And yet, from what I've read no criminal charges or arrests were made. Sounds to me like Verizon is just trying to get the public on their side.
Then again, perhaps there's a new story that says otherwise. But from what I've read, the newspapers and such have only quote Verizon... and not added "police are currently investigating in city-X"
OK, on one hand some of this stuff is news-worthy. It's a huge company, and there are allegations flying around involving the ownership and origins of said company. Likewise, there's a bunch of stuff going around about falsified documents or supposed chat logs.
So yes, on one hand it IS news... and news for nerds at that since Facebook is such a huge presence online. And while I don't use it, I'm sure a fair percentage of/. readers us it.
But part of me just wants to throw my hands up in the air and say "enough already, just give me the final verdicts." I don't mean/. perse, just the general news I see everywhere about it. The whole situation is so complicated that even if final decisions on all matters are reached we'll never know what REALLY happened.
Meanwhile it's a lawyer pissing match. This document is real, no that's a fake THIS one is real. But he agreed to this, nuh-uh, ah-huh, nuh-uh, ah-ah, etc.
Trying to get people to stop using cars is basically forcing them to reduce their quality of life... There are simply no viable alternatives to many car uses for a lot of people.
Public transport is useless, its dirty, unreliable, often unsafe, overcrowded (yes i know the roads can be crowded too, but at least you have somewhere comfortable to sit in a car and can stop to take a break), doesn't run all night and is even more useless outside of large cities.
It depends on where you go. The article is about the Netherlands, not the US.
I don't know about that country but I've been to a few places in Europe where the public transportation is great and thus a lot of people don't even bother with cars. And I'm not talking big-city type of places either. Meanwhile I also know a bunch of people that use bikes + public transportation in Switzerland.
Then again, for all I know the public transportation thing over there could be like in the US: amazing in some places and complete garbage in others. Since I've only spent maybe a few months of my life over there spread out over 5 years.
I wasn't trying to say "cool watch those videos," I just didn't quote the parent.
It was along the lines of "whats the big deal, wouldn't it just evaporate." In which case I responded with, well your faucet might turn into a flame thrower if your not careful.
There are some videos out there of what happens when a Fracking operation messes up. Your water faucet might as well be pumping out gasoline, you can ignite what comes out. Some of the fireballs coming out are quite impressive.
Think "Carbonated Water" only instead of caron dioxide it's a flamable gas.
Small engines that are rated to a few horsepower (probably in the 3-4 hp or 2-3 KW range) don't consume much fuel today.Considering that a gallon of gas contains about 33 KW hours of energy (probably 8 to 10 kwh of which is extracted) it doesn't seem unreasonable that my little gas lawnmower can mow my entire law on a quarter gallon of gas and it takes about an hour and a half. This same lawnmower engine could probably put out enough power to run one of these suites (how much power are they drawing) since if it were a 4hp engine it would be capable of producing about 3 KW continuously. Granted engines are not light and you would need to add a generator and probably some peaking power storage which is probably why this type of setup become infeasible for a power suite.
My dad uses a gas powered backpack blower too and that thing has some kick.
Though I don't know if that thing is strong enough to be able to power a metal frame (itself heavy) that can move lift thousands of lbs while moving its limbs and walking.
Then again I don't know what the power requirements for that are, or how much hydraulics come into play for power consumption.
But I imagine a gas-powered engine would burn through a tank really quick. Plus there's the whole safety issue: said gas-tank would have to be big, and god forbid anything happen while you have a firebomb strapped to your back. At least cars are able to enclose that stuff and put firewalls between the engine and the passenger
If you went with the "huge backpack of Li-Ion battery cells" route then you have other problems. Batteries are fsking heavy. A huge backpack of those would weigh an ungodly amount, perhaps enough to overpower the metal/hydraulic strength. Or at least enough to reduce the "lifting" weight, which is probably one of the main reasons to have something like that.
I reject the notion that "anything man does is unnatural".
Agreed. In the end, we're just moving around the same atoms / molecules / etc that are already being moved around by the universe and natural processes.
Are ants and birds natural? What about the ant hill/colony and bird's nest? What about beaver dams/lodges? If so, then our buildings are natural as there's. Heck, even the Hoover Dam.
Are rivers, streams, etc natural? If so, then the Panama Canal is nature since we're just cutting out the path quickly instead of waiting for centuries/millenium/etc.
Alloys occur in nature, though usually in small and less-refined quantities.
Some animals use tools.
Some animals have a basic "medicine" going on, like dogs knowing to each grass to throw-up something bothering their stomach.
Most of what we do is just replicating a natural process, or taking something simple that's done by animals already and building upon it.
Well, it was nice knowing this user. After even the slightest murmur in a forum populated by a bunch of children-of-the-80s-and-90s nerds that 80s era cartoons were anything less than whatever equivalent of the second coming of the Messiah is to them, I suspect the next we hear about kannibal_klown will be the grisly autopsy report, complete with the description of the crime scene, including such details as "the culprits repeatedly wrote the phrase 'MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE' on the walls using the victim's blood, most likely as a warning".
I mean, assuming the Japanophiles don't get to him first for failure to show proper worship to their favoritest cartoons ever when discussing animation of any form. Those lunatics are ruthless.
Hehe
Don't get me wrong, as a kid my top fav shows were Buck Rogers, Transformers, GI Joe, and Thundercats. But going back and watching that stuff now... between being older / more mature and just the dated content... it's pretty weak.
I'm OK when a cartoon is subtly trying to drive a message home... but the cartoons of the 80s flashed big neon signs shouting "SHARE" or "DON'T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER."
The recent Battlestar Galactica wasn't everyone's cup of tea. But go back and watch the original, seriously go and watch a marathon
I just did. BSG (the new one), Caprica and BSG (the original) plus BSG 1980 (the time travel one).
BSG (the new one, way too soapy for my liking, 'soap in space' pretty much sums it up for me but enough of that)
BSG (the original one) I SWEAR that the original script was written in a language other than English and they used a primitive version of Google translate to render it into English.
I didn't have problems with phrasing, and the writing was probably "par for the course" for back then. It is just, in my opinion, a weak show by today's standards.
For back then, it was "The bomb." I loved watching the old BSG and Gil Gerard Buck Rogers show as a kid. And while I think Buck is still semi-decent even today, people going on about how the old BSG had superior writing are still wearing rose-colored glasses. You might not like the new BSG (as it IS soap-y) but the storyline was better, the dialog was better, the action scenes better, etc.
have you WATCHED CSI? It's 98% fantasy and 2% made up crap. 0% reality.
True, CSI and those insane User Interfaces on their PCs are scifi... sorry but the Fingerprint Matching app is not 2 steps away from the interface on "Minority Report." The fact that they have DNA tests coming back within hours or 1-2 days is bonkers. And CSI Miami is more action-oriented than crime drama.
But they do include more forensics and pathology in the show than back-in-the-day. Like I said, back in the day you were limited to finding a blonde hair with your bare hands, not seeing much with the body, and just hearing the doctor say something vague like "they really messed up that poor woman and then bashed in her skull."
Now they talk about sweat, explain gun-shot-residue via animations (over-and-over-and-over), mentioning different chemicals. How such-and-such trace evidence matches up with a car or what-not.
The medical examiner will describe the injury in detail, mentioning the specific bones, arteries, etc. Actually, the show "Bones" is a good example of them describing the injuries even if the action-side of things gets a little far-fetched.
Ahem.. new CN programs like Adventure Time and Regular Show are light years away from Sponge Bob..
Don't get me wrong, I watch more Cartoon Network that I care to admit. While I don't watch much Adventure Time or The Regular Show I have seen them and know they are NOT the Snorks / Smurfs / etc. And The Venture Brothers are one of my favorite shows period, just behind Archer (from FX).
But for argument's sake I wanted to stick with the more action-oriented shows were people actually get hurt and there are deeper plots comparing to similar shows from the 80s (Justice League vs Super Friends / GI Joe Renegades vs 80s G Joe / Thundercats remake vs 80s Thundercats / etc).
It's hard to make an argument that cartoons are more hard-core now than before if the reader doesn't know anything about AT or RS and just did a quick Google Image Search and see primitive art w/ rainbows and birds they might ask WTF I was smoking by saying they are more advanced than old shows.
The problem isn't porn. It's the quality of TV. There has been a steady decline in the quality of television since the 80s. As if 80s TV was great to begin with
I don't agree with that., but that's just my personal opinion.
Sure, TV is still filled with tons of trash. We have more "Reality TV" and the music channels (like MTV) don't do much anymore, we stil have tons of Soap Operas an your basic sitcoms.
But some TV-shows have evolved, since just about all TV in the 80's were directed at the whole family (youngsters included) while now we the separate out the shows for adults, kids, etc.
Crime Shows / Mysteries Crime shows are darker and grittier with more mature content; less fantasy, more reality. Instead of them walking into a room with a body under a sheet and the main character saying "they went to town on her" now they're allowed to say specifically what happened like "due to vaginal tearing we can tell she was raped" and include some science and forensics in the investigation. IE, talking about something new or interesting in forensics (and thus teach something) instead of Columbo picking up a blonde hair with his bare hands and saying "Aha."
They also try to be realistic; now-a-days our cop shows try to be very realistic, at least compared to Starsky and Hutch or TJ Hooker.
Meanwhile the motive also tend to be more varied since they're allowed to cover more sensitive areas. Sure, the motives still revolve around money / love / revenge but due to the "standards" of the 80s they could only say or do so many things. Now it can be "they assaulted my daughter" or "my wife gave me AIDS" or "my husband left me for another man."
Sure, Jessica from "Murder She Wrote" and Columbo were charismatic and all-around good... but so are characters like Adrian Monk, Elliot Stabler, Shawn Spencer, etc. And most of them demonstrate more personality than some of the old TV characters. Face it, Jessica was nice but was otherwise a plain/vanilla polite older woman.
Adventure / Heroes / SciFi Compare the first season of Heroes with the $6million Man or the Bionic Woman. Special effects aside, there is a LOT more complexity in the newer shows than those old hits. The characters are dealing with more personal demons or concepts, instead of the Bionic Woman having 1 or 2 episodes where she was depressed about not being a real woman anymore.
The recent Battlestar Galactica wasn't everyone's cup of tea. But go back and watch the original, seriously go and watch a marathon. It was the same 3 or 4 flight sequences shown over and over, it was VERY family oriented and/or directed to 7-year-olds. There was little/no realistic reaction to being the survivors of a holocaust. And the science fiction elements were quite rare. With the remake we got more cerebral discussions on politics, philosophy, and emotion. AND we got more in-depth science fiction descriptions and discussions: AI, FTL, how this widget works, etc.
Star Trek: granted the original series was the 60s and not the 80s. But in the original we didn't get much explanation for the events going on, just the occasional strange alien that had a weird ability. Did we learn how their FTL work, no just that it required dilithium crystals. The Next Generation / DS9 / Voyager really put the sci-fi elements to shame. We got real-life theories on how stuff might work, some real biology terms, and some fake techno-babble.
Catoons And don't get me started on cartoons. Try watching some 80's era Transformers, GI Joe, Smurfs, etc. Taking off the rose-colored glasses and you'll see they were lame... even for the targetted age-groups. Now watch one of the DCAU cartoons (Justice League, Batman TAS, etc), or Young Justice, or Generator Rex, or heck even the Thundercats or Transformers revivals going on now. More mature, more cerebral, better animation, etc. Sure there's still Sponge Bob and Adventure Time but they try to make things more complex
...is they essentially undid all of Peter's character development, erased his marriage, made him back to a 'single nerdy guy'...and then killed him off and replaced him.
Hey, idiots? Why not just, I dunno, injure him, or remove his powers, or something, and let him retire in peace with his wife? And then have a new guy take over?
Different universes..
The "One More Day" reboot / marriage-erasal / etc was from the main universe.
This is from the "Ultimate" universe, think of it like a parallel universe with different origins / back-stories / etc. The "Ultimate" line is still normally a good read, but the regular Spider-Man is still alive and well. Though still suffering from the horrible writing of One More Day and all of that.
When you kiss your child are you sexually exploiting them?
The missus here over-reacted quite a bit by saying "We've moved next to a paedophile".
Granted, the neighbor over-reacted hugely.
But this isn't paedophilia. Because not everyone who kisses a child means to have sex with them.
Maybe some places there are different definitions of "acceptable," but I imagine anywhere in the US that a social difference between a stranger kissing kissing a child on the lips is crossing the line. If it was the fore-head or the hand or something I "guess" you could argue some sort of culture clash... on the lips is pushingit. Either the parents saw it in which case the guy's in trouble, or the kid makes an off-hand comment about it in which case the parents wonder what ELSE was going on.
But even if you're on the fence about the kiss for culture reasons or whatever, combining the kiss and the photos starts putting you on the sex offender radar. Maybe you're not a flat-out pedo, but you've crossed a line. Meanwhile, the crazy s**t this guy was doing was beyond the pale so they probably wanted to throw whatever charge they could at him.
I will admit, I think in some places the sex offender registry is a bit over-used. Technically some places can ding you for public urination or something, and then you're pretty much a pariah for life.
The guy didn't download the CP for sexual purposes. He's not a paedophile, just a warped anti-social individual.
That register is for people who have a proven (and acted upon) attraction to minors;...
All of this supposedly started because the parents claimed he kissed their child on the lips. If the kid acknowledged that happened, then combined with all of the picture / net stuff he did then getting on the registration isn't exactly "out there."
Heck, a minor can be charged with a sex crime for taking a naked photo of themselves and texting it to their other minor friends... ridiculous but it still happens.
An adult male doing stuff with pictures of minors will land him in hot water... whether it was for his pleasure or some other means.
It's a chain-of-ownership issue here. If NASA loaned the rock to the museum for display, and they accidentally tossed it out, NASA still owns it, all the way to the dump and beyond. Just because you lose track of something doesn't mean you don't own it anymore. You have to give it away, sell it, transfer it, abandon it, or have it confiscated, to lose ownership over it. Valuable things are rarely donated to museums, they are more often put on exhibit on a temporary or permanent basis.
My understanding is stolen property is returned to the original owner where possible. It doesn't matter if it was sold 2 or 3 times down the line already, if that car was stolen from someone then those poor buyers are SOL and the owner gets the car back.
Here, it's murky. On one hand the guy saved a priceless artifact from winding up under a few metric tons of trash. NASA should be grateful for that fact alone.
AND typically trash is the wild west... if it was left on public property (the curb) and in regular trash bins then anyone can pick through it. Cops, homeless, stalkers, ANYONE. It sucks, but those are the breaks.
So if the rock was still NASA's then it's probably still there's. I really doubt they simply "gave" the rock to a museum, things tend to be "on loan" to museums.
I found what I needed at MonoPrice for about $40 USD.
For the heck of it I decided to see what BestBuy had it for, as if it was about the same price I'd rather get it that day. It was something like $500 or $600 USD.
The never-ending fight scenes were made less dramatic by virtue of the fact that Hal's limitations were never really explained or explored. It wasn't even clear whether he knew himself. That really spoiled the movie for me more than anything else -- when Batman was pinned by Liam Neeson in the EL-train car, you knew that he was vulnerable, and it was that collateral of mortality that defined the character. Here, when the main character had no problem flying across the galaxy for a quick meeting with his idiot boss and was literally dodging asteroids in the climax, it wasn't so clear.
Depending on the era: Green Lantern's vulnerability has been wood, yellow, or the emotion of fear. At one point any of those 3 would either injure them, drop their constructs, or make them ineffective. The "Fear" thing is the most recent one: if you can overcome it with a strong will then you're unstoppable.
That is the problem with the "incredibly powerful super heroes" realm of comics. DC's roster of quite full of these insanely powerful being that might as well be the gods of old.
Marvel's heroes are rather limited: most have only 1 or 2 abilities and it's rare that any one of them are incredibly strong (ignoring outliers like Thor and Sentry). Spider-man has super reflexes and some minor super strength (lift a VW bug), Wolverine has metal claws and healing factor, Cyclops has eye beams, etc.
Sure DC has Batman, Nightwing, the Question, etc. But it also has Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Martian Mahunter... beings that can wipe out entire armies if they want. A LOT of their heroes are really "out there" in terms of powers. And actually, Green Lantern's powers sometimes put him above Superman due to their versatility.
So in the end, DC comics are always dealing with insanely powerful people that are almost unstoppable. So the choice is find someone more powerful than the hero, introduce the hero's "kryptonite" (aka weakness), or have it be a morality tale or some other drama.
If the big antagonist is always the "kryptonite" then it starts to get boring. Oh my gosh he's strong, how's this gonna play out? Oh, they whipped out his weakness to styrofoam and now he's a helpless as a kitten.
actually, the original 1989 was a pretty damn good movie. of course, totally different than dark knight, but good on its own merits in its own time. yes, by the time mr. freeze and poison ivy and bane and nippled suits showed up, it was suckage, but it took time to get there
Agreed. I like Nolan's take on Batman, but as far as I am concerned Michael Keaton is THE Batman of film. Kevin Conroy is my TV Batman (at least in voice).
The first Michael Keaton Batman was great, and still holds up fairly well today. I can't think of many 80's action-type movies that hold up well over 20 years later. It was dark, action packed, and all out fun. The second one wasn't my favorite film but it was OK. After that it got progressively cheesier.
I wonder if it will have an archive feature, if so for the various senators out there I imagine it would be like this:
1-June-2011 - For X 2-June-2011 - Received donation from group Y 3-June-2011 - Against X 4-June-2011 - Received larger donation from group Z 4-June-2011 - For X
Again, in general. I know nothing about the senator in question.
If you really want something that runs iOS, then get an iPad2 with Wi-fi+3G, then get a cheap phone. The iPhone has become very unattractive, as of late, and it is not getting any better. You can spend another $100 and get a much bigger screen and 64GB of storage.
Yeh, but I'm a big guy and yet even I don't have pockets big enough for an iPad./sarcasm
But I wouldn't be surprised if it was cheaper to use the iPad and some IP thing like Skype.
since I'm fairly sure the GSM antenna doesn't support T-Mobile's frequency though I may be wrong. All this really points to is that Apple is definitively a manufacturer and wishes to remain that way.
I believe the AT&T iPhone supports the T-Mobile edge frequencies... just not the 3G frequencies.
So you can get a signal and make calls, but forget about doing anything data-related without WiFi unless you're really patient.
The same thing with the old Nexus One (in reverse) made for T-Mobile. You could put it on AT&T network but data was limited to edge.
Slashdot Mirror
And yet, from what I've read no criminal charges or arrests were made. Sounds to me like Verizon is just trying to get the public on their side.
Then again, perhaps there's a new story that says otherwise. But from what I've read, the newspapers and such have only quote Verizon... and not added "police are currently investigating in city-X"
OK, on one hand some of this stuff is news-worthy. It's a huge company, and there are allegations flying around involving the ownership and origins of said company. Likewise, there's a bunch of stuff going around about falsified documents or supposed chat logs.
So yes, on one hand it IS news... and news for nerds at that since Facebook is such a huge presence online. And while I don't use it, I'm sure a fair percentage of /. readers us it.
But part of me just wants to throw my hands up in the air and say "enough already, just give me the final verdicts." I don't mean /. perse, just the general news I see everywhere about it. The whole situation is so complicated that even if final decisions on all matters are reached we'll never know what REALLY happened.
Meanwhile it's a lawyer pissing match. This document is real, no that's a fake THIS one is real. But he agreed to this, nuh-uh, ah-huh, nuh-uh, ah-ah, etc.
Trying to get people to stop using cars is basically forcing them to reduce their quality of life... There are simply no viable alternatives to many car uses for a lot of people.
Public transport is useless, its dirty, unreliable, often unsafe, overcrowded (yes i know the roads can be crowded too, but at least you have somewhere comfortable to sit in a car and can stop to take a break), doesn't run all night and is even more useless outside of large cities.
It depends on where you go. The article is about the Netherlands, not the US.
I don't know about that country but I've been to a few places in Europe where the public transportation is great and thus a lot of people don't even bother with cars. And I'm not talking big-city type of places either. Meanwhile I also know a bunch of people that use bikes + public transportation in Switzerland.
Then again, for all I know the public transportation thing over there could be like in the US: amazing in some places and complete garbage in others. Since I've only spent maybe a few months of my life over there spread out over 5 years.
I wasn't trying to say "cool watch those videos," I just didn't quote the parent.
It was along the lines of "whats the big deal, wouldn't it just evaporate." In which case I responded with, well your faucet might turn into a flame thrower if your not careful.
There are some videos out there of what happens when a Fracking operation messes up. Your water faucet might as well be pumping out gasoline, you can ignite what comes out. Some of the fireballs coming out are quite impressive.
Think "Carbonated Water" only instead of caron dioxide it's a flamable gas.
Small engines that are rated to a few horsepower (probably in the 3-4 hp or 2-3 KW range) don't consume much fuel today.Considering that a gallon of gas contains about 33 KW hours of energy (probably 8 to 10 kwh of which is extracted) it doesn't seem unreasonable that my little gas lawnmower can mow my entire law on a quarter gallon of gas and it takes about an hour and a half. This same lawnmower engine could probably put out enough power to run one of these suites (how much power are they drawing) since if it were a 4hp engine it would be capable of producing about 3 KW continuously. Granted engines are not light and you would need to add a generator and probably some peaking power storage which is probably why this type of setup become infeasible for a power suite.
My dad uses a gas powered backpack blower too and that thing has some kick.
Though I don't know if that thing is strong enough to be able to power a metal frame (itself heavy) that can move lift thousands of lbs while moving its limbs and walking.
Then again I don't know what the power requirements for that are, or how much hydraulics come into play for power consumption.
I haven't seen it in a while, but wasn't the main antagonist running around at the end with a large mech?
I "think" the arm motion was controlled by the guy's arms but I don't recall how the leg movement worked (moving his legs, ordinary cockpit, etc).
That was my thought too.
But I imagine a gas-powered engine would burn through a tank really quick. Plus there's the whole safety issue: said gas-tank would have to be big, and god forbid anything happen while you have a firebomb strapped to your back. At least cars are able to enclose that stuff and put firewalls between the engine and the passenger
If you went with the "huge backpack of Li-Ion battery cells" route then you have other problems. Batteries are fsking heavy. A huge backpack of those would weigh an ungodly amount, perhaps enough to overpower the metal/hydraulic strength. Or at least enough to reduce the "lifting" weight, which is probably one of the main reasons to have something like that.
I reject the notion that "anything man does is unnatural".
Agreed. In the end, we're just moving around the same atoms / molecules / etc that are already being moved around by the universe and natural processes.
Are ants and birds natural? What about the ant hill/colony and bird's nest? What about beaver dams/lodges?
If so, then our buildings are natural as there's. Heck, even the Hoover Dam.
Are rivers, streams, etc natural?
If so, then the Panama Canal is nature since we're just cutting out the path quickly instead of waiting for centuries/millenium/etc.
Alloys occur in nature, though usually in small and less-refined quantities.
Some animals use tools.
Some animals have a basic "medicine" going on, like dogs knowing to each grass to throw-up something bothering their stomach.
Most of what we do is just replicating a natural process, or taking something simple that's done by animals already and building upon it.
etc
Well, it was nice knowing this user. After even the slightest murmur in a forum populated by a bunch of children-of-the-80s-and-90s nerds that 80s era cartoons were anything less than whatever equivalent of the second coming of the Messiah is to them, I suspect the next we hear about kannibal_klown will be the grisly autopsy report, complete with the description of the crime scene, including such details as "the culprits repeatedly wrote the phrase 'MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE' on the walls using the victim's blood, most likely as a warning".
I mean, assuming the Japanophiles don't get to him first for failure to show proper worship to their favoritest cartoons ever when discussing animation of any form. Those lunatics are ruthless.
Hehe
Don't get me wrong, as a kid my top fav shows were Buck Rogers, Transformers, GI Joe, and Thundercats. But going back and watching that stuff now... between being older / more mature and just the dated content... it's pretty weak.
I'm OK when a cartoon is subtly trying to drive a message home... but the cartoons of the 80s flashed big neon signs shouting "SHARE" or "DON'T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS COVER."
The recent Battlestar Galactica wasn't everyone's cup of tea. But go back and watch the original, seriously go and watch a marathon
I just did. BSG (the new one), Caprica and BSG (the original) plus BSG 1980 (the time travel one).
BSG (the new one, way too soapy for my liking, 'soap in space' pretty much sums it up for me but enough of that)
BSG (the original one) I SWEAR that the original script was written in a language other than English and they used a primitive version of Google translate to render it into English.
I didn't have problems with phrasing, and the writing was probably "par for the course" for back then. It is just, in my opinion, a weak show by today's standards.
For back then, it was "The bomb." I loved watching the old BSG and Gil Gerard Buck Rogers show as a kid. And while I think Buck is still semi-decent even today, people going on about how the old BSG had superior writing are still wearing rose-colored glasses. You might not like the new BSG (as it IS soap-y) but the storyline was better, the dialog was better, the action scenes better, etc.
Though the original's StarBuck is still iconic
"less fantasy, more reality."
have you WATCHED CSI? It's 98% fantasy and 2% made up crap. 0% reality.
True, CSI and those insane User Interfaces on their PCs are scifi... sorry but the Fingerprint Matching app is not 2 steps away from the interface on "Minority Report." The fact that they have DNA tests coming back within hours or 1-2 days is bonkers. And CSI Miami is more action-oriented than crime drama.
But they do include more forensics and pathology in the show than back-in-the-day. Like I said, back in the day you were limited to finding a blonde hair with your bare hands, not seeing much with the body, and just hearing the doctor say something vague like "they really messed up that poor woman and then bashed in her skull."
Now they talk about sweat, explain gun-shot-residue via animations (over-and-over-and-over), mentioning different chemicals. How such-and-such trace evidence matches up with a car or what-not.
The medical examiner will describe the injury in detail, mentioning the specific bones, arteries, etc. Actually, the show "Bones" is a good example of them describing the injuries even if the action-side of things gets a little far-fetched.
Ahem.. new CN programs like Adventure Time and Regular Show are light years away from Sponge Bob. .
Don't get me wrong, I watch more Cartoon Network that I care to admit. While I don't watch much Adventure Time or The Regular Show I have seen them and know they are NOT the Snorks / Smurfs / etc. And The Venture Brothers are one of my favorite shows period, just behind Archer (from FX).
But for argument's sake I wanted to stick with the more action-oriented shows were people actually get hurt and there are deeper plots comparing to similar shows from the 80s (Justice League vs Super Friends / GI Joe Renegades vs 80s G Joe / Thundercats remake vs 80s Thundercats / etc).
It's hard to make an argument that cartoons are more hard-core now than before if the reader doesn't know anything about AT or RS and just did a quick Google Image Search and see primitive art w/ rainbows and birds they might ask WTF I was smoking by saying they are more advanced than old shows.
The problem isn't porn. It's the quality of TV. There has been a steady decline in the quality of television since the 80s. As if 80s TV was great to begin with
I don't agree with that., but that's just my personal opinion.
Sure, TV is still filled with tons of trash. We have more "Reality TV" and the music channels (like MTV) don't do much anymore, we stil have tons of Soap Operas an your basic sitcoms.
But some TV-shows have evolved, since just about all TV in the 80's were directed at the whole family (youngsters included) while now we the separate out the shows for adults, kids, etc.
Crime Shows / Mysteries
Crime shows are darker and grittier with more mature content; less fantasy, more reality. Instead of them walking into a room with a body under a sheet and the main character saying "they went to town on her" now they're allowed to say specifically what happened like "due to vaginal tearing we can tell she was raped" and include some science and forensics in the investigation. IE, talking about something new or interesting in forensics (and thus teach something) instead of Columbo picking up a blonde hair with his bare hands and saying "Aha."
They also try to be realistic; now-a-days our cop shows try to be very realistic, at least compared to Starsky and Hutch or TJ Hooker.
Meanwhile the motive also tend to be more varied since they're allowed to cover more sensitive areas. Sure, the motives still revolve around money / love / revenge but due to the "standards" of the 80s they could only say or do so many things. Now it can be "they assaulted my daughter" or "my wife gave me AIDS" or "my husband left me for another man."
Sure, Jessica from "Murder She Wrote" and Columbo were charismatic and all-around good... but so are characters like Adrian Monk, Elliot Stabler, Shawn Spencer, etc. And most of them demonstrate more personality than some of the old TV characters. Face it, Jessica was nice but was otherwise a plain/vanilla polite older woman.
Adventure / Heroes / SciFi
Compare the first season of Heroes with the $6million Man or the Bionic Woman. Special effects aside, there is a LOT more complexity in the newer shows than those old hits. The characters are dealing with more personal demons or concepts, instead of the Bionic Woman having 1 or 2 episodes where she was depressed about not being a real woman anymore.
The recent Battlestar Galactica wasn't everyone's cup of tea. But go back and watch the original, seriously go and watch a marathon. It was the same 3 or 4 flight sequences shown over and over, it was VERY family oriented and/or directed to 7-year-olds. There was little/no realistic reaction to being the survivors of a holocaust. And the science fiction elements were quite rare. With the remake we got more cerebral discussions on politics, philosophy, and emotion. AND we got more in-depth science fiction descriptions and discussions: AI, FTL, how this widget works, etc.
Star Trek: granted the original series was the 60s and not the 80s. But in the original we didn't get much explanation for the events going on, just the occasional strange alien that had a weird ability. Did we learn how their FTL work, no just that it required dilithium crystals. The Next Generation / DS9 / Voyager really put the sci-fi elements to shame. We got real-life theories on how stuff might work, some real biology terms, and some fake techno-babble.
Catoons
And don't get me started on cartoons. Try watching some 80's era Transformers, GI Joe, Smurfs, etc. Taking off the rose-colored glasses and you'll see they were lame... even for the targetted age-groups. Now watch one of the DCAU cartoons (Justice League, Batman TAS, etc), or Young Justice, or Generator Rex, or heck even the Thundercats or Transformers revivals going on now. More mature, more cerebral, better animation, etc. Sure there's still Sponge Bob and Adventure Time but they try to make things more complex
...is they essentially undid all of Peter's character development, erased his marriage, made him back to a 'single nerdy guy'...and then killed him off and replaced him.
Hey, idiots? Why not just, I dunno, injure him, or remove his powers, or something, and let him retire in peace with his wife? And then have a new guy take over?
Different universes..
The "One More Day" reboot / marriage-erasal / etc was from the main universe.
This is from the "Ultimate" universe, think of it like a parallel universe with different origins / back-stories / etc. The "Ultimate" line is still normally a good read, but the regular Spider-Man is still alive and well. Though still suffering from the horrible writing of One More Day and all of that.
In an unrelated story: Beavers mate for life
When you kiss your child are you sexually exploiting them?
The missus here over-reacted quite a bit by saying "We've moved next to a paedophile".
Granted, the neighbor over-reacted hugely.
But this isn't paedophilia. Because not everyone who kisses a child means to have sex with them.
Maybe some places there are different definitions of "acceptable," but I imagine anywhere in the US that a social difference between a stranger kissing kissing a child on the lips is crossing the line. If it was the fore-head or the hand or something I "guess" you could argue some sort of culture clash... on the lips is pushingit. Either the parents saw it in which case the guy's in trouble, or the kid makes an off-hand comment about it in which case the parents wonder what ELSE was going on.
But even if you're on the fence about the kiss for culture reasons or whatever, combining the kiss and the photos starts putting you on the sex offender radar. Maybe you're not a flat-out pedo, but you've crossed a line. Meanwhile, the crazy s**t this guy was doing was beyond the pale so they probably wanted to throw whatever charge they could at him.
I will admit, I think in some places the sex offender registry is a bit over-used. Technically some places can ding you for public urination or something, and then you're pretty much a pariah for life.
The guy didn't download the CP for sexual purposes. He's not a paedophile, just a warped anti-social individual.
That register is for people who have a proven (and acted upon) attraction to minors;...
All of this supposedly started because the parents claimed he kissed their child on the lips. If the kid acknowledged that happened, then combined with all of the picture / net stuff he did then getting on the registration isn't exactly "out there."
Heck, a minor can be charged with a sex crime for taking a naked photo of themselves and texting it to their other minor friends... ridiculous but it still happens.
An adult male doing stuff with pictures of minors will land him in hot water... whether it was for his pleasure or some other means.
It's a chain-of-ownership issue here. If NASA loaned the rock to the museum for display, and they accidentally tossed it out, NASA still owns it, all the way to the dump and beyond. Just because you lose track of something doesn't mean you don't own it anymore. You have to give it away, sell it, transfer it, abandon it, or have it confiscated, to lose ownership over it. Valuable things are rarely donated to museums, they are more often put on exhibit on a temporary or permanent basis.
My understanding is stolen property is returned to the original owner where possible. It doesn't matter if it was sold 2 or 3 times down the line already, if that car was stolen from someone then those poor buyers are SOL and the owner gets the car back.
Here, it's murky. On one hand the guy saved a priceless artifact from winding up under a few metric tons of trash. NASA should be grateful for that fact alone.
AND typically trash is the wild west... if it was left on public property (the curb) and in regular trash bins then anyone can pick through it. Cops, homeless, stalkers, ANYONE. It sucks, but those are the breaks.
So if the rock was still NASA's then it's probably still there's. I really doubt they simply "gave" the rock to a museum, things tend to be "on loan" to museums.
I needed a fairly long run of HDMI, about 50'
I found what I needed at MonoPrice for about $40 USD.
For the heck of it I decided to see what BestBuy had it for, as if it was about the same price I'd rather get it that day. It was something like $500 or $600 USD.
Needless to say I ordered from MonoPrice.
The never-ending fight scenes were made less dramatic by virtue of the fact that Hal's limitations were never really explained or explored. It wasn't even clear whether he knew himself. That really spoiled the movie for me more than anything else -- when Batman was pinned by Liam Neeson in the EL-train car, you knew that he was vulnerable, and it was that collateral of mortality that defined the character. Here, when the main character had no problem flying across the galaxy for a quick meeting with his idiot boss and was literally dodging asteroids in the climax, it wasn't so clear.
Depending on the era: Green Lantern's vulnerability has been wood, yellow, or the emotion of fear. At one point any of those 3 would either injure them, drop their constructs, or make them ineffective. The "Fear" thing is the most recent one: if you can overcome it with a strong will then you're unstoppable.
That is the problem with the "incredibly powerful super heroes" realm of comics. DC's roster of quite full of these insanely powerful being that might as well be the gods of old.
Marvel's heroes are rather limited: most have only 1 or 2 abilities and it's rare that any one of them are incredibly strong (ignoring outliers like Thor and Sentry). Spider-man has super reflexes and some minor super strength (lift a VW bug), Wolverine has metal claws and healing factor, Cyclops has eye beams, etc.
Sure DC has Batman, Nightwing, the Question, etc. But it also has Superman, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, Martian Mahunter... beings that can wipe out entire armies if they want. A LOT of their heroes are really "out there" in terms of powers. And actually, Green Lantern's powers sometimes put him above Superman due to their versatility.
So in the end, DC comics are always dealing with insanely powerful people that are almost unstoppable. So the choice is find someone more powerful than the hero, introduce the hero's "kryptonite" (aka weakness), or have it be a morality tale or some other drama.
If the big antagonist is always the "kryptonite" then it starts to get boring. Oh my gosh he's strong, how's this gonna play out? Oh, they whipped out his weakness to styrofoam and now he's a helpless as a kitten.
i think you are referring to batman
actually, the original 1989 was a pretty damn good movie. of course, totally different than dark knight, but good on its own merits in its own time. yes, by the time mr. freeze and poison ivy and bane and nippled suits showed up, it was suckage, but it took time to get there
Agreed. I like Nolan's take on Batman, but as far as I am concerned Michael Keaton is THE Batman of film. Kevin Conroy is my TV Batman (at least in voice).
The first Michael Keaton Batman was great, and still holds up fairly well today. I can't think of many 80's action-type movies that hold up well over 20 years later. It was dark, action packed, and all out fun. The second one wasn't my favorite film but it was OK. After that it got progressively cheesier.
I wonder if it will have an archive feature, if so for the various senators out there I imagine it would be like this:
1-June-2011 - For X
2-June-2011 - Received donation from group Y
3-June-2011 - Against X
4-June-2011 - Received larger donation from group Z
4-June-2011 - For X
Again, in general. I know nothing about the senator in question.
If you really want something that runs iOS, then get an iPad2 with Wi-fi+3G, then get a cheap phone. The iPhone has become very unattractive, as of late, and it is not getting any better. You can spend another $100 and get a much bigger screen and 64GB of storage.
Yeh, but I'm a big guy and yet even I don't have pockets big enough for an iPad. /sarcasm
But I wouldn't be surprised if it was cheaper to use the iPad and some IP thing like Skype.
since I'm fairly sure the GSM antenna doesn't support T-Mobile's frequency though I may be wrong. All this really points to is that Apple is definitively a manufacturer and wishes to remain that way.
I believe the AT&T iPhone supports the T-Mobile edge frequencies... just not the 3G frequencies.
So you can get a signal and make calls, but forget about doing anything data-related without WiFi unless you're really patient.
The same thing with the old Nexus One (in reverse) made for T-Mobile. You could put it on AT&T network but data was limited to edge.