This will only stop the unsophisticated users. While the government is backdooring into some 1337 h4x0r script kiddies' communications, terrorists cells will be communicating through steganographic messages with non-government-approved encryption on the local pr0n site.
Lucas's big mistake with TPM was creating a more sophisticated plot than the original trilogy. A plot that apparently went completely over the heads of all the Lucas bashers out there.
But then he squandered about 3 hours of the movie on that interminable race, and all the pretty eye-candy under the ocean, and the third version of "Blowing Up the Big Spaceship with a Lucky Shot"(TM) while glossing over much of the really interesting political stuff. The Jedi Council meeting should have been shown in more detail. They decide not to train Anakin, which is illogical, and no justification is given for this bizarre decision.
Granted, Lucas doesn't want to bore the kiddies, but let's face, if you are going to introduce political intrigue into your story, you shouldn't gloss over it so well. You can always cut back periodically to Jar-Jar getting his tongue scissored off or pod racers exploding or Darth Maul flossing his horns or something to keep the Ritalin set in their seats.
In summary, if you are going to make a movie with a two-hour plot, don't waste two-thirds of the movie showing stuff that does little or nothing to advance that plot. One or the other has to go.
Nice sentiment... and it's something I'd love to see myself. However, let's look at Hollywood as an example. They remake movies from old movies or TV shows all the time, knowing they are working with a proven idea, and also they can cash in on the nostalgia factor. The problem is that with few exceptions, these remakes suck!
I wouldn't have any high expectations for a remake of something classic like the old Ultima games (for the record I played 2, 3, and 4, and recently picked up the reissued bundle of the whole series). However, I would be ticked to be proved wrong. Some remakes are good.
That's nothing. They're going to be introducing purple ketchup next. I figger for my Mardi Gras party I can serve hot dogs garnished with green and purple ketchup and yellow mustard. Lots of fun until the kids get hyperactive and you come down with cancer.
Seriously though, there are "natural" strains of potato that are purple, so it's not like it's some kind of freak.
Now, I'll get me a blue Nehi and settle back and enjoy the FD&C rainbow.
Wossamatter, you don't like that mid-70's hairdo he's sporting. I would have to say that of all of the Hildebrandts' renderings of characters from Middle-earth, Aragorn is probably the only one that doesn't match my mental image reasonably well. Of course, I never pictured the Last Homely House under large trees either. But to me the Hildebrandt pictures _are_ what Tolkien's world looked like.
I think you completely missed his point. Katz clearly meant that the loss of life _is_ the horrific convergence. Let's stick to criticizing what Katz actually says.
When else in history could a country at peace be suddenly subject to such devastating loss? The last 100 years or so has seen exactly what Katz said...
Re:Mod this crap down.
on
DivX;) Goes Legit
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Read the post again. This was his analysis of the situation. As cynical as it is, I think he's probably not far off the track.
Slashdot mispresented the story, sure. They usually do. I take that as a given. Slashdot may have good standards but they are like the Weely World News with their headlines.
However, a CD-ROM drive _is_ a standard CD player. It supports the Red Book standard. Before you accuse others of substandard reading comprehension maybe you'd better get your definitions straight.
But aren't hyperlinks (you know, from the 'H' in HTML) appropriate for footnotes. Just a stupid idea, I suppose.
You're right in that HTML was never intended to be a layout tool although it has been coerced into being one, but IMO, in and of itself HTML can be a very reasonable way to display information. However, footnotes are placed on the same page to allow the user to see them without flipping around the book. If you are using hyperlinks, you get the same effect.
_Every_ toy designed at least in part for boys features characters that are some sort of legendary heroes. If they are fighting together, that's fine, but to fight, you need an enemy, and I don't doubt that the enemies are available too.
I think this whole good vs. bad thing in toys is stale and tiring. When I played with Lego as a kid, everything didn't need to revolve around combat, in fact I don't recall playing that way often. Now that Lego has been sucked in to that whole mentality, they have just erased the almost all of the last differences between themselves and any other stupid toy on the market.
Who needs heroes when you have a mind?
on
Why Can't LEGO Click?
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Well, gee whiz, how did kids ever play togther before there was TV? Your argument is ludicrous... if anything I think the problem with Lego is that it's not Lego anymore, unless you stick with the very basic stuff. Lego was originally large quantities of very generic pieces that would as easilt build a house, spaceship, car or dinosaur. Nowaways, most Lego sets are essentially models. You build the model, there might be some variations possible, but with all the specific pieces they have now it doesn't require any imagination. Also, one of the strengths of Lego was its limitations. There weren't pieces to cover every possible thing you might want to build so you had to learn both creativity and compromise. In more recent days, they make models that look like the things they look like (to paraphrase Homer Simpson) in part by making one-off pieces specifically for the target model. Sure, the resulting model looks better, but to me it violates the basic principle of what makes Lego the best toy ever. My kids have a lot of Lego, some of it is 30+ years old from my early childhood. They received several of the Star Wars sets, which are very cool, and in each case, the sets were built once, and then cannibalized for the latest original creation. Now the Star Wars sets do seem to have fewer non-generic pieces than other sets I have seen, but in my family's case, being able to create your own toys out of Lego is the highest requirement.
I'm sorry if you feel the way you do, but in my book, if a child can't be creative without a TV show or something to draw from, he or she is going to grow up to be another boring person. My kids do watch their share of TV.. I'm not a purist in that regard, but their imaginative games, drawings, Lego models, etc, veer wildly into realms they create themselves. I think all children should have to drive and capacity to be like this. I have always steered them towards toys that lend themselves to creative play, which is what I myself was brought up on, and at the end of the day, with a toy box stuffed full of cool things, often times their favorite indoor toy is blank paper and something to color with.
Thanks to his inventions we may soon kiss incandescent lights goodbye forever. The savings in both energy costs and reduced landfill would be enormous. There are LED replacements for incandescent bulbs now, but their cost is around $200. Some day, when the cost gets more reasonable, I plan on filling my house with them. I hope Dr. Nakamura gets everything he deserves. Hooray for science!
Blue LED's are now plentiful, if a little costly, and are much brighter than other LED's you might have seen (some approach 10000mcd!). They were first developed in the early 90's by some Japanese guy whose name I am too lazy to look up.
You can buy awesome blue (also white) LED's from Radio Shack for about $3 or $4 a piece, cheaper from electronics sites on-line. Those babies are painfully bright... not your Daddy's LED's. I made a flashlight with a single white LED at the end of a piece of intercom wire with a 9v battery pack. I use it for looking around in computers and other cramped places, reading (much better than those Itty-Bitty Book Lights), and entertaining my kids.
You should "get out" more. There is more incredible music coming out that will _never_ be played by a radio station now than at any time in the past. If all your music exposure is from the radio then your are getting the drek of the crop with only very few real gems.
Well, what _can_ you do? All we have to do is look at Congress and the President themselves to see that you can lie with impunity, get caught, and pay no real penalty. In essence, lying is now acceptable behavior. It's frowned upon, sure, but no one who gets caught at it in public life sees any real consequences.
Re:How much deeper does this hole get?
on
Netscape 6.1
·
· Score: 1
...if only to complain. So will I. So will almost everyone else in this forum. But that's OK. I don't think it makes anyone into a hypocrite if he or she wants to spend $7 for some cool CGI eye-candy.
Just repeat to yourself, it's just a movie, I should really just relax.
I watched FG a couple of time and found it to be painfully unfunny. The dad is pretty good, sure, but he's a shameless Homer-ripoff. The baby is just annoying... that character's entire schtick seems to be that he says/thinks things that are too sophisticated for a baby. Big deal. Nothing he says is actually funny to me, just odd (and tiresome) coming from a baby.
Slashdot Mirror
This will only stop the unsophisticated users. While the government is backdooring into some 1337 h4x0r script kiddies' communications, terrorists cells will be communicating through steganographic messages with non-government-approved encryption on the local pr0n site.
Lucas's big mistake with TPM was creating a more sophisticated plot than the original trilogy. A plot that apparently went completely over the heads of all the Lucas bashers out there.
But then he squandered about 3 hours of the movie on that interminable race, and all the pretty eye-candy under the ocean, and the third version of "Blowing Up the Big Spaceship with a Lucky Shot"(TM) while glossing over much of the really interesting political stuff. The Jedi Council meeting should have been shown in more detail. They decide not to train Anakin, which is illogical, and no justification is given for this bizarre decision.
Granted, Lucas doesn't want to bore the kiddies, but let's face, if you are going to introduce political intrigue into your story, you shouldn't gloss over it so well. You can always cut back periodically to Jar-Jar getting his tongue scissored off or pod racers exploding or Darth Maul flossing his horns or something to keep the Ritalin set in their seats.
In summary, if you are going to make a movie with a two-hour plot, don't waste two-thirds of the movie showing stuff that does little or nothing to advance that plot. One or the other has to go.
Nice sentiment... and it's something I'd love to see myself. However, let's look at Hollywood as an example. They remake movies from old movies or TV shows all the time, knowing they are working with a proven idea, and also they can cash in on the nostalgia factor. The problem is that with few exceptions, these remakes suck!
I wouldn't have any high expectations for a remake of something classic like the old Ultima games (for the record I played 2, 3, and 4, and recently picked up the reissued bundle of the whole series). However, I would be ticked to be proved wrong. Some remakes are good.
Yeah, but what I'd really like to see is a 3D first person updating of that old Apple II, etc, classic "Castle Wolfenstein"... er... never mind.
That's nothing. They're going to be introducing purple ketchup next. I figger for my Mardi Gras party I can serve hot dogs garnished with green and purple ketchup and yellow mustard. Lots of fun until the kids get hyperactive and you come down with cancer.
Seriously though, there are "natural" strains of potato that are purple, so it's not like it's some kind of freak.
Now, I'll get me a blue Nehi and settle back and enjoy the FD&C rainbow.
Wossamatter, you don't like that mid-70's hairdo he's sporting. I would have to say that of all of the Hildebrandts' renderings of characters from Middle-earth, Aragorn is probably the only one that doesn't match my mental image reasonably well. Of course, I never pictured the Last Homely House under large trees either. But to me the Hildebrandt pictures _are_ what Tolkien's world looked like.
Ironically, it's the "teaser" page inside the front cover and the passage does not actually appear in the story proper.
BoTR is a brilliant tribute to Tolkien and a hilarious work in its own right.
Too bad... I was so looking forward to seeing all those dwarves with mohawks...
I think you completely missed his point. Katz clearly meant that the loss of life _is_ the horrific convergence. Let's stick to criticizing what Katz actually says.
When else in history could a country at peace be suddenly subject to such devastating loss? The last 100 years or so has seen exactly what Katz said...
Read the post again. This was his analysis of the situation. As cynical as it is, I think he's probably not far off the track.
Slashdot mispresented the story, sure. They usually do. I take that as a given. Slashdot may have good standards but they are like the Weely World News with their headlines.
However, a CD-ROM drive _is_ a standard CD player. It supports the Red Book standard. Before you accuse others of substandard reading comprehension maybe you'd better get your definitions straight.
But aren't hyperlinks (you know, from the 'H' in HTML) appropriate for footnotes. Just a stupid idea, I suppose.
You're right in that HTML was never intended to be a layout tool although it has been coerced into being one, but IMO, in and of itself HTML can be a very reasonable way to display information. However, footnotes are placed on the same page to allow the user to see them without flipping around the book. If you are using hyperlinks, you get the same effect.
What if a computer CD-ROM drive is the only means you have of playing an audio CD? Is it then your fault that you cannot use your purchased CD?
About 3000 if they stay at their keyboards. About 200 if they sit around and masturbate and throw poo.
I think Lego deserves a permanent place in the toy manufacturers Hall of Fame regardless of what they do from here on out.
_Every_ toy designed at least in part for boys features characters that are some sort of legendary heroes. If they are fighting together, that's fine, but to fight, you need an enemy, and I don't doubt that the enemies are available too.
I think this whole good vs. bad thing in toys is stale and tiring. When I played with Lego as a kid, everything didn't need to revolve around combat, in fact I don't recall playing that way often. Now that Lego has been sucked in to that whole mentality, they have just erased the almost all of the last differences between themselves and any other stupid toy on the market.
Well, gee whiz, how did kids ever play togther before there was TV? Your argument is ludicrous... if anything I think the problem with Lego is that it's not Lego anymore, unless you stick with the very basic stuff. Lego was originally large quantities of very generic pieces that would as easilt build a house, spaceship, car or dinosaur. Nowaways, most Lego sets are essentially models. You build the model, there might be some variations possible, but with all the specific pieces they have now it doesn't require any imagination. Also, one of the strengths of Lego was its limitations. There weren't pieces to cover every possible thing you might want to build so you had to learn both creativity and compromise. In more recent days, they make models that look like the things they look like (to paraphrase Homer Simpson) in part by making one-off pieces specifically for the target model. Sure, the resulting model looks better, but to me it violates the basic principle of what makes Lego the best toy ever. My kids have a lot of Lego, some of it is 30+ years old from my early childhood. They received several of the Star Wars sets, which are very cool, and in each case, the sets were built once, and then cannibalized for the latest original creation. Now the Star Wars sets do seem to have fewer non-generic pieces than other sets I have seen, but in my family's case, being able to create your own toys out of Lego is the highest requirement.
I'm sorry if you feel the way you do, but in my book, if a child can't be creative without a TV show or something to draw from, he or she is going to grow up to be another boring person. My kids do watch their share of TV.. I'm not a purist in that regard, but their imaginative games, drawings, Lego models, etc, veer wildly into realms they create themselves. I think all children should have to drive and capacity to be like this. I have always steered them towards toys that lend themselves to creative play, which is what I myself was brought up on, and at the end of the day, with a toy box stuffed full of cool things, often times their favorite indoor toy is blank paper and something to color with.
Thanks to his inventions we may soon kiss incandescent lights goodbye forever. The savings in both energy costs and reduced landfill would be enormous. There are LED replacements for incandescent bulbs now, but their cost is around $200. Some day, when the cost gets more reasonable, I plan on filling my house with them. I hope Dr. Nakamura gets everything he deserves. Hooray for science!
Blue LED's are now plentiful, if a little costly, and are much brighter than other LED's you might have seen (some approach 10000mcd!). They were first developed in the early 90's by some Japanese guy whose name I am too lazy to look up.
You can buy awesome blue (also white) LED's from Radio Shack for about $3 or $4 a piece, cheaper from electronics sites on-line. Those babies are painfully bright... not your Daddy's LED's. I made a flashlight with a single white LED at the end of a piece of intercom wire with a 9v battery pack. I use it for looking around in computers and other cramped places, reading (much better than those Itty-Bitty Book Lights), and entertaining my kids.
You should "get out" more. There is more incredible music coming out that will _never_ be played by a radio station now than at any time in the past. If all your music exposure is from the radio then your are getting the drek of the crop with only very few real gems.
Rick "prog-head since '78" Gutleber
Thanks. I can't take credit for it. I snarfed it from someone off of Usenet.
Rick
Well, what _can_ you do? All we have to do is look at Congress and the President themselves to see that you can lie with impunity, get caught, and pay no real penalty. In essence, lying is now acceptable behavior. It's frowned upon, sure, but no one who gets caught at it in public life sees any real consequences.
That term is used in the U.S. as well.
...if only to complain. So will I. So will almost everyone else in this forum. But that's OK. I don't think it makes anyone into a hypocrite if he or she wants to spend $7 for some cool CGI eye-candy.
Just repeat to yourself, it's just a movie, I should really just relax.
I watched FG a couple of time and found it to be painfully unfunny. The dad is pretty good, sure, but he's a shameless Homer-ripoff. The baby is just annoying... that character's entire schtick seems to be that he says/thinks things that are too sophisticated for a baby. Big deal. Nothing he says is actually funny to me, just odd (and tiresome) coming from a baby.
Blech!