Thank you for taking the words right out of my mouth! My sentiments exactly. What's funny about the complaints about the latest films is that most of the criticisms apply to the old films, but most "fans" out there haven't come to terms with how much more jaded and cynical they've become since the original trilogy was out. Newsflash: the acting, dialog, plot lines and effects of the original films were mediocre too. The only difference is that the concept of an effects-loaded fantasy space film was newer at the time. The newer films are no worse or better. The whole point is not to make an Oscar-winning film, but to pull the viewer into that other world. All of the films succeed amazingly at that. Talk to the average school kid out there who hasn't yet lost the ability to go along with a moviemaker's vision.
I wish us older Star Wars fans would stop pissing on the parade for the younger fans.
Some local links for any out-of-towners
on
Linuxfest Northwest
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· Score: 3, Informative
Just thought I'd post a few local links for anyone coming from out of town.
bellingham.net -- slash-style local news and events site.
As someone who lives in Bellingham (in fact, a five-minute walk from BTC) let me offer one, non-computer-related thing that Bellingham has: natural beauty. Bellingham consistently wins awards for the quality of life it offers its populace, and it's well-deserved. Yes, you could pick larger and more populated venues for this kind of event, but you would have a hard time finding something more surrounded by natural beauty. (May not mean much to some people, but it means a lot to me.) There is a tree that is not more than a two minute walk from BTC where you can regularly spot bald eagles perched. You can get good clear views of Mt. Baker. Good luck finding sights like that in larger cities (and believe me, those are the tip of the iceberg.)
It's not nearly as large as Tacoma.
And it's not nearly as noisy, smoggy, congested, dirty, run-down, crime-ridden and smelly either but let's not pick nits.
Can't tell if you're down on the corporate web sites or not, but a couple that are aimed at the younger crowd are Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network which both have great games. Not particularly educational and the advertising can be a little annoying, but definitely good bookmarks for the "fun" category. My daugher loves them both.
In this particular case, broadband has come to mean "high capacity." That's how the vast majority---VAST majority---of people use it
For the most part, I agree with you and feel the same way, but how do you respond to people who claim that Unix isn't an operating system? The vast majority of people think of an operating system as the GUI-based experience and the consumer-friendly applications you get when you buy a Windows or Macintosh machine. Therefore, Unix isn't an operating system (according to the masses.)
Oh, I see. That makes me feel sooooo much better. That makes me feel like I can trust Microsoft to the ends of the earth.
Let's learn from history, shall we?
Lesson 1: exclusive console rights to Halo.
Playing Halo on your PC yet? Even though Bungiesoft said it would be available for PC and Mac? I'd give id more credit than that, but they are dealing with Microsoft and who knows what sort of arm-twisting may be going on behind the scenes. We'll see.
I say if Ms. MacDonald believes concerns about privacy are outdated and only the concern of Luddites, then I say she ought to lead by example. I hearby make a public calling to Ms. MacDonald to immediately do all of the following to prove to us that privacy shouldn't be an issue:
* Make available all her credit card numbers, PINs, bank account numbers, and all personal financial information, including bank statements and both personal and professional tax information.
* Make available to the public all financial statements, receipts and information concerning purchases she has made.
* Make available for public viewing all personal correspondences via all mediums (i.e., email, written, phone, etc.)
* Make available all passwords to her Internet accounts and online services.
* Make available all professional exchanges between herself and her clients as well as those of others in her field and those with whom she does other business.
* Make available for public viewing all personal journals and/or diaries as well as any personal records pertaining to herself or her family members (i.e., birth certificates, medical records, etc.)
* Install 24-hour Web cams in her home, business or place or work and in any other places she spends significant time; of course, we expect that since privacy is not a conern, all personal moments in the bedroom and bathrooms will be freely abailable in an uncensored form.
* Leave the locks on the doors of her home, car, business and elsewhere (including safes and other contained personal belongings) unlocked and available to the general public.
I'm sure there are other items and areas I have forgotten, but since Ms. MacDonald seems to willing to give up privacy in favor of protection from a world full of terrorists, I bet she will happily accommodate any further requests in the future.
So, Ms. MacDonald... lead the way. Lead by example. Show us poor, befuddled, unwashed Luddites the way out of our backward thinking about privacy and basic human rights, We'll be right behind you too because it's painfully obvious to us that an attorney with links to a conservative think-tank who feels the need to swipe aside the our basic rights could have nothing but the best of intentions for us.
The subject isn't the film title, but a joke film title from the movie that I consider a rather underappreciated film: Robert Townshend's Hollywood Shuffle. Not only is the film hilarious, but it is one of those rare comedies that uses the humor to make a point--and it does it without getting preachy or too high-and-mighty. It's interesting too because it contains many of the soon-to-be members of "In Living Color."
Can someone please show me the real show stoper bugs in 10.2? I didn't think so.
Think again. I love OS X, don't get me wrong, but it's got some glaring f***-ups that need to be addressed. They are the sort of thing you would only notice in a business or work environment. I don't think a lot of them would pop up in home use.
The worst of the bunch is the Finder's apparent inability to deal with copying large numbers of files to or from a network volume. Try it out sometime. Drag a few thousand files to your desktop from a network volume and let it go. The copy progress either gets bogged down and stops or it puts up an error dialog and bails out. Try copying large numbers of files to a zip disk even. You occasionally get errors trying that. Try copying one or two very large files. Cross your fingers because it may or may not work.
It's not a "show stopper" for most, but if you need to move large numbers of files or several large files around frequently, it can be.
There is a reason Shawn King of the Your Mac Life show changed the name of his list of links to stupid and clueless Mac articles from "Bozo of the Week" to "Dvorak of the Week."
Dvorak has time and time again shot massive holes through his credibility when it comes to the topic of Macintosh and Apple. I'm surprised he's not so thoroughly embarrassed by this point to avoid the subject completely. It's likely he only put this column up to kick up hits to his column which is precisely why I'm not going to it.
I swear to freakin' God, the geek crowd on the Internet has the most impenetrable tunnel-vision I've ever seen. How on earth could Apple lose customers by cancelling a beta testing program? Most customers know nothing of it, much less the "controversy" surrounding it being cancelled.
_Spirited Away_ really deserves a Best Picture nod, IMHO.
Definitely. The storyline wasn't spectacular, but the animation was amazing and beautiful, easily the best animated film. I don't really keep up with film awards and whatnot, but was Spirited Away not nominated? If not, you go get the torches and I'll get the dogs and let's hunt down the @#$*-wads responsible for that oversight.
Recall the recent (and pathetic, IMO) outcry from actors against the film S1m0ne which dealt with the concept of using CG actors in films. There may be a willful attempt to muddy the waters, or at the very least an unconscious desire to leave things unclear in an attempt to shun digitally produced work in film. I find the idea of classifying films based on what percentage contains "animation" to be asinine. Obviously, the solution is to introduce digital categories instead of stomping all over the definitions of live-action and animation, but it seems that there is little desire to recognize digitally produced performance as its own unique endeavor.
I bet artists who labor over traditional animation probably take offense at the notion of competing with CG and the same probably goes for live-action. Rightfully so. These are three different activities, all perfectly valid in their own way, and they should not be competing against each other. Hollywood apparently wants to treat CG work as the unloved stepchild, constantly pushing it away. No surprise.
If music industry execs really do decide to rely on this kind of software to guide their judgment, then we can surely expect more homogenized and bland music in the future. This will further propel popular music away from the realm of art and closer to the realm of product and entertainment. They may be able to determine hits and weed out non-hits with this software, but that will never take the place of a real artist and in fact, reliance on this kind of thing may widen the gulf between artists and entertainers to an extent that the two are finally, properly viewed as different things entirely.
There is a great saying that I love that I've heard credited to David Cronenberg (never been able to verify it). The saying goes, "An entertainer gives you what you want. An artist gives you what you didn't realize you wanted."
This kind of hit-finding software will give music execs the abillity to perfect their entertainment while pushing them almost entirely away from art. For real artists out there, this could be a good thing, in the long-run.
An important part of this is that it uses Javascript and the DOM as a scripting language. This opens up basic GUI wrapping of OS X API frameworks to a lot of individuals out there who would probably never try programming if they had to use PERL, C, or any other regular language for development.
That's great, but if you've got the basics of Javascript down then the jump to Perl or C or any C-like language is really trivial, IMO. The syntax and many of the concepts behind Javascript bear a striking similarity to the syntax of C and the object-oriented concepts in Javascript look and work a lot like many of the OOP languages out there. To some extent, I disagree with the notion that Javascript is a beginner's scripting language. For many of us who program, Javascript is child's-play, but for a beginner...? There's quite a learning curve involved.
I haven't actually looked over Konfabulator yet, but if a full working knowledge of Javascript is required, then I would argue that it's not really a beginner's environment.
I'm curious as to whether or not the open source community has attempted to address this need in software? Are there any open source tax/financial software packages out there? There are several attempted replacements for MS Office and open source operating systems, graphics apps, audio, databases, etc., etc. What exists out there for replacing mainstream finance apps? If there isn't anything, wouldn't this be a great opening for an open source solution to step in? It seems to me that a lot of mainstream companies sit up and take notice of this kind of thing and pretty quickly start figuring out how to stop pissing off their customers. Maybe Intuit needs such a "threat" hanging over them to keep them in line.
He gets $1.2 million for renting the jet to them -- a jet that Apple bought for Jobs.
You mean the jet that costs Jobs money to maintain and use? You bet your ass he rents it to them, and why shouldn't he? Why should Jobs foot the bill for the use of his property? I realize that it seems odd that a CEO would rent his jet to the company he runs, but this is no Enron. Let's keep the overreacting to a minimum, shall we?
I too just booted my Mac into single user mode and can access EVERYTHING. Oh my!
Hell, the interesting thing about this is that Macs running OS X have an analogous "hack" in that anyone with an OS 9 CD can boot into the machine and have full access. OS 9 doesn't recognize any of the security that Mac OS X uses so an user has full access to the contents of the machine that way. That's why it's sad that companies like Quark who can't get on the ball with updating their products have forced Apple to make their newer machines bootable into OS 9. The plan was to stop producing machines that could boot into OS 9 this January, but that has been put off for a bit.
Did I say that? No. Would you care to cite examples?
They find someone with Windows 98 loaded on a piece of garbage PC to tell them about their experience. Of course they had a bad experience.
You have evidence to back this up or is this just something you're pullng out of thin air?
Windows XP and Windows 98 are in a different universe.
Maybe, but it's the same company and the same corporate philosophy behind the two. Maybe they differ in many ways, but some people have grown tired of the direction MS is taking their operating system and seek something else. Besides, Steve Jobs has a point when he says that there are benefits to having a company produce the hardware and the software. I know people all around who have moved on to XP. Most of them have retreated to previous version.
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Thank you for taking the words right out of my mouth! My sentiments exactly. What's funny about the complaints about the latest films is that most of the criticisms apply to the old films, but most "fans" out there haven't come to terms with how much more jaded and cynical they've become since the original trilogy was out. Newsflash: the acting, dialog, plot lines and effects of the original films were mediocre too. The only difference is that the concept of an effects-loaded fantasy space film was newer at the time. The newer films are no worse or better. The whole point is not to make an Oscar-winning film, but to pull the viewer into that other world. All of the films succeed amazingly at that. Talk to the average school kid out there who hasn't yet lost the ability to go along with a moviemaker's vision.
I wish us older Star Wars fans would stop pissing on the parade for the younger fans.
bellingham.net -- slash-style local news and events site.
bellingham.com -- general info.
The Bellingham Herald -- local newspaper and its local entertainment and events site.
Bar Stop -- should be self-explanatory. ;^) Bar Stop has a guide to places to stay and restaurants.
City of Bellingham official site.
Oh boy... I can't believe you didn't tip off the geek crowd to the Krispy Kreme in Burlington, about a half-mile away from the theater you described.
What's Bellingham got?
As someone who lives in Bellingham (in fact, a five-minute walk from BTC) let me offer one, non-computer-related thing that Bellingham has: natural beauty. Bellingham consistently wins awards for the quality of life it offers its populace, and it's well-deserved. Yes, you could pick larger and more populated venues for this kind of event, but you would have a hard time finding something more surrounded by natural beauty. (May not mean much to some people, but it means a lot to me.) There is a tree that is not more than a two minute walk from BTC where you can regularly spot bald eagles perched. You can get good clear views of Mt. Baker. Good luck finding sights like that in larger cities (and believe me, those are the tip of the iceberg.)
It's not nearly as large as Tacoma.
And it's not nearly as noisy, smoggy, congested, dirty, run-down, crime-ridden and smelly either but let's not pick nits.
Can't tell if you're down on the corporate web sites or not, but a couple that are aimed at the younger crowd are Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network which both have great games. Not particularly educational and the advertising can be a little annoying, but definitely good bookmarks for the "fun" category. My daugher loves them both.
For the most part, I agree with you and feel the same way, but how do you respond to people who claim that Unix isn't an operating system? The vast majority of people think of an operating system as the GUI-based experience and the consumer-friendly applications you get when you buy a Windows or Macintosh machine. Therefore, Unix isn't an operating system (according to the masses.)
exclusive console rights
Oh, I see. That makes me feel sooooo much better. That makes me feel like I can trust Microsoft to the ends of the earth.
Let's learn from history, shall we?
Lesson 1: exclusive console rights to Halo.
Playing Halo on your PC yet? Even though Bungiesoft said it would be available for PC and Mac? I'd give id more credit than that, but they are dealing with Microsoft and who knows what sort of arm-twisting may be going on behind the scenes. We'll see.
Define "some."
2) Apple CPUs suck for desktop use.
Dude, seriously... put down the bong.
I say if Ms. MacDonald believes concerns about privacy are outdated and only the concern of Luddites, then I say she ought to lead by example. I hearby make a public calling to Ms. MacDonald to immediately do all of the following to prove to us that privacy shouldn't be an issue:
* Make available all her credit card numbers, PINs, bank account numbers, and all personal financial information, including bank statements and both personal and professional tax information.
* Make available to the public all financial statements, receipts and information concerning purchases she has made.
* Make available for public viewing all personal correspondences via all mediums (i.e., email, written, phone, etc.)
* Make available all passwords to her Internet accounts and online services.
* Make available all professional exchanges between herself and her clients as well as those of others in her field and those with whom she does other business.
* Make available for public viewing all personal journals and/or diaries as well as any personal records pertaining to herself or her family members (i.e., birth certificates, medical records, etc.)
* Install 24-hour Web cams in her home, business or place or work and in any other places she spends significant time; of course, we expect that since privacy is not a conern, all personal moments in the bedroom and bathrooms will be freely abailable in an uncensored form.
* Leave the locks on the doors of her home, car, business and elsewhere (including safes and other contained personal belongings) unlocked and available to the general public.
I'm sure there are other items and areas I have forgotten, but since Ms. MacDonald seems to willing to give up privacy in favor of protection from a world full of terrorists, I bet she will happily accommodate any further requests in the future.
So, Ms. MacDonald... lead the way. Lead by example. Show us poor, befuddled, unwashed Luddites the way out of our backward thinking about privacy and basic human rights, We'll be right behind you too because it's painfully obvious to us that an attorney with links to a conservative think-tank who feels the need to swipe aside the our basic rights could have nothing but the best of intentions for us.
I wonder how Microsoft will convince consumers that loss of control is a good thing, and how long the convincing will take.
Oh that's easy! All you have to do is convince everyone that having control over your computer just helps terrorists.
Sigh. Now if only I were kidding.
The subject isn't the film title, but a joke film title from the movie that I consider a rather underappreciated film: Robert Townshend's Hollywood Shuffle. Not only is the film hilarious, but it is one of those rare comedies that uses the humor to make a point--and it does it without getting preachy or too high-and-mighty. It's interesting too because it contains many of the soon-to-be members of "In Living Color."
Think again. I love OS X, don't get me wrong, but it's got some glaring f***-ups that need to be addressed. They are the sort of thing you would only notice in a business or work environment. I don't think a lot of them would pop up in home use.
The worst of the bunch is the Finder's apparent inability to deal with copying large numbers of files to or from a network volume. Try it out sometime. Drag a few thousand files to your desktop from a network volume and let it go. The copy progress either gets bogged down and stops or it puts up an error dialog and bails out. Try copying large numbers of files to a zip disk even. You occasionally get errors trying that. Try copying one or two very large files. Cross your fingers because it may or may not work.
It's not a "show stopper" for most, but if you need to move large numbers of files or several large files around frequently, it can be.
Week One: The dangers of open source software
Week Two: More dangers of open source software
Week Three: How frequent licensing payments improve security
Week Four: Shhhh... better security means not discussing exploits and security holes
Week Five: How the media exaggerates security issues
Week Six: Did we mention the dangers of open source? Let's review
Week Seven: How to uninstall Linux
Week Eight: Macintosh--the gay-communist connection
Week Nine: (No classes during this week so students can reinstall Windows or do any necessary security patches.)
Week Ten: Trusted computing, i.e., how hypnosis is your friend
Week Eleven: The dangers of open source software revisitted
OMFG!
Dvorak has time and time again shot massive holes through his credibility when it comes to the topic of Macintosh and Apple. I'm surprised he's not so thoroughly embarrassed by this point to avoid the subject completely. It's likely he only put this column up to kick up hits to his column which is precisely why I'm not going to it.
I swear to freakin' God, the geek crowd on the Internet has the most impenetrable tunnel-vision I've ever seen. How on earth could Apple lose customers by cancelling a beta testing program? Most customers know nothing of it, much less the "controversy" surrounding it being cancelled.
Get out a little more often.
They should call this the Gladys Kravitz filter.
Definitely. The storyline wasn't spectacular, but the animation was amazing and beautiful, easily the best animated film. I don't really keep up with film awards and whatnot, but was Spirited Away not nominated? If not, you go get the torches and I'll get the dogs and let's hunt down the @#$*-wads responsible for that oversight.
I bet artists who labor over traditional animation probably take offense at the notion of competing with CG and the same probably goes for live-action. Rightfully so. These are three different activities, all perfectly valid in their own way, and they should not be competing against each other. Hollywood apparently wants to treat CG work as the unloved stepchild, constantly pushing it away. No surprise.
There is a great saying that I love that I've heard credited to David Cronenberg (never been able to verify it). The saying goes, "An entertainer gives you what you want. An artist gives you what you didn't realize you wanted."
This kind of hit-finding software will give music execs the abillity to perfect their entertainment while pushing them almost entirely away from art. For real artists out there, this could be a good thing, in the long-run.
That's great, but if you've got the basics of Javascript down then the jump to Perl or C or any C-like language is really trivial, IMO. The syntax and many of the concepts behind Javascript bear a striking similarity to the syntax of C and the object-oriented concepts in Javascript look and work a lot like many of the OOP languages out there. To some extent, I disagree with the notion that Javascript is a beginner's scripting language. For many of us who program, Javascript is child's-play, but for a beginner...? There's quite a learning curve involved.
I haven't actually looked over Konfabulator yet, but if a full working knowledge of Javascript is required, then I would argue that it's not really a beginner's environment.
I'm curious as to whether or not the open source community has attempted to address this need in software? Are there any open source tax/financial software packages out there? There are several attempted replacements for MS Office and open source operating systems, graphics apps, audio, databases, etc., etc. What exists out there for replacing mainstream finance apps? If there isn't anything, wouldn't this be a great opening for an open source solution to step in? It seems to me that a lot of mainstream companies sit up and take notice of this kind of thing and pretty quickly start figuring out how to stop pissing off their customers. Maybe Intuit needs such a "threat" hanging over them to keep them in line.
You mean the jet that costs Jobs money to maintain and use? You bet your ass he rents it to them, and why shouldn't he? Why should Jobs foot the bill for the use of his property? I realize that it seems odd that a CEO would rent his jet to the company he runs, but this is no Enron. Let's keep the overreacting to a minimum, shall we?
Hell, the interesting thing about this is that Macs running OS X have an analogous "hack" in that anyone with an OS 9 CD can boot into the machine and have full access. OS 9 doesn't recognize any of the security that Mac OS X uses so an user has full access to the contents of the machine that way. That's why it's sad that companies like Quark who can't get on the ball with updating their products have forced Apple to make their newer machines bootable into OS 9. The plan was to stop producing machines that could boot into OS 9 this January, but that has been put off for a bit.
Did I say that? No. Would you care to cite examples?
They find someone with Windows 98 loaded on a piece of garbage PC to tell them about their experience. Of course they had a bad experience.
You have evidence to back this up or is this just something you're pullng out of thin air?
Windows XP and Windows 98 are in a different universe.
Maybe, but it's the same company and the same corporate philosophy behind the two. Maybe they differ in many ways, but some people have grown tired of the direction MS is taking their operating system and seek something else. Besides, Steve Jobs has a point when he says that there are benefits to having a company produce the hardware and the software. I know people all around who have moved on to XP. Most of them have retreated to previous version.