Re:Both franchise shared the same fate.
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New Star Trek Trailer
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· Score: 5, Insightful
As both franchise got similarly raped by dubious quality prequels
I had some hopes for this movie, because I like JJ Abrams. Now that I've seen the trailer, I can't help but agree with you. Holy crap, what is so hard about making good star trek movies? They have so much background to choose from, finding the right story should be easy.
Actually, I know what the problem is. They see the fanbase as a bonus, not as the target demographic. We have these people who are going to see the movie no matter what, so might as well aim for a completely different demographic. This way we get the other people AND the trek nerds!!!
We need to start boycotting this shit. If they don't start making good trek to bring us back, at least it might cause them to stop making trek altogether. That would be an improvement.
Why the hell are almost ALL new movie trailers hosted by Apple, with each requiring Quicktime.
I agree with the reason you're angry, but your choice is between quicktime and flash. I'll take quicktime anyday. At least I get to export it to a.mp4 container.
Re:Hey, remember when Ender's Game was good?
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Ender in Exile
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· Score: 3, Insightful
But as a onetime fan of Card's work, I am saddened to learn that he shares much in common with groups like the Taliban.
When I found out about Card's personal views I was pretty surprised. I agree that they're fairly extremist views, and I pretty much disagree with him in every way.
However I don't really see the hate toward his books. I see all these posts saying that his books are advertisements for his religion, his anti-gay views, whatever. I don't think he's doing that. In fact, it's pretty hard to reconcile his pro-war views with the pain Ender felt when he discovered his own wargames were part of an actual war.
I will agree that his books are somewhat colored by his views, but you can't expect an author to do otherwise. The best sci-fi is a comment on society, and it has to end up being the author's comment on society. If you were to sit down and write a book, your hero would form decisions that agreed with your morals. He's the good guy, he has to do what you think the good guy would do. Feel free to disagree with the man on his personal views (I do), but judge his work on its own merits. If you liked Ender's Game once, there's no reason to start disliking it because you found out something about the author that you didn't know before.
I like Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead (the only two I've read). If I were to criticize them for something, it would be for the somewhat amateurish writing style (in my opinion). I don't see what makes them so cult worthy among so many awesome sci-fi novels, but they're pretty good.
And then he invoices Toyota for complying with each and everyone of them to the tune of the same dollar amount their bill is. Two can play this game.
Why break even?
Have toyota file a proper dmca takedown request
Take down all pictures with toyota cars, exactly as requested.
Post a notice on the website that submitters of wallpapers may file a counterclaim
Invoice toyota for lost advertisement revenue (I'm assuming the site gets its revenue from ads) for each and every counterclaim.
???
Profit!
The "???" step is clearly how to collect on that invoice. If you really want to piss them off, you sue them for it. Either way, the pictures will be back up after the counterclaims come through.
Unsubstantiated? Didn't you read what I say earlier about the effect of lower bitrates? STFU?
I guess you didn't understand what the poster said. His point is that mp3's and other audio compression techniques are specifically made to sacrifice sounds that humans just can't perceive. Those same sounds might be conveying a lot of information when you're encoding a picture.
I do understand that you think that since you can hear the difference in the sound when you perform the encoding at lower bitrates, that the mp3 is failing at audio encoding, even at the human hearing frequencies. The problem is that the multitude of information in the other frequencies cause the audible artifacts. Those characteristics are simply not present in any music, orchestral or otherwise.
As the other poster also tried to inform you, you'd see the same thing if you tried to encode a few notes in jpeg. At 95% quality, your Lena picture might look exactly the same as the original. If you tried to encode sound, it's not going to be anywhere near to 95% quality of the original. That's because jpeg is optimized to sacrifice information that you won't notice with your eyes, but when you map audio information to a picture, not only will it have to sacrifice a lot of useful information BUT the picture is also going to be naturally a lot more difficult to compress so you're going to be able to see a lot of the artifacts. However, it's also not likely to resemble anything that you'd actually take a picture of, it's just going to look like noise. When you have noise in a picture, it looks better when you smooth it out. That would completely ruin the sound information, but make a picture look "better"
So, stop telling people to shut up. Admit that you don't know everything and be happy that you learned something new.
They don't specifically say you must have an AT&T contract to get warranty service, but it's more or less required via the other terms. They wont' service your phone unless its activated ("How can we see if it's working or not?). They won't service phones that aren't activated legitimately (at least not if they know about it). You MUST sign up for a contract to activate your phone (not actually true with the 3g, it'll apparently activate on a prepaid sim).
Well, I see from your other posts that your iphone isn't actually broken, but if you ever do need service, don't assume they won't service it. Give them a call. I doubt they won't honor the warranty (they might initially tell you they won't, but ask to talk with a supervisor).
The reason I'm certain they'll honor the warranty is because you can just file a small claims suit if they don't. You're on solid legal ground here. The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act prevents them from tying in their warranty to sales or services. And the latest DMCA exemptions allow you to unlock your cell phone. Of course, if your attempts to unlock the phone was what caused the damage, then it falls into the accidental damage clause and they're not liable again...however, I don't think anyone has actually bricked an iphone by unlocking it (by the real definition of brick, ie, a restore won't work).
Given the price of the iphone, the lawsuit would be worth it. However, do remember to ask them to honor the warranty first. Not only are they likely to honor it, but judges tend to throw out lawsuits if you don't make an effort with the other party first.
One thing I try to do, which I see in Groklaw, but nowhere else in the news world, is to give people access to the actual legal documents, so they can make up their minds for themselves...In this day and age, where almost all federal litigation is electronic and there are *pdf files of every document, I feel there is no excuse for holding back on that.
I think your position in regards to the RIAA is no accident considering the mindset you described in this post. It's been my impression that quite a few lawyers would love to keep legal information as private as possible. When the information is public, they like as much obfuscation as possible, not just to make their arguments clear (which I understand makes legaleze a necessity) but also as as a way of keeping the rest of us dependent on them.
You on the other hand, provide your interpretation so that those of us who are not lawyers can understand what's going on. However, you also provide the documents so we can go see for ourselves, if we care to. On many occasions, I have also seen you explain some of the legal terms that we are likely to encounter in those documents, which further removes the obfuscation. And you believe the media in general should do the same in the name of transparency.
Thanks, I really appreciate it. As a non-lawyer who almost never looks at any legal documents, I appreciate you giving me the option. I have taken advantage of it once or twice, on cases that really interest me.
There is - perjury. The problem is that nobody pursues it.
Everyone misunderstands that clause. The penalty is not perjury if you don't own the copyright. The penalty is perjury if you didn't have a "good faith" belief that you own the copyright. So if you send your take-down to something that has a similar name to your movie, you can prove that you had a "good faith" believe that it was your movie, even if it was something else.
THAT is why nobody pursues it. It's almost impossible to prove that the person did committed perjury. They really need to fix that clause because, as it stands, it's completely toothless.
So you're totally behind email spam, you don't think spam should be considered unethical, let alone made illegal?
Uh...email spam by itself most definitely should not be illegal, and it is not unethical.
That doesn't mean that the some types of spam, or the most common methods for spamming shouldn't be illegal. Nigerian Prince-type spam is fraud (it's not the e-mail sending that should be--and actually is--illegal, it's the fucking fraud). Using spam bots to send spam should be--and most likely is--illegal because it's hijacking people's computers.
Not allowing for an unsubscription method is unethical. Providing an unsubscription method that doesn't actually unsubscribe the person is most definitely unethical.
When best-buy sends you an e-mail about their latest deals, that's spam. However, they didn't use spam bots, they're not defrauding you, and when you click on the unsubscribe link, it actually works. Therefore, that should not be illegal OR considered unethical.
Capitalism is essentially economic anarchy. If it's good enough for our money, what's to stop it from being good enough for us?
Because capitalism is pretty brutal. When a company isn't doing well, it goes bankrupt (unless you count socialist bailouts, but that's not capitalism).
It doesn't work that well when you expand it beyond economics. Under a complete anarchy, if your neighbor likes your big screen TV, but can't afford it? He'll just walk right into your house and take it, there's no police to stop him, no laws to enforce. He spends his free time lifting weights and you're a nerd. He's going to win that battle.
Now you and your nerd friends can agree on a protection pact where you help one another in defense duties. That might work, but everyone will still be in constant battle, looking over their shoulders. That's pretty much like what companies do, keeping on eye on their competitors, making sure they're not stealing all their customers, adapting their business strategy all the time. Not a suitable way to live when everything and not just business needs to be treated that way.
Besides, that little pact you made with your friends to pool together your resources? I imagine you also created a few rules to be part of your group? We won't steal from one another, we'll provide defense services...maybe you've instituted a little tax so you can buy weapons? That's a really small scale government, which you created because anarchy didn't work for you.
The nacelles aren't going to be pressurized, so you can ignore them and likely the pylons as well. You only have to worry about the saucer and engineering hulls.
The nacelles are pressurized, at least when not under warp. When the plasma stream is not operational, you can walk inside them and perform maintenance. Here's a picture of what they look like in the inside, with the doors open. The episode is "Eye of the Beholder", TNG. Humans travel to the nacelles and control room where they can be monitored during operation is done through the pylons, so they're pressurized all the time.
Well, after the refit, the Enterprise became 305 meters long. However, the refit happened after the 5-year mission, so this Enterprise is 289 meters long.
Let's just guess that it's 120 meters wide
That's probably overestimating quite a bit. Sounds about right for the saucer section, but the engineering section isn't anywhere near as wide.
and an average of 20 meters thick
Well, the ship has 24 decks, but it's not a cube. Actually, that's really the biggest problem with your estimate there. You'd arrive at a much closer volume if you divided the ship up between saucer, nacelles, and engineering hulls. Then sum them up.
but it's not important to be all that accurate
Blasphemy! I have to head to work right now, but I somebody else should take my recommendation and get on that.
The rest of your calculations seem pretty good, though:)
arguably this is what helped Bush the Lesser win the first time. Nader is still called a spoiler by many.
I don't understand that reasoning. I thought being a "spoiler" was the whole point of third parties. Once the democrats see that they lost the election because their potential voters went third-party, that encourages them to change the focus of their issues to try to get those voters back. I mean, no Nader voter thought that Nader was going to actually win, so the whole point was to accumulate a sufficient number of votes to bring attention to the issues they cared about, right?
Being a spoiler is what you're aiming for. Only way to make the major parties take notice.
"because the wrong lizard might get in" is not a good enough excuse to keep repeating a mistake. voting for bush once -- hey, everyone makes a mistake, right? voting for bush twice? as they say in texas: "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice...-foo..ma...won't get fooled again."
what i'm saying is, why not try asskisser b? just for the variety?
You're right that "because the wrong lizard might get in" is not a good excuse to keep repeating a mistake, but you completely missed the point of the story when you recommended trying asskisser b. Asskisser b is another "lizard" as in, the parent hates both a and b for being asskissers. The moral of the story is the vote for a human (somebody you actually like), even if they have no chance of winning, instead of voting for a lizard just to make sure the lizard you dislike more doesn't win.
If everyone had that mindset, a human that "has no chance of winning" would actually win, because nobody likes the lizards. When you vote for the lesser evil, you elect evil.
There is no requirement to actually utilize the BD-Live features to watch this title. I picked it up the other day, popped the disc into my PS3 and let it load. You know what happened? A screen came up ASKING wether or not I wanted to download the additional content. I chose not to, and it continued on its merry way to the main menu and I was able to watch the movie without any issues whatsoever.
Well, I picked it up on Tuesday, popped the disc into my PS3 and let it load. It didn't. A blue flashing circle showed up on the screen, and no message whatsoever about what was happening appeared. I took the disc out. I cleaned it and put it back on. I changed the input on the tv and WATCHED A 45 MINUTE TV EPISODE on my DVR, then went back to it to see if it had finished doing whatever it was that it was doing. It hadn't. Eventually I figured it out that it was due to BD-Live servers and changed the PS3 settings.
Here's what happened with you. Either you picked it up before their servers started messing up / after their servers were back up by which point they added the additional menu option that asks if you want to download the additional content or you had your PS3 set up to "ask" before connecting to BD-Live.
Under BD settings for the PS3 there's an option on whether or not to allow the Blu-Ray discs to connect to BD-Live servers. Here's the fucking catch. The two options are "allow" and "ask". You can't set it to I never want to fucking connect. So those of us who were tired of having the menu pop up every single time we put a blu-ray on the PS3 asking if we could allow it to connect to BD-Live had given up and set it to "allow." Then the servers were overloaded, the disc menu never said it was connecting to the net, so I didn't think to turn that feature off, and we had a horrible experience. So no, it's not fud.
yes... thats the reason I assumed clicking ! would be marking the tag incorrect. e.g. its tagged fud, so if i click ! that means I'm saying its not fud.
No, that's not it. If you read the tag faq, you'll find out that when you want to tag something "notfud" you should instead tag it "!fud". So, if you see "!fud" it means that it's already tagged "not fud".
This is done so that different tags can offset one another. For example, I have seen tags that were outright wrong before and I corrected it by adding a tag to "!blah". Thus, if you see "fud" when the article isn't fud, you need to tag it "!fud". When the votes are equal (I imagine within a certain tolerance), the tags will disappear entirely, if they tip one way or the other, either "fud" or "!fud" is going to show up.
Sigh...Geordi's VISOR doesn't use his skin. They translate the electromagnetic spectrum to signals the brain can interpret directly.
However, there's an earlier device that did use the skin though. It's not what the guy in the article is proposing, but it is like some other much more promising devices that translate information into tactile information, and the user can train himself/herself to use that information.
Since you're a TNG fan (what self-respecting trekkie isn't), you should also note that Dr. Miranda Jones is oddly reminiscent of Dr. Katherine Pulaski:) You might also want to look up Dr. Ann Mulhall.
even though evolution is still basically just a theory at this point
You have a serious problem with the use of the word theory in science. It does not mean the same as the word theory when used in casual english.
Take the theory of gravity for example. It's pretty well tested, but it's a scientific theory. It's never going to graduate from that, because a scientific theory, by definition, is a well-tested hypothesis that has not been disproven.
Allow me to demonstrate and explain the difference. FACT: Things fall. Theory: Objects with mass attract one another with a force equal to F=G*m1*m2/(r^2). Prediction: Based on the theory, all objects fall at the same rate, regardless of their mass. Test: drop objects of different mass in a vacuum, observe them fall at the same rate. Prediction: acceleration due to gravity on the moon will be 1.6 m/s^2. Test: Drop things on moon, measure their fall rate. Anytime one of these tests give results that do not fit prediction, we say that our theory is incorrect and revise it to fit the new observations.
There are also hypotheses, which are weaker than theories, and more like speculations. Example: "gravity does not behave at F=G*m1*m2/(r^2) at very large scales, and this accounts for the "missing mass" that we observe in the universe instead of 'dark matter'. There's no way we can test that yet, so it's not as strong as a theory (theory is the strongest statement you can make in science). It is falsifiable in that it does make predictions and it is therefore still scientific (and it has, in fact, been falsified as it is not sufficient to explain away all the effects attributed to dark matter).
So...evolution. Theory: A combination of mutation, gene exchange, and environmental pressures results in adaptation of living organisms. Prediction: addition of antibiotics to a bacterial population may cause the bacteria to develop a resistance. Test: Superbugs exist. Prediction: Breeding of foxes by selecting those that are tamer toward humans will cause them to develop dog-like traits, in the same way the domestication of wolves led to the different breeds dogs we have today. Test: Tame Silver Foxes. There are many other predictions made. Once evolution fails a prediction, that particular theory will be revised, and replaced by a better one.
Now here's why ID isn't a scientific theory. Prediction: "Evolution from one species to another cannot occur without intelligent guidance". Test: ???. When you observe the evolution into a new species how can you prove that an intelligent ultra-powerful being wasn't involved? It gives no testable predictions that differ from standard evolution and its other claims are unfalsifiable. That doesn't mean ID is wrong, it could be right, but unfalsifiable=not science.
In short, evolution is the only theory that can be taught in a science classroom. When your kid gets home, or when he's in sunday school, you can feel free to supplement that teaching with "the evolution you studied was guided by this higher being." However, that's a personal unscientific belief. It could be right, it could be wrong, but it's most definitely unscientific.
As an ex-christian I'll help interpret for you. Since I understand both sides of the fence.
I'm an ex-catholic turned agnostic, and I'm a bit curious about your explanation. From what you said, from personal experience, being certain that you were right brought you a lot of happiness. Any uncertainty brought you pain. That leads me to two questions:
What exactly brought you comfort from your beliefs? I turned agnostic because I never really had the warm fuzzy feeling from the whole god thing. Was it just a fear of mortality, and the certainty that you wouldn't "die" and instead would lead an eternal life of bliss? I guess that's why I never got the happy feeling, I really don't find anything to fear from fading into nothingness. It's nothingness, how can you fear something you'll never experience?
Since you did get the "beautiful all enveloping right-hemisphere of the brain oneness with God" religious experience thing that I've never had, what exactly made you stop being a christian?
But instead of the consumer respecting the desires of the creator, they're ripping that away and screaming "Mine!" like a toddler.
You have a serious misunderstanding of copyright. The "creator" doesn't and shouldn't have any special rights other than over his own physical property. When a painter creates a painting, the painting is his until he sells it. If somebody else sees the painting, there should be nothing preventing him from reproducing it. No property is being stolen from the creator.
When granting copyright, the people give up their rights to reproduction for a limited time because we think that will encourage the creation of more art and sciences that will go into the public domain later. If it's not going into the public domain soon enough, then we're not getting the benefits, and are just stuck with the costs of giving the creator artificial rights.
Let the creators choose.
Right. When you decide to add a new section to your house, don't forget to pay royalties to the person who designed your house. You're making an unauthorized derivative work.
Actually, it would take a guy in the spacecraft a minimum of 4.3 years to arrive at Alpha Centauri. In Earth's reference frame it might take thousands of years. I'm saying that you're using the times in the wrong frames of reference.
People always remember that time is relative, but they forget that so is distance. The grandparent is right. There's nothing preventing him from reaching Alpha Centauri in an hour from his reference frame (other than the acceleration that would kill him, and the insane amount of energy it would take). And, as he accelerates, the distance between him and alpha centauri will be significantly shorter (thanks to the Lorentz Contraction), so he'll never have to travel faster than light to do it.
From Earth's or Alpha Centauri's perspective, it's going to take a damn long time from thousands of years to an absolute minimum of 4.3 years, though.
Slashdot Mirror
As both franchise got similarly raped by dubious quality prequels
I had some hopes for this movie, because I like JJ Abrams. Now that I've seen the trailer, I can't help but agree with you. Holy crap, what is so hard about making good star trek movies? They have so much background to choose from, finding the right story should be easy.
Actually, I know what the problem is. They see the fanbase as a bonus, not as the target demographic. We have these people who are going to see the movie no matter what, so might as well aim for a completely different demographic. This way we get the other people AND the trek nerds!!!
We need to start boycotting this shit. If they don't start making good trek to bring us back, at least it might cause them to stop making trek altogether. That would be an improvement.
Why the hell are almost ALL new movie trailers hosted by Apple, with each requiring Quicktime.
I agree with the reason you're angry, but your choice is between quicktime and flash. I'll take quicktime anyday. At least I get to export it to a .mp4 container.
But as a onetime fan of Card's work, I am saddened to learn that he shares much in common with groups like the Taliban.
When I found out about Card's personal views I was pretty surprised. I agree that they're fairly extremist views, and I pretty much disagree with him in every way.
However I don't really see the hate toward his books. I see all these posts saying that his books are advertisements for his religion, his anti-gay views, whatever. I don't think he's doing that. In fact, it's pretty hard to reconcile his pro-war views with the pain Ender felt when he discovered his own wargames were part of an actual war.
I will agree that his books are somewhat colored by his views, but you can't expect an author to do otherwise. The best sci-fi is a comment on society, and it has to end up being the author's comment on society. If you were to sit down and write a book, your hero would form decisions that agreed with your morals. He's the good guy, he has to do what you think the good guy would do. Feel free to disagree with the man on his personal views (I do), but judge his work on its own merits. If you liked Ender's Game once, there's no reason to start disliking it because you found out something about the author that you didn't know before.
I like Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead (the only two I've read). If I were to criticize them for something, it would be for the somewhat amateurish writing style (in my opinion). I don't see what makes them so cult worthy among so many awesome sci-fi novels, but they're pretty good.
a hand written thank you note on a good card that you took the time to mail after a job interview sends a completely different message than an email
Yeah, it sends the message that you don't know how to use e-mail :)
And then he invoices Toyota for complying with each and everyone of them to the tune of the same dollar amount their bill is. Two can play this game.
Why break even?
The "???" step is clearly how to collect on that invoice. If you really want to piss them off, you sue them for it. Either way, the pictures will be back up after the counterclaims come through.
Unsubstantiated? Didn't you read what I say earlier about the effect of lower bitrates? STFU?
I guess you didn't understand what the poster said. His point is that mp3's and other audio compression techniques are specifically made to sacrifice sounds that humans just can't perceive. Those same sounds might be conveying a lot of information when you're encoding a picture.
I do understand that you think that since you can hear the difference in the sound when you perform the encoding at lower bitrates, that the mp3 is failing at audio encoding, even at the human hearing frequencies. The problem is that the multitude of information in the other frequencies cause the audible artifacts. Those characteristics are simply not present in any music, orchestral or otherwise.
As the other poster also tried to inform you, you'd see the same thing if you tried to encode a few notes in jpeg. At 95% quality, your Lena picture might look exactly the same as the original. If you tried to encode sound, it's not going to be anywhere near to 95% quality of the original. That's because jpeg is optimized to sacrifice information that you won't notice with your eyes, but when you map audio information to a picture, not only will it have to sacrifice a lot of useful information BUT the picture is also going to be naturally a lot more difficult to compress so you're going to be able to see a lot of the artifacts. However, it's also not likely to resemble anything that you'd actually take a picture of, it's just going to look like noise. When you have noise in a picture, it looks better when you smooth it out. That would completely ruin the sound information, but make a picture look "better"
So, stop telling people to shut up. Admit that you don't know everything and be happy that you learned something new.
They don't specifically say you must have an AT&T contract to get warranty service, but it's more or less required via the other terms. They wont' service your phone unless its activated ("How can we see if it's working or not?). They won't service phones that aren't activated legitimately (at least not if they know about it). You MUST sign up for a contract to activate your phone (not actually true with the 3g, it'll apparently activate on a prepaid sim).
Well, I see from your other posts that your iphone isn't actually broken, but if you ever do need service, don't assume they won't service it. Give them a call. I doubt they won't honor the warranty (they might initially tell you they won't, but ask to talk with a supervisor).
The reason I'm certain they'll honor the warranty is because you can just file a small claims suit if they don't. You're on solid legal ground here. The Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act prevents them from tying in their warranty to sales or services. And the latest DMCA exemptions allow you to unlock your cell phone. Of course, if your attempts to unlock the phone was what caused the damage, then it falls into the accidental damage clause and they're not liable again...however, I don't think anyone has actually bricked an iphone by unlocking it (by the real definition of brick, ie, a restore won't work).
Given the price of the iphone, the lawsuit would be worth it. However, do remember to ask them to honor the warranty first. Not only are they likely to honor it, but judges tend to throw out lawsuits if you don't make an effort with the other party first.
One thing I try to do, which I see in Groklaw, but nowhere else in the news world, is to give people access to the actual legal documents, so they can make up their minds for themselves...In this day and age, where almost all federal litigation is electronic and there are *pdf files of every document, I feel there is no excuse for holding back on that.
I think your position in regards to the RIAA is no accident considering the mindset you described in this post. It's been my impression that quite a few lawyers would love to keep legal information as private as possible. When the information is public, they like as much obfuscation as possible, not just to make their arguments clear (which I understand makes legaleze a necessity) but also as as a way of keeping the rest of us dependent on them.
You on the other hand, provide your interpretation so that those of us who are not lawyers can understand what's going on. However, you also provide the documents so we can go see for ourselves, if we care to. On many occasions, I have also seen you explain some of the legal terms that we are likely to encounter in those documents, which further removes the obfuscation. And you believe the media in general should do the same in the name of transparency.
Thanks, I really appreciate it. As a non-lawyer who almost never looks at any legal documents, I appreciate you giving me the option. I have taken advantage of it once or twice, on cases that really interest me.
A hearty congratulations to the brilliant programmers of Doom9, including Oopho2ei - who claims not to be a "professional programmer".
I mean, it seems their programmers did it first, and then helped out the Doom9 people by providing hints here and there.
Not to diminish the value of the doom9, who gave us an open solution to the problem, but let's not forget the other guys.
There is - perjury. The problem is that nobody pursues it.
Everyone misunderstands that clause. The penalty is not perjury if you don't own the copyright. The penalty is perjury if you didn't have a "good faith" belief that you own the copyright. So if you send your take-down to something that has a similar name to your movie, you can prove that you had a "good faith" believe that it was your movie, even if it was something else.
THAT is why nobody pursues it. It's almost impossible to prove that the person did committed perjury. They really need to fix that clause because, as it stands, it's completely toothless.
So you're totally behind email spam, you don't think spam should be considered unethical, let alone made illegal?
Uh...email spam by itself most definitely should not be illegal, and it is not unethical.
That doesn't mean that the some types of spam, or the most common methods for spamming shouldn't be illegal. Nigerian Prince-type spam is fraud (it's not the e-mail sending that should be--and actually is--illegal, it's the fucking fraud). Using spam bots to send spam should be--and most likely is--illegal because it's hijacking people's computers.
Not allowing for an unsubscription method is unethical. Providing an unsubscription method that doesn't actually unsubscribe the person is most definitely unethical.
When best-buy sends you an e-mail about their latest deals, that's spam. However, they didn't use spam bots, they're not defrauding you, and when you click on the unsubscribe link, it actually works. Therefore, that should not be illegal OR considered unethical.
Even some actors are into that.
I have to say that there's something fitting about Worf in a fighter jet
Capitalism is essentially economic anarchy. If it's good enough for our money, what's to stop it from being good enough for us?
Because capitalism is pretty brutal. When a company isn't doing well, it goes bankrupt (unless you count socialist bailouts, but that's not capitalism).
It doesn't work that well when you expand it beyond economics. Under a complete anarchy, if your neighbor likes your big screen TV, but can't afford it? He'll just walk right into your house and take it, there's no police to stop him, no laws to enforce. He spends his free time lifting weights and you're a nerd. He's going to win that battle.
Now you and your nerd friends can agree on a protection pact where you help one another in defense duties. That might work, but everyone will still be in constant battle, looking over their shoulders. That's pretty much like what companies do, keeping on eye on their competitors, making sure they're not stealing all their customers, adapting their business strategy all the time. Not a suitable way to live when everything and not just business needs to be treated that way.
Besides, that little pact you made with your friends to pool together your resources? I imagine you also created a few rules to be part of your group? We won't steal from one another, we'll provide defense services...maybe you've instituted a little tax so you can buy weapons? That's a really small scale government, which you created because anarchy didn't work for you.
The nacelles aren't going to be pressurized, so you can ignore them and likely the pylons as well. You only have to worry about the saucer and engineering hulls.
The nacelles are pressurized, at least when not under warp. When the plasma stream is not operational, you can walk inside them and perform maintenance. Here's a picture of what they look like in the inside, with the doors open. The episode is "Eye of the Beholder", TNG. Humans travel to the nacelles and control room where they can be monitored during operation is done through the pylons, so they're pressurized all the time.
I know rabid trekkies will correct all this
I wasn't going to, but now I can't resist.
a Constitution class starship is 305 meters long
Well, after the refit, the Enterprise became 305 meters long. However, the refit happened after the 5-year mission, so this Enterprise is 289 meters long.
Let's just guess that it's 120 meters wide
That's probably overestimating quite a bit. Sounds about right for the saucer section, but the engineering section isn't anywhere near as wide.
and an average of 20 meters thick
Well, the ship has 24 decks, but it's not a cube. Actually, that's really the biggest problem with your estimate there. You'd arrive at a much closer volume if you divided the ship up between saucer, nacelles, and engineering hulls. Then sum them up.
but it's not important to be all that accurate
Blasphemy! I have to head to work right now, but I somebody else should take my recommendation and get on that.
The rest of your calculations seem pretty good, though :)
arguably this is what helped Bush the Lesser win the first time. Nader is still called a spoiler by many.
I don't understand that reasoning. I thought being a "spoiler" was the whole point of third parties. Once the democrats see that they lost the election because their potential voters went third-party, that encourages them to change the focus of their issues to try to get those voters back. I mean, no Nader voter thought that Nader was going to actually win, so the whole point was to accumulate a sufficient number of votes to bring attention to the issues they cared about, right?
Being a spoiler is what you're aiming for. Only way to make the major parties take notice.
"because the wrong lizard might get in" is not a good enough excuse to keep repeating a mistake. voting for bush once -- hey, everyone makes a mistake, right? voting for bush twice? as they say in texas: "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice...-foo..ma...won't get fooled again."
what i'm saying is, why not try asskisser b? just for the variety?
You're right that "because the wrong lizard might get in" is not a good excuse to keep repeating a mistake, but you completely missed the point of the story when you recommended trying asskisser b. Asskisser b is another "lizard" as in, the parent hates both a and b for being asskissers. The moral of the story is the vote for a human (somebody you actually like), even if they have no chance of winning, instead of voting for a lizard just to make sure the lizard you dislike more doesn't win.
If everyone had that mindset, a human that "has no chance of winning" would actually win, because nobody likes the lizards. When you vote for the lesser evil, you elect evil.
Pros. Macbooks use the intel on board chips which while sucky for gaming, have now proven themselves to not be mini-USS Enterprises.
Because of the self-destruct? Dude, even I think that's stretching for a reference.
There is no requirement to actually utilize the BD-Live features to watch this title. I picked it up the other day, popped the disc into my PS3 and let it load. You know what happened? A screen came up ASKING wether or not I wanted to download the additional content. I chose not to, and it continued on its merry way to the main menu and I was able to watch the movie without any issues whatsoever.
Well, I picked it up on Tuesday, popped the disc into my PS3 and let it load. It didn't. A blue flashing circle showed up on the screen, and no message whatsoever about what was happening appeared. I took the disc out. I cleaned it and put it back on. I changed the input on the tv and WATCHED A 45 MINUTE TV EPISODE on my DVR, then went back to it to see if it had finished doing whatever it was that it was doing. It hadn't. Eventually I figured it out that it was due to BD-Live servers and changed the PS3 settings.
Here's what happened with you. Either you picked it up before their servers started messing up / after their servers were back up by which point they added the additional menu option that asks if you want to download the additional content or you had your PS3 set up to "ask" before connecting to BD-Live.
Under BD settings for the PS3 there's an option on whether or not to allow the Blu-Ray discs to connect to BD-Live servers. Here's the fucking catch. The two options are "allow" and "ask". You can't set it to I never want to fucking connect . So those of us who were tired of having the menu pop up every single time we put a blu-ray on the PS3 asking if we could allow it to connect to BD-Live had given up and set it to "allow." Then the servers were overloaded, the disc menu never said it was connecting to the net, so I didn't think to turn that feature off, and we had a horrible experience. So no, it's not fud.
yes... thats the reason I assumed clicking ! would be marking the tag incorrect. e.g. its tagged fud, so if i click ! that means I'm saying its not fud.
No, that's not it. If you read the tag faq, you'll find out that when you want to tag something "notfud" you should instead tag it "!fud". So, if you see "!fud" it means that it's already tagged "not fud".
This is done so that different tags can offset one another. For example, I have seen tags that were outright wrong before and I corrected it by adding a tag to "!blah". Thus, if you see "fud" when the article isn't fud, you need to tag it "!fud". When the votes are equal (I imagine within a certain tolerance), the tags will disappear entirely, if they tip one way or the other, either "fud" or "!fud" is going to show up.
And did anyone read this...and think of this?
Sigh...Geordi's VISOR doesn't use his skin. They translate the electromagnetic spectrum to signals the brain can interpret directly.
However, there's an earlier device that did use the skin though. It's not what the guy in the article is proposing, but it is like some other much more promising devices that translate information into tactile information, and the user can train himself/herself to use that information.
Since you're a TNG fan (what self-respecting trekkie isn't), you should also note that Dr. Miranda Jones is oddly reminiscent of Dr. Katherine Pulaski :) You might also want to look up Dr. Ann Mulhall.
even though evolution is still basically just a theory at this point
You have a serious problem with the use of the word theory in science. It does not mean the same as the word theory when used in casual english.
Take the theory of gravity for example. It's pretty well tested, but it's a scientific theory. It's never going to graduate from that, because a scientific theory, by definition, is a well-tested hypothesis that has not been disproven.
Allow me to demonstrate and explain the difference. FACT: Things fall. Theory: Objects with mass attract one another with a force equal to F=G*m1*m2/(r^2). Prediction: Based on the theory, all objects fall at the same rate, regardless of their mass. Test: drop objects of different mass in a vacuum, observe them fall at the same rate. Prediction: acceleration due to gravity on the moon will be 1.6 m/s^2. Test: Drop things on moon, measure their fall rate. Anytime one of these tests give results that do not fit prediction, we say that our theory is incorrect and revise it to fit the new observations.
There are also hypotheses, which are weaker than theories, and more like speculations. Example: "gravity does not behave at F=G*m1*m2/(r^2) at very large scales, and this accounts for the "missing mass" that we observe in the universe instead of 'dark matter'. There's no way we can test that yet, so it's not as strong as a theory (theory is the strongest statement you can make in science). It is falsifiable in that it does make predictions and it is therefore still scientific (and it has, in fact, been falsified as it is not sufficient to explain away all the effects attributed to dark matter).
So...evolution. Theory: A combination of mutation, gene exchange, and environmental pressures results in adaptation of living organisms. Prediction: addition of antibiotics to a bacterial population may cause the bacteria to develop a resistance. Test: Superbugs exist. Prediction: Breeding of foxes by selecting those that are tamer toward humans will cause them to develop dog-like traits, in the same way the domestication of wolves led to the different breeds dogs we have today. Test: Tame Silver Foxes. There are many other predictions made. Once evolution fails a prediction, that particular theory will be revised, and replaced by a better one.
Now here's why ID isn't a scientific theory. Prediction: "Evolution from one species to another cannot occur without intelligent guidance". Test: ???. When you observe the evolution into a new species how can you prove that an intelligent ultra-powerful being wasn't involved? It gives no testable predictions that differ from standard evolution and its other claims are unfalsifiable. That doesn't mean ID is wrong, it could be right, but unfalsifiable=not science.
In short, evolution is the only theory that can be taught in a science classroom. When your kid gets home, or when he's in sunday school, you can feel free to supplement that teaching with "the evolution you studied was guided by this higher being." However, that's a personal unscientific belief. It could be right, it could be wrong, but it's most definitely unscientific.
As an ex-christian I'll help interpret for you. Since I understand both sides of the fence.
I'm an ex-catholic turned agnostic, and I'm a bit curious about your explanation. From what you said, from personal experience, being certain that you were right brought you a lot of happiness. Any uncertainty brought you pain. That leads me to two questions:
What exactly brought you comfort from your beliefs? I turned agnostic because I never really had the warm fuzzy feeling from the whole god thing. Was it just a fear of mortality, and the certainty that you wouldn't "die" and instead would lead an eternal life of bliss? I guess that's why I never got the happy feeling, I really don't find anything to fear from fading into nothingness. It's nothingness, how can you fear something you'll never experience?
Since you did get the "beautiful all enveloping right-hemisphere of the brain oneness with God" religious experience thing that I've never had, what exactly made you stop being a christian?
But instead of the consumer respecting the desires of the creator, they're ripping that away and screaming "Mine!" like a toddler.
You have a serious misunderstanding of copyright. The "creator" doesn't and shouldn't have any special rights other than over his own physical property. When a painter creates a painting, the painting is his until he sells it. If somebody else sees the painting, there should be nothing preventing him from reproducing it. No property is being stolen from the creator.
When granting copyright, the people give up their rights to reproduction for a limited time because we think that will encourage the creation of more art and sciences that will go into the public domain later. If it's not going into the public domain soon enough, then we're not getting the benefits, and are just stuck with the costs of giving the creator artificial rights.
Let the creators choose.
Right. When you decide to add a new section to your house, don't forget to pay royalties to the person who designed your house. You're making an unauthorized derivative work.
Actually, it would take a guy in the spacecraft a minimum of 4.3 years to arrive at Alpha Centauri. In Earth's reference frame it might take thousands of years. I'm saying that you're using the times in the wrong frames of reference.
People always remember that time is relative, but they forget that so is distance. The grandparent is right. There's nothing preventing him from reaching Alpha Centauri in an hour from his reference frame (other than the acceleration that would kill him, and the insane amount of energy it would take). And, as he accelerates, the distance between him and alpha centauri will be significantly shorter (thanks to the Lorentz Contraction), so he'll never have to travel faster than light to do it.
From Earth's or Alpha Centauri's perspective, it's going to take a damn long time from thousands of years to an absolute minimum of 4.3 years, though.