If you've read the books, ask yourself why you want to see this movie. Most likely, it's for nostalgic reasons. You might want to bring back the feelings you got when you read it the first time. I never got excited when I heard they were making this movie. Having read the series, I don't feel the need to watch a condensed version where I'm required to check my imagination at the door.
One of the greatest things about books as a medium is that a lot of the audio/visual details are left up to the reader to figure out. Words can never completely describe someone's personality, what a landscape looks like, or the subtle tones and inflections used in speech. Words can get you in the general vicinity, but the reader's mind has to fill in the gaps.
In effect, each time someone reads a book, it's customized for that particular reader. It's tailored to a single imagination. Science fiction is read by people who tend to have great imaginations, and a well-written sci-fi novel lets its readers' imaginations play a major role in what they get out of the book.
HHGTTG is one of the best sci-fi books ever for this very reason. Adams didn't use pages of prose to describe things in minute detail. He left that up the reader.
(Side note: If you've read the Tolkien trilogy, you know how much work he put into description. This is one of the major reasons it translated so well to the big screen. This is also why the books were so long.)
Looks like my lowered expectations have avoided a major let-down.
Why are we trying to cram all this stuff into our lives? When you multitask your entertainment, all it does is take some of the pleasure out of it. I'd rather *read* a single book in two months and really take it in than squeeze 8 of them into the little gaps of time during the day.
I subscribe to the field of thought that it's better to make priorities of what makes you happiest and go after a few of them full bore in the spare time you have, rather than spend a little time with each of them and get nowhere. Accept the fact that you can't possibly do everything you want, and take seriously the things you *can* do.
... as evidenced by one of my colleague's recent thesis. In it, he compares the performance of a high end 24-processor SGI system with the performance of a few (2-4) cheap Linux PCs running the same application. We aren't even talking about a clustered system here - just a few boxes sync'd with a little networking.
... which is the fact that spam cases need to eventually be taken through the court system, with a verdict being handed down by a judge or jury.
This man doesn't qualify for hero status. He basically threatened the company with a lawsuit and accepted a little money to go away and not tell anyone about the company's practices (or at least without the company's name).
When people settle cases, they may get some money and self-satisfaction, but it does very little good for anyone else. When a case is tried in court and a verdict is rendered, a legal precedent is set by which future actions are governed. This is the only truly effective way of fighting the onslaught of spam email in the long run.
Even if you manage to get a huge settlement and put a company out of business, the way is still paved for 5 more companies to pop up and take its place. And in this case, it sounds like the company is absolutely free to continue its practices as it has in the past. Where's the good angle to this story?
We've had a couple of people in my lab looking into handheld devices with Java solutions. The fact is, many of the devices and OS's that claim to support Java only support a subset of the packages.
Since we wanted to use the Corba classes in Java, many of the options we looked at simply didn't have that implemented. And few (if any) devices actually support Java 2 1.3.x, which we needed to use the Swing classes.
In the end (and I know the Slashdot crowd will love to hear this), we snagged an iPaq 3670 and installed ARM Linux on it, which allowed us to install Blackdown's Java-Linux runtime environment. Beautiful.
Our largest project, VRJuggler, is a development environment for virtual reality apps and is absolutely open sourced.
We've had great success using the open source academic model, particularly in getting interest and support for the project from people outside the university.
Are there any other labs out in academia that are also promoting the use of open source?
Slashdot Mirror
If you've read the books, ask yourself why you want to see this movie. Most likely, it's for nostalgic reasons. You might want to bring back the feelings you got when you read it the first time. I never got excited when I heard they were making this movie. Having read the series, I don't feel the need to watch a condensed version where I'm required to check my imagination at the door.
One of the greatest things about books as a medium is that a lot of the audio/visual details are left up to the reader to figure out. Words can never completely describe someone's personality, what a landscape looks like, or the subtle tones and inflections used in speech. Words can get you in the general vicinity, but the reader's mind has to fill in the gaps.
In effect, each time someone reads a book, it's customized for that particular reader. It's tailored to a single imagination. Science fiction is read by people who tend to have great imaginations, and a well-written sci-fi novel lets its readers' imaginations play a major role in what they get out of the book.
HHGTTG is one of the best sci-fi books ever for this very reason. Adams didn't use pages of prose to describe things in minute detail. He left that up the reader.
(Side note: If you've read the Tolkien trilogy, you know how much work he put into description. This is one of the major reasons it translated so well to the big screen. This is also why the books were so long.)
Looks like my lowered expectations have avoided a major let-down.
Why are we trying to cram all this stuff into our lives? When you multitask your entertainment, all it does is take some of the pleasure out of it. I'd rather *read* a single book in two months and really take it in than squeeze 8 of them into the little gaps of time during the day.
I subscribe to the field of thought that it's better to make priorities of what makes you happiest and go after a few of them full bore in the spare time you have, rather than spend a little time with each of them and get nowhere. Accept the fact that you can't possibly do everything you want, and take seriously the things you *can* do.
It's fan-freaking-tastic.
[Check out the paper here]
Purely to add a little bit of the aesthetic to the list. [Check it out]
This man doesn't qualify for hero status. He basically threatened the company with a lawsuit and accepted a little money to go away and not tell anyone about the company's practices (or at least without the company's name).
When people settle cases, they may get some money and self-satisfaction, but it does very little good for anyone else. When a case is tried in court and a verdict is rendered, a legal precedent is set by which future actions are governed. This is the only truly effective way of fighting the onslaught of spam email in the long run.
Even if you manage to get a huge settlement and put a company out of business, the way is still paved for 5 more companies to pop up and take its place. And in this case, it sounds like the company is absolutely free to continue its practices as it has in the past. Where's the good angle to this story?
We've had a couple of people in my lab looking into handheld devices with Java solutions. The fact is, many of the devices and OS's that claim to support Java only support a subset of the packages.
Since we wanted to use the Corba classes in Java, many of the options we looked at simply didn't have that implemented. And few (if any) devices actually support Java 2 1.3.x, which we needed to use the Swing classes.
In the end (and I know the Slashdot crowd will love to hear this), we snagged an iPaq 3670 and installed ARM Linux on it, which allowed us to install Blackdown's Java-Linux runtime environment. Beautiful.
The Virtual Reality Application Center at Iowa State University is kind of a testbed for open source, being used as a trial to see if this type of development can really work.
Our largest project, VRJuggler, is a development environment for virtual reality apps and is absolutely open sourced.
We've had great success using the open source academic model, particularly in getting interest and support for the project from people outside the university.
Are there any other labs out in academia that are also promoting the use of open source?