But you are a prior geek, and know A) how to get to the Unix underpinnings, B) know that Pico is there, and C) due to previous knowledge know the basic structure of the *nix enviroment. Most of my Apple freinds don't even know that the Unix is there, much less how to get to it. I think they are actually kinda scared when I open up the terminal and start hacking out nasty looking text.
The thing is that a kid would be more prone to mess around in the windowing enviroment, since it is more intuitive, and more obvious (as compaired to the terminal icon hidden 3 directories deep). Also people like the simple solution, and most things on an Apple (thanks to the "Just Works" philosophy" can be done at a GUI level with no need to ever even think of bash. While using a GUI might be good for little kids, there has to be a motivation for them to graduate into the wonderful world of text (*nix san windowing, programming, scrpiting).
Actually. With OS X, try to get the kids to learn applescript, and from there they can hit up Python, and others... Hmmm... Apple script seems to be a good starting point, rather powerful, rather simple. HTML is also a good starting point, for the same reasons, and kids like making pretty things. Windows users who want their kids to become geeks should give them a couple pages on the server, and open up notepad.
I guess it could be a manner of training. It is hard to decypher things such as this when children are young, I suppose. Perhaps I should have paid slightly more attention when I took developmental psych, I think they covered something like this. Perhaps you just really have to get to them within a certain window, and most of us were lucky enough to have exposure to some structured, logical, stimulous in time.
But then there is the fact that some children are completely uninterested in LEGOs, computers, or any other thing like them. My friends kid will just sit there at a computer waiting for you to do something, and completely ignores all building style toys, this kid is about 7, and both his parents are geeks. But then another friend of mine's kid was messing (decently) with Photoshop and HTML at 4. Perhaps it is what their exposed to... I'm gonna have to admit ignorance.
Yeah, my page died unexpectedly awhile back, and I never knew it. It seems the guy in charge of sending in money forgot. Wasn't much anyways, just a bunch of rants and a quickly thrown together forum. Didn't miss anything, guess I should update my info here though.
I think you confusing causes and effects. I doubt that programming increases comprehension and coherence, I think that kids who are more logically based (and hence better at the above) are more drawn to computers and programming. More moved towards MAKING THINGS, since the inherent A->B interactions make one feel powerful when they set up A.
As a kid my main toy was erector sets, tinker toys, and lincon logs, way before I ever got my lovely c64. The computer was just an extention of the forementioned toys, it let me make things that did things.
And no, I'm not a programmer now either. One of my hobbies is philosophy, especially when it gets down to formal logic. I love logic, and I think that is why I like computers, and my hobby of programming bad programs for my own amusment. The structure comes naturally to me.
I think the thing that got me, wasn't that they were new, since even old computers were new to me when I had no real contact with them, but that old computers were blatantly open, no gui, no man pages, no helpful hints on what to do, just a flashing prompt. Now computers look like their meant to do specific thing, I have a media player icon, I have a word icon, I got a Doom3 icon, thats what I can do.
On my first computer (a c64) all you had was the little flashing ascii cursor, from there it was up to you, you had to figure out what the hell to do with it. I still remember the first time I got my c64 to load something, when I figured out the load "*" 8,1 command. My heart lit up as I waited for the loading text to go away, revealing Qix. This was even better because my parents didn't even know how to do this, for once I knew more than them. And that was the beginning of them be really confused everytime I get within 10 feet of a computer.
Samething when figured how to get my c64's modem to init to a BBS I found in a free newspaper. Possibility. Discovery. Control. All the things the children need to be stimulated. Granted I never really got into programming, and can program C as well as I could in high school, which isn't saying much.
Basically all you need to do is get the kids hooked on the open ended possibility of it.
And yes, I actually was quite enthrawled with my mom's old Underwood, it was scary, and I still remember using it with reverence when my c64's dot matrix died, and my parents refused to see that I didn't break it, and it needed a ribbon instead.
Dropping kids on a bash prompt wouldn't be a bad idea, IMHO, especially after letting them get used to some random windowing system. How can Windows or OS X get you intreged how it all works, when the works are well hidden?
Bleh! Literate casual users use Word enough. Ignoring work and school, I still open Word once a day roughly, either for writing letters, writing personal rants, memos, and other things. Some people like to write, and hopefully it is a common thing.
I would HATE a "suite" that only allowed me to view things, what the hell would be the point in that? Stifle my creativity?
I think that the average body of Apple people are rather creative, and would actually use a word processor to WRITE something, and I would hope the larger body of public would want to use it to write something as well. Writing is good for you.
I don't run OO because it sucks, and the x11 version that works on OS X looks like crap, runs like crap, and basically is crap. And I don't run it on my windows box because it just doesn't have that aura of good software, it is just kind of kludgy feeling. The nice OO folk should make it more aesthetically pleasing, as well as more intuitive.
So on both my "work" PCs I use Office. I would use Appleworks on my Mac, except I just don't like how it is layed out, most of the formatting options I want lie hidden in menus. While I will grant that Apple generally does good software design, Appleworks seems to be crap. That and it doesn't have good.doc compatability, and it's format is not openable on windows PCs, or even on the G5s at my school.
How the hell could a damn droid use lightsabers? I thought there was some form of force sensativity needed (to use the terms from the RPG)? Or perhaps that is only needed to do all the whiz-bang tricks with 'em.
Hell, perhaps they injected the droid with those pesky mitichlorines, or whatever they were.
I've put some thought into this and I think that there are several reasons that Ep1-2 don't sit well in our (the average geeks) stomach.
The first trilogy was inovative, and while I sadly was not old enough to see any of them except VI, even I could recognize that they were something new. This might be because of Joseph Cambell being involved, or just because it was the best black vs. white epic out there, with enough backstory and depth to make it good meme material. I-II does not have this, Lucas seems to have gone for the awe factor, instead of some deep arctypcial story. Same old little stupid boy inadvertantly saves the world, think Home Alone with lightsabers, and a couple Jedi.
Then we have the fact that we geeks are inherently elitist snobs. Of course this new stuff can't be as good as our old stuff! This is especially true for Star Wars, which has been raised to some special iconic geeky stature. Hell, I would go so far as saying that Star Wars is a necissary elemen within the definition of geek, you can't be a geek unless you actually CARE that Han shot firt.
Then, as almost a corollary to my first point, is that I-II lack artistic merit. The stories lack depth, the characters don't garner much empathy, the special effects subtract from plot. They are movies where you can oooohhhh and ahhhhh at, but when you leave the theater you are left feeling somewhat empty, you didn't get anything out of it except entertainment.
Then we have the fact that most of this audience GREW UP with the originals. This is important, since media preference seems to become rather fixed with age. I still compare childrens movies to Labrynth and The Dark Crystal, and they, for the most part, don't seem to compare. I compare I-II with their older counterparts, and cannot take them on their own. This might be because of the Lucas marketing empire that surrounded us as children, teens too. But to children I-II are shiny and new, and the old ones go against what they expect in movies (due to their enviroment), flash and CG, not story (story is BORING!).
And for me personally, I generally HATE CG in movies, since it hasn't reached the level of perfection to be unobtrusive. When I watch the first 3 Alien movies, I am in awe of the special effects, so much better than what we can now spew out of our technilogical arse with computers. To me CG in movies gets this odd "Hey look its CG" reaction, which completely breaks down the fourth wall. Though LoTR did rather well with it, but even at times it was quite cheesy. For petes sake, what was wrong with muppets? Does Lucas really have to make a CG Yoda? The muppet worked quite well, and seemed more realistic to me.
Now if III comes out, and, as it might, has the mythical story arc, the depth, and slightly less happy crappy eye candy, I still doubt that your average (older) geek will like it much, since it conflicts with my second point. Nothing can compare to IV-VI, since we grew up with it, we're a bunch of elitists.
The point is, I would rather live in a society free from the tyranny of the masses. If there was some way of keeping the uninformed from being allowed to vote on issues that they have no clue about, or issues to complicated for them. Now ideally this could be achieved by having actual educated voters, but I think that that is a long shot, especially when some countries have a culture of ignorance and/or apathy.
Besides, all of this is pointless philosophizing, it will never happen, and it's positive effects, as you pointed out, are purely hypothetical, since leaves to many doors open to other, and more drastic, forms of tyranny.
As my personal opinion I think only those with higher education should be allowed to vote and all goverment officials should not be paid more than the average salary.
HERE HERE! Democracy is drastically overrated. Democracy = tyrany of the masses. I don't think that higher education really should be the criteria though, since I know people with a degree who are still morons, and people who are antischool with very worthy and educated opinions. I think there should be a test for a "voting license", testing knowledge of the countries political system, current events, and various politcal POVs. Ideally, though human nature is against this, you should be forced to back up your vote, intelligently. Like have a "reason" area after every ballot item.
On the internet wouldn't the host machine be doing the copying, even if it is initiated by a remote location?
So by your understanding of the law, online copyright infringment is completely on the wrong side? Since it is like me asking you to make a copy of your CD, and then give it to me.
Though I don't think that intent is quite the full story. If left a a cd sitting around, and you copied it, it would still be a crime, and there was no intent on your behalf of my copying it, but the onus of guilt moves onto my head. Though the problem with this is that if I leave a computer full of mp3s open to the public, with no intent for them to copy, I would be at fault, still, in the RIAAs eyes at least.
In principle I agree with the **AA's POV (flame on), since it is theft, and in theory the artist should get their just due. But being that the artist doesn't actually, the morality of the issue is slightly reduced. And with the actions of the **AAs, I figure that downloading things is perfectly okay now, since they're asshats.:)
If the russians screwed off, then the space station would die. Being that the Americans are too chickenshit to even fly up there anymore. Thats what I hate about NASA, one (two) fricken accident and we chicken out out, and now we bitch about the How it is OUR space station, and the russians should give us rides. No. If we want to get there, we should get ourselves there, if not we could be said to be forfieting the prodject.
There really is no problem with each site having a different password scheme. As stated, it is much more secure. And how much of a hastle is it to register once, then let cookies take care of the login afterwards (or FF saving pwords, or apple keychain items?) This way you, as a user, are responsible for the safty of your passwords, as it should be.
That and I have 3 levels of passwords, which these single identity sites don't handle well. One for nonsecure, who cares info. two random alphanumerics for sites where my identity really matters. And then one each for things that really really matter, remote access, su, logons on my own computers.
I never could really change my silly passport, it was always the same. If was really important it would allow me (or better prompt, or better yet, force) me to change my password. If this is/was supposed to be a general universal password, it would fall into my third, and highest security, area.
That and I think I ended up with 12 of them, since I never remembered what email addy I used to register, and clean cookies completely once a month, especially those with a microsoft.com in them.
Man I remember sitting around LUSTING for one of those when they came out, and I was still running my 286, which was a big upgrade from my poor or 8086. My freind got one, and I was in awe of how responsive it was with win3.11. It was quite a gaming machine. It played that silly pipe game like a dream!
Then I got a P1 60 (66?), and laughed at him for hours, putting his manhood to shame.
Re:The PC evolving into a dataserver
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The Future of the P.C.
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· Score: 2, Interesting
My little lap top is my media box, it has svideo out, into the tv, I play DVDs and AVI (self encoded home movies) from it. It has every CD I own on it, all encoded at a decent rate AAC, and for this I have a good speaker system. I also use it for a dock for my camera and for my iPod, and it thus has all my pictures on it. All of the files are stored on a USB external HD, except the music. I use it as a mobile document store/word processor. I've outgrown gaming (besides solitare, and some emulation), so I really don't care about that. And when I still had my PDA I used it for downloading eBooks and such, but I nev er quite got into that.
This is the way I see computing going, with the PC being the terminal that we use to interact, and coordinate with our other gizmos. Much like you said. But, the important part you miss is the control it grants, basically everything is slaved to it, and it is generally the interface I use to control my other forms of hardware. I like this, though it should be simpler.
I might be thinking different if I still used my big box, which is now a wireless file server/back up box. It was a big monolithic box that sounds like a reactor running. Even the silly colorful case fans and lighting didn't even help. My little lap top is inobtrusive, which I think is beginning to matter more, it blends in with my decor, is silent, and "just works".
I think people are getting sick of power, which seems to come with obtrusivness. I don't want a computer sitting in my living room, screaming "look at me! I compute stuff!", people want something that acts like an infomation appliance, and not a chibi Cray.
Re:Enough with the silly.
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Ho, Ho, Ho
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· Score: 1
Sure, if you want to be a poop, it is a lie. But, if we take everything to this degree we realize that most everything else is a lie to. Freedom, justice, love, progess, right, wrong, good and evil, all of these are empty terms that have no real meaning, and are completely culturally constructed, and thus lies we tell ourselves to help ourselves sleep at night. Hell our beloved science is a lie as well, we just coddle ourselves with the fact that we grew closer to some truth, when in fact all we have are a bunch of falible inductive instances, which we, for mere convention, take as fact.
Children don't trust their parents because their parents lie about much more important things than Santa Claus. Kids don' trust their parents because adults are, for the most part, not to be trusted. I am one, and I don't trust anyone who claims to be adult and mature, on principle.
I tell you, the least traumatizing thing as a child was finding out that my dad ate those cookies that I left out. Really didn't have much of an effect on me, besides making realize that my parents loved me, and making me feel like I was in on the joke.
I tell you what, you have fun over analyzing trivial things, or I guess that your not allowed to be having fun because of some underlying pompous ideology. Seems to be endemic these days. And my consiquences are well though out, being happy, enjoying family and a good laugh. If some kids poor ego is twisted by a harmless myth, I don't care, they were obviously psychologically weak anyways. If something like Santa Claus can shatter you later in life, then anything could, you have problems that stem from a deeper source than a harmless xmas myth, one of the few frivolous myths we still allow ourselves (not under he guise of positivism). Millions of children have grown up with Santa, and we still exist as a species, and as a culture, so it must not have many side effects, especially since he existed as a comforting fiction in previous, and happier days, as well as todays idiotic ideological doomsday.
Sacraficing fun, and happiness for ideology is dispicable.
And reguardless, this is not the time of year for this, so Happy Holidays, go drink some egg nog, with lots of brandy in it, it sounds like you need it. (:
I have a little statue of Kali above my computer, and when ever a component completey fails I ritually sacrafice it, and hang a part of it around her neck, as a warning to all the other hardware. It generally works, though right now I have a PSU and a CD-ROM drive waiting for my 10pd sledge of technological vengence.
The last one to go was a damn Epson Stylus. That one really ate it, the neighbors were frigtened of my, but not as much as that printer was on my size 13 steel toes.
It's not like I do this to live functioning hardware though, I generally coax it nicely, and vocally. Only dead fried stuff.
I think this is because we interact with machines almost in the way we interact with people, but people we can tell off, or correct, but hardware gets out of control, and can consitantly stand in our way. And thus we let of steam in the only way we know how, with large blugeoning objects.
I tried mashing one of those nice heavy IBM keyboards over my knee once, I walked with a limp for a week.
I think that is when I hosed window by plugging in a joystick.
Re:Enough with the silly.
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Ho, Ho, Ho
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· Score: 1, Troll
You are a frump. Why is anyone listening to you.
Re:Enough with the silly.
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Ho, Ho, Ho
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Wow, who would of though that/. could be so depressing on xmas eve. Every other post is turning the harmless Santa myth into some from in an ideological battle. Who the hell really cares? It's Santa, he exists as much as we want him to do, and is real because he exists in our heads and collective conscious. Hell, folk, he is as real as George Washington, whom I have never met, or any other historical figure, hell he might be more real than Socrates.
Santa Claus is FUN! Boring ideologies aren't, and people who choose them over anything that might bring light to the hearts of children should just, then, shut up for a couple days a year. Let children beleive. It's a harmless tradition. And, I know you won't agree, but holidays are about tradition, not terrorism, coporate monopolies, unjust(or just) wars, and politicians you don't agree with. They are about being happy, making others happy, and being with your family and freinds for one calm, peaceful night of the year. I like my traditions, and am not going to let some mindless idiologues ruin them with their heady political views, or rationalism (for that fact).
Hell, if I was a purely rational individual I wouldn't even be celebrating today, I'd be at work, or something smart. I'm not a Christian, therefore the historical reason for this holiday is personally meaningless to me. But... The deeper reason is just as valid, I'm celebrating my family and freinds, my life, good food, a pretty tree, and the goodies beneath it, in this order.
It is the one bastion of sanity in this world, the holidays. Why don't you just shut up, stop thinking, and go home to whoever you love, and give them something to show you love them.
Diatribe out of the way. Merry Xmas my fellow geeks!/me realizing how sad it is to be/.ing on xmas eve, goes to help his family make some xmas chili.
This "signfigant" number of people with an IQ below 19 are also severely retarded, or comatose. Also, judging from the charateristics of a guassian distrabution, I doubt that there is there is a signifigant proportion of people with an IQ below 19, being that it is 4 SDs from the mean, meaning there is a slim chance in hell of being there.
Remember though that children can access this tool, and I doubt that many parents want the first suggestion their children get to be "goatse", or "midget porn with aminals". So I can see this censorship as okay. Also, I think there is enough porn noise out there to probably filter out more valid results. Just think of the many idiotic variations of the word "porn" we have floating out there.
While in this case I agree with you, sice Fod was racially ambiguous, being that the books never stated he was black/white/indian/mexican/etc... Though in the first movie, he was white. I don't like the fact that he is a thug though, I'm sick of that idiotic ignorant aspect of black culture being played up in media. They're obnoxious. I don't want to see a movie with some ebonics talking, rapper (hip-hopster?), acting like he is in the galactic ghetto, when Ford was rather civilized, and clever. But I've never seemed anything with him, so it is just my reaction against hip-hop culture, and people who can't use a real name, but some stupid cutesy fake neoghettoism (Mos Def? Come on now, what the hell type of name is that?). Though, he might actually be good, its just the circumstancial evidence is pointing against that. By all means cast Freeman, or Poiter, though, since they've proven their merit as actors, and not some silly trendy image.
But I also agree with the the fact, unintended rant aside, that I'm getting sick of EVERY movie having the tolken black. No, I have nothing against movies with black characters, WHEN THEY FIT. I just sick of diversity for diversities sake. A whole white cast, then off in the side-lines (not as main character) is the one black guy, acting stereotypically black, basically screaming; "Look at me, I'm black!". Thats what annoys me.
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But you are a prior geek, and know A) how to get to the Unix underpinnings, B) know that Pico is there, and C) due to previous knowledge know the basic structure of the *nix enviroment. Most of my Apple freinds don't even know that the Unix is there, much less how to get to it. I think they are actually kinda scared when I open up the terminal and start hacking out nasty looking text.
The thing is that a kid would be more prone to mess around in the windowing enviroment, since it is more intuitive, and more obvious (as compaired to the terminal icon hidden 3 directories deep). Also people like the simple solution, and most things on an Apple (thanks to the "Just Works" philosophy" can be done at a GUI level with no need to ever even think of bash. While using a GUI might be good for little kids, there has to be a motivation for them to graduate into the wonderful world of text (*nix san windowing, programming, scrpiting).
Actually. With OS X, try to get the kids to learn applescript, and from there they can hit up Python, and others... Hmmm... Apple script seems to be a good starting point, rather powerful, rather simple. HTML is also a good starting point, for the same reasons, and kids like making pretty things. Windows users who want their kids to become geeks should give them a couple pages on the server, and open up notepad.
I guess it could be a manner of training. It is hard to decypher things such as this when children are young, I suppose. Perhaps I should have paid slightly more attention when I took developmental psych, I think they covered something like this. Perhaps you just really have to get to them within a certain window, and most of us were lucky enough to have exposure to some structured, logical, stimulous in time.
But then there is the fact that some children are completely uninterested in LEGOs, computers, or any other thing like them. My friends kid will just sit there at a computer waiting for you to do something, and completely ignores all building style toys, this kid is about 7, and both his parents are geeks. But then another friend of mine's kid was messing (decently) with Photoshop and HTML at 4. Perhaps it is what their exposed to... I'm gonna have to admit ignorance.
Yeah, my page died unexpectedly awhile back, and I never knew it. It seems the guy in charge of sending in money forgot. Wasn't much anyways, just a bunch of rants and a quickly thrown together forum. Didn't miss anything, guess I should update my info here though.
I think you confusing causes and effects. I doubt that programming increases comprehension and coherence, I think that kids who are more logically based (and hence better at the above) are more drawn to computers and programming. More moved towards MAKING THINGS, since the inherent A->B interactions make one feel powerful when they set up A.
As a kid my main toy was erector sets, tinker toys, and lincon logs, way before I ever got my lovely c64. The computer was just an extention of the forementioned toys, it let me make things that did things.
And no, I'm not a programmer now either. One of my hobbies is philosophy, especially when it gets down to formal logic. I love logic, and I think that is why I like computers, and my hobby of programming bad programs for my own amusment. The structure comes naturally to me.
I think the thing that got me, wasn't that they were new, since even old computers were new to me when I had no real contact with them, but that old computers were blatantly open, no gui, no man pages, no helpful hints on what to do, just a flashing prompt. Now computers look like their meant to do specific thing, I have a media player icon, I have a word icon, I got a Doom3 icon, thats what I can do.
On my first computer (a c64) all you had was the little flashing ascii cursor, from there it was up to you, you had to figure out what the hell to do with it. I still remember the first time I got my c64 to load something, when I figured out the load "*" 8,1 command. My heart lit up as I waited for the loading text to go away, revealing Qix. This was even better because my parents didn't even know how to do this, for once I knew more than them. And that was the beginning of them be really confused everytime I get within 10 feet of a computer.
Samething when figured how to get my c64's modem to init to a BBS I found in a free newspaper. Possibility. Discovery. Control. All the things the children need to be stimulated. Granted I never really got into programming, and can program C as well as I could in high school, which isn't saying much.
Basically all you need to do is get the kids hooked on the open ended possibility of it.
And yes, I actually was quite enthrawled with my mom's old Underwood, it was scary, and I still remember using it with reverence when my c64's dot matrix died, and my parents refused to see that I didn't break it, and it needed a ribbon instead.
Dropping kids on a bash prompt wouldn't be a bad idea, IMHO, especially after letting them get used to some random windowing system. How can Windows or OS X get you intreged how it all works, when the works are well hidden?
But according to the RPG, he was force senstive, hence he prowess with the turrent on the MF.
Lord I'm a geek. I'm using an RPG to back up a comment on Starwars... I'm going back to my basement now.
Bleh! Literate casual users use Word enough. Ignoring work and school, I still open Word once a day roughly, either for writing letters, writing personal rants, memos, and other things. Some people like to write, and hopefully it is a common thing.
I would HATE a "suite" that only allowed me to view things, what the hell would be the point in that? Stifle my creativity?
I think that the average body of Apple people are rather creative, and would actually use a word processor to WRITE something, and I would hope the larger body of public would want to use it to write something as well. Writing is good for you.
I don't run OO because it sucks, and the x11 version that works on OS X looks like crap, runs like crap, and basically is crap. And I don't run it on my windows box because it just doesn't have that aura of good software, it is just kind of kludgy feeling. The nice OO folk should make it more aesthetically pleasing, as well as more intuitive.
.doc compatability, and it's format is not openable on windows PCs, or even on the G5s at my school.
So on both my "work" PCs I use Office. I would use Appleworks on my Mac, except I just don't like how it is layed out, most of the formatting options I want lie hidden in menus. While I will grant that Apple generally does good software design, Appleworks seems to be crap. That and it doesn't have good
How the hell could a damn droid use lightsabers? I thought there was some form of force sensativity needed (to use the terms from the RPG)? Or perhaps that is only needed to do all the whiz-bang tricks with 'em.
Hell, perhaps they injected the droid with those pesky mitichlorines, or whatever they were.
I've put some thought into this and I think that there are several reasons that Ep1-2 don't sit well in our (the average geeks) stomach.
The first trilogy was inovative, and while I sadly was not old enough to see any of them except VI, even I could recognize that they were something new. This might be because of Joseph Cambell being involved, or just because it was the best black vs. white epic out there, with enough backstory and depth to make it good meme material. I-II does not have this, Lucas seems to have gone for the awe factor, instead of some deep arctypcial story. Same old little stupid boy inadvertantly saves the world, think Home Alone with lightsabers, and a couple Jedi.
Then we have the fact that we geeks are inherently elitist snobs. Of course this new stuff can't be as good as our old stuff! This is especially true for Star Wars, which has been raised to some special iconic geeky stature. Hell, I would go so far as saying that Star Wars is a necissary elemen within the definition of geek, you can't be a geek unless you actually CARE that Han shot firt.
Then, as almost a corollary to my first point, is that I-II lack artistic merit. The stories lack depth, the characters don't garner much empathy, the special effects subtract from plot. They are movies where you can oooohhhh and ahhhhh at, but when you leave the theater you are left feeling somewhat empty, you didn't get anything out of it except entertainment.
Then we have the fact that most of this audience GREW UP with the originals. This is important, since media preference seems to become rather fixed with age. I still compare childrens movies to Labrynth and The Dark Crystal, and they, for the most part, don't seem to compare. I compare I-II with their older counterparts, and cannot take them on their own. This might be because of the Lucas marketing empire that surrounded us as children, teens too. But to children I-II are shiny and new, and the old ones go against what they expect in movies (due to their enviroment), flash and CG, not story (story is BORING!).
And for me personally, I generally HATE CG in movies, since it hasn't reached the level of perfection to be unobtrusive. When I watch the first 3 Alien movies, I am in awe of the special effects, so much better than what we can now spew out of our technilogical arse with computers. To me CG in movies gets this odd "Hey look its CG" reaction, which completely breaks down the fourth wall. Though LoTR did rather well with it, but even at times it was quite cheesy. For petes sake, what was wrong with muppets? Does Lucas really have to make a CG Yoda? The muppet worked quite well, and seemed more realistic to me.
Now if III comes out, and, as it might, has the mythical story arc, the depth, and slightly less happy crappy eye candy, I still doubt that your average (older) geek will like it much, since it conflicts with my second point. Nothing can compare to IV-VI, since we grew up with it, we're a bunch of elitists.
My 2c.
The point is, I would rather live in a society free from the tyranny of the masses. If there was some way of keeping the uninformed from being allowed to vote on issues that they have no clue about, or issues to complicated for them. Now ideally this could be achieved by having actual educated voters, but I think that that is a long shot, especially when some countries have a culture of ignorance and/or apathy.
Besides, all of this is pointless philosophizing, it will never happen, and it's positive effects, as you pointed out, are purely hypothetical, since leaves to many doors open to other, and more drastic, forms of tyranny.
As my personal opinion I think only those with higher education should be allowed to vote and all goverment officials should not be paid more than the average salary.
HERE HERE! Democracy is drastically overrated. Democracy = tyrany of the masses. I don't think that higher education really should be the criteria though, since I know people with a degree who are still morons, and people who are antischool with very worthy and educated opinions. I think there should be a test for a "voting license", testing knowledge of the countries political system, current events, and various politcal POVs. Ideally, though human nature is against this, you should be forced to back up your vote, intelligently. Like have a "reason" area after every ballot item.
On the internet wouldn't the host machine be doing the copying, even if it is initiated by a remote location?
:)
So by your understanding of the law, online copyright infringment is completely on the wrong side? Since it is like me asking you to make a copy of your CD, and then give it to me.
Though I don't think that intent is quite the full story. If left a a cd sitting around, and you copied it, it would still be a crime, and there was no intent on your behalf of my copying it, but the onus of guilt moves onto my head. Though the problem with this is that if I leave a computer full of mp3s open to the public, with no intent for them to copy, I would be at fault, still, in the RIAAs eyes at least.
In principle I agree with the **AA's POV (flame on), since it is theft, and in theory the artist should get their just due. But being that the artist doesn't actually, the morality of the issue is slightly reduced. And with the actions of the **AAs, I figure that downloading things is perfectly okay now, since they're asshats.
If the russians screwed off, then the space station would die. Being that the Americans are too chickenshit to even fly up there anymore. Thats what I hate about NASA, one (two) fricken accident and we chicken out out, and now we bitch about the How it is OUR space station, and the russians should give us rides. No. If we want to get there, we should get ourselves there, if not we could be said to be forfieting the prodject.
There really is no problem with each site having a different password scheme. As stated, it is much more secure. And how much of a hastle is it to register once, then let cookies take care of the login afterwards (or FF saving pwords, or apple keychain items?) This way you, as a user, are responsible for the safty of your passwords, as it should be.
That and I have 3 levels of passwords, which these single identity sites don't handle well. One for nonsecure, who cares info. two random alphanumerics for sites where my identity really matters. And then one each for things that really really matter, remote access, su, logons on my own computers.
I never could really change my silly passport, it was always the same. If was really important it would allow me (or better prompt, or better yet, force) me to change my password. If this is/was supposed to be a general universal password, it would fall into my third, and highest security, area.
That and I think I ended up with 12 of them, since I never remembered what email addy I used to register, and clean cookies completely once a month, especially those with a microsoft.com in them.
Man I remember sitting around LUSTING for one of those when they came out, and I was still running my 286, which was a big upgrade from my poor or 8086. My freind got one, and I was in awe of how responsive it was with win3.11. It was quite a gaming machine. It played that silly pipe game like a dream!
Then I got a P1 60 (66?), and laughed at him for hours, putting his manhood to shame.
My little lap top is my media box, it has svideo out, into the tv, I play DVDs and AVI (self encoded home movies) from it. It has every CD I own on it, all encoded at a decent rate AAC, and for this I have a good speaker system. I also use it for a dock for my camera and for my iPod, and it thus has all my pictures on it. All of the files are stored on a USB external HD, except the music. I use it as a mobile document store/word processor. I've outgrown gaming (besides solitare, and some emulation), so I really don't care about that. And when I still had my PDA I used it for downloading eBooks and such, but I nev er quite got into that.
This is the way I see computing going, with the PC being the terminal that we use to interact, and coordinate with our other gizmos. Much like you said. But, the important part you miss is the control it grants, basically everything is slaved to it, and it is generally the interface I use to control my other forms of hardware. I like this, though it should be simpler.
I might be thinking different if I still used my big box, which is now a wireless file server/back up box. It was a big monolithic box that sounds like a reactor running. Even the silly colorful case fans and lighting didn't even help. My little lap top is inobtrusive, which I think is beginning to matter more, it blends in with my decor, is silent, and "just works".
I think people are getting sick of power, which seems to come with obtrusivness. I don't want a computer sitting in my living room, screaming "look at me! I compute stuff!", people want something that acts like an infomation appliance, and not a chibi Cray.
Sure, if you want to be a poop, it is a lie. But, if we take everything to this degree we realize that most everything else is a lie to. Freedom, justice, love, progess, right, wrong, good and evil, all of these are empty terms that have no real meaning, and are completely culturally constructed, and thus lies we tell ourselves to help ourselves sleep at night. Hell our beloved science is a lie as well, we just coddle ourselves with the fact that we grew closer to some truth, when in fact all we have are a bunch of falible inductive instances, which we, for mere convention, take as fact.
Children don't trust their parents because their parents lie about much more important things than Santa Claus. Kids don' trust their parents because adults are, for the most part, not to be trusted. I am one, and I don't trust anyone who claims to be adult and mature, on principle.
I tell you, the least traumatizing thing as a child was finding out that my dad ate those cookies that I left out. Really didn't have much of an effect on me, besides making realize that my parents loved me, and making me feel like I was in on the joke.
I tell you what, you have fun over analyzing trivial things, or I guess that your not allowed to be having fun because of some underlying pompous ideology. Seems to be endemic these days. And my consiquences are well though out, being happy, enjoying family and a good laugh. If some kids poor ego is twisted by a harmless myth, I don't care, they were obviously psychologically weak anyways. If something like Santa Claus can shatter you later in life, then anything could, you have problems that stem from a deeper source than a harmless xmas myth, one of the few frivolous myths we still allow ourselves (not under he guise of positivism). Millions of children have grown up with Santa, and we still exist as a species, and as a culture, so it must not have many side effects, especially since he existed as a comforting fiction in previous, and happier days, as well as todays idiotic ideological doomsday.
Sacraficing fun, and happiness for ideology is dispicable.
And reguardless, this is not the time of year for this, so Happy Holidays, go drink some egg nog, with lots of brandy in it, it sounds like you need it. (:
I have a little statue of Kali above my computer, and when ever a component completey fails I ritually sacrafice it, and hang a part of it around her neck, as a warning to all the other hardware. It generally works, though right now I have a PSU and a CD-ROM drive waiting for my 10pd sledge of technological vengence.
The last one to go was a damn Epson Stylus. That one really ate it, the neighbors were frigtened of my, but not as much as that printer was on my size 13 steel toes.
It's not like I do this to live functioning hardware though, I generally coax it nicely, and vocally. Only dead fried stuff.
I think this is because we interact with machines almost in the way we interact with people, but people we can tell off, or correct, but hardware gets out of control, and can consitantly stand in our way. And thus we let of steam in the only way we know how, with large blugeoning objects.
I tried mashing one of those nice heavy IBM keyboards over my knee once, I walked with a limp for a week.
I think that is when I hosed window by plugging in a joystick.
You are a frump. Why is anyone listening to you.
Wow, who would of though that /. could be so depressing on xmas eve. Every other post is turning the harmless Santa myth into some from in an ideological battle. Who the hell really cares? It's Santa, he exists as much as we want him to do, and is real because he exists in our heads and collective conscious. Hell, folk, he is as real as George Washington, whom I have never met, or any other historical figure, hell he might be more real than Socrates.
/me realizing how sad it is to be /.ing on xmas eve, goes to help his family make some xmas chili.
Santa Claus is FUN! Boring ideologies aren't, and people who choose them over anything that might bring light to the hearts of children should just, then, shut up for a couple days a year. Let children beleive. It's a harmless tradition. And, I know you won't agree, but holidays are about tradition, not terrorism, coporate monopolies, unjust(or just) wars, and politicians you don't agree with. They are about being happy, making others happy, and being with your family and freinds for one calm, peaceful night of the year. I like my traditions, and am not going to let some mindless idiologues ruin them with their heady political views, or rationalism (for that fact).
Hell, if I was a purely rational individual I wouldn't even be celebrating today, I'd be at work, or something smart. I'm not a Christian, therefore the historical reason for this holiday is personally meaningless to me. But... The deeper reason is just as valid, I'm celebrating my family and freinds, my life, good food, a pretty tree, and the goodies beneath it, in this order.
It is the one bastion of sanity in this world, the holidays. Why don't you just shut up, stop thinking, and go home to whoever you love, and give them something to show you love them.
Diatribe out of the way.
Merry Xmas my fellow geeks!
This "signfigant" number of people with an IQ below 19 are also severely retarded, or comatose. Also, judging from the charateristics of a guassian distrabution, I doubt that there is there is a signifigant proportion of people with an IQ below 19, being that it is 4 SDs from the mean, meaning there is a slim chance in hell of being there.
Remember though that children can access this tool, and I doubt that many parents want the first suggestion their children get to be "goatse", or "midget porn with aminals". So I can see this censorship as okay. Also, I think there is enough porn noise out there to probably filter out more valid results. Just think of the many idiotic variations of the word "porn" we have floating out there.
And that explains why one of Korea's top searches was for Full House, seriously, it's in the top ten.
While in this case I agree with you, sice Fod was racially ambiguous, being that the books never stated he was black/white/indian/mexican/etc... Though in the first movie, he was white. I don't like the fact that he is a thug though, I'm sick of that idiotic ignorant aspect of black culture being played up in media. They're obnoxious. I don't want to see a movie with some ebonics talking, rapper (hip-hopster?), acting like he is in the galactic ghetto, when Ford was rather civilized, and clever. But I've never seemed anything with him, so it is just my reaction against hip-hop culture, and people who can't use a real name, but some stupid cutesy fake neoghettoism (Mos Def? Come on now, what the hell type of name is that?). Though, he might actually be good, its just the circumstancial evidence is pointing against that. By all means cast Freeman, or Poiter, though, since they've proven their merit as actors, and not some silly trendy image.
But I also agree with the the fact, unintended rant aside, that I'm getting sick of EVERY movie having the tolken black. No, I have nothing against movies with black characters, WHEN THEY FIT. I just sick of diversity for diversities sake. A whole white cast, then off in the side-lines (not as main character) is the one black guy, acting stereotypically black, basically screaming; "Look at me, I'm black!". Thats what annoys me.