I wish I had read this a while before watching 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood', it would have made a lot more sense.I wish I had read this a while before watching 'Once Upon a Time in Hollywood', it would have made a lot more sense....more
There are a couple of scenes involving the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie which I appreciated mainly because I had completely forgotten about it. There There are a couple of scenes involving the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie which I appreciated mainly because I had completely forgotten about it. There unfortunately isn't a U.S. blu-ray 25th anniversary edition but I made do with finding an old DVD copy with zero special features other than captions. It's too bad this novel doesn't dig into the behind the scenes more than just recounting high level uninvolved Nintendo executives talking about it. The movie is very odd, and it would be good to know why- we need to understand it the decision making process that went into creating it....more
This book leans heavily on quotes from the interviews where I'd prefer the author to have a stronger voice and distill the essence of what they are saThis book leans heavily on quotes from the interviews where I'd prefer the author to have a stronger voice and distill the essence of what they are saying, delete minor inconsistencies and mistaken beliefs unless there is a point to it. But I understand why that is nearly impossible here: for every two Commodore employees interviewed there seem to be three conflicting viewpoints on what the best course of action would have been for the company to take. There were many projects given resources then canceled within a year or two, both fostering creative competition and squandering millions of dollars, and the people involved then fired or suffering lowered morale so that they would quit. The Amiga 500 was disliked by the original creators of the Amiga who wanted to make something more advanced and more expensive, but if that had happened I would have never owned one.
I skipped the first volume because it is more expensive and the Amiga is my main interest, but having read this I'll have to get it while waiting for The Final Years to come out.
More than a year after reading The Future Was Here I did finally start learning 68000 assembly and how to program the OCS chipset: https://github.com/lucasw/amiga_assembly, The Amiga Years helped with additional inspiration though is less technical- I need to re-read a few chapters from the Maher book now that I better understand the bitplanes, blitter, and copper....more
The history is fascinating, the most surprising details were about the WWI covert German support for Lenin and revolution within Russia- the radical aThe history is fascinating, the most surprising details were about the WWI covert German support for Lenin and revolution within Russia- the radical aims of Lenin were irrelevant because chaos would make Russia a weak opponent in WWI, and those aims were irrelevant to Lenin because world-wide Marxist revolution would surely soon topple a victorious Kaiser anyhow. That has to be one of the most disastrous cases of blowback ever?
The central story of centuries of the multi-national 'great game' giving way to a century dominated by a bipolar ideologically fueled cold war is an decent one, but the policy analysis and recommendations, parallels between Lenin and Wilson, and the rest that go beyond the facts are muddled and weak. Reveal the history and let it speak for itself, leave out extraneous stuff that that can't be adequately backed up by the rest.
The Russian response to German invasion in WWI (which is told here) vs. WWII under Stalin (which isn't in this book) is especially interesting- the first destroying a state and giving a limited victory to Germany, the second hardening the successor into a brutal machine that would defend and retake territory at any cost.
I did like the exploration of possible alternate history- an earlier U.S. entry into WWI and substantial backing of Kerensky against Lenin could save a lot of lives. But it's not really possible to roll that scenario forward that far with any certainty of always better outcomes- maybe you get a 1950s Nazi-free WWII but now blitzkrieg mixed with battlefield atomic bombs....more
At many points reads like a spreadsheet of daily financial happenings. Should either add more text about the meaning of specific changes in money/poinAt many points reads like a spreadsheet of daily financial happenings. Should either add more text about the meaning of specific changes in money/points/percentages or summarize qualitatively....more
Using the name Cristobal Colon instead of Christopher Columbus is fine, but the book is entirely about the Columbian exchange- I suppose the 'Colonic Using the name Cristobal Colon instead of Christopher Columbus is fine, but the book is entirely about the Columbian exchange- I suppose the 'Colonic exchange' is too unfortunate to propose anyone adopt.
The explanation that the little ice age was caused by reforestation following disrupted burn practices (and other reasons I missed?) is very interesting, I'd like to read a book entirely about that....more
At one point the main character puts a million dollars of his own money into the stock market in the hopes of earning money to pay legal fees, and theAt one point the main character puts a million dollars of his own money into the stock market in the hopes of earning money to pay legal fees, and then loses it all in a matter of days or weeks: in his previous professional career he made millions for himself and his employers, but on his own wasn't able to cheat the system. Perhaps the ego acquired made him worse than dumb money, I would guess a normal day trader would have pulled the plug and cut their losses far sooner.
I also expected him to be far wealthier at that point given the bonuses and yearly salary mentioned earlier in the book, but it's possible the house in London and high cost living in Tokyo and elsewhere ate up a lot of that.
Early in the book there is the mention of financial models programmed into Excel spreadsheets which formed the basis of a lot of trades. Perhaps a lot of distilled intuition and acquired heuristics can be programmed into Excel, and constant tinkering and adjustments are required? Excel seems like a crude tool, surely now people are now crafting financial models with enormous GPU neural networks? Perhaps having a team of machine learning specialists creating software that requires tens of thousands of dollars of computing hardware is not yet cost effective, but the cross-over point ought to be approaching.
Regardless of that couldn't at least LIBOR/TIBOR/etc. be set by a computer?...more
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