Let me rephrase what I just said. Punk's dead, punk. You could say that it was born dead -- or died shortly after birth, the moment when the Sex Pistols signed their first recording contract. The history of punk is a history of necrophilia. Not that anyone minds...
I should've made it more clear that what I said in my post was mostly in response to what these 'pajama journalists' wrote on their web page: In the 1960's, the medium may have been the message, but in the new century, it's time for the medium to get out of the way. I can't see how this is possible -- how it's possible for blogs to give us "the experts themselves". For a blogger is still a "mediated expert": he still has only a subset of the facts, and he doesn't write everything he knows in his blog. In the end, the main difference between 'new' and 'old' media is, instead of "experts say", we get "I, $expert, say". Yes, these experts (or people pretending to be experts) are a legion, but what they produce isn't something qualitatively new.
The only area where I have, so far, noticed any difference is disaster-reporting. Blogs have brought disasters (invcluding war) to your bedroom. But I tend to see this change as a negative one: you still get lots of lies and misinformation just like you got from the 'old media', except that it's all loaded with tons of emotion, making you less critical about what you read or see.
Unfortunately, it seems that this is one of the myths they'll never be able to bust. The myth about the so-called New Media not being media, about blogs being the voice of the experts. I mean, fuck, look at us, the commentators on one of the bigger blogs -- we're nothing but a bunch of egomaniacs who think that they "get it", but really don't when it comes to application development, IT, networking, etc... Unfortunately, we're far too common.
You don't need to be a genius to change the world -- it'll only take one idiot to push the right button and blow the place up. On the other hand, you don't have to change the world to be a genius. It doesn't even take changing the world to be regarded as one: just getting to know it a bit better (by making a scientific discovery or two) can be enough.
learning to come up with ideas is the hardest that people can do.
Learning to come up with ideas is easy. Anyone can do that ("Hey, I know, what about a flying car?"). The difficult part is coming up with ideas that are scientific in the sense of the discipline that they are studying (ie Physics has one set of standards, Linguistics has another one).
Because a) all that fiber has already been laid by someone else and they're just buying it up (quite cheap, I can imagine), b) the Internet is spread a lot wider than just in these 300+ points, c) what the AC said, and d) WHY THE HELL WOULD THEY WANT TO REPLACE THE INTERNET, YOU MORON???
Even more extremely unrealistic (in all aspect) than "Starship Troopers".
First of all, it's a bit unrealistic to expect realism from a sci-fi film:7
Secondly, in case you didn't get it, "Starship Troopers" was meant to be unrealistic. A satire of other sci-fi films, and of the American society. And it worked real well, too -- not only didn't some of the viewers get it but neither did the director of the sequel...
Similarly, Besson wanted to make the "5th Element" a film completely fantastic. I think it was something he had dreamed of as a kid -- Bruce Willis saving the universe:H Of course it's completely unreal for this one tough guy to save the universe and not even get a scratch in the progress, but within the frames of the genre (remember that the film's a fairytale), it's completely logical that you'd send one man instead of an army.
It's based on reader ratings, so it's really no wonder that it's so heavy on space operas -- these are, after all, the most popular kind of sci-fi (or space) movies. Yes, I guess it is a generation thing. Most of their users probably haven't even seen "Silent Running".
he somehow managed to slip 4 or 5 absolute masterpieces past the Soviet censors... how he did that is beyond me.
It wasn't easy, seeing that in all his career, he would only make seven feature films, even though he had ideas for dozens more. It seems that he was allowed to continue to make films after Rublyov mostly because of the critical acclaim and festival prizes it received, but even then it took quite a long time to make a movie, and the budgets were tight (The Stalker, if I remember correctly, is mostly black and white because the budget didn't allow for it to be filmed full in color). Also, bypassing the censors became increasingly difficult in Brezhnev's times, which is one of the things that led to Tarkovsky's emigration.
For some reason, I'm still yet to watch this movie (even though it's been sitting on my shelf for several months now), but from what I've heard, it "suffers" from being a Tarkovsky movie rather than a movie based on Lem's book (Lem himself has said that "he didn't make Solaris at all, he made Crime and Punishment."), exploring similar themes to other Tarkovsky movies, making it lose some of the dimension. Of course it's impossible (and perhaps even wrong) for a movie to faithfully follow the book it was based on, but...it's still very difficult not to think of the book when watching the movie.
Well, I've had first hand experience with Chinese pirated CDs in (Eastern) Europe, but this was almost eight years ago.. They were not uncommon back then, but the Chinese CDs were lower quality than the Russian ones. Mind you, I haven't seen one in years, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
On the other hand, there have been reports of fake brand-name clothing (and other merchandise, like power tools) being found in cargo containers from China. So it's a bit naive to suggest (like that poster did) that the media are making a fuss over nothing.
The Americans and the Europeans are obsessed with it because of copious the pirated Chinese CD-s (and other merchandise) making its way to Europe and America.
Look, I'm not trying to sound negative here, but unless this conflict draws really really long, I don't really believe these devices will ever hit the streets of Baghdad. All the talk about the possible use of this technology in Iraq serves only to justify all the millions being spent on these machine translation projects.
I don't think this particular project is about making the kids read these books. Rather than promote reading literary classics, what it seems to be about is familiarizing the kids with some of the central memes of the culture is built on. The kids might never read "Romeo and Juliet", but at least they'll recognize the basic plot when they happen to see a movie based on it. Or if an angsty teenage girl tells an angsty teenage boy that they're "just like Romeo and Juliet", then the boy will at least know that the world is so fucked up that they're better off committing suicide.
Slashdot Mirror
Let me rephrase what I just said. Punk's dead, punk. You could say that it was born dead -- or died shortly after birth, the moment when the Sex Pistols signed their first recording contract. The history of punk is a history of necrophilia. Not that anyone minds...
Haven't you heard? Punk's dead.
He did it on purpose -- just so that you people could comment on his sexual preferences. YHL. HAND.
The Illuminati.
The only area where I have, so far, noticed any difference is disaster-reporting. Blogs have brought disasters (invcluding war) to your bedroom. But I tend to see this change as a negative one: you still get lots of lies and misinformation just like you got from the 'old media', except that it's all loaded with tons of emotion, making you less critical about what you read or see.
Unfortunately, it seems that this is one of the myths they'll never be able to bust. The myth about the so-called New Media not being media, about blogs being the voice of the experts. I mean, fuck, look at us, the commentators on one of the bigger blogs -- we're nothing but a bunch of egomaniacs who think that they "get it", but really don't when it comes to application development, IT, networking, etc... Unfortunately, we're far too common.
Whose bedroom are they reporting from?
When will you finally bust the Moon as a Liberal myth?
"We" have always spent more money on killing than on science. How's this Bush's fault?
And no, I didn't read it on digg.com.
EFF has launched a class-action suit against Sony.
You don't need to be a genius to change the world -- it'll only take one idiot to push the right button and blow the place up. On the other hand, you don't have to change the world to be a genius. It doesn't even take changing the world to be regarded as one: just getting to know it a bit better (by making a scientific discovery or two) can be enough.
Learning to come up with ideas is easy. Anyone can do that ("Hey, I know, what about a flying car?"). The difficult part is coming up with ideas that are scientific in the sense of the discipline that they are studying (ie Physics has one set of standards, Linguistics has another one).
Because a) all that fiber has already been laid by someone else and they're just buying it up (quite cheap, I can imagine), b) the Internet is spread a lot wider than just in these 300+ points, c) what the AC said, and d) WHY THE HELL WOULD THEY WANT TO REPLACE THE INTERNET, YOU MORON???
First of all, it's a bit unrealistic to expect realism from a sci-fi film :7
Secondly, in case you didn't get it, "Starship Troopers" was meant to be unrealistic. A satire of other sci-fi films, and of the American society. And it worked real well, too -- not only didn't some of the viewers get it but neither did the director of the sequel...
Similarly, Besson wanted to make the "5th Element" a film completely fantastic. I think it was something he had dreamed of as a kid -- Bruce Willis saving the universe :H Of course it's completely unreal for this one tough guy to save the universe and not even get a scratch in the progress, but within the frames of the genre (remember that the film's a fairytale), it's completely logical that you'd send one man instead of an army.
It's based on reader ratings, so it's really no wonder that it's so heavy on space operas -- these are, after all, the most popular kind of sci-fi (or space) movies. Yes, I guess it is a generation thing. Most of their users probably haven't even seen "Silent Running".
It wasn't easy, seeing that in all his career, he would only make seven feature films, even though he had ideas for dozens more. It seems that he was allowed to continue to make films after Rublyov mostly because of the critical acclaim and festival prizes it received, but even then it took quite a long time to make a movie, and the budgets were tight (The Stalker, if I remember correctly, is mostly black and white because the budget didn't allow for it to be filmed full in color). Also, bypassing the censors became increasingly difficult in Brezhnev's times, which is one of the things that led to Tarkovsky's emigration.
For some reason, I'm still yet to watch this movie (even though it's been sitting on my shelf for several months now), but from what I've heard, it "suffers" from being a Tarkovsky movie rather than a movie based on Lem's book (Lem himself has said that "he didn't make Solaris at all, he made Crime and Punishment."), exploring similar themes to other Tarkovsky movies, making it lose some of the dimension. Of course it's impossible (and perhaps even wrong) for a movie to faithfully follow the book it was based on, but...it's still very difficult not to think of the book when watching the movie.
Pathetic.
On the other hand, there have been reports of fake brand-name clothing (and other merchandise, like power tools) being found in cargo containers from China. So it's a bit naive to suggest (like that poster did) that the media are making a fuss over nothing.
The Americans and the Europeans are obsessed with it because of copious the pirated Chinese CD-s (and other merchandise) making its way to Europe and America.
It appears that you also need a brain. Wanna buy one? I also have lungs, livers, blood (AB), a few hearts and a ton of other body parts for sale.
Look, I'm not trying to sound negative here, but unless this conflict draws really really long, I don't really believe these devices will ever hit the streets of Baghdad. All the talk about the possible use of this technology in Iraq serves only to justify all the millions being spent on these machine translation projects.
Indeed, Slashdot seems to be losing its positions in the dupe posting market fast...
I don't think this particular project is about making the kids read these books. Rather than promote reading literary classics, what it seems to be about is familiarizing the kids with some of the central memes of the culture is built on. The kids might never read "Romeo and Juliet", but at least they'll recognize the basic plot when they happen to see a movie based on it. Or if an angsty teenage girl tells an angsty teenage boy that they're "just like Romeo and Juliet", then the boy will at least know that the world is so fucked up that they're better off committing suicide.