I don't know the specific name for the choking. I'd have just called it "telekinesis." I've always thought that Jedi powers were rather limited in number, with wide ranging applications.
1. prescience (from Yoda's long-range futures to Anakin's pod-racing reflexes) 2. telekinesis (lifting/tossing objects, choking people, enhanced jumping/acrobatics, enhanced strength of sword arm) 3. limited telepathy (mind control, passing long-distance mental messages, sensing other users of the force) 4. throwing/catching lightning 5. unity with the force (longevity, ghost-at-death)
I'd be pleased enough with the interpretation that Luke was learning some of the dark side in RoTJ, but I'm not sure we have enough evidence to be sure. The clothing change may simply be an attempt to turn Mark Hammel into an action hero -- make him look neat and competent in a 1980s, we-must-reject-disco kind of way. Also, we have to remember that this was the first time Lucas had put a Jedi knight in his prime on screen. He was probably still figuring out what one should look like. That the costume was black in color is a strong point for the dark side, though.
As for choking the Gamorrean guards, it's a way for Luke to quickly establish his reputation with Jabba's people -- to put on the image of a bad-ass. Plus, it's nonlethal, so Jabba doesn't have a grievance about dead guards. Qui-gon wouldn't have hesitated to do the same, though if anything he'd have been more arrogant about it.
Anyway, I do like the idea of Luke and his generation learning to use all of the force. Lessons like "anger can be a source of strength and endurance but will produce tragedy if not tempered by love." A balancing of yin and yang that is better than allowing either to dominate.
I don't see Lucas doing this, though. It seems to me that his Jedis begin with "first deny the body" and follow with "eliminate your desire" on their path to a sterile enlightenment. We'll see what Episode III brings.
Yeah, I wondered about that, too. Given that the Jedi counsel dominates/monopolizes use of the force. Given that they only use the light side. Given that the Sith are always two and two only.
Why would the Jedi Counsel view balancing the force as a good thing? Is it not obvious to them that a lot of Jedi must die to get down to balance?
If "bring balance to the force" means something more interesting, such as "allow a practitioner to use both sides of the force safely", thus acheiving great things that single-side practitioners cannot, that'd be cool. But I've never gotten the sense that Vader or Luke ever achieved any understanding of the force that was better than Yoda's light-side-only-must-you-use dictum.
Well, the prophecy does say the chosen one will bring balance to the force. Not that it will necessarily stay balanced. Particularly after the chosen one is dead.
There's just one problem with that scenario: lost future revenues.
There is a business model for this: cell-phone covers. How much money have manufacturers made selling three covers at $19.95 to each person who bought the phone for $79.95? And the cost of each cover is ~$0.50, or some such.
Same thing works here. Sell the vehicle for $15000 and each new cover for $8000. If the chassis is the expensive part, the the covers are largely profit.
Also, you can afford to make specialty covers that have sales numbers so low they used to be unprofitable, e.g., covertables for the tall and wide crowd. Heck, anything for the tall and wide crowd.
For lots and lots of consumers, the cover contains all the selling points -- they hardly care about the hardware. This gives the manufacturer a chance to produce the cheap half of the car, have it include all the marketing hooks, and sell it more often.
Of course, the chassis will eventually wear out, too. But the more covers you sell per chassis, the higher your profit.
Could it be that the company wants to ID those reviewers who may be leaking/ripping the stuff before release? If the units must be returned in original condition, untampered, after they're reviewed, then this may be meant to identify leaks. The way the company figures it, if the leakers refuse to review the stuff, no big loss.
Perhaps the company also thinks that most of what it considers "legitimate" reviewers will acquiesce.
In theory, the problem with no copyright law is that people who own the means of production (e.g. printing presses) benefit while creators (e.g. authors) do not.
In practice, the problem with current copyright law is that people who own the means of production (e.g. CD presses) benefit ($0.98) while creators (e.g. musicians) do not ($0.02).
At least the experimental results correlate well with the predictions. Or not.
RIAA seeks summary judgement against Musiccity , Kazaa and Grokster. In other words they want the above to be banned even before the trial.
Sensationalism aside, summary judgment is nothing special. All Musiccity, Kazaa and Grokster have to do to prevent it is to point to same facts that are in dispute that matter. If not everybody agrees on the important facts, then there can be a trial.
Demonstrations included an experimental Pentium 4 chip that designers ratcheted up to 4.7 gigahertz, nearly twice as speedy as the fastest chip on the market, a 2.8 gigahertz chip.
For the math-impaired article authors, twice(2.8) = 5.6 5.6/2.8=200% 4.7/2.8=168% The 4.7 GHz was impressive enough by itself -- there was no need to inflate it again with bad math.
Not that GHz rating has any meaningful relationship to the speed of your boxen.
Yeah, this demographic does have another tendency towards self-concealment. But, there's at least one other reason they tend to be unappealing to advertisers: discriminating spending. It seems likely to me that this demographic is more likely to think before it buys, and thus is harder to sway by means of advertising.
Many advertising mind tricks only work on the weak-minded.
Consumer: Let me see your privacy policies, labor and environmental records, and audited financials. Marketer: You don't need to see his records. Consumer: We don't need to see his records. Marketer: These are the goods you're looking for. Consumer: These are the goods we're looking for. Marketer: You should buy from this business. Consumer: We'll all buy from your business. Marketer: Next in line. Consumer: Next in line, next in line.
Well said. In America, copyright is a bargain. We give authors monopoly rents for a period of time and in exchange, their work eventually enriches the public domain. To explain how the public domain is being robbed to the uninitiated, we have to list off works in their favorite genre of music, movies, or literature that are more than about 30 years old.
For example, take the AFI's Top 100 Movies. Eighty-nine of the 100 are more than 30 years old! Including "Citizen Kane" (1941), "Casablanca" (1942), "The Godfather" (1972), "Gone With the Wind" (1939), "The Wizard of Oz" (1939), "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957), "Psycho" (1960), "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968), "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962), "King Kong" (1933), "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951), "A Clockwork Orange" (1971), "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), "The Sound of Music" (1965), "M*A*S*H" (1970), "Fantasia" (1940), "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955), "Ben-Hur" (1959).
Under the original term of copyright, all these would already be 100% free to all of us. Not to mention Elvis, the Beatles, Tolkien, and a host of novels: Ulysses (1918) -- James Joyce, The Great Gatsby (1925) -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lolita (1955) -- Vladimir Nabokov, Brave New World (1932) -- Aldous Huxley, Catch-22 (1961) -- Joseph Heller, The Grapes of Wrath (1939) -- John Steinbeck, 1984 (1949) -- George Orwell, Slaughterhouse Five (1969) -- Kurt Vonnegut, Invisible Man (1952) -- Ralph Ellison, Animal Farm (1946) -- George Orwell, Lord of the Flies (1954) -- William Golding, Deliverance (1970) -- James Dickey, The Sun Also Rises (1926) -- Ernest Hemingway, The Maltese Falcon (1930) -- Dashiell Hammett, The Catcher in the Rye (1951) -- J.D. Salinger, A Clockwork Orange (1962) -- Anthony Burgess, Of Human Bondage (1915) -- W. Somerset Maugham, A Farewell to Arms (1929) -- Ernest Hemingway, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) -- James M. Cain. While some of this stuff may already have fallen into the public domain, by rights, ALL of it should be ours already.
The public domain is what let's us sing "America the Beautiful" and do anything we want with it, royalty-free. The plundering of the public domain by copyright extensions, is what will prevent us from freely sing "God Bless the USA" for more than 70 years (copyright Lee Greenwood 1984).
-----
To which I replied, "Mark Twain's ancestors could profit off of Huckleberry Finn, but it's public domain.
;) Of course, Clemens' ancestors are probably a lot less worried about that than his descendants.
While abuse of copyright and dwindling fair use law is bad, fundamentally those things which are copyrighted are created by the authors, and they should have the ability to control them.
Do you really think the creating authors are controlling their copyrights, "here, in this place? Do you think that's air you're breathing now? Hmmph."
In a word: corporations.
The patent problem is horrid. Unlike copyright, where at least people might claim some rights based on creation, patent law is clearly corrupted. People patent things that are not inventions . ..
Reasons why the copyright mess is worse than the patent mess.
1. Copyright lasts roughly 5 times as long. (And, given the current pattern of highly convenient extensions is effectively unending.)
2. Unlike copyright, there are some barriers to getting a patent. (We can all wish they'd been higher in the last few years, but that's fixable.)
3. If you want your patent to last the full 20 years, you must pay hefty maintenance fees. Otherwise, it goes into the public domain much sooner.
4a. If you're looking for corruption, look no further than the vote-buying and lobbying that abounds in copyright: the Bono Act, the DMCA, the NET Act, not to mention that hack-em-if-you-own-em Berman-Coble bill. You can't point to a similar history for patents.
4b. The problem with patents is that the patent office is over-worked, understaffed, and out-gunned by applicants. It's not about corruption.
5. If a bad patent is issued, it can be broken in court. There's almost no way to get a copyright revoked.
6. Copyrights affect us individually every day: crippled devices, PVR wars, Napster may-it-rest-in-peace, DVD region-coding, unskippable DVD tracks, movie theater ticket prices, closed-source software, etc. Patents are seldom "in our face" as consumers.
We should wish copyrights were as easy to get rid of as patents. If they were, we'd have Elvis, the Beatles, Tolkien, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Casablanca, and so, so many others in the public domain today.
Ecomonics. You can only make money at this if you can get lots and lots of people to use your trademark.
Step 1: Trademark the token.
Step 2: Get lots of people to use the token in their mail, establishing that your token has value due to its reputation as non-spam.
Step 3: When a spammer uses the token, sue them for destroying the value of your reputation. The more spam they sent with your token, the more they hurt you.
Step 4: Most times, the spammer will evaporate, but the few you make pay just might be enough to cover the bills.
use the first two lines to draw a pretty picture for the last to change
Haiku, like all forms of poetry, particularly the short ones, is an exercise in packing a lot of information into a few words. Haiku are distinguished from other forms by having a particular syllable count (5-7-5, 9-7-9, 17/3, and a couple of others) and no rhyme. Traditional haiku have a natural theme. Haiku tend to be descriptive, not narrative. They convey a single burst of perception and an insight.
The next level of detail is to set the scene in the first two lines and then use the third to deliver some insight at odds with the scene. An example is
plum blossoms bloom pleasure-women buy new scarves in a brothel room
Taken alone, the first two lines describe something gentle and feminine. The last reveals that the scene is not at all what it appears to be. Another example of this technique from today's discussion comes from zeus_tfc:
Anything that blocks Spam from my machine is good. How long will this work?
Re:Ignorance is beaming
on
Haiku vs Spam
·
· Score: 1
many evil acts of U.S.-based business are done overseas
shouldn't have said that
on
Haiku vs Spam
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
if i write one more meaningless poem, they just might mod me off topic
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know the specific name for the choking. I'd have just called it "telekinesis." I've always thought that Jedi powers were rather limited in number, with wide ranging applications.
1. prescience (from Yoda's long-range futures to Anakin's pod-racing reflexes)
2. telekinesis (lifting/tossing objects, choking people, enhanced jumping/acrobatics, enhanced strength of sword arm)
3. limited telepathy (mind control, passing long-distance mental messages, sensing other users of the force)
4. throwing/catching lightning
5. unity with the force (longevity, ghost-at-death)
I'd be pleased enough with the interpretation that Luke was learning some of the dark side in RoTJ, but I'm not sure we have enough evidence to be sure. The clothing change may simply be an attempt to turn Mark Hammel into an action hero -- make him look neat and competent in a 1980s, we-must-reject-disco kind of way. Also, we have to remember that this was the first time Lucas had put a Jedi knight in his prime on screen. He was probably still figuring out what one should look like. That the costume was black in color is a strong point for the dark side, though.
As for choking the Gamorrean guards, it's a way for Luke to quickly establish his reputation with Jabba's people -- to put on the image of a bad-ass. Plus, it's nonlethal, so Jabba doesn't have a grievance about dead guards. Qui-gon wouldn't have hesitated to do the same, though if anything he'd have been more arrogant about it.
Anyway, I do like the idea of Luke and his generation learning to use all of the force. Lessons like "anger can be a source of strength and endurance but will produce tragedy if not tempered by love." A balancing of yin and yang that is better than allowing either to dominate.
I don't see Lucas doing this, though. It seems to me that his Jedis begin with "first deny the body" and follow with "eliminate your desire" on their path to a sterile enlightenment. We'll see what Episode III brings.
Yeah, I wondered about that, too. Given that the Jedi counsel dominates/monopolizes use of the force. Given that they only use the light side. Given that the Sith are always two and two only.
Why would the Jedi Counsel view balancing the force as a good thing? Is it not obvious to them that a lot of Jedi must die to get down to balance?
If "bring balance to the force" means something more interesting, such as "allow a practitioner to use both sides of the force safely", thus acheiving great things that single-side practitioners cannot, that'd be cool. But I've never gotten the sense that Vader or Luke ever achieved any understanding of the force that was better than Yoda's light-side-only-must-you-use dictum.
Well, the prophecy does say the chosen one will bring balance to the force. Not that it will necessarily stay balanced. Particularly after the chosen one is dead.
LMAO!
Thanks for brightening my day.
There's just one problem with that scenario: lost future revenues.
There is a business model for this: cell-phone covers. How much money have manufacturers made selling three covers at $19.95 to each person who bought the phone for $79.95? And the cost of each cover is ~$0.50, or some such.
Same thing works here. Sell the vehicle for $15000 and each new cover for $8000. If the chassis is the expensive part, the the covers are largely profit.
Also, you can afford to make specialty covers that have sales numbers so low they used to be unprofitable, e.g., covertables for the tall and wide crowd. Heck, anything for the tall and wide crowd.
For lots and lots of consumers, the cover contains all the selling points -- they hardly care about the hardware. This gives the manufacturer a chance to produce the cheap half of the car, have it include all the marketing hooks, and sell it more often.
Of course, the chassis will eventually wear out, too. But the more covers you sell per chassis, the higher your profit.
Could it be that the company wants to ID those reviewers who may be leaking/ripping the stuff before release? If the units must be returned in original condition, untampered, after they're reviewed, then this may be meant to identify leaks. The way the company figures it, if the leakers refuse to review the stuff, no big loss.
Perhaps the company also thinks that most of what it considers "legitimate" reviewers will acquiesce.
In theory, the problem with no copyright law is that people who own the means of production (e.g. printing presses) benefit while creators (e.g. authors) do not.
In practice, the problem with current copyright law is that people who own the means of production (e.g. CD presses) benefit ($0.98) while creators (e.g. musicians) do not ($0.02).
At least the experimental results correlate well with the predictions. Or not.
RIAA seeks summary judgement against Musiccity , Kazaa and Grokster. In other words they want the above to be banned even before the trial.
Sensationalism aside, summary judgment is nothing special. All Musiccity, Kazaa and Grokster have to do to prevent it is to point to same facts that are in dispute that matter. If not everybody agrees on the important facts, then there can be a trial.
Now, preliminary injunction is another matter...
GYOGDLYMNO
Demonstrations included an experimental Pentium 4 chip that designers ratcheted up to 4.7 gigahertz, nearly twice as speedy as the fastest chip on the market, a 2.8 gigahertz chip.
For the math-impaired article authors,
twice(2.8) = 5.6
5.6/2.8=200%
4.7/2.8=168%
The 4.7 GHz was impressive enough by itself -- there was no need to inflate it again with bad math.
Not that GHz rating has any meaningful relationship to the speed of your boxen.
It should be no surprize that AMD will support Palladium. How, exactly, would we expect AMD to survive if it kissed off the entire Windows market?
Reasons why there is less corruption on the patent side of the pitch than on the copyright side:
1. Copyright power is concentrated in about a half-dozen enourmous rich greedy bstrds; patent is spread across thousands of large rich greedy bstrds.
Yeah, this demographic does have another tendency towards self-concealment. But, there's at least one other reason they tend to be unappealing to advertisers: discriminating spending. It seems likely to me that this demographic is more likely to think before it buys, and thus is harder to sway by means of advertising.
Many advertising mind tricks only work on the weak-minded.
Consumer: Let me see your privacy policies, labor and environmental records, and audited financials.
Marketer: You don't need to see his records.
Consumer: We don't need to see his records.
Marketer: These are the goods you're looking for.
Consumer: These are the goods we're looking for.
Marketer: You should buy from this business.
Consumer: We'll all buy from your business.
Marketer: Next in line.
Consumer: Next in line, next in line.
For example, take the AFI's Top 100 Movies. Eighty-nine of the 100 are more than 30 years old! Including "Citizen Kane" (1941), "Casablanca" (1942), "The Godfather" (1972), "Gone With the Wind" (1939), "The Wizard of Oz" (1939), "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957), "Psycho" (1960), "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968), "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962), "King Kong" (1933), "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951), "A Clockwork Orange" (1971), "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), "The Sound of Music" (1965), "M*A*S*H" (1970), "Fantasia" (1940), "Rebel Without a Cause" (1955), "Ben-Hur" (1959).
Under the original term of copyright, all these would already be 100% free to all of us. Not to mention Elvis, the Beatles, Tolkien, and a host of novels: Ulysses (1918) -- James Joyce, The Great Gatsby (1925) -- F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lolita (1955) -- Vladimir Nabokov, Brave New World (1932) -- Aldous Huxley, Catch-22 (1961) -- Joseph Heller, The Grapes of Wrath (1939) -- John Steinbeck, 1984 (1949) -- George Orwell, Slaughterhouse Five (1969) -- Kurt Vonnegut, Invisible Man (1952) -- Ralph Ellison, Animal Farm (1946) -- George Orwell, Lord of the Flies (1954) -- William Golding, Deliverance (1970) -- James Dickey, The Sun Also Rises (1926) -- Ernest Hemingway, The Maltese Falcon (1930) -- Dashiell Hammett, The Catcher in the Rye (1951) -- J.D. Salinger, A Clockwork Orange (1962) -- Anthony Burgess, Of Human Bondage (1915) -- W. Somerset Maugham, A Farewell to Arms (1929) -- Ernest Hemingway, The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) -- James M. Cain. While some of this stuff may already have fallen into the public domain, by rights, ALL of it should be ours already.
The public domain is what let's us sing "America the Beautiful" and do anything we want with it, royalty-free. The plundering of the public domain by copyright extensions, is what will prevent us from freely sing "God Bless the USA" for more than 70 years (copyright Lee Greenwood 1984).
-----
To which I replied, "Mark Twain's ancestors could profit off of Huckleberry Finn, but it's public domain.
Step 1: Admit that current MS OS is insecure.
Step 2: Allege that problem is fundamental due to the nature of the hardware platform. Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt.
Step 3: But wait! MS has the solution that will solve this crisis -- Palladium.
While abuse of copyright and dwindling fair use law is bad, fundamentally those things which are copyrighted are created by the authors, and they should have the ability to control them.
.
Do you really think the creating authors are controlling their copyrights, "here, in this place? Do you think that's air you're breathing now? Hmmph."
In a word: corporations.
The patent problem is horrid. Unlike copyright, where at least people might claim some rights based on creation, patent law is clearly corrupted. People patent things that are not inventions . .
Reasons why the copyright mess is worse than the patent mess.
1. Copyright lasts roughly 5 times as long. (And, given the current pattern of highly convenient extensions is effectively unending.)
2. Unlike copyright, there are some barriers to getting a patent. (We can all wish they'd been higher in the last few years, but that's fixable.)
3. If you want your patent to last the full 20 years, you must pay hefty maintenance fees. Otherwise, it goes into the public domain much sooner.
4a. If you're looking for corruption, look no further than the vote-buying and lobbying that abounds in copyright: the Bono Act, the DMCA, the NET Act, not to mention that hack-em-if-you-own-em Berman-Coble bill. You can't point to a similar history for patents.
4b. The problem with patents is that the patent office is over-worked, understaffed, and out-gunned by applicants. It's not about corruption.
5. If a bad patent is issued, it can be broken in court. There's almost no way to get a copyright revoked.
6. Copyrights affect us individually every day: crippled devices, PVR wars, Napster may-it-rest-in-peace, DVD region-coding, unskippable DVD tracks, movie theater ticket prices, closed-source software, etc. Patents are seldom "in our face" as consumers.
We should wish copyrights were as easy to get rid of as patents. If they were, we'd have Elvis, the Beatles, Tolkien, Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Casablanca, and so, so many others in the public domain today.
I get spam email
its everywhere. it doesn't
know that it is spam
Ecomonics. You can only make money at this if you can get lots and lots of people to use your trademark.
Step 1: Trademark the token.
Step 2: Get lots of people to use the token in their mail, establishing that your token has value due to its reputation as non-spam.
Step 3: When a spammer uses the token, sue them for destroying the value of your reputation. The more spam they sent with your token, the more they hurt you.
Step 4: Most times, the spammer will evaporate, but the few you make pay just might be enough to cover the bills.
Taco set up bomb
you post, but all your haiku
are belong to us
use the first two lines
to draw a pretty picture
for the last to change
Haiku, like all forms of poetry, particularly the short ones, is an exercise in packing a lot of information into a few words. Haiku are distinguished from other forms by having a particular syllable count (5-7-5, 9-7-9, 17/3, and a couple of others) and no rhyme. Traditional haiku have a natural theme. Haiku tend to be descriptive, not narrative. They convey a single burst of perception and an insight.
The next level of detail is to set the scene in the first two lines and then use the third to deliver some insight at odds with the scene. An example is
plum blossoms bloom
pleasure-women buy new scarves
in a brothel room
Taken alone, the first two lines describe something gentle and feminine. The last reveals that the scene is not at all what it appears to be. Another example of this technique from today's discussion comes from zeus_tfc:
Anything that blocks
Spam from my machine is good.
How long will this work?
many evil acts
of U.S.-based business
are done overseas
if i write one more
meaningless poem, they just might
mod me off topic
i had the chicken
it tasted like something else
that tastes like chicken
using your haiku
my email has become your
derivative work
circumvent poem
you have just violated
the DMCA
if government won't stop spam
how can you trust your email to a
copyright vigilante