Granted that the code may be largely trivial, but that makes it even more puzzling as to why they would appropriate it in the first place. Why bother, if it's something any Java programmer could do in his sleep?
It may be that this company doesn't actually employ any Java programmers and some HTML designer just snagged some code he found on the web that did what he wanted. In that case, why let them off the hook? IP is IP, no matter how it's licensed. And why give to a company for free something that they'd otherwise have to pay for when they're not even meeting the few not-terribly-burdensome non-monetary requirements imposed by the GPL?
HP owns VMS these days, having bought Compaq which had bought DEC. If there were any code copied directly from it into NT you can be sure there would have been lawsuits during DEC's death throes years ago.
Sadly, the resemblence is purely architectural, and the implementation original code. (There's not even the same "look & feel". In that respect, VMS has far more in common with Unix than any of the Windows.) If NT had actually been based on VMS code, it's not too unreasonable to imagine it would have been a lot more stable and secure.
Not in earnest, anyway. You can use it ironically or metaphorically, or just plain misuse in the fashionable way as Graham does here. This is one of the modern fashions in thought he fails to notice.
It means simply "error". As in a factual error. The reason the Church repeatedly tried to stamp out heresy is because it believed them to be lies about the nature of God and so perilous to souls. The Inquisition-style tactics were a late development that came (in the West) after the Papacy had acquired a great deal of political power. But in combatting the earliest heresies -- gnosticism, Sabellianism, modalism -- the Church was, at least in the beginning, a persecuted minority and could use no such tactics even if were so inclined. Orthodoxy prevailed purely in the battleground of ideas. Even under Constantine and his successors when some political muscle could be flexed on behalf of (although not by) the Church, there was no equivalent to the Inquisition.
And yet it was the later, relatively brief period of the Inquisition that has made "heresy" such a forbidden word that it cannot now be used in its proper sense. It's an anti-euphemism.
They weren't intended to have anything like the depth or scale of Tolkien's work. LotR is the product of decades of work in creating a fictional history and mythology as a vehicle for Tolkien's invented languages. Its depth isn't illusory; there really is a wealth of background material behind it that even reading the published Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales gives you only a glimpse of. You need the entire History of Middle Earth series to fully appreciate it.
The Narnia books, on the other hand, are rather obvious (and not very deep) allegories on the Christian story and various events in salvation history, aimed at pre-teenage children. This is by design, not accident. It would be astonishing if the happened to be as deep as LotR.
Your complaint is a bit like comparing James Joyce to Winnie-the-Pooh.
So when the article says, "...there are several advantages to using vxfs, primarily speed and fscking issues," my immediate reaction was, "Gee, there's no need to be vulgar." (Or words to that effect.) The correct interpretation registered half a beat later, but by then the damage had been done.
At least he didn't say, "fscking speed issues." Or "speed fscking issues," which sounds as if someone's trying to raise blisters.
Despite the fact that you might not know it very well, New Zealand isn't a third world country.
I know it quite well. One of my favorite mystery writers spent most of her life there. There's no need to be snide. My suggestions had to do with what every community could use a little more of.
He didn't say this, and it was a quote in a general-interest publication. While he may yet have meant it in the sense you say, I don't think it's the most obvious construction to put on it.
In the US, you have a right to a jury trial, which you can waive if you really want to be tried by a judge alone. But we consider it preferable in general that the verdict be decided by persons like ourselves and not beholden to the government.
In the US you have a right to a trial in all cases. This is never waived, but the accused will plead guilty from time to time if he actually is guilty, the evidence against him is overwhelming, and it seems to him that conviction is certain. He will do this in the hopes of receiving a lighter sentence than otherwise. Occasionally, if a "plea-bargain" has been reached, he's sure to receive a lighter sentence. Plea-bargains happen when the evidence against is overwhelming but the prosecutors wish to avoid a trial for their own reasons -- for example, when their own resources are stretched thin. It's just a troll to call this "blackmail".
In the US, if a lower court finds the defendant innocent, the prosecution cannot appeal and a retrial cannot be brought unless some kind of misconduct can be proved, such as jury tampering. A defendant found guilty, on the other hand, can appeal to as many levels of the courts as there are if reasonable grounds can be found.
You're arguing so dishonestly here you must not think you have much support for your position. A good portion of your reply is either irrelevant or strawmen. Ignoring these, we're left with only a few substantive points.
Peter Jackson and company meet and surpass his requirement for understanding and respecting the source material. We both know Tolkien would not be as stubbornly angry as you make him out to be.
Peter Jackson did not respect the source material, and I did not make Tolkien out to be "stubbornly angry" so I can scarcely know that he would be so. I'm not really what you call a "Tolkien purist", so it's not necessary for you to put everything I say through that filter. Try taking my words at face value instead, and avoid unreasonable interpretations.
Modifications to the plot are expected and normal when making a film out of a book. The media are very different, and film has nowhere near the narrative freedom of literature, so it's absolutely necessary to do some things differently. However, the one thing that I object to in the movies, and the thing I think Tolkien would have objected to most strongly, is the mangling of the characters. I can't see that this was necessary in the hands of a skilled filmmaker. Nearly every single major character has been remolded, whether it's in stripping Gimli of all dignity and making him into a laughingstock, or turning Faramir into an only slightly smarter version of Boromir, or recasting Theoden as an indecisive risk-avoider even after his healing, or making Elrond into an angry creature nursing a millennia-old grudge against all humankind. Why? What was so unfilmable about the characters as we've come to know them? I'd gladly have dispensed with Helm's Deep to see Theoden throwing caution to the wind and leading the wild charge onto the Pelennor Field. He may still, but we now know it would be deeply uncharacteristic of him. Jackson's Theoden has drifted very far from the Beowulfian roots of the character Tolkien created.
You are absolutely joking, right?
No, but I did use the wrong word. I should have said "need" instead of "goal".
Christopher Tolkien has been "scraping his daddy's wastepaper backets" for decades, as it has been put. The only thing worthy that he put out was the Silmarillion. Everything else, he needlessly edits and composites. It's how he made his fortune.
Now you're the one who's joking. If HoME has made anything clear, it's that it was The Silmarillion that was needlessly edited, or at least badly edited in many respects. In some ways it was not "worthy" at all. But in publishing it, he was doing nothing more than attempting to fulfull his father's fondest wish. HoME is an entirely different animal, and it was hardly needless to anyone who wanted to see the source material Tolkien had created for himself. It had a far more limited audience than anything else put out under Tolkien's name, and I'd be surprised if it even earned out its advance. The financial return for the amount of work preparing it must have involved over the length of time it took was probably lower than your imagination is allowing.
And yet they do [sell "anything"].
Are you paying any attention at all? This discussion is about how they're refusing to sell something, namely the movie rights to The Hobbit. The Tolkien Estate could have done very little about the LoTR movie even if they wanted to, and CJRT at least probably did given his express refusal to endorse it. The rights had already been sold years ago to Saul Zaentz who had produced the Bakshi film back in the 70s and I believe is credited as some sort of producer in the Jackson films. Zaentz acquired them at a vew removes from United Artists, to which Tolkien had sold them in 1966. Again, this was mainly to assure himself of a comfortable retirement, something he may be said to have earned.
As I review the background for all this, I realize that it's not at all clear why they need the Tolkien Estate's permission for a H
He was stubborn about certain things, as you must know if you were as well-informed as you imply. Tolkien never minded violence done to the plot, but he would brook no alterations at all to his characters. I'm reasonably certain that he wouldn't have approved of the monkeying around Jackson's done with them.
You've also failed to notice that Tolkien himself was in a very different situation than that of his heirs. He needed the money. He lived a penurous existence as a professor. The position did not pay particularly well, as it was expected that Oxford professors had independent means. Tolkien did not. His savings would have made a very uncomfortable retirement for him, and he in fact extended his tenure by an optional two years for financial reasons, something he'd never have done had he not been in dire straits. The only thing that gave him comfort in his old age was the quite unexpected success of LOTR. Even then he never became personally wealthy. Selling the movie rights was something he had to do in order to feel financially secure. Even then only a very large amount of money could have induced him to give up creative control; he said this outright. Evidently the folks who optioned it weren't willing to pay, so we have his wonderfully pithy commentary on a story treatment that was sent to him for approval.
His heirs on the other hand have no such financial goad. There's been a further 30 years of LOTR sales since Tolkien died, and I doubt any of them need be in any financial difficulty at all. It simply isn't necessary for them to sell anything. For a fan-geek to become incensed over CJRT's reluctance to license any more of his father's legacy is ridiculous.
Oh, absolutely. But he's the one saying he wants to "do something for the community." To blame the Tolkien estate for him not being able to do so is... well, I'll be polite and call it disingenuous.
I have my doubts that a statue and a museum devoted to the props from a single movie, no matter how popular that movie was at the time it was released, could be that much of a draw. Movie props just aren't that interesting. They couldn't, for example, make Planet Hollywood profitable.
In any event, if the movies themselves didn't create enough of a draw to NZ for all its beautiful and amazingly varied landscape, a museum isn't going to do a whole lot more IMO.
From the article: If he can't have a museum, Jackson wants a bronze statue of the film's characters in Wellington to thank the people of New Zealand for their support - and the $NZ300 million ($265 million) tax break they gave the producers. "We have appealed to (the Tolkien estate) at various times to do something for the community but they keep saying no," Jackson said.
Someone should tell Jackson that there's a whole lot you can do for a community besides put up a museum or a monument to what you did with their tax break, and it need not even be an eyesore like that statue he wants. How about building parks and playgrounds? Contributing to local health programs? Financial aid for economically depressed areas? Charities? Libraries? Help for schools?
These and a whole lot of others are ways to give back to the community in ways that really help. And they don't require the permission of the Tolkien estate either.
With a prematurely born and now disabled son, I've dealt with numerous healthcare providers. In my experience, all hospitals outsource their transcription work. Problem is, transcription pays diddly. You only get both diddly and squat if you're very, very lucky. It's difficult as hell to make a living doing medical transcriptions anywhere in the US; it's virtually impossible in the SF Bay Area. It should have surprised no one that this happened, least of all to UCSF.
From the article: "Is Jimmy Hoffa's body lying perfectly preserved in the concrete foundation of the Meadowlands sports stadium?"
No. Groundbreaking for the stadium at the Meadowlands (Giants Stadium) was in 1972, and Hoffa disappeared in the summer of '75. By then the stadium was not far from completion; the foundations had been laid long before.
However, the nearby New Jersey Turnpike is paved with concrete, and elevated portions of it are continually being resurfaced to deal with the effects of East Coast winters. Most people I knew when I was growing up in that area who had an opinion on the subject considered the Turnpike to be the most likely resting place for Hoffa.
I wonder, then, what Jackson intends the eye-on-tower to actually be?
Well, it's either what I suggested or what you suggested. Yours is the more likely. This is one of those things that makes me think he's missed the point of the books somewhat.
I know all about the Tolkien Sarcasm Page, and have even directed a few hapless students to the synopses hosted there for their benefit. Hee.
Tolkien made is very plain that Sauron had lost the ability to take a humanoid shape long before.
Tolkien never said any such thing. Sauron had lost the ability to take a "fair shape", not a human shape. He could, and did, assume the form of a tall, menacing manlike figure. Tolkien stated this flat-out in one of his letters, which was undoubtedly the source of the Wiki entry. And you're going to want to make me look it up too, aren't you? Sheesh... (flip, flip...) It's in #246, in the paragraph near the end where Tolkien is discussing how it might have gone had Gollum been done away with before Frodo claimed the Ring for himself at the Crack of Doom. He said "Sauron should be thought of as very terrible. The form that he took was that of a man of more than human stature, but not gigantic." This is in the context of Aragorn's battle of wills with him over the Palantir, so it's plainly talking about the form Sauron had taken at the time.
You might also take note of Gollum's obeservation at one point in "The Two Towers" that there were only four fingers on Sauron's hand. He'd actually seen Sauron in person, so he ought to know. If you ever spot an eyeball with fingers, be sure to alert us all!
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It may be that this company doesn't actually employ any Java programmers and some HTML designer just snagged some code he found on the web that did what he wanted. In that case, why let them off the hook? IP is IP, no matter how it's licensed. And why give to a company for free something that they'd otherwise have to pay for when they're not even meeting the few not-terribly-burdensome non-monetary requirements imposed by the GPL?
And where would geeks be without caffeine? Try Monastery Blend Coffee from the Christ the All-merciful Saviour Russian Orthodox Monstery on Vashon Island near Seattle. Excellent stuff.
What, the Scary Devil Monastery isn't good enough for you?
Sadly, the resemblence is purely architectural, and the implementation original code. (There's not even the same "look & feel". In that respect, VMS has far more in common with Unix than any of the Windows.) If NT had actually been based on VMS code, it's not too unreasonable to imagine it would have been a lot more stable and secure.
It means simply "error". As in a factual error. The reason the Church repeatedly tried to stamp out heresy is because it believed them to be lies about the nature of God and so perilous to souls. The Inquisition-style tactics were a late development that came (in the West) after the Papacy had acquired a great deal of political power. But in combatting the earliest heresies -- gnosticism, Sabellianism, modalism -- the Church was, at least in the beginning, a persecuted minority and could use no such tactics even if were so inclined. Orthodoxy prevailed purely in the battleground of ideas. Even under Constantine and his successors when some political muscle could be flexed on behalf of (although not by) the Church, there was no equivalent to the Inquisition.
And yet it was the later, relatively brief period of the Inquisition that has made "heresy" such a forbidden word that it cannot now be used in its proper sense. It's an anti-euphemism.
Don't be so sure. I once heard a Muzak version of "A Day in the Life". I hadn't thought it was possible. After hearing it, I knew it wasn't possible.
I take it you're not very agile, huh?
You know it's pronounced "Coburn", right? Or were you wondering about all those funny looks you kept getting at the local BevMo?
It's a hint. You're supposed to wash them every so often. (The clothes, not the hamper.)
What, don't they make patches available for free download?
They weren't intended to have anything like the depth or scale of Tolkien's work. LotR is the product of decades of work in creating a fictional history and mythology as a vehicle for Tolkien's invented languages. Its depth isn't illusory; there really is a wealth of background material behind it that even reading the published Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales gives you only a glimpse of. You need the entire History of Middle Earth series to fully appreciate it. The Narnia books, on the other hand, are rather obvious (and not very deep) allegories on the Christian story and various events in salvation history, aimed at pre-teenage children. This is by design, not accident. It would be astonishing if the happened to be as deep as LotR. Your complaint is a bit like comparing James Joyce to Winnie-the-Pooh.
At least he didn't say, "fscking speed issues." Or "speed fscking issues," which sounds as if someone's trying to raise blisters.
I know it quite well. One of my favorite mystery writers spent most of her life there. There's no need to be snide. My suggestions had to do with what every community could use a little more of.
He didn't say this, and it was a quote in a general-interest publication. While he may yet have meant it in the sense you say, I don't think it's the most obvious construction to put on it.
In the US you have a right to a trial in all cases. This is never waived, but the accused will plead guilty from time to time if he actually is guilty, the evidence against him is overwhelming, and it seems to him that conviction is certain. He will do this in the hopes of receiving a lighter sentence than otherwise. Occasionally, if a "plea-bargain" has been reached, he's sure to receive a lighter sentence. Plea-bargains happen when the evidence against is overwhelming but the prosecutors wish to avoid a trial for their own reasons -- for example, when their own resources are stretched thin. It's just a troll to call this "blackmail".
In the US, if a lower court finds the defendant innocent, the prosecution cannot appeal and a retrial cannot be brought unless some kind of misconduct can be proved, such as jury tampering. A defendant found guilty, on the other hand, can appeal to as many levels of the courts as there are if reasonable grounds can be found.
Now which system do you prefer?
Peter Jackson and company meet and surpass his requirement for understanding and respecting the source material. We both know Tolkien would not be as stubbornly angry as you make him out to be.
Peter Jackson did not respect the source material, and I did not make Tolkien out to be "stubbornly angry" so I can scarcely know that he would be so. I'm not really what you call a "Tolkien purist", so it's not necessary for you to put everything I say through that filter. Try taking my words at face value instead, and avoid unreasonable interpretations.
Modifications to the plot are expected and normal when making a film out of a book. The media are very different, and film has nowhere near the narrative freedom of literature, so it's absolutely necessary to do some things differently. However, the one thing that I object to in the movies, and the thing I think Tolkien would have objected to most strongly, is the mangling of the characters. I can't see that this was necessary in the hands of a skilled filmmaker. Nearly every single major character has been remolded, whether it's in stripping Gimli of all dignity and making him into a laughingstock, or turning Faramir into an only slightly smarter version of Boromir, or recasting Theoden as an indecisive risk-avoider even after his healing, or making Elrond into an angry creature nursing a millennia-old grudge against all humankind. Why? What was so unfilmable about the characters as we've come to know them? I'd gladly have dispensed with Helm's Deep to see Theoden throwing caution to the wind and leading the wild charge onto the Pelennor Field. He may still, but we now know it would be deeply uncharacteristic of him. Jackson's Theoden has drifted very far from the Beowulfian roots of the character Tolkien created.
You are absolutely joking, right?
No, but I did use the wrong word. I should have said "need" instead of "goal".
Christopher Tolkien has been "scraping his daddy's wastepaper backets" for decades, as it has been put. The only thing worthy that he put out was the Silmarillion. Everything else, he needlessly edits and composites. It's how he made his fortune.
Now you're the one who's joking. If HoME has made anything clear, it's that it was The Silmarillion that was needlessly edited, or at least badly edited in many respects. In some ways it was not "worthy" at all. But in publishing it, he was doing nothing more than attempting to fulfull his father's fondest wish. HoME is an entirely different animal, and it was hardly needless to anyone who wanted to see the source material Tolkien had created for himself. It had a far more limited audience than anything else put out under Tolkien's name, and I'd be surprised if it even earned out its advance. The financial return for the amount of work preparing it must have involved over the length of time it took was probably lower than your imagination is allowing.
And yet they do [sell "anything"].
Are you paying any attention at all? This discussion is about how they're refusing to sell something, namely the movie rights to The Hobbit. The Tolkien Estate could have done very little about the LoTR movie even if they wanted to, and CJRT at least probably did given his express refusal to endorse it. The rights had already been sold years ago to Saul Zaentz who had produced the Bakshi film back in the 70s and I believe is credited as some sort of producer in the Jackson films. Zaentz acquired them at a vew removes from United Artists, to which Tolkien had sold them in 1966. Again, this was mainly to assure himself of a comfortable retirement, something he may be said to have earned.
As I review the background for all this, I realize that it's not at all clear why they need the Tolkien Estate's permission for a H
You've also failed to notice that Tolkien himself was in a very different situation than that of his heirs. He needed the money. He lived a penurous existence as a professor. The position did not pay particularly well, as it was expected that Oxford professors had independent means. Tolkien did not. His savings would have made a very uncomfortable retirement for him, and he in fact extended his tenure by an optional two years for financial reasons, something he'd never have done had he not been in dire straits. The only thing that gave him comfort in his old age was the quite unexpected success of LOTR. Even then he never became personally wealthy. Selling the movie rights was something he had to do in order to feel financially secure. Even then only a very large amount of money could have induced him to give up creative control; he said this outright. Evidently the folks who optioned it weren't willing to pay, so we have his wonderfully pithy commentary on a story treatment that was sent to him for approval.
His heirs on the other hand have no such financial goad. There's been a further 30 years of LOTR sales since Tolkien died, and I doubt any of them need be in any financial difficulty at all. It simply isn't necessary for them to sell anything. For a fan-geek to become incensed over CJRT's reluctance to license any more of his father's legacy is ridiculous.
Oh, absolutely. But he's the one saying he wants to "do something for the community." To blame the Tolkien estate for him not being able to do so is... well, I'll be polite and call it disingenuous.
In any event, if the movies themselves didn't create enough of a draw to NZ for all its beautiful and amazingly varied landscape, a museum isn't going to do a whole lot more IMO.
It's a problem that he feels no need to further prostitute his dad's work to the movie industry? That's an odd use of the word "problem".
Someone should tell Jackson that there's a whole lot you can do for a community besides put up a museum or a monument to what you did with their tax break, and it need not even be an eyesore like that statue he wants. How about building parks and playgrounds? Contributing to local health programs? Financial aid for economically depressed areas? Charities? Libraries? Help for schools?
These and a whole lot of others are ways to give back to the community in ways that really help. And they don't require the permission of the Tolkien estate either.
With a prematurely born and now disabled son, I've dealt with numerous healthcare providers. In my experience, all hospitals outsource their transcription work. Problem is, transcription pays diddly. You only get both diddly and squat if you're very, very lucky. It's difficult as hell to make a living doing medical transcriptions anywhere in the US; it's virtually impossible in the SF Bay Area. It should have surprised no one that this happened, least of all to UCSF.
No. Groundbreaking for the stadium at the Meadowlands (Giants Stadium) was in 1972, and Hoffa disappeared in the summer of '75. By then the stadium was not far from completion; the foundations had been laid long before.
However, the nearby New Jersey Turnpike is paved with concrete, and elevated portions of it are continually being resurfaced to deal with the effects of East Coast winters. Most people I knew when I was growing up in that area who had an opinion on the subject considered the Turnpike to be the most likely resting place for Hoffa.
Well, it's either what I suggested or what you suggested. Yours is the more likely. This is one of those things that makes me think he's missed the point of the books somewhat.
I know all about the Tolkien Sarcasm Page, and have even directed a few hapless students to the synopses hosted there for their benefit. Hee.
Tolkien never said any such thing. Sauron had lost the ability to take a "fair shape", not a human shape. He could, and did, assume the form of a tall, menacing manlike figure. Tolkien stated this flat-out in one of his letters, which was undoubtedly the source of the Wiki entry. And you're going to want to make me look it up too, aren't you? Sheesh... (flip, flip...) It's in #246, in the paragraph near the end where Tolkien is discussing how it might have gone had Gollum been done away with before Frodo claimed the Ring for himself at the Crack of Doom. He said "Sauron should be thought of as very terrible. The form that he took was that of a man of more than human stature, but not gigantic." This is in the context of Aragorn's battle of wills with him over the Palantir, so it's plainly talking about the form Sauron had taken at the time.
You might also take note of Gollum's obeservation at one point in "The Two Towers" that there were only four fingers on Sauron's hand. He'd actually seen Sauron in person, so he ought to know. If you ever spot an eyeball with fingers, be sure to alert us all!