I see this as one user, solving a personal issue at the burden of everyone else around them. Seems more like arrogance than zen.
The ‘Dune’ Screenplay Was Written in Movie Master on MS-DOS
61–70 of 224 posts
Re: The ‘Dune’ Screenplay Was Written in Movie Master on MS-DOS
#62I often wonder this about old tech. What attracts some people to keep using it? Is it the comfort or familiarity or is it minimalism?
I sometimes want to feel the experience of my Pentium 1 PC with that rubberdome keyboard and ball mouse. But I know it was a frustrating experience. The mouse didn't work exactly, we had to alt+ctrl+delete every 20-30 minutes. They keyboard felt like jello. The CRT monitor gave us headaches.
Moreover I have a 2010 era functioning hybrid laptop that is collecting dust. I like the idea of familiarity it is certainly not a comfortable or faster experience. Is it veiled minimalism underneath you have frustration that you can't do anything that would be distraction because your computer is ancient.
Re: The ‘Dune’ Screenplay Was Written in Movie Master on MS-DOS
#63Re: The ‘Dune’ Screenplay Was Written in Movie Master on MS-DOS
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's fantastic. Go see it in Imax if you can. Going to the theaters will help to get part 2 made.
I was so disappointed after spending like 12 hours watching this film to it ending without telling the complete story. Never mind the Part 1 title card at the beginning. I just assumed they were going to expand upon the story not cut it into pieces. Then to find out that they didn't already green light the rest of the story being made. WTF? Who does this in today's movie universe? We get the full story approved to ma…
I fully expect it's greenlit, but not publicly so.
They'll openly greenlight it when theater attendance drops off, after a couple of weeks, and ride the extra publicity.
Re: The ‘Dune’ Screenplay Was Written in Movie Master on MS-DOS
#65Are we going to see old refurbished devices be sold as distraction-free machines? Does a new market for somewhat-luddite computers exist? I'd like to buy something like the freewrite [1] but cheaper, any suggestions? [1] https://getfreewrite.com/
I've had similar experiences with green screen enterprise manufacturing software. It had a remarkable amount of features that were accessed via nested command sequences that didn't take too long to learn, and could easily handle 800 users simultaneously with no lag or interruption.
I watched some order takers at a food service company a few years back. They worked in a green screen program -- not sure if it was DOS, or some terminal.
The speed at which they worked was unreal. Their hands never left the keyboard. They knew where everything was, and they could literally retrieve any information in less than one second, both due to the speed their fingers worked on the keyboard, and the responsiveness of the app.
I remember thinking that I need to pay more attention to keyboard-only usage of the next app I write.
Re: The ‘Dune’ Screenplay Was Written in Movie Master on MS-DOS
#66On the one hand, as a technologist, this pisses me off because we've advanced so far in the field of word processing. Autocorrect, holding more than 40 pages in memory, cut/paste, etc. Why does this Luddite persist in the old ways?!?!?! But as a writer who knows the pains of distraction... maybe he's on to something?
I know what you mean. But, remember that most of the best writing in history was produced by candlelight. Improvements to word processing probably lowered the barrier so that more people could write, but if you're already a writer it may not make much of a difference to you. And since the most difficult part of writing is sitting down and doing it for a long time, the key technology involved may not be the word processor, it may be the rituals that make that happen for you over and over.
Re: The ‘Dune’ Screenplay Was Written in Movie Master on MS-DOS
#67What I like about this is the 40 page limit. He actually considers it a kind of feature, and this arbitrary limit has contributed to his works. One would think that if 40 pages comes to full, the writer would just find a way to extend it, but instead he didn't bother and shortened instead.
I distinctly remember an assignment from college where there was a 12-page limit on the report for a machine learning assignment. Some people freaked out over this - "12 pages isn't even enough for me to finish describing the problem!" And the professor's response was essentially "If that's true, then you are writing the wrong report." Brevity is the soul of wit indeed, and having these sorts of constraints can definitely yield a better result under some circumstances.
Re: The ‘Dune’ Screenplay Was Written in Movie Master on MS-DOS
#68Are we going to see old refurbished devices be sold as distraction-free machines? Does a new market for somewhat-luddite computers exist? I'd like to buy something like the freewrite [1] but cheaper, any suggestions? [1] https://getfreewrite.com/
Alphasmart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AlphaSmart
I had a Neo2 for a while. Transferring is weird but it is just a USB keyboard that types whatever is in memory making it future-proof.
Re: The ‘Dune’ Screenplay Was Written in Movie Master on MS-DOS
#69What I like about this is the 40 page limit. He actually considers it a kind of feature, and this arbitrary limit has contributed to his works. One would think that if 40 pages comes to full, the writer would just find a way to extend it, but instead he didn't bother and shortened instead.
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Re: The ‘Dune’ Screenplay Was Written in Movie Master on MS-DOS
#70On the one hand, as a technologist, this pisses me off because we've advanced so far in the field of word processing. Autocorrect, holding more than 40 pages in memory, cut/paste, etc. Why does this Luddite persist in the old ways?!?!?! But as a writer who knows the pains of distraction... maybe he's on to something?
Msdos edit had cut/copy/paste. The 64k limit which I presume is the base for the 40 pages was sometimes bad, but you can just open another file.
And then there is autocorrect. I am not at all a writer, but even for me the thing causes as much trouble as it solves. Tolerable on a cell phone, but a real keyboard is a much better option than mr oh-I-don't-know-that-word-here-is-red-squigly-for-you. If a real writer is forced to use it, I understand it very well if he attacks the precocious abacus with an axe.