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Entertainment Software Linux

Linux Enhances Shakespeare 174

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you-can't-make-this-stuff-up dept.
marXian writes "Opening in Norwich UK this week and subsequently visiting Cambridge is makb3th from theatre company pirateutopia.org. The show is very much Linux-powered using aalib, XDirectFB, VLC and more to set the piece (an adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth) on an off-shore data haven." Allright, pick your jaw up off the floor ;)
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Linux Enhances Shakespeare More

Linux Enhances Shakespeare

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  • Well, I suppose the plays are GPL now...

  • MacBeth.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by MadBiologist ( 657155 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @11:06AM (#5583150)
    Double Double... AMD, Intel are in trouble, Chipset burn and servers bubble.... With apologies to Big Willie!

  • Oh, yay, great (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Hey everyone, lets put on an avant garde show! [theonion.com]

  • Linus MacBeth (Score:3, Funny)

    by joshsnow ( 551754 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @11:08AM (#5583160) Journal
    "Life is a tale told by an idiot, who but struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is gone - unless he is a 19yr old Finnish Computer Science student, in which case he achieves immortality"
    "tomorrow, tomorrow and tomorrow, Linux World Domination is all I see before me"

  • Shouldn't they call it: (Score:4, Funny)

    by Mac Degger ( 576336 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @11:11AM (#5583177) Journal
    YASA (Yet Another Shakespeare adaptation)?

  • (2*B) OR (NOT(2*B)) (Score:5, Funny)

    by GQuon ( 643387 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @11:13AM (#5583190) Journal
    If ((2*B) OR (NOT(2*B))){
    answer="yes";
    }
    else{
    answer="no";
    }

    printf(be);

    >a.out
    >yes

    • I prefer the regex version... /(bb|[^b]{2})/

      To the regex-ignorant... the above matches two B's or not-B twice ("to be or not to be").

      There's even a t-shirt [thinkgeek.com] :)

    • MacBeth, not Hamlet (Score:5, Informative)

      by Jan-Pascal ( 21029 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @11:25AM (#5583270) Homepage
      Go re-read your Shakespeare. The "to be or not to be" quote is from Hamlet, not from MacBeth.

  • Choice of pager (Score:5, Funny)

    by Migrant Programmer ( 19727 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @11:15AM (#5583197) Journal
    The show is very much Linux-powered using aalib, XDirectFB, VLC and more

    Come on now, don't you know all the cool geeks are using less these days?
  • SEYTON: The server, my lord, is dead!

    MACBETH: She should have died hereafter;
    There would have been a time for such a word.
    To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
    Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
    To the last syllable of recorded time,
    And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
    The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
    Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
    That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
    And then is heard no more: it is a tale
    Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
    Si

    • Re:Context is everything. (Score:5, Funny)

      by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @11:36AM (#5583320) Homepage
      Ok, I'll give it a shot:

      -+-+-+-+

      SEYTON: The server, my lord, is dead!

      MACBETH: It should have died hereafter;
      There would have been bandwidth for such requests.
      Page after page after page
      Creeps in this petty pace from client to client
      To the last tag of a slashdotted site,
      and all our access logs have lighted admins
      to way to budget denials. Out, out router activity light!
      The web's but a dancing banner ad, a poor merchandiser
      that struts and frets his hour upon the screen
      and then is heard no more: it is an offer
      made by an idiot, full of grandiose promises,
      signifying nothing.
  • Like the Scottish Play [wvnet.edu], data heavens still seem to be a cursed venture.
    • data heavens still seem to be a cursed venture.

      Cursed heavens... that seems like a bad idea...
      cursed havens, on the other hand... that might be a reality. I just think that "heaven" by definition, can't be cursed...

      • A data haven by any other name would still be as....

        Ah, who am I kidding?!

        If your data does wind up in data heaven, you're pretty much screwed.

  • Shakespeare + Simpsons = (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sczimme ( 603413 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @11:21AM (#5583246)

    MacHomer [machomer.com]. An excerpt from the 'About' page:

    This one-man vocal spectacular features over 50 voices from TV's favourite dysfunctional family in a hilarious performance of Shakespeare's bloodiest tragedy! Starring 'Homer Simpson' as Macbeth and 'Marge' as Lady Macbeth (in a script which remains 85% Shakespeare), MacHomer is hysterically funny and amazing to watch.

    A friend of mine saw MacHomer in the DC area and though it was great; apparently the voices are quite accurate.

    Oops - sorry: Linux! Linux! Linux!

    (Don't want to be off-topic. D'oh.)

  • Breaking news!! (Reuters) 15:22 GMT (Score:3, Funny)

    by borgdows ( 599861 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @11:25AM (#5583268)
    Shakespeare is dead! Netcraft confirms!
  • ..well, not so much spot as Slashdot. Predictably suffering.

  • Not so fast! (Score:5, Funny)

    by paiute ( 550198 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @11:28AM (#5583285)
    This just in - the US Congress today extended copyright protection back to "three business days before the Earth coalesced from the formless void", so the laywer representing the descendants of the Bard will be calling on these IP pirates and terrorists this afternoon with the mother of all cease-and-desist orders.

    • Re:Not so fast! (Score:5, Funny)

      by MrHanky ( 141717 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @01:12PM (#5583946) Homepage Journal
      A Congress spokesperson said, commenting on the new extension:

      All causes shall give way: We are in copyright
      Step't in so far that, should we wade no more,
      Returning were as tedious as go o'er:
      Strange things we have in head, that will to hand;
      Which must be acted ere they may be scann'd.

      Lawyers are currently debating whether it's feasible to build a time machine to sue those who infringe copyright even before the works have been scanned.
  • I suppose you could also use the GNU/Bard kernel. It's really up to you, because Iambic Pentameter wants to be free!

  • Klingon? (Score:3, Funny)

    by eingram ( 633624 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @11:28AM (#5583290)
    I bet it's best when presented in its original Klingon.
  • Macbeth:
    Here upon the platform oil
    I do hack and code and toil
    free information for them all
    yet I recieve naught but their gall
    They shall rue they day of spite
    When their trust becomes my might

    • Use C, or not use C, that is the question:
      Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
      The flags and warnings of a rude compiler,
      Or to take arms against a sea of errors,
      And by debugging, fix them? To code, to hack,
      No more; and by a hack to say we end
      The type-check and the thousand other checks
      Pascal is heir to, 'tis a compilation
      Devoutly to be wish'd. To code, to hack;
      To hack! perchance to test: ay, there's the rub;
      For in that hacker's bliss what bugs may come,
      When we have written out this awful

    • Huh? (Score:1)

      by Dthoma ( 593797 )
      I thought Shakespeare wrote virtually all of his plays, sonnets and poems in blank verse? Didn't he only use the occasional rhyming couple now and then at the end of a scene for emphasis?
      • I wasn't trying to copy Shakespeare there, just having fun with rhymes and the given storyline. :)
      • Shakespeare wrote virtually all of his plays in blank verse, relying on couplets to really drive home some of the important concepts (not so much end-of-scenes), although there were a few passages with end-rhymes.

        Shakespearean sonnets, however, virtually always carry the rhyme scheme: ABABCDCDEFEFGG. His most famous sonnet would be:

        Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
        Thou art more lovely and more temperate,
        Rough winds do shake the darling buds of may,
        And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

        Someti

  • iMacBeth (Score:3, Funny)

    by GQuon ( 643387 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @11:30AM (#5583300) Journal
    The new iMacBeth, broght to you by MacOnLinux.
    In stylish blood red colors.

  • shakespeare parser (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Miguel de Icaza ( 660439 ) <`trowel' `at' `gmail.com'> on Monday March 24, 2003 @11:51AM (#5583403) Homepage Journal
    sorry if this is going offtopic. but reading about this reminded me of a paper I read a few years back... It was about a computer program that parsed the full text of shakespears lifes work and then could predict the probability that a play or part of a play was infact not written by shakespeare. The program was used to independantly prove a hypothisis long held by scholars about some of the sonnets. Can't seem to find this interesting topic anyware on google - anyone remember it?

    Probably the tech was bought up by the CIA and classified - could be being used to verify identities of known persons in transcripts of discussions intelligence intercepts in bagdad right now.
    • You mean this [shu.ac.uk]?
    • I can foresee a number of problems with this.

      Mainly, you have to be sure that the canon you feed it is actually entirely written by the author.

      Since: 1) The Shakespeare texts were pieced together by actors in the plays--each only having their own cue's and their own lines (and who knows what changes slipped in during this process
      2) Since the authorship of some of the peices have been question -- which is the whole point of doing this right -- how do you know what you fed is actually part of shakespear
  • Is me or are the fonts different on this /. story in Mozilla v1.3?

  • Hmmm. (Score:1)

    by Boing ( 111813 )
    What rhymes with XDirectFB?

  • All the web's a stage (Score:5, Funny)

    by arvindn ( 542080 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @12:00PM (#5583444) Homepage Journal
    All the www's a stage,
    And all the web designers and database admins merely players:
    They have their exits and their entrances;
    And one programmer in his time plays many parts,
    His acts being seven ages. At first the n00b,
    Drooling and clicking on his brother's comp.
    And then the whining freshman, with his pirated WinXP
    And shining new imac, lugging his laptop
    Unwillingly to class. And then the coder,
    Cursing like furnace, with a woeful sigh
    On the night of the deadline. Then a hacker,
    Full of strange perl scripts and bearded like RMS,
    Jealous in GNU/honor, sudden and quick in attacking M$,
    Seeking the wizard reputation
    Even in the economic downturn. And then the guru,
    In fair round belly with long flowing hair,
    With eyes severe and beard uncut,
    Full of wise one-liners and modern programming paradigms;
    And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
    Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
    With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
    His youthful PDP11 code, well saved, now obsolete
    On his rusting i686; and his quick nerdy keystrokes,
    Falling again toward newbie typing speeds, null pointers
    And unmatched parentheses in his code. Last scene of all,
    That ends this strange eventful history,
    Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
    Sans keyboard, sans monitor, sans processor, sans everything.

    Didn't get it? Read Shakespeare's original [shu.ac.uk]

  • new topic (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jonnyfivealive ( 611482 ) <skinnyjonsperformance@ y a hoo.com> on Monday March 24, 2003 @12:03PM (#5583457) Homepage Journal
    now, ive only been on /. for 6 mos or so, but i would imagine that that topic pic had to be made expecially for this story... how many times does theater come up on /.?
    • (Pssssst [slashdot.org] )
    • Thath's their generic symbol for "the arts" and has been used at least four times recently. Just click on it...
    • shiver me timbers, i spose i just never noticed the icon itself, because i remember most of those stories... ah well
    • The topic is "ENTERTAINMENT"... If you disable topic icons you would see that for yourself.

      I pitty the moderators that gave you +1.
      • wow, im wondering whether i should even reply to someone with such a dark, scary nick...am i safe?

        perhaps those moderators dont take it quite as seriously as some of the mod nazis around here. maybe they even agreed with me, because im not the only one to notice that that topic doesnt make it out much. maybe i dont want to disable the topic icons, maybe i like those pretty little things!!!my sincere appologies for not doing an exhaustive search on the matter before i so foolhardedly used my freedom of s

        • dark, scary nick...am i safe?

          I don't see the problem.

          perhaps those moderators dont take it quite as seriously

          The point of moderation is to highlight posts with interesting content... not to save someone from spending 5 seconds to find something out.

          maybe i dont want to disable the topic icons

          I never suggested you do. In fact, you could have hovered your cursor over the icon for a couple seconds and read the alt text to find out what the toric was.

          to ask a simple question.

          It wasn't the question.

  • Wrong old story... (Score:5, Funny)

    by gmuslera ( 3436 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @12:04PM (#5583465) Homepage Journal
    ... instead a millon monkeys on typewriters to reproduce all shakespeare books, all they need are penguins.
  • I just hope there are no mysterious goings-on while the play is being downloaded/performed. Is it even safe to use the name, however l33t0rized, as the actual title?

    Maybe they should call it "The ASCII Play"

    (I haven't read the article, I suppose the FB and VLC and others can be used as video players, and maybe everyone doesn't think that watching The Matrix using a high-res aalib window is really cool.)

    • Re:The ASCII Play (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fgodfrey ( 116175 )
      The superstition allows you to use the title as long as you're performing it. However, I was a little bit nervous when I stage managed Macbeth on Friday the 13th... Fortunately, no actors required major medical attention after the sword fights :)

      Now, Slashdot may have some trouble since they have now used the name without the performance so if you read that a fire destroyed all the computers in the /. cage and no other equipment, don't be surprised :)

  • I have always wondered how you say "31337" out loud.

    I gave up, and just go "three one... you know".

    • I always figured it was pronounced as:
      "thirty-one, three, thirty-seven", or
      "Ee-leet".
      • *chuckle* I happen to be fond of 113440, myself... Ah, the fun that can be had with a mere pocket calculator.
    • > I have always wondered how you say "31337" out loud.

      Which kind of makes you the dictionary defintion of a 14m3r.

      If you don't know....now you know...

  • Awful play (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gantic ( 460802 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @12:47PM (#5583784)
    This actual play premiered in my school (Thurston Community College) just outside Bury St. Edmunds. Everyone in the audience (drama students aged 13-18) thought the play was awful, the acting abysmal and the scene where some dodgy old man started making love to an ugly woman on stage terrible. If you're thinking of seeing makb3th (or as we like to pronounce mak-be-three-ith) then think again, it was not a good version of the original macbeth.

    Having said that, pretty cool that something in my area got slashdotted, never thought I would see the day! \o/
    • Sorry you didn't have a good time.

      Maybe there's a problem with the difference between adaptation and modernisation here. The play's not supposed to be a version of Macbeth - its about a guy who becomes obsessed _with_ Macbeth. So you're right its not a "good version" but then its not really a version at all.
      We've had more positive views from others who were in the audience at that preview (though I guess they don't read /.).
      You're dead right on one count though - Leighton is a dodgy old man...
  • If these guys are so full of being open source, why don't they, for example, open up their chyper-phunk-slanged version of mcbeth for us to read, enjoy, alter if needed. That would be a good sign of giving an open performance.
  • "Linux Enhances Shakespeare"

    Would Slashdot be interested if I were to create a 'woop-de-doo!' icon?

  • ...in realtime in your VRML-viewer?


    Take a look at planethamlet [spatialknowledge.com]
    an AVI of the running app is here [spatialknowledge.com]

  • Here's Macbeth's famous speech, rendered in 1337. I think FARK nailed it when they called leet "cyber-retard."

    70M0rr0\\/, 4|\||) 70M0rr0\\/, 4|\||) 70M0rr0\\/ (r33|>5 ||\| 7|-||5 |>377`/ |>4(3 |=r0M |)4`/ 70 |)4`/,(|-|453 570(|00r |>14`/3r 7|-|47 57ru75 4|\||) |=r375 |-||5 |-|0ur u|>0|\| 7|-|3 57493 4|\||) 7|-|3|\| |5 |-|34r|) |\|0 M0r3: |7 |5 4 7413 701|) 8`/ 4|\| ||)|07, |=u11 0|= 50u|\||) 4|\||) |=ur`/, 5|9|\|||=`/||\|9 |\|07|-|||\|9.

  • [Flash] should have died hereafter... (Score:3, Informative)

    by dr00g911 ( 531736 ) on Monday March 24, 2003 @04:09PM (#5585328)
    Looks ambitious, and is a great context for adapting Macbeth.

    That said, Macbeth is my most favorite of the Bard's plays, and also the play of his that I've acted in 3 productions of... I know the material rather well, you could say.

    One of the charms of The Scottish Play is its inherent level of accessibility to just about anyone. The Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll (well, witchy, at any rate) factor. The core characters are tragically flawed at a very base level -- human nature: pride, jealousy, lust, ambition, greed and trust. If acted and directed well, the language acts as less of a barrier for entry to this play than many of Shakespeare's works.

    Judging by the creative direction choices made in the *cough* "trailer*, production sketches, etc. -- it seems that they're purposefully trying to make it as 1337 and "insider" as possible. Problem is, they really don't seem to get the 1337 part. So, you have a bit of a catch-22. The viewer has to be both 1) very familiar with Macbeth to get the in-joke and 2) a 31337 h4x0r to get the context. Or completely fucked up.

    The short of it: if the same creative team is responsible for the production as was responsible for the most abhorrent piece of flash drivel I've seen in a year, I'd sooner volunteer for a full upper GI exploratory than sit through 2 hours of that kind of pain.

    That's not to say that tech and Shakespeare can't mate well. Apple has a feature about another version of Macbeth done in the same spirit [apple.com] -- but much less... well... full of itself?

    Definitely worth a look if the fusion of tech and theatre intrigues you.
  • pirateutopia.org -> thx god for mozilla text zoom feature :P

    yes, IE has it too, but doesn't work as good
  • I was hoping I wasn't the only one completely baffled here.

    I guess I'm just the only one who will speak up with something other than a bard quote.

    Simply put, I browsed the site and I'm boggled.
  • From the project site:


    >On an abandoned oil platform in the North Sea, a community of libertarian cypher-punks establish the world's first free data haven:

    Great. Shalkespeare redone in leetspeek as a William Gibson clone. I think I can safely skip this one. "Cypher-punk" is just soo 1994 Wired anyway, isn't it?

    For a more accessible reworking of Macbeth, the other night I watched Scotland, PA [imdb.com], set in a hamburger restaurant in rural Pennsylvania in the 1970's. James LeGros as Macbeth, Christopher
  • Hope that you realize Shakespeare is not the Author. Most if not all was written by De-vere instead..
  • "to b a b or not to b, a b? that is the question..."
  • Does this remind anyone else of the terminals [bungie.org] in Bungie's Marathon series? Specifically the messed up poetry ones that confused the hell out of me when I played it as a kid. It's certainly an interesting way to present art, whatever the heck that art is.

    ---
    "Orbis non suficit"

  • as for computerized shakespeare, i prefer hamlet [niftee-tron.com]. :)

    after all, human actors are all so finicky and outdated.

    plus, there's nothing quite like hearing zarvox give the pronouncement that "rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead!"

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