> Lucas's defence for Crystal Skull was that viewers didn't understand his source material, and that's true, but in a way irrelevant. [...]
Enh. In the seventies and eighties I developed a taste for '30's pulps, adventure stories and early "golden age" science fiction. (Doc Savage, The Avenger, various works by A E Van Voight and Doc Smith, lots of others) (This also led to "hard boiled" detective novels, which resulted in reading all the works of Hammett and Chandler, and by extension ("Perchance to dream") now delving into Robert Parker. Side issue. Never mind.) Anyway, I'm very familiar with the genre he was trying to exploit. I thought the movie was a mishmash of painfully executed tropes that didn't really fit well together. There was no "aha" moment, (which the film DESPERATELY needed) and way too many "WTF" moments.
Let me be clear: This is not the fault of the tropes he was trying to execute. It was because they didn't really fit together, and because he executed them clumsily and in a rather ham-fisted manner. Everything about this film seemed... I dunno, unfinished. (Especially the script.) Even the digital effects were not up to the state of the art at the time.
So no, the issue with the fourth Indiana Jones film was not that it was about ancient aliens in south america (oops, spoilers) but that it was a stupid story about ancient aliens in south america.
> Are you suggesting that, because our particular planet has a lot of diversity (and do I need to point out that pretty much all of the other planets we've discovered are NOT diverse at all?) that all space operas should take place on a single planet?
Nope. I'm suggesting that the trope that you have to go to one human-habitable planet to find ice, and another to find forest, and another to find desert, and another to find lava, is a tired one and doesn't show a lot of imagination.
Will he? Something I liked about Jurassic World is how it ignored the second and third sequels. Something I liked about the most recent Terminator film is that it completely ignored the third and fourth sequels.
The way I'd work it is, anything that happened before "Did you hear that? They shut down the main reactor. We'll be destroyed for sure." may or may not have happened, but we don't talk about it. At all. Ever. Except for maybe an easter egg of JarJar's bones bleaching in the sun.
Put in more little robots! And I want cutesy creatures here, and here, and here and here and here and here and here. The main character has to grab a fruit with his tongue! Kids love that!
The main character is human, George.
Well, make him something else then. With a funny accent. Kids love that.
> When they made Star Wars Episodes 1-3 they sucked, because we had to try to implement a modern style to an old film.
Hm. And why did we have to do that?
They sucked for a variety of reasons -- casting, plot, dialog, but they also sucked because there seemed to be a rule that every square inch of screen needed to be squirming with cutesy protoplasm or cutesy robotics. Agreed, the original Star Wars was a 1970's take on 1930's SF serials, but the prequels were... I dunno what. Really expensive self parody, I guess. And not the good kind.
Ignoring all the other things for a minute, a "style" like the original film -- sparse, concise, with callbacks to older serials but without overdoing it, might have been less unpleasant to watch.
I would have put it differently, that the current "product" mindset does work while we're on the steep end of the curve, but we've long passed that. Most people *can't buy* a computer that isn't 10X more powerful than they actually need. Hardware capability has long passed the most common usage model. Similarly, software has gotten to the point where most people don't need anything new. With Windows 7 and maybe Office 2000 (which I still use at home) we don't even need the software to be more reliable. (I didn't think I'd ever say that about Office or Windows...) It's been "good enough" for several years now.
But as processor companies had to get used to the fact that new users don't care anymore what's under the hood (as opposed, for instance, to everyone still running a 386 saving up for that 486), software companies need to realize that hiding the control panel, replacing buttons with gestures and then back to buttons, and going from flat icons to 3d back to flat isn't buying them any love from most users. The only reason, for instance, that I went to 7 from XP is that the 64 bit version of 7 was better developed than the 64 bit version of XP. And there's absolutely no reason (at least, so far) for me to delve into 8, or 10. Similarly, as I said, I'm using Office 2000 at home and with the compatibility pack it works fine. At work I was recently force-upgraded to Office 2013 "in the cloud" and it's been a fiasco. Unreliable, prone to unexplained pauses and freezes, and I have to google how to do things I used to know how to do. This "different is better" thing has to stop.
> "using graphic primitives such as 'draw rectangle'"
Let's not be ridiculous -- *how* it's done can change. And user interfaces can change when they're new, only used by geeks, and all the use cases haven't been figured out yet. But once mature, the buttons shouldn't move around (or go away completely) just to be new and trendy. You don't have to be old to not want that.
I do know there are a few less-complicated remote support products, but they are few and far between, do not seem to be popular enough to be in common use in these scenarios, and often have more security issues than the services I mention above.
Use TeamViewer. Free for personal use, easy to set up, secure and use. No web browser needed.
Um, yeah, I use it too, but it takes someone with basic computer skills to set it up, which isn't always assured at the other end. I support a medium-large user base, many elderly, and I always visit them personally the first time, set up Team Viewer, and make sure it works before I leave. Then it's always running and they don't have to do anything for me to jump on and help.
Incidentally, a big hitch in my daily operations was when Logmein went pay-only. (The logic being that it was offering a bunch of wonderful new features, mostly eye candy, that I would never use.) I had to visit each customer, uninstall Logmein, and install Team Viewer. What a hassle.
> When software reaches that level of maturity, it's a good thing to leave it working.
Absolutely true. I think this runs counter to the basic business model,,which posits that the next version be New and Exciting. (We could all think of examples of this I'm sure.) The Exciting part often being "I desperately need to do something RIGHT NOW that I USED to know how to do!"
If software companies are upset that we're obstinately staying with older versions of their products, instead of paying for the latest and greatest, the answer might be simply "I know how to use this version, and I don't want to spend hours with each new revision trying to figure out where you've hidden the button this time." [1] It's ok to make things faster, more efficient, or add features, but Exciting New changes to the UI will slow adoption and may lose customers.
[1] Trivial example: Mother in law in her seventies being forced to switch from Outlook Express to Windows Live Mail. She very nearly gave up on email altogether.
I believe they meant that the software (or hardware) on the spacecraft behaved as expected, but the error was rather due to an handling mistake, sending the commands with the wrong timing. If you asked me, such an handling mistake should be catched by the on-board software and handled properly (which means telling the operator right away to RTFM). I would thus qualify this as a software issue, regardless of what they say.
The official statement is simply putting the "you're holding it wrong" response to a whole new level.
Well, ok, one could argue that any obscure corner case should be handled appropriately. But at some point, you have to launch the thing.
> because it was also my only time in an open office, so there were lots of other distractions I wasn't used to.
I'm beginning to believe that switching to an open office is a first level manager tactic to increase headcount. Switch to an open office because it's a Shiny Object and there's company budget, watch production plummet, and then ask for more people to cover the shortage. Whether this turns into a downward spiral has not yet been decided.
I'm not sure how to respond to that. You really think that government, which is made up of people, would naturally do a better job managing a dangerous resource than a company, which is also made up of people? Sometimes the SAME people?
Slashdot Mirror
> Lucas's defence for Crystal Skull was that viewers didn't understand his source material, and that's true, but in a way irrelevant. [...]
Enh. In the seventies and eighties I developed a taste for '30's pulps, adventure stories and early "golden age" science fiction. (Doc Savage, The Avenger, various works by A E Van Voight and Doc Smith, lots of others) (This also led to "hard boiled" detective novels, which resulted in reading all the works of Hammett and Chandler, and by extension ("Perchance to dream") now delving into Robert Parker. Side issue. Never mind.) Anyway, I'm very familiar with the genre he was trying to exploit. I thought the movie was a mishmash of painfully executed tropes that didn't really fit well together. There was no "aha" moment, (which the film DESPERATELY needed) and way too many "WTF" moments.
Let me be clear: This is not the fault of the tropes he was trying to execute. It was because they didn't really fit together, and because he executed them clumsily and in a rather ham-fisted manner. Everything about this film seemed ... I dunno, unfinished. (Especially the script.) Even the digital effects were not up to the state of the art at the time.
So no, the issue with the fourth Indiana Jones film was not that it was about ancient aliens in south america (oops, spoilers) but that it was a stupid story about ancient aliens in south america.
> Are you suggesting that, because our particular planet has a lot of diversity (and do I need to point out that pretty much all of the other planets we've discovered are NOT diverse at all?) that all space operas should take place on a single planet?
Nope. I'm suggesting that the trope that you have to go to one human-habitable planet to find ice, and another to find forest, and another to find desert, and another to find lava, is a tired one and doesn't show a lot of imagination.
Yes. Yes, exactly.
> Bark less. Wag more.
This.
Will he? Something I liked about Jurassic World is how it ignored the second and third sequels. Something I liked about the most recent Terminator film is that it completely ignored the third and fourth sequels.
The way I'd work it is, anything that happened before "Did you hear that? They shut down the main reactor. We'll be destroyed for sure." may or may not have happened, but we don't talk about it. At all. Ever. Except for maybe an easter egg of JarJar's bones bleaching in the sun.
Point. If Lucas properly understood scale, the entire series could have taken place on one planet.
If they were smart, they'd have the character just blowing ten or fifteen creatures away before they had a chance to draw.
"Han. You're still alive!"
"I shot first."
I think "ass-pull fix" is my new favorite term.
Kinda like the movies.
I want to believe that the prequels never happened.
Put in more little robots! And I want cutesy creatures here, and here, and here and here and here and here and here. The main character has to grab a fruit with his tongue! Kids love that!
The main character is human, George.
Well, make him something else then. With a funny accent. Kids love that.
Shut up, George.
> When they made Star Wars Episodes 1-3 they sucked, because we had to try to implement a modern style to an old film.
Hm. And why did we have to do that?
They sucked for a variety of reasons -- casting, plot, dialog, but they also sucked because there seemed to be a rule that every square inch of screen needed to be squirming with cutesy protoplasm or cutesy robotics. Agreed, the original Star Wars was a 1970's take on 1930's SF serials, but the prequels were... I dunno what. Really expensive self parody, I guess. And not the good kind.
Ignoring all the other things for a minute, a "style" like the original film -- sparse, concise, with callbacks to older serials but without overdoing it, might have been less unpleasant to watch.
I would have put it differently, that the current "product" mindset does work while we're on the steep end of the curve, but we've long passed that. Most people *can't buy* a computer that isn't 10X more powerful than they actually need. Hardware capability has long passed the most common usage model. Similarly, software has gotten to the point where most people don't need anything new. With Windows 7 and maybe Office 2000 (which I still use at home) we don't even need the software to be more reliable. (I didn't think I'd ever say that about Office or Windows...) It's been "good enough" for several years now.
But as processor companies had to get used to the fact that new users don't care anymore what's under the hood (as opposed, for instance, to everyone still running a 386 saving up for that 486), software companies need to realize that hiding the control panel, replacing buttons with gestures and then back to buttons, and going from flat icons to 3d back to flat isn't buying them any love from most users. The only reason, for instance, that I went to 7 from XP is that the 64 bit version of 7 was better developed than the 64 bit version of XP. And there's absolutely no reason (at least, so far) for me to delve into 8, or 10. Similarly, as I said, I'm using Office 2000 at home and with the compatibility pack it works fine. At work I was recently force-upgraded to Office 2013 "in the cloud" and it's been a fiasco. Unreliable, prone to unexplained pauses and freezes, and I have to google how to do things I used to know how to do. This "different is better" thing has to stop.
> "using graphic primitives such as 'draw rectangle'"
Let's not be ridiculous -- *how* it's done can change. And user interfaces can change when they're new, only used by geeks, and all the use cases haven't been figured out yet. But once mature, the buttons shouldn't move around (or go away completely) just to be new and trendy. You don't have to be old to not want that.
> and replace it with confusing trendy hipster bullshit!
That pretty much says it all.
I do know there are a few less-complicated remote support products, but they are few and far between, do not seem to be popular enough to be in common use in these scenarios, and often have more security issues than the services I mention above.
Use TeamViewer. Free for personal use, easy to set up, secure and use. No web browser needed.
Um, yeah, I use it too, but it takes someone with basic computer skills to set it up, which isn't always assured at the other end. I support a medium-large user base, many elderly, and I always visit them personally the first time, set up Team Viewer, and make sure it works before I leave. Then it's always running and they don't have to do anything for me to jump on and help.
Incidentally, a big hitch in my daily operations was when Logmein went pay-only. (The logic being that it was offering a bunch of wonderful new features, mostly eye candy, that I would never use.) I had to visit each customer, uninstall Logmein, and install Team Viewer. What a hassle.
Hear Hear!
> When software reaches that level of maturity, it's a good thing to leave it working.
Absolutely true. I think this runs counter to the basic business model, ,which posits that the next version be New and Exciting. (We could all think of examples of this I'm sure.) The Exciting part often being "I desperately need to do something RIGHT NOW that I USED to know how to do!"
If software companies are upset that we're obstinately staying with older versions of their products, instead of paying for the latest and greatest, the answer might be simply "I know how to use this version, and I don't want to spend hours with each new revision trying to figure out where you've hidden the button this time." [1] It's ok to make things faster, more efficient, or add features, but Exciting New changes to the UI will slow adoption and may lose customers.
[1] Trivial example: Mother in law in her seventies being forced to switch from Outlook Express to Windows Live Mail. She very nearly gave up on email altogether.
I believe they meant that the software (or hardware) on the spacecraft behaved as expected, but the error was rather due to an handling mistake, sending the commands with the wrong timing. If you asked me, such an handling mistake should be catched by the on-board software and handled properly (which means telling the operator right away to RTFM). I would thus qualify this as a software issue, regardless of what they say.
The official statement is simply putting the "you're holding it wrong" response to a whole new level.
Well, ok, one could argue that any obscure corner case should be handled appropriately. But at some point, you have to launch the thing.
> The operator fell asleep waiting for the response [...] and missed the F8
Happens to me all the time.
I'm guessing this refers to a command sequence sent from the ground.
init 6 ?
init 1, apparently.
Standing and sitting, under desk treadmills, this sounds familiar... Oh yeah, The Zero Theorem.
> because it was also my only time in an open office, so there were lots of other distractions I wasn't used to.
I'm beginning to believe that switching to an open office is a first level manager tactic to increase headcount. Switch to an open office because it's a Shiny Object and there's company budget, watch production plummet, and then ask for more people to cover the shortage. Whether this turns into a downward spiral has not yet been decided.
I'm not sure how to respond to that. You really think that government, which is made up of people, would naturally do a better job managing a dangerous resource than a company, which is also made up of people? Sometimes the SAME people?