I second the motion. Multiple Sellerses is always a good thing (better than Muliple Michael Myerses, even). I also recall another movie, perhaps also taking place in the Grand Dutch of Fenwick, where Fenwick beats the US and USSR to the moon, using a crackpot scientist's invention.
This is true. But remember that Starship Troopers is one of Heinlein's "juvenile" novels, written for a younger audience. Also, the idea of the government in Starship Troopers as being fascist is completely false. The theory behind the book is that the world was taken over by veterans and that the right to vote was limited to only those persons who have 1) completed at least two years of government service (not just military) and 2) are no longer in government service. The idea here is that the right to vote should be limited to those persons who have demonstrated the ability to put the nation ahead of themselves through self-sacrifice, rather than just turn age 18 while maintaining a pulse. The government had to over service to anyone, of any age, who wanted to sign up.
The principal problem with this theory is that veterans are as self-serving as anyone (I'm a veteran) and cannot necessarily be trusted any more than the rest of us with the power to vote. But, in Heinlein's defense, he wrote the book a very long time ago, before Vietnam.
I have to respond, just because of my sig, which is not new.
Perhaps 133t speak presents a problem moderation by increasing the pool of comments that cry out for negative moderation, but there's nothing official Slashdot can do about it other than create some sort of auto-censoring l33t filter.
And it's not as if entire front page postings are in 133t, either. It was just a headline, and a headline's only job is to draw your attention to the body alone. And it did, so it worked.
Also it made sense - granting the hax0rs their due if they were the ones who really brought down al-J. Of course, it could have been a DOD-DOS. This would not surprise me in the slightest.
Remeber it's just a show and you should really just relax.
It's still the same thing. The ease of the uninstall procedure isn't important, and the common user doesn't care that you can't take Explorer off the hard drive without breaking the machine, as long has he or she has enough hard drive space to store their mp3 files. The user isn't going to bother to pay money for Brand X when he already gets software that does the same thing for "free" from Apple.
And it's not nonsensical to say that Apple has a monopoly on Apple products. They do. If you want the OS, you have to buy the machine. If you want the machine, you have to buy the OS, and also pay for all of the bundled software that discourages the purchase of competing products. While this may not seem as egregious as what Microsoft does, it's really the same thing, only on a smaller scale.
Good point. Apple bundling all that software with their systems is just like Microsoft bundling Explorer with Windows (except for the monopoly - except that for Apple users, Apple IS the monopoly.
I've never taken a class on the Internet, but I did take a California Bar Exam review course from BarBri in a classroom watching videotapes. It was a non-interactive experience, and thus less likely to be of benefit than interactive distance learning.
But I did learn an important lesson about learning while taking this class. The stimulation that a student receives in class must be fine-tuned to each student, otherwise it's worthless. While watching videotapes of learned scholars talk about Contracts, Constiutional law and the like, I realized that a lot of it was very very boring.
So I brought my palm pilot and played Solitare over and over again during the lectures. This multitasking was enough to allow me to not spend too much of my attention on the lecture, and it kept me from being too bored to learn. It's important to pay full attention to something that you are being exposed to for the first time. But, if it's a review course, it's easy to sit their and think "Damn it, I know this already, I'm checking out", and then tune out completely.
Soltaire was, for me, just the right amount of mindless entertainment to allow me to listen to the lecture without losing my mind. And it worked - for me. I managed to pass the bar on the first time around, while studying on my own terms.
What's the point here? The point is that distance learning has to give students the proper amount of stimulation - or it's a waste of time. Students can do things (like what I did) to help focus themselves to the proper level of concentration, but too much stimulation causes overload (like my Differential Equations class). Too little stimulation, and the students will tune out and ignore the important points when the occur.
Sorry, I submitted this post, so I guess I'm responsible. It's significant not just because it's recognition of Hayao Miyazaki and his body of work (Nausicaa, Porco Rosso, Cagliostro's Castle, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service, etc.), it's also an historic Hollywood recognition of Anime as an art form. This is the first time that any Anime has won an Oscar - and it was up against "Ice Age", a CG wonder, and two Disney films, "Treasure Planet" and "Lilo and Stitch".
It's also recognition that animated films don't have to be musicals for children in the Disney style.
I didn't know that and I'm sorry to hear it. Frankly, I think that 'Whispers of the Heart' is better than any of Miyazaki's films other than Nausicaa and Cagliostro's Castle. The scene where the boy is playing the violin and the old men walk in, pick up their instruments, and join along is one of the best scenes in all cinema.
Young James Tiberius Kirk is rescued from a giant space rat or something. They let him drive the ship for a little bit, but Wesley Crusher visits from the future, and convinces Kirk that it's a really really bad idea, so Kirk leaves the ship to train as an Iron Chef (Iron Klingon). The entire timeline is changed, except for Wesley, who now travels in a battered blue police box, and is thus immune from the changes he has wrought.
In the meantime, when the Klingons attack Earth after trying Kirk's attempt to cook gagh, and a Vulcan shuttle transporting young Sarek crashlands onto the Picard vineyards, killing the entire family. Just to play it safe. The bistro in New Orleans where Sisko came from can stay. Good restaurants in New Orleans are surprisingly hard to find.
Finally, young Checkov discovers that he has psychic powers, and the rest of Starfleet travels off to meet the Minbari.
OK, we could only wish. But the ultimate problem with what Star Trek has evolved (devolved?) into is that the producers don't actually have a story to tell. They have episodes, and a made-by-committee chronowar goulash to hold it all together. They just don't get it. They need a continuing story, where you can't get everything if you miss a couple of episodes.
They also need to start killing off redshirts. No one on the crew has died so far (at least on the episodes I've watched). I want to see Crewman Jones choke to death on space pollen. I want to see a crew member shipped home because of genetic damage caused by routine exposure to the Warp V engine. I want to see some sacrifice here, space people.
I wanna see them complete f*ck up an undeveloped world trying to do good, resulting in the creation of the Prime Directive. It's got to be bloody, and horrible. I want to see them drop off on an unsuspecting planet that really nice scientist who thinks that the Nazis could have been a good idea - but he's really just an evil Nazi bastard like all of them are and secretly went there to create the Fourth Reich in all its glory. [want an alternate universe story? Starfleet vs. Nazis armed by the Klingons].
AND, they need to drop all of their useful crutches, that means:
1. No holo-anything. Not even holo-trinkets from Vulcan. 2. No transporter malfunctions that result in anything other than painful and irreversable death. 3. No mirror-universe 4. No mirrors - let's play it safe here. 5. No Borg 6. No Q. OK, maybe Q, but they can't remember ANY of it at the end of the episode. 7. No time travel chrono war. Have it all resolved in a very special episode with special guest stars Wil Wheaton and John DeLancie. 8. No decon gel. Let's get real, folks. Just let them have space-sex, and we'll get all the fan service we want. Just give us an honest space-erotic massage, and I'll be happy.
Need a plot? War with the Klingons. War with the Romulans. Peace protestors at home. Vulcan and French disapproval of Starfleet military intervention.
"No, the troops aren't fighting for my freedom of speech. They are fighting because Dubya doesn't understand what diplomacy is for."
The troops aren't fighting for your freedom of speech, but they aren't fighting because of what you would like to believe concerning Bush's understanding of diplomacy. Make all the assertions you want against the motives of George Bush, but it's little more than flamebait to call him stupid, or ignorant.
"No, Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th. In fact, Saddam Hussein is a socialist and Islamic freaks don't like the guy."
My theory is that the connection with Sept 11th is plain - after 50 years of the US trying (sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing) to be an honest broker in the Middle East, the net result was the destruction of the World Trade Center. I believe Bush's position is that we can no longer afford to wait until serious potential threats evolve into acts of war.
"No, Iraq is not an immediate threat to anybody. Not even it's next door neighbors. Saddam is not the only *evil* dictator in the world. Who is next? Uzbekistan? Zimbabwe? North Korea? Saudi Arabia? Pakistan? This tyrant argument should be applied evenly, not just in this case."
You have the mistaken impression that international relations should be governed by the US legal system. The issue here which threats can be stopped using military force and which threats are sufficiently serious to justify the use of military force. I know that you don't belive Iraq's threat is sufficiently serious, but that's something that we disagree about.
"Yes, in fact, I do love French wine. Burgundy actually has some pretty good Chardonnays. And Wine Spectator [winespectator.com] just said that the 2000 Bordeaux's are the best in 39 years. If I had the cash, I'd buy a few bottles today."
I like French wine too, even though I live in Sonoma, home of better wines than France, but that's just my opinion. Drink up.
As an aside, the result of sanctions against Iraq has been little more than 12 years of starvation and economic stagnation. As lopsided as this may sound, the cost to the Iraqi civilian population of this war is probably going to be less, in lives and money, than what they've lost while we've been giving sanctions "time to work".
...by making substantial reelection campaign contributions. Seriously, why else would most legislators care about this issue one way or the other? I am perhaps being more than a bit cynical here, but politicians must raise money to remain in office, and they have a tendency to listen to those who contribute to them (those that aren't outright 0wn3d by their contributors).
The courts were our best shot at stopping this. And it didn't work.
Gotta ask: Why is WP10 crap? I'm still using WP 6.1, but I've looked at each subsequent version. I thought 7 and 8 were terrible, and I'm not sure I ever saw 9, but I did try out 10, and 10 seems to have most of the things I like about 6.1 - except it did crash a couple of times. Maybe that's it.
"In all honesty, a manned mission to the moon by another country would be great. It would finally shut up all of these conspiracy theories about how the manned missions to the moon by the U.S. were elaborate hoaxes."
What do you mean by "another country"? You're making that up. There are no other countries, and any "moon" missions that they accomplish are as made up as they are.
Good point. I propose that we adopt the Sid Meier's Civilization test - the Space Race will be won by the first nation to establish a permanent off-world colony. Anything less than that is simply theatrics.
I think that it's less an issue of the risk involved rather than it's a question of "What's the point?". We've been to the Moon. Until we start construction of Moon Base Alpha and start shipping nuclear waste to the Moon there's little reason to go pick up a few more rocks other than to say we can. And we know we can, so why bother?
Exactly, we need to build Side 7, and some giant robots to go with it.
We have a giant robot gap.
There was once a BBC space detective drama, in which the large US-built satellite was called "Space Station Ronald Reagon" and the protaginist had a voice-interface computer named "Box".
I can see this with video cards, but sound cards? When was the last time anyone bothered to upgrade their sound card? You have a point, but this is not going to be an issue very often. 99%+ of the users out there, even the ones who tinker with their systems, never even think about upgrading their sound card. Most don't even upgrade their speakers.
Slashdot Mirror
This may be the cause of that mysterious sandstorm in Iraq.
Makes you kind of think, doesn't it?
I second the motion. Multiple Sellerses is always a good thing (better than Muliple Michael Myerses, even). I also recall another movie, perhaps also taking place in the Grand Dutch of Fenwick, where Fenwick beats the US and USSR to the moon, using a crackpot scientist's invention.
This is true. But remember that Starship Troopers is one of Heinlein's "juvenile" novels, written for a younger audience. Also, the idea of the government in Starship Troopers as being fascist is completely false. The theory behind the book is that the world was taken over by veterans and that the right to vote was limited to only those persons who have 1) completed at least two years of government service (not just military) and 2) are no longer in government service. The idea here is that the right to vote should be limited to those persons who have demonstrated the ability to put the nation ahead of themselves through self-sacrifice, rather than just turn age 18 while maintaining a pulse. The government had to over service to anyone, of any age, who wanted to sign up.
The principal problem with this theory is that veterans are as self-serving as anyone (I'm a veteran) and cannot necessarily be trusted any more than the rest of us with the power to vote. But, in Heinlein's defense, he wrote the book a very long time ago, before Vietnam.
I have to respond, just because of my sig, which is not new.
Perhaps 133t speak presents a problem moderation by increasing the pool of comments that cry out for negative moderation, but there's nothing official Slashdot can do about it other than create some sort of auto-censoring l33t filter.
And it's not as if entire front page postings are in 133t, either. It was just a headline, and a headline's only job is to draw your attention to the body alone. And it did, so it worked.
Also it made sense - granting the hax0rs their due if they were the ones who really brought down al-J. Of course, it could have been a DOD-DOS. This would not surprise me in the slightest.
Remeber it's just a show and you should really just relax.
It's still the same thing. The ease of the uninstall procedure isn't important, and the common user doesn't care that you can't take Explorer off the hard drive without breaking the machine, as long has he or she has enough hard drive space to store their mp3 files. The user isn't going to bother to pay money for Brand X when he already gets software that does the same thing for "free" from Apple.
And it's not nonsensical to say that Apple has a monopoly on Apple products. They do. If you want the OS, you have to buy the machine. If you want the machine, you have to buy the OS, and also pay for all of the bundled software that discourages the purchase of competing products. While this may not seem as egregious as what Microsoft does, it's really the same thing, only on a smaller scale.
Good point. Apple bundling all that software with their systems is just like Microsoft bundling Explorer with Windows (except for the monopoly - except that for Apple users, Apple IS the monopoly.
I've never taken a class on the Internet, but I did take a California Bar Exam review course from BarBri in a classroom watching videotapes. It was a non-interactive experience, and thus less likely to be of benefit than interactive distance learning.
But I did learn an important lesson about learning while taking this class. The stimulation that a student receives in class must be fine-tuned to each student, otherwise it's worthless. While watching videotapes of learned scholars talk about Contracts, Constiutional law and the like, I realized that a lot of it was very very boring.
So I brought my palm pilot and played Solitare over and over again during the lectures. This multitasking was enough to allow me to not spend too much of my attention on the lecture, and it kept me from being too bored to learn. It's important to pay full attention to something that you are being exposed to for the first time. But, if it's a review course, it's easy to sit their and think "Damn it, I know this already, I'm checking out", and then tune out completely.
Soltaire was, for me, just the right amount of mindless entertainment to allow me to listen to the lecture without losing my mind. And it worked - for me. I managed to pass the bar on the first time around, while studying on my own terms.
What's the point here? The point is that distance learning has to give students the proper amount of stimulation - or it's a waste of time. Students can do things (like what I did) to help focus themselves to the proper level of concentration, but too much stimulation causes overload (like my Differential Equations class). Too little stimulation, and the students will tune out and ignore the important points when the occur.
Just a note - that's not a line in the original version - it's only in the dub.
Sorry, I submitted this post, so I guess I'm responsible. It's significant not just because it's recognition of Hayao Miyazaki and his body of work (Nausicaa, Porco Rosso, Cagliostro's Castle, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service, etc.), it's also an historic Hollywood recognition of Anime as an art form. This is the first time that any Anime has won an Oscar - and it was up against "Ice Age", a CG wonder, and two Disney films, "Treasure Planet" and "Lilo and Stitch".
It's also recognition that animated films don't have to be musicals for children in the Disney style.
I didn't know that and I'm sorry to hear it. Frankly, I think that 'Whispers of the Heart' is better than any of Miyazaki's films other than Nausicaa and Cagliostro's Castle. The scene where the boy is playing the violin and the old men walk in, pick up their instruments, and join along is one of the best scenes in all cinema.
Or better yet, a Vulcan with five asses.
Here's what's going to happen:
Young James Tiberius Kirk is rescued from a giant space rat or something. They let him drive the ship for a little bit, but Wesley Crusher visits from the future, and convinces Kirk that it's a really really bad idea, so Kirk leaves the ship to train as an Iron Chef (Iron Klingon). The entire timeline is changed, except for Wesley, who now travels in a battered blue police box, and is thus immune from the changes he has wrought.
In the meantime, when the Klingons attack Earth after trying Kirk's attempt to cook gagh, and a Vulcan shuttle transporting young Sarek crashlands onto the Picard vineyards, killing the entire family. Just to play it safe. The bistro in New Orleans where Sisko came from can stay. Good restaurants in New Orleans are surprisingly hard to find.
Finally, young Checkov discovers that he has psychic powers, and the rest of Starfleet travels off to meet the Minbari.
OK, we could only wish. But the ultimate problem with what Star Trek has evolved (devolved?) into is that the producers don't actually have a story to tell. They have episodes, and a made-by-committee chronowar goulash to hold it all together. They just don't get it. They need a continuing story, where you can't get everything if you miss a couple of episodes.
They also need to start killing off redshirts. No one on the crew has died so far (at least on the episodes I've watched). I want to see Crewman Jones choke to death on space pollen. I want to see a crew member shipped home because of genetic damage caused by routine exposure to the Warp V engine. I want to see some sacrifice here, space people.
I wanna see them complete f*ck up an undeveloped world trying to do good, resulting in the creation of the Prime Directive. It's got to be bloody, and horrible. I want to see them drop off on an unsuspecting planet that really nice scientist who thinks that the Nazis could have been a good idea - but he's really just an evil Nazi bastard like all of them are and secretly went there to create the Fourth Reich in all its glory. [want an alternate universe story? Starfleet vs. Nazis armed by the Klingons].
AND, they need to drop all of their useful crutches, that means:
1. No holo-anything. Not even holo-trinkets from Vulcan.
2. No transporter malfunctions that result in anything other than painful and irreversable death.
3. No mirror-universe
4. No mirrors - let's play it safe here.
5. No Borg
6. No Q. OK, maybe Q, but they can't remember ANY of it at the end of the episode.
7. No time travel chrono war. Have it all resolved in a very special episode with special guest stars Wil Wheaton and John DeLancie.
8. No decon gel. Let's get real, folks. Just let them have space-sex, and we'll get all the fan service we want. Just give us an honest space-erotic massage, and I'll be happy.
Need a plot? War with the Klingons. War with the Romulans. Peace protestors at home. Vulcan and French disapproval of Starfleet military intervention.
But the replacement bulbs for LCD projectors are expensive, especially considering that these bulbs don't have a particularly long lifetime.
To respond to your points:
"No, the troops aren't fighting for my freedom of speech. They are fighting because Dubya doesn't understand what diplomacy is for."
The troops aren't fighting for your freedom of speech, but they aren't fighting because of what you would like to believe concerning Bush's understanding of diplomacy. Make all the assertions you want against the motives of George Bush, but it's little more than flamebait to call him stupid, or ignorant.
"No, Iraq had nothing to do with September 11th. In fact, Saddam Hussein is a socialist and Islamic freaks don't like the guy."
My theory is that the connection with Sept 11th is plain - after 50 years of the US trying (sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing) to be an honest broker in the Middle East, the net result was the destruction of the World Trade Center. I believe Bush's position is that we can no longer afford to wait until serious potential threats evolve into acts of war.
"No, Iraq is not an immediate threat to anybody. Not even it's next door neighbors.
Saddam is not the only *evil* dictator in the world. Who is next? Uzbekistan? Zimbabwe? North Korea? Saudi Arabia? Pakistan? This tyrant argument should be applied evenly, not just in this case."
You have the mistaken impression that international relations should be governed by the US legal system. The issue here which threats can be stopped using military force and which threats are sufficiently serious to justify the use of military force. I know that you don't belive Iraq's threat is sufficiently serious, but that's something that we disagree about.
"Yes, in fact, I do love French wine. Burgundy actually has some pretty good Chardonnays. And Wine Spectator [winespectator.com] just said that the 2000 Bordeaux's are the best in 39 years. If I had the cash, I'd buy a few bottles today."
I like French wine too, even though I live in Sonoma, home of better wines than France, but that's just my opinion. Drink up.
As an aside, the result of sanctions against Iraq has been little more than 12 years of starvation and economic stagnation. As lopsided as this may sound, the cost to the Iraqi civilian population of this war is probably going to be less, in lives and money, than what they've lost while we've been giving sanctions "time to work".
Great. We're doing our part in the war effort to slashdot Iraq.
...by making substantial reelection campaign contributions. Seriously, why else would most legislators care about this issue one way or the other? I am perhaps being more than a bit cynical here, but politicians must raise money to remain in office, and they have a tendency to listen to those who contribute to them (those that aren't outright 0wn3d by their contributors).
The courts were our best shot at stopping this. And it didn't work.
Gotta ask: Why is WP10 crap? I'm still using WP 6.1, but I've looked at each subsequent version. I thought 7 and 8 were terrible, and I'm not sure I ever saw 9, but I did try out 10, and 10 seems to have most of the things I like about 6.1 - except it did crash a couple of times. Maybe that's it.
This may not be a good rule, because there's Sailor Ceres, isn't there? Or maybe I'm just reading way the hell too much fanfiction.
But it's clear that Pluto is a planet, if only because I wouldn't want the be the astronmer on the wrong end of Meiou Setsuna's "Dead Scream".
Remember, when you leave that cow manure alone, you are leaving it alone with Osama bin Ladin.
"In all honesty, a manned mission to the moon by another country would be great. It would finally shut up all of these conspiracy theories about how the manned missions to the moon by the U.S. were elaborate hoaxes."
What do you mean by "another country"? You're making that up. There are no other countries, and any "moon" missions that they accomplish are as made up as they are.
"those darned Chinese"? There you go again...
Good point. I propose that we adopt the Sid Meier's Civilization test - the Space Race will be won by the first nation to establish a permanent off-world colony. Anything less than that is simply theatrics.
I think that it's less an issue of the risk involved rather than it's a question of "What's the point?". We've been to the Moon. Until we start construction of Moon Base Alpha and start shipping nuclear waste to the Moon there's little reason to go pick up a few more rocks other than to say we can. And we know we can, so why bother?
Exactly, we need to build Side 7, and some giant robots to go with it.
We have a giant robot gap.
There was once a BBC space detective drama, in which the large US-built satellite was called "Space Station Ronald Reagon" and the protaginist had a voice-interface computer named "Box".
I can see this with video cards, but sound cards? When was the last time anyone bothered to upgrade their sound card? You have a point, but this is not going to be an issue very often. 99%+ of the users out there, even the ones who tinker with their systems, never even think about upgrading their sound card. Most don't even upgrade their speakers.
Dell is supposed to be dropping floppys as standard issue soon.