Not only that, but this is old news. A friend of mine noticed this happening to him over a year ago. In fact, he posted this comment to Slashdot to its effect. But when he told other people about Netflix' shenanigans, nobody believed him. Now they're eating their words.
In some businesses. In others, the whole company could get away with a competing product if they wanted to, or even free software. Depends on the crowd.
A month ago, I would have said Continuum (formerly called Subspace)... a wonderful free (as in beer) massively multiplayer online game, the oldest running one in history. Fast paced, extremely addictive, excellent gameplay.
But some nice people hacked WINE and got it working (see also WineHQ Notes), something I've been waiting for for years.
I'm now thoroughly wasting all my time in this game again, without the guilty feeling of booting Windows for it! Screenshot
I mean, who's complaining about your article formatting? The only thing I see people complaining about in this dept are mistakes in grammar, spelling, and whatnot. And as you said yourself, you're human and make mistakes. I'm just not seeing a relevant discussion here... Your FAQ already states your good reasons why you reformat people's submissions.
I'm glad you're making posts "on the subject of Slashdot matters" but this one is a total non issue IMHO. Why don't we talk about more pressing issues like giving people reasons for their story's rejection so as to better improve that person's submissions in the future, or the problems with moderation, or other ACTUAL hot topic Slashdot issues?
Ever hear of Languatron? He hates the new BSG so much that even his fellow classic BSG fanboy peers shun him away. So he created a messageboard where only he is allowed to post. Additionally, only he is allowed to read. If you read it too long, you will be banned.
His rants are totally hilarious, this guy is totally off his rocker. Since getting banned over and over isn't my cup of tea, I decided instead to archive his entire website. It's funny stuff. I love crazy people.
Okay, come on. I know bashing Firefly is all the rage, and I tend to agree with you about BSG being a better show, but do you really have to resort to bashing Firefly's actors? It was a damn good show, one of the best and it did not deserve to be canceled. And FYI, BSG's creator (Ronald Moore) LOVED Firefly and much of the directing in BSG is based off of Firefly's style. So chill.
No way. BSG is totally rewatchable. I've rewatched the Mini, and seasons 1 and 2 in their entirety several times showing them to small groups of friends and colleagues and loved every minute of it.
BSG is fast paced and rarely dull. Even when you've seen it all and know what's going to happen it's still great fun to watch.
Watching TV isn't about having stories surprise you. The best stories are the ones that are the best told. BSG is storytelling at its best. I enjoy the execution so much, I could stand to watch it all again dozens of times.
OFFTOPIC: Why is that when I submitted this article on the 22nd was rejected, but five days later someone else submits it and it gets accepted?
Except less than two dozen episodes of Firefly were leaps and bounds better than over 100 episodes of B5. The best plot arc in B5 (Londo and G'Kar and their governments) was sadly neglected and shown out of order, disjointed just like Firefly was, except B5's problem wasn't the fault of the network. It was a fault of the writing.
1) One dimensional characters? The "rangers" where introduced in about 3 seconds in a way that would have lead you to understand they were just like Tolken's Rangers out of Lord of the Rings. He could have hours building that depth and miss (like Peter Jackson did) or he could assume you read the books and would understand. There are many other examples through the series that assume you are well read and thats where the depth of the characters come from.
That's crap. You can't just introduce a character, a set of characters, or an entire civilization of characters, make them remarkably similar to something from another publication, and assume the audience will assume depth. B5 created its own universe. Hell, LOTR isn't even in the same frigging genre.
2) After much foreshadowing and much work to build up a very suttle idea of just how scary the bad guys are and how benvolent the good guys are he throws the whole thing away and the bad guys are so evil and the good guys are more evil than anyone else.
Uh, okay? Did you read my post? I was very happy with the revelations about the Vorlons and the shadows. But within a handful of episodes after these revelations, they were completely written out of the show. This is unacceptable. That'd be like the Dominion war being declared over after DS9 was retaken just a few episodes after the war began. The DS9 people knew how to build up to a war, then how to make it last. JMS did the buildup correctly, hell, better than DS9. But the war didn't last. It was over in no time, which made the buildup as worthless as the execution of the war.
3) got messed up because of the stupid pseudo-cancelation on the 4th season. The result was much of the story had to be speed up and that did mess things up thanks to the stupid execs at the studios.
I agree with you here, but we're seeing the effect, not the cause. JMS wouldn't have had network execs threatening to cancel his show if he didn't mismanage time from the start on B5, wasting it on unnecessary plot arcs and boring characters. He had a gold mine, but he spent all his time mining the silver.
Quit overreacting. I wouldn't be praising the Centauri / Narn arcs AT ALL had it not been for the 5th season. Instead I'd be complaining about the total lack of closure. But even with that closure, it was still aired in disjointed orders with that whole pseudo cancellation then the prequel they did after season 5 ended.
JMS mismanaged time and focused on the wrong things. This is why the network started getting cancel happy. The same damn thing happened to Farscape. They wasted all their time. The same damn thing happened to Enterprise. They wasted all their time. B5 was lucky it managed to at least conclude the story in a meaningful way, even if disjointed. Farscape only barely got that opportunity and didn't do it as well. Enterprise just fucked up their ending.
Oh how I wanted to like B5. I really wanted to like it. But I just couldn't.
Problem 1. Too much time spent on one-dimensional characters
The protagonists couldn't have been more one-dimensional. Delenn with her religious quest, Sinclair and Sheridan with their blind following of her, that silly relationship between Delenn and Sheridan. They were all so cookie cutter. Ivanova and Garibaldi were a little more faceted and interesting, as was the doctor. But those characters and their facets were largely neglected in favor of showboating the boring heroes.
Problem 2. Shadow war took too long to build up to, then ended too quickly and in an anticlimactic way
Then there's the shadow war. It took *years* to develop. The shadows were totally a faceless enemy for a very long time and when their motives were finally revealed, they were eliminated from the story in short order. This contributed heavily to the show's one-dimensional feel. With the face of the enemy being a mystery for the vast majority of the shadow war, it didn't feel like much of a war. When the motives were revealed and the true fighting broke out, I felt it was over too quickly. That, and the Shadows took the Vorlons with them when they packed up and left! Two mystery races gone in an anticlimactic poof.
Problem 3. Londo and G'Kar and their governments were the best part of the show, but were totally neglected
Then there's Londo and G'Kar. Let me just first say that the story of the Centauri Republic's rise, fall, rise again, and fall again and how they took the Narns with them for the ride was one of the single most moving things I have ever seen on TV. And the way Londo and G'Kar personified the emotional roller coaster, and how they went from bitter enemies to friends was an amazing piece of writing. But JMS neglected this amazing story arc to an extreme! The Centauri/Narn arc took a backseat to *everything* else. So much so that it was even depicted in disjointed order!
~~
So in short, B5 wasted all its time on the monologues of mono-dimensional characters and failed to effectively deliver the profound story of Londo and G'Kar. If I were JMS, the main characters would have been Londo and G'Kar. Screw Earth Alliance and the Minbari. They were boring as hell for the full 5 season run. JMS had gold with the Centauri and the Narn and he buried it. I felt very betrayed by Babylon 5.
Isn't that wonderful. You found one offending website. OTOH, I've been running my copy of FF 1.0.7 for over a week straight (in Ubuntu) with 30+ tabs and I haven't had a single issue. I really don't understand why people bitch about FF crashing or otherwise freaking out. I've never seen it happen on my Linux desktop. Maybe it's an issue with the Windows port...
If you meant to say that there is a "missing link" with regards to an animal representing an evolutionary transition from apes to man, then you're still wrong. That is based on a misunderstanding of basic evolutionary theory, as biologists do not propose that such a link exists; but rather, man has a common ancestor with other primates.
(d) technological progress is not driven by natural selection;
And this is where your argument fails. If our ape ancestors hadn't evolved larger brains with which to develop tools that they needed to survive, we wouldn't be sitting here debating this today. I've got news for you: tools are technology. Their technology made them better suited to their environment. Evolution is a natural process by which a species becomes more suited to its environment. Our technology is the result of millions of years of evolution.
Therefore, we when we start messing around with other animals using selective breeding, or by directly tinkering with their genome, it's not the animals that are evolving. We are. We are becoming better suited to our environment by learning how to control animals. The changes that occur in the animals are the result of our evolution.
So since one species controlling another in this fashion is in fact part of natural selection, "Intelligent Design" as a term and a concept is redundant and unnecessary. Unless you prefer this rewording because you want to hint at the existence of God being an "Intelligent Designer." The proponents of this campaign are pushing a religious agenda. They have zero interest in the truth, or the scientific method.
Scientists have recently designed genetically-modified species. Therefore---wait for it!---species now exist that are not the result of selective pressure.
And hence the theory of evolution is simply false.
What? This makes absolutely no sense. First, you don't seem to realize evolution is not a theory, it is a natural law. If you give me the funding, I can demonstrate to you in a lab by breeding animals and subjecting them to certain unusual environments for their species that with each new generation, they will become better suited to their environment.
I can also demonstrate to you that man is in a constant state of evolution. We are constantly improving our knowledge and technology. We get better, more fuel efficient cars, that make us better suited to our environment. We get computers, which allow us to do new things, making us better suited for our environment. And so on.
I can also demonstrate to you that man and ape have a common ape-man ancestor through fossil records. I can also demonstrate to you that two distinct species of man roamed Africa and Europe at one time having been descended from ape-men; Humans and Neanderthals. Well, the Neanderthals went extinct, and we became the dominent species. There is evidence to suggest we killed all the Neanderthals.
With enough funding, I can go out, and I can demonstrate all of these things to you as fact. With enough time and objectivity, you can do enough google searches to discover many such people have already done the said demonstrations. Species evolve naturally over time. Man and ape have a common ancestor. Man is still evolving. These facts, yes, facts, have led most of your Christian brothers to accept that evolution is also one of God's creations, and that genesis is a metaphor. Do you think the people of 2000 years ago could wrap their heads around natural selection, much less the scientific method? (Barring an enlightened few.) Hell, it seems we're having trouble doing it today!
Now given all this, are you going to sit here and tell me that the natural law of evolution is patently false because humans have developed the technology to interfere in the process directly, without waiting for it to occur naturally over time? If so, you'd fail my science class. There's no a shred of logical reasoning to back up your conclusion because your evidence compares apples to oranges. No matter how much technology we develop and how much we feel like fucking around with an animal's genome, the process will still occur naturally all over Earth.
Please, just stop. Faith has no place in the science classrooms of my kids and it's people like you who can't realize that they aren't even contradictory that have ruined my state. (Kansas.) Your Catholic brothers seem to have figured it out. Do you hate their version of the Christian faith so much that you refuse to believe that they at least got this one thing right?
Err, that's a pretty bold statement. The theory of Evolution as it stands is the best we have, but it is certainly not complete. Once you get to a single-celled DNA based organism current evolutionary theory does a pretty good job of explaining things, however getting from primordial soup to a single celled organism is not so easy. There are some interesting theories (involving replication in clays for example), but nothing terribly satisifying.
The problem with ID is that it plays on weaknesses like this (and some that its proponents just pull out of their collective arses). However, the approach that because it can't be can't be currently explained it must have been magic is ridiculous. There are so many examples of the "this can't be explained" argument being refuted in the past. The classic one being the evolution of the eye. Originally the evolution of a complex organ such as the eye was thought to be so difficult to achieve by natural selection that it was evidence against it. However, when one starts to understand the fact that even a tenth of 1% of an eye is better than none at all, and the way the structure of the eye (which is somewhat inefficient in its "design") only makes any sense at all if seen as a series of refinements driven by natural selection.
Well, fist, evolution is not a theory. It is a natural law. And second, it does not attempt to explain the origin of life itself, but instead simply how simpler life became more complex life. There is a clear difference. And explaining the gap between primordial soup and self replicating bacteria does not make evolution as a natural law any more or less valid.
The irony about the controversy is that given all evolution does is explain how simple life becomes more complex life over time, it is not, in fact, incompatible with religion. Unless you're a moron and didn't catch the fact that everything in the Bible is an umpteen times translated metaphor anyway when you were in Bible school. Which apparently the vast majority of my state has not realized.
I'm going to be a very unpopular middleschool science teacher when I graduate college. I really should just move.
Now it's up to the colleges/universities to teach Kansas schools about natural selection. "Going for a science degree, huh? From Kansas, are you? Interesting..."
I am a Kansas resident.
I am studying at a Kansas college to become a science teacher in secondary education.
I can assure you when I finish my degree and start teaching science to middleschool kids, "Intelligent Design" will not be a part of their curriculum.
I won't have the Board of Education corrupting the minds of my kids. I will oppose this with every means at my disposal.
"Intelligent Design" is not science and as such it will never be taught in my science class.
But it's the mirror universe where everyone evil is good and everyone good is evil. In that universe SCO wouldn't be trying to sue Linux out of existence. They'd be largest contributor of GPL code.
Slashdot Mirror
Uh, Moogle Charm? That's by far the easiest way to clear ANY dungeon.
Not only that, but this is old news. A friend of mine noticed this happening to him over a year ago. In fact, he posted this comment to Slashdot to its effect. But when he told other people about Netflix' shenanigans, nobody believed him. Now they're eating their words.
In some businesses. In others, the whole company could get away with a competing product if they wanted to, or even free software. Depends on the crowd.
Old versions of AutoCAD are known to run in WINE with some trivial hacking. Google should be able to help you dig up that info...
A month ago, I would have said Continuum (formerly called Subspace)... a wonderful free (as in beer) massively multiplayer online game, the oldest running one in history. Fast paced, extremely addictive, excellent gameplay.
But some nice people hacked WINE and got it working (see also WineHQ Notes), something I've been waiting for for years.
I'm now thoroughly wasting all my time in this game again, without the guilty feeling of booting Windows for it! Screenshot
I mean, who's complaining about your article formatting? The only thing I see people complaining about in this dept are mistakes in grammar, spelling, and whatnot. And as you said yourself, you're human and make mistakes. I'm just not seeing a relevant discussion here... Your FAQ already states your good reasons why you reformat people's submissions.
I'm glad you're making posts "on the subject of Slashdot matters" but this one is a total non issue IMHO. Why don't we talk about more pressing issues like giving people reasons for their story's rejection so as to better improve that person's submissions in the future, or the problems with moderation, or other ACTUAL hot topic Slashdot issues?
I've been a victim of that twice.
Your comment has more humor than you know.
Ever hear of Languatron? He hates the new BSG so much that even his fellow classic BSG fanboy peers shun him away. So he created a messageboard where only he is allowed to post. Additionally, only he is allowed to read. If you read it too long, you will be banned.
His rants are totally hilarious, this guy is totally off his rocker. Since getting banned over and over isn't my cup of tea, I decided instead to archive his entire website. It's funny stuff. I love crazy people.
Okay, come on. I know bashing Firefly is all the rage, and I tend to agree with you about BSG being a better show, but do you really have to resort to bashing Firefly's actors? It was a damn good show, one of the best and it did not deserve to be canceled. And FYI, BSG's creator (Ronald Moore) LOVED Firefly and much of the directing in BSG is based off of Firefly's style. So chill.
No way. BSG is totally rewatchable. I've rewatched the Mini, and seasons 1 and 2 in their entirety several times showing them to small groups of friends and colleagues and loved every minute of it.
BSG is fast paced and rarely dull. Even when you've seen it all and know what's going to happen it's still great fun to watch.
Watching TV isn't about having stories surprise you. The best stories are the ones that are the best told. BSG is storytelling at its best. I enjoy the execution so much, I could stand to watch it all again dozens of times.
OFFTOPIC:
Why is that when I submitted this article on the 22nd was rejected, but five days later someone else submits it and it gets accepted?
Except less than two dozen episodes of Firefly were leaps and bounds better than over 100 episodes of B5. The best plot arc in B5 (Londo and G'Kar and their governments) was sadly neglected and shown out of order, disjointed just like Firefly was, except B5's problem wasn't the fault of the network. It was a fault of the writing.
Quit overreacting. I wouldn't be praising the Centauri / Narn arcs AT ALL had it not been for the 5th season. Instead I'd be complaining about the total lack of closure. But even with that closure, it was still aired in disjointed orders with that whole pseudo cancellation then the prequel they did after season 5 ended.
JMS mismanaged time and focused on the wrong things. This is why the network started getting cancel happy. The same damn thing happened to Farscape. They wasted all their time. The same damn thing happened to Enterprise. They wasted all their time. B5 was lucky it managed to at least conclude the story in a meaningful way, even if disjointed. Farscape only barely got that opportunity and didn't do it as well. Enterprise just fucked up their ending.
Oh how I wanted to like B5. I really wanted to like it. But I just couldn't.
Problem 1. Too much time spent on one-dimensional characters
The protagonists couldn't have been more one-dimensional. Delenn with her religious quest, Sinclair and Sheridan with their blind following of her, that silly relationship between Delenn and Sheridan. They were all so cookie cutter. Ivanova and Garibaldi were a little more faceted and interesting, as was the doctor. But those characters and their facets were largely neglected in favor of showboating the boring heroes.
Problem 2. Shadow war took too long to build up to, then ended too quickly and in an anticlimactic way
Then there's the shadow war. It took *years* to develop. The shadows were totally a faceless enemy for a very long time and when their motives were finally revealed, they were eliminated from the story in short order. This contributed heavily to the show's one-dimensional feel. With the face of the enemy being a mystery for the vast majority of the shadow war, it didn't feel like much of a war. When the motives were revealed and the true fighting broke out, I felt it was over too quickly. That, and the Shadows took the Vorlons with them when they packed up and left! Two mystery races gone in an anticlimactic poof.
Problem 3. Londo and G'Kar and their governments were the best part of the show, but were totally neglected
Then there's Londo and G'Kar. Let me just first say that the story of the Centauri Republic's rise, fall, rise again, and fall again and how they took the Narns with them for the ride was one of the single most moving things I have ever seen on TV. And the way Londo and G'Kar personified the emotional roller coaster, and how they went from bitter enemies to friends was an amazing piece of writing. But JMS neglected this amazing story arc to an extreme! The Centauri/Narn arc took a backseat to *everything* else. So much so that it was even depicted in disjointed order!
~~
So in short, B5 wasted all its time on the monologues of mono-dimensional characters and failed to effectively deliver the profound story of Londo and G'Kar. If I were JMS, the main characters would have been Londo and G'Kar. Screw Earth Alliance and the Minbari. They were boring as hell for the full 5 season run. JMS had gold with the Centauri and the Narn and he buried it. I felt very betrayed by Babylon 5.
Isn't that wonderful. You found one offending website. OTOH, I've been running my copy of FF 1.0.7 for over a week straight (in Ubuntu) with 30+ tabs and I haven't had a single issue. I really don't understand why people bitch about FF crashing or otherwise freaking out. I've never seen it happen on my Linux desktop. Maybe it's an issue with the Windows port...
Ape-man fossils
Another ape-man fossil
Yet another
More...
And more...
If you meant to say that there is a "missing link" with regards to an animal representing an evolutionary transition from apes to man, then you're still wrong. That is based on a misunderstanding of basic evolutionary theory, as biologists do not propose that such a link exists; but rather, man has a common ancestor with other primates.
Therefore, we when we start messing around with other animals using selective breeding, or by directly tinkering with their genome, it's not the animals that are evolving. We are. We are becoming better suited to our environment by learning how to control animals. The changes that occur in the animals are the result of our evolution.
So since one species controlling another in this fashion is in fact part of natural selection, "Intelligent Design" as a term and a concept is redundant and unnecessary. Unless you prefer this rewording because you want to hint at the existence of God being an "Intelligent Designer." The proponents of this campaign are pushing a religious agenda. They have zero interest in the truth, or the scientific method.
Wow.
That's twisted, but very entertaining. Thanks. That made my day.
What? This makes absolutely no sense. First, you don't seem to realize evolution is not a theory, it is a natural law. If you give me the funding, I can demonstrate to you in a lab by breeding animals and subjecting them to certain unusual environments for their species that with each new generation, they will become better suited to their environment.
I can also demonstrate to you that man is in a constant state of evolution. We are constantly improving our knowledge and technology. We get better, more fuel efficient cars, that make us better suited to our environment. We get computers, which allow us to do new things, making us better suited for our environment. And so on.
I can also demonstrate to you that man and ape have a common ape-man ancestor through fossil records. I can also demonstrate to you that two distinct species of man roamed Africa and Europe at one time having been descended from ape-men; Humans and Neanderthals. Well, the Neanderthals went extinct, and we became the dominent species. There is evidence to suggest we killed all the Neanderthals.
With enough funding, I can go out, and I can demonstrate all of these things to you as fact. With enough time and objectivity, you can do enough google searches to discover many such people have already done the said demonstrations. Species evolve naturally over time. Man and ape have a common ancestor. Man is still evolving. These facts, yes, facts, have led most of your Christian brothers to accept that evolution is also one of God's creations, and that genesis is a metaphor. Do you think the people of 2000 years ago could wrap their heads around natural selection, much less the scientific method? (Barring an enlightened few.) Hell, it seems we're having trouble doing it today!
Now given all this, are you going to sit here and tell me that the natural law of evolution is patently false because humans have developed the technology to interfere in the process directly, without waiting for it to occur naturally over time? If so, you'd fail my science class. There's no a shred of logical reasoning to back up your conclusion because your evidence compares apples to oranges. No matter how much technology we develop and how much we feel like fucking around with an animal's genome, the process will still occur naturally all over Earth.
Please, just stop. Faith has no place in the science classrooms of my kids and it's people like you who can't realize that they aren't even contradictory that have ruined my state. (Kansas.) Your Catholic brothers seem to have figured it out. Do you hate their version of the Christian faith so much that you refuse to believe that they at least got this one thing right?
Well, fist, evolution is not a theory. It is a natural law. And second, it does not attempt to explain the origin of life itself, but instead simply how simpler life became more complex life. There is a clear difference. And explaining the gap between primordial soup and self replicating bacteria does not make evolution as a natural law any more or less valid.
The irony about the controversy is that given all evolution does is explain how simple life becomes more complex life over time, it is not, in fact, incompatible with religion. Unless you're a moron and didn't catch the fact that everything in the Bible is an umpteen times translated metaphor anyway when you were in Bible school. Which apparently the vast majority of my state has not realized.
I'm going to be a very unpopular middleschool science teacher when I graduate college. I really should just move.
I am a Kansas resident.
I am studying at a Kansas college to become a science teacher in secondary education.
I can assure you when I finish my degree and start teaching science to middleschool kids, "Intelligent Design" will not be a part of their curriculum.
I won't have the Board of Education corrupting the minds of my kids. I will oppose this with every means at my disposal.
"Intelligent Design" is not science and as such it will never be taught in my science class.
But it's the mirror universe where everyone evil is good and everyone good is evil. In that universe SCO wouldn't be trying to sue Linux out of existence. They'd be largest contributor of GPL code.