> Another view is that Middle Earth is a > recreated 'history' of ancient England....A > land which was rural, simple, non- > industrialized. Where everyone had a pipe to > smoke, a story to tell by the fire, and a > garden to tend to: an idealized time
Grumpy Old Man: Back in my day, we didn't have any anti-bee-otics. You cut your thumb, a red streak went up your arm, you died, and YOU LIKED IT.
There are, of course, the other two of the "big three" SF&F epic stories:
Dune Foundation (tho' it's more of a collection of short stories, "The Mule" is a twist-ending story like none I've ever read before.
And, of course, if you like epic battles, indeed wars, the space war of "In Death Ground" is like none I've ever read or seen before. It dwarfs the pitiful "Wolf 359" and "Dominion" battles of Star Trek, as well as the tiny battles of Star Wars. It even supercedes anime stuff.
That was the cool part, learning that Sauron was basically just an evil cherub assistant to one of the true main evil beings. One wonders what those battles vs. good were like.
Yes, but remember the Elvish ladies all look like Cate Blanchette and Liv Tyler -- and they've thousands of years of practicing the gentler arts of love, if you know what I mean.
> The fact that Tom Bombadil is able to see into > the future,... and especially the fact that he > is not affected by the One Ring show that he > is "above and beyond" the powers in action in > Middle Earth.
Bobby the Barbarian: Dungeon Master!
> he is not affected by the One Ring
Beyond the ring! Even Cate Blanchette was affected by it.
Imagine...
Cate (in hyper-hot ghostly form): I have seen the power, but I have the will to...too...
history shifts
Cate:...to...to seize the power! I shall rule with an iron fist that even Sauron cannot imagine!
Frodo: Uh oh
Cate: And I shall make you my sexual slave for the next ten thousand years.
I read somewhere once that a normal movie covers roughly about 40 pages of a novel.
Given how massive the trilogy is, it shouldn't surprise me. Also remember that, for the movie to sell well, they had to get to some good action before the end of the first one. Sitting around for six hours while Tom Bombadil relates some geneaologies from the Old Testament isn't exactly much of a "WOW" factor.
> is that God allows evil to exist to let us know what is good
Tell that to they choking, dying 6 year old who has fingers around his neck and an erection up his torn, bleeding ass.
No, any "god" who allows that (much less created the world with the possibilities of that in mind) is a sick, sadistic bastard. (And, according to theory, one who knows and experiences both what the child experiences, and experiences the sick, voilent lust/orgasm of the attacker!)
If that doesn't make God a sick son of a bitch, I don't know what does.
The idea that you need bad in order to showcase good is some lame philosophical idea that sounds impressive to an 8th grade Jr. High student, but that collapses when you think about it for more than four seconds.
You don't need murder and torture to know that a flower is good. It's just a silly notion that, actually, exposes what an evil S.O.B. "the lord" is.
It may be in the nature of a good and powerful being to create lesser self-aware beings, but it does not follow that one puts them in a world where they can harm each other.
Ergo, God is evil. Stand with me brothers and make that judgement!
Once you accept that, it's just a small step to concluding He, or It, doesn't really exist, and all religion collapses into what would be clownish behavior, were it not so supremely murderous and thuggish throughout history, right up thru 9/11 and beyond.
> The team has around 50 stations across the UK, > and use GPS technology to track miniscule > changes in altitude and location.
"Whoa! Look at that shift!"
"Wait a minnit. It's just Fergie just tripped."
Amazon one-click patent is a bad example
on
Steal This Idea
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's ironic, but the Amazon one-click purchase patent is a bad example of a "bad" patent. It's actually quite a good patent.
No site had, and no programmer before or since would ever feel comfortable letting someone buy something without a second click for a confirmation. This is well documented, and any programmer of any age would tell you this. It was a true innovation in thought to both the online community and the programming community.
A better example would be something that was an imminently obvious next step, like rendering "frames" in 3D to provide animation. Whatever happened to that guy and his patent and his lawsuit against the big 3D card companies?
> It'll be "intelligent noise". Any civilization > capabable of sending radio signals will be > poluting the universe with signals from various > sources, just like we've done for the past 80 > years.
ASSuming there is no way for faster-than-light communication, which, if it exists, will probably not be radio-based.
If it does exist, we could be in the brief sliver of time of a civilization between when they develop radio and when they develop whatever-it-is.
> The only difference is that for 24 hours they > got to decide what it's pointed at.
Does anyone know if Drummlin was fuming or happy at this? He hates "nonsense" research, but on the other hand, he's a suck-ass who prolly realized Seti@home was rather popular and he knows what side his bread is buttered on!
Security Breach Warning! California socialist laws will end up slowing scientific progress, having the net effect of causing more deaths than without them over the years, and a corresponding increase in needless misery.
You can tell it's CGI when they start moving fast. The center of gravity, always shifting as limbs move, isn't quite right. The limbs themselves don't accellerate and decellerate at the correct rates that muscles and arm mass would dictate, and also thus don't look quite right.
Witness some of the silly looking Jar Jar, especially when he dives into water, or the complete idiocy of "The Goblin" in that godawful Spiderman movie, as he leaps onto his flier and so on.
Slashdot Mirror
Quit niggling.
Most SF&F style writers, when inventing a language, just start heaving apostrophes into the words and proper names.
> Another view is that Middle Earth is a
> recreated 'history' of ancient England....A
> land which was rural, simple, non-
> industrialized. Where everyone had a pipe to
> smoke, a story to tell by the fire, and a
> garden to tend to: an idealized time
Grumpy Old Man: Back in my day, we didn't have any anti-bee-otics. You cut your thumb, a red streak went up your arm, you died, and YOU LIKED IT.
There are, of course, the other two of the "big three" SF&F epic stories:
Dune
Foundation (tho' it's more of a collection of short stories, "The Mule" is a twist-ending story like none I've ever read before.
And, of course, if you like epic battles, indeed wars, the space war of "In Death Ground" is like none I've ever read or seen before. It dwarfs the pitiful "Wolf 359" and "Dominion" battles of Star Trek, as well as the tiny battles of Star Wars. It even supercedes anime stuff.
> Sauron as a lieutenant of Morgoth
That was the cool part, learning that Sauron was basically just an evil cherub assistant to one of the true main evil beings. One wonders what those battles vs. good were like.
> Didn't somebody look at the article between the
> time that the submitter typed the words and the
> article was posted?
Mod: -10,000 Redundant
I heard when you sign up as a Slashdot paid subscriber, they actually issue you a laminated card with that phrase on it.
Yes, but remember the Elvish ladies all look like Cate Blanchette and Liv Tyler -- and they've thousands of years of practicing the gentler arts of love, if you know what I mean.
So, sir, you lose! Good day!
I said, "Good day!"
Note to fellow rhetoriticians: sadly, this is not a straw man argument. Were that it were...
> The fact that Tom Bombadil is able to see into ... and especially the fact that he
...to...to seize the power! I shall rule with an iron fist that even Sauron cannot imagine!
...ok!
> the future,
> is not affected by the One Ring show that he
> is "above and beyond" the powers in action in
> Middle Earth.
Bobby the Barbarian: Dungeon Master!
> he is not affected by the One Ring
Beyond the ring! Even Cate Blanchette was affected by it.
Imagine...
Cate (in hyper-hot ghostly form): I have seen the power, but I have the will to...too...
history shifts
Cate:
Frodo: Uh oh
Cate: And I shall make you my sexual slave for the next ten thousand years.
Frodo:
I read somewhere once that a normal movie covers roughly about 40 pages of a novel.
Given how massive the trilogy is, it shouldn't surprise me. Also remember that, for the movie to sell well, they had to get to some good action before the end of the first one. Sitting around for six hours while Tom Bombadil relates some geneaologies from the Old Testament isn't exactly much of a "WOW" factor.
> is that God allows evil to exist to let us know what is good
Tell that to they choking, dying 6 year old who has fingers around his neck and an erection up his torn, bleeding ass.
No, any "god" who allows that (much less created the world with the possibilities of that in mind) is a sick, sadistic bastard. (And, according to theory, one who knows and experiences both what the child experiences, and experiences the sick, voilent lust/orgasm of the attacker!)
If that doesn't make God a sick son of a bitch, I don't know what does.
The idea that you need bad in order to showcase good is some lame philosophical idea that sounds impressive to an 8th grade Jr. High student, but that collapses when you think about it for more than four seconds.
You don't need murder and torture to know that a flower is good. It's just a silly notion that, actually, exposes what an evil S.O.B. "the lord" is.
It may be in the nature of a good and powerful being to create lesser self-aware beings, but it does not follow that one puts them in a world where they can harm each other.
Ergo, God is evil. Stand with me brothers and make that judgement!
Once you accept that, it's just a small step to concluding He, or It, doesn't really exist, and all religion collapses into what would be clownish behavior, were it not so supremely murderous and thuggish throughout history, right up thru 9/11 and beyond.
> The team has around 50 stations across the UK,
> and use GPS technology to track miniscule
> changes in altitude and location.
"Whoa! Look at that shift!"
"Wait a minnit. It's just Fergie just tripped."
It's ironic, but the Amazon one-click purchase patent is a bad example of a "bad" patent. It's actually quite a good patent.
No site had, and no programmer before or since would ever feel comfortable letting someone buy something without a second click for a confirmation. This is well documented, and any programmer of any age would tell you this. It was a true innovation in thought to both the online community and the programming community.
A better example would be something that was an imminently obvious next step, like rendering "frames" in 3D to provide animation. Whatever happened to that guy and his patent and his lawsuit against the big 3D card companies?
> the 24 hrs were broken into 3 sets of 8 hrs.
> during the first set they reobserved
> 80something targets
That'd be one damned boring episode of 24.
Jack! JACK! I need you to go...get me some more coffee.
Some better, choice quotes:
"Ugly bags of mostly-water."
and another that has nothing to do with anything...
"We raise our children in fibrous husks."
Damn, I can't even type that sh** without laughing. Thanks, ST:TNG!
Too bad that penalty wasn't applied to you at age 27.
> what if the aliens took a 10 min break?
I'd be sorry to hear that since it would indicate a minor, hobby-group of aliens, rather than a concentrated, large-scale effort on their part.
> It'll be "intelligent noise". Any civilization
> capabable of sending radio signals will be
> poluting the universe with signals from various
> sources, just like we've done for the past 80
> years.
ASSuming there is no way for faster-than-light communication, which, if it exists, will probably not be radio-based.
If it does exist, we could be in the brief sliver of time of a civilization between when they develop radio and when they develop whatever-it-is.
> The only difference is that for 24 hours they
> got to decide what it's pointed at.
Does anyone know if Drummlin was fuming or happy at this? He hates "nonsense" research, but on the other hand, he's a suck-ass who prolly realized Seti@home was rather popular and he knows what side his bread is buttered on!
Security Breach Warning! California socialist laws will end up slowing scientific progress, having the net effect of causing more deaths than without them over the years, and a corresponding increase in needless misery.
Here's a spoiler. Who wants to hear a spoiler?
You will die...alone.
You can tell it's CGI when they start moving fast. The center of gravity, always shifting as limbs move, isn't quite right. The limbs themselves don't accellerate and decellerate at the correct rates that muscles and arm mass would dictate, and also thus don't look quite right.
Witness some of the silly looking Jar Jar, especially when he dives into water, or the complete idiocy of "The Goblin" in that godawful Spiderman movie, as he leaps onto his flier and so on.
I think you mean "up shut."
As in "Up shut you will. Yes"
When Natalie Porman's shirt got ripped open in Clones, my penis changed size by an order of magnitude.