There were firearms thousands of years ago. It's only within the last two hundred years or so that they were developed to the point of being militarily useful.
You know, the whole 'look upon my works, ye mighty'...'nothing remains' thing becomes more poignant when you think that Dr. Manhattan pretty much tells Ozy to his face that his plan fails, in the end.
I don't know if Ror qualifies as a psychopath. For example, he's ready to kill his landlady for lying about them, until he sees the kids and, well, feels mercy.
Or the way he toys with old man Moloch; in his own way, he's teasing the old guy. They're old, not exactly buddies, but, well, of an age.
And again, shows mercy when he learns that Moloch is dying of cancer.
Let alone showing concern for all of his friends when he thinks they might be targets of a serial killer.
Understandably, Rorschach realizes this and refuses to be complicit in Ozy's crime. He's a zero-tolerance type. Burn the world down if you must, but crime must be punished. That is why he refuses.
You know, it suddenly occurs to me that Rorschach is the closest thing in Watchmen to a classic comic-book character; four colour morality, only kind of in the opposite direction. Where Superman is always good and right, Rorschach is the mirror image of that; black and white, the negative side of utter uncompromise.
And he dies for it. It's all a metaphor for the old style of comics being killed off for being utterly unable to adapt.
Ozy isn't uttering forth a monologue; he's distracting everybody. He's already won. Further, he's not trying to show them how smart he is, daring them to outthink him, Riddler-style; he's giving himself up for judgement. He wouldn't have stopped any of the heroes had they decided to go reveal the plan; you'll note that he lets Rorshach go. Further, he seeks absolution from Dr. Manhattan.
In other words, the entire point of that scene is to send up the comic book trope.
Oh, I can see a few reasons to do it this way, to some extent, at least.
For example, ship 5 licenses to customer, put it in five boxes. Then, when UPS/Fedex/whatever delivers, they scan five items, the customer signs for five items, and can't complain that they 'didn't get one.'
Just like 'this page intentionally left blank:' it's cheaper to pay the extra shipping than to spend an hour on the phone convincing the customer that no, they're not missing pages (or entire manuals in the empty box.)
Also, people tend to forget the difference between 'broadcast' and 'narrowcast.'
Yes, if you point a laser 0 degrees, and point a laser 90 degrees, they'll intersect and keep going. This isn't what happens with RF broadcast, however.
Take a military blinker light. Stand a few miles away. Have somebody blink you a message in morse code. Perfect.
Now, while that code is coming, have somebody else with another blinker, exactly the same color (wavelength, or 'frequency') and output strength stand directly beside the first guy, and start blinking a different message at you.
Not so easy to pick out your own, is it? Now, do it while a third guy with a flood light is standing behind them both.
Actually, Canada got it's name when Jacques Cartier and company, well, mangled the St-Lawrence Iroquois word 'kanata,' which means 'town' or 'village.'
There's a sweet little 'Canadian Heritage' edvert that illustrates this as Cartier and company coming over a hill and meeting said Iroquois for the first time. The local elder offers to bring them to his village, repeatedly using the word 'kanata.' Cartier turns to a religious scholar, and asks for a translation. The scholar, having never heard this language before, stammers out something about 'Ka-na-da' being the name of the land. Meanwhile, an unlettered sailor is trying to convince them that the elder is specifically pointing at the village. "I'm *sure* he means those huts over there!"
You have to watch it to get the humor, I think. Mainly the looks on various faces.
Don't forget that they've announced that the Fall Update for the 360 will allow you to copy any 360 game to the hard drive and play from there with naught but a CD check.
Ok, but if your wii-saber is past your left shoulder, and your virtual wii-saber is above your right, how do you translate 'I'm re-locating my wii-saber, but not my virtual wii-saber?' Make somebody hold a button on the wii-saber to indicate 'this is a game move' or 'this is not a game move?'
It goes beyond 'simulating resistance' to 'the onscreen avatar is subject to forces that you, the physical human, are not.'
A simple example: You, as a person holding a wii-saber, make a sideways cut. From your perspective, it's rather like a baseball swing; your right shoulder to your left shoulder.
Your on-screen opponent, however, does a very nice twirly parry of your blade, carrying it aabove your right shoulder.
So, now you are physically holding your wii-saber, two-handed, past your left shoulder. Your onscreen avatar is hoding his wii-saber, two handed, above it's right shoulder. How to reconcile?
But c'mon, man! Shoggoth pudding! That would be awesome:)
(deep announcer voice) Kids go CRAZY for Shoggoth Pudding!
(cut to a bunch of kids in straight jackets; one staring at the wall drooling, one banging his head rythmically against a wall, one lying on his back and gnawing on a toe, then using the now-bleeding toe to draw MC Escher-like designs on the wall. In front of each is a spoon and an empty Shoggoth Pudding container)
Every copy of Solaris (and Java, as I recall) sternly tells you not to use it for critical medical equipment, nuke plants, missile guidence, all sorts of stuff.
Assuming we're talking about Grossman's On Killing, an excellent book, by the way, I don't buy into his assertion that 'In the military, they put you in a uniform, hand you a rifle, stick you in a foxhole, and have man-shaped targets pop up at you, while a drill sergeant screams at you to shoot it. In DooM, you sit in a chair, sipping a Mountain Dew, while deftly using the WASD keys and the control key to shoot down floating demons. Both of these are CONDITIIONING YOU TO KILL!'
Granted; 'back up your data because shit happens' is a perfectly fine sentiment. 'Back up your data because the company can't be bothered to do simple things like checksumming and non-destructive updates' isn't.
Any firmware update has the potential to go wrong, especially when it's as large as the PS3 firmware is (130Mb) and can be downloaded over flaky links and installed from potentially faulty hard drives.
Sorry, that doesn't fly. Checksums have been a known quantity for decades.
Wiping the drive shouldn't be an issue if people are running backups like they should be. Sony *do* provide a backup utility for this. Don't read this as an excuse for Sony - if the firmware is flawed, they should have done more testing, but EVERYBODY should be backing up their data if they care about it!
Again, doesn't fly. Rollbacks and non-destructive upgrades have been a known quantity for decades. And you have zero excuse when your update is less than one percent of your smallest target harddrive.
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25 years? Faugh.
There were firearms thousands of years ago. It's only within the last two hundred years or so that they were developed to the point of being militarily useful.
You hook it up to the Baghdad Battery.
You know, the whole 'look upon my works, ye mighty'...'nothing remains' thing becomes more poignant when you think that Dr. Manhattan pretty much tells Ozy to his face that his plan fails, in the end.
At some point, Nite Owl's going to go pick it up. Besides, he probably has it wired to alert him if somebody tries to access it.
No, because we all read the part about where he disabled the ability to do exactly what you suggested he do.
I don't know if Ror qualifies as a psychopath. For example, he's ready to kill his landlady for lying about them, until he sees the kids and, well, feels mercy.
Or the way he toys with old man Moloch; in his own way, he's teasing the old guy. They're old, not exactly buddies, but, well, of an age.
And again, shows mercy when he learns that Moloch is dying of cancer.
Let alone showing concern for all of his friends when he thinks they might be targets of a serial killer.
You know, it suddenly occurs to me that Rorschach is the closest thing in Watchmen to a classic comic-book character; four colour morality, only kind of in the opposite direction. Where Superman is always good and right, Rorschach is the mirror image of that; black and white, the negative side of utter uncompromise.
And he dies for it. It's all a metaphor for the old style of comics being killed off for being utterly unable to adapt.
Or something.
I think you missed the point. Spoilers ahoy.
Ozy isn't uttering forth a monologue; he's distracting everybody. He's already won. Further, he's not trying to show them how smart he is, daring them to outthink him, Riddler-style; he's giving himself up for judgement. He wouldn't have stopped any of the heroes had they decided to go reveal the plan; you'll note that he lets Rorshach go. Further, he seeks absolution from Dr. Manhattan.
In other words, the entire point of that scene is to send up the comic book trope.
Oh, I can see a few reasons to do it this way, to some extent, at least.
For example, ship 5 licenses to customer, put it in five boxes. Then, when UPS/Fedex/whatever delivers, they scan five items, the customer signs for five items, and can't complain that they 'didn't get one.'
Just like 'this page intentionally left blank:' it's cheaper to pay the extra shipping than to spend an hour on the phone convincing the customer that no, they're not missing pages (or entire manuals in the empty box.)
Sadly, perhaps the greatest legacy of BeOS is this little Zork spoof about writing a graphic driver.
There's always BeOS, which prided itself on lightning-fast load times. Otherwise, a rather stripped down UNIX-alike would do you fine.
Also, people tend to forget the difference between 'broadcast' and 'narrowcast.'
Yes, if you point a laser 0 degrees, and point a laser 90 degrees, they'll intersect and keep going. This isn't what happens with RF broadcast, however.
Take a military blinker light. Stand a few miles away. Have somebody blink you a message in morse code. Perfect.
Now, while that code is coming, have somebody else with another blinker, exactly the same color (wavelength, or 'frequency') and output strength stand directly beside the first guy, and start blinking a different message at you.
Not so easy to pick out your own, is it? Now, do it while a third guy with a flood light is standing behind them both.
No no, his vocodor is on the fritz, see, and has jumped up about three octaves.
Actually, Canada got it's name when Jacques Cartier and company, well, mangled the St-Lawrence Iroquois word 'kanata,' which means 'town' or 'village.'
There's a sweet little 'Canadian Heritage' edvert that illustrates this as Cartier and company coming over a hill and meeting said Iroquois for the first time. The local elder offers to bring them to his village, repeatedly using the word 'kanata.' Cartier turns to a religious scholar, and asks for a translation. The scholar, having never heard this language before, stammers out something about 'Ka-na-da' being the name of the land. Meanwhile, an unlettered sailor is trying to convince them that the elder is specifically pointing at the village. "I'm *sure* he means those huts over there!"
You have to watch it to get the humor, I think. Mainly the looks on various faces.
Don't forget that they've announced that the Fall Update for the 360 will allow you to copy any 360 game to the hard drive and play from there with naught but a CD check.
If flipping discs is really that much hassle....
Ok, but if your wii-saber is past your left shoulder, and your virtual wii-saber is above your right, how do you translate 'I'm re-locating my wii-saber, but not my virtual wii-saber?' Make somebody hold a button on the wii-saber to indicate 'this is a game move' or 'this is not a game move?'
It goes beyond 'simulating resistance' to 'the onscreen avatar is subject to forces that you, the physical human, are not.'
A simple example: You, as a person holding a wii-saber, make a sideways cut. From your perspective, it's rather like a baseball swing; your right shoulder to your left shoulder.
Your on-screen opponent, however, does a very nice twirly parry of your blade, carrying it aabove your right shoulder.
So, now you are physically holding your wii-saber, two-handed, past your left shoulder. Your onscreen avatar is hoding his wii-saber, two handed, above it's right shoulder. How to reconcile?
(deep announcer voice) Kids go CRAZY for Shoggoth Pudding!
(cut to a bunch of kids in straight jackets; one staring at the wall drooling, one banging his head rythmically against a wall, one lying on his back and gnawing on a toe, then using the now-bleeding toe to draw MC Escher-like designs on the wall. In front of each is a spoon and an empty Shoggoth Pudding container)
Every copy of Solaris (and Java, as I recall) sternly tells you not to use it for critical medical equipment, nuke plants, missile guidence, all sorts of stuff.
Assuming we're talking about Grossman's On Killing, an excellent book, by the way, I don't buy into his assertion that 'In the military, they put you in a uniform, hand you a rifle, stick you in a foxhole, and have man-shaped targets pop up at you, while a drill sergeant screams at you to shoot it. In DooM, you sit in a chair, sipping a Mountain Dew, while deftly using the WASD keys and the control key to shoot down floating demons. Both of these are CONDITIIONING YOU TO KILL!'
Granted; 'back up your data because shit happens' is a perfectly fine sentiment. 'Back up your data because the company can't be bothered to do simple things like checksumming and non-destructive updates' isn't.
Sorry, that doesn't fly. Checksums have been a known quantity for decades.
Again, doesn't fly. Rollbacks and non-destructive upgrades have been a known quantity for decades. And you have zero excuse when your update is less than one percent of your smallest target harddrive.
Me thinks he means that, if you're typing it into your computer, you are, by definition, well, 'in front of computer.'
Given that he's talking about test packages, he was probably on a development or testing site, and sending feedback as part of a QA cycle.