They're not authentic until I can cut my neighbor's car in half with it.
A sonic screwdriver, on the other hand, is pretty easy to make if you have access to a ceramic resonator and a quantum power source.
I made a sonic screwdriver that can turn off TVs...
Of course, what that really means is that I took TV-B-Gone code that someone else wrote, and a sonic screwdriver toy that someone else made, and built the TV-B-Gone circuit inside the Sonic Screwdriver... Still, it was an interesting (and sometimes frustrating) challenge... The worst of it was when the circuit would fail after the toy had been reassembled and repainted.
Batman has plans for every situation EVER. In fact, someone "spilling" his plans online was probably his plan all along.
Yeah! He let word of the irradiated bills slip so that no one would suspect that there's another set of bills that have been soaked in an exotic pheromone that his dogs have been trained to sniff out...
And he only let word of the pheromone slip so that no one would suspect that there's more bills in there with subtle patterns of metallic ink, carefully arranged to resonate when subjected to a particular radio signal which the Batwing is equipped to emit...
And he only let word of the metallic ink slip so the crooks would think they had their bases covered, and wouldn't suspect that Batman has been keeping the bank under constant surveillance for the last week.
The problem is that there is no technical reason it has to be a "public place".
Well, there is actually... Let's suppose everyone involved promised not to snoop on your data as it passed through their network systems. How do you know they're sticking to that promise? You have know way of knowing. If they decide to snoop on you without saying so, you'll simply never know. Therefore, if you care about the privacy of your data you have to treat the internet as a hostile environment.
Yup. And due to market forces, guess what happens to Verizon.
They get my business because they're still better than Comcast?
Or, if we're talking wireless - they go on doing what they're doing and I remain tied to their service by my contract and by the fact that my phone is programmed not to work with any other carrier?
And while we're at it, the idea that societal equality and general happiness are good is also a purely ideological stance. It's a stance most people agree with, but there is nothing inherent in the universe that requires it.
From a purely pragmatic standpoint - keeping the populace reasonably happy is a good way to prevent revolution.
"My personal take on Net Neutrality is that ISPs should treat all packets equally. I do not like the idea of being forced to host all my videos on YouTube or another huge site that can afford to make special deals with broadband providers such as Brighthouse, my local cable TV monopoly, instead of on my friend Joe's Globaltap hosting service."
Ugh. Nobody "forces" Mr. Miller to host anywhere. He's more than welcome to host his videos at his friend's Joe's Globaltap hosting service, but is he expecting his friend to do this for free or give him some flat rate $5/month service? Does Mr. Miller expect his friend Joe to eat the Internet transit costs of $3 to $10 per Mbps per month which might be thousands of dollars a month for popular content while he free loads off of his friend's hosting service?
The point being made in the article is that, without good rules in support of net neutrality, ISPs can place artificial limits on the effective throughput of a server per connection over their network. This is different from the server's normal performance limitations, as the ISPs can (and probably will) do this on a discriminatory basis in order to make their affiliated services look better. One could place their video on a server that's quite adequate for the job (and with a connection adequate for their level of traffic) but wind up facing intentional, discriminatory degradation of their content by individual ISPs when customers of those ISPs connect. This is what would "force" people to use a video hosting site like Youtube - in order to host video reliably they would need to either negotiate with all the different ISPs individually to ensure safe passage for their traffic, or else put the video on a site that has addressed this issue already.
I don't know if this would actually be a problem. I expect (of course I am not sure of this) that the ISPs will only direct this kind of discriminatory traffic filtering in cases where, one way or another, there is money to be made. They'll try to block piracy to encourage people to get videos, etc. via (their affiliated) legitimate channels, and they'll extort money from any high-traffic site with deep pockets (especially competitors). But I doubt they would bother with a small site that happens to have a video or two on it.
Actually, I googled it after posting - I guess "Threat or Menace" was a J.J. Jameson thing (from Spiderman)... If my memory is correct and they really did use it in TMNT, then it must have been a nod to Berne's status as TMNT's version of Jameson...
It's a reference to an episode of the old (1980s) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, I think. (I'm sure it was in TMNT but I don't know if it was in something else as well...) In one episode April O'Neil's boss Burne (basically the TMNT TV series' version of Spiderman's J.J. Jameson - the newsroom boss who is determined to make money by publishing/broadcasting stories that cast the heroes of the series in a bad light) proposes that they do a special report called "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Threat or Menace?" - the false dichotomy there was expressing his prejudice that the TMNT could be nothing but bad.
As an online discussion decomposing the software stack of a linux distribution grows longer, the probability of RMS bursting in and saying "It's actually kind of sad that most people soley identify the GNU toolchain environment as 'Linux', which is just kernel." approaches 1.
And, you know, I can appreciate his point. GNU software forms huge chunks of the basic functionality of a typical Linux box. So some credit where credit's due does seem appropriate to me.
On the other hand - if he wanted to have GNU be the operating system (i.e. including kernel) he had his shot and he missed it. While the HURD folks were debating architectural issues, somebody went ahead and just wrote a damn kernel that works.:)
True, but they didn't do much against blasters, let alone lightsabers... So what exactly were they defending against!:)
Very few things at all defend against lightsabers... But, of course, after the clone wars, there's very few Jedi left so it's not much of a concern.
'Course that still leaves the question of blasters. When Stormtroopers are shot and fall, it's not like you see any medical teams coming to their rescue, and they don't get up, either... So even if you assume the armor is minimizing but not negating the hit, it still seems like the troopers are actually getting killed...
<shrug> I don't have a rationalization for that.:)
Honestly the first 3 were just as targeted. We look at them through rose colored glasses at this point. Don't watch them for e few years come back and watch them anew. You will see the first one is rather dull and boring with a whiny guy. The second one is a bit better written with some motivation thrown in for the chars this time. The third was a giant effects fest. Sound familiar?
I can't really agree with your assessment, or your attempt to directly correlate them with the prequels. I still enjoy the original trilogy. I don't think the first film was dull at all, and Luke was just whiny enough that we could see him start to grow the hell up... I think "Jedi" is pretty weak - and a lot of people blame the Ewoks - I just think there was too much going on... To have the whole sequence on Tatooine and then follow up with Endor and the Death Star - the movie was overloaded, I think.
The prequels - I'm open to giving them another chance, but I'm not motivated enough to actually buy them. But my impression of the prequels the first time around was they were telling parts of the story that needn't be told - and in fact, shouldn't be told, because doing so undermines the rest of the story... And there were various plot points - particularly Anakin turning evil - that were never explained to my satisfaction. Plus, while Jedi are cool, watching nothing but Jedi is actually kind of boring. Sometimes it's more fun to see more ordinary people instead... People who actually have to take cover when faced with a barrage of blaster fire...
Personally I can't say that I have a real problem with any of the Star Wars films due to them being targeted at kids... There were other issues there with the prequels.
A good way to gauge that is to ask a 5-10 year old what they think about star wars
You know, I have to unilaterally reject this idea. I'm not a kid any more, but as far as I'm concerned, my opinion of Star Wars is at least as valid as anyone else's.
Seriously, how many different versions will the fanbois pay money for? No matter how you feel about Greedo shooting first, doesn't owning four different box sets already make dumping $150 on another seem as silly as rebuilding your basement into the Emperor's Throne Room?
The problem with your basement plan is that often the basement is below the level of the drain... This complicates the process of setting up the plumbing for any kind of Throne Room in the basement.
Eh, idunno. I think Revenge of the Sith is at least as good as Return of the Jedi. Purists may burn me alive, I guess.
My biggest problem with "Revenge of the Sith" was that this movie, due to its place in the story, needed to somehow convince me that Anakin would turn evil. I don't think they pulled it off. Palpatine had a way to get his attention (the promise of saving Padme) but how Anakin went from "Okay, I'm listening" to "Sure, slaughtering a room full of children sounds like a pretty good idea to me." wasn't really explored satisfactorily. Anakin was played as generally an OK guy up until that point... Sand people notwithstanding...
I know if I was a trooper I would be questioning the use of "armor" that seems particularly vulnerable to small sticks and rocks as wielded by little teddy bears.
Actually, if you look at body armor, physical impact has always been one of the tougher things to defend against. You can armor your body and head, and that can keep you from getting cut by a sword (or, with modern armor, it can stop bullets) but to do this it spreads the impact out... You still take the hit, it just doesn't go through you. This is the basis of weapons like maces and war hammers: deliver a powerful impact that, even if the armor isn't dented by it, will still hurt the person inside.
Slashdot Mirror
They're not authentic until I can cut my neighbor's car in half with it.
A sonic screwdriver, on the other hand, is pretty easy to make if you have access to a ceramic resonator and a quantum power source.
I made a sonic screwdriver that can turn off TVs...
Of course, what that really means is that I took TV-B-Gone code that someone else wrote, and a sonic screwdriver toy that someone else made, and built the TV-B-Gone circuit inside the Sonic Screwdriver... Still, it was an interesting (and sometimes frustrating) challenge... The worst of it was when the circuit would fail after the toy had been reassembled and repainted.
Fornication
Batman has plans for every situation EVER.
In fact, someone "spilling" his plans online was probably his plan all along.
Yeah! He let word of the irradiated bills slip so that no one would suspect that there's another set of bills that have been soaked in an exotic pheromone that his dogs have been trained to sniff out...
And he only let word of the pheromone slip so that no one would suspect that there's more bills in there with subtle patterns of metallic ink, carefully arranged to resonate when subjected to a particular radio signal which the Batwing is equipped to emit...
And he only let word of the metallic ink slip so the crooks would think they had their bases covered, and wouldn't suspect that Batman has been keeping the bank under constant surveillance for the last week.
Wow, I'm tired. Rite of passage, not right. Ugh.
You have redeemed yourself. I am happy to report that hara-kiri will not be necessary in this case.
It's interesting that the Radeon brand, or series at least, has outlived it's
Parser error
I read Knuth for fun... I don't get this notion of algorithms being "boring"...
The problem is that there is no technical reason it has to be a "public place".
Well, there is actually... Let's suppose everyone involved promised not to snoop on your data as it passed through their network systems. How do you know they're sticking to that promise? You have know way of knowing. If they decide to snoop on you without saying so, you'll simply never know. Therefore, if you care about the privacy of your data you have to treat the internet as a hostile environment.
Yup. And due to market forces, guess what happens to Verizon.
They get my business because they're still better than Comcast?
Or, if we're talking wireless - they go on doing what they're doing and I remain tied to their service by my contract and by the fact that my phone is programmed not to work with any other carrier?
And while we're at it, the idea that societal equality and general happiness are good is also a purely ideological stance. It's a stance most people agree with, but there is nothing inherent in the universe that requires it.
From a purely pragmatic standpoint - keeping the populace reasonably happy is a good way to prevent revolution.
"My personal take on Net Neutrality is that ISPs should treat all packets equally. I do not like the idea of being forced to host all my videos on YouTube or another huge site that can afford to make special deals with broadband providers such as Brighthouse, my local cable TV monopoly, instead of on my friend Joe's Globaltap hosting service."
Ugh. Nobody "forces" Mr. Miller to host anywhere. He's more than welcome to host his videos at his friend's Joe's Globaltap hosting service, but is he expecting his friend to do this for free or give him some flat rate $5/month service? Does Mr. Miller expect his friend Joe to eat the Internet transit costs of $3 to $10 per Mbps per month which might be thousands of dollars a month for popular content while he free loads off of his friend's hosting service?
The point being made in the article is that, without good rules in support of net neutrality, ISPs can place artificial limits on the effective throughput of a server per connection over their network. This is different from the server's normal performance limitations, as the ISPs can (and probably will) do this on a discriminatory basis in order to make their affiliated services look better. One could place their video on a server that's quite adequate for the job (and with a connection adequate for their level of traffic) but wind up facing intentional, discriminatory degradation of their content by individual ISPs when customers of those ISPs connect. This is what would "force" people to use a video hosting site like Youtube - in order to host video reliably they would need to either negotiate with all the different ISPs individually to ensure safe passage for their traffic, or else put the video on a site that has addressed this issue already.
I don't know if this would actually be a problem. I expect (of course I am not sure of this) that the ISPs will only direct this kind of discriminatory traffic filtering in cases where, one way or another, there is money to be made. They'll try to block piracy to encourage people to get videos, etc. via (their affiliated) legitimate channels, and they'll extort money from any high-traffic site with deep pockets (especially competitors). But I doubt they would bother with a small site that happens to have a video or two on it.
So like this, then?
Actually, I googled it after posting - I guess "Threat or Menace" was a J.J. Jameson thing (from Spiderman)... If my memory is correct and they really did use it in TMNT, then it must have been a nod to Berne's status as TMNT's version of Jameson...
It's a reference to an episode of the old (1980s) Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, I think. (I'm sure it was in TMNT but I don't know if it was in something else as well...) In one episode April O'Neil's boss Burne (basically the TMNT TV series' version of Spiderman's J.J. Jameson - the newsroom boss who is determined to make money by publishing/broadcasting stories that cast the heroes of the series in a bad light) proposes that they do a special report called "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Threat or Menace?" - the false dichotomy there was expressing his prejudice that the TMNT could be nothing but bad.
There might or might not be a $20 bill in my wallet; I won't know for certain until I look for it?
The likelihood of there NOT being a $20 bill in your wallet approaches infinity
Don't you mean "approaches one"?
There might or might not be a $20 bill in my wallet; I won't know for certain until I look for it?
No $20 bill... But my cat just died.
Thanks, a lot, jerk.
What about all those people wearing Red Hats?
The old ladies? They don't like computers.
As an online discussion decomposing the software stack of a linux distribution grows longer, the probability of RMS bursting in and saying "It's actually kind of sad that most people soley identify the GNU toolchain environment as 'Linux', which is just kernel." approaches 1.
And, you know, I can appreciate his point. GNU software forms huge chunks of the basic functionality of a typical Linux box. So some credit where credit's due does seem appropriate to me.
On the other hand - if he wanted to have GNU be the operating system (i.e. including kernel) he had his shot and he missed it. While the HURD folks were debating architectural issues, somebody went ahead and just wrote a damn kernel that works. :)
However this being a PG movie for kids and no blood
Ponda Baba notwithstanding...
Poor guy, things were really looking up for him, too, and then Obi Wan had to go and chop off his drawing arm...
True, but they didn't do much against blasters, let alone lightsabers... So what exactly were they defending against! :)
Very few things at all defend against lightsabers... But, of course, after the clone wars, there's very few Jedi left so it's not much of a concern.
'Course that still leaves the question of blasters. When Stormtroopers are shot and fall, it's not like you see any medical teams coming to their rescue, and they don't get up, either... So even if you assume the armor is minimizing but not negating the hit, it still seems like the troopers are actually getting killed...
<shrug> I don't have a rationalization for that. :)
Basically you were watching a bad Twilight Movie.
So, a Twilight movie, then.
Honestly the first 3 were just as targeted. We look at them through rose colored glasses at this point. Don't watch them for e few years come back and watch them anew. You will see the first one is rather dull and boring with a whiny guy. The second one is a bit better written with some motivation thrown in for the chars this time. The third was a giant effects fest. Sound familiar?
I can't really agree with your assessment, or your attempt to directly correlate them with the prequels. I still enjoy the original trilogy. I don't think the first film was dull at all, and Luke was just whiny enough that we could see him start to grow the hell up... I think "Jedi" is pretty weak - and a lot of people blame the Ewoks - I just think there was too much going on... To have the whole sequence on Tatooine and then follow up with Endor and the Death Star - the movie was overloaded, I think.
The prequels - I'm open to giving them another chance, but I'm not motivated enough to actually buy them. But my impression of the prequels the first time around was they were telling parts of the story that needn't be told - and in fact, shouldn't be told, because doing so undermines the rest of the story... And there were various plot points - particularly Anakin turning evil - that were never explained to my satisfaction. Plus, while Jedi are cool, watching nothing but Jedi is actually kind of boring. Sometimes it's more fun to see more ordinary people instead... People who actually have to take cover when faced with a barrage of blaster fire...
Personally I can't say that I have a real problem with any of the Star Wars films due to them being targeted at kids... There were other issues there with the prequels.
A good way to gauge that is to ask a 5-10 year old what they think about star wars
You know, I have to unilaterally reject this idea. I'm not a kid any more, but as far as I'm concerned, my opinion of Star Wars is at least as valid as anyone else's.
Seriously, how many different versions will the fanbois pay money for? No matter how you feel about Greedo shooting first, doesn't owning four different box sets already make dumping $150 on another seem as silly as rebuilding your basement into the Emperor's Throne Room?
The problem with your basement plan is that often the basement is below the level of the drain... This complicates the process of setting up the plumbing for any kind of Throne Room in the basement.
Eh, idunno. I think Revenge of the Sith is at least as good as Return of the Jedi. Purists may burn me alive, I guess.
My biggest problem with "Revenge of the Sith" was that this movie, due to its place in the story, needed to somehow convince me that Anakin would turn evil. I don't think they pulled it off. Palpatine had a way to get his attention (the promise of saving Padme) but how Anakin went from "Okay, I'm listening" to "Sure, slaughtering a room full of children sounds like a pretty good idea to me." wasn't really explored satisfactorily. Anakin was played as generally an OK guy up until that point... Sand people notwithstanding...
I know if I was a trooper I would be questioning the use of "armor" that seems particularly vulnerable to small sticks and rocks as wielded by little teddy bears.
Actually, if you look at body armor, physical impact has always been one of the tougher things to defend against. You can armor your body and head, and that can keep you from getting cut by a sword (or, with modern armor, it can stop bullets) but to do this it spreads the impact out... You still take the hit, it just doesn't go through you. This is the basis of weapons like maces and war hammers: deliver a powerful impact that, even if the armor isn't dented by it, will still hurt the person inside.