The adaptation/screenplay was (IIRC) based on a short story by Clarke called "The Sentinal".
The screenplay went much farther than the original short story, but the story was excellent to begin with.
It just goes to show what happens when a talented director and writer can do when they have less than 30 typeset pages of story and create 156 minutes of classic Science Fiction cinema.
That is the one thing that worries me about Rama... at several hundred pages there may be too much stuff in there to "easily" make a viable film. Though Fincher has done some interesting work and I would like to see how he handles it.
Though I suppose that "secure" could be considered a subset of "good" - though I think that secure has been neglected long enough that it should be taken separately.
IIRC the Poles tried to sell a version of the Enigma machine to the French, and then to the British a couple of times BEFORE the start of the 2nd World War.
Neither group was interested at that time.
If was only after the begining of hostilities (with the invasion of Poland) that the Poles out gave it to the British out of desperation that no one was going to be able to use it. (They saw that they would be unable to use the it themselves by then).
I have heard anecdotal evidence that things might be different in Europe.
It has been rumoured that there the call centre is often populated with the most knowledgable technical people who are paid appropriately for their knowledge. It is considered a high-prestige job. NOT the call center slave that we experience in NA.
Anyone out there got any direct experience or is this just so much "grass is greener over there" party chatter?
(Europe is where ITIL (now mutating/innovating into MOF in Redmond) came from after all...)
Google essentially provides what librarians and researchers call a citations index.
These things have been around for ages in the print world. I'm sure anyone whose ever done serious research can tell us how useful they are. (certainly anyone who has ever used Google can)
The description of the "new" search technology in the main story sounds like a "dumbed down", blunted or blurred version of the citations index concept to me - but maybe I'm missing something.
I was forced to attend a "re-education" meeting with a firm hired by MS to promote their licensing policies and suggested practices. One of the interesting statistics they presented was that in the past year in North America software piracy had dropped by a couple of percent in general.
They didn't seem very happy (or surprised I would add) when I mentioned to them that this decrease in piracy could also be explained by the lack of compelling reasons that people had to upgrade to Windows and Office XP. (At this point the IT media were often talking about upgrading to XP with a "why bother" slant to the stories)
People aren't likely to steal what they don't want to buy in the first place.
I wonder if this is an element in the student stats.
If anyone is interested in the field James Bamford's _The_Puzzle_Palace_ has a section where he discusses the use of open source intelligence during the second world war (the "childhood" of the NSA).
There is an interesting element of debate in the book (IIRC) regarding whether or not all the spy and cryptographic stuff that was done during the war was worth the cost when much of the information alledgedly could have been deduced from open sources.
> The company that could offer the best services for the best price would be successful.
A small correction: The company that could convince the most consumers that they were offering the best services for the best price would be successful. (Much like the drug companies today - look at how much they actually spend on R&D vs. what they spend on advertising, promotions and the lawyers to fight for longer patent durations)
Also - why would a "for profit" system be better equipped? Would it make $en$e to put an MRI somewhere there was no money making possibility? - "Sorry John Q. public - we could have diagnosed your cancer soon enough to save your life but it just wasn't profitable to have a second MRI machine in Moosejaw."
I suppose that this would be fine if you were buying a steak (mmmmm artery clogging fat...) but I think that it goes against the grain for those doctors who don't want to treat their patients as commodities but as human beings - after all Time is money in the capitalistic system you envision you've gotta move those unwashed and ill masses through the waiting room quickly - prescribe Prescribe! PRESCRIBE... Gosh I wonder if there are any big financial interests behind all those "think tanks"...
Business is not always right, neither is gov't. Gov't shouldn't be run like a business - there are some things that society can really use that just can't be summed up in a profit/loss statement. ARPANET for one. Some level of health care for another. (I am also thankful that business isn't run like the government - but more on that some other time.)
yeah, you caught me... sorry - just trying to trick the readers out there into thinking. From the trailers I've seen that is what "John Q." seems to have started out trying to do, though I won't be surprised if it fails because it is toting too many agendas and Hollywood baggage.
The same chip that runs the T-100 (and T-102 and T-200) was sent to Mars to run the pathfinder rover. AFAIK there were a couple of reasons:
1) NASA likes to buy milspec stuff, and I think it was a milspec IC
2) How would you like to send the latest and greatest (and more complicated and fragile) CPU to Mars only to find out it can't divide properly? Most (all?) off the bugs in the 8045 (if I remember the chip - I could be wrong) were known when it was sent - it was already many many years old and well understood when the mission left the launchpad.
What started me thinking about that: A few years ago I heard an interview and the subject spoke about a specific role that Reagan had turned down near the end of his film career - in that role he would have played some sort of heavy (for the time) bad guy - a communist or a fascist spy or something. I can't remember what the role or film were though.
It was speculated that if he had taken it his public image would never have recovered sufficiently for him to make it to the white house... but the speaker could be wrong - it survived Bonzo.
I would agree with Wateshay in that playing someone handicapped - even someone who is temporarily handicapped (by drunkeness say) is a difficult thing to do. You have to maintain consistency throughout AND (in the case of drunkeness of some mental afflictions where the sufferer would be considered "High Function") you have to play it as though you were trying to be "normal"/sober. Don't real life drunks spend most of their time trying to show how undrunk/sober they are? A badly acted drunk ignores that human tendancy and falls down and loudly hiccups alot. An individual human with some social awareness will try to minimize their differences (usually - unless they are an COBOL coder;-) this ongoing attempt is what the actor has to capture.
IMO Dustin Hoffman did not do this (as the character did not call for it) in "Rainman" as the character was not afflicted with a condition that would/could allow him to care how he was percieved by others. He did have to be meticulously consistent throughout though, which I thought he did - though whether that merits an Oscar is another question.
For an interesting take on a handicapped person who is definitely "not nice" check out "Proof" from 1991. Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith from "The Matrix") plays a blind person who believes that no one is telling him the truth, he tries to document this belief with photographs. Russel Crowe plays a friend in one of his early film appearances. Hit the imdb for more info. ( www.imdb.com generally or specifically (for "Proof")):
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0102721 )
All that being said - Hollywood will continue to crank out manipulative junk because we will go and see it. The Oscars are set up to advertise the manipulative junk that Hollywood produces. No one wants to see movies about normal people in normal situations - so it should be no surprise that this sort of thing is getting and will continue to get nominations.
In this light I am more impressed by an actor who is willing to switch from Hero to Villain rather than "normal" to "non-normal"(Ben Kingsley from Ghandi to his role in "Sexy Beast" which incidentally has gotten him an Oscar nomination - though I have to agree that it is not a "normal" person he is playing!)
Some actors either refuse to play a villain, or their agents won't allow it (or they never get a good villain script... I'd like to see Tom Hanks play a villain, but I doubt that the "star machine" will let him now. If Ronald Regean had played the right villain (and done it well) he might never have made it to the oval office.
For an interesting take on the whole "Oscar" thing dig up a copy of Danny Peary's book "The Alternate Oscars" which details year by year from 1927 to 1992 or so (and is blessed somewhat with hindsight) the award winners and what didn't win or didn't even get nominated and should have (IHO). He manages to remove much of the hype and politics of the day (substituting his own of course - but still a fresh and interesting view). The book is OOP, but a good library can get you a copy on interlibrary loan.
In the end though the only Oscars really worth checking out are what I think of as the "foundation" ones for Cinematography, and best adapted, and original screenplays. Without those things every Oscar that follows would be much much more difficult. Those awards also tend to have a bit less hype, and thus a bit less political crap, attached to them.
Didn't Chris Carter move on to other projects a couple of years ago?... that is about the last time I remember seeing a really good _story_ on the X-Files.
Lately all we've been getting are bad poetry/psuedo-science/neo-philosophical monologues from Scully. Pretty much every time I hear one I tune out (mentally) and/or change the channel (phyically) - which explains why I haven't seen very much of this series lately.
And beyond the marketroid messing things up.
In the physical world you just would not build some things certain ways - they would fall down.
(This is one reason that engineers need certifications and licensing - a way of making sure that none of them will succumb to the marketroid telling them that "concrete is out - use this cool blue toothpaste to build that bridge" I think this kind of licensing would be very difficult to enforce in SW eng. though that is for another discussion... (which IIRC has already happened here...)
In the world o' software there is no upper limit to the amount of complexity you can add to a project, some of the complexity comes in automatically (various OS's, hardware profiles, DB's etc.) and some is sprinkled liberally by the marketroids who tell you that now it has to have an "XML tie in" either one is enough to make it "fall down" alone.
Isn't that the fun of it? (No - you're not allowed to beat the marketroids... that one is the boss's nephew...)
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The adaptation/screenplay was (IIRC) based on a short story by Clarke called "The Sentinal".
The screenplay went much farther than the original short story, but the story was excellent to begin with.
It just goes to show what happens when a talented director and writer can do when they have less than 30 typeset pages of story and create 156 minutes of classic Science Fiction cinema.
That is the one thing that worries me about Rama... at several hundred pages there may be too much stuff in there to "easily" make a viable film. Though Fincher has done some interesting work and I would like to see how he handles it.
If you've had to get a security clearance lately I'm pretty sure that you've had a credit check done.
Were'nt that last few major espionage cases in the US basically motivated by money (or ego) and not political ideaology?
This doesn't surprise me.
Good luck.
I usually say:
Good
Fast
Cheap
Secure
Pick *two*
Though I suppose that "secure" could be considered a subset of "good" - though I think that secure has been neglected long enough that it should be taken separately.
Neither group was interested at that time.
If was only after the begining of hostilities (with the invasion of Poland) that the Poles out gave it to the British out of desperation that no one was going to be able to use it. (They saw that they would be unable to use the it themselves by then).
http://sunnyday.mit.edu/therac-25.html
Which includes links to the author's other papers and publications.
It has been rumoured that there the call centre is often populated with the most knowledgable technical people who are paid appropriately for their knowledge. It is considered a high-prestige job. NOT the call center slave that we experience in NA.
Anyone out there got any direct experience or is this just so much "grass is greener over there" party chatter?
(Europe is where ITIL (now mutating/innovating into MOF in Redmond) came from after all...)
Google essentially provides what librarians and researchers call a citations index.
These things have been around for ages in the print world. I'm sure anyone whose ever done serious research can tell us how useful they are. (certainly anyone who has ever used Google can)
The description of the "new" search technology in the main story sounds like a "dumbed down", blunted or blurred version of the citations index concept to me - but maybe I'm missing something.
They didn't seem very happy (or surprised I would add) when I mentioned to them that this decrease in piracy could also be explained by the lack of compelling reasons that people had to upgrade to Windows and Office XP. (At this point the IT media were often talking about upgrading to XP with a "why bother" slant to the stories)
People aren't likely to steal what they don't want to buy in the first place.
I wonder if this is an element in the student stats.
There is an interesting element of debate in the book (IIRC) regarding whether or not all the spy and cryptographic stuff that was done during the war was worth the cost when much of the information alledgedly could have been deduced from open sources.
> The company that could offer the best services for the best price would be successful.
A small correction: The company that could convince the most consumers that they were offering the best services for the best price would be successful. (Much like the drug companies today - look at how much they actually spend on R&D vs. what they spend on advertising, promotions and the lawyers to fight for longer patent durations)
Also - why would a "for profit" system be better equipped? Would it make $en$e to put an MRI somewhere there was no money making possibility? - "Sorry John Q. public - we could have diagnosed your cancer soon enough to save your life but it just wasn't profitable to have a second MRI machine in Moosejaw."
I suppose that this would be fine if you were buying a steak (mmmmm artery clogging fat...) but I think that it goes against the grain for those doctors who don't want to treat their patients as commodities but as human beings - after all Time is money in the capitalistic system you envision you've gotta move those unwashed and ill masses through the waiting room quickly - prescribe Prescribe! PRESCRIBE... Gosh I wonder if there are any big financial interests behind all those "think tanks"...
Business is not always right, neither is gov't. Gov't shouldn't be run like a business - there are some things that society can really use that just can't be summed up in a profit/loss statement. ARPANET for one. Some level of health care for another. (I am also thankful that business isn't run like the government - but more on that some other time.)
yeah, you caught me... sorry - just trying to trick the readers out there into thinking. From the trailers I've seen that is what "John Q." seems to have started out trying to do, though I won't be surprised if it fails because it is toting too many agendas and Hollywood baggage.
1) NASA likes to buy milspec stuff, and I think it was a milspec IC
2) How would you like to send the latest and greatest (and more complicated and fragile) CPU to Mars only to find out it can't divide properly? Most (all?) off the bugs in the 8045 (if I remember the chip - I could be wrong) were known when it was sent - it was already many many years old and well understood when the mission left the launchpad.
What started me thinking about that: A few years ago I heard an interview and the subject spoke about a specific role that Reagan had turned down near the end of his film career - in that role he would have played some sort of heavy (for the time) bad guy - a communist or a fascist spy or something. I can't remember what the role or film were though.
It was speculated that if he had taken it his public image would never have recovered sufficiently for him to make it to the white house... but the speaker could be wrong - it survived Bonzo.
I would agree with Wateshay in that playing someone handicapped - even someone who is temporarily handicapped (by drunkeness say) is a difficult thing to do. You have to maintain consistency throughout AND (in the case of drunkeness of some mental afflictions where the sufferer would be considered "High Function") you have to play it as though you were trying to be "normal"/sober. Don't real life drunks spend most of their time trying to show how undrunk/sober they are? A badly acted drunk ignores that human tendancy and falls down and loudly hiccups alot. An individual human with some social awareness will try to minimize their differences (usually - unless they are an COBOL coder ;-) this ongoing attempt is what the actor has to capture.
IMO Dustin Hoffman did not do this (as the character did not call for it) in "Rainman" as the character was not afflicted with a condition that would/could allow him to care how he was percieved by others. He did have to be meticulously consistent throughout though, which I thought he did - though whether that merits an Oscar is another question.
For an interesting take on a handicapped person who is definitely "not nice" check out "Proof" from 1991. Hugo Weaving (Agent Smith from "The Matrix") plays a blind person who believes that no one is telling him the truth, he tries to document this belief with photographs. Russel Crowe plays a friend in one of his early film appearances. Hit the imdb for more info. ( www.imdb.com generally or specifically (for "Proof")):
http://us.imdb.com/Title?0102721 )
All that being said - Hollywood will continue to crank out manipulative junk because we will go and see it. The Oscars are set up to advertise the manipulative junk that Hollywood produces. No one wants to see movies about normal people in normal situations - so it should be no surprise that this sort of thing is getting and will continue to get nominations.
In this light I am more impressed by an actor who is willing to switch from Hero to Villain rather than "normal" to "non-normal"(Ben Kingsley from Ghandi to his role in "Sexy Beast" which incidentally has gotten him an Oscar nomination - though I have to agree that it is not a "normal" person he is playing!)
Some actors either refuse to play a villain, or their agents won't allow it (or they never get a good villain script... I'd like to see Tom Hanks play a villain, but I doubt that the "star machine" will let him now. If Ronald Regean had played the right villain (and done it well) he might never have made it to the oval office.
For an interesting take on the whole "Oscar" thing dig up a copy of Danny Peary's book "The Alternate Oscars" which details year by year from 1927 to 1992 or so (and is blessed somewhat with hindsight) the award winners and what didn't win or didn't even get nominated and should have (IHO). He manages to remove much of the hype and politics of the day (substituting his own of course - but still a fresh and interesting view). The book is OOP, but a good library can get you a copy on interlibrary loan.
In the end though the only Oscars really worth checking out are what I think of as the "foundation" ones for Cinematography, and best adapted, and original screenplays. Without those things every Oscar that follows would be much much more difficult. Those awards also tend to have a bit less hype, and thus a bit less political crap, attached to them.
Visor definitely has no flash RAM - as they mention in their FAQ. Sorry no easy/cheap upgrade there for BOTH of these reasons.
Didn't Chris Carter move on to other projects a couple of years ago?... that is about the last time I remember seeing a really good _story_ on the X-Files.
Lately all we've been getting are bad poetry/psuedo-science/neo-philosophical monologues from Scully. Pretty much every time I hear one I tune out (mentally) and/or change the channel (phyically) - which explains why I haven't seen very much of this series lately.
Um... No.
You have to put both sides together and actually _think_ to figure that out.
Three sides to every story...
And beyond the marketroid messing things up. In the physical world you just would not build some things certain ways - they would fall down. (This is one reason that engineers need certifications and licensing - a way of making sure that none of them will succumb to the marketroid telling them that "concrete is out - use this cool blue toothpaste to build that bridge" I think this kind of licensing would be very difficult to enforce in SW eng. though that is for another discussion... (which IIRC has already happened here...) In the world o' software there is no upper limit to the amount of complexity you can add to a project, some of the complexity comes in automatically (various OS's, hardware profiles, DB's etc.) and some is sprinkled liberally by the marketroids who tell you that now it has to have an "XML tie in" either one is enough to make it "fall down" alone. Isn't that the fun of it? (No - you're not allowed to beat the marketroids... that one is the boss's nephew...)
"Shockwave Rider",
"Sheep Look Up",
"Stand on Zanzibar"...
They just don't *feel* like Sci-Fi when you're reading them... they feel like newscasts and documentaries...