This recovery is a breeze. Just follow these easy steps.
1.) Take the HD out of your machine, take it to your clean room, and crack it open.
2.) Pull the platters, one by one, run them under your magnetometer, and use the programming in your magnetometer to develop a magnetic wave map of your drive. Store this image in your workstation.
3.) Run the analyser over the waveform to get a datamap of the drive. Be sure to save the layers as separate images.
4.) Pan back through the resulting images, and find the one that corresponds to the drive topology at the time you want (the time when the file/data still existed in readable format).
5.) Create a disk image file from that waveform.
6.) Mount the resulting image, and copy your file to a more secure location.
> Then again, I don't have anything that important anyways.
Don't be so certain of that. Open up your wallet, and you'll see much of importance. No credit cards? That's not the most important thing you have. Take a close look at your driver's license, or any ID you have. That's of great value to many people, and whether or not you trust it to a computer most state governments will. Leaving something as simple as your name in a computer proves that a person by your name exists, which can be used for profit or to complete an agenda.
> it's still impossible the delta-v for this is much too large...
I'm not sure I get you. If a rocket booster can lift off from a standing start on the Earth's surface, why is it impossible to start it moving with a rail/coil gun and then start the burn when it leaves the launcher? Since a railgun can accelerate the object at any speed (modifying the current lets you pick the potential difference and thus the delta-a), it's not required to chuck it into the sky at Mach 20+. The use of the launcher is to give the rocket a kickstart so it can carry less fuel (thus less weight) and still get out of Earth's G-well. As an example, take something very dangerous that we did as kids for illustration. We used to build and fly model rockets. We discovered that if someone stood on the flat and held the rocket in hand, he could throw it upward off the ground. Then the "launcher" would run like Hell and "mission control" would hit the starter. Barring a bad throw or entangling (or igniting) your launcher, your rocket would climb noticeably higher because it was already moving upward when the engine fired.
I'm still sure the cost is prohibitive, but I'm having trouble seeing why the physics would interfere.
Keep in mind that these numbers are wildly rounded off, but it comes from the cost of lifting a pound of material into space, out of the Earth's gravity well, which is around $10,000 per pound. It's safe to assume that you can cut that by a third, because the only things we've put out of Earth's orbit were devices we didn't want damaged (or people), so you can cut corners if you're not concerned about failure after escape. Then, multiply that by the number of tons of radioactive waste that U.S. generation plants create (spent fuel and other "hot" items like tools, machinery and containers) and divide the answer by the number of people in the U.S. Chop off 90% for my example and the result falls around $8,000.
Overly simple, yes, but it does serve to prove my point.
I'm not so certain that Philips will fall in line, but a different scenario occurred to me. Perhaps the RIAA will simply dump the "CD Compact Disc" logo and put a disclaimer on that says something to the effect of "may not work in all CD(tm) players" and then Philips wouldn't have any leverage against them.
First things first. On rereading my response, I was crankier than I intended to be, so my apologies for my tone.
On the points, further thoughts:
> a) sonic booms occur above mach 1 not at mach 1.
Agreed, but there are two things to consider. Firstly, jets make a lot of noise, but something thrown from a rail (or coil) gun doesn't, until it uses afterlaunch engines. Secondly, since this object is to be moving upward and two miles off the ground by the time it begins its own acceleration, I didn't consider the sonic boom to be an issue.
> b)&c) Making a mach 27 object survive at all is not easy.
Holy crap, I'd hate to try to design that object. I didn't realistically consider that this object would be thrown into orbit by the launcher alone, a' la Jules Verne's moon bullet. My thought was a booster engine thrown up into the air by the launcher, which ignites and completes the exit burn. On review, I never mentioned that in my reply, so reread with that in mind and it makes more sense.
> d) orbital mechanics... what can I say... there are three types of
> orbits around anything; elliptical, escape and hyperbolic. Any object with
> less than escape velocity is in an elliptical orbit. These orbits are
> generally stable. It's theoretically possible to get a decaying solar orbit,
> but not practically; decaying orbits need
atmosphere- the sun doesn't
> really have this.
A simple misunderstanding here. I'm focused on the problem, so I didn't consider a decaying orbit so much as a death shot. I considered "impact" (insofar as anything can impact a star) to be the goal and thus, the target. If the arc is calculated correctly, the object passes into the Sun's corona, which I'm sure you will agree will alter its orbital mechanics to a great degree. Hence my comment on stable orbits (again, sorry for the tone) which does not apply to paths which are so elliptical as to pass through the orbited body.
> Oh yeah, you mention rail guns.
Only because to original poster did, but considering the above comment about points B and C (that I was assuming an assisted rocket, not a ballistic object) the rail gun is not a completely undoable approach, considering power needs.
> Why isn't the government doing this instead of burying it underground?
Because they can't afford to. Lifting stuff out of Earth's gravity well is alarmingly expensive (more than ten time as expensive as just getting it into Earth orbit). To say, as you did, that it's "probably a little more expensive" is such an understatement that it's almost funny. If we (the U.S. alone) were to take this practice up as a nation, assuming that everyone paid the same part of the resulting bill and assuming that by some means the government could cover 90% of the tab, the average power bill for a U.S. citizen would still be around $8,000.00 per month. That's per MONTH. Could you afford $10,000.00 annually for your electricity?
Jeez, where do you people get your math? Let's address:
> a) sonic booms- concorde at Mach 2 gives big bangs for tens of miles; Mach 27+ sonic booms are going to reach hundreds or thousands of miles
Sonic booms happen when you cross the sound barrier (that's once, at Mach 1), and they don't get louder under harder acceleration.
> b) failure modes- e.g. it doesn't quite reach escape velocity due to a coil failure and lands in the middle of Tokyo or something,
A valid concern, but it could be handled through several possibilities. First, the launch package could be designed to allow for controlled abortion of launch in the case of launcher failure, just as astronauts can "eject" from a failed rocket on launch. Second, the package can be designed for reentry (and safe landing, like a manned capsule) in the case of low-apex launch failure.
> c) ablation- the first 100m will probably lose atleast a couple of mach and quite a bit of the casing
Again, this problem could be designed out.
> d) solar orbits don't decay very much, for example the earth would have burnt up long ago
Huh? Didn't pay much attention in physics class, did you? Orbital mechanics is orbital mechanics, and there's nothing special about the Sun's gravity well. The reason the Earth hasn't burned up is that we're in a stable solar orbit. Stuff falls into the Sun all the time.
> e) Orbital mechanics issues: to a reasonable approximation anything
> fired from the earth, still intersects the earths orbit twice per year,
> and takes a year to complete 1 orbit. You have to fire it quite fast
> to avoid this issue. It takes a LOT of speed to fire something from the
> earth and get it to impact the Sun; off-hand you'd need maybe Mach 32 or so
Again I'm baffled by your physics. The first sentence is simply incorrect. To wit, let's discuss the best launch vector for such a device. The original poster suggested an eastward launch, with which I can agree. However, this launch could be timed so that when the object exited our gravity well it's moving back along our orbital path (that is, back the way the Earth came from), minus some number of degrees into the ecliptic. This would put it on a slowly arcing orbit toward the Sun that would bring it nowhere near the Earth's orbit ever again, and if properly calculated (which may be tough considering what happened to the Mars probes;.)) would cause a fairly short, backward-curving (relative to Earth) drop into the Sun lasting less than three months. And, barring escape velocity (which is extremely high) once it's out of Earth's orbit the speed at which it's moving is relatively unimportant, unless the Greenpeace detachments for Venus or Mercury are worried about a package striking those planets on the way in.
All that said, it's still very likely to be prohibitively expensive to lift these containers out of Earth's gravity. Rail guns are useful to accelerate objects to insane speeds, but they're much less efficient in terms of necessary input energy than other forms like rocket boosters, so there's still the BIG problem of cost.
For the first point, you're on the money. Even with a critical mass of waste on the top of the rocket, there would be nowhere near critical density, so no boom. However, on the second point, you're off the money. With a properly designed drop vessel, if the payload had to leave the booster for any reason, it'd fall to earth without burning up (think reentry of human astronauts; the same type of vessel would protect against burnup of the waste payload). There are three problems with jetting nuclear waste into the Sun instead of burying it locally. They are:
1.) Money
2.) Money
3.) Money
It's far too expensive to put stuff into orbit to consider lifting off heavy metals instead of putting them in a deep hole.
> Maybe you should have made contingency plans for the possibility that you might lose your fingers or vision in the future.
Most people have such a contingency, at least in corporate America. It's called disability insurance. That's not what this case is about. The person in question doesn't want to collect disability payments, she wants to use the Americans with Disabilities Act to get her employer to add accessibility modifications so she can do her job. It would be the same (in her eyes, but not in the eyes of the Supreme Court) as demanding wheelchair access to her workplace if she couldn't walk.
> A little pain in your wrist that prevents you from typing is a
> sad excuse for not getting another kind of job.
Um, according to the facts of the case, she has a job in an assembly plant that requires her to use her hands above shoulder level for extended periods of time. There's no mention of typing, and there are currently no ergonomic standards for preventing Carpal Tunnel Syndrome due to this sort of work.
> You're only disabled if you insist that the only work you can carry
> out is done with a keyboard! Get another job and stop being a slacker.
Get some reading comprehension lessons and stop being a dope. There was no mention of keyboarding.
> Besides, the carpal tunnel syndrome is self-inflicted just
> like alcoholism and drug use. You should have thought about ergonomics
> and periodic rest before ruining your physique with the unnatural
> typing posture.
Again with the typing! I won't even comment on that. I will, however, comment on the situation in this case. To say that this woman's CTS is self inflicted is on some level true, but the same could be said of anyone working any job, and would remove any responsibility for any employer to safeguard its employees by blaming the employees for taking dangerous jobs in the first place. That's just plain silly. Just so you know, a large number of repetitive motion injuries are not typing injuries. Many are industrial in nature, stemming from factory floor work, vibration or poorly designed work areas. None of these things are (usually) within the worker's ability to change, it becomes difficult to blame the worker for simple laziness or bad planning.
> I do have to give props to Indy for at least trying to do something
> about the situation, their heart was in the right place just not their minds.
No, it wasn't in the right place. The entire problem with this sort of thing is that what they tried to do cuts counter to the very principles on which the U.S. is founded, and since they're the city government they're more wrong than any private citizen initiative could ever have been. Despite the fact that these games are not appropriate for children, they are trying to force the decision for all kids, even those whose parents allow them to play. In a very real sense, they're trying to legislate morality. There are some cases where morality has external effect (legislating "thou shalt not kill" is legitimate because of the obvious repercussions outside of the individual), but since there's never been a credible study that proves that violent video games cause real-world crime, there's no external effect to legislate. This is the morality for which parents must be responsible, and for which the state must not be allowed to be responsible, because making laws to "protect people from themselves" is paramount to outlawing skydiving because it's dangerous.
>well, on slashdot, with the atrocious grammar and poor vocabularies
> that most people apparently have, it would not have been at all unusual
> for your post to have been serious.
Point conceded. My apologies if I sounded too snide.
> I believe he is doing this to improve the marketabity of the film.
> That is what rubs me the wrong way. The fact that I believe he is adding
> something gratuitous to the film that I dislike.
Therein lies the rub, indeed. What you believe is coloring your view of what's happening. Your problem seems to stem from the idea of using celebrities (in this case, ones you feel are inappropriate) as extras. I disagree with your reasoning here, because using celebrities (or anyone in particular, for that matter) does not fall under the artistic intent of the film. It does not stand to reason that there is no neutrality in artistic intent. Your claim is that anything that does not improve the film necessarily hurts it. By this logic, since adding N*Sync members does not improve the film, it must hurt it. Adding them in this role is plot-neutral, and so no harm. You don't know for certain why he did it, so you can't claim that he's doing it solely to improve marketability. He likely realizes that it will help marketability, but might be doing it for personal or artistic or whatever reasons. Hell, he might actually like their music, for all anyone knows. So, no foul.
To give you food for thought, how do you think you (and many other Slashdotters who have complained) would have felt if he recruited extras from members of his family? Or to Star Trek cast members, or anyone you choose that doesn't annoy you? Be careful that it's not merely the fact that it's a band that appeals to teenage girls that annoys you.
OK, then your complaint is not why he's doing it, but that he's doing it. In this case, though, I have to ask why having the members of N*Sync as four of the extras is any different than having four equipment riggers as the extras, in terms of artistic vision. To cite a different example, in the scene in "The Sound of Music" where Julie Andrews (as Maria) approaches the convent, the real Maria von Trapp is one of the extras walking on the street. There was no reason artistically why it had to be her on the street, but there she was, and it didn't do any damage to the movie's artism. Yes, there's no reason why N*Sync band members had to be there, but how does it damage the movie? If you didn't know it was them, would you have even noticed? Therefore, I can say (at least in this case), no harm, no foul. He's sold out in many ways, but this is a bad example.
In the original theatrical release, Greedo didn't shoot at all. That was the part where you started seeing Han Solo as a darker character, and in the remake Lucas decided to present him as more of a "white hat" hero.
I'd say the cinema (or cinemas) in your area suck. I've been to a theatre that I really enjoy (good sound system, stadium seats that recline, big cupholders, free drink refills even on the way out, etc.) many times over three years, and the only technical flaw I encountered was a blown bulb that stopped the projector for a mere ten seconds.
In short, go find a decent cinema. You're right to say that the crap is unacceptable.
No, a cameo is just the term the industry uses for "bit part" when said part goes to a well-known person. It's basically to avoid insulting a big name celebrity. For example, when Christian Slater appeared for ten seconds as a captain's lackey on "Star Trek VI: The Undiscoverd Country" it was labelled a cameo.
> Sure, if I were 'NSYNC, I would try to get myself a cameo. But if I were Lucas, I would tell 'NSYNC to go F themselves.
Your implication is that it's about money (he wants to woo the young teen girl dollars), but what if it's not that at all? What if he was really telling the truth when he told an interviewer that his daughters are big N*Sync fans and asked him to find them parts in the film? If so, then he's doing what you're bemoaning that he's not doing; namely, he's putting in something just because he can. Since both extremes (he's doing it just for money, or doing it just for personal reasons) are feasible, I'm inclined to believe that the middle ground is most likely. What probably happened is this:
G. Lucas's daughters: "Put N*Sync in the next Star Wars!"
G. Lucas: "Hmm, why the heck not? It couldn't hurt ticket sales."
RING, RING
G. Lucas: "Hey, guy, offer a cameo to the boyz in the band."
N*Sync Agent: "Do you boyz want a cameo in AOTC? No acting and you'll all get shot early."
Yeah, that Alec Guinness guy screwed the whole thing up for me. The whole time I was watching I couldn't help but see Doctor Zhivago. And don't even get me started about Peter "This is a horror film?!?" Cushing. (End Sarcasm)
The point is that even a big name actor can act well enough to make you forget who he/she is, if he/she acts well enough. They fail with disturbing regularity, but they can also succeed.
That said, I don't think the boys from N'Sync are up to the task.
The unknown actors were fairly evenly divided between good and bad. For every Mark Hamill overexpression there was a Harrison Ford smirk (remember, he wasn't a big name back then). For all of Carrie Fisher's swooning there was Anthony Daniels's angst, which he could express even without showing a human facial expression.
Slashdot Mirror
> it's like trying to type the word "passed" after working in UNIX for a while.
What's the passe daemon do?
Sorry, couldn't resist.
Virg
> A googolplex is 10^google.
What started this thread? A googolplex is 10^googol, not google.
Geez.
Virg
This recovery is a breeze. Just follow these easy steps.
1.) Take the HD out of your machine, take it to your clean room, and crack it open.
2.) Pull the platters, one by one, run them under your magnetometer, and use the programming in your magnetometer to develop a magnetic wave map of your drive. Store this image in your workstation.
3.) Run the analyser over the waveform to get a datamap of the drive. Be sure to save the layers as separate images.
4.) Pan back through the resulting images, and find the one that corresponds to the drive topology at the time you want (the time when the file/data still existed in readable format).
5.) Create a disk image file from that waveform.
6.) Mount the resulting image, and copy your file to a more secure location.
See? Quick and easy.
Virg
> Then again, I don't have anything that important anyways.
Don't be so certain of that. Open up your wallet, and you'll see much of importance. No credit cards? That's not the most important thing you have. Take a close look at your driver's license, or any ID you have. That's of great value to many people, and whether or not you trust it to a computer most state governments will. Leaving something as simple as your name in a computer proves that a person by your name exists, which can be used for profit or to complete an agenda.
Virg
> it's still impossible the delta-v for this is much too large...
I'm not sure I get you. If a rocket booster can lift off from a standing start on the Earth's surface, why is it impossible to start it moving with a rail/coil gun and then start the burn when it leaves the launcher? Since a railgun can accelerate the object at any speed (modifying the current lets you pick the potential difference and thus the delta-a), it's not required to chuck it into the sky at Mach 20+. The use of the launcher is to give the rocket a kickstart so it can carry less fuel (thus less weight) and still get out of Earth's G-well. As an example, take something very dangerous that we did as kids for illustration. We used to build and fly model rockets. We discovered that if someone stood on the flat and held the rocket in hand, he could throw it upward off the ground. Then the "launcher" would run like Hell and "mission control" would hit the starter. Barring a bad throw or entangling (or igniting) your launcher, your rocket would climb noticeably higher because it was already moving upward when the engine fired.
I'm still sure the cost is prohibitive, but I'm having trouble seeing why the physics would interfere.
Virg
Keep in mind that these numbers are wildly rounded off, but it comes from the cost of lifting a pound of material into space, out of the Earth's gravity well, which is around $10,000 per pound. It's safe to assume that you can cut that by a third, because the only things we've put out of Earth's orbit were devices we didn't want damaged (or people), so you can cut corners if you're not concerned about failure after escape. Then, multiply that by the number of tons of radioactive waste that U.S. generation plants create (spent fuel and other "hot" items like tools, machinery and containers) and divide the answer by the number of people in the U.S. Chop off 90% for my example and the result falls around $8,000.
Overly simple, yes, but it does serve to prove my point.
Virg
I'm not so certain that Philips will fall in line, but a different scenario occurred to me. Perhaps the RIAA will simply dump the "CD Compact Disc" logo and put a disclaimer on that says something to the effect of "may not work in all CD(tm) players" and then Philips wouldn't have any leverage against them.
Virg
First things first. On rereading my response, I was crankier than I intended to be, so my apologies for my tone.
On the points, further thoughts:
> a) sonic booms occur above mach 1 not at mach 1.
Agreed, but there are two things to consider. Firstly, jets make a lot of noise, but something thrown from a rail (or coil) gun doesn't, until it uses afterlaunch engines. Secondly, since this object is to be moving upward and two miles off the ground by the time it begins its own acceleration, I didn't consider the sonic boom to be an issue.
> b)&c) Making a mach 27 object survive at all is not easy.
Holy crap, I'd hate to try to design that object. I didn't realistically consider that this object would be thrown into orbit by the launcher alone, a' la Jules Verne's moon bullet. My thought was a booster engine thrown up into the air by the launcher, which ignites and completes the exit burn. On review, I never mentioned that in my reply, so reread with that in mind and it makes more sense.
> d) orbital mechanics... what can I say... there are three types of
> orbits around anything; elliptical, escape and hyperbolic. Any object with
> less than escape velocity is in an elliptical orbit. These orbits are
> generally stable. It's theoretically possible to get a decaying solar orbit,
> but not practically; decaying orbits need atmosphere- the sun doesn't
> really have this.
A simple misunderstanding here. I'm focused on the problem, so I didn't consider a decaying orbit so much as a death shot. I considered "impact" (insofar as anything can impact a star) to be the goal and thus, the target. If the arc is calculated correctly, the object passes into the Sun's corona, which I'm sure you will agree will alter its orbital mechanics to a great degree. Hence my comment on stable orbits (again, sorry for the tone) which does not apply to paths which are so elliptical as to pass through the orbited body.
> Oh yeah, you mention rail guns.
Only because to original poster did, but considering the above comment about points B and C (that I was assuming an assisted rocket, not a ballistic object) the rail gun is not a completely undoable approach, considering power needs.
Virg
> Why isn't the government doing this instead of burying it underground?
Because they can't afford to. Lifting stuff out of Earth's gravity well is alarmingly expensive (more than ten time as expensive as just getting it into Earth orbit). To say, as you did, that it's "probably a little more expensive" is such an understatement that it's almost funny. If we (the U.S. alone) were to take this practice up as a nation, assuming that everyone paid the same part of the resulting bill and assuming that by some means the government could cover 90% of the tab, the average power bill for a U.S. citizen would still be around $8,000.00 per month. That's per MONTH. Could you afford $10,000.00 annually for your electricity?
Virg
Jeez, where do you people get your math? Let's address:
;.)) would cause a fairly short, backward-curving (relative to Earth) drop into the Sun lasting less than three months. And, barring escape velocity (which is extremely high) once it's out of Earth's orbit the speed at which it's moving is relatively unimportant, unless the Greenpeace detachments for Venus or Mercury are worried about a package striking those planets on the way in.
> a) sonic booms- concorde at Mach 2 gives big bangs for tens of miles; Mach 27+ sonic booms are going to reach hundreds or thousands of miles
Sonic booms happen when you cross the sound barrier (that's once, at Mach 1), and they don't get louder under harder acceleration.
> b) failure modes- e.g. it doesn't quite reach escape velocity due to a coil failure and lands in the middle of Tokyo or something,
A valid concern, but it could be handled through several possibilities. First, the launch package could be designed to allow for controlled abortion of launch in the case of launcher failure, just as astronauts can "eject" from a failed rocket on launch. Second, the package can be designed for reentry (and safe landing, like a manned capsule) in the case of low-apex launch failure.
> c) ablation- the first 100m will probably lose atleast a couple of mach and quite a bit of the casing
Again, this problem could be designed out.
> d) solar orbits don't decay very much, for example the earth would have burnt up long ago
Huh? Didn't pay much attention in physics class, did you? Orbital mechanics is orbital mechanics, and there's nothing special about the Sun's gravity well. The reason the Earth hasn't burned up is that we're in a stable solar orbit. Stuff falls into the Sun all the time.
> e) Orbital mechanics issues: to a reasonable approximation anything
> fired from the earth, still intersects the earths orbit twice per year,
> and takes a year to complete 1 orbit. You have to fire it quite fast
> to avoid this issue. It takes a LOT of speed to fire something from the
> earth and get it to impact the Sun; off-hand you'd need maybe Mach 32 or so
Again I'm baffled by your physics. The first sentence is simply incorrect. To wit, let's discuss the best launch vector for such a device. The original poster suggested an eastward launch, with which I can agree. However, this launch could be timed so that when the object exited our gravity well it's moving back along our orbital path (that is, back the way the Earth came from), minus some number of degrees into the ecliptic. This would put it on a slowly arcing orbit toward the Sun that would bring it nowhere near the Earth's orbit ever again, and if properly calculated (which may be tough considering what happened to the Mars probes
All that said, it's still very likely to be prohibitively expensive to lift these containers out of Earth's gravity. Rail guns are useful to accelerate objects to insane speeds, but they're much less efficient in terms of necessary input energy than other forms like rocket boosters, so there's still the BIG problem of cost.
Virg
> Oops yeah, I multiplied by 9/5 instead of 5/9.
Do you work for the JPL?
Virg
For the first point, you're on the money. Even with a critical mass of waste on the top of the rocket, there would be nowhere near critical density, so no boom. However, on the second point, you're off the money. With a properly designed drop vessel, if the payload had to leave the booster for any reason, it'd fall to earth without burning up (think reentry of human astronauts; the same type of vessel would protect against burnup of the waste payload). There are three problems with jetting nuclear waste into the Sun instead of burying it locally. They are:
1.) Money
2.) Money
3.) Money
It's far too expensive to put stuff into orbit to consider lifting off heavy metals instead of putting them in a deep hole.
Virg
> Maybe you should have made contingency plans for the possibility that you might lose your fingers or vision in the future.
Most people have such a contingency, at least in corporate America. It's called disability insurance. That's not what this case is about. The person in question doesn't want to collect disability payments, she wants to use the Americans with Disabilities Act to get her employer to add accessibility modifications so she can do her job. It would be the same (in her eyes, but not in the eyes of the Supreme Court) as demanding wheelchair access to her workplace if she couldn't walk.
Virg
> A little pain in your wrist that prevents you from typing is a
> sad excuse for not getting another kind of job.
Um, according to the facts of the case, she has a job in an assembly plant that requires her to use her hands above shoulder level for extended periods of time. There's no mention of typing, and there are currently no ergonomic standards for preventing Carpal Tunnel Syndrome due to this sort of work.
> You're only disabled if you insist that the only work you can carry
> out is done with a keyboard! Get another job and stop being a slacker.
Get some reading comprehension lessons and stop being a dope. There was no mention of keyboarding.
> Besides, the carpal tunnel syndrome is self-inflicted just
> like alcoholism and drug use. You should have thought about ergonomics
> and periodic rest before ruining your physique with the unnatural
> typing posture.
Again with the typing! I won't even comment on that. I will, however, comment on the situation in this case. To say that this woman's CTS is self inflicted is on some level true, but the same could be said of anyone working any job, and would remove any responsibility for any employer to safeguard its employees by blaming the employees for taking dangerous jobs in the first place. That's just plain silly. Just so you know, a large number of repetitive motion injuries are not typing injuries. Many are industrial in nature, stemming from factory floor work, vibration or poorly designed work areas. None of these things are (usually) within the worker's ability to change, it becomes difficult to blame the worker for simple laziness or bad planning.
Virg
> I do have to give props to Indy for at least trying to do something
> about the situation, their heart was in the right place just not their minds.
No, it wasn't in the right place. The entire problem with this sort of thing is that what they tried to do cuts counter to the very principles on which the U.S. is founded, and since they're the city government they're more wrong than any private citizen initiative could ever have been. Despite the fact that these games are not appropriate for children, they are trying to force the decision for all kids, even those whose parents allow them to play. In a very real sense, they're trying to legislate morality. There are some cases where morality has external effect (legislating "thou shalt not kill" is legitimate because of the obvious repercussions outside of the individual), but since there's never been a credible study that proves that violent video games cause real-world crime, there's no external effect to legislate. This is the morality for which parents must be responsible, and for which the state must not be allowed to be responsible, because making laws to "protect people from themselves" is paramount to outlawing skydiving because it's dangerous.
Virg
>well, on slashdot, with the atrocious grammar and poor vocabularies
> that most people apparently have, it would not have been at all unusual
> for your post to have been serious.
Point conceded. My apologies if I sounded too snide.
Virg
> I believe he is doing this to improve the marketabity of the film.
> That is what rubs me the wrong way. The fact that I believe he is adding
> something gratuitous to the film that I dislike.
Therein lies the rub, indeed. What you believe is coloring your view of what's happening. Your problem seems to stem from the idea of using celebrities (in this case, ones you feel are inappropriate) as extras. I disagree with your reasoning here, because using celebrities (or anyone in particular, for that matter) does not fall under the artistic intent of the film. It does not stand to reason that there is no neutrality in artistic intent. Your claim is that anything that does not improve the film necessarily hurts it. By this logic, since adding N*Sync members does not improve the film, it must hurt it. Adding them in this role is plot-neutral, and so no harm. You don't know for certain why he did it, so you can't claim that he's doing it solely to improve marketability. He likely realizes that it will help marketability, but might be doing it for personal or artistic or whatever reasons. Hell, he might actually like their music, for all anyone knows. So, no foul.
To give you food for thought, how do you think you (and many other Slashdotters who have complained) would have felt if he recruited extras from members of his family? Or to Star Trek cast members, or anyone you choose that doesn't annoy you? Be careful that it's not merely the fact that it's a band that appeals to teenage girls that annoys you.
Virg
OK, then your complaint is not why he's doing it, but that he's doing it. In this case, though, I have to ask why having the members of N*Sync as four of the extras is any different than having four equipment riggers as the extras, in terms of artistic vision. To cite a different example, in the scene in "The Sound of Music" where Julie Andrews (as Maria) approaches the convent, the real Maria von Trapp is one of the extras walking on the street. There was no reason artistically why it had to be her on the street, but there she was, and it didn't do any damage to the movie's artism. Yes, there's no reason why N*Sync band members had to be there, but how does it damage the movie? If you didn't know it was them, would you have even noticed? Therefore, I can say (at least in this case), no harm, no foul. He's sold out in many ways, but this is a bad example.
Virg
In the original theatrical release, Greedo didn't shoot at all. That was the part where you started seeing Han Solo as a darker character, and in the remake Lucas decided to present him as more of a "white hat" hero.
Virg
I'd say the cinema (or cinemas) in your area suck. I've been to a theatre that I really enjoy (good sound system, stadium seats that recline, big cupholders, free drink refills even on the way out, etc.) many times over three years, and the only technical flaw I encountered was a blown bulb that stopped the projector for a mere ten seconds.
In short, go find a decent cinema. You're right to say that the crap is unacceptable.
Virg
Well, I can see why Britney Spears belongs in "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones" but there's only one Ron Jeremy.
Virg
No, a cameo is just the term the industry uses for "bit part" when said part goes to a well-known person. It's basically to avoid insulting a big name celebrity. For example, when Christian Slater appeared for ten seconds as a captain's lackey on "Star Trek VI: The Undiscoverd Country" it was labelled a cameo.
Virg
> Sure, if I were 'NSYNC, I would try to get myself a cameo. But if I were Lucas, I would tell 'NSYNC to go F themselves.
Your implication is that it's about money (he wants to woo the young teen girl dollars), but what if it's not that at all? What if he was really telling the truth when he told an interviewer that his daughters are big N*Sync fans and asked him to find them parts in the film? If so, then he's doing what you're bemoaning that he's not doing; namely, he's putting in something just because he can. Since both extremes (he's doing it just for money, or doing it just for personal reasons) are feasible, I'm inclined to believe that the middle ground is most likely. What probably happened is this:
G. Lucas's daughters: "Put N*Sync in the next Star Wars!"
G. Lucas: "Hmm, why the heck not? It couldn't hurt ticket sales."
RING, RING
G. Lucas: "Hey, guy, offer a cameo to the boyz in the band."
N*Sync Agent: "Do you boyz want a cameo in AOTC? No acting and you'll all get shot early."
N*Sync (in harmony): "Damn Straight!"
Virg
Yeah, that Alec Guinness guy screwed the whole thing up for me. The whole time I was watching I couldn't help but see Doctor Zhivago. And don't even get me started about Peter "This is a horror film?!?" Cushing. (End Sarcasm)
The point is that even a big name actor can act well enough to make you forget who he/she is, if he/she acts well enough. They fail with disturbing regularity, but they can also succeed.
That said, I don't think the boys from N'Sync are up to the task.
Virg
The unknown actors were fairly evenly divided between good and bad. For every Mark Hamill overexpression there was a Harrison Ford smirk (remember, he wasn't a big name back then). For all of Carrie Fisher's swooning there was Anthony Daniels's angst, which he could express even without showing a human facial expression.
Virg