Most individuals can control themselves, but there is a substantial group of people for whom no legal penalties will be enough to discourage their behavior.
That's true of every crime I can think of. That's why we like to keep people who have demonstrated that legal penalties don't discourage them in prison, where they can do no further harm. Legal penalties may not aways be a deterent to crime, but they sure as hell can be an impediment to it.
It's sucking money away from more economical but less glamorous scientific projects
I'm as fascinated as anyone by the many amazing discoveries and achievements of NASA over the years, but it has been "sucking money" from more useful scientific and social research long before the space station came along. I'm all for the exploration of the solar system, but first why don't we devote these hundreds of millions of dollars to more pressing needs? Like curing AIDS? Or ending poverty? Treating cancer? Ending warfare? It's a matter of priorities. Let the government work on solving our problems here on earth first. Making sure that all the world's children go to bed with a full stomach is more important than, say, learning the chemical composition of the Jovian atmospehere.
Well here's a bill that's likely to have some unintended consequences. In outlawing so much of the software which they feel is a threat to "the national information infrastructure", they've also made it difficult for computer professionals to use the tools they need to test and evaluate the security of that same infrastructure. Computer security experts, it seems, will have to work for the government -- either that or have to consult lawyers on a daily basis to avoid inadvertently breaking the law in the course of their duties. As a result Australia will end up with some of the most insecure networks in the world.
The military is looking at using the system for many of its operations in foreign countries, Palmquist notes. "It is very intimidating when a Marine carrying a gun comes up to a civilian and asks a question and the civilian can't understand it," he says. "If you could more easily communicate with that person, a lot of tension is relieved. There is a certain benefit when the military is able to communicate with the local populace."
Imagine a heavily armed marine striding up to you, asking you a question, and depending on a machine to translate the response. Would any us who have used babelfish want our lives to depend on this technolgy? Yikes. The only question would be, should I just keep my mouth shut, or should I run like hell?
Your knee must have jerked with such violence that you couldn't even be bothered to understand what I wrote before you posted.
Hey you heard him! No bullshit in fiction.
Did you miss the phrase "after the fact?"
Even if you didn't, does your definition of bullshit include "a fantastic but for the most part internally coherent system of physics in a sci-fi or fantasy universe." If it makes you feel any better, mine doesn't.
Not all sci-fi has to 'hard' sci-fi.
I didn't say it did. I didn't refer to "all sci-fi." I did refer to "bad sci-fi," and you seem determined to think that phrase refers to whatever kind of sci-fi you happen to like. *shrug*
I'm a big fan of PKD's work and it has little to do with the assumptions of scientific materialism. It isn't wacko, its art.
Er, I'm a fan of Philip K. Dick too. But we were talking about actors in films or television, not characters in novels. Hollywood doesn't give shit about hard sci-fi, or soft sci-fi, or PKD, or "the assumptions of scientific materialism," or art. They just care about whatever they can get a bunch of morons in a preview screening or focus group to believe -- whether or not it insults my intelligence, or yours.
My guess is that it's cheaper to float your actors with special effects than to send them up and shoot them in real zero gravity.
Or you could just use the old tried and true method of bad sci-fi. Simply don't float your actors at all, ignore physics completely, and hope your audience is too stupid to notice. And if anyone does notice, make up some bullshit about "artifical gravity" and "inertia dampeners" after the fact.
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly, they were pretty much irrelevent to the movie makers as well.
From the article:
Most individuals can control themselves, but there is a substantial group of people for whom no legal penalties will be enough to discourage their behavior.
That's true of every crime I can think of. That's why we like to keep people who have demonstrated that legal penalties don't discourage them in prison, where they can do no further harm. Legal penalties may not aways be a deterent to crime, but they sure as hell can be an impediment to it.
I'm as fascinated as anyone by the many amazing discoveries and achievements of NASA over the years, but it has been "sucking money" from more useful scientific and social research long before the space station came along. I'm all for the exploration of the solar system, but first why don't we devote these hundreds of millions of dollars to more pressing needs? Like curing AIDS? Or ending poverty? Treating cancer? Ending warfare? It's a matter of priorities. Let the government work on solving our problems here on earth first. Making sure that all the world's children go to bed with a full stomach is more important than, say, learning the chemical composition of the Jovian atmospehere.
Well here's a bill that's likely to have some unintended consequences. In outlawing so much of the software which they feel is a threat to "the national information infrastructure", they've also made it difficult for computer professionals to use the tools they need to test and evaluate the security of that same infrastructure. Computer security experts, it seems, will have to work for the government -- either that or have to consult lawyers on a daily basis to avoid inadvertently breaking the law in the course of their duties. As a result Australia will end up with some of the most insecure networks in the world.
Imagine a heavily armed marine striding up to you, asking you a question, and depending on a machine to translate the response. Would any us who have used babelfish want our lives to depend on this technolgy? Yikes. The only question would be, should I just keep my mouth shut, or should I run like hell?
Hey you heard him! No bullshit in fiction.
Did you miss the phrase "after the fact?"
Even if you didn't, does your definition of bullshit include "a fantastic but for the most part internally coherent system of physics in a sci-fi or fantasy universe." If it makes you feel any better, mine doesn't.
Not all sci-fi has to 'hard' sci-fi.
I didn't say it did. I didn't refer to "all sci-fi." I did refer to "bad sci-fi," and you seem determined to think that phrase refers to whatever kind of sci-fi you happen to like. *shrug*
I'm a big fan of PKD's work and it has little to do with the assumptions of scientific materialism. It isn't wacko, its art.
Er, I'm a fan of Philip K. Dick too. But we were talking about actors in films or television, not characters in novels. Hollywood doesn't give shit about hard sci-fi, or soft sci-fi, or PKD, or "the assumptions of scientific materialism," or art. They just care about whatever they can get a bunch of morons in a preview screening or focus group to believe -- whether or not it insults my intelligence, or yours.
Or you could just use the old tried and true method of bad sci-fi. Simply don't float your actors at all, ignore physics completely, and hope your audience is too stupid to notice. And if anyone does notice, make up some bullshit about "artifical gravity" and "inertia dampeners" after the fact.