I mean, it's not like substantive patent reform -- in particular reform that as a side effect fixes this specific case -- is something they can exactly toss together before the term is up. And now that pretty much everyone realizes our economy is treading water before a recession, keeping the banks up seems like a good idea. I mean if we're going to be spending billions in tax payer money to keep banks afloat after the subprime mortgage fiasco, this doesn't seem like that big a deal.
Sometimes a band aid is better than a hastily planned and thus ill-conceived surgery.
Well I'm against software patents because they are a patent on math, the fundamental language of science and the blocks upon which all scientific progress is made. I'm against locking up software in patents for the same reason I'm against patenting stories written in natural languages.
I'll be willing to reconsider my stance when an experiment backs up that largely philosophical-sounding TOE. One of the consequences, though, being that as math is unpatentable, and everything is math, that means nothing is patentable.
In the meantime, math is an abstract description of how objects behave, it is not in fact an object itself. It is a concept. Software is math, an electronic computer that interprets software into voltage levels is not math.
"You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror." - George W. (November 2001).
There are quite a few countries that aren't "with" the U.S.A. so I guess that makes them the enemies from that statement.
You guess correctly, not that you really have to guess -- Bush's intention with that statement was quite clear.
It's a shame, too, because it could be taken the opposite way -- if you aren't "against" us, i.e. not engaging in terror attacks against the U.S., then that makes you "with" us in the war on terror, even if you aren't a direct U.S. ally. That almost makes sense. There are plenty of countries which aren't "with" us per se, but also have no love of terrorism and would cooperate with us in reasonable ways, to our mutual benefit.
Instead, sadly, it's a blatantly antagonistic statement that anyone who doesn't go along with whatever GW Bush says is effectively a terrorist sympathizer. Much like his definition of "partisan politics", which also means not doing whatever he says.
Math is an abstract concept, there is very little that IS math. A pendulum isn't math, math just describes it's motion. The gears in a watch aren't math, math just tells you what the ratio of gears should be. The gears themselves aren't math, they're physical objects. You don't assemble math into material objects, math is just a part of the rules of physics. Math is involved in the creation of many things, but the created thing isn't math.
Software, however, IS math. Or more pedantically, it's a machine-readable description of math. Does being machine-readable math make it more patentable than human-readable math? Without the machine to interpret the description and take tangible physical action, it is still nothing more than an abstract definition of mathematical operations. Just like the mathematical equation defining a pendulum's motion is just an abstraction until you build a pendulum and set it in motion, and if you do that, and patent it, you're patenting the physical device, not the mathematical description of its motion.
There's also reason to believe, based on Microsoft vs AT&T, that SCOTUS agrees with this interpretation that software by itself is just an idea and not patentable.
a mechanical device is made of matter you can use maths to describe it but then you can't patent the maths only the device. in a similar way software is only maths, you shouldn't be able to patent the software but maybe you should be able to patent it running on a specific device.
I think it's worth pointing out that, as best I can tell since they haven't actually issued a ruling on the specific subject, that SCOTUS agrees. The Justice states that they've "never held in this Court" that software is, by itself, patentable, but that an electronic device of which software is a part may be patented.
The CAFC may not be regretting its decisions, but it's been getting some pretty blunt signals from the USSC that they are not totally pleased with what the CAFC has done while on a long break from supervision.
Indeed, and I'm not sure if the USSC doesn't feel that they're flatly wrong and just haven't been given a reason to rule.
I recall that when AT&T v Microsoft hit the Supreme Court, one of the sides made an argument that seemed to imply that the patent being argued over covered pure software, and Justice Breyer said "I take it that we are operating under the assumption that software is patentable. We have never held that in this Court, have we?", and both sides quickly backed away from raising that issue. It's understandable why neither would want to give the court a reason to rule that software is unpatentable, though they may realize that they're only stalling for time. The DoJ lawyer arguing on behalf of Microsoft when asked by Stevens if he thought software was patentable, he said that by itself no it was not.
It may just be a matter of setting up the right case in which this is a fundamental issue and which can be appealed to the top.
I'd rather have the Chinese or whoever have to pay for it themselves.
Yeah, binoculars being so expensive and all. Oh, and manpower! I hear that comes at a premium in China!
You're being ridiculous. The fact is that China would have already found all of these satellites some time ago; they're a big country with a big intelligence agency just like ours, they can launch satellites so if they have any interest in finding satellites -- and they certainly do -- then they would have funded their own discovery effort. No hobbiest is discovering anything that China didn't already know.
The person next to you knows when to shut up, and there is in general better feedback.
And even if they don't necessarily shut up, they understand that if you don't pay attention to them, it's because you're paying attention to the road, a fact that they will generally be grateful for. A person on the phone expects to receive your full attention -- in general, it's considered rude if you're talking to someone on the phone and you ask them a question and they don't answer because they're paying attention to someone else. Especially if it's a mobile, most people will start going "hello? Are you there? Are you listening?" if you don't reply immediately. A person in the car doesn't expect that. And we respond to other people's expectations.
Yeah, and I can't wait until someone gets the Microsoft web server therapy, and after a couple weeks starts walking around screaming "Hacked by Chinese!"
Most good skins are ones where you can tell one side from the other.
The Q3 mod Navy Seals had skins that were fairly close to each other, because both sides would be wearing appropriate camouflage, like "light desert camo" vs "light with some darker spots desert camo", and failing to spot the small differences in the fraction of a second you'd have to decide to shoot resulted in a lot of team kills. Part of the charm of the game, imo.
Anyway, I can only see the problems this would result in. "Ooh, it's a congressman with a corporate lobbyist monkey on their back! Fire! Oh crap, that was a media monkey, not a defense monkey! I'm so sorry, forgive my teamkill!"
Even if what you said were completely correct, I would probably not pay attention because your asshole quotient has been far too high.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, no? And after "Your ignorance is their bliss" and "who the hell are YOU?" why the fuck do you think I should care what you say or think? Like you're an authority on polite discourse. I hate hypocrites who think their shit don't stink, who think they can be rude, and then get all offended when someone is rude back.
The only difference is that I AM completely correct, not because I'm a genius but because I actually bothered to look up the law. Whereas you seem happy to use me being rude to justify your own continued ignorance. Whatever works for you, buddy.
The only reference I have seen so far is [cornell.edu], which really is not a reference at all. It is about as specific as [chicagopubliclibrary.org]. The underlined and colored text preceding "[cornell.edu]" was what is called a "hyper-link", or just a "link". You click it with your left mouse button (or only mouse button if you are using a Mac), and it takes you to another web page. In this case, a web page at Cornell Law School containing the exact text of the portion of FISA which provides for warrantless wire taps. You read this web page, and then you too can have the amazing power of knowing what the law says. An amazing trick, I know. Here, I'll do it again: Click me and learn!.
His telekinesis could have ripped the room apart, but hey it's genius because Suresh managed to make all of Sylar's powers uncontrollable in a very precise plot convenient way - but forgivable
Except they never showed telekinesis as being something that just "happened", whereas they showed super-hearing as something that was always on and took control to tune down. But of course Suresh was taking a huge risk. I think he knew that.
the rest of your comments demonstrate a wonderful ability to do the writer's jobs for them. I have to conclude that the only rational explanation for Claire is that she is actually retarded - if you had said that, I might have bought it. But no, you're right, after all of those things I listed (there may be more!), she still has good reason to doubt.
Yes, she does have reason to doubt, or at least she is portrayed as doubting, and since it is her or Peter's life that would end if it turns out that it isn't literal immortality, that counts for something. The writers did their job of showing the character's doubts, just because you don't have any doesn't mean she wouldn't. I'm not doing their job for them, I'm trying to undo all the work you did in your effort to ignore the characters in the story and treat it like you're playing a character in the Heroes RPG and the DM says "Peter is about to blow up--- What do you do?" and you check in the source book to see what would happen if you shot him.
(just curious, when was Sylar's mental discipline demonstrated - and does he also think in another language like Claire's dad, which would certainly arouse at least curiosity if not suspicion, and why would the cop, who is a wanker in this future, not try to probe for thoughts and not be curious as to how Nathan has the mental prowess to block his powers)
Dude has a brain like the watches he works on, and he treats his and others as though they are machines to be fiddled with and corrected until they work perfectly. He constantly demonstrates a ridiculous amount of self control, from feigning fear or anger or compassion, to picking up on new abilities right after he acquires them even if the original owner never did -- the super-hearing power being the one exception due to its downside, but Isaac's blood hadn't even dried and Sylar was painting the future. Hell he even feigned his own death until he had an opportunity to escape.
Claire's dad only had to use tricks like thinking in Japanese because he was being directly interrogated by the cop who knew he was lying and trying to push his way into the guy's brain. The cop has no reason to be suspicious of "Nathan", Sylar doesn't have to somehow block the ability, all he has to do is avoid stray thoughts like "Boy, sure is great to be a mega-villain disguised as the President!" I think he has amply demonstrated discipline to do that.
and the Haitian never using his ability within a given radius? (remember, his power affects an entire floor of a building - a power that presumably goes through walls but not floors and ceilings,
What makes you think it's a "radius" effect? He nullifies Sylar's powers while Voice Command Girl is standing right next to him making Sylar obey. Seems more likely that it's a more personal ability just like his mind-wiping and he can nullify the powers of individuals he chooses. Otherwise, like I said, having him work with the cop would be pretty useless or he couldn't cancel a suspect's power and let the cop interrogate them at the same time. And just like he wouldn't nullify the cop's powers, he'd have no reason to nullify "Nathan's" powers either.
Remember Claire's dad only said it was a field that suppressed powers on that floor because he didn't want to reveal that it was actually the Haitian doing it, and half the time he said this the Haitian was standing in the room. Just like he let them think it was the radioisotope that allowed them to be tracked by some computer system so as not to reveal that it was actually a lit
Most of the scientific community seems to hold tightly to the notion that the human body is electrically neutral, ignoring that a human being is really an electro-chemical battery!
I know! That's why the machines want to use us as a power source!
Forget your silly EMF cancers, the real danger is that instead of plugging our bodies into their big generators while our brains are allowed to run free in a computer-generated utopia where we can all do super kung-fu, they'll keep us awake so we can run on treadmills generating power with our clothes!
Lost episodes don't (typically) waste half their time with filler subplots, Lost characters are actually likeable and generally don't do anything utterly, bone-headedly stupid. (It helps that the main character doesn't constantly whine.) Lost characters don't mysteriously disappear from one location then appear a day later in another, literally on the opposite side of the world, with no explanation or motivation.
No, they waste entire episodes with filler subplots whose only purpose is to explain why a character suddenly runs off into the jungle to do something that would have otherwise made absolutely zero sense based on the character up to the point, and that ultimately amounts to nothing because whatever they thought they were doing turns out to be a lie, or result in just another mystery. Then the character gets forgotten for half a season, as does the mystery too.
Lost characters practically teleport around that island willy-nilly, traipsing across the jungle, and always conveniently running into another group of people randomly traipsing across the jungle even though neither of them are following a trail and it's the middle of the night. It takes them months before they find the Other's camp despite traveling far and wide, but when they need a sense of urgency they're only a couple hours apart.
I can't believe your so hung up on Mojinder taking a plane when Lost makes 24's "sure you can drive from one side of LA to another at rush hour during a commercial break!" look plausible.
And when I watched season 1 of Lost, I went back to watch season 2... I'm sure as hell not going to watch season 2 of Heroes.
That just means you like Lost more. Which is fine, like I said it's your opinion. And yeah, if you didn't like Season 1 of Heroes then you definitely wouldn't like Season 2, it's rather substantially worse. I still watch Lost, but only because I got over expecting the writers to know what was going on any more than the viewer does. I just think of it as X-Files On An Island and it's all good.
Heck, the cop shot her at the behest of her father who knew full well that she'd live, and so she knows mere bullets can't kill her! How can you possibly claim that she doesn't know the extent of her powers, and by extension, Peter's, who, I remind you again, also came back to life in front of her very eyes?
She knows that he "died" when he had a piece of glass jammed in his brain, and didn't come back until it was removed. How does she know what would happen if she blew his brains out the back of his skull? Would she have to scoop them back in and hope for the best? She knows getting shot in the chest doesn't kill her, how does she know that nothing else possibly can? She repeatedly asked her father about the extent of her powers, making it fully clear she did not in fact know whether she could survive any arbitrary injury because she'd never tried blowing her brains out, and from the time it was first mentioned she acted frightened of the prospect of shooting Peter because she didn't know what would happen.
This is what I mean about Comic Book Guy-ing it out. You infer from what you've seen that she's unkillable, and thus presume that her character shouldn't have hesitated to shoot Peter. When in fact it makes perfect sense that when the moment came she was reluctant to do so, and Nathan "protect my little brother" Petrelli was the first to step up.
Remember the time Suresh tortures Sylar while hooking him up to some chemical that supposedly nullifies his powers, and then proceeds to torture him with a tuning fork (a comical scene in and of itself), a torture method that would only work if Sylar's powers were still working! (Of course, Sylar's powers were actually still working, but Suresh wasn't supposed to know that).
Uh, no, as Suresh specifies the chemical is supposed to prevent Sylar from controlling his powers, not eliminate them. And as super-hearing lady explained, and Sylar demonstrated when he first got it, if you can't control the super-hearing power then it is very much a form of torture. It was actually a pretty genius scene, but between not paying attention and being nit-picky (not a good combination!) you missed it. Oh well.
I suppose you're going to tell me that they were just too decent to use their powers around the President.
Why would the Haitian use his powers on "Nathan"? A subtle sense of practical humor? I'm assuming he uses them voluntarily, or he wouldn't do much good standing next to the cop. As to the cop, even in the future he was fairly crap at controlling his power, and Claire's dad had the mental discipline to avoid his powers even when being directly interrogated, Sylar at least matches him for mental discipline and would know to be careful around the cop who has no reason to be suspicious. What's so ludicrous about that?
Again, you're thinking from your semi-omniscient third-person view as someone who knows Nathan has been replaced by Sylar. Having the characters take advantage of that viewpoint is what would be bad writing.
And for what it's worth, Lost isn't as well written as some of the cable shows I mentioned.
No shit, which is why I couldn't believe you listed it first. Lost is "pretty consistent" because they never explain anything, and when they do explain something half a season later they explain that the previous explanation was just a lie. The characterization is terrible, every time they want a character to step into the limelight they have to spend the whole episode providing enough back story to explain why the character then rushes off to do something that would have up to that point made no sense at all. And pacing? Seriously? The show is proceding practically in real-time and half the episodes literally nothing happens, not even character development since every character present is just lying. And personally I just don't consider "tense, guarded, and lying" to be good characterization especially when it applies to everyone on screen.
If it ever comes to violent revolt, whether or not we're legally allowed to bear arms prior to the revolt is utterly irrelevant. We will immediately be reduced to guerrilla or terrorist tactics. We will be using home made explosives, and importing rockets, pistols, rifles, automatic weapons, grendades and ammo from black market arms dealers. We won't be much different than the Iraqi's current 'insurgents', and fighting for much the same reason... to take our own country back.
Well yes, since revolution is illegal, obviously the legality of owning guns is irrelevant when the revolution is in progress.
However, it being legal now means that when the revolution starts, you'll already own rifles and fertilizer. It'll become illegal quickly, so re-supply will have to come from the black market, but again it being legal now means the domestic black market will begin with a large stock, rather than having to immediately begin to import from other countries.
This will in fact be a huge leg up in a guerrilla war. Just like the Iraqi insurgency had a huge leg up from the fact that pretty much every household had at least one AK-47. I have no idea what we'd use in the place of the amazing RPG-7, but we'd at least have a good stock of firearms to begin with. If they'd had to start importing rifles from Iran and Syria in the beginning, the insurgency wouldn't have gotten started nearly as quickly and effectively.
Ultimately, though, I think the best reason to have the 2nd Amendment is to remind us that our country was itself founded on armed revolt, and the leaders of this revolt knew full well that another such revolt may be necessary in the future. Revolt is an American principle, and the 2nd Amendment enshrines it in our highest law.
The only edge we'll have over the iraqis is that -hopefully- our own army will have a slightly harder time killing fellow americans. But if history has taught us anything that shouldn't be a much a deterrent as one would think it should be.
The parts of the army that stay loyal will probably not have that hard a time shooting "traitors". At the same time, I think our biggest edge will be that sections of the military would defect to the revolutionary side. If even a small portion defects, that could provide enough skills and equipment for a guerrilla army to fight effectively for many years.
On a lighter but related note, I thought it was pretty funny in Jericho where it was mentioned there was a "wild card" that hadn't joined any of the new unions yet. I knew who it was before they even got to the part about them having lots of oil -- it was Texas, of course. Yeah I have a strong feeling that even if they weren't necessarily on the side of the revolution, they also wouldn't exactly cling to the federal government either. They still half think of themselves as an independent nation.
This is not supported by what is actually depicted in the show.
Sure it is. Claire doesn't know the extent of her or Peter's powers and she demonstrates this fear; it's just we the viewer who have already assumed that Claire and thus Peter are completely immortal and aren't afraid of Claire shooting her.
Is that what bothers you? The difference between what a sci-fi attuned audience would know and infer about the heroes' abilities vs what the characters themselves know? Sure maybe that disconnect leaves the show open to this kind of criticism, but I don't think that makes the writing bad.
"what TV series meets your writing standards" - Lost,
You're freaking kidding me. You're lambasting Heroes for plot holes, then saying that the quintessential "make shit up that makes absolutely no sense, and refrain from explaining it because we sure as hell don't know what's going on either" show meets your standards for good writing? That's my mindless entertainment; I like watching it just to see what random changes occur to the plot and characters. They have built themselves the nice out that since pretty much everything is built around lies and deception, they can always change the explanation whenever they want. maybe that's how they out-do the Heroes writers -- realizing that internal consistency is only an obstacle if you reveal the rules.
He took a cab from India to NYC? Wow, that's a fare.
I guess I don't know exactly what specific event in the series you're talking about. But gee let me think... He took a fucking plane? Was that so hard to figure out? Is it such a crime that they didn't spell it out for you?
Because I paid for the DVDs, like a sucker, because a lot of my friends said it was a great show.
Your friends are right, it is a great show. You're just weird and picky, and should probably rent before you buy if it's going to make you so bitter. Seriously, what TV series meets your writing standards?
how *did* Mohinder get back to New York, for example?
I dunno, he took a cab or rented a car? You're complaining about filler, but then whine about them not showing the most mundane thing possible?
Hell, even the scene where Sylar goes to see his mom. WTF was that about, other than filler?
I know, and what's up with that scene in Macbeth where he hallucinates a dagger?! It has nothing to do with anything! Other than Macbeth's state of mind, of course.
Filler, character development, whatever. Personally I thought him going to her basically asking forgiveness by asking if he could be normal and insignificant, only to have her insist that he can and must be somebody, was a good way of adding some depth to the character.
I guess if they had taken out all of that kind of stuff, they could have made a very punchy 13 episode show, but I think it would have felt hollow and shallow.
Sorry, I'm a horrible bitter person, but I hate it when a half-dozen people insist I watch this great new show, and the show is crap.
Well you're entitled to your opinion, but I'm really wondering what shows meet your standards. I'm also wondering why you slogged through the whole thing if you hated it so much...
Characters in stories like Heroes are fictional, and aren't supposed to be real humans in real situations with real emotions.
If they aren't human, if they show no semblance of human emotion, then they aren't interesting. A character who is specifically emotionless, like say Spock, is only interesting due to their contrast with the humans or how they themselves end up showing emotion. That's why they're called "characters".
In fiction writing, it is far more important to be internally consistent than it is to be a slave to realism.
Okay, well it was internally consistent for Peter to freak out and not know what to do when he loses control of his nuclear powers, because that's the way the character had been presented the whole time. He had some training in controlling his powers, yes, but the only time he was shown to be fully in control as you would have him be is as Dark Future Peter.
It would have made no sense whatsoever for Peter to suddenly go "Oh noes I'm blowing up just like my dream, but wait no big deal I can fly, and OH RIGHT I can stop time and teleport! So I'll just stop time, teleport over North Korea, blow up inside their underground nuclear testing facility and not only save New York but stop a future war with NK, and hey before I do that while time is stopped I'll go check on Sylar and make sure he's dead, maybe take him with me when I blow up to make double sure he's not in season 2".
Peter doing what you think he should have done would have been incredibly inconsistent with his character. But for some geeks, only the internal consistency of the physics seems to matter.
No one should be able to look back at the story arc and say "but wait, why didn't X just do Y?"
No, wrong, every story SHOULD have a moment when you say "but wait, why didn't X just do Y? Oh... right... because of the character's feelings!" Characters should make mistakes, they should miss opportunities, they should let someone live when reason and logic says they should kill them, because otherwise they're completely boring robots. Show me a story where you can never find a way that the character couldn't have done something better or smarter, and I'll show you a sad boring uninteresting story probably written by Ayn Rand.
I shudder to think of what disasters Shakespeare's plays would have been had he followed this philosophy. Flawed characters who made what were in hindsight obvious mistakes were the essence of his plays' poignancy.
Heroes is hardly Hamlet, but if you stop thinking in terms of what the characters could have done, I think you'll see that there was very much a sense of inevitability, driven in part by the human failings of the characters themselves.
And most importantly - many high value shows seemed to be airing new episodes in the middle of the strike.
Uh, because the strike only affected writing of new episodes, not the filming or airing of new episodes. Whatever scripts the networks had when the strike started, they could film, and any shows they had filmed, they could wait to air any time they wanted. I'm certain that in many cases this was strategic -- filming shows earlier, and then waiting until the middle of the strike when the hope was that other networks would be showing re-runs.
I think overall this strike was extremely effective. The only way in way I can see in which SWG was shown to be weakened by this strike was that the networks realized that in a pinch they could fill their time slots with writer-less reality TV schlock.
Slashdot Mirror
I mean, it's not like substantive patent reform -- in particular reform that as a side effect fixes this specific case -- is something they can exactly toss together before the term is up. And now that pretty much everyone realizes our economy is treading water before a recession, keeping the banks up seems like a good idea. I mean if we're going to be spending billions in tax payer money to keep banks afloat after the subprime mortgage fiasco, this doesn't seem like that big a deal.
Sometimes a band aid is better than a hastily planned and thus ill-conceived surgery.
Well I'm against software patents because they are a patent on math, the fundamental language of science and the blocks upon which all scientific progress is made. I'm against locking up software in patents for the same reason I'm against patenting stories written in natural languages.
I'll be willing to reconsider my stance when an experiment backs up that largely philosophical-sounding TOE. One of the consequences, though, being that as math is unpatentable, and everything is math, that means nothing is patentable.
In the meantime, math is an abstract description of how objects behave, it is not in fact an object itself. It is a concept. Software is math, an electronic computer that interprets software into voltage levels is not math.
"You're either with us or against us in the fight against terror." - George W. (November 2001).
There are quite a few countries that aren't "with" the U.S.A. so I guess that makes them the enemies from that statement.
You guess correctly, not that you really have to guess -- Bush's intention with that statement was quite clear.
It's a shame, too, because it could be taken the opposite way -- if you aren't "against" us, i.e. not engaging in terror attacks against the U.S., then that makes you "with" us in the war on terror, even if you aren't a direct U.S. ally. That almost makes sense. There are plenty of countries which aren't "with" us per se, but also have no love of terrorism and would cooperate with us in reasonable ways, to our mutual benefit.
Instead, sadly, it's a blatantly antagonistic statement that anyone who doesn't go along with whatever GW Bush says is effectively a terrorist sympathizer. Much like his definition of "partisan politics", which also means not doing whatever he says.
Math is an abstract concept, there is very little that IS math. A pendulum isn't math, math just describes it's motion. The gears in a watch aren't math, math just tells you what the ratio of gears should be. The gears themselves aren't math, they're physical objects. You don't assemble math into material objects, math is just a part of the rules of physics. Math is involved in the creation of many things, but the created thing isn't math.
Software, however, IS math. Or more pedantically, it's a machine-readable description of math. Does being machine-readable math make it more patentable than human-readable math? Without the machine to interpret the description and take tangible physical action, it is still nothing more than an abstract definition of mathematical operations. Just like the mathematical equation defining a pendulum's motion is just an abstraction until you build a pendulum and set it in motion, and if you do that, and patent it, you're patenting the physical device, not the mathematical description of its motion.
There's also reason to believe, based on Microsoft vs AT&T, that SCOTUS agrees with this interpretation that software by itself is just an idea and not patentable.
a mechanical device is made of matter you can use maths to describe it but then you can't patent the maths only the device.
in a similar way software is only maths, you shouldn't be able to patent the software but maybe you should be able to patent it running on a specific device.
I think it's worth pointing out that, as best I can tell since they haven't actually issued a ruling on the specific subject, that SCOTUS agrees. The Justice states that they've "never held in this Court" that software is, by itself, patentable, but that an electronic device of which software is a part may be patented.
The CAFC may not be regretting its decisions, but it's been getting some pretty blunt signals from the USSC that they are not totally pleased with what the CAFC has done while on a long break from supervision.
Indeed, and I'm not sure if the USSC doesn't feel that they're flatly wrong and just haven't been given a reason to rule.
I recall that when AT&T v Microsoft hit the Supreme Court, one of the sides made an argument that seemed to imply that the patent being argued over covered pure software, and Justice Breyer said "I take it that we are operating under the assumption that software is patentable. We have never held that in this Court, have we?", and both sides quickly backed away from raising that issue. It's understandable why neither would want to give the court a reason to rule that software is unpatentable, though they may realize that they're only stalling for time. The DoJ lawyer arguing on behalf of Microsoft when asked by Stevens if he thought software was patentable, he said that by itself no it was not.
It may just be a matter of setting up the right case in which this is a fundamental issue and which can be appealed to the top.
I'd rather have the Chinese or whoever have to pay for it themselves.
Yeah, binoculars being so expensive and all. Oh, and manpower! I hear that comes at a premium in China!
You're being ridiculous. The fact is that China would have already found all of these satellites some time ago; they're a big country with a big intelligence agency just like ours, they can launch satellites so if they have any interest in finding satellites -- and they certainly do -- then they would have funded their own discovery effort. No hobbiest is discovering anything that China didn't already know.
Uh, okay, well how about this:
9/11 TERRORISTS WITH US OR AGAINST US 9/11 THINK OF THE CHILDREN TERROR TERROR!
There, did that turn your brain off? No? Shit! Why does this crap only work in America?!
The person next to you knows when to shut up, and there is in general better feedback.
And even if they don't necessarily shut up, they understand that if you don't pay attention to them, it's because you're paying attention to the road, a fact that they will generally be grateful for. A person on the phone expects to receive your full attention -- in general, it's considered rude if you're talking to someone on the phone and you ask them a question and they don't answer because they're paying attention to someone else. Especially if it's a mobile, most people will start going "hello? Are you there? Are you listening?" if you don't reply immediately. A person in the car doesn't expect that. And we respond to other people's expectations.
Legals reasons include surveillance laws which prohibit ISPs from monitoring a user's data unless compelled by a warrant.
Silly UK government! The secret password to get around the law isn't "piracy", it's "TERROR"!
I can't wait till I'm my own websever.
Yeah, and I can't wait until someone gets the Microsoft web server therapy, and after a couple weeks starts walking around screaming "Hacked by Chinese!"
Most good skins are ones where you can tell one side from the other.
The Q3 mod Navy Seals had skins that were fairly close to each other, because both sides would be wearing appropriate camouflage, like "light desert camo" vs "light with some darker spots desert camo", and failing to spot the small differences in the fraction of a second you'd have to decide to shoot resulted in a lot of team kills. Part of the charm of the game, imo.
Anyway, I can only see the problems this would result in. "Ooh, it's a congressman with a corporate lobbyist monkey on their back! Fire! Oh crap, that was a media monkey, not a defense monkey! I'm so sorry, forgive my teamkill!"
Even if what you said were completely correct, I would probably not pay attention because your asshole quotient has been far too high.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander, no? And after "Your ignorance is their bliss" and "who the hell are YOU?" why the fuck do you think I should care what you say or think? Like you're an authority on polite discourse. I hate hypocrites who think their shit don't stink, who think they can be rude, and then get all offended when someone is rude back.
The only difference is that I AM completely correct, not because I'm a genius but because I actually bothered to look up the law. Whereas you seem happy to use me being rude to justify your own continued ignorance. Whatever works for you, buddy.
His telekinesis could have ripped the room apart, but hey it's genius because Suresh managed to make all of Sylar's powers uncontrollable in a very precise plot convenient way - but forgivable
Except they never showed telekinesis as being something that just "happened", whereas they showed super-hearing as something that was always on and took control to tune down. But of course Suresh was taking a huge risk. I think he knew that.
the rest of your comments demonstrate a wonderful ability to do the writer's jobs for them. I have to conclude that the only rational explanation for Claire is that she is actually retarded - if you had said that, I might have bought it. But no, you're right, after all of those things I listed (there may be more!), she still has good reason to doubt.
Yes, she does have reason to doubt, or at least she is portrayed as doubting, and since it is her or Peter's life that would end if it turns out that it isn't literal immortality, that counts for something. The writers did their job of showing the character's doubts, just because you don't have any doesn't mean she wouldn't. I'm not doing their job for them, I'm trying to undo all the work you did in your effort to ignore the characters in the story and treat it like you're playing a character in the Heroes RPG and the DM says "Peter is about to blow up--- What do you do?" and you check in the source book to see what would happen if you shot him.
(just curious, when was Sylar's mental discipline demonstrated - and does he also think in another language like Claire's dad, which would certainly arouse at least curiosity if not suspicion, and why would the cop, who is a wanker in this future, not try to probe for thoughts and not be curious as to how Nathan has the mental prowess to block his powers)
Dude has a brain like the watches he works on, and he treats his and others as though they are machines to be fiddled with and corrected until they work perfectly. He constantly demonstrates a ridiculous amount of self control, from feigning fear or anger or compassion, to picking up on new abilities right after he acquires them even if the original owner never did -- the super-hearing power being the one exception due to its downside, but Isaac's blood hadn't even dried and Sylar was painting the future. Hell he even feigned his own death until he had an opportunity to escape.
Claire's dad only had to use tricks like thinking in Japanese because he was being directly interrogated by the cop who knew he was lying and trying to push his way into the guy's brain. The cop has no reason to be suspicious of "Nathan", Sylar doesn't have to somehow block the ability, all he has to do is avoid stray thoughts like "Boy, sure is great to be a mega-villain disguised as the President!" I think he has amply demonstrated discipline to do that.
and the Haitian never using his ability within a given radius? (remember, his power affects an entire floor of a building - a power that presumably goes through walls but not floors and ceilings,
What makes you think it's a "radius" effect? He nullifies Sylar's powers while Voice Command Girl is standing right next to him making Sylar obey. Seems more likely that it's a more personal ability just like his mind-wiping and he can nullify the powers of individuals he chooses. Otherwise, like I said, having him work with the cop would be pretty useless or he couldn't cancel a suspect's power and let the cop interrogate them at the same time. And just like he wouldn't nullify the cop's powers, he'd have no reason to nullify "Nathan's" powers either.
Remember Claire's dad only said it was a field that suppressed powers on that floor because he didn't want to reveal that it was actually the Haitian doing it, and half the time he said this the Haitian was standing in the room. Just like he let them think it was the radioisotope that allowed them to be tracked by some computer system so as not to reveal that it was actually a lit
Most of the scientific community seems to hold tightly to the notion that the human body is electrically neutral, ignoring that a human being is really an electro-chemical battery!
I know! That's why the machines want to use us as a power source!
Forget your silly EMF cancers, the real danger is that instead of plugging our bodies into their big generators while our brains are allowed to run free in a computer-generated utopia where we can all do super kung-fu, they'll keep us awake so we can run on treadmills generating power with our clothes!
I wanna be a battery, not a hamster!
Lost episodes don't (typically) waste half their time with filler subplots, Lost characters are actually likeable and generally don't do anything utterly, bone-headedly stupid. (It helps that the main character doesn't constantly whine.) Lost characters don't mysteriously disappear from one location then appear a day later in another, literally on the opposite side of the world, with no explanation or motivation.
No, they waste entire episodes with filler subplots whose only purpose is to explain why a character suddenly runs off into the jungle to do something that would have otherwise made absolutely zero sense based on the character up to the point, and that ultimately amounts to nothing because whatever they thought they were doing turns out to be a lie, or result in just another mystery. Then the character gets forgotten for half a season, as does the mystery too.
Lost characters practically teleport around that island willy-nilly, traipsing across the jungle, and always conveniently running into another group of people randomly traipsing across the jungle even though neither of them are following a trail and it's the middle of the night. It takes them months before they find the Other's camp despite traveling far and wide, but when they need a sense of urgency they're only a couple hours apart.
I can't believe your so hung up on Mojinder taking a plane when Lost makes 24's "sure you can drive from one side of LA to another at rush hour during a commercial break!" look plausible.
And when I watched season 1 of Lost, I went back to watch season 2... I'm sure as hell not going to watch season 2 of Heroes.
That just means you like Lost more. Which is fine, like I said it's your opinion. And yeah, if you didn't like Season 1 of Heroes then you definitely wouldn't like Season 2, it's rather substantially worse. I still watch Lost, but only because I got over expecting the writers to know what was going on any more than the viewer does. I just think of it as X-Files On An Island and it's all good.
Heck, the cop shot her at the behest of her father who knew full well that she'd live, and so she knows mere bullets can't kill her! How can you possibly claim that she doesn't know the extent of her powers, and by extension, Peter's, who, I remind you again, also came back to life in front of her very eyes?
She knows that he "died" when he had a piece of glass jammed in his brain, and didn't come back until it was removed. How does she know what would happen if she blew his brains out the back of his skull? Would she have to scoop them back in and hope for the best? She knows getting shot in the chest doesn't kill her, how does she know that nothing else possibly can? She repeatedly asked her father about the extent of her powers, making it fully clear she did not in fact know whether she could survive any arbitrary injury because she'd never tried blowing her brains out, and from the time it was first mentioned she acted frightened of the prospect of shooting Peter because she didn't know what would happen.
This is what I mean about Comic Book Guy-ing it out. You infer from what you've seen that she's unkillable, and thus presume that her character shouldn't have hesitated to shoot Peter. When in fact it makes perfect sense that when the moment came she was reluctant to do so, and Nathan "protect my little brother" Petrelli was the first to step up.
Remember the time Suresh tortures Sylar while hooking him up to some chemical that supposedly nullifies his powers, and then proceeds to torture him with a tuning fork (a comical scene in and of itself), a torture method that would only work if Sylar's powers were still working! (Of course, Sylar's powers were actually still working, but Suresh wasn't supposed to know that).
Uh, no, as Suresh specifies the chemical is supposed to prevent Sylar from controlling his powers, not eliminate them. And as super-hearing lady explained, and Sylar demonstrated when he first got it, if you can't control the super-hearing power then it is very much a form of torture. It was actually a pretty genius scene, but between not paying attention and being nit-picky (not a good combination!) you missed it. Oh well.
I suppose you're going to tell me that they were just too decent to use their powers around the President.
Why would the Haitian use his powers on "Nathan"? A subtle sense of practical humor? I'm assuming he uses them voluntarily, or he wouldn't do much good standing next to the cop. As to the cop, even in the future he was fairly crap at controlling his power, and Claire's dad had the mental discipline to avoid his powers even when being directly interrogated, Sylar at least matches him for mental discipline and would know to be careful around the cop who has no reason to be suspicious. What's so ludicrous about that?
Again, you're thinking from your semi-omniscient third-person view as someone who knows Nathan has been replaced by Sylar. Having the characters take advantage of that viewpoint is what would be bad writing.
And for what it's worth, Lost isn't as well written as some of the cable shows I mentioned.
No shit, which is why I couldn't believe you listed it first. Lost is "pretty consistent" because they never explain anything, and when they do explain something half a season later they explain that the previous explanation was just a lie. The characterization is terrible, every time they want a character to step into the limelight they have to spend the whole episode providing enough back story to explain why the character then rushes off to do something that would have up to that point made no sense at all. And pacing? Seriously? The show is proceding practically in real-time and half the episodes literally nothing happens, not even character development since every character present is just lying. And personally I just don't consider "tense, guarded, and lying" to be good characterization especially when it applies to everyone on screen.
If it ever comes to violent revolt, whether or not we're legally allowed to bear arms prior to the revolt is utterly irrelevant. We will immediately be reduced to guerrilla or terrorist tactics. We will be using home made explosives, and importing rockets, pistols, rifles, automatic weapons, grendades and ammo from black market arms dealers. We won't be much different than the Iraqi's current 'insurgents', and fighting for much the same reason... to take our own country back.
Well yes, since revolution is illegal, obviously the legality of owning guns is irrelevant when the revolution is in progress.
However, it being legal now means that when the revolution starts, you'll already own rifles and fertilizer. It'll become illegal quickly, so re-supply will have to come from the black market, but again it being legal now means the domestic black market will begin with a large stock, rather than having to immediately begin to import from other countries.
This will in fact be a huge leg up in a guerrilla war. Just like the Iraqi insurgency had a huge leg up from the fact that pretty much every household had at least one AK-47. I have no idea what we'd use in the place of the amazing RPG-7, but we'd at least have a good stock of firearms to begin with. If they'd had to start importing rifles from Iran and Syria in the beginning, the insurgency wouldn't have gotten started nearly as quickly and effectively.
Ultimately, though, I think the best reason to have the 2nd Amendment is to remind us that our country was itself founded on armed revolt, and the leaders of this revolt knew full well that another such revolt may be necessary in the future. Revolt is an American principle, and the 2nd Amendment enshrines it in our highest law.
The only edge we'll have over the iraqis is that -hopefully- our own army will have a slightly harder time killing fellow americans. But if history has taught us anything that shouldn't be a much a deterrent as one would think it should be.
The parts of the army that stay loyal will probably not have that hard a time shooting "traitors". At the same time, I think our biggest edge will be that sections of the military would defect to the revolutionary side. If even a small portion defects, that could provide enough skills and equipment for a guerrilla army to fight effectively for many years.
On a lighter but related note, I thought it was pretty funny in Jericho where it was mentioned there was a "wild card" that hadn't joined any of the new unions yet. I knew who it was before they even got to the part about them having lots of oil -- it was Texas, of course. Yeah I have a strong feeling that even if they weren't necessarily on the side of the revolution, they also wouldn't exactly cling to the federal government either. They still half think of themselves as an independent nation.
This is not supported by what is actually depicted in the show.
Sure it is. Claire doesn't know the extent of her or Peter's powers and she demonstrates this fear; it's just we the viewer who have already assumed that Claire and thus Peter are completely immortal and aren't afraid of Claire shooting her.
Is that what bothers you? The difference between what a sci-fi attuned audience would know and infer about the heroes' abilities vs what the characters themselves know? Sure maybe that disconnect leaves the show open to this kind of criticism, but I don't think that makes the writing bad.
"what TV series meets your writing standards" - Lost,
You're freaking kidding me. You're lambasting Heroes for plot holes, then saying that the quintessential "make shit up that makes absolutely no sense, and refrain from explaining it because we sure as hell don't know what's going on either" show meets your standards for good writing? That's my mindless entertainment; I like watching it just to see what random changes occur to the plot and characters. They have built themselves the nice out that since pretty much everything is built around lies and deception, they can always change the explanation whenever they want. maybe that's how they out-do the Heroes writers -- realizing that internal consistency is only an obstacle if you reveal the rules.
He took a cab from India to NYC? Wow, that's a fare.
I guess I don't know exactly what specific event in the series you're talking about. But gee let me think... He took a fucking plane? Was that so hard to figure out? Is it such a crime that they didn't spell it out for you?
Because I paid for the DVDs, like a sucker, because a lot of my friends said it was a great show.
Your friends are right, it is a great show. You're just weird and picky, and should probably rent before you buy if it's going to make you so bitter. Seriously, what TV series meets your writing standards?
how *did* Mohinder get back to New York, for example?
I dunno, he took a cab or rented a car? You're complaining about filler, but then whine about them not showing the most mundane thing possible?
Hell, even the scene where Sylar goes to see his mom. WTF was that about, other than filler?
I know, and what's up with that scene in Macbeth where he hallucinates a dagger?! It has nothing to do with anything! Other than Macbeth's state of mind, of course.
Filler, character development, whatever. Personally I thought him going to her basically asking forgiveness by asking if he could be normal and insignificant, only to have her insist that he can and must be somebody, was a good way of adding some depth to the character.
I guess if they had taken out all of that kind of stuff, they could have made a very punchy 13 episode show, but I think it would have felt hollow and shallow.
Sorry, I'm a horrible bitter person, but I hate it when a half-dozen people insist I watch this great new show, and the show is crap.
Well you're entitled to your opinion, but I'm really wondering what shows meet your standards. I'm also wondering why you slogged through the whole thing if you hated it so much...
Characters in stories like Heroes are fictional, and aren't supposed to be real humans in real situations with real emotions.
If they aren't human, if they show no semblance of human emotion, then they aren't interesting. A character who is specifically emotionless, like say Spock, is only interesting due to their contrast with the humans or how they themselves end up showing emotion. That's why they're called "characters".
In fiction writing, it is far more important to be internally consistent than it is to be a slave to realism.
Okay, well it was internally consistent for Peter to freak out and not know what to do when he loses control of his nuclear powers, because that's the way the character had been presented the whole time. He had some training in controlling his powers, yes, but the only time he was shown to be fully in control as you would have him be is as Dark Future Peter.
It would have made no sense whatsoever for Peter to suddenly go "Oh noes I'm blowing up just like my dream, but wait no big deal I can fly, and OH RIGHT I can stop time and teleport! So I'll just stop time, teleport over North Korea, blow up inside their underground nuclear testing facility and not only save New York but stop a future war with NK, and hey before I do that while time is stopped I'll go check on Sylar and make sure he's dead, maybe take him with me when I blow up to make double sure he's not in season 2".
Peter doing what you think he should have done would have been incredibly inconsistent with his character. But for some geeks, only the internal consistency of the physics seems to matter.
No one should be able to look back at the story arc and say "but wait, why didn't X just do Y?"
No, wrong, every story SHOULD have a moment when you say "but wait, why didn't X just do Y? Oh... right... because of the character's feelings!" Characters should make mistakes, they should miss opportunities, they should let someone live when reason and logic says they should kill them, because otherwise they're completely boring robots. Show me a story where you can never find a way that the character couldn't have done something better or smarter, and I'll show you a sad boring uninteresting story probably written by Ayn Rand.
I shudder to think of what disasters Shakespeare's plays would have been had he followed this philosophy. Flawed characters who made what were in hindsight obvious mistakes were the essence of his plays' poignancy.
Heroes is hardly Hamlet, but if you stop thinking in terms of what the characters could have done, I think you'll see that there was very much a sense of inevitability, driven in part by the human failings of the characters themselves.
And most importantly - many high value shows seemed to be airing new episodes in the middle of the strike.
Uh, because the strike only affected writing of new episodes, not the filming or airing of new episodes. Whatever scripts the networks had when the strike started, they could film, and any shows they had filmed, they could wait to air any time they wanted. I'm certain that in many cases this was strategic -- filming shows earlier, and then waiting until the middle of the strike when the hope was that other networks would be showing re-runs.
I think overall this strike was extremely effective. The only way in way I can see in which SWG was shown to be weakened by this strike was that the networks realized that in a pinch they could fill their time slots with writer-less reality TV schlock.