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Post by Battlechantress on Aug 26, 2010 21:29:17 GMT 1
Another thing FOX did to screw the show over was to move it around in time slots. That's usually a death knell for any TV show, but especially for one like "Firefly". ABC did that for "Pushing Daisies" too, but I think they were hoping to kill it off to make room for crap like "Wipeout" anyway.
Basically, in American TV, if it's odd and even slightly original (worse yet, if you have to think even a little bit while watching it), it's going to be yanked for more dumbassed bachelors, socialites with the IQ of a watermelon, and people who sing like wounded albatrosses.
Makes me wonder why I still have satellite. Oh yeah. Because local radio is that much worse.
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Post by jklinders on Aug 26, 2010 21:42:05 GMT 1
Uh yeah, I have never experienced it but I think US AM radio would be entirely too frightening for anyone who may be concerned over getting dumber from listening to dumb people. At least Dr Laura will be hanging her microphone up soon.
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Post by Battlechantress on Aug 26, 2010 21:53:41 GMT 1
FM radio isn't much better these days, honestly. Dr. Laura may be gone, but we've still got morons like Rush Limbaugh to ignore....
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Post by Knightfall on Aug 26, 2010 22:23:51 GMT 1
I only get Hispanic and 50s music when I happen to tune into AM. I have it pretty good! =D
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Post by Battlechantress on Aug 26, 2010 22:45:02 GMT 1
I remember when I drove to northern Maine (as in, "along the Canadian border") there were only two choices for music once you got past Bangor: country, or Christian music (bad Christian music at that). I ended up opting for silence (my car was an old piece of crap Datsun that didn't even have a cassette deck, never mind a CD player)... for nearly 6 hours.
Finally remembered one possible ME influence, though it's been a few months since I played the game and read the codex: Earth supposedly found a monolith or similar object on Mars in ME, right? (They attributed it to Protheans, I remember that much.) "2001" had to be an influence for that.
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Post by jklinders on Aug 26, 2010 23:05:12 GMT 1
The music doesn't change for at least an hour on the Canadian side in New Brunswick. Aside from the french speaking folks they could well be the same folk.
Nice catch on the 2001 reference. Onl;y saw the movie once so I doubt I would have picked it up.
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Post by Battlechantress on Aug 26, 2010 23:10:08 GMT 1
I've never seen more than the first 45 minutes of the movie, honestly (I'm ashamed to admit it; I just never got the chance to see it all the way through). But I *did* read the book.
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Post by lieden on Aug 26, 2010 23:19:17 GMT 1
Finally remembered one possible ME influence, though it's been a few months since I played the game and read the codex: Earth supposedly found a monolith or similar object on Mars in ME, right? (They attributed it to Protheans, I remember that much.) "2001" had to be an influence for that. Yes! And that's a good one, too. Well-spotted, chantress! :D I mostly listen a reliable variety of radio stations when taking a cab. Best case scenario is rock or quality Greek scene music, political satire, news, discussions (plenty of those!). But more often than not it is Greek pop, or songs from our local, horrible folk-ish genre, or soccer talks. I'm not sure which of the latter two I hate more. But I suppose I cannot get the wild lamentations out of my head easily. :p
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Post by opteronium on Aug 29, 2010 16:06:18 GMT 1
Hello folks, I'm new around here, please forgive my lack of introduction. I'd like to add my 2 cents to this thread. For me, Mass Effect is quite as science fiction should be. Some would say it borrows a bit from Star Wars, and I saw people mention Contact, Space Odyssey 2001, Dune, etc. In my eyes, everything in Mass Effect is explained quite well, quite scientifically and put to use quite the way one would expect it to be used. As far as originality goes, I think it lies in the way these things interconnect rather than in some new invention. Let's face it, the world has physical boundries which make things possible, plausible, probable or at the other and of the scale, irrational, unbelievable or just plain dumb. Mass Effect works well within the boundries of reality, with a pinch of possible and plausible while the probable is open to debate particularly in the xenobiological department. As for the science part... The idea of a mass influencing particle is a very scientific one. In fact, the hedron colider's main objective is to try and confirm existence of a hypothesized particle called a Higgs Boson which is believed to be a mediator of mass (check wikipedia for more on Higgs Boson). Element Zero in that aspect is not far fetched, merely simplified to the common knowledge of the periodic table, supposing a new type of element, preceding Hydrogen. The crowd gets rather thin when you go subatomic. The idea that running a positive or a negative current to increase/decrease mass of its surroundings is absolutely brilliant, not only for explanation of biotic powers, but also FTL travel. We understand that reaching the speed of light or going FTL is impossible with the current restrictions as you would need fuel of infinite mass to achieve infinite energy to accelerate yourself to FTL. Decreasing your mass to zero is thus a very logical proposal, and the Mass Effect FTL transportation suddenly makes a lot more sense, as does the fact that ships have simulated gravity. Quantum entanglement is an explanation many weird experiments in labs point to. Noteworthy, Eve Online built on this a few years ago and explained how changing a state of entangled matter could be used to transfer information, much the same way computers interpret the difference between one state (1) and another (0). The commlink to the Illusive Man would work something like that and in the Codex entries, it is also explained that galaxy wide information is problematic in its scale despite FTL and quantum entanglement. The main story line of Mass Effect focuses on the challenge of the Reapers, which to me are very original. They are not AI's, they are a species that integrated themselves with technology to a hybrid state to extend their thought and life capacities. I think of them as some kind of cyborgs, and it is not far fetched that even we, if we were given the technology for much much longer life, would not accept it. Of course, since they are hybrid, they need resources to create more of themselves, especially so if they went so far as to forgo their reproductive cycle to such an extent, that they can not replicate meaningfully without a host species that they eventually fuse with technology. Their omnipotence is also not an exaduration. In their life span they would probably experience more than any other short lived race, not to mention they would be stuck with so much memory, they would probably need to offload some stuff into some kind of machinery. This is similar to the "Sha" in Walter Jon Williams' Dread Empire Fall series. Above said, if Mass Effect borrows things, I'd say it borrows heavily from Syd Mead ( themainloop.blogspot.com/2007/12/art-of-mass-effect.html , www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuMIrHlAf2Q , also google it) As a comment to originality/borrowing things... Its obvious that science fiction has matured and branched out. One must take into account that with the advent of technology, the reader is also streamlined into a certain type of future which has some connection to todays reality. As such, the usual topics will always be about resolved or unresolved problems of today and consequences or future developments of tomorrow. In the end, we are all human, and even Darth Vader just uses a light saber... a technicial evolution of an ordinary sword, and Jedi's are all Ninjas and Biotics are all Jedi's which all connect to our history. In the end, any book you pick up will be about people dying, falling in love, good vs. evil, murder mystery, basically about obstacles in an individual or a nation/race's path. I don't think Mass Effect in this case deserves any negativity about lacking in originallity. If anything, it brings a very fresh path and outcome of how things that are common and will continue to be common in reality, play out and interconnect. The story is unique and the technology and science and love and the strugles etc. are all compatible to eachother and everyhting plays nice and smooth.
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Post by ommadawn on Sept 1, 2010 4:39:24 GMT 1
Awesome first post, opteronium. And welcome!
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Post by Knightfall on Sept 1, 2010 6:51:54 GMT 1
A very nice post indeed! And also: Welcome! Hope you decide to stick around; we'd love to have more input around here.
I go back and forth constantly between my negative feelings toward Mass Effect and the sense of outright excitement that I get from playing it. I realize that ANYTHING that you pull out of fiction is going to be a composite of some kind. Whether or not you're actually going to like it depends on whether or not that "grab bag" is filled with things right up your alley.
It's just that I still think that what Mass Effect picked from was a genre that hasn't expanded all that much in recent years. It's sorta like writing an essay and copying off the student next to you, even through there are only three of you in the class. I really don't believe in that, unless you're celebrating what came before you. Mass Effect didn't. They kinda just yanked Sagan's machine, called it a mass relay and went on with the story.
It rubs me the wrong way. I can't properly explain it, but it does. ME2 made a BIG deal of letting the player know what/who was influencing them, and that made me happy. As it was pointed out earlier, OSC made use of the ansible, even though that wasn't his idea, but he readily gave credit where credit was due.
I'd be just as peeved if someone put a large, spherical, planet-destroying spacestation in their game and called it something other than a Death Star.
Though, this really is a confusing debate for me, because I honestly flip-flop on my opinion every time I think about it. xD
Also, apparently quantum entanglement being used as communication, or even being properly controlled, is impossible. Learning this killed Christmas for me three times over. =(
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Post by opteronium on Sept 1, 2010 11:41:55 GMT 1
Thanks for the warm welcome Of course, this in itself is fiction and I do not know enough about physics or quantum physics to argue this ideas, but from afar, it seems reasonable: www.eveonline.com/background/communication/Whoever wrote this document knew what they were talking about, even if they introduced some fiction to it (if at all). From what I understand, quantum entangelment is as much a mathematically derived conclusion as, primarily, the only logical explanation to some experiments involving photons. In other terms, following occams razor, it's a conclusion that can not be verified and observed, yet is the only one that seems to explain the results of those experiments, has mathemtaical sense and is thus the most probable cause for the observed results. In reference to the eve online article about FTL communication, I find it satisfactory (most likely because I can not scientifically examine it beyond my understanding). Supposing the Heisenberg principle and that you can not measure a particles speed and location/direction at the same time since to observe it you need to bounce a photon from the particle and thus change it's path, it seems perfectly plausible to me that even if the particles path is changed, it could be extrapolated if its quantum pair was observed for the other mutually exclusive property (as in, you'd observe one particles velocity and its quantum pair's position). If more than 2 particles can be entangled, you could have accurate measurments and thus observe them consistently for natural randomness or induced randomness. Somone compared this to two random number generators producing the same random numbers, and people trying to decypher a message from these completely random numbers without any refernece to what would pass as an interrupt signal/polar extreme which would stand in for 0 and 1 to form a bit of information. Eve Online I suppose suggest some kind of math algorithm that traces these random numbers back to figure out if they are spontanious numbers, or numbers induced by outside influence, i.e. someone sending bits through. Judging by the fact that quantum computers work in theory if not perhaps already in practice, 2 computers with some entangled parts should surely enough be able send something more meaningful than just random numbers to the screen. But back to mass effect... I suppose entangled element zero, when passed a current, changes the mass effect of its entangled pair... so... quantum communication is possible again since youd see the particles mass shift up and down for every bit... regardless of all this speed and velocity stuff. And as discussed previously.. this Higgs Boson thingy might as well be element zero Anyway, I dont take all these theories as axioms quite yet and at this point prefer to live in the undetermined area of weather or not quantum communication is possible. If anything, its a technical problem until someone finds a way to solve it (sort of like lots of interesting maths stuff was a problem before they invented 0 ) So, dont give up on this quantum communication just quite yet!
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Post by opteronium on Sept 1, 2010 11:49:27 GMT 1
Just as an after thought... It looks like science is killing science fiction for us, once we will know enough about science to look at Death Star and say something like "Yeah right, that totally wouldnt work due to the Fujikawa-Shaw unilateral instability induction collapsing the horizon of a quantum uncertainty reflex dispersion field" I fear that day
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Post by Knightfall on Sept 1, 2010 12:17:16 GMT 1
Which is an interesting event. When science fiction was coming into its own, the preeminent authors always looked forward, speculating where technology would eventually end up to the umpteenth power. Now, looking forward isn't as fashionable. SF is essentially becoming Fantasy Fiction. Though, I'm really glad Eve Online and Mass Effect are attempting to merge astrophysics with gaming. We've come a long way. Now, you make the claim that you don't know much about physics or quantum mechanics, but you're clearly a liar. Liar! You've made three posts so far and I'm already impressed off my ass. =D My sole basis for saying quantum entanglement-based communication was impossible was on account of an article jklinders posted here awhile back (really interesting, btw). The guy basically said that, although entanglement is entirely possible/almost-observable, it's impossible to determine the polarity of the other particle. So, if you were to manipulate one photon to communicate something to the other, the message on the other end would be impossible to translate since it's completely random. At least, that's what I got from it. I could be wrong because I am both tired and not a scientist. xD www.gamepro.com/article/features/214805/the-real-science-of-mass-effect-2/
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Post by jklinders on Sept 1, 2010 13:07:20 GMT 1
opteronium, welcome to the board. For both the reasons I have already given and some you have as well I don't really concern myself too much about originality. Fact is in most of the ways that count ME is the freshest look at sci-fi I have seen in a while. But is it hard sci-fi? I say no.
It gets so much right, like garden planets being rare and large stretches of space being useless for colonization. But it all hinges on element zero. I have suspended my disbelief to allow eezo to be the underpinning for the whole setting. This does not change that it completely breaks physics as it is currently understood.
I do not doubt that a practical way to bypass the speed of light will be found sooner or later, but I doubt the tech for it will be easy or cheap.
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