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Fun, fun, fun. The Death Star is apparently 25,000 miles away from Endor! Who'd have thought?

* The shots of the actual Battle of Endor were filmed with telephoto
lenses, yielding a angle of view of between 1 and 5 degrees, depending on
the shots, and filmed from roughly 20,000 miles away. I just checked ...
this does NOT contradict anything we see on film, it would just be a weird
way to justify the DSII not moving 20000 miles in a heartbeat or changing
size altogether!

*rubs forehead, groans*

What about the shots of the DS2 explosion as seen from the surface of Endor? If these shots were telephoto, then the FOV in that shots should be a lot narrower than we see for the DS2 explode.

In order for the shots where the DS2 and the various ships to be telephoto, the ships would have to be a lot farther apart than what we see in shots where the DS2 is not on screen, and there is forground action that shows a wider field of view.

I was already irritated by that guy because of his behaviour in the Odds thread, but this take the price.

I have decided to avoid arguments with noobs with preconceptions that Saxton is wrong. Hence I shall refuse to deal with noobs like himself.

I'm sure I'm not the first making this observation, but it's interesting all the same: The same people who vigorously defends the three million figure are the same people who vigorously defends the WEG derived figures.

Of course, because heaven forsake, there can't be big things in fantasy! :P

VT-16 wrote:Of course, because heaven forsake, there can't be big things in fantasy!

Yeah, and now TMcE has gotten involved with his BS claim that the movies are "visually impressionistic".

EDIT: Oh, and that "Movie visuals can't be assumed to be reliable for scaling purposes."

EDIT 2: You hit it on the head over at TFN, Fingolfin. I wonder what would happen if one would start to address the three-million figure defenders "Travisstarians".

Ignore him. I get the feeling he's just doing this to irritate people. His quantitative analysis is deploringly lacking and seems to be absolutely absent from the Odds thread. His math skills are probably at a mere high school level algebra/trig, since he doesn't seem to understand that from AOTC, at those production rates, that single line can produce double digit millions.

The problem with people like this is that they honestly don't realize how little they know, compared to someone like Dr. Saxton (or for that matter, anyone with a post-secondary science or engineering education). They're mostly precocious children, at that age in the mid-teens when they think they know everything but in reality know next to nothing.

There's an old saying that you need a fair bit of education just to realize how little you know, and unfortunately, high school education in this country doesn't reach that level. So the average high-schooler (or even high-school graduate) literally has no idea how big and complicated fields like science, engineering, and medicine are. That's why you have guys diagnosing themselves with Google, and then arguing with the doctor (yes, this happens; ask doctors).

Wow. They actually argue with their doctors? That's just insane. I mean, I'll poke around for my symptoms on the internet a bit, but only so I can rule out particularly nasty infections and not be concerned about them. Hell, sometimes it even helps my doctor out when I do that, since it helps me narrow down what I think it might be.

loomer wrote:Wow. They actually argue with their doctors? That's just insane. I mean, I'll poke around for my symptoms on the internet a bit, but only so I can rule out particularly nasty infections and not be concerned about them. Hell, sometimes it even helps my doctor out when I do that, since it helps me narrow down what I think it might be.

Try asking your doctor about hostile argumentative patients sometime. Unless he's just plain lucky, he'll have his fair share of stories. Some of them even come in demanding a prescription for a particular medication.

Wouldn't it be a better to try and use the angles in the surface shots to try and figure out how much of the thing is seen in one image and then use that to figure the diameter of the DSII?

the Executar crash scene might be good now that its length is known.

Unfortunately the DS outer surface sets they used for those shots were flat, so thats a no go, unless the DS is infinitely large.

Darth Wong wrote:

loomer wrote:Wow. They actually argue with their doctors? That's just insane. I mean, I'll poke around for my symptoms on the internet a bit, but only so I can rule out particularly nasty infections and not be concerned about them. Hell, sometimes it even helps my doctor out when I do that, since it helps me narrow down what I think it might be.

Try asking your doctor about hostile argumentative patients sometime. Unless he's just plain lucky, he'll have his fair share of stories. Some of them even come in demanding a prescription for a particular medication.

Im many of those cases can't the doctor have the pharmasist give a placebo of he see no reason to administer said drug? I think this problem might have gotten worse since drug companies have been allowed to advertise for prescription drugs. People see these adds and then say to the doc. I want drug X for problem Y, ect.

Lazarus wrote:Unfortunately the DS outer surface sets they used for those shots were flat, so thats a no go, unless the DS is infinitely large.

If we're allowed to use out-of-context backstage info, it's been stated by the people who did the FX that DS2 was intended to have a 500 mile diameter.

I've been grappling with the question of what makes these people tick: loyalty to certain authors or precedents, scientific ignorance, etc. But I think that maybe, in the end, they're just driven by an innate hostility toward anybody who knows how to do this sort of thing and dares to apply that knowledge to Star Wars. They're like the people in high school who get angry at you if you use big words because they think you're trying to show off. And in both cases, the situation isn't helped by the presence of posers, who don't really know what they're doing but pretend they do.

Darth Wong wrote:[I've been grappling with the question of what makes these people tick: loyalty to certain authors or precedents, scientific ignorance, etc. But I think that maybe, in the end, they're just driven by an innate hostility toward anybody who knows how to do this sort of thing and dares to apply that knowledge to Star Wars. They're like the people in high school who get angry at you if you use big words because they think you're trying to show off. And in both cases, the situation isn't helped by the presence of posers, who don't really know what they're doing but pretend they do.

I think it's probably symptomatic of a wider problem. It's well known that the teacher unions are major obstacles to reforms of the public school system in America, and one of the issues they constantly shy away from is competency of the teachers.

It's no surprise that the students themselves have an inferiority complex, can't do decent math, instead choose the easy path to college education and through college. Most Americans aren't prepared for college education as it is.

dp4m said that I was "baiting" him when I said that:

Good, then I know what I can call the three million defenders then without risking any punishment...

WTF? DP4M just banned me for "arguing canon"? He refused to back up his claims (essentially, that LFL said the DS is 160km and the Databank is more important than the holocron).

What exactly are their rules on banning, anyway? Is it just moderator's whim? What kind of a charge is "arguing canon"?

Vympel wrote:WTF? DP4M just banned me for "arguing canon"? He refused to back up his claims (essentially, that LFL said the DS is 160km and the Databank is more important than the holocron).

I really really hate that guy for his abuse of power.

It looks like they realise they are staring at contradictions and took the easy way out by silencing the opposition.

Darth Wong wrote:What exactly are their rules on banning, anyway? Is it just moderator's whim? What kind of a charge is "arguing canon"?

I have no bloody idea. I wasn't "arguing canon", I was disputing his baseless fiat that the official length is 160km- that would be a fancy way of avoiding having to say that he doesnt' consider the OT:ITW canonical, never mind he has no reason for saying that apart from his subjective belief based on his interpreation of LFL's "actions".

So I take it that they don't bother trying to justify their bannings? Transparency in administration obviously isn't their strong suit. Then again, I still remember when theforce.net screeched and whined about landoverbaptist.org because somebody on the staff was a fundie idiot and didn't like being mocked. That place has never struck me as particularly concerned about intellectual integrity.

From what I hear the secret police delete the relevant posts, so anyone not involved would probably only hear about the banning through indirect means. That's one of the reasons Parting Shots is such a great part of SDN.

Vympel wrote:WTF? DP4M just banned me for "arguing canon"? He refused to back up his claims (essentially, that LFL said the DS is 160km and the Databank is more important than the holocron).

Yeah, I was banned on a similarly bullshit charge. Their method of resolving such issues is:

You create a sock-puppet account and use it to PM Darth Sapient, their head admin. You're not supposed to use the account for anything else, but it's pretty indicative of their horrifically bad dispute resolution procedure. And, of course, last time this happened to me this method was completely undocumented so far as I could find, although I spent nearly an hour looking around their board for it.

I sent the ban form in. Dp4m replied, repeating his position. I continue to give my position, will see what happens.