A lot of professors don't care either - they've got their research projects they'd much rather be working on, than giving basic teaching to undergrads.
If they did a 3 film set about the Timothy Zahn stuff - they really wouldn't have to change much either, and... acutally really _shouldn't_ change much - then you'd get something really cool. Thrawn was a brilliant character - a very plausible 'bad guy', and the rest of the storyline fit really quite well indeed.
Actually, yeah. I think I'll go re-read those:)
Actually Star Wars very definitely has potential to do 'dark and nasty' and do it well. I mean, think about the key themes in there. It's about a rebellion - freedom fighters, or perhaps 'terrorists'? It's about an oppressive regime, spreading out and being racist (ok, species-ist) across the galaxy.
You'd have plenty of framework to make a political commentary on the war on terror. Mix in a little bit of fundamental differences in culture - the Empire plugs one ideology to people who just don't think that way - and maybe mix in a bit of crooked shenanigans, spaceships and just a shade of jedi mythos/persecution. (Not convinced it needs it though - way better to have a couple of 'dark jedi' bad guys, and have the good guys running scared).
Could be pretty good. Fairly sure it'll never happen mind - George Lucas will want creative control, and he'll go all fluffy and cute.
Problem is, and always has been that computers are basically jumped up calculators - sure they're fast, and can bounce lots of numbers back and forth, but they just don't 'think' in the same was as a person does. Any AI is an approximation of a human ideal of an algorithm, emulated on a platform that doesn't really support that kind of processing.
Until that changes, we cannot really have 'machine intelligence', because it won't ever be - it'll be an emulation of a human thought process, that pretty much by definition will be incomplete.
We can have AI - and we already do - but only when we stop trying to reproduce the human brain electronically - what's the point anyway, it's not like it's difficult for people to reproduce.
Handheld computers were predicted. The level of data/communications connectivity though? Not so much. Tricorders are pretty much standalone devices, where the current smartphone is more of a mobile net presence.
What can someone do with your cell number? Phone you up? Yeah, that really sucks. I hate it when people do that.
With photos of you, they can see where you live, what you do, who you know, what you wear, what you look like, whether you're underage, whether you get drunk at parties, whether you're an exhibitionist who runs down streets wearing a tutu, and whatnot.
Cellphones are a means of contact - that's all. Phone numbers even get listed in the phone book and everything.
Thing is, my LJ layout has remained pretty much the same since I got it in... 03?
I spent a while fiddling around with it, to get something I was happy with and... have left it the same ever since. Which is ok, because other people can apply their own custom layouts too.
But I don't really care about how facebook layers their info, only that they seem to have two 'sources' - top news and most recent - and between the two they still don't cover all the stuff I _want_ to see.
I'm all for change, but when it makes the user experience more annoying, I'd like to be able to opt out, thanks.
I do. Although, I do make it post to Facebook, because I know more people bother to log in to facebook than bother to go and read LJs.
I don't mind overly - I can cope with the notion that inane drivel goes on facebook, and real content goes in a real blog. What annoys me is when people try to have a 'proper' discussion in the comments on FB, when it really just doesn't support it properly.
See, in my book that's 'harder to use'. I find the fact that I'm not certain to see everything on facebook irritating too - I have a blog, I subscribe to see others, I want to see all their posts, not just some of them.
Meh, whatever. I'm on facebook because other people are. I'm hoping google will be less annoying and _also_ managed to drag people away from farcebook. I suspect this will not be so.
Same reason the masses migrated to facebook - they didn't, but as a new generation decided that the 'new way' was facebook, the rest caught up or got left out.
I have a facebook account primarily for that reason, despite liking having a 'proper' blog. - I missed out on what people I knew were doing.
And am considering twitter, for a similar reason.
Give me wave as a social network, and I will be happy. Technically, people can already do this, but... a 'publish and let people follow if they wish' sort of approach is better than a defined list of recipients.
You don't actually need much more than that, to make something that'll be better than most of the competition.
How about: It was written in 1965, and still somehow manages to be more visionary than almost all Sci Fi since?
For me, I really liked the epic feel to it. Yes, it's a word that gets overused. And yet Dune is set in a distant future, and somehow manages to make you _believe_ that's so - that there are organizations that have been scheming for millenia to set all the pieces in place for something, and that there could have been a rise and fall of the technology.
Actually, the thing I really like is it's complete lack of computers - not a single one - the book was written at about a point where computers were starting to become something that was 'known', and yet Herbert came up with the notion that a 'machine mind' was an abomination, and there was the 'butlerian jihad' which threw it all out.
But you've also got a lot of religion in there - The Fremen, for example are Zen Sunni - in which there's been an extrapolation of Sunni Muslim, and Zen Buddhism, and that's gone to underpin their culture and their outlook.
All through the book, the you see the reflection of the sheer depth of the setting that Herbert created, and something that's consistent and actually makes you feel that that's how a distant future of humanity _could_ look.
And the idea of a Mentat is still one I really like.
I'd say a lot of the current Sci Fi and Fantasy genres owe rather a lot to Dune.
Lynch did a credible 'feel' to it - good enough that they reused it in Dune: Emperor and it worked fairly well.
I'm a massive fan of Dune, and... would like to see a film that did it justice - I just don't think that the book can make the transition and still be good.
Then again, Peter Jackson proved me wrong with Lord of the Rings, so maybe it can be done.
I mean, Lynch's original had 8 hours of footage left on the cutting room floor, so y'know.
It's something that can work as 3D, but I don't actually think the visuals are what 'makes' Dune - I quite like the miniseries, for all the (obvious) low budget there. The acting suffered somewhat, but the general multi part, several hours approach worked a lot better than a film ever could I think.
You make a good point. I'm pretty sure there are 'scantily clad' baby photos of me. They're not porn. Me wandering around naked isn't porn either. I'm not particularly bothered by the notion of 'being naked' but I do wear clothes out of courtesy to everyone else - if they really want to see a fat man naked jiggling his bits, I don't care in the slightest.
I think they're missing an opportunity actually.
First class passengers get a personalised 'pat down' by a security attendant of the opposite sex (or same sex, if that's more to their taste) wearing something sexy. Pick from bikini, catsuit, negliee, hotpants...
This is totally unfair. They get to full body scan me, but still force me to wear clothes?
The flesh wants to be FREE!.
Let me fly naked, waving my bits free in the breeze for all to see. What's good for one is good for all!
*cough*
Might not be entirely serious.
OK. I have done certs and continuing education - I've been 'in the industry' for 10 years now. It's all been too narrow in scope - vendor certs in particular, are much more focussed on how their bit of kit works, and very few of them cover any broader than that. Even those that do widen the scope somewhat, still are quite narrow in scope - they might tell you about the general practises of SAN tech, but to date no one has covered communication theory, Nyquist theorum, hamming distance and channel bandwidth/entropy. Similarly No employer has seen a need to educate me about databases, because I'm not a DBA - but knowing how they work, and the theory behind them is frequently very useful when I'm doing Unix sysadmin. And more, it means I understand what 'relational database' actually means (sound dumb, I know, but a lot of my colleagues don't really 'get' it). I understand/know how semiconductors are designed, and have done some PCB design myself.
There's a lot of stuff where that's the case - there's _some_ courses that are better than others, that I won't dispute. But still, all of them I've run into have been quite narrowly focussed, and don't confer many transferrable skills, for all they give me bits of paper to list on my CV.
Agreed. Most of my degree was _directly_ not a lot of use - I've moved into systems admin type stuff, and Computer Systems Engineering only had a few modules over the 3 years that were directly applicable. (E.g. perl programming I use daily, formal methods, database design, not so much).
But there's a lot of stuff that's been indirectly relevant - communication theory kicks in when you start talking about protocols. Database design lets you slap people upside the head for using a spreadsheet for server configurations. Assembly and embedded processor programming gives you a handle on performance analysis for 'black box' devices.
I daily see the difference in perspective my degree has given me - I'm thinking a different way to most of my colleagues who just 'sort of ended up' in IT.
I'm not convinced. I think there is value in a degree. I would tend to agree that their value isn't as much as they're bigged up to be though - there's a lot of careers that 3 years on the job holds more value than 3 years of formal education, but... at the same time, I think I've come out ahead with mine, working in IT. But I know a lot of my contemporaries at Uni who _didn't_ end up working in their chosen field, and for them, the degree has had less value than 3 years more work experience would have.
I generally like the notion of a touch screen gizmo that'll let me STFW and watch the odd video and stuff, that I can hang on a wall - like in the kitchen - I like the idea of having a recipe website handy.
But for me, if it's a large (touch) screen that doesn't do much, I'm not going to pay over the odds for it.
I'll pay more for more functionality (well, actually I probably won't - if I wanted a laptop, I'd have already gone and bought a laptop), and I'll buy cheaper stuff if it does the right subset of things.
I don't have a problem with people who don't want to be contactable, as long as they don't mind not getting invited to any parties.
I'll accept your right to not be bothered, just as long as you accept my right to not bother to stay in touch if you make it difficult. Sound reasonable?
It isn't? Certainly looks a lot like a iPod touch with a larger screen.
Whatever. The world bought 'locked down' in the form of consoles, and did so in a massive scale. The average consumer doesn't want freedom, they just want their shiny toy to work.
Slashdot Mirror
A lot of professors don't care either - they've got their research projects they'd much rather be working on, than giving basic teaching to undergrads.
Why just teenagers? >:-)
If they did a 3 film set about the Timothy Zahn stuff - they really wouldn't have to change much either, and ... acutally really _shouldn't_ change much - then you'd get something really cool. Thrawn was a brilliant character - a very plausible 'bad guy', and the rest of the storyline fit really quite well indeed.
:)
Actually, yeah. I think I'll go re-read those
Actually Star Wars very definitely has potential to do 'dark and nasty' and do it well. I mean, think about the key themes in there. It's about a rebellion - freedom fighters, or perhaps 'terrorists'? It's about an oppressive regime, spreading out and being racist (ok, species-ist) across the galaxy.
You'd have plenty of framework to make a political commentary on the war on terror. Mix in a little bit of fundamental differences in culture - the Empire plugs one ideology to people who just don't think that way - and maybe mix in a bit of crooked shenanigans, spaceships and just a shade of jedi mythos/persecution. (Not convinced it needs it though - way better to have a couple of 'dark jedi' bad guys, and have the good guys running scared).
Could be pretty good. Fairly sure it'll never happen mind - George Lucas will want creative control, and he'll go all fluffy and cute.
The same could be said of Dune. As we all know well, there were only ever 3 Dune books.
Problem is, and always has been that computers are basically jumped up calculators - sure they're fast, and can bounce lots of numbers back and forth, but they just don't 'think' in the same was as a person does. Any AI is an approximation of a human ideal of an algorithm, emulated on a platform that doesn't really support that kind of processing.
Until that changes, we cannot really have 'machine intelligence', because it won't ever be - it'll be an emulation of a human thought process, that pretty much by definition will be incomplete.
We can have AI - and we already do - but only when we stop trying to reproduce the human brain electronically - what's the point anyway, it's not like it's difficult for people to reproduce.
Handheld computers were predicted. The level of data/communications connectivity though? Not so much. Tricorders are pretty much standalone devices, where the current smartphone is more of a mobile net presence.
Or do it anyway, and brag about it on facebook.
What can someone do with your cell number? Phone you up? Yeah, that really sucks. I hate it when people do that.
With photos of you, they can see where you live, what you do, who you know, what you wear, what you look like, whether you're underage, whether you get drunk at parties, whether you're an exhibitionist who runs down streets wearing a tutu, and whatnot.
Cellphones are a means of contact - that's all. Phone numbers even get listed in the phone book and everything.
Thing is, my LJ layout has remained pretty much the same since I got it in ... 03? ... have left it the same ever since. Which is ok, because other people can apply their own custom layouts too.
I spent a while fiddling around with it, to get something I was happy with and
But I don't really care about how facebook layers their info, only that they seem to have two 'sources' - top news and most recent - and between the two they still don't cover all the stuff I _want_ to see.
I'm all for change, but when it makes the user experience more annoying, I'd like to be able to opt out, thanks.
I do. Although, I do make it post to Facebook, because I know more people bother to log in to facebook than bother to go and read LJs.
I don't mind overly - I can cope with the notion that inane drivel goes on facebook, and real content goes in a real blog. What annoys me is when people try to have a 'proper' discussion in the comments on FB, when it really just doesn't support it properly.
See, in my book that's 'harder to use'. I find the fact that I'm not certain to see everything on facebook irritating too - I have a blog, I subscribe to see others, I want to see all their posts, not just some of them.
Meh, whatever. I'm on facebook because other people are. I'm hoping google will be less annoying and _also_ managed to drag people away from farcebook. I suspect this will not be so.
Same reason the masses migrated to facebook - they didn't, but as a new generation decided that the 'new way' was facebook, the rest caught up or got left out.
I have a facebook account primarily for that reason, despite liking having a 'proper' blog. - I missed out on what people I knew were doing.
And am considering twitter, for a similar reason.
Give me wave as a social network, and I will be happy. Technically, people can already do this, but ... a 'publish and let people follow if they wish' sort of approach is better than a defined list of recipients.
You don't actually need much more than that, to make something that'll be better than most of the competition.
How about: It was written in 1965, and still somehow manages to be more visionary than almost all Sci Fi since?
For me, I really liked the epic feel to it. Yes, it's a word that gets overused. And yet Dune is set in a distant future, and somehow manages to make you _believe_ that's so - that there are organizations that have been scheming for millenia to set all the pieces in place for something, and that there could have been a rise and fall of the technology.
Actually, the thing I really like is it's complete lack of computers - not a single one - the book was written at about a point where computers were starting to become something that was 'known', and yet Herbert came up with the notion that a 'machine mind' was an abomination, and there was the 'butlerian jihad' which threw it all out.
But you've also got a lot of religion in there - The Fremen, for example are Zen Sunni - in which there's been an extrapolation of Sunni Muslim, and Zen Buddhism, and that's gone to underpin their culture and their outlook.
All through the book, the you see the reflection of the sheer depth of the setting that Herbert created, and something that's consistent and actually makes you feel that that's how a distant future of humanity _could_ look.
And the idea of a Mentat is still one I really like.
I'd say a lot of the current Sci Fi and Fantasy genres owe rather a lot to Dune.
Lynch did a credible 'feel' to it - good enough that they reused it in Dune: Emperor and it worked fairly well. ... would like to see a film that did it justice - I just don't think that the book can make the transition and still be good.
I'm a massive fan of Dune, and
Then again, Peter Jackson proved me wrong with Lord of the Rings, so maybe it can be done.
I mean, Lynch's original had 8 hours of footage left on the cutting room floor, so y'know.
It's something that can work as 3D, but I don't actually think the visuals are what 'makes' Dune - I quite like the miniseries, for all the (obvious) low budget there. The acting suffered somewhat, but the general multi part, several hours approach worked a lot better than a film ever could I think.
You make a good point. I'm pretty sure there are 'scantily clad' baby photos of me. They're not porn. Me wandering around naked isn't porn either. I'm not particularly bothered by the notion of 'being naked' but I do wear clothes out of courtesy to everyone else - if they really want to see a fat man naked jiggling his bits, I don't care in the slightest.
I think they're missing an opportunity actually. ...
First class passengers get a personalised 'pat down' by a security attendant of the opposite sex (or same sex, if that's more to their taste) wearing something sexy. Pick from bikini, catsuit, negliee, hotpants
This is totally unfair. They get to full body scan me, but still force me to wear clothes?
The flesh wants to be FREE!.
Let me fly naked, waving my bits free in the breeze for all to see. What's good for one is good for all!
*cough*
Might not be entirely serious.
OK. I have done certs and continuing education - I've been 'in the industry' for 10 years now. It's all been too narrow in scope - vendor certs in particular, are much more focussed on how their bit of kit works, and very few of them cover any broader than that. Even those that do widen the scope somewhat, still are quite narrow in scope - they might tell you about the general practises of SAN tech, but to date no one has covered communication theory, Nyquist theorum, hamming distance and channel bandwidth/entropy.
Similarly No employer has seen a need to educate me about databases, because I'm not a DBA - but knowing how they work, and the theory behind them is frequently very useful when I'm doing Unix sysadmin. And more, it means I understand what 'relational database' actually means (sound dumb, I know, but a lot of my colleagues don't really 'get' it). I understand/know how semiconductors are designed, and have done some PCB design myself.
There's a lot of stuff where that's the case - there's _some_ courses that are better than others, that I won't dispute. But still, all of them I've run into have been quite narrowly focussed, and don't confer many transferrable skills, for all they give me bits of paper to list on my CV.
Agreed. Most of my degree was _directly_ not a lot of use - I've moved into systems admin type stuff, and Computer Systems Engineering only had a few modules over the 3 years that were directly applicable. (E.g. perl programming I use daily, formal methods, database design, not so much).
But there's a lot of stuff that's been indirectly relevant - communication theory kicks in when you start talking about protocols. Database design lets you slap people upside the head for using a spreadsheet for server configurations. Assembly and embedded processor programming gives you a handle on performance analysis for 'black box' devices.
I daily see the difference in perspective my degree has given me - I'm thinking a different way to most of my colleagues who just 'sort of ended up' in IT.
I'm not convinced. I think there is value in a degree. I would tend to agree that their value isn't as much as they're bigged up to be though - there's a lot of careers that 3 years on the job holds more value than 3 years of formal education, but ... at the same time, I think I've come out ahead with mine, working in IT. But I know a lot of my contemporaries at Uni who _didn't_ end up working in their chosen field, and for them, the degree has had less value than 3 years more work experience would have.
I generally like the notion of a touch screen gizmo that'll let me STFW and watch the odd video and stuff, that I can hang on a wall - like in the kitchen - I like the idea of having a recipe website handy.
But for me, if it's a large (touch) screen that doesn't do much, I'm not going to pay over the odds for it.
I'll pay more for more functionality (well, actually I probably won't - if I wanted a laptop, I'd have already gone and bought a laptop), and I'll buy cheaper stuff if it does the right subset of things.
I don't have a problem with people who don't want to be contactable, as long as they don't mind not getting invited to any parties.
I'll accept your right to not be bothered, just as long as you accept my right to not bother to stay in touch if you make it difficult. Sound reasonable?
It isn't? Certainly looks a lot like a iPod touch with a larger screen.
Whatever. The world bought 'locked down' in the form of consoles, and did so in a massive scale. The average consumer doesn't want freedom, they just want their shiny toy to work.