Many Asian and European cuisines came from academic and courtly traditions of cooking, and were as elaborated and self-conscious as the Californian ones. In a world sense, the California cuisines are closer to a haute cuisine than the others are, which are regional folk cuisines.
French Parisian haute cuisine is the "national" cuisine of France, as mandarin cuisine is of China. Italian cuisines are as you say - there isn't a single national cuisine - but there is a set of family resemblances shared by all Italian tables that aren't shared by US ones.
Most great American cuisines are regional: Cajun, Califonian nouvelle-cuisine and the Californian fusions, Southern cooking, and the New England table. I can't think of a generic "American" cuisine.
Re:Another overpriced system with overpriced games
on
Gamecube Hits US Early
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· Score: 2
I got a dime, give me my Atari.
I think those have bounced off the floor of obsolesence into the superstrates of collectability.
To be more exact, globalization means that capital can move freely, but labor cannot. Ford is free to move its factories to Mexico for cheaper labor: Mexican workers are not free to move north for more well-paying jobs. Nike can move its manufacturing to Thailand; Thais cannot go to Japan for better-paying work. It is a formula for a race to the bottom.
You observation about the trajectory of the aesthetics of videogames was made also by Will Wright, the creator of Sim City and The Sims and one of the speakers at the symposium at the SFMOMA.
He illustrated his pointed by noting the trajectory of computer games from Zork to Quake, from a situation in which the computer simply cued the human imagination, to one in which 90 per cent of the "imagination" was being done on the computer screen and only 10 percent in the mind of the viewer. He observed that when we get past realism, we can re-engage the imagination of the viewer in games, and he placed the aesthetic maturity of gaming exactly where you did: in the mid- to late- 18th century.
You know, this would make a great mailing-list topic.
Some people need to earn a living, yes. But what is at stake is whether we should be expected to actively (and financially) support it, just because it happens to have the word "Open" stuck on it.
Let's come down to brass tacks: we are developing Free software. Each Free thing that gets released reduces the market for an unfree solution. Ultimately, SourceForge "Premium" may be competing with its free sibling. Are we obligated to pay for software just because it supports someone's business plan when a free (and Free) alternative exists? I don't think so.
Someone else here once expressed it better than I could: that people are free to try to make money however they want, but we are not responsible for the viability of their business plans. No one has the right to make money at a business, only the right to try.
As the only person here who, as far as I know, actually *went* to that symposium (which occured about 3 months ago, it's looooong over) the point was that video games and art were two distinction institutions that have a lot to say to each other, and each has and will continue to plunder from the other - conceptual (and other) artists exploit the game-interface and the elements of to create art-works, and video-games (and other software) use the aesthetics and concepts developed in the art millieu to do their work. The answer actually given at the symposium was "the question doesn't make sense."
This whole thread is wonderfully naive in its complete abuse of the word "art" as a short hand for "things that are hard to do" or even "things that are pretty" or "things that are novel," when art is really more of a certain type of discourse that is going on in specific institutional settings using a variety of media. But I'm not going to fight that battle - the fact that programmers and gamers feel that describing what they do as art is an important battle for *them* to fight is fascinating and sort of nice to know in itself.
What video games are is a new type of cultural practice - it is unique as a media in that it is the first content-carrying media that makes persistant demands on the *body* of its audience. You get caught into narratives - and yes, even PacMan is, in a certain abstract sense, a narrative - which mandate that you do something, that you move here or jump there or press that - in order to correctly handle that narrative. Two ironies are already apparent: first, that video games are maligned as sedentary activities by its critics (who oppose them to, for example, playing football or something, rather than the activities it really competes with: television/film watching and web-browsing); second, that gamer-mythology seldom acknowledges the body, but participates in the fantasy of a disembodied mind totally absorbed into technology.
How come nationals of foreign companies are criminally liable for the actions of their employers, but neither here nor elsewhere are employees of US based corporations either liable or culpable? Should anyone from Union Carbide who steps foot on Indian soil be held accountable for murder? And let's not even mention Microsoft.
I want to put in a plug for getting started at non-profits (not volunteer work, but a paying gig at a non-profit). They tend to be a bit more relaxed about qualifications, since they usually can't pay as well as businesses can. Since they usually have fewer people to throw at a problem, you'll get a chance to work with more environments than you might if you just became the mail-server-backup-guy at a corporation with an IT staff of 500. And you won't have much of a budget, so you'll learn how to make your existing stuff work instead of just having the option of throwing money at a problem.
I'm sorry, but this is the funniest bit of distortion I've seen in ages. The Republicans were extremely obstructionist with Democratic candidates (remember Jesse Helms blocking ambassadorial appointments?) during the Clinton administration, while the Republican nominees were getting a cakewalk before Sept. 11, and it is only getting easier for them. And the failure to block the appointment of folks like Ashcroft has resulted in horrid constrictions of civil liberties, including his attack on the right-to-death measure enacted in Oregon and his attack on medical marijuana. (Apparently, state's rights is only a slogan when the state wants the right to toe the Republican line.)
A real miscarriage of justice is the murders and such that walk free every day - why don't we spend more time and effort punishing those injustices?
You've been watching too many Dirty Harry movies. The whole myth of the killer getting free on a technicality is just that - a myth which makes for good TV. Well over 90 percent of all criminal trial cases result in a conviction. A bigger problem is the innocent who are convicted of crime, including murder, some of whom have been executed. But one does not get the votes of a timorous populace by seeking to free the innocent.
Um, I feel to see how your response relates to its parent. Palestinians are, in fact, making bombs while under intense scrutiny and lockdown, and killing people with them. (Remember, 9/11 is neither the first nor last word in Middle East violence. It's that sort of myopia which earns the US much of its reputation as, erm, myopic.) The posters point was the fact that security measures can never be completely foolproof for most activities.
An excellent list. I'd forgotten Delany, even though I have almost all his SF and non-fiction works. Ballard and Disch also deserve long literary lives.
The only Womack I've read is Random Acts. Can you recommend one of the others?
When I read the list, I only realized that he was still alive by his omission from it.
Stanislaw Lem is an incredible author, and, along with Alfred Bester and PKD, probably my favorite SF writer. He will be read - and in circles far broader than the SF fan crowd - when Orson Scott Card is relegated to footnote status.
Also in not-in-English, Adolfo Bioy-Casares should share mention with Jorge Luis Borges; Borges identified him as the best Spanish-language fantastic fictionist of his time.
I haven't been impressed by the PDA/cell-phone fusions that I've seen yet, but I'd be pleased by one that incorporated some of the less bulky aspects of the original poster's dream machine with a cell-phone in a very small package.
My ideal would actually by a "soft" device - perhaps something that could be rolled up like a square of canvas and put into the pocket. Something I could stick into my back pocket without worrying about, with IC in the fabric. Instead of trying to be an all-purpose computer, I'd be happy with the tasks which I needed most: text input/storage, image display, network/web access, voice access/cell phone, PIM, maybe a little file storage for mp3's or such. A full-featured interface for general computing would be way too much.
I carry my cell and my Palm everywhere, and when I've got both in my pocket, I look *way* too happy to see people. I'd like to consolidate and lighten the load.
Your comic is really very, very good. I'm impressed.
Sadly, just like very few people can appreciate truly elegant code or (something else that often gets neglected) well-architected software, I'm afraid that few people can appreciate good work in other domains, especially when appreciation takes effort. User Friendly is, to me, a mildly amusing piece of folk-art generated by the community which it serves. I don't think you could call it either a good comic or good comic art.
I hope you print this on paper someday and get it distributed, to reach a wider audience.
To create really useable systems, it's not just a matter of documentation. It's having people with training in HCI and useability with the power to mandate how the interface is going to work. And to have that power consistently, over most all applications, including the desktop and administration tools.
Apple and Microsoft have the clout to do that. It's the benefit of a cathedral approach: you get to have a design pope. Gnome/GTK and KDE/Qt are trying to do that, too, but I doubt that they are going to have a lot of success creating consistency when they're already competing with each other. The proliferation of distros makes that job all the harder.
Several organizations like the one mentioned exist. You haven't heard of them, and they don't have a lot of success. However, we are discussing this because some people threw bricks at IMF meetings.
I think I know 2 or 3 people who routinely use the webs with cookies off, because the vast majority of commercial sites have been designed to be effectively unuseable without them. If there are restrictions placed on the ability to use cookies without permission, commercial sites (at least those targetting the EU market) will be redesigned to make opt-in explicit. The Commission seems to understand this, which is why the actual legislation calls for explicit opt-in.
Education is not enough. Education is less effective, and more expensive, than legislation, for things like this.
Note that the legislation being drafted (and in the EU, the bodies that draft the legislation are not the ones that pass it: there's a sense that politicians aren't really smart enough to write laws, so they prefer to leave that task to experts) bans the use of cookies without explicit permission from the user. That is perfectly acceptable, and is as much a protection of the user's property (restricting the ability to write to his hard drive without his permission or a request on his part) as his privacy.
But if education and boycotts were enough to change corporate behaviour, more than 2% of the world would be using linux. Legislation is effective because you only have to enforce it occassionally: most EU businesses will cooperate willingly. It sets a bar - corporations that violate privacy won't have an unfair advantage over those who do not: that is what happens with a lot of unilateral modification of commercial behavior.
The headline for this article was poorly written and provocative, because it omits the fact that the user can, in fact, opt in - but he has to do so explicitly, obviously.
Slashdot Mirror
French Parisian haute cuisine is the "national" cuisine of France, as mandarin cuisine is of China. Italian cuisines are as you say - there isn't a single national cuisine - but there is a set of family resemblances shared by all Italian tables that aren't shared by US ones.
Most great American cuisines are regional: Cajun, Califonian nouvelle-cuisine and the Californian fusions, Southern cooking, and the New England table. I can't think of a generic "American" cuisine.
I think those have bounced off the floor of obsolesence into the superstrates of collectability.
To be more exact, globalization means that capital can move freely, but labor cannot. Ford is free to move its factories to Mexico for cheaper labor: Mexican workers are not free to move north for more well-paying jobs. Nike can move its manufacturing to Thailand; Thais cannot go to Japan for better-paying work. It is a formula for a race to the bottom.
He illustrated his pointed by noting the trajectory of computer games from Zork to Quake, from a situation in which the computer simply cued the human imagination, to one in which 90 per cent of the "imagination" was being done on the computer screen and only 10 percent in the mind of the viewer. He observed that when we get past realism, we can re-engage the imagination of the viewer in games, and he placed the aesthetic maturity of gaming exactly where you did: in the mid- to late- 18th century.
You know, this would make a great mailing-list topic.
Let's come down to brass tacks: we are developing Free software. Each Free thing that gets released reduces the market for an unfree solution. Ultimately, SourceForge "Premium" may be competing with its free sibling. Are we obligated to pay for software just because it supports someone's business plan when a free (and Free) alternative exists? I don't think so.
Someone else here once expressed it better than I could: that people are free to try to make money however they want, but we are not responsible for the viability of their business plans. No one has the right to make money at a business, only the right to try.
This whole thread is wonderfully naive in its complete abuse of the word "art" as a short hand for "things that are hard to do" or even "things that are pretty" or "things that are novel," when art is really more of a certain type of discourse that is going on in specific institutional settings using a variety of media. But I'm not going to fight that battle - the fact that programmers and gamers feel that describing what they do as art is an important battle for *them* to fight is fascinating and sort of nice to know in itself.
What video games are is a new type of cultural practice - it is unique as a media in that it is the first content-carrying media that makes persistant demands on the *body* of its audience. You get caught into narratives - and yes, even PacMan is, in a certain abstract sense, a narrative - which mandate that you do something, that you move here or jump there or press that - in order to correctly handle that narrative. Two ironies are already apparent: first, that video games are maligned as sedentary activities by its critics (who oppose them to, for example, playing football or something, rather than the activities it really competes with: television/film watching and web-browsing); second, that gamer-mythology seldom acknowledges the body, but participates in the fantasy of a disembodied mind totally absorbed into technology.
Tis' true. The greatest "creativity drug" is sweat.
How come nationals of foreign companies are criminally liable for the actions of their employers, but neither here nor elsewhere are employees of US based corporations either liable or culpable? Should anyone from Union Carbide who steps foot on Indian soil be held accountable for murder? And let's not even mention Microsoft.
Now I fumble around looking for the moderation option: +1 DISGUSTING.
I want to put in a plug for getting started at non-profits (not volunteer work, but a paying gig at a non-profit). They tend to be a bit more relaxed about qualifications, since they usually can't pay as well as businesses can. Since they usually have fewer people to throw at a problem, you'll get a chance to work with more environments than you might if you just became the mail-server-backup-guy at a corporation with an IT staff of 500. And you won't have much of a budget, so you'll learn how to make your existing stuff work instead of just having the option of throwing money at a problem.
I'm sorry, but this is the funniest bit of distortion I've seen in ages. The Republicans were extremely obstructionist with Democratic candidates (remember Jesse Helms blocking ambassadorial appointments?) during the Clinton administration, while the Republican nominees were getting a cakewalk before Sept. 11, and it is only getting easier for them. And the failure to block the appointment of folks like Ashcroft has resulted in horrid constrictions of civil liberties, including his attack on the right-to-death measure enacted in Oregon and his attack on medical marijuana. (Apparently, state's rights is only a slogan when the state wants the right to toe the Republican line.)
Um, I feel to see how your response relates to its parent. Palestinians are, in fact, making bombs while under intense scrutiny and lockdown, and killing people with them. (Remember, 9/11 is neither the first nor last word in Middle East violence. It's that sort of myopia which earns the US much of its reputation as, erm, myopic.) The posters point was the fact that security measures can never be completely foolproof for most activities.
Maybe I should cover it with fur.
The only Womack I've read is Random Acts. Can you recommend one of the others?
Stanislaw Lem is an incredible author, and, along with Alfred Bester and PKD, probably my favorite SF writer. He will be read - and in circles far broader than the SF fan crowd - when Orson Scott Card is relegated to footnote status.
Also in not-in-English, Adolfo Bioy-Casares should share mention with Jorge Luis Borges; Borges identified him as the best Spanish-language fantastic fictionist of his time.
My ideal would actually by a "soft" device - perhaps something that could be rolled up like a square of canvas and put into the pocket. Something I could stick into my back pocket without worrying about, with IC in the fabric. Instead of trying to be an all-purpose computer, I'd be happy with the tasks which I needed most: text input/storage, image display, network/web access, voice access/cell phone, PIM, maybe a little file storage for mp3's or such. A full-featured interface for general computing would be way too much.
I carry my cell and my Palm everywhere, and when I've got both in my pocket, I look *way* too happy to see people. I'd like to consolidate and lighten the load.
Sadly, just like very few people can appreciate truly elegant code or (something else that often gets neglected) well-architected software, I'm afraid that few people can appreciate good work in other domains, especially when appreciation takes effort. User Friendly is, to me, a mildly amusing piece of folk-art generated by the community which it serves. I don't think you could call it either a good comic or good comic art.
I hope you print this on paper someday and get it distributed, to reach a wider audience.
Apple and Microsoft have the clout to do that. It's the benefit of a cathedral approach: you get to have a design pope. Gnome/GTK and KDE/Qt are trying to do that, too, but I doubt that they are going to have a lot of success creating consistency when they're already competing with each other. The proliferation of distros makes that job all the harder.
It's been so long since the right thing has happened in an intellectual property-related case, that I don't believe it.
Several organizations like the one mentioned exist. You haven't heard of them, and they don't have a lot of success. However, we are discussing this because some people threw bricks at IMF meetings.
Perhaps democracy is overrated.
I think I know 2 or 3 people who routinely use the webs with cookies off, because the vast majority of commercial sites have been designed to be effectively unuseable without them. If there are restrictions placed on the ability to use cookies without permission, commercial sites (at least those targetting the EU market) will be redesigned to make opt-in explicit. The Commission seems to understand this, which is why the actual legislation calls for explicit opt-in.
Note that the legislation being drafted (and in the EU, the bodies that draft the legislation are not the ones that pass it: there's a sense that politicians aren't really smart enough to write laws, so they prefer to leave that task to experts) bans the use of cookies without explicit permission from the user. That is perfectly acceptable, and is as much a protection of the user's property (restricting the ability to write to his hard drive without his permission or a request on his part) as his privacy.
But if education and boycotts were enough to change corporate behaviour, more than 2% of the world would be using linux. Legislation is effective because you only have to enforce it occassionally: most EU businesses will cooperate willingly. It sets a bar - corporations that violate privacy won't have an unfair advantage over those who do not: that is what happens with a lot of unilateral modification of commercial behavior.
The headline for this article was poorly written and provocative, because it omits the fact that the user can, in fact, opt in - but he has to do so explicitly, obviously.