I don't want to see Jacksons 'interpretation' of Middle Earth. The more I see Jacksons LOTR, the more it irritates me. The parts that follow the book are great, and the casting, effects and cinematography are fantastic. I completely get that things like Tom Bombadil and the scouring of the Shire had to be left out. But it's the things he put in, completely unnecessarily, that cause growing annoyance over time. Dwarf tossing, Orcs swarming like cockroaches, men of Gondor no more than orc fodder. Bah I say.

It's like Jackson thought 'well here's a pretty good book, by a talented writer, but I am more creative, and I can improve the story.'

What a conceited idiot he is.

LOTR was polished and perfected over more than 30 years, by the mind of a shining intellect. LOTR movie is brilliant because of the strength of the story it is based on, and lots and lots of money. LOTR movie totally fails because of what some Kiwi yob with a degree in ego has added to it.

I am very sad to hear he now wants to spread his ruin to other parts of the tale. He is doing the work of Sauron if you ask me.

No pun intended, but Phil Specter knew that 49 years ago. The son 'Da doo Ron Ron' was deliberately made to be the sum of all pop songs, which was the theory behind the Wall of Sound', and IMHO has artistic merit for that point alone.

It depends on the audience. A physics review journal or a medical publication for doctors is going to be very unappealing if it's written in laymans terms. On the other hand magazines like New Scientist and Scientific American do a pretty good job of making scientific news accessible to everyone, and take the effort to explain jargon terms when used.

OTH, IMHO, I LMAO at the irony of where journalism is heading in general. DUCY?

My point was; I would like to be rich enough to give away $500M too.

Many may well consider such acts of philanthropy completely altruistic. Whether you agree with the cause or not, only the most cynical of people would view it as 'marketing' or 'self promotion', and even if it actually is that; so what? The people who will benefit from it wont care - it doesn't matter what the motivation for doing it is, the end result is what is important.

Personally, I think the motivation is truly altruistic and comes from a genuine desire to do good in the world. The point I would make is; anyone 'richer than God' is going to acquire the same philosophy. Why are mega rich people altruistic? Because they can be. When every conceivable want and desire is met, what is left but to be generous to your fellow man?

I for one would welcome the opportunity to do exactly that myself. If only I had some software I could sell to IBM.

In those days, the earth was still stationary at the centre of the universe. Under those conditions astronomical phenomena may have only been visible from and effect some parts of the earth and not others. I guess it would depend on which crystal sphere the supernova occurred in.

In those days, the earth was still stationary in the centre of the universe. Under those conditions astronomical phenomena may have only been visible from some parts of the earth and not others.

I thought it had already returned from the Delta quadrant 10 years ago?

lol - don't even know what an astroturfer is. Nice title though.

I don't know why this got modded down. I live in Australia and it's a perfectly accurate observation. +1 informative.

A few years ago I resigned from a company on less than perfect terms. They took the laptop I had been using and sent it for forensic analysis (for some paranoid reason I can only guess). Anyway, the day before I left I had reformatted the drive and loaded Ubuntu to replace the Windows 2000 OS that was on there.

The report from the (so called) forensic lab was that I had 'used powerful encryption to hide the contents of the hard drive'. Hell, I didn't even use a proper overwrite format, just the fast format option.

So there you go. Either a 10 minute Linux install will beat a professional forensic investigation, or it's proof against fools. I favor the latter.

Well, no point arguing with people with tin ears.

Really? Modded as flamebait? Are you all deaf? I am not an audiophile by any means, as you can probably tell from my use of terminology. But surely everyone agrees an MP3 sounds crap compared to a CD or an LP?

It's already April 2 hear, so alert mode for April Fools has been switched off. 2nd story I have been sucked in by. 2nd -1 for off topic too I guess.

Anything but lossy compressed MP3's! An MP3 just sucks the life out of the sound. Even on an average stereo system in my car, while driving, the loss of fidelity is noticeable, and just becomes more and more annoying over time. If anyone thinks and MP3 is in any way a substitute for 40Khz dynamic range, then they just have no soul.