... how Johnny Come Lately and pointless is this? It's like the guy in Something about Mary and 7 minute abs. At the rate at which I recieve extra space on GMail, I'm likely to hit 30GB of storage on there before I ever use the 2GB they start you out with. I've been using GMail for almost a year now and I have barely used 200MB of storage and I now have 2.6GB of accumulated storage.
So if all things being rationally tilted for GMail, including trustworthyness and the fact that Google has a scary vibe of keeping their users best interests at heart, (until we see their real evil plans) in addition to using a free product provided by a company with billions of dollars in net worth and a strong supporter of open source, I say GMail is still really the only way to go, unless you are too attached to hotmail or yahoo to switch.
Good magazine so far...
on
Makers of MAKE
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· Score: 4, Informative
I've got my first two issues and at the very least, they are interesting. They straddle the line between pure MacGyver-ness and the kinds of things you'd find in 2600 magazine.
AI was actually a fantastic movie IMHO. It was a good blend of a Kubrik story with Speilberg's very polished look and high production value that he's famous for.
... or is everyone ignoring the fact that the icon for games or linux games (not sure which) is a MICROSOFT Sidewinder joystick? It seems oddly out of place.
Having been at the very least an HTML tinkerer since 1996, and also having parlayed a hobby into a career, I've spent a lot of time with cross browser compatability. In 2002, I learned a whole new level of cross browser grilling when I went to work for an ad agency with clients such as Dell, HP, 3M, etc.
My message to web developers is this:
For the love of God, stop using CSS for anything more than text formatting. Outside of that, not much else is 100% cross browser compatible, and I define 100% cross browser compatible as being more than vaguely similar from one browser to the next. Certain things like spacing and borders when defined in CSS get rendered differently from one browser to the next. I don't care if it looks great in IE or Mozilla. It should look great in both.
Until the browsers converge on CSS, (which is great in theory) please use nested tables for your layouts. They work great all the way back to Netscape 4, which is all you can ask for these days.
What I do for a living now, is even more dependent on other people writing clean, well commented, cross-browser code than the last job. I take websites for non-profits and put them into a CMS with an emphasis on preserving the look of their original site. Since the pages get split up into itty bitty pieces and put into a generic CMS that must cater to most types of site designs, I've lowered my tollerance for bad HTML and shoehorning designs into CSS.
I feel bad for my mom. I sold her my laptop back when, so that I'd have money to move to Austin. 2 years later, she finally caved and got a cable modem but the exploits and spyware are killing her desire to even have the computer.
It's not just the internet thing. She has a Celeron 733MHz w/ 64MB of RAM which is enough to run Win2K and do the most basic tasks, but with all the spyware, it leeches every last ounce of memory and processor time. I thought about putting XandrOS on it (I did for my brother.) but that's too bold of an experiment when I live out of town and am not the most affluent linux user. I wouldn't be able to put Windows back on if it's not working out until my next visit. If my brother manages alright with Xandr, I might put it on my mom's machine this summer.
Re:Arbitrary and completely against the grain
on
Top 50 DVDs
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· Score: 1
All that and my line breaks got foobar'd? Damn!
Arbitrary and completely against the grain
on
Top 50 DVDs
·
· Score: 1
That said, here is a hodgepodge top ten list from my collection. I think ruling out boxed sets isn't really unfair because the extras are often separate from the regular discs and with a few, you can't even buy the movies individually.
Criteria for a good DVD package include:
Tons of extras that are actually of some entertainment value. (Commentary tracks are usually standard and no "points" are granted to ones that aren't exceptionally insightful or funny.)
A real DTS audio track.
Anamorphic widescreen.
Music Vidoes, games, etc.
Fight Club -
This was the first disc I got deep into because by the time it came out on DVD it was my favorite movie of all time. I was also much more fascinated by 3D art at the time, and there is a great deal about the art production on this disc. The commentary with David Finscher(sp), Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham Carter was one of the coolest commentaries where there wasn't an over abundance of people trying to be funny.
Indiana Jones Trilogy
Ok, so this one gets a pass on the DTS business even though they could've used DTS's uncompressed audio for a more rich soundscape. It was more satisfying to actually get this pure and untouched on DVD than it was the original Star Wars Trilogy. The separate extras disc was really well done and there is a ton of interesting stuff there relating to everything Indy.
Desparado/El Mariachi Double Feature DVD
This is a case where less is still less but it's still more than you get with your standard DVD. As an aspiring filmmaker, I really liked the two "10 minute filmschool" bits and it's also a great supplement if you picked up Robert Rodriguez's book "Rebel without a Crew." You also get two entertaining movies for what is probably now a sub $20 pricetag.
Clerks X
I'm no doubt a big Kevin Smith fan, and I think he knows that suckers like me will keep pumping out bucks for movies we allready own just to get the fancy multi-disc boxed set. I also think he knows that he's got a bit of a reputation DVD-wise to live up to. Kevin Smith has never held anything sacred and prevented the public from seeing it on DVD, if it has anything to do with his movies. This usually means a funny-as-hell commentary and piles and piles of extras and outtakes. This set is no different, and if anything it's more insightful about Kevin's rise to stardom than any previous DVDs. You get the rough cut direct from the SVHS master (that's not much better than a VHS master) in addition to the pristine film print.
Citizen Kane
The main propelling feature of this set is not the transfer, certainly not the Dolby Digital 1 channel sound, and there isn't much in terms of a slew of extras. However, it does come with the 2 hour+ documentary that tells the real story behind Kane, including William Randalph Hearst's attempts to block it from release. Orsen Wells' rise from the days as a radio show prodigy at RKO to the all singing all dancing filmmaker/actor/writer. I'd say it's safe to say the movie is quite good too.
Lord of the Rings Special Extended Edition
It's hard not to catigorize each of these separately (even though that's how I bought them) since they follow a very similar template with their special features. When you see how many there are, (2 discs of just extras per movie) you'll be thankful. You can browse the disc and know that Weta Workshop is completely different on Return of the King than it is on Two Towers. They try to focus on things that are introduced in the films in which they accompany which is quite a mammoth task considering how much material there is to cover. No extras have ever made me appreciate a film more for the amount of work put into it's production.
Mallrats
Kevin Smith strikes again. Outragiously funny commentary that's almost as funny as the movie. This is also one of the "old" discs that was produced in such a way as to utilize every ounce of available space on a dual layer DVD. This disc has tons of features.
Tenacious D - The Complete Masterworks
Ok. If you get trapped on a desert island, this is the disc to take with you. On
Strings still break. Roadies still have jobs. heh
Most bands having roadies change strings quite frequently in addition to the breakage factor. Also most guitarists have more than one guitar.
I remember seeing a very similar keypad on Jimmy's guitar in the MTV Unleaded Page/Plant reunion circa 1996. I do remember seeing it and thinking it a bit odd.
I'm a huge Jimmy Page fan, and before I finished reading this post, I immediately thought of him. Anyone familiar with him and how he plays should know he ofton plays in alternate tunings like open D and DADGAD. Me being the poser that I am often find myself tuning and detuning my guitar to play some of his stuff.
It was insane. People wrapped around the Alamo two wide. The adaptation is very true to the film while still being very creative. I mean, how would you have done this stuff when you were twelve? I wish I had the ability to finish things I start like these guys. The Q&A's should've been filmed for the DVD special features. It was almost as entertaining listening to these guys describe how the risked life and limb and broke the law numerous times. Tbey basically played with guns, blew things up, got plaster molds stuck on their heads, (NOT dental plaster either) and lots of other stupid stuff kids do.
The system relies on the fact that all people have eyes that can be photographed properly. What about the people who have lost both eyes, or the people like me who have a condition that makes the eyes twitch quite sporraditcally. I'm not talking about an occasional twitch either. It's constant, and would make iris scanning difficult, and retnal scanning much more difficult.
It couldn't possibly be because the cost of materials or the fabrication process is cheaper now? I don't think using substandard materials and components is going to make you a successful business when RMAing all those drives (and most drives have exceptional warranties when compared to other consumer electronics) would cost you a lot of money. IBM just sold their disk division, and it probably had a lot to do with the fact that they were gutshot and hemhoraging(sp?) money from producing all those shit shingle drives that were failing at an almost unbelievable rate.
Slashdot Mirror
... how Johnny Come Lately and pointless is this? It's like the guy in Something about Mary and 7 minute abs. At the rate at which I recieve extra space on GMail, I'm likely to hit 30GB of storage on there before I ever use the 2GB they start you out with. I've been using GMail for almost a year now and I have barely used 200MB of storage and I now have 2.6GB of accumulated storage.
So if all things being rationally tilted for GMail, including trustworthyness and the fact that Google has a scary vibe of keeping their users best interests at heart, (until we see their real evil plans) in addition to using a free product provided by a company with billions of dollars in net worth and a strong supporter of open source, I say GMail is still really the only way to go, unless you are too attached to hotmail or yahoo to switch.
I've got my first two issues and at the very least, they are interesting. They straddle the line between pure MacGyver-ness and the kinds of things you'd find in 2600 magazine.
AI was actually a fantastic movie IMHO. It was a good blend of a Kubrik story with Speilberg's very polished look and high production value that he's famous for.
... or is everyone ignoring the fact that the icon for games or linux games (not sure which) is a MICROSOFT Sidewinder joystick? It seems oddly out of place.
Having been at the very least an HTML tinkerer since 1996, and also having parlayed a hobby into a career, I've spent a lot of time with cross browser compatability. In 2002, I learned a whole new level of cross browser grilling when I went to work for an ad agency with clients such as Dell, HP, 3M, etc.
My message to web developers is this:
For the love of God, stop using CSS for anything more than text formatting. Outside of that, not much else is 100% cross browser compatible, and I define 100% cross browser compatible as being more than vaguely similar from one browser to the next. Certain things like spacing and borders when defined in CSS get rendered differently from one browser to the next. I don't care if it looks great in IE or Mozilla. It should look great in both.
Until the browsers converge on CSS, (which is great in theory) please use nested tables for your layouts. They work great all the way back to Netscape 4, which is all you can ask for these days.
What I do for a living now, is even more dependent on other people writing clean, well commented, cross-browser code than the last job. I take websites for non-profits and put them into a CMS with an emphasis on preserving the look of their original site. Since the pages get split up into itty bitty pieces and put into a generic CMS that must cater to most types of site designs, I've lowered my tollerance for bad HTML and shoehorning designs into CSS.
I feel bad for my mom. I sold her my laptop back when, so that I'd have money to move to Austin. 2 years later, she finally caved and got a cable modem but the exploits and spyware are killing her desire to even have the computer. It's not just the internet thing. She has a Celeron 733MHz w/ 64MB of RAM which is enough to run Win2K and do the most basic tasks, but with all the spyware, it leeches every last ounce of memory and processor time. I thought about putting XandrOS on it (I did for my brother.) but that's too bold of an experiment when I live out of town and am not the most affluent linux user. I wouldn't be able to put Windows back on if it's not working out until my next visit. If my brother manages alright with Xandr, I might put it on my mom's machine this summer.
All that and my line breaks got foobar'd? Damn!
That said, here is a hodgepodge top ten list from my collection. I think ruling out boxed sets isn't really unfair because the extras are often separate from the regular discs and with a few, you can't even buy the movies individually. Criteria for a good DVD package include: Tons of extras that are actually of some entertainment value. (Commentary tracks are usually standard and no "points" are granted to ones that aren't exceptionally insightful or funny.) A real DTS audio track. Anamorphic widescreen. Music Vidoes, games, etc. Fight Club - This was the first disc I got deep into because by the time it came out on DVD it was my favorite movie of all time. I was also much more fascinated by 3D art at the time, and there is a great deal about the art production on this disc. The commentary with David Finscher(sp), Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, and Helena Bonham Carter was one of the coolest commentaries where there wasn't an over abundance of people trying to be funny. Indiana Jones Trilogy Ok, so this one gets a pass on the DTS business even though they could've used DTS's uncompressed audio for a more rich soundscape. It was more satisfying to actually get this pure and untouched on DVD than it was the original Star Wars Trilogy. The separate extras disc was really well done and there is a ton of interesting stuff there relating to everything Indy. Desparado/El Mariachi Double Feature DVD This is a case where less is still less but it's still more than you get with your standard DVD. As an aspiring filmmaker, I really liked the two "10 minute filmschool" bits and it's also a great supplement if you picked up Robert Rodriguez's book "Rebel without a Crew." You also get two entertaining movies for what is probably now a sub $20 pricetag. Clerks X I'm no doubt a big Kevin Smith fan, and I think he knows that suckers like me will keep pumping out bucks for movies we allready own just to get the fancy multi-disc boxed set. I also think he knows that he's got a bit of a reputation DVD-wise to live up to. Kevin Smith has never held anything sacred and prevented the public from seeing it on DVD, if it has anything to do with his movies. This usually means a funny-as-hell commentary and piles and piles of extras and outtakes. This set is no different, and if anything it's more insightful about Kevin's rise to stardom than any previous DVDs. You get the rough cut direct from the SVHS master (that's not much better than a VHS master) in addition to the pristine film print. Citizen Kane The main propelling feature of this set is not the transfer, certainly not the Dolby Digital 1 channel sound, and there isn't much in terms of a slew of extras. However, it does come with the 2 hour+ documentary that tells the real story behind Kane, including William Randalph Hearst's attempts to block it from release. Orsen Wells' rise from the days as a radio show prodigy at RKO to the all singing all dancing filmmaker/actor/writer. I'd say it's safe to say the movie is quite good too. Lord of the Rings Special Extended Edition It's hard not to catigorize each of these separately (even though that's how I bought them) since they follow a very similar template with their special features. When you see how many there are, (2 discs of just extras per movie) you'll be thankful. You can browse the disc and know that Weta Workshop is completely different on Return of the King than it is on Two Towers. They try to focus on things that are introduced in the films in which they accompany which is quite a mammoth task considering how much material there is to cover. No extras have ever made me appreciate a film more for the amount of work put into it's production. Mallrats Kevin Smith strikes again. Outragiously funny commentary that's almost as funny as the movie. This is also one of the "old" discs that was produced in such a way as to utilize every ounce of available space on a dual layer DVD. This disc has tons of features. Tenacious D - The Complete Masterworks Ok. If you get trapped on a desert island, this is the disc to take with you. On
Strings still break. Roadies still have jobs. heh Most bands having roadies change strings quite frequently in addition to the breakage factor. Also most guitarists have more than one guitar.
I remember seeing a very similar keypad on Jimmy's guitar in the MTV Unleaded Page/Plant reunion circa 1996. I do remember seeing it and thinking it a bit odd.
I'm a huge Jimmy Page fan, and before I finished reading this post, I immediately thought of him. Anyone familiar with him and how he plays should know he ofton plays in alternate tunings like open D and DADGAD. Me being the poser that I am often find myself tuning and detuning my guitar to play some of his stuff.
It was insane. People wrapped around the Alamo two wide. The adaptation is very true to the film while still being very creative. I mean, how would you have done this stuff when you were twelve? I wish I had the ability to finish things I start like these guys. The Q&A's should've been filmed for the DVD special features. It was almost as entertaining listening to these guys describe how the risked life and limb and broke the law numerous times. Tbey basically played with guns, blew things up, got plaster molds stuck on their heads, (NOT dental plaster either) and lots of other stupid stuff kids do.
Four words in closing. The fire is real.
The system relies on the fact that all people have eyes that can be photographed properly. What about the people who have lost both eyes, or the people like me who have a condition that makes the eyes twitch quite sporraditcally. I'm not talking about an occasional twitch either. It's constant, and would make iris scanning difficult, and retnal scanning much more difficult.
It couldn't possibly be because the cost of materials or the fabrication process is cheaper now? I don't think using substandard materials and components is going to make you a successful business when RMAing all those drives (and most drives have exceptional warranties when compared to other consumer electronics) would cost you a lot of money. IBM just sold their disk division, and it probably had a lot to do with the fact that they were gutshot and hemhoraging(sp?) money from producing all those shit shingle drives that were failing at an almost unbelievable rate.