The problem with making Dune was that the book the movie was from was over 500 pages. You can go into a lot of detail in 500 pages but you can't in a 3 hour movie. The "Picard version" is best seen after having read the book.
Their business model was morbidly flawed; they started renting movies when tapes cost over a hundred dollars each, so four bucks to rent one wasn't a bad deal. But then tapes (and later DVDs) came down in price, Blockbuster's competitors had prices down to a buck a tape/DVD and Blockbuster acted like they held a monopoly. Hell, there used to be a Blockbuster right across from Family Video on 6th street here, with FamVid DVDs at $1 and Blockbuster DVDs at $4 and you could often BUY the DVD Blockbuster was renting for $4 at WalMart for $5.
Meanwhile, there are still dozens of Family Video stores here in town, as well as lots of RedBox kiosks. Blockbuster was greedy to the point of mental retardation. No way can you rent a $5 or $10 or even $20 item for $4.
And yet, in and of itself, "I Robot" was not a bad movie. It just didn't have much to do with the book. A movie can only really hold a short story with any fidelity
I agree that it was a good movie, even though it wasn't I, Robot. But the book I, Robot was a collection of short stories, so they could have made a movie out of any of them. The one on Mercury would have been very suspenseful. But if what I read was right and what I remember of it was accurate, the script for I, Robot had already been written and somebody said "Hey! Asimov!" so they simply changed some of the characters' names and paid Asimov's widow not to sue.
In defense of HHGTG, you can't blame the studios, since Adams wrote the screenplay and was heavily into it until he died.
TFS mentioned I, Robot, but that movie got more scorn than it deserved. I was taken aback by it myself, having been an Asimov fan for decades. But the book was a collection of barely connected short stories, the movie was a completely new story and simply borrowed from Asimov. Remove the Asimov part and it was a pretty good story.
Now, what they (SyFy? I don't remember) did to Foundation was terrible. They held pretty close to the original story, but the acting sucked and the directing was worse and the costuming terrible.
I've never seen a movie that followed a book 100%. In fact, the only reason I read True Grit was to see which movie came the closest. Both were equally close, and both were a LOT better than the book, which wasn't that well written.
If the cost of an online book was substantially cheaper than a hard copy I might feel different but it really isn't...
What about writers who sell physical books but give away the electronic versions? That's what Doctorow does and what I'm doing with "Nobots". If it works I'll make future books the same way.
Margie even wrote about it that night in her diary. On the page headed May 17, 2157, she wrote, "Today, Tommy found a real book!"
It was a very old book. Margie's grandfather once said that when he was a little boy his grandfather told him that there was a time when all stories were printed on paper.
They turned the pages, which were yellow and crinkly, and it was awfully funny to read words that stood still instead of moving the way they were supposed to--on a screen, you know. And then, when they turned back to the page before, it had the same words on it that it had had when they read it the first time.
"Gee," said Tommy, "what a waste. When you're through with the book, you just throw it away, I guess. Our television screen must have had a million books on it and it's good for plenty more. I wouldn't throw it away."
I don't so much mind the ones that mark the writer as an idiot* so much as the ones that change the meaning of what the idiot was trying to convey. "Writing in Python will make you loose your mind." Well, isn't setting your mind free a GOOD thing?
I have to laugh at a post that tries to be erudite by using "whom" (usually incorrectly) but doesn't know the difference between there, their, and they're. Those kinds of aliteracies really slow my reading down.
As to being native speakers, I corrected a fellow here the other day who I was sure was an idiot American, who it turned out appreciated the education because he wasn't a native speaker. I usually assume that someone who appears aliterate is really simply not a native speaker on slashdot.
As Twain said, an aliterate has no advantage over an illiterate.
* I worked with a fellow who wrote a book about his combat experiences in Viet Nam. Educated, intelligent guy, but there was an instance of "should of" in his book... and I assume he had an editor who should have caught it. When I see these mistakes in books, magazines, and newspapers it really does annoy me. "I'm paying for this garbage?" Thankfully I'd only checked it out from the library.
It was either 1971 or 1972 when I was in the USAF that I saw the aftermath of a bird strike. A duck (a little more than 4 pounds, of course) went through the windshield of a C-141 and decapitated the co-pilot.
That "four pound" thing... there are a lot of bigger birds than that. Ducks, gees, raptors... and the danger is probably higher that a flock of small birds will get sucked into the jet intake and kill everyone on the aircraft.
Agreed, it was hilarious... although I wouldn't say it had nothing to do with the book, most of it followed rather loosely even though there was new stuff.
And there was a radio show and a TV series before the book.
Now, I, Robot had little to do with the books (although James Cromwell is how I pictured Alfred Lanning when I read the books).
First, with a screen that small there's no visible difference between 720p and 1800p. As to the car, your mother may have a very good reason for that expensive ride, like my sister.
I'm just pointing out that the real reason for iPhones and upscale Samsungs and Lexuses is to be a show-off. I say go ahead ans spend that money, it won't hurt me and might help the economy.
The health care system isn't the problem, the agriculture industry is. They're feeding cows and pigs antibiotics and other stuff to make them bigger, and they're the same antibiotics used in human medicine. It's insane and should be illegal. The free market doesn't curb abuse, no matter what the Randians say.
It's funny, just yesterday I was having a slashdot conversation with someone who was talking about Microsoft's "superior QA", a day after the slashdot story about W8.1 breaking mice and other stuff.
I clicked on the story expecting to see a Windows problem (I still have W7 on this notebook, too lazy to install kubuntu) and it turns out I'm safe; I don't use IE or MS Office (I'm using Oo to write my books).
Agreed, but by taxing income, you allow taxation to be avoided by deferring income, having income received outside the country, etc.
Only because the tax law allows it. Just take away all deductions, all deferrals, and tax all citizens no matter where the income comes from. After all, if you live in East St Louis and work in St Louis you're going to pay income tax in Illinois and Missouri both. Will I be taxed on income for sales of my book to Europeans? I think I should, it's income.
BTW, get rid of the capital gains tax and tax capital gains as regular income. It would go a long way towards bringing down the deficit.
Yes, Linux does have bugs and fixes them as soon as they're fixable. No waiting for Patch Tuesday, no reboots. But every OS is less buggy than Windows. I've seen bad distros, and desktops getting borked, but in Linux never anything like the litany of woes being reported about W8.1.
Microsoft can afford sloppy coding, since their OS is installed on almost every new computer and "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft". Other OSes don't have that luxury, they HAVE to do it right.
Sorry, I have to disagree with most of what you said vehemently. Sales/consumption taxes are regressive; the poor slob behind the grill at McDonald's lives paycheck to paycheck while the CEO spends only a small portion of what he "earns". Worse still is property tax; you're getting taxed over and over. I knew an elderly couple who lost their home, because it had been paid off twenty years earlier but housing prices had risen so much that the taxes were higher than what they'd been paying for the mortgage. There should be no such thing as property tax, period.
I do agree that we should tax things we want to discourage, but if you say "tax what you want to discourage and tax consumption" you're saying that the marketplace is something that should be discouraged.
Tax income and only income, and tax ALL the income, no deductions. And since the rich get far more benefit from government than the poor, they should be paying a higher percentage of their income.
Is "diverse economy" a euphemism for "in-equal wealth distribution"?
Stupid Slashdot. Why does this shitty site not have a way to mod down moronic submissions like this?
It does. It's called the firehose, and you can set it up so that newly submitted stories are on the front page, with a handy + and - next to each story and a moderation for it (spam, stale, stupid, dupe, notthebest).
Then I'm sure you appreciate the information. Here's another tip: there are an awful lot of uneducated people on the internet, don't mimic them. Just do it like your teachers and books taught.
They shouldn't have to, since school lets out at 3:00 and starts at 8. OTOH I had to adjust my work schedule when my daughters were in high school because band class was at 7:00 so I had to drive them. Start school at 9:00 and keep them until 4:00.
Slashdot Mirror
You're confusing mean and median. The "average" is the mean, meaning that the average driver is at the 50% point. The median could be 90% or 10%.
Hell, I'd almost pay higher premiums for the computer to do the driving.
The problem with making Dune was that the book the movie was from was over 500 pages. You can go into a lot of detail in 500 pages but you can't in a 3 hour movie. The "Picard version" is best seen after having read the book.
Their business model was morbidly flawed; they started renting movies when tapes cost over a hundred dollars each, so four bucks to rent one wasn't a bad deal. But then tapes (and later DVDs) came down in price, Blockbuster's competitors had prices down to a buck a tape/DVD and Blockbuster acted like they held a monopoly. Hell, there used to be a Blockbuster right across from Family Video on 6th street here, with FamVid DVDs at $1 and Blockbuster DVDs at $4 and you could often BUY the DVD Blockbuster was renting for $4 at WalMart for $5.
Meanwhile, there are still dozens of Family Video stores here in town, as well as lots of RedBox kiosks. Blockbuster was greedy to the point of mental retardation. No way can you rent a $5 or $10 or even $20 item for $4.
And yet, in and of itself, "I Robot" was not a bad movie. It just didn't have much to do with the book. A movie can only really hold a short story with any fidelity
I agree that it was a good movie, even though it wasn't I, Robot. But the book I, Robot was a collection of short stories, so they could have made a movie out of any of them. The one on Mercury would have been very suspenseful. But if what I read was right and what I remember of it was accurate, the script for I, Robot had already been written and somebody said "Hey! Asimov!" so they simply changed some of the characters' names and paid Asimov's widow not to sue.
In defense of HHGTG, you can't blame the studios, since Adams wrote the screenplay and was heavily into it until he died.
TFS mentioned I, Robot, but that movie got more scorn than it deserved. I was taken aback by it myself, having been an Asimov fan for decades. But the book was a collection of barely connected short stories, the movie was a completely new story and simply borrowed from Asimov. Remove the Asimov part and it was a pretty good story.
Now, what they (SyFy? I don't remember) did to Foundation was terrible. They held pretty close to the original story, but the acting sucked and the directing was worse and the costuming terrible.
I've never seen a movie that followed a book 100%. In fact, the only reason I read True Grit was to see which movie came the closest. Both were equally close, and both were a LOT better than the book, which wasn't that well written.
I'm no fan of Robert Heinlein, I detest his opinions. I am, however, a fan of his work (even if Jerry Was A Man was a little annoyingly racist).
If the cost of an online book was substantially cheaper than a hard copy I might feel different but it really isn't...
What about writers who sell physical books but give away the electronic versions? That's what Doctorow does and what I'm doing with "Nobots". If it works I'll make future books the same way.
Asimov:
I don't so much mind the ones that mark the writer as an idiot* so much as the ones that change the meaning of what the idiot was trying to convey. "Writing in Python will make you loose your mind." Well, isn't setting your mind free a GOOD thing?
I have to laugh at a post that tries to be erudite by using "whom" (usually incorrectly) but doesn't know the difference between there, their, and they're. Those kinds of aliteracies really slow my reading down.
As to being native speakers, I corrected a fellow here the other day who I was sure was an idiot American, who it turned out appreciated the education because he wasn't a native speaker. I usually assume that someone who appears aliterate is really simply not a native speaker on slashdot.
As Twain said, an aliterate has no advantage over an illiterate.
* I worked with a fellow who wrote a book about his combat experiences in Viet Nam. Educated, intelligent guy, but there was an instance of "should of" in his book... and I assume he had an editor who should have caught it. When I see these mistakes in books, magazines, and newspapers it really does annoy me. "I'm paying for this garbage?" Thankfully I'd only checked it out from the library.
Your scenario only applies to Weird societies. The prisoner's dilemma doesn't work the same in all cultures; and in fact, it only plays out that way in western societies.
Link supplied by /.'s resident biologist, Samantha Wright
Watching M$ die its weird death is sort of like the scene in Blade Runner when Pris is killed and does that awesome android freak out
Death spiral? He's not dead yet. Your comment reminds me of the Holy Grail of Death:
It was either 1971 or 1972 when I was in the USAF that I saw the aftermath of a bird strike. A duck (a little more than 4 pounds, of course) went through the windshield of a C-141 and decapitated the co-pilot.
That "four pound" thing... there are a lot of bigger birds than that. Ducks, gees, raptors... and the danger is probably higher that a flock of small birds will get sucked into the jet intake and kill everyone on the aircraft.
Agreed, it was hilarious... although I wouldn't say it had nothing to do with the book, most of it followed rather loosely even though there was new stuff.
And there was a radio show and a TV series before the book.
Now, I, Robot had little to do with the books (although James Cromwell is how I pictured Alfred Lanning when I read the books).
Look again, there is a sign. It's hard to see from the camera angle but it's there.
First, with a screen that small there's no visible difference between 720p and 1800p. As to the car, your mother may have a very good reason for that expensive ride, like my sister.
I'm just pointing out that the real reason for iPhones and upscale Samsungs and Lexuses is to be a show-off. I say go ahead ans spend that money, it won't hurt me and might help the economy.
But it's still "keep up with the Jonses" bling.
The health care system isn't the problem, the agriculture industry is. They're feeding cows and pigs antibiotics and other stuff to make them bigger, and they're the same antibiotics used in human medicine. It's insane and should be illegal. The free market doesn't curb abuse, no matter what the Randians say.
It's funny, just yesterday I was having a slashdot conversation with someone who was talking about Microsoft's "superior QA", a day after the slashdot story about W8.1 breaking mice and other stuff.
I clicked on the story expecting to see a Windows problem (I still have W7 on this notebook, too lazy to install kubuntu) and it turns out I'm safe; I don't use IE or MS Office (I'm using Oo to write my books).
Agreed, but by taxing income, you allow taxation to be avoided by deferring income, having income received outside the country, etc.
Only because the tax law allows it. Just take away all deductions, all deferrals, and tax all citizens no matter where the income comes from. After all, if you live in East St Louis and work in St Louis you're going to pay income tax in Illinois and Missouri both. Will I be taxed on income for sales of my book to Europeans? I think I should, it's income.
BTW, get rid of the capital gains tax and tax capital gains as regular income. It would go a long way towards bringing down the deficit.
Yes, Linux does have bugs and fixes them as soon as they're fixable. No waiting for Patch Tuesday, no reboots. But every OS is less buggy than Windows. I've seen bad distros, and desktops getting borked, but in Linux never anything like the litany of woes being reported about W8.1.
Microsoft can afford sloppy coding, since their OS is installed on almost every new computer and "nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft". Other OSes don't have that luxury, they HAVE to do it right.
Windows has decent QA now and isn't really any more vulnerable than MacOS or Linux.
Microsoft has decent QA? Then why does Microsoft Admit Windows 8.1 Update May Bork Your Mouse? And look at the trouble this guy had after using it for 5 hours.
Decent QA, my ass.
Sorry, I have to disagree with most of what you said vehemently. Sales/consumption taxes are regressive; the poor slob behind the grill at McDonald's lives paycheck to paycheck while the CEO spends only a small portion of what he "earns". Worse still is property tax; you're getting taxed over and over. I knew an elderly couple who lost their home, because it had been paid off twenty years earlier but housing prices had risen so much that the taxes were higher than what they'd been paying for the mortgage. There should be no such thing as property tax, period.
I do agree that we should tax things we want to discourage, but if you say "tax what you want to discourage and tax consumption" you're saying that the marketplace is something that should be discouraged.
Tax income and only income, and tax ALL the income, no deductions. And since the rich get far more benefit from government than the poor, they should be paying a higher percentage of their income.
Is "diverse economy" a euphemism for "in-equal wealth distribution"?
Stupid Slashdot. Why does this shitty site not have a way to mod down moronic submissions like this?
It does. It's called the firehose, and you can set it up so that newly submitted stories are on the front page, with a handy + and - next to each story and a moderation for it (spam, stale, stupid, dupe, notthebest).
You're doing better than a lot of native speakers. Since you don't speak natively I'm sure you appreciate the instruction.
Then I'm sure you appreciate the information. Here's another tip: there are an awful lot of uneducated people on the internet, don't mimic them. Just do it like your teachers and books taught.
They shouldn't have to, since school lets out at 3:00 and starts at 8. OTOH I had to adjust my work schedule when my daughters were in high school because band class was at 7:00 so I had to drive them. Start school at 9:00 and keep them until 4:00.