i probably shouldn't even give this a response, but... what exactly are the requirements of being a "good wife"? while you may not want a programmer as a wife or girlfriend, there are plenty of guys who don't really care what a woman does for a living.
believe me, if you're a woman in the 1990's and you can't get a date, it's not because of your job. being a programmer probably hurts a man more in the dating scene than it does a woman (at least for student programmers, before the money starts rolling in).
you seem to be quite a paranoid privacy type-person. what i don't get about the whole privacy deal is, assuming someone can and does monitor what websites you visit and what emails you send, who cares? there isn't much about my telephone conversations, emails, or website visiting that i would really care if the entire world knew. and the rest is simply security issues (i.e., no, i don't really want everyone to know what my credit card number is when i buy something from the web). if what you are saying is going to "come back and bite you", maybe you shouldn't be even saying it at all? backstabbing emails are not necessarily a good idea even when they are private.
as far as completely anonymous email, i would think this would be fairly simple and i have a feeling it might exist already. all you need is just webmail that doesn't make you put in an email address and doesn't use cookies, if i'm correct? just have some cgi that submits user/password everytime and use it with anonymizer. or am i missing something?
sun seems really unprofessionally bitter on this press release (or whatever it is). the future of computing is very obviously going to have a lot of wireless, "instant internet" appliances. there's no reason sun should have a monopoly to that "vision", even if they were the first company to concentrate their efforts on this.
of course, they're involved with the doj case, complaining about microsoft and has been angry with them for hijacking java. but simply attacking microsoft at every turn is not a good way to act. so, microsoft wants to compete in the market for the future internet appliances. that's a good thing. we don't have to have a sun monopoly, do we? i would think that if this came from any other company but microsoft, they wouldn't have said anything publically. and, in fact, i'm sure other companies have said things like this. this "vision" is almost a fact. this should've been left as an in-office joke memo.
yes, microsoft is bad and evil and do everything wrong, but sun's constant "official" whining about their monopoly makes me respect them less. is there anything like this on red hat's website? i would be surprised if there is. "we did it first!" is not a good argument to get customers. "we did it better!" is. sun should've simply taken the imitation as a compliment and continued their effort to create products that are better than microsoft's, not just think up buzz words.
Well, I don't really have that much exotic hardware, but I had much less problems installing, for example, my ethernet card in Linux than I did in Windows. In Windows, the first time you put it in, it "detects" it, but it doesn't always know what to do with it. I just had to fool around with it and boot it a billion times until I got everything right. And I still have like phantom drivers for it in my system devices. In Linux, it was simply a matter of uncommenting all of the modprobes, rebooting and then looking to see which one worked, then recommenting the rest. If I had known which one it was, then it wouldn't have even been that hard. In Windows, if I didn't know what I had, I would have to reboot 200 times trying every ethernet card I thought could be mine.
The only thing that was more difficult in Linux was my soundcard, but only because it comes with a special install disk for Windows. Without that disk, Windows has problems with it, even though it's a genuine SB.
The only thing I had to manually enter any settings for was my soundcard. Every thing else is automatically figured out at boot.
The problems that the letters here describe seem more to be with how Windows handles hardware than fragmentation necessarily. I haven't run anything past Windows 95 on my machine, so maybe I'm missing something with these Windows 98 versions, but I've had similar problems just getting my hardware to load up correctly.
Of course, you almost always have to fight with Windows when you try to install new hardware. Even with a friggin' Lucent WINmodem, I had to go through probably two dozen reboots and lucky guessing to get it to figure out that there is a modem there. It wouldn't recognize it as a modem, only as a "PCI Communication Device". Ultimately, I had to let it install it as that, and then "update" the driver later.
Once you get it set up, usually everything works okay as long as you don't change anything. BUT, if you do, it goes nuts. As far as I know, with Linux, most (if not all) of the hardware stuff is figured out dynamically when the computer boots. But with Windows, it seems, this information is stored on the hard drive so if you add and/or remove something, you have to first boot up, have it recognize that something is new or gone, and then reboot again so it will have its new settings. And this is assuming that it actually works correctly. With Linux, you may have to recompile the kernel to get support for something you didn't have before, but if you just have a bloated kernel and sometimes have stuff in and sometimes out, it just says "oh well, didn't find that hardware, no big deal, moving on...".
I got completely frustrated with Windows when I used VMWare to boot my raw partition. I tried to use a separate "hardware profile" so that VMWare's simulated environment wouldn't screw up my real environment, but it simply doesn't work. I have to reconfigure my video card everytime and I boot into either, as well as my sound card. The virtual machine can't find VMWare's simulated network card, but I got it to find it when I created a clean virtual disk for VMWare. I can only imagine that it's because I had a "clean" install that it figured out everything. These profiles don't need to be stored on disk, they should just be created dynamically.
Through all of my Linux kernel upgrades, I have never had to reconfigure any of my hardware settings. I can only imagine what would happen to my hardware settings if I ever felt like wasting $100 on a Windows 98 "upgrade".
well, i was wondering when someone would bring this up.
i've seen the last broadcast and the blair witch project. actually, i saw the last broadcast at a special screening in at least lance's hometown (i'm not sure where stefan is from), doylestown, pa. both of them were there and took questions after the film. lance went to the same high school as me and had the same senior AP english teacher. i don't know lance personally, though, as he's several years older than me.
now, as for the movie. yes, the last broadcast is about filmmakers who die and a movie is created from the footage they shot. both of mockumentaries. both are about a false myth that they go to investigate. however, they are very different _styled_ films and films that had significantly different purposes.
and i really don't think that the blair witch project is in any way illegally stolen from the last broadcast.
first of all, as i've heard from the filmmakers themselves, the last broadcast is mostly a "proof of concept" film. the concept being that you can make a movie completely digitally. their movie never went onto actually film even for months after i saw it. they had some low quality film cameras, but mostly digital. it was edited all on computer and it was shown via a betamax projector. film is just damned expensive and cumbersome and they wanted to be free of all of that. the plot of the movie is somewhat secondary (and it shows sometimes).
the blair witch project's purpose is completely different. they used low cost (not necessarily digital) technology to create an eerie movie without special effects. and they created a completely unique sense of acting, script, and dialogue. the last broadcast, as far as i know, is pretty much a normally scripted movie. and anything that wasn't scripted was probably just laziness. the two directors are the main actors, so there is no the sense of "method surprise" that goes on in blair witch, because the directors know what they want to happen. the actors in blair witch do not.
the really thief of the last broadcast is mr. george lucas. he's been screaming about how star wars is going all digital and it's the first film to ever be shown in digital and film in digital and blahblahblah in digital. but really, the last broadcast was shown via satellite to theaters all over the world before episode one even came out.
also, i read something with one of the directors of blair witch (i'm sorry i can't remember the link, though it was a diary of his trip to cannes, if that helps). basically, they were on the same plane to cannes as the last broadcast guys and talked about it and decided it was just a weird coincidence. though of course, that is coming from the blair witch guys, so they could be lying!! but i doubt it. i doubt he would even mention the last broadcast if he knew he stole from it.
the last broadcast is basically an interesting flim junkie flick that shows the possibilities of low cost production, but it really lacks dramatically. it plays like an episode of 20/20 and is really kinda drawn out. it's a good proof of concept, but it's not great. and i don't think they wanted it to be great. if it were filmed like a normal film, it wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention.
the blair witch project, while overhyped, is a much better film on its own. the technology it uses isn't really important. no, not everyone is going to love it, but its audience is past film junkies. it's a cool movie, no matter what is costs or how it was made.
but i suppose those are just my opinions, huh?
but sure, if you like blair witch, go see the last broadcast, too. just don't get any lawyers involved. i really hope stefan and lance didn't.
heather knows/believes that it's josh, because it has part of his shirt in the bundle or something. i don't think it really matters what part, but if i had to guess, i'd say tongue. it's made relatively clear that she doesn't tell mike, as she nervously tells him that she's "just cleaning [her] hands."
heather, who thinks all of this is her "fault", would have motivation not to tell mike, as he may get really angry with her after he is certain that josh is dead.
now, at the end, the audience and mike hear josh's faint voice coming from the house, so mike (not knowing for sure that josh is dead), goes into the house, trying to find him. heather is behind him, but yelling at him not to go so fast. mike is more convinced than heather is that there is hope for josh and runs faster, etc, etc. heather is just following him because she doesn't want to be alone.
i don't know if this would've been legally possible, but it would've been best if Red Hat treated this like the OSS developers were employees of Red Hat and let them in privately or something. Without the more important developers, Red Hat wouldn't be where it is today and some of these people can be almost thought of as unpaid employees. I mean, isn't Joe Schmoe Linux user who works at Red Hat as a phone tech support guy getting a chance into the IPO or stock options or something, without an ETrade form to fill out?
Most of Red Hat Linux is a product that was developed by these people who are not employees of Red Hat. Because they, in some very important ways, helped the company, they shouldn't be treated just like the guy off the street.
the guy who runs this site seems to be pretty reasonable, since he agreed to delete the files from his server, etc. so, presumably, he would be willing to stop linking to the actual media file and link to a page that has all of the advertising, etc, etc. AND presumably, this page already exists on the universal website, unless all of the movies have just one index page (in which case he would probably agree to link to that). as long as they're not using frames, they shouldn't really lose out on any ads or whatever. and frames suck, anyway.
i suppose they lose out on the advertising/marketing/whatever from making someone wander through your main page to what they actually want to get to, but that's just getting ridiculous. these are movie TRAILERS. they are ADVERTISEMENTS in themselves. universal should want people to see them in whatever way possible. blah blah blah. this kind of stuff just makes me frightened of future. it's nice that most of the web is free, but the proliferation of advertising is starting to get to me. now i have to see a banner advertisement to have the permission to see another advertisement?
it's _possible_ that microsoft's client asks for your aol user name and password and it is secretly sent to bill.gates@microsoft.com so that bill can log onto your aol account, and pretend to be a 13 year old girl. but probably not. probably it asks for your aol username and password like ALL other non-AOL AIM clients do, so that you can LOG IN.
aol published the protocols for aol aim so that other people could write aim clients for platforms they didn't have time to write one for. little did they think that someone would decide to compete with them for the win32 platform. but this "security" issue was never a problem with any others before. aol knows all about the gtk+ gaim client and, in fact, has had its lawyers tell them to get rid of the aol logo, but they've said nothing about the username and password thing. it's simply a necessity for the protocol.
the only real difference between the microsoft client and the gtk+ gaim client, is that one is open source and one is not. it would probably be a lot easier to figure out if the gtk+ gaim client is using your username and password is unscrupulous ways than it would be to find out with microsoft's. but i highly doubt aol had any open source qualifications when they published the protocol. they're simply mad that microsoft might beat them at their own game.
just because you don't think that the who (or the beatles or the stones) were the absolute best band of their era doesn't mean that they're not any good at all. all three of those bands are extremely good, though i happen to like the lesser-known velvet underground better than all of them. but that's not the point.
your windows analogy is pretty much irrelevant. you can listen to more than one band easily. most people do. you can't use more than one operating system as easily. most people don't. so to praise a band like the who as the absolute best, greatest band ever like rob doesn't mean that he doesn't listen to anything else (i'm sure he does listen to many other things). but if someone proclaims windows 98 as the best, greatest operating system in the world, then he probably doesn't have a dual boot machine.
getting "big" in pop music is hard, and was harder back then. maybe the stones, the who, and the beatles got luckier than some other better bands. tough shit. those bands are better than the popular bullshit that is on mtv today (uh, britney spears, backstreet boys, ricky martin, smash mouth?).
driving a car is a whole different beast from watching a movie, because when you drive a car, someone who doesn't know what they're doing is probably going to kill someone. as for buying a bottle of liquor, well...
let me share some personal experience. i had a friend when i was about 11 whose dad smoked cigarettes. when his dad didn't feel like going to the store, he would ask his son to buy a pack for him at the store down the street. now, the people at the store knew both him and his father so they knew that he was just buying cigarettes for his dad, so they sold them to him. i suppose the same could apply to liquor, except that liquor is more immediately dangerous than cigarettes and more highly regulated. what is wrong with that as long as it is reasonable that the father knows what is going on?
the fact that something is "the law" in america means nothing more than (in theory), a majority of people have decided that something is a good idea to keep the country running well. it is not a god-stated fact. the law in america is dynamic. it can and _should_ be changed and shouldn't be enforced 100% all of the time.
but back to the point. the law shouldn't necessarily tell us what our kids can and can't do. it should tell us what fucked up, incapable parents _shouldn't_ do to their kids (incest, etc.), but as long as what a parent and child does doesn't affect anyone else and doesn't take advantage of the child, it's really not the place for government. any parent should be allowed to say "i want my child to see this movie" and be able to leave and come pick them up.
it's possible to extend this argument to things like alcohol and cigarettes, (i.e., "i'm buying this beer for my son and he can drink it."), but i won't be so bold now.
when arguing about american morals, you can't hide behind the argument "it's the law", because we (in theory, heh) make the law.
well, only recently has the bandwidth become cheaply available for trading mp3s to be reasonable. who wants to do it on 14.4? if some technology exists that nobody uses, it's not news, at least for the mainstream media and you really shouldn't blame them for that.
but now "normal" people are using the internet a lot more, downloading these mp3s and want goods and services that help them use mp3s better. retailers are getting involved. people are going to spend money on this stuff. now THAT'S news. at least in america.
I would think it would be horrible if what you said were to happen, but I don't think that mp3 will necessarily make it happen. People want what people want, despite of the technology. There have been ways to get just "the single" for years now (taping it off the radio, just buying the cd/tape single, just watch MTV), but people are still buying albums. Of course, buying the hot song for $1 (mp3) instead of $3 or $4 (tape/cd single), may make people more willing to just get the single.
Still, the important thing to remember that mp3 is just a technology and it can be used in many ways. While perhaps the big record companies will make up a bunch of fake bands to release a continues stream of singles that the record executives have concluded will be a "hit," you're not going to see Sonic Youth do that. "Real" bands, who write their own songs, weren't discovered in a casting call, etc., want their "filler" material to be heard and they'll release on mp3, because it costs practically nothing. In fact, you'll probably get to hear a lot more material that would otherwise be thrown away, because it will cost almost nothing more to distribute it.
No, maybe they're won't be an album accompanying every one hit wonder band that you see on MTV, but maybe that's a good thing. The bands that want their music HEARD and not necessarily bought will find a way to get it heard. mp3 is simply a conveience that can used for good or evil equally as well.
it could be written for almost any OS, but it couldn't so easily installed without windows' lack of a superuser/regular user login scheme and the integration of email into the system. the first one is windows' fault, the second one is just a symptom of trying to make everything easier to use.
if something like this were written for linux, first the person getting the trojan horse install program would actually have to execute/view it. in outlook express or whatever, you usually do this by just clicking on it. there is no real difference between "executing" and "viewing" in windows because of how all of the file types are set up. most linux users don't do this, simply because the gui isn't as integrated.
second, for the program to completely wipe out really important stuff, it would have to have root access. this is possible to hack in linux or something sure, but in windows every user has that access by default.
>Who (yeah, I figured out he is Palpitate) exactly >is the Emperor? Given that there is >a senate, what exactly does the Emperor preside >over?
I don't think he is actually ever called Emperor in Episode I. This movie is about forty years before Episode IV ("Star Wars") and in this one, the "good" side of the force (the Jedi council, etc.) is in power. The "emperor" is not really an "emperor" quite yet, he is working his way up to get control. People on slashdot may call him that, but that's just because we all know that's who he'll eventually be. He is the ultimate evil bad-force-using guy, but he has little political control under his evil disguise, which is why he needs his senator disguise.
By Episode III, he'll probably be official known as emperor.
Re:An Investor in the "Morality Industry" speaks o
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i perhaps took your agreement with the CAP too far. you do believe south park should exist (free speech), while CAP would prefer that every single thing related to south park would suddenly disappear.
since you asked, i'm 19 years old. i don't have any kids of my own (shockingly enough). most of what i say about parenting is what my own father has said. i like myself and i tend to think he did a pretty good job.
certainly saving private ryan is a more positive influence than south park could be. saving private ryan is probably art. south park probably isn't. however, i'll bet that eyes wide shut will be even higher in artistic quality than both of those two movies combined, yet the cap will most certainly condemn it because it has naked people having sex.
my real problem with the cap is that they equate "quality" with "positive influence". movies aren't good or bad because they influence people in a good or bad way. PEOPLE are good or bad because they are influenced by something in a good or bad way. the cap's favorite movie would be one that merely regurgitates their values. regurgitating values is something that any english professor will tell you is not artistic.
i do not believe in either of the world views that you describe at the end of your comment. i simply believe that depravity MAY happen. and because it may happen, we should be able to recognize it and not let it hinder our own values. and sometimes we should be able to laugh at it too.
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i too mentioned the pro-wrestling imitation death in my comment above, though i do not believe this is evidence that south park is something that should not exist or should not be seen by anyone under 17.
yes, images and words have consequences. people can and will be influenced by them. otherwise, what's the point? but who exactly is influenced? you obviously would not let your children watch the south park movie, because you think it would have a "bad" influence on them. it would make them say curse words and try to light their farts on fire. this is quite possible. but would the movie have the same "bad" influence on you? would you, an ADULT, after watching the south park movie, increase the number of curse words you say and do dangerous things?
i would presume that you must say no to this question. you may not _like_ south park, as you said, but since you "know what is the truth" (read: "i know what i believe", as i pressume you are not christ and don't know perfect truth as you insist), your behavior certainly wouldn't CHANGE because of this movie? your beliefs of how to act and what to say would remain the same?
this is because you are a thinking, rational human being. you can make decisions. you can say "i like this" and "i don't like this." children have the same ability, except their ability to do this is very primitive and selfish. yes, many children might say after watching south park "saying fuck is cool! i like to say fuck!" but you are wiser and older and realize the reasons you shouldn't say curses all the time (i.e., people won't listen to what you have to say if you're vulgar all the time). or perhaps you just don't say "fuck" because jesus says you shouldn't. i'm not sure. but either way, there is a REASON you act the way you do and you have control of it. i believe that if someone asked you if anyone could change your beliefs against your will, you would say no. i do not know how old your children are, i would hope they could say the same thing once they are about 14 or 15, maybe younger. south park is not for children who can not clearly make decisions for themselves, however it is not harmful the person viewing it has a stable system of beliefs, like you do.
let me throw a christian proverb at you. "give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime." keeping all children away from everything that is not "innocent" is much like giving a man a fish. the child is hidden from bad things for the day, but he still needs you to protect him when south park part II comes out. rather, you should teach him how to judge for himself what is good and what is bad. this is not done by simply "showing where i stand on moral issues." your children will no doubt have many opportunities to rebel against your beliefs and perhaps may take these opportunities. but if you shield them from all evil things in our culture, as they become older and less attached to you, they may be too naive to make rational choices. let them see the evil and discuss it WITH them. tell them WHY it is wrong, not that it IS wrong.
hearing a curse word is not the same as saying a curse word. seeing a person murdered is not the same as murdering someone. if you understand why killing is bad (and to primitive creatures such as children, there is no reason why they should think it is bad) for society, then you can see 1000 murders and still will not kill. but the real point is this: south park is not real. it is not supposed to be a substitute for reality. it is funny. it is supposed to be funny. if your children are too young to understand that something seen on a movie screen meant to be funny is not something that should be imitated, then they should not see south park. but if they do understand this, there is no reason why they shouldn't see it (though there may be no reason why they SHOULD, but that's beside the point.) seven year olds shouldn't watch wrestling, but 23 year olds should be able to. the difference is in the content of the viewer's brain, not the content of television screen. parents should concentrate on shaping their children's thinking ability instead worrying about what their eyes might see. it is really much more effective.
south park is a world without fences, yes. if we keep the fences up all of the time, we will forget what is hiding behind them. and that it is when it will come to haunt us. south park is a hilarious reminder why we try to be civilized.
i agree with you that childhood glorification is wrong, as adults are generally much more reasonable human beings than children. they are more able to make rational decisions based on their own personal values. most children don't have these values and thus when exposed to vulgarity will copy it without thought (heard on the news today, kid copied WWF moves on 4 year old sibling. baby dead.)
now, while south park may represent an alternate morality, we are not to take this alternate morality seriously. do you think that matt stone and trey parker walk around saying "shut your fucking face you uncle fucker" all the time? i'm pretty sure they don't. the vulgarity in south park is used as sarcasm, for shock value, and to entertain our more primal tendencies. an unwise child can enjoy this on the primal level, an adult can enjoy it on both the primal and the psuedo-intellectual sarcastic level. yes, okay, we are meant to enjoy the tune of "uncle fucker", but we are also to know that we shouldn't call our mother that. a child cannot always make this distinction. adults, usually, can. otherwise, wouldn't adults avoid movies such as these so they won't corrupt their brain?
but what happens when adults turn into parents is that they are constantly on the lookout for vulgarity that may influence their children and trying to keep their children away from it, instead of teaching them how to judge between "good" and "bad" so that censorship is not necessary. obviously, during the earlier years of childhood, you can't teach a child these things. an 8 year old probably shouldn't see the south park movie. but a 14 year old? i would _hope_ by that time he would be able to understand what is vulgar and what is not, otherwise he's going to have a lot more problems than a movie. as for the bottle of vodka, that's a little bit different than movie-watching. there are _physical_ reasons a 14 year old shouldn't drink... knowing when not to say curse words is a bit easier than knowing how to handle alcohol. that's why you only have to be 17 to see south park and 21 to drink (yes, you crazy europeans, _21_ to drink).
i would hope that all human beings strive to create their own values so that they can _not_ be harmfully influenced by movies, etc. when his own values are in opposition to whatever message or evil satanic subliminal code the media is eminating. we should not learn right and wrong from a list, we should learn it from life and logic. there's nothing wrong with telling a child that killing is bad, but if he asks why, you better be able to back it up. i would presume many children ask why cursing is bad. the simple answer is that it's culturally considered rude. if you want people to take you seriously, you shouldn't use a whole lot of curses. a 14 year old should be able to understand this logic and decide for himself what to say. a child cannot create his own set of values in a world where mommy hides everything from him.
http://www.mrshowbiz.go.com/reviews/moviereviews /preview/summerpreview99/southparkbiggerlo ngeranduncut.html (making a real link didn't work, it added a space in the URL due to its length, I think)
from mrshowbiz.com suggests that this movie is almost guaranteed to make money. Why? Making two hours of South Park-style animation isn't very expensive. The budget is only $1.5 million and about 2 million people tune into South Park every week. Even if only those 2 million go to see it, they'll probably about double their money. And I'm sure even more will go. I almost never watch the TV show, but I'll definitely go to see the movie. It's pretty much a no-risk situation for the studio.
I don't really understand what you just replied to me with, but I suppose I should make it clear both to the person above and you that I meant "hip and educated" in a somewhat sarcastic light. "Hip and educated" people, as in writers for magazines like Salon and Wired, etc., are generally very materialistic (not greedy) and tend to look at anything spiritual with confusion. This is evident in Brin's article as he equates "forgiveness" with a judicial system.
Perhaps I should've left out the word "educated." There are certainly many educated people who are religious, but it is certainly not "hip" to be religious in 1999's American culture. At least it doesn't seem to be to me.
Nevertheless, my point was that Brin made an inaccurate comparison between Vader and Hitler _because_ Brin is "hip and educated" and doesn't understand Lucas's religious standpoint.
To put it in perspective, let's imagine that the United States and its allies managed to capture Adolf Hitler at the end of the Second World War, putting him on trial for war crimes. The prosecution spends months listing all the horrors done at his behest. Then it is the turn of Hitler's defense attorney, who rises and utters just one sentence:
"But, your honors... Adolf did save the life of his own son!"
Gasp! The prosecutors blanch in chagrin. "We didn't know that! Of course all charges should be dismissed at once!"
This hypothetical judicial redemption of Hitler is not really comparable to the type of redemption that Vader receives. Vader is not and would not be forgiven by a judicial system and neither would Hitler, because they both die before something like this could happen. The real question is: If Hitler/Vader had saved his own son and really felt remorse for what he had done, would he be forgiven by whatever supernatural power (The Force, Christian God) and live in eternal bliss ( heaven)?
Lucas would say yes. And this seems to be the ultimate point of both trilogies. Star Wars is a pseudo-Christian epic. No matter what you do in life, you can and will be forgiven as long as if, in that dying moment realize the "sin" you have done.
In the movie, Vader's "sin" is quite universal. (Almost) nobody thinks it's a good thing to go around killing millions of people. But Lucas's movie also has the standard Christian trap: Everyone is bad. Everyone has evil in them. The only way to get rid of this evil is to follow some weirdo set of rules set by some weirdo (Jesus, Yoda) and we'll let you off the hook about this evil thing.
This is a good trick for a religion, but most hip, educated people nowdays don't buy it, like this article's author, and are distrubed by the fact that someone who does incredibly bad things can be forgiven in a flash. But the point is, this is not an illogical point in Lucas's plot, it's something much deeper in America's Christian heritage. You don't have to like it, but it's certainly not something exclusive to Lucas.
Simply because Qui-Gon (is that his name?) died doesn't mean he won't be in the next two movies. What other Jedi died in the first of the original trilogy and managed to have a substantial role in all three?
Slashdot Mirror
i probably shouldn't even give this a response, but... what exactly are the requirements of being a "good wife"? while you may not want a programmer as a wife or girlfriend, there are plenty of guys who don't really care what a woman does for a living.
believe me, if you're a woman in the 1990's and you can't get a date, it's not because of your job. being a programmer probably hurts a man more in the dating scene than it does a woman (at least for student programmers, before the money starts rolling in).
you seem to be quite a paranoid privacy type-person. what i don't get about the whole privacy deal is, assuming someone can and does monitor what websites you visit and what emails you send, who cares? there isn't much about my telephone conversations, emails, or website visiting that i would really care if the entire world knew. and the rest is simply security issues (i.e., no, i don't really want everyone to know what my credit card number is when i buy something from the web). if what you are saying is going to "come back and bite you", maybe you shouldn't be even saying it at all? backstabbing emails are not necessarily a good idea even when they are private.
as far as completely anonymous email, i would think this would be fairly simple and i have a feeling it might exist already. all you need is just webmail that doesn't make you put in an email address and doesn't use cookies, if i'm correct? just have some cgi that submits user/password everytime and use it with anonymizer. or am i missing something?
sun seems really unprofessionally bitter on this press release (or whatever it is). the future of computing is very obviously going to have a lot of wireless, "instant internet" appliances. there's no reason sun should have a monopoly to that "vision", even if they were the first company to concentrate their efforts on this.
of course, they're involved with the doj case, complaining about microsoft and has been angry with them for hijacking java. but simply attacking microsoft at every turn is not a good way to act. so, microsoft wants to compete in the market for the future internet appliances. that's a good thing. we don't have to have a sun monopoly, do we? i would think that if this came from any other company but microsoft, they wouldn't have said anything publically. and, in fact, i'm sure other companies have said things like this. this "vision" is almost a fact. this should've been left as an in-office joke memo.
yes, microsoft is bad and evil and do everything wrong, but sun's constant "official" whining about their monopoly makes me respect them less. is there anything like this on red hat's website? i would be surprised if there is. "we did it first!" is not a good argument to get customers. "we did it better!" is. sun should've simply taken the imitation as a compliment and continued their effort to create products that are better than microsoft's, not just think up buzz words.
Well, I don't really have that much exotic hardware, but I had much less problems installing, for example, my ethernet card in Linux than I did in Windows. In Windows, the first time you put it in, it "detects" it, but it doesn't always know what to do with it. I just had to fool around with it and boot it a billion times until I got everything right. And I still have like phantom drivers for it in my system devices. In Linux, it was simply a matter of uncommenting all of the modprobes, rebooting and then looking to see which one worked, then recommenting the rest. If I had known which one it was, then it wouldn't have even been that hard. In Windows, if I didn't know what I had, I would have to reboot 200 times trying every ethernet card I thought could be mine.
The only thing that was more difficult in Linux was my soundcard, but only because it comes with a special install disk for Windows. Without that disk, Windows has problems with it, even though it's a genuine SB.
The only thing I had to manually enter any settings for was my soundcard. Every thing else is automatically figured out at boot.
The problems that the letters here describe seem more to be with how Windows handles hardware than fragmentation necessarily. I haven't run anything past Windows 95 on my machine, so maybe I'm missing something with these Windows 98 versions, but I've had similar problems just getting my hardware to load up correctly.
Of course, you almost always have to fight with Windows when you try to install new hardware. Even with a friggin' Lucent WINmodem, I had to go through probably two dozen reboots and lucky guessing to get it to figure out that there is a modem there. It wouldn't recognize it as a modem, only as a "PCI Communication Device". Ultimately, I had to let it install it as that, and then "update" the driver later.
Once you get it set up, usually everything works okay as long as you don't change anything. BUT, if you do, it goes nuts. As far as I know, with Linux, most (if not all) of the hardware stuff is figured out dynamically when the computer boots. But with Windows, it seems, this information is stored on the hard drive so if you add and/or remove something, you have to first boot up, have it recognize that something is new or gone, and then reboot again so it will have its new settings. And this is assuming that it actually works correctly. With Linux, you may have to recompile the kernel to get support for something you didn't have before, but if you just have a bloated kernel and sometimes have stuff in and sometimes out, it just says "oh well, didn't find that hardware, no big deal, moving on...".
I got completely frustrated with Windows when I used VMWare to boot my raw partition. I tried to use a separate "hardware profile" so that VMWare's simulated environment wouldn't screw up my real environment, but it simply doesn't work. I have to reconfigure my video card everytime and I boot into either, as well as my sound card. The virtual machine can't find VMWare's simulated network card, but I got it to find it when I created a clean virtual disk for VMWare. I can only imagine that it's because I had a "clean" install that it figured out everything. These profiles don't need to be stored on disk, they should just be created dynamically.
Through all of my Linux kernel upgrades, I have never had to reconfigure any of my hardware settings. I can only imagine what would happen to my hardware settings if I ever felt like wasting $100 on a Windows 98 "upgrade".
well, i was wondering when someone would bring this up.
i've seen the last broadcast and the blair witch project. actually, i saw the last broadcast at a special screening in at least lance's hometown (i'm not sure where stefan is from), doylestown, pa. both of them were there and took questions after the film. lance went to the same high school as me and had the same senior AP english teacher. i don't know lance personally, though, as he's several years older than me.
now, as for the movie. yes, the last broadcast is about filmmakers who die and a movie is created from the footage they shot. both of mockumentaries. both are about a false myth that they go to investigate. however, they are very different _styled_ films and films that had significantly different purposes.
and i really don't think that the blair witch project is in any way illegally stolen from the last broadcast.
first of all, as i've heard from the filmmakers themselves, the last broadcast is mostly a "proof of concept" film. the concept being that you can make a movie completely digitally. their movie never went onto actually film even for months after i saw it. they had some low quality film cameras, but mostly digital. it was edited all on computer and it was shown via a betamax projector. film is just damned expensive and cumbersome and they wanted to be free of all of that. the plot of the movie is somewhat secondary (and it shows sometimes).
the blair witch project's purpose is completely different. they used low cost (not necessarily digital) technology to create an eerie movie without special effects. and they created a completely unique sense of acting, script, and dialogue. the last broadcast, as far as i know, is pretty much a normally scripted movie. and anything that wasn't scripted was probably just laziness. the two directors are the main actors, so there is no the sense of "method surprise" that goes on in blair witch, because the directors know what they want to happen. the actors in blair witch do not.
the really thief of the last broadcast is mr. george lucas. he's been screaming about how star wars is going all digital and it's the first film to ever be shown in digital and film in digital and blahblahblah in digital. but really, the last broadcast was shown via satellite to theaters all over the world before episode one even came out.
also, i read something with one of the directors of blair witch (i'm sorry i can't remember the link, though it was a diary of his trip to cannes, if that helps). basically, they were on the same plane to cannes as the last broadcast guys and talked about it and decided it was just a weird coincidence. though of course, that is coming from the blair witch guys, so they could be lying!! but i doubt it. i doubt he would even mention the last broadcast if he knew he stole from it.
the last broadcast is basically an interesting flim junkie flick that shows the possibilities of low cost production, but it really lacks dramatically. it plays like an episode of 20/20 and is really kinda drawn out. it's a good proof of concept, but it's not great. and i don't think they wanted it to be great. if it were filmed like a normal film, it wouldn't have gotten nearly as much attention.
the blair witch project, while overhyped, is a much better film on its own. the technology it uses isn't really important. no, not everyone is going to love it, but its audience is past film junkies. it's a cool movie, no matter what is costs or how it was made.
but i suppose those are just my opinions, huh?
but sure, if you like blair witch, go see the last broadcast, too. just don't get any lawyers involved. i really hope stefan and lance didn't.
heather knows/believes that it's josh, because it has part of his shirt in the bundle or something. i don't think it really matters what part, but if i had to guess, i'd say tongue. it's made relatively clear that she doesn't tell mike, as she nervously tells him that she's "just cleaning [her] hands."
heather, who thinks all of this is her "fault", would have motivation not to tell mike, as he may get really angry with her after he is certain that josh is dead.
now, at the end, the audience and mike hear josh's faint voice coming from the house, so mike (not knowing for sure that josh is dead), goes into the house, trying to find him. heather is behind him, but yelling at him not to go so fast. mike is more convinced than heather is that there is hope for josh and runs faster, etc, etc. heather is just following him because she doesn't want to be alone.
> you misspelled 'lose'. hope this helps.
god, what are you, an ispell bot? at least you're right this time. people who spell "lose" as "loose" really annoy me.
> you misspelled 'organized'. hope this helps.
actually, "organised" is how that word is spelled in england and, given the posters email address domain ".au", in australia too.
i don't know if this would've been legally possible, but it would've been best if Red Hat treated this like the OSS developers were employees of Red Hat and let them in privately or something. Without the more important developers, Red Hat wouldn't be where it is today and some of these people can be almost thought of as unpaid employees. I mean, isn't Joe Schmoe Linux user who works at Red Hat as a phone tech support guy getting a chance into the IPO or stock options or something, without an ETrade form to fill out?
Most of Red Hat Linux is a product that was developed by these people who are not employees of Red Hat. Because they, in some very important ways, helped the company, they shouldn't be treated just like the guy off the street.
the guy who runs this site seems to be pretty reasonable, since he agreed to delete the files from his server, etc. so, presumably, he would be willing to stop linking to the actual media file and link to a page that has all of the advertising, etc, etc. AND presumably, this page already exists on the universal website, unless all of the movies have just one index page (in which case he would probably agree to link to that). as long as they're not using frames, they shouldn't really lose out on any ads or whatever. and frames suck, anyway.
i suppose they lose out on the advertising/marketing/whatever from making someone wander through your main page to what they actually want to get to, but that's just getting ridiculous. these are movie TRAILERS. they are ADVERTISEMENTS in themselves. universal should want people to see them in whatever way possible. blah blah blah. this kind of stuff just makes me frightened of future. it's nice that most of the web is free, but the proliferation of advertising is starting to get to me. now i have to see a banner advertisement to have the permission to see another advertisement?
it's _possible_ that microsoft's client asks for your aol user name and password and it is secretly sent to bill.gates@microsoft.com so that bill can log onto your aol account, and pretend to be a 13 year old girl. but probably not. probably it asks for your aol username and password like ALL other non-AOL AIM clients do, so that you can LOG IN.
aol published the protocols for aol aim so that other people could write aim clients for platforms they didn't have time to write one for. little did they think that someone would decide to compete with them for the win32 platform. but this "security" issue was never a problem with any others before. aol knows all about the gtk+ gaim client and, in fact, has had its lawyers tell them to get rid of the aol logo, but they've said nothing about the username and password thing. it's simply a necessity for the protocol.
the only real difference between the microsoft client and the gtk+ gaim client, is that one is open source and one is not. it would probably be a lot easier to figure out if the gtk+ gaim client is using your username and password is unscrupulous ways than it would be to find out with microsoft's. but i highly doubt aol had any open source qualifications when they published the protocol. they're simply mad that microsoft might beat them at their own game.
just because you don't think that the who (or the beatles or the stones) were the absolute best band of their era doesn't mean that they're not any good at all. all three of those bands are extremely good, though i happen to like the lesser-known velvet underground better than all of them. but that's not the point.
your windows analogy is pretty much irrelevant. you can listen to more than one band easily. most people do. you can't use more than one operating system as easily. most people don't. so to praise a band like the who as the absolute best, greatest band ever like rob doesn't mean that he doesn't listen to anything else (i'm sure he does listen to many other things). but if someone proclaims windows 98 as the best, greatest operating system in the world, then he probably doesn't have a dual boot machine.
getting "big" in pop music is hard, and was harder back then. maybe the stones, the who, and the beatles got luckier than some other better bands. tough shit. those bands are better than the popular bullshit that is on mtv today (uh, britney spears, backstreet boys, ricky martin, smash mouth?).
driving a car is a whole different beast from watching a movie, because when you drive a car, someone who doesn't know what they're doing is probably going to kill someone. as for buying a bottle of liquor, well...
let me share some personal experience. i had a friend when i was about 11 whose dad smoked cigarettes. when his dad didn't feel like going to the store, he would ask his son to buy a pack for him at the store down the street. now, the people at the store knew both him and his father so they knew that he was just buying cigarettes for his dad, so they sold them to him. i suppose the same could apply to liquor, except that liquor is more immediately dangerous than cigarettes and more highly regulated. what is wrong with that as long as it is reasonable that the father knows what is going on?
the fact that something is "the law" in america means nothing more than (in theory), a majority of people have decided that something is a good idea to keep the country running well. it is not a god-stated fact. the law in america is dynamic. it can and _should_ be changed and shouldn't be enforced 100% all of the time.
but back to the point. the law shouldn't necessarily tell us what our kids can and can't do. it should tell us what fucked up, incapable parents _shouldn't_ do to their kids (incest, etc.), but as long as what a parent and child does doesn't affect anyone else and doesn't take advantage of the child, it's really not the place for government. any parent should be allowed to say "i want my child to see this movie" and be able to leave and come pick them up.
it's possible to extend this argument to things like alcohol and cigarettes, (i.e., "i'm buying this beer for my son and he can drink it."), but i won't be so bold now.
when arguing about american morals, you can't hide behind the argument "it's the law", because we (in theory, heh) make the law.
well, only recently has the bandwidth become cheaply available for trading mp3s to be reasonable. who wants to do it on 14.4? if some technology exists that nobody uses, it's not news, at least for the mainstream media and you really shouldn't blame them for that.
but now "normal" people are using the internet a lot more, downloading these mp3s and want goods and services that help them use mp3s better. retailers are getting involved. people are going to spend money on this stuff. now THAT'S news. at least in america.
I would think it would be horrible if what you said were to happen, but I don't think that mp3 will necessarily make it happen. People want what people want, despite of the technology. There have been ways to get just "the single" for years now (taping it off the radio, just buying the cd/tape single, just watch MTV), but people are still buying albums. Of course, buying the hot song for $1 (mp3) instead of $3 or $4 (tape/cd single), may make people more willing to just get the single.
Still, the important thing to remember that mp3 is just a technology and it can be used in many ways. While perhaps the big record companies will make up a bunch of fake bands to release a continues stream of singles that the record executives have concluded will be a "hit," you're not going to see Sonic Youth do that. "Real" bands, who write their own songs, weren't discovered in a casting call, etc., want their "filler" material to be heard and they'll release on mp3, because it costs practically nothing. In fact, you'll probably get to hear a lot more material that would otherwise be thrown away, because it will cost almost nothing more to distribute it.
No, maybe they're won't be an album accompanying every one hit wonder band that you see on MTV, but maybe that's a good thing. The bands that want their music HEARD and not necessarily bought will find a way to get it heard. mp3 is simply a conveience that can used for good or evil equally as well.
it could be written for almost any OS, but it couldn't so easily installed without windows' lack of a superuser/regular user login scheme and the integration of email into the system. the first one is windows' fault, the second one is just a symptom of trying to make everything easier to use.
if something like this were written for linux, first the person getting the trojan horse install program would actually have to execute/view it. in outlook express or whatever, you usually do this by just clicking on it. there is no real difference between "executing" and "viewing" in windows because of how all of the file types are set up. most linux users don't do this, simply because the gui isn't as integrated.
second, for the program to completely wipe out really important stuff, it would have to have root access. this is possible to hack in linux or something sure, but in windows every user has that access by default.
>Who (yeah, I figured out he is Palpitate) exactly >is the Emperor? Given that there is
>a senate, what exactly does the Emperor preside
>over?
I don't think he is actually ever called Emperor in Episode I. This movie is about forty years before Episode IV ("Star Wars") and in this one, the "good" side of the force (the Jedi council, etc.) is in power. The "emperor" is not really an "emperor" quite yet, he is working his way up to get control. People on slashdot may call him that, but that's just because we all know that's who he'll eventually be. He is the ultimate evil bad-force-using guy, but he has little political control under his evil disguise, which is why he needs his senator disguise.
By Episode III, he'll probably be official known as emperor.
i perhaps took your agreement with the CAP too far. you do believe south park should exist (free speech), while CAP would prefer that every single thing related to south park would suddenly disappear.
since you asked, i'm 19 years old. i don't have any kids of my own (shockingly enough). most of what i say about parenting is what my own father has said. i like myself and i tend to think he did a pretty good job.
certainly saving private ryan is a more positive influence than south park could be. saving private ryan is probably art. south park probably isn't. however, i'll bet that eyes wide shut will be even higher in artistic quality than both of those two movies combined, yet the cap will most certainly condemn it because it has naked people having sex.
my real problem with the cap is that they equate "quality" with "positive influence". movies aren't good or bad because they influence people in a good or bad way. PEOPLE are good or bad because they are influenced by something in a good or bad way. the cap's favorite movie would be one that merely regurgitates their values. regurgitating values is something that any english professor will tell you is not artistic.
i do not believe in either of the world views that you describe at the end of your comment. i simply believe that depravity MAY happen. and because it may happen, we should be able to recognize it and not let it hinder our own values. and sometimes we should be able to laugh at it too.
i too mentioned the pro-wrestling imitation death in my comment above, though i do not believe this is evidence that south park is something that should not exist or should not be seen by anyone under 17.
yes, images and words have consequences. people can and will be influenced by them. otherwise, what's the point? but who exactly is influenced? you obviously would not let your children watch the south park movie, because you think it would have a "bad" influence on them. it would make them say curse words and try to light their farts on fire. this is quite possible. but would the movie have the same "bad" influence on you? would you, an ADULT, after watching the south park movie, increase the number of curse words you say and do dangerous things?
i would presume that you must say no to this question. you may not _like_ south park, as you said, but since you "know what is the truth" (read: "i know what i believe", as i pressume you are not christ and don't know perfect truth as you insist), your behavior certainly wouldn't CHANGE because of this movie? your beliefs of how to act and what to say would remain the same?
this is because you are a thinking, rational human being. you can make decisions. you can say "i like this" and "i don't like this." children have the same ability, except their ability to do this is very primitive and selfish. yes, many children might say after watching south park "saying fuck is cool! i like to say fuck!" but you are wiser and older and realize the reasons you shouldn't say curses all the time (i.e., people won't listen to what you have to say if you're vulgar all the time). or perhaps you just don't say "fuck" because jesus says you shouldn't. i'm not sure. but either way, there is a REASON you act the way you do and you have control of it. i believe that if someone asked you if anyone could change your beliefs against your will, you would say no. i do not know how old your children are, i would hope they could say the same thing once they are about 14 or 15, maybe younger. south park is not for children who can not clearly make decisions for themselves, however it is not harmful the person viewing it has a stable system of beliefs, like you do.
let me throw a christian proverb at you. "give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day. teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime." keeping all children away from everything that is not "innocent" is much like giving a man a fish. the child is hidden from bad things for the day, but he still needs you to protect him when south park part II comes out. rather, you should teach him how to judge for himself what is good and what is bad. this is not done by simply "showing where i stand on moral issues." your children will no doubt have many opportunities to rebel against your beliefs and perhaps may take these opportunities. but if you shield them from all evil things in our culture, as they become older and less attached to you, they may be too naive to make rational choices. let them see the evil and discuss it WITH them. tell them WHY it is wrong, not that it IS wrong.
hearing a curse word is not the same as saying a curse word. seeing a person murdered is not the same as murdering someone. if you understand why killing is bad (and to primitive creatures such as children, there is no reason why they should think it is bad) for society, then you can see 1000 murders and still will not kill. but the real point is this: south park is not real. it is not supposed to be a substitute for reality. it is funny. it is supposed to be funny. if your children are too young to understand that something seen on a movie screen meant to be funny is not something that should be imitated, then they should not see south park. but if they do understand this, there is no reason why they shouldn't see it (though there may be no reason why they SHOULD, but that's beside the point.) seven year olds shouldn't watch wrestling, but 23 year olds should be able to. the difference is in the content of the viewer's brain, not the content of television screen. parents should concentrate on shaping their children's thinking ability instead worrying about what their eyes might see. it is really much more effective.
south park is a world without fences, yes. if we keep the fences up all of the time, we will forget what is hiding behind them. and that it is when it will come to haunt us. south park is a hilarious reminder why we try to be civilized.
i agree with you that childhood glorification is wrong, as adults are generally much more reasonable human beings than children. they are more able to make rational decisions based on their own personal values. most children don't have these values and thus when exposed to vulgarity will copy it without thought (heard on the news today, kid copied WWF moves on 4 year old sibling. baby dead.)
now, while south park may represent an alternate morality, we are not to take this alternate morality seriously. do you think that matt stone and trey parker walk around saying "shut your fucking face you uncle fucker" all the time? i'm pretty sure they don't. the vulgarity in south park is used as sarcasm, for shock value, and to entertain our more primal tendencies. an unwise child can enjoy this on the primal level, an adult can enjoy it on both the primal and the psuedo-intellectual sarcastic level. yes, okay, we are meant to enjoy the tune of "uncle fucker", but we are also to know that we shouldn't call our mother that. a child cannot always make this distinction. adults, usually, can. otherwise, wouldn't adults avoid movies such as these so they won't corrupt their brain?
but what happens when adults turn into parents is that they are constantly on the lookout for vulgarity that may influence their children and trying to keep their children away from it, instead of teaching them how to judge between "good" and "bad" so that censorship is not necessary. obviously, during the earlier years of childhood, you can't teach a child these things. an 8 year old probably shouldn't see the south park movie. but a 14 year old? i would _hope_ by that time he would be able to understand what is vulgar and what is not, otherwise he's going to have a lot more problems than a movie. as for the bottle of vodka, that's a little bit different than movie-watching. there are _physical_ reasons a 14 year old shouldn't drink... knowing when not to say curse words is a bit easier than knowing how to handle alcohol. that's why you only have to be 17 to see south park and 21 to drink (yes, you crazy europeans, _21_ to drink).
i would hope that all human beings strive to create their own values so that they can _not_ be harmfully influenced by movies, etc. when his own values are in opposition to whatever message or evil satanic subliminal code the media is eminating. we should not learn right and wrong from a list, we should learn it from life and logic. there's nothing wrong with telling a child that killing is bad, but if he asks why, you better be able to back it up. i would presume many children ask why cursing is bad. the simple answer is that it's culturally considered rude. if you want people to take you seriously, you shouldn't use a whole lot of curses. a 14 year old should be able to understand this logic and decide for himself what to say. a child cannot create his own set of values in a world where mommy hides everything from him.
This article:
s /preview/summerpreview99/southparkbiggerlo ngeranduncut.html (making a real link didn't work, it added a space in the URL due to its length, I think)
http://www.mrshowbiz.go.com/reviews/moviereview
from mrshowbiz.com suggests that this movie is almost guaranteed to make money. Why? Making two hours of South Park-style animation isn't very expensive. The budget is only $1.5 million and about 2 million people tune into South Park every week. Even if only those 2 million go to see it, they'll probably about double their money. And I'm sure even more will go. I almost never watch the TV show, but I'll definitely go to see the movie. It's pretty much a no-risk situation for the studio.
I don't really understand what you just replied to me with, but I suppose I should make it clear both to the person above and you that I meant "hip and educated" in a somewhat sarcastic light. "Hip and educated" people, as in writers for magazines like Salon and Wired, etc., are generally very materialistic (not greedy) and tend to look at anything spiritual with confusion. This is evident in Brin's article as he equates "forgiveness" with a judicial system.
Perhaps I should've left out the word "educated." There are certainly many educated people who are religious, but it is certainly not "hip" to be religious in 1999's American culture. At least it doesn't seem to be to me.
Nevertheless, my point was that Brin made an inaccurate comparison between Vader and Hitler _because_ Brin is "hip and educated" and doesn't understand Lucas's religious standpoint.
From the first article:
... Adolf did save the life of his own son!"
To put it in perspective, let's imagine that the United States and its allies managed to capture Adolf Hitler at the end of the Second World War, putting him on trial for war crimes. The prosecution spends months listing all the horrors done at his behest. Then it is the turn of Hitler's defense attorney, who rises and utters just one sentence:
"But, your honors
Gasp! The prosecutors blanch in chagrin. "We didn't know that! Of course all charges should be dismissed at once!"
This hypothetical judicial redemption of Hitler is not really comparable to the type of redemption that Vader receives. Vader is not and would not be forgiven by a judicial system and neither would Hitler, because they both die before something like this could happen. The real question is: If Hitler/Vader had saved his own son and really felt remorse for what he had done, would he be forgiven by whatever supernatural power (The Force, Christian God) and live in eternal bliss ( heaven)?
Lucas would say yes. And this seems to be the ultimate point of both trilogies. Star Wars is a pseudo-Christian epic. No matter what you do in life, you can and will be forgiven as long as if, in that dying moment realize the "sin" you have done.
In the movie, Vader's "sin" is quite universal. (Almost) nobody thinks it's a good thing to go around killing millions of people. But Lucas's movie also has the standard Christian trap: Everyone is bad. Everyone has evil in them. The only way to get rid of this evil is to follow some weirdo set of rules set by some weirdo (Jesus, Yoda) and we'll let you off the hook about this evil thing.
This is a good trick for a religion, but most hip, educated people nowdays don't buy it, like this article's author, and are distrubed by the fact that someone who does incredibly bad things can be forgiven in a flash. But the point is, this is not an illogical point in Lucas's plot, it's something much deeper in America's Christian heritage. You don't have to like it, but it's certainly not something exclusive to Lucas.
> I mean they killed off the best actor.
Simply because Qui-Gon (is that his name?) died doesn't mean he won't be in the next two movies. What other Jedi died in the first of the original trilogy and managed to have a substantial role in all three?