Well I re-read Gutmann and the blogs and I feel a bit ignorant. When I read it a few years ago, I was by his thoroughness, especially with the driver issues.. How things change.
Nvidia and ATI and every 3D card company had serious problems with Vista - not the graphics, but the HDvideo implementation. You see, a Vista capable graphic card also has to be able to play HD Video.
This has thoroughly been discussed by Peter Gutmann here
Briefly, the fact that Vista was designed for 'premium content protection' caused long delays to sort out HD graphics driver issues as HD Video will not play unless the Audio can be unscrambled. It's still not fixed, but many companies have designed a work-around that stalls the content protection system. So much for MS OS design, pressure from the RIAA and MPAA. Gutmann is very clear on how Vista's design had stuffed up 3D hardware and driver design. A good read.
Running Crysis at 800 x 600 with the lowest quality settings, an eight-core Core i7 system managed an average frame rate of 7.36fps, compared with 5.17fps from Intel's DirectX 10 integrated graphics.
Is that the one with the Cheddite Cheese Projector? Now why couldn't someone invent one of those! My favourite has got to be Bill The Galactic Hero. Or maybe Venus on a Half Shell - but that's Vonnegut at his best.
How would like a watermelon full of liquid nitrogen. explode? I mean, to get the liquid nitrogen into a watermelon, you'll have to pull out the soft red bits and pour in the liquid nitrogen. Then it will just sit there, bubbling away. I just don't get it. Do you have a link?
Yep. Vote me in for the Stainless Steel Rat movies! But gee there is a lot of good movie making stuff out there.
As for Heinlein, I think he loved women and probably was a bit of a dirty old man (as hiryuu surmised in this thread).
I can't help thinking that a lot of real Sci-Fi has made it into the movies. Most of which I would like to see re-done. Heinlein's "He Who Shrank" (maybe he wrote that as Anson McDonald) which I presume was the basis for 'The Incredible Shrinking Man' should be re-told. In that, the main character shrinks and finds himself surviving into the microcosm of an atom, which Heinlein treats as a mini solar system. He continues to shrink on an electron (now a 'planet' revolving around the nucleus 'the sun'). But it doesn't end there, as he continues to shrink - a new concept of infinity.
I think you're too close to the situation. The movie I, Robot just wasn't Asimov as pure as you suggest. Yes, the 3 laws were mentioned but Susan Clavin had such a small part that none of her skill was used but rather usurped by WS. Calvin is really the human mind working with a robotic mind. Most of Asimov's Robot stories were how the 3 Laws could be circumvented by logic. It was also a statement on a Turing-like event, that Robots can synthesize thoughts, and not just respond to situations like a GPS unit. The positronic brain was not treated sufficiently in my opinion. Another gloss-over when more can be made from it. I did like it, but when I read the originals in the 60s - the 'future' envisioned in the 60s is very different to the future envisioned today. If Asimov was to be translated well, then that should be taken into account. But the movie fails as an introduction to Asimov in this regard, that it was a detective/corporate thriller rather than the story of the 3 Laws of Robotics.
For example- George Pal made a movie 'Destination Moon (1950)' http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042393/ and the big problem with that was it was too technical and not entertaining enough. I, Robot as a pure Asimov translation could fall into that trap with too much exposition, but I think the movie as we have it today went too far the other way.
A friend of mine dragged me to LOTR (under protest). I would have enjoyed the movie if it wasn't for long minutes of 'nothing' repeated time and time again. Nothing as various characters gazed into forests, repetitious waiting for something to happen, dramatic buildup was too slow and cumbersome. I went and saw LOTR the sequel and like Conan The Barbarian, I couldn't place the mythology anywhere except a little of old Norse.
It's like Titanic. A long movie that could have been shortened somewhat.
As for any director/producer/screenwriter trying to treat something like the Foundation Trilogy, just won't work. It is an impossible task and the only people it will satisfy would be those who have never read the book. Foundation, like Dune, has too many sub-plots and storylines for a linear movie treatment. People will see it as another Star Wars copy when I bet Foundation was the core concept of Star Wars.
I fear the worst however. What I don't want to see is another I, Robot. It was a good story, but definitely wasn't Asimov.
The "Long" saga by Heinlein is bound to be on the cards. But if I had some input, then Harry Harrison's "Bill The Galactic Hero" would be prime Movie making stuff!.
Wasn't Estonia DDOS'd a few months ago by the Russian Government? That was very freaky. I heard that they got a lot of outside help to try and get their backbone up and running again.
Imagine that you somehow get to stand on Mars let's say... What do you see? Well, we don't really know do we? Because ALL OF THE DAMN CAMERAS that Nasa or whomever send up there in the firmament, to the heavenly bodies or the moons are not designed for human vision. No. The imaging data sent back to terrafirma has to be 'processed' with 'algorithms' before we can see a representation of human vision! This 'representation' is not accurate, as captions often state that the image in question is made up of various data representing different wavelengths of light that are assembled to create it! Well I'm not afraid! I, publicly state, here on Slashdot, that I am extremely disappointed that we don't get human vision of planetary surfaces and cosmic phenomenon. I for one would very much like to see any asteroid that will obliterate the Earth in full glorious colo(u)r.
There. I said it. Now I will lie down somewhere.....
That's a brilliant idea! We can do all the countries, not just Aus and USA. Tomorrow could be 'Nigerian Free Week' where no stories on, about, referring to, alluding to, reflective upon and commented would a start. So much for Net neutrality!
I tend to agree. Maybe he should try the experiment again. His point though was to see how long meat was edible using natural refrigeration techniques. 3 months is not bad going for dead horse meat. Mind you, in tough times it's the offal that would be prized and eaten first due to the higher nutritional content. Depends how hungry you are. Fred Flintstone ate mammoth ribs. It was on TV so it must be true.
No. Mammoth meat probably smells and tastes like limburger cheese.
University of Michigan paleontologist Daniel Fisher had a theory that early Americans of 10,000 years ago used frozen lakes as refrigerators to store mastodon and mammoth meat. He tested his theory when a friend's horse died of old age. Fisher dropped chunks of horse meat of up to 170 pounds below the ice in a nearby pond. He anchored some pieces to the bottom. Every week or so he cooked and chewed a piece of meat, and eventually swallowed each bite. The meat remained safe to eat well into the summer. The theory is that as the water warmed in the spring, lactobacilli (the bacteria found in yogurt & cheese) colonized the meat, rendering it inhospitable to other pathogens. So despite the smell and taste (similar to Limburger cheese), the meat remained safe to eat. http://www.foodreference.com/html/f-mammoth-meat.html
They were quite recent: They survived on Wrangle Island (Artic) and St Paul Island (Bearing Sea) as dwarfs until 1700 BCE. They were also found on the Channel Islands off California and disappeared around 40,000 BCE. They are still digging them up, preserved, in the permafrost of Siberia. Humans did hunt mammoths, sabre-tooths etc.
Slashdot Mirror
Well I re-read Gutmann and the blogs and I feel a bit ignorant. When I read it a few years ago, I was by his thoroughness, especially with the driver issues..
How things change.
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html
sorry - forgot to put in the link
Nvidia and ATI and every 3D card company had serious problems with Vista - not the graphics, but the HDvideo implementation. You see, a Vista capable graphic card also has to be able to play HD Video.
This has thoroughly been discussed by Peter Gutmann here
Briefly, the fact that Vista was designed for 'premium content protection' caused long delays to sort out HD graphics driver issues as HD Video will not play unless the Audio can be unscrambled. It's still not fixed, but many companies have designed a work-around that stalls the content protection system. So much for MS OS design, pressure from the RIAA and MPAA.
Gutmann is very clear on how Vista's design had stuffed up 3D hardware and driver design. A good read.
Running Crysis at 800 x 600 with the lowest quality settings, an eight-core Core i7 system managed an average frame rate of 7.36fps, compared with 5.17fps from Intel's DirectX 10 integrated graphics.
and this is ball-slapping good news?
Is that the one with the Cheddite Cheese Projector?
Now why couldn't someone invent one of those!
My favourite has got to be Bill The Galactic Hero.
Or maybe Venus on a Half Shell - but that's Vonnegut at his best.
That's got to be a Mythbusters episode. Who do we email for that to get proved? (which is the bigger bang?).
as well as sega games.
How would like a watermelon full of liquid nitrogen. explode?
I mean, to get the liquid nitrogen into a watermelon, you'll have to pull out the soft red bits and pour in the liquid nitrogen. Then it will just sit there, bubbling away.
I just don't get it.
Do you have a link?
Yep. Vote me in for the Stainless Steel Rat movies! But gee there is a lot of good movie making stuff out there.
As for Heinlein, I think he loved women and probably was a bit of a dirty old man (as hiryuu surmised in this thread).
I can't help thinking that a lot of real Sci-Fi has made it into the movies. Most of which I would like to see re-done.
Heinlein's "He Who Shrank" (maybe he wrote that as Anson McDonald) which I presume was the basis for 'The Incredible Shrinking Man' should be re-told. In that, the main character shrinks and finds himself surviving into the microcosm of an atom, which Heinlein treats as a mini solar system. He continues to shrink on an electron (now a 'planet' revolving around the nucleus 'the sun'). But it doesn't end there, as he continues to shrink - a new concept of infinity.
I think you're too close to the situation.
The movie I, Robot just wasn't Asimov as pure as you suggest. Yes, the 3 laws were mentioned but Susan Clavin had such a small part that none of her skill was used but rather usurped by WS.
Calvin is really the human mind working with a robotic mind. Most of Asimov's Robot stories were how the 3 Laws could be circumvented by logic.
It was also a statement on a Turing-like event, that Robots can synthesize thoughts, and not just respond to situations like a GPS unit.
The positronic brain was not treated sufficiently in my opinion. Another gloss-over when more can be made from it.
I did like it, but when I read the originals in the 60s - the 'future' envisioned in the 60s is very different to the future envisioned today.
If Asimov was to be translated well, then that should be taken into account.
But the movie fails as an introduction to Asimov in this regard, that it was a detective/corporate thriller rather than the story of the 3 Laws of Robotics.
For example- George Pal made a movie 'Destination Moon (1950)' http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042393/ and the big problem with that was it was too technical and not entertaining enough. I, Robot as a pure Asimov translation could fall into that trap with too much exposition, but I think the movie as we have it today went too far the other way.
A friend of mine dragged me to LOTR (under protest). I would have enjoyed the movie if it wasn't for long minutes of 'nothing' repeated time and time again. Nothing as various characters gazed into forests, repetitious waiting for something to happen, dramatic buildup was too slow and cumbersome.
I went and saw LOTR the sequel and like Conan The Barbarian, I couldn't place the mythology anywhere except a little of old Norse.
It's like Titanic. A long movie that could have been shortened somewhat.
As for any director/producer/screenwriter trying to treat something like the Foundation Trilogy, just won't work. It is an impossible task and the only people it will satisfy would be those who have never read the book. Foundation, like Dune, has too many sub-plots and storylines for a linear movie treatment.
People will see it as another Star Wars copy when I bet Foundation was the core concept of Star Wars.
I fear the worst however. What I don't want to see is another I, Robot. It was a good story, but definitely wasn't Asimov.
The "Long" saga by Heinlein is bound to be on the cards. But if I had some input, then Harry Harrison's "Bill The Galactic Hero" would be prime Movie making stuff!.
A shiraz a day keeps the doctor at bay!
The redder the better!
I totally agree, and about 1/2 bottle per day makes a case last almost a month!
Wasn't Estonia DDOS'd a few months ago by the Russian Government?
That was very freaky. I heard that they got a lot of outside help to try and get their backbone up and running again.
Imagine that you somehow get to stand on Mars let's say...
What do you see? Well, we don't really know do we? Because ALL OF THE DAMN CAMERAS that Nasa or whomever send up there in the firmament, to the heavenly bodies or the moons are not designed for human vision.
No. The imaging data sent back to terrafirma has to be 'processed' with 'algorithms' before we can see a representation of human vision!
This 'representation' is not accurate, as captions often state that the image in question is made up of various data representing different wavelengths of light that are assembled to create it!
Well I'm not afraid!
I, publicly state, here on Slashdot, that I am extremely disappointed that we don't get human vision of planetary surfaces and cosmic phenomenon.
I for one would very much like to see any asteroid that will obliterate the Earth in full glorious colo(u)r.
There. I said it.
Now I will lie down somewhere.....
After all, we know that nothing really exists outside the US, don't we?
Except the World Series! Oh wait.....
That's a brilliant idea!
We can do all the countries, not just Aus and USA.
Tomorrow could be 'Nigerian Free Week' where no stories on, about, referring to, alluding to, reflective upon and commented would a start.
So much for Net neutrality!
No. Try again.
Clue: Without a shadow of a doubt, they are not Vogons.
I tend to agree. Maybe he should try the experiment again.
His point though was to see how long meat was edible using natural refrigeration techniques. 3 months is not bad going for dead horse meat.
Mind you, in tough times it's the offal that would be prized and eaten first due to the higher nutritional content. Depends how hungry you are.
Fred Flintstone ate mammoth ribs. It was on TV so it must be true.
That's them!.
Mastodons?
They seem to have lived later than the mammoths like 10,000 years ago
No. Mammoth meat probably smells and tastes like limburger cheese.
University of Michigan paleontologist Daniel Fisher had a theory that early Americans of 10,000 years ago used frozen lakes as refrigerators to store mastodon and mammoth meat. He tested his theory when a friend's horse died of old age. Fisher dropped chunks of horse meat of up to 170 pounds below the ice in a nearby pond. He anchored some pieces to the bottom. Every week or so he cooked and chewed a piece of meat, and eventually swallowed each bite. The meat remained safe to eat well into the summer. The theory is that as the water warmed in the spring, lactobacilli (the bacteria found in yogurt & cheese) colonized the meat, rendering it inhospitable to other pathogens. So despite the smell and taste (similar to Limburger cheese), the meat remained safe to eat.
http://www.foodreference.com/html/f-mammoth-meat.html
How about a furby?
Almost as bad as those FORTRAN lifeforms. They tend to turn up when least expected and have no idea about micro-computers
They were quite recent: They survived on Wrangle Island (Artic) and St Paul Island (Bearing Sea) as dwarfs until 1700 BCE.
They were also found on the Channel Islands off California and disappeared around 40,000 BCE. They are still digging them up, preserved, in the permafrost of Siberia.
Humans did hunt mammoths, sabre-tooths etc.
Is there cake?