I liked the Silmarillion much better as an audio book. I don't know if there are multiple versions out there, but the one I have is read by Martin Shaw.
Gilker_Kimmel Star Wars is not the universe-spanning mythic adventure Lucas pretends. It is a hack-written space opera with cardboard characters play-acting through old-time Saturday morning serial cliff-hangers. It is not an art film of great depth.
chadosaurus
But is it reasonable to think that within his many explicit metaphors, the story concealed an overarching and intentional central metaphor about the good and evil inherent in plotting? Or is it perhaps more reasonable to conclude that Aidan Wasley came up with a silly ass theory and expanded that to article length, mainly because someone was willing to pay him to do so?
TheNewSnobbery
So let me get this straight -- anti-intellectuals fill the Fray to trash a fawning, academic analysis of the Star Wars series?
2005 is so schizophrenic it makes my head hurt.
petersattler
Dear First-Year Grad Student:
Your analysis of Star Wars is good, as far as it goes. At one time or another, we have all felt that rush of excitement as we try out rhetorical terms and academic jargon for the first time. And I can definitely feel that excitement in your essay. You grab your readers' attention by making sweepingly counterintuitive claims (Star Wars is postmodern art) and then cement the argument with the glue of those old lit-crit favorites, self-referentiality and self-reflexivity. It's a tried an true method -- musicals about musicals, genre fiction's obsession with its own rules, comic strip characters who talk about comics -- but it still packs a punch with some people. And it make popular culture seem canny and highfalutin. Nice try on that account.
Keifus
Oh for Christ's sake.
Which is more likely:
(A) Lucas cleverly and consciously infused a subtle interplay of textual analysis on serendipity in fiction into a series of films where starchy dry plot points are piled high like flapjacks on a lumberjack's plate, with an ice cream scoop of buttery special effects on top and smothered sloppily with a pitcherful of treacly, saccarine emotion.*
(B) It's a vestigial relic of the storytelling tradition he's borrowing so heavily from.**
Can you imagine a server of user-submitted ratings?
I can. Netflix is probably one of the best examples. The problem with Netflix is that almost all the ratings are between 3 and 4-1/2 stars. Only truly awful movies are usually below. Most public-rating systems suffer the same problem of a too-tight distribution of samples to be all that helpful, or at least a compressed gradient of values, so that it is difficult to get a easy read on the rating. A decent movie might be 3.2 stars, and a really bad one 3.0.
I have some theories on the why:
1) tastes differ so much that most films' ratings are neutral. solution: affinity-based ratings (such as Netflix's recommendations) to use a more relevant subset.
2) people do not like giving low ratings, so they inflate them. As if a low rating is a failing grade, and somebody is going to be hurt by it. solution: normalization. If people won't use the full range of ratings, analyze their ratings and normalize them to a baseline them before combining with others.
3) most people have such terrible taste in movies that they really do think most films deserve at least 3 out of 5. solution: normalization or affinity-based, or simply remove those ratings from consideration. A 3 is considered "neutral" for those people who refuse to make use of the range, and is not factored into the average. This cuts down on the inertia needed to move a rating away from the middle
In the end, I just think people are stupid. They won't use the full range to help them sort out the good from the bad, and so limits the overall use of such a system.
According to the article, the ruling just says that Google can't use GEICO in the actual text of the ad. Trademark infringment is about confusion -- would having GEICO in the text of the ad lead someone to believe that it was an ad for GEICO? Quite possibly.
I'll admit freely that I don't know anything about legal precedent, BUT I can tell you that the case has NOTHING to do with the First Amendment.
Are you so sure? You know nothing about legal precedent, but seem to be so positive about how this relates to the first amendment?
If a journalist is forced to reveal his sources, then the person is vulnerable to retribution for it. This is the "whistleblower" problem -- insiders are almost always the ones who expose fraud, corruption, etc. To put whistleblowers into jeopardy by giving them no protection is to prevent any reporting of illegal, unethical, or dangerous behavior by government or corporations.
Now, this seems innocent enough to say "we're just letting Apple ask (demand) for the name of the source" in connection with releasing their oh-so-secret marketing information. But it's not innocent when it's the government asking who leaked that report on embezzled public funds or prisoner abuse, or that corporation memo on dumping toxic waste into the reservoir.
If you let Apple sue for this, it will set a precedent that this information can be forced from journalists. And that is a restriction of freedom of the press, which is a first amendment issue.
Oh, wait, this has NOTHING to do with the first amendment. Never mind then.
Which is why it is sad if they got the plug pulled because of their content. Our liberty is defined by whether we err on the side of caution and shut down anything that makes us the least uneasy, or whether we accept the risk of things we don't understand/agree with. See Lee Greenwood fans vs. Flag-burning.
Maybe this is just a business decision, completely independent of politics. I doubt it. The US administration is growing increasingly hostile to Iran. Imagine a US ISP hosting a news service sympathetic to Iraq during the build-up to the war. Do you think that they would keep doing so? Do you think that, in the current climate of "sieze you and your assets with a secret warrant and haul you to Cuba where you never get a trial or even a lawyer", the ISP would even wait for the government to say anything?
Most likely, this web site seemed risky to business, and they figured it would just be best if they ended their business relationship. Understandable, but when we look at the history of human abuse and how it is institutionalized in society, we always ask, how could people just stand by and let that happen? Well, you're watching it happen. This may be a small thing, and not particularly oppressive, but it's a good example of how we've allowed ourselves to be intimidated by the threat of government attention, and how it affects many of the decisions we make every day.
Of course. I've run into this type of thing with all sorts of data hash/checksum type of algorithms. If there are a numerically smaller amount of hash values than source data values, it is a mathematical certainty that multiple source data from generating the same hash value.
If you have a 4-byte hash value of a 1000-byte character string, you have 4+ billion possible hash values. But the number of possible 1000-byte strings? What's 256^1000? So, on average, there would be 256^4 / 256^1000 source values that would generate each individual hash value. The only way to avoid this is to have a hash value that is as long as the source value, which eliminates much of the benefits of a hash.
I like the idea someone else posted about using multiple algorithms because it would dramatically reduce the number of possible values that would generate the same hash value using 2 different methods.
Pixar employs great writers. I think the best thing about Pixar is that they tell a great story. There are few cheap jokes (unlike bathroom humor in Shrek, for instance) or overly cutesy stuff that adults roll their eyes at (like in most Disney films). There are lots of little jokes, subtle humor, and satire in Pixar films. Disney stuff looks cool but you never forget you're watching a movie for kids. The writing is hokey and stiff.
My guess is that the writers are given much more freedom and control at Pixar than at Disney. So maybe if Disney learned something from the experience, they can do it. But most likely not.
Proportionality isn't really the only factor. It reminds me of the frontier saying, "We shoot horse theives out here, son." Punishment will not be just proportional to the damage directly caused by the crime, but also to the ease of getting away with it. I guess that's the deterrent factor at work. That's the reaction to spam -- people get very very upset when people are pulling off these acts right in front of them and slipping away. They want it punished more than rape because it's much easier to get away with spamming.
Anonymous Coward wrote: semi-articulate jumble of profanity
I'm sorry for my previous post. I realize now that it was completely unnecessary. You've demonstrated my point quite well without me, and much more eloquently. Thanks for your help. Also, I'm sorry about your slaray. I assume that's something like a catamaran, which is something I wouldn't want to lose most of either.
Now I'd like to see the list by average bench-press, Wal-Mart expenditure, body fat %, or pork rind consumption. Now there's a contest that a red state could clean up on!
I disagree; simplified, easily digestible sound-bites -- even if factually incorrect -- sell. People like them, because if all of their information is derived from them they just don't have to think. It's the basis of mainstream private media. No doubt about it, Ballmer got to be where he is because he understands that the system rewards bullshit.
Yeah, fine, but it's not like you could get elected President using that kind of...oh, wait.
To date, SCO's actions have been a little like sticking your head up out of the foxhole -- with about a thousand guns trained on your position. Every time they try to take a shot themselves, they get pounded with a barrage of fire from several different directions. So if you have any sense, you just stay down and don't give them anything to shoot at.
SCO doesn't have much on it's side. The more they encourage effort on the part of their adversaries, the more they have to lose. Perhaps they believed that in this overly intellectual property-conscious land, they would get sympathy, but if so, that was a miscalculation.
A status bar that works is an important part of preventing that kind of fraud.
If it's so important, why does Javascript allow you to put whatever you want in the status bar? Anyone can easily override the default behavior without an "exploit".
I can see how this is a bug, and should be fixed, but how big of a security risk is it really? I think anyone aware enough to look at the status bar will probably look at the address bar in the browswer, which will show the real URL. So, yes, the status bar spoof might get someone to click, but they can't spoof the address bar, and a phishing scam would fall apart at that point.
You might as well say that links themselves are a security risk, since a link that says "Microsoft Web Site" but really goes to goatse.cx is a dangerous spoof.
Slashdot Mirror
Gonzales has been with Bush since Texas. That's how long his poor judge of character has been in place.
Funny - I can't tell if you are talking about Bush or Gonzales' judgment.
I liked the Silmarillion much better as an audio book. I don't know if there are multiple versions out there, but the one I have is read by Martin Shaw.
Gilker_Kimmel
Star Wars is not the universe-spanning mythic adventure Lucas pretends. It is a hack-written space opera with cardboard characters play-acting through old-time Saturday morning serial cliff-hangers. It is not an art film of great depth.
chadosaurus
But is it reasonable to think that within his many explicit metaphors, the story concealed an overarching and intentional central metaphor about the good and evil inherent in plotting? Or is it perhaps more reasonable to conclude that Aidan Wasley came up with a silly ass theory and expanded that to article length, mainly because someone was willing to pay him to do so?
TheNewSnobbery
So let me get this straight -- anti-intellectuals fill the Fray to trash a fawning, academic analysis of the Star Wars series?
2005 is so schizophrenic it makes my head hurt.
petersattler
Dear First-Year Grad Student:
Your analysis of Star Wars is good, as far as it goes. At one time or another, we have all felt that rush of excitement as we try out rhetorical terms and academic jargon for the first time. And I can definitely feel that excitement in your essay. You grab your readers' attention by making sweepingly counterintuitive claims (Star Wars is postmodern art) and then cement the argument with the glue of those old lit-crit favorites, self-referentiality and self-reflexivity. It's a tried an true method -- musicals about musicals, genre fiction's obsession with its own rules, comic strip characters who talk about comics -- but it still packs a punch with some people. And it make popular culture seem canny and highfalutin. Nice try on that account.
Keifus
Oh for Christ's sake.
Which is more likely:
(A) Lucas cleverly and consciously infused a subtle interplay of textual analysis on serendipity in fiction into a series of films where starchy dry plot points are piled high like flapjacks on a lumberjack's plate, with an ice cream scoop of buttery special effects on top and smothered sloppily with a pitcherful of treacly, saccarine emotion.*
(B) It's a vestigial relic of the storytelling tradition he's borrowing so heavily from.**
I've gotta go with B, Alex.
I can. Netflix is probably one of the best examples. The problem with Netflix is that almost all the ratings are between 3 and 4-1/2 stars. Only truly awful movies are usually below. Most public-rating systems suffer the same problem of a too-tight distribution of samples to be all that helpful, or at least a compressed gradient of values, so that it is difficult to get a easy read on the rating. A decent movie might be 3.2 stars, and a really bad one 3.0.
I have some theories on the why:
1) tastes differ so much that most films' ratings are neutral.
solution: affinity-based ratings (such as Netflix's recommendations) to use a more relevant subset.
2) people do not like giving low ratings, so they inflate them. As if a low rating is a failing grade, and somebody is going to be hurt by it.
solution: normalization. If people won't use the full range of ratings, analyze their ratings and normalize them to a baseline them before combining with others.
3) most people have such terrible taste in movies that they really do think most films deserve at least 3 out of 5.
solution: normalization or affinity-based, or simply remove those ratings from consideration. A 3 is considered "neutral" for those people who refuse to make use of the range, and is not factored into the average. This cuts down on the inertia needed to move a rating away from the middle
In the end, I just think people are stupid. They won't use the full range to help them sort out the good from the bad, and so limits the overall use of such a system.
According to the article, the ruling just says that Google can't use GEICO in the actual text of the ad. Trademark infringment is about confusion -- would having GEICO in the text of the ad lead someone to believe that it was an ad for GEICO? Quite possibly.
Are you so sure? You know nothing about legal precedent, but seem to be so positive about how this relates to the first amendment?
If a journalist is forced to reveal his sources, then the person is vulnerable to retribution for it. This is the "whistleblower" problem -- insiders are almost always the ones who expose fraud, corruption, etc. To put whistleblowers into jeopardy by giving them no protection is to prevent any reporting of illegal, unethical, or dangerous behavior by government or corporations.
Now, this seems innocent enough to say "we're just letting Apple ask (demand) for the name of the source" in connection with releasing their oh-so-secret marketing information. But it's not innocent when it's the government asking who leaked that report on embezzled public funds or prisoner abuse, or that corporation memo on dumping toxic waste into the reservoir.
If you let Apple sue for this, it will set a precedent that this information can be forced from journalists. And that is a restriction of freedom of the press, which is a first amendment issue.
Oh, wait, this has NOTHING to do with the first amendment. Never mind then.
The Source Tree must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of Forkers and Flamers.
Which is why it is sad if they got the plug pulled because of their content. Our liberty is defined by whether we err on the side of caution and shut down anything that makes us the least uneasy, or whether we accept the risk of things we don't understand/agree with. See Lee Greenwood fans vs. Flag-burning.
Maybe this is just a business decision, completely independent of politics. I doubt it. The US administration is growing increasingly hostile to Iran. Imagine a US ISP hosting a news service sympathetic to Iraq during the build-up to the war. Do you think that they would keep doing so? Do you think that, in the current climate of "sieze you and your assets with a secret warrant and haul you to Cuba where you never get a trial or even a lawyer", the ISP would even wait for the government to say anything?
Most likely, this web site seemed risky to business, and they figured it would just be best if they ended their business relationship. Understandable, but when we look at the history of human abuse and how it is institutionalized in society, we always ask, how could people just stand by and let that happen? Well, you're watching it happen. This may be a small thing, and not particularly oppressive, but it's a good example of how we've allowed ourselves to be intimidated by the threat of government attention, and how it affects many of the decisions we make every day.
I've got my own secret program to live forever. So far, it's working!
Before you flame, change 256^4 / 256^1000 to 256^1000 / 256^4.
If you have a 4-byte hash value of a 1000-byte character string, you have 4+ billion possible hash values. But the number of possible 1000-byte strings? What's 256^1000? So, on average, there would be 256^4 / 256^1000 source values that would generate each individual hash value. The only way to avoid this is to have a hash value that is as long as the source value, which eliminates much of the benefits of a hash.
I like the idea someone else posted about using multiple algorithms because it would dramatically reduce the number of possible values that would generate the same hash value using 2 different methods.
My guess is that the writers are given much more freedom and control at Pixar than at Disney. So maybe if Disney learned something from the experience, they can do it. But most likely not.
Proportionality isn't really the only factor. It reminds me of the frontier saying, "We shoot horse theives out here, son." Punishment will not be just proportional to the damage directly caused by the crime, but also to the ease of getting away with it. I guess that's the deterrent factor at work. That's the reaction to spam -- people get very very upset when people are pulling off these acts right in front of them and slipping away. They want it punished more than rape because it's much easier to get away with spamming.
How about, "What was the most fanatic fan of Star Trek you have encountered?"
I can't tell from watching the film
These days, that's called Fox News...
semi-articulate jumble of profanity
I'm sorry for my previous post. I realize now that it was completely unnecessary. You've demonstrated my point quite well without me, and much more eloquently. Thanks for your help. Also, I'm sorry about your slaray. I assume that's something like a catamaran, which is something I wouldn't want to lose most of either.
Now I'd like to see the list by average bench-press, Wal-Mart expenditure, body fat %, or pork rind consumption. Now there's a contest that a red state could clean up on!
Hey, don't forget John McCain in there.
The problem however, is that this works best on uneducated people.
Who are in the majority by at least 3 million, according to a survey conducted a couple of days ago. :-)
Yeah, fine, but it's not like you could get elected President using that kind of...oh, wait.
SCO doesn't have much on it's side. The more they encourage effort on the part of their adversaries, the more they have to lose. Perhaps they believed that in this overly intellectual property-conscious land, they would get sympathy, but if so, that was a miscalculation.
If it's so important, why does Javascript allow you to put whatever you want in the status bar? Anyone can easily override the default behavior without an "exploit".
Maybe, but in Outlook, there's no status bar anyway, so you have to click links blind.
You might as well say that links themselves are a security risk, since a link that says "Microsoft Web Site" but really goes to goatse.cx is a dangerous spoof.