hmm... allright... I guess you've defined how to do this for a web application where both the XML file and the application itself would be on the same server. I can think of only one possible use for this scenario - perhaps if you're a web hosting company and trying to hide the SQL from your customers. Anybody else would have to be an admin on the server to reconfigure apache, and therefore would have access to the xml file no matter what.
I should point out that it can be tricky to setup, but some webhost providers give you such a directory to use. Even so, if you chown your xml file to the web server user, other websites hosted on the same server might be able to find your file and read it, so it's not perfectly safe.:) Since when was security an exact science? Personally, I don't see a reason for trying that hard to keep other users from seeing the file. If you just chown the file to the apache group and chmod it 640, you should be able to safely store it within your website root and nobody can download it.
Of course, in a shared server environment, you're better off hardcoding your SQL if you want to keep it hidden.:) I don't see any reason to keep it hidden, but I don't see any reason to make it freely available either. If I were coding for a client, I'd want them to have access to the schema no matter what, because it's their data stored there. Otherwise, I don't see this setup as being nearly as useful for security as the GP poster seemed to think it was. It's just like a resource file, where you can change little things without having to recompile the application.
I use this method on my home machine, actually, for some files (but not xml schema, unless wikkitikkitavi does it, and it might). But then, I have complete access to the machine.:) But it does serve up my own website. Not that my website is the most secure thing by my standards, but one thing at a time. I've got a bunch of meals cooking on different burners, and I can only work on one at a time.:)
After having went through several maintenance and change cycles, obviously the programmers of that application had obviously lost track of when something is supposed to be a string and when it's supposed to be a value. The fact that in PHP if (x == 0) is true when x is "", or for that matter when X equals "OTHER", didn't help either.
Weak typing is always a mistake, in my opinion. I have yet to create an app or even a very very short script that didn't somehow need typing to be separated. Sure, it can smooth over some quick prototyping, but it's always a pain in the ass. When using weakly typed languages, I always use a shitty naming convention to show what the variable should contain. It's only a hack solution, and it doesn't fix the language, but it does help in maintenance because you can see what the variable is supposed to contain.
Weak typing also tends to encourage people to jump back and forth with what they store in a variable, which is a bad habit. A variable, from creation to destruction, should only store one type of data. If it's a string, great. If it's an integer, great. If it's 3 letters, null-terminated, great. But only one type of data, always. You code yourself into a corner if you keep flip-flopping what kind of data is kept in a variable.
Uninitialized variables are another "feature" of weak typed languages that I can really do without. (Yeah, I know, C and C++ allow you to use a variable before it's initialized, and Java doesn't, and I like that about Java, but gcc will warn you when you do that, and I like that about gcc) When you need a string to be either "true" or "false", and it's initialized to "" by default, then you're screwed when it doesn't equal one of the values it must equal. (Yeah, it's better to create constants or at least variables that you agree never to change and name them true or false if you have to, but something must be done for code readability. Once you're > 300 lines || > 3 days from writing the code, you've gotta be able to read it)
But Java is pretty mature compared to most other things. JDBC, JavaDoc, Swing.... they're all good. Not to mention, and this is the big one for me, one.jar can run on any machine with a modern VM. Because I need to write stuff that runs on a... variety... of operating systems, that's pretty priceless.
Um, wxWindows predates Java by some years, actually. Sure, it's been in a niche for most of its life, but with the 2.4 release it actually has just about everything you'll find in MFC. Plus it's very easy with C++ to just use the libraries you like the most.
All this to hide some SQL statements... Jeez... Sounds like a heck of a lot more work than neccessary. I doubt that knowing a SQL statement will yield any great secrets. SQL statements are data. They are not any more secret than the decompiled code itself.
Not that hard, if you have access to the server, that is. Apache runs as the user apache on most systems by default. Change that.:) Then store your xml file somewhere out of the website root and the web server root, and define its location in an env variable. Then you can store it anywhere you want, just make sure to update that env variable. Store it in your home directory, but chown it to the web server's user and group, and chmod it 400.
NOw it can't be downloaded from the web server. It you've stored it carefully, you've put it where it can't be downloaded through other servers (such as proftpd and whatever else is installed). You've only made it readable by the webserver user and group, and you *did* make a strong password for that account, right? And you change it regularly? So a user has to have shell access to the machine, *and* they have to crach the webserver user's account, in which case they'd have control of your entire web server anyway.
Or at least criss-cross campus leading co-eds to the sign it's lighting proclaiming one BITCHIN' pool party.
What, and give all the nerds the only chance they may ever have to have sex? The last thing society needs is sexually-satisfied nerds. There goes all our technological progress....
That is, when they're not too busy submitting dupes without checking for messy details like facts, grammer, spelling, etc.
Here's an idea. Why don't the story submitters get the google cache links when they submit the story? Why is it that the slashdot editors are held up as solely responsible for this problem, and the submitters who fail to provide such links are not held up as well? For that matter, we'd have to trickle the effect down to every person who clicks on the link and causes the server to become overloaded. And in this day and age, individual responsibility is something studied in History but is no longer in current practice.
Please, let's keep the rationalization to a minimum. The fact is that drugs like marajuana and alcohol affect your mind, and hinder your ability to make rational, coherent choices. They also affect motor skills and reduce the acuity with which one can perceive and determine what is going on around them.
Um, how was I rationalizing? You're absolutely right about what pot and alcohol do to you. Of course, many over-the-counter drugs have similar effects, some are even more dangerous because there's no accompanying sense of euphoria to signal that you're off your rocker. The modern fad of prescribing drugs to kids just for being kids winds up prescribing drugs that also have these effects. There is a certain duplicity in citing the dangers of alcohol and pot and ignoring the dangers inherent in all of modern medicine.
Yes, people are dumb. But I'd argue that people who make stupid choices while under the influence of alocohol, marajuana, or any other drug, are even dumber, because they often do so knowing full well the consequences.
There is something to be said for the illegal nature of drugs (alcohol is only partly legal) attracting a certain uncaring mindset. At least, it's what I have observed.
Bottom line, the drugs aren't the problem, and you can't legislate stupidity out of people's lives.
Should we continue to give the Wrights credit for the first powered flight when they had to rely on 25mph winds? Seems the 1903 Wright flyer was more like a glider.
No, we should be giving them credit for what they actually achieved.
Wilbur and Orville Wright wished to be remembered for making the first controlled and sustained powered flight. Their greatest contribution to aviation was the development of three-axis aerodynamic controls -- roll, pitch, and yaw -- and the piloting skills needed to use them effectively.
Why would Vader care about the droids anyway? Some dopey mechanical friends from his childhood - they were probably beneath his notice by Episodes 4-6. Maybe he thought "Hmm, I guess Obi-Wan has my old droids. Whatever." But we couldn't exactly read the thoughtful look on his face when that occurred to him.
Well, if Lucas had planned it properly from the beginning, seeing threepio and r2d2 could have contributed to the drama of Vader turning back to the light side.
But since he didn't do that, here are some other reasons he might care (and they're optional, so Lucas can ignore them if he wants):
Any potentially diabolical kid builds backdoors into his droids to allow him to take control of them. Vader could exploit them and have threepio assassinate/capture Luke Skywalker.
Any potentially diabolical kid puts a homing device in his droids that is detectable only by the kid, therefore he could have located the rebel base in Episode IV just because he knew threepio was on board. (For this to hold true, the rebels would have to find the beacon after the battle of the death star and remove it, or they might possibly remove it sometime between Ep IV and V)
If he had either a backdoor or a homing beacon, in Episode V, while the rebels were captive at Bespin, he could have exploited it somehow to make Threepio either a psychotic assassin among the rebels, or to make Threepio work to help the Empire to track down the rebel fleet.
There are probably other ways Anakin's relationship with the droids could be exploited, but mostly only with Threepio. He didn't do much with r2d2. On the other hand, had he recognized r2d2 at some point, we could be awarded with a flashback scene to his wedding or something like that, lending to the drama of his ultimate reconversion.
I should point out that it may not be necessary for the droids to have their memories' erased. If they don't know that Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader, then they have nothing to reveal to Luke Skywalker. Furthermore, while Luke tended to take the droids more seriously than other humans did, he still considered them second-class citizens and was ot likely to have stumbled across the information in Threepio. Conversely, threepio could just blurt something out about Anakin sometime during Episode V, noting how Vader did something that reminded him of his maker, foreshadowing the announcement that Vader == Anakin Skywalker who is LUke's father. This could be added simply, I'll bet. Conversely, r2d2 could use this information in a tactical fashion against Vader to give the Rebels some sort of advantage, and we could wind up with a situation where the top rebel leaders knew about Vader and Luke at the start of Episode V (even Leia), but Luke didn't know. This could be done without adding any footage that they don't already have, but they would have to be pretty careful about it, and it would totally change the dynamics of the Empire Strikes Back, and might well prompt Lucas to deal with The Fanatics Strike Back.
I have problems with that. Let's not forget that Han, who hung out with bounty hunters regularly, knew exactly who Greedo was. I don't buy this idea that Greedo was on his first bounty hunting gig.
Yeah, I know waaaay too much about this. Anyway, in the third book of the Han Solo trilogy, Boba Fett warns Han that Greedo is after him. Greedo also meets with Han several times before confronting him in the cantina and getting shot. So yes, he knew Greedo was after him, and he knew who he was, and he knew (ref: Han's conversation with jabba in the hangar, originally filmed with a human playing Jabba) that Greedo was just a two-bit player, if that. Greedo did spend some time learning to fire a blaster, and that damn blaster shot was added in. Han fired first in the original release, the original vhs release, the book, and the Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina. Lucas just was't in sync with "his creation" when he had that blaster shot added in.
People need to start taking more blame for once. Jesus.
Interesting that you say "people need to start taking more blame for once", and then give the name of the world's most well-known scapegoat.
Anyway, to address your concerns, there is a great deal of statistical evidence available to show that people smoke pot for years and years and years and lead normal, healthy lives, even successful.
It has been proven (rather conclusively) that pot has a detrimental effect on memory and cognitive processes while the person is still under the influence of it (the same can be said of flu remedies though...). Considering that the compound often stays in the body for as much as a week, this will certainly cause effects much as you describe (blocking pathways associated with long-term memory and cognitive processes) in a regular user.
It has to due with neurotransmitters. Pot doesn't actually kill brain cells (I think alcohol actually does, but I could be wrong). It just stimulates certain transmitters or something. I read all about it Here.
The real issue is that there is no proof of chronic effects. While the compound blocks these parts of the brain, and intoxicates the person while the substance is in their bloodstream, the parts are not destroyed (unlike, say, alcohol, which kills the cells).
Long-term effects are there. Your brain gets used to the pot being there and ultimately starts producing less of the relevant neurotransmitters. Whether or not your brain ever fully recovers I have yet to experience. My short-term memory has been crap every since I started smoking pot, but I only did it for 2 years. Heavily when I did it, mind you, but now it's > 7 years after I quit, and my short-term memory still hasn't recovered. I used to be able to remember phone numbers given to me once. I can't remember more than 2-3 digits in sequence anymore. It's very frustrating.
Symptoms may include restlessness, irritability, mild agitation and sleep disruption. However, for the overwhelming majority of marijuana smokers, these symptoms are not severe enough to re-initiate their use of cannabis.
I have to say, I think there's a lot of social influence here. These symptoms are the same (although less severe, some of them) as what you get when you quit smoking cigarettes cold turkey. The difference is that you can just go down to the corner store and buy a pack of cigarettes. Quitting pot smoking is a complete lifestyle change. You get new friends, you do new things, and so forth. At the very least you isolate yourself from your pot-smoking friends. (Unless you're one of those unique potheads that doesn't hang out with other potheads)
In addition, marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. It fails to inflict the types of serious health consequences these two legal drugs cause. Around 50,000 people die each year from alcohol poisoning. Similarly, more than 400,000 deaths each year are attributed to tobacco smoking. By comparison, marijuana is nontoxic and cannot cause death by overdose.
These are significant facts I wish people would notice. As much as I know about being a pothead, and I'm one of those who was negatively affected (but I do addiction pretty easily; my wife and I had to cut down on sex for that reason, and other stuff), I'm all over decriminalizing it. Fuck that, I want it legal. This is supposed to be a free society, right? How can we have freedom without responsibility? Take away our responsibility for our own decisions and you take away our freedom to act.
No one is suggesting we encourage more drug use; simply that we stop arresting responsible marijuana smokers. In recent years, we have significantly reduced the prevalence of drunk driving and tobacco smoking.
Indeed, I would hazard to guess that pot-smoking would probably decrease when it became legal. the trick is to make it legal, tax it, drive the price up, and so forth, without creating a black market for it. Cigarettes are very close to developing a black market in this country. Expect to see it appear or become prevalent in the coming years.:)
We have not achieved this by prohibiting the use of alcohol and tobacco or by targeting and arresting adults who use alcohol and tobacco responsibly, but through honest educational campaigns.
This is some use of the word "honest" with which I am unfamiliar. I've read/heard plenty of crap both for and against cigarette smoking. Until recently, most of the supposed hazards of smoking were unproven, and some were even made up. I'm not saying cigarettes are safe, but the fact is that there is 30 years of FUD against cigarettes, with facts surfacing to support only a subset of that FUD in the last 5-10 years. The single largest factor, near as I can tell, that has reduced cigarette smoking has nothing to do with health issues (which were suspected for years anyway, some frivolous lawsuits notwithstanding) or stupid laws passed to discriminate against smokers. It's been peer pressure. You know, that thing you're supposed to resist, and make your own decisions? Yeah, that. It's the most-used weapon of those who would ban drug use of all kinds, and in my experience, it's not used at all by drug dealers. Regardless of what Nancy Reagan had to say about it, her tactic was peer pressure.
Anyone who's parents have made them smoke an entire pack at one sitting will tell you that you can't make it through one pack (chain smoked) without puking.
This isn't true, dude. For a kid who got caught smoking his 3rd or 4th cigarette, sure, it's true. I have sat down and smoked entire packs of Marlboro reds, Camel wides, American Spirit blues, and some lighter cigarettes. I won't say it's the *cheapest* thing to do, nor will I pretend I didn't get a head rush at least, but I did it without turning green and/or puking. And not on a dare. Get me home, really bored, with a book, and I'll sit and read and chain smoke all day. Lucky for me now, my life is so active that I don't smoke all that much anymore.
So: does Vader ever actually see R2D2 and C3PO together in episodes IV to VI? I can't remember.
Yes, and no. He may have seen them go to the Millenium Falcon in Episode IV, but he was also fighting ObiWan at the moment. He may have spied them on the moon of Endor where he picked up Luke, but I don't think he spent any time spying on them. The only times in Episode V that the droids were together were at the beginning, before Vader even showed up on Hoth (He might've caught a glimpse of 3PO running up the ramp to the Falcon) but split up soon afterward. Later on, they hooked up again, in Bespin, but by then Vader was trying to kick his son's ass.
There are lots of similar droids, true. I don't think he would've recognized R2D2 except by temperament, but he never had an opportunity to observe artoo's temperament. I think he would have recognized threepio, though, since he was looking basically the same as he had in Episode II. However, he didn't get much exposure to threepio. Remember that when he took everyone prisoner, threepio had been blown to bits. Then he saw threepio strapped to Chewie's back, but still in pieces.
I think that Lucas wouldn't have done what he did with the droids if it were actually possible for Vader to have interacted with them in the other movies. That would have been a plot hole even he couldn't fill with BS.
Would I get a show of hands who believes that an adapted version of the "New Jedi Order" novel series might be a good trilogy to film and produce for the fans? I think they could probably get all the old actors from Episodes 4,5,6 to play characters that are actually pretty close in age now to the characters to the books. Just seeing the Yuuhzan Vong and the new Jedi's trading blows with all the intrigue going on... I think there is enough story material to do a trilogy of sorts. Hell it might even redeem Lucas if he wrote a crappy Episode 3.
Screw that, let's see the Timothy Vaugn series that starts with Heir to the Empire. They can get Brendan Frasier as Han Solo and that chick he played with in The Mummy as Leia. Leonardo deCrappio would be fine for Luke, but they should really try to get a good actor this time. No idea who'd play Lando, though. Other than that, and a few costumes, they won't *need* any of the original characters. It's all new and really really good, and there's no way Lucas could screw it up! NO WAY!
I knew it wouldn't take long for a hot grits reference... But, since others are sadly lacking, I'll risk the wrath of moderators. I've got Karma to spare anyway.
Reminds me why I hate Lucas. I will never believe that a professional bounty hunter could miss his mark by three feet at point blank range. Han was cooler when he shot first anyway.
Not that Lucas has been trying to preserve the plots in any of the books (i.e. Boba Fett was a madeup name by the man once known as the Protecter somethingorother. Jango Fett never existed, iirc), however, if you read Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, you'll find that Greedo was a wanna-be bounty hunter who was setup to get Han as his first bounty. He was supposed to try, and Han was supposed to kill him. He had only used a blaster like, once maybe?, before he went after Han. He didn't know what he was doing...
It's sad that George Lucas, who gave us the truly brilliant THX-1138, has devolved from great artist to talentless hack.
What, you really thought he was talented to begin with? Lol. He just stopped taking credit for other peoples' work, did the right thing, and started doing his own work with full responsibility for it. Now we see that the emporer has no clothes...
Slashdot Mirror
hmm... allright... I guess you've defined how to do this for a web application where both the XML file and the application itself would be on the same server. I can think of only one possible use for this scenario - perhaps if you're a web hosting company and trying to hide the SQL from your customers. Anybody else would have to be an admin on the server to reconfigure apache, and therefore would have access to the xml file no matter what.
I should point out that it can be tricky to setup, but some webhost providers give you such a directory to use. Even so, if you chown your xml file to the web server user, other websites hosted on the same server might be able to find your file and read it, so it's not perfectly safe. :) Since when was security an exact science? Personally, I don't see a reason for trying that hard to keep other users from seeing the file. If you just chown the file to the apache group and chmod it 640, you should be able to safely store it within your website root and nobody can download it.
Of course, in a shared server environment, you're better off hardcoding your SQL if you want to keep it hidden. :) I don't see any reason to keep it hidden, but I don't see any reason to make it freely available either. If I were coding for a client, I'd want them to have access to the schema no matter what, because it's their data stored there. Otherwise, I don't see this setup as being nearly as useful for security as the GP poster seemed to think it was. It's just like a resource file, where you can change little things without having to recompile the application.
I use this method on my home machine, actually, for some files (but not xml schema, unless wikkitikkitavi does it, and it might). But then, I have complete access to the machine. :) But it does serve up my own website. Not that my website is the most secure thing by my standards, but one thing at a time. I've got a bunch of meals cooking on different burners, and I can only work on one at a time. :)
After having went through several maintenance and change cycles, obviously the programmers of that application had obviously lost track of when something is supposed to be a string and when it's supposed to be a value. The fact that in PHP if (x == 0) is true when x is "", or for that matter when X equals "OTHER", didn't help either.
Weak typing is always a mistake, in my opinion. I have yet to create an app or even a very very short script that didn't somehow need typing to be separated. Sure, it can smooth over some quick prototyping, but it's always a pain in the ass. When using weakly typed languages, I always use a shitty naming convention to show what the variable should contain. It's only a hack solution, and it doesn't fix the language, but it does help in maintenance because you can see what the variable is supposed to contain.
Weak typing also tends to encourage people to jump back and forth with what they store in a variable, which is a bad habit. A variable, from creation to destruction, should only store one type of data. If it's a string, great. If it's an integer, great. If it's 3 letters, null-terminated, great. But only one type of data, always. You code yourself into a corner if you keep flip-flopping what kind of data is kept in a variable.
Uninitialized variables are another "feature" of weak typed languages that I can really do without. (Yeah, I know, C and C++ allow you to use a variable before it's initialized, and Java doesn't, and I like that about Java, but gcc will warn you when you do that, and I like that about gcc) When you need a string to be either "true" or "false", and it's initialized to "" by default, then you're screwed when it doesn't equal one of the values it must equal. (Yeah, it's better to create constants or at least variables that you agree never to change and name them true or false if you have to, but something must be done for code readability. Once you're > 300 lines || > 3 days from writing the code, you've gotta be able to read it)
Sounds like you know when to hold them, when to fold them, when to walk away AND when to run.
But obviously he counts his money while he's sitting at the table. *sigh*
But Java is pretty mature compared to most other things. JDBC, JavaDoc, Swing.... they're all good. Not to mention, and this is the big one for me, one .jar can run on any machine with a modern VM. Because I need to write stuff that runs on a... variety... of operating systems, that's pretty priceless.
Um, wxWindows predates Java by some years, actually. Sure, it's been in a niche for most of its life, but with the 2.4 release it actually has just about everything you'll find in MFC. Plus it's very easy with C++ to just use the libraries you like the most.
The saying goes like this:
ANSI C++. Write once, compile anywhere.
Java. Write once, debug everywhere.
:)
All this to hide some SQL statements... Jeez... Sounds like a heck of a lot more work than neccessary. I doubt that knowing a SQL statement will yield any great secrets. SQL statements are data. They are not any more secret than the decompiled code itself.
Not that hard, if you have access to the server, that is. Apache runs as the user apache on most systems by default. Change that. :) Then store your xml file somewhere out of the website root and the web server root, and define its location in an env variable. Then you can store it anywhere you want, just make sure to update that env variable. Store it in your home directory, but chown it to the web server's user and group, and chmod it 400.
NOw it can't be downloaded from the web server. It you've stored it carefully, you've put it where it can't be downloaded through other servers (such as proftpd and whatever else is installed). You've only made it readable by the webserver user and group, and you *did* make a strong password for that account, right? And you change it regularly? So a user has to have shell access to the machine, *and* they have to crach the webserver user's account, in which case they'd have control of your entire web server anyway.
Here's the same, clickable
Or at least criss-cross campus leading co-eds to the sign it's lighting proclaiming one BITCHIN' pool party.
What, and give all the nerds the only chance they may ever have to have sex? The last thing society needs is sexually-satisfied nerds. There goes all our technological progress....
That is, when they're not too busy submitting dupes without checking for messy details like facts, grammer, spelling, etc.
Here's an idea. Why don't the story submitters get the google cache links when they submit the story? Why is it that the slashdot editors are held up as solely responsible for this problem, and the submitters who fail to provide such links are not held up as well? For that matter, we'd have to trickle the effect down to every person who clicks on the link and causes the server to become overloaded. And in this day and age, individual responsibility is something studied in History but is no longer in current practice.
Well, that's where the nano-rednecks come in.
I realize this is funny and was modded so, but why did I get chills running up my spine when I read it?
Please, let's keep the rationalization to a minimum. The fact is that drugs like marajuana and alcohol affect your mind, and hinder your ability to make rational, coherent choices. They also affect motor skills and reduce the acuity with which one can perceive and determine what is going on around them.
Um, how was I rationalizing? You're absolutely right about what pot and alcohol do to you. Of course, many over-the-counter drugs have similar effects, some are even more dangerous because there's no accompanying sense of euphoria to signal that you're off your rocker. The modern fad of prescribing drugs to kids just for being kids winds up prescribing drugs that also have these effects. There is a certain duplicity in citing the dangers of alcohol and pot and ignoring the dangers inherent in all of modern medicine.
Yes, people are dumb. But I'd argue that people who make stupid choices while under the influence of alocohol, marajuana, or any other drug, are even dumber, because they often do so knowing full well the consequences.
There is something to be said for the illegal nature of drugs (alcohol is only partly legal) attracting a certain uncaring mindset. At least, it's what I have observed.
Bottom line, the drugs aren't the problem, and you can't legislate stupidity out of people's lives.
What does sod mean in the dirst place?
Stormtroopers of Death. Sargent D is coming, and you're on his list.
Should we continue to give the Wrights credit for the first powered flight when they had to rely on 25mph winds? Seems the 1903 Wright flyer was more like a glider.
No, we should be giving them credit for what they actually achieved.
From first-to-fly
Why would Vader care about the droids anyway? Some dopey mechanical friends from his childhood - they were probably beneath his notice by Episodes 4-6. Maybe he thought "Hmm, I guess Obi-Wan has my old droids. Whatever." But we couldn't exactly read the thoughtful look on his face when that occurred to him.
Well, if Lucas had planned it properly from the beginning, seeing threepio and r2d2 could have contributed to the drama of Vader turning back to the light side.
But since he didn't do that, here are some other reasons he might care (and they're optional, so Lucas can ignore them if he wants):
There are probably other ways Anakin's relationship with the droids could be exploited, but mostly only with Threepio. He didn't do much with r2d2. On the other hand, had he recognized r2d2 at some point, we could be awarded with a flashback scene to his wedding or something like that, lending to the drama of his ultimate reconversion.
I should point out that it may not be necessary for the droids to have their memories' erased. If they don't know that Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader, then they have nothing to reveal to Luke Skywalker. Furthermore, while Luke tended to take the droids more seriously than other humans did, he still considered them second-class citizens and was ot likely to have stumbled across the information in Threepio. Conversely, threepio could just blurt something out about Anakin sometime during Episode V, noting how Vader did something that reminded him of his maker, foreshadowing the announcement that Vader == Anakin Skywalker who is LUke's father. This could be added simply, I'll bet. Conversely, r2d2 could use this information in a tactical fashion against Vader to give the Rebels some sort of advantage, and we could wind up with a situation where the top rebel leaders knew about Vader and Luke at the start of Episode V (even Leia), but Luke didn't know. This could be done without adding any footage that they don't already have, but they would have to be pretty careful about it, and it would totally change the dynamics of the Empire Strikes Back, and might well prompt Lucas to deal with The Fanatics Strike Back.
I have problems with that. Let's not forget that Han, who hung out with bounty hunters regularly, knew exactly who Greedo was. I don't buy this idea that Greedo was on his first bounty hunting gig.
Yeah, I know waaaay too much about this. Anyway, in the third book of the Han Solo trilogy, Boba Fett warns Han that Greedo is after him. Greedo also meets with Han several times before confronting him in the cantina and getting shot. So yes, he knew Greedo was after him, and he knew who he was, and he knew (ref: Han's conversation with jabba in the hangar, originally filmed with a human playing Jabba) that Greedo was just a two-bit player, if that. Greedo did spend some time learning to fire a blaster, and that damn blaster shot was added in. Han fired first in the original release, the original vhs release, the book, and the Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina. Lucas just was't in sync with "his creation" when he had that blaster shot added in.
People need to start taking more blame for once. Jesus.
Interesting that you say "people need to start taking more blame for once", and then give the name of the world's most well-known scapegoat.
Anyway, to address your concerns, there is a great deal of statistical evidence available to show that people smoke pot for years and years and years and lead normal, healthy lives, even successful.
It has been proven (rather conclusively) that pot has a detrimental effect on memory and cognitive processes while the person is still under the influence of it (the same can be said of flu remedies though...). Considering that the compound often stays in the body for as much as a week, this will certainly cause effects much as you describe (blocking pathways associated with long-term memory and cognitive processes) in a regular user.
It has to due with neurotransmitters. Pot doesn't actually kill brain cells (I think alcohol actually does, but I could be wrong). It just stimulates certain transmitters or something. I read all about it Here.
The real issue is that there is no proof of chronic effects. While the compound blocks these parts of the brain, and intoxicates the person while the substance is in their bloodstream, the parts are not destroyed (unlike, say, alcohol, which kills the cells).
Long-term effects are there. Your brain gets used to the pot being there and ultimately starts producing less of the relevant neurotransmitters. Whether or not your brain ever fully recovers I have yet to experience. My short-term memory has been crap every since I started smoking pot, but I only did it for 2 years. Heavily when I did it, mind you, but now it's > 7 years after I quit, and my short-term memory still hasn't recovered. I used to be able to remember phone numbers given to me once. I can't remember more than 2-3 digits in sequence anymore. It's very frustrating.
Symptoms may include restlessness, irritability, mild agitation and sleep disruption. However, for the overwhelming majority of marijuana smokers, these symptoms are not severe enough to re-initiate their use of cannabis.
I have to say, I think there's a lot of social influence here. These symptoms are the same (although less severe, some of them) as what you get when you quit smoking cigarettes cold turkey. The difference is that you can just go down to the corner store and buy a pack of cigarettes. Quitting pot smoking is a complete lifestyle change. You get new friends, you do new things, and so forth. At the very least you isolate yourself from your pot-smoking friends. (Unless you're one of those unique potheads that doesn't hang out with other potheads)
In addition, marijuana is far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. It fails to inflict the types of serious health consequences these two legal drugs cause. Around 50,000 people die each year from alcohol poisoning. Similarly, more than 400,000 deaths each year are attributed to tobacco smoking. By comparison, marijuana is nontoxic and cannot cause death by overdose.
These are significant facts I wish people would notice. As much as I know about being a pothead, and I'm one of those who was negatively affected (but I do addiction pretty easily; my wife and I had to cut down on sex for that reason, and other stuff), I'm all over decriminalizing it. Fuck that, I want it legal. This is supposed to be a free society, right? How can we have freedom without responsibility? Take away our responsibility for our own decisions and you take away our freedom to act.
No one is suggesting we encourage more drug use; simply that we stop arresting responsible marijuana smokers. In recent years, we have significantly reduced the prevalence of drunk driving and tobacco smoking.
Indeed, I would hazard to guess that pot-smoking would probably decrease when it became legal. the trick is to make it legal, tax it, drive the price up, and so forth, without creating a black market for it. Cigarettes are very close to developing a black market in this country. Expect to see it appear or become prevalent in the coming years. :)
We have not achieved this by prohibiting the use of alcohol and tobacco or by targeting and arresting adults who use alcohol and tobacco responsibly, but through honest educational campaigns.
This is some use of the word "honest" with which I am unfamiliar. I've read/heard plenty of crap both for and against cigarette smoking. Until recently, most of the supposed hazards of smoking were unproven, and some were even made up. I'm not saying cigarettes are safe, but the fact is that there is 30 years of FUD against cigarettes, with facts surfacing to support only a subset of that FUD in the last 5-10 years. The single largest factor, near as I can tell, that has reduced cigarette smoking has nothing to do with health issues (which were suspected for years anyway, some frivolous lawsuits notwithstanding) or stupid laws passed to discriminate against smokers. It's been peer pressure. You know, that thing you're supposed to resist, and make your own decisions? Yeah, that. It's the most-used weapon of those who would ban drug use of all kinds, and in my experience, it's not used at all by drug dealers. Regardless of what Nancy Reagan had to say about it, her tactic was peer pressure.
And I've seen lives ruined by the stupid choices people make while under the influence of marajuana...and other drugs.
And I've seen lives ruined by the stupid choices of people who were stone cold sober. what of it? Bottom line? People are dumb.
Anyone who's parents have made them smoke an entire pack at one sitting will tell you that you can't make it through one pack (chain smoked) without puking.
This isn't true, dude. For a kid who got caught smoking his 3rd or 4th cigarette, sure, it's true. I have sat down and smoked entire packs of Marlboro reds, Camel wides, American Spirit blues, and some lighter cigarettes. I won't say it's the *cheapest* thing to do, nor will I pretend I didn't get a head rush at least, but I did it without turning green and/or puking. And not on a dare. Get me home, really bored, with a book, and I'll sit and read and chain smoke all day. Lucky for me now, my life is so active that I don't smoke all that much anymore.
So: does Vader ever actually see R2D2 and C3PO together in episodes IV to VI? I can't remember.
Yes, and no. He may have seen them go to the Millenium Falcon in Episode IV, but he was also fighting ObiWan at the moment. He may have spied them on the moon of Endor where he picked up Luke, but I don't think he spent any time spying on them. The only times in Episode V that the droids were together were at the beginning, before Vader even showed up on Hoth (He might've caught a glimpse of 3PO running up the ramp to the Falcon) but split up soon afterward. Later on, they hooked up again, in Bespin, but by then Vader was trying to kick his son's ass.
There are lots of similar droids, true. I don't think he would've recognized R2D2 except by temperament, but he never had an opportunity to observe artoo's temperament. I think he would have recognized threepio, though, since he was looking basically the same as he had in Episode II. However, he didn't get much exposure to threepio. Remember that when he took everyone prisoner, threepio had been blown to bits. Then he saw threepio strapped to Chewie's back, but still in pieces.
I think that Lucas wouldn't have done what he did with the droids if it were actually possible for Vader to have interacted with them in the other movies. That would have been a plot hole even he couldn't fill with BS.
Would I get a show of hands who believes that an adapted version of the "New Jedi Order" novel series might be a good trilogy to film and produce for the fans? I think they could probably get all the old actors from Episodes 4,5,6 to play characters that are actually pretty close in age now to the characters to the books. Just seeing the Yuuhzan Vong and the new Jedi's trading blows with all the intrigue going on... I think there is enough story material to do a trilogy of sorts. Hell it might even redeem Lucas if he wrote a crappy Episode 3.
Screw that, let's see the Timothy Vaugn series that starts with Heir to the Empire. They can get Brendan Frasier as Han Solo and that chick he played with in The Mummy as Leia. Leonardo deCrappio would be fine for Luke, but they should really try to get a good actor this time. No idea who'd play Lando, though. Other than that, and a few costumes, they won't *need* any of the original characters. It's all new and really really good, and there's no way Lucas could screw it up! NO WAY!
Hopefully Tarantino won't suffer this fate.
Hell, the script writing isn't so bad, if you think about it. He could've handed the script to Tarantino to shoot and they would've rocked!
I knew it wouldn't take long for a hot grits reference... But, since others are sadly lacking, I'll risk the wrath of moderators. I've got Karma to spare anyway.
In Soviet Russia, Episode III script leaks YOU.
Reminds me why I hate Lucas. I will never believe that a professional bounty hunter could miss his mark by three feet at point blank range. Han was cooler when he shot first anyway.
Not that Lucas has been trying to preserve the plots in any of the books (i.e. Boba Fett was a madeup name by the man once known as the Protecter somethingorother. Jango Fett never existed, iirc), however, if you read Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina, you'll find that Greedo was a wanna-be bounty hunter who was setup to get Han as his first bounty. He was supposed to try, and Han was supposed to kill him. He had only used a blaster like, once maybe?, before he went after Han. He didn't know what he was doing...
It's sad that George Lucas, who gave us the truly brilliant THX-1138, has devolved from great artist to talentless hack.
What, you really thought he was talented to begin with? Lol. He just stopped taking credit for other peoples' work, did the right thing, and started doing his own work with full responsibility for it. Now we see that the emporer has no clothes...