The whole point of manifestos is to be superlative and breathless. What he's doing is quite all right... i think it's important to remember that Sterling's real target isn't us geeks, but rather the traditional ivory-tower intelligensia, and the artists. He wants to bring them to a life of constantly changing technology, as well as bring art to those who are creating the technology.
More importantly, i think he's saying that old centralized governments and idiologies (i always spell it with an i rather than an e) are too rigid and self-centered to cope with future shock. And, like any rational person, he fears a world of technology without heed for consequences.
With this in mind, he is proposing art and aesthetics as the only lens "supple" enough to keep up with the mad rush of technology. Central planning cannot insure that new tech will be environmentally or socially sound - in fact, it will probably make it worse (the history of the 20th century is the history of government and corporate abuse of technology). Aesthetics, however, may work. Technology that is environmentally or socially destructive is ugly, and should be rejected for its ugliness.
Sure, it doesn't make much sense, but it makes more sense than the alternatives.
Try writing haiku! Everyone is doing it! Even ESR!
But seriously... the problem with sussing out a license for a database is that it depends on how the data is used. Open Source licenses work because the ways we use source code are pretty straightforward. Open Content licenses build off of them. But source and content have one thing in common... duplication causes no essential harm, and data integrity is not a huge issue.
Databases, on the other hand, are often intended to centralize and synchronize information. Hence transactions, which exist to protect the integrity of the data. Moreover, databases often contain relations that require locks and triggers to maintain referential integrity. You may not WANT free copies of your database floating around, even if the information within the database should be free (speech or beer).
So, barring lots of deep thought on the subject, i don't see a simple, general set of rules for "open" databases, because of the integrity issues, and because of the wide variety of ways in which the data may be used. --- 120 chars is barely sufficient
Now that it turns out there was no disaster, my local newspaper (St Paul Pioneer Press) is wondering if all those billions of dollars needed to be spent in preparation.
There was no disaster BECAUSE those billions were spent, idjits.
I just got the awards in my mail this morning, and couldn't believe it... the first runner-up is *still alive*!!! Worse, his genitalia are still intact, and he might still breed (he only blew his face off with the blasting cap in his mouth). That, my friends, is unworthy of a Darwin Award.
Way back when they first started, nominees actually had to die in order to be considered. A few years later, they added the "honorable mention" category for those who merely maimed themselves. But this year, they seem to be handing out full nominations for mere stupidity... i saw nominations this year that involved no bodily harm whatsoever! (like the guy who tried to steal the letters from the board for his mug shots)
I really hope the Darwin Awards staff will reconsider their methodology and return to their previous high standards, lest they become another Golden Globe, or worse yet, America's Funniest Home Videos.
You're right, Tom, i phrased that badly. strftime() exists in Perl, within the POSIX module. BUT... i'll still say that it's somewhat more understandable that programmers would make the Y1C error (how's that for a turn of phrase?) in Perl than in C. ctime() is part of Perl without loading any modules. strftime() is not... unless you're already an experienced C programmer (enough to know about strftime()), or read a LOT of documentation on Perl, you won't know about it. In C, on the other hand, the standard libraries are MUCH smaller and easier to study, and more importantly, strftime() is documented right alongside ctime()... on the same page, iirc.
So Perl is no more prone to Y1C than C. However, Perl *programmers* are more prone to Y1C than C programmers. Is that better phrasing?
As for the prevalence of the Cut and Paste Programming Antipattern with Perl... again, it's a lot easier in Perl than it is in C. When i found 150+ scripts with the bug, many of those scripts didn't even USE the timestamp string generated. And virtually all of those scripts dated to Perl 4, or stuck to Perl 4 conventions. Was there a POSIX module then?
I have now seen a few instances of the "19100" bug, sometimes as the 100 bug - 2000 gets displayed as either 100 or 19100. Several people have commented on this, but missed a crucial point. So i thought i'd explain this bug some.
The 19100 bug comes from improper use of the header in the C standard library. It is much more common in Perl than C, but much more disappointing in C.
To learn about this, get out your battered copy of K&R (you DO have K&R, don't you? _The C Programming Language_, by Kernigan and Richie. If you only have one book on C, it should be this one). Turn to the reference in the appendix. Look at the description of struct tm. You'll see that tm->tm_year is the years *since 1900*. So, to print years correctly, in either two-digit or four-digit form, we must add 1900 to tm->tm_year.
Here's where naive, amateurish C programmers mess up. They do not learn their standard libraries, and thus reinvent them poorly. The strftime() function provides printf()-style formatting for struct tm. It will print the year correctly in either two-digit or four-digit form. Programmers who don't know their libraries just stick tm_year in a printf() somewhere, without accounting for the missing 1900, something like this: printf("19%d", tm->tm_year); which will print 1999, then 19100. The libraries are very good (with the glaring exception of some security holes!). Learn them and use them.
Perl is where this bug comes into its own. For various reasons either obvious or opaque to you, strftime() does not exist in Perl. And the contents of struct tm are handed back from ctime() as an array. Therefore, more programmers are likely to not look deep enough to see how this SHOULD be handled, and do the 19100 bug, since they don't have a nice built-in library routine to do it for them.
This is a tremendous problem. When doing Y2K checking for a previous job, i found this bug in over 150 Perl scripts, mostly due to cut-and-paste programming (Perl unfortunately encourages that approach). I also found it in the popular wwwboard online discussion script. I'll bet it's all over the place.
Hopefully, someone finds this informative, and maybe moderates it up so it actually gets READ.
I *briefly* hosted a commercial site on CIHost, based on the strong recommendations by various rating sites. They were WRONG. I had serious performance problems, configuration issues, problems with domain name transfers, and virtually no response from tech support.
The last straw, though, was when i emailed them about a Y2K bug in a Perl-based online discussion group CGI they provide, and never even got an acknowledgement. Fuck that. I switched to Hurricane Electric (he.net), and they've been terrific.
Oh, i'm sure you'll see plenty of that Y2K bug at Perl-driven sites now, and in some C programs too. The symptom is that this year is now "100", not 2000. To understand why, grab K&R, look up , study how years are represented in struct tm, and consider the implications of not using strftime() to print dates. Perl doesn't have strftime(), which is why the bug is more prevalent there. But lots of naive C programmers don't learn their libraries, and thus reinvent wheels poorly.
And i've now seen this bug on at least one bbs since the Y2K rollover, and it according to a friend it has completely disabled the old telnet-driven Delphi interface. --- 120 chars is barely sufficient
I live in the Twin Cities, and really love it here. A few weeks ago, a friend and i were discussing how we try to get our friends to move here, and compete with other friends in hipper places like Seattle and Chicago. The problem, she said, is that Mpls/St Paul isn't a great *tourist* town. It doesn't have the tourist attractions of Chicago or Seattle or San Fransisco, so it doesn't show off quite as well at first blush.
But there are other things to consider... relatively low housing costs, less "churn" at jobs, nicer people, and an overall more relaxed atmosphere. As a parent, i find this a very nice place to raise my children. Good schools, lovely scenery, i can afford a decent house, etc. But the area is urban enough that all the big-city amenities are here. Anything that the Twin Cities doesn't have is probably exclusive to a single city elsewhere. And we have our own exclusive bits, too... for example, i work four blocks from the nation's only Kurdish resturant, and two blocks from the diner featured on the cover of Tom Waits' "Nighthawks at the Diner". And we have the nation's most, um, interesting governor.:} --- 120 chars is barely sufficient
And when i wrote my protest mail to eToys.com, that's exactly what i told them... i am a parent of five year old twins, our family is well within the top 10% income bracket, and we regularly purchase goods online. And if they want a share of the hundreds of dollars a year i spend on toys, they need to drop their complaints against etoy.
Which reminds me... i should send them another letter telling them that i won't be satisfied until they have unilaterally and unconditionally dropped everything against etoy. --- 120 chars is barely sufficient
Excellent point! Andy Kaufman wasn't so much doing comedy as he was prying it apart, to see what makes it tick. Then he showed you what was inside it. The comparison to writers like Barth is very insightful... the average fiction reader couldn't handle genius work, either. How many of you have read James Joyce' "Ulysses"?
That gets back to what i said in my review... Andy Kaufman didn't so much make you laugh as make you squirm. --- 120 chars is barely sufficient
(I originally posted this review yesterday to a small discussion mailing list i share with a few friends)
Man on the Moon starring Jim Carrey, Danny Devito, Courtney Love, et al directed by Milos Forman produced by Danny Devito
"Man on the Moon" is the story of the rise, fall, and death of legendary comic Andy Kaufman. Some of you may know Kaufman from his role as the zany eastern European mechanic on the sitcom "Taxi". Others may know him for his occasional work on Saturday Night Live, and the story of how the audience voted to not have him on the show anymore. Or maybe you've never heard of him at all. Those who have watched his work generally either love him or hate him. He didn't like neutral reactions, and didn't get them.
Author bias here: i think Andy Kaufman was one of the greatest geniuses in comic history. And yes, he fell on his face a lot, and went over the top A LOT. But when he was on, he was golden. Lots of comedians make you laugh. Some make you think. Andy Kaufman made you squirm. Of course, most people don't want to squirm, don't want to find humor in their own embarassment and shame, so a lot of people hated him.
That being said, i loved this movie. It may not be one of the greatest films ever made, but it really works well, and tells a fascinating story. I think it's worth seeing even if you didn't like Andy Kaufman.
What i liked most about it, i think, wasn't so much the story, but rather getting to see all the great Andy Kaufman standup shows and routines that were never captured on film. His work on Taxi and Saturday Night Live barely scratched the surface. In the film, you get the full story of his pro wrestling career, his famous Carnegie Hall show when he took the entire audience out for milk and cookies, the story of Tony Clifton, etc. This is hardcore genius work. And, like much genius work, it is often difficult to understand (at one point, his manager (Danny Devito) chides him and his writer Bob Zmuda (Paul Giamatti) for dragging out the Tony Clifton joke to where it was only funny to two people in the entire world... but of course, those two thought it was hilarious).
The acting is generally superb. For me, Jim Carrey never completely became Kaufman, but that's probably because i had seen the real Kaufman so much. But i have to credit Carrey with getting his timing and mannerisms down as well as any actor is capable of doing them... and for Kaufman, comedy was as much a matter of timing as anything. The Maharishi Mahesh Yogi once told him the secret of being funny was "Silence", and he used silence more effectively than any comedian since Buster Keaton (personally, i say the essence of comedy is timing, but i suspect the Maharishi and i mean the same thing). So, despite the fact that i couldn't overcome the cognitive dissonance of Carrey playing Kaufman, it worked as well as such things ever do for me.
Danny Devito plays Kaufman's manager George Shapiro (the film was his baby... he worked with Kaufman on Taxi, and then produced it as an ode to his friend). As George Shapiro, Devito provides the primary lens through which the audience sees Andy Kaufman. Fans of Milos Forman's previous work (Amadeus, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) will recognize the technique of humanizing a genius character for the audience by watching him through more ordinary eyes. As usual, Devito completely absorbs his role, becoming the most believable character in the film.
Paul Giamatti as Kaufman's writer/partner Bob Zmuda, and Courtney Love as Kaufman's girlfriend, both deliver superbly given their somewhat limited roles. Courtney Love in particular doesn't get enough meat in her part to be much more than a mirror, but what she does she does very well. For someone like her who specializes in being over the top, she is very subdued and sensitive in the role.
Perhaps the best thing i can say about this film is that i intend to buy a copy when it is available on video - for my children. Not for today... although there isn't anything in it that i don't think they should see (brief nudity? so?), it's very much adult humor, in that it is humor about how adults see the world. Andy Kaufman's humor, while childlike and evoking childhood memories, is not something children can even understand as humor. What's funny to adults is just normal for them. But, when they're old enough to understand, i want them to see this film. It's a matter of cultural education, getting a chance to see one of the greatest comedians ever in action. It's the same reason i'd get them a Buster Keaton movie, really. --- 120 chars is barely sufficient
This platform was used by a character in Robert Anton Wilson's "Schroedinger's Cat Trilogy", and now constitutes my minimum standard for candidates. If they won't work for life extension and an economy based on something better than wage slavery and taxation, then i'm ignoring them. In the ideal world, there would be no death or taxes. A true idealist should expect no less from a candidate.
Actually, the Microsoft Intellimouse works very nicely under Linux/XFree86. I recently used one on a Netfinity at work because i knew it could be used as a three-button mouse, and it was handy. To my pleasant surprise, i found out that the wheel also moves an xterm scrollbar! What a great feature!
But a DVD drive? Um, guys, they aren't really supported well yet.
I don't know where it came from, but it always makes me think of my old drunken buddies from long ago who drank a lot of "Mad Dog"... M/D (Mad Dog) 20/20 wine, a really cheap horrible brand good for nothing but a cheap drunk. They told me the reason for its superiority is that Mad Dog spelled backwards is God Dam!!
Slashdot Mirror
The whole point of manifestos is to be superlative and breathless. What he's doing is quite all right... i think it's important to remember that Sterling's real target isn't us geeks, but rather the traditional ivory-tower intelligensia, and the artists. He wants to bring them to a life of constantly changing technology, as well as bring art to those who are creating the technology.
More importantly, i think he's saying that old centralized governments and idiologies (i always spell it with an i rather than an e) are too rigid and self-centered to cope with future shock. And, like any rational person, he fears a world of technology without heed for consequences.
With this in mind, he is proposing art and aesthetics as the only lens "supple" enough to keep up with the mad rush of technology. Central planning cannot insure that new tech will be environmentally or socially sound - in fact, it will probably make it worse (the history of the 20th century is the history of government and corporate abuse of technology). Aesthetics, however, may work. Technology that is environmentally or socially destructive is ugly, and should be rejected for its ugliness.
Sure, it doesn't make much sense, but it makes more sense than the alternatives.
---
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Yes, that's much clearer, thanks! I can see open-sourcing the *schema* for a database rather than the data itself.
Too bad none of this will be moderated up.
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Oops! You're right! My bad.
What can i do about it?
Repost corrections?
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Try writing haiku!
Everyone is doing it!
Even ESR!
But seriously... the problem with sussing out a license for a database is that it depends on how the data is used. Open Source licenses work because the ways we use source code are pretty straightforward. Open Content licenses build off of them. But source and content have one thing in common... duplication causes no essential harm, and data integrity is not a huge issue.
Databases, on the other hand, are often intended to centralize and synchronize information. Hence transactions, which exist to protect the integrity of the data. Moreover, databases often contain relations that require locks and triggers to maintain referential integrity. You may not WANT free copies of your database floating around, even if the information within the database should be free (speech or beer).
So, barring lots of deep thought on the subject, i don't see a simple, general set of rules for "open" databases, because of the integrity issues, and because of the wide variety of ways in which the data may be used.
---
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Another license?
Is it needed? Isn't that what
copyright is for?
---
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Thanks for the pointer!
Now i shall use this module
in all future code.
It would be cool if
unworthy code generated
unworthy haiku.
After all, software
is like poetry. Sturgeon's Law
applies equally.
And, in re-reading,
i realize your haiku
is in correct form.
Therefore, my bitching
about bad haiku is for
ESR alone.
I apologize
to you, Tom, and i hope that
you will forgive me.
I shouldn't flame you
carelessly like some half-assed
lamer wannabe.
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I have a response :}
for you here. Kind of a flame,
but you're used to that.
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I threatened to get
"medieval on your ass".
I need a new phrase.
Yeah, he posted those
last week. They were dumb then, and
they are still dumb now.
Is this my problem?
I don't think so. Separate
the wheat from the chaff.
I would rather bitch
at ESR and Tom C
for poor haiku form.
Five seven five, d00d2
are syllables for haiku
not just seventeen!
You, of all people,
understand the importance
of open standards!
You are major d00d2.
Please set a good example
for all the newbies.
That is all i ask.
Respectfully submitted,
(signed Frank Sullivan)
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Now that it turns out there was no disaster, my local newspaper (St Paul Pioneer Press) is wondering if all those billions of dollars needed to be spent in preparation.
There was no disaster BECAUSE those billions were spent, idjits.
---
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chars is barely sufficient
I just got the awards in my mail this morning, and couldn't believe it... the first runner-up is *still alive*!!! Worse, his genitalia are still intact, and he might still breed (he only blew his face off with the blasting cap in his mouth). That, my friends, is unworthy of a Darwin Award.
Way back when they first started, nominees actually had to die in order to be considered. A few years later, they added the "honorable mention" category for those who merely maimed themselves. But this year, they seem to be handing out full nominations for mere stupidity... i saw nominations this year that involved no bodily harm whatsoever! (like the guy who tried to steal the letters from the board for his mug shots)
I really hope the Darwin Awards staff will reconsider their methodology and return to their previous high standards, lest they become another Golden Globe, or worse yet, America's Funniest Home Videos.
---
120
chars is barely sufficient
You're right, Tom, i phrased that badly. strftime() exists in Perl, within the POSIX module. BUT... i'll still say that it's somewhat more understandable that programmers would make the Y1C error (how's that for a turn of phrase?) in Perl than in C. ctime() is part of Perl without loading any modules. strftime() is not... unless you're already an experienced C programmer (enough to know about strftime()), or read a LOT of documentation on Perl, you won't know about it. In C, on the other hand, the standard libraries are MUCH smaller and easier to study, and more importantly, strftime() is documented right alongside ctime()... on the same page, iirc.
So Perl is no more prone to Y1C than C. However, Perl *programmers* are more prone to Y1C than C programmers. Is that better phrasing?
As for the prevalence of the Cut and Paste Programming Antipattern with Perl... again, it's a lot easier in Perl than it is in C. When i found 150+ scripts with the bug, many of those scripts didn't even USE the timestamp string generated. And virtually all of those scripts dated to Perl 4, or stuck to Perl 4 conventions. Was there a POSIX module then?
---
120
chars is barely sufficient
I have now seen a few instances of the "19100" bug, sometimes as the 100 bug - 2000 gets displayed as either 100 or 19100. Several people have commented on this, but missed a crucial point. So i thought i'd explain this bug some.
The 19100 bug comes from improper use of the header in the C standard library. It is much more common in Perl than C, but much more disappointing in C.
To learn about this, get out your battered copy of K&R (you DO have K&R, don't you? _The C Programming Language_, by Kernigan and Richie. If you only have one book on C, it should be this one). Turn to the reference in the appendix. Look at the description of struct tm. You'll see that tm->tm_year is the years *since 1900*. So, to print years correctly, in either two-digit or four-digit form, we must add 1900 to tm->tm_year.
Here's where naive, amateurish C programmers mess up. They do not learn their standard libraries, and thus reinvent them poorly. The strftime() function provides printf()-style formatting for struct tm. It will print the year correctly in either two-digit or four-digit form. Programmers who don't know their libraries just stick tm_year in a printf() somewhere, without accounting for the missing 1900, something like this:
printf("19%d", tm->tm_year);
which will print 1999, then 19100. The libraries are very good (with the glaring exception of some security holes!). Learn them and use them.
Perl is where this bug comes into its own. For various reasons either obvious or opaque to you, strftime() does not exist in Perl. And the contents of struct tm are handed back from ctime() as an array. Therefore, more programmers are likely to not look deep enough to see how this SHOULD be handled, and do the 19100 bug, since they don't have a nice built-in library routine to do it for them.
This is a tremendous problem. When doing Y2K checking for a previous job, i found this bug in over 150 Perl scripts, mostly due to cut-and-paste programming (Perl unfortunately encourages that approach). I also found it in the popular wwwboard online discussion script. I'll bet it's all over the place.
Hopefully, someone finds this informative, and maybe moderates it up so it actually gets READ.
---
120
chars is barely sufficient
I *briefly* hosted a commercial site on CIHost, based on the strong recommendations by various rating sites. They were WRONG. I had serious performance problems, configuration issues, problems with domain name transfers, and virtually no response from tech support.
The last straw, though, was when i emailed them about a Y2K bug in a Perl-based online discussion group CGI they provide, and never even got an acknowledgement. Fuck that. I switched to Hurricane Electric (he.net), and they've been terrific.
Oh, i'm sure you'll see plenty of that Y2K bug at Perl-driven sites now, and in some C programs too. The symptom is that this year is now "100", not 2000. To understand why, grab K&R, look up , study how years are represented in struct tm, and consider the implications of not using strftime() to print dates. Perl doesn't have strftime(), which is why the bug is more prevalent there. But lots of naive C programmers don't learn their libraries, and thus reinvent wheels poorly.
And i've now seen this bug on at least one bbs since the Y2K rollover, and it according to a friend it has completely disabled the old telnet-driven Delphi interface.
---
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chars is barely sufficient
You have your haiku.
I have a gun. Now I have
both gun and haiku.
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I will have to get /. effect
medieval on your ass
with
---
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Sniveling coward!
Whatcha gonna do 'bout it?
Sue me like eToys?
---
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Many will respond
To this silly thread; waste points;
Scores will rise and fall
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i would disagree
with you though, if i were to
meta-moderate
---
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I live in the Twin Cities, and really love it here. A few weeks ago, a friend and i were discussing how we try to get our friends to move here, and compete with other friends in hipper places like Seattle and Chicago. The problem, she said, is that Mpls/St Paul isn't a great *tourist* town. It doesn't have the tourist attractions of Chicago or Seattle or San Fransisco, so it doesn't show off quite as well at first blush.
:}
But there are other things to consider... relatively low housing costs, less "churn" at jobs, nicer people, and an overall more relaxed atmosphere. As a parent, i find this a very nice place to raise my children. Good schools, lovely scenery, i can afford a decent house, etc. But the area is urban enough that all the big-city amenities are here. Anything that the Twin Cities doesn't have is probably exclusive to a single city elsewhere. And we have our own exclusive bits, too... for example, i work four blocks from the nation's only Kurdish resturant, and two blocks from the diner featured on the cover of Tom Waits' "Nighthawks at the Diner". And we have the nation's most, um, interesting governor.
---
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And when i wrote my protest mail to eToys.com, that's exactly what i told them... i am a parent of five year old twins, our family is well within the top 10% income bracket, and we regularly purchase goods online. And if they want a share of the hundreds of dollars a year i spend on toys, they need to drop their complaints against etoy.
Which reminds me... i should send them another letter telling them that i won't be satisfied until they have unilaterally and unconditionally dropped everything against etoy.
---
120
chars is barely sufficient
Excellent point! Andy Kaufman wasn't so much doing comedy as he was prying it apart, to see what makes it tick. Then he showed you what was inside it. The comparison to writers like Barth is very insightful... the average fiction reader couldn't handle genius work, either. How many of you have read James Joyce' "Ulysses"?
That gets back to what i said in my review... Andy Kaufman didn't so much make you laugh as make you squirm.
---
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chars is barely sufficient
(I originally posted this review yesterday to a small discussion mailing list i share with a few friends)
Man on the Moon
starring Jim Carrey, Danny Devito, Courtney Love, et al
directed by Milos Forman
produced by Danny Devito
"Man on the Moon" is the story of the rise, fall, and death of legendary
comic Andy Kaufman. Some of you may know Kaufman from his role as the
zany eastern European mechanic on the sitcom "Taxi". Others may know
him for his occasional work on Saturday Night Live, and the story of how
the audience voted to not have him on the show anymore. Or maybe you've
never heard of him at all. Those who have watched his work generally
either love him or hate him. He didn't like neutral reactions, and
didn't get them.
Author bias here: i think Andy Kaufman was one of the greatest geniuses
in comic history. And yes, he fell on his face a lot, and went over the
top A LOT. But when he was on, he was golden. Lots of comedians make
you laugh. Some make you think. Andy Kaufman made you squirm. Of
course, most people don't want to squirm, don't want to find humor in
their own embarassment and shame, so a lot of people hated him.
That being said, i loved this movie. It may not be one of the greatest
films ever made, but it really works well, and tells a fascinating
story. I think it's worth seeing even if you didn't like Andy Kaufman.
What i liked most about it, i think, wasn't so much the story, but
rather getting to see all the great Andy Kaufman standup shows and
routines that were never captured on film. His work on Taxi and
Saturday Night Live barely scratched the surface. In the film, you get
the full story of his pro wrestling career, his famous Carnegie Hall
show when he took the entire audience out for milk and cookies, the
story of Tony Clifton, etc. This is hardcore genius work. And, like
much genius work, it is often difficult to understand (at one point, his
manager (Danny Devito) chides him and his writer Bob Zmuda (Paul
Giamatti) for dragging out the Tony Clifton joke to where it was only
funny to two people in the entire world... but of course, those two
thought it was hilarious).
The acting is generally superb. For me, Jim Carrey never completely
became Kaufman, but that's probably because i had seen the real Kaufman
so much. But i have to credit Carrey with getting his timing and
mannerisms down as well as any actor is capable of doing them... and for
Kaufman, comedy was as much a matter of timing as anything. The
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi once told him the secret of being funny was
"Silence", and he used silence more effectively than any comedian since
Buster Keaton (personally, i say the essence of comedy is timing, but i
suspect the Maharishi and i mean the same thing). So, despite the fact
that i couldn't overcome the cognitive dissonance of Carrey playing
Kaufman, it worked as well as such things ever do for me.
Danny Devito plays Kaufman's manager George Shapiro (the film was his
baby... he worked with Kaufman on Taxi, and then produced it as an ode
to his friend). As George Shapiro, Devito provides the primary lens
through which the audience sees Andy Kaufman. Fans of Milos Forman's
previous work (Amadeus, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest) will recognize
the technique of humanizing a genius character for the audience by
watching him through more ordinary eyes. As usual, Devito completely
absorbs his role, becoming the most believable character in the film.
Paul Giamatti as Kaufman's writer/partner Bob Zmuda, and Courtney Love
as Kaufman's girlfriend, both deliver superbly given their somewhat
limited roles. Courtney Love in particular doesn't get enough meat in
her part to be much more than a mirror, but what she does she does very
well. For someone like her who specializes in being over the top, she
is very subdued and sensitive in the role.
Perhaps the best thing i can say about this film is that i intend to buy
a copy when it is available on video - for my children. Not for
today... although there isn't anything in it that i don't think they
should see (brief nudity? so?), it's very much adult humor, in that it
is humor about how adults see the world. Andy Kaufman's humor, while
childlike and evoking childhood memories, is not something children can
even understand as humor. What's funny to adults is just normal for
them. But, when they're old enough to understand, i want them to see
this film. It's a matter of cultural education, getting a chance to see
one of the greatest comedians ever in action. It's the same reason i'd
get them a Buster Keaton movie, really.
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This platform was used by a character in Robert Anton Wilson's "Schroedinger's Cat Trilogy", and now constitutes my minimum standard for candidates. If they won't work for life extension and an economy based on something better than wage slavery and taxation, then i'm ignoring them. In the ideal world, there would be no death or taxes. A true idealist should expect no less from a candidate.
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Actually, the Microsoft Intellimouse works very nicely under Linux/XFree86. I recently used one on a Netfinity at work because i knew it could be used as a three-button mouse, and it was handy. To my pleasant surprise, i found out that the wheel also moves an xterm scrollbar! What a great feature!
But a DVD drive? Um, guys, they aren't really supported well yet.
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I don't know where it came from, but it always makes me think of my old drunken buddies from long ago who drank a lot of "Mad Dog"... M/D (Mad Dog) 20/20 wine, a really cheap horrible brand good for nothing but a cheap drunk. They told me the reason for its superiority is that Mad Dog spelled backwards is God Dam!!
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