Query: "King Richard the Lionheart" Results: 1. "I fart in your general direction".
Amusing, but unlikely. Richard Coeur de Lion was French, he was king of most of France, he lived in France most of the time when he wasn't off on expensive and pointless wars in the Middle East, and only ever came to England when he wanted money.
I might further add that the bastard nearly bankrupted England when he got himself captured and sent the ransom bill to Prince John to cough up. You know all those Robin Hood stories where John's taxing the crap out of the peasants, and Robin keeps nicking the money and redistributing it, all the while wondering what's keeping Richard so long?...
India rocket science. Oh yeah there is an image that doesn't have a tiny bit of a mismatch. Offcourse by now they probably turning out more rocket scientist then the rest of the world but I was raised by "It ain't half hot mum" and old prejudices die hard.
The impression I have is that Indian culture places a great premium on education and intellectual achievement. I'm certainly not surprised they can build rockets and develop a space programme.
Meanwhile American culture places a great premium on beauty and athleticism and its catchphrases include 'Oh, I never understood math' and 'Let's teach intelligent design in biology class'. If the Germans hadn't taught you all how, I doubt American rocketry would have got too far...
It seems to me that humanity has a tendency to fall into two intellectual traps: 1. Either the future is rosy and beautiful, and the best is ahead of us (for instance: Nanotechnologies and nano-factories will save the world! Fusion power is right around the corner!), 2. Or The End of the World and Civilization As We Know It is right around the corner (for instance: Peak Oil! Planet Warming! Bird Flu! Grey Goo! Killer Asteroids!).
Similarly, either the coin will come down heads or tails. It can't keep spinning forever.
Our current society is grossly unsustainable. We're subsidising our lifestyles by burning off oil and chopping down forests. Either we sort that problem out - either by new technology or by energy efficiency or a global Gaian religion or whatever it might be - or we fuck up completely and end up sitting around staring at useless ancient relics like the Easter Islanders.
We cannot go on forever as we are. One way or another, we will change.
You have 100 doors. 1 has a prize. Thus, any door you pick has a 1/100 chance of being right.
Right.
Monte then opens 98 doors. The original door you chose now has a 1/2 chance of being right. So does the other, unpicked door. Originally, both had a 1/100 chance of being right, now both have a 1/2 chance of being right.
Wrong.
Let's say I pick door 1. Now, there are two possibilities:
Possibility A: The door I have picked is the right one. 1%
Possibility B: The door I have picked is the wrong one. 99%
Now, if possibility A turns out to be the case, then I would lose by switching after Monty opens the doors. If possibility B turns out to be the case, then I would win by switching after Monty opens the doors. What Monty has told me is that if possibility B is the case, then the actual door is door 'd'.
So, I should definitely switch.
For the three-door case, which is the one most people find confusing, it's reasonable to enumerate every possible outcome. Let's suppose that you've picked door 1. Then
a) The prize is behind door 1. If you switch, you lose. If you stay, you win.
b) The prize is behind door 2. If you switch, you win. If you stay, you lose.
c) The prize is behind door 3. If you switch, you win. If you stay, you lose.
And if you still don't believe me, then I'd like to play the three-door Monty Hall game with you a few times, for money. Try it with a friend. Bet, say, $1.20 for a $3 prize, and see which of the two policies of 'switch' and 'stay' actually wins you money in the long run.
Think about it. The two greatest wizards in the world fight and can do little more than a few very light telekenisis-type tricks (lift and throw human body, cause a small avalanch, etc.) The greatest magical swords could, umm, cut a ghost, but were otherwise not particularly awesome in combat. Yeah, the invisibility ring was nice, till it got retconned with all that mind control crap and stuff.
The fight between Gandalf and Saruman in the film was... probably not how it went. I imagine it as being a mirror-image of the confrontation with Saruman after the ruin of Isengard - just as Saruman caved in before Gandalf the White without putting up a fight, I imagine Gandalf the Grey didn't really attempt to resist Saruman. It would be pointless. It's also not made clear that the weather on Caradhras was Saruman's doing; it might have been Sauron's influence, or even malevolence on the part of the mountain itself.
However, open magical combat was seen on Weathertop, and at the climax of Gandalf's duel with the Balrog of Moria on Zirak-zigil. Those both made a considerable mess.
As for the magical swords, Glamdring was effective against the Balrog, Narsil was able to cut clear through the... flesh?... of the hitherto invulnerable Dark Lord, and as Andúril, the Flame of the West held similar terrors for all creatures of the Darkness - with some indications that it literally does flame. However, it's unclear whether its powers here derived from the sword itself, or from its being in the hand of the rightful King. And while Boromir's sword bounced off the hide of the cave troll of Moria, Sting, the elven dagger of old Gondolin, cut it deeply.
As for the One Ring: well, that's powerful mojo any way you cut it, unless, as you say, you pretend the story ended with The Hobbit and that Gandalf never found that *Identify* scroll in the vaults of Minas Tirith...
You're right in saying that the world of Middle-Earth is one of generally low magic, in the roleplaying sense, but the heroes of the War of the Ring are exceptions. There are only five Wizards in the world, but they're powerful. There are many rings of trivial magic like invisibility, such that a Wizard might safely leave in the hands of a clueless hobbit, but may the Valar save anyone who dares meddle with one of the twenty Rings of real Power. High-powered magic exists only in rare cases, usually as a relic of the Elder Days.
Moreover, the model of magic is rather different in Tolkien's world. It's subtle. Galadriel does not draw a distinction between the works of superior elven-craft and works of magic - she doesn't even clearly understand how such a distinction can be drawn. Magic is the result of a deeper understanding of the underlying, spiritual nature of the matter of Arda, not of any mysterious external force.
Incidentally, in writing the above it occurred to me to try to gauge the strength of the Balrog of Moria by comparing it to the entire Dwarf-city it supposedly overthrew - thereby demonstrating how mighty Gandalf and Glamdring must have been to harm it. But I just can't see it happening. The masked dwarves of Belegost were at the Battle of Tears Unnumbered, where they fought bravely and well against the dragon-horde of Morgoth - while Men betrayed the Eldar and the great armies of the Noldor were destroyed. Yet Belegost was a much smaller Dwarf-realm than Khazad-dum.
I wonder if perhaps the ruin of the kingdoms of the Noldor caused a collapse in demand for mithril equipment? Certainly none of the kingdoms of Men could afford such expensive armament. With the mithril market in deep recession much of Khazad-dum would likely be abandoned as Dwarves sought a living elsewhere in the world, leaving the deep mines empty as a hiding place for the Balrog fleeing the destruction of Angband.
And perhaps once the rise of the Dunedain provided a market once more for such exotic materials, the Dwarves returned to their deep mines, and got a nasty surprise...
I can tell you what, I think my reaction time was quicker than 50ms the first time I accidentally clicked on that link at work. *shudder*
The FIRST time? There were others?
Clicking goatse.cx once is understandable. You weren't to know. But, having clicked, and seen, and screamed and discovered just how accurately you were able to find the 'x' in the corner of the window on pure reflex... what on earth possessed you to do it again?
A long time-to-load probably means a badly configured server, or graphics heavy and often content free site. If a graphics rich site like BBC news can get it right, why can't anybody else?
Their good web design and configuration are certainly a big part of it, but, er... they're not exactly on a level playing field with the average website.
If I had this network available, I reckon I could get a graphics-rich page to load pretty damn quickly... Just looking at those connections is making me get all hot and bothered.
Machine X: 'Hi everybody. Here I am. I do wireless networking.'
My Machine: 'Cool. Can I connect to you?'
Machine X: 'Sure. Here, use this IP number.'
My Machine: 'Nifty. Thanks.'
Connecting to an open wireless network is definitely legit. You asked permission and got it. Using the 'house' metaphor, it's as if I come up to your mansion, knock at the door, and get let in by the butler, who has been instructed to let in anybody who asks.
What I proceed to do with the connection is another matter. For instance, having connected I might proceed to download mp3s over your connection. You pay by the megabyte, or perhaps you have a monthly usage limit? Then this costs you money. This is the equivalent of coming up to your mansion, being let in by the friendly butler, and proceeding to nick all your silverware...
Maybe that's what happened, we keep finding evidence of dark matter streams, and then the scientist who makes the discovery forgets about it before he can tell anyone...
Or first US city: China would be more than happy to provide North Korea with a Dong Feng 31 or two and Kim already has the payload.
Hell, no, they wouldn't. China has no interest at all in having the US nuked. They're making far too much money to want to disturb the status quo. This quite apart from the certainty that the US would be utterly bloody livid (yes, that's right... ninety-one thousand one hundred!), and the strong likelihood that they'd find out whose missile it was that just hit them...
The Chinese help North Korea because they don't want the place to collapse; if that happens, then at the very least they'll end up with hordes of starving refugees coming over the border, and it's more than possible that a desperate KJI would try something rash.
They'll keep North Korea alive, but only barely, and only because they don't want another war on their doorstep. Giving that maniac ICBMs does not help in that aim.
They broadcasted that episode (the others as well btw) at 1900 UK time. Imagine all those brittish 8 year olds sitting on the couch watching thát...
That episode first aired at 18:25. It was nudged back a bit to make room for the Eurovision Song Contest (for those who don't know what it is, be grateful; an annual celebration of truly appalling music and blatantly corrupt voting).
I think this was a good move. I would not have wanted to have seen that episode while it was dark outside.
First, calling the recent resurrection of Doctor Who the first series and noting an option for series two is sacrilege and spits on the work done by thousands of individuals over more than thirty years. THAT was the first series. This is just the latest continuation.
Who's counting by series? When there are so many, it all kind of runs together, especially given the irregularity with which they were released and the colossal gap through the 1990s. The sensible thing is to count by Doctor, by which measure this is the Ninth, with the Tenth about to appear on British TV.
For that matter, does it even make sense to count the old Doctor Who in terms of series at all? I always thought of them by story. You have the Doctor dealing with Daleks for these few episodes, then you have him in ancient Rome for a while, and now you've got one where a computer in the middle of London has gone berserk, and then you have him in an unconvincing impersonation of Mars by a Welsh quarry. It doesn't matter whether it's series 11 or series 17; just, who's the Doctor, and what are the monsters?
If there'd been an attempt to pretend that Christopher Ecclestone was the first and only Doctor, to airbrush out the ancient history, then I would have objected, but calling it 'Series 1' is just good sense. Calling it 'Series 26' or whatever it is will just put off people who'll think they need to have seen thirty years' worth of backstory in order to enjoy it.
There's no point being grown-up if you can't be childish sometimes.
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am 50, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things -- including the fear of childishness and the desire to be grown-up."
I don't know. Maybe the British audience cares more about a good show that happens to be in a science fiction setting, whereas Americans are more apt to be geeks who drool and get a hardon over special effects and makeup and invented languages and crap like that.
One thing to remember is that in the UK, Doctor Who is not a geek niche. It's family entertainment. The return has been well timed; there's a large nostalgia viewership from the twentysomething McCoy-era viewers, and also from the thirtysomething Tom Baker fans who now have their own kids... So, it's not made solely for the convention-going hardcore, but for the very large mainstream audience it has. An audience which vividly remembers being frightened out of their wits as kids, and have now returned with their own children to see that the same happens to them.
I remember always watching it when I was small - this would have been Colin Baker and McCoy time, though I also definitely remember Peter Davison, which must have been repeated. Daleks were the most frightening things in the world back then. I watched the new series with my 10-year-old sister, and was delighted to see the reaction to the old monsters. It was well-handled, too. All those jokes over the years about Daleks and stairs, and about the sink plunger, and about sneaking up behind them... suddenly aren't funny. Nasty.
She told me that the next day in school all the kids were shouting 'Exterminate!' at each other.
Better yet was The Empty Child. Hell, that frightened me. That was more like Ringu than like anything I remember from old Doctor Who. God only knows what that episode did to a generation of British kids, but I daresay there'll be plenty who panic at the sight of a gas mask for the rest of their lives.
That, I think, is why Doctor Who lasted so long in its first incarnation - well, in its first seven incarnations:) It's like a modern equivalent of the Brothers Grimm: stories supposedly for children, dark and frightening but impossible to look away from. We hid behind the sofa in fright, but never left the room or changed the channel...
Oh, and there's always been one other thing. The mutable cast. The Klingons will never destroy the Enterprise, and James Bond will always escape Blofeld's death-trap, but the Doctor can die, and has done so on screen eight times to date. Sure, he regenerates, but once he does so he's a different person entirely, and you might not like him so much afterwards. Assistants are even more expendable - they come and go all the time. So you don't even have the comfort of he's one of the good guys, of course he'll survive. Our heroes will win, but there may well be a price.
Except for the "downloading the internet" bit, obviously.
It's in the secret research bunker belonging to the guy who OWNS the internet. There's presumably a cache on-site at least as large as that of Google or archive.org. As for the bandwidth, the human-made computer is something like ten years in advance of the present, and Davros only knows what kind of gear a Dalek has onboard...
The "Everybody lives!" hokum ending of The Empty Child?? Most of the episode was interesting, but then they painted themselves into a corner. It could only have been more deux ex machina if he'd used a sonic screwdriver to fix everything
Actually, I'm not convinced of that. The problem was a plague of medical nanobots with the wrong idea of how to repair a human. The solution was to find the pod from which they all came (which it's reasonable to suppose is a control centre of some kind) and either correct its notion of what humans are supposed to be like, or shut the whole thing down. 'Everybody lives' was a bonus, which the Doctor was rightly very happy about; had it not worked out, the Doctor could likely have switched off all the nanobots once he had his hands on their pod, but doing so would likely have meant the deaths of the various gasmask zombies.
Not that Doctor Who is short of deus ex machina: Boom Town and The Parting of the Ways, for instance. Inconceivable power from inside the TARDIS. It's an established fact from way back that the core of the TARDIS is semi-sentient and enormously powerful, but relying on it to wrap up a storyline is still unsatisfactory.
And Eccleston as the Doctor can be pretty harsh when it comes to things (Daleks in particular), very not diplomatic at all, which is interesting to see. Compare Doctor Who to the "always do the right thing" story lines of Star Trek.
Interesting that you said that. If you've seen the Christmas episode, in which an alien menace uses mind control to hold a large slice of the world population to ransom, the Doctor's solution is very Kirk. He turns up on the mothership and by a combination of bluff, bravery and challenging the alien leader to single combat he saves the day. He then lets the aliens go, warning them not to come back to Earth.
On return to Earth, while the Doctor and Rose celebrate, the Prime Minister orders 'Torchwood' to fire at will. Something looking suspiciously like the Death Star megalaser promptly fires from under London and blasts the mothership to a fine powder. UNIT have clearly been busy with all that alien tech they've got hold of over the years.
This horrifies the Doctor. He's clearly surprised and deeply shocked.
Now, I can't see the Ninth as reacting that way. He might well have been angry at the PM for this Belgrano-esque act, as the Tenth was, but he wouldn't have been so amazed. He had a darker outlook, I think. The Tenth might well turn out to be a bit more idealistic.
The interesting thing here is that the PM gives a very good reason for why she did it. Both she and the Doctor are doing the right thing; they simply have different priorities. The Doctor is a Time Lord, concerned with all of the universe and all of history, despite his fondness for Earth. The PM is responsible only for one small crowded island. So, the Doctor is inclined to be merciful to the Sycorax - they, too, are part of his larger portfolio - while the PM is not prepared to take the risk that they will ever again threaten her own people.
"We recommend that customers do not click on attachments or links in IM without confirming their validity with the person who sent them"
When is a patch going to come out for this problem, it seems to have been plaguing the net for quite some.
Once AOL start requiring (for 'technical' or even 'security' reasons) a set-top box to place on top of the monitor. This will track the location of the user using an inbuilt digital camera. Every so often it will cause a popup message containing suitably spammy text and a linked executable. If the user clicks it, the box deploys its payload: a hollowpoint between the user's eyes.
Slashdot Mirror
But you must be protected. You must go down the stairs...
Amusing, but unlikely. Richard Coeur de Lion was French, he was king of most of France, he lived in France most of the time when he wasn't off on expensive and pointless wars in the Middle East, and only ever came to England when he wanted money.
I might further add that the bastard nearly bankrupted England when he got himself captured and sent the ransom bill to Prince John to cough up. You know all those Robin Hood stories where John's taxing the crap out of the peasants, and Robin keeps nicking the money and redistributing it, all the while wondering what's keeping Richard so long?...
The impression I have is that Indian culture places a great premium on education and intellectual achievement. I'm certainly not surprised they can build rockets and develop a space programme.
Meanwhile American culture places a great premium on beauty and athleticism and its catchphrases include 'Oh, I never understood math' and 'Let's teach intelligent design in biology class'. If the Germans hadn't taught you all how, I doubt American rocketry would have got too far...
Sorry. I mostly play NWN. So I've got the int, but not the lore...
Similarly, either the coin will come down heads or tails. It can't keep spinning forever.
Our current society is grossly unsustainable. We're subsidising our lifestyles by burning off oil and chopping down forests. Either we sort that problem out - either by new technology or by energy efficiency or a global Gaian religion or whatever it might be - or we fuck up completely and end up sitting around staring at useless ancient relics like the Easter Islanders.
We cannot go on forever as we are. One way or another, we will change.
Right.
Monte then opens 98 doors. The original door you chose now has a 1/2 chance of being right. So does the other, unpicked door. Originally, both had a 1/100 chance of being right, now both have a 1/2 chance of being right.
Wrong.
Let's say I pick door 1. Now, there are two possibilities:
Possibility A: The door I have picked is the right one. 1%
Possibility B: The door I have picked is the wrong one. 99%
Now, if possibility A turns out to be the case, then I would lose by switching after Monty opens the doors. If possibility B turns out to be the case, then I would win by switching after Monty opens the doors. What Monty has told me is that if possibility B is the case, then the actual door is door 'd'.
So, I should definitely switch.
For the three-door case, which is the one most people find confusing, it's reasonable to enumerate every possible outcome. Let's suppose that you've picked door 1. Then
a) The prize is behind door 1. If you switch, you lose. If you stay, you win.
b) The prize is behind door 2. If you switch, you win. If you stay, you lose.
c) The prize is behind door 3. If you switch, you win. If you stay, you lose.
And if you still don't believe me, then I'd like to play the three-door Monty Hall game with you a few times, for money. Try it with a friend. Bet, say, $1.20 for a $3 prize, and see which of the two policies of 'switch' and 'stay' actually wins you money in the long run.
The fight between Gandalf and Saruman in the film was... probably not how it went. I imagine it as being a mirror-image of the confrontation with Saruman after the ruin of Isengard - just as Saruman caved in before Gandalf the White without putting up a fight, I imagine Gandalf the Grey didn't really attempt to resist Saruman. It would be pointless. It's also not made clear that the weather on Caradhras was Saruman's doing; it might have been Sauron's influence, or even malevolence on the part of the mountain itself.
However, open magical combat was seen on Weathertop, and at the climax of Gandalf's duel with the Balrog of Moria on Zirak-zigil. Those both made a considerable mess.
As for the magical swords, Glamdring was effective against the Balrog, Narsil was able to cut clear through the... flesh?... of the hitherto invulnerable Dark Lord, and as Andúril, the Flame of the West held similar terrors for all creatures of the Darkness - with some indications that it literally does flame. However, it's unclear whether its powers here derived from the sword itself, or from its being in the hand of the rightful King. And while Boromir's sword bounced off the hide of the cave troll of Moria, Sting, the elven dagger of old Gondolin, cut it deeply.
As for the One Ring: well, that's powerful mojo any way you cut it, unless, as you say, you pretend the story ended with The Hobbit and that Gandalf never found that *Identify* scroll in the vaults of Minas Tirith...
You're right in saying that the world of Middle-Earth is one of generally low magic, in the roleplaying sense, but the heroes of the War of the Ring are exceptions. There are only five Wizards in the world, but they're powerful. There are many rings of trivial magic like invisibility, such that a Wizard might safely leave in the hands of a clueless hobbit, but may the Valar save anyone who dares meddle with one of the twenty Rings of real Power. High-powered magic exists only in rare cases, usually as a relic of the Elder Days.
Moreover, the model of magic is rather different in Tolkien's world. It's subtle. Galadriel does not draw a distinction between the works of superior elven-craft and works of magic - she doesn't even clearly understand how such a distinction can be drawn. Magic is the result of a deeper understanding of the underlying, spiritual nature of the matter of Arda, not of any mysterious external force.
Incidentally, in writing the above it occurred to me to try to gauge the strength of the Balrog of Moria by comparing it to the entire Dwarf-city it supposedly overthrew - thereby demonstrating how mighty Gandalf and Glamdring must have been to harm it. But I just can't see it happening. The masked dwarves of Belegost were at the Battle of Tears Unnumbered, where they fought bravely and well against the dragon-horde of Morgoth - while Men betrayed the Eldar and the great armies of the Noldor were destroyed. Yet Belegost was a much smaller Dwarf-realm than Khazad-dum.
I wonder if perhaps the ruin of the kingdoms of the Noldor caused a collapse in demand for mithril equipment? Certainly none of the kingdoms of Men could afford such expensive armament. With the mithril market in deep recession much of Khazad-dum would likely be abandoned as Dwarves sought a living elsewhere in the world, leaving the deep mines empty as a hiding place for the Balrog fleeing the destruction of Angband.
And perhaps once the rise of the Dunedain provided a market once more for such exotic materials, the Dwarves returned to their deep mines, and got a nasty surprise...
The FIRST time? There were others?
Clicking goatse.cx once is understandable. You weren't to know. But, having clicked, and seen, and screamed and discovered just how accurately you were able to find the 'x' in the corner of the window on pure reflex... what on earth possessed you to do it again?
Nah. He probably knows mirc's still available. I think he means that he's not sure if the joke string is still there, in current releases.
Their good web design and configuration are certainly a big part of it, but, er... they're not exactly on a level playing field with the average website.
If I had this network available, I reckon I could get a graphics-rich page to load pretty damn quickly... Just looking at those connections is making me get all hot and bothered.
My Machine: 'Cool. Can I connect to you?'
Machine X: 'Sure. Here, use this IP number.'
My Machine: 'Nifty. Thanks.'
Connecting to an open wireless network is definitely legit. You asked permission and got it. Using the 'house' metaphor, it's as if I come up to your mansion, knock at the door, and get let in by the butler, who has been instructed to let in anybody who asks.
What I proceed to do with the connection is another matter. For instance, having connected I might proceed to download mp3s over your connection. You pay by the megabyte, or perhaps you have a monthly usage limit? Then this costs you money. This is the equivalent of coming up to your mansion, being let in by the friendly butler, and proceeding to nick all your silverware...
Now, come on, get your adjectives right on your satirical deities.
The Pink Unicorn (pbuhhh) is invisible. The Spaghetti Monster is flying.
Wasn't that the Lethe?
Bow or don't bow, it's all much the same to them. These guys are worse than Cthulhu, they don't even want to eat you... just the sun.
Hell, no, they wouldn't. China has no interest at all in having the US nuked. They're making far too much money to want to disturb the status quo. This quite apart from the certainty that the US would be utterly bloody livid (yes, that's right... ninety-one thousand one hundred!), and the strong likelihood that they'd find out whose missile it was that just hit them...
The Chinese help North Korea because they don't want the place to collapse; if that happens, then at the very least they'll end up with hordes of starving refugees coming over the border, and it's more than possible that a desperate KJI would try something rash.
They'll keep North Korea alive, but only barely, and only because they don't want another war on their doorstep. Giving that maniac ICBMs does not help in that aim.
That episode first aired at 18:25. It was nudged back a bit to make room for the Eurovision Song Contest (for those who don't know what it is, be grateful; an annual celebration of truly appalling music and blatantly corrupt voting).
I think this was a good move. I would not have wanted to have seen that episode while it was dark outside.
Who's counting by series? When there are so many, it all kind of runs together, especially given the irregularity with which they were released and the colossal gap through the 1990s. The sensible thing is to count by Doctor, by which measure this is the Ninth, with the Tenth about to appear on British TV.
For that matter, does it even make sense to count the old Doctor Who in terms of series at all? I always thought of them by story. You have the Doctor dealing with Daleks for these few episodes, then you have him in ancient Rome for a while, and now you've got one where a computer in the middle of London has gone berserk, and then you have him in an unconvincing impersonation of Mars by a Welsh quarry. It doesn't matter whether it's series 11 or series 17; just, who's the Doctor, and what are the monsters?
If there'd been an attempt to pretend that Christopher Ecclestone was the first and only Doctor, to airbrush out the ancient history, then I would have objected, but calling it 'Series 1' is just good sense. Calling it 'Series 26' or whatever it is will just put off people who'll think they need to have seen thirty years' worth of backstory in order to enjoy it.
"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am 50, I read them openly. When I became a man, I put away childish things -- including the fear of childishness and the desire to be grown-up."
-- C. S. Lewis
After, what, fifteen years, you're saying a delay of six months between the UK and US releases is a long time to wait?
One thing to remember is that in the UK, Doctor Who is not a geek niche. It's family entertainment. The return has been well timed; there's a large nostalgia viewership from the twentysomething McCoy-era viewers, and also from the thirtysomething Tom Baker fans who now have their own kids... So, it's not made solely for the convention-going hardcore, but for the very large mainstream audience it has. An audience which vividly remembers being frightened out of their wits as kids, and have now returned with their own children to see that the same happens to them.
I remember always watching it when I was small - this would have been Colin Baker and McCoy time, though I also definitely remember Peter Davison, which must have been repeated. Daleks were the most frightening things in the world back then. I watched the new series with my 10-year-old sister, and was delighted to see the reaction to the old monsters. It was well-handled, too. All those jokes over the years about Daleks and stairs, and about the sink plunger, and about sneaking up behind them... suddenly aren't funny. Nasty.
She told me that the next day in school all the kids were shouting 'Exterminate!' at each other.
Better yet was The Empty Child. Hell, that frightened me. That was more like Ringu than like anything I remember from old Doctor Who. God only knows what that episode did to a generation of British kids, but I daresay there'll be plenty who panic at the sight of a gas mask for the rest of their lives.
That, I think, is why Doctor Who lasted so long in its first incarnation - well, in its first seven incarnations :) It's like a modern equivalent of the Brothers Grimm: stories supposedly for children, dark and frightening but impossible to look away from. We hid behind the sofa in fright, but never left the room or changed the channel...
Oh, and there's always been one other thing. The mutable cast. The Klingons will never destroy the Enterprise, and James Bond will always escape Blofeld's death-trap, but the Doctor can die, and has done so on screen eight times to date. Sure, he regenerates, but once he does so he's a different person entirely, and you might not like him so much afterwards. Assistants are even more expendable - they come and go all the time. So you don't even have the comfort of he's one of the good guys, of course he'll survive. Our heroes will win, but there may well be a price.
It's in the secret research bunker belonging to the guy who OWNS the internet. There's presumably a cache on-site at least as large as that of Google or archive.org. As for the bandwidth, the human-made computer is something like ten years in advance of the present, and Davros only knows what kind of gear a Dalek has onboard...
Actually, I'm not convinced of that. The problem was a plague of medical nanobots with the wrong idea of how to repair a human. The solution was to find the pod from which they all came (which it's reasonable to suppose is a control centre of some kind) and either correct its notion of what humans are supposed to be like, or shut the whole thing down. 'Everybody lives' was a bonus, which the Doctor was rightly very happy about; had it not worked out, the Doctor could likely have switched off all the nanobots once he had his hands on their pod, but doing so would likely have meant the deaths of the various gasmask zombies.
Not that Doctor Who is short of deus ex machina: Boom Town and The Parting of the Ways, for instance. Inconceivable power from inside the TARDIS. It's an established fact from way back that the core of the TARDIS is semi-sentient and enormously powerful, but relying on it to wrap up a storyline is still unsatisfactory.
Interesting that you said that. If you've seen the Christmas episode, in which an alien menace uses mind control to hold a large slice of the world population to ransom, the Doctor's solution is very Kirk. He turns up on the mothership and by a combination of bluff, bravery and challenging the alien leader to single combat he saves the day. He then lets the aliens go, warning them not to come back to Earth.
On return to Earth, while the Doctor and Rose celebrate, the Prime Minister orders 'Torchwood' to fire at will. Something looking suspiciously like the Death Star megalaser promptly fires from under London and blasts the mothership to a fine powder. UNIT have clearly been busy with all that alien tech they've got hold of over the years.
This horrifies the Doctor. He's clearly surprised and deeply shocked.
Now, I can't see the Ninth as reacting that way. He might well have been angry at the PM for this Belgrano-esque act, as the Tenth was, but he wouldn't have been so amazed. He had a darker outlook, I think. The Tenth might well turn out to be a bit more idealistic.
The interesting thing here is that the PM gives a very good reason for why she did it. Both she and the Doctor are doing the right thing; they simply have different priorities. The Doctor is a Time Lord, concerned with all of the universe and all of history, despite his fondness for Earth. The PM is responsible only for one small crowded island. So, the Doctor is inclined to be merciful to the Sycorax - they, too, are part of his larger portfolio - while the PM is not prepared to take the risk that they will ever again threaten her own people.
America! Fuck Yeah!
When is a patch going to come out for this problem, it seems to have been plaguing the net for quite some.
Once AOL start requiring (for 'technical' or even 'security' reasons) a set-top box to place on top of the monitor. This will track the location of the user using an inbuilt digital camera. Every so often it will cause a popup message containing suitably spammy text and a linked executable. If the user clicks it, the box deploys its payload: a hollowpoint between the user's eyes.
Think of it as evolution in action.