jere7my @ 144,
I agree that in the AU the Romulans will have time to get their act together. But what is wrong with the Vulcans that after centuries of space travel they only have ten thousand individuals living off Vulcan? It's pretty clear that the Federation colonizes uninhabited planets. Even if the Vulcans have ethical objections to terraforming (vulcanforming?) and/or colonization, anybody interested in the long-term preservation of their species and culture needs to have significant presence elsewhere in the galaxy--- building orbital habitats in other systems is well within the capability of Star Trek (even ToS) technology.
Maybe this is yet another case of Vulcans hiding their irrational biases under the pretense of "logic".
The movie makes much of being an 'alternate reality' due to the presence of old Spock and Nero. I'm worried that they simply won't carry through on the right implications of this for the Star Trek universe.
When you drop a traveller into our time from a century hence, his knowledge of history and politics becomes rapidly obsolete the more he impacts the course of development. Certainly old Spock will face this problem, living with the destruction of Vulcan. And this provides a "reboot" where the crew can have different adventures. (Though I've seen a complaint or two that the same crew getting together smacks too much of fate.)
But, it doesn't go quite far enough. That traveller will bring both knowledge of events he can't alter, and knowledge of the properties of the universe. When it's somebody as well-versed in science and technology as Spock, he brings the capability for a technological leap. )Which was used even in this movie._
The first property implies that there are still Borg. Still the Dominion. That whale probe from Star Trek IV. The Doomsday machine. Heck, even Organians. Based on the explanation given for the reboot, the Federation is still going to have to deal with all of them--- even if the Enterprise does not. I'm unhappy if these world-shattering events are simply ignored, but equally unhappy to retread them. How do you deal with that in a 'reboot' which tries to hook into the same continuity through time travel?
The second implies that rather than being at technological parity with the Klingons and Romulans, the Federation may come to dominate its local space. What does a hundred years of new science do to the Federation? To the balance of power with its neighbors? I don't trust the writers to pay sufficient attention to this. As others have said, I'm surprised they left old Spock alive.
Remus@12:
The panel is pretty thin and lightweight; it's some sort of flexible electroluminescent. It wears pretty well, so I didn't have another shirt on underneath. There is a cable (encased in a cloth sheath for comfort) running down to a belt battery pack so the heavier components are not on the chest.
On the other hand, it's not quite as comfortable as wearing a normal T-shirt. The velcro connecting the panel and the T-shirt can cause it to hang somewhat funny, or give way and let the panel curl up a little bit.
I do, in fact, own one of these. DDB has a picture of me wearing it at 4th street.
Somebody made a T-shirt with a scrolling LED text display but most sites report being out of stock.
I'd like to make my own improved one (to play Life on a small grid, maybe) but that seems a sure-fire way to attract unwanted bomb-scare attention these days.
As Paul says, even if the "anti-virus" story is correct, it's still Premiere's fault. If you're going to be moving data around (on smartcards or anything else) you need to use the proper techniques and safeguards against data corruption. Just doing a copy and hoping that everything works isn't acceptable for a high-reliability application.
(Unfortunately reliable copying is the classic example of the "end-to-end" principle and yet the one that hardly anybody gets right.)
I've heard plenty of excuses for Buckley today.
One is that he was just a product of his time--- it's been 50 years. Bull-crap. There are octogenarians today who opposed Buckley. They were right and he was wrong.
Another is that we shouldn't be so hasty to criticize the newly dead. Again, bull-crap. Obituaries should serve not merely to praise but also criticize. If it is wrong to speak ill of the newly dead, how much more the living (who can be offended) or the ancient dead (who cannot defend themselves.)
Plenty of people convert; some even ask forgiveness. Very few ponder why they arrived at the wrong conclusion, and what else they might be wrong about. There is no sign Buckley achieved the slightest bit of self doubt from being so egregiously wrong in the 50's.
Musicals are big, right?
1. The lost heir to the throne of Venice is found on Mars, living a humble life shuttling cargo around the (post-terraforming) Martian canals. Unfortunately, so his is brother. The firstborn brother has stayed in the solar system; the second son has taken a near-lightspeed trip to Alpha Centauri and back. Now nobody can determine which is the "older" heir and the rightful husband of the beautiful Casilda. While the International Court of Justice debates the situation, the brothers must rule jointly. Their Martian egalitarianism shocks the staid classism of Old Earth... until the true heir is discovered in an unlikely guise.
2. Felicia Carpenter was born on Mars but grew up on Earth. There, she was mistakenly apprenticed to an arms broker rather than a mortgage broker. Obedient to her duty, she engages in her master's horrible trade until her 21st birthday, when she gains her independence and promises to bring him to justice. A retired major general and his handsome clone-sons ally with Felicia, until the startling revelation that her term of service lasts until her 21st Martian year! Only an even more shocking revelation can save Felicia from the bonds of duty and the major general from the wrath of the arms broker.
3. The Dzur Heir, Princess Irisfields, opens a military leadership academy for Teckla, much to the dismay of her father, her fiance Hirtrinknef, her House, and the Emperor. Hirtrinknef has not seen his promised bride in many centuries, but promises to woo her anew and turn her from this socially-disruptive plan.
Hirtrinknef and two friends enter the academy disguised as common Teckla, and ridicule the strange ideas they find there. Hirtrinknef saves Irisfields' life from a Jhereg assassin but she demands his life in payment for his trespass and subterfuge. Hirtrinknef and his friends successfully fight a duel with Irisfields' three oafish half-breed brothers, easily outwitting them. Irisfields, defeated, agrees to marry and admits at last that only the noble classes are suitable military leaders.
Slacker and part-time musician Don T., pursued by a gang of genetically enhanced wolf/human hybids, falls through his native urban landscape into a hidden world and discovers the secret post-Singularity nano-technological afterlife that awaits him and all of humanity. Guided by an androgynous AI, Don engages in an allegorical tour in which not only overcomes his own faults and but deconstructs the social and ethical shortcomings of our time. Through the course of this trilogy, Don achieves a spiritual renewal and returns ready to help shepherd humanity to its future among the stars.
Evidently Slate's Fraywatch columnist hasn't yet got to the "bored" state:
...many posts are so toxic that just reading them gives one the urge to rinse the eyes with soapy water. In my darker moods, well-meaning optimists reassure me that the internet is a distorted lens for viewing the human condition—that people sheltering behind anonymity express very different views than they'd profess in the public sphere. But, if this argument is true, then one has to wonder about that lynchpin of modern democratic governance—the secret ballot. After all, in their secrecy and insulation from personal accountability the ballot box and the internet are very much alike. If voters are as nasty in the polls as posters can be on the boards, then democratic theory might need a re-think.
Of course, for a dour Calvinist such as myself, message-board nastiness is merely another confirmation of the doctrine of total depravity.
I want to like RP, really I do. But he comes across as a right-wing nut. He's very principled in his view of federalism; much more so than in his defense of liberty, in my opinion. (When I tried to point this out on my blog I got rather heated remarks from some RP supporters.)
Ron Paul's position on the Fed, the gold standard, and banking is itself sufficient to propel him into right-wing nut territory. That's before we add in the Panama canal treaty and immigration.
RP on Lawrence vs. Texas:
"Consider the Lawrence case decided by the Supreme Court in June. The Court determined that Texas had no right to establish its own standards for private sexual conduct, because gay sodomy is somehow protected under the 14th amendment “right to privacy.†Ridiculous as sodomy laws may be, there clearly is no right to privacy nor sodomy found anywhere in the Constitution. There are, however, states’ rights – rights plainly affirmed in the Ninth and Tenth amendments. Under those amendments, the State of Texas has the right to decide for itself how to regulate social matters like sex, using its own local standards. But rather than applying the real Constitution and declining jurisdiction over a properly state matter, the Court decided to apply the imaginary Constitution and impose its vision on the people of Texas."
Consistently pro-states rights? Yes. Consistently pro-liberty? No.
Sodomy laws are not "ridiculous"; they ought to be an affront to everyone who believes in individual liberty.
I worked a couple blocks from a Rearden Steel office in Palo Alto. I didn't get the reference, though, never having read any Rand.
In Omaha there is a John Galt Boulevard, so at least the question "where is John Galt" has an answer.
The first half of the book seemed to me an apt demonstration that Harry, Ron, and Hermione haven't actually learned anything useful at Hogwarts, and that Harry hasn't learned anything useful from the last six books, either.
Harry and his friends have been badly served by their magical education. They have learned a lot of tricks but they have no framework from which to innovate. Adult wizards of long experience somehow create useful artifacts and new spells. Fred and George have managed to pick up the trick, but probably due to long hours spent experimenting and self-teaching rather than attending classes. (Even James Potter manages to make the very useful Maurader's Map? And Snape develops his signature combat spell while still at Hogwarts.) But Harry, Ron, and Hermione perform no magic they haven't been explicitly taught. Hermione's magic bag is perhaps the sole exception.
So instead of trying to develop Horcrux finders, Death-Eater communication blocks, infiltration tools, or better combat spells... they sit on their rear ends waiting for the plot to advance.
Harry still has the go-it-alone problem. He's needed his friends to overcome obstacles before. He should have learned that he needs allies--- and informed allies--- to defeat Voldemort. But we're back to the usual routine of secrecy and Harry trying to solve things himself, until help is shoved down his throat for the big climax.
If Harry can't think of ways to thwart Voldemort, he could at least periodically raid the Ministry of Magic and free captured Muggle-born. Perhaps some of them have ideas he doesn't. Maybe a campaign of attrition against the Death Eaters would save lives (that were instead sacrificed as a delaying action at Hogwarts.) Heck, anything that annoys He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named seems to thin the ranks of Death Eaters quite rapidly.
(Also I am annoyed at Harry for getting his owl killed. If she had been left to find her own way instead of being caged up...)
Once the heroes manage to get captured, the plot rolls along nicely but it strikes me too much as a James Bond-ish "wait for the villain to advance the plot." Had Harry decided to take a more active role, perhaps the prisoners could have been sprung from the Malfoy estate that much sooner.
I think there's a disconnect here between what the law says explicitly must be required, and what it allows the government to require. So I feel that the Seminal (and vnunet.com) is being a little bit alarmist about what the bill actually says, but also there is a real issue here.
The bill says that ISPs must, at a minimum, match IP addresses and user names to real people. This is not an unreasonable requirement, in my opinion (though depending on the scope of what an ISP is legally defined to be, the user name side of things may be more difficult.) It's no more of an invasion of privacy than asking your phone company "who was assigned the number 555-1234 on June 23rd, 2005?"
The problem is that the law also gives the DoJ arbitrary authority to require other "records" beyond the minimum. It's clear that some legislators or DoJ people are already thinking of IMs, e-mails, and web access logs. But that doesn't mean the law as implemented would actually require that.
The law as a whole appears to be a mess of minefields... what does it mean to make a financial transaction that facilitates access to child pornography? What does it mean for an email provider to facilitate access to or possession of child pornography? What does it mean for "a provider of electronic communication services or remote computing services" to fail (either knowingly or negligently) to make a report under the Victims of Child Abuse Act?
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 3 |
| 2008 | 4 |
| 2007 | 7 |
Total: 14 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Mark Gritter:
Show all comments by Mark Gritter.