Re:Developed by Kubrick or Spielberg?
on
Taken?
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· Score: 2
Kubrick had been working on A.I. for a long time before his discussion with began with Spielberg.
Kubrick developed ideas and art, but never went past that pre-pre-pre-production phase. He tossed his ideas to Spielberg, then died, and Spielberg did the movie. The sentence "A.I. was not largely developed by Kubrick" is true.
A.I. is based on a Brian Aldiss short story, Supertoys Last All Summer Long.
Yes, but Brian Aldiss never went to anyone and said, "Hey, let's make a movie out of this." The idea for the film originated with Kubrick and Spielberg.
Re:Over the Hill? ... An Opinion
on
Taken?
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· Score: 2
A.I. was not largely developed by Kubrick. The idea for the film originated with discussions between Spielberg and Kubrick, but Kubrick died well before work was begun on the film. That film was Spielberg all the way.
As for other Spielberg movies that sucked, try Amistad, The Lost World, Hook, and pretty much all of his early career TV movies. Which raises another point: TV is not a new avenue for Spielberg. He got his start doing TV. Granted, the guy has more hits than misses on his resume, but that doesn't make him a saint.
Sweet tap-dancing Jesus, this is the most informed post of any kind I've read on Slashdot in the last three years. Someone give this man a Pulitzer prize or something.
Last year, when I was researching cellular service providers, I made the decision to go with AT&T. I ordered the service, they sent me a phone, and I spent the next few days calling customer support trying to figure out why I could *sometimes* call other people, but other people couldn't call me.
In the end, it turned out they had given me a phone number that was technically in the same area code, but was long distance from where I lived, and due to the funky nature of the ten-digit dialing here in the Portland area, it was pretty much impossible to call my phone from my house. They also claimed they couldn't give me another number because they'd run out.
Needless to say, I attempted to cancel my service. The representative I spoke to seemed happy to comply, but then asked me how I'd like to pay the cancellation fee. I laughed, thinking he was joking, and he asked again. I informed him that the contract I agreed to had clearly specified that I had a 30 day grace period. He claimed that didn't apply in this circumstance. I told him to go read the contract again, because it did. Finally, he agreed not to charge me a fee, but then he told me the accounts department had shut down their computers for routine maintenance and suggested I call back the next day.
The next day, I called again, waited through the phone queue, and reached another representative. Again I was told the 30 day grace period did not apply, and again I had to argue for a good fifteen minutes before he agreed to cancel my account. Surprise surprise, he proceeded to tell me that the accounts computers had gone down for maintenance. I said, "Gee, that's funny, because they were apparently down for maintenance all last night, too." He said "Um" a few times, stuttered a bit, and then told me it was my lucky day because the system had just come back up.
Suffice to say I won't be doing any business with AT&T again anytime soon.
Definitely not his best
on
Prey
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· Score: 3, Insightful
I finished Prey last night. While I was intrigued, the overall feeling the book left me with was disappointment. It really started off with a bang; I had high expectations throughout the first section of the book. It had me riveted, turning each page with anticipation. But as soon as Jack flies out to the lab in Nevada at the start of the second section, the book starts a sharp downward spiral that doesn't let up.
It really felt like Crichton himself lost interest after the first act and had an intern finish off the story from there. He sets up the science and the mystery very nicely in the beginning, then turns it into a stupid "predator hunts prey, prey kills predator" story that's been done much better thousands of times before (even by Crichton himself). He even goes so far as to completely and intentionally ruin every possible element of suspense by dropping extremely heavy hints and using copious amounts of foreshadowing at every possible turn. By the first ten pages of the second section, I knew how the book would end and who would die.
As if the plot flaws aren't enough, Crichton chose to write this book in the first-person, which is uncommon for him. I'm not sure what his reasoning was there. At first I enjoyed the perspective; Crichton's third-person narrative tends to be one-dimensional and patronizing, and in the beginning it looked like that was going to change. But, like everything else, that too stopped being the case after the first section. It seems like Crichton really struggled with the fact that he had limited himself to being able to tell the story from only one point of view. At one point, he even goes so far as to have the narrator describe, in detail, a scene that takes place without him present, explaining it by saying that the narrator saw the events later by watching security tapes. Nevermind that he's already told us the security tapes only show ten-frame intervals from each camera and cycle through all the cameras in this huge facility, nor do they record sound (and yet, strangely, the narrator somehow heard the dialog in this particular scene).
In short, while it's not a horrible book, Prey is no Andromeda Strain and no Jurassic Park. It's not even a Lost World. It's better than Timeline, but only just barely.
I'm surprised you even thought for a minute that this was a real legal threat. That letter isn't even personalized. It's just plain junk mail meant to scare stupid webmasters like you into buying a scam license. Ignore it. Ignore anything that isn't addressed to you or your company by name, and that doesn't directly threaten legal action.
I spurted Coke out my nose when I got to the benchmarking portion of the article, where the author calls his 700MHz Duron system with 384MB RAM a "medium-range" system. Ha! Medium-range maybe if you're talking about big fat corporate servers. I host The Uptimes Project, which handles over a million database-driven dynamic page hits per day (including pages that generate large graphs on the fly), plus several other medium-traffic sites, all on a 350 MHz Pentium II running Apache under FreeBSD. This little server handles all that traffic without even blinking.
Before this, I used to host a medium-traffic database-driven website on an old Pentium 166 with 64 megs of RAM running -- get this -- Windows 2000 Server. And it never blinked either (except when I got Slashdotted once; that really hurt).
Anyway, in an article about a great low-overhead super efficient webserver like Boa, I'd really like to see benchmarks on systems that are actually low-end, as opposed to systems that are low-end if your other server is a quad Xeon with 16 gigs of RAM.
I think the Jack in the Box Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger has the Whopper beat. Bacon, two layers of cheese, big fat hamburger patty, two more layers of cheese, another hamburger patty, another layer of bacon, and all smothered in ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. It's the only thing I've ever eaten that smells the same going in as it does coming out. That's not to say it smells bad -- it doesn't -- it's just so greasy that it slips right through the ol' digestive tract. Sure is delicious though.
Re:Not satisfied with killing Roy Rogers, huh?
on
Organizing Sim Protests
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· Score: 3, Insightful
"Anyway, for closing Roys and for denying Boston Market, my kids decided--quite on their own--that they prefered Wendy's and Burger King. We haven't been in a MacDonald's since. This nonesense with Sims tells me that we're not ready to go back."
Well thank the good Lord for that! Now that your kids are eating Whoppers and Big Bacon Cheeseburgers instead of Quarter Pounders and Big Macs, they've no doubt postponed their first heart attacks until well into their 30s! Congratulations!
I spent years looking for a keyboard with the qualities you mention. Good tactile feedback, yet quiet. I code pretty much nonstop 12 to 16 hours a day (sadly), so my hands and wrists complain quite loudly when I use a bad keyboard. Luckily, I stumbled across this goofy little BTC 9110, which turned out to be the best keyboard I've ever used.
It's a smaller-than-normal keyboard, but the key layout is actually very sensible. I find that for programming, the keys I need most (shift, ctrl, alt, home, end, insert, delete and of course, return) are in the perfect positions. I also do a lot of gaming, and despite the smaller keyboard size it works great for that too. In addition, the tactile feedback is excellent. There's no annoying clicking sound, but there's just enough of a noise to let you (and only you) know that you've successfully hit a key. The keys also have a very light keypress so you don't strain your fingers, and yet at the same time the feedback is just right. It's actually kinda similar to a laptop keyboard in many respects.
Give it a shot. It's only $30 or so, and I think you'll really like it if you can get past the silly silver design.
No. Don't do it. Your kids will hate you. I will hate you. We'll all hate you together.
Linux is not ready for beginners yet. It's not even ready for so-called "power users" (which is apparently what you call people who know how to get to the Control Panel in Windows). Hell, I won't even use Linux full-time; I'm far more productive in Windows despite being proficient in both operating systems.
If you force your kids to use Linux, you'll get one of two possible results. The best possible result is that your kids love trying new things and don't mind a long, frustrating learning curve, and will become geeks extraordinaire. The worst possible result is that your kids will take one look at the thing, say "What the crap is this? Where's the Start menu?" and go over to a friend's house to use their "normal" Windows box.
An OS is like a religion in more ways than one. You can force one on your children, but chances are 50/50 that they'll grow to hate it. Let your kids use the OS they're comfortable with, and maybe install a nice friendly Linux distro on another box and encourage them to play around with it. Maybe you can gradually wean them off Windows, but you certainly shouldn't force them or you risk putting them off computers permanently.
Oh, and don't forget, there's always a charge for refunding purchases made with some form of plastic, so there's going to be many people who will simply "eat it". Especially the passive cattle with plastic in this great land of diminishing returns.
Um, no. That's illegal here in the US. If a store doesn't charge a restocking fee to customers who pay with cash, then they can't charge a restocking fee to customers who pay with a credit card.
So would you rather they called it an "Interferometric Modulator Display"? They've got a good reason to call it iMoD. It's what we call an "abbreviation". Quit yer whinin'.
especially if its Windows run and goes down once a week
Er, take a look at these uptime stats and count the number of Windows systems with uptimes over a year. I see three, and one of those has been up over two years. It really bugs me when slashbots spout off about Windows' unreliability when a Windows server is really every bit as reliable as the sysadmin in charge of it.
I read this in a study over a year ago, but I can't seem to find the article with Google. Basically, caffeine keeps you awake because the brain's adenosine receptors think it's adenosine. The caffeine molecules bind to the receptors rather than adenosine, but instead of slowing the receptors down as adenosine does, caffeine speeds them up. But all that blocked adenosine is still floating around out there, and when the caffeine goes away after 12 hours, a flood of adenosine hits the receptors, causing intense drowsiness.
If I remember correctly, the study I read said that drinking large quantities of water slows or somehow blocks adenosine production in such a way that it helps you stay awake, just like caffeine, but without the overstimulation or the drowsiness after it wears off.
In addition to what I said above, I should add that caffeine is really a bad idea if you need to concentrate. Despite the fact that caffeine has for some reason gained some sort of legendary status as "hacker fuel", large amounts of caffeine only make you jittery and unable to concentrate.
I've found that a much better replacement is good fresh, clean, cold water. Fill up a nice big 32 oz. bottle and take a swallow every few minutes. Not only is it good for you, consistent cold water intake throughout the day keeps you awake almost like caffeine does, only without the nasty side effects.
If you want clean code, you've gotta take it easy
on
Programming Marathons?
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· Score: 2
I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to code. I have very rigid standards that I adhere to and that I expect fellow programmers to adhere to when working on an important project. Unfortunately, after eight hours of nonstop coding, even I start getting sloppy and writing quick hacks instead of well thought-out, well-commented, elegant code.
If I can, I try to limit myself to no more than four hours of nonstop coding at a time, with a lengthy break in between that doesn't involve much brain activity and that will allow me to rest physically. TV is ideal for this, but a bit of online gaming will do the trick as well. I think the longest coding marathon I ever did was 18 hours, and by the end I was writing horrible, nearly unmaintainable code that I later regretted.
That's odd, because my Small Business Server 2000 Per server/seat license agreement right here in front of me says I only need a CAL for each device that is used by an authenticated user to connect to the server. It defines "authenticated user" as a user who "directly or indirectly utilizes the Windows 2000 Server Integrated Sign-On Service or receives credentials from the Windows 2000 Directory Services." It also says I can run the software on up to four processors.
My web users are not authenticated users by that definition, so they do not need CALs. If Microsoft told you otherwise, they're lying. Tell them to read their own license agreement.
SQL Server can be licensed either per-processor or per server/seat. If you license it per server, you'll need to buy additional client access licenses for each client that connects to the server, but since one webserver equals one client no matter how many hits it gets, this could be a more cost-effective solution for your company.
In addition, you may want to look into purchasing Small Business Server instead. Small Business Server comes bundled with SQL Server 2000 Standard and five CALs, and if you don't need the extra features in Enterprise, it'll save you a ton of cash. Why SQL Server is cheaper when bundled with a bunch of other products than it is on its own I will never understand, but that's the way Microsoft works, I guess.
Slashdot Mirror
Kubrick developed ideas and art, but never went past that pre-pre-pre-production phase. He tossed his ideas to Spielberg, then died, and Spielberg did the movie. The sentence "A.I. was not largely developed by Kubrick" is true.
A.I. is based on a Brian Aldiss short story, Supertoys Last All Summer Long.
Yes, but Brian Aldiss never went to anyone and said, "Hey, let's make a movie out of this." The idea for the film originated with Kubrick and Spielberg.
As for other Spielberg movies that sucked, try Amistad, The Lost World, Hook, and pretty much all of his early career TV movies. Which raises another point: TV is not a new avenue for Spielberg. He got his start doing TV. Granted, the guy has more hits than misses on his resume, but that doesn't make him a saint.
Sourceforget? What? Am I missing something?
Sweet tap-dancing Jesus, this is the most informed post of any kind I've read on Slashdot in the last three years. Someone give this man a Pulitzer prize or something.
In the end, it turned out they had given me a phone number that was technically in the same area code, but was long distance from where I lived, and due to the funky nature of the ten-digit dialing here in the Portland area, it was pretty much impossible to call my phone from my house. They also claimed they couldn't give me another number because they'd run out.
Needless to say, I attempted to cancel my service. The representative I spoke to seemed happy to comply, but then asked me how I'd like to pay the cancellation fee. I laughed, thinking he was joking, and he asked again. I informed him that the contract I agreed to had clearly specified that I had a 30 day grace period. He claimed that didn't apply in this circumstance. I told him to go read the contract again, because it did. Finally, he agreed not to charge me a fee, but then he told me the accounts department had shut down their computers for routine maintenance and suggested I call back the next day.
The next day, I called again, waited through the phone queue, and reached another representative. Again I was told the 30 day grace period did not apply, and again I had to argue for a good fifteen minutes before he agreed to cancel my account. Surprise surprise, he proceeded to tell me that the accounts computers had gone down for maintenance. I said, "Gee, that's funny, because they were apparently down for maintenance all last night, too." He said "Um" a few times, stuttered a bit, and then told me it was my lucky day because the system had just come back up.
Suffice to say I won't be doing any business with AT&T again anytime soon.
It really felt like Crichton himself lost interest after the first act and had an intern finish off the story from there. He sets up the science and the mystery very nicely in the beginning, then turns it into a stupid "predator hunts prey, prey kills predator" story that's been done much better thousands of times before (even by Crichton himself). He even goes so far as to completely and intentionally ruin every possible element of suspense by dropping extremely heavy hints and using copious amounts of foreshadowing at every possible turn. By the first ten pages of the second section, I knew how the book would end and who would die.
As if the plot flaws aren't enough, Crichton chose to write this book in the first-person, which is uncommon for him. I'm not sure what his reasoning was there. At first I enjoyed the perspective; Crichton's third-person narrative tends to be one-dimensional and patronizing, and in the beginning it looked like that was going to change. But, like everything else, that too stopped being the case after the first section. It seems like Crichton really struggled with the fact that he had limited himself to being able to tell the story from only one point of view. At one point, he even goes so far as to have the narrator describe, in detail, a scene that takes place without him present, explaining it by saying that the narrator saw the events later by watching security tapes. Nevermind that he's already told us the security tapes only show ten-frame intervals from each camera and cycle through all the cameras in this huge facility, nor do they record sound (and yet, strangely, the narrator somehow heard the dialog in this particular scene).
In short, while it's not a horrible book, Prey is no Andromeda Strain and no Jurassic Park. It's not even a Lost World. It's better than Timeline, but only just barely.
Um, no. My Nokia 3390 has never taken longer than three seconds to connect to the network (T-Mobile).
I'm surprised you even thought for a minute that this was a real legal threat. That letter isn't even personalized. It's just plain junk mail meant to scare stupid webmasters like you into buying a scam license. Ignore it. Ignore anything that isn't addressed to you or your company by name, and that doesn't directly threaten legal action.
Before this, I used to host a medium-traffic database-driven website on an old Pentium 166 with 64 megs of RAM running -- get this -- Windows 2000 Server. And it never blinked either (except when I got Slashdotted once; that really hurt).
Anyway, in an article about a great low-overhead super efficient webserver like Boa, I'd really like to see benchmarks on systems that are actually low-end, as opposed to systems that are low-end if your other server is a quad Xeon with 16 gigs of RAM.
I think the Jack in the Box Bacon Ultimate Cheeseburger has the Whopper beat. Bacon, two layers of cheese, big fat hamburger patty, two more layers of cheese, another hamburger patty, another layer of bacon, and all smothered in ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise. It's the only thing I've ever eaten that smells the same going in as it does coming out. That's not to say it smells bad -- it doesn't -- it's just so greasy that it slips right through the ol' digestive tract. Sure is delicious though.
Well thank the good Lord for that! Now that your kids are eating Whoppers and Big Bacon Cheeseburgers instead of Quarter Pounders and Big Macs, they've no doubt postponed their first heart attacks until well into their 30s! Congratulations!
It's a smaller-than-normal keyboard, but the key layout is actually very sensible. I find that for programming, the keys I need most (shift, ctrl, alt, home, end, insert, delete and of course, return) are in the perfect positions. I also do a lot of gaming, and despite the smaller keyboard size it works great for that too. In addition, the tactile feedback is excellent. There's no annoying clicking sound, but there's just enough of a noise to let you (and only you) know that you've successfully hit a key. The keys also have a very light keypress so you don't strain your fingers, and yet at the same time the feedback is just right. It's actually kinda similar to a laptop keyboard in many respects.
Give it a shot. It's only $30 or so, and I think you'll really like it if you can get past the silly silver design.
Linux is not ready for beginners yet. It's not even ready for so-called "power users" (which is apparently what you call people who know how to get to the Control Panel in Windows). Hell, I won't even use Linux full-time; I'm far more productive in Windows despite being proficient in both operating systems.
If you force your kids to use Linux, you'll get one of two possible results. The best possible result is that your kids love trying new things and don't mind a long, frustrating learning curve, and will become geeks extraordinaire. The worst possible result is that your kids will take one look at the thing, say "What the crap is this? Where's the Start menu?" and go over to a friend's house to use their "normal" Windows box.
An OS is like a religion in more ways than one. You can force one on your children, but chances are 50/50 that they'll grow to hate it. Let your kids use the OS they're comfortable with, and maybe install a nice friendly Linux distro on another box and encourage them to play around with it. Maybe you can gradually wean them off Windows, but you certainly shouldn't force them or you risk putting them off computers permanently.
Yep, it works fine for me too, although it didn't a few weeks ago. I'm not sure when they made the change.
e-gold is still going strong. Just like in Cryptonomicon, only without quite so many stupendous badasses.
So take it back. If the product doesn't work as advertised, then Best Buy is required by law to refund your money.
Um, no. That's illegal here in the US. If a store doesn't charge a restocking fee to customers who pay with cash, then they can't charge a restocking fee to customers who pay with a credit card.
So would you rather they called it an "Interferometric Modulator Display"? They've got a good reason to call it iMoD. It's what we call an "abbreviation". Quit yer whinin'.
Er, take a look at these uptime stats and count the number of Windows systems with uptimes over a year. I see three, and one of those has been up over two years. It really bugs me when slashbots spout off about Windows' unreliability when a Windows server is really every bit as reliable as the sysadmin in charge of it.
If I remember correctly, the study I read said that drinking large quantities of water slows or somehow blocks adenosine production in such a way that it helps you stay awake, just like caffeine, but without the overstimulation or the drowsiness after it wears off.
I've found that a much better replacement is good fresh, clean, cold water. Fill up a nice big 32 oz. bottle and take a swallow every few minutes. Not only is it good for you, consistent cold water intake throughout the day keeps you awake almost like caffeine does, only without the nasty side effects.
If I can, I try to limit myself to no more than four hours of nonstop coding at a time, with a lengthy break in between that doesn't involve much brain activity and that will allow me to rest physically. TV is ideal for this, but a bit of online gaming will do the trick as well. I think the longest coding marathon I ever did was 18 hours, and by the end I was writing horrible, nearly unmaintainable code that I later regretted.
pow() sure seems to work just fine to me...
My web users are not authenticated users by that definition, so they do not need CALs. If Microsoft told you otherwise, they're lying. Tell them to read their own license agreement.
In addition, you may want to look into purchasing Small Business Server instead. Small Business Server comes bundled with SQL Server 2000 Standard and five CALs, and if you don't need the extra features in Enterprise, it'll save you a ton of cash. Why SQL Server is cheaper when bundled with a bunch of other products than it is on its own I will never understand, but that's the way Microsoft works, I guess.