Slashdot Mirror
How the Batsuit Works
An anonymous reader writes "Batman's outfit plays a much more prominent role in Batman Begins than it did in the previous films. And a lot of the technology actually seems plausible. This HowStuffWorks article explains all its features."
This is very reminiscant of "How Lightsabres Work". Apparently Howstuffworks.com has become a major sponsor of Slashdot.
Sponsored links should be declared as such to help seperate news from "news".
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Looking forward to the new Batman -- he's one of the deepest comic book heroes out there. Apart from his own turmoil, documented throughout the series, the madness, brooding insanity and general darkness of Gotham is still an interesting depiction of a vaguely 40s American Urban wasteland. It contrasts fairly starkly with today's forgettable, fluffy all-star heroes.
This Kuro5hin article makes interesting reading.
((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
May as well ask, as we're clearly just discussing new products and services we plan to buy here on ./ these days...
After the last few Batman horrors I swore I would never go to another Batman-related movie, but this one seems to be faring well on Rotten Tomatoes, and Roger Ebert even gave it 4 stars (although he is admittedly something of a teenage boy when it comes to superhero movies). However, I'm sorely tempted to actually pay money to see this. Especially because Christian Bale is so much more interesting than run-of-the-mill action heroes. I had to kill a *lot* of people.
So, would it be worth it, or is this essentially more Hollywood crap? Are the good reviews merely a product of relief a the fact that it's not monumentally awful, or is it actually _good_?
Read Pynchon.
Seriously. I understand that howstuffworks.com (and slashdot, for that matter) has to make money and all, but do they sleep well at night knowing they turned an informative website into a showcase for the latest movie?
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
Remember, my good man, that in addition to fine young women, bald, obese, hairy 60 year old men with severe hygeine problems ALSO have nipples...
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
It's very rare that you see anyone in the movie industry taking the time to make their technology realistic. In most cases there's no incentive to do so; The movie will only seem less realistic to a small number of people who really know the difference. This movie, however, has a large enough pre-existing existing fan base that does care, and in this case the higher level of detail is a worthwhile one.
How much did howstuffworks pay slashdot for this article? Same price as the lightsaber article?
/karma to waste
Simple, really...
- Write something that tangentially
touches on a geeky subject
- subscribe to a million and one pageads
- submit your link to Slashdot
- Profit!
Notice the lack of a "..." step here... Slashdot has nicely answered that (apparently-not-so-)eternal question for us.The only real skill involved occurs in step #1... In this case, I have to admit, getting geeks to read a description of what boils down to a fashion accessory really takes the cake!
As an aside, some people totally misunderstand the Slashdot effect. They believe it involves writing something factual for step 1, and trying to harden their webserver as step 2 - Thus entirely missing out on step 4, and often actually have to pay more to cover the bandwidth spike. Tsk tsk tsk, silly people... When will you learn, the world doesn't want hard data, it wants the illusion of hard data. real factual information takes (gasp!) thought to process.
Not only that, I was looking there just earlier today, and I thought "What a crock" when I saw the advertisement for the new batman movie (sorry, i meant "informative article"). Howstuffworks used to be useful, but I searched there today for the word roulette (was wondering if they had an article on how a roulette wheel is constructed - commercial ones are like $4000), and I got 300 "paid ads" that weren't even in the paid ads section.
howstuffworks is useless now. Just another website where advertising has replaced content.
~Will
sig?
HowStuffWorks: Here are thousands upon thousands of articles on real items, devices, and phenomena that are both interesting and useful to the reader, composed and compiled over many years.
Yotto: *Yawn*
HowStuffWorks: Here are a handful of articles written for fun on technology seen in popular movies.
Yotto: OMG, HowStuffWorks sucks! They are teh sellouts! How can they do this to me?
It must be terrible to live in your serious, serious world.
I think people are a little preturbed by the fact that HowStuffWorks.com has thousands of articles that are based on real things and then they throw in this Pseudo-Science bullsh*t which brings down the credibility of their site. Its like if I was watching the news and they told me what was going on in World of Warcraft or something. It's nothing to get your panties in a bind about, its just out of place.
DankLogic - There is a system to everything.
No, having him be a rich bastard was how Batman having all those phenomenally expensive toys was justified (hell, in the TV series he had his own Bat Atomic Reactor.) Perhaps it would have been better if he'd been a normal guy that accidentally discovered an alien device that gave him superpowers. That way he would be less unlikeable to you.
... he wouldn't be Batman.
But then
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Actually, I think it was in this movie:
Batman (1966)
But it might have been in an episode too?
I saw the photos. Although the comments on them state that it looks a bit dubious, to me the design looks extremely logical, and basically exactly what I'd expect Batman to drive.
Realistically, to my mind he'd want if not caterpillar tracks, then as close to all-terrain as tires could give him. That would mean all-wheel drive presumably, and it would also mean big tires like the ones we see there. He'd also presumably want it to be very heavily armoured; capable of withstanding anything short of rockets if that were possible. Heavily armoured glass, small windows, and possibly blast shutters for them as well. The downside is that the car would be extremely heavy in all likelihood, but that probably couldn't be helped.
I'm guessing he'd also want the car to have its own air filtration system. (for threats like the Scarecrow's fear gas, and other airborne threats) If I was wanting a vehicle like that, I'd also want GPS in conjunction with a very large map database, as well as at least basic AI pathfinding to plot courses between points quickly. More futuristically speaking, steering via AI-augmented direct neural interface could also be interesting, especially for people with disabilities. I've got some disabilities as far as learning to drive is concerned myself, so it makes me hope that if AI gets somewhat more advanced in the future, a partly-AI driven car could be a great thing for some people.
There is something that Batman should have in order to get revenge and stop crime: A gun