The point the parent was trying to make is that War of the Worlds and The Lord of the Rings movies were both based on books. The later versons are not so much based on the previous movies, more of a "reimagining" of the source material. The 21st century version of LoTR bears little resemblence to the 1978 film.
Of the other examples TheOriginalRevdoc gives, The Maltese Falcon and The Thing were both based on earlier works, so they don't count as straight remakes (by some people's reckoning) either.
Remakes don't have to be worse, I would have added the 80s version of The Fly to the grandparents list. Movie revivals of old TV series always seem to be, though.
Having said all this, I am sure the new version of Revenge of the Nerds is going to horrible. For one thing, a lot of the blatent sexual content in the original will have to be cut down.
I agree with your comments on the current story. In reality, all modern processors have flaws that only occur in extrememly unlikely circumstances. This one is not any different.
Something similar used to happen on very old processors, back in the day. If certain instructions were executed in tight loops, the chips would experience localised heating and eventually malfunction (sometimes with permanent damage).
I'm too young to remember the details (I think it goes back to the early eighties at least), but perhaps some of the elder gods that lurk around here might be able to supply more details.
I had a whole bunch of the earlier Fighting Fantasy books - Deathtrap Dungeon was pretty much the best of the bunch. Well written with a setting that leant itself well to the medium. Cool artwork as well.
There were actually a whole lot of similar series floating around in the late eighties. Did anyone else play those books that came in pairs and you played with another person? They used a clever method of synchonising state between the players so that one persons descisions would affect the other - all very cool when you are twelve years old.
Its a smart move not to tie the in-game points to any one currency. It means that at some later date they can start charging more or (unlikely) less for each point, effectively raising prices without having to change the point system. Lots of online game systems do this, for instance Magic:The Gathering Online with "ticks".
...that their stock options aren't going to be worth as much. The truth is that Microsoft has very good reasons to delay Vista, only some of which they control. Anyone who has installed the beta can see that it has a long way to go before it reaches release quality. Vista is a fairly big update to the Windows code base, and the fact that it is not stable or speedy enough yet for day-to-day use at this late stage must be a factor in their decision to put it back. Externally, Vista changes the driver model, and the hardware manufacturers seem to be lagging behind. There is no point releasing an OS if no one can use their graphics cards. Microsoft has a lot riding on Vista, the first desktop OS release since 2001. They will not have decided to slip lightly.
Do not underestimate genetic drift; certain charactistics become more or less common in a population due to random chance even without the pressure of natural selection. Over time this can cause great changes in the average genetic makeup of a population. Also, its possible that natural selection is still going on, even in the industrial world. There is an overall decline in fertility in most western nations. If was due to environmental chemicals (for instance), a certain percentage of the population would be less affected and hence more fertile and more likely to pass the genes for resistence to chemical infertility. This would happen even if the chemicals caused no actual deaths. Finally, there is still sexual selection going on, although it is unclear how much effect this has in human society.
And it only cost 200 million to make... So they should break even about 2010 or so..
If you had actually read the short but annoyingly formatted Forbes article, you would see that it made $115 million in profit even including its production cost. Many famous big budget flops eventually make back their costs over the years due to DVD sales and broadcast rights.
Kevin Costner is a great actor...if you want him to play Kevin Costner...
True, he has been responsible for some of the most tedious movies known to man.
Should change his name to Kevin CostMore
Somewhere in Hollywood: "Gentlemen, our long search is over. The host for the 2007 Oscars has been found."
I remember reading something, I think it was in Nature, about a project to manipulate sharks brains to study Alzheimer's. It didn't work out so well and some people died. The govenment tried to hush in up, but this documentary is available and contains some chilling footage.
I hope this new project is run with much stricter controls.
The Microsoft JVM was amazing for its time, but that time was seven years ago. It has many problems and limitations (no Swing being only one of them) and I am not sorry to see it go. The.NET framework is even more annoying to install than the JVM, many people don't have it, it will only even work under Windows, and even there only under Internet Explorer. I see no advantage in.NET over Java for general internet distribution of applets.
Installing the JVM on Linux is a pain - it works but you have to jump through hoops that many people can't be bothered with.
MacOSX has excellent support for Java built in, although it always lags behind the latest release from Sun.
I was writing an Applet aimed at Internet Cafes as well, I abandoned it when I realised that most cafes would not have a decent JVM installed.
The Microsoft JVM does not (and never will) support Swing, or any of the more advanced Java features. Since Microsoft has dropped all support and has removed their JVM from Windows, I decided that it wasn't worth trying to cater to the minority of users that still have it, I just tell people to go to www.java.com and download the Sun JVM if it doesn't work.
Then again, I am not trying to make money off my applets, so I don't care if some people can't use them.
I don't have the page handy, but Sun has claimed that 50% of browsers have the Sun JVM installed. I don't know whether to believe that or not.
I can't read the article but IMHO there is no clear winner in the SWT vs Swing debate (AWT died years ago).
Swing is slower and not quite native, but comes with every Java VM (or the important ones anyway) and is very flexible.
SWT is fast and more native, but requires external machine-specific JARs which can be a pain to deploy, and has a more limited design.
In Java I tend to use Swing because I am making applets, so the deployment issues are important to me. If I was going to create a large-scale application like Eclipse I would be tempted to use SWT, since the installer could handled the SWT specific issues.
Java programmers really should not be complaining about having two first-class GUI APIs.
ActiveX served its purpose well. It was never really intended for use on the Internet, but instead was aimed at company intranets as a way of enticing client-server programmers to avoid using HTML based applications that do not require expensive Windows licenses. Even today, many popular intranet applications still run as ActiveX controls even though they could easily be implemented as pure HTML. However, ActiveX is on its way out, now that Microsoft has Avalon waiting in the wings to replace it as a Windows-only application deployment method.
I would be interested in seeing how many web pages use Java applets, Flash, Shockwave, Quicktime, ActiveX controls etc, etc. Sadly the authors did not include this information.
In Puzzle Pirates, while combat, sailing, etc. are all simulated with puzzles, you still need to spend time grinding away at the puzzles to get a good rating at anything.
This is true, but if you like puzzles (and the PP minigames are pretty good) then it doesn't feel like grinding. I played out me demo period in PP last year and was utterly charmed by the game. The only reason I didn't subscribe was that I didn't want to be sucked into another MMRPG.
It also helps that most of the other players are friendly, and that even starting characters perform useful roles in the economy.
I don't have a cite, but I have been told that several schemes like this have been carried out over the years. The problem is that there is really no way to pass off several hundred thousand transactions for less than a cent as legitimate. Banks tend to notice that kind of thing.
Re:Newness? Reliability?
on
Sun Releases ZFS
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Er, did you read the article the same article that I did? The filesystem apparently supports transactions both for file contents and filesystem structures. They are bragging that they have simulated crashing the computer over a million times without corruption. Sounds like they have it covered.
King Kong Lived? No, King Kong Lives!
on
King Kong Lived?
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· Score: 1
You can find out more (including how Kong got his artifical heart and found love while on the run from the army) in the excellent documentary, King Kong Lives. Its a mystery to me how this fine movie missed out on the Best Factual Presentation Oscar in 1986.
Slashdot Mirror
Of the other examples TheOriginalRevdoc gives, The Maltese Falcon and The Thing were both based on earlier works, so they don't count as straight remakes (by some people's reckoning) either.
Remakes don't have to be worse, I would have added the 80s version of The Fly to the grandparents list. Movie revivals of old TV series always seem to be, though.
Having said all this, I am sure the new version of Revenge of the Nerds is going to horrible. For one thing, a lot of the blatent sexual content in the original will have to be cut down.
I agree with your comments on the current story. In reality, all modern processors have flaws that only occur in extrememly unlikely circumstances. This one is not any different.
I'm too young to remember the details (I think it goes back to the early eighties at least), but perhaps some of the elder gods that lurk around here might be able to supply more details.
Just played this today, everyone over a certain age should check it out. Its a great homage/parody of the way things used to be.
There were actually a whole lot of similar series floating around in the late eighties. Did anyone else play those books that came in pairs and you played with another person? They used a clever method of synchonising state between the players so that one persons descisions would affect the other - all very cool when you are twelve years old.
http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2005/05/tiny-music- makers-pt-2-microsoft-sound.html
Its a smart move not to tie the in-game points to any one currency. It means that at some later date they can start charging more or (unlikely) less for each point, effectively raising prices without having to change the point system.
Lots of online game systems do this, for instance Magic:The Gathering Online with "ticks".
...that their stock options aren't going to be worth as much. The truth is that Microsoft has very good reasons to delay Vista, only some of which they control. Anyone who has installed the beta can see that it has a long way to go before it reaches release quality. Vista is a fairly big update to the Windows code base, and the fact that it is not stable or speedy enough yet for day-to-day use at this late stage must be a factor in their decision to put it back.
Externally, Vista changes the driver model, and the hardware manufacturers seem to be lagging behind. There is no point releasing an OS if no one can use their graphics cards.
Microsoft has a lot riding on Vista, the first desktop OS release since 2001. They will not have decided to slip lightly.
Do not underestimate genetic drift; certain charactistics become more or less common in a population due to random chance even without the pressure of natural selection. Over time this can cause great changes in the average genetic makeup of a population.
Also, its possible that natural selection is still going on, even in the industrial world. There is an overall decline in fertility in most western nations. If was due to environmental chemicals (for instance), a certain percentage of the population would be less affected and hence more fertile and more likely to pass the genes for resistence to chemical infertility. This would happen even if the chemicals caused no actual deaths.
Finally, there is still sexual selection going on, although it is unclear how much effect this has in human society.
I hope this new project is run with much stricter controls.
The Microsoft JVM was amazing for its time, but that time was seven years ago. It has many problems and limitations (no Swing being only one of them) and I am not sorry to see it go. The .NET framework is even more annoying to install than the JVM, many people don't have it, it will only even work under Windows, and even there only under Internet Explorer. I see no advantage in .NET over Java for general internet distribution of applets.
Installing the JVM on Linux is a pain - it works but you have to jump through hoops that many people can't be bothered with.
MacOSX has excellent support for Java built in, although it always lags behind the latest release from Sun.
I was writing an Applet aimed at Internet Cafes as well, I abandoned it when I realised that most cafes would not have a decent JVM installed.
The Microsoft JVM does not (and never will) support Swing, or any of the more advanced Java features. Since Microsoft has dropped all support and has removed their JVM from Windows, I decided that it wasn't worth trying to cater to the minority of users that still have it, I just tell people to go to www.java.com and download the Sun JVM if it doesn't work.
Then again, I am not trying to make money off my applets, so I don't care if some people can't use them.
I don't have the page handy, but Sun has claimed that 50% of browsers have the Sun JVM installed. I don't know whether to believe that or not.
I can't read the article but IMHO there is no clear winner in the SWT vs Swing debate (AWT died years ago).
Swing is slower and not quite native, but comes with every Java VM (or the important ones anyway) and is very flexible.
SWT is fast and more native, but requires external machine-specific JARs which can be a pain to deploy, and has a more limited design.
In Java I tend to use Swing because I am making applets, so the deployment issues are important to me. If I was going to create a large-scale application like Eclipse I would be tempted to use SWT, since the installer could handled the SWT specific issues.
Java programmers really should not be complaining about having two first-class GUI APIs.
ActiveX served its purpose well. It was never really intended for use on the Internet, but instead was aimed at company intranets as a way of enticing client-server programmers to avoid using HTML based applications that do not require expensive Windows licenses. Even today, many popular intranet applications still run as ActiveX controls even though they could easily be implemented as pure HTML.
However, ActiveX is on its way out, now that Microsoft has Avalon waiting in the wings to replace it as a Windows-only application deployment method.
Variations of this post have been around for years. It was very funny for the first few months, but the trolls should really get some new material.
Is your whole post a joke? MOD PARENT UP +1 INSIGHTFUL!!!!1!
I would be interested in seeing how many web pages use Java applets, Flash, Shockwave, Quicktime, ActiveX controls etc, etc. Sadly the authors did not include this information.
I don't have a cite, but I have been told that several schemes like this have been carried out over the years. The problem is that there is really no way to pass off several hundred thousand transactions for less than a cent as legitimate. Banks tend to notice that kind of thing.
Actually its $30 a month (== $360 per year). Still a good deal.
Sorry, the information I referred to is in a PDF that is linked to the article. It's at http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/docs/z fs_last.pdf. Its a pretty good read - exciting times for filesystem fans.
Er, did you read the article the same article that I did? The filesystem apparently supports transactions both for file contents and filesystem structures. They are bragging that they have simulated crashing the computer over a million times without corruption. Sounds like they have it covered.
You can find out more (including how Kong got his artifical heart and found love while on the run from the army) in the excellent documentary, King Kong Lives. Its a mystery to me how this fine movie missed out on the Best Factual Presentation Oscar in 1986.