Different beasts. These guys are talking about having content providers pay to have priority in their network; currently, everyone is treated equally.
Assume you're an AT&T customer. This sort of behavior could end up in a situation where AT&T wants you to pay them for high speed access to their network... and then they want to turn around and have Google pay to provide you high speed access to their site. Does that sound reasonable to you?
They charge you money for high speed internet, but in order to do that, the sites you use must also pay money to deliver to you at high speed. That's pure bogosity in my book.
Further, you can have a situation where Google has a line to AT&T, but in order for AT&T to deliver it, they have to hand it to say, UUNet, who then hands it off to Earthlink. So in that situation, in order for you to have high speed access, YOU will have to pay Earthlink, and Google may end up having to pay AT&T, UUNet, and Earthlink also.
Does that make a lot of sense to you? Essentially, what that tells you is that the only content providers that will be able to provide bandwidth intensive services are the extremely wealthy ones. And thus ends the days of the Internet as a level playing field where the little guy can compete with the big guy.
I agree that you need to be careful. I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that fraud generally requires an *intent* to defraud.
If the guy here honestly believes that Blizzard did not provide the service that they promised to deliver, and that he fullfilled all of his obligations (not violating the AUP/TOS for example), then he should probably be able to charge back without fear.
He needs to consider carefully whether or not he can make an argument to support any chargebacks he may request.
Carefully examine your case. Consider the TOS and AUP.
Then, if you really honestly think you have a case, use your credit card's chargeback ability as a bludgeon. If you really think you have a case that you can make, then they'll start talking back if you can convince the credit card company to take your side.
(Keep in mind that by selling you the software, they *offered* to provide you with continuing service at a certain price. Because RPGs are a character building exercise for some people, that "future service" promise may be considered critical to the original purchase -- a sort of contract if you will. Furthermore, they did not give you a reasonable opportunity for dialog to resolve this issue independant of the credit card company {something the CC company wants} because they communicated with you almost exclusively through the form letters, failing to provide you with any meaningful communication.)
I don't know how well it will hold up, but getting the credit card company on your side is critical for you. You know how Blizzard can tell you to stuff it, do what it wants, and start ignoring you? Yeah, the credit card company can and will do the same thing to Blizzard -- if you can get them on your side. You're going to have to come up with justification (maybe like mine above) that holds water for charging back to day one. Mine may not hold up, so consider it carefully. But, you can expect someone at Blizzard will start talking if you can convince the credit card company that $200 worth of chargeback is justified.
Assuming you do get the CC company on your side, even if Blizzard doesn't give you what you want... well, you've got your $200 back;)
(You may have to threaten to cancel the card to get what you want, btw.:) It helps if you do high volume on it. I do about $20k/yr on my credit card {paying off as I go}, and they do not play around with me.)
With the 7th Ed I have, they have a full calculus series book, a book covering only derivatives and integrals, a book covering only power series, and a book covering vectors with calculus.
The first book I had covered only the derivatives and integrals.:)
Gee Wally, if it's found in the tear sheet of *all* calculus books, then why wasn't it in mine? (Calculus, 7ed Larson, Hostetler, Edwards) Maybe mine isn't really a calculus book? No, it has differentiation, limits, and integrals in it. Must really be calculus.
Might just be that you don't know what you're talking about, saying that something exists in a book you've never seen. That's my guess.
(This book doesn't have power series either, those are in the next book in the series).
Actually, I'm not being rediculous. This is the sort of stuff you have to do if you want to make a robot deal with a shopping list.
The point is, there's more to the task list that this guy made than he realizes because the human brain can deal with a lot of these things "under the hood" so to speak.
Writing is a good example of this. Do you recall how hard you had to concentrate on writing when you first learned how to do it? Now consider what it's like to write now -- it's practically a reflex. You just pick up a pen or pencil and just do it.
Or how about riding a bicycle? It's very hard at first, but after enough practice, you don't even have to think about it.
Imagine trying to walk if you had to think about every muscle that has to move in exactly the right way to keep you upright and moving (as a baby learning how to walk does). It's HARD stuff.
The point is, there is a *lot* more to everyday tasks than a lot of people realize because they're so used to doing them that they don't even have to think about it -- their brain takes care of it under the hood. But the brain is there, doing all of these calculations behind the scenes.
Actually, it does in fact require advanced knowledge of math, even if the advanced knowledge is instinctive. Try to keep in mind that each operation you have listed implies a rather large number of additional operations that your brain and instinct and experience have abstracted out.
1. Write down the list of things I need.
1a. What do I need?
1b. What can I write on?
1c. Where is it?
1d. How do I physically move to get it?
1e. How do I pick it up?
1f. Once I've picked it up, how do I position it to write on?
1g. What can I write with?
1h. Where is it?
1i. How do I physically move to get it?
1j. How do I pick it up?
1k. Once I've picked it up, how do I move it to write with it? 2. Go to store.
2a. What kind of store?
2b. Are multiple stores needed?
2c. What is an approximately optimal tour of those stores? (and if you didn't have a knowledge of maths and alogirithms, you wouldn't even know to ask for an "approximately optimal" tour, at which point you might try to do a truly optimal tour, and end up stuck trying to work the algorithm for this problem forever.)
2d. What kind of transport shall I use?
2e. How do I operate that transport? etc... etc... etc...
You'd realize just how bloody hard this algorithm *really* is if you had ever tried to program a robot to actually do it. Each of the substeps I've described have substeps of their own. This seemingly trivial algorithm suddenly becomes extremely non-trivial as soon as you remove the hardware (the brain) that is already designed and conditioned to handle the steps silently in the background.
Once you know this, then integration and derivation of all sin/cos and derived functions boils down to algebra and derivation and integration of e, which is trivial.
I cannot tell you how angry I was with them for not teaching me this until well after integral calculus.
My guess would be the '&' operator. Two objects of the same type at the same memory location would be the same object, yes?
Really, I'm just guessing here. I don't speak C#. But I did look up the API for the particular class, and it absolutely does overload the '==' operator and call a method to do the comparison.
Are they really pointers? The guy was talking C# in his original post, and in C#, these aren't going to be pointers if I'm reading the API docs right -- and the == operator is overloaded to boot. It's a deep comparison, based on that.
I would also point out that either of those is likely to be a roughly O(n) operation, so neither selection is obviously rediculous, and the use of them took very little programmer time to implement. If they become a bottleneck, identify them as such, and choose a better algorithm.
I'm far more likely to get bent out of shape if a programmer who works for me chooses to use a bubble sort algorithm to sort a 5 million record database, or if he spends three weeks trying to find an algorithm to optimally solve a 3SAT equivalent problem. (unless, of course, he actually succeeds in the second case!)
Fact is, someone with real study in CS is less likely to make the above mistakes than someone with just programming experience. And programmer time costs way more than processor time.
Not knowing C#, just knowing what the names say it does, my guess is that the second one is faster.
The first one is going to require two copies and a compare.
Three main loops, and a whole slew of slow, slow copies. The second doesn't need to do any copying, all it has to do is check that each letter in the string is the upper or lower case equivelent of the other. In ASCII, for example, you can use neato-keen bitwise tricks to do this in less than 10 instructions (on most architectures) if you want. Much faster. I bet they were smart enough to do the same with the various other encoding methods.
I can't imagine any EE who doesn't at least use 20log10(X/Y) on a regular basis. Not one doing meaningful work, at any rate.
Um, maybe one that prefers to express in V/V instead of dB? Maybe one that is concerned with power gain instead of voltage/current gain? Maybe one that works with only digital ICs?
Cmon, surely there's at least a few EE's that don't use 20log10(X/Y) that are also doing meaningful work?:)
Mandatory curving is nonsense. If a student masters 92% of the course material, they deserve an A, even if everyone else in the course got a 93%. You're basically advocating something that would punish otherwise good students for the failings of their teacher -- the teacher should devise a test and grading system that accurately measures how much of the material is mastered, and determine at what minimum level of mastery will earn what grade. Curves can just as easily end up with "Well, lil' Billy only learned 25% of the material, but because everyone else only learned 20%, he deserves an A." Bull. Shit.
Tough tests are not a magical solution. Tests that accurately measure mastery and FAIR mastery expectations are the solution. I can easily devise a test that's so tough you can't pass it, just as many teachers devise tests so easy that you can't fail them. MASTERY IS THE KEY.
Hold em back. Hear, hear. Social promotion is nonsense. Learn or get burned.
Teach em to think. Good. Yes. Mandatory critical thinking and logic and problem solving classes are important.
No more teaching the test. Hear, hear.
Linking of pay to progress. Good and bad. Sometimes, the kids just won't learn. It's not that they can't, and it's not that the teacher is bad. It's that they simply won't. I was one of them once; I got sick of taking algebra over and over and over again (long story). I'm not sure exactly the metric that should be used, but mere seniority is definately not it.
Mandatory civil service. Garbage. Garbage. Garbage. Take out civil, and what do you have? Mandatory service. ie, slavery. "civil" just makes it sound better. Fuck. That.
Kids teaching kids. Not a bad idea, but this kind of thing happens naturally when it can. I don't see how making it mandatory will accomplish anything.
Music. Fair enough.
Art. Fair enough. Just be aware that a lot of times, they shunt the "slow" kids into the art programs to boost grades.
Recess is important. Agree.
Paddle. Corporeal punishment is not necessary. Simply make it feasible to remove a kid from public schools. Any student convicted of using any kind of violence in any kind of crime is expelled. Instantly. No discussion, no appeal. Any student convicted of a felony is expelled. Instantly. No discussion, no appeal. Indictment in either case results in suspension pending trial. Any student who is disruptive gets punishment ranging from detention to suspension, to expulsion with enough offenses. Problem solved.
Same sex schools -- eh. Ambivelence.
School vouchers. Fair enough.
More pay. Fair enough.
Now, let me add my own: Instead of measuring performance with tests, measure performance at "the next level," and use that to evaluate the education system they're coming from. Mandate that all federally funded jobs (federal jobs, state jobs backed by federal funding, etc) report on whether or not their employees out of high school need remedial training on a subject. Provide free/discounted remedial training to other employers that report voluntarily. Mandate that all federally funded universities, colleges, etc, report on whether or not their students need remedial training on a subject. Mandate that high schools report on whether their students need remedial training, etc, and down the line. Compile statistics.
Punish schools that graduate students that end up needing remedial training at the next level. Punish schools that fail to correctly place students that need remedial training even more. Punish schools with low graduation rates.
Viola. You no longer have a "test" that can be taught to. Institutions are incentivized to correctly place students in remedial training, and are incentivized to make sure that the next level up doesn't place their students in remedial training. At the high school/college break, you will have a disinterested party providing feedback on the education the student received at the high school.
Originally, there were armies of Sith, rather like there were armies of Jedi.
They rose, got put down, and rose again. One time, they rose and put themselves down with infighting.
After the infighting incident, the survivor decided that a new strategy was in order, and from then on out, there were only two -- the master and apprentice, so that the same mistake would not be repeated.
By the time of Episodes I-VI, this new Sith order (or whatever you want to call it) had been operating like this for roughly 1000 years.
Or that's the story as I understand it, if you include the expanded universe.
If you want to include the movies only, then well, what we know is that Yoda says, "Always two there are, the master and the apprentice", and there are ONLY ever two Sith.
Episode I -- Sidious and Maul Episode II -- Sidious and Dooku Episode III -- Sidious and Dooku, then Sidious and Vader after Anakin kills Dooku Episodes IV-VI -- Sidious and Vader
"To guard against the Sith self-destructing or losing sight of their "ideals" again, Bane took only one apprentice, starting a one-master-one-apprentice tradition to prevent the Sith from destroying themselves again. He also restarted the tradition of passing the name "Darth" to each of his successors, a trend which appears to have originated with Darth Revan millennia before. In a nod to Kaan's earlier pronouncement, both master and apprentice in Bane's Sith Order held the title "Dark Lord of the Sith," making them, nominally at least, equals. The new tenets of this sinister order would be cunning, stealth, and subterfuge"
Actually, as far as we know (in the movies at least), Dooku was not a dark side follower at the same time Darth Maul was -- Maul died before Dooku ever appeared. And Dooku died before Sidious took on Anakin.
We only ever have knowledge of two dark side Sith at any given time in any of the movies.
Sidious in I-VI Maul in I Dooku in II Dooku for the first 15-20 minutes of III, Vader for the rest Vader for IV-VI
To my knowledge, Sith MEANS Sith lord. For example, in the novels, Mara Jade was obviously a dark side force user, but she was never at any time referred to as "Sith".
Sidious always intended that Luke become his apprentice; go rewatch VI, he refers to him as his "new apprentice" in the throne scene. For Luke to be his apprentice, Vader has to die, and so it was with Dooku having to die before Sidious could take on Vader.
> Why did Luke suddenly think that Vader could be > turned in Episode VI? Vader stood for everything > that was evil to him, and yet in Episode VI, he > works to save him.
He learns that Vader is his father; he doesn't want to kill his own father. He can also sense that there's good in him via the force. If there's good in him, there's a chance for redemption, and if you had a choice between killing and redeeming your father, what would you choose?
> Why did Palpatine want Luke at all? As we > learned from Episodes I-III, there can only be > two Sith: a master and apprentice. And Vader was > not as strong after Episode III -- it's clear > that Vader in the suit would have been no match > against a hypothetical Anakin pre-lava-bath. And > Palpatine wanted a strong apprentice he could > control.
Actually, he wanted Luke mostly because he had prophecied that Luke would be his undoing. Obi-wan mentions this in Episode V, I think. Palpatine figured that if he could turn Luke, he could beat the prophecy.
It turns out that if he had turned Luke, he would have at least delayed it -- remember, it was because Luke refused to kill Vader that Vader had the opportunity to kill the Emporer.
It also should be understood that both Vader AND Palpatine had to know what it meant to turn Luke. There can only be TWO Sith -- the master and apprentice. To turn Luke, that means one of them had to die, and it's obvious that BOTH Vader and Palpatine meant it to happen that way -- see the scene in V when Vader is telling Luke they'll "rule as father and son", and the scene in VI when the Emporer urges Luke to... how did it go... "kill your father and take his place by my side!"
> More plot holes -- Why did Vader torture Han, > Leia, and Chewie?
To draw Luke out, of course. It's easier to capture someone when they come to you. I expect it's also easier to turn someone earlier in their Jedi training than later.
> Why did Obi-Wan allow himself to die in Episode IV?
Didn't need I-III to tell you this. Obi-wan appears at the end of I in voice only, and then actually manifests in II and III. Obi-wan knew he could cheat death, if he wanted to. He distracted Vader getting the Falcon out of there, simultanously shedding the limitations of a physical body. (...although he did also shed the advantages)
> East Asians (Chinese, Korean etc) are the majority graduating.
Not here at OU, and we have a very large international contingent.
The number of asians in my classes is definately disproportionate to the normal population, but I am also including US-born asians.
But, here, probably 3/20 students is African American, 4/20 is Asian, 3/20 is Arab/Persian, maybe 1/40 is Native American and the rest are white. Interesting distribution, no?
Slashdot Mirror
Different beasts. These guys are talking about having content providers pay to have priority in their network; currently, everyone is treated equally.
Assume you're an AT&T customer. This sort of behavior could end up in a situation where AT&T wants you to pay them for high speed access to their network... and then they want to turn around and have Google pay to provide you high speed access to their site. Does that sound reasonable to you?
They charge you money for high speed internet, but in order to do that, the sites you use must also pay money to deliver to you at high speed. That's pure bogosity in my book.
Further, you can have a situation where Google has a line to AT&T, but in order for AT&T to deliver it, they have to hand it to say, UUNet, who then hands it off to Earthlink. So in that situation, in order for you to have high speed access, YOU will have to pay Earthlink, and Google may end up having to pay AT&T, UUNet, and Earthlink also.
Does that make a lot of sense to you? Essentially, what that tells you is that the only content providers that will be able to provide bandwidth intensive services are the extremely wealthy ones. And thus ends the days of the Internet as a level playing field where the little guy can compete with the big guy.
I agree that you need to be careful. I'm not a lawyer, but my understanding is that fraud generally requires an *intent* to defraud.
If the guy here honestly believes that Blizzard did not provide the service that they promised to deliver, and that he fullfilled all of his obligations (not violating the AUP/TOS for example), then he should probably be able to charge back without fear.
He needs to consider carefully whether or not he can make an argument to support any chargebacks he may request.
Carefully examine your case. Consider the TOS and AUP.
;)
:) It helps if you do high volume on it. I do about $20k/yr on my credit card {paying off as I go}, and they do not play around with me.)
Then, if you really honestly think you have a case, use your credit card's chargeback ability as a bludgeon. If you really think you have a case that you can make, then they'll start talking back if you can convince the credit card company to take your side.
(Keep in mind that by selling you the software, they *offered* to provide you with continuing service at a certain price. Because RPGs are a character building exercise for some people, that "future service" promise may be considered critical to the original purchase -- a sort of contract if you will. Furthermore, they did not give you a reasonable opportunity for dialog to resolve this issue independant of the credit card company {something the CC company wants} because they communicated with you almost exclusively through the form letters, failing to provide you with any meaningful communication.)
I don't know how well it will hold up, but getting the credit card company on your side is critical for you. You know how Blizzard can tell you to stuff it, do what it wants, and start ignoring you? Yeah, the credit card company can and will do the same thing to Blizzard -- if you can get them on your side. You're going to have to come up with justification (maybe like mine above) that holds water for charging back to day one. Mine may not hold up, so consider it carefully. But, you can expect someone at Blizzard will start talking if you can convince the credit card company that $200 worth of chargeback is justified.
Assuming you do get the CC company on your side, even if Blizzard doesn't give you what you want... well, you've got your $200 back
(You may have to threaten to cancel the card to get what you want, btw.
Brilliant!
Not to mention fines from the state, more than likely.
It wouldn't. But I wasn't replying to the guy who was talking about 1/(1+x^2) ;)
With the 7th Ed I have, they have a full calculus series book, a book covering only derivatives and integrals, a book covering only power series, and a book covering vectors with calculus.
:)
The first book I had covered only the derivatives and integrals.
Gee Wally, if it's found in the tear sheet of *all* calculus books, then why wasn't it in mine? (Calculus, 7ed Larson, Hostetler, Edwards) Maybe mine isn't really a calculus book? No, it has differentiation, limits, and integrals in it. Must really be calculus.
Might just be that you don't know what you're talking about, saying that something exists in a book you've never seen. That's my guess.
(This book doesn't have power series either, those are in the next book in the series).
Cmon. It really is easy. Keep in mind that -i=1/i. (Do you really want proof of that too?)
d/dx cos(x)=d/dx e^(ix)/2 + d/dx e^(-ix)/2 = i/2*e^(ix) - i/2*e^(-ix) = i/2*(e^(ix)-e^(-ix)) = -1/(2i)*(e^(ix)-e^(-ix)) = -sin(x)
Actually, I'm not being rediculous. This is the sort of stuff you have to do if you want to make a robot deal with a shopping list.
The point is, there's more to the task list that this guy made than he realizes because the human brain can deal with a lot of these things "under the hood" so to speak.
Writing is a good example of this. Do you recall how hard you had to concentrate on writing when you first learned how to do it? Now consider what it's like to write now -- it's practically a reflex. You just pick up a pen or pencil and just do it.
Or how about riding a bicycle? It's very hard at first, but after enough practice, you don't even have to think about it.
Imagine trying to walk if you had to think about every muscle that has to move in exactly the right way to keep you upright and moving (as a baby learning how to walk does). It's HARD stuff.
The point is, there is a *lot* more to everyday tasks than a lot of people realize because they're so used to doing them that they don't even have to think about it -- their brain takes care of it under the hood. But the brain is there, doing all of these calculations behind the scenes.
Actually, it does in fact require advanced knowledge of math, even if the advanced knowledge is instinctive. Try to keep in mind that each operation you have listed implies a rather large number of additional operations that your brain and instinct and experience have abstracted out.
1. Write down the list of things I need.
1a. What do I need?
1b. What can I write on?
1c. Where is it?
1d. How do I physically move to get it?
1e. How do I pick it up?
1f. Once I've picked it up, how do I position it to write on?
1g. What can I write with?
1h. Where is it?
1i. How do I physically move to get it?
1j. How do I pick it up?
1k. Once I've picked it up, how do I move it to write with it?
2. Go to store.
2a. What kind of store?
2b. Are multiple stores needed?
2c. What is an approximately optimal tour of those stores? (and if you didn't have a knowledge of maths and alogirithms, you wouldn't even know to ask for an "approximately optimal" tour, at which point you might try to do a truly optimal tour, and end up stuck trying to work the algorithm for this problem forever.)
2d. What kind of transport shall I use?
2e. How do I operate that transport?
etc... etc... etc...
You'd realize just how bloody hard this algorithm *really* is if you had ever tried to program a robot to actually do it. Each of the substeps I've described have substeps of their own. This seemingly trivial algorithm suddenly becomes extremely non-trivial as soon as you remove the hardware (the brain) that is already designed and conditioned to handle the steps silently in the background.
Sadly, you had this problem because those bastards never ever let you in on the secret:
e^(ix)=cos(x)+i*sin(x)
=> cos(x)=(e^(ix)+e^(-ix))/2
=> sin(x)=(e^(ix)-e^(-ix))/(2i)
Once you know this, then integration and derivation of all sin/cos and derived functions boils down to algebra and derivation and integration of e, which is trivial.
I cannot tell you how angry I was with them for not teaching me this until well after integral calculus.
My guess would be the '&' operator. Two objects of the same type at the same memory location would be the same object, yes?
Really, I'm just guessing here. I don't speak C#. But I did look up the API for the particular class, and it absolutely does overload the '==' operator and call a method to do the comparison.
Are they really pointers? The guy was talking C# in his original post, and in C#, these aren't going to be pointers if I'm reading the API docs right -- and the == operator is overloaded to boot. It's a deep comparison, based on that.
I would also point out that either of those is likely to be a roughly O(n) operation, so neither selection is obviously rediculous, and the use of them took very little programmer time to implement. If they become a bottleneck, identify them as such, and choose a better algorithm.
I'm far more likely to get bent out of shape if a programmer who works for me chooses to use a bubble sort algorithm to sort a 5 million record database, or if he spends three weeks trying to find an algorithm to optimally solve a 3SAT equivalent problem. (unless, of course, he actually succeeds in the second case!)
Fact is, someone with real study in CS is less likely to make the above mistakes than someone with just programming experience. And programmer time costs way more than processor time.
Not knowing C#, just knowing what the names say it does, my guess is that the second one is faster.
The first one is going to require two copies and a compare.
Three main loops, and a whole slew of slow, slow copies. The second doesn't need to do any copying, all it has to do is check that each letter in the string is the upper or lower case equivelent of the other. In ASCII, for example, you can use neato-keen bitwise tricks to do this in less than 10 instructions (on most architectures) if you want. Much faster. I bet they were smart enough to do the same with the various other encoding methods.
Um, maybe one that prefers to express in V/V instead of dB? Maybe one that is concerned with power gain instead of voltage/current gain? Maybe one that works with only digital ICs?
Cmon, surely there's at least a few EE's that don't use 20log10(X/Y) that are also doing meaningful work? :)
Now, let me add my own: Instead of measuring performance with tests, measure performance at "the next level," and use that to evaluate the education system they're coming from. Mandate that all federally funded jobs (federal jobs, state jobs backed by federal funding, etc) report on whether or not their employees out of high school need remedial training on a subject. Provide free/discounted remedial training to other employers that report voluntarily. Mandate that all federally funded universities, colleges, etc, report on whether or not their students need remedial training on a subject. Mandate that high schools report on whether their students need remedial training, etc, and down the line. Compile statistics.
Punish schools that graduate students that end up needing remedial training at the next level. Punish schools that fail to correctly place students that need remedial training even more. Punish schools with low graduation rates.
Viola. You no longer have a "test" that can be taught to. Institutions are incentivized to correctly place students in remedial training, and are incentivized to make sure that the next level up doesn't place their students in remedial training. At the high school/college break, you will have a disinterested party providing feedback on the education the student received at the high school.
Originally, there were armies of Sith, rather like there were armies of Jedi.
They rose, got put down, and rose again. One time, they rose and put themselves down with infighting.
After the infighting incident, the survivor decided that a new strategy was in order, and from then on out, there were only two -- the master and apprentice, so that the same mistake would not be repeated.
By the time of Episodes I-VI, this new Sith order (or whatever you want to call it) had been operating like this for roughly 1000 years.
Or that's the story as I understand it, if you include the expanded universe.
If you want to include the movies only, then well, what we know is that Yoda says, "Always two there are, the master and the apprentice", and there are ONLY ever two Sith.
Episode I -- Sidious and Maul
Episode II -- Sidious and Dooku
Episode III -- Sidious and Dooku, then Sidious and Vader after Anakin kills Dooku
Episodes IV-VI -- Sidious and Vader
*shrug*
Heh, another reply:
FWIW, from Wikipedia on Sith:
"To guard against the Sith self-destructing or losing sight of their "ideals" again, Bane took only one apprentice, starting a one-master-one-apprentice tradition to prevent the Sith from destroying themselves again. He also restarted the tradition of passing the name "Darth" to each of his successors, a trend which appears to have originated with Darth Revan millennia before. In a nod to Kaan's earlier pronouncement, both master and apprentice in Bane's Sith Order held the title "Dark Lord of the Sith," making them, nominally at least, equals. The new tenets of this sinister order would be cunning, stealth, and subterfuge"
Also, your statement that for the Sith to rule the galaxy there would have had to be many more than just two... well it's just wrong.
Keep in mind that just two Sith ruled the galaxy in IV-VI.
Actually, as far as we know (in the movies at least), Dooku was not a dark side follower at the same time Darth Maul was -- Maul died before Dooku ever appeared. And Dooku died before Sidious took on Anakin.
We only ever have knowledge of two dark side Sith at any given time in any of the movies.
Sidious in I-VI
Maul in I
Dooku in II
Dooku for the first 15-20 minutes of III, Vader for the rest
Vader for IV-VI
To my knowledge, Sith MEANS Sith lord. For example, in the novels, Mara Jade was obviously a dark side force user, but she was never at any time referred to as "Sith".
Sidious always intended that Luke become his apprentice; go rewatch VI, he refers to him as his "new apprentice" in the throne scene. For Luke to be his apprentice, Vader has to die, and so it was with Dooku having to die before Sidious could take on Vader.
> Why did Luke suddenly think that Vader could be
... how did it go... "kill your father and take his place by my side!"
> turned in Episode VI? Vader stood for everything
> that was evil to him, and yet in Episode VI, he
> works to save him.
He learns that Vader is his father; he doesn't want to kill his own father. He can also sense that there's good in him via the force. If there's good in him, there's a chance for redemption, and if you had a choice between killing and redeeming your father, what would you choose?
> Why did Palpatine want Luke at all? As we
> learned from Episodes I-III, there can only be
> two Sith: a master and apprentice. And Vader was
> not as strong after Episode III -- it's clear
> that Vader in the suit would have been no match
> against a hypothetical Anakin pre-lava-bath. And
> Palpatine wanted a strong apprentice he could
> control.
Actually, he wanted Luke mostly because he had prophecied that Luke would be his undoing. Obi-wan mentions this in Episode V, I think. Palpatine figured that if he could turn Luke, he could beat the prophecy.
It turns out that if he had turned Luke, he would have at least delayed it -- remember, it was because Luke refused to kill Vader that Vader had the opportunity to kill the Emporer.
It also should be understood that both Vader AND Palpatine had to know what it meant to turn Luke. There can only be TWO Sith -- the master and apprentice. To turn Luke, that means one of them had to die, and it's obvious that BOTH Vader and Palpatine meant it to happen that way -- see the scene in V when Vader is telling Luke they'll "rule as father and son", and the scene in VI when the Emporer urges Luke to
> More plot holes -- Why did Vader torture Han,
> Leia, and Chewie?
To draw Luke out, of course. It's easier to capture someone when they come to you. I expect it's also easier to turn someone earlier in their Jedi training than later.
> Why did Obi-Wan allow himself to die in Episode IV?
Didn't need I-III to tell you this. Obi-wan appears at the end of I in voice only, and then actually manifests in II and III. Obi-wan knew he could cheat death, if he wanted to. He distracted Vader getting the Falcon out of there, simultanously shedding the limitations of a physical body. (...although he did also shed the advantages)
Could have been much worse, coulda been hydrofluoric acid.
Not only does it burn the shit out of you, but it's highly toxic, so even if the burns don't kill you, the toxicity may.
> East Asians (Chinese, Korean etc) are the majority graduating.
Not here at OU, and we have a very large international contingent.
The number of asians in my classes is definately disproportionate to the normal population, but I am also including US-born asians.
But, here, probably 3/20 students is African American, 4/20 is Asian, 3/20 is Arab/Persian, maybe 1/40 is Native American and the rest are white. Interesting distribution, no?