I'll be waiting patiently for your answer as to why someone would be forced to leave school because they are embarassed.
Your lack of imagination in this regard simply exposes your lack of understanding of the problem under discussion. You think "embarrassed" is the same as humiliation or complete alienation. Every year hundreds of kids leave school because their peers will not allow them to function as a student at their school due to some "embarassment."
Your assertion that you have been bullied is absurd. It's tantamount to saying you understand the rigors of drowning because you had someone 'gleek' you in high school. Maybe you're under the illusion that being in an overwhelmingly hostile atmosphere allows one to continue being a good student. Your demand for an explanation as to how this could happen reveals that you're simply unwilling to comprehend any experience outside of your own. It wasn't just a table of jocks giggling in the lunch room. It wasn't a bully cornering you in the locker room. It was everybody. Every single person he knew. Everyone who saw him, constantly, all day long, every day.
Pretty bad place to leave the video, if he didn't want anyone to see it.
So he is responsibel for leaving it lying around, but the kids who actually posted the movie and named it jackass aren't culpable because the chance opportunity sucked their free will from their minds? Is that what your saying?
"Come on officer, look at the way she's dressed. She was askin for it."
The videos are just wonderful, and are NOT bullying to people like me.
That's because bullies always react that way to accusations of bullying, "We were just joking," "Just havign fun." I caught an employee making groping gestures at the backside of the most prudsh girl at my work and groaning, "Move that ass." When I pulled him aside his defense was, "Oh, we do that all the time. She knows I don't mean anything by it." The girl was mortified, but the guy couldn't even comprehend that since he didn't mean it in a bad way that it could be taken that way.
You need to recognize that just because you enjoy something does not make it right or innocent. If you can comprehend having every single person you have worked with for the past four years mocking you day in and day out you might find your ability to laugh along with them just a tiny bit stretched.
Call it what you will, lots of people have trouble stepping forward and saying, "Yeah, this is me, I did that, and I'm damn proud of it."
I call it a gross failure to understand the cruelty of kids. He could spend all his time defendign it, being proud of it, whatever. He's still a fat kid who did something silly. No one is ever going to stop giving him hell for it.
Your self-actualized recipe for dealing with teen angst only works in teen movies. Most kids don't give a damn. They just want someone to attack.
Yes, it is frivolous. Lots of people go through hell in school --- maybe all of them. This kid needed to suck it up and get on with his life.
This may what happens, but that doesn't make it just. It's far more common for the scars to taint the rest of one's life (if you don't believe me how long does it take you to remember your most embarrassing sports moment).
Your cynicism and inability to control your tongue does not mean that the rest of us have to take shit from other people lying down. I personally can't wait for the culture of 'boys will be boys' to die out completely. No more Star Wars Kid, n o more Kliebold and Harris.
You know, I and a lot of people hated using Explorer, just because Netscape was a much neater bundle for anyone who uses the meail client and newsreader. The big problem with explorer was not that it's browser wasn't better (it was in some ways, but not any that the verage user cared about, particularlyon non-windows OS'), but that Outlook did and still is a bloated piece of crap.
The best thing about Mozilla is that I didn't have to give up using one of the best email clients out there.
Re:This has been open for a while...
on
Lucas's New HQ
·
· Score: 1
The Presidio facility has been open for a bit.... I'm sure 80% of slashdot already knows about this
The official opening was yesterday. There weren't even toilet seat covers in half of the new buildings on Friday. I'm sure you knew it was coming but a)it was not open before yesteday, and b)today you can come in and walk the grounds. I suppose/. should have stopped people talking about it past the first press release in 1998.
I really like how Bill Gates and Paul Allen are "a small seattle firm" instead of a couple of kids into programming languages who weren't anywhere near seattle at the time.
I don't know if there is really a revival of old computers. The article doesn't really present evidence, it just makes some assumptions and runs with them to justify what is, after all, just a fetish. One that I share, granted, but not because I have an great fantasies that my IBM luggable laptop is ever going to restore important data to me.
I disagree. Having had to suffer through the big, "Oh, you've got to be kidding me." in RotJ, I think anything that would spare the audience the silly revelation that Luke french kissed his sister is a good think.
You know, I was working at ILM during production on AotC. Everyone who went anywhere near that movie were pouring their hearts into it. You may like the last movie best, but it's not because they were slacking off for the first two. If anything there was more love put into TPM because everyone on the project had dreamed of doing it their whole life. After 10 years enything can become routine.
The point is that the flaws in TPM and AotC were because of idiot choices that Lucas made to every single scene. Changing his mind, picking the worst possible permutations of scenes, throwing out thousands of hours of work in favor of a really stupid gag, etc. The reason, I think you're seeing more love now, is because the boner filter is paying less attention to micromanaging his puppet project and trusting the people with real talent to do the work (which is how everything good that came of the SW franchise got made)
Firstly, TPM and AOC getting 62-65% is appalling in itself. Many of these reviews roast the film then recommend it for the effects (at least at rottentomatoes). Each and every positive review I've read on their site for RotSith I would re-rate as a splat because, like Ebert's review, they all pan the movie. RotJ didn't get 80% in any universe I lived in in the 80's.
Secondly, reviewing ANH in hindsight like this is a bunch of crap. Critically, in the 1970s, it was very mixed. Critics derided it rightly for bad acting, a narrow, 2 dimensional, predictable plot, and only after its success and Best Picture nomination did people start treating it like it had been anything more. The reviews at Rottentomatoes are from the 1990s re-release, mostly written by guys who grew up on the movies, and loved them so much they felt it was their opportunity to write rave reviews about a movie that many (most) critics thought was a pretty bad film in 1977.
Thirdly the generation of critics from the 70s has utterly transformed itself into a bunch of industry ass-kissing corporate shills. There are very few movie critics worthy of any respect when it comes to being willing to judge a "popular" movie harshly. In modern media criticism is now aimed at reacting to what the lowest common denominator. Read all the Star Wars reviews from the 90s. "a confusing plot with bad acting, but enjoyable for those who just want to have a good time." This is not honesty in criticism; it is ugly culture-whoring pandering so as not to piss off too many sponsors (I presume).
That is what allows the entertainment moguls to drag us down in their race to the Lowest Common Denominator. I have high expectations, so I don't settle for McDonalds, Twinkies, and cross-dressing hookers to get my jollies. I expect someone who is spending a million dollars an episode to be capable of putting together a story, cast, and concept that isn't recycled from the most mediocre of the last century's pop culture. There isn't a lot of *great* Science Fiction out there, but if you're in a world that allows you to watch Farscape, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica-2003 on demand what excuse do you have for lowering your expectations to watch Star Trek: Voyager reruns?
Are you suggesting that the airlines are actually "private" (as oppozsed to being very heavily regulated by the government), or even that they do a good job by herding thousands of people in great discomfort for gargantuan sums of money?
" Two things can happen. Either he will give up because its too much effort, or he will hit me first."
I would posit that A) your assertion that he would not be able to bother you is false. It is far too easy to impose upon someone. You might pretend to ignore it, and he might believe it, but you are permitting his shit to continue. Personally, I think you are lying. B) You are encouraging this behavior by letting it have no consequences. To pretend you can ignore anything that anyone tries to do to you is a very naive behavior.
You know, the "bargain racks" are just garbage racks, but if you are looking actively for the games you want, the retailer will dump the price on hot titles to "liquidate" their overstock, and for two or three months there'll be huge discoutns on really hot titles. That's how I bought Civ3 for $20. Just check the shelves at CompUSA, or Best Buy (not the game boutiques w/no shelf-space). There is always something that was just the hot ticket with a big discount, even if it's not exactly the game you want.
Campaign contributions matter because they run our elections and determine who gets to be selected between. Hopelessly naive is the statement that said, "It shouldn't be too difficult" considering the mass movement of very active and involved participants fighting the big 5.
You can accuse people of being armchair warriors, but you haven't really got a perspective on the conflict.
I just think that people who claim that since we're some sort of democracy that it should just be a cake walk to put public opinion into policy should try some college level reading, but that's a very involved topic.
"If as many people agree with you as you think, that shouldn't be difficult, now should it?"
I'm sorry, but this is a hopelessly naive statement. If we lived in a direct democracy instead of a representative, largely corporate socialist economy, then you might have a weak argument, but what you are claiming simply stumbles, staggers, and falls in the face of the literally hundreds of thousands of attempts to address the issue, not to mention the millions of us who "vote with our checkbooks" by not buying big 5 CDs while their control gets even tighter and prices continue to climb.
Seriously people: http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/60fanfilguar.ht ml
They're called filters, you put them over the top of your fan and dust the outside when you clean your room (you do dust, don't you?).
I've been running a clear case (http://www.monkeybrains.net/~maggot/Streamline/De sktop.jpg) for a year and a half now, PSU goes in an external shielded container, there are filters over the front grill, yeah once every six months I clean out my case; I've done this with every computer I've owned.
Why is everyone making such a big deal over the dust issue? I mean, you must have monster balls of lint in your boxen if you don't recognize the simplest of precautions, does it make you happier that you can't see them?
The Lord of the Rings is not as black and white as you make it out. But nice try at trolling. All baddies do NOT start out bad.
Astonishing that you can't simply agree to disagree without whiney cries of "Mommy I'm being trolled!"
Both points are calid, and both points make a strong third. The characters in LoTR and HP are both shallow by any standard of fictional characters. Even TV routinely displays more depth of thought and the effect of the challenges on characters than anything in the movies being diuscussed. HP characters have certainly become much more developed as the series progresses in print, but the film is naturally forced to deal with children to deliver those levels, and given the complicated plots of the stories, there's not much to lean on.
The dev in LotR is quite the reverse. They become more simplistic as time goes on and their onion-like layers are peeled away, though don't mistake that for hidden depths. Frodo is always melencholy, Sam is always fiercly devoted, Aragorn always Will Be King, yet the movies have actors, writers and a director attempting to churn out more and more character (which I think is a pity in some cases as it does dilute what made LotR great and takes away from the movie which ought to concentrate on letting the story develop the characters).
Accusing Tolkien or Rawling of being great character writers is simply being disingenuous. These are people with great minds for fantastic worlds, but the most casual examination of the science fiction/fantasy section in any bookstore will reveal vastly more depth of character in almost any book you pick up from L.Ron to L.E.Modisette Jr.
Whoops! We need to decompress the ship but we only have once space suit! I know, we'll give you this death shot and then revive you when we have pressure again. This from Farscape, no less.
Only problem is being dead won't particularly protect you from the ravages of vacuum. Your fluids will still boil and make a mess of your innards. Bummer for John...
Umm, actually they had to eject oxygen from the shuttle, not decompress. The atmosphere was too 02 rich, as they stated, to use a welding tool, for far of setting off a fire. John would have asphyxiated, but not been subject to a vacuum.
You are mistaking one of the well thought out plot contrivances in Farscape for the numerous and sundry ludicrous ones, such as the Flux (the episode you are referring too) being able to sieze thousands of starships which happen to pass through this extremely narrow band of space with no stellar bodies in the vicinity that also happens to create no gravitational field that is detectable from very close.
It also spawned several subcultures, including cyberpunks and cypherpunks, and possibly contributed to goths...
Bill Gibson's novels had absolutely Jack to do with the evolution of goth, which was already five years old by the time Count Zero was published. Bill was great at looking at things that are out there and pegging them, right on the mark.
The Gothiks in CZ were far more a reflection of japanese glam rock, which in turn was a reflection of the LA punk/goth scene.
As far as "cyberpunks" I've said it before, I'll say it again, like New Wave music, there wasn't never no cyberpunk scene, just a lotta middle-aged yuppies trying to sound hip.
Well, one very important truth to consider is that within about two hours of the beetle being hung a fog bank rolled in that totally obscured the beetle from any viewing position except helicoptors flying dangerously close to the bridge.
I was among those climbing to the top of Russian hill to see the drop. Suffice to say that not only could we not see through the cloud, but that *no one* saw the drop but the workers doing the cutting.
As much as I hate to admit it, having spent the past five years doing "meaningful" work in live theatre, designing lights, sets, sound engineering, acting and directing a bit, and generally being on of the City's few altruistic small theatre techs, I have come to the firm conclusion that one show is indeed pretty much like the last.
After hundreds of shows they've started dissolving into one another, I am actually typing this during a performance of a Paula Vogel play (she's a Pulitzer winner, BTW), because I am just so bleedin' bored-and it's only night number two!
!
The ultimate irony is that I find myself with the exact same problems as cubicle workers: brain sludge, moodieness, lack of perspective about what's important, etc...
Oh, here comes the cat fight, I gotta go...
maggot@monkeybrains.net
Slashdot Mirror
Your lack of imagination in this regard simply exposes your lack of understanding of the problem under discussion. You think "embarrassed" is the same as humiliation or complete alienation. Every year hundreds of kids leave school because their peers will not allow them to function as a student at their school due to some "embarassment."
Your assertion that you have been bullied is absurd. It's tantamount to saying you understand the rigors of drowning because you had someone 'gleek' you in high school. Maybe you're under the illusion that being in an overwhelmingly hostile atmosphere allows one to continue being a good student. Your demand for an explanation as to how this could happen reveals that you're simply unwilling to comprehend any experience outside of your own. It wasn't just a table of jocks giggling in the lunch room. It wasn't a bully cornering you in the locker room. It was everybody. Every single person he knew. Everyone who saw him, constantly, all day long, every day.
Go ahead, pretend you get it.
So he is responsibel for leaving it lying around, but the kids who actually posted the movie and named it jackass aren't culpable because the chance opportunity sucked their free will from their minds? Is that what your saying?
"Come on officer, look at the way she's dressed. She was askin for it."
That's because bullies always react that way to accusations of bullying, "We were just joking," "Just havign fun." I caught an employee making groping gestures at the backside of the most prudsh girl at my work and groaning, "Move that ass." When I pulled him aside his defense was, "Oh, we do that all the time. She knows I don't mean anything by it." The girl was mortified, but the guy couldn't even comprehend that since he didn't mean it in a bad way that it could be taken that way.
You need to recognize that just because you enjoy something does not make it right or innocent. If you can comprehend having every single person you have worked with for the past four years mocking you day in and day out you might find your ability to laugh along with them just a tiny bit stretched.
I call it a gross failure to understand the cruelty of kids. He could spend all his time defendign it, being proud of it, whatever. He's still a fat kid who did something silly. No one is ever going to stop giving him hell for it.
Your self-actualized recipe for dealing with teen angst only works in teen movies. Most kids don't give a damn. They just want someone to attack.
This may what happens, but that doesn't make it just. It's far more common for the scars to taint the rest of one's life (if you don't believe me how long does it take you to remember your most embarrassing sports moment).
Your cynicism and inability to control your tongue does not mean that the rest of us have to take shit from other people lying down. I personally can't wait for the culture of 'boys will be boys' to die out completely. No more Star Wars Kid, n o more Kliebold and Harris.
You know, I and a lot of people hated using Explorer, just because Netscape was a much neater bundle for anyone who uses the meail client and newsreader. The big problem with explorer was not that it's browser wasn't better (it was in some ways, but not any that the verage user cared about, particularlyon non-windows OS'), but that Outlook did and still is a bloated piece of crap.
The best thing about Mozilla is that I didn't have to give up using one of the best email clients out there.
The Presidio facility has been open for a bit. ... I'm sure 80% of slashdot already knows about this
/. should have stopped people talking about it past the first press release in 1998.
The official opening was yesterday. There weren't even toilet seat covers in half of the new buildings on Friday. I'm sure you knew it was coming but a)it was not open before yesteday, and b)today you can come in and walk the grounds. I suppose
I really like how Bill Gates and Paul Allen are "a small seattle firm" instead of a couple of kids into programming languages who weren't anywhere near seattle at the time.
I don't know if there is really a revival of old computers. The article doesn't really present evidence, it just makes some assumptions and runs with them to justify what is, after all, just a fetish. One that I share, granted, but not because I have an great fantasies that my IBM luggable laptop is ever going to restore important data to me.
I disagree. Having had to suffer through the big, "Oh, you've got to be kidding me." in RotJ, I think anything that would spare the audience the silly revelation that Luke french kissed his sister is a good think.
It's sort of like a horiscope. You can fit it to anything, no matter how utterly innacurate the comparison.
You know, I was working at ILM during production on AotC. Everyone who went anywhere near that movie were pouring their hearts into it. You may like the last movie best, but it's not because they were slacking off for the first two. If anything there was more love put into TPM because everyone on the project had dreamed of doing it their whole life. After 10 years enything can become routine.
The point is that the flaws in TPM and AotC were because of idiot choices that Lucas made to every single scene. Changing his mind, picking the worst possible permutations of scenes, throwing out thousands of hours of work in favor of a really stupid gag, etc. The reason, I think you're seeing more love now, is because the boner filter is paying less attention to micromanaging his puppet project and trusting the people with real talent to do the work (which is how everything good that came of the SW franchise got made)
Firstly, TPM and AOC getting 62-65% is appalling in itself. Many of these reviews roast the film then recommend it for the effects (at least at rottentomatoes). Each and every positive review I've read on their site for RotSith I would re-rate as a splat because, like Ebert's review, they all pan the movie. RotJ didn't get 80% in any universe I lived in in the 80's.
Secondly, reviewing ANH in hindsight like this is a bunch of crap. Critically, in the 1970s, it was very mixed. Critics derided it rightly for bad acting, a narrow, 2 dimensional, predictable plot, and only after its success and Best Picture nomination did people start treating it like it had been anything more. The reviews at Rottentomatoes are from the 1990s re-release, mostly written by guys who grew up on the movies, and loved them so much they felt it was their opportunity to write rave reviews about a movie that many (most) critics thought was a pretty bad film in 1977.
Thirdly the generation of critics from the 70s has utterly transformed itself into a bunch of industry ass-kissing corporate shills. There are very few movie critics worthy of any respect when it comes to being willing to judge a "popular" movie harshly. In modern media criticism is now aimed at reacting to what the lowest common denominator. Read all the Star Wars reviews from the 90s. "a confusing plot with bad acting, but enjoyable for those who just want to have a good time." This is not honesty in criticism; it is ugly culture-whoring pandering so as not to piss off too many sponsors (I presume).
That is what allows the entertainment moguls to drag us down in their race to the Lowest Common Denominator. I have high expectations, so I don't settle for McDonalds, Twinkies, and cross-dressing hookers to get my jollies. I expect someone who is spending a million dollars an episode to be capable of putting together a story, cast, and concept that isn't recycled from the most mediocre of the last century's pop culture. There isn't a lot of *great* Science Fiction out there, but if you're in a world that allows you to watch Farscape, Firefly, and Battlestar Galactica-2003 on demand what excuse do you have for lowering your expectations to watch Star Trek: Voyager reruns?
Are you suggesting that the airlines are actually "private" (as oppozsed to being very heavily regulated by the government), or even that they do a good job by herding thousands of people in great discomfort for gargantuan sums of money?
" Two things can happen. Either he will give up because its too much effort, or he will hit me first."
I would posit that A) your assertion that he would not be able to bother you is false. It is far too easy to impose upon someone. You might pretend to ignore it, and he might believe it, but you are permitting his shit to continue. Personally, I think you are lying. B) You are encouraging this behavior by letting it have no consequences. To pretend you can ignore anything that anyone tries to do to you is a very naive behavior.
You know, the "bargain racks" are just garbage racks, but if you are looking actively for the games you want, the retailer will dump the price on hot titles to "liquidate" their overstock, and for two or three months there'll be huge discoutns on really hot titles. That's how I bought Civ3 for $20. Just check the shelves at CompUSA, or Best Buy (not the game boutiques w/no shelf-space). There is always something that was just the hot ticket with a big discount, even if it's not exactly the game you want.
Campaign contributions matter because they run our elections and determine who gets to be selected between. Hopelessly naive is the statement that said, "It shouldn't be too difficult" considering the mass movement of very active and involved participants fighting the big 5.
You can accuse people of being armchair warriors, but you haven't really got a perspective on the conflict.
I just think that people who claim that since we're some sort of democracy that it should just be a cake walk to put public opinion into policy should try some college level reading, but that's a very involved topic.
"If as many people agree with you as you think, that shouldn't be difficult, now should it?"
I'm sorry, but this is a hopelessly naive statement. If we lived in a direct democracy instead of a representative, largely corporate socialist economy, then you might have a weak argument, but what you are claiming simply stumbles, staggers, and falls in the face of the literally hundreds of thousands of attempts to address the issue, not to mention the millions of us who "vote with our checkbooks" by not buying big 5 CDs while their control gets even tighter and prices continue to climb.
Seriously people: http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/60fanfilguar.ht ml
e sktop.jpg) for a year and a half now, PSU goes in an external shielded container, there are filters over the front grill, yeah once every six months I clean out my case; I've done this with every computer I've owned.
They're called filters, you put them over the top of your fan and dust the outside when you clean your room (you do dust, don't you?).
I've been running a clear case (http://www.monkeybrains.net/~maggot/Streamline/D
Why is everyone making such a big deal over the dust issue? I mean, you must have monster balls of lint in your boxen if you don't recognize the simplest of precautions, does it make you happier that you can't see them?
The Lord of the Rings is not as black and white as you make it out. But nice try at trolling. All baddies do NOT start out bad.
Astonishing that you can't simply agree to disagree without whiney cries of "Mommy I'm being trolled!"
Both points are calid, and both points make a strong third. The characters in LoTR and HP are both shallow by any standard of fictional characters. Even TV routinely displays more depth of thought and the effect of the challenges on characters than anything in the movies being diuscussed. HP characters have certainly become much more developed as the series progresses in print, but the film is naturally forced to deal with children to deliver those levels, and given the complicated plots of the stories, there's not much to lean on.
The dev in LotR is quite the reverse. They become more simplistic as time goes on and their onion-like layers are peeled away, though don't mistake that for hidden depths. Frodo is always melencholy, Sam is always fiercly devoted, Aragorn always Will Be King, yet the movies have actors, writers and a director attempting to churn out more and more character (which I think is a pity in some cases as it does dilute what made LotR great and takes away from the movie which ought to concentrate on letting the story develop the characters).
Accusing Tolkien or Rawling of being great character writers is simply being disingenuous. These are people with great minds for fantastic worlds, but the most casual examination of the science fiction/fantasy section in any bookstore will reveal vastly more depth of character in almost any book you pick up from L.Ron to L.E.Modisette Jr.
Umm, actually they had to eject oxygen from the shuttle, not decompress. The atmosphere was too 02 rich, as they stated, to use a welding tool, for far of setting off a fire. John would have asphyxiated, but not been subject to a vacuum.
You are mistaking one of the well thought out plot contrivances in Farscape for the numerous and sundry ludicrous ones, such as the Flux (the episode you are referring too) being able to sieze thousands of starships which happen to pass through this extremely narrow band of space with no stellar bodies in the vicinity that also happens to create no gravitational field that is detectable from very close.
It also spawned several subcultures, including cyberpunks and cypherpunks, and possibly contributed to goths...
Bill Gibson's novels had absolutely Jack to do with the evolution of goth, which was already five years old by the time Count Zero was published. Bill was great at looking at things that are out there and pegging them, right on the mark.
The Gothiks in CZ were far more a reflection of japanese glam rock, which in turn was a reflection of the LA punk/goth scene.
As far as "cyberpunks" I've said it before, I'll say it again, like New Wave music, there wasn't never no cyberpunk scene, just a lotta middle-aged yuppies trying to sound hip.
Well, one very important truth to consider is that within about two hours of the beetle being hung a fog bank rolled in that totally obscured the beetle from any viewing position except helicoptors flying dangerously close to the bridge. I was among those climbing to the top of Russian hill to see the drop. Suffice to say that not only could we not see through the cloud, but that *no one* saw the drop but the workers doing the cutting.
As much as I hate to admit it, having spent the past five years doing "meaningful" work in live theatre, designing lights, sets, sound engineering, acting and directing a bit, and generally being on of the City's few altruistic small theatre techs, I have come to the firm conclusion that one show is indeed pretty much like the last. After hundreds of shows they've started dissolving into one another, I am actually typing this during a performance of a Paula Vogel play (she's a Pulitzer winner, BTW), because I am just so bleedin' bored-and it's only night number two! ! The ultimate irony is that I find myself with the exact same problems as cubicle workers: brain sludge, moodieness, lack of perspective about what's important, etc... Oh, here comes the cat fight, I gotta go... maggot@monkeybrains.net