One of the better things about DS9 was their use of the Prophets in just this way - their whole way of 'interacting' with people, their reactions ("they are linear - it's disturbing", the fact that you only saw them as avatars, never as they really were (whatever that looked like). The whole first encounter between Cisco and Prophets had me scratching my head wondering what just happened.
The problem is they weren't done the way they said they were. If the prophets were truely non-linear, the first episode of DS9 would have been 15 minutes long, and consisted of Sisko entering the wormhole, the prophets saying "Yeah, yeah Sisko, we like baseball too. You can use the wormhole. The Cardassians are coming, go defend your station.", and then him going back to the station.
LOTR:FOTR had the same mistake Star Wars IV made. It should have been "A New Hope: (Star Wars Episode IV)" rather than the other way around
The only problem with that is that when Star Wars originally came out, it wasn't called Episode IV at all. It was simply called Star Wars. The rest of the title came later, after the studio agreed to make the rest of them.
Blade Runner and The Matrix may be the only two good SciFi movies ever made.
The Matrix?! The Matrix??!!! The Matrix was probably the worst sci-fi film ever made that actually had a budget! Total Recall was better! For it to qualify as sci-fi, it has to be *possible* given the current state of scientific knowledge. The Matrix fails miserably on that.
I will admit that sci-fi is hard to film, but thats because its hard to write as well. Real science fiction doesn't have a protagonist, at least not a human one. The main character in a science fiction story is a concept, which is incredibly hard to translate to film. For a good example, read Asimov's Foundation series.
Star Trek, Star Wars, B5, and Farscape are all not true sci-fi. They are fantasy set in a futuristic (I say that because I'm sure someone will point out that Star Wars is in fact set in the past) setting. In the case of Star Wars and B5, good gripping fantasy, and in the case of Star Trek, fun pulpy fantasy. (IMHO, of course).
Here are some examples of good sci-fi (again IMHO and in no way supposed to be an exhaustive list):
Movies: Blade Runner (or just about anything by P.K. Dick), Gattaca, 2001, A Clockwork Orange, and Contact
Books: Again, just about anything by P.K. Dick, Clarke, or Asimov, The Manifold series and The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter, Snow Crash and The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, and Contact by Carl Sagan (which was far better than the movie).
The underlying theme in all these is that the characters don't really matter and its the underlying idea that is important.
And yet, somehow, in the end of that episode, Data still says "I'm fine". I guess we are forced to conclude that It was in fact Data that was beamed out into space and Lore managed to conceal his evilness for 6 years, until he finally disassembled Data to keep his secret.
Yes, yes, I realize that that is taking Star Trek way too literally, but that was a serious continuity error considering it was a major plot point in the episode. I thought people were paid to catch things like that.
The reason B5 was good was because of the amazing continuity. It wasn't really a soap opera, rather than one big story that all fit together. In fact, thats the only reason I can tolerate watching the horrible melodramatic acting. Somehow, this is the very thing that ruined DS9. DS9 turned into a soap opera in the worst sense of the phrase. It had continuity only in the sense that each episode had one more inane plot twist that you couldn't really care about. There was no foreshadowing, no planned character development, and no rational story arc evolution.
It happens all the time, but before you spout off that those users are stupid, I must remind you that we all have those things we know nothing about. Do you know the correct usage for its vs. it's? (Hint: Only use it's in place of it is -- no other time.) Can you fix your car every time something goes wrong, or do you take it into a mechanic? Do you know how to ballroom dance?
I do know the difference between its and it's, but the other things I don't know. The difference is that I know that I don't know. Thats why I don't try to fix my car or go ballroom dancing. If you don't know how to do something and you try anyway, odds are you are going to fuck something up. You should be prepared for that, and if you aren't you have only yourself to blame.
Another problem is the dominanc of the direct X API's which are proprietary microsft.
Actually, I just saw a blurb in MacAddict about a company called Coderus that has ported the DirectX APIs to the Mac. They support both OS 9 and OS X, and any computer later than rev B iMacs. Their product isn't for consumers though, its for developers. Perhaps we could see Connectix using this technology to finally make it feasible to play Windows games under emulation.
By your reasoning, people would have stopped entering chess
tournaments after a computer (Deep Blue) defeated the world's
best human (Kasparov).
First of all, it wasn't Deep Blue that beat Kasparov, it was Deeper Blue, its sucessor.
Secondly, the only reason that Deeper Blue was able to beat Kasparov was because it was specifically programmed to play against him. They fed it his entire professional chess playing history so it could figure out his style and how to beat it. If you entered Deeper Blue as a contestant in the world championship proceedings, it wouldn't win.
Re:The optimal state of any linear game is a draw
on
Awari Solved
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· Score: 2
Not quite correct as regards to Go. Because Go allows for a pass play, and two passes ends the game it is known that there is not a winning strategy for white (the second player).
Proof: If white had such a strategy, black would pass as his first move, thus stealing the strategy.
Preface: I don't completely understand the rules of Go, so if I mistook two passes in a row ends the game for two passes during the game ends the game, I apologize.
That is a faulty proof, what if the strategy requires white to pass at some later point during the game? Black has already used up one pass and cannot use another one, rendering him unable to use the strategy.
Re:With enough storage, Chess could be solved too.
on
Awari Solved
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· Score: 2
Because of those rules (the 50 move rule specifically affects it the most), there is a definite longest game. IIRC it was around 5400 moves.
The reason cell phones aren't allowed to be used in aircraft isn't because you are endangering the aircraft, its because you are endangering the cell phone network. When you are on the ground, your phone can generally only see one or two cell stations, but when you are in the air, you have line of sight to tons and tons of them. This produces an immense strain on the cell phone network, especially when you have many people using them at once.
Its been a while since I took Japanse, but let me correct you on a few points.
Watashi and nani are correct, but nan da (notice the space) isn't exactly the same as nani. Nan da is a shortening (read informal use) of nan desu ka which basically means "What is it?"
I don't remember "nano" and "daymo" is impossible (you can't have a y without a following vowel like that), but hello is "moshi moshi" and the word you are looking for for excuse me is "ano" which is also used for "um" and just about any other time you would want to say something similiar.
Re:One of my favourite quotes...
on
Want Freedom?
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· Score: 2
The founding fathers believed in faith and guidance from God. Now we're called intolerant when we follow those beliefs.
Bullshit, no they didn't. The vast majority of the founding fathers were deists (blind watchmaker theory) if not down and out atheist. And as for being intolerant, you are only intolerant when you try to force your own morals and beliefs on other people who don't necessarily agree with you.
There are actually several different classification systems with numbers of kingdoms ranging from 3 to 6. The 5 kingdom model is the currently most accepted one, but has only been around since the 1970's.
He says the process does not produce extra carbon dioxide, as this would have been released back into the air anyway through biodegradation of the plants.
This statement, which I suppose is technically true, is absolutely ludacris. It would be like saying that burning down the rainforest wouldn't produce any extra carbon dioxide for the same reason! If this process becomes widespread, even though it won't technically produce any more carbon dioxide than would have been produced, it will produce it a hell of a lot faster and there will be higher concentrations of it in the atmosphere.
At present in the laboratory bench process, hydrogen constitutes about half of the product from a catalyzed glucose solution. But with further refining of the sugar solution the percentage rises.
The percentage cannot rise above 50%. The reaction is C6H12O6 (glucose) + 6O2 -> 6H2 + 6CO2. And that's only 50% by volume. By mass its only 4.3% H2 and 95.7% CO2.
How much heat do you get from C6H12O6 + 6O => 12H + 6CO2? And what is the molecular mass of C6H12O6?
First of all you wouldn't get 12H, you'd get 6H2. I don't know about the heat, but the molecular mass is pretty easy to figure out. 6C = 6*12. 12H = 12*1. 6O = 6*16. That makes 72+12+96=180. What I want to know is how they are keeping the H2 from combining with the O2 at those temperatures.
120mg/20oz = 6mg/oz for Jolt. 100mg/12oz = 8.3mg/oz for coffee. Its nowhere near twice as much, and it most certainly isn't 3x as the original poster said.
Coffee does NOT have 3x the caffiene of pop, it only has slightly more. A 12oz cup of regular coffee has about 100mg of caffiene, a 20oz of Jolt has 120mg of caffiene.
BTW, if any of you are worried about the health effects of caffiene, the LD-50 of caffiene is 10g, or about 100 cups of coffee. So you don't have too much to worry about.
The difference is that Jon Johansen (the author of DeCSS) was never charged in an American court (IIRC) because the crime wasn't committed on U.S. soil. The two big DeCSS cases were both about groups or individuals in the U.S. redistributing DeCSS, and being charged for that.
Skylarov, on the other hand, is a Russian citizen, coded whatever he coded on Russian soil, never attempted to distribute code in the U.S., yet was arrested by U.S. police, and charged in a U.S. court for something completely out of their jurisdiction.
Your statement is the learning equivalent of saying "some people simply cannot drive with a gas pedal... they need someone to ride with them and operate the gas". Wrong. You can't drive a car without knowing how to use the gas pedal, and you can't learn without being able to pull information from a book.
No, its the equivalent of saying "some people simply cannot learn to drive without someone showing them how and riding along with them at first" which if you ask me if perfectly reasonable.
I wasn't suggesting that it should be alright for people to not be able to learn from a book at all, but rather that there are quite a few people that cannot learn from only a book. The value of a good teacher cannot be underestimated.
The job of the person at the front of the classroom is not to digest knowledge for students, because it can't be done.
No, their job is to figure out how a student best learns, and translate the material to be learned into a form digestable by the student. Whether or not the student actually digests the material is a function of how much he/she wants to learn it.
The learning process involves exactly one person, the student. The only one who can teach you is you.
The learning process invovles two people, the student and the teacher. You need both a motivated student, and a good teacher in order to learn.
It's not like there is anything you actually learn in four years of CS education that you can't learn in 3 months with a pile of books.
Here's a clue for everyone who thinks that teachers are useless, some people simply cannot learn from a book!!!!
There is a reason why teachers exist, and that is because the vast majority of people have a hard time learning material on their own with only a dry text book to guide them.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is they weren't done the way they said they were. If the prophets were truely non-linear, the first episode of DS9 would have been 15 minutes long, and consisted of Sisko entering the wormhole, the prophets saying "Yeah, yeah Sisko, we like baseball too. You can use the wormhole. The Cardassians are coming, go defend your station.", and then him going back to the station.
The only problem with that is that when Star Wars originally came out, it wasn't called Episode IV at all. It was simply called Star Wars. The rest of the title came later, after the studio agreed to make the rest of them.
The Matrix?! The Matrix??!!! The Matrix was probably the worst sci-fi film ever made that actually had a budget! Total Recall was better! For it to qualify as sci-fi, it has to be *possible* given the current state of scientific knowledge. The Matrix fails miserably on that.
I will admit that sci-fi is hard to film, but thats because its hard to write as well. Real science fiction doesn't have a protagonist, at least not a human one. The main character in a science fiction story is a concept, which is incredibly hard to translate to film. For a good example, read Asimov's Foundation series.
Star Trek, Star Wars, B5, and Farscape are all not true sci-fi. They are fantasy set in a futuristic (I say that because I'm sure someone will point out that Star Wars is in fact set in the past) setting. In the case of Star Wars and B5, good gripping fantasy, and in the case of Star Trek, fun pulpy fantasy. (IMHO, of course).
Here are some examples of good sci-fi (again IMHO and in no way supposed to be an exhaustive list):
Movies: Blade Runner (or just about anything by P.K. Dick), Gattaca, 2001, A Clockwork Orange, and Contact
Books: Again, just about anything by P.K. Dick, Clarke, or Asimov, The Manifold series and The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter, Snow Crash and The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson, and Contact by Carl Sagan (which was far better than the movie).
The underlying theme in all these is that the characters don't really matter and its the underlying idea that is important.
Yes, yes, I realize that that is taking Star Trek way too literally, but that was a serious continuity error considering it was a major plot point in the episode. I thought people were paid to catch things like that.
I don't know about 72 pin *DIMMs* (for the sarcasm impaired, there is no such thing), but in 72 pin SIMMs, the notch IS off-center.
Thats perfectly possible, assuming you are in a powered craft. Its only not possible if you are in a free-fall (non-powered) orbit.
The reason B5 was good was because of the amazing continuity. It wasn't really a soap opera, rather than one big story that all fit together. In fact, thats the only reason I can tolerate watching the horrible melodramatic acting. Somehow, this is the very thing that ruined DS9. DS9 turned into a soap opera in the worst sense of the phrase. It had continuity only in the sense that each episode had one more inane plot twist that you couldn't really care about. There was no foreshadowing, no planned character development, and no rational story arc evolution.
What the hell kind of RAM were you using? Both 30 pin and 72 pin are asymmetric.
I do know the difference between its and it's, but the other things I don't know. The difference is that I know that I don't know. Thats why I don't try to fix my car or go ballroom dancing. If you don't know how to do something and you try anyway, odds are you are going to fuck something up. You should be prepared for that, and if you aren't you have only yourself to blame.
Actually, I just saw a blurb in MacAddict about a company called Coderus that has ported the DirectX APIs to the Mac. They support both OS 9 and OS X, and any computer later than rev B iMacs. Their product isn't for consumers though, its for developers. Perhaps we could see Connectix using this technology to finally make it feasible to play Windows games under emulation.
First of all, it wasn't Deep Blue that beat Kasparov, it was Deeper Blue, its sucessor.
Secondly, the only reason that Deeper Blue was able to beat Kasparov was because it was specifically programmed to play against him. They fed it his entire professional chess playing history so it could figure out his style and how to beat it. If you entered Deeper Blue as a contestant in the world championship proceedings, it wouldn't win.
Preface: I don't completely understand the rules of Go, so if I mistook two passes in a row ends the game for two passes during the game ends the game, I apologize.
That is a faulty proof, what if the strategy requires white to pass at some later point during the game? Black has already used up one pass and cannot use another one, rendering him unable to use the strategy.
Because of those rules (the 50 move rule specifically affects it the most), there is a definite longest game. IIRC it was around 5400 moves.
The term wardialing came about because the practice was popularized by the movie WarGames.
The reason cell phones aren't allowed to be used in aircraft isn't because you are endangering the aircraft, its because you are endangering the cell phone network. When you are on the ground, your phone can generally only see one or two cell stations, but when you are in the air, you have line of sight to tons and tons of them. This produces an immense strain on the cell phone network, especially when you have many people using them at once.
Watashi and nani are correct, but nan da (notice the space) isn't exactly the same as nani. Nan da is a shortening (read informal use) of nan desu ka which basically means "What is it?"
I don't remember "nano" and "daymo" is impossible (you can't have a y without a following vowel like that), but hello is "moshi moshi" and the word you are looking for for excuse me is "ano" which is also used for "um" and just about any other time you would want to say something similiar.
Bullshit, no they didn't. The vast majority of the founding fathers were deists (blind watchmaker theory) if not down and out atheist. And as for being intolerant, you are only intolerant when you try to force your own morals and beliefs on other people who don't necessarily agree with you.
There are actually several different classification systems with numbers of kingdoms ranging from 3 to 6. The 5 kingdom model is the currently most accepted one, but has only been around since the 1970's.
This statement, which I suppose is technically true, is absolutely ludacris. It would be like saying that burning down the rainforest wouldn't produce any extra carbon dioxide for the same reason! If this process becomes widespread, even though it won't technically produce any more carbon dioxide than would have been produced, it will produce it a hell of a lot faster and there will be higher concentrations of it in the atmosphere.
At present in the laboratory bench process, hydrogen constitutes about half of the product from a catalyzed glucose solution. But with further refining of the sugar solution the percentage rises.
The percentage cannot rise above 50%. The reaction is C6H12O6 (glucose) + 6O2 -> 6H2 + 6CO2. And that's only 50% by volume. By mass its only 4.3% H2 and 95.7% CO2.
First of all you wouldn't get 12H, you'd get 6H2. I don't know about the heat, but the molecular mass is pretty easy to figure out. 6C = 6*12. 12H = 12*1. 6O = 6*16. That makes 72+12+96=180. What I want to know is how they are keeping the H2 from combining with the O2 at those temperatures.
120mg/20oz = 6mg/oz for Jolt. 100mg/12oz = 8.3mg/oz for coffee. Its nowhere near twice as much, and it most certainly isn't 3x as the original poster said.
BTW, if any of you are worried about the health effects of caffiene, the LD-50 of caffiene is 10g, or about 100 cups of coffee. So you don't have too much to worry about.
Skylarov, on the other hand, is a Russian citizen, coded whatever he coded on Russian soil, never attempted to distribute code in the U.S., yet was arrested by U.S. police, and charged in a U.S. court for something completely out of their jurisdiction.
No, its the equivalent of saying "some people simply cannot learn to drive without someone showing them how and riding along with them at first" which if you ask me if perfectly reasonable.
I wasn't suggesting that it should be alright for people to not be able to learn from a book at all, but rather that there are quite a few people that cannot learn from only a book. The value of a good teacher cannot be underestimated.
The job of the person at the front of the classroom is not to digest knowledge for students, because it can't be done.
No, their job is to figure out how a student best learns, and translate the material to be learned into a form digestable by the student. Whether or not the student actually digests the material is a function of how much he/she wants to learn it.
The learning process involves exactly one person, the student. The only one who can teach you is you.
The learning process invovles two people, the student and the teacher. You need both a motivated student, and a good teacher in order to learn.
Here's a clue for everyone who thinks that teachers are useless, some people simply cannot learn from a book!!!!
There is a reason why teachers exist, and that is because the vast majority of people have a hard time learning material on their own with only a dry text book to guide them.