h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Oops-
One shouldn't drink sherry,
One cannot drink stout,
And port is a wine I can well do without.

It's simply a case of "chac'un à son gout"
Have some Madeira, m'dear!


The public may leave at the end of each performance
By all the exit doors...

Tom Lehrer fans too! To use the Lobachevsky technique.....
My joy would be complete dear,
I you were only here,
But still I keep your hand
As a precious souvenir.

I used to sing this song at parties, until they told me not to... (honestly, I did). Usually preceded by Ill Wind.

IBM estimated that the world market for computers at any time was 5.

Hey, they cut my name short. It's supposed to be:
some bloke who tried to think of a short, catchy, pithy name and spent five sleepless nights racking his brain but couldn't think of one

& that's exactly what your name says.


;^)#

I kind of noticed
3

No it's not. I changed my name when I noticed it stopped after "but couldn't thin" by cutting out the "racking his brains" part. I didn't realise this would change on the post, though.


      o      o       o      o
° ° ° °

Sorry, my proofreading skills are exhausted after 20 characters. Maybe the site's the same.



;^)#

Ah, but Work is
Force x Distance,
and Force is
Mass x Acceleration.

Therefore Money is proportional to Mass / Knowledge

So you get more money not only for knowing less, but also for being heavier. Seems pretty true to me

This means I have several problems.

1) I have just submitted my Masters dissertation, hence it could be reasoned that I am trying to prove how much I know.
2) I have just started a diet / exercise regime, hence trying to reduce the amount I weigh
3) I am currently out of work, and therefore earning nothing.

Although, given (2), I should be earning quite a lot, (1) and (3) seem to tally with your premise. Oh dear!

ditto
But all such doors, must at that time be open....

On a slightly more serious note, have you ever heard 'And then we wrote..', a colection of F&S songs from their review days with Laurie Lister? It was recorded in 1974, not long before MF died, and is well worth a listen.

Oh my! How could you have -possibly- guessed?

The lady was (at least -among-) the first to help squelch the rumour that all dragons were big, mean scaly things that breathed fire and hated humans. She must be Good™.

LOL ... My father would agree with you on the preying on stupid users bit.

IBM (and others) also said (back in around 86?) that within 10 years all computers would be interchangeable and compatible, too...

Well, compared with the situation in the early 80's, they are. It's just that no-one mentioned that a pre-requisite was Bill Gates taking over the world. You win some, you lose some........

Why some books translate bizarrely is partly due to the nature of the film industry as practiced in Hollywood:

A writer has to go through several stages to run the risk of having a script accepted (and this is especially true of television):
1)Pitch the story: if they like it, the writer is asked usually to submit a written version of the story. At which point they:

2)Decide whether they like the story as told by the first writer; if yes, s/he gets to do a treatment (a slightly more detailed version of the story, including each scene and flashes of dialogue); if not, a different writer is hired to write a treatment and the cycle continues until a "satisfactory" version is created.

3)The writer writes the script, into 1st draught. This goes through the same procedure as 2.

4)If the original writer's work survives, a 2nd draught is done, and the cycle continues to 3rd draught and final polish.

5)Come time to shoot, the actor's figure that the script needs work and, if they're powerful enough, they change it on the floor. Sometimes the director might re-write it on the fly, or the producer, if s/he doesn't have enough to do.

6)What's left of the script is then shown to the public, and the writer wonders why it diverges so strongly from what they originally dreamt. (This is especially true in comedy shows, where each line must get a laugh or it's changed until it does, logic be damned.)

Filmed versions of novels always suffer because films are visual, and very expensive (more so than necessary), and that means that masses of people (some of whom are partially illiterate) have to see the film for it to see profit.
Some filmed versions are better than the novel: "Jaws", for example, got rid of an idiotic subplot about an affair betwen Hooper and Ellen Brody.
I often think that the changes imposed on film translations of good books is partially due to the idiocy of those putting up the money: they just get scared by thinking that the audience won't get it as written.
Lots of factors contribute: What an executive thinks will sell really well despite the story told (witness what happened to "Legend", with a chunk of story cut in the name of running time, and a perfectly suitable score replaced by a disco version to attract a younger group).
Tailoring a character to fit a "hot" star who's badly miscast.

Etc.

Fruitbat

I had a situation like that in reverse: back when I had a PC and an internal fax/modem, I wanted to import a fax into my word-processor, amend it, and fax it back. Software wouldn't do it and I couldn't find a listing for it in the manuals.

I called up the fax help-line and was told 2 hrs wait. Fat chance, I sent them a fax. An hour or so later I realised there was also a modem on this thing and THEY might know how to do this: rang up, got through immediately and was told No, the software won't do that, I'm out of luck.

Next day I got a fax from the PR people of the Fax asking me to rate their service...which I'd not yet got. I sent them a short, nasty note about not actually being serviced, and having regional call-in centres to avoid 2 hr waits for technical support.

I didn't hear anything back.

Fruitbat

I think that a part of this is the very nature of our ease-oriented culture. We have remote controls for everything, power-windows in cars, automatic gear-boxes, automatic cameras, and fast "food". Few people know how to do anything by hand any more. (I'm a fine one to talk: I use a calculator over doing math of any kind.)

Another part of that is the pace of change: Many are feeling intimidated by the apparent complexity of computer systems (and let's face it, Microsoft is unnecessarily complex).

Still more is attributable to the deification of ignorance. The other day I was remembering all the students on the honour roll in Junior High: as I remember, every one was Japanese. I couldn't work that out. What I need to remember is that there's a tiny percentage of people that actually work with IT, and the rest are struggling to keep up...sort of.

Genuine thought is on the decline, and being made more obvious by those that would rather ask someone or blame the gear than take the responsibility, and a bit of time, to work it out for themselves.

Fruitbat

That idea of videophones is brilliant. I haven't used a helpline in years, and certainly not since I went to a Mac, but the idea of SEEING a technician to talk through a computer problem is hilarious and true.

Fruitbat