Do you believe that there is a moral obligation to scientific and technological progress, then? I ask this, because you (and others on this topic) have demonstrated almost a horror that "The Powers that Be" prevented the development of a new technology. A technology of dubious utility, I would argue, but I would be in the minority there.
Are we, in fact, that much better off because of the wireless phone? And by whose definition of "better"?
I fully admit to having no answer to such questions; I just wish to counter the "onwards and upwards for no particular reason" inclinations which come out of the woodwork during discussions such as these.
I agree. I heartily wish he'd go away and pester some other city with his millions.
One of the Seattle weekly newspapers (I don't think it was the Stranger, because I don't read that rag) wrote some months ago that Paul Allen, unlike the married Bill Gates, is dangerously at loose ends with his money. So instead of settling down in a private Xanadu on Lake Washington with thousands of acres and a significant other, he makes Seattle itself his playground, and roams around trying to impress people. He's like the class nerd trying desperately hard to prove that he's not square but a regular guy, because he likes football (hence his ownership of the Seahawks) and he likes Jimi Hendrix (hence the EMP) and that _must_ make him a cool guy...right? No, it makes him a public nuisance.
You're absolutely right, and it's been proven to me lately, when I was faced with the task of explaining to someone with little exposure to personal computers (my boyfriend) how to read his e-mail.
Straightaway I was impressed with how useless was the language in which I was trying to explain things. Terms like "desktop", "right-click", "select" were mere jargon; it was impossible for me to guage how unfamiliar they would seem to someone without my long familiarity with such things. Strange behaviors to which I had wearily become accustomed--accidentally hitting the "Window" key on the keyboard, pop-up advertisements suddenly appearing, web links popping up a new browser window instead of continuing in the same window--confused my friend. And why shouldn't they?
Maybe a simple command line, with command-line tools, _would_ be the easiest system for a novice to learn. There would be a relatively small number of new words to learn, not a bewildering array of graphical user actions, often with contradictory or counterintuitive effects (especially on a Windows system.)
Poole jogs (which, although not a game, is surely a sport); Bowman plays chess.
Oh, and did you mean to spell "bordom" that way?
hyacinthus.
It's official: Apple has become Microsoft...
on
OS X
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· Score: 2
...with that "MacOS X Ten 10.0" crap. One of the distinguishing features of Microsoft has been its meaningless product version numbers. Apple started getting into that game in a small way with "System 7.5" (where, one asks, was System 7.4?) and really got into the swing of things with "MacOS X Server", which was neither MacOS, nor the tenth release of anything, nor which has any kind of "MacOS X Consumer" counterpart. But this "MacOS X 10.0" achieves truly Microsoftian greatness. I'm expecting "MacOS X 2010 Special Edition 2.0" any time soon.
I've been stunned by how much Apple has been able to get away with, during this whole MacOS X business. Microsoft charged for a beta and everyone who didn't condemn them, laughed at them; Apple pulls the same trick and there's hardly a whisper of complaint. The beta was bug-ridden and dog-slow, and the excuses of "It's JUST a BETA!" flew thick and fast. Now we find that the commercial release is bug-ridden and dog-slow, and we head modified versions of the same excuses--"It's JUST a FIRST RELEASE!"
I miss HyperCard as well, but I think a product has stepped into the breach, at least in some respects--REALbasic.
I've been using REALbasic for prototyping an application which uses the USB development board from ActiveWire. I was able to write a simple application within the space of a day. REALbasic provides a greater variety of GUI widgets with which to build interfaces, and a far easier way to extend the language with new objects and controls. And REALbasic allows for cross-platform development on MacOS and Windows (albeit, for high licensing fees.) The computer geeks, who seem to equate difficulty and intricacy of programming with proof of masculinity, will never see anything like REALbasic or HyperCard as anything but toys; but for my part, I'm glad that there's a way to write a small application on the Macintosh without struggling with MPW, or giving money to Metrowerks.
So a small number of broadband ISP's are set to corner the market and charge high prices. I say, what's the big deal?
Electricity is a true "utility". It is useful, nay, vital for so many daily tasks that there is a real need for the government to regulate the electrical utilities, and prevent monopolization and price gouging. The same is true of water, natural gas, mail, and (to a lesser extent) telephone service.
Internet service is _not_ a utility. So far, internet service is not necessary to perform any daily task. Oh, I'm sure that the "need" for internet service will eventually be forced upon us; I can see a future where companies will start billing customers and sending important notices entirely through e-mail. Broadband access is even less of a necessity. So why should the government involve itself in the business of regulating ISP's?
hyacinthus.
Re:They're called "viruses"...
on
New Linux Worm
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· Score: 1
You're right about the "pansy" part; I cheerfully admit to being a "gay homosexual".
You're not right about anything else, though. Accept criticism with grace, my anonymous, cowardly friend.
hyacinthus.
Re:They're called "viruses"...
on
New Linux Worm
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· Score: 1
Mr. Anonymous Coward is completely wrong, of course, on several counts.
First, only words which end in "-us" and which belong to the second declension have plurals end in "-i". For example, the Latin word "status" belongs to the fourth declension, and its plural is (ready for it?) spelled "status"--pronounced slightly differently, but spelled the same. "Venus" belongs to the third declension, and its plural is "Veneres". Anyone who writes "stati" or "Veni" deserved to be beaten to death with the Oxford Latin Dictionary.
Second, adding "-ii" to a noun-stem to form a plural is _not_ proper Latin. Never has been, never will be.
"virus" is a second-declension word; its plural, therefore, would be formed "viri". I say "would be", because I believe that the form "viri" is not attested anywhere in Latin; the word (which means "poison", "venom") seems to have been used exclusively in the singular.
The moral? if you don't know Latin, but only think you do, use the English plural "viruses".
I'm curious. How many people buy movies on DVD for the special features? I'm not one of them; I own a number of DVD movies, and I don't think any of them, with the possible exception of the L. A. CONFIDENTIAL DVD, has special features on it which merited more than a passing glance. I should be more interested, say, in what John Woo has to say in the audio commentary of HARD BOILED and THE KILLER, but I'm not, particularly; I bought the disc for the movie, not for "special features" and trivia.
As for this DUNE miniseries itself...it sucked. As bad as David Lynch's butchering of the story was, his DUNE movie was at least interesting; this Sci-Fi channel series was tapioca pudding in comparison, hamstrung by poor acting, ridiculous costuming, and badly incorporated special effects. About the only interesting aspect, from my perspective, was that at least we got to see most of the character of Stilgar (whose part is cut down almost to invisibility in Lynch's rendition.)
"Sure they need net access to study..." Since when? I don't remember that the Internet was of any utility for studying anything of academic value. Can you find the Journal of the American Chemical Society online? (And I mean the real thing, not just a few tasty sample articles on the ACS website.) Or, indeed, leaving aside commercial publications like the New York Times, reference materials of _any_ sort of reliability or credibility?
I don't know whence comes this myth that the Internet is useful for research. Now and again I wish to look up item of scientific interest--some formula in physics, say--and _every time_ I've turned to the Internet for research purposes, I would have been better served if I'd driven to the nearest library. I probably would have found my information quicker, too--it takes a few seconds to search and a few quarter-hours to wade through the oceans of garbage which the search turns up. A search for information on a chemical reaction is more likely to turn up half a dozen pages on cooking up a batch of N-methylamphetamine, instead of anything of serious research value.
But, hell, going to school to _learn_ something is out of fashion these days. You go to school to play Quake ten hours a day, and trade in music and software bootlegs.
hyacinthus.
the _hybris_ of the technophile
on
The Hacker Ethic
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· Score: 4
Sigh. Why is it that people who like recompiling Linux kernels in their spare time love to posture themselves as flame-bearers of some sort of dynamic, inventive new spirit?
When I was young, I discovered that in my school library's archive of old SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN magazines was an amazing treasure trove of investigative work done by amateurs in almost every field of natural and physical science. (I'm speaking of the "Amateur Scientist" column.) These investigations spanned the range from inquiries into the habits of hummingbirds to the construction of elaborate scientific apparata. I admire the people who did such things, if only because they gave the lie to the notion that science was exclusively the domain of professional men with degrees. It was not always so. But, well, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN is more advertising than content now, and the "Amateur Scientist" is a shadow of its former self.
Were those amateur scientists "hackers"? At least they were interested in the real, observable universe--that's what science is all about. Computer hackers, though, work in their little artificial domain. I find it ironic that this topic should have appeared on Slashdot at almost the same time that the Napster story broke. Napster (and all its brethren in the music-piracy business)--now there's a tremendous misapplication of intellect. The energy which might have gone into the creation of something truly beautiful--or something truly useful--instead went into the institution of an intricate mechanism, useless to anyone not engrossed with that artificial domain--anyone who doesn't live and breathe computers, and would rather spend hours downloading and storing low-fidelity MP3 files than get up and visit the neighborhood music, or take in a concert. Why? because he'd have to stop "hacking" and spend a little less time away from his precious technology, that's why.
With computer mania sweeping the US, and the growing perception that it's more important to get schoolchildren in front of computers than to teach them about their language, their history, and their universe, it's no wonder that our children suck at math and science.
If you want to SLOW THE HELL DOWN so much, why are you so intent on allowing your job to invade every aspect of your life?
There is one great advantage to centralizing employment in an office. When the job is over, you can _leave_.
Unfortunately, "telecommuting" is seen as a virtue now, probably because corporations would like nothing better than to demand all of their employees' time. I see this as part of the reason for the huge advertising "push" for expensive broadband Internet providers and for wireless phone service--once you have those things, it becomes far easier for your employer to insist that you take your work home with you. At least a couple of the radio advertisements to which I've been subjected lately extol the ability instantly to check your stock portfolio, &c., from anywhere and everywhere. The underlying message is clear--you should spend every waking moment either trying to make money or trying to spend it.
I suspect that I'm not writing anything which has not already been written in this forum, but...Star Trek is moribund, and ought not to continue. At least, not until after another indefinite hiatus.
Hell, I watched STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION as religiously as any Trekkie. This was back when I disparaged the original show, because of its cheapjack production values and Kirk's belligerence. Now, it seems to me that TOS has retained its value, while it's TNG which has aged poorly. Is there a single TNG episode anything like as memorable as "The Doomsday Machine", or "Balance of Terror", or of course "City on the Edge of Forever"? The original show had very few stinkers to its credit. I'll say it; I'd rather watch "The Omega Glory" or "Spock's Brain" for the hundredth time than watch most episodes of TNG for the second.
The crew of Enterprise 'D'...just wasn't _interesting_. TNG's soapy attempts at "character development" were often forced and unconvincing. (Worf, the single father! Data tries to emulate human behavior...again! Troi has to deal with her mother! Yawn.) Their well-meaning, topical episodes were daring less often than they were craven (q.v. "The Outcast"). And then there was the ridiculous way that the show often substituted hobbies for personality. Consider those ludicrous poker games--they seem to me analoguous to the class nerd's laughable attempt to prove that he isn't square after all but a regular guy because he likes poker (baseball, beer, &c.) You'd never catch Spock or McCoy playing poker; they didn't have to, because they were interesting enough characters without such props.
And although Trekkies are quick to laud Patrick Stewart's acting, he didn't exhibit as much of it as TNG as I would have liked. Indeed, Stewart's ability to deliver a pompous, Ciceronian oration--and make it sound believable--was often used as a convenient way to wrap up a mediocre episode (qq.v. "Measure of a Man", "The Drumhead").
I spend so much time on TNG because that show. The faults of DEEP SPACE NINE (which, be it noted, I _did_ find interesting enough to watch for two seasons) and the execrable VOYAGER are also TNG's faults, magnified. Michael Dorn's addition to the DS9 cast illustrates this--the show was taking refuge in the sort of violence-heavy plots which the Klingons came to exemplify in TNG. Dorn's addition, also, pointed up the Trek franchises increasing inability to attract new viewers; increasingly, Trek began to feed on itself. The TNG-universe movies were the logical conclusion of this trend: movies which were utterly pointless to anyone who wasn't so devoted a fan of Star Trek that they could watch Brent Spiner tell bad jokes for two hours and consider themselves well entertained. (Wait...)
We've had enough of Trek to last us for a few years. But then, science fiction, in the visual media, has long since run itself dry. It has nothing to offer but mindless action and tiresome hand-to-hand combat, dressed up with a futuristic gloss. It's a little depressing to think that the last, best hope for intelligence sci-fi movie making is Steven Spielberg.
I was about to post something sarcastic, to the effect of, "Who would want a bunch of living-for-the-weekend alcoholics to work for his company anyway?" But there is a truth behind this story.
When I graduated from college and started considering places whither I could move and work, I considered a number of cities other than Seattle. I _did_ get a message from a company in Salt Lake City, expressing interest in interviewing me; I didn't take it seriously for a second. Why? Because it's _Salt Lake City_. Mormonville. My father was born there, escaped when he was young, and has never expressed the slightest sign of homesickness for the city of his birth.
An older and wiser friend of mine did point out that any city of Salt Lake City's size is going to be less parochial and more cosmopolitan than I might suspect; "It's not Ogden," I remember he said. All the same, I couldn't think of a good reason why any self-respecting coffee-drinking, liberal-voting queer should move to the land of the Latter-Day Saints and Sen. Orrin Hatch, when there were other options open to me.
(Yet I never seriously considered San Francisco either, partly because I didn't want to have to try to afford San Franciscan rents.)
I'm not too sorry I chose Seattle, although I think if I knew what I know now, I would have moved to Portland instead. Less pretentious, a better highway system, and cheaper; and I wouldn't have to put up with overcompensating nerds like Paul Allen trying to remake the city the way they like. Say what you will about Bill Gates; at least he's not trying to prove to the world that he really _is_ cool, because he likes the Seahawks and Jimi Hendrix.
I find it ironic that Robert Wise, a second rate talent at best (he is probably best known for the THE SOUND OF MUSIC), sees fit to express his auctorial prerogative to remake STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE. Ironic, because Wise presided over the butchering of what might have been one of the best films ever made, Orson Welles's THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. While Welles was in South America at RKO's behest, Wise supervised the deletion of fifty minutes of footage from Welles's rough cut; the cut footage was destroyed, and so we've got nothing left of THE MAGNFICENT AMBERSONS but a fragment.
I suppose Wise can do what he likes to "his" film--although, with the possible exception of Stanley Kubrick and a small number of other control-freak directors, I don't think any director of a major Hollywood production can claim auctorial privileges over the films they direct. But, to my mind, if he dislikes STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE that much, he should make another film. Using the George Lucas excuse, that the film isn't "finished" and needed to be "completed" by patching in new footage and new special effects, is the coward's way out. Has anyone come up with a convincing defence of Lucas's alterations to the Star Wars films?
But this sort of revision has become rampant. Old films are subjected to radical "restorations", e.g. the recutting of Orson Welles's TOUCH OF EVIL, the use of still photographs to "restore" GREED and A STAR IS BORN. Mediocre directors, enamored of every second of footage whether it adds to the film or not, assemble "director's cuts" to be sold for premium prices on DVD "special edition" releases. Remember the "director's cut" of Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER? What made that good wasn't what Scott added back, but what he removed--the stupid voice-over, the tacked-on ending. And, thanks to Lucas's precedent, it's possible that these botched-up "restorations" will be distributed to the exclusion of the original films.
By the way, The STAR TREK picture is not a great movie, or even a very good one, but I'll say this for it--at least the movie is its own creation, and not just a puffed-out episode of the TV series, as was THE WRATH OF KHAN and just about every other subsequent Star Trek movie.
Well, where did you go to school? I graduated from San Diego State in 1999 and I can't remember with any confidence if even _one_ of the machines in the public computer laboratories had a Zip drive.
At the job I had in San Diego at the time, out of maybe forty or fifty PC's, there was one Zip drive. There was also one Jaz drive.
Using a PDA as an extension of your memory is a convenient idea...until the first moment that you're stuck without your $300 toy.
The only safe place for information is in your head. I've been stuck, aching to work on a new idea but without the needed reference books on hand to look up some crucial equation or physical constant, too many times. I want that information memorized, not "written down so I don't have to remember."
UNIX, spelled backwards, is "XINU", which is simply a corruption of "Xenu", the name of the intergalactic tyrant about whom an obscure religious figure named Lafayette R. Hubbard had a vision one evening.
We have to thank Mr. Raskin for uncovering this fiendish, suppressive plot on the part of an enemy from whose depredations we have been suffering from for seventy-five million years. I say that UNIX should be accorded "Fair Game" status.
...in CYTEEN, is that so soon as a private consortium of scientists develops the ability to clone a human, they'll attempt to clone one of their own. Bring a dead genius back to life.
I'm not sure if that's how it will play out in real life, but in Cherryh's hands, it makes a damn good story.
I've encountered few programmers whose grasp of mathematics exceeds high school algebra. I work at Amazon.com now, and I was greeted with smart-aleck remarks like "boy, does _that_ bring back bad memories" when I was seen working a trigonometry problem for something I was working on. (Call that another instance of the abiding contempt, held by many techie types, for anything of learning outside of their own narrow field of interest.) And my own grasp of math is pathetically weak, compared to where I'd like it to be--I'm still stuck at a freshman-college level of competency, at best.
There's a good reason for this--except perhaps at a few fortunate schools such as M.I.T., "computer science", as taught, doesn't impose anything like the intellectual prerequisites of a real science. To even touch (say) physics, or physical chemistry, requires a grasp of mathematics far in advance of mine--but in CS, hey, you can coast along with not much more than algebra and maybe a little single-variable calculus.
Speak for yourself! I love movies, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay thousands for a modest increase in television resolution. And I'll have to say...my home video setup is mediocre at best (20" TV with composite inputs, DVD player, and an old Fisher vacuum-tube amplifier) and in the middle of a good movie...it just doesn't matter. THE SEARCHERS is a good movie whether it's shown on a screen fifty feet across, or a black-and-white twelve-inch television. But then, my idea of a "good movie" is a little different, and doesn't include films which stand or fall by their special effects such as THE MATRIX.
And I don't think people like my lover, who makes half the money I do and works ten times as hard to get it, care either. And I daresay there are a lot more people like him than like me. HDTV is a luxury item for the geek with more money than common sense, and (the gods willing) will remain such for a good long while.
Oof. Crediting Lee DeForest and leaving out Edwin Armstrong? DeForest may have "invented" the vacuum triode, but Armstrong was the first man who figured out what could be done with it (e.g. regenerative amplification, the "superheterodyne" receiver, frequency modulation.) DeForest's chief innovation is a familiar one--he learned how to sue everyone in sight to gain credit for things he didn't invent.
Slashdot Mirror
We're talking about connotations, not about dictionary definitions.
To me, anyway, "czar" connotes the corrupt, autocratic leadership of an inbred ruling house. To me, "czar" suggests Nicholas II. But that's just me.
hyacinthus.
Do you believe that there is a moral obligation to scientific and technological progress, then? I ask this, because you (and others on this topic) have demonstrated almost a horror that "The Powers that Be" prevented the development of a new technology. A technology of dubious utility, I would argue, but I would be in the minority there.
Are we, in fact, that much better off because of the wireless phone? And by whose definition of "better"?
I fully admit to having no answer to such questions; I just wish to counter the "onwards and upwards for no particular reason" inclinations which come out of the woodwork during discussions such as these.
hyacinthus.
I agree. I heartily wish he'd go away and pester some other city with his millions.
One of the Seattle weekly newspapers (I don't think it was the Stranger, because I don't read that rag) wrote some months ago that Paul Allen, unlike the married Bill Gates, is dangerously at loose ends with his money. So instead of settling down in a private Xanadu on Lake Washington with thousands of acres and a significant other, he makes Seattle itself his playground, and roams around trying to impress people. He's like the class nerd trying desperately hard to prove that he's not square but a regular guy, because he likes football (hence his ownership of the Seahawks) and he likes Jimi Hendrix (hence the EMP) and that _must_ make him a cool guy...right? No, it makes him a public nuisance.
hyacinthus.
Moderate this up, someone.
You're absolutely right, and it's been proven to me lately, when I was faced with the task of explaining to someone with little exposure to personal computers (my boyfriend) how to read his e-mail.
Straightaway I was impressed with how useless was the language in which I was trying to explain things. Terms like "desktop", "right-click", "select" were mere jargon; it was impossible for me to guage how unfamiliar they would seem to someone without my long familiarity with such things. Strange behaviors to which I had wearily become accustomed--accidentally hitting the "Window" key on the keyboard, pop-up advertisements suddenly appearing, web links popping up a new browser window instead of continuing in the same window--confused my friend. And why shouldn't they?
Maybe a simple command line, with command-line tools, _would_ be the easiest system for a novice to learn. There would be a relatively small number of new words to learn, not a bewildering array of graphical user actions, often with contradictory or counterintuitive effects (especially on a Windows system.)
hyacinthus.
Poole jogs (which, although not a game, is surely a sport); Bowman plays chess.
Oh, and did you mean to spell "bordom" that way?
hyacinthus.
...with that "MacOS X Ten 10.0" crap. One of the distinguishing features of Microsoft has been its meaningless product version numbers. Apple started getting into that game in a small way with "System 7.5" (where, one asks, was System 7.4?) and really got into the swing of things with "MacOS X Server", which was neither MacOS, nor the tenth release of anything, nor which has any kind of "MacOS X Consumer" counterpart. But this "MacOS X 10.0" achieves truly Microsoftian greatness. I'm expecting "MacOS X 2010 Special Edition 2.0" any time soon.
I've been stunned by how much Apple has been able to get away with, during this whole MacOS X business. Microsoft charged for a beta and everyone who didn't condemn them, laughed at them; Apple pulls the same trick and there's hardly a whisper of complaint. The beta was bug-ridden and dog-slow, and the excuses of "It's JUST a BETA!" flew thick and fast. Now we find that the commercial release is bug-ridden and dog-slow, and we head modified versions of the same excuses--"It's JUST a FIRST RELEASE!"
hyacinthus
I miss HyperCard as well, but I think a product has stepped into the breach, at least in some respects--REALbasic.
I've been using REALbasic for prototyping an application which uses the USB development board from ActiveWire. I was able to write a simple application within the space of a day. REALbasic provides a greater variety of GUI widgets with which to build interfaces, and a far easier way to extend the language with new objects and controls. And REALbasic allows for cross-platform development on MacOS and Windows (albeit, for high licensing fees.) The computer geeks, who seem to equate difficulty and intricacy of programming with proof of masculinity, will never see anything like REALbasic or HyperCard as anything but toys; but for my part, I'm glad that there's a way to write a small application on the Macintosh without struggling with MPW, or giving money to Metrowerks.
hyacinthus.
So a small number of broadband ISP's are set to corner the market and charge high prices. I say, what's the big deal?
Electricity is a true "utility". It is useful, nay, vital for so many daily tasks that there is a real need for the government to regulate the electrical utilities, and prevent monopolization and price gouging. The same is true of water, natural gas, mail, and (to a lesser extent) telephone service.
Internet service is _not_ a utility. So far, internet service is not necessary to perform any daily task. Oh, I'm sure that the "need" for internet service will eventually be forced upon us; I can see a future where companies will start billing customers and sending important notices entirely through e-mail. Broadband access is even less of a necessity. So why should the government involve itself in the business of regulating ISP's?
hyacinthus.
You're right about the "pansy" part; I cheerfully admit to being a "gay homosexual".
You're not right about anything else, though. Accept criticism with grace, my anonymous, cowardly friend.
hyacinthus.
Mr. Anonymous Coward is completely wrong, of course, on several counts.
First, only words which end in "-us" and which belong to the second declension have plurals end in "-i". For example, the Latin word "status" belongs to the fourth declension, and its plural is (ready for it?) spelled "status"--pronounced slightly differently, but spelled the same. "Venus" belongs to the third declension, and its plural is "Veneres". Anyone who writes "stati" or "Veni" deserved to be beaten to death with the Oxford Latin Dictionary.
Second, adding "-ii" to a noun-stem to form a plural is _not_ proper Latin. Never has been, never will be.
"virus" is a second-declension word; its plural, therefore, would be formed "viri". I say "would be", because I believe that the form "viri" is not attested anywhere in Latin; the word (which means "poison", "venom") seems to have been used exclusively in the singular.
The moral? if you don't know Latin, but only think you do, use the English plural "viruses".
hyacinthus.
I'm curious. How many people buy movies on DVD for the special features? I'm not one of them; I own a number of DVD movies, and I don't think any of them, with the possible exception of the L. A. CONFIDENTIAL DVD, has special features on it which merited more than a passing glance. I should be more interested, say, in what John Woo has to say in the audio commentary of HARD BOILED and THE KILLER, but I'm not, particularly; I bought the disc for the movie, not for "special features" and trivia.
As for this DUNE miniseries itself...it sucked. As bad as David Lynch's butchering of the story was, his DUNE movie was at least interesting; this Sci-Fi channel series was tapioca pudding in comparison, hamstrung by poor acting, ridiculous costuming, and badly incorporated special effects. About the only interesting aspect, from my perspective, was that at least we got to see most of the character of Stilgar (whose part is cut down almost to invisibility in Lynch's rendition.)
hyacinthus.
"Sure they need net access to study..." Since when? I don't remember that the Internet was of any utility for studying anything of academic value. Can you find the Journal of the American Chemical Society online? (And I mean the real thing, not just a few tasty sample articles on the ACS website.) Or, indeed, leaving aside commercial publications like the New York Times, reference materials of _any_ sort of reliability or credibility?
I don't know whence comes this myth that the Internet is useful for research. Now and again I wish to look up item of scientific interest--some formula in physics, say--and _every time_ I've turned to the Internet for research purposes, I would have been better served if I'd driven to the nearest library. I probably would have found my information quicker, too--it takes a few seconds to search and a few quarter-hours to wade through the oceans of garbage which the search turns up. A search for information on a chemical reaction is more likely to turn up half a dozen pages on cooking up a batch of N-methylamphetamine, instead of anything of serious research value.
But, hell, going to school to _learn_ something is out of fashion these days. You go to school to play Quake ten hours a day, and trade in music and software bootlegs.
hyacinthus.
Sigh. Why is it that people who like recompiling Linux kernels in their spare time love to posture themselves as flame-bearers of some sort of dynamic, inventive new spirit?
When I was young, I discovered that in my school library's archive of old SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN magazines was an amazing treasure trove of investigative work done by amateurs in almost every field of natural and physical science. (I'm speaking of the "Amateur Scientist" column.) These investigations spanned the range from inquiries into the habits of hummingbirds to the construction of elaborate scientific apparata. I admire the people who did such things, if only because they gave the lie to the notion that science was exclusively the domain of professional men with degrees. It was not always so. But, well, SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN is more advertising than content now, and the "Amateur Scientist" is a shadow of its former self.
Were those amateur scientists "hackers"? At least they were interested in the real, observable universe--that's what science is all about. Computer hackers, though, work in their little artificial domain. I find it ironic that this topic should have appeared on Slashdot at almost the same time that the Napster story broke. Napster (and all its brethren in the music-piracy business)--now there's a tremendous misapplication of intellect. The energy which might have gone into the creation of something truly beautiful--or something truly useful--instead went into the institution of an intricate mechanism, useless to anyone not engrossed with that artificial domain--anyone who doesn't live and breathe computers, and would rather spend hours downloading and storing low-fidelity MP3 files than get up and visit the neighborhood music, or take in a concert. Why? because he'd have to stop "hacking" and spend a little less time away from his precious technology, that's why.
With computer mania sweeping the US, and the growing perception that it's more important to get schoolchildren in front of computers than to teach them about their language, their history, and their universe, it's no wonder that our children suck at math and science.
hyacinthus.
If you want to SLOW THE HELL DOWN so much, why are you so intent on allowing your job to invade every aspect of your life?
There is one great advantage to centralizing employment in an office. When the job is over, you can _leave_.
Unfortunately, "telecommuting" is seen as a virtue now, probably because corporations would like nothing better than to demand all of their employees' time. I see this as part of the reason for the huge advertising "push" for expensive broadband Internet providers and for wireless phone service--once you have those things, it becomes far easier for your employer to insist that you take your work home with you. At least a couple of the radio advertisements to which I've been subjected lately extol the ability instantly to check your stock portfolio, &c., from anywhere and everywhere. The underlying message is clear--you should spend every waking moment either trying to make money or trying to spend it.
hyacinthus.
...in perfect harmony...
I suspect that I'm not writing anything which has not already been written in this forum, but...Star Trek is moribund, and ought not to continue. At least, not until after another indefinite hiatus.
Hell, I watched STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION as religiously as any Trekkie. This was back when I disparaged the original show, because of its cheapjack production values and Kirk's belligerence. Now, it seems to me that TOS has retained its value, while it's TNG which has aged poorly. Is there a single TNG episode anything like as memorable as "The Doomsday Machine", or "Balance of Terror", or of course "City on the Edge of Forever"? The original show had very few stinkers to its credit. I'll say it; I'd rather watch "The Omega Glory" or "Spock's Brain" for the hundredth time than watch most episodes of TNG for the second.
The crew of Enterprise 'D'...just wasn't _interesting_. TNG's soapy attempts at "character development" were often forced and unconvincing. (Worf, the single father! Data tries to emulate human behavior...again! Troi has to deal with her mother! Yawn.) Their well-meaning, topical episodes were daring less often than they were craven (q.v. "The Outcast"). And then there was the ridiculous way that the show often substituted hobbies for personality. Consider those ludicrous poker games--they seem to me analoguous to the class nerd's laughable attempt to prove that he isn't square after all but a regular guy because he likes poker (baseball, beer, &c.) You'd never catch Spock or McCoy playing poker; they didn't have to, because they were interesting enough characters without such props.
And although Trekkies are quick to laud Patrick Stewart's acting, he didn't exhibit as much of it as TNG as I would have liked. Indeed, Stewart's ability to deliver a pompous, Ciceronian oration--and make it sound believable--was often used as a convenient way to wrap up a mediocre episode (qq.v. "Measure of a Man", "The Drumhead").
I spend so much time on TNG because that show. The faults of DEEP SPACE NINE (which, be it noted, I _did_ find interesting enough to watch for two seasons) and the execrable VOYAGER are also TNG's faults, magnified. Michael Dorn's addition to the DS9 cast illustrates this--the show was taking refuge in the sort of violence-heavy plots which the Klingons came to exemplify in TNG. Dorn's addition, also, pointed up the Trek franchises increasing inability to attract new viewers; increasingly, Trek began to feed on itself. The TNG-universe movies were the logical conclusion of this trend: movies which were utterly pointless to anyone who wasn't so devoted a fan of Star Trek that they could watch Brent Spiner tell bad jokes for two hours and consider themselves well entertained. (Wait...)
We've had enough of Trek to last us for a few years. But then, science fiction, in the visual media, has long since run itself dry. It has nothing to offer but mindless action and tiresome hand-to-hand combat, dressed up with a futuristic gloss. It's a little depressing to think that the last, best hope for intelligence sci-fi movie making is Steven Spielberg.
hyacinthus.
I was about to post something sarcastic, to the effect of, "Who would want a bunch of living-for-the-weekend alcoholics to work for his company anyway?" But there is a truth behind this story.
When I graduated from college and started considering places whither I could move and work, I considered a number of cities other than Seattle. I _did_ get a message from a company in Salt Lake City, expressing interest in interviewing me; I didn't take it seriously for a second. Why? Because it's _Salt Lake City_. Mormonville. My father was born there, escaped when he was young, and has never expressed the slightest sign of homesickness for the city of his birth.
An older and wiser friend of mine did point out that any city of Salt Lake City's size is going to be less parochial and more cosmopolitan than I might suspect; "It's not Ogden," I remember he said. All the same, I couldn't think of a good reason why any self-respecting coffee-drinking, liberal-voting queer should move to the land of the Latter-Day Saints and Sen. Orrin Hatch, when there were other options open to me.
(Yet I never seriously considered San Francisco either, partly because I didn't want to have to try to afford San Franciscan rents.)
I'm not too sorry I chose Seattle, although I think if I knew what I know now, I would have moved to Portland instead. Less pretentious, a better highway system, and cheaper; and I wouldn't have to put up with overcompensating nerds like Paul Allen trying to remake the city the way they like. Say what you will about Bill Gates; at least he's not trying to prove to the world that he really _is_ cool, because he likes the Seahawks and Jimi Hendrix.
hyacinthus.
I find it ironic that Robert Wise, a second rate talent at best (he is probably best known for the THE SOUND OF MUSIC), sees fit to express his auctorial prerogative to remake STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE. Ironic, because Wise presided over the butchering of what might have been one of the best films ever made, Orson Welles's THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. While Welles was in South America at RKO's behest, Wise supervised the deletion of fifty minutes of footage from Welles's rough cut; the cut footage was destroyed, and so we've got nothing left of THE MAGNFICENT AMBERSONS but a fragment.
I suppose Wise can do what he likes to "his" film--although, with the possible exception of Stanley Kubrick and a small number of other control-freak directors, I don't think any director of a major Hollywood production can claim auctorial privileges over the films they direct. But, to my mind, if he dislikes STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE that much, he should make another film. Using the George Lucas excuse, that the film isn't "finished" and needed to be "completed" by patching in new footage and new special effects, is the coward's way out. Has anyone come up with a convincing defence of Lucas's alterations to the Star Wars films?
But this sort of revision has become rampant. Old films are subjected to radical "restorations", e.g. the recutting of Orson Welles's TOUCH OF EVIL, the use of still photographs to "restore" GREED and A STAR IS BORN. Mediocre directors, enamored of every second of footage whether it adds to the film or not, assemble "director's cuts" to be sold for premium prices on DVD "special edition" releases. Remember the "director's cut" of Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER? What made that good wasn't what Scott added back, but what he removed--the stupid voice-over, the tacked-on ending. And, thanks to Lucas's precedent, it's possible that these botched-up "restorations" will be distributed to the exclusion of the original films.
By the way, The STAR TREK picture is not a great movie, or even a very good one, but I'll say this for it--at least the movie is its own creation, and not just a puffed-out episode of the TV series, as was THE WRATH OF KHAN and just about every other subsequent Star Trek movie.
hyacinthus.
Well, where did you go to school? I graduated from San Diego State in 1999 and I can't remember with any confidence if even _one_ of the machines in the public computer laboratories had a Zip drive.
At the job I had in San Diego at the time, out of maybe forty or fifty PC's, there was one Zip drive. There was also one Jaz drive.
hyacinthus.
Using a PDA as an extension of your memory is a convenient idea...until the first moment that you're stuck without your $300 toy.
The only safe place for information is in your head. I've been stuck, aching to work on a new idea but without the needed reference books on hand to look up some crucial equation or physical constant, too many times. I want that information memorized, not "written down so I don't have to remember."
hyacinthus.
UNIX, spelled backwards, is "XINU", which is simply a corruption of "Xenu", the name of the intergalactic tyrant about whom an obscure religious figure named Lafayette R. Hubbard had a vision one evening.
We have to thank Mr. Raskin for uncovering this fiendish, suppressive plot on the part of an enemy from whose depredations we have been suffering from for seventy-five million years. I say that UNIX should be accorded "Fair Game" status.
hyacinthus.
...in CYTEEN, is that so soon as a private consortium of scientists develops the ability to clone a human, they'll attempt to clone one of their own. Bring a dead genius back to life.
I'm not sure if that's how it will play out in real life, but in Cherryh's hands, it makes a damn good story.
hyacinthus.
I've encountered few programmers whose grasp of mathematics exceeds high school algebra. I work at Amazon.com now, and I was greeted with smart-aleck remarks like "boy, does _that_ bring back bad memories" when I was seen working a trigonometry problem for something I was working on. (Call that another instance of the abiding contempt, held by many techie types, for anything of learning outside of their own narrow field of interest.) And my own grasp of math is pathetically weak, compared to where I'd like it to be--I'm still stuck at a freshman-college level of competency, at best.
There's a good reason for this--except perhaps at a few fortunate schools such as M.I.T., "computer science", as taught, doesn't impose anything like the intellectual prerequisites of a real science. To even touch (say) physics, or physical chemistry, requires a grasp of mathematics far in advance of mine--but in CS, hey, you can coast along with not much more than algebra and maybe a little single-variable calculus.
hyacinthus.
Speak for yourself! I love movies, but I'll be damned if I'm going to pay thousands for a modest increase in television resolution. And I'll have to say...my home video setup is mediocre at best (20" TV with composite inputs, DVD player, and an old Fisher vacuum-tube amplifier) and in the middle of a good movie...it just doesn't matter. THE SEARCHERS is a good movie whether it's shown on a screen fifty feet across, or a black-and-white twelve-inch television. But then, my idea of a "good movie" is a little different, and doesn't include films which stand or fall by their special effects such as THE MATRIX.
And I don't think people like my lover, who makes half the money I do and works ten times as hard to get it, care either. And I daresay there are a lot more people like him than like me. HDTV is a luxury item for the geek with more money than common sense, and (the gods willing) will remain such for a good long while.
hyacinthus.
Oof. Crediting Lee DeForest and leaving out Edwin Armstrong? DeForest may have "invented" the vacuum triode, but Armstrong was the first man who figured out what could be done with it (e.g. regenerative amplification, the "superheterodyne" receiver, frequency modulation.) DeForest's chief innovation is a familiar one--he learned how to sue everyone in sight to gain credit for things he didn't invent.
hyacinthus.