I don't know if George Lucas would want to do this, but what if the DVD had all three versions (or at least the original and the newest with both sets of new stuff)? That way, our beloved original is not lost, but there's some fun added stuff.
Well yes, they are all MS Office macro viruses. But even if you accept the idea that the Mac allows these viruses to exist, even if they need MS Office to actually carry out their activities, there are still *way* more Windows viruses.
And on OS X, as long as you aren't running as root, there is only so much a macro could even do.
I noticed that line too. How exactly was this myth shattered and by whom?
In fact, 62 per cent of Mac users said that increased security was the main reason for them moving to the platform, according to Symantec.
Sixty-two percent of Mac users have a Mac mainly because they want security? I don't think 62% of Mac users really even think about security.
"Obviously there are more PC-only viruses out there, but there are still over 7,000 macro viruses which can hit either Mac or PC platforms."
So there are lots and lots of viruses, mostly for the PC, but some are cross platform. Who, then, has more? When was the last time a Mac-only or even a Mac-compatible virus (like Nimda or Code Red) been in the news (or even existed)?
Chapman explained that, because of the Mac's age, some of the first viruses ever written were for a Mac
Oh no, not the first viruses ever! What is the relevance of that?
and some writers still target the platform specifically.
Really? All 15 of them? Compared to 15000 on Windows? Did anyone claim there was a 0% chance of a virus being written for Mac?
"Another big problem Mac users don't think about is that they make perfect incubators for Windows viruses," said Chapman.
This makes the Mac less secure how? And the fact that Macs don't automatically search for viruses on any platform and destroy them means they are somehow guilty of giving Windows users viruses?
At the time of going to press Apple was unavailable for comment.
That's because Apple shouldn't have to waste its time defending itself to trolls like that.
Okay, so the Mac community believed there were FAR less Mac viruses out there, and very few Mac virus writers. What "myth" has been shattered exactly?
This is such complete FUD that pretty much every sentence is full of it. This wasn't ignorance but someone going out of their way to deceive.
The point about Korean was not a suggestion that it becomes the default language for the internet, just that if it had been the language that needed to be used to access anything, then this would be a barrier to the takeup of the Internet by average people in the West, and most people would not be prepared to learn it, even though it is not that complex, just for this purpose.
Oh, so you are kind of agreeing with me but saying that even an easy language like Korean would be a barrier if it was a Korean Internet? Yes, this might be true.
However, I did originally say that English worked not because it is easy to learn, but because a lot of people already knew it or were regularly exposed to it by the time the Internet came about. And there is a good chance that those who don't know English know some Roman-based language (this doesn't cover everybody of course).
So it is this advantage of being widespread and similar to other widespread languages that makes it IMO easier to adopt in other countries than Korean. That is to say, if Roman-based languages weren't already so widespread and Korean dialects were, and a Korean Internet came about, it would have no more difficulty in the West.
Anyway, this is getting very far from reality. But you have an interesting point about Korean.
but there are still vast amounts of Chinese people who have never seen a Western alphabet (or at least any more than you have seen Chinese on a Chinese menu etc). The Chinese equivilent of Mom & Dad USA usually speaks not one word of English.
That might be true, although it is a lot less likely that the poorer and more rural areas would have much exposure to computers or the Internet. And I would say a lot more Chinese are reasonably familiar with the Roman letters than non-Chinese are with Chinese characters.
More likely would be the creation of a Latin-based Internet in the West.
Which is almost exactly the route that is being taken by creating Unicode URLs.
I'm not arguing that. I'm only saying if China had developed an Internet before the Internet as we know it existed, it would not have gotten as widespread as the "English" Internet has throughout the world.
If you want an easier alphabet, would you expect everyone in the US to learn Korean (24 letters, my wife picked up the basics in a week or so)?
Well, I happen to have studied Korean myself, and it isn't very difficult to learn. However, Korean has some slight disadvantages. The first is that it is mostly spoken only by Koreans (either within the country or elsewhere in the world). So, while Roman character languages are already widespread, 99% of those who would already be familiar with Roman characters would now have to learn Korean characters. The other problem with Korean is that it is a more complicated matter to display. Roman characters go left to right, and the letters do not need to cross or connect (except maybe oe, ae...). Korean groups each syllable together into a single "symbol" where the letters within that symbol can connect right to left and/or up to down.
For the sake of having just 2 less letters, I don't think these problems make Korean a simpler or more convenient option for anyone, except Koreans of course.
I'm not trying to do a nickle-and-dime comparison like that (Hawaiian has only 12 letters, but it's not twice as easy as Korean or something). But 26 (English) compared to 5-10,000 (Chinese)-- that is a significant difference and I see meaning in that.
The other day at work I scribbled a couple of words in Korean on my notepad (I studied Korean a bit). Later my boss came by and saw it and asked what it meant. I told him and then showed it to the *Chinese* guys who work in my area to see if I had it right. They glanced and said "oh that's Korean" and my boss said "oh, I see, but can't you read it at all?" Errrr, no.
With Chinese, I can understand there is a huge learning curve, but a lot of people don't know that they could pick up basic Korean (alphabet and making words) in about a day.
I guess when people look at Chinese/Japanese/Korean they see "Chicken Scratch language" and don't really look for the obvious distinctions among them.
Besides, how do you explain to the kids that the effects keep getting worse?? "Daddy, why do they fly those crappy looking X-wings instead of the Mega-fly 2000??" (Available in toy stores now.)
I bet a 6 year old kid wouldn't get caught up in the latest special effects. Especially since Star Wars does a darn good job of not looking totally cheesy even though it's dated.
Actually, I think not only does it not make sense, but it's actually kind of a sick thing to do.
Are we showing compassion towards the victim's families? "If we act like they never were up, maybe the victims won't think about how they fell when they watch the movie." Don't you think New York itself reminds them of their lost loved ones? Or airplanes?
Are we showing the enemy that we've moved on? "Oh yeah, well, we've edited the twin towers out of our movies because they are such ancient history."
Are we being patriotic? "To show that we stand behind the US, we don't want people to escape to a time when you could see the twin towers in the background."
What is the logic here? I'll tell you one thing, it's very creepy.
Yeah, there's that, but I think that giving-away stuff is a little worse when you watch it with IV-VI first???
As in,
ANAKIN: I'm going to be the most powerful Jedi ever!
AMIDALA: No shit, we're gonna give birth to twins named Luke and Leia, you'll turn evil and kill all the Jedi, I'll die when the kids are young, Leia will be raised by royalty on Alderaan and Luke will be raised by his step-uncle on Tatooine. He'll meet Obi-Wan and-- long story short-- you as Darth Vader will throw Palpatine who is now Emperor into a pit to his death in order to save Jedi Luke.
But in terms of number of characters per text or sq. cm. of paper. The "What is Unicode" page is smaller byte-size in Chinese than any other language, IIRC, even with each Chinese character taking 3 bytes and most Latin character taking 1.
I know that this is what you meant, but I wasn't talking about complexity in terms of size on paper or byte-wise. I'm sure you are correct on that. But the complexity of learning the language is far greater. And that complexity is the crux of my viewpoint.
What self-respecting geek is going to let a language - much less a writing system - get in the way of getting hooked up to the Internet?
Maybe a few geeks would learn Chinese in order to get on the Chinese Internet. Just like a some really hardcore gamers study up on Japanese because Japan has great games that don't come out in the US. Geeks make up a *very* small minority, especially ones that learn a language like this. How long was the Internet around in some form to computer geeks before it was really a "thing"? I'd say 96-97 was when the Internet really took off (although it was building throughout the 90s). It would have just stagnated like this if one had to learn Chinese to even see what was going on. Do you know how much more time and effort it takes to learn (even basic) Chinese compared to learning (even fairly advanced) Perl? It is for this reason that Western geeks would learn protocols and technology to build their own Internet rather than study languages for years!
Here's the big difference I was trying to explain before. Lots of people in China and Japan already know English or are in some way familiar with Roman characters. They see and use them every day. When the Internet was coming about, even if they didn't speak English, they could at least see more than incomprehensible gibberish (of course it isn't really this at all, but it is to most Westerners, honestly).
How would the Chinese Internet ever take off in the West, if the West would not even be able to recognize a single character, of which there are over 10,000 (5,000 common)?
Yes, people would begin learn Chinese, *if* the Internet was a big thing. But the Internet wouldn't be big enough to warrant years of study if only Chinese people used it. So you have a catch-22. At this point in time, instead of people saying "we want to be part of China's Internet, so let's all learn Chinese!" (which requires huge changes in social and educational structures), I think it is far more likely that people would say "we want an Internet too, let's make one (and connect it with China?)"
This is why I think a Chinese Internet that is a world standard almost could not exist.
Unless you go back and completely change the political and economic structures of the entire world for the past few hundred years. But then there would be so many changed factors that it's almost pointless to speculate. I mean, being expansionist goes against the very nature of China, which has always been isolationist (sometimes to great extremes). Would the USA even exist? Would widespread use of Chinese cause a total reform of the language (I feel it would)?
Although Chinese may not be harder for the native Chinese speaker than English is to the native English speaker, I still believe it is much easier and more productive for a Chinese speaker to "dabble" in English than it is for an English speaker to "dabble" in Chinese. Much higher learning curve.
Rather it appeared that they honestly believed that what they were doing was for the good of all. This may in deed be the case for Chancellor Palpatine as well.
I disagree on Palpatine. He's in it for the power. He tricked Jar-Jar into voting him into place to deal with the Separatists (Dooku and gang), even though he (as the Sith Lord) is Dooku's master. He's playing both sides in order to generate the conflict. Now that he has emergency powers, and control of both the clone army (as Chancellor) as well as the droid army (as Sith Lord), he can dissolve the Senate and have all the firepower to back it up. And all the while he's telling Annakin not to be told what to do and that he's the most powerful, and to let his emotions guide him... so Annakin will be able to take care of those pesky Jedi!
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Re:It's very simple, really.
on
The Empire Stumbles
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· Score: 3, Interesting
I am sure my children will still be watching them with the same excitement that we grew up with watching the original trilogy.
And this leads to the question I have been wondering about for my (future) kids. Do I show them episodes IV-VI and then I-III? Or do I go chronologically? Which would be more fun?
In fact, I'd say the new movies are much MORE violent than any of the original three. Think about the scene in ANH in the cantina where Obi-Wan chops off that creature's arm. We don't even see it happen!
Now we have Annakin decapitating Sandpeople, fly creatures getting mashed by machinery and chopped in half, Qui-Gon Jinn getting a lightsaber through his chest.
Lots of implied violence is now shown, and there is a lot more detail. And there is a lot more than just people getting shot with lasers.
Reducing the symbol set is not always making things easier. Even if a binary dump of text uses only 2 symbols, it is much harder to read.
Hey, that's a slippery-slope argument.
My point was not even readability anyway. It was being able to tell things apart and use them. Think about this situation. If I speak Japanese as my native language, I probably see English characters often, and am at least familiar with the 26 letters (and probably have studied a Latin-based language at some point). And this holds true before the Internet's popularity. Also, I probably have some known way to easily type Roman characters into my keyboard. The Internet comes around, I just go along with these English characters without much extra learning, although it can be a bit of a pain.
Now take Chinese as the language of the Internet. Say I speak English/Russian/Swedish/Portugese/whatever as a native language. It's likely that I can't tell Chinese from Japanese (or even Korean for some people), and it's also likely I can't even write a single Chinese character (maybe I memorized one or two for fun). Imagine the undertaking required to even tell characters apart, regardless of meaning. There would have to be a fundamental restructuring of schooling in the West just to get people acquainted enough with the language to use it for web addresses, email, etc. I mean, people wouldn't even be able to transcribe an email address. More likely would be the creation of a Latin-based Internet in the West.
This is the problem that causes it to be very unlikely to have ever been universally adopted in the Internet.
I don't think one language is better than another, but it's just a fact that Chinese (as well as Japanese) takes much longer to learn than Latin-based languages and is much less widespread geographically.
Also, considering the Spider-Man creators specifically edited out the World Trade Center towers from every scene, I'm not sure that they really intended to tackle the issue head on either.
Well, I still think the title was misleading, as I thought there was a real development of some sort in this speculation that's been going on.
I don't think this was a terrible untruth or anything. I more wanted to make it clear that this is really 99.9% speculation, just based on "if I were running Apple, this is what I would do now" ideas. And although there have been the tiniest shreds of evidence to indicate Apple might at some point go with a gecko browser at default, I don't know of any evidence that Apple itself is doing anything.
So maybe if this was angled as "an interesting opinion piece at theRegister" instead of "this might be happening now, according to theRegister. Who knows?" would make it not be sensationalism to me.
That's all. It's still an interesting thing to think about.
It's an alternate history idea, and there will of course be different events (I'd make the divergence China a republic sometime in the 50 years before 1930 . ..)
Well, I wasn't really considering going back that far in history. What I thought would be bizarre would be if other events happened along the same lines, except China got an equivalent to the Internet going first.
If your alternate history still calls for the predominance of US computing and ASCII/ISO-646, then they probably would have used some ASCII based system.
I was simply thinking of Latin-based dominance in terms of international communication.
But Chinese characters are more concise than Roman characters.
Certainly not in terms of the number of characters!
In any case, everything you've said applies with equal power to Cyrillic; a Sino-Russian web would probably have used Cyrillic as a base.
Or Korea could have used its letters, yes. Or what if German had been made the national language of the United States? What if? Again, when responding the the comment about "what if China had created the Internet", I didn't know it was fair game to also imply "what if China became a Republic in the 1800s", "what if Russia/China/etc. had pioneered computing" and so on.
In response to Cyrillic and such, I went by the notion of "what language(s)/alphabet(s) are/were most widespread during the development of the Internet?" In the early 1900s, one might say that French was the "international language", and nowadays it is English-- both are Latin-based alphabets.
Yes, English dominated computing, as well as the Internet, but don't you think part of the reason for that could be because just about everyone was familiar in some way with these characters? On the other hand, if all of Western Europe and the Americas had to start learning katakana, cyrillic or Korean letters (let alone Chinese(!), which is what I was responding to), I think they would have rather developed their own way of handling the Internet, keeping the Chinese(or whatever) "Internet" confined within China.
What if the Internet had started in China? Would you be happy to learn the Chinese alphabet in order to enter URLs?
First of all, if the Internet had started in China (which would have been absolutely bizarre), they probably would have used ascii characters, or some set of latin characters. Or, if they used Chinese symbols, then it wouldn't have gone outside the country until a different format came about. No matter what you say, Latin characters are easier to recognize and use than Chinese symbols (there are only 26 of them!). And just about every computer-aware culture is familiar with these 26 letters (since before the Internet).
Also important to note, the Chinese language isn't an alphabet. It is logographic.
I think perhaps the title of this article is a bit of sensationalism. There is no general knowledge nor mention in the article that Apple is making any browser whatsoever. The only "news" that the article mentions is that Apple _appeared_ to push Chimera in the WWDC, although it is a brand new application in very early developmental stages.
Yes, there has been recent speculation that Apple might move to a different "default" browser, now that the agreement with Microsoft is coming to an end. But it's been little more than people wondering... no real evidence.
I'd say it may very well happen, and the article brings up some good reasons why it might.
But to imply not only that this is happening, but Apple is creating it or directly involved is misleading.
My point wasn't supposed to be that this can't be done or won't be done. I thought I even mentioned that they do it in baseball right now. My point was supposed to be that it can't take over for regular commercials outright, because it doesn't scale.
What if the ad doesn't fit into the show anywhere? Will there be an obligation that an every episode of ER show a car driving down the street because they have a contract with Ford? How complicated would this be if it was done on every show and was the only advertising medium?
Why would there be any place for AT&T long distance in the world of Star Trek? What if the show is a cartoon but the ad needs to be a real picture? What if Menards hardware gets their Hammer that's on sale spliced into someone's hand or on a desk for Midwest viewers, and then on the West coast it is a burger from Jack-in-the-box? What if Southwest wants to talk about their low airfares in October, but there isn't a big enough billboard or they don't stand near it long enough? What if the producers of the show have some shred of artistic integrity?
It just doesn't fit everywhere, although it is around and will become more common. But we still have to figure out something else, if commercial interruptions are no longer viable.
No, Goonies two was a side-scrolling, rescue the other Goonies and search for different items in a bunch of different locations kind of game. The original Goonies was arcade only (except maybe in Japan?).
Don't forget Batman, Ducktales, Fester's Quest, Goonies II, Chip & Dale, Spy vs. Spy, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (a few of those were TV shows, but it's the same deal).
Slashdot Mirror
I don't know if George Lucas would want to do this, but what if the DVD had all three versions (or at least the original and the newest with both sets of new stuff)? That way, our beloved original is not lost, but there's some fun added stuff.
Would there be any harm in doing this?
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Well yes, they are all MS Office macro viruses. But even if you accept the idea that the Mac allows these viruses to exist, even if they need MS Office to actually carry out their activities, there are still *way* more Windows viruses.
And on OS X, as long as you aren't running as root, there is only so much a macro could even do.
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Sixty-two percent of Mac users have a Mac mainly because they want security? I don't think 62% of Mac users really even think about security.
So there are lots and lots of viruses, mostly for the PC, but some are cross platform. Who, then, has more? When was the last time a Mac-only or even a Mac-compatible virus (like Nimda or Code Red) been in the news (or even existed)?
Oh no, not the first viruses ever! What is the relevance of that?
Really? All 15 of them? Compared to 15000 on Windows? Did anyone claim there was a 0% chance of a virus being written for Mac?
This makes the Mac less secure how? And the fact that Macs don't automatically search for viruses on any platform and destroy them means they are somehow guilty of giving Windows users viruses?
That's because Apple shouldn't have to waste its time defending itself to trolls like that.
Okay, so the Mac community believed there were FAR less Mac viruses out there, and very few Mac virus writers. What "myth" has been shattered exactly?
This is such complete FUD that pretty much every sentence is full of it. This wasn't ignorance but someone going out of their way to deceive.
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Oh, so you are kind of agreeing with me but saying that even an easy language like Korean would be a barrier if it was a Korean Internet? Yes, this might be true.
However, I did originally say that English worked not because it is easy to learn, but because a lot of people already knew it or were regularly exposed to it by the time the Internet came about. And there is a good chance that those who don't know English know some Roman-based language (this doesn't cover everybody of course).
So it is this advantage of being widespread and similar to other widespread languages that makes it IMO easier to adopt in other countries than Korean. That is to say, if Roman-based languages weren't already so widespread and Korean dialects were, and a Korean Internet came about, it would have no more difficulty in the West.
Anyway, this is getting very far from reality. But you have an interesting point about Korean.
mark
That might be true, although it is a lot less likely that the poorer and more rural areas would have much exposure to computers or the Internet. And I would say a lot more Chinese are reasonably familiar with the Roman letters than non-Chinese are with Chinese characters.
I'm not arguing that. I'm only saying if China had developed an Internet before the Internet as we know it existed, it would not have gotten as widespread as the "English" Internet has throughout the world.
Well, I happen to have studied Korean myself, and it isn't very difficult to learn. However, Korean has some slight disadvantages. The first is that it is mostly spoken only by Koreans (either within the country or elsewhere in the world). So, while Roman character languages are already widespread, 99% of those who would already be familiar with Roman characters would now have to learn Korean characters. The other problem with Korean is that it is a more complicated matter to display. Roman characters go left to right, and the letters do not need to cross or connect (except maybe oe, ae...). Korean groups each syllable together into a single "symbol" where the letters within that symbol can connect right to left and/or up to down.
For the sake of having just 2 less letters, I don't think these problems make Korean a simpler or more convenient option for anyone, except Koreans of course.
I'm not trying to do a nickle-and-dime comparison like that (Hawaiian has only 12 letters, but it's not twice as easy as Korean or something). But 26 (English) compared to 5-10,000 (Chinese)-- that is a significant difference and I see meaning in that.
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Ha, I can definitely believe that.
The other day at work I scribbled a couple of words in Korean on my notepad (I studied Korean a bit). Later my boss came by and saw it and asked what it meant. I told him and then showed it to the *Chinese* guys who work in my area to see if I had it right. They glanced and said "oh that's Korean" and my boss said "oh, I see, but can't you read it at all?" Errrr, no.
With Chinese, I can understand there is a huge learning curve, but a lot of people don't know that they could pick up basic Korean (alphabet and making words) in about a day.
I guess when people look at Chinese/Japanese/Korean they see "Chicken Scratch language" and don't really look for the obvious distinctions among them.
mark
I bet a 6 year old kid wouldn't get caught up in the latest special effects. Especially since Star Wars does a darn good job of not looking totally cheesy even though it's dated.
mark
It would be called:
Microsoft Boob(tm)
Get it?
I wonder if they will come out with an equivalent to Stack Up that uses these new controllers so that it at least is tied with R.O.B. in usefulness!
mark
Actually, I think not only does it not make sense, but it's actually kind of a sick thing to do.
Are we showing compassion towards the victim's families? "If we act like they never were up, maybe the victims won't think about how they fell when they watch the movie." Don't you think New York itself reminds them of their lost loved ones? Or airplanes?
Are we showing the enemy that we've moved on? "Oh yeah, well, we've edited the twin towers out of our movies because they are such ancient history."
Are we being patriotic? "To show that we stand behind the US, we don't want people to escape to a time when you could see the twin towers in the background."
What is the logic here? I'll tell you one thing, it's very creepy.
mark
Yeah, there's that, but I think that giving-away stuff is a little worse when you watch it with IV-VI first???
As in,
ANAKIN: I'm going to be the most powerful Jedi ever!
AMIDALA: No shit, we're gonna give birth to twins named Luke and Leia, you'll turn evil and kill all the Jedi, I'll die when the kids are young, Leia will be raised by royalty on Alderaan and Luke will be raised by his step-uncle on Tatooine. He'll meet Obi-Wan and-- long story short-- you as Darth Vader will throw Palpatine who is now Emperor into a pit to his death in order to save Jedi Luke.
=)
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I know that this is what you meant, but I wasn't talking about complexity in terms of size on paper or byte-wise. I'm sure you are correct on that. But the complexity of learning the language is far greater. And that complexity is the crux of my viewpoint.
Maybe a few geeks would learn Chinese in order to get on the Chinese Internet. Just like a some really hardcore gamers study up on Japanese because Japan has great games that don't come out in the US. Geeks make up a *very* small minority, especially ones that learn a language like this. How long was the Internet around in some form to computer geeks before it was really a "thing"? I'd say 96-97 was when the Internet really took off (although it was building throughout the 90s). It would have just stagnated like this if one had to learn Chinese to even see what was going on. Do you know how much more time and effort it takes to learn (even basic) Chinese compared to learning (even fairly advanced) Perl? It is for this reason that Western geeks would learn protocols and technology to build their own Internet rather than study languages for years!
Here's the big difference I was trying to explain before. Lots of people in China and Japan already know English or are in some way familiar with Roman characters. They see and use them every day. When the Internet was coming about, even if they didn't speak English, they could at least see more than incomprehensible gibberish (of course it isn't really this at all, but it is to most Westerners, honestly).
How would the Chinese Internet ever take off in the West, if the West would not even be able to recognize a single character, of which there are over 10,000 (5,000 common)?
Yes, people would begin learn Chinese, *if* the Internet was a big thing. But the Internet wouldn't be big enough to warrant years of study if only Chinese people used it. So you have a catch-22. At this point in time, instead of people saying "we want to be part of China's Internet, so let's all learn Chinese!" (which requires huge changes in social and educational structures), I think it is far more likely that people would say "we want an Internet too, let's make one (and connect it with China?)"
This is why I think a Chinese Internet that is a world standard almost could not exist.
Unless you go back and completely change the political and economic structures of the entire world for the past few hundred years. But then there would be so many changed factors that it's almost pointless to speculate. I mean, being expansionist goes against the very nature of China, which has always been isolationist (sometimes to great extremes). Would the USA even exist? Would widespread use of Chinese cause a total reform of the language (I feel it would)?
Although Chinese may not be harder for the native Chinese speaker than English is to the native English speaker, I still believe it is much easier and more productive for a Chinese speaker to "dabble" in English than it is for an English speaker to "dabble" in Chinese. Much higher learning curve.
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I disagree on Palpatine. He's in it for the power. He tricked Jar-Jar into voting him into place to deal with the Separatists (Dooku and gang), even though he (as the Sith Lord) is Dooku's master. He's playing both sides in order to generate the conflict. Now that he has emergency powers, and control of both the clone army (as Chancellor) as well as the droid army (as Sith Lord), he can dissolve the Senate and have all the firepower to back it up. And all the while he's telling Annakin not to be told what to do and that he's the most powerful, and to let his emotions guide him... so Annakin will be able to take care of those pesky Jedi!
mark
And this leads to the question I have been wondering about for my (future) kids. Do I show them episodes IV-VI and then I-III? Or do I go chronologically? Which would be more fun?
mark
In fact, I'd say the new movies are much MORE violent than any of the original three. Think about the scene in ANH in the cantina where Obi-Wan chops off that creature's arm. We don't even see it happen!
Now we have Annakin decapitating Sandpeople, fly creatures getting mashed by machinery and chopped in half, Qui-Gon Jinn getting a lightsaber through his chest.
Lots of implied violence is now shown, and there is a lot more detail. And there is a lot more than just people getting shot with lasers.
mark
Hey, that's a slippery-slope argument.
My point was not even readability anyway. It was being able to tell things apart and use them. Think about this situation. If I speak Japanese as my native language, I probably see English characters often, and am at least familiar with the 26 letters (and probably have studied a Latin-based language at some point). And this holds true before the Internet's popularity. Also, I probably have some known way to easily type Roman characters into my keyboard. The Internet comes around, I just go along with these English characters without much extra learning, although it can be a bit of a pain.
Now take Chinese as the language of the Internet. Say I speak English/Russian/Swedish/Portugese/whatever as a native language. It's likely that I can't tell Chinese from Japanese (or even Korean for some people), and it's also likely I can't even write a single Chinese character (maybe I memorized one or two for fun). Imagine the undertaking required to even tell characters apart, regardless of meaning. There would have to be a fundamental restructuring of schooling in the West just to get people acquainted enough with the language to use it for web addresses, email, etc. I mean, people wouldn't even be able to transcribe an email address. More likely would be the creation of a Latin-based Internet in the West.
This is the problem that causes it to be very unlikely to have ever been universally adopted in the Internet.
I don't think one language is better than another, but it's just a fact that Chinese (as well as Japanese) takes much longer to learn than Latin-based languages and is much less widespread geographically.
mark
Also, considering the Spider-Man creators specifically edited out the World Trade Center towers from every scene, I'm not sure that they really intended to tackle the issue head on either.
mark
Well, I still think the title was misleading, as I thought there was a real development of some sort in this speculation that's been going on.
I don't think this was a terrible untruth or anything. I more wanted to make it clear that this is really 99.9% speculation, just based on "if I were running Apple, this is what I would do now" ideas. And although there have been the tiniest shreds of evidence to indicate Apple might at some point go with a gecko browser at default, I don't know of any evidence that Apple itself is doing anything.
So maybe if this was angled as "an interesting opinion piece at theRegister" instead of "this might be happening now, according to theRegister. Who knows?" would make it not be sensationalism to me.
That's all. It's still an interesting thing to think about.
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Well, I wasn't really considering going back that far in history. What I thought would be bizarre would be if other events happened along the same lines, except China got an equivalent to the Internet going first.
I was simply thinking of Latin-based dominance in terms of international communication.
Certainly not in terms of the number of characters!
Or Korea could have used its letters, yes. Or what if German had been made the national language of the United States? What if? Again, when responding the the comment about "what if China had created the Internet", I didn't know it was fair game to also imply "what if China became a Republic in the 1800s", "what if Russia/China/etc. had pioneered computing" and so on.
In response to Cyrillic and such, I went by the notion of "what language(s)/alphabet(s) are/were most widespread during the development of the Internet?" In the early 1900s, one might say that French was the "international language", and nowadays it is English-- both are Latin-based alphabets.
Yes, English dominated computing, as well as the Internet, but don't you think part of the reason for that could be because just about everyone was familiar in some way with these characters? On the other hand, if all of Western Europe and the Americas had to start learning katakana, cyrillic or Korean letters (let alone Chinese(!), which is what I was responding to), I think they would have rather developed their own way of handling the Internet, keeping the Chinese(or whatever) "Internet" confined within China.
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First of all, if the Internet had started in China (which would have been absolutely bizarre), they probably would have used ascii characters, or some set of latin characters. Or, if they used Chinese symbols, then it wouldn't have gone outside the country until a different format came about. No matter what you say, Latin characters are easier to recognize and use than Chinese symbols (there are only 26 of them!). And just about every computer-aware culture is familiar with these 26 letters (since before the Internet).
Also important to note, the Chinese language isn't an alphabet. It is logographic.
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I think perhaps the title of this article is a bit of sensationalism. There is no general knowledge nor mention in the article that Apple is making any browser whatsoever. The only "news" that the article mentions is that Apple _appeared_ to push Chimera in the WWDC, although it is a brand new application in very early developmental stages.
Yes, there has been recent speculation that Apple might move to a different "default" browser, now that the agreement with Microsoft is coming to an end. But it's been little more than people wondering... no real evidence.
I'd say it may very well happen, and the article brings up some good reasons why it might.
But to imply not only that this is happening, but Apple is creating it or directly involved is misleading.
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Also, from then on, every time the moon was in the background in later episodes, there was still the CHA in it. Excellent continuity there.
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My point wasn't supposed to be that this can't be done or won't be done. I thought I even mentioned that they do it in baseball right now. My point was supposed to be that it can't take over for regular commercials outright, because it doesn't scale.
What if the ad doesn't fit into the show anywhere? Will there be an obligation that an every episode of ER show a car driving down the street because they have a contract with Ford? How complicated would this be if it was done on every show and was the only advertising medium?
Why would there be any place for AT&T long distance in the world of Star Trek? What if the show is a cartoon but the ad needs to be a real picture? What if Menards hardware gets their Hammer that's on sale spliced into someone's hand or on a desk for Midwest viewers, and then on the West coast it is a burger from Jack-in-the-box? What if Southwest wants to talk about their low airfares in October, but there isn't a big enough billboard or they don't stand near it long enough? What if the producers of the show have some shred of artistic integrity?
It just doesn't fit everywhere, although it is around and will become more common. But we still have to figure out something else, if commercial interruptions are no longer viable.
Maybe now I made my point clearer.
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No, Goonies two was a side-scrolling, rescue the other Goonies and search for different items in a bunch of different locations kind of game. The original Goonies was arcade only (except maybe in Japan?).
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Don't forget Batman, Ducktales, Fester's Quest, Goonies II, Chip & Dale, Spy vs. Spy, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (a few of those were TV shows, but it's the same deal).
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