A cylon wouldn't have to be biological to profess a belief in God.
That's true, but I don't think that we, as viewers, would be as ready to accept that premise and ponder the question seriously if they weren't flesh. If you think the show would have been more interesting otherwise, you may be one of the few that would have been willing to question it, personally.
What makes a cylon more human than a toaster?... Would you be able to empathize with a tortured prisoner that didn't bleed?
I think that's exactly it. I don't think the audience would. Flesh bleeds. It hurts. It feels terror. Machines are predictable, but flesh isn't. If the cylons were machines, Sharon wouldn't be able to have a child, and wouldn't have a reason to act to protect the human race from the other cylons.
"Terminator 2" was a reasonably good Sci-Fi that ended with the narrator speculating that a machine could learn the value of human life, but I don't think it'd work as well in a TV serial. You're free to believe otherwise.:)
When you said, "You don't "get" the show, then," were you telling that to me or not?...Maybe I was. When I posted that, I was *sure* that the post I originally replied to was made by a user, and not AC. I guess I was wrong.:)
there are some heinous examples of people flinging insults at each other over a subjective opinion
It's slashdot. What did you expect?
I haven't said anything about the presentation of the cylons as living beings.
Presumably you made the claim that the human-form cylons were a cost-saving measure. I assert otherwise. The story revolves around the fact that the cylon race believes that they are to replace us. They're trying to be human. The story would have to be significantly different, and could not touch the same topics as effectively, if the cylons were not human in appearance.
I'm not sure what you mean about "this" not being a black-and-white issue, though.
"This" refers to the "sexual" content of the show. Some people will cynically believe that it is using sex to sell the show. Others, like myself, who find the story more compelling than the appearance of the characters, won't. This, too, is somewhat subjective. If you refuse to accept that it has significance in the story, then you're making a black-and-white issue of something that isn't.
you basically told me I must not like the show because I'm too dumb for it
I don't recall telling you anything.
For that matter, I wasn't even talking about the sexual content of the show when I made the statement that you're referring to. I was talking about the presentation of cylons as living, humanoid beings.
I also "get" that all the "hawties" on the show were cast primarily to draw in the horny geek demographic, of which I am a part. It's so obvious that it's offensive.
Personally, I think you're so inundated with exactly that, that you begin to see it where it doesn't necessarily exist. I also object to the over-sexualization of practically everything we see in mainstream media. I don't see the content of BSG as being that.
Sophistication aside, you should consider that this isn't a black-and-white issue. There are nuances that your reaction to the perceived sexual content may be preventing you from considering.
Come on...raping the alien?... After that episode I don't watch BSG.
That was the best episode yet. The whole show questions the validity of the cylons' claim to humanity, and that episode puts the questions in very certain terms. Are the cylons "human" enough to be entitled to human rights? Was it morally wrong for the soldiers to rape the cylon they'd captured? If not, then would it have been wrong to do the same to Sharon?
That episode was directed at everyone who did not or does not believe that the cylons are "human" themselves. If they're "toasters", as so many of the human characters believe, then is anything that you do to them wrong? There are definitely characters in the show that think so, and in believing so, they are beginning to see the cylons as a living race.
Of course the show is an allegory. Rape is torture. The cylons, as a race, are trying to exterminate the human race, although some individual cylons don't support that goal. Are the humans justified in torturing the individuals that they perceive as the enemy? What if they cylons might give up some information that could save human lives by doing so?
aggressive "sex sells" nature of the character makes me resent the makers for attempting to influence me in such a base way
They're not trying to influence you. The character is manipulating humans, particularly Baltar, and using their human instincts to do it. You should feel like it's manipulation, because it is. It just doesn't happen to be directed at you.
The whole human-form cylons thing rankles me, too
You don't "get" the show, then. It's not a cost-saving measure. It's the essence of the show. The cylons are biological. They think and breath and live. They profess a belief in a God that gives them life, and that they are our successors. Are they right? Do they even really believe that? As characters, it's those questions that give them depth in intrigue.
the camera would zoom in on their face
That does bother a lot of people, but as far as I can tell, the crew is trying to imitate the way real humans view the world. The camera focuses narrowly when a human watching would feel tense, because that's what a human does. The camera shakes and darts, because that's what our eyes do. You're not accustomed to seeing a camera do it, and it may never catch on as a technique (many will appreciate that), but it's interesting to see it done, when you understand what's happening.
Common sense, and personal experience don't bear that out. If you're in the middle of a city, on a bright, sunny day, it's going to be *real* fucking hot. Much hotter there than in arid regions in the same general area. Grasslands will be cooler. Forested areas tend to be much cooler, often strait out cold.
Clearly, plants absorb sunlight, and some of what they absorb will be radiated as heat, but there's a lot more going on in their ecosystem than that. Before we start worrying about heat absorbed and radiated by forests, which have covered vastly more of the earth before the industrial revolution than afterward, when global temperatures began to increase, I think we should work on reducing the environmental impact of concrete and blacktop.
Since it's a subscription service, yes. It is intended to be more or less streaming only. The player will cache content so that you don't have to stream it *every* time, but encryption is required to make it a subscription service rather than a free download site.
On the other hand, if you use the Windows app and purchase content, you'll download CD-quality tracks that you can burn, and have all the rights you'd have to any audio CD.
It's not *that* tight-lipped. If you go to the www.real.com page in a Linux browser, you'll see a section in big letters: "Helix Community needs Linux users like you"
Calm down, dude. Stateless Linux and Xen are the actual names of projects included in Fedora Core. They are not buzzwords or marketspeak. "Open source server virtualization software" was slightly redundant, but it is also a plain English description of Xen, which is exactly what you're asking for.
That process isn't really better or worse than using 'dd if=/dev/zero'. One advantage of using/dev/zero is that if the filesystem is corrupted, you're better able to locate actual data on the disk.
If you ever *do* care about web applications, you can still get good performance from PostgreSQL if you use persistant connections from the application. Last I heard, PostgreSQL was a bit slow at accepting connections and authenticating, but if that's not normally a part of the web application's process, then it's not a concern.:)
If any application redraws because you move your mouse over it, then you know that your video driver doesn't support a hardware mouse cursor. In any normal case, that means that your video driver is set up wrong.
Forget about switching terminals for now. Fix your video driver, and your experience will be much better.
PASSV doesn't remove the need for a second TCP connection on a different port, but it does eliminate the need for special firewall support. In passive mode, the server opens the second port and reports it to the client. The client then establishes a second TCP connection to the IP and port indicated by the server.
ip_conntrack_ftp and PIX fixup protocols are only needed for old style FTP. They aren't used when transferring files with passive mode.
Even with a less restrictive binary license, most Linux distributions wouldn't include the software, and most Free Software developers would avoid the Java platform.
An important part of the freedom to use software is the freedom to fix it when it's broken rather than wait on a vendor who may not be responsive to your problem.
I'm a RealNetworks employee, and we recently saw these things demoed after they added support for RealNetworks' Rhapsody service. Add a Rhapsody subscription to the cost of the device, and you get a massive library of music accessible for high-quality streaming. It was pretty impressive.
He's hostile to the idea for the same reason that people have always been hostile to usability features on the Mac OS:
His computer doesn't work that way, and isn't entirely interoperable. If you had to copy data from a Mac OS host to a less capable Windows OS host, most of the organizational and usability data becomes worthless.
He's hostile because his experience is made more difficult by an inferior design.
On the other hand: In the interest of interoperability, and fostering a more usable computer ecology, Apple should make sure that the design and implementation of their abstractions are published. If they don't, then doublem's hostility is warranted....And I wouldn't know if that information is available or not.
Comparing a computer to *a* hammer is just foolishness.
A computer is more like a tool *shop* than a tool. And to that analogy, I'll point out that I was taught about shop safety during middle school. Furthermore, I do know shop geeks that spend a lot of time playing with their tools, looking at new tools, etc. They build their own shop equipment, too. I'll even take the position you propose that it's ignorant to go into a shop without learning proper safety procedures, which as close as I can reasonably apply your "get to know the hammer" comment to a shop.
When you suggest that two dissimilar things are alike for the purposes of metaphor, you show everyone that you have no idea what you're talking about. They're not similar just because you say that they are.
Slashdot Mirror
A cylon wouldn't have to be biological to profess a belief in God.
:)
That's true, but I don't think that we, as viewers, would be as ready to accept that premise and ponder the question seriously if they weren't flesh. If you think the show would have been more interesting otherwise, you may be one of the few that would have been willing to question it, personally.
What makes a cylon more human than a toaster?... Would you be able to empathize with a tortured prisoner that didn't bleed?
I think that's exactly it. I don't think the audience would. Flesh bleeds. It hurts. It feels terror. Machines are predictable, but flesh isn't. If the cylons were machines, Sharon wouldn't be able to have a child, and wouldn't have a reason to act to protect the human race from the other cylons.
"Terminator 2" was a reasonably good Sci-Fi that ended with the narrator speculating that a machine could learn the value of human life, but I don't think it'd work as well in a TV serial. You're free to believe otherwise.
No one who looks at your posting history is going to believe you.
When you said, "You don't "get" the show, then," were you telling that to me or not? ...Maybe I was. When I posted that, I was *sure* that the post I originally replied to was made by a user, and not AC. I guess I was wrong. :)
there are some heinous examples of people flinging insults at each other over a subjective opinion
It's slashdot. What did you expect?
I haven't said anything about the presentation of the cylons as living beings.
Presumably you made the claim that the human-form cylons were a cost-saving measure. I assert otherwise. The story revolves around the fact that the cylon race believes that they are to replace us. They're trying to be human. The story would have to be significantly different, and could not touch the same topics as effectively, if the cylons were not human in appearance.
I'm not sure what you mean about "this" not being a black-and-white issue, though.
"This" refers to the "sexual" content of the show. Some people will cynically believe that it is using sex to sell the show. Others, like myself, who find the story more compelling than the appearance of the characters, won't. This, too, is somewhat subjective. If you refuse to accept that it has significance in the story, then you're making a black-and-white issue of something that isn't.
I'm not sure what part you thought was overly graphic, rather than implied. Could you clarify that?
you basically told me I must not like the show because I'm too dumb for it
I don't recall telling you anything.
For that matter, I wasn't even talking about the sexual content of the show when I made the statement that you're referring to. I was talking about the presentation of cylons as living, humanoid beings.
I also "get" that all the "hawties" on the show were cast primarily to draw in the horny geek demographic, of which I am a part. It's so obvious that it's offensive.
Personally, I think you're so inundated with exactly that, that you begin to see it where it doesn't necessarily exist. I also object to the over-sexualization of practically everything we see in mainstream media. I don't see the content of BSG as being that.
Sophistication aside, you should consider that this isn't a black-and-white issue. There are nuances that your reaction to the perceived sexual content may be preventing you from considering.
Come on...raping the alien? ... After that episode I don't watch BSG.
That was the best episode yet. The whole show questions the validity of the cylons' claim to humanity, and that episode puts the questions in very certain terms. Are the cylons "human" enough to be entitled to human rights? Was it morally wrong for the soldiers to rape the cylon they'd captured? If not, then would it have been wrong to do the same to Sharon?
That episode was directed at everyone who did not or does not believe that the cylons are "human" themselves. If they're "toasters", as so many of the human characters believe, then is anything that you do to them wrong? There are definitely characters in the show that think so, and in believing so, they are beginning to see the cylons as a living race.
Of course the show is an allegory. Rape is torture. The cylons, as a race, are trying to exterminate the human race, although some individual cylons don't support that goal. Are the humans justified in torturing the individuals that they perceive as the enemy? What if they cylons might give up some information that could save human lives by doing so?
aggressive "sex sells" nature of the character makes me resent the makers for attempting to influence me in such a base way
They're not trying to influence you. The character is manipulating humans, particularly Baltar, and using their human instincts to do it. You should feel like it's manipulation, because it is. It just doesn't happen to be directed at you.
The whole human-form cylons thing rankles me, too
You don't "get" the show, then. It's not a cost-saving measure. It's the essence of the show. The cylons are biological. They think and breath and live. They profess a belief in a God that gives them life, and that they are our successors. Are they right? Do they even really believe that? As characters, it's those questions that give them depth in intrigue.
the camera would zoom in on their face
That does bother a lot of people, but as far as I can tell, the crew is trying to imitate the way real humans view the world. The camera focuses narrowly when a human watching would feel tense, because that's what a human does. The camera shakes and darts, because that's what our eyes do. You're not accustomed to seeing a camera do it, and it may never catch on as a technique (many will appreciate that), but it's interesting to see it done, when you understand what's happening.
Common sense, and personal experience don't bear that out. If you're in the middle of a city, on a bright, sunny day, it's going to be *real* fucking hot. Much hotter there than in arid regions in the same general area. Grasslands will be cooler. Forested areas tend to be much cooler, often strait out cold.
Clearly, plants absorb sunlight, and some of what they absorb will be radiated as heat, but there's a lot more going on in their ecosystem than that. Before we start worrying about heat absorbed and radiated by forests, which have covered vastly more of the earth before the industrial revolution than afterward, when global temperatures began to increase, I think we should work on reducing the environmental impact of concrete and blacktop.
Since it's a subscription service, yes. It is intended to be more or less streaming only. The player will cache content so that you don't have to stream it *every* time, but encryption is required to make it a subscription service rather than a free download site.
On the other hand, if you use the Windows app and purchase content, you'll download CD-quality tracks that you can burn, and have all the rights you'd have to any audio CD.
It's not *that* tight-lipped. If you go to the www.real.com page in a Linux browser, you'll see a section in big letters: "Helix Community needs Linux users like you"
Calm down, dude. Stateless Linux and Xen are the actual names of projects included in Fedora Core. They are not buzzwords or marketspeak. "Open source server virtualization software" was slightly redundant, but it is also a plain English description of Xen, which is exactly what you're asking for.
That process isn't really better or worse than using 'dd if=/dev/zero'. One advantage of using /dev/zero is that if the filesystem is corrupted, you're better able to locate actual data on the disk.
I'm pretty sure that when Microsoft's WindowsUpdate servers were cracked by a worm, it made the front page.
If you ever *do* care about web applications, you can still get good performance from PostgreSQL if you use persistant connections from the application. Last I heard, PostgreSQL was a bit slow at accepting connections and authenticating, but if that's not normally a part of the web application's process, then it's not a concern. :)
If any application redraws because you move your mouse over it, then you know that your video driver doesn't support a hardware mouse cursor. In any normal case, that means that your video driver is set up wrong.
Forget about switching terminals for now. Fix your video driver, and your experience will be much better.
... or, more likely, with his subtraction:
(-2) - (-3) = 1
PASSV doesn't remove the need for a second TCP connection on a different port, but it does eliminate the need for special firewall support. In passive mode, the server opens the second port and reports it to the client. The client then establishes a second TCP connection to the IP and port indicated by the server.
ip_conntrack_ftp and PIX fixup protocols are only needed for old style FTP. They aren't used when transferring files with passive mode.
Even with a less restrictive binary license, most Linux distributions wouldn't include the software, and most Free Software developers would avoid the Java platform.
An important part of the freedom to use software is the freedom to fix it when it's broken rather than wait on a vendor who may not be responsive to your problem.
I'm a RealNetworks employee, and we recently saw these things demoed after they added support for RealNetworks' Rhapsody service. Add a Rhapsody subscription to the cost of the device, and you get a massive library of music accessible for high-quality streaming. It was pretty impressive.
SELinux option during installation is Enabled or Disabled, no halfway house as in FC3.
I believe that they've stopped offering the strict policy, so "on" would be the targeted policy that was offered in FC3.
He's hostile to the idea for the same reason that people have always been hostile to usability features on the Mac OS:
...And I wouldn't know if that information is available or not.
His computer doesn't work that way, and isn't entirely interoperable. If you had to copy data from a Mac OS host to a less capable Windows OS host, most of the organizational and usability data becomes worthless.
He's hostile because his experience is made more difficult by an inferior design.
On the other hand: In the interest of interoperability, and fostering a more usable computer ecology, Apple should make sure that the design and implementation of their abstractions are published. If they don't, then doublem's hostility is warranted.
Comparing a computer to *a* hammer is just foolishness.
A computer is more like a tool *shop* than a tool. And to that analogy, I'll point out that I was taught about shop safety during middle school. Furthermore, I do know shop geeks that spend a lot of time playing with their tools, looking at new tools, etc. They build their own shop equipment, too. I'll even take the position you propose that it's ignorant to go into a shop without learning proper safety procedures, which as close as I can reasonably apply your "get to know the hammer" comment to a shop.
When you suggest that two dissimilar things are alike for the purposes of metaphor, you show everyone that you have no idea what you're talking about. They're not similar just because you say that they are.
Actually it indicates that software that runs on Linux (including GNU) is what the defense program needs, and that Linux, specifically, is not.
The only thing that surprises me about that item is that SUID scripts were allowed until now. Most Unix systems don't allow SUID scripts, AFAIK.
Since Linux isn't actually involved in this project in any way, shouldn't the summary state that GNU is a key part of the FCS initiative?
Tux is actually sitting this one out.