Says the guy flogging George Lucas in his signature?;)
You have a point. Now that he's finally no longer making movies, I suppose I should move on. But I still don't forgive him for what he did to Star Wars. Similar to (but not as intense) my feelings towards Rick Bremen for the emasculation of Star Trek.
The thing, though, is that ST:TOS was pretty topical for it's era, with metaphors to the Cold War, Civil (black & women's) Rights, all wrapped up in US optimism that was a carry-over from WW2.
Likewise, ST:TNG echoed the wretched sensitivity of the 80s & 90s, and ST:ENT did the terrorism thing.
Why couldn't a new ST deal with the over-arching themes of the 2010s?
Of course it could. But could it do so in an engaging and watchable fashion? I found Enterprise stiff, predictable, and boring as snot. That's not to say that terrorism as a theme is boring, it's the execution that was so.
recent star trek movies make me sad time travel and rewriting is the tool of lazy sci-fi writers out to make a buck on an established name.
...generally true. But old Trek had gotten so stale that there wasn't really any other place to go
My preference would have been "somewhere else". Not "reboot" the franchise. If Abrams wanted to do something new, he should have done it. Not something half-new. Just as time travel/alternate universes crap is the crutch of the lazy sci-fi writer, rebooting an aged but recognizable and previously successful franchise is the crutch of the lazy producer and risk averse investor.
You have a point.
...but I don't think the answer is to recreate the worst aspects of Voyager with as many former cast members as you can oust from the rest home.
> No place to go? It's an infinite universe with an infinite timeline.
Agreed, agreed. And so, why is our only focus an infinitesimally small number of characters, many long in the tooth, with a single, series-long mission? You know that even if this is wildly successful, (unlikely, in my opinion) the great majority of the scenes will be with the same small collection of people, in the same rooms and hallways, week after week? How in any measurement is this an infinite number of things that could happen? (Except perhaps at an atomic level, but I don't think that's what you meant.)
In other words, it's not the high level concept, but the inevitable composition that's at issue.
The problem is that L5 did one pilot, it ended on a cliffhanger, and a year and a half later there's no indication of any work to continue it.
Yes, that is a problem. But the difference between that and this is that it wasn't trying to drag a dead franchise out of its casket and slap it awake. L5 had some interesting ideas, and I'm sad that it never went anywhere.
There are people who will watch anything that's Old Trek, even if it's the original crew playing Wheelchair Basketball. Maybe there are enough geriatric fans out there to make another series a moderate success. But it has to be a steadily decreasing number.
recent star trek movies make me sad time travel and rewriting is the tool of lazy sci-fi writers out to make a buck on an established name.
...generally true. But old Trek had gotten so stale that there wasn't really any other place to go. I know many Trekkers don't like the reboot, and there are aspects that I wasn't excited about, but let's face it -- is a series made by old pharts for old pharts really where you want to be? It's starting to sound like being a Deadhead... "Yeah, there are a few members of the band still playing, let's follow them. Quick, Sundove, get in before the grandkids haul us off to the nursing facility." ("Grandma! Your name isn't 'Sundove'! Drop the bong and back away from the microbus!")
Isn't it better to let the franchise die when our memories are still of young people doing exciting things, not arthritic pharts arguing at a conference table?
I really do. And it's good to see Walter working again. But Voyager and Enterprise pretty much soured me to Old Trek. I'm sure some people will really enjoy this, and the best to them. But I'm done. I'd much rather see something (relatively) new and different move forward, like L5. Or a series based on literature that hasn't been done yet, like Ringworld or even the Heinlein juveniles. Why must we continue to flog dead horses?
> Yep, I like Microsoft, there I said -- I know, it's blasphemy here to say that, I'll go into an iChurch later and pray to the image of St. Jobs for forgiveness.
Ok, Jobs said there would never be a 7" ipad. Jobs died, and the company immediately made plans for a 7" ipad. (No offense meant to Apple fanbois. 7" is a good form factor for certain kinds of work, and Jobs was a true visionary who had a few blind spots, like many visionaries do.)
Now, Ballmer is leaving. What radical changes do we expect from the company?
Speculation:
(1) We will see something like "Windows 8 Workstation" released, which optionally restores the traditional desktop. It'll still run Metro apps if required, but will look and feel like an interface that actually works well on a traditional PC. Motivation: (a) Microsoft can't afford to take a big hit in the PC OS marketplace, which is their bread and butter. (b) Microsoft now credibly has someone to blame for Windows 8. (Similarly, they can't afford to piss off businesses with Server 2012; expect changes there.)
(2) Something radical will happen with Surface. Either the RT will be abandoned completely and with extreme malice, (which is my guess) or the company will seriously bear down on it and make it, I dunno, actually worthwhile. One way or another, there will be a major shift in priorities.
(3) The facilities manager will feel better about ordering new office furniture.
Re:A thousand chairs sigh in relief
on
Ballmer To Retire
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· Score: 1
until they realize what Ballmer's retirement gift is going to be.
I'd think it would be the entire unsold inventory of the Surface RT. But they'd really be missing an opportunity if it didn't include at least one conference room chair.
I worked in 3 hotels for about 6 years, big names, one was a Bestwestern. In all three hotels, we got bed bugs on a regular basis. We have protocols on how to put the room and the linens in quarantine as soon as this is discovered. Then we call someone to spray something ll over the room to kill the bed bugs. It's also common thing to put in quarantine the rooms beside the affected room.
So there is such a thing as "only one room infested", I also think that the guest over-reacted... Was it it's first time in an hotel ?
I still agree that the hotel should not sue the guest, maybe just explaining to the public what I just said... Informing them.
I understand what you're saying (and I have a friend who owns a motel, so hear many of these stories first hand).
The operative word to me, in this case, is infested. It's absolutely true that a traveler could bring bed bugs into a room from clothing or luggage -- it happens all the time -- that's how they spread, after all. But usually there are only a few, perhaps even in the single digits, and they take time to propagate to what a reasonable person would call "an infestation".
As rooms are cleaned daily (in most hotels), and as a few bedbugs take time to turn into an infestation, there's usually plenty of time for the cleaning crew to come in and out of the room, perhaps changing sheets, surely changing towels, brushing against bedclothes as they make the bed (even if they don't change sheets daily), taking stuff on and off the cleaning cart, and generally doing all the things that allow bedbugs to travel to other locales. And then they do the same operations in supposedly non-infested rooms, transporting bugs to those rooms. Although one or more travelers were almost certainly the original vector, it is the cleaning crew that spreads them throughout the rest of the hotel.
Now, if the guy was exaggerating, and there was only, maybe, two or four bedbugs that got him during the night, I could believe that the bugs were left by a previous resident. But an infestation... that implies a large colony, and in that environment, a colony does not stay in one place for any appreciable time.
So yeah, an infestation in one room tells me that in all probability the entire hotel has a problem.
"the hotel demanded he take it down and when he did they sued him for $95,000."" should be "the hotel demanded he take it down and when he didn't, they sued him for $95,000.""
I was wondering about that. My first thought was "wow, he shoulda left it up".
The hotel is not denying that this guy had bedbugs in his room on the night of his stay. Apparently the hotel's justification for suing comes down to them believing that only his room was infested, and that this was an isolated incident.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as "only one room infested with bed bugs" in a hotel. (Think about how they're serviced.) This could be an entertaining lawsuit. The problem I see is that the hotel taking him to court puts even more media attention on the hotel being infested.
I remember that; it was in rec.humor in the early nineties, wasn't it? People were complaining that duplicated apples tasted of toner, and then once it accidentally fired up while a tech was working on it, duplicating his arm, which flopped around wildly until subdued by beating it with sticks.
Was a very funny article as I recall. Haven't seen it in years, though.
Reading all the comments from people who have tried to use the soft keyboard or have seen it trying to be used, plus people getting aggravated at the dual nature of the operating system GUI (not functioning well as a desktop and not intuitive as a touch interface) it's readily apparent why commercials don't show people actually using the Surface.
But the real point, it's become apparent that the Surface was designed to sell, not to use. It's like a movie made to formula that some people see the first weekend, and then nobody else goes to once the word gets out.
well, it depends which laptop you compare it to, my old work Dell was heavier than a desktop PC!
The BBC's Click programme did a piece on it when it first came out and they ripped into it for being heavy, showing it being used in a gym for weight training. They also showed the very unresponsive keyboard in use... which told me all I needed to know about it.
...which, I think, goes back to why official commercials don't show users actually using the thing.
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Says the guy flogging George Lucas in his signature? ;)
You have a point. Now that he's finally no longer making movies, I suppose I should move on. But I still don't forgive him for what he did to Star Wars. Similar to (but not as intense) my feelings towards Rick Bremen for the emasculation of Star Trek.
The thing, though, is that ST:TOS was pretty topical for it's era, with metaphors to the Cold War, Civil (black & women's) Rights, all wrapped up in US optimism that was a carry-over from WW2.
Likewise, ST:TNG echoed the wretched sensitivity of the 80s & 90s, and ST:ENT did the terrorism thing.
Why couldn't a new ST deal with the over-arching themes of the 2010s?
Of course it could. But could it do so in an engaging and watchable fashion? I found Enterprise stiff, predictable, and boring as snot. That's not to say that terrorism as a theme is boring, it's the execution that was so.
recent star trek movies make me sad time travel and rewriting is the tool of lazy sci-fi writers out to make a buck on an established name.
My preference would have been "somewhere else". Not "reboot" the franchise. If Abrams wanted to do something new, he should have done it. Not something half-new. Just as time travel/alternate universes crap is the crutch of the lazy sci-fi writer, rebooting an aged but recognizable and previously successful franchise is the crutch of the lazy producer and risk averse investor.
You have a point.
> No place to go? It's an infinite universe with an infinite timeline.
Agreed, agreed. And so, why is our only focus an infinitesimally small number of characters, many long in the tooth, with a single, series-long mission? You know that even if this is wildly successful, (unlikely, in my opinion) the great majority of the scenes will be with the same small collection of people, in the same rooms and hallways, week after week? How in any measurement is this an infinite number of things that could happen? (Except perhaps at an atomic level, but I don't think that's what you meant.)
In other words, it's not the high level concept, but the inevitable composition that's at issue.
The problem is that L5 did one pilot, it ended on a cliffhanger, and a year and a half later there's no indication of any work to continue it.
Yes, that is a problem. But the difference between that and this is that it wasn't trying to drag a dead franchise out of its casket and slap it awake. L5 had some interesting ideas, and I'm sad that it never went anywhere.
There are people who will watch anything that's Old Trek, even if it's the original crew playing Wheelchair Basketball. Maybe there are enough geriatric fans out there to make another series a moderate success. But it has to be a steadily decreasing number.
recent star trek movies make me sad time travel and rewriting is the tool of lazy sci-fi writers out to make a buck on an established name.
Isn't it better to let the franchise die when our memories are still of young people doing exciting things, not arthritic pharts arguing at a conference table?
I really do. And it's good to see Walter working again. But Voyager and Enterprise pretty much soured me to Old Trek. I'm sure some people will really enjoy this, and the best to them. But I'm done. I'd much rather see something (relatively) new and different move forward, like L5. Or a series based on literature that hasn't been done yet, like Ringworld or even the Heinlein juveniles. Why must we continue to flog dead horses?
A car that doubles as a trash compactor.
That hurt my eyes. And ears.
> Yep, I like Microsoft, there I said -- I know, it's blasphemy here to say that, I'll go into an iChurch later and pray to the image of St. Jobs for forgiveness.
Those are by no means the only options.
Ok, Jobs said there would never be a 7" ipad. Jobs died, and the company immediately made plans for a 7" ipad. (No offense meant to Apple fanbois. 7" is a good form factor for certain kinds of work, and Jobs was a true visionary who had a few blind spots, like many visionaries do.)
Now, Ballmer is leaving. What radical changes do we expect from the company?
Speculation:
(1) We will see something like "Windows 8 Workstation" released, which optionally restores the traditional desktop. It'll still run Metro apps if required, but will look and feel like an interface that actually works well on a traditional PC. Motivation: (a) Microsoft can't afford to take a big hit in the PC OS marketplace, which is their bread and butter. (b) Microsoft now credibly has someone to blame for Windows 8. (Similarly, they can't afford to piss off businesses with Server 2012; expect changes there.)
(2) Something radical will happen with Surface. Either the RT will be abandoned completely and with extreme malice, (which is my guess) or the company will seriously bear down on it and make it, I dunno, actually worthwhile. One way or another, there will be a major shift in priorities.
(3) The facilities manager will feel better about ordering new office furniture.
Of course it's the right time, he's leaving the sinking ship to try to save some of his legacy.
Seriously, too late. Win8 and the Surface RT are already out.
At least that would be entertaining.
until they realize what Ballmer's retirement gift is going to be.
I'd think it would be the entire unsold inventory of the Surface RT. But they'd really be missing an opportunity if it didn't include at least one conference room chair.
Ballmer will retire when chairs fly.... wait, that doesn't work. I got nuthin.
I worked in 3 hotels for about 6 years, big names, one was a Bestwestern. In all three hotels, we got bed bugs on a regular basis. We have protocols on how to put the room and the linens in quarantine as soon as this is discovered. Then we call someone to spray something ll over the room to kill the bed bugs. It's also common thing to put in quarantine the rooms beside the affected room.
So there is such a thing as "only one room infested", I also think that the guest over-reacted... Was it it's first time in an hotel ?
I still agree that the hotel should not sue the guest, maybe just explaining to the public what I just said... Informing them.
I understand what you're saying (and I have a friend who owns a motel, so hear many of these stories first hand).
The operative word to me, in this case, is infested. It's absolutely true that a traveler could bring bed bugs into a room from clothing or luggage -- it happens all the time -- that's how they spread, after all. But usually there are only a few, perhaps even in the single digits, and they take time to propagate to what a reasonable person would call "an infestation".
As rooms are cleaned daily (in most hotels), and as a few bedbugs take time to turn into an infestation, there's usually plenty of time for the cleaning crew to come in and out of the room, perhaps changing sheets, surely changing towels, brushing against bedclothes as they make the bed (even if they don't change sheets daily), taking stuff on and off the cleaning cart, and generally doing all the things that allow bedbugs to travel to other locales. And then they do the same operations in supposedly non-infested rooms, transporting bugs to those rooms. Although one or more travelers were almost certainly the original vector, it is the cleaning crew that spreads them throughout the rest of the hotel.
Now, if the guy was exaggerating, and there was only, maybe, two or four bedbugs that got him during the night, I could believe that the bugs were left by a previous resident. But an infestation... that implies a large colony, and in that environment, a colony does not stay in one place for any appreciable time.
So yeah, an infestation in one room tells me that in all probability the entire hotel has a problem.
"the hotel demanded he take it down and when he did they sued him for $95,000.""
should be
"the hotel demanded he take it down and when he didn't, they sued him for $95,000.""
I was wondering about that. My first thought was "wow, he shoulda left it up".
The hotel is not denying that this guy had bedbugs in his room on the night of his stay. Apparently the hotel's justification for suing comes down to them believing that only his room was infested, and that this was an isolated incident.
Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's no such thing as "only one room infested with bed bugs" in a hotel. (Think about how they're serviced.) This could be an entertaining lawsuit. The problem I see is that the hotel taking him to court puts even more media attention on the hotel being infested.
I remember that; it was in rec.humor in the early nineties, wasn't it? People were complaining that duplicated apples tasted of toner, and then once it accidentally fired up while a tech was working on it, duplicating his arm, which flopped around wildly until subdued by beating it with sticks.
Was a very funny article as I recall. Haven't seen it in years, though.
Hmm, it seems I've read that story somewhere.
Thank you, Sheldon.
Reading all the comments from people who have tried to use the soft keyboard or have seen it trying to be used, plus people getting aggravated at the dual nature of the operating system GUI (not functioning well as a desktop and not intuitive as a touch interface) it's readily apparent why commercials don't show people actually using the Surface.
But the real point, it's become apparent that the Surface was designed to sell, not to use. It's like a movie made to formula that some people see the first weekend, and then nobody else goes to once the word gets out.
well, it depends which laptop you compare it to, my old work Dell was heavier than a desktop PC!
The BBC's Click programme did a piece on it when it first came out and they ripped into it for being heavy, showing it being used in a gym for weight training. They also showed the very unresponsive keyboard in use... which told me all I needed to know about it.