Well, I wouldn't worry, because as I said, amending the bill of rights is not something any politician in his right mind is going to ever even think about considering maybe hypothetically discussing. But I still don't think the Second is getting us anything positive today.
In anything vaugely resembling the US as it is today, if 100 million Americans decided to revolt, whether or not they had guns wouldn't matter.
For whether they have guns to matter, we must assume a society that has degraded to the point that meaningful elections are no longer being held, and where the better part of the armed forces are willing to attack ordinary citizens in support of the totalitarian government. And then tanks and warplanes and maybe nukes do matter. I really can't see a situation where the stuff the NRA argues about, particularly handguns, matter in terms of opposing an oppressive government.
Looking at "revolts" in modern times it seems to me that the ones that involve armed resistance turn into eternal guerrilla wars, and the government becomes more repressive. But there have been several quite effective ones that involve a significant fraction of the populace just marching through the streets in mass protests instead of going to their jobs until the repressive government caves.
I don't think it works anymore to ensure the ability for armed revolt. So we must be vigilant to make sure our society stays sufficiently on track that the military won't be willing to slaughter vast numbers of the populace. If the military is ready to do that (as they are some places) you don't have any real hope for an internal overthrow. If not, a peaceful shutdown of society will work better than armed resistance anyway.
Actually, I think that's exactly what they had in mind. They'd just done it a few years earlier, so they probably didn't consider armed rebellion to be automatically a bad thing. They didn't expect the government wouldn't try to stop an armed rebellion. They just wanted to ensure that if most of the citizens were part of an armed rebellion, the government wouldn't be able to stop them. I beleive they realized that military power ultimately trumps any other kind. That the only way to garauntee the government would not become opressive was to ensure that ordinary citizens, if they acted collectively, would be the dominant military force in the country. In their day, that could be acheived (and was, by them a few years earlier) so long as those citizens had access to weapons.
These days, citizens can not become the dominant military force in the country. Unless we have the right to bear nuclear weapons. Which the second ammendment pretty clearly grants. If I'm part of a well regulated militia, my right to bear arms shall not be infringed. Saying, yes, but not those arms is obvuiously infringing. Since that would obviously be insane, we've engaged in all sorts of legal contortions to reduce the second to more sane levels. It would make much more sense to amend the constitution to drop the second, and admit that we have lost that garauntee against oppressive government, so we'd better pay attention. But the Bill of Rights has atained such a sacrosanct status, that that will never happen. So the NRA will keep playing their stupid game of opposing all gun regulation, no matter how sensible in the guise of defending our constitutional right to bear arms. And no politician is going to commit the heresy of admiting that the rights the founders intended to grant in the second amendment are already gone, and nobody sane would want them to still be around anyway.
"RMS gets pissed (if I read this right) because people by and large steadfastly refuse to be idealists"
I'm perfectly willing to be an idealist much of the time; it's just that I have different ideals then RMS. One of my ideals is that I think software should be as good as possible. Contributing to open source projects is one way to pursue this ideal. Rewarding (financially) proprietary vendors of high-quality software is another.
Speaking as a Boulder hippie (I know some actual hippies, and I am not one, but anyway)... I don't drive more than people who live in big cities, since I hardly drive at all. Actually, I'd consider Boulder to be living in a small city. I agree with you about the idiocy of living way out in the Mountains and commuting into Boulder, but living in some suburb and commuting into a bigger city is just as stupid, and a lot more people do it. The question, as far as I'm concerned, is do you have to drive to get to your job, the supermarket, a restaurant, whatever leisure activities you enjoy, etc. If the answer is yes to more than half, maybe you should move. If, as is the case with vast numbers of suburbanites, the answer is yes, I have to drive to get to anything but other peoples houses, that's stupid; It's just insanely wasteful to live somewhere that you have to drive to do anything. Even besides being wasteful of resources, it's a waste of your life. I don't see why people put up with it. I've lived where I had an hour commute, now I walk home for lunch if I feel like it. I can never go back, so sorry, I can't stand living in the big city. But most people (in the US) don't live in the city. Most people live in the suburbs, and drive into the city every day. The other option is to stop building vast tracts of purely residential development, with nothing for people to do there but drive somewhere else.
But he actually specified he's going to swim from Norway to America by way of Greenland. i.e. against the North Atlantic current. Since said current flows slightly faster than the fastest swimmers swim, this whole disscussion is silly, because he's not actually going to do it.
No, doing it incorrectly is what makes space probes die. Just as many errors result from using units one is unfamiliar with. Raised in the US, I am, sadly, most familiar with US units. Ideally I'd do everything in SI units. But, if you too were raised in the US, can you tell me off the top of your head what a reasonable swimming speed is in meters per second?
OK, adding gulf stream velocity, including when he was resing in the boat, gets the numbers in the right ballpark. But that means the gulf stream provided much more of the propulsion than he did.
It's an impressive feat to be sure, but it seems it would be most accurate to say he swam a lot while floating across the Atlantic in a boat. Most of his distance would have been covered while in the boat.
"An organism attempting to maximize its survival is about the most "natural" process you can find; why do environmentalists object to humans doing this?"
"enviromentalists" is a big group, with a variety of positions, some of them looney. (Note that you can substitue pretty much any large political group as the quoted word in that sentence.) I consider myself an environmentalist, and speaking for myself, and at least quite a few others I know:
We do not object to humans attempting to maximize our survival; in fact, that is exactly what we are arguing in favor of. We think society currently tries to maximise quality of life in the (very) short term, at the expense of the long, or even medium term. Yes, humans can control enviromental factors to a far greater extent than animals, or even humans of previous generations, and that is a good thing. Perhaps we should think about how best to use that power, even if just to benefit ourselves.
If he were actually going to do the swim, and we assume he plans to do it by swiming at an elite-endurance-swimmer pace 12 hour a day, a year is about how long it would take. Which is to say, the put the date of the update 24 days too late.
5600km in 72 6-8 hour days. Doing the math and translating some units, that's roughy 7 miles per hour on average. Nobody swims that fast, even for short distances. Just using numbers from that same page, the record holders for swimming the English Channel average about 1.5 miles per hour.
PJ is a smart and funny guy. But in that quote he's being a humorist at the expense of being a historian.
In short, the founders weren't religious fanatics. They were perhaps some of the least religious people of their time, and they certainly feared religious fanatacism. They tried hard to set up the government so as to keep religion out of it.
Religious fanatics do all sorts of nasty things, and they can't be reasoned with; fearing them is hardly a knee-jerk reaction.
And if you think it's unreasonable to fear religious fanatics when they have guns, you have not been paying attention.
I entirely agree with everything you said except this:
"the average Joe doesn't have a clue how to make a good piece of music"
The average Joe, in modern American society, never tries to make music. I, like other members of that society, get my music from CDs, and rarely sing, except for silly songs for my kids. But I've visited a couple other societies where this is not the case. For example, the society my uncle and his family inhabit: hippie-back-to-the-land-Canadians. They don't own CD players (no electricity), but as many evenings as not will find a bunch of people sitting around singing and playing music. They are not particualarly talented, but that music is considerably more enjoyable than anything on CD.
The RIAA "monopoly" on music is entirely consumer granted. It doesn't matter if they have the copyright to some music; listen to something else; make something else.
But they are not damned if they do AND don't. They will be whined at if they don't support the standard, naturally. Just as naturally, they will be whined at if their new version refuses to compile code their previous version compiled warning free. They should have provided the ability to select standards-compliant behavior or previous-version-compliant behavior. This should be obvious, and apparently was to both the commercial compilers I have knowledge of. Personally, I prefer my compiler, and my code, to be standards compliant. But since the latter might take quite a lot of work on my part, I'd like to be able to choose when I want to deal with it.
Well, you're entitled to your opinion, but I don't see it. Having to suddenly deal with unplanned change is called life, Linus seems to have done so in his typical highly competent manner. Many have accused Linus of hubris because he sticks to what he thinks is the right decision regardless of its unpopularity. This is hardly the first issue on which he's done so, and confidence in him has survived before. In fact, most highly-competent people I've dealt with share this tendency. Linus has pretty good reason to beleive he is better at running a development project than the average.
I say the decision didn't turn out badly because it looks to me like Linus got a net positive effect from using BK. The only downside I've heard of at all is other peoples negative perceptions, which Linus quite rightly ignores.
No, sorry, I'm not too smart; heck I'm not even smart enough to understand how one could be too smart. I mean, too smart for what?
Anyway, please, have pity on poor dopey me, and explain what super clever point you were making by asking how I knew you thought the movies weren't that bad the very post after you said exactly that. To one as dumb as poor little me, it sure looks like you just said something idiotic, and are pretending there was some deeper meaning I was missing. I'm sure that's not the case, since you obviously are too smart for that. So please, walk through it real slow, so even a dope like me can understand your brilliance.
Why exactly should he learn a lesson? Is he without any data because it was "held hostage"? No. Was he more productive for a while thanks to BK? Yes. Did he learn valuable things about how to set up a SC system to be helpful to him, which he'll now apply to Git? Yes. One generally "learns a lesson" by making a decision that turns out badly for one. Linus does not seem to feel that the decision to use BK turned out badly, and I fail to see why he should.
Of course the internet had inventors. Talk about it "evolving" all you want, it didn't just crawl up out of the muck on it's own; people thought it up, designed it, built it, in short, invented it. You point out that many different people deserve credit for their contributions, which is absolutely true. But some people deserve more credit than others, and Vint Cerf has got to be pretty near the top of any reasonable list.
Who says the turing test is about conversational ability? The test is really meant to be a thought experiment. Turing was saying, if you are talking to a human and to a machine, and you can't tell which is which, how can you say the machine is not intelligent? The nice part about this test is that it doesn't matter what definition of intelligence you like. If you want to ask the entities you are talking to to solve some problems that require pattern recognition, feel free. If you ask whatever you want, and still can't tell who's the human, Turing argues you must accept that the machine is intelligent. And note that by intelligent, we mean sentient. A machine that couldn't be distinguished from a fairly dumb human would stil be pretty interesting.
Turing really meant the test as a thought experiment to challenge people who might claim that it was simply impossible for a machine to ever be sentient. People have naturally thought about actually attempting the test anyway, but haven't gotten very far. i.e. you can still pick the machines by their lack of basic conversational ability, you don't even get to the point of asking complicated questions, trying to trip up the machine.
On a side note, you assert that invariant pattern recognition is the mark of true intelligence, and that this is nearly undisputed. Well, I'll dispute it. Invariant pattern recognition, and related skills, are one of many aspects of intelligence; their advantage is that they are the aspects that are most easily subject to testing on an IQ test. I also do fairly well on IQ tests. My wife doesn't do quite as well on IQ tests, but she can fairly easily write a short story you'll find interesting to read, while I can right one that is articulate, but boring. Clearly, IQ test taking and short story writing are both purely mental activities, dependent on ones intelligence. Just because pattern recognition, etc. are the testable aspects of intelligence, doesn't mean they are all there is. Frankly, I'd assume a machine will be able to kick your and my ass on an IQ test long before one can compete with my wife at writing a story, or with anyone at holding an interesting conversation.
Well, call me crazy, but when someone says, "in actuality, the movies aren't that bad", I conclude that they think the movies, uh, aren't that bad. And when they incredulously questijn such a conclusion, I further conclude they are just trying to be difficult, but aren't smart enough to do it effectively.
Sure! Anyone can get sued, at least theoretically. You won't, however, be sued successfully in this particular case, because you have not committed fraud, which the people Google is suing have (assuming Googles allegations are accurate).
"...I think it's the same thing, don't you?"
Did you sign a contract where you agreed not to click on the religious links or to take the pamphlets? No? Then, no, I don't think it's the same thing, and neither does our legal system.
"What's to stop server side code from parsing the XForms "
There's nothing to stop you from doing it that way. It's just slower by a round-trip to the server (which could be a little or a lot), and uses server resources instead of client resources, when the latter are generally more available.
Personally, I like to occasionally try my software using a slow dialup account several time-zones away from the server, since that will be the environment for plenty of my users. I avoid network round trips like the plaugue.
"I never said anything about the first two movies"
Right, but you do in fact think they are "not that bad". It seems pretty reasonable that people who have opinions on the probable quality of this movie are basing those assumptions on the previous two.
"the first ones were kinda bad in the same sense (in terms of acting and whatnot)." I thought the acting in the first ones was better, but I'll readily admit it wasn't that great. The acting, while it didn't help much, isn't really why the last two sucked. They sucked because the writing was lame, and they had none of the sense of a great struggle between good and evil. We cared what happened to Luke because even despite his whiny acting, his charachter had sufficient development that we got to know who he was, and were rooting for him. We're supposed to care what happens to Anakin because we're told right from the start he's important, but he's really just a bratty kid, or an adolescent to tediously angstful to stand. Oh, nevermind. I could go on as long as you like about why (IMO) the new ones don't work, but it doesn't really matter.
You're correct, the new movies don't get me all giddy like they did when I was nine. But they don't get current nine-year-olds all giddy either, nor any significant number of people of any demographic. The last two movies ran for a few months and did pretty well I guess. The original Star Wars was playing at a theater near me for several years. The original is a tough yardstick, but what are we supposed to measure sequels against? The new ones have not had nearly the critical or popular acclaim. What bugs me is that it seems pretty easy to see why.
"Here's one you didn't see coming: Darth Vader is only in the last 5 minutes."
Why the hell wouldn't we see that coming? Darth Vader is a menacing dramatic antagonist; he's part of what made the first movie good. Obviously we're not going to see much of that. It's easy to seee things coming with this movie; just ask yourself, which would I rather see, more Vader or less Vader? More Vader. So obviously the movie will have less Vader.
What I think is funny is the people like you coming out saying the last two movies were actually good (and thus this one will be) because you think it's cool to be different; an obvious sign that you are able to look deeper into these movies than the rest of us. There's nothing wrong with being different, but there isn't any "deeper" in these movies. Almost everyone doesn't like them. Maybe we're all mysteriously blind to the qualities you have the near unique insight to see. Or maybe the movies just blow chunks.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I wouldn't worry, because as I said, amending the bill of rights is not something any politician in his right mind is going to ever even think about considering maybe hypothetically discussing. But I still don't think the Second is getting us anything positive today.
In anything vaugely resembling the US as it is today, if 100 million Americans decided to revolt, whether or not they had guns wouldn't matter.
For whether they have guns to matter, we must assume a society that has degraded to the point that meaningful elections are no longer being held, and where the better part of the armed forces are willing to attack ordinary citizens in support of the totalitarian government. And then tanks and warplanes and maybe nukes do matter.
I really can't see a situation where the stuff the NRA argues about, particularly handguns, matter in terms of opposing an oppressive government.
Looking at "revolts" in modern times it seems to me that the ones that involve armed resistance turn into eternal guerrilla wars, and the government becomes more repressive. But there have been several quite effective ones that involve a significant fraction of the populace just marching through the streets in mass protests instead of going to their jobs until the repressive government caves.
I don't think it works anymore to ensure the ability for armed revolt. So we must be vigilant to make sure our society stays sufficiently on track that the military won't be willing to slaughter vast numbers of the populace. If the military is ready to do that (as they are some places) you don't have any real hope for an internal overthrow. If not, a peaceful shutdown of society will work better than armed resistance anyway.
Actually, I think that's exactly what they had in mind. They'd just done it a few years earlier, so they probably didn't consider armed rebellion to be automatically a bad thing. They didn't expect the government wouldn't try to stop an armed rebellion. They just wanted to ensure that if most of the citizens were part of an armed rebellion, the government wouldn't be able to stop them.
I beleive they realized that military power ultimately trumps any other kind. That the only way to garauntee the government would not become opressive was to ensure that ordinary citizens, if they acted collectively, would be the dominant military force in the country. In their day, that could be acheived (and was, by them a few years earlier) so long as those citizens had access to weapons.
These days, citizens can not become the dominant military force in the country. Unless we have the right to bear nuclear weapons. Which the second ammendment pretty clearly grants. If I'm part of a well regulated militia, my right to bear arms shall not be infringed. Saying, yes, but not those arms is obvuiously infringing. Since that would obviously be insane, we've engaged in all sorts of legal contortions to reduce the second to more sane levels. It would make much more sense to amend the constitution to drop the second, and admit that we have lost that garauntee against oppressive government, so we'd better pay attention. But the Bill of Rights has atained such a sacrosanct status, that that will never happen. So the NRA will keep playing their stupid game of opposing all gun regulation, no matter how sensible in the guise of defending our constitutional right to bear arms. And no politician is going to commit the heresy of admiting that the rights the founders intended to grant in the second amendment are already gone, and nobody sane would want them to still be around anyway.
"RMS gets pissed (if I read this right) because people by and large steadfastly refuse to be idealists"
I'm perfectly willing to be an idealist much of the time; it's just that I have different ideals then RMS. One of my ideals is that I think software should be as good as possible. Contributing to open source projects is one way to pursue this ideal. Rewarding (financially) proprietary vendors of high-quality software is another.
Speaking as a Boulder hippie (I know some actual hippies, and I am not one, but anyway)... I don't drive more than people who live in big cities, since I hardly drive at all. Actually, I'd consider Boulder to be living in a small city. I agree with you about the idiocy of living way out in the Mountains and commuting into Boulder, but living in some suburb and commuting into a bigger city is just as stupid, and a lot more people do it. The question, as far as I'm concerned, is do you have to drive to get to your job, the supermarket, a restaurant, whatever leisure activities you enjoy, etc. If the answer is yes to more than half, maybe you should move. If, as is the case with vast numbers of suburbanites, the answer is yes, I have to drive to get to anything but other peoples houses, that's stupid;
It's just insanely wasteful to live somewhere that you have to drive to do anything. Even besides being wasteful of resources, it's a waste of your life. I don't see why people put up with it. I've lived where I had an hour commute, now I walk home for lunch if I feel like it. I can never go back, so sorry, I can't stand living in the big city. But most people (in the US) don't live in the city. Most people live in the suburbs, and drive into the city every day. The other option is to stop building vast tracts of purely residential development, with nothing for people to do there but drive somewhere else.
But he actually specified he's going to swim from Norway to America by way of Greenland. i.e. against the North Atlantic current. Since said current flows slightly faster than the fastest swimmers swim, this whole disscussion is silly, because he's not actually going to do it.
No, doing it incorrectly is what makes space probes die. Just as many errors result from using units one is unfamiliar with. Raised in the US, I am, sadly, most familiar with US units. Ideally I'd do everything in SI units. But, if you too were raised in the US, can you tell me off the top of your head what a reasonable swimming speed is in meters per second?
OK, adding gulf stream velocity, including when he was resing in the boat, gets the numbers in the right ballpark. But that means the gulf stream provided much more of the propulsion than he did.
It's an impressive feat to be sure, but it seems it would be most accurate to say he swam a lot while floating across the Atlantic in a boat. Most of his distance would have been covered while in the boat.
"An organism attempting to maximize its survival is about the most "natural" process you can find; why do environmentalists object to humans doing this?"
"enviromentalists" is a big group, with a variety of positions, some of them looney. (Note that you can substitue pretty much any large political group as the quoted word in that sentence.) I consider myself an environmentalist, and speaking for myself, and at least quite a few others I know:
We do not object to humans attempting to maximize our survival; in fact, that is exactly what we are arguing in favor of. We think society currently tries to maximise quality of life in the (very) short term, at the expense of the long, or even medium term. Yes, humans can control enviromental factors to a far greater extent than animals, or even humans of previous generations, and that is a good thing. Perhaps we should think about how best to use that power, even if just to benefit ourselves.
If he were actually going to do the swim, and we assume he plans to do it by swiming at an elite-endurance-swimmer pace 12 hour a day, a year is about how long it would take. Which is to say, the put the date of the update 24 days too late.
Somethings not right there.
5600km in 72 6-8 hour days. Doing the math and translating some units, that's roughy 7 miles per hour on average. Nobody swims that fast, even for short distances. Just using numbers from that same page, the record holders for swimming the English Channel average about 1.5 miles per hour.
PJ is a smart and funny guy. But in that quote he's being a humorist at the expense of being a historian.
In short, the founders weren't religious fanatics. They were perhaps some of the least religious people of their time, and they certainly feared religious fanatacism. They tried hard to set up the government so as to keep religion out of it.
Religious fanatics do all sorts of nasty things, and they can't be reasoned with; fearing them is hardly a knee-jerk reaction.
And if you think it's unreasonable to fear religious fanatics when they have guns, you have not been paying attention.
I entirely agree with everything you said except this:
"the average Joe doesn't have a clue how to make a good piece of music"
The average Joe, in modern American society, never tries to make music. I, like other members of that society, get my music from CDs, and rarely sing, except for silly songs for my kids. But I've visited a couple other societies where this is not the case. For example, the society my uncle and his family inhabit: hippie-back-to-the-land-Canadians. They don't own CD players (no electricity), but as many evenings as not will find a bunch of people sitting around singing and playing music. They are not particualarly talented, but that music is considerably more enjoyable than anything on CD.
The RIAA "monopoly" on music is entirely consumer granted. It doesn't matter if they have the copyright to some music; listen to something else; make something else.
But they are not damned if they do AND don't. They will be whined at if they don't support the standard, naturally. Just as naturally, they will be whined at if their new version refuses to compile code their previous version compiled warning free. They should have provided the ability to select standards-compliant behavior or previous-version-compliant behavior. This should be obvious, and apparently was to both the commercial compilers I have knowledge of.
Personally, I prefer my compiler, and my code, to be standards compliant. But since the latter might take quite a lot of work on my part, I'd like to be able to choose when I want to deal with it.
Because there wasn't a standard when we wrote the code.
Well, you're entitled to your opinion, but I don't see it. Having to suddenly deal with unplanned change is called life, Linus seems to have done so in his typical highly competent manner. Many have accused Linus of hubris because he sticks to what he thinks is the right decision regardless of its unpopularity. This is hardly the first issue on which he's done so, and confidence in him has survived before. In fact, most highly-competent people I've dealt with share this tendency. Linus has pretty good reason to beleive he is better at running a development project than the average.
I say the decision didn't turn out badly because it looks to me like Linus got a net positive effect from using BK. The only downside I've heard of at all is other peoples negative perceptions, which Linus quite rightly ignores.
No, sorry, I'm not too smart; heck I'm not even smart enough to understand how one could be too smart. I mean, too smart for what?
Anyway, please, have pity on poor dopey me, and explain what super clever point you were making by asking how I knew you thought the movies weren't that bad the very post after you said exactly that. To one as dumb as poor little me, it sure looks like you just said something idiotic, and are pretending there was some deeper meaning I was missing. I'm sure that's not the case, since you obviously are too smart for that. So please, walk through it real slow, so even a dope like me can understand your brilliance.
Why exactly should he learn a lesson?
Is he without any data because it was "held hostage"? No. Was he more productive for a while thanks to BK? Yes. Did he learn valuable things about how to set up a SC system to be helpful to him, which he'll now apply to Git? Yes.
One generally "learns a lesson" by making a decision that turns out badly for one. Linus does not seem to feel that the decision to use BK turned out badly, and I fail to see why he should.
Of course the internet had inventors. Talk about it "evolving" all you want, it didn't just crawl up out of the muck on it's own; people thought it up, designed it, built it, in short, invented it. You point out that many different people deserve credit for their contributions, which is absolutely true. But some people deserve more credit than others, and Vint Cerf has got to be pretty near the top of any reasonable list.
uh, yeah, whatever you say.
Who says the turing test is about conversational ability? The test is really meant to be a thought experiment. Turing was saying, if you are talking to a human and to a machine, and you can't tell which is which, how can you say the machine is not intelligent? The nice part about this test is that it doesn't matter what definition of intelligence you like. If you want to ask the entities you are talking to to solve some problems that require pattern recognition, feel free. If you ask whatever you want, and still can't tell who's the human, Turing argues you must accept that the machine is intelligent. And note that by intelligent, we mean sentient. A machine that couldn't be distinguished from a fairly dumb human would stil be pretty interesting.
Turing really meant the test as a thought experiment to challenge people who might claim that it was simply impossible for a machine to ever be sentient. People have naturally thought about actually attempting the test anyway, but haven't gotten very far. i.e. you can still pick the machines by their lack of basic conversational ability, you don't even get to the point of asking complicated questions, trying to trip up the machine.
On a side note, you assert that invariant pattern recognition is the mark of true intelligence, and that this is nearly undisputed. Well, I'll dispute it. Invariant pattern recognition, and related skills, are one of many aspects of intelligence; their advantage is that they are the aspects that are most easily subject to testing on an IQ test. I also do fairly well on IQ tests. My wife doesn't do quite as well on IQ tests, but she can fairly easily write a short story you'll find interesting to read, while I can right one that is articulate, but boring. Clearly, IQ test taking and short story writing are both purely mental activities, dependent on ones intelligence. Just because pattern recognition, etc. are the testable aspects of intelligence, doesn't mean they are all there is. Frankly, I'd assume a machine will be able to kick your and my ass on an IQ test long before one can compete with my wife at writing a story, or with anyone at holding an interesting conversation.
Well, call me crazy, but when someone says, "in actuality, the movies aren't that bad", I conclude that they think the movies, uh, aren't that bad. And when they incredulously questijn such a conclusion, I further conclude they are just trying to be difficult, but aren't smart enough to do it effectively.
"...can I get sued now?"
Sure! Anyone can get sued, at least theoretically. You won't, however, be sued successfully in this particular case, because you have not committed fraud, which the people Google is suing have (assuming Googles allegations are accurate).
"...I think it's the same thing, don't you?"
Did you sign a contract where you agreed not to click on the religious links or to take the pamphlets? No? Then, no, I don't think it's the same thing, and neither does our legal system.
"What's to stop server side code from parsing the XForms "
There's nothing to stop you from doing it that way. It's just slower by a round-trip to the server (which could be a little or a lot), and uses server resources instead of client resources, when the latter are generally more available.
Personally, I like to occasionally try my software using a slow dialup account several time-zones away from the server, since that will be the environment for plenty of my users. I avoid network round trips like the plaugue.
"I never said anything about the first two movies"
Right, but you do in fact think they are "not that bad". It seems pretty reasonable that people who have opinions on the probable quality of this movie are basing those assumptions on the previous two.
"the first ones were kinda bad in the same sense (in terms of acting and whatnot)."
I thought the acting in the first ones was better, but I'll readily admit it wasn't that great. The acting, while it didn't help much, isn't really why the last two sucked. They sucked because the writing was lame, and they had none of the sense of a great struggle between good and evil. We cared what happened to Luke because even despite his whiny acting, his charachter had sufficient development that we got to know who he was, and were rooting for him. We're supposed to care what happens to Anakin because we're told right from the start he's important, but he's really just a bratty kid, or an adolescent to tediously angstful to stand. Oh, nevermind. I could go on as long as you like about why (IMO) the new ones don't work, but it doesn't really matter.
You're correct, the new movies don't get me all giddy like they did when I was nine. But they don't get current nine-year-olds all giddy either, nor any significant number of people of any demographic. The last two movies ran for a few months and did pretty well I guess. The original Star Wars was playing at a theater near me for several years. The original is a tough yardstick, but what are we supposed to measure sequels against? The new ones have not had nearly the critical or popular acclaim. What bugs me is that it seems pretty easy to see why.
"Here's one you didn't see coming: Darth Vader is only in the last 5 minutes."
Why the hell wouldn't we see that coming? Darth Vader is a menacing dramatic antagonist; he's part of what made the first movie good. Obviously we're not going to see much of that. It's easy to seee things coming with this movie; just ask yourself, which would I rather see, more Vader or less Vader? More Vader. So obviously the movie will have less Vader.
What I think is funny is the people like you coming out saying the last two movies were actually good (and thus this one will be) because you think it's cool to be different; an obvious sign that you are able to look deeper into these movies than the rest of us. There's nothing wrong with being different, but there isn't any "deeper" in these movies. Almost everyone doesn't like them. Maybe we're all mysteriously blind to the qualities you have the near unique insight to see. Or maybe the movies just blow chunks.