Before you start typing, you may want to read this May 2000 interview with Ben
That's what you should have done. It says in there:
At the beginning, I thought it would be good to have a kind of a CGI (computer-generated imagery) pair of eyes that more perfectly matched what was going on in the comic book design, the cartoon design. But first of all, the cost of that, for a series, you know maybe for a feature it would be fine, but for a series, is prohibitive.
This may have lead you to believe that they wouldn't have done computer-generated antennae. However, if that doesn't convince you...
We had to body cast Patrick Warburton, and build a giant rubber suit, and remote control antennae...
"Sorry, but (IMHO) better teachers teach for the love of teaching, or perhaps for the enjoyment of being in control of what gets put in kids minds today.
Poor teachers teach for the money. "
Two things:
Yes, teachers teach for the love of teaching, ideally. However, ideology is boolean, not scalar. It's not like there are people who live for an idea and people who don't. And nobody lives their life entirely on ideology.
In order for a person to decide to spend their life in a field (teaching), there must also be comfort and respect involved. Currently, teaching anywhere outside a privite college lacks both, so the only people who teach outside private colleges are the educated people who are either very ideological and selfless (good for them, but there aren't many of 'em), those who have somehow managed to be affluent and/or respected through other means, and those who had to turn to teaching because they were unable to achieve a more affluent and respectable job. That third kind is the vast majority. Some of them just got screwed by the system, but waaaaaay more than any of us want to see are the kind who just aren't smart enough, or who are closed-minded.
And all of this can be fixed by paying teachers more. If teachers are respected and well-paid, it'll be mroe competitive, and better teachers will get hired. Perhaps it'll happen slowly, But it'll happen. Money will make teachers affluent, and in the United States of America, there is little that's more respected than riches. Yeah, yeah, I think respecting money is bullshit, too, but that's the way this country works.
Also, once we've got retards out of the school system, it's a fair expectation that the intelligent, professional teachers we end up with will be decent enough to get rid of the chaff you mentioned, without being forced to do so when their funding is cut off. Maybe we can even hire teachers who are smart enough to decide what the students learn, without relying on elected school boards consisting of people who don't know jack about how the human mind learns.
My sincerest apologies to you people who aren't in the United States and think I'm insulting you by talking about the US without mentioning your country. The United States, oddly enough, is more important to me than any other country, because I'm stuck here.
Errr - it feels like I ranted a little, too - sorry.
But as long as we're talking theory, heads up: if a substance were truly unalterable, there would be no way to encode information on it in the first place. Maybe those thingies are really hard to alter, and maybe they're 99.99% safe, but hey, I'm anal retentive:) Gotta mention that.01%
There's no way to store data with a gaurantee that it won't be corrupted. Unless you somehow manage to encode it in a black hole (we think), but then you wouldn't be able to get it back out. Even before this fungus, CDs could be broken, and were easier to break than the stone tablets you mentioned. But information in general can't be accessed unless it's represented in a pattern on physical objects (I use the term physical to mean all physics - electromagnetics too), and if you can rearrange the physics to include encoded information, then something or someone else can rearrange them to be garbage. Gauranteed. So don't worry about safe. Worry about relatively safe. CDs are still the way to go. But we're getting better! Lots of new ideas are in the works. Don't you read slashdot?
Check out the realms update at http://www.battle.net/forums/diablo2-realmstatus/p osts/ac/52.shtml
it says:
During the past week, some players have experienced character
losses. Instances have ranged from hardcore characters dying, to
the loss of items, skill points and experience in normal
characters.
As of this morning, we can confirm that the problem causing these
losses has been fixed.
-- end quote --
They don't say how they fixed it, or what was causing the problem. They are going to revive all hardcore characters that died after a certain day (dec 19 or something like that), and will reset any of your characters to the states they were in then (if you ask).
"As more and more people spoke it, they each brutalized the language a little differently -- a little colloquism here and there, different stresses on syllables etc...
It grew to the point where Latin wasn't really latin anymore. Out of this grew the romance languages. From one root, came French, Italian, Spanish etc... "
Latin, the language of Rome, was being brutalized to the point of being many different languages by people who were still in Europe. All across the United States, people can understand each other's English, and this extends to England (duh), most of Canada and others, and to a point even to most non-English speaking countries whose cultures strongly encourge teaching English. Why the larger sphere of influence? More advanced communications technologies. People won't brutalize their dialects of English to the point of not being able to understand folks they hear from (on the news etc) daily, let alone people they talk with all the time (over the phone, over the internet etc...) I doubt the splintering of English, even if it has begun in Malasia as you say, will result in the same death as Latin. Maybe English in 100 years will be different, maybe even not understandable to an English-speaker today, but it will still be one language.
Unless it's supplanted by some other language (probably mandarin imo ? but I don't know too much about that), but the argument stays the same. No splintering. I sure would like if the whole world spoke one language. "Culture" (which should be able to survive without native language anyway) is a pretty poor excuse for the whole world wasting so much time learning each other's languages and for the misunderstandings that occur from doing it badly.
If a player isn't good enough at a game to win within the rules, he or she is faced with three choices:
a) stop playing the game. You don't see these people playing games anyway, so forget about them for the moment...
b) try to get better. Huzzah for those of you who pick this. I applaud you.
c) cheat. This is the same mentality as used to join gangs and such. People sacrifice being liked by others in favor of being respected. Strong hatred for someone at least indicates that you acknowledge that they have some power. If you didn't respect them, you'd just ignore them, which is what you should try to do anyway.
So basically what I'm saying is that bitching about cheating is just about the worst thing you can possibly do. Other than actually cheating.
"One of the reasons Napster was so successful was that there was a large user base, hence a larger selection of files. "
True, more alternatives means each is less likely to have the music you're looking for. However, it also means a longer, harder battle for those politicians of the idiot variety who think it'll do to shut down each napster alternative individually. As napster clone after napster clone pops up, such politicians will eventually either drop the issue or learn to deal with the theory behind it rather than symptoms of it. This can only (I hope - maybe I'm not cynical enough) result in at least somewhat less retarded horse shit from politicians. Anyway, if you want a song badly enough, you can always check the other napster clones for it.
Re:What's the deal with anime voice acting?
on
Tenchi Muyou 3?
·
· Score: 1
Sadly, yes, I've only seen dubbed anime. I don't speak Japanese:/
What's the deal with anime voice acting?
on
Tenchi Muyou 3?
·
· Score: 1
Anime always seems to have very interesting or at least neat-o plots and characters, at least to geeks and guys in general (possibly because of the much larger men/women ratio in japan), but why does _every_ _single_ anime cartoon, be it a series, a movie, or anything else, have to have such god-awful voice acting? _I_ could do better voice acting than I've seen in any anime, and I know a lot of people who could do better than me. How expensive can it be?
On Hotblack Desiato's black, frictionless, and doomed stunt ship, Marvin said he could see the question imprinted in Arthur's brianwaves, but didn't say what it was. While Arthur and Ford were on ancient earth with the Golgafrians (Sp?), Arthur used his a scrabble board to get his subconsciousness to tell him that the question is "What do you get if you multiply 6 by 9?" This does not yield the correct answer, but he and Ford recognized that what Arthur's subconsciousness said might be off by a bit, since he was descended from the Golgawhatevers instead of real earth cavemen. This implies that the Ultimate Question is "What do you get if you multiply 6 by 7?" Adams hints at this on Margaretha, when the mice are guessing at the question. They touch on 6 times seven but discard it in favor of something more pleasing. He can't let both the answer and the question both be known to his characters, because he tells us through Prak that if both were known in the same universe they'd cancel each other out and take the whole universe with them. It is possible that this is the real reason somebody was trying so hard to get rid of the earth - to keep the question from being discovered and the universe form ending. In my opinion, the point is either that even if there is a simple answer and a simple question, we really don't know exactly what it is we really want to know, so if someone told us we wouldn't understand. Either that or the point is that the ultimate questions and answers are not at all what we expect or want them to be.
"Only one question per post. I applaud the sneaky way in which you asked him about,nearly, everything in on question. However, you follow it up with 2 more questions.oops. oh well better luck next time! "
First: hey, all relevant apologies, geekoid! No sneaky-ness intended. In my defense but not, I think and hope, in direct contradiction to what you said, I think the non-rant bit of my post can still simplify down to just one question. By one question I mean just one sentence, for all those rules lawyers:) Here it is: "Which are your favorite and/or most influential media creators and creations, and why?" I know that's a really huge question if not several, but it sticks pretty much to the same general subject. I was a bit long-winded about it because I wanted to try to make it clearer for everyone. Also, it's really open-ended on purpose, because Adams doesn't have to answer anything he doesn't want to. I decided to give him a nice, broad question to maximize the chances of him having something to say. If as you say my question is too broad to be chosen, I'm equally and perfectly happy asking a smaller one that covers less subject area, such as any combination of the following:
1) Mr. Adams,
2) What / Who
3) (is / was) / (are / were)
4) your
5) favorite / most influential
**** By now, you've probably got the idea - feel **** free to skip down. I'll indent the bit to **** skip, to make it easy for you to see where **** it ends.
6) author(s) / artist(s) / scriptwriter(s) / director(s) / actor(s) / celebrit(y/ies) / musician(s) / composer(s) / (insert your type of creator(s) of media) / novel(s) / book(s) / motion picture(s) / work(s) of fine art / piece(s) of music / television program(s) / radio program(s) / web page(s) / computer game(s) / magazine(s) / (insert your type of creation of media here)
8) (optional) , and why
9) ?
10) (also optional) Feel free to elaborate.
ex: "Mr. Adams, what are your favorite books, and why?"
discard questions containing incorrect pronouns, such as: "Mr. Adams, who was your favorite magazine? Feel free to elaborate." or: "Mr. Adams, what are your favorite authors?"
**** If you decided to skip down, this is where **** you should start reading again.
I adamantly hope the party responsible for deciding which questions end up in front of Mr. Adams consider using something somewhat similar one such permutation or a combination of two or more, if that party shares your position that my original question is too broad.
WARNING! MOST OF THIS POST IS A RANT! SKIP TO THE GOOD BIT!
I've noticed that a lot of the previously posted questions are questions of fact, albeit open-ended ones, like "why 42" and "what happened to Zaphod." We don't have to ask most of these of Mr. Adams - each, in a manner quite the opposite of improbably, already fall into one of the following categories: Has already been answered; Can be answered by someone other than Adams; Is discernable without being answered; Shouldn't be answered (literary ambiguity and all that, you know?) In any case, Mr. Adams is a busy man, so if you have a question about plot or publication or whatnot, get it answered by other SlashDot users, on IRC, in usenet, or elsewhere. We can be reliably certain that he's sick of being asked those questions. What follows is an example of a question of opinion, rather than fact, that he is also probably sick of hearing, but is at least worth asking, since nobody else can answer. It also doubles as a serious question I'd like to submit in just the way the article asks, in hopes that Douglas Adams really does answer it.
HERE ENDS THE RANT. YOU MAY NOW BEGIN READING.
Dear Mr. Adams:
A very large number of people on this earth consider at least one of your works to be a personal favorite - and that's not just because there are so many people on earth - an impressive percentage of them do as well. This serves as flattery and a weak method of introduction for a vaguely related question. Parentheses are used in a grammatically incorrect but mathematically intuitive fashion to help clarify an obfuscated and poorly constructed sentence.
Which (books, movies, pieces of music, works of art, television/radio programs, or generally any items of media or entertainment), and which (authors, directors, producers, actors, composers, rock stars, artists, scriptwriters, or generally any creators of media or entertainment,) do you consider your favorites? Which were most influential for you? Why? Please feel free - or, if that isn't enough, imposed upon - to elaborate and explain in detailing your choices and opinions, and to mention anything that strikes you as relevant. Be as long-winded as you want. We love to read anything you write.
Obliged and enthralled, A guy sometimes referred to as UberQwerty
the vogons did indeed transfer into the big corporation idea. They bought the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy buisiness under the name Infinidim Enterprises and had themselves made a new, omnipotent guid that had the power to go back in time and muddle with things until exactly what it wanted to happen happened. They used the bird to finally destroy and put an end to earth on all points in the WSOGMM (whole sort of general mish-mash) It'd be nice if the questions people ask here are not ALREADY ANSWERED in the fourth and fifth books, which people don't seem to know about
Zarniwoop, Zaphod, and a couple other fellows we meet during Zaphod's misadventures, originally conspired together to meet the ruler of the universe. They had figured out where he was - on an utterly hidden, unknown planet protected by an unprobability field, making it infinitely improbable for anyone to happen upon it by accident. When the Infinite Impribability drive was created, they figured it'd be able to get them to the planet in question, but only the President of the Galaxy would be in a position to steal the Hart of Gold, which had the drive. So they lasered out parts of Zaphod's brain to make him the egomaniacal crazy guy he is in the books and to make him forget the bits about meeting the ruler of the universe. This way he passed the brain scans to become president, and made a good president. (since the actualy ruler of the universe was hidden on some planet somewhere, the president is only a figurehead designed to draw attention away from the real power, and they made Zaphod really good at that - he spent a good percentage of his term in jail for fraud.) So Zaphod, manipulated by messages sent to him from his brain from his older, unlasered self, steals the heart of gold and makes his way to the Ruler of the Universe, who is a big disappointment for Zarniwoop and in whom the new, lasered Zaphod, has no interest, being very hungry at the time.
...and the poeple at whom it's aimed will never read it, is it still a flame? That one's up to you, moderators.
I fucking hate metallica. As soon as I read this story, I went to delete all my metallica mp3s in zealot fury. Then I realized that a) this is what they want b) metallica music sucks, so I didn't have any of their mp3s to begin with
Instead, through sheer desperation, I went and downloaded a lot of metallica mp3s and tried listening to them
Yup, they still suck. Sadly, metallica isn't losing any money on me having their mp3s since I'd never buy any of their albums anyway. I think I'll go delete the mp3s now.
Clever-sounding slogans aren't usually very clever, so I don't have one.
Neither of you know the facts; you're just talking about whose dick is bigger This is excatly the kind of thing that gets in the way of objective science.
relying on the bible for facts, while very convincing to religious people, doesn't do jack when you're talking to atheists like me. Keep your theology to yourself, unless you can back it up. Even religious people admit the bible has plenty fo bullshit in it.
The Ad Hominum fallacy of formal logic is as follows: to attack another person's credibility instead of their arguments. An argument's truthfullness is not affected by who puts forth said argument. This previous post includes no new facts for the argument - it is a stream of insults; irrelevent. The only fact he uses is a restatement of his original argument; "The sun is a fusion reactor," which has already been addressed by his adversary.
You are one or more of the following: Overly cynical; saving face; not as smart as you think. But you are definately wrong.
However, these allegations are all ad hominum, so have a look at the extrapersonal facts: 1. The title of the story ("Web-Censors Prompt College To Consider Name Change") did not mention the name of the college, only the information relevent to a story about censorship in general. It's the title that does the eye-catching, not the synopsis underneath. If you were surfing for stories about sex, you wouldn't have read this one. 2. No other slashdot article on the main page, or even under "older stuff," has anything to do with sex, or anything else along those lines, suggesting the conclusion that slashdot isn't interested in selling out as the Jerry Springer show has. Only one article thus listed under "older stuff" isn't really news for nerds; the review of "Scream 3." Remember, though, that this is the work of Jon Katz, who thinks only somewhat clearly, and not at all completely, about what he writes. 3. Slashdot has such a huge amount of readership that a _slang term_ ("slashdot effect") has developed to describe the overloading flow of slashdot readership to _other_ websites. With this many hits, slashdot could easily double your salary with just 1 more banner ad. There is still only one banner ad to justify slashdot's existance.
Just because the Jerry Springer show exists doesn't mean everything else in all forms of media is equally corrupt, and nobody is a "starry-eyed youngster" for thinking so. I hope you'll think about who you flame in the future - the number one thing Jerry's show gets bashed for is its lack of respect for anything.
How about justa "fundamentalist" tag to put on posts that use theistic arguments? Then they could be scaled up or down based on the level of relative dumbassary and trolling involved
Have you ever heard of "seperation of church and state?" If not, you're not alone. I support *Not Bush* in part because his dumb ass supportes prayer in school. Fundamentalism has no place in society. How will you explain this kind of theological argument to an atheist like me? And no, you can't convince an atheist that there is a God. Too many philosophers smarter than you have tried and failed.
Could I have a flame tag, please? It occurs to me that I might not have expressed my hatred for fundamentalism offensively enough.
You know, if the two sides were Pro-Death and Pro-Opression instead of Pro-Choice and Pro-Life, that wouldn't work either. I am wondering how long the word "censorship" will take to accumulate enough flak to have negative connotations in the ears of the general public. It certainly makes me shudder.
Normally I'd have an entertaining Doublas Adams quote here, but I misplaced my copy of the Ultimate Guide....sorry
Slashdot Mirror
Before you start typing, you may want to read this May 2000 interview with Ben
That's what you should have done. It says in there:
At the beginning, I thought it would be good to have a kind of a CGI (computer-generated imagery) pair of eyes that more perfectly matched what was going on in the comic book design, the cartoon design. But first of all, the cost of that, for a series, you know maybe for a feature it would be fine, but for a series, is prohibitive.
This may have lead you to believe that they wouldn't have done computer-generated antennae. However, if that doesn't convince you...
We had to body cast Patrick Warburton, and build a giant rubber suit, and remote control antennae...
"Sorry, but (IMHO) better teachers teach for the love of teaching, or perhaps for the enjoyment of being in control of what gets put in kids minds today.
Poor teachers teach for the money. "
Two things:
Yes, teachers teach for the love of teaching, ideally. However, ideology is boolean, not scalar. It's not like there are people who live for an idea and people who don't. And nobody lives their life entirely on ideology.
In order for a person to decide to spend their life in a field (teaching), there must also be comfort and respect involved. Currently, teaching anywhere outside a privite college lacks both, so the only people who teach outside private colleges are the educated people who are either very ideological and selfless (good for them, but there aren't many of 'em), those who have somehow managed to be affluent and/or respected through other means, and those who had to turn to teaching because they were unable to achieve a more affluent and respectable job. That third kind is the vast majority. Some of them just got screwed by the system, but waaaaaay more than any of us want to see are the kind who just aren't smart enough, or who are closed-minded.
And all of this can be fixed by paying teachers more. If teachers are respected and well-paid, it'll be mroe competitive, and better teachers will get hired. Perhaps it'll happen slowly, But it'll happen. Money will make teachers affluent, and in the United States of America, there is little that's more respected than riches. Yeah, yeah, I think respecting money is bullshit, too, but that's the way this country works.
Also, once we've got retards out of the school system, it's a fair expectation that the intelligent, professional teachers we end up with will be decent enough to get rid of the chaff you mentioned, without being forced to do so when their funding is cut off. Maybe we can even hire teachers who are smart enough to decide what the students learn, without relying on elected school boards consisting of people who don't know jack about how the human mind learns.
My sincerest apologies to you people who aren't in the United States and think I'm insulting you by talking about the US without mentioning your country. The United States, oddly enough, is more important to me than any other country, because I'm stuck here.
Errr - it feels like I ranted a little, too - sorry.
Cheers
Those sound really cool. Where can I get one?
:) Gotta mention that .01%
But as long as we're talking theory, heads up: if a substance were truly unalterable, there would be no way to encode information on it in the first place. Maybe those thingies are really hard to alter, and maybe they're 99.99% safe, but hey, I'm anal retentive
There's no way to store data with a gaurantee that it won't be corrupted. Unless you somehow manage to encode it in a black hole (we think), but then you wouldn't be able to get it back out. Even before this fungus, CDs could be broken, and were easier to break than the stone tablets you mentioned. But information in general can't be accessed unless it's represented in a pattern on physical objects (I use the term physical to mean all physics - electromagnetics too), and if you can rearrange the physics to include encoded information, then something or someone else can rearrange them to be garbage. Gauranteed. So don't worry about safe. Worry about relatively safe. CDs are still the way to go. But we're getting better! Lots of new ideas are in the works. Don't you read slashdot?
Check out the realms update at http://www.battle.net/forums/diablo2-realmstatus/p osts/ac/52.shtml
it says:
During the past week, some players have experienced character
losses. Instances have ranged from hardcore characters dying, to
the loss of items, skill points and experience in normal
characters.
As of this morning, we can confirm that the problem causing these
losses has been fixed.
-- end quote --
They don't say how they fixed it, or what was causing the problem. They are going to revive all hardcore characters that died after a certain day (dec 19 or something like that), and will reset any of your characters to the states they were in then (if you ask).
You used to release a new album every few years, but Factory Showroom was a good four years ago. I want more! How long do I havev to wait?
"As more and more people spoke it, they each brutalized the language a little differently -- a little colloquism here and there, different stresses on syllables etc...
It grew to the point where Latin wasn't really latin anymore. Out of this grew the romance languages. From one root, came French, Italian, Spanish etc... "
Latin, the language of Rome, was being brutalized to the point of being many different languages by people who were still in Europe. All across the United States, people can understand each other's English, and this extends to England (duh), most of Canada and others, and to a point even to most non-English speaking countries whose cultures strongly encourge teaching English. Why the larger sphere of influence? More advanced communications technologies. People won't brutalize their dialects of English to the point of not being able to understand folks they hear from (on the news etc) daily, let alone people they talk with all the time (over the phone, over the internet etc...) I doubt the splintering of English, even if it has begun in Malasia as you say, will result in the same death as Latin. Maybe English in 100 years will be different, maybe even not understandable to an English-speaker today, but it will still be one language.
Unless it's supplanted by some other language (probably mandarin imo ? but I don't know too much about that), but the argument stays the same. No splintering. I sure would like if the whole world spoke one language. "Culture" (which should be able to survive without native language anyway) is a pretty poor excuse for the whole world wasting so much time learning each other's languages and for the misunderstandings that occur from doing it badly.
If a player isn't good enough at a game to win within the rules, he or she is faced with three choices: a) stop playing the game. You don't see these people playing games anyway, so forget about them for the moment... b) try to get better. Huzzah for those of you who pick this. I applaud you. c) cheat. This is the same mentality as used to join gangs and such. People sacrifice being liked by others in favor of being respected. Strong hatred for someone at least indicates that you acknowledge that they have some power. If you didn't respect them, you'd just ignore them, which is what you should try to do anyway. So basically what I'm saying is that bitching about cheating is just about the worst thing you can possibly do. Other than actually cheating.
"One of the reasons Napster was so successful was that there was a large user base, hence a larger selection of files. "
True, more alternatives means each is less likely to have the music you're looking for. However, it also means a longer, harder battle for those politicians of the idiot variety who think it'll do to shut down each napster alternative individually. As napster clone after napster clone pops up, such politicians will eventually either drop the issue or learn to deal with the theory behind it rather than symptoms of it. This can only (I hope - maybe I'm not cynical enough) result in at least somewhat less retarded horse shit from politicians.
Anyway, if you want a song badly enough, you can always check the other napster clones for it.
Sadly, yes, I've only seen dubbed anime. I don't speak Japanese :/
Anime always seems to have very interesting or at least neat-o plots and characters, at least to geeks and guys in general (possibly because of the much larger men/women ratio in japan), but why does _every_ _single_ anime cartoon, be it a series, a movie, or anything else, have to have such god-awful voice acting? _I_ could do better voice acting than I've seen in any anime, and I know a lot of people who could do better than me. How expensive can it be?
On Hotblack Desiato's black, frictionless, and doomed stunt ship, Marvin said he could see the question imprinted in Arthur's brianwaves, but didn't say what it was. While Arthur and Ford were on ancient earth with the Golgafrians (Sp?), Arthur used his a scrabble board to get his subconsciousness to tell him that the question is "What do you get if you multiply 6 by 9?" This does not yield the correct answer, but he and Ford recognized that what Arthur's subconsciousness said might be off by a bit, since he was descended from the Golgawhatevers instead of real earth cavemen. This implies that the Ultimate Question is "What do you get if you multiply 6 by 7?"
Adams hints at this on Margaretha, when the mice are guessing at the question. They touch on 6 times seven but discard it in favor of something more pleasing. He can't let both the answer and the question both be known to his characters, because he tells us through Prak that if both were known in the same universe they'd cancel each other out and take the whole universe with them. It is possible that this is the real reason somebody was trying so hard to get rid of the earth - to keep the question from being discovered and the universe form ending.
In my opinion, the point is either that even if there is a simple answer and a simple question, we really don't know exactly what it is we really want to know, so if someone told us we wouldn't understand. Either that or the point is that the ultimate questions and answers are not at all what we expect or want them to be.
geekoid writes:
,nearly, everything in on question. However, you follow it up with 2 more questions.oops. oh well better luck next time! "
:) Here it is: "Which are your favorite and/or most influential media creators and creations, and why?"
"Only one question per post.
I applaud the sneaky way in which you asked him about
First: hey, all relevant apologies, geekoid! No sneaky-ness intended. In my defense but not, I think and hope, in direct contradiction to what you said, I think the non-rant bit of my post can still simplify down to just one question. By one question I mean just one sentence, for all those rules lawyers
I know that's a really huge question if not several, but it sticks pretty much to the same general subject. I was a bit long-winded about it because I wanted to try to make it clearer for everyone.
Also, it's really open-ended on purpose, because Adams doesn't have to answer anything he doesn't want to. I decided to give him a nice, broad question to maximize the chances of him having something to say. If as you say my question is too broad to be chosen, I'm equally and perfectly happy asking a smaller one that covers less subject area, such as any combination of the following:
1) Mr. Adams,
2) What / Who
3) (is / was) / (are / were)
4) your
5) favorite / most influential
**** By now, you've probably got the idea - feel
**** free to skip down. I'll indent the bit to
**** skip, to make it easy for you to see where
**** it ends.
6) author(s) / artist(s) / scriptwriter(s) /
director(s) / actor(s) / celebrit(y/ies) /
musician(s) / composer(s) / (insert your
type of creator(s) of media) / novel(s) /
book(s) / motion picture(s) / work(s) of
fine art / piece(s) of music / television
program(s) / radio program(s) / web page(s)
/ computer game(s) / magazine(s) /
(insert your type of creation of media
here)
8) (optional) , and why
9) ?
10) (also optional) Feel free to elaborate.
ex:
"Mr. Adams, what are your favorite books,
and why?"
discard questions containing incorrect
pronouns, such as:
"Mr. Adams, who was your favorite magazine?
Feel free to elaborate."
or:
"Mr. Adams, what are your favorite authors?"
**** If you decided to skip down, this is where
**** you should start reading again.
I adamantly hope the party responsible for deciding which questions end up in front of Mr. Adams consider using something somewhat similar one such permutation or a combination of two or more, if that party shares your position that my original question is too broad.
Hoping for the best,
UberQwerty
WARNING! MOST OF THIS POST IS A RANT! SKIP TO THE GOOD BIT!
I've noticed that a lot of the previously posted questions are questions of fact, albeit open-ended ones, like "why 42" and "what happened to Zaphod." We don't have to ask most of these of Mr. Adams - each, in a manner quite the opposite of improbably, already fall into one of the following categories: Has already been answered; Can be answered by someone other than Adams; Is discernable without being answered; Shouldn't be answered (literary ambiguity and all that, you know?) In any case, Mr. Adams is a busy man, so if you have a question about plot or publication or whatnot, get it answered by other SlashDot users, on IRC, in usenet, or elsewhere. We can be reliably certain that he's sick of being asked those questions. What follows is an example of a question of opinion, rather than fact, that he is also probably sick of hearing, but is at least worth asking, since nobody else can answer. It also doubles as a serious question I'd like to submit in just the way the article asks, in hopes that Douglas Adams really does answer it.
HERE ENDS THE RANT. YOU MAY NOW BEGIN READING.
Dear Mr. Adams:
A very large number of people on this earth consider at least one of your works to be a personal favorite - and that's not just because there are so many people on earth - an impressive percentage of them do as well. This serves as flattery and a weak method of introduction for a vaguely related question. Parentheses are used in a grammatically incorrect but mathematically intuitive fashion to help clarify an obfuscated and poorly constructed sentence.
Which (books, movies, pieces of music, works of art, television/radio programs, or generally any items of media or entertainment), and which (authors, directors, producers, actors, composers, rock stars, artists, scriptwriters, or generally any creators of media or entertainment,) do you consider your favorites? Which were most influential for you? Why? Please feel free - or, if that isn't enough, imposed upon - to elaborate and explain in detailing your choices and opinions, and to mention anything that strikes you as relevant. Be as long-winded as you want. We love to read anything you write.
Obliged and enthralled,
A guy sometimes referred to as UberQwerty
the vogons did indeed transfer into the big corporation idea. They bought the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy buisiness under the name Infinidim Enterprises and had themselves made a new, omnipotent guid that had the power to go back in time and muddle with things until exactly what it wanted to happen happened. They used the bird to finally destroy and put an end to earth on all points in the WSOGMM (whole sort of general mish-mash)
It'd be nice if the questions people ask here are not ALREADY ANSWERED in the fourth and fifth books, which people don't seem to know about
Zarniwoop, Zaphod, and a couple other fellows we meet during Zaphod's misadventures, originally conspired together to meet the ruler of the universe. They had figured out where he was - on an utterly hidden, unknown planet protected by an unprobability field, making it infinitely improbable for anyone to happen upon it by accident. When the Infinite Impribability drive was created, they figured it'd be able to get them to the planet in question, but only the President of the Galaxy would be in a position to steal the Hart of Gold, which had the drive.
So they lasered out parts of Zaphod's brain to make him the egomaniacal crazy guy he is in the books and to make him forget the bits about meeting the ruler of the universe. This way he passed the brain scans to become president, and made a good president. (since the actualy ruler of the universe was hidden on some planet somewhere, the president is only a figurehead designed to draw attention away from the real power, and they made Zaphod really good at that - he spent a good percentage of his term in jail for fraud.)
So Zaphod, manipulated by messages sent to him from his brain from his older, unlasered self, steals the heart of gold and makes his way to the Ruler of the Universe, who is a big disappointment for Zarniwoop and in whom the new, lasered Zaphod, has no interest, being very hungry at the time.
...and the poeple at whom it's aimed will never read it, is it still a flame? That one's up to you, moderators.
I fucking hate metallica. As soon as I read this story, I went to delete all my metallica mp3s in zealot fury. Then I realized that
a) this is what they want
b) metallica music sucks, so I didn't have
any of their mp3s to begin with
Instead, through sheer desperation, I went and downloaded a lot of metallica mp3s and tried listening to them
Yup, they still suck.
Sadly, metallica isn't losing any money on me having their mp3s since I'd never buy any of their albums anyway. I think I'll go delete the mp3s now.
Clever-sounding slogans aren't usually very clever, so I don't have one.
Neither of you know the facts; you're just talking about whose dick is bigger This is excatly the kind of thing that gets in the way of objective science.
relying on the bible for facts, while very convincing to religious people, doesn't do jack when you're talking to atheists like me. Keep your theology to yourself, unless you can back it up. Even religious people admit the bible has plenty fo bullshit in it.
The Ad Hominum fallacy of formal logic is as follows: to attack another person's credibility instead of their arguments. An argument's truthfullness is not affected by who puts forth said argument. This previous post includes no new facts for the argument - it is a stream of insults; irrelevent. The only fact he uses is a restatement of his original argument; "The sun is a fusion reactor," which has already been addressed by his adversary.
You are one or more of the following: Overly cynical; saving face; not as smart as you think. But you are definately wrong.
However, these allegations are all ad hominum, so have a look at the extrapersonal facts:
1. The title of the story ("Web-Censors Prompt College To Consider Name Change") did not mention the name of the college, only the information relevent to a story about censorship in general. It's the title that does the eye-catching, not the synopsis underneath. If you were surfing for stories about sex, you wouldn't have read this one.
2. No other slashdot article on the main page, or even under "older stuff," has anything to do with sex, or anything else along those lines, suggesting the conclusion that slashdot isn't interested in selling out as the Jerry Springer show has. Only one article thus listed under "older stuff" isn't really news for nerds; the review of "Scream 3." Remember, though, that this is the work of Jon Katz, who thinks only somewhat clearly, and not at all completely, about what he writes.
3. Slashdot has such a huge amount of readership that a _slang term_ ("slashdot effect") has developed to describe the overloading flow of slashdot readership to _other_ websites. With this many hits, slashdot could easily double your salary with just 1 more banner ad. There is still only one banner ad to justify slashdot's existance.
Just because the Jerry Springer show exists doesn't mean everything else in all forms of media is equally corrupt, and nobody is a "starry-eyed youngster" for thinking so. I hope you'll think about who you flame in the future - the number one thing Jerry's show gets bashed for is its lack of respect for anything.
How about justa "fundamentalist" tag to put on posts that use theistic arguments? Then they could be scaled up or down based on the level of relative dumbassary and trolling involved
Have you ever heard of "seperation of church and state?" If not, you're not alone. I support *Not Bush* in part because his dumb ass supportes prayer in school. Fundamentalism has no place in society. How will you explain this kind of theological argument to an atheist like me? And no, you can't convince an atheist that there is a God. Too many philosophers smarter than you have tried and failed.
Could I have a flame tag, please? It occurs to me that I might not have expressed my hatred for fundamentalism offensively enough.
You know, if the two sides were Pro-Death and Pro-Opression instead of Pro-Choice and Pro-Life, that wouldn't work either. I am wondering how long the word "censorship" will take to accumulate enough flak to have negative connotations in the ears of the general public. It certainly makes me shudder.
...sorry
Normally I'd have an entertaining Doublas Adams quote here, but I misplaced my copy of the Ultimate Guide.
*rant* Hello? I replied to the first post with a joke based on the same play on words! I was oh-so-hoping for a "funny" tag. *rant*
Yeah, I know this is petty, and worse, ridiculous. We all know moderation is crap.