>These movies were all bad, regardless of the fact that we were supposed to see that they were making fun of themselves. Making fun of a genre is not justification for poor quality.
Agreed. I was afraid I was the only one who thought that. There are about 100 posts bashing Jon so far for not "having a sense of humour". I think Jon knew that it is a homage to the Indiana Jones films and 50s horror movies. Maybe it is toungue-in-cheek, it's just that it doesn't do it intelligently. Even porn movies have irony these days, that does not make them better.
While I'm already pissing people off, this might be a good opportunity to post a link to The Onion....
"Quite simply, the collective intelligence level is dropping so rapidly that it's becoming increasingly difficult for producers to insult the intelligence of the American public," said News Corp president and COO Peter Chernin. "Without a way to set a floor for the lowest common denominator, even the stupidest material we can develop is not stupid enough for audiences to enjoy"
I haven't seen it yet, so I can't comment on the story. I suspect I would agree with Jon though, I didn't even like the first one much even though it was mostly toungue-in-cheek. I see already lots of posts attacking Jon for not understanding the "camp" or "irony" value of this film. Repeat after me - irony is not a universal excuse for producing stupid crap.
What did strike me about the first film is how utterly unscary the computer generated special effects were. I recently saw The Thing and Predator again, and the old puppet monsters of the 80s were just so much better.
Of course, best of all is when they manage to combine good effects with good plots like Alien or Hellraiser.
Oh well, I'll go put on my asbestos suit now.
Cheers,
Lars
>Normandy was a Hell. Sorry but even you americans of today may not totally understand this. In fact only veterans may say what is to stand in a shoreline with Hell falling on you. That should be honored.
I'd also like to add, that despite the impression that people might have gotten from Saving Private Ryan, there were quite a lot of nationalities involved on the D-Day landing, including British, Australians, the free French, and many others.
You have to check out Sluggy Freelance. It is just brilliant. Try the Viewer Guide if you are completely new to it, the Classic Theatre links contain some really great episodes.
I know I risk getting modden down as a troll for saying this, but what is the big deal with Doom 3?
I loved the first games id published, I got my first PC (An IBM Bluelightning 486/66 with the speed of a 486/33) just so I could play Doom 2, and Quake was a big contributor to my later upgrade to Pentium, and I bought a Voodoo card and later a TNT so I could see Quake 2 in all its glory.
However, am I the only one who think that Carmack et al have really not moved creatively at all while the rest of the industry have taken huge steps forward? The only reason people and gaming magazines still get so exited when id is mentioned because they don't want to admit how far the company which gave them so many good memories has fallen. Ok, some mindless shooting is still fun for a short while (no matter if you prefer UT or Q3) and people will still buy their latest release just to see the cool graphics, but I just don't see them taking the gaming world by storm again unless they start coming up with something really innovative and original. And considering that ever since Doom 1 they have made the same game over and over again I'm not holding my breath that Doom 3 will be any different. I agree with Clive Barker where in one of his recent interviews he said that too many games are just "Here is a gun. There is a monster. Now shoot it. Wasn't that fun? Let's do it again, a thousand times". To keep the interest up, games need good plots and interesting realistic characters. (At least, that's my opinion. I love games such as System Shock 2, Planescape: Torment or Half-Life and I'm defenitely going to buy Clive Barker's Undying).
Getting back to id, they have shown again and again that they don't give a rats ass about plot or characters. Even more seriously, they don't care enough even to hire someone else to do the writing. Remember the introductory "story" in the manual to Quake 2 which read like it had been written by a 14-year old fanboy? Alien race with no background attacking for no reason, marine drill sergeants screaming about kicking ass. The only thing missing was "They sent us up the bomb!"
As for games the last couple of years, do reviews say "Good, but not quite Quake 2 or Quake 3"? No, they say "Good, but not quite Half-Life". And the stuff they complain about is not lack of graphics, but lack of good storytelling.
No, I hope the trend of getting more real writers in, like the guy who wrote the story for Half-Life (his horror book the 49th Mandala is really good), Clive Baker, or the Japanese guys who wrote the story for FF7.
As for Doom 3, well, I hope I can get pleasantly surprised. But that would surprise me.:-)
That reminded me of something similar that happened to me when I was 11. We had had a substitute teacher for several weeks and she belonged to some evangelical Christian group. I don't think she consciously tried to push this on us (we have freedom of religion and freedom *from* religion in Sweden), but it showed up quite often in her attitues.
Once she gave us the task of drawing what we thought God looked like. Most of us dutifully started drawing bearded old men and shining bright lights. I started on my own little god but quickly became bored (I was already a budding little Atheist) and instead started drawing deformed ugly men which was much more fun. She walked around and spotted me doing it, so she took all the drawings and, in front of all the class, looked at them one by one, shook her head or glared at me, and threw them in the trash. I was embarressed and angry but didn't say anything about it to the other teachers (don't remember why, it probably just didn't occur to me).
I still get angry when I think about it.
So: Fuck you, Toad. Fuck you.
I gave in last year and bought a Playstation when I was in Australia (it felt a bit excessive to buy a whole new computer when I was only going to be there one year) and even though I did enjoy some games such as Vagrant Story and Vandal Hearts, I found I tired quickly of console titles. I just didn't find the emotional depth I like, even in games famous for it such as Final Fantasy 8 (the characters are so flat they are almost non-dimensional, and all the good plot points are ripoffs of #7). But maybe it is just a matter of taste.
However, my suggestion for some good PC games are: System Shock 2, Planescape: Torment, Grim Fandango, Deus Ex, Chessmaster 8000, Diablo 2, and considering the great reviews, I have high hopes for the Unreal Engine based Clive Barker's Undying. Perhaps I can get scared out of my pants again for the first time since System Shock 2?
Swedish gaming companies are actually making quite a lot of good games lately. I find they have a lot of great gameplay and "soul". The graphics are often a lot simpler too, but because of that reason and a serious lack of polish (bugs, weak AI and so on) they are rarely distributed in the US. Your loss.... Some of the better ones have made it of course, like the big budget Ground Control. Check out Clusterball too, I like that for once it is non-violent without being for kids like Nerf Arena. If you are a die hard strategist, you must check out Europa Universalis. I think you are going to see more interesting PC games coming out of Europe the next couple of years, Central and Eastern European countries are beginning to have a vibrant gaming industry too. See the recent games like, for instance Serious Sam or Hidden and Dangerous, and more stuff than I can count from Russia.
1) I didn't read the article
2) I was wrong about the spelling
3) I made a HTML mistake
4) I called OTHER people morons.
Could someone mod me down please. I want as few people as possible to see this.
Re:when you're the leader of the free world
on
Hannibal's Return
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· Score: 2
I think this is a troll, but what the hell, its a Sunday evening and I'm bored...
when you're the leader of the free world your cultural standards are little bit different than if your some past-your-prime fiefdom in an aging continent.
Yes...a troll. A pretty good one. So my counter troll is: "When you are the enlightened birthplace of democracy and leader of the free world (since we don't let corporations screw our citizens), our cultural standards are a little bit different than if we were some past-their-prime colony populated by the descendants of religious fanatics."
And BTW, the continents are *exactly* the same age. And at the moment I think the culture of Europe is looking more younger and dynamic. We don't need no stinking old declaration of independence to bog us down...;-)
The world looks to America for leadership and sacrifice (no, not the whole world, but most of it).
I know you like to believe that.
Whenever dirty work needs to be done, vital fluids protected, American troops are the first to respond and the first to die.
That is such utter bullshit. Ever since the catastrophic incidents in Somalia, the American governement have become utter cowards when it comes to putting their soldier's life on the line. It may now be once of the first armies that refuses to put its soldiers in any danger. For instance, the US vetoed all its NATO allies plan to use ground troops in Yugoslavia and went ahead and bombed the whole country from a safe distance. Fine, I can understand that they are afraid to have the media getting hold of images of dead soldiers, and America is fearful of repeating the mistakes of the Vietnam War. But what really gets my blood boiling is when American conservatives act like we should be grateful for this since "America paid for the war". We in Europe have had to deal with hundreds of thousands of refugees, and the cost of rebuilding the infrastructure of a country that got bombed back to the middle ages.
Witness one of Dubya's first acts as President, placing American airmen at risk to destroy dangerous Iraqi air defences.
Wag the Dog
Stanley Motss: "The President will be a hero. He brought peace."
Conrad 'Connie' Brean: "But there was never a war."
Stanley Motss: "All the greater accomplishment."
Now, it's all well and good for certain European countries to adopt an opposite philosophy of pleasure seeking; sex is good, promiscuity is good, guns and violence are bad.
Well, yes, that is my basic philosophy. Especially if you take responsibility for your procreation by using condoms. My life has been much better since I discovered promiscuity. And I am scared about the American attitudes Katz point out in his review.
But don't push them on America, we need to be violent to save the world.
But who will save us from America? That's what I want to know. Any takers?
Attention Shoppers: Special Today -- Iceland's DNA
on
Who Owns Your Body?
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· Score: 2
(Yes, I stole the subject line from a CNN article)
I'm surprised no one yet has mentioned the case of the governement of Iceland selling the genetic information of its citizens. Iceland was chosen because of its long history of testing and because its population is small and very genetically homogenous. An "opt-out" scheme is included, so you don't HAVE to give away your genetic information. I believe many were convinced that they were making a contribution to mankind since this will be a very valuable database for tracing genes responsible for, for instance, hereditary diseases. But as this CNN article on the same topic points out:
Selling exclusive rights to a single corporation sets up the possibility for both exploitation of whatever information comes from the research, and for control over access to the benefits it may yield. It is ironic that such exclusive licensing deals make the quintessentially public resource into a private commodity, and may end up denying access to its benefits to the very individuals whose DNA make discoveries possible.
It seems people are stuck more on the subject of movies than the "free repository" part, so here comes my contribution...
I think the Movie Mistakes page is quite funny. Unfortunately when the big budget blockbusters have 115 entries, many of them are just "making of" trivia and so on instead of the hilarius Mystery Science Theatre 3000 badness that I crave. It seems that people submit more "mistakes" about famous films rather than about those really badly made films that are packed with errors of logic, continuity, special effects etc.
Also, even though I rarely buy stuff from them, I find it very fascinating to go to Amazon and just click around different reviews, "page you made", user made listmania lists and so on to find good stuff I might not have heard about before. It made me interested in old movies again, I have started to collect Kurosawa on DVD and I'm currently thinking of getting La Grande Illusion, Orson Welles films, The Third Man, lots of Noir detective films. Too bad Amazon doesn't stock more foreign films.
>"First they ignore you.
>Then they laugh at you.
>Then they fight you.
>Then you win."
Unless, of course, you are on the losing side, in which case it goes:
"First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you lose."
I wish people could do more thinking and less rehashing of worn out old quotes. The only one worse is the one about people who sacrifice liberty for safety not deserving either. Well, we do that every day to get a functioning society, for instance traffic rules.
I think it is really great. Well done. For people interested in daily news about Africa (local media rarely covers it unless something bad or depressing has happened), I recommend the http://allafrica.com/ site. Considering how dangerous it is to run independent media in places such as Zimbabwe, this is an example how it is not all empty hype from Wired style techno-utopians. Technology might actually give concrete benefits to developing nations.
Damnit...couldn't you just flame me back? Why did you have to go and be all reasonable? Ok. I sincerely apologize for the personal attacks in my previous post. I mean it. Nevertheless, I'd like to adress some points:
>It is true that the NRA lobbies against every single gun restriction. They're believers in the slipperly slope thing. Give an inch, you lose a mile.
Isn't slippery slope usually considered a logical fallacy...? I know I don't want to ban all guns. That is defenitely a too severe infringement on personal rights....Of course, what I think doesn't really matter since I am not a US citizen. Aren't you glad?;-)
I'm not sure about the Switzerland example. I have heard it mentioned several times, but never from a reliable source. I know that some NRA people have used Sweden as an example in similar arguments. Sweden has more guns per capita than the US, but less violent crime, they say. However, what they fail to meantion is that what we have are rarely assault rifles or even handguns, but hunting rifles. Furthermore, the law says these must be
A) Securely locked, for instance in a safe
B) kept with a vital part removed, and
C) In a separate place from the ammunition
I'm not sure if it is a requirement to buy a gun, but to hunt, you have to have a hunting licence, and to get one of those you have to pass a pretty difficult test.
>There is one other main reason to be anti-gun: many anti gunners simply don't believe in the possibility or the right to self-defense. They prefer to rely on the police for everything, and they are trying to arrange it so that you have no other option. I find these people especially odious. Self-defense is a basic human right, and the best tool for it is a gun. Even if you don't think people should be allowed to carry guns, they should have the right to keep one at home.
I am sceptical that a gun is the best tool for self-defence. Did you read the article in the Economist? Of course, I don't believe that this is the final word or anything. I know Lott has sent a letter disputing the claims. But the Economist tend to do very well researched articles. I just don't see how having a gun is going to stop somebody from shooting me. If they know I might have a gun, isn't that just going to increase the likelyhood they make sure I don't get a chance to fire it, for instance by shooting me in the back without warning? If they have a knife at least I can run, but few people can outrun a bullet.
By the way, I grew up in a hunting family. My grandad, my dad and my brother hunted. My brother is now a cop. So I am not unfamiliar with guns. I have been out on several hunting trips, and while I never was present while an animal was killed, I did see the dead bodies and the butchering. I have also done target shooting, and when I did military service I learned to use a machine gun (model 1945...I was a radar operator. If the enemy ever got into the command central it would be short distance combat, so the guns would actually be ok, especially since they are light to carry. They gave the modern guns, AK4 and AK5, to the people who would be in the field). So I have some familiarity with guns and might even be said to have experienced the "gun culture".
I believe you mentioned somewhere in another post that you disapproved of too much sex in the media (or did I confuse you with somebody else?). That is such an alien concept to me. If you have to censor something, I really prefer that they allow sex (a natural, pleasure giving, life affirming act) and ban violence like they do in Sweden, instead of the other way around like in the US.
>If you have trustworthy friends or relatives who go shooting, try to go on a trip with them. Learn a little, like how to handle a gun safely. Having knowledge like that can never hurt.
And if you are really really lucky, you can even get to see them kill something. Then you will see first hand the real purpose of a gun, what a metal bit passing though living tissue at high velocity really does. It's really fun.
>I actually think they should teach kids about guns in school, kind of like what they do with cars. They should show videos of gunshot wounds, like they do with car crashes. They should teach you basic things like "don't point a gun at anyone."
Yeah! Maybe it could even teach them that "guns are really dumb things, we would be better off without them in everyday society".
>It's already illegal to be a fool and store your gun where kids can get at it. It has been for a long time. The penalties are severe. Such laws seem never to be enforced. Why? Beats me.
Could it be because the NRA bribes the republican party with millions of dollars to prevent any gun law, no matter how common sense, from being passed or enforced?
>Probably because the anti-gun crowd has an easier time getting more laws passed with a pile of dead kids around. If some parents did get locked up for being retards, other parents might get a clue and rates of accidental shootings might decline. That probably isn't optimal for the Master Plan, which is getting rid of all the guns period. (Was this an excessively cynical comment? Maybe. Maybe not.)
There is no maybe about it. That was the dumbest fucking thing I have ever heard. Why would someone ever be anti-gun if it wasn't to save kids from being killed by guns? Oh, of course, it is all a plot to disarm white trash so the UN can invade and occupy their precious trailer parks. Why would anyone want to? To get to all that precious Budweiser and fried chicken? Don't worry IronChef. You can keep it.
Kind of interesting that this comes at the same time as the report from the Surgeon General which does not blame games or TV for youth violence. Rumours before it was released had it that the report did in fact claim that there was a strong connection between violence and media, and the Los Angeles Times (which appearently had gotten its hands on a draft version) claimed that it would say that "statistical evidence on the connection of real violence to media violence was as strong as lung cancer's connection to smoking". More discussion of the report at the Adrenaline Vault.
An aside - whenever this topic comes up, 99% of the posters seem to agree that no connection exists, and that censorship is bad. I agree that we have to be careful with censorship, but I wanted to ask, what do you think causes the greater amount of violence in America? If it isn't the culture, what is it? If you say, "parents", what made American parents fail where parents from other countries succeed? If it isn't culture, what? Something in the water?
I'm not trolling. I really want to know your opinion on this.
Europa Universalis is a recent computer game that fulfills most of your criteria. It is based on a French boargame with a cult following. The computer game has sold very well in Europe. Check out the positive reviews on the homepage.
>European companies here have always the difficulty to understand what it means to distribute something in a _continent_ like the US.
Er, sorry, but you got that mixed up.
Europe=continent.
US=country.
:-)
But I do agree with you that US companies have done better at expanding internationally. However, there are some very notable exceptions. Just looking at Scandinavia, I can think of Ericsson, Nokia, IKEA, Electrolux, Volvo, Saab, Bang & Olufsen. And as the European markets have become more competetive I think the number will increase a lot in the next couple of years.
Good point. We have had the same discussion in Scandinavia. We have the quick Cat ferries between Denmark and Sweden. They are very quick and very comfortable, but as they gained in popularity it turned out that perhaps they weren't as good for the environment, and some people called for them to be banned. First it was the problem you mentioned above, that the big waves created by the speed were slowly wearing down the coastline. (We have the same problem with the huge cruiseships that go throught the Stockholm archipelago and over the Baltic sea, so working class Swedes and Finns can get drunk on tax free booze and go to each other's capital citys and vomit.) The second problem (with the Cat ferries that is, not the drunken bogons) was that appearently the jets were whipping up tons of water every day into foam and turning the fish into chum. And last was that they were not very fuel efficient.
This was a couple of years ago, I haven't heard anything lately about it. So maybe the environmental fears were exaggerated, the boats were banned, or it just faded from public consciousness.
Re:2000 Nobel price in chemistry
on
Plastic Valley?
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· Score: 1
>Antispam is never clever.
>It's the wrong approach for several reasons. ACs
>posting the decrypted addresses is one of them.
Well, it's good enough to trick autoharvesters. So it shouldn't be a problem unless the AC is a total asshole and post it for them. Oh, wait, that's just what you did...
Slashdot Mirror
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Agreed. I was afraid I was the only one who thought that. There are about 100 posts bashing Jon so far for not "having a sense of humour". I think Jon knew that it is a homage to the Indiana Jones films and 50s horror movies. Maybe it is toungue-in-cheek, it's just that it doesn't do it intelligently. Even porn movies have irony these days, that does not make them better.
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"Quite simply, the collective intelligence level is dropping so rapidly that it's becoming increasingly difficult for producers to insult the intelligence of the American public," said News Corp president and COO Peter Chernin. "Without a way to set a floor for the lowest common denominator, even the stupidest material we can develop is not stupid enough for audiences to enjoy"
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What did strike me about the first film is how utterly unscary the computer generated special effects were. I recently saw The Thing and Predator again, and the old puppet monsters of the 80s were just so much better.
Of course, best of all is when they manage to combine good effects with good plots like Alien or Hellraiser.
Oh well, I'll go put on my asbestos suit now.
Cheers,
Lars
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Yep, subtle satire. Nothing better.
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I'd also like to add, that despite the impression that people might have gotten from Saving Private Ryan, there were quite a lot of nationalities involved on the D-Day landing, including British, Australians, the free French, and many others.
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I loved the first games id published, I got my first PC (An IBM Bluelightning 486/66 with the speed of a 486/33) just so I could play Doom 2, and Quake was a big contributor to my later upgrade to Pentium, and I bought a Voodoo card and later a TNT so I could see Quake 2 in all its glory.
However, am I the only one who think that Carmack et al have really not moved creatively at all while the rest of the industry have taken huge steps forward? The only reason people and gaming magazines still get so exited when id is mentioned because they don't want to admit how far the company which gave them so many good memories has fallen. Ok, some mindless shooting is still fun for a short while (no matter if you prefer UT or Q3) and people will still buy their latest release just to see the cool graphics, but I just don't see them taking the gaming world by storm again unless they start coming up with something really innovative and original. And considering that ever since Doom 1 they have made the same game over and over again I'm not holding my breath that Doom 3 will be any different. I agree with Clive Barker where in one of his recent interviews he said that too many games are just "Here is a gun. There is a monster. Now shoot it. Wasn't that fun? Let's do it again, a thousand times". To keep the interest up, games need good plots and interesting realistic characters. (At least, that's my opinion. I love games such as System Shock 2, Planescape: Torment or Half-Life and I'm defenitely going to buy Clive Barker's Undying).
Getting back to id, they have shown again and again that they don't give a rats ass about plot or characters. Even more seriously, they don't care enough even to hire someone else to do the writing. Remember the introductory "story" in the manual to Quake 2 which read like it had been written by a 14-year old fanboy? Alien race with no background attacking for no reason, marine drill sergeants screaming about kicking ass. The only thing missing was "They sent us up the bomb!"
As for games the last couple of years, do reviews say "Good, but not quite Quake 2 or Quake 3"? No, they say "Good, but not quite Half-Life". And the stuff they complain about is not lack of graphics, but lack of good storytelling.
No, I hope the trend of getting more real writers in, like the guy who wrote the story for Half-Life (his horror book the 49th Mandala is really good), Clive Baker, or the Japanese guys who wrote the story for FF7.
As for Doom 3, well, I hope I can get pleasantly surprised. But that would surprise me.
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Once she gave us the task of drawing what we thought God looked like. Most of us dutifully started drawing bearded old men and shining bright lights. I started on my own little god but quickly became bored (I was already a budding little Atheist) and instead started drawing deformed ugly men which was much more fun. She walked around and spotted me doing it, so she took all the drawings and, in front of all the class, looked at them one by one, shook her head or glared at me, and threw them in the trash. I was embarressed and angry but didn't say anything about it to the other teachers (don't remember why, it probably just didn't occur to me).
I still get angry when I think about it.
So: Fuck you, Toad. Fuck you.
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However, my suggestion for some good PC games are: System Shock 2, Planescape: Torment, Grim Fandango, Deus Ex, Chessmaster 8000, Diablo 2, and considering the great reviews, I have high hopes for the Unreal Engine based Clive Barker's Undying. Perhaps I can get scared out of my pants again for the first time since System Shock 2?
Swedish gaming companies are actually making quite a lot of good games lately. I find they have a lot of great gameplay and "soul". The graphics are often a lot simpler too, but because of that reason and a serious lack of polish (bugs, weak AI and so on) they are rarely distributed in the US. Your loss.... Some of the better ones have made it of course, like the big budget Ground Control. Check out Clusterball too, I like that for once it is non-violent without being for kids like Nerf Arena. If you are a die hard strategist, you must check out Europa Universalis. I think you are going to see more interesting PC games coming out of Europe the next couple of years, Central and Eastern European countries are beginning to have a vibrant gaming industry too. See the recent games like, for instance Serious Sam or Hidden and Dangerous, and more stuff than I can count from Russia.
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2) I was wrong about the spelling
3) I made a HTML mistake
4) I called OTHER people morons.
Could someone mod me down please. I want as few people as possible to see this.
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when you're the leader of the free world your cultural standards are little bit different than if your some past-your-prime fiefdom in an aging continent.
Yes...a troll. A pretty good one. So my counter troll is: "When you are the enlightened birthplace of democracy and leader of the free world (since we don't let corporations screw our citizens), our cultural standards are a little bit different than if we were some past-their-prime colony populated by the descendants of religious fanatics." ;-)
And BTW, the continents are *exactly* the same age. And at the moment I think the culture of Europe is looking more younger and dynamic. We don't need no stinking old declaration of independence to bog us down...
The world looks to America for leadership and sacrifice (no, not the whole world, but most of it).
I know you like to believe that.
Whenever dirty work needs to be done, vital fluids protected, American troops are the first to respond and the first to die.
That is such utter bullshit. Ever since the catastrophic incidents in Somalia, the American governement have become utter cowards when it comes to putting their soldier's life on the line. It may now be once of the first armies that refuses to put its soldiers in any danger. For instance, the US vetoed all its NATO allies plan to use ground troops in Yugoslavia and went ahead and bombed the whole country from a safe distance. Fine, I can understand that they are afraid to have the media getting hold of images of dead soldiers, and America is fearful of repeating the mistakes of the Vietnam War. But what really gets my blood boiling is when American conservatives act like we should be grateful for this since "America paid for the war". We in Europe have had to deal with hundreds of thousands of refugees, and the cost of rebuilding the infrastructure of a country that got bombed back to the middle ages.
Witness one of Dubya's first acts as President, placing American airmen at risk to destroy dangerous Iraqi air defences.
Wag the Dog
Stanley Motss: "The President will be a hero. He brought peace."
Conrad 'Connie' Brean: "But there was never a war."
Stanley Motss: "All the greater accomplishment."
Now, it's all well and good for certain European countries to adopt an opposite philosophy of pleasure seeking; sex is good, promiscuity is good, guns and violence are bad.
Well, yes, that is my basic philosophy. Especially if you take responsibility for your procreation by using condoms. My life has been much better since I discovered promiscuity. And I am scared about the American attitudes Katz point out in his review.
But don't push them on America, we need to be violent to save the world.
But who will save us from America? That's what I want to know. Any takers?
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I'm surprised no one yet has mentioned the case of the governement of Iceland selling the genetic information of its citizens. Iceland was chosen because of its long history of testing and because its population is small and very genetically homogenous. An "opt-out" scheme is included, so you don't HAVE to give away your genetic information. I believe many were convinced that they were making a contribution to mankind since this will be a very valuable database for tracing genes responsible for, for instance, hereditary diseases. But as this CNN article on the same topic points out:
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I think the Movie Mistakes page is quite funny. Unfortunately when the big budget blockbusters have 115 entries, many of them are just "making of" trivia and so on instead of the hilarius Mystery Science Theatre 3000 badness that I crave. It seems that people submit more "mistakes" about famous films rather than about those really badly made films that are packed with errors of logic, continuity, special effects etc.
Also, even though I rarely buy stuff from them, I find it very fascinating to go to Amazon and just click around different reviews, "page you made", user made listmania lists and so on to find good stuff I might not have heard about before. It made me interested in old movies again, I have started to collect Kurosawa on DVD and I'm currently thinking of getting La Grande Illusion, Orson Welles films, The Third Man, lots of Noir detective films. Too bad Amazon doesn't stock more foreign films.
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>Then they laugh at you.
>Then they fight you.
>Then you win."
Unless, of course, you are on the losing side, in which case it goes:
"First they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you lose."
I wish people could do more thinking and less rehashing of worn out old quotes. The only one worse is the one about people who sacrifice liberty for safety not deserving either. Well, we do that every day to get a functioning society, for instance traffic rules.
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Let's deconstruct that.
>European
At least you got the continent right, that's better than most trollers.
>liberal
I guess.
>Pansy-ass
Well Mr Anonymous Coward, at least I have the courage to stand for my opinion and use my real name.
>Someone oughta pop a cap in your ass.
Words, words...
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>It is true that the NRA lobbies against every single gun restriction. They're believers in the slipperly slope thing. Give an inch, you lose a mile.
Isn't slippery slope usually considered a logical fallacy...? I know I don't want to ban all guns. That is defenitely a too severe infringement on personal rights. ...Of course, what I think doesn't really matter since I am not a US citizen. Aren't you glad? ;-)
I'm not sure about the Switzerland example. I have heard it mentioned several times, but never from a reliable source. I know that some NRA people have used Sweden as an example in similar arguments. Sweden has more guns per capita than the US, but less violent crime, they say. However, what they fail to meantion is that what we have are rarely assault rifles or even handguns, but hunting rifles.
Furthermore, the law says these must be
A) Securely locked, for instance in a safe
B) kept with a vital part removed, and
C) In a separate place from the ammunition
I'm not sure if it is a requirement to buy a gun, but to hunt, you have to have a hunting licence, and to get one of those you have to pass a pretty difficult test.
>There is one other main reason to be anti-gun: many anti gunners simply don't believe in the possibility or the right to self-defense. They prefer to rely on the police for everything, and they are trying to arrange it so that you have no other option. I find these people especially odious. Self-defense is a basic human right, and the best tool for it is a gun. Even if you don't think people should be allowed to carry guns, they should have the right to keep one at home.
I am sceptical that a gun is the best tool for self-defence. Did you read the article in the Economist? Of course, I don't believe that this is the final word or anything. I know Lott has sent a letter disputing the claims. But the Economist tend to do very well researched articles. I just don't see how having a gun is going to stop somebody from shooting me. If they know I might have a gun, isn't that just going to increase the likelyhood they make sure I don't get a chance to fire it, for instance by shooting me in the back without warning? If they have a knife at least I can run, but few people can outrun a bullet.
By the way, I grew up in a hunting family. My grandad, my dad and my brother hunted. My brother is now a cop. So I am not unfamiliar with guns. I have been out on several hunting trips, and while I never was present while an animal was killed, I did see the dead bodies and the butchering. I have also done target shooting, and when I did military service I learned to use a machine gun (model 1945...I was a radar operator. If the enemy ever got into the command central it would be short distance combat, so the guns would actually be ok, especially since they are light to carry. They gave the modern guns, AK4 and AK5, to the people who would be in the field). So I have some familiarity with guns and might even be said to have experienced the "gun culture".
I believe you mentioned somewhere in another post that you disapproved of too much sex in the media (or did I confuse you with somebody else?). That is such an alien concept to me. If you have to censor something, I really prefer that they allow sex (a natural, pleasure giving, life affirming act) and ban violence like they do in Sweden, instead of the other way around like in the US.
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And if you are really really lucky, you can even get to see them kill something. Then you will see first hand the real purpose of a gun, what a metal bit passing though living tissue at high velocity really does. It's really fun.
>I actually think they should teach kids about guns in school, kind of like what they do with cars. They should show videos of gunshot wounds, like they do with car crashes. They should teach you basic things like "don't point a gun at anyone."
Yeah! Maybe it could even teach them that "guns are really dumb things, we would be better off without them in everyday society".
BTW, here is an URL for you. Recent research has shown that guns do not deter crime, they cause it.
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Could it be because the NRA bribes the republican party with millions of dollars to prevent any gun law, no matter how common sense, from being passed or enforced?
>Probably because the anti-gun crowd has an easier time getting more laws passed with a pile of dead kids around. If some parents did get locked up for being retards, other parents might get a clue and rates of accidental shootings might decline. That probably isn't optimal for the Master Plan, which is getting rid of all the guns period. (Was this an excessively cynical comment? Maybe. Maybe not.)
There is no maybe about it. That was the dumbest fucking thing I have ever heard. Why would someone ever be anti-gun if it wasn't to save kids from being killed by guns? Oh, of course, it is all a plot to disarm white trash so the UN can invade and occupy their precious trailer parks. Why would anyone want to? To get to all that precious Budweiser and fried chicken? Don't worry IronChef. You can keep it.
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An aside - whenever this topic comes up, 99% of the posters seem to agree that no connection exists, and that censorship is bad. I agree that we have to be careful with censorship, but I wanted to ask, what do you think causes the greater amount of violence in America? If it isn't the culture, what is it? If you say, "parents", what made American parents fail where parents from other countries succeed? If it isn't culture, what? Something in the water?
I'm not trolling. I really want to know your opinion on this.
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Er, sorry, but you got that mixed up.
Europe=continent.
US=country.
:-)
But I do agree with you that US companies have done better at expanding internationally. However, there are some very notable exceptions. Just looking at Scandinavia, I can think of Ericsson, Nokia, IKEA, Electrolux, Volvo, Saab, Bang & Olufsen. And as the European markets have become more competetive I think the number will increase a lot in the next couple of years.
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This was a couple of years ago, I haven't heard anything lately about it. So maybe the environmental fears were exaggerated, the boats were banned, or it just faded from public consciousness.
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>It's the wrong approach for several reasons. ACs
>posting the decrypted addresses is one of them.
Well, it's good enough to trick autoharvesters. So it shouldn't be a problem unless the AC is a total asshole and post it for them. Oh, wait, that's just what you did...
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