To paraphrase that to fit what Generic Joe will hear: "You'll have to grin and bear it as you use an internet that wasn't written to use these standards, BUT, if you and lots of other people start using Opera then those websites will be written to comply with those standards and that'll be great!"
Not sure that's a terribly compelling argument to Generic Joe. Some will certainly go for it, willing to bite the bullet to advance humanity a little bit, but a lot of people just want to use the internet.
The more compliant your web browser is, the less likely your web browser will break.
I love webstandards, and wish greatly that all browsers supported them well. But I just don't think that quote is factually true. If your browser adheres to webstandards that IE doesn't then it's quite possible/plausible that your browser will fail to deliver websites that look and function like you and the designer expected it to.
People "should" code to standards, but I just don't think that it's (yet) true that they DO.
There are indeed references to major floods in many, though not all ancient cultures around the world.
The timing for them doesn't seem to match up though, they can have very wildly divergent dates.
The simplest explanation is that many different (smaller than global yet still huge to the primitive locals) catastrophic floods happened to people in ancient times, and they each made up their own mythologies about it.
Heck, If I were alive a few millenia ago I could have sat down and created a flood myth just through the judicious use of my creativity. If it was a good enough story it might have caught on, despite having no basis in historical fact.
A major issue with accepting evolution and an old age to the Earth for some is that it takes a lot of the wind out of the sails of The Fall.
If humans have been around in a recognizeable way for 100,000+ years and animals have been eating each other, disease rampant, etc, for billions of years before that... then the wonderful serenity of Eden where all things lived in harmony with each other wasn't true. And if Eden wasn't true, then perhaps mankind didn't fall from a state of grace and are in need of redemption? If we didn't fall, then Jesus' purported purpose on earth seems to be rather superfluous.
Some people can't accept that the stories in the bible are stories because having an omnipotent Dad who's looking out for you and will reward you after you die is extremely comforting to them. The Bible promises them that. I have a university educated(in physics) friend who claims that yes, the Flood really happened. And Balaam? His donkey talked to him in plain Aramaic.
Reading that comment I'm not sure how much Dawkins you've read. It appears to make numerous claims that are not supported by his written work, nor public speeches.
Dawkins for one has said repeatedly that a belief in evolution is neither neccessary nor sufficient to be an atheist. His opinion is that a good understanding of evolution takes a good deal of wind out of the sails of the arguement from design(an arguement that powerfully influenced many thinkers over the years, leading people who quite likely would have been atheists to instead advocate a form of Deism).
You're right though that Dawkins is indeed intolerant of certain ways of thinking, I don't think he'd disagree with that. Nor would most of the New Atheists that you refer to. They tend to peacefully advocate that one should try one's best to make sure that one's beliefs are true. Beliefs that have no supporting evidence have aren't as likely to be true as beliefs that do have supporting evidence. "You don't have to like or even respect their beliefs, but you must respect the individual's right to believe what they choose." I am not sure where you've seen atheists arguing that we should make belief in Yahweh/Vishnu/Allah/FSM illegal. They tend agree that people have the right to believe whatever they want(up until those beliefs impinge on the rights of others). But that's not a sufficient arguement for saying that they shouldn't be trying to convince people to change their mind.
As Sam Harris tends to say, I do think that you should be allowed to think that Elvis is still alive. But I don't think that means I can't try to peacefully convince you that it's likely he's not. Particularly not if your beliefs in Elvis mean that you close your eyes to evidence in fields such as biology, while trying to keep others from seeing it. Sam does indeed advocate intolerance. Conversation intolerance I believe is the term he uses? In essense, we start using the same intolerance for religions beliefs that have insufficient evidence to support them that we use for people who believe that aliens from Pluto are controlling the president's mind.
Indeed, such commentary typically makes me rage or sigh with exasperation.
We already have medical interventions that can drastically change what a person acts like, thinks and feels. We've had brain surgeries ranging from incredibly crude to fairly sophisticated, these affect the brains and hence the minds of patients.
As you said, we have psychoactive drugs that can change the activity(or even structure) of the brain, leading to changes in all sorts of stuff. Hell, sitting down on a couch and talking about your life can have noticeable and significant changes in neurochemistry and we believe the structure of the brain(eg: changes in hippocampal neurogenesis).
If this is an ethical issue(and broadly speaking I think it is) then the development of this new technology isn't why we should be talking about it. It's the fact that we've been able to do this for millenia and have gotten steadily better and better at it. We should already have good answers to such topics because we've been doing it for ages.
Enriched environments have long been known to make mice 'happier' in addition to being better at solving various tests, and having larger brains, etc. This stress-reducing effect has been known to be maintained long after the rats are removed from the enriched environment.
The change in the mother rats should fully be expected to be partially shared with the pups. The womb is not a completely separate environment that just happens to exist inside the mother, her experiences shape what sort of chemicals(beneficial or detrimental) are delivered to the baby.
A healthier, less stressed out mother is likely to nurture her babies properly while they're in utero, and uterine environment that's not bathed in stress hormones is generally a preferable one for the baby's neurological development. TFA also mentions that an opposite effect occurs, where highly stressed mothers had babies that then also abused their pups tend to have pups that themselves are poorer mothers. They don't mention if problem solving tests were given to these rats, but I'd fully expect that they'd show deficits in tests of memory and intelligence.
The researchers in the article say that this is a completely shocking discovery, I'd be shocked if it didn't happen. The stress response affects not only the mother, but also the baby, and those changes can be noticed in their later lives. Quel surprise.
Rather sad commentary on the state of things isn't it? But quite a few people wont bat an eye at it, and for some people that's what they're stuck with.
Need this particular piece of hardware, and it's more convenient to get it with this software and then go through the trouble of "downgrading" than it is to find another place offering the hardware without the New and Improved Software(assuming such a place exists).
The article seemed pretty good, I like his writing style and he seems to be very knowledgeable about such things. Shame the summary distorted his views somewhat.
It's truly astonishing how many people viewing porn were born on January 1st, with the year being whatever a few presses of the "page down" button got you. Asking people to put in their birth date for viewing porn is not likely to really catch anyone. If it did, they could always just hit back in their browser and plug in a new date.
Those sensors to help when backing-up are a good idea, but they certainly have some issues. What I preferred was the vehicle I drove a while back that had a small wide-angle camera in back. It then broadcasted its imagery to the GPS/radio screen up front.
Want to know how far away that thing behind you really is? Look at the screen and see for yourself.
I've been muttering about how I wanted one of these for years now. If every 12 year old in the world can have a webcam, why not an SUV/truck/car? It's not like you need a top of the line camera with spectacular video quality. Really looking forward to seeing these become more common.
If one assumes that all the music on my computer is stuff that the RIAA can sue over(some isn't, not sure the %), and ignores that some of the stuff that I have comes from legal purchases and my own rips(some, but not all that much to be honest), and if one uses the $9,250 per song figure from the summary:
My computer has a value of approximately $207,900,000.
For perspective, the current price of gold is $871.20 USD per troy oz. Alternatively, about $28,000 per kilogram of gold. $207,900,000 / $28,000/kg = 7425 kg of gold A Ford F150 truck comes in with a weight of 2,197kg.
My computer is worth almost as much as three and a half Ford F150 trucks made of solid gold
You're right Adult film producer... I feel rich, powerful! Excuse me, I'm going to go buy a bigger basement and a new family now.
Does it always produce true responses?
on
Torture in Games
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I don't play WoW or the MUD mentioned in the article, but I'm curious if the use of torture in these games does/would invariably produce honest factual information from the person/monster being tortured?
Torture has a somewhat speckled history when it comes to getting at what's actually really going on. Torture someone enough and they'll tell you whatever they think will get you to stop the torture, regardless of if it's true or not.
It'd be a bit more interesting I'd think if the torture sometimes works, and sometimes leads you off in directions that aren't at all productive(and might actually weaken you).
huh, a censorship organisation that's capable of acquiring new information, and using that to change their actions.
I didn't think that I'd live long enough to see the day where such a thing would happen.
Isn't there someplace in Revelations where they mention this? "And yea, look ye unto the people running the anti-child porn organizations on the intertubes. For they shall learn the error of their ways (temporarily) and it shall be a sign that the end of all things is upon you."
I don't think I'm saying that. At least, I'm pretty sure that's not what I intended to say.
What I'm saying is, there's no justification for making any declaration on innocence or guilt unless you have access to some sort of evidence. I don't think we should treat her as guilty, but nor do I think we should make a factual claim that she IS innocent.
Based off the RIAA's history I think it's likely she is innocent of the offences they're levelling against her. But do I claim to know it? No.
I suppose it's just a case of being pedantic, but I find people claiming to know things without evidence to be distateful. That's what I saw the submitter of this story as doing.
This time they've sued an innocent, 19-year-old, transplant patient, hospitalized with pancreatitis and needing islet cell transplants.
Oh, an innocent 19 year old eh? How do we know this?
I'm not a fan of RIAA legal tactics, or anything connected with them really, but it's quite possible that this girl is indeed 'guilty' of the offense of infringing on copyrights that the RIAA is accusing her of infringing.
I once spent a significant amount of time in the hospital, does that have any relevance to the question of if I've infringed on copyrights or not? I understand the desire to show how hard done by she is in the hopes of mobilizing additional resources to defend her, but does that make her innocent? Does anything mentioned in the summary or articles?
Hey now, I've never read any of his "lesbian fiction" but it's *possible* it's not porn. It might be unlikely for this case sure, but there are more than a few non-pornographic romance stories out there about two (or more!) women falling in love.
These stories might feature graphic sex, or subtle references to sex having happened, or no sex at all.... That said, if you find the stories, gzip them up and upload them to some file host like rapidshare/megaupload please? =P I'd like to test my hypothesis that they're not pornographic.
So what you're saying is that THEY are actually Cardassians? child porn is a smokescreen for music torrents which are a smokescreen for free speech.
"a plan within a plan within a plan leading to a trap" seems very in-line with what you're describing. Hmm, this situation is alternatively terrifying and awesome, not sure how I'm supposed to feel as an old trek nerd and current music nerd.
Really? I mean, being able to see into other parts of the ultraviolet spectrum could be kind of neat, you really want your vision to be so easily taken away? Steal your VISOR and all of a sudden you're absolutely blind.
I could see wanting to go for the ocular implants that Geordi got later on though. Those I suppose could still be stolen, but far less easily than a VISOR(and no more susceptible to theft than organic eyes). Plus they're more powerful. huh, apparently Seven of Nine got something like these too, except perhaps even more advanced. Had stopped watching Voyager before that happened. I suppose it's not really a stretch to think that she'd be open to mechanically enhancing the body though:P I was a bit surprised that more people didn't opt for the procedure in the Trek universe, particularly people who are doing engineering work. Geordi certainly benefited from the abilities his visor gave him on several occasions. A diplomat might too(since his visor could apparently detect the involuntary reactions made by humanoids when they're bluffing)
In fact, millions of people do this every year. Not TOO shocking perhaps that someone on slashdot has yet to get a good grasp of the process by which humans make newly souled creatures.
They're at least somewhat orthogonal I thought? I'm not American so sometimes I can have really skewed views of how things work down there, but I don't see either as junior to the other. They have a very different set of responsibilities and privileges.
Regarding why she'd want to run... from up here I'd heard some rumblings about how Palin might have some executive experience, but a stunning lack of information about the rest of the country. Said persons then went on to suggest that some senate experience would be good for her if she wants to be involved in the 2012 race, get her some additional exposure out-of-state and some experience in Washington(being a maverick outsider renegade is all well and good, but some knowledge of how things work in Washington isn't entirely bad).
I'm not sure how many millions of Americans this would carry weight with, but these two seemed to think it'd be a splendid idea.
To my shame I've not seen every single episode of TOS, but I think I've got a good feel for it(have seen the majority of eps). I do however know that Kirk having hot alien women falling for him is somewhat of a cliche, and I got to see that a few times. (Yeoman Rand was fairly sexualized as well)
My point was that I don't recall seeing either of them in their underwear in full-on grope on a bed.
Sex is an important part of humanity, and I don't think it should be ignored. But that trailer made me expect that this new movie is going to be 98% flash and maybe, maybe 2% substance. That car chase scene? My suspicions are that this film is largely going to consist of tits, explosions, and weirdly shaped evil aliens. That's fine for a mindless action flick for the summer, but Trek can do better. It has been a (small) force for social change in the past, and I would like to see that again. If I want to see boobs and bombs I can get those from a million other sources. This movie may indeed be immensely popular and make scads of money but I'm no longer holding out much hope for it challenging people's deeply held views about any of the issues of today.
I know it cuts against the grain for slashdot, but are tits really the answer to Star Trek's woe's? Watching that trailer it seems like they've made an effort to sex-up trek. I don't have any issue with attractive women being on board, I'd think that by the time that we're launching warp-capable ships that it'll be fairly easy to have an attractive body. I just don't think that having bra-clad women(what, no better tech in THAT area yet?) or showing softcore porn on a bed is really the best way to make people take trek seriously.
meh, I suppose the old methods weren't working, might as well try something new eh?
Slashdot Mirror
To paraphrase that to fit what Generic Joe will hear:
"You'll have to grin and bear it as you use an internet that wasn't written to use these standards, BUT, if you and lots of other people start using Opera then those websites will be written to comply with those standards and that'll be great!"
Not sure that's a terribly compelling argument to Generic Joe. Some will certainly go for it, willing to bite the bullet to advance humanity a little bit, but a lot of people just want to use the internet.
The more compliant your web browser is, the less likely your web browser will break.
I love webstandards, and wish greatly that all browsers supported them well. But I just don't think that quote is factually true. If your browser adheres to webstandards that IE doesn't then it's quite possible/plausible that your browser will fail to deliver websites that look and function like you and the designer expected it to.
People "should" code to standards, but I just don't think that it's (yet) true that they DO.
My vote goes to hamthrax.
Just wait until you get that pink powder through the mail...
"Plus the blu-ray can't be any better quality than the film the movie is recorded on so it's not clear to me what your logic is for that complaint."
This assumes that the theatre staff are able to focus their projector properly. Most do a very good job of this. Some do not.
There are indeed references to major floods in many, though not all ancient cultures around the world.
The timing for them doesn't seem to match up though, they can have very wildly divergent dates.
The simplest explanation is that many different (smaller than global yet still huge to the primitive locals) catastrophic floods happened to people in ancient times, and they each made up their own mythologies about it.
Heck, If I were alive a few millenia ago I could have sat down and created a flood myth just through the judicious use of my creativity. If it was a good enough story it might have caught on, despite having no basis in historical fact.
A major issue with accepting evolution and an old age to the Earth for some is that it takes a lot of the wind out of the sails of The Fall.
If humans have been around in a recognizeable way for 100,000+ years and animals have been eating each other, disease rampant, etc, for billions of years before that... then the wonderful serenity of Eden where all things lived in harmony with each other wasn't true. And if Eden wasn't true, then perhaps mankind didn't fall from a state of grace and are in need of redemption? If we didn't fall, then Jesus' purported purpose on earth seems to be rather superfluous.
Some people can't accept that the stories in the bible are stories because having an omnipotent Dad who's looking out for you and will reward you after you die is extremely comforting to them. The Bible promises them that.
I have a university educated(in physics) friend who claims that yes, the Flood really happened. And Balaam? His donkey talked to him in plain Aramaic.
Reading that comment I'm not sure how much Dawkins you've read. It appears to make numerous claims that are not supported by his written work, nor public speeches.
Dawkins for one has said repeatedly that a belief in evolution is neither neccessary nor sufficient to be an atheist. His opinion is that a good understanding of evolution takes a good deal of wind out of the sails of the arguement from design(an arguement that powerfully influenced many thinkers over the years, leading people who quite likely would have been atheists to instead advocate a form of Deism).
You're right though that Dawkins is indeed intolerant of certain ways of thinking, I don't think he'd disagree with that. Nor would most of the New Atheists that you refer to. They tend to peacefully advocate that one should try one's best to make sure that one's beliefs are true. Beliefs that have no supporting evidence have aren't as likely to be true as beliefs that do have supporting evidence. "You don't have to like or even respect their beliefs, but you must respect the individual's right to believe what they choose." I am not sure where you've seen atheists arguing that we should make belief in Yahweh/Vishnu/Allah/FSM illegal. They tend agree that people have the right to believe whatever they want(up until those beliefs impinge on the rights of others). But that's not a sufficient arguement for saying that they shouldn't be trying to convince people to change their mind.
As Sam Harris tends to say, I do think that you should be allowed to think that Elvis is still alive. But I don't think that means I can't try to peacefully convince you that it's likely he's not. Particularly not if your beliefs in Elvis mean that you close your eyes to evidence in fields such as biology, while trying to keep others from seeing it. Sam does indeed advocate intolerance. Conversation intolerance I believe is the term he uses? In essense, we start using the same intolerance for religions beliefs that have insufficient evidence to support them that we use for people who believe that aliens from Pluto are controlling the president's mind.
Indeed, such commentary typically makes me rage or sigh with exasperation.
We already have medical interventions that can drastically change what a person acts like, thinks and feels.
We've had brain surgeries ranging from incredibly crude to fairly sophisticated, these affect the brains and hence the minds of patients.
As you said, we have psychoactive drugs that can change the activity(or even structure) of the brain, leading to changes in all sorts of stuff.
Hell, sitting down on a couch and talking about your life can have noticeable and significant changes in neurochemistry and we believe the structure of the brain(eg: changes in hippocampal neurogenesis).
If this is an ethical issue(and broadly speaking I think it is) then the development of this new technology isn't why we should be talking about it. It's the fact that we've been able to do this for millenia and have gotten steadily better and better at it. We should already have good answers to such topics because we've been doing it for ages.
Here's my personal suggested mechanism.
Enriched environments have long been known to make mice 'happier' in addition to being better at solving various tests, and having larger brains, etc. This stress-reducing effect has been known to be maintained long after the rats are removed from the enriched environment.
The change in the mother rats should fully be expected to be partially shared with the pups. The womb is not a completely separate environment that just happens to exist inside the mother, her experiences shape what sort of chemicals(beneficial or detrimental) are delivered to the baby.
A healthier, less stressed out mother is likely to nurture her babies properly while they're in utero, and uterine environment that's not bathed in stress hormones is generally a preferable one for the baby's neurological development.
TFA also mentions that an opposite effect occurs, where highly stressed mothers had babies that then also abused their pups tend to have pups that themselves are poorer mothers. They don't mention if problem solving tests were given to these rats, but I'd fully expect that they'd show deficits in tests of memory and intelligence.
The researchers in the article say that this is a completely shocking discovery, I'd be shocked if it didn't happen. The stress response affects not only the mother, but also the baby, and those changes can be noticed in their later lives. Quel surprise.
Rather sad commentary on the state of things isn't it? But quite a few people wont bat an eye at it, and for some people that's what they're stuck with.
Need this particular piece of hardware, and it's more convenient to get it with this software and then go through the trouble of "downgrading" than it is to find another place offering the hardware without the New and Improved Software(assuming such a place exists).
The article seemed pretty good, I like his writing style and he seems to be very knowledgeable about such things. Shame the summary distorted his views somewhat.
It's truly astonishing how many people viewing porn were born on January 1st, with the year being whatever a few presses of the "page down" button got you.
Asking people to put in their birth date for viewing porn is not likely to really catch anyone. If it did, they could always just hit back in their browser and plug in a new date.
Those sensors to help when backing-up are a good idea, but they certainly have some issues. What I preferred was the vehicle I drove a while back that had a small wide-angle camera in back. It then broadcasted its imagery to the GPS/radio screen up front.
Want to know how far away that thing behind you really is? Look at the screen and see for yourself.
I've been muttering about how I wanted one of these for years now. If every 12 year old in the world can have a webcam, why not an SUV/truck/car? It's not like you need a top of the line camera with spectacular video quality. Really looking forward to seeing these become more common.
If one assumes that all the music on my computer is stuff that the RIAA can sue over(some isn't, not sure the %), and ignores that some of the stuff that I have comes from legal purchases and my own rips(some, but not all that much to be honest), and if one uses the $9,250 per song figure from the summary:
My computer has a value of approximately $207,900,000.
For perspective, the current price of gold is $871.20 USD per troy oz. Alternatively, about $28,000 per kilogram of gold.
$207,900,000 / $28,000/kg = 7425 kg of gold
A Ford F150 truck comes in with a weight of 2,197kg.
My computer is worth almost as much as three and a half Ford F150 trucks made of solid gold
You're right Adult film producer... I feel rich, powerful! Excuse me, I'm going to go buy a bigger basement and a new family now.
I don't play WoW or the MUD mentioned in the article, but I'm curious if the use of torture in these games does/would invariably produce honest factual information from the person/monster being tortured?
Torture has a somewhat speckled history when it comes to getting at what's actually really going on. Torture someone enough and they'll tell you whatever they think will get you to stop the torture, regardless of if it's true or not.
It'd be a bit more interesting I'd think if the torture sometimes works, and sometimes leads you off in directions that aren't at all productive(and might actually weaken you).
Chicks? ... Using an apple-built computer will get me chicks?
Would I have to use OSX? Are the chicks attractive?
My loyalties are pretty flexible(like the chicks?)
Sign me up!
huh, a censorship organisation that's capable of acquiring new information, and using that to change their actions.
I didn't think that I'd live long enough to see the day where such a thing would happen.
Isn't there someplace in Revelations where they mention this?
"And yea, look ye unto the people running the anti-child porn organizations on the intertubes. For they shall learn the error of their ways (temporarily) and it shall be a sign that the end of all things is upon you."
I don't think I'm saying that. At least, I'm pretty sure that's not what I intended to say.
What I'm saying is, there's no justification for making any declaration on innocence or guilt unless you have access to some sort of evidence. I don't think we should treat her as guilty, but nor do I think we should make a factual claim that she IS innocent.
Based off the RIAA's history I think it's likely she is innocent of the offences they're levelling against her. But do I claim to know it? No.
I suppose it's just a case of being pedantic, but I find people claiming to know things without evidence to be distateful. That's what I saw the submitter of this story as doing.
This time they've sued an innocent, 19-year-old, transplant patient, hospitalized with pancreatitis and needing islet cell transplants.
Oh, an innocent 19 year old eh? How do we know this?
I'm not a fan of RIAA legal tactics, or anything connected with them really, but it's quite possible that this girl is indeed 'guilty' of the offense of infringing on copyrights that the RIAA is accusing her of infringing.
I once spent a significant amount of time in the hospital, does that have any relevance to the question of if I've infringed on copyrights or not?
I understand the desire to show how hard done by she is in the hopes of mobilizing additional resources to defend her, but does that make her innocent? Does anything mentioned in the summary or articles?
Hey now, I've never read any of his "lesbian fiction" but it's *possible* it's not porn.
It might be unlikely for this case sure, but there are more than a few non-pornographic romance stories out there about two (or more!) women falling in love.
These stories might feature graphic sex, or subtle references to sex having happened, or no sex at all. ... That said, if you find the stories, gzip them up and upload them to some file host like rapidshare/megaupload please? =P I'd like to test my hypothesis that they're not pornographic.
So what you're saying is that THEY are actually Cardassians? child porn is a smokescreen for music torrents which are a smokescreen for free speech.
"a plan within a plan within a plan leading to a trap" seems very in-line with what you're describing. Hmm, this situation is alternatively terrifying and awesome, not sure how I'm supposed to feel as an old trek nerd and current music nerd.
Really? I mean, being able to see into other parts of the ultraviolet spectrum could be kind of neat, you really want your vision to be so easily taken away? Steal your VISOR and all of a sudden you're absolutely blind.
I could see wanting to go for the ocular implants that Geordi got later on though. Those I suppose could still be stolen, but far less easily than a VISOR(and no more susceptible to theft than organic eyes). Plus they're more powerful. :P I was a bit surprised that more people didn't opt for the procedure in the Trek universe, particularly people who are doing engineering work. Geordi certainly benefited from the abilities his visor gave him on several occasions. A diplomat might too(since his visor could apparently detect the involuntary reactions made by humanoids when they're bluffing)
huh, apparently Seven of Nine got something like these too, except perhaps even more advanced. Had stopped watching Voyager before that happened. I suppose it's not really a stretch to think that she'd be open to mechanically enhancing the body though
In fact, millions of people do this every year. Not TOO shocking perhaps that someone on slashdot has yet to get a good grasp of the process by which humans make newly souled creatures.
They're called babies.
They're at least somewhat orthogonal I thought? I'm not American so sometimes I can have really skewed views of how things work down there, but I don't see either as junior to the other. They have a very different set of responsibilities and privileges.
Regarding why she'd want to run... from up here I'd heard some rumblings about how Palin might have some executive experience, but a stunning lack of information about the rest of the country. Said persons then went on to suggest that some senate experience would be good for her if she wants to be involved in the 2012 race, get her some additional exposure out-of-state and some experience in Washington(being a maverick outsider renegade is all well and good, but some knowledge of how things work in Washington isn't entirely bad).
I'm not sure how many millions of Americans this would carry weight with, but these two seemed to think it'd be a splendid idea.
To my shame I've not seen every single episode of TOS, but I think I've got a good feel for it(have seen the majority of eps).
I do however know that Kirk having hot alien women falling for him is somewhat of a cliche, and I got to see that a few times. (Yeoman Rand was fairly sexualized as well)
My point was that I don't recall seeing either of them in their underwear in full-on grope on a bed.
Sex is an important part of humanity, and I don't think it should be ignored. But that trailer made me expect that this new movie is going to be 98% flash and maybe, maybe 2% substance. That car chase scene? My suspicions are that this film is largely going to consist of tits, explosions, and weirdly shaped evil aliens. That's fine for a mindless action flick for the summer, but Trek can do better. It has been a (small) force for social change in the past, and I would like to see that again. If I want to see boobs and bombs I can get those from a million other sources. This movie may indeed be immensely popular and make scads of money but I'm no longer holding out much hope for it challenging people's deeply held views about any of the issues of today.
I know it cuts against the grain for slashdot, but are tits really the answer to Star Trek's woe's? Watching that trailer it seems like they've made an effort to sex-up trek. I don't have any issue with attractive women being on board, I'd think that by the time that we're launching warp-capable ships that it'll be fairly easy to have an attractive body. I just don't think that having bra-clad women(what, no better tech in THAT area yet?) or showing softcore porn on a bed is really the best way to make people take trek seriously.
meh, I suppose the old methods weren't working, might as well try something new eh?