Perhaps Miguel should inform his investors that he is spending a large part of their money on an effort (Mono) that very few of the consumers in Ximian's current marketplace are actually interested in. In fact, most of his current customers are dead set against the product that Ximian intends to push out the door.
Miguel's amazing lack of business sense is simply stupifying. Is there no accountability at Ximian? All of its employees and investors are willing to just march right off the end of a bridge if told to by Miguel?
Perhaps Miguel is attempting to top the blind-sighted, who-cares-about-a-business-plan failure of Eazel?
Miguel is well known for his efforts in emulating Microsoft technology. What he failed to do while training at the knee of the beast was to visit the Microsoft marketing department.
"With.NET once an API is published it's available to all programming languages at the same time."
With comments like these, Miguel has really lost it. Perhaps he never had it to begin with.
He appears to have this entirely fantastical idea that when Mono reaches 1.0, we will be able to just plug in the existing C, C++, Perl, etc code bases into it and, WAMMO!, instant cross language, cross platform code. I can understand his frustration with updating Gnome language bindings. However, I think his mind has snapped from doing that kind of work.
He has bought into the central.NET MYTH: that you can just willy-nilly plug in existing languages in the CLR nirvana. He has become one of those.NET fan boys who show up touting that.NET supports over twenty programming languages.
Note to Miguel: the cross languages promises of.NET are a pile of large stinking COW dookey!
Programmers don't like half assed solutions to problems. And that is just what Perl, Python and name-your-favorite-language are inside the world of.NET. What are the hard realities:
(1) Languages evolve. The.NET support for the.NET versions of languages do not. Programmers don't want to work with 80 percent of the features of their chosen language simply because the.NET version of the language doesn't support it. They also don't want to deal with compatibility problems arising with FunctionA() acts differently when run under the C++.NET as opposed to the native C++ environment.
(2) The Common Type System and Common Class Libraries of the.NET universe impose straight jackets on languages that no programmers will want to deal with. Programmers don't want to be confined to using a limited set of types and classes just so their program can function in the CLR. Should I even mention the compatibility problems that existing code will have within the.NET sandbox?
Mandrake has lost their position as "Newbie Linux of Choice".
While I use Mandrake and have purchased every standard version that they ever released, I really feel that Mandrake is being left behind in the useability department by the likes of SuSE and many of the upcoming newbiew friendly distros like Redmond Linux. The real nit that I have with Mandrake is total lack of cohesion between the Drake Applications. Many of these applications really pioneered new functionality for the linux desktop, but they haven't grown together like applications from KDE, Gnome, Ximian, etc. They all function/look/act differently.
Why hasn't someone inside of Mandrake taken pieces from the KDE and Gnome design standards and attempted to apply some uniformity between the applications that Mandrakes designs? It simply boggles the mind that tools like RPMDrake can be so poorly designed.
And what about ICONS!!!! The Mandrake icons and the menu system itself are both totally unprofessional. Can Mandrake afford to pay an icon designer who knows how to make icons in more than two shades of blue?
So what do we attribute the stagnification of Mandrake to? Is Mandrake's development model too open? No one within Mandrake has the guts or the brains to stand up and say: "No, we shouldn't be designed 20 applications that all look and function differently. There is a reason why KDE and Gnome came into existence." Then again, perhaps it is just the bureacratic chaos and momentum that surrounds Mandrake.
You can still get their port of Quake3 (which comes in the nice tine box) from www.ebgames.com for only 10 bucks. Go to ebgames.com and do a search for Linux.
You can even easily convert it to the Win32 version (not sure why you would want to).
- Just last quarter MS wrote off 700 million on a class action law suit. That number will probably be revised upwards as the judge actually rejected the settlement on which that number was based.
- MS settled out of court with Caldera for something like 500 million.
- MS is mostly likely spending hundreds of millions of dollars on attorney fees.
- AOL is about to roll Billy Boy for at least 500 million to 1 billion.
And what did they get for all of these well spend funds? A few percentage points of browser market share that don't mean a damn thing. Their desktop monopoly would probably be just as strong as it is today if they hadn't played dirty. There was no competition: DR DOS and over priced Macs couldn't have prevented the MS desktop monopoly.
Why people think Gates is an asset for MS, when his marketing/business smarts are clearly dwarfed by his clear lack of perspective and maturity, baffles me.
>> But the Netscape browser was bug-ridden piece of crap. That's why they died.
If the giant flaming a**hole that is Bill Gates had intelligently realized that he didn't need to cheat in this market to win, then Microsoft wouldn't be in the current state that it is.
Alas, Gates' maturity problems have cost Microsoft a few billion dollars and possibly doomed Microsoft in the long term as the behavior of his company was a primary fuel for the rise of Linux.
>> If Xbox MK3 or thereabouts was a game console, a digital VCR, an internet machine (Messenger, IE, Outlook, Frontpage, IRC client, SSH client), a DVD player, a CD player, a home office suite (Word, Excel, Access), you could buy 3rd party licenced software, how many of your non-geek friends and family would need a real computer? The answer is: Almost none.
Wrong. The nirvana of your MK3 won't be realized because:
(1) Current XBox technology can't multi-task well enough to do two to three of those tasks well at the same time.
You aren't going to come close to being able to (1) run office suite (2) record program (3) play game at the same time.
(2) Current graphical display technology for remotely displaying a screen at my desk from the box that sits under the TV isn't affordable. People aren't going to be writing papers using the crap video resolution that comes out of a TV set.
I would say that manufacturing an affordable box that can perform (1) and (2) is one hell of a long ways away. Now if you were inferring that people would only be able to purchase the MK3 in the year 2020 you might have a decent argument.
>> That makes us exceptions: most people very rarely crash their windows computers
This is simply a bald faced lie. Whatever never never land you are living in isn't visited by the rest of us in the tech industry.
The vast majority of people that work with windows (especially in its earlier incarnations) that I have met (and that's a fairly large number of poeple) deal and are well versed in the fact that windows crashes.
For a full two decades before the release of WinNT and its children, the working people of the world put up with constant crashing and re-installing from windows. Suggesting anything else is pure and un-adulterated BULLSHIT.
>> The Linux kernel is starting to look like anarchy to non-developers.
What data points do you base this observation on? You believe that there is an appearance of linux kernel development becoming increasing chaotic?
You are very wrong. A true analysis of the progress of linux kernel development would show a measurable decrease in the level of chaos in the system.
The past few years have seen an increase in paid full time linux kernel hackers. These hackers are generally tasked with working on a specific sub-system and/or providing source control management. The Marcelos and Coxes of the world are increasing in number and their work is really paying off in a more ordered kernel development process.
Even the volunteers like the kernel janitors work in a more structured and orderly manner.
Perhap someone should write a white paper detailing the main kernel hackers and the evolution of the kernel development process. THAT would make for good PR.
"Lin" is the first three letters from Linux. This product is mostly about Linux. That's why people will buy it.
Ok, Mr. Trademark Nazi, please provide a complete list of trademarks that I cannot create that include any of either of the strings "win" or "dows".
Would the use of the product name "Winux" be illegal? Its simply ridiculous that MS is prosecuting this case. Its just another case of the Ballmer and Co showing what large a**holes that can be.
The standardization of Javascript by Netscape is all well and good. It also entirely not relevant.
As I said before, MS submitted _JScript_ to the EMCA as an entirely different implementation of Javascript. Its a variant of Javascript. MS created their own standard. Its a standard that MS never bothered to implement fully in their actual implementation and that is not compatible with Javascript.
Microsoft has also submitted their implementation of Javascript (which they call JScript) to the EMCA. There are untold deviatations from what they submitted to the EMCA and bugs that will never be addressed by MS.
Good luck to the Mono development staff. A typical days work will consist of ensuring that bug #34433 behaves exactly like the bug in the MS code.
If they can't guarantee 100% bug-infested compatibility, then Mono is worthless.
That little company is some SERIOUS trouble. They lost the equivalent of 13 million Euros last year. Mandrake only managed 3.5 million in revenue for the entire year!
What more is there to say about this report other than there is little or no money to be made from selling a 30 dollar Linux boxes at retail? Good lord even lowly Caldera has more revenue than Mandrake!
How can what is arguably the most popular Linux distribution be on the verge of economic melt down?
Jackson had to balance action against exposition and character and story development. While he did a decent job at this balancing act I too think he could have cut more action from the film. However, you strike me as one of the Tolkien nuts who would simply haven't come to grips with the fact that the greater majority of the exposition and character/story development from the LoTR simply doesn't make for a good movie.
The movie that you desire is simply not possible. The printed page simply doesn't transfer to the screen easily. Movies are about SHOWING things. They are about characters DOING thing and TALKING to each other. You can only have so many sequences where characters talk about things (so that the audience may understand them) in an un-natural manner before people begin to fall asleep.
Your observations are consistently wrong:
>>Frodo is particularly undermined by the writing, he never gets to act on his own
No. Frodo is allowed a number of scenes with both Bilbo and Gandalf where he gets ample opportunity to act on his own.
>>What had been the saddest scene in the first book - Frodo, Bilbo, and the Ring - is played for a cheap shock effect
While the CG in that scene was overdone, the scene itself still retained all of its emotion. Ian Holm's acting was GREAT.
>> Aragon only once displays any knowlege of the outdoors
No. He mentions names of places. He takes over from Gandalf in a convincing manner.
>>If Boromir mentions his brother and their strained relationship I missed it.
Simply not possible. Any exposition of that would have left the audience going "What the Fuck!".
>>but even so Gimli acts like an idiot for no obvious reason
Gimli acts exactly like a strong willed, simple minded dwarf in that scene. The scene is also necessary to show the power of the ring.
>>Only minor mention is made of the rivalry and mistrust between the elves and dwarves
The mistrust was aptly featured in two scenes. You must be blind!
>>Saruman forgets to mention that he has become "many colours"
Another "What the Fuck?" request from a Tolkien nut. Perhaps Saruman's bunking up with Orcs can clue the audience into that fact?
>>Seeing Gandalf resort to violent magic so easily undermines everything important to his character
Perhaps the later battle scenes where Gandalf's magic plays an important role will unconvince you of this delusion.
>>audience is told that the Balrog is in Moria before seeing it
Again, another film-making necessity. Besides, Saruman never explicity mentions that there is a Balrog in Moria.
>>The fight scenes are so over-done that the Hobbits have to become little death machines
Death Machines? Again, have your vision checked. They put up ZERO resistance against the orcs following Boromirs death.
>> but movies like Lord of the Rings and (to a lesser extent, IMHO) Star Wars: Episode One have shown how the effective use of CG can not only compliment human acting
To a lesser extent? You are far understating that comparison.
Peter Jackson specifically went away from the overuse of CG in LoTR. He, instead, made excellent use of miniatures that were completed by CG effects. That's why the effects in LoTR are so good. They completed the movie and story, not distracted and demanded center stage.
We must all thank the Old Took, that Lucas or a film maker like him didn't get ahold of LoTR. Who knows what lifeless and disgusting Jar-Jar-Hobbits we would have had to deal with.
The careful use of CG in LoTR distinguishes it from the CG crazed film making of George Lucas.
>> For me, and a lot of people I know, it got wrapped up in that kind of "scene".
I am glad that you and others like you didn't read these books.
If you can't read a book because you don't like how someone who has read that book looks, then bugger off! You have no business being an literature graduate as you have obviously learned nothing from the experience.
I also suggest giving up literature and taking up something more practical like farming. You can spend you time guarding your cabbages and carrots from those of us in the world who aren't afraid of different things and people.
Couldn't you find a better way to disqualify yourself for this position other than appearing on the most popular anti-Microsoft website that there is?
Microsoft's ability to frustrate two key federal judges, to the point where those judges essentially lost their judicial composure, has resulted in whatever escape from the jaws of jutice that Microsoft has achieved here. Those two judges who had years of service behind the bench essetially flipped out over disgust with this company. Then, in the aftermath of those guys blowing their tops, Microsoft successfully labeled them as biased and the substance of their rulings were essentially thrown out.
After dispensing with two federal judges, Microsoft will not find it difficult to ruin your career and reputation if you show even the slighest bias.
>> I have come to the conclusion that Commander Taco is a 12 year old boy
The rest of us came to this conclusion long ago. I have up on him when he gave a good review to The Phantom Menace.
Perhaps CmdrTaco's movie critic skills are improving because he faults Jake Loyd above for his acting in The Phantom Menace, while he said almost exactly the opposite in his original favorable review of TPM (which you can find in the Slashdot archives).
If shit sandwiches somehow became "all the rage", CmdrTaco would be eating three to four a day.
"The agreement provides Microsoft with a rich set of
strategies to undermine the development of free software,
which depends upon the free sharing of technical information
with the general public, taking advantage of the collective
intelligence of users of software, who share ideas on
improvements in the code."
With words like these Ralph Nader almost seems to good to be true: a well known presidential candidate who really knows his open source.
He's like an kick ass (some would say cheat) dual class wizard/warrior combination.
Your beliefs, once properly explained, are reasonable. I apologize for calling you an imbecile as you have demonstrated that you are clearly not one.
Not that I don't think that you are not confused or at least not realistic.
Quite specifically, I don't believe that the passificist approach is of much use in a world with nuclear weapons. In comes down to this: the US administration and most of the western world is freaked that Al Queada and the Taliban will acquire nuclear weapons, probably suit case nukes. We either take them out or they take us out. It sounds like a crazy motivation, but I guarantee you that is why we are attacking the Afghans. And if you look in the US political context of this motivation, any action besides ordering an attack would probably result in some type of impeachment proceedings against Bush.
My defintion of coward is someone who engages in a violent act against another person when the person being attacked has no possibility to defend himself. Stabbing in the back, setting off a car bomb, flying a plane into a building all fall with my definition of cowardly. Perhaps you have a different defintion.
And killing innocent civilians easily qualifies as "senseless" for me.
We simply have different approaches to the terminology here.
You wanted the entire text that comprises the quote:
"Anybody who knows US history in Latin America should have seen 9/11 coming. The attack was evil, but it was not cowardly nor senseless nor unprecedented nor unforseen."
It was impossible for me to take such a short bit out of context. You obviously have no understanding of what "taking something out of context" means. Furthermore, I didn't apply any context of my own to the quote, aside from generally saying that that Ximian employee is an idiot.
The fact is that Ximian employees an imbucile who believes that murdering 5,000 people is neither "cowardly" or "senseless".
So much the better for them, if they don't want my business, I can go elsewhere.
After George Lucas is dead. And his copyrights on the original Star Wars material have expired.
A new film director arises and reshoots the Star Wars Episode I to III as they should have been done.
This new director focuses on story telling and character development. The new films do not make use of fart jokes, inane action sequences that only exists to have action sequences, and highly annoying animated aliens that only school children can appreciate.
All you need to know about CmdrTaco is that he actually liked The Phantom Menace.
Slashdot Mirror
Perhaps Miguel should inform his investors that he is spending a large part of their money on an effort (Mono) that very few of the consumers in Ximian's current marketplace are actually interested in. In fact, most of his current customers are dead set against the product that Ximian intends to push out the door.
Miguel's amazing lack of business sense is simply stupifying. Is there no accountability at Ximian? All of its employees and investors are willing to just march right off the end of a bridge if told to by Miguel?
Perhaps Miguel is attempting to top the blind-sighted, who-cares-about-a-business-plan failure of Eazel?
Miguel is well known for his efforts in emulating Microsoft technology. What he failed to do while training at the knee of the beast was to visit the Microsoft marketing department.
"With .NET once an API is published it's available to all programming languages at the same time."
.NET MYTH: that you can just willy-nilly plug in existing languages in the CLR nirvana. He has become one of those .NET fan boys who show up touting that .NET supports over twenty programming languages.
.NET are a pile of large stinking COW dookey!
.NET. What are the hard realities:
.NET support for the .NET versions of languages do not. Programmers don't want to work with 80 percent of the features of their chosen language simply because the .NET version of the language doesn't support it. They also don't want to deal with compatibility problems arising with FunctionA() acts differently when run under the C++.NET as opposed to the native C++ environment.
.NET universe impose straight jackets on languages that no programmers will want to deal with. Programmers don't want to be confined to using a limited set of types and classes just so their program can function in the CLR. Should I even mention the compatibility problems that existing code will have within the .NET sandbox?
With comments like these, Miguel has really lost it. Perhaps he never had it to begin with.
He appears to have this entirely fantastical idea that when Mono reaches 1.0, we will be able to just plug in the existing C, C++, Perl, etc code bases into it and, WAMMO!, instant cross language, cross platform code. I can understand his frustration with updating Gnome language bindings. However, I think his mind has snapped from doing that kind of work.
He has bought into the central
Note to Miguel: the cross languages promises of
Programmers don't like half assed solutions to problems. And that is just what Perl, Python and name-your-favorite-language are inside the world of
(1) Languages evolve. The
(2) The Common Type System and Common Class Libraries of the
Mandrake has lost their position as "Newbie Linux of Choice".
While I use Mandrake and have purchased every standard version that they ever released, I really feel that Mandrake is being left behind in the useability department by the likes of SuSE and many of the upcoming newbiew friendly distros like Redmond Linux. The real nit that I have with Mandrake is total lack of cohesion between the Drake Applications. Many of these applications really pioneered new functionality for the linux desktop, but they haven't grown together like applications from KDE, Gnome, Ximian, etc. They all function/look/act differently.
Why hasn't someone inside of Mandrake taken pieces from the KDE and Gnome design standards and attempted to apply some uniformity between the applications that Mandrakes designs? It simply boggles the mind that tools like RPMDrake can be so poorly designed.
And what about ICONS!!!! The Mandrake icons and the menu system itself are both totally unprofessional. Can Mandrake afford to pay an icon designer who knows how to make icons in more than two shades of blue?
So what do we attribute the stagnification of Mandrake to? Is Mandrake's development model too open? No one within Mandrake has the guts or the brains to stand up and say: "No, we shouldn't be designed 20 applications that all look and function differently. There is a reason why KDE and Gnome came into existence." Then again, perhaps it is just the bureacratic chaos and momentum that surrounds Mandrake.
You can still get their port of Quake3 (which comes in the nice tine box) from www.ebgames.com for only 10 bucks. Go to ebgames.com and do a search for Linux.
You can even easily convert it to the Win32 version (not sure why you would want to).
- Just last quarter MS wrote off 700 million on a class action law suit. That number will probably be revised upwards as the judge actually rejected the settlement on which that number was based.
- MS settled out of court with Caldera for something like 500 million.
- MS is mostly likely spending hundreds of millions of dollars on attorney fees.
- AOL is about to roll Billy Boy for at least 500 million to 1 billion.
And what did they get for all of these well spend funds? A few percentage points of browser market share that don't mean a damn thing. Their desktop monopoly would probably be just as strong as it is today if they hadn't played dirty. There was no competition: DR DOS and over priced Macs couldn't have prevented the MS desktop monopoly.
Why people think Gates is an asset for MS, when his marketing/business smarts are clearly dwarfed by his clear lack of perspective and maturity, baffles me.
>> But the Netscape browser was bug-ridden piece of crap. That's why they died.
If the giant flaming a**hole that is Bill Gates had intelligently realized that he didn't need to cheat in this market to win, then Microsoft wouldn't be in the current state that it is.
Alas, Gates' maturity problems have cost Microsoft a few billion dollars and possibly doomed Microsoft in the long term as the behavior of his company was a primary fuel for the rise of Linux.
>> If Xbox MK3 or thereabouts was a game console, a digital VCR, an internet machine (Messenger, IE, Outlook, Frontpage, IRC client, SSH client), a DVD player, a CD player, a home office suite (Word, Excel, Access), you could buy 3rd party licenced software, how many of your non-geek friends and family would need a real computer? The answer is: Almost none.
Wrong. The nirvana of your MK3 won't be realized because:
(1) Current XBox technology can't multi-task well enough to do two to three of those tasks well at the same time.
You aren't going to come close to being able to (1) run office suite (2) record program (3) play game at the same time.
(2) Current graphical display technology for remotely displaying a screen at my desk from the box that sits under the TV isn't affordable. People aren't going to be writing papers using the crap video resolution that comes out of a TV set.
I would say that manufacturing an affordable box that can perform (1) and (2) is one hell of a long ways away. Now if you were inferring that people would only be able to purchase the MK3 in the year 2020 you might have a decent argument.
>> That makes us exceptions: most people very rarely crash their windows computers
This is simply a bald faced lie. Whatever never never land you are living in isn't visited by the rest of us in the tech industry.
The vast majority of people that work with windows (especially in its earlier incarnations) that I have met (and that's a fairly large number of poeple) deal and are well versed in the fact that windows crashes.
For a full two decades before the release of WinNT and its children, the working people of the world put up with constant crashing and re-installing from windows. Suggesting anything else is pure and un-adulterated BULLSHIT.
>> The Linux kernel is starting to look like anarchy to non-developers.
What data points do you base this observation on? You believe that there is an appearance of linux kernel development becoming increasing chaotic?
You are very wrong. A true analysis of the progress of linux kernel development would show a measurable decrease in the level of chaos in the system.
The past few years have seen an increase in paid full time linux kernel hackers. These hackers are generally tasked with working on a specific sub-system and/or providing source control management. The Marcelos and Coxes of the world are increasing in number and their work is really paying off in a more ordered kernel development process.
Even the volunteers like the kernel janitors work in a more structured and orderly manner.
Perhap someone should write a white paper detailing the main kernel hackers and the evolution of the kernel development process. THAT would make for good PR.
Its not a blatant ripoff.
"Lin" is the first three letters from Linux. This product is mostly about Linux. That's why people will buy it.
Ok, Mr. Trademark Nazi, please provide a complete list of trademarks that I cannot create that include any of either of the strings "win" or "dows".
Would the use of the product name "Winux" be illegal? Its simply ridiculous that MS is prosecuting this case. Its just another case of the Ballmer and Co showing what large a**holes that can be.
The standardization of Javascript by Netscape is all well and good. It also entirely not relevant.
As I said before, MS submitted _JScript_ to the EMCA as an entirely different implementation of Javascript. Its a variant of Javascript. MS created their own standard. Its a standard that MS never bothered to implement fully in their actual implementation and that is not compatible with Javascript.
JScript and Javascript are two different things.
Microsoft has also submitted their implementation of Javascript (which they call JScript) to the EMCA. There are untold deviatations from what they submitted to the EMCA and bugs that will never be addressed by MS.
Good luck to the Mono development staff. A typical days work will consist of ensuring that bug #34433 behaves exactly like the bug in the MS code.
If they can't guarantee 100% bug-infested compatibility, then Mono is worthless.
Mandrake just released an earnings reports.
That little company is some SERIOUS trouble. They lost the equivalent of 13 million Euros last year. Mandrake only managed 3.5 million in revenue for the entire year!
What more is there to say about this report other than there is little or no money to be made from selling a 30 dollar Linux boxes at retail? Good lord even lowly Caldera has more revenue than Mandrake!
How can what is arguably the most popular Linux distribution be on the verge of economic melt down?
Jackson had to balance action against exposition and character and story development. While he did a decent job at this balancing act I too think he could have cut more action from the film. However, you strike me as one of the Tolkien nuts who would simply haven't come to grips with the fact that the greater majority of the exposition and character/story development from the LoTR simply doesn't make for a good movie.
The movie that you desire is simply not possible. The printed page simply doesn't transfer to the screen easily. Movies are about SHOWING things. They are about characters DOING thing and TALKING to each other. You can only have so many sequences where characters talk about things (so that the audience may understand them) in an un-natural manner before people begin to fall asleep.
Your observations are consistently wrong:
>>Frodo is particularly undermined by the writing, he never gets to act on his own
No. Frodo is allowed a number of scenes with both Bilbo and Gandalf where he gets ample opportunity to act on his own.
>>What had been the saddest scene in the first book - Frodo, Bilbo, and the Ring - is played for a cheap shock effect
While the CG in that scene was overdone, the scene itself still retained all of its emotion. Ian Holm's acting was GREAT.
>> Aragon only once displays any knowlege of the outdoors
No. He mentions names of places. He takes over from Gandalf in a convincing manner.
>>If Boromir mentions his brother and their strained relationship I missed it.
Simply not possible. Any exposition of that would have left the audience going "What the Fuck!".
>>but even so Gimli acts like an idiot for no obvious reason
Gimli acts exactly like a strong willed, simple minded dwarf in that scene. The scene is also necessary to show the power of the ring.
>>Only minor mention is made of the rivalry and mistrust between the elves and dwarves
The mistrust was aptly featured in two scenes. You must be blind!
>>Saruman forgets to mention that he has become "many colours"
Another "What the Fuck?" request from a Tolkien nut. Perhaps Saruman's bunking up with Orcs can clue the audience into that fact?
>>Seeing Gandalf resort to violent magic so easily undermines everything important to his character
Perhaps the later battle scenes where Gandalf's magic plays an important role will unconvince you of this delusion.
>>audience is told that the Balrog is in Moria before seeing it
Again, another film-making necessity. Besides, Saruman never explicity mentions that there is a Balrog in Moria.
>>The fight scenes are so over-done that the Hobbits have to become little death machines
Death Machines? Again, have your vision checked. They put up ZERO resistance against the orcs following Boromirs death.
>> but movies like Lord of the Rings and (to a lesser extent, IMHO) Star Wars: Episode One have shown how the effective use of CG can not only compliment human acting
To a lesser extent? You are far understating that comparison.
Peter Jackson specifically went away from the overuse of CG in LoTR. He, instead, made excellent use of miniatures that were completed by CG effects. That's why the effects in LoTR are so good. They completed the movie and story, not distracted and demanded center stage.
We must all thank the Old Took, that Lucas or a film maker like him didn't get ahold of LoTR. Who knows what lifeless and disgusting Jar-Jar-Hobbits we would have had to deal with.
The careful use of CG in LoTR distinguishes it from the CG crazed film making of George Lucas.
>> For me, and a lot of people I know, it got wrapped up in that kind of "scene".
I am glad that you and others like you didn't read these books.
If you can't read a book because you don't like how someone who has read that book looks, then bugger off! You have no business being an literature graduate as you have obviously learned nothing from the experience.
I also suggest giving up literature and taking up something more practical like farming. You can spend you time guarding your cabbages and carrots from those of us in the world who aren't afraid of different things and people.
Couldn't you find a better way to disqualify yourself for this position other than appearing on the most popular anti-Microsoft website that there is?
Microsoft's ability to frustrate two key federal judges, to the point where those judges essentially lost their judicial composure, has resulted in whatever escape from the jaws of jutice that Microsoft has achieved here. Those two judges who had years of service behind the bench essetially flipped out over disgust with this company. Then, in the aftermath of those guys blowing their tops, Microsoft successfully labeled them as biased and the substance of their rulings were essentially thrown out.
After dispensing with two federal judges, Microsoft will not find it difficult to ruin your career and reputation if you show even the slighest bias.
Have you no fear of your impending DOOM?
>> I have come to the conclusion that Commander Taco is a 12 year old boy
The rest of us came to this conclusion long ago. I have up on him when he gave a good review to The Phantom Menace.
Perhaps CmdrTaco's movie critic skills are improving because he faults Jake Loyd above for his acting in The Phantom Menace, while he said almost exactly the opposite in his original favorable review of TPM (which you can find in the Slashdot archives).
If shit sandwiches somehow became "all the rage", CmdrTaco would be eating three to four a day.
Anyone seen other reports that XBox is having hardware problems?
This report at The Inquirer suggests that the XBox launch could be more of a self-destruct.
In the future perhaps Microsoft will include one of their illegal EULAs and prevent the return/refund of the XBox.
"The agreement provides Microsoft with a rich set of
strategies to undermine the development of free software,
which depends upon the free sharing of technical information
with the general public, taking advantage of the collective
intelligence of users of software, who share ideas on
improvements in the code."
With words like these Ralph Nader almost seems to good to be true: a well known presidential candidate who really knows his open source.
He's like an kick ass (some would say cheat) dual class wizard/warrior combination.
Your beliefs, once properly explained, are reasonable. I apologize for calling you an imbecile as you have demonstrated that you are clearly not one.
Not that I don't think that you are not confused or at least not realistic.
Quite specifically, I don't believe that the passificist approach is of much use in a world with nuclear weapons. In comes down to this: the US administration and most of the western world is freaked that Al Queada and the Taliban will acquire nuclear weapons, probably suit case nukes. We either take them out or they take us out. It sounds like a crazy motivation, but I guarantee you that is why we are attacking the Afghans. And if you look in the US political context of this motivation, any action besides ordering an attack would probably result in some type of impeachment proceedings against Bush.
My defintion of coward is someone who engages in a violent act against another person when the person being attacked has no possibility to defend himself. Stabbing in the back, setting off a car bomb, flying a plane into a building all fall with my definition of cowardly. Perhaps you have a different defintion.
And killing innocent civilians easily qualifies as "senseless" for me.
We simply have different approaches to the terminology here.
You wanted the entire text that comprises the quote:
"Anybody who knows US history in Latin America should have seen 9/11 coming. The attack was evil, but it was not cowardly nor senseless nor unprecedented nor unforseen."
It was impossible for me to take such a short bit out of context. You obviously have no understanding of what "taking something out of context" means. Furthermore, I didn't apply any context of my own to the quote, aside from generally saying that that Ximian employee is an idiot.
The fact is that Ximian employees an imbucile who believes that murdering 5,000 people is neither "cowardly" or "senseless".
So much the better for them, if they don't want my business, I can go elsewhere.
Check out this quote from a Ximian employee's website about the attack on the World Trade Center:
... was not cowardly nor senseless ... "
"The attack
Great work on Evolution Ximian, now if you could only hire some employees who have a clue.
In the far distant future...
After George Lucas is dead. And his copyrights on the original Star Wars material have expired.
A new film director arises and reshoots the Star Wars Episode I to III as they should have been done.
This new director focuses on story telling and character development. The new films do not make use of fart jokes, inane action sequences that only exists to have action sequences, and highly annoying animated aliens that only school children can appreciate.
All you need to know about CmdrTaco is that he actually liked The Phantom Menace.
Glad to see I am not the only one who stopped visiting espn.com after it was Borgified in MSN. Who knows how many users that PHB decision cost ESPN.