Yeah... great... what are you, fourteen? What do you suggest? That we concoct some crazy scheme to get back at the principal and the jocks?
I simply suggest that the stories be vaguely on topic for the site.
I'm sorry but US football is a thrilling and complex game that is both viceral and intellectual.
If that's true, then perhaps the story should have talked about *that*. As it is, it's just "there's some stuff on TV right now". What's the point of it, exactly? Yes, I'm equally annoyed by "there's a LoTR/Matrix movie coming real soon now" stories.
And you are the last person who should complain about the "dumbification of/."
Why? Where have I been substantively technically incorrect?
Oh, was it was because I proved a "Javascript in 21 days, Windows XP for Dummies" "eye tee professional" to be wrong, poorly educated, of low breeding, and a loud-mouthed fool to boot?
I would add "glorifying crappy action flicks like the Matrix and Terminator" to the dumbification list
And I would agree completely - unless the stories themselves had an NTNSTM angle. For example, the story on the LOTR "Massive" program used to co-ordinate the actions of individuals within the CGI armies was fine. Stories just announcing movies and repeating various movie rumours are clearly off topic as there are dozens of sites for just this purpose.
The problem is that you have plenty of places to go for all your football news needs. Why should/. become yet another generic news portal? I think we would have lost something worthwhile if that were to happen.
Of course, if the story had been somehow technically or scientifically on-topic, I'd be fine with it. As it is, it is completely content free - even from the "football news" perspective!
You've been here since Slashdot really was NFN, STM, and yet you're just now figuring out that Michael's an idiot?
No, he's only just now exceeding my lameness threshold:)
How about deselecting his name under "Exclude stories from the Homepage" (Preferences -> Homepage) and saving yourself the grief?
I could do that. But then, keeping in mind that we can't vote on the stories themselves, if everyone who actually cared did this the/. powers-that-be would get absolutely no feedback on the quality of these stories.
So they would hire more editors like Michael, and over time natural attrition would reduce the pool of good editors until I only had lamers to choose from.
Imagine if everyone had just filtered out JonKatz./. would have become his own personal ranting forum by now.
The dumbification of /.
on
Superbowl XXXVII
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Remember when this was "news for nerds, stuff that matters"? When we had an interesting and even compelling mix of science and technology news that we might not see elsewhere?
Recently we've had "SOHO", "Crop circles", and now this. All "posted by Michael", BTW. What next? "What happened on the last episode of 'Friends'"? "Crossing over, with Michael"? "Psychic hotlines - how they've helped me"? "Methods for selecting lottery numbers"? "Best use for that old washing machine in the back yard and the car up on blocks"? "Naming my 6th child - Lerleen, Billy-bob, Sue-anne or Scout"?
Anyway, it's lucky Michael told me about the Superbowl, I might not have heard about it otherwise. Sigh.
You were the one who said "I can learn *anything* in minutes". And "I should be CEO of a Fortune 500 company". God, it's hilarious.
You are not even intelligent enough to worthy of my time discussing, debating or trolling
No, you lost. I have smashed every attempt you came up with to "hide the web page source". You keep inventing ever more bizarre new ones, but they are all worthless. Every time one is destroyed, you move onto a new one, and never try to defend the old ones again. I'm pleased that you realize the limits of your intellectual capacity, finally.
Anyway, get back your web site in Nowheresville Florida, your Windows pointing-and-clicking, and Javascript "programming".
I kinda feel sorry for any company which lets unknowlegdable people make decisions for the experts to implement
So, you're an *expert* now? Been reading up on cryptography, TCP/IP, programming, and so on, have we? Because a few weeks ago, you were, as you put it "unknowlegdable" to an painful degree. It is to laugh.
Luckily your utter stupidity is now well-documented in my journal for all to see.
"WSH is the most powerful language ever" - William "woogieoogieboogie" Platt
Time to get that pesky degree, I think... or the local McDonald's awaits!
You knew India was going to kick the US's ass at coding eventually.
Really? You could have fooled me. Total creative and/or innovative output of Indian sweat-shops: zero.
The simple fact is, once something is well-defined and well-understood, it's not "skilled" labor any longer. If you can do your job after reading "HTML in 21 days", "Flash for Weenies", or "Javascript for Dummies" (now *there's* a redundancy;) you are doomed to be replaced by someone who also reads that book, and is willing to be paid a whole lot less.
So, if your job can be summed up as "putting up a web site", you are in trouble (temporarily). This happened 7 or so years ago with back-end COBOL business apps - but no-one minded because this whole "web" thing took off and there was something actually new to work with for everyone to become involved with. So we didn't mind that the brain-dead stuff disappeared to Elbonia.
The answer is to be working on things that sweat-shop workers in third world countries can't do, as true creativity requires a good, solid, broad education and exposure to more of areas of technology, science and life in general than working 20 hours a day in an asbestos lined factory can provide.
Build the next "web", "Java", or whatever interesting new technology in your vertical industry you can come up with, perhaps building on existing things. Okay, that's a pretty hard to reach goal, but you get the idea. Accept that this is the status quo - people won't pay large amounts of money for people to do stuff that has become, frankly, pretty simple. It's part of the maturity cycle of any technology. Live with it.
And yes, there are a lot of non-techies out there, too. They will either sink or swim, depending on whether they are *really* interested in technology, or they just saw a quick buck. So there is far more supply than demand, but most of that supply is an illusion - I may get X candidates for a position, but it's pretty clear that most *aren't* particularly good, or even have anything interesting to contribute to computing. Those people have to drop out of the market first.
When you figure out how to draw a picture with the command line, or edit a video, or make a 3D model, or even play checkers, let me know. Until then, graphical interfaces are here to stay
So, you've never heard of SVG, VRML, or gnuchess? I'm sure there are CLI video editing tools, as well.
GUIs are frankly more limiting than they are enabling. They are good for the first tiny part of a problem space, but for complex problems third-person interaction is clearly superior. I want computers to *increase* my productivity. I do not want to sit around going "point, click, point, click" for hours on end.
Take DocBook, an XML based notation for describing documents. I use that now for everything. I can write my own stylesheets, transform documents in various interesting ways, and combine them with information from other sources - for example extracting code examples for documentation directly from compilable, tested code for insertion into the final document, write programs to do all sorts of interesting things to the documents, and so on ad infinitum. Try doing any of that with a GUI. And then automate it."Point, click, drag, point, click, scroll" etc, etc.
With stuff like Word what do I get - nothing. It's just a glorified typewriter (unless you use Word's Basic, but you've stopped using a GUI at exactly that point, you're into third-person manipulation now, and therefore reinforcing my point).
So, given the demographic that seems to like "texting", isn't this like lotteries ie. a tax on stupid people? It seems to me to be only interesting to people for which email is some sort of "novelty".
Text messages are *ridiculously* expensive already, for what you get. Think about the cost per byte that they are charging people! I'd be prepared to pay a very small flat monthly fee to send as many messages as I like. Any thing else is simply price gouging.
Not to mention that they take too long to compose. It amuses me to watch Joe Average compose one of these things. In the time it took to compose the message and send it, they could have called the recepient 10 times already, and sorted out whatever it was in 30 seconds, or left a message at the speed at which they can speak.
Still, no one ever underestimated the intelligence and taste of the general public... and with the baffling popularity of "texting", this trend looks set to continue into a new century.
It likely the arm of a Terminator contains some distributed neural processing capability consider the Terminator equivalent of muscle memory particularly part of a 'learning machine/computer' with redundant systems and fail-over capability
If that were true, then the T800 in T2 would have known that, and made damned sure that he destroyed it. Otherwise his sacrifice is completely in vain.
Besides, Arnie in T2 clearly says, "there is *one* processor left", and points to his *head*. See?
Nope, if they do the "they used the arm!" thing I will merely laugh at the utter stupidity of the movie, and avoid it like the plague. There are so many simple ways to get around the "conclusion" of T2, without using the arm, which has got to be the stupidest idea I've heard in a *long* time.
There is also the unsettled issue of a batch of steel containing some highly unusually elements, or a part of the liquid metal terminator surviving
That's better. Perhaps some of the "lost" liquid metal (bits did keep breaking off) contains information about the processor. Perhaps it's even like our cells, where our entire DNA is held in each one. It's still not *great* though.
The idea of Cyberdyne using off-site disaster recover or fire safe backup vault are also very credible
This is my current favourite, but it makes the characters in T2 look a bit dumb, though.
Building Terminators requires advances in metallurgy
You've made a common mistake. The terminators are not really important in the grand scheme of things. Only an accident of history made them so. They are just an infiltration weapon, with autonomous processing capacity. Cyberdyne were not trying to build terminators directly. The important thing is the processor design that leads to the birth of an intelligent machine, Skynet, that then creates any number of intelligent machines, like terminators, hunter/killers, and so on to deal with human resistence. Skynet is the only one who has to worry about metallurgy.
And besides, what's so special about the metals used in the terminators construction? Not that it matters, but I'm curious - I don't think I've seen anything that indicates it was particularly special.
Arnie tore off his own arm after the T1000 stuck it in that machine in the steel mill. So, they used his arm for the research instead of the original Terminator's arm and CPU
That's got to be the lamest explanation they could use. How could an *arm*, ie. some metal and hydraulics, possibly help you design the "neural net" processor required for Skynet itself?
This is even dumber than the "using human body heat for energy" thing from The Matrix, but as that was a great film I'll overlook it.
However, if this is the explanation used in this movie I will simply assume it's too stupid to warrant parting with money to see. Please, someone, say it isn't so. Even the laziest Hollywood hack couldn't be this brain-dead!
No, because you would want different looking robots, but not two looking the same, but at different ages! Not for the sort of infiltration/kill-em-all mission shown in T1. None of these robots would be able to pass for human long enough for "non-aging" to be a problem, they simply don't behave very "human" at all and aren't able to live as, and with, humans. Building auto-aging abilities would be a waste until they were able to behave "human" as well. "I'll be back" just isn't going to fool anyone:)
Didn't Robin Williams (sorry-bear with me) in Bicentennial Man" age? Or whatshisname in AI [snip] Look at Data (STNG)
All these cases are long term relationships with humans. No terminator could manage that.
People have faulty memory, and people and technology, especially primitive technology, is easily compromised
But the resistence would be distributing photos, with the caption "Beware this man!!". So memory doesn't come into it. All the guards and soldiers would recognize Arnie on sight. They *have* to look like completely different people. Every one. It's clearly an error in T2 that this wasn't explained, but I can live with it.
The problem isn't Arnold's level of fitness, which I'm sure is fine.
It's that robots don't age, and Arnie clearly has. Unless they can grow the outer "skin" to look like different ages, or something, which leads to another big problem (apart from just "why bother?") - the "two terminators looking the same" bug...
This was something I could forgive T2 for (as it was generally quite good). You would never make the outer "skin" of two terminators look alike. It would defeat the whole purpose, unless you were sure that two human resistence "cells" weren't communicating... but why bother? They would clearly just be all different.
Finally, this leads into the lameness of the "kill the young John Connor with time travel" story. Again? Clearly, *this* movie should be set in the future, showing the war. If you absolutely had to have Arnold in it, it could be as the human that "our" particular terminator design was based on. It would explain the aging, and would lead to a nice setup where we *think* he's a terminator early on, and it turns out he's just a human. Which would be reminiscent of the good guy/bad guy switch that occurred early on in T2.
Both stragegy/managerial and technical positions require intelligence, problem solving, and creativity
As soon as someone displays these three qualities, they cease being a "suit" in my opinion. It's just that there are so many climbers who don't actually produce *anything*, have *never* done anything, have no skills at all, and in fact continually make utterly stupid decisions that cause costly damage. The good thing about a recession, of course, is that the middle managers are weeded out pretty rapidly.
Anyone who thinks otherwise should try to run a company by him/herself
See, there's your problem right there. Most managerial positions *aren't* running the company! What exactly they are doing, no-one seems to know. I try to only work in organizations with relatively "flat" structures, and where everyone works to produce things that can be seen and have actual value, not "synergy", or "pro-active visions for win/win scenarios", or corporate theme songs, or dolls of the CEO, or whatever else they spoon feed people in MBA "school".
Okay Comic Book Guy [snpp.com] , it's time for you learn how the outside world works
That's quite ironic, considering you then go off on a long thread defending the utter crap that is Star Trek, currently, use arguments only a true fan-boy could possibly agree with.
Finally, it seems Paramount are also aware that this movie is a turkey. Why else would they dump it the weekend before TTT? It's going to get *slaughtered* next weekend.
Ah well, a sad end for Star Trek, but not before time. Look at the dismal, worthless flops (Voyager, Enterprise) that have been passing for Star Trek on television recently. Do we really want more of *that*? Best to let it die with dignity!
Glad to see you have an opinion on the subject. Looks like you have a real feel for the show. I mean you watched all of three episodes
I believe I addressed this already.
If 90% of everything is crap, then for you to hold a valid opinion on whether or not something is crap, you will have to watch better than 90% of the series to really hold an opinion you can espouse
If I make the surprising discovery that I am immortal, I will then have time to dig deeper into everything that looked like rubbish, in order to verify that there were not in fact hidden diamonds there, despite all evidence to the contrary.
In the meantime, I'm just going to do what every other reasonable person does, give it a chance, then make a decision in order to allocate finite free time sensibly.
I've been bitten so many times trying to like something because it's labelled "science fiction" that I'm just not going to buy it any more. I'm also tired of the "save show X" campaigns. Maybe, just maybe, the show wasn't actually very good, or the idea/story was really good but lacked something in execution (eg Babylon 5)? Or wasn't constructed well enough to have wide enough appeal *and* be worthwhile at the same time. And let's face it, with the current revenue model, these shows must have fairly broad appeal to do well. But, it has been done before, and will be done again.
The second way is to find out who is paying for the series, and let them know you appreciate it
You're saying I should write in, saying why I didn't watch it?:)
These are the people you want to make aware that you appreciate the fact they took the risk of paying for good programming
At this point I don't agree that it is good. However I will watch one episode, out of idle curiosity, and because it clearly *must* have improved since the beginning if anyone's left defending it. If it's good, I'll watch another one. What could be fairer than that?
Complaining to fans that you don't see why they don't just go read a book or get outside, does nothing to promote either as good entertainment.
This is a straw man. I didn't actually say this. I said not to try to save something just because it's been labelled a certain way. If you *really* like it, then, okay, knock yourself out.
I think the show failed because the premise (lost in space *again*) wasn't original or compelling, the villians were silly, hammy, over the top and incompetant, and the individual stories just felt like retreads of Star Trek episodes and themes, as did the "different scenario each week" setup. But, maybe the producers changed direction radically and came up with a half way interesting story to tell...
I admit I watched the first three episodes, in the spirit of supporting science fiction, and they were *dire*. So it may have picked up from there.
I just got that "seen it all before" feeling, I'm afraid. It seemed like a shadow of a shadow of Star Trek - and I'm well and truly sick of everything Trek!
And then there's the "you killed my brother!" villian. He was unbearably painful to watch.
Unfortunately, first impressions last, and I can't keep going back to these things because the fans say, "It got better, really!". Life is too short. I'm surprised they kept it going for 4 years, after such a start. I just assumed it had died a natural death. Perhaps those involved should just call it a day, and do something that's fundamentally original and interesting from day one?
I have to admit, I'm astounded by these comments. Are we talking about the same show? I guess standards are slipping, if this is considered "sophisticated space opera", "the genre's brightest beacon", and "intelligent and exciting". I wonder if these reviewers are aware of non-Star Trek based science fiction? After watching the first show, I was astounded that this trite nonsense actually got made. It's a sad day when this is considered the best science fiction available.
Anyway, on to those "eye popping special effects";)
This is *not* a troll, you retard. Read the moderator guidelines. If you disagree, replying is the appropriate mechanism. You should show me where these "eye popping special effects" are. Or better yet, the "critical acclaim" mentioned in the article.
Something along the lines of: "That Muppet portrayed a very convincing and emotive sock" by [some credible (ie not a fan-boy) reviewer] with a link will do.
That statement was from the Farscape article. Where were these great effects? All I remember is laughable CGI and an embarrassingly obvious Muppet.
Why has this show got such rabid loyalty? I watched 3 episodes, and everything about them was cliched, hackneyed and lame, from the basic premise through to the characters, writing, acting and "special" effects. It seemed even *worse* than Voyager, if such a thing is possible. Why on earth didn't they take all that money and do something *original* for a change?
By all means, protest the passing of decent sci-fi, but when you rail against *any* sci-fi being canned no matter how pathetic, you just look like sad losers.
No doubt there will be a chorus of replies stating that I must watch more than 3 episodes to "appreciate" this drivel, but I'm going to pre-empt that by asking exactly how much of my life must I spend looking at crap to determine that it is, in fact, crap?
I will enjoy watching Farscape die a well deserved death. Rubbish like this that fails is what prevents *decent* science fiction from being made.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah... great... what are you, fourteen? What do you suggest? That we concoct some crazy scheme to get back at the principal and the jocks?
I simply suggest that the stories be vaguely on topic for the site.
I'm sorry but US football is a thrilling and complex game that is both viceral and intellectual.
If that's true, then perhaps the story should have talked about *that*. As it is, it's just "there's some stuff on TV right now". What's the point of it, exactly? Yes, I'm equally annoyed by "there's a LoTR/Matrix movie coming real soon now" stories.
And you are the last person who should complain about the "dumbification of /."
Why? Where have I been substantively technically incorrect?
Oh, was it was because I proved a "Javascript in 21 days, Windows XP for Dummies" "eye tee professional" to be wrong, poorly educated, of low breeding, and a loud-mouthed fool to boot?
I would add "glorifying crappy action flicks like the Matrix and Terminator" to the dumbification list
And I would agree completely - unless the stories themselves had an NTNSTM angle. For example, the story on the LOTR "Massive" program used to co-ordinate the actions of individuals within the CGI armies was fine. Stories just announcing movies and repeating various movie rumours are clearly off topic as there are dozens of sites for just this purpose.
God forbid someone like football AND computers
/. become yet another generic news portal? I think we would have lost something worthwhile if that were to happen.
The problem is that you have plenty of places to go for all your football news needs. Why should
Of course, if the story had been somehow technically or scientifically on-topic, I'd be fine with it. As it is, it is completely content free - even from the "football news" perspective!
You've been here since Slashdot really was NFN, STM, and yet you're just now figuring out that Michael's an idiot?
:)
/. powers-that-be would get absolutely no feedback on the quality of these stories.
/. would have become his own personal ranting forum by now.
No, he's only just now exceeding my lameness threshold
How about deselecting his name under "Exclude stories from the Homepage" (Preferences -> Homepage) and saving yourself the grief?
I could do that. But then, keeping in mind that we can't vote on the stories themselves, if everyone who actually cared did this the
So they would hire more editors like Michael, and over time natural attrition would reduce the pool of good editors until I only had lamers to choose from.
Imagine if everyone had just filtered out JonKatz.
Remember when this was "news for nerds, stuff that matters"? When we had an interesting and even compelling mix of science and technology news that we might not see elsewhere?
Recently we've had "SOHO", "Crop circles", and now this. All "posted by Michael", BTW. What next? "What happened on the last episode of 'Friends'"? "Crossing over, with Michael"? "Psychic hotlines - how they've helped me"? "Methods for selecting lottery numbers"? "Best use for that old washing machine in the back yard and the car up on blocks"? "Naming my 6th child - Lerleen, Billy-bob, Sue-anne or Scout"?
Anyway, it's lucky Michael told me about the Superbowl, I might not have heard about it otherwise. Sigh.
There would have to be the lines:
* Gandalf: "In Mordor, the party comes to *you*".
* Sauron:
1. Create rings of power.
2. Forge one ring to rule them all.
3. ???
4. Profit.
* At the battle with Elrond/Elves/Men right at the start:
Sauron: "All your rings are belong to us!"
Elrond: "What you say?!"
Hey, look it is the self proclaimed genius
You were the one who said "I can learn *anything* in minutes". And "I should be CEO of a Fortune 500 company". God, it's hilarious.
You are not even intelligent enough to worthy of my time discussing, debating or trolling
No, you lost. I have smashed every attempt you came up with to "hide the web page source". You keep inventing ever more bizarre new ones, but they are all worthless. Every time one is destroyed, you move onto a new one, and never try to defend the old ones again. I'm pleased that you realize the limits of your intellectual capacity, finally.
Anyway, get back your web site in Nowheresville Florida, your Windows pointing-and-clicking, and Javascript "programming".
I kinda feel sorry for any company which lets unknowlegdable people make decisions for the experts to implement
... or the local McDonald's awaits!
So, you're an *expert* now? Been reading up on cryptography, TCP/IP, programming, and so on, have we? Because a few weeks ago, you were, as you put it "unknowlegdable" to an painful degree. It is to laugh.
Luckily your utter stupidity is now well-documented in my journal for all to see.
"WSH is the most powerful language ever" - William "woogieoogieboogie" Platt
Time to get that pesky degree, I think
You knew India was going to kick the US's ass at coding eventually.
;) you are doomed to be replaced by someone who also reads that book, and is willing to be paid a whole lot less.
Really? You could have fooled me. Total creative and/or innovative output of Indian sweat-shops: zero.
The simple fact is, once something is well-defined and well-understood, it's not "skilled" labor any longer. If you can do your job after reading "HTML in 21 days", "Flash for Weenies", or "Javascript for Dummies" (now *there's* a redundancy
So, if your job can be summed up as "putting up a web site", you are in trouble (temporarily). This happened 7 or so years ago with back-end COBOL business apps - but no-one minded because this whole "web" thing took off and there was something actually new to work with for everyone to become involved with. So we didn't mind that the brain-dead stuff disappeared to Elbonia.
The answer is to be working on things that sweat-shop workers in third world countries can't do, as true creativity requires a good, solid, broad education and exposure to more of areas of technology, science and life in general than working 20 hours a day in an asbestos lined factory can provide.
Build the next "web", "Java", or whatever interesting new technology in your vertical industry you can come up with, perhaps building on existing things. Okay, that's a pretty hard to reach goal, but you get the idea. Accept that this is the status quo - people won't pay large amounts of money for people to do stuff that has become, frankly, pretty simple. It's part of the maturity cycle of any technology. Live with it.
And yes, there are a lot of non-techies out there, too. They will either sink or swim, depending on whether they are *really* interested in technology, or they just saw a quick buck. So there is far more supply than demand, but most of that supply is an illusion - I may get X candidates for a position, but it's pretty clear that most *aren't* particularly good, or even have anything interesting to contribute to computing. Those people have to drop out of the market first.
When you figure out how to draw a picture with the command line, or edit a video, or make a 3D model, or even play checkers, let me know. Until then, graphical interfaces are here to stay
So, you've never heard of SVG, VRML, or gnuchess? I'm sure there are CLI video editing tools, as well.
GUIs are frankly more limiting than they are enabling. They are good for the first tiny part of a problem space, but for complex problems third-person interaction is clearly superior. I want computers to *increase* my productivity. I do not want to sit around going "point, click, point, click" for hours on end.
Take DocBook, an XML based notation for describing documents. I use that now for everything. I can write my own stylesheets, transform documents in various interesting ways, and combine them with information from other sources - for example extracting code examples for documentation directly from compilable, tested code for insertion into the final document, write programs to do all sorts of interesting things to the documents, and so on ad infinitum. Try doing any of that with a GUI. And then automate it."Point, click, drag, point, click, scroll" etc, etc.
With stuff like Word what do I get - nothing. It's just a glorified typewriter (unless you use Word's Basic, but you've stopped using a GUI at exactly that point, you're into third-person manipulation now, and therefore reinforcing my point).
Since he turned 64 this year (he termed it getting a "bit" older :) he'd better get it published soon!
So, given the demographic that seems to like "texting", isn't this like lotteries ie. a tax on stupid people? It seems to me to be only interesting to people for which email is some sort of "novelty".
... and with the baffling popularity of "texting", this trend looks set to continue into a new century.
Text messages are *ridiculously* expensive already, for what you get. Think about the cost per byte that they are charging people! I'd be prepared to pay a very small flat monthly fee to send as many messages as I like. Any thing else is simply price gouging.
Not to mention that they take too long to compose. It amuses me to watch Joe Average compose one of these things. In the time it took to compose the message and send it, they could have called the recepient 10 times already, and sorted out whatever it was in 30 seconds, or left a message at the speed at which they can speak.
Still, no one ever underestimated the intelligence and taste of the general public
In other words, you read the latest Terminator novel
;)
I didn't even know there were such things.
Sarah and John find the template for the 'Arnold' Terminator, who turns out to be a good guy
What can I say? Great minds think alike, perhaps
It's still a much better and interesting way to get Arnold into the plot, than having him be the terminator again.
It likely the arm of a Terminator contains some distributed neural processing capability consider the Terminator equivalent of muscle memory particularly part of a 'learning machine/computer' with redundant systems and fail-over capability
If that were true, then the T800 in T2 would have known that, and made damned sure that he destroyed it. Otherwise his sacrifice is completely in vain.
Besides, Arnie in T2 clearly says, "there is *one* processor left", and points to his *head*. See?
Nope, if they do the "they used the arm!" thing I will merely laugh at the utter stupidity of the movie, and avoid it like the plague. There are so many simple ways to get around the "conclusion" of T2, without using the arm, which has got to be the stupidest idea I've heard in a *long* time.
There is also the unsettled issue of a batch of steel containing some highly unusually elements, or a part of the liquid metal terminator surviving
That's better. Perhaps some of the "lost" liquid metal (bits did keep breaking off) contains information about the processor. Perhaps it's even like our cells, where our entire DNA is held in each one. It's still not *great* though.
The idea of Cyberdyne using off-site disaster recover or fire safe backup vault are also very credible
This is my current favourite, but it makes the characters in T2 look a bit dumb, though.
Building Terminators requires advances in metallurgy
You've made a common mistake. The terminators are not really important in the grand scheme of things. Only an accident of history made them so. They are just an infiltration weapon, with autonomous processing capacity. Cyberdyne were not trying to build terminators directly. The important thing is the processor design that leads to the birth of an intelligent machine, Skynet, that then creates any number of intelligent machines, like terminators, hunter/killers, and so on to deal with human resistence. Skynet is the only one who has to worry about metallurgy.
And besides, what's so special about the metals used in the terminators construction? Not that it matters, but I'm curious - I don't think I've seen anything that indicates it was particularly special.
Arnie tore off his own arm after the T1000 stuck it in that machine in the steel mill. So, they used his arm for the research instead of the original Terminator's arm and CPU
That's got to be the lamest explanation they could use. How could an *arm*, ie. some metal and hydraulics, possibly help you design the "neural net" processor required for Skynet itself?
This is even dumber than the "using human body heat for energy" thing from The Matrix, but as that was a great film I'll overlook it.
However, if this is the explanation used in this movie I will simply assume it's too stupid to warrant parting with money to see. Please, someone, say it isn't so. Even the laziest Hollywood hack couldn't be this brain-dead!
but you defeated your own argument
:)
No, because you would want different looking robots, but not two looking the same, but at different ages! Not for the sort of infiltration/kill-em-all mission shown in T1. None of these robots would be able to pass for human long enough for "non-aging" to be a problem, they simply don't behave very "human" at all and aren't able to live as, and with, humans. Building auto-aging abilities would be a waste until they were able to behave "human" as well. "I'll be back" just isn't going to fool anyone
Didn't Robin Williams (sorry-bear with me) in Bicentennial Man" age? Or whatshisname in AI [snip] Look at Data (STNG)
All these cases are long term relationships with humans. No terminator could manage that.
People have faulty memory, and people and technology, especially primitive technology, is easily compromised
But the resistence would be distributing photos, with the caption "Beware this man!!". So memory doesn't come into it. All the guards and soldiers would recognize Arnie on sight. They *have* to look like completely different people. Every one. It's clearly an error in T2 that this wasn't explained, but I can live with it.
The problem isn't Arnold's level of fitness, which I'm sure is fine.
...
... but why bother? They would clearly just be all different.
It's that robots don't age, and Arnie clearly has. Unless they can grow the outer "skin" to look like different ages, or something, which leads to another big problem (apart from just "why bother?") - the "two terminators looking the same" bug
This was something I could forgive T2 for (as it was generally quite good). You would never make the outer "skin" of two terminators look alike. It would defeat the whole purpose, unless you were sure that two human resistence "cells" weren't communicating
Finally, this leads into the lameness of the "kill the young John Connor with time travel" story. Again? Clearly, *this* movie should be set in the future, showing the war. If you absolutely had to have Arnold in it, it could be as the human that "our" particular terminator design was based on. It would explain the aging, and would lead to a nice setup where we *think* he's a terminator early on, and it turns out he's just a human. Which would be reminiscent of the good guy/bad guy switch that occurred early on in T2.
Both stragegy/managerial and technical positions require intelligence, problem solving, and creativity
As soon as someone displays these three qualities, they cease being a "suit" in my opinion. It's just that there are so many climbers who don't actually produce *anything*, have *never* done anything, have no skills at all, and in fact continually make utterly stupid decisions that cause costly damage. The good thing about a recession, of course, is that the middle managers are weeded out pretty rapidly.
Anyone who thinks otherwise should try to run a company by him/herself
See, there's your problem right there. Most managerial positions *aren't* running the company! What exactly they are doing, no-one seems to know. I try to only work in organizations with relatively "flat" structures, and where everyone works to produce things that can be seen and have actual value, not "synergy", or "pro-active visions for win/win scenarios", or corporate theme songs, or dolls of the CEO, or whatever else they spoon feed people in MBA "school".
Okay Comic Book Guy [snpp.com] , it's time for you learn how the outside world works
That's quite ironic, considering you then go off on a long thread defending the utter crap that is Star Trek, currently, use arguments only a true fan-boy could possibly agree with.
Not that it matters, the numbers are in. And so are the reviews. That's gotta hurt!
Finally, it seems Paramount are also aware that this movie is a turkey. Why else would they dump it the weekend before TTT? It's going to get *slaughtered* next weekend.
Ah well, a sad end for Star Trek, but not before time. Look at the dismal, worthless flops (Voyager, Enterprise) that have been passing for Star Trek on television recently. Do we really want more of *that*? Best to let it die with dignity!
Glad to see you have an opinion on the subject. Looks like you have a real feel for the show. I mean you watched all of three episodes
:)
...
I believe I addressed this already.
If 90% of everything is crap, then for you to hold a valid opinion on whether or not something is crap, you will have to watch better than 90% of the series to really hold an opinion you can espouse
If I make the surprising discovery that I am immortal, I will then have time to dig deeper into everything that looked like rubbish, in order to verify that there were not in fact hidden diamonds there, despite all evidence to the contrary.
In the meantime, I'm just going to do what every other reasonable person does, give it a chance, then make a decision in order to allocate finite free time sensibly.
I've been bitten so many times trying to like something because it's labelled "science fiction" that I'm just not going to buy it any more. I'm also tired of the "save show X" campaigns. Maybe, just maybe, the show wasn't actually very good, or the idea/story was really good but lacked something in execution (eg Babylon 5)? Or wasn't constructed well enough to have wide enough appeal *and* be worthwhile at the same time. And let's face it, with the current revenue model, these shows must have fairly broad appeal to do well. But, it has been done before, and will be done again.
The second way is to find out who is paying for the series, and let them know you appreciate it
You're saying I should write in, saying why I didn't watch it?
These are the people you want to make aware that you appreciate the fact they took the risk of paying for good programming
At this point I don't agree that it is good. However I will watch one episode, out of idle curiosity, and because it clearly *must* have improved since the beginning if anyone's left defending it. If it's good, I'll watch another one. What could be fairer than that?
Complaining to fans that you don't see why they don't just go read a book or get outside, does nothing to promote either as good entertainment.
This is a straw man. I didn't actually say this. I said not to try to save something just because it's been labelled a certain way. If you *really* like it, then, okay, knock yourself out.
I think the show failed because the premise (lost in space *again*) wasn't original or compelling, the villians were silly, hammy, over the top and incompetant, and the individual stories just felt like retreads of Star Trek episodes and themes, as did the "different scenario each week" setup. But, maybe the producers changed direction radically and came up with a half way interesting story to tell
I admit I watched the first three episodes, in the spirit of supporting science fiction, and they were *dire*. So it may have picked up from there.
I just got that "seen it all before" feeling, I'm afraid. It seemed like a shadow of a shadow of Star Trek - and I'm well and truly sick of everything Trek!
And then there's the "you killed my brother!" villian. He was unbearably painful to watch.
Unfortunately, first impressions last, and I can't keep going back to these things because the fans say, "It got better, really!". Life is too short. I'm surprised they kept it going for 4 years, after such a start. I just assumed it had died a natural death. Perhaps those involved should just call it a day, and do something that's fundamentally original and interesting from day one?
I have to admit, I'm astounded by these comments. Are we talking about the same show? I guess standards are slipping, if this is considered "sophisticated space opera", "the genre's brightest beacon", and "intelligent and exciting". I wonder if these reviewers are aware of non-Star Trek based science fiction? After watching the first show, I was astounded that this trite nonsense actually got made. It's a sad day when this is considered the best science fiction available.
;)
Anyway, on to those "eye popping special effects"
To the anonymous moderator:
This is *not* a troll, you retard. Read the moderator guidelines. If you disagree, replying is the appropriate mechanism. You should show me where these "eye popping special effects" are. Or better yet, the "critical acclaim" mentioned in the article.
Something along the lines of: "That Muppet portrayed a very convincing and emotive sock" by [some credible (ie not a fan-boy) reviewer] with a link will do.
Meta-moderators, do your duty!
That statement was from the Farscape article. Where were these great effects? All I remember is laughable CGI and an embarrassingly obvious Muppet.
Why has this show got such rabid loyalty? I watched 3 episodes, and everything about them was cliched, hackneyed and lame, from the basic premise through to the characters, writing, acting and "special" effects. It seemed even *worse* than Voyager, if such a thing is possible. Why on earth didn't they take all that money and do something *original* for a change?
By all means, protest the passing of decent sci-fi, but when you rail against *any* sci-fi being canned no matter how pathetic, you just look like sad losers.
No doubt there will be a chorus of replies stating that I must watch more than 3 episodes to "appreciate" this drivel, but I'm going to pre-empt that by asking exactly how much of my life must I spend looking at crap to determine that it is, in fact, crap?
I will enjoy watching Farscape die a well deserved death. Rubbish like this that fails is what prevents *decent* science fiction from being made.