If you've got a gripe, I suggest keeping it brief, because really, nobody read all that.
Reading just the last part "If we're wrong and Slashdot does not try to let scornful chiselers serve as our overlords, we'll be relieved," we can see that it's complete gibberish, not an actual complaint. Overlords? Chislers? I swear, there should be some type of test before posting to weed out those people who are apperantly on LSD. Maybe "Did Dick Cheney initiate the 9/11 attacks y/n" and those who answer yes automatically get posted on the "insane/inane shadow slashdot."
Why do I not hear anybody crying out, "There are only 2 men for every 40 women in the Health & Human Development Major!"
I think it's mostly because those are clear cases of men not wanting to be a health and human development major, wheras conspiracy theories about sexism in CS are easier to buy given history. And by that I only mean if one of the sexes have been discriminated against, it's not men.
Also because women don't care and men want to date women.
I know what you mean! The thought of the government being able to tell what digital camera I used to take a picture of myself for my facebook profile is terrifying.
But that's not what happens in The Watchmen. The Watchmen is a story about people. There isn't a lot of action. Hardly any, actually. This is a story about people. It has more in common with Clerks than it does with X-Men. Most of the story is people standing around talking. Character development.
Which is why Hollywood is going to fuck it up.
They're going to insist on their action beats. And that's not at all what the story is about.
To take what will be an extremely unpopular devil's advocate stance, there is a very slight but non-zero chance they could actually improve the story by changing it.
Make no mistake, I'm not saying that will happen, in fact I'd bet good money it won't. I just wanted to make the point that a lot of people, myself included, won't be judging it based off of how faithful it is to the original, but how good it is on it's own right. If they were to drastically change it, I wouldn't mind so long as it was an improvement.
The changes the studios are making are going to make a bad movie, not by virtue of the fact that they're changing it. The changes are going to make it into a bad movie because throwing action sequences in pointlessly makes a bad movie.
Although I'm sure with the recent success of movies like X-Men, Spiderman, Fantastic Four, etc that script writers are rushing back to their desks to find any unexploited comic book series that their pen can interpret.
I cringe at the thought.
I cringe at the thought of movie executives making a profit off of the abomination that was "fantastic four."
That said, I'm extremely excited for how sucky "Namor, the submariner" is going to be. I'm betting it will be actually worse than F4, but how much worse? Will it top "Daredevil" in terms of crapiness?
You can't see it, but I'm kind of half raising my hand, because they're "RUBBER duckies" but I'm not sure if they're actually made out of plastic these days. Also I wouldn't say DEEPLY amused. So count that as a 1/4 hand raise.
I know! I only read the title (don't have time to RTFS) but I just gotta say, mollecules are already pretty much invisible! I mean, when's the last time you were all like "There's too much oxygen mollecules, I can't see the strippers!" Probably never.
I feel like google is going to take at least some flak on that issue no matter which direction they go. If they don't, someone on slashdot points it out. If they do, I think other people might be offended, likely on slashdot.
Come to think of it, if every google employee simultaneously decided not to even get out of bed today, someone on slashdot would accuse them of a nefarious bed-related attempt to strip us of our privacy. Maybe they should just accept their bad karma here, and merge with microsoft, al Qaeda, and the RIAA.
I feel the need to point out this was a joke, but there would be a difference between making fun of one actual murder like "Ha ha, Joe the Plumber got shot through the butt and bled to death!" and other types of comedy, like a movie where a fictional character named joe gets shot to death in a humorous way.
If Monty python had been making fun of a real guy who got chopped down while giving an interview, that would be kind of disrespectful to the family.
I believe they also stole the story of King Arthur for Holy Grail. They also ripped off a real life story of a pundit historian getting killed by a mysterious stranger on horseback. The victim's family didn't get a dime, and they made a mockery out of a tragedy.
The article is -light- on details (ugh). If the DNA strand has to be of a specific base composition, then they probably made it themselves with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in a test tube. Also, proteins stuck on the DNA strand may have interfered with whatever YO is and whatever it was doing, PCR-generated DNA would also eliminate that problem.
If associated proteins don't stop the signal and sequence doesn't matter, I suppose they could have gotten it from anywhere they wanted. Its easy to harvest a lot of DNA from bacteria.
Humans or animals I think are unlikely, because it's at least a little more difficult (AKA expensive) to get a sample and purify the DNA.
I'm no biologist, but I'll bet it's the right scale for human-implanted computing.
I'm no... er... bio-computerist... person... but if you had naked DNA strands running through your body linking computers or something like that, they wouldn't last very long. For one thing, they'd get broken just by moving around. Also, this YO they need to add onto DNA strands actually interacts with the DNA. I don't know if it would be able to penetrate your cell nuclei to interact with your own DNA, but if it did that would increase your risk of cancer.
So... yes, be afraid, because not only would it not work, you'd get cancer!
There are plenty of cases you can think of where you don't actually have a choice in private enterprises, and why are we talking about business vs government anyway? This is business USING the government as a weapon.
The cold war is over, I don't think anyone would object if you used Soviet Russia itself as an example of what goes wrong with communism. It was a little more complicated than the animal farm's failure, for example, largely failing because it's not a good economic system, not because Gorbachev started walking on two feet instead of four.
NASA Science Military Android contingency plan activated. Please observe mandatory test protocol safety procedure as you proceed. Remember the NASA Science Military Androids are unable to distinguish between friend, foe and even common household items such as cake flour, office chairs and... bzzzzt... other nuclear devices.
As far as the "only" creature to experience pain in child birth, I'll address that with the common species wide misconception that humans are super special and have exclusive domain over acts that are associated with living. We haven't defined pain well in Humans, so it would not be a surprise (especially in Sagan's time frame) to believe that it is not present in other animals
I have to point out that I was summarizing Sagan, he does include a disclaimer along the lines of "so far as we know." He wasn't exactly the most human-centric person. I also realized we might just not have noticed that birth is painful for other animals, but didn't want to go off on a tangent.
Likewise the unfused skull is a tangent I didn't want to get into, specifically that another indication human brain development has been pushed to an extreme is the increased helplessness and vulnerability early in life. I should point out I'm not a zoologist. You realize though that many newborn non-primate animals are able to stand on their own comparatively quickly compared to humans, and are in many ways more functional a day after being born than humans are one year after being born. Some of that is due to the extended time for neural development.
I'd be suprised if it wasn't established that unfused skull at birth was an adaptation to compensate for the bigger brains, but it of course again comes with a liability: easier to damage that big brain early on. That's on top of newborns being utterly dependant.
So we still see that there's no such thing as a free lunch, or rather, consequence-free manipulation of development.
I had been wondering about how much that was costing me, but never bothered, thanks! Someone should really make some white noise machine with decent subwoofers, I agree, the ones I've seen had speakers you wouldn't put on a radio, and it's the deep sounds that are impossible to muffle with a pillow or earplugs. I have my fan at the foot of the bed so the vibrations are transfered more directly to the frame and cancel out my neighbor's woofer, that helps a bit.
I also require a box fan every night, it's such a waste, I have to put it pointed at the wall at the foot of my bed. It's either run a fan pointlessly or start taking sedatives. Thanks a lot, mom.
Slashdot Mirror
If you've got a gripe, I suggest keeping it brief, because really, nobody read all that.
Reading just the last part
"If we're wrong and Slashdot does not try to let scornful chiselers serve as our overlords, we'll be relieved," we can see that it's complete gibberish, not an actual complaint. Overlords? Chislers? I swear, there should be some type of test before posting to weed out those people who are apperantly on LSD. Maybe "Did Dick Cheney initiate the 9/11 attacks y/n" and those who answer yes automatically get posted on the "insane/inane shadow slashdot."
Why do I not hear anybody crying out, "There are only 2 men for every 40 women in the Health & Human Development Major!"
I think it's mostly because those are clear cases of men not wanting to be a health and human development major, wheras conspiracy theories about sexism in CS are easier to buy given history. And by that I only mean if one of the sexes have been discriminated against, it's not men.
Also because women don't care and men want to date women.
I know what you mean! The thought of the government being able to tell what digital camera I used to take a picture of myself for my facebook profile is terrifying.
But that's not what happens in The Watchmen. The Watchmen is a story about people. There isn't a lot of action. Hardly any, actually. This is a story about people. It has more in common with Clerks than it does with X-Men. Most of the story is people standing around talking. Character development.
Which is why Hollywood is going to fuck it up.
They're going to insist on their action beats. And that's not at all what the story is about.
To take what will be an extremely unpopular devil's advocate stance, there is a very slight but non-zero chance they could actually improve the story by changing it.
Make no mistake, I'm not saying that will happen, in fact I'd bet good money it won't. I just wanted to make the point that a lot of people, myself included, won't be judging it based off of how faithful it is to the original, but how good it is on it's own right. If they were to drastically change it, I wouldn't mind so long as it was an improvement.
The changes the studios are making are going to make a bad movie, not by virtue of the fact that they're changing it. The changes are going to make it into a bad movie because throwing action sequences in pointlessly makes a bad movie.
Although I'm sure with the recent success of movies like X-Men, Spiderman, Fantastic Four, etc that script writers are rushing back to their desks to find any unexploited comic book series that their pen can interpret.
I cringe at the thought.
I cringe at the thought of movie executives making a profit off of the abomination that was "fantastic four."
That said, I'm extremely excited for how sucky "Namor, the submariner" is going to be. I'm betting it will be actually worse than F4, but how much worse? Will it top "Daredevil" in terms of crapiness?
Please, God, let us never find out.
Can we at least agree that they used physical force to silence the other side of the debate?
You can't see it, but I'm kind of half raising my hand, because they're "RUBBER duckies" but I'm not sure if they're actually made out of plastic these days. Also I wouldn't say DEEPLY amused. So count that as a 1/4 hand raise.
I know! I only read the title (don't have time to RTFS) but I just gotta say, mollecules are already pretty much invisible! I mean, when's the last time you were all like "There's too much oxygen mollecules, I can't see the strippers!" Probably never.
No, that was hideously visible. If it were invisible, that would be creepy, but seeing that guy's very much opaque intestines is worse.
Amen. To all you wow players: Shut that computer down and go out get some fresh air. Life is much too short to waste it on playing a bloody game.
And this comes from someone who is posting to slashdot on his laptop as he is skiing down K2 being chased by ninjas while nailing the new Bond chick.
Fixed that little bit of hypocrisy there for you.
I feel like google is going to take at least some flak on that issue no matter which direction they go. If they don't, someone on slashdot points it out. If they do, I think other people might be offended, likely on slashdot.
Come to think of it, if every google employee simultaneously decided not to even get out of bed today, someone on slashdot would accuse them of a nefarious bed-related attempt to strip us of our privacy. Maybe they should just accept their bad karma here, and merge with microsoft, al Qaeda, and the RIAA.
I feel the need to point out this was a joke, but there would be a difference between making fun of one actual murder like "Ha ha, Joe the Plumber got shot through the butt and bled to death!" and other types of comedy, like a movie where a fictional character named joe gets shot to death in a humorous way.
If Monty python had been making fun of a real guy who got chopped down while giving an interview, that would be kind of disrespectful to the family.
Not sure why this needed so much clarification...
Well, not a specific tragedy at least.
I believe they also stole the story of King Arthur for Holy Grail. They also ripped off a real life story of a pundit historian getting killed by a mysterious stranger on horseback. The victim's family didn't get a dime, and they made a mockery out of a tragedy.
The article is -light- on details (ugh). If the DNA strand has to be of a specific base composition, then they probably made it themselves with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) in a test tube. Also, proteins stuck on the DNA strand may have interfered with whatever YO is and whatever it was doing, PCR-generated DNA would also eliminate that problem.
If associated proteins don't stop the signal and sequence doesn't matter, I suppose they could have gotten it from anywhere they wanted. Its easy to harvest a lot of DNA from bacteria.
Humans or animals I think are unlikely, because it's at least a little more difficult (AKA expensive) to get a sample and purify the DNA.
I'm no biologist, but I'll bet it's the right scale for human-implanted computing.
I'm no... er... bio-computerist... person... but if you had naked DNA strands running through your body linking computers or something like that, they wouldn't last very long. For one thing, they'd get broken just by moving around. Also, this YO they need to add onto DNA strands actually interacts with the DNA. I don't know if it would be able to penetrate your cell nuclei to interact with your own DNA, but if it did that would increase your risk of cancer.
So... yes, be afraid, because not only would it not work, you'd get cancer!
some animal species that are about to go extinct might actually think that this is a wonderful concept.
Well then, they should have invented their own firearms and started "deurbanizing" our habitats to make way for their own purposes!
There are plenty of cases you can think of where you don't actually have a choice in private enterprises, and why are we talking about business vs government anyway? This is business USING the government as a weapon.
The cold war is over, I don't think anyone would object if you used Soviet Russia itself as an example of what goes wrong with communism. It was a little more complicated than the animal farm's failure, for example, largely failing because it's not a good economic system, not because Gorbachev started walking on two feet instead of four.
I've thought about it, and what I came up with was the following: Meter? What? Huh?
NASA Science Military Android contingency plan activated. Please observe mandatory test protocol safety procedure as you proceed. Remember the NASA Science Military Androids are unable to distinguish between friend, foe and even common household items such as cake flour, office chairs and ... bzzzzt ... other nuclear devices.
As far as the "only" creature to experience pain in child birth, I'll address that with the common species wide misconception that humans are super special and have exclusive domain over acts that are associated with living. We haven't defined pain well in Humans, so it would not be a surprise (especially in Sagan's time frame) to believe that it is not present in other animals
I have to point out that I was summarizing Sagan, he does include a disclaimer along the lines of "so far as we know." He wasn't exactly the most human-centric person. I also realized we might just not have noticed that birth is painful for other animals, but didn't want to go off on a tangent.
Likewise the unfused skull is a tangent I didn't want to get into, specifically that another indication human brain development has been pushed to an extreme is the increased helplessness and vulnerability early in life. I should point out I'm not a zoologist. You realize though that many newborn non-primate animals are able to stand on their own comparatively quickly compared to humans, and are in many ways more functional a day after being born than humans are one year after being born. Some of that is due to the extended time for neural development.
I'd be suprised if it wasn't established that unfused skull at birth was an adaptation to compensate for the bigger brains, but it of course again comes with a liability: easier to damage that big brain early on. That's on top of newborns being utterly dependant.
So we still see that there's no such thing as a free lunch, or rather, consequence-free manipulation of development.
I had been wondering about how much that was costing me, but never bothered, thanks! Someone should really make some white noise machine with decent subwoofers, I agree, the ones I've seen had speakers you wouldn't put on a radio, and it's the deep sounds that are impossible to muffle with a pillow or earplugs. I have my fan at the foot of the bed so the vibrations are transfered more directly to the frame and cancel out my neighbor's woofer, that helps a bit.
I also require a box fan every night, it's such a waste, I have to put it pointed at the wall at the foot of my bed. It's either run a fan pointlessly or start taking sedatives. Thanks a lot, mom.
Circuit city seems to be doing its best.