... who doesn't admire Spielberg movies? They seem bland, generic, badly acted and terribly scripted. Sure, the concepts are awesome at first, but they wear thin very soon. How much war documentary can you watch in one sitting? How many times can digital dinosaurs impress you? How plausible is it that we communicate with aliens through music and not something more advanced, like mathematics?
His movies are great eye candy, but offer little to go on. The only exception I can think of was Schindler's List, but that was based on a real story so he couldn't screw it up too much.
Anyways, consider this a troll if you must, but I can think of at least three other directors I would have liked to see work on this project.
Guiness is the most generic stout you can find. It's the Budweiser of stouts - the only thing it has going for it is its name.
I don't care if X million people drink it daily; there's probably 5 times as many that drink Coors Lite, and we all know the quality of that "beer".
So using a straw to drink it wouldn't really make a difference for the proverbial Joe Blow, since most of them don't know even know a stout from a porter.
And it prevents their facial hair from absorbing the drink.
Of course, the better beers should be savoured from a nicely chilled glass...
IMHO, blocking websites from children should not be done by software but by the parents. If they can't sit down with the kid for a few hours a week to browse disney.com, they probably shouldn't have had children.
Of course, not every parent will sit with a child while they're looking information about volcanos for a school project. This is what history/cookies/cache/ip logs are for - you can *always* find a way to monitor what your kids did.
The best analogy I can think of is not allowing children to watch porn on tv. Sure, they'll still do it on occasion (and they should, eventually), but it won't be done on every day basis.
As for public access from libraries, maybe it's time to face the fact that "CLICK HERE IF YOU ARE UNDER 18" rarely gets pressed. Maybe the public terminals could only be accessed by people of legal age.
On the other hand, I wouldn't want to be checking out porn in *any* public place...
Food for thought. Now it's time to put on my anti-flame suit.
The only reason I'd go see this movie would be because of the amount of chicks that would be there. Even then, I'd be eyeing them instead of the screen [while they drooled over Leo.]
Here's a list of stuff you can do with the 8 dollars that you save by not going to this movie:
Pay the kid next door to shovel your driveway during the two next snow storms
Rent Apocalypse Now and Lord Of The Flies buy a bag of candy.
I've recently cut down the amount of time I spend using the computer at home. I was spending a couple of hours on IRC, answering e-mail and reading various sites.
Overall, it looked like social interaction. But in reality, I lost touch with many people which live close to me. Instead, I conversed with semi-strangers on the other side of the continent.
This being said, I met my best friend about six years ago on a BBS. But imho, BBSes offered much more social interaction than anything I found on the internet.
So now that I have a couple of free hours a night, I can spend it any way I want - take a nap, read a book, go to a movie with my friends or keep up with my old hobbies.
The hardest part was noticing that I traded my life for the computer.
Now that I think about it, themes are the ultimate tribute to a GUI. People try to make different hardware look and feel like the real thing.
Personally, I can't afford to buy a Mac, as much as I'd like to use it for video caputre and editing.
Instead, I pretend I have one and use KDE with a neat trade-marked Apple icon in the corner instead of the ugly K. Of course, this doesn't bring me any closer to the video editing goal, but it still looks pretty. It's also good propaganda for Apple - I haven't changed my theme in a couple of months and have started craving a G4.
In this aspect, I'm glad that Apple hasn't gone after other themes; just after the one that violated its trademark.
My work day begins at 4 am, when I get up to feed the Huskies. At the same time, I have to chase off any polar bears that have been wandering around my igloo.
By 5:30 am, I have eaten my smoked bacon and am ready to begin my daily 40 mile commute (by dog sled) to work.
After I get there at about 7:30, I need about 2 hours to get any sensation in my fingers so I can type properly. In that time, our boss holds very productive discussions about last night's hockey game. This keeps the employees happy.
At about 9:30, when the feeling returns to my limbs, I work for about 15 minutes and then take a coffee break.
After that, it's time to slaughter a seal and cook it for lunch. We alternate this chore daily between all the employees at the company. (Company pays for the lunch every day - keeps the employees happy, again).
After lunch, we do about 3 hours of work, and then head home because the sun is setting and it's not safe to be out in the dark in the winter.
I make my way home by 5 pm, have a beer, watch the hockey game (I like to be ready for the next day's meeting) and go to bed by 8 pm.
A few years ago, when Linux was just beginning to gain popularity, winmodems, motherboards with built-in everything (ethernet, modem, video, sound) were a wet dream.
Linux was developped to run on what can now be considered ancient hardware - 386s with Sound Blasters (if you were lucky) and 2400 baud modems...
Technology took a step forward and decided to incorporate these extras into motherboards, leaving Linux behind to play with standard chipsets.
While I agree with you that it probably costs more to build a box that includes a real ethernet card, a real SB and a real modem instead of getting it all melted into a pretty motherboard, the box will probably cost you less than a comparable box 4 or 5 years ago. (as much as 386s can be compared to pentiums. ).
All the cards mentionned above have dropped in price, the almighty MHz has shot way up and RAM has dropped in price (even with the recent surge).
Linux doesn't need the latest hardware, and it doesn't need the best hardware. It just needs hardware that it has drivers for... which is probably its biggest downside. After all, not everyone can write their own X server.
There is a really neat experiment which has proven this, in sight, at least.
The image captured by your eyeball is actually upside down. The brain has learned to make us perceive that we see everything the right side up, but if you wear a pair of glasses which inverse the image captured by the eye (to make it properly displayed on the back of your eyeball), the brain will temporarily forget how to make you see everything the right side up.
People who wore such glasses went for a number of DAYS seeing everything upside down, even after taking them off.
[I hope to god that's understandable - I should have gone to bed a few hours ago]
The point is that our brain has several functions to perform to adjust to the physics of the real world. If you start screwing with the input, you're likely to get it confused.
"More seriously, porting Linux to non-PC platforms, and the iMac in particular, is great for two reasons. One, because they're out there -- people, companies, and schools out there already have the hardware. An Atari Falcon port is not useless if you have the hardware. Two, to get new adopters to try Linux, for which the iMac platform is a good place to look." You forgot a very important one. The half the technology on the iMac has very limited or non existant support in Linux. Features like USB, Firewire and DVD could then be advanced at a faster rate and be included in the kernel a bit sooner if the iMac ran Linux. If there's a demand for it, it will be made. Bart
I don't run anything that I haven't compiled, or any binary that came from a reputable source/mirror. And because I use Linux, if another user on this system decides to compile and run crap they don't understand, they're the only ones affected.
Maybe it's a practice left over from the good old days of MS-DOS and the virus paranoia associated with it.
I for one don't care what the subject of the game is. As far as I'm concerend, if there's a market for it, it should be made. In high school, I was really addicted to the Sim-whatever games. Sim-Earth, Sim-City, Sim-Ant, I played whatever I could get my hands on. I found them so fascinating I went on to fantasize about other topics which could be simulated. At that time, there was a lot of civil unrest in Somalia and the US had sent its troops to the area. I figured I'd love to play Sim-Alia, where you get to distribute food to people, fight crime lords, deploy troops, and build a thriving country out of a third world country. My dreams never realized, but when I think about it now, it still seems like a good idea. Heck, it could probably qualify as Edutainment these days. "Learn how to help poor people by simulation!" Anyways, that's it. Bart
I was bored one year in college, so every day at lunch a friend and I would put in something into the microwave and watch the results. It started the day when he forgot to bring a plate for his canned ravioli. I told him to open the can and nuke the entire thing. He did, and it didn't go in flames. We then started microwaving coke cans, forks, various other containers, cds, money, and anything we could get our hands on. We always made sure to set the timer for at least 30 seconds, and step away from the microwave in case it caught fire or the door blew off. All these experiments made resulted in one real life application: if you have a can of frozen juice, remove the metal lid, nuke it until thawed, and it will never spark. Bart
Slashdot Mirror
... who doesn't admire Spielberg movies? They seem bland, generic, badly acted and terribly scripted. Sure, the concepts are awesome at first, but they wear thin very soon. How much war documentary can you watch in one sitting? How many times can digital dinosaurs impress you? How plausible is it that we communicate with aliens through music and not something more advanced, like mathematics?
His movies are great eye candy, but offer little to go on. The only exception I can think of was Schindler's List, but that was based on a real story so he couldn't screw it up too much.
Anyways, consider this a troll if you must, but I can think of at least three other directors I would have liked to see work on this project.
Bart
I can finally keep track of those 200,000 credit card numbers that I "received" last week.
*grin*
Guiness is the most generic stout you can find. It's the Budweiser of stouts - the only thing it has going for it is its name.
I don't care if X million people drink it daily; there's probably 5 times as many that drink Coors Lite, and we all know the quality of that "beer".
So using a straw to drink it wouldn't really make a difference for the proverbial Joe Blow, since most of them don't know even know a stout from a porter.
And it prevents their facial hair from absorbing the drink.
Of course, the better beers should be savoured from a nicely chilled glass...
Use a straw while drinking beer.
That way, not only will you keep the precious nectar away from any facial hair, but you'll also be able to slurp up any leftover foam on the bottom.
Cheers,
Bart
I am really happy about this.
IMHO, blocking websites from children should not be done by software but by the parents. If they can't sit down with the kid for a few hours a week to browse disney.com, they probably shouldn't have had children.
Of course, not every parent will sit with a child while they're looking information about volcanos for a school project. This is what history/cookies/cache/ip logs are for - you can *always* find a way to monitor what your kids did.
The best analogy I can think of is not allowing children to watch porn on tv. Sure, they'll still do it on occasion (and they should, eventually), but it won't be done on every day basis.
As for public access from libraries, maybe it's time to face the fact that "CLICK HERE IF YOU ARE UNDER 18" rarely gets pressed. Maybe the public terminals could only be accessed by people of legal age.
On the other hand, I wouldn't want to be checking out porn in *any* public place...
Food for thought. Now it's time to put on my anti-flame suit.
Cheers,
Bart
The only reason I'd go see this movie would be because of the amount of chicks that would be there. Even then, I'd be eyeing them instead of the screen [while they drooled over Leo.]
Here's a list of stuff you can do with the 8 dollars that you save by not going to this movie:
Pay the kid next door to shovel your driveway during the two next snow storms
Rent Apocalypse Now and Lord Of The Flies buy a bag of candy.
Make a political donnation to Duke's Presidential Campaign.
Buy 40 lbs of Raman.
Go see Magnolia.
Buy two porno mags, distribute their pages to 12 kids in your neigbourhood and gain 12 disciples.
Buy candy and offer it to strangers at the mall.
Give it to the 4 bums you pass on your way to work.
Put it your piggy bank Cheers, Bart
I've recently cut down the amount of time I spend using the computer at home. I was spending a couple of hours on IRC, answering e-mail and reading various sites.
Overall, it looked like social interaction. But in reality, I lost touch with many people which live close to me. Instead, I conversed with semi-strangers on the other side of the continent.
This being said, I met my best friend about six years ago on a BBS. But imho, BBSes offered much more social interaction than anything I found on the internet.
So now that I have a couple of free hours a night, I can spend it any way I want - take a nap, read a book, go to a movie with my friends or keep up with my old hobbies.
The hardest part was noticing that I traded my life for the computer.
Cheers,
Bart
Now that I think about it, themes are the ultimate tribute to a GUI. People try to make different hardware look and feel like the real thing.
Personally, I can't afford to buy a Mac, as much as I'd like to use it for video caputre and editing.
Instead, I pretend I have one and use KDE with a neat trade-marked Apple icon in the corner instead of the ugly K. Of course, this doesn't bring me any closer to the video editing goal, but it still looks pretty. It's also good propaganda for Apple - I haven't changed my theme in a couple of months and have started craving a G4.
In this aspect, I'm glad that Apple hasn't gone after other themes; just after the one that violated its trademark.
Cheers,
Bart
I live and work in Canada.
My work day begins at 4 am, when I get up to feed the Huskies. At the same time, I have to chase off any polar bears that have been wandering around my igloo.
By 5:30 am, I have eaten my smoked bacon and am ready to begin my daily 40 mile commute (by dog sled) to work.
After I get there at about 7:30, I need about 2 hours to get any sensation in my fingers so I can type properly. In that time, our boss holds very productive discussions about last night's hockey game. This keeps the employees happy.
At about 9:30, when the feeling returns to my limbs, I work for about 15 minutes and then take a coffee break.
After that, it's time to slaughter a seal and cook it for lunch. We alternate this chore daily between all the employees at the company. (Company pays for the lunch every day - keeps the employees happy, again).
After lunch, we do about 3 hours of work, and then head home because the sun is setting and it's not safe to be out in the dark in the winter.
I make my way home by 5 pm, have a beer, watch the hockey game (I like to be ready for the next day's meeting) and go to bed by 8 pm.
Life is good in Canada.
Bart
A few years ago, when Linux was just beginning to gain popularity, winmodems, motherboards with built-in everything (ethernet, modem, video, sound) were a wet dream.
Linux was developped to run on what can now be considered ancient hardware - 386s with Sound Blasters (if you were lucky) and 2400 baud modems...
Technology took a step forward and decided to incorporate these extras into motherboards, leaving Linux behind to play with standard chipsets.
While I agree with you that it probably costs more to build a box that includes a real ethernet card, a real SB and a real modem instead of getting it all melted into a pretty motherboard, the box will probably cost you less than a comparable box 4 or 5 years ago. (as much as 386s can be compared to pentiums. ).
All the cards mentionned above have dropped in price, the almighty MHz has shot way up and RAM has dropped in price (even with the recent surge).
Linux doesn't need the latest hardware, and it doesn't need the best hardware. It just needs hardware that it has drivers for... which is probably its biggest downside. After all, not everyone can write their own X server.
Cheers,
Bart
There is a really neat experiment which has proven this, in sight, at least.
The image captured by your eyeball is actually upside down. The brain has learned to make us perceive that we see everything the right side up, but if you wear a pair of glasses which inverse the image captured by the eye (to make it properly displayed on the back of your eyeball), the brain will temporarily forget how to make you see everything the right side up.
People who wore such glasses went for a number of DAYS seeing everything upside down, even after taking them off.
[I hope to god that's understandable - I should have gone to bed a few hours ago]
The point is that our brain has several functions to perform to adjust to the physics of the real world. If you start screwing with the input, you're likely to get it confused.
bart.
I just completed this course... or at least I feel as if I did, after reading all the comments posted here.
I learned about calculus functions, existentialisim, reality and the meaning of life.
Now that I'm so enligthened, I'll go write a thesis on people who overanalyse a situation which definately does not require such close scrutiny.
Bart.
"More seriously, porting Linux to non-PC platforms, and the iMac in particular, is great for two reasons. One, because they're out there -- people, companies, and schools out there already have the hardware. An Atari Falcon port is not useless if you have the hardware. Two, to get new adopters to try Linux, for which the iMac platform is a good place to look." You forgot a very important one. The half the technology on the iMac has very limited or non existant support in Linux. Features like USB, Firewire and DVD could then be advanced at a faster rate and be included in the kernel a bit sooner if the iMac ran Linux. If there's a demand for it, it will be made. Bart
Werd.
I don't run anything that I haven't compiled, or any binary that came from a reputable source/mirror. And because I use Linux, if another user on this system decides to compile and run crap they don't understand, they're the only ones affected.
Maybe it's a practice left over from the good old days of MS-DOS and the virus paranoia associated with it.
Bart.
I for one don't care what the subject of the game is. As far as I'm concerend, if there's a market for it, it should be made.
In high school, I was really addicted to the Sim-whatever games. Sim-Earth, Sim-City, Sim-Ant, I played whatever I could get my hands on. I found them so fascinating I went on to fantasize about other topics which could be simulated.
At that time, there was a lot of civil unrest in Somalia and the US had sent its troops to the area. I figured I'd love to play Sim-Alia, where you get to distribute food to people, fight crime lords, deploy troops, and build a thriving country out of a third world country.
My dreams never realized, but when I think about it now, it still seems like a good idea. Heck, it could probably qualify as Edutainment these days. "Learn how to help poor people by simulation!"
Anyways, that's it.
Bart
I was bored one year in college, so every day at lunch a friend and I would put in something into the microwave and watch the results. It started the day when he forgot to bring a plate for his canned ravioli. I told him to open the can and nuke the entire thing. He did, and it didn't go in flames. We then started microwaving coke cans, forks, various other containers, cds, money, and anything we could get our hands on. We always made sure to set the timer for at least 30 seconds, and step away from the microwave in case it caught fire or the door blew off. All these experiments made resulted in one real life application: if you have a can of frozen juice, remove the metal lid, nuke it until thawed, and it will never spark. Bart