> Look at Minas Tirith, for example. The books describe the gardens, the busy roads, everything. The movie has a city surrounded by empty boring plains.
While I agree that it was more spartan than one would expect, the only difference I'd find rational is that of having more houses and fields, but not much more traffic. Remember that the parts of the movie that took place around Minas Tirith were in the days directly preceding the fall of Osgiliath and the assault on Minas Tirith itself, so it's reasonable to assume that the inhabitants of the surrounding lands would have moved into the walls for safety by the time we as viewers arrived.
Remember, the books mentioned a lot of stuff that wasn't part of the present story, and some of what was present-day was left out of the movie for time reasons. While I agree that the terrain was plainer than it could have been, I'm not quite as comfortable saying it was plainer than is should have been.
> Respecting Tattooine, the sense I got from the trilogy was that the whole point of hiding Luke (and the droids) on Tattooine was that that it was so remote and insignificant that Vader would never find him.
Once his mother died, what reason would Vader have for returning to Tattooine? I'd think that it would be a great place to hide, given that if I were Anakin, I'd have exactly zero desire to go back there.
> Would Leiah really try to hide the droids on Vader's homeworld?
Nobody except Obi-Wan knew that Tattooine was Vader's home world, and Leia was going to Tattooine to find Obi-Wan Kenobi and bring him to Alderaan, not stash droids. She did that when her ship fell under attack and she had to get the Death Star plans away from Vader.
> Naboo (understandably) doesn't appear in the wider universe (at least as far as I know, I've only read novels from after ROTJ), and it seems strange to introduce what seems like a major player which was never mentioned in the trilogy and seldom (if ever) in the novels.
Naboo wasn't all that important in terms of the story as a whole, it was just that Queen Amidala happened to be the (sitting at the start of episode 1) chancellor's staunchest supporter, and so Palpatine's effort to become chancellor centered around getting Amidala to withdraw her support (which she did).
> I think that's where the Lord of the rings films fell down: there was no universe like in the books, they only ever went to the places that had something important to do with the script. There were no farmlands, no houses and villages, hardly any roads, it was as if the entire middle-earth consisted of a bunch of fortresses connected by plains.
By the time of the Second Ring War, that's really all there was left. The fall of the nation of men (Numenor) had left behind a bunch of disjointed and bickering factions (of which Rohan and Gondor were the most pivotal in the war, but which included places like Angmar which simply didn't figure strongly in the war due to geography). The whole reason for the rise of Sauron's power was the fracturing of the nation of men when Isildur was corrupted by the Ring, and the resultant abandoning of ties with the other races. By the time Bilbo recovered the Ring, Middle Earth was compartmentalized into little more than fortresses connected by plains (or mountains), and the reuniting of the peoples of Middle Earth by the king of Gondor (that being Aragorn) was integral to the story.
> So, about the "sense of grandeur" - couldn't agree more, with regards to the OT. I couldn't say that the prequels lacked a "grand design", but I could say that it was too "forced".
I don't know why... lazyness to come up with not-so-straightforward developements, need to "cram in" as much possible, desire to explain everything that wasn't explained in the OT (when I say "midichloreans", I guess many *will* cringe and cover their ears going "la-la-la-la").
You know, some things SHOULD remain unexplained, or at least not so "thoroughly" explained.
While I don't harbor any feeling that he's likely to do this, I thought that the idea of midichloreans was a good one, in the idea of the intelligencia "overexplaining" the world. In the Middle Ages, the concept that the world was built of four elements was done to death, and grandiose and very "intelligent" explanations were derived for observation that fit this concept, but turned out entirely wrong when the underlying premise fell to pieces. For example, scientists thought that drilling a cannon released the fire element from the metal, and this is why it heated up. It was perfectly sensible for the premise, and completely wrong. In the same way, I always wanted midichloreans to be exposed as the "right answer given the wrong premise" in episode three, wherein Obi-Wan discovers that the vast knowledge of the Jedi had been based on some mistaken assumptions, driving him "back to the drawing board" and off to Tatooine to reflect and learn again.
It'd be a great subplot, but I'm not betting the moisture farm on it.
> Also, for an "evil genius" that Sidious/Palpatine is supposed to be, I guess he could have worked out a better plan than "create sympathy for me by placing homeworld under wrongfull siege so I can then use some obedient army I just created to destroy the obedient armies of my probably not so obedient puppets so I can rule the galaxy, while trying to corrupt a young but powerful twerp I just met mid-plan by sacrificing some of my more experienced underlings" scenario.
Not fair. Even if the premise is so strongly based on Hitler's rise that I had trouble with some of the actors not speaking German, Palpatine's plan was more than what you describe. The idea behind it was that he wanted to be chancellor of the Senate. To that end, he engineered a blockade of Naboo, the queen of which was the current chancellor's strongest supporter. She went to the Senate (and to him) for help that he was unable to provide, due to Palpatine's machinations with the trade guilds. By getting her to turn against him and call for a vote of no confidence, he was able to drive out the sitting chancellor at a time when he was a literal shoo-in for the seat. The fall of Darth Maul was unintended, and the discovery of Anakin Skywalker was marked by both Palpatine and by Qui-Gon Jinn, because the force was so strong with him that both sides took notice and began courting him.
Episode two finds this plan well underway, with the discovery that the Senate and chancellor have commissioned a clone army "for the defense of the Republic" against forces that can see Palpatine's power grab. Count Dooku and his cohorts are made out to be rebels, and even though they're the bad guys they realize that Palpatine's consolidation of power is a bad thing. In return, he uses the clone army (notice how much like the stormtroopers we know and love they are) to beat down the insurgents. Meanwhile, he passes resolutions that give him ever more power to do stuff without seeking Senate approval, and uses the insurgents as his reason.
> What I would have done, which would have caused much whining, is make force sensitivity a random thing. At 100 days, the force sensitivity of the character is revealed (a random chance), and the player is given the choice of becoming a jedi (if the amount of sensitivity is high enough).
This would drive those who do this sort of farming for a living to make LOTS of characters, and then let them stew for 100 days. The ones that come force-sensitive would then be sold off for cash. Soon, there'd be a lot of Jedi running around. Your solution doesn't solve the problem of gaming the system by brute force.
> That way, you won't have so many jedi, and only the ones who are dedicated to the game have a chance of becoming one.
There'd also be one heck of an attrition problem after 100 days, as folks who worked so hard found that they'd never be Jedi and quit for other MMORPGs. In a gaming model where retaining customers for years is done regularly, you'd be cutting off a good part of your customer base that way.
> The point is that not everyone in the SW world was a jedi, or even had a chance of becoming one. They probably all would have loved to be one, but it just wasn't the reality of the situation. As for me? I'd much rather have been Han.
So, instead of being one in a million that can become a Jedi, you'd rather be the one in a million that parlayed being a smuggler into success instead of death? For every Han Solo or Lando Calrissian, there were planets full of Greedos.
The point of the game is entertainment. People don't want to pay money to join a world where they're unimportant. They want to be heroes, and the game should cater to that by making the unimportant people NPCs so players can be the movers and shakers of the world. If my desire is to be a Jedi, and I only have a small, random chance to be a Jedi, why would I bother? There are a dozen other games that will let me slay the dragon or save the world if I can't do it in this one.
> Guilds are the sux0r ! Damnit, it's supposed to be a game, not work.
Not fair, but also not false. On one side, there are plenty of guilds that don't suck like this, in virtually every game and MUD out there. If any of my guild officers in EQ yelled at me for closing guild chat, they'd find themselves smaller by one player before they could ask if I was AFK. The flip side is that I can't imagine any of my guild officers ever doing this, so I've never been inclined to hide from guildmates when I'm logged in.
On the other, it'd be nice to have a game that's as open-ended as a lot of the MMORPGs but isn't massively online, so you can have the world to yourself (or a small group) if you like. It'd be a welcome change from having a world full of people, only a small fraction of which you really want to interact with.
That said, you're right on the mark that it's a game. When it stops being fun to play, I'll drop my account with no regrets.
> You keep saying diabetes like it's something that impairs driving. I don't think you actually know what it is. It's a disease where your body cannot create glucose effectively. One takes insulin every day, and is normal. Driving is more likely impaired by having a common cold than it is by having diabetes.
A point of note is that diabetics can have an insulin imbalance in the course of a normal day and suffer from insulin shock, which can cause blackouts. One cannot get a pilot's license when one is diabetic because of this. So, driving is more likely to be impaired in a severe way by diabetes than by a cold.
> The problem as you seem to acknowledge is that not everyone will leave you alone as you wish. The fact that you were mugged proves this. Therefore you must have some way to back up your wishes, with force if necessary.
This is my main problem with universal gun posession. Sure, you need some way to back up your wishes in some cases, but the force you describe is deadly force. More below.
> Walking around disarmed leads to the very problem you encountered. Anyone who is eitehr physically stronger, can suprise you, or simply disregards anti-gun laws can overpower you with force, and you have little recourse. If someone is willing to mug you, do you believe they care they are breaking the law? Do you think that they would respect the anti-gun laws either? Probably not.
Having a gun doesn't significantly change this equation. Someone who catches me by surprise isn't going to have much to worry about in terms of my having a gun or not. Whether they have a gun or not is simply not an issue when I can't reasonably deploy my gun against them. In a society where everyone is armed, a mugger would simply change tactics, from "give me your wallet" to hitting me over the head with a board and rifling my pockets (and stealing my gun in the process). The thought that others would "get involved" doesn't recognize that most muggings don't take place in public view. Only stupid muggers work in open view. And for the "quick draw" crowd, remember that only stupid muggers work alone.
None of this really addresses the main problem, though, which is the concept of "have it, use it". By definition, having a gun makes you more likely to use it. Drawing a gun in most situations significantly increases your likelihood of death or injury, as it also increases the likelihood of death or injury for everyone around you. To give you a simple example, when someone says, "give me your wallet" and you have a gun, you're likely to go for the gun. If you don't have it, you're likely to go for the wallet. Guess which one is more likely to end with you alive and healthy? Sure, it's nice to dole out justice on the spot, but given the choice between giving up my dignity and my wallet or getting into a firefight in the street, I'd have to say that the wallet is well lost.
In a shooting class I took, we addressed what was referred to as "advanced situational awareness" training. Basically, we'd go to the outdoor range, and we'd be presented with situations to help us with understanding the use of the firearm. One of the situations was the classic holdup in a convenience store. For the first run, we were to address only our personal safety and nothing else. In the second pass, we were to address "neutralizing the assailant using as few shots as possible". In both cases, there was an assailant at the counter, a clerk, three patrons and the testee, at the door.
In the first situation (remember, personal safety above all), when the situation "started", I left by the door. Only one other person in twelve did the same. The other ten drew their guns and opened fire. I leave you to the conclusions.
On the second run, in the same situation, nine people expended three or more bullets. One guy emptied his clip and winged one of the other patrons (the target cutouts did move, so he wasn't just an awful shot, but still, 14 shots?!?). The one woman who scored with a single shot hit the assailant in the neck. The bad spot is that the bullet she fired continued on and hit the clerk in the chin. Most people used two shots, some used three and seven people hit bystanders.
I took one step up to the clerk, pressed his gun to the counter with one hand and put my weapon against his neck, and said "freeze". No shots, and the threat was controlled. If he had been real, and moved, I could easily have shot him fatally with a downward shot that didn't risk hitting anyone else.
This is my problem with firearms. People with guns generally grab them when the s
> The reason some drugs are illegal is for control. Pot became illegal as a way to control the Mexican Immigrant population in the southwest. Cocaine became illegal as a way to control immigrants from South America. Opium became illegal as a way to control the Asian immigrant population.
Way too simple. You're forgetting the influence of the Puritan ethical system in the U.S. since the first European settlers came over. Just because drugs tended toward being used by foreigners is not so revealing as the fact that the U.S. criminalized alcohol for a while, too. There has always been a "drugs=hedonism" and "hedonism=bad" ethical framework in the U.S. and the War on Drugs reflects that. Even today, taxes on alcohol, cigarettes and gambling are referred to as "sin taxes".
So, it is about control, but not just controlling minorities.
> I'm not advocating stealing, but lets put aside the idea that "we all pay for shoplifting". We don't. It costs the store money. Period.
If the drive's being stolen at that rate, the store may choose not to carry it at all. They'll never offer a rebate on it, they'll never put it on sale for less than US$100, and they'll put up a big hassle if someone tries to return one. There are a thousand ways to pass on the cost of a high-theft item, from determining pricing to reducing sales. High volumes of theft can (and do, in the real world) affect pricing.
Remember, just because the before price is $100 doesn't mean you can get it anywhere for that price. If Fry's can sell it for $100 and the other stores can't afford to sell for less than $120, then Fry's can mark it up to $119 and still get most of the sales.
Mommy and Daddy aren't always as dumb as you make it out.
> You did commit a crime: trespassing. You were granted permission to enter the property under condition of following certain rules and guidelines thereof. Permission was not granted to do what you did.
You're very wrong. If he was a Costco member, then he could not possibly be charged for trespassing. However, the rule he did violate, non-lawyer-being-person, is violation of contract, for which they can revoke his membership.
If he returns after being asked to retire from the premises (and having his membership revoked), then he can be charged with trespassing, but there's no legal standing to charge a current member with trespassing. You lose.
I agree that protesting the showing of ID at a membership club is not a good idea. That said, the fact that protesting makes the line back up is not a valid excuse for telling him not to protest. If that were the case, any protest for anything at all could be shorted via the "invconvenience to others" method, and that margnializes the protester. "Don't rock the boat" isn't in itself a valid reason not to protest.
Um, am I the only one who sees this as silly? If you use a third party application to remove the Software, you violate the EULA, which has the effect of...
Please get a grip on yourself. You've got way too much anger and not anywhere near enough sense. If you think you're acting rationally, consider a few cases and tell me what that'd get you.
Firstly, this discussion pertains to notifications of the possibility of child porn. If I called your ISP and told them you were hosting CP, and you lived in Australia, they'd have to pass that information on to the police. Whether you actually did it is a matter for the police to decide, so toss yourself on the fire if you feel that an accusation (which is what the article is about, by the way) is enough.
Next, take note that if you choose to execute such punishment only on convicted offenders, that there are a number of cases where folks have been convicted (and in one case, sentenced to death) for sexually abusing a child, only to have later evidence exonerate them. If you performed such hellacious torture on someone who turns out to have been innocent, you can't simply let them out of their grave, eh?
Lastly, if you only choose to torture those who are unquestionably guilty, then there's a fifteen year old girl who was convicted of posession and distribution of child porn for taking videos of herself masturbating and giving them to a classmate. There's no question of her guilt, and she's now a registered sex offender, so you'll have to consider lighting her up until she begs you to let her die.
Lastly, you're kidding yourself if you think that fear of getting caught will reduce the number of child sex abuse cases. Sexual urges tend to override virtually everything else, including fear of retribution.
In short, shut up. You sound like a pissed-off ten year old. It's obvious that you view the world through a haze of red, and frankly I'd consider you more dangerous than most because you have actually attached your morality to this badly damaged view of justice, so you'd likely be uncorrectable. I feel for your "precious angel", who may never learn to handle anger properly with you around.
> There are some tremendous actors out there in theater, in film, that you've never heard of. I can name 50 people I've worked with who are more talented than all but the very upper echelon of Hollywood types. I know directors who can do REALLY amazing things, and writers who can write gripping dialogue. And none of them make it.
This is because success in any field of endeavor requires some parcel of luck, and the entertainment industry is no different. On top of that, the entertainment industry is awash in talent, and so you need to be really good and really lucky to get to the big leagues.
> When is the last time you went looking for an independent film, rather than seeing the latest well-marketed film from MGM, Mirimax, or Disney? Sure, there are occasional exceptions, but even those turn on one really catchy, marketable idea
I do this constantly, myself. There's something that this has shown me, and that is quite simply that (much like big studio productions) most independent movies suck. I've seen hundreds of indies in the last few years, and even going only for films that have gotten some good word of mouth and what sounds interesting I've found that a lot of them are not the greatest. The problem is that, much like the big studio movies, it takes a lot of wading through crap to get to the stuff that's really good, and the big productions have the advantage of getting a lot more press, good or bad. It's easier to tell if I'll like a Miramax film because I can find a dozen reviews for it, where some independents only turn up one review done by a fawning college girl who wouldn't pan the film if you put a gun to her head, even though fifteen minutes of it are out of focus.
> The side of the road is littered with better shows than most of the crap that's on your TV in primetime. You want to do something about it? SUPPORT THE INDEPENDENTS. Watch TV shows that TV giude doesn't put on the covers. See what's on networks that aren't top of the line ("Pilot Season" on Treo was tremendous). Do your own research on what's good instead of checking out what you see in the paper as "the thing to see".
This is a great thought, but I have little enough time to watch any television, much less sit through dozens of shows hoping to find gold in the stream. The biggest problem with your suggestion is that you don't seem willing to admit that most of the shows you'll find on TV, top-of-the-line or not, are not worth the time to watch. Frankly, I'd love to support the independents, but there are simply not enough hours in the day to give everyone a fair shot. I do my own research, but if part of that is checking the paper to see what's playing, then you shouldn't simply decide that's wrong.
Doug Stanhope sounds like an asshole, but notwithstanding that, the general public has overwhelmingly voted to the effect that telling someone to go elsewhere for a job if they don't like cigarette smoke is not acceptable. This isn't about a workplace being dangerous because it needs to be to get the job done. The number of restaurants and bars that had to close their doors due to smoking bans has been vanishingly small, so the argument that pub owners will be driven out on the street in droves by the ban is simply not true.
When discussions about smoking in restaurants and bars comes up, there's always a forgotten group of people involved, and the reason for the ban is primarily them: employees. The waitstaff in a restaurant have to deal with the smoke if smoking is allowed, and it's not considered acceptable to tell them simply to find work elsewhere if they don't like it. By the logic of "go elsewhere", your office manager could allow smoking in your office and tell you to go find a job somewhere else if you didn't like it. Since that was made illegal, the same rule applies to restaurant and bar owners.
Don't worry about the cost, since as you can see, not fixing the problem can lead to continuing problems that will be nothing but a legal hassle. Hire a Massachusetts attorney who specializes in tax law. What this will get you is a laywer who knows who to talk to on the phone at the Mass. Dept. of Taxation so that this problem goes away and your SO gets her money back (minus legal fees).
Tax offices are used to dealing with deadbeats, and there's no law saying they can't drop the hammer on anyone they choose, just to make their jobs easier. That said, virtually everyone in a civil service job will back down when they're confronted by someone who knows the game and plays it for a living (like an attorney) because they know that a lawyer isn't going to cave in to vague threats and also probably plays golf with their boss's boss.
People hate scum-sucking lawyers because they're good at getting what their clients want. It's your turn to be on the winning side of that, considering how airtight your case is.
> How long before every kid in Florida gets an injunction on their parents from installing any monitoring software?
Such an injunction is powerless. A parent is not required by any law to allow a child access to or use of a computer. The parent needs only state that he told the child that use of the computer is contingent on allowing monitoring. Notification and consent to monitoring eliminates the ability of injunction.
> Yeah, because by the "kids have no privacy" argument, a father could require his 16-year-old daughter to allow him into her room when she's getting dressed. I think we'd all agree that was unreasonable.
Unreasonable but not illegal due to privacy issues. If a father did this to his daughter, he'd likely face an investigation pursuant to incest charges, but he wouldn't face any charges based on violation of privacy.
> My point was that claiming that a lesser market to sell your product is not the same as taking money. Not anything ethical.
Not anything relevant, either, then. I never made that claim. You turned my argument to that, and I pointed out that you were incorrect to do that. The "taking" wasn't money, it was the taking of opportunity to earn money, which you seem not to value and seem to equate with money. I made neither of these comparisons.
> But following that logic, if tommorrow people stopped buying cars/dvds, they are taking money from you.
That's not a good analogy. The market disappearing due to a drop in demand across the market is not the same as someone deliberately saturating a market so that demand drops off. In the saturation case, if you didn't copy my cars, I'd be able to sell them. In the demand shift, if you didn't copy my cars, I still couldn't sell them. The wrong happens when your action directly and negatively impacts my ability to sell, where the absence of your copying would not result in negative impact (and remember that we're discussing replication, not direct competition, which is on an entirely different level of ethics).
> Didn't we put a man on the moon using primarily slide rules?
Nope. In fact, miniaturizing a computer by making it solid state was one of the problems that had to be solved for the Apollo missions. Sure, their computer was slow and specialized by our standards, but they could not have done a lot of the calculating work with slide rules with enough speed to be useful.
> Name a popular movie that didn't make piles of money. Go ahead, I'm waiting.
Um, the term "popular" is used to describe movies that turn a big profit due to ticket sales, so that's like saying "name a profitable movie that wasn't profitable". Still, that's not relevant to the point the OP made. He said:
Movies are making HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS! I said I buy the DVD. The movie companies tend to break even in theaters and make all their profit from DVDs.
This simply isn't true. There are very, very few films that make "hundreds of millions", and movies don't "tend to break even" in the box office. They tend to do very well, or very badly, but rare is the film that lands very near its production costs in box office receipts.
> That's not to say that there aren't plenty of movies out there that do lose piles of money. Probably because those movies suck. Just because a movie studio invests millions in a movie does not mean they are entitled to a profit.
Whether the movie sucks or not isn't the issue here. His implication that movies break even in the box office is at issue. "Gigli" didn't break even at the box office, and it didn't sell well in the aftermarket either. "Titanic" did very well in both venues.
Remember, my original post was entitled "Point of Note" and was only intended to address the error in his assumptions about profits in movies. Don't overextend it.
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> Look at Minas Tirith, for example. The books describe the gardens, the busy roads, everything. The movie has a city surrounded by empty boring plains.
While I agree that it was more spartan than one would expect, the only difference I'd find rational is that of having more houses and fields, but not much more traffic. Remember that the parts of the movie that took place around Minas Tirith were in the days directly preceding the fall of Osgiliath and the assault on Minas Tirith itself, so it's reasonable to assume that the inhabitants of the surrounding lands would have moved into the walls for safety by the time we as viewers arrived.
Remember, the books mentioned a lot of stuff that wasn't part of the present story, and some of what was present-day was left out of the movie for time reasons. While I agree that the terrain was plainer than it could have been, I'm not quite as comfortable saying it was plainer than is should have been.
Virg
> Respecting Tattooine, the sense I got from the trilogy was that the whole point of hiding Luke (and the droids) on Tattooine was that that it was so remote and insignificant that Vader would never find him.
Once his mother died, what reason would Vader have for returning to Tattooine? I'd think that it would be a great place to hide, given that if I were Anakin, I'd have exactly zero desire to go back there.
> Would Leiah really try to hide the droids on Vader's homeworld?
Nobody except Obi-Wan knew that Tattooine was Vader's home world, and Leia was going to Tattooine to find Obi-Wan Kenobi and bring him to Alderaan, not stash droids. She did that when her ship fell under attack and she had to get the Death Star plans away from Vader.
> Naboo (understandably) doesn't appear in the wider universe (at least as far as I know, I've only read novels from after ROTJ), and it seems strange to introduce what seems like a major player which was never mentioned in the trilogy and seldom (if ever) in the novels.
Naboo wasn't all that important in terms of the story as a whole, it was just that Queen Amidala happened to be the (sitting at the start of episode 1) chancellor's staunchest supporter, and so Palpatine's effort to become chancellor centered around getting Amidala to withdraw her support (which she did).
Virg
> I think that's where the Lord of the rings films fell down: there was no universe like in the books, they only ever went to the places that had something important to do with the script. There were no farmlands, no houses and villages, hardly any roads, it was as if the entire middle-earth consisted of a bunch of fortresses connected by plains.
By the time of the Second Ring War, that's really all there was left. The fall of the nation of men (Numenor) had left behind a bunch of disjointed and bickering factions (of which Rohan and Gondor were the most pivotal in the war, but which included places like Angmar which simply didn't figure strongly in the war due to geography). The whole reason for the rise of Sauron's power was the fracturing of the nation of men when Isildur was corrupted by the Ring, and the resultant abandoning of ties with the other races. By the time Bilbo recovered the Ring, Middle Earth was compartmentalized into little more than fortresses connected by plains (or mountains), and the reuniting of the peoples of Middle Earth by the king of Gondor (that being Aragorn) was integral to the story.
Virg
> So, about the "sense of grandeur" - couldn't agree more, with regards to the OT. I couldn't say that the prequels lacked a "grand design", but I could say that it was too "forced". I don't know why... lazyness to come up with not-so-straightforward developements, need to "cram in" as much possible, desire to explain everything that wasn't explained in the OT (when I say "midichloreans", I guess many *will* cringe and cover their ears going "la-la-la-la"). You know, some things SHOULD remain unexplained, or at least not so "thoroughly" explained.
While I don't harbor any feeling that he's likely to do this, I thought that the idea of midichloreans was a good one, in the idea of the intelligencia "overexplaining" the world. In the Middle Ages, the concept that the world was built of four elements was done to death, and grandiose and very "intelligent" explanations were derived for observation that fit this concept, but turned out entirely wrong when the underlying premise fell to pieces. For example, scientists thought that drilling a cannon released the fire element from the metal, and this is why it heated up. It was perfectly sensible for the premise, and completely wrong. In the same way, I always wanted midichloreans to be exposed as the "right answer given the wrong premise" in episode three, wherein Obi-Wan discovers that the vast knowledge of the Jedi had been based on some mistaken assumptions, driving him "back to the drawing board" and off to Tatooine to reflect and learn again.
It'd be a great subplot, but I'm not betting the moisture farm on it.
> Also, for an "evil genius" that Sidious/Palpatine is supposed to be, I guess he could have worked out a better plan than "create sympathy for me by placing homeworld under wrongfull siege so I can then use some obedient army I just created to destroy the obedient armies of my probably not so obedient puppets so I can rule the galaxy, while trying to corrupt a young but powerful twerp I just met mid-plan by sacrificing some of my more experienced underlings" scenario.
Not fair. Even if the premise is so strongly based on Hitler's rise that I had trouble with some of the actors not speaking German, Palpatine's plan was more than what you describe. The idea behind it was that he wanted to be chancellor of the Senate. To that end, he engineered a blockade of Naboo, the queen of which was the current chancellor's strongest supporter. She went to the Senate (and to him) for help that he was unable to provide, due to Palpatine's machinations with the trade guilds. By getting her to turn against him and call for a vote of no confidence, he was able to drive out the sitting chancellor at a time when he was a literal shoo-in for the seat. The fall of Darth Maul was unintended, and the discovery of Anakin Skywalker was marked by both Palpatine and by Qui-Gon Jinn, because the force was so strong with him that both sides took notice and began courting him.
Episode two finds this plan well underway, with the discovery that the Senate and chancellor have commissioned a clone army "for the defense of the Republic" against forces that can see Palpatine's power grab. Count Dooku and his cohorts are made out to be rebels, and even though they're the bad guys they realize that Palpatine's consolidation of power is a bad thing. In return, he uses the clone army (notice how much like the stormtroopers we know and love they are) to beat down the insurgents. Meanwhile, he passes resolutions that give him ever more power to do stuff without seeking Senate approval, and uses the insurgents as his reason.
Virg
> What I would have done, which would have caused much whining, is make force sensitivity a random thing. At 100 days, the force sensitivity of the character is revealed (a random chance), and the player is given the choice of becoming a jedi (if the amount of sensitivity is high enough).
This would drive those who do this sort of farming for a living to make LOTS of characters, and then let them stew for 100 days. The ones that come force-sensitive would then be sold off for cash. Soon, there'd be a lot of Jedi running around. Your solution doesn't solve the problem of gaming the system by brute force.
> That way, you won't have so many jedi, and only the ones who are dedicated to the game have a chance of becoming one.
There'd also be one heck of an attrition problem after 100 days, as folks who worked so hard found that they'd never be Jedi and quit for other MMORPGs. In a gaming model where retaining customers for years is done regularly, you'd be cutting off a good part of your customer base that way.
> The point is that not everyone in the SW world was a jedi, or even had a chance of becoming one. They probably all would have loved to be one, but it just wasn't the reality of the situation. As for me? I'd much rather have been Han.
So, instead of being one in a million that can become a Jedi, you'd rather be the one in a million that parlayed being a smuggler into success instead of death? For every Han Solo or Lando Calrissian, there were planets full of Greedos.
The point of the game is entertainment. People don't want to pay money to join a world where they're unimportant. They want to be heroes, and the game should cater to that by making the unimportant people NPCs so players can be the movers and shakers of the world. If my desire is to be a Jedi, and I only have a small, random chance to be a Jedi, why would I bother? There are a dozen other games that will let me slay the dragon or save the world if I can't do it in this one.
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> Guilds are the sux0r ! Damnit, it's supposed to be a game, not work.
Not fair, but also not false. On one side, there are plenty of guilds that don't suck like this, in virtually every game and MUD out there. If any of my guild officers in EQ yelled at me for closing guild chat, they'd find themselves smaller by one player before they could ask if I was AFK. The flip side is that I can't imagine any of my guild officers ever doing this, so I've never been inclined to hide from guildmates when I'm logged in.
On the other, it'd be nice to have a game that's as open-ended as a lot of the MMORPGs but isn't massively online, so you can have the world to yourself (or a small group) if you like. It'd be a welcome change from having a world full of people, only a small fraction of which you really want to interact with.
That said, you're right on the mark that it's a game. When it stops being fun to play, I'll drop my account with no regrets.
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> You keep saying diabetes like it's something that impairs driving. I don't think you actually know what it is. It's a disease where your body cannot create glucose effectively. One takes insulin every day, and is normal. Driving is more likely impaired by having a common cold than it is by having diabetes.
A point of note is that diabetics can have an insulin imbalance in the course of a normal day and suffer from insulin shock, which can cause blackouts. One cannot get a pilot's license when one is diabetic because of this. So, driving is more likely to be impaired in a severe way by diabetes than by a cold.
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> The problem as you seem to acknowledge is that not everyone will leave you alone as you wish. The fact that you were mugged proves this. Therefore you must have some way to back up your wishes, with force if necessary.
This is my main problem with universal gun posession. Sure, you need some way to back up your wishes in some cases, but the force you describe is deadly force. More below.
> Walking around disarmed leads to the very problem you encountered. Anyone who is eitehr physically stronger, can suprise you, or simply disregards anti-gun laws can overpower you with force, and you have little recourse. If someone is willing to mug you, do you believe they care they are breaking the law? Do you think that they would respect the anti-gun laws either? Probably not.
Having a gun doesn't significantly change this equation. Someone who catches me by surprise isn't going to have much to worry about in terms of my having a gun or not. Whether they have a gun or not is simply not an issue when I can't reasonably deploy my gun against them. In a society where everyone is armed, a mugger would simply change tactics, from "give me your wallet" to hitting me over the head with a board and rifling my pockets (and stealing my gun in the process). The thought that others would "get involved" doesn't recognize that most muggings don't take place in public view. Only stupid muggers work in open view. And for the "quick draw" crowd, remember that only stupid muggers work alone.
None of this really addresses the main problem, though, which is the concept of "have it, use it". By definition, having a gun makes you more likely to use it. Drawing a gun in most situations significantly increases your likelihood of death or injury, as it also increases the likelihood of death or injury for everyone around you. To give you a simple example, when someone says, "give me your wallet" and you have a gun, you're likely to go for the gun. If you don't have it, you're likely to go for the wallet. Guess which one is more likely to end with you alive and healthy? Sure, it's nice to dole out justice on the spot, but given the choice between giving up my dignity and my wallet or getting into a firefight in the street, I'd have to say that the wallet is well lost.
In a shooting class I took, we addressed what was referred to as "advanced situational awareness" training. Basically, we'd go to the outdoor range, and we'd be presented with situations to help us with understanding the use of the firearm. One of the situations was the classic holdup in a convenience store. For the first run, we were to address only our personal safety and nothing else. In the second pass, we were to address "neutralizing the assailant using as few shots as possible". In both cases, there was an assailant at the counter, a clerk, three patrons and the testee, at the door.
In the first situation (remember, personal safety above all), when the situation "started", I left by the door. Only one other person in twelve did the same. The other ten drew their guns and opened fire. I leave you to the conclusions.
On the second run, in the same situation, nine people expended three or more bullets. One guy emptied his clip and winged one of the other patrons (the target cutouts did move, so he wasn't just an awful shot, but still, 14 shots?!?). The one woman who scored with a single shot hit the assailant in the neck. The bad spot is that the bullet she fired continued on and hit the clerk in the chin. Most people used two shots, some used three and seven people hit bystanders.
I took one step up to the clerk, pressed his gun to the counter with one hand and put my weapon against his neck, and said "freeze". No shots, and the threat was controlled. If he had been real, and moved, I could easily have shot him fatally with a downward shot that didn't risk hitting anyone else.
This is my problem with firearms. People with guns generally grab them when the s
> The reason some drugs are illegal is for control. Pot became illegal as a way to control the Mexican Immigrant population in the southwest. Cocaine became illegal as a way to control immigrants from South America. Opium became illegal as a way to control the Asian immigrant population.
Way too simple. You're forgetting the influence of the Puritan ethical system in the U.S. since the first European settlers came over. Just because drugs tended toward being used by foreigners is not so revealing as the fact that the U.S. criminalized alcohol for a while, too. There has always been a "drugs=hedonism" and "hedonism=bad" ethical framework in the U.S. and the War on Drugs reflects that. Even today, taxes on alcohol, cigarettes and gambling are referred to as "sin taxes".
So, it is about control, but not just controlling minorities.
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> I'm not advocating stealing, but lets put aside the idea that "we all pay for shoplifting". We don't. It costs the store money. Period.
If the drive's being stolen at that rate, the store may choose not to carry it at all. They'll never offer a rebate on it, they'll never put it on sale for less than US$100, and they'll put up a big hassle if someone tries to return one. There are a thousand ways to pass on the cost of a high-theft item, from determining pricing to reducing sales. High volumes of theft can (and do, in the real world) affect pricing.
Remember, just because the before price is $100 doesn't mean you can get it anywhere for that price. If Fry's can sell it for $100 and the other stores can't afford to sell for less than $120, then Fry's can mark it up to $119 and still get most of the sales.
Mommy and Daddy aren't always as dumb as you make it out.
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> You did commit a crime: trespassing. You were granted permission to enter the property under condition of following certain rules and guidelines thereof. Permission was not granted to do what you did.
You're very wrong. If he was a Costco member, then he could not possibly be charged for trespassing. However, the rule he did violate, non-lawyer-being-person, is violation of contract, for which they can revoke his membership.
If he returns after being asked to retire from the premises (and having his membership revoked), then he can be charged with trespassing, but there's no legal standing to charge a current member with trespassing. You lose.
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I agree that protesting the showing of ID at a membership club is not a good idea. That said, the fact that protesting makes the line back up is not a valid excuse for telling him not to protest. If that were the case, any protest for anything at all could be shorted via the "invconvenience to others" method, and that margnializes the protester. "Don't rock the boat" isn't in itself a valid reason not to protest.
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Um, am I the only one who sees this as silly? If you use a third party application to remove the Software, you violate the EULA, which has the effect of...
...negating your license to use the Software.
How's that again?
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Please get a grip on yourself. You've got way too much anger and not anywhere near enough sense. If you think you're acting rationally, consider a few cases and tell me what that'd get you.
Firstly, this discussion pertains to notifications of the possibility of child porn. If I called your ISP and told them you were hosting CP, and you lived in Australia, they'd have to pass that information on to the police. Whether you actually did it is a matter for the police to decide, so toss yourself on the fire if you feel that an accusation (which is what the article is about, by the way) is enough.
Next, take note that if you choose to execute such punishment only on convicted offenders, that there are a number of cases where folks have been convicted (and in one case, sentenced to death) for sexually abusing a child, only to have later evidence exonerate them. If you performed such hellacious torture on someone who turns out to have been innocent, you can't simply let them out of their grave, eh?
Lastly, if you only choose to torture those who are unquestionably guilty, then there's a fifteen year old girl who was convicted of posession and distribution of child porn for taking videos of herself masturbating and giving them to a classmate. There's no question of her guilt, and she's now a registered sex offender, so you'll have to consider lighting her up until she begs you to let her die.
Lastly, you're kidding yourself if you think that fear of getting caught will reduce the number of child sex abuse cases. Sexual urges tend to override virtually everything else, including fear of retribution.
In short, shut up. You sound like a pissed-off ten year old. It's obvious that you view the world through a haze of red, and frankly I'd consider you more dangerous than most because you have actually attached your morality to this badly damaged view of justice, so you'd likely be uncorrectable. I feel for your "precious angel", who may never learn to handle anger properly with you around.
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> There are some tremendous actors out there in theater, in film, that you've never heard of. I can name 50 people I've worked with who are more talented than all but the very upper echelon of Hollywood types. I know directors who can do REALLY amazing things, and writers who can write gripping dialogue. And none of them make it.
This is because success in any field of endeavor requires some parcel of luck, and the entertainment industry is no different. On top of that, the entertainment industry is awash in talent, and so you need to be really good and really lucky to get to the big leagues.
> When is the last time you went looking for an independent film, rather than seeing the latest well-marketed film from MGM, Mirimax, or Disney? Sure, there are occasional exceptions, but even those turn on one really catchy, marketable idea
I do this constantly, myself. There's something that this has shown me, and that is quite simply that (much like big studio productions) most independent movies suck. I've seen hundreds of indies in the last few years, and even going only for films that have gotten some good word of mouth and what sounds interesting I've found that a lot of them are not the greatest. The problem is that, much like the big studio movies, it takes a lot of wading through crap to get to the stuff that's really good, and the big productions have the advantage of getting a lot more press, good or bad. It's easier to tell if I'll like a Miramax film because I can find a dozen reviews for it, where some independents only turn up one review done by a fawning college girl who wouldn't pan the film if you put a gun to her head, even though fifteen minutes of it are out of focus.
> The side of the road is littered with better shows than most of the crap that's on your TV in primetime. You want to do something about it? SUPPORT THE INDEPENDENTS. Watch TV shows that TV giude doesn't put on the covers. See what's on networks that aren't top of the line ("Pilot Season" on Treo was tremendous). Do your own research on what's good instead of checking out what you see in the paper as "the thing to see".
This is a great thought, but I have little enough time to watch any television, much less sit through dozens of shows hoping to find gold in the stream. The biggest problem with your suggestion is that you don't seem willing to admit that most of the shows you'll find on TV, top-of-the-line or not, are not worth the time to watch. Frankly, I'd love to support the independents, but there are simply not enough hours in the day to give everyone a fair shot. I do my own research, but if part of that is checking the paper to see what's playing, then you shouldn't simply decide that's wrong.
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Doug Stanhope sounds like an asshole, but notwithstanding that, the general public has overwhelmingly voted to the effect that telling someone to go elsewhere for a job if they don't like cigarette smoke is not acceptable. This isn't about a workplace being dangerous because it needs to be to get the job done. The number of restaurants and bars that had to close their doors due to smoking bans has been vanishingly small, so the argument that pub owners will be driven out on the street in droves by the ban is simply not true.
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When discussions about smoking in restaurants and bars comes up, there's always a forgotten group of people involved, and the reason for the ban is primarily them: employees. The waitstaff in a restaurant have to deal with the smoke if smoking is allowed, and it's not considered acceptable to tell them simply to find work elsewhere if they don't like it. By the logic of "go elsewhere", your office manager could allow smoking in your office and tell you to go find a job somewhere else if you didn't like it. Since that was made illegal, the same rule applies to restaurant and bar owners.
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> http://www.massdor.com/help/guides/abate_amend/Per sonal/issues/Usetax.htm
.com domain, not .gov?
Am I the only one who finds it odd that the Massachusetts Department of Revenue web site has a
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Don't worry about the cost, since as you can see, not fixing the problem can lead to continuing problems that will be nothing but a legal hassle. Hire a Massachusetts attorney who specializes in tax law. What this will get you is a laywer who knows who to talk to on the phone at the Mass. Dept. of Taxation so that this problem goes away and your SO gets her money back (minus legal fees).
Tax offices are used to dealing with deadbeats, and there's no law saying they can't drop the hammer on anyone they choose, just to make their jobs easier. That said, virtually everyone in a civil service job will back down when they're confronted by someone who knows the game and plays it for a living (like an attorney) because they know that a lawyer isn't going to cave in to vague threats and also probably plays golf with their boss's boss.
People hate scum-sucking lawyers because they're good at getting what their clients want. It's your turn to be on the winning side of that, considering how airtight your case is.
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> How long before every kid in Florida gets an injunction on their parents from installing any monitoring software?
Such an injunction is powerless. A parent is not required by any law to allow a child access to or use of a computer. The parent needs only state that he told the child that use of the computer is contingent on allowing monitoring. Notification and consent to monitoring eliminates the ability of injunction.
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> Yeah, because by the "kids have no privacy" argument, a father could require his 16-year-old daughter to allow him into her room when she's getting dressed. I think we'd all agree that was unreasonable.
Unreasonable but not illegal due to privacy issues. If a father did this to his daughter, he'd likely face an investigation pursuant to incest charges, but he wouldn't face any charges based on violation of privacy.
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> My point was that claiming that a lesser market to sell your product is not the same as taking money. Not anything ethical.
Not anything relevant, either, then. I never made that claim. You turned my argument to that, and I pointed out that you were incorrect to do that. The "taking" wasn't money, it was the taking of opportunity to earn money, which you seem not to value and seem to equate with money. I made neither of these comparisons.
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> But following that logic, if tommorrow people stopped buying cars/dvds, they are taking money from you.
That's not a good analogy. The market disappearing due to a drop in demand across the market is not the same as someone deliberately saturating a market so that demand drops off. In the saturation case, if you didn't copy my cars, I'd be able to sell them. In the demand shift, if you didn't copy my cars, I still couldn't sell them. The wrong happens when your action directly and negatively impacts my ability to sell, where the absence of your copying would not result in negative impact (and remember that we're discussing replication, not direct competition, which is on an entirely different level of ethics).
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> Didn't we put a man on the moon using primarily slide rules?
Nope. In fact, miniaturizing a computer by making it solid state was one of the problems that had to be solved for the Apollo missions. Sure, their computer was slow and specialized by our standards, but they could not have done a lot of the calculating work with slide rules with enough speed to be useful.
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Um, the term "popular" is used to describe movies that turn a big profit due to ticket sales, so that's like saying "name a profitable movie that wasn't profitable". Still, that's not relevant to the point the OP made. He said:This simply isn't true. There are very, very few films that make "hundreds of millions", and movies don't "tend to break even" in the box office. They tend to do very well, or very badly, but rare is the film that lands very near its production costs in box office receipts.
> That's not to say that there aren't plenty of movies out there that do lose piles of money. Probably because those movies suck. Just because a movie studio invests millions in a movie does not mean they are entitled to a profit.
Whether the movie sucks or not isn't the issue here. His implication that movies break even in the box office is at issue. "Gigli" didn't break even at the box office, and it didn't sell well in the aftermarket either. "Titanic" did very well in both venues.
Remember, my original post was entitled "Point of Note" and was only intended to address the error in his assumptions about profits in movies. Don't overextend it.
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