What I never understood was, how do you prepare for these "If I just did X..." situations? Do you have warning that you're going to encounter a medusa (short of seeing it;)), or of there being a BigHairyNastyThing up ahead, which can inform the knowledgeable player that they should prepare for it (e.g., put on a blindfold, get out a torch, run the hell away)?
There are a few situations where you always know you'll run into trouble. The level where Medusa lives is always there, and is easily recognizable, so you know if you get there that Medusa is nearby.
Other than that, you prepare just by knowing it is possible to get into certain situations and having the appropriate counters on hand. E.g. Touch of Death can be countered with Magic Resistance, so you should go about finding an item with that property before you're likely to encounter a monster who uses it. If one shows up before you've gotten resistance, well then you should be prepared with something like a scroll of teleport level or a wand of digging so you can get your sorry butt out of there before they have a chance to use it. Or just general caution such as *never* going around blind without gloves on if you think it's even remotely possible there's a cockatrice corpse lying around (in your blind groping you'll touch it and turn to stone).
All of this is subject to the random number generator. Knowing that you want magic resistance, spell reflection, a blessed unicorn horn, a blindfold, etc etc is one thing, actually getting it before you need it is another. Though in your travels you'll usually find something that could at least help save you. In Nethack, there's usually more than one way to approach something.
There's lots of stuff that can instantly kill you in Nethack.
Touching a cockatrice with bare skin will turn you to stone.
Seeing medusa's face will do likewise.
Some monsters can use Touch of Death, and guess what it does if you aren't resistant to magic.
Wands of Death.
Black dragon breath.
Being dragged underwater by an eel.
There's more, plus a host of things that don't kill you -instantly-, but are guaranteed to kill you in a few turns if you don't do anything.
The upside is that every instant death in the game has a counter. It just might take you a couple of deaths to figure it out...
but really, despite how harsh it can be, Nethack has always struck me as the least "cheap" game ever. There's almost always something you could have done, or some way to have prepared.
I had blotted that agony out of my brain, actually. I never beat FFVII, but I did watch my friend fight Sephiroth, who took many KotR summons, and who had his -own- lengthy summons and special attacks with cut scenes. It was truly ridiculous. We were both basically spectators to the fight.
He's spot on about allowing controller remapping, subtitles for deaf people or kids whose parents make them turn the volume off, forced-death boss fights (I remember one in Chrono Cross where I used a massive number of potions, curative spells, ethers, etc to survive and continually damaged the boss, ultimately giving up and letting him kill me just to see if I was "supposed" to lose it- and promptly reset so I could redo it without losing all the items.)
The way this should be done, if you feel you must, is how it was done in Final Fantasy IV (USA II). Cecil, the main character, was on the path to becoming a Paladin. As the last part of the challenge, you face off against Cecil's former self as a Dark Knight, who is extremely strong. The in-game message tells you something along the lines of violence not being the way, and you're supposed to let the Dark Knight beat you, though of course this particular lesson is forgotten as soon as you become a paladin and proceed to use violence to solve all future problems. The catch, though, is that if you decide you want cleanse your soul by kicking your evil self's butt it is actually possible to do so. Which is good, not just because it gives you multiple ways of getting through and not having a ridiculous 'forced' loss, but it also keeps the fundamental morality of the FF world intact: Sure, you can solve some problems without using violence, but all problems are solvable through violence if only you use enough of it.:)
Heh, yeah I know, there's nothing worse than a non-skipable cut scene.
Oh, wait, I can think of one thing, though it's more a variation on a theme: The un-skipable Summons in a Final Fantasy.
FFVII's summons were absolutely awesome... the first time. They were still pretty cool up through let's say the twentieth time. But after the thousandth time you've used your summon you'll just want to gouge your eyes out waiting. Especially since the power of the summon seems to scale with the length of the cutscene. Okay, Bahamat Zero, would you mind flying to our planet from outer space a little FASTER maybe? Or how about just sticking around in orbit above my head, since you know I'm going to need you again soon...
...the implication being that it just slams on the brakes or kills the engine or both.
Uh... I see how that's a possible implication, but it's not one I assumed applied, simply because that wouldn't just be alarming but rather stark-raving bat-shit loco.
What the article describes is "remotely shutting down vehicles". They're just doing it in a relatively sane way, slowing the car gradually by disengaging the transmission rather than locking the brakes or something idiotic that would just be begging for lawsuits both against On-Star and any police department that used this feature and inevitably caused a horrible accident. Instead, it's merely a quiet request for lawsuits since it is still going to inevitably lead to an accident, it just won't be in the first day the system is used.
This argument appears predicated on the belief that even if a customer doesn't voluntarily and willingly "opt in", that it can still somehow be used by police or hackers. I'm sorry, but that's simply not how it works.
Okay, but if you -do- opt in then it can be used by police or hackers. I would never do such a thing, but since they don't ever discuss any of the possibilities that are why I would never opt in, there are going to be people who do opt-in without realizing what all that means. Acting like everything's okay because people can choose is wrong if people can't make informed choices.
Further, OnStar can currently be used to unlock vehicles. Why isn't that an "irresistible target for hackers"?
Who says it isn't? Of course that requires you or your buddies to be physically near the car in order to get anything out of it. If you're just out to ruin somebody's day, you can disable their car remotely and read about your success on the evening news.
But in all seriousness, the possibilities of hackers doesn't bother me as much as abuse by police and OnStar itself.
Um, no, because I wouldn't have to [bet my life on OnStar being impossible to hack], nor would anyone else who opts in to the service?
Of course you would if you opt in! Suddenly disengaging your engine could cause all kinds of problems and accidents. Suddenly slowing on an interstate with no brake lights so you get rear-ended by the guy tailgating behind you is one way. Or on the on-ramp. In snow or ice coasting is very dangerous as it causes a loss of traction, and if you were in the middle of a turn then the results could be very bad as the best way to come out of a slide in snow -- using the engine -- has been denied to you, and the next best option -- ABS brakes -- are only going to send you in a straight line into who knows what.
Honestly, think a little bit about what it would mean if this happened randomly while you were driving. If your driving conditions are so ideal that it never even occurred to you that the sudden loss of engine power could cause accidents, well, congratulations on your unique experience but it doesn't apply to the rest of us.
This is no different than Lojack, which can also, in theory, be "activated" when a user chooses to have the service, in the same way this could be.
Heh, amusing anecdote about the financier at the dealership I bought my car from. He was trying to get me to sign up for LoJack, and after describing how it's a microwave transmitter that the police can enable remotely to find your car wherever it is, even in an underground garage, he then said how since it is "only turned on when you report your car stolen" that it isn't as "Big Brother-ish as OnStar".
Let that sink in. A remote tracker that the police can turn on whenever they want to find my car wherever it is isn't Big Brother-ish. I guess I'm supposed to just assume that the police would never want to turn on the transmitter unless I reported my car stolen. Take it on faith. But if I was so naive that I always trusted the Powers That Be to never do anything they weren't supposed to and always
Already hospitals prefer to use fresh blood in transfusions, and when they can predict the need they get fresh blood when possible. I myself have been called by the local Blood & Tissue Center to donate blood for a child's operation that was going to be performed the next day. It wasn't a general supply issue; my blood type is A+, the second most common in the U.S. and when I asked they said they had plenty. It's just that since they knew of the need in advance they could afford to take the time to call me up for some of my fresh blood.
If the results of this study bear out, then it may just mean that hospitals are even more likely to try to get a fresh donation prior to any surgery that may require a transfusion. E.R. is still going to have to deal with whatever supply they have on hand when someone comes through the doors, though maybe there are procedural changes they can make to help ensure that they use newer blood by preference?
Well he is talking about walking to the store and buying a physical copy, so I think it's a valid complaint. If the music industry's digital enlightenment involved them tying their online distribution to physical CDs so even though you bought a CD you still had to register online to actually use it, I think anyone who asked the music industry to change distribution models would be correct to say "That's not what we meant".
Online distribution is supposed to make getting media without purchasing a physical object easier. It's not supposed to make buying a physical object should you choose more of a chore.:P
Well, I think it's both: Mr. AC is a troll who chose to troll here because of their deep personal attachment to Tolkien that goes well beyond respect for a great author.
I never assumed a substantive response from the outset, I'm just engaging in a little troll-bashing for fun.
I'm glad you're aware enough to know that you're been completely defeated, and must resort to picking on a spelling error that I spelled correctly most of the time.
I'm sorry someone implied that Tolkien was merely a great author and not the god of all things. I know it must hurt you. Please turn down your emotions and learn some logic next time. Just to be sure, let me repeat the lesson: An appeal to authority is invalid when the authority is not an authority on the subject in question. The subject is film, the authority is Tolkien, and according to his own words he's not a film authority. QED, HAND.
You're just mad because you got called on your fallacious appeal to authority. What does the content of the letters matter, when according to you Tolkien therein does not claim to be an authority on film? According to you, your own argument is fallacious. Your appeal to authority is stupid and wrong as most such appeals are. Now you're just upset that even your secret knowledge not only doesn't support your theory, it actually contradicts it. You might think I care about being ignorant of Tolkiens opinion's on film, but I don't consider him a film authority (and neither does he), so no I don't. You care about your terrible self-goal. Appeal to invalid authority is invalid. Get over it.
Indeed. Appeals to authority are only fallacious when the authority is not an expert on the matter under debate. Thank you.
You're welcome, since you clearly don't understand the concept, as proven by:
You're a myope who in ignorance -- having not read The Letters of JRR Tolkien either, along with Tweedledee -- has failed to realize that Tolkien himself took the difference in medium well into consideration, and did not claim expertise in filmmaking when making his protests.
Of course Tolkein took the difference in medium into consideration. He's not an idiot, but even an idiot can tell that they are different mediums. That doesn't make him a film director, either. The fact that he did not claim film making expertise makes me wonder all the more why you're trying to prop him up as an authority on the subject.
In other words, according to your own authority, your appeal to authority is fallacious.
And really, the claim that the director of Meet the Feebles and The Frighteners is any sort of expert filmmaker is laughable. If it were Spielberg making these absurd and extreme decisions, that would be one thing, but Peter Jackson? The fact that he won an Oscar was an affront to all truly-competent directors.
So you don't like Peter Jackson or the LotR movies. That's nice. Doesn't make your appeal to authority any more valid. Doesn't make it any more likely that Tolkien-become-film-director would have done a better job. The fact that merely having Spielberg making the same decisions would somehow appease you just shows how authority-oriented you are. Talk about myopic: Try seeing past your hero-worship of Tolkien for a second to realize that the LotR *books* are amazing and are also *not movies*.
The GP (or whatever depth of ancestry he's at now) was essentially a defense of Jackson's decisions to make the story more dramatic for the screen, with only a couple very obvious opinions such as that not every change worked, and that changes requiring additional explanations in an already dense story were less likely to work. You attempt to discredit the post by comparing the post's author to Tolkien in an appeal to authority. Yet the real match up is Jackson vs Tolkien, and while Tolkien would be an authority on the books themselves, he's not an authority on film adaptation compared to Jackson, and hence your appeal falls flat.
Maybe the parent poster thinks he's a better judge of what should work than the author himself, but personally, I doubt it.
No, I doubt it too. Because everyone knows that a truly gifted author such as Tolkein must by virtue of being a skilled author of novels and short stories also be a master of film as well. They are basically the same medium, after all. So a defense of Peter Jackson's decisions is clearly unfounded, as Jackson, being a mere director, could not possibly have any idea what makes a good film adaptation since only the novel's author knows what makes good film. In fact I doubt you could find any case where a movie suffered for following the original author's wishe-*HHGTTG* Oops, sorry there, coughed up some phlegm.
Why do we always have to go to "It's light! It's strong! This will clearly help prevent foreigners from killing our troops!"?
Sign of the times. As a civie, my first thought about the world beyond my own little life in any given day is of the war. And to the business interests who want to sell this stuff, they want a piece of those sweet, sweet billions the government is spending on this war.
Yeah, no kidding. And besides, I had to read the title like 5 times before I stopped parsing it as "Space MONKEY invented for Space Tourists", and while I didn't know how one "invents" a monkey, I did think this would be a great thing that space tourists would greatly appreciate.
But just some money? Sounds more like gift shop tokens. If you can't use QUIDs to buy a Space Monkey, then I predict they will fail.
I've always thought it interesting that ozone is considered essential in the upper atmosphere; yet is considered pollution at ground level.
Yeah, how bizarre! Also weird is how hydrochloric acid is considered an essential component of etching silicon chips, yet at the same time is considered a bad thing to get in your eye. WTF is up with scientists?!
I don't think you got what I was saying. Our current 'cybernetic' interfaces -- both practical and experimental -- use the signals created in our existing motor-control network to operate the machine. Either by being directly wired in, or by using some other stimulus -- like the artificial arms that detect muscle twitches in the patient's stump to activate the motors in the arm. It's a layered interface, one level of abstraction on top of another.
This has a practical engineering implication regarding reliability: If it is possible for your brain-muscle interface to 'accidentally' tell your arm to shoot someone, then with a cybernetic limb it is possible for your brain-muscle interface to tell your arm to shoot someone OR for the interface between your neurons and the cybernetics to misinterpret the signal and 'accidentally' think it was supposed to shoot someone. An failure in either level of the interface can cause the negative effect, meaning the odds of failure are higher than in either layer of the interface alone.
Absolutely modern computer technology bears this out. An error in any level of your tcp/ip stack will break your network app. As will a failure in the network fabric. Or at the other end's stack. And thus the overall error rate is higher than any single step, because they're dependent.
If you'll notice, I said this wasn't inherent in cybernetics, I said it was a practical reality in current and most proposed interfaces. If you want your x-ray visions and gorilla strength, you'd do well to pay attention to the practical engineering realities.
it's not an "assumption" that it's "inherently" more reliable. It's a practical reality that there is no interface as reliable as the one we are born with, in large degree because every interface we have so far built or conceived of uses the existing one in some way and tries to interpret the results and thus are -at least- as unreliable as our own body interface.
A man with cybernetic limbs shoots and kills a woman. During the court trials, his defense lawyer (highly experienced with defending people with cybernetic prosthetics) says that the defendant wasn't used to his newly upgraded/installed cybernetic body parts (and the new control software for them) and thus fired the gun unintentionally.
I haven't seen that episode but let me guess... It turned out that his arm was actually hacked by another Section in order to kill the woman for various political reasons with various political ramifications that are explained through fifteen minutes of exposition while Sec 9 drives around town?
I kid, much love for GitS, but the show is often -way- too true to the more obnoxious parts of Shiro Masumune's writing style.:)
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What I never understood was, how do you prepare for these "If I just did X ..." situations? Do you have warning that you're going to encounter a medusa (short of seeing it ;)), or of there being a BigHairyNastyThing up ahead, which can inform the knowledgeable player that they should prepare for it (e.g., put on a blindfold, get out a torch, run the hell away)?
There are a few situations where you always know you'll run into trouble. The level where Medusa lives is always there, and is easily recognizable, so you know if you get there that Medusa is nearby.
Other than that, you prepare just by knowing it is possible to get into certain situations and having the appropriate counters on hand. E.g. Touch of Death can be countered with Magic Resistance, so you should go about finding an item with that property before you're likely to encounter a monster who uses it. If one shows up before you've gotten resistance, well then you should be prepared with something like a scroll of teleport level or a wand of digging so you can get your sorry butt out of there before they have a chance to use it. Or just general caution such as *never* going around blind without gloves on if you think it's even remotely possible there's a cockatrice corpse lying around (in your blind groping you'll touch it and turn to stone).
All of this is subject to the random number generator. Knowing that you want magic resistance, spell reflection, a blessed unicorn horn, a blindfold, etc etc is one thing, actually getting it before you need it is another. Though in your travels you'll usually find something that could at least help save you. In Nethack, there's usually more than one way to approach something.
There's lots of stuff that can instantly kill you in Nethack.
Touching a cockatrice with bare skin will turn you to stone.
Seeing medusa's face will do likewise.
Some monsters can use Touch of Death, and guess what it does if you aren't resistant to magic.
Wands of Death.
Black dragon breath.
Being dragged underwater by an eel.
There's more, plus a host of things that don't kill you -instantly-, but are guaranteed to kill you in a few turns if you don't do anything.
The upside is that every instant death in the game has a counter. It just might take you a couple of deaths to figure it out...
but really, despite how harsh it can be, Nethack has always struck me as the least "cheap" game ever. There's almost always something you could have done, or some way to have prepared.
I had blotted that agony out of my brain, actually. I never beat FFVII, but I did watch my friend fight Sephiroth, who took many KotR summons, and who had his -own- lengthy summons and special attacks with cut scenes. It was truly ridiculous. We were both basically spectators to the fight.
He's spot on about allowing controller remapping, subtitles for deaf people or kids whose parents make them turn the volume off, forced-death boss fights (I remember one in Chrono Cross where I used a massive number of potions, curative spells, ethers, etc to survive and continually damaged the boss, ultimately giving up and letting him kill me just to see if I was "supposed" to lose it- and promptly reset so I could redo it without losing all the items.)
:)
The way this should be done, if you feel you must, is how it was done in Final Fantasy IV (USA II). Cecil, the main character, was on the path to becoming a Paladin. As the last part of the challenge, you face off against Cecil's former self as a Dark Knight, who is extremely strong. The in-game message tells you something along the lines of violence not being the way, and you're supposed to let the Dark Knight beat you, though of course this particular lesson is forgotten as soon as you become a paladin and proceed to use violence to solve all future problems. The catch, though, is that if you decide you want cleanse your soul by kicking your evil self's butt it is actually possible to do so. Which is good, not just because it gives you multiple ways of getting through and not having a ridiculous 'forced' loss, but it also keeps the fundamental morality of the FF world intact: Sure, you can solve some problems without using violence, but all problems are solvable through violence if only you use enough of it.
Heh, yeah I know, there's nothing worse than a non-skipable cut scene.
Oh, wait, I can think of one thing, though it's more a variation on a theme: The un-skipable Summons in a Final Fantasy.
FFVII's summons were absolutely awesome... the first time. They were still pretty cool up through let's say the twentieth time. But after the thousandth time you've used your summon you'll just want to gouge your eyes out waiting. Especially since the power of the summon seems to scale with the length of the cutscene. Okay, Bahamat Zero, would you mind flying to our planet from outer space a little FASTER maybe? Or how about just sticking around in orbit above my head, since you know I'm going to need you again soon...
...the implication being that it just slams on the brakes or kills the engine or both.
Uh... I see how that's a possible implication, but it's not one I assumed applied, simply because that wouldn't just be alarming but rather stark-raving bat-shit loco.
What the article describes is "remotely shutting down vehicles". They're just doing it in a relatively sane way, slowing the car gradually by disengaging the transmission rather than locking the brakes or something idiotic that would just be begging for lawsuits both against On-Star and any police department that used this feature and inevitably caused a horrible accident. Instead, it's merely a quiet request for lawsuits since it is still going to inevitably lead to an accident, it just won't be in the first day the system is used.
This argument appears predicated on the belief that even if a customer doesn't voluntarily and willingly "opt in", that it can still somehow be used by police or hackers. I'm sorry, but that's simply not how it works.
Okay, but if you -do- opt in then it can be used by police or hackers. I would never do such a thing, but since they don't ever discuss any of the possibilities that are why I would never opt in, there are going to be people who do opt-in without realizing what all that means. Acting like everything's okay because people can choose is wrong if people can't make informed choices.
Further, OnStar can currently be used to unlock vehicles. Why isn't that an "irresistible target for hackers"?
Who says it isn't? Of course that requires you or your buddies to be physically near the car in order to get anything out of it. If you're just out to ruin somebody's day, you can disable their car remotely and read about your success on the evening news.
But in all seriousness, the possibilities of hackers doesn't bother me as much as abuse by police and OnStar itself.
Um, no, because I wouldn't have to [bet my life on OnStar being impossible to hack], nor would anyone else who opts in to the service?
Of course you would if you opt in! Suddenly disengaging your engine could cause all kinds of problems and accidents. Suddenly slowing on an interstate with no brake lights so you get rear-ended by the guy tailgating behind you is one way. Or on the on-ramp. In snow or ice coasting is very dangerous as it causes a loss of traction, and if you were in the middle of a turn then the results could be very bad as the best way to come out of a slide in snow -- using the engine -- has been denied to you, and the next best option -- ABS brakes -- are only going to send you in a straight line into who knows what.
Honestly, think a little bit about what it would mean if this happened randomly while you were driving. If your driving conditions are so ideal that it never even occurred to you that the sudden loss of engine power could cause accidents, well, congratulations on your unique experience but it doesn't apply to the rest of us.
This is no different than Lojack, which can also, in theory, be "activated" when a user chooses to have the service, in the same way this could be.
Heh, amusing anecdote about the financier at the dealership I bought my car from. He was trying to get me to sign up for LoJack, and after describing how it's a microwave transmitter that the police can enable remotely to find your car wherever it is, even in an underground garage, he then said how since it is "only turned on when you report your car stolen" that it isn't as "Big Brother-ish as OnStar".
Let that sink in. A remote tracker that the police can turn on whenever they want to find my car wherever it is isn't Big Brother-ish. I guess I'm supposed to just assume that the police would never want to turn on the transmitter unless I reported my car stolen. Take it on faith. But if I was so naive that I always trusted the Powers That Be to never do anything they weren't supposed to and always
Already hospitals prefer to use fresh blood in transfusions, and when they can predict the need they get fresh blood when possible. I myself have been called by the local Blood & Tissue Center to donate blood for a child's operation that was going to be performed the next day. It wasn't a general supply issue; my blood type is A+, the second most common in the U.S. and when I asked they said they had plenty. It's just that since they knew of the need in advance they could afford to take the time to call me up for some of my fresh blood.
If the results of this study bear out, then it may just mean that hospitals are even more likely to try to get a fresh donation prior to any surgery that may require a transfusion. E.R. is still going to have to deal with whatever supply they have on hand when someone comes through the doors, though maybe there are procedural changes they can make to help ensure that they use newer blood by preference?
Well he is talking about walking to the store and buying a physical copy, so I think it's a valid complaint. If the music industry's digital enlightenment involved them tying their online distribution to physical CDs so even though you bought a CD you still had to register online to actually use it, I think anyone who asked the music industry to change distribution models would be correct to say "That's not what we meant".
:P
Online distribution is supposed to make getting media without purchasing a physical object easier. It's not supposed to make buying a physical object should you choose more of a chore.
Well, I think it's both: Mr. AC is a troll who chose to troll here because of their deep personal attachment to Tolkien that goes well beyond respect for a great author.
I never assumed a substantive response from the outset, I'm just engaging in a little troll-bashing for fun.
Currently playing though was
James Brown, Hot pants.
Followed fifteen seconds later by:
Jerry Lee Lewis, Great Balls of Fire
I'm glad you're aware enough to know that you're been completely defeated, and must resort to picking on a spelling error that I spelled correctly most of the time.
I'm sorry someone implied that Tolkien was merely a great author and not the god of all things. I know it must hurt you. Please turn down your emotions and learn some logic next time. Just to be sure, let me repeat the lesson: An appeal to authority is invalid when the authority is not an authority on the subject in question. The subject is film, the authority is Tolkien, and according to his own words he's not a film authority. QED, HAND.
You're just mad because you got called on your fallacious appeal to authority. What does the content of the letters matter, when according to you Tolkien therein does not claim to be an authority on film? According to you, your own argument is fallacious. Your appeal to authority is stupid and wrong as most such appeals are. Now you're just upset that even your secret knowledge not only doesn't support your theory, it actually contradicts it. You might think I care about being ignorant of Tolkiens opinion's on film, but I don't consider him a film authority (and neither does he), so no I don't. You care about your terrible self-goal. Appeal to invalid authority is invalid. Get over it.
Indeed. Appeals to authority are only fallacious when the authority is not an expert on the matter under debate. Thank you.
You're welcome, since you clearly don't understand the concept, as proven by:
You're a myope who in ignorance -- having not read The Letters of JRR Tolkien either, along with Tweedledee -- has failed to realize that Tolkien himself took the difference in medium well into consideration, and did not claim expertise in filmmaking when making his protests.
Of course Tolkein took the difference in medium into consideration. He's not an idiot, but even an idiot can tell that they are different mediums. That doesn't make him a film director, either. The fact that he did not claim film making expertise makes me wonder all the more why you're trying to prop him up as an authority on the subject.
In other words, according to your own authority, your appeal to authority is fallacious.
And really, the claim that the director of Meet the Feebles and The Frighteners is any sort of expert filmmaker is laughable. If it were Spielberg making these absurd and extreme decisions, that would be one thing, but Peter Jackson? The fact that he won an Oscar was an affront to all truly-competent directors.
So you don't like Peter Jackson or the LotR movies. That's nice. Doesn't make your appeal to authority any more valid. Doesn't make it any more likely that Tolkien-become-film-director would have done a better job. The fact that merely having Spielberg making the same decisions would somehow appease you just shows how authority-oriented you are. Talk about myopic: Try seeing past your hero-worship of Tolkien for a second to realize that the LotR *books* are amazing and are also *not movies*.
The GP (or whatever depth of ancestry he's at now) was essentially a defense of Jackson's decisions to make the story more dramatic for the screen, with only a couple very obvious opinions such as that not every change worked, and that changes requiring additional explanations in an already dense story were less likely to work. You attempt to discredit the post by comparing the post's author to Tolkien in an appeal to authority. Yet the real match up is Jackson vs Tolkien, and while Tolkien would be an authority on the books themselves, he's not an authority on film adaptation compared to Jackson, and hence your appeal falls flat.
Maybe the parent poster thinks he's a better judge of what should work than the author himself, but personally, I doubt it.
No, I doubt it too. Because everyone knows that a truly gifted author such as Tolkein must by virtue of being a skilled author of novels and short stories also be a master of film as well. They are basically the same medium, after all. So a defense of Peter Jackson's decisions is clearly unfounded, as Jackson, being a mere director, could not possibly have any idea what makes a good film adaptation since only the novel's author knows what makes good film. In fact I doubt you could find any case where a movie suffered for following the original author's wishe-*HHGTTG* Oops, sorry there, coughed up some phlegm.
Why do we always have to go to "It's light! It's strong! This will clearly help prevent foreigners from killing our troops!"?
Sign of the times. As a civie, my first thought about the world beyond my own little life in any given day is of the war. And to the business interests who want to sell this stuff, they want a piece of those sweet, sweet billions the government is spending on this war.
Yeah, no kidding. And besides, I had to read the title like 5 times before I stopped parsing it as "Space MONKEY invented for Space Tourists", and while I didn't know how one "invents" a monkey, I did think this would be a great thing that space tourists would greatly appreciate.
But just some money? Sounds more like gift shop tokens. If you can't use QUIDs to buy a Space Monkey, then I predict they will fail.
Good point. Well try tracing your steps. Where were you when you last remember having your keys? Were you near a comet?
Did you leave them on a comet fragment?
I've always thought it interesting that ozone is considered essential in the upper atmosphere; yet is considered pollution at ground level.
Yeah, how bizarre! Also weird is how hydrochloric acid is considered an essential component of etching silicon chips, yet at the same time is considered a bad thing to get in your eye. WTF is up with scientists?!
I don't think you got what I was saying. Our current 'cybernetic' interfaces -- both practical and experimental -- use the signals created in our existing motor-control network to operate the machine. Either by being directly wired in, or by using some other stimulus -- like the artificial arms that detect muscle twitches in the patient's stump to activate the motors in the arm. It's a layered interface, one level of abstraction on top of another.
This has a practical engineering implication regarding reliability: If it is possible for your brain-muscle interface to 'accidentally' tell your arm to shoot someone, then with a cybernetic limb it is possible for your brain-muscle interface to tell your arm to shoot someone OR for the interface between your neurons and the cybernetics to misinterpret the signal and 'accidentally' think it was supposed to shoot someone. An failure in either level of the interface can cause the negative effect, meaning the odds of failure are higher than in either layer of the interface alone.
Absolutely modern computer technology bears this out. An error in any level of your tcp/ip stack will break your network app. As will a failure in the network fabric. Or at the other end's stack. And thus the overall error rate is higher than any single step, because they're dependent.
If you'll notice, I said this wasn't inherent in cybernetics, I said it was a practical reality in current and most proposed interfaces. If you want your x-ray visions and gorilla strength, you'd do well to pay attention to the practical engineering realities.
it's not an "assumption" that it's "inherently" more reliable. It's a practical reality that there is no interface as reliable as the one we are born with, in large degree because every interface we have so far built or conceived of uses the existing one in some way and tries to interpret the results and thus are -at least- as unreliable as our own body interface.
A man with cybernetic limbs shoots and kills a woman. During the court trials, his defense lawyer (highly experienced with defending people with cybernetic prosthetics) says that the defendant wasn't used to his newly upgraded/installed cybernetic body parts (and the new control software for them) and thus fired the gun unintentionally.
:)
I haven't seen that episode but let me guess... It turned out that his arm was actually hacked by another Section in order to kill the woman for various political reasons with various political ramifications that are explained through fifteen minutes of exposition while Sec 9 drives around town?
I kid, much love for GitS, but the show is often -way- too true to the more obnoxious parts of Shiro Masumune's writing style.
But it takes a concerted effort to play painfully bad.
:)
Well thanks it feels good to have my hard work appreciated.
Funny, I always get the same results when I strum a guitar -- ear-destroying crap.