I've seen many actors become typecast (such as yourself and most of the Star Trek crew), but I've seen many others who seem to defy typecasting even when put into popular roles (Tom Hanks in Bosom Buddies comes to mind). Do you think this tendency comes more from acting skill, facial features (recognizable face vs. rather generic face), the nature of the role itself, or some other factor?
How did you happen to land the role of Kirk?
on
Ask William Shatner
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
As I understand it, Jeffery Hunter was originally offered the part of Captain Captain of the Enterprise (he played Christopher Pike in the Pilot), but turned it down after the Pilot was filmed. First, is this accurate, and second:
Obviously, this was your big break into showbusiness, but did it feel like it at the time. How did this part come to you, and when did you realize this show would be this big, when did you realize you had been typecast and that you would be forever known as Captain Kirk, and did you go through any of the disgust with that typecast like Leonard Nemoy did?
Dark is actually considerably faster than light...
on
Landshark
·
· Score: 1, Offtopic
For years it has been believed that electric bulbs emitted light. However, recent information from Bell Labs has proven otherwise. Electric bulbs don't emit light, they suck dark. Thus they now call these bulbs dark suckers. The dark sucker theory, according to a Bell Labs spokesperson, proves the existence of dark, that dark has mass heavier than that of light, and that dark is faster than light.
The basis of the dark sucker theory is that electric bulbs suck dark. Take for example, the dark suckers in the room where you are. There is less dark right next to them than there is elsewhere. The larger the dark sucker, the greater its capacity to suck dark. Dark suckers in a parking lot have a much greater capacity than the ones in this room. As with all things, dark suckers don't last forever. Once they are full of dark, they can no longer suck. This is proven by the black spot on a full dark sucker. A candle is a primitive dark sucker. lA new candle has a white wick. You will notice that after the first use, the wick turns black, representing all the dark which has been sucked into it. If you hold a pencil next to the wick of an operating candle, the tip will turn black because it got in the path of the dark flowing into the candle. Unfortunately, these primitive dark suckers have a very limited range. There are also portable dark suckers. The bulbs in these can't handle all of the dark by themselves, and must be aided by a dark storage unit. When the dark storage unit is full, it must be either emptied or replaced before the portable dark sucker can operate again.
Dark has mass. When dark goes into a dark sucker, friction from this mass generates heat. Thus it is not wise to touch an operating dark sucker. Candles present a special problem, as the dark must travel in the solid wick instead of through glass. This generates a great amount of heat. Thus it can be very dangerous to touch an operating candle. Dark is also heavier than light. If you swim deeper and deeper, you notice it gets slowly darker and darker. When you reach a depth of approximately fifty feet, you are in total darkness. This is because the heavier dark sinks to the bottom of the lake and the lighter light floats to the top. The immense power of dark can be utilized to mans advantage. We can collect the dark that has settled to the bottom of lakes and push it through turbines, which generate electricity and help push it to the ocean where it may be safely stored. Prior to turbines, it was much more difficult to get dark from the rivers and lakes to the ocean. The Indians recognized this problem, and tried to solve it. When on a river in a canoe travelling in the same direction as the flow of the dark, they paddled slowly, so as not to stop the flow of dark, but when they traveled against the flow of dark, they paddled quickly so as to help push the dark along its way.
Finally, we must prove that dark is faster than light. If you were to stand in an illuminated room in front of a closed, dark closet, then slowly open the closet door, you would see the light slowly enter the closet, but since the dark is so fast, you would not be able to see the dark leave the closet.
In conclusion, Bell Labs stated that dark suckers make all our lives much easier. So the next time you look at an electric bulb remember that it is indeed a dark sucker.
A great solution for electronic voting...
on
Indecision 2002
·
· Score: 2
I posted an idea two years ago after the whole presidential debacle which people seemed to like. Fill out a simple voting scantron type of form (online, or at the polling place). Feed it into the scantron voting machines at the polling place. The voting machine prints out the actual ballot, as well as a copy for you to keep. You check the ballot to make sure it is correct. Drop it in the ballot box. That way you get instant electronic results, as well as paper ballots to check for programming errors, fraud, etc... It involves a few extra steps and a little more paper, but not much more than we use right now, and that way, hard proof of the ballots exists to mitigate electronic tampering.
The more I think about it, the more farsical the Firefly universe seems. As other authors have pointed out, my earlier post on gunpowder not working in a vacuum is not correct (even if it is how they explain it in the show.) But as I said, there are many reasons why a gun wouldn't be useful on a space craft. For one, a differential velocity of several hundred miles per hour would be trivial compared to the speeds at which space craft normally travel. Surely in order to travel through space, one would have to build a craft which could deal gracefully with small debris traveling at large velocities.
They actually had an episode where they tried to use a gun out in space. They had to bring along a space suit so the gunpowder could get oxygen, and they only got one shot. Now it still doesn't explain why they don't have a rail gun, or some similar weapon, but then again most merchant ships on earth's oceans don't have ship mounted weapons either.
I don't know, Star Trek the Next Generation might have been like USA Today (generally interesting and harmless, but vapid and shallow.) But Enterprise is more like the National Enquirer (Man has sex with big titted vulcan: Says love child will be named Spock.) Now SG-1 is more like the Wall Street Journal, but still not as good as Babylon 5.
P.S. This is niether a Troll or a Flame, just a poor attempt at humor.
The fact that the table exists doesn't surprise me that much (in other words no assinine waste of taxpayer money surprises me anymore.) My question is: What job do you have that you would happen to have this link on hand, and how might I apply. (Or did you just figure such a unit conversion must exist and do a google search.) I await and fear any reply.
First installment may be better. I believe they are currently contracted to install four of these refridgerator sized units having a total of 64000 processors. Prototype implies they will modify the design and build the final installation of 64 racks out of a new improved design. I don't think this is the case. Instead, they will simply add the remaining racks. Also, I believe this machine is specifically designed to work on the problem of protien folding. I'm not sure what that means in terms of its general purpose capabilities, but I believe it will be optimized for the protien folding task. Finally, this is supposed to be the first computer capable of a PetaFLOP. Seeing as the final machine will have 1 million processors, this seems much less impressive (1 GigaFLOP times 1 million) A GigaFLOP per processor doesn't seem all that impressive. FLOPs doesn't seem to capture the speed of a massively parallel computer all that well.
The thing that really gets me is not who gets the trademark, but that fact that one branch of government (the police) had to use another branch of government (the courts) to try to force a third branch of government (the BBC) to give up a trademark which the first branch of government (the police) really had no need for. This is like me suing my wife over who gets to use the BRA I bought her. For gods sake don't they all answer to the same person eventually. Just ask that person what they should do. And a fine of 850 pounds???? So the government is going to fine one branch of government because of a lawsuit they brought against another branch of government. Who is going to pay the fine, the government??? What the hell is the point of that?
On the up side, it's good to know that my own government isn't the only government which does stupid wasteful things with my tax dollars.
In the case of medical marijuana, the Constitution is clearly on the side of California. Your implication that strong federal law trumps weak state law does not have a basis in the Constution (though the federal government would like you to believe it does.) The powers of the federal government are enumerated. Those which aren't enumerated default to the state. Have you ever wondered how the federal government justifies its anti-drug laws. They claim they have juristiction under the interstate commerce clause. If California decides to raise marijuana and sell it entirely within the state, the federal government simply has no Constitutional authority to stop it. Like I said, I'd like to see California sue the U.S. government over this issue. It would give the Supreme Court a chance to say that after over 100 years of no states rights, the 10th amendment might mean something again.
If LCD's give off no radiation, how the hell do you see a picture?
Exactly what type of radiation do you think a CRT gives off, and how is it fundamentally different than CRT radiation. Are you talking nuclear radiation? The only radiation a CRT might give off that the standard LCD doesn't might be the random high voltage electron which passes through. Please provide more details if you have them.
The thing that is so revealing about the RIAA's statement is that if they say something untrue often enough, people begin to believe it. The simple fact that you are allowed to own a VCR to copy copyrighted material off the television is proof of that. It's the people who broadcast or distribute the material who may or may not be violating the copyright. This is exactly why, as other posters have mentioned, many of the universities are placing restrictions on uploading, but don't care about downloading. In other words, if you upload material, you may or may not be breaking the law. If you download, you almost certainly are not. Of course, before the RIAA is done, it probably will be a crime to download, but it is not yet the case. IANAL, YMMV, etc...
Shaw's principle: Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
Kaa's Law: "In any sufficiently large group of people, most are idiots."
Microsoft's Synthesis: "In any sufficiently large group of people, the largest profit comes from marketing a system that only a fool will want to use."
Re:Apple was also smart enough to include SCSI...
on
USB On-the-Go Go Go Go
·
· Score: 1
I'll grant you that it's different, but not totally different. Granted Firewire currently has a strong foothold in the DV market, but it has almost zero penetration in the PC market where you might want to hook up your DV recorder. DV is currently a niche market where higher costs are tollerated. USB simply wasn't an option for DV, but USB 2.0 is an option (albiet a shoddy, inferior "fast enough for most people's needs." option), but then again, that summarizes the entire history of the PC market. Taking a shoddy, inferior, lowest common denominator product, adding kludge, after, kludge, improvement, after improvement, until the shoddy inferior solution becomes the defacto, economy of scale, superior solution. I loved my Amiga. It took years for MS to catch up, and finally surpass it, and it still lacks much of the elegance of the Amiga, but unfortunately that is a mute point. I'm not saying Firewire is going to die, but saying USB 2.0 or 3.0 or 4.0 "sure as hell won't" replace, or largely displace Firewire is not nearly as certain as you you make it seem. I think Apple's real genius is realizing that they were never going to beat microsoft at their own game, but rather that there is a sizable niche market that will still pay for an elegant solution. When I see the vast majority of motherboards carrying Firewire and USB, the demise of USB may be more assured, but how likely is that to happen. (by the way, it is my understanding that SCSI/IDE has several technical similarities to Firewire/USB. Peer-Peer/Master-Slave, Smart Device/Dumb Device, Cost, Theoretical Speed, etc...) Based on superior technology, you're right, but by that arguement, Apple should be dominating the market by now. No one ever said MS had superior technology.
I love Ad Hominem attacks. Consumer devices are clearly moving to SCSI. Everyone's eventually going to want SCSI because everyones going to want a faster hard drive. Apple was smart enough to recognize this, but I'm betting the dufus you were responding to probably wasn't. I still can't wait until people come around on the whole Amiga thing...
Man: How many of you kids would like Itchy & Scratchy to deal with
real-life problems, like the ones you face every day?
Kids: [clamoring] Oh, yeah! I would! Great idea! Yeah, that's it!
Man: And who would like to see them do just the opposite -- getting
into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers?
Kids: [clamoring] Me! Yeah! Oh, cool! Yeah, that's what I want!
Man: So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show... that's
completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots?
Kids: [all agreeing, quieter this time] That's right. Oh yeah,
good. Milhouse: And also, you should win things by watching. -- Conflicting results, "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show"
Myers, fed up, turns on the light in the observation booth, making himself visible to the kids.
Myers: You kids don't know what you want! That's why you're still kids;
'cause you're stupid!
I did a doubletake when I read this, and though it was quite obvious on second reading that you meant assess, I had a nice grin in the meantime wondering how you might ass danger. Perhaps it's like Charades with your ass trying to mime danger, or perhaps the Palermo scale is simply a rating of how likely it is you need to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye. None the less, thanks for the grin:)
It's not dead, it's just resting...
on
Is Linux Dead?
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
I've seen many actors become typecast (such as yourself and most of the Star Trek crew), but I've seen many others who seem to defy typecasting even when put into popular roles (Tom Hanks in Bosom Buddies comes to mind). Do you think this tendency comes more from acting skill, facial features (recognizable face vs. rather generic face), the nature of the role itself, or some other factor?
As I understand it, Jeffery Hunter was originally offered the part of Captain Captain of the Enterprise (he played Christopher Pike in the Pilot), but turned it down after the Pilot was filmed. First, is this accurate, and second:
Obviously, this was your big break into showbusiness, but did it feel like it at the time. How did this part come to you, and when did you realize this show would be this big, when did you realize you had been typecast and that you would be forever known as Captain Kirk, and did you go through any of the disgust with that typecast like Leonard Nemoy did?
For years it has been believed that electric bulbs emitted light. However, recent information from Bell Labs has proven otherwise. Electric bulbs don't emit light, they suck dark. Thus they now call these bulbs dark suckers. The dark sucker theory, according to a Bell Labs spokesperson, proves the existence of dark, that dark has mass heavier than that of light, and that dark is faster than light.
The basis of the dark sucker theory is that electric bulbs suck dark. Take for example, the dark suckers in the room where you are. There is less dark right next to them than there is elsewhere. The larger the dark sucker, the greater its capacity to suck dark. Dark suckers in a parking lot have a much greater capacity than the ones in this room. As with all things, dark suckers don't last forever. Once they are full of dark, they can no longer suck. This is proven by the black spot on a full dark sucker. A candle is a primitive dark sucker. lA new candle has a white wick. You will notice that after the first use, the wick turns black, representing all the dark which has been sucked into it. If you hold a pencil next to the wick of an operating candle, the tip will turn black because it got in the path of the dark flowing into the candle. Unfortunately, these primitive dark suckers have a very limited range. There are also portable dark suckers. The bulbs in these can't handle all of the dark by themselves, and must be aided by a dark storage unit. When the dark storage unit is full, it must be either emptied or replaced before the portable dark sucker can operate again.
Dark has mass. When dark goes into a dark sucker, friction from this mass generates heat. Thus it is not wise to touch an operating dark sucker. Candles present a special problem, as the dark must travel in the solid wick instead of through glass. This generates a great amount of heat. Thus it can be very dangerous to touch an operating candle. Dark is also heavier than light. If you swim deeper and deeper, you notice it gets slowly darker and darker. When you reach a depth of approximately fifty feet, you are in total darkness. This is because the heavier dark sinks to the bottom of the lake and the lighter light floats to the top. The immense power of dark can be utilized to mans advantage. We can collect the dark that has settled to the bottom of lakes and push it through turbines, which generate electricity and help push it to the ocean where it may be safely stored. Prior to turbines, it was much more difficult to get dark from the rivers and lakes to the ocean. The Indians recognized this problem, and tried to solve it. When on a river in a canoe travelling in the same direction as the flow of the dark, they paddled slowly, so as not to stop the flow of dark, but when they traveled against the flow of dark, they paddled quickly so as to help push the dark along its way.
Finally, we must prove that dark is faster than light. If you were to stand in an illuminated room in front of a closed, dark closet, then slowly open the closet door, you would see the light slowly enter the closet, but since the dark is so fast, you would not be able to see the dark leave the closet.
In conclusion, Bell Labs stated that dark suckers make all our lives much easier. So the next time you look at an electric bulb remember that it is indeed a dark sucker.
P.S. I plan to be burried in a heated coffin. :)
I posted an idea two years ago after the whole presidential debacle which people seemed to like. Fill out a simple voting scantron type of form (online, or at the polling place). Feed it into the scantron voting machines at the polling place. The voting machine prints out the actual ballot, as well as a copy for you to keep. You check the ballot to make sure it is correct. Drop it in the ballot box. That way you get instant electronic results, as well as paper ballots to check for programming errors, fraud, etc... It involves a few extra steps and a little more paper, but not much more than we use right now, and that way, hard proof of the ballots exists to mitigate electronic tampering.
I would have thought it was obvious that B5 is not a newspaper, it's a novel; and a damn good one too.
The more I think about it, the more farsical the Firefly universe seems. As other authors have pointed out, my earlier post on gunpowder not working in a vacuum is not correct (even if it is how they explain it in the show.) But as I said, there are many reasons why a gun wouldn't be useful on a space craft. For one, a differential velocity of several hundred miles per hour would be trivial compared to the speeds at which space craft normally travel. Surely in order to travel through space, one would have to build a craft which could deal gracefully with small debris traveling at large velocities.
They actually had an episode where they tried to use a gun out in space. They had to bring along a space suit so the gunpowder could get oxygen, and they only got one shot. Now it still doesn't explain why they don't have a rail gun, or some similar weapon, but then again most merchant ships on earth's oceans don't have ship mounted weapons either.
I don't know, Star Trek the Next Generation might have been like USA Today (generally interesting and harmless, but vapid and shallow.) But Enterprise is more like the National Enquirer (Man has sex with big titted vulcan: Says love child will be named Spock.) Now SG-1 is more like the Wall Street Journal, but still not as good as Babylon 5.
P.S. This is niether a Troll or a Flame, just a poor attempt at humor.
The fact that the table exists doesn't surprise me that much (in other words no assinine waste of taxpayer money surprises me anymore.) My question is: What job do you have that you would happen to have this link on hand, and how might I apply. (Or did you just figure such a unit conversion must exist and do a google search.) I await and fear any reply.
First installment may be better. I believe they are currently contracted to install four of these refridgerator sized units having a total of 64000 processors. Prototype implies they will modify the design and build the final installation of 64 racks out of a new improved design. I don't think this is the case. Instead, they will simply add the remaining racks. Also, I believe this machine is specifically designed to work on the problem of protien folding. I'm not sure what that means in terms of its general purpose capabilities, but I believe it will be optimized for the protien folding task. Finally, this is supposed to be the first computer capable of a PetaFLOP. Seeing as the final machine will have 1 million processors, this seems much less impressive (1 GigaFLOP times 1 million) A GigaFLOP per processor doesn't seem all that impressive. FLOPs doesn't seem to capture the speed of a massively parallel computer all that well.
The thing that really gets me is not who gets the trademark, but that fact that one branch of government (the police) had to use another branch of government (the courts) to try to force a third branch of government (the BBC) to give up a trademark which the first branch of government (the police) really had no need for. This is like me suing my wife over who gets to use the BRA I bought her. For gods sake don't they all answer to the same person eventually. Just ask that person what they should do. And a fine of 850 pounds???? So the government is going to fine one branch of government because of a lawsuit they brought against another branch of government. Who is going to pay the fine, the government??? What the hell is the point of that?
On the up side, it's good to know that my own government isn't the only government which does stupid wasteful things with my tax dollars.
In the case of medical marijuana, the Constitution is clearly on the side of California. Your implication that strong federal law trumps weak state law does not have a basis in the Constution (though the federal government would like you to believe it does.) The powers of the federal government are enumerated. Those which aren't enumerated default to the state. Have you ever wondered how the federal government justifies its anti-drug laws. They claim they have juristiction under the interstate commerce clause. If California decides to raise marijuana and sell it entirely within the state, the federal government simply has no Constitutional authority to stop it. Like I said, I'd like to see California sue the U.S. government over this issue. It would give the Supreme Court a chance to say that after over 100 years of no states rights, the 10th amendment might mean something again.
If LCD's give off no radiation, how the hell do you see a picture?
Exactly what type of radiation do you think a CRT gives off, and how is it fundamentally different than CRT radiation. Are you talking nuclear radiation? The only radiation a CRT might give off that the standard LCD doesn't might be the random high voltage electron which passes through. Please provide more details if you have them.
The thing that is so revealing about the RIAA's statement is that if they say something untrue often enough, people begin to believe it. The simple fact that you are allowed to own a VCR to copy copyrighted material off the television is proof of that. It's the people who broadcast or distribute the material who may or may not be violating the copyright. This is exactly why, as other posters have mentioned, many of the universities are placing restrictions on uploading, but don't care about downloading. In other words, if you upload material, you may or may not be breaking the law. If you download, you almost certainly are not. Of course, before the RIAA is done, it probably will be a crime to download, but it is not yet the case. IANAL, YMMV, etc...
No, that's not what I mean, If you want to find out exactly how you can get that free computer/Mobile Phone/Car for just $10, send $1 to:
Happy Dude
742 Evergreen Terr.
Springfield, Ky 40069
Shaw's principle: Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.
Kaa's Law: "In any sufficiently large group of people, most are idiots."
Microsoft's Synthesis: "In any sufficiently large group of people, the largest profit comes from marketing a system that only a fool will want to use."
I'll grant you that it's different, but not totally different. Granted Firewire currently has a strong foothold in the DV market, but it has almost zero penetration in the PC market where you might want to hook up your DV recorder. DV is currently a niche market where higher costs are tollerated. USB simply wasn't an option for DV, but USB 2.0 is an option (albiet a shoddy, inferior "fast enough for most people's needs." option), but then again, that summarizes the entire history of the PC market. Taking a shoddy, inferior, lowest common denominator product, adding kludge, after, kludge, improvement, after improvement, until the shoddy inferior solution becomes the defacto, economy of scale, superior solution. I loved my Amiga. It took years for MS to catch up, and finally surpass it, and it still lacks much of the elegance of the Amiga, but unfortunately that is a mute point. I'm not saying Firewire is going to die, but saying USB 2.0 or 3.0 or 4.0 "sure as hell won't" replace, or largely displace Firewire is not nearly as certain as you you make it seem. I think Apple's real genius is realizing that they were never going to beat microsoft at their own game, but rather that there is a sizable niche market that will still pay for an elegant solution. When I see the vast majority of motherboards carrying Firewire and USB, the demise of USB may be more assured, but how likely is that to happen. (by the way, it is my understanding that SCSI/IDE has several technical similarities to Firewire/USB. Peer-Peer/Master-Slave, Smart Device/Dumb Device, Cost, Theoretical Speed, etc...) Based on superior technology, you're right, but by that arguement, Apple should be dominating the market by now. No one ever said MS had superior technology.
I love Ad Hominem attacks. Consumer devices are clearly moving to SCSI. Everyone's eventually going to want SCSI because everyones going to want a faster hard drive. Apple was smart enough to recognize this, but I'm betting the dufus you were responding to probably wasn't. I still can't wait until people come around on the whole Amiga thing...
...we have the christians to thank for recursion.
no intelligent life here on Earth.
Dammit, I had the lens cap on again.
You're creating a self fulfilling prophecy. You know they get half thier story ideas from Slashdot trolls.
Thank you again Simpsons.
Back with the focus group...
Man: How many of you kids would like Itchy & Scratchy to deal with
real-life problems, like the ones you face every day?
Kids: [clamoring] Oh, yeah! I would! Great idea! Yeah, that's it!
Man: And who would like to see them do just the opposite -- getting
into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers?
Kids: [clamoring] Me! Yeah! Oh, cool! Yeah, that's what I want!
Man: So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show... that's
completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots?
Kids: [all agreeing, quieter this time] That's right. Oh yeah,
good.
Milhouse: And also, you should win things by watching.
-- Conflicting results, "The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show"
Myers, fed up, turns on the light in the observation booth, making
himself visible to the kids.
Myers: You kids don't know what you want! That's why you're still kids;
'cause you're stupid!
I did a doubletake when I read this, and though it was quite obvious on second reading that you meant assess, I had a nice grin in the meantime wondering how you might ass danger. Perhaps it's like Charades with your ass trying to mime danger, or perhaps the Palermo scale is simply a rating of how likely it is you need to bend over and kiss your ass goodbye. None the less, thanks for the grin :)
it was just waking up when you stunned it.