If you little green men don't stop shooting down our probes, we are going to have to kick your butts! Don't make us come down there ourselves. We'll plant JDAMs right between your pointy little antennae!
Happy birthday Perl! You are now old enough to get a US drivers license."
So the Camel can drive now, cool. But, I'm sorry, he can't vote, drink, or smoke, and if we see him SELLING CIGARETTES(!) we'll hunt him down and try our hand at Chinese Camel's Hump Soup!
I love the LOTR books and loved the movies... love the Narnia books and look forward to the movies (with awaiting wrath if they suck)... love the Ringworld series and can't wait to hear about plans for the movies!
You seriously misunderstood me, or I failed to make myself clear. I _LOVED_ LOTR as a book, and _LOVED_ the movie, too! Stict compliance with the story was not an issue to me down to the tiniest detail. They didn't faithfully reproduce every detail in the book, but respected the tone and themes very well.
Timeline, on the other hand, took a book I _LIKED_ and made a sorry pyrotechnics fest out of it.
Just got back from seeing LOTR-ROTK, it simply IS the winner. As a 40-something who read LOTR first at about 12, I can only say WOW! To see a story I love dealt with so well by artists who seemed to also love the story... well, they win.
Like every year, there were so many losers it is hard to pick, but Timeline gets the nod for the same reason LOTR did - how they handled a book I had read. I really liked Timeline when I read it about 4 years ago, but the hollywood hacks (no artists involved) thought all that boring history stuff would just get in the way of the big yellow fireballs. They seem to say "The book you read didn't have enough explosions, we know you'd rather have explosions than any respect for the story."
Since it inevitably came up - The Matrix finale was a disappointment, but not anywhere near the worst of the year. Seeing it in IMAX made the explosions and big yellow fireballs kind of mesmerising...
I would like to add two interesting links pulled from other posts:
Birmingham International Airport in Britian used to have a MagLev running from '84-'95. It was shut down due to high maintenance cost and replaced with a cable-drawn rail system.
The Shanghai Transrapid looks at first blush like a running passenger service, but look closer and it is a "Test Facility" that gives guided tours and "Demonstration Rides".
There can be no doubt about the technical capabiltiy to build these things, but the practical viability has yet to be seen.
The Japanese have test trains running on test tracks, and some rosy promises made for future passenger service, but I don't think they have ANY MagLev providing regular service, nor does anyone else. Could those who keep bringing up existing Japanese trains be confusing the "Bullet Trains", which run on conventional but smoother and more precisely built wheels and rails, with MagLev? I have still not seen any examples of running regular MagLev service. And I believe there is a reason why they don't exist.
The Virginian Pilot has a terrible habit of changing the link every time they make an update to a story. The article is (for now) at http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?sto ry=63543&ran=55013.
The referenced link is for TEST TRAINS that do not carry regular passengers. Where is there a MagLev anywhere in the world providing passenger service? This is exactly why I compared it with the personal flying car. We've all seen the Moller SkyCar. It can be done in small experimental scales, but is it too impractical/expensive/dangerous for regular service? On the economic viability especially, what added VALUE does a MagLev have over a wheeled train that makes it worth the high cost?
"...would require a voter-verified paper audit trail, ban the use of 'undisclosed' software and wireless communications for voting machines, and require mandatory surprise recounts -- all in time for the November 2004 election."
Pointy-haired bosses with no tech background writing the specs and setting the drop-dead date... yet again. The result will either be a rush-job kludge or very late. The specs are not bad but the timeline should be targeted for the 2006 elections, at the earliest.
The "drug-induced dream" and "commie hippie" parts were not ad hominem, they were meant to be a funny paraphrase of Linus' quote. I have no plans to quit my day job for a career in stand-up, so it's OK if I was less than witty, but I did not intend to be insulting. FWIW, in serious conversation, I do consider the tag "commie" to be insulting as I find Communist philosophy failed and inevitably destructive to society. But as I failed to get the humor accross and only sounded insulting, I do appologize to 'argoff'.
Others copyrighting or limiting YOUR speech is the antithesis of freedom. Others copyrighting THEIR speech, or you copyrighting your own, is a practical enabling policy that is usefull to our society. Again, excessive duration of copyright is a bad policy, but does not make copyright bad of itself.
...left-wing commie hippie. There is nothing wrong with copyrights. We have problems with forcing others to enforce them by questionalble means. We have problems with expanding them indefinitely and stretching definitions beyond reason. We have problems with assuming that those with tools capable of bootlegging could not be doing anything else... etc. But the principle of copyright is sound, usefull to society, and the basis of the GPL!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficinetly advanced.
"At issue before the court, according to privacy advocates, is how valuable privacy really is."
...make it clear to the Judges, Lawyers, and Representatives involved that their decision WILL apply to THEIR personal data! I really believe they forget that sometimes. There was a/. article, which I'm too lazy to look up now, about a District Atourney who ruled getting personal data from someone's trash was not actionable. His attitude changed when a group of activists raided HIS trash and published what they found.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insuficiently advanced.
I disagree. Megacorp reasearch departments and some great geeks they employed invented many of the things that make up our digital present. Of course, many came from great geeks at university labs too. But the large scale, affordable digital present could not have been achieved without the megacorps.
"The same type of people who built our digital past.."
Here I agree. The hobbyist geeks, university geeks, and megacorp geeks will continue to be the source of cool new stuff in the our digital future. Megacorps will almost exclusively bring this stuff to the masses at affordable prices, though. Open source software could be an exception to this in some areas, but it will still hold generally true.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insuficiently advanced.
- Jim Jones prepped his people with paranoid tales of how the heathen were coming to get them. Daryl preaches that OSS programmers are unwashed commies out to destroy honest proprietary programmer's families.
- The murders at Jones-towne were triggered by an ivestigation from a Congressman who was about to make Jones' abuses public. So we should expect the sweet, cherry-berry flavored goodbye at SCO when the SEC announces their pump-and-dump investigation of Daryl and Co.
- Jim Jones whole career was based on a self-destructive pack of lies. Daryl... well, you get the idea!
Any technology distinguisable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Daryl-the-Dingus says those Linux geeks don't even warant their product, but last time I read a EULA, anybody's EULA, it said they promise nothing, owe nothing, warant nothing, and will take responsibility for nothing.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insuficiently advanced.
The USNS Zeus (ARC-7) is the Navy's cable laying and repair ship. The cable is laid mostly on the surface of the bottom, but at vulnerable points and at both ends (near shore) is its ploughed in to the mud/sand on the bottom. When a cut or fault occurs, the location of the fault is determined with a TDR or O-TDR, the same way it works with a land based cable. They know the cable length to the fault and have a survey map of where the cable was layed. It is physicaly located with side-scanning sonar and robotic submersibles, then hooked and brought on deck for repair (each end in case of a break). Once repairs are complete, the cable is unceremoniously shoved over the side, or re-ploughed depending on the location and mission of the cable.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
"Just shows how systems with build-in redundancy can still go badly wrong...."
No, it shows how well designed redundancy can be overcome by bad management decisions! Engineering brought low by bean counters... Gee, when has that ever happened before?!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
...all that time, money, and effort to protect against viruses... and I get infected by bacteria. Funny thing though, boiling my CPU didn't fix it...hmmm.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not suficiently advanced.
I think Mandrake is the second easiest Linux I ever used (not that I've had that much experience yet). The first is the Knoppix 3.3 CD, which is also the coolest thing I've seen in a long time! As a old Windows weenie trying to catch up with the real world, I have loaded FreeBSD, NetBSD, RedHat, Debian, and Mandrake 9.0. Mandrake 9.2 was the easiest of all by far. To be fair, the RH7 was complicated by an NVidia thang I didn't know was a problem then, and was finally pretty easy too.
(P.S. Newbie thogh I be, I have been reading/. long enough to know the BSDs are not Linux, so leave that alone.)
I downed two LG 8332B CD-ROMS installing M9.2, but the fix came out pretty quick and I don't think that turned out to be Mandrake's fault, so I'm still a fan.
Just FYI, the business about running ads during the install was a non-issue too. There was a button for "Details" during install, and selecting that hid the ads.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not suficiently advanced.
Slashdot Mirror
From: Earth
Subj: Mars Probes
Dear Sir, Madam, or Whatever;
If you little green men don't stop shooting down our probes, we are going to have to kick your butts! Don't make us come down there ourselves. We'll plant JDAMs right between your pointy little antennae!
V/r,
Tony Blair
Happy birthday Perl! You are now old enough to get a US drivers license."
So the Camel can drive now, cool. But, I'm sorry, he can't vote, drink, or smoke, and if we see him SELLING CIGARETTES(!) we'll hunt him down and try our hand at Chinese Camel's Hump Soup!
...how about a TV mini-series (like was done with Dune) on the Foundation series? I'll buy^H^H^H Tivo that for a dollar!
I love the LOTR books and loved the movies... love the Narnia books and look forward to the movies (with awaiting wrath if they suck)... love the Ringworld series and can't wait to hear about plans for the movies!
You seriously misunderstood me, or I failed to make myself clear. I _LOVED_ LOTR as a book, and _LOVED_ the movie, too! Stict compliance with the story was not an issue to me down to the tiniest detail. They didn't faithfully reproduce every detail in the book, but respected the tone and themes very well.
Timeline, on the other hand, took a book I _LIKED_ and made a sorry pyrotechnics fest out of it.
Just got back from seeing LOTR-ROTK, it simply IS the winner. As a 40-something who read LOTR first at about 12, I can only say WOW! To see a story I love dealt with so well by artists who seemed to also love the story... well, they win.
Like every year, there were so many losers it is hard to pick, but Timeline gets the nod for the same reason LOTR did - how they handled a book I had read. I really liked Timeline when I read it about 4 years ago, but the hollywood hacks (no artists involved) thought all that boring history stuff would just get in the way of the big yellow fireballs. They seem to say "The book you read didn't have enough explosions, we know you'd rather have explosions than any respect for the story."
Since it inevitably came up - The Matrix finale was a disappointment, but not anywhere near the worst of the year. Seeing it in IMAX made the explosions and big yellow fireballs kind of mesmerising...
I would like to add two interesting links pulled from other posts:
Birmingham International Airport in Britian used to have a MagLev running from '84-'95. It was shut down due to high maintenance cost and replaced with a cable-drawn rail system.
The Shanghai Transrapid looks at first blush like a running passenger service, but look closer and it is a "Test Facility" that gives guided tours and "Demonstration Rides".
There can be no doubt about the technical capabiltiy to build these things, but the practical viability has yet to be seen.
The Japanese have test trains running on test tracks, and some rosy promises made for future passenger service, but I don't think they have ANY MagLev providing regular service, nor does anyone else. Could those who keep bringing up existing Japanese trains be confusing the "Bullet Trains", which run on conventional but smoother and more precisely built wheels and rails, with MagLev? I have still not seen any examples of running regular MagLev service. And I believe there is a reason why they don't exist.
The Virginian Pilot has a terrible habit of changing the link every time they make an update to a story. The article is (for now) at http://home.hamptonroads.com/stories/story.cfm?sto ry=63543&ran=55013.
The referenced link is for TEST TRAINS that do not carry regular passengers. Where is there a MagLev anywhere in the world providing passenger service? This is exactly why I compared it with the personal flying car. We've all seen the Moller SkyCar. It can be done in small experimental scales, but is it too impractical/expensive/dangerous for regular service? On the economic viability especially, what added VALUE does a MagLev have over a wheeled train that makes it worth the high cost?
"...would require a voter-verified paper audit trail, ban the use of 'undisclosed' software and wireless communications for voting machines, and require mandatory surprise recounts -- all in time for the November 2004 election."
Pointy-haired bosses with no tech background writing the specs and setting the drop-dead date... yet again. The result will either be a rush-job kludge or very late. The specs are not bad but the timeline should be targeted for the 2006 elections, at the earliest.
The "drug-induced dream" and "commie hippie" parts were not ad hominem, they were meant to be a funny paraphrase of Linus' quote. I have no plans to quit my day job for a career in stand-up, so it's OK if I was less than witty, but I did not intend to be insulting. FWIW, in serious conversation, I do consider the tag "commie" to be insulting as I find Communist philosophy failed and inevitably destructive to society. But as I failed to get the humor accross and only sounded insulting, I do appologize to 'argoff'.
Others copyrighting or limiting YOUR speech is the antithesis of freedom. Others copyrighting THEIR speech, or you copyrighting your own, is a practical enabling policy that is usefull to our society. Again, excessive duration of copyright is a bad policy, but does not make copyright bad of itself.
...left-wing commie hippie. There is nothing wrong with copyrights. We have problems with forcing others to enforce them by questionalble means. We have problems with expanding them indefinitely and stretching definitions beyond reason. We have problems with assuming that those with tools capable of bootlegging could not be doing anything else... etc. But the principle of copyright is sound, usefull to society, and the basis of the GPL!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficinetly advanced.
Found the article, and gracefully ignored my spelling of "Attorney". Thanks for the backup!
:-)
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insuficiently advanced.
"At issue before the court, according to privacy advocates, is how valuable privacy really is."
...make it clear to the Judges, Lawyers, and Representatives involved that their decision WILL apply to THEIR personal data! I really believe they forget that sometimes. There was a /. article, which I'm too lazy to look up now, about a District Atourney who ruled getting personal data from someone's trash was not actionable. His attitude changed when a group of activists raided HIS trash and published what they found.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insuficiently advanced.
"...here's a hint, it wasn't megacorp!"
I disagree. Megacorp reasearch departments and some great geeks they employed invented many of the things that make up our digital present. Of course, many came from great geeks at university labs too. But the large scale, affordable digital present could not have been achieved without the megacorps.
"The same type of people who built our digital past.."
Here I agree. The hobbyist geeks, university geeks, and megacorp geeks will continue to be the source of cool new stuff in the our digital future. Megacorps will almost exclusively bring this stuff to the masses at affordable prices, though. Open source software could be an exception to this in some areas, but it will still hold generally true.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insuficiently advanced.
You make an interesting allusion...
- Jim Jones prepped his people with paranoid tales of how the heathen were coming to get them. Daryl preaches that OSS programmers are unwashed commies out to destroy honest proprietary programmer's families.
- The murders at Jones-towne were triggered by an ivestigation from a Congressman who was about to make Jones' abuses public. So we should expect the sweet, cherry-berry flavored goodbye at SCO when the SEC announces their pump-and-dump investigation of Daryl and Co.
- Jim Jones whole career was based on a self-destructive pack of lies. Daryl... well, you get the idea!
Any technology distinguisable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Daryl-the-Dingus says those Linux geeks don't even warant their product, but last time I read a EULA, anybody's EULA, it said they promise nothing, owe nothing, warant nothing, and will take responsibility for nothing.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insuficiently advanced.
The USNS Zeus (ARC-7) is the Navy's cable laying and repair ship. The cable is laid mostly on the surface of the bottom, but at vulnerable points and at both ends (near shore) is its ploughed in to the mud/sand on the bottom. When a cut or fault occurs, the location of the fault is determined with a TDR or O-TDR, the same way it works with a land based cable. They know the cable length to the fault and have a survey map of where the cable was layed. It is physicaly located with side-scanning sonar and robotic submersibles, then hooked and brought on deck for repair (each end in case of a break). Once repairs are complete, the cable is unceremoniously shoved over the side, or re-ploughed depending on the location and mission of the cable.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
"Just shows how systems with build-in redundancy can still go badly wrong...."
No, it shows how well designed redundancy can be overcome by bad management decisions! Engineering brought low by bean counters... Gee, when has that ever happened before?!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
1,600 Servers............. $640,000
10GB network.............. $378,000
35 IT staffers............ $140/hr
420 Visual f/x staffers... $9,800,000.28
Seeing Gollum bite Frodo's finger off with "Photorealism"... Priceless!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
"...if you're skilled and determined but have a flexible moral compass, there's a lot of job opportunities out there."
/. should be vanishingly close to zero.
So unemployment on
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not suficiently advanced.
...all that time, money, and effort to protect against viruses... and I get infected by bacteria. Funny thing though, boiling my CPU didn't fix it...hmmm.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not suficiently advanced.
...and another newbie chimes in... "Me too!"
/. long enough to know the BSDs are not Linux, so leave that alone.)
I think Mandrake is the second easiest Linux I ever used (not that I've had that much experience yet). The first is the Knoppix 3.3 CD, which is also the coolest thing I've seen in a long time! As a old Windows weenie trying to catch up with the real world, I have loaded FreeBSD, NetBSD, RedHat, Debian, and Mandrake 9.0. Mandrake 9.2 was the easiest of all by far. To be fair, the RH7 was complicated by an NVidia thang I didn't know was a problem then, and was finally pretty easy too.
(P.S. Newbie thogh I be, I have been reading
I downed two LG 8332B CD-ROMS installing M9.2, but the fix came out pretty quick and I don't think that turned out to be Mandrake's fault, so I'm still a fan.
Just FYI, the business about running ads during the install was a non-issue too. There was a button for "Details" during install, and selecting that hid the ads.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not suficiently advanced.