... sending the message that achieving energy independence through hydrogen is a patriotic duty.
Patriotic duty? Forget that! It's your duty to humankind! Propaganda using Nationalism and Patriotism as a basis is not really a good thing. It creates the illusion of "us" versus "them" and leads to intolerance and violence. Don't make patriotism the focus of the advertising campaign! Though I suppose it'd work on more people these days than saving mankind would... Bleh.
Or better yet, make it more cost effective than gasoline. If people can save money, they'll do it, patriotic/environmental reasons aside.
(what is it about intelligence and the desire to blow things up?)
I don't think it's just intelligence... plenty of stupid people like to blow things up too. They just aren't as good at it. They either:
Fail to blow anything up, or
Blow themselves up quickly, thus ending their foray into the world of explosives.
Intelligent people manage to create explosions, and presumably are smart enough to stay out of the way. This means they can do a whole lot more of it than stupid people.
While I can certainly see the wisdom of using these in the military, I'd be a little worried about its potential for causing strokes if used more widely. Of course, if you're bleeding heavily enough to need it, I'd say the minimal risk of a stroke or heart attack is worth it. But if they start selling them to everyone (not just EMTs, emergency rooms, etc), people are going to use them when they cut their hand or scrape their knee.
They'd certainly have to come with warning labels, at least. That way the company that sells them will have covered their ass for when Aunt May has a stroke after slapping on a clotting bandaid to keep her finger from bleeding on her embroidery.
Is it me or do companies split off and merge at stock market whims? A companies stock goes up for merging, the all merge. When one company makes money from spinning off, they all start spinning off companies.
That may be true, but in this case, not so much so. According to the article, Lucasfilm is privately held, so doesn't have a stock price tracked on the market and millions of stockholders to make happy. They're not doing this to raise stock prices, because its stock isn't publicly traded. They're doing it so that all the companies can share resources without stepping on each others' toes as much. So if the games people want a bit of CG footage from a movie, they won't have to go through as much red tape, because it's already owned by their company. Or if they want to bring in the lead designer for a movie's special effects to talk to game artists, it'll be much easier. This might translate into more profits, but has nothing to do with stock price.
Probably not. I just can't see myself being happy staring at a computer screen for the next 30 years or so. Now if I could find a nice, fun IT job that got me away from my computer (and maybe::gasp:: outdoors occasionally), I might be able to make it to retirement.
If only I'd been able to catch the dot-com wave and retire at 30... Though I suppose that doesn't count for this question, since it would be without pension or benefits (wouldn't need 'em), and after a short successful career in IT.
But that makes me wonder-- do most tech companies (I'm thinking specifically about newer dot-com-type companies) have retirement plans? Many probably haven't been around long enough to have employees with enough longevity at the company to qualify for any kind of retirement benefits. But what about the bigger ones that have been around a while? Anyone know? Can you retire with benefits after a long IT (not management) career? I should hope that if you can't now, by the time most techies are heading for retirement, the system will be in place at most companies.
This same type of argument is used by those opposed to genetically modified foods-- the possibility of introducing new allergens and such that we have no experience with, and anyone could be allergic to. The risk is always there, and the only way to discover it is to try.
if you screw up, you can loose your certificate, but its too late for those who trusted that it had value in the first place.
Well, if we're talking about letting the government do this certification, perhaps there should be some sort of guarantee associated with it. For example, if you take your computer to a government-licensed technician, and they mess it up, you can keep taking it back to them until they fix it or replace it at no additional cost. Maybe there could even be a provision that you could take it to *any* government-licensed technician until it works. If that were the case, however, costs for the additional/subsequent repairs would have to be paid by the guy who messed up in the first place...
Sure, I bet it'd cost more to get your machine fixed by one of these guys, but you'd have the guarantee that it'll work, eventually. If you want to pay less, you can take your chances.
As for licensing someone's skills or credentials, I wouldn't want the government to be the one doing that. Maybe they can come up with a list of licensors, and people with one of those licenses/certificates can qualify for the government license described above.
As I think more about it, I think it'd never work. Maybe just have a fine (payable to the victim) if you're licensed and screw someone over?
I will correct myself: a MACHO is not a particle, but just a general term for stuff in the halo of a galaxy that's hard to see, like white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. So I guess this ring of stars could possibly be considered a bunch of MACHOs.
I believe WIMPs and MACHOs are the (theoretical-- I don't think either have every been found) particles that are one of the possible explanations of dark matter.
Other theories include massive black holes at the centers of galaxies, lots of cosmic dust, etc. etc.
Re:Negative review, but not (intentional) flamebai
on
LOTR: The Two Towers
·
· Score: 1
Posting anonymously? You coward!;)
Re:Negative review, but not (intentional) flamebai
on
LOTR: The Two Towers
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
The 'simplified' Gollum/Smeagol doesn't just have conversations with himself, he uses cartoonish visual devices like peeking from behind alternating sides of a tree in order to help the poor, stupid (but lucrative) audience keep up with which side is talking.
He's not peeking around different sides of a tree-- he's sitting in exactly the same place. The only thing that changes is the camera angle. PJ is using the camera to drive home the point that Gollum/Smeagol is a divided personality. When he says "our precious" he really means "our". I thought it was a very clever way of doing it, and lent very well to the character development of Gollum (he had the most of any character in this movie, I think, and I think I like the movie Gollum better than I liked the book Gollum).
The reason it really feels like two separate people is because PJ violates one of the rules of cinematography-- crossing the "line" (I don't remember exactly what it's called, but if there are two people talking to one another, there's an imaginary line between them. In order to not confuse the audience, the camera should never cross this "line" when switching between shots of one and the other). By switching between shots from one side of the line and the other, it makes it feel as if there are two Gollums, facing one another. The most movement Gollum does to facilitate this is perhaps a slight turn of his head in a different direction. Otherwise, the switching is all done by the camerawork.
In response to your other comments, I agree with your disappointment about Faramir. It was my one real dislike about the movie. As a whole, though I enjoyed it.
Being produced in labs and being used by the general public are two very different things. Not only do the labs have to produce it and test it, they then have to sell the idea to someone. When one of these fancy new interfaces first goes to market, they'll probably be pretty expensive, since it's unlikely it'd be mass produced yet. For a large chunk of the general public to actually start using a spiffy new interface, enough tech hounds have to shell out dough for the early ones for the manufacturer to bother mass producing, and thus lowering the cost of, the new gadget. Plus it has to have a large enough benefit over existing interfaces that people are actually willing to take the leap to pay for and try it (or at least enough people to make it "trendy").
Take the mouse, for example. According to this article, the mouse was invented in 1968. And it didn't become popular until the Mac came out in 1984. That's 16 years of obscurity before general adoption. Granted, there wasn't really any general widespread use of computer technology in that 16 years, so these days it'd be a good bit less. Still, people are really slow to switch away from something familiar that "works".
It's because you have to manually update the contacts and appointments-- it doesn't automatically load them all onto the iPod. You drag each contacts card (or appointment, I assume)into the Contacts folder on your iPod, and then it'll show up.
I suppose you could only drag over your "favorite" people to show up as contacts on your iPod, and if you drag them all over, everyone gets to be a favorite!
Russia seems to be having all sorts of problems these days. I saw a blurb on CNN the other day about a Russian rocket failing to make orbit and falling back into the atmosphere, destroying the satellite it was carrying. I feel like we hear about something like this in Russia every few months lately. But it makes me wonder-- does the US have this kind of problem (maybe not NASA, but commercial satellites going up, or military stuff), and the media just doesn't make a big deal of it?
Slashdot Mirror
From the article:
Patriotic duty? Forget that! It's your duty to humankind! Propaganda using Nationalism and Patriotism as a basis is not really a good thing. It creates the illusion of "us" versus "them" and leads to intolerance and violence. Don't make patriotism the focus of the advertising campaign! Though I suppose it'd work on more people these days than saving mankind would... Bleh.
Or better yet, make it more cost effective than gasoline. If people can save money, they'll do it, patriotic/environmental reasons aside.
- Fail to blow anything up, or
- Blow themselves up quickly, thus ending their foray into the world of explosives.
Intelligent people manage to create explosions, and presumably are smart enough to stay out of the way. This means they can do a whole lot more of it than stupid people.They'd certainly have to come with warning labels, at least. That way the company that sells them will have covered their ass for when Aunt May has a stroke after slapping on a clotting bandaid to keep her finger from bleeding on her embroidery.
That may be true, but in this case, not so much so. According to the article, Lucasfilm is privately held, so doesn't have a stock price tracked on the market and millions of stockholders to make happy. They're not doing this to raise stock prices, because its stock isn't publicly traded. They're doing it so that all the companies can share resources without stepping on each others' toes as much. So if the games people want a bit of CG footage from a movie, they won't have to go through as much red tape, because it's already owned by their company. Or if they want to bring in the lead designer for a movie's special effects to talk to game artists, it'll be much easier. This might translate into more profits, but has nothing to do with stock price.
If only I'd been able to catch the dot-com wave and retire at 30... Though I suppose that doesn't count for this question, since it would be without pension or benefits (wouldn't need 'em), and after a short successful career in IT.
But that makes me wonder-- do most tech companies (I'm thinking specifically about newer dot-com-type companies) have retirement plans? Many probably haven't been around long enough to have employees with enough longevity at the company to qualify for any kind of retirement benefits. But what about the bigger ones that have been around a while? Anyone know? Can you retire with benefits after a long IT (not management) career? I should hope that if you can't now, by the time most techies are heading for retirement, the system will be in place at most companies.
I wonder if it'll be OS X native, too? Probably a patch, or they likely would've required OS 9.x or higher.
Yes. As an example recently in the news, gene therapy for "bubble-boy" disease has been suspended, because a couple of the boys have developed leukemia (or something like it) as a result of the gene therapy.
This same type of argument is used by those opposed to genetically modified foods-- the possibility of introducing new allergens and such that we have no experience with, and anyone could be allergic to. The risk is always there, and the only way to discover it is to try.
I wonder what the results would've been if they'd managed to get their hands on the (much rumored) version of OS X that runs on Intel processors...
Well, if we're talking about letting the government do this certification, perhaps there should be some sort of guarantee associated with it. For example, if you take your computer to a government-licensed technician, and they mess it up, you can keep taking it back to them until they fix it or replace it at no additional cost. Maybe there could even be a provision that you could take it to *any* government-licensed technician until it works. If that were the case, however, costs for the additional/subsequent repairs would have to be paid by the guy who messed up in the first place...
Sure, I bet it'd cost more to get your machine fixed by one of these guys, but you'd have the guarantee that it'll work, eventually. If you want to pay less, you can take your chances.
As for licensing someone's skills or credentials, I wouldn't want the government to be the one doing that. Maybe they can come up with a list of licensors, and people with one of those licenses/certificates can qualify for the government license described above.
As I think more about it, I think it'd never work. Maybe just have a fine (payable to the victim) if you're licensed and screw someone over?
I will correct myself: a MACHO is not a particle, but just a general term for stuff in the halo of a galaxy that's hard to see, like white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. So I guess this ring of stars could possibly be considered a bunch of MACHOs.
WIMP: Weakly Interacting Massive Particle
MACHO: Massive Compact Halo Object
Other theories include massive black holes at the centers of galaxies, lots of cosmic dust, etc. etc.
Posting anonymously? You coward! ;)
He's not peeking around different sides of a tree-- he's sitting in exactly the same place. The only thing that changes is the camera angle. PJ is using the camera to drive home the point that Gollum/Smeagol is a divided personality. When he says "our precious" he really means "our". I thought it was a very clever way of doing it, and lent very well to the character development of Gollum (he had the most of any character in this movie, I think, and I think I like the movie Gollum better than I liked the book Gollum).
The reason it really feels like two separate people is because PJ violates one of the rules of cinematography-- crossing the "line" (I don't remember exactly what it's called, but if there are two people talking to one another, there's an imaginary line between them. In order to not confuse the audience, the camera should never cross this "line" when switching between shots of one and the other). By switching between shots from one side of the line and the other, it makes it feel as if there are two Gollums, facing one another. The most movement Gollum does to facilitate this is perhaps a slight turn of his head in a different direction. Otherwise, the switching is all done by the camerawork.
In response to your other comments, I agree with your disappointment about Faramir. It was my one real dislike about the movie. As a whole, though I enjoyed it.
Take the mouse, for example. According to this article, the mouse was invented in 1968. And it didn't become popular until the Mac came out in 1984. That's 16 years of obscurity before general adoption. Granted, there wasn't really any general widespread use of computer technology in that 16 years, so these days it'd be a good bit less. Still, people are really slow to switch away from something familiar that "works".
Yeah... BT did.
It's because you have to manually update the contacts and appointments-- it doesn't automatically load them all onto the iPod. You drag each contacts card (or appointment, I assume)into the Contacts folder on your iPod, and then it'll show up.
I suppose you could only drag over your "favorite" people to show up as contacts on your iPod, and if you drag them all over, everyone gets to be a favorite!
Russia seems to be having all sorts of problems these days. I saw a blurb on CNN the other day about a Russian rocket failing to make orbit and falling back into the atmosphere, destroying the satellite it was carrying. I feel like we hear about something like this in Russia every few months lately. But it makes me wonder-- does the US have this kind of problem (maybe not NASA, but commercial satellites going up, or military stuff), and the media just doesn't make a big deal of it?