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The one basic change that I've noticed that many people have overlooked is that Win XP is using the Win NT/2000 kernel and finally retiring the MS-DOS/Win 3.1 codebase

Maybe most people overlooked it because it happened like... erm.... 8 years ago or so when WinNT was released? It's really nothing new at this point... well, unless you're talking about the fact that they've finally released a "home" OS without any 16-bit code... but that's not what you said...

http://www.bootyproject.org

Well, 128meg is kind of ridiculous, but... it only costs like $50 these days for 128meg of PC133...

So what's a good amount? 64meg (which costs $35)? I mean if you're going to bash an OS over $15 worth of hardware requirements.... that's just silly...

http://www.bootyproject.org

So what other major DSL providers does this leave? Besides Covad, and the local telcos (which typically suck). Hopefully, a lot of the customers left stranded by Northpoint will migrate to ISP's that go through Covad...

Just FYI to anyone interested in DSL...I would have to say that I've had an excellent experience with Covad. The technician showed up three minutes EARLY and the installation took about 3 minutes. Speakeasy is my ISP and I have nothing but good things to say about them, too... including their liberal policies about customers running servers over their lines (a rarity for broadband providers).
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not dissing the web designers for designing. I'm dissing web sites that provide more design than content.
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"This is bad for two reasons"

It would be cool because the designer could make a more intelligent default choice for the user... lots of artery-clogging graphics, or few artery-clogging graphics?

Then again, considering how shitty 99% of web design is, maybe it's better than designers code their pages in assumption that users have 28.8 modems. I'm freaking tired of graphic design overload and NO content.

Putting your bandwidth in the HTTP request would only be good if...
1. Users could override what goes in the header... for example I have DSL but I hate graphic overload so I'd probably self-identify as a 14.4 modem user :)
2. Users had the power to switch to the low- or high-bandwidth site.

http://www.bootyproject.org

Am I being overly optimistic, or does everyone win with this deal?

Hopefully I'm wrong, but I'd say you're being over optimistic. :) Seems to me like this is a "Buy it and kill it" type deal, as a previous poster noted.

I'm not sure what incentive Sony has to market this emulator commericially. It's true, hardware margins suck (witness the selling of PS2's at a huge loss)... which makes selling a software-based Playstation seem somewhat attractive at first....

But after a few years, console margins aren't that bad because the hardware vendors have usually shrunk and integrated the components to the point where they're HUGELY cheaper to make than they were a few years previously, when the console was first introduced to market.

Look at the new PSOne... it's about the size of my smoke detector! Tiny! I wouldn't even be suprised if Sony was making money on PSOne hardware sales at this point.

Of course, hopefully I'm wrong and you're right, and Sony won't kill the product. It could actually be a REALLY neat selling point for their VAIO PC's.... Playstation compatibility!!! :)

http://www.bootyproject.org

You can pretty much eliminate any interpreted language (e.g. Tcl) and web script (e.g. PHP, ASP, ColdFusion).

I wouldn't rule out interpreted languages, because you're not going to be doing any "heavy lifting" in them anyway.

For example, with ASP, the goal is to use ASP *only* for formatting and user-interface. All the "heavy lifting" (ie, computationally expensive stuff) should be done in another tier, written in precompiled COM components written in C/C++ or some other language. Sure, ASP is slow, but if it's only doing 1% of the total work you're okay. Also, it's a good way to separate interface and design from the game logic.

A similar strategy could be used with any interpreted language that generates web pages... Java, Cold Fusion, etc.

http://www.bootyproject.org

Cool! I'll have to use this utility to select the next web sites I'll crack. I used to have to run tons of different 1337 scripts to accomplih that same goal, but now it looks like I can do it all with one app. :)

I'm not sure why this was rated offtopic. Troll, maybe :) I was joking when I wrote it, but I was trying to make a point, too. Whenever these powerful security analysis tools are released, often times they're equally useful to black hats as well as legit folks. Remember when that SATAN tool was released years ago?

Hopefully, maybe the tool they're releasing can't even diagnose the flaws of NT directly. Maybe you have to run it directly on the NT box you're looking at. I hope that's how it works, because otherwise hackers will have a field day with it remotely scrutinizing people's boxes.....

http://www.bootyproject.org

"Within a day or two, the Center for Internet Security will release a small tool that you can use to check your systems for the vulnerabilities and also to look for files the FBI has found present on many compromised systems... "

Cool! I'll have to use this utility to select the next web sites I'll crack. I used to have to run tons of different 1337 scripts to accomplih that same goal, but now it looks like I can do it all with one app. :)

http://www.bootyproject.org

Mine:Art is a human expression meant to evoke an emotional response.

Well, to a coder, seeing something so cool accomplished in such a small yet powerful piece of code does invoke an emotional response! Just like "free" (or as my brother calls it, "crack-smoking") jazz, not everyone will "get" it, but in the target audience (coders) it definitely does get an emotional response.


http://www.bootyproject.org

They made one! It's called Cowboy Bebop and it's a fine anime series that fits all of your requests... except there aren't really any aliens. :)

But it's got great characters, cool animation, and a nihilistic feel to it that's a nice contrast to the new-agey, feel-good, politically-correct rut that Star Trek often falls into.

I've watched a lot of anime and I'd put Bebop into my top 4 series of all time (along with Star Blazers, Evangelion, and Kare Kano). Of course, YMMV.

In anime, they're free to show some more blood and deal with less uh...family-friendly scenes then are acceptable on USA TV, so that opens up room for more creativity IMHO. Not that gore in itself makes a good series.

And no, I'm not saying that anime is "superior" to American TV. Just like American TV, most anime sucks. But when anime is good, the results can be amazing. Like Bebop!


http://www.bootyproject.org

I've been working with MSSQL 6.5/7.0 for about 4 years now, mostly on 7.0 (so my answers will mainly apply to 7.0, can't remember 7.0 that well). Let me comment on some of these statements.

Views essentially dont work,
I use views all the time, never seen one that didn't work properly.

The error reporter says thing like "General network error" for a syntax error
Wrong. I would say MSSQL's error messages are above average in the software world for descriptiveness. You only get the "General network error" messag when there's... guess what... an actual NETWORK ERROR. Not too confusing from where I sit but hey, YMMV.

If you try to use ansi outer joins, aggregate functions, and subqueries together it craps out. A buggy stored procedure can freeze the whole server up
I'll have to try and get this to happen. I've never seen that happen before... and I've written a lot of buggy stored procedures. :)

moving from 6.5 to 7.0 is very difficult because it wont transfer identity prorerties correctly
I only moved one database from 6.5-->7.0 and that was a while back. I don't remember identity field problems. Even if this does happen though, it's easy to force the identity value for each table. Pain in the butt, but shouldn't take more than about 10 seconds per table to force the right value. And it's not like you need to migrate every day- should be a one-time thing.

Its stored procedures cannot return rowsets to other stored procs
This true, and it's a pain... but you can get around this by storing the rowset in a cursor and/or a temp table or just using output parameters for the innermost SP's. (yes I know temp tables and cursors are expensive).

After about three years of MSSQL 7.0 use I'd have to say it's an awesome product, honestly. Stable, fast, and incredibly feature-rich. I've been keeping an eye on PostgresSQL tho. I think that's going to be a match for MSSQL pretty soon, especially since MSSQL is overkill for most user's needs.
http://www.bootyproject.org

Actually the "FAWKING DSL" ad is one of the few online ads I've ever clicked. I figured any DSL company with the balls to put up an ad like that would be pretty cool to deal with.

Turns out it was a good choice, Speakeasy is one of the most highly-regarded DSL providers out there. I signed up for service as soon as I moved to an area where DSL was available.

It's ironic that people are trashing one of the... perhaps... five? maybe six? ads I've ever clicked on. And I've been web surfing since 1994! I know other people who liked that ad a lot too... in fact a lot of ppl actually mailed that ad to each because it's too damn funny. :)


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"The whole point of the upgrade campaign was to punish Microsoft and Netscape."

Just step away from the keyboard, man. Did you read the Web Standard Project press release? IE was one of their recommended browsers, noted for its good CSS support and the Mac version was praised even more highly.

I haven't used Lynx in ages, but if it doesn't understand style sheets that's OK too if it ignores them (as opposed to breaking on them). Stripping all the formatting information out of HTML and into CSS will make pages easier for Lynx to render. At worst, at least it's not going to make it any *harder* for Lynx.
http://www.bootyproject.org

If you knew anything about web design, you'd know that recent standards (CSS, XSL, etc) are aimed at separating CONTENT from STYLE. And if you knew anything at all about web design, programming, or simply didn't have your head firmly implanted into your colon, you'd know that was a good thing.

When you separate content from style, then it's easy to change the presentation of the content by changing the style (since it was cleanly separated in the first place, it's easy to do).

That was the original goal of HTML- describe content in a LOGICAL manner (paragraphs, tables, etc) and leave the style representation up to the user agent (ie, browser).

Probably the biggest flaw of HTML was that it gave web developers TOO much control over appearance. Give 'em an inch, they'll take a foot. Soon, so much visual-presentation was being crammed into HTML that it was hopelessly polluted and style and content were being hopelessly intermingled everywhere.

The new standards aim to fix that. But I don't know why I'm explaining it to you, since someone stupid enough to make the comments you made in the first place is probably too stupid to understand the explanation as well. :(
http://www.bootyproject.org

And the father of the "click here for the next page" links on long stories online. Goddamn that is annoying

Actually you're totally wrong. In his book, he specifically talked about how splitting one article up into multiple pages was a bad idea. He argues for keeping crucial things short whereever possible.

Ironically, in his book, he points out an article by Jon Katz that appeared on another web site as a bad example of this practice, because the JK article was broken up into many pieces. :)
http://www.bootyproject.org

On another note I go to microsoft.com all the time in fact (though usually msdn.microsoft.com). Excellent site. In fact I believe it's among the top 3 most visited sites on the planet, so to proclaim it not to matter seems rather goofy.

Oh my god. You must be kidding. "Excellent site"? Whatever you think about Microsoft (I actually like Win2K) their website has to be among the worst on the planet. It's impossible to find anything on there. I have never seen such a poorly-organized site. And the interface changes all the time. They move stuff around just for the hell of it, apparently, because they move stuff around and it doesn't seem any more organized than it was before. I'm a professional web page designer who spends a lot of time studying UI's and I put a lot of faith in Jakob Neilsen, so hopefully I'm at least somewhat qualified to say this.

Case in point: last week I needed to D/L "Option Pack 4" for WinNT. Not to be confused with ServicePack 4. I searched their site for about 20 minutes and could not find it. When I went to their downloads area and searched for it, the search results were so meaningless as to render them useless. The #1 search result was "Service Pack 4, Simplified Chinese Edition". I kid you not. Out of the first 50 search results for "Option Pack 4", not ONE of them was actually option Pack 4. So I went to www.download.com and found it on the first try, and it was the ONLY search result when I searched for "Option Pack 4".

I wrote Microsoft and told them about this. Their response? One week later they apologized for the inconvenience and sent me a link to download Service Pack 4. Service Pack 4. Not Option Pack 4, which is what I was looking for and what I wrote them about, but Service Pack 4. Sigh. I guess their reading comprehension is about as good as their interface design. Pathetic!
http://www.bootyproject.org

I'm sure I won't be the first (or last) to say this, but I just don't think DivX ;-) really has a big effect on movie piracy. The simple fact remains that most people do not have high-speed net connections, and most people don't want to be bothered with finding and downloading movies.

I can't even believe you're halfway serious, or that you got modded up. Dude, do a search-and-replace on your post and replace "movie" with "music" and "DivX" with "mp3".

You're saying the same things about DivX as people once said about MP3. As more and more people get broadband access, DivX will get more and more popular. Movies are just as (if not more so) attractive to pirates than music. And bandwidth WILL eventually allow more and more people to trade with DivX.

It's already quite popular at colleges where bandwidth is plentiful Ring a bell? Sound like the mp3 story? God, some people do NOT learn from history even if you beat them about the head with it. Argh.
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Heh... I thought I was being careful enough with my wording when I said "movie" screens, but I guess not. The production you're talking about was the BBC television series.

In case you don't know, Douglas Adams has been in negotionations forever to get the movie made (you know, actual movie screen, theater, the whole thing... quite different from the small box in your living room, unles you've got a MUCH nicer entertainment setup than me). Sicne the 80's, there have been about a zillion scripts and the rights themselves have changed hands a couple of times. Apparently the closest it ever came to being made was when Harold Ramis (director of Ghostbusters, Animal House, etc) was involved. However, apparently Adams wasn't happy because Ramis & co were sort of turning it into a slapstick kinda comedy set in space, which might be funny (ala Spaceballs) but is miles away from the absurd, existensial angst-ridden (yet extremely hilarious) nature of the novels.
http://www.bootyproject.org

I wonder if maybe I got the two games mixed up? But it seems like I read about it 3-4 years ago (B&W has been in development a long time, but not that long)... then again I could be wrong. Thx for the info :)
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Hmmm, so which do you think will make it to movie screens first: and Ender's Game movie, or a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie? :-)

Both have been in limbo forever. They might be able to make a decent go of Ender's, but I'm thinking there's no way an American studio could pull off a HGTTG movie that captures the feel of the original. It's just too full of British humor and world-weary (universe-weary?) stiff upper-lippedness. And even if they could pull it off, they jsut wouldn't want to. Bastards. Damn this post got OT in a hurry OK I'm cutting myself off no----
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About 4 years ago I remember an interview with one of the Ultima developers (maybe British himself, I really can't recall).

Anyway, he was talking about how they were going to be using a form of OCR for the spell casting in the next Ultima game. Each spell would have a hand-motion associated with it... part of casting a spell would be to actually use your mouse mimic the patterns that your mage would be drawing in the air with his staff (or hands or whatever).

The more accurately you draw the pattern... the more effective the spell would be! I thought that was the COOLEST idea. To me that seems very a) innovative and b) fun. :-) It would be satisfying to draw a spell *just right* at a crucial moment and turn the tide of a battle... heheheh.

What do you guys think about that idea? And have you heard of any other uses of OCR in games? To me this is an area just begging to be exploited. :-)
http://www.bootyproject.org

Video on D-VHS tapes is uncompressed, so it's enormous. A 75GB hard disk would only hold around 30 minutes of the video, according to company officials, making the trading of HD content over the Internet impossible

Hey, I just invented a new digtial audio storage format. It's uncompressed, and a single 650MB CD will only hold about 74 minutes of audio. So I guess trading of my new format over the internet will be impossible. :-)

Seriously, what kind of crack are they smoking? Uncompressed video? That's a ripper's dream. If(when) DVHS is cracked, DivX (or whatever format) movies ripped from DVHS will look ever better than DivX ripped from DVD, since DVD is compressed already and things get yuckier when ya recompress them...


http://www.bootyproject.org

Dreamcast had a proprietary "GD-ROM" drive that has a capacity of 1Mb or so I

"1mb"? That's not real impressive... I mean you can fit 1.44mb on a floppy.... oh you meant 1gb right? :)
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First, I'd be extremely interested to see what this guys credentials are - its interesting to see him take the entire Intel CPU design team to task over this.

He's not taking the Intel engineers to task. He's taking the Intel marketing people to task. What, you don't think the Intel engineers didn't want a larger L1 cache, more execution units, etc? Of course they did. But more silicon=higher costs so you can bet that it's the marketing guys who lopped off all that extra silicon.

I would bet you that the actual Intel engineers who designed the chip would probably agree with most of this guy's points!

I'll stand by all of your other points too. :-)
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the Illiad, the Oddessy

It's amazing how some people just don't get the "Millenium" part of the "Best Books of the Millenium" thing.

What year were the Illiad and the Oddyesy written it? It's funny how you're bashing the Amazon voters for their lack of knowledge/taste, but they apparently know a key fact about the Homer's works and other ancient works that you don't. Either that or they're just better at math. :)
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Um....dude... it was the Best 10 of the Millenium.

The Bible's a lot older than that, so most people (except you, evidentally) would not consider it to be eligible for the list.

I guess you're also mad because "Abbey Road" and "Dark Side of the Moon" weren't included in everyone's "Best of the 90's" lists, eh? :)

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Mod that post up! :)

Seriously, that's so true. Why are so few computer-types into hip-hop? I know I'm into it. Since most people consider me to be more-or-less the whitest guy they know, they are suprised that I'm a huge hip-hop fan.

Considering how a lot of geeks tend to love wrting, creativity, and wordplay, I'd think that rap would strike more of a chord with them. I dunno... I guess by that logic, geeks would like Emily Dickenson too. :P

There was a time when there was at least ONE big link between hip-hop and computers. Remember when demos were big? You know... Future Crew, etc... I always thought that a lot of demos had a cool hip-hop feel. Don't laugh... :) A lot of the demos had graffitti-style logos, and the demo crews has habits of giving each-other shout-outs just like rappers. Also, the whole spirit of the demo scene sort of echoed the hip-hip spirit... there was a lot of pride/boasting in rap AND demos, but there was a real sense of community too. And just like hip hop showed that you could make music with just a microphone and a tape recorder, demos showed that you could make awesome graphics apps with just a whole 'lotta assembly code. You know, stripping the art form down to the bare mininum.

Maybe I'm reading too much into it. What do you guys think? :)

Oh... I agree, very few people need a second monitor. Definite niche market. However, lots of people would benefit from one. Also, the niche market is growing. Windows2000, which suports dual monitors (NT4 didn't) is just starting to catch on in the professional market. And most people who have tried a dul-monitor setup don't want to go back.

Also, the P4 is supposedly the current top-of-the-line chip you can buy. A lot of P4 users are high-end users, so the percentage of P4 users who need/want dual monitor support is small, but larger than the percentage of general PC users who need/want dual-monitor support.

I mean, how many people need more than 128MB of ram? Very few. But what if the P4 chipsets didn't support more than 128MB of ram? What if the P4 didn't support defragging your disks on the 5th day of the month? What if your car didn't support sharp left turns above 55mph? What if your toilet didn't support more than five flushes an hour?

The point is, it's ridiculous to defend an error by saying "oh, must people don't need that anyway". The point is, some people do need or want those features. Obviously this is another bad mark against Intel's name. Plus, as far as I know, every previous Intel chipset supported dual monitors just fine (MS OS's haven't always supported them... but to the chipset another PCI video card is just another PCI device for the most part). Intel's arrogance and coverups are really ticking people off...

Tell me: just how many people out there NEED a second graphics card?

I'll tell you what... two monitors are the way to go. Anyone who's going work that requires a lot of screen real estate (programmers, artists, etc) can benefit from an extra monitor, no matter how big their primary monitor is. Also, a lot of people simply have extra, perfectly good, compatible hardware laying around they'd like to use. Or they can pick it up on eBay or a computer show...

but given today's cheap 19" and 21" monitors running 1600x1200 resolution, you can have lots of display area AND still keep the menu commands on the same screen.

Trust me... in order to get 1600x1200 resolution at a decent clarity and refresh rate that doesn't kill your eyes, you need to buy a pretty nice monitor, NOT a cheap one. The average 19-inch monitor is NOT usable at 1600x1200... cheap ones only do 60 or 70hz at this resolution. Trust me, I did a lot of shopping before I found one and it wasn't cheap. But I love my 19-inch Sony. :)

In short, the bug with the i850 chipset only affects people who primarily use legacy hardware. It's not that likely people will put in older graphics hardware into today's P4 systems given how good 3-D graphics cards and their ability to display 1600x1200 32-bit color have become.

Wrong! A large number of computer professionals/hobbiest have old PCI video cards and smallish monitors laying around. Come on, what computer junkie DOESN'T have a box full of old hardware? :) It's INCREDIBLY USEFUL AND COST EFFECTIVE to use this old hardware for a secondary display on your shiny new PC.

And anyway... your post bothers me on a couple of other points to. The "who really needs all that screen real estate" attitude reeks heavily of the infamous "640k should be enough for everyone" quote. Also, it's none of yours or Intel's god damn business HOW much screen real estate I need. I pay for hardware, it should work whether you think I'm using it in a dumb way or not. If I think I need 3 1600x1200 monitors that's my business. Intel's hardware should simply work the way it's supposed to. If it did, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

I don't think my next purchase is likely to contain this company's products.

Well... technically... USB is basically their baby. If your next computer purchase has USB support, some of your money is probably going towards royalties to Intel off of the whole USB deal. :p
http://www.bootyproject.org

I'm sure you meant $1/Kb/sec, not $1/b/sec.
LOL. Yes. :-)

No. He's charging $1/b/sec, NOT $1/kb. Big difference! :)

3. In the event you consume more than 30kbp/s of sustained peak traffic within any 24 hour period of time, for any month, a fee of $1 per 1kbp/s will be billed to your account via the payment method used upon sign up.

I usually don't flame, but this may be the least intelligent post I've read in a long time (yes, I browse at +2).

Unless you really want to learn the details of computing and the subject itself jazzes you
Ummmm...wouldn't any good programmer fit this definition?

just take a few CS courses, do an internship and study something else that *really* interests you...physics or history or philosophy or music
Employers generally want to see some sort of experience and/or education on your resume before they hire you as a programmer. Sure, you could program a bunch of impressive apps on your own in lieu of actual CS coursework.... but you'd still be at a disadvantage (in the employer's eye) when compared to anyone with an actual CS education.

So why not just study CS anyway? You'll be much better equipped solve all kinds of programming problems, and it will look good on your resume.

Spend your time in college well. There'll be time enough to code.
And what could be better than programming? Well... I can think of a couple things, but there's still time for drinking and girls (or whatever sex you prefer) if you're a CS major... jeez....Mmm. Girls.

So was Mercedes-Benz. My grandfather, who is Dutch, was taken to a work camp when the Nazis occupied his town. A lot of his time in work camps was spent working in a Mercedes-Benz factory that was making engines and things for all sorts of Nazi vehicles.

One time, he and I were watching TV and a Mercedes commercial came on. He said, "They are good cars! I know, I used to work there". :)

One of the worst parts about having to work in the factories was that they were very important to the Germans. So of course they were favorite bombing targets of the Allies. Sucked to be my Grandpa... enslaved by the bad guys, and the GOOD GUYS are trying to bomb the shit out of the factory where he's working! Talk about feeling alone.....

"WordStar2000, released in 1985, fared poorly against rival WordPerfect, and the company fell from its lead position. "

They released WordStar2000 in 1985?
I guess it was just ahead of its time.

Come to think of it, maybe d.net on here WOULD make them worth buying...

Well, the CPU on the dreamcast only runs at ~200mhz. Supposedly it's got great floating-point performance, but then again, d.net (at least the RC5 challenge) pretty much relies on integer calculations only. So your keyrate on here would be nothing to write home about.

But then again, suppose you found the winning key on a Dreamcast? LOL. Now that would be a marketing coup for Sega. ;)

Is there any quicker way to get modded up than to start off a post with,

"I'm probably going to get modded down for this, but.... [insert righteous-sounding, semi-controversial statement here]"

I don't think there is a quicker way. Damn, I'm probably going to get modded down for this.....hehehe

"Must be a good reader... ...to have read them all. "

Huh? What? That doesn't make any sense out of context. Jon, it helps if you reply to the post you're referring to, or at least quote the original post... so that we have some what you're talking about. Thanks, bud. ;)

Of course, there is a thin line between "leaving 'em wanting more" and performing the artistic equivalent of coitus interruptus.... hehehe....
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I liked the abruptness of the ending. I like a movie that lets me walk away from the theater thinking. It's nice to see a director that doesn't have to spell everything out for his audience.

Besides... as anyone who's ever performed knows, one of the top rules is... "Always leave 'em wanting more!" Any good stand-up comedian, director, band, etc., knows this. Hell, I'm don't even fit into any of the categories I just named, and I know that. :P

If he were truly evil, and not just insane, the last thing he would want is to find a hero, for it would interfere with his evil actions

Okay.... spoilers ahread.... you've been warned....

I disagree! At the end of the movie, Mr. Glass is says how the biggest crime of all is to not know who you are, and that now that he's finally found Bruce Willis, his opposite, the hero, he finally knows who he, himself is.

See, I think that's part of what made the movie so good. It wasn't about Hero A stopping Villian B. It was about two very human characters and some supernatural-tinged circumstances.

Personally, even though the ending of the movie just screamed, "SEQUEL!", I kind of hope they don't make one. I like the way it was sort of up to our imagination to think about the direction that Dunn's life took after the end of the movie...

Unbreakable was like a comic-book movie told as a story for adults. That's what I loved about it... it was a pretty complex drama, full of totally human charcters. But with a twist of the supernatural, it turned into the most unbelievably realistic movie about the whole superhero/archvillan theme I've ever seen. Plus I love the way zillions of lame people who would never go near anythign with a "comic book"-type theme are going to see this movie. Nice piece of trojan-horse filmmaking.

Trojan-horse aspects aside, it was a damn fine movie. Awesome story, plenty of creeping and uplifting moments. The movie did drag in places, and I thought it was unecessarily dreary in parts. However... I loved the ending so much, it made the entire rest of the movie worthwhile. It's one of those movies I'm still thinking about, 24 hours after seeing it. :)