here's my review of LOTR 1, for example:
1. taylor girl doesn't know how to play
2. jackson is NOT a first rate director
3. aragorn beats 9 nazgul with a torch? come on.
4. aragorn and elf women cuddle while frodo is dying in the background?!
5. elfs are 3 feet tall. this is not shown in the film. watch willow for crissake. a byproduct of this is that merry and pippin remain undifferentiated throught LOTR 1,2,3.
6. gandalf and elrond winking contest in the famous meeting: didn't people SEE THEM wink? is this some corporate drama??
7. boromir is a bad actor. and aragorn has no presence either, not a chirstopher walken type that's for sure
8. lagolas. come on. he almost doesn't speak, and when he does it's all classic yes-man phrases
9. moria chase before they get to the stairs is totally missed. great potential there.
10. final battle scene also totally screwed: where are people located? way too unclear and DON'T tell me that was the point
11. boromir/aragorn corridor conflict is downright pathetic. can't they communicate?
12. nazgul murdering blankets scene also coulda been shot much better. jackson sucks.
Nice to see Google is the major player picking up the Invisible Web issue, mining databases other than its own.
If they would only index their own Google Answers database better - currently search is the only way *Sigh*. It screams for dmoz.org-quality indexing. This promising service could be so much more mature this way.
Collaborative Aggregation answers an extremely important need: Aggregated web pages form an answer to some research question, be it a one page discussion or the name of a bookmark folder. It is the mechanism of choice for sharing information that is included in more than one web page - contrasted with information that is part of a web page, e.g. how many guns there are in the US, or with information that is *A* web page, e.g. where is the order page for an O'Reilly book.
While StumbleUpon (mentioned above somewhere) is nice, and Amazon has their booklist sharing function (which I'm sure they've patented, *hmpf*), the contender for social bookmarking seems to be Google Answers, from the Expert Sites category. However, rather than cross-referencing and indexing their DB, Google choose to let users mine it with (surprise) a search function, so you need to do some digging if the question is not well-defined and this causes the product to be pretty immature IMHO.
An extension of the concept into Wikipedia would be WikiStrings (suggested name), a group of terms spanning otherwise unrelated topics, plus a text field - the WikiString term - which explains the informational value of packaging the terms together, e.g. "Why Nationality is Stupid WikiString", "Lifestyle Impact of Full-Blown VR WikiString", "Info for Avoiding Media Manipulations WikiString", etc.
In all collab. aggregation is hot. Good luck!!!!!
-Yuval
Tel Aviv
I would recommend practicing Samadhi meditation, the deepest meditative state of Yoga. It is taught by the India-based SSY. It is a state of "no-mind": supressing/dis-identifying with thoughts. Benefits set in with regular practice over several months. It's an easy practice - basically passive, allowing thoughts to blow away un-attended. You do it 3 times a day for 15 minutes and become *extremely* relaxed.
Benefits include improved memory, near-perfect concentration, no inner conflict (!) and increased oratory skills. Health-wise it cures one from the oh-so-popular state of chronic excess of mental activity, which manifests as nervousness/anxiety, over-talkativeness, sleep problems due to inability to "let-go" of thoughts (known as "subjective insomnia"), etc. It is also good for psychosomatic related disorders, including asthma, joint pain (stress-related) and perhaps even diabetes (?).
For a firsthand description of the experience read the intruiging "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle.
i've seen ross's mountain pic in a gallery in NY this summer, it is indeed extremely impressive.
hyper-realism is a term coined by canadian artist char davies, former founder of softimage. she defines it as the bottom-up approach to simulating reality. she actually SUCCEEDED in making people perceive what they see as reality-quality, people bursting into tears when they remove the HMD and so forth. very interesting and worthwhile to look into. there was a very inspiring salon.com article titles '3-d epiphany' about what charlotte was doing in 1998(!!): http://dir.salon.com/tech/feature/1998/ 06/13/featu re947640934/index.html?pn=1
Slashdot Mirror
this might be unpopular, but really people.
here's my review of LOTR 1, for example:
1. taylor girl doesn't know how to play
2. jackson is NOT a first rate director
3. aragorn beats 9 nazgul with a torch? come on.
4. aragorn and elf women cuddle while frodo is dying in the background?!
5. elfs are 3 feet tall. this is not shown in the film. watch willow for crissake. a byproduct of this is that merry and pippin remain undifferentiated throught LOTR 1,2,3.
6. gandalf and elrond winking contest in the famous meeting: didn't people SEE THEM wink? is this some corporate drama??
7. boromir is a bad actor. and aragorn has no presence either, not a chirstopher walken type that's for sure
8. lagolas. come on. he almost doesn't speak, and when he does it's all classic yes-man phrases
9. moria chase before they get to the stairs is totally missed. great potential there.
10. final battle scene also totally screwed: where are people located? way too unclear and DON'T tell me that was the point
11. boromir/aragorn corridor conflict is downright pathetic. can't they communicate?
12. nazgul murdering blankets scene also coulda been shot much better. jackson sucks.
of course LOTR 1 is the best of the 3.
Nice to see Google is the major player picking up the Invisible Web issue, mining databases other than its own.
If they would only index their own Google Answers database better - currently search is the only way *Sigh*. It screams for dmoz.org-quality indexing. This promising service could be so much more mature this way.
Collaborative Aggregation answers an extremely important need: Aggregated web pages form an answer to some research question, be it a one page discussion or the name of a bookmark folder. It is the mechanism of choice for sharing information that is included in more than one web page - contrasted with information that is part of a web page, e.g. how many guns there are in the US, or with information that is *A* web page, e.g. where is the order page for an O'Reilly book.
While StumbleUpon (mentioned above somewhere) is nice, and Amazon has their booklist sharing function (which I'm sure they've patented, *hmpf*), the contender for social bookmarking seems to be Google Answers, from the Expert Sites category. However, rather than cross-referencing and indexing their DB, Google choose to let users mine it with (surprise) a search function, so you need to do some digging if the question is not well-defined and this causes the product to be pretty immature IMHO.
An extension of the concept into Wikipedia would be WikiStrings (suggested name), a group of terms spanning otherwise unrelated topics, plus a text field - the WikiString term - which explains the informational value of packaging the terms together, e.g. "Why Nationality is Stupid WikiString", "Lifestyle Impact of Full-Blown VR WikiString", "Info for Avoiding Media Manipulations WikiString", etc.
In all collab. aggregation is hot. Good luck!!!!!
-Yuval
Tel Aviv
Meditation is a risk-free brain enhancer.
:-)
I would recommend practicing Samadhi meditation, the deepest meditative state of Yoga. It is taught by the India-based SSY. It is a state of "no-mind": supressing/dis-identifying with thoughts. Benefits set in with regular practice over several months. It's an easy practice - basically passive, allowing thoughts to blow away un-attended. You do it 3 times a day for 15 minutes and become *extremely* relaxed.
Benefits include improved memory, near-perfect concentration, no inner conflict (!) and increased oratory skills. Health-wise it cures one from the oh-so-popular state of chronic excess of mental activity, which manifests as nervousness/anxiety, over-talkativeness, sleep problems due to inability to "let-go" of thoughts (known as "subjective insomnia"), etc. It is also good for psychosomatic related disorders, including asthma, joint pain (stress-related) and perhaps even diabetes (?).
For a firsthand description of the experience read the intruiging "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle.
Search terms: Samadhi consciousness, unitary consciousness, unified consciousness, no-mind.
enjoy
i've seen ross's mountain pic in a gallery in NY this summer, it is indeed extremely impressive.
/ 06/13/featu re947640934/index.html?pn=1
hyper-realism is a term coined by canadian artist char davies, former founder of softimage. she defines it as the bottom-up approach to simulating reality. she actually SUCCEEDED in making people perceive what they see as reality-quality, people bursting into tears when they remove the HMD and so forth. very interesting and worthwhile to look into. there was a very inspiring salon.com article titles '3-d epiphany' about what charlotte was doing in 1998(!!):
http://dir.salon.com/tech/feature/1998
her website is http://www.immersence.com/
i'd love to see slashdot cover her.