It doesn't matter how good that fiction is, to treat it like it is real is retarded. Klingon is an invented language, a clever one indeed actually designed to buck as many linguistic norms as possible, but to think that some language that was invented for a TV show is actually spoken by extraterrestrial life forms is irredeemably stupid, even as an act.
I just see this as elaborate roleplay -- just as some people are giant Star Wars nerds (/wave) and will talk about the ethical ramifications of the Force, or some Star Trek nerds might speculate on how an economy like that depicted on Star Trek might work (or might fail). They don't need to believe it is real to do this. (Granted, some crackpots might really believe it's real. Many would consider them crazy. OTOH, millions of people believe in invisible all-powerful beings that dictate how we should act.)
An opera is a story, and doesn't need to be about Real People. It could be an opera about magical hamsters, and if the plot and music were good, it could be good. (OK... magical hamsters? I admit that's pushing it.) The fact is, the (fictional) Klingon culture is one with a rich (imagined) heritage, and has stories and lore and heroes in it which could make potent entertainment.
The libretto of 'u' is based on the epos of Kahless the unforgettable. Betrayed by his brother and witness to his father's brutal slaying, Kahless is pitted against his bitter enemy the mighty tyrant Molor. To regain his honor he must travel into the underworld, create the first Bat'leth, be united with his true love the lady Lukara and fight many epic battles.
I would love to see a hero's journey played out with Klingon characters, exploring Klingon warrior culture, etc -- just as I love watching Kurosawa's films, or watching Lord of the Rings, or playing video games with plots. The libretto of this opera sounds like it could be awesome. Granted, it's quite possible this was all just someone trolling for attention, and the opera (if it exists) will suck, but the possibility of an opera about Kahless would be frickin' awesome. It would be like someone making an opera about the formation of the Rings of Power, and Sauron's rise to power.
Can you imagine a big-budget movie of such a plot? (The story of Kahless, that is.) It would have betrayal, murder, sex, love, regained honor, brutal tyrants, vengeance, and triumph. No wonder Klingons like Hamlet.
I didn't realize you could commit Treason against a country of which you are not a citizen... but the wording of that seems to imply it, since it says Person and not Citizen. I'm curious if I'm missing something important.
Asked the original source( not the leaker) for help in redacting out sensible information. Got told to fuck off. Published the information with whatever redeacting they could do themselves. Can you blame wikileaks for whatever you learn through that information, spoecially since they refused to help redacting it?
Hell yes I can blame them. They could have ensured that no names were leaked by redacting all of the names. They were negligent, and didn't do that.
JetBlue flight attendant Steven Slater, 38, of Queens, N.Y., has been charged with criminal mischief and reckless endangerment
I'm not sure I understand what the mischief and reckless endangerment is here. The plane was on the ground, so using the emergency chute isn't likely to hurt anyone, is it? I guess I am just missing the connection between "Quits Rudely" and "Potentially 7 years of prison".
I realize the doctor didn't want you to do strenuous lifting and such; have you considered swimming? It's pretty much a whole-body cardio exercise, and is low-impact too.
And yet, they could have redacted ALL of the names and geographical information, and released that. A dragnet-style "Names have been changed...." disclaimer would likely have prevented all of this crap.
I noticed that too. Watching that, I was apalled by the complete silence on the subject of how people have researched ways that primitive man may have assembled stonehenge-like structures. For example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K7q20VzwVs shows one man moving extremely large rocks. I remember reading something about how stones could have been stood up as well, but can't remember where I saw it, so I can't link it.
Sure, I'm baffled by the artistry of Machu Picchu, but the Pyramids and Stonehenge seem much more easily human.
The rate at which the TV show claimed stones would have had to have been assembled into the Great Pyramid in order for it to have been completed in twenty years sounded far outside human capability, but I don't know how they arrived at that rate. From an engineering standpoint, though, it seems plausible. Given enough slave labor, large enough ramps, and rollers, it certainly seems feasible to move large blocks around. Did Egypt had a shortage of trees or sand (or labor) at the time?
Wikipedia estimates 2.3 million blocks were used; that means that in order to finish in 20 years, builders would need to place a little more than 13 blocks per hour if they worked through the nights. (If they only worked half of a day, on average, then they'd need to place ~26 blocks per hour.) That does sound a bit fast.
So far, the half hour I've wasted reading Wikipedia's articles on the Great Pyramid's construction have been tremendously interesting.
DO NOT EVER USE AUTOPILOT TO TRAVEL BETWEEN STAR SYSTEMS as it INTENTIONALLY leaves you wide open for a large portion of the travel time.
So... how does one travel? How should you travel between systems without the autopilot? I played a demo of EVE a long time back, and never went anywhere dangerous, but it didn't really seem terribly intuitive as far as how safe travel was intended to work. The things I read online about creating in-system waypoints were so much busywork for "make me a random waypoint" that it quickly grew both frustrating and unwieldy.
EVE seems (to me) like the MMO-equivalent of "I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game": I'd love to be bad-ass at it, but every interaction I've ever had with it has conveyed a deep-seated malevolence (disdain?) that the game has for me as a player. It hates you, and so does everyone else in the game. Yikes. Kudos if you like it, but it's not for me.
I would also advocate that no one be issued a permit of any kind without first passing a weapons safety course and displaying an understanding of not only how to fire a gun but the laws regulating when you can/can not use it and the legal responsibilities involved.
I'd like to also suggest a requirement to pass a marksmanship exam. I don't really want to have people who are trained in When and How to use the weapon properly, yet when the time comes end up missing their assailant and potentially hitting others.
If I were in a position where ordering assassinations were potentially necessary (e.g., president, or head of CIA, etc -- clearly, positions which I will never hold), I believe I would need to reconcile that (a) it's horrible, (b) it's necessary, and (c) yes, I'm a bit of a monster for ordering it. Much as "The Operative" in Serenity did. Some people believe that preserving Freedom sometimes requires some people to undertake actions which could be considered monstrous. I don't think that's necessarily the same as trying to blame the target. More accurately, yes the target has blame, but I'd have to accept that I was responsible for ordering the action.
Without googling, off of the top of your head, what's the full name and correct spelling of the guy behind WikiLeaks? And what does he look like?
My initial answer was, "Julian Assange, and he looks like a grey haired hippie, but in nice clothes".
After googling him, and glacing at his Wikipedia page, anyne can see that that is not a 100% correct or flattering answer: his real name is Julian Paul Assange, and he looks a bit more respectable than many would think when they hear "grey haired hippie". However, I only meant it to mean that he has longish hair, and it's mostly grey.:) In retrospect, I should have said that he looked like a grey-haired history professor. Given that he's under 40, I assume that his hair is actually just a very light color, rather than grey. (For some reason, I always thought that he was in his late 50s. Sorry, Julian.)
I forgot that he was Australian, though if you'd asked his nationality I might have guessed right given that Wikileaks is sheltered in Australia. (For some reason, I was thinking he was Belgian. I have no idea why.)
But you understood what he was trying to say, so why does it matter?
Because it was wrong. You can make scornful jokes and XKCD references about "wrong on the internet" if you wish, but the fact remains that using the Wrong Word, or spelling something in a way that is so completely wrong as to not even be a real word, makes one look unintelligent to anyone that reads what you write. It also makes it unclear to a reader what exactly you wrote. ("Is he using the wrong word, or would this sentence make more sense if I assume he left out a word?")
I don't type "Hay yew guise" or "That guy totally khaned me" or "r u srs?" because they're not the correct way to write it. I don't write "rite"/"right" instead of "write", either, and I've seen that frequently in others' writings.
A native speaker being able to figure out what you probably mean is no excuse for using the wrong words or incorrect spellings. Not everyone is a native speaker. More importantly, using incorrect words, grammar, or spellings is not conducive to intelligent discourse. If you want people to understand you in a clear and unambiguous way (rather than forcing your reader to guess what you meant), you must write with the correct words, spelled in the correct manner, and ideally punctuated in a way which is proper.
It's possible that they don't view it as genocide, but rather as morally similar to exterminating the rats and spiders that infest the barn/field/etc that you want to build a house on.
If you want the item, the solution is to bid what you feel the item is worth, rather than to bid a number that is what you'd like to pay.
If you see something and bid $10 on it, knowing that it normally goes for $20, then if someone snipes that, you've failed at bidding. If you bid $20 on an item you feel is worth $20 (and the current bid is $10), you can still get it for cheap (if no one else wants it), but if someone tries to snipe it, they will end up paying more than you feel the item is worth.
In practice, you'd need to inflate your max bid if you/want/ this item, and are willing to outbid someone else who values the item similarly to you.
I believe a less stressful option would be to ask them, "Am I free to go?". Not "Am I under arrest", as you don't want to give them ideas, and there are times you could be Not Under Arrest yet not yet free to go.
I can understand this; humans always make more challenging opponents than AI [that don't cheat]. I enjoyed COD4 a great deal because of this. However, there's also a different niche of multiplayer that I want to play: "relaxing with friends".
My best friend lives across the nation from me. The way we keep in touch is by playing Borderlands together, and just talking while we play. It's not terribly challenging: Borderlands has no significant death penalty, and our weapons are Good Enough for whatever we're trying. We enjoy the cooperative experience. You might suggest that we could cooperate and play COD or some other team-based multiplayer game, but we can't: my best friend is not a very good FPS player. *I* am not a stellar player, and I'm noticeably better than he is. So, rather than rofling our way through hordes of AI bad guys (Oh look, more spiderants!), we'd be getting thrashed by random strangers on the internet.
I've thought about the cooperative multiplayer in Modern Warfare 2 -- it's pretty neat. But, I don't think my friend is good enough to do that, even, as the higher difficulty levels seem pretty punishing. Borderlands, on the other hand, scales well with our relative lack of skill, yet still lets us do stuff that is fun for both of us. When we played Starcraft, we played this way too -- coop versus AI. Any skilled player would have thrashed us (at once or separately), but this was still an enjoyable steam-vent for us, and a way to have fun together. I'll be surprised if we don't get Starcraft II for that reason.
I want games with great single player action (Portal, Fallout, Deus Ex). I want games with good adversarial multiplayer (COD4). I want games with good cooperative multiplayer (Starcraft, Borderlands, WoW).
Of the three types, I play the latter more, despite the intensity of enjoyment I get from the first category. If COD had a cooperative campaign mode, I'd probably rarely feel the need to do adversarial play.
The wiretapping charge is orthoganal to the safety issue. I am 100% on board with him getting punished for driving recklessly. However, the reaction to his videotape has been terrible. I fully agree with the ACLU that officers, when performing public duties on public roads, have no expectation of privacy.
I realize this is the descendent of a comedy post, but I would define "firm" as:
- about as hard as you'd grip a baseball bat to keep from dropping it (NOT in order to swing it hard). If you don't have one handy, try holding a lunchbox out at arm's length. - like holding an egg hard enough not to drop it, yet not hard enough to worry about breaking it. - not so hard as to imagine breaking things with your grip.... I'm having a hard time thinking of better examples.:)
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I just see this as elaborate roleplay -- just as some people are giant Star Wars nerds (/wave) and will talk about the ethical ramifications of the Force, or some Star Trek nerds might speculate on how an economy like that depicted on Star Trek might work (or might fail). They don't need to believe it is real to do this. (Granted, some crackpots might really believe it's real. Many would consider them crazy. OTOH, millions of people believe in invisible all-powerful beings that dictate how we should act.)
An opera is a story, and doesn't need to be about Real People. It could be an opera about magical hamsters, and if the plot and music were good, it could be good. (OK ... magical hamsters? I admit that's pushing it.) The fact is, the (fictional) Klingon culture is one with a rich (imagined) heritage, and has stories and lore and heroes in it which could make potent entertainment.
I would love to see a hero's journey played out with Klingon characters, exploring Klingon warrior culture, etc -- just as I love watching Kurosawa's films, or watching Lord of the Rings, or playing video games with plots. The libretto of this opera sounds like it could be awesome. Granted, it's quite possible this was all just someone trolling for attention, and the opera (if it exists) will suck, but the possibility of an opera about Kahless would be frickin' awesome. It would be like someone making an opera about the formation of the Rings of Power, and Sauron's rise to power.
Can you imagine a big-budget movie of such a plot? (The story of Kahless, that is.) It would have betrayal, murder, sex, love, regained honor, brutal tyrants, vengeance, and triumph. No wonder Klingons like Hamlet.
Interesting. Then either they redacted every name, and this is all made up, or they missed a few.
I didn't realize you could commit Treason against a country of which you are not a citizen... but the wording of that seems to imply it, since it says Person and not Citizen. I'm curious if I'm missing something important.
Hell yes I can blame them. They could have ensured that no names were leaked by redacting all of the names. They were negligent, and didn't do that.
I'm not sure I understand what the mischief and reckless endangerment is here. The plane was on the ground, so using the emergency chute isn't likely to hurt anyone, is it? I guess I am just missing the connection between "Quits Rudely" and "Potentially 7 years of prison".
I realize the doctor didn't want you to do strenuous lifting and such; have you considered swimming? It's pretty much a whole-body cardio exercise, and is low-impact too.
And yet, they could have redacted ALL of the names and geographical information, and released that. A dragnet-style "Names have been changed ...." disclaimer would likely have prevented all of this crap.
I noticed that too. Watching that, I was apalled by the complete silence on the subject of how people have researched ways that primitive man may have assembled stonehenge-like structures. For example, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K7q20VzwVs shows one man moving extremely large rocks. I remember reading something about how stones could have been stood up as well, but can't remember where I saw it, so I can't link it.
Sure, I'm baffled by the artistry of Machu Picchu, but the Pyramids and Stonehenge seem much more easily human.
The rate at which the TV show claimed stones would have had to have been assembled into the Great Pyramid in order for it to have been completed in twenty years sounded far outside human capability, but I don't know how they arrived at that rate. From an engineering standpoint, though, it seems plausible. Given enough slave labor, large enough ramps, and rollers, it certainly seems feasible to move large blocks around. Did Egypt had a shortage of trees or sand (or labor) at the time?
Wikipedia estimates 2.3 million blocks were used; that means that in order to finish in 20 years, builders would need to place a little more than 13 blocks per hour if they worked through the nights. (If they only worked half of a day, on average, then they'd need to place ~26 blocks per hour.) That does sound a bit fast.
So far, the half hour I've wasted reading Wikipedia's articles on the Great Pyramid's construction have been tremendously interesting.
So ... how does one travel? How should you travel between systems without the autopilot? I played a demo of EVE a long time back, and never went anywhere dangerous, but it didn't really seem terribly intuitive as far as how safe travel was intended to work. The things I read online about creating in-system waypoints were so much busywork for "make me a random waypoint" that it quickly grew both frustrating and unwieldy.
EVE seems (to me) like the MMO-equivalent of "I Wanna Be The Guy: The Movie: The Game": I'd love to be bad-ass at it, but every interaction I've ever had with it has conveyed a deep-seated malevolence (disdain?) that the game has for me as a player. It hates you, and so does everyone else in the game. Yikes. Kudos if you like it, but it's not for me.
This doesn't rule out the possibility of you being an extroverted cannibal, getting your energy from other people. :D
Comments like this make me wish I could moderate "+1 Scary".
I'd like to also suggest a requirement to pass a marksmanship exam. I don't really want to have people who are trained in When and How to use the weapon properly, yet when the time comes end up missing their assailant and potentially hitting others.
If I were in a position where ordering assassinations were potentially necessary (e.g., president, or head of CIA, etc -- clearly, positions which I will never hold), I believe I would need to reconcile that (a) it's horrible, (b) it's necessary, and (c) yes, I'm a bit of a monster for ordering it. Much as "The Operative" in Serenity did. Some people believe that preserving Freedom sometimes requires some people to undertake actions which could be considered monstrous. I don't think that's necessarily the same as trying to blame the target. More accurately, yes the target has blame, but I'd have to accept that I was responsible for ordering the action.
Thank god I'll never be in such a situation.
My initial answer was, "Julian Assange, and he looks like a grey haired hippie, but in nice clothes".
After googling him, and glacing at his Wikipedia page, anyne can see that that is not a 100% correct or flattering answer: his real name is Julian Paul Assange, and he looks a bit more respectable than many would think when they hear "grey haired hippie". However, I only meant it to mean that he has longish hair, and it's mostly grey. :) In retrospect, I should have said that he looked like a grey-haired history professor. Given that he's under 40, I assume that his hair is actually just a very light color, rather than grey. (For some reason, I always thought that he was in his late 50s. Sorry, Julian.)
I forgot that he was Australian, though if you'd asked his nationality I might have guessed right given that Wikileaks is sheltered in Australia. (For some reason, I was thinking he was Belgian. I have no idea why.)
Because it was wrong. You can make scornful jokes and XKCD references about "wrong on the internet" if you wish, but the fact remains that using the Wrong Word, or spelling something in a way that is so completely wrong as to not even be a real word, makes one look unintelligent to anyone that reads what you write. It also makes it unclear to a reader what exactly you wrote. ("Is he using the wrong word, or would this sentence make more sense if I assume he left out a word?")
I don't type "Hay yew guise" or "That guy totally khaned me" or "r u srs?" because they're not the correct way to write it. I don't write "rite"/"right" instead of "write", either, and I've seen that frequently in others' writings.
A native speaker being able to figure out what you probably mean is no excuse for using the wrong words or incorrect spellings. Not everyone is a native speaker. More importantly, using incorrect words, grammar, or spellings is not conducive to intelligent discourse. If you want people to understand you in a clear and unambiguous way (rather than forcing your reader to guess what you meant), you must write with the correct words, spelled in the correct manner, and ideally punctuated in a way which is proper.
It's possible that they don't view it as genocide, but rather as morally similar to exterminating the rats and spiders that infest the barn/field/etc that you want to build a house on.
Isn't eye strain caused by muscle fatigue? Also, I didn't realize you could have strained nerves.
If you want the item, the solution is to bid what you feel the item is worth, rather than to bid a number that is what you'd like to pay.
If you see something and bid $10 on it, knowing that it normally goes for $20, then if someone snipes that, you've failed at bidding. If you bid $20 on an item you feel is worth $20 (and the current bid is $10), you can still get it for cheap (if no one else wants it), but if someone tries to snipe it, they will end up paying more than you feel the item is worth.
In practice, you'd need to inflate your max bid if you /want/ this item, and are willing to outbid someone else who values the item similarly to you.
What about when they're brandishing a gun in your face and claiming to be police?
I believe a less stressful option would be to ask them, "Am I free to go?". Not "Am I under arrest", as you don't want to give them ideas, and there are times you could be Not Under Arrest yet not yet free to go.
No, but it makes it easier for an auditing body to do so, or for competitors to point out (and prove) that their device is safer.
I can understand this; humans always make more challenging opponents than AI [that don't cheat]. I enjoyed COD4 a great deal because of this. However, there's also a different niche of multiplayer that I want to play: "relaxing with friends".
My best friend lives across the nation from me. The way we keep in touch is by playing Borderlands together, and just talking while we play. It's not terribly challenging: Borderlands has no significant death penalty, and our weapons are Good Enough for whatever we're trying. We enjoy the cooperative experience. You might suggest that we could cooperate and play COD or some other team-based multiplayer game, but we can't: my best friend is not a very good FPS player. *I* am not a stellar player, and I'm noticeably better than he is. So, rather than rofling our way through hordes of AI bad guys (Oh look, more spiderants!), we'd be getting thrashed by random strangers on the internet.
I've thought about the cooperative multiplayer in Modern Warfare 2 -- it's pretty neat. But, I don't think my friend is good enough to do that, even, as the higher difficulty levels seem pretty punishing. Borderlands, on the other hand, scales well with our relative lack of skill, yet still lets us do stuff that is fun for both of us. When we played Starcraft, we played this way too -- coop versus AI. Any skilled player would have thrashed us (at once or separately), but this was still an enjoyable steam-vent for us, and a way to have fun together. I'll be surprised if we don't get Starcraft II for that reason.
I want games with great single player action (Portal, Fallout, Deus Ex).
I want games with good adversarial multiplayer (COD4).
I want games with good cooperative multiplayer (Starcraft, Borderlands, WoW).
Of the three types, I play the latter more, despite the intensity of enjoyment I get from the first category. If COD had a cooperative campaign mode, I'd probably rarely feel the need to do adversarial play.
The wiretapping charge is orthoganal to the safety issue. I am 100% on board with him getting punished for driving recklessly. However, the reaction to his videotape has been terrible. I fully agree with the ACLU that officers, when performing public duties on public roads, have no expectation of privacy.
You appear not to have watched the video, which was taken with a helmet-cam.
I realize this is the descendent of a comedy post, but I would define "firm" as:
- about as hard as you'd grip a baseball bat to keep from dropping it (NOT in order to swing it hard). If you don't have one handy, try holding a lunchbox out at arm's length. ... I'm having a hard time thinking of better examples. :)
- like holding an egg hard enough not to drop it, yet not hard enough to worry about breaking it.
- not so hard as to imagine breaking things with your grip.