I just had a vision of the future. Mr. Ballmer was at a news conference and was explaining that searching the internet is a fundamental and indivisible function of the modern Operating System and the new version of Windows cannot be modified to allow access to Google without losing all its functionality.
This is great thinking! So as long as we have good imaginations, we will be guaranteed to be working hard and living in poverty because we will have to pay for some new weapon system. (I cant wait for the weapon to protect us from giant monsters)
I think it is a better idea to actually look at the world and prepare for dangers that are either present, or will soon be present.
Nobody is building space weapons yet. If they did we would know. So why don't we wait for somebody to start building the things before we throw our money after it.
Now explain how exactly did reagan bankrupt the soviet union with starwars?
What did the soviets do in retaliation to starwars that they would not have done otherwise, and which bankrupted them?
What reagan did was extract a trillion dollars from the taxpayer with nothing to show for it, and then the dumbass taxpayers ended up worshipping him over it.
It would be funny if I was not stuck paying back that trillion with interest.
Oh let me give you an answer: the soviets bankrupted themselves because of the inneficiency of their economic system. Sure their huge military helped speed up the bankruptcy but that had nothing to do with star wars. Their military was huge even before starwars and most of the expansions (i.e. their ever growing tank armies) had nothing to do with star wars. The soviet nuclear arsenal did not increase out of proportion after starwars. They did not spend huge ammounts of money on a program to counter starwars.
"Getting there first ensures continued access to space."
Where did you get that silly idea? The only thing building weapons in space ensures is the spending of a lot of fucking money.
"What's to keep China, India, Japan, etc... from getting a weapon there first and preventing anybody else from accessing space by applying their weapon?"
The laws of physics and current technology. Right now any weapon in space will be just a huge fucking target. It can be tracked by any amateur with a telescope and destroyed by a spoonful of well placed explosives.
You seem to be under the misconception that just because something can be done we must do it. Otherwise someone else (i think the chinese are the current boogeyman) will do it and gosh will we be in trouble.
Why dont we spend one trillion dollars on building a giant golden pyramid? If we don't the chinese will surely do it before us.
There is a misconception that if the chinese are first to develop space weapons then they would gain a huge advantage. Fact is, space weapons can be destroyed very easily (and cheaply compared to the price of the weapons) by any country with space launch capabilities.
So if the Chinese are stupid enough to spend a trillion dollars on some space weapon, we can easily break the thing by sending a couple of pounds of explosives its way. The US (and Russia i think) both have missiles for destroying satelites in orbit.
So no country will be able to gain any meaningful advantage over the US by building space weapons first.
So "the if we don't build it someone else will" reasoning is complete bullshit.
You seem to be under the misconception that just because something can be done we must do it. Otherwise the chinese will do it.
Why dont we spend 100 billion on building a giant golden pyramid? If we don't the chinese will surely do it before us.
Space weapons are just not very effective. That all powerful laser system was already tried in the SDI boondogle and found impossible. Even the SDI gave up on placing the lasers in space and put them on the ground (that did not work either). Nuclear and power laser technology has not improved drastically in the last 30 years.
Also, there is a misconception that if the chinese are first to develop space weapons then they would gain a huge advantage. Fact is, space weapons can be destroyed very easily (and cheaply compared to the price of the weapons) by any country with space launch capabilities.
So if the Chinese are stupid enough to spend a trillion dollars on some space weapon, we can easily break the thing by sending a couple of pounds of explosives its way. The US (and Russia i think) both have missiles for destroying satelites in orbit.
So no country will be able to gain any meaningful advantage over the US by building space weapons first.
So "the if we don't build it the Chinese will" reasoning is complete bs.
Seeing as how all newly designed rockets have at least a couple of midair explosions before things get straigthened out, I don't think nuclear propulsion should even be considered in the Earth's atmosphere.
It is however an option in space, if the nuclear fuel is brought up to orbit in a rocket with established safety.
As far as the nuclear engineers -- that is a non-issue. If you think nuclear engineers are per se dangerous, then we should pay them to retrain themselves for other (hopefully physics related jobs). If we try to create more nuclear engineering jobs just to keep them busy, then we will also be creating more nuclear engineers which you will have to worry about again.
You are quite right. And the annoying thing is that they are not being creative. Exactly the same story was ran before the other movies premiered. If they want to be whores they should at least try to find some newer angles on this, so they don't repeat themselves. But maybe its not a problem coz readers of the NY Post seem to have short memories.
Remmeber how Kerrey got attacked because he voted against all those military spending bills, and that he voted against a bill that "would have given food and provisions to our soldiers in iraq". Well that's the reason why everybody voted for this bill.
Actually IBM came up with tablets looong before Microsoft did. I remember playing around with an IBM tablet notebook in the mid 90s. Needless to say it sucked then too.
In any event if anyone can make a tablet work apple can. They have a hidden advantage -- nobody expects macs to be useful.
Suppose I draw a random number from 1 to 10 million. I get the number 947537. Then I wonder well gee what were the odds of me getting that particular number. Obviously 1 in 10 million. Isn't that a huge coincidence? Clearly God must be involved. This is a wonderful argument because it works no matter which number I draw.
See, the problem with these argments is that a result of low likely hood is not really an amazing thing unless you have somebody predicting that particular result before hand.
BTW I do believe in God, but I nevertheless accept that it may be the case that we are not able to prove his existance.
I don't really agree. I was in my late teens when I first saw star wars (not because I am very old but because I am not originally from the US so I happened to miss all the hoopla). Well I liked it. I thought they were fun movies.
As far as the Phantom Menace it is obvious that if anybody only small children would like it. But even so it was not that good. My sisters who were the perfect age for it did not like it at all.
So first of all TPM was targeted at a younger crowd than the original series (purely a business decision as lucas knew he would make the most money out of toys and younger children buy more toys) but also it was just not nearly as good of a movie as the original series. TPM never generated the kind of obssession with today's children and teenagers the original star wars did. In fact even for his supposed target audience it was rather forgetable in comparison with other children's movies (such as finding nemo, etc.).
Fact is that it is mostly star wars fan boys that even talk about star wars nowadays. Children and teenagers have long forgotten it.
Whatever you do, do not trust AICN for any star wars reviews. It is a cool site and a great place to get rumors and such about movies (and also great place for flame wars) but their reviews are questionable to say the least.
It is just painfully obvious that they give good reviews in exchange for early access to the movie. Their review of Phantom Menace was so gushing it was embarrassing. Harry even assured us that we would love Jar-Jar's hijinks.
I would wait until a well established critic that would never give a positive review in exchange for access (such as Roger Ebert) reviews the movie.
The most ridiculous computer related scene perpetrated in a movie:
In independence day Jeff Goldblum (sp?) sees a captured alien ship which has not been opened or examined by humans before. The ship is sealed and one cannot get inside of it or open it to see its internals. They know nothing about alien technology.
So what does Jeff Goldblum do? He sneezes and that gives him an idea. Why not give the ship a virus? He proceeds to open his apple notebook and somehow interface with the ship to give it a virus.
Lawyers are very worried about legal shows, and not just because of the inacuracies. Actually, entertainment's treatment of law is usually more accurate than its treatment of science and math, because a lot of the writers have had legal training.
However, some shows set really bad example. For example in Law and Order which is supposed to be the most serious and respected of the legal shows, the main hero of the show (the prosecutor) keeps doing things that are either illegal or immoral for an attorney in his position. It usually has something to do with hiding evidence that he is supposed to submit to the defence, or tricking a defendent or a witness. And the show celebrates these breaches of the ethics rules, essentially portraying the prosecutor in being really clever in getting the bad guy.
Pretty much every second part of every eposode is portrayed as a heroic battle between the good guys (that prosecutor and an ever changing hot female prosecutor) on one side and the forces of evil (the civil rights of the defendant and the rules of ethics) on the other side. I have yet to see a show where an innocent defendant has been spared inprisonment because of the proper observance of his rights.
And of course since more or less the whole population has seen at least several Law and Order episodes (and many people watch that show religously), when the government decides to curb civil rights, the people don't really mind, which is not what you would really expect from this freedom loving nation.
Wow, was that that Razorfish movie? Maybe I should see it. I don't suppose they had a close-up of Halle sucking that guy off? That would make it worthwhile to watch Travolta trying to look fat and evil (as opposed to just fat) for two hours.
Care to share some examples of things they have gotten wrong?
I have not seen the show I just see the commercials, and they really annoy me, for some reason. I don't know, maybe I am just a bitter person but I would rather have a specific reason to hate the show:)
It does not matter if you are white or black, able-bodied or disabled, every American has a right to shop, and if there is any impediment to this right our brilliant scientists will work non-stop to remove it.
Is this the end of large dogs? Well, not really, dogs can be trained to be much more reliable impulse byuers than a robot.
Hah, please don't tell me that star wars is a movie about ideas. See you were doing well in the begining admitting that you only like pretty pictures, but then you had to get all pretentious in the end and say star wars is "about ideas".
Sorry but if you think there are any interesting ideas in the new star wars movies you are either very young or very stupid.
Slashdot Mirror
I just had a vision of the future. Mr. Ballmer was at a news conference and was explaining that searching the internet is a fundamental and indivisible function of the modern Operating System and the new version of Windows cannot be modified to allow access to Google without losing all its functionality.
This is great thinking! So as long as we have good imaginations, we will be guaranteed to be working hard and living in poverty because we will have to pay for some new weapon system. (I cant wait for the weapon to protect us from giant monsters)
I think it is a better idea to actually look at the world and prepare for dangers that are either present, or will soon be present.
Nobody is building space weapons yet. If they did we would know. So why don't we wait for somebody to start building the things before we throw our money after it.
Now explain how exactly did reagan bankrupt the soviet union with starwars?
What did the soviets do in retaliation to starwars that they would not have done otherwise, and which bankrupted them?
What reagan did was extract a trillion dollars from the taxpayer with nothing to show for it, and then the dumbass taxpayers ended up worshipping him over it.
It would be funny if I was not stuck paying back that trillion with interest.
Oh let me give you an answer: the soviets bankrupted themselves because of the inneficiency of their economic system. Sure their huge military helped speed up the bankruptcy but that had nothing to do with star wars. Their military was huge even before starwars and most of the expansions (i.e. their ever growing tank armies) had nothing to do with star wars. The soviet nuclear arsenal did not increase out of proportion after starwars. They did not spend huge ammounts of money on a program to counter starwars.
"Getting there first ensures continued access to space."
Where did you get that silly idea? The only thing building weapons in space ensures is the spending of a lot of fucking money.
"What's to keep China, India, Japan, etc... from getting a weapon there first and preventing anybody else from accessing space by applying their weapon?"
The laws of physics and current technology. Right now any weapon in space will be just a huge fucking target. It can be tracked by any amateur with a telescope and destroyed by a spoonful of well placed explosives.
You seem to be under the misconception that just because something can be done we must do it. Otherwise someone else (i think the chinese are the current boogeyman) will do it and gosh will we be in trouble.
Why dont we spend one trillion dollars on building a giant golden pyramid? If we don't the chinese will surely do it before us.
There is a misconception that if the chinese are first to develop space weapons then they would gain a huge advantage. Fact is, space weapons can be destroyed very easily (and cheaply compared to the price of the weapons) by any country with space launch capabilities.
So if the Chinese are stupid enough to spend a trillion dollars on some space weapon, we can easily break the thing by sending a couple of pounds of explosives its way. The US (and Russia i think) both have missiles for destroying satelites in orbit.
So no country will be able to gain any meaningful advantage over the US by building space weapons first.
So "the if we don't build it someone else will" reasoning is complete bullshit.
You seem to be under the misconception that just because something can be done we must do it. Otherwise the chinese will do it.
Why dont we spend 100 billion on building a giant golden pyramid? If we don't the chinese will surely do it before us.
Space weapons are just not very effective. That all powerful laser system was already tried in the SDI boondogle and found impossible. Even the SDI gave up on placing the lasers in space and put them on the ground (that did not work either). Nuclear and power laser technology has not improved drastically in the last 30 years.
Also, there is a misconception that if the chinese are first to develop space weapons then they would gain a huge advantage. Fact is, space weapons can be destroyed very easily (and cheaply compared to the price of the weapons) by any country with space launch capabilities.
So if the Chinese are stupid enough to spend a trillion dollars on some space weapon, we can easily break the thing by sending a couple of pounds of explosives its way. The US (and Russia i think) both have missiles for destroying satelites in orbit.
So no country will be able to gain any meaningful advantage over the US by building space weapons first.
So "the if we don't build it the Chinese will" reasoning is complete bs.
Seeing as how all newly designed rockets have at least a couple of midair explosions before things get straigthened out, I don't think nuclear propulsion should even be considered in the Earth's atmosphere.
It is however an option in space, if the nuclear fuel is brought up to orbit in a rocket with established safety.
As far as the nuclear engineers -- that is a non-issue. If you think nuclear engineers are per se dangerous, then we should pay them to retrain themselves for other (hopefully physics related jobs). If we try to create more nuclear engineering jobs just to keep them busy, then we will also be creating more nuclear engineers which you will have to worry about again.
Anyone have any news on whether those humanoid remains discovered in malaisa were classified as a new species?
BEHOLD, Dijkistra is posting slashdot comments from the grave.
"he hasn't done anything remotely funny for over 20 years. "
Fish called Wanda was very funny. Was that 20 years ago? Other than that I agree with you.
You are quite right. And the annoying thing is that they are not being creative. Exactly the same story was ran before the other movies premiered. If they want to be whores they should at least try to find some newer angles on this, so they don't repeat themselves. But maybe its not a problem coz readers of the NY Post seem to have short memories.
Remmeber how Kerrey got attacked because he voted against all those military spending bills, and that he voted against a bill that "would have given food and provisions to our soldiers in iraq". Well that's the reason why everybody voted for this bill.
Does anyone have the pat. application number?
Actually IBM came up with tablets looong before Microsoft did. I remember playing around with an IBM tablet notebook in the mid 90s. Needless to say it sucked then too.
In any event if anyone can make a tablet work apple can. They have a hidden advantage -- nobody expects macs to be useful.
Suppose I draw a random number from 1 to 10 million.
I get the number 947537. Then I wonder well gee what were the odds of me getting that particular number. Obviously 1 in 10 million. Isn't that a huge coincidence? Clearly God must be involved. This is a wonderful argument because it works no matter which number I draw.
See, the problem with these argments is that a result of low likely hood is not really an amazing thing unless you have somebody predicting that particular result before hand.
BTW I do believe in God, but I nevertheless accept that it may be the case that we are not able to prove his existance.
I don't really agree. I was in my late teens when I first saw star wars (not because I am very old but because I am not originally from the US so I happened to miss all the hoopla). Well I liked it. I thought they were fun movies.
As far as the Phantom Menace it is obvious that if anybody only small children would like it. But even so it was not that good. My sisters who were the perfect age for it did not like it at all.
So first of all TPM was targeted at a younger crowd than the original series (purely a business decision as lucas knew he would make the most money out of toys and younger children buy more toys) but also it was just not nearly as good of a movie as the original series. TPM never generated the kind of obssession with today's children and teenagers the original star wars did. In fact even for his supposed target audience it was rather forgetable in comparison with other children's movies (such as finding nemo, etc.).
Fact is that it is mostly star wars fan boys that even talk about star wars nowadays. Children and teenagers have long forgotten it.
Whatever you do, do not trust AICN for any star wars reviews. It is a cool site and a great place to get rumors and such about movies (and also great place for flame wars) but their reviews are questionable to say the least.
It is just painfully obvious that they give good reviews in exchange for early access to the movie. Their review of Phantom Menace was so gushing it was embarrassing. Harry even assured us that we would love Jar-Jar's hijinks.
I would wait until a well established critic that would never give a positive review in exchange for access (such as Roger Ebert) reviews the movie.
The most ridiculous computer related scene perpetrated in a movie:
In independence day Jeff Goldblum (sp?) sees a captured alien ship which has not been opened or examined by humans before. The ship is sealed and one cannot get inside of it or open it to see its internals. They know nothing about alien technology.
So what does Jeff Goldblum do? He sneezes and that gives him an idea. Why not give the ship a virus? He proceeds to open his apple notebook and somehow interface with the ship to give it a virus.
Lawyers are very worried about legal shows, and not just because of the inacuracies. Actually, entertainment's treatment of law is usually more accurate than its treatment of science and math, because a lot of the writers have had legal training.
However, some shows set really bad example. For example in Law and Order which is supposed to be the most serious and respected of the legal shows, the main hero of the show (the prosecutor) keeps doing things that are either illegal or immoral for an attorney in his position. It usually has something to do with hiding evidence that he is supposed to submit to the defence, or tricking a defendent or a witness. And the show celebrates these breaches of the ethics rules, essentially portraying the prosecutor in being really clever in getting the bad guy.
Pretty much every second part of every eposode is portrayed as a heroic battle between the good guys (that prosecutor and an ever changing hot female prosecutor) on one side and the forces of evil (the civil rights of the defendant and the rules of ethics) on the other side. I have yet to see a show where an innocent defendant has been spared inprisonment because of the proper observance of his rights.
And of course since more or less the whole population has seen at least several Law and Order episodes (and many people watch that show religously), when the government decides to curb civil rights, the people don't really mind, which is not what you would really expect from this freedom loving nation.
Wow, was that that Razorfish movie? Maybe I should see it. I don't suppose they had a close-up of Halle sucking that guy off? That would make it worthwhile to watch Travolta trying to look fat and evil (as opposed to just fat) for two hours.
Care to share some examples of things they have gotten wrong?
:)
I have not seen the show I just see the commercials, and they really annoy me, for some reason. I don't know, maybe I am just a bitter person but I would rather have a specific reason to hate the show
Either that or we'll go blind due to the large number of mis-spellings in slashdot stories. "obsticle"? Give me a break.
It does not matter if you are white or black, able-bodied or disabled, every American has a right to shop, and if there is any impediment to this right our brilliant scientists will work non-stop to remove it.
Is this the end of large dogs? Well, not really, dogs can be trained to be much more reliable impulse byuers than a robot.
Hah, please don't tell me that star wars is a movie about ideas. See you were doing well in the begining admitting that you only like pretty pictures, but then you had to get all pretentious in the end and say star wars is "about ideas".
Sorry but if you think there are any interesting ideas in the new star wars movies you are either very young or very stupid.
Well you are very unlikely to hear the radio program in a non-english speaking country, while the books were translated into many languages.