Ok, let's get one thing straight -- the Cylons "evolving" into human form was not "mind blowing". It just wasn't.
Agreed. it wasn't even new to the Galactica canon. We first see human looking cylons in "The Night the Cyclons Landed" two-parter (aka "the halloween episode" with a special Wolfman Jack appearance) of Galactica 1980.
So really, the first picture of a human was porn, and not the picture in this article? That's awesome!
No. You made the mistake of reading the summary and thinking that somehow reflected what the fine article said. It's a common mistake here. If you actually take the time to read the rather brief article itself, you will find that the first photo of a human was in 1838.
Who could have guessed that the Germans would pass through impassable terrain and precisely hit the single weak point between the strong Maginot Line and the first-string armies in Belgium?
The Germans, it seems, had no trouble guessing it at all.
399 images included the location of the camera at the time the image was taken, and 102 images included the name of the photographer....
Or, to summarize from the other point of view...
"97.4% of images did not include the location of the camera at the time the image was taken, and 99.3% of images did not include the name of the photographer.... "
If someone buys "UNLIMITED" (all caps to match marketing material) access, shouldn't they be entitled to UNLIMITED (all caps to match marketing material) usage without being considered "offending"? That's like saying my family uses too much milk because we drink the full gallon instead of letting it go bad.
We have a doomsday once every 365 days (except on leap years) when our calendar hits December 31.
I'm just being pedantic, I know, but our calendar (the Gregorian calendar) actually has a cycle of 400 years. The most recent cycle transition was in year 2000 (which was a leap year when it otherwise wouldn't have been).
There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. That they may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilizations of Lemuria or Atlantis. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens...
DS9 only got good when they hired 1/2 the creative people off of B5
Which creative people would that be? There were 110 B5 episodes. Of those 92 were written by JMS. All 44 episodes of seasons 3 and 4 were scripted by him.
because fox said (You guessed it) B5 is cancelled.
That would be a peculiar thing for Fox to say, as B5 was produced by Warner Brothers and aired in syndication.
Amazingly they recanted
not quite... what happened is that TNT agreed to pick up the show.
which is why the last season of B5 was crap they had lost 1/2 their talent and squeezed the last 2 years of story arc into season 4 to finish the series.
The only person I recall leaving was Claudia Christian who played Cmdr Ivanova.
"Warp speed" though, I'm not sure on. I'm pretty sure it predates Roddenberry though... Any takers?
"Warp", as a nautical term, is a method of moving a ship by pulling on a rope. C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower frequently does this in the novels (often having the crew in a rowboat carry the anchor some distance then drop it, then the shipboard crew pulls the line to drag the ship to the new location where the process is repeated). Seeing that Roddenberry frequently described Trek as "Horatio Hornblower in space" I would say that Roddenberry borrowed the nautical term to have a new meaning.
The question is, does gaming improve mental agility and make you a safer driver.
That's the wrong question. A more correct question would be "Is there a correlation between gaming and driving ability?"
It could very well be the there is no causal relationship between the two, but rather they share a common cause. Perhaps those without sufficient mental acuity/coordination to drive also lack the "mad skillz" needed for gaming, and thus they don't find games to be enjoyable and therefore don't play.
If the teenage girl was shot but escaped and is coherent enough to talk, why do the authorities talk about the "apparent" gunman? That seems to me the sort of language you use when all you have is circumstantial evidence.
Just because a witness says something happened a certain way doesn't at all mean that's what really happened. No doubt the investigation is ongoing.
6,563,415 "Analog sensor(s) with snap-through tactile feedback" - This one is invalid through prior art, i.e. atari 2600 joysticks had snap-through tactile feedback.
As a long-time Windows user who has since switched to both OS X and Linux...
Thank you for stating your qualifications. I've used Windows since 3.1.1, MacOS since 7.something, and Linux since... umm.. only 5 or 6 years. Initially Fedora, then Kubuntu.
I love OS X, and I'm not that big a fan of Windows. But I do cherish honesty. So as a fellow Mac user allow me to share my experience.
1 - Registry bloat. No other OS keeps app settings and preferences in what really amounts of a gigantic text file. Many apps do NOT remove registry entries correctly (or fully) when uninstalled. Inevitably this file will bloat, bloat, bloat, bloat until it takes forever just to get anything out of it.
The Mac has Library bloat. Programs and the system store settings in/Library or ~/Library, except for the Unixy ones that just store stuff in ~ with dot-names. Most apps don't even have an uninstall process... you just drag the.app folder to the trash and all the other crap stays on your hard drive.
Wouldn't it be nice if they fought this? If they said, hey, we bought your software, we can install it on whatever we want. And then, in my imaginary world, a judge sees their point of view and rules that once you purchase a piece of software, it's yours to do with as you please.
It would be an interesting world. Does that mean Microsoft would have to abandon "upgrade" licenses in order to prevent everyone buying at the upgrade price even when they need the full version? (That's the same situation as here--every OTS copy of MacOS is effectively being sold as an upgrade copy).
Digging deeper, would we see the difference in OEM and OTS prices go away? Maybe not, as the real difference is OEM is "supportless", so when you buy retail you're really paying for the support.
And per-user license fees would have to be out the window. It's yours--you can do with it what you will
Of course that's a lot of lost revenue out there, and companies won't go for that so the base price for everything will rise. But it can only rise so much before you hit the market's limit.
Would it be cheaper in the long run? Don't know. It's an interesting thought-experiment.
Colleen Kollar-Kotelly [wikipedia.org], who just created this official, binding policy that the government is above the law, is a fascist judge. She might be familiar to Slashdotters as the judge who the incoming Bush "Justice" Department got to run the Microsoft monopoly verdict's appeal and toothless "remedy [wikipedia.org] phase.
You might not know that Kollar-Kotelly ruled in the execution trial of Saddam Hussein that "the United States has no right to interfere with the judicial processes of another nation's courts", when such interference might mean Hussein might live to tell more of what he knows about US interference in Iraq, or rather its lengthy cooperation with his murderous regime.
And you might not realize that Kollar-Kotelly is the presiding judge of the Bush-packed FISA Court [wikipedia.org], that has rubberstamped Bush's regime's tens of thousands of "exceptional" wiretap requests that violate the 4th Amendment (which artificial loophole is the entire purpose of that court). Which is why today's Congressional Republicans are doing everything they can to put telco amnesty for violating FISA under the FISA Court's jurisdiction, instead of a regular court that actually obeys the Constitution.
Kollar-Kotelly is the go-to judge for Unitary Executive [wikipedia.org] fantasy privileges, whenever they can squeak some out. After all, she kicked off her legal career as a lawyer for Nixon's "Justice" Department.
Play ball!
Wow. We should be very mad at President Clinton for appointing her to the Federal Bench.
On a side note, I have personally found it very interesting to watch the way people on Mac forums approach problems versus Windows or Linux users. Often there is an implicit assumption that any problem encountered is an OS bug (sometimes even if nobody else can be found who is experiencing the same problem) and you see demands that it be fixed in the next release. Possibly this is because a high proportion of the problems experienced by Mac users are indeed OS bugs.
When something goes wrong with a Windows machine, I understand that the problem might be in Windows itself. Or it might be in the hardware drivers supplied by ATI or nVidia or something. Or it might be and actual hardware issue.
On my Mac, none of this matters. It was sold to be as a unit--I didn't get to pick my video card, Apple picked it for me. Same thing with my web cam, sound card, keyboard, mouse, etc. So if I have a problem--especially a problem with a new OS version--it is an Apple problem and Apple's responsibility to fix.
We often talk about Apple's benefit to controlling the supplier change. This is the flip side of that coin.
I don't have adverts on my television channels... [bbc.co.uk];-)
And I don't have government officials driving TV detector vans down my street looking to fine me $1000 because I didn't pay my mandatory $250/year tax for just owning a television. What's your point?
Disclaimer: I left the UK 20 years ago (this month!), so my memory might be a little rusty...
does this mean that someone can eventually kill people remotely?
The technology for that already exists; it's called a "gun". It replaced an older technology called an "arrow", which in turn was the replacement for an even older technology called the "javelin". There was also an older technology called a "sling" which was a peripheral device designed to increase the effectiveness of the original technology call the "rock".
People have been remotely killing other people for millions of years.
GURPS, BTW, has published their most recent edition. They *do* keep to such long periods between publications
Maybe you're a new comer to GURPS, or you just have a short memory.
GURPS First Edition was published in 1986.
GURPS Second Edition was at the printer by April of 1987.
GURPS Third Edition was the 1988 Game of the Year at Origin.
Three editions in three years.
Of course, one might say that the third edition spent a whopping 16 years in print, but that ignores the fact that it was changed to be GURPS, Third Edition, Revised in 1994. And then in 1996 things were shook up with the release of Compedium I and Compendium II and their status as "core books".
motorists being forced off the road and into buses
You know, I would love to take public transportation to work. I mean really love it. The hour I spend in my car driving to and from work every day would suddenly be converted from "chore time" to "me time". I could read a book. I could watch a movie on my iPod. I could even do some work on my laptop, if I was feeling generous to my employer.
But the it seems to me that the truth is that "they" (the public transportation authority) really don't want me to ride the bus. Why do I say this? Let me tell you.
The nearest bus stop to my house is 2 miles away. The nearest bus stop to my work is 1 mile away. That's 3 miles in the morning and 3 miles in the afternoon. I just happen to walk at about 3 miles per hour, so now my 60 minutes of daily commuting time has now turned into 2 hours of commuting time just to walk to the bus stops and back.
But it gets better. According to the online "plan your trip" schedule, they pick me up at the bus stop, then there is a layover (oops, transfer) as I wait for another bus to take me to work. Total rode-and-wait one-way time to work: 3 hours! Coming home at night is a bit better, at only 1.5 hours.
So my 60 minutes of daily commute is now a whopping total of 5.5 hours! As if that wasn't enough, due to the times the buses run I can only work a 6 hour day. On top of all this, I have to pay!
So, yes, I'd love to take public transoprtation. Too bad there's no such thing, practically speaking, where I live.
I don't know if it's so much about avoiding hype as it's good business sense. The primary purpose of advertising is to generate demand for your product. If the demand exceeds the supply, then why pay for more demand?
I often wonder what would happen if Coca Cola would say "We're not going to advertise for one month". Would people really stop drinking Coke? How much money would they save?
Last summer I started keeping track of how many messages were in my gmail spam "folder"--it seemed to hover around 500. Then it dropped to 400. And today it's 340.
I can't even remember the last time one got through (on gmail--on Yahoo it happens frequently).
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, let's get one thing straight -- the Cylons "evolving" into human form was not "mind blowing". It just wasn't.
Agreed. it wasn't even new to the Galactica canon. We first see human looking cylons in "The Night the Cyclons Landed" two-parter (aka "the halloween episode" with a special Wolfman Jack appearance) of Galactica 1980.
So really, the first picture of a human was porn, and not the picture in this article? That's awesome!
No. You made the mistake of reading the summary and thinking that somehow reflected what the fine article said. It's a common mistake here. If you actually take the time to read the rather brief article itself, you will find that the first photo of a human was in 1838.
Who could have guessed that the Germans would pass through impassable terrain and precisely hit the single weak point between the strong Maginot Line and the first-string armies in Belgium?
The Germans, it seems, had no trouble guessing it at all.
399 images included the location of the camera at the time the image was taken, and 102 images included the name of the photographer. ...
Or, to summarize from the other point of view...
"97.4% of images did not include the location of the camera at the time the image was taken, and 99.3% of images did not include the name of the photographer. ... "
Charge for extra service for the offending 3%.
"Offending"?
If someone buys "UNLIMITED" (all caps to match marketing material) access, shouldn't they be entitled to UNLIMITED (all caps to match marketing material) usage without being considered "offending"? That's like saying my family uses too much milk because we drink the full gallon instead of letting it go bad.
We have a doomsday once every 365 days (except on leap years) when our calendar hits December 31.
I'm just being pedantic, I know, but our calendar (the Gregorian calendar) actually has a cycle of 400 years. The most recent cycle transition was in year 2000 (which was a leap year when it otherwise wouldn't have been).
Of course the rest of your comment is spot-on!
We're native to earth.
There are those who believe that life here began out there, far across the universe, with tribes of humans who may have been the forefathers of the Egyptians, or the Toltecs, or the Mayans. That they may have been the architects of the great pyramids, or the lost civilizations of Lemuria or Atlantis. Some believe that there may yet be brothers of man who even now fight to survive somewhere beyond the heavens...
DS9 only got good when they hired 1/2 the creative people off of B5
Which creative people would that be? There were 110 B5 episodes. Of those 92 were written by JMS. All 44 episodes of seasons 3 and 4 were scripted by him.
because fox said (You guessed it) B5 is cancelled.
That would be a peculiar thing for Fox to say, as B5 was produced by Warner Brothers and aired in syndication.
Amazingly they recanted
not quite... what happened is that TNT agreed to pick up the show.
which is why the last season of B5 was crap they had lost 1/2 their talent and squeezed the last 2 years of story arc into season 4 to finish the series.
The only person I recall leaving was Claudia Christian who played Cmdr Ivanova.
Damn you FOX!!
Fox had nothing to do with anything.
Good post. Next time try some facts.
"Warp speed" though, I'm not sure on. I'm pretty sure it predates Roddenberry though... Any takers?
"Warp", as a nautical term, is a method of moving a ship by pulling on a rope. C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower frequently does this in the novels (often having the crew in a rowboat carry the anchor some distance then drop it, then the shipboard crew pulls the line to drag the ship to the new location where the process is repeated). Seeing that Roddenberry frequently described Trek as "Horatio Hornblower in space" I would say that Roddenberry borrowed the nautical term to have a new meaning.
Doing the math (and using advertised vs actual transfer rates), that means the user gets only 2 minutes of transfer per day...
The question is, does gaming improve mental agility and make you a safer driver.
That's the wrong question. A more correct question would be "Is there a correlation between gaming and driving ability?"
It could very well be the there is no causal relationship between the two, but rather they share a common cause. Perhaps those without sufficient mental acuity/coordination to drive also lack the "mad skillz" needed for gaming, and thus they don't find games to be enjoyable and therefore don't play.
If the teenage girl was shot but escaped and is coherent enough to talk, why do the authorities talk about the "apparent" gunman? That seems to me the sort of language you use when all you have is circumstantial evidence.
Just because a witness says something happened a certain way doesn't at all mean that's what really happened. No doubt the investigation is ongoing.
6,563,415 "Analog sensor(s) with snap-through tactile feedback" - This one is invalid through prior art, i.e. atari 2600 joysticks had snap-through tactile feedback.
Atari 2600 joysticks were digital, not analog.
As a long-time Windows user who has since switched to both OS X and Linux...
Thank you for stating your qualifications. I've used Windows since 3.1.1, MacOS since 7.something, and Linux since... umm.. only 5 or 6 years. Initially Fedora, then Kubuntu.
I love OS X, and I'm not that big a fan of Windows. But I do cherish honesty. So as a fellow Mac user allow me to share my experience.
1 - Registry bloat. No other OS keeps app settings and preferences in what really amounts of a gigantic text file. Many apps do NOT remove registry entries correctly (or fully) when uninstalled. Inevitably this file will bloat, bloat, bloat, bloat until it takes forever just to get anything out of it.
The Mac has Library bloat. Programs and the system store settings in /Library or ~/Library, except for the Unixy ones that just store stuff in ~ with dot-names. Most apps don't even have an uninstall process... you just drag the .app folder to the trash and all the other crap stays on your hard drive.
Wouldn't it be nice if they fought this? If they said, hey, we bought your software, we can install it on whatever we want. And then, in my imaginary world, a judge sees their point of view and rules that once you purchase a piece of software, it's yours to do with as you please.
It would be an interesting world. Does that mean Microsoft would have to abandon "upgrade" licenses in order to prevent everyone buying at the upgrade price even when they need the full version? (That's the same situation as here--every OTS copy of MacOS is effectively being sold as an upgrade copy).
Digging deeper, would we see the difference in OEM and OTS prices go away? Maybe not, as the real difference is OEM is "supportless", so when you buy retail you're really paying for the support.
And per-user license fees would have to be out the window. It's yours--you can do with it what you will
Of course that's a lot of lost revenue out there, and companies won't go for that so the base price for everything will rise. But it can only rise so much before you hit the market's limit.
Would it be cheaper in the long run? Don't know. It's an interesting thought-experiment.
Wow. We should be very mad at President Clinton for appointing her to the Federal Bench.
When something goes wrong with a Windows machine, I understand that the problem might be in Windows itself. Or it might be in the hardware drivers supplied by ATI or nVidia or something. Or it might be and actual hardware issue.
On my Mac, none of this matters. It was sold to be as a unit--I didn't get to pick my video card, Apple picked it for me. Same thing with my web cam, sound card, keyboard, mouse, etc. So if I have a problem--especially a problem with a new OS version--it is an Apple problem and Apple's responsibility to fix.
We often talk about Apple's benefit to controlling the supplier change. This is the flip side of that coin.
And I don't have government officials driving TV detector vans down my street looking to fine me $1000 because I didn't pay my mandatory $250/year tax for just owning a television. What's your point?
Disclaimer: I left the UK 20 years ago (this month!), so my memory might be a little rusty...
I don't get it. What makes this news? Some dude wrote a book. So what? It happens every day.
What am I missing? That's a genuine question.
The technology for that already exists; it's called a "gun". It replaced an older technology called an "arrow", which in turn was the replacement for an even older technology called the "javelin". There was also an older technology called a "sling" which was a peripheral device designed to increase the effectiveness of the original technology call the "rock".
People have been remotely killing other people for millions of years.
Maybe you're a new comer to GURPS, or you just have a short memory.
GURPS First Edition was published in 1986.
GURPS Second Edition was at the printer by April of 1987.
GURPS Third Edition was the 1988 Game of the Year at Origin.
Three editions in three years.
Of course, one might say that the third edition spent a whopping 16 years in print, but that ignores the fact that it was changed to be GURPS, Third Edition, Revised in 1994. And then in 1996 things were shook up with the release of Compedium I and Compendium II and their status as "core books".
Or maybe we know about ALL the objects like this now. That's the way it is with a word like "maybe".
You know, I would love to take public transportation to work. I mean really love it. The hour I spend in my car driving to and from work every day would suddenly be converted from "chore time" to "me time". I could read a book. I could watch a movie on my iPod. I could even do some work on my laptop, if I was feeling generous to my employer.
But the it seems to me that the truth is that "they" (the public transportation authority) really don't want me to ride the bus. Why do I say this? Let me tell you.
The nearest bus stop to my house is 2 miles away. The nearest bus stop to my work is 1 mile away. That's 3 miles in the morning and 3 miles in the afternoon. I just happen to walk at about 3 miles per hour, so now my 60 minutes of daily commuting time has now turned into 2 hours of commuting time just to walk to the bus stops and back.
But it gets better. According to the online "plan your trip" schedule, they pick me up at the bus stop, then there is a layover (oops, transfer) as I wait for another bus to take me to work. Total rode-and-wait one-way time to work: 3 hours! Coming home at night is a bit better, at only 1.5 hours.
So my 60 minutes of daily commute is now a whopping total of 5.5 hours! As if that wasn't enough, due to the times the buses run I can only work a 6 hour day. On top of all this, I have to pay!
So, yes, I'd love to take public transoprtation. Too bad there's no such thing, practically speaking, where I live.
I don't know if it's so much about avoiding hype as it's good business sense. The primary purpose of advertising is to generate demand for your product. If the demand exceeds the supply, then why pay for more demand?
I often wonder what would happen if Coca Cola would say "We're not going to advertise for one month". Would people really stop drinking Coke? How much money would they save?
Last summer I started keeping track of how many messages were in my gmail spam "folder"--it seemed to hover around 500. Then it dropped to 400. And today it's 340.
I can't even remember the last time one got through (on gmail--on Yahoo it happens frequently).