No fault of yours, but I took his quote out of context. What he's talking about is being unable to forgive murder.
I stand by my assessment of his skills as a storyteller, however. We're talking about writing for television, telling a story in four 12-minute blocks once a week, twenty-odd weeks a year, for five years. Aaron Sorkin is the only other writer I can think of who does it as well, and he's getting his material from the Washington Post.
He gets no special credit from me for being an atheist. Where he does get credit is for embracing faith, spirituality, and religion in his stories and characters.
I'm neither a writer nor an English literature major, but if I were to try and pick the one element that puts JMS (and Sorkin) at the top, it is their understanding of resonance. They (like you) refer to Shakespeare, Scripture, myths, and so forth. Those familiar with the references are rewarded by a much deeper understanding of the characters and stories. This is where writers like Brannon Braga (gack!) fail - they don't have the education and background in literature and end up relying on formula.
In the end, it's all a matter of taste. I like JMS. I like Sorkin. I loathe Braga. I also like A&W Diet Root Beer, so what can you say?
I have just finished watching an episode from the second season of "Earth, Final Conflict." I watched it with the stunned fascination of someone seeing a car wreck. How could a show with so many good ideas have gone bad so quickly?
Answer: The writers. It's all about the writers. It's always all about the writers. It's about the writers remembering one simple thing: the people sitting around the campfire asking the bard or shaman, "Tell us a story. Tell us a story about noble kings and fearsome battles and tender loves. Tell us a story about ourselves, our secret fears, our greatest hopes. Tell us a story.
I'm not an SF fanboy, but I do love good SF. There's so little of it about. JMS loves good SF too, and it shows in his storytelling. JMS also loves history, Scripture, legend, fable, and humanity. Humanity most of all. He once said
"As an atheist, I believe that all life is unspeakably precious, because it's only here for a brief moment, a flare against the dark, and then it's gone forever. No afterlives, no second chances, no backsies. So there can be nothing crueler than the abuse, destruction or wanton taking of a life. It is a crime no less than burning the Mona Lisa, for there is always just one of each.
"So I cannot forgive. Which makes the notion of writing a character who CAN forgive momentarily attractive...because it allows me to explore in great detail something of which I am utterly incapable. I cannot fly, so I would write of birds and starships and kites; I cannot play an instrument, so I would write of composers and dancers; and I cannot forgive, so I would write of priests and monks and Minbari..."
I am sitting eagerly by the fireside, awaiting any tale JMS wants to tell. Because when he's good, which is usually, he's one of the finest storytellers of our age.
It's interesting that the original link is to a Swedish site. I cannot read Swedish. It's a perfectly good language, the speech of a country of 9 million people with a noble history and culture, but I cannot read it. Do you suppose this link will inspire me to learn Swedish, or will I just click on the next link?
Yup - you guessed it. *click*
I also can't read L337. It's exclusionary speech, meant to be read only by other members of the clique.
Free Software is a philosophy. Part of that philosophy is to share with as many people as possible. It's not a stick to beat people with, or something for the privileged techno-elite.
Go ahead - keep Outlook users from reading your mail. Write in L337 if you want and keep people over the age of 17 from reading your mail. Heck, write in Swedish! Do you suppose my desire to read your deathless prose will make me learn Swedish?
I think what Apple has realized is that almost any computer sold nowadays is more than fast enough. The place to compete is not speed, but style.
An analogy could be made to the automotive market. That sporty little Boxter there can probably go twice as fast as my minivan, but it's constrained by the same speed limit as the rest of us, and is probably stuck in the same backup to the toll booth that I am.
I've bought the latest and greatest a couple times in my life. It's a wonderful feeling, tapping on the keys of the fastest and most powerful computer available. (Power. Power! Raw, brute, merciless POWER!!! Muahahahaha!)
Then two weeks later Intel or AMD releases an even faster and less expensive chip, and inside of a month you overhear some snot-nosed kid boasting about his new TurboUltraMegaBox which has twice the CPU, memory, and storage of yours.
That way lies madness. At least fashion fads stick around for a couple years. They even come back around in a couple decades. iMac Lisa, anyone?
I like Macs. I really do. I'm particularly partial to the all-in-one models. I've got an SE and an SE/30, and I bought the original Bondi Blue iMac the day they went on sale. So when I heard about this new iMac, I was excited. The pictures were tantalizing, but the thing that really thrilled me were the specs. There's an awful lot under the hood!
Last Friday, I visited my local Apple Store to see this baby for myself. A small scheming portion of my mind was already wondering if Uncle Sam's Tax Return might defray the costs of a new computer.
And then I saw it. I was deeply disappointed. It's ugly. It's clunky. The picture made it look light and airy, but in person it looked like a heavy white lump with an oversized nickel-plated pipe connecting a flat panel in a big lucite frame. (What is it with Apple and white plastic, anyway? Does Ives live in a house without dust and grubby-fingered kids?)
There's no accounting for taste, and I may be an uncircumcised philistine with aesthetic sense, but I've never had such a negative reaction to a computer before.
Maybe the next one...
"Botticelli ain't a wine, you dolt! It's a cheese!"
No, it's not. The iBook mainly appeals to kidlings, with their sharp eyes and clear vision. Us older folks have a problem with 1024x768 @ 12.1". I think I'm the market for the 14" screen.
At least, I would be the market if the iBook weren't so woefully underpowered.
Alas, the curse of presbyopia...
Once upon a time, there was a company in Cambridge, Mass. called Infocom. They made the great text games "Zork," "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," and "Leather Goddesses of Phobos," among others. They had a little newsletter called "The New Zork Times."
Well, the Great Grey Lady from the Big Apple objected strenuously to this, so the Infocommies started a contest for a new newsletter name. One contributor suggested, "Call it the New YORK Times. Let's really piss 'em off!"
Millions for defense, but not one penny for tribute, I say!
That I can tell you in one word: Performance. I have a rev. A iMac. 233 MHz G3, 160 MB RAM. Plenty of horsepower for Linux, but MacOS X just crawls on its belly and begs for mercy.
SuSE 7.3 PPC is on my Christmas wish list.
"But I just got you SuSE 7.3 IA32 for your birthday!" -my long-suffering wife
As I look down at my left wrist, I see a large onHand PC looking back at me. 2 MB of memory, all kinds of PIM goodies and games, and it syncs up with my PC. Battery life is better than what is promised for the Fossil. My wife bought it for me two years ago. It's the US version of the Japanese Ruputer, which is almost four years old. So tell me again how this 8-bit wonder from Fossil can possibly be considered "News?"
Prior to the onHand, I wore a Casio Databank. I like the little keys and the availability of the instant calculator. It makes short work of the usual arguments around the restaurant table.
My ideal watch would combine the ease of calculator input and battery life of the Casio with the Calendar/Phonebook/Notepad features of the onHand. While I'm dreaming, I'd like a built-in cell phone and a date with Sarah Alexander...
Truth is stranger than fiction: According to the CIA World Factbook, the Taliban flag is plain white.
Re:Glad someone has the guts !
on
Gamecube Guts
·
· Score: 2
Back in 198... er, back when I was but a mere sprat, I maxxed out my credit card to buy a Compaq Portable from a Sears Computer Center. Two 5.25" floppy drives and a whopping 256K of RAM. "You'll never need more that 256K," the salesman told me. I got it home, booted it up under Compaq's MS-DOS 1.1, and was enthralled. Then I turned it off and figured out how to take it apart. Incredible engineering skull-sweat went into that box! The outer shell was tough, impact-resistant plastic. Inside was a carefully constructed anodized aluminum skeleton, fit together to flex rather than fracture. The thing was so designed that you'd have to basically take a logger's maul to it in order to break it. I was impressed.
Nowadays, of course, I just build 'em myself. One of these days I'd like to do a proper soup-up job on that Compaq Portable...
As the happy owner of a Replay TV, I can tell you that it has changed TV forever. Prime Time is whenever I sit down in front of the couch. I regularly watch two or more episodes of a program in a row. Episodic programs are much more interesting when they can be viewed back-to-back rather than week-to-week. I'm addicted to the pause and rewind features. Phone rings in the middle of West Wing? No problem - I don't miss a sentence.
One of the big complaints is that I get to skip commercials. Do I? You damn betcha! I don't waste a moment on cheesy ads pushing depilatories, cleansers not available in stores (or in states with active consumer fraud statutes, I suspect), and Slim Whitman retrospectives. However, I DO stop and watch ads that are either funny (Amstel Lite, for example), or are for something in which I'm interested.
As for sharing recorded programs across the Internet, it should be noted that this feature is for sharing programs with other Replay 4000 owners. I'm sure it will be able to be hacked, but how does it differ from sharing my Babylon 5 tapes with unfortunate friends who don't have cable?
I hope Sonic Blue is able to vigorously defend these suits. I'm sick to the teeth of network executives who want to control what, when, and how I watch.
For more on this phenomenon, check out the last section of Michael Lewis' book, Next.
Many moons ago, Penn Jillette (the talking half of Penn & Teller) wrote a column for PC Magazine. Well known for practical jokes and a sense of humor that skirts the borders of sick, he once suggested an autoexec.bat file for laptops that went something like this:
Decidedly NOT recommended in these hypersensitive times!
Will you kill him in his bed? Stick a dagger in his head? I would not, could not kill the king. I would not do this evil thing. I will not wed this girl, you see. So get her to a nunnery. -- Green Eggs and Hamlet
What's next? An anonymous denunciation hotline for turning in your neighbors? "His attic light is on. He's probably up there with his computer again. He's one of those strange quiet types - keeps to himself. Can't be trusted."
I'm reminded of two lessons from my wasted youth. The first was a book called, "It Can't Happen Here," by Sinclair Lewis in 1935. It chronicled the creation of a totalitarian state in America. An excellent cautionary tale, I recommend it.
The second was a lesson I received in group dynamics from my high school theater group's director, a guy named Lou. About a hundred of us kids had gathered together in the gym, doing warmup exercises. Lou got up and introduced a new exercise. We were going to count up from one to ten, slowly adjusting our attitude and appearance from utter dejection to triumphant at ten. One... We were slumped over and suicidal. Two... we straighted a little... Three... perhaps I shall not hang myself today. And so on to a hearty, confident, triumphant roar of TEN! "TEN!" shouted Lou. "TEN!!" we yelled back. "SEIG HEIL!" shouted Lou. "SEIG HEIL!!" we roared. "SEIG HEIL!!! SEIG HEIL!!! SEIG..."
Lou clapped his hands sharply for attention. He looked at us for a long moment. "Never forget," he said softly, "how easy it was for one man to make you do that."
This is not a product for the home LAN - the range is far too limited. You'd require some kind of repeater in every room.
Fortunately, the main use for wireless in home LANs is to share Internet access. Since mine is capped at 1.5 Mbps, it doesn't matter that 802.11b only runs at roughly twice that. (I know it's rated at 11 Mbps, but true throughput is far less.)
Digital video over wireless will just have to wait.
Is the latest Athlon processor overkill for any normal computer user? Yup.
Is there any software currently available that requires this kind of speed? Nope.
Is there any sensible reason to upgrade your CPU? Nope.
Is my rational, analytical mind paying the slightest bit of attention to this argument? Nope.
It's all about the megahertz, baby! In an earlier generation, we were the people tinkering under the hoods of our Fords, trying to get a little more oomph out of a carburetor. Most of us don't need it, most of us have no idea what to do with it, but since when has that ever stopped us? More speed! More storage! More bandwidth! I want more!!!
Good job, AMD. Keep 'em coming.
My id is sneaking up behind my superego with a rock...
Broadband is dead? Lucky thing I kept my old '386 running TBBS. I'll just dig my 2400 bps modems out of the attic and fire up the old Bulletin Board. Now if only I can remember how to configure Fidonet...
Seriously, like others have said, I've been broadband for years. I had ISDN, then DSL, and am currently running both DSL and cable as I evaluate the latter. (Cable is winning.) Broadband is a pretty lively corpse around here!
"Good times and bum times, I've seen them all and, my dear, I'm still here."
I was SysOp of WithoutaNet, a TBBS system which lived in my attic. It started on a clone 8088 machine, and eventually made it all the way up to a '386 with a handful of modems ranging from 2400 to 19.2!
I also had a pet iguana who liked to clamber on top of the nice warm CPU. Somehow, the lizard managed to hit the right keys to change the system password, and I was never able to manage the system from the console again!
The trouble with art like this is that those of us who read the books in our impressionable childhood already know exactly what each character and location looks like. They're vividly imprinted on our imaginations, thanks to the clarity of Tolkein's writing. These artists just have them all wrong!
IMHO, the closest anyone has come is the Brothers Hildebrand, and even there they've got the wrong Aragorn. (The Hildebrand version of Aragorn looks more like a plumber than the descendant of the Kings of Westernesse.)
By the bye, is anyone else as dismayed as I that every bar napkin Tolkien ever scribbled a note on is now being published? It's getting worse than the prolific undead pen of L. Ron! Does every word the man wrote have to be mined for posthumous publication?
This ring, no other, was made by the Elves.
Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves...
My wife and I consider Chuck E. Cheese to be the world's most effective form of birth control. Whenever I start cooing at other people's mitotic miracles, or whenever my wife's biological clock chimes, we head for the nearest Chuck E. Cheese establishment.
They've done a nice job in positioning this baby as the perfect computer for a 90 pound weakling who's also a marathon typist and a frequent flyer. If they advertise in enough in-flight magazines, they may even sell a few. They start from a premise that the most important features are weight and battery life. But in order to get that weight and battery life, they stripped out a whole bunch of things I'd want. Heck, my Toshiba T-1000 is lightweight and can make it across the country without a recharge.
I want to like it, I really do. I might seriously consider one if it had 256 or 512 MB of RAM, a larger screen (1280x1024 would be nice), USB 2.0 ports and an external DVD/CD-RW drive. I don't mind schlepping a little more weight in return for being able to watch my own in-flight movie.
Slashdot Mirror
Mind like a steel whatchamacallit..."
I stand by my assessment of his skills as a storyteller, however. We're talking about writing for television, telling a story in four 12-minute blocks once a week, twenty-odd weeks a year, for five years. Aaron Sorkin is the only other writer I can think of who does it as well, and he's getting his material from the Washington Post.
He gets no special credit from me for being an atheist. Where he does get credit is for embracing faith, spirituality, and religion in his stories and characters.
I'm neither a writer nor an English literature major, but if I were to try and pick the one element that puts JMS (and Sorkin) at the top, it is their understanding of resonance. They (like you) refer to Shakespeare, Scripture, myths, and so forth. Those familiar with the references are rewarded by a much deeper understanding of the characters and stories. This is where writers like Brannon Braga (gack!) fail - they don't have the education and background in literature and end up relying on formula.
In the end, it's all a matter of taste. I like JMS. I like Sorkin. I loathe Braga. I also like A&W Diet Root Beer, so what can you say?
Answer: The writers. It's all about the writers. It's always all about the writers. It's about the writers remembering one simple thing: the people sitting around the campfire asking the bard or shaman, "Tell us a story. Tell us a story about noble kings and fearsome battles and tender loves. Tell us a story about ourselves, our secret fears, our greatest hopes. Tell us a story.
I'm not an SF fanboy, but I do love good SF. There's so little of it about. JMS loves good SF too, and it shows in his storytelling. JMS also loves history, Scripture, legend, fable, and humanity. Humanity most of all. He once said
I am sitting eagerly by the fireside, awaiting any tale JMS wants to tell. Because when he's good, which is usually, he's one of the finest storytellers of our age.
Yup - you guessed it. *click*
I also can't read L337. It's exclusionary speech, meant to be read only by other members of the clique.
Free Software is a philosophy. Part of that philosophy is to share with as many people as possible. It's not a stick to beat people with, or something for the privileged techno-elite.
Go ahead - keep Outlook users from reading your mail. Write in L337 if you want and keep people over the age of 17 from reading your mail. Heck, write in Swedish! Do you suppose my desire to read your deathless prose will make me learn Swedish?
Yup, you guessed it. *click*
Another lumpen-proletarian
I set up a network of PS/2 Mod 30's running Arcnet and Banyan VINES. My God, I'm old!
An analogy could be made to the automotive market. That sporty little Boxter there can probably go twice as fast as my minivan, but it's constrained by the same speed limit as the rest of us, and is probably stuck in the same backup to the toll booth that I am.
I've bought the latest and greatest a couple times in my life. It's a wonderful feeling, tapping on the keys of the fastest and most powerful computer available. (Power. Power! Raw, brute, merciless POWER!!! Muahahahaha!)
Then two weeks later Intel or AMD releases an even faster and less expensive chip, and inside of a month you overhear some snot-nosed kid boasting about his new TurboUltraMegaBox which has twice the CPU, memory, and storage of yours.
That way lies madness. At least fashion fads stick around for a couple years. They even come back around in a couple decades. iMac Lisa, anyone?
I like Macs. I really do. I'm particularly partial to the all-in-one models. I've got an SE and an SE/30, and I bought the original Bondi Blue iMac the day they went on sale. So when I heard about this new iMac, I was excited. The pictures were tantalizing, but the thing that really thrilled me were the specs. There's an awful lot under the hood! Last Friday, I visited my local Apple Store to see this baby for myself. A small scheming portion of my mind was already wondering if Uncle Sam's Tax Return might defray the costs of a new computer. And then I saw it. I was deeply disappointed. It's ugly. It's clunky. The picture made it look light and airy, but in person it looked like a heavy white lump with an oversized nickel-plated pipe connecting a flat panel in a big lucite frame. (What is it with Apple and white plastic, anyway? Does Ives live in a house without dust and grubby-fingered kids?) There's no accounting for taste, and I may be an uncircumcised philistine with aesthetic sense, but I've never had such a negative reaction to a computer before. Maybe the next one... "Botticelli ain't a wine, you dolt! It's a cheese!"
No, it's not. The iBook mainly appeals to kidlings, with their sharp eyes and clear vision. Us older folks have a problem with 1024x768 @ 12.1". I think I'm the market for the 14" screen. At least, I would be the market if the iBook weren't so woefully underpowered. Alas, the curse of presbyopia...
Well, the Great Grey Lady from the Big Apple objected strenuously to this, so the Infocommies started a contest for a new newsletter name. One contributor suggested, "Call it the New YORK Times. Let's really piss 'em off!"
Millions for defense, but not one penny for tribute, I say!
That I can tell you in one word: Performance. I have a rev. A iMac. 233 MHz G3, 160 MB RAM. Plenty of horsepower for Linux, but MacOS X just crawls on its belly and begs for mercy.
SuSE 7.3 PPC is on my Christmas wish list.
"But I just got you SuSE 7.3 IA32 for your birthday!" -my long-suffering wife
As I look down at my left wrist, I see a large onHand PC looking back at me. 2 MB of memory, all kinds of PIM goodies and games, and it syncs up with my PC. Battery life is better than what is promised for the Fossil. My wife bought it for me two years ago. It's the US version of the Japanese Ruputer, which is almost four years old. So tell me again how this 8-bit wonder from Fossil can possibly be considered "News?"
Prior to the onHand, I wore a Casio Databank. I like the little keys and the availability of the instant calculator. It makes short work of the usual arguments around the restaurant table.
My ideal watch would combine the ease of calculator input and battery life of the Casio with the Calendar/Phonebook/Notepad features of the onHand. While I'm dreaming, I'd like a built-in cell phone and a date with Sarah Alexander...
Truth is stranger than fiction: According to the CIA World Factbook, the Taliban flag is plain white.
Back in 198... er, back when I was but a mere sprat, I maxxed out my credit card to buy a Compaq Portable from a Sears Computer Center. Two 5.25" floppy drives and a whopping 256K of RAM. "You'll never need more that 256K," the salesman told me. I got it home, booted it up under Compaq's MS-DOS 1.1, and was enthralled. Then I turned it off and figured out how to take it apart. Incredible engineering skull-sweat went into that box! The outer shell was tough, impact-resistant plastic. Inside was a carefully constructed anodized aluminum skeleton, fit together to flex rather than fracture. The thing was so designed that you'd have to basically take a logger's maul to it in order to break it. I was impressed.
Nowadays, of course, I just build 'em myself. One of these days I'd like to do a proper soup-up job on that Compaq Portable...
Always yield to the hands-on imperative!
As the happy owner of a Replay TV, I can tell you that it has changed TV forever. Prime Time is whenever I sit down in front of the couch. I regularly watch two or more episodes of a program in a row. Episodic programs are much more interesting when they can be viewed back-to-back rather than week-to-week. I'm addicted to the pause and rewind features. Phone rings in the middle of West Wing? No problem - I don't miss a sentence.
One of the big complaints is that I get to skip commercials. Do I? You damn betcha! I don't waste a moment on cheesy ads pushing depilatories, cleansers not available in stores (or in states with active consumer fraud statutes, I suspect), and Slim Whitman retrospectives. However, I DO stop and watch ads that are either funny (Amstel Lite, for example), or are for something in which I'm interested.
As for sharing recorded programs across the Internet, it should be noted that this feature is for sharing programs with other Replay 4000 owners. I'm sure it will be able to be hacked, but how does it differ from sharing my Babylon 5 tapes with unfortunate friends who don't have cable?
I hope Sonic Blue is able to vigorously defend these suits. I'm sick to the teeth of network executives who want to control what, when, and how I watch.
For more on this phenomenon, check out the last section of Michael Lewis' book, Next.
And now for a word from our sponsor...
Sorry, that's a common misperception. 65 C is a nice comfortable temperature for a 1.2 MHz Athlon Thunderbird. The chip is rated to 95 C.
Decidedly NOT recommended in these hypersensitive times!
Will you kill him in his bed? Stick a dagger in his head? I would not, could not kill the king. I would not do this evil thing. I will not wed this girl, you see. So get her to a nunnery. -- Green Eggs and Hamlet
What's next? An anonymous denunciation hotline for turning in your neighbors? "His attic light is on. He's probably up there with his computer again. He's one of those strange quiet types - keeps to himself. Can't be trusted."
I'm reminded of two lessons from my wasted youth. The first was a book called, "It Can't Happen Here," by Sinclair Lewis in 1935. It chronicled the creation of a totalitarian state in America. An excellent cautionary tale, I recommend it.
The second was a lesson I received in group dynamics from my high school theater group's director, a guy named Lou. About a hundred of us kids had gathered together in the gym, doing warmup exercises. Lou got up and introduced a new exercise. We were going to count up from one to ten, slowly adjusting our attitude and appearance from utter dejection to triumphant at ten. One... We were slumped over and suicidal. Two... we straighted a little... Three... perhaps I shall not hang myself today. And so on to a hearty, confident, triumphant roar of TEN! "TEN!" shouted Lou. "TEN!!" we yelled back. "SEIG HEIL!" shouted Lou. "SEIG HEIL!!" we roared. "SEIG HEIL!!! SEIG HEIL!!! SEIG..."
Lou clapped his hands sharply for attention. He looked at us for a long moment. "Never forget," he said softly, "how easy it was for one man to make you do that."
I never will.
Remember Peter McWilliams
"(Gregg) said he was definitely supporting it. Now he says he's definitely not. Maybe he'll say he's definitely supporting it again."
Our beloved solons are sometimes wrong, but never in doubt.
This is not a product for the home LAN - the range is far too limited. You'd require some kind of repeater in every room.
Fortunately, the main use for wireless in home LANs is to share Internet access. Since mine is capped at 1.5 Mbps, it doesn't matter that 802.11b only runs at roughly twice that. (I know it's rated at 11 Mbps, but true throughput is far less.)
Digital video over wireless will just have to wait.
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball...
Is the latest Athlon processor overkill for any normal computer user? Yup.
Is there any software currently available that requires this kind of speed? Nope.
Is there any sensible reason to upgrade your CPU? Nope.
Is my rational, analytical mind paying the slightest bit of attention to this argument? Nope.
It's all about the megahertz, baby! In an earlier generation, we were the people tinkering under the hoods of our Fords, trying to get a little more oomph out of a carburetor. Most of us don't need it, most of us have no idea what to do with it, but since when has that ever stopped us? More speed! More storage! More bandwidth! I want more!!!
Good job, AMD. Keep 'em coming.
My id is sneaking up behind my superego with a rock...
Seriously, like others have said, I've been broadband for years. I had ISDN, then DSL, and am currently running both DSL and cable as I evaluate the latter. (Cable is winning.) Broadband is a pretty lively corpse around here!
"Good times and bum times, I've seen them all and, my dear, I'm still here."
-- Follies
I also had a pet iguana who liked to clamber on top of the nice warm CPU. Somehow, the lizard managed to hit the right keys to change the system password, and I was never able to manage the system from the console again!
Ahhh, the good old days...
IMHO, the closest anyone has come is the Brothers Hildebrand, and even there they've got the wrong Aragorn. (The Hildebrand version of Aragorn looks more like a plumber than the descendant of the Kings of Westernesse.)
By the bye, is anyone else as dismayed as I that every bar napkin Tolkien ever scribbled a note on is now being published? It's getting worse than the prolific undead pen of L. Ron! Does every word the man wrote have to be mined for posthumous publication?
This ring, no other, was made by the Elves.
Who'd pawn their own mother to grab it themselves...
So far, it's working!
My inner child can beat up your inner child.
I want to like it, I really do. I might seriously consider one if it had 256 or 512 MB of RAM, a larger screen (1280x1024 would be nice), USB 2.0 ports and an external DVD/CD-RW drive. I don't mind schlepping a little more weight in return for being able to watch my own in-flight movie.
And while I'm dreaming, I want a pony...
I can't imagine an easier way to welcome in a brave new world of tyranny and oppression than this.
Here at the First Federated National Bank, you're not just a number. You're four numbers, a dash, three letters, four more numbers...