Please, are you really claiming anything Cameron has done is art?
Of course it is. Opinions may differ on whether it's GOOD art, but of course it's art. There isn't a threshold of quality that determines whether something is art. "Twilight" is art, just crappy art. So are my son's crayon drawings.
You have to be pretty damn selective to find a group of critics who didn't like Avatar... which I have no doubt you are. I'm sure you're attracted to like-minded critics. That's understandable, but realize that it is a flaw when you come to believe that's representative of actual critical acclaim. It's like reading nothing but Daily Kos, and thinking that's normal and representative political discussion.
You seem to forget that emulating a modern GPU would require somewhat up to a hundred cores from a generic CPU.
I don't believe that at all; it sounds like marketing-speak. Intel's using, what, eight CPUs to do real-time RAY TRACING, and that's MORE demanding than the rasterizering paradigm that modern GPUs are based on. Certainly a GPU is more specialized and efficient than a similar-scale general purpose CPU, but I think the performance ratio is closer to 4::1 than 100::1.
I *am* a lawyer and I have no idea what an "effective and brutal libel" attorney is. And I'm pretty versed in defamation law. In fact, I'm published on it.
You're being deliberately obtuse, which may be a good skill for you to possess in the courtroom, but not on slashdot. An "effective and brutal libel" attorney is a libel attorney that is effective and brutal. This isn't a legal term; this is English. You need to be able to read and parse both.
You're completely correct that the OP needs to go talk to a lawyer. Slashdot, at most, might provide some technical clues to tracking down the real culprit.
Yes, I only did about a billion of them when I was in college for CS. I was saying fuck finding a proof for P != NP. It's obviously true.
And that's interesting. There's a disconnect of sorts between formal logic and reason, tied in to the difference between deductive and inductive methods. Of course a proof is nice, and a necessary part of advancing mathematics; but a person would not be in error for believing N != NP. At some point a preponderance of evidence, or probability, or reasoning by analogy, or Monte Carlo simulation, can lead to to a practical certainty that something is true. They aren't absolutely certain, and those methods of reasoning would all fall before a REAL proof... but neither are they worthless. Sure, "obviously true" things might end up not being true... but in the vast majority of circumstances, they ARE... and we'd be crippled if we didn't act on them.
Yeah, Firefox is still my browser of choice, but I'm no longer as evangelical as I used to be. Ever since the Awesomebar debacle... they've seemed to have an agenda that was distinct from simply making a good, open, browser. They've gotten all 'marketing' on us, trying to move us in certain directions, rather than helping us go where we want.
Corporations, at least the kind that are politically active, WANT big government. What profit is there in a weak government? There's different details between the democrats and republicans, in the way they're constraining the public to profit corporations, but they're both doing it.
That's not evading the issue. Pointing out that both parties are just as bad isn't defending one over the other; it's trying to counter loons who think this proves the massive superiority of one part over the other. It's an important point.
Blah blah yadda yadda. Dude, a bill was proposed and one party supported it and the other didn't. It's fucking stupid for you to try to blame the party that supported it for the failure of the bill.
Wow, your fingers are deep in your ears, aren't they? The democrats are in power. Currently, if a bill fails, it's because some democrats don't support it.
I'm for more comfortable with that than electing somebody who thinks government is the solution to problems. Governments 'fix' things by curtailing freedom. It's their sole power.
Which is hard to avoid. Reading Genesis without preconceptions will reveal a very different story than we are taught in Sunday School; there are so many elaborate myths built around what is written that it is difficult to put them out of your mind. You just think of the snake as Satan, even though there's no reason to, for instance.
If you think the Democrats have a shortage of loons in their party, you aren't looking at the two parties in an unbiased manner. There are a LOT of nuts in both parties. You should primarily judge the party by the majority of the members, which are not insane in either party. They simply disagree.
Why? I've been involved with a couple women who have had abortions, and in both cases they felt damaged by it, regretted doing it, and swore they never would again. That's not at all an unusual reaction. Both were liberal, incidentally.
It's.333... probably. Phrasing the riddle in English brings in some murkiness... but the idea is there are four possible combinations of two kids: BB, BG, GB, and GG. One of them is a boy, so eliminate GG as a possibility. Therefore there are equal chances of BB, BG, and GB. If one of the kids is a boy, that means there is a 1 in 3 chance that both are boys.
The reason it gives the seemingly nonintuitive answer is because order isn't specified. If he said "My oldest is a boy; what are the odds the younger is, also?" it truly would be a 50/50 chance.
I think that scenario is just as likely as the idea the US or other western government is behind the rape charges... although I also think NEITHER scenario is likely. I think it is far more likely that the rape charges really were spurious rape charges, prompted by a previously obscure individual's rapid rise to international notability. That can bring out all sorts of leeches.
They might, but it won't be like this. It's ludicrous to think these rape charges were part of a covert plan by the US or other government. If (when) they get him, it will be the boring way; legal and international pressure, political dealings... not by hiring a couple of local bimbos to place some rape and molestation complaints. This is more likely the kind of crap that often ensues whenever anybody gets sudden celebrity.
I like the concept of Wikileaks, but Assange seems to have a clear political bias, and is clearly sloppy and careless. He doesn't seem that concerned about putting people in serious danger. I'm sure that we'll have a wikileaks-alike in the future, even if it needs to be hosted on Freenet or other untraceable network; but I think they would be better off with somebody else in charge.
I ran into this a while ago, when I read on slashdot somebody claiming that hemp had a far greater percentage of fiber than any other crop. Turns out it doesn't, it's right in line with cotton and other crops, but an incorrect number that was published in one magazine article in the 50's has been circulating ever since. Since the number errored on the HIGH side, it became a 'useful' number, and so gets constantly repeated.
I'm confident that the person I corrected continued using the incorrect number, even though I cited the source.
From the thirteen year old girl's testimony: After polanski had fed her champagne and a quaalude, the victim testified that Polanski told her to go into a nearby bedroom and lie down.
A: I was going, 'No, I think I better go home,' because I was afraid. So I just went and I sat down on the couch.
Q: What were you afraid of?
A: Him.
(a few minutes later)
A: He sat down beside me and asked me if I was OK.
Q: What did you say, if anything?
A: I said, 'No.'
Q: What did he say?
A: He goes, 'Well, you'll be better.' And I go, 'No, I won't. I have to go home.'
Q: What happened then?
A: He reached over and he kissed me. And I was telling him, 'No,' you know, 'Keep away.'
After Polanski kissed her, the victim alleged, he began to engage in oral sex.
A:... I was ready to cry. I was kind of -- I was going, 'No. Come on. Stop it.' But I was afraid.
Q: And what did he say, if anything?
A: He wasn't saying anything that I can remember. He was -- sometimes he was saying stuff, but I was just blocking him out, you know.
The victim testified that Polanski began having sex with her, but sodomized her when he learned she wasn't using birth control.
A: He asked, he goes, 'Are you on the pill?' And I went, 'No.' And he goes, 'When did you last have your period?' And I said, I don't know. A week or two. I'm not sure.'
Q: And what did he say?
A: He goes, 'Come on. You have to remember.' And I told him I didn't.
Q: Did he say anything after that?
A: Yes. He goes, 'Would you want me to go through your back? And I went, 'No.'
The victim testified that after the sex, she got dressed and waited in the car for Polanski to drive her home. Before driving her home, he asked her to keep the incident a secret.
A: He said to me, he goes, 'Oh, don't tell your mother about this.'...
Q: What did you say?
A: I wasn't saying anything. He says, 'Don't tell your mother about this and don't tell your boyfriend either.'... He said something like, 'This is our secret.' And I went, 'Yeah.' And then later he said, 'You know, when I first met you I promised myself I wouldn't do anything like this with you.'
There's a damn good reason that we don't always let victims drop charges. It could result in people who DRUG AND ANALLY RAPE THIRTEEN YEAR OLD GIRLS getting off without being punished.
Anyway, now you know that your description of what happened is wrong, and so I hope you're intellectually honest enough to never portray Polanski in that favorable of a light again.
I think Flash will stick around for at least a few more years. Actionscript has turned into a fairly nice language, and I think it will be a while yet before HTML5+Javascript match its performance and capabilities... at least for substantial web applications and games. Where HTML5 will take over, I hope, is in small 'widgets'... drop down menus, loading bars, all the tiny little flash applications that drive us crazy.
I also think that even once everything Flash does can be recreated in HTML, the more locked-down nature of Flash (at least against casual probing) may make it more tempting to companies streaming video, music, and other such products.
The biggest way to hurt Flash, I think, would be to create a nice opensource development IDE for HTML5, comparable to what Adobe gives us for Flash. If you can get kids and artists to feel comfortable creating simple drag-n-drop animations and games, you'll be legitimate competition.
The instigating event that caused the patent mess is not corrupt companies, but the government having the power to grant patents in the first place. Areas where the government is expressly forbidden to regulate, such as religion and (most) free speech, are also free of corrupt businesses attempting to bribe the government. You can't bribe congressmen to do things that they can't do.
Slashdot Mirror
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
This apparent conflict goes away when you realize governments should be weaker than individuals.
Please, are you really claiming anything Cameron has done is art?
Of course it is. Opinions may differ on whether it's GOOD art, but of course it's art. There isn't a threshold of quality that determines whether something is art. "Twilight" is art, just crappy art. So are my son's crayon drawings.
Tomatometer: 83
Average Rating: 7.4/10
Critic Reviews: 268
Fresh: 222 | Rotten: 46
You have to be pretty damn selective to find a group of critics who didn't like Avatar... which I have no doubt you are. I'm sure you're attracted to like-minded critics. That's understandable, but realize that it is a flaw when you come to believe that's representative of actual critical acclaim. It's like reading nothing but Daily Kos, and thinking that's normal and representative political discussion.
He's modded as troll? I knew we had Apple-fanboy mods, and Linux-fanboy mods, but I didn't realize there were kneejerk Glucose-fanboy mods.
That's a stupid thing to say. Are right handers that put the mouse on the right side stupid? There's no innate, objective 'correct' side.
The only stupid move would be doing it a way that is less productive for you personally.
You seem to forget that emulating a modern GPU would require somewhat up to a hundred cores from a generic CPU.
I don't believe that at all; it sounds like marketing-speak. Intel's using, what, eight CPUs to do real-time RAY TRACING, and that's MORE demanding than the rasterizering paradigm that modern GPUs are based on. Certainly a GPU is more specialized and efficient than a similar-scale general purpose CPU, but I think the performance ratio is closer to 4::1 than 100::1.
I *am* a lawyer and I have no idea what an "effective and brutal libel" attorney is. And I'm pretty versed in defamation law. In fact, I'm published on it.
You're being deliberately obtuse, which may be a good skill for you to possess in the courtroom, but not on slashdot. An "effective and brutal libel" attorney is a libel attorney that is effective and brutal. This isn't a legal term; this is English. You need to be able to read and parse both.
You're completely correct that the OP needs to go talk to a lawyer. Slashdot, at most, might provide some technical clues to tracking down the real culprit.
Whoever has done the most.
Yes, I only did about a billion of them when I was in college for CS. I was saying fuck finding a proof for P != NP. It's obviously true.
And that's interesting. There's a disconnect of sorts between formal logic and reason, tied in to the difference between deductive and inductive methods. Of course a proof is nice, and a necessary part of advancing mathematics; but a person would not be in error for believing N != NP. At some point a preponderance of evidence, or probability, or reasoning by analogy, or Monte Carlo simulation, can lead to to a practical certainty that something is true. They aren't absolutely certain, and those methods of reasoning would all fall before a REAL proof... but neither are they worthless. Sure, "obviously true" things might end up not being true... but in the vast majority of circumstances, they ARE... and we'd be crippled if we didn't act on them.
Yeah, Firefox is still my browser of choice, but I'm no longer as evangelical as I used to be. Ever since the Awesomebar debacle... they've seemed to have an agenda that was distinct from simply making a good, open, browser. They've gotten all 'marketing' on us, trying to move us in certain directions, rather than helping us go where we want.
Corporations, at least the kind that are politically active, WANT big government. What profit is there in a weak government? There's different details between the democrats and republicans, in the way they're constraining the public to profit corporations, but they're both doing it.
That's not evading the issue. Pointing out that both parties are just as bad isn't defending one over the other; it's trying to counter loons who think this proves the massive superiority of one part over the other. It's an important point.
Blah blah yadda yadda. Dude, a bill was proposed and one party supported it and the other didn't. It's fucking stupid for you to try to blame the party that supported it for the failure of the bill.
Wow, your fingers are deep in your ears, aren't they? The democrats are in power. Currently, if a bill fails, it's because some democrats don't support it.
I'm for more comfortable with that than electing somebody who thinks government is the solution to problems. Governments 'fix' things by curtailing freedom. It's their sole power.
You're just reading modern conceptions into it.
Which is hard to avoid. Reading Genesis without preconceptions will reveal a very different story than we are taught in Sunday School; there are so many elaborate myths built around what is written that it is difficult to put them out of your mind. You just think of the snake as Satan, even though there's no reason to, for instance.
If you think the Democrats have a shortage of loons in their party, you aren't looking at the two parties in an unbiased manner. There are a LOT of nuts in both parties. You should primarily judge the party by the majority of the members, which are not insane in either party. They simply disagree.
Why? I've been involved with a couple women who have had abortions, and in both cases they felt damaged by it, regretted doing it, and swore they never would again. That's not at all an unusual reaction. Both were liberal, incidentally.
Spoken like a true sexist.
It's .333... probably. Phrasing the riddle in English brings in some murkiness... but the idea is there are four possible combinations of two kids: BB, BG, GB, and GG. One of them is a boy, so eliminate GG as a possibility. Therefore there are equal chances of BB, BG, and GB. If one of the kids is a boy, that means there is a 1 in 3 chance that both are boys.
The reason it gives the seemingly nonintuitive answer is because order isn't specified. If he said "My oldest is a boy; what are the odds the younger is, also?" it truly would be a 50/50 chance.
I think that scenario is just as likely as the idea the US or other western government is behind the rape charges... although I also think NEITHER scenario is likely. I think it is far more likely that the rape charges really were spurious rape charges, prompted by a previously obscure individual's rapid rise to international notability. That can bring out all sorts of leeches.
They might, but it won't be like this. It's ludicrous to think these rape charges were part of a covert plan by the US or other government. If (when) they get him, it will be the boring way; legal and international pressure, political dealings... not by hiring a couple of local bimbos to place some rape and molestation complaints. This is more likely the kind of crap that often ensues whenever anybody gets sudden celebrity.
I like the concept of Wikileaks, but Assange seems to have a clear political bias, and is clearly sloppy and careless. He doesn't seem that concerned about putting people in serious danger. I'm sure that we'll have a wikileaks-alike in the future, even if it needs to be hosted on Freenet or other untraceable network; but I think they would be better off with somebody else in charge.
I ran into this a while ago, when I read on slashdot somebody claiming that hemp had a far greater percentage of fiber than any other crop. Turns out it doesn't, it's right in line with cotton and other crops, but an incorrect number that was published in one magazine article in the 50's has been circulating ever since. Since the number errored on the HIGH side, it became a 'useful' number, and so gets constantly repeated. I'm confident that the person I corrected continued using the incorrect number, even though I cited the source.
From the thirteen year old girl's testimony: After polanski had fed her champagne and a quaalude, the victim testified that Polanski told her to go into a nearby bedroom and lie down.
... I was ready to cry. I was kind of -- I was going, 'No. Come on. Stop it.' But I was afraid.
... ... He said something like, 'This is our secret.' And I went, 'Yeah.' And then later he said, 'You know, when I first met you I promised myself I wouldn't do anything like this with you.'
A: I was going, 'No, I think I better go home,' because I was afraid. So I just went and I sat down on the couch.
Q: What were you afraid of?
A: Him.
(a few minutes later)
A: He sat down beside me and asked me if I was OK.
Q: What did you say, if anything?
A: I said, 'No.'
Q: What did he say?
A: He goes, 'Well, you'll be better.' And I go, 'No, I won't. I have to go home.'
Q: What happened then?
A: He reached over and he kissed me. And I was telling him, 'No,' you know, 'Keep away.'
After Polanski kissed her, the victim alleged, he began to engage in oral sex.
A:
Q: And what did he say, if anything?
A: He wasn't saying anything that I can remember. He was -- sometimes he was saying stuff, but I was just blocking him out, you know.
The victim testified that Polanski began having sex with her, but sodomized her when he learned she wasn't using birth control.
A: He asked, he goes, 'Are you on the pill?' And I went, 'No.' And he goes, 'When did you last have your period?' And I said, I don't know. A week or two. I'm not sure.'
Q: And what did he say?
A: He goes, 'Come on. You have to remember.' And I told him I didn't.
Q: Did he say anything after that?
A: Yes. He goes, 'Would you want me to go through your back? And I went, 'No.'
The victim testified that after the sex, she got dressed and waited in the car for Polanski to drive her home. Before driving her home, he asked her to keep the incident a secret.
A: He said to me, he goes, 'Oh, don't tell your mother about this.'
Q: What did you say?
A: I wasn't saying anything. He says, 'Don't tell your mother about this and don't tell your boyfriend either.'
There's a damn good reason that we don't always let victims drop charges. It could result in people who DRUG AND ANALLY RAPE THIRTEEN YEAR OLD GIRLS getting off without being punished.
Anyway, now you know that your description of what happened is wrong, and so I hope you're intellectually honest enough to never portray Polanski in that favorable of a light again.
I think Flash will stick around for at least a few more years. Actionscript has turned into a fairly nice language, and I think it will be a while yet before HTML5+Javascript match its performance and capabilities... at least for substantial web applications and games. Where HTML5 will take over, I hope, is in small 'widgets'... drop down menus, loading bars, all the tiny little flash applications that drive us crazy.
I also think that even once everything Flash does can be recreated in HTML, the more locked-down nature of Flash (at least against casual probing) may make it more tempting to companies streaming video, music, and other such products.
The biggest way to hurt Flash, I think, would be to create a nice opensource development IDE for HTML5, comparable to what Adobe gives us for Flash. If you can get kids and artists to feel comfortable creating simple drag-n-drop animations and games, you'll be legitimate competition.
The instigating event that caused the patent mess is not corrupt companies, but the government having the power to grant patents in the first place. Areas where the government is expressly forbidden to regulate, such as religion and (most) free speech, are also free of corrupt businesses attempting to bribe the government. You can't bribe congressmen to do things that they can't do.