Well, barring use of the job system, though some posts seem to say that X-2 has that, it makes it rather difficult to have an involving story. I mean, Cecil and Rosa had to be the specific people they were or the game fell apart story-wise and wouldn't draw you in.
Coupling fucking rocks!!! NBC's gonna fsck up the US version, though. The one commercial I've seen, with Patrick's take on relationships, totally put me off. It was a straight ripoff of a scene from, I believe, the UK pilot delivered by actors who didn't seem to really fit the roles and whose delivery took all the humor out of one of those laugh-out-loud scenes Coupling produces more regularly than any other show I've seen.
The casting is what I'm really worried about. Steve could be played by almost any decent actor, so no worries there. Patrick just needs a sufficiently macho guy, though the guy in the commercial might not cut it. I'm not sure anyone else can pull off Jeff, though. The character is made by the performance more than the lines. On the female side, Sally should be fairly easy. Jane moderately so. Susan will be tough though. The chick who plays her just has so much force of personality and the character grew to need all of it.
If nothing else, it will probably be a better translation that British Men Behaving Badly.
You hit the nail on the head. This is also the reason I, after years of not wanting to even give it a chance, eventually became a King of the Hill fan. I had expected it to be like Beavis and Butthead, which I got kind of tired of after about a year. But one episode made me a fan: the one in which the Buddhist monks are looking for the reincarnation of a certain Lama and think Bobby could be him. That episode showed me that King of the Hill had a lot more heart than I'd given it credit for.
Well, it's the least (or at least one of the least) socialized country/ies in said group. We let pretty much anyone own firearms, and in some states carry them most places in a concealed manner. We execute people. We have more military might than any other human civilization ever. Most things that define "first world countries" are present here in an extreme not found elsewhere.
I'm not commenting at the moment on whether these, together or separately, are good or bad. I'm just saying that the United States is, quantitatively and sometimes qualitatively, clearly a standout from those who followed us into the capialist republic experiment.
But most of the real files suck and I've already got the albums the good ones are on. Spoof away!
Re:Timothy, the book may be good...
on
Decipher
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Take a deep breath and listen to me. Timothy didn't write the review, Javed Ikbal did. Timothy is the/. editor who posted it. While you might like to see the editors here actually read something before they post it, you'll be much happier if you just realize, like most of us did long ago, that it's just not going to happen.
Oh, I don't know. It's just that there's so much more literature (and I use the term loosely) being produced now, and the vast majority is for throwaway escapist reading. In the works of say, to use the best example for this audience, Stephenson this sort of thing is still there. The man writes whole chapters about eating Captain Crunch, for goodness sake (although the method he describes just tears up the roof of your mouth without accomplishing anything else). But the novels filling the racks at the airport or supermarket, as well as almost all modern speculative fiction, are written to be read through once and more or less forgotten by a barely literate audience, even if that's not what their authors might think about their work.
Or, you could have put some thought into it and come up with a real list of books people here read. That could potentially have been funny and you could still have relied on the stupid/.er caricature we're all bored of. And if you logged in when you did it, you could even have scored some cheap karma.
Well, that's not the only reason Titan is interesting.
But if we do find even single celled organisms, it is a HUGE F'ING DEAL! Besides the simple proof that we aren't alone, finding life in our own solar system implies that life is probably neither uncommon or insanely spread out. And, if life is that common, intelligent life can't be all that rare.
The reason we look in Earth-like places for Earth-like life is that we know life like us is possible in conditions like ours. We know how to recognize it and where it might possibly exist. To look for something unlike us in weird environments leaves us flailing about and unlikely to find anything, even if it's there.
And Titan would be one of (and possibly THE) most hospitable place for humans in the solar system. The air pressure is such that we would need only simple breathing gear and drysuits to keep us warm, which could be augmented by small bleed valves allowing small amounts of oxygen to burn against the methane atmosphere. It also has lots of readily available carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. These, and other, advantages are discussed in obert Zubrin's Entering Space. The only problem with Titan is its distance from us.
And if you're not excited by Cassini, what space exploration does interest you? It's well short of what we could have accomplished if the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and other things done in the late sixties and early seventies to slow down the space program hadn't happened (not to mention the stagnant shuttle program and cheaper/faster/mia), but we have to work with what's available and build upon it.
Yeah, as many have already pointed out, this is not new news. But it is worth discussing. Why? Because Cassini is the last real NASA probe, made in the old way. None of that cheaper/faster/destroyed on entry/by miscommunication/flat out lost in space crap. It should give us some good data to chew on and maybe, but not probably, inspire NASA to cut the crap and get back to real space exploration.
Ummmm, there's life on Earth. Unless you're hypothesizing that it was planted here from somewhere else, abiogenesis happened here. While Earth may be unique we have no reason to think it either is or is not. Life happened here by some mechanism and I'm not sure why you think that mechanism can't perform anywhere else. Unless of course you can tell me what that mechanism is and why it's impossible elsewhere.
" Past life on Mars is the only object of any rational exploration of the Red planet. Terra Forming is Star Drek sci-fi. Obviously there will be no rapidly evolving "life" as we understand it on the present Mars."
Well, I think establishing humantity as a multi-planet species with long term survivability is rational and Mars is the place to do that.
As for terraforming, we could warm the planet by 10K in a matter of decades. This would release CO2 from the soil. CO2 as a greenhouse gas would continue the warming process, which would further accelerate the process, eventually warming the planet 50K in fifty years. This would also raise the pressure to levels where humans would need only breathing gear, not full pressure suits. This would also make building habitats much more simple, as they would no longer need to maintain a different pressure from the outside. In around a thousand years Mars could have a breathable atmosphere. I'm pulling this from Robert Zubrin's Entering Space. It's long term, but not bad for creating a second home for humanity. And with resources focused on terraforming, we might be able to do it even faster.
And no, what we will or will not find is not obvious.
"If there are single celled organisms or even clustering goo, it will prove to be of little scientific interest. Even the genetics of these oganisms will be useless: UNLESS we find that these organisms contain code that closely resembles similar organisms on Earth! Then the implications are that just maybe we are the Martians."
It would be of HUGE interest. If we can find life on our next door neighbot, then intelligent life is almost certain to be out there. Unless we happen to be the first to reach that stage, my favorite unlikely theory. Finding life of any kind is the most important discovery ever.
And I absolutely agree that too many of our bright minds are eaten up by the military-industrial complex, though what light China is seeing I don't know.
Actually, SETI's reasoning is pretty good. While I don't recall the particulars, they basically decided on the part of the EM spectrum that is most likely to reach us from far off distances. Look it up if you want anything more specific.
This sounds great. I've wanted Tivo since I first saw the coolest infomercial ever (you know, the one with the '50s sitcom family), but I hate anything I have to make payments on and it's just a bit too expensive to be worth it. I'lll definitely be considering this.
"Seinfeld was not meant to be anything in the first place."
Then it succeeded, marvelously. And in the process managed to make stars of a crappy standup comic and two boring actors. There are plenty of comedies that manage to be intelligent and funny, all the while having a point. One example that should be compared to Seinfeld is its erstwhile partner Mad About You. Seinfeld managed to be dumb, unfunny, and entirely pointless.
"You state The Matrix as "brainless fun". This would mean that good movies come along only once in maybe 7-8 years."
You did read the "fun" part of "brainless fun", didn't you? It's a stylish, mildly innovative, and well executed action movie. I think it pales in comparison to, say, Hard Boiled (or any other Woo/Yun-Fat collaboration), but it's pretty good.
"Granted that the immersive intellectual jigsaw presented in the first 40 minutes could have been better utilized later in the movie, it does quite a good job."
Immersive? Intellectual jigsaw (puzzle)? Episode One was more complicated. IMHO, of course.
And why would you reply as an AC? And why even mention it if you decided against it?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, barring use of the job system, though some posts seem to say that X-2 has that, it makes it rather difficult to have an involving story. I mean, Cecil and Rosa had to be the specific people they were or the game fell apart story-wise and wouldn't draw you in.
Yeah, like maybe carve the faces of some great leaders into the side of a mountain. Or make like a lion's body with a human face, or . . .
A sled. Gaaah! SPOILER!!! C'mon man, I haven't seen the second half yet!
Manchild bores me.
.
But Coupling . .
Coupling fucking rocks!!! NBC's gonna fsck up the US version, though. The one commercial I've seen, with Patrick's take on relationships, totally put me off. It was a straight ripoff of a scene from, I believe, the UK pilot delivered by actors who didn't seem to really fit the roles and whose delivery took all the humor out of one of those laugh-out-loud scenes Coupling produces more regularly than any other show I've seen.
The casting is what I'm really worried about. Steve could be played by almost any decent actor, so no worries there. Patrick just needs a sufficiently macho guy, though the guy in the commercial might not cut it. I'm not sure anyone else can pull off Jeff, though. The character is made by the performance more than the lines. On the female side, Sally should be fairly easy. Jane moderately so. Susan will be tough though. The chick who plays her just has so much force of personality and the character grew to need all of it.
If nothing else, it will probably be a better translation that British Men Behaving Badly.
Of the Mars Wongs?
You hit the nail on the head. This is also the reason I, after years of not wanting to even give it a chance, eventually became a King of the Hill fan. I had expected it to be like Beavis and Butthead, which I got kind of tired of after about a year. But one episode made me a fan: the one in which the Buddhist monks are looking for the reincarnation of a certain Lama and think Bobby could be him. That episode showed me that King of the Hill had a lot more heart than I'd given it credit for.
I kinda like to use "Why don't you interface with my ass . . . by biting it!" whenever I can.
Well, it's the least (or at least one of the least) socialized country/ies in said group. We let pretty much anyone own firearms, and in some states carry them most places in a concealed manner. We execute people. We have more military might than any other human civilization ever. Most things that define "first world countries" are present here in an extreme not found elsewhere.
I'm not commenting at the moment on whether these, together or separately, are good or bad. I'm just saying that the United States is, quantitatively and sometimes qualitatively, clearly a standout from those who followed us into the capialist republic experiment.
Ahhh. Sweet, non-judgemental Fox Network.
We demand to see the spunky female lawyer!!!
But most of the real files suck and I've already got the albums the good ones are on. Spoof away!
Take a deep breath and listen to me. Timothy didn't write the review, Javed Ikbal did. Timothy is the /. editor who posted it. While you might like to see the editors here actually read something before they post it, you'll be much happier if you just realize, like most of us did long ago, that it's just not going to happen.
Oh, I don't know. It's just that there's so much more literature (and I use the term loosely) being produced now, and the vast majority is for throwaway escapist reading. In the works of say, to use the best example for this audience, Stephenson this sort of thing is still there. The man writes whole chapters about eating Captain Crunch, for goodness sake (although the method he describes just tears up the roof of your mouth without accomplishing anything else). But the novels filling the racks at the airport or supermarket, as well as almost all modern speculative fiction, are written to be read through once and more or less forgotten by a barely literate audience, even if that's not what their authors might think about their work.
Or, you could have put some thought into it and come up with a real list of books people here read. That could potentially have been funny and you could still have relied on the stupid /.er caricature we're all bored of. And if you logged in when you did it, you could even have scored some cheap karma.
This reminds me of the 24 hour computer lab in my dorm a couple years ago.
And this was the Honors dorm!
Well, that's not the only reason Titan is interesting.
But if we do find even single celled organisms, it is a HUGE F'ING DEAL! Besides the simple proof that we aren't alone, finding life in our own solar system implies that life is probably neither uncommon or insanely spread out. And, if life is that common, intelligent life can't be all that rare.
The reason we look in Earth-like places for Earth-like life is that we know life like us is possible in conditions like ours. We know how to recognize it and where it might possibly exist. To look for something unlike us in weird environments leaves us flailing about and unlikely to find anything, even if it's there.
And Titan would be one of (and possibly THE) most hospitable place for humans in the solar system. The air pressure is such that we would need only simple breathing gear and drysuits to keep us warm, which could be augmented by small bleed valves allowing small amounts of oxygen to burn against the methane atmosphere. It also has lots of readily available carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. These, and other, advantages are discussed in obert Zubrin's Entering Space. The only problem with Titan is its distance from us.
And if you're not excited by Cassini, what space exploration does interest you? It's well short of what we could have accomplished if the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and other things done in the late sixties and early seventies to slow down the space program hadn't happened (not to mention the stagnant shuttle program and cheaper/faster/mia), but we have to work with what's available and build upon it.
Yeah, as many have already pointed out, this is not new news. But it is worth discussing. Why? Because Cassini is the last real NASA probe, made in the old way. None of that cheaper/faster/destroyed on entry/by miscommunication/flat out lost in space crap. It should give us some good data to chew on and maybe, but not probably, inspire NASA to cut the crap and get back to real space exploration.
Ummmm, there's life on Earth. Unless you're hypothesizing that it was planted here from somewhere else, abiogenesis happened here. While Earth may be unique we have no reason to think it either is or is not. Life happened here by some mechanism and I'm not sure why you think that mechanism can't perform anywhere else. Unless of course you can tell me what that mechanism is and why it's impossible elsewhere.
" Past life on Mars is the only object of any rational exploration of the Red planet.
Terra Forming is Star Drek sci-fi. Obviously there will be no rapidly evolving "life" as we understand it on the present Mars."
Well, I think establishing humantity as a multi-planet species with long term survivability is rational and Mars is the place to do that.
As for terraforming, we could warm the planet by 10K in a matter of decades. This would release CO2 from the soil. CO2 as a greenhouse gas would continue the warming process, which would further accelerate the process, eventually warming the planet 50K in fifty years. This would also raise the pressure to levels where humans would need only breathing gear, not full pressure suits. This would also make building habitats much more simple, as they would no longer need to maintain a different pressure from the outside. In around a thousand years Mars could have a breathable atmosphere. I'm pulling this from Robert Zubrin's Entering Space. It's long term, but not bad for creating a second home for humanity. And with resources focused on terraforming, we might be able to do it even faster.
And no, what we will or will not find is not obvious.
"If there are single celled organisms or even clustering goo, it will prove to be of little scientific interest. Even the genetics of these oganisms will be useless: UNLESS we find that these organisms contain code that closely resembles similar organisms on Earth!
Then the implications are that just maybe we are the Martians."
It would be of HUGE interest. If we can find life on our next door neighbot, then intelligent life is almost certain to be out there. Unless we happen to be the first to reach that stage, my favorite unlikely theory. Finding life of any kind is the most important discovery ever.
And I absolutely agree that too many of our bright minds are eaten up by the military-industrial complex, though what light China is seeing I don't know.
By "us" I am not saying that I hold a doctorate. Yet.
Maybe scientific curiosity, the thing that gets most of us into it in the first place?
Actually, SETI's reasoning is pretty good. While I don't recall the particulars, they basically decided on the part of the EM spectrum that is most likely to reach us from far off distances. Look it up if you want anything more specific.
This sounds great. I've wanted Tivo since I first saw the coolest infomercial ever (you know, the one with the '50s sitcom family), but I hate anything I have to make payments on and it's just a bit too expensive to be worth it. I'lll definitely be considering this.
Out of curiosity, do you preview your posts?
"Seinfeld was not meant to be anything in the first place."
Then it succeeded, marvelously. And in the process managed to make stars of a crappy standup comic and two boring actors. There are plenty of comedies that manage to be intelligent and funny, all the while having a point. One example that should be compared to Seinfeld is its erstwhile partner Mad About You. Seinfeld managed to be dumb, unfunny, and entirely pointless.
"You state The Matrix as "brainless fun".
This would mean that good movies come along only once in maybe 7-8 years."
You did read the "fun" part of "brainless fun", didn't you? It's a stylish, mildly innovative, and well executed action movie. I think it pales in comparison to, say, Hard Boiled (or any other Woo/Yun-Fat collaboration), but it's pretty good.
"Granted that the immersive intellectual jigsaw presented in the first 40 minutes could have been better utilized later in the movie, it does quite a good job."
Immersive? Intellectual jigsaw (puzzle)? Episode One was more complicated. IMHO, of course.
And why would you reply as an AC? And why even mention it if you decided against it?
I wanna be an anti-realist. It just sounds cool as hell.
On a more serious note, is this something different from nihilism?