RDM is good and not just as a producer. Perhaps more importantly as a writer: for 33, Water, and the Kobols Last Gleaming pt1 teleplay and pt2 story and teleplay. So it's not fair to only think of him as a producer. He is also one of the best writers for the series. I can only speculate whether he is also the one who directly determines the overall story arc for the the team of writers to follow.
But don't forget to give credit to David Eick (story for Kobols Last Gleaming pt1), Michael Angeli (writer for Six Degrees of Seperation - s1e07), as well as Michael Rymer and Robert Young (s1e07 director) for their excellent directing skills. These are the people (in addition to the actors) mostly responsible for raising this show to a level far above most television.
And then there is the amazing pilot/mini-series that got everyone's attention. RDM did the writing for that along with Christopher James and Michael Rymer did the directing. IMO, only episodes 07 and 12 rose anywhere near to the film quality of the pilot. The rest were just somewhat better (to varying degrees depending on the writer) than most TV scifi. A lot of the tension of 'The Terminator meets Blade Runner at the end of the world' was lost once the series started, at least for me. I can only guess that maintaining all the episodes at pilot quality would be too expensive. Or at least that's what I would like to think.
Season 2 shows no sign of getting back to that level either with the military strategy writers Bradley Thompson and David Weddle kicking things off. Not that I thought s2e01 was actually bad. It's just nowhere near the potential of the series relying on cliched just-in-the-nick-of-time military scenarios to build tension and suspense. Michael Rymer is above the level of virtually any TV series director, but even he can only do so much with the script he is given.
I am looking forward to some scripts by RDM, David Eick, and Michael Angeli. I can only hope that they have written at least some of the shows for season 2. Even Toni Graphia is preferable to Carla Robinson, Jeff Flaming, and the Thompson/Weddle team. I so hope that Robinson and Flaming no longer write for this or any other scifi show. I don't need to see any more comedy variety shows, court dramas blatently copied from ST:TNG episodes, top gun rip-offs, or spaceship hulls patched with flight jackets before high-G maneuvers. The quality of the show depends on the quality of the writing.
However that is not really the case for some of the writers for the new BSG. Several of them used to write for lawyer TV shows and that kind of thing. The writers for the season 2 premiere were previously story editors, not writers (except for the previous season). They are used for the 'military strategy' episodes. Maybe they have military experience or have done previous work with military oriented shows.
Personally I hate this whole team-of-writers, different writer for every episode style of American TV writing. I think the British style of one writer per season makes for far better television. They should at least trim things down to the three best writers. A huge team of them is just ridiculous. How can you expect consistency that way? It's not so bad for planet-of-the-week episodes, but not a good strategy for a continuous story arc.
That aint you:). But it is funny. I just don't get whether it is for real or not. There should be a whole website for suicidal blogs. Now that's something I could sink my teeth into. Hot girls posting about how happy they are and how many guys checked them out makes me want to rape, torture, and kill them. And then kill them again. And then maybe rape them again. Saving the last bullet for myself of course.
"who cares about the jap kids, let the little bastards burn"
I can see that that is exactly what you are thinking. But you have zero evidence in support of that. Sure both the Japanese and the Germans were hated. As they hated Americans along with the British and Australians. It's called war. You are letting your anti-American prejudice cloud your judgment and logic. Ask yourself if you would feel the same way if a more sympathetic country had been the first to invent the bomb. Think they wouldn't have used it because it was 'wrong'? Think again.
The key point is the U.S. could have easily forced Japan into capitulation by nuking military targets, or at least stopping after Hiroshima.
So you think dropping the nuke on Hiroshima was a good idea then? As far as 'easily' goes, I don't know what history books you have been reading but I guarantee you they are heavily biased. They all are. You were not there. You cannot get inside the heads of the decision makers at the time. So you cannot know their motives. Period. They were military decisions. And Japan was no ordinary foe. They were not the kind of folks to surrender easily.
I personally believe that dropping the bombs was a mistake. But I wasn't alive then, and I am guessing that you weren't either. All we can go by are biased second hand accounts of biased second hand accounts of biased second hand accounts. Finding the real story that way is not easy. So maybe you should check that certainty of yours at the door.
The only thing I am certain of about that war is that Adolf Hitler and those willing to directly follow his orders were some of the most evil (not in a religious sense) human beings ever to be born on this planet. Unfortunately it is all too easy to justify almost any number of civilian deaths when fighting against such people. A tendency that may have carried over to the Japanese. The fact that some Japanese soldiers were also responsible for killing unarmed civilians in horrible ways is beside the point. I don't see how so many civilian casualties can be justified by the valid military targets. Conventional bombings should have sufficed. Although lots of civilians would still have died. Welcome to war. It isn't pretty.
It is actually a friggin' miracle (no, not in a religious sense) that Germany and Japan did not just take over the entire world. It is difficult to think of two more difficult foes. War was practically a religion in Japan and had been for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. And Germany had always been a leader in science and technology. And both cultures were known for their willingness to follow orders and for intense discipline and strong work ethics. With so much energy, intelligence, and ingenuity devoted exclusively to waging war, they were an awesome force.
The notion that America no matter what happened always were and are the good guys
Well my favorite defense of dropping the bombs on Japan is: "You started it". To me that's all that needs to be said. If the Japanese had not attacked Pearl Harbor, the US may not have entered the war at all.
I think many Americans, in 20/20 hindsight, disagree with the decision. Just remember that (1) there was a very nasty war on with heavy casualties on all sides and (2) many of the nasty effects of radiation were not fully understood at that time, especially by most of the politicians involved. It was a brand new invention. Everything was theoretical.
I assume that you are not arguing that the Germans and Japanese were the good guys? Sorry but you have to choose sides. Who would you like to have won that war?
I think that only shows that Americans, or a large part of the American populace, are unable to look at their country's history in anything but black or white.
How does that follow? Have you ever even been to the US? How many Americans have you discussed these issues with? I call bullshit. If most Americans are so much dumber than the rest of the world, how is it that this country along with the UK and Germany are responsible for like 90% of the post industrial revolution inventions that you take for granted. Why do so many people from other countries flock to our universities (like MIT and Caltech for instance)?
All statements like this do is show your own ignorance. If you yourself had any real insight or intelligence and you had actually travelled a fair bit you would be able to see that most people around the world are basically the same despite some significant cultural differences.
The US is a country of immigrants. So blame all of the countries we came from, which are mostly Europe but also Asia. My grandparents were from France, Poland and Russia for instance. No doubt I am genetically similar to people in those countries. Your unwarranted generalizations, blanket statements about millions of people that you have never met, are no better than racism.
Is showing how to build a nuclear bomb a national secret?
This isn't the 1940s anymore. Lots of countries know how to build them and almost everyone already has access to the information in that wiki article. That information is not detailed enough to actually build one anyway. I was looking for information on building a centrifuge, but it wasn't there. Plutonium does not occur naturally, but U-238 does. Converting the U-238 to U-235 is the main problem for amateur nuke experiments. There is some information on centrifuge building on the web, but I have not located any instructions detailed enough for a non-professional to get started with.
Once you have a sufficient quantity of U-235 or Plutonium, building a crude nuke is trivial, especially if you are willing to die in the explosion. I think I read that simply clicking together two sub-critical masses with your hands would not be sufficient. I am not sure if you have to hold them together with some significant force or not. It would be an interesting experiment to see what the crudest possible nuke would consist of. Clearly it would be less efficient than a more sophisticated design. I'd love to play around with building a uranium centrifuge, but I've heard they are pretty technical despite the simplicity of the basic idea. What we really need are some detailed plans or a kit. Anyone have a link? The holy grail for an info-anarchist like myself would be to release that forbidden info on freenet.
Such codes are in place to prevent home hackery like this, especially in the case of electrical wiring.
Actually building codes are mainly intended to guard against shoddy work by contractors trying to save a few bucks. The only enforcement focuses on getting occupancy permits and the like. Most building departments don't worry too much about stuff like this.
I've done quite a bit of home electrical wiring, and I'm familiar with a lot of the code. It's mostly common sense stuff. While I can't speak for the building inspectors in his locale, I don't think he would have a problem in my area. In construction there are two ways to do things: the easy way and the right way. The author doesn't strike me as an 'easy way' kind of guy.
OTOH, where I live you have to be a licensed electrician to legally do this kind of work. And even then you need to get a permit from the town before you go ahead with it. So it may not be advisable for him to call the building department to come and admire his work.
If you can find any sort of solid body in the outer reaches (or inner reaches for small stars, which compose most of the universe's stars), you've found ice 95% of the time.
I call bullshit. Cite it. Supply some references. We know almost nothing about planets in other solar systems. Until very recently we couldn't even be sure that they existed at all. You are extrapolating based on exactly one solar system. Not a very good sample size. The fact that hydrogen and oxygen are common does not mean that water/ice is. Just because they can combine as 2 atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen doesn't mean that they will.
While your hypothesis that most other solar systems have similar compositions to our own has some plausibility, it is completely unproven. You have no basis on which to criticize the 'water' episode for being absurd. The composition of other solar systems (to the extent that they exist at all) is simply unknown.
Consider yourself lucky that you haven't seen the episode where a good sized hole in a spaceship is patched by stuffing a flight jacket into it. After which the ship is used for high g-force maneuvers both inside and outside of an atmosphere. Presumably the writers wouldn't get away with that for an airplane or a boat, but a spaceship? No problem. It's science fiction. Where anything goes.
They visited dozens or hundreds of systems *and found no water in any of them*,
How do you know how common water is outside of our little solar system? If you have any direct evidence of even one molecule of H20 outside of our system I suggest that you publish it. I agree that comets and certain gas giant moons like Europa are good sources if you don't mind doing some purification/distillation. I don't see how that demonstrates the absurdity of the 'water' episode. It was asserted in that episode that water was rare in the universe. None of us really has any way to disprove that.
IIRC, It's actually around 7 give or take a year for most people. To truly grok abstract ideas that is. Before that most people are kind of like animals, on autopilot all the time. This is also the time when kids start asking lots of questions about the world around them.
I can't understand why so many females think they can't do something so technical.
I don't think its an issue of confidence. Just a lack of interest. Most women tend to be less interested in computers and other technical stuff. Maybe it has something to do with estrogen. As computers become more and more mainstream and integrated into our lives, women have become more comfortable with them. I think we will eventually see a higher ratio of women working with computers, but not that much higher.
They think guys will be intimidated by them being intelligent.
Yeah. Only people who know how to write computer programs are intelligent. And it takes a genius to learn some C keywords and syntax.
I think this might be true. I scared away several guys in my university as a female who did programming, networking, and business.
Most guys I know prefer geeky women. And intelligent geeky women are even better. You genuinely believe you can get inside someone else's head and know the real reason why they weren't interested in you? If you think so, you are kidding yourself. There is a stereotype about female techies not being attractive. However that generalization is becoming less and less true every year.
The irony is that you probably wouldn't even date a guy who was less intelligent than you. It's sort of like saying 'guys don't like tall women' when what you really mean is you don't like short guys. Most women want the guy to be 'superior' to them in pretty much every area. They may settle for less, but they won't be satisfied with it. In contrast most guys don't give a frack whether his potential girlfriend can impress him in 101 different ways. If she's cute that's more than enough. In fact lots of guys are even willing to live without the 'cute' part.
If you check out her photo, in another 10-15 years she is going to be a major geek hottie...
I think you have that backwards. She's cute now, but in 10-15 years things may go south. My gut feeling says that she will probably lose a lot of that cuteness by the age of 20. She also may lose her interest in computers when she figures out that she is actually kind of pretty.
Just remember that any time you write software that you don't have a patent on, any big company can incorporate your ideas for free into their products and you will neither have recourse nor compensation for them.
Ideas are or certainly should be free, as in both speech and beer. It is a specific implementation of an idea that people can attempt to 'protect' from other people who may want to use it. Even with software patents you will not have recourse. Do you really think that you can afford a court battle against, say, Microsoft? If you don't want anyone to 'steal' your idea then don't publish it. It's a mute point anyway because at least some of your algorithms will already have been patented by the large corporations who can afford to apply for them at the rate of thousands per week. If by some miracle you came up with an algorithm they wanted to use, they could just sue you first for some other algorithm they 'own' before using yours. I'm sorry, but this just is not a game you can win without the resources of a large corporation. And even they can only win against individuals and small companies. Other large companies will just cross-license.
Yes. You are missing the part about software being a series of zeros and ones, a form of code, a form of communication with a computer. Patents should not apply to it any more than it would to language or mathematics. A series of opcodes and operands is really a combination of both language and mathematics. If you can patent software you should also be able to patent abstract ideas/thoughts, sentences, block diagrams, speech patterns, sounds, philosophies... You could justify patenting almost anything. And the world is well on its way, led by corporate America. If you think this benefits anyone but large corporations (and the accompanying nuisance idea squatters) you are kidding yourself. Quicksort should not be patentable. It's just wrong. I don't understand how some people can't see that.
Imagine, you do all the work to develop a new product, then someone with $$$$ buys your product, reverse-engineers it, and sells an exact copy on the street, for a lower price.
Maybe that works when you are rich and can afford to defend your patent in court. Personally, I would never bother patenting an invention because I could never afford to sue anyone. Face it. Patents specifically and intellectual property in general are designed for and by those who already have gigantic piles of money. In other words it only benefits large corporations.
If patents are so great for the lone inventor and so bad for large corporations, why are the large corporations the main supporters of intellectual property and patents in particular? I mean if what you are saying is true you'd think it would be outright irresponsible to their stockholders to support software patents. After all, they only stand to lose. They mainly function to protect individuals against them, right?
...as it quickly degenerates. Capitalism seems to me to be an intermediate state between anarchy and oligarchy.
Unregulated capitalism? Is this a joke? Did I miss a sarcasm tag? Intellectual property only exists because of big daddy government helping out the corporate fat cats. You think those rich executives are in favor of laissez faire? Haha. That's a good one. This is not about capitalism. It's about rising fascism. It's about corporations teaming up with governments against a common enemy which would be the rest of us. The problem in these cases is too much government not too little.
I've never seen any. If you mean that Lactaid stuff, that isn't lactose free. In fact it is not even lactose reduced. It just has added Lactase enzyme. You can achieve the same result with regular, good tasting milk and Lactase pills or drops. Actually even their so called '100% reduced' milk doesn't have enough Lactase for me. I still have to take tablets with it. Just not as many. I'd love to find a truly lactose free milk, but I think it would take genetically engineered cows.
I disagree. His belief may be harmless, but it is also quite silly. Some beliefs are well deserving of mockery. And believing that some all-powerful, invisible, mythological creature is going to be reading slashdot and take offense at the use of his name spelled correctly is certainly one of them. God's boss probably doesn't even know he is reading Slashdot. He'd probably dock His pay if he caught him in the act.
No it isn't. Copyright is granting of a temporary monopoly for distribution of a particular work. Monopoly is different from socialism, although they are both inefficient.
Legally and even technically you may be correct in terms of strict dictionary definitions. However copyright is indeed a kind of social-ism. It is a monopoly granted by the government. To the extent that such a monopoly allows a greater profit it is a kind of government subsidy. That extra profit is being payed for by the taxpayer. This subsidy is only justified with reference to how it benefits the public. Hence, it is a socialist system in a broad sense of the term.
A system such as the one you are proposing would ensure that nothing good ever gets produced again in the entertainment industry.
Speak for yourself. Or define 'good'. Although I would not be in favor of the proposed system, some of my favorite films have been produced with significant subsidies from their governments (Canada and Australia). I wonder if they would ever have been made without these funds. So I guess whether you would benefit from such a system may depend on how mainstream your taste is and of course whether you are a consumer of artistic content at all. I agree that governments are far less efficient than (most) private companies, but efficiency is not the only issue.
Wanting to see something that costs nothing and being willing to fork over $12 (for me, equal to 2.5 hours of unpleasant work) to see it at the cinema are two very different things. This is just basic economics. For instance I have almost no interest in paying $12 to see the new Romero movie because I am not a big fan of zombie movies. But I may be willing to download it for free and skim through it out of curiosity. No one has lost any money by my (hypothetical) download. A customer only willing to buy with a price of zero is not a customer at all.
You are missing the distinction between things that are copied and things that are actually taken. They are not the same. This is even recognized by law. You cannot copy an acre of land. Although you can copy someone's house. AFAIK, that is not even illegal. It is the taking away of something from an individual that requires justification. Copying something of theirs does not. They have lost nothing. It's like the difference between kidnapping someone or just taking a photo of them or sketching them.
They're already successful so they don't need them as incentives anymore.
Unless the individual in question is not in business for the money, taking away the results of their money will reduce their motivation to continue. But this is a red herring anyway because no one is advocating taking anything away from anyone. BTW, what you are talking about already takes place to some extent. It is called a graduated income tax.
However, using the "information wants to be free" as an excuse to steal is no excuse;
Not everyone believes that information is something that you can own. The piece of paper it is written on yes. The data itself, no. I just copied your sentence. You created it but there it is. I have duplicated your 'work'. Would you say that I have stolen it? The reason I was able to copy the information is because it is inherently copyable. It is inherently uncontrollable (as the Chinese government is finding out). This inherent free-flowing nature of information means that earning a living from its creation is difficult. But does the creator or 'owner' of the information have the right to prevent the world from using it even when it requires great intrusiveness by the government into everyone's life in order to do so? For me the answer is no. It is not worth it. However, preventing the commercial reproduction of art does not require such intrusiveness. So for me that strikes a nice balance.
English spelling is harder than some other European languages but the grammar is easier and more logical. This is why I think Spanglish is a good idea. Combine the simplest aspects of the two easiest langauges in the world.
Slashdot Mirror
RDM is good and not just as a producer. Perhaps more importantly as a writer: for 33, Water, and the Kobols Last Gleaming pt1 teleplay and pt2 story and teleplay. So it's not fair to only think of him as a producer. He is also one of the best writers for the series. I can only speculate whether he is also the one who directly determines the overall story arc for the the team of writers to follow.
But don't forget to give credit to David Eick (story for Kobols Last Gleaming pt1), Michael Angeli (writer for Six Degrees of Seperation - s1e07), as well as Michael Rymer and Robert Young (s1e07 director) for their excellent directing skills. These are the people (in addition to the actors) mostly responsible for raising this show to a level far above most television.
And then there is the amazing pilot/mini-series that got everyone's attention. RDM did the writing for that along with Christopher James and Michael Rymer did the directing. IMO, only episodes 07 and 12 rose anywhere near to the film quality of the pilot. The rest were just somewhat better (to varying degrees depending on the writer) than most TV scifi. A lot of the tension of 'The Terminator meets Blade Runner at the end of the world' was lost once the series started, at least for me. I can only guess that maintaining all the episodes at pilot quality would be too expensive. Or at least that's what I would like to think.
Season 2 shows no sign of getting back to that level either with the military strategy writers Bradley Thompson and David Weddle kicking things off. Not that I thought s2e01 was actually bad. It's just nowhere near the potential of the series relying on cliched just-in-the-nick-of-time military scenarios to build tension and suspense. Michael Rymer is above the level of virtually any TV series director, but even he can only do so much with the script he is given.
I am looking forward to some scripts by RDM, David Eick, and Michael Angeli. I can only hope that they have written at least some of the shows for season 2. Even Toni Graphia is preferable to Carla Robinson, Jeff Flaming, and the Thompson/Weddle team. I so hope that Robinson and Flaming no longer write for this or any other scifi show. I don't need to see any more comedy variety shows, court dramas blatently copied from ST:TNG episodes, top gun rip-offs, or spaceship hulls patched with flight jackets before high-G maneuvers. The quality of the show depends on the quality of the writing.
The writers are generally geeks
However that is not really the case for some of the writers for the new BSG. Several of them used to write for lawyer TV shows and that kind of thing. The writers for the season 2 premiere were previously story editors, not writers (except for the previous season). They are used for the 'military strategy' episodes. Maybe they have military experience or have done previous work with military oriented shows.
Personally I hate this whole team-of-writers, different writer for every episode style of American TV writing. I think the British style of one writer per season makes for far better television. They should at least trim things down to the three best writers. A huge team of them is just ridiculous. How can you expect consistency that way? It's not so bad for planet-of-the-week episodes, but not a good strategy for a continuous story arc.
That aint you :). But it is funny. I just don't get whether it is for real or not. There should be a whole website for suicidal blogs. Now that's something I could sink my teeth into. Hot girls posting about how happy they are and how many guys checked them out makes me want to rape, torture, and kill them. And then kill them again. And then maybe rape them again. Saving the last bullet for myself of course.
"who cares about the jap kids, let the little bastards burn"
I can see that that is exactly what you are thinking. But you have zero evidence in support of that. Sure both the Japanese and the Germans were hated. As they hated Americans along with the British and Australians. It's called war. You are letting your anti-American prejudice cloud your judgment and logic. Ask yourself if you would feel the same way if a more sympathetic country had been the first to invent the bomb. Think they wouldn't have used it because it was 'wrong'? Think again.
The key point is the U.S. could have easily forced Japan into capitulation by nuking military targets, or at least stopping after Hiroshima.
So you think dropping the nuke on Hiroshima was a good idea then? As far as 'easily' goes, I don't know what history books you have been reading but I guarantee you they are heavily biased. They all are. You were not there. You cannot get inside the heads of the decision makers at the time. So you cannot know their motives. Period. They were military decisions. And Japan was no ordinary foe. They were not the kind of folks to surrender easily.
I personally believe that dropping the bombs was a mistake. But I wasn't alive then, and I am guessing that you weren't either. All we can go by are biased second hand accounts of biased second hand accounts of biased second hand accounts. Finding the real story that way is not easy. So maybe you should check that certainty of yours at the door.
The only thing I am certain of about that war is that Adolf Hitler and those willing to directly follow his orders were some of the most evil (not in a religious sense) human beings ever to be born on this planet. Unfortunately it is all too easy to justify almost any number of civilian deaths when fighting against such people. A tendency that may have carried over to the Japanese. The fact that some Japanese soldiers were also responsible for killing unarmed civilians in horrible ways is beside the point. I don't see how so many civilian casualties can be justified by the valid military targets. Conventional bombings should have sufficed. Although lots of civilians would still have died. Welcome to war. It isn't pretty.
It is actually a friggin' miracle (no, not in a religious sense) that Germany and Japan did not just take over the entire world. It is difficult to think of two more difficult foes. War was practically a religion in Japan and had been for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. And Germany had always been a leader in science and technology. And both cultures were known for their willingness to follow orders and for intense discipline and strong work ethics. With so much energy, intelligence, and ingenuity devoted exclusively to waging war, they were an awesome force.
The notion that America no matter what happened always were and are the good guys
Well my favorite defense of dropping the bombs on Japan is: "You started it". To me that's all that needs to be said. If the Japanese had not attacked Pearl Harbor, the US may not have entered the war at all.
I think many Americans, in 20/20 hindsight, disagree with the decision. Just remember that (1) there was a very nasty war on with heavy casualties on all sides and (2) many of the nasty effects of radiation were not fully understood at that time, especially by most of the politicians involved. It was a brand new invention. Everything was theoretical.
I assume that you are not arguing that the Germans and Japanese were the good guys? Sorry but you have to choose sides. Who would you like to have won that war?
I think that only shows that Americans, or a large part of the American populace, are unable to look at their country's history in anything but black or white.
How does that follow? Have you ever even been to the US? How many Americans have you discussed these issues with? I call bullshit. If most Americans are so much dumber than the rest of the world, how is it that this country along with the UK and Germany are responsible for like 90% of the post industrial revolution inventions that you take for granted. Why do so many people from other countries flock to our universities (like MIT and Caltech for instance)?
All statements like this do is show your own ignorance. If you yourself had any real insight or intelligence and you had actually travelled a fair bit you would be able to see that most people around the world are basically the same despite some significant cultural differences.
The US is a country of immigrants. So blame all of the countries we came from, which are mostly Europe but also Asia. My grandparents were from France, Poland and Russia for instance. No doubt I am genetically similar to people in those countries. Your unwarranted generalizations, blanket statements about millions of people that you have never met, are no better than racism.
We all know that while there is probably some keypad on the front, it really just completes a circuit somewhere inside.
There's a course you may be interested in. It's called Reality 101. OTOH maybe you are joking.
Is showing how to build a nuclear bomb a national secret?
This isn't the 1940s anymore. Lots of countries know how to build them and almost everyone already has access to the information in that wiki article. That information is not detailed enough to actually build one anyway. I was looking for information on building a centrifuge, but it wasn't there. Plutonium does not occur naturally, but U-238 does. Converting the U-238 to U-235 is the main problem for amateur nuke experiments. There is some information on centrifuge building on the web, but I have not located any instructions detailed enough for a non-professional to get started with.
Once you have a sufficient quantity of U-235 or Plutonium, building a crude nuke is trivial, especially if you are willing to die in the explosion. I think I read that simply clicking together two sub-critical masses with your hands would not be sufficient. I am not sure if you have to hold them together with some significant force or not. It would be an interesting experiment to see what the crudest possible nuke would consist of. Clearly it would be less efficient than a more sophisticated design. I'd love to play around with building a uranium centrifuge, but I've heard they are pretty technical despite the simplicity of the basic idea. What we really need are some detailed plans or a kit. Anyone have a link? The holy grail for an info-anarchist like myself would be to release that forbidden info on freenet.
Such codes are in place to prevent home hackery like this, especially in the case of electrical wiring.
Actually building codes are mainly intended to guard against shoddy work by contractors trying to save a few bucks. The only enforcement focuses on getting occupancy permits and the like. Most building departments don't worry too much about stuff like this.
I've done quite a bit of home electrical wiring, and I'm familiar with a lot of the code. It's mostly common sense stuff. While I can't speak for the building inspectors in his locale, I don't think he would have a problem in my area. In construction there are two ways to do things: the easy way and the right way. The author doesn't strike me as an 'easy way' kind of guy.
OTOH, where I live you have to be a licensed electrician to legally do this kind of work. And even then you need to get a permit from the town before you go ahead with it. So it may not be advisable for him to call the building department to come and admire his work.
If you can find any sort of solid body in the outer reaches (or inner reaches for small stars, which compose most of the universe's stars), you've found ice 95% of the time.
I call bullshit. Cite it. Supply some references. We know almost nothing about planets in other solar systems. Until very recently we couldn't even be sure that they existed at all. You are extrapolating based on exactly one solar system. Not a very good sample size. The fact that hydrogen and oxygen are common does not mean that water/ice is. Just because they can combine as 2 atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen doesn't mean that they will.
While your hypothesis that most other solar systems have similar compositions to our own has some plausibility, it is completely unproven. You have no basis on which to criticize the 'water' episode for being absurd. The composition of other solar systems (to the extent that they exist at all) is simply unknown.
Consider yourself lucky that you haven't seen the episode where a good sized hole in a spaceship is patched by stuffing a flight jacket into it. After which the ship is used for high g-force maneuvers both inside and outside of an atmosphere. Presumably the writers wouldn't get away with that for an airplane or a boat, but a spaceship? No problem. It's science fiction. Where anything goes.
They visited dozens or hundreds of systems *and found no water in any of them*,
How do you know how common water is outside of our little solar system? If you have any direct evidence of even one molecule of H20 outside of our system I suggest that you publish it. I agree that comets and certain gas giant moons like Europa are good sources if you don't mind doing some purification/distillation. I don't see how that demonstrates the absurdity of the 'water' episode. It was asserted in that episode that water was rare in the universe. None of us really has any way to disprove that.
At what age can a child grasp abstract thoughts?
IIRC, It's actually around 7 give or take a year for most people. To truly grok abstract ideas that is. Before that most people are kind of like animals, on autopilot all the time. This is also the time when kids start asking lots of questions about the world around them.
I can't understand why so many females think they can't do something so technical.
I don't think its an issue of confidence. Just a lack of interest. Most women tend to be less interested in computers and other technical stuff. Maybe it has something to do with estrogen. As computers become more and more mainstream and integrated into our lives, women have become more comfortable with them. I think we will eventually see a higher ratio of women working with computers, but not that much higher.
They think guys will be intimidated by them being intelligent.
Yeah. Only people who know how to write computer programs are intelligent. And it takes a genius to learn some C keywords and syntax.
I think this might be true. I scared away several guys in my university as a female who did programming, networking, and business.
Most guys I know prefer geeky women. And intelligent geeky women are even better. You genuinely believe you can get inside someone else's head and know the real reason why they weren't interested in you? If you think so, you are kidding yourself. There is a stereotype about female techies not being attractive. However that generalization is becoming less and less true every year.
The irony is that you probably wouldn't even date a guy who was less intelligent than you. It's sort of like saying 'guys don't like tall women' when what you really mean is you don't like short guys. Most women want the guy to be 'superior' to them in pretty much every area. They may settle for less, but they won't be satisfied with it. In contrast most guys don't give a frack whether his potential girlfriend can impress him in 101 different ways. If she's cute that's more than enough. In fact lots of guys are even willing to live without the 'cute' part.
If you check out her photo, in another 10-15
years she is going to be a major geek hottie...
I think you have that backwards. She's cute now, but in 10-15 years things may go south. My gut feeling says that she will probably lose a lot of that cuteness by the age of 20. She also may lose her interest in computers when she figures out that she is actually kind of pretty.
Just remember that any time you write software that you don't have a patent on, any big company can incorporate your ideas for free into their products and you will neither have recourse nor compensation for them.
Ideas are or certainly should be free, as in both speech and beer. It is a specific implementation of an idea that people can attempt to 'protect' from other people who may want to use it. Even with software patents you will not have recourse. Do you really think that you can afford a court battle against, say, Microsoft? If you don't want anyone to 'steal' your idea then don't publish it. It's a mute point anyway because at least some of your algorithms will already have been patented by the large corporations who can afford to apply for them at the rate of thousands per week. If by some miracle you came up with an algorithm they wanted to use, they could just sue you first for some other algorithm they 'own' before using yours. I'm sorry, but this just is not a game you can win without the resources of a large corporation. And even they can only win against individuals and small companies. Other large companies will just cross-license.
Can someone tell me if I'm missing something?
Yes. You are missing the part about software being a series of zeros and ones, a form of code, a form of communication with a computer. Patents should not apply to it any more than it would to language or mathematics. A series of opcodes and operands is really a combination of both language and mathematics. If you can patent software you should also be able to patent abstract ideas/thoughts, sentences, block diagrams, speech patterns, sounds, philosophies... You could justify patenting almost anything. And the world is well on its way, led by corporate America. If you think this benefits anyone but large corporations (and the accompanying nuisance idea squatters) you are kidding yourself. Quicksort should not be patentable. It's just wrong. I don't understand how some people can't see that.
Imagine, you do all the work to develop a new product, then someone with $$$$ buys your product, reverse-engineers it, and sells an exact copy on the street, for a lower price.
Maybe that works when you are rich and can afford to defend your patent in court. Personally, I would never bother patenting an invention because I could never afford to sue anyone. Face it. Patents specifically and intellectual property in general are designed for and by those who already have gigantic piles of money. In other words it only benefits large corporations.
If patents are so great for the lone inventor and so bad for large corporations, why are the large corporations the main supporters of intellectual property and patents in particular? I mean if what you are saying is true you'd think it would be outright irresponsible to their stockholders to support software patents. After all, they only stand to lose. They mainly function to protect individuals against them, right?
...as it quickly degenerates. Capitalism seems to me to be an intermediate state between anarchy and oligarchy.
Unregulated capitalism? Is this a joke? Did I miss a sarcasm tag? Intellectual property only exists because of big daddy government helping out the corporate fat cats. You think those rich executives are in favor of laissez faire? Haha. That's a good one. This is not about capitalism. It's about rising fascism. It's about corporations teaming up with governments against a common enemy which would be the rest of us. The problem in these cases is too much government not too little.
Fortunately there's lactose-free milk nowadays.
I've never seen any. If you mean that Lactaid stuff, that isn't lactose free. In fact it is not even lactose reduced. It just has added Lactase enzyme. You can achieve the same result with regular, good tasting milk and Lactase pills or drops. Actually even their so called '100% reduced' milk doesn't have enough Lactase for me. I still have to take tablets with it. Just not as many. I'd love to find a truly lactose free milk, but I think it would take genetically engineered cows.
It doesn't deserve anyone's mockery.
I disagree. His belief may be harmless, but it is also quite silly. Some beliefs are well deserving of mockery. And believing that some all-powerful, invisible, mythological creature is going to be reading slashdot and take offense at the use of his name spelled correctly is certainly one of them. God's boss probably doesn't even know he is reading Slashdot. He'd probably dock His pay if he caught him in the act.
No it isn't. Copyright is granting of a temporary monopoly for distribution of a particular work. Monopoly is different from socialism, although they are both inefficient.
Legally and even technically you may be correct in terms of strict dictionary definitions. However copyright is indeed a kind of social-ism. It is a monopoly granted by the government. To the extent that such a monopoly allows a greater profit it is a kind of government subsidy. That extra profit is being payed for by the taxpayer. This subsidy is only justified with reference to how it benefits the public. Hence, it is a socialist system in a broad sense of the term.
A system such as the one you are proposing would ensure that nothing good ever gets produced again in the entertainment industry.
Speak for yourself. Or define 'good'. Although I would not be in favor of the proposed system, some of my favorite films have been produced with significant subsidies from their governments (Canada and Australia). I wonder if they would ever have been made without these funds. So I guess whether you would benefit from such a system may depend on how mainstream your taste is and of course whether you are a consumer of artistic content at all. I agree that governments are far less efficient than (most) private companies, but efficiency is not the only issue.
Wanting to see something that costs nothing and being willing to fork over $12 (for me, equal to 2.5 hours of unpleasant work) to see it at the cinema are two very different things. This is just basic economics. For instance I have almost no interest in paying $12 to see the new Romero movie because I am not a big fan of zombie movies. But I may be willing to download it for free and skim through it out of curiosity. No one has lost any money by my (hypothetical) download. A customer only willing to buy with a price of zero is not a customer at all.
You are missing the distinction between things that are copied and things that are actually taken. They are not the same. This is even recognized by law. You cannot copy an acre of land. Although you can copy someone's house. AFAIK, that is not even illegal. It is the taking away of something from an individual that requires justification. Copying something of theirs does not. They have lost nothing. It's like the difference between kidnapping someone or just taking a photo of them or sketching them.
They're already successful so they don't need them as incentives anymore.
Unless the individual in question is not in business for the money, taking away the results of their money will reduce their motivation to continue. But this is a red herring anyway because no one is advocating taking anything away from anyone. BTW, what you are talking about already takes place to some extent. It is called a graduated income tax.
However, using the "information wants to be free" as an excuse to steal is no excuse;
Not everyone believes that information is something that you can own. The piece of paper it is written on yes. The data itself, no. I just copied your sentence. You created it but there it is. I have duplicated your 'work'. Would you say that I have stolen it? The reason I was able to copy the information is because it is inherently copyable. It is inherently uncontrollable (as the Chinese government is finding out). This inherent free-flowing nature of information means that earning a living from its creation is difficult. But does the creator or 'owner' of the information have the right to prevent the world from using it even when it requires great intrusiveness by the government into everyone's life in order to do so? For me the answer is no. It is not worth it. However, preventing the commercial reproduction of art does not require such intrusiveness. So for me that strikes a nice balance.
it tarnishes the nobility of the ideology.
What ideology?
English spelling is harder than some other European languages but the grammar is easier and more logical. This is why I think Spanglish is a good idea. Combine the simplest aspects of the two easiest langauges in the world.