So when, oh when, will someone do "Neuromancer" on the big screen? Maybe the whole trilogy, even? So OK, Johnny Mnemonic was a mess, but Gibson's vision, done well, would be glorious to see.
Johnny Mnemonic suffered from some bad press. A lot of people went into the theater mistakenly thinking it had something to do with the Gibson story by the same name...:p
Indeed. I'd love to see some of the Asimov short stories and novels done well. The film versions of Nightfall and I, Robot were abysmal, they took great stories and ruined them.
Well, in the case of I, Robot, they didn't take a great story to begin with. They took a completely unrelated story and slapped the "I, Robot" label on it.
I don't think Foundation could be made into a movie or TV series. It would either be nothing like the original, or it would look like it belonged on History Channel, but with less action and excitement than your typical History Channel program. Maybe more PBS...
Elijah Baley's trilogy of stories could make for some good movies, though.
It would need some serious updating. I reread it fairly recently and was struck by how much of it is grounded in extrapolating 80s technology, or the worst of the 80s society, or how much humor is poking fun at 80s pop culture, etc. I was surprised at how dated it had become so quickly.
Another vote for "none"; there are plenty of books and comics out there just crying out for being made into movies or series.
Short stories cry to be made in movies. Any story longer than about 50 pages, though, is far too long to be adapted into a movie that isn't a travesty against the original. OTOH, there are plenty of books out there just crying out to be made into long-running TV series.
Oh, and get rid of the whole Miranda bullshit. The people who ply the lanes of space would neither "overlook" nor "forget" an entire main planet over the course of less than 20 years. Nor could such a thing be hidden as, outer-most or not, it would show up on everybody's orbital computations as a huge perturbation in their plots. Let alone one ten-year-old with binoculars.
Knowing there's a body there and knowing there's a colony there are two different things. It can easily be "hidden" simply by being lost in the crowd.
Oh yea, and drop that whole "all the planets orbiting one sun" nonsense since it isn't workable. Miranda would have been frozen ice-ball _or_ the "inner planets" would be molten slag.
Really? What is the stellar type of the main star, and the size of the "Goldilocks zone"? Since neither of there are defined in the series, your speculation above has no basis. There's no reason to think the system they're in doesn't have a Goldilocks zone large enough for hundreds of planets, when it's explicitly stated that it does and there's no scientific reason to reject that idea. Not to mention many if not most of these worlds could easily be moons of gas giants. Each "super-Jupiter" could have dozens of habitable worlds orbiting it, not to mention a few worlds at each trojan point.
I could have come up with a better "reason for the reavers" in my sleep. The original one from the series (mental erosion from facing the emptiness of space etc) was good enough. Hell, the movie contradicted the series directly. If the Pax caused reaverdom, the the episode where the one guy got tortured and became a reaver himself woudln't have worked unless the reavers carry a supply of the otherwise secret Pax around and deliberately pre-expose potential recruits to it before deciding who to kill, rape, and eat (in that order, if you're really lucky).
It doesn't need to be deliberate. I can come up with three different reasons in my sleep why they'd be unintentionally exposing anyone they bring aboard one of their ships.
Then again the maximum speed is almost certainly measured without any wind.
Or rather, it's an airspeed, which is measured relative to the surrounding air, and is thus unaffected by wind speed. Your speed relative to the ground can be greatly affected by wind, but your airspeed tends to be the same regardless of the wind.
Might I suggest that instead of dumping the warm air into the upper atmosphere, we pump it to Minnesota? Please?
But seriously, this is essentially harvesting energy that's going to waste. Since we're using it to turn turbines and extract energy out of it, technically, it ought to result in a net cooling of the air rather than a heating (although when you consider the waste heat when the energy is used, it probably all balances out in the end -- well, it would have to, wouldn't it, unless you're suggesting the conservation of energy is being violated somewhere).
Except that it is a case of an interstate tariff. My prediction is that it will be overturned by the courts.
I'm sure it won't be, precisely because it's not an interstate tariff, no matter how badly the Dakotas wish it was. The motives may be ultimately the same as a protectionist tariff, but the action itself is perfectly normal case of taxation. You can't overturn a cheese tax just because a lot of cheese gets imported from Wisconsin, you can't overturn a wine tax just because a lot of wine comes from California, and they won't overturn a carbon-tax just because a lot of coal-generated electricity comes from the Dakotas.
Why do governments so often fail to consider the effects of disincentives?
Huh? That's exactly what this is all about. They're trying to get people to stop using coal. They're not failing to consider the disincentives, the whole point of this tax is to create a disincentive. If everyone stops using coal and they end up generating no revenue at all with this tax, they will consider the tax to have been wildly successful.
they are laying a tax* on imports, specifically energy.
That's precisely what they aren't doing. They are taxing energy, yes. They have the right to do that, and there's no legal requirement to exclude imported items from any particular tax. A tax on cheese would apply to cheese imported from Wisconsin as much as on cheese made in Minnesota. It would not become unconstitutional if it turned out more cheese came from Wisconsin than locally made. Likewise, this energy tax is not unconstitutional, simply because it does disproportionally effect the Dakotas.
Except that it is putting a tariff on electricity generated in ND and imported into MN, which kinda is what that article forbids.
Except that's not what they're doing. If they decide to tax cheese, and it turns out a lot of cheese is imported from Wisconsin, that doesn't make a cheese tax unconstitutional. They've decided to tax carbon. Will this disproportionally effect North Dakota? Yes. Does that make it unconstitutional? No.
The tax doesn't get evaded by moving the power-generation out of state. That's what has North Dakota hopping mad and bringing a lawsuit. The effect of this is not to move power generation out of state, that's already happened, the coal plants MN is drawing power from are in ND. What the expected effect is, is that by making imported power from ND more expensive, MN power companies will turn to wind farms and such, which, coincidentally, are being developed in MN. The end result is pretty much the opposite of what you assert -- bringing the power generation back home to Minnesota. The Dakotans are calling this protectionism. They may be right. However, it's not technically unconstitutional, since it's not a tax on imported power, it's a tax on a particular type of power that happens to be largely imported.
Alas, no. The nukes may be located within the Dakotas, but they belong to Washington, DC, which given the current administration, isn't about to nuke a blue state.:p
This isn''t a tax on trade between states. It's a tax on carbon. It's perfectly neutral in theory -- no matter where your carbon-based energy comes from, it gets hit with the tax. Now, it's true that much of MN's coal-based energy comes from ND, so the law will impact imported power more than local power, but a luxury tax on high-priced wines is not unconstitutional because more wine is grown in California and imported to Minnesota rather than grown in Minnesota. This is no different. There's nothing unconsitutional going on here, it's a spurious argument being raised by people who oppose a carbon tax in principle.
Ah, thanks for the random constitutional quote. You failed to explain why you're making it, but I assume you're pointing out what the Constitution actually says, in case some people misremember this part of the constitution and thus mistakenly think what Minnesota is doing here is in any way unconstitutional. Since Minnesota isn't doing what this particular article forbids, it's perfectly constitutional, even if it does have a greater impact on ND than MN power companies.
It's great that they're pushing for cleaner power, but isn't this a textbook case of interstate tariffs that states are forbidden to enact?
No, it's not. States are free to tax things within their state all they want. If Minnesota wants to tax carbon, Minnesota can tax carbon. If people don't want to see carbon taxed, they can point out that most of the coal-fired energy used in Minnesota actually comes from North Dakota, and then pretend that this is a case of an interstate tariff when it's nothing of the sort. By lying about what it is, they can generate a lot of heat and fire the public up against it. Seems to be working, based on some of the posts I'm seeing here...
Why do we see the wagon wheel effect if updates are asynchronous? There must be some synchronization going on down the line.
When you see the "wagon wheel effect", there is synchronization going on, but it's external to you, before the light even gets to your eyes. You don't see it watching real wagons moving in sunlight. You do see it on TV, in movies, or under artificial lighting which often has a stroboscopic effect. This last fact comes as a surprise to a lot of people, since their lights don't look like they're strobe-lights, but that's for the same reason a movie doesn't look like what it is: a slide-show. Pretty much any light on a dimmer, or for that matter running on alternating current, is going to have a strobe effect you can't see directly, but potentially strong enough to trigger the "wagon wheel effect" illusion under the right circumstances.
I know it's costly to build a giant dome over the city, and the odds of a meteor hitting your mother as she walks to her car is small, but put it this way, how much is your mother's life worth? Your wife? Child? Yourself? If your kid gets splattered by a falling rock from space, would you say, "Well, I understand they didn't want to spend ten trillion dollars to fix the problem, so I don't blame them for a known issue that allowed my kid to die." Falling rocks are an issue, we need to get this fixed, whatever the cost.
I mean, its great that they won't give you a refund for your ships if you got them destroyed because of stupidity... but if the network code destroyed your fleet? Isn't that CCP's fault entirely?
The "network code" didn't destroy anything. Network performance might have had something to do with it, but this is the EVE equivalent of space-weather. Sometimes the divine wind comes by and wipes out the invading fleet (I'm talking real history now). No fault of the invaders, and not due to the skill of the defenders, just bad weather. Oh well, too bad, so sad. Nature doesn't reimburse you for your lost invasion fleet. CCP doesn't either.
It's also apparently the case that the invaders were intentionally trying to bring down the server in a plan that backfired on the badly.
You can argue until you're blue in the face that CCP should make such things impossible, but while they're possible, you live and die by the consequences of reality as it is rather than reality as you might want it to be, and crying to CCP for a refund will get you nowhere, whether it was skill, luck, or bad "space-weather" that ate your fleet. Life isn't always fair, QQ.
Slashdot Mirror
Where is Zelazny's Lord of Light?
Better yet, the Chronicles of Amber. Would require five seasons of TV, though, or ten if you include Merlin's stories.
So when, oh when, will someone do "Neuromancer" on the big screen? Maybe the whole trilogy, even? So OK, Johnny Mnemonic was a mess, but Gibson's vision, done well, would be glorious to see.
Johnny Mnemonic suffered from some bad press. A lot of people went into the theater mistakenly thinking it had something to do with the Gibson story by the same name... :p
Indeed. I'd love to see some of the Asimov short stories and novels done well. The film versions of Nightfall and I, Robot were abysmal, they took great stories and ruined them.
Well, in the case of I, Robot, they didn't take a great story to begin with. They took a completely unrelated story and slapped the "I, Robot" label on it.
I don't think Foundation could be made into a movie or TV series. It would either be nothing like the original, or it would look like it belonged on History Channel, but with less action and excitement than your typical History Channel program. Maybe more PBS...
Elijah Baley's trilogy of stories could make for some good movies, though.
Can I get a Snow Crash movie or mini-series here?
It would need some serious updating. I reread it fairly recently and was struck by how much of it is grounded in extrapolating 80s technology, or the worst of the 80s society, or how much humor is poking fun at 80s pop culture, etc. I was surprised at how dated it had become so quickly.
Another vote for "none"; there are plenty of books and comics out there just crying out for being made into movies or series.
Short stories cry to be made in movies. Any story longer than about 50 pages, though, is far too long to be adapted into a movie that isn't a travesty against the original. OTOH, there are plenty of books out there just crying out to be made into long-running TV series.
That and un-kill Wash and Sheppard Book.
Yes, please.
Oh, and get rid of the whole Miranda bullshit. The people who ply the lanes of space would neither "overlook" nor "forget" an entire main planet over the course of less than 20 years. Nor could such a thing be hidden as, outer-most or not, it would show up on everybody's orbital computations as a huge perturbation in their plots. Let alone one ten-year-old with binoculars.
Knowing there's a body there and knowing there's a colony there are two different things. It can easily be "hidden" simply by being lost in the crowd.
Oh yea, and drop that whole "all the planets orbiting one sun" nonsense since it isn't workable. Miranda would have been frozen ice-ball _or_ the "inner planets" would be molten slag.
Really? What is the stellar type of the main star, and the size of the "Goldilocks zone"? Since neither of there are defined in the series, your speculation above has no basis. There's no reason to think the system they're in doesn't have a Goldilocks zone large enough for hundreds of planets, when it's explicitly stated that it does and there's no scientific reason to reject that idea. Not to mention many if not most of these worlds could easily be moons of gas giants. Each "super-Jupiter" could have dozens of habitable worlds orbiting it, not to mention a few worlds at each trojan point.
I could have come up with a better "reason for the reavers" in my sleep. The original one from the series (mental erosion from facing the emptiness of space etc) was good enough. Hell, the movie contradicted the series directly. If the Pax caused reaverdom, the the episode where the one guy got tortured and became a reaver himself woudln't have worked unless the reavers carry a supply of the otherwise secret Pax around and deliberately pre-expose potential recruits to it before deciding who to kill, rape, and eat (in that order, if you're really lucky).
It doesn't need to be deliberate. I can come up with three different reasons in my sleep why they'd be unintentionally exposing anyone they bring aboard one of their ships.
The car industry is finally catching up to where it was in 1917. XD
My lawn... get off of it. :p
Then again the maximum speed is almost certainly measured without any wind.
Or rather, it's an airspeed, which is measured relative to the surrounding air, and is thus unaffected by wind speed. Your speed relative to the ground can be greatly affected by wind, but your airspeed tends to be the same regardless of the wind.
Might I suggest that instead of dumping the warm air into the upper atmosphere, we pump it to Minnesota? Please?
But seriously, this is essentially harvesting energy that's going to waste. Since we're using it to turn turbines and extract energy out of it, technically, it ought to result in a net cooling of the air rather than a heating (although when you consider the waste heat when the energy is used, it probably all balances out in the end -- well, it would have to, wouldn't it, unless you're suggesting the conservation of energy is being violated somewhere).
Except that it is a case of an interstate tariff. My prediction is that it will be overturned by the courts.
I'm sure it won't be, precisely because it's not an interstate tariff, no matter how badly the Dakotas wish it was. The motives may be ultimately the same as a protectionist tariff, but the action itself is perfectly normal case of taxation. You can't overturn a cheese tax just because a lot of cheese gets imported from Wisconsin, you can't overturn a wine tax just because a lot of wine comes from California, and they won't overturn a carbon-tax just because a lot of coal-generated electricity comes from the Dakotas.
I stand corrected. There's a reason I usually just say "the Dakotas". XD
Why do governments so often fail to consider the effects of disincentives?
Huh? That's exactly what this is all about. They're trying to get people to stop using coal. They're not failing to consider the disincentives, the whole point of this tax is to create a disincentive. If everyone stops using coal and they end up generating no revenue at all with this tax, they will consider the tax to have been wildly successful.
they are laying a tax* on imports, specifically energy.
That's precisely what they aren't doing. They are taxing energy, yes. They have the right to do that, and there's no legal requirement to exclude imported items from any particular tax. A tax on cheese would apply to cheese imported from Wisconsin as much as on cheese made in Minnesota. It would not become unconstitutional if it turned out more cheese came from Wisconsin than locally made. Likewise, this energy tax is not unconstitutional, simply because it does disproportionally effect the Dakotas.
Except that it is putting a tariff on electricity generated in ND and imported into MN, which kinda is what that article forbids.
Except that's not what they're doing. If they decide to tax cheese, and it turns out a lot of cheese is imported from Wisconsin, that doesn't make a cheese tax unconstitutional. They've decided to tax carbon. Will this disproportionally effect North Dakota? Yes. Does that make it unconstitutional? No.
The tax doesn't get evaded by moving the power-generation out of state. That's what has North Dakota hopping mad and bringing a lawsuit. The effect of this is not to move power generation out of state, that's already happened, the coal plants MN is drawing power from are in ND. What the expected effect is, is that by making imported power from ND more expensive, MN power companies will turn to wind farms and such, which, coincidentally, are being developed in MN. The end result is pretty much the opposite of what you assert -- bringing the power generation back home to Minnesota. The Dakotans are calling this protectionism. They may be right. However, it's not technically unconstitutional, since it's not a tax on imported power, it's a tax on a particular type of power that happens to be largely imported.
Alas, no. The nukes may be located within the Dakotas, but they belong to Washington, DC, which given the current administration, isn't about to nuke a blue state. :p
This isn''t a tax on trade between states. It's a tax on carbon. It's perfectly neutral in theory -- no matter where your carbon-based energy comes from, it gets hit with the tax. Now, it's true that much of MN's coal-based energy comes from ND, so the law will impact imported power more than local power, but a luxury tax on high-priced wines is not unconstitutional because more wine is grown in California and imported to Minnesota rather than grown in Minnesota. This is no different. There's nothing unconsitutional going on here, it's a spurious argument being raised by people who oppose a carbon tax in principle.
Ah, thanks for the random constitutional quote. You failed to explain why you're making it, but I assume you're pointing out what the Constitution actually says, in case some people misremember this part of the constitution and thus mistakenly think what Minnesota is doing here is in any way unconstitutional. Since Minnesota isn't doing what this particular article forbids, it's perfectly constitutional, even if it does have a greater impact on ND than MN power companies.
It's great that they're pushing for cleaner power, but isn't this a textbook case of interstate tariffs that states are forbidden to enact?
No, it's not. States are free to tax things within their state all they want. If Minnesota wants to tax carbon, Minnesota can tax carbon. If people don't want to see carbon taxed, they can point out that most of the coal-fired energy used in Minnesota actually comes from North Dakota, and then pretend that this is a case of an interstate tariff when it's nothing of the sort. By lying about what it is, they can generate a lot of heat and fire the public up against it. Seems to be working, based on some of the posts I'm seeing here...
Why do we see the wagon wheel effect if updates are asynchronous? There must be some synchronization going on down the line.
When you see the "wagon wheel effect", there is synchronization going on, but it's external to you, before the light even gets to your eyes. You don't see it watching real wagons moving in sunlight. You do see it on TV, in movies, or under artificial lighting which often has a stroboscopic effect. This last fact comes as a surprise to a lot of people, since their lights don't look like they're strobe-lights, but that's for the same reason a movie doesn't look like what it is: a slide-show. Pretty much any light on a dimmer, or for that matter running on alternating current, is going to have a strobe effect you can't see directly, but potentially strong enough to trigger the "wagon wheel effect" illusion under the right circumstances.
...on an LST.
Large Stationary Target?
"Channel connecting depressions in bottom right providing clear evidence of liquid exchange between depressions."
Around here, we call that a "river"... XD Most lakes have one or two connecting them to other bodies of water.
I knew this post was coming. Cue the histrionics.
I know it's costly to build a giant dome over the city, and the odds of a meteor hitting your mother as she walks to her car is small, but put it this way, how much is your mother's life worth? Your wife? Child? Yourself? If your kid gets splattered by a falling rock from space, would you say, "Well, I understand they didn't want to spend ten trillion dollars to fix the problem, so I don't blame them for a known issue that allowed my kid to die." Falling rocks are an issue, we need to get this fixed, whatever the cost.
I mean, its great that they won't give you a refund for your ships if you got them destroyed because of stupidity... but if the network code destroyed your fleet? Isn't that CCP's fault entirely?
The "network code" didn't destroy anything. Network performance might have had something to do with it, but this is the EVE equivalent of space-weather. Sometimes the divine wind comes by and wipes out the invading fleet (I'm talking real history now). No fault of the invaders, and not due to the skill of the defenders, just bad weather. Oh well, too bad, so sad. Nature doesn't reimburse you for your lost invasion fleet. CCP doesn't either.
It's also apparently the case that the invaders were intentionally trying to bring down the server in a plan that backfired on the badly.
You can argue until you're blue in the face that CCP should make such things impossible, but while they're possible, you live and die by the consequences of reality as it is rather than reality as you might want it to be, and crying to CCP for a refund will get you nowhere, whether it was skill, luck, or bad "space-weather" that ate your fleet. Life isn't always fair, QQ.