McKellen as Gandalf. It was memorable because, over the years, he has often been a bit cranky on chat-shows (perhaps because in the past he has been hassled over his sexuality). His enthusiasm was quite interesting.
For USian readers, Sir Ian has appeared on a number of chat shows recently promoting RoTK and other recent films of his. He was directly asked about his willingness to appear in "The Hobbit" should it be filmed and basically came across as absolutely desperate to do it and said something along the lines of "fingers crossed Peter Jackson will do it".
So there you are. No word from Holm as far as I know though.
A rather simple point to make, but NASA as an organisation have a finger in most scientific pies. I've personally run into problems getting hold of NASA code before now (owing to the fact I'm based in Europe and thus my taxes never nominally went toward the development; which is the current state of play atm for non-Americans). This can only be a good thing for the international scientific community.
A bizarre thing I've noticed is that whilst the RIAA's reach is limited to the US, the bad PR has travelled internationally. There are people all over the world now getting a bit sniffy about buying CDs from the big record labels (although I doubt internet ranting = action in the majority of cases).
In a month or so the Bush administration will reveal they have overwhelming evidence of the widespread production of just such a "chemical weapon" in Iraq...lawyers formerly working for SCO will then be brought in to oversee the dissemination of the details.
The funny thing is that people were saying this in 1967 before Sgt Pepper came out. And even before that, the "guitar fad" was pronounced over. Theres a nice interview following the "Bigger than Jesus" debacle where lots of people were saying that they were over (in 1965 if memory serves). In reality, their influence is too deep for them to be forgotten in the short-term; and it covers more than just guitar music, although I will admit this point can be over-extended somewhat (e.g., world music, sample based music, the studio-as-an-instrument etc.) When they weren't innovators they were at least popularisers. It would probably be going too far to say that, say, Helter Skelter was the blueprint for heavy metal etc. though. Anyway, McCartney has just completed an international stadium tour that was sold out completely. And the One album sold 30 million copies. The Anthology DVD is selling well. The sheer numbers of sales make it unlikely that it is purely nostalgia that is driving sales. Its not purely people in their 50s and 60s buying this stuff. Members may have passed away, but the Beatles as an entity are still going strong in my opinion.
(In the interests of full disclosure I should state for the record I'm from Merseyside. Thus biased beyond belief in all honesty. Hehe. We've got our tourist industry to look at you know...)
Apple Corps was formed by the Beatles for their music and the handful of artists they signed when they were playing at being business men (Mary Hopkin, Yoko Ono, Plastic Ono band, John & Yoko, George Harrison's early solo ouput -- Theme for Wonderwall and an electronic album -- James Taylor, Badfinger etc.). Its pervue included their groovy but illfated shop in London (heh, the internet boom "business plan" was nothing new then). I think the idea was that it would form a way of wrapping up all their interests after the death of Brian Epstein (which were far ranging at the time; the Beatles had a level of merchandising that was only really surpassed when Star Wars came around). The Beatles split up in 1970. The last new release from Apple was the Anthology series on DVD last year. The singles from the original issue of the Anthology were both on Apple btw (which wasn't repackaged as it was new to the market). So its still a going concern basically; for example, a the most recent Badfinger compilation from the Apple years is on Apple etc.
Apple's reason for existence is for Beatles records. The Beatles are no more (as an entity), hence no more new stuff. This said, I don't see relative inaction as a reason to waive their legal rights. Whilst Apple Corps internet presence is almost non-existant, who knows what plans they have in the pipeline?
Yes, but we are talking about a difference of several orders of magnitude. Going to a user group is something of a minority activity; asking the guy across the hall/your coworker/your friend is more the level of support that is needed. Whilst you may move in circles that are knowledgable about Linux, remember most people have never even heard of it, most people don't work in the IT industry, and it highly unlikely they'd know their friendly neighbourhood guru even if one existed.
Sci-fi doesn't drive science in my opinion; scientists and engineers are quite capable of having ideas themselves now and then(!). As with anything, apart from a few wildly insightful and original thoughts that have changed the world, the rest is alas two-a-penny. The real trick is having the skill and the tenacity to develop things to a state where they can be used/brought to the market.
I have a strange feeling of deja vu here because I've just remembered I've posted almost the same comment before. Heh, heres another point I made then; be careful how you interpret the evidence for sci-fi's contribution. Thousands of writers, thousands of books, hundreds of thousands of speculations (some major = we will live on the moon, some minor = we will have portable computers). Each one of these writers is striving for some degree of originality or novelty (very much the raison d'etre of SF since pulp-sci fi bit the bullet). Would it not be incredibly strange if a handful of these hundreds of thousands of speculations didn't to some extent come true?
Its a while since I saw the DVD, but I seem to remember there were CGI ducks (swans?). The other uses of CGI throughout the film were very subtle, putting leaves on trees and I think also some snow was computer generated and some buildings were altered as well. In a way I think that this film is great advertisement for where CGI should go; as a tool for helping the filmmaker rather than as the center-point of the film. The fact that you (and I before I saw the making of documentary) didn't notice it is probably the greatest compliment that could be paid. Its easy to forget just how much time film makers waste waiting for the lighting or the weather to be just right. CGI can be used to fix these problems and in no way detract from the finished film by hogging the limelight.
are a thousand pencils on the back of envelopes as a thousand filesharing advocates try to come up with a clever play on the name Mitch Brainwol. All I've got is Titch Brainless...anyone doing any better? Bitch Bainofmylife? I need more coffee!
I don't doubt your word, but do you have any references for this? It just seems a bit of a convienient finding. I hear it repeatedly but I wonder if its based in fact or wishful thinking/selective memory.
You should also consider theres nothing to stop the still very young Indian tech economy from raising its game even if that were true. More money = more applicants attracted = better pool to select from = more funds for training/QC etc. etc. Its just I remember that people used to say the same thing about imported electronics as well (both retail and manufacturing).
To whom it may interest: In the UK, I've seen a boxed copy in my local Game for approx 30 quid (I think it was 35 - a discount they were running at the time).
If you know what you are doing, which specific features do you want to add to X-Plane that the SDK [http://www.xsquawkbox.net/xpsdk/] doesn't allow you to already?
I'm quite annoyed by the parent argument. I know of more than one aviation lab that has approached Meyer and said "we would like this change or alteration made. how much?" and they have recieved by return of email, absolutely for free, modified versions of the software. He could of made thousands each time. Meyer is thought of very highly in these circles. Its an almost unique attitude towards customers that I find incredibly impressive. Puts a different spin on it huh. You can't argue the guy is some sort of profiteer; he's doing *free* bespoke programming for no reward. Why begrudge him the means to earn a living?
I'd like to see some psychophysical analyses of these things. Failing that, see what blind test/retest data are like. I do a get a bit puzzled when audiophiles claim to be able hear differences between things outside the ability of people tested with very high level equipment in laboratory conditions to discern or discriminate between. I'm not saying they are necessarily lying or imagining things, but on the other hand at the present time some (not all) claims made by audiophiles are akin to those made by people claiming to be psychic.
"Hey, check it out. I rebuilt the jar-jar model. Took me a week. This time don't...".
STOMP!
"Argh! Not again...*sob*"
But seriously, seems like a strange thing to spend your time doing but if it makes him happy why not? I saw a few comments above along the lines of "hehe, lego, he'll never get laid". Well, the thing is, kernel-compilation or getting in a funk over Microsoft aren't exactly activities known for their pulling power either.
I agree with you really. These acts of alleged prescience on the part of sci-fi writers are noted retrospectively, and in many cases the fit between the idea and reality is only very vague in most cases (as with most long-term predictions in general). You also have to remember how many cracks at guessing science fiction writers get; all those writers, all those books, all those pages. It shouldn't be surprising that occasionally, taken as a group, they guess right-ish. Furthermore, the vast majority of sci-fi writers aren't famous because they came up with clever ideas, but rather because they were good writers and tell an entertaining story. I'm not convinced they have some sort of intellectual credibility that the man in the street necessarily lacks; its just that you come to hear of their speculations, these thoughts are on-record for evermore, and obviously, if they are any good at writing, these speculations are put across in a compelling way. Any fool can come up with an idea, the difficult part is testing a hypothesis or implementing and bringing an invention to market. Edison and Einstein may have been "dreamers" but the important thing, sad as it may be for our dreams of what we may become if we just stumbled across the right thought in the shower, is that they put in the graft as well.
of the analogy is that if you program for Linux you aren't a sharecropper, but rather a farmer in the old USSR. Where people were forced to band into collectives under the control of a shadowy elite representing the people on the basis of ingrained dogma rather than the (genuine) needs of the majority... if you want to be paranoid about the OSS community you might see parallels there.
OK, so that was a bit of trolling, but the point is that the analogy is a very poor one indeed. The level of analysis in the article is incorrect anyway. Most OSS developers develop a specific solution to a specific problem. And if afterwards someone else could benefit from the intellectual effort already expended, then make it available (as one can witness anytime someone suggests OSS developers *should* do something like improving interfaces; the reaction on Slashdot is often rather belligerent in reply). Fine. However, this model of software production is totally unrelated to platform upon which the software runs. Even if we just consider commercial exploitation, the analogy is senseless. There are enough packages becoming standard in the OSS world (e.g., GIMP & Mozilla) that it makes it pointless to try and roll your own competitor unless you have something very special. And I don't see what stops a better project/contractor team coming down the pike and blowing your efforts out of the ground whatever model of software development you have used and whatever platform you develop for. Sure, writing software for windows my help MS sell my copies of their OS. But I fail to see how this differs from anything else we do without blinking in the real world. I post a chicken recipe on Usenet, am I sharecropper because my labour has supported a not entirely ethical poultry farmer? Where does it end this side of capitalism?
So now they are spending the time socializing in virtual environments, when they could be with their next door neighboor in the vacinity of moms, dads, other kids, older, younger, shop owners, policemen, firefighters, accounts, doctors, garbage collectors, and any other people that might be wandering as they ride on their bike down their street.
They could be, but more likely I'd say is that geeks would be sat in front of their 1-player Nintendo game, the TV, reading a comic or messing about with a soldering iron and some veroboard (or whatver). I think this issue depends on whether you think the glass is half empty or half full. The internet is no substitute for "face time" but on the other hand, there are a lot of very lonely people out there (some who can't handle the fact to face thing for example) for whom its an awful lot better than nothing.
I can only speak from personal experience, and whilst classified work has never fallen into my lap, its not at all unusual for PhD students to work with Confidential (big C) and Confidential in Confidence (i.e., commercially sensitive) data. This sort of work can't go necessarily go directly into your thesis or be published (in the former case for ethical reasons sometimes and in the latter, for obvious IP reasons). But its quite normal to do bits of work on the side and to have "Technical Reports" that aren't publicly accessible in your CV. Depending on the circumstances you can see it as additional professional experience or obesiance to the organisation funding your studentship. Post-PhD this sort of work is called "consultancy" and is really your only shot at making any real money in academia. By no means is an academic's working life summed up in the peer-reviewed publications.
High paying jobs post-PhD? Depends on the area perhaps. CS/Engineering maybe but taking academia as a whole, doing a PhD nearly always loses you money if you take working life as a whole (one never makes up for the 3+ poorly paid years spent doing it).
Hype will certainly not help him in the academic job market; possibly it may even work against him knowing what academic snobbery is like. Academic hiring, apart from the usual political or turf issues, is these days on the basis of two strict criteria: success in publishing and success in aquiring funding. If you can't translate it into published pages of text and regular funding cheques, it doesn't really matter how clever/famous/whatever you are. There isn't room for you. Its a terrible way to run things perhaps, but there is a bottom line basically.
That only 12 out of 6305 emails they received were actually spam (i.e., 0.2%)! Actually make that 11; I'd guess a spammer would likely be an opted-in and interested customer as regards penis enlargement.
Whilst you are leafing through these tomes of knowledge, it might be a good idea for you to look up the following: "obvious" and "troll". "Orientate is not a word" is such an old troll that its got a beard and bus pass.
BUZZ! WRONG!
Journals don't pay unfortunately.
In fact you often pay to get stuff published, especially if the article is unusually long or requires colour illustrations (take a look at the IEEE Software submission rules for example).
Slashdot Mirror
McKellen as Gandalf. It was memorable because, over the years, he has often been a bit cranky on chat-shows (perhaps because in the past he has been hassled over his sexuality). His enthusiasm was quite interesting.
The chat show in question was "Parkinson" btw.
For USian readers, Sir Ian has appeared on a number of chat shows recently promoting RoTK and other recent films of his. He was directly asked about his willingness to appear in "The Hobbit" should it be filmed and basically came across as absolutely desperate to do it and said something along the lines of "fingers crossed Peter Jackson will do it". So there you are. No word from Holm as far as I know though.
A rather simple point to make, but NASA as an organisation have a finger in most scientific pies. I've personally run into problems getting hold of NASA code before now (owing to the fact I'm based in Europe and thus my taxes never nominally went toward the development; which is the current state of play atm for non-Americans). This can only be a good thing for the international scientific community.
A bizarre thing I've noticed is that whilst the RIAA's reach is limited to the US, the bad PR has travelled internationally. There are people all over the world now getting a bit sniffy about buying CDs from the big record labels (although I doubt internet ranting = action in the majority of cases).
In a month or so the Bush administration will reveal they have overwhelming evidence of the widespread production of just such a "chemical weapon" in Iraq...lawyers formerly working for SCO will then be brought in to oversee the dissemination of the details.
(In the interests of full disclosure I should state for the record I'm from Merseyside. Thus biased beyond belief in all honesty. Hehe. We've got our tourist industry to look at you know...)
Apple's reason for existence is for Beatles records. The Beatles are no more (as an entity), hence no more new stuff. This said, I don't see relative inaction as a reason to waive their legal rights. Whilst Apple Corps internet presence is almost non-existant, who knows what plans they have in the pipeline?
Yes, but we are talking about a difference of several orders of magnitude. Going to a user group is something of a minority activity; asking the guy across the hall/your coworker/your friend is more the level of support that is needed. Whilst you may move in circles that are knowledgable about Linux, remember most people have never even heard of it, most people don't work in the IT industry, and it highly unlikely they'd know their friendly neighbourhood guru even if one existed.
I have a strange feeling of deja vu here because I've just remembered I've posted almost the same comment before. Heh, heres another point I made then; be careful how you interpret the evidence for sci-fi's contribution. Thousands of writers, thousands of books, hundreds of thousands of speculations (some major = we will live on the moon, some minor = we will have portable computers). Each one of these writers is striving for some degree of originality or novelty (very much the raison d'etre of SF since pulp-sci fi bit the bullet). Would it not be incredibly strange if a handful of these hundreds of thousands of speculations didn't to some extent come true?
Its a while since I saw the DVD, but I seem to remember there were CGI ducks (swans?). The other uses of CGI throughout the film were very subtle, putting leaves on trees and I think also some snow was computer generated and some buildings were altered as well. In a way I think that this film is great advertisement for where CGI should go; as a tool for helping the filmmaker rather than as the center-point of the film. The fact that you (and I before I saw the making of documentary) didn't notice it is probably the greatest compliment that could be paid. Its easy to forget just how much time film makers waste waiting for the lighting or the weather to be just right. CGI can be used to fix these problems and in no way detract from the finished film by hogging the limelight.
are a thousand pencils on the back of envelopes as a thousand filesharing advocates try to come up with a clever play on the name Mitch Brainwol. All I've got is Titch Brainless...anyone doing any better? Bitch Bainofmylife? I need more coffee!
You should also consider theres nothing to stop the still very young Indian tech economy from raising its game even if that were true. More money = more applicants attracted = better pool to select from = more funds for training/QC etc. etc. Its just I remember that people used to say the same thing about imported electronics as well (both retail and manufacturing).
To whom it may interest: In the UK, I've seen a boxed copy in my local Game for approx 30 quid (I think it was 35 - a discount they were running at the time).
If you know what you are doing, which specific features do you want to add to X-Plane that the SDK [http://www.xsquawkbox.net/xpsdk/] doesn't allow you to already?
I'm quite annoyed by the parent argument. I know of more than one aviation lab that has approached Meyer and said "we would like this change or alteration made. how much?" and they have recieved by return of email, absolutely for free, modified versions of the software. He could of made thousands each time. Meyer is thought of very highly in these circles. Its an almost unique attitude towards customers that I find incredibly impressive. Puts a different spin on it huh. You can't argue the guy is some sort of profiteer; he's doing *free* bespoke programming for no reward. Why begrudge him the means to earn a living?
I'd like to see some psychophysical analyses of these things. Failing that, see what blind test/retest data are like. I do a get a bit puzzled when audiophiles claim to be able hear differences between things outside the ability of people tested with very high level equipment in laboratory conditions to discern or discriminate between. I'm not saying they are necessarily lying or imagining things, but on the other hand at the present time some (not all) claims made by audiophiles are akin to those made by people claiming to be psychic.
But seriously, seems like a strange thing to spend your time doing but if it makes him happy why not? I saw a few comments above along the lines of "hehe, lego, he'll never get laid". Well, the thing is, kernel-compilation or getting in a funk over Microsoft aren't exactly activities known for their pulling power either.
I agree with you really. These acts of alleged prescience on the part of sci-fi writers are noted retrospectively, and in many cases the fit between the idea and reality is only very vague in most cases (as with most long-term predictions in general). You also have to remember how many cracks at guessing science fiction writers get; all those writers, all those books, all those pages. It shouldn't be surprising that occasionally, taken as a group, they guess right-ish. Furthermore, the vast majority of sci-fi writers aren't famous because they came up with clever ideas, but rather because they were good writers and tell an entertaining story. I'm not convinced they have some sort of intellectual credibility that the man in the street necessarily lacks; its just that you come to hear of their speculations, these thoughts are on-record for evermore, and obviously, if they are any good at writing, these speculations are put across in a compelling way. Any fool can come up with an idea, the difficult part is testing a hypothesis or implementing and bringing an invention to market. Edison and Einstein may have been "dreamers" but the important thing, sad as it may be for our dreams of what we may become if we just stumbled across the right thought in the shower, is that they put in the graft as well.
OK, so that was a bit of trolling, but the point is that the analogy is a very poor one indeed. The level of analysis in the article is incorrect anyway. Most OSS developers develop a specific solution to a specific problem. And if afterwards someone else could benefit from the intellectual effort already expended, then make it available (as one can witness anytime someone suggests OSS developers *should* do something like improving interfaces; the reaction on Slashdot is often rather belligerent in reply). Fine. However, this model of software production is totally unrelated to platform upon which the software runs. Even if we just consider commercial exploitation, the analogy is senseless. There are enough packages becoming standard in the OSS world (e.g., GIMP & Mozilla) that it makes it pointless to try and roll your own competitor unless you have something very special. And I don't see what stops a better project/contractor team coming down the pike and blowing your efforts out of the ground whatever model of software development you have used and whatever platform you develop for. Sure, writing software for windows my help MS sell my copies of their OS. But I fail to see how this differs from anything else we do without blinking in the real world. I post a chicken recipe on Usenet, am I sharecropper because my labour has supported a not entirely ethical poultry farmer? Where does it end this side of capitalism?
They could be, but more likely I'd say is that geeks would be sat in front of their 1-player Nintendo game, the TV, reading a comic or messing about with a soldering iron and some veroboard (or whatver). I think this issue depends on whether you think the glass is half empty or half full. The internet is no substitute for "face time" but on the other hand, there are a lot of very lonely people out there (some who can't handle the fact to face thing for example) for whom its an awful lot better than nothing.
High paying jobs post-PhD? Depends on the area perhaps. CS/Engineering maybe but taking academia as a whole, doing a PhD nearly always loses you money if you take working life as a whole (one never makes up for the 3+ poorly paid years spent doing it).
Hype will certainly not help him in the academic job market; possibly it may even work against him knowing what academic snobbery is like. Academic hiring, apart from the usual political or turf issues, is these days on the basis of two strict criteria: success in publishing and success in aquiring funding. If you can't translate it into published pages of text and regular funding cheques, it doesn't really matter how clever/famous/whatever you are. There isn't room for you. Its a terrible way to run things perhaps, but there is a bottom line basically.
That only 12 out of 6305 emails they received were actually spam (i.e., 0.2%)! Actually make that 11; I'd guess a spammer would likely be an opted-in and interested customer as regards penis enlargement.
Whilst you are leafing through these tomes of knowledge, it might be a good idea for you to look up the following: "obvious" and "troll". "Orientate is not a word" is such an old troll that its got a beard and bus pass.
BUZZ! WRONG! Journals don't pay unfortunately. In fact you often pay to get stuff published, especially if the article is unusually long or requires colour illustrations (take a look at the IEEE Software submission rules for example).