Having gone to see the Lord of the Rings exhibit in New Zealand (apparently heading overseas once it is finished here) the single most impressive thing was seeing video of Andy Serkis saying gollums lines side by side with video of the animated Gollum. Gollum's facial movements are an (almost) exact copy of Andy Serkis', it showed another reason why gollum was so impressive in the films. The rest of the exhibit was pretty cool as well:)
I used to dabble in scifi until I started hitting the general fiction/nonfiction shelves and found that in general, the quality of writing is much higher when there isn't a pixie or a dragon or a robot on the book's cover.
Perhaps you have been reading the wrong authors. In genereal, I've found the quality of writing in all genres isn't that fantastic, but there are good authors everywhere. In Sci-Fi, Philip K Dick, Iain M Banks and Peter F Hamilton are examples of good writers.
The director was Ivan Reitman and this was before he directed Ghostbusters. There is all sorts of information from Douglas Adams in The Salmon of Doubt (which includes what was written of the Dirk Gently novel he was working on when he died, along with essays, articles and interviews from him.) Well worth getting hold of if you are at all a fan.
I'm quietly confident about the quality of the movie as DNA has said he is very confident in Jay Roach, who is directing it. It is going to cover the first book, or as he said in one of the interviews, "It's funny, because I've been looking around the Web at what people have been saying. I've seen, "He's going to put all five books into it." People just don't understand the way a book maps onto a movie. Somebody said, and I think quite accurately, that the best source material for a movie is a short story. Which effectively means, yes, it's going to be the first book. Having said that, whenever I sit down to do another version of Hitchhiker, it highly contradicts whichever version went before. The best thing I can say about the movie is that it will specifically contradicting the first book."
They almost never end up in jail (where they belong), and invariably walk away with more money then you, me, and a hundred of our best friends will make in a lifetime.
Don't forget that they usually walk straight into another high paying job, even though they are shown to be crooks and usually incompetent at the same time.
As I said, it was just off the top of my head, but opinions being aired would be fine. It would purely be the donations that would have to be anonymous. Sure the system wouldn't be perfect, but no system is.
As for disney donating to both parties, I'm tempted to say fuck it, and say that introducing a tax to corporations that donate regularly for the amount of their donation adjusted over time for inflation. If they are so interested in the "democratic process" then they shouldn't worry and candidates wouldn't be worried about their decisions affecting future funding.
If they only donate so that laws get made or changed to favour them, then as i say, fuck 'em.
Yeah, this is a little harsh, but corps buying laws makes me ill.
you're allowed to do so, but you have to do so anonymously, so that the candidate doesn't know you paid for it. Setting up a system for this to work shouldn't be too complicated.
not being a usanian I'm not 100% sure what you mean by paid for advertisements in this context, but any advertising done by a candidate should be the responsibility of that candidate and if someone else wants to pay for it that should be done through an anonymous donation.
I basically feel that any system where a candidate knows who contributions are coming from is open to far too much abuse.
Just off the top of my head, make it so campaign contributions must be anonymous.
If a corporation/person is supporting someone because they like their policies, fine. If they are supporting them in order to get favours in the future, that is bribery.
They have a similar system at the Comp Sci department at the local university. So this certainly isn't new.
The biggest problem they then have is actually doing anything about the cheats. To actually take action against someone who is cheating the department needs to get support from the universities administration, who don't know anything about programming. This generally means they don't accept that a student is cheating even if all they have changed is variable names.
Pretty much the only way they can take action against a student is if they confront the student and the student confesses.
I think that some of the ire toward PayPal is because you only hear about the bad things that happen. When a transaction goes well, no one stands up and screams.
Of course you don't hear when a transaction goes well. That is what transactions are meant to do. The fact that quite a few people have had things go badly and, more importantly, when things do go wrong paypal seems to be utterly useless in dealing with the situation, is the issue here.
They are dealing with money and should, at the very least, have decent methods in place for dealing with problems that occur.
That they don't scares me enough to not want to use them.
What??? Sorry, but Erector Sets really didn't do it for me. Great for static stuff, but not really there for things that actually move. How can anyone who likes programming not enjoy the modularity of a Lego set? And the pneumatic kits kicked some serious butt.
Static? Hmm, you were getting the wrong sets. I had a set that allowed you to build a fully functioning pendulum clock. Fairly complicated to put together and a lot of fun.
Although I have never seen it or heard of it previously (it sounds awesome to watch), I believe it. Here are the two dominant reasons according to Physics:
And here is the one dominant reason not to believe it according to common sense.
We are talking about liquid hydrogen, I think it is safe to assume that the container is evacuated. Air would be liquid at that temperature as well.
The one excuse I always read versus the missile defense systems is this "suitcase", yet why hasn't it happened yet?
Which begs the question, why build a missile defense system when no one has attacked the US with a ICBM yet?
(btw - you would be very scared if you knew just what the government has the ability to track entering this country) Don't get fooled, the FBI takes it damn serious, and they do have toys we can only dream of.
Yet huge amounts of drugs get through on a daily basis, what is it about a suitcase nuke that makes it easier or more likely to be stopped?
server capacity. Let the users who really want to exchange Divx's go to a pay service.
Damn right, I have long thought that usenet should be reduced to just text filtering out mime and uuencoded messages. Why should the avergae users pay for pr0n and warez for other users?
A full usenet feed with binaries must use a hell of a lot of bandwidth that could go to better uses.
> But the weirdest thing of all is that we really don't care.
>To take an example that may sound trivial but isn't, the
> Television Licensing Authority is currently running an
> advertising campaign boasting of its ability to invade our
> privacy. Hoardings show a local street sign with the
> caption that declares, four people in this street don't
> have a TV licence and the TLA knows who they are.
I read once that the TLA don't have any advanced equipment to detect who has a tv license and who doesn't and use the less technologically impressive method of assuming that everyone has a television and hassling people at addresses that don't have a license. This came from someone who was hassled pretty much every year despite not having a tv in his house.
> What I personally feel doesn't come in to it. There is no point arguing for a law if it will never get voted in or be enforced.
Bollocks, arguing for a law is always worth it if it is something you believe in. Even if the law doesn't pass you may convince people of your point of view.
In the case of vivisection, maybe you'll convince some people to boycott companies who support the practice. It may not make a huge difference, but if that is the case why bother doing anything.
Do you think that when black slaves first started trying to gain their freedom that there was much chance of a change to the status quo?
Your attitude seems to be, "If anything is too difficult, just give up."
I believe that ie5 farms out pngs to quicktime (at least it does when not viewing them inline, you can watch the qt logo pop up when you look at an image on its own in ie5)
I personally would love to start using pngs but until the support is correct it isn't really an option, especially when transparency isn't supported and when netscape screws up the gamma of images.
Slashdot Mirror
Or you can avoid Creative's drivers by installing the kx drivers available here.
Those these drivers are aimed more at musicians than gamers.
Having gone to see the Lord of the Rings exhibit in New Zealand (apparently heading overseas once it is finished here) the single most impressive thing was seeing video of Andy Serkis saying gollums lines side by side with video of the animated Gollum. Gollum's facial movements are an (almost) exact copy of Andy Serkis', it showed another reason why gollum was so impressive in the films. The rest of the exhibit was pretty cool as well :)
Perhaps you have been reading the wrong authors. In genereal, I've found the quality of writing in all genres isn't that fantastic, but there are good authors everywhere. In Sci-Fi, Philip K Dick, Iain M Banks and Peter F Hamilton are examples of good writers.
The director was Ivan Reitman and this was before he directed Ghostbusters. There is all sorts of information from Douglas Adams in The Salmon of Doubt (which includes what was written of the Dirk Gently novel he was working on when he died, along with essays, articles and interviews from him.) Well worth getting hold of if you are at all a fan.
I'm quietly confident about the quality of the movie as DNA has said he is very confident in Jay Roach, who is directing it. It is going to cover the first book, or as he said in one of the interviews, "It's funny, because I've been looking around the Web at what people have been saying. I've seen, "He's going to put all five books into it." People just don't understand the way a book maps onto a movie. Somebody said, and I think quite accurately, that the best source material for a movie is a short story. Which effectively means, yes, it's going to be the first book. Having said that, whenever I sit down to do another version of Hitchhiker, it highly contradicts whichever version went before. The best thing I can say about the movie is that it will specifically contradicting the first book."
They almost never end up in jail (where they belong), and invariably walk away with more money then you, me, and a hundred of our best friends will make in a lifetime.
Don't forget that they usually walk straight into another high paying job, even though they are shown to be crooks and usually incompetent at the same time.
As I said, it was just off the top of my head, but opinions being aired would be fine. It would purely be the donations that would have to be anonymous. Sure the system wouldn't be perfect, but no system is.
As for disney donating to both parties, I'm tempted to say fuck it, and say that introducing a tax to corporations that donate regularly for the amount of their donation adjusted over time for inflation. If they are so interested in the "democratic process" then they shouldn't worry and candidates wouldn't be worried about their decisions affecting future funding.
If they only donate so that laws get made or changed to favour them, then as i say, fuck 'em.
Yeah, this is a little harsh, but corps buying laws makes me ill.
you're allowed to do so, but you have to do so anonymously, so that the candidate doesn't know you paid for it. Setting up a system for this to work shouldn't be too complicated.
not being a usanian I'm not 100% sure what you mean by paid for advertisements in this context, but any advertising done by a candidate should be the responsibility of that candidate and if someone else wants to pay for it that should be done through an anonymous donation.
I basically feel that any system where a candidate knows who contributions are coming from is open to far too much abuse.
Just off the top of my head, make it so campaign contributions must be anonymous.
If a corporation/person is supporting someone because they like their policies, fine. If they are supporting them in order to get favours in the future, that is bribery.
The biggest problem they then have is actually doing anything about the cheats. To actually take action against someone who is cheating the department needs to get support from the universities administration, who don't know anything about programming. This generally means they don't accept that a student is cheating even if all they have changed is variable names.
Pretty much the only way they can take action against a student is if they confront the student and the student confesses.
They are dealing with money and should, at the very least, have decent methods in place for dealing with problems that occur.
That they don't scares me enough to not want to use them.
And here is the one dominant reason not to believe it according to common sense.
We are talking about liquid hydrogen, I think it is safe to assume that the container is evacuated. Air would be liquid at that temperature as well.
Boy am I glad you weren't my physics teacher.
Damn right, I have long thought that usenet should be reduced to just text filtering out mime and uuencoded messages. Why should the avergae users pay for pr0n and warez for other users?
A full usenet feed with binaries must use a hell of a lot of bandwidth that could go to better uses.
> But the weirdest thing of all is that we really don't care.
>To take an example that may sound trivial but isn't, the
> Television Licensing Authority is currently running an
> advertising campaign boasting of its ability to invade our
> privacy. Hoardings show a local street sign with the
> caption that declares, four people in this street don't
> have a TV licence and the TLA knows who they are.
I read once that the TLA don't have any advanced equipment to detect who has a tv license and who doesn't and use the less technologically impressive method of assuming that everyone has a television and hassling people at addresses that don't have a license. This came from someone who was hassled pretty much every year despite not having a tv in his house.
Erm, what happens when different companies in different countries trade using the same name?
Can you say disaster waiting to happen?
> What I personally feel doesn't come in to it. There is no point arguing for a law if it will never get voted in or be enforced.
Bollocks, arguing for a law is always worth it if it is something you believe in. Even if the law doesn't pass you may convince people of your point of view.
In the case of vivisection, maybe you'll convince some people to boycott companies who support the practice. It may not make a huge difference, but if that is the case why bother doing anything.
Do you think that when black slaves first started trying to gain their freedom that there was much chance of a change to the status quo?
Your attitude seems to be, "If anything is too difficult, just give up."
I believe that ie5 farms out pngs to quicktime (at least it does when not viewing them inline, you can watch the qt logo pop up when you look at an image on its own in ie5)
I personally would love to start using pngs but until the support is correct it isn't really an option, especially when transparency isn't supported and when netscape screws up the gamma of images.