I wonder what would've happened if the tagline were "Encode. Mix. Burn." The word "rip" has such negative connotation as itis, and its increasingly tighter association with MP3 distribution (which in and of itself is viewed as a shady thing by all facets of The Establishment) only serves to help throw the term into the Big Pile of Words Which Instinctively Connote Badness In Technology, right up there with "hacker". It would've been interesting to see how differently public reaction would've turned out had they used a more benign word than "rip."
Please, please, please... a tasteful, satisfactory ending.... Just once! I just want one satisfying, well-thought out season ender. Doesn't have to tie up all the (horribly convoluted) threads, doesn't have to result in everybody finding their true love/hooking up with their partner, just end one episode in a way that doesn't give the viewer cinematic blue-balls. Just once! Or let the guy who wrote "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" write it and screw closure. Either one would be good.
IIRC, the overwhelming benefit of digital was to speed up the production/editing process, such that the innumerable FX shots could be more easily incorporated into the shooting footage. That is, the filmmakers would save a step by having digital image data as soon as it was shot, as opposed to having to scan the developed film in order to manipulate the images. Digital projection of the completed film, as far as I understood, was just gravy on top of that.
A real shame that the Simpsons continues to be milked long past it's prime (let's not kid ourselves; Simpsons has been in a steady decline for some time now) while Futurama gets neglected despite a noticable superiority in both animation quality and humor (the recent Anthology ep, for example).
Re:Incompetence
on
Apollo 1
·
· Score: 2, Informative
At least with the Challenger launch, the pressures from on high to keep schedule with the high profile crew (Mrs. MacAuliffe) must have been rather high, and not just from the immediate supervisors to the O-ring managers. The launch was a big media event, and the pressures of delivering on the promise of a historic launch date probably swayed more than a few otherwise clear heads at NASA.
I think a lot of posters are expecting you to teach some sort of programming course; I would think that assumes quite a bit of the students prior to meeting them.
I would suggest as a baseline goal to foster familiarity with the computer first (how GUIs work, basic internet skills, general operability knowledge) and then go from there. Programming would be pretty difficult if they didn't have this.
Most importantly of all, I would strive to teach them enough about computers to learn more about them on their own after the class has ended. The course needn't be intensive or comprehensive; all you need to really do is to teach them enough such that they could decide if this kind of thing is "for them" or not.
Trade one hierarchy of coolness (a very vague and arbitrary distinction by the author's own admission) for another which has no clear benefit? How is this system an improvement on what is presently available, other than the fact that it seems to elevate the author's own "coolness" for suggesting it?
Not exactly Armageddon quite yet
on
TigerCloning
·
· Score: 1
Making a viable specimen of a Tasmanian Tiger in vitro wouldn't necessarily mean that they would be able to create anything close to a stable population, nor is it possible to say if the animal would be behaviorally viable, that is, be able to "act" like a Tasmanian Tiger. A significant portion of higher mammalian behavior is learned; any successful specimens from these trials would more or less have to "figure it out on their own." This does not point to any sort of large-scale animal repopulation possibility yet, so don't start flipping out over "Nature's Prime Directive" yet. If anything, this probably could lead to several laboratory specimens, even a small breeding group, but repopulating the wild would be a long ways off, if indeed it is at all possible.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought the April Fool's joke submissions were over...
I wonder what would've happened if the tagline were "Encode. Mix. Burn." The word "rip" has such negative connotation as itis, and its increasingly tighter association with MP3 distribution (which in and of itself is viewed as a shady thing by all facets of The Establishment) only serves to help throw the term into the Big Pile of Words Which Instinctively Connote Badness In Technology, right up there with "hacker". It would've been interesting to see how differently public reaction would've turned out had they used a more benign word than "rip."
Please, please, please... a tasteful, satisfactory ending.... Just once! I just want one satisfying, well-thought out season ender. Doesn't have to tie up all the (horribly convoluted) threads, doesn't have to result in everybody finding their true love/hooking up with their partner, just end one episode in a way that doesn't give the viewer cinematic blue-balls. Just once! Or let the guy who wrote "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" write it and screw closure. Either one would be good.
IIRC, the overwhelming benefit of digital was to speed up the production/editing process, such that the innumerable FX shots could be more easily incorporated into the shooting footage. That is, the filmmakers would save a step by having digital image data as soon as it was shot, as opposed to having to scan the developed film in order to manipulate the images. Digital projection of the completed film, as far as I understood, was just gravy on top of that.
A real shame that the Simpsons continues to be milked long past it's prime (let's not kid ourselves; Simpsons has been in a steady decline for some time now) while Futurama gets neglected despite a noticable superiority in both animation quality and humor (the recent Anthology ep, for example).
At least with the Challenger launch, the pressures from on high to keep schedule with the high profile crew (Mrs. MacAuliffe) must have been rather high, and not just from the immediate supervisors to the O-ring managers. The launch was a big media event, and the pressures of delivering on the promise of a historic launch date probably swayed more than a few otherwise clear heads at NASA.
Guess it goes to show that even people who are uber-geniuses in one field are not immune to laughable ignorance in others.
I think a lot of posters are expecting you to teach some sort of programming course; I would think that assumes quite a bit of the students prior to meeting them.
I would suggest as a baseline goal to foster familiarity with the computer first (how GUIs work, basic internet skills, general operability knowledge) and then go from there. Programming would be pretty difficult if they didn't have this.
Most importantly of all, I would strive to teach them enough about computers to learn more about them on their own after the class has ended. The course needn't be intensive or comprehensive; all you need to really do is to teach them enough such that they could decide if this kind of thing is "for them" or not.
Trade one hierarchy of coolness (a very vague and arbitrary distinction by the author's own admission) for another which has no clear benefit? How is this system an improvement on what is presently available, other than the fact that it seems to elevate the author's own "coolness" for suggesting it?
Making a viable specimen of a Tasmanian Tiger in vitro wouldn't necessarily mean that they would be able to create anything close to a stable population, nor is it possible to say if the animal would be behaviorally viable, that is, be able to "act" like a Tasmanian Tiger. A significant portion of higher mammalian behavior is learned; any successful specimens from these trials would more or less have to "figure it out on their own." This does not point to any sort of large-scale animal repopulation possibility yet, so don't start flipping out over "Nature's Prime Directive" yet. If anything, this probably could lead to several laboratory specimens, even a small breeding group, but repopulating the wild would be a long ways off, if indeed it is at all possible.