Hmmm, I'm not sure who you think these "feel good people" are who really think as you describe. What you've done here to set the stage for the rest of your rant is known as a straw man fallacy. The presence of one of these is often the signpost of a mind that is not accustomed to engaging others in rational discussion.

That's a rather depressingly brutish and short-sighted opinion. I for one do not believe that we are so hopeless.

We are conflicted beings -- in part enslaved to a nature that derives from a hostile crucible of nature... to eat or be eaten. But in part, we are also miraculously intelligent, able to reason, able to control our animal programming when appropriately educated and disciplined.

Because we are capable of being rational and reasonable, I think there is hope for us. We are able to aspire to a more civilized nature. It is counterproductive to simply surrender to (or even revel in) our passion for violence.

Today we are creatures in transition -- something partway between animals and truly civilized beings. It may take time and patience, but if we can manage to survive for a while longer (on evolutionary time scales), we may be able to become something nobler, something more emotionally stable.

We have to. We've got nukes.

Whoosh!

That's the sound of the discussion going completely over your head.

You totally misunderstand my point.

No, I havent read the thing you're referring to.

However, feel free to argue its points in cogent terms here.

You seem to equate our old passion for violence with strength. My whole point is that violence IS a weakness now. Wit and Reason are the strengths we must esteem today, or we are not deserving of the stars.

It's time for us to evolve and it's time for you to evolve your thinking.

Evolve or die. It's the law.

I should add that flamewars turn off intelligent, rational, good-hearted people. Flamewars get locked down. So a flamewar, even if it quotes a controversial post, is still a squelch.

How can we devise a system that:

1. can keep up with the massive volume of the internet
2. can effectively moderate the nasties out
3. yet not stamp out the rational ones who are simply supporting an unpopular opinion?

You make a seemingly poignant and clever remark. However, his comment is not obscure, minority, or controversial... his comment is mainstream, rational, and well accepted, particularly among the SlashDot crowd.

What he refers to is daring, perhaps "crackpot" opinions that go against the grain of the PC ethos of the internet community. A lot of crackpots are annoying attention-starved irrational, overly emotional, etc, and they often get the down-votes they deserve. But we all know and admire the few epic heros who changed the world with their unpopular opinions because they ended up being a step ahead of the world in insight... We should make sure that the internet does not make it easier to squelch these people, but instead allows them to blossom.

He's talking about people like the guy who makes rational attempts to critique or debunk global warming science, the guy who enters a discussion forum on a San Francisco newspaper and tries to argue that it's wrong for gay couples to raise children, the Saudi who tries to argue for equal rights for women in his country, that guy who thinks Jar Jar was a worthy attempt at levity in the Star Wars mythos.

These guys, if they make their cases with reasonable doses of civility, credible knowledge, and rationality, should still be heard, even if their opinions are loathed by the majority. These people make us sharper as a society. They are out of the box thinkers. And some of them could be right.

Yet, in a pure crowd-sourced voting system, the unpopular opinions will always get squelched unless they manage to provoke a flame war before they are forgotten.

A really interesting product... But it won't do away with contollers I think... Imagine the RSI (repetitive strain) problems people will develop. The large motion big joints I think will be more vulnerable to motion strain than the small motions needed by contollers, mice, and keyboards.

I imagine people might even develop neck and back problems if they get addicted to some game that involves more full body gestures.

Chiropractors rejoice!

So does anyone have any credible estimates on what the acoustic energy density is like of a typical office environment?

Or maybe, what is the average power output of a typical human voice?

-b

I have a T-shirt that says "Fix your own #@$^&! computer."

Get yourself one of those.

Problem solved.

Alright guys, come back to the real world: The reason Wash and Book died is superficial and fans would hate Joss even more if he told the truth.

The problem is, there were too many characters for movie format storytelling. Joss had to cut down the cast so that the masses of Firefly noobies (movie audience) would not be confused by so many faces. On the upside it saves a little budget too. The reality is that movies just can't support so many characters and just keeping them around to deliver 1 or 2 lines in a 2 hour feature can't be justified on a limited budget. Killing them at least delivers some emotional payoff in terms of gravity and consequence for the remaining characters.

TV programming has way more time in the schedule to enable the different characters to distinguish themselves over the course of a season. (Strong and distinct characters is one of the strengths that Joss Whedon was able to bring to this show.) But movies have nowhere near the time available in them to let more than a few characters have their special scenes... Scenes that establish to the noobie audience how the characters are distinct in motivation and abilities and why we should care about them.

Movies have to be successful in emotionally engaging MANY more people in a short time span in order to pay for themselves. These movies were targetting a much larger audience than the meager loyal Firefly fanbase. I think Joss in part was paring down the complexity of the Firefly family because he was anticipating that if the franchise was going to go anywhere, a few movies would be the best chance he would get. In that new format, he had to keep things as simple as possible and focus on just a few main characters.

In the end, it was Fox dumping the show from TV that killed off Wash and Book... Catering to the mass market is a rather unsatisfying motivation for eliminating characters in which the loyal fans have emotional investment. That's why Joss will never admit this reason.

It's the brutal cold logic that a fight for survival necessitates.