Now on the other hand what to you do when the VP choice has no experience and no intelligence?
Come on, I know Senate experience isn't executive experience, but Biden's at least managed to get re-elected a whole buncha times. However, the "no intelligence" part is dead-on.
So in reality you save 30$ by not having Windows installed, and then pay 70$ more because NortonWare and JoeBobFirewall, etc
And save more than that in the value of your time and your machine's performance without having a nice OS installation polluted with a bunch of crappy software.
Re:Both franchise shared the same fate.
on
New Star Trek Trailer
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Now that I've seen the trailer, I can't help but agree with you.
And there's never been a targeted trailer? They do this all the time, making a more action-oriented trailer for showing before an action movie ("Quantum of Solace") that makes the movie look more "summer blockbustery" than it really is. There's nothing saying this movie can't be the Star Trek we know and love and are hoping it will be. A later trailer may show the character aspect of the movie. Obviously you expect action in this movie and the trailer says, "Yep. There's action." It was being shown to a James Bond crowd (among others). It doesn't mean the whole tone of the movie is going to be like Transformers (which I liked by the way) as opposed to "Star Trek: TMP". I'm willing to give Abrams the benefit of the doubt for now. It looks cool, and it looks fun. Maybe it will be a lame piece of fluff. But at least wait until you see the movie before writing it off as crap. Ya never know. It might be good.
No, I'm just aware enough to realize that there were a lot more good shows in the 60s and 70s than now. Sure, there are some good shows now, but nowhere near as many as there used to be.
Hooray! Someone else who recognizes that "Insurrection" was actually a decent movie. Was it in reality just a two-hour episode? Of course. What makes Star Trek great was the _episodes_ not the movies. The small moments. The character development (even if it was slowly drawn out over years). Not the bigger than life blockbuster action.
Compare that to "First Contact", which while being a decent movie, would have worked perfectly well if you'd scrubbed all Star Trek references and made it a generic SF/action flick. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it was originally written as such. The Star Trek element seemed totally tacked on, and the way they utterly butchered canon to make the story fit is another clue. Did it have some neat moments? Sure. Did it even have some good Star Trek character moments? Yes. But overall it just didn't feel like Trek.
Yes, "Wrath of Khan" was the best Star Trek movie, but it was first and foremost about the characters. It took a story we'd seen some 15 years prior and extrapolated a new chapter out of it. "The Voyage Home" was a great departure for Trek, and used humor well, but every subsequent movie tried to be the same thing: Some utter contrivance to get the core cast on their own operating completely ad hoc, usually against orders. This was a mockery of the idea of what Star Trek was, a vast powerful starship, part of a vast fleet accomplishing great things because everyone works together. Not the renegade loner who bucks orders every 15 minutes but gets away with it because he's always right and everyone else is conveniently always wrong. The core of Star Trek is that unlike today, the establishment actually works. Sure there is corruption at times. Sure people make mistakes. But Gene Roddenberry's idea was that we've gotten past most of the usual human crap and have figured out how to work together for a common good and a larger goal. Meeting challenges as a team, working together to solve problems, being true teammates and friends with no politics and no subterfuge because we as a society managed to get beyond the usual petty crap that most people suffer from every day. Humans in Star Trek aren't and were never supposed to be perfect, but they were supposed to be better than we usually are. It set a goal, an aspiration for us to strive for. Not conformity in thoughts and deeds, but the ability to find strength in unity despite, no not despite, _because of_ diversity.
As to Voyager, we'll have to agree to disagree. I gave it a few seasons, and it was occasionally good, but completely gave up when I realized that no matter what happened during the episode, they would always restore it to the precise status quo ante at the end of the last act. It was "Gilligan's Island" in space, completely risk-free and formulaic. The whole premise of the show was that it was a huge risk, a huge shake-up of the Star Trek formula, but it ended up being exactly the same stuff. The same aliens with putty on their faces and goofy hairdos, that all speak English (yes, I know about the universal translator), the same kinds of stories. The same "deus ex treknobabble" in the last act. The same safeness. I realized how ridiculous it was when they had to ration energy for the replicators, which was a neat idea, but then later in the same episodes they're clowning around in the holodeck. The change was all superficial. Underneath, it was TNG with a largely inferior cast and inferior stories. Yawn.
That's why shows like BSG will always win, because with BSG, you never know what will happen! Will they kill off a major character? They might. Will they completely change the setting? Definitely. Will they shock you? Disturb you? Shove you out of the comfort zone? Practically every episode! I don't mean a show need to be excessively violent or whatever to have an edge, but it does need to progress. Star Trek was always episodic with little or no context between episodes, but with "Voyager" I finally got sick of that. We've grown up. We deserve a real story arc. We deserve characters who change and situations that aren't static, just like real life.
Whoa. That non-sequitur was so abrupt I almost got whiplash. The fact is Obama has proposed an obscene and absurd amount of more government spending. I find it ironic that he's supposed to fix the bankrupt government when, by every measure, he wants to expand it as rapidly as President Bush.
But you're right, the guy who graduated at the bottom of his class and relied on his family name is probably far less self-reliant then the guy that graduated Magna from a top law school.
Spoken like a college student, or someone else who hasn't been in the "real world" for very long. You do realize that after your first job, your grades are largely irrelevant. Of course, Obama's grades are the most recent concrete accomplishment you can point to before his election to the Oval Office, so I guess it does matter. And if you think Obama hasn't been riding on the coattails of many, many benefactors, you are really being naive.
I can't speak for the MSM because I mostly avoid it. I get most of my news online from multiple sources and saw all of maybe 5 campaign commercials throughout the whole election season.
That said, I agree with you. It pains me that the commercials are playing to the lowest common denominator. In fact, the entire campaigns play to the lowest common denominator, which is why it is so relevant to do serious digging into the candidates' backgrounds. In the case of Obama, since his paper trail was very thin, knowing who he "pals around with", who his mentors, friends and associates are was a vitally important clue (and often the only clue) to finding out what the guy really believes. As yet, I think these are wholly unanswered in any detail, which is ironic since the guy takes office in two months.
Neither, unfortunately, are the candidates going to give much information except for a Christmas list of what they hope the accomplish, which is all but pointless. Hey, I want to achieve world peace and eliminate poverty too! The real question is how are you going to do it, Chester? Can you cite the philosophies which undergird how you will govern? (In that case, I think Obama inadvertently spoke volumes with his "spread the wealth" comments.) These are things that neither candidate did a good job of articulating, because, apparently, this is irrelevant to most people who want nothing more than a checklist of hot-button issues to compare against. For instance, McCain adopted certain conservative planks but never really gave us any reason why he supported these things, especially given his history. Do we really think he would be tough on immigration enforcement when he was totally behind that bogus "reform" bill from 2007? Is this a real conviction or was he just placating the law-and-order conservatives?
I think, aside from being totally in the can for Obama, the MSM did a horrible job of covering this election, which is one of the many reasons why I largely avoid them. On the other hand, the candidates largely did an equal job of describing themselves. Frankly, I think we elected a candidate based on campaigning that was largely contrary to everything he's done in his life up until now, basing himself on vague optimism, discontent with the current administration and a bunch of smooth rhetoric with little real detail or substance.
In other words, the superficial, knee-jerk, content-free campaigning works really well. I was really hoping 2008 would be a repeat of 1980 and 1992 where independent candidates had a real influence in the race. We need independents like Ron Paul, Dennis Kuchinch, and the host of Libertarian, Constitution, Green, etc, Party candidates to keep the Big Two real, because left alone they are no more honest and revealing than the most stereotypical sleazy used car salesman. This wasn't an election, it was American Idol - The Presidential Edition. The winner looks and sounds great, is a real crowd-pleaser and totally dominated on presentation, but how we will be as a President is no more clear than it was two years ago when hardly anyone had heard of his name.
What I'm saying is that since the majority of the country voted for the candidate who wants to make the government everything for everyone the idea of using self-initiative and being self-reliant must be obsolete.
It's like trading in your Volvo for a Jaguar. Sure the Volvo was sturdy and dependable, but it was also boring, and didn't attract the chicks. The Jaguar is way cooler, and makes you more popular and successful with women, but you have to take it to the shop every week because it constantly breaks down. This country moved one more step from being a Volvo to being a Jaguar.
In the Star Trek timeline (at least as it was envisioned in the days of the original show), 2009 would have been a decade or more past WWIII and near-global devastation.
I wonder how long Peter Norton was actually involved with writing the tools. I wonder the ending of his involvement was when it went from a suite of extremely useful utilities to a lumbering behemoth that served little purpose other than to make XP less usable than Vista.
It was indeed "The Crawling Eye" they are watching in Mike's apartment at the end of episode 1013 ("Danger: Diabolik"). That was the first cable episode (i.e., episode 101). Jim Mallon and the Best Brains prefer to pretend the KTMA episodes never happened. For the first half or so of the season, I'm inclined to agree. However, it would be sweet if they made a DVD out of the host segments from the KTMA season, many of which very really good.
The summary mentioned Rifftrax and Cinema Titanic, both of which are great (the latter basically being "MST3K: The Next Generation"), but it failed to mention "The Film Crew" composed of Mike, Bill and Kevin. They've done several releases and those are really good too.
"Keep Circulating the Tapes" (but buy the Rhino and Shout! releases)
I am wondering why they are having anything to do with Norton who makes the most bloated, resource wasting, performance sucking, software on the planet.
Yeah, bypass the middleman. Vista comes pre-bloated, pre-resource wasting, pre-sucking... etc.
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
Does anyone remember when the Norton Utilities were the most useful pieces of software you could buy? SecMod, DirSort, all those things? They were the SysInternals of their day.
Does anyone remember the last time Norton software was something you would even consider putting on your computer? Or wouldn't be the first thing (after AOL) you uninstall on a new machine?
Yes. Why not? It's an operating system. That's what operating systems do!
If Windows were actually designed, instead of just accreted like the last 4000 doughnuts on Homer Simpson's mid-section, it could degrade gracefully on machines of lesser capability.
That Windows requires 50 times as much memory to just boot and be nominally usable than it did 10 years ago is absurd.
Yes. It took me about a month or two to hit 50, which was the max, IIRC. Shortly after that it just became "Excellent". I can understand wanting to prevent people from karma-whoring, but I miss the number.
And how many sales of Vista would there be if Microsoft didn't have a de facto monopoly and could force that steaming load of overripe cheese onto practically every new computer sold in the world?
Not 180 million but maybe 180 thousand.
Vista is a failure because very few people would choose it. The vast majority of sales were forced on people regardless of what they would choose, and I can guarantee most of those sales would not happen if customers didn't have a choice.
I'm glad the Netbooks are hurting Microsoft because Microsoft does nothing but damage the industry and stagnates the state of the art. They are a boat anchor on the whole technical industry and the sooner their monopoly is broken, the better we will all be.
No sane being ever leaves the "Beep" driver enabled and the "Sound scheme" on anything else than "No Sounds".
That was always the first thing I did when installing Windows. If any sane being even did leave those stupid sounds on, I'm sure he wouldn't remain sane for long. It's one of the many, many default settings in Windows that to this day I cannot understand what drugs they were using when they decided to do that. Another is hiding the file extensions by default. In 13 years I have yet to think of a reason why that could possibly be useful or helpful, but many, many reasons why it would cause confusion, frustration and problems.
OK. You're definitely right. No one who votes for either of the Big Two or doesn't vote at all has any right to believe it will make much difference in the big picture.
Slashdot Mirror
Now on the other hand what to you do when the VP choice has no experience and no intelligence?
Come on, I know Senate experience isn't executive experience, but Biden's at least managed to get re-elected a whole buncha times. However, the "no intelligence" part is dead-on.
So in reality you save 30$ by not having Windows installed, and then pay 70$ more because NortonWare and JoeBobFirewall, etc
And save more than that in the value of your time and your machine's performance without having a nice OS installation polluted with a bunch of crappy software.
Now that I've seen the trailer, I can't help but agree with you.
And there's never been a targeted trailer? They do this all the time, making a more action-oriented trailer for showing before an action movie ("Quantum of Solace") that makes the movie look more "summer blockbustery" than it really is. There's nothing saying this movie can't be the Star Trek we know and love and are hoping it will be. A later trailer may show the character aspect of the movie. Obviously you expect action in this movie and the trailer says, "Yep. There's action." It was being shown to a James Bond crowd (among others). It doesn't mean the whole tone of the movie is going to be like Transformers (which I liked by the way) as opposed to "Star Trek: TMP". I'm willing to give Abrams the benefit of the doubt for now. It looks cool, and it looks fun. Maybe it will be a lame piece of fluff. But at least wait until you see the movie before writing it off as crap. Ya never know. It might be good.
"Doesn't seem whinny?" Good, I hate when Kirk acts like a horse.
No, I'm just aware enough to realize that there were a lot more good shows in the 60s and 70s than now. Sure, there are some good shows now, but nowhere near as many as there used to be.
Hooray! Someone else who recognizes that "Insurrection" was actually a decent movie. Was it in reality just a two-hour episode? Of course. What makes Star Trek great was the _episodes_ not the movies. The small moments. The character development (even if it was slowly drawn out over years). Not the bigger than life blockbuster action.
Compare that to "First Contact", which while being a decent movie, would have worked perfectly well if you'd scrubbed all Star Trek references and made it a generic SF/action flick. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it was originally written as such. The Star Trek element seemed totally tacked on, and the way they utterly butchered canon to make the story fit is another clue. Did it have some neat moments? Sure. Did it even have some good Star Trek character moments? Yes. But overall it just didn't feel like Trek.
Yes, "Wrath of Khan" was the best Star Trek movie, but it was first and foremost about the characters. It took a story we'd seen some 15 years prior and extrapolated a new chapter out of it. "The Voyage Home" was a great departure for Trek, and used humor well, but every subsequent movie tried to be the same thing: Some utter contrivance to get the core cast on their own operating completely ad hoc, usually against orders. This was a mockery of the idea of what Star Trek was, a vast powerful starship, part of a vast fleet accomplishing great things because everyone works together. Not the renegade loner who bucks orders every 15 minutes but gets away with it because he's always right and everyone else is conveniently always wrong. The core of Star Trek is that unlike today, the establishment actually works. Sure there is corruption at times. Sure people make mistakes. But Gene Roddenberry's idea was that we've gotten past most of the usual human crap and have figured out how to work together for a common good and a larger goal. Meeting challenges as a team, working together to solve problems, being true teammates and friends with no politics and no subterfuge because we as a society managed to get beyond the usual petty crap that most people suffer from every day. Humans in Star Trek aren't and were never supposed to be perfect, but they were supposed to be better than we usually are. It set a goal, an aspiration for us to strive for. Not conformity in thoughts and deeds, but the ability to find strength in unity despite, no not despite, _because of_ diversity.
As to Voyager, we'll have to agree to disagree. I gave it a few seasons, and it was occasionally good, but completely gave up when I realized that no matter what happened during the episode, they would always restore it to the precise status quo ante at the end of the last act. It was "Gilligan's Island" in space, completely risk-free and formulaic. The whole premise of the show was that it was a huge risk, a huge shake-up of the Star Trek formula, but it ended up being exactly the same stuff. The same aliens with putty on their faces and goofy hairdos, that all speak English (yes, I know about the universal translator), the same kinds of stories. The same "deus ex treknobabble" in the last act. The same safeness. I realized how ridiculous it was when they had to ration energy for the replicators, which was a neat idea, but then later in the same episodes they're clowning around in the holodeck. The change was all superficial. Underneath, it was TNG with a largely inferior cast and inferior stories. Yawn.
That's why shows like BSG will always win, because with BSG, you never know what will happen! Will they kill off a major character? They might. Will they completely change the setting? Definitely. Will they shock you? Disturb you? Shove you out of the comfort zone? Practically every episode! I don't mean a show need to be excessively violent or whatever to have an edge, but it does need to progress. Star Trek was always episodic with little or no context between episodes, but with "Voyager" I finally got sick of that. We've grown up. We deserve a real story arc. We deserve characters who change and situations that aren't static, just like real life.
So what explains the dearth of quality new shows for the last 25 years or so?
Should we lower taxes further?
Whoa. That non-sequitur was so abrupt I almost got whiplash. The fact is Obama has proposed an obscene and absurd amount of more government spending. I find it ironic that he's supposed to fix the bankrupt government when, by every measure, he wants to expand it as rapidly as President Bush.
But you're right, the guy who graduated at the bottom of his class and relied on his family name is probably far less self-reliant then the guy that graduated Magna from a top law school.
Spoken like a college student, or someone else who hasn't been in the "real world" for very long. You do realize that after your first job, your grades are largely irrelevant. Of course, Obama's grades are the most recent concrete accomplishment you can point to before his election to the Oval Office, so I guess it does matter. And if you think Obama hasn't been riding on the coattails of many, many benefactors, you are really being naive.
I can't speak for the MSM because I mostly avoid it. I get most of my news online from multiple sources and saw all of maybe 5 campaign commercials throughout the whole election season.
That said, I agree with you. It pains me that the commercials are playing to the lowest common denominator. In fact, the entire campaigns play to the lowest common denominator, which is why it is so relevant to do serious digging into the candidates' backgrounds. In the case of Obama, since his paper trail was very thin, knowing who he "pals around with", who his mentors, friends and associates are was a vitally important clue (and often the only clue) to finding out what the guy really believes. As yet, I think these are wholly unanswered in any detail, which is ironic since the guy takes office in two months.
Neither, unfortunately, are the candidates going to give much information except for a Christmas list of what they hope the accomplish, which is all but pointless. Hey, I want to achieve world peace and eliminate poverty too! The real question is how are you going to do it, Chester? Can you cite the philosophies which undergird how you will govern? (In that case, I think Obama inadvertently spoke volumes with his "spread the wealth" comments.) These are things that neither candidate did a good job of articulating, because, apparently, this is irrelevant to most people who want nothing more than a checklist of hot-button issues to compare against. For instance, McCain adopted certain conservative planks but never really gave us any reason why he supported these things, especially given his history. Do we really think he would be tough on immigration enforcement when he was totally behind that bogus "reform" bill from 2007? Is this a real conviction or was he just placating the law-and-order conservatives?
I think, aside from being totally in the can for Obama, the MSM did a horrible job of covering this election, which is one of the many reasons why I largely avoid them. On the other hand, the candidates largely did an equal job of describing themselves. Frankly, I think we elected a candidate based on campaigning that was largely contrary to everything he's done in his life up until now, basing himself on vague optimism, discontent with the current administration and a bunch of smooth rhetoric with little real detail or substance.
In other words, the superficial, knee-jerk, content-free campaigning works really well. I was really hoping 2008 would be a repeat of 1980 and 1992 where independent candidates had a real influence in the race. We need independents like Ron Paul, Dennis Kuchinch, and the host of Libertarian, Constitution, Green, etc, Party candidates to keep the Big Two real, because left alone they are no more honest and revealing than the most stereotypical sleazy used car salesman. This wasn't an election, it was American Idol - The Presidential Edition. The winner looks and sounds great, is a real crowd-pleaser and totally dominated on presentation, but how we will be as a President is no more clear than it was two years ago when hardly anyone had heard of his name.
Well, he wanted a car analogy. That was the best I think of.
What I'm saying is that since the majority of the country voted for the candidate who wants to make the government everything for everyone the idea of using self-initiative and being self-reliant must be obsolete.
It's like trading in your Volvo for a Jaguar. Sure the Volvo was sturdy and dependable, but it was also boring, and didn't attract the chicks. The Jaguar is way cooler, and makes you more popular and successful with women, but you have to take it to the shop every week because it constantly breaks down. This country moved one more step from being a Volvo to being a Jaguar.
In the Star Trek timeline (at least as it was envisioned in the days of the original show), 2009 would have been a decade or more past WWIII and near-global devastation.
That's one prediction I'm glad they got wrong.
You don't just "let the government help him". You use your individual liberty to take the initiative, call an ambulance, and help stop the bleeding.
I would have agreed with you, but since this country has now elected Obama, you would seem to be wrong.
Interesting idea, because of course, there's never been a self-indulgent druggie!
I wonder how long Peter Norton was actually involved with writing the tools. I wonder the ending of his involvement was when it went from a suite of extremely useful utilities to a lumbering behemoth that served little purpose other than to make XP less usable than Vista.
I think the "no max" was before my time, but signal11 sounds familiar.
It was indeed "The Crawling Eye" they are watching in Mike's apartment at the end of episode 1013 ("Danger: Diabolik"). That was the first cable episode (i.e., episode 101). Jim Mallon and the Best Brains prefer to pretend the KTMA episodes never happened. For the first half or so of the season, I'm inclined to agree. However, it would be sweet if they made a DVD out of the host segments from the KTMA season, many of which very really good.
The summary mentioned Rifftrax and Cinema Titanic, both of which are great (the latter basically being "MST3K: The Next Generation"), but it failed to mention "The Film Crew" composed of Mike, Bill and Kevin. They've done several releases and those are really good too.
"Keep Circulating the Tapes" (but buy the Rhino and Shout! releases)
I am wondering why they are having anything to do with Norton who makes the most bloated, resource wasting, performance sucking, software on the planet.
Yeah, bypass the middleman. Vista comes pre-bloated, pre-resource wasting, pre-sucking... etc.
Sorry. Couldn't resist.
Does anyone remember when the Norton Utilities were the most useful pieces of software you could buy? SecMod, DirSort, all those things? They were the SysInternals of their day.
Does anyone remember the last time Norton software was something you would even consider putting on your computer? Or wouldn't be the first thing (after AOL) you uninstall on a new machine?
My how times have changed.
Yes. Why not? It's an operating system. That's what operating systems do!
If Windows were actually designed, instead of just accreted like the last 4000 doughnuts on Homer Simpson's mid-section, it could degrade gracefully on machines of lesser capability.
That Windows requires 50 times as much memory to just boot and be nominally usable than it did 10 years ago is absurd.
Yes. It took me about a month or two to hit 50, which was the max, IIRC. Shortly after that it just became "Excellent". I can understand wanting to prevent people from karma-whoring, but I miss the number.
I wish a "+1 snarky" mod affacted your karma.
Megaweapon?
We are in serious trouble. Where's the Paper Chase guy when you need 'im?
And how many sales of Vista would there be if Microsoft didn't have a de facto monopoly and could force that steaming load of overripe cheese onto practically every new computer sold in the world?
Not 180 million but maybe 180 thousand.
Vista is a failure because very few people would choose it. The vast majority of sales were forced on people regardless of what they would choose, and I can guarantee most of those sales would not happen if customers didn't have a choice.
I'm glad the Netbooks are hurting Microsoft because Microsoft does nothing but damage the industry and stagnates the state of the art. They are a boat anchor on the whole technical industry and the sooner their monopoly is broken, the better we will all be.
No sane being ever leaves the "Beep" driver enabled and the "Sound scheme" on anything else than "No Sounds".
That was always the first thing I did when installing Windows. If any sane being even did leave those stupid sounds on, I'm sure he wouldn't remain sane for long. It's one of the many, many default settings in Windows that to this day I cannot understand what drugs they were using when they decided to do that. Another is hiding the file extensions by default. In 13 years I have yet to think of a reason why that could possibly be useful or helpful, but many, many reasons why it would cause confusion, frustration and problems.
OK. You're definitely right. No one who votes for either of the Big Two or doesn't vote at all has any right to believe it will make much difference in the big picture.