Working on nuclear missile guidance systems does not necessarily mean an abrogration of ethics. I personally, could work perfectly ethically on such a system in the United States since its values and ideologies are worth preserving, and a nuclear deterrant is a very effective tool in that arsenal.
Fair point. I realised afterwards that I'd phrased the question particularly badly.
But you see what I was trying to ask: how easily will you turn against your personal ethical beliefs for career/material gain/etc.? Because all I see so far in this Slashdot thread is people excusing themselves from having to make ethical decisions.
One more example that is near and dear to lots of us is file sharing. Should the inventors of file sharing be held responsible for its unlawful use? The answer to me is clearly they should not.
But it's clearly not that clear to everyone, or there wouldn't be all this argument about it.
Gnutella in particular was invented for lawful uses.
It was? How do you know? Were you there at the time?
It's just as easy for me to claim that Kazaa was not created for lawful purposes. In fact, it's even easier: 1: Sharman Networks is a business. Businesses don't create products like Kazaa without a proper business case, which includes looking over the state of the market to work out whether there will be customers. 2: At least 95% of Kazaa's users are using it for unlawful purposes - a similar percentage that were doing unlawful file sharing before Kazaa came out. 3: Kazaa was initially targeted (a) at the existing file-sharing internet users and (b) those wanting to get in on the act.
If we don't thing these people should be responsible for the misuse of their product
By "we" I'm guessing you mean "I". Easy slip.
why would we think free software makers should feel responsible if their software is misused by the military?
For all my smartass comments, there is a genuine distinction worth keeping in mind here - the difference between legal responsibility and ethical responsibility. Sharman argue that they are not legally responsible for what their users do. This is probably true. But it's irrelevant in this particular argument.
Either of those responsibilities can see you being the bad guy, but only one will land you in jail. Mr Claiborne clearly has no jail worries - he just doesn't want to be a bad guy.
What is the answer? There is no answer. Anything can be used as a weapon. That paperweight on your desk: weapon. That water cooler in your office: did you see that commercial where it was a fighting robot?
But this is handwaving to avoid having to think hard about ethical issues. More important questions:
1: How much would you want to be paid to work on a nuclear missile guidance system? (In other words - how much can we buy your ethics for? Or do you just not care?)
2: The population census data tool you're building for the government - is that a weapon? (Here's a clue.)
But most importantly:
3: If you find that something you created for peaceful purposes is being used for something ethically abhorrent, what can and should you do about it?
Once again: The creation of technology always has ethical considerations. Taking those considerations into account is vital. If you just ignore them and say "Not my problem" then you're one of the bad guys.
The GPL only binds your ethical responsibility to teh CODE, it has nothing to do with what do while running that code. If you modify the code you are only ethically bound to tell people what you did.
In fact, you're only bound if you modify the code and then go on to redistribute the software. However, you're not just ethically bound, you're legally bound by the terms of the licence. That's the whole point - the ethics are enforced. You don't get the chance to disagree with those ethics unless you're willing to back them up in court.
All other ethical considerations are outside the scope of the GPL and are supposed to be that way.
Even so, the purpose of the GPL is to enforce a particular ethical consideration, however limited the scope of that consideration may be. It's still all about ethics.
In fact, enforcing your beliefs upon others is (in my opinion) often, but not always, worse than a live and let live style attitude towards stuff you don't understand.
Yet this is exactly what the GPL does, by the very essence of its licence - it enforces the FSF's particular version of freedom.
No, I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I think the GPL is fantastic for a whole load of reasons, but the one which I have yet to see pop up in this argument, and which is completely relevant to it, is this:
The underlying message of the GPL is that technology, creativity and ethics are inextricably bound together, and should be treated as such.
RMS created the GPL to enforce (what he saw as) the ethical treatment of ideas. The beauty of the GPL, to me, is the remarkably innovative and powerful way in which he did this. Now, it may be that the ethics of the GPL and the ethics of Mr Claiborne diverge somewhat, but the underlying message is remarkably similar: you can't just create technology and divorce yourself from the ethical ramifications, as tempting as it is. (I'm not necessarily supporting what he said, but the typical Slashdot blinkered attitude of social-conscience-only-when-it-suits-us is getting on my nerves)
Don't say that he's hypocritical Say rather that he's apolitical "Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun -- Tom Lehrer
The whole discussion is not actually about programming languages. It's about how you get people to agree on a coding platform that allows component A to talk to component B when the components are in different products.
Do not integrate, do not unify, be free.
Be free to have to specify each individual UI preference for every new app I use, you mean?
Be free to have to spend hours trying to get my new word processor to talk to my printer?
You're kind of missing the point re: integration, I think.
I had inferred from your original comment that black boxes are inherently problematic because they cause failures to occur due to their users not seeing the inherent complexity. My response to this is that black boxes should be better designed, rather than the users having to be taught. But I realise that this is a rather idealistic position. The more complex a device is and the more varied its uses (the computer being both one of the most complex and most varied in use) the harder it is to cover all the problem bases.
I think one of the main causes of problems lies in the incompleteness of UI analogies - modern operating systems portray an idealised, simplified view of the machine, but do not implement this view consistently all the way down to the low-level. Users, misunderstanding the analogies presented by the OS, hit a problem; but due to believing the OS's version of how things work rather than the real underlying workings, stubbornly persist in the same way and make the problems worse. I should make it clear that I have no problem with simplified UI analogies, as I think it's the only way to get people to use a computer without driving them mad - however, it's when those analogies are insufficiently implemented that operational disconnects are caused. The user believes the simplified model because they were taught that it is how you deal with the machine - and often, these models are complex enough without wanting to look further.
I don't think you realize how many people used WordPerfect 5.1.
Oh, I do. But that doesn't mean that it was easy to learn. It just means that they somehow, eventually, managed to get WP booted - probably because their work depended on it.
Our black-boxing people usually end up overheating their engine (and blocking traffic and creating big jams in the Alps, grumble!;) You see: it pays to know at least a bit about what's under the black cover of your black box!
No, it pays to actually design black boxes that warn users about things like this.
You can't account for every stupid thing that a user might do. But you can watch for common problems and either take evasive action or alert the user. (This is what the oil light on your dashboard is for)
We have the technology, you know. And when there's a simple problem that's easily spotted, it's far easier to encode the problem and its solution in easily-replicable software than it is to try and train all the users.
There's a common theme in this forum of people getting all uppity about "stupid users". But users aren't stupid. They just don't have time to learn everything. And given that we have the technology to help them, why don't we?
The issue here is that while you have no desire to find out how your computer works, YOU STILL NEED TO.
Why? Oh, you're not actually going to tell me, are you? You're just going to give me yet another tired car analogy.
Before you say you have no idea, if you live in the US, you did have to a test before you were allowed on the road
Yes, I did (in the UK) because CARS CAN KILL PEOPLE. It's perfectly good and sensible to ensure that people know the rules of the road before they take to it. However, the rules of the road and the workings of the internal combustion engine are two utterly unrelated things.
Do you know how your microwave works? I mean, really? Because you shouldn't need to. Besides a couple of key rules to stop it blowing up (i.e. don't put any metal in there, or kittens) there is no need that I can see to understand what "the polarisation frequency of water molecules" means.
The whole point of appliances is to make complicated tasks simpler by hiding all but the most necessary complexity. A computer is an information appliance, and I shouldn't have to know about i386 opcodes and hard disk platters in order to use one.
You know, if we were having this argument ten years ago, I bet you'd have told me that it was utterly vital that I understand all the IRQ settings of my hardware, and that if I was arguing against having to know such madness then I'm clearly a moron who can barely type for all the dribble in the way. Well, thank god that someone disagreed with you and invented Plug and Play, the whole point of which is to stop me having to worry about that shit. And in response to your next point, yes, PnP can go wrong, just like a billion other things that keep me having to carry around a hundred manuals in my head, but it hasn't. If it does, I'll learn about it then.
The fundamental point is this: Computers are designed to execute software, and software is the embodiment of someone else's expertise which abstracts away the difficult parts of simple tasks. We should be trying to make sure that operating systems get better at keeping the problems away from the user, rather than having to teach the user about all the problems. Because some of us have actual work to do.
They do the same thing with their programming - because of the way they are funded they could offer interesting and different programming _NOT_ reality crap that is available on the commercial channels anyway.
That's odd, because most of the stuff I see coming out of the BBC is interesting and different programming. Especially, as another poster said, BBC4.
But you wouldn't know that, since you don't have a TV.
Apparently anyone who doesn't think he will be a complete disaster as a director is in the "Garth Jennings Fan Club". But what the hell...
First, to the Garth Jennings Fan club, when was the last time you heard the phrase: "That flick was like a two-hour MTV music video!" used in a complimentary fashion?
Sorry, is that meant to be an argument of some kind?
As has already been pointed out, many music video directors know the difference between a 4-minute pop promo and a 2-hour feature film.
Second, to the anti-Garth Jennings camp, could it possibly be any worse than a low budget 1980's BBC TV production?
So the BBC production (which I though was okay, if not great) was the worst thing ever, and purely because of the budgetary constraints? Thus, all we need for a fantastic film is as much money as the studio can throw at it! No problem.
Personally, I don't expect a film that is going to come even close to the books. Not from Garth Jennings at least.
Given that you apparently know nothing about him other than that he's directed some music videos, on what basis do you make this judgement? Or is it just because he's never directed a feature before? Clearly, nobody's first film can possibly be any good.
Lets first iron out the bugs and establish features, and then lets worry about integration!:)
I'd say seamless migration from the previous version is a pretty important feature, wouldn't you?
BTW, I don't know if anyone else has had this experience, but Firefox seems to be pretty unreliable for me - it's freezing during certain parts of the page-load process, the download manager thinks it's open when it isn't, the new XPI interface gives no progress indication at any stage (which is quite a retrograde step) and generally the whole thing seems to be less persuasively stable than 0.7. Mind you, that was only in 10 minutes' usage, so perhaps I didn't give it enough of a chance, but now I'm back on 0.7 because I have work to do.
h2g2 (note the lower-casing) is the name of the online guide inspired by The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy. It's considered "official" because it was created by The Digital Village Ltd., the new media company that had Douglas Adams amongst its directors, and he assisted in its creation. It is not the name of the book, the radio series, the game, or anything else. Just the online, fact-based guide.
If you want to reference the fictional story or Guide with an abbreviation, I'd recommend HHGTTG. Or HHGG. Or HHG.
-- Yoz, who was one of the four original developers of h2g2.com, and is also horrifically pedantic
Garth Jennings, while perhaps a promising up and comer, is still an unproven quantity in the movie making buisiness.
On feature films, maybe. But H&T's large existing body of work shows that they can consistently produce stuff that is imaginative, wild, fun, popular, on time and on budget.
Do not underestimate how vitally important the above sentence is to a movie studio exec.
Of the four other directors you list, only Tim Burton could be said to fit the same description. (Scott, while popular and imaginative, has also had his share of rough production rides - read about the making of Blade Runner. Plus, I really doubt that either he or Lynch could do DNA's comedy justice)
"Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is the sort of property that proven world-class directors would line up and beat the snot outta each other for the chance to direct!
*cough* *splutter*
Yeah, nice idea, but evidence shows this to be untrue. Leaving aside the possible (un)popularity of HHG with directors, one of the major problems that all these fandom fantasy cast lists leave out is that they bear absolutely no relation to what may be going on in Hollywood at the time - in particular, who is or isn't available to do a project. If you're a world-class anything, you're going to be quite in demand and probably also quite busy, no?
It is an utter travesty that this fellow can get the budget for Hitchhiker (which should be at least 60 million) while directors like Terry Gilliam have so recently *failed* to raise the money to produce equally hilarious properties like "Good Omens".
Ignoring the horrific insult you've just dealt a talented director who you admit you know nothing about, I ask you to reread the sentence I highlighted earlier. Now think of Gilliam, then think of Munchausen and Don Quixote. The guy is a genius, but he is distinctly unlucky with projects.
My comment meant in the main any of the people whose directing range is limited to 180 seconds of eye candy.
Short films have always been a good starting point for young filmmakers, and music videos are easily the most popular kind of short film. Besides, there are several ways of thinking about music vids; either, as you say, meaningless eye candy, or as a chance to squeeze some brilliantly original film-making into a meagre three minutes while managing often-pitiful budgets, release schedules and pop star divas. (To me, much of H&T's work falls in the latter category)
I trust Garth Jennings, but that's mainly because <EGO ALERT>I was privileged to meet him (and Nick Goldsmith, his partner in H&T shortly after he got the HHG job and chat to him about it. He's a big fan from way back and he's not going to mindlessly Hollywoodise it. (If it helps reassure you, he's English) Sure, some of the casting decisions are going to raise eyebrows but you cannot please all of the fans at once, especially if you want to keep the studio (who are the ones writing the cheques, remember) happy as well.</EGO>
A whole load of work has gone into this film project for many years now, much of it by Douglas himself (who turned out several new scripts just before he died), much of it by people who love his work, Garth and Nick among them. They're not just going to throw it all away.
I've never heard of Garth Jennings. Its not like this guy's even worked his way up to director.
Whereas you, clearly, have more than paid your dues for your role as Ignorant Slashdot Bigot.
(I'm constantly amazed at the number of times I hear the "I've never heard of X, it's clearly no good" argument. I'm not sure which offends me more, the breathtaking ego or the total logic breakdown.)
And what do you mean by "worked his way up to director" exactly? He's done plenty of directing work, just not on movies. Most directors get their starts on short films; his just happen to be music videos (and fantastic ones at that - check out REM's "Imitation Of Life")
My first read of the comparison with BitTorrent just feels wrong. Unfortunately I haven't the time right now to go into it properly (being at work, with boss coming up every five minutes) but does anyone else get the impression that one of the premises (leading him to the conclusion that k2b is more scalable) is wrong?
He says that it's based on most people have far greater download than upload bandwidth, so people lower down the chain are going to receive a trickle. Yet every time I've done a BT download it has maxed out my downstream bandwidth. My first guess is that he doesn't take into account people leaving their BT clients open once they've finished a download.
Most of Microsoft's value-add has been stolen^h^h^h^h^h^hcopied or acquired.
I continually wonder when people who continually spout the nonsense you do are going to wake up and realise that the thousands of developers and researchers employed by Microsoft aren't just sitting there and playing Minesweeper all day.
Yes, MS sometimes buys products off other companies. So does Apple (Logic and Shake, and of course NeXT/BSD). So does IBM (Lotus, Informix). Furthermore, MS puts enough development into those products that they properly evolve: the current version of SQL Server retains no remaining code from Sybase (which the original version was based on). But WinNT was a completely new OS, not based on VMS (though it was designed by VMS's lead architect).
The idea that MS never innovates is just nonsense. Examples like their using a WIMP GUI (which, if you recall, was ripped off from Xerox by many different OS companies, yet no one ever accused Amiga of not innovating) are total red herrings, especially given the number of times that the Windows UI has been ripped off by others. (Mac OS X dock = shinier Win98 taskbar, and all the things that GNOME/KDE have ripped off)
It's almost always possible to take any computing innovation and point to a precursor, saying "Ah, that's not new, look - it's just an evolution of that previous thing." But "Just" Is A Dangerous Word.
The reason MS has a this reputation is that it rarely innovates in big ways, just as creating new markets or completely new types of products. This is not from lack of innovative ability (spend half an hour wandering through Microsoft Research and realise just how innovative they can be) but from a corporate philosophy of deliberately not pioneering technology advances. Remember that they've been burnt in the past (Windows For Pen, anyone? And MS Bob, of course) - the saying "Pioneers are the ones with the arrows in their backs" is a very wise one for the tech industry. Much better to let someone else take the risk and prove the market before moving in.
However, while MS rarely innovates in new product types, it does innovate in small product features - IntelliSense and Cleartype (sub-pixel rendering had research precursors, but had never been part of a windowing system before) are two examples that stick in my mind. But the reason they stick is because MS actually gave them names and touted them as innovations, which it doesn't often do.
To summarise: MS develops and produces thousands of products. To pull a couple of ancient examples and claim that this shows MS does nothing other than sell boxes makes me wonder if you know anything about the company besides what you read on Slashdot.
You put all of your money into a big pile. Your opponent puts all of his/her money into another big pile. Then the lawyers come along and start tearing up the money piles. Whichever lawyer finishes first loses.
-- Yoz
How about Soyuz, then?
on
Shuttle Politics
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
The Russian Soyuz spacecraft has made 1500 successful launches in a life of over 30 years. Several hundred of those have been manned, with only one catastrophe.
Unlike the Shuttle, the Soyuz is not a reusable craft. The Shuttle was designed to be reusable to cut down on the cost of manned spaceflight - the irony being that the cost of the two lost Shuttles is greater than all the money spent on Soyuz craft so far.
Slashdot Mirror
Working on nuclear missile guidance systems does not necessarily mean an abrogration of ethics. I personally, could work perfectly ethically on such a system in the United States since its values and ideologies are worth preserving, and a nuclear deterrant is a very effective tool in that arsenal.
Fair point. I realised afterwards that I'd phrased the question particularly badly.
But you see what I was trying to ask: how easily will you turn against your personal ethical beliefs for career/material gain/etc.? Because all I see so far in this Slashdot thread is people excusing themselves from having to make ethical decisions.
It must be wonderful to live in such a simplistic Bush like world full of "bad guys" that are easily identifiable.
You should know, you're the one who simply jumped on a phrase without bothering to interpret it in context.
One more example that is near and dear to lots of us is file sharing. Should the inventors of file sharing be held responsible for its unlawful use? The answer to me is clearly they should not.
But it's clearly not that clear to everyone, or there wouldn't be all this argument about it.
Gnutella in particular was invented for lawful uses.
It was? How do you know? Were you there at the time?
It's just as easy for me to claim that Kazaa was not created for lawful purposes. In fact, it's even easier:
1: Sharman Networks is a business. Businesses don't create products like Kazaa without a proper business case, which includes looking over the state of the market to work out whether there will be customers.
2: At least 95% of Kazaa's users are using it for unlawful purposes - a similar percentage that were doing unlawful file sharing before Kazaa came out.
3: Kazaa was initially targeted (a) at the existing file-sharing internet users and (b) those wanting to get in on the act.
If we don't thing these people should be responsible for the misuse of their product
By "we" I'm guessing you mean "I". Easy slip.
why would we think free software makers should feel responsible if their software is misused by the military?
For all my smartass comments, there is a genuine distinction worth keeping in mind here - the difference between legal responsibility and ethical responsibility. Sharman argue that they are not legally responsible for what their users do. This is probably true. But it's irrelevant in this particular argument.
Either of those responsibilities can see you being the bad guy, but only one will land you in jail. Mr Claiborne clearly has no jail worries - he just doesn't want to be a bad guy.
What is the answer? There is no answer. Anything can be used as a weapon. That paperweight on your desk: weapon. That water cooler in your office: did you see that commercial where it was a fighting robot?
But this is handwaving to avoid having to think hard about ethical issues. More important questions:
1: How much would you want to be paid to work on a nuclear missile guidance system? (In other words - how much can we buy your ethics for? Or do you just not care?)
2: The population census data tool you're building for the government - is that a weapon? (Here's a clue.)
But most importantly:
3: If you find that something you created for peaceful purposes is being used for something ethically abhorrent, what can and should you do about it?
Once again: The creation of technology always has ethical considerations. Taking those considerations into account is vital. If you just ignore them and say "Not my problem" then you're one of the bad guys.
The GPL only binds your ethical responsibility to teh CODE, it has nothing to do with what do while running that code. If you modify the code you are only ethically bound to tell people what you did.
In fact, you're only bound if you modify the code and then go on to redistribute the software. However, you're not just ethically bound, you're legally bound by the terms of the licence. That's the whole point - the ethics are enforced. You don't get the chance to disagree with those ethics unless you're willing to back them up in court.
All other ethical considerations are outside the scope of the GPL and are supposed to be that way.
Even so, the purpose of the GPL is to enforce a particular ethical consideration, however limited the scope of that consideration may be. It's still all about ethics.
In fact, enforcing your beliefs upon others is (in my opinion) often, but not always, worse than a live and let live style attitude towards stuff you don't understand.
Yet this is exactly what the GPL does, by the very essence of its licence - it enforces the FSF's particular version of freedom.
No, I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I think the GPL is fantastic for a whole load of reasons, but the one which I have yet to see pop up in this argument, and which is completely relevant to it, is this:
The underlying message of the GPL is that technology, creativity and ethics are inextricably bound together, and should be treated as such.
RMS created the GPL to enforce (what he saw as) the ethical treatment of ideas. The beauty of the GPL, to me, is the remarkably innovative and powerful way in which he did this. Now, it may be that the ethics of the GPL and the ethics of Mr Claiborne diverge somewhat, but the underlying message is remarkably similar: you can't just create technology and divorce yourself from the ethical ramifications, as tempting as it is. (I'm not necessarily supporting what he said, but the typical Slashdot blinkered attitude of social-conscience-only-when-it-suits-us is getting on my nerves)
Don't say that he's hypocritical
Say rather that he's apolitical
"Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down
That's not my department," says Wernher von Braun
-- Tom Lehrer
The whole discussion is not actually about programming languages. It's about how you get people to agree on a coding platform that allows component A to talk to component B when the components are in different products.
Do not integrate, do not unify, be free.
Be free to have to specify each individual UI preference for every new app I use, you mean?
Be free to have to spend hours trying to get my new word processor to talk to my printer?
You're kind of missing the point re: integration, I think.
Ah, I see.
I had inferred from your original comment that black boxes are inherently problematic because they cause failures to occur due to their users not seeing the inherent complexity. My response to this is that black boxes should be better designed, rather than the users having to be taught. But I realise that this is a rather idealistic position. The more complex a device is and the more varied its uses (the computer being both one of the most complex and most varied in use) the harder it is to cover all the problem bases.
I think one of the main causes of problems lies in the incompleteness of UI analogies - modern operating systems portray an idealised, simplified view of the machine, but do not implement this view consistently all the way down to the low-level. Users, misunderstanding the analogies presented by the OS, hit a problem; but due to believing the OS's version of how things work rather than the real underlying workings, stubbornly persist in the same way and make the problems worse. I should make it clear that I have no problem with simplified UI analogies, as I think it's the only way to get people to use a computer without driving them mad - however, it's when those analogies are insufficiently implemented that operational disconnects are caused. The user believes the simplified model because they were taught that it is how you deal with the machine - and often, these models are complex enough without wanting to look further.
I don't think you realize how many people used WordPerfect 5.1.
Oh, I do. But that doesn't mean that it was easy to learn. It just means that they somehow, eventually, managed to get WP booted - probably because their work depended on it.
I was going to do a more in-depth reply to this, but then I hit this line...
... and now I just want to know which utopian planet our Mr Coward is from.
People never had trouble learning DOS before a decent GUI was available
Our black-boxing people usually end up overheating their engine (and blocking traffic and creating big jams in the Alps, grumble! ;) You see: it pays to know at least a bit about what's under the black cover of your black box!
No, it pays to actually design black boxes that warn users about things like this.
You can't account for every stupid thing that a user might do. But you can watch for common problems and either take evasive action or alert the user. (This is what the oil light on your dashboard is for)
We have the technology, you know. And when there's a simple problem that's easily spotted, it's far easier to encode the problem and its solution in easily-replicable software than it is to try and train all the users.
There's a common theme in this forum of people getting all uppity about "stupid users". But users aren't stupid. They just don't have time to learn everything. And given that we have the technology to help them, why don't we?
The issue here is that while you have no desire to find out how your computer works, YOU STILL NEED TO.
Why?
Oh, you're not actually going to tell me, are you? You're just going to give me yet another tired car analogy.
Before you say you have no idea, if you live in the US, you did have to a test before you were allowed on the road
Yes, I did (in the UK) because CARS CAN KILL PEOPLE. It's perfectly good and sensible to ensure that people know the rules of the road before they take to it. However, the rules of the road and the workings of the internal combustion engine are two utterly unrelated things.
Do you know how your microwave works? I mean, really? Because you shouldn't need to. Besides a couple of key rules to stop it blowing up (i.e. don't put any metal in there, or kittens) there is no need that I can see to understand what "the polarisation frequency of water molecules" means.
The whole point of appliances is to make complicated tasks simpler by hiding all but the most necessary complexity. A computer is an information appliance, and I shouldn't have to know about i386 opcodes and hard disk platters in order to use one.
You know, if we were having this argument ten years ago, I bet you'd have told me that it was utterly vital that I understand all the IRQ settings of my hardware, and that if I was arguing against having to know such madness then I'm clearly a moron who can barely type for all the dribble in the way. Well, thank god that someone disagreed with you and invented Plug and Play, the whole point of which is to stop me having to worry about that shit. And in response to your next point, yes, PnP can go wrong, just like a billion other things that keep me having to carry around a hundred manuals in my head, but it hasn't. If it does, I'll learn about it then.
The fundamental point is this: Computers are designed to execute software, and software is the embodiment of someone else's expertise which abstracts away the difficult parts of simple tasks. We should be trying to make sure that operating systems get better at keeping the problems away from the user, rather than having to teach the user about all the problems. Because some of us have actual work to do.
They do the same thing with their programming - because of the way they are funded they could offer interesting and different programming _NOT_ reality crap that is available on the commercial channels anyway.
That's odd, because most of the stuff I see coming out of the BBC is interesting and different programming. Especially, as another poster said, BBC4.
But you wouldn't know that, since you don't have a TV.
Apparently anyone who doesn't think he will be a complete disaster as a director is in the "Garth Jennings Fan Club". But what the hell...
First, to the Garth Jennings Fan club, when was the last time you heard the phrase: "That flick was like a two-hour MTV music video!" used in a complimentary fashion?
Sorry, is that meant to be an argument of some kind?
As has already been pointed out, many music video directors know the difference between a 4-minute pop promo and a 2-hour feature film.
Second, to the anti-Garth Jennings camp, could it possibly be any worse than a low budget 1980's BBC TV production?
So the BBC production (which I though was okay, if not great) was the worst thing ever, and purely because of the budgetary constraints? Thus, all we need for a fantastic film is as much money as the studio can throw at it! No problem.
Personally, I don't expect a film that is going to come even close to the books. Not from Garth Jennings at least.
Given that you apparently know nothing about him other than that he's directed some music videos, on what basis do you make this judgement? Or is it just because he's never directed a feature before? Clearly, nobody's first film can possibly be any good.
Lets first iron out the bugs and establish features, and then lets worry about integration! :)
I'd say seamless migration from the previous version is a pretty important feature, wouldn't you?
BTW, I don't know if anyone else has had this experience, but Firefox seems to be pretty unreliable for me - it's freezing during certain parts of the page-load process, the download manager thinks it's open when it isn't, the new XPI interface gives no progress indication at any stage (which is quite a retrograde step) and generally the whole thing seems to be less persuasively stable than 0.7. Mind you, that was only in 10 minutes' usage, so perhaps I didn't give it enough of a chance, but now I'm back on 0.7 because I have work to do.
-- Yoz
Heavy sigh...
h2g2 (note the lower-casing) is the name of the online guide inspired by The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy. It's considered "official" because it was created by The Digital Village Ltd., the new media company that had Douglas Adams amongst its directors, and he assisted in its creation. It is not the name of the book, the radio series, the game, or anything else. Just the online, fact-based guide.
If you want to reference the fictional story or Guide with an abbreviation, I'd recommend HHGTTG. Or HHGG. Or HHG.
-- Yoz, who was one of the four original developers of h2g2.com, and is also horrifically pedantic
Garth Jennings, while perhaps a promising up and comer, is still an unproven quantity in the movie making buisiness.
On feature films, maybe. But H&T's large existing body of work shows that they can consistently produce stuff that is imaginative, wild, fun, popular, on time and on budget.
Do not underestimate how vitally important the above sentence is to a movie studio exec.
Of the four other directors you list, only Tim Burton could be said to fit the same description. (Scott, while popular and imaginative, has also had his share of rough production rides - read about the making of Blade Runner. Plus, I really doubt that either he or Lynch could do DNA's comedy justice)
"Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is the sort of property that proven world-class directors would line up and beat the snot outta each other for the chance to direct!
*cough* *splutter*
Yeah, nice idea, but evidence shows this to be untrue. Leaving aside the possible (un)popularity of HHG with directors, one of the major problems that all these fandom fantasy cast lists leave out is that they bear absolutely no relation to what may be going on in Hollywood at the time - in particular, who is or isn't available to do a project. If you're a world-class anything, you're going to be quite in demand and probably also quite busy, no?
It is an utter travesty that this fellow can get the budget for Hitchhiker (which should be at least 60 million) while directors like Terry Gilliam have so recently *failed* to raise the money to produce equally hilarious properties like "Good Omens".
Ignoring the horrific insult you've just dealt a talented director who you admit you know nothing about, I ask you to reread the sentence I highlighted earlier. Now think of Gilliam, then think of Munchausen and Don Quixote. The guy is a genius, but he is distinctly unlucky with projects.
Give Jennings the script for the sequel to Gigli
Oh for god's sake.
My comment meant in the main any of the people whose directing range is limited to 180 seconds of eye candy.
Short films have always been a good starting point for young filmmakers, and music videos are easily the most popular kind of short film. Besides, there are several ways of thinking about music vids; either, as you say, meaningless eye candy, or as a chance to squeeze some brilliantly original film-making into a meagre three minutes while managing often-pitiful budgets, release schedules and pop star divas. (To me, much of H&T's work falls in the latter category)
I trust Garth Jennings, but that's mainly because <EGO ALERT>I was privileged to meet him (and Nick Goldsmith, his partner in H&T shortly after he got the HHG job and chat to him about it. He's a big fan from way back and he's not going to mindlessly Hollywoodise it. (If it helps reassure you, he's English) Sure, some of the casting decisions are going to raise eyebrows but you cannot please all of the fans at once, especially if you want to keep the studio (who are the ones writing the cheques, remember) happy as well.</EGO>
A whole load of work has gone into this film project for many years now, much of it by Douglas himself (who turned out several new scripts just before he died), much of it by people who love his work, Garth and Nick among them. They're not just going to throw it all away.
I've never heard of Garth Jennings. Its not like this guy's even worked his way up to director.
Whereas you, clearly, have more than paid your dues for your role as Ignorant Slashdot Bigot.
(I'm constantly amazed at the number of times I hear the "I've never heard of X, it's clearly no good" argument. I'm not sure which offends me more, the breathtaking ego or the total logic breakdown.)
And what do you mean by "worked his way up to director" exactly? He's done plenty of directing work, just not on movies. Most directors get their starts on short films; his just happen to be music videos (and fantastic ones at that - check out REM's "Imitation Of Life")
Every movie done by a music video director has sucked. EVERY ONE.
Are you including "Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation" in this generalisation?
Ooh, you're the guy who created my favourite BT client. Nice one. :)
*takes opportunity to nag for combined bandwidth throttling in both directions*
My first read of the comparison with BitTorrent just feels wrong. Unfortunately I haven't the time right now to go into it properly (being at work, with boss coming up every five minutes) but does anyone else get the impression that one of the premises (leading him to the conclusion that k2b is more scalable) is wrong?
He says that it's based on most people have far greater download than upload bandwidth, so people lower down the chain are going to receive a trickle. Yet every time I've done a BT download it has maxed out my downstream bandwidth. My first guess is that he doesn't take into account people leaving their BT clients open once they've finished a download.
Most of Microsoft's value-add has been stolen^h^h^h^h^h^hcopied or acquired.
I continually wonder when people who continually spout the nonsense you do are going to wake up and realise that the thousands of developers and researchers employed by Microsoft aren't just sitting there and playing Minesweeper all day.
Yes, MS sometimes buys products off other companies. So does Apple (Logic and Shake, and of course NeXT/BSD). So does IBM (Lotus, Informix). Furthermore, MS puts enough development into those products that they properly evolve: the current version of SQL Server retains no remaining code from Sybase (which the original version was based on). But WinNT was a completely new OS, not based on VMS (though it was designed by VMS's lead architect).
The idea that MS never innovates is just nonsense. Examples like their using a WIMP GUI (which, if you recall, was ripped off from Xerox by many different OS companies, yet no one ever accused Amiga of not innovating) are total red herrings, especially given the number of times that the Windows UI has been ripped off by others. (Mac OS X dock = shinier Win98 taskbar, and all the things that GNOME/KDE have ripped off)
It's almost always possible to take any computing innovation and point to a precursor, saying "Ah, that's not new, look - it's just an evolution of that previous thing." But "Just" Is A Dangerous Word.
The reason MS has a this reputation is that it rarely innovates in big ways, just as creating new markets or completely new types of products. This is not from lack of innovative ability (spend half an hour wandering through Microsoft Research and realise just how innovative they can be) but from a corporate philosophy of deliberately not pioneering technology advances. Remember that they've been burnt in the past (Windows For Pen, anyone? And MS Bob, of course) - the saying "Pioneers are the ones with the arrows in their backs" is a very wise one for the tech industry. Much better to let someone else take the risk and prove the market before moving in.
However, while MS rarely innovates in new product types, it does innovate in small product features - IntelliSense and Cleartype (sub-pixel rendering had research precursors, but had never been part of a windowing system before) are two examples that stick in my mind. But the reason they stick is because MS actually gave them names and touted them as innovations, which it doesn't often do.
To summarise: MS develops and produces thousands of products. To pull a couple of ancient examples and claim that this shows MS does nothing other than sell boxes makes me wonder if you know anything about the company besides what you read on Slashdot.
-- Yoz
... somewhat like this:
You put all of your money into a big pile. Your opponent puts all of his/her money into another big pile. Then the lawyers come along and start tearing up the money piles. Whichever lawyer finishes first loses.
-- Yoz
The Russian Soyuz spacecraft has made 1500 successful launches in a life of over 30 years. Several hundred of those have been manned, with only one catastrophe.
Unlike the Shuttle, the Soyuz is not a reusable craft. The Shuttle was designed to be reusable to cut down on the cost of manned spaceflight - the irony being that the cost of the two lost Shuttles is greater than all the money spent on Soyuz craft so far.
More information here.