I know Frank Herbert claimed that Lucas has stolen a lot of ideas from Dune (the novel that is), which is, I suppose, where the accusation comes from. However, other than the fact that both feature a Galactic Empire and a hero with superhuman abilities, there's not a lot in common. Even the two Galactic Empires are as dissimilar as you can imagine; Dune's Galactic Empire basically Medieval/early Renaissance-styled monarchy based in no small part on the German states (or possibly the earlier Italian city states) of the Holy Roman Empire, and Star Wars' empire is based more on the 20th century military dictatorship.
Lucas has basically said he's out of the movie business, or at least the big studio business, and I'm sure he's getting a helluva good buyout, so why not? His kids, grandkids, greatgrandkids and so forth will have more money than God, and I'm sure he made sure he and his heirs will continue to have a royalty stake.
I think it more likely that the villains that run Disney will shut the whole expanded universe down. Lucas didn't mind it, because it kept Star Wars going while he was busy with other things. But Disney, they're going to capitalize the living fuck out of the whole thing, and that means anyone writing expanded universe material is likely going to meet a nice new gatekeeper, and watch out all you fanfic guys, Disney will tip you upside and down and shake you for whatever loose change you have.
There was a time, long ago, when Disney was a pretty innovative company, when its animation was state of the art and even its live action films were at least somewhat amusing. From Eisner onward it's been downhill.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and state that I don't think Google's news aggregation service has anything to do with failing readership. I think the claim that people are just reading headlines in Google News and getting everything they need is unevidenced post hoc explanation for falling readership. The problem was beginning to rear its head long before Google reached the position it's at it. I suspect it has more to do with a lack of interest in content, and I would wager that if Google were to simply cut off all domestic French media outlets from its aggregator that their hits would in fact fall even lower. And I think we are about to find that out, because I can't imagine Google is going to give in to this particularly bit of extortion, and will simply cut French outlets out.
At some point newspapers and other media outlets are going to have to face facts. What they produce, no matter how much it may cost them, appears to be worth significantly less in the Internet Age.
One bit of Bligh's reputation is secure. He was one helluva a seaman. There are damned few sailors in history who could have accomplished what he managed to do; sailing and navigating a launch with eighteen loyal crewmen 3,600 nautical miles to Timor with only one casualty (from a native attack). It is one of the great feats of maritime history.
I think most historians long ago centered most of the blame on Fletcher Christian. As you say, Bligh was a man of his times, and in those days, where you might spend a year or longer at sea, if you did not maintain absolute discipline, it was likely no one would ever see home again.
If Google stops indexing all French news sources, it strikes me that any attempt to go after it after that must certainly be a violation of international trade laws.
Fate was different, but blasted reputation the same.
I swear, somewhere in Apple HQ, there's a picture of Steve Jobs surrounded by happy children entitled "Flowers For Comrade Jobs". I guess that makes Cook a sort of Kruschev. I eagerly await Apple's next Five Year Plan. Perhaps iOS Maps guided tractors.
Indeed. The maps fiasco is more like something that came out of Redmond than out of Apple. I can well imagine Ballmer going "So it doesn't work? Well fuck it. Release it anyways." Basically he's done that on a few occasions. But Jobs, egomaniacal control freak that he was, would never have allowed it to go to production like that.
Microsoft behemothicity didn't exactly make the Zune or the previous generations of Windows devices major market performers. One can argue that the XBox division did greatly benefit, but then again, Microsoft dumped a helluva lot of money into it, and it's likely to be years before that investment is ever paid off, so it's difficult to call it a success.
Apple is also a behemoth now, so there's no longer Microsoft and everyone else. It has actual competition, and competition that has had a couple of years now to stake out a position.
Why should we stop using specialist language just because some of the words and phrases have multiple definitions? The word "theory" has always had colloquial and specialist definitions.
Theory is a perfectly good word for describing what science formulates. No other word is required. What is required is for people to be educated in at least the basics of science. Education is the bane of ignorance, not dumbing down terminology.
None of this seems to have anything to do with science. You have created a strawman of how science works and are beating it with all your might. I have pretty deep suspicions that you have no idea how science actually works, but having some experience in statistics, like a Creationist engineer, you attack from the only angle you can.
But let's look at this. Science often has to deal in things that cannot be directly observed. One cannot directly observe an electron. One can only detect it by the effects that it has on observable phenomena. Some phenomena have even deeper levels of inference. No one living saw your great great great great great grandparents copulate. In fact no one living saw your great great great great grandparents copulate either. There are multiple levels of inference required to suggest that A. your great great great great great grandparents copulated, B. that they were mammals, and that C. you are a descendant of those two individuals and their act of copulation.
As to your final claim, it's funny when some guy who claims to understand statistics goes and simply invents a statistic. It rather undermines everything you have said. You're just a pseudo-skeptic who has come up with a word salad argument that you likely endlessly repeat.
Go post your crap on talk.origins and see how long it stands up.
Good grief. You would throw about 80% of science in the garbage because you don't think layers of inference are legitimate. What you learned was bullshit reasoning. You should have at least taking a philosophy of science course.
The Internet does not need the ITU. Hopefully within the next 10 to 15 years, any attempt at control, short of putting an ax through the wires, will be moot.
I see no evidence of any country of note who would be better for the Internet than the US. Look at Australia and the UK, with governments falling over themselves to try to censor it.
Apparently you haven't adapted. We're talking about a highly confirmed theory accepted by virtually every single researcher in fields that touch on it (you could probably count the number of active publishing biologists who outright reject evolution on one hand, not even Michael Behe actually rejects it).
I spent about a decade debating Creationists on talk.origins, and while there were a few Creationists, mainly of the ID variety, who did understand the fundamentals, by and large most Creationists were simply going off of ICR pamphlets, AiG talking points and Jack Chick comics, and actually didn't have even the most rudimentary understanding of evolution or biology in general, and more often than not mixed biology, geology and cosmology into one great big bag called "Science That Lies".
The US is the devil we know. It isn't perfect but by and large it leaves the Internet alone. The UN has this predilection for, quite frankly, giving very repugnant regimes equal say with democracies.
And your priority with the oncoming East Coast weather holocaust is to make first posts on/. bemoaning submitters not making every story about weather or the Middle East?
My experience with Bing is that its search results are pretty dismal compared to Google's. At the end of the day, whatever you think of Google, the fact remains that it has superior search algorithms.
Slashdot Mirror
I know Frank Herbert claimed that Lucas has stolen a lot of ideas from Dune (the novel that is), which is, I suppose, where the accusation comes from. However, other than the fact that both feature a Galactic Empire and a hero with superhuman abilities, there's not a lot in common. Even the two Galactic Empires are as dissimilar as you can imagine; Dune's Galactic Empire basically Medieval/early Renaissance-styled monarchy based in no small part on the German states (or possibly the earlier Italian city states) of the Holy Roman Empire, and Star Wars' empire is based more on the 20th century military dictatorship.
Lucas has basically said he's out of the movie business, or at least the big studio business, and I'm sure he's getting a helluva good buyout, so why not? His kids, grandkids, greatgrandkids and so forth will have more money than God, and I'm sure he made sure he and his heirs will continue to have a royalty stake.
I think it more likely that the villains that run Disney will shut the whole expanded universe down. Lucas didn't mind it, because it kept Star Wars going while he was busy with other things. But Disney, they're going to capitalize the living fuck out of the whole thing, and that means anyone writing expanded universe material is likely going to meet a nice new gatekeeper, and watch out all you fanfic guys, Disney will tip you upside and down and shake you for whatever loose change you have.
There was a time, long ago, when Disney was a pretty innovative company, when its animation was state of the art and even its live action films were at least somewhat amusing. From Eisner onward it's been downhill.
Mind you, the above could apply to Lucas as well.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and state that I don't think Google's news aggregation service has anything to do with failing readership. I think the claim that people are just reading headlines in Google News and getting everything they need is unevidenced post hoc explanation for falling readership. The problem was beginning to rear its head long before Google reached the position it's at it. I suspect it has more to do with a lack of interest in content, and I would wager that if Google were to simply cut off all domestic French media outlets from its aggregator that their hits would in fact fall even lower. And I think we are about to find that out, because I can't imagine Google is going to give in to this particularly bit of extortion, and will simply cut French outlets out.
At some point newspapers and other media outlets are going to have to face facts. What they produce, no matter how much it may cost them, appears to be worth significantly less in the Internet Age.
One bit of Bligh's reputation is secure. He was one helluva a seaman. There are damned few sailors in history who could have accomplished what he managed to do; sailing and navigating a launch with eighteen loyal crewmen 3,600 nautical miles to Timor with only one casualty (from a native attack). It is one of the great feats of maritime history.
I think most historians long ago centered most of the blame on Fletcher Christian. As you say, Bligh was a man of his times, and in those days, where you might spend a year or longer at sea, if you did not maintain absolute discipline, it was likely no one would ever see home again.
There are still sizable Francophone populations in the Americas, Africa, East Asia and Oceania.
If Google stops indexing all French news sources, it strikes me that any attempt to go after it after that must certainly be a violation of international trade laws.
Fate was different, but blasted reputation the same.
I swear, somewhere in Apple HQ, there's a picture of Steve Jobs surrounded by happy children entitled "Flowers For Comrade Jobs". I guess that makes Cook a sort of Kruschev. I eagerly await Apple's next Five Year Plan. Perhaps iOS Maps guided tractors.
Indeed. The maps fiasco is more like something that came out of Redmond than out of Apple. I can well imagine Ballmer going "So it doesn't work? Well fuck it. Release it anyways." Basically he's done that on a few occasions. But Jobs, egomaniacal control freak that he was, would never have allowed it to go to production like that.
This reads like a Stalinist missive regarding the liquidation of some member of the Politburo.
Microsoft behemothicity didn't exactly make the Zune or the previous generations of Windows devices major market performers. One can argue that the XBox division did greatly benefit, but then again, Microsoft dumped a helluva lot of money into it, and it's likely to be years before that investment is ever paid off, so it's difficult to call it a success.
Apple is also a behemoth now, so there's no longer Microsoft and everyone else. It has actual competition, and competition that has had a couple of years now to stake out a position.
Why should we stop using specialist language just because some of the words and phrases have multiple definitions? The word "theory" has always had colloquial and specialist definitions.
Theory is a perfectly good word for describing what science formulates. No other word is required. What is required is for people to be educated in at least the basics of science. Education is the bane of ignorance, not dumbing down terminology.
None of this seems to have anything to do with science. You have created a strawman of how science works and are beating it with all your might. I have pretty deep suspicions that you have no idea how science actually works, but having some experience in statistics, like a Creationist engineer, you attack from the only angle you can.
But let's look at this. Science often has to deal in things that cannot be directly observed. One cannot directly observe an electron. One can only detect it by the effects that it has on observable phenomena. Some phenomena have even deeper levels of inference. No one living saw your great great great great great grandparents copulate. In fact no one living saw your great great great great grandparents copulate either. There are multiple levels of inference required to suggest that A. your great great great great great grandparents copulated, B. that they were mammals, and that C. you are a descendant of those two individuals and their act of copulation.
As to your final claim, it's funny when some guy who claims to understand statistics goes and simply invents a statistic. It rather undermines everything you have said. You're just a pseudo-skeptic who has come up with a word salad argument that you likely endlessly repeat.
Go post your crap on talk.origins and see how long it stands up.
Good grief. You would throw about 80% of science in the garbage because you don't think layers of inference are legitimate. What you learned was bullshit reasoning. You should have at least taking a philosophy of science course.
The Internet does not need the ITU. Hopefully within the next 10 to 15 years, any attempt at control, short of putting an ax through the wires, will be moot.
I see no evidence of any country of note who would be better for the Internet than the US. Look at Australia and the UK, with governments falling over themselves to try to censor it.
The Internet does not need the UN. So why should the UN have any say over the Internet?
Apparently you haven't adapted. We're talking about a highly confirmed theory accepted by virtually every single researcher in fields that touch on it (you could probably count the number of active publishing biologists who outright reject evolution on one hand, not even Michael Behe actually rejects it).
I spent about a decade debating Creationists on talk.origins, and while there were a few Creationists, mainly of the ID variety, who did understand the fundamentals, by and large most Creationists were simply going off of ICR pamphlets, AiG talking points and Jack Chick comics, and actually didn't have even the most rudimentary understanding of evolution or biology in general, and more often than not mixed biology, geology and cosmology into one great big bag called "Science That Lies".
The US is the devil we know. It isn't perfect but by and large it leaves the Internet alone. The UN has this predilection for, quite frankly, giving very repugnant regimes equal say with democracies.
Leave it where it is.
Warrants make fishing expeditions very difficult, and it is fishing expedition powers the cops want.
Ah yes. A fine representative from the Grand Old Sociopath Party.
And your priority with the oncoming East Coast weather holocaust is to make first posts on /. bemoaning submitters not making every story about weather or the Middle East?
My experience with Bing is that its search results are pretty dismal compared to Google's. At the end of the day, whatever you think of Google, the fact remains that it has superior search algorithms.