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      Welcome!   03/05/2016

      Welcome, everyone, to the new 910CMX Community Forums. I'm still working on getting them running, so things may change.  If you're a 910 Comic creator and need your forum recreated, let me know and I'll get on it right away.  I'll do my best to make this new place as fun as the last one!
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Drasvin

NP: Friday January 26, 2018

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15 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:
1 hour ago, hkmaly said:

I already said that most people would probably prefer the 3D movie.

Well, an audio-book is at least accurate to what the original author wrote (assuming it's not abridged), though if it was a translation there would be some shift from the original. Movies on the other hand by their very nature must take a few liberties with the text, and usually they take a lot of liberties.

It probably will be abridged :)

And the movie might still be closer to the original than the COMIC. Yes, I did read comics about Trojan War. It was very abridged.

16 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

Also, hearing a story is an ancient human tradition, one that has faded somewhat in the past few centuries; it would be nice to see it make a comeback.

It used to be necessity. Comeback might be as likely as comeback of hunting - wait a sec ...

19 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

If the current numbers or close to them do keep reading books, the classics old and modern will continue to be known; I don't think the percentage of people that read them matters all that much. Unfortunately, that assumes the population will continue to rise; unless we start colonizing other planets (which admittedly I would like to happen) eventually we'll reach the maximum population the Earth can hold even with technology to improve food production.

We - as a species - are adapted to expansion. If we wouldn't be able to expand, we will selfdestruct. And even if some people would survive the self-destruction, there is not enough accessible metals, oil and other resources to restart the industrial revolution. It's now or never.

20 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

However, I've been thinking about it, and for thousands of years literacy was not widespread, and only a relatively small number of people were familiar even with books contemporary to their time, let alone classics. And yet they were enough to allow many of those classics to be known about and available to read today. So even if only a handful of people keep reading and passing on the old stories, they'll be kept alive.

Especially with new technology making passing the old stories much easier. It used to be lot of work for monk in dark age to copy single book ... nowadays, you only need handful of people who won't all have HDD crash at the same time. They can copy everything written before 1923 in few minutes.

23 minutes ago, ChronosCat said:

Also, movie adaptations are a good thing. They allow the ideas of the old stories to be spread to a much wider audience than they would otherwise have, even if the skill of the original writing is often lost. They serve as good advertising too; I'm sure a lot of people were inspired to read the Lord of the Rings because they saw the movies (and this would apply to other book-to-movie adaptations as well).

They are definitely a good thing, however I suspect that less people decided to read the book because they saw the movies than how many already read it in past. On the other hand, the numbers will be different with Harry Potter for example ...

 

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Literacy and printing can endure with pre-industrial technology.

Since so much of the United States is celebrating Philadelphia today, I would toast the greatest Philadelphian (other than the chef who invented the Cheesesteak), Benjamin Franklin.

If we can keep libraries, printing presses, and lightning rods available for the masses, we have a reasonable chance of ultimately preserving essential human knowledge.

Media depending on specific technology for presentation is the most vulnerable.

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18 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Since so much of the United States is celebrating Philadelphia today, I would toast the greatest Philadelphian (other than the chef who invented the Cheesesteak), Benjamin Franklin.

Marvelous, marvelous man. I wish more people paid attention to him. *sigh* Mind, he had his flaws, too. But I really admire him for his good points.

(Though possibly the most controversial idea of mine ever was when I disagreed with him. He is reputed to have said or quoted, "A penny saved is a penny earned." That made me think and suddenly I realised he was wrong. A penny saved is worth more than a penny earned. The penny saved isn't subject to taxation. That was the point where I went completely off the rails and started to speculate on whether this could be considered tax evasion and how the Danish Bureau of Taxation could deal with that. For example, if you bought things on sale, clearly the DBT could demand that the price reduction be taxed. For example, you saved 200 crowns from buying a cheaper CD player, obviously you owed a percentage of that in taxes. Also, if it could be established that you owned a car but used public transport to save money, these savings too should be taxed. And so forth.)

(For some reason, when I told a friend of mine about this idea, he told me to never, ever, ever go to work for the Bureau of Taxation. Clearly, I had far too many insane ideas to be allowed to work for them. And so the notion of enforcing taxation on the saved penny died its sad but probably deserved death.)

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4 hours ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

Literacy and printing can endure with pre-industrial technology.

Since so much of the United States is celebrating Philadelphia today, I would toast the greatest Philadelphian (other than the chef who invented the Cheesesteak), Benjamin Franklin.

If we can keep libraries, printing presses, and lightning rods available for the masses, we have a reasonable chance of ultimately preserving essential human knowledge.

Media depending on specific technology for presentation is the most vulnerable.

While true, I would prefer if people stops reading and get their information from movies taking lot of liberties with source material AND explore the stars, than being limited to read about stars because they lose the technology to show the movies.

 

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A loss of specific technologies to present various media does not require a loss of technology overall.

After all, when was the last time you brought out the Zoetrope to entertain your rural cousins?
And have you taken your significant other out to the show at the Kinetoscope parlor?

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3 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

A loss of specific technologies to present various media does not require a loss of technology overall.

After all, when was the last time you brought out the Zoetrope to entertain your rural cousins?
And have you taken your significant other out to the show at the Kinetoscope parlor?

Some of the best forms of entertainment do not involve very much technology. Tabletop roleplaying involves such sophisticated things as writing paper, pencils and dice. And the creativity of a storyteller. And in some of these games you even make do without the dice.

In fact, come to think of it, all you really need is the storyteller.

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18 minutes ago, Pharaoh RutinTutin said:

A loss of specific technologies to present various media does not require a loss of technology overall.

After all, when was the last time you brought out the Zoetrope to entertain your rural cousins?
And have you taken your significant other out to the show at the Kinetoscope parlor?

You don't need Zoetrope or Kinetoscope to present media created for them. Both can be emulated on computer. It's rarely done, because those media created for Zoetrope were not that good and their only value was in showing capabilities of that technology, but it IS possible and in this sense the technology wasn't lost.

16 minutes ago, The Old Hack said:

Some of the best forms of entertainment do not involve very much technology. Tabletop roleplaying involves such sophisticated things as writing paper, pencils and dice. And the creativity of a storyteller. And in some of these games you even make do without the dice.

In fact, come to think of it, all you really need is the storyteller.

This reminds me the joke of mathematicians only requiring paper, pencils and eraser, while philosophers are even cheaper, only requiring the paper and pencils.

Tabletop roleplaying doesn't require paper, pencils and dice, but it may help if the abilities of the storyteller are suboptimal.

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48 minutes ago, hkmaly said:

This reminds me the joke of mathematicians only requiring paper, pencils and eraser, while philosophers are even cheaper, only requiring the paper and pencils.

Infinite mathematicians walk into a bar. The first orders a beer. The second orders half a beer. The third orders a quarter of a beer. The fourth an eighth of a beer. And so forth.

The bartender calls them all a bunch of idiots and serves them two beers.

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On 2/5/2018 at 9:32 PM, The Old Hack said:

Infinite mathematicians walk into a bar.

And Hilbert's Hotel, while mathematically perfect, doesn't rate high for customer satisfaction - making all the already-checked-in guests move to another room every time a bus arrives...

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On 02/09/2018 at 11:24 PM, Don Edwards said:

And Hilbert's Hotel, while mathematically perfect, doesn't rate high for customer satisfaction - making all the already-checked-in guests move to another room every time a bus arrives...

They actually have a great rating so far -- it will be an infinite time before they fill up. Unfortunately for them, mathematicians can post downvotes based on expected poor service at infinity...

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Actually, no, Hilbert's Hotel is full when it first opens, and nobody checks out. Probably because the rest of the hotels in the universe, collectively, don't have room for all of Hilbert's guests.

Oh, and the buses that pull up there are also of infinite capacity. As are the ferries the buses arrive on.

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2 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

Actually, no, Hilbert's Hotel is full when it first opens, and nobody checks out. Probably because the rest of the hotels in the universe, collectively, don't have room for all of Hilbert's guests.

Oh, and the buses that pull up there are also of infinite capacity. As are the ferries the buses arrive on.

I though that Hilbert's Hotel opens empty, but then the first infinite bus fills it up.

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14 hours ago, Don Edwards said:

Actually, no, Hilbert's Hotel is full when it first opens, and nobody checks out. Probably because the rest of the hotels in the universe, collectively, don't have room for all of Hilbert's guests.

"you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave"...

Oh sorry, that's the competing hotel chain.

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