Hehe. Your right of course, much easier that way. And if your willing to do something like that, no telling how far you can take it.
The Scene: A man enters his living room, and plugs his PDA into the universal sync-cradle on his 60-Inch Digital TV. He grabs the remote, and powers on his TV. He is greeted by the following message from his TV's OS.
TV: Good evening, Mr. Blank. Tonights TvOS is brought to you by AOL: so easy to use, and now pre-installed on every TV, no wonder it's #1! It has been 12 days since your last pay-per-view purchase. Please note that you must order another pay-per-view movie or event within the next 2 days to keep your "frequent watcher" preferred rate. Would you like to see a list of current pay-per-view titles available?
Mr. Blank chooses Yes on his remote, and is promptly greeted with a list of categories to choose from. After 10 minutes of searching, he finds the title he wants, Slashdot: The Movie.
TV: Thank you for your purchase of Slashdot: The Movie. Before we can begin the show, please take a moment to review the terms of Slashdot: The Movie's Licensing Agreement, which will be displayed in a moment. Under the terms of the 2011 Consumer Protection Act, you are authorized to have a lawyer present for the License Agreement and viewing. If you do not have a lawyer, an e-lawyer can be provided for you at an additional charge. Do you wish to contact your lawyer, or recieve more information about obtaining an e-lawyer?
Mr. Blank chooses No, as by now he nearly has the license agreement memorized. What follows is approximately 10 pages of leagal documents that scrolls slowly by on his screen. Mr. Blank agrees to never record or rebroadcast the following material (not that he could even if he wanted to), or to publically release any description of said film, through any media. He also agrees to not comment on said file, either in the form of review or personal opinion, without the express written permission of the MPAA.
Mr. Blank stares at the TV through the whole 10 minutes of the document: if he gets up from his seat, the infrared sensors in his cable box will detect his absense and pause the license agreement until he returns. At the end of the agreement, Mr. Blank digitally signs 3 forms, legally acknowledging that he has read and understands the license agreement. Copies of these documents are uploaded into his PDA, and also transmitted to his cable company and the MPAA.
Rant Time: It seems the MPAA won't be satisfied until they control all media with an iron fist. Usually I scoff at people who talk of things like "The MPAA is Big Brother", and "Your being spoon-fed what they want you to have", but after reading articles like this, I wonder if, to paraphrase the X-Files, I'm not paranoid enough.
I can't belive the MPAA has the balls to do something like this. They can talk all they want to about "artists rights" and "copy protection", but I think it's pretty clear that this whole issue is about one thing: executives making money. This is even more offensive with TV shows, where advertising already permeates nearly show in existence. So now, not only do I have to endure 10 minutes of ads, but I cannot record it and fast forward through them? Sad thing is, it'll get worse before it gets better. Hey MPAA, many people have e-mail accounts now. Why not send e-mails to everyone, and make them digitally sign and return the e-mail as proof that they won't record, rebroadcast, or distribute a show, and that they will watch all the advertising like the good little sheep they are?
OK, rant over. It's funny, though: since I got my cable modem, I spend most free evenings either playing D2 and Team Fortress Classic online, or just generally surfing Slashdot and the like. About the only TV shows I watch any more are SouthPark, Simpsons, X-Files and sporting events, and even then it's hit or miss. I think organizations like the MPAA, RIAA and their ilk have known for a while what I'm just figuring out: that they are pimping a dying media, and they must squeeze it for every nickle while they still can.
Well, for one thing, it isn't really Slashdot's responsibility to be giving out legal advice. I mean, it's fun and all to speculate about whether Topic X is legal or not, but when it comes right down to it, our opinions don't mean Jack to the World of Law. This is a discussion board. Anyone coming to Ask Slashdot for advice on a legal matter in place of a lawyer get's what they deserve.
Ep1 was what I would consider a fair-to-good movie, but not a great one. The opening scenes with Liam and Ewan running around the ship, kicking robot ass, plunging their lightsabers through 10-ft thick doors was damn cool. The pod race was OK, as was the final space battle. The "Dark Senator" setup, and all the backstory on the old republic was good, but in the end, Ep1 seemed little more than a vehicle for 3-4 "big action" scenes that seemed designed for selling toys rather than giving us good action.
Media blitz is probably one reason I was a little disappointed by Ep1, but the main reason is that, IMHO, it just didn't measure up to the originals. Maybe I'm just too old to properly enjoy Star Wars now, I don't know. I haven't given up hope on the next 2, though: the idea of watching Anikin turn evil and telling Obi-Wan to piss off has a certain built-in entertainment value attached to it;)
What this probably means is that now R2 will suddenly have jet packs, laser guns, and giant radar dishes coming out of nowhere on him. One more opportunity to put out 10 different variations of the same R2-D2 toy just in time for Christmas 2003.
You know, I thought Ep1 had it's problems, but up until now was willing to give Lucas the benifit of doubt. Yeah, Jar-Jar sucked and all, but as some have pointed out, the case can be made that Ep1 had to be a "happy" film, considering the direction the next 2 must go. But seeing stuff like this, and announcements a few weeks ago that they're putting out yet another VHS set of originals with some trash "Making Of" thrown in...It's pretty clear that Lucas intends to squeeze this Prequel for every ounce of money he can.
Help us, Wachowski Brothers, you're our only hope...
As pointed out previously, video games might help problem solving, hand-eye, etc. but they promote short attention spans by reinforcing instant gratification
That's bull. I've been playing video games since Atari, and I don't have any kind of problem with a short attent
Johnny Quest: Actually, it made it cool to want to be Race Bannon. Dr. Quest was Race's bitch.
Roadrunner: Physics lessons like, "if you don't look down, gravity has no effect", and, "a trip though the center of the earth takes you to China and leaves you none the worse for wear".
Scooby Doo: Also taught us that every amusement park, construction site, beach, and historical landmark in the country has an evil employee who wants to take it over for themselves by dressing up a costume that wouldn't scare my grandmother.
Speed Racer: The genius of Speed Racer can be summed up in the following 2 scenes.
Trixie: Oh, Speed! That curve looked especially dangerous, but it must not be, we went right through it!
Speed: No, it's really trecherous! I'm just an excellent driver!
Some Guy: And now we present the trophy for winning the Death Race to Speed Racer!
Speed: This wasn't a very good race. 100 people entered, and only 2 made it out alive!
Well, I don't think G-Force came before the Fantastic Four, though the FF does fit the criteria somewhat, save for the rebel loner part. And the good with machines guy is also the (hardly studly) leader Reed.
As others have pointed out, G-Force was technically known as Battle of the Planets. The team was called G-Force, though, and they ran around yelling it all the time, so that's how I remember it.
G-Force basically was formed to defeat Zoltar and his legion of dumb goons and occasional super-monsters. They all flew around in the Phoenix, a space-ship that also flew underwater, and could literally transform itself into a firey Phoenix. When things got really tough, all 5 members banded together, formed a human pyramid, and spun around at tornadic speeds.
Looking back, I'm not really sure how any of these things was supposed to defeat giant monsters or hordes of gun-toating goons, but it always seemed to work out that way. Guess Zoltar and Mum-Ra went to the same School for Inept Villianry.
Bah! Silverhawks, Thundercats, Voltron, hell, even Power Rangers...imposters! They all bow down before the glory that is G-Force. No other cartoon team was their equal. Consider how many cartoon-team themes that we now take for granted were pioneered by G-Force.
- Teams must have 5 members: A studly leader, a rebel loner, a token female, a wacky kid brother, and a fat guy who's good with machines.
- Every 5th episode must be feature a team-member other than the leader in great detail. Said episode usually involves the feature team member doing something incredibly stupid, which usually leads to him/her being captured. The rest of the team must then bail out stupid team member, and give them a stern lecture about the importance of teamwork.
- Whenever the entire team is rendered unconcious, the studly leader is ALWAYS the first to wake up. Second up is the rebel loner.
- Each team member has their own unique form of transportation. There is usually a motercycle of some form. Each team member also has their own unique weapons. There is usually some form of boomerang, whip, and grapling hook.
- Whenever the team is facing off against their arch-enemy and his legion of goons, the rebel loner is the first to attack. The fat guy invariably ends up throwing 5 goons into a pile to show his massive strength, the wacky kid makes two goons run into each other, and the token female fights one goon the entire brawl. The studly leader, of course, goes straight for the arch-enemy, but always let's him escape.
Come to think of it, these themes also seem to apply to family sitcoms and boy-bands as well. Hmmm....
Screen size and resolution, and really laptops in general, are like Frames-Per-Second, # Polygons, and such to business-types. They can't impress each other with their Voodoo 9000's and Razer mice, so they trick out laptops.
Business Guy 1: So then accounts puts out this spreadsheet of quarterly projected earnings, and they don't even bother to break it down into multiple sheets! I'm scrolling all over the place looking at it! Business Guy 2: Really? Cause on my new laptop with 1600x1200 resolution, I was able to view the whole thing on one page. Guy1: Well, that's great, but I bet it took forever to load with that 1 Meg video card your laptop has in it. Mine, on the other hand, has a full 4 Meg of video memory, plus 256 Meg of RAM. I can load the Powerpoint Org Chart presentation in no time! Guy2: Too bad you've got that 2 Gig hard drive in there. Mine, on the other hand, has a full 10 Gig, not counting the extra 6 Gig drive I can put in my expansion bay.
I'm only half kidding here; I've actually seen scenes similar to this. It's actually pretty funny to watch two 40+ mid-level managers have a pissing contest to see who the CEO likes best.
Because it's made by Nintendo. Ever since the SuperNintendo, Nintendo has been release under-powered, under-featured consoles that nevertheless sell like crazy. The reason? Marketing and Mario.
This things going to have a DVD that doesn't play DVD's (how...useful), no built in harddrive like the x-box (though, how necessary this is is certainly up to debate), and from the look of the specs, no built in modem/ethernet card for on-line play. And it won't matter a bit, because MarioWorld 128, DonkeyKong Word 2, or whatever they'll call all those titles will be available, and half the country will want one anyway.
Not that the Dolphin will necessarily be a bad thing, however. SuperNintendo and N64 certainly had their share of good games, and there's no reason to think Dolphin won't either. Still, you have to wonder what the console gaming field would be like had Nintendo simply put more power into their gaming consoles. Coming of the NES, Nintendo literally ruled the console market, with Sega shooting themselves in the foot and others like Atari not really a threat. Had Nintendo beefed up the hardware for the SNES and N64, you might not even be hearing about Dreamcast, PS2 or XBox.
The film nearly achieved immortality after being played repeatedly on cable during the mid-80s, but faded into obscurity after Ernest Borgnine himself is rumored to have found the movie "a bit lacking."
For those of you who may not have seen this movie, this is a bit like Satan showing up on your doorstep and telling you that your "a little bit too evil" in his view.
I don't think there was an afternoon between May and September of 1985 that this movie didn't get played on HBO. This Dave Speed guy made the Green Lantern look like a kick-ass superhero by comparison.
On a more serious not, I'd like to know where the hell Pizza Man is? Surely any movie with Bill Maher and the phrase "Exploding Sausage" deserves to be top 20 at least!
Now how about some real competition we all can get in on, building stuff out of AOL CD's.
Because any device built entirely out of AOL CD's would eventually gain consciousness, grow powerful beyond imagine, and destroy us all. Don't believe me? It's in the Bible, somewhere near the back. Really.
Nowadays, companies try to make their product as graphically impressive as possible and compromise gameplay
Well, sure they do. If they don't, gamers/game reviewers start crying about the games horrible graphics. Witness Diablo2. I guess it's sort of a Catch-22 for game producers. We as players want it all: cutting edge graphics and steller gameplay.
It's unfair to say games with great graphics automatically suck, though. Half-Life was one of the best plays ever, and the graphics on it are good. Tribes has some of the best outdoor scenery I've ever seen, and it's gameplay rocks. Ground Control is another recent one.
I think part of the reason games seem of such lower quality now-a-days is that there's so much more of them. Remember when you'd walk into a retailer, and there'd be 15, maybe 20 titles on the shelf? You had a lot better chance of picking up a title like Civilization instead of a title like Cohort. Now, though, the market's been glutted with game companies that care nothing more than pumping out a set number of games each year, quality be damned. And yes, one good way for a game to hide poor gameplay is to pretty it up with graphics.
All those problems didn't stop Mike Judge from make a Beavis and Butthead movie...
The ironic thing, of course, is that the Simpsons paved the way for all the "prime-time" cartoons on TV now. And now, after the B&B and SouthPark movies, we finally get the Simpsons one. Here's hoping it doesn't suck.
I'm guessing that they'll use this movie as the big sendoff for the Simpsons. Probably get 1, maybe 2 more years out of it, the movie, then call it quits. Sure, the Simpson's isn't what it used to be (see Season 4), but it's still one of Fox's highest rated shows, and continues to pull in the ad dollars. 2 more years seems possible.
How about, "So you can have the ability to play DVD's on whatever kind of hardware/software you see fit, and not just what the MPAA says you can use?"
This is how the whole big mess started: some kid decided he wanted to play DVD's on his Linux box. Only there was no Linux DVD software decoding package. So he made his own, and in the process broke the MPAA's encryption technique.
Please don't take this as an attack on anyone's competence or intelligence, but I would imagine that, as lawyers, there are probably technical parts of this case that are beyond your scope of understanding. Heck, I work with computers for a living, and my eyes start glazing over reading descriptions of source code and reverse engineering techniques. My question is, How do you handle cases (not just this one) that deal with material beyond your field of expertise? Do you find it difficult to rely so heavily on "experts" when creating your defense? Do you ever find yourself thinking, "Is this really the way we should approach this?"
So it's possible that a Japanese's mentalese is different from the American's, and it prohibits him from seeing the situation in the same way that an American would see it, and visa versa.
This is really the point I was trying to convey. After all, language, at it's most basic, is simply our way of expressing our view of the world to others.
Perhaps my example was not clear enough. Going back a bit, say the hypothetical female employee is berating the male for something he did: perhaps he didn't get those sales figures like he promised for the big meeting. Jane Doe takes John to task on it: after all, it could be her ass on the line.
Again, I'm not looking to racial stereotype anyone here, but there's probably going to be a difference in how an American and Japanese person sees this situation. Both would probably see Jane's reaction as justified, but the Japanese person might view Jane as overly aggressive, or perhaps even out of place. If you later asked both individuals to describe the situation, would the description of the Japanese person reflect this supposed cultural bias? I don't know: but those links make for some interesting reading nonetheless.
This is all well-and-good, but does it apply to programming? I don't think so: when your programming, you deal mostly with logic problems, with step-by-step solutions. More black-and-white than a social situation. After all, effective programming demands certain things, like variables, pointers, counters, loops.
My understanding of Pinker's explanation of Chomsky is that everybody has the same mentalese
I don't think this would be true in all cases. For example: imagine a scene where a female employee of a company is verbally berating a male co-worker, one that is not her subordinate.
Someone from the US, a country where the so-called "woman's movement" has lead to more open attitudes about women in positions of power, might get a "mentalese picture" very different from someone from, say, Japan, where women are still expected to be submissive to a certain extent.
I use this as an example only: not trying to start a gender/racial thread.
Damn, talk about an 800 pound gorilla. IBM and Novell would seem to me to be a real threat to Microsoft's server-side stuff. Add to Netware some Linux integration that IBM's been messing around with, and you've got a pretty attractive package.
Speaking as a tech who works in a Novell shop, I can tell you that, at least in-house, there might be some pretty irate people if Groupwise got axed in favor of Notes. I'm no expert in it, but from what I've experienced, GW is a pretty stable, functional product. Never used Notes, but I've heard some horror stories. Still, considering that both products do essentially the same thing, a merger would almost guarentee one product being dropped: probably Groupwise.
Why does this have to be an "all-or-nothing" issue? Do you really believe the internet is pointless, and America is a police state, if people in a public laundromat aren't allowed to view Kobi Tai in compromising positions?
Obviously, questions like "How much does it block" and "How far can this be taken" are valid, and need to be dealt with. At the same time, however, you cannot expect every person to deal with a powerful tool like the internet in a responsible manner.
Kids are as much a victim of human nature as adults are: if you put them on a computer and tell them not to look for smut, they'll eventually go looking for it anyway, if only to see why you said that in the first place. You could make the argument, I suppose, that seeing smut really isn't harming a child. I'm not a child psychologist (nor do I play one on TV), so I won't comment on that. The fact remains, however, that the vast majority of society WOULD see that as harmful to a child: they'd also see it as offensive if displayed openly in a public place (that doesn't have a 2 drink minimum, anyway).
So, should we simply pull internet terminals from all public places? Of course not: why deprive people of an otherwise useful tool simply because a portion of the information is offensive to some. But there has to be some kinds of safeguards in place. And don't get me wrong: I'm not advocating the general installation of CyberPatrol or anything. All current forms of browser blocking are woefully inadequate for a multitude of reasons. But we do need some sort of system.
On the gripping hand, quitting your job and publicaly stating your reasons can often do far more to change attitudes than simply quietly working within the system.
The message may be lost, however, if there's another sysadmin standing right behind you, copy of CyberPatrol in hand, screaming "Let me take care of this problem!". A sysadmin who has absolutely no problem blocking 95% of the sites out there, if it means he has the inside track on the next big networking job the school board contracts out on.
Morals and $.25 buys you a pack of gum. It also doesn't solve the problem. The children's parents aren't going to accept free, unmonitored access on school workstations, no matter how much you talk to them about censorship, free speech, and illegal blocking. All they care about is that Dick and Jane can't get to "that smutty stuff on the Internet". Better to have someone in the process who believes in free speech and such, than someone who's just going to give them what they want, no questions asked.
Slashdot Mirror
Hehe. Your right of course, much easier that way. And if your willing to do something like that, no telling how far you can take it.
The Scene: A man enters his living room, and plugs his PDA into the universal sync-cradle on his 60-Inch Digital TV. He grabs the remote, and powers on his TV. He is greeted by the following message from his TV's OS.
TV: Good evening, Mr. Blank. Tonights TvOS is brought to you by AOL: so easy to use, and now pre-installed on every TV, no wonder it's #1! It has been 12 days since your last pay-per-view purchase. Please note that you must order another pay-per-view movie or event within the next 2 days to keep your "frequent watcher" preferred rate. Would you like to see a list of current pay-per-view titles available?
Mr. Blank chooses Yes on his remote, and is promptly greeted with a list of categories to choose from. After 10 minutes of searching, he finds the title he wants, Slashdot: The Movie.
TV: Thank you for your purchase of Slashdot: The Movie. Before we can begin the show, please take a moment to review the terms of Slashdot: The Movie's Licensing Agreement, which will be displayed in a moment. Under the terms of the 2011 Consumer Protection Act, you are authorized to have a lawyer present for the License Agreement and viewing. If you do not have a lawyer, an e-lawyer can be provided for you at an additional charge. Do you wish to contact your lawyer, or recieve more information about obtaining an e-lawyer?
Mr. Blank chooses No, as by now he nearly has the license agreement memorized. What follows is approximately 10 pages of leagal documents that scrolls slowly by on his screen. Mr. Blank agrees to never record or rebroadcast the following material (not that he could even if he wanted to), or to publically release any description of said film, through any media. He also agrees to not comment on said file, either in the form of review or personal opinion, without the express written permission of the MPAA.
Mr. Blank stares at the TV through the whole 10 minutes of the document: if he gets up from his seat, the infrared sensors in his cable box will detect his absense and pause the license agreement until he returns. At the end of the agreement, Mr. Blank digitally signs 3 forms, legally acknowledging that he has read and understands the license agreement. Copies of these documents are uploaded into his PDA, and also transmitted to his cable company and the MPAA.
Rant Time: It seems the MPAA won't be satisfied until they control all media with an iron fist. Usually I scoff at people who talk of things like "The MPAA is Big Brother", and "Your being spoon-fed what they want you to have", but after reading articles like this, I wonder if, to paraphrase the X-Files, I'm not paranoid enough.
I can't belive the MPAA has the balls to do something like this. They can talk all they want to about "artists rights" and "copy protection", but I think it's pretty clear that this whole issue is about one thing: executives making money. This is even more offensive with TV shows, where advertising already permeates nearly show in existence. So now, not only do I have to endure 10 minutes of ads, but I cannot record it and fast forward through them? Sad thing is, it'll get worse before it gets better. Hey MPAA, many people have e-mail accounts now. Why not send e-mails to everyone, and make them digitally sign and return the e-mail as proof that they won't record, rebroadcast, or distribute a show, and that they will watch all the advertising like the good little sheep they are?
OK, rant over. It's funny, though: since I got my cable modem, I spend most free evenings either playing D2 and Team Fortress Classic online, or just generally surfing Slashdot and the like. About the only TV shows I watch any more are SouthPark, Simpsons, X-Files and sporting events, and even then it's hit or miss. I think organizations like the MPAA, RIAA and their ilk have known for a while what I'm just figuring out: that they are pimping a dying media, and they must squeeze it for every nickle while they still can.
Well, for one thing, it isn't really Slashdot's responsibility to be giving out legal advice. I mean, it's fun and all to speculate about whether Topic X is legal or not, but when it comes right down to it, our opinions don't mean Jack to the World of Law. This is a discussion board. Anyone coming to Ask Slashdot for advice on a legal matter in place of a lawyer get's what they deserve.
I've been to dental school. Is there really that much of a difference?
Yes, you are not able to force someone to come in for a thorough reaming just by sending them a letter.
And when your a dentist, people willingly come to you for pain and suffering.
Ep1 was what I would consider a fair-to-good movie, but not a great one. The opening scenes with Liam and Ewan running around the ship, kicking robot ass, plunging their lightsabers through 10-ft thick doors was damn cool. The pod race was OK, as was the final space battle. The "Dark Senator" setup, and all the backstory on the old republic was good, but in the end, Ep1 seemed little more than a vehicle for 3-4 "big action" scenes that seemed designed for selling toys rather than giving us good action.
;)
Media blitz is probably one reason I was a little disappointed by Ep1, but the main reason is that, IMHO, it just didn't measure up to the originals. Maybe I'm just too old to properly enjoy Star Wars now, I don't know. I haven't given up hope on the next 2, though: the idea of watching Anikin turn evil and telling Obi-Wan to piss off has a certain built-in entertainment value attached to it
What this probably means is that now R2 will suddenly have jet packs, laser guns, and giant radar dishes coming out of nowhere on him. One more opportunity to put out 10 different variations of the same R2-D2 toy just in time for Christmas 2003.
You know, I thought Ep1 had it's problems, but up until now was willing to give Lucas the benifit of doubt. Yeah, Jar-Jar sucked and all, but as some have pointed out, the case can be made that Ep1 had to be a "happy" film, considering the direction the next 2 must go. But seeing stuff like this, and announcements a few weeks ago that they're putting out yet another VHS set of originals with some trash "Making Of" thrown in...It's pretty clear that Lucas intends to squeeze this Prequel for every ounce of money he can.
Help us, Wachowski Brothers, you're our only hope...
As pointed out previously, video games might help problem solving, hand-eye, etc. but they promote short attention spans by reinforcing instant gratification
That's bull. I've been playing video games since Atari, and I don't have any kind of problem with a short attent
hehe, this has been a fun article...
Johnny Quest: Actually, it made it cool to want to be Race Bannon. Dr. Quest was Race's bitch.
Roadrunner: Physics lessons like, "if you don't look down, gravity has no effect", and, "a trip though the center of the earth takes you to China and leaves you none the worse for wear".
Scooby Doo: Also taught us that every amusement park, construction site, beach, and historical landmark in the country has an evil employee who wants to take it over for themselves by dressing up a costume that wouldn't scare my grandmother.
Speed Racer: The genius of Speed Racer can be summed up in the following 2 scenes.
Trixie: Oh, Speed! That curve looked especially dangerous, but it must not be, we went right through it!
Speed: No, it's really trecherous! I'm just an excellent driver!
Some Guy: And now we present the trophy for winning the Death Race to Speed Racer!
Speed: This wasn't a very good race. 100 people entered, and only 2 made it out alive!
Ahh, Speed. He was the man, and he knew it.
Well, I don't think G-Force came before the Fantastic Four, though the FF does fit the criteria somewhat, save for the rebel loner part. And the good with machines guy is also the (hardly studly) leader Reed.
As others have pointed out, G-Force was technically known as Battle of the Planets. The team was called G-Force, though, and they ran around yelling it all the time, so that's how I remember it.
G-Force basically was formed to defeat Zoltar and his legion of dumb goons and occasional super-monsters. They all flew around in the Phoenix, a space-ship that also flew underwater, and could literally transform itself into a firey Phoenix. When things got really tough, all 5 members banded together, formed a human pyramid, and spun around at tornadic speeds.
Looking back, I'm not really sure how any of these things was supposed to defeat giant monsters or hordes of gun-toating goons, but it always seemed to work out that way. Guess Zoltar and Mum-Ra went to the same School for Inept Villianry.
Emerson Willowick: Thinker, Writer, Human Being
....Troll?
Wings of metal...Nerves of steel...:)
Bah! Silverhawks, Thundercats, Voltron, hell, even Power Rangers...imposters! They all bow down before the glory that is G-Force. No other cartoon team was their equal. Consider how many cartoon-team themes that we now take for granted were pioneered by G-Force.
- Teams must have 5 members: A studly leader, a rebel loner, a token female, a wacky kid brother, and a fat guy who's good with machines.
- Every 5th episode must be feature a team-member other than the leader in great detail. Said episode usually involves the feature team member doing something incredibly stupid, which usually leads to him/her being captured. The rest of the team must then bail out stupid team member, and give them a stern lecture about the importance of teamwork.
- Whenever the entire team is rendered unconcious, the studly leader is ALWAYS the first to wake up. Second up is the rebel loner.
- Each team member has their own unique form of transportation. There is usually a motercycle of some form. Each team member also has their own unique weapons. There is usually some form of boomerang, whip, and grapling hook.
- Whenever the team is facing off against their arch-enemy and his legion of goons, the rebel loner is the first to attack. The fat guy invariably ends up throwing 5 goons into a pile to show his massive strength, the wacky kid makes two goons run into each other, and the token female fights one goon the entire brawl. The studly leader, of course, goes straight for the arch-enemy, but always let's him escape.
Come to think of it, these themes also seem to apply to family sitcoms and boy-bands as well. Hmmm....
Screen size and resolution, and really laptops in general, are like Frames-Per-Second, # Polygons, and such to business-types. They can't impress each other with their Voodoo 9000's and Razer mice, so they trick out laptops.
Business Guy 1: So then accounts puts out this spreadsheet of quarterly projected earnings, and they don't even bother to break it down into multiple sheets! I'm scrolling all over the place looking at it!
Business Guy 2: Really? Cause on my new laptop with 1600x1200 resolution, I was able to view the whole thing on one page.
Guy1: Well, that's great, but I bet it took forever to load with that 1 Meg video card your laptop has in it. Mine, on the other hand, has a full 4 Meg of video memory, plus 256 Meg of RAM. I can load the Powerpoint Org Chart presentation in no time!
Guy2: Too bad you've got that 2 Gig hard drive in there. Mine, on the other hand, has a full 10 Gig, not counting the extra 6 Gig drive I can put in my expansion bay.
I'm only half kidding here; I've actually seen scenes similar to this. It's actually pretty funny to watch two 40+ mid-level managers have a pissing contest to see who the CEO likes best.
Because it's made by Nintendo. Ever since the SuperNintendo, Nintendo has been release under-powered, under-featured consoles that nevertheless sell like crazy. The reason? Marketing and Mario.
This things going to have a DVD that doesn't play DVD's (how...useful), no built in harddrive like the x-box (though, how necessary this is is certainly up to debate), and from the look of the specs, no built in modem/ethernet card for on-line play. And it won't matter a bit, because MarioWorld 128, DonkeyKong Word 2, or whatever they'll call all those titles will be available, and half the country will want one anyway.
Not that the Dolphin will necessarily be a bad thing, however. SuperNintendo and N64 certainly had their share of good games, and there's no reason to think Dolphin won't either. Still, you have to wonder what the console gaming field would be like had Nintendo simply put more power into their gaming consoles. Coming of the NES, Nintendo literally ruled the console market, with Sega shooting themselves in the foot and others like Atari not really a threat. Had Nintendo beefed up the hardware for the SNES and N64, you might not even be hearing about Dreamcast, PS2 or XBox.
The film nearly achieved immortality after being played repeatedly on cable during the mid-80s, but faded into obscurity after Ernest Borgnine himself is rumored to have found the movie "a bit lacking."
For those of you who may not have seen this movie, this is a bit like Satan showing up on your doorstep and telling you that your "a little bit too evil" in his view.
I don't think there was an afternoon between May and September of 1985 that this movie didn't get played on HBO. This Dave Speed guy made the Green Lantern look like a kick-ass superhero by comparison.
On a more serious not, I'd like to know where the hell Pizza Man is? Surely any movie with Bill Maher and the phrase "Exploding Sausage" deserves to be top 20 at least!
Now how about some real competition we all can get in on, building stuff out of AOL CD's.
Because any device built entirely out of AOL CD's would eventually gain consciousness, grow powerful beyond imagine, and destroy us all. Don't believe me? It's in the Bible, somewhere near the back. Really.
Nowadays, companies try to make their product as graphically impressive as possible and compromise gameplay
Well, sure they do. If they don't, gamers/game reviewers start crying about the games horrible graphics. Witness Diablo2. I guess it's sort of a Catch-22 for game producers. We as players want it all: cutting edge graphics and steller gameplay.
It's unfair to say games with great graphics automatically suck, though. Half-Life was one of the best plays ever, and the graphics on it are good. Tribes has some of the best outdoor scenery I've ever seen, and it's gameplay rocks. Ground Control is another recent one.
I think part of the reason games seem of such lower quality now-a-days is that there's so much more of them. Remember when you'd walk into a retailer, and there'd be 15, maybe 20 titles on the shelf? You had a lot better chance of picking up a title like Civilization instead of a title like Cohort. Now, though, the market's been glutted with game companies that care nothing more than pumping out a set number of games each year, quality be damned. And yes, one good way for a game to hide poor gameplay is to pretty it up with graphics.
All those problems didn't stop Mike Judge from make a Beavis and Butthead movie...
The ironic thing, of course, is that the Simpsons paved the way for all the "prime-time" cartoons on TV now. And now, after the B&B and SouthPark movies, we finally get the Simpsons one. Here's hoping it doesn't suck.
I'm guessing that they'll use this movie as the big sendoff for the Simpsons. Probably get 1, maybe 2 more years out of it, the movie, then call it quits. Sure, the Simpson's isn't what it used to be (see Season 4), but it's still one of Fox's highest rated shows, and continues to pull in the ad dollars. 2 more years seems possible.
How about, "So you can have the ability to play DVD's on whatever kind of hardware/software you see fit, and not just what the MPAA says you can use?"
This is how the whole big mess started: some kid decided he wanted to play DVD's on his Linux box. Only there was no Linux DVD software decoding package. So he made his own, and in the process broke the MPAA's encryption technique.
Please don't take this as an attack on anyone's competence or intelligence, but I would imagine that, as lawyers, there are probably technical parts of this case that are beyond your scope of understanding. Heck, I work with computers for a living, and my eyes start glazing over reading descriptions of source code and reverse engineering techniques. My question is, How do you handle cases (not just this one) that deal with material beyond your field of expertise? Do you find it difficult to rely so heavily on "experts" when creating your defense? Do you ever find yourself thinking, "Is this really the way we should approach this?"
So it's possible that a Japanese's mentalese is different from the American's, and it prohibits him from seeing the situation in the same way that an American would see it, and visa versa.
This is really the point I was trying to convey. After all, language, at it's most basic, is simply our way of expressing our view of the world to others.
Perhaps my example was not clear enough. Going back a bit, say the hypothetical female employee is berating the male for something he did: perhaps he didn't get those sales figures like he promised for the big meeting. Jane Doe takes John to task on it: after all, it could be her ass on the line.
Again, I'm not looking to racial stereotype anyone here, but there's probably going to be a difference in how an American and Japanese person sees this situation. Both would probably see Jane's reaction as justified, but the Japanese person might view Jane as overly aggressive, or perhaps even out of place. If you later asked both individuals to describe the situation, would the description of the Japanese person reflect this supposed cultural bias? I don't know: but those links make for some interesting reading nonetheless.
This is all well-and-good, but does it apply to programming? I don't think so: when your programming, you deal mostly with logic problems, with step-by-step solutions. More black-and-white than a social situation. After all, effective programming demands certain things, like variables, pointers, counters, loops.
File this one under "That's not quite right".
My understanding of Pinker's explanation of Chomsky is that everybody has the same mentalese
I don't think this would be true in all cases. For example: imagine a scene where a female employee of a company is verbally berating a male co-worker, one that is not her subordinate.
Someone from the US, a country where the so-called "woman's movement" has lead to more open attitudes about women in positions of power, might get a "mentalese picture" very different from someone from, say, Japan, where women are still expected to be submissive to a certain extent.
I use this as an example only: not trying to start a gender/racial thread.
Damn, talk about an 800 pound gorilla. IBM and Novell would seem to me to be a real threat to Microsoft's server-side stuff. Add to Netware some Linux integration that IBM's been messing around with, and you've got a pretty attractive package.
Speaking as a tech who works in a Novell shop, I can tell you that, at least in-house, there might be some pretty irate people if Groupwise got axed in favor of Notes. I'm no expert in it, but from what I've experienced, GW is a pretty stable, functional product. Never used Notes, but I've heard some horror stories. Still, considering that both products do essentially the same thing, a merger would almost guarentee one product being dropped: probably Groupwise.
Why does this have to be an "all-or-nothing" issue? Do you really believe the internet is pointless, and America is a police state, if people in a public laundromat aren't allowed to view Kobi Tai in compromising positions?
Obviously, questions like "How much does it block" and "How far can this be taken" are valid, and need to be dealt with. At the same time, however, you cannot expect every person to deal with a powerful tool like the internet in a responsible manner.
Kids are as much a victim of human nature as adults are: if you put them on a computer and tell them not to look for smut, they'll eventually go looking for it anyway, if only to see why you said that in the first place. You could make the argument, I suppose, that seeing smut really isn't harming a child. I'm not a child psychologist (nor do I play one on TV), so I won't comment on that. The fact remains, however, that the vast majority of society WOULD see that as harmful to a child: they'd also see it as offensive if displayed openly in a public place (that doesn't have a 2 drink minimum, anyway).
So, should we simply pull internet terminals from all public places? Of course not: why deprive people of an otherwise useful tool simply because a portion of the information is offensive to some. But there has to be some kinds of safeguards in place. And don't get me wrong: I'm not advocating the general installation of CyberPatrol or anything. All current forms of browser blocking are woefully inadequate for a multitude of reasons. But we do need some sort of system.
On the gripping hand, quitting your job and publicaly stating your reasons can often do far more to change attitudes than simply quietly working within the system.
The message may be lost, however, if there's another sysadmin standing right behind you, copy of CyberPatrol in hand, screaming "Let me take care of this problem!". A sysadmin who has absolutely no problem blocking 95% of the sites out there, if it means he has the inside track on the next big networking job the school board contracts out on.
Morals and $.25 buys you a pack of gum. It also doesn't solve the problem. The children's parents aren't going to accept free, unmonitored access on school workstations, no matter how much you talk to them about censorship, free speech, and illegal blocking. All they care about is that Dick and Jane can't get to "that smutty stuff on the Internet". Better to have someone in the process who believes in free speech and such, than someone who's just going to give them what they want, no questions asked.
Solitaire is probably the most useful. Keeps users from poking around in places they shouldn't ;)