What you saw were Syrian auxiliaries with their typical bows.
Ah. I was under the impression that Syrian bows were about a foot or so shorter than the ones I saw on screen. It is quite possible I am mistaken there. The bows shown looked a great deal like the Mongol large bows (one of three types they used). As you, apparently a history-type person, would know, the six foot compound recurve bows they used were first brought west by them. With a gap of about 1000 years between these two times, that would be exactly like the machine gun comparison.
During the Roman empire (as opposed to republic), soldiers became less dependable and therefore less likely to use the sword to good effect.
Ah, again. I have not particularly studied the end of the Roman Empire, so I was not aware of this. My military history teachers never thought it important enough to mention, I guess. This would also explain an evolution away from pila. (I assumed that the average person would be more familiar with the term javelin. Which I suppose is a silly concern when I am nitpicking specifics.)
Ballistas. What you assume to be 12th century was in fact in widespread use in the 4th century BC.
Again, I must be misinformed, then. I was told that ballista were pretty much confined to ships and sieges before the twelfth century. Now that I think further though, that was told to me by history student aquaintence of mine.
I was amused, however, by your implication that effective cavalry did not exist since there were no stirrups.
Without stirrups, you tend to have horsemen, not cavalry. The riders need to be excellent and either all pretty much live on horses (the Huns) or be an elite trained unit (Alexander's Companions). Cavalry gain most of their ability to dominate a battlefield later in history from being able to rain blows down on people while effectively standing on their stirrups or from being securely on their horses and using mass to crush people in the form of lances, spears, or simply hooves.
Commodus, Caligula and a couple of others fought in the arena while emperor.
Never knowingly against someone competant. My point was that Cruise's fighting style was far-fetched, but no more far fetched than this.
Feeling good about yourself yet?... Sue your history teacher.
Yep. Every time I am corrected, I know something else. Sooner or later, I may bother to research all of this and figure out exactly how wrong/right I was. My perceptions of what I saw can also be affected by the simple fact that I saw something once on a movie screen. As I origianlly said, what I perceived made it more difficult to suspend my disbelief. I can hardly sue my teachers for me not double-checking my information now can I? That is one of my many peeves: when people sue because they didn't perform a common sense action.
Oh, yes... ignorance is bliss, as I would not have thought to question the movie at all, and I would not have received an incentive to check both your facts and mine. Nah. I'll continue to be partially informed and work my way up to fully informed if I care.
Ok, I have to say that I am amazed at the number of people here who are saying that Gladiator is better than MI:2. I have seen both along with various other movies inthe past few weeks and I enjoyed MI:2 more because it was easier to suspend my disbelief.
I think the thing that started Gladiator off on the wrong foot for me was the fact that the Roman Legion was using Mongol recurve bows and 12th century ballistas in the 3rd century AD. This is roughly equivalent to Mel Gibson using a machinegun in Braveheart. Never mind that longbows (the first large European bows used heavily for combat) were invented by the Welsh a noticable while later. The Roman Legions used javelins. The javelins were made with soft metal heads that would bend if they hit a shield, so that the user was stuck with dead weight instead of a useful shield. The time and place references did not get better as the movie went on, either. The stirrup, allowing effective cavalry, also had not been invented.
As far as plot goes, it was at least as predictable as MI:2, if not more so. The only three-dimensional character in the film was the former gladiator who owned Maximus. All the rest of the characters were lucky to get one dimension. The plot was painful and the ending simply absurd. Which is more unlikely, Cruise's nutty aerobatic fighting style, or an EMPEROR challenging a SLAVE to a duel?!?!?
I'm sorry. If you want a brainless plot with some good action and entertainment, go see either. If you want a good plot, respectable dialogue, etc. don't see either. I am just astounded that Gladiator can be held up as a better movie than MI:2, when the first is a poor rehash of old gladiator movies and the second is an occaisionally inventive action flick in the spy motif. The only possible reasons I can come up with is that people have seen more spy movies recently, or that they just want to see people dismembered.
Argh. Anyway, if you like John Woo movies, as I do, you will be entertained by MI:2. If you are a medieval weaponry buff, as I am, you will like the fight scenes in Gladiator. If you like to laugh, as I do, you might just like Jackie Chan's mockery of the old west in Shanghai Noon better than either one. The script is witty and the action is good. Plus, it probably cost about a tenth of what either of the other two did.
You didn't say how far into the future of the internet we are talking, so I am going to jump ahead at least four decades. Virtual Reality. Can we do it with technology we have now? Possibly. If we had the advances in broadband access that I expect in the next decade or two, people WOULD be developing VR. We have it in a very limited sense in a few settings already, but it is simply a matter of focusing a few major companies to throw money at it for ten years or so.
Now once VR is a reality, I would expect that the cost for access would rise just a bit. I expect that there will be two types of stratification that emerge at the beginning: coders vs. non-coders and rich vs. poor. The coders would be the people who could actively modify their simulations on the fly, possibly even while in a public area where things are supposed to be set. These would be like the hackers and crackers of today. Non-coders are stuck in the ride that they were given. In gaming, the rich/poor stratification is already happening. A player with a 1.2 Ghz Athlon, the best video card, and a T3 connection has a bit of an advantage over a person using a Celeron 400 over a 56.6 modem. In VR this gulf would get wider as a person with a lot of money could afford to stay on the net more, have the best equipment, buy special code, and have specialized devices to give advantages in various situations. Such people also will be likely to find less and less reason to leave home and may eventually build there real-life homes as glorified bedrooms with kitchens, because everything else they need and want is on the net.
As to the net itself, I forsee it developing a UN-style administrative counsel from the countries with heavy net usage. I see business and government comandeering about 75-90% of the web resources with the rest distributed to various individuals and organizations. There will be various disassociated networks that are difficult or impossible to get to via the net for when people want security or to get away from the rest of the netizens. Most literature, vacations, shopping, etc. will all be accessable via the net. Teaching about almost anything would be done via VR. Many people with good net access will suffer a decline in physical health due to simple lack of activity. In short, I see it being much like the first half of Tad Williams's book: Otherland: City of Golden Shadow.
they... feel that artists have a right to prevent people from preacefully sharing information
When did Lars ask you to stop sharing information? He wants you to stop running his paintings through the photocopier (metaphorically speaking). All of the information: lyrics, score, etc. are in the public domain or might as well be. Go compile it yourself instead.
Sure you can make a garden that you don't want people to stand on your grass and look at it with out paying. Sure you can't stop them from looking from the street. You can stop them from digging it up, taking it to the landscapers, getting a copy of it made, and throwing it back into your yard more or less where it was. Just because something is easy to copy, doesn't necessarily make it information. Information is how something is done, a description of it, the wording used, etc. Information is not the product it refers to (such as a reading of a particular piece of poetry) in my book.
Lars is wrong because he claims that artists have a right to control the spread of their work. They do not - information wants to be free, and nobody has the right or should have the ability to control it.
OK. Here is another perspective to view it from. The information is and always has been free. The source code (the actual music sheets and lyrics) is out there and free as far as Lars is concerned. If you download and actually compile (play) it yourself, I doubt Lars would care. So the information is completely free. What are you complaining about? Oh... wait. You want HIS compiled version of the information done by Metallica (a beowulf cluster of Alphas) not the one done by you (a TRS-80). Well, it is his performance, so he can do it for you at your every whim, or do it when the hell he wants and charge you for it. If you were in his shoes, which would you prefer? Honestly, now?
Music tracks are not information that is free. They are reproductions of something unique. If Lars had a unique painting and made a few prints of it for his friends, would you complain? How about if you had the painting instead, and Lars made 5,000 prints at Kinko's (on your credit card) and gave them away to everyone who wanted them. Suppose those people did the same thing. The prints you gave to your friends wouldn't seem so special, huh?
You have your opinion and he has his. I personally view his as more reasonable, but that does not mean yours is wrong. It means that one of us is misinformed, or that we disagree on this. I try to think of things in metaphors before I make judgements, because I like to look at things in a perspective that others might see it from.
I'm amazed that Lars can say that the taping vinyl is OK but MP3ing vinyl isn't, purely on the basis of scale and availability.... At what scale does it become unethical?
One word: Microsoft.
Most people on/. are not fond of MS. Is the stuff they are doing that much worse than that done by many smaller companies? No, not much. Scale does become a factor in that one, because it gives them the power to pummel anyone who interferes with their plans.
In general, there are a lot of things that people overlook all the time. When you do those same things on a massive scale, people start to care. Kill a bug: who cares? Wipe out a healthy species: Some people are going to care. The scale at which people care varies by person. An entymologist or environmentalist is going to care about someone killing bugs long before your average yuppie. An average Washinton DC politician probably won't care until studies come in showing that many voters care about the fact you wiped out the entire population of mantids everywhere in the world and we now have locusts. It just varies from person to person and what they care about.
Yep. You're right. Those two occupy the same corner in the back of my brain with various other CEOs. I don't like or dislike either one enough to actually keep them straight...
Apple: Good point. As defined by this trial, Apple has a monopoly on Macintosh computers. If they participate in tactics to preserve their monopoly that are considered unfair, they should be investigated and action taken.
Sun: As much as Larry Ellison wishes it was, Sun is not a monopoly. Therefore, anti-trust law does not apply. Even in its web server area, HP, IBM, and Compaq make sure Sun is not a monopoly.
AOL/Time Warner/Netscape: I sure can't think of any monopolies it holds yet, but I am sure it will get one before too long. Then we can do the exact same thing if it abuses monopoly power.
IBM: Sure they could have drug it out longer. I mean, heck, they'd only been trying to nail IBM in that case for, what, ten years? Unfortunately, in addition to the fact that IBM had lost the monopoly they were being tried for during the course of the trial, there was a problem of insufficient evidence. Another problem was that IBM apparently listened to their own lawyers. This made things much more difficult. The DOJ gave up because they realized that a conviction of a meningful sort would be nigh impossible and IBM had already agreed to a lot of reforms. Oh yeah, as to your other IBM comments: Ermmm I don't think you'd call the share that IBM has of desktop PCs a monopoly.
Your dripping sarcasm is entertaining, but if you actually wanted to sway someone, you'd have to deal with the fact that US law says monopolies have to play by nicer rules than non-monopolies. Personally, I like that. Otherwise many things we take for granted would never have happened, because the patents would all be owned and suppressed by the descendants of Carnegie and other turn of the last century tycoons. I like both innovation and profit, not a choice of one or the other.
The House of Representatives in the US passed the China trade pact this afternoon.
You can find the CNN article here. An amusing point is that there is also a link to a Time article on the point brought up here about whether opening trade with China means trade should be opened up with Cuba. You can find that here.
Major point: The Senate will consider the issue after Memorial Day. The vote will probably come in early June and the normalized trade is expected to pass. It hasn't completely passed yet, but the chances of it failing are miniscule.
but does that really release the dominance of one company with one OS?
While I think that breaking up Microsoft could be viewed as a fun mental excursion, I am limiting myself to those likely to be carried out. Under US law, it is not at all illegal to be a monopoly, so long as you don't abuse monopoly power. Microsoft did, so the DOJ wants them broken up. If you are going to do a vertical split like we have been talking, you should not try to do a horizontal split too. The reason is that the judgement would probably be thrown out on appeal as unnecessarily harsh. If you take away apps an such from the OS company, they have no real strong arm tactics to use except hideously raising prices. That would just drive people to Linux and other operating systems. A vertical split leaves them the monopoly, but no real way to exploit it that I have thought up. A horizontal split has the danger that one will simply continue as the real Microsoft while the others shrival to almost nothing.
I am not going to attempt make up your mind for you, I just decided you might want an explanation for why I would not want the OS company split. As for the X-Box, I would be slightly surprised if it comes to reality even if they don't split. On the other hand, if one of the three companies is counting on it to survive, it might turn out pretty darn good.
The apps monopoly will quickly find its monopoly power fading away unless they make their products better and more compatible.
Better than and more compatible with what?
Good question. The answer to better than would probably be the improved versions of Wordperfect, Star Office, Lotus Smartsuite, etc. that would have access to the full set of APIs that Office has had access to all along. The answer to compatible with would be the other operating systems people use. As Linux gains poularity as a server, there will be more demand for Linux apps. There already is a demand for Unix apps.
I don't in the slightest disagree that MS makes a lot of good apps. Some of those will lose large advantages they have enjoyed upon being separated from Windows.
1. OS (DOS, Windows operating environment, NT) 2. Applications (Office, Games, Wordpad, Solitaire and other apps that are now included in the Windows operating environment) 3. Media (MSNBC, MSN (including Hotmail), MicrosoftPress)
So you would put IE with apps instead of Media. As I ponder that, it makes a lot of sense. It prevents the media group from putting special stuff in IE that only they can really take advantage of, etc. I have long been a proponent of basicly the same breakup as you outlined with a few differences. For one, let the OS group keep Wordpad, Solitare, etc. These programs are so basic that they have to be given away free for anyone to want them. The OS group can probably keep anything simplistic enough that no one would BUY it. They need to have basic text editors and such to have a prayer of competing with Linux and *BSD fo long.
The next question is who gets hardware? They have mice, keyboards, etc. right now and are theoretically designing the X-Box. I am inclined to give it to the Media group so that they have a chance to actually make some sort of money. This is not the preposterous figures you could point to from Office, so they can do little to support themselves through one line of products paying for all the others.
After all, they will be (most likely) all working in the same building, and have access to everybody's source code.
As soon as they tried a stunt like that, they would be eligible to be sued by every single competitor they've got for collusion. If you have been broken up as a company, you *DO NOT* get to share a building. All properties between the two - three new companies will be split up as fairly as possible in order to separate them cleanly. If at all possible, I suspect that the DOJ would try to get only one company to have the main Microsoft campus in Redmond and send everyone else to their other facilities.
In short, MS's enemies will be salivating for MS to try to act in collusion so they can drag them back into court and make it even more obvious that: "They are dirty scumballs who don't comply with court orders!" The apps group will no longer have access to all of that secret code that the OS group sets aside for them.
That said, I think that giving IE to a third company is a great idea if you also give it MSN, Hotmail, etc. Heck, even give it the hardware like mice, keyboards and X-Boxes. You end up with two LEGAL monopolies and one competitive company. The apps monopoly will quickly find its monopoly power fading away unless they make their products better and more compatible. It seems like the best solution to me.
It makes a really good comment about political correctness. While it is a good thing, this book paints the nightmare scenerio where free thought is eliminated through the destruction of books and programming of people (with television).
Allow me to append to the bolded quotation: in moderation. The simple problem that the book illustrates (along with various absurdities in the United States today) is a lack of moderation. No I am not talking Karma here, either.
Any special interest group is formed because the people involved share a set of opinions and priorities. When those groups suggest that the general public should or should not do X and give a valid reason, the public should listen, think about it, and usually agree to some extent. If, on the other hand, extremists in those groups are dictating public policies to the public and the public is simply acquiesing, that is the path to problems like F451 examines. Guess which one we are getting in the US? There is one version of zero moderation that we call fascism, and most people seem not to like it. This inverted version of it that arose from more liberal ideologies really just boils back down to fascism with a different coat of paint on it. Instead of starting with a majority and eliminating minority deviations, it starts with a federation of minorities and forging them into a majority that wipes out deviations within, then outside of the majority.
Are we in danger of this in the next year or two? Probably not. But unless people start making decisions based on their own ethics, representing themselves in society, and generally acting as a voice of "reason", they will continue to be trampled by the power of much smaller groups. I am not advocating any particular ideology, but stand up for whatever ones you believe in. As those of us who are not extremists drop out of the political picture in disgust, there are only the extremists left. Extremists come up with extreme solutions to problems. People are getting strange ideas from books? Get rid of the books. People are insulting minorities disproportionally? Make it a special, worse kind of crime that punishes anyone who insults a minority. People don't like Jews and Gypsies? Well, put them in special camps where they won't bother people.
As people complacently ignore political and societal situations, they tend to sit on their duff or pursue their own particular interests. (We/.ers tend to fall into the latter category from what I have seen.) With the TV right in front of them and nothing better to do, these people fall into the complete complacency of a world where nothing affects them. Those who lose themselves into their own interests tend to ignore or forget about the rest of the world unless it directly stomps in the way of their interests.
Who could change things and prevent the powers that control a government from doing the extreme things I mentioned? That middle group that isn't paying attention. Why aren't they paying attention? Because it is a lot easier to go with the flow and do everything according to the "right thing to do" of the moment. Who is keeping them content and uninterested? People who make money from having content and uninterested TV viewers. Hollywood makes such a disproportional amount of money to stage theatres that it isn't even remotely funny. Why would they ever want to give that up?
If people took every good-sounding idea and applied it in moderation, they would have a lot of things get better. When the good idea turned out to be not-so-good, there is a smaller mess to clean up. Oops! Burning books wasn't such a good idea! Good thing we only burned a few thousand instead of all of them!
I wonder if IBM's "Deep Blue" got its name from "Deep Thought."
Short answer: Yes.
Long Answer: The predecessor chess machine that IBM came up with before Deep Blue was called Deep Thought. It went up against various chess masters, but was not good enought to beat Gary Kasparov. Deep Blue was an upgraded version of Deep Thought that was about twice as fast, contained more specialized hardware, and had been "trained" by a group of chess masters whom had studied many of Gary Kasparov's games. Metaphoricly, Deep Blue was Deep Thought's offspring and trained from birth to defeat the man that Deep Thought couldn't.
DMCA promises staying power with Moron. The new chip is based on Congress prosecutor technology and will target citizens in the market for value HRs.
By B. Elgin, Slashdot News UPDATED April 27, 2000 7:41 PM PT
NEW YORK -- Digital Millenium Copyright Act Inc. promises staying power with a new brand of prosecutor designed for low-cost Human Rights.
The prosecutor's name, Moron, was derived from the Greek word "mOros," which means "foolish, stupid." Moron was announced Thursday by Steve Case, DMCA's chairman and CEO, at the oligarchy's annual shareholders meeting.
Moron, based on DMCA's (DCgov: DMCA) Congress prosecutor technology, will target consumers in the market for low-cost HRs.
Moron will be available this summer in sub-$10,000,000,000 companies. (Already available in $10 billion+ companies.) DMCA will offer the new law at higher court speeds than its MPAA, which has topped out at $550 billion, but is unlikely to charge much more than the $550 billion MPAA, which was introduced at $187,000 in campaign contributions.
The corporate benefit, the company said, will be low cost and much higher performance.
"We want (companies) to know they've got something good and solid, and they won't have to spend another $1,000,000 in six months or a year," said Mark Bode, Congress marketing manager.
I could keep going, but I'll spare you my very odd sense of humor...
YAAAR: Arrogant? Of course. Many people are arrogant at times. I was struck by the extreme arrogance of the original post and responded in the same vein. Retard? My, how un-PC (Politically Correct). No, not according to any metrics I have seen. I do have a sometimes foolish tendency of talking to people who annoy me in a deliberatly assinine way just to annoy them back, though. It usually takes a lot to annoy me, but sometimes a single comment will do it. Luckily for all involved, I get tired of being immature after a little while.
YHNF: That's news to me. I suppose it is possible that someone completed an infinate improbability drive ala Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy and we have hit the probability of all my friends inexplicably spontaneously combusting.... Doesn't seem likely though.
Translation for Usenet illiterate: You have taken a joke seriously. "Have a nice day" or HAND is code that a given comment is intended to garner a response, not be taken as serious or factual. YHBT or "You have been trolled" is the usual response. Trolls are usually moderated down on Slashdot.
So their propoganda would have you believe. Funny how they're more than happy to use government to back their personal moral beliefs to enrich their interests.
As I stated in my original post, I am measuring left vs. right separately from up vs. down. Right-wing people vary the spectrum from authoritism to libertarianism, just like left-wingers. As a matter of fact, what you described is exactly the same as what I described, except I did not try to make it sound negative. Are your personal biases so strong that they blind you the fact that people, no matter how strongly you disagree with them, are... umm... people.
As for the left? You are joking, right?
No. This is one current set of political theory. There are others too. This one seems most objective to me. I gather that you disagree with the assessment.
Anarchism says, "Fsck the army. Yeah they were famous for it in Spain. Gee, could you be more uninformed...
As I said before, I was refering to the United States. I was also refering to the concept of Anarchism, not the supposed practice in Spain. Calling the "Anarchist" regime in Spain an example of anarchy is something of a historical joke you know... Most people would call organized Anarchy an oxymoron.
You've hit a nail on the head that the author didn't realize was there. The fact of the matter is that libertarians represent a spectrum, just like any other political association.
First let us define a space to think in according to current poltical spectrum as I have gathered it in the US. The right side emphacizes personal fiscal responsibility and collective moral responsibility. The upper side represents authoritism, wherein all power is centralized. The left side emphacizes personal moral responsibility and collective fiscal responsibility. The lower side represents libertarianism or anarchism, wherein all the power is decentralized or distributed.
The Repulicans average about five steps right and two steps down from the center. The Democrats average about four steps left and three steps up from center. Fascists tend to stand about twelve to fifteen steps up and half a dozen to a dozen right. The Socialists here average about ten steps left and eight steps up from center. Libertarians average about seven steps down from center and wobble left and right. Anarchists just go down until they can't see anybody else.:) Moderates like me orbit around the center reacting to current trends. These locations fluctuate based on whom is in power, what conditions are, and how angry people are.
The author believes that because corporations are becoming the enemy, libertarians are making a long dash north and left. In actuality, it would not surprise me to see libertarians move up and left as corporations become more of a threat, but they are not going to cross the whole spectrum. Once serious campaign finance reform is done, there is a decent chance of corporations losing the ability to buy votes for a while and the groups will shift back right and south. Libertarians are just going to form against the critical mass of power wherever it happens to be. If they have to form an army to fight the current menace, they are happy with that so long as they can leave that army when the battle is over. Socialism tends to say more that the army is a good thing and lets keep it as a permanent thing. Anarchism says, "Fsck the army."
The author decided for whatever reasons that the libertarians are on the lower right (below the Republicans), which is accurate for many libertarians, but there are an equal number to the left (right under the Democrats). Libertarians have factions just like any other group and the faction with the most sway is the one whom is against the current power locus. There will still be factions that proclaim government a danger and prevent the whole from sliding too far in any given direction. It all works out.
I expected everyone to go off on how they loved playing Populous way back when.... Did these guys just jump on the nerd-bus when it became profitable? I say all of those people get banned immediately!
Sirrah, I fear you are confused. You have mistaken nerds and geeks once again. I am frightfully sorry for you old chap, but Populous enjoyed immense signifigance on the Geek bus. The nerd bus was spending most of its time in the library, observatory, chemical lab, and other such places. A full two-thirds of nerds did not play Populous or even recognize it for a major development. I am one such. In the verbiage of current trends, geeks show an amazing tendency towards the computer and technical, whilst nerds tend to flow more towards the literate and scientific. There is a wide swath of overlap in the midst of these two pools of talent wherin your confusion has occurred.
I, for instance, could be defined as a geek due to my profession as a programmer and occaisional game player. On the other hand, I am not much of a hacker due to lack of time and overriding inclination, so I am not a true geek. As a nerd however, I have collected an immense storehouse of useless or specialized knowledge in combination with my obsessive/compulsive tendencies towards whatever my current hobby is. This makes it more difficult for me to be defined as a non-nerd than a non-geek. Your personal prerequisite that nerds have played Populous on your platform of choice is your opinion, but your wording is incorrect. It should be a prerequisite for geeks.
Thank you for your patience, sirrah. Have a nice day!
Thank you. That was a very silly memory fudge on my part.
Morgoth was the rogue of the Valar and was taken down by his own kin. Sauron was the strongest of Morgoth's Maiar(sp?) servitors. I haven't reread the Simarillion since my freshman year of college, wheras I reread TLotR in the past couple of years.
I was actually thinking of Earendil and Beren(?) the one handed who retrieved one of the Simirils from Morgoth's crown. Men played a minor role in the war of the elves against Morgoth and his servents, and they were rewarded with the Isle of Numenor, within sight of Valinor. The elves of Beleriend and other Noldor fortifications were nonetheless potent enough to stick in Sauron's memory. He respected their power, but learned to warp it against them by insinuating himself in their circles to betray them to his master Morgoth.
By the third age, most of the power displayed by remnants of the high elven lords appears related to words and the light of the last remaining Simiril: Earendil's star. Sauron was pretty well familiar with the power of the Simirils. IIRC, as soon as Sam used the Phial on Shelob, Sauron's eye started to drift his way. Sauron was not worried, however, as he had one of his most potent allies watching the path: Shelob.
You are completely right in your recounting of the fall of Numenor, etc. I was just mixing things together in my mind a bit.
So the new question is why wasn't the ring given to a group of well-trained elven commandos to sneak it into Mordor instead of a group of hobbits.
Short Answer from someone who studied the books (including the Simarillion) too closely for his own good...
Sauron did not take hobbits seriously. Nobody would entrust the fate of the world to a gaggle of pint-sized twerps. Elves on the other hand were a well known enemy. He had been fighting the high elves to one degree or another for millenia. He watched his lord and master Morgoth brought down by a combination of high elves and the men Aragorn was decended from. These enemies had specific patterns he could watch for. The moment Sam invoked the Phial of Galadriel to fight Shelob, Sauron knew something was up, because that was high elven magic.
Legolas was sent because he was a grey elf. High elves were simply too distinctive and obvious. Sending a high elven lord like Glorfindel or Elrond's sons would be like sending in a panzer armed with a searchlight and a cannon into a sniper position. As soon as it fired once, you would know exactly where it was. It's trail would not be too hard to follow either. Grey elves didn't have that same type of power, because they never left Middle Earth to go dwell with the not-quite-gods.
A very well stated argument. I have been historically very impressed with the performance of the PlayStation and made give its successor slightly more credit than it is yet due. Similarly, I may give X-Box slightly less credit than it is due, because of the hardware developers and my previous experiences. I am endeavoring to minimize my bias.;-)
The real power I see in the PS2 that I believe will exceed the X-Box is simply the difficulty of programming for the PS2 vs. the simplicity of the X-Box. (Yes. That is what I meant to say.)
Both machines will have more than enough power to do amazing things, particulary if the graphics card for the X-Box is as excellent as hoped. The difficulty of developing for the PS2 is actually symptomatic of an incredible strength: innovation. As people learn to use the Emotion Engine, they will need to become intimately familiar, excellent programmers to create market-winning games. This intimacy allows them to program more efficiently and do neat tricks that one normally does not think of. All of the best Japanese companies are lining up behind the PS2 and investing the time necessary to get great developers for the system. This means that the games will be excellent by the time the X-Box is hitting its release. In contrast, many more American companies will jump onto the X-Box bandwagon that have not played in the console space before, as the barrier of entry is much lower due to the higher similarity to American and European PC programming. I expect the learning curve for using the full potential of the X-Box according to MS's claims will be far less steep in difficulty, but longer in time.
And all of this means? X-Box as described by the specs will be an excellent system that will satiate many gamers. However, we still have yet to see what portion of those specs are realized and in what fashion. We have yet to see the graphics "card" that will be the true power behind the X-Box. We have yet to see if the PS2 becomes as popular in the US as it is in Japan (every last machine sold out in the first weekend). If the PS2 and Dolphin are too firmly entrenched, the X-Box may have difficulty getting market share. Let's not forget that the much mentioned, never seen Nintendo Dolphin is supposed to come out in early 2001. The fierce competition will probably be good for gamers. The problem is that the extreme differences in the different systems may force gamers to get all three systems to play all the games they want!
Slashdot Mirror
Ah. I was under the impression that Syrian bows were about a foot or so shorter than the ones I saw on screen. It is quite possible I am mistaken there. The bows shown looked a great deal like the Mongol large bows (one of three types they used). As you, apparently a history-type person, would know, the six foot compound recurve bows they used were first brought west by them. With a gap of about 1000 years between these two times, that would be exactly like the machine gun comparison.
During the Roman empire (as opposed to republic), soldiers became less dependable and therefore less likely to use the sword to good effect.
Ah, again. I have not particularly studied the end of the Roman Empire, so I was not aware of this. My military history teachers never thought it important enough to mention, I guess. This would also explain an evolution away from pila. (I assumed that the average person would be more familiar with the term javelin. Which I suppose is a silly concern when I am nitpicking specifics.)
Ballistas. What you assume to be 12th century was in fact in widespread use in the 4th century BC.
Again, I must be misinformed, then. I was told that ballista were pretty much confined to ships and sieges before the twelfth century. Now that I think further though, that was told to me by history student aquaintence of mine.
I was amused, however, by your implication that effective cavalry did not exist since there were no stirrups.
Without stirrups, you tend to have horsemen, not cavalry. The riders need to be excellent and either all pretty much live on horses (the Huns) or be an elite trained unit (Alexander's Companions). Cavalry gain most of their ability to dominate a battlefield later in history from being able to rain blows down on people while effectively standing on their stirrups or from being securely on their horses and using mass to crush people in the form of lances, spears, or simply hooves.
Commodus, Caligula and a couple of others fought in the arena while emperor.
Never knowingly against someone competant. My point was that Cruise's fighting style was far-fetched, but no more far fetched than this.
Feeling good about yourself yet? ... Sue your history teacher.
Yep. Every time I am corrected, I know something else. Sooner or later, I may bother to research all of this and figure out exactly how wrong/right I was. My perceptions of what I saw can also be affected by the simple fact that I saw something once on a movie screen. As I origianlly said, what I perceived made it more difficult to suspend my disbelief. I can hardly sue my teachers for me not double-checking my information now can I? That is one of my many peeves: when people sue because they didn't perform a common sense action.
Oh, yes ... ignorance is bliss, as I would not have thought to question the movie at all, and I would not have received an incentive to check both your facts and mine. Nah. I'll continue to be partially informed and work my way up to fully informed if I care.
B. Elgin
I think the thing that started Gladiator off on the wrong foot for me was the fact that the Roman Legion was using Mongol recurve bows and 12th century ballistas in the 3rd century AD. This is roughly equivalent to Mel Gibson using a machinegun in Braveheart. Never mind that longbows (the first large European bows used heavily for combat) were invented by the Welsh a noticable while later. The Roman Legions used javelins. The javelins were made with soft metal heads that would bend if they hit a shield, so that the user was stuck with dead weight instead of a useful shield. The time and place references did not get better as the movie went on, either. The stirrup, allowing effective cavalry, also had not been invented.
As far as plot goes, it was at least as predictable as MI:2, if not more so. The only three-dimensional character in the film was the former gladiator who owned Maximus. All the rest of the characters were lucky to get one dimension. The plot was painful and the ending simply absurd. Which is more unlikely, Cruise's nutty aerobatic fighting style, or an EMPEROR challenging a SLAVE to a duel?!?!?
I'm sorry. If you want a brainless plot with some good action and entertainment, go see either. If you want a good plot, respectable dialogue, etc. don't see either. I am just astounded that Gladiator can be held up as a better movie than MI:2, when the first is a poor rehash of old gladiator movies and the second is an occaisionally inventive action flick in the spy motif. The only possible reasons I can come up with is that people have seen more spy movies recently, or that they just want to see people dismembered.
Argh. Anyway, if you like John Woo movies, as I do, you will be entertained by MI:2. If you are a medieval weaponry buff, as I am, you will like the fight scenes in Gladiator. If you like to laugh, as I do, you might just like Jackie Chan's mockery of the old west in Shanghai Noon better than either one. The script is witty and the action is good. Plus, it probably cost about a tenth of what either of the other two did.
B. Elgin
Now once VR is a reality, I would expect that the cost for access would rise just a bit. I expect that there will be two types of stratification that emerge at the beginning: coders vs. non-coders and rich vs. poor. The coders would be the people who could actively modify their simulations on the fly, possibly even while in a public area where things are supposed to be set. These would be like the hackers and crackers of today. Non-coders are stuck in the ride that they were given. In gaming, the rich/poor stratification is already happening. A player with a 1.2 Ghz Athlon, the best video card, and a T3 connection has a bit of an advantage over a person using a Celeron 400 over a 56.6 modem. In VR this gulf would get wider as a person with a lot of money could afford to stay on the net more, have the best equipment, buy special code, and have specialized devices to give advantages in various situations. Such people also will be likely to find less and less reason to leave home and may eventually build there real-life homes as glorified bedrooms with kitchens, because everything else they need and want is on the net.
As to the net itself, I forsee it developing a UN-style administrative counsel from the countries with heavy net usage. I see business and government comandeering about 75-90% of the web resources with the rest distributed to various individuals and organizations. There will be various disassociated networks that are difficult or impossible to get to via the net for when people want security or to get away from the rest of the netizens. Most literature, vacations, shopping, etc. will all be accessable via the net. Teaching about almost anything would be done via VR. Many people with good net access will suffer a decline in physical health due to simple lack of activity. In short, I see it being much like the first half of Tad Williams's book: Otherland: City of Golden Shadow.
B. Elgin
When did Lars ask you to stop sharing information? He wants you to stop running his paintings through the photocopier (metaphorically speaking). All of the information: lyrics, score, etc. are in the public domain or might as well be. Go compile it yourself instead.
Sure you can make a garden that you don't want people to stand on your grass and look at it with out paying. Sure you can't stop them from looking from the street. You can stop them from digging it up, taking it to the landscapers, getting a copy of it made, and throwing it back into your yard more or less where it was. Just because something is easy to copy, doesn't necessarily make it information. Information is how something is done, a description of it, the wording used, etc. Information is not the product it refers to (such as a reading of a particular piece of poetry) in my book.
B. Elgin
OK. Here is another perspective to view it from. The information is and always has been free. The source code (the actual music sheets and lyrics) is out there and free as far as Lars is concerned. If you download and actually compile (play) it yourself, I doubt Lars would care. So the information is completely free. What are you complaining about? Oh ... wait. You want HIS compiled version of the information done by Metallica (a beowulf cluster of Alphas) not the one done by you (a TRS-80). Well, it is his performance, so he can do it for you at your every whim, or do it when the hell he wants and charge you for it. If you were in his shoes, which would you prefer? Honestly, now?
Music tracks are not information that is free. They are reproductions of something unique. If Lars had a unique painting and made a few prints of it for his friends, would you complain? How about if you had the painting instead, and Lars made 5,000 prints at Kinko's (on your credit card) and gave them away to everyone who wanted them. Suppose those people did the same thing. The prints you gave to your friends wouldn't seem so special, huh?
You have your opinion and he has his. I personally view his as more reasonable, but that does not mean yours is wrong. It means that one of us is misinformed, or that we disagree on this. I try to think of things in metaphors before I make judgements, because I like to look at things in a perspective that others might see it from.
B. Elgin
One word: Microsoft.
Most people on /. are not fond of MS. Is the stuff they are doing that much worse than that done by many smaller companies? No, not much. Scale does become a factor in that one, because it gives them the power to pummel anyone who interferes with their plans.
In general, there are a lot of things that people overlook all the time. When you do those same things on a massive scale, people start to care. Kill a bug: who cares? Wipe out a healthy species: Some people are going to care. The scale at which people care varies by person. An entymologist or environmentalist is going to care about someone killing bugs long before your average yuppie. An average Washinton DC politician probably won't care until studies come in showing that many voters care about the fact you wiped out the entire population of mantids everywhere in the world and we now have locusts. It just varies from person to person and what they care about.
B. Elgin
Yep. You're right. Those two occupy the same corner in the back of my brain with various other CEOs. I don't like or dislike either one enough to actually keep them straight...
B. Elgin
Apple: Good point. As defined by this trial, Apple has a monopoly on Macintosh computers. If they participate in tactics to preserve their monopoly that are considered unfair, they should be investigated and action taken.
Sun: As much as Larry Ellison wishes it was, Sun is not a monopoly. Therefore, anti-trust law does not apply. Even in its web server area, HP, IBM, and Compaq make sure Sun is not a monopoly.
AOL/Time Warner/Netscape: I sure can't think of any monopolies it holds yet, but I am sure it will get one before too long. Then we can do the exact same thing if it abuses monopoly power.
IBM: Sure they could have drug it out longer. I mean, heck, they'd only been trying to nail IBM in that case for, what, ten years? Unfortunately, in addition to the fact that IBM had lost the monopoly they were being tried for during the course of the trial, there was a problem of insufficient evidence. Another problem was that IBM apparently listened to their own lawyers. This made things much more difficult. The DOJ gave up because they realized that a conviction of a meningful sort would be nigh impossible and IBM had already agreed to a lot of reforms.
Oh yeah, as to your other IBM comments: Ermmm I don't think you'd call the share that IBM has of desktop PCs a monopoly.
Your dripping sarcasm is entertaining, but if you actually wanted to sway someone, you'd have to deal with the fact that US law says monopolies have to play by nicer rules than non-monopolies. Personally, I like that. Otherwise many things we take for granted would never have happened, because the patents would all be owned and suppressed by the descendants of Carnegie and other turn of the last century tycoons. I like both innovation and profit, not a choice of one or the other.
B. Elgin
You can find the CNN article here. An amusing point is that there is also a link to a Time article on the point brought up here about whether opening trade with China means trade should be opened up with Cuba. You can find that here.
Major point: The Senate will consider the issue after Memorial Day. The vote will probably come in early June and the normalized trade is expected to pass. It hasn't completely passed yet, but the chances of it failing are miniscule.
B. Elgin
While I think that breaking up Microsoft could be viewed as a fun mental excursion, I am limiting myself to those likely to be carried out. Under US law, it is not at all illegal to be a monopoly, so long as you don't abuse monopoly power. Microsoft did, so the DOJ wants them broken up. If you are going to do a vertical split like we have been talking, you should not try to do a horizontal split too. The reason is that the judgement would probably be thrown out on appeal as unnecessarily harsh. If you take away apps an such from the OS company, they have no real strong arm tactics to use except hideously raising prices. That would just drive people to Linux and other operating systems. A vertical split leaves them the monopoly, but no real way to exploit it that I have thought up. A horizontal split has the danger that one will simply continue as the real Microsoft while the others shrival to almost nothing.
I am not going to attempt make up your mind for you, I just decided you might want an explanation for why I would not want the OS company split. As for the X-Box, I would be slightly surprised if it comes to reality even if they don't split. On the other hand, if one of the three companies is counting on it to survive, it might turn out pretty darn good.
B. Elgin
Better than and more compatible with what?
Good question. The answer to better than would probably be the improved versions of Wordperfect, Star Office, Lotus Smartsuite, etc. that would have access to the full set of APIs that Office has had access to all along. The answer to compatible with would be the other operating systems people use. As Linux gains poularity as a server, there will be more demand for Linux apps. There already is a demand for Unix apps.
I don't in the slightest disagree that MS makes a lot of good apps. Some of those will lose large advantages they have enjoyed upon being separated from Windows.
B. Elgin
2. Applications (Office, Games, Wordpad, Solitaire and other apps that are now included in the Windows operating environment)
3. Media (MSNBC, MSN (including Hotmail), MicrosoftPress)
So you would put IE with apps instead of Media. As I ponder that, it makes a lot of sense. It prevents the media group from putting special stuff in IE that only they can really take advantage of, etc. I have long been a proponent of basicly the same breakup as you outlined with a few differences. For one, let the OS group keep Wordpad, Solitare, etc. These programs are so basic that they have to be given away free for anyone to want them. The OS group can probably keep anything simplistic enough that no one would BUY it. They need to have basic text editors and such to have a prayer of competing with Linux and *BSD fo long.
The next question is who gets hardware? They have mice, keyboards, etc. right now and are theoretically designing the X-Box. I am inclined to give it to the Media group so that they have a chance to actually make some sort of money. This is not the preposterous figures you could point to from Office, so they can do little to support themselves through one line of products paying for all the others.
B. Elgin
As soon as they tried a stunt like that, they would be eligible to be sued by every single competitor they've got for collusion. If you have been broken up as a company, you *DO NOT* get to share a building. All properties between the two - three new companies will be split up as fairly as possible in order to separate them cleanly. If at all possible, I suspect that the DOJ would try to get only one company to have the main Microsoft campus in Redmond and send everyone else to their other facilities.
In short, MS's enemies will be salivating for MS to try to act in collusion so they can drag them back into court and make it even more obvious that: "They are dirty scumballs who don't comply with court orders!" The apps group will no longer have access to all of that secret code that the OS group sets aside for them.
That said, I think that giving IE to a third company is a great idea if you also give it MSN, Hotmail, etc. Heck, even give it the hardware like mice, keyboards and X-Boxes. You end up with two LEGAL monopolies and one competitive company. The apps monopoly will quickly find its monopoly power fading away unless they make their products better and more compatible. It seems like the best solution to me.
B. Elgin
Allow me to append to the bolded quotation: in moderation. The simple problem that the book illustrates (along with various absurdities in the United States today) is a lack of moderation. No I am not talking Karma here, either.
Any special interest group is formed because the people involved share a set of opinions and priorities. When those groups suggest that the general public should or should not do X and give a valid reason, the public should listen, think about it, and usually agree to some extent. If, on the other hand, extremists in those groups are dictating public policies to the public and the public is simply acquiesing, that is the path to problems like F451 examines. Guess which one we are getting in the US? There is one version of zero moderation that we call fascism, and most people seem not to like it. This inverted version of it that arose from more liberal ideologies really just boils back down to fascism with a different coat of paint on it. Instead of starting with a majority and eliminating minority deviations, it starts with a federation of minorities and forging them into a majority that wipes out deviations within, then outside of the majority.
Are we in danger of this in the next year or two? Probably not. But unless people start making decisions based on their own ethics, representing themselves in society, and generally acting as a voice of "reason", they will continue to be trampled by the power of much smaller groups. I am not advocating any particular ideology, but stand up for whatever ones you believe in. As those of us who are not extremists drop out of the political picture in disgust, there are only the extremists left. Extremists come up with extreme solutions to problems. People are getting strange ideas from books? Get rid of the books. People are insulting minorities disproportionally? Make it a special, worse kind of crime that punishes anyone who insults a minority. People don't like Jews and Gypsies? Well, put them in special camps where they won't bother people.
As people complacently ignore political and societal situations, they tend to sit on their duff or pursue their own particular interests. (We /.ers tend to fall into the latter category from what I have seen.) With the TV right in front of them and nothing better to do, these people fall into the complete complacency of a world where nothing affects them. Those who lose themselves into their own interests tend to ignore or forget about the rest of the world unless it directly stomps in the way of their interests.
Who could change things and prevent the powers that control a government from doing the extreme things I mentioned? That middle group that isn't paying attention. Why aren't they paying attention? Because it is a lot easier to go with the flow and do everything according to the "right thing to do" of the moment. Who is keeping them content and uninterested? People who make money from having content and uninterested TV viewers. Hollywood makes such a disproportional amount of money to stage theatres that it isn't even remotely funny. Why would they ever want to give that up?
If people took every good-sounding idea and applied it in moderation, they would have a lot of things get better. When the good idea turned out to be not-so-good, there is a smaller mess to clean up. Oops! Burning books wasn't such a good idea! Good thing we only burned a few thousand instead of all of them!
B. Elgin
Short answer: Yes.
Long Answer: The predecessor chess machine that IBM came up with before Deep Blue was called Deep Thought. It went up against various chess masters, but was not good enought to beat Gary Kasparov. Deep Blue was an upgraded version of Deep Thought that was about twice as fast, contained more specialized hardware, and had been "trained" by a group of chess masters whom had studied many of Gary Kasparov's games. Metaphoricly, Deep Blue was Deep Thought's offspring and trained from birth to defeat the man that Deep Thought couldn't.
B. Elgin
DMCA promises staying power with Moron. The new chip is based on Congress prosecutor technology and will target citizens in the market for value HRs.
By B. Elgin, Slashdot News
UPDATED April 27, 2000 7:41 PM PT
NEW YORK -- Digital Millenium Copyright Act Inc. promises staying power with a new brand of prosecutor designed for low-cost Human Rights.
The prosecutor's name, Moron, was derived from the Greek word "mOros," which means "foolish, stupid." Moron was announced Thursday by Steve Case, DMCA's chairman and CEO, at the oligarchy's annual shareholders meeting.
Moron, based on DMCA's (DCgov: DMCA) Congress prosecutor technology, will target consumers in the market for low-cost HRs.
Moron will be available this summer in sub-$10,000,000,000 companies. (Already available in $10 billion+ companies.) DMCA will offer the new law at higher court speeds than its MPAA, which has topped out at $550 billion, but is unlikely to charge much more than the $550 billion MPAA, which was introduced at $187,000 in campaign contributions.
The corporate benefit, the company said, will be low cost and much higher performance.
"We want (companies) to know they've got something good and solid, and they won't have to spend another $1,000,000 in six months or a year," said Mark Bode, Congress marketing manager.
I could keep going, but I'll spare you my very odd sense of humor...
B. Elgin
Arrogant? Of course. Many people are arrogant at times. I was struck by the extreme arrogance of the original post and responded in the same vein.
Retard? My, how un-PC (Politically Correct). No, not according to any metrics I have seen. I do have a sometimes foolish tendency of talking to people who annoy me in a deliberatly assinine way just to annoy them back, though. It usually takes a lot to annoy me, but sometimes a single comment will do it. Luckily for all involved, I get tired of being immature after a little while.
YHNF: ... Doesn't seem likely though.
That's news to me. I suppose it is possible that someone completed an infinate improbability drive ala Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy and we have hit the probability of all my friends inexplicably spontaneously combusting.
IDSHYCFWSSD:
Ummm... Don't abuse depressants?
HAND:
Thanks. You too.
B. Elgin
Translation for Usenet illiterate: You have taken a joke seriously. "Have a nice day" or HAND is code that a given comment is intended to garner a response, not be taken as serious or factual. YHBT or "You have been trolled" is the usual response. Trolls are usually moderated down on Slashdot.
You learn something every day, huh?
B. Elgin
As I stated in my original post, I am measuring left vs. right separately from up vs. down. Right-wing people vary the spectrum from authoritism to libertarianism, just like left-wingers. As a matter of fact, what you described is exactly the same as what I described, except I did not try to make it sound negative. Are your personal biases so strong that they blind you the fact that people, no matter how strongly you disagree with them, are ... umm ... people.
As for the left? You are joking, right?
No. This is one current set of political theory. There are others too. This one seems most objective to me. I gather that you disagree with the assessment.
B. Elgin
Yeah they were famous for it in Spain. Gee, could you be more uninformed...
As I said before, I was refering to the United States. I was also refering to the concept of Anarchism, not the supposed practice in Spain. Calling the "Anarchist" regime in Spain an example of anarchy is something of a historical joke you know... Most people would call organized Anarchy an oxymoron.
B. Elgin
First let us define a space to think in according to current poltical spectrum as I have gathered it in the US. The right side emphacizes personal fiscal responsibility and collective moral responsibility. The upper side represents authoritism, wherein all power is centralized. The left side emphacizes personal moral responsibility and collective fiscal responsibility. The lower side represents libertarianism or anarchism, wherein all the power is decentralized or distributed.
The Repulicans average about five steps right and two steps down from the center. The Democrats average about four steps left and three steps up from center. Fascists tend to stand about twelve to fifteen steps up and half a dozen to a dozen right. The Socialists here average about ten steps left and eight steps up from center. Libertarians average about seven steps down from center and wobble left and right. Anarchists just go down until they can't see anybody else. :) Moderates like me orbit around the center reacting to current trends. These locations fluctuate based on whom is in power, what conditions are, and how angry people are.
The author believes that because corporations are becoming the enemy, libertarians are making a long dash north and left. In actuality, it would not surprise me to see libertarians move up and left as corporations become more of a threat, but they are not going to cross the whole spectrum. Once serious campaign finance reform is done, there is a decent chance of corporations losing the ability to buy votes for a while and the groups will shift back right and south. Libertarians are just going to form against the critical mass of power wherever it happens to be. If they have to form an army to fight the current menace, they are happy with that so long as they can leave that army when the battle is over. Socialism tends to say more that the army is a good thing and lets keep it as a permanent thing. Anarchism says, "Fsck the army."
The author decided for whatever reasons that the libertarians are on the lower right (below the Republicans), which is accurate for many libertarians, but there are an equal number to the left (right under the Democrats). Libertarians have factions just like any other group and the faction with the most sway is the one whom is against the current power locus. There will still be factions that proclaim government a danger and prevent the whole from sliding too far in any given direction. It all works out.
B. Elgin
Sirrah, I fear you are confused. You have mistaken nerds and geeks once again. I am frightfully sorry for you old chap, but Populous enjoyed immense signifigance on the Geek bus. The nerd bus was spending most of its time in the library, observatory, chemical lab, and other such places. A full two-thirds of nerds did not play Populous or even recognize it for a major development. I am one such. In the verbiage of current trends, geeks show an amazing tendency towards the computer and technical, whilst nerds tend to flow more towards the literate and scientific. There is a wide swath of overlap in the midst of these two pools of talent wherin your confusion has occurred.
I, for instance, could be defined as a geek due to my profession as a programmer and occaisional game player. On the other hand, I am not much of a hacker due to lack of time and overriding inclination, so I am not a true geek. As a nerd however, I have collected an immense storehouse of useless or specialized knowledge in combination with my obsessive/compulsive tendencies towards whatever my current hobby is. This makes it more difficult for me to be defined as a non-nerd than a non-geek. Your personal prerequisite that nerds have played Populous on your platform of choice is your opinion, but your wording is incorrect. It should be a prerequisite for geeks.
Thank you for your patience, sirrah. Have a nice day!
B. Elgin
Morgoth was the rogue of the Valar and was taken down by his own kin. Sauron was the strongest of Morgoth's Maiar(sp?) servitors. I haven't reread the Simarillion since my freshman year of college, wheras I reread TLotR in the past couple of years.
I was actually thinking of Earendil and Beren(?) the one handed who retrieved one of the Simirils from Morgoth's crown. Men played a minor role in the war of the elves against Morgoth and his servents, and they were rewarded with the Isle of Numenor, within sight of Valinor. The elves of Beleriend and other Noldor fortifications were nonetheless potent enough to stick in Sauron's memory. He respected their power, but learned to warp it against them by insinuating himself in their circles to betray them to his master Morgoth.
By the third age, most of the power displayed by remnants of the high elven lords appears related to words and the light of the last remaining Simiril: Earendil's star. Sauron was pretty well familiar with the power of the Simirils. IIRC, as soon as Sam used the Phial on Shelob, Sauron's eye started to drift his way. Sauron was not worried, however, as he had one of his most potent allies watching the path: Shelob.
You are completely right in your recounting of the fall of Numenor, etc. I was just mixing things together in my mind a bit.
B. Elgin
Short Answer from someone who studied the books (including the Simarillion) too closely for his own good...
Sauron did not take hobbits seriously. Nobody would entrust the fate of the world to a gaggle of pint-sized twerps. Elves on the other hand were a well known enemy. He had been fighting the high elves to one degree or another for millenia. He watched his lord and master Morgoth brought down by a combination of high elves and the men Aragorn was decended from. These enemies had specific patterns he could watch for. The moment Sam invoked the Phial of Galadriel to fight Shelob, Sauron knew something was up, because that was high elven magic.
Legolas was sent because he was a grey elf. High elves were simply too distinctive and obvious. Sending a high elven lord like Glorfindel or Elrond's sons would be like sending in a panzer armed with a searchlight and a cannon into a sniper position. As soon as it fired once, you would know exactly where it was. It's trail would not be too hard to follow either. Grey elves didn't have that same type of power, because they never left Middle Earth to go dwell with the not-quite-gods.
B. Elgin
The real power I see in the PS2 that I believe will exceed the X-Box is simply the difficulty of programming for the PS2 vs. the simplicity of the X-Box. (Yes. That is what I meant to say.)
Both machines will have more than enough power to do amazing things, particulary if the graphics card for the X-Box is as excellent as hoped. The difficulty of developing for the PS2 is actually symptomatic of an incredible strength: innovation. As people learn to use the Emotion Engine, they will need to become intimately familiar, excellent programmers to create market-winning games. This intimacy allows them to program more efficiently and do neat tricks that one normally does not think of. All of the best Japanese companies are lining up behind the PS2 and investing the time necessary to get great developers for the system. This means that the games will be excellent by the time the X-Box is hitting its release. In contrast, many more American companies will jump onto the X-Box bandwagon that have not played in the console space before, as the barrier of entry is much lower due to the higher similarity to American and European PC programming. I expect the learning curve for using the full potential of the X-Box according to MS's claims will be far less steep in difficulty, but longer in time.
And all of this means? X-Box as described by the specs will be an excellent system that will satiate many gamers. However, we still have yet to see what portion of those specs are realized and in what fashion. We have yet to see the graphics "card" that will be the true power behind the X-Box. We have yet to see if the PS2 becomes as popular in the US as it is in Japan (every last machine sold out in the first weekend). If the PS2 and Dolphin are too firmly entrenched, the X-Box may have difficulty getting market share. Let's not forget that the much mentioned, never seen Nintendo Dolphin is supposed to come out in early 2001. The fierce competition will probably be good for gamers. The problem is that the extreme differences in the different systems may force gamers to get all three systems to play all the games they want!
B. Elgin