I think they have slightly different meanings where “use” is more direct like a tool and “utilize” is more indirect like a system but that could be more about context than meaning. The words “usage” and “utilization” show this more where I would expect “usage” to be binary or integer and “utilization” to be fractional or percentage. That context and expectation is important for clear writing.
I agree that utilize is distinct from use, in that it makes something useful in a novel way; you might utilize a flat stone to dig, where you would otherwise use a shovel.
But I also agree with GP that many words like this are chosen just to sound more impressive, in the same way that people say 'at this time' instead of 'now.'
This helped me understand what I was getting at so I’ll try explaining again now with that.
The words are typically used in two different contexts, one more professional (utilize) and one more casual (use). The words can be chosen to hint at which context we’re in or shift the context locally if needed.
For example, a story about a group of drunk guys could say that one of them utilized a flat stone to dig, to add humour since we’re clearly not in that professional context.
I'm sure a lot of people would like this to be true, but it's right there in the definition of use: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/use. Anywhere you can use "utilize" you can also equally use "use." One subsumes the other.
Personally, anytime I see the word "utilize" it makes me think the writer is just trying to sound smart or "put on airs." For me it has the opposite effect that the writer is trying to achieve.
«Use» and «utilise» are not always interchangeable. «The burglar utilised the door to escape» would sound comical at best, or it would have the domain knowledge intrinsic to the forensics.
But «utilise» is almost always interchangeable with «employ», which almost always has the same meaning.
I don’t know if Cory Doctorow has read the “fantastic 1981 novel”, but I have (decades ago) and as I recall the plot of the book and the plot of the movie are very different from each other. The author of the book didn’t write the screenplay and I doubt he had much (if anything) to do the character designs in the movie. So even if he has the rights to his novel back, it’s not at all clear to me that he could just make (or sell a license to make) a straight, recognizable sequel to Disney’s movie without getting back into bed with Disney, and clearly Disney isn’t interested or they’d have done something by now.
I read the "fantastic 1981 novel", too, and you know what? It wasn't very good. It had a lot of really interesting world-building and some cool ideas, but the characters were flat and the central mystery was terrible. Despite common wisdom, the book is not always better than the movie.
I mean, given that Disney wasn't doing anything new with Roger Rabbit, I'm glad he got the rights back. But I think part of the reason that very little new material got produced is that the first movie was kind of lightning in a bottle. It's possible other production companies would have had to be involved to get something new done, depending on how the rights were parceled out. (We're all talking about Disney here because that's who Doctorow focused on, but it was a co-production with Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment.) And I think you're right that he's unlikely to have the rights to do a sequel that's too close to the original.
Yeah the Roger Rabbit is a miracle where multiple major studios came together and allowed their IP to be in the same work. Disney, Warner Bros, Fleischer Studios, Harvey Comics, King Features Syndicate, Felix the Cat Productions, Turner Entertainment, and Universal Pictures/Walter Lantz Productions all agreed to share their characters. One of Steven Spielbergs great accomplishments was negotiating this. With how protective these studios are about their IP anymore I doubt we'd see anything close to the Roger Rabbit movie sadly.
Not to mention some of the actors have passed like Paul Reuben who really sold the cartoon aspect of Roger Rabbit.
Roger Rabbit was voiced by Charles Fleischer. (Paul Reubens was under consideration in an earlier version, and you can find his voice tests out on YouTube, which might be what you're remembering.)
Paul Reubens wasn't great. With the right direction he could easily have been as good as Fleischer, but I'm sure he was (incorrectly in this case) trying to show he could be less over the top than Pee Wee Herman, who was a known quantity in LA at that time.
What fascinated me is how I reacted to the Jessica Rabbit pencil test, where she snuggles up to the live actor. Even in that low resolution, lousy video transfer, I had a visceral reaction to her character. Those animators were all kinds of good even for a minor demo.
Roger Rabbit was voiced by Charles Fleischer (no relation to Max and Dave Fleischer of Fleischer Studios), who is currently still working (and also voiced Roger's cameo in the Chip and Dale movie that was a spiritual sequel).
Disney definitely owns the character designs, so Roger and Jessica Rabbit will have to look different if a new movie is made using the IP owned by the book's author.
Sometimes (often) the original is the best. Sequels are just milking more money from the concept and rarely match the original let alone exceed it. It's the laziest sort of movie-making.
In this case it’s not that there is litigation. It’s that Steven Spielberg must approve any and all content featuring Roger Rabbit. The delinquent partner who sits on their hands and does nothing is Spielberg.
No they think "its bullshit that you can't get out of it, since I did it myself". The argument from the left is not "we should help poor people since they are miserable" its that "its impossible for poor people to help themselves", why do left wing people try to make that bullshit claim that will just create more oponents?
I think we should help poor people, but I also think that its not hard for poor people to work hard and stop being poor today. If you want my support just say you wanna help poor people, don't try to tell me that its impossible for poor people to help themselves because then I will argue against you.
Like, why equate the two opinions "you can work yourself out of poverty" and "we shouldn't help poor people", those are two entirely different kinds of opinions.
The problem is that it's easy to do it wrong and the C compiler doesn't help you. RAII prevents you from leaking the resource, but the complaint in the post is that it can be cumbersome to use RAII in C++ if acquisition can fail and you want to handle that failure.
Swift doesn't capture a stack trace in the `Error` object, but Xcode can break when an error is thrown if you set a “Swift Error Breakpoint”, and the debugger will show you the stack trace. Under the hood it just sets breakpoints on the runtime functions `swift_willThrow` and `swift_willThrowTypedImpl`.
Another really nice thing about Swift is that you have to put the `try` keyword in front of any expression that can throw. This means there's no hidden control flow: if some function call can throw, you're informed at the call site and don't have to look at the function declaration.
I say limited because the compiler doesn't (yet, as of 6.2) perform typed throw inference for closures (a closure that throws is inferred to throw `any Error`). I have personally found this sufficiently limiting that I've given up using typed throws in the few places I want to, for now.
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