"What if Captain Ahab had chased Moby Dick to land, wherein Moby and Ahab's ship sprouted legs and continuted chase?"
I would love to see that version, heh.
What you said reminded me of Hithhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, particularly where the Improbability Drive turned a missile into a whale. How could a FTL drive do that? Because it was improbable! heh
Just about any physics can be accepted in the proper context, which some movies fail to explain too well. Few people criticize animated movies, for example. However, the comment about the physics in the Matrix sparked a heated "It's all a computer simulation!" rebuttal.
If you want an interesting example of context fixing scripting oddities, watch the first 3 eps of Robotech, and then read the first Robotech novel. (There are 6 books total....) There are some cheesy lines in the ep, but the book gave more attention to the context, while having the character deliver the exact same lines. I couldn't believe how much more mature it felt.
"I'll take an X-Wing Fighter style high speed bank over a lumbering, time intensive, retro thruster burn as a "real" spaceship might be forced to make."
Hey bud, I totally agree with your point about Rimmerian arrogance, but the geek side of me wanted to argue this spaceship banking bit...
I'll use the Enterprise from STNG as an example. That ship (particularly the saucer section...) can generate a great deal of lateral thrust, presumably to hold a position close over a planet. It stands to reason that this thrust is much stronger than thrust from any other direction on the ship. I can imagine the ship banking to take advantage of the lateral thrust so that it can peform a 180 quicker.
I'm not trying to deflate your point, I think you're right. I just have a hot-button with that particular issue because I don't see too many people actually thinking about how a ship like that might need to bank. Rather, they'd use a generic "There's no air in space, so an airplane could be pushed in any direction" rule of physics to say: "Ah, I found a flaw and can explain it, so I'm smarter than the people who don't care about the issue."
Using a little more imagination, they could figure out a plausible solution. But there's no benfit to that. "Man, that just wouldn't work" sounds a hell of a lot cooler than my explanation for why it might work. (I could tell by the expression on my gf's face... heh)
"really, the average joe blow doesnt give a damn if a movie follows physical rules...
Wrong. The average Joe likes to present the impression he's smart by pointing out flaws in movies and then acting like it really bothered them. Remember the story on 'transparent concrete' a few months ago? Much to noone's surprise, Star Trek IV's plot about transparent aluminum came up. One guy was like "I couldn't stand that movie because there was no need for them to have windows to see the whales. I mean come on, they have sensors!"
He couldn't stand the movie over a frivolous detail. He tried to use this detail in order to present the appearance that he understands the Star Trek universe better than anybody. I honestly think he expected me to think "Wow, that guy is really paying attention. I wish I could be so observant."
The funny thing is, there's clues in the movie why they needed the windows. I won't bore you guys with it, its not worth it. I just found it funny that this guy thought he was being so observant. It reminds me of the joke "Why do 24-hour convenience stores have locks?"
I am sure it was such an ego bloating experience for him to say "I noticed something you dimwits didn't." I don't think he realized how overly-fascinated he was with a movie that's known to repel attractive women.
"So I guess the Death Star needs no giant laser cannon to destroy planets just grab a handicapped spot in front of any planet and watch it rip to shreds."
Nah, the Star Wars galaxy isn't as responsive to gravity. For example, people can be dropped from ridiculous heights w/o injury.
"That would definately have to be physics from another universe..."
In the beginning of the movie, I thought the stunts were just badly performed. In true MSTian fashion, I blurted out "Good thing their stunt doubles are trained in the ways of the force." Several people in front of me chuckled at that comment. Heh.
"Golblum sits down with his Macintosh lap top and knocks out the code for a virus which when implanted in the mother RV will download itself into all the others causing them to lower their shields..."
Are you man enough to say you were wrong and apologize for not heeding the warning in my sig?
Re:The Force violates conservation of momentum
on
Physics in the Movies
·
· Score: 2
"In reality you will not be able to hear the laser guns firing on another ship or the screech of its engines as it files by, and you will not be able to hear the death star explode. This is of course because space is a vacuum and sound does not travel through it"
I dun particularly care much for the whole 'sound doesnt travel in a vacuum' blooper. It's not a blooper. It's a fact of entertainment: Audio is more important than video.
I do find it funny that you brought that up, though. I remember an Ep of Babylon 5 where one of the characters claimed to have heard the distinctive sound of a Shadow ship fly by. Heh.
Oh oh there's another B5 physics blooper: Some dude kiled another dude and threw his body out of an airlock or something. Gera-baldy (Bruce Willis's little brother) claimed to have found the body clinging to the hull of the station. I'm reasonably sure that their spinny thing would have flung it off.
Re:The Force violates conservation of momentum
on
Physics in the Movies
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Star Wars has some strange physics. For example, 'Light Speed' makes a trip to Tatooine seem like a a weekend camping trip.
Just to tweak the people who take SW too seriously (they read the books, and the books tried to patch up obvious flaws in the script...), I came up with a theory that the Star Wars galaxy is scaled down to about 1/3rd of a lightyear wide. (Remember the galaxy in MiB?)
You'd think they'd be receptive to this idea, afterall it explains a lot of strange physics in the movies. (Like people falling from 30 feet without injury...) It even gives motivation for the Force to 'surround all life forms'. Nope, it created contraversy.
You see, SW fanatics think that the Empire could wipe out the Federation in Star Trek. If a Star Destroyer is virtually microscopic, it cannot possibly fight the Enterprise.
Not that I care to defend ID4 or anything, but a deleted scene on the DVD made the whole Mac thing slightly more palatable. Its been a while since I watched it, but I vaguely remember a scene where one of the scientists mentions taking the ship apart and putting it back together. They had hinted that they were able to sort of emulate the alien computer.
Sorry, I wish I could quote the convo. I just remember watching that scene and saying "huh. No idea why they dropped that scene, it really helped bridge that hole a bit."
I agree with just about everything you said, I just wanted to append one thing: If you're a web developer, why do you care about anything but IE? Everybody has it. Unless your site is about *nix, you want people to see your site. Everybody running Windows has IE no matter what.
MS isn't paying me to say 'I wanna make my site to run on IE', the rest of the internet world said 'we are happy to use it'. Hate MS all you want, but they provided a common ground for Windows users (ie a huge population of the net) to view the web.
Mozilla or Opera or anybody else hoping to make a dent needs to be as good as IE, and better. I'm an Opera user because it has an MDI interface, MS doesn't support that. We dun wanna see stupid pop-up ads, and MS has a vested interest in NOT providing a feature to remove them.
Heck, if one really wanted to make a dent, they'd make a browser that's nearly %100 compatible with IE, then they'd create a new format to replace HTML to view. That approach is interesting because it's funny how ideas become viral like that.
I had an idea bout making a website that uses a theme that you download locally to your computer. The website just sends down the HTML and the graphics come up locally from your hard-drive, thus saving you oodles of time. I could even play games like have the entire site encapsulated into one big download, and fire that down to view locally. That last one'd take some custom programming to do, but has a very valuable place in the handheld market, as AvantGo illustrated.
Make a browser like that, and you got it made. Heck, even Macromedia sees that. Flash is sort of like that, except it's a plug-in instead of a seperate browser.
Anyway, hopefully you all get my point. For a browser to become a huge hit, it needs to be IE and a lot more. Slashdot could seriously promote that.
Okay, so my response to the flamebait challenge here was modded down as redundant. Whoever modded me down apparently didn't see that other people, though they don't feel the same way I do about Walmart, disagreed with the moderation.
Let me explain something to you moderators who modded me down: Just because my opinion goes against the general flow, doesn't mean that it is flamebait or that I'm being a troll. It's called 'disagreeing'. I'm not sure where you guys are from, but in the USA it's perfectly okay to disagree on matters, even if the topic is controversial. Flamebait is when you say something intended to draw harsh replies. In my case, though it could have drawn flames, but it didn't. The fact that people responded kindly to it indicates that I am correct.
Here's an example of flamebait: "Linux sucks. Windows 2000 is so much better!"
Here's an example if disagreement: "I prefer Windows 2000 over Linux because I can do this, this, and that."
The difference is not that subtle. If you can reasonbly back up your points, like I did in my original post, then you're not trolling or creating flame bait.
As for being redundant: I don't see how this post could be considered redundant. That's definitely one of the wierder moderations I've had recently. This moderation was pretty retarded. Again, I'll point out that other people in this thread have expressed that the original moderation was bad. So what happens? My post challenging it is redundant.
*Sigh* Oh well, I doubt the moderator will look back at this post and give me some sort of explanation. Worse, I doubt I'll accept his answer. For the most part, moderations of my posts are pretty decent. This time, it was just lame.
hahaha no I'm not Scottish, at least not for a generation or two. I do have Scottish relatives, though. I don't have the accent. The 'cannae' developed from IRC habit where many of me friends use that term. Heh, thank you for making me laugh.
I'll give Wine-X a try, but are you sure that's at Blizzard? *Hasn't checked yet*
Just to clear up a comment you made: ILM is using Maya, which has Linux versions available. Lightwave is PC/Mac, and used to even run on Alpha. One day I may go to Maya, but the places I'm interested in working at are on LW.
One thing I've noticed is that Walmart has a way of attracting businesses around it. I've seen two Walmart's appear, only to have a myriad of business materialize around it. It creates an attractive location for other businesses to arrive.
Does it balance out? I dunno. Even if the stuff sold is run by sweatshops, there is still the matter of selling and maintaining things.
In any case, I doubt that debating it on Slashdot is going to deliver anybody to concessions. However, I'm not willing to boycott them over running sweatshops. Why? Because everything I hear is propoganda, and I never trust that type of info. There's two sides to every story.
If anybody can recommend a good source of unbiased info on this topic, I'd really appreciate it.
"Aside from ESD precautions there's no reason the average person shouldn't be able to slap together a working system. "
Not sure what ESD is (jet lagged, brain no function) heh. My comment ended up being kinda sarcastic, but I am serious that a redneck friend of mine got into building computers. I think the only real requirement to building a machine is that you have to have an interest in doing so.
Here's my origial post, in response to somebody commenting that Walmart should be taken down:
"Did it occur to you that the reason people go to Walmart is because it's cheap and convenient? They didn't put a musket to anybody's head.
When I was a teenager, I had a friend that had 3 bros and 3 sis's. They *needed* WalMart to survive. If they had cheap computers running Lindows for cheap, then they'd have been able to get on the net."
Some idiot moderator modded me down as flamebait!! I don't see why!
I guess you can tell somebody pushed a hot-button with me. You'd be uspet too if your best friend was barely able to survive in this world because his family was too large. You can hate Walmart for their business practices, but they are one of the few places that my friend's family was forced to shop at because they had little money.
Did it occur to you that the reason people go to Walmart is because it's cheap and convenient? They didn't put a musket to anybody's head.
When I was a teenager, I had a friend that had 3 bros and 3 sis's. They *needed* WalMart to survive. If they had cheap computers running Lindows for cheap, then they'd have been able to get on the net.
Actually, the most redneckian person I know was into building computers and stuff. I guess he thought it wasn't much different than working on cars. He even kept it on the front yard with the case open, sitting on a cinder block. Looked kinda artistic with the yellow grass neatly outlining it.
I have no doubt that Linux is superior in stability. However, Win2k is still my OS of choice. I cannae run Lightwave or After Effects, or nearly all my games on Linux. (Altho I am SERIOUSLY considering a Linux/VMWare setup...)
Slashdot Mirror
"What if Captain Ahab had chased Moby Dick to land, wherein Moby and Ahab's ship sprouted legs and continuted chase?"
I would love to see that version, heh.
What you said reminded me of Hithhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, particularly where the Improbability Drive turned a missile into a whale. How could a FTL drive do that? Because it was improbable! heh
Just about any physics can be accepted in the proper context, which some movies fail to explain too well. Few people criticize animated movies, for example. However, the comment about the physics in the Matrix sparked a heated "It's all a computer simulation!" rebuttal.
If you want an interesting example of context fixing scripting oddities, watch the first 3 eps of Robotech, and then read the first Robotech novel. (There are 6 books total....) There are some cheesy lines in the ep, but the book gave more attention to the context, while having the character deliver the exact same lines. I couldn't believe how much more mature it felt.
"I'll take an X-Wing Fighter style high speed bank over a lumbering, time intensive, retro thruster burn as a "real" spaceship might be forced to make."
Hey bud, I totally agree with your point about Rimmerian arrogance, but the geek side of me wanted to argue this spaceship banking bit...
I'll use the Enterprise from STNG as an example. That ship (particularly the saucer section...) can generate a great deal of lateral thrust, presumably to hold a position close over a planet. It stands to reason that this thrust is much stronger than thrust from any other direction on the ship. I can imagine the ship banking to take advantage of the lateral thrust so that it can peform a 180 quicker.
I'm not trying to deflate your point, I think you're right. I just have a hot-button with that particular issue because I don't see too many people actually thinking about how a ship like that might need to bank. Rather, they'd use a generic "There's no air in space, so an airplane could be pushed in any direction" rule of physics to say: "Ah, I found a flaw and can explain it, so I'm smarter than the people who don't care about the issue."
Using a little more imagination, they could figure out a plausible solution. But there's no benfit to that. "Man, that just wouldn't work" sounds a hell of a lot cooler than my explanation for why it might work. (I could tell by the expression on my gf's face... heh)
Go ahead if it's funny! Heh
Im just sick of ppl saying "No, you're completely totally wrong because it's just like saying a pound of feathers falls slower than a pound of lead."
"really, the average joe blow doesnt give a damn if a movie follows physical rules...
Wrong. The average Joe likes to present the impression he's smart by pointing out flaws in movies and then acting like it really bothered them. Remember the story on 'transparent concrete' a few months ago? Much to noone's surprise, Star Trek IV's plot about transparent aluminum came up. One guy was like "I couldn't stand that movie because there was no need for them to have windows to see the whales. I mean come on, they have sensors!"
He couldn't stand the movie over a frivolous detail. He tried to use this detail in order to present the appearance that he understands the Star Trek universe better than anybody. I honestly think he expected me to think "Wow, that guy is really paying attention. I wish I could be so observant."
The funny thing is, there's clues in the movie why they needed the windows. I won't bore you guys with it, its not worth it. I just found it funny that this guy thought he was being so observant. It reminds me of the joke "Why do 24-hour convenience stores have locks?"
I am sure it was such an ego bloating experience for him to say "I noticed something you dimwits didn't." I don't think he realized how overly-fascinated he was with a movie that's known to repel attractive women.
"So I guess the Death Star needs no giant laser cannon to destroy planets just grab a handicapped spot in front of any planet and watch it rip to shreds."
Nah, the Star Wars galaxy isn't as responsive to gravity. For example, people can be dropped from ridiculous heights w/o injury.
"That would definately have to be physics from another universe..."
In the beginning of the movie, I thought the stunts were just badly performed. In true MSTian fashion, I blurted out "Good thing their stunt doubles are trained in the ways of the force." Several people in front of me chuckled at that comment. Heh.
"Golblum sits down with his Macintosh lap top and knocks out the code for a virus which when implanted in the mother RV will download itself into all the others causing them to lower their shields..."
Are you man enough to say you were wrong and apologize for not heeding the warning in my sig?
"In reality you will not be able to hear the laser guns firing on another ship or the screech of its engines as it files by, and you will not be able to hear the death star explode. This is of course because space is a vacuum and sound does not travel through it"
I dun particularly care much for the whole 'sound doesnt travel in a vacuum' blooper. It's not a blooper. It's a fact of entertainment: Audio is more important than video.
I do find it funny that you brought that up, though. I remember an Ep of Babylon 5 where one of the characters claimed to have heard the distinctive sound of a Shadow ship fly by. Heh.
Oh oh there's another B5 physics blooper: Some dude kiled another dude and threw his body out of an airlock or something. Gera-baldy (Bruce Willis's little brother) claimed to have found the body clinging to the hull of the station. I'm reasonably sure that their spinny thing would have flung it off.
Star Wars has some strange physics. For example, 'Light Speed' makes a trip to Tatooine seem like a a weekend camping trip.
Just to tweak the people who take SW too seriously (they read the books, and the books tried to patch up obvious flaws in the script...), I came up with a theory that the Star Wars galaxy is scaled down to about 1/3rd of a lightyear wide. (Remember the galaxy in MiB?)
You'd think they'd be receptive to this idea, afterall it explains a lot of strange physics in the movies. (Like people falling from 30 feet without injury...) It even gives motivation for the Force to 'surround all life forms'. Nope, it created contraversy.
You see, SW fanatics think that the Empire could wipe out the Federation in Star Trek. If a Star Destroyer is virtually microscopic, it cannot possibly fight the Enterprise.
Amusing, isn't it?
Not that I care to defend ID4 or anything, but a deleted scene on the DVD made the whole Mac thing slightly more palatable. Its been a while since I watched it, but I vaguely remember a scene where one of the scientists mentions taking the ship apart and putting it back together. They had hinted that they were able to sort of emulate the alien computer.
Sorry, I wish I could quote the convo. I just remember watching that scene and saying "huh. No idea why they dropped that scene, it really helped bridge that hole a bit."
I agree with just about everything you said, I just wanted to append one thing: If you're a web developer, why do you care about anything but IE? Everybody has it. Unless your site is about *nix, you want people to see your site. Everybody running Windows has IE no matter what.
MS isn't paying me to say 'I wanna make my site to run on IE', the rest of the internet world said 'we are happy to use it'. Hate MS all you want, but they provided a common ground for Windows users (ie a huge population of the net) to view the web.
Mozilla or Opera or anybody else hoping to make a dent needs to be as good as IE, and better. I'm an Opera user because it has an MDI interface, MS doesn't support that. We dun wanna see stupid pop-up ads, and MS has a vested interest in NOT providing a feature to remove them.
Heck, if one really wanted to make a dent, they'd make a browser that's nearly %100 compatible with IE, then they'd create a new format to replace HTML to view. That approach is interesting because it's funny how ideas become viral like that.
I had an idea bout making a website that uses a theme that you download locally to your computer. The website just sends down the HTML and the graphics come up locally from your hard-drive, thus saving you oodles of time. I could even play games like have the entire site encapsulated into one big download, and fire that down to view locally. That last one'd take some custom programming to do, but has a very valuable place in the handheld market, as AvantGo illustrated.
Make a browser like that, and you got it made. Heck, even Macromedia sees that. Flash is sort of like that, except it's a plug-in instead of a seperate browser.
Anyway, hopefully you all get my point. For a browser to become a huge hit, it needs to be IE and a lot more. Slashdot could seriously promote that.
... to make me download music w/o paying for it.
Either I let them play games with fairness and my personal rights, or I break the law and fight the evil power.
Can you believe that a year ago, I wouldn't download Napster because I didn't wanna be unfair to the music industry?
Okay, so my response to the flamebait challenge here was modded down as redundant. Whoever modded me down apparently didn't see that other people, though they don't feel the same way I do about Walmart, disagreed with the moderation.
Let me explain something to you moderators who modded me down: Just because my opinion goes against the general flow, doesn't mean that it is flamebait or that I'm being a troll. It's called 'disagreeing'. I'm not sure where you guys are from, but in the USA it's perfectly okay to disagree on matters, even if the topic is controversial. Flamebait is when you say something intended to draw harsh replies. In my case, though it could have drawn flames, but it didn't. The fact that people responded kindly to it indicates that I am correct.
Here's an example of flamebait: "Linux sucks. Windows 2000 is so much better!"
Here's an example if disagreement: "I prefer Windows 2000 over Linux because I can do this, this, and that."
The difference is not that subtle. If you can reasonbly back up your points, like I did in my original post, then you're not trolling or creating flame bait.
As for being redundant: I don't see how this post could be considered redundant. That's definitely one of the wierder moderations I've had recently. This moderation was pretty retarded. Again, I'll point out that other people in this thread have expressed that the original moderation was bad. So what happens? My post challenging it is redundant.
*Sigh* Oh well, I doubt the moderator will look back at this post and give me some sort of explanation. Worse, I doubt I'll accept his answer. For the most part, moderations of my posts are pretty decent. This time, it was just lame.
This isn't about karma. This is about fairness.
*Bursts out laughing*
:)
hahaha no I'm not Scottish, at least not for a generation or two. I do have Scottish relatives, though. I don't have the accent. The 'cannae' developed from IRC habit where many of me friends use that term. Heh, thank you for making me laugh.
I'll give Wine-X a try, but are you sure that's at Blizzard? *Hasn't checked yet*
Just to clear up a comment you made: ILM is using Maya, which has Linux versions available. Lightwave is PC/Mac, and used to even run on Alpha. One day I may go to Maya, but the places I'm interested in working at are on LW.
Thanks!
I'm not impressed, really. I can see the strings.
jet lag also jetlag (jtlg)
n. A temporary disruption of bodily rhythms caused by high-speed travel across several time zones typically in a jet aircraft.jet-lagged adj.
jet lag
n : fatigue and sleep disturbance resulting from disruption of
the body's normal circadian rhythm as a result of jet
travel
Lots of people were willing to boycott Blizzard over their treatment of BnetD, why is not buying a PC at Walmart different?
People here want to take a stand for the greater good. If Walmart is doing unethical stuff, are you willing to buy their Lindows PC's?
One thing I've noticed is that Walmart has a way of attracting businesses around it. I've seen two Walmart's appear, only to have a myriad of business materialize around it. It creates an attractive location for other businesses to arrive.
Does it balance out? I dunno. Even if the stuff sold is run by sweatshops, there is still the matter of selling and maintaining things.
In any case, I doubt that debating it on Slashdot is going to deliver anybody to concessions. However, I'm not willing to boycott them over running sweatshops. Why? Because everything I hear is propoganda, and I never trust that type of info. There's two sides to every story.
If anybody can recommend a good source of unbiased info on this topic, I'd really appreciate it.
"Does Wal-Mart siphon more money out of the community than the amount they save you with more efficient operations?"
That's an interesting question. One's rebuttal might be that Walmart also provides jobs.
I'm curious, though: Are there any studies or anything I could read (Not propoganda, though) that would help me understand this better?
I think it's pretty much a foregone conclusion that places like Walmart are only going to expand. I'm curious what kind of effect that it'll have.
"Aside from ESD precautions there's no reason the average person shouldn't be able to slap together a working system. "
Not sure what ESD is (jet lagged, brain no function) heh. My comment ended up being kinda sarcastic, but I am serious that a redneck friend of mine got into building computers. I think the only real requirement to building a machine is that you have to have an interest in doing so.
"Wal-Mart must not sell condoms."
You don't have to live in a family of 9 (2 parents + 7 kids) to have little money to survive on.
Here's my origial post, in response to somebody commenting that Walmart should be taken down:
"Did it occur to you that the reason people go to Walmart is because it's cheap and convenient? They didn't put a musket to anybody's head.
When I was a teenager, I had a friend that had 3 bros and 3 sis's. They *needed* WalMart to survive. If they had cheap computers running Lindows for cheap, then they'd have been able to get on the net."
Some idiot moderator modded me down as flamebait!! I don't see why!
I guess you can tell somebody pushed a hot-button with me. You'd be uspet too if your best friend was barely able to survive in this world because his family was too large. You can hate Walmart for their business practices, but they are one of the few places that my friend's family was forced to shop at because they had little money.
Did it occur to you that the reason people go to Walmart is because it's cheap and convenient? They didn't put a musket to anybody's head.
When I was a teenager, I had a friend that had 3 bros and 3 sis's. They *needed* WalMart to survive. If they had cheap computers running Lindows for cheap, then they'd have been able to get on the net.
Actually, the most redneckian person I know was into building computers and stuff. I guess he thought it wasn't much different than working on cars. He even kept it on the front yard with the case open, sitting on a cinder block. Looked kinda artistic with the yellow grass neatly outlining it.
I have no doubt that Linux is superior in stability. However, Win2k is still my OS of choice. I cannae run Lightwave or After Effects, or nearly all my games on Linux. (Altho I am SERIOUSLY considering a Linux/VMWare setup...)
Think Lightwave and my games'd work then?