You thought they just wanted to host a fun outing for robotics geeks? Like, they had all this money left over from the arms race and decided to spend it on something cool and froody?
Of *course* they want really smart people to come up with good ideas they can use. That's why design competitions exist.
It does them no good if all the contestants wash out. DARPA needs to do exactly what they're doing, in order to come up with a winnable contest so that good ideas can be identified by how well they meet the challenge. It's hard to sort the good ideas from the poor ones if everybody fails.
The mobile phone was an improvement over the immobile phone. The PDA was, for lots of us, a disimprovement over the paper and pencil that continue to do everything we want in a note-taking system. My DayTimer doesn't run down, doesn't break when I drop it, retains *exactly* what I wrote instead of its best guess, also holds the day's receipts when closed, and doesn't fail to do anything I want it to do.
I suppose someone could make electronic digitalized chewing gum, but would it really be better?
(Don't go telling me I'm opposed to change. Making *useful* changes is what I do for a living. Some changes are not useful, or not broadly useful.)
You know what would be *really* smart? Letting me tell my phone to take big wads of unwanted features *off* the menus until I decide that I want one of them back. Let them all hide behind one "manage features" menu pick.
Second the notion. Let me know when I can buy a Linux-based stupidphone that just dials, picks up, and lets me talk with people out of earshot. A basic personal phone book is a plus. My years-old Motorola ST7868W already has far too many features I don't use and don't want to use.
OTOH "long standby time" is good. They're trying to say that it will run for a long long time between chargings when you don't actually talk (assuming that talking is still provided). An active connection drains the battery at a higher rate and doesn't count as "standby"; only time spent switched on but not connected is "standby". You want standby time to be somewhat longer than you usually go, or would want to go, between chargings. And "triband" is good too -- it means that the phone's radio section can communicate with all mobile phone gear, at least until they discover that most Americans now have triband so it's time to invent another band to keep the riffraff out.
Unless the artist sold the copyright to the publisher. Isn't it common practice that the publisher isn't interested in your creation unless he can own it altogether?
That's why we write things down formally. Then we can get all the liars around a table and see what the agreement says. We don't dissolve into arguments over what A believes B told him that he remembered C saying that D meant -- at least, not about the final form of the agreement. We eliminate the ever-growing tree of transitive relationships: everybody's opinion has only one degree of separation from the consensus, which everybody can examine as needed.
It doesn't automatically resolve all conflicts, but it makes things a lot easier to think about.
Yes, "Quenta Silmarillion" is a bunch of stories, but at the same time they are also tied together in the single story of the Silmarils: their creation; their theft by Melkor; the Oath of Fëanor and his sons to reclaim them; various wars, disasters, and internal schisms of the Eldar caused by lust for them; and their fate. In this sense it is a single tale with many subplots. You can view it either way.
Likewise all that and the rest as well are really part of a still larger tale: the Song of the Ainur made manifest by Eru, with all of its textures and ramifications.
Amazing. I have no problem seeing stories there. Although "quenta" can be read as "history", "tale" is closer. Both senses actually occur in that volume: "Valaquenta" should probably be "history of the Valar", while "Quenta Silmarillion" is definitely a "Tale" although it does cover the full history of the Silmarils.
Wait, I think I see what you mean. There's not a single thread sweeping the reader from a definite beginning to a definite ending. (The beginning is *definitely* there in "Ainulindale" but there is no end since at the close we still have two Ages to go.) In the middle there's sort of a swamp of smaller tales which bear on each other here and there, and it's easy to lose the broader flow. But I *like* a bit of complexity, a bit of world-building.
I think a lot of people also get put off by the author's indulgence of his interest in language. I happen to like tasty written expression, but that sort of style is definitely not for everyone. A lot of 20th century writers tried to breathe life into their language by making it new in various ways, but I much prefer the work of those who made their words young by drawing me back to a time when older modes of expression *were* young. Tolkien's use of English wields a kind of power that SFX can never command.
Make it more like a real book. I want two full pages of text visible at once, and at similar resolution. I want it to work at any level of illumination above a single candle. It can be no heavier than a book. It must have no more controls than a book, or I must be able to operate it normally while ignoring (without effort) any extra controls it presents.
The content itself must not stop functioning if I don't keep paying; I don't buy content that isn't good enough to enjoy for a lifetime. Avoid the temptation to cram in sidebars and flashing whozits -- I want no distractions while I'm reading. Keep It Simple.
Speaking of content, it needs stuff beyond whatever inhabits the front windows of the big chain bookstores this week. Older titles and specialty subjects are important.
The price of a reader must not be more than, say, three times the price of a paper book. And the content modules should be much cheaper than p-books since I have to furnish the reader.
All this is required to make an e-book *nearly as good as* a p-book. Still wanna be in the e-book business?
...*why* do they want to be the broadband capital of the world? What do they do with it that the rest of us don't? Because I haven't seen anything out there that needs to come to me any faster than my modem can handle.
Interesting to note that those infractions of The Rules are also the complaint that some have against Chinese novels, which tend to weave several stories together and offer a profusion of characters.
Sticking to the story might give a competitive edge. The movies are good movies but it's not the same story, really. At best they earn an "inspired by". I can see that much in them would be hard to understand if you hadn't read the book -- so much is glossed over or left out altogether.
Appendices, indeed. Check out the "mythology" too! The entire trilogy chronicles only the very ending of the Third Age. _The Silmarillion_ sets the stage with the creation of the world and a rich history of the First Age (mainly the Elves), explaining where a lot of this stuff comes from. (Not much is known about the Second Age, but that's in _The Silmarillion_ too -- mainly the history of Aragorn's people before they came to Middle Earth.)
If you get really interested, there's lots more.
_The Book of Lost Tales_ _Unfinished Tales_ Christopher Tolkien's _History of Middle Earth_ series which unearths early ideas either reshaped or abandoned during the crafting of all this stuff.
I'm on the far end of a 56kb/s dialup. I want the CD. I'd just get an additional warm feeling if I knew that some of the money would support further development. If it doesn't, fine; I'd just like to know, one way or the other.
Doesn't matter if it's a trojan or not. Nachi messed up our network at least as much as the thing it was supposed to fight. The whole organization worked like bees for the better part of a week to get rid of that thing.
These aren't "white knights"; it's a case of two black knights contesting a crossroads, and our networks are the road that's getting pounded into dust by the hooves! Fie on both of them.
If I buy a Mozilla CD, does all the money get eaten by production and administrative costs and shipping, or does the Foundation actually get some money to spend on development? I haven't been able to find anything at the Mozilla site which says yea or nay on this.
I'll probably send a small gift either way, but it would be nice to know.
I'd say any Mozilla after about 1.0 would be an upgrade for Netscape, as it would remove a bunch of advertising and other junk I'd be happier without.
We offer NS 6 on our stations here in addition to the unremovable IE. Next time the images are updated, I'm going to lobby hard to replace it with Firefox current.current no matter what, and never look back.
Honestly. Netscape threw in their hand...why are they still at the table?
Yeah, when we got our portion of the cut, I turned to my wife and said, "hey, good news, we're plutocrats!" It's still a struggle to make the payments on a modest home and the grocery budget is a bit tight, but we must be among the richest 2% of Americans 'cos our taxes were cut. Maybe there are a few bags of $1000 bills that got lost behind the sofa.
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You thought they just wanted to host a fun outing for robotics geeks? Like, they had all this money left over from the arms race and decided to spend it on something cool and froody?
Of *course* they want really smart people to come up with good ideas they can use. That's why design competitions exist.
It does them no good if all the contestants wash out. DARPA needs to do exactly what they're doing, in order to come up with a winnable contest so that good ideas can be identified by how well they meet the challenge. It's hard to sort the good ideas from the poor ones if everybody fails.
Yeah, I would probably pay *more* for a simpler phone than for one of these overcomplicated gadgetphones.
The mobile phone was an improvement over the immobile phone. The PDA was, for lots of us, a disimprovement over the paper and pencil that continue to do everything we want in a note-taking system. My DayTimer doesn't run down, doesn't break when I drop it, retains *exactly* what I wrote instead of its best guess, also holds the day's receipts when closed, and doesn't fail to do anything I want it to do.
I suppose someone could make electronic digitalized chewing gum, but would it really be better?
(Don't go telling me I'm opposed to change. Making *useful* changes is what I do for a living. Some changes are not useful, or not broadly useful.)
You know what would be *really* smart? Letting me tell my phone to take big wads of unwanted features *off* the menus until I decide that I want one of them back. Let them all hide behind one "manage features" menu pick.
Second the notion. Let me know when I can buy a Linux-based stupidphone that just dials, picks up, and lets me talk with people out of earshot. A basic personal phone book is a plus. My years-old Motorola ST7868W already has far too many features I don't use and don't want to use.
OTOH "long standby time" is good. They're trying to say that it will run for a long long time between chargings when you don't actually talk (assuming that talking is still provided). An active connection drains the battery at a higher rate and doesn't count as "standby"; only time spent switched on but not connected is "standby". You want standby time to be somewhat longer than you usually go, or would want to go, between chargings. And "triband" is good too -- it means that the phone's radio section can communicate with all mobile phone gear, at least until they discover that most Americans now have triband so it's time to invent another band to keep the riffraff out.
Unless the artist sold the copyright to the publisher. Isn't it common practice that the publisher isn't interested in your creation unless he can own it altogether?
That's why we write things down formally. Then we can get all the liars around a table and see what the agreement says. We don't dissolve into arguments over what A believes B told him that he remembered C saying that D meant -- at least, not about the final form of the agreement. We eliminate the ever-growing tree of transitive relationships: everybody's opinion has only one degree of separation from the consensus, which everybody can examine as needed.
It doesn't automatically resolve all conflicts, but it makes things a lot easier to think about.
Yes, "Quenta Silmarillion" is a bunch of stories, but at the same time they are also tied together in the single story of the Silmarils: their creation; their theft by Melkor; the Oath of Fëanor and his sons to reclaim them; various wars, disasters, and internal schisms of the Eldar caused by lust for them; and their fate. In this sense it is a single tale with many subplots. You can view it either way.
Likewise all that and the rest as well are really part of a still larger tale: the Song of the Ainur made manifest by Eru, with all of its textures and ramifications.
Amazing. I have no problem seeing stories there. Although "quenta" can be read as "history", "tale" is closer. Both senses actually occur in that volume: "Valaquenta" should probably be "history of the Valar", while "Quenta Silmarillion" is definitely a "Tale" although it does cover the full history of the Silmarils.
Wait, I think I see what you mean. There's not a single thread sweeping the reader from a definite beginning to a definite ending. (The beginning is *definitely* there in "Ainulindale" but there is no end since at the close we still have two Ages to go.) In the middle there's sort of a swamp of smaller tales which bear on each other here and there, and it's easy to lose the broader flow. But I *like* a bit of complexity, a bit of world-building.
I think a lot of people also get put off by the author's indulgence of his interest in language. I happen to like tasty written expression, but that sort of style is definitely not for everyone. A lot of 20th century writers tried to breathe life into their language by making it new in various ways, but I much prefer the work of those who made their words young by drawing me back to a time when older modes of expression *were* young. Tolkien's use of English wields a kind of power that SFX can never command.
Make it more like a real book. I want two full pages of text visible at once, and at similar resolution. I want it to work at any level of illumination above a single candle. It can be no heavier than a book. It must have no more controls than a book, or I must be able to operate it normally while ignoring (without effort) any extra controls it presents.
The content itself must not stop functioning if I don't keep paying; I don't buy content that isn't good enough to enjoy for a lifetime. Avoid the temptation to cram in sidebars and flashing whozits -- I want no distractions while I'm reading. Keep It Simple.
Speaking of content, it needs stuff beyond whatever inhabits the front windows of the big chain bookstores this week. Older titles and specialty subjects are important.
The price of a reader must not be more than, say, three times the price of a paper book. And the content modules should be much cheaper than p-books since I have to furnish the reader.
All this is required to make an e-book *nearly as good as* a p-book. Still wanna be in the e-book business?
...*why* do they want to be the broadband capital of the world? What do they do with it that the rest of us don't? Because I haven't seen anything out there that needs to come to me any faster than my modem can handle.
It takes *two* words to say, "read it!"
You want the "Quenta Silmarillion", then. Pride! Lust! Vengeance! Treachery! Ultimate Evil! And lots and lots of Battles!
Hear, hear. At 47 I find that Heinlein's juveniles are as enjoyable as anything else he wrote. I'm enjoying Harry Potter and Duane's _Young Wizards_.
The best writing "for the young" really speaks to all ages.
Interesting to note that those infractions of The Rules are also the complaint that some have against Chinese novels, which tend to weave several stories together and offer a profusion of characters.
Sticking to the story might give a competitive edge. The movies are good movies but it's not the same story, really. At best they earn an "inspired by". I can see that much in them would be hard to understand if you hadn't read the book -- so much is glossed over or left out altogether.
Appendices, indeed. Check out the "mythology" too! The entire trilogy chronicles only the very ending of the Third Age. _The Silmarillion_ sets the stage with the creation of the world and a rich history of the First Age (mainly the Elves), explaining where a lot of this stuff comes from. (Not much is known about the Second Age, but that's in _The Silmarillion_ too -- mainly the history of Aragorn's people before they came to Middle Earth.)
If you get really interested, there's lots more.
_The Book of Lost Tales_
_Unfinished Tales_
Christopher Tolkien's _History of Middle Earth_ series which unearths early ideas either reshaped or abandoned during the crafting of all this stuff.
I'm on the far end of a 56kb/s dialup. I want the CD. I'd just get an additional warm feeling if I knew that some of the money would support further development. If it doesn't, fine; I'd just like to know, one way or the other.
Yeah, if someone hits you with a brick so he can darn your socks while you recover, is that a "white knight" mugging?
It is *not* "trying to do some good". Two worm writers are carrying on a wheel war using *our* equipment.
Doesn't matter if it's a trojan or not. Nachi messed up our network at least as much as the thing it was supposed to fight. The whole organization worked like bees for the better part of a week to get rid of that thing.
These aren't "white knights"; it's a case of two black knights contesting a crossroads, and our networks are the road that's getting pounded into dust by the hooves! Fie on both of them.
Yeah, everytime someone finds a new hole in IE these days, CNN has a story on it the next day.
If I buy a Mozilla CD, does all the money get eaten by production and administrative costs and shipping, or does the Foundation actually get some money to spend on development? I haven't been able to find anything at the Mozilla site which says yea or nay on this.
I'll probably send a small gift either way, but it would be nice to know.
I'd say any Mozilla after about 1.0 would be an upgrade for Netscape, as it would remove a bunch of advertising and other junk I'd be happier without.
We offer NS 6 on our stations here in addition to the unremovable IE. Next time the images are updated, I'm going to lobby hard to replace it with Firefox current.current no matter what, and never look back.
Honestly. Netscape threw in their hand...why are they still at the table?
Yeah, when we got our portion of the cut, I turned to my wife and said, "hey, good news, we're plutocrats!" It's still a struggle to make the payments on a modest home and the grocery budget is a bit tight, but we must be among the richest 2% of Americans 'cos our taxes were cut. Maybe there are a few bags of $1000 bills that got lost behind the sofa.