The only 'obsession' Americans have in regards to classification of ethnicity is the resurgence of pride certain ethnic groups feel in regards to their heritage. Back in what I would term 'the good old days' of immigration (Ellis Island as gateway to America) everyone did what they could to fit in, and adapt to their new country. Today it seems, everyone does what they can to differentiate themselves to show how special they are relative to everyone else. This has gone way overboard, in my opinion.
The classic example of this is the term 'African American' becoming more prominently used and preferred (due to politically correct thinking) in the United States. This choice of words is more acceptable the thinking goes, than simply using the term 'black'. I believe black people prefer to use this term as it somehow sounds better, and gives the sense of some special, unique classification, or entitlement. In contrast, even though I have a varied European background (half Slovakian, part German, French, and Scottish) I have no issue with being called 'white' and wouldn't expect anyone to call me 'Slovakian American'.
I remember that jingle too, but for some reason I thought the slogan was "Your joystick won't go wacko when you buy Wico". Again, I was only 8 or 9 at the time, so could just be poor memory.
Heh, apparently you missed the intense math portions of Mr. Wizard's show.
I was born in the early 70s, so was ages 9-19 during the 80s. How would that have prevented us from watching the program? I too loved seeing Mr. Wizard. May he rest in peace.
A tangential comment if I may...Those were simpler and better times to be quite honest. At least for children. We had honest-to-goodness classic shows to watch like Bugs Bunny and The Little Rascals. How they don't broadcast those shows any longer I'll never know. Not spastic enough for today's kids?
Don't bother with dedicated RAID hardware controllers. I've seen the Linux md disk driver mentioned, and while a viable option, the better option IMO is Solaris x86 using ZFS. Basically you've got an industrial-strength piece of storage software ripe with features begging to be used in this situation....for free.
If you're interested in an industrial strength hardware platform to go with the software, go for one of these.
If you're interested in rolling your own, then simply put together an x86 box with as many SATA controllers and buses you can stuff in a box and set the disk up as JBOD (just make sure the hardware is Solaris x86 compatible of course). Create some ZFS pools of whatever RAID suits your need, and sit back and enjoy data glory.
Oh, and simply pick a protocol of your choosing to serve up the data to your clients...iSCSI, SMB, NFS, whatever.
1. You're generalizing too much here. IT folk vary in their roles, just like any other profession. Some are technical specialists, some are project managers, some are architects, some are general management, etc. If I'm an architect or a manager, yes, I've got to know more about the business side. If I'm a technical specialist in a particular area, not so much. I'm not saying it's not a good idea that these people know the business side too, but it certainly isn't required many times for the job that they do.
2. Though most see being promoted to a management position as 'making it up the ladder', it is anathema to many technical specialists. Why? Well, I'm sure an IT professional in a technical area went to school and took the position they did because they wanted to work with computers in a technical capacity...not to learn how to manage people. If they wanted that they would have gotten some business degree. This situation often leads to the 'pointy headed' ignorant management we so often see...No one on the technical side wants to get promoted to the management position, so instead, a less technically astute individual (or someone non-technical period) is placed in the position of power and is too ignorant to make informed decisions. They didn't 'come from the ranks' so to speak.
3. Any IT-based decision needs to be made by IT, end of story. That's where the problems start. Does anyone think an IT department making accounting or purchasing decisions is a good idea? I didn't think so.
I agree that balance is key to slowly moving children into the different stages of life, and getting them acclimated to the real world. Ultimately, they will be able to stand on their own as independents.
What I'm curious about, is how have things changed since I was growing up (I'm 35) for an average child, and how much the day-to-day school experience differs from what I was brought up in (I went to private, Catholic schools)?
I will say that I recall having a low work vs. play and recreation ratio in the early years...that gradually changed so that as I matured, I was given more work, more responsibility, and that of course related to homework as well. I mean, I'd get close to nothing in 1st grade...maybe 20-30 minutes of homework in 4/5th grade....then by high school I'd say on average anywhere from none, to 30 minutes to a couple hours each night, depending on the classes I was taking.
The key thing I remember throughout, however, was that from my parents, my teachers, and my peers, there was always an expectation to succeed, to try your hardest, and to do your very best. That environment gave me the support and willingness to push myself harder, and ultimately become a productive and successful person. I think this environment of expectation and support in the different areas (parents, teachers, peers) is key for a young person to develop as individuals and fulfill their potential as people. I think things fall down when there is lack of support in one of those areas, or when the areas don't mesh....particularly from the parent and teacher side.
While I'm at it, I'll also mention that all kids should not only have to do some kind of homework (and get a job when they're old enough...say 12 yrs old)....they should also not all get a trophy just for participating in something. Doing so shows kids that they don't have to work hard for anything, and that they are entitled for no good reason. I think there are way too many parents out there today who think children are somehow adults already, and that they deserve all consideration and entitlement that an adult does....that somehow children possess adult-like intellect and emotions...and that they come out of the womb as 21 year olds. I think this type of parental behavior damages children much more than any possible 'bruising of self-esteem' that everyone seems to concern themselves with these days. It teaches children to become manipulative and difficult.
The answer is in the form of a question: do you have any clue as to what you're talking about?
I'm being completely serious here.
Anyone who knows anything about the IT marketplace will know that of the UNIX-variant operating systems (yes, that includes Linux), Sun Solaris has quite a significant share. In fact, a good deal of the professional UNIX admins out there prefer Solaris over the other choices, and again, that includes Linux.
I am an IT professional and have been a UNIX system administrator for ten or more years. This is a great topic of conversation.
First off, I would like to say that insulting clients and slamming users is never a good practice, and it should not be acceptable. Being a professional requires at least common courtesy. However, there are several mitigating factors to consider, some of which may be acting in unison, to produce a highly bad attitude from IT professionals as a whole. Whether this 'damages' the IT profession or not can be debated, but I believe it is very much subjective and depends on the specific situations and groups of people involved (i.e. a specific IT department's reputation at a particular company might be diminished in some peoples' eyes, but likely not IT as a whole). In any event, I'd like to point out the multitude of factors that contribute to an IT staff's bad attitude, and typically poor morale. Hopefully other non-IT types will read this so they can better understand where this attitude originates. In many cases I believe IT workers are not appreciated as much as they should be:
Pager duty - a good number of IT jobs require walking around with electronic 'tethers'. This aspect of an IT job alone is very painful. If you've never had a job requiring a pager, be thankful.
Work hours - generally, as salaried employees, an IT professional's time is not sacred. After hours. Middle of the night. Weekends. Holidays. It doesn't matter what time or place, you're expected to be availble, and often times you're expected to work when the computers aren't being used. In fact, I just worked through New Year's Eve and all of New Year's day for an emergency that came up. No sleep. Do you think the next time I was in the office any of the clients cared? Did I get paid any extra money or overtime for this? No. What did I receive for it? Scorn from the clients as the problem was not fixed sooner, and second guessing of the competence of our staff.
Workload - Varies from shop to shop, but everyone's trying to squeeze more work out of less people. New projects, maintenance projects, deployments, and the like all contribute. Problem is, planning surrounding these doesn't account for.....
Emergencies - Yes, emergencies. If an IT workload was better regulated and more time was allowed, there would be less emergencies. Also, due to a dependence on software and hardware, there are simply going to be emergencies which we as IT professionals don't have control over. We can try to mitigate these problems through good design, but that assumes we were given time to plan and that we were the actual people that implemented the design. Speaking of which....
Employee Turnover - moving from job to job has calmed down some, but it still happens quite frequently in IT. Due to this, the employees which left take with them a valuable knowledgebase of technical skills, historical knowledge, and experiences which can almost never be duplicated by the remaining staff. Two weeks is not enough time to be able to transfer that amount of knowledge in a technical profession, and sadly, management seldom stresses the importance of this. So, the remaining IT staff is left 'holding the bag' and there's a void left which is seldom filled. Bad for IT, bad for morale, bad for everyone.
Management - ah, yes. Dilbert has gotten a lot of miles out of this one. Sad thing is, in many respects, it's true to life. Truly technical management in IT is hard to come by, so many mistakes are made by the people wielding a lot of the power. The biggest mistake made by managers in my opinion (and not just IT managers) is not putting enough trust in their technical staff to make sound decisions. Especially in emergency situations.
Technology - supposed to make everyone's lives easier, right? Heh. Fact is, it's always changing, so an IT professional is constantly under the gun le
I look at what's been done here...who knows how many endless hours of coding, several different platforms supported, an entire clone of the MS Office suite. What basically amounts to a very large commercial software product offering.
For free.
What's the benefit? It's FREE people! You don't have to spend a dime on it.
It'd be nice to hear a kind word or two in appreciation every once in a while instead of a bunch of ingrate whiney bitches.
AMD is supposed to ship 45nm in 18 months...and if Intel ships 45nm towards end of '07, that leaves AMD roughly 6 months behind. AMD has been used to lagging Intel in process technology, so I don't see how this is anything new.
It was very interesting that despite Intel moving to 65nm earlier (i.e. Presler, Pentium D), AMD still held the performance crown for quite a while afterwards, despite the fact that it was a 90nm implementation...the K8 design was simply that much better. Now that Intel finally got off their ass, they've got the better design with C2D. Needless to say, '07 will be an interesting year for microprocessors.
Reminds me of the temporary paralysis of the vocal chords that singer Chris Barron of the Spin Doctors went through. I guess he could barely speak, and obviously couldn't sing, for a year or more.
That has to be such an aggravating afflication...though I would think a bit less for a comic strip author than for a singer.
This type of trend begs for analysis as to the true cause. Many would say it's the neverending lawsuits. I believe that's part of the equation, but I believe another contributer to be the parents of today which came from the baby boomer and flower child timeframes. I believe their 'openmindedness', 'free spirit', and general lack of personal accountability have resulted in weak overall parenting. Parents today no longer seem to hold their child accountable for anything and no longer support other adults (i.e. teachers) in disciplining their children properly. If a child gets poor grades, it must be the teacher's fault afterall. And if the teacher scolds or disciplines the precious child, the parent doesn't say 'Well, you got what you deserved', they go after the teacher and then the principal.
I know I was taught much differently by my parents...who, thankfully, became adults and parents just prior to the late 60's/early 70's ridiculousness. I am a child of the 80s. Mine was a disciplined, sometimes physically enforced, upbringing. I had respect for my parents, partially out of simple fear of threats given for negative behavior. I had respect for all adults for the very same reason. I no longer see this same respect given to adults by children today, and I believe part of it is due to the lack of any martial discipline being employed. Poor parenting, with no manner of enforcement used to back up threats, only leads to poor children.
And to those naysayers who label martial discipline as somehow inhumane: I say little Johnny can only be manipulated so much via psychological techniques and timeouts before he becomes a master manipulator himself.
When I was introduced to the new Novell releases based around Linux I was very surprised indeed that ReiserFS was the default. I know you can't judge a book (in this case Hans and his filesystem) by its cover, but I think a public company would make more conservative decisions given some of the negativity (both technical and non-technical) related to ReiserFS.
I always had the impression that the filesystem and its development were more cutting edge than a commericial software company would feel comfortable with.
He's strategizing, joined a competitor, and developing a new system to combat this upstart Amiga product!
Seriously though, the Amigas and Atari STs were always the better machines in the day compared to anything else. I was an Atari fanboy at the time, and quite passionate about it, but the Amiga was thoroughly better.
Look, you stupid twit, terrorism is a tactic. It's not an ideal. It's not a people. It's not defeatable.
Please, how about refraining from the childish insults? Stupid twit? Kids these days. We should be able to differ in opinion and not resort to silly unpleasantries. This is/. though, so I guess we'll find out.
If you actually read my post, I didn't say terrorism could be stopped, I said terrorists. That assumes a person or group of people being stopped from committing specific, heinous acts. You know, like the group of men who hijacked the planes and crashed them into the big buildings. I think had a bit more surveillance been done with a little better organization, that entire episode in this country's history could have been prevented. I don't think that's too hard a concept to grasp.
Apparently I'm freaking out though. I'm sorry, fucking freaking out. Over nothing. And I guess people dying of natural causes can be equated to the murder of thousands of innocent, healthy people and destruction of billions of dollars of property. In fact, it's strangely the same thing. I believe I'm starting to come around to your line of thinking. It makes so much sense.
Live your life 'at the mercy' of those who claim to protect you? That's some pretty cynical stuff right there. If you have that attitude, you might as well rid every city in the U.S. of the police forces as Lord knows they're doing more harm than good. I'm not going to live my life on their whimsy!
If it weren't about security or protecting America why would the policy even be considered then? Seriously?
Of course the terrorists have wanted to do another 9/11. They have been making attempts since 9/11/2001 ended and 9/12/2001 dawned. I'm glad they haven't been successful for a five year period. And I'm also pretty sure some of the lack of success has been due to changes in policy and actions taken by our government. The purpose of the U.S. government isn't solely to screw its citizens over, regardless of what the paranoid may think.
We can't stop the terrorists, only detour? That's the most defeatist attitude I've ever heard. We might as well just give up now and accept the fact that terrorist acts are fine, reasonable, expected, and acceptable. Let's just not do anything. Let's detour.
Honestly, I fully expect that the U.S. government has been doing this type of surveillance for as long as it has technically been possible. How is anyone shocked or surprised by this?
I only think that in today's age of technology, political correctness, and softness that it has actually been dragged out into the public for debate, whereas in the past it was simply done when it was deemed necessary, and no one questioned it.
Of course, the fear is that the power will be abused. In some cases it will. That is inevitable. However, I say the good outweighs the bad. But that's just me.
Who knows, maybe Lucas' number was up... maybe him time was over. Maybe the older core of SW fans just couldn't relate. There is a thousand things that could have gone wrong. I don't think he was brought down for doing a sequel, I think he was brought down by doing bad films.
I think you may have hit the nail on the head here with your first and last sentence. Somewhere, somehow, George's ability to tell a real story, hire real actors with chemistry, and most importantly develop characters with depth that the audience cared about was lost. His ability on all these fronts shone in Star Wars, but not one of these abilities was demonstrated in any of the prequels.
I think he simply lost the passion and diligence necessary for writing a great story and making a great film. He got old, was too successful, and became lazy, in my opinion. The first three films had many great, novel elements that were woven together well. The three prequels had some novel elements, but they were all smashed together in a mess and topped off with some bad acting.
Slashdot Mirror
The only 'obsession' Americans have in regards to classification of ethnicity is the resurgence of pride certain ethnic groups feel in regards to their heritage. Back in what I would term 'the good old days' of immigration (Ellis Island as gateway to America) everyone did what they could to fit in, and adapt to their new country. Today it seems, everyone does what they can to differentiate themselves to show how special they are relative to everyone else. This has gone way overboard, in my opinion.
The classic example of this is the term 'African American' becoming more prominently used and preferred (due to politically correct thinking) in the United States. This choice of words is more acceptable the thinking goes, than simply using the term 'black'. I believe black people prefer to use this term as it somehow sounds better, and gives the sense of some special, unique classification, or entitlement. In contrast, even though I have a varied European background (half Slovakian, part German, French, and Scottish) I have no issue with being called 'white' and wouldn't expect anyone to call me 'Slovakian American'.
I think it's silly.
I remember that jingle too, but for some reason I thought the slogan was "Your joystick won't go wacko when you buy Wico". Again, I was only 8 or 9 at the time, so could just be poor memory.
http://www.adstocollect.com/servlet/the-1277/1984-WICO-Joystick-Color/Detail
Anyways, we had a couple Wicos and a TAC-2 and the TAC-2 sucked balls, IMO. Wicos were much better.
Heh, apparently you missed the intense math portions of Mr. Wizard's show.
I was born in the early 70s, so was ages 9-19 during the 80s. How would that have prevented us from watching the program? I too loved seeing Mr. Wizard. May he rest in peace.
A tangential comment if I may...Those were simpler and better times to be quite honest. At least for children. We had honest-to-goodness classic shows to watch like Bugs Bunny and The Little Rascals. How they don't broadcast those shows any longer I'll never know. Not spastic enough for today's kids?
Don't bother with dedicated RAID hardware controllers. I've seen the Linux md disk driver mentioned, and while a viable option, the better option IMO is Solaris x86 using ZFS. Basically you've got an industrial-strength piece of storage software ripe with features begging to be used in this situation....for free.
If you're interested in an industrial strength hardware platform to go with the software, go for one of these.
If you're interested in rolling your own, then simply put together an x86 box with as many SATA controllers and buses you can stuff in a box and set the disk up as JBOD (just make sure the hardware is Solaris x86 compatible of course). Create some ZFS pools of whatever RAID suits your need, and sit back and enjoy data glory.
Oh, and simply pick a protocol of your choosing to serve up the data to your clients...iSCSI, SMB, NFS, whatever.
Wanted to respond to each of these in kind:
1. You're generalizing too much here. IT folk vary in their roles, just like any other profession. Some are technical specialists, some are project managers, some are architects, some are general management, etc. If I'm an architect or a manager, yes, I've got to know more about the business side. If I'm a technical specialist in a particular area, not so much. I'm not saying it's not a good idea that these people know the business side too, but it certainly isn't required many times for the job that they do.
2. Though most see being promoted to a management position as 'making it up the ladder', it is anathema to many technical specialists. Why? Well, I'm sure an IT professional in a technical area went to school and took the position they did because they wanted to work with computers in a technical capacity...not to learn how to manage people. If they wanted that they would have gotten some business degree. This situation often leads to the 'pointy headed' ignorant management we so often see...No one on the technical side wants to get promoted to the management position, so instead, a less technically astute individual (or someone non-technical period) is placed in the position of power and is too ignorant to make informed decisions. They didn't 'come from the ranks' so to speak.
3. Any IT-based decision needs to be made by IT, end of story. That's where the problems start. Does anyone think an IT department making accounting or purchasing decisions is a good idea? I didn't think so.
Absolutely. Tempest 2000 was an ever better game than Alien vs. Predator. I'd also note that the VLM from Minter was quite da bomb.
I agree that balance is key to slowly moving children into the different stages of life, and getting them acclimated to the real world. Ultimately, they will be able to stand on their own as independents.
What I'm curious about, is how have things changed since I was growing up (I'm 35) for an average child, and how much the day-to-day school experience differs from what I was brought up in (I went to private, Catholic schools)?
I will say that I recall having a low work vs. play and recreation ratio in the early years...that gradually changed so that as I matured, I was given more work, more responsibility, and that of course related to homework as well. I mean, I'd get close to nothing in 1st grade...maybe 20-30 minutes of homework in 4/5th grade....then by high school I'd say on average anywhere from none, to 30 minutes to a couple hours each night, depending on the classes I was taking.
The key thing I remember throughout, however, was that from my parents, my teachers, and my peers, there was always an expectation to succeed, to try your hardest, and to do your very best. That environment gave me the support and willingness to push myself harder, and ultimately become a productive and successful person. I think this environment of expectation and support in the different areas (parents, teachers, peers) is key for a young person to develop as individuals and fulfill their potential as people. I think things fall down when there is lack of support in one of those areas, or when the areas don't mesh....particularly from the parent and teacher side.
While I'm at it, I'll also mention that all kids should not only have to do some kind of homework (and get a job when they're old enough...say 12 yrs old)....they should also not all get a trophy just for participating in something. Doing so shows kids that they don't have to work hard for anything, and that they are entitled for no good reason. I think there are way too many parents out there today who think children are somehow adults already, and that they deserve all consideration and entitlement that an adult does....that somehow children possess adult-like intellect and emotions...and that they come out of the womb as 21 year olds. I think this type of parental behavior damages children much more than any possible 'bruising of self-esteem' that everyone seems to concern themselves with these days. It teaches children to become manipulative and difficult.
The answer is in the form of a question: do you have any clue as to what you're talking about?
I'm being completely serious here.
Anyone who knows anything about the IT marketplace will know that of the UNIX-variant operating systems (yes, that includes Linux), Sun Solaris has quite a significant share. In fact, a good deal of the professional UNIX admins out there prefer Solaris over the other choices, and again, that includes Linux.
First off, I would like to say that insulting clients and slamming users is never a good practice, and it should not be acceptable. Being a professional requires at least common courtesy. However, there are several mitigating factors to consider, some of which may be acting in unison, to produce a highly bad attitude from IT professionals as a whole. Whether this 'damages' the IT profession or not can be debated, but I believe it is very much subjective and depends on the specific situations and groups of people involved (i.e. a specific IT department's reputation at a particular company might be diminished in some peoples' eyes, but likely not IT as a whole). In any event, I'd like to point out the multitude of factors that contribute to an IT staff's bad attitude, and typically poor morale. Hopefully other non-IT types will read this so they can better understand where this attitude originates. In many cases I believe IT workers are not appreciated as much as they should be:
I look at what's been done here...who knows how many endless hours of coding, several different platforms supported, an entire clone of the MS Office suite. What basically amounts to a very large commercial software product offering.
For free.
What's the benefit? It's FREE people! You don't have to spend a dime on it.
It'd be nice to hear a kind word or two in appreciation every once in a while instead of a bunch of ingrate whiney bitches.
AMD is supposed to ship 45nm in 18 months...and if Intel ships 45nm towards end of '07, that leaves AMD roughly 6 months behind. AMD has been used to lagging Intel in process technology, so I don't see how this is anything new.
It was very interesting that despite Intel moving to 65nm earlier (i.e. Presler, Pentium D), AMD still held the performance crown for quite a while afterwards, despite the fact that it was a 90nm implementation...the K8 design was simply that much better. Now that Intel finally got off their ass, they've got the better design with C2D. Needless to say, '07 will be an interesting year for microprocessors.
It's Niagara
Niagara II (T2) has one floating point unit per core...so for a T2 outfit with all cores, eight FPUs.
Reminds me of the temporary paralysis of the vocal chords that singer Chris Barron of the Spin Doctors went through. I guess he could barely speak, and obviously couldn't sing, for a year or more.
That has to be such an aggravating afflication...though I would think a bit less for a comic strip author than for a singer.
Unfortunate, but true.
This type of trend begs for analysis as to the true cause. Many would say it's the neverending lawsuits. I believe that's part of the equation, but I believe another contributer to be the parents of today which came from the baby boomer and flower child timeframes. I believe their 'openmindedness', 'free spirit', and general lack of personal accountability have resulted in weak overall parenting. Parents today no longer seem to hold their child accountable for anything and no longer support other adults (i.e. teachers) in disciplining their children properly. If a child gets poor grades, it must be the teacher's fault afterall. And if the teacher scolds or disciplines the precious child, the parent doesn't say 'Well, you got what you deserved', they go after the teacher and then the principal.
I know I was taught much differently by my parents...who, thankfully, became adults and parents just prior to the late 60's/early 70's ridiculousness. I am a child of the 80s. Mine was a disciplined, sometimes physically enforced, upbringing. I had respect for my parents, partially out of simple fear of threats given for negative behavior. I had respect for all adults for the very same reason. I no longer see this same respect given to adults by children today, and I believe part of it is due to the lack of any martial discipline being employed. Poor parenting, with no manner of enforcement used to back up threats, only leads to poor children.
And to those naysayers who label martial discipline as somehow inhumane: I say little Johnny can only be manipulated so much via psychological techniques and timeouts before he becomes a master manipulator himself.
Well that completely makes sense. Thanks for the clarification.
So I'm guessing the decision to move from ReiserFS to ext3 is then the expected conservative one by a commercial software company.
When I was introduced to the new Novell releases based around Linux I was very surprised indeed that ReiserFS was the default. I know you can't judge a book (in this case Hans and his filesystem) by its cover, but I think a public company would make more conservative decisions given some of the negativity (both technical and non-technical) related to ReiserFS.
I always had the impression that the filesystem and its development were more cutting edge than a commericial software company would feel comfortable with.
He's strategizing, joined a competitor, and developing a new system to combat this upstart Amiga product!
Seriously though, the Amigas and Atari STs were always the better machines in the day compared to anything else. I was an Atari fanboy at the time, and quite passionate about it, but the Amiga was thoroughly better.
Anyone up for a game of Dungeon Master?
Look, you stupid twit, terrorism is a tactic. It's not an ideal. It's not a people. It's not defeatable.
/. though, so I guess we'll find out.
Please, how about refraining from the childish insults? Stupid twit? Kids these days. We should be able to differ in opinion and not resort to silly unpleasantries. This is
If you actually read my post, I didn't say terrorism could be stopped, I said terrorists. That assumes a person or group of people being stopped from committing specific, heinous acts. You know, like the group of men who hijacked the planes and crashed them into the big buildings. I think had a bit more surveillance been done with a little better organization, that entire episode in this country's history could have been prevented. I don't think that's too hard a concept to grasp.
Apparently I'm freaking out though. I'm sorry, fucking freaking out. Over nothing. And I guess people dying of natural causes can be equated to the murder of thousands of innocent, healthy people and destruction of billions of dollars of property. In fact, it's strangely the same thing. I believe I'm starting to come around to your line of thinking. It makes so much sense.
Live your life 'at the mercy' of those who claim to protect you? That's some pretty cynical stuff right there. If you have that attitude, you might as well rid every city in the U.S. of the police forces as Lord knows they're doing more harm than good. I'm not going to live my life on their whimsy!
If it weren't about security or protecting America why would the policy even be considered then? Seriously?
Of course the terrorists have wanted to do another 9/11. They have been making attempts since 9/11/2001 ended and 9/12/2001 dawned. I'm glad they haven't been successful for a five year period. And I'm also pretty sure some of the lack of success has been due to changes in policy and actions taken by our government. The purpose of the U.S. government isn't solely to screw its citizens over, regardless of what the paranoid may think.
We can't stop the terrorists, only detour? That's the most defeatist attitude I've ever heard. We might as well just give up now and accept the fact that terrorist acts are fine, reasonable, expected, and acceptable. Let's just not do anything. Let's detour.
Honestly, I fully expect that the U.S. government has been doing this type of surveillance for as long as it has technically been possible. How is anyone shocked or surprised by this?
I only think that in today's age of technology, political correctness, and softness that it has actually been dragged out into the public for debate, whereas in the past it was simply done when it was deemed necessary, and no one questioned it.
Of course, the fear is that the power will be abused. In some cases it will. That is inevitable. However, I say the good outweighs the bad. But that's just me.
Who knows, maybe Lucas' number was up... maybe him time was over. Maybe the older core of SW fans just couldn't relate. There is a thousand things that could have gone wrong. I don't think he was brought down for doing a sequel, I think he was brought down by doing bad films.
I think you may have hit the nail on the head here with your first and last sentence. Somewhere, somehow, George's ability to tell a real story, hire real actors with chemistry, and most importantly develop characters with depth that the audience cared about was lost. His ability on all these fronts shone in Star Wars, but not one of these abilities was demonstrated in any of the prequels.
I think he simply lost the passion and diligence necessary for writing a great story and making a great film. He got old, was too successful, and became lazy, in my opinion. The first three films had many great, novel elements that were woven together well. The three prequels had some novel elements, but they were all smashed together in a mess and topped off with some bad acting.