Re:The reviewer is missing the point of the book
on
Anathem
·
· Score: 1
First of all, I completely agree with you on the issue of neologisms in the book. There is a vital thematic reason for the fictional vocabulary that only becomes clear 3/4 of the way through the book. I get the feeling that many who complain about this either a). didn't read that far, or b). entirely missed the point of the book.
People should go back and reread every quote from Fraa Jad. Such an exercise clearly reveals the core theme of the novel.
Also, I love that you read it aloud to your wife. After I completed the book, I asked my wife to read it aloud to me, and we are currently on page ~900 or so. It has been a very interesting experiment, and we have both enjoyed it!
Gary Gygax's work has meant a lot to me over the years. Many of my best and longest-lasting friendships were formed while playing his games.
I am still impressed by his technical writing style and the depth of thought that went into the original system. To this day I enjoy reading through the old DM's Guide or Player's Handbook, simply to appreciate the precision of his writing. One might think that books comprised mainly of statistical tables would be unreadable, but not so with Mr. Gygax's work. He was able to bring abstract concepts to life. I know he wrote novels as well, but it was the rulebooks that influenced and inspired me most.
What a rare creative mind. I feel great sadness at his passing.
It's not Automatix' use of a root acount that is most troubling. Automatix also replaces your/etc/apt/sources.list (without backing up or asking), and use -force yes during installs which is generally a nyet.
That being said, Automatix rocks, and I have used it on all of my ubuntu installs with no problem (other than repositories at freecontrib being down occasionally).
Easyubuntu is good too, and safer, but is not available for Dapper yet. Of course, replacing all instances of "breezy" with "dapper" in a detect.py isn't all that difficult either, now is it.
If you're running ubuntu dapper, it updated to 2.14 wednesday. It isn't really immediately distinguishable from the previous version but then, if you are also running xgl/compiz, who the hell cares?
PSP 9 isn't necessarily bloated, but it does have a lot of features included that go beyond simple image editing. A lot of work in the later versions of PSP has been done on vector tools, filters, and suchlike. Not a bad thing, but really a lot of extras.
So yeah, 9 is a really great program, but to keep Dvorak from becoming confused and agitated, I would settle on 5.
Oh yeah, I was forced to use Microsoft's Photo Manager the other day on a computer that had no other image editing software (outside Paint), and after cropping and exporting about ten screenshots I felt like I had been beaten about the head and shoulders. That program has the single most painful user interface I have ever experienced in any piece of image editing software since Doodle! for the C64.
I agree that soyuz is probably a better alternative to the inefficient and costly use of the nearly obsolete shuttle orbiter.
But what about the billions of dollars worth of internationally built modules that have yet to be installed on ISS?
I don't think Russia and Japan, and the other countries that are heavily invested in ISS, and who have had their work in storage for 2.5 years due to the shuttle being grounded will be overjoyed when (if?) we cancel the program.
I have watched so many of these landings, and it still amazes me. I remember watching the first launch in grade school, and the first landing.
I was tuned into NASA to when Columbia launched and heard mission control talking about the foam impact on the lead wing. That whole mission I kept shaking my head at follow up reports that the damage was inconsequential. I got up just in time to watch Columbia break up that morning. It was a heart-rending thing to see happen live.
This morning was fascinating. NASA coverage on the web just absolutely rocks. Even with the visual on the shuttle the whole way down, I still have a hard time conceptualizing that nature of that descent, from 17K mph 220 miles altitude to wheels stopped on the ground in a hour.
Incredible. Flawless. Heroic.
Great work NASA, JPL, Discovery crew! Welcome home. I hope you fly again, soon.
- This is the greatest sentence ever written in the history of man. Thank you for your penetrating insight. - Seconded. Don't read it too many times, though. Blood will shoot out of your nose. (credit: Lewis Black.)
Sometimes I think Waits' later, more surrealist work overshadows his fantastic early songwriting. Some of his best material can be heard on Nighthawks at the Diner, Small Change, Foreign Affairs, and Blue Valentine.
The verse quoted above is a prime example, and the rest of that tragic lyric is equally poetic.
Yes. I recently got a Msoft keyboard with a new PC. The layout of the keys is insanely stupid. Page UP & Down, Home, End, and Delete are not where they should be. Assinine. But it gets worse:
The Function lock key...arrrrgh. Function keys do not perform their standard functions (in windows) until you hit function lock, which is off as a default. F2 is mapped as "Undo" until you activate function lock restoring it to the default "edit". How many times have I "undone" my previous operation (like renaming a file or deleting a file in explorer) without noticing that F2 is not "Edit" as it should be.
Okay- No one here seems to get it. Let me simplify it for you! You are there to be supportive of your child. The teacher will have a set routine for this whole "production". You will not have very long to explain or show anything. You are there to answer a few questions. Career day is not about the parent or even really the career, it's about the child. Think that over and re-focus your efforts.
"Pirates" is a hack job of Cringely's "Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires." Look it up on google.
"Nerds" is a pretty well constructed and fascinating documentary of the rise of Apple & Microsoft. Interviews with the actual players -- Jobs, Gates, Balmer, Woz, etc.
"Pirates" stole Cringely's "look and feel" and made a ridiculous, if entertaining, dramatic recreation of the same story. I believe Cringely even sought some legal redress for the close visual similiarity between the Turner Network tripe and his PBS history lesson.
It is sad to see so many folks referencing "Pirates" in lieu of (or in ignorance of) "Nerds", especially in a thread about a Cringely article.
I am playing U4 straight through right now using the ccs64 emulator and the rom. The game is very playable this way (unlike the Ultima Classics EA disc with moslo bs). You get all the music, and the rare pleasure of the Commodore 64 interface as well.
Rocking good fun!
Also -- for a bit of well crafted flash reminiscence -- check Lazarus
The most surpising thing to me in this posting is that the band Moxy Fruvous has finally made it onto Slashdot. Who'd have predicted that?! (Note the "from the dept." line in Emmet's post.)
A guy in our CAD department here at work just pulled his brand new dual PIII 550 out of the box last night. 512 meg ram, 512k secondary cache, NT. When I got here this morning he was still trying to get it to run...seems every time he put a load on the system (like an IGES translation), BAM! BSOD. How odd.
Then I read this on/. and, problem solved. He pulled out one of the processors, and now the thing works fine. It was only $500 extra for the useless chip!
Slashdot Mirror
First of all, I completely agree with you on the issue of neologisms in the book. There is a vital thematic reason for the fictional vocabulary that only becomes clear 3/4 of the way through the book. I get the feeling that many who complain about this either a). didn't read that far, or b). entirely missed the point of the book.
People should go back and reread every quote from Fraa Jad. Such an exercise clearly reveals the core theme of the novel.
Also, I love that you read it aloud to your wife. After I completed the book, I asked my wife to read it aloud to me, and we are currently on page ~900 or so. It has been a very interesting experiment, and we have both enjoyed it!
-rcmiv
Gary Gygax's work has meant a lot to me over the years. Many of my best and longest-lasting friendships were formed while playing his games.
I am still impressed by his technical writing style and the depth of thought that went into the original system. To this day I enjoy reading through the old DM's Guide or Player's Handbook, simply to appreciate the precision of his writing. One might think that books comprised mainly of statistical tables would be unreadable, but not so with Mr. Gygax's work. He was able to bring abstract concepts to life. I know he wrote novels as well, but it was the rulebooks that influenced and inspired me most.
What a rare creative mind. I feel great sadness at his passing.
-rcmiv
I have always enjoyed this comic. Sorry to see it go. Long run, though! It's just one of those things you expect to always be there.
0 0413.jpg
I have had a copy of this one:
http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/df200004/df200
on my bulletin board at work for over 6 years. Struck me funny, and it's been moving with me from cubicle to cubicle the whole time.
-rcmiv
It's not Automatix' use of a root acount that is most troubling. Automatix also replaces your /etc/apt/sources.list (without backing up or asking), and use -force yes during installs which is generally a nyet.
That being said, Automatix rocks, and I have used it on all of my ubuntu installs with no problem (other than repositories at freecontrib being down occasionally).
Easyubuntu is good too, and safer, but is not available for Dapper yet. Of course, replacing all instances of "breezy" with "dapper" in a detect.py isn't all that difficult either, now is it.
I'd recommend Easyubuntu.
-rcmiv
HA! HA! I have the cube!
A good overview:
http://www.gnome.org/~davyd/gnome-2-14/
If you're running ubuntu dapper, it updated to 2.14 wednesday. It isn't really immediately distinguishable from the previous version but then, if you are also running xgl/compiz, who the hell cares?
http://www.tectonic.co.za/view.php?id=916
-rcmiv
HA! HA! I have the cube!
PSP 9 isn't necessarily bloated, but it does have a lot of features included that go beyond simple image editing. A lot of work in the later versions of PSP has been done on vector tools, filters, and suchlike. Not a bad thing, but really a lot of extras.
So yeah, 9 is a really great program, but to keep Dvorak from becoming confused and agitated, I would settle on 5.
Oh yeah, I was forced to use Microsoft's Photo Manager the other day on a computer that had no other image editing software (outside Paint), and after cropping and exporting about ten screenshots I felt like I had been beaten about the head and shoulders. That program has the single most painful user interface I have ever experienced in any piece of image editing software since Doodle! for the C64.
-rcmiv
Paintshop Pro would be my choice. Powerful, easy to understand tools, good browser, simple interface.
Specifically version 5. Versions 6-9 are perhaps somewhat unnecessarily complicated.
-rcmiv
There's something creepy about Apple. There's something even creepier about Apple fans.
There. I said it. I feel better now.
-rcmiv
This is a zen post. A koan.
And yes, I agree (so far, anyway) that this Google/Sun internet office thingy is mostly just an innovative marketing scheme for Google and Sun.
-rcmiv
I agree that soyuz is probably a better alternative to the inefficient and costly use of the nearly obsolete shuttle orbiter.
But what about the billions of dollars worth of internationally built modules that have yet to be installed on ISS?
I don't think Russia and Japan, and the other countries that are heavily invested in ISS, and who have had their work in storage for 2.5 years due to the shuttle being grounded will be overjoyed when (if?) we cancel the program.
-rcmiv
I have watched so many of these landings, and it still amazes me. I remember watching the first launch in grade school, and the first landing.
I was tuned into NASA to when Columbia launched and heard mission control talking about the foam impact on the lead wing. That whole mission I kept shaking my head at follow up reports that the damage was inconsequential. I got up just in time to watch Columbia break up that morning. It was a heart-rending thing to see happen live.
This morning was fascinating. NASA coverage on the web just absolutely rocks. Even with the visual on the shuttle the whole way down, I still have a hard time conceptualizing that nature of that descent, from 17K mph 220 miles altitude to wheels stopped on the ground in a hour.
Incredible. Flawless. Heroic.
Great work NASA, JPL, Discovery crew! Welcome home. I hope you fly again, soon.
-rcmiv
-
This is the greatest sentence ever written in the history of man. Thank you for your penetrating insight.
-
Seconded. Don't read it too many times, though. Blood will shoot out of your nose. (credit: Lewis Black.)
-rcmiv
Sometimes I think Waits' later, more surrealist work overshadows his fantastic early songwriting. Some of his best material can be heard on Nighthawks at the Diner, Small Change, Foreign Affairs, and Blue Valentine.
The verse quoted above is a prime example, and the rest of that tragic lyric is equally poetic.
I'm old.
-rcmiv
Brian: Are you the Judean Date Tree?
Reg: Fuck off.
Brian: What?
Reg: Judean Date Tree. (scoffs) I'm the Date Tree of Judea. Judean Date Tree, caw.
Francis: Wanker.
Brian: Can I join your group?
Reg: No. Piss off.
-rcmiv
Yes. I recently got a Msoft keyboard with a new PC. The layout of the keys is insanely stupid. Page UP & Down, Home, End, and Delete are not where they should be. Assinine. But it gets worse:
The Function lock key...arrrrgh. Function keys do not perform their standard functions (in windows) until you hit function lock, which is off as a default. F2 is mapped as "Undo" until you activate function lock restoring it to the default "edit". How many times have I "undone" my previous operation (like renaming a file or deleting a file in explorer) without noticing that F2 is not "Edit" as it should be.
One more time and it's the sledgehammer!!!!!
Super Assinine.
-rcmiv
The site sucks. Honest opinion. Not a troll.
Okay-
No one here seems to get it. Let me simplify it for you! You are there to be supportive of your child.
The teacher will have a set routine for this whole "production". You will not have very long to explain or show anything. You are there to answer a few questions. Career day is not about the parent or even really the career, it's about the child. Think that over and re-focus your efforts.
"Pirates" is a hack job of Cringely's "Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires." Look it up on google.
"Nerds" is a pretty well constructed and fascinating documentary of the rise of Apple & Microsoft. Interviews with the actual players -- Jobs, Gates, Balmer, Woz, etc.
"Pirates" stole Cringely's "look and feel" and made a ridiculous, if entertaining, dramatic recreation of the same story. I believe Cringely even sought some legal redress for the close visual similiarity between the Turner Network tripe and his PBS history lesson.
It is sad to see so many folks referencing "Pirates" in lieu of (or in ignorance of) "Nerds", especially in a thread about a Cringely article.
Rocking good fun!
Also -- for a bit of well crafted flash reminiscence -- check Lazarus
rcmiv
Same guy. An amazing Cringely temper tantrum is well documented in that PBS show.
The most surpising thing to me in this posting is that the band Moxy Fruvous has finally made it onto Slashdot. Who'd have predicted that?! (Note the "from the dept." line in Emmet's post.)
A guy in our CAD department here at work just pulled his brand new dual PIII 550 out of the box last night. 512 meg ram, 512k secondary cache, NT. When I got here this morning he was still trying to get it to run...seems every time he put a load on the system (like an IGES translation), BAM! BSOD. How odd.
/. and, problem solved. He pulled out one of the processors, and now the thing works fine. It was only $500 extra for the useless chip!
Then I read this on