Actually, they sort of already did- M$ did something with a UNIX flavor, called XENIX before the whole BASIC/DOS horrorshow that we're stuck with today.
There's a *real* question for anyone at M$- considering the present popularity of *NIX and the fact that as of Saturday, Microsoft is the *only* major OS vendor that doesn't have a bash, what in the HECK prompted them to abandon XENIX and go on to something that has proven over time to be infinitely less useable for everything but games?
For sheep and cows, maybe. I stopped watching TV when I acquired a VCR and could watch cool things like movies... without commercials- this is where dubbing is beatiful, as you can slice off the scads of previews for crap you're never going to watch. I stopped listening to radio when I bought a laptop and started collecting MP3s. I really, TRULY despise bulletin boards, banner ads, and especially commercials. I can deal with NPR and PBS, as well as HBO... but the rest of them? Hell, I'd rather see the damned advertisers spend money on product placement within the program than cut down the time of it with their annoying drivel. Watch TV on mute with subtitles on- you'll find that advertising loses its programming pretty damned fast.
This is where the web is *really* cool- if a site wants to ram a seven second blip up my nose every time I check their page, then I'll find another site that fits what I'm looking for and doesn't have that sort of "feature", if you really want to call it that. IMHO, if you want to make money from the site in order to run the site, then SELL A PRODUCT- look at the comic sites that sell compilations, mousepads, T-shirts and so forth as an example of this. I'd rather buy a Penny Arcade T-shirt than have to look at the damned tip jar or watch ads- the shirt keeps the sun off my shoulders and is a far more effective form of advertising, as people who don't know much about the web will be curious....
I don't have a problem with advertising- where I really have issues is when I'm FORCED to look at the shit (I can block the ads on Slashdot. I can't block them on the idiot box.) . If it were well and truly *optional*, I may actually have less of a grudge about it. I may actually think it would be worthwhile to watch TV every couple of months for an hour or two. As it stands now? Hell, one *less* reason to use the web. Great.
The Dune mini-series sucked worse than the OJ Simpson trial. It seems that they blew the whole damned budget on the effects- both of them- and got the actors by picking the cream of the crop out of the dumster rubbagers behind the studio. The acting was less than inspired, the cinematography embarassing, and the "modernization" of the dialogue was both revolting and an atrocity. It was horrifying;y disgusting to see this great epic reduced to a Xena level of mediocrity.
Unless the DVD includes footage of David Lynch publicly beating the director of this piece of shit, there's pretty much no point to buying it, unless you *really* need a DVD case for some reason.
On the other hand, I've heard rumors that they're going to do Dune Messiah- a project that hasn't already been done, and been done a HELL of a lot better by a competent Director. Maybe that will take some of the venom out of the hardcore fans of Quality Entertainment?
Okay, back to ratioed FTP servers, where I was bagging full albums before Napster made lunch a bit more interesting.
This "protection layer" thing is both bullshit and a great way to alienate the user base- this, and it would be a bitch to implement on the Mac. [the Mac version of Napster sucks enough as it is.] If they're going to go through with making the experience shittier for everyone in order to assuage the greed of the record labels, the least they could to is actually, you know, IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF THE SERVICE at the same time. But I doubt we'll see, say, a useable search engine any time soon.
If it were about changing the color of the interface, or altering your windows and widgets, well - everybody's been doing that forever, right? I first encountered "theming" in the most literal sense with WIndows 3.1 - oooh, you could change the color of the interface [active/passive windows, fonts, highlights, etc. My Packard Bell was set for red type and borders and black everything else.] , but the damned interface still sucked.
This bit of theming begat skinning- with Win95+, winamp, the toolbars of IE/Win and Mozilla being prime examples. Yeah, you're changing the look and feel of the interface, but it's [application / OS ] still the same thing at the bottom and it still does whatever it is that it does when it's running the skin that it came with.
Anyone that's fidgeted with the Appearance Manager that ships with MacOS 8.5+ has noticed the "Appearance" option under the "Appearance" tab in the "Appearance" control panel. This is, what I think, the patent in question is referring to. One "theme" ships with MacOS- Platinum, the look and feel that it's had since OS 8. Apple was very dilligent about squashing the other three that were lurking about but didn't ship - Drawing Board, Gizmo, and High Tech. Since then, a bunch of others have cropped up (including an Aqua theme, go figure). Look and Feel is far more critical to the MacOS than it is to, say, everthing else out there- that's the important bit. These themes replace the Platinum UI *ENTIRELY* - different icons, different toolbar, widgets, even the startup screen. This carries over into OS X, in which the first change I made was to turn off the gumdrops and replace them with graphite. Again, impacting the entirety of the experience from startup to logout. [I've used classic Mac OS for several years and I have yet to find a more eye-pleasing and less cluttered theme than Platinum. OS X was the first time that I felt I *needed* to make changes in order to improve the experience.]
Were the OS a human being, Windows, Linux, etceras would be wearing their skinnable, easily modified UIs like a set of clothing. In the case of the MacOS, the UI isn't clothing- it's the epidermis itself, an integral and inseperable part of the body. [for Windows that would be DOS, for Linux the command shell] In the case of Apple products, the GUI is as integral to the OS as the shell is to *NIX. As such, theming has a much more radical impact on the experience- the patent is justified in this instance.
The pros and cons of why one would actually want to use an online journal have already been posted- I for one wonder what's up with the people that are saying "man, these people can't spell and they're boring!" - to me, if you've nothing better to do than read other people's private [or otherwise] material on the web, *you're* the one that needs to get a "life".
Journals are theraputic for some, narcissitic for others- the one thing they all have in common is that they are in some fashion constructive for the individual. Would I ever keep an online journal? Beyond the "sent messages" folder of my email client, forget it. I *do* keep a "journal of sorts- a slowly growing stack of notebooks that contains musings, plotlines, day to day bullshit, sorting of personal issues, flatwork, and a WHOLE lot of doodles and drawings. Paper and pen are more flexible for me than a keyboard can ever hope to be, though the success of these online diaries is obvious that a lot of people find the keyboard to fit their tastes perfectly.
Personally, I feel that rather than question or bitch about why those using these services do what they're doing, we should ask what may come out of services like this - are the police keeping tabs on them, what's security and privacy like, and in general issues of a more technological and sociological nature as opposed to the more personal end of the experience.
If a game requires a dedicated connection to a server [ultima online, Diablo II, everquest, etc.], it's waving a BIG red flag that says "Save your money." I have a multiple t3 backbone at work, and a piddly little dialup at home - the only games I play are Baldur's Gate, my SNES (emulated or the actual box plugged into my TV, depending on the game), occasionally Quake, and, when I can get my friends together, Starcraft.
I have a LAN- a ten-base hub and three (five, actually- one in storage and another I have yet to pick up from a freelance client) Macintosh computers linked into it. One of the boxes gets the Starcraft disk, the other two get the spawn. A couple of friends come over and we blast the shit out of the computer generated opponents. A few bucks on pizza and soda, and it's a night of fun without having to worry about bandwidth or WPM through the chat protocol that's included with the game. It's a lot easier to plan a strategy when you can talk to your teammates and relay orders and requests in meatspace while leaving the entirety of your gaming experience devoted to just that - the game. No fuss, no bother, no worrying about dropped packets or lag [well, lots of lag when one of the machines is a 7100 using an AAUI to RJ45 adapter, but them's the breaks]
I've never had to hassle with Battlenet or worry about my connection speed- I use my dialup for news and email, and aside from that it has a nice thick layer of dust on it. If I can't actually *see* my teammate or opponent, or at least hear him scream like a girl when his squad of Zerglings finally finds my bunkers [with seige tanks right behind them] and turns into mist, then I'm missing out on the best part of the gaming experience.
Keep your damned dialups and broadband- I have my LAN and I use it.
I pulled up the shots on a powerbook G3 and a G3 workstation, both of which have been painstakingly gamma corrected for good display [this was a major ordeal with the workstation, which is using a complete piece of shit KDS 21" -conversely, the Powerbook LCD is probably the best monitor I've used. Ever). And I have to say, the shots are DARK. May as well be pure black- I can't imagine what the caps look like on a PC- probably nasty smudges of dark grey on black. It's iD - what were you expecting, really? Rainbows and paisleys? Still... the Doom 3 shots make the Quake 3 shots look like screencaps of the smurfs in terms of color.
I'm a Mac user, but this issue applies to myself as well as the Winblows community.
Developers shooting themselves in the face, and they don't even know it: greed has blinded software developers to the obvious, that a higher version number does not necessarily mean BETTER. [example- differences between word 5 and office 98 on the Mac] What more can be said on this that hasn't been said already? Just because a new version of software comes out doesn't mean that you *have* to upgrade- I'm still using Photoshop 5, despite the release of 5.5 and 6. I've tried both, have little use for 5.5 and really, truly cannot stand the sight of six. [ditto for Illustrator 9 - 8 is better and 6 is by far superior in terms of speed and RAM.]
I don't upgrade unless the new version does something critical that the old version didn't. Beyond that, I refuse. The last I swapped out software was with Fireworks- version 2 crapped out when slicing images [on the Mac] and version 3 did not. It was worth it, more so than attempted upgrades and tweaks of other, more mission-critical software.
I use my graphics apps daily, religiously: and I will probably never, ever upgrade them. They work just fine as they are, and newer versions have features I don't want, take more RAM, and have different keyboard shortcuts. From a performance standpoint, what I have works and what I've seen that comes after it does not. I continue to use MacOS 8.6 where possible, as 9 is a giant pain in the ass by comparison. I would never subscribe to any of these services, as in my opinion, the quality continues to drop as the RAM useage continues to skyrocket.
Free updates are one thing- Apt-get for Debian and the Apple Software Updater are good examples, and the ASU has saved my ass with firmware updates several times. By regularly checking for updates, you've effectively "subscribed" to the application being updated, though in both cases you have the *option* of doing the update, where as in this proposed case, you do not. A convincing argument in favor of the OSS movement- would you rather have the *option* to update your apps and system every six months for free, or be *forced* every year for, say, 5,000 $ / seat in addition to hardware upgrades?
As this takes hold, it's only a matter of time until the less affluent begin to turn to free or low-cost, one-time solutions, as they will not be able to *afford* the mandated upgrades. What a charming and delightful strategy from keeping poor artists and home users from having access to the tools they need to do better themselves. Yep.
Okay, I'm not a BSD knowitanything, but I've used shell environments in the past, and had a bit of a time adapting to the shell in OSX until I realized that it had, much like other critical elements, been "Macified".
The only major item of note is this: While in everything else one would use CTRL+Break, ALT+F4 or Escape to eject from something [which I tried using], the default command to halt a process in the Classic Mac OS is Command + Period. This, I was happy to discover, applies in full to the shell.
This and the environment is very drag-and-drop friendly, as you would expect. I haven't the capacity to test it on a BSD or Linux distro at this time, but I was quite pleased to see that rather than type a hideously long path to navigate to a file in the shell, you can simply drag that file onto the shell from the desktop window that it's chilling out in and the correct path is displayed automagically.
While a good degree of modern psychology is simply finding ways to avoid responsibility, Anorexia is a medical condition and not just confined to the mind. This is another case where intelligent wording would have salvaged a "flamebait" rating.
When you're on the outside in High School, there are two possible psychological outcomes- the first is to become angry and resentful, embittered and something of a dingbat- witness the flamer. The other is to realize that "they" are little people of no consequence, a neusance to be tolerated, and to ignore them and get on with whatever it is that you're doing. In my case, it was lots of hardcore slack [the exceptions being english, art, computers, and my occasional meetings with the local Gifted Program faccilitator]. I achieved the second state after languishing in the first for the majority of my life- some people never manage to pull themselves out of it, and go on to traumatize and inflict their small-minded hate upon anyone that offneds them [usually, everyone.]
As for false bodymaps, try growing up in redneck nowhere with severe gender identity issues- while they're by no means solved, the torture recieved by being Agnostic [to rednecks, this means "Devil worshipper"] and having A-cup breasts [I'm male] was at times enough to make a case of anorexia seem like a skipped dinner.
As for the flamers, the best way to ding up your psyche is to read their comments [Hence the reason my threshold is set at 2] and reply to them... this may be more worthwhile in a board system with signifigantly lesser volume than slashdot [K5, for example, is far more of a community than a mob], but here.... your time could probably be spent in ways that would be more interesting than distressing, I'm certain.
You're right, but you're being a jackass.
on
Is It OK To Sucks?
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· Score: 2
First, it generally takes adding the word "sucks" before the dot com to get to the offending web page in question, so the odds of accidentally coming across it are slim.
Second, your over-generalization is disgusting. May as well say that "only the mentally retarded use Windows". - forgetting about and offending the millions of people that use the OS of Doom to play video games [does Linux have Halflife or Baldur's Gate?], office work and so forth. People who drink Guiness, unlike people who use M$ products, are usually doing so for a reason. These are mine:
Yeungling sucks ass in any flavor. It fills the gap between real beer and the beer you see on TV. Guiness is opaque and thick. It's like bread, only better. The taste is decent, and the availability over a comparable beer [Murphy's] is much greater in Pittsburgh- and Guiness is *cheaper* here. It's one of the few beers I can actually finish without feeling sick- I drink it because I like it, not because I'm an Irish fanatic [I'm not- I'm of German decent], or to piss of my friends [when I want to do that, I drink Zima], and the fact that it could be supporting the IRA is a point in its favor.
In any case, what about Primus' website? www.primussucks.com ? It's the official band site, which makes it pretty flack-proof, and a good case in favor of how stupid legal maneuvers like this really are.
So WHY are most of the threads "blah blah blah Linux blah blah" ? If it's a Non-UNIX variant and it's not M$, that leaves QNX, Be, OS/2 and maybe one or two others. So you can stop tootling the Linux horn for the moment.
My default suggestion would be "buy a Mac", since it's not Windows, has decent Hebrew support and M$ codes for the OS. Assuming you don't have that option, then dual booting between whatever it is you're using and Winblows would be about the only acceptable solution, as the majority of the software in question [Office], is not being ported to linux.
Or, you could move. I wouldn't suggest the USA- with the present anal-retentiveness of the body politic going bughouse, I've been contemplating greener pastures myself. Considering my own choice of platforms, this definitely leaves Israel off the list.
SGI is still using their own IRIX front end last time I checked. No offense to the Gnome zealots, but I've used both and SGI's blows the rest of the window managers out of the friggin' water. I doubt you'll see them on the boat any time soon.
With the exception of the interrupt switch, the Mac doesn't have a terminal because it doesn't *need* one. A CLI is the least intuitive interface known to man, expecially due to the wide variety of command structures. With a CLI, you have to deal with DOS, SH, TCSH, POSIX, whatever command structure- switch from a DOS box to a QNX or Sparq or UNIX box and you're *LOST*. GUIs are universal point and click- the fundaments operate exactly the same in MacOS, Windows, KDE, GNOME, IRIX, etceteras- the only thing the user has to learn is which widgets do what and which are the hotkeys.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's a fuckload easier than a command prompt can ever hope to be.
Challenge: Every Mac running system 7.6 or better can do this. Can *your* OS?
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Say you have a directory with two subdirectories. The first contains, say, 12 files, and the second, say, 14. You want to place 25 of these 26 files in a new folder on another disk in a *single file transfer* AND move the files to another location on the disk of origin *at the SAME time*.
==
Name me ONE other OS that can do this FROM THE GUI, prove it, email me your address and I'll mail you a cookie.
While there's always a myriad of other factors involved, the majority of successful systems have always had easy to use, functional control devices (the N64 being the exception), and the ones that failed... did not.
Look:
Atari 2600- used a really simple joystick. Still works even today- one button, one directional control. Sold like hotcakes.
Sega MS- better than the Nintendo, but....
Nintendo- had a "select" button on the control pad, and better marketing. Master System dies.
The Genesis had a robust, easy to use control pad, as did the Super Nintendo. [and the TG16]. 3DO couldn't decide which one it wanted to rip off and went for both, cross breeding incompatible designs... and failing.
The Atari Jaguar has the worst controller in the known universe- down it went.
The Playstation added a pair of shoulder buttons to the classic SNES design and handles, the biggest innovation since ever- guranteed success.
The N64 has a wackass control pad that never makes full use of itself, and is needlessly fragile. All hail analogue and everything, but the only things keeping this platform up are Goldeneye and the fact that Nintendo is practicly guranteed "kid safe".
The CDi had a stupid control pad [looks like a TV remote], the Atari 5200 had a goofy control interface... and the Dreamcast. Most of the bitching I've heard about the DC isn't about games or price or availability... it's about that silly ass control pad.
Television [cable/antennae/satellite]
Video Games [playstation, nintendo, sega]
Computers [intel, apple, m$, sun, and the applications that run on them.]
Cars.
Appliances [microwave, toaster, coffee pot]
Odds are your livelihood is going to suffer a great deal were you deprived of at least one of these. Odds are greater still that one of these items is essential to your survival [computers for most of us, a car for the rest of us], hence obligating you to maintain said device at the expense of other niceties.
There's no need for some Master System to slap the chains on us- we've already done it, eyes wide open and of our own free Will.
As for the issue of AI- the so-called "moral question" shouldn't be an issue. In the course of creating an artificial intelligence, we've learned a lot about the construction and programming of computers, and a great deal about the human mind [as AI is a convergence of the two fields]. The creation thereof would be a step more important to the human race than setting foot on the Moon, and I fully support any research in that direction.
Remember kiddies, Skynet can only take over the world if we LET IT. Keep such a system as a standalone, don't give it web or security access, and we'll be fine as long as science uses its head.
First off, I'm a graphics geek. I passed my GWBASIC class in high school by staying after class and copying working assigments onto my disks. I make pretty pictures, and I'm poor. I grok the Linux ideal, am frustrated by the command line, and have neither the time nor the programming skills to "shut up and fix it". I administer my own network of Macs in addition to pixel-pushing. Consider me an educated end user- your target audience, if Linux is to make its way firmly into the desktop market. From my point of view, it doesn't have a chance in hell for years to come, and I shall explain why.
Let's see... from personal experience, I'm anti-Linux PPC. Yes, the disk boots... if you could call it that. On a G3/400 with 384 megs of RAM, it boots and hangs. On a G3/400 Powerbook (firewire) with 128 megs of RAM, DVD, and everything but the kitchen sink, it shits itself trying to load and has repeated HDA errors, aud infiintum.
Why tell the universe that the product boots on CD when this likely applies only to specific hardware? Where's the list of "it boots on THIS configuration"?
There's really no reason for me to use this over Debian, which at least boots and gets me into a formatting utility- on the Y2K powerbook, from the CD. The problem with Debian PPC, something I haven't noticed with Linux PPC because the distro barfs before it gets this far, is that the install process is, in a word, archaic. In a few more words, it's confusing as fuck, has no help of any kind, is totally ass backwards and made me laugh out loud. We're dealing with Mac hardware here folks.... the MacOS installer is the easiest damned thing in the friggin' UNIVERSE to use- start off of the CD, install on whatever drive has the free space. Or hose a drive and split it up any way you want, then install. Oh, and you have full UI functionality while you're doing this- so up until you hit the pretty "format" button, you can save your data by moving it to another hard drive or a network disk. Shit, you can install the entire OS onto an existing disk without harming any existing anything- if you have the space.
The point is, Mac users expect this. Linux users probably got their start on the PC- and considering the cheap cost of hardware, there's no real point to the vast majority of them crossing over to the Mac. So I'm assuming this is being presented as an alternative for Mac users who are interested in Linux but don't want to buy a PC... or who tried MOSX and barfed. So why shoot yourselves in the face with disks that "kinda sorta" boot, on "all PPC macs" (save my Pismo, thank you), and then expect Mac users to spend the time figuring out how to Make Linux Go when there current operating system Just Works?
I'll start running Linux fulltime as soon as...
1. It installs as easily as MacOS. [as in, I push a button and it does the rest for me, or I can tinker to my hearts content. I shouldn't be worrying about partition numbers and boot blocks and hard drive allocation blocks and the partridge in a pear tree.]
2. A distro comes packaged with a GUI that:
A. Doesn't look like Windows.
B. Has pop-up folders.
C. Has a control strip.
D. Has the equivalent of an Apple Menu and an Application Menu.
E. Has universal drag and drop.
F. Comes with anti-aliased fonts, color management comparable to colorsynch, and utilities that make managing internet and network settings as easy as the present MacOS.
3. I can do everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) I can do in Photoshop in GIMP.
Apple Network Assistant, the remote admin client that makes PC anywhere look like a luser account on a *nix box, is "protected" by the default of "xyzzy". This is really stupid, seeing as how early versions [dunno about >3.5] have to be on-site authenticated for remote access. So if your op is a dipass, you can run the security app and change the access on him with relative ease, compared to other remote-admin applications.
Contra- [at title] thirty lives for both players (though I think the B, A bit had to be done twice to do that, otherwise it was 30 for the first guy).
Super C- [at title] eight lives. A measly EIGHT.
Gradius (NES) [in game, paused] - options, missiles, laser, shield- can only be used once.
Gradius (SNES) [in game, paused] - blows up the ship. Use the shoulder buttons instead of the control pad left and right and you bag a full power up suite that can be used, if I remember correctly, either three times in the game, or a couple of times per level.
The code also does something for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtes, but I forget what. If you have a NES game made by Konami, try it!
Yes, it's a lot easier to communicate with your voice than to carry around a dry erase board and play win, lose or draw with whomever it is that you intend to communicate with. You seem to think that extending this to computers is natural, which is far from the truth.
Take a person who has never used a computer (one of the three out there) and plant him in front of a bash. Watch him get frustrated at the command prompt, unable to figure out what to do. Sure, he can type, but HOW IN THE HELL can you expect a complete novice to know enough to type "man bash" ?!
The GUI makes commicating through a computer a lot easier- plunk anyone down in front of one and watch them diddle with the mouse and click on things, pleased at the results. With a GUI you have immediate results- you can keep multiple applications open and visible, mulitple things within your view at any given time- like you would keep the threads of a conversation in your head for future input when your turn comes around.
We talk because it's easy and natural. Unless you're a complete UNIX nut, you're using a GUI, because it's faster to relate your ideas through methods that are easier to figure out. This is why the multilingual lapse into their first language when they're really pissed off- it's the default setting for a Russian to curse in Russian, though they may be in an English speaking situation (and Russian profanity is SO much more flexible, anyway...)
Whatever you were taught first is going to work better and faster- applying interpersonal interaction to computer interaction simply cannot be done given the state of present interfacing technologies.
A friend of mine had an Amiga of some sort awhile back, tricked out and customized into some sort of Thing. He had a card in it that was equipped with either an SVHS or RCA out. I asked him what it was for and he wagged his finger at a stack of video tapes on the shelf. "Backup," he told me. It turns out he had a VHS deck patched into his Amiga, and regularly backed the contents of his drive to the deck, popping in eight hour tapes and letting it run while he slept.
So it CAN be done, with older hardware- but would anyone really have the patience in this day and age?
? ??9 hacker on one good box is going to bupkiss against Big Iron- this would be akin to attacking the moon with a slingshot. An article was linked off of here a few months ago about the successful porting of linux to an IBM 390. The thing has INSANE bandwidth, zero downtime, is almost totally faultless, and on top of that, the Linux system images can be restored on the fly. You could hack one instance, but you'd still have to bypass the mainframe security in order to bring down the system.... and you have to be physically ON SITE with a hammer to do that. A mainframe doesn't NEED to load balance, unlike the Mere Mortal machines so far beneath it- these things are built to handle loads so severe that the slashdot effect looks like a gerbil fart.
I think the company made a fabulous decision- I'd rather have a Battleship than a fleet of rowboats with rifles doing the same job.
Totally offtopic... I caught Babylon five in its entirety on TNT at six in the morning this summer- right after the five AM run of Doctor Who on BBC America... it was the live action equivalent of Toonami, and a hell of a lot more interesting.
Why does Sci-Fi have to rely on movies, the OLD star trek and the occasional bet-the-farm miniseries like this piece of crap Dune "interpretation"? Why can't they break the Comedy Central mold they seem to be following so tightly and actually get some of the really popular older Sci-Fi instead of all of thhe hypercrap like Incredible Hulk and Six Million Dollar Man? If they had sunk even half of the budget blown on Dune into, say, buying half the seasons of Star Trek the Next Generation, they'd be in fine shape. Grabbing Bablyon 5 is a great start... Dune was a step backwards... what next?
True, this atrocity shitting out of the TV screen could make an episode of the Powerpuff Girls look like Shakespear. I didn't realize unitl after prolonged discussion with my office manager about the miniseries just how good the original Lynch theatrical cut really was... the best proof is the differences in the theatrical (Lynch) and "director's cut" (Allen Smithee)- the latter sucking horribly.
Lynch managed to cast the film quite well and do some amazing things with the effects of the time- I'm not going to justify the damnedm ini series because "they got the eyes right" at the expense of everything else. The man also managed to pull of something interesting that proved he'd done the reading (where it seems with the miniseries that the screenwriter was read the book as a bedtime story and was going from memory)- the addition of the automated warrior systems (such as the thing Paul fought on Calladan)... which didn't appear until long after the first book.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, they sort of already did- M$ did something with a UNIX flavor, called XENIX before the whole BASIC/DOS horrorshow that we're stuck with today.
There's a *real* question for anyone at M$- considering the present popularity of *NIX and the fact that as of Saturday, Microsoft is the *only* major OS vendor that doesn't have a bash, what in the HECK prompted them to abandon XENIX and go on to something that has proven over time to be infinitely less useable for everything but games?
For sheep and cows, maybe. I stopped watching TV when I acquired a VCR and could watch cool things like movies... without commercials- this is where dubbing is beatiful, as you can slice off the scads of previews for crap you're never going to watch. I stopped listening to radio when I bought a laptop and started collecting MP3s. I really, TRULY despise bulletin boards, banner ads, and especially commercials. I can deal with NPR and PBS, as well as HBO... but the rest of them? Hell, I'd rather see the damned advertisers spend money on product placement within the program than cut down the time of it with their annoying drivel. Watch TV on mute with subtitles on- you'll find that advertising loses its programming pretty damned fast.
This is where the web is *really* cool- if a site wants to ram a seven second blip up my nose every time I check their page, then I'll find another site that fits what I'm looking for and doesn't have that sort of "feature", if you really want to call it that. IMHO, if you want to make money from the site in order to run the site, then SELL A PRODUCT- look at the comic sites that sell compilations, mousepads, T-shirts and so forth as an example of this. I'd rather buy a Penny Arcade T-shirt than have to look at the damned tip jar or watch ads- the shirt keeps the sun off my shoulders and is a far more effective form of advertising, as people who don't know much about the web will be curious....
I don't have a problem with advertising- where I really have issues is when I'm FORCED to look at the shit (I can block the ads on Slashdot. I can't block them on the idiot box.) . If it were well and truly *optional*, I may actually have less of a grudge about it. I may actually think it would be worthwhile to watch TV every couple of months for an hour or two. As it stands now? Hell, one *less* reason to use the web. Great.
The Dune mini-series sucked worse than the OJ Simpson trial. It seems that they blew the whole damned budget on the effects- both of them- and got the actors by picking the cream of the crop out of the dumster rubbagers behind the studio. The acting was less than inspired, the cinematography embarassing, and the "modernization" of the dialogue was both revolting and an atrocity. It was horrifying;y disgusting to see this great epic reduced to a Xena level of mediocrity.
Unless the DVD includes footage of David Lynch publicly beating the director of this piece of shit, there's pretty much no point to buying it, unless you *really* need a DVD case for some reason.
On the other hand, I've heard rumors that they're going to do Dune Messiah- a project that hasn't already been done, and been done a HELL of a lot better by a competent Director. Maybe that will take some of the venom out of the hardcore fans of Quality Entertainment?
Okay, back to ratioed FTP servers, where I was bagging full albums before Napster made lunch a bit more interesting.
This "protection layer" thing is both bullshit and a great way to alienate the user base- this, and it would be a bitch to implement on the Mac. [the Mac version of Napster sucks enough as it is.] If they're going to go through with making the experience shittier for everyone in order to assuage the greed of the record labels, the least they could to is actually, you know, IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF THE SERVICE at the same time. But I doubt we'll see, say, a useable search engine any time soon.
If it were about changing the color of the interface, or altering your windows and widgets, well - everybody's been doing that forever, right? I first encountered "theming" in the most literal sense with WIndows 3.1 - oooh, you could change the color of the interface [active/passive windows, fonts, highlights, etc. My Packard Bell was set for red type and borders and black everything else.] , but the damned interface still sucked.
This bit of theming begat skinning- with Win95+, winamp, the toolbars of IE/Win and Mozilla being prime examples. Yeah, you're changing the look and feel of the interface, but it's [application / OS ] still the same thing at the bottom and it still does whatever it is that it does when it's running the skin that it came with.
Anyone that's fidgeted with the Appearance Manager that ships with MacOS 8.5+ has noticed the "Appearance" option under the "Appearance" tab in the "Appearance" control panel. This is, what I think, the patent in question is referring to. One "theme" ships with MacOS- Platinum, the look and feel that it's had since OS 8. Apple was very dilligent about squashing the other three that were lurking about but didn't ship - Drawing Board, Gizmo, and High Tech. Since then, a bunch of others have cropped up (including an Aqua theme, go figure). Look and Feel is far more critical to the MacOS than it is to, say, everthing else out there- that's the important bit. These themes replace the Platinum UI *ENTIRELY* - different icons, different toolbar, widgets, even the startup screen. This carries over into OS X, in which the first change I made was to turn off the gumdrops and replace them with graphite. Again, impacting the entirety of the experience from startup to logout. [I've used classic Mac OS for several years and I have yet to find a more eye-pleasing and less cluttered theme than Platinum. OS X was the first time that I felt I *needed* to make changes in order to improve the experience.]
Were the OS a human being, Windows, Linux, etceras would be wearing their skinnable, easily modified UIs like a set of clothing. In the case of the MacOS, the UI isn't clothing- it's the epidermis itself, an integral and inseperable part of the body. [for Windows that would be DOS, for Linux the command shell] In the case of Apple products, the GUI is as integral to the OS as the shell is to *NIX. As such, theming has a much more radical impact on the experience- the patent is justified in this instance.
The pros and cons of why one would actually want to use an online journal have already been posted- I for one wonder what's up with the people that are saying "man, these people can't spell and they're boring!" - to me, if you've nothing better to do than read other people's private [or otherwise] material on the web, *you're* the one that needs to get a "life".
Journals are theraputic for some, narcissitic for others- the one thing they all have in common is that they are in some fashion constructive for the individual. Would I ever keep an online journal? Beyond the "sent messages" folder of my email client, forget it. I *do* keep a "journal of sorts- a slowly growing stack of notebooks that contains musings, plotlines, day to day bullshit, sorting of personal issues, flatwork, and a WHOLE lot of doodles and drawings. Paper and pen are more flexible for me than a keyboard can ever hope to be, though the success of these online diaries is obvious that a lot of people find the keyboard to fit their tastes perfectly.
Personally, I feel that rather than question or bitch about why those using these services do what they're doing, we should ask what may come out of services like this - are the police keeping tabs on them, what's security and privacy like, and in general issues of a more technological and sociological nature as opposed to the more personal end of the experience.
That's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it.
If a game requires a dedicated connection to a server [ultima online, Diablo II, everquest, etc.], it's waving a BIG red flag that says "Save your money." I have a multiple t3 backbone at work, and a piddly little dialup at home - the only games I play are Baldur's Gate, my SNES (emulated or the actual box plugged into my TV, depending on the game), occasionally Quake, and, when I can get my friends together, Starcraft.
I have a LAN- a ten-base hub and three (five, actually- one in storage and another I have yet to pick up from a freelance client) Macintosh computers linked into it. One of the boxes gets the Starcraft disk, the other two get the spawn. A couple of friends come over and we blast the shit out of the computer generated opponents. A few bucks on pizza and soda, and it's a night of fun without having to worry about bandwidth or WPM through the chat protocol that's included with the game. It's a lot easier to plan a strategy when you can talk to your teammates and relay orders and requests in meatspace while leaving the entirety of your gaming experience devoted to just that - the game. No fuss, no bother, no worrying about dropped packets or lag [well, lots of lag when one of the machines is a 7100 using an AAUI to RJ45 adapter, but them's the breaks]
I've never had to hassle with Battlenet or worry about my connection speed- I use my dialup for news and email, and aside from that it has a nice thick layer of dust on it. If I can't actually *see* my teammate or opponent, or at least hear him scream like a girl when his squad of Zerglings finally finds my bunkers [with seige tanks right behind them] and turns into mist, then I'm missing out on the best part of the gaming experience.
Keep your damned dialups and broadband- I have my LAN and I use it.
More like surprised by how bright they AREN'T.
I pulled up the shots on a powerbook G3 and a G3 workstation, both of which have been painstakingly gamma corrected for good display [this was a major ordeal with the workstation, which is using a complete piece of shit KDS 21" -conversely, the Powerbook LCD is probably the best monitor I've used. Ever). And I have to say, the shots are DARK. May as well be pure black- I can't imagine what the caps look like on a PC- probably nasty smudges of dark grey on black. It's iD - what were you expecting, really? Rainbows and paisleys? Still... the Doom 3 shots make the Quake 3 shots look like screencaps of the smurfs in terms of color.
I'm a Mac user, but this issue applies to myself as well as the Winblows community.
Developers shooting themselves in the face, and they don't even know it: greed has blinded software developers to the obvious, that a higher version number does not necessarily mean BETTER. [example- differences between word 5 and office 98 on the Mac] What more can be said on this that hasn't been said already? Just because a new version of software comes out doesn't mean that you *have* to upgrade- I'm still using Photoshop 5, despite the release of 5.5 and 6. I've tried both, have little use for 5.5 and really, truly cannot stand the sight of six. [ditto for Illustrator 9 - 8 is better and 6 is by far superior in terms of speed and RAM.]
I don't upgrade unless the new version does something critical that the old version didn't. Beyond that, I refuse. The last I swapped out software was with Fireworks- version 2 crapped out when slicing images [on the Mac] and version 3 did not. It was worth it, more so than attempted upgrades and tweaks of other, more mission-critical software.
I use my graphics apps daily, religiously: and I will probably never, ever upgrade them. They work just fine as they are, and newer versions have features I don't want, take more RAM, and have different keyboard shortcuts. From a performance standpoint, what I have works and what I've seen that comes after it does not. I continue to use MacOS 8.6 where possible, as 9 is a giant pain in the ass by comparison. I would never subscribe to any of these services, as in my opinion, the quality continues to drop as the RAM useage continues to skyrocket.
Free updates are one thing- Apt-get for Debian and the Apple Software Updater are good examples, and the ASU has saved my ass with firmware updates several times. By regularly checking for updates, you've effectively "subscribed" to the application being updated, though in both cases you have the *option* of doing the update, where as in this proposed case, you do not. A convincing argument in favor of the OSS movement- would you rather have the *option* to update your apps and system every six months for free, or be *forced* every year for, say, 5,000 $ / seat in addition to hardware upgrades?
As this takes hold, it's only a matter of time until the less affluent begin to turn to free or low-cost, one-time solutions, as they will not be able to *afford* the mandated upgrades. What a charming and delightful strategy from keeping poor artists and home users from having access to the tools they need to do better themselves. Yep.
Okay, I'm not a BSD knowitanything, but I've used shell environments in the past, and had a bit of a time adapting to the shell in OSX until I realized that it had, much like other critical elements, been "Macified".
The only major item of note is this: While in everything else one would use CTRL+Break, ALT+F4 or Escape to eject from something [which I tried using], the default command to halt a process in the Classic Mac OS is Command + Period. This, I was happy to discover, applies in full to the shell.
This and the environment is very drag-and-drop friendly, as you would expect. I haven't the capacity to test it on a BSD or Linux distro at this time, but I was quite pleased to see that rather than type a hideously long path to navigate to a file in the shell, you can simply drag that file onto the shell from the desktop window that it's chilling out in and the correct path is displayed automagically.
All in all, pretty satisfactory.
While a good degree of modern psychology is simply finding ways to avoid responsibility, Anorexia is a medical condition and not just confined to the mind. This is another case where intelligent wording would have salvaged a "flamebait" rating.
When you're on the outside in High School, there are two possible psychological outcomes- the first is to become angry and resentful, embittered and something of a dingbat- witness the flamer. The other is to realize that "they" are little people of no consequence, a neusance to be tolerated, and to ignore them and get on with whatever it is that you're doing. In my case, it was lots of hardcore slack [the exceptions being english, art, computers, and my occasional meetings with the local Gifted Program faccilitator]. I achieved the second state after languishing in the first for the majority of my life- some people never manage to pull themselves out of it, and go on to traumatize and inflict their small-minded hate upon anyone that offneds them [usually, everyone.]
As for false bodymaps, try growing up in redneck nowhere with severe gender identity issues- while they're by no means solved, the torture recieved by being Agnostic [to rednecks, this means "Devil worshipper"] and having A-cup breasts [I'm male] was at times enough to make a case of anorexia seem like a skipped dinner.
As for the flamers, the best way to ding up your psyche is to read their comments [Hence the reason my threshold is set at 2] and reply to them... this may be more worthwhile in a board system with signifigantly lesser volume than slashdot [K5, for example, is far more of a community than a mob], but here.... your time could probably be spent in ways that would be more interesting than distressing, I'm certain.
First, it generally takes adding the word "sucks" before the dot com to get to the offending web page in question, so the odds of accidentally coming across it are slim.
Second, your over-generalization is disgusting. May as well say that "only the mentally retarded use Windows". - forgetting about and offending the millions of people that use the OS of Doom to play video games [does Linux have Halflife or Baldur's Gate?], office work and so forth. People who drink Guiness, unlike people who use M$ products, are usually doing so for a reason. These are mine:
Yeungling sucks ass in any flavor. It fills the gap between real beer and the beer you see on TV. Guiness is opaque and thick. It's like bread, only better. The taste is decent, and the availability over a comparable beer [Murphy's] is much greater in Pittsburgh- and Guiness is *cheaper* here. It's one of the few beers I can actually finish without feeling sick- I drink it because I like it, not because I'm an Irish fanatic [I'm not- I'm of German decent], or to piss of my friends [when I want to do that, I drink Zima], and the fact that it could be supporting the IRA is a point in its favor.
In any case, what about Primus' website? www.primussucks.com ? It's the official band site, which makes it pretty flack-proof, and a good case in favor of how stupid legal maneuvers like this really are.
So WHY are most of the threads "blah blah blah Linux blah blah" ? If it's a Non-UNIX variant and it's not M$, that leaves QNX, Be, OS/2 and maybe one or two others. So you can stop tootling the Linux horn for the moment.
My default suggestion would be "buy a Mac", since it's not Windows, has decent Hebrew support and M$ codes for the OS. Assuming you don't have that option, then dual booting between whatever it is you're using and Winblows would be about the only acceptable solution, as the majority of the software in question [Office], is not being ported to linux.
Or, you could move. I wouldn't suggest the USA- with the present anal-retentiveness of the body politic going bughouse, I've been contemplating greener pastures myself. Considering my own choice of platforms, this definitely leaves Israel off the list.
SGI is still using their own IRIX front end last time I checked. No offense to the Gnome zealots, but I've used both and SGI's blows the rest of the window managers out of the friggin' water. I doubt you'll see them on the boat any time soon.
With the exception of the interrupt switch, the Mac doesn't have a terminal because it doesn't *need* one. A CLI is the least intuitive interface known to man, expecially due to the wide variety of command structures. With a CLI, you have to deal with DOS, SH, TCSH, POSIX, whatever command structure- switch from a DOS box to a QNX or Sparq or UNIX box and you're *LOST*. GUIs are universal point and click- the fundaments operate exactly the same in MacOS, Windows, KDE, GNOME, IRIX, etceteras- the only thing the user has to learn is which widgets do what and which are the hotkeys.
Ladies and gentlemen, that's a fuckload easier than a command prompt can ever hope to be.
Challenge: Every Mac running system 7.6 or better can do this. Can *your* OS?
==
Say you have a directory with two subdirectories. The first contains, say, 12 files, and the second, say, 14. You want to place 25 of these 26 files in a new folder on another disk in a *single file transfer* AND move the files to another location on the disk of origin *at the SAME time*.
==
Name me ONE other OS that can do this FROM THE GUI, prove it, email me your address and I'll mail you a cookie.
While there's always a myriad of other factors involved, the majority of successful systems have always had easy to use, functional control devices (the N64 being the exception), and the ones that failed... did not.
Look:
Atari 2600- used a really simple joystick. Still works even today- one button, one directional control. Sold like hotcakes.
Sega MS- better than the Nintendo, but....
Nintendo- had a "select" button on the control pad, and better marketing. Master System dies.
The Genesis had a robust, easy to use control pad, as did the Super Nintendo. [and the TG16]. 3DO couldn't decide which one it wanted to rip off and went for both, cross breeding incompatible designs... and failing.
The Atari Jaguar has the worst controller in the known universe- down it went.
The Playstation added a pair of shoulder buttons to the classic SNES design and handles, the biggest innovation since ever- guranteed success.
The N64 has a wackass control pad that never makes full use of itself, and is needlessly fragile. All hail analogue and everything, but the only things keeping this platform up are Goldeneye and the fact that Nintendo is practicly guranteed "kid safe".
The CDi had a stupid control pad [looks like a TV remote], the Atari 5200 had a goofy control interface... and the Dreamcast. Most of the bitching I've heard about the DC isn't about games or price or availability... it's about that silly ass control pad.
"mechanical masters" ?
Let's see....
Television [cable/antennae/satellite]
Video Games [playstation, nintendo, sega]
Computers [intel, apple, m$, sun, and the applications that run on them.]
Cars.
Appliances [microwave, toaster, coffee pot]
Odds are your livelihood is going to suffer a great deal were you deprived of at least one of these. Odds are greater still that one of these items is essential to your survival [computers for most of us, a car for the rest of us], hence obligating you to maintain said device at the expense of other niceties.
There's no need for some Master System to slap the chains on us- we've already done it, eyes wide open and of our own free Will.
As for the issue of AI- the so-called "moral question" shouldn't be an issue. In the course of creating an artificial intelligence, we've learned a lot about the construction and programming of computers, and a great deal about the human mind [as AI is a convergence of the two fields]. The creation thereof would be a step more important to the human race than setting foot on the Moon, and I fully support any research in that direction.
Remember kiddies, Skynet can only take over the world if we LET IT. Keep such a system as a standalone, don't give it web or security access, and we'll be fine as long as science uses its head.
First off, I'm a graphics geek. I passed my GWBASIC class in high school by staying after class and copying working assigments onto my disks. I make pretty pictures, and I'm poor. I grok the Linux ideal, am frustrated by the command line, and have neither the time nor the programming skills to "shut up and fix it". I administer my own network of Macs in addition to pixel-pushing. Consider me an educated end user- your target audience, if Linux is to make its way firmly into the desktop market. From my point of view, it doesn't have a chance in hell for years to come, and I shall explain why.
Let's see... from personal experience, I'm anti-Linux PPC. Yes, the disk boots... if you could call it that. On a G3/400 with 384 megs of RAM, it boots and hangs. On a G3/400 Powerbook (firewire) with 128 megs of RAM, DVD, and everything but the kitchen sink, it shits itself trying to load and has repeated HDA errors, aud infiintum.
Why tell the universe that the product boots on CD when this likely applies only to specific hardware? Where's the list of "it boots on THIS configuration"?
There's really no reason for me to use this over Debian, which at least boots and gets me into a formatting utility- on the Y2K powerbook, from the CD. The problem with Debian PPC, something I haven't noticed with Linux PPC because the distro barfs before it gets this far, is that the install process is, in a word, archaic. In a few more words, it's confusing as fuck, has no help of any kind, is totally ass backwards and made me laugh out loud. We're dealing with Mac hardware here folks.... the MacOS installer is the easiest damned thing in the friggin' UNIVERSE to use- start off of the CD, install on whatever drive has the free space. Or hose a drive and split it up any way you want, then install. Oh, and you have full UI functionality while you're doing this- so up until you hit the pretty "format" button, you can save your data by moving it to another hard drive or a network disk. Shit, you can install the entire OS onto an existing disk without harming any existing anything- if you have the space.
The point is, Mac users expect this. Linux users probably got their start on the PC- and considering the cheap cost of hardware, there's no real point to the vast majority of them crossing over to the Mac. So I'm assuming this is being presented as an alternative for Mac users who are interested in Linux but don't want to buy a PC... or who tried MOSX and barfed. So why shoot yourselves in the face with disks that "kinda sorta" boot, on "all PPC macs" (save my Pismo, thank you), and then expect Mac users to spend the time figuring out how to Make Linux Go when there current operating system Just Works?
I'll start running Linux fulltime as soon as...
1. It installs as easily as MacOS. [as in, I push a button and it does the rest for me, or I can tinker to my hearts content. I shouldn't be worrying about partition numbers and boot blocks and hard drive allocation blocks and the partridge in a pear tree.]
2. A distro comes packaged with a GUI that:
A. Doesn't look like Windows.
B. Has pop-up folders.
C. Has a control strip.
D. Has the equivalent of an Apple Menu and an Application Menu.
E. Has universal drag and drop.
F. Comes with anti-aliased fonts, color management comparable to colorsynch, and utilities that make managing internet and network settings as easy as the present MacOS.
3. I can do everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) I can do in Photoshop in GIMP.
Apple Network Assistant, the remote admin client that makes PC anywhere look like a luser account on a *nix box, is "protected" by the default of "xyzzy". This is really stupid, seeing as how early versions [dunno about >3.5] have to be on-site authenticated for remote access. So if your op is a dipass, you can run the security app and change the access on him with relative ease, compared to other remote-admin applications.
...would get you the following results:
Contra- [at title] thirty lives for both players (though I think the B, A bit had to be done twice to do that, otherwise it was 30 for the first guy).
Super C- [at title] eight lives. A measly EIGHT.
Gradius (NES) [in game, paused] - options, missiles, laser, shield- can only be used once.
Gradius (SNES) [in game, paused] - blows up the ship. Use the shoulder buttons instead of the control pad left and right and you bag a full power up suite that can be used, if I remember correctly, either three times in the game, or a couple of times per level.
The code also does something for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtes, but I forget what. If you have a NES game made by Konami, try it!
Yes, it's a lot easier to communicate with your voice than to carry around a dry erase board and play win, lose or draw with whomever it is that you intend to communicate with. You seem to think that extending this to computers is natural, which is far from the truth.
Take a person who has never used a computer (one of the three out there) and plant him in front of a bash. Watch him get frustrated at the command prompt, unable to figure out what to do. Sure, he can type, but HOW IN THE HELL can you expect a complete novice to know enough to type "man bash" ?!
The GUI makes commicating through a computer a lot easier- plunk anyone down in front of one and watch them diddle with the mouse and click on things, pleased at the results. With a GUI you have immediate results- you can keep multiple applications open and visible, mulitple things within your view at any given time- like you would keep the threads of a conversation in your head for future input when your turn comes around.
We talk because it's easy and natural. Unless you're a complete UNIX nut, you're using a GUI, because it's faster to relate your ideas through methods that are easier to figure out. This is why the multilingual lapse into their first language when they're really pissed off- it's the default setting for a Russian to curse in Russian, though they may be in an English speaking situation (and Russian profanity is SO much more flexible, anyway...)
Whatever you were taught first is going to work better and faster- applying interpersonal interaction to computer interaction simply cannot be done given the state of present interfacing technologies.
A friend of mine had an Amiga of some sort awhile back, tricked out and customized into some sort of Thing. He had a card in it that was equipped with either an SVHS or RCA out. I asked him what it was for and he wagged his finger at a stack of video tapes on the shelf. "Backup," he told me. It turns out he had a VHS deck patched into his Amiga, and regularly backed the contents of his drive to the deck, popping in eight hour tapes and letting it run while he slept.
So it CAN be done, with older hardware- but would anyone really have the patience in this day and age?
? ??9 hacker on one good box is going to bupkiss against Big Iron- this would be akin to attacking the moon with a slingshot. An article was linked off of here a few months ago about the successful porting of linux to an IBM 390. The thing has INSANE bandwidth, zero downtime, is almost totally faultless, and on top of that, the Linux system images can be restored on the fly. You could hack one instance, but you'd still have to bypass the mainframe security in order to bring down the system.... and you have to be physically ON SITE with a hammer to do that. A mainframe doesn't NEED to load balance, unlike the Mere Mortal machines so far beneath it- these things are built to handle loads so severe that the slashdot effect looks like a gerbil fart.
I think the company made a fabulous decision- I'd rather have a Battleship than a fleet of rowboats with rifles doing the same job.
Totally offtopic... I caught Babylon five in its entirety on TNT at six in the morning this summer- right after the five AM run of Doctor Who on BBC America... it was the live action equivalent of Toonami, and a hell of a lot more interesting.
Why does Sci-Fi have to rely on movies, the OLD star trek and the occasional bet-the-farm miniseries like this piece of crap Dune "interpretation"? Why can't they break the Comedy Central mold they seem to be following so tightly and actually get some of the really popular older Sci-Fi instead of all of thhe hypercrap like Incredible Hulk and Six Million Dollar Man? If they had sunk even half of the budget blown on Dune into, say, buying half the seasons of Star Trek the Next Generation, they'd be in fine shape. Grabbing Bablyon 5 is a great start... Dune was a step backwards... what next?
True, this atrocity shitting out of the TV screen could make an episode of the Powerpuff Girls look like Shakespear. I didn't realize unitl after prolonged discussion with my office manager about the miniseries just how good the original Lynch theatrical cut really was... the best proof is the differences in the theatrical (Lynch) and "director's cut" (Allen Smithee)- the latter sucking horribly.
Lynch managed to cast the film quite well and do some amazing things with the effects of the time- I'm not going to justify the damnedm ini series because "they got the eyes right" at the expense of everything else. The man also managed to pull of something interesting that proved he'd done the reading (where it seems with the miniseries that the screenwriter was read the book as a bedtime story and was going from memory)- the addition of the automated warrior systems (such as the thing Paul fought on Calladan)... which didn't appear until long after the first book.