There's a term called "informed consent". Even if a child gives their consent, the developmental stage of the child prevents them from fully understanding what it means to give consent and thus negates any consent they may give, even if it's given quite willingly.
Have you ever spent time relating to a nine-year-old child? They dont know what the hell they're doing. If they did, we'd let them vote, drink and buy property, as well as give their consent to engage in sexual activity. But they don't. Thats why we love them and protect them instead of subjecting them to situations that will give them nightmares as their lives progress.
Now I agree with you and the intentions of the law against statutory rape (which is what covers informed consent) and the like. Now I don't believe that something magical happens on someone's 18th birthday in the US or 16th birthday in the UK. The maturity required to give informed consent is gradual, and occurs at different times for different people. But the law requires an age to be set, so it quasi-arbitrarily sets an age. The fact that different countries draw the line at different places, but in roughly the same age range is a testament to the well-natured, but arbitrariness of any law drawing line between when someone is mature enough to make adult decisions, and when they are not.
Now here's where the fun begins.
In the United States we had a juvenile justice system. When a minor committed a crime, they were tried under a juvenile justice system. The idea was that kids aren't mature enough to make decisions, and as you said "Don't know what the hell they're doing." Also the kids are still young, so society can still "fix" them before they become an adult. Sentences were much lighter in the juvenile system, since society was dealing with kids and not adults. Another key component of the juvenile system was that all records were sealed on a kid-criminal's 18th birthday. The idea is that someone shouldn't be stigmatized and punished their entire lives for something they did when they were 12.
Then in the 80s, conservatives began to complain that the juvenile justice system was joke, and let repeat offenders out into society too early, and the sealed records harmed society and police. So under the guise of "We're only going to apply this to the hardest of the hard. We're only going to apply this to those that are almost 18," laws were passed that allowed kid defendents to be "tried as an adult". Upon conviction, these minors would be given adult prison sentences in adult jail. Society was scared of 16-17 year old black gang banging crack dealers, so the law was changed.
After the law was changed, the "adult trials" were few and far between. Were they in and out of juvenile hall most of their short lives? Yeah. Was it likely they were going to commit another crime in the future? Yeah. Did the defendents know what they were doing? Eh....maybe. They were going to be 18 in a year anyway. So society didn't have much qualms about trying these minors as adults.
Over the years since, society has pretty much gutted the juvenile justice system. Lots of kids are now being tried as adults. Lots of kids who never before committed a crime are being tried as adults. 10-12 year old kids are being tried as adults. In some states, kids can even be executed.
Right now there's a case being tried in Florida where a boy killed his grandparents when he was 12. He's now 15. If convicted, he will spend the rest of his life in jail. By all accounts, this kids was pretty messed up when he was 12. The kid was on Zoloft, for crying out loud. (I can't imagine how messed up he is now after being in police custody for 3 years.) The prosecution has been saying the 12 year old knew what he was doing, and killed his grandparents in cold blood. Furthermore, he knew it was wrong, and tha
How many people have bought the entire Knuth series just to occupy the moral high ground on their bookshelf? For my money, Cormen/Leiserson/Rivest's "Introduction to Algorithms" is preferred for almost all related material you might want to investigate.
The Big White Book of Algorithms is a fine book. It is much more accessable than Knuth (Examples in assembly instead of pseudocode? Please! At that point Knuth is just telling his reader "I'm smarter than you." Yeah, no shit Mr. Theory of Computing. That's why I'm reading your book instead of writing my own.), but for a more theoretical understanding you need Knuth. The best bet is to learn from the Big White Book, but grok from Knuth.
Basicly, my feel of the enterprise was that they were planning to "get to" the forming of the federation, but didn't want to play that card just yet, and they didn't know what the "rest" would be about.. so what do we need? some story arc to go off on before that. Is there another story arc but the federation thing? Writers, meet corner. Play the time travel card.
It's perfectly reasonable to have one or two plot arcs prior to federation. People don't tend to say "Hey. We're all generally wary of each other and have competing interests. Let's team up!" without some catalyzing moment. One season of Earth basically bumbling around the galaxy, more often causing more problems for itself and the more established races. Then the catalyzing moment, like the Romulan Wars. The RW was an important backstory event that predates the formation of the Federation. Also, binding together for the common defense is as popular reason for the formation of alliances.
I would have liked to have seen the RW since I like big space battles. The Dominion War was when DS9 really came into its own. (I don't buy that B5 crap that DS9 had a war because B5 had a war. It was obvious DS9 was going to have a war as soon as the Federation and the Bajorans started colonizing the Gamma Quadrant.) But now, we will never see the RW.
Ever watch Dr. Who? It was a show all about time travel, and in 25 years it managed to never be as lame as Star Trek's time travel.
Yes I did. I watched it in grade school on the local PBS station religiously back when Baker was the Doctor when the Doctor died as played by Davison. IIRC Baker was pushed off a radio telescope and hit the ground. Baker's sidekicks rushed to his body. When they got there, the Doctor sat up and was now Davison.
As I said, time travel is different when that is the primary scifi element. I even named _The_Time_Machine_ as non-sucky time travel scifi. The time travel episodes of Twilight Zone, didn't suck. The problem when Star Trek and the like do it, is that it's either played for sophmoric laughs ("Hello computer? Computer? Hello?"), or as a throwaway episode that doesn't the overall story or characters one iota. Yes, there are good time travel episodes, but they're few and far between.
OK, some of it was "nonsensical", you're saying that automatically makes it not entertaining?
It think it's sophmoric. I think it's basically scifi's fart joke. It is possible to write comedic episodes that don't involve having the characters have their first encounter with a cellphone. DS9's "The Magnificent Feringi" for example.
Besides, Star Trek 4 was one of the most successful Star Trek movies ever. It brought in more non-fans than any other movie in the series.
Would these be the same non-fans that watch "worthless crap like gameshows and 'reality' shows "? Geez, they really know how pick quality entertainment.
For further heresy, "Trouble with Tribbles" is least favorite episode of any of the Treks. It's dumb. The DS9-TOS tribbles episode ranks higher because it was obviously intended as nothing more than an ode to the original series.
There is no reason not to like it other than elitism.
You say that like elitism is a bad thing. If I'm an elitiest because I don't like cheap jokes that end up being "groaners" rather than actually witty, then yes, I'm an elitiest. Anyone with standards, is an elitest.
It is, after all, just a TV show. It's just one that I don't happen to want to see go away simply because the network is filled with incompetant fuckwits, and many of the supposed fans of the "franchise" are too busy displaying what Elite Conneseurs of SF they are to just shut the fuck up and enjoy the show
The problem with ENT was that it could have been so much more. There are interesting stories that could have been told about the Romulans, the Klingons, the Vulcans, and the early federation. Instead they invented a temporal cold war and then had the crew fight space nazis. Sure, the show got better in the end, but it's because they started giving fans what they wanted in the first place. If there are fuckwits at play here, it's not the ones who decided to kill an unprofitable show.
Yes because time travel OBVIOUSLY always equals crap.
Time travel doesn't always suck, but the vast majority of the time, especially in Star Trek, it does. When time travel isn't the main scifi element (i.e. H.G. Wells's _Time_Machine_), it tends to be an excuse for lazy writing.
Time travel episodes generally fall into two catagories. At best, time travel is a deus ex machina. These episodes typically end with someone going back in time and undoing all the events of the episode. (e.g. TNG's "Parallels", DS9's "Time's Orphan", VOY's "Endgame", etc.) These episodes can work if they're character driven. Harlan Ellison's TOS episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise" and DS9's "The Visitor" being some of the best.
Then you have the "cheap laughs" episodes. These are MUCH more common, and always suck. TOS's "Tomorrow is Yesterday"'s airforce sargent on the Enterprise. TOS's "Assignment: Earth" where the crew go back to 1968. TNG's "Time's Arrow" where the crew goes back to 19th century San Francisco and meets Mark Twain. DS9's "Little Green Men", where Quark, Nog, and Rom are the Roswell crash. DS9's "Past Tense" where the cheap laughs are coupled with the "afterschool special" leason of "treat poor people with dignity". STVIII:FC where the crew travels back in time to the future. TOS's "By Any Other Name" is effectively a "cheap laughs" time travel episode, but it's even lamer since the crew doesn't actually travel back in time, but rather to a planet populated by 1920's Chicago gangsters.
The granddaddy of this type of episode is STIV:TVH. Kirk and the gang prevent the destruction of Earth by going back in time to the present day, in order to save the whales, while getting into all sorts of silly misunderstandings. The high point is Kirk pawning his reading glasses while noting that they'll eventually find their way back to him. The low point isn't as easy to pick, since there's so many of them. But, if I had to pick on, I'd say it's Scotty with the Macintosh.
You've got "metal fever" boy! Stay away from those fembots! Didn't you watch the film in school? Society can't handle it. Instead of getting a paper route to earn money to take your girlfriend out to a nice dinner to earn a slim chance to perform the reproductive act, you'll stay home all day in your room making out with your fembot. Society will crumble! Science, sports, technology, war, crime, and drama will be swepted away. Then the aliens will come and destroy the planet.
So my cat is an alien? Damn, he must have been spying on me all this time.
Yes. The cats are locked in a desperate battle for control of the galaxy with the dogs, and we are there unwitting pawns. Who was the mastermind behind the Son of Sam murders? A dog, that's who!
The shroud isn't authentic. It's physically impossible for a 3d object to have made the entire image. The face, back and front all have slightly different dimensions, meaning they were created at three seperate times. I don't necessarily believe it, but an intersting theory that explains this is that the shroud is actually a primitive photograph. Camera obscuras and light sensitive chemicals were known at the time of the shrouds creation in medieval times. It is conceivable, however unlikely, that someone could have put all the pieces together to create the shroud through photographic techniques.
This theoretical photographer could then have used his camera obscura to creat the front and back seperately. A thrid image would be needed for the face since lenses at the time did not have the focal range needed to show enough detail at the range needed to show the entire body. The photographer couldn't simply leave the face blurry, because that's where everyone looks.
strides forward in the fields of Digital Rights Management
You should not call DRM "Digital Rights Management", the term is "Digital Restrictions Management". This isn't just a linguistic trick, it's framing the debate. "Rights" has a positive connotation, "restrictions" has a negative one. The idea is that you define the debate in your terms, so that your opposition has to defend itself using your terms.
The master of this is Frank Luntz. His way of framing debate with words is called "Luntz Speak". I don't agree with his politics, but I admire his methods tremendously.
Which of those that stole billions are "going free"? They are either already sentences, awaiting sentencing, or awaiting their trial. Trials take time, especially in humongously complex cases like this one.
Ken Lay. If he does ever go to trial and is convicted, he will get less than 5 years. If he stole a car. He would receive more time.
But this time, at least Mr. Kutaragi is willing to admit the PSP has a problem, and can offer a logical explanation for the engineering compromises that led to this design.
He is offering an explanation, but it is not admission of a problem at all, because in his mind, there is no problem. The article directly quotes him as saying, "The button's location is on purpose. It's according to specifications. This is something that we've created, and this is our specification. There was a clear purpose to it, and it wasn't a mistake."
Even his explanation is weak, since it's not so much of a limitation of the technology, but one of stubborness on his part. ("I didn't want the PSP's LCD screen to become any smaller than this, nor did I want its machine body to become any larger.") He had to choose between something slightly larger (we're probably talking about probably less than centimeter here) that works, or something the exact size he wanted that doesn't. He chose the later.
I will not buy a PSP because I'm not going to shell out that much money for a knowingly defective product.
Let's face it, wraith are vampires that can go into the sun but are neutered by the fact that S:A is Sci-Fi and not fantasy.
All the way.
McKay is a poor replacement for Carter Teyla is a poor replacement for Teal'c
Well of course they are. They're different characters. They have completely different personalities. Would you rather have them be clones of other more developed characters?
* Why do they have teeth like carnivores? Heck, why do they have teeth at all?
Because all the actors who showed up had the annoying habit of having a mouth full teeth.
I know that. Where do you think I got that line? My problem is everyone and everything gtk/gnome related is trying to eraticate bitmapped fonts in favor of vector fonts. That's all fine and good, until you realize that so far there's no good replacement for -misc-fixed.
If you're curious, by the end of the season the precise total is 47,886. Maybe 47,885. We'll have to wait until the next season to find out.
Yeah I know. I think they started that in the first episode after the miniseries, "33". (Quite a depressing episode at that.) I also like how they've been telling you percisely how much time has elapsed since the end of the miniseries. 130+ hours for "33". Then at the start of "Water" Tigh tells us it's been four days since the last attack. "Bastile Day" seems to take place immediatly after "water" since the episode starts with them just reading the results of the scans.
The current CVS versions of Emacs have excellent GTK support, making full use of the latest versions of GTK. It looks and behaves very nicely indeed, and integrates quite well into a GNOME desktop.
I just would like xemacs to support gnome-session. I don't want to have to use vector fonts in xemacs. I like my bitmaped -misc-fixed-*-*-semicondensed-*-*-120-*-*-c-*-iso8 859-15. It's the perfect size to allow three 80 col windows to be placed side by side in 1600x1200 resolution. All my vector fonts seem too big or too small.
That's because you have a thing for asian girls.:)
And really there isn't anyone groan inducing like Neelix (which is strange - because the doctor kind of reminds me of him - just not annoying) or Nog from DS9 or Wesley
Nog was fine. He was neat foil to Jake. In the beginning they were worthless characters, but by the end, they were both interesting characters. I know your heart sank when Nog lost his leg during the Dominion War. (That was good very good episode by the way.)
Not as good as it could be, and certainly not as "cool" (now the in thing is to be anti Star Trek) as Battlestar (now that we decided not to kill anyone for a female Starbuck and human cylons)
The new BSG is good. The old BSG sucked and it always has. New BSG is how old BSG should have been made. The costumes aren't crappy Star Wars knockoffs, and plots aren't in the vein of Star Trek's "The Roman God Appolo Makes Kirk Fight Genghis Kahn At The O.K. Corral On A Planet Of 1920s Chicago Gangsters To Settle A Bet With Rumplestiskin On Whether Good Or Evil Is More Powerful, While Hitler's Bare Midrift Greenskined Girlfriend Watches On". The episodes have the right mix of independence and plotarc. Most importantly, the characters' lives suck just as hard as less than 50k refugees fleeing their homeworlds from the relentless attack of mechanical killing machines should.
The were only two redeaming features of old BSG. First, the cylon bombers. That was cool design, and it still holds up over the years. Second, seeing Ben Cartright as a military dictator.
Don't even get me started on Galatica 1980!:)
or Stargate (but not Atlantis, because thats NOT cool in the eyes of the SF culture police)
SG:A may be a knock off, but it's an entertaining knock off damn it! Yes, Sheppard is basically O'Neil, but I like him damn it! I loved the scene where McKay and Sheppard explain to Wier that when they were testing a personal shield they found when Sheppard threw McKay off a third story balcony. (Wier: "And you thought throwing him off a balcony would be best way to test it?" McKay: "No!" Sheppard: "First, I shot him!")
The wraith aren't that interesting, espcially from an artistic standpoint, but so far they've been used sparingly, and mostly as a backstory element.
Your scifi police need to go back to discussing whether or not Smurfs are egg laying species or nothing more than simple mammals.
Yes, the last episode of DS9 was very weak, however it was because they were expecting the next season to be the final season, but then was told "Nope. Sorry. This is it." with something like 3 unproduced episodes left in the last season. Given that, the "And then I surfaced" vibe is somewhat understandable. The crappy ass Sisko is the prophet's champion, Dukat is the pah wraith's champion in a boxing match is not.
Sorry for the double post, I accidently clicked submit instead of preview.
"The other argument you put forth is corruption of inspection officials. I just don't think there's evidence of widespread blackmail by inspectors, no more than there is widespread abuse by police officers or soldiers."
These people are the small potatoes of the corruption. If they were all that were involved I wouldn't worry about it. It is the CEO's, the special interest groups, the lawyers, the politicians and the lobbyists that are the big problem.
[...]
I think that you get the idea. This kind of corruption is rampant, and the costs are huge.
Some would argue that "corruption" you describe isn't actually corruption but rather merely citizens exercising their constitutional rights of petition and expression though politcal donations. This is certainly true to a point, but the question of undue influence is also serious concern. Determining when such actions cross the line and become actual corruption is a muddled one at best, and perhaps will never be satisfactorily resolved.
That said, your concerns about undo influence aren't eliminated or even necessarily mitigated under a reactive regime. The key components of enforcement under any regulatory regime is the penalties incurred for violating the regulations, and the likelyhood of being found in violation. If P(caught) * Reward(caught) (assume R(c) <= 0, since decision theory regards penalties as merely negative rewards. Also assume R(c) completely encompases all negative consequences of being found in violation (e.g. lost profits, jail time, damage to reputation, etc.)) is small enough, then any sanctions can be merely written off as "a cost of doing buisness".
I'm not saying anything groundbreaking here. We all make similar decisions everyday. We also try to minimize this equation whenever possible, usually by attempting to reduce P(caught), but we also lobby to reduce R(caught) as well. Again, nothing particularly new here.
Let's for the sake of argument assume that the current preventive regime has an optimal value for P(c) * R(c). Converting to reactive regime reduces P(c) by its very nature. To maintain optimality, R(c) must increase accordingly. I believe you've concided that point already. What this conversion does not and can not address is human nature, that is the tendency to attempt to reduce P(c) * R(c).
We see this tendency today in the lobbying of relaxing regulations or even complete deregulation of industries (reduction of P(c)). We also see attempts to reduce R(c) as well, most notably through recent calls to limit "frivolus lawsuits" and to institute caps on damages.
I would submit that conversion from an effective preventive to an equally effective reactive regime will most likely never occur since there very forces in favor of reducing P(c) will undoubtly oppose needed corresponding increase in R(c).
In the end your opposition to preventive regulation regimes as "corrupt" is unfounded, as the corruption lies in the creation of the regulations themselves, rather than the enforcement method. As you said corruption of career civil servant inspectors is essentially a non-issue.
I don't think the costs of the inspectors would be less than the damage caused when someone screws up, simply because everyone has to be inspected, and only those who cause harm jailed/fined etc. This of course also hinges on "The relatively small number of possible violators"
Exactly. That's why you have different enforcement regimes for different regulations. For example, criminal law is a regulation that everyone is subject to. This means that in a very real sense, everyone is potentially a criminal. Since the number of potential violators exceeds the ability to continously monitor them, a reactive regulatory regime is in place.
Now if you're enforcing the "don't dump large amounts of benzene into the water supply" regulation the number of vio
"The other argument you put forth is corruption of inspection officials. I just don't think there's evidence of widespread blackmail by inspectors, no more than there is widespread abuse by police officers or soldiers."
These people are the small potatoes of the corruption. If they were all that were involved I wouldn't worry about it. It is the CEO's, the special interest groups, the lawyers, the politicians and the lobbyists that are the big problem.
[...]
I think that you get the idea. This kind of corruption is rampant, and the costs are huge.
Some would argue that "corruption" you describe isn't actually corruption but rather merely citizens exercising their constitutional rights of petition and expression though politcal donations. This is certainly true to a point, but the question of undue influence is also serious concern. Determining when such actions cross the line and become actual corruption is a muddled one at best, and perhaps will never be satisfactorily resolved.
That said, your concerns about undo influence aren't eliminated or even necessarily mitigated under a reactive regime. The key components of enforcement under any regulatory regime is the penalties incurred for violating the regulations, and the likelyhood of being found in violation. If P(caught) * Reward(caught) (assume R(c) = 0) is small enough, then any sanctions can be merely written off as "a cost of doing buisness".
I'm not saying anything groundbreaking here. We all make similar decisions everyday. We also try to minimize this equation whenever possible, usually by attempting to reduce P(caught), but we also lobby to reduce R(caught) as well. Again, nothing particularly new here.
Let's for the sake of argument assume that the current preventive regime has an optimal value for P(c) * R(c). Converting to reactive regime reduces P(c) by its very nature. To maintain optimality, R(c) must increase accordingly. I believe you've concided that point already. What this conversion does not and can not address is human nature, that is the tendency to attempt to reduce P(c) * R(c).
We see this tendency today in the lobbying of relaxing regulations or even complete deregulation of industries (reduction of P(c)). We also see attempts to reduce R(c) as well, most notably through recent calls to limit "frivolus lawsuits" and to institute caps on damages.
Seriously, some people are very impressed by CLIs. Especially green ones. Try "cat/dev/urandom" on a green terminal to make dummies think you are doing real work...
Dude! That's so cool! We should make a movie about this! What? They did already? Damn.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a term called "informed consent". Even if a child gives their consent, the developmental stage of the child prevents them from fully understanding what it means to give consent and thus negates any consent they may give, even if it's given quite willingly.
Have you ever spent time relating to a nine-year-old child? They dont know what the hell they're doing. If they did, we'd let them vote, drink and buy property, as well as give their consent to engage in sexual activity. But they don't. Thats why we love them and protect them instead of subjecting them to situations that will give them nightmares as their lives progress.
Now I agree with you and the intentions of the law against statutory rape (which is what covers informed consent) and the like. Now I don't believe that something magical happens on someone's 18th birthday in the US or 16th birthday in the UK. The maturity required to give informed consent is gradual, and occurs at different times for different people. But the law requires an age to be set, so it quasi-arbitrarily sets an age. The fact that different countries draw the line at different places, but in roughly the same age range is a testament to the well-natured, but arbitrariness of any law drawing line between when someone is mature enough to make adult decisions, and when they are not.
Now here's where the fun begins.
In the United States we had a juvenile justice system. When a minor committed a crime, they were tried under a juvenile justice system. The idea was that kids aren't mature enough to make decisions, and as you said "Don't know what the hell they're doing." Also the kids are still young, so society can still "fix" them before they become an adult. Sentences were much lighter in the juvenile system, since society was dealing with kids and not adults. Another key component of the juvenile system was that all records were sealed on a kid-criminal's 18th birthday. The idea is that someone shouldn't be stigmatized and punished their entire lives for something they did when they were 12.
Then in the 80s, conservatives began to complain that the juvenile justice system was joke, and let repeat offenders out into society too early, and the sealed records harmed society and police. So under the guise of "We're only going to apply this to the hardest of the hard. We're only going to apply this to those that are almost 18," laws were passed that allowed kid defendents to be "tried as an adult". Upon conviction, these minors would be given adult prison sentences in adult jail. Society was scared of 16-17 year old black gang banging crack dealers, so the law was changed.
After the law was changed, the "adult trials" were few and far between. Were they in and out of juvenile hall most of their short lives? Yeah. Was it likely they were going to commit another crime in the future? Yeah. Did the defendents know what they were doing? Eh....maybe. They were going to be 18 in a year anyway. So society didn't have much qualms about trying these minors as adults.
Over the years since, society has pretty much gutted the juvenile justice system. Lots of kids are now being tried as adults. Lots of kids who never before committed a crime are being tried as adults. 10-12 year old kids are being tried as adults. In some states, kids can even be executed.
Right now there's a case being tried in Florida where a boy killed his grandparents when he was 12. He's now 15. If convicted, he will spend the rest of his life in jail. By all accounts, this kids was pretty messed up when he was 12. The kid was on Zoloft, for crying out loud. (I can't imagine how messed up he is now after being in police custody for 3 years.) The prosecution has been saying the 12 year old knew what he was doing, and killed his grandparents in cold blood. Furthermore, he knew it was wrong, and tha
How many people have bought the entire Knuth series just to occupy the moral high ground on their bookshelf? For my money, Cormen/Leiserson/Rivest's "Introduction to Algorithms" is preferred for almost all related material you might want to investigate.
The Big White Book of Algorithms is a fine book. It is much more accessable than Knuth (Examples in assembly instead of pseudocode? Please! At that point Knuth is just telling his reader "I'm smarter than you." Yeah, no shit Mr. Theory of Computing. That's why I'm reading your book instead of writing my own.), but for a more theoretical understanding you need Knuth. The best bet is to learn from the Big White Book, but grok from Knuth.
...the "We've written ourselves into a corner - use the 'get out of jail free' time travel card".
That would be deus ex machina.
Basicly, my feel of the enterprise was that they were planning to "get to" the forming of the federation, but didn't want to play that card just yet, and they didn't know what the "rest" would be about.. so what do we need? some story arc to go off on before that. Is there another story arc but the federation thing? Writers, meet corner. Play the time travel card.
It's perfectly reasonable to have one or two plot arcs prior to federation. People don't tend to say "Hey. We're all generally wary of each other and have competing interests. Let's team up!" without some catalyzing moment. One season of Earth basically bumbling around the galaxy, more often causing more problems for itself and the more established races. Then the catalyzing moment, like the Romulan Wars. The RW was an important backstory event that predates the formation of the Federation. Also, binding together for the common defense is as popular reason for the formation of alliances.
I would have liked to have seen the RW since I like big space battles. The Dominion War was when DS9 really came into its own. (I don't buy that B5 crap that DS9 had a war because B5 had a war. It was obvious DS9 was going to have a war as soon as the Federation and the Bajorans started colonizing the Gamma Quadrant.) But now, we will never see the RW.
Ever watch Dr. Who? It was a show all about time travel, and in 25 years it managed to never be as lame as Star Trek's time travel.
Yes I did. I watched it in grade school on the local PBS station religiously back when Baker was the Doctor when the Doctor died as played by Davison. IIRC Baker was pushed off a radio telescope and hit the ground. Baker's sidekicks rushed to his body. When they got there, the Doctor sat up and was now Davison.
As I said, time travel is different when that is the primary scifi element. I even named _The_Time_Machine_ as non-sucky time travel scifi. The time travel episodes of Twilight Zone, didn't suck. The problem when Star Trek and the like do it, is that it's either played for sophmoric laughs ("Hello computer? Computer? Hello?"), or as a throwaway episode that doesn't the overall story or characters one iota. Yes, there are good time travel episodes, but they're few and far between.
when we talked about URLs, he insisted on saying UNIQUE RESOURCE LOCATOR [...] it was pretty obvious he was hoping for the "wow"-effect.
:)
If you wanted to play buzzword penis length, you could have told him, "They're called URIs for the past few years now."
I belive you're right. Anyway, they're now called URIs.
OK, some of it was "nonsensical", you're saying that automatically makes it not entertaining?
It think it's sophmoric. I think it's basically scifi's fart joke. It is possible to write comedic episodes that don't involve having the characters have their first encounter with a cellphone. DS9's "The Magnificent Feringi" for example.
Besides, Star Trek 4 was one of the most successful Star Trek movies ever. It brought in more non-fans than any other movie in the series.
Would these be the same non-fans that watch "worthless crap like gameshows and 'reality' shows "? Geez, they really know how pick quality entertainment.
For further heresy, "Trouble with Tribbles" is least favorite episode of any of the Treks. It's dumb. The DS9-TOS tribbles episode ranks higher because it was obviously intended as nothing more than an ode to the original series.
There is no reason not to like it other than elitism.
You say that like elitism is a bad thing. If I'm an elitiest because I don't like cheap jokes that end up being "groaners" rather than actually witty, then yes, I'm an elitiest. Anyone with standards, is an elitest.
It is, after all, just a TV show. It's just one that I don't happen to want to see go away simply because the network is filled with incompetant fuckwits, and many of the supposed fans of the "franchise" are too busy displaying what Elite Conneseurs of SF they are to just shut the fuck up and enjoy the show
The problem with ENT was that it could have been so much more. There are interesting stories that could have been told about the Romulans, the Klingons, the Vulcans, and the early federation. Instead they invented a temporal cold war and then had the crew fight space nazis. Sure, the show got better in the end, but it's because they started giving fans what they wanted in the first place. If there are fuckwits at play here, it's not the ones who decided to kill an unprofitable show.
And for the record, I don't hate Berman.
Yes because time travel OBVIOUSLY always equals crap.
Time travel doesn't always suck, but the vast majority of the time, especially in Star Trek, it does. When time travel isn't the main scifi element (i.e. H.G. Wells's _Time_Machine_), it tends to be an excuse for lazy writing.
Time travel episodes generally fall into two catagories. At best, time travel is a deus ex machina. These episodes typically end with someone going back in time and undoing all the events of the episode. (e.g. TNG's "Parallels", DS9's "Time's Orphan", VOY's "Endgame", etc.) These episodes can work if they're character driven. Harlan Ellison's TOS episode "The City on the Edge of Forever", TNG's "Yesterday's Enterprise" and DS9's "The Visitor" being some of the best.
Then you have the "cheap laughs" episodes. These are MUCH more common, and always suck. TOS's "Tomorrow is Yesterday"'s airforce sargent on the Enterprise. TOS's "Assignment: Earth" where the crew go back to 1968. TNG's "Time's Arrow" where the crew goes back to 19th century San Francisco and meets Mark Twain. DS9's "Little Green Men", where Quark, Nog, and Rom are the Roswell crash. DS9's "Past Tense" where the cheap laughs are coupled with the "afterschool special" leason of "treat poor people with dignity". STVIII:FC where the crew travels back in time to the future. TOS's "By Any Other Name" is effectively a "cheap laughs" time travel episode, but it's even lamer since the crew doesn't actually travel back in time, but rather to a planet populated by 1920's Chicago gangsters.
The granddaddy of this type of episode is STIV:TVH. Kirk and the gang prevent the destruction of Earth by going back in time to the present day, in order to save the whales, while getting into all sorts of silly misunderstandings. The high point is Kirk pawning his reading glasses while noting that they'll eventually find their way back to him. The low point isn't as easy to pick, since there's so many of them. But, if I had to pick on, I'd say it's Scotty with the Macintosh.
So yeah. Time travel pretty much sucks.
A complete Fembot ! :D
You've got "metal fever" boy! Stay away from those fembots! Didn't you watch the film in school? Society can't handle it. Instead of getting a paper route to earn money to take your girlfriend out to a nice dinner to earn a slim chance to perform the reproductive act, you'll stay home all day in your room making out with your fembot. Society will crumble! Science, sports, technology, war, crime, and drama will be swepted away. Then the aliens will come and destroy the planet.
DON'T DATE ROBOTS!!!
So my cat is an alien? Damn, he must have been spying on me all this time.
Yes. The cats are locked in a desperate battle for control of the galaxy with the dogs, and we are there unwitting pawns. Who was the mastermind behind the Son of Sam murders? A dog, that's who!
A similiar example would be "Air America" where the government controls the funds and employees. This is not covered by the "freedom of press".
The goverment controls Air America? That would be news to these guys and these guys as well.
The shroud isn't authentic. It's physically impossible for a 3d object to have made the entire image. The face, back and front all have slightly different dimensions, meaning they were created at three seperate times. I don't necessarily believe it, but an intersting theory that explains this is that the shroud is actually a primitive photograph. Camera obscuras and light sensitive chemicals were known at the time of the shrouds creation in medieval times. It is conceivable, however unlikely, that someone could have put all the pieces together to create the shroud through photographic techniques.
This theoretical photographer could then have used his camera obscura to creat the front and back seperately. A thrid image would be needed for the face since lenses at the time did not have the focal range needed to show enough detail at the range needed to show the entire body. The photographer couldn't simply leave the face blurry, because that's where everyone looks.
strides forward in the fields of Digital Rights Management
You should not call DRM "Digital Rights Management", the term is "Digital Restrictions Management". This isn't just a linguistic trick, it's framing the debate. "Rights" has a positive connotation, "restrictions" has a negative one. The idea is that you define the debate in your terms, so that your opposition has to defend itself using your terms.
The master of this is Frank Luntz. His way of framing debate with words is called "Luntz Speak". I don't agree with his politics, but I admire his methods tremendously.
Which of those that stole billions are "going free"? They are either already sentences, awaiting sentencing, or awaiting their trial. Trials take time, especially in humongously complex cases like this one.
Ken Lay. If he does ever go to trial and is convicted, he will get less than 5 years. If he stole a car. He would receive more time.
"Because all the actors who showed up had the annoying habit of having a mouth full teeth."
:P
So they all had plenty of very pointy teeth?
Because aliens have sharp teeth. Gee. Where have you been all these years?
But this time, at least Mr. Kutaragi is willing to admit the PSP has a problem, and can offer a logical explanation for the engineering compromises that led to this design.
He is offering an explanation, but it is not admission of a problem at all, because in his mind, there is no problem. The article directly quotes him as saying, "The button's location is on purpose. It's according to specifications. This is something that we've created, and this is our specification. There was a clear purpose to it, and it wasn't a mistake."
Even his explanation is weak, since it's not so much of a limitation of the technology, but one of stubborness on his part. ("I didn't want the PSP's LCD screen to become any smaller than this, nor did I want its machine body to become any larger.") He had to choose between something slightly larger (we're probably talking about probably less than centimeter here) that works, or something the exact size he wanted that doesn't. He chose the later.
I will not buy a PSP because I'm not going to shell out that much money for a knowingly defective product.
Let's face it, wraith are vampires that can go into the sun but are neutered by the fact that S:A is Sci-Fi and not fantasy.
All the way.
McKay is a poor replacement for Carter
Teyla is a poor replacement for Teal'c
Well of course they are. They're different characters. They have completely different personalities. Would you rather have them be clones of other more developed characters?
* Why do they have teeth like carnivores? Heck, why do they have teeth at all?
Because all the actors who showed up had the annoying habit of having a mouth full teeth.
I know that. Where do you think I got that line? My problem is everyone and everything gtk/gnome related is trying to eraticate bitmapped fonts in favor of vector fonts. That's all fine and good, until you realize that so far there's no good replacement for -misc-fixed.
If you're curious, by the end of the season the precise total is 47,886. Maybe 47,885. We'll have to wait until the next season to find out.
Yeah I know. I think they started that in the first episode after the miniseries, "33". (Quite a depressing episode at that.) I also like how they've been telling you percisely how much time has elapsed since the end of the miniseries. 130+ hours for "33". Then at the start of "Water" Tigh tells us it's been four days since the last attack. "Bastile Day" seems to take place immediatly after "water" since the episode starts with them just reading the results of the scans.
So far I love that show.
The current CVS versions of Emacs have excellent GTK support, making full use of the latest versions of GTK. It looks and behaves very nicely indeed, and integrates quite well into a GNOME desktop.
8 859-15. It's the perfect size to allow three 80 col windows to be placed side by side in 1600x1200 resolution. All my vector fonts seem too big or too small.
I just would like xemacs to support gnome-session. I don't want to have to use vector fonts in xemacs. I like my bitmaped -misc-fixed-*-*-semicondensed-*-*-120-*-*-c-*-iso
Voyager never .. NEVER had good characters ..
:)
:)
:)
The doc was cool.
at least the new series has Hoshi
That's because you have a thing for asian girls.
And really there isn't anyone groan inducing like Neelix (which is strange - because the doctor kind of reminds me of him - just not annoying) or Nog from DS9 or Wesley
Nog was fine. He was neat foil to Jake. In the beginning they were worthless characters, but by the end, they were both interesting characters. I know your heart sank when Nog lost his leg during the Dominion War. (That was good very good episode by the way.)
Not as good as it could be, and certainly not as "cool" (now the in thing is to be anti Star Trek) as Battlestar (now that we decided not to kill anyone for a female Starbuck and human cylons)
The new BSG is good. The old BSG sucked and it always has. New BSG is how old BSG should have been made. The costumes aren't crappy Star Wars knockoffs, and plots aren't in the vein of Star Trek's "The Roman God Appolo Makes Kirk Fight Genghis Kahn At The O.K. Corral On A Planet Of 1920s Chicago Gangsters To Settle A Bet With Rumplestiskin On Whether Good Or Evil Is More Powerful, While Hitler's Bare Midrift Greenskined Girlfriend Watches On". The episodes have the right mix of independence and plotarc. Most importantly, the characters' lives suck just as hard as less than 50k refugees fleeing their homeworlds from the relentless attack of mechanical killing machines should.
The were only two redeaming features of old BSG. First, the cylon bombers. That was cool design, and it still holds up over the years. Second, seeing Ben Cartright as a military dictator.
Don't even get me started on Galatica 1980!
or Stargate (but not Atlantis, because thats NOT cool in the eyes of the SF culture police)
SG:A may be a knock off, but it's an entertaining knock off damn it! Yes, Sheppard is basically O'Neil, but I like him damn it! I loved the scene where McKay and Sheppard explain to Wier that when they were testing a personal shield they found when Sheppard threw McKay off a third story balcony. (Wier: "And you thought throwing him off a balcony would be best way to test it?" McKay: "No!" Sheppard: "First, I shot him!")
The wraith aren't that interesting, espcially from an artistic standpoint, but so far they've been used sparingly, and mostly as a backstory element.
Your scifi police need to go back to discussing whether or not Smurfs are egg laying species or nothing more than simple mammals.
Yes, the last episode of DS9 was very weak, however it was because they were expecting the next season to be the final season, but then was told "Nope. Sorry. This is it." with something like 3 unproduced episodes left in the last season. Given that, the "And then I surfaced" vibe is somewhat understandable. The crappy ass Sisko is the prophet's champion, Dukat is the pah wraith's champion in a boxing match is not.
Sorry for the double post, I accidently clicked submit instead of preview.
"The other argument you put forth is corruption of inspection officials. I just don't think there's evidence of widespread blackmail by inspectors, no more than there is widespread abuse by police officers or soldiers."
These people are the small potatoes of the corruption. If they were all that were involved I wouldn't worry about it. It is the CEO's, the special interest groups, the lawyers, the politicians and the lobbyists that are the big problem.
[...]
I think that you get the idea. This kind of corruption is rampant, and the costs are huge.
Some would argue that "corruption" you describe isn't actually corruption but rather merely citizens exercising their constitutional rights of petition and expression though politcal donations. This is certainly true to a point, but the question of undue influence is also serious concern. Determining when such actions cross the line and become actual corruption is a muddled one at best, and perhaps will never be satisfactorily resolved.
That said, your concerns about undo influence aren't eliminated or even necessarily mitigated under a reactive regime. The key components of enforcement under any regulatory regime is the penalties incurred for violating the regulations, and the likelyhood of being found in violation. If P(caught) * Reward(caught) (assume R(c) <= 0, since decision theory regards penalties as merely negative rewards. Also assume R(c) completely encompases all negative consequences of being found in violation (e.g. lost profits, jail time, damage to reputation, etc.)) is small enough, then any sanctions can be merely written off as "a cost of doing buisness".
I'm not saying anything groundbreaking here. We all make similar decisions everyday. We also try to minimize this equation whenever possible, usually by attempting to reduce P(caught), but we also lobby to reduce R(caught) as well. Again, nothing particularly new here.
Let's for the sake of argument assume that the current preventive regime has an optimal value for P(c) * R(c). Converting to reactive regime reduces P(c) by its very nature. To maintain optimality, R(c) must increase accordingly. I believe you've concided that point already. What this conversion does not and can not address is human nature, that is the tendency to attempt to reduce P(c) * R(c).
We see this tendency today in the lobbying of relaxing regulations or even complete deregulation of industries (reduction of P(c)). We also see attempts to reduce R(c) as well, most notably through recent calls to limit "frivolus lawsuits" and to institute caps on damages.
I would submit that conversion from an effective preventive to an equally effective reactive regime will most likely never occur since there very forces in favor of reducing P(c) will undoubtly oppose needed corresponding increase in R(c).
In the end your opposition to preventive regulation regimes as "corrupt" is unfounded, as the corruption lies in the creation of the regulations themselves, rather than the enforcement method. As you said corruption of career civil servant inspectors is essentially a non-issue.
I don't think the costs of the inspectors would be less than the damage caused when someone screws up, simply because everyone has to be inspected, and only those who cause harm jailed/fined etc. This of course also hinges on "The relatively small number of possible violators"
Exactly. That's why you have different enforcement regimes for different regulations. For example, criminal law is a regulation that everyone is subject to. This means that in a very real sense, everyone is potentially a criminal. Since the number of potential violators exceeds the ability to continously monitor them, a reactive regulatory regime is in place.
Now if you're enforcing the "don't dump large amounts of benzene into the water supply" regulation the number of vio
"The other argument you put forth is corruption of inspection officials. I just don't think there's evidence of widespread blackmail by inspectors, no more than there is widespread abuse by police officers or soldiers."
These people are the small potatoes of the corruption. If they were all that were involved I wouldn't worry about it. It is the CEO's, the special interest groups, the lawyers, the politicians and the lobbyists that are the big problem.
[...]
I think that you get the idea. This kind of corruption is rampant, and the costs are huge.
Some would argue that "corruption" you describe isn't actually corruption but rather merely citizens exercising their constitutional rights of petition and expression though politcal donations. This is certainly true to a point, but the question of undue influence is also serious concern. Determining when such actions cross the line and become actual corruption is a muddled one at best, and perhaps will never be satisfactorily resolved.
That said, your concerns about undo influence aren't eliminated or even necessarily mitigated under a reactive regime. The key components of enforcement under any regulatory regime is the penalties incurred for violating the regulations, and the likelyhood of being found in violation.
If P(caught) * Reward(caught) (assume R(c) = 0) is small enough, then any sanctions can be merely written off as "a cost of doing buisness".
I'm not saying anything groundbreaking here. We all make similar decisions everyday. We also try to minimize this equation whenever possible, usually by attempting to reduce P(caught), but we also lobby to reduce R(caught) as well. Again, nothing particularly new here.
Let's for the sake of argument assume that the current preventive regime has an optimal value for P(c) * R(c). Converting to reactive regime reduces P(c) by its very nature. To maintain optimality, R(c) must increase accordingly. I believe you've concided that point already. What this conversion does not and can not address is human nature, that is the tendency to attempt to reduce P(c) * R(c).
We see this tendency today in the lobbying of relaxing regulations or even complete deregulation of industries (reduction of P(c)). We also see attempts to reduce R(c) as well, most notably through recent calls to limit "frivolus lawsuits" and to institute caps on damages.
Seriously, some people are very impressed by CLIs. Especially green ones. Try "cat /dev/urandom" on a green terminal to make dummies think you are doing real work...
Dude! That's so cool! We should make a movie about this! What? They did already? Damn.