Ooh, that's a good one. When I started reading this whole thread, I was thinking, wasn't there some cave game I had on my palm back in the day that was controlled by one button? That would be it.
Well, it's probably similar to some way that Shakespeare probably wrote it. Did they work from the First Folio? A Quarto? It doesn't include, for example, three different versions of Hamlet or two of Midsummer, so it's got to be *somebody's* interpretation of what counts as "the complete works." And did they include every one of the bard's misspellings, or did some editor decide which were probably intentional and which were not? Probably the latter.
No cheapo Complete Works is near "how Shakespeare wrote it," probably even less so than well-edited versions. They just have far less information letting you know how these decisions were made.
Yeah, I have that version. It sucks. It has no line numbers, which makes it totally unusable for anything but just reading a play straight through. Plus, no decent editing, footnotes, intros, etc. You get what you pay for.
There is a smattering of non-Western literature represented, such as the Bhagavad-Gita and The Art of War. Not a lot, certainly, probably only about 10-20 titles. I'm sure they could do better, but it's good that they're at least including a bit.
Well, the Complete Works of Shakespeare that's included is $40 by itself (if you buy it on Amazon, claims it's $65 elsewhere). So that makes up for a couple others that would be less than $7 elsewhere. From working in a bookstore, I know that some of the other collections (for example, The Portable 60s Reader) are the size of trade paperbacks rather than mass-markets, and go for $10-15 each. So total, it's probably not a bad price.
I have the B&N leatherbound Complete Works of Shakespeare. It sucks. It doesn't have line numbers, which is obnoxious if you're actually trying to use the play for anything other than just reading straight through.
Well, there are three in there by Lovecraft - it's a start. I think both of the ones you cite are too recent to be declared classics - I don't think there's anything on the list newer than late 60s.
I'm sorry, but Appleworks sucks. The spreadsheet doesn't even support multiple sheets in a workbook, and it does some ridiculous things when you try and insert new rows into something. I use Appleworks a lot (b/c my Office runs in Classic so I only fire it up if I really need it), but I don't like it. And getting it to export to Word accurately? Just not happening. Even importing from Word is a nightmare if there are tables involved. I also have a strange problem (which might partially be my printer) where if I open a.doc file in Appleworks it will only print one page at a time. I've tried to use the presentation maker once or twice, but never got very far.
Overall, I can't wait to d/l NeoOffice and give it a shot.
Re:OMG No Pictures? What use is this book?
on
From Alien to The Matrix
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· Score: 2, Interesting
I notice that all of the examples you give of good books with little formatting are fiction.
Do you have any examples that are not narratives?
I find that for narratives (either fiction or non), a lack of formatting works very well because your imagination is carried smoothly through the text. In a non-narrative, though, some formatting can aid greatly in the readability. It can help your eye flow down the page, it can break up the monotony (even if it's well-written and interesting, reading it in unbroken paragraph form can get rough on the eyes).
You're right that it can certainly be overdone, and used to mask deficiencies in the text. But in non-narrative non-fiction, a little formatting can be a very, very good thing, and I think the lack of it when it would be helpful is a valid complaint. Maybe not the author's fault, but it does affect the readability and enjoyability of the book.
I thought it was the "admitting you have a passing knowledge of Christianity rather than just posting flames about how stupid people are for believing in invisible men in the sky" part.
I wish I had mod points. I think this is exactly the problem. I know that my mom has this attitude. When I was growing up, I played Super Mario and Zelda and Castlevania on the NES. Now my 14-year-old brother is playing GTA and Halo 2, but it doesn't really even occur to my mom that these are at all unlike the games I played.
I once called her into the room to see what was happening when he played San Andreas (he was in a sex shop and some lady was walking around with her boobs hanging out). She was flat-out shocked, she had no idea they allowed stuff like that in video games. Of course, then her reaction was "Eh, he's 14, he can handle it" - but if he'd been 10, she wouldn't have paid any more attention before letting him get the game, and probably would have been much more pissed that her son was exposed to this.
There are certainly plenty of those posts. But I've seen a number (the minority, probably, but not insignificant) that are gloom and doom about how no one will buy Apple hardware now, they'll become a software-only company because of this, blah blah blah. Just ain't happening.
What's REALLY funny is when you pair the "Pirated OS X will destroy Apple's hardware business" posts with the "Windows emulation will destroy all OS X software posts." Apparently, switching to Intel is the total demise of everything Macintosh.
Nevermind that the Senate itself can't amend the Constitution, or that various members of Congress have been trying to push that amendment for decades now unsuccessfully.
How does that work? On ICQ, you get a member #, and you can change the nickname associated with that # at any time. So multiple people can have the same nickname as long as they have unique #s. On AIM, your nickname is your login. If you change your nickname, it's a new account. So if I wanted to IM someone with an ICQ account, would I use their nickname or #?
Also, I can log into both my ICQ and AIM accounts with my client. But my ICQ nickname is different from my AIM nickname, and I know that someone else has that name on AIM. So if someone without a client that handles multiple messengers only had AIM, how would they send a message to my ICQ account?
Hm, it was a long time ago, I haven't played SC in years (never playced SC2). This was on a Dreamcast. It may have been Kilik - did anyone else have a long pole-like weapon? It basically involved moving toward the other person, shoving your pole at them, then sweeping it up and back down again. Over and over.
I actually had similar thoughts when it first came out and people were talking about the whole scanning your email to put in text ads thing, until someone pointed out that it's highly likely that all the other free services do something similar for their ads.
I'm in the US, and the people I'm referring to are all over the country. Most of my friends were on ICQ once upon a time, but over the past 5 years have slowly switched to AIM. I think ICQ is better, but if nobody I know is on it there's not much point, is there?
Well, TFA states that Yahoo has its own competing technology (DomainKeys), so it seems unlikely that they would start using Sender ID instead. And it doesn't seem like Google is going to do anything to give MSN any kind of slack now that they're a competitor in the search department.
Are there any other major free email providers? Mail.com maybe? Who knows about them.
My dad does, but I'm willing to bet it won't be too hard to get him to switch to Yahoo or gmail when I tell him that all emails from my sister and I (who both use yahoo) are going to go to his spam box soon.
Personally, I don't know a single person who uses MSN Messenger. AIM, yes, lots. Yahoo messenger, a few. ICQ, a few. I can't imagine that these people you know would lose much if they all switched to Yahoo - and they'd gain 750MB of storage.
But even aside from carbonization issues, it's a crappy app compared with office. Especially if you want to export Word or Excel compatible files, or want to make a presentation. But I'd still use it over a Windows emulation of Office.
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Ooh, that's a good one. When I started reading this whole thread, I was thinking, wasn't there some cave game I had on my palm back in the day that was controlled by one button? That would be it.
No cheapo Complete Works is near "how Shakespeare wrote it," probably even less so than well-edited versions. They just have far less information letting you know how these decisions were made.
Yeah, I have that version. It sucks. It has no line numbers, which makes it totally unusable for anything but just reading a play straight through. Plus, no decent editing, footnotes, intros, etc. You get what you pay for.
There is a smattering of non-Western literature represented, such as the Bhagavad-Gita and The Art of War. Not a lot, certainly, probably only about 10-20 titles. I'm sure they could do better, but it's good that they're at least including a bit.
Well, the Complete Works of Shakespeare that's included is $40 by itself (if you buy it on Amazon, claims it's $65 elsewhere). So that makes up for a couple others that would be less than $7 elsewhere. From working in a bookstore, I know that some of the other collections (for example, The Portable 60s Reader) are the size of trade paperbacks rather than mass-markets, and go for $10-15 each. So total, it's probably not a bad price.
I have the B&N leatherbound Complete Works of Shakespeare. It sucks. It doesn't have line numbers, which is obnoxious if you're actually trying to use the play for anything other than just reading straight through.
Well, there are three in there by Lovecraft - it's a start. I think both of the ones you cite are too recent to be declared classics - I don't think there's anything on the list newer than late 60s.
Some of them are too recent to be in the public domain. Not many, but you couldn't get the complete collection.
Overall, I can't wait to d/l NeoOffice and give it a shot.
Do you have any examples that are not narratives?
I find that for narratives (either fiction or non), a lack of formatting works very well because your imagination is carried smoothly through the text. In a non-narrative, though, some formatting can aid greatly in the readability. It can help your eye flow down the page, it can break up the monotony (even if it's well-written and interesting, reading it in unbroken paragraph form can get rough on the eyes).
You're right that it can certainly be overdone, and used to mask deficiencies in the text. But in non-narrative non-fiction, a little formatting can be a very, very good thing, and I think the lack of it when it would be helpful is a valid complaint. Maybe not the author's fault, but it does affect the readability and enjoyability of the book.
I thought it was the "admitting you have a passing knowledge of Christianity rather than just posting flames about how stupid people are for believing in invisible men in the sky" part.
Wow, I hate Wal-mart even more now. If they're going to censor, they could at least not be hypocritical about it.
I once called her into the room to see what was happening when he played San Andreas (he was in a sex shop and some lady was walking around with her boobs hanging out). She was flat-out shocked, she had no idea they allowed stuff like that in video games. Of course, then her reaction was "Eh, he's 14, he can handle it" - but if he'd been 10, she wouldn't have paid any more attention before letting him get the game, and probably would have been much more pissed that her son was exposed to this.
What's REALLY funny is when you pair the "Pirated OS X will destroy Apple's hardware business" posts with the "Windows emulation will destroy all OS X software posts." Apparently, switching to Intel is the total demise of everything Macintosh.
Nevermind that the Senate itself can't amend the Constitution, or that various members of Congress have been trying to push that amendment for decades now unsuccessfully.
Also, I can log into both my ICQ and AIM accounts with my client. But my ICQ nickname is different from my AIM nickname, and I know that someone else has that name on AIM. So if someone without a client that handles multiple messengers only had AIM, how would they send a message to my ICQ account?
Hm, it was a long time ago, I haven't played SC in years (never playced SC2). This was on a Dreamcast. It may have been Kilik - did anyone else have a long pole-like weapon? It basically involved moving toward the other person, shoving your pole at them, then sweeping it up and back down again. Over and over.
I actually had similar thoughts when it first came out and people were talking about the whole scanning your email to put in text ads thing, until someone pointed out that it's highly likely that all the other free services do something similar for their ads.
I'm in the US, and the people I'm referring to are all over the country. Most of my friends were on ICQ once upon a time, but over the past 5 years have slowly switched to AIM. I think ICQ is better, but if nobody I know is on it there's not much point, is there?
Well, according to the site, it was launched in 1999. I actually thought it was a year or so older than that, but it sounds about right.
Are there any other major free email providers? Mail.com maybe? Who knows about them.
Well, considering that TFA states that Yahoo has a competing technology of its own, I doubt it.
My dad does, but I'm willing to bet it won't be too hard to get him to switch to Yahoo or gmail when I tell him that all emails from my sister and I (who both use yahoo) are going to go to his spam box soon.
Personally, I don't know a single person who uses MSN Messenger. AIM, yes, lots. Yahoo messenger, a few. ICQ, a few. I can't imagine that these people you know would lose much if they all switched to Yahoo - and they'd gain 750MB of storage.
But even aside from carbonization issues, it's a crappy app compared with office. Especially if you want to export Word or Excel compatible files, or want to make a presentation. But I'd still use it over a Windows emulation of Office.