The issue with export controls isn't to prevent a foreign power from acquiring a nuclear weapon and then using it -- the issue is preventing them from building their own nukes en masse and then having nuclear capability, which means we can't just abuse them or invade them at will (like, say, Iraq), since they would then have some significant amount of power against us.
Whether it works is another story, but that's the idea -- the idea is not to prevent a rogue madman from nuking us.
Re:Dear "environmentalist" NIMBYs everywhere,
on
A Mighty Wind
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· Score: 1
Er, I thought the idea behind the OC airport would be so that people would stop driving from OC to LAX, thus LESSENING the traffic on the freeways (since they're driving a shorter distance to get to the OC airport), as well as lightening the load on LAX.
I seem to recall that Sauron is never seen in person in the novels; the most direct contact we ever have is when his servant quotes him to (I think) Gloin, which Gloin relates at the Council of Elrond.
Of course Sauron and his actions are referred to numerous times, but we never see him. I was suprised by this fact when I first read LOTR, mainly because I already know that the name "Lord of the Rings" referred to Sauron before I started reading it. I got to the end, and thought, "Wait a minute, we never saw Sauron!"
One box to hold them off, One box to blind them (with extra scenes). One box to bring them all (more extras), And in the darkness (of their living rooms) bind them.
In the Lord of the Rings novel, there are several lengthy appendices, one of which details the story of Arwen and Aragorn. Most of the details of this story are not in the main novel; we simply learn that they are betrothed (I think) but little more. As you pointed out, their marriage almost comes out of the blue in the novel.
As it would not be practical to include this appendix in its entirety in the films, a little more backstory is needed. (Granted, they changed it a bit from what happened in the novel, which may or may not have been advisable, but hey.)
Ok ok. I KNOW Im ranting in a crazy fashion. I appologize. It is just that I am a Tolkien fanatic. Imagine (linux geeks) if all of a sudden everyone was using lindows and talking about how great linux was and if you tried to tell them about debian, suse or whatever distro you liek they were like "hunh? thats not linux."
I avoid the problem by not being a fanatic about it in the first place.
(contrast this to the US or any number of European countries where unclassified films default to 18/X).
Not true in the U.S. We have (as of yet) no government ratings classification; what we do have is an organization (the MPAA) which will rate your movie if you pay them a fee. Theater owners generally agree to abide by the ratings, but there is nothing (e.g. laws) that forces them to do so.
A movie unrated by the MPAA is "unrated". In practice, this means that the MPAA wouldn't give them the rating they wanted, so they simply rejected the rating. Effectively, unrated films are generally shown only at "independent" art-house theaters or theater chains, of which there are several, and they have varying policies about how old you have to be to see such an "unrated" film (although as a practical matter, very few teenagers ever have any interest in seeing "unrated" films, as such films are usually artsy things that don't appeal to those under 20).
Maybe the best tool should win instead of the tool that has the most political power
The license the tool is provided under (i.e. GPL vs., say, one of MS's abusive licenses) certainly should be considered when determining what the "best" tool is. Only considering financial cost and the utility of the tool is shortsighted, especially considering the government's responsibility toward the people -- the government exists to serve us. If we can't tell whether the products the gov't buys are actually serving our needs (and, e.g., protecting our privacy), that's bad.
Here's an example from an earlier post on this topic. Imagine the Army is going to buy a Jeep. Should they buy the "open-source" Jeep that costs some small amount X, that they can open up, modify, fix, and do whatever they want to; or should they buy the "closed-source" Jeep that costs 10 times X, that runs a little bit better and a little bit faster than the other Jeep, but they are not allowed to open the hood or make any modifications to without getting sued by the vendor, and cannot repair without sending the Jeep off to a repair center three states away?
I'm ashamed to share a first name with this Oppenheim guy. If there were laws about logic abuse the same way there were laws about domestic abuse, Oppenheim would get the gas chamber.
In any event, are you suggesting that a royalty dispute between an artist and a label is justification for stealing from both of them? Would you feel free to shoplift a CD from a record store based on that logic?
What?! We're suddenly equating physical theft with duplicating information? How does he figure that? I'd go into more detail but I'm starting to get nauseous. I don't know how many more of these questions I can read through.
I guess I knew all I needed to know about the RIAA's position when I read Oppenheim's answer to the second question:
Matt Oppenheim from the Recording Industry Association of America responds:
AMEN!!
Yep. It's basically a religious issue. Which means they'll be just about as rational and reasonable as fundamentalists are. Not that it's surprising, given the RIAA's history.:)
Ballmer: "I'm shocked--shocked!--to find that spamming is going on here." Allchin: "The latest donation from the spammers, sir." Ballmer: (sotto voce) "Oh, thank you very much." (to customers) "Get out! Everyone out at once!"
It's kind of funny that you keep demanding that he "get a real education," yet you're incapable of spelling the word "dealt." In fact, you misspelled it twice, the same way ("dealth").
Here's another word you might not know how to spell: hipocrisy.
Anyway, what your argument seems to have changed to is something along the lines of, "It's wrong to cause pain to any living being (that is capable of feeling pain)." The obvious question is, why is that the case?
Re:but it's more humane!
on
Chicken Run
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· Score: 1
Correction: Assistant chicken masturbator.
Further correction: Chicken masturbator trainee.
Re:Once again, another of my 1337 job skillz hosed
on
Chicken Run
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· Score: 1
I guess, on chicken farms at least, that 20,000 is a sufficiently close approximation to a buhzillion (which, as we all know, is 1,000 gazillions or 1,000,000 bajillions).
You have regions like Phoenix and Los Angles who's enviroment doesn't naturally support humans,
I don't know about Phoenix, but this is false for Los Angeles. Various Indian tribes lived in the San Fernando Valley and the Los Angeles basin before the Europeans arrived. Contrary to popular belief, the LA basin is not and was never a desert; it was a Mediterranean climate like Greece or South Africa. Much of the surrounding areas (the eastern parts of the San Gabriel Valley, for example) were indeed desert, but not the basin itself (or the Valley).
In the dog-eat-dog world of tax preparation software,
Given the much taxes I had to pay last year, I may well end up eating dog. Our neighborhood does have a lot of them... maybe I can get a job with Animal Control.
I would think it's more the complexity of the Shuttle that makes it so that "any problem becomes huge," rather than the expense. Nonetheless, are you saying the Soyuz can't have a catastrophic failure that kills its crew? I can't imagine any more extreme a catastrophe than that for a spacecraft. (Aside from maybe crashing into a building on the ground.)
Note that when the Soyuz has a problem it gets lost and they have to spend a few hours looking for it, whereas when the Shuttle has a problem it blows up.
Not that there aren't examples of both these things happening recently, but come on, you can hardly pretend this is a general case -- like the only problem Soyuz ever has is going off-course, and the only problem the Shuttle ever has is blowing up.
(Reuters) Further research also produced an Instant Film Generation Algorithm (IFGA). The Perfect Film Formula (PFF) was then programmed into the IFGA and the scientists were delighted to see Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope produced spontaneously.
Viewers of the IFGA/PFF results were astounded and enthralled until someone realized that popcorn hadn't been figured into the PFF. The project was scrapped.
Oh my God -- I think you've just discovered the formula for the perfect movie! Although the "project" has to become self-aware and go on a killing spree... but aside from that, it's perfect!
Slashdot Mirror
The issue with export controls isn't to prevent a foreign power from acquiring a nuclear weapon and then using it -- the issue is preventing them from building their own nukes en masse and then having nuclear capability, which means we can't just abuse them or invade them at will (like, say, Iraq), since they would then have some significant amount of power against us.
Whether it works is another story, but that's the idea -- the idea is not to prevent a rogue madman from nuking us.
Er, I thought the idea behind the OC airport would be so that people would stop driving from OC to LAX, thus LESSENING the traffic on the freeways (since they're driving a shorter distance to get to the OC airport), as well as lightening the load on LAX.
I seem to recall that Sauron is never seen in person in the novels; the most direct contact we ever have is when his servant quotes him to (I think) Gloin, which Gloin relates at the Council of Elrond.
Of course Sauron and his actions are referred to numerous times, but we never see him. I was suprised by this fact when I first read LOTR, mainly because I already know that the name "Lord of the Rings" referred to Sauron before I started reading it. I got to the end, and thought, "Wait a minute, we never saw Sauron!"
Well, I don't own a DVD player or any DVDs, so there you go.
One box to hold them off,
One box to blind them (with extra scenes).
One box to bring them all (more extras),
And in the darkness (of their living rooms) bind them.
In the Lord of the Rings novel, there are several lengthy appendices, one of which details the story of Arwen and Aragorn. Most of the details of this story are not in the main novel; we simply learn that they are betrothed (I think) but little more. As you pointed out, their marriage almost comes out of the blue in the novel.
As it would not be practical to include this appendix in its entirety in the films, a little more backstory is needed. (Granted, they changed it a bit from what happened in the novel, which may or may not have been advisable, but hey.)
A movie unrated by the MPAA is "unrated". In practice, this means that the MPAA wouldn't give them the rating they wanted, so they simply rejected the rating. Effectively, unrated films are generally shown only at "independent" art-house theaters or theater chains, of which there are several, and they have varying policies about how old you have to be to see such an "unrated" film (although as a practical matter, very few teenagers ever have any interest in seeing "unrated" films, as such films are usually artsy things that don't appeal to those under 20).
Here's an example from an earlier post on this topic. Imagine the Army is going to buy a Jeep. Should they buy the "open-source" Jeep that costs some small amount X, that they can open up, modify, fix, and do whatever they want to; or should they buy the "closed-source" Jeep that costs 10 times X, that runs a little bit better and a little bit faster than the other Jeep, but they are not allowed to open the hood or make any modifications to without getting sued by the vendor, and cannot repair without sending the Jeep off to a repair center three states away?
I guess I knew all I needed to know about the RIAA's position when I read Oppenheim's answer to the second question:
Yep. It's basically a religious issue. Which means they'll be just about as rational and reasonable as fundamentalists are. Not that it's surprising, given the RIAA's history.Ballmer: "I'm shocked--shocked!--to find that spamming is going on here."
Allchin: "The latest donation from the spammers, sir."
Ballmer: (sotto voce) "Oh, thank you very much." (to customers) "Get out! Everyone out at once!"
It's kind of funny that you keep demanding that he "get a real education," yet you're incapable of spelling the word "dealt." In fact, you misspelled it twice, the same way ("dealth").
Here's another word you might not know how to spell: hipocrisy.
Anyway, what your argument seems to have changed to is something along the lines of, "It's wrong to cause pain to any living being (that is capable of feeling pain)." The obvious question is, why is that the case?
I guess, on chicken farms at least, that 20,000 is a sufficiently close approximation to a buhzillion (which, as we all know, is 1,000 gazillions or 1,000,000 bajillions).
You think that's bad? Try this search. I mean, come on! "Death to Smoochy" my ass.
I would think it's more the complexity of the Shuttle that makes it so that "any problem becomes huge," rather than the expense. Nonetheless, are you saying the Soyuz can't have a catastrophic failure that kills its crew? I can't imagine any more extreme a catastrophe than that for a spacecraft. (Aside from maybe crashing into a building on the ground.)