Oh yeah, well, umm, well the wrong cabin number of Yeoman Rand, as listed in teh famous Saturday Night Live skit was Y-390!
The maximum sustainable warp of Voyager at the start of the show was 9.997.
The interaction between Tuvok and Kleenex on that space elevator episode was intentionally homoerotic.
There have been two saliva-string lesbian kisses, one between Jadzia Dax and her former huband's guest star new female body, and Evil Ezri-Dax and Evil Kira.
I can't wait to get a phaser that takes 5-6 shots to kill a rat, or to be a Vulcan, 10 times as strong as a human male, and have a tough time beating up a human ruffian behind Harcourt Fenton Mudd's bar.
Or to have to get to level 200 before I learn the Vulcan Neck Pinch, which will only work 1 of 10 times on humans, and even that'll get nerfed to never work ever on "boss humans".
Or to have to get to level 50 before I can go somewhere without having to run there on foot, from the only teleporter in the entire city to the other side of the city. And even then, my, umm, motorcycle I get for eight gazillion bars of gold-pressed latinum only moves about 2x the speed of a running human.
Yeah, I can't wait./petition The ship went into warp and because of lag I got left behind in space and died.
$100.00 to the first person who can produce a statue of my maximally-assied scrapper girl in bikini 2 briefs from City of Heroes! Ass width slider -> max, waist slider -> min, ahh, life is good.
What? You prefer to run around for hours behind a male character so you won't seem "gay"? Interesting...veddy veddy interesting...
I recall a female secretary loading a Ginger Lynn pr0n video on my 286, then asking me to start my computer to "get something" for her, then laughing when it started playing automatically. It was grainy as hell, but was, for lack of a better term, full motion video. God only knows what viruses would have been buried in that.exe file nowadays.
It occurs to me that, had this happened a few years later, I could have sued for 6 or 7 figures for permanent psychological damage and sexual harassment. She smoked at work at her desk, too. Son of a bitch was America a wild, crazy, lawless place back then before people figured out how to proscribe how other people should behave in intimate detail.
> I think that this is what this is all about. > Some people really love cutscenes and others don't have much time for them.
The first time I played through BG II, I was playing co-op, and I watched the cut scene when my buddy didn't. Of course, it was a lot of scrolling text, but the same effect was achieved.
That's true, but I played it on hard (not that that was that much harder) plus I was delaying levelling up as much as possible, so that when I changed over to a Jedi I'd have many more Jedi levels, instead of just 10.
Hence I needed every last split second, which allowed the very first volley of grenades yet give me time to run away from his first volley.
Actually, the 4th time I played through the entire game, my Guardian was so powerful, and had such an amped lightsaber, that I 2-shotted the undead dark lord on the second encounter with him near the end of the game. To make life even more interesting, my "outfit" was the dancer's outfit the entire game, or at least from the point you get it onward. No Jedi or Sith robe for me. (Actually, I also had the first battle with him well in hand, too, but the game makes you flee anyway.) Oh, wait, I'm confusing KoToR and KoToR II. Ah, well, Debbie, Dark Lord of the Sith, rules regardless.
1. a 'hard' (constitutional ammendment) limit of copyright/patent protection to 15 years, after which it becomes the property of the public. for anyone who meets the rest of the laws of the US to use, As they see fit. No extentions, any materials derived from 'public' works would need to clearly cite those public works, in order to recieve copyright protection.
Life of the author + 20 (or whatever it used to be) is perfectly fine. It allows the creative author to get the maximum value out of their effort, and the +20 allows them to strike good financial deals with companies, without the companies having to worry about sudden death causing them to lose their investment immediately.
We wouldn't be in the situation we are in now if Congress weren't re-lengthening the program indefinitely.
2. a constitutional ammedment limiting the spending power of the federal government (including debt financing) in peace time to.02% above tax revenues, the only exception being allowing the federal reserve to issue additional bonds to 'stabalize' the us/global economy. (those bonds would be issued seperately from normal notes issued to cover debts)
Why even allow that? The standard ammendment proposed forbids deficit spending at all with the exception of war (a real, declared one) or 2/3 supermajority (or 60% or some such, whatever.)
If "issuing bonds" is such a good idea, you'll have no problem convincing Congress to pass a temporary deficit override.
3. A constitutional ammendment that prohibted the use of television, raido, telephone, internet, or print media in any type of election campaign. by either the politician or the ppolial parties. only debates, and public apperances would be legal. why? to truly level the playing field in the art of politics, only the words and actions of the politician themselves could speak for their worthiness as an elected official.
Would still have loopholes a mile wide since people could still create "issues" ads that functionally attack one candidate because they attack an issue only one major candidate supports.
And if you're suggesting that be closed, too, I doubt it would have the effect you want, since now everybody is forbidden from broadcasting information about what our beloved, squirrely thieves of both parties are actually up to. That obviously cannot be your intent.
Nah, I'm with George Will on this one, why should the sum total of political spending, on the order of the marischino cherry industry, be considered a problem, especially when half of the candidates (the incumbants) get to spend, this year alone, $2.6 trillion, and to what? To convince the voters to re-elect them.
Nah, here're the ammendments we need:
A) Congress shall pass no law except with a 90% supermajority. If you cannot convince 9 of 10 people something should be a law, it shouldn't be. Why the cheesy 50.01% simple majority concept? A simple might makes right concept? Because some politician can briefly out-rhetoric the competition for the briefest of time? And have that law apply for all future time? Which leads us to:
B) All laws automatically expire every 5 years. Congress must re-approve (again, with 9/10 supermajority) or it goes bye-bye. And if Congress has too many laws they can't re-consider them all given five damned years then the general population certainly doesn't need to be bound by that godawfully large number of laws. This ammendment applies retroactively to current laws -- no grandfather clause.
> Right now, animal trials are just starting and it will > take at least a decade before human trials begin. But > when these living bandages are ready for cardiac care, > they'll have the potential to save millions of lives > in the world every year.
While I can see engineering taking awhile to develop something useful to humans, keep in mind that every year delayed "proving it" to arrogant government officials kills millions a year. Now explain to me why exactly they are a friend to humanity again?
One good cure for something like this, that's delayed a few years, delayed because of FDA-type bureaucracy will slaugter more people than all those the FDA "protects", even allowing for the wildest, slobbering socialist evils-of-corporations fantasies put together over the last 5 decades.
But it feels good, I guess, so that isn't actually happening. Couldn't be.
> You're exactly that. You're willing to sacrifice the Brooklyn Bridge > (spared from attack because of spying) out of fear that someone > might listen in on a conversation to Iraq or Afghanistan.
No, people are scared someone might listen in on political conversations and use them to their advantage, or learn some embarassing secrets and extort political advantage.
You know, just like J. Edgar used to do? That's what this is all about.
The idea's hardly mine. I read a story in Niven's expanded universe (the one with the Kzin wars and Ringworld) wherein a guest author has an early battle between the best the Earth can produce (not properly deployed but with a big gun and a massive computer) vs. a standard single Kzin fighter. The fighter had "ablative armor", designed to burn away and thrust the ship out of the way of any laser or other beam burning into it.
Though maybe using computers to control the laser and it's contact with the object to direct it might be. =D
Is it so hard to just check if they've watched it before and, if they haven't, pop up a box that says "You haven't seen this before. It helps understanding of the plot. Are you sure you want to skip it?" to cover the worst-case scenario. Otherwise just let ESC escape.
Knights of the Old Republic allowed you to escape these, except if it required interaction, in which case certain sub-sequences had to be sat through. (Most notably, the battle vs. the final guy in the arena on the initial planet is tough, especially if you're on your first character playthrough. Hence you must repeat a dozen times, including the irritating cut scene.)
> You see, the joke was, Lim was pissed he lost his role as Mr. Sulu
You guys don't just know about this, but are arguing about it!
And I thought me knowing that Yeoman's Rand's (incorrect) cabin number as listed in the Saturday Night Live skit (Y-390) was a nerdly waste of brain cells. Christ almighty, I bow to you.
> "Actually in the last film they made me a Captain".
In full context, evidently Sulu was pissed that his few moderate scenes in the whale movie were cut. Hence later on, he's captain of the Excelsior, and Kirk and the lads watch him fly away at the end of the next movie, saying "That's a big ship!" "Not half as big as 'er captain."
> Hmm...so, with Sulu coming back, will we now have to > suffer through the first futuristic, homosexual liplock?
No fewer than two lesbian, saliva-string kisses have occured. Jadzia Dax-to-guest actress, and Evil Ezri Dax to Evil Kira. Yes, later series chickened out, most notably and unfortunately no Hoshi-to-T'Pol big lip slamathons, though we did get some sweaty/oily mutual backrubbings.
Kirk: Sulu! Oh my god. It's ancient Sulu from the future! Gods, man! Sulu, what happened. WHAT HAPPENED?!?!? (grabbing upper arms and shaking him)
Sulu: Captain, I bring you a warning. You're gonna die a stupid death. On the positive side, it'll be climbing around on Wile-e-Coyote-style rock formations in California just like you always loved doing, like with the Gorn and that Plato guy and your old girlfriend or whoever the hell that ghosty chick was.
(Kirk looks as Spock. Spock raises an eyebrow.)
Sulu: Did you know you have a son? By the way, the Klingon's moon Praxis is going to explode in about 20 years. You might want to subtly encourage them via clandestine CIA manipulation to dump even more antimatter waste and neutronium. Perhaps it can take out their entire starsystem.
Kirk: You're kidding!
Sulu: I wish I were! (Suddenly looks woozy.)
Kirk: (catches him as he starts to fall.) Kirk to sickbay. Medical emergency on the bridge!
Sulu: Also...
Kirk: Also, what?
Sulu: Also...you must, you must destroy the Crusher family line. Just hand out some condoms to the ones currently alive should be sufficient. You need to...you need to....agk!
Kirk: Need to what? To WHAT? (shakes him gently again)
(McCoy runs in and waves the medical tricorder saltshaker thingie over him.) His career is dead, Jim.
> Would you rather be on a deathbed dying from an > illness you have no chance against, or having a chance > against that illness and not be able to afford it?
No, they are not. Expensive, new techniques are the result of people spending tons of money to develop products that save lives for profit. The choice isn't between cheap medicine for all or "just for the rich". The choice is between cheap, 1950's medicine in the year 2000 for all, or expensive, 2000 medicine in 2000.
What good is cheap AIDS medicine in 2050, when the greedy, evil, capitalist parallel world has already cured it?
We're already behind where the planet otherwise would be due to many countries having socialized medicine, which slows technological development just as it does in every other industry as last century murderously showed.
Of course, I'm sure this is all bunk, and that government-controlled health care would churn out awesomeness, just the way government-controlled automobile styles would r00l and government-controlled art would be fantastic and deep to contemplate. Oh, yea, it wouldn't. But I'm sure health care would be different from those industries! After all, we all have such emotional investment in the command-and-control concept, especially when approved by our own mind, that it doesn't seem bad, therefore it isn't. Objective reality doesn't exist, it's all about perception. Where's my homeopathic 2000 year old government-approved medicine?
> Corporations typically only spend at most 10-20% of their budget > on RND, which includes science.
As opposed to what, manufacturing? And what does this 10-20% amount to in dollars, vs. what the government spends? (And vs. what the government spends on actual, useful research, rather than buying off some anthropologist who's studying inner city vs. country mouse cockroach killing techniques?)
> Instead, they blamed biased reporting from brain tumour > sufferers who knew what side of the head their tumours were on
Reminds me of the studies of evil silicon breast implants, where the two groups had identical rates of lupus onset, joint problems, auto-immune problems, etc.
Also reminds me of the studies of evil Olestra potato chips. Turns out they have slightly less incidence of abdominal cramping than real potato chips. Didn't stop the common bozo from imagining problems, placebo-style, or from frauds selling themselves as talking heads on TV.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh yeah, well, umm, well the wrong cabin number of Yeoman Rand, as listed in teh famous Saturday Night Live skit was Y-390!
The maximum sustainable warp of Voyager at the start of the show was 9.997.
The interaction between Tuvok and Kleenex on that space elevator episode was intentionally homoerotic.
There have been two saliva-string lesbian kisses, one between Jadzia Dax and her former huband's guest star new female body, and Evil Ezri-Dax and Evil Kira.
There, how's that?
I can't wait to get a phaser that takes 5-6 shots to kill a rat, or to be a Vulcan, 10 times as strong as a human male, and have a tough time beating up a human ruffian behind Harcourt Fenton Mudd's bar.
/petition The ship went into warp and because of lag I got left behind in space and died.
Or to have to get to level 200 before I learn the Vulcan Neck Pinch, which will only work 1 of 10 times on humans, and even that'll get nerfed to never work ever on "boss humans".
Or to have to get to level 50 before I can go somewhere without having to run there on foot, from the only teleporter in the entire city to the other side of the city. And even then, my, umm, motorcycle I get for eight gazillion bars of gold-pressed latinum only moves about 2x the speed of a running human.
Yeah, I can't wait.
$100.00 to the first person who can produce a statue of my maximally-assied scrapper girl in bikini 2 briefs from City of Heroes! Ass width slider -> max, waist slider -> min, ahh, life is good.
What? You prefer to run around for hours behind a male character so you won't seem "gay"? Interesting...veddy veddy interesting...
I recall a female secretary loading a Ginger Lynn pr0n video on my 286, then asking me to start my computer to "get something" for her, then laughing when it started playing automatically. It was grainy as hell, but was, for lack of a better term, full motion video. God only knows what viruses would have been buried in that .exe file nowadays.
It occurs to me that, had this happened a few years later, I could have sued for 6 or 7 figures for permanent psychological damage and sexual harassment. She smoked at work at her desk, too. Son of a bitch was America a wild, crazy, lawless place back then before people figured out how to proscribe how other people should behave in intimate detail.
> I think that this is what this is all about.
> Some people really love cutscenes and others don't have much time for them.
The first time I played through BG II, I was playing co-op, and I watched the cut scene when my buddy didn't. Of course, it was a lot of scrolling text, but the same effect was achieved.
That's true, but I played it on hard (not that that was that much harder) plus I was delaying levelling up as much as possible, so that when I changed over to a Jedi I'd have many more Jedi levels, instead of just 10.
Hence I needed every last split second, which allowed the very first volley of grenades yet give me time to run away from his first volley.
Actually, the 4th time I played through the entire game, my Guardian was so powerful, and had such an amped lightsaber, that I 2-shotted the undead dark lord on the second encounter with him near the end of the game. To make life even more interesting, my "outfit" was the dancer's outfit the entire game, or at least from the point you get it onward. No Jedi or Sith robe for me. (Actually, I also had the first battle with him well in hand, too, but the game makes you flee anyway.) Oh, wait, I'm confusing KoToR and KoToR II. Ah, well, Debbie, Dark Lord of the Sith, rules regardless.
Life of the author + 20 (or whatever it used to be) is perfectly fine. It allows the creative author to get the maximum value out of their effort, and the +20 allows them to strike good financial deals with companies, without the companies having to worry about sudden death causing them to lose their investment immediately.
We wouldn't be in the situation we are in now if Congress weren't re-lengthening the program indefinitely.
Why even allow that? The standard ammendment proposed forbids deficit spending at all with the exception of war (a real, declared one) or 2/3 supermajority (or 60% or some such, whatever.)
If "issuing bonds" is such a good idea, you'll have no problem convincing Congress to pass a temporary deficit override.
Would still have loopholes a mile wide since people could still create "issues" ads that functionally attack one candidate because they attack an issue only one major candidate supports.
And if you're suggesting that be closed, too, I doubt it would have the effect you want, since now everybody is forbidden from broadcasting information about what our beloved, squirrely thieves of both parties are actually up to. That obviously cannot be your intent.
Nah, I'm with George Will on this one, why should the sum total of political spending, on the order of the marischino cherry industry, be considered a problem, especially when half of the candidates (the incumbants) get to spend, this year alone, $2.6 trillion, and to what? To convince the voters to re-elect them.
Nah, here're the ammendments we need:
A) Congress shall pass no law except with a 90% supermajority. If you cannot convince 9 of 10 people something should be a law, it shouldn't be. Why the cheesy 50.01% simple majority concept? A simple might makes right concept? Because some politician can briefly out-rhetoric the competition for the briefest of time? And have that law apply for all future time? Which leads us to:
B) All laws automatically expire every 5 years. Congress must re-approve (again, with 9/10 supermajority) or it goes bye-bye. And if Congress has too many laws they can't re-consider them all given five damned years then the general population certainly doesn't need to be bound by that godawfully large number of laws. This ammendment applies retroactively to current laws -- no grandfather clause.
> If you are downloading, you arent stealing
.sig, sir:
I agree, however, I also love rhetorical snaps. Your
> ---- Booth was a patriot ----
So stealing music is wrong, but stealing lives via enslaving people is A-OK?
> Right now, animal trials are just starting and it will
> take at least a decade before human trials begin. But
> when these living bandages are ready for cardiac care,
> they'll have the potential to save millions of lives
> in the world every year.
While I can see engineering taking awhile to develop something useful to humans, keep in mind that every year delayed "proving it" to arrogant government officials kills millions a year. Now explain to me why exactly they are a friend to humanity again?
One good cure for something like this, that's delayed a few years, delayed because of FDA-type bureaucracy will slaugter more people than all those the FDA "protects", even allowing for the wildest, slobbering socialist evils-of-corporations fantasies put together over the last 5 decades .
But it feels good, I guess, so that isn't actually happening. Couldn't be.
> You're exactly that. You're willing to sacrifice the Brooklyn Bridge
> (spared from attack because of spying) out of fear that someone
> might listen in on a conversation to Iraq or Afghanistan.
No, people are scared someone might listen in on political conversations and use them to their advantage, or learn some embarassing secrets and extort political advantage.
You know, just like J. Edgar used to do? That's what this is all about.
Not to mention, stunningly, he has the amazing IP address of 255.255.255.255. What a stoke of luck!
So free nations should sacrifice more troops just to save civilians on the evil side? I don't think so. Nice try.
The idea's hardly mine. I read a story in Niven's expanded universe (the one with the Kzin wars and Ringworld) wherein a guest author has an early battle between the best the Earth can produce (not properly deployed but with a big gun and a massive computer) vs. a standard single Kzin fighter. The fighter had "ablative armor", designed to burn away and thrust the ship out of the way of any laser or other beam burning into it.
Though maybe using computers to control the laser and it's contact with the object to direct it might be. =D
Is it so hard to just check if they've watched it before and, if they haven't, pop up a box that says "You haven't seen this before. It helps understanding of the plot. Are you sure you want to skip it?" to cover the worst-case scenario. Otherwise just let ESC escape.
Knights of the Old Republic allowed you to escape these, except if it required interaction, in which case certain sub-sequences had to be sat through. (Most notably, the battle vs. the final guy in the arena on the initial planet is tough, especially if you're on your first character playthrough. Hence you must repeat a dozen times, including the irritating cut scene.)
> You see, the joke was, Lim was pissed he lost his role as Mr. Sulu
You guys don't just know about this, but are arguing about it!
And I thought me knowing that Yeoman's Rand's (incorrect) cabin number as listed in the Saturday Night Live skit (Y-390) was a nerdly waste of brain cells. Christ almighty, I bow to you.
Hey! Be nice now. Some of the Deus were not Ex Machina. They were real.
> "Actually in the last film they made me a Captain".
In full context, evidently Sulu was pissed that his few moderate scenes in the whale movie were cut. Hence later on, he's captain of the Excelsior, and Kirk and the lads watch him fly away at the end of the next movie, saying "That's a big ship!" "Not half as big as 'er captain."
He got his due! Sulu got his due!
No shit. It's at least 75% who are strippers (or who will strip for him for money and prizes, or who are starlettes with pages on Mr. Skin dot com.)
Kirk (with a ripped shirt) is one of only two non-meta people (the other is Sean Connery 007) who it's generally agreed could beat up Batman.
Well, I suppose Frank Miller's Marv could also beat up modern, which is to say, Frank Miller's Batman.
May your party this weekend be attended by Abe Vigoda and Ernest Borgnine engaged in Vulcan finger sex.
> Hmm...so, with Sulu coming back, will we now have to
> suffer through the first futuristic, homosexual liplock?
No fewer than two lesbian, saliva-string kisses have occured. Jadzia Dax-to-guest actress, and Evil Ezri Dax to Evil Kira. Yes, later series chickened out, most notably and unfortunately no Hoshi-to-T'Pol big lip slamathons, though we did get some sweaty/oily mutual backrubbings.
Presumably, things would go this way:
(Sulu walks onto the bridge.)
Kirk: Sulu! Oh my god. It's ancient Sulu from the future! Gods, man! Sulu, what happened. WHAT HAPPENED?!?!? (grabbing upper arms and shaking him)
Sulu: Captain, I bring you a warning. You're gonna die a stupid death. On the positive side, it'll be climbing around on Wile-e-Coyote-style rock formations in California just like you always loved doing, like with the Gorn and that Plato guy and your old girlfriend or whoever the hell that ghosty chick was.
(Kirk looks as Spock. Spock raises an eyebrow.)
Sulu: Did you know you have a son? By the way, the Klingon's moon Praxis is going to explode in about 20 years. You might want to subtly encourage them via clandestine CIA manipulation to dump even more antimatter waste and neutronium. Perhaps it can take out their entire starsystem.
Kirk: You're kidding!
Sulu: I wish I were! (Suddenly looks woozy.)
Kirk: (catches him as he starts to fall.) Kirk to sickbay. Medical emergency on the bridge!
Sulu: Also...
Kirk: Also, what?
Sulu: Also...you must, you must destroy the Crusher family line. Just hand out some condoms to the ones currently alive should be sufficient. You need to...you need to....agk!
Kirk: Need to what? To WHAT? (shakes him gently again)
(McCoy runs in and waves the medical tricorder saltshaker thingie over him.) His career is dead, Jim.
> Would you rather be on a deathbed dying from an
> illness you have no chance against, or having a chance
> against that illness and not be able to afford it?
No, they are not. Expensive, new techniques are the result of people spending tons of money to develop products that save lives for profit. The choice isn't between cheap medicine for all or "just for the rich". The choice is between cheap, 1950's medicine in the year 2000 for all, or expensive, 2000 medicine in 2000.
What good is cheap AIDS medicine in 2050, when the greedy, evil, capitalist parallel world has already cured it?
We're already behind where the planet otherwise would be due to many countries having socialized medicine, which slows technological development just as it does in every other industry as last century murderously showed.
Of course, I'm sure this is all bunk, and that government-controlled health care would churn out awesomeness, just the way government-controlled automobile styles would r00l and government-controlled art would be fantastic and deep to contemplate. Oh, yea, it wouldn't. But I'm sure health care would be different from those industries! After all, we all have such emotional investment in the command-and-control concept, especially when approved by our own mind, that it doesn't seem bad, therefore it isn't. Objective reality doesn't exist, it's all about perception. Where's my homeopathic 2000 year old government-approved medicine?
> Corporations typically only spend at most 10-20% of their budget
> on RND, which includes science.
As opposed to what, manufacturing? And what does this 10-20% amount to in dollars, vs. what the government spends? (And vs. what the government spends on actual, useful research, rather than buying off some anthropologist who's studying inner city vs. country mouse cockroach killing techniques?)
> Instead, they blamed biased reporting from brain tumour
> sufferers who knew what side of the head their tumours were on
Reminds me of the studies of evil silicon breast implants, where the two groups had identical rates of lupus onset, joint problems, auto-immune problems, etc.
Also reminds me of the studies of evil Olestra potato chips. Turns out they have slightly less incidence of abdominal cramping than real potato chips. Didn't stop the common bozo from imagining problems, placebo-style, or from frauds selling themselves as talking heads on TV.