Gandalf first grabs Sam by the shoulders outside the window of Bag End and scolds him, then he carefully lifts him through the window (FOTR p.97-98). Jackson has Gandalf pull Sam quickly through the window and onto a table. Unnecessary and poorly handled. Why did Gandalf need to treat poor Sam so violently? It was also an obvious stuffed dummy prop.
The silly thing about a list like this is that it's just pointing out the inevitable. When a story goes from one medium to another, from words to action, you have to abbreviate things and get certain points across about characters in a different way. In the book, it's clear that Gandalf is powerful and not to be triffled with and we know this because Tolkien has page after page to get that point across. In the film, where action is key not words, it must be demonstrated and in a way that doesn't seem too pedantic. So, Gandalf reaching through the window and pulling Sam through violently demonstrates that he's far more powerful than he looks. In a sense, doing it that way remains more faithful to what Tolkien wrote than slavishly adhering to each and every detail.
I've been casually pointing out the apparent parallels between software and agricultural monoculture without really being an "expert" for quite some time. Of course, not being an expert, it just sounds like BS. Interesting to see such a topic finally becoming newsworthy.
This is actually a great argument against the dominance of Windows, btw. When Windows defenders claim that viruses and security issues are prevalent on Windows only because it's so widely used, you can point out the dog-chasing-its-tail nature of such a viewpoint and ask them why they continue to be part of the problem by contributing to that prevalence instead of using a different OS. (Frankly, I don't buy the argument, but it's fun to put that out there and see what responses you get.)
I've said it before and I'll say it again: the concept of the GUI (and in fact, the concept of the personal computer) is still so new that it's ludicrous to start codifying any rules about what makes good design or bad design for GUIs. All you can go by is what works and what doesn't and let the process work itself out on its own in the baby steps that it inevitably requires. GUI Luddites like Tog are boring. I don't see the point. If something doesn't work, it will be obvious and it will change. Apple's already made countless small and large changes to the Aqua interface, the Finder and the Dock and each revision feels more and more "correct."
I've read countless critiques of the various esoteric design "problems" of OS X and whatnot and none of them have proven useful to me, nor have many of them turned out to be true. I recall reading (probably Tog) that the position of the destructive close button, next to the non-destructive minimize and expand buttons in OS X windows would lead to constant confusion and data loss. I've never once clicked the wrong button. Silly.
I did read the article and I'm aware that it was a quote, but anyone editing a site that has the kind of traffic Slashdot does should understand the effects of how things are presented. It probably should have been presented without a direct quote. If you'll notice, a ton of responses focused on the "superior" thing. That effect on the signal-noise ratio is what I was talking about with my post. Avoiding that kind of thing is wise.
Wish you weren't an AC otherwise I'd mark you as "friend." My post is now modded as funny so someone must have agreed with you. I didn't see it modded as troll which is way off the mark. It was probably the "stuperior" thing which is a quote from some movie that eludes me now.
I have no problem with one-button mouse, but I can think of many reasons Apple ought to offer both types. The point wasn't to argue with that, but to point out that there was a day long ago on Slashdot when every Apple post ended with a flame-war inducing comment about the one-button mouse. The gratuitous "superior" thing seemed along that lines. I don't know what the value of having a discussion forum is if the posts are geared toward sparking a flame-war. It definitely sends the signal-noise ratio off the wrong direction and fast.
I thought laying flamebait in the article summaries died with the end of the "but they ruin it all by having a one button mouse" type posts. Anyway, I'm too tired to make a logical argument against it (and many others have done already) so I'll just fall back on an oldie but a goodie from Usenet. Come along kids... it'll be a trip down memory lane.
Drum roll, please...
The company will be working with Apple to add support for Microsoft's superior Windows Media Audio
You misspelled "crappy."
Ba-dum bum!
(Raucous laughter)
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much. I'm here 'til Thursday.
Two, by the time the Mac port comes out, the PC version is usually in the bargain bin, so Mac players are paying $50 for what PC users are now paying $20 for. And if you're like me, I never buy a new release when I know it's going to be half price in 6 months.
I'm not sure how long you've been using Macs, but I've watched that gap closing rapidly in the last few years. Game companies have shown and startlingly renewed interest in getting the Mac versions out either simultaneous with the PC version or hot on the heels of. I can't think of many top games that haven't had a Mac version out in a matter of days.
There are still some, however, I admit. One issue to consider is that some game companies wait to see if a game is big enough to bother porting to the Mac. True, that causes some lag, but it effectively weeds out most of the garbage and if you're a casual game player, that's a small blessing. I've played a lot of the games that PC users brag about having and IMO, it's not impressive. It's like the old Dennis Miller quote about KMart clothing (you know, back before he became Bush's little bitch): "Dontcha love these cheap clothing stores? Two of shit... is shit. If they really wanna fuck you, they'll give you three." Lots of shitty games doesn't mean much to me. I'd rather deal with a gap in the release times and know that most of what's available is actually worth buying.
And yes, I'm well aware of Half-Life, but those kinds of situations are few and far between.
In Apple's MacWorld presentation (and this film) they show how the VT supercomputer is #3 and they talk about the details, but barely touch on #2 and #1. I'm curious what operating systems primarily drive those two, but none of the searches on Google I'm doing are turning up the info that I'm seeking. Anyone have any links or resources to share that can clarify it?
I don't want to sound like yet another obnoxious Mac user, but I have spent less than 2 hours doing maintenance on the 3 Macs running OS X and the 2 running OS 9 that I regularly deal with at home and work... and that's for the entire year! I'm not trying to show off, but rather express my confusion about why Windows continues to be so popular despite the amount of time it requires from its users. I feel sorry for the guy frankly. It sounds like he should explore some other options. December is a busy month for most people. I couldn't imagine spending that much time doing computer maintenance during such a hectic time of year.
I've done a couple searches, but I'm not coming up with anything. Does anyone know why a date in 1904 was selected (assuming it was selected and not some quirk)?
Whoa! Hold on, there. I'm not a Windows user either. I'm primarily a Mac user (OS X) but I have a keen interest in playing around with Linux. I have an old PowerMac that will likely run Linux perfectly well and I'm planning to set it up at work and install Linux for the purpose of exploring it, so my statemet previously that I don't plan on using it wasn't entirely accurate. I meant "use" in the sense that I had no immediate plans to work it into my workflow. But experimenting with it and learning about it is certainly in my immediate future.
I recently installed X11 on my iMac and have been pleasantly surprised by the quality of some of the free software out there. That, along with a brief period of time where I had a Linux machine at my disposal a couple years ago, has piqued my interest in Linux quite a bit.
4) Why do you use Linux? (check all that apply)
( ) It's not Windows
( ) It's not Windows-like
( ) It's not a Microsoft product
( ) It doesn't crush innovation with its monopoly
( ) It doesn't need a security patch every 15 minutes
5) How can Windows be better? (check all that apply)
( ) By being Linux
( ) By being Linux-like
( ) By not being a Microsoft product
( ) By not crushing innovation with its monopoly
( ) By not needing a security patch every 15 minutes
I'm a long-time Mac user. I wasn't dissing the classic OS. I know that OS 9, for the most part, wasn't nearly as prone to freezing up like its predecessors, but the point I was making is that it was enough of a problem (circa System 7.x) that many users came to associate Apple with the operating system that throws out cute little bomb dialogs every so often or just freezes up solid. Fair or not, it's the general sense that a lot of Windows users had of Macs and an image that Apple is still fighting.
I keep seeing mention of the fact that Apple doesn't profit from iTMS, which may or may not be true. And I see mention that iPod sales are the real goal of iTMS, which may or may not be true. What I don't see mentioned is the fact that Apple is once again (as they did with OS X) using their products to regain some of their long-lost mindshare amongst consumers. No longer do people think of the classic Mac OS freezing up daily and crappy Performas of the mid-90s. People are associating Apple with iTMS and the iPod, iMacs and G5s and these are all excellent products that will draw new customers in. iTMS is one part of a wider strategy to increase Apple's marketshare, IMHO. I know several people who are planning to switch from Windows to Mac in the near future and one of those people are doing so specifically because of the quality of the iPod.
I understand that a lot of you here on Slashdot are new to the Mac (since OS X) but those of us who have been on Macs for longer recognize this type of junk tech writing for exactly what it is: an attempt to stir the shit and increase readership. It's probably easier to sell advertising on your site or magazine if you can create just the right anti-Mac tempest in a teapot and sell a few more copies or increase your web site hits. This tactic used to run under the headline "Apple going out of business" or "Apple to close up." Now that's mutated into a "critique" of security or speed claims or whatever. Sadly, there is a fraction of Mac users out there who are still willing to take this bait and play into the game. I'm not even looking at the article. Been there, done that. I recommend that you stare out the window and observe the slow but steady growth of the grass outside--that would be far more productive that playing into this kind of shameless, professional trolling masquerading as tech reporting.
Love him or hate him, you have to give Steve Jobs some credit for working in a corporate environment and being willing to talk this plainly. Yes, I see lots and lots of canned market-speak sprinkled throughout the interview, but there are many moments where it's obvious he's just speaking his mind and it's refreshing to hear someone on the technology side of the music controversy willing to call a little bullshit on both sides of the debate. It's good to hear someone talk about the ethics of illegal downloads on one hand, but then, on the other hand, talk about how clueless the recording industry really is about all this. That's exactly the kind of non-dogmatic attitude that's needed here, not someone willing to tow the RIAA's DRM line (like Microsoft), not someone willing to grandstand for all the illegal downloaders out there (like Kazaa.)
b) A manager stuck with a school of noobs can't just toss out the bad ones and hire new, better ones because they're all noobs. the manager is stuck with biomass of all abilities, and no way around it. A good manager that can make a team of worthless noobs perform is a highly valuable asset.
That wasn't your point, however. You made a blanket statement that management is more valuable than the workers. I think that is a flawed attitude. Yes, a good, highly motivated, inspiring and creative manager is worth more than any given worker, but those managers are a rarity. Even you admitted that. All else being equal, management is not by any stretch of the imagination more valuable than any given worker. IMO, even a half-assed worker is more valuable to a business than your average manager. At least, there is some productivity happening with the bad employee.
Despite YEARS of brainwashing (by Scott Adams) that Management is useless and evil, which you all seem to be blinded by,
How is that preferable to the decades, if not centuries, of brainwashing that individuals couldn't be organized or productive without being shackled to a hierarchy? And why do you assume anyone with such an attitude is taking cues from a comic strip as opposed to drawing conclusions from their own daily experience?
This is Slashdot and you're posting here so it's likely that you're aware that the open source software movement largely embodies this ideal, and it has managed to produce some software and concepts that have played a part in changing the world. (And I say that without even being a particlurly big fan of open source so resist the urge to write me off as an OSS zealot.)
the reality is: Management is far more critical than grunt biomass.
That's the reality we're asked to accept without question on a daily basis and yet I've found that managers quite frequently are figureheads playing the go-between for the knowledgeable workers below and the idea people above. True, there are exceptions, but even as you admit...
good managers are worht their pay because they are rare,
Note that even you must qualify that statement with "good" after making the statement that management is "far more critical than grunt biomass." In a perfect world where all managers were productive and full of great ideas and had any sense of what they were doing, sure, your statements would be true. It would be true in a world full of "good" managers, even "fair" managers. But the fact is that "good" and "fair" are few and far between.
If managers are so much more valuable, why don't you start a business with all managements and just cut out the "grunt biomass" altogether. I'd give you about a week before your entire business caved in.
This is probably one of the best sounding ideas I've heard on Slashdot. I don't know much about SCO's case here or how the legal system works, but it sounds like an excellent plan.
You should look into setting up a web site where people willing to do this register their intentions. Then, give the site as much publicity as you can on the Web, Usenet, etc., to gather as many participants as possible. Use the registration process as a means of to synchronize launching the lawsuits. It seems that the impact of this approach would be increased if all the suits were done simultaneously.
That's the first thing that went through my head when I read that. I've seen the films enough to practically recite them verbatim, and I don't recall any isntance of humans understanding R2. C3PO understands but that's because he's "fleunt in over 8 million forms of communication."
Slashdot Mirror
What a coincidence! So am I. We should start a support group.
The silly thing about a list like this is that it's just pointing out the inevitable. When a story goes from one medium to another, from words to action, you have to abbreviate things and get certain points across about characters in a different way. In the book, it's clear that Gandalf is powerful and not to be triffled with and we know this because Tolkien has page after page to get that point across. In the film, where action is key not words, it must be demonstrated and in a way that doesn't seem too pedantic. So, Gandalf reaching through the window and pulling Sam through violently demonstrates that he's far more powerful than he looks. In a sense, doing it that way remains more faithful to what Tolkien wrote than slavishly adhering to each and every detail.
What's stopping you from doing it?
This is actually a great argument against the dominance of Windows, btw. When Windows defenders claim that viruses and security issues are prevalent on Windows only because it's so widely used, you can point out the dog-chasing-its-tail nature of such a viewpoint and ask them why they continue to be part of the problem by contributing to that prevalence instead of using a different OS. (Frankly, I don't buy the argument, but it's fun to put that out there and see what responses you get.)
I've read countless critiques of the various esoteric design "problems" of OS X and whatnot and none of them have proven useful to me, nor have many of them turned out to be true. I recall reading (probably Tog) that the position of the destructive close button, next to the non-destructive minimize and expand buttons in OS X windows would lead to constant confusion and data loss. I've never once clicked the wrong button. Silly.
Anyway, thanks!
I have no problem with one-button mouse, but I can think of many reasons Apple ought to offer both types. The point wasn't to argue with that, but to point out that there was a day long ago on Slashdot when every Apple post ended with a flame-war inducing comment about the one-button mouse. The gratuitous "superior" thing seemed along that lines. I don't know what the value of having a discussion forum is if the posts are geared toward sparking a flame-war. It definitely sends the signal-noise ratio off the wrong direction and fast.
I thought laying flamebait in the article summaries died with the end of the "but they ruin it all by having a one button mouse" type posts. Anyway, I'm too tired to make a logical argument against it (and many others have done already) so I'll just fall back on an oldie but a goodie from Usenet. Come along kids... it'll be a trip down memory lane.
Drum roll, please...
The company will be working with Apple to add support for Microsoft's superior Windows Media Audio
You misspelled "crappy."
Ba-dum bum!
(Raucous laughter)
Thank you. Thank you. Thanks so much. I'm here 'til Thursday.
I'm not sure how long you've been using Macs, but I've watched that gap closing rapidly in the last few years. Game companies have shown and startlingly renewed interest in getting the Mac versions out either simultaneous with the PC version or hot on the heels of. I can't think of many top games that haven't had a Mac version out in a matter of days.
There are still some, however, I admit. One issue to consider is that some game companies wait to see if a game is big enough to bother porting to the Mac. True, that causes some lag, but it effectively weeds out most of the garbage and if you're a casual game player, that's a small blessing. I've played a lot of the games that PC users brag about having and IMO, it's not impressive. It's like the old Dennis Miller quote about KMart clothing (you know, back before he became Bush's little bitch): "Dontcha love these cheap clothing stores? Two of shit... is shit. If they really wanna fuck you, they'll give you three." Lots of shitty games doesn't mean much to me. I'd rather deal with a gap in the release times and know that most of what's available is actually worth buying.
And yes, I'm well aware of Half-Life, but those kinds of situations are few and far between.
I don't want to sound like yet another obnoxious Mac user, but I have spent less than 2 hours doing maintenance on the 3 Macs running OS X and the 2 running OS 9 that I regularly deal with at home and work... and that's for the entire year! I'm not trying to show off, but rather express my confusion about why Windows continues to be so popular despite the amount of time it requires from its users. I feel sorry for the guy frankly. It sounds like he should explore some other options. December is a busy month for most people. I couldn't imagine spending that much time doing computer maintenance during such a hectic time of year.
I recently installed X11 on my iMac and have been pleasantly surprised by the quality of some of the free software out there. That, along with a brief period of time where I had a Linux machine at my disposal a couple years ago, has piqued my interest in Linux quite a bit.
4) Why do you use Linux? (check all that apply)
( ) It's not Windows
( ) It's not Windows-like
( ) It's not a Microsoft product
( ) It doesn't crush innovation with its monopoly
( ) It doesn't need a security patch every 15 minutes
5) How can Windows be better? (check all that apply)
( ) By being Linux
( ) By being Linux-like
( ) By not being a Microsoft product
( ) By not crushing innovation with its monopoly
( ) By not needing a security patch every 15 minutes
I understand that a lot of you here on Slashdot are new to the Mac (since OS X) but those of us who have been on Macs for longer recognize this type of junk tech writing for exactly what it is: an attempt to stir the shit and increase readership. It's probably easier to sell advertising on your site or magazine if you can create just the right anti-Mac tempest in a teapot and sell a few more copies or increase your web site hits. This tactic used to run under the headline "Apple going out of business" or "Apple to close up." Now that's mutated into a "critique" of security or speed claims or whatever. Sadly, there is a fraction of Mac users out there who are still willing to take this bait and play into the game. I'm not even looking at the article. Been there, done that. I recommend that you stare out the window and observe the slow but steady growth of the grass outside--that would be far more productive that playing into this kind of shameless, professional trolling masquerading as tech reporting.
That wasn't your point, however. You made a blanket statement that management is more valuable than the workers. I think that is a flawed attitude. Yes, a good, highly motivated, inspiring and creative manager is worth more than any given worker, but those managers are a rarity. Even you admitted that. All else being equal, management is not by any stretch of the imagination more valuable than any given worker. IMO, even a half-assed worker is more valuable to a business than your average manager. At least, there is some productivity happening with the bad employee.
How is that preferable to the decades, if not centuries, of brainwashing that individuals couldn't be organized or productive without being shackled to a hierarchy? And why do you assume anyone with such an attitude is taking cues from a comic strip as opposed to drawing conclusions from their own daily experience?
This is Slashdot and you're posting here so it's likely that you're aware that the open source software movement largely embodies this ideal, and it has managed to produce some software and concepts that have played a part in changing the world. (And I say that without even being a particlurly big fan of open source so resist the urge to write me off as an OSS zealot.)
the reality is: Management is far more critical than grunt biomass.
That's the reality we're asked to accept without question on a daily basis and yet I've found that managers quite frequently are figureheads playing the go-between for the knowledgeable workers below and the idea people above. True, there are exceptions, but even as you admit...
good managers are worht their pay because they are rare,
Note that even you must qualify that statement with "good" after making the statement that management is "far more critical than grunt biomass." In a perfect world where all managers were productive and full of great ideas and had any sense of what they were doing, sure, your statements would be true. It would be true in a world full of "good" managers, even "fair" managers. But the fact is that "good" and "fair" are few and far between.
If managers are so much more valuable, why don't you start a business with all managements and just cut out the "grunt biomass" altogether. I'd give you about a week before your entire business caved in.
You should look into setting up a web site where people willing to do this register their intentions. Then, give the site as much publicity as you can on the Web, Usenet, etc., to gather as many participants as possible. Use the registration process as a means of to synchronize launching the lawsuits. It seems that the impact of this approach would be increased if all the suits were done simultaneously.