https://youtu.be/s1qiDrNHjXI?t...

I read The Hobbit and thought it was just okay, which made me not read the rest of the LotR books. I also watched the LotR movies and to be honest thought they sucked. Despite their length, they largely failed to communicate who everyone was, their relationships to each other and their motivations. I felt like the films were made for people who already knew everything that was going on. There were endless conversations that appeared to be about nothing. Nearly 50% of the films were slow motions shots of, again, nothing. The entire thing was a painfully long "wtf" moment. I didn't care who lived or died and there were no feelings of loss or triumph. The closest thing to emotion I felt was the scene with the "who said it would be a man" bit. Anyway, if the books are actually good, they should do a Game of Thrones style series where proper time is taken to establish the characters and why things are happening. I'll never watch another LotR movie again.

As soon as you said "how they handle Doctor Smith" I thought "Gary Oldman", who is my favorite actor. I read on and, holy shit, you then suggested Gary Oldman for the role. Maybe we should start a petition. :)

Slashdot is dead when the only post connecting TFA to Macross sits idle at a score of 1. What the fuck, people?

I can and will circumvent any technological or legal obstacles they can dream of, and they can all go fuck themselves. At some point they're going to run out of dimwits who don't know how to use encryption, VPN, tor, i2p, freenet, bittorrent, etc., and their entire consumer base will have collapsed with a mighty "ARRR!!!" How's that for an end game, you short-sighted, unimaginative, greedy bitches?

How can anyone at a level where they can (and do) make contributions to the Linux kernel not know what they're getting themselves in to. This is like walking into a biker bar dressed like Richard Simmons and complaining that the Hell's Angels are looking at you funny and walking out upset. Torvalds is infamous for tearing people new assholes for submitting imperfect patches, among other things. He's probably not alone in that attitude. I'm not trying to justify or explain the attitude, but shit, people should know it exists by now and be prepared for it.

is the new smoking. If soft drink manufacturers switched back to cane sugar it would help evade stigmatization. Additionally, the cost benefit of using corn syrup has weakened because of the higher price of corn as a result of ethanol production. And cane sugar tastes better; some niche soft drinks have already made the switch and I've tried them.

War seems like a good way to solve a problem, even fun and exciting to watch, until it's your ass (or your son or daughter's) they call up to go. Easy to go to war when you sit at a desk and people you've never locked eyes with go off to kill and die.

Most people aren't violent and would get physically sick if they had to kill someone (though the primitive bloodlust instinct remains in us all). I think the problem is a lack of empathy and personal consequence for those in a position to send soldiers off to die to "fix" their problems. Drones make it even easier, these days.

Because when the goon squad is making its way through your village you should really wait for the AP release before evacuating your family. Twitter is useful for on the ground, at the moment, eye-witness accounts of shit happening. The first news of the assassination of Osama bin Laden broke on Twitter from people hearing the helicopters outside their homes.

For everyone else talking shit about Twitter or calling for it to be nuked from orbit, please take your head out of your ass for a moment and realize it's just a tool, and it's up to you how you use it. You can follow some idiot in Hollywood and complain about how idiotic it is, or you can follow @NASA, @NASA_Skylab, @NASA_SLS, @elonmusk, @SpaceX, @ComsumerReports, @TEDTalks, @mental_floss, @History_Pics, @techreview (MIT), etc.

Twitter is fucking awesome. All it really needs is a "Switch Account" button to easily switch between "personal" and "professional" accounts and some minor usability tweaks.

Just in case anyone was wondering what the fuck biofilm is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"A biofilm is any group of microorganisms in which cells stick to each other on a surface. These adherent cells are frequently embedded within a self-produced matrix of extracellular polymeric substance (EPS). Biofilm extracellular polymeric substance, which is also referred to as slime (although not everything described as slime is a biofilm), is a polymeric conglomeration generally composed of extracellular DNA, proteins, and polysaccharides. Biofilms may form on living or non-living surfaces and can be prevalent in natural, industrial and hospital settings."

Another PSA: Don't drink the water in Venezuela; its inhabitants are measured in centimeters.

It's like VB6 except for being awesome and Linux-exclusive. http://gambas.sourceforge.net/... http://gambaswiki.org/wiki

Would it be more efficient to launch an impactor from Earth to change the asteroid's trajectory or to launch a rocket (using the same rocket that would launch the impactor) carrying a second rocket that would attach to the asteroid and burn to similarly change its trajectory? An impactor would need to be calculated precisely in advance, while attaching a rocket would allow some room for error since its burn could be controlled remotely. The actual feat of getting the rocket to land and securely mount itself would be a challenge however. I don't think "blowing it up" is a good idea, but diversion if possible seems the least-risky and most-effective method.

I haven't read the book or seen the movie, but holy shit that sounds awesome.

Blender: http://www.blender.org/manual/

The worst are pretty much anything requiring me to type "man" in a terminal.

Guilty as charged. :) I think randomness is the result of interactions we can't observe, that's it's an illusion we're generally more than happy to accept. I don't let it ruin my day or anything (I love the idea of free will and all), but my intuition tells me deep inside that it's probably not so. A shame our lifespans are so short, as it would be terribly interesting to see what science a few hundred years from now would have to say about it.