I use my DSLite to play Final Fantasy 2 pretty much as the sole app, right now. FF2 is part of the FF:Dawn of Souls re-re(-re?)-release, which is a GBA game. Being able to have that on a flash thing like the R4 would be pretty sweet. Interestingly, the DSi no longer has a GBA slot. If my DS breaks, I'll feel quite sad not being able to play my primary game, so I would likely resort to playing a ripped version of the same cart on the DSi.
I realize that this might qualify for a "-1, Hypocritical" rating, but I think it's consistent. My goal is not to pirate games on the system, but if that's how to play the games I own, I'll consider it.
It would be interesting to know the correlation between South Park/shock jock/reality show fandom and the condoning of torture among the American public.
I think that if they had a prime-time (?) reality TV series which televised executions, complete with an hour's worth of footage of the person beforehand, and interviews with people there, that many in the US would find it more distasteful, perhaps enough to campaign either against the death penalty or for more humane methods (e.g., nitrogen as mentioned in a parent post).... that's probably why we'd never see it.
There are a number of DS homebrew games I'd love to use, if I ever have the disposable income to spare on the adapters and cards. There's a painting app ( http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/about.php ) which looks neat, especially if you are traveling and want to sketch something, or just like to doodle. There are also some PDA-like programs which might be handy, though I don't know how I'd find them useful.
ScummVM ( http://scummvm.drunkencoders.com/ ) is a homebrew app to let you play old LucasArts games, as well as newer (free) games made for the Scumm interpreter. (Yes, one could pirate the old LucasArts games. The morality of playing a no longer published game on a newer platform is not something I wish to discuss. I don't plan to pirate it, if that's any consolation to you.) There are some free games, such as several from Revolution Software, that have been re-released from Amiga to Nintendo DS.
There are even e-book and comic reader homebrew apps for the DS... though I've not used them. (I prefer paper books.)
I'd get a lot more geek cred if I were part of the nintendo DS demo scene, but I'm not. (: However, I hope I have adequately debunked your claim that all we'd want to do is use it to run pirated games.
Honestly, I would like to play a game that tried to portray their experience. If the soldiers have a story to tell (and every one does), I want to see it.
I've always enjoyed FPS games, but what I've found is that playing the more modern ones (Rainbow Six, and the Call of Duty series) has made me appreciate how fragile my life is. Playing these games has made me even MORE adamant that I never want to be in a situation where someone is pointing a weapon even remotely in my direction.
The "realism" of uniforms is even more scary: how can you tell friend from foe!? I remember playing America's Army, and past a certain distance I couldn't even tell who was the enemy: I could guess, based on the fact that they were firing at me, but TKs were common. Worse, if I played more cautiously, I would get shot by the enemy while I was trying to determine their friend/foe status. I wouldn't call that glorifying war, as it depicts some of the ways that it's absolutely Bad Stuff. Similarly, in games like CoD, your squadmates (and you) die extremely easily -- and it even cheats in your favor! The urban combat levels of that game were terribly chaotic, and I cannot imagine how anyone would voluntarily subject themself to such horrors. I wouldn't. I wouldn't want my kid there, or my neighbor's kids there.
The multiplayer portion of COD4 is pretty much glorified paintball. It's only mildly stressful. Playing through the single player mode, though, especially on a harder difficulty, makes it very clear to me just how much of a fiction it is to expect to survive armed conflict. If this game is based on real memoirs, it'll be interesting to see just how fortunate those survivors were.
If the US were invaded, I would consider attacking the invaders. However, I would then no longer be a civilian, but a resistance fighter. If I fire on that column of tanks, or snipe their officers, I can't really complain when they shoot back at me. That'd be a risk I would have to accept. If I attacked them and then expected to be considered an "innocent civilian", I'd be a fool.
I can understand your distaste for "mercenaries"; I personally am not a member of the US armed forces, nor am I likely to be. (I'm fairly risk-averse.) However, I think you are too harsh on the poster you initially laid into.
No one joined up to go to Iraq. They joined to serve, to fund their college educations, or learn skills they can use in future careers. By all means, blame the president, and blame our congress of sending our troops over there... but please don't blame the soldiers. It's their job. Once they've signed up, they can't decide not to go, or they go to prison for a Long Time. A mercenary, on the other hand, can (I believe) decide to terminate his employment. Yes, being in the military is a career... but you have fewer freedoms than a true mercenary would.
From what another poster said (a few posts above yours), they appear to have worked hard to ensure that civilians had ample warning to leave. If the military wanted a massacre of civilians, they could have firebombed the city, shelled it indiscriminantly, or just rolled in shooting. They didn't. They told the city residents, "We're going to invade, as your town is full of insurgents... you should leave now." Frankly, if an invading military told me that my city (let's say Los Angeles) were full of insurgents, and that the city would be invaded shortly, I'd be getting the hell out of there as soon as humanly possible. Wouldn't you? I'm not saying this absolves them of civilian deaths, but they sure sound like they made significant effort to ensure that civilians were not harmed.
In ages past, when cities were considered to contain enemies, they were destroyed. Whether physically razed, or shelled from afar, or ravaged by disease during a siege, the population was considered to be an expendable statistic. In World War II, we (and others) carpet bombed for months; Tokyo was torched, and I'm sure we can remember the other horriffic things that were done to civilian populations.
In contrast, Falluja had extended efforts to get the civilians OUT. Given that the military forces were ordered to remove the insurgents, how would you prefer it were done? - "No.": Commander is slapped in irons, and replaced with someone who WILL follow orders. The orders will be followed, by someone, so this isn't a valid answer. (It is on an individual level, but it won't affect whether or not the city gets invaded or destroyed.) - Warn the people ahead of time, give civilians time to leave. When you do invade, the people remaining know you consider them enemies. - Don't warn the people, and invade. We lose more people, and even more civilians die. - Don't warn the populace. Level the city with aerial bombardment.
Considering which of these we did NOT choose to do, I think our soldiers went about it the right way. I understand you don't like the idea of an invading force at all, but when one IS an invading force, please at least acknowledge that they're not trying to massacre civilians. It's possible to condemn the strategic decisions (invade Iraq) while still respecting the soldiers responsible for carrying out the tactical decisions.
But, the other side needs to be able to measure the change in order for it to be useful. Doesn't the act of measuring change its' state, also? I must be missing something, as I'm by no means an expert.
See, what people fail to see is this requires not only Strong AI but also a programmed Malicious intent.
I disagree. For an AI to determine that we are suboptimal, and replace/eradicate us, it doesn't need malicious intent, merely a calculation that things would be Better (by whatever metric) without us, and a lack of adequately expressed "don't kill the humans" controls.
Maliciousness implies wanting to see someone else be harmed. There's a difference between WANTING to harm us and "merely" recognizing that we are inferior, poorly suited for space expansion, and will eventually starve ourselves out of existence on this planet. A poorly constructed AI (or perhaps a very savvy one?;)) might decide that the way to spare the human race (at a much larger population density) the suffering of starvation is just to kill us all now. That's not malice, though you might be able to consider it a bit Machiavellian.
As I don't have mod points, I'd like to thank you for linking that. It was a very interesting read -- I may even try talking to my wife about some of it.
You've been marked Funny, but that might not be a bad idea. It'd be interesting to see a concrete example: Known movie, leaked, and measurable box office success. Then again, movie beancounters would likely claim that it could have been more...
I find it interesting that there appear to be no download locations listed on the forums (though there are md5 hashes). I presume they expect you to find it via bittorent?
What I do not understand is freeloaders who complain that things do not work and, moreover, complain that nobody will take their "criticism." Somebody gave this software to you. For free. Feel free to offer your criticism. Maybe the developers will fix it, because maybe they are just nice people. Or, maybe the developers want to see more people using their software. On the other hand, maybe the developers don't see it as worthwhile to fix your problem. They gave you the software--now you are claiming it is their problem?
The problem is not that I want my free software to be more awesome. I have little trouble picking among several alternatives to find one that meets my needs best. The "problem" is that many open source developers bemoan the fact that their software isn't well-adopted, yet do not take steps to make it more adoptable.
The problem is not that they ignore user complaints. Let's face it: with limited resources, and developers that you cannot compel to do un-fun tasks, there's some level of triage for errors or feature requests. Sometimes, the most efficient thing for the developers is to say, "Spend $80 on a new video tuner, as we have no one willing to spend months coding support for the one you have." Clearly, as a developer, this makes a degree of sense. Similarly, if someone codes up a chage which adds a Feature (or fixes an error), it might not meet the standards or fit the desired architecture... and thus might be discarded -- this is, in theory, better for the health of the codebase than simply accepting all patches just because they "work".
However, when one sees people using Some Other Product (than yours), we also need to recognize that this could be because of shortcomings in our own software. We can increase our user count by making a product that is more appealing, in addition to the advertisement that we already do. If half of your desired users use hardware which you don't currently support (for whatever reasons), very few will re-buy new hardware that you DO support just to use your software, unless they feel they have no other choice. For-profit businesses can justify (and compel) the work necessary to add such support, but... again, Open Source projects need to herd cat-like programmers to get things like that done (or pray that someone REALLY wants to code in support for Hardware X). While there is a difference between things that are Our Fault and Not Our Fault, they both effect our users, and both need to be resolved in order for those users to be happy with our software. Until open source developers actively pursue user happiness, not just coder happiness, their product will not be adopted as widely as it could be. (This is a generalization: of course some do make user happiness a priority, and some would argue that they care little for other users, and just want something that THEY would use and find handy. This isn't directed at you guys, as you're not the ones complaining about "why aren't people using my product".)
Imagine you had a physical product which you gave away for free, such as a bread maker. It might be excellent about making and baking bread, and have a neat interface with your Cuisinart mixer so that it can automagically make you fresh bread every morning. It's awesome, and free. However, if what I really want is a bread maker that also will make me pizza, or one that works with my Kitchenaid mixer, I'm not going to use your product. I'll buy one that DOES have the features I want, or that supports the mixer I already have. I might find your cause compelling, or WANT to use your bread maker (as I love the idea of automagical bread made while I sleep), but I already have a system that mostly works without needing to re-fit my whole kitchen, and which meets ALL of my needs, rather than blatantly failing at a few.
Similar arguments can be applied when the core developers of a product feel that the UI or workflow they ch
She may be "effectively" a figurehead, but at the same time her subjects are (I imagine) fiercely loyal to her -- both as a symbol and as a person. I imagine many Brits would be willing to fight and die to preserve her status as "figurehead". Her power comes not from the fact that she directly makes laws (I could be wrong on this, of course), but that if she said, "We should do X", her nation will take steps to do it.
However, the President is not above the law. (At least in theory.)
I doubt the RIAA is going to be so silly as to sue him, of course, but it's possible that in the process of making what we would consider a reasonable gift, he DID infringe copyrights -- perhaps even without knowing it.
If you're a white person that didn't grow up in an urban slum in the United States, you owe a hell of a lot to a bunch of dead slaves and their survivors who have been not allowed to create the generational wealth that you benefit from.
May I ask what benefit I (and my ancestors) have derived from slaves, given that they were poor German, Polish, and Irish immigrants from the late 1800s? What generational wealth? While I feel that slavery was despicable, I do not feel that I have benefitted from it in any measurable way. I'm curious why you simply say "white people", also.
No one on this or any other planet can possibly bring to Kirk what Shatner brought to Kirk.... [I]t's just farking impossible to do Star Trek with different actors correctly.
I agree that the original cast brought amazing intensity and excellence to their portrayals, but I think it's too harsh to say that NO ONE can every do it "correctly" besides them. For classic literature (and Star Trek is IMO a classic among science-fiction, at least for its popular impact), the story and characters can be interpreted well by multiple people, as it's the core of it that is the classic part. The Cage was one of my favourite Star Trek episodes, and has very few of the same cast members. Similarly, I've read Hamlet, and seen several performances of it. I felt that Kenneth Branagh's portrayal was very nuanced, and highlighted things which the text only hints at -- I had many "so THAT is what that could have meant!" moments.
Do we miss out on the original performers' interpretations of Hamlet (or Star Trek) when others do it? Yes. However, I don't think one can say that everyone else is Doing It Wrong. A story has little value if the audience cannot connect with it... in two hundred years, will people be watching Shatner, or some other (more contemporary) actor portraying Kirk? Students of film or sci-fi may watch Shatner, but I don't think that it will be a tragic loss if others portray the same character as well.
Rotational spin is great, but so is the fact that it has no land to the east of it, which means we have fewer risks of dropping disposable/reusable rocket bits on populated areas (since we launch in an eastward direction, normally).
I admit, it would be fun to have a skinnable Slashdot, where we could select from the traditional Nerdy-Green theme, the OMGPonies!1! theme, generally whatever else. Cool beans.
And, I admit, achievements are pretty neat. It'd be nifty of the achievement displays in our achievements listing were linked to what the criteria are, though.
Does Slashdot suspend all Real News Handling on April 1, though? This story is one that I'm not exactly sure is legit or not. Do we have to wait for tomorrow for the stories saying, "No, really, we weren't kidding about Conficker"? (We might need to wait that long to/believe/ them, I guess.)
Depending on the link density of one's pages that are actually served out to users, the bits used by the links themselves might be a large proportion of the page that is served. Yes, there's other stuff (images, javascript), but from the server's perspective those might be served someplace else -- they're just naming them. If the links can be shortened, especially for temporary things not meant to be indexed, it can save some bandwidth.
I'm not saying it's a primary way to save bandwidth, just that it's an interesting one.
Many teens that age (13-16) smoke, drink, or use drugs. That doesn't mean I want my children doing those things, and I do not want my children having sex that early. We have too many children who are getting pregnant while in high school, or before they are mature enough to handle being a parent, and I do not want my kids to contribute to that problem.
However, the viewer is clearly left with the knowledge that violence happened. That, more than the seeing of violence, is the harmful part, I believe. When your kids are saying, "Dude, he totally shot that guy/cut off his ___/stabbed him in the ___", despite it not actually being depicted on the film, it's hard to say that there wasn't violence. Implied violence still counts, IMO.
I would not call that pioneering forms of insanity, merely preserving (or descended from) things which many American colonists left England about in the first place. Our perception of the "right" to own and bear arms is based on the fact that it was necessary in our own revolution (in addition to being a core requirement for life on the frontier).
I'd say that reporting knowledge of wrongdoing, when you know there's a bounty and have given them an opportunity to reform, is:
+1 ethical (and we hope +1 lucrative also. It's also probably -1 Bad Career Choice, though.)
Doing it right off the bat isn't very nice, but if the management insists on unethical (and illegal?) behavior being company policy, then you're in the clear.
Slashdot Mirror
I use my DSLite to play Final Fantasy 2 pretty much as the sole app, right now. FF2 is part of the FF:Dawn of Souls re-re(-re?)-release, which is a GBA game. Being able to have that on a flash thing like the R4 would be pretty sweet. Interestingly, the DSi no longer has a GBA slot. If my DS breaks, I'll feel quite sad not being able to play my primary game, so I would likely resort to playing a ripped version of the same cart on the DSi.
I realize that this might qualify for a "-1, Hypocritical" rating, but I think it's consistent. My goal is not to pirate games on the system, but if that's how to play the games I own, I'll consider it.
Everyone deserves to be treated with decency, no matter their crimes or personal failings.
I think that if they had a prime-time (?) reality TV series which televised executions, complete with an hour's worth of footage of the person beforehand, and interviews with people there, that many in the US would find it more distasteful, perhaps enough to campaign either against the death penalty or for more humane methods (e.g., nitrogen as mentioned in a parent post). ... that's probably why we'd never see it.
There are a number of DS homebrew games I'd love to use, if I ever have the disposable income to spare on the adapters and cards. There's a painting app ( http://colors.collectingsmiles.com/about.php ) which looks neat, especially if you are traveling and want to sketch something, or just like to doodle. There are also some PDA-like programs which might be handy, though I don't know how I'd find them useful.
ScummVM ( http://scummvm.drunkencoders.com/ ) is a homebrew app to let you play old LucasArts games, as well as newer (free) games made for the Scumm interpreter. (Yes, one could pirate the old LucasArts games. The morality of playing a no longer published game on a newer platform is not something I wish to discuss. I don't plan to pirate it, if that's any consolation to you.) There are some free games, such as several from Revolution Software, that have been re-released from Amiga to Nintendo DS.
There are even e-book and comic reader homebrew apps for the DS... though I've not used them. (I prefer paper books.)
I'd get a lot more geek cred if I were part of the nintendo DS demo scene, but I'm not. (: However, I hope I have adequately debunked your claim that all we'd want to do is use it to run pirated games.
Honestly, I would like to play a game that tried to portray their experience. If the soldiers have a story to tell (and every one does), I want to see it.
I've always enjoyed FPS games, but what I've found is that playing the more modern ones (Rainbow Six, and the Call of Duty series) has made me appreciate how fragile my life is. Playing these games has made me even MORE adamant that I never want to be in a situation where someone is pointing a weapon even remotely in my direction.
The "realism" of uniforms is even more scary: how can you tell friend from foe!? I remember playing America's Army, and past a certain distance I couldn't even tell who was the enemy: I could guess, based on the fact that they were firing at me, but TKs were common. Worse, if I played more cautiously, I would get shot by the enemy while I was trying to determine their friend/foe status. I wouldn't call that glorifying war, as it depicts some of the ways that it's absolutely Bad Stuff. Similarly, in games like CoD, your squadmates (and you) die extremely easily -- and it even cheats in your favor! The urban combat levels of that game were terribly chaotic, and I cannot imagine how anyone would voluntarily subject themself to such horrors. I wouldn't. I wouldn't want my kid there, or my neighbor's kids there.
The multiplayer portion of COD4 is pretty much glorified paintball. It's only mildly stressful. Playing through the single player mode, though, especially on a harder difficulty, makes it very clear to me just how much of a fiction it is to expect to survive armed conflict. If this game is based on real memoirs, it'll be interesting to see just how fortunate those survivors were.
If the US were invaded, I would consider attacking the invaders. However, I would then no longer be a civilian, but a resistance fighter. If I fire on that column of tanks, or snipe their officers, I can't really complain when they shoot back at me. That'd be a risk I would have to accept. If I attacked them and then expected to be considered an "innocent civilian", I'd be a fool.
I can understand your distaste for "mercenaries"; I personally am not a member of the US armed forces, nor am I likely to be. (I'm fairly risk-averse.) However, I think you are too harsh on the poster you initially laid into.
No one joined up to go to Iraq. They joined to serve, to fund their college educations, or learn skills they can use in future careers. By all means, blame the president, and blame our congress of sending our troops over there ... but please don't blame the soldiers. It's their job. Once they've signed up, they can't decide not to go, or they go to prison for a Long Time. A mercenary, on the other hand, can (I believe) decide to terminate his employment. Yes, being in the military is a career ... but you have fewer freedoms than a true mercenary would.
From what another poster said (a few posts above yours), they appear to have worked hard to ensure that civilians had ample warning to leave. If the military wanted a massacre of civilians, they could have firebombed the city, shelled it indiscriminantly, or just rolled in shooting. They didn't. They told the city residents, "We're going to invade, as your town is full of insurgents... you should leave now." Frankly, if an invading military told me that my city (let's say Los Angeles) were full of insurgents, and that the city would be invaded shortly, I'd be getting the hell out of there as soon as humanly possible. Wouldn't you? I'm not saying this absolves them of civilian deaths, but they sure sound like they made significant effort to ensure that civilians were not harmed.
In ages past, when cities were considered to contain enemies, they were destroyed. Whether physically razed, or shelled from afar, or ravaged by disease during a siege, the population was considered to be an expendable statistic. In World War II, we (and others) carpet bombed for months; Tokyo was torched, and I'm sure we can remember the other horriffic things that were done to civilian populations.
In contrast, Falluja had extended efforts to get the civilians OUT. Given that the military forces were ordered to remove the insurgents, how would you prefer it were done?
- "No.": Commander is slapped in irons, and replaced with someone who WILL follow orders. The orders will be followed, by someone, so this isn't a valid answer. (It is on an individual level, but it won't affect whether or not the city gets invaded or destroyed.)
- Warn the people ahead of time, give civilians time to leave. When you do invade, the people remaining know you consider them enemies.
- Don't warn the people, and invade. We lose more people, and even more civilians die.
- Don't warn the populace. Level the city with aerial bombardment.
Considering which of these we did NOT choose to do, I think our soldiers went about it the right way. I understand you don't like the idea of an invading force at all, but when one IS an invading force, please at least acknowledge that they're not trying to massacre civilians. It's possible to condemn the strategic decisions (invade Iraq) while still respecting the soldiers responsible for carrying out the tactical decisions.
But, the other side needs to be able to measure the change in order for it to be useful. Doesn't the act of measuring change its' state, also? I must be missing something, as I'm by no means an expert.
I disagree. For an AI to determine that we are suboptimal, and replace/eradicate us, it doesn't need malicious intent, merely a calculation that things would be Better (by whatever metric) without us, and a lack of adequately expressed "don't kill the humans" controls.
Maliciousness implies wanting to see someone else be harmed. There's a difference between WANTING to harm us and "merely" recognizing that we are inferior, poorly suited for space expansion, and will eventually starve ourselves out of existence on this planet. A poorly constructed AI (or perhaps a very savvy one? ;)) might decide that the way to spare the human race (at a much larger population density) the suffering of starvation is just to kill us all now. That's not malice, though you might be able to consider it a bit Machiavellian.
As I don't have mod points, I'd like to thank you for linking that. It was a very interesting read -- I may even try talking to my wife about some of it.
You've been marked Funny, but that might not be a bad idea. It'd be interesting to see a concrete example: Known movie, leaked, and measurable box office success. Then again, movie beancounters would likely claim that it could have been more...
I find it interesting that there appear to be no download locations listed on the forums (though there are md5 hashes). I presume they expect you to find it via bittorent?
The problem is not that I want my free software to be more awesome. I have little trouble picking among several alternatives to find one that meets my needs best. The "problem" is that many open source developers bemoan the fact that their software isn't well-adopted, yet do not take steps to make it more adoptable.
The problem is not that they ignore user complaints. Let's face it: with limited resources, and developers that you cannot compel to do un-fun tasks, there's some level of triage for errors or feature requests. Sometimes, the most efficient thing for the developers is to say, "Spend $80 on a new video tuner, as we have no one willing to spend months coding support for the one you have." Clearly, as a developer, this makes a degree of sense. Similarly, if someone codes up a chage which adds a Feature (or fixes an error), it might not meet the standards or fit the desired architecture ... and thus might be discarded -- this is, in theory, better for the health of the codebase than simply accepting all patches just because they "work".
However, when one sees people using Some Other Product (than yours), we also need to recognize that this could be because of shortcomings in our own software. We can increase our user count by making a product that is more appealing, in addition to the advertisement that we already do. If half of your desired users use hardware which you don't currently support (for whatever reasons), very few will re-buy new hardware that you DO support just to use your software, unless they feel they have no other choice. For-profit businesses can justify (and compel) the work necessary to add such support, but ... again, Open Source projects need to herd cat-like programmers to get things like that done (or pray that someone REALLY wants to code in support for Hardware X). While there is a difference between things that are Our Fault and Not Our Fault, they both effect our users, and both need to be resolved in order for those users to be happy with our software. Until open source developers actively pursue user happiness, not just coder happiness, their product will not be adopted as widely as it could be. (This is a generalization: of course some do make user happiness a priority, and some would argue that they care little for other users, and just want something that THEY would use and find handy. This isn't directed at you guys, as you're not the ones complaining about "why aren't people using my product".)
Imagine you had a physical product which you gave away for free, such as a bread maker. It might be excellent about making and baking bread, and have a neat interface with your Cuisinart mixer so that it can automagically make you fresh bread every morning. It's awesome, and free. However, if what I really want is a bread maker that also will make me pizza, or one that works with my Kitchenaid mixer, I'm not going to use your product. I'll buy one that DOES have the features I want, or that supports the mixer I already have. I might find your cause compelling, or WANT to use your bread maker (as I love the idea of automagical bread made while I sleep), but I already have a system that mostly works without needing to re-fit my whole kitchen, and which meets ALL of my needs, rather than blatantly failing at a few.
Similar arguments can be applied when the core developers of a product feel that the UI or workflow they ch
She may be "effectively" a figurehead, but at the same time her subjects are (I imagine) fiercely loyal to her -- both as a symbol and as a person. I imagine many Brits would be willing to fight and die to preserve her status as "figurehead". Her power comes not from the fact that she directly makes laws (I could be wrong on this, of course), but that if she said, "We should do X", her nation will take steps to do it.
However, the President is not above the law. (At least in theory.)
I doubt the RIAA is going to be so silly as to sue him, of course, but it's possible that in the process of making what we would consider a reasonable gift, he DID infringe copyrights -- perhaps even without knowing it.
May I ask what benefit I (and my ancestors) have derived from slaves, given that they were poor German, Polish, and Irish immigrants from the late 1800s? What generational wealth? While I feel that slavery was despicable, I do not feel that I have benefitted from it in any measurable way. I'm curious why you simply say "white people", also.
I agree that the original cast brought amazing intensity and excellence to their portrayals, but I think it's too harsh to say that NO ONE can every do it "correctly" besides them. For classic literature (and Star Trek is IMO a classic among science-fiction, at least for its popular impact), the story and characters can be interpreted well by multiple people, as it's the core of it that is the classic part. The Cage was one of my favourite Star Trek episodes, and has very few of the same cast members. Similarly, I've read Hamlet, and seen several performances of it. I felt that Kenneth Branagh's portrayal was very nuanced, and highlighted things which the text only hints at -- I had many "so THAT is what that could have meant!" moments.
Do we miss out on the original performers' interpretations of Hamlet (or Star Trek) when others do it? Yes. However, I don't think one can say that everyone else is Doing It Wrong. A story has little value if the audience cannot connect with it ... in two hundred years, will people be watching Shatner, or some other (more contemporary) actor portraying Kirk? Students of film or sci-fi may watch Shatner, but I don't think that it will be a tragic loss if others portray the same character as well.
Rotational spin is great, but so is the fact that it has no land to the east of it, which means we have fewer risks of dropping disposable/reusable rocket bits on populated areas (since we launch in an eastward direction, normally).
I admit, it would be fun to have a skinnable Slashdot, where we could select from the traditional Nerdy-Green theme, the OMGPonies!1! theme, generally whatever else. Cool beans.
And, I admit, achievements are pretty neat. It'd be nifty of the achievement displays in our achievements listing were linked to what the criteria are, though.
Does Slashdot suspend all Real News Handling on April 1, though? This story is one that I'm not exactly sure is legit or not. Do we have to wait for tomorrow for the stories saying, "No, really, we weren't kidding about Conficker"? (We might need to wait that long to /believe/ them, I guess.)
Depending on the link density of one's pages that are actually served out to users, the bits used by the links themselves might be a large proportion of the page that is served. Yes, there's other stuff (images, javascript), but from the server's perspective those might be served someplace else -- they're just naming them. If the links can be shortened, especially for temporary things not meant to be indexed, it can save some bandwidth.
I'm not saying it's a primary way to save bandwidth, just that it's an interesting one.
Many teens that age (13-16) smoke, drink, or use drugs. That doesn't mean I want my children doing those things, and I do not want my children having sex that early. We have too many children who are getting pregnant while in high school, or before they are mature enough to handle being a parent, and I do not want my kids to contribute to that problem.
However, the viewer is clearly left with the knowledge that violence happened. That, more than the seeing of violence, is the harmful part, I believe. When your kids are saying, "Dude, he totally shot that guy/cut off his ___/stabbed him in the ___", despite it not actually being depicted on the film, it's hard to say that there wasn't violence. Implied violence still counts, IMO.
I would not call that pioneering forms of insanity, merely preserving (or descended from) things which many American colonists left England about in the first place. Our perception of the "right" to own and bear arms is based on the fact that it was necessary in our own revolution (in addition to being a core requirement for life on the frontier).
I'd say that reporting knowledge of wrongdoing, when you know there's a bounty and have given them an opportunity to reform, is:
+1 ethical
(and we hope +1 lucrative also. It's also probably -1 Bad Career Choice, though.)
Doing it right off the bat isn't very nice, but if the management insists on unethical (and illegal?) behavior being company policy, then you're in the clear.