After I found this site on making business card cubes, I started doing more experiments and figured out how to make tetrahedrons, octahedrons, and icosahedrons using a really simple module.
I bought an ATI TV Wonder VE card and had all kinds of hell with my crappy on board video card, so I bought an medium end ATI AGP card which I could *never* get to work with my system. After two days of booting in VGA and green screens installing and uninstalling drivers, I returned in and bought a GeForce card that worked great first time and works great with the ATI TV Card.
ATI may have the hardware, but, I agree, their drivers are *BUGGY*.
I was rewatching Attack of the Clones the other day (yes, it sucks, but it does have cool eye candy) and thinking that if anyone spent as much money as Lucas and if ILM put in the same effort they applied to the Star Wars films, almost anything would be filmable. Instead, they blow it all on crappy stories, poor direction, and mediocre acting. Look at the chase scene on Coruscant and think about all of the work that went into that -- all of the 3d models of speeders and buildings, the alien billboards, the crowds. Many man-months of work and they all flash by in a few frames.
However, when I think of the adaptions of "classic" SF that I have seen, none of them really impress me, yet I can't pin the fault on the SFX (weak as they have been). I love movies, but I think that books are superior -- the movie in my head is *always* better than the movie on the screen.
Having said all of that, it I had a huge budget to work with and ILM or WETA at my disposal, my dream project would be a "straight" adaption of one of the Heinlein juveniles. It would be set in an alternate universe/timeline where the future progressed exactly as it did in the novels -- Mars is populated, Venus is a smelly swamp, digital computers never really kicked in -- interplanetary ship pilots plot their courses with sliderules, and we built huge wheeled space stations in the 1960's. Red Planet, Space Cadet, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. None of them campy, just done as top notch period pieces...
I kinda like the idea, even if you have to plug in the TV to conserve battery life, it does mean you can watch cable, sattelite, digitial cable, DVDs, or even feeds from your computer via a media center, anywhere in your house.
When I go to Best Buy and see the 10-12 different pocket and tiny portable TVs, I always think, "Why bother, all I could receive is 3-4 snowy local channels".
I used to get a kick out of naming Boolean class status variables bFailin (in Hungarian notation) so I could write VB code like:
Dim myXYZ As CXYZClass
myXYZ.DoSomething
If myXYZ.bFailin Then...
Before you flame my coding style (lack of proper error handling, using Hungarian notation for class members, etc.), this was a long time ago and I know better now. But the code is kinda funny...
Our best roleplaying games were ones where we pretty much abandoned the rules and used percentile dice for everything. "Hmm, you've got several years of experience doing that, so I think you should have a 75% chance of success." "No way, this should be easier than that, I'd say 95%" "OK, make it 85%", then you roll. Easy, no rule checking, and you concentrated on the story and the characters...
Hmm, a bit of Googling and I find most people agreeing with my interpretation -- a low, roiling, overcast sky, chaotically lit by city glow and flashing neon. Somehow, bright blue clear skies don't fit my vision of Neuromancer's world.
This is further supported by Neil Gaimon's deliberate and ironic updating of the line when he wrote (something like): "The sky was the unblemished blue of a television turned to a dead channel." Obviously, this line wasn't intended to be an updating of the famous opening line, but a jarring contrast using most of the same words.
"The sky was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel."
The funny thing about this line is that it meant "TV snow", which is becoming very rare now that most tuners blank out the picture to a neon blue, so now most readers probably think the sky was unnaturally blue and blank.
This ranks up there with kids not knowing what "sounding like a broken record" means or the joke I ran across the other day on the rec.humor.funny "best of" lists where a stupid parent wants to buy her son a blank CD at the record store because she doesn't know what kind of music he likes. Boy, was she stupid. Imagine, a recordable CD:-)
Gibson, at his best, is a poet and his prose relies on free association of words, images, and technology. When we're lucky, there is a story in there, too. As a futurist, he gets the "feel" right quite often, but I don't know if he even tries to really research the science and technology behind what he writes.
Add: "small bits of rock and mineral" with nasty, caustic chemicals. Think of trying to grow plants in sterile, dusty sand that has been soaking in Clorox for a few million years.
Actually, I'm hoping the Saudi's invest some of their oil money and start planning the Martian Islamic Empire. If that happened, we'd be all over the solar system within a century.
The weirdest remedy (that worked) was when I walked into a sub shop with annoying hiccups. The waitress said, "What I can I get you?" and I said, "A cure for my hiccups." She said, "No problem, name three famous bald men." Me: "uh, Yul Brynner (sp?), Telly Savalas, and, uh, uh, Billy Zane, currently." She said, "OK, your hiccups are gone, can I get you anything else?"
This is absolutely true and I was excited about the possibility of my kids being able to watch marginally acceptible movies.
I will admit that I am a hypocrite about watch my kids watch and read. My daughter is in the 6th grade. When I was in the 6th grade, I was reading Stephen King. If my daughter was reading a King novel, I would freak. I was watching R rated movies, but I prescreen most PG and all PG-13 movies and refuse to let my kids watch them if I don't approve.
I, on the other hand, refuse to watch movies that are butchered for TV or to even rent R-rated cuts of unrated or NC-17 rated films that the local video store gets.
Do I want Hollywood to make all movies clean family films? Not at all, but I applaud people like Robert Rodriquez for making films like Spy Kids.
Does anyone remember some crappy comedic horror film from the 80's (intentionally "funny") that had a short intermission in the middle where a guy in a suit discussed how R-rated films make more money than PG films, but since his movie didn't have anything in it to earn an R, he says "Fuck you"? That's what I think sucks about PG-13 -- movies that have no reason being anything other than family fare push in just enough "adult" material to get a PG-13. On the other hand, movies that would be a very enjoyable R get cut just enough to get a PG-13.
Quite often, it is a single scene or one or two words that push a rating one way or another. This would be trivial to change on a DVD, even without filtering software.
I can't in my wildest dreams imagine why the MPAA can not see that this would increase their audience.
Only slightly on topic: When I went to see Starship Troopers in the theater, I sat beside a man with his ~10yo son. They both sat patiently through the profanity, blood, decapitations, dismemberments, and alien gore, but when there was a shot of bare breasts, the father turned and covered his kids eyes. It takes all kinds, I guess...
I recently bought a Franklin eBookman ($39.95 at CostCo!) and then, more recently, got an iPaq through work. The last five books I've read have been on one or the other PDA's (I had the Baen CD-ROM of Honor Harrington books and others). It still isn't quite as good as a paper book, but it is the best way I've found yet to read in bed.
I've been using the Mobipocket reader on both devices and the autoscroll feature is really cool -- you can prop up the device, turn on the backlight, and adjust the autoscroll to your reading speed. Hands-free, no reading lamp, no cramps from trying to prop up and turn pages.
On thing that strikes me is how much typography and formatting matter, which is, as others have pointed out, the problem with Gutenberg texts. I have read quite a few PG texts in the past (or at least used them for reference when I was looking for particular quotes or need a big text file to test something:-), and the formatting leaves a lot to be desired. On the PDA's, weird page and line breaks or even bad justification or extreme ragged edges, are very disconcerting when reading.
Uh, that's what I was saying. I was just pointing out that, for concerts, hot acts charge premium prices.
Was the last line an insult? What brought that on?
If it matters (and it doesn't), the last three CD's I bought were by Puddle of Mudd, Echo and the Bunnymen, and The Old 97's -- No Britney in the bunch...
There is a precedent for doing it the "right" way: I can pay nearly $100 to see a top pop band in concert or I can pay a $5 cover to see a good local band.
Granted, it won't be in a huge stadium or auditorium with fireworks, light shows, and ear splitting sound systems. But hey, I can hang around and talk to the band during breaks and have a few beers that don't cost $10 a piece.
There is a chance that this type of recycling might work for such a device, assuming the "hardening" process is chemically reversable. Since the printer would be starting with homogenous polymer "ink wells" and, theoretically, wouldn't be mixing, fusing, or chemically combining the "inks", then the polymers might be able to be tagged for dissassembly (which might take nano-technology, but no miracles of chemistry or physics).
Of course, if the hardening process is not chemically or physically reversable, any nano-dissassembly of the completed device would just leave you with carefully separated heaps of dust.
One other idea would be that if these items are made of "plastics", then discarded devices might be able to be ground up and the resulting grey powder used for the case and filler of new devices. You can't just grind up a discarded TV set and its cost prohibitive to separate the metal, glass, plastic, copper, etc. for recycling, but you might be able to do it with these devices if they are carefully designed...
A good start for this would be if McDonald's would take start recycling old Happy Meal toys into new ones by grinding up the old plastic and recasting it -- I think I just threw away an entire garbage bag of Happy Meal toys and assorted pieces.
I'm replying to myself because I saw Two Towers last night.
First of all, I was blown away. There are probably more changes to the book in the second movie than the first, but I'll go out on a big shaky limb and admit that I think most of the changes actually improved the story.
After revealing that heresy, remember that Tolkien himself changed and re-wrote the story so much that the published version was just a snapshot of one state of the story -- if he had done another rewrite, it would probably have been just as different.
Specifically (spoilers), I thought I would hate the change in Faramir. Instead, since the movie has to show external things and can't really show internals, having Faramir nobly release Frodo and Sam and Smeagol wouldn't make any sense -- he pretty much had to realize the stakes before he could make the decision.
Elves at Helm's Deep. I know what Tolkein wrote about the elves being apart from the events, but, again, without a huge onscreen backstory, they would look like total bastards if they didn't try to help at all when the entire kingdom of Rohan was about to be wiped out.
Arwen and the somewhat premature departure of the Rivendell elves. J.R.R. wasn't too swift in the romance department, so the amplification of Arwen for the film is (mostly) good. Weaving in the stuff from the Appendix and making her choice moving (and somewhat ambiguous for those who haven't read the books) makes for good cinema.
The Ents. They may have been done about as well as they could have been -- big humanoid walking trees are likely to look hokey no matter what you do. I was dissapointed that they didn't decide to attack Isengard at the Entmoot, but the way the movie handled it greatly elevated the characters of Merry and Pippen -- instead of imparting a bit of info and hanging around for comic relief, they essentially gathered the army that storms Isengard and leads to Saruman's defeat.
At first I groaned at Aragorn's "death" -- it was a bit cliche. But, his absense led to scenes that illustrated the feelings of Eowyn, Gimli, and Legolas.
Good Stuff: The preparation for the battle of Helm's Deep was very moving. Suiting up the old men and dragging teenage boys from their mothers to face unsurmountable odds gave the battle a human dimension to match the hoardes of MASSIVE generated warriors.
Gollum/Smeagol, as others have pointed out, is the best animated/CGI character to date. He isn't perfectly realistic, but he *feels* real -- when you watch him, he evokes emotion and you can see him thinking. There are a few scenes that approach perfection in acting and FX.
The Ents attacking Isengard. I would like to have seen one thing -- an ent planting his foot or hand in the walls and growing into it, splintering the stone. Other than that, it was as good as I could have hoped.
There were quite a few things in FOTR that I felt the same way about. After I'd watched it a few times, I re-read the book. Interestingly, most things that I thought were over the top in the movie (Bilbo's bulging eyes, Galadriel's transformation, etc.) were almost word for word as described in the book.
The difference is that, in the book, these scenes are from a character's point of view (usually Frodo). So, Frodo "sees" Bilbo tranform into a fierce, wild eyed creature and "sees" Galadrial grow tall and dark and hears her voice change dramatically.
In the movie, the audience is a third person viewer and Jackson chose to show these POV shots as happening objectively. This may be the only way to portray these inner experiences in the film and people I know who have not read the books have no problems with them.
I'm seeing Two Towers in 2.5 hours, but judging from FOTR, Jackson has a good handle on the major themes. It is interesting to read film critics (those who have and those who haven't read them books) and note the disparity in opinion. One guy was bored by the Shire scenes, someone else didn't like the battle scenes, someone thinks there is too much talking, another thinks that Jackson is ignoring character and story and concentrating on visuals and SFX.
For the record, here are the things I think weren't handled well in FOTR (some are improved in the extended edition):
Saruman -- As much as I like Christopher Lee, I think Jackson's direction of him is wrong. Due to time constraints, you don't get the impact of his betrayal because as soon as he appears, he is evil. The mystery of the Palantir is revealed as soon as it is shown.
Storytime Compression -- I don't have a problem with Frodo leaving soon after the party instead of 17 years later. However, Saruman converting Isengard from a pastoral fortress to a pit of hell in the time it takes Frodo and co. to travel to Rivendell is a bit much.
Galadriel and Lothlorien -- get gutted. In the original edition, they are practically cameos. Leaving out the gift giving was a crime. Cate Blanchett is a wonderful actress, but I don't care for her portrayal.
Gimli and Legolas -- the enmity between elves and dwarves comes across as childish bickering. Gimli and Legolas don't have enough scenes in the original edition to develop the impact that their eventual friendship should have.
Things Jackson did better than I could have hoped anyone could have done:
Casting Locations Height Effects Gravity without awkwardness The Balrog
Finally, kudos to the entire crew for filling the film with subtle details. I wanted to wander around Rivendell and look at the stuff in the background. Every costume and piece of armor is perfect. The maps and Bilbo's book made me want to read them. I want to wander around Bag End and poke around in all of the drawers. I felt the immensity of Moria and the grandeur of Middle Earth without ever feeling like the film was a succession of set pieces.
They would have sold another X-Box this Christmas if they had more non-Adult games. I wanted one, but I just couldn't justify the purchase "for my kids" because there weren't enough "kid friendly" games.
And no, I didn't buy a Gamecube. My neighbor has one (loves it) and my kids get their Nintendo fix there, on their old N64 (hooked up to an Amiga monitor in the study), and their GBA's. There weren't enough games *I* wanted for the GameCube.
I got a Playstation 2 for the wide selection of games and backward compatibility with the PS1 games.
Maybe they can find some way of making money with it or doing some real cool research for microgravity manufacturing. Aside from our really cool planetary probes, all of our other space exploration accomplishments have been a result of the "Space Race". If we have an economic space race, maybe something will get accomplished.
Hell, if we want a *real* cold war style space race, sell it to the Saudi's -- then we'll be forced to spend a lot of money building another space station to one-up them and to keep an eye on them:-)
Reading off a screen isn't that bad!
on
War of Honor
·
· Score: 1
When I heard about War of Honor, I remembered that I had bought the first Honor Harrington book (On Basilisk Station) last year, but never read it (I started it, but it seemed pretty lame). I dug out Basilisk and read it. About halfway through I stopped hanging up on the amateurish writing and really got into the story, so I bought the second one. It was good, so I bought the third. Then I realized that I was going to blow nearly $80 at this rate (the used bookstores around here rarely have the Harrington books), so I bought War of Honor and thought I'd give the books on CD a try.
I've read three of them so far on my laptop using the Microsoft Reader and it's really just something you have to get used to. I've read a bit of them on a monitor, but sitting in front of a monitor in an office chair just isn't the way I like to read a book. At home, I plugged in my laptop and sat it on a chair in front of the couch, lay on my side, arranged my pillows, moved around so my finger rested on the "next page" button, and started reading. After I while, I actually preferred this to propping up and reading a "real" book (although I would prefer to have the same book on a PDA so I could put it in my pocket -- or read it on the toilet).
As for the hardcover vs. paperback arguement, I tend to buy hardcovers of my favorite authors new books mostly because I'm anxious to read them or expect to re-read them. But, overall, I prefer paperbacks. It's rare that I don't have a paperback shoved in my pants pocket or jacket pocket.
Regarding Weber himself, his writing gets better as the series progresses, but, as other posters have commented, his plotting suffers as he becomes overconfident. Plus, if I read "the bomb pumped X-ray lasers clawed at the cruiser's sidewalls" on more time, I'm going to scream. You could make a good drinking game on his descriptive cliches.
The books aren't as good as Bujold's Miles books, but they are entertaining if you like that sort of thing.
I agree. It is overpriced (but that is a Catch 22 -- the price will come down when they sell a lot, they'll sell a lot when the price comes down), but the technology embodied in it is amazing. It's funny to think that the Looney Tunes/Jetsons single wheeled robots may be closer to reality that really good walking robots.
I also agree that, while Kamen himself may not be the super genius that the hype would have us believe, the Edison style invention factory he has created at DEKA is a cool idea and I really hope they make it big with something (either the Segway, the new Stirling engine, or something). I think it is encouraging that someone is doing inventive research without a business plan.
I write mostly Visual Basic, too (although I started in C/C++). I like it and I'm not embarassed by it.
I use Windows machines because that is what I have to use at work. We write applications that interface with a lot of Windows-only sofware using lots of Windows-only components. There are quite a few people at work who would like to use Linux/*nix, but, thanks the old chicken or egg problem, our customers just don't want it.
I use Windows machines at home because my wife and kids use Windows at work/school (my wife is a teacher, so that's almost the same thing).
If I was single and writing custom server applications or specialized sofware, I would use Linux/*unix. I started out in the Unix world and like/miss a lot about it.
If I was not working as a programmer and didn't have to worry about money, I would use a Macintosh. I'd love to have one, I think they are really cool and easy to use, but I just can't justify having one unless I get enough disposable income to get one as a 3rd computer.
Slashdot Mirror
After I found this site on making business card cubes, I started doing more experiments and figured out how to make tetrahedrons, octahedrons, and icosahedrons using a really simple module.
Instructions are here
Now I have a nice set on my monitor.
I bought an ATI TV Wonder VE card and had all kinds of hell with my crappy on board video card, so I bought an medium end ATI AGP card which I could *never* get to work with my system. After two days of booting in VGA and green screens installing and uninstalling drivers, I returned in and bought a GeForce card that worked great first time and works great with the ATI TV Card.
ATI may have the hardware, but, I agree, their drivers are *BUGGY*.
I was rewatching Attack of the Clones the other day (yes, it sucks, but it does have cool eye candy) and thinking that if anyone spent as much money as Lucas and if ILM put in the same effort they applied to the Star Wars films, almost anything would be filmable. Instead, they blow it all on crappy stories, poor direction, and mediocre acting. Look at the chase scene on Coruscant and think about all of the work that went into that -- all of the 3d models of speeders and buildings, the alien billboards, the crowds. Many man-months of work and they all flash by in a few frames.
However, when I think of the adaptions of "classic" SF that I have seen, none of them really impress me, yet I can't pin the fault on the SFX (weak as they have been). I love movies, but I think that books are superior -- the movie in my head is *always* better than the movie on the screen.
Having said all of that, it I had a huge budget to work with and ILM or WETA at my disposal, my dream project would be a "straight" adaption of one of the Heinlein juveniles. It would be set in an alternate universe/timeline where the future progressed exactly as it did in the novels -- Mars is populated, Venus is a smelly swamp, digital computers never really kicked in -- interplanetary ship pilots plot their courses with sliderules, and we built huge wheeled space stations in the 1960's. Red Planet, Space Cadet, Have Spacesuit, Will Travel. None of them campy, just done as top notch period pieces...
I kinda like the idea, even if you have to plug in the TV to conserve battery life, it does mean you can watch cable, sattelite, digitial cable, DVDs, or even feeds from your computer via a media center, anywhere in your house.
When I go to Best Buy and see the 10-12 different pocket and tiny portable TVs, I always think, "Why bother, all I could receive is 3-4 snowy local channels".
Gay Deceiver, bounce!
Barsoom, here I come!
With my luck, though, I'd wind up in the Library of Babel...
I used to get a kick out of naming Boolean class status variables bFailin (in Hungarian notation) so I could write VB code like:
...
Dim myXYZ As CXYZClass
myXYZ.DoSomething
If myXYZ.bFailin Then
Before you flame my coding style (lack of proper error handling, using Hungarian notation for class members, etc.), this was a long time ago and I know better now. But the code is kinda funny...
Our best roleplaying games were ones where we pretty much abandoned the rules and used percentile dice for everything. "Hmm, you've got several years of experience doing that, so I think you should have a 75% chance of success." "No way, this should be easier than that, I'd say 95%" "OK, make it 85%", then you roll. Easy, no rule checking, and you concentrated on the story and the characters...
"I have a proof that all primes are odd numbers!"
"But 2 is prime"
"Yes, that makes it the oddest prime number of all!"
Hmm, a bit of Googling and I find most people agreeing with my interpretation -- a low, roiling, overcast sky, chaotically lit by city glow and flashing neon. Somehow, bright blue clear skies don't fit my vision of Neuromancer's world.
This is further supported by Neil Gaimon's deliberate and ironic updating of the line when he wrote (something like): "The sky was the unblemished blue of a television turned to a dead channel." Obviously, this line wasn't intended to be an updating of the famous opening line, but a jarring contrast using most of the same words.
I've always loved the first line of Neuromancer:
:-)
"The sky was the color of a television tuned to a dead channel."
The funny thing about this line is that it meant "TV snow", which is becoming very rare now that most tuners blank out the picture to a neon blue, so now most readers probably think the sky was unnaturally blue and blank.
This ranks up there with kids not knowing what "sounding like a broken record" means or the joke I ran across the other day on the rec.humor.funny "best of" lists where a stupid parent wants to buy her son a blank CD at the record store because she doesn't know what kind of music he likes. Boy, was she stupid. Imagine, a recordable CD
Gibson, at his best, is a poet and his prose relies on free association of words, images, and technology. When we're lucky, there is a story in there, too. As a futurist, he gets the "feel" right quite often, but I don't know if he even tries to really research the science and technology behind what he writes.
Add: "small bits of rock and mineral" with nasty, caustic chemicals. Think of trying to grow plants in sterile, dusty sand that has been soaking in Clorox for a few million years.
Actually, I'm hoping the Saudi's invest some of their oil money and start planning the Martian Islamic Empire. If that happened, we'd be all over the solar system within a century.
My normal remedies:
A large spoonful of sugar
or
A large spoonful of peanut butter
(works almost every time).
The weirdest remedy (that worked) was when I walked into a sub shop with annoying hiccups. The waitress said, "What I can I get you?" and I said, "A cure for my hiccups." She said, "No problem, name three famous bald men." Me: "uh, Yul Brynner (sp?), Telly Savalas, and, uh, uh, Billy Zane, currently." She said, "OK, your hiccups are gone, can I get you anything else?"
And they were... (she got a tip)
This is absolutely true and I was excited about the possibility of my kids being able to watch marginally acceptible movies.
I will admit that I am a hypocrite about watch my kids watch and read. My daughter is in the 6th grade. When I was in the 6th grade, I was reading Stephen King. If my daughter was reading a King novel, I would freak. I was watching R rated movies, but I prescreen most PG and all PG-13 movies and refuse to let my kids watch them if I don't approve.
I, on the other hand, refuse to watch movies that are butchered for TV or to even rent R-rated cuts of unrated or NC-17 rated films that the local video store gets.
Do I want Hollywood to make all movies clean family films? Not at all, but I applaud people like Robert Rodriquez for making films like Spy Kids.
Does anyone remember some crappy comedic horror film from the 80's (intentionally "funny") that had a short intermission in the middle where a guy in a suit discussed how R-rated films make more money than PG films, but since his movie didn't have anything in it to earn an R, he says "Fuck you"? That's what I think sucks about PG-13 -- movies that have no reason being anything other than family fare push in just enough "adult" material to get a PG-13. On the other hand, movies that would be a very enjoyable R get cut just enough to get a PG-13.
Quite often, it is a single scene or one or two words that push a rating one way or another. This would be trivial to change on a DVD, even without filtering software.
I can't in my wildest dreams imagine why the MPAA can not see that this would increase their audience.
Only slightly on topic: When I went to see Starship Troopers in the theater, I sat beside a man with his ~10yo son. They both sat patiently through the profanity, blood, decapitations, dismemberments, and alien gore, but when there was a shot of bare breasts, the father turned and covered his kids eyes. It takes all kinds, I guess...
I recently bought a Franklin eBookman ($39.95 at CostCo!) and then, more recently, got an iPaq through work. The last five books I've read have been on one or the other PDA's (I had the Baen CD-ROM of Honor Harrington books and others). It still isn't quite as good as a paper book, but it is the best way I've found yet to read in bed.
:-), and the formatting leaves a lot to be desired. On the PDA's, weird page and line breaks or even bad justification or extreme ragged edges, are very disconcerting when reading.
I've been using the Mobipocket reader on both devices and the autoscroll feature is really cool -- you can prop up the device, turn on the backlight, and adjust the autoscroll to your reading speed. Hands-free, no reading lamp, no cramps from trying to prop up and turn pages.
On thing that strikes me is how much typography and formatting matter, which is, as others have pointed out, the problem with Gutenberg texts. I have read quite a few PG texts in the past (or at least used them for reference when I was looking for particular quotes or need a big text file to test something
Uh, that's what I was saying. I was just pointing out that, for concerts, hot acts charge premium prices.
Was the last line an insult? What brought that on?
If it matters (and it doesn't), the last three CD's I bought were by Puddle of Mudd, Echo and the Bunnymen, and The Old 97's -- No Britney in the bunch...
There is a precedent for doing it the "right" way: I can pay nearly $100 to see a top pop band in concert or I can pay a $5 cover to see a good local band.
Granted, it won't be in a huge stadium or auditorium with fireworks, light shows, and ear splitting sound systems. But hey, I can hang around and talk to the band during breaks and have a few beers that don't cost $10 a piece.
There is a chance that this type of recycling might work for such a device, assuming the "hardening" process is chemically reversable. Since the printer would be starting with homogenous polymer "ink wells" and, theoretically, wouldn't be mixing, fusing, or chemically combining the "inks", then the polymers might be able to be tagged for dissassembly (which might take nano-technology, but no miracles of chemistry or physics).
Of course, if the hardening process is not chemically or physically reversable, any nano-dissassembly of the completed device would just leave you with carefully separated heaps of dust.
One other idea would be that if these items are made of "plastics", then discarded devices might be able to be ground up and the resulting grey powder used for the case and filler of new devices. You can't just grind up a discarded TV set and its cost prohibitive to separate the metal, glass, plastic, copper, etc. for recycling, but you might be able to do it with these devices if they are carefully designed...
A good start for this would be if McDonald's would take start recycling old Happy Meal toys into new ones by grinding up the old plastic and recasting it -- I think I just threw away an entire garbage bag of Happy Meal toys and assorted pieces.
I'm replying to myself because I saw Two Towers last night.
First of all, I was blown away. There are probably more changes to the book in the second movie than the first, but I'll go out on a big shaky limb and admit that I think most of the changes actually improved the story.
After revealing that heresy, remember that Tolkien himself changed and re-wrote the story so much that the published version was just a snapshot of one state of the story -- if he had done another rewrite, it would probably have been just as different.
Specifically (spoilers), I thought I would hate the change in Faramir. Instead, since the movie has to show external things and can't really show internals, having Faramir nobly release Frodo and Sam and Smeagol wouldn't make any sense -- he pretty much had to realize the stakes before he could make the decision.
Elves at Helm's Deep. I know what Tolkein wrote about the elves being apart from the events, but, again, without a huge onscreen backstory, they would look like total bastards if they didn't try to help at all when the entire kingdom of Rohan was about to be wiped out.
Arwen and the somewhat premature departure of the Rivendell elves. J.R.R. wasn't too swift in the romance department, so the amplification of Arwen for the film is (mostly) good. Weaving in the stuff from the Appendix and making her choice moving (and somewhat ambiguous for those who haven't read the books) makes for good cinema.
The Ents. They may have been done about as well as they could have been -- big humanoid walking trees are likely to look hokey no matter what you do. I was dissapointed that they didn't decide to attack Isengard at the Entmoot, but the way the movie handled it greatly elevated the characters of Merry and Pippen -- instead of imparting a bit of info and hanging around for comic relief, they essentially gathered the army that storms Isengard and leads to Saruman's defeat.
At first I groaned at Aragorn's "death" -- it was a bit cliche. But, his absense led to scenes that illustrated the feelings of Eowyn, Gimli, and Legolas.
Good Stuff:
The preparation for the battle of Helm's Deep was very moving. Suiting up the old men and dragging teenage boys from their mothers to face unsurmountable odds gave the battle a human dimension to match the hoardes of MASSIVE generated warriors.
Gollum/Smeagol, as others have pointed out, is the best animated/CGI character to date. He isn't perfectly realistic, but he *feels* real -- when you watch him, he evokes emotion and you can see him thinking. There are a few scenes that approach perfection in acting and FX.
The Ents attacking Isengard. I would like to have seen one thing -- an ent planting his foot or hand in the walls and growing into it, splintering the stone. Other than that, it was as good as I could have hoped.
The wargs and oliphaunts were very cool.
There were quite a few things in FOTR that I felt the same way about. After I'd watched it a few times, I re-read the book. Interestingly, most things that I thought were over the top in the movie (Bilbo's bulging eyes, Galadriel's transformation, etc.) were almost word for word as described in the book.
The difference is that, in the book, these scenes are from a character's point of view (usually Frodo). So, Frodo "sees" Bilbo tranform into a fierce, wild eyed creature and "sees" Galadrial grow tall and dark and hears her voice change dramatically.
In the movie, the audience is a third person viewer and Jackson chose to show these POV shots as happening objectively. This may be the only way to portray these inner experiences in the film and people I know who have not read the books have no problems with them.
I'm seeing Two Towers in 2.5 hours, but judging from FOTR, Jackson has a good handle on the major themes. It is interesting to read film critics (those who have and those who haven't read them books) and note the disparity in opinion. One guy was bored by the Shire scenes, someone else didn't like the battle scenes, someone thinks there is too much talking, another thinks that Jackson is ignoring character and story and concentrating on visuals and SFX.
For the record, here are the things I think weren't handled well in FOTR (some are improved in the extended edition):
Saruman -- As much as I like Christopher Lee, I think Jackson's direction of him is wrong. Due to time constraints, you don't get the impact of his betrayal because as soon as he appears, he is evil. The mystery of the Palantir is revealed as soon as it is shown.
Storytime Compression -- I don't have a problem with Frodo leaving soon after the party instead of 17 years later. However, Saruman converting Isengard from a pastoral fortress to a pit of hell in the time it takes Frodo and co. to travel to Rivendell is a bit much.
Galadriel and Lothlorien -- get gutted. In the original edition, they are practically cameos. Leaving out the gift giving was a crime. Cate Blanchett is a wonderful actress, but I don't care for her portrayal.
Gimli and Legolas -- the enmity between elves and dwarves comes across as childish bickering. Gimli and Legolas don't have enough scenes in the original edition to develop the impact that their eventual friendship should have.
Things Jackson did better than I could have hoped anyone could have done:
Casting
Locations
Height Effects
Gravity without awkwardness
The Balrog
Finally, kudos to the entire crew for filling the film with subtle details. I wanted to wander around Rivendell and look at the stuff in the background. Every costume and piece of armor is perfect. The maps and Bilbo's book made me want to read them. I want to wander around Bag End and poke around in all of the drawers. I felt the immensity of Moria and the grandeur of Middle Earth without ever feeling like the film was a succession of set pieces.
They would have sold another X-Box this Christmas if they had more non-Adult games. I wanted one, but I just couldn't justify the purchase "for my kids" because there weren't enough "kid friendly" games.
And no, I didn't buy a Gamecube. My neighbor has one (loves it) and my kids get their Nintendo fix there, on their old N64 (hooked up to an Amiga monitor in the study), and their GBA's. There weren't enough games *I* wanted for the GameCube.
I got a Playstation 2 for the wide selection of games and backward compatibility with the PS1 games.
Maybe they can find some way of making money with it or doing some real cool research for microgravity manufacturing. Aside from our really cool planetary probes, all of our other space exploration accomplishments have been a result of the "Space Race". If we have an economic space race, maybe something will get accomplished.
:-)
Hell, if we want a *real* cold war style space race, sell it to the Saudi's -- then we'll be forced to spend a lot of money building another space station to one-up them and to keep an eye on them
When I heard about War of Honor, I remembered that I had bought the first Honor Harrington book (On Basilisk Station) last year, but never read it (I started it, but it seemed pretty lame). I dug out Basilisk and read it. About halfway through I stopped hanging up on the amateurish writing and really got into the story, so I bought the second one. It was good, so I bought the third. Then I realized that I was going to blow nearly $80 at this rate (the used bookstores around here rarely have the Harrington books), so I bought War of Honor and thought I'd give the books on CD a try.
I've read three of them so far on my laptop using the Microsoft Reader and it's really just something you have to get used to. I've read a bit of them on a monitor, but sitting in front of a monitor in an office chair just isn't the way I like to read a book. At home, I plugged in my laptop and sat it on a chair in front of the couch, lay on my side, arranged my pillows, moved around so my finger rested on the "next page" button, and started reading. After I while, I actually preferred this to propping up and reading a "real" book (although I would prefer to have the same book on a PDA so I could put it in my pocket -- or read it on the toilet).
As for the hardcover vs. paperback arguement, I tend to buy hardcovers of my favorite authors new books mostly because I'm anxious to read them or expect to re-read them. But, overall, I prefer paperbacks. It's rare that I don't have a paperback shoved in my pants pocket or jacket pocket.
Regarding Weber himself, his writing gets better as the series progresses, but, as other posters have commented, his plotting suffers as he becomes overconfident. Plus, if I read "the bomb pumped X-ray lasers clawed at the cruiser's sidewalls" on more time, I'm going to scream. You could make a good drinking game on his descriptive cliches.
The books aren't as good as Bujold's Miles books, but they are entertaining if you like that sort of thing.
I agree. It is overpriced (but that is a Catch 22 -- the price will come down when they sell a lot, they'll sell a lot when the price comes down), but the technology embodied in it is amazing. It's funny to think that the Looney Tunes/Jetsons single wheeled robots may be closer to reality that really good walking robots.
I also agree that, while Kamen himself may not be the super genius that the hype would have us believe, the Edison style invention factory he has created at DEKA is a cool idea and I really hope they make it big with something (either the Segway, the new Stirling engine, or something). I think it is encouraging that someone is doing inventive research without a business plan.
I write mostly Visual Basic, too (although I started in C/C++). I like it and I'm not embarassed by it.
I use Windows machines because that is what I have to use at work. We write applications that interface with a lot of Windows-only sofware using lots of Windows-only components. There are quite a few people at work who would like to use Linux/*nix, but, thanks the old chicken or egg problem, our customers just don't want it.
I use Windows machines at home because my wife and kids use Windows at work/school (my wife is a teacher, so that's almost the same thing).
If I was single and writing custom server applications or specialized sofware, I would use Linux/*unix. I started out in the Unix world and like/miss a lot about it.
If I was not working as a programmer and didn't have to worry about money, I would use a Macintosh. I'd love to have one, I think they are really cool and easy to use, but I just can't justify having one unless I get enough disposable income to get one as a 3rd computer.