Genejoke
Novels I find harder to knock

What about The DaVinci Code?

The basic plot was okay in a very average pot-boiler of a thriller kind of way, and I was fairly interested in some of the historical content (I never knew there was a Templar's church in the City, for example!), but I found it an excruciating read! I can't remember the last time I'd read something so badly written.

DAJB

Genejoke
Novels I find harder to knock

What about The DaVinci Code?

The basic plot was okay in a very average pot-boiler of a thriller kind of way, and I was fairly interested in some of the historical content (I never knew there was a Templar's church in the City, for example!), but I found it an excruciating read! I can't remember the last time I'd read something so badly written.

Never read it, I did read a couple of pages of his novel digital fortress and that was enough.

I pretty much get the appeal of nearly anything. It's the fanaticism that I've always had trouble getting.

As Shatner said about Star Trek, "It's a TV show and you have made it your entire life!"

Never got that. There has to be something to it to make it worth such devotion.

You could call my mother a Gone with the Wind fangirl. I've seen the picture of her in bobbysox and GWTW came out when she was a teen and she read it the same way teens devour Twilight today. (Except Margaret Mitchell is a superior writer.) Then came the movie. My older sister is named Melanie for Olivia DeHaviland's character.

The story is epic and sprawls across some of the most interesting and most mythologized years in US history. Reconstruction and the antebellum South are huge draws for an epic story and Gone with the Wind is that story and a lot more than that story. Then there's Max Steiner's score, the technicolor cinematography that reaches an artistry that is breathtaking. It's not digital. The movie became bigger than the story (Scarlett O'Hara Wars? The story about the casting of that character is epic itself)

It's a spectacular story that today would be two or three movies or books not one.

Faliat
Regarding modern technology, I don't get the sudden urge for everyone to make touchscreen phones.

Pretty soon we'll have the iEverything. xD I'm content using basic phones, IM, e-mails, including the hand-written letter, but that's as far as I go. Bulking up on too much tech not only shreds my finances, it also makes my house more cluttered than it should be.

It should be noted, that soon after Star Wars was released - there was also the foreign director's chance to try and imitate, and likely fail, to imitate it. Excluding 'Hardware Wars', there was--

'Star Knight' (a mute Luke in a funny spacesuit wins the heart of a Princess in some medieval town, while a Don Quixote-type and poorly audio-dubbed Vader villain attempts to foil him...)

'Star Crash' (dude, this was supported by Roger Corman. You can expect no less!)

'Starship', which again has a Luke character fighting 'storm troopers' (self-proclaimed) who are taking over a very Tatooine-esque junkyard. There's even a midget played by a guy who, I think, played an Ewok in ROTJ.

With all great movies, comes the eventual dumpster truck of knock-offs.

Anything beginning with "i" can get to f***


A big one I forgot.

U2

And no not even the Joshua tree was good, there is no good with U2.
the best thing about them was the south park episode about bono being a giant turd.

Pretty soon we'll have the iEverything. xD I'm content using basic phones, IM, e-mails, including the hand-written letter, but that's as far as I go. Bulking up on too much tech not only shreds my finances, it also makes my house more cluttered than it should be.

Actually, the point of a lot of new tech is to cut down on the number of devices you need. I'm pretty happy with my Droid X. Don't need a separate media player, I can read books on it (with text-to-speech), it works as a free GPS (also with text-to-speech) when I'm in the car, I can get internet radio, and I get a full internet browser with flash and java support, email, live chat, office document and PDF support, etc. I've even loaded it up with some of my old PSX games. It's great for networking meetings, I can just pull it out and show off my reel or character design work, or just for everyday use. I pop onto the internet all the time when I'm with friends or family to look up local hotspots or just info on the current topic or conversation.

The interest in touch screens is because they are adaptable interfaces which allow for larger screens for your media or custom interfaces for your programs. Keyboards are set hardware that can't be moved or altered. They take up real estate on the device that could be used for other functions or greater visual quality.

I suppose your right, though I don't really keep much beyond basic utilities. xD Anything I need to send out on the go I can use a basic cellphone for, or send out packages and the like. At the very least, I'd really only need a GPS since I'm bad with directions. I'm pretty archaic. xD

Genejoke
U2. And no not even the Joshua tree was good, there is no good with U2.

U2 is my music bible. They're f'ing awesome. Not all their songs, but Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby are deserving of their fame.

bravo1102
As Shatner said about Star Trek, "It's a TV show and you have made it your entire life!"

He didn't actually, that as a scriptwriter. Shatner only spoke that line it as Shatner playing Shatner. ;)

Hehe, TV fantasy merges into reality in surprising ways eh?



I'll have to echo Isukun about the smartphone thing. When I'm travelling it's simply invaluable- it's most of the benefits of a laptop PC in a size that comfortably fits in your pocket, so you get all the utility without the size, weight and awkwardness. Heh, if I was better with the great drawing programs I've got on mine I could even do my comic on it and upload it directly to DD.
...and when you need something in a city, just hop on Google maps and search for the nearest shops that cater to it. That was a great help when I wanted extra bags, new shoes, find out where the nearest AT&T outlet was, UPS...

I do not own anything that I cannot drop onto the concrete ground, pick up, and still use. Things tend to fall out of my pockets. I lost a very expensive sphygmomanometer that way. It's why I refuse to have palm-size electronic devices, and my cell phone is the cheapest kind.

(And yes, I have dropped that thing several times. It still works cuz it's cheap. Which is funny. Like how I had dropped my NES down a flight of stairs when I was a kid, and lo and behold it still plays perfectly afterwards.)

mlai
Like how I had dropped my NES down a flight of stairs when I was a kid, and lo and behold it still plays perfectly afterwards.)

D=
I'm having a hard time imagining any electronic device surviving that. Eep!

Final Fantasy was the biggest one I had trouble with. It was a case of being seriously underwhelmed after hearing all the praise about the series, and I still get some scary reactions after telling people I didn't like it.

I do not own anything that I cannot drop onto the concrete ground, pick up, and still use.

That's what they make the hard cases and covers for. Hell, some phones are pretty resillient, even without them. I don't have a case, I've dropped my phone a couple of times on the sidewalks without any incident.

My Game Boy of 20 years still runs no matter how many battle scars it's achieved. xD I love it.

itsjustaar
My Game Boy of 20 years still runs no matter how many battle scars it's achieved. xD I love it.

Mine died years ago.
...A while after I'd given it to my mum. She never dropped it or anything, just Tetrissed it to death.

isukun

I do not own anything that I cannot drop onto the concrete ground, pick up, and still use.

That's what they make the hard cases and covers for. Hell, some phones are pretty resillient, even without them. I don't have a case, I've dropped my phone a couple of times on the sidewalks without any incident.

The Defy [gizmodo.com.au] by Motorola seems like a tough cookie...

I haven't dropped my fancy Android phone yet and hopefully i never will... :(
But I've had a few cheap Nokia phones as part of my work which I've dropped and those didn't fare too well- going wonky pretty soon after. One immediate issue with them that always seems to happen is that the button pad pops off and the case splits open. That happens even when you just drop them on your desk. They started to die after about a year and a half of constant use.

ozoneocean

bravo1102
As Shatner said about Star Trek, "It's a TV show and you have made it your entire life!"

He didn't actually, that as a scriptwriter. Shatner only spoke that line it as Shatner playing Shatner. ;)

Hehe, TV fantasy merges into reality in surprising ways eh?

Not really. Shatner actually said that at a convention when appearing as himself and the script was based on that much earlier appearance. According to the people who were there he did say it before it was immortalized in that SNL skit. A similar viewpoint was expressed in Nimoy's book I Am Not Spock

It occured before SNL even came on TV as reported in an ancient issue of Starlog an interview with Bjo Trimble about early Trekkies. It also popped up in a TV Guide article about fandom.

---

I'm a former tank crewman so everything I have has to be soldier proof. Put a tanker in a bare room with an anvil and a hammer leave and come back two minutes later; the hammer will be missing, the anvil broken and the tanker will know nothing about it. So technological things I own have to be things I can't pick up and carry around. I have a desktop computer and my cell phone is firmly kept in a pocket in a backpack.

My Sega game console and Gameboy didn't survive the apocolypse that is my life.

bravo1102
It occured before SNL even came on TV as reported in an ancient issue of Starlog an interview with Bjo Trimble about early Trekkies. It also popped up in a TV Guide article about fandom.

Word for word or just similar sounding sorts of sentiments?

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I get U2.
I disliked them from the beginning and have always found them wanky... but that's mainly prejudice on my part, they are actually pretty good at what they do.

I don't get Madonna
I don't see why she is now seen as some sort of grande dame of pop music... some sort of high ranking dowager empress diva.
WTF? She's still the same shitty bubblegum pop-singer she was when she started, all she has going for her is that she never went away!

Also Sean Combs, Puff Daddy, P Diddy or whatever he's called this particular minute of the day. Why has anyone ever bought a single song that he's done? Why? How has this man achieved the recognition and fame that he has with the utter blandness that exudes from every skerrick of his being?
...Apart from looking like his lower lip is far too heavy for his face.

Someone
I get U2.
I disliked them from the beginning and have always found them wanky... but that's mainly prejudice on my part, they are actually pretty good at what they do.

Very true they are good at what they do, but then so are the black eyed peas but what they do is make even worse music than U2... or anything/anyone actually.


Grant Morrison.

He has written some very good stuff and has some great ideas but he also writes some absolute garbage and people still think he is some almighty god of comic writing.
The worst thing is the rabid fans who believe that if you don't like his work then you are too stupid to understand it. F@#&tards.

Madonna? It's all self-promotion kind of like Lady Gaga or Cher. Pop music, wild costumes and naked female flesh.

Madonna purposely courted controversy. We had all hoped she and gone away and out comes that book of soft-core porn. The very name Madonna! The mother of Jesus and a slutty pop singer... oooo the controversy!

Cher has a much better voice and Lady Gaga is great camp. Loved her appearances at the Met games.

---

Cell phones. I don't want to be reached 24/7 everywhere I go! I don't want to talk to people on the phone everywhere! To me I want to sit down in a quiet place, have a cup of tea, maybe a snack and get into the discussion, not gabble along in the supermarket. I don't want people able to listen to everything going on because I have a loud voice and being a bit hard of hearing can't hear anything on that hidden muffled speaker so I turn it up. I like real speakers on real phones so I can hear!

I only got a cell phone this year so I can call ahead when I'm trapped in traffic.

bravo1102
Cell phones. I don't want to be reached 24/7 everywhere I go! I don't want to talk to people on the phone everywhere! To me I want to sit down in a quiet place, have a cup of tea, maybe a snack and get into the discussion, not gabble along in the supermarket. I don't want people able to listen to everything going on because I have a loud voice and being a bit hard of hearing can't hear anything on that hidden muffled speaker so I turn it up. I like real speakers on real phones so I can hear!

I only got a cell phone this year so I can call ahead when I'm trapped in traffic.

I've had a mobile for a long time and use a few of the features but I have learned not to give my number out too much, for the very reasons you listed. SMS I find very useful, the camera in it also but little else.

Basically when I need a new phone I pay no attention to the muppet trying to sell me over priced rubbish I don't need.

bravo1102
Madonna? It's all self-promotion kind of like Lady Gaga or Cher. Pop music, wild costumes and naked female flesh.

---

Cell phones. I don't want to be reached 24/7 everywhere I go! I don't want to talk to people on the phone everywhere! To me I want to sit down in a quiet place, have a cup of tea, maybe a snack and get into the discussion, not gabble along in the supermarket. I don't want people able to listen to everything going on because I have a loud voice and being a bit hard of hearing can't hear anything on that hidden muffled speaker so I turn it up. I like real speakers on real phones so I can hear!

I only got a cell phone this year so I can call ahead when I'm trapped in traffic.

same on both counts. re: madonna (should be lowercase, don't ya think?), I remember when she and Cindi Lauper were both the newbies on scene. Good thing I didn't bet with money, because I "knew" Lauper would come out on top. oh well.

re: cell phones. Because of the vagaries of schedules, we had to get one for my daughter and my husband and if I'll be on the road for awhile, I'll borrow one of theirs, but most times I LIKE not being immediately available.

It's a huge crack up when I'm in the grocery store and see three guys on their phones "I don't know, hon. It says 100% whole wheat. That's a grain, right?" Dunno - maybe the things Have saved marriages.

What I really dislike are (1) talking out into the air and (2) the teensie little buttons. Even with smallish fingers, I still can hit 2 or 3 buttons at a time ---I HATE texting on those things. And they're getting smaller all the time (ZOOLANDER phones for Christmas anybody?)

isukun
That's what they make the hard cases and covers for. Hell, some phones are pretty resillient, even without them. I don't have a case, I've dropped my phone a couple of times on the sidewalks without any incident.

Or you could invest in a Samsung - by my experience, those things are tanks. I was working on a roof a while ago and dropped it from the second story onto a brick patio. Still using the thing to this day.

However, some phone companies do not excel in touch screen. That same Samsung phone has a hard time responding to scrolling, whereas an iPhone is just sensitive enough. I feel like a few of these companies are trying to ride that touch screen wave too early before they fix some of their glaring issues.

What I really dislike are (1) talking out into the air and (2) the teensie little buttons. Even with smallish fingers, I still can hit 2 or 3 buttons at a time ---I HATE texting on those things. And they're getting smaller all the time

Don't really agree witht he size issues. I've got big hands and fat fingers and I never hit two buttons at once. Even on my old phone with a physical keyboard I never did. Also, phones aren't getting smaller at this point, they're getting bigger. The android phones and the iPhones are bigger than past generation phones to accomodate the larger screens (which also allow for bugger buttons on the touch screens). Add to that the new wave of tablets hitting the market and we're starting to get phones that are getting back to the REALLY old school proportions.

ayesinback
I remember when she and Cindi Lauper were both the newbies on scene. Good thing I didn't bet with money, because I "knew" Lauper would come out on top. oh well.

Everyone did. Madonna copied her style, without having great songs or an interesting personality like Lauper.
I think she mainly stayed in there just by becoming a pure celebrity like that Beckam woman who was in the Spice Girls. -there was all that stuff with Sean Penn, Warren Beaty, the movies the book... etc. But people don't remember history and imagine that she got and stayed famous for her signing and performing.

isukun

What I really dislike are (1) talking out into the air and (2) the teensie little buttons. Even with smallish fingers, I still can hit 2 or 3 buttons at a time ---I HATE texting on those things. And they're getting smaller all the time

Don't really agree witht he size issues. I've got big hands and fat fingers and I never hit two buttons at once. Even on my old phone with a physical keyboard I never did. Also, phones aren't getting smaller at this point, they're getting bigger. The android phones and the iPhones are bigger than past generation phones to accomodate the larger screens (which also allow for bugger buttons on the touch screens). Add to that the new wave of tablets hitting the market and we're starting to get phones that are getting back to the REALLY old school proportions

Yes and no.
The touch screen genre of phones are uniformly big. That is true.
But normal phones (i.e. not smartphones), which still make up the vast majority of phones made and sold, do tend to be slightly smaller all the time.

I have long thin fingers and I've mashed the buttons on those things...
Whereas texting on my Android touchscreen is a dream, especially after the nightmare of doing it on teeny Nokia phones! Having the whole alphabet on the virtual keyboard as well as auto-correcting spell-checking is lovely!
-Apart from when I don't check it and it ends up replacing perfectly good words with hilarious errors... Especially bad when I'm posting to Twitter or something from it.

blindsk
However, some phone companies do not excel in touch screen. That same Samsung phone has a hard time responding to scrolling, whereas an iPhone is just sensitive enough. I feel like a few of these companies are trying to ride that touch screen wave too early before they fix some of their glaring issues.

My HTC Desire works nicely.

------------------------

-Being contactable any time: switch off the phone. Works wonders!

But normal phones (i.e. not smartphones), which still make up the vast majority of phones made and sold, do tend to be slightly smaller all the time.

You may want to double check that. A couple of years ago that may have been true and they certainly do still make the low end phones, but I can't think of anyone I know who owns one and the current top ten in terms of sales are all smartphones, with nine of them being touchscreen. Considering how far the prices have dropped since the Android phones hit the market, it's not surprising. Plus the service plans are getting cheaper, too. You can get a number of touch screen Android, PalmOS, Windows, and Blackberry phones for $50 or less (several of them for nothing) with a service plan, plus they even make cheap prepaid touchscreen smartphones, now.

At least that's how it is here in the US.

isukun
At least that's how it is here in the US.

Yeah, that's the thing- since I'm in Australia I'm thinking globally. (ie. the Aussie market is too teeny thing really focus on so the next best thing is the world market)... and Nokia still owns that with ordinary non-smartphones.

The most recent data I could find for the US market from smartphone VS Non-smartphone market is here:
http://www.comscoredatamine.com/2010/12/u-s-smartphone-vs-non-smartphone-subscriber-share/

Aparently even in the US ordinary phones are still in the majority by a factor of 4 to 1, though that level is always decreasing. So even there people will be buying new non-smartphones.
I suspect media hype favours smartphones and telecommunications companies prefer it that way since they see more profits there in the long term.

Subscriber share doesn't mean sales are higher for lower end phones. People tend to get locked in with a specific phone for at least 1-2 years and prices really didn't start dropping until recently. That's why you have the 10% turnover just in the past year. With where the price points are now, I wouldn't be surprised to see 20% turnover in the next year.

Even looking at global sales, though, those top selling nokias got the vast majority of their sales prior to 2007. They get listed as the best selling cell phones because in terms of total units since their launch thay have outsold any other phone on the market. If you look at current sales, though, they are overshadowed by the current top selling smart phones. To say they are still the top sellers is like saying Super Mario Brothers (the NES one) is the best selling game right now because it has more overall units sold than anything on the market.

Talking hard numbers, the top selling cell phone was the Nokia 1100, which pushed 250 million units from 2003 until the present. 200 million of those sales were prior to 2007, the last 50 million were in the past four years (still making it the best selling non-smartphone in that time). The iPhone has sold 100 million over the same four year period, though. The Samsung Galaxy S sold 15 million just in it's first six months. Nokia's not touching those numbers right now. In fact, their market share continues to shrink, mostly attributed to their inability to make a strong competitor for the iPhone and Android phones currently on the market.

I'm going to get so much hate for this but:

Harry Potter (the books). They're OKAY, but honestly, they really aren't the great, original classics that it has been made out to be. I've read so many books that are millions of times better and more original than them that it's just a little frustrating for me that they're is so big. Not only that, but some of the things put in to make the world of wizards 'MAGICAL' I find to be completely asinine and pointless.

If I want to read a book where an unlikely hero with his rag-tag group of buddies set out to destroy a dark lord, I'll just read Lord of the Rings, thank you.

Rocky Horror Picture Show. Just...what the hell? I really tried to watch it, but I kept getting bored and wanted to do something more exciting the whole time. I couldn't find any plot in it and when I tried to make sense of it, I just ended up falling asleep. I didn't think the songs were catchy enough to warrant me listening.

All in all, I thought it was boring and made no sense.

Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name. It's a decent comic with good art, but JEEZ.

Quentin Tarantino- Of the things he's directly done, Pulp Fiction is the only one I found halfway watchable. That said, Kill Bill ranks as one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I swear this guy's niche is making live action cartoons for adults.

Devil May Cry series- I don't like any of these flashy button masher types (are you fighting or having a seizure in mid air?), but I absolutely cannot get worked up over DMC. All style, no substance. Dante kinda begs for a knee to the groin for all his presumed coolness.

CSI- Outside the cute gothy girl and the ever popular 'yeeeeah' meme, what is there to this show? The characters have such bland divorced personalities most of the time. Kinda odd when the extras are more engaging than the main characters.

Jesse Eisenberg- *glares*

Chernobog
Quentin Tarantino- Of the things he's directly done, Pulp Fiction is the only one I found halfway watchable. That said, Kill Bill ranks as one of the worst movies I've ever seen. I swear this guy's niche is making live action cartoons for adults.

Aside from the pulp fiction aspect i largely agree, covered in the first post though.

Chernobog
Devil May Cry series- I don't like any of these flashy button masher types (are you fighting or having a seizure in mid air?), but I absolutely cannot get worked up over DMC. All style, no substance. Dante kinda begs for a knee to the groin for all his presumed coolness.

Although I like some button mashers DMC certainly isn't one of them.

Chernobog
CSI- Outside the cute gothy girl and the ever popular 'yeeeeah' meme, what is there to this show? The characters have such bland divorced personalities most of the time. Kinda odd when the extras are more engaging than the main characters.

I have never met anyone who watches those shows, I could never get into them at all.

Chernobog
Jesse Eisenberg- *glares*

My first thought was "Who?"

A google search and yeah well he's okay I guess. Doesn't offend me, nor excite me either. A young Tom Hanks perhaps.

So while I can definitely see a purpose behind having a handheld device that does everything, I rally have to wonder how Apple has managed to dupe their loyal fan base THIS LONG with their line of iCrap. They still don't address problems they have had since the original iPod, they don't listen to their customers, they have terrible customer support, they are staunch supporters of DRM software that limits how you use the media that you've paid for, and their syncing software is the worst abomination to grace a computer of any type, ever. God only knows why people continue to line up to pay inflated prices for the garbage they shovel onto their store shelves.