However, Star Trek III is generally considered good. Certainly, it is nowhere on the level of I or V. Given that III was really a continuation of II (the best, in my opinion), perhaps one can add a corollary to your corollary, that if an odd-numbered film is a direct sequel to an even-numbered film, it will be good.
The airlines don't permit firearms on airplanes, with good reason. The thought of an agitated passenger opening fire inside a crowded cabin isn't a pleasant one.
Moreover, there's a lot more to self-defense than guns. What about kendo or judo? Hell, all the hijackers had were box cutters. Despite their lack of weapons, passengers were able to force down the fourth plane over Pennsylvania.
As regards your second point, do you seriously want teachers exchanging fire with students? I mean, really. I appreciate your concern about the right to bear arms (and support said right), but they aren't the only answer and there are places where I really don't think they are appropriate.
You speak as though Slashdot speaks with one voice. It does not. Repeat after me: Slashdot has 600,000 user accounts. Thousands of those post daily. They are all unique individuals. Thank you.
A meta topic. About bloody time. It would be nice to have these more often, to let slashbots discuss slashdot, without being modded offtopic or worse...
I work tech support at a small liberal arts college, and we require all students to register their machines within three weeks of getting on campus. We then lock their ports to their MAC addresses. If you need to move or change your card you can re-register, usually the change goes through in a day. We did it to make it easier to detect and limit email worms. If we see it coming from some specified port we close it off and the flag passes to the techs. So far it's worked pretty well, often we get people coming to us complaining that "their Internet doesn't work," usually it's because they got Klez and we shut their port off. Decent alarm system, really.
I work tech support for a small midwestern liberal arts college. We've got a 6 megabit outgoing. We had the subnets for KaZaa, WinMX, etc blocked. The first week of classes the connection was great. Then word got out that Morpheus was still working. Within a day the outgoing had slowed to a crawl. I like p2p as much as the next Slashbot but darn it, the network can't take that kind of abuse. We continue to allow LAN file sharing and AIM file transfers because they don't suck bandwidth, but the major p2p apps are just too wasteful...
The movie studios have been in search of a new DVD encryption scheme since the industry standard, known as CSS, was cracked by Linux programmers in 1999.
I'm getting out of the way right now before the flames hit. Trolls and Editors first! Run for your lives!
I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I am primarily a strategy gamer. Sure, I play UT at nights to relax a bit, but my main diversions are Civilization II, Space Empires IV, The Operational Art of War...
These games need no acceleration, nor any really outstanding hardware. Hell, Civ2 can run on my old 75mhz box. These games are also noted, especially in the case of Civ2, for being mod-friendly. They came with good scenario editors and open formats so people could tweak to their heart's content. The makes of SE4 are continually releasing free updates that better the game. Civ2 has a vibrant online community some SEVEN years after it's initial release.
Can console games truly claim this sort of thing? I can't even imagine trying to play TOAW on a console...the horror...
So, please, try not to forget about us poor, abused strategy gamers.
There is a minor flaw in your reasoning. While it's true that video cards cost roughly the same as consoles, the video card is not an essential component for gaming. I play a lot of strategy games (something you won't find on a console), and they don't need fancy acceleration. And they'll run for years. Moreover, you don't have to upgrade to play ALL the latest new games, just the memory hogs. Consoles have no such option. It's all or nothing.
Slashdot community aside, most folks don't want to swap PCs every year or two just to run the latest and greatest shooter. I think game developers have simply put the PC market down like a dog with their recommended and in some cases minimum requirements. There just are not enough people who are gonna get a bug up their ass to buy a $400 graphics board, 1GB of RAM, 2.x GHz processor, and $200 Windows upgrade.
About two years ago I bought a Voodoo3 card. It was old then. It is obsolete now. It still does its job. That $400 graphics board, obviously bought new, will last for years. Nobody needs the kind of power you're describing.
Compare this to new game consoles coming out every couple of years, and with the commendable exception of the Playstation and PS2, being incapable of running old games. NO LEGACY SUPPORT AT ALL! That's a hell of a deal all right.
Post any jokes about the Bastard Operator From Hell (and what he would think of this) here so people don't have to hunt for them. Then delete those people's files and point their login to the null device.
Okay, I'm tired of seeing this thing linked to, so I will post my rather extensive rebuttal. Even if the author was joking, which I don't think he was.
I'm not going to deal with his ignorance of the Expanded Universe, I don't like his reasons but I'll let it be. I'll refute him with the movies.
The notion that the Emperor was a benign dictator like Pinochet--I don't know where to start. I'm sure Chile would be most impressed to learn that Pinochet was "benign." Thousands killed for political reasons is not "benign."
Now, he has a point that Alderaan was probably armed. Most planets are. That's not illegal. Destruction of those weapons would have been a legitimate military exercise. Now, I ask you this: is it legitimate to slaughter civilians to destroy those targets? Especially if you're doing it to blackmail a resistance leader? Who happens to be a member of your own governing body? That would be akin to Bush nuking New York because Hillary Clinton would blow him. I mean, really. Who's the author trying to kid?
He speaks of the system of regional governors, owing their fealty to the Emperor, and what a nice system was and how the Emperor's death would shatter it all. First of all, it's not much of a system if it takes one man (in a galaxy of quadrillions or more) to hold it all together. That they would squabble speaks poorly of Palpatine's judgement.
Yes it's true that the Empire is a meritocracy. Do what we say or we kill you. Do it right while doing what we say or we kill you. Never does he question the ethics of such a policy.
How are Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru traitors? They bought two droids secondhand from junk dealers. The droids weren't stolen, so all you can get them on is harboring fugitives. Except, those droids were abandoning ship. Hell, C-3PO didn't even know what R2-D2 had. If you want to get technical, R2-D2 should be gotten for possessing stolen goods, 3P0 for aiding a felon...There were no grounds for executing them, especially since without the droids there was no proof. I didn't see the Jawas give Owen a receipt.
As for his bashing of the Jedi, I will suggest to him "hubris," and ask him if the Jedi ever killed innocent people at random. Moreover, the Jedi are elevated by biology, and the cultivation of resultant abilites. A meritocracy, of sorts. Isn't that what he thought was so great about the Empire?
As for the Republic putting down the rebellion...they were simply a regime fighting a violent group committed to their overthrow...like the Empire.
His article is amusing, but I see people taking it seriously, thus I must point out these inconsistencies and logical fallacies. The Empire benign? Please...
He directed Star Wars, The Phantom Menace, and Attack of the Clones. The Empire Strikes Back was directed by Irvin Kershner, The Return of the Jedi by Richard Marquand. So while this is his first that didn't end with a reactor being shot, he'd only done it twice before.
In providing a common (perceived) enemy Gates and Microsoft have given free software a goal, something to strive for. We're fighting the Evil Empire, looking to develop better products. In a word: competition. If there was no Microsoft, what would drive most of this development? Rather, if there was not an unhinged company making inferior closed-source software, I doubt there would have been such a flow of free software because it would not have been necessary.
Given that, one could argue that Gates caused all our problems so screw 'em, but I would rather concentrate on the beautiful cooperation and spirit demonstrated by GNU/Linux/BSD/ developers around the world.
"One reason full-line vending machines have not swept the United States to date is that we have had a large population of entrepreneurial immigrants eager to operate convenience stores,"
We must save Apu from the unstoppable march of progress!
First of all, this article is getting posted waaay too early. 12:30? Wait until 2, and get genuine reponses. At least from the Eastern half of the US, anyway (where I happen to live, so quiet, all of you).
Personally, I tend to drink Mountain Dew. It's cheap, easy to find...
That, or I just go to bed. The server will be there later, and I find that the longer I prolong the inevitable, the worse my aim gets.
Your post intrigues me, but if you're really looking to prevent World War I, I can suggest people more culpable than Princip:
Grand Admiral Alfred Tirpitz: Led the drive to create the Imperial German High Seas Fleet, which aggravated tensions with the British Empire (the Naval Race and all that).
Colonel General Alfred von Schlieffen: Chief of the German General Staff before the war, architect of the Schlieffen Plan to attack France and defend against Russia, which included the violation of Belgium.
Bringing the British into the war was the real disaster. Had they stayed out, it is quite probable the France would have lost the Battle of the Marne and therefore the war. Germany would then have teamed up with Austria against Russia far earlier, and it is entirely conceivable that the war would have been over before the leaves fell, as the Kaiser had promised his troops.
A quick end to the war would have left the Central Powers dominant on the Continent, Russia in the throes of revolution (I imagine that defeat in the war would cause collapse), and France diplomatically isolated. Not a wonderful situation really, but nothing to lead to the Second World War.
Of course, the above is an exercise in what-if history, which generally gets dismissed as quackery...
"You must also be in favor of network television inforcing commercial viewing, because, hey, if you miss the commercials you are missing the expereince they have planned, invested time in, and prepared for you. Those are artistic rights, are they not?"
Absolutely not. The commercials are rarely if ever tied to said program. I'm watching the program, not the commercials.
"So you are saying if I saw Titanic in the theatre, went to refill my popcorn halfway through the movie and missed Leonardo and Kate in the car or whatever. According to you, now I have somehow missed what he (Cameron) intended and may no longer be watching a James Cameron film? Interesting."
No, because what you experience is not quite the same as what he is showing. The film itself is intact, if you missed part of it that's your own lookout.
Had you read the part of my post, in the beginning, where I noted that I had to objection to people making their own edits, only to people selling such edits, this would have been clear.
Now, I know this will be hard, but I want everyone to take a deep breath and think about the issue for a second.
Third-parties are editing creative works that are not their own to meet their particular standards. They want to screen out tits, Jar-Jar, whatever. The argument that seems to be pretty popular here is that "we bought, we can do what we want with it." This is true, to a point. If I want to watch my own 30-minute version of Eyes Wide Shut that's my own business.
Where it gets complicated is that people are making that edit and then selling it. Even if it's marked, under what right are they doing this? They didn't create it. Like it or not, a film is a work of art. The entire film is an expression of the artistic vision of the creator. To alter it is to alter the message, which does a gross disservice to the creator.
What would Lolita be without a 14-year old girl (never mind that she was 12 in the book)? Clockwork Orange sans violence. Armageddon with no asteroid?
A film is not just some montage of scenes pieced together for you viewing. It has a point, maybe a moral--it's going somewhere. At the very least it is telling a story that has certain nuances.
My point is simple: the art is being altered and then being sold. Even if it's marked as edited, it's being sold under the original title. Let's say that Titanic is edited to remove the lovemaking between Winslet and DiCaprio? Is it still a James Cameron film? Hard to say, really, because you aren't seeing what he intended. Think about that, for a second. Consumer rights this, consumer rights that--what about artistic rights?
Slashdot Mirror
However, Star Trek III is generally considered good. Certainly, it is nowhere on the level of I or V. Given that III was really a continuation of II (the best, in my opinion), perhaps one can add a corollary to your corollary, that if an odd-numbered film is a direct sequel to an even-numbered film, it will be good.
Cheers, Chazzf
If you want to send postal congrats/bundt cake/fondue pots/yet more place mats, I've included the postal address.
No grits?
Congrats to the both of you,
~Chazzf
What about a Beowulf Cluster of Slashdot meta-comments?
The airlines don't permit firearms on airplanes, with good reason. The thought of an agitated passenger opening fire inside a crowded cabin isn't a pleasant one.
Moreover, there's a lot more to self-defense than guns. What about kendo or judo? Hell, all the hijackers had were box cutters. Despite their lack of weapons, passengers were able to force down the fourth plane over Pennsylvania.
As regards your second point, do you seriously want teachers exchanging fire with students? I mean, really. I appreciate your concern about the right to bear arms (and support said right), but they aren't the only answer and there are places where I really don't think they are appropriate.
~Chazzf
And the last time I checked John Conyers was from Michigan, has been for some three decades now...
You speak as though Slashdot speaks with one voice. It does not. Repeat after me: Slashdot has 600,000 user accounts. Thousands of those post daily. They are all unique individuals. Thank you.
A meta topic. About bloody time. It would be nice to have these more often, to let slashbots discuss slashdot, without being modded offtopic or worse...
I work tech support at a small liberal arts college, and we require all students to register their machines within three weeks of getting on campus. We then lock their ports to their MAC addresses. If you need to move or change your card you can re-register, usually the change goes through in a day. We did it to make it easier to detect and limit email worms. If we see it coming from some specified port we close it off and the flag passes to the techs. So far it's worked pretty well, often we get people coming to us complaining that "their Internet doesn't work," usually it's because they got Klez and we shut their port off. Decent alarm system, really.
I work tech support for a small midwestern liberal arts college. We've got a 6 megabit outgoing. We had the subnets for KaZaa, WinMX, etc blocked. The first week of classes the connection was great. Then word got out that Morpheus was still working. Within a day the outgoing had slowed to a crawl. I like p2p as much as the next Slashbot but darn it, the network can't take that kind of abuse. We continue to allow LAN file sharing and AIM file transfers because they don't suck bandwidth, but the major p2p apps are just too wasteful...
~Chazzf
The movie studios have been in search of a new DVD encryption scheme since the industry standard, known as CSS, was cracked by Linux programmers in 1999.
I'm getting out of the way right now before the flames hit. Trolls and Editors first! Run for your lives!
~Chazzf
Ahem, that's boxen.
/me screams in annoyance
I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I am primarily a strategy gamer. Sure, I play UT at nights to relax a bit, but my main diversions are Civilization II, Space Empires IV, The Operational Art of War...
These games need no acceleration, nor any really outstanding hardware. Hell, Civ2 can run on my old 75mhz box. These games are also noted, especially in the case of Civ2, for being mod-friendly. They came with good scenario editors and open formats so people could tweak to their heart's content. The makes of SE4 are continually releasing free updates that better the game. Civ2 has a vibrant online community some SEVEN years after it's initial release.
Can console games truly claim this sort of thing? I can't even imagine trying to play TOAW on a console...the horror...
So, please, try not to forget about us poor, abused strategy gamers.
~Chazzf
There is a minor flaw in your reasoning. While it's true that video cards cost roughly the same as consoles, the video card is not an essential component for gaming. I play a lot of strategy games (something you won't find on a console), and they don't need fancy acceleration. And they'll run for years. Moreover, you don't have to upgrade to play ALL the latest new games, just the memory hogs. Consoles have no such option. It's all or nothing.
Slashdot community aside, most folks don't want to swap PCs every year or two just to run the latest and greatest shooter. I think game developers have simply put the PC market down like a dog with their recommended and in some cases minimum requirements. There just are not enough people who are gonna get a bug up their ass to buy a $400 graphics board, 1GB of RAM, 2.x GHz processor, and $200 Windows upgrade.
About two years ago I bought a Voodoo3 card. It was old then. It is obsolete now. It still does its job. That $400 graphics board, obviously bought new, will last for years. Nobody needs the kind of power you're describing.
Compare this to new game consoles coming out every couple of years, and with the commendable exception of the Playstation and PS2, being incapable of running old games. NO LEGACY SUPPORT AT ALL! That's a hell of a deal all right.
~Chazzf
Post any jokes about the Bastard Operator From Hell (and what he would think of this) here so people don't have to hunt for them. Then delete those people's files and point their login to the null device.
~Chazzf
Okay, I'm tired of seeing this thing linked to, so I will post my rather extensive rebuttal. Even if the author was joking, which I don't think he was.
I'm not going to deal with his ignorance of the Expanded Universe, I don't like his reasons but I'll let it be. I'll refute him with the movies.
The notion that the Emperor was a benign dictator like Pinochet--I don't know where to start. I'm sure Chile would be most impressed to learn that Pinochet was "benign." Thousands killed for political reasons is not "benign."
Now, he has a point that Alderaan was probably armed. Most planets are. That's not illegal. Destruction of those weapons would have been a legitimate military exercise. Now, I ask you this: is it legitimate to slaughter civilians to destroy those targets? Especially if you're doing it to blackmail a resistance leader? Who happens to be a member of your own governing body? That would be akin to Bush nuking New York because Hillary Clinton would blow him. I mean, really. Who's the author trying to kid?
He speaks of the system of regional governors, owing their fealty to the Emperor, and what a nice system was and how the Emperor's death would shatter it all. First of all, it's not much of a system if it takes one man (in a galaxy of quadrillions or more) to hold it all together. That they would squabble speaks poorly of Palpatine's judgement.
Yes it's true that the Empire is a meritocracy. Do what we say or we kill you. Do it right while doing what we say or we kill you. Never does he question the ethics of such a policy.
How are Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru traitors? They bought two droids secondhand from junk dealers. The droids weren't stolen, so all you can get them on is harboring fugitives. Except, those droids were abandoning ship. Hell, C-3PO didn't even know what R2-D2 had. If you want to get technical, R2-D2 should be gotten for possessing stolen goods, 3P0 for aiding a felon...There were no grounds for executing them, especially since without the droids there was no proof. I didn't see the Jawas give Owen a receipt.
As for his bashing of the Jedi, I will suggest to him "hubris," and ask him if the Jedi ever killed innocent people at random. Moreover, the Jedi are elevated by biology, and the cultivation of resultant abilites. A meritocracy, of sorts. Isn't that what he thought was so great about the Empire?
As for the Republic putting down the rebellion...they were simply a regime fighting a violent group committed to their overthrow...like the Empire.
His article is amusing, but I see people taking it seriously, thus I must point out these inconsistencies and logical fallacies. The Empire benign? Please...
~Chazzf
Lucas has only directed three.
He directed Star Wars, The Phantom Menace, and Attack of the Clones. The Empire Strikes Back was directed by Irvin Kershner, The Return of the Jedi by Richard Marquand. So while this is his first that didn't end with a reactor being shot, he'd only done it twice before.
~Chazzf
...we can't moderate the story. Even if we could, there's no (-1, Crackpot) or (-1, Scam), so all we could is mod it funny.
~Chazzf
In providing a common (perceived) enemy Gates and Microsoft have given free software a goal, something to strive for. We're fighting the Evil Empire, looking to develop better products. In a word: competition. If there was no Microsoft, what would drive most of this development? Rather, if there was not an unhinged company making inferior closed-source software, I doubt there would have been such a flow of free software because it would not have been necessary.
Given that, one could argue that Gates caused all our problems so screw 'em, but I would rather concentrate on the beautiful cooperation and spirit demonstrated by GNU/Linux/BSD/ developers around the world.
Just remember: Gates made you do it
~Chazzf
"One reason full-line vending machines have not swept the United States to date is that we have had a large population of entrepreneurial immigrants eager to operate convenience stores,"
We must save Apu from the unstoppable march of progress!
~Chazzf
First of all, this article is getting posted waaay too early. 12:30? Wait until 2, and get genuine reponses. At least from the Eastern half of the US, anyway (where I happen to live, so quiet, all of you).
Personally, I tend to drink Mountain Dew. It's cheap, easy to find...
That, or I just go to bed. The server will be there later, and I find that the longer I prolong the inevitable, the worse my aim gets.
~Chazzf
Your post intrigues me, but if you're really looking to prevent World War I, I can suggest people more culpable than Princip:
Grand Admiral Alfred Tirpitz: Led the drive to create the Imperial German High Seas Fleet, which aggravated tensions with the British Empire (the Naval Race and all that).
Colonel General Alfred von Schlieffen: Chief of the German General Staff before the war, architect of the Schlieffen Plan to attack France and defend against Russia, which included the violation of Belgium.
Bringing the British into the war was the real disaster. Had they stayed out, it is quite probable the France would have lost the Battle of the Marne and therefore the war. Germany would then have teamed up with Austria against Russia far earlier, and it is entirely conceivable that the war would have been over before the leaves fell, as the Kaiser had promised his troops.
A quick end to the war would have left the Central Powers dominant on the Continent, Russia in the throes of revolution (I imagine that defeat in the war would cause collapse), and France diplomatically isolated. Not a wonderful situation really, but nothing to lead to the Second World War.
Of course, the above is an exercise in what-if history, which generally gets dismissed as quackery...
~Chazzf
Terribly sorry, you must have missed this:
RIAA Sues Backbone ISPs to Censor Website
~Chazzf
"You must also be in favor of network television inforcing commercial viewing, because, hey, if you miss the commercials you are missing the expereince they have planned, invested time in, and prepared for you. Those are artistic rights, are they not?"
Absolutely not. The commercials are rarely if ever tied to said program. I'm watching the program, not the commercials.
"So you are saying if I saw Titanic in the theatre, went to refill my popcorn halfway through the movie and missed Leonardo and Kate in the car or whatever. According to you, now I have somehow missed what he (Cameron) intended and may no longer be watching a James Cameron film? Interesting."
No, because what you experience is not quite the same as what he is showing. The film itself is intact, if you missed part of it that's your own lookout.
Had you read the part of my post, in the beginning, where I noted that I had to objection to people making their own edits, only to people selling such edits, this would have been clear.
~Chazzf
Now, I know this will be hard, but I want everyone to take a deep breath and think about the issue for a second.
Third-parties are editing creative works that are not their own to meet their particular standards. They want to screen out tits, Jar-Jar, whatever. The argument that seems to be pretty popular here is that "we bought, we can do what we want with it." This is true, to a point. If I want to watch my own 30-minute version of Eyes Wide Shut that's my own business.
Where it gets complicated is that people are making that edit and then selling it. Even if it's marked, under what right are they doing this? They didn't create it. Like it or not, a film is a work of art. The entire film is an expression of the artistic vision of the creator. To alter it is to alter the message, which does a gross disservice to the creator.
What would Lolita be without a 14-year old girl (never mind that she was 12 in the book)? Clockwork Orange sans violence. Armageddon with no asteroid?
A film is not just some montage of scenes pieced together for you viewing. It has a point, maybe a moral--it's going somewhere. At the very least it is telling a story that has certain nuances.
My point is simple: the art is being altered and then being sold. Even if it's marked as edited, it's being sold under the original title. Let's say that Titanic is edited to remove the lovemaking between Winslet and DiCaprio? Is it still a James Cameron film? Hard to say, really, because you aren't seeing what he intended. Think about that, for a second. Consumer rights this, consumer rights that--what about artistic rights?
~Chazzf