play a DVD out of the box. Pathetic. So what choices did the user have? Either download and install something that would play it illegally, as most did, or pay separately for licensed codecs. Now that Windows users face exactly the same choice, they will feel a certain deflation, a little at a loss, when they argue for the natural superiority of their operating system. It's an uncomfortable feeling, but ultimately healthy.
-Gareth
I just got the $200 model of Playbook for myself. I thought it had better hardware than the $200 Android tablets (camera, hdmi connection), less cost than an iPad and is easier to carry in a pocket for reading and so on. The software selection got a lot better through the Android compatability.
-Gareth
Easy. In the French parliament, the party of the ruling class was on the speaker's right, the party representing the poor on his left. The political positions you would expect from these two constituencies on taxes, foreign wars, universal education, universal health care, the established church, etc are right wing and left wing to this day.
In short, right wingers believe that people exist to serve their country; left wingers believe the country exists to serve its people.
I think Hitler's documented policies on forced sterilization, foreign wars, political pluralism, etc make clear that he belongs on the right.
-Gareth
A follow up with a few favourites that I'd forgotten for a moment.
-Celestial Matters by Richard Garfinkle (alternate history that involves an alternate astronomy and physics, too. Sui generis).
-Wings of Flame by Nancy Springer
-Prisoner of Conscience by Susan R. Matthews (not an easy read for the torture scenes, but a very interesting main character and situation).
Honestly, I don't know how "forgotten" these are, but I liked them.
-Gareth
She, Hi. Rider Haggard
Lud-in-the-Mist, Hope Mirlees
The Wallet of Kai Lung, Ernest Brahma
The Lost Continent, C. Cutliffe Hyne
The Forgotten Beasts of Eld, Patricia McKillip
Micromegas, Voltaire
The Epic of Gilgamesh, translated by Stephen Mitchell (very readable, enjoyable)
The Ballantine Adult Fantasy series should introduce you to a lot of good but often obscure work on the fantasy side.
-Gareth
"nobody is going to create a (quality) textbook for free."
http://www.lightandmatter.com/books.html
http://lightandmatter.com/french/
http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/
http://oerconsortium.org/discipline-specific/
http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/display/ (an extended, on-line version of the University of Toronto's long-time textbook "Representative Poetry")
Keep in mind that many of the textbooks assigned for English classes are classic books, now public domain.
Look at it this way: a professor is going to put together the equivalent of a textbook in handouts and lecture notes anyway, over the years. They don't necessarily think it will make them money in a crowded market. Many, in those circumstances, wouldn't mind sharing, and would keep it up to date for their own use. If they bring in a few like-minded souls, they could keep it up to date just like an open-source programming project.
Let's hear what Francis, Lord Verulam had to say about trusting only the guy with grandkids. "He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men; which both in affection and means, have married and endowed the public." Anyone agree with him? Here's something: "[8] I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. [9] But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn." (1 Corinthians 7). On the other hand, the idea that we raise our kids as a duty of sorts to society sounds (Godwin forgive me) awfully fascist.
-Gareth
Total bullshit. Pick up a history book some day.
I would have agreed with you. Hey, just look at the seventy years of soviet dictatorship. And Arabs have never had a democratic government, ever. Brutal dictatorship, much as I hated to say it, just seemed to work. Then Prague Spring, Solidarity, the Berlin Wall's destruction, the end of Ceaucescu, the Tunisian Revolution, the Egyptian Revolution, and the panic among the other Arab powers stunned me. Contrary cases, disproving your point. Eventually, popular hatred of a government proved to be bad for the government.
I don't have a reason why dictatorships succeed until, suddenly, they don't. The best clue I found was in a Michael Moorcock novel, _The War in the Air_. A character tells Karl Marx that he's wrong, that oppression is not enough to lead to revolution. It requires a combination of oppression and hope.
-Gareth
I'm in shock that so may people here agree that Tolkien's prose is a problem. Far from that being the case, Tolkien is so sensitive to prose rhythm that I use it from time to time to teach how to appreciate rhythm in prose or poetry. Take, for example, the ride of the Rohirrim, at the end of chapter 5 of the Return of the King. It starts off at a walk ("Then suddenly Merry felt it at last, beyond doubt: a change. Wind was in his face! Light was glimmering.") picks up a bit to a trot ("But at that same moment there was a flash, as if lightning had sprung from the earth beneath
the City. For a searing second it stood dazzling far off in black and white, its topmost tower like a glittering needle: and then as the darkness closed again there came rolling over the fields a great _boom_.") a canter ("With that he seized a great horn from Guthláf his banner-bearer, and he blew such a blast upon it that it burst asunder. And straightway all the horns in the host were lifted up in music, and the blowing of the horns of Rohan in that hour was like a storm upon the plain and a thunder in the mountains."), and then a full-out gallop ("Suddenly the king cried to Snowmane and the horse sprang away. Behind him his banner blew in the wind, white horse upon a field of green, but he outpaced it. After him thundered the knights of his house, but he was ever before them. Éomer rode there, the white horsetail on his helm floating in his speed, and the front of the first _éored_ roared like a breaker foaming to the shore, but Théoden could not be overtaken.") Then, once the cavalry has bashed through the enemy lines and the fighting's intensity lags, we slow down to a walk again ( And then all the host of Rohan burst into song, and they sang as they slew, for the joy of battle was on them, and the sound of their singing that was fair and terrible came even to the City.") I could also point out the careful word choice for alliteration ("and he blew such a blast upon it that it burst asunder") and assonance ("the host of Rohan"). Reading this page aloud is a joy. If you appreciate the King James Bible, or Old English poetry, you can appreciate this.
But he doesn't always write in this style. There are homely conversations between country folk, and orders in the field, and descriptions of landscapes, and "dropped in" details that suggest thousands of years of history that are simply not explained, but make Middle Earth seem real.
By the way, I would take Ursula Le Guin's opinion on prose quality pretty seriously. She is a fan of Tolkien's writing, too, calling it "a great wind blowing" that could have overwhelmed her own voice if she had read it earlier than she did. (http://greenbooks.theonering.net/tributes/files/ursula_leguin.html)
So, again, I don't get where this opinion that Tolkien writes badly. The man put more care into a sentence than others do in a chapter.
-Gareth
Banning the possession of firearms by civilians will ensure that only tyrants and criminals will have them.
So there are only three categories of people: civilians, tyrants, and criminals? I thought there were others, such as members of the armed forces, security forces for legitimate governments, and police officers, too.
-Gareth
I believe, China won't try to start a war.
1. they are not fundamentalists
2. they already built their economy to work with the western economies.
They cannot afford a war and they know it. Only "small" fundamentalist states not integrated into the world would try to start something. North Korea, Iran and possibly Pakistan if taken over by the Taliban.
You are correct, they are not fundamentalists. Your unstated assumption is correct that it would be irrational to start a major war, although China has had small ones with, for example, India and Viet Nam, and a much larger one some time back in Korea. However, what does rationality have to do with such decisions when passions are at play? I believe that war between China and the U.S. is a possibility that could be triggered by the ambitions of both to have naval dominance leading to a series of incidents, or by the claim to Taiwan heating up, or by the claims to almost all of the China Sea leading to more friction with Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, etc. A BBC report a little while back speculated that the strong statements recently for these claims was to let the government seem to be leading the passions of the public, and therefore maintain credibility with the public. It sounds plausible.
-Gareth
Charging for news is a great way to drive readers to the BBC. That fine source of news makes its money through a mandatory fee and is, I believe, required by law to make its content available, at least to those who pay the fees, without further cost. Entering this kind of cartel would involve a big political debate.
If you haven't tried it, go to news.bbc.co.uk
-Gareth
It sounds to me like you suffer from a degree of political chauvinism, though I can't tell if its also cultural chauvinism.
You're right. I jumped on his comment with both boots on. Comments about Canada being less than a nation or less than a democracy because of our form of government do bother me, but I shouldn't have been so touchy here.
-Gareth
Canada won't have the possibility of being a democracy till the Queen is excised from all Canadian institutions. It's no longer acceptable to have political structures dominated by fantasies of Monarchy from God, conquest or tyranny.
How the monarchy came to be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAaWvVFERVA
We've had representative government from the start. We got responsible government through negotiation. We achieved independence and ended slavery without a war for either. We just happen to split the function of "head of state" away from the function of "head of the executive branch," which allows us to think as witheringly as we please about the latter without having to show him any respect in his role as the former. The United States never figured out the advantages of that.
In short, we've got democracy. (Look up what happened to the Conservative Party after Brian Mulroney if you don't believe me). Take your cultural chauvinism home.
-Gareth
To tell the truth, I never minded having it called "OpenOffice.org" because no-one ever bothered to say ".org." On the other hand, you've got a good point that the names are stupid...but the names of the components. You've got Writer, Calc, Impress, Base, and Draw. These are, respectively, noun, contracted verb or noun, verb, contracted noun, and verb. Could we even be less consistent? We'd have to create a new component that was named with a preposition, participle, or conjunction...for example a mail component called Into, Mailing, or And.
I hope that this new start lets even something so basic get fixed.
-Gareth
Leebray Zeebray? I don't get it.
It works if you pronounce it French-style instead of Spanish-style. Lee-BRUH, not Lee-BRAY. (Do Zebras bray?)
-Gareth
With reference to "Snowball Earth" and the possibility of life arising twice,
But if life has arisen twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for extinction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
(Apologies to Robert Frost)
-Gareth