I'm not sure what the advantages are of dancing around with the OS's virtual memory system. If it were me, I would detect the amount of physical memory available, allocate 80% of it, lock it into physical memory and manage the paging myself. It would be portable, not subject to changes in the VM algorithm by the OS authors, and easier to directly monitor and improve performance. But that's just me.
. . . and maybe you do know better than the OS authors; who knows, you may have actually implemented a few OSes or bare metal apps yourself. In the case of a system where you need that kind of control to hit benchmarks (eg, embedded real-time), this might be reasonable, or you'd probably just code it to the bare metal. But in most other cases, you should really try to look at how the OS is configured first and save yourself a lot of time; the option to tune RAM+swap and allocation schemes are probably already there. You might *think* you know better than the OS authors, but I doubt your app has had (or will ever have) the number of test cases thrown against it that any popular modern OS has. Those test cases most likely include something similar to your resource hungry app that should really be running on a dedicated machine, and not with the default multitasking options if you are using a general purpose OS at all. I've always maintained that any decent programmer is also a decent sysadmin who knows what his/or her operating system (and other abstraction layers) are doing, and how to change them. Otherwise, you're just some wanker badmouthing people who have put a lot of effort into making their code flexible and adaptable.
Open source solves the broken window fallacy in the software market. Seriously. Does anyone believe that Bill Gates or Steve Jobs are ridiculously rich because their companies' software is that much better? That they really earned all the money they have? Linux and other OSS has saved the world probably on the order of trillions of USD which has been put to other uses (curing cancer, researching alternative energy, feeding the poor, etc, etc). On top of that, it has made it possible for people who could never afford the outrageous prices of Microsoft or Apple to be able to use a computer.
The lack of open source software billionaires is by design. It's part of the intent of open source software -- to balance the scales by devaluing the obscene profit margins that exist in the commercial software business. Duplicating software is about as close to legally printing money as a company can get; profit margins regularly exceed 80 percent.
To ask where the open source billionaires are is to demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of how open source software works. If you wanted to become obscenely rich by starting an open source software company, I'm sorry, but you picked the wrong industry. You'll make a living, perhaps even a lucrative one. But you won't become Bill Gates rich, or Paul Allen rich, by siphoning away the exorbitant profit margins commercial software vendors have enjoyed for so many years.
1. Would need to be able to withstand multiple wash cycles. Washing machines are very hard on electronics and sensors.
I'm sure they can either make it machine wash proof, or just make the electronic part removable. I have an HRM that has a removable/washable strap and I've heard of washable HRM sports bras.
2. Each person would require multiple pairs of underwear as very few people wash cloths every day.
Multiple pairs of underwear, one sensor module that snaps onto the underwear. Problem solved.
3. Difficult to replace medications. (Take off your pants. I need to add insulin.)
Or hey, just have a refill port that's easily accessible.
4. Trans dermal meds are generally low dose. If a soldier needs pain meds I doubt that enough could be administered.
They already have insulin pumps; this underwear combined with that and a few other advances will bring us juicers faster than you think.
So while I haven't definitively made up my mind, I feel like the evidence I am aware of leans towards "worse off".
How so? You mention you use Arduinos; would you have ever even heard about them without the 'net? Would they even *exist* without the 'net? You mention your girlfriend used to cross-stitch; my wife knits, and she's found some really cool patterns (for free!) online, not to mention some really cool yarn that she probably never would have found without the 'net.
I keep my musical instruments setup in the front room where the piano is, so I can pick them up when I have some free time and doodle on them (eg, while waiting for tea to steep). My wife and I keep our bookshelves stocked and visible in the same room. The TV is in another room, and while my wife still watches what I consider too much, she's usually doing something else at the same time (like knitting). These are all tools (TV, Internet, books, musical instruments, etc), and it's in how you use them. It just takes motivation. But the Internet is an extremely powerful tool, one that has made impossible things easy and created opportunities undreamed of. I would have to say that we are *by far* better off because of the Internet.
Between multiple cell phones and their add-ons, high-speed Internet connections, and digital TV subscriptions, most households are paying for data delivery at least three times over, often paying the same provider twice.
These services are *not* the same, and anyone who thinks otherwise is obviously not qualified to talk about. I mean, really, can't these idiots tell the difference between wireless and wired data plans? Not that I'm defending communications companies, but you can already get bundles that give you discounts for these sorts of things. Not to mention that there are some of us who don't use one (or more) of the aforementioned services and don't want to be charged for them (and if you think that bundling all these services by default and reducing choice will make them cheaper overall, you're even stupider than the lady in the article).
Now don't get me wrong, I realize there are problems with things the way they are, but conflating Network Neutrality with this sort of nonsense is holding back the cause; we need to call these idiots out and reject them; Network Neutrality is a reasonable goal, but getting distracted by bullshit like this only hurts the users of data plans.
It's pretty close to flat - the curvature of the earth is less than a foot per mile - a rounding error really, given that even the smoothest of prairies can easily vary by more than that.
I like to tell people that my father (who started out writing programs on punch cards that he had to send to the University and wait a week to get the results) now keeps a computer in his pocket (a smartphone) that is orders of magnitude more powerful than what he worked on most of his career, plus it's available instantly all the time and is connected to even more powerful stores of data and computing power. That, my friends, is progress.
You can find more by searching at the obvious places, but needless to say, in recent years, coffee consumption (even high consumption) has been linked to health benefits. Of course, all things in moderation; I personally have one cup of coffee and one cup of tea a day, before noon (no caffeine after noon). It's more for taste and custom than anything else.
I used to only drink tea (and lots of it), which I had switched to because I used to drink so much coffee I started getting chest pains. I used to drink a *lot* of Dr. Pepper before that, but soda is probably the worst thing you can drink, besides bad moonshine or paint thinner. Seriously, the amount of sugar and other things that will leach the minerals right out of your bones in soda is criminal. Of course, getting a mocha-latte-frappe-choco-swirl from you-know-where probably isn't much better for you.
Just get yourself some whole beans, grind them right before you brew, and use a decent brewing system, and don't drink too much, and you will be better off. Or get some good tea, and make sure the water is boiling if it is black tea.
Would-be "Rationalists" need to identify what they live for, which will not in-itself be a "rational" thing. It won't defy reason or logic or what have you, but it won't be derivable or even based in reason or logic. It'll be an imaginary thing, or an imaginary society, or an imaginary world, or an imaginary person, most likely -- but an imaginary thing worth loving.
As Nietzsche put it, "a strong individual... creates himself by fashioning his own values." This is from the same quote where Nietzsche implies that the universe has no inherent meaning. Many people find this depressing or claim it will make people immoral; I take away from it that I can choose what meaning for my life to have. But I always realize it's *my* meaning, which just like the models in science, I can further change and refine as more evidence becomes available to me.
The athiests I know all have comic books in their back pockets. They should just fess up where their hearts are, rather than hiding behind the facad of "rationality."
I'm an atheist (in the classical sense), and I'm no fan of comic books (I don't have a single one). Of course, by your above criterion, if someone is carrying USA legal tender, they are a theist ("In God we Trust"). As an atheist, though, it appears to me that the only meaning that exists is what we give it. The safest bet is to wait until all the evidence is in, but it appears that may never happen. Therefore, I choose to treat others as I would want to be treated, as this seems a rational thing to do, and would make the world a better place. The evidence I have seen so far supports this hypothesis. I keep in mind that the initial choice of what to value was mine, and I can change it, but from there I can extrapolate via evidence how best to make the world a better place.
That doesn't mean you need to kiss our ass or anything, but some people around here really need to understand that the world did not start when they were born. It makes me cringe to even hear me say it, but sometimes the arrogance of the young--many of whom cannot be bothered to read even the history of their own industry--really wears thin.
All due respect, but you might need to take some of your own medicine. Ever hear of The Mother of All Demos? Sure, sure, it was "only" demoed in 1968, but it still gives PLATO a run for its money (including a mouse!), and my reading of the history doesn't make it clear which was first.
It does sadden me that computer technology has (at best) appeared to stagnate in terms of features (don't even get me started on language features that are showing up in Java and Python that have been in LISP for decades). The funny thing is, some of the most radical advances (including both PLATO and The Mother of All Demos) seem to have been publicly funded. Of course, back then, open source was the dominant culture in terms of software. I think proprietary software (and this includes such "innovators" as Apple and Microsoft) has really held back the march of progress.
You want to blame someone for ignorance of computing history? Blame Apple and Microsoft who are always claiming "we've done this *incredible* thing that no one else has ever done before!". At least people here at slashdot are inquisitive and *asking* what PLATO is.
I think we can all agree they're better than THEM.
No, we can't agree that Apple is better than the MPAA/RIAA. For one, thing Apple enables them and seems to have no qualms about using the same tactics, right down to being a member of a terrorist front group.
We will eventually realize the artificial limitation here, remove the middle man
Some people already have; they are called "pirates" by some and "thieves" by others, although the correct legal term is "copyright infringers."
, and find a way to pay the producers and get our content without *AAs.
Aye, now there's the rub; assuming they should be paid indefinitely for work they did once, how do you pay the producers? Of course, no one likes to hear that maybe they should have negotiated payment upfront, but that's viable way that doesn't even require copyright.
You might hear one song, say, "Run for Your Life" (on Rubber Soul), and note that it's from the perspective of a downright abusive man. So it is; I guess a band might sing a song about anything. Then listen to some of their other songs and records from around the same time. It starts to get really creepy, far beyond the typical casual misogyny of early rock-and-roll.
I've always thought "Please Don't Let me be Misunderstood" was being sung from the POV of a wifebeater. Just listen closely to the lyrics.
That's why we need to acknowledge these sorts of portrayals, and what they say to us and others. Banning porn is almost never the answer (maybe never never?), but understanding its meaning, and trying to improve ourselves and our society is.
Porn will improve when society improves; "hurtful" porn is a symptom, an effect, and it's very obvious that it is highly market/demand driven. Like any market with high demand, it will create its own supply no matter how you try to regulate it. Fix the sick society that demands the sick porn and it will go away.
It's companies like Apple and Microsoft who are behind the draconian licensing of H.264. MPEG-LA is just a mask. The patents are actually held by the licensors, and MPEG-LA only handles litigation.
Why does this sound so familiar?. And people wonder why I boycott Apple and Microsoft. As if their inferior products weren't reason enough.
Maybe you need to consider that the problem here isn't with Steve Jobs.
No, Steve Jobs isn't the problem, but he's certainly one of many. Of course, listening to Steve Jobs (or anyone at Apple) talk about openness would be like listening to Mussolini talk about democracy. OTOH, Steve Jobs would be a good source about companies that offer proprietary locked down platforms; after all, it takes one to know one.
But Apple's position of "we know better than you, and we're limiting your choices to support openness" is disingenuous at best. I'm no fan of Flash, but it is a very widely used standard that you can't really get by without today. I wish that would change, and I commend Apple for supporting HTML5. I'm not going to buy any Apple products anytime soon, because I believe that I know what is best for me. That includes leaving the choice of whether I can use Flash or not up to me, among many, many other choices.
I have two things I use to weed out hotels when I have a surfeit of choice, and most of the booking/travel sites make it easy to filter by many criteria. I prefer an "exercise room" or some way of exercising onsite, but free wifi (or free Internet in general) is a must; I can always go for a run or a swim (these days, free wifi is becoming like pools at hotels: expected).
I wish Nokia provided some better alternatives to C++ for development on Symbian.
Come to Maemo/Meego! It's got Perl out of the box, and Python and C++ are just a few taps away. Packages for Ruby and Go are in repositories. I've also heard murmurings about Erlang, Java, etc. As this is an open platform, the sky's the limit, and I'm sure more and more languages will keep showing up.
Watch Iron Man again. Then watch Dark Knight again. Tell me Iron Man is in the same class.
You're right; Iron Man was way better;-)
You know what gets me about most superhero movies these days? They're trying to be "grown up". This wouldn't be so bad if their idea of "grown up" wasn't "darker and edgier". I mean come on, Batman is about a guy who dresses up as a bat fighting against guys who dress up in bad Mexican wrestling masks. Taking it way too seriously isn't more adult, it's pathetic. Besides, nobody likes a brooding moralist.
Now, I'm no big fan of comics or "Iron Man" in particular, but the movie was fantastic. Tony Stark is a brilliant, successful engineer, acting the superhero *and* having fun and mugging at the camera, not denying he's the guy in the suit *at all*. I'm a fan of Christopher Nolan's works, but while his reboots of Batman may be slicker and more stylish, they just aren't nearly as fun as "Iron Man". This from a guy whose favorite movies almost always have unhappy endings ("Memento", "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", etc) or are "thinking" movies.
Usually the most important ingredients to a film are the screen/scriptwriter and director, but I think that "Dark Knight" and "Iron Man" show situations where this isn't the case. I know who Christopher Nolan is; I love his other works. But Christian Bale plays Bruce Wayne as a flat character and Batman as a kung fu asshole in need of a throat lozenge. Robert Downey Jr has charm and wit, and it shows in "Iron Man". Anyone who has doubts after that performance can watch "Sherlock Holmes" (now *that* was a reboot that had me very pleasantly surprised). The one thing that saved "Dark Knight" was Heath Ledger, amazingly out-Jokering Nicholson.
It's a fine line between mindless happiness and "mature art", but I have to say that Tim Burton pulled it off fairly well in the first Batman, and "Iron Man" doesn't even make pretensions in that direction. The Batman reboots try to act "grown up" by slathering on the darkness and grittiness thick, but when you wipe that away, you find a typical superhero flick, just more "stylish" and not nearly as much fun. I don't know about you, but I don't go to superhero flicks for darker and grittier.
This is something that drives me crazy. I bought a screen with a relatively high DPI, and on half the websites I visit now the content is provided on some kind of fixed size (in pixels) flash thingee.
This is just another in a long line of examples of why Flash is Evil.
Here are a couple of proposals that I'd consider more realistic. Both of these really do involve voting with your wallet. (1) If there are no options that avoid DRM and lockdowns, don't buy. This is my current attitude about the Kindle and iPod. I'll buy one when there is a non-DRM'd library of books available for it that is roughly the same size as Amazon's current catalog. (2) Buy the lesser of two evils. E.g., I believe Android is significantly less locked down than iPhone, so if I were choosing between the two, I'd buy an Android.
I'll add another: 3) buy an Nokia N900, as it's not locked down at all.
I will posit that the amount of people who jailbreak an iPhone is insignificant compared to the amount of those who don't. Therefore, to the vast majority of the users it "just works."
I've heard of not reading the article, and not reading the summary, but "jailbreaking" is right there in the article headline. This is a discussion about jailbreaking; this discussion centers around an apologetic for Apple's closed and inferior systems. The author, being a user who jailbreaks by definition, should not have thrown his money at a company that is so obviously hostile to him and others like him. He should have known better, and he shouldn't apologize for Apple or claim that "it just works" when it doesn't for him.
Like Mark Pilgrim says in the link I posted:
I thought the big draw for Apple hardware was that "It Just Works." By breaking it, you must know you're giving up the "Just Works" factor, so what's left? Rounded corners?
My current theory is that it's some twisted form of wish fulfillment. "I wish this company understood the value of openness, but they don't, so I'm going to keep buying their closed, crippled shit until they get it." Yeah, let me know how that works out for you. And while you were waiting breathlessly for them to "get it," Apple locked out third-party videos. And third-party hardware. And third-party ringtones, applications, and carriers. Openness is just around the corner!
I'll never get this obsession with buying Apple products - supposedly it's because they "just work", but when you have to void the warranty to get it to do what you want it to do, you're obviously admitting that it doesn't "just work". Why buy it when you can get something that is designed to be open and hackable?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for hacking and modding and sticking it to the man, but since when is forking over your hard earned cash (to the man, no less) for a device that is hack-hostile "sticking it to the man"? Why not instead encourage companies that are encouraging you to be more than a consumer?
Slashdot Mirror
. . . and maybe you do know better than the OS authors; who knows, you may have actually implemented a few OSes or bare metal apps yourself. In the case of a system where you need that kind of control to hit benchmarks (eg, embedded real-time), this might be reasonable, or you'd probably just code it to the bare metal. But in most other cases, you should really try to look at how the OS is configured first and save yourself a lot of time; the option to tune RAM+swap and allocation schemes are probably already there. You might *think* you know better than the OS authors, but I doubt your app has had (or will ever have) the number of test cases thrown against it that any popular modern OS has. Those test cases most likely include something similar to your resource hungry app that should really be running on a dedicated machine, and not with the default multitasking options if you are using a general purpose OS at all. I've always maintained that any decent programmer is also a decent sysadmin who knows what his/or her operating system (and other abstraction layers) are doing, and how to change them. Otherwise, you're just some wanker badmouthing people who have put a lot of effort into making their code flexible and adaptable.
Open source solves the broken window fallacy in the software market. Seriously. Does anyone believe that Bill Gates or Steve Jobs are ridiculously rich because their companies' software is that much better? That they really earned all the money they have? Linux and other OSS has saved the world probably on the order of trillions of USD which has been put to other uses (curing cancer, researching alternative energy, feeding the poor, etc, etc). On top of that, it has made it possible for people who could never afford the outrageous prices of Microsoft or Apple to be able to use a computer.
Coding Horror already answered the question of this article over three years ago:
I'm sure they can either make it machine wash proof, or just make the electronic part removable. I have an HRM that has a removable/washable strap and I've heard of washable HRM sports bras.
Multiple pairs of underwear, one sensor module that snaps onto the underwear. Problem solved.
Or hey, just have a refill port that's easily accessible.
They already have insulin pumps; this underwear combined with that and a few other advances will bring us juicers faster than you think.
How so? You mention you use Arduinos; would you have ever even heard about them without the 'net? Would they even *exist* without the 'net? You mention your girlfriend used to cross-stitch; my wife knits, and she's found some really cool patterns (for free!) online, not to mention some really cool yarn that she probably never would have found without the 'net.
I keep my musical instruments setup in the front room where the piano is, so I can pick them up when I have some free time and doodle on them (eg, while waiting for tea to steep). My wife and I keep our bookshelves stocked and visible in the same room. The TV is in another room, and while my wife still watches what I consider too much, she's usually doing something else at the same time (like knitting). These are all tools (TV, Internet, books, musical instruments, etc), and it's in how you use them. It just takes motivation. But the Internet is an extremely powerful tool, one that has made impossible things easy and created opportunities undreamed of. I would have to say that we are *by far* better off because of the Internet.
These services are *not* the same, and anyone who thinks otherwise is obviously not qualified to talk about. I mean, really, can't these idiots tell the difference between wireless and wired data plans? Not that I'm defending communications companies, but you can already get bundles that give you discounts for these sorts of things. Not to mention that there are some of us who don't use one (or more) of the aforementioned services and don't want to be charged for them (and if you think that bundling all these services by default and reducing choice will make them cheaper overall, you're even stupider than the lady in the article).
Now don't get me wrong, I realize there are problems with things the way they are, but conflating Network Neutrality with this sort of nonsense is holding back the cause; we need to call these idiots out and reject them; Network Neutrality is a reasonable goal, but getting distracted by bullshit like this only hurts the users of data plans.
The Relativity of Wrong
Just food for thought . . .
I like to tell people that my father (who started out writing programs on punch cards that he had to send to the University and wait a week to get the results) now keeps a computer in his pocket (a smartphone) that is orders of magnitude more powerful than what he worked on most of his career, plus it's available instantly all the time and is connected to even more powerful stores of data and computing power. That, my friends, is progress.
Health effects of coffee
Health effects of tea
You can find more by searching at the obvious places, but needless to say, in recent years, coffee consumption (even high consumption) has been linked to health benefits. Of course, all things in moderation; I personally have one cup of coffee and one cup of tea a day, before noon (no caffeine after noon). It's more for taste and custom than anything else.
I used to only drink tea (and lots of it), which I had switched to because I used to drink so much coffee I started getting chest pains. I used to drink a *lot* of Dr. Pepper before that, but soda is probably the worst thing you can drink, besides bad moonshine or paint thinner. Seriously, the amount of sugar and other things that will leach the minerals right out of your bones in soda is criminal. Of course, getting a mocha-latte-frappe-choco-swirl from you-know-where probably isn't much better for you.
Just get yourself some whole beans, grind them right before you brew, and use a decent brewing system, and don't drink too much, and you will be better off. Or get some good tea, and make sure the water is boiling if it is black tea.
As Nietzsche put it, "a strong individual ... creates himself by fashioning his own values." This is from the same quote where Nietzsche implies that the universe has no inherent meaning. Many people find this depressing or claim it will make people immoral; I take away from it that I can choose what meaning for my life to have. But I always realize it's *my* meaning, which just like the models in science, I can further change and refine as more evidence becomes available to me.
I'm an atheist (in the classical sense), and I'm no fan of comic books (I don't have a single one). Of course, by your above criterion, if someone is carrying USA legal tender, they are a theist ("In God we Trust"). As an atheist, though, it appears to me that the only meaning that exists is what we give it. The safest bet is to wait until all the evidence is in, but it appears that may never happen. Therefore, I choose to treat others as I would want to be treated, as this seems a rational thing to do, and would make the world a better place. The evidence I have seen so far supports this hypothesis. I keep in mind that the initial choice of what to value was mine, and I can change it, but from there I can extrapolate via evidence how best to make the world a better place.
All due respect, but you might need to take some of your own medicine. Ever hear of The Mother of All Demos? Sure, sure, it was "only" demoed in 1968, but it still gives PLATO a run for its money (including a mouse!), and my reading of the history doesn't make it clear which was first.
It does sadden me that computer technology has (at best) appeared to stagnate in terms of features (don't even get me started on language features that are showing up in Java and Python that have been in LISP for decades). The funny thing is, some of the most radical advances (including both PLATO and The Mother of All Demos) seem to have been publicly funded. Of course, back then, open source was the dominant culture in terms of software. I think proprietary software (and this includes such "innovators" as Apple and Microsoft) has really held back the march of progress.
You want to blame someone for ignorance of computing history? Blame Apple and Microsoft who are always claiming "we've done this *incredible* thing that no one else has ever done before!". At least people here at slashdot are inquisitive and *asking* what PLATO is.
We warned you. You didn't listen. Here's your fucking violin.
No, we can't agree that Apple is better than the MPAA/RIAA. For one, thing Apple enables them and seems to have no qualms about using the same tactics, right down to being a member of a terrorist front group.
Some people already have; they are called "pirates" by some and "thieves" by others, although the correct legal term is "copyright infringers."
Aye, now there's the rub; assuming they should be paid indefinitely for work they did once, how do you pay the producers? Of course, no one likes to hear that maybe they should have negotiated payment upfront, but that's viable way that doesn't even require copyright.
I've always thought "Please Don't Let me be Misunderstood" was being sung from the POV of a wifebeater. Just listen closely to the lyrics.
Porn will improve when society improves; "hurtful" porn is a symptom, an effect, and it's very obvious that it is highly market/demand driven. Like any market with high demand, it will create its own supply no matter how you try to regulate it. Fix the sick society that demands the sick porn and it will go away.
Why does this sound so familiar?. And people wonder why I boycott Apple and Microsoft. As if their inferior products weren't reason enough.
No, Steve Jobs isn't the problem, but he's certainly one of many. Of course, listening to Steve Jobs (or anyone at Apple) talk about openness would be like listening to Mussolini talk about democracy. OTOH, Steve Jobs would be a good source about companies that offer proprietary locked down platforms; after all, it takes one to know one.
But Apple's position of "we know better than you, and we're limiting your choices to support openness" is disingenuous at best. I'm no fan of Flash, but it is a very widely used standard that you can't really get by without today. I wish that would change, and I commend Apple for supporting HTML5. I'm not going to buy any Apple products anytime soon, because I believe that I know what is best for me. That includes leaving the choice of whether I can use Flash or not up to me, among many, many other choices.
I have two things I use to weed out hotels when I have a surfeit of choice, and most of the booking/travel sites make it easy to filter by many criteria. I prefer an "exercise room" or some way of exercising onsite, but free wifi (or free Internet in general) is a must; I can always go for a run or a swim (these days, free wifi is becoming like pools at hotels: expected).
Come to Maemo/Meego! It's got Perl out of the box, and Python and C++ are just a few taps away. Packages for Ruby and Go are in repositories. I've also heard murmurings about Erlang, Java, etc. As this is an open platform, the sky's the limit, and I'm sure more and more languages will keep showing up.
Hey, it's at least a minority of two.
You're right; Iron Man was way better ;-)
You know what gets me about most superhero movies these days? They're trying to be "grown up". This wouldn't be so bad if their idea of "grown up" wasn't "darker and edgier". I mean come on, Batman is about a guy who dresses up as a bat fighting against guys who dress up in bad Mexican wrestling masks. Taking it way too seriously isn't more adult, it's pathetic. Besides, nobody likes a brooding moralist.
Now, I'm no big fan of comics or "Iron Man" in particular, but the movie was fantastic. Tony Stark is a brilliant, successful engineer, acting the superhero *and* having fun and mugging at the camera, not denying he's the guy in the suit *at all*. I'm a fan of Christopher Nolan's works, but while his reboots of Batman may be slicker and more stylish, they just aren't nearly as fun as "Iron Man". This from a guy whose favorite movies almost always have unhappy endings ("Memento", "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", etc) or are "thinking" movies.
Usually the most important ingredients to a film are the screen/scriptwriter and director, but I think that "Dark Knight" and "Iron Man" show situations where this isn't the case. I know who Christopher Nolan is; I love his other works. But Christian Bale plays Bruce Wayne as a flat character and Batman as a kung fu asshole in need of a throat lozenge. Robert Downey Jr has charm and wit, and it shows in "Iron Man". Anyone who has doubts after that performance can watch "Sherlock Holmes" (now *that* was a reboot that had me very pleasantly surprised). The one thing that saved "Dark Knight" was Heath Ledger, amazingly out-Jokering Nicholson.
It's a fine line between mindless happiness and "mature art", but I have to say that Tim Burton pulled it off fairly well in the first Batman, and "Iron Man" doesn't even make pretensions in that direction. The Batman reboots try to act "grown up" by slathering on the darkness and grittiness thick, but when you wipe that away, you find a typical superhero flick, just more "stylish" and not nearly as much fun. I don't know about you, but I don't go to superhero flicks for darker and grittier.
Yes.
This is just another in a long line of examples of why Flash is Evil.
I'll add another: 3) buy an Nokia N900, as it's not locked down at all.
I've heard of not reading the article, and not reading the summary, but "jailbreaking" is right there in the article headline. This is a discussion about jailbreaking; this discussion centers around an apologetic for Apple's closed and inferior systems. The author, being a user who jailbreaks by definition, should not have thrown his money at a company that is so obviously hostile to him and others like him. He should have known better, and he shouldn't apologize for Apple or claim that "it just works" when it doesn't for him.
Like Mark Pilgrim says in the link I posted:
I'll never get this obsession with buying Apple products - supposedly it's because they "just work", but when you have to void the warranty to get it to do what you want it to do, you're obviously admitting that it doesn't "just work". Why buy it when you can get something that is designed to be open and hackable?
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for hacking and modding and sticking it to the man, but since when is forking over your hard earned cash (to the man, no less) for a device that is hack-hostile "sticking it to the man"? Why not instead encourage companies that are encouraging you to be more than a consumer?