I think a book like LOTR is fiendishly harsh to adapt to a screen.
I think they did a great job, especially the extended editions put enough of the lore in to make you see that they tried to stay as true to the books as possible with such a huge format shift.
Is your problem that the movies are too long? Your comment seems to suggest it. Then what should have been cut out? Saruman, the mines of Moria, the Ents, Helms deep?
Tell me, which other bubble you want to reduce spending on? Maybe scrap the CDC, or FAA?
If you look at that graph, NASA is only one of the very few blobs outside the DoD and National Security/Intelligence that would be relatively painless to cut and is of decent size.
But it's clear to me that the big spending is in the DoD, NS/I and the wars in irak and afganistan.
The problem is, that if the ships start shooting at the pirates, the pirates start shooting at the merchant ships.
Given that those ships might carry a cargo worth hundreds of millions, are very slow, almost impossible to miss, and can be sunk with a well placed RPG, it's not a risk most of the merchant companies want to take.
That is the essence of the issue why these ships are not protecting themselves. The pirates would blow them up.
Maybe you, or someone else can explain why all of this is such a hassle to begin with.
In my country everyone who turns 18 and is a legal citizen of the country automatically gets a card sent in the mail on each election event, about where they are supposed to vote and how they can do an absentee vote and such.
Being born automatically means you are eligble to vote 18 years later.
If you're not issuing birth certificates, then how do you even know if and when someone was born in the USA? If you do, then why is this such an issue?
Where I live (The Netherlands), we have different difficulty levels of classes. Don't you have a similar system?
We basically have four levels: Low, Medium, High and Advanced. Distribution among the population is about 25%, 40%, 30%, 5%. Advanced level is required for University entry, and usually challenges even the most gifted of students. In the city where I live, with an estimated school going population of 25.000 at the time I was between 12-18. I think there was only one boy in the city who managed to skip a year at the Advanced level. He went on to finish a PhD in Physics and in Mathematics within five years from graduating highschool. For anyone else, this system is sufficiently challenging. I'm not saying that it's perfect though.
If you don't have a system that challenges all students, then I can understand things like you describe.
I completely agree. Eric3 is a great Python IDE. It uses Scintilla for the editor, so it depends a bit on if you like that, but otherwise it is a very good and powerful IDE, with all the functions I can think of one could need. I could give a list, but it's free, so try it and see if you like it.
I had a long search to find a good Python IDE, and tried most of the other suggestions in this topic. I think Eric3 is just the best when it comes to Python, because it is made in Python for Python. Especially if you make your GUIs in PyQt it is a very powerful tool, integrating directly with the Qt tooling.
What I really liked about Eric3, is that it is itself a Python project in Eric3. It shows by it's very nature, that with Eric3, it is possible to develop large and complex software in Python and have it work really well. Yuo just need the right IDE.
As a WoW player, I was rally happy that they went after Glider, as it's only purpose is to cheat.
This bnetd thing, I don't know, might be ok, might not, but give it's purpose of being able to play net games with hacked versions, I can see why Blizzard would go after them. It's only logical that any company will try to protect against illegal use of their software.
I haven't looked at the freeCraft thing, if it's just a Warcraft II clone, cleanroom implementation, then I think renaming it would have solved the problem. I don't think Blizzard can claim to own the RTS genre itself. Trademark protection requires that you go after things that try to use a similar name for a similar product, so Blizzard needed to also take action here.
--
All in all, there might be reasons not to like Blizzard, but I really don't think any of the reasons you mentioned are valid, unless you want to cheat, want to use an illegal copy of their games, or think that Blizzard should to defend its trademarks.
When I visited the US a couple of years ago, the whole torture thing was hot, and I remember McCain saying something on the TV along the lines of it not being torture unless it does permanent physical damage.
I'm no US citizen, but it's one of the reasons that I hope they learned their lesson from 8 years of Bush, and McCain doesn't become the next USA president.
But then a wise man once said that a country gets the leaders it deserves. (Don't remember who)
It's a format designed for Astronomical images. It's not a widespread as JPEG or something, but if I know your average astronomer, it will certainly be around in 25 years.
It was designed in 1981, so it already beats the 25 year mark, and will easily do another 25 years.
Astronomers tend to use their software for a long time. For example AIPS - from the seventies - and Miriad - from 1987 - are still the main packages for radioastronomy.
I actually think that marketing and accounting didn't have enough to do with it.
WotC has a traditional publishing culture and basically failed mostly in finding out if people actually wanted this, and in communicating with their fans and existing forum users.
It was doomed from the start, the way they handled it and how they communicated.
Just look at their previous endeavours: e-Tools, D&DO, M:TGO.
And the name, Gleemax referenced an obscure M:TG card, so was basically a corporate insider joke, not something their non M:TG playing customers could relate too (D&D, ), and certainly not bringing in new people from outside their existing customer base.
But too be honest, I think it has been Harbro pushing them, and they ended up biting of more then they could chew.
WotC has had many failures indeveloping software. Both on the M:TG and on the D&D side. I think their corporate culture just doesn't support it well. From D&D Online, to e-Tools to M:TG Online, and now Gleemax.
I used to frequent their old forum a lot, but the way they launched this new thing was a massive failure. They started by alienating a significant part of their existing user base, and didn't advertize enough to replace those with others.
Even the name they choose was a failure, as it references some obscure M:TG card, so is basically a corporate insider joke, not something the average joe internet user will recognize.
I actually like a lot of C++, and catching errors compile time is in the end easier as catching them runtime. I also do a lot of Python, and I agree with the other poster that available libraries are a very important part of what makes it good.
Coming from a Borland C++/Delphi background, which also provided a lot of libraries, bare-bones g++ on Linux needs a lot of finding libraries, and then getting them onto the machines my code needs to run on. Boost, Qt and friends bring you a long way, but if the target machine has it, then it still might be an incompatible version.
I find Python libraries often being much nicer in up and downward compatibility than their C++ counterparts. Also because if one is compiled with a different compiler (version) you also easily end up with problems.
I've only made the comparison between the cheapest MBP and Dell's offerings, and if you look at the videocard, screen quality and resolution and cpu speeds, I still find the prices comparable.
For example, the Dell XPS M1530 will start at 799 euros, compared to the MBP at 1799. But once you add everything in the Dell, it ends up at 1786,99, so the difference ends up being minimal, and it's actually higher without the 120 euro special action price.
And they are similar weight and such. Not sure if the Dell had backlight in the keyboard and it certainly doesn't have the magsave, but it has a cardreader instead.
YMMV, but overall I think Apple products are comparatively priced.
If one were to conduct a no-bullshit trade study before making purchases of phones, music players, laptops, desktops, or operating systems, then Apple would sell a lot less products.
What converted me to using Apple products, was to use other people's Apples. I discovered they just make better user interfaces.
They aren't real big inventers, but they are quick at adapting and pushing a new technology, if it makes a device easier to use. Between GUI, trackpad, USB, touchscreen smartphones, and some other things, they have been great at pushing for easier to use technologies to the point where the entire market adopted them.
On the flip side, apart from all the rumor mongering, they love to jump ahead of everyone else by using their secrecy. cf. MacIntel, iPhone.
That's why they are so secretive. There are lots of competitors that would rush a similar but inferiour product to market ahead of them and possibly spoil it for them. It also helps fuel the hype and thus get more free media attention.
Being secretive about bugs and issues is bad though. I agree with that.
What I have the feeling from colleagues around me, who've owned Mac notebooks for a long time, is that Apple makes more effort to have their new OS also work well on old hardware, which means that you can much longer keep using an old machine as your main production machine without feeling the need to upgrade.
It means that it will not only technically keep running, but I have the feeling it takes longer before the average Apple gets moved to the attic.
Partially this is due to the fact that they are quite high end expensive machines when first purchased, so if in the long run it's means you get better value for money, I'm not sure, but OSX and general Apple UI design might make you a slightly happier user if you can afford their hardware.
Where the iPod won it from the competition was ease of use. Something like an iRier might have more features, and better specs, but have you ever tried to use one? I have.
I got my first Mac a year ago, but the first time I used one was in 1997 and after that I knew I would end up on a Mac eventually.
It was the time of win3.11 and win95, winNT4, (and I think Mac system7). I was at university and helped a lot of people with their computers. I was used to first having to "figure out" someone's computer before I could help them. I also did some DTP work. At one point my computer couldn't handle what I was doing, and I ended up finishing my project at a professional DTP firm, who happened to also have QuarkXpress but on a big powerful dual head Mac. I was productive from the get go, and if I needed something, it would just be where I'd expect it to be and work intuitively, even outside the software I had experience with on Windows. At that point I understood that Apple is just miles ahead of the competition in UI design.
They are just very good in removing all things from an UI that you don't really need. Some rarely used options and a reduction in choice comes with that, but I'll do without an optic output for my digital music player if it means I have an interface that is easy to use.
The point is not about being able to detect rocky planets. It is that according to the old models a gas giant close to a star could not exist. We now found 250 of these impossible planets, so after adjusting the theory so these are possible, we find that rocky inner planets are all of a sudden a lot less likely.
Slashdot Mirror
Still, the Foundation stories have potential, just like 2001.
But they need to be executed like 2001, as mostly a mind game, not an action movie.
I think a book like LOTR is fiendishly harsh to adapt to a screen.
I think they did a great job, especially the extended editions put enough of the lore in to make you see that they tried to stay as true to the books as possible with such a huge format shift.
Is your problem that the movies are too long? Your comment seems to suggest it. Then what should have been cut out? Saruman, the mines of Moria, the Ents, Helms deep?
I found this detailed graph of what the USA federal spending looks like in 2008 quite insightful.
http://coolinfographics.blogspot.com/2007/07/death-and-taxes-2008.html
Tell me, which other bubble you want to reduce spending on? Maybe scrap the CDC, or FAA?
If you look at that graph, NASA is only one of the very few blobs outside the DoD and National Security/Intelligence that would be relatively painless to cut and is of decent size.
But it's clear to me that the big spending is in the DoD, NS/I and the wars in irak and afganistan.
The problem is, that if the ships start shooting at the pirates, the pirates start shooting at the merchant ships.
Given that those ships might carry a cargo worth hundreds of millions, are very slow, almost impossible to miss, and can be sunk with a well placed RPG, it's not a risk most of the merchant companies want to take.
That is the essence of the issue why these ships are not protecting themselves. The pirates would blow them up.
Maybe you, or someone else can explain why all of this is such a hassle to begin with.
In my country everyone who turns 18 and is a legal citizen of the country automatically gets a card sent in the mail on each election event, about where they are supposed to vote and how they can do an absentee vote and such.
Being born automatically means you are eligble to vote 18 years later.
If you're not issuing birth certificates, then how do you even know if and when someone was born in the USA? If you do, then why is this such an issue?
Where I live (The Netherlands), we have different difficulty levels of classes. Don't you have a similar system?
We basically have four levels: Low, Medium, High and Advanced. Distribution among the population is about 25%, 40%, 30%, 5%. Advanced level is required for University entry, and usually challenges even the most gifted of students. In the city where I live, with an estimated school going population of 25.000 at the time I was between 12-18. I think there was only one boy in the city who managed to skip a year at the Advanced level. He went on to finish a PhD in Physics and in Mathematics within five years from graduating highschool. For anyone else, this system is sufficiently challenging. I'm not saying that it's perfect though.
If you don't have a system that challenges all students, then I can understand things like you describe.
I completely agree. Eric3 is a great Python IDE. It uses Scintilla for the editor, so it depends a bit on if you like that, but otherwise it is a very good and powerful IDE, with all the functions I can think of one could need. I could give a list, but it's free, so try it and see if you like it.
I had a long search to find a good Python IDE, and tried most of the other suggestions in this topic. I think Eric3 is just the best when it comes to Python, because it is made in Python for Python.
Especially if you make your GUIs in PyQt it is a very powerful tool, integrating directly with the Qt tooling.
What I really liked about Eric3, is that it is itself a Python project in Eric3. It shows by it's very nature, that with Eric3, it is possible to develop large and complex software in Python and have it work really well. Yuo just need the right IDE.
And my name is not Eric. ;-)
As a WoW player, I was rally happy that they went after Glider, as it's only purpose is to cheat.
This bnetd thing, I don't know, might be ok, might not, but give it's purpose of being able to play net games with hacked versions, I can see why Blizzard would go after them. It's only logical that any company will try to protect against illegal use of their software.
I haven't looked at the freeCraft thing, if it's just a Warcraft II clone, cleanroom implementation, then I think renaming it would have solved the problem. I don't think Blizzard can claim to own the RTS genre itself. Trademark protection requires that you go after things that try to use a similar name for a similar product, so Blizzard needed to also take action here.
--
All in all, there might be reasons not to like Blizzard, but I really don't think any of the reasons you mentioned are valid, unless you want to cheat, want to use an illegal copy of their games, or think that Blizzard should to defend its trademarks.
I visited on my one and only trip to Las Vegas. It was one of the things I liked most.
When I visited the US a couple of years ago, the whole torture thing was hot, and I remember McCain saying something on the TV along the lines of it not being torture unless it does permanent physical damage.
I'm no US citizen, but it's one of the reasons that I hope they learned their lesson from 8 years of Bush, and McCain doesn't become the next USA president.
But then a wise man once said that a country gets the leaders it deserves. (Don't remember who)
Use FITS (Flexible Image Transport System). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FITS
It's a format designed for Astronomical images. It's not a widespread as JPEG or something, but if I know your average astronomer, it will certainly be around in 25 years.
It was designed in 1981, so it already beats the 25 year mark, and will easily do another 25 years.
Astronomers tend to use their software for a long time. For example
AIPS - from the seventies - and Miriad - from 1987 - are still the main packages for radioastronomy.
It hasn't arrived yet.
I actually think that marketing and accounting didn't have enough to do with it.
WotC has a traditional publishing culture and basically failed mostly in finding out if people actually wanted this, and in communicating with their fans and existing forum users.
It was doomed from the start, the way they handled it and how they communicated.
Just look at their previous endeavours: e-Tools, D&DO, M:TGO.
And the name, Gleemax referenced an obscure M:TG card, so was basically a corporate insider joke, not something their non M:TG playing customers could relate too (D&D, ), and certainly not bringing in new people from outside their existing customer base.
But too be honest, I think it has been Harbro pushing them, and they ended up biting of more then they could chew.
They had a huge fanbase actively frequenting their forums before they tried pulling this off. Something in the order of 20-30 thousand.
The way they moved to Gleemax and combined it with some other actions, alienated a lot of those fans.
They had a decent base to start with, but squandered it. With poor communication and mis management.
WotC has had many failures indeveloping software. Both on the M:TG and on the D&D side. I think their corporate culture just doesn't support it well. From D&D Online, to e-Tools to M:TG Online, and now Gleemax.
I think that's what caused the basic failiure.
I used to frequent their old forum a lot, but the way they launched this new thing was a massive failure. They started by alienating a significant part of their existing user base, and didn't advertize enough to replace those with others.
Even the name they choose was a failure, as it references some obscure M:TG card, so is basically a corporate insider joke, not something the average joe internet user will recognize.
I just bought the hardcover, because I really like what Paizo is doing.
And I hadn't purchased anything from them before.
I actually like a lot of C++, and catching errors compile time is in the end easier as catching them runtime. I also do a lot of Python, and I agree with the other poster that available libraries are a very important part of what makes it good.
Coming from a Borland C++/Delphi background, which also provided a lot of libraries, bare-bones g++ on Linux needs a lot of finding libraries, and then getting them onto the machines my code needs to run on. Boost, Qt and friends bring you a long way, but if the target machine has it, then it still might be an incompatible version.
I find Python libraries often being much nicer in up and downward compatibility than their C++ counterparts. Also because if one is compiled with a different compiler (version) you also easily end up with problems.
I offer myself as the datum. I just turned 40.
Now all we need is a scale..
30 here
I'm also 30, so that kinda messes up the scale.
I've only made the comparison between the cheapest MBP and Dell's offerings, and if you look at the videocard, screen quality and resolution and cpu speeds, I still find the prices comparable.
For example, the Dell XPS M1530 will start at 799 euros, compared to the MBP at 1799. But once you add everything in the Dell, it ends up at 1786,99, so the difference ends up being minimal, and it's actually higher without the 120 euro special action price.
And they are similar weight and such. Not sure if the Dell had backlight in the keyboard and it certainly doesn't have the magsave, but it has a cardreader instead.
YMMV, but overall I think Apple products are comparatively priced.
If one were to conduct a no-bullshit trade study before making purchases of phones, music players, laptops, desktops, or operating systems, then Apple would sell a lot less products.
What converted me to using Apple products, was to use other people's Apples. I discovered they just make better user interfaces.
They aren't real big inventers, but they are quick at adapting and pushing a new technology, if it makes a device easier to use. Between GUI, trackpad, USB, touchscreen smartphones, and some other things, they have been great at pushing for easier to use technologies to the point where the entire market adopted them.
On the flip side, apart from all the rumor mongering, they love to jump ahead of everyone else by using their secrecy. cf. MacIntel, iPhone.
That's why they are so secretive. There are lots of competitors that would rush a similar but inferiour product to market ahead of them and possibly spoil it for them. It also helps fuel the hype and thus get more free media attention.
Being secretive about bugs and issues is bad though. I agree with that.
What I have the feeling from colleagues around me, who've owned Mac notebooks for a long time, is that Apple makes more effort to have their new OS also work well on old hardware, which means that you can much longer keep using an old machine as your main production machine without feeling the need to upgrade.
It means that it will not only technically keep running, but I have the feeling it takes longer before the average Apple gets moved to the attic.
Partially this is due to the fact that they are quite high end expensive machines when first purchased, so if in the long run it's means you get better value for money, I'm not sure, but OSX and general Apple UI design might make you a slightly happier user if you can afford their hardware.
Where the iPod won it from the competition was ease of use.
Something like an iRier might have more features, and better specs, but have you ever tried to use one? I have.
I got my first Mac a year ago, but the first time I used one was in 1997 and after that I knew I would end up on a Mac eventually.
It was the time of win3.11 and win95, winNT4, (and I think Mac system7). I was at university and helped a lot of people with their computers. I was used to first having to "figure out" someone's computer before I could help them.
I also did some DTP work. At one point my computer couldn't handle what I was doing, and I ended up finishing my project at a professional DTP firm, who happened to also have QuarkXpress but on a big powerful dual head Mac. I was productive from the get go, and if I needed something, it would just be where I'd expect it to be and work intuitively, even outside the software I had experience with on Windows. At that point I understood that Apple is just miles ahead of the competition in UI design.
They are just very good in removing all things from an UI that you don't really need. Some rarely used options and a reduction in choice comes with that, but I'll do without an optic output for my digital music player if it means I have an interface that is easy to use.
The point is not about being able to detect rocky planets. It is that according to the old models a gas giant close to a star could not exist. We now found 250 of these impossible planets, so after adjusting the theory so these are possible, we find that rocky inner planets are all of a sudden a lot less likely.