Hayden IS a good actor. But no actor can deliver what the director has no inclination to request. Hayden and all the others couldn't find the character, couldn't become the person, because George wouldn't give them a clue. As Stephenson says, the books give a lot of missing background, explaining why Anakin is as twitchy and unpredictible as he is. But NO ONE TOLD HAYDEN. Especially Lucas, who had no hand in the writing of Clone Wars or the novels. Lucas had an outline of the plot, not the characters.
One other point which occured to me recently is this: Lucas was intentionally making the characters as detached from time, emotion, and recognizable conversation patterns as possible to maintaing the timelessness of the story, making it impossible to date the production. He wants this story shown in a hundred years, unchanged, a Grim's fairy tale for the ages.
The River East theater complex in Chicago on Illinois street has a sign saying that they provide captioning for the deaf, or descriptions for the blind, in one of their theaters. Noticed it while waiting in line last Wednesday.
9.75 US for a ticket, TEN DOLLARS for a large popcorn and sugar water.
You forgot the commericals. I saw Batman Begins on Wednesday.
I sat down at 6:45 for a 7:00 show. I waited through a THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES OF COMMERICALS AND TRAILERS before the show started. My legs and my mind had gone numb.
How much will you pay me for a half hour of my free time, Loews?
eBay brags about handing over customer records without warrant to any law enforcement officer that wants them. Makes you think about that "Girls Gone Wild, London!" DVD you may have bought on eBay, and when it will be a factor in running for office, or getting a job when "moral tests" become common. Let's also not forget about that poor schmuck in California who was almost sent to Death Row because his Safeway purchase records indicated he'd bought a lighter of the same make as that used to torch his family's house. He was released after someone else confessed. No evidence, other than a purchase record and a fantasy cooked up by a DA, was presented. And Homeland Security (When have Americans EVER used the term "Homeland"?? Paging Hitler...) won't be bothered by rules or laws. If they decide you're a terrorist, you gone. Do not pass Go, do not bother finding a lawyer, or expect your family to find you.
1. Naziesqe ethnic cleansing, and the world was with us when we stopped it - with allies from around the world. 2. He didn't write it, and few people understood the ramifications.
If this is the worse that he did, considering 100,000 dead for a strategic conquest of an oil field isn't even news,, then he's the cleanest president we've had in a century. We sure could have used him as a President the last five years.
Thinking about it, I realize that most people, to say the least, aren't trying to hide anything, and won't encrypt.
The danger comes from not just the government, which is bad enough, considering the direction they are going -- no subpoenas, rooting through your life on fishing expeditions -- but from hostile parties using their proven insider connections to the ISPs and the government to conduct their own surveillance and destruction campaigns against targeted individuals.
Cults such as the Moonies and the Scientologists have shown that there is no limit to the means they will employ to destroy even the slightest criticism. They won't even have to leave the bunker with such data available. They can phone in disaster on their "enemies".
Journalists will have to live spotless lives to avoid being ruined by even the most casual search into their life's database, thus insuring the silence of the fourth estate -- even quieter than they are now.
Of course, the people who will utilize this data, government officials and the shadowy almost-governments such as cults, as well as the very wealthy and/or celebrated, will be immune to such searches, being largely anonymous in their activities. They'll make sure of that.
"but this will only serve to push more people into using encryption"
Boil the frog, one degree at a time. Banning encryption will be a no-brainer, easy to sell after someone bombs a bus depot or something equally pathetic.
I hate the DRM on the Untrusted Computing platform. The reasons why are numberless. Apparently we were right in our worst case analysis when some pointed out that the DRM in the Intel chipsets would be used for the Mac software. Expect that movies, music, and all sorts of other goodies will be locked down as well.
Since encryption is part of the Untrusted Computing scheme, it is effortless to point out that cracking the lockdown to enable one to port the OS to an AMD processor, even if it can be done, will be a violation of, oh yes, wait for it: The Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Jail Time for running your software on an AMD box.
Not only have they thrown down the gauntlet, they have stuck their chin out for the opening blow. Cracking this unholy alliance of the DMCA and Apple is now Job One for anyone with blood in their veins.
Thinking about what you said about materials, I recall that the price of wood was jacked 300 percent back in 92 by the defacto wood cartel. The price of wood is virtually nothing, considering a lot of it comes from national forests given to the wood industry as a present from our representatives in congress, along with free logging roads. We are being reamed. Back in the 90's, a congressperson tried to hold hearings on how exactly the price of wood tripled overnight (I remember the industry blamed the newly elected Clinton - foreshadowing a lot of hot air - because he was going to be an environmental president - logic wasn't a factor) but the hearings stalled out. The wood cartel was too well connected to answer to the Congress.
Back to the noodling. Since we have the tools to make nearly anything we like, and what we need mostly is good wood at sane prices, it might be reasonable to plan for the future, end-running the wood cartel, by simply planting hardwood trees wherever possible, on our own property. We can cut down our own trees, make our own wood, bring back woodworking craftsmanship into our lives. Mennonites and the Amish sell hardwood furniture today using this method.
Another thought wanders in. Why are only lumber corporation allowed to wander into national forests and nick all the trees? Maybe, thinking crazy here, we could create some laws allowing interested citizens to choose, say, one tree every decade for his very own wood source. This isn't crazy; the wood companies think they are entitled, so why not a real person?
Adjusted for inflation? And how much for Star Wars or the laser cannons or the new nuclear weapons programs? 6.6 billion is horseshit. NASA is getting defunded by atttrition and inflation. Paper raises in funding mean nothing.
Flamebait? I will be damned. Listen: the reason why the people are being canned at NASA is because the budget is shrinking, and because Bush says one thing while he does another: No Child Left Behind, in which he dumps the funding onto the individual state; Clear Skies, in which pollution controls are dismantled or the enforcement defunded; Healthy Forests, where the lumber companies are given carte blanche and free roads; pumping up patriotism for the armed forces while cutting funding for their retirement, their wages, and their medical care; disassembling bankruptcy laws while declaiming concern for struggling families... the list can go on for hours. Not that Americans hear anything about it on the news.
DO NOT USE YOUR MOD POINTS, BUSHITES, TO SHUT PEOPLE UP.
NASA is being defunded and beheaded by Bush and his brain trust. I doubt very much Bush even knows about the process, being who he is and limited as he is in capacity to understand detail.
Modding this as "flamebait" is like saying a man forced you to riot, rightwingers. If the truth upsets you, too bad, but mod points are for keeping people on topic and legal, not for smothering the voices telling you the truth.
This is what happened to ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN. Everyone is terrified to mention obvious truth because the right wingers are ready to Ratherize anyone who defames the Leader or points out that their worldview is bullshit. And BTW, Rather's report was correct: Bush bugged out, never got sent to Vietnam as a normal punishment, and walked away whistling, his Daddy's friends cleaning up after him. It's the Texas Way. Deal with it.
A few weeks ago we were wondering about NASA's new direction.
I posted that the money would never show up for whatever Bush is selling nowadays about the manned space program.
This is the first shot. As in so many other programs, he will say one thing and do the Orwellian switch, with no one bothering to note the discrepancy. Education, environment, energy policy, on and on. Say something thing positive, then defund and kill.
He will make brave speeches, then move to cut the budgets and starve the governmental beast that firstly, he hates, and secondly, won't have the budget to support basic science like NASA because we've jacked all the cash, no - correction: borrowed the cash to jack into tax cuts for the wealthiest.
With a quarter of all federal tax revenues going into simply paying the interest on all the money we've borrowed for the last quarter century to finance tax "relief", we'll have no spare cash to spank a cat, much less fund NASA. The people making trillions are those being paid that interest. And we lose space for another couple of generations.
And this is exactly on-topic, for the smile-then-backstab tactic is exactly why the admins are being axed. Those admins ARE the engineers. They will be replaced with MBA's, or with no one at all. As much as we dislike management, it takes savvy bosses to navigate the halls of power. Killing the administrators off will decapitate NASA's ability to keep funding alive. You don't kill a beast by shooting it in the hands. You kill it by carefully shooting it in the brain.
"Hardware is not used under license. It is yours."
Try selling a used Scientology e-meter on eBay. eBay won't let you do it. Scientology lawyers claim the hardware is copyrighted. eBay said, "Please don't sue us -- you got it, no sales."
To create law from the primal soup, you first establish precedents. We're well along the path to "licensed hardware use".
Since you mentioned the cell processor, I've thought that Job's next move would be porting to a cell-processor mac, leapfrogging intel and AMD and producing a supercomputer for cheap. Hell, Microsoft is doing it.
And why Intel? Why not AMD chips, which are better all around, pricing and technically?
Something isn't right about all this.
And this better not enable Intel's recently announced DRM-on-the-processor plans for macs.
No one, no president, no congresscritter, can make a promise to fund anything beyond their term in office, if that long.
The U.S. has a government that is structurally incapable of long term planning. We have scheduled revolutions every 2, 4, and 6 years.
We are also so bloody broke and in hock thanks to the tax cuts that discretionary spending for the next twenty years is pretty much cleaned out - and that not unintentionally. Some neocon thinker said it best when he said he wanted a government so small you could drown it in a bathtub. Spending and borrowing a few trillion, and scheduling future tax cuts to phase in for the rest of the decade, is going to put us on a military-only diet unless we want to reinstate the proper taxation levels, plus a bit more to pay off the hangover from the 2000's.
NASA can fund all the research it wants. It's just large sums of money being transfered to major corporate interests. But the will, the money, the vision necessary to figure out a plan and stick to it will not materialize in the next decades.
Now, a personal savings account would be a part of a Social Security retirement system. It would be a part of what you would have to retire when you reach retirement age. As you -- as I mentioned to you earlier, we're going to redesign the current system. If you've retired, you don't have anything to worry about -- third time I've said that. (Laughter.) I'll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. (Applause.)
"Slashdotters are like hippies, they don't have money. Lock them in a basement and give them a guitar and some joints. Just go with it."
When, O South Park Republican white suburban boys, have any of you met a hippie? There hasn't been a hippy in thirty years, yet you keep channeling your daddies' rage against the guys who got all the chicks in the sixties.
Hackers and goths and alty people of all stripes are the new hippies. They're all around you, man. Hate them, they're closer in chronologically.
That $8.00 per item savings translated, in the past two decades, into complete shutdown of the textile and clothing manufacturing industry in the U.S. That meant millions of people thrown into the local Wal-Mart job, if they were lucky, and onto welfare if not. And Wal-Mart exists because it passes its healthcare on to the local state's tax-supported public services -- not to mention the number of Wal-Martish employees who are on food stamps because they aren't paid enough to eat.
That eight bucks cost us our electronics sector, our manufacturing sector, software, it goes on and on.
The "savings" is localized on someone's balance sheet. The cost incurred to generate that savings is measured in ruined careers, disappeared industry, impoverished people, and let's not forget, the almighty national security hole caused by our inability to make our own defense equipment.
The savings in moving our economy overseas goes into few pockets, but the costs come out of all our taxes. And the real costs never show up in the Economist or the cable news shows, because those are paid by the poor and almost-poor, the invisible majority that don't really count.
Slashdot Mirror
Hayden IS a good actor. But no actor can deliver what the director has no inclination to request. Hayden and all the others couldn't find the character, couldn't become the person, because George wouldn't give them a clue. As Stephenson says, the books give a lot of missing background, explaining why Anakin is as twitchy and unpredictible as he is. But NO ONE TOLD HAYDEN. Especially Lucas, who had no hand in the writing of Clone Wars or the novels. Lucas had an outline of the plot, not the characters.
One other point which occured to me recently is this: Lucas was intentionally making the characters as detached from time, emotion, and recognizable conversation patterns as possible to maintaing the timelessness of the story, making it impossible to date the production. He wants this story shown in a hundred years, unchanged, a Grim's fairy tale for the ages.
The River East theater complex in Chicago on Illinois street has a sign saying that they provide captioning for the deaf, or descriptions for the blind, in one of their theaters. Noticed it while waiting in line last Wednesday.
Bathrooms are very clean, too.
9.75 US for a ticket, TEN DOLLARS for a large popcorn and sugar water.
You forgot the commericals. I saw Batman Begins on Wednesday.
I sat down at 6:45 for a 7:00 show. I waited through a THIRTY-FIVE MINUTES OF COMMERICALS AND TRAILERS before the show started. My legs and my mind had gone numb.
How much will you pay me for a half hour of my free time, Loews?
eBay brags about handing over customer records without warrant to any law enforcement officer that wants them. Makes you think about that "Girls Gone Wild, London!" DVD you may have bought on eBay, and when it will be a factor in running for office, or getting a job when "moral tests" become common. Let's also not forget about that poor schmuck in California who was almost sent to Death Row because his Safeway purchase records indicated he'd bought a lighter of the same make as that used to torch his family's house. He was released after someone else confessed. No evidence, other than a purchase record and a fantasy cooked up by a DA, was presented. And Homeland Security (When have Americans EVER used the term "Homeland"?? Paging Hitler...) won't be bothered by rules or laws. If they decide you're a terrorist, you gone. Do not pass Go, do not bother finding a lawyer, or expect your family to find you.
Careful where you step: you may leave footprints.
You forgot the return of "Family Guy".
"1. Bombing Belgrade
2. DMCA"
1. Naziesqe ethnic cleansing, and the world was with us when we stopped it - with allies from around the world.
2. He didn't write it, and few people understood the ramifications.
If this is the worse that he did, considering 100,000 dead for a strategic conquest of an oil field isn't even news,, then he's the cleanest president we've had in a century. We sure could have used him as a President the last five years.
Thinking about it, I realize that most people, to say the least, aren't trying to hide anything, and won't encrypt.
The danger comes from not just the government, which is bad enough, considering the direction they are going -- no subpoenas, rooting through your life on fishing expeditions -- but from hostile parties using their proven insider connections to the ISPs and the government to conduct their own surveillance and destruction campaigns against targeted individuals.
Cults such as the Moonies and the Scientologists have shown that there is no limit to the means they will employ to destroy even the slightest criticism. They won't even have to leave the bunker with such data available. They can phone in disaster on their "enemies".
Journalists will have to live spotless lives to avoid being ruined by even the most casual search into their life's database, thus insuring the silence of the fourth estate -- even quieter than they are now.
Of course, the people who will utilize this data, government officials and the shadowy almost-governments such as cults, as well as the very wealthy and/or celebrated, will be immune to such searches, being largely anonymous in their activities. They'll make sure of that.
"but this will only serve to push more people into using encryption"
:(
Boil the frog, one degree at a time. Banning encryption will be a no-brainer, easy to sell after someone bombs a bus depot or something equally pathetic.
Reason has nothing to do with it
I hate the DRM on the Untrusted Computing platform. The reasons why are numberless. Apparently we were right in our worst case analysis when some pointed out that the DRM in the Intel chipsets would be used for the Mac software. Expect that movies, music, and all sorts of other goodies will be locked down as well.
Since encryption is part of the Untrusted Computing scheme, it is effortless to point out that cracking the lockdown to enable one to port the OS to an AMD processor, even if it can be done, will be a violation of, oh yes, wait for it: The Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Jail Time for running your software on an AMD box.
Not only have they thrown down the gauntlet, they have stuck their chin out for the opening blow. Cracking this unholy alliance of the DMCA and Apple is now Job One for anyone with blood in their veins.
Thinking about what you said about materials, I recall that the price of wood was jacked 300 percent back in 92 by the defacto wood cartel. The price of wood is virtually nothing, considering a lot of it comes from national forests given to the wood industry as a present from our representatives in congress, along with free logging roads. We are being reamed. Back in the 90's, a congressperson tried to hold hearings on how exactly the price of wood tripled overnight (I remember the industry blamed the newly elected Clinton - foreshadowing a lot of hot air - because he was going to be an environmental president - logic wasn't a factor) but the hearings stalled out. The wood cartel was too well connected to answer to the Congress.
Back to the noodling. Since we have the tools to make nearly anything we like, and what we need mostly is good wood at sane prices, it might be reasonable to plan for the future, end-running the wood cartel, by simply planting hardwood trees wherever possible, on our own property. We can cut down our own trees, make our own wood, bring back woodworking craftsmanship into our lives. Mennonites and the Amish sell hardwood furniture today using this method.
Another thought wanders in. Why are only lumber corporation allowed to wander into national forests and nick all the trees? Maybe, thinking crazy here, we could create some laws allowing interested citizens to choose, say, one tree every decade for his very own wood source. This isn't crazy; the wood companies think they are entitled, so why not a real person?
Adjusted for inflation? And how much for Star Wars or the laser cannons or the new nuclear weapons programs? 6.6 billion is horseshit. NASA is getting defunded by atttrition and inflation. Paper raises in funding mean nothing.
Flamebait? I will be damned. Listen: the reason why the people are being canned at NASA is because the budget is shrinking, and because Bush says one thing while he does another: No Child Left Behind, in which he dumps the funding onto the individual state; Clear Skies, in which pollution controls are dismantled or the enforcement defunded; Healthy Forests, where the lumber companies are given carte blanche and free roads; pumping up patriotism for the armed forces while cutting funding for their retirement, their wages, and their medical care; disassembling bankruptcy laws while declaiming concern for struggling families... the list can go on for hours. Not that Americans hear anything about it on the news.
DO NOT USE YOUR MOD POINTS, BUSHITES, TO SHUT PEOPLE UP.
NASA is being defunded and beheaded by Bush and his brain trust. I doubt very much Bush even knows about the process, being who he is and limited as he is in capacity to understand detail.
Modding this as "flamebait" is like saying a man forced you to riot, rightwingers. If the truth upsets you, too bad, but mod points are for keeping people on topic and legal, not for smothering the voices telling you the truth.
This is what happened to ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN. Everyone is terrified to mention obvious truth because the right wingers are ready to Ratherize anyone who defames the Leader or points out that their worldview is bullshit. And BTW, Rather's report was correct: Bush bugged out, never got sent to Vietnam as a normal punishment, and walked away whistling, his Daddy's friends cleaning up after him. It's the Texas Way. Deal with it.
Ah, boys, here we go.
A few weeks ago we were wondering about NASA's new direction.
I posted that the money would never show up for whatever Bush is selling nowadays about the manned space program.
This is the first shot. As in so many other programs, he will say one thing and do the Orwellian switch, with no one bothering to note the discrepancy. Education, environment, energy policy, on and on. Say something thing positive, then defund and kill.
He will make brave speeches, then move to cut the budgets and starve the governmental beast that firstly, he hates, and secondly, won't have the budget to support basic science like NASA because we've jacked all the cash, no - correction: borrowed the cash to jack into tax cuts for the wealthiest.
With a quarter of all federal tax revenues going into simply paying the interest on all the money we've borrowed for the last quarter century to finance tax "relief", we'll have no spare cash to spank a cat, much less fund NASA. The people making trillions are those being paid that interest. And we lose space for another couple of generations.
And this is exactly on-topic, for the smile-then-backstab tactic is exactly why the admins are being axed. Those admins ARE the engineers. They will be replaced with MBA's, or with no one at all. As much as we dislike management, it takes savvy bosses to navigate the halls of power. Killing the administrators off will decapitate NASA's ability to keep funding alive. You don't kill a beast by shooting it in the hands. You kill it by carefully shooting it in the brain.
"Hardware is not used under license. It is yours."
Try selling a used Scientology e-meter on eBay. eBay won't let you do it. Scientology lawyers claim the hardware is copyrighted. eBay said, "Please don't sue us -- you got it, no sales."
To create law from the primal soup, you first establish precedents. We're well along the path to "licensed hardware use".
Since you mentioned the cell processor, I've thought that Job's next move would be porting to a cell-processor mac, leapfrogging intel and AMD and producing a supercomputer for cheap. Hell, Microsoft is doing it.
And why Intel? Why not AMD chips, which are better all around, pricing and technically?
Something isn't right about all this.
And this better not enable Intel's recently announced DRM-on-the-processor plans for macs.
Jeeze.
As the French die in Afghanistan fighting for us, you rightwing tards insult them.
Asshole.
No one, no president, no congresscritter, can make a promise to fund anything beyond their term in office, if that long.
The U.S. has a government that is structurally incapable of long term planning. We have scheduled revolutions every 2, 4, and 6 years.
We are also so bloody broke and in hock thanks to the tax cuts that discretionary spending for the next twenty years is pretty much cleaned out - and that not unintentionally. Some neocon thinker said it best when he said he wanted a government so small you could drown it in a bathtub. Spending and borrowing a few trillion, and scheduling future tax cuts to phase in for the rest of the decade, is going to put us on a military-only diet unless we want to reinstate the proper taxation levels, plus a bit more to pay off the hangover from the 2000's.
NASA can fund all the research it wants. It's just large sums of money being transfered to major corporate interests. But the will, the money, the vision necessary to figure out a plan and stick to it will not materialize in the next decades.
Slyck says it's a hoax. Enjoy.
According to Slyck.com, the Pirate Bay closure is a hoax.
Cheer up; there's still one Puck left in the world.
You'll love this bit:
Bush admits he reiterates propaganda.
You can't make this stuff up.
Quoting:
Now, a personal savings account would be a part of a Social Security retirement system. It would be a part of what you would have to retire when you reach retirement age. As you -- as I mentioned to you earlier, we're going to redesign the current system. If you've retired, you don't have anything to worry about -- third time I've said that. (Laughter.) I'll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda. (Applause.)
Here's the sound bite.
He actually said it. Ye gods. And you can tell how well they screen that audience - because they applauded him admitting use of reiterated propaganda.
Someone above disputed that Bush is stupid.
Case closed.
Yipe.
Kim Stanley Robinson's definition of a libertarian:
An anarchist demanding police protection against his slaves.
"Slashdotters are like hippies, they don't have money. Lock them in a basement and give them a guitar and some joints. Just go with it."
When, O South Park Republican white suburban boys, have any of you met a hippie? There hasn't been a hippy in thirty years, yet you keep channeling your daddies' rage against the guys who got all the chicks in the sixties.
Hackers and goths and alty people of all stripes are the new hippies. They're all around you, man. Hate them, they're closer in chronologically.
Rush Limbaugh joins Slashdot. -1: drug-induced hostility
Ah, the horror of cost accoounting.
That $8.00 per item savings translated, in the past two decades, into complete shutdown of the textile and clothing manufacturing industry in the U.S. That meant millions of people thrown into the local Wal-Mart job, if they were lucky, and onto welfare if not. And Wal-Mart exists because it passes its healthcare on to the local state's tax-supported public services -- not to mention the number of Wal-Martish employees who are on food stamps because they aren't paid enough to eat.
That eight bucks cost us our electronics sector, our manufacturing sector, software, it goes on and on.
The "savings" is localized on someone's balance sheet. The cost incurred to generate that savings is measured in ruined careers, disappeared industry, impoverished people, and let's not forget, the almighty national security hole caused by our inability to make our own defense equipment.
The savings in moving our economy overseas goes into few pockets, but the costs come out of all our taxes. And the real costs never show up in the Economist or the cable news shows, because those are paid by the poor and almost-poor, the invisible majority that don't really count.
Those tax savings are lost on the back end.
Because they are hiding criminal behavior.