I'm going to voice the unpopular opinion: Gail Simone not a very good writer, neither of fiction or bloggy opinion pieces. Her work is overly-fannish, similiar to what we see in Peter David's or Mark Waid's work, but without the character development of David or the skilful plot unification that Waid is known for. IMHO, what sets Simone's work apart from other comics writers is its astounding degree of 'fanservice'. Fans want to see X beat up Y? So does Simone. Fans want to see fan-favourite characters A, B and C in a team? So does Simone. Whether it makes sense from a plot perspective or whether there's any kind of character development that grows from those stories is secondary -- and usually non-existent.
Simone also writes in too many 'Mary Sue' characters. Birds of Prey's Misfit. Tranquility's Sheriff Thomasina. And on and on and on.
Tranquility had a great high concept, but has failed terribly in its execution. The best large-cast stories are able to develop the characters of the cast. The worst focus on one or two and leave the rest as cardboard cutouts. The very worst can't even succeed with one or two. And then there's Tranquility, with a cast of cardboard characters, none of whom the audience should care about, inhabiting a virtually incomprehensible story. Don't get me wrong: the idea was great, but someone else should have written it.
So far, Simone's WW arc has had several retcons: WW's lasso can do *what*? Captain Nazi's mother was a what? And some of the plot points are just asinine; Diana agrees to serve some Hawaiian god? Talking gorillas in her apartment? More unnecessary bloodshed directed against women, ironically from a writer who has railed about such violence for years?
As with so many other fanservice writers before her, fans mistake her ability to press the right buttons in the fannish pleasure centre for good writing.
Let's be very aggressive and assume that hard drives continue doubling in capacity every 2 years for the next decade
That's not very aggressive; that is conservative. Based on price-per-byte, we've been seeing a doubling every 14 months since 1990.
A 2.56 TB iPod would be quite impressive, but wouldn't even hold every season of The Simpsons
4 DVDs per season at 4.7 GB per disc. Let's assume that the show will still be on air in a decade or so and that there will be 30 seasons to store on your iPod. That's 564 GB.
Historically and mathematically your claims don't add up, either.
No, you don't. The state will not defend your privilege to drive. You have the right to travel, but not the right to use any specific means of transportation.
Maybe I'm leaning my premise on funky semantics, but I'm not entirely sure I'm wrong.
You are, and you are. While the Bill of Rights in the US and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada (as two examples) state that the rights they enumerate are not the only rights its citizens have, I guarantee you that you do not have any rights that have not been specifically codified in law, either by legislation or judicial ruling.
If something is not illegal, I therefore have the legal "right" to do it.
By no means. A right is a privilege protected by the state. There are countless legal activities in which you don't have a right to partake. You don't have a right to drive a car, for example. In many commonwealth countries, one does not have a right to vote or to be married (those are considered to be franchises as opposed to rights).
That doesn't follow logically. If the state wanted to ban extreme sports, they could. You don't have a right to skate a vert pipe or go BASE jumping or whateverthefuck. That one can put oneself in danger in no way suggests that one has a right to put oneself in danger, nor does it suggest that all means of putting oneself in danger can, will, or should be outlawed.
It WILL be used an an excuse for the government to intervene in private choice.
Good. Some things should, and do, trump private choice.
You FORCING me to
You're not being forced to do anything. Citizens agree to pay taxes, obey the law, and so forth by remaining part of the community. That's the social contract. You've got it completely bass-ackwards. You can either agitate to get the rules changed or you can leave.
If your state chooses to ban the sales of processed foods containing more than a certain threshold of transfats or high-fructose corn syrup, and you don't like it, you can move. If your state chooses to pass a helmet law and you don't like it, you can move.
Nobody's forcing you to do a goddamn thing.
Explaining how the word works to libertarians is like teaching dogs how to count. I don't know why I bother.
Australia has universal health care. You and your fellow countrymen pay for it. They should have the right to reduce their liability by requiring you to mitigate your risk of injury. This is pretty basic and uncontroversial, and at the root of much legislation.
You do not have the right to be in danger. That's asinine.
Except it isn't. This has been explained to you countles times, and there's ample evidence in this thread and elsewhere. Your interpretation of how the world works is an irrelevant fantasy.
When people put things on the web it is made to be seen by all, unless the take steps to prevent it.
It is unsurprising that your knowledge of copyright law is fucking retarded, too. Putting stuff on the web does not place it in the public domain by default, you moron.
They host torrents to illegal material, they know so and refuse to do something about it. That makes them culpable.
Except, of course, that doing so is not a crime in Sweden. That it is a crime in the US is absolutely irrelevant.
I doubt there are arguments to be made that Googles cache is illegal
Copyrighted content being cached and served directly without permission of the copyright holders? Strictly illegal under US law. And unlike TPB, Google is in the US and is therefore subject to US law.
I want accountability from recruiters. More than half of the postings on any given site are by recruiters or agencies, and my bet is that most of thir postings are merely meant to suck up resumes; the jobs don't actually exist. I want to see a feedback system or the like in place, whereby if recruiters aren't actually filling the jobs they list, they don't get to post jobs anymore on that site.
Yeah, I'm getting awfully tired of applying for positions for which I am absolutely perfect and not even getting an interview, even when I follow up with the recruiter. Seriously; there was an ad a few months ago that nobody else in the province could have had qualifications as perfect as I do, the listing was that narrow. Nada.
If these recruiters are going to waste my time and the time of others, I want their ability to do business terminated.
yet you accept that life came from death without any evidence.
Moron. That's abiogenesis. We have no scientific theories to explain the origin of life. Evolution is not about the origin of life, no matter how much you fundie idiots want to conflate the two.
Ask an atheist scientist how life originated, and he'll tell you "We don't know." Ask a fundie moron and he'll say "Goddidit." You're the one drawing a conclusion without evidence, not th scientist.
As per previously mentioned citations, Craiglist does not act as a publisher (vis: the roommates.com suit). They act as a censor, not an editor, and this is an important distinction.
In a perfect world, anyone would be able to post anything they liked, but the penalty for posting something discriminatory would be deletion of the post, blocking of the IP address, and being visited by a hired goon and cockpunched until sterile.
P.S.: No, they don't. They reflect only a lack of care when taking 30 seconds to post a message to a blog. Besides, no editor edits his own work.
Your ability to judge my state of mind -- calm, agitated or otherwise -- is uncanny. James Randi has offered a million dollars to anyone who can show evidence that they have psychic gifts. Give him a call.
our inability to keep even a modest calm in a slight disagreement on an internet message board gives you away. You're not an editor with 20 years of experience. You're an angry little kid.
Whatever you want to believe, Chuckles. I didn't throw the first punch and have defended my posts honestly, calmly and personally, without hiding behind the shroud of anonymity. My name and resume are only two clicks away.
Forgive me if I don't take your unsupported (and blatantly false) accusations seriously.
Thank you for pointing out my typos. While I suspect that you expect perfection from others, I have accepted that fact that I am not perfect. I would, however, suggest that if you're going to tell me how to spell "belligerence", that you should spell it correctly when you do so. I also made a typo on "ignorance". These are typos, not errors due to lack of ability.
Lastly, I know what hyperbole is. I'm pretty sure that you don't.
Yes, I'm a jerk. This is not relevant. No, I don't write badly, but thanks for the chuckle.
It's called hyperbole. I get the fact that you have difficulty with rhetorical constructs common among people who are old enough to have grown a man's hair, but igorance is no excuse for beliigerence to one's betters.
I supported my assertions, and I know what I'm talking about. I sold my first feature article more than twenty years ago. I have years of professional editing experience. You're some punk without a clue and with an axe to grind -- probably a friend of the kid in question. If you can't take it, don't dish it out.
The linked article is badly written. I have more than adequately explained why. You are more than welcome to disagree. You'd be wrong (and are wrong), of course, but that's your issue, not mine.
Already answered the "encapsulates" bit elsewhere. No, you're wrong. And no matter how you slice it, the "remit" sentence is poorly constructed at best and nonsensical at worst.
If you want to criticise my criticism, at least have the ability to do so. Mere unsupported assertion isn't going to cut it, particularly when you haven't got clue #1 as to what you're talking about.
Slashdot Mirror
Which isn't saying much.
I'm going to voice the unpopular opinion: Gail Simone not a very good writer, neither of fiction or bloggy opinion pieces. Her work is overly-fannish, similiar to what we see in Peter David's or Mark Waid's work, but without the character development of David or the skilful plot unification that Waid is known for. IMHO, what sets Simone's work apart from other comics writers is its astounding degree of 'fanservice'. Fans want to see X beat up Y? So does Simone. Fans want to see fan-favourite characters A, B and C in a team? So does Simone. Whether it makes sense from a plot perspective or whether there's any kind of character development that grows from those stories is secondary -- and usually non-existent.
Simone also writes in too many 'Mary Sue' characters. Birds of Prey's Misfit. Tranquility's Sheriff Thomasina. And on and on and on.
Tranquility had a great high concept, but has failed terribly in its execution. The best large-cast stories are able to develop the characters of the cast. The worst focus on one or two and leave the rest as cardboard cutouts. The very worst can't even succeed with one or two. And then there's Tranquility, with a cast of cardboard characters, none of whom the audience should care about, inhabiting a virtually incomprehensible story. Don't get me wrong: the idea was great, but someone else should have written it.
So far, Simone's WW arc has had several retcons: WW's lasso can do *what*? Captain Nazi's mother was a what? And some of the plot points are just asinine; Diana agrees to serve some Hawaiian god? Talking gorillas in her apartment? More unnecessary bloodshed directed against women, ironically from a writer who has railed about such violence for years?
As with so many other fanservice writers before her, fans mistake her ability to press the right buttons in the fannish pleasure centre for good writing.
Except, of course, that "creationist" does not equal "Christian". Talk.origins exposes *all* creationist pseudoscience, from *all* sources.
Let's be very aggressive and assume that hard drives continue doubling in capacity every 2 years for the next decade
That's not very aggressive; that is conservative. Based on price-per-byte, we've been seeing a doubling every 14 months since 1990.
A 2.56 TB iPod would be quite impressive, but wouldn't even hold every season of The Simpsons
4 DVDs per season at 4.7 GB per disc. Let's assume that the show will still be on air in a decade or so and that there will be 30 seasons to store on your iPod. That's 564 GB.
Historically and mathematically your claims don't add up, either.
That data was collected nearly seven years ago, and there is wide criticism of the poll's methodologies.
A better way to back up his assertion would be to count the number of genre game stores in North America. That number peaked in 1996.
Within the confines of existing law, I do.
No, you don't. The state will not defend your privilege to drive. You have the right to travel, but not the right to use any specific means of transportation.
Maybe I'm leaning my premise on funky semantics, but I'm not entirely sure I'm wrong.
You are, and you are. While the Bill of Rights in the US and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada (as two examples) state that the rights they enumerate are not the only rights its citizens have, I guarantee you that you do not have any rights that have not been specifically codified in law, either by legislation or judicial ruling.
Really, this isn't rocket science.
If something is not illegal, I therefore have the legal "right" to do it.
By no means. A right is a privilege protected by the state. There are countless legal activities in which you don't have a right to partake. You don't have a right to drive a car, for example. In many commonwealth countries, one does not have a right to vote or to be married (those are considered to be franchises as opposed to rights).
That doesn't follow logically. If the state wanted to ban extreme sports, they could. You don't have a right to skate a vert pipe or go BASE jumping or whateverthefuck. That one can put oneself in danger in no way suggests that one has a right to put oneself in danger, nor does it suggest that all means of putting oneself in danger can, will, or should be outlawed.
It WILL be used an an excuse for the government to intervene in private choice.
Good. Some things should, and do, trump private choice.
You FORCING me to
You're not being forced to do anything. Citizens agree to pay taxes, obey the law, and so forth by remaining part of the community. That's the social contract. You've got it completely bass-ackwards. You can either agitate to get the rules changed or you can leave.
If your state chooses to ban the sales of processed foods containing more than a certain threshold of transfats or high-fructose corn syrup, and you don't like it, you can move. If your state chooses to pass a helmet law and you don't like it, you can move.
Nobody's forcing you to do a goddamn thing.
Explaining how the word works to libertarians is like teaching dogs how to count. I don't know why I bother.
Australia has universal health care. You and your fellow countrymen pay for it. They should have the right to reduce their liability by requiring you to mitigate your risk of injury. This is pretty basic and uncontroversial, and at the root of much legislation.
You do not have the right to be in danger. That's asinine.
Except it is (just wait and see)
Except it isn't. This has been explained to you countles times, and there's ample evidence in this thread and elsewhere. Your interpretation of how the world works is an irrelevant fantasy.
When people put things on the web it is made to be seen by all, unless the take steps to prevent it.
It is unsurprising that your knowledge of copyright law is fucking retarded, too. Putting stuff on the web does not place it in the public domain by default, you moron.
They host torrents to illegal material, they know so and refuse to do something about it. That makes them culpable.
Except, of course, that doing so is not a crime in Sweden. That it is a crime in the US is absolutely irrelevant.
I doubt there are arguments to be made that Googles cache is illegal
Copyrighted content being cached and served directly without permission of the copyright holders? Strictly illegal under US law. And unlike TPB, Google is in the US and is therefore subject to US law.
Sounds like Runescape, which is hardly much of a game anyway.
I want accountability from recruiters. More than half of the postings on any given site are by recruiters or agencies, and my bet is that most of thir postings are merely meant to suck up resumes; the jobs don't actually exist. I want to see a feedback system or the like in place, whereby if recruiters aren't actually filling the jobs they list, they don't get to post jobs anymore on that site.
Yeah, I'm getting awfully tired of applying for positions for which I am absolutely perfect and not even getting an interview, even when I follow up with the recruiter. Seriously; there was an ad a few months ago that nobody else in the province could have had qualifications as perfect as I do, the listing was that narrow. Nada.
If these recruiters are going to waste my time and the time of others, I want their ability to do business terminated.
and in every instance of the study, those who were prayed for did significantly better as far as their recovery went.
Lie. A common lie, but a lie nonetheless.
yet you accept that life came from death without any evidence.
Moron. That's abiogenesis. We have no scientific theories to explain the origin of life. Evolution is not about the origin of life, no matter how much you fundie idiots want to conflate the two.
Ask an atheist scientist how life originated, and he'll tell you "We don't know." Ask a fundie moron and he'll say "Goddidit." You're the one drawing a conclusion without evidence, not th scientist.
The roomates.com suit is quite different - as it covers a very different mechanism than Craigslist publishing system.
No, it isn't, and it is not a 'publishing system'.
If one can censor, then one is editing - it's a distinctio without a difference.
Incorrect, and it is an important and salient difference.
Whatever. You can believe what you like. You're wrong, and your incorrect beliefs will have no bearing on how the world actually works.
As per previously mentioned citations, Craiglist does not act as a publisher (vis: the roommates.com suit). They act as a censor, not an editor, and this is an important distinction.
In a perfect world, anyone would be able to post anything they liked, but the penalty for posting something discriminatory would be deletion of the post, blocking of the IP address, and being visited by a hired goon and cockpunched until sterile.
P.S.: No, they don't. They reflect only a lack of care when taking 30 seconds to post a message to a blog. Besides, no editor edits his own work.
Your ability to judge my state of mind -- calm, agitated or otherwise -- is uncanny. James Randi has offered a million dollars to anyone who can show evidence that they have psychic gifts. Give him a call.
And feel free to keep coming back for more.
seems ok to me.
Only because you're not too bright.
Please read...
Please kiss my ass.
our inability to keep even a modest calm in a slight disagreement on an internet message board gives you away. You're not an editor with 20 years of experience. You're an angry little kid.
Whatever you want to believe, Chuckles. I didn't throw the first punch and have defended my posts honestly, calmly and personally, without hiding behind the shroud of anonymity. My name and resume are only two clicks away.
Forgive me if I don't take your unsupported (and blatantly false) accusations seriously.
Hi there!
Thank you for pointing out my typos. While I suspect that you expect perfection from others, I have accepted that fact that I am not perfect. I would, however, suggest that if you're going to tell me how to spell "belligerence", that you should spell it correctly when you do so. I also made a typo on "ignorance". These are typos, not errors due to lack of ability.
Lastly, I know what hyperbole is. I'm pretty sure that you don't.
Yes, I'm a jerk. This is not relevant. No, I don't write badly, but thanks for the chuckle.
It's called hyperbole. I get the fact that you have difficulty with rhetorical constructs common among people who are old enough to have grown a man's hair, but igorance is no excuse for beliigerence to one's betters.
Whether the world needs a grammar checker is less than irrelevant. The kid in question does.
What you need is a pair of balls and two functioning brain cells.
I supported my assertions, and I know what I'm talking about. I sold my first feature article more than twenty years ago. I have years of professional editing experience. You're some punk without a clue and with an axe to grind -- probably a friend of the kid in question. If you can't take it, don't dish it out.
The linked article is badly written. I have more than adequately explained why. You are more than welcome to disagree. You'd be wrong (and are wrong), of course, but that's your issue, not mine.
Already answered the "encapsulates" bit elsewhere. No, you're wrong. And no matter how you slice it, the "remit" sentence is poorly constructed at best and nonsensical at worst.
If you want to criticise my criticism, at least have the ability to do so. Mere unsupported assertion isn't going to cut it, particularly when you haven't got clue #1 as to what you're talking about.