I am sorry, but even though it has already been done, I am still convinced that making a Street Fighter movie at all is as bad as making a novelization of Godzilla
Yes, but I have high hopes for "Street Fighter: The Movie, The Game: The Movie". Apparently it's a movie, based on the game, which is based on the movie based on the game "Street Fighter".
Also, I hear that Electronic Arts has bought the rights to make it into a game.
Re:The right to privacy is underrated
on
The Privacy Candidate
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· Score: 2, Informative
As for Senator Clinton being a pro privacy advocate? I would say that needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It was her husband who started echelon
The Echelon program did not start under Clinton. From Wikipedia: "Reportedly created to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its East Bloc allies during the Cold War in the early sixties, today ECHELON is believed to search also for hints of terrorist plots, drug-dealers' plans, and political and diplomatic intelligence."
I think whoever did this is going for a kind of terrorism. They want to scare the hell out of their enemies. Like the guy who ran for president in Ukraine and was disfigured by a mysterious poison. Scary stuff.
+1 most insightful comment on Slashdot all week. If you just want to shut up Litvinenko, knife him in an alley and take his wallet so it looks like a robbery. But if your goal is to shut everyone else up, make an example of Litvinenko and kill him using an exotic poison so everyone will know who did it.
On the plus side, I guess this means we can go back to having the Russians be the villains in James Bond movies?
Actually, knowing some of the laws of this country, its probably legal to kill a russian, however he didn't fill in all the correct forms or even apply for a license.
Even if you *did* have a license, it's only legal to kill Russians during Russki season, which is March-April.
Anyway, the failure of town planners is going to work out by itself in the end. As oil prices skyrocket & people in the suburbs grow fatter, the solution become obvious. Liposuction clinics combined with gas stations;-)
I have an even better idea: instead of gas, we can use biodiesel, made from animal fats provided by those liposuction clinics!
True, another WOW-like game doesn't make sense from a business standpoint. Offering the same gameplay but with different character classes (Oboy! I wanna be an SCV pilot!) would just cannibalize the existing business they're getting from WOW.
The clever thing to do would be to create a massively multiplayer online game which involves a completely different model of gameplay, so that it doesn't compete with World of Warcraft so much. The fact that they're hiring RTS people could be an indication of the direction they're going: MMORTS.
What if your character isn't a Marine, he's a squad leader. He gets a dozen marines, half a dozen firebats, a couple of goliaths. And maybe by leveling up you can move up the tech tree and get different units, command more units, ultimately become an Admiral, and soforth. The gameplay could be like Starcraft, but unlike online Starcraft- where you face the same units over, and over, and over no matter how long you've been playing- you'd have the opportunity to acquire new technologies and face ever more challenging enemies.
You know, that's just what they said about cuneiform. But I'm continuing to develop new kinds of clay for the tablets and to experiment with new ways of making a reed stylus- I'm working with a new kind of reed from South America which is vastly superior to the ones the Sumerians used. And cuneiform on clay tablets works fine for all my word-processing and accounting needs, plus it never gets viruses. Well, I did once have a problem with mold growing on my styluses. But I solved that by keeping them in a dry place.
That would actually be a pretty cool device- a coffee mug with a heating element
Still, I think this is the solution to the wrong problem. I don't find a single cord and an adapter that much of a hassle. The problem I have is that every single device needs a different charger- laptop, cell phone, iPod, digital camera, etc. I think the real need is for some standardization so you could have just one adapter charging multiple devices.
This robot is exactly the wrong approach to be taking in a counterinsurgency. Great, you've figured out where the sniper is holed up, and dropped a 500 lb. bomb on his head. Your $150,000 robot and your $20,000 guided bomb have now taken out exactly one (1) Iraqi insurgent. In the process, you've managed to piss off all the residents of the building by dropping high explosives on their homes, and pissed off all their friends and relatives, and convinced those people that you don't really give a shit about the people of the country you've occupied (assuming they were on the fence before). And now four or five more guys join the insurgency to take his place, and all those other people you pissed off are that much more likely to support the insurgents instead of you. Seriously, think about it: imagine you were living in a small apartment building and a sniper hides on top of it. You didn't ask for him to be there, you don't want him there, maybe you'd even turn him in if you weren't afraid of the guerillas, but suddenly 500 lbs. of explosive land on the roof. Are you suddenly going to be won over by the military?
In a coventional war, you strike at your enemy's troops, at his supply train, at his ability to make war. But in a counterinsurgency, the goal is entirely different- you have to win over the people the insurgency is based within. And the more people you kill, the more bombs you drop in populated areas, the further you are from that goal. Your strategy should not be to kill the sniper- your strategy should be to convince him that he's got more to gain from being a part of the system than fighting it, and to lay down his arms, and go back to work. Failing that, you need to convince the people he operates among that he's not working in their best interests, so they won't support him. But as long as we're operating within the "kill the bad guys" mentality, we will continue to fail in Iraq.
The new guy in charge, General Petraeus, does seem to get this stuff. He did a PhD on Viet Nam. But it may be a case of too little, too late.
You're right, this guy hasn't thought things through.
Negative. I find your argument untenable. I am in agreement with the Danish monkey-being. Probabilities of non-human life spreading through the Galaxy and discovering primitive monkey-beings in Sol System are minimal. Probability is on the same order of probability of a F'narthag slime-weasel evolving wings and taking flight. It is also highly improbable that extraterrestrial beings would colonize the pathetic planet Earth and blend into the primitive monkey-being society. They would be forced to hide in internet discussion groups and the tech sector so that they are mistaken for geeks when they display lack of monkey-being social skills.
Terrorists aren't dumb, but we keep acting like they are. They know they can't rush an aircraft with just a handful of boxcutters: the passengers would turn on them and tear them limb from limb. 9/11 only worked because of the element of surprise, it wouldn't work again. Yet the government keeps preparing ways to keep us safe from another 9/11 attack. Likewise, why are they going to bother going after aircraft when so many easy targets are available?
Terrorists will just attack somewhere else. The most obvious target is mass transit. Leave a bunch of bombs on the New York Subway, just like they did with the trains in Madrid- that would probably be a lot easier than smuggling a Stinger missile into the US. Or plant an IED on the Northwest Corridor and wait for a packed Acela train to go over it. Plant a limpet mine on the bottom of a ferry- if you can sink it fast enough you could kill a few hundred people.
It's all just a show: most of the security efforts I've seen in place do comparatively little to make anyone safer, they're just designed to make us *feel* safer. They're not security, they're a security blanket.
Re:Don't freak out, little troll
on
Who won?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Just to establish where I'm coming from: George W. Bush is arguably the worst president in American history. He took America into a war of choice against a nation that posed no immediate threat, and plunged both Iraq and the U.S. military into the middle of a vicious civil war, a mistake that will cost the U.S. 1-2 trillion dollars. In the wake of 9/11, his administration managed to turn America from a nation which was united and had the sympathy of the world, into a nation which was bitterly divided and hated the world over. In the name of freedom, his administration has implemented domestic spying on a previously unheard-of scale, detained people without trial, and tortured people. He's destroying the U.S. Army. On top of it all, Osama bin Laden is still out there. He might not be the worst president of all time, but he's unquestionably in the running.
So yes, from where I'm sitting, it seems impossible to believe that 62 million Americans voted for this incompetent fool, given his mismanagement of the war, Abu Ghraib, and everything else. But what's the alternative hypothesis? That (of the Americans who voted for the two major candidates) only 49.999% of Americans voted for Bush, and 50.001% voted for Kerry? That would still mean that just under 61 million Americans were willing to vote for Bush.
My argument is this: why is it somehow plausible to believe that you could find 61 million people willing to vote for the fool, but somehow incomprehensible that 62 million people could have voted for him?
For one thing, the primary risk is not from above, but from below (IEDs) and the sides (IEDs, small arms, RPGs), so that's where you should concentrate any additional armor. For another, there are limits to how much further the HUMVEE can be modified: it's already slow and dangerously prone to rollovers because of all the added armor, and adding armor to the top of the turret is going to make those problems even worse.
I'd guess that part of the problem could be that the past success of Harvard is working against them. Harvard currently has more name recognition, and more of a perception of success, than any other university in the U.S., so it's bound to attract a lot of people on the basis of reputation alone, on the basis of image rather than substance. In other words, it's going to draw a lot of people in, simply because that's where successful people have gone in the past.
But that's exactly the opposite of what you need to do revolutionary science. To do revolutionary science, you need people who can either think independently of the herd, or actively go against it, and turn over that stone that nobody has ever thought of turning over before. I'm not saying this is a problem for all or even most of the people who end up at the Ivies, but I suspect it has to be a factor.
Look at Richard Jewell. He was falsely accused of planting a bomb and had every media outlet on the planet broadcasting his picture. Yet how many people today could pick him out of a lineup, or have more than the vaguest recollection of what he looks like, other than his weight? Anything less newsworthy will net you fifteen minutes of fury, and then people will go on to the next scandal.
Sure, our emotional involvement with Richard Jewell may involve the proverbial Fifteen Minutes and then we're on to whatever the story of the week is. But being falsely accused on national TV of being a terrorist in front of your friends and family... I have to wonder, how many days has he had when he hasn't thought back on this episode with bitterness and resentment? If you were falsely accused of something and your "guilt" was broadcast around the country, how long would the stain of that false accusation haunt you? Imagine all the job interviews, dates, and casual introductions at parties where you'd desperately hope your name wasn't recognized. Even assuming you are guilty, say, of swiping the neighbor's newspaper or letting your dog crap on the neighbor's lawn, is national notoriety a fitting punishment?
'For the last few weeks, we have been in serious discussions with Apple over how the two companies could work together and share the iPhone trademark....I was surprised and disappointed when Apple decided to go ahead and announce their new product with our trademarked name without reaching an agreement. It was essentially the equivalent of "we're too busy." [We] wanted an open approach. We hoped our products could interoperate in the future.'
Cisco sounds like a date who's been stood up and had her feelings hurt: "I thought we really had some chemistry. But then he's too busy to even call me. And I thought we really had some potential. Do you think he'll call me?" Piece of advice, Cisco: hire some decent PR guys. This kind of stuff makes you sound really whiny, and the whole trademarking an iPhone before Apple move just reeks of desperation.
Why? That scene was perfect, imho. We see the huge difference between a sith and a jedi. It's the difference between an angry caged tiger and a martial arts master. The sith is the epitome of the dark side - he's angry and impatient. The jedi is the epitome of the light side - he's patient and calm, using the small reprieve to meditate.
One of my friends said, "that was the only part where it actually felt like a Star Wars movie", and I wholeheartedly agree. The hype around Star Wars is a lot to live up to, but if the whole first trilogy had hit that level of quality, it would have done it. That scene shows what the prequels could have been.
He was asked if he would ever consider reprising the role of Han Solo. He said, no. He said he didn't like the character of Han at all. When asked if he would consider playing Indiana Jones again, his immediate response was "In a second".
Ford like Jones and doesn't like Solo. It's as simple as that. He has the luxury of being able to pick his roles.
I don't get it. Why can't George Lucas just digitally remaster things so Harrison Ford agrees to play Han Solo?
Did you see the keynote. It's not just a phone + iPod, it's a smartphone (with all of the features you expect when you hear "smartphone") + iPod with an interface that doesn't suck. A smartphone with an interface that doesn't suck is truly newsworthy, as the industry has been trying to build that for years and failing miserably.
Agreed: it's the "doesn't suck" that's key. Apple's iPod wasn't the first portable MP3 player by a long shot, but they created one that was small, stylish, had a good interface, and was actually enjoyable to use (and yes, marketed the hell out of it). Apple took the portable MP3 player to the masses and led a revolution in how we listen to music. They don't deserve all the credit, but in putting out the first non-sucky MP3 player, and in continuing to push the boundaries of the technology, they deserve a heck of a lot of credit.
The question here is, can they do the same thing to phones that they did to music players? Coming off the successes of the iPod, I wouldn't count them out. On the other hand, the iPod is a tough act to follow, and Apple has created a monster wave of hype that they're somehow going to have to live up to. This thing has to be good enough to survive on more than novelty and buzz, it's got to offer real advantages over your cell phone, rather than just being an awkward chimera of phone and iPod.
I think that Apple is clearly heading in the right direction. But being a pioneer is dangerous. Think back on the Newton- it came out not quite ready for prime time, so even after they got the text recognition working better, they had already lost the brief opportunity to capitalize on the device's novelty and buzz, and it never really took off. One or two major snafus in the iPhone and the same thing could happen.
The other issue has to do with the state of the nation's finances. The biggest issue is Iraq. We're currently spending 2 billion a week on the Iraq war; over the course of the year that adds up to 100 billion dollars (roughly the cost of a Mars mission according to some plans)and over the past few years, half a trillion dollars. Economists have previously predicted that the Iraq war will cost 1 trillion dollars when other costs, such as caring for disabled soldiers and rebuilding our army, are factored in.
Iraq, however, isn't the only issue. You've also got the problem that government spending has grown out of control, while the government is taking in less money than it otherwise would because it's cut taxes for the wealthiest few in the country, the people who are least in need of a helping hand. Overall, what it comes down to is that we're going to be very deep in debt for a long time to come, and that makes it extremely unlikely that any large-scale manned mission will survive the rounds of budget cuts that will inevitably come.
because we are engaging most of the enemy (terrorists) in that fight and we have not been attacked on US Soil.
Brilliant. Instead of making it difficult and expensive for them to kill us, we spend billions of dollars making it easy for the terrorists, by sending our citizens into hostile environment where the terrorists blend in, speak the language, and have local support. Meanwhile, we kill a few of them, but the war provides the perfect recruiting tool to create even more radical Islamist terrorists, who can then get hands-on skill in running terrorist cells and building bombs. Once we're out of Iraq, they'll pack up and start killing people elsewhere. I fail to see how this is an effective counterterrorism strategy.
No the invasion was VERY sucessful, the occupation and "mop-up" has been very tough going.
That's like defending the decision to saw your own leg off as successful by saying, "No, the initial severing of the foot was very successful, the massive blood loss and gangrene which followed have been very tough going".
Tactical success is meaningless if the result is strategic failure, as has been the case in Iraq. There's an old term for this: Pyrrhic victory. King Pyrrhus managed to beat the Romans, but at such a heavy cost that he was reported to say, "Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone". Likewise, we've managed to defeat Iraq (as much due to Hussein's incompetence as brilliance on our part) but the costs that came with this victory are massive. Thousands of Americans dead, wounded and crippled, billions of dollars wasted, an Army that has limited ability to respond to other threats (for example, we can't credibly threaten military action against Iran or North Korea), too few resources to ensure stability in Afghanistan, the hatred of the Muslim world, and a violent and vicious civil war that makes Lebanon look idyllic by comparison. Maybe this wasn't the inevitable outcome of the invasion, but the success of the invasion is meaningless outside the context of the ensuing occupation.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but I have high hopes for "Street Fighter: The Movie, The Game: The Movie". Apparently it's a movie, based on the game, which is based on the movie based on the game "Street Fighter".
Also, I hear that Electronic Arts has bought the rights to make it into a game.
The Echelon program did not start under Clinton. From Wikipedia: "Reportedly created to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its East Bloc allies during the Cold War in the early sixties, today ECHELON is believed to search also for hints of terrorist plots, drug-dealers' plans, and political and diplomatic intelligence."
+1 most insightful comment on Slashdot all week. If you just want to shut up Litvinenko, knife him in an alley and take his wallet so it looks like a robbery. But if your goal is to shut everyone else up, make an example of Litvinenko and kill him using an exotic poison so everyone will know who did it.
On the plus side, I guess this means we can go back to having the Russians be the villains in James Bond movies?
Even if you *did* have a license, it's only legal to kill Russians during Russki season, which is March-April.
I have an even better idea: instead of gas, we can use biodiesel, made from animal fats provided by those liposuction clinics!
The clever thing to do would be to create a massively multiplayer online game which involves a completely different model of gameplay, so that it doesn't compete with World of Warcraft so much. The fact that they're hiring RTS people could be an indication of the direction they're going: MMORTS.
What if your character isn't a Marine, he's a squad leader. He gets a dozen marines, half a dozen firebats, a couple of goliaths. And maybe by leveling up you can move up the tech tree and get different units, command more units, ultimately become an Admiral, and soforth. The gameplay could be like Starcraft, but unlike online Starcraft- where you face the same units over, and over, and over no matter how long you've been playing- you'd have the opportunity to acquire new technologies and face ever more challenging enemies.
You know, that's just what they said about cuneiform. But I'm continuing to develop new kinds of clay for the tablets and to experiment with new ways of making a reed stylus- I'm working with a new kind of reed from South America which is vastly superior to the ones the Sumerians used. And cuneiform on clay tablets works fine for all my word-processing and accounting needs, plus it never gets viruses. Well, I did once have a problem with mold growing on my styluses. But I solved that by keeping them in a dry place.
I don't know what weird parallel universe you inhabit where grad students are worshiped... but as a grad student, I desperately want to go there.
Still, I think this is the solution to the wrong problem. I don't find a single cord and an adapter that much of a hassle. The problem I have is that every single device needs a different charger- laptop, cell phone, iPod, digital camera, etc. I think the real need is for some standardization so you could have just one adapter charging multiple devices.
In a coventional war, you strike at your enemy's troops, at his supply train, at his ability to make war. But in a counterinsurgency, the goal is entirely different- you have to win over the people the insurgency is based within. And the more people you kill, the more bombs you drop in populated areas, the further you are from that goal. Your strategy should not be to kill the sniper- your strategy should be to convince him that he's got more to gain from being a part of the system than fighting it, and to lay down his arms, and go back to work. Failing that, you need to convince the people he operates among that he's not working in their best interests, so they won't support him. But as long as we're operating within the "kill the bad guys" mentality, we will continue to fail in Iraq.
The new guy in charge, General Petraeus, does seem to get this stuff. He did a PhD on Viet Nam. But it may be a case of too little, too late.
Negative. I find your argument untenable. I am in agreement with the Danish monkey-being. Probabilities of non-human life spreading through the Galaxy and discovering primitive monkey-beings in Sol System are minimal. Probability is on the same order of probability of a F'narthag slime-weasel evolving wings and taking flight. It is also highly improbable that extraterrestrial beings would colonize the pathetic planet Earth and blend into the primitive monkey-being society. They would be forced to hide in internet discussion groups and the tech sector so that they are mistaken for geeks when they display lack of monkey-being social skills.
Terrorists will just attack somewhere else. The most obvious target is mass transit. Leave a bunch of bombs on the New York Subway, just like they did with the trains in Madrid- that would probably be a lot easier than smuggling a Stinger missile into the US. Or plant an IED on the Northwest Corridor and wait for a packed Acela train to go over it. Plant a limpet mine on the bottom of a ferry- if you can sink it fast enough you could kill a few hundred people.
It's all just a show: most of the security efforts I've seen in place do comparatively little to make anyone safer, they're just designed to make us *feel* safer. They're not security, they're a security blanket.
So yes, from where I'm sitting, it seems impossible to believe that 62 million Americans voted for this incompetent fool, given his mismanagement of the war, Abu Ghraib, and everything else. But what's the alternative hypothesis? That (of the Americans who voted for the two major candidates) only 49.999% of Americans voted for Bush, and 50.001% voted for Kerry? That would still mean that just under 61 million Americans were willing to vote for Bush.
My argument is this: why is it somehow plausible to believe that you could find 61 million people willing to vote for the fool, but somehow incomprehensible that 62 million people could have voted for him?
Come to think of it, I *do* notice a distinct sucking sensation coming from the Zune...
Hrm, is their a Misanthropic Principle? That the physical constants of the universe are the way they are to make our lives miserable?
For one thing, the primary risk is not from above, but from below (IEDs) and the sides (IEDs, small arms, RPGs), so that's where you should concentrate any additional armor. For another, there are limits to how much further the HUMVEE can be modified: it's already slow and dangerously prone to rollovers because of all the added armor, and adding armor to the top of the turret is going to make those problems even worse.
But that's exactly the opposite of what you need to do revolutionary science. To do revolutionary science, you need people who can either think independently of the herd, or actively go against it, and turn over that stone that nobody has ever thought of turning over before. I'm not saying this is a problem for all or even most of the people who end up at the Ivies, but I suspect it has to be a factor.
It's called a "Google bomb".
Sure, our emotional involvement with Richard Jewell may involve the proverbial Fifteen Minutes and then we're on to whatever the story of the week is. But being falsely accused on national TV of being a terrorist in front of your friends and family... I have to wonder, how many days has he had when he hasn't thought back on this episode with bitterness and resentment? If you were falsely accused of something and your "guilt" was broadcast around the country, how long would the stain of that false accusation haunt you? Imagine all the job interviews, dates, and casual introductions at parties where you'd desperately hope your name wasn't recognized. Even assuming you are guilty, say, of swiping the neighbor's newspaper or letting your dog crap on the neighbor's lawn, is national notoriety a fitting punishment?
Cisco sounds like a date who's been stood up and had her feelings hurt: "I thought we really had some chemistry. But then he's too busy to even call me. And I thought we really had some potential. Do you think he'll call me?" Piece of advice, Cisco: hire some decent PR guys. This kind of stuff makes you sound really whiny, and the whole trademarking an iPhone before Apple move just reeks of desperation.
One of my friends said, "that was the only part where it actually felt like a Star Wars movie", and I wholeheartedly agree. The hype around Star Wars is a lot to live up to, but if the whole first trilogy had hit that level of quality, it would have done it. That scene shows what the prequels could have been.
I don't get it. Why can't George Lucas just digitally remaster things so Harrison Ford agrees to play Han Solo?
Agreed: it's the "doesn't suck" that's key. Apple's iPod wasn't the first portable MP3 player by a long shot, but they created one that was small, stylish, had a good interface, and was actually enjoyable to use (and yes, marketed the hell out of it). Apple took the portable MP3 player to the masses and led a revolution in how we listen to music. They don't deserve all the credit, but in putting out the first non-sucky MP3 player, and in continuing to push the boundaries of the technology, they deserve a heck of a lot of credit.
The question here is, can they do the same thing to phones that they did to music players? Coming off the successes of the iPod, I wouldn't count them out. On the other hand, the iPod is a tough act to follow, and Apple has created a monster wave of hype that they're somehow going to have to live up to. This thing has to be good enough to survive on more than novelty and buzz, it's got to offer real advantages over your cell phone, rather than just being an awkward chimera of phone and iPod.
I think that Apple is clearly heading in the right direction. But being a pioneer is dangerous. Think back on the Newton- it came out not quite ready for prime time, so even after they got the text recognition working better, they had already lost the brief opportunity to capitalize on the device's novelty and buzz, and it never really took off. One or two major snafus in the iPhone and the same thing could happen.
Iraq, however, isn't the only issue. You've also got the problem that government spending has grown out of control, while the government is taking in less money than it otherwise would because it's cut taxes for the wealthiest few in the country, the people who are least in need of a helping hand. Overall, what it comes down to is that we're going to be very deep in debt for a long time to come, and that makes it extremely unlikely that any large-scale manned mission will survive the rounds of budget cuts that will inevitably come.
Brilliant. Instead of making it difficult and expensive for them to kill us, we spend billions of dollars making it easy for the terrorists, by sending our citizens into hostile environment where the terrorists blend in, speak the language, and have local support. Meanwhile, we kill a few of them, but the war provides the perfect recruiting tool to create even more radical Islamist terrorists, who can then get hands-on skill in running terrorist cells and building bombs. Once we're out of Iraq, they'll pack up and start killing people elsewhere. I fail to see how this is an effective counterterrorism strategy.
No the invasion was VERY sucessful, the occupation and "mop-up" has been very tough going.
That's like defending the decision to saw your own leg off as successful by saying, "No, the initial severing of the foot was very successful, the massive blood loss and gangrene which followed have been very tough going".
Tactical success is meaningless if the result is strategic failure, as has been the case in Iraq. There's an old term for this: Pyrrhic victory. King Pyrrhus managed to beat the Romans, but at such a heavy cost that he was reported to say, "Another such victory over the Romans and we are undone". Likewise, we've managed to defeat Iraq (as much due to Hussein's incompetence as brilliance on our part) but the costs that came with this victory are massive. Thousands of Americans dead, wounded and crippled, billions of dollars wasted, an Army that has limited ability to respond to other threats (for example, we can't credibly threaten military action against Iran or North Korea), too few resources to ensure stability in Afghanistan, the hatred of the Muslim world, and a violent and vicious civil war that makes Lebanon look idyllic by comparison. Maybe this wasn't the inevitable outcome of the invasion, but the success of the invasion is meaningless outside the context of the ensuing occupation.
Another such victory and we are undone.