"He is believed to be the sole author of the Windows Vista operating system."
He'll be remembered as one of the most malevolent and self-interested sacks of human waste ever to walk the Earth. A man whose excesses knew no maximum height and who's cruelty knew no lowest depth. He was foul, despicable and disgusting... but I don't think even he was that evil.
Yeah that sounds pretty dumb. But also weird: They're talking about lush gardens and foliage on a building that was inspired by something that existed on a dessert planet with no vegetation... Are they going for aesthetics, or is this the harbinger of a drastic ret-conning of Tatooine's landscape for the next media release? With Lucas, you can never be sure.
A friend of mine in med school wanted to help out with the building/early staffing of a hospital in Ethiopia, but she wasn't selected for the program (so she went to Cambodia instead to do other humanitarian work). I know nothing whatsoever about the details, but I have to imagine any hospital built today, anywhere in the world, would have some sort of technical infrastructure. A network with WiFi or perhaps even some sort of program that manages and sorts patient data... all these sound within the skill set of the average geek and could make a major positive impact. Apologies for the lack of solid information and here-say nature of the post. Regardless of what you do, I wish you the best of luck and I hope you find a project where your talents are put to good use for the benefit many, many people.
I was hoping to get my friends together at 5:30 for an End Of The World party... but they're all busy early, so we're have a Post Apocalypse Party at 6:30. What a difference an hour makes.
You can read the story from the perspecive of Mordor if you like, but I'm still waiting for a version of the original LOTR that removes the offensive word "hobbit" and replaces it with the more politically correct, "large-footed halfling".
You are correct about the useless nature of "treat levels" which this system provided, however you missed the point of why it existed in the first place. It was brought about because the government needed to look like it was doing something, and in America that's just as important as actually doing something. Specific information would be far more useful, but it takes time and effort to collect, connect and distribute. If a threat is centralized in one place and that place gets a proper, specific warning, people everywhere else are going to say "Why didn't I get anything?" even if there's zero chance they were at risk. Additionally, there isn't always reliable or detailed intelligence with which to make good warnings. When there isn't, the government can't just say "Yeah, we have no intel today." because they'd look lazy and incompetent. Enter the Color Coded Terror Alerts, the government can please everyone by making something that sounds like a warning, but without the burden of correlating data, or the risk of revealing there is none.
There's a nice little add-on program for Photoshop called Exposure that will emulate all sorts of film stocks. Kodachrome, Portia, Velvia, Tri-X... hell, it'll even emulate Daugarrotype. Granted it's far from the real thing, but it does preserve the color palettes that give these film stocks their various personalities.
"Do you really think someone else would have come up with a better screen play from the same source material?"
Yes, but the finished product would have looked nothing like the source. It would have required cutting parts out, adding new material in and seriously revising whatever remained. The human race fighting to overcome alien oppressors is not the worst movie concept I've ever heard. In the right hands it could be a pretty good movie, or at least something better than it ended up being.
It was pretty clear from the article that the CoS insisted that he write it their way. They didn't give him much leeway to adapt it into something that didn't suck so hard I took the DVD outside and curb-stomped till it shattered after watching it for Bad Movie Night.
I'm on the Wave preview right now, and I'm surprised they didn't put this Buzz feature into that instead. I suspect they were trying to get it out the door in time to beat Facebook's email system to the punch and retain/grab users.
As for Wave, I like it alot. I can't see it replacing email, though. For correspondence between just two people email is simple and effictive, no ammount of bells and whistles that Google or any other company can throw in will change that. What Wave does do extremely well is group communications. I use it to coordinate Bad Movie Nights with my friends, and I've even recommended it to some former co-workers and given them invites to try it out within their organization. I've seen how nasty and incomprehensible emails can get when 3 or more people are involved and all responding, and I'm sick of it. Wave isn't revolutionized email, but it will fill a niche where email is lacking.
"Romantic Comedies are popular in large part because they try and reflect what women dream of happening..."
You focus the rest of your post on the Big Romantic Stunt, but I think there's more to it than that. While seeing idealistic stunts in the name of love is part of the draw, there's also something to be said for the happily-ever-after ending. I've heard friends talk about big romantic gestures they've done for their significant others, and a good chunk of them are now broken up or divorced. The stunts are nice, but the ending where True Love blossoms is a very attractive and re-assuring part of the movie. I even know guys who watch romantic comedies from time to time because of this.
Not using a pen and paper may atrophy one's penmanship, but it has nothing to do with the ability to express a coherent thought on a page. I have been typing everything I hand in in school since about sixth grade. My handwriting sucks, but my writing hasn't suffered for it, the same goes for most of my friends my age (22).
Technology is merely a tool. It doesn't make people and dumber or any smarter. Like everything else, it all depends on how it's used. To paraphrase an old saying, "The technology opens the door, but the user must step through."
The wealth of knowledge available through technology gives us the opportunity to become collectively smarter than any other time in human history. Printing presses gave way to libraries and now literacy is expected when once it was a mark of wealth and privilege. Computers gave way to the Internet which gave way to a faster and easier method of sharing information. The increased computer literacy makes us more resistant to Skynet
I'm 22 now, and in the last five years, I've almost completely stopped watching TV, but I was never bothered by the appointment with the media. Freshman year of college, knowing my night would end with The Daily Show was something to look forward to. More recently, How I Met Your Mother became a staple of my Monday nights. The problem I have is the advertising. I still watch plenty of shows, from DVDs mostly, and they're without the advertising that was a part of the original broadcast. When I watch something on TV now, I get angry when a show gets broken up by ads. I can barely make it through a full episode of anything before my loathing for the advertising drives me to do something else. Like I said before, the appointment doesn't bother me, but when it can get something on my own time with no ads, I'm going to take it over any other option.
The more I think about it the more I agree with you that this is a bad idea. I'd love to see Humphrey Bogart in a new movie, but he's dead and that's that. CGI Bogey is not an acceptable substitute. There's a big risk for abuse that I think outweighs just about any possible good. The worst I can imagine is something like what was suggested in Thank You For Smoking (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxIGcpas_wk see 3:04 for relevant part) where some moral busybody goes back and tries to politically correct old movies...
Why not use this technology to create photo-realistic CGI actors that are totally unique? You side-step the "But it's not really him!" problem at the very least, and it guarantees you an actor who will do exactly what the director wants, how the director wants, never lock themself in a trailer, never snort coke, never die unexpectedly. I'd pay to see a totally CGI actor that could pass for a human... assuming it's in a movie that I would want to go and see in the first place.
That was actually one of my pet peeves from the Rainbow Six series, especially Raven Sheild, which was the one I played the most. Bullets affected my character realistically. Most times I was hit, I'd die. If I was lucky, I'd have my movement and aim severely comprimised. I'm not comlpaining about that, it lended an air of realism to the game and a necessity for strong planning and loyal execution that I enjoyed very much. My problem came in when I'd shoot NPC terrorists. They seemed to die less easily than my character, and worst of all, even if I wounded them, their aim was unaffected. Numerous times I would bang on the keyboard in frustration as a guy I had just shot in the arm could level his gun and kill me just an instant after I shot him.
All good points, however I have to correct one factual error. The concept of the blockbuster as we know it today originated in 1975 with Jaws and paved the way for movies like Star Wars in 1977.
My family drives from New Jersey to Massachussetts every year, and it's tradition to stop in Groton at the Nautilus for a long break. The museum is excellent and the tour of the sub gives you a feel for history that can never be matched by books or documentaries. I have a lot of fond memories of the place, from when I was very young being completely in awe of this boat that could go underwater, to growing up and understanding the history surrounding its creation, and truly appreciating the sign on one of the nearby houses in Groton that encouraged visitors to be mindful of the fact that, for all the marvelous engineering and history surrounding the ship, it was a ship made for war.
According to the article, there will be unskippable warnings that suggest that the upcoming content may be disturbing. I understand where they're coming from on this, but if it's rated M on the box, I expect M-rated content. Don't spoil surprises for me with specific in-game warnings. If it's really that bad, give me the option when I start a new game to skip "objectionable content" and then don't bother me again with it. A mid-game warning breaks the fourth wall and lets you know something is going to happen rather than just shock you with it. It loses emotional impact that way.
Call of Duty is arguably my favorite series of games (at least the installments made by Infinity Ward), and part of what made Modern Warfare so powerful was the unflinching portrayal of war. A portrayal where even the good guys do bad things from time to time and the consequences of actions are brutally rendered. Would the game have been nearly as powerful if you'd had the option to skip the sequence where you crawl out of a downed helicopter and died of radiation poisoning from a nuclear explosion because it was "potentially disturbing"?
Assuming people are intolerent bigots for their faith is a dellusional generalization, and equally intolerent and bigotted. It's the kind of divisive prejudice that leads one group to lash out at another. Sure there's still violence, but it's getting more and more isolated. The only way to wipe it out completely is if everybody crosses borders, gets to know everybody else and realizes that despite all our differences, we all have the capacity to be decent people.
If I wore a shirt that said, "I'm an atheist" down the street, I doubt I'd take much flak for it. All it does is announce something about myself (which is true). Similarly, I don't give any flak to the people I see wearing Christian-themed shirts. The t-shirt you advertise on your site about "Cleaning up after your dogma" is actively insulting another faith by suggesting the destruction of the bible. It's not an "I'm an atheist" shirt. It's a shirt that proclaims "You're wrong for being Christian." It's the equivalent of a Christian wearing a shirt that says "Ask me about how you'll burn in Hell for not loving Jesus." Both shirts are about baiting people and starting fights.
I never had much interest in science-fiction until I read Slaughterhouse Five. It grabbed me, shook me up, made me laugh, and wouldn't let me put it down. I went from cover to cover in one three-hour sitting. I'm hard pressed to think of any book I've read that comes close to how much it affected. I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet (outside of a few references to Vonnegut in general).
I recently re-watched Holy Grail and followed it up with Life of Brian, and I noticed that while both are funny, they're funny in very different ways.
Holy Grail is mostly a light-hearted parody of Arthurian legend. They took the framework of the quest for the Holy Grail, and injected it with the kind of surreal humor they're best remembered for. The closest thing to social satire in it is the oft-quoted scene where Arthur and the peasant argue over how he came to power, and that's more funny because it's totally absurd than because it's making any kind of statement.
Life of Brian, on the other hand, is very heavy on biting social satire. It's critical of beaurocracy and religion, chiefly. Most of the humor comes from mocking the people's way of being more concerned with being followers of the messiah than listening to the messiah's message, the way the Judean People's Front is a committee mired in bylaws, not really acting, most frequently infighting with the JPF, PFJ, Judean Populist Front, et al. The scenes you quote "It says 'Romans Go Home'" "No it doesn't!" are exceptions to the rule for Life of Brian.
Slashdot Mirror
"He is believed to be the sole author of the Windows Vista operating system."
He'll be remembered as one of the most malevolent and self-interested sacks of human waste ever to walk the Earth. A man whose excesses knew no maximum height and who's cruelty knew no lowest depth. He was foul, despicable and disgusting... but I don't think even he was that evil.
Yeah that sounds pretty dumb. But also weird: They're talking about lush gardens and foliage on a building that was inspired by something that existed on a dessert planet with no vegetation... Are they going for aesthetics, or is this the harbinger of a drastic ret-conning of Tatooine's landscape for the next media release? With Lucas, you can never be sure.
A friend of mine in med school wanted to help out with the building/early staffing of a hospital in Ethiopia, but she wasn't selected for the program (so she went to Cambodia instead to do other humanitarian work). I know nothing whatsoever about the details, but I have to imagine any hospital built today, anywhere in the world, would have some sort of technical infrastructure. A network with WiFi or perhaps even some sort of program that manages and sorts patient data... all these sound within the skill set of the average geek and could make a major positive impact. Apologies for the lack of solid information and here-say nature of the post. Regardless of what you do, I wish you the best of luck and I hope you find a project where your talents are put to good use for the benefit many, many people.
I was hoping to get my friends together at 5:30 for an End Of The World party... but they're all busy early, so we're have a Post Apocalypse Party at 6:30. What a difference an hour makes.
You can read the story from the perspecive of Mordor if you like, but I'm still waiting for a version of the original LOTR that removes the offensive word "hobbit" and replaces it with the more politically correct, "large-footed halfling".
"He probably would have killed off at least 1 of those people if he had a second season."
And when he got a movie, he killed off two.
You are correct about the useless nature of "treat levels" which this system provided, however you missed the point of why it existed in the first place. It was brought about because the government needed to look like it was doing something, and in America that's just as important as actually doing something. Specific information would be far more useful, but it takes time and effort to collect, connect and distribute. If a threat is centralized in one place and that place gets a proper, specific warning, people everywhere else are going to say "Why didn't I get anything?" even if there's zero chance they were at risk. Additionally, there isn't always reliable or detailed intelligence with which to make good warnings. When there isn't, the government can't just say "Yeah, we have no intel today." because they'd look lazy and incompetent. Enter the Color Coded Terror Alerts, the government can please everyone by making something that sounds like a warning, but without the burden of correlating data, or the risk of revealing there is none.
There's a nice little add-on program for Photoshop called Exposure that will emulate all sorts of film stocks. Kodachrome, Portia, Velvia, Tri-X... hell, it'll even emulate Daugarrotype. Granted it's far from the real thing, but it does preserve the color palettes that give these film stocks their various personalities.
"None of these people are proven to be pirates. Uwe Boll claims they are."
Uwe Boll also claims to be a film-maker, so I think it's clear we should take anything he says with a grain of salt.
You can, Lifehacker just posted this article about doing that today:
http://lifehacker.com/5542041/block-sites-from-using-your-facebook-login-with-adblock-plus
"Do you really think someone else would have come up with a better screen play from the same source material?"
Yes, but the finished product would have looked nothing like the source. It would have required cutting parts out, adding new material in and seriously revising whatever remained. The human race fighting to overcome alien oppressors is not the worst movie concept I've ever heard. In the right hands it could be a pretty good movie, or at least something better than it ended up being.
It was pretty clear from the article that the CoS insisted that he write it their way. They didn't give him much leeway to adapt it into something that didn't suck so hard I took the DVD outside and curb-stomped till it shattered after watching it for Bad Movie Night.
I'm on the Wave preview right now, and I'm surprised they didn't put this Buzz feature into that instead. I suspect they were trying to get it out the door in time to beat Facebook's email system to the punch and retain/grab users.
As for Wave, I like it alot. I can't see it replacing email, though. For correspondence between just two people email is simple and effictive, no ammount of bells and whistles that Google or any other company can throw in will change that. What Wave does do extremely well is group communications. I use it to coordinate Bad Movie Nights with my friends, and I've even recommended it to some former co-workers and given them invites to try it out within their organization. I've seen how nasty and incomprehensible emails can get when 3 or more people are involved and all responding, and I'm sick of it. Wave isn't revolutionized email, but it will fill a niche where email is lacking.
"Romantic Comedies are popular in large part because they try and reflect what women dream of happening..."
You focus the rest of your post on the Big Romantic Stunt, but I think there's more to it than that. While seeing idealistic stunts in the name of love is part of the draw, there's also something to be said for the happily-ever-after ending. I've heard friends talk about big romantic gestures they've done for their significant others, and a good chunk of them are now broken up or divorced. The stunts are nice, but the ending where True Love blossoms is a very attractive and re-assuring part of the movie. I even know guys who watch romantic comedies from time to time because of this.
Not using a pen and paper may atrophy one's penmanship, but it has nothing to do with the ability to express a coherent thought on a page. I have been typing everything I hand in in school since about sixth grade. My handwriting sucks, but my writing hasn't suffered for it, the same goes for most of my friends my age (22).
Technology is merely a tool. It doesn't make people and dumber or any smarter. Like everything else, it all depends on how it's used. To paraphrase an old saying, "The technology opens the door, but the user must step through."
The wealth of knowledge available through technology gives us the opportunity to become collectively smarter than any other time in human history. Printing presses gave way to libraries and now literacy is expected when once it was a mark of wealth and privilege. Computers gave way to the Internet which gave way to a faster and easier method of sharing information. The increased computer literacy makes us more resistant to Skynet
I'm 22 now, and in the last five years, I've almost completely stopped watching TV, but I was never bothered by the appointment with the media. Freshman year of college, knowing my night would end with The Daily Show was something to look forward to. More recently, How I Met Your Mother became a staple of my Monday nights. The problem I have is the advertising. I still watch plenty of shows, from DVDs mostly, and they're without the advertising that was a part of the original broadcast. When I watch something on TV now, I get angry when a show gets broken up by ads. I can barely make it through a full episode of anything before my loathing for the advertising drives me to do something else. Like I said before, the appointment doesn't bother me, but when it can get something on my own time with no ads, I'm going to take it over any other option.
The more I think about it the more I agree with you that this is a bad idea. I'd love to see Humphrey Bogart in a new movie, but he's dead and that's that. CGI Bogey is not an acceptable substitute. There's a big risk for abuse that I think outweighs just about any possible good. The worst I can imagine is something like what was suggested in Thank You For Smoking (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxIGcpas_wk see 3:04 for relevant part) where some moral busybody goes back and tries to politically correct old movies...
Why not use this technology to create photo-realistic CGI actors that are totally unique? You side-step the "But it's not really him!" problem at the very least, and it guarantees you an actor who will do exactly what the director wants, how the director wants, never lock themself in a trailer, never snort coke, never die unexpectedly. I'd pay to see a totally CGI actor that could pass for a human... assuming it's in a movie that I would want to go and see in the first place.
That was actually one of my pet peeves from the Rainbow Six series, especially Raven Sheild, which was the one I played the most. Bullets affected my character realistically. Most times I was hit, I'd die. If I was lucky, I'd have my movement and aim severely comprimised. I'm not comlpaining about that, it lended an air of realism to the game and a necessity for strong planning and loyal execution that I enjoyed very much. My problem came in when I'd shoot NPC terrorists. They seemed to die less easily than my character, and worst of all, even if I wounded them, their aim was unaffected. Numerous times I would bang on the keyboard in frustration as a guy I had just shot in the arm could level his gun and kill me just an instant after I shot him.
All good points, however I have to correct one factual error. The concept of the blockbuster as we know it today originated in 1975 with Jaws and paved the way for movies like Star Wars in 1977.
It's not only possible... it is essential!
Amen to that, thank you for posting it.
My family drives from New Jersey to Massachussetts every year, and it's tradition to stop in Groton at the Nautilus for a long break. The museum is excellent and the tour of the sub gives you a feel for history that can never be matched by books or documentaries. I have a lot of fond memories of the place, from when I was very young being completely in awe of this boat that could go underwater, to growing up and understanding the history surrounding its creation, and truly appreciating the sign on one of the nearby houses in Groton that encouraged visitors to be mindful of the fact that, for all the marvelous engineering and history surrounding the ship, it was a ship made for war.
According to the article, there will be unskippable warnings that suggest that the upcoming content may be disturbing. I understand where they're coming from on this, but if it's rated M on the box, I expect M-rated content. Don't spoil surprises for me with specific in-game warnings. If it's really that bad, give me the option when I start a new game to skip "objectionable content" and then don't bother me again with it. A mid-game warning breaks the fourth wall and lets you know something is going to happen rather than just shock you with it. It loses emotional impact that way.
Call of Duty is arguably my favorite series of games (at least the installments made by Infinity Ward), and part of what made Modern Warfare so powerful was the unflinching portrayal of war. A portrayal where even the good guys do bad things from time to time and the consequences of actions are brutally rendered. Would the game have been nearly as powerful if you'd had the option to skip the sequence where you crawl out of a downed helicopter and died of radiation poisoning from a nuclear explosion because it was "potentially disturbing"?
Paranoid much?
Assuming people are intolerent bigots for their faith is a dellusional generalization, and equally intolerent and bigotted. It's the kind of divisive prejudice that leads one group to lash out at another. Sure there's still violence, but it's getting more and more isolated. The only way to wipe it out completely is if everybody crosses borders, gets to know everybody else and realizes that despite all our differences, we all have the capacity to be decent people.
If I wore a shirt that said, "I'm an atheist" down the street, I doubt I'd take much flak for it. All it does is announce something about myself (which is true). Similarly, I don't give any flak to the people I see wearing Christian-themed shirts. The t-shirt you advertise on your site about "Cleaning up after your dogma" is actively insulting another faith by suggesting the destruction of the bible. It's not an "I'm an atheist" shirt. It's a shirt that proclaims "You're wrong for being Christian." It's the equivalent of a Christian wearing a shirt that says "Ask me about how you'll burn in Hell for not loving Jesus." Both shirts are about baiting people and starting fights.
If a place smells like a moose just died in it, ...
Canadians feel at home?
Well, them and Sarah Palin.
I never had much interest in science-fiction until I read Slaughterhouse Five. It grabbed me, shook me up, made me laugh, and wouldn't let me put it down. I went from cover to cover in one three-hour sitting. I'm hard pressed to think of any book I've read that comes close to how much it affected. I'm surprised no one has mentioned it yet (outside of a few references to Vonnegut in general).
I recently re-watched Holy Grail and followed it up with Life of Brian, and I noticed that while both are funny, they're funny in very different ways.
Holy Grail is mostly a light-hearted parody of Arthurian legend. They took the framework of the quest for the Holy Grail, and injected it with the kind of surreal humor they're best remembered for. The closest thing to social satire in it is the oft-quoted scene where Arthur and the peasant argue over how he came to power, and that's more funny because it's totally absurd than because it's making any kind of statement.
Life of Brian, on the other hand, is very heavy on biting social satire. It's critical of beaurocracy and religion, chiefly. Most of the humor comes from mocking the people's way of being more concerned with being followers of the messiah than listening to the messiah's message, the way the Judean People's Front is a committee mired in bylaws, not really acting, most frequently infighting with the JPF, PFJ, Judean Populist Front, et al. The scenes you quote "It says 'Romans Go Home'" "No it doesn't!" are exceptions to the rule for Life of Brian.