The Tall Guy, English romantic comedy starring Jeff Goldblum. Rowan Atkinson plays the asshole everyone suspects Rowan Atkinson really is. Brilliant musical parody based on The Elephant Man lambastes Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Weber, and everyone else who has ever written a musical.
Ticket to Heaven, brilliant Canadian low-budget film about cults. Some seriously good anthropology.
Serial, Martin Mull movie about Marin County nuttiness, also some cults. Hilarious. Christopher Lee as a headhunter who is in a gay biker gang on weekends, Tommy Smothers perfect as a New Age preacher.
Gods and Monsters, Ian McKellum plaing James Whale in his last days, with Brendan Frasier as the young man with the monster face he becomes obsessed with. A film about loneliness and loss. One of the best films I've seen in a decade.
I'm quoting it from memory, so I probably have some words wrong:
I have just seen Blade Runner. It is terrific. It has nothing to do with a book. What my book will become is a futuristic shoot-em-up. Which is just as well, because my book may have made a terrible movie, full as it is of the main character's internal dialog. A book is meant to be contemplated, but a movie is an event that moves.
The advice given is intended to be used in granting and interpreting patents. There is no list of rules that is guaranteed to produce good science. If there were, we wouldn't need to have the intensely human and social process of science to work things out.
The problem is that it sometimes takes a long time. People who want patents want them right away. So, the question becomes whether there's more risk in getting bogus science patented versus waiting for science to finish its process before giving a patent. I'd argue that the former is more risky. A patent seems to grant an imprimatur, and I don't think that should be given when there's a reasonable doubt.
Ever get passed by a truck while driving a Volkswagen Beetle on the interstate? That's where lifting becomes a problem.
Was I the only kid who read Three Investigators?
on
Soundless Music?
·
· Score: 1
More than 30 years ago, I read a kids' mystery book centered on The Three Investigators (roughly equivalent to Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys but a bit smarter) where infrasound was used in a supposedly haunted house.
Microsoft didn't invent BASIC, but they did turn it into something quite useful, with the transparent tokenizing, peek and poke, and the (in modern terms, primitive) integer typing.
This is not the America I grew up in. This is not the America I swore to defend.
Unless you're at least 50, this is the America you grew up in, because you've been a consumer since the first time Eisenhower sent a vacuum cleaner manufacturer to the Soviet Union to show them all about what freedom means to us. And it continued through the 1970s when Disco was the corporate tweeze and everyone was dismantling to manufacturing sector to buy powder for up their nose and the 1980s with the PMRC and Jack Valenti, who is pushing Dick Clark for longevity. And, oh yeah, the latter 1980s when everybody was sick of career politicians and wanted business people in office and hooray for Ross Perot. And people were pointing out the dangers of this the whole time, but nobody cared, so long as the trash gets picked up, and if anyone did notice, they were all called Paranoid, Commies, or Right Wingers. Guess what! Big, fat, hairy, thwacking surprise!
And now you've noticed it. Oh, my. I bet they're just quaking in their boots at this new American Spirit.
DeCSS isn't for copying, because you can copy DVDs without using DeCSS or any decryption. Just copy the pattern on the disc. Commercially available bulk copiers do just that. Hell, the large-scale means of producing DVDs are photographic.
This story provides an interesting contrast with the other story about webmasters ignoring standards and designing only for IE. The attitude there seems to be that, as long as you get 95% of all potential customers, who cares about the other 5%? Furthermore, some Slashdotters seem to agree with this attitude. I've always taken the Americans with Disabilities Act very seriously, and would probably do things to comply even if it hadn't been passed. But the question is, although Quake for the blind is a great concept, what is the real value if the vast majority of service-providers simply couldn't care less?
About a decade and a half ago, I recall seeing you speak at a convention in Florida (according to rumor, the only con at which you ever spoke, though I don't know if this is true). As I remember, at the time you said you were reluctant to use a computer because you were already so fast on your Dvorak typewriter. Moving to a Linux-based system seems to me to be a rather dramatic switch, especially as Linux is generally thought of as a system of technophiles, the same sort of people who eagerly used CP/M systems with ADM 3-As twenty years ago. What prompted your switch, and what adventures (both pleasant and unpleasant) has it entailed?
Holograms called "integrals" have been possible for decades. (They are featured in the 70's cheesoid flick Logan's Run) They are traditionally made from motion picture film, with the subject on a rotating platform. Each frame of film produces a single vertical strip hologram. These integrals produce horizontal parallax, but no vertical.
So, is this just a cheaper way to make bigger integrals, or have they solved the knotty problem of getting vertical parallax as well? If the former, OK, but yawn. If the latter, that's pretty impressive. It's conceivably possible to do, but I can't find anything in the article that makes it clear.
It's two or three back-projection walls and a front-projection floor with alternate frame 3-D synchronizing with a pair of tracked LCD flip glasses. Very clever math for getting the projections right and a very convincing display (especially if you're the one wearing the tracker), but not a hologram.
Smear makeup on your face. Drape an old sheet over it like a shroud. Wait for the contact print to form. Peel off the sheet. Look at it. Notice how it looks just like Arnold the cartoon character?
Now look at a picture of the Shroud of Turin. Notice how the face doesn't look like a football? Notice how it's even gaunt?
Any technology or spiritual manifestation or whatever that involves the shroud being used on the shroud would produce Mr. Football Head, because of the basic geometry. There is no more need to think about it.
I would love it if our money were prettier. However, it seems to me that this idea comes across every few years, and nothing ever comes of it. The new 20's were supposed to be in color, and then they decided not to do it. Ho hum.
You do have to admit, though, that it's pretty stupid to say that foreigners would be able to differentiate our money better if it were in color. Even if it were in color, it would be in a different color code from what they're used to.
Personally, I find this kind of whining, psuedo-advocacy bullshit extremely annoying. It's far too easy for
media pundits with no programming or interface design experience to complain endlessly about how
operating systems and applications haven't advanced since the late 80's, without offering any concrete
evidence to the contrary.
Okayyy... Well, I don't like Dvorak very much. And I've been doing programming and interface design for fifteen years, even did some research into interfaces (VR Toolshed, Roller [no, you've never heard of them unless you went to some highly specialized conferences]) and have implemented many unusual interfaces (cylinder menus, gesture interfaces, etc.). So can I whine about how little interface design has improved?
It's unfair to single out Apple, though. OS X is good. Apple is just beginning to re-assemble a world-class design team like they had in the early 1980's with Alan Kay and the other Grand Old Men. In the mean time, they need to secure their future in the marketplace. If they need to produce vanilla-scented art-deco Macs with built-in can openers, then they need to do it.
Watergate is a big deal for the same reason that some people think Bob Dylan can sing: it's a Baby Boomer thing. First the Baby Boomers discovered color, sex, civil rights, and opposition to the war. Then they discovered political scandal, and that was Watergate. By the time Reagan came around, they had discovered cocaine, tax-free municipal bonds, and all-white neighborhoods, so they didn't notice.
Besides being deliberately designed to prevent the copying of music on personal computers,
the anti-piracy technology often prevents playback altogether on PCs, and even on some CD
players, Mansfield said.
If it prevents copying on personal computers, it always prevents playback on those computers.
Just look at some of the old columns (some of which are by people who still write columns, like John C. Dvorak). The whole idea of a GUI was anathema to them. Until Windows, of course, and then GUIs were great and totally better than the Mac. I can remember one column about 15 years ago stating that the Mac was bad because the Motorola processors were too orthogonal and therefore didn's impose discipline.
This is under Section 3, which only applies to distributing executables. If you don't distribute executables, it doesn't apply.
This is clarified in Section 0: "Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are not covered by this License; they are outside its scope."
3b is one of three options. If you do 3a, giving the source, you don't have to do 3b.
There's one more thing about the GPL that most people miss. It is directed to a licensee, not the author. Note from section 7: "Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system
in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software
through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice."
Slashdot Mirror
The Tall Guy, English romantic comedy starring Jeff Goldblum. Rowan Atkinson plays the asshole everyone suspects Rowan Atkinson really is. Brilliant musical parody based on The Elephant Man lambastes Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Weber, and everyone else who has ever written a musical.
Ticket to Heaven, brilliant Canadian low-budget film about cults. Some seriously good anthropology.
Serial, Martin Mull movie about Marin County nuttiness, also some cults. Hilarious. Christopher Lee as a headhunter who is in a gay biker gang on weekends, Tommy Smothers perfect as a New Age preacher.
Gods and Monsters, Ian McKellum plaing James Whale in his last days, with Brendan Frasier as the young man with the monster face he becomes obsessed with. A film about loneliness and loss. One of the best films I've seen in a decade.
I'm quoting it from memory, so I probably have some words wrong:
I have just seen Blade Runner. It is terrific. It has nothing to do with a book. What my book will become is a futuristic shoot-em-up. Which is just as well, because my book may have made a terrible movie, full as it is of the main character's internal dialog. A book is meant to be contemplated, but a movie is an event that moves.
The advice given is intended to be used in granting and interpreting patents. There is no list of rules that is guaranteed to produce good science. If there were, we wouldn't need to have the intensely human and social process of science to work things out.
The problem is that it sometimes takes a long time. People who want patents want them right away. So, the question becomes whether there's more risk in getting bogus science patented versus waiting for science to finish its process before giving a patent. I'd argue that the former is more risky. A patent seems to grant an imprimatur, and I don't think that should be given when there's a reasonable doubt.
Ever get passed by a truck while driving a Volkswagen Beetle on the interstate? That's where lifting becomes a problem.
More than 30 years ago, I read a kids' mystery book centered on The Three Investigators (roughly equivalent to Nancy Drew or The Hardy Boys but a bit smarter) where infrasound was used in a supposedly haunted house.
Microsoft didn't invent BASIC, but they did turn it into something quite useful, with the transparent tokenizing, peek and poke, and the (in modern terms, primitive) integer typing.
But it wouldn't really be replacing paint, as the automobile industry has been using powder
for about a decade.And it would only take about as much energy as we use in 15-20 years to build all those solar cells.
The people who put it together should be stoned in the street.
Gosh! Proof positive that GTA causes violent tendencies.
This is not the America I grew up in. This is not the America I swore to defend.
Unless you're at least 50, this is the America you grew up in, because you've been a consumer since the first time Eisenhower sent a vacuum cleaner manufacturer to the Soviet Union to show them all about what freedom means to us. And it continued through the 1970s when Disco was the corporate tweeze and everyone was dismantling to manufacturing sector to buy powder for up their nose and the 1980s with the PMRC and Jack Valenti, who is pushing Dick Clark for longevity. And, oh yeah, the latter 1980s when everybody was sick of career politicians and wanted business people in office and hooray for Ross Perot. And people were pointing out the dangers of this the whole time, but nobody cared, so long as the trash gets picked up, and if anyone did notice, they were all called Paranoid, Commies, or Right Wingers. Guess what! Big, fat, hairy, thwacking surprise!
And now you've noticed it. Oh, my. I bet they're just quaking in their boots at this new American Spirit.
DeCSS isn't for copying, because you can copy DVDs without using DeCSS or any decryption. Just copy the pattern on the disc. Commercially available bulk copiers do just that. Hell, the large-scale means of producing DVDs are photographic.
In the words of Johnny Carson, I did not know that.
This story provides an interesting contrast with the other story about webmasters ignoring standards and designing only for IE. The attitude there seems to be that, as long as you get 95% of all potential customers, who cares about the other 5%? Furthermore, some Slashdotters seem to agree with this attitude. I've always taken the Americans with Disabilities Act very seriously, and would probably do things to comply even if it hadn't been passed. But the question is, although Quake for the blind is a great concept, what is the real value if the vast majority of service-providers simply couldn't care less?
About a decade and a half ago, I recall seeing you speak at a convention in Florida (according to rumor, the only con at which you ever spoke, though I don't know if this is true). As I remember, at the time you said you were reluctant to use a computer because you were already so fast on your Dvorak typewriter. Moving to a Linux-based system seems to me to be a rather dramatic switch, especially as Linux is generally thought of as a system of technophiles, the same sort of people who eagerly used CP/M systems with ADM 3-As twenty years ago. What prompted your switch, and what adventures (both pleasant and unpleasant) has it entailed?
Holograms called "integrals" have been possible for decades. (They are featured in the 70's cheesoid flick Logan's Run) They are traditionally made from motion picture film, with the subject on a rotating platform. Each frame of film produces a single vertical strip hologram. These integrals produce horizontal parallax, but no vertical.
So, is this just a cheaper way to make bigger integrals, or have they solved the knotty problem of getting vertical parallax as well? If the former, OK, but yawn. If the latter, that's pretty impressive. It's conceivably possible to do, but I can't find anything in the article that makes it clear.
It's two or three back-projection walls and a front-projection floor with alternate frame 3-D synchronizing with a pair of tracked LCD flip glasses. Very clever math for getting the projections right and a very convincing display (especially if you're the one wearing the tracker), but not a hologram.
It is cool, though. I've written code for it.
Smear makeup on your face. Drape an old sheet over it like a shroud. Wait for the contact print to form. Peel off the sheet. Look at it. Notice how it looks just like Arnold the cartoon character?
Now look at a picture of the Shroud of Turin. Notice how the face doesn't look like a football? Notice how it's even gaunt?
Any technology or spiritual manifestation or whatever that involves the shroud being used on the shroud would produce Mr. Football Head, because of the basic geometry. There is no more need to think about it.
I would love it if our money were prettier. However, it seems to me that this idea comes across every few years, and nothing ever comes of it. The new 20's were supposed to be in color, and then they decided not to do it. Ho hum.
You do have to admit, though, that it's pretty stupid to say that foreigners would be able to differentiate our money better if it were in color. Even if it were in color, it would be in a different color code from what they're used to.
Personally, I find this kind of whining, psuedo-advocacy bullshit extremely annoying. It's far too easy for media pundits with no programming or interface design experience to complain endlessly about how operating systems and applications haven't advanced since the late 80's, without offering any concrete evidence to the contrary.
Okayyy... Well, I don't like Dvorak very much. And I've been doing programming and interface design for fifteen years, even did some research into interfaces (VR Toolshed, Roller [no, you've never heard of them unless you went to some highly specialized conferences]) and have implemented many unusual interfaces (cylinder menus, gesture interfaces, etc.). So can I whine about how little interface design has improved?
It's unfair to single out Apple, though. OS X is good. Apple is just beginning to re-assemble a world-class design team like they had in the early 1980's with Alan Kay and the other Grand Old Men. In the mean time, they need to secure their future in the marketplace. If they need to produce vanilla-scented art-deco Macs with built-in can openers, then they need to do it.
Scandinavian independence day. If it weren't for Scandinavians, we wouldn't even be thinking about this.
Watergate is a big deal for the same reason that some people think Bob Dylan can sing: it's a Baby Boomer thing. First the Baby Boomers discovered color, sex, civil rights, and opposition to the war. Then they discovered political scandal, and that was Watergate. By the time Reagan came around, they had discovered cocaine, tax-free municipal bonds, and all-white neighborhoods, so they didn't notice.
Besides being deliberately designed to prevent the copying of music on personal computers, the anti-piracy technology often prevents playback altogether on PCs, and even on some CD players, Mansfield said.
If it prevents copying on personal computers, it always prevents playback on those computers.
Just look at some of the old columns (some of which are by people who still write columns, like John C. Dvorak). The whole idea of a GUI was anathema to them. Until Windows, of course, and then GUIs were great and totally better than the Mac. I can remember one column about 15 years ago stating that the Mac was bad because the Motorola processors were too orthogonal and therefore didn's impose discipline.
There's one more thing about the GPL that most people miss. It is directed to a licensee, not the author. Note from section 7: "Many people have made generous contributions to the wide range of software distributed through that system in reliance on consistent application of that system; it is up to the author/donor to decide if he or she is willing to distribute software through any other system and a licensee cannot impose that choice."