The market you describe is at most hundreds of thousands of units. There are a thousand times more normal users. Any rational producer would concentrate on consumer models. The "secure" ones will end up being made by a niche manufacturer and costing $500+.:)
Actually, I can say your phone is actually a PDA with phone functions. I have a Palm IIIxe and a cheap old Nokia, so I know various PDA functions can be quite handy. But I think it is misleading to think about it as a phone+ (despite the name Smartphone). The usage patterns are different, the consumer preferences are different.
Don't you think Darl has some experience addressing different audiences? It is to be expected that he would try to win friends by behaving in the way optimal for this specific group of people. When his comments are addressed to CEOs and COOs, he spreads FUD about Linux, when he talks to the general public or politicians, he claims GPL is unconstitutional. When he speaks to law and CS students in Harward, he is pushed into making only safe and reasonable comments. Thus he makes an impression of a reasonable man.
In May 2003 they promised the game will be released by September. Now it looks like it will be out in summer. They owed to keep the promise noone forced them to make. If they wanted to build anticipation, they could have shown the demo at E3 and keep the mouth shut about the release date, like the id guys did (a demo shown in 2002, the game will hopefully be released 2 years later). Valve built up the hype and promised the game on the shelves in 4 months. Now it takes them at least 3 times longer and probably even more. That's dishonest.
Do you realise what was the point of discussion? It was that Wikipedia (its users) often fails to stay neutral. Thus one of the goals is not reached. This is a failure of the system, not its achievement. The consensus (judging from the discussion) was that the article should be left, but reedited to be more NPOV. Then some people started butchering the text by removing things they didn't like. It was not neutral, but you can't expect every omission to be fixed, I certainly don't have time for editing wars.
And have you noticed that you contradict yourself by first saying that the right to delete is part of the free speech, but then suggesting me to move to another site? Irrationality again... You want to defend Wikipedia from critics or what?
When the article got the same treatment in E2 (nuked by the gods), I could understand. It's their sandpit and they set the rules. But in Wikipedia it was not done by an admin. No, instead some ordinary users covertly removed the portions of text they didn't like. As a lawyer (one of the E2 admins) pointed out, the article (even the more extreme original version) didn't contain anything illegal in the US. So the article could not realistically get the Foundation in trouble. And, as some people pointed out, the article had significant legitimate uses, other than to aid child pornographers.
So, since (a) it wasn't management's decision and (b) there was nothing illegal whatsoever in the article, I say that Wikipedia editing process failed, because the NPOV principle was grossly violated.
What was there to be "proud of" for the USSR? The numerous invasions and conquests and annexations of countries in an ever-expanding evil empire? That is like being proud to be from Nazi Germany.
It is a better place to be proud of now that it is not a ravaging benighted empire. Yes, there is Chechnya, but that is insignificant compared to past invasions.
That's simple bullshit. Yes, we did invade Finland (to protect St. Petersburg from Nazi ally, and we paid for it with many lives). And we invaded Czechoslovakia. And Afganistan. Both were not annexed, but occupied to support a friendly regime. An evil empire? Hardly. That bullshit is not even remotely believable. Unless you are a USian, then, of course, you are probably brainwashed enough to believe that USSR was an evil ever-expanding empire and the US attacking 3 countries just in the last few years is the protector of all that is good in this world. Sure, whatever...
However, there were some positive accomplishments in the arts, and don't forget the space program. Is this what you are referring to? Science, art and a society that was quite pleasant to live in (not utopia, though), unless you only cared about material posessions. We also supported third world countries and helped many of them (in Asia, Africa and America) on their way to a better future. And I was also proud to live in a country, which to a very large extent was driven by a desire to build a better world, a world where people would enjoy freedom from fear, freedom from need and freedom to express themselves. A world of communism. Sadly, we failed, but not for the lack of trying. When communism is eventually (in a few decades) built in Europe, the US and other parts of the world, we will all remember Soviet people for being the first.
I'm not so sure that was the case. How many people are being executed and starved to death these days? The Soviet Union killed 30,000,000+ of its citizens through mass executions, "disappearances", and purposeful famines: averaging to 500,000 a year. Please, stop that averaging. Stalin was crazy and evil. But for the rest of the Soviet history only a few people were killed by the state. And if you want to average, let's calculate how many dead Indians and Negros the US averages per year (starting from the Declaration of Independence, of course).
And right now men in Russia have life expectancy of 56 years, which is the lowest we ever had (after the WW2) and much lower than in any developed country. So yes, it IS worse today, except, of course, for those who managed to steal our common property. As for executions, fortunately, we (like the rest of civilized countries) have a moratorium on death penalty.
I am not arguing that many people die from hunger in your country. Actually, few people die from hunger in Russia either. The problem in both countries is that millions of people suffer from hunger, become unhealthy and eventually die sooner. According to this page by University of Minnesota,
One in six elderly citizens in the USA is either hungry or has an inadequate diet.
One in four children comes to school undernourished in the United States.
And surely, if tens of millions of people suffer from hunger, some die from it. As for the causes, check out the Food Research and Action Center website for causes of hunger. Still, the fact that the US has a great support network feeding the hungry is great. Sadly, we don't have that in Russia today (to such an extent).:(
I can't deny it when PJ says in the DVD that "let's all sit down and have tea, and then off you go!" or something like that Why do you think that wouldn't work? IMHO it was worth trying. And in any case, PJ mostly argued that it would be downplaying the power of the Ring. Well, first of all, I don't like PJ hammering down the same ideas and the same scenes in every film (e.g. Elrond+Isildur and Sam+Frodo, Gimli+the horn and Pippin+beakons, etc.). And second, Aragorn refused the Ring, Gandalf refused it. Why can't Faramir do it as well?
A matter of opinion; I think it was perfectly necessary, if for the very least that a king like Aragorn needs a queen like Arwen. Again, I am not against Arwen per se, but against her "departure" to Valinor and that bullshit about her connection to the Ring. There was lots of stuff for her to do, such as make a goddamn flag for Aragorn.:) And although I appreciate her actually turning back in ROTK, it was handled pretty lame (especially her Elf companion).
I especially liked how he said to the hobbits, "you bow to no-one." I hated it.:) In the book they only bow to Sam and Frodo! What did Pippin do that was so great?:) He couldn't even kill a troll.
Seriously, would you have been happier if they all spoke in Shakespearian tongue?... Simple dialog is effective in movies, but not in books. No, I would appreciate if they simply made some sense. It should be simple, but coherent. As it is, almost every time someone spoke, I cringed.:) Of course, it's a matter of opinions and quite difficult to objectively judge, so let me just say that I thought the quality of writing was very poor. A problem with this movie is that at no point there existed a coherent script. I appreciate PJ fixing some of his mistakes in the process (Arwen in Helm's Deep, etc.), but it would be better if he had a detail vision beforehand and then implemented it. Right now there are several glaring examples of revising the story in mid-course (the hug of Aragorn and Eowyn in TTT, Eagles vs. Nazguls in ROTK), when first shot is from one version and the next one is from another.
Because the shire was the purest place in Middle Earth, and served as a foil to the environment outside. The problem was that there was nothing outside of Minas Tirith, Edoras, Helm's Deep. Nothing at all. The only Rohan village was the one necessary to the plot. The backgrounds were completely lifeless, which is nonsense. In the book these places were real, they were alive, there were peasants, merchants, etc. going in and out. Second problem is that PJ has completely fucked up the scale. That idiotic beacons episode took place over the whole 24 hours (started in the day, ended next day) and still each next beacon shone after just 5-10 seconds. Assuming 1 km separation, Edoras is about 5000-10000 kilometers from Minas-Tirith. Does that make any sense? And then we have Osgiliath and Minas-Tirith conviniently brought together to be at most 1 km away from each other and also just next to the harbour (which we only see a few piers of, as if it doesn't exist at all). And the Gorgorat plain is so small that all Orcs manage to leave it in just a few minutes...
BTW, I am pretty happy about people, like you, who liked TTT and ROTK overall. What annoys me, though, are fanboys who absolutely refuse to acknowledge that there is even a single problem with the films. I guess, I should just ignore them, but I can't, as long as they downmod me.:)
Thanks for the reply. I agreed with most of the constructive comments people made about neutral point of view and encouraged the same editing myself. Unfortunately, removing the factual content simply for the reason you don't agree with it is not NPOV. Sorry for the emotionally loaded comparision, but that is akin to removing the figures about economic growth in Germany under Hitler simply because you think he is a SOB.
It's not like Wikipedia rules and mechanisms do not work at all, but they are not perfect and in difficult situations produce results which are, IMO, far from optimal. Nobody even bothered to make an argument for removing the facts (although I've heard a lot of arguments for removing the article alltogether, banning the author, etc., etc.). Think what you want about ethical aspects of the article, but how can you have an article ABOUT online child pornography without using the word "lolita" at least once? That doesn't make any more sense than writing about the US without mentioning the word "constitution". And still, someone decided to remove the name of the magazine ("Little Lolita"). Come on, I don't think someone can find it in the library anymore, how much would it harm to live that fact intact?
That's not editing, that's censorship. And censorship is not NPOV.
Yep. I wrote a great and very informative article about Internet child porn (see this Slashdot post for the original version, submitted it to Wikipedia and had it deleted in a few hours. Deleted in violation of Wikipedia written policies, despite the fact that the article didn't contain anything illegal (according to a lawyer). Fortunately, it was restored, but then the militant editors meticulously removed every single bit of valuable information from the article that they were morally opposed to. I don't really see the point in editing that now...
So, despite the stated goal to maintain the neutral point of view, Wikipedia consists of people and these people will insert bias into the encyclopedia. That doesn't mean it is useless, but it suggests that it still has to evolve before it can be considered totally successful.
Anything on the web that isn't mirrored to hell and gone with full legal rights to distribute has to be considered volatile. Extrememly volatile.
And wikipedia is GPLed and it's content is already mirrored/used on many servers. Assuming regular backups are made by Wikipedia admins, even if they go under, the archive is relatively safe - GPL means no mp3.com-like hurdles.
I live in Russia and before that lived in the USSR (obviously). There was indeed poverty in Soviet Union, but there is also poverty in the US. People are dying from hunger in the United States - a sad fact, but this is not a secret and is freely admitted by the Americans themselves.
So what is important is the scale of poverty and the structure of income distribution. The fact is that today the decile ratio (total income of the richest 10% divided by total income of the poorest 10%) in Russia is 14, which is almost 4 times higher than in the USA and EU. The same ratio for Moscow is 45. So the social inequality is an order of magnitude greater than anything we had in Soviet Union.
And overall the real incomes are still lower today than they used to be in the 1980s after the GDP fell more than 50% in early 1990s. And the situation is much worse in other Soviet republics (except for Baltic states, thanks to generous investments from Scandinavia).
It is already 13 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but people are still worse off than they used to be. May be the personal incomes were not that low, compared with the Western countries, but it was more than compensated by great access to public services, such as free medicine, free education, free everything else. Yes, the state was corrupt, but not to the extent it became corrupt now.
P.S. Personally I am better off than I was, but when I consider the intangible things that were lost (like being proud of your country and stuff), I am no longer that sure. And of course, hope. Being a realist and relatively well informed about the economy (working in an investment banking and management consulting here for some time), I don't have any hope for the country that used to be my home. The only rational thing to do now is to move to the Western Europe.
I have never been in Yugoslavia, but I live in Russia, so my guess would be: 1) everyone was able to join labour unions 2) the home might have been owned by the state, but that didn't really matter after all
Destroying an enemy's energy infrastructure in wartime isn't "terrorism", it's sound strategy. I was not aware that the US was at war with Soviet Union. Too bad our leaders didn't recognise that - they could have nuked both Pacific and Atlantic shores of the US in response... It would be sound strategy, right?
What heated things up, in my opinion, was a little bit of implied interspecies relations.:) Quoting from the script:
ROHIRRIM CAMP EOWYN: Here, little fellow. Put this armor on. MERRY: Thanks much, my lady. Ooh, I don't think you fastened my belt right. Could you put your hands there again?...Ahh, that's it; right there... EOMER: Wow, sis, you are getting desperate. EOWYN: Look at this hobbit: can you honestly tell me he isn't brave and handsome, and doesn't inspire your courage? EOMER: (snicker) Uh, sure. Sure, he's great. Yeah. (gives MERRY thumbs-up sign) You go, dude.
I am not particularly perverted, but that episode clearly was either totally exhilarating or horribly disgusting.:) To hear Eomer worrying about the reach of Merry's arm.:))) Priceless!
I never said she got too much screen time or that she played Arwen poorly. What I said is that the subplot with her going away was contrived, stupid and contradicted the book.
I didn't mind her appearance at all and the expansion of her role didn't bother me per se, only the direction in which it was expanded.
As for the (-1, Homosexual), I believe that stupid movie deserves it!:) The scene with Sam in nightgown was so gay (as in fag) a lot of people in the theatre bursted out laughting. Sam positively looked like Frodo just made him his bitch.:)))
I am happy that you enjoyed it, but the fact is - I didn't like the second and the third part. There are reasons for that and they are discussed all other the Net (various character and plot changes, which in opinion of some people, weaken the films and go against the ideas of Tolkien). The fact that we hold different opinions doesn't make one of us a troll.
I still think that Faramir's character was butchered by PJ, Arwen's subplot was unnecessary, conflict between Sam and Frodo was stupid, Aragorn was not kingly, dialog in TTT and ROTK was lame and contrived, the quality of special effects was not consistant (just think, why all agriculture in the movie was concentrated in Shire? PJ was too cheap to add a few CGI fields/villages/gardens to Gondor/Rohan panorama shots?). The movies sucked. Many people and critics enjoyed them, but they sucked.
That someone can downmod this comment doesn't change the fact that TTT and ROTK were just lame B-movies with expensive CGI.
Good post, even though I mostly disagree with you.
A better description of reality is that we overestimate short-term developments, but understimate long-term progress. I saw a research from the 1980s (can't give a reference, sorry), which found out that in most fields (that were studied) scientists and engineers had no significant predictive ability over a 7-year horizon. Most people are not qualified to predict how the developments in this particular area will influence/be influenced by other seemingly unrelated areas.
Overestimation certainly happens, but overall it appears to be the exception, not the rule. As for nanotechnologies, the most important is not extrapolation, but fundamental analysis of what is possible. And the answer is that pretty much everything nanotech advocates are talking about is physically (chemically) possible. As for the timeframe, we can't say today for sure whether it will be 2 decades or a century, but we definitely have some reasons to be optimistic.
The question is will resistance also develop in China and other future high technology hot spots. My guess is that as long as we do not live in Libria or Oceania, as long as we have relatively independent states, companies, universities and people, some will be more risk-tolerant than others. It seems natural that those, who are more risk-tolerant will become more successful (may be not all of them, but dead ones do not matter). The successful ones will promote their culture and their ideas, leading to more risk-taking, more successes and ever accelerating progress.
And lets not forget that first attempts often fail. It sucks to be Monsanto now, but we must realise that GM brings very simple economic advantages. And the success of Walmart proves - no matter how questionable your business practices are, if you can sell cheaper, you win. GM products can be easier to grow, easier to store, easier to package, cook and they have nutritious and health benefits. Give the biotech companies a few more years and it will be even more difficult for the farmers to resist the temptation. At some point someone will start using them and gain the advantage. The only measures stopping that are attempts to scare the customers. While it may work in the short-term, it is destined to fail eventually, because there is nothing fundamentally flawed about GM food.
First, I suggest we take the mentioned research with a grain of salt. After all, this is just one experiment and we don't know whether it was reproduced and passed peer-review or not. May be it's just speculation.
But even if it is not, two points need to be made. One, it is relatively easy to avoid nanopollution altogether, while it would be completely impossible in 18-19th centuries. Second, according to all available information, nanoparticles are extremely unlikely to suddenly cause great harm to many humans. Just think of it - the cars kill tens of thousands every year in the US alone and still noone, not even the greenest eco-freak urge us to abandon cars or pass some additional regulations. New technologies, on the other hand, offer dangers so small, they are barely distinguishable from random statistical fluctuations. Think mobile phones and GM food - after being scapegoats for more than a decade, there is still no compelling evidence that they do any harm.
Let's go over it again. What evidence is there that cars are harmful? Plenty of it, just watch TV or ask any traffic cop, or just think about your friends and relatives, chances are there is a person you know, who was harmed in a car accident. Are there reproducible experiments to prove that cars are dangerous? Yep, they are repeated by manufacturers every day. Just take a crash dummy and hit it with a car. This should have been a scientist's dream - an experiment, which is easily reproduced everywhere with any equipment, even by the least qualified scientist.
What eveidence do we have against nanoparticles, mobile phones and GM food? Now you should see. Which technologies should be regulated and/or limited? If logic is used, they should not start with "nano-".
Well, there are good reasons not to post before reading the article... Actually after finishing it, it looks like a relatively well-written piece on currently identified risks of nanoparticle technologies. If only the first page was not so trollish...
Still, the general point of my post remains valid. There is simply too much uninformed opposition to science and progress, which sometimes even forces rational people to respond before hearing the argument, which is truly sad.
That's just great. Every time I make a negative comment about Peter Jackson's films, in a few minutes I get moderated as Troll... That's just pathetic. I honestly do think that TTT and ROTK were very crappy movies, although visually impressive. If you disagree, reply, don't just downmod because I dare touch your sacred cow.
If you think Peter Jackson is so good, why don't you go and give him a blowjob. That gotta make you feel real warm and fuzzy.
I've always been a peaceful boy/man, never fighting, never wanting to harm anyone. I am quite selfish and I value my life very much, because I intend on living forever. Still, if this insanity does not end soon, I may be compelled to tie a headband, take an AK-47 and a few frag grenades and start wrecking havoc. I can't stand that stupidity anymore and my experience tells me that stupid people are reluctant to learn anything. Public education is not a solution - the only solution is to place all opposers of nanotech, GM food, cloning and other emerging technologers to the wall.
On a more serious note, does anyone know about a pro-science terrorist group with a PayPal account? Something like those guys, who kill abortion doctors and free lab animals, but opposite.:) Like someone who does forced abortions to pro-lifers and cages animal right activists to carry out cruel experiments on them.:)
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The market you describe is at most hundreds of thousands of units. There are a thousand times more normal users. Any rational producer would concentrate on consumer models. The "secure" ones will end up being made by a niche manufacturer and costing $500+. :)
Actually, I can say your phone is actually a PDA with phone functions. I have a Palm IIIxe and a cheap old Nokia, so I know various PDA functions can be quite handy. But I think it is misleading to think about it as a phone+ (despite the name Smartphone). The usage patterns are different, the consumer preferences are different.
Don't you think Darl has some experience addressing different audiences? It is to be expected that he would try to win friends by behaving in the way optimal for this specific group of people. When his comments are addressed to CEOs and COOs, he spreads FUD about Linux, when he talks to the general public or politicians, he claims GPL is unconstitutional. When he speaks to law and CS students in Harward, he is pushed into making only safe and reasonable comments. Thus he makes an impression of a reasonable man.
In May 2003 they promised the game will be released by September. Now it looks like it will be out in summer. They owed to keep the promise noone forced them to make. If they wanted to build anticipation, they could have shown the demo at E3 and keep the mouth shut about the release date, like the id guys did (a demo shown in 2002, the game will hopefully be released 2 years later). Valve built up the hype and promised the game on the shelves in 4 months. Now it takes them at least 3 times longer and probably even more. That's dishonest.
That reminds you to always have two copies of source code and all other materials. This way, if one copy is stolen, you can still use another.
Do you realise what was the point of discussion? It was that Wikipedia (its users) often fails to stay neutral. Thus one of the goals is not reached. This is a failure of the system, not its achievement. The consensus (judging from the discussion) was that the article should be left, but reedited to be more NPOV. Then some people started butchering the text by removing things they didn't like. It was not neutral, but you can't expect every omission to be fixed, I certainly don't have time for editing wars.
And have you noticed that you contradict yourself by first saying that the right to delete is part of the free speech, but then suggesting me to move to another site? Irrationality again... You want to defend Wikipedia from critics or what?
When the article got the same treatment in E2 (nuked by the gods), I could understand. It's their sandpit and they set the rules. But in Wikipedia it was not done by an admin. No, instead some ordinary users covertly removed the portions of text they didn't like. As a lawyer (one of the E2 admins) pointed out, the article (even the more extreme original version) didn't contain anything illegal in the US. So the article could not realistically get the Foundation in trouble. And, as some people pointed out, the article had significant legitimate uses, other than to aid child pornographers.
So, since (a) it wasn't management's decision and (b) there was nothing illegal whatsoever in the article, I say that Wikipedia editing process failed, because the NPOV principle was grossly violated.
What was there to be "proud of" for the USSR? The numerous invasions and conquests and annexations of countries in an ever-expanding evil empire? That is like being proud to be from Nazi Germany.
It is a better place to be proud of now that it is not a ravaging benighted empire. Yes, there is Chechnya, but that is insignificant compared to past invasions.
That's simple bullshit. Yes, we did invade Finland (to protect St. Petersburg from Nazi ally, and we paid for it with many lives). And we invaded Czechoslovakia. And Afganistan. Both were not annexed, but occupied to support a friendly regime. An evil empire? Hardly. That bullshit is not even remotely believable. Unless you are a USian, then, of course, you are probably brainwashed enough to believe that USSR was an evil ever-expanding empire and the US attacking 3 countries just in the last few years is the protector of all that is good in this world. Sure, whatever...
However, there were some positive accomplishments in the arts, and don't forget the space program. Is this what you are referring to?
Science, art and a society that was quite pleasant to live in (not utopia, though), unless you only cared about material posessions. We also supported third world countries and helped many of them (in Asia, Africa and America) on their way to a better future. And I was also proud to live in a country, which to a very large extent was driven by a desire to build a better world, a world where people would enjoy freedom from fear, freedom from need and freedom to express themselves. A world of communism. Sadly, we failed, but not for the lack of trying. When communism is eventually (in a few decades) built in Europe, the US and other parts of the world, we will all remember Soviet people for being the first.
I'm not so sure that was the case. How many people are being executed and starved to death these days? The Soviet Union killed 30,000,000+ of its citizens through mass executions, "disappearances", and purposeful famines: averaging to 500,000 a year.
Please, stop that averaging. Stalin was crazy and evil. But for the rest of the Soviet history only a few people were killed by the state. And if you want to average, let's calculate how many dead Indians and Negros the US averages per year (starting from the Declaration of Independence, of course).
And right now men in Russia have life expectancy of 56 years, which is the lowest we ever had (after the WW2) and much lower than in any developed country. So yes, it IS worse today, except, of course, for those who managed to steal our common property. As for executions, fortunately, we (like the rest of civilized countries) have a moratorium on death penalty.
And surely, if tens of millions of people suffer from hunger, some die from it. As for the causes, check out the Food Research and Action Center website for causes of hunger. Still, the fact that the US has a great support network feeding the hungry is great. Sadly, we don't have that in Russia today (to such an extent).
I can't deny it when PJ says in the DVD that "let's all sit down and have tea, and then off you go!" or something like that
:) And although I appreciate her actually turning back in ROTK, it was handled pretty lame (especially her Elf companion).
:) In the book they only bow to Sam and Frodo! What did Pippin do that was so great? :) He couldn't even kill a troll.
:) Of course, it's a matter of opinions and quite difficult to objectively judge, so let me just say that I thought the quality of writing was very poor. A problem with this movie is that at no point there existed a coherent script. I appreciate PJ fixing some of his mistakes in the process (Arwen in Helm's Deep, etc.), but it would be better if he had a detail vision beforehand and then implemented it. Right now there are several glaring examples of revising the story in mid-course (the hug of Aragorn and Eowyn in TTT, Eagles vs. Nazguls in ROTK), when first shot is from one version and the next one is from another.
:)
Why do you think that wouldn't work? IMHO it was worth trying. And in any case, PJ mostly argued that it would be downplaying the power of the Ring. Well, first of all, I don't like PJ hammering down the same ideas and the same scenes in every film (e.g. Elrond+Isildur and Sam+Frodo, Gimli+the horn and Pippin+beakons, etc.). And second, Aragorn refused the Ring, Gandalf refused it. Why can't Faramir do it as well?
A matter of opinion; I think it was perfectly necessary, if for the very least that a king like Aragorn needs a queen like Arwen.
Again, I am not against Arwen per se, but against her "departure" to Valinor and that bullshit about her connection to the Ring. There was lots of stuff for her to do, such as make a goddamn flag for Aragorn.
I especially liked how he said to the hobbits, "you bow to no-one."
I hated it.
Seriously, would you have been happier if they all spoke in Shakespearian tongue?... Simple dialog is effective in movies, but not in books.
No, I would appreciate if they simply made some sense. It should be simple, but coherent. As it is, almost every time someone spoke, I cringed.
Because the shire was the purest place in Middle Earth, and served as a foil to the environment outside.
The problem was that there was nothing outside of Minas Tirith, Edoras, Helm's Deep. Nothing at all. The only Rohan village was the one necessary to the plot. The backgrounds were completely lifeless, which is nonsense. In the book these places were real, they were alive, there were peasants, merchants, etc. going in and out. Second problem is that PJ has completely fucked up the scale. That idiotic beacons episode took place over the whole 24 hours (started in the day, ended next day) and still each next beacon shone after just 5-10 seconds. Assuming 1 km separation, Edoras is about 5000-10000 kilometers from Minas-Tirith. Does that make any sense? And then we have Osgiliath and Minas-Tirith conviniently brought together to be at most 1 km away from each other and also just next to the harbour (which we only see a few piers of, as if it doesn't exist at all). And the Gorgorat plain is so small that all Orcs manage to leave it in just a few minutes...
BTW, I am pretty happy about people, like you, who liked TTT and ROTK overall. What annoys me, though, are fanboys who absolutely refuse to acknowledge that there is even a single problem with the films. I guess, I should just ignore them, but I can't, as long as they downmod me.
Thanks for the reply. I agreed with most of the constructive comments people made about neutral point of view and encouraged the same editing myself. Unfortunately, removing the factual content simply for the reason you don't agree with it is not NPOV. Sorry for the emotionally loaded comparision, but that is akin to removing the figures about economic growth in Germany under Hitler simply because you think he is a SOB.
It's not like Wikipedia rules and mechanisms do not work at all, but they are not perfect and in difficult situations produce results which are, IMO, far from optimal. Nobody even bothered to make an argument for removing the facts (although I've heard a lot of arguments for removing the article alltogether, banning the author, etc., etc.). Think what you want about ethical aspects of the article, but how can you have an article ABOUT online child pornography without using the word "lolita" at least once? That doesn't make any more sense than writing about the US without mentioning the word "constitution". And still, someone decided to remove the name of the magazine ("Little Lolita"). Come on, I don't think someone can find it in the library anymore, how much would it harm to live that fact intact?
That's not editing, that's censorship. And censorship is not NPOV.
Yep. I wrote a great and very informative article about Internet child porn (see this Slashdot post for the original version, submitted it to Wikipedia and had it deleted in a few hours. Deleted in violation of Wikipedia written policies, despite the fact that the article didn't contain anything illegal (according to a lawyer). Fortunately, it was restored, but then the militant editors meticulously removed every single bit of valuable information from the article that they were morally opposed to. I don't really see the point in editing that now...
So, despite the stated goal to maintain the neutral point of view, Wikipedia consists of people and these people will insert bias into the encyclopedia. That doesn't mean it is useless, but it suggests that it still has to evolve before it can be considered totally successful.
Anything on the web that isn't mirrored to hell and gone with full legal rights to distribute has to be considered volatile. Extrememly volatile.
And wikipedia is GPLed and it's content is already mirrored/used on many servers. Assuming regular backups are made by Wikipedia admins, even if they go under, the archive is relatively safe - GPL means no mp3.com-like hurdles.
I live in Russia and before that lived in the USSR (obviously). There was indeed poverty in Soviet Union, but there is also poverty in the US. People are dying from hunger in the United States - a sad fact, but this is not a secret and is freely admitted by the Americans themselves.
So what is important is the scale of poverty and the structure of income distribution. The fact is that today the decile ratio (total income of the richest 10% divided by total income of the poorest 10%) in Russia is 14, which is almost 4 times higher than in the USA and EU. The same ratio for Moscow is 45. So the social inequality is an order of magnitude greater than anything we had in Soviet Union.
And overall the real incomes are still lower today than they used to be in the 1980s after the GDP fell more than 50% in early 1990s. And the situation is much worse in other Soviet republics (except for Baltic states, thanks to generous investments from Scandinavia).
It is already 13 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, but people are still worse off than they used to be. May be the personal incomes were not that low, compared with the Western countries, but it was more than compensated by great access to public services, such as free medicine, free education, free everything else. Yes, the state was corrupt, but not to the extent it became corrupt now.
P.S. Personally I am better off than I was, but when I consider the intangible things that were lost (like being proud of your country and stuff), I am no longer that sure. And of course, hope. Being a realist and relatively well informed about the economy (working in an investment banking and management consulting here for some time), I don't have any hope for the country that used to be my home. The only rational thing to do now is to move to the Western Europe.
I have never been in Yugoslavia, but I live in Russia, so my guess would be:
1) everyone was able to join labour unions
2) the home might have been owned by the state, but that didn't really matter after all
Destroying an enemy's energy infrastructure in wartime isn't "terrorism", it's sound strategy.
I was not aware that the US was at war with Soviet Union. Too bad our leaders didn't recognise that - they could have nuked both Pacific and Atlantic shores of the US in response... It would be sound strategy, right?
What heated things up, in my opinion, was a little bit of implied interspecies relations. :) Quoting from the script:
...Ahh, that's it; right there...
:) To hear Eomer worrying about the reach of Merry's arm. :))) Priceless!
ROHIRRIM CAMP
EOWYN: Here, little fellow. Put this armor on.
MERRY: Thanks much, my lady. Ooh, I don't think you fastened my belt right. Could you put your hands there again?
EOMER: Wow, sis, you are getting desperate.
EOWYN: Look at this hobbit: can you honestly tell me he isn't brave and handsome, and doesn't inspire your courage?
EOMER: (snicker) Uh, sure. Sure, he's great. Yeah. (gives MERRY thumbs-up sign) You go, dude.
I am not particularly perverted, but that episode clearly was either totally exhilarating or horribly disgusting.
I never said she got too much screen time or that she played Arwen poorly. What I said is that the subplot with her going away was contrived, stupid and contradicted the book.
:) The scene with Sam in nightgown was so gay (as in fag) a lot of people in the theatre bursted out laughting. Sam positively looked like Frodo just made him his bitch. :)))
I didn't mind her appearance at all and the expansion of her role didn't bother me per se, only the direction in which it was expanded.
As for the (-1, Homosexual), I believe that stupid movie deserves it!
I am happy that you enjoyed it, but the fact is - I didn't like the second and the third part. There are reasons for that and they are discussed all other the Net (various character and plot changes, which in opinion of some people, weaken the films and go against the ideas of Tolkien). The fact that we hold different opinions doesn't make one of us a troll.
I still think that Faramir's character was butchered by PJ, Arwen's subplot was unnecessary, conflict between Sam and Frodo was stupid, Aragorn was not kingly, dialog in TTT and ROTK was lame and contrived, the quality of special effects was not consistant (just think, why all agriculture in the movie was concentrated in Shire? PJ was too cheap to add a few CGI fields/villages/gardens to Gondor/Rohan panorama shots?). The movies sucked. Many people and critics enjoyed them, but they sucked.
That someone can downmod this comment doesn't change the fact that TTT and ROTK were just lame B-movies with expensive CGI.
Good post, even though I mostly disagree with you.
A better description of reality is that we overestimate short-term developments, but understimate long-term progress. I saw a research from the 1980s (can't give a reference, sorry), which found out that in most fields (that were studied) scientists and engineers had no significant predictive ability over a 7-year horizon. Most people are not qualified to predict how the developments in this particular area will influence/be influenced by other seemingly unrelated areas.
Overestimation certainly happens, but overall it appears to be the exception, not the rule. As for nanotechnologies, the most important is not extrapolation, but fundamental analysis of what is possible. And the answer is that pretty much everything nanotech advocates are talking about is physically (chemically) possible. As for the timeframe, we can't say today for sure whether it will be 2 decades or a century, but we definitely have some reasons to be optimistic.
The question is will resistance also develop in China and other future high technology hot spots.
My guess is that as long as we do not live in Libria or Oceania, as long as we have relatively independent states, companies, universities and people, some will be more risk-tolerant than others. It seems natural that those, who are more risk-tolerant will become more successful (may be not all of them, but dead ones do not matter). The successful ones will promote their culture and their ideas, leading to more risk-taking, more successes and ever accelerating progress.
And lets not forget that first attempts often fail. It sucks to be Monsanto now, but we must realise that GM brings very simple economic advantages. And the success of Walmart proves - no matter how questionable your business practices are, if you can sell cheaper, you win. GM products can be easier to grow, easier to store, easier to package, cook and they have nutritious and health benefits. Give the biotech companies a few more years and it will be even more difficult for the farmers to resist the temptation. At some point someone will start using them and gain the advantage. The only measures stopping that are attempts to scare the customers. While it may work in the short-term, it is destined to fail eventually, because there is nothing fundamentally flawed about GM food.
First, I suggest we take the mentioned research with a grain of salt. After all, this is just one experiment and we don't know whether it was reproduced and passed peer-review or not. May be it's just speculation.
But even if it is not, two points need to be made. One, it is relatively easy to avoid nanopollution altogether, while it would be completely impossible in 18-19th centuries. Second, according to all available information, nanoparticles are extremely unlikely to suddenly cause great harm to many humans. Just think of it - the cars kill tens of thousands every year in the US alone and still noone, not even the greenest eco-freak urge us to abandon cars or pass some additional regulations. New technologies, on the other hand, offer dangers so small, they are barely distinguishable from random statistical fluctuations. Think mobile phones and GM food - after being scapegoats for more than a decade, there is still no compelling evidence that they do any harm.
Let's go over it again. What evidence is there that cars are harmful? Plenty of it, just watch TV or ask any traffic cop, or just think about your friends and relatives, chances are there is a person you know, who was harmed in a car accident. Are there reproducible experiments to prove that cars are dangerous? Yep, they are repeated by manufacturers every day. Just take a crash dummy and hit it with a car. This should have been a scientist's dream - an experiment, which is easily reproduced everywhere with any equipment, even by the least qualified scientist.
What eveidence do we have against nanoparticles, mobile phones and GM food? Now you should see. Which technologies should be regulated and/or limited? If logic is used, they should not start with "nano-".
Well, there are good reasons not to post before reading the article... Actually after finishing it, it looks like a relatively well-written piece on currently identified risks of nanoparticle technologies. If only the first page was not so trollish...
Still, the general point of my post remains valid. There is simply too much uninformed opposition to science and progress, which sometimes even forces rational people to respond before hearing the argument, which is truly sad.
That's just great. Every time I make a negative comment about Peter Jackson's films, in a few minutes I get moderated as Troll... That's just pathetic. I honestly do think that TTT and ROTK were very crappy movies, although visually impressive. If you disagree, reply, don't just downmod because I dare touch your sacred cow.
If you think Peter Jackson is so good, why don't you go and give him a blowjob. That gotta make you feel real warm and fuzzy.
I've always been a peaceful boy/man, never fighting, never wanting to harm anyone. I am quite selfish and I value my life very much, because I intend on living forever. Still, if this insanity does not end soon, I may be compelled to tie a headband, take an AK-47 and a few frag grenades and start wrecking havoc. I can't stand that stupidity anymore and my experience tells me that stupid people are reluctant to learn anything. Public education is not a solution - the only solution is to place all opposers of nanotech, GM food, cloning and other emerging technologers to the wall.
:) Like someone who does forced abortions to pro-lifers and cages animal right activists to carry out cruel experiments on them. :)
On a more serious note, does anyone know about a pro-science terrorist group with a PayPal account? Something like those guys, who kill abortion doctors and free lab animals, but opposite.