Great, this is a copy of my original page of instructions located here. Probably at some time I may have given them permission to copy or link to the site, but I did ask that they reference the original page (which they do not seem to have done).
BTW, this was the first public web page I ever created -- way back in the dark ages of the web. I need to fix the broken links, counter, and my (really) old e-mail link:-(
I work with a girl who used to work as a (*gasp*) telemarketer. She told me that her calls were monitored and she would have been immediately fired if she hung up before the person on the other end:
(a) said the word "No" *three* times or (b) hung up first.
OK, I'll admit it. I'm a hypocritical parent who carefully screens what my kids watch, read, and play. I'm a hypocrite because, when I was growing up, my parents did none of these things and I turned out (IMO) just fine. I guess the difference is that my parents were just ignorant of what I was reading, watching, and playing, but I'm not, since I tend to watch, read, and play much of the same things as my kids. I feel like I'm actively pimping smut to my kids if I don't control their media access to some extent.
I am a realist in that I *know* my kids are exposed to just about anything imaginable when they are outside the house and I can live with that, I just don't feel comfortable being an "enabler".
When my kids want to see a movie that I haven't seen yet, I usually use Screen-It. My only gripe with Screen-it is that is can spoil certain scenes because they list *every* thing that might be objectionable to just about anyone, but at least they do it objectively.
I prefer this (even with the chance of spoilers) to any rating system (and much prefer it to outright censorship). If I don't mind nudity without explicit sex, or don't mind sexual innuendo, but don't like violence, or if I don't mind wanton sex and violence as long as no one drinks a beer, I can screen my films using this service.:-)
I would love to have a similar service for videogames, but I just don't see it happening, because, as other posters have noted, you would have to play through every scene in a game (and all branching paths) to identify objectionable material.
Opening this to the user community probably wouldn't work either, because people would be posting Photoshopped screen images and bogus "secret" areas.
As the message below indicates, return policies for opened software are a bit more stringent thanks to anti-piracy paranoia.
However, threatening to dispute the charges with your credit card company will often force businesses to reconsider their position. As I understand it, too many contested charges and the business can lose their ability to process credit card transactions -- something that would sink most mail-order businesses (and many retail ones as well).
One time my fiancee (now wife) and I were shopping before Valentine's Day and she saw a pair of cubic zirconia earrings that were about $12. She said something, "Oh, these are pretty" and we went on.
For Valentine's Day, I bought her a watch (~$40). She looked at it and her face darkened a bit and she was moody for the rest of the day (she *said* she liked it, but I could tell she was miffed). Finally, I said, "What is wrong with the watch? Don't you like it?".
It turns out she was expecting the cheap CZ earrings. She went on and on about how much she had hinted that they would be the perfect gift, they were really nice, etc. To the best of my recollection, all I remember was her saying, "Oh, these are pretty."
Perdido Street Station was weird, imaginative, and thought-provoking, but ultimately (IMHO) sort of boring and pointless. I recommend it, but I didn't feel that it lived up to the hype. I am looking forward to reading The Scar.
I loved 85% of American Gods. Unfortunately, the 15% that I didn't like was the resolution. Yes, it had one. Yes, I understood it. For some reason I just wasn't satisfied by it, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. I wasn't bored by it (the book or the ending), but I felt that a book so strongly resonant about, well, American gods, would ultimately have something profound to say. I got my hopes up when the gods of the modern world got center stage, but the resolution of the story was, alas, not very interesting to me.
Overall, I liked Pratchett's Small Gods, which shares a similar philosophy about deities, much better.
Personally, I agree with most of the other posters who have said that they will (a) probably buy the DVDs regardless (after all, they're only movies and Eps 1 and 2 have kinda taken the shine off the whole Star Wars thing), and (b) by any means possible, remix or download then burn my own DVDs of the version(s) I want to see.
I have bought (several) VHS versions and, if I've also bought the DVDs, I will have no guilt about downloading an "illegal" version if that is the only way to get it -- Lucas has got plenty of my money over the years (movie tickets, DVDs, VHS videos, books, merchandise, etc.).
By the same token, I had a really nice DivX copy of The Two Towers about six months before it was released on DVD. I watched it several times (after seeing TTT in the theater four times), then I bought the legal DVD the day it was released (actually, both versions). No harm, no foul, right?
Go ahead and release the Special Editions. Hell, add Jar Jar to the end of the ROTK (it couldn't suck much worse, could it?).
But (and I'm very serious here)...
Fix the Han and Greedo scene and, right before the DVD's come out, go on CNN and apologize for changing the scene in the first place. It's a small change, no big deal. Then all of the fanboys and fangirls around the planet won't have any excuse to wait a week or so to "punish" you for screwing up the films -- they can safely go and stand in line at Wal-Mart to buy them at midnight and skip work or school the next day to watch them!
Everybody wins!
I don't think for a moment that most of the slashdotters saying that they won't buy the DVDs are serious. They'll wait a few days or weeks, but everytime they walk by them, they'll feel the urge and eventually they'll give in. If Lucas made that one little geeky, stupid change, everyone would swallow up the rest of the CGI and cuteness.
Overall, I liked the special editions just fine, particularly ESB (I like the cloud city FX). But, for completeness, if he issued the original-originals and the SE-originals, I'd probably buy both sets the first day (with or without Han shooting first -- at least I could remix the scene from the original-original DVD).
I use an old Microsoft Natural keyboard (the proper kind that slants backwards:-) connected to my laptop whenever I can. When I am forced to use my laptop by itself (when travelling or in meetings usually - my laptop is my desktop comp at work with keyboard, mouse, and monitor), my wrists hurt. I'm sure I would get used to it, but no thanks.
And don't even get me started on the touchpad. Aargh.
This may be a myth, but I remember hearing a story about an American programmer who lost his job and applied to the company in India that received the outsourced work he was working on. He planned to move to India, take the paycut, and work there for a few years, kinda like a working sabbatical. He was told that it was illegal to hire foreign workers and there was no way he could get a work visa, or the equivalent.
Maybe I'm an incurable optimist, but I fully expect oscars for Best Director and/or Best Film for ROTK. Between the lines, I expect that it will receive this recognition for all three films combined, not merely for the third film.
If Fellowship or the Two Towers had won, it would have set a precedent that the films following would have been hard to live up to and I think that a lot of academy members had a "wait and see" attitude.
Note that I don't feel that the films were perfect or that they were the best movies ever made (although I probably enjoyed them the most of what I've seen for the last three years -- I'm a geek), but when you look at the level of attention to detail, dedication of cast and crew, wise spending of money, popularity, money earned, and groundbreaking technical achievements, they deserve the recognition.
If you think about it, these were the most successful and the most expensive low-budget independent films ever made. Comparing dollars to screen time, many films spend more money on star salaries and huge physical sets and stunts.
If I had my guess, I would think that movies like ROTK have blurred the line between special FX, art direction, and general digital touchups to the point that cinematography is going to be harder and harder to define.
When you have movies where every single frame has been touched up for color, composition, effects, backgrounds, cosmetic facial touchups, glints in the eye, etc., how do you judge what was actually captured by the camera?
What about the current theories that oil and natural gas are *not* fossil fuels, but are unrelated to ancient plants and animals? Maybe Mars does have huge oil reserves:-)
If the above were true, it wouldn't do us any good unless Earth completely ran out and even then it would probably be cheaper to develop the alternative than it would be to ship it from Mars to Earth. $1,000,000 per gallon, anyone?
However, as others such as Zubrin have pointed out, if you can find "free" water -- even if you have to deep drill for it, you've solved 80+% of your resource problems for a long term colony -- you have water, oxygen to breath, hydrogen to burn, fuel to get home, etc.
If you can chemically process the soil so that plants can grow in greenhouses, you can be nearly self-sufficient.
Or, maybe I've been reading too much Kim Stanley Robinson.
Changing topics a bit, it is interesting to see all of the/.ers, most of whom, I suppose, are major space geeks, having to blast a new Moon and Mars initiative because it came from the Bush administration.
Be perfectly honest with yourselves -- would the same announcement by a different party, person, or agency get the same response from you?
I'm pretty sure the highs get well above -40 C in the temperate and equitorial areas.
One particularly nasty thing about Martian soil (and one that would preclude planting most Earth plants -- even in greenhouses using Martian soil) is the high concentration of superoxides in the soil, making it like OxyClean. Earth's extremophiles, however, make me wary about making blanket statements that "life couldn't evolve or exist" in those conditions.
What I always told my kids about swearing was that, in a public place, or within earshot of +90% of all of the adults they encounter, the use of profanity would have them labeled as trash, juvenile delinquents, rude, and/or troublemakers. I told them that this wasn't fair or right, but it was the way it was. As far as their language around me, I ask them to practice the same restraint for practice, if nothing else.
I *know* they use profanity with their friends and that I'm not protecting them from anything (although I did curtail my language around them when they were younger).
I am so glad someone else said this. I get so pissed at other people (including some of my co-workers) when the fly with everything they need for a three day business trip in their carry-on luggage -- two bags, bulging over their limit, and then trying to cram them on a commuter flight.
Last week, I saw a guy with a broken arm, a briefcase, and a duffle bag that was way over the maximum size. He actually got into a big argument with the boarding agent about the duffle, even though it was two times too big and there was no way he could deal with his two bags with his arm in an above the elbow cast.
If I didn't have to carry a laptop and, ocassionally, film, I would never carry on anything but a book and maybe an MP3 player.
I'm a terribly disorganized person who always intends on creating a reading diary or using my cobweb infested blog to record what I read, but never does. So, most of these books are very recent reads or things I *think* I read this year, but may have been last year.
Biggest Disapointment: Quicksilver Bought it the day it came out, read it with great enthusiasm. Hit the reference books and the Quicksilver wiki frequently and learned a lot about the period. Bogged through slower and slower. Now it is sitting beside my reading chair with a bookmark somewhere past the 3/4 mark. I'm going to finish it. Really.
Second Biggest Disappointment: The daVinci Code Granted, it was a fun read (like about 2 hours), but overall it was waaay too Crichton-like: huge, earthshattering ideas compressed into a slapdash movie treatment with lots of chase scenes, action set pieces, and simplistic characters.
Most Eagerly Awaited No Show: A Feast For Crows
Best Fantasy: Fool's Fate Great end to a great series and if Martin doesn't get some more stuff published, Robin Hobb is going to be my favorite fantasy author.
Current Overall Favorite Author: Terry Pratchett Even though I didn't like Monstrous Regiment half as much as I wanted to. I did finally read The Bromeliad Trilogy and the Wee Free Men was great.
What I'm Reading Now: Perdio Street Station About 1/3 of the way through and enjoying it immensely.
Also Read/Liked: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix To The Nines Q is for Quarry Shutter Island Tricky Business (hey, it was funny) The Honor Harrington Series (not great books, but I enjoyed them well enough to read them all) Flashman (been meaning to read that for a long time) Master and Commander (ditto)
One thing I liked during the horse charging scenes was the images of the horses being killed. Wait a minute, now, I'm not being a sicko...
Since (real) horses have to be treated well in movies or the ASPCA will rightfully raise a ruckus, you are usually treated to scenes of hundreds of men being cut down with arrows, while their horses do that "pull the reigns to the side and make your horse fall down" move. You might occasionally have a few stunt arrows or blood squibs on the horses, but you usually don't see dead ones until the end of the battle where their carcasses are laying around.
In ROTK, you saw the horses being killed underneath the riders and rolling, flipping, and being trampled. Not a pleasant sight, but a more realistic one to be sure.
Another thing that people do at the library sales around here is go to the big library sales and buy every SF/Fantasy paperback for 10 to 25 cents apiece, no matter what they are, then carry them to the local used paperback store and trade them 2 for 1 for the books they really want from the used bookstore.
I've done this on a small scale (buying a handfull of books that I *might* want to read and then ending up trading them in), but I know people who do it wholesale. I'm not sure what I think about it -- I tend to think that the people looking for books at the library get screwed, the library is losing money they could have got by selling the books directly (as mentioned in the article), and the used PB stores get flooded with crap.
Hmm, that's interesting. I love to read books to my kids (even though they're now 12 and 9, we just read "The Wee Free Men" by Terry Pratchett aloud), but I had a hard time reading The Hobbit to them. I didn't have a hard time with Pratchett's colloquialisms and I could do an OK Nac Mac Feegle voice ("Ach. Crivens!"), but some of the sentence structure and dialogue in The Hobbit, while beautifully written, was awkward to parse out loud.
I would love for Jackson to do The Hobbit. It is a very different book from LOTR and I think the biggest changes would be to make it feel more like the LOTR movies. For example, the troll scene with it's bumbling Cockney trolls would seem out of place compared to the cave troll from Moria.
I do wonder if Ian Holm would be up to doing Bilbo as a younger hobbit?
Slashdot Mirror
Great, this is a copy of my original page of instructions located here. Probably at some time I may have given them permission to copy or link to the site, but I did ask that they reference the original page (which they do not seem to have done).
:-(
BTW, this was the first public web page I ever created -- way back in the dark ages of the web. I need to fix the broken links, counter, and my (really) old e-mail link
I work with a girl who used to work as a (*gasp*) telemarketer. She told me that her calls were monitored and she would have been immediately fired if she hung up before the person on the other end:
(a) said the word "No" *three* times
or
(b) hung up first.
I imagine these "techs" have similar rules.
OK, I'll admit it. I'm a hypocritical parent who carefully screens what my kids watch, read, and play. I'm a hypocrite because, when I was growing up, my parents did none of these things and I turned out (IMO) just fine. I guess the difference is that my parents were just ignorant of what I was reading, watching, and playing, but I'm not, since I tend to watch, read, and play much of the same things as my kids. I feel like I'm actively pimping smut to my kids if I don't control their media access to some extent.
:-)
I am a realist in that I *know* my kids are exposed to just about anything imaginable when they are outside the house and I can live with that, I just don't feel comfortable being an "enabler".
When my kids want to see a movie that I haven't seen yet, I usually use Screen-It. My only gripe with Screen-it is that is can spoil certain scenes because they list *every* thing that might be objectionable to just about anyone, but at least they do it objectively.
I prefer this (even with the chance of spoilers) to any rating system (and much prefer it to outright censorship). If I don't mind nudity without explicit sex, or don't mind sexual innuendo, but don't like violence, or if I don't mind wanton sex and violence as long as no one drinks a beer, I can screen my films using this service.
I would love to have a similar service for videogames, but I just don't see it happening, because, as other posters have noted, you would have to play through every scene in a game (and all branching paths) to identify objectionable material.
Opening this to the user community probably wouldn't work either, because people would be posting Photoshopped screen images and bogus "secret" areas.
As the message below indicates, return policies for opened software are a bit more stringent thanks to anti-piracy paranoia.
However, threatening to dispute the charges with your credit card company will often force businesses to reconsider their position. As I understand it, too many contested charges and the business can lose their ability to process credit card transactions -- something that would sink most mail-order businesses (and many retail ones as well).
One time my fiancee (now wife) and I were shopping before Valentine's Day and she saw a pair of cubic zirconia earrings that were about $12. She said something, "Oh, these are pretty" and we went on.
For Valentine's Day, I bought her a watch (~$40). She looked at it and her face darkened a bit and she was moody for the rest of the day (she *said* she liked it, but I could tell she was miffed). Finally, I said, "What is wrong with the watch? Don't you like it?".
It turns out she was expecting the cheap CZ earrings. She went on and on about how much she had hinted that they would be the perfect gift, they were really nice, etc. To the best of my recollection, all I remember was her saying, "Oh, these are pretty."
Your mileage may vary...
Perdido Street Station was weird, imaginative, and thought-provoking, but ultimately (IMHO) sort of boring and pointless. I recommend it, but I didn't feel that it lived up to the hype. I am looking forward to reading The Scar.
I loved 85% of American Gods. Unfortunately, the 15% that I didn't like was the resolution. Yes, it had one. Yes, I understood it. For some reason I just wasn't satisfied by it, for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. I wasn't bored by it (the book or the ending), but I felt that a book so strongly resonant about, well, American gods, would ultimately have something profound to say. I got my hopes up when the gods of the modern world got center stage, but the resolution of the story was, alas, not very interesting to me.
Overall, I liked Pratchett's Small Gods, which shares a similar philosophy about deities, much better.
Well, I did say "most" :-)
Personally, I agree with most of the other posters who have said that they will (a) probably buy the DVDs regardless (after all, they're only movies and Eps 1 and 2 have kinda taken the shine off the whole Star Wars thing), and (b) by any means possible, remix or download then burn my own DVDs of the version(s) I want to see.
I have bought (several) VHS versions and, if I've also bought the DVDs, I will have no guilt about downloading an "illegal" version if that is the only way to get it -- Lucas has got plenty of my money over the years (movie tickets, DVDs, VHS videos, books, merchandise, etc.).
By the same token, I had a really nice DivX copy of The Two Towers about six months before it was released on DVD. I watched it several times (after seeing TTT in the theater four times), then I bought the legal DVD the day it was released (actually, both versions). No harm, no foul, right?
Go ahead and release the Special Editions. Hell, add Jar Jar to the end of the ROTK (it couldn't suck much worse, could it?).
But (and I'm very serious here)...
Fix the Han and Greedo scene and, right before the DVD's come out, go on CNN and apologize for changing the scene in the first place. It's a small change, no big deal. Then all of the fanboys and fangirls around the planet won't have any excuse to wait a week or so to "punish" you for screwing up the films -- they can safely go and stand in line at Wal-Mart to buy them at midnight and skip work or school the next day to watch them!
Everybody wins!
I don't think for a moment that most of the slashdotters saying that they won't buy the DVDs are serious. They'll wait a few days or weeks, but everytime they walk by them, they'll feel the urge and eventually they'll give in. If Lucas made that one little geeky, stupid change, everyone would swallow up the rest of the CGI and cuteness.
Overall, I liked the special editions just fine, particularly ESB (I like the cloud city FX). But, for completeness, if he issued the original-originals and the SE-originals, I'd probably buy both sets the first day (with or without Han shooting first -- at least I could remix the scene from the original-original DVD).
Just a few days ago, huh?
I use an old Microsoft Natural keyboard (the proper kind that slants backwards :-) connected to my laptop whenever I can. When I am forced to use my laptop by itself (when travelling or in meetings usually - my laptop is my desktop comp at work with keyboard, mouse, and monitor), my wrists hurt. I'm sure I would get used to it, but no thanks.
And don't even get me started on the touchpad. Aargh.
This may be a myth, but I remember hearing a story about an American programmer who lost his job and applied to the company in India that received the outsourced work he was working on. He planned to move to India, take the paycut, and work there for a few years, kinda like a working sabbatical. He was told that it was illegal to hire foreign workers and there was no way he could get a work visa, or the equivalent.
Maybe I'm an incurable optimist, but I fully expect oscars for Best Director and/or Best Film for ROTK. Between the lines, I expect that it will receive this recognition for all three films combined, not merely for the third film.
If Fellowship or the Two Towers had won, it would have set a precedent that the films following would have been hard to live up to and I think that a lot of academy members had a "wait and see" attitude.
Note that I don't feel that the films were perfect or that they were the best movies ever made (although I probably enjoyed them the most of what I've seen for the last three years -- I'm a geek), but when you look at the level of attention to detail, dedication of cast and crew, wise spending of money, popularity, money earned, and groundbreaking technical achievements, they deserve the recognition.
If you think about it, these were the most successful and the most expensive low-budget independent films ever made. Comparing dollars to screen time, many films spend more money on star salaries and huge physical sets and stunts.
If I had my guess, I would think that movies like ROTK have blurred the line between special FX, art direction, and general digital touchups to the point that cinematography is going to be harder and harder to define.
When you have movies where every single frame has been touched up for color, composition, effects, backgrounds, cosmetic facial touchups, glints in the eye, etc., how do you judge what was actually captured by the camera?
While they don't appear to have the full sets, Pitsco has sensors, extra parts, and lots of neat Lego stuff intended for the educational market.
Their print catalog is really cool.
What about the current theories that oil and natural gas are *not* fossil fuels, but are unrelated to ancient plants and animals? Maybe Mars does have huge oil reserves :-)
/.ers, most of whom, I suppose, are major space geeks, having to blast a new Moon and Mars initiative because it came from the Bush administration.
If the above were true, it wouldn't do us any good unless Earth completely ran out and even then it would probably be cheaper to develop the alternative than it would be to ship it from Mars to Earth. $1,000,000 per gallon, anyone?
However, as others such as Zubrin have pointed out, if you can find "free" water -- even if you have to deep drill for it, you've solved 80+% of your resource problems for a long term colony -- you have water, oxygen to breath, hydrogen to burn, fuel to get home, etc.
If you can chemically process the soil so that plants can grow in greenhouses, you can be nearly self-sufficient.
Or, maybe I've been reading too much Kim Stanley Robinson.
Changing topics a bit, it is interesting to see all of the
Be perfectly honest with yourselves -- would the same announcement by a different party, person, or agency get the same response from you?
I'm pretty sure the highs get well above -40 C in the temperate and equitorial areas.
One particularly nasty thing about Martian soil (and one that would preclude planting most Earth plants -- even in greenhouses using Martian soil) is the high concentration of superoxides in the soil, making it like OxyClean. Earth's extremophiles, however, make me wary about making blanket statements that "life couldn't evolve or exist" in those conditions.
So, er... frying pans... are made of... mussels?
What I always told my kids about swearing was that, in a public place, or within earshot of +90% of all of the adults they encounter, the use of profanity would have them labeled as trash, juvenile delinquents, rude, and/or troublemakers. I told them that this wasn't fair or right, but it was the way it was. As far as their language around me, I ask them to practice the same restraint for practice, if nothing else.
I *know* they use profanity with their friends and that I'm not protecting them from anything (although I did curtail my language around them when they were younger).
I am so glad someone else said this. I get so pissed at other people (including some of my co-workers) when the fly with everything they need for a three day business trip in their carry-on luggage -- two bags, bulging over their limit, and then trying to cram them on a commuter flight.
Last week, I saw a guy with a broken arm, a briefcase, and a duffle bag that was way over the maximum size. He actually got into a big argument with the boarding agent about the duffle, even though it was two times too big and there was no way he could deal with his two bags with his arm in an above the elbow cast.
If I didn't have to carry a laptop and, ocassionally, film, I would never carry on anything but a book and maybe an MP3 player.
I'm a terribly disorganized person who always intends on creating a reading diary or using my cobweb infested blog to record what I read, but never does. So, most of these books are very recent reads or things I *think* I read this year, but may have been last year.
Biggest Disapointment: Quicksilver
Bought it the day it came out, read it with great enthusiasm. Hit the reference books and the Quicksilver wiki frequently and learned a lot about the period. Bogged through slower and slower. Now it is sitting beside my reading chair with a bookmark somewhere past the 3/4 mark. I'm going to finish it. Really.
Second Biggest Disappointment: The daVinci Code
Granted, it was a fun read (like about 2 hours), but overall it was waaay too Crichton-like: huge, earthshattering ideas compressed into a slapdash movie treatment with lots of chase scenes, action set pieces, and simplistic characters.
Most Eagerly Awaited No Show: A Feast For Crows
Best Fantasy: Fool's Fate
Great end to a great series and if Martin doesn't get some more stuff published, Robin Hobb is going to be my favorite fantasy author.
Current Overall Favorite Author: Terry Pratchett
Even though I didn't like Monstrous Regiment half as much as I wanted to. I did finally read The Bromeliad Trilogy and the Wee Free Men was great.
What I'm Reading Now: Perdio Street Station
About 1/3 of the way through and enjoying it immensely.
Also Read/Liked:
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
To The Nines
Q is for Quarry
Shutter Island
Tricky Business (hey, it was funny)
The Honor Harrington Series (not great books, but I enjoyed them well enough to read them all)
Flashman (been meaning to read that for a long time)
Master and Commander (ditto)
I laughed out loud at the "Young master Gandalf" line of Treebeard's...
One thing I liked during the horse charging scenes was the images of the horses being killed. Wait a minute, now, I'm not being a sicko...
Since (real) horses have to be treated well in movies or the ASPCA will rightfully raise a ruckus, you are usually treated to scenes of hundreds of men being cut down with arrows, while their horses do that "pull the reigns to the side and make your horse fall down" move. You might occasionally have a few stunt arrows or blood squibs on the horses, but you usually don't see dead ones until the end of the battle where their carcasses are laying around.
In ROTK, you saw the horses being killed underneath the riders and rolling, flipping, and being trampled. Not a pleasant sight, but a more realistic one to be sure.
Uh, he keeps fiddling long after that, too.
Another thing that people do at the library sales around here is go to the big library sales and buy every SF/Fantasy paperback for 10 to 25 cents apiece, no matter what they are, then carry them to the local used paperback store and trade them 2 for 1 for the books they really want from the used bookstore.
I've done this on a small scale (buying a handfull of books that I *might* want to read and then ending up trading them in), but I know people who do it wholesale. I'm not sure what I think about it -- I tend to think that the people looking for books at the library get screwed, the library is losing money they could have got by selling the books directly (as mentioned in the article), and the used PB stores get flooded with crap.
Hmm, that's interesting. I love to read books to my kids (even though they're now 12 and 9, we just read "The Wee Free Men" by Terry Pratchett aloud), but I had a hard time reading The Hobbit to them. I didn't have a hard time with Pratchett's colloquialisms and I could do an OK Nac Mac Feegle voice ("Ach. Crivens!"), but some of the sentence structure and dialogue in The Hobbit, while beautifully written, was awkward to parse out loud.
I would love for Jackson to do The Hobbit. It is a very different book from LOTR and I think the biggest changes would be to make it feel more like the LOTR movies. For example, the troll scene with it's bumbling Cockney trolls would seem out of place compared to the cave troll from Moria.
I do wonder if Ian Holm would be up to doing Bilbo as a younger hobbit?