It's not a concern that's specific to FOSS software, but in fairness, a change in direction for a product that is a fairly important component of your workplace infrastructure *should* be cause for a re-evaluation.
Is the software going to be actively supported, upgraded, maintained? Is it going to be left to die a slow, languishing death-by-neglect? If it's going to be actively supported, is the strategy for the product in line with your intended use for it? Are their suitable replacements for it if that vision diverges from your intended use? How much time and effort will be spent on the rollout & training associated with the software?
There's more to it than just "If someday the company goes out of business, you still have the source code" - this is not a winning selling point for a lot of businesses, simply because they don't have the expertise in-house, or the money to hire expertise, to support it and continue development themselves, meaning that they're in the same boat with open source if the project just simply dies due to apathy. Major shifts in ownership/stewardship of a piece of important business software is always a reason to review your own strategy with respect to that software's function.
No it not. Its designed to make it look like they are "doing something",
Notice I said "aimed at," not "successful at."
You won't find anybody in the TSA who will tell you that the checkpoints and the scanners and everything else are designed to "prevent somebody with a suitcase bomb from walking up to the crowd queued for entry and detonating the bomb."
You will find people at the TSA who will tell you that the checkpoints and scanners are intended to prevent people from getting a bomb or a knife or a gun onto a plane.
Criticizing these precautions because they "don't stop an attack like [the one that just happened in Russia]," is, again, like criticizing a bathing suit because it doesn't keep you dry. It's not meant to, it was never meant to, and nobody has ever suggested it would.
Wow, I like how you were specifically putting in the clause for "last ten years" so you could intentionally ignore the case of Matthew Shepard. As if anything older than 10 years is too old to be remembered.
And if that's all you can cite for "CHristian-sanctioned murder," then:
1) It's clearly not as common as you suggest; 2) Matthew Shepard was not killed by "Christian" fundamentalists - he was killed by a couple of ignorant homophobe assholes whose stated intent was to rob him, but then they "panicked because he made a pass at them."
You have a very high burden of proof to demonstrate that Matthew Shepard's murder had ANYTHING to do with Christian sanction, motivation, or beliefs.
9/11 2001 is going to be 10 years this September, so I guess you should forgive all Muslims, right? Beck, Limbaugh and Palin can't mention 9/11 during their 2012 Presidential runs, right, because it's too old?
I never held "all Muslims" responsible for the 9/11 attacks, so your straw man is humorous. If they use 9/11 to suggest that we're "constantly under assault by followers of Islam every day, in every way," then yes, they're out of line, and full of shit. Of course, Beck & Limbaugh will almost certainly NOT be running for the presidency anyway, so I'm not sure why you're lumping them in with Ms. Palin.
But seriously, there isn't room to list all the offenses of American Christians throughout the rest of the world.
I didn't ask you to list all of them. I specifically asked you to cite a few from the last 10 years, to deliberately narrow your expected response time frame. You saw that as me "deliberately" omitting Matthew Shepard - so pick any from the last 50 years if you'd rather. List 5 crimes from any recent time period you prefer where you feel that there was *Christian sanction* for the crime - either encouraged or condoned by a Christian church.
Let's just say that American foreign policy is geared to make everyone in the world hate America.
You present no coherent argument to justify this statement, and you're completely jumping topics anyway. American foreign policy is not "Christian policy." You are so confused by your blind hatred that you can't even formulate a coherent statement on a single point. Please explain to us why we should give a shit what you have to say, when you're so obviously incapable of rational thought and discussion?
When you behave as if everybody else around you is hostile to your way of thinking and lash out, you create people who are hostile to your points. As someone who obviously considers himself a student of "good" foreign policy, I'd think you'd accept that as axiomatic.
It's also in Google's interests to implement weak voluntary controls rather than FTC-mandated strict controls that would more-directly impinge on Google's bottom line.
An FTC ruling which dictates something along the lines of "You must default everybody to opted-out of all advertisements, and allow them to opt back in if they wish to," pretty much destroys Google's business overnight. "No need for the FTC to take action, since the browser makers have already provided a system to allow users to opt out of advertisements if they wish to," hurts a lot less.
Yes, it allows the advertisers to lie more effectively so they can bilk you out of more of your money than they could otherwise.
How so? How does me knowing that the model of guitar I'm looking for is available from some out-of-state dealer (who's offering free shipping, to boot!) for about 10% less than I can find it near where I live bilk me out of money?
The act of advertising a service, or a product, is not intrinsically evil. And the act of connecting businesses advertising a product or service with customers who are more likely to be looking for that product or service means two things: 1) People not looking for that product or service are less likely to see those ads and have their time wasted by nonsense; 2) Advertisers have to spend less money connecting to the people who are interested in their products or services, which has a long-term effect of lowering prices through competition.
Fraudulent advertising is evil. Basing your purchasing decisions on nothing but advertising decisions is foolish. But using advertisements as a piece of information in the overall research and decision-making process? Whyever would you consider that to be a bad thing?
If you care about your instrument, wouldn't you want to base your decisions on information from unbiased sources? How does it benefit you to inject biased information into that process?
How is it being injected into the process? In the course of doing my research, I decided to buy a particular Yamaha guitar, based on the reviews I found in several and my own experience with them.
So... I know the model I want, and now I want to look and see if I can find a good deal on it, and perhaps find people in my area who offer lessons and supplies... why wouldn't it be helpful to be able to compare prices of vendors who do business both online, and in my area? In some cases, the advertisements I've found are for businesses that I had no idea even existed, because they're miles away in towns I rarely visit - but easily found once I know they exist.
I don't just type in "buy a guitar" and click the first ad that comes up - and frankly, the people who would do that are gullible buffoons who need no help from advertisements to spend foolishly.
The "security theater" was never intended to, and never will be able to, prevent this type of attack. It's aimed at preventing people from hijacking or blowing up planes in-flight.
Its effectiveness in achieving that aim is certainly an open question, but criticizing security by saying "the security checkpoints don't stop this type of attack," is sort of like saying "bathing suits are useless because they don't keep you dry."
The vast majority appear to be knee-jerk, xenophobic rednecks who watch Fox News and believe everything Glenn Beck says.
What the FUCK are you on about? First: American population is roughly 307 million people. Second: Glenn Beck has sold ~5 million copies of his books since 2003. Third: Fox News's highest ratings that I can find suggest an average of about 3.3 million viewers daily.
good Christians beat to death any Homosexuals they tend to come across
Cite the numerous cases, by name please, of all the homosexuals who have been beaten to death by "good Christians" in the last ten years? Shit, give me 3 names where there is a verifiable "christian" element or motivation to the murder.
the KKK, also run by good Christians...
More facts: 1) estimates of the size of the KKK today suggest 5,000 to 10,000 members; US is, once again, 300+million people; 2) No modern Christian church suggests that the mission of the KKK makes members "good Christians" 3) It is possible to be an ignorant racist, while also still claiming to be a "good Christian" - this does not make the "good Christian" name accurate;
Get stuffed, you ignorant twat. If you're going to make sweeping assertions that bear no resemblance to the real world, expect to be called out on it and modded down.
Good points. A lot of the "online tracking" that people seem to get so wound up about is simply allowing advertisers to target interested people with their advertisements more directly. If I spend a lot of time researching and reading about guitars (something I did recently), and I end up seeing lots of ads related to music - lessons, instrument sales, instrument service, sheet music... I really don't see a problem with that.
There are a handful of sites that I would pay a subscription fee of a few bucks a month for an ad-free / no-tracking option (Facebook, Gmail, maybe one or two others), but for most web sites, I don't begrudge them their ad revenue.
The title was just about the only slanted aspect of the release.
That, and the editing to remove evidence that supported the military's assertion that they appeared to be an armed group of insurgents and that the helicopter that fired on them was completely justified in doing so based on that evidence.
Yes, they provided a link to the unedited video. How many people actually clicked it, versus how many people watched "Collateral Murder" in its edited form, and simply accepted what they were shown - that the US military was just flying circles over Baghdad lighting up random people. They intentionally omitted the footage showing the men carrying what appear to be weapons, and they named it in as sensational a way as possible to paint the military in a horrific light.
All things considered, such a service is so valuable that anyone who supports government accountability should be thankful to Wikileaks, even if they disagree with the apparent bias.
This, I can agree with you on, at least in principle, and I've said so here on Slashdot repeatedly. I think that Wikileaks does provide a valuable service. I do not like Mr. Assange's editorializing about the content they're releasing, and I think it only serves to undermine their mission and make them (and him) less credible. Let the information speak for itself.
The Collateral Murder video footage was powerful. But they introduced bias to it. Let people watch the full & unedited version, and understand that war: 1) Requires young men and women with very imperfect information to make quick decisions about the situation they see unfolding in front of them, and act on it; 2) Is not a series of explosions and fire-from-the-hip Rambo footage. Modern warfare is in fact, large stretches of "mostly nothing happens" interspersed with a few minutes of gut-wrenching "interesting parts".
That video would have painted a terrifically informative picture of modern warfare for the average civilian... unfortunately, it painted a picture that said "these kids are trigger-happy monsters, and are just looking for an excuse to kill anybody they see walking down the street." Frankly, I'd say that the people who are already predisposed to agree with that message simply use the collateral murder video as a way to reinforce that notion, and never bothered to watch the full unedited video. And in that regard, they're no better than the people who refuse to watch any news source other than Fox.
Oh, but surely that was just a difference of opinion. The Pharaoh wanted slaves, the Jews didn't want to be slaves. They could have compromised and sold HALF of their family into slavery, while the other half remained free. After all, it's not like being sold into slavery to the ancient Egyptians was a *bad* thing. But the Jews, they lacked the essential spirit of compromise, you see.
(/tongue firmly in cheek, before I have to come back and "woosh" someone.)
Well... in the city you're correct - they all ride carriages and wear swell top hats. But they don't drive carriages when they're hunting foxes, and that's pretty much all they do when they're not working or living a live-action Jane Austen piece.
"They sent people to Iraq to confirm the authenticity, and then edited the video to paint a completely different picture of events that more strongly supported Mr. Assange's agenda," you mean... right?
What you see in the Collateral Murder video is *not* "unvarnished truth" - you see a highly edited segment of video that does its worst to paint the US military in the most harmful light possible.
If it were truth they were after, they would have left in the segments where you can see men in the group that gets fired upon walking around carrying AK-47's.
I'll ask once more: please submit your nominations for series that meet your criteria?
Fringe is, according to the 'story premise,' involved with fringe science - stuff that is not accepted and supported by most current scientific thinking. In light of that, the fact that many of the things going on in Fringe aren't 'scientific' fits quite well with the "logic established by the story premise."
Again: If you don't *like* Fringe, that's fine. But if you're trying to argue that it's not "science fiction," then your argument is nothing but pointless smug pedantry.
Science fiction, adheres well to logical story lines and of adhering to the logic established by the story premise.
In light of this statement, please list the 1 or 2 remaining "sci-fi" shows or movies that fit your definition? Because NONE of the popular ones do.
Hint: using such words as "midichlorians," "dilithium," and "firefly-class spaceship" does nothing to make the content they're talking about inherently more "scientific". They're all just made-up words for made-up stuff, that happens to take place in outer space and involve spaceships.
All science fiction is an exercise in world-creation and speculation: "What would happen if...?" "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" If you don't happen to like the universe that Fringe inhabits, then that's fine. But I'd say it's pretty clear that Fringe, from the outset and by design, has inhabited an area where "fringe" science - what we would call pseudoscience, controversial theories, and speculative guessing far beyond the limits of our current scientific understanding - is one of the defining points of the plot. This gives us alternate universes, reanimation of the dead, genetic hybrids, and dozens of other plot devices which are... controversial, speculative, or just flat-out impossible given our current understanding of science.
In short, your smug pedantry adds nothing to the discussion, and just makes you sound like a douche.
Science fiction is speculative. The "science grounding" of Fringe is in the already speculative/controversial/pseudoscience area of Fringe science. And it is, most importantly, "fiction".
There are hundreds of "science fiction" stories whose central premises have more or less NO support in our current scientific knowledge: they consist of the author saying, "wouldn't it be cool if..." and "what if THIS happened..." and they use vaguely scientific language wrapped up with a lot of metaphor to "explain" how it works.
I mean come on: Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Stargate, X-Files... none of these very popular "science fiction" stories have a hard science orientation. Your narrow view of "what may properly be called science fiction" certainly doesn't fit the accepted definition.
I look at it the same way - it's a bit of entertaining fun, watching Astrid & Walter play off one another in the lab is amusing, and Anna Torv isn't exactly difficult to look at.
I don't expect to get a course in physics out of it.
What was said: Fringe is thousands of magnitudes better than American Idol, et. al.
Your response: Raw corn is way better than shit, but you never hear somebody calling their friends to "come over for raw corn."
My response to you: "And yet, corn is actually a popular edible. Shit, not so much."
You seem to be suggesting that somebody was saying "WOW FRINGE R TEH BEST SHOWZ EVAR, NOT HORRIBLE LIKE DAT STOOPID MERICAN EYEDULL." In fact, nobody said that. Mister Whirly essentially said "for all the 'cringe' factor, it's still thousands of times better than American Idol." "A thousand times better" is a relative statement, not an absolute: You can be "a thousand times better" than something very bad, and still not be very good yourself.
So perhaps the problem isn't with our comprehension of your metaphor, so much as the fact that your metaphor was poorly constructed, and aimed at a point that nobody suggested or implied?
Fringe science, also called questionable science, is scientific inquiry in an established field of study that departs significantly from mainstream or orthodox theories, and is classified in the "fringes" of a credible mainstream academic discipline. Mainstream scientists typically regard fringe concepts as highly speculative or even strongly refuted. [ . . . ] The term fringe science is sometimes loosely used to describe fields that are actually pseudosciences, or fields which are referred to as sciences, but entirely lack scientific rigor or plausibility. Debunkers have coined the terms pathological science, voodoo science, and cargo cult science to suggest inquiry lacking in scientific integrity.
So I'm curious. What part of the series' title... and its entire premise... led you to believe that it was going to be a hard-science program, with rigorous hard-science underpinnings and pages of proofs and calculations issued with every episode?
It's very unlikely that there is no back-spray that lands on your pants. Taking a leak (and, incidentally - FLUSHING) cause droplets to spray up and out of the toilet.
Unless you're literally hung like a horse and can stand clear across the room from the urinal, it's virtually guaranteed that some spray will find its way back to your pants.
We're not talking "pissed your pants" amounts of spray, but do the math over 15 months, and add up the volume of a couple drops a day, splashed at random between your knees and belt.
Of course, the form of the argument isn't the important part. The actual numbers and data associated with it, and whether or not they support the conclusion, are what matters, and I think it's safe to say that "illegal abortions" and "open software and standards" have very little common ground when it comes to comparing the validity of arguments about them.
No, it would likely cost you ten-20 cents tacked onto the price of your computer or other USB-enabled device to license your device's USB implementation.
Those fees would then be paid by the manufacturer to the "USB Consortium" for royalty licensing on the devices they manufacture that implement USB.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not a concern that's specific to FOSS software, but in fairness, a change in direction for a product that is a fairly important component of your workplace infrastructure *should* be cause for a re-evaluation.
Is the software going to be actively supported, upgraded, maintained? Is it going to be left to die a slow, languishing death-by-neglect? If it's going to be actively supported, is the strategy for the product in line with your intended use for it? Are their suitable replacements for it if that vision diverges from your intended use? How much time and effort will be spent on the rollout & training associated with the software?
There's more to it than just "If someday the company goes out of business, you still have the source code" - this is not a winning selling point for a lot of businesses, simply because they don't have the expertise in-house, or the money to hire expertise, to support it and continue development themselves, meaning that they're in the same boat with open source if the project just simply dies due to apathy. Major shifts in ownership/stewardship of a piece of important business software is always a reason to review your own strategy with respect to that software's function.
Notice I said "aimed at," not "successful at."
You won't find anybody in the TSA who will tell you that the checkpoints and the scanners and everything else are designed to "prevent somebody with a suitcase bomb from walking up to the crowd queued for entry and detonating the bomb."
You will find people at the TSA who will tell you that the checkpoints and scanners are intended to prevent people from getting a bomb or a knife or a gun onto a plane.
Criticizing these precautions because they "don't stop an attack like [the one that just happened in Russia]," is, again, like criticizing a bathing suit because it doesn't keep you dry. It's not meant to, it was never meant to, and nobody has ever suggested it would.
And if that's all you can cite for "CHristian-sanctioned murder," then:
1) It's clearly not as common as you suggest;
2) Matthew Shepard was not killed by "Christian" fundamentalists - he was killed by a couple of ignorant homophobe assholes whose stated intent was to rob him, but then they "panicked because he made a pass at them."
You have a very high burden of proof to demonstrate that Matthew Shepard's murder had ANYTHING to do with Christian sanction, motivation, or beliefs.
I never held "all Muslims" responsible for the 9/11 attacks, so your straw man is humorous. If they use 9/11 to suggest that we're "constantly under assault by followers of Islam every day, in every way," then yes, they're out of line, and full of shit. Of course, Beck & Limbaugh will almost certainly NOT be running for the presidency anyway, so I'm not sure why you're lumping them in with Ms. Palin.
I didn't ask you to list all of them. I specifically asked you to cite a few from the last 10 years, to deliberately narrow your expected response time frame. You saw that as me "deliberately" omitting Matthew Shepard - so pick any from the last 50 years if you'd rather. List 5 crimes from any recent time period you prefer where you feel that there was *Christian sanction* for the crime - either encouraged or condoned by a Christian church.
You present no coherent argument to justify this statement, and you're completely jumping topics anyway. American foreign policy is not "Christian policy." You are so confused by your blind hatred that you can't even formulate a coherent statement on a single point. Please explain to us why we should give a shit what you have to say, when you're so obviously incapable of rational thought and discussion?
When you behave as if everybody else around you is hostile to your way of thinking and lash out, you create people who are hostile to your points. As someone who obviously considers himself a student of "good" foreign policy, I'd think you'd accept that as axiomatic.
It's also in Google's interests to implement weak voluntary controls rather than FTC-mandated strict controls that would more-directly impinge on Google's bottom line.
An FTC ruling which dictates something along the lines of "You must default everybody to opted-out of all advertisements, and allow them to opt back in if they wish to," pretty much destroys Google's business overnight. "No need for the FTC to take action, since the browser makers have already provided a system to allow users to opt out of advertisements if they wish to," hurts a lot less.
Yeah... self-righteous parroting of ignorant myths gets you an Insightful mod, while justifiable irritation with obvious trolls gets you a Troll mod.
Such is life.
How so? How does me knowing that the model of guitar I'm looking for is available from some out-of-state dealer (who's offering free shipping, to boot!) for about 10% less than I can find it near where I live bilk me out of money?
The act of advertising a service, or a product, is not intrinsically evil. And the act of connecting businesses advertising a product or service with customers who are more likely to be looking for that product or service means two things:
1) People not looking for that product or service are less likely to see those ads and have their time wasted by nonsense;
2) Advertisers have to spend less money connecting to the people who are interested in their products or services, which has a long-term effect of lowering prices through competition.
Fraudulent advertising is evil. Basing your purchasing decisions on nothing but advertising decisions is foolish. But using advertisements as a piece of information in the overall research and decision-making process? Whyever would you consider that to be a bad thing?
How is it being injected into the process? In the course of doing my research, I decided to buy a particular Yamaha guitar, based on the reviews I found in several and my own experience with them.
So... I know the model I want, and now I want to look and see if I can find a good deal on it, and perhaps find people in my area who offer lessons and supplies... why wouldn't it be helpful to be able to compare prices of vendors who do business both online, and in my area? In some cases, the advertisements I've found are for businesses that I had no idea even existed, because they're miles away in towns I rarely visit - but easily found once I know they exist.
I don't just type in "buy a guitar" and click the first ad that comes up - and frankly, the people who would do that are gullible buffoons who need no help from advertisements to spend foolishly.
The "security theater" was never intended to, and never will be able to, prevent this type of attack. It's aimed at preventing people from hijacking or blowing up planes in-flight.
Its effectiveness in achieving that aim is certainly an open question, but criticizing security by saying "the security checkpoints don't stop this type of attack," is sort of like saying "bathing suits are useless because they don't keep you dry."
What the FUCK are you on about?
First: American population is roughly 307 million people.
Second: Glenn Beck has sold ~5 million copies of his books since 2003.
Third: Fox News's highest ratings that I can find suggest an average of about 3.3 million viewers daily.
Cite the numerous cases, by name please, of all the homosexuals who have been beaten to death by "good Christians" in the last ten years? Shit, give me 3 names where there is a verifiable "christian" element or motivation to the murder.
More facts:
1) estimates of the size of the KKK today suggest 5,000 to 10,000 members; US is, once again, 300+million people;
2) No modern Christian church suggests that the mission of the KKK makes members "good Christians"
3) It is possible to be an ignorant racist, while also still claiming to be a "good Christian" - this does not make the "good Christian" name accurate;
Get stuffed, you ignorant twat. If you're going to make sweeping assertions that bear no resemblance to the real world, expect to be called out on it and modded down.
Good points. A lot of the "online tracking" that people seem to get so wound up about is simply allowing advertisers to target interested people with their advertisements more directly. If I spend a lot of time researching and reading about guitars (something I did recently), and I end up seeing lots of ads related to music - lessons, instrument sales, instrument service, sheet music... I really don't see a problem with that.
There are a handful of sites that I would pay a subscription fee of a few bucks a month for an ad-free / no-tracking option (Facebook, Gmail, maybe one or two others), but for most web sites, I don't begrudge them their ad revenue.
That, and the editing to remove evidence that supported the military's assertion that they appeared to be an armed group of insurgents and that the helicopter that fired on them was completely justified in doing so based on that evidence.
Yes, they provided a link to the unedited video. How many people actually clicked it, versus how many people watched "Collateral Murder" in its edited form, and simply accepted what they were shown - that the US military was just flying circles over Baghdad lighting up random people. They intentionally omitted the footage showing the men carrying what appear to be weapons, and they named it in as sensational a way as possible to paint the military in a horrific light.
This, I can agree with you on, at least in principle, and I've said so here on Slashdot repeatedly. I think that Wikileaks does provide a valuable service. I do not like Mr. Assange's editorializing about the content they're releasing, and I think it only serves to undermine their mission and make them (and him) less credible. Let the information speak for itself.
The Collateral Murder video footage was powerful. But they introduced bias to it. Let people watch the full & unedited version, and understand that war:
1) Requires young men and women with very imperfect information to make quick decisions about the situation they see unfolding in front of them, and act on it;
2) Is not a series of explosions and fire-from-the-hip Rambo footage. Modern warfare is in fact, large stretches of "mostly nothing happens" interspersed with a few minutes of gut-wrenching "interesting parts".
That video would have painted a terrifically informative picture of modern warfare for the average civilian... unfortunately, it painted a picture that said "these kids are trigger-happy monsters, and are just looking for an excuse to kill anybody they see walking down the street." Frankly, I'd say that the people who are already predisposed to agree with that message simply use the collateral murder video as a way to reinforce that notion, and never bothered to watch the full unedited video. And in that regard, they're no better than the people who refuse to watch any news source other than Fox.
When the problem was created by "global involvement," it's not unreasonable to think that "global involvement" might be required to solve it as well.
And you're wrong about worst case: worst case is a handful of survivors from each side end up squabbling over a radioactive glass parking lot.
Oh, but surely that was just a difference of opinion. The Pharaoh wanted slaves, the Jews didn't want to be slaves. They could have compromised and sold HALF of their family into slavery, while the other half remained free. After all, it's not like being sold into slavery to the ancient Egyptians was a *bad* thing. But the Jews, they lacked the essential spirit of compromise, you see.
(/tongue firmly in cheek, before I have to come back and "woosh" someone.)
Well... in the city you're correct - they all ride carriages and wear swell top hats. But they don't drive carriages when they're hunting foxes, and that's pretty much all they do when they're not working or living a live-action Jane Austen piece.
"They sent people to Iraq to confirm the authenticity, and then edited the video to paint a completely different picture of events that more strongly supported Mr. Assange's agenda," you mean... right?
What you see in the Collateral Murder video is *not* "unvarnished truth" - you see a highly edited segment of video that does its worst to paint the US military in the most harmful light possible.
If it were truth they were after, they would have left in the segments where you can see men in the group that gets fired upon walking around carrying AK-47's.
I'll ask once more: please submit your nominations for series that meet your criteria?
Fringe is, according to the 'story premise,' involved with fringe science - stuff that is not accepted and supported by most current scientific thinking. In light of that, the fact that many of the things going on in Fringe aren't 'scientific' fits quite well with the "logic established by the story premise."
Again: If you don't *like* Fringe, that's fine. But if you're trying to argue that it's not "science fiction," then your argument is nothing but pointless smug pedantry.
In light of this statement, please list the 1 or 2 remaining "sci-fi" shows or movies that fit your definition? Because NONE of the popular ones do.
Hint: using such words as "midichlorians," "dilithium," and "firefly-class spaceship" does nothing to make the content they're talking about inherently more "scientific". They're all just made-up words for made-up stuff, that happens to take place in outer space and involve spaceships.
All science fiction is an exercise in world-creation and speculation: "What would happen if...?" "Wouldn't it be cool if...?" If you don't happen to like the universe that Fringe inhabits, then that's fine. But I'd say it's pretty clear that Fringe, from the outset and by design, has inhabited an area where "fringe" science - what we would call pseudoscience, controversial theories, and speculative guessing far beyond the limits of our current scientific understanding - is one of the defining points of the plot. This gives us alternate universes, reanimation of the dead, genetic hybrids, and dozens of other plot devices which are... controversial, speculative, or just flat-out impossible given our current understanding of science.
In short, your smug pedantry adds nothing to the discussion, and just makes you sound like a douche.
Science fiction is speculative. The "science grounding" of Fringe is in the already speculative/controversial/pseudoscience area of Fringe science. And it is, most importantly, "fiction".
There are hundreds of "science fiction" stories whose central premises have more or less NO support in our current scientific knowledge: they consist of the author saying, "wouldn't it be cool if..." and "what if THIS happened..." and they use vaguely scientific language wrapped up with a lot of metaphor to "explain" how it works.
I mean come on: Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, Star Trek, Stargate, X-Files... none of these very popular "science fiction" stories have a hard science orientation. Your narrow view of "what may properly be called science fiction" certainly doesn't fit the accepted definition.
I look at it the same way - it's a bit of entertaining fun, watching Astrid & Walter play off one another in the lab is amusing, and Anna Torv isn't exactly difficult to look at.
I don't expect to get a course in physics out of it.
What was said: Fringe is thousands of magnitudes better than American Idol, et. al.
Your response: Raw corn is way better than shit, but you never hear somebody calling their friends to "come over for raw corn."
My response to you: "And yet, corn is actually a popular edible. Shit, not so much."
You seem to be suggesting that somebody was saying "WOW FRINGE R TEH BEST SHOWZ EVAR, NOT HORRIBLE LIKE DAT STOOPID MERICAN EYEDULL." In fact, nobody said that. Mister Whirly essentially said "for all the 'cringe' factor, it's still thousands of times better than American Idol." "A thousand times better" is a relative statement, not an absolute: You can be "a thousand times better" than something very bad, and still not be very good yourself.
So perhaps the problem isn't with our comprehension of your metaphor, so much as the fact that your metaphor was poorly constructed, and aimed at a point that nobody suggested or implied?
I'm curious why you think that "science fiction" must be scientifically accurate to qualify as science fiction .
And yet, corn on the cob - "Hot corn on a stick" - is a staple of summer barbecues. Grilled Shit? Not so much.
From the wikipedia entry for fringe science:
So I'm curious. What part of the series' title... and its entire premise... led you to believe that it was going to be a hard-science program, with rigorous hard-science underpinnings and pages of proofs and calculations issued with every episode?
It's very unlikely that there is no back-spray that lands on your pants. Taking a leak (and, incidentally - FLUSHING) cause droplets to spray up and out of the toilet.
Unless you're literally hung like a horse and can stand clear across the room from the urinal, it's virtually guaranteed that some spray will find its way back to your pants.
We're not talking "pissed your pants" amounts of spray, but do the math over 15 months, and add up the volume of a couple drops a day, splashed at random between your knees and belt.
Funny you mention that - this very argument shows up on lots of pro-choice web sites as a significant reason why pro-lifers are misguided and wrong.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=pro-choice+back-alley
Of course, the form of the argument isn't the important part. The actual numbers and data associated with it, and whether or not they support the conclusion, are what matters, and I think it's safe to say that "illegal abortions" and "open software and standards" have very little common ground when it comes to comparing the validity of arguments about them.
No, it would likely cost you ten-20 cents tacked onto the price of your computer or other USB-enabled device to license your device's USB implementation.
Those fees would then be paid by the manufacturer to the "USB Consortium" for royalty licensing on the devices they manufacture that implement USB.
Just like H.264.