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Episode V! (Score:5, Insightful)
Get off my effin lawn! (Score:5, Insightful)
When I saw Star Wars in the theatre when it was released, it was call Star Wars. None of this "New hope" BS. And it was the one where Han shot first!
And lets also not forget Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress" (which I never saw in theaters but I *have* seen)
So get off my lawn you young whippersnappers.
Re:Episode V! (Score:5, Insightful)
Evil will always triumph! (Score:4, Insightful)
Because good is dumb...
Re:Episode II (Score:4, Insightful)
I actually liked the prequels ,as do a lot of fans. Some of them are so revisionist they'll try to claim they didn't like some of the *originals* now. Honestly, take out Jar Jar and the TPM is my 2nd favorite. Take out the terribly-acted romantic scenes by Christensen, and the prequels are on a par with the originals, for me.
Han did NOT shoot first... (Score:2, Insightful)
I went back and rewatched the original, actual movie. Han did NOT shoot "first"... he shot "ONLY". Greedo never got a shot off. The whole thing is preposterous. He had the weapon pointed RIGHT AT HAN, so if he had shot "first," Harrison Ford's part in Star Wars: A New Hope would have been essentially a cameo, because even if he DID get a shot off as he died, he'd still be dead. So hopefully we can put all this nonsense behind us. Han fired the ONLY shot in that scene. No one else fired anything.
(Greedo's like Rachel's ex-boyfriend in Primer. "He doesn't fire." "No! He didn't the time I wasn't there... uh, he didn't the time I was when I rushed him... we know everything! We're prescient!)
Consider however, how the story would have been different if Greedo HAD killed Solo:
1. Greedo grabs the Millennium Falcon's space keys and heads for the hanger, figuring it's cool to take the ship as payment for his NOT telling Jaba he saw Han (even though that no longer matters at that point). Chewie is expecting Han so doesn't put up a fight when Greedo shows up. Greedo knows Chewie's going to be a problem, so he shoots him too, and when Obi Wan and Luke show up with the droids, Greedo explains that he's second mate of the Falcon, or Chief Engineer or something, and that Han was just paying their docking fees, and if they want to get comfy in their quarters, they'll be leaving just as soon as they have clearance from the tower.
Greedo assumes the passengers are worth something to someone, finds out the guards at Mos Isley are looking for a couple droids... puts two and two together, and in the end there's a fight between Obi Wan and a bunch of Storm Troopers on the Falcon. Greedo (waiting patiently outside at this point) is pissed-off that all these laser-holes are being blown in his new ship, but he's assured he'll be compensated, (spoiler alert, he won't be!) and storms off to get a space drink, and groove to the funkadelic sounds of the Cantina Band, (Doo do do do, dododo... dedo, doo de doo doo! Sing along if you know the tune!)
Eventually, the SS retreats, seals up the ship, and gases the occupants, because, after all, they're space Nazis. Knowing the importance of the droids, Obi Wan asks R2 to login to C3PO, jailbreak him, and run " srm -rfz /* " which safely removes all the files he might have, then wipes himself the same way. After that, Obi Wan hacks both droids up with his light saber, Masada style because... it's the only way to be sure. He also kills Luke and finally himself knowing they can NOT let themselves fall into the hands of the Empire. The End.
2. Greedo flips the bartender a space coin, says "waCHEE naBU ca Lowa" (Sorry for the mess!) and drags Solo's corpse to his own ship, takes him to Jaba, who pays him a small fraction of the bounty because HE wanted to kill him and a corpse, by tradition, is only worth a TENTH of the promised price. Obi Wan and Luke have to sneak out of Mos Isley without leaving the planet because of the attention Obi Wan attracted at the bar when he killed "I Don't Like You Either!" Guy. Witnesses reported the site of a slipper-shaped hovercraft with two droids (matching the description of the guards from the alleged consular ship) strapped to the back of it a few weeks earlier. The Empire deduces the stolen plans in the droids that were in the escape pod are now with the men who were at the bar when that guy got hacked up with a light saber.
Suddenly there's a No-Fly Zone around the planet, and the entire resources of the Empire go into finding the droids, because the Emperor didn't make clear he wanted them to look PRETTY HARD to find the stolen plans, but not quite hard enough to actually FIND THE DAMNED THINGS. Oops. Stolen plans safely returned, the Death Star is completed and a set of shielding tubes are placed in the path of the exhaust port (a defect they knew about for years, kind of like GM...) to keep anyone shooting a photon torpedo or whatever into it, making the station effectively impre
Re:Why have an exhaust port at all? (Score:4, Insightful)
In space, one of the most difficult things to do is dissipate heat. You can radiate, but you can't convect or conduct heat away from you. For a practical demonstration, get a vacuum flask, fill it with boiling water, put it in the freezer and see how long it takes to cool down.
The Death Star has a massive laser-of-doom weapon, which almost certainly produces a huge amount of waste heat. Dumping that heat is likely to be a priority, because you want the planet you're shooting at to be destroyed, not you. Being able to vent coolant in large amounts quickly from the middle of the station is probably very important.