No one would have believed in the first years of the twenty-first century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than microbes' and yet as mortal as our own; that as microbes busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a microbe with a really small microscope might scrutinise the really really small transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a speck of permafrost. With infinite complacency microbes went to and fro over this globe about their really little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the really really small microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of microbe danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most Mars-estrial microbes fancied there might be other microbes upon Earth, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the rocks that pretty much just sit there, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this Mars with envious photophilic sensors of some kind, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
I never really got into it, It was too crude and garish (CG, costumes, alien make-up). And the story (what I saw) wasn't compelling enough to help me suspend my disbelief and get over that.
That's one good thing a bout the new BG, IMO. They don't try too hard to create a complete and completely different world. They sketch it out, focus on character development and pacing, and move on. You can buy a lot of the props in your local office supply, but because you really don't notice, such is the strength of the script. (There's one scene in a later episode where Baltar is using a calculator-like thing, it's actually a collapsible travel alarm clock just like one I used to have. But it's just a quick cutaway shot, so it doesn't matter. Look at headsets and such as well, they're generally cobbled together from $5 earphones.)
No doubt if it does well and lasts a couple of seasons it'll jump the shark and acquire bumpy-headed humanoid aliens and I'll lose interest, but right now it's creating its world through its characters, not a constraining backstory involving N years of alien history. This to my mind is a good thing, because it makes for good sci-fi but also makes it accessible on the level of drama.
They've also been using the delay to build buzz through Bittorrent, so they don't have bad audience figures for the first couple of shows. Pre-emptive word-of-mouth. Of course, now that it's being released in its primary territory they'll probably clamp down.
There is nothing not to like about it. The CG is great, the physics is as close as Hollywood will probably ever get to accurate (the fighters use thrusters! There's very little noise in space!). The cinematography is gritty and "realist", but not gratuitously so. The storyline (11 episodes in) is a bit on the mystical side, but a lot tighter than the original. And! There's less reason for the heterosexual male segment of the audience to feel conflicted about being attracted to Starbuck!
THis kind of thing was a problem for the US during the first Gulf War. Basically, a laser would be pread with a (parabolic?) mirror, an F117 would fly into the beam, the night-vision camera hooked into the pilot's helmet would be overloaded, and the pilot would be blinded for a second or two, enough to lose control and crash.
One countermeasure that was later looked into was to use a lens coating with a non-linear response - it remained clear for most light intensities, but went opaque almost instantaneously (in milliseconds) when the intensity went over a certain threshold.
The reason I know about this was that my nonlinear optics professor had an amusing story about being invited to give a lecture on his research in the US, only to find when he arrived that it was to a military lab with several times more people working on the field than the amount doing the same research, but publically.
No doubt some bright spark is thinking of trying to sell the same tech to commercial jet makers now, especially since the new invadee paradigm is to just let the Americans in, wait till they relax, then commence the guerilla warfare.
The US simply doesn't have that level of deployable force, without the draft. They might, if all the armchair generals such as yourself out there signed up. Luckily, being a Canadian, you'll probably never be forced to put your money where your mouth is.
As for popular support, it's a bit silly mentioning it, as the world population as a whole was pretty much against it. At one anti-war march in my country, 10% of the entire adult population showed up.
Strictly speaking they don't have that freedom either at the moment. Protests have to be cleared with the CPA some time in advance, aren't allowed over a certain size, and are generally controlled with indimidating numbers of skittish troops with a habit of firing first and asking questions later.
That may what was claimed was going to happen, but what is happening is that the remaining infrastructure is being run into the ground so that US companies can replace it at vast markups, the interim government (Chalabi's part at least) is acting as a secret police for the US agency whose job it is to ensure contracts for the US companies, and the country is dissolving into chaos as the general population realise that their liberators are actually just well-equipped looters, and starts trying to rise up against them, ironically fighting for their freedom.
The point about making obviously contradicting statements like mine, and that (admittedly rather stupid) one you quote above, is that it's meant to make you think about the contradictory statements and actions of those currently in power. Their methods will never achieve the goals they claim to have, and in fact will set them back. If that's the case, and they're not complete idiots, you should ask if maybe they don't actually have very different unsavoury goals.
The piece of software that sparked this "discussion" isn't going to enhance anybody's freedom, it's all about enhancing the US Army's ability to fight and control your typical third world urban armed populace. The only reason the US Army will ever be fighting in such urban areas is for strategic control over the resources of the country involved. It's worth remembering this before you start talking about fighting for freedom. If you're bombarding people in their own neighbourhoods with Apache gunships and Abrams tanks, chances are you're not fighting for freedom.
I doubt that they're eating anything specifically for Thanksgiving, seeing as none of them are from the US. (Michael Foale doesn't count, even if the UK does look more and more like the 51s state lately.)
Funnily enough I installed 1.0prewhatever last night.
I downloaded the source, typed./configure make su -c "make install"
And I was done. (I didn't bother downloading any skins or anything posh like that. CLIs are good enough for the likes of me.)
Mind you, that was on Slackware 9. But even so, I think yon reviewer may be taking the piss a bit. Why did he expect a CVS build to work as cleanly as an official one. Isn't the point of a CVS version being available so people can see and help with a work in progress>
> BTW : the 19 saudi nationals had no us insurance based medical histories... but then again they had other signifying traits that were indicative of being a foreigner.
Bearing in mind the points system they now have (at least for the visa I'm eligible for), I'd be surprised if there were any new immigrants without a good command of English or French and at least a bachelors.
Canadian employers have taken to looking for what they call "canadian experience", in order to weed out recent immigrants from applicants. It's really a disguised form of xenophobia, and it's worrying the hell out of me, as I'm planning to move to Canada for a few years in the near future, and don't even have a degree in my current field.
The rest of the world doesn't need drug development that focuses on losing weight without exercise and maintaining an erection for more than 30 seconds without a ruler and gaffer tape.
Slashdot Mirror
There is a built-in TCP/IP stack now. Has been since 6.something, I think, definitely since 7.
No one would have believed in the first years of the twenty-first century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than microbes' and yet as mortal as our own; that as microbes busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a microbe with a really small microscope might scrutinise the really really small transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a speck of permafrost. With infinite complacency microbes went to and fro over this globe about their really little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the really really small microscope do the same. No one gave a thought to the older worlds of space as sources of microbe danger, or thought of them only to dismiss the idea of life upon them as impossible or improbable. It is curious to recall some of the mental habits of those departed days. At most Mars-estrial microbes fancied there might be other microbes upon Earth, perhaps inferior to themselves and ready to welcome a missionary enterprise. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the rocks that pretty much just sit there, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this Mars with envious photophilic sensors of some kind, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.
Please don't sign me up for your newsletter.
I never really got into it, It was too crude and garish (CG, costumes, alien make-up). And the story (what I saw) wasn't compelling enough to help me suspend my disbelief and get over that.
That's one good thing a bout the new BG, IMO. They don't try too hard to create a complete and completely different world. They sketch it out, focus on character development and pacing, and move on. You can buy a lot of the props in your local office supply, but because you really don't notice, such is the strength of the script. (There's one scene in a later episode where Baltar is using a calculator-like thing, it's actually a collapsible travel alarm clock just like one I used to have. But it's just a quick cutaway shot, so it doesn't matter. Look at headsets and such as well, they're generally cobbled together from $5 earphones.)
No doubt if it does well and lasts a couple of seasons it'll jump the shark and acquire bumpy-headed humanoid aliens and I'll lose interest, but right now it's creating its world through its characters, not a constraining backstory involving N years of alien history. This to my mind is a good thing, because it makes for good sci-fi but also makes it accessible on the level of drama.
Makes a change from dodgy pseudo-classical soundtracks.
Pity that everything else about Babylon 5 sucked tits. And the graphics were too obviously CG. The tech has progressed a little since then.
They've also been using the delay to build buzz through Bittorrent, so they don't have bad audience figures for the first couple of shows. Pre-emptive word-of-mouth. Of course, now that it's being released in its primary territory they'll probably clamp down.
There is nothing not to like about it. The CG is great, the physics is as close as Hollywood will probably ever get to accurate (the fighters use thrusters! There's very little noise in space!). The cinematography is gritty and "realist", but not gratuitously so. The storyline (11 episodes in) is a bit on the mystical side, but a lot tighter than the original. And! There's less reason for the heterosexual male segment of the audience to feel conflicted about being attracted to Starbuck!
Good thing OPEC will be trading in it in 10 years time, eh? That should shore it up a little.
THis kind of thing was a problem for the US during the first Gulf War. Basically, a laser would be pread with a (parabolic?) mirror, an F117 would fly into the beam, the night-vision camera hooked into the pilot's helmet would be overloaded, and the pilot would be blinded for a second or two, enough to lose control and crash.
One countermeasure that was later looked into was to use a lens coating with a non-linear response - it remained clear for most light intensities, but went opaque almost instantaneously (in milliseconds) when the intensity went over a certain threshold.
The reason I know about this was that my nonlinear optics professor had an amusing story about being invited to give a lecture on his research in the US, only to find when he arrived that it was to a military lab with several times more people working on the field than the amount doing the same research, but publically.
No doubt some bright spark is thinking of trying to sell the same tech to commercial jet makers now, especially since the new invadee paradigm is to just let the Americans in, wait till they relax, then commence the guerilla warfare.
The original title of Episode VI was "Revenge of the Jedi", so a bit of symmetry there.
(Apparently some of the crew all got t-shirts with that title on them, which are worth decent money now.)
The US simply doesn't have that level of deployable force, without the draft. They might, if all the armchair generals such as yourself out there signed up. Luckily, being a Canadian, you'll probably never be forced to put your money where your mouth is.
As for popular support, it's a bit silly mentioning it, as the world population as a whole was pretty much against it. At one anti-war march in my country, 10% of the entire adult population showed up.
Strictly speaking they don't have that freedom either at the moment. Protests have to be cleared with the CPA some time in advance, aren't allowed over a certain size, and are generally controlled with indimidating numbers of skittish troops with a habit of firing first and asking questions later.
That may what was claimed was going to happen, but what is happening is that the remaining infrastructure is being run into the ground so that US companies can replace it at vast markups, the interim government (Chalabi's part at least) is acting as a secret police for the US agency whose job it is to ensure contracts for the US companies, and the country is dissolving into chaos as the general population realise that their liberators are actually just well-equipped looters, and starts trying to rise up against them, ironically fighting for their freedom.
The point about making obviously contradicting statements like mine, and that (admittedly rather stupid) one you quote above, is that it's meant to make you think about the contradictory statements and actions of those currently in power. Their methods will never achieve the goals they claim to have, and in fact will set them back. If that's the case, and they're not complete idiots, you should ask if maybe they don't actually have very different unsavoury goals.
The piece of software that sparked this "discussion" isn't going to enhance anybody's freedom, it's all about enhancing the US Army's ability to fight and control your typical third world urban armed populace. The only reason the US Army will ever be fighting in such urban areas is for strategic control over the resources of the country involved. It's worth remembering this before you start talking about fighting for freedom. If you're bombarding people in their own neighbourhoods with Apache gunships and Abrams tanks, chances are you're not fighting for freedom.
The beatings will continue until morale improves!
10
01
You may have to scale and tile it a bit.
I doubt that they're eating anything specifically for Thanksgiving, seeing as none of them are from the US. (Michael Foale doesn't count, even if the UK does look more and more like the 51s state lately.)
Forgot the "and then I copied the codecs into the appropriate directory" stage, but that wasn't exactly rocket science.
Funnily enough I installed 1.0prewhatever last night.
./configure
I downloaded the source, typed
make
su -c "make install"
And I was done.
(I didn't bother downloading any skins or anything posh like that. CLIs are good enough for the likes of me.)
Mind you, that was on Slackware 9. But even so, I think yon reviewer may be taking the piss a bit. Why did he expect a CVS build to work as cleanly as an official one. Isn't the point of a CVS version being available so people can see and help with a work in progress>
> BTW : the 19 saudi nationals had no us insurance based medical histories... but then again they had other signifying traits that were indicative of being a foreigner.
Yeah, they were carrying Saudi passports.
Bearing in mind the points system they now have (at least for the visa I'm eligible for), I'd be surprised if there were any new immigrants without a good command of English or French and at least a bachelors.
Canadian employers have taken to looking for what they call "canadian experience", in order to weed out recent immigrants from applicants. It's really a disguised form of xenophobia, and it's worrying the hell out of me, as I'm planning to move to Canada for a few years in the near future, and don't even have a degree in my current field.
The rest of the world doesn't need drug development that focuses on losing weight without exercise and maintaining an erection for more than 30 seconds without a ruler and gaffer tape.
They're going to use a card counting system to defeat card counters. Oh the irony.