I have compared it to things I was bitTorrenting (over a year ago, since that was the last time I spent any time BT'ing any TV shows). I think for the download time and file size, the resolution is not so terrible as to be distracting from watching the show. It's not DVD quality, though, I'll admit that. Plus you have the added benefit of legality!
I haven't had these difficulties on my machine, although I'll admit its an iBook, so maybe I have some sort of "Apple software on Apple hardware" advantage. It does pause when I go full screen, and sometimes spacebar as play/pause is a little glitchy. I've come to expect problems like this from media players, though.
It sounds like a lot of your problem is with trying to task switch while playing video. I've never had a good experience with trying to do something like that on ANY machine (and I've used PCs/*nix frequently in the past and still do, the iBook is my first Mac).
Unless you are a hifi addict, I think the resolution is sufficient. This weekend we are going to try running it to our TV through my husband's laptop, since he has S-Video out. I'm guessing the aliasing you can see when you look closely will disappear on the TV, due to phosphor affects (yeah, its one of those 'oldschool' regular tvs). So far we've caught up on Desperate Housewives (so I can talk to my mom about it again!) by viewing it with the iBook at the foot of the bed - unless you look for problems, your eyes will gloss over any aliasing unless you get up really close.
I'm guessing from the link in your sig that you live in the NYC area. It might come as a complete shock to you, but outside of that market and a few other large cities, VOD is nearly nonexistant. Even for people who have major cable provider service (like ComCast or TimeWarner). For example, I live in Florida. It is not available in the ENTIRE GEOGRAPHICAL REGION that I live in. Digital cable is also about twice as much as 'basic' here.
Realizing that TV mostly wastes our time, my husband and I cancelled cable service when we moved across town. I know of several other people (a lot I read about here on/.!) that are doing the same - with services like NetFlix, there's little use for having cable service unless you follow a sports team or feel shackled to traditional news media. We save a whole crapload of money a month, as well.
The revolutionary thing about the video downloads via iTMS is not that they are the first to do it, it is the fact that they are the first to do it in a manner that is easily accessible with little to no entrance costs beyond owning a computer and an internet connection. I'm pretty sure most of my computer-unsavvy friends and relatives could handle using iTMS to catch that episode of Desperate Housewives or Lost that they missed (and I fully expect other shows to sign on with iTMS as it proves itself to be a valid distribution method). I know some people who bitTorrent shows when they miss them (for whatever reason, including their TiVo choking or their power being out or something), who would be more than happy to pay for the show to be able to get a legal copy.
But I'm getting off my point here. The point is, VOD is not as well infiltrated in the market as you may think. Please remember you (might) have bigcity/populous region blinders on. I do not live in a rural area (although it is not a 'big city' either..) but the local company here doesn't even have the equipment to push VOD even if the CABLE BOX might have a socket for it like they might be able to offer that service. iTMS or pirating is the only choice I have to catch things I didn't manage to catch via cable service (well, assuming I still had it).
The revolution of only paying for what you want to watch is coming. Do you really use all those channels you pay for now?
Your use of statistical 'evidence' is somewhat spurious.
I think the point of this endeavor is less to single out pet owners, or as a gateway to tracking people, but as a deterrent to a behavior pattern which has been evident for years. There is a big problem with people buying exotic pets (wherein 'exotic' means anything other than cats or dogs, pretty much, although they suffer from the same behavior), and then not liking them or not knowing how to take care of them. A lot of times, these animals are left on the roadside, or in a pond, in a misguided effort to give them a better habitat. Since they have been kept as pets, they are much more used to humans == food source than other wild animals. I think this Japanese effort is just a method to better inform pet owners of their responsibilites, and to be able to find the responsible party if a 'lost' animal hurts someone. Chipping is not harmful to the pet, and could easily be integrated with the licensing program a lot of countries have for pets of all types.
GAHHH! I hit submit instead of preview. Here's a fixed format on that email, SORRY EVERYONE. On an unrelated note, anyone have any idea why the pre tag isn't allowable HTML for comments?
From: Neateye
Reply-To: Neateye
To: ---
Date: May 6, 2005 2:13 AM
Subject: Gouranga
Call out Gouranga be happy!!!
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga....
That which brings the highest happiness!!
I recently got my first Nigerian scam emails ever in my GMail account recently. I saved it, because it amused me. How it managed to get there is unamusing, but at least it was autofiltered to spam.
On the topic of amusing spam, has anyone ever gotten Hare Krishna spam? I did, once. I actually did some Google'rch to figure out what the hell it was. I kept it, too, because it makes me happy (coincidentally) for no apparent reason:
From: Neateye
Reply-To: Neateye
To: ---------------------
Date: May 6, 2005 2:13 AM
Subject: Gouranga
Call out Gouranga be happy!!!
Gouranga Gouranga Gouranga....
That which brings the highest happiness!!
I really hope that Public Broadcasting takes notice of this. I would really love to get my PBS shows via the internet, and I wouldn't mind paying for them in this manner. I think it would really help support the stations (probably better than the money-making drives they do make) and their content lends itself to this sort of scheme. Plus it would expand the PBS shows available, instead of just the ones my local PBS decided to pick up.
Does anyone know how PBS broadcasting works? Do they pay the local cable companies to carry the channels? Do the cable companies pay them? Since PBS shows are accustomed to operating without commercial advertising (beyond the good ole "Brought to you by... Company X, making wodgets since 1000 BC, and viewers like you!" opener/closer), and they create a lot of 'atomic' shows that have no future in DVD distribution, I would think they would be eager for a market like this.
I'm just really excited by the prospects of a movement to the internet and a by-show charge as a distribution medium for television shows. iTMS will be able to compile much better viewership statistics than Nielson does, although without the advertising they are pretty much useless except as a way to inform the networks of what we really want to see. What's even better is if all the networks get on board, as well as independent productions, we will finally have a democratic television system. I'm tired of not being able to see such-and-such show because Comcast decided that the channel wasn't the right fit for my geographical area.
The only things that would not work for this distribution is news and sports. I don't know about any of you, but I stopped watching the television news a long time ago - the internet is a more reliable and more varied source of news. I can quickly check multiple news companies and overseas and get all angles on a story much better than being plopped in front of the FoxNews propaganda machine. So that's not a problem. C-Span fans might rejoice in downloadable content - and I would have to think they could provide the congressional proceedings and other c-span fodder for free. Sports will always do best as a live broadcast over cable, but I can see more events moving into pay-per-view format or some sort of season pass for your team.
Did anyone else mentally stumble over the awkward incorrect grammar in the summary? Example: "that increasingly includes and women is joining in the fun"
Some of us don't bother with paying for cable. When my husband and I moved across town recently, we realized it was an excellent time to tell Comcast "No thanks, we think cable TV is a big fat waste of our money and our time." Most of what we watched regularly was available (at the end of the season) on DVD anyway, and usually in the NetFlix catalog. We also took the opportunity to give TiVo the finger for some of its more recent practices..
Total savings to us? 12.95 TiVo/month + ~$35 regular cable/month (never did find out what it would be at the new place, the old place had a special deal with the cable company)= $48. Let's round that to $50 for taxes and stuff. We now have 2/time unlimited NetFlix subscription, which is $15/month.
This means our total freed-up entertainment budget is $35/month. We also stopped going to movie theaters entirely (except in the special cases of movies we want to 'vote with our dollar' on, such as Serenity and March of the Penguins) so that is an untold savings per month. We also watch zero commercials now.
With the money left over, we could buy 17.5 shows PER MONTH on iTunes with this money. That's a lot. If you consider 4 shows/month for a particular title (like Lost or Desperate Housewives) it means we could follow 4 titles per month if we wanted to, without commercials. If we had less to spend that month, we could just hold back. If we didn't want to stay current (mostly I want to watch a couple so that I don't hear 'spoilers' at work or at the store or in the news..) we could wait for the DVDs to come out or until we have more funds available.
So let's review:
Your plan - pay a bunch of money for cable service, with countless amounts of programming you'll never watch. Do things on their schedule, build a PVR, or pay for TiVo. Watch commercials. Go through wankery if you want a digital copy.
Our plan - save a lot of money by not paying a monthly subscription for something we don't use that much anyway. Never watch commercials. Do things on our schedule, and have everything as digital content.
Of course, YMMV. Personally I've been happy with all the 'free time' and 'extra entertainment cash' hanging around that resulted from not having cable service.
Think back to your experiences in your science labs in school. If you were a good student, you probably cared about your grade. You probably understood on an intimate level that often experiments don't work properly, that there can be factors contributing to a bad degree of error in your measurements (maybe your ruler is inaccurate? Perhaps that high pressure front is affecting your delicate volume measurement?).
If you were to record measurements which seem to be out of line with the purpose of the lab, you take your grade into your own hands. The lab TAs and science teachers do not want to see accurate work from you - they want to see 'the right answer'. Not the actual answer, mind you. You could do very poorly on the lab assignment for having these spurious numbers reported. It could affect your final grade, which could affect your semester grade, which could affect your GPA, which could affect your future....
So you kowtow to the academic establishment, and you record a fake number that meets the goals of the lab, knowing that it is incorrect but that, in the end, you will get a good grade. Congratulations, you have successfully jumped through another US Science education Hoop (TM).
Until science teachers embrace the ability to discuss Things Going Wrong, or Getting Something Other Than Expected (scientific method? sometimes your hypothesis isn't true? what? What was the point then! Get back in there and prove your hypothesis was right! Or change your hypothesis! And for God's sake, get rid of that terrible data), science will continue to erode in the US. I would not be surprised if this sort of behavior isn't passed on to future scientists, making the majority of 'science', well, rather unscientific.
I think you hit this spot on. I've used Windows (and previous to that, DOS!) for years upon years, but I got my first Mac just last month. It took me absolutely no time to figure out how to do 90% of the activities I normally use a home computer for. It DID take me a while to do some development tool installs, mostly because my experiences with linux make me expect the shell configuration files (think.bashrc or.cshrc) to be in my home directory.... OS X makes it very, very easy to learn how to do all your average fluff computer stuff, but it makes it a little difficult to do anything 'major' that might affect the system poorly. Personally, I like it. I'm considering getting some mini's for family members who are behind on computing, just because I think they could actually pick it up easily.
I will have to add this to my 'things to see next time I'm across the pond' list. Thanks for the confirmation that this place exists! It will be interesting to see whether British crackpots are any more or less funny than US crackpots.
No no no no. I am not talking about some sort of crazy zen 'total happiness'. I'm talking about baseline happy. Like, the absence of unhappy - that is, you don't have to force yourself out of bed just to go to work. Have you ever had work that was so unfulfilling, so obnoxious, so whatever, that you didn't even want to leave the house, dreaded going in to work? It happens to some people with some jobs. They are unhappy, and not just 'oh I had a bad day' but UNHAPPY. This fellow in the article is not UNHAPPY, but he might be HAPPIER in general with one type of job over another. Engineering might be a better 'fit' for him, or management might. Do you understand?
As far as the 'shallowness' of pursuing happiness - at least happiness is something that can be experienced without outside definition. Money (paper or electronic) is intrinsically worthless - it only has value because our society gives it value. Happiness is something you can value with or without outside definition - it is personal.
I think the market is in homebrew video. A large number of people use the photo iPods as their virtual expanding wallet of family photos. Just imagine being able to show Grandma a short video of that cute thing Junior did, without going to another room, setting up the tv and the VCR or the DVD player and then remembering the stuff and... well, you see?
The latest version of iTunes to come out added support for video podcasting, and with storage and bandwidth becoming less of a factor, I think we are going to see more and more people taking their blogs to the next step.. from text, to podcasts, to video podcasts.
Just because its an iPod doesn't mean it has to be music related.
I work on code that is older than I am. They are totally mystified as to why it is taking me longer to understand its structure, etc. than I did on the C++ work. Gee, I wonder if its because the technology was being fazed out while I was still in diapers?
Bahh. I don't know why I am bothering to reply, but I'm bored. I've watched plenty of westerns - I find them pretty boring. Firefly had definite western underpinnings - but it was not "A WESTERN". Serenity had even less of a western influence. Mr. Whedon borrowed thematic elements from westerns, but I think both pieces of work have more in common with science fiction than westerns.
I am so sad no one would just let me make the comparison between the science fiction Reavers and fantasy/occult zombies. Somehow it had to devolve into some sort of argument about Native Americans and Hollywood depictions and... at no point was I trying to analyze the 'western' genre of Firefly, which was nearly nonexistant in Serenity! Oh well:) Points well taken.
I don't think anyone is going to want to start the fight that Reavers are like jihadists. Given the average misinformed slashdot reader, that would likely turn into a giant flamewar on Islam.
Well, yes, this is true. Sorry I left out a word. They never let him live long enough to find out how far it would go. When one's behavior perfectly simulates that of another group, can you not then be said to have the behaviors of that group? Reavers are defined by their behavior. They don't seem to have any sort of society, though.
Uhm, I was trying to point out the parallel of the Reavers to other genres Joss Whedon has done a lot of work in. I don't think anyone would appreciate your comparison of them to Apaches. Last I checked, the Apaches were not bloodthirsty cannibals...
Slashdot Mirror
I have compared it to things I was bitTorrenting (over a year ago, since that was the last time I spent any time BT'ing any TV shows). I think for the download time and file size, the resolution is not so terrible as to be distracting from watching the show. It's not DVD quality, though, I'll admit that. Plus you have the added benefit of legality!
I haven't had these difficulties on my machine, although I'll admit its an iBook, so maybe I have some sort of "Apple software on Apple hardware" advantage. It does pause when I go full screen, and sometimes spacebar as play/pause is a little glitchy. I've come to expect problems like this from media players, though.
It sounds like a lot of your problem is with trying to task switch while playing video. I've never had a good experience with trying to do something like that on ANY machine (and I've used PCs/*nix frequently in the past and still do, the iBook is my first Mac).
Unless you are a hifi addict, I think the resolution is sufficient. This weekend we are going to try running it to our TV through my husband's laptop, since he has S-Video out. I'm guessing the aliasing you can see when you look closely will disappear on the TV, due to phosphor affects (yeah, its one of those 'oldschool' regular tvs). So far we've caught up on Desperate Housewives (so I can talk to my mom about it again!) by viewing it with the iBook at the foot of the bed - unless you look for problems, your eyes will gloss over any aliasing unless you get up really close.
I'm guessing from the link in your sig that you live in the NYC area. It might come as a complete shock to you, but outside of that market and a few other large cities, VOD is nearly nonexistant. Even for people who have major cable provider service (like ComCast or TimeWarner). For example, I live in Florida. It is not available in the ENTIRE GEOGRAPHICAL REGION that I live in. Digital cable is also about twice as much as 'basic' here.
/.!) that are doing the same - with services like NetFlix, there's little use for having cable service unless you follow a sports team or feel shackled to traditional news media. We save a whole crapload of money a month, as well.
Realizing that TV mostly wastes our time, my husband and I cancelled cable service when we moved across town. I know of several other people (a lot I read about here on
The revolutionary thing about the video downloads via iTMS is not that they are the first to do it, it is the fact that they are the first to do it in a manner that is easily accessible with little to no entrance costs beyond owning a computer and an internet connection. I'm pretty sure most of my computer-unsavvy friends and relatives could handle using iTMS to catch that episode of Desperate Housewives or Lost that they missed (and I fully expect other shows to sign on with iTMS as it proves itself to be a valid distribution method). I know some people who bitTorrent shows when they miss them (for whatever reason, including their TiVo choking or their power being out or something), who would be more than happy to pay for the show to be able to get a legal copy.
But I'm getting off my point here. The point is, VOD is not as well infiltrated in the market as you may think. Please remember you (might) have bigcity/populous region blinders on. I do not live in a rural area (although it is not a 'big city' either..) but the local company here doesn't even have the equipment to push VOD even if the CABLE BOX might have a socket for it like they might be able to offer that service. iTMS or pirating is the only choice I have to catch things I didn't manage to catch via cable service (well, assuming I still had it).
The revolution of only paying for what you want to watch is coming. Do you really use all those channels you pay for now?
Your use of statistical 'evidence' is somewhat spurious.
I think the point of this endeavor is less to single out pet owners, or as a gateway to tracking people, but as a deterrent to a behavior pattern which has been evident for years. There is a big problem with people buying exotic pets (wherein 'exotic' means anything other than cats or dogs, pretty much, although they suffer from the same behavior), and then not liking them or not knowing how to take care of them. A lot of times, these animals are left on the roadside, or in a pond, in a misguided effort to give them a better habitat. Since they have been kept as pets, they are much more used to humans == food source than other wild animals. I think this Japanese effort is just a method to better inform pet owners of their responsibilites, and to be able to find the responsible party if a 'lost' animal hurts someone. Chipping is not harmful to the pet, and could easily be integrated with the licensing program a lot of countries have for pets of all types.
On the topic of amusing spam, has anyone ever gotten Hare Krishna spam? I did, once. I actually did some Google'rch to figure out what the hell it was. I kept it, too, because it makes me happy (coincidentally) for no apparent reason:
I really hope that Public Broadcasting takes notice of this. I would really love to get my PBS shows via the internet, and I wouldn't mind paying for them in this manner. I think it would really help support the stations (probably better than the money-making drives they do make) and their content lends itself to this sort of scheme. Plus it would expand the PBS shows available, instead of just the ones my local PBS decided to pick up.
Does anyone know how PBS broadcasting works? Do they pay the local cable companies to carry the channels? Do the cable companies pay them? Since PBS shows are accustomed to operating without commercial advertising (beyond the good ole "Brought to you by... Company X, making wodgets since 1000 BC, and viewers like you!" opener/closer), and they create a lot of 'atomic' shows that have no future in DVD distribution, I would think they would be eager for a market like this.
I'm just really excited by the prospects of a movement to the internet and a by-show charge as a distribution medium for television shows. iTMS will be able to compile much better viewership statistics than Nielson does, although without the advertising they are pretty much useless except as a way to inform the networks of what we really want to see. What's even better is if all the networks get on board, as well as independent productions, we will finally have a democratic television system. I'm tired of not being able to see such-and-such show because Comcast decided that the channel wasn't the right fit for my geographical area.
The only things that would not work for this distribution is news and sports. I don't know about any of you, but I stopped watching the television news a long time ago - the internet is a more reliable and more varied source of news. I can quickly check multiple news companies and overseas and get all angles on a story much better than being plopped in front of the FoxNews propaganda machine. So that's not a problem. C-Span fans might rejoice in downloadable content - and I would have to think they could provide the congressional proceedings and other c-span fodder for free. Sports will always do best as a live broadcast over cable, but I can see more events moving into pay-per-view format or some sort of season pass for your team.
Did anyone else mentally stumble over the awkward incorrect grammar in the summary? Example:
"that increasingly includes and women is joining in the fun"
Did the submitter C&P, or did he re-type?
Some of us don't bother with paying for cable. When my husband and I moved across town recently, we realized it was an excellent time to tell Comcast "No thanks, we think cable TV is a big fat waste of our money and our time." Most of what we watched regularly was available (at the end of the season) on DVD anyway, and usually in the NetFlix catalog. We also took the opportunity to give TiVo the finger for some of its more recent practices..
Total savings to us? 12.95 TiVo/month + ~$35 regular cable/month (never did find out what it would be at the new place, the old place had a special deal with the cable company)= $48. Let's round that to $50 for taxes and stuff. We now have 2/time unlimited NetFlix subscription, which is $15/month.
This means our total freed-up entertainment budget is $35/month. We also stopped going to movie theaters entirely (except in the special cases of movies we want to 'vote with our dollar' on, such as Serenity and March of the Penguins) so that is an untold savings per month. We also watch zero commercials now.
With the money left over, we could buy 17.5 shows PER MONTH on iTunes with this money. That's a lot. If you consider 4 shows/month for a particular title (like Lost or Desperate Housewives) it means we could follow 4 titles per month if we wanted to, without commercials. If we had less to spend that month, we could just hold back. If we didn't want to stay current (mostly I want to watch a couple so that I don't hear 'spoilers' at work or at the store or in the news..) we could wait for the DVDs to come out or until we have more funds available.
So let's review:
Your plan - pay a bunch of money for cable service, with countless amounts of programming you'll never watch. Do things on their schedule, build a PVR, or pay for TiVo. Watch commercials. Go through wankery if you want a digital copy.
Our plan - save a lot of money by not paying a monthly subscription for something we don't use that much anyway. Never watch commercials. Do things on our schedule, and have everything as digital content.
Of course, YMMV. Personally I've been happy with all the 'free time' and 'extra entertainment cash' hanging around that resulted from not having cable service.
Think back to your experiences in your science labs in school. If you were a good student, you probably cared about your grade. You probably understood on an intimate level that often experiments don't work properly, that there can be factors contributing to a bad degree of error in your measurements (maybe your ruler is inaccurate? Perhaps that high pressure front is affecting your delicate volume measurement?).
If you were to record measurements which seem to be out of line with the purpose of the lab, you take your grade into your own hands. The lab TAs and science teachers do not want to see accurate work from you - they want to see 'the right answer'. Not the actual answer, mind you. You could do very poorly on the lab assignment for having these spurious numbers reported. It could affect your final grade, which could affect your semester grade, which could affect your GPA, which could affect your future....
So you kowtow to the academic establishment, and you record a fake number that meets the goals of the lab, knowing that it is incorrect but that, in the end, you will get a good grade. Congratulations, you have successfully jumped through another US Science education Hoop (TM).
Until science teachers embrace the ability to discuss Things Going Wrong, or Getting Something Other Than Expected (scientific method? sometimes your hypothesis isn't true? what? What was the point then! Get back in there and prove your hypothesis was right! Or change your hypothesis! And for God's sake, get rid of that terrible data), science will continue to erode in the US. I would not be surprised if this sort of behavior isn't passed on to future scientists, making the majority of 'science', well, rather unscientific.
I would mod you +1 Interesting if I had mod points today.
Thanks for the tip, I've gotten tired of using iChat...
Do you know what is sad about all this?
::sigh::
Since you posted the passage, I can now distinctly remember reading that before.
I am curious, is 'Jacks's a doughnut' a common saying where you are from? I have not heard this turn of phrase before. Can you translate?
Considering their population views, I am unsure China would want to encourage what results when a pill has viagra-like side effects :)
I think you hit this spot on. I've used Windows (and previous to that, DOS!) for years upon years, but I got my first Mac just last month. It took me absolutely no time to figure out how to do 90% of the activities I normally use a home computer for. It DID take me a while to do some development tool installs, mostly because my experiences with linux make me expect the shell configuration files (think .bashrc or .cshrc) to be in my home directory.... OS X makes it very, very easy to learn how to do all your average fluff computer stuff, but it makes it a little difficult to do anything 'major' that might affect the system poorly. Personally, I like it. I'm considering getting some mini's for family members who are behind on computing, just because I think they could actually pick it up easily.
I will have to add this to my 'things to see next time I'm across the pond' list. Thanks for the confirmation that this place exists! It will be interesting to see whether British crackpots are any more or less funny than US crackpots.
No no no no. I am not talking about some sort of crazy zen 'total happiness'. I'm talking about baseline happy. Like, the absence of unhappy - that is, you don't have to force yourself out of bed just to go to work. Have you ever had work that was so unfulfilling, so obnoxious, so whatever, that you didn't even want to leave the house, dreaded going in to work? It happens to some people with some jobs. They are unhappy, and not just 'oh I had a bad day' but UNHAPPY. This fellow in the article is not UNHAPPY, but he might be HAPPIER in general with one type of job over another. Engineering might be a better 'fit' for him, or management might. Do you understand?
As far as the 'shallowness' of pursuing happiness - at least happiness is something that can be experienced without outside definition. Money (paper or electronic) is intrinsically worthless - it only has value because our society gives it value. Happiness is something you can value with or without outside definition - it is personal.
I think the market is in homebrew video. A large number of people use the photo iPods as their virtual expanding wallet of family photos. Just imagine being able to show Grandma a short video of that cute thing Junior did, without going to another room, setting up the tv and the VCR or the DVD player and then remembering the stuff and... well, you see?
The latest version of iTunes to come out added support for video podcasting, and with storage and bandwidth becoming less of a factor, I think we are going to see more and more people taking their blogs to the next step.. from text, to podcasts, to video podcasts.
Just because its an iPod doesn't mean it has to be music related.
2. Being stuck using older technologies.
I work on code that is older than I am. They are totally mystified as to why it is taking me longer to understand its structure, etc. than I did on the C++ work. Gee, I wonder if its because the technology was being fazed out while I was still in diapers?
Bahh. I don't know why I am bothering to reply, but I'm bored. I've watched plenty of westerns - I find them pretty boring. Firefly had definite western underpinnings - but it was not "A WESTERN". Serenity had even less of a western influence. Mr. Whedon borrowed thematic elements from westerns, but I think both pieces of work have more in common with science fiction than westerns.
I am so sad no one would just let me make the comparison between the science fiction Reavers and fantasy/occult zombies. Somehow it had to devolve into some sort of argument about Native Americans and Hollywood depictions and... at no point was I trying to analyze the 'western' genre of Firefly, which was nearly nonexistant in Serenity! Oh well :) Points well taken.
I don't think anyone is going to want to start the fight that Reavers are like jihadists. Given the average misinformed slashdot reader, that would likely turn into a giant flamewar on Islam.
Well, yes, this is true. Sorry I left out a word. They never let him live long enough to find out how far it would go. When one's behavior perfectly simulates that of another group, can you not then be said to have the behaviors of that group? Reavers are defined by their behavior. They don't seem to have any sort of society, though.
Your typo is hilariously funny in light of primate psychology. Thank you. Or was it intentional?
Uhm, I was trying to point out the parallel of the Reavers to other genres Joss Whedon has done a lot of work in. I don't think anyone would appreciate your comparison of them to Apaches. Last I checked, the Apaches were not bloodthirsty cannibals...