You're pretty incoherent. Everything at the moment is contemporary. For something to be contemporary does not necessarily preclude its status as an epic.
Obviously, since we perceive time linearly, it is only necessary for an epic to speak to future generations, rather than all generations. Cavemen would have just as much trouble understanding Beowulf as the ancient Greeks would have with Star Wars. And there's no evidence that I can see that would indicate that humans in hundreds or thousands of years would suddenly stop being able to understand Star Wars.
The Greeks considered Homer to be an epic poet (as they distinguished him from a lyric poet)--why should we restrain from speculating about the epic-ness of Star Wars?
The reason why Star Wars is one of the most epic stories ever told is because unlike those static documents you listed are exactly that: static.
Star Wars, on the other hand, is continually revisited and revised with the compound intelligence of millions of fans and dozens of authors.
Certainly epic poetry has its value, and I wouldn't claim that Star Wars outclasses those poems, but it's more comparable than you allow.
Clones are inherently inferior to their natural counterparts, at least in the Star Wars universe. They have a tendency to be flaky to the point of insanity. An example of this would be Joruus C'baoth, the dark Jedi clone employed by Admiral Thrawn.
Cloning Jedi would make for some very unstable people with some very frightening powers.
My point is that the step from beginning galactic colonization and completing it is equivalent to a cosmic blink. Yeah, technically luck could have it so that we just happen to be in some interim stage, or we just happen to have been passed over.
If robots from outer space came and visited us, it would be no less of a breakthrough than if their makers came in the flesh.
So it would be, that is--of course, it's never happened, which is precisely my point. Our robots are never going to find any life either.
Of course such speculation is interesting and encouraging--but it does not dissuade me. I really would love for there to be an infinite untapped wealth of life throughout the universe, but when we need to go through such logical leaps of faith as "maybe we're surrounded but shielded" in order to keep hope alive, I find my patience wearing thin.
Of course, yes, it's possible. Anything's possible at this stage in the game. It's just stupefyingly unlikely.
Actually, I don't believe faster than light travel to be a necessary prerequisite to galactic colonization. It would certainly make things easier, yes, but we could still do it. It would just have to be incremental and would perhaps take longer.
This argument is a bit like a subjectivist saying that it's impossible to know anything.
Certainly Ptolemy had some pretty wacky things to say. Certainly we've seen some of our most cherished scientific notions rescinded even within our lifetimes. But our degree of error has gotten lower and lower. An example: Newton's theory of gravity no longer holds salt, thanks to Einstein. However, Newton's theory of gravity also yielded results that were very, very close to accurate. In the grand scheme of things, it might not be useful, but it was much more useful than no theory at all, just as Ptolemy's ideas were much more useful than thinking the celestial bodies were controlling deities.
Slowly, we're getting closer to a truth, and it is a definite truth. I agree that we aren't there yet, and the path that might take us there is likely beyond our current levels of conception. But the destination is not going to be a radical overhaul of our understanding of space and time. These are natural physical restraints on our ability to perceive the universe--we exist according to their thrum, and we would be fools to expect to ever look beyond them.
Technically it's possible that every civilization reaches a point of becoming pure thought--it is certainly possible that the option will present itself. However, this does not preclude interaction with the physical world. However, for that to disprove my previous theory, every civilization EVER would have to reach that point--if only one civilization decided to colonize instead, they would have reached us eventually. I find it hard to believe that something could be that common.
If you think about it, this should come as no real surprise. In the span of a mere 10,000 years, humans have gone from being completely without any technology to being nearly spacefaring, with the rate of technological advancement increasing exponentially.
It won't be long before we're in space, and from there the rate of advancement will only continue to grow. I doubt it will take more than 10,000 more years for us to populate most of the easily habitable or terraformable worlds in the galaxy. Think about it mathematically--10,000 years ago, the world human population was at most a few million. We're now at 6 billion. Every single mind added to that tally makes us that much smarter as a race--and soon we'll have the capability to technologically improve our own intelligence.
On the galactic timescale, 10,000 years is an increment barely worth discussing. And our sun isn't particularly old--the bleak truth is that if there were ANY life in any state of advancement anywhere else in the galaxy (this is charitable--really, the universe), it would not only have evolved far beyond us, but would have colonized us long ago.
It's a lonely frontier out there; though I wish it weren't so, life is a beautiful singularity, an aberration of staggering magnitude. It's almost enough to make you believe in God.
If you don't like it, then rescind your subscription. This will remind them why people don't develop commercial games for Linux, which made room for their project in the first place.
Of course they'll eventually find something else to do and/or starve to death.
This is a good point. Slashdotters should realize this, considering all the trouble that the management here has done to make Goatse links more obvious.
If the paranoid open-sourcers don't look where they click, it's highly improbable that granny is either, and there are far more grannies than open sourcers.
The above respondent obviously didn't understand the point of the parent post.
Why exactly is nullification too strong? The world has obsoleted IP laws by the advent of digital reproduction and the internet. Why must we cling to these vestiges of a former, darker era?
IP laws don't affect software, since a software company can easily protect its own product (closing its source) if it so chooses. Therefore, IP laws pertain only to entertainment media--and it's clear that even the most draconian legislative measures are fingers in the dyke, mere lip service to the corporate campaign donors. Despite how much we complain about these laws, they have had no strong real-world ramifications--the proliferation of freely-attainable entertainment on the internet attests to that.
Let's just forget this charade and point our resources elsewhere. Let the current entertainment industry die the death it deserves, and let a new, more capable industry rise to fill the void. It's the natural order of things.
asked in sincerity: does this mean faster chips, or what?
what's the point?
on
StarOffice 6.0
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
OpenOffice.org 1.0 released sooner, has comparable features and is completely free.
It's the same code base, anyway. So why would anyone want Star Office?
Note that this isn't meant as a troll--I think it's a legitimate question.
While I don't necessarily disagree with your sentiment in a general sense, I think to link this cut to commercialism is a stretch. Cutting out 1 second of footage should not dramatically change the film's appeal to you. You would not miss it if nobody had told you it was supposed to have been there.
Moreover, whether you like it or not, a lot of Star Wars fans are kids, and it would be a serious pain in the ass for them if the movie were rated so that they couldn't see it. Sure this costs Lucas money, but not very much, and more likely the issue that's on his mind is making sure that anyone who wants to see the movie can see the movie. If they were making serious plot changes, I might agree with you, but this just isn't a big deal.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no greater glory than the FP.
They would be difficult to control. Just because they would be crazy does not mean that they would serve the empire.
You're pretty incoherent. Everything at the moment is contemporary. For something to be contemporary does not necessarily preclude its status as an epic.
Obviously, since we perceive time linearly, it is only necessary for an epic to speak to future generations, rather than all generations. Cavemen would have just as much trouble understanding Beowulf as the ancient Greeks would have with Star Wars. And there's no evidence that I can see that would indicate that humans in hundreds or thousands of years would suddenly stop being able to understand Star Wars.
The Greeks considered Homer to be an epic poet (as they distinguished him from a lyric poet)--why should we restrain from speculating about the epic-ness of Star Wars?
The reason why Star Wars is one of the most epic stories ever told is because unlike those static documents you listed are exactly that: static. Star Wars, on the other hand, is continually revisited and revised with the compound intelligence of millions of fans and dozens of authors. Certainly epic poetry has its value, and I wouldn't claim that Star Wars outclasses those poems, but it's more comparable than you allow.
Clones are inherently inferior to their natural counterparts, at least in the Star Wars universe. They have a tendency to be flaky to the point of insanity. An example of this would be Joruus C'baoth, the dark Jedi clone employed by Admiral Thrawn. Cloning Jedi would make for some very unstable people with some very frightening powers.
My point is that the step from beginning galactic colonization and completing it is equivalent to a cosmic blink. Yeah, technically luck could have it so that we just happen to be in some interim stage, or we just happen to have been passed over.
I prefer to think sensibly, that's all.
If robots from outer space came and visited us, it would be no less of a breakthrough than if their makers came in the flesh. So it would be, that is--of course, it's never happened, which is precisely my point. Our robots are never going to find any life either.
That's nice, but you've completely overlooked robotics and artifical intelligence.
I don't really need to say more about this. It should now be pretty obvious what you missed.
Of course such speculation is interesting and encouraging--but it does not dissuade me. I really would love for there to be an infinite untapped wealth of life throughout the universe, but when we need to go through such logical leaps of faith as "maybe we're surrounded but shielded" in order to keep hope alive, I find my patience wearing thin.
Of course, yes, it's possible. Anything's possible at this stage in the game. It's just stupefyingly unlikely.
Actually, I don't believe faster than light travel to be a necessary prerequisite to galactic colonization. It would certainly make things easier, yes, but we could still do it. It would just have to be incremental and would perhaps take longer.
Cosmically, though, not much longer.
sorry for the dreadful lack of formatting. i thought plain text was on, as it is my default.
This argument is a bit like a subjectivist saying that it's impossible to know anything. Certainly Ptolemy had some pretty wacky things to say. Certainly we've seen some of our most cherished scientific notions rescinded even within our lifetimes. But our degree of error has gotten lower and lower. An example: Newton's theory of gravity no longer holds salt, thanks to Einstein. However, Newton's theory of gravity also yielded results that were very, very close to accurate. In the grand scheme of things, it might not be useful, but it was much more useful than no theory at all, just as Ptolemy's ideas were much more useful than thinking the celestial bodies were controlling deities. Slowly, we're getting closer to a truth, and it is a definite truth. I agree that we aren't there yet, and the path that might take us there is likely beyond our current levels of conception. But the destination is not going to be a radical overhaul of our understanding of space and time. These are natural physical restraints on our ability to perceive the universe--we exist according to their thrum, and we would be fools to expect to ever look beyond them. Technically it's possible that every civilization reaches a point of becoming pure thought--it is certainly possible that the option will present itself. However, this does not preclude interaction with the physical world. However, for that to disprove my previous theory, every civilization EVER would have to reach that point--if only one civilization decided to colonize instead, they would have reached us eventually. I find it hard to believe that something could be that common.
If you think about it, this should come as no real surprise. In the span of a mere 10,000 years, humans have gone from being completely without any technology to being nearly spacefaring, with the rate of technological advancement increasing exponentially.
It won't be long before we're in space, and from there the rate of advancement will only continue to grow. I doubt it will take more than 10,000 more years for us to populate most of the easily habitable or terraformable worlds in the galaxy. Think about it mathematically--10,000 years ago, the world human population was at most a few million. We're now at 6 billion. Every single mind added to that tally makes us that much smarter as a race--and soon we'll have the capability to technologically improve our own intelligence.
On the galactic timescale, 10,000 years is an increment barely worth discussing. And our sun isn't particularly old--the bleak truth is that if there were ANY life in any state of advancement anywhere else in the galaxy (this is charitable--really, the universe), it would not only have evolved far beyond us, but would have colonized us long ago.
It's a lonely frontier out there; though I wish it weren't so, life is a beautiful singularity, an aberration of staggering magnitude. It's almost enough to make you believe in God.
If you don't like it, then rescind your subscription. This will remind them why people don't develop commercial games for Linux, which made room for their project in the first place.
Of course they'll eventually find something else to do and/or starve to death.
This is a good point. Slashdotters should realize this, considering all the trouble that the management here has done to make Goatse links more obvious. If the paranoid open-sourcers don't look where they click, it's highly improbable that granny is either, and there are far more grannies than open sourcers. The above respondent obviously didn't understand the point of the parent post.
Why exactly is nullification too strong? The world has obsoleted IP laws by the advent of digital reproduction and the internet. Why must we cling to these vestiges of a former, darker era?
IP laws don't affect software, since a software company can easily protect its own product (closing its source) if it so chooses. Therefore, IP laws pertain only to entertainment media--and it's clear that even the most draconian legislative measures are fingers in the dyke, mere lip service to the corporate campaign donors. Despite how much we complain about these laws, they have had no strong real-world ramifications--the proliferation of freely-attainable entertainment on the internet attests to that.
Let's just forget this charade and point our resources elsewhere. Let the current entertainment industry die the death it deserves, and let a new, more capable industry rise to fill the void. It's the natural order of things.
Highlight doing auto-copy is stupid. What if you want to paste over something? This gets annoying really quickly.
asked in sincerity: does this mean faster chips, or what?
OpenOffice.org 1.0 released sooner, has comparable features and is completely free. It's the same code base, anyway. So why would anyone want Star Office? Note that this isn't meant as a troll--I think it's a legitimate question.
so you're in bed with your girlfriend browsing slashdot? that's called addiction. no wonder she rolled out of bed.
My US copy plays just fine in my computer.
Oh you are? So that your connection will be noticeably slowed by all the information about you that's being extracted?
U R BAD RITER K?
While I don't necessarily disagree with your sentiment in a general sense, I think to link this cut to commercialism is a stretch. Cutting out 1 second of footage should not dramatically change the film's appeal to you. You would not miss it if nobody had told you it was supposed to have been there.
Moreover, whether you like it or not, a lot of Star Wars fans are kids, and it would be a serious pain in the ass for them if the movie were rated so that they couldn't see it. Sure this costs Lucas money, but not very much, and more likely the issue that's on his mind is making sure that anyone who wants to see the movie can see the movie. If they were making serious plot changes, I might agree with you, but this just isn't a big deal.
Is your kid a Slashdot troll or something? Mommy, what's a goatse?