Re:Rotating egg on Shiny Thing
on
Voyager Eulogy
·
· Score: 1
Maybe, but the episode attributed the transformation to an acceleration of human evolution in the rider -- that millions of years from now, we will become swamp creatures with extra brain capacity and redundant organs, and that it is all scripted in our DNA. Which is strange, because I always thought evolution happens to civilizations, not individuals.
--------------------------------
Re:Warp drive silliness : somebody skipped math 10
on
Voyager Eulogy
·
· Score: 3
Actually, it's not exponential, it's a hand-drawn function that has an asymptote at 10, where it takes infinite energy to go at infinite speed and occupy every point in the universe simulatenously.
That was the model until Voyager's Threshold, which establishes that going at warp 10 simply makes you turn into a giant lizard.
Deus ex machina is a phrase referring to a plot device in Greek drama. The various characters would spend the whole play getting tangled up in conflict. In the end, instead of the characters finding a way to right things themselves, a god would come down and make everything right, since gods can do that without consequence. Today, we use deus ex machina as a derogatory term for a drama, and refer to the use of some contrived, improbably force to come down at the end and provide a cheap way out of the conflict.
Spoiler warning. After seven years, that's how Voyager ended, in my opinion. Did the crew use their years of experience with the Borg to get past them? No... they were blessed with a visitor from the future, who brought weapons to make them invincible to every enemy. They were then free to use Borg transwarp conduits (which didn't bother me as much since they've been established since season 6 of TNG).
Put another way, what did you want to see out of the finale? Here's what I've been imagining for seven years:
The crew arrives home
Emotional farewells between crew members and uncertaintly about their future
Commendation or other acknowledgement by Starfleet
An investigation into the psychological effect of unexpectedly seeing one's loved ones after seven years of isolation
Will Seven of Nine be accepted by humanity and be able to live alongside billions of humans?
What role will the Doctor play in liberating repressed sentinent holograms, as referred to in recent episodes?
Whatever happened to Kim's fiancee?
etc.
The producers, however, assumed that I had only one question, and wrote the entire episode under that assumption:
Will they make it back?
I wanted an hour or more in the Alpha quandrant providing closure to the series. But instead they held out the contrived suspense to the very last minute, giving us only one single shot of Voyager approaching Earth. Completely unsatisfying end to seven years' anticipation.
I mean, all in all, it was just another episode. How many episodes were there that had them spend an hour getting REALLY REALLY CLOSE to getting home and then be thwarted? This episode was about getting REALLY REALLY CLOSE for two hours, and then being successful. I didn't want to see another episode about getting really really close. I wanted to see an episode about returning home!
Sigh... well, it's not important enough to get too worked up over. But still, their priorities were in the wrong place. It's that kind of substitution -- giving us more phasers, nebulae, and "transphasic torpedoes" instead of human drama, that makes Star Trek suck today compared to the days of TOS and TNG.
Take sappy romance + large-scale tragedy + sinking ship from Titanic, the top-grossing movie of 1997 (and all time)
Add the World War II patriotic factor from Saving Private Ryan, the top-grossing movie of 1998
Be careful to cater to every demographic group, and beware to not offend the Japanese, who added $200 million to Titanic's gross (they are reluctantly forced to raid and then second-guess themselves).
And you get Pearl Harbor, a movie designed from the ground up to make money, not be historically accurate.
I'm used to this sort of stuff from Hollywood, but in this case, we're talking about capitalizing on the slaughter of thousands of American soldiers. The film doesn't honor them, it adds them to the bottom line.
As Roger Ebert said: What is the point, really, of more than
half an hour of planes bombing ships, of explosions and fireballs, of roars on the
soundtrack and bodies flying through the air and people running away from fighters
that are strafing them? How can it be entertaining or moving when it's simply about
the most appalling slaughter? Why do the filmmakers think we want to see this,
unrelieved by intelligence, viewpoint or insight? It was a terrible, terrible day.
It reminds me of some of the blabbering that went on between writers and directors in the recent Hollywood strike threat. It got pretty nasty at some points... and also pretty silly. Like in an editorial I read in a writer's magazine that said -- in what appeared to be all seriousness -- that the best solution for writers is to just direct themselves. How hard can it be? Let the DP (director of photography) and his friends take care of all the tech stuff. Just get up there, tell your actors to do funny things with your script, and shoot away!
--------------------------------
Re:Final Fantasy blows this away...
on
Linux and Shrek
·
· Score: 1
That was until I heard that the whole movie was computer generated!
I've learned to take such claims with a grain of salt. Yes, the objects look realistic, but that's because they're based on scans of real objects. Yes, objects move in a realistic fashion, but that's proabably because they captured the motions of actors in golf-ball suits on a stage.
Remember back in September, when Slashdot was hacked? The guys that did it apparently just wanted the experience of hacking Slashdot; they posted a victory story and emailed Taco will full details about how they did it.
But Taco & company decided to rebuild the entire system as though they had maliciously took over.
Similarly, even if this "good" worm hits me, I'll treat it like a bad one. You never know, it would be ingenious for some l4m3 (or whatever the numeric abbreviation is) hackers to release a version that looks like "Cheese" but actually does a "rm -rf/".
Check out the "Flame" filter in Gimp. It's very similar-- you choose which of 9 variations you find prettiest, and then it gives you 9 variations of your choice. It's like a genetic algorithm for finding the most beautiful shape, in your opinion.
NSA uses NT quite heavily and may even use it solely for storing highly classified secrets.
Well, the really sensitive stuff is absolutely secure, because it's stored on computers which are not on the Internet in the first place (moles nonwithstanding).
he little icon comparing Microsoft to the Borg is a bit much. The borg never force you to pay license fees to get stuck with thier garbage.
I realize you're being facetious, but it's worth noting that articles like this one are exactly why we liken Microsoft to the Borg.: "IM & CDR markets: you will be assimilated. We will add your economical technological distinctiveness to our own. Your customers will adapt to service us. Lawsuits are futile."
Actually, the analogy proabably better represents the philosophy that "if you can't beat 'em, buy 'em."
As former Jedi master I am, comply I must. Sloth leads to plagiarism, plagiarism leads to trolling, trolling leads to -1! Go to a domain of burgers for two years you must; only then, a student will you be.
You know, I was thinking about all the +4 and +5 Funnies that routinely pop up on Slashdot, and I suddenly came up with a great idea.
You see, not any one Slashdotter is routinely side-splitting, but all of us put together (with appropriate moderation) routinely come up with the finest tech humor around! So why not capitalize on it? Our timely, hilarious comments are like an open-source scripting (pardon the pun) of a late night comedian's monologue, a la Letterman!
Think of it! Every night Hemos or Taco gets on a live stream and goes through the day's news, complete with all the +5 punchlines and a live studio audience to laugh at them all over again. There can be celebrity guests too -- why not Slashdot regulars like Katz, or special guests like Mundie? Or how about the "Top Ten Trolls" of the day? We'll call it "Slashdot Tonight!"
It's time to tap the potential of this free, volunteer humor base! Who's with me?
It's home to eye-popping views of the shoreline and ocean, staggering cliffs and switchbacks, and enough redwood trees to make one think they've stepped onto the forest moon of Endor.
...when in fact Endor is a whole ninety miles across town.
Hey, wait a sec-- this is unfair. I am not a troll. Not only was I marked as such here, but my post below where I present this argument in full is one of the few posts to remain at 1, despite a lot of response.
It seems that I'm moderated down as a troll simply for having an unpopular -- yet no less insightful -- view here on slashdot. That discourages me from ever posting anything other than the stautus quo.
I'm kind of confused by your analogy. The distribution technology has advanced but the music is still owned and copyrighted by the RIAA. How has the music industry been obsoleted? If Napster users created their own content... that would be something.
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe, but the episode attributed the transformation to an acceleration of human evolution in the rider -- that millions of years from now, we will become swamp creatures with extra brain capacity and redundant organs, and that it is all scripted in our DNA. Which is strange, because I always thought evolution happens to civilizations, not individuals.
--------------------------------
Actually, it's not exponential, it's a hand-drawn function that has an asymptote at 10, where it takes infinite energy to go at infinite speed and occupy every point in the universe simulatenously.
That was the model until Voyager's Threshold, which establishes that going at warp 10 simply makes you turn into a giant lizard.
--------------------------------
Spoiler warning. After seven years, that's how Voyager ended, in my opinion. Did the crew use their years of experience with the Borg to get past them? No... they were blessed with a visitor from the future, who brought weapons to make them invincible to every enemy. They were then free to use Borg transwarp conduits (which didn't bother me as much since they've been established since season 6 of TNG).
Put another way, what did you want to see out of the finale? Here's what I've been imagining for seven years:
- The crew arrives home
- Emotional farewells between crew members and uncertaintly about their future
- Commendation or other acknowledgement by Starfleet
- An investigation into the psychological effect of unexpectedly seeing one's loved ones after seven years of isolation
- Will Seven of Nine be accepted by humanity and be able to live alongside billions of humans?
- What role will the Doctor play in liberating repressed sentinent holograms, as referred to in recent episodes?
- Whatever happened to Kim's fiancee?
- etc.
The producers, however, assumed that I had only one question, and wrote the entire episode under that assumption:- Will they make it back?
I wanted an hour or more in the Alpha quandrant providing closure to the series. But instead they held out the contrived suspense to the very last minute, giving us only one single shot of Voyager approaching Earth. Completely unsatisfying end to seven years' anticipation.I mean, all in all, it was just another episode. How many episodes were there that had them spend an hour getting REALLY REALLY CLOSE to getting home and then be thwarted? This episode was about getting REALLY REALLY CLOSE for two hours, and then being successful. I didn't want to see another episode about getting really really close. I wanted to see an episode about returning home!
Sigh... well, it's not important enough to get too worked up over. But still, their priorities were in the wrong place. It's that kind of substitution -- giving us more phasers, nebulae, and "transphasic torpedoes" instead of human drama, that makes Star Trek suck today compared to the days of TOS and TNG.
--------------------------------
Take sappy romance + large-scale tragedy + sinking ship from Titanic, the top-grossing movie of 1997 (and all time)
Add the World War II patriotic factor from Saving Private Ryan, the top-grossing movie of 1998
Be careful to cater to every demographic group, and beware to not offend the Japanese, who added $200 million to Titanic's gross (they are reluctantly forced to raid and then second-guess themselves).
And you get Pearl Harbor, a movie designed from the ground up to make money, not be historically accurate.
I'm used to this sort of stuff from Hollywood, but in this case, we're talking about capitalizing on the slaughter of thousands of American soldiers. The film doesn't honor them, it adds them to the bottom line.
As Roger Ebert said: What is the point, really, of more than half an hour of planes bombing ships, of explosions and fireballs, of roars on the soundtrack and bodies flying through the air and people running away from fighters that are strafing them? How can it be entertaining or moving when it's simply about the most appalling slaughter? Why do the filmmakers think we want to see this, unrelieved by intelligence, viewpoint or insight? It was a terrible, terrible day.
--------------------------------
It reminds me of some of the blabbering that went on between writers and directors in the recent Hollywood strike threat. It got pretty nasty at some points... and also pretty silly. Like in an editorial I read in a writer's magazine that said -- in what appeared to be all seriousness -- that the best solution for writers is to just direct themselves. How hard can it be? Let the DP (director of photography) and his friends take care of all the tech stuff. Just get up there, tell your actors to do funny things with your script, and shoot away!
--------------------------------
That was until I heard that the whole movie was computer generated!
I've learned to take such claims with a grain of salt. Yes, the objects look realistic, but that's because they're based on scans of real objects. Yes, objects move in a realistic fashion, but that's proabably because they captured the motions of actors in golf-ball suits on a stage.
--------------------------------
Remember back in September, when Slashdot was hacked? The guys that did it apparently just wanted the experience of hacking Slashdot; they posted a victory story and emailed Taco will full details about how they did it.
/".
But Taco & company decided to rebuild the entire system as though they had maliciously took over.
Similarly, even if this "good" worm hits me, I'll treat it like a bad one. You never know, it would be ingenious for some l4m3 (or whatever the numeric abbreviation is) hackers to release a version that looks like "Cheese" but actually does a "rm -rf
--------------------------------
Microsoft, it's time for you to join us.
Quick, someone make a Borg Penguin logo.
--------------------------------
I'm impressed that a company called DVI could be so high-tex.
--------------------------------
Check out the "Flame" filter in Gimp. It's very similar-- you choose which of 9 variations you find prettiest, and then it gives you 9 variations of your choice. It's like a genetic algorithm for finding the most beautiful shape, in your opinion.
--------------------------------
NSA uses NT quite heavily and may even use it solely for storing highly classified secrets.
Well, the really sensitive stuff is absolutely secure, because it's stored on computers which are not on the Internet in the first place (moles nonwithstanding).
--------------------------------
For instance, they predict that "the calculator solves thousands of separate equations in a minute", which is absurdly low.
:)
Well, considering Moore's Law, he's not too many years off. Besides, how complicated are the equations?
there are 50 variables in predicting the weather, which is also absurdly low.
Yeah, there are literally millions of butterflies out there.
--------------------------------
Cancer is not yet curable in 2000. But physicians optimistically predict that the time is not far off when it will be cured.
Nah, that could never happen now.
--------------------------------
he little icon comparing Microsoft to the Borg is a bit much. The borg never force you to pay license fees to get stuck with thier garbage.
I realize you're being facetious, but it's worth noting that articles like this one are exactly why we liken Microsoft to the Borg.: "IM & CDR markets: you will be assimilated. We will add your economical technological distinctiveness to our own. Your customers will adapt to service us. Lawsuits are futile."
Actually, the analogy proabably better represents the philosophy that "if you can't beat 'em, buy 'em."
--------------------------------
There were sanitation problems... :)
--------------------------------
Do your own work, never have a problem.
Except when a lot of other people are cheating and it hurts you on the curve. Even here at Columbia some people cheat just to keep up.
--------------------------------
on first load. It seems slashdot is slashdotted.
--------------------------------
As former Jedi master I am, comply I must. Sloth leads to plagiarism, plagiarism leads to trolling, trolling leads to -1! Go to a domain of burgers for two years you must; only then, a student will you be.
--------------------------------
You know, I was thinking about all the +4 and +5 Funnies that routinely pop up on Slashdot, and I suddenly came up with a great idea.
You see, not any one Slashdotter is routinely side-splitting, but all of us put together (with appropriate moderation) routinely come up with the finest tech humor around! So why not capitalize on it? Our timely, hilarious comments are like an open-source scripting (pardon the pun) of a late night comedian's monologue, a la Letterman!
Think of it! Every night Hemos or Taco gets on a live stream and goes through the day's news, complete with all the +5 punchlines and a live studio audience to laugh at them all over again. There can be celebrity guests too -- why not Slashdot regulars like Katz, or special guests like Mundie? Or how about the "Top Ten Trolls" of the day? We'll call it "Slashdot Tonight!"
It's time to tap the potential of this free, volunteer humor base! Who's with me?
--------------------------------
This would be an endeavour that will dwarf the manhatan project
I thought dwarfing manhattan was the whole idea.
--------------------------------
I wonder if you will have to give Gene Wilder a piece of chocolate before you can ride it.
--------------------------------
Now the U.S. can skip the whole getting-the-crew-home part and get on with the getting-the-top-secret-plane-home part.
--------------------------------
Description of the remote testing site:
...when in fact Endor is a whole ninety miles across town.
It's home to eye-popping views of the shoreline and ocean, staggering cliffs and switchbacks, and enough redwood trees to make one think they've stepped onto the forest moon of Endor.
--------------------------------
Hey, wait a sec-- this is unfair. I am not a troll. Not only was I marked as such here, but my post below where I present this argument in full is one of the few posts to remain at 1, despite a lot of response.
It seems that I'm moderated down as a troll simply for having an unpopular -- yet no less insightful -- view here on slashdot. That discourages me from ever posting anything other than the stautus quo.
--------------------------------
I'm kind of confused by your analogy. The distribution technology has advanced but the music is still owned and copyrighted by the RIAA. How has the music industry been obsoleted? If Napster users created their own content... that would be something.
--------------------------------