Right, but when you say "natural breast implants" (as the original post that Hurricane78 was responding to did), "natural" refers to the implants, not the breasts.
Besides that, if you really wanted to get precise, I think most breasts are natural. It's the internals of the breasts that are artificial. The external breasts themselves are still (AFAIK) still skin tissue.
It's perfectly reasonable to call an implant "natural" if the material it's made of is natural (i.e., not man-made). In this case, they'd be compared to silicone implants, which don't fit anyone's definition of "natural".
On the other hand, this substance itself is man-made, so it can't be "natural" (but not for the reason you state). I would hazard a guess that they feel more natural than the silicone implants.
You know that an iTunes App Store application won't work on an Android phone. I know that. Do you think every single "average" user knows that?
Android has its own app store, prominently displayed on its phones. Are you seriously suggesting that someone would ignore the app store on their phones, and try to run software never intended for their phone, despite the well-publicized link between iTunes and the iPhone, and the fact that even the most cursory explanation of features (for a true newbie) from the salesperson would explain to them where to get apps from?
If people such as that exist, I highly doubt they're capable of dialing phones, let alone using smartphones.
I think there are better ways to do exposition than with a long voice-over. And I don't think the voice-over in the movie made that much of a difference, anyway. It looked like they were just trying to use it as a shortcut to setting up the story. A better idea would've been to start the story 20 minutes earlier and have dialogue that did the exposition for you.
Ironically, Frank Herbert seems to be one of the movie's biggest fans*.
You're going to need a much better citation than the one provided. The quote you provided simply says that Dune was very much in the news that year (which it was). It in no way implies any affinity for the movie by Herbert.
In the introduction to Eye, his collection of short stories, Herbert expresses regret that some scenes were left on the cutting room floor. I happen to believe he was being diplomatic, but he certainly wasn't praising the film. He could've done that more effectively by not referencing the cut scenes, had he chosen to do so.
Probably not a good idea, to remake a movie completely different from the from the popular original.
I'd have to disagree. First, the original Dune movie was not generally popular. (Maybe its reputation has increased over the years.) It was almost universally panned. Second (but related to the first), the original Dune had good visuals for the time, but the story was so badly mangled that it's best to just start over.
As someone who read the original book, and then saw the movie, I thought the movie hit the high points of the book, but there was almost none of the story that the book gave you. Any remake needs to start with the story and work outward to the visuals so that it makes sense to someone who hasn't read the book.
Honestly, I can't see a remake of Dune that would be less than 4 or 5 hours in length. You'd need that much time to build up the story. And something (better than what was done in the 1984 movie) would have to be done to better express the inner monologues of the characters.
Theres a difference between being allowed to do something and finding a way around the restrictions against doing it. You can hold up a bank at gunpoint, but that doesn't mean that the vaults are "open" in any sane sense of the word.
True, one can buy a Mac, or borrow one from a friend to try it out, but a) buying a Mac is a little extreme, just to "try it out", and b) how many people do you know who would be willing to give up their computer to a friend for a sufficient amount of time to test out software/an OS? Generally speaking, most people don't have spare computers lying around that they're not using.
Nice try. Just because someone doesn't bother to take the effort to find out for themselves, doesn't automatically make it a myth. I've never bothered to go to northern Canada and see if the Magnetic North Pole and Geographic North Pole are actually different, but that doesn't make it a myth.
Usability is a little bit different from a scientific measurement. While one can get an objective determination of where magnetic north or geographic north is, you can't get an objective assessment of which OS is more usable. The situations are entirely different.
I'm certainly not going to argue your points about Linux's usability vs. Mac OS X (except maybe to say that it's my experience that Linux has come a long way since 2005). But you should recognize where the trade-off is for that "it just works" feeling: Hardware lock-in. It's pretty easy to ensure that your OS is going to work flawlessly with the hardware attached to it if you don't allow for any hardware flexibility.
At least with Linux, you have options. Torvalds doesn't decide what software you run, unlike the iPod, iPhone, and soon the iPad. (I'm astonished that OS X is still as open as it is to outside software right now. We'll see how long that lasts. I'm sure it's a bug up Jobs' ass right now.)
Having said all that, I agree that there's too much emphasis in the Linux camp right now on duplicating what's in Windows. I think that's a result of the attempt to win converts, but the effort has gone too far in that direction. The thinking that's gone into projects like Compiz (which, IMO, looks better than anything that either Windows or Mac have been able to show so far) needs to be extended to other projects. It's fine to pare things down for recent converts, but the extended options need to be accessible for more experienced users to really change their environments.
It could be that the cost of transporting an invasion fleet great distances could be much less for a sufficiently advanced civilization.
But in that case the cost of the alternatives - building an artificial planet, terraforming an existing one or whatever - would also be lower.
My understanding is that terraforming is cheaper than interstellar travel (although, of course, neither option comes "cheap"). As I said, the odds are, even if they did have the resources to make such a trip, they could almost certainly get resources closer to home.
The only way I really see it as reasonable is if they have some kind of expansionist agenda. If that was the case, though, one would hope that we would've seen them coming before they actually contacted us.
In Drake's defense, he apparently never intended it to be taken as a mathematical formula, per se. He was using it as a tool to discuss the factors that affected whether we would ever find intelligent life outside of Earth. The relationship between the factors is probably sound, but it's folly to think the Drake Equation can ever be "solved" such that we would know what the actual probability of finding intelligent life in the galaxy actually was.
On the other hand, I would argue that the Drake Equation probably inspired a lot of actual science, because it got people thinking about the possibility of extraterrestrial life and taking it seriously as a scientific pursuit. To even know how to look, you have to get into the factors that might affect detecting extraterrestrial life.
That is one possibility the "Drake Equation" fails to account for.
There's a lot the Drake Equation fails to account for. As a mathematical estimate, it's fairly useless. Its chief contribution to science (although some might question whether this is a contribution) is that it gets people talking about extraterrestrial life.
Unless the aliens have some sort of magic infinite energy source or teleportation device, the cost of transporting an invasion fleet to another solar system would be orders of magnitude higher than the value of anything they could possibly gain from Earth.
Doesn't that assume minimal technological progress? It could be that the cost of transporting an invasion fleet great distances could be much less for a sufficiently advanced civilization. Technology has a way of becoming cheaper over time.
I kind of agree with your general conclusion, though: If we do get invaded, it will probably be for entertainment purposes. The distance between us and the prospective invaders is almost certainly sufficient that they could acquire whatever they needed from a more local planet (unless there's some unique property to human beings that they need -- but I sincerely doubt that, given the fact that the elements in our bodies seem to be readily available elsewhere in the universe).
I see EA Games maybe releasing Scrabble, but I think the big draw for the development kit will be things like notes applications, calendars, and the like. Hopefully a decent e-mail client, too (although I wonder how much they'll allow with the Internet connection, since they're currently footing the bill for Internet charges on the cell radio).
Depending on how old you are (I'm almost 40) you might remember a time when people with handicaps were given precious little slack for much of anything. I went half my live with a cognitive deficit that was undiagnosed. (I have spina bifida, and at the time, little was known about its effects on things like cognitive processing, organization, memory, etc.) Someone returning to school from years ago might not recognize the fact that there are now ways to accommodate their disabilities (assuming they've since been diagnosed, of course).
It's debatable as to whether or not someone who's achieved to that level without accommodation actually needs it, but I think there's a good argument to be made that it's worth it to unlock a person's potential.
I have no idea whether or not you'd want that person as your doctor. That would be your decision, if your doctor shared with you that he/she had a learning disability.
As for why someone like that would be allowed more time on a test: Some people with learning disabilities need more time to process written information. For someone with a demonstrated and documented disability of this type, the extra time just brings them up to par with other students. Giving a student an hour and a half, rather than an hour, doesn't magically insert information into their brains. And I dare say that there are many people with learning disabilities who nonetheless hold jobs which require high-level functioning. Certainly, a person with ADD (even being treated) isn't suitable for every job, but simply needing more time to read isn't necessarily a disqualification for every job, either.
So, the core problem is not the Kindle or eReaders themselves, but the use of proprietary DRM'd eBooks on eReaders.
Not exactly. There're lots of DRM'd Amazon e-books that have text-to-speech enabled. It's also possible to disable text-to-speech in a non-DRM'd e-book. Amazon includes a metatag in their books which tell the Kindle whether text-to-speech is allowed. Theoretically, you could have an un-DRM'd (in terms of copy-protection, anyway) Kindle book which nonetheless has text-to-speech disabled.
The publishers have disabled text-to-speech because they don't intend to license the book in that format when they just sell an e-book.
I think this is a specious argument on the part of the publishers who take this position. When they sell an e-book, they're only selling one format. They're not providing an audiobook, and they shouldn't be allowed to demand a second license for it. It's the reader that's doing all the work. The publishers have nothing to do with it. By this argument, anyone using a screen reader on their computer should have to ask for a separate license any time they read copyrighted content on their computers. That seems fairly insane to me.
The publishers don't deserve 100% of the blame either, though. The Authors' Guild is pushing for its members to demand separate audio rights contracts for their works in electronic form.
Right. I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know how successful they'd be, but it seems to me that the right object of the DOJ's wrath should be the publishers. The Kindle in the classroom would actually be great for visually handicapped students (assuming that Amazon enables text-to-speech in the menus, of course). It's the publishers that represent the greatest impediment, right now.
Actually, computer science is one of the most accessible curricula. All the student would really need would be a screen reader, and there are several readily available.
As for the ADA, Title III of the law applies to all schools, not just public ones. this explains it fairly well.
It's not necessarily because they got into legal trouble. It might be that they're trying to avoid legal trouble. Handicapped/disabled students are allowed certain accommodations, depending on their particular problem. For example, a deaf student might be entitled to a sign language interpreter, a student with a learning disability might be allowed more time on tests, a blind person might be allowed to have a companion dog in class, etc.
I would imagine that any student who would be affected by this would probably know to mention it without having to be reminded, but that might not be the case.
Actually, that's half-right. Kindle e-books can have text-to-speech capabilities, but many publishers (e.g., Random House, Penguin) disable it. What Amazon can do (and is working on) is to use text-to-speech in the Kindle's menu, so that the visually impaired (i.e., blind or legally blind) can navigate the menus to get to the e-books, which can then be read through text-to-speech (assuming it's not disabled).
As it stands right now, the Kindle doesn't have text-to-speech in the menu. Theoretically, if you can use the menu, you can use the Kindle (2 or DX, at least) to read to you using text-to-speech.
The thing is, Amazon has announced previously that they're working on enabling text-to-speech in the menu, so that particular issue will be moot (although I don't know what the timeline is).
The bigger problem is that publishers can disable the text-to-speech in their e-books on the Kindle, which would render an accessible menu fairly pointless. (The same groups mentioned in the article also have been trying to pressure those publishers who have disabled it (e.g., Random House) to re-enable text-to-speech in their Kindle e-books.)
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Right, but when you say "natural breast implants" (as the original post that Hurricane78 was responding to did), "natural" refers to the implants, not the breasts. Besides that, if you really wanted to get precise, I think most breasts are natural. It's the internals of the breasts that are artificial. The external breasts themselves are still (AFAIK) still skin tissue.
That depends on how you define "natural".
It's perfectly reasonable to call an implant "natural" if the material it's made of is natural (i.e., not man-made). In this case, they'd be compared to silicone implants, which don't fit anyone's definition of "natural".
On the other hand, this substance itself is man-made, so it can't be "natural" (but not for the reason you state). I would hazard a guess that they feel more natural than the silicone implants.
I see what you're saying. I should've been more specific.
What I meant was that the censorship (of apps in the App Store), didn't start with the best of intentions.
Android has its own app store, prominently displayed on its phones. Are you seriously suggesting that someone would ignore the app store on their phones, and try to run software never intended for their phone, despite the well-publicized link between iTunes and the iPhone, and the fact that even the most cursory explanation of features (for a true newbie) from the salesperson would explain to them where to get apps from?
If people such as that exist, I highly doubt they're capable of dialing phones, let alone using smartphones.
Except, in this case, Apple didn't even start with the best of intentions.
I'd mod you up for that post, if I hadn't already commented on the story. :)
I think there are better ways to do exposition than with a long voice-over. And I don't think the voice-over in the movie made that much of a difference, anyway. It looked like they were just trying to use it as a shortcut to setting up the story. A better idea would've been to start the story 20 minutes earlier and have dialogue that did the exposition for you.
You're going to need a much better citation than the one provided. The quote you provided simply says that Dune was very much in the news that year (which it was). It in no way implies any affinity for the movie by Herbert.
In the introduction to Eye, his collection of short stories, Herbert expresses regret that some scenes were left on the cutting room floor. I happen to believe he was being diplomatic, but he certainly wasn't praising the film. He could've done that more effectively by not referencing the cut scenes, had he chosen to do so.
What the hell are you talking about? There's no "u" in "honor"! Can't you recognize that? ;-)
I'd have to disagree. First, the original Dune movie was not generally popular. (Maybe its reputation has increased over the years.) It was almost universally panned. Second (but related to the first), the original Dune had good visuals for the time, but the story was so badly mangled that it's best to just start over.
As someone who read the original book, and then saw the movie, I thought the movie hit the high points of the book, but there was almost none of the story that the book gave you. Any remake needs to start with the story and work outward to the visuals so that it makes sense to someone who hasn't read the book.
Honestly, I can't see a remake of Dune that would be less than 4 or 5 hours in length. You'd need that much time to build up the story. And something (better than what was done in the 1984 movie) would have to be done to better express the inner monologues of the characters.
Theres a difference between being allowed to do something and finding a way around the restrictions against doing it. You can hold up a bank at gunpoint, but that doesn't mean that the vaults are "open" in any sane sense of the word.
True, one can buy a Mac, or borrow one from a friend to try it out, but a) buying a Mac is a little extreme, just to "try it out", and b) how many people do you know who would be willing to give up their computer to a friend for a sufficient amount of time to test out software/an OS? Generally speaking, most people don't have spare computers lying around that they're not using.
Usability is a little bit different from a scientific measurement. While one can get an objective determination of where magnetic north or geographic north is, you can't get an objective assessment of which OS is more usable. The situations are entirely different.
.02.
I'm certainly not going to argue your points about Linux's usability vs. Mac OS X (except maybe to say that it's my experience that Linux has come a long way since 2005). But you should recognize where the trade-off is for that "it just works" feeling: Hardware lock-in. It's pretty easy to ensure that your OS is going to work flawlessly with the hardware attached to it if you don't allow for any hardware flexibility.
At least with Linux, you have options. Torvalds doesn't decide what software you run, unlike the iPod, iPhone, and soon the iPad. (I'm astonished that OS X is still as open as it is to outside software right now. We'll see how long that lasts. I'm sure it's a bug up Jobs' ass right now.)
Having said all that, I agree that there's too much emphasis in the Linux camp right now on duplicating what's in Windows. I think that's a result of the attempt to win converts, but the effort has gone too far in that direction. The thinking that's gone into projects like Compiz (which, IMO, looks better than anything that either Windows or Mac have been able to show so far) needs to be extended to other projects. It's fine to pare things down for recent converts, but the extended options need to be accessible for more experienced users to really change their environments.
Just my
But in that case the cost of the alternatives - building an artificial planet, terraforming an existing one or whatever - would also be lower.
My understanding is that terraforming is cheaper than interstellar travel (although, of course, neither option comes "cheap"). As I said, the odds are, even if they did have the resources to make such a trip, they could almost certainly get resources closer to home.
The only way I really see it as reasonable is if they have some kind of expansionist agenda. If that was the case, though, one would hope that we would've seen them coming before they actually contacted us.
In Drake's defense, he apparently never intended it to be taken as a mathematical formula, per se. He was using it as a tool to discuss the factors that affected whether we would ever find intelligent life outside of Earth. The relationship between the factors is probably sound, but it's folly to think the Drake Equation can ever be "solved" such that we would know what the actual probability of finding intelligent life in the galaxy actually was. On the other hand, I would argue that the Drake Equation probably inspired a lot of actual science, because it got people thinking about the possibility of extraterrestrial life and taking it seriously as a scientific pursuit. To even know how to look, you have to get into the factors that might affect detecting extraterrestrial life.
There's a lot the Drake Equation fails to account for. As a mathematical estimate, it's fairly useless. Its chief contribution to science (although some might question whether this is a contribution) is that it gets people talking about extraterrestrial life.
Doesn't that assume minimal technological progress? It could be that the cost of transporting an invasion fleet great distances could be much less for a sufficiently advanced civilization. Technology has a way of becoming cheaper over time.
I kind of agree with your general conclusion, though: If we do get invaded, it will probably be for entertainment purposes. The distance between us and the prospective invaders is almost certainly sufficient that they could acquire whatever they needed from a more local planet (unless there's some unique property to human beings that they need -- but I sincerely doubt that, given the fact that the elements in our bodies seem to be readily available elsewhere in the universe).
I see EA Games maybe releasing Scrabble, but I think the big draw for the development kit will be things like notes applications, calendars, and the like. Hopefully a decent e-mail client, too (although I wonder how much they'll allow with the Internet connection, since they're currently footing the bill for Internet charges on the cell radio).
That's not necessarily the point.
Depending on how old you are (I'm almost 40) you might remember a time when people with handicaps were given precious little slack for much of anything. I went half my live with a cognitive deficit that was undiagnosed. (I have spina bifida, and at the time, little was known about its effects on things like cognitive processing, organization, memory, etc.) Someone returning to school from years ago might not recognize the fact that there are now ways to accommodate their disabilities (assuming they've since been diagnosed, of course). It's debatable as to whether or not someone who's achieved to that level without accommodation actually needs it, but I think there's a good argument to be made that it's worth it to unlock a person's potential.
I have no idea whether or not you'd want that person as your doctor. That would be your decision, if your doctor shared with you that he/she had a learning disability. As for why someone like that would be allowed more time on a test: Some people with learning disabilities need more time to process written information. For someone with a demonstrated and documented disability of this type, the extra time just brings them up to par with other students. Giving a student an hour and a half, rather than an hour, doesn't magically insert information into their brains. And I dare say that there are many people with learning disabilities who nonetheless hold jobs which require high-level functioning. Certainly, a person with ADD (even being treated) isn't suitable for every job, but simply needing more time to read isn't necessarily a disqualification for every job, either.
Not exactly. There're lots of DRM'd Amazon e-books that have text-to-speech enabled. It's also possible to disable text-to-speech in a non-DRM'd e-book. Amazon includes a metatag in their books which tell the Kindle whether text-to-speech is allowed. Theoretically, you could have an un-DRM'd (in terms of copy-protection, anyway) Kindle book which nonetheless has text-to-speech disabled.
I think this is a specious argument on the part of the publishers who take this position. When they sell an e-book, they're only selling one format. They're not providing an audiobook, and they shouldn't be allowed to demand a second license for it. It's the reader that's doing all the work. The publishers have nothing to do with it. By this argument, anyone using a screen reader on their computer should have to ask for a separate license any time they read copyrighted content on their computers. That seems fairly insane to me.
The publishers don't deserve 100% of the blame either, though. The Authors' Guild is pushing for its members to demand separate audio rights contracts for their works in electronic form.
Right. I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know how successful they'd be, but it seems to me that the right object of the DOJ's wrath should be the publishers. The Kindle in the classroom would actually be great for visually handicapped students (assuming that Amazon enables text-to-speech in the menus, of course). It's the publishers that represent the greatest impediment, right now.
Actually, computer science is one of the most accessible curricula. All the student would really need would be a screen reader, and there are several readily available.
As for the ADA, Title III of the law applies to all schools, not just public ones. this explains it fairly well.
It's not necessarily because they got into legal trouble. It might be that they're trying to avoid legal trouble. Handicapped/disabled students are allowed certain accommodations, depending on their particular problem. For example, a deaf student might be entitled to a sign language interpreter, a student with a learning disability might be allowed more time on tests, a blind person might be allowed to have a companion dog in class, etc. I would imagine that any student who would be affected by this would probably know to mention it without having to be reminded, but that might not be the case.
Actually, that's half-right. Kindle e-books can have text-to-speech capabilities, but many publishers (e.g., Random House, Penguin) disable it. What Amazon can do (and is working on) is to use text-to-speech in the Kindle's menu, so that the visually impaired (i.e., blind or legally blind) can navigate the menus to get to the e-books, which can then be read through text-to-speech (assuming it's not disabled).
As it stands right now, the Kindle doesn't have text-to-speech in the menu. Theoretically, if you can use the menu, you can use the Kindle (2 or DX, at least) to read to you using text-to-speech.
The thing is, Amazon has announced previously that they're working on enabling text-to-speech in the menu, so that particular issue will be moot (although I don't know what the timeline is). The bigger problem is that publishers can disable the text-to-speech in their e-books on the Kindle, which would render an accessible menu fairly pointless. (The same groups mentioned in the article also have been trying to pressure those publishers who have disabled it (e.g., Random House) to re-enable text-to-speech in their Kindle e-books.)