To us Chinese, this is hardly news, considering that they block all kinds of stuff like "carrot"(contains a character which also occurs in the president's name)
AC's statement is both true and factual. Will.i.am is one of the least innovative musicians. On a scale of "one" to "Room temperature superconductor breast implants", he's just below "farmville". Most musicians are at least "spork" level.
That and the fact that I (and I hope anyone else with half a brain) twigged that this was a blatant publicity stunt and that Mr. I.am's (*) new job would be some important-sounding but obviously meaningless and figureheaded position when I'd read as far as...
'Semiconductor giant Intel has announced that it has hired music artist Will.i.am as
...only to be confirmed...
Director of Creative Innovation
Uh, yeah.
which is a new post as far as we know
Yeah, I'll bet. Guess from that subtle jibe that "IT Pro Portal" were thinking along the same lines...
(*) That's another giveaway, Mr Iams is obviously already too busy running his pet food company to work at Intel;-)
I'm just saying that blaming the game for murder is as dumb as blaming Pac Man for making you over eat.
Obligatory 90s joke: If video games had any effect on kids, they would have grown up gobbling pills, running around in the dark and listening to repetitive music.
Im convinced we will see a really big collapse in the future. [..] All it takes is a "new" social interaction platform thats hip and popular and Facebook is but a faint memory [..] I said the exact same thing about for eg. Second Life and was laughed out of my chair while countries even built embassies, that now stands empty and abandoned.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but the comparison with Second Life is flawed. You're mistaking the media hype and prominence of Second Life at its "peak" with actual usage- and I'm not convinced that Second Life was anywhere *near* as popular as the former would have suggested. It certainly wasn't even in the same league as Facebook.
I'm convinced that everyone in the media thought that Second Life was going to be the Next Big Thing and was worried about being left behind. Hence the slew of news stories.
It was also quite a cool sort of "virtual reality here at last" type situation that was good for stories, but how many people do you know that *actually* used SL versus those who use Facebook? Even if SL did peak in real terms, I'm pretty sure that neither its rise nor fall were as sharp as its "hot thing/yesterday's news" status would suggest- that was more the media abandoning something that was never as big as they expected it to be.
In the first Matrix, he was actually pretty good, the role was simple and within his range.
He worked very well in the first Matrix *precisely* because he was a relative blank. I mean, ask yourself who Thomas Anderson is, what his motivations are, etc. He was good at being both everyman and iconic.
He didn't work nearly as well in the sequels because we'd have expected him to become a "real" character then, not the everyman proxy he fulfilled well in the first film.
Re:Translation: the Wachowskis watched more anime
on
The Matrix Re-Reloaded
·
· Score: 1
Similarly, arms made sense on the Aliens loader, because it was a giant forklift. For combat, using arms and hands with giant oversized weapons just looks foolish. Requiring the operator to aim the guns down the barrel is doubly so. Why wouldn't you just put a gun platform on a turret, with a proper targeting mechanism?
I hated the scene where they had a whole damn army of them in those Aliens-style mechasuits. Specifically for the bit when the guy in charge is psyching them up and they throw their arms (and by extension, the mechanised arms on the suits) up in the air in a cheesily macho way.
Yeah, it's really damn realistic that they're going to be waving around those massively-powerful hydraulic arms- which we can safely assume are massively powerful and could cause serious damage- around in close proximity to each other.
Honestly? I'd never analysed the first two Matrix films in that much depth, and I wasn't going into the third one looking for "answers" or anything. I hadn't expected the second movie to be great, and it wasn't, but I still liked it quite a bit.
I hated the third movie because it was boring. Too much hollow action that went on forever, even more of those characters you didn't care about from the second movie, too little inside The Matrix and what there was felt empty and boring, the "big fight" in the rain felt like I'd seen it before even though I hadn't. Whole damn thing was just dull and stupid.
You didn't need to be disappointed on a fanboy level to think that the third movie was crap.
What part of the word "friends" didn't you understand?
They're his/her friends, not mine. I'm entitled to think what I like about them.
But frankly, you missed the point. I wasn't criticising him trying to help out his friends (and relatives) in the first place. That's a decent thing of him to do, and the type of thing one would expect someone to do for their friends.
What's clear (at least the way he put it) is that it took him "YEARS" of getting his friends who were "just too *lazy* [my emphasis] to change". He, I assume, gave them advice and offered to help them move away from wasting money on something they didn't need, for very little effort on their part. Something that would solely benefit them- and they were too lazy to do it.
Friends or not, after the first few times, you're under no obligation to bust a gut for "YEARS" trying to help out people who obviously don't care that they're losing money and are too lazy to spend five minutes changing things over.
It took me YEARS to wean most of my AOL using friends/relatives off of AOL. Once something winds up getting "automatically charged" on their credit card every month, a lot of folks are just too lazy to change.
If, as you're implying, your friends were simply "too lazy" to bother spending five minutes on something that would save them loads in the long term, why were you spending "YEARS" getting them to change?
Don't get me wrong, AOL is, and always has been, a dickish company, and I don't like to see them get people's money. But if people know the score and are so damn lazy they won't change despite repeated attempts by you... they probably deserve to be ripped off- they sure as hell don't deserve your help, so why waste your time?
The trouble is it hasn't been Red Dwarf since series 6.
Well, of course it hasn't. They haven't made any new episodes since then.
I keep hearing all those odd stories about a series 7 or 8, but they're obviously false because there was no series 7 or 8.
I mean, that's a mixed blessing. If there had been a series 7 or 8 and they'd been good, that'd have been great. But if they'd sucked, I'd have had to brainwash myself into thinking that they'd never existed, and that would be terrible, so it's a good job that they never existed!
I seem to remember the BBC barely acknowledged 1 and 2 existed when it came to repeats for years.
No, series 2 was definitely repeated early on- I started watching halfway through series 2, then saw what I thought was a new series... then they got to the episodes I'd already seen and I realised it was a repeat.
I assume that by that point it was safe to repeat it, as the show's identity had been established and a fanbase built up.
Series 1 does feel a bit different. I don't know if that's because I didn't see it when it first went out. (*) But the "last man alive" sense of isolation- probably combined with the horrible grey set- gives it a more claustrophobic and downbeat feel. Some aspects which appear in it are less prominent or absent altogether in subsequent series (and some later features aren't included here). I'd also say that while the later series don't seem as old as they are, the first one *does* feel like a show that's well over 20 years old- slightly older if anything, reminiscent of late-70s/early-80s BBC sci-fi production values. Not awful, just more dated. (**)
Anyway, IMHO series 2 is still where it came together properly, and much closer to subsequent series than it is to the first.
(*) IMHO, if you first see something when it first went out, you remember and judge it that way, when it was fresh, and that stays in your memory when you re-watch it. If you see something a few years later, out of context, it's possible that it doesn't get the same "free pass". It's notable that I saw series 2 to 6 all in order when they went out, and series 1 *after* that, not when it- and the show- was new.
(**) Again, this could be bias on my part, not having seen it when it first went out.
Nicely said. The early Red Dwarfs were primarily comedies that used "sci fi" (which often didn't bear scrutiny, but who cared) to drive the comic situations.
It suffered later on, when they started to lose sight of this and you get the impression that they were writing a humorous sci-fi show (note the change of focus) that didn't bear scrutiny, and wasn't as funny as it used to be.
I suspect the most geeky, obsessive hardcore fans liked the sci-fi aspects (whereas those who enjoyed it for the comedy were likely to be less obsessive) so "pushed" the writers into moving it in that direction too, both parties kind of missing the point.
You think with a name like iPad they would serve up Playgirl
You do realize the overwhelming majority of Playgirl buyers are male, don't you?
You do realise that you've now obliged some troll to make a joke at the expense of the supposed stereotypical Apple owner by pointing out that it would be the perfect match then?
Oh, hang on, I think I just did and that makes me the troll.
So why hasn't anyone taken Microsoft to court over the terms of their EULA Then?
Over the use of which terms? The ones which say you can't sue them, or any terms in general?
Perhaps it is because the lawyers think you have not a chance in hell of winning?
I strongly suspect that it's because suing MS would be very expensive (depending upon where you live- the US doesn't often award costs AFAIK, so even if you "win" you get to go bankrupt, some victory) and/or would take a lot of time and resources that most companies couldn't afford.
The Microsoft EULA (Which you agreed to) specifically says that you can't sue them for anything whatsoever. So sorry nope.
Many jurisdictions (including the US AFAIK) have the concept of unsonscionability which limits on what you can "agree" to in a contract (assuming a EULA is even considered a contract.)
They can put in there that you agree to give them your first-born child on their 5th birthday. Doesn't mean they'd be able to enforce that in court. I suspect that a *lot* of terms in EULAs and contracts- and almost certainly that one- would be thrown out as unconscionable.
Of course, they probably take the cynical attitude that there's no harm in throwing it in there just in case it does work, or enough people believe it would and are dissuaded from legal action (etc.) anyway.
Resurrection isn't a bad film (as far as trashy SciFi goes), but it doesn't fit with the rest of the series at all. If you think of it as something other than an Alien film, it's quite enjoyable. If you think of it as part of the Alien universe, it's horrible. Alien 3, on the other hand, felt like an Alien film, just a really bad one.
You got that right. I actually did enjoy Resurrection, but it has a very different "feel" to it than the first three movies- a distinctly French "comic book" style versus the more "real" originals. Not to the extent of (say) The Fifth Element, but enough that it jars when you consider it next to its predecessors.
I think that Aliens was a far better movie than Alien.
I agree- or rather, I'd say that personally I much preferred Aliens to Alien. I initially put that down to having seen Aliens first (possibly spoiling some of the surprise and effect of the original), but when I later heard Alien described as a "horror movie in space", I realised that that was also the reason. Horror movies just don't work for me, however much I'd like them to.
That said, I also wouldn't class it as a horror movie
Which is probably why I enjoyed it better though...
more of a really intense action movie.
...I'm not really that much into action movies either, but I still enjoyed it! Anyway, Aliens probably worked and felt fresh because they *weren't* trying to copy the original or out-do it, but managed to keep its spirit while doing something different.
Alien 3 was dull though, and while Alien Resurrection was somewhat more enjoyable, its French "comic book" feel clashed with the more realistic style of the original films, mitigated only slightly by the time that was meant to have passed between them.
No, he's right. I've been taught to "imitate" things that show promise. They don't exactly teach you to break the law, but they give examples where obvious plagiarism has been dealt with outside of the court system, so I guess they think it's OK then.
Are there any known situations where someone or something has intentionally *exploited* another company's likelihood of screwing them over?
Example. I have some arbitrary intellectual property (let's call this the "MacGuffin") that would plausibly have some real and very non-trivial value if offered to other companies on the free market.
In reality, I know that one or more of these companies are likely to be *not* acting in good faith and will probably attempt to rip it off if they can get away with it- say, if they think I'm a small developer with no resources to sue.
They rip me off, and actually, it turns out that- unknown to them- that I had better documented and protected my idea and had more resources to sue them than I gave the impression of. I'm able to get more money than I would have otherwise, possibly via an out-of-court settlement.
Of course, they can't use "we ripped them off because we thought we'd be able to get away with it" as a defence!
This would, of course, require some shrewd judgement on the part of the MacGuffin's original creators/owners.
You cannot deny that the vocal crowd of anti-vaxxers is doing just this.
Er, yes, but that wasn't the point I was making. It was whether you were implying that Zironic agreed with the anti-vaxxers (when there was no evidence he did).
I read his comment as a plain *explanation* of herd immunity. *Not* as an endorsement of parents who don't vaccinate their kids and selfishly rely on herd immunity to protect them.
Your comment
And yet, you are also telling everyone that vaccines are worthless
sounds like an attack on him for this reason. But there's no evidence he was suggesting that!
Slashdot Mirror
To us Chinese, this is hardly news, considering that they block all kinds of stuff like "carrot"(contains a character which also occurs in the president's name)
Your president is Carrot Top??!!!
To be fair, a lot of lyrics look stupid written down in cold, static print, but come across much better when performed as intended as part of a song.
On the other hand, this doesn't apply to Boom Boom Pow which sounds even more moronic when it's coming out of Fergie's mouth.
AC's statement is both true and factual. Will.i.am is one of the least innovative musicians. On a scale of "one" to "Room temperature superconductor breast implants", he's just below "farmville". Most musicians are at least "spork" level.
That and the fact that I (and I hope anyone else with half a brain) twigged that this was a blatant publicity stunt and that Mr. I.am's (*) new job would be some important-sounding but obviously meaningless and figureheaded position when I'd read as far as...
'Semiconductor giant Intel has announced that it has hired music artist Will.i.am as
...only to be confirmed...
Director of Creative Innovation
Uh, yeah.
which is a new post as far as we know
Yeah, I'll bet. Guess from that subtle jibe that "IT Pro Portal" were thinking along the same lines...
;-)
(*) That's another giveaway, Mr Iams is obviously already too busy running his pet food company to work at Intel
I'm just saying that blaming the game for murder is as dumb as blaming Pac Man for making you over eat.
Obligatory 90s joke: If video games had any effect on kids, they would have grown up gobbling pills, running around in the dark and listening to repetitive music.
Im convinced we will see a really big collapse in the future. [..] All it takes is a "new" social interaction platform thats hip and popular and Facebook is but a faint memory [..] I said the exact same thing about for eg. Second Life and was laughed out of my chair while countries even built embassies, that now stands empty and abandoned.
I'm not disagreeing with you, but the comparison with Second Life is flawed. You're mistaking the media hype and prominence of Second Life at its "peak" with actual usage- and I'm not convinced that Second Life was anywhere *near* as popular as the former would have suggested. It certainly wasn't even in the same league as Facebook.
I'm convinced that everyone in the media thought that Second Life was going to be the Next Big Thing and was worried about being left behind. Hence the slew of news stories.
It was also quite a cool sort of "virtual reality here at last" type situation that was good for stories, but how many people do you know that *actually* used SL versus those who use Facebook? Even if SL did peak in real terms, I'm pretty sure that neither its rise nor fall were as sharp as its "hot thing/yesterday's news" status would suggest- that was more the media abandoning something that was never as big as they expected it to be.
In the first Matrix, he was actually pretty good, the role was simple and within his range.
He worked very well in the first Matrix *precisely* because he was a relative blank. I mean, ask yourself who Thomas Anderson is, what his motivations are, etc. He was good at being both everyman and iconic.
He didn't work nearly as well in the sequels because we'd have expected him to become a "real" character then, not the everyman proxy he fulfilled well in the first film.
Similarly, arms made sense on the Aliens loader, because it was a giant forklift. For combat, using arms and hands with giant oversized weapons just looks foolish. Requiring the operator to aim the guns down the barrel is doubly so. Why wouldn't you just put a gun platform on a turret, with a proper targeting mechanism?
I hated the scene where they had a whole damn army of them in those Aliens-style mechasuits. Specifically for the bit when the guy in charge is psyching them up and they throw their arms (and by extension, the mechanised arms on the suits) up in the air in a cheesily macho way.
Yeah, it's really damn realistic that they're going to be waving around those massively-powerful hydraulic arms- which we can safely assume are massively powerful and could cause serious damage- around in close proximity to each other.
Honestly? I'd never analysed the first two Matrix films in that much depth, and I wasn't going into the third one looking for "answers" or anything. I hadn't expected the second movie to be great, and it wasn't, but I still liked it quite a bit.
I hated the third movie because it was boring. Too much hollow action that went on forever, even more of those characters you didn't care about from the second movie, too little inside The Matrix and what there was felt empty and boring, the "big fight" in the rain felt like I'd seen it before even though I hadn't. Whole damn thing was just dull and stupid.
You didn't need to be disappointed on a fanboy level to think that the third movie was crap.
What part of the word "friends" didn't you understand?
They're his/her friends, not mine. I'm entitled to think what I like about them.
But frankly, you missed the point. I wasn't criticising him trying to help out his friends (and relatives) in the first place. That's a decent thing of him to do, and the type of thing one would expect someone to do for their friends.
What's clear (at least the way he put it) is that it took him "YEARS" of getting his friends who were "just too *lazy* [my emphasis] to change". He, I assume, gave them advice and offered to help them move away from wasting money on something they didn't need, for very little effort on their part. Something that would solely benefit them- and they were too lazy to do it.
Friends or not, after the first few times, you're under no obligation to bust a gut for "YEARS" trying to help out people who obviously don't care that they're losing money and are too lazy to spend five minutes changing things over.
It took me YEARS to wean most of my AOL using friends/relatives off of AOL. Once something winds up getting "automatically charged" on their credit card every month, a lot of folks are just too lazy to change.
If, as you're implying, your friends were simply "too lazy" to bother spending five minutes on something that would save them loads in the long term, why were you spending "YEARS" getting them to change?
Don't get me wrong, AOL is, and always has been, a dickish company, and I don't like to see them get people's money. But if people know the score and are so damn lazy they won't change despite repeated attempts by you... they probably deserve to be ripped off- they sure as hell don't deserve your help, so why waste your time?
The trouble is it hasn't been Red Dwarf since series 6.
Well, of course it hasn't. They haven't made any new episodes since then.
I keep hearing all those odd stories about a series 7 or 8, but they're obviously false because there was no series 7 or 8.
I mean, that's a mixed blessing. If there had been a series 7 or 8 and they'd been good, that'd have been great. But if they'd sucked, I'd have had to brainwash myself into thinking that they'd never existed, and that would be terrible, so it's a good job that they never existed!
I seem to remember the BBC barely acknowledged 1 and 2 existed when it came to repeats for years.
No, series 2 was definitely repeated early on- I started watching halfway through series 2, then saw what I thought was a new series... then they got to the episodes I'd already seen and I realised it was a repeat.
AFAIK, series 1 on the other hand definitely wasn't repeated for quite a number of years, but that was at the creators' request. "At the insistence of the creators, Red Dwarf II broke with BBC tradition and was shown without a repeat of Series I. Feeling let down by so much of the first series, Grant and Naylor shot straight in with the brand new season". I personally didn't see it until (IIRC) they repeated it in 1994.
I assume that by that point it was safe to repeat it, as the show's identity had been established and a fanbase built up.
Series 1 does feel a bit different. I don't know if that's because I didn't see it when it first went out. (*) But the "last man alive" sense of isolation- probably combined with the horrible grey set- gives it a more claustrophobic and downbeat feel. Some aspects which appear in it are less prominent or absent altogether in subsequent series (and some later features aren't included here). I'd also say that while the later series don't seem as old as they are, the first one *does* feel like a show that's well over 20 years old- slightly older if anything, reminiscent of late-70s/early-80s BBC sci-fi production values. Not awful, just more dated. (**)
Anyway, IMHO series 2 is still where it came together properly, and much closer to subsequent series than it is to the first.
(*) IMHO, if you first see something when it first went out, you remember and judge it that way, when it was fresh, and that stays in your memory when you re-watch it. If you see something a few years later, out of context, it's possible that it doesn't get the same "free pass". It's notable that I saw series 2 to 6 all in order when they went out, and series 1 *after* that, not when it- and the show- was new.
(**) Again, this could be bias on my part, not having seen it when it first went out.
Nicely said. The early Red Dwarfs were primarily comedies that used "sci fi" (which often didn't bear scrutiny, but who cared) to drive the comic situations.
It suffered later on, when they started to lose sight of this and you get the impression that they were writing a humorous sci-fi show (note the change of focus) that didn't bear scrutiny, and wasn't as funny as it used to be.
I suspect the most geeky, obsessive hardcore fans liked the sci-fi aspects (whereas those who enjoyed it for the comedy were likely to be less obsessive) so "pushed" the writers into moving it in that direction too, both parties kind of missing the point.
You think with a name like iPad they would serve up Playgirl
You do realize the overwhelming majority of Playgirl buyers are male, don't you?
You do realise that you've now obliged some troll to make a joke at the expense of the supposed stereotypical Apple owner by pointing out that it would be the perfect match then?
Oh, hang on, I think I just did and that makes me the troll.
Damn.
(Anyway, Playgirl rules, so there.)
the grammar nazi's among us
I can't work out whether this was an intentional joke or just ironic.
:-/
So why hasn't anyone taken Microsoft to court over the terms of their EULA Then?
Over the use of which terms? The ones which say you can't sue them, or any terms in general?
Perhaps it is because the lawyers think you have not a chance in hell of winning?
I strongly suspect that it's because suing MS would be very expensive (depending upon where you live- the US doesn't often award costs AFAIK, so even if you "win" you get to go bankrupt, some victory) and/or would take a lot of time and resources that most companies couldn't afford.
The Microsoft EULA (Which you agreed to) specifically says that you can't sue them for anything whatsoever. So sorry nope.
Many jurisdictions (including the US AFAIK) have the concept of unsonscionability which limits on what you can "agree" to in a contract (assuming a EULA is even considered a contract.)
They can put in there that you agree to give them your first-born child on their 5th birthday. Doesn't mean they'd be able to enforce that in court. I suspect that a *lot* of terms in EULAs and contracts- and almost certainly that one- would be thrown out as unconscionable.
Of course, they probably take the cynical attitude that there's no harm in throwing it in there just in case it does work, or enough people believe it would and are dissuaded from legal action (etc.) anyway.
You have won 5i mod points.
Yeah, but I bet they only work on imaginary posts...
kids would be sipping Alien Blood *WITH MORE VITAMIN C* at school lunch?
Given what the "actual" Alien blood was like in the films, if this drink was remotely realistic, the results would be horrendous... :-O
And what the hell is a "distinctly lesbian atmosphere"? 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen and 1% oestrogen?!
Resurrection isn't a bad film (as far as trashy SciFi goes), but it doesn't fit with the rest of the series at all. If you think of it as something other than an Alien film, it's quite enjoyable. If you think of it as part of the Alien universe, it's horrible. Alien 3, on the other hand, felt like an Alien film, just a really bad one.
You got that right. I actually did enjoy Resurrection, but it has a very different "feel" to it than the first three movies- a distinctly French "comic book" style versus the more "real" originals. Not to the extent of (say) The Fifth Element, but enough that it jars when you consider it next to its predecessors.
I think that Aliens was a far better movie than Alien.
I agree- or rather, I'd say that personally I much preferred Aliens to Alien. I initially put that down to having seen Aliens first (possibly spoiling some of the surprise and effect of the original), but when I later heard Alien described as a "horror movie in space", I realised that that was also the reason. Horror movies just don't work for me, however much I'd like them to.
That said, I also wouldn't class it as a horror movie
Which is probably why I enjoyed it better though...
more of a really intense action movie.
...I'm not really that much into action movies either, but I still enjoyed it! Anyway, Aliens probably worked and felt fresh because they *weren't* trying to copy the original or out-do it, but managed to keep its spirit while doing something different.
Alien 3 was dull though, and while Alien Resurrection was somewhat more enjoyable, its French "comic book" feel clashed with the more realistic style of the original films, mitigated only slightly by the time that was meant to have passed between them.
No, he's right. I've been taught to "imitate" things that show promise. They don't exactly teach you to break the law, but they give examples where obvious plagiarism has been dealt with outside of the court system, so I guess they think it's OK then.
Are there any known situations where someone or something has intentionally *exploited* another company's likelihood of screwing them over?
Example. I have some arbitrary intellectual property (let's call this the "MacGuffin") that would plausibly have some real and very non-trivial value if offered to other companies on the free market.
In reality, I know that one or more of these companies are likely to be *not* acting in good faith and will probably attempt to rip it off if they can get away with it- say, if they think I'm a small developer with no resources to sue.
They rip me off, and actually, it turns out that- unknown to them- that I had better documented and protected my idea and had more resources to sue them than I gave the impression of. I'm able to get more money than I would have otherwise, possibly via an out-of-court settlement.
Of course, they can't use "we ripped them off because we thought we'd be able to get away with it" as a defence!
This would, of course, require some shrewd judgement on the part of the MacGuffin's original creators/owners.
You cannot deny that the vocal crowd of anti-vaxxers is doing just this.
Er, yes, but that wasn't the point I was making. It was whether you were implying that Zironic agreed with the anti-vaxxers (when there was no evidence he did).
I read his comment as a plain *explanation* of herd immunity. *Not* as an endorsement of parents who don't vaccinate their kids and selfishly rely on herd immunity to protect them.
Your comment
And yet, you are also telling everyone that vaccines are worthless
sounds like an attack on him for this reason. But there's no evidence he was suggesting that!
And yet, you are also telling everyone that vaccines are worthless, and that people should avoid them.
Who are you addressing here? Zironic has said no such thing in this thread.