A movie so blatantly full of bad racial stereotypes would start a re-run of the Rodney King riots if it had played on Black stereotypes instead. But since the bad guys are white, we whites discuss that some of it's facets may be true. Whitey, pleeeze.
"An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop. The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbours were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests." -- Iain Banks, Excession
Living in harmony with nature restricts farming so you cannot get food, ever. You are surplus human inventory whose feeding would place an unsustainable burden on the environment.
Everyone else is slightly above starvation level, but you still don't have enough sustainably grown food for you. What do you do now? Curse your parents?
These blue creatures live in a perfect Volksgemeinschaft under a wise and ominpotent Fuh^hather and respect Earth and Nature. An evil, greedy wizard looking like the caricature of a stereotypical Jew is trying to catch, eat or turn them into gold, but is too dumb to breathe and fails spectacularly on everything. The only attractive female of their species was initially created by the Jewish caricature with the intent to subvert and catch them but is turned good (and blonde of course!) by the righteous smurfs and aids them instead.
Fuh^h^hather knows best, people with dominant long noses want to turn you into gold, females are sent by the Jewish devil and one woman is enough for the entire squad.
Very nice.
His evil but equally inept sidekick cat is called Azrael (=USrael) for crying out loud.
Now what about Avatar:
Nature knows best, blue characters live in perfect harmony. Suspiciously White Anglo Saxon Protestant from a Greedy Corporation people come to kill them and turn their homeland into gold, but are too dumb to breathe and produce epic fails in the process. An attractive WASP male is sent by them to subvert and catch them, but he is turned good by the righteous Blue People and aids them instead.
One day you will realize that while all people are created equal, they don't remain so for the rest of their lives. Ideally, they would be judged by their deeds and virtues, but even then they are not equal.
If you think all people were of absolutely equal worth, I suggest you lead by example and start giving away all your belongings, everything up to your last sock, because then it would not be fair that you have a sock while another one is starving to death. And trust me, there is always someone starving to death, even if we donated all the gold in Fort Knox a hundred times and then some more.
People don't suicide bomb others because they have no food.
This particular wannabe suicide bomber is the son of pretty well-off parents and did not have a day of hunger in his entire life.
You will never come to relevant conclusions if you disregard the fact that terrorism always involves Islam. All terrorists are people from poor or non-poor families, from educated or non-educated backgrounds - but never from non-islamic societies.
This is presented as a struggle of rich vs. poor or rightless vs. oppressor, but that is not the case. Look up the background of known perpetrators and you will see there's only one common ground among them: good ol' Mohammed.
Murder is different when you know and when you don't know anyone involved: a murderer had a personal gain from his act and he could strike again tomorrow or after lunch.
I refuse to debate civil liberties with individuals that declare 3000-fold premediated first degree murder to be "at most a minor annoyance".
That you were modded +5 insightful for that makes me cringe in pain. I am not defending Patriot Act madness, inane TSA regulation or Wars on Terror, but your remark marks a loss of moral compass unheard of since the end of the Nuremberg trials.
The last terrorist used 80g of plastic explosives that would have been sufficient to blow the plane out of the sky down into the densely populated Detroit metropolitan area, killing at least 300 people aboard plus a large number on the ground.
The explosion would have killed the terrorist as well, but that doesn't stop today's terrorists and 80g of plastic explosives have the same or smaller volume than a regular bar of chocolate and can be faked to look just like it. It is also very hard to detect and can be vacuum sealed just like a pack of coffee.
There are thousands of planes in the sky every day with millions of passengers. Any one of them could carry an item the size and the look of a chocolate bar. How on earth are we suppose to protect our planes given the fact that terrorists now don't even care about their own life?
The answer is that we can't and day will come when we acknowledge our inability to secure flights and planes under these circumstances. In a time when 80g of explosives are enough and terrorists are not even trying to stay alive anymore, all security measures that skip a full search of bodily orifices must be considered incomplete.
We could could pour several billions in the development of new explosive detectors, but we will not succeed unless we really step down to probing people's anuses. We simply cannot defend against this kind of terrorism once the terrorists recognize it, knowing that we will not do that.
We can now choose to either accept Jihad as a natural cause of death or realize that we are in a new era that is for all intents and purposes a Second Cold War, the West vs. Islam, with regular civilian casualties. And we have to decide how much civilian losses we are willing to accept in this new Cold War until the price of relative peace is higher than the price of actual war.
In the 1970s, you could board flights like you board subway trains, with the conductor coming around to punch a hole through your ticket and all that.
Every single measure of air travel security was instated because of good ol' Mohammed and violence done by his rabid fans. If you have to present all your bodily orifices for TSA prior to boarding, it is only because of the Religion Of Peace.
The only thing removed because of other reasons is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airstair and we certainly could do worse than omit 200kg of dead weight on our planes.
There are no security screenings for civilian flights or authorities resembling the TSA in Star Trek. There are also no Muslims in Star Trek and I'm starting to guess this is not a coincidence with a series set in the distant future.
I don't know about the probability of liquid explosive attacks, but the prohibition on liquid containers sure does increase prices and sales of refreshments and drinks in transit areas. It probably cuts down the average weight of carry-on luggage, probably saving more than one hundred kilograms per flight, assuming a standard-sized 300ml-500ml Coke bottle on a plane with 300 passengers.
On the other hand, it's much less of a hassle than the rest of the TSA striptease and I'm pretty okay with that. I guess banning smoking on transcontinental flights cause much more discomfort than that, but I'm not sympathetic with heavy chain smokers either.
Although the chances are pretty rare, I'm certain that people's cries will be much louder when liquid explosives were used to bring down a plane, so the tradeoff between people bitching today ("bah, it's a Coke not a bomb") and people crying tomorrow ("bah, you knew they'd be using liquid explosives and you didn't prevent it, lazy bastards") is heavily tilted towards banning liquids.
The people responsible would be tarred and feathered if they did NOT implement some draconian measure to thwart an avenue of attack, after an actual attack. It's usually the same people that complain about any action OR lack thereof. Getting complaints isa fact of life in politics and security, I guess.
I once read that a ram will not attempt mate more than a couple of times with one ewe. The only way to make him mate again is to introduce an ewe B, which will yield an, err, prompt reaction. If ewe A and ewe B stay present, he will alternate between them, with decreasing frequency, but never actually go on mating strike again.
But then there's some fish, where the female will not mate until presented with at least two male specimen to choose from.
In terms familiar to all ye pirates: most species' males have SuperSeeding enabled by default and teh m0nogamy is a lie.
We don't know if the GP ever dated or married other girls.
While it may sound preposterous, some guys have been living with one or more girls without being married to them, some even at the same time. And surely some guys remarried after getting a divorce. Actually, we don't know if the GP was even a guy, for that matter:)
I know The Pope doesn't condone casual cohabitation and condemns divorce, marrying more than once or anything involving more or less than exactly one guy and one girl after marriage, but for some us, it's a matter of daily life:)
Being a gamer does not require gaming in your free time. Getting paid to play 8 hours is still playing for 8 hours a day, which is what I would call hardcore gaming.
If a Korean StarCraft professional (ie. one who earns his living playing games) is a gamer, then a gold farmer is also a gamer.
Mnemonic languages were not the low hanging fruit before high level languages, they were a necessity.
This is not easy vs. hard, but layers upon layers: today's software would never be possible if it weren't for the previous iteration. Cloud computing could've never been handled if the many many layers below it would not exist.
Maybe it is because people who are good at machine level programming are usually not good at high level programming or machine level programming just takes so much time that complex apps take years?
It's more of a chicken-and-egg problem like with the physical tools: you need tools to develop better tools, computer-numerical controlled lathes don't just spring out of a sea of pig iron.
Non-man-made climate change is a myth by the oil industry. London was only cold because mankind didn't burn much coal back then and it was great. Let's spend some trillions to go return to that.
We are running out of countries to route our traffic through, quickly.
Well, lets adapt Niemoller for a second:
When they came for China, I chose a proxy in Australia to route around. When they came for Australia, I chose a proxy in the UK to route around. When they came for the UK, I chose a proxy in the USA to route around. When they came for the USA, there was no country left to route through and all my complaints were met with 404s.
Because - all airlines operating it will be perfectly colluding and conspiring from now on to gauge prices? - all benefits are taxed away by the New World Order? - FAA will mandate minimum ticket prices? - passengers will not accept lower ticket prices? - passengers will be getting free lunches and free alcohol again on all discount airlines operating the 787?
Or will Free Market prevail and at least one airline will try to squeeze their cost advantage in order to gain more marketshare?
GPL is not the most "free" of all licenses, there are also LGPL and BSD style licenses that pose almost no limits on using the souce.
I strongly object labeling "some restrictions" as "not free" or "freedom" = "no restrictions at all", because that is not the nature of freedom. Freedom is the absence of coercion or compulsion and that not only needs, but absolutely requires some very specific restrictions that are enforced hard and fast.
In personal freedom, it is your right to swing your fist or wander around other people's backyards that must be restricted. The same applies to software: when no individual is subject to any restrictions, you are bound to get some individuals oppressing others. Freedom needs defense or it becomes mob-rule.
Now excuse me while I get my check from the US Army Advertisement office.
Getting lost in European cities can mean a 15km drive to get back on track, when all left turns are forbidden for several km or after the wrong exit on the roundabout you're right on a freeway that has no option of stopping or turning for quite some time.
If you're on holiday, rent a GPS or take a GPS-phone with Open Street Maps with you. It will certainly save some headaches, hours of searching and confusion when overpasses become underpasses, tall buildings obstruct all possible landmarks and reading the direction signs are placed only near the intersection like they typically are in France, Italy, Spain or Portugal. With three lanes of dense rush hour traffic between you and the exit.
Getting lost is still an option on a relaxed vacation: turn the thing off. But then you're hosed when you would like to return once again to that incredibly delicious tiny restaurant in that cozy village only a few km out where you've eaten at a week ago.
And then try to navigate the streets in Beijing or Shanghai, where traffic is absolutely batshit crazy, all drivers are in a hurry, using the turn indicators is forbidden by tradition and/or the brake lights are kaput since the dawn of the ages. And streets and lanes are still half a kilometer wide. I don't know about India, but I reckon the army of tuk-tuks storming the streets doesn't help much either. Ignoring for a while that most foreigners are not allowed to drive in mainland China, you absolutely positively need a GPS to survive things like that:
Slashdot Mirror
It's not anti-tech, it's anti-White.
A movie so blatantly full of bad racial stereotypes would start a re-run of the Rodney King riots if it had played on Black stereotypes instead. But since the bad guys are white, we whites discuss that some of it's facets may be true. Whitey, pleeeze.
http://www.agentsmith.com/memento/o/outside+context+problem.html
"An Outside Context Problem was the sort of thing most civilisations encountered just once, and which they tended to encounter rather in the same way a sentence encountered a full stop. The usual example given to illustrate an Outside Context Problem was imagining you were a tribe on a largish, fertile island; you'd tamed the land, invented the wheel or writing or whatever, the neighbours were cooperative or enslaved but at any rate peaceful and you were busy raising temples to yourself with all the excess productive capacity you had, you were in a position of near-absolute power and control which your hallowed ancestors could hardly have dreamed of and the whole situation was just running along nicely like a canoe on wet grass... when suddenly this bristling lump of iron appears sailless and trailing steam in the bay and these guys carrying long funny-looking sticks come ashore and announce you've just been discovered, you're all subjects of the Emperor now, he's keen on presents called tax and these bright-eyed holy men would like a word with your priests." -- Iain Banks, Excession
Living in harmony with nature restricts farming so you cannot get food, ever. You are surplus human inventory whose feeding would place an unsustainable burden on the environment.
Everyone else is slightly above starvation level, but you still don't have enough sustainably grown food for you. What do you do now? Curse your parents?
Storyline of the Smurfs:
These blue creatures live in a perfect Volksgemeinschaft under a wise and ominpotent Fuh^hather and respect Earth and Nature. An evil, greedy wizard looking like the caricature of a stereotypical Jew is trying to catch, eat or turn them into gold, but is too dumb to breathe and fails spectacularly on everything. The only attractive female of their species was initially created by the Jewish caricature with the intent to subvert and catch them but is turned good (and blonde of course!) by the righteous smurfs and aids them instead.
Fuh^h^hather knows best, people with dominant long noses want to turn you into gold, females are sent by the Jewish devil and one woman is enough for the entire squad.
Very nice.
His evil but equally inept sidekick cat is called Azrael (=USrael) for crying out loud.
Now what about Avatar:
Nature knows best, blue characters live in perfect harmony. Suspiciously White Anglo Saxon Protestant from a Greedy Corporation people come to kill them and turn their homeland into gold, but are too dumb to breathe and produce epic fails in the process. An attractive WASP male is sent by them to subvert and catch them, but he is turned good by the righteous Blue People and aids them instead.
The bad guys:
Stephen Lang http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3726346240/nm0002332 - symbolizing White Anglo Saxon Protestant male
Giovanni Ribisi http://www.imdb.com/media/rm3037960960/nm0000610 - symbolizing a "Southern European" complexion similar to people from Italy and, well, Israel. Compare him to Michel Friedman, vice president of the Jewish conference in Germany from 2000-2003 and decide: http://2005.euroforum.cc/2005/pix/main/Michel_Friedmann.jpg
In short: greedy Jews/USrael/AmeriKKKans are trying to kill the perfect Volk to get their money/oil/resources.
The Smurfs give this "conflict" in full length and Avatar concentrates on the story of Smurfette. The special effects are better.
One day you will realize that while all people are created equal, they don't remain so for the rest of their lives. Ideally, they would be judged by their deeds and virtues, but even then they are not equal.
If you think all people were of absolutely equal worth, I suggest you lead by example and start giving away all your belongings, everything up to your last sock, because then it would not be fair that you have a sock while another one is starving to death. And trust me, there is always someone starving to death, even if we donated all the gold in Fort Knox a hundred times and then some more.
People don't suicide bomb others because they have no food.
This particular wannabe suicide bomber is the son of pretty well-off parents and did not have a day of hunger in his entire life.
You will never come to relevant conclusions if you disregard the fact that terrorism always involves Islam. All terrorists are people from poor or non-poor families, from educated or non-educated backgrounds - but never from non-islamic societies.
This is presented as a struggle of rich vs. poor or rightless vs. oppressor, but that is not the case. Look up the background of known perpetrators and you will see there's only one common ground among them: good ol' Mohammed.
If everyone's life is so insignificant, why are you still here? Are you too much of a pussy to lead by example and just jump out of that window?
Murder is different when you know and when you don't know anyone involved: a murderer had a personal gain from his act and he could strike again tomorrow or after lunch.
Why do we have a police force then?
Why do we imprison murderers?
Why are we forbidden to kill people with a low moral compass like you?
Think about it: if accidents are the same as a first-degree murder, YOU could have an "accident" soon.
I refuse to debate civil liberties with individuals that declare 3000-fold premediated first degree murder to be "at most a minor annoyance".
That you were modded +5 insightful for that makes me cringe in pain. I am not defending Patriot Act madness, inane TSA regulation or Wars on Terror, but your remark marks a loss of moral compass unheard of since the end of the Nuremberg trials.
The last terrorist used 80g of plastic explosives that would have been sufficient to blow the plane out of the sky down into the densely populated Detroit metropolitan area, killing at least 300 people aboard plus a large number on the ground.
The explosion would have killed the terrorist as well, but that doesn't stop today's terrorists and 80g of plastic explosives have the same or smaller volume than a regular bar of chocolate and can be faked to look just like it. It is also very hard to detect and can be vacuum sealed just like a pack of coffee.
There are thousands of planes in the sky every day with millions of passengers. Any one of them could carry an item the size and the look of a chocolate bar. How on earth are we suppose to protect our planes given the fact that terrorists now don't even care about their own life?
The answer is that we can't and day will come when we acknowledge our inability to secure flights and planes under these circumstances. In a time when 80g of explosives are enough and terrorists are not even trying to stay alive anymore, all security measures that skip a full search of bodily orifices must be considered incomplete.
We could could pour several billions in the development of new explosive detectors, but we will not succeed unless we really step down to probing people's anuses. We simply cannot defend against this kind of terrorism once the terrorists recognize it, knowing that we will not do that.
We can now choose to either accept Jihad as a natural cause of death or realize that we are in a new era that is for all intents and purposes a Second Cold War, the West vs. Islam, with regular civilian casualties. And we have to decide how much civilian losses we are willing to accept in this new Cold War until the price of relative peace is higher than the price of actual war.
Ten years after http://images.google.com/images?q=ground+zero+ocean you can shut down the TSA and operate flights like the subway trains.
In the 1970s, you could board flights like you board subway trains, with the conductor coming around to punch a hole through your ticket and all that.
Every single measure of air travel security was instated because of good ol' Mohammed and violence done by his rabid fans. If you have to present all your bodily orifices for TSA prior to boarding, it is only because of the Religion Of Peace.
The only thing removed because of other reasons is the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airstair and we certainly could do worse than omit 200kg of dead weight on our planes.
There are no security screenings for civilian flights or authorities resembling the TSA in Star Trek. There are also no Muslims in Star Trek and I'm starting to guess this is not a coincidence with a series set in the distant future.
If Roddenberry's future included http://images.google.com/images?q=ground+zero+ocean he must have had prophetic visions.
I don't know about the probability of liquid explosive attacks, but the prohibition on liquid containers sure does increase prices and sales of refreshments and drinks in transit areas. It probably cuts down the average weight of carry-on luggage, probably saving more than one hundred kilograms per flight, assuming a standard-sized 300ml-500ml Coke bottle on a plane with 300 passengers.
On the other hand, it's much less of a hassle than the rest of the TSA striptease and I'm pretty okay with that. I guess banning smoking on transcontinental flights cause much more discomfort than that, but I'm not sympathetic with heavy chain smokers either.
Although the chances are pretty rare, I'm certain that people's cries will be much louder when liquid explosives were used to bring down a plane, so the tradeoff between people bitching today ("bah, it's a Coke not a bomb") and people crying tomorrow ("bah, you knew they'd be using liquid explosives and you didn't prevent it, lazy bastards") is heavily tilted towards banning liquids.
The people responsible would be tarred and feathered if they did NOT implement some draconian measure to thwart an avenue of attack, after an actual attack. It's usually the same people that complain about any action OR lack thereof. Getting complaints isa fact of life in politics and security, I guess.
By this definition, AWP whores and notorious campers weren't true "gamers" either. But I think we can agree on that :)
It's not supply and demand, it's the genes :)
I once read that a ram will not attempt mate more than a couple of times with one ewe. The only way to make him mate again is to introduce an ewe B, which will yield an, err, prompt reaction. If ewe A and ewe B stay present, he will alternate between them, with decreasing frequency, but never actually go on mating strike again.
But then there's some fish, where the female will not mate until presented with at least two male specimen to choose from.
In terms familiar to all ye pirates: most species' males have SuperSeeding enabled by default and teh m0nogamy is a lie.
We don't know if the GP ever dated or married other girls.
While it may sound preposterous, some guys have been living with one or more girls without being married to them, some even at the same time. And surely some guys remarried after getting a divorce. Actually, we don't know if the GP was even a guy, for that matter :)
I know The Pope doesn't condone casual cohabitation and condemns divorce, marrying more than once or anything involving more or less than exactly one guy and one girl after marriage, but for some us, it's a matter of daily life :)
Being a gamer does not require gaming in your free time. Getting paid to play 8 hours is still playing for 8 hours a day, which is what I would call hardcore gaming.
If a Korean StarCraft professional (ie. one who earns his living playing games) is a gamer, then a gold farmer is also a gamer.
Mnemonic languages were not the low hanging fruit before high level languages, they were a necessity.
This is not easy vs. hard, but layers upon layers: today's software would never be possible if it weren't for the previous iteration. Cloud computing could've never been handled if the many many layers below it would not exist.
Maybe it is because people who are good at machine level programming are usually not good at high level programming or machine level programming just takes so much time that complex apps take years?
It's more of a chicken-and-egg problem like with the physical tools: you need tools to develop better tools, computer-numerical controlled lathes don't just spring out of a sea of pig iron.
Well then we start typing Chinese. Two symbols = one "concept", grammar not included.
Non-man-made climate change is a myth by the oil industry. London was only cold because mankind didn't burn much coal back then and it was great. Let's spend some trillions to go return to that.
We are running out of countries to route our traffic through, quickly.
Well, lets adapt Niemoller for a second:
When they came for China, I chose a proxy in Australia to route around.
When they came for Australia, I chose a proxy in the UK to route around.
When they came for the UK, I chose a proxy in the USA to route around.
When they came for the USA, there was no country left to route through and all my complaints were met with 404s.
Because
- all airlines operating it will be perfectly colluding and conspiring from now on to gauge prices?
- all benefits are taxed away by the New World Order?
- FAA will mandate minimum ticket prices?
- passengers will not accept lower ticket prices?
- passengers will be getting free lunches and free alcohol again on all discount airlines operating the 787?
Or will Free Market prevail and at least one airline will try to squeeze their cost advantage in order to gain more marketshare?
GPL is not the most "free" of all licenses, there are also LGPL and BSD style licenses that pose almost no limits on using the souce.
I strongly object labeling "some restrictions" as "not free" or "freedom" = "no restrictions at all", because that is not the nature of freedom. Freedom is the absence of coercion or compulsion and that not only needs, but absolutely requires some very specific restrictions that are enforced hard and fast.
In personal freedom, it is your right to swing your fist or wander around other people's backyards that must be restricted. The same applies to software: when no individual is subject to any restrictions, you are bound to get some individuals oppressing others. Freedom needs defense or it becomes mob-rule.
Now excuse me while I get my check from the US Army Advertisement office.
Getting lost in European cities can mean a 15km drive to get back on track, when all left turns are forbidden for several km or after the wrong exit on the roundabout you're right on a freeway that has no option of stopping or turning for quite some time.
If you're on holiday, rent a GPS or take a GPS-phone with Open Street Maps with you. It will certainly save some headaches, hours of searching and confusion when overpasses become underpasses, tall buildings obstruct all possible landmarks and reading the direction signs are placed only near the intersection like they typically are in France, Italy, Spain or Portugal. With three lanes of dense rush hour traffic between you and the exit.
Getting lost is still an option on a relaxed vacation: turn the thing off. But then you're hosed when you would like to return once again to that incredibly delicious tiny restaurant in that cozy village only a few km out where you've eaten at a week ago.
And then try to navigate the streets in Beijing or Shanghai, where traffic is absolutely batshit crazy, all drivers are in a hurry, using the turn indicators is forbidden by tradition and/or the brake lights are kaput since the dawn of the ages. And streets and lanes are still half a kilometer wide. I don't know about India, but I reckon the army of tuk-tuks storming the streets doesn't help much either. Ignoring for a while that most foreigners are not allowed to drive in mainland China, you absolutely positively need a GPS to survive things like that:
http://maps.google.com/maps?&sll=51.151786,10.415039&sspn=13.744729,39.506836&ie=UTF8&ll=31.209975,121.497352&spn=0.009139,0.01929
http://wallpapers.bpix.org/wallpapers/63/Shanghai_at_Night%2C_Shanghai%2C_P.R._China.jpg