"If the main series Discworld were to be translated to a format other than books I think animation would be better than filmed live action."
Ahhh... but just imagine... a Lancre/Witches-Story vizualized (is that actually a word?) by Peter Jackson... even with only one-tenth of the LOTR-budget...
The mind boggles...
(well... mine does, but it does that all the time anyway, so... ah, nevermind.... )
Click on the pulldown-menu and release the mouse-button when it says "Funny". If you just click at random you might just get a post modded "Interesting" (or something) when it isn't really.
Parent: "By way of illustrating this point, he tells an amusing story about..." (etc. etc.)
"If it costs $10k per kg to get something to LEO, all you have to do is find stuff already in LEO that could work, grab it, and put it to use. I'm sure some of the stuff up there has some practical application."
Sweet idea, but if anyone really wants to help humanity today, they should probably go to the dumps and scrapyards of any third-world-country currently being used as a hardware-"/dev/null" by us and try to work out how to make somehing worthwile out of that junk (without contaminating future generations of the locals).
Since I support my mother's computer she always had what I had -- first a WinPC, then a Mac. She mostly works with text and spreadsheets, and, having come to computers late in her life (and having no geek-strain whatsoever in her personality) she's always had problems with "the computer".
It got a little better after I switched her to Mac OS X --- a system I hated at first because I couldn't figure out where all my beloves quirks, hacks etc. (that I knew from OS9) went. She took to it like a duck to water.
Last year she started bugging me about a digital camera... she really really wanted one. So (nice kid that I am) started to research the possibilities... Camera was a no-brainer (CANON), but how on earth would I get her to actually transfer, view and manage the pics on a computer?
I had a look at iPhoto and it was hate at first sight. Remember: I'm a Graphic Designer, I can operate Photoshop almost blindfolded. Where are all my options? Why am I forced to store/order pictures in a certain way? I had a look at other programs... Photoshop LE (or whatsitscalled) etc... Finally I gave in, and we presented her with a shiny new CANON and I promised to sit in with her as long as it would take to come to terms with iPhoto (my estimate: 2-3 weeks, and constant phone-support from there on).
I was wrong. Not only wrong, but w-r-o-n-g. Remember duck/water? Same here. We plugged her CANON into her iBook for the first time, iPhoto starts, I explain the basics --- and that was it. She was able to use a program (actually: a file-managing-concept) within minutes.
All those Photoshop-features I use every day? She doesn't need them - doesn't even miss them. Crop? Check. Red-Eye-Reduction? Check. Print the picture in [whatever] size/quality? Check. Find that picture from [whenwasitagain]? Check. Anything else? Missing -- and a good thing, too: less confusion.
Is iPhoto the panacea to parental digital photography? Of course not. She uses iPhoto 2.x on a G4/400/768 MB RAM and an iBook/G3/500/ 300something RAM (both with Mac OS X 10.4) --- with a library of over 1800 pictures iPhoto is starting to behave rather badly (slow, even a few crashes). So soon we'll have to get her a newer version of iPhoto, and (preferably) a new Mac. Also she still makes mistakes.
But still... whatever those people in cupertino were smoking when they designed the user-workflow of iPhoto --- it must have been some righteous stuff. Getting my (beloved, albeit bloody boneheaded) mother to understand (and productively use) a piece of software she's never seen before within minutes is a feat I never believed possible.
This is a really important question.
This is a really interesting question because [...]
You make a great point about [...]
Great question!
This is a question that has passed through my mind more than once.
This is an interesting problem because [...]
You bring up a couple of interesting points.
Etc. etc.
Mind you: I'm not commenting on the actual value of his arguments (I know next to nothing about the subject matter), but this read eerily straight from the "How To Successfully Communicate In Meetings"-Handbook.
"Good God! How many of you slashbot jerks even bother to sniff the article before launching into a tirade about structured programming etc. Dumb asses, the bunch of you!"
IF DUMP ASS GO ATSE.CX
Or was it the other way round? Anyway: There! Neener-Neener!
So when Christ said "I am the door" (John 10:9), do you suppose he had hinges and a doorknob?
Weeell... if you accept that he was both divine and human, and (on the human side) of the genus "male", then, yes, you'd actually have to suppose he had a knob.
What (to me) still sets 2001: A Space Odyssey apart from all other/later films with an "outer space" theme is that feeling of complete loneliness and despair when Frank Poole drifts away from the spaceship...
Sure, it would have been equally deadly only 10 miles from earth's orbit (or half a mile at sea), but watching that film I understood for the first time how vast, lonely and unforgiving that "outer" space really is.
I watched the film with my dad when I was about 12 (far too early IMO - I had nightmares about the end for weeks, but my dad (bless his simple soul) thought I shoud see "the original" first befor we would go see "StarWars"). I recently saw 2001 again (now at age 30something) --- and yet I still find the aforementioned scene the most disturbing of the whole film.
(PS: System 7 drove me away, OS X brought me back.)
System 7 intrigued and teased me (vs. Win 2./3.x), System 8 hooked and sold me (vs. Win 9x), System 9 clobbered and humiliated me (vs. Win NT), System 10 (a.k.a. Mac OS X) has turned me into one happy, drooling user.;)
Well, to be honest: it was Mac OS X 10.3. Before that it was more like "test-driving a shiny new toy", but since 10.3 (and especially 10.4) it's a whole new ballgame... in fact my raggedy-ass ol'iBook has suddenly turned into the computer i've always wanted to have! (*)
a.c.
(*) I bought my current portable (an iBook/600) early 2002, when Mac OS 9.x was still all the rage. Just by an OS-upgrade this machine became more useful than I could ever have imagined when I first got it (remember: when I bought it it was still high OS9-time). I was ready for (and expected) multiple daily crashes/reboots when working full load (Quark, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.), even though the machine was administrated (is that a proper verb?) quite competently. OS X, while sucking away a little speed, has given this old box a stability and versatility I hardly dared to dream of when I first bought it.
You might have said that today"the wake up from sleep on Macs is essentially instantaneous."
It didn't always use to be that way, here's my personal experience (mind you this is the same hardware we're talking about, an iBook/600 from early 2002):
Wake-up-time:
Mac OS 9.2.2.: 20 to 40 seconds
Mac OS X 10.1: (not tested)
Mac OS X 10.2: 4-5 seconds, some parts not responding up to 10 seconds after wake.
Mac OS X 10.3: 4-5 seconds, very slight delay (another 5 seconds) for some parts (WLAN would usually be up faster than clock updated (i.e.: clock still showing time of sleep for abot 4-5 second after wake))
Mac OS X 10.4: hardly any noticeable delay. Clock-display fixed, so now at lest it looks and feels like "instant-wake".
Professor A. ("Affidavit") Donda (the offspring of an unfortunate genetical experiment including 3 women and a microscope slide) invents "Svarnetics" (roughly: "Advanced Mumbo-Jumboistics") as a pretense to load the worlds biggest computer with as much data as possible to find out if information has physical weight. He succeeds; however at the moment information is actually so dense that it becomes matter/weighable it turns into an info-black-hole, swallowing all information so far accumulated by humankind. What's left are some issues of "Playboy" (remember: this was written in the late 70s).
In his novels and short stories you will find tons of amazing stuff (bio-/cyber-jack-stories from the 50es, bizarre robot-love and one of the most disillusioned space-pilots ever ("Pirx"). Besides: Lem was the guy who wrote the novel "Solaris", decently turned into a movie by Andrei Tarkovsky and, more recently, but not quite as decently, by Steven Soderbergh.
Actually this is a (supposedly) true story stolen from http://www.daujones.com/detail.php?usrid=4703 (Warning: all in german), but it's the first thing that made me laugh all week, so I thought I'd translate&share.
The Setting: Woman works as a receptionist at a veterinarians. Part of her job is to have a look at the new arrivals in the waiting-room so the veterinarian knows what's up next.
In comes a woman with a bird cage. Content: a parrot. Receptionist kneels down, takes a peek in the cage, and the following dialogue ensues:
Receptionist: "A-ha! A Parrot." Parrot: "Oh Dear!"
Disclaimer: If you don't think this is funny, I'd like to know what you're doing in my universe (or, alternatively, how the hell I got into yours).
Mods: This is not an attempt at troll, but a parody of the typical "This is why you should switch to Firefox" posts whenever a vulnerability involving IE. It should be painfully obvious, but then again most of you are on crack.
Slander! I only mod people down when I'm off crack!
Slashdot Mirror
"So, what rating are they going to put on the movie, PG-13?"
Er... that would be "Pray to the Gods (all 13 of 'em)", right?
"If the main series Discworld were to be translated to a format other than books I think animation would be better than filmed live action."
Ahhh... but just imagine... a Lancre/Witches-Story vizualized (is that actually a word?) by Peter Jackson... even with only one-tenth of the LOTR-budget...
The mind boggles...
(well... mine does, but it does that all the time anyway, so... ah, nevermind.... )
"Multiple exclamation marks are a sure sign of a diseased mind."
But you really asked for that one, didn't you?
Click on the pulldown-menu and release the mouse-button when it says "Funny". If you just click at random you might just get a post modded "Interesting" (or something) when it isn't really.
Parent: "By way of illustrating this point, he tells an amusing story about..." (etc. etc.)
"If it costs $10k per kg to get something to LEO, all you have to do is find stuff already in LEO that could work, grab it, and put it to use. I'm sure some of the stuff up there has some practical application."
Sweet idea, but if anyone really wants to help humanity today , they should probably go to the dumps and scrapyards of any third-world-country currently being used as a hardware-"/dev/null" by us and try to work out how to make somehing worthwile out of that junk (without contaminating future generations of the locals).
Jus' sayin'... not really snarky.
"It's Web 2.0 baby - get on the bus!"
Actually it's called "Web 2.0 beta ", baby.
Since I support my mother's computer she always had what I had -- first a WinPC, then a Mac. She mostly works with text and spreadsheets, and, having come to computers late in her life (and having no geek-strain whatsoever in her personality) she's always had problems with "the computer".
It got a little better after I switched her to Mac OS X --- a system I hated at first because I couldn't figure out where all my beloves quirks, hacks etc. (that I knew from OS9) went. She took to it like a duck to water.
Last year she started bugging me about a digital camera... she really really wanted one. So (nice kid that I am) started to research the possibilities... Camera was a no-brainer (CANON), but how on earth would I get her to actually transfer, view and manage the pics on a computer?
I had a look at iPhoto and it was hate at first sight. Remember: I'm a Graphic Designer, I can operate Photoshop almost blindfolded. Where are all my options? Why am I forced to store/order pictures in a certain way? I had a look at other programs... Photoshop LE (or whatsitscalled) etc... Finally I gave in, and we presented her with a shiny new CANON and I promised to sit in with her as long as it would take to come to terms with iPhoto (my estimate: 2-3 weeks, and constant phone-support from there on).
I was wrong. Not only wrong, but w-r-o-n-g. Remember duck/water? Same here. We plugged her CANON into her iBook for the first time, iPhoto starts, I explain the basics --- and that was it. She was able to use a program (actually: a file-managing-concept) within minutes.
All those Photoshop-features I use every day? She doesn't need them - doesn't even miss them. Crop? Check. Red-Eye-Reduction? Check. Print the picture in [whatever] size/quality? Check. Find that picture from [whenwasitagain]? Check. Anything else? Missing -- and a good thing, too: less confusion.
Is iPhoto the panacea to parental digital photography? Of course not. She uses iPhoto 2.x on a G4/400/768 MB RAM and an iBook/G3/500/ 300something RAM (both with Mac OS X 10.4) --- with a library of over 1800 pictures iPhoto is starting to behave rather badly (slow, even a few crashes). So soon we'll have to get her a newer version of iPhoto, and (preferably) a new Mac. Also she still makes mistakes.
But still... whatever those people in cupertino were smoking when they designed the user-workflow of iPhoto --- it must have been some righteous stuff. Getting my (beloved, albeit bloody boneheaded) mother to understand (and productively use) a piece of software she's never seen before within minutes is a feat I never believed possible.
.. looking for stuff on your [real world] desktop?
I have, have actually had my arm and fingers twitching for the keyboard...
I think I need a major vacation soon, somewhere with no IT-devices whatsoever.
a.c.
I know.
I was just joking, you know.
Etc. etc.
Mind you: I'm not commenting on the actual value of his arguments (I know next to nothing about the subject matter), but this read eerily straight from the "How To Successfully Communicate In Meetings"-Handbook.
"Good God! How many of you slashbot jerks even bother to sniff the article before launching into a tirade about structured programming etc. Dumb asses, the bunch of you!"
IF DUMP ASS GO ATSE.CX
Or was it the other way round? Anyway: There! Neener-Neener!
;-)
So when Christ said "I am the door" (John 10:9), do you suppose he had hinges and a doorknob?
Weeell... if you accept that he was both divine and human, and (on the human side) of the genus "male", then, yes, you'd actually have to suppose he had a knob.
What (to me) still sets 2001: A Space Odyssey apart from all other/later films with an "outer space" theme is that feeling of complete loneliness and despair when Frank Poole drifts away from the spaceship...
Sure, it would have been equally deadly only 10 miles from earth's orbit (or half a mile at sea), but watching that film I understood for the first time how vast, lonely and unforgiving that "outer" space really is.
I watched the film with my dad when I was about 12 (far too early IMO - I had nightmares about the end for weeks, but my dad (bless his simple soul) thought I shoud see "the original" first befor we would go see "StarWars"). I recently saw 2001 again (now at age 30something) --- and yet I still find the aforementioned scene the most disturbing of the whole film.
(PS: System 7 drove me away, OS X brought me back.)
;)
;)
System 7 intrigued and teased me (vs. Win 2./3.x), System 8 hooked and sold me (vs. Win 9x), System 9 clobbered and humiliated me (vs. Win NT), System 10 (a.k.a. Mac OS X) has turned me into one happy, drooling user.
Well, to be honest: it was Mac OS X 10.3. Before that it was more like "test-driving a shiny new toy", but since 10.3 (and especially 10.4) it's a whole new ballgame... in fact my raggedy-ass ol'iBook has suddenly turned into the computer i've always wanted to have! (*)
a.c.
(*) I bought my current portable (an iBook/600) early 2002, when Mac OS 9.x was still all the rage. Just by an OS-upgrade this machine became more useful than I could ever have imagined when I first got it (remember: when I bought it it was still high OS9-time). I was ready for (and expected) multiple daily crashes/reboots when working full load (Quark, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc.), even though the machine was administrated (is that a proper verb?) quite competently. OS X, while sucking away a little speed, has given this old box a stability and versatility I hardly dared to dream of when I first bought it.
P.S.: Sorry for the gushing.
Is a "Fight Scammer" something like a "Battle Droid"?
And why would Micrrosoft want tho help them? Besides: shouldn't that read "Nigerian Fight Scammers"?
Just asking...
So is having children out of wedlock copyright infringement?
No, but it's probably a violation of that big, fat EULA (a.k.a. "The Bible").
Or what was that "program" called again?
"Or pick up a disease from the phone! Don't forget that most pulbic fones are covered in feces."
No, those would be the pubic phones.
You wouldn't dare to... oh. You did.
Well, Karma's a whore. But she knows your address.
:)
... come free of worry?
Dang! Several of my paradigms just imploded!
... Windows Vista ... his name is Windows Vista.
You see, in death operating systems do have a name - even the ones that cause mayhem.
You might have said that today "the wake up from sleep on Macs is essentially instantaneous."
It didn't always use to be that way, here's my personal experience (mind you this is the same hardware we're talking about, an iBook/600 from early 2002):
Wake-up-time:
Mac OS 9.2.2.: 20 to 40 seconds
Mac OS X 10.1: (not tested)
Mac OS X 10.2: 4-5 seconds, some parts not responding up to 10 seconds after wake.
Mac OS X 10.3: 4-5 seconds, very slight delay (another 5 seconds) for some parts (WLAN would usually be up faster than clock updated (i.e.: clock still showing time of sleep for abot 4-5 second after wake))
Mac OS X 10.4: hardly any noticeable delay. Clock-display fixed, so now at lest it looks and feels like "instant-wake".
...roughly 1978:
Professor A. ("Affidavit") Donda (the offspring of an unfortunate genetical experiment including 3 women and a microscope slide) invents "Svarnetics" (roughly: "Advanced Mumbo-Jumboistics") as a pretense to load the worlds biggest computer with as much data as possible to find out if information has physical weight. He succeeds; however at the moment information is actually so dense that it becomes matter/weighable it turns into an info-black-hole, swallowing all information so far accumulated by humankind. What's left are some issues of "Playboy" (remember: this was written in the late 70s).
In case you've never heard of Stanislaw Lem: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislaw_Lem
In his novels and short stories you will find tons of amazing stuff (bio-/cyber-jack-stories from the 50es, bizarre robot-love and one of the most disillusioned space-pilots ever ("Pirx"). Besides: Lem was the guy who wrote the novel "Solaris", decently turned into a movie by Andrei Tarkovsky and, more recently, but not quite as decently, by Steven Soderbergh.
The Setting: Woman works as a receptionist at a veterinarians. Part of her job is to have a look at the new arrivals in the waiting-room so the veterinarian knows what's up next. In comes a woman with a bird cage. Content: a parrot. Receptionist kneels down, takes a peek in the cage, and the following dialogue ensues:Disclaimer: If you don't think this is funny, I'd like to know what you're doing in my universe (or, alternatively, how the hell I got into yours).
Slander! I only mod people down when I'm off crack!