We've had them for years in Canada, stick a quarter in the slot and release the cart. Bring the cart back and get your quarter back. Very few carts ever go missing or leave the store property. I don't know why it's not like that in the States.
Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio was vetted by my friend who's a Ph.D. in molecular biology and virology. It read well and certainly falls under the science + fiction category.
If memory serves, Catherine Asaro has a Ph.D. herself in physics. Her Skolian series has romantic themes as well as hard sci fi plot lines.
Love LOST but am thinking would be very very tough to pull off too many more seasons. Then there's Alias, which I haven't watched but have heard good things about. So Abrams can tell a story (or at least hires people who can) so I'll wait and reserved judgement.
Shirley
who still longs for Firefly and TV by Whedon
I think of this B5 direct to DVD as another innovation by JMS. The 5 season story arc was pretty innovative esp. as all other TV at the time (and still) was so episodic. I see LOST and the 4400 suffering without a defined end. Similarly, BSG may become problematic as plot lines drag and get extended for profit rather than story-telling. And with all the different media playback, what does it matter if it's on TV at such and such a time? I get a much better experience watching the shows uninterrupted, all at once (or at least on my own time schedule). I can see content-on-demand like this being much more popular and it bypasses TV execs (phooey on FOX) so how can that be bad? If only Firefly can be brought back like this...
It would help if you had an educational component to this ie., how can teachers, students use Appleseed as a forum yadda yadda or how can academic groups collaborate to use this system. Then definitely hook up with academia to write a co-grant. Currently NSF funding isn't so hot but it's possible that someone already has a grant or need a component like yours for their current grant. All NSF government-funded research projects are supposed to set aside 10% of their funding for educational outreach purposes. If you can spin your component as a vehicle for such then you may be able to get some of that money. Otherwise, try the computer companies. They all have "charities" and ways to submit projects. As someone else mentioned, finding $ and grant writing is a fulltime job in itself. Good luck.
Shirley
I don't buy this logic. There's lots of great flicks that weren't adapted from copyrighted material and there are sucky flicks that were adapted from coyprighted material. Regardless of where the premise came from, book, short story, weird dream in the middle of the night, it's the execution of the idea, the plotting, writing, scripting, acting, direction that makes it a good film vs. a bad one. Brokeback Mountain would have been a completely different film if directed by someone other than Ang Lee, or if Heath and Jay weren't the main actors. And it was adapted from Anne Proulx's short story. Remakes, sequels can be good but not if the $ goes disproportionally into SFX, hello Lucas!
They should have special awards for movies that get the least bang for the buck. Lucas' last three films had a bare minimum of plot, dialogue, and story. Special effects are cool but they shouldn't carry the film. I can think of a number of films I enjoyed a lot more that cost 10X less than Lucas' -- Serenity comes to mind. The movie industry blames the internet and pirated DVDs for the decrease in people actually going to the movie theater (theme of Oscar speech by Prez of the motion picture association). Certainly these have an effect. Still, take some responsibility, put out better movies.
Build up your portfolio. Lots of comments already covered volunteering, trying to get a co-op. What would impress me is if you can "show" me your work. Have a great idea? Let's see you realize it. Like gaming? Design/create one -- collaborate with your fellow students/friends. See a better way to do something on a website? Do it and show me how you improve it. I can't tell you how many resumes I've scanned looking for a summer intern, (and sadly this applies to actual job applicants as well) many had no web pages, no working samples of their work. A high GPA means you know how to pass a test, it doesn't give me any sense of how you deal with practical issues, like writing code/script to solve a problem. Even if you don't get an internship/job, the working portfolio is still useful.
Yahoo in Mandarin Chinese is phonetic Ya hu. The name also has meaning as the characters used are ya = tooth and hu = tiger. So the Toothy Tiger is doing the trolling and the monitoring. Haven't checked to see what Google translates as.
Having reviewed lots of resumes (no, I'm not in HR), I have assembled a short list of what to do if you DON'T want to be hired - in no particular order, and yes, I have had all of these in the past, and no, haven't hired or even interviewed any of these candidates:
1) Mass email your CV and let everyone see everyone else's email addresses.
2) Have a mini blog on your website/portfolio that says the city you're in "has design studios that are crap and all they produce is shit".
3) Send me links for work examples that don't work - if you're applying for a web developer job, I expect to see web work. Similarly if you're applying for a copy editing job, I don't want to see a typo on your CV.
3) Send me "questionable" work samples to review - that gay porn site that you got paid to put together might not be something you want to be remembered by.
4) Spell my name incorrectly if you're emailing me.
5) Call me when I specifically say on the job ad NO PHONE CALLS.
6) Show up late or not show up at all for the interview.
7) Inappropriate dress, demeanor at interview - you would think this is a given but it isn't.
8) Tell me your life story at the interview as opposed to your work experience.
9) List age, marital status, GPA etc. on the CV - this may be SOP in other countries but not in the U.S.
10) Send out your CV and cover letter without getting a friend to review it. If you have no friends, pay someone, get your mother to do it. Ultimatley, you're not "waiting for my replay" and I don't want to "TTYL".
I wasn't suggesting that FOX offer downloads. I was suggesting a completely different model all together that cuts out the networks. The artists/producers like Joss Whedon, Neil Gaiman, David Boncho etc. would go directly to their audience, us, and sell us their ideas/shows/content. We vote with our wallets. It would be content on demand. They're the ones that should earn the $ anyway, not the networks or the publishers who are constantly complaining about the investment risks vs. reward equation. If enough $ gets the show/project greenlighted, then the shows can be bittorented or otherwise delivered -- new viewers will have to watch the targetted ads prior to getting the feed.
Fox is leading the way for showing how old-style TV content and programming just won't work in the new digital, downloadable world. The network producers are still "selling" TV shows based on advertising dollar. The drive seems to be what can be produced for the most eyeballs so they can get advertising $. They don't seem to appreciate the niche market and targetting strategies which currently works for the web -- ebay is the biggest niche market there is. Quality/Niche shows like Firefly and Futurama may not get as many eyeballs to begin with (never mind the time slot mixups or the last-minute preumpts for football) but the audience is loyal and certainly can be target marketed to probably with better success. I understand that it's expensive to produce a TV show (hence the upswing of reality TV) but the model doesn't work anymore, not if there's a market they're not fullfilling. I don't and never watch football so where's my TV? Where's my chance to be marketed to? Though to be honest, given a choice, I'd bittorent and skip all the commercials. So where's the drive to change the model? How about having the niche audience pay for the show's production as have been bruited about on the Firefly.fan net. $1M/episode, how many fans are willing to put their $ where their mouth is to fund the production for further seasons of their cancelled favs?
Have you tried Cmap? It's free and from what I remember, you can add hyperlinks, jpgs, small flash files; you can also share files and have others add to yours. Not hard to learn and it's better than a simple flowchart.
Checking the list and it seems almost all the books are more scifi than fantasy. Tolkein, Narnia are fantasies so maybe that's why they didn't make the list.
Re:The Colour of Magic is a weird choice...
on
Top 20 Geek Novels
·
· Score: 1
I second the recommendation for Jasper Fford, though The Well of Lost Plots is not the first of the series, The Eyre Affair is the first. An extremely well-plotted novel, it evoked the sense of surfing the net, watching a movie, and reading at the same time. His latest series is in a similar universe but has different protagonists -- The Big Over Easy featuring the murder of Humpty Dumpty and the detectives Jack Spratt and Mary Mary from the Nursery Crimes Division. Jasper Fforde's home page is fun too.
It's what another poster said with the Heinlein quote re. experts. I was in research/academia, am an Ph.D. as opposed to an M.D. And OTOH, the graduate school experience teaches you self-reliance, figure it out-ness, OTOH, no training, no management class, no people skills. Yet these are the brightest minds who run their own labs and projects (project management), who write grants and get funding (CFO, venture cap.), deal with personalities and believe me there are plenty of personalities in academia (HR/admin). And this cycle continues over and over. I've had people who basically tell me that what I do is easy (I produce educational content websites -- I often write the content too) and they could do it if they really want to but it's not important enough...
It's a strange dicotomy that promotes the self-reliance until it becomes the God complex without sprinkling in a bit of common sense and self-analysis.
I agree with your comment about the benefits of intelligence though it'd be nice to see salaries that match. Scientists, post doc, people who do research etc. the vast majority of these people get paid a pittance compared to the "beautiful" people or those who can hit a fast ball out of the park. You can make an argument about the equality of fame ie., the weight of a Nobel Prize vs. a multimillion $ contract but it'd be nice if the money was a bit more equalized too.
Slashdot Mirror
We've had them for years in Canada, stick a quarter in the slot and release the cart. Bring the cart back and get your quarter back. Very few carts ever go missing or leave the store property. I don't know why it's not like that in the States.
Greg Bear's Darwin's Radio was vetted by my friend who's a Ph.D. in molecular biology and virology. It read well and certainly falls under the science + fiction category. If memory serves, Catherine Asaro has a Ph.D. herself in physics. Her Skolian series has romantic themes as well as hard sci fi plot lines.
Love LOST but am thinking would be very very tough to pull off too many more seasons. Then there's Alias, which I haven't watched but have heard good things about. So Abrams can tell a story (or at least hires people who can) so I'll wait and reserved judgement. Shirley who still longs for Firefly and TV by Whedon
Matt, Ben, . I'm hoping that Abrams can give us the story. I've liked his TV so here's hoping.
I think of this B5 direct to DVD as another innovation by JMS. The 5 season story arc was pretty innovative esp. as all other TV at the time (and still) was so episodic. I see LOST and the 4400 suffering without a defined end. Similarly, BSG may become problematic as plot lines drag and get extended for profit rather than story-telling. And with all the different media playback, what does it matter if it's on TV at such and such a time? I get a much better experience watching the shows uninterrupted, all at once (or at least on my own time schedule). I can see content-on-demand like this being much more popular and it bypasses TV execs (phooey on FOX) so how can that be bad? If only Firefly can be brought back like this ...
The New Scientist has an article http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9469-dodging -punishment-may-be-its-own-reward.html about how in some who have brain damage, getting away with a crime is as good as being rewarded for good behavior. This could be part of the "addiction".
It would help if you had an educational component to this ie., how can teachers, students use Appleseed as a forum yadda yadda or how can academic groups collaborate to use this system. Then definitely hook up with academia to write a co-grant. Currently NSF funding isn't so hot but it's possible that someone already has a grant or need a component like yours for their current grant. All NSF government-funded research projects are supposed to set aside 10% of their funding for educational outreach purposes. If you can spin your component as a vehicle for such then you may be able to get some of that money. Otherwise, try the computer companies. They all have "charities" and ways to submit projects. As someone else mentioned, finding $ and grant writing is a fulltime job in itself. Good luck. Shirley
I don't buy this logic. There's lots of great flicks that weren't adapted from copyrighted material and there are sucky flicks that were adapted from coyprighted material. Regardless of where the premise came from, book, short story, weird dream in the middle of the night, it's the execution of the idea, the plotting, writing, scripting, acting, direction that makes it a good film vs. a bad one. Brokeback Mountain would have been a completely different film if directed by someone other than Ang Lee, or if Heath and Jay weren't the main actors. And it was adapted from Anne Proulx's short story. Remakes, sequels can be good but not if the $ goes disproportionally into SFX, hello Lucas!
They should have special awards for movies that get the least bang for the buck. Lucas' last three films had a bare minimum of plot, dialogue, and story. Special effects are cool but they shouldn't carry the film. I can think of a number of films I enjoyed a lot more that cost 10X less than Lucas' -- Serenity comes to mind. The movie industry blames the internet and pirated DVDs for the decrease in people actually going to the movie theater (theme of Oscar speech by Prez of the motion picture association). Certainly these have an effect. Still, take some responsibility, put out better movies.
Build up your portfolio. Lots of comments already covered volunteering, trying to get a co-op. What would impress me is if you can "show" me your work. Have a great idea? Let's see you realize it. Like gaming? Design/create one -- collaborate with your fellow students/friends. See a better way to do something on a website? Do it and show me how you improve it. I can't tell you how many resumes I've scanned looking for a summer intern, (and sadly this applies to actual job applicants as well) many had no web pages, no working samples of their work. A high GPA means you know how to pass a test, it doesn't give me any sense of how you deal with practical issues, like writing code/script to solve a problem. Even if you don't get an internship/job, the working portfolio is still useful.
Yahoo in Mandarin Chinese is phonetic Ya hu. The name also has meaning as the characters used are ya = tooth and hu = tiger. So the Toothy Tiger is doing the trolling and the monitoring. Haven't checked to see what Google translates as.
1) Mass email your CV and let everyone see everyone else's email addresses.
2) Have a mini blog on your website/portfolio that says the city you're in "has design studios that are crap and all they produce is shit".
3) Send me links for work examples that don't work - if you're applying for a web developer job, I expect to see web work. Similarly if you're applying for a copy editing job, I don't want to see a typo on your CV.
3) Send me "questionable" work samples to review - that gay porn site that you got paid to put together might not be something you want to be remembered by.
4) Spell my name incorrectly if you're emailing me.
5) Call me when I specifically say on the job ad NO PHONE CALLS.
6) Show up late or not show up at all for the interview.
7) Inappropriate dress, demeanor at interview - you would think this is a given but it isn't.
8) Tell me your life story at the interview as opposed to your work experience.
9) List age, marital status, GPA etc. on the CV - this may be SOP in other countries but not in the U.S.
10) Send out your CV and cover letter without getting a friend to review it. If you have no friends, pay someone, get your mother to do it. Ultimatley, you're not "waiting for my replay" and I don't want to "TTYL".
I wasn't suggesting that FOX offer downloads. I was suggesting a completely different model all together that cuts out the networks. The artists/producers like Joss Whedon, Neil Gaiman, David Boncho etc. would go directly to their audience, us, and sell us their ideas/shows/content. We vote with our wallets. It would be content on demand. They're the ones that should earn the $ anyway, not the networks or the publishers who are constantly complaining about the investment risks vs. reward equation. If enough $ gets the show/project greenlighted, then the shows can be bittorented or otherwise delivered -- new viewers will have to watch the targetted ads prior to getting the feed.
Fox is leading the way for showing how old-style TV content and programming just won't work in the new digital, downloadable world. The network producers are still "selling" TV shows based on advertising dollar. The drive seems to be what can be produced for the most eyeballs so they can get advertising $. They don't seem to appreciate the niche market and targetting strategies which currently works for the web -- ebay is the biggest niche market there is. Quality/Niche shows like Firefly and Futurama may not get as many eyeballs to begin with (never mind the time slot mixups or the last-minute preumpts for football) but the audience is loyal and certainly can be target marketed to probably with better success. I understand that it's expensive to produce a TV show (hence the upswing of reality TV) but the model doesn't work anymore, not if there's a market they're not fullfilling. I don't and never watch football so where's my TV? Where's my chance to be marketed to? Though to be honest, given a choice, I'd bittorent and skip all the commercials. So where's the drive to change the model? How about having the niche audience pay for the show's production as have been bruited about on the Firefly.fan net. $1M/episode, how many fans are willing to put their $ where their mouth is to fund the production for further seasons of their cancelled favs?
Have you tried Cmap? It's free and from what I remember, you can add hyperlinks, jpgs, small flash files; you can also share files and have others add to yours. Not hard to learn and it's better than a simple flowchart.
Checking the list and it seems almost all the books are more scifi than fantasy. Tolkein, Narnia are fantasies so maybe that's why they didn't make the list.
I second the recommendation for Jasper Fford, though The Well of Lost Plots is not the first of the series, The Eyre Affair is the first. An extremely well-plotted novel, it evoked the sense of surfing the net, watching a movie, and reading at the same time. His latest series is in a similar universe but has different protagonists -- The Big Over Easy featuring the murder of Humpty Dumpty and the detectives Jack Spratt and Mary Mary from the Nursery Crimes Division. Jasper Fforde's home page is fun too.
It's what another poster said with the Heinlein quote re. experts. I was in research/academia, am an Ph.D. as opposed to an M.D. And OTOH, the graduate school experience teaches you self-reliance, figure it out-ness, OTOH, no training, no management class, no people skills. Yet these are the brightest minds who run their own labs and projects (project management), who write grants and get funding (CFO, venture cap.), deal with personalities and believe me there are plenty of personalities in academia (HR/admin). And this cycle continues over and over. I've had people who basically tell me that what I do is easy (I produce educational content websites -- I often write the content too) and they could do it if they really want to but it's not important enough ...
It's a strange dicotomy that promotes the self-reliance until it becomes the God complex without sprinkling in a bit of common sense and self-analysis.
I agree with your comment about the benefits of intelligence though it'd be nice to see salaries that match. Scientists, post doc, people who do research etc. the vast majority of these people get paid a pittance compared to the "beautiful" people or those who can hit a fast ball out of the park. You can make an argument about the equality of fame ie., the weight of a Nobel Prize vs. a multimillion $ contract but it'd be nice if the money was a bit more equalized too.