I saw Majo no Takkyubin at the cinema. One-off showing to promote the DVD. What the buggers didn't mention was how completely appalling the DVD subs were - English for Hard of Hearing only. Not only dubtitles, dubtitles with SOUND EFFECTS! Yuk!
I'm told Tenku no Shiro Rapyuta has the same flaws. So did Mononoke Hime, but at least Gaiman's translation was close enough that it didn't annoy much. It's just the moments where nobody's talking, yet the subtitles keep on rolling...
If the end of the universe is a heat death it might be possible to live forever, in smaller increments of time/energy.
Only in a universe-wide socialist cooperative in which we all agree to ration ourselves. But suppose I decide to spend my allotted energy at double rate, and use my more active mind and body (or whatever passes for 'body' ten trillion years from now) to steal _your_ energy supply? Profit for me, and I get to be the fastest and smartest thing around in this universe of low-energy dullards.
Your only defence, it seems, is to invest energy in protecting yourself from predators like me. In effect, do it to me first, by spending your energy at triple rate...
Does that work? My guess would be that it would actually move towards the mirror. You're throwing photons both forward and backward from the source, and each photon carries momentum (+-) 'p'. Absorbing a photon on the black surface, the device's momentum changes by -p, while on reflecting one from the mirror the momentum changes by +2p. Assuming that all the photons striking the mirror entirely miss the absorber, that's a net change of +p.
You can double that by just removing the absorber, and having _both_ photons escape. Then you get rid of the -p retardation and get double the acceleration. Of course, what you have then is a light rocket - a beam of light is shot out the back, and the spacecraft is pushed forward. No reaction _mass_ is thrown away, but the principle's the same:-)
France and poland were definatly not a threat to germany, and germany definatly was not planning on leaving anywhere that they invaded.
According to the Germans at the time, Poland actually invaded first. Absurd, of course... But then, according to the Americans, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Pretexts for aggressive war are wonderful things.
As for leaving, the Germans probably would have left France in time. Once they no longer needed northern France as a guard against Britain, and once a suitable government friendly to Berlin could be installed... Occupying France was an unnecessary expense when the real war was in Russia (which I agree they had no intention of leaving - the idea there was lebensraum).
Incidentally, France _was_ a threat, and a big one. Big army, fearsome defences, powerful allies. Just a shame those fearsome defences didn't quite go all the way to the coast...
What he is saying by that is that we could be doing a lot of horrible things with the power we have, but we arn't. We invade countries like Iraq and Afganistan once in a while when they are deemed a threat, and we are in Iraq because we are personally rebuilding their country for them so that when we do leave, they will be stable and not a threat anymore.
We invade countries like Poland and Norway once in a while when they are deemed a threat, and we are in France because we are personally rebuilding their country for them so that when we do leave, they will be stable and not a threat anymore.
I seem to remember that the Americans were unhappy about British and French involvement in the Suez war with Egypt in the '50s; moreover, Reagan took quite some persuasion to climb down off the fence and back Britain against Argentina in the Falklands affair. After all, Galtieri was an _anti-communist_ evil murdering dictator.
Supposing (despite the technology of the time) the US had, in these two cases, had a GPS system operating, and had refused to shut it down to benefit the European belligerents. Would it be fair for the Europeans to shoot down the satellites?
Actually, an easier way to do this is set your 15" monitor to 1600x1200 resolution. You need pretty good reading vision and few parents will be able to see what you are reading.
Quite right. In fact nobody will be able to see what you're doing on that monitor, ever again! How's that for privacy?
From what I heard, Lindows ran as root by default.
As for other names, friendlier than 'root' - can we really be sure that no distributor is going to simply give every user root privileges, in the name of ease-of-use? Geeks would scream at this horrific abuse of Unix, but we're thinking about what Marketing will want here...
wcfw's idea, of simply concealing the very existence of root to all but the more intelligent users, probably won't work. Seems to me that Joe Luser will need his root password when he installs software; otherwise, he'll be pissed off that he has to install it six times over, once for himself, once for the wife and once for each of the kids. He'll get used to just typing the root password into any box that asks for it. Now here comes a rogue attachment - bang, a Linux virus.
Well for one, you'll need to be root in order to make deadly changes to your system. On top of that, more people are able to spot holes in a system much easier and fix them usually before it gets dangerous.
And when Linux has a marketshare as large as or larger than that of Apple, is becoming a serious desktop threat to MS... will that still be so? Or will the common-or-garden Moronic User run as root all the time, and have not the faintest idea how to spot problems?
Once there's a sizeable population of Linux users who are idiots, run as root all the time, and run any damn executable someone emails to them, there'll be Linux viruses aplenty.
Not quite true we could go to the moon on short order if we needed to. The only problem is getting the funding to do so
With what? The space shuttle? No way; even if that thing was still flying it couldn't go to the Moon without a cargo bay rammed full of extra fuel; the aerodynamic structure is just a huge dead weight. And if you fill the cargo bay with fuel there's no room for a LM.
How about a capsule? America doesn't have one, hasn't had since Apollo, and you try finding enough spare parts for the Sixties hardware that thing used.
AFAIK, the only hardware that could go to the Moon tomorrow is Soyuz and its Chinese descendant. So - let's suppose we write the Russians a blank cheque and say 'Take us to the Moon'. We have another problem; Russia's largest rocket is the Proton, which just isn't powerful enough to send a Soyuz plus LM to the Moon. The N1 could have, but they never quite got that working. The last Saturn is a lawn ornament these days, and the Energia rocket that once launched Buran is long-since out of production.
So, perhaps we use one Proton to launch the Soyuz / LM into Earth orbit, and a second to launch a booster stage. Rendezvous, dock, fire. But what booster stage do we have in mind here? Again, no existing hardware fits the job. Centaur is the most powerful booster there is, I think, and I don't think it has the power even if it could be reconfigured to boost a Soyuz. To get Apollo to the Moon took a Saturn third stage, which was so large it was later pressed into service as America's first space station. Come to think of it, we might need multiple Protons to get enough kit up there...
And once we have somehow got our Russian spacecraft to lunar orbit, there's the matter of the LM I've referred to but never specified. The only LM there ever was was the Apollo lander.
So, we need to develop at least two new pieces of hardware to conduct a moon landing: a booster stage capable of taking Soyuz/LM to the Moon, and a suitable LM. We probably need a new monster rocket too. Even with limitless funds, this will take a good deal of time.
And the thoughtlessly rude always call it political correctness when people are offended.
Re:Going on an off-topic tangent of Studio Ghibli
on
Neil Gaiman Responds
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· Score: 1
That is just cruel. Cruel, cruel, cruel. But cripplingly funny.
I would say that it's absurd - that someone would watch the animation they'd bought before airing it. But then, a couple of months ago ITV managed to show Invader Zim in the slot where only small kiddies are watching. So it's just possible that this nightmare scenario might actually arise;-)
However, for living beings, how does one explain the transportation of the SOUL, the consciousness of the person or being which is transported? Even one single lepton out of place in the reassembly and you've materially changed that person's psychic makeup.
Gene Roddenberry was an atheist, as are most human Star Trek characters. The soul doesn't enter into it. We are the sum of our particles, and assuming the transporter can get that right then the consciousness is successfully transferred.
In the UK we use some very advanced technology to handle elections. The vote is recorded by a sophsticated device called a pencil on a sheet of a material called paper, in the form of a graphite mark in the shape of an X. These pieces of paper are then folded for privacy, and put through a slot into a ballot box, which is locked. These boxes are then taken away and opened and the votes are counted by humans.
...Atheism has no position on morality (except so far as an atheist cannot logically follow the "divine command" principle of morality).
That is a position on morality.
Hence the word 'except'.
It has no opinion on abortion. It has no opinion on evolution. Atheism does not require belief in the Big Bang, or moral relativism, or the existence of the soul. Given non-belief in a God, some positions appear more likely than others, but none are required.
To the contrary, one is required. You are required to *not* believe in God. You are required to *not* believe in creation ex nihilo because that would require the existence of God. You are required to *not* believe in moral absolutism, because absolutes in morality requires a God to set them.
How about: Creation ex nihilo by force or forces as yet unknown, without personality, intelligence or concern for humanity. Is that something you'd call a god? How about: absolute morality based on the dictates of James 'Kibo' Parry, who is by definition correct in all things? Is he then a god? (Actually, some say yes...)
By not believing in the triune God, you wall yourself into believing many other things.
Why triune in particular? Can't I believe in a dipolar God, or a quadratic God? What's so special about the number three? 'The Universe was brought to you today by the letters J and C, and by the number 3. The Universe is a production of the Divine Astrophysical Workshop.'
I can be a pro-life, anti-evolution, moral objectivist who believes that he will be reincarnated as Steven Segal after he dies, and still be an atheist.
Not true. At the very least, you will be a very inconsistent person relying heavily on Trinitarian morality while at the same time trying to deny that it exists. The most obvious problem here, and the only one I'll spend time on, is your moral objectivist part. What sort of objectivity will to appeal to in your morals? Your own? That would make it relativism again. Who gets to set the morals? You cannot have an absolute without having God to set that absolute.
You'd certainly be very odd, and frankly quite silly, but logically I think you could make a case. First, I ask again what's so special about a triple God rather than a god of some other combination of personalities. As for moral objectivity, why shouldn't I take Kibo as my moral standard rather than God? Why should I think that God's standards are better than Kibo's? Just because God's more powerful? Does that mean that George Bush's opinion on morality is closer to 'right' than the Dalai Lama's, because Bush is more powerful? What if there's a god and he's evil? What if God's a bloodthirsty genocidal maniac? Certainly many popular gods of present-day religion have done some morally questionable things over the years...
Selecting God as your standard of morality seems to me to be just as arbitrary and unjustifiable as selecting Kibo.
"We encourage users to share Preview Files that they download with colleagues and friends around the world via e-mail. We would ask that this is not achieved by publishing Preview Files on-line. The only instance where we feel this might be appropriate is within a closed user group in an educational environment.
"Above all we would like users to enjoy discovering the past through our wonderful archive, and would hope that in return the images downloaded are not misused in any way."
Really specific there, one would think they could come up with a slightly more defined policy.
Surely this is the sort of thing/. would like to see more of? Pathe have put a vast archive up on the net for public access. The copyright has in most cases not expired, and they still make money licencing this stuff to companies making history books or films or whatever. If anyone starts using this material commercially, they'll come down hard; I imagine the note about web usage is so that if some neo-Nazi twerp uses their wartime images for a site they'll have pretty solid grounds to have it pulled. But apart from that, download, share, and enjoy.
I think it's nice to see a large media company actually doing something like this and not being stuffy legalistic arses about it.
SAMBA is copyrighted software. SCO does not own that copyright and AFAIK has not yet claimed to. However, the GPL allows SCO to redistribute SAMBA, and to charge for it if they like. But SCO think the GPL is invalid... This is going to be so much fun.
"And if I remember correctly, the guiness in the US isn't even brewed the same as the irish version."
It probably is. Guinness have spent a whole lot on establishing a global brand, and on standardising the drink. There'll be subtle differences from one brewery to another, but they'll all use yeast from the same original strain, and they'll all use the same process. The canned and bottled stuff isn't that bad either; again, they've spent a hell of a lot on R&D over the years. Indeed, the canned stuff can be better than the stuff on tap - what's in the can is never far off what Guinness intended, whereas what's on tap is at the mercy of the pub cellar and the landlord.
Incidentally, if you ever are in Ireland don't bother with the Guinness brewery in Dublin. The bar there is a soulless corporate pit, and there's certainly no shortage of excellent pubs in Dublin. The best pint of Guinness I ever had was at Matt Molloy's bar in Westport, Co Mayo. Fabulous pub, too; there was an old bloke in the corner singing verses of 'Galway Bay' that had surely never been printed in any book of Irish songs ever compiled;-)
Personally I never had so much of a problem with Zaphod's second head looking horribly unnatural and fake. Arthur recognises Zaphod from the Islington party, but says that he only had one head and two arms back then, and Ford says that the extra arm suits him; it seems clear that these additional appendages have been installed surgically, and it's just the sort of thing that would please Zaphod's immense ego. So the reason they look phony is because they _are_ phony.
Another reason why Zaphod's bicephality cannot be natural to him, and must be a result of later surgery: his exchange with the receptionist at the Guide head office.
"Don't try to outweird me. I get weirder things than you free with my breakfast cereal."
"Oh yeah? And who are you, Zaphod Beeblebrox or something?"
"Count the heads."
Clearly if two-headedness was natural to Zaphod's species, then all the receptionist could tell by counting the heads would be that he was from Betelgeuse Five.
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I'm told Tenku no Shiro Rapyuta has the same flaws. So did Mononoke Hime, but at least Gaiman's translation was close enough that it didn't annoy much. It's just the moments where nobody's talking, yet the subtitles keep on rolling...
Only in a universe-wide socialist cooperative in which we all agree to ration ourselves. But suppose I decide to spend my allotted energy at double rate, and use my more active mind and body (or whatever passes for 'body' ten trillion years from now) to steal _your_ energy supply? Profit for me, and I get to be the fastest and smartest thing around in this universe of low-energy dullards.
Your only defence, it seems, is to invest energy in protecting yourself from predators like me. In effect, do it to me first, by spending your energy at triple rate...
We're stuffed.
If I had 128kbps, I wouldn't sleep much either. It's a nightmare being back on 56k after having known 512... :-(
That's where we went wrong, then... Should have sent Razer to Mars. Now there's a robot that wouldn't ever break down inexplicably.
Does that work? My guess would be that it would actually move towards the mirror. You're throwing photons both forward and backward from the source, and each photon carries momentum (+-) 'p'. Absorbing a photon on the black surface, the device's momentum changes by -p, while on reflecting one from the mirror the momentum changes by +2p. Assuming that all the photons striking the mirror entirely miss the absorber, that's a net change of +p. You can double that by just removing the absorber, and having _both_ photons escape. Then you get rid of the -p retardation and get double the acceleration. Of course, what you have then is a light rocket - a beam of light is shot out the back, and the spacecraft is pushed forward. No reaction _mass_ is thrown away, but the principle's the same :-)
The Beatle That Thought It Was A Rolling Stone
which would just be plain wrong.
TB is indeed a major threat to the health service...
Oh, you meant _tuberculosis_. Silly me.
According to the Germans at the time, Poland actually invaded first. Absurd, of course... But then, according to the Americans, Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. Pretexts for aggressive war are wonderful things.
As for leaving, the Germans probably would have left France in time. Once they no longer needed northern France as a guard against Britain, and once a suitable government friendly to Berlin could be installed... Occupying France was an unnecessary expense when the real war was in Russia (which I agree they had no intention of leaving - the idea there was lebensraum).
Incidentally, France _was_ a threat, and a big one. Big army, fearsome defences, powerful allies. Just a shame those fearsome defences didn't quite go all the way to the coast...
Ah yes. The Axis. Those would be Germany and Italy, no?
Can you tell me which large political and economic bloc those two countries are now members of?
We invade countries like Poland and Norway once in a while when they are deemed a threat, and we are in France because we are personally rebuilding their country for them so that when we do leave, they will be stable and not a threat anymore.
Supposing (despite the technology of the time) the US had, in these two cases, had a GPS system operating, and had refused to shut it down to benefit the European belligerents. Would it be fair for the Europeans to shoot down the satellites?
Quite right. In fact nobody will be able to see what you're doing on that monitor, ever again! How's that for privacy?
As for other names, friendlier than 'root' - can we really be sure that no distributor is going to simply give every user root privileges, in the name of ease-of-use? Geeks would scream at this horrific abuse of Unix, but we're thinking about what Marketing will want here...
wcfw's idea, of simply concealing the very existence of root to all but the more intelligent users, probably won't work. Seems to me that Joe Luser will need his root password when he installs software; otherwise, he'll be pissed off that he has to install it six times over, once for himself, once for the wife and once for each of the kids. He'll get used to just typing the root password into any box that asks for it. Now here comes a rogue attachment - bang, a Linux virus.
And when Linux has a marketshare as large as or larger than that of Apple, is becoming a serious desktop threat to MS... will that still be so? Or will the common-or-garden Moronic User run as root all the time, and have not the faintest idea how to spot problems?
Once there's a sizeable population of Linux users who are idiots, run as root all the time, and run any damn executable someone emails to them, there'll be Linux viruses aplenty.
With what? The space shuttle? No way; even if that thing was still flying it couldn't go to the Moon without a cargo bay rammed full of extra fuel; the aerodynamic structure is just a huge dead weight. And if you fill the cargo bay with fuel there's no room for a LM.
How about a capsule? America doesn't have one, hasn't had since Apollo, and you try finding enough spare parts for the Sixties hardware that thing used.
AFAIK, the only hardware that could go to the Moon tomorrow is Soyuz and its Chinese descendant. So - let's suppose we write the Russians a blank cheque and say 'Take us to the Moon'. We have another problem; Russia's largest rocket is the Proton, which just isn't powerful enough to send a Soyuz plus LM to the Moon. The N1 could have, but they never quite got that working. The last Saturn is a lawn ornament these days, and the Energia rocket that once launched Buran is long-since out of production.
So, perhaps we use one Proton to launch the Soyuz / LM into Earth orbit, and a second to launch a booster stage. Rendezvous, dock, fire. But what booster stage do we have in mind here? Again, no existing hardware fits the job. Centaur is the most powerful booster there is, I think, and I don't think it has the power even if it could be reconfigured to boost a Soyuz. To get Apollo to the Moon took a Saturn third stage, which was so large it was later pressed into service as America's first space station. Come to think of it, we might need multiple Protons to get enough kit up there...
And once we have somehow got our Russian spacecraft to lunar orbit, there's the matter of the LM I've referred to but never specified. The only LM there ever was was the Apollo lander.
So, we need to develop at least two new pieces of hardware to conduct a moon landing: a booster stage capable of taking Soyuz/LM to the Moon, and a suitable LM. We probably need a new monster rocket too. Even with limitless funds, this will take a good deal of time.
And the thoughtlessly rude always call it political correctness when people are offended.
I would say that it's absurd - that someone would watch the animation they'd bought before airing it. But then, a couple of months ago ITV managed to show Invader Zim in the slot where only small kiddies are watching. So it's just possible that this nightmare scenario might actually arise ;-)
Gene Roddenberry was an atheist, as are most human Star Trek characters. The soul doesn't enter into it. We are the sum of our particles, and assuming the transporter can get that right then the consciousness is successfully transferred.
In the UK we use some very advanced technology to handle elections. The vote is recorded by a sophsticated device called a pencil on a sheet of a material called paper, in the form of a graphite mark in the shape of an X. These pieces of paper are then folded for privacy, and put through a slot into a ballot box, which is locked. These boxes are then taken away and opened and the votes are counted by humans.
That is a position on morality.
Hence the word 'except'.
It has no opinion on abortion. It has no opinion on evolution. Atheism does not require belief in the Big Bang, or moral relativism, or the existence of the soul. Given non-belief in a God, some positions appear more likely than others, but none are required.
To the contrary, one is required. You are required to *not* believe in God. You are required to *not* believe in creation ex nihilo because that would require the existence of God. You are required to *not* believe in moral absolutism, because absolutes in morality requires a God to set them.
How about: Creation ex nihilo by force or forces as yet unknown, without personality, intelligence or concern for humanity. Is that something you'd call a god? How about: absolute morality based on the dictates of James 'Kibo' Parry, who is by definition correct in all things? Is he then a god? (Actually, some say yes...)
By not believing in the triune God, you wall yourself into believing many other things.
Why triune in particular? Can't I believe in a dipolar God, or a quadratic God? What's so special about the number three? 'The Universe was brought to you today by the letters J and C, and by the number 3. The Universe is a production of the Divine Astrophysical Workshop.'
I can be a pro-life, anti-evolution, moral objectivist who believes that he will be reincarnated as Steven Segal after he dies, and still be an atheist.
Not true. At the very least, you will be a very inconsistent person relying heavily on Trinitarian morality while at the same time trying to deny that it exists. The most obvious problem here, and the only one I'll spend time on, is your moral objectivist part. What sort of objectivity will to appeal to in your morals? Your own? That would make it relativism again. Who gets to set the morals? You cannot have an absolute without having God to set that absolute.
You'd certainly be very odd, and frankly quite silly, but logically I think you could make a case. First, I ask again what's so special about a triple God rather than a god of some other combination of personalities. As for moral objectivity, why shouldn't I take Kibo as my moral standard rather than God? Why should I think that God's standards are better than Kibo's? Just because God's more powerful? Does that mean that George Bush's opinion on morality is closer to 'right' than the Dalai Lama's, because Bush is more powerful? What if there's a god and he's evil? What if God's a bloodthirsty genocidal maniac? Certainly many popular gods of present-day religion have done some morally questionable things over the years...
Selecting God as your standard of morality seems to me to be just as arbitrary and unjustifiable as selecting Kibo.
"Above all we would like users to enjoy discovering the past through our wonderful archive, and would hope that in return the images downloaded are not misused in any way."
Really specific there, one would think they could come up with a slightly more defined policy.
Surely this is the sort of thing /. would like to see more of? Pathe have put a vast archive up on the net for public access. The copyright has in most cases not expired, and they still make money licencing this stuff to companies making history books or films or whatever. If anyone starts using this material commercially, they'll come down hard; I imagine the note about web usage is so that if some neo-Nazi twerp uses their wartime images for a site they'll have pretty solid grounds to have it pulled. But apart from that, download, share, and enjoy.
I think it's nice to see a large media company actually doing something like this and not being stuffy legalistic arses about it.
SAMBA is copyrighted software. SCO does not own that copyright and AFAIK has not yet claimed to. However, the GPL allows SCO to redistribute SAMBA, and to charge for it if they like. But SCO think the GPL is invalid... This is going to be so much fun.
It probably is. Guinness have spent a whole lot on establishing a global brand, and on standardising the drink. There'll be subtle differences from one brewery to another, but they'll all use yeast from the same original strain, and they'll all use the same process. The canned and bottled stuff isn't that bad either; again, they've spent a hell of a lot on R&D over the years. Indeed, the canned stuff can be better than the stuff on tap - what's in the can is never far off what Guinness intended, whereas what's on tap is at the mercy of the pub cellar and the landlord.
Incidentally, if you ever are in Ireland don't bother with the Guinness brewery in Dublin. The bar there is a soulless corporate pit, and there's certainly no shortage of excellent pubs in Dublin. The best pint of Guinness I ever had was at Matt Molloy's bar in Westport, Co Mayo. Fabulous pub, too; there was an old bloke in the corner singing verses of 'Galway Bay' that had surely never been printed in any book of Irish songs ever compiled ;-)
Another reason why Zaphod's bicephality cannot be natural to him, and must be a result of later surgery: his exchange with the receptionist at the Guide head office.
"Don't try to outweird me. I get weirder things than you free with my breakfast cereal."
"Oh yeah? And who are you, Zaphod Beeblebrox or something?"
"Count the heads."
Clearly if two-headedness was natural to Zaphod's species, then all the receptionist could tell by counting the heads would be that he was from Betelgeuse Five.
- No tea