Ironik

It doesn't take much to please Sam. A little pea green yack and he's re-subbed for 6 more months.

"For its time" nothin'. Raiders is still awesome. The kinetic action, the incredible music, the hilarious dialogue... that's why it has staying power.

I really want a combo platter: something with the apps of the iPad and the speed of the Xoom, the look-and-feel of the Apple with the ability to do basic, everyday things like run Flash. I'd get a Nook Color, except that it's too small. Like I said, I was looking forward to getting a Skiff, which would've been the ideal tablet for my needs.

I've read entirely too much EFP.* All I recall from the last book was that he seemed to keep writing the same chapter over and over again. By the third time with the "Palace intrigue" of the female half of the Incest Twins (are they twins? does it matter, really?) I was just paging by it. Then the brand-new characters whose stories just seem to drag and drag (something with a boat, a warrior chick gets killed in a glade) and then he would come back around to them yet again. Been there, done that, got the soiled leather jerkin.

Compare the dragging fourth novel to the snappy second one. It's like a different person wrote them. Or at least someone who had an editor holding his feet to the fire.





* Extruded Fantasy Product

I'd say Neal is *beyond* "out there". He's on the outside of the universe looking in. The guy seems nice enough, with his charity work and all, but he is certifiably insane. Go look at his website, particularly the part where he claims (with a straight face) that planets expand like balloons. Nevermind that there are decades' worth of evidence for plate tectonics, Neal says the continents match together because the Earth blew up like a child's balloon. Even Scientology makes more sense, and Scientology is the idiot stepchild of religion and science fiction that truly makes no sense.

I don't like it.

I love it!

Hey, don't blame screenwriters! None of this is their fault in any way, shape or form. To put food on the table they write what they're hired to write. The ideas for these remakes comes from producers and studio heads. No writer is sitting out there saying, "Man, I know I could make it if only Hollywood would listen to me and read my reboot of Caddyshack!"

The problem is the audience. People keep going to see these reboots. I know almost everyone on this forum will see the new Spider-man, verifying that the studio's desire to remake it was a good one. Clash of the Titans was crap, yet it made over 150 million bucks. Karate Kid was lame, but it did similar business. Stop going to remakes and they'll stop remaking movies.

As I posted in another thread, The Maltese Falcon was the third iteration of that story in less than a decade. The first version in 1931 was arguably closer to the book's story but is not a good movie. The second one was "re-imagined" as a light comedy. The 1941 John Huston/Humphrey Bogart film gets the tone of the book right but eliminates the subtext, making it a straight-up thriller. (The Hays Code prevented them from portraying the characters as they were in the book, too.) I'm just saying that there's ample precedent for such behavior.

Looking at the top 20 box office films in 2010, There are only five which were written expressly for the screen. Yet I consider last year to be the best year in cinema so far this century. 1939 is considered by many to be the greatest year in movie history, yet of the top-grossing films that year there are only three written-for-the-screen entries. The rest are either based on books or plays.

That's all my dad uses his computer for. Once I talked him into a laptop last year, he loved it. He takes it everywhere. I have absolute certainty that if I bought him an iPad, it would more than serve his needs of web surfing and casual gaming. (He rarely checks his email, so people have stopped sending him any.) My mom would be the same way. I have aunts and uncles and in-laws who have never once in their lives even considered turning on a computer.

Look at docbuzzard's post. The vast majority of computer users -- particularly the oldest and youngest users -- don't use computers the way you and I do. For that segment, things like the iPad and Xoom more than suit their needs. I do know one person who has completely stopped buying tree-based books due to her use of the Kindle.

Wow, they really need a better acronym for "T.H.U.N.D.E.R."

"Usually not as expensive?" Not sure where you're getting that notion.

This "reboot" stuff is just an info-age word meaning "remake." Hollywood has always done it, but nowadays they stand out because there are fewer films released than there were 70 years ago. Even the speed of the reboot/remake is nothing new. The Maltese Falcon directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart was the third film of that book made by Warner Brothers in less than a decade, which was not at all unusual for the time. (So common was the practice of remaking things, George Raft had a clause in his contract specifically stating that he wouldn't appear in any remakes... which is why he passed on Falcon and Bogart got the role. What did Raft make instead? The forgettable Manpower.)

I, too, have PCs at home and Macs at work. They each have pluses and minuses. Apple has been brilliant at marketing, particularly touting the simplicity and reliability of their products. That's one of the reasons people rage particularly hard when an Apple stuffs it. When a Windows product jams, people shrug and go, "Oh well," then reboot it. Macs are aggravating in this area because they also lock up but you rarely know why, and often it's almost impossible to reboot them. A local minister had his entire TV series on his laptop and was stunned when the thing bricked. He didn't rage, being a calm pastor-ly type, but he was shocked to find out Apples are just machines.

I'd use an iPad to look up info while watching a movie, read a comic book or magazine, play some games, maybe write a blog entry, surf Facebook, whatever. I suppose you could get one of those cover-slash-keyboard deals and use the cloud to work, but I'm not comfortable with my stuff being out in the wild. It would be a casual entertainment device rather than a hardcore work machine.

The tablet I was really looking forward to was the Skiff because of its size and use of color e-ink for long battery life. But Rupert Murdoch bought it and killed it, yet another reason to hate him.

inorite?

Today I rewrote relativity. E=MC cubed now. So you should all feel much peppier.

He said "quality." Heh.

All kidding aside, I think the second book was one of the best Fantasy novels I've ever read. The 4th was easily one of the worst. Speaking of quantity over quality, Martin really needs someone to smack him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper and say, "No! Bad writer! Take the unnecessary 722 pages out!"

::: slain by the awesome :::

::: resurrected by the cool :::

Only in this forum. You're welcome. PM for details.