Most European countries can easily be crossed by road in an hour or two, and they have extensive rail service besides. America runs on trucks that deliver goods from one coast to the other and back again. Not to mention that we have commuters who live 1-2 hours away from their jobs. Imagine living in Paris and commuting every day to Amsterdam, by car. That's what a lot of Americans depend upon.
To adapt to $9/gallon gas, we will need extensive changes to our way of life. That's why people are complaining. Change isn't easy.
And there's the rub, and the reason why people are still trying to prove QM after a hundred years. The equations appear to indicate that one of the following MUST BE FALSE:
1. Quantum Mechanics. 2. Locality. 3. Realism.
All the experiments performed so far strongly support QM, so we can't dismiss that. If locality is false then we have Einstein's spooky action at a distance and a conflict with GR. If realism is false...then nobody knows where the hell we are, or what we are.
But one of them *has* to be wrong. All these experiments are trying to prove is which one.
You probably won't see what's special about AC from a short trial. Its uniqueness is in the dynamic game world. Sure, other games add zones and places to explore...but as far as I know only AC has destroyed major cities in the game as part of their storyline.
The 'zoneless' nature of AC is unique, too, and it adds to the dynamic feel. You don't just get doors to new zones -- additions to the world are generally placed on existing terrain. So it feels like one world that is changing, instead of an expanding series of disconnected rooms.
I liked AC when I played it. The designers were a little too focused on PvP, and the skill system was a little unforgiving, IMHO, but for the most part it was a great game for its time.
Leaving aside for the moment the accusation of telecom kickbacks......you do realize how deceptive those tax returns are, don't you? They show that he has an income of about $240 thousand a year, from his pension and Senate salary. Almost all of McCain's living expenses are paid by his wife, who brings in over $6 million a year and has a personal fortune well over $100 million. He's effectively hiding 96% of his income.
Whether he's corrupt or not is another matter -- I personally do not believe he is. But he certainly does not give the impression of being honest and forthright about these matters.
You're confusing the terms 'Human Beings' and 'Americans'.
Americans riot and revolt when their government screws them over, because we've been steeped in the whole 'revolution is a good thing' bullshit since we were toddlers. We're taught that bad guys want power and good guys always win, and that's a recipe for a society that views its government as transient and replaceable -- as long as you replace it with something even more attuned to the ideals of freedom and justice and whatnot.
People from other countries and other times don't see things the american way. There is plenty of historical evidence that oppressed serfs will endure under hundreds of years of totalitarian rule. Maybe they feel it's God's law, or just the way of things, or that resistance is futile. I don't know -- I'm american, I don't understand it. But history shows us that a totalitarian regime can effectively imprison a populace for long periods of time, until the status quo is shaken by outside influences. And if these fascist measures go global, there will be no outside influences.
So yes, it can work, and they can do it in a way that avoids civil war if they get the system set up correctly. Which is why we should prevent them from doing so.
The director has already said that it's a three-hour movie, although he's in a fight with the studio to keep it that long.
As for the story of the Black Freighter, it will be released in its entirety as a separate DVD-only animated film, released along with the Watchmen's theatrical release. More on that here.
I think they are taking extreme steps to make this movie faithful to the comic, and I'm heartened that it will be entertaining and true to the original. But we'll see....
It started as a Usenet newsgroup devoted to nonsense. But sometime around 1993, people began generating a consistent storyline within the newsgroup. (The particulars involved intelligent, man-eating rabbits and their quest to enslave humanity, but that's not important for this discussion.) Before very long, the writers in alt.devilbunnies were creating novel-length stories, often with over a dozen contributors, and all set within an internally consistent shared world.
The Devilbunnies phenomenon continued from around 1993 to around 2002, when the authors slowly abandoned the newsgroup. There were multiple attempts to bring the Devilbunnies to the web, or to publish their shared stories. But every time someone began such a project, someone in the community would oppose it for one reason or another. Because the copyright on the devilbunny universe was shared between everyone involved, there was no way of publishing or continuing it if even a single person vetoed the project. So those who wanted to make it bigger eventually gave up. Now the devilbunnies are nothing more than a group of friends who fondly remember stories they wrote together but which will never -- *can* never -- live again in any other format.
I believe alt.Devilbunnies is the first internet-powered collaborative story group. (There are many pre-internet efforts, going all the way to Beowulf and beyond, as others have mentioned.)
It is also my considered opinion that the fate of Devilbunnies awaits any collaborative story project, unless it is a small, close-knit group who have been told in advance that the project is intended for publication and been given clear rules for how it will be done. Copyright laws are strict enough, and legal expenses great enough, that a single bad egg can ruin an entire collaborative fiction project. So be careful, and don't let what happened to alt.Devilbunnies happen to you.
Or in other words, keep an eye on your toes, because those wabbits will eat them if you give them half a chance. And keep your fireaxe handy.
I'm 40 years old, and I watched Speed Racer as a child. Not that into it though, so this movie looks 'bleh' for me. (Although 'bleh' in a very gaudy, eye-searing CGI way.)
Since I'm outside of Hollywood's normal demographic, I don't think this movie is meant to capitalize on nostalgia for Speed Racer. This movie is meant to appeal to the billions and billions of Nascar fans in the US. Racing is hot right now in America, and everyone loves to watch the crashes, so a race movie with lots of CGI crashing might make money.
If that's their target audience, it means that they just bought the Speed Racer license to have some property to hang their futuristic Nascar film onto. Which makes me even less interested in this film -- it's likely to be a cynical attempt at marketing-driven art, and have no real soul.
Wyrms was a good book if (SPOILER) you like tentacle rape. And one could argue it was prophetic, as it predicted the tentacle rape fanfic phenomenon a decade before the internet got big.
Law is *not* a science. It is a field just as demanding and just as logical, true. But calling something a science implies that it follows the scientific method of theory, experimentation, and validation. Law doesn't do that. Neither does 'Intelligent Design'.
If Ben Stein is calling himself a scientist, then I can see how he could suffer the delusion that ID is science. He doesn't seem to know what science is.
I'm intrigued that this effect happens in avian retinas. Do birds actually *see* magnetic north and south? As in, everything to the north is tinted one color, and everything to the south is tinted another hue?
Fascinating. Birds (and possibly dinosaurs) see the world as one gigantic rave. Sometimes I feel I'm missing too much by being born human.
From the summary: "The space opera is not a science-driven work."
This is an understatement, and should be underlined and in bold when discussing Iain M. Banks. Those expecting science fiction in the mode of Heinlein, Asimov, or Clarke will not enjoy Iain Banks' work.
Banks' novels are best described as fantasy stories set in space, with characters that may have alien appearances but who act like humans in rubber suits. He makes no attempt to suspend the readers' disbelief or justify his worldbuilding. And he often writes scenes or entire novels that are blatantly experimental, which may be mind-expanding for some readers but those with more literary experience find these amateurish excursions rather tedious.
In short, you either love or hate Iain M. Banks novels. He is not for everyone.
Seems natural to me, from a japanese perspective. Japanese like eating whales. Cows are easy to breed and keep. It would be a terrific thing for Japan if they could make cows that tasted like whales. (It wouldn't be a bad thing from the whales' perspective, either.)
I think you're asking for a layperson's explanation. I'll try...
It's a matter of density. How dense the universe is decides whether it's closed or open -- if it's dense enough, gravity will cause it to close in on itself at some point in the future.
But the universe's early density also determines how big the fluctuations were in its early days. The bigger the overall density, the bigger the possible smaller-scale fluctuations that might occur.
Measuring the microwave background gives us an idea of how large those small-scale fluctuations in density were. So we can draw a direct connection from the fluctuation size to the openness/closeness of the universe.
(The only way this breaks down is if the universe changed in overall density in the past 13 billion years. But the law of conservation of energy and matter tells us that's impossible.)
Thanks. Count me as another person who cannot view videos at work. Thus, I will take the above summarizations as the true answers to Slashdot's questions.
I'm on the opposite side of you in the question of how Cylons should be treated. They have proven themselves an existential threat to the human race, and they should be exterminated without pity or mercy. I was frustrated by the one episode (much later than where you apparently are) when they decide not to release a biological weapon that could wipe out the Cylons all at once. I'd press that button in a heartbeat, and I think any leader responsible for the safety of the human race would do the same.
Still, it's a good reflection on the series writers that they are able to evoke such complex and powerful quandries.
And probably far fewer -- possibly zero -- facilities where he can be denied access to a phone. Disabled people need to be able to contact others for help, but this guy is likely to abuse any such privilege.
You can put kids on trial as if they were adults. I wonder if this guy can be sentenced as if he were non-disabled?
It never occurred to me before, but this new story has, in my mind at least, connected Islam with the beliefs of various aboriginals. There are a few aboriginal people who believe that taking a photograph steals a person's soul, or that viewing photographs of the dead is taboo. Does Wikipedia make allowances for these kind of religious beliefs?
Now that I think of it, Islam and aboriginals seem to share other things in common, such as distrust of the modern world and a proclivity to violence when their beliefs or ways of life are threatened. Interesting. But I'd likely get into trouble if I explore too far into the concept of radical moslems as the aboriginal people of the middle east...
Don't forget the hispanic factor. Obama lost California due to women and hispanics voting overwhelmingly for Hillary. Texas, with its large hispanic population may skew the same way.
For those of us who are political junkies, this is exciting. But I can only imagine how stressful this is for people who just want someone sane in the White House.
What's the point of intentionally playing a class with suboptimal mechanics when you could play a more poweful class and still play exactly the same role?
Because Paladins are supposed to fill a special role in a game world, that of the designated holy warrior. When the party visits a king, the paladin is the one who is granted audience. When the party meets a god, the paladin is the one who gains favor. Paladins are supposed to have not only charisma but reputation, and reputation can get you out of a lot of trouble (or into it, sometimes.) Paladins were excellent vehicles for role-playing, despite what their stats may have been.
Count me as another person who sees D&D 4th edition as an 'MMORPG on paper'. Role playing and flavor seems to have been tossed aside.
Bah, I'm old enough to remember when thieves were in the party to open locks and disarm traps, and in combat they stayed the hell out of the way. Were they interesting in combat? No. But outside of combat they were fascinating to roleplay, and that's why people chose to play them.
Uwe Boll would spice up a Portal movie by setting it in a forest and throwing ninjas at Chell, which she would refer to as 'androids'. The portal gun -- being too expensive a special effect -- will be used only once, to dump cake all over GlaDOS, with the portal itself never shown. The vulnerability that GlaDOS has to cake which causes her to explode will never be explained.
Now that I contemplate this tragedy, I hope Valve knows enough not to sell any rights for Half-Life or Portal to anyone, least of all legendary bad directors.
I work in the space industry, on the Landsat satellite program.
There's a law that we must have an operating Landsat satellite -- it's that important to geology, agriculture, urban planning, etc. Landsats 1-7 were all specified and built by the government or its contractors.
In the early 2000s it came time to build Landsat 8 (known as LDCM, because nobody likes the abbreviation 'L8'). The government directive was to use the COTS program: Buy data from an existing commercial satellite, or get a commercial company to build and operate it for profit, with the government its preferred customer.
But there are no satellites that create the precise kind of data that Landsat needs. And when companies measured the profit potential of building the right kind of satellite, they walked away. If I recall the COTS LDCM request for proposal got zero bidders.
The government has finally given up on its free market fever and allowed LDCM to be a non-COTS system. Meanwhile, because we dicked around trying to shoehorn a government project into a commercial venture, we're going to be 4-8 years late in launching the next Landsat satellite. Assuming budgetary problems don't kill the entire 30+ year program.
COTS, and the recent governmental zeal to make everything part of the free market, is what has crippled and bankrupted the US space program. Some things are just better if done by governments, and at this point in history spaceflight is one of those things.
Slashdot Mirror
Your economy is different than ours.
Most European countries can easily be crossed by road in an hour or two, and they have extensive rail service besides. America runs on trucks that deliver goods from one coast to the other and back again. Not to mention that we have commuters who live 1-2 hours away from their jobs. Imagine living in Paris and commuting every day to Amsterdam, by car. That's what a lot of Americans depend upon.
To adapt to $9/gallon gas, we will need extensive changes to our way of life. That's why people are complaining. Change isn't easy.
And there's the rub, and the reason why people are still trying to prove QM after a hundred years. The equations appear to indicate that one of the following MUST BE FALSE:
1. Quantum Mechanics.
2. Locality.
3. Realism.
All the experiments performed so far strongly support QM, so we can't dismiss that. If locality is false then we have Einstein's spooky action at a distance and a conflict with GR. If realism is false...then nobody knows where the hell we are, or what we are.
But one of them *has* to be wrong. All these experiments are trying to prove is which one.
You probably won't see what's special about AC from a short trial. Its uniqueness is in the dynamic game world. Sure, other games add zones and places to explore...but as far as I know only AC has destroyed major cities in the game as part of their storyline.
The 'zoneless' nature of AC is unique, too, and it adds to the dynamic feel. You don't just get doors to new zones -- additions to the world are generally placed on existing terrain. So it feels like one world that is changing, instead of an expanding series of disconnected rooms.
I liked AC when I played it. The designers were a little too focused on PvP, and the skill system was a little unforgiving, IMHO, but for the most part it was a great game for its time.
Leaving aside for the moment the accusation of telecom kickbacks... ...you do realize how deceptive those tax returns are, don't you? They show that he has an income of about $240 thousand a year, from his pension and Senate salary. Almost all of McCain's living expenses are paid by his wife, who brings in over $6 million a year and has a personal fortune well over $100 million. He's effectively hiding 96% of his income.
Whether he's corrupt or not is another matter -- I personally do not believe he is. But he certainly does not give the impression of being honest and forthright about these matters.
You're confusing the terms 'Human Beings' and 'Americans'.
Americans riot and revolt when their government screws them over, because we've been steeped in the whole 'revolution is a good thing' bullshit since we were toddlers. We're taught that bad guys want power and good guys always win, and that's a recipe for a society that views its government as transient and replaceable -- as long as you replace it with something even more attuned to the ideals of freedom and justice and whatnot.
People from other countries and other times don't see things the american way. There is plenty of historical evidence that oppressed serfs will endure under hundreds of years of totalitarian rule. Maybe they feel it's God's law, or just the way of things, or that resistance is futile. I don't know -- I'm american, I don't understand it. But history shows us that a totalitarian regime can effectively imprison a populace for long periods of time, until the status quo is shaken by outside influences. And if these fascist measures go global, there will be no outside influences.
So yes, it can work, and they can do it in a way that avoids civil war if they get the system set up correctly. Which is why we should prevent them from doing so.
The director has already said that it's a three-hour movie, although he's in a fight with the studio to keep it that long.
As for the story of the Black Freighter, it will be released in its entirety as a separate DVD-only animated film, released along with the Watchmen's theatrical release. More on that here.
I think they are taking extreme steps to make this movie faithful to the comic, and I'm heartened that it will be entertaining and true to the original. But we'll see....
Let me introduce you to alt.Devilbunnies , founded in 1993.
It started as a Usenet newsgroup devoted to nonsense. But sometime around 1993, people began generating a consistent storyline within the newsgroup. (The particulars involved intelligent, man-eating rabbits and their quest to enslave humanity, but that's not important for this discussion.) Before very long, the writers in alt.devilbunnies were creating novel-length stories, often with over a dozen contributors, and all set within an internally consistent shared world.
The Devilbunnies phenomenon continued from around 1993 to around 2002, when the authors slowly abandoned the newsgroup. There were multiple attempts to bring the Devilbunnies to the web, or to publish their shared stories. But every time someone began such a project, someone in the community would oppose it for one reason or another. Because the copyright on the devilbunny universe was shared between everyone involved, there was no way of publishing or continuing it if even a single person vetoed the project. So those who wanted to make it bigger eventually gave up. Now the devilbunnies are nothing more than a group of friends who fondly remember stories they wrote together but which will never -- *can* never -- live again in any other format.
I believe alt.Devilbunnies is the first internet-powered collaborative story group. (There are many pre-internet efforts, going all the way to Beowulf and beyond, as others have mentioned.)
It is also my considered opinion that the fate of Devilbunnies awaits any collaborative story project, unless it is a small, close-knit group who have been told in advance that the project is intended for publication and been given clear rules for how it will be done. Copyright laws are strict enough, and legal expenses great enough, that a single bad egg can ruin an entire collaborative fiction project. So be careful, and don't let what happened to alt.Devilbunnies happen to you.
Or in other words, keep an eye on your toes, because those wabbits will eat them if you give them half a chance. And keep your fireaxe handy.
I'm 40 years old, and I watched Speed Racer as a child. Not that into it though, so this movie looks 'bleh' for me. (Although 'bleh' in a very gaudy, eye-searing CGI way.)
Since I'm outside of Hollywood's normal demographic, I don't think this movie is meant to capitalize on nostalgia for Speed Racer. This movie is meant to appeal to the billions and billions of Nascar fans in the US. Racing is hot right now in America, and everyone loves to watch the crashes, so a race movie with lots of CGI crashing might make money.
If that's their target audience, it means that they just bought the Speed Racer license to have some property to hang their futuristic Nascar film onto. Which makes me even less interested in this film -- it's likely to be a cynical attempt at marketing-driven art, and have no real soul.
Wyrms was a good book if (SPOILER) you like tentacle rape. And one could argue it was prophetic, as it predicted the tentacle rape fanfic phenomenon a decade before the internet got big.
Law is *not* a science. It is a field just as demanding and just as logical, true. But calling something a science implies that it follows the scientific method of theory, experimentation, and validation. Law doesn't do that. Neither does 'Intelligent Design'.
If Ben Stein is calling himself a scientist, then I can see how he could suffer the delusion that ID is science. He doesn't seem to know what science is.
I'm intrigued that this effect happens in avian retinas. Do birds actually *see* magnetic north and south? As in, everything to the north is tinted one color, and everything to the south is tinted another hue?
Fascinating. Birds (and possibly dinosaurs) see the world as one gigantic rave. Sometimes I feel I'm missing too much by being born human.
Perhaps it would be more appropriate to say, "You can have my black hole when you pry my cold, dead fingers out of it!"
From the summary: "The space opera is not a science-driven work."
This is an understatement, and should be underlined and in bold when discussing Iain M. Banks. Those expecting science fiction in the mode of Heinlein, Asimov, or Clarke will not enjoy Iain Banks' work.
Banks' novels are best described as fantasy stories set in space, with characters that may have alien appearances but who act like humans in rubber suits. He makes no attempt to suspend the readers' disbelief or justify his worldbuilding. And he often writes scenes or entire novels that are blatantly experimental, which may be mind-expanding for some readers but those with more literary experience find these amateurish excursions rather tedious.
In short, you either love or hate Iain M. Banks novels. He is not for everyone.
Seems natural to me, from a japanese perspective. Japanese like eating whales. Cows are easy to breed and keep. It would be a terrific thing for Japan if they could make cows that tasted like whales. (It wouldn't be a bad thing from the whales' perspective, either.)
I think you're asking for a layperson's explanation. I'll try...
It's a matter of density. How dense the universe is decides whether it's closed or open -- if it's dense enough, gravity will cause it to close in on itself at some point in the future.
But the universe's early density also determines how big the fluctuations were in its early days. The bigger the overall density, the bigger the possible smaller-scale fluctuations that might occur.
Measuring the microwave background gives us an idea of how large those small-scale fluctuations in density were. So we can draw a direct connection from the fluctuation size to the openness/closeness of the universe.
(The only way this breaks down is if the universe changed in overall density in the past 13 billion years. But the law of conservation of energy and matter tells us that's impossible.)
Is that a simple enough explanation?
Security through obscurity. If the terrorists don't know how to use the system, they won't get any bombs into the system.
Of course, that means a system that nobody but a trusted few can use, and they're not allowed to talk about it.
"The first rule of Freight Club is..."
Thanks. Count me as another person who cannot view videos at work. Thus, I will take the above summarizations as the true answers to Slashdot's questions.
I'm on the opposite side of you in the question of how Cylons should be treated. They have proven themselves an existential threat to the human race, and they should be exterminated without pity or mercy. I was frustrated by the one episode (much later than where you apparently are) when they decide not to release a biological weapon that could wipe out the Cylons all at once. I'd press that button in a heartbeat, and I think any leader responsible for the safety of the human race would do the same.
Still, it's a good reflection on the series writers that they are able to evoke such complex and powerful quandries.
And probably far fewer -- possibly zero -- facilities where he can be denied access to a phone. Disabled people need to be able to contact others for help, but this guy is likely to abuse any such privilege.
You can put kids on trial as if they were adults. I wonder if this guy can be sentenced as if he were non-disabled?
It never occurred to me before, but this new story has, in my mind at least, connected Islam with the beliefs of various aboriginals. There are a few aboriginal people who believe that taking a photograph steals a person's soul, or that viewing photographs of the dead is taboo. Does Wikipedia make allowances for these kind of religious beliefs?
Now that I think of it, Islam and aboriginals seem to share other things in common, such as distrust of the modern world and a proclivity to violence when their beliefs or ways of life are threatened. Interesting. But I'd likely get into trouble if I explore too far into the concept of radical moslems as the aboriginal people of the middle east...
Don't forget the hispanic factor. Obama lost California due to women and hispanics voting overwhelmingly for Hillary. Texas, with its large hispanic population may skew the same way.
For those of us who are political junkies, this is exciting. But I can only imagine how stressful this is for people who just want someone sane in the White House.
What's the point of intentionally playing a class with suboptimal mechanics when you could play a more poweful class and still play exactly the same role?
Because Paladins are supposed to fill a special role in a game world, that of the designated holy warrior. When the party visits a king, the paladin is the one who is granted audience. When the party meets a god, the paladin is the one who gains favor. Paladins are supposed to have not only charisma but reputation, and reputation can get you out of a lot of trouble (or into it, sometimes.) Paladins were excellent vehicles for role-playing, despite what their stats may have been.
Count me as another person who sees D&D 4th edition as an 'MMORPG on paper'. Role playing and flavor seems to have been tossed aside.
Bah, I'm old enough to remember when thieves were in the party to open locks and disarm traps, and in combat they stayed the hell out of the way. Were they interesting in combat? No. But outside of combat they were fascinating to roleplay, and that's why people chose to play them.
A movie is interesting because the protagonist screws up at some point.
A game is interesting because the protagonist (you) must never screw up.
As a counter point, the film theory I've encountered says that film narratives are interesting when the protagonist goes through an emotional change.
By both of your standards, Planescape: Torment would make an awesome movie.
Uwe Boll would spice up a Portal movie by setting it in a forest and throwing ninjas at Chell, which she would refer to as 'androids'. The portal gun -- being too expensive a special effect -- will be used only once, to dump cake all over GlaDOS, with the portal itself never shown. The vulnerability that GlaDOS has to cake which causes her to explode will never be explained.
Now that I contemplate this tragedy, I hope Valve knows enough not to sell any rights for Half-Life or Portal to anyone, least of all legendary bad directors.
I work in the space industry, on the Landsat satellite program.
There's a law that we must have an operating Landsat satellite -- it's that important to geology, agriculture, urban planning, etc. Landsats 1-7 were all specified and built by the government or its contractors.
In the early 2000s it came time to build Landsat 8 (known as LDCM, because nobody likes the abbreviation 'L8'). The government directive was to use the COTS program: Buy data from an existing commercial satellite, or get a commercial company to build and operate it for profit, with the government its preferred customer.
But there are no satellites that create the precise kind of data that Landsat needs. And when companies measured the profit potential of building the right kind of satellite, they walked away. If I recall the COTS LDCM request for proposal got zero bidders.
The government has finally given up on its free market fever and allowed LDCM to be a non-COTS system. Meanwhile, because we dicked around trying to shoehorn a government project into a commercial venture, we're going to be 4-8 years late in launching the next Landsat satellite. Assuming budgetary problems don't kill the entire 30+ year program.
COTS, and the recent governmental zeal to make everything part of the free market, is what has crippled and bankrupted the US space program. Some things are just better if done by governments, and at this point in history spaceflight is one of those things.