Uh, okay. There seems to be some misconceptions going on here. The tv series, movie and manga don't fall in any formal continuity. Fans can imagine whatever connection they want but it's quite common for different creators (Oshii Mamoru, etc.) to create different interpretations of a given manga work.
In fact, Shirow himself has done a manga in the Dominion universe (Dominion: No more noise) with the same characters that had no relation to the events in the anime television series "Dominion Tank Police."
Just like the two Appleseed movies have no real relation to one another. This has been documented in numerous interviews. In fact the creators of the current GITS television series have specifically stated that this story occurs in a universe where the merger with the "puppet master" never happens.
He's well known for a certain emphasis on female anatomy plus high tech hardware. In fact, for a Shirow character, Motoko is roughly middle of the road in terms of exposed skin and gratuitous accentuation of the aforementioned.
This even leads to an extremely ironic moment in one episode where an ambush on some smugglers goes sour and the Major ends up getting thrown into a pile of garbage, forcing her to wear even less in public than we're used to much to her discomfort and prompting a smartass remark from her boss.
I guess, I'd take this a little less seriously. Sure it was pretty noticeable in the first two episodes (can an animated camera ogle?) but to let that stop you from enjoying the series for it's many other fine qualities is a little short-sighted. Besides, the Major's mode of dress quickly becomes more a commentary on her complete lack of interest in physical appearance rather than anything sexual.
There's even some argument to be made about whether a totally mechanical sentient being requires "clothes." Motoko is every inch the "soldier" here.
What we have here is one part non-linear musing, one part book proposal, and one part total bullshit. I'm seeing one or two solid lines of reasoning with a liberal sprinkling of jargon and some nasty linguistic preservatives. In short, exactly what we used to get from people like Jaron back during the 90's. Pardon me if I take the following quotes out of context but from what I could see, there wasn't much context to begin with.. I quote
"There could be no Google without an Internet"
Uh.huh..
"If that author, by the grace of fate, happens to have good taste, as in the case of Steve Jobs, an Antigora can deliver extraordinary value"
Like NEXT, say?
"Perhaps customers can live in little pods in the big box stores"
Well, okay, but my fort is in the washing machine aisle, Jaron can go hang out with the other band geeks in electronics!
"I argued with a guy named Richard Stallman"
The persistant name-checking doesn't help his case.
Cato usually is better than this, though many liberal leaning slashdotters will argue otherwise. I think they decided they'd get up to speed with the "blogosphere" and got put over by Lanier's patented "Cliff Stohl" absent-minded genius hippy act.
Oh yeah, and memo to Mr. Lanier, Rob Zombie wants his hair back.
1. Your company is in manufacturing.
2. Your company is in manufacturing.
These people will never understand what you have to offer or how it can improve their business. Ever. Barring a "road to Damascus" experience in the boardroom (possible but highly improbable) you are setting yourself up for a career ending debacle if not years of poor health due to unreasonable stress level and a heart-attack. What you do might as well be in Sanskrit to management. RUN! Run your balls off. You owe it to yourself.
Y'know it's been kind of rough for us Republicans lately. People have been actually paying attention to us ruining the economy and wasting good soldiers in Iraq and stuff, its been shaping up to be kind of a blue Christmas lately.
Then the honorable Senator from New York goes and makes a complete fool of herself! Nothin like lady Macbeth in a headband and pantsuit to lighten those holiday glums. Did you know every time she whines on Larry King a Republican gets their wings?
Merry Christmas, you wonderful old world! To Hillary Clinton, the dumbest Senator in town.
My wife wants to be Paks when she grows up. There's an actual large paperback omnibus version that includes both books. I might hesitate on giving that to pre-teens because of the amount of torture and death in the later parts of the books.
Orson Scott Card is one I would have liked to read when I was that age but I didn't get into anything "hard science fiction" when I was that young. I spent more time on military and military sci-fi (and I wouldn't recommend David Drake for that age group). I didn't dive further into sci-fi until college because I spent so much time on actual science probably. And Asimov bored me to tears when I was younger.
Where did each of the myth-busters start out careerwise? I went into materials science because we get to deal with the strangest ass stuff this side of particle physics and materials testing because it fit my personality and lets me get payed to break stuff.
Cross Bill's heart and hope to die, stick a needle in Balmer's eye, promise they won't sue.
It must be true, Redmond's lawyers say so!
(Anyone else flashing back to Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown by any chance?)
Too bad Johnny Cochran kicked the bucket, we might need to employ the "Liar, liar, pants on fire defense" if this goes bad!
Melting and materials science
on
How Ice Melts
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
The underlying point here is the techniques materials scientists normally use to examine material properties. Techniques like FTIR, SEM, STEM and x-ray diffraction work well on materials in one state but any time phase change occurs they are too simple to examine the change as it occurs. Even an environmental SEM that can examine certain materials at higher temperatures tends to still be too simplistic to examine a phenomena like melting closely at the atomic scale. For melting energy really one of the few useful techniques is DSC (differential scanning calorimetry) and that still won't let you observe the melting mechanism itself, only detect the energy needed to reach the melting point. In this area, the physicists actually have us beaten because they at least have particle detectors that can observe the effect of high energy collisions at the sub-atomic scale. That's why this experiment is important, they are developing techniques to circumvent the limitations of the instrumentation.
The underlying map data is from Earth Satellite Corporation's Naturalvu 2000 off the shelf 15 meter resolution package. You can read about it at http://www.earthsat.com/ I just like giving a shout out to the people who did the hard stuff. God knows you won't hear it from google.
I bet they didn't even include a mention of that in their press release.
[-)
Uh, sorry, but we already use that. It's called Iron and steel plants. Most ductile grey iron and steel mini-mills in the U.S. now run on third shift so they can take advantage of this period during the day. The electricity is cheaper due to the decreased demand but it still gets used even at night. Lots of other manufacturers use this model also. The U.S. manufacturing sector may be down significantly but taking steps like this is why we still have a basic manufacturing sector.
They let Mo Rocca on "Wait, wait don't tell me.." on NPR, and Wil can't get on "This American Life?" I call BS. I wonder if Westley can take Rocca in a fair fight?
[-)
I was wondering about the "Jihadist training" and "flag burning" sections that popped up recently in my local library. And here I thought we were safe! We'd better renew that Patriot Act pronto!
UG..UG.. Bad spirit come, takem all files if you online. Bad.. Bad online you share files! I pity the poor everyday Joe who's family I am depriving of money by illegal downloads, mainly because the head honchos are making them do stupid things like setting up the abovementioned web site. I honestly have no compelling reason to download copyrighted material beyond giving the poor saps at the RIAA a reason to humiliate themselves in order to stop me. This isn't about intellectual freedom anymore, you can't buy entertainment like this folks! Sadistic, probably, but it's just like the Army, the officers think they're in charge, the non-coms run the universe. [-)
And how many serious accidents like Chernobyl have happened? Meanwhile, coal miners die young from black lung disease and the United States is pathetically dependent on foreign oil. I'm not going to say nuclear disasters are impossible, I'm not going to disagree that the NRC has made the occasional mistake. But the shear Luddite malice directed at this technology is insane! Imagine if car crashes were as rare as nuclear incidents?
Prometheus has been on the drawing boards at the Jet Propulsion Lab since the early eighties. The reason it didn't get anywhere then is the same reason it won't get off the ground now. It's nuclear. Let's give an example. Recently, there was a major press blow-up (no pun intended) in Michigan about allowing the transport of used fissile material across the state. Never mind that said material was cast in the center of rain barrel or bigger sized pieces of concrete. Never mind that you could drop the damn containment vessels off a five story building and they wouldn't break. Everyone was screaming about the possibility of radiation getting into the water and air. The poor NRC guys had a public relations nightmare. And all because Ralph Nader and his merry bunch of marauders has made "nuclear" anything the scariest thing in the public imagination since Anthrax. You can't build new nuclear reactors and there is no chance you can get a nuclear powered craft whether propelled or simply powered by radiation off the ground. Too many people are too dumb to understand how infitesimal the possibility of disaster is, because all they remember is Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Sad but true my friends. And now we get treated to the same feast of ignorance about cloning or genetically modified foods by people who let ignorance and fear rule their imaginations. [-)
Huh? Did Wild Bill talk to Balmer beforehand?
on
Bill Gates On Linux
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I seem to remember a company memo that got published stating Steve Balmer was looking at Linux as a very active threat and Microsoft needed a strategy to beat it. Is old Wild Bill just blowing smoke here to keep the posse off his trail or is he going a might soft? Circle the wagons boys, troubles a comin! YEEHAW!
Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that as Steve Jobs gets older he seems more and more like this sort of evil Mr. Rogers? "Won't you be my user, boys and girls?" It even comes across in the pro-Mac rhetoric, "Don't let that Mr. Gates touch you, he's bad." "Won't you please, please won't you be my, Mac-user." [-)
I disagree, I feel I'm reframing this debate in terms of ethical and moral obligation as opposed to a neo-religious view as expressed by Rousseau. Because humans are capable of seeing the value in the earth and animals, we have an ethical and moral obligation to not waste or destroy either. This should not be twisted in such a way as to harm the interests of humans and proceeding from a humbler viewpoint may ultimately be healthier. The level of damage caused by destroying the animals in question needs to be assessed in a realistic manner. This may or may not be the effect of the present study.
[-)
That would be my argument though, I think in a lot of cases especially in the types of situations Special Forces are supposed to be involved in (as opposed to the way they are used often) a cell phone type deal is better to go with. It's smaller, it's concealable and if it gets captured by the enemy there's a lower likelihood they'll be able to figure out how to use it or what it really does. I also feel the CIA has no business in direct action operations, they should focus on dealing with intelligence not the operations angle. In a perfect world the CIA and the FBI would not be running around in the jungle, that should be the snake eater's job. [-)
Point and click bombing. Your soldiers walk in undercover, figure out where the target is in the building, Saddam Hussein, Usama Bin Laden or whatever then click and transmit the coordinates to your air cap boys on standby. Now all we need are black ops guys who are smart and skilled enough to infiltrate well. [-)
Let's face it, the United States is badly in need of an old fashioned, BOHICA, humiliation. The Russians pulled it off with Sputnik, but I'm not sure the Chinese can get us off our collective butts. Maybe if they start launching weapons into space, that'd be a good old fashioned Cold War type deal. Beats having their economy make us their bitch twenty years from now.
Has it occurred to anyone that the Earth is such a vastly complex and effective machine that just about anything we do makes no difference, whatsoever? This planet operates on time scales that are frankly unimagineable. We're going to be here for a while, then poof, the whales aren't going to miss us. I think environmentalism is a uniquely human form of hubris. That certainly doesn't absolve us of the need to act ethically to the most practical extent, but whining about trashing the planet is frankly unimaginative. We don't have that kind of power.
[-)
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, okay. There seems to be some misconceptions going on here. The tv series, movie and manga don't fall in any formal continuity. Fans can imagine whatever connection they want but it's quite common for different creators (Oshii Mamoru, etc.) to create different interpretations of a given manga work.
In fact, Shirow himself has done a manga in the Dominion universe (Dominion: No more noise) with the same characters that had no relation to the events in the anime television series "Dominion Tank Police."
Just like the two Appleseed movies have no real relation to one another. This has been documented in numerous interviews. In fact the creators of the current GITS television series have specifically stated that this story occurs in a universe where the merger with the "puppet master" never happens.
He's well known for a certain emphasis on female anatomy plus high tech hardware. In fact, for a Shirow character, Motoko is roughly middle of the road in terms of exposed skin and gratuitous accentuation of the aforementioned.
This even leads to an extremely ironic moment in one episode where an ambush on some smugglers goes sour and the Major ends up getting thrown into a pile of garbage, forcing her to wear even less in public than we're used to much to her discomfort and prompting a smartass remark from her boss.
I guess, I'd take this a little less seriously. Sure it was pretty noticeable in the first two episodes (can an animated camera ogle?) but to let that stop you from enjoying the series for it's many other fine qualities is a little short-sighted. Besides, the Major's mode of dress quickly becomes more a commentary on her complete lack of interest in physical appearance rather than anything sexual.
There's even some argument to be made about whether a totally mechanical sentient being requires "clothes." Motoko is every inch the "soldier" here.
What we have here is one part non-linear musing, one part book proposal, and one part total bullshit. I'm seeing one or two solid lines of reasoning with a liberal sprinkling of jargon and some nasty linguistic preservatives. In short, exactly what we used to get from people like Jaron back during the 90's. Pardon me if I take the following quotes out of context but from what I could see, there wasn't much context to begin with.. I quote
"There could be no Google without an Internet"
Uh.huh..
"If that author, by the grace of fate, happens to have good taste, as in the case of Steve Jobs, an Antigora can deliver extraordinary value"
Like NEXT, say?
"Perhaps customers can live in little pods in the big box stores"
Well, okay, but my fort is in the washing machine aisle, Jaron can go hang out with the other band geeks in electronics!
"I argued with a guy named Richard Stallman"
The persistant name-checking doesn't help his case.
Cato usually is better than this, though many liberal leaning slashdotters will argue otherwise. I think they decided they'd get up to speed with the "blogosphere" and got put over by Lanier's patented "Cliff Stohl" absent-minded genius hippy act.
Oh yeah, and memo to Mr. Lanier, Rob Zombie wants his hair back.
1. Your company is in manufacturing. 2. Your company is in manufacturing. These people will never understand what you have to offer or how it can improve their business. Ever. Barring a "road to Damascus" experience in the boardroom (possible but highly improbable) you are setting yourself up for a career ending debacle if not years of poor health due to unreasonable stress level and a heart-attack. What you do might as well be in Sanskrit to management. RUN! Run your balls off. You owe it to yourself.
Y'know it's been kind of rough for us Republicans lately. People have been actually paying attention to us ruining the economy and wasting good soldiers in Iraq and stuff, its been shaping up to be kind of a blue Christmas lately. Then the honorable Senator from New York goes and makes a complete fool of herself! Nothin like lady Macbeth in a headband and pantsuit to lighten those holiday glums. Did you know every time she whines on Larry King a Republican gets their wings? Merry Christmas, you wonderful old world! To Hillary Clinton, the dumbest Senator in town.
My wife wants to be Paks when she grows up. There's an actual large paperback omnibus version that includes both books. I might hesitate on giving that to pre-teens because of the amount of torture and death in the later parts of the books.
Orson Scott Card is one I would have liked to read when I was that age but I didn't get into anything "hard science fiction" when I was that young. I spent more time on military and military sci-fi (and I wouldn't recommend David Drake for that age group). I didn't dive further into sci-fi until college because I spent so much time on actual science probably. And Asimov bored me to tears when I was younger.
Where did each of the myth-busters start out careerwise? I went into materials science because we get to deal with the strangest ass stuff this side of particle physics and materials testing because it fit my personality and lets me get payed to break stuff.
Cross Bill's heart and hope to die, stick a needle in Balmer's eye, promise they won't sue. It must be true, Redmond's lawyers say so! (Anyone else flashing back to Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown by any chance?) Too bad Johnny Cochran kicked the bucket, we might need to employ the "Liar, liar, pants on fire defense" if this goes bad!
To say something like that!
The underlying point here is the techniques materials scientists normally use to examine material properties. Techniques like FTIR, SEM, STEM and x-ray diffraction work well on materials in one state but any time phase change occurs they are too simple to examine the change as it occurs. Even an environmental SEM that can examine certain materials at higher temperatures tends to still be too simplistic to examine a phenomena like melting closely at the atomic scale. For melting energy really one of the few useful techniques is DSC (differential scanning calorimetry) and that still won't let you observe the melting mechanism itself, only detect the energy needed to reach the melting point. In this area, the physicists actually have us beaten because they at least have particle detectors that can observe the effect of high energy collisions at the sub-atomic scale. That's why this experiment is important, they are developing techniques to circumvent the limitations of the instrumentation.
The underlying map data is from Earth Satellite Corporation's Naturalvu 2000 off the shelf 15 meter resolution package. You can read about it at http://www.earthsat.com/ I just like giving a shout out to the people who did the hard stuff. God knows you won't hear it from google. I bet they didn't even include a mention of that in their press release. [-)
Uh, sorry, but we already use that. It's called Iron and steel plants. Most ductile grey iron and steel mini-mills in the U.S. now run on third shift so they can take advantage of this period during the day. The electricity is cheaper due to the decreased demand but it still gets used even at night. Lots of other manufacturers use this model also. The U.S. manufacturing sector may be down significantly but taking steps like this is why we still have a basic manufacturing sector.
They let Mo Rocca on "Wait, wait don't tell me.." on NPR, and Wil can't get on "This American Life?" I call BS. I wonder if Westley can take Rocca in a fair fight? [-)
I was wondering about the "Jihadist training" and "flag burning" sections that popped up recently in my local library. And here I thought we were safe! We'd better renew that Patriot Act pronto!
UG..UG.. Bad spirit come, takem all files if you online. Bad.. Bad online you share files! I pity the poor everyday Joe who's family I am depriving of money by illegal downloads, mainly because the head honchos are making them do stupid things like setting up the abovementioned web site. I honestly have no compelling reason to download copyrighted material beyond giving the poor saps at the RIAA a reason to humiliate themselves in order to stop me. This isn't about intellectual freedom anymore, you can't buy entertainment like this folks! Sadistic, probably, but it's just like the Army, the officers think they're in charge, the non-coms run the universe. [-)
And how many serious accidents like Chernobyl have happened? Meanwhile, coal miners die young from black lung disease and the United States is pathetically dependent on foreign oil. I'm not going to say nuclear disasters are impossible, I'm not going to disagree that the NRC has made the occasional mistake. But the shear Luddite malice directed at this technology is insane! Imagine if car crashes were as rare as nuclear incidents?
Prometheus has been on the drawing boards at the Jet Propulsion Lab since the early eighties. The reason it didn't get anywhere then is the same reason it won't get off the ground now. It's nuclear. Let's give an example. Recently, there was a major press blow-up (no pun intended) in Michigan about allowing the transport of used fissile material across the state. Never mind that said material was cast in the center of rain barrel or bigger sized pieces of concrete. Never mind that you could drop the damn containment vessels off a five story building and they wouldn't break. Everyone was screaming about the possibility of radiation getting into the water and air. The poor NRC guys had a public relations nightmare. And all because Ralph Nader and his merry bunch of marauders has made "nuclear" anything the scariest thing in the public imagination since Anthrax. You can't build new nuclear reactors and there is no chance you can get a nuclear powered craft whether propelled or simply powered by radiation off the ground. Too many people are too dumb to understand how infitesimal the possibility of disaster is, because all they remember is Chernobyl and Three Mile Island. Sad but true my friends. And now we get treated to the same feast of ignorance about cloning or genetically modified foods by people who let ignorance and fear rule their imaginations. [-)
I seem to remember a company memo that got published stating Steve Balmer was looking at Linux as a very active threat and Microsoft needed a strategy to beat it. Is old Wild Bill just blowing smoke here to keep the posse off his trail or is he going a might soft? Circle the wagons boys, troubles a comin! YEEHAW!
Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that as Steve Jobs gets older he seems more and more like this sort of evil Mr. Rogers? "Won't you be my user, boys and girls?" It even comes across in the pro-Mac rhetoric, "Don't let that Mr. Gates touch you, he's bad." "Won't you please, please won't you be my, Mac-user." [-)
I disagree, I feel I'm reframing this debate in terms of ethical and moral obligation as opposed to a neo-religious view as expressed by Rousseau. Because humans are capable of seeing the value in the earth and animals, we have an ethical and moral obligation to not waste or destroy either. This should not be twisted in such a way as to harm the interests of humans and proceeding from a humbler viewpoint may ultimately be healthier. The level of damage caused by destroying the animals in question needs to be assessed in a realistic manner. This may or may not be the effect of the present study. [-)
That would be my argument though, I think in a lot of cases especially in the types of situations Special Forces are supposed to be involved in (as opposed to the way they are used often) a cell phone type deal is better to go with. It's smaller, it's concealable and if it gets captured by the enemy there's a lower likelihood they'll be able to figure out how to use it or what it really does. I also feel the CIA has no business in direct action operations, they should focus on dealing with intelligence not the operations angle. In a perfect world the CIA and the FBI would not be running around in the jungle, that should be the snake eater's job. [-)
Point and click bombing. Your soldiers walk in undercover, figure out where the target is in the building, Saddam Hussein, Usama Bin Laden or whatever then click and transmit the coordinates to your air cap boys on standby. Now all we need are black ops guys who are smart and skilled enough to infiltrate well. [-)
Let's face it, the United States is badly in need of an old fashioned, BOHICA, humiliation. The Russians pulled it off with Sputnik, but I'm not sure the Chinese can get us off our collective butts. Maybe if they start launching weapons into space, that'd be a good old fashioned Cold War type deal. Beats having their economy make us their bitch twenty years from now.
Has it occurred to anyone that the Earth is such a vastly complex and effective machine that just about anything we do makes no difference, whatsoever? This planet operates on time scales that are frankly unimagineable. We're going to be here for a while, then poof, the whales aren't going to miss us. I think environmentalism is a uniquely human form of hubris. That certainly doesn't absolve us of the need to act ethically to the most practical extent, but whining about trashing the planet is frankly unimaginative. We don't have that kind of power. [-)