Code Pink, AFL/CIO and SEIU organized and funded the uprisings in this year's "Arab Spring"? Code Pink?
You Republicans are so insane that it's incredible that you even listen to each other. Insane.
He's not a Republican, just your run-of-the-mill retard. Yes I know there can be some overlap, but I don't know many (any?) Republicans who actually believe the grandparent's nonsense.
Marvel (and, I suppose, DC) operates in a very strange time continuity, where most of their characters remain the same age regardless of when they were first introduced, with their 'backstory' updated automatically or covered up and not referred to as necessary. So a character who in the mid 80s would have been a 35-year old Vietnam War veteran would today be a 35-year old vet of.. say, the early 90s Gulf War or the Bosnian conflict, or any other conflict appropriate for the time. Characters age only a little, and although they can become veterans of the various teams they're on, they still have aged only a small amount, and their teams only having been in operation for a similar time.
This is informally known as 'Marvel Time' or 'Comic Book Time' since the 80s. TV Tropes has an awesome page on this, but be wary -- TV Tropes can easily suck up all the time from an afternoon.. or a week.
Eh, TNG (latter half) and DS9 both flew in the face of Gene Roddenberry's vision, and we were better off for it. You might say "Voyager" but then I might say "What? What's that? You mean V'Ger? No, not the best movie of them, but better than 3 or 5."
Wrath of Khan flew in the face of Roddenberry's vision and were better off for it!
Studio heads thought he had too much influence over the ridiculously-expensive Star Trek: The Motion Picture, so he was moved to "Executive Producer" (IE, no formal power) while writing and control were handed to writer/producer Harve Bennett and writer/director Nicholas Meyer.
Roddenberry was very much against Star Trek II's naval trappings. He thought it seemed too militaristic.
Star Trek reboot? You mean Star Trek the Next Generation, right?
That's a continuation. A reboot takes the original story and characters and retells it in a different manner.
Gene Roddenberry himself endorsed the idea decades ago, when a reporter asked him about the future of Star Trek, he said that he envisioned someone taking Star Trek and doing it all over again -- but bigger and better. And he wished them well. Link
Sorry, You can't call one movie a rejuvenated series. Once the new television show gets underway, then we can talk. Oh wait, there isn't even one in the works.
That's probably a good thing. Star Trek doesn't need another television series, at least not for a good, long, time.
Yes, I was an X-Men fan when I was a kid. Loved the "all new, all different" X-Men introduced in the mid-70s. The series was still strong through the 80s, seemed to lose its way a big in the early 90s, then Liefeld and Morrison took over and the 90s became a horrible time for the X-comics in general.
Mmm, a number of Pixar films might be more meaningful to adults than they are to kids (Ratatouille, Up). But I get what you mean especially with anime -- the juvenile tropes in many animes might be why I find it so difficult to get into any anime series. As much as I adored Space Battleship Yamato and the works of Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon, most other series, OVAs, etc.. I just feel so disconnected from.
Either the themes are utterly ridiculous and melodramatic (teenage girl market) or they're juvenile and sexist (teenage boy market).
And the fact that Israelis have managed to build a highly developed society in the little piece of desert they turned into a blooming oasis is commendable.
Yes, you can do a lot with a tiny strip of area when it gets infused with massive amounts of foreign capital!
This is why I basically operate on a time expiration. If a certain amount of time has passed, you cease to have any bitching rights that land was stolen from your ancestors. Oh, some folks stole land from people 20-30 years ago? That's a big problem, they might have a case. Oh, some people are bitching because they had that land a few hundred or thousand years ago? Too fucking bad.
Would the results have been better if both pictures had been based off of the same source picture, rather than the second being made from the first? I was always taught that creating a lossy image out of a lossy image yielded poor results..
I'm glad to see that the "Invite CmdrTaco to your cool place" campaign has went a lot better so far than its predecessor, the "Come kick kdawson in the balls" campaign.
If some duche bag wants to drag religion into this, then it is fair game to point out that officially, China is Atheist (No God but the State). They don't like any religion, but tolerate some more than others.
The Chinese government is ok with religion as long as it doesn't interfere with their vision of society or their power hold on the people. The Chinese government is vehemently opposed to anything that can threaten their role of being all-powerful and all-authoritarian in their country.
If color accuracy is important (and I mean really important), look for the HP DreamColor LP2480zx. It's a 24-inch fully color-calibratable flat panel, the first that I've seen. They're pricey too, at $2500, about the price of the 30" displays when they were first put on the market.
I'm digging my HP zr24w - 24" of IPS goodness, matte surface, and standard color gamut. If I could find a 30" with a matte surface and standard color gamut, I'd probably get it, but I don't think they exist.
The closest to the above is the Apple 30" HD Cinema Display which have the best color gamut of the various 30" displays, and a matte surface. The HP LP3065 has a wider (and thus worse) gamut, but it's still not too bad, and is also matte. Sadly, neither of these are made any longer.
Hell even though I don't approve of his policies just look at how quick the MSM was when it came to isolating Ron Paul when it looked like he might actually gain some support
Actually, most Americans dismissed Ron Paul when they finally checked out what his political beliefs were and what the consequences were. He gained a lot of followers when the faithful spoke in rather vague "the government has gone too far" terms, then lost them again when people heard him in debates and saw his stances on issues.
[ those who jumped on the 'intellectual property/copyright' bandwagon... ] Who should be called what they truly are: modern day slavers. That is simply because an attempt to control the information one can access translates directly into an attempt at control what thoughts one can think. Which directly impacts what actions one can perform. Anyone who tries to restrict the mental capacity - and thus actions - of someone else in order to profit from it is a slaver.
No one is restricting the mental capacity of anyone. Oh, you mean that those who write the books have to do so for free or at a loss, because the learner's right to learn is more important? Isn't that slavery as well, just of a different group? Now you could say that there's no reason for people to use those $150 textbooks when others would do, and that's certainly right. For some reason students, parents who pay the bills, etc have not demanded that professors use lower-priced materials. I don't think it's any surprise that textbook prices are astronomical without such outcry. The professors seem to think that the extra-high content of those books should be the only factor in what course textbooks they use.
To expand upon what the other guy said, as explained towards the end of FFX, a thousand years ago the kingdom of Zanarkand was at war with the kingdom of Bevelle. Fearing for its destruction, the high priest of Bevelle, Yu Yevon, channeled the most massive spell the world had ever (or would ever, probably) know: the creation of Sin, which he merged with. Yevon/Sin quickly laid waste to Zanarkand as shown in the game introduction. The survivors of Zanarkand become the Fayth, people who give up their lives to have their souls sealed in statues. This allows them to commune with the summoners, the only people capable of channeling the energy needed to defeat Sin. So in a way, the war never ended, you have the people of Spira fighting against Sin, and the only people to know the truth are the inner circle of Bevelle's priesthood who outlawed technology in an effort to appease Sin and to hide Bevelle's true role in Sin's creation.
The Fayth use their combined forces in various ways: *) They keep a pristine copy of pre-destruction Zanarkand in their living memory. This is where Tidus and Jecht came from. Since he was a resident in the channeled Zanarkand, Tidus exists only as long as the Fayth exist and as long as they keep the Zanarkand summon going. At the end of the game, the Fayth depart as spirits, and Tidus fades from existence. *) The Fayth send Aeons forth at the summoner's call. *) The Fayth enable the "final summon" to defeat Sin.
Unfortunately, the spirit of Yu Yevon still exists, and passes to the final summon. It incubates for several years, then is reborn anew as Sin. So every generation, a summoner dies defeating Sin, and the summoner's guardian merges with Yevon to become Sin (which is why Sin was Jecht). This is why the group decides not to go through with the Final Summon, since it would kill Yuna, and would only cause Sin to go into hibernation for a few decades anyway. The only way to defeat Sin was to kill Yevon, the (surprisingly easy) final boss of the game.
So. The Zanarkand you see destroyed was a dream/projection of the Fayth. (There are several clues that things are not quite real in the game's opening movie, such as the bending and warping of buildings when Sin drew near) Tidus and Jecht were also dream/projections of the Fayth. Auron was an unsent spirit; he'd died 10 years earlier after confronting Lady Yunalesca. Seymour is a normal Guado, but is killed halfway through the game, and exists as a unsent spirit for the rest of the game.
Final Fantasy X-2 may have changed this continuity, but I didn't play much of it so I wouldn't know.
That's not a world problem, that's a dungeon design problem.
It's both when the game (frequently the plot) prevent you from revisiting previous areas. If you can only explore the area that you're in and advance the plot, then you have a dungeon and world problem.
I loved FF13's worlds, but I'd love a little more flexibility.
what i'm more interested in, is WHERE THE FUCK IS THE MONEY GOING? I mean, for that much loss you're paying some guys a lot of money!
If you play Final Fantasy 13 for awhile, you'll see where the money is going. That game's production values are amazing. Art is expensive, effects are expensive, and it's clear they had a lot of artists working on that game. They probably did the same for the dead-out-of-the-gate FF14. Now look at all the games that Square-Enix makes, and you might see where that money is going -- the games' expenses are rising, but the units purchased are not.
I don't think the movie was bad at all, but calling it Final Fantasy just to attract the people that knew about the games was bound to become a dissapointment after they realized that it had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Then again, each Final Fantasy title is in its own self-contained universe, so Spirits Within wasn't too far off from that. It was made shortly after FF7's successful "future dystopia fantasy" and went for the same sci-fi feel. But really, other than a character named Cid, it could have been any random sci-fi movie.
a lot of critics panned it as well. It was strange, in those days, to see a realistic CG animated film, rather then the more cartoony/whimsical cg of stuff like toy story. Triggered an uncanny valley effect as well.
The makers of Toy Story specifically chose plastic and fabric toys for characters in their first film because that's what renderers of the time could make look good. Not surprising that they knew the limitations of the Renderman software that they (and Square) used, since they also wrote it.
But I suspect that those games had a lot of their development work done pre-merger, or in the immediate aftermath of the merger before corporate identities had really come together.
It seems like when companies merge, or get bought out, the integration process is quite slow. They still get to exist for awhile as separate companies doing what they'd been doing (unless they were REALLY on the wrong track), and then they start slowly getting knitted together. A little executive interference here, a talented VP fired due to redundancy there, and you get a very slow death spiral. At least, if it ends up being a bad merger in the long term.
Slashdot Mirror
Code Pink, AFL/CIO and SEIU organized and funded the uprisings in this year's "Arab Spring"? Code Pink?
You Republicans are so insane that it's incredible that you even listen to each other. Insane.
He's not a Republican, just your run-of-the-mill retard.
Yes I know there can be some overlap, but I don't know many (any?) Republicans who actually believe the grandparent's nonsense.
That would be nice. I have boxes of stuff from the '80s that, for the most part, haven't appreciated at all.
Wait.. did you actually read them? That was the mistake I made.
When I was 7 I didn't appreciate the value of "mint condition."
Marvel (and, I suppose, DC) operates in a very strange time continuity, where most of their characters remain the same age regardless of when they were first introduced, with their 'backstory' updated automatically or covered up and not referred to as necessary. So a character who in the mid 80s would have been a 35-year old Vietnam War veteran would today be a 35-year old vet of.. say, the early 90s Gulf War or the Bosnian conflict, or any other conflict appropriate for the time. Characters age only a little, and although they can become veterans of the various teams they're on, they still have aged only a small amount, and their teams only having been in operation for a similar time.
This is informally known as 'Marvel Time' or 'Comic Book Time' since the 80s. TV Tropes has an awesome page on this, but be wary -- TV Tropes can easily suck up all the time from an afternoon.. or a week.
Eh, TNG (latter half) and DS9 both flew in the face of Gene Roddenberry's vision, and we were better off for it. You might say "Voyager" but then I might say "What? What's that? You mean V'Ger? No, not the best movie of them, but better than 3 or 5."
Wrath of Khan flew in the face of Roddenberry's vision and were better off for it!
Studio heads thought he had too much influence over the ridiculously-expensive Star Trek: The Motion Picture, so he was moved to "Executive Producer" (IE, no formal power) while writing and control were handed to writer/producer Harve Bennett and writer/director Nicholas Meyer.
Roddenberry was very much against Star Trek II's naval trappings. He thought it seemed too militaristic.
Star Trek reboot? You mean Star Trek the Next Generation, right?
That's a continuation. A reboot takes the original story and characters and retells it in a different manner.
Gene Roddenberry himself endorsed the idea decades ago, when a reporter asked him about the future of Star Trek, he said that he envisioned someone taking Star Trek and doing it all over again -- but bigger and better. And he wished them well. Link
Sorry, You can't call one movie a rejuvenated series. Once the new television show gets underway, then we can talk. Oh wait, there isn't even one in the works.
That's probably a good thing. Star Trek doesn't need another television series, at least not for a good, long, time.
Yes, I was an X-Men fan when I was a kid. Loved the "all new, all different" X-Men introduced in the mid-70s. The series was still strong through the 80s, seemed to lose its way a big in the early 90s, then Liefeld and Morrison took over and the 90s became a horrible time for the X-comics in general.
Mmm, a number of Pixar films might be more meaningful to adults than they are to kids (Ratatouille, Up). But I get what you mean especially with anime -- the juvenile tropes in many animes might be why I find it so difficult to get into any anime series. As much as I adored Space Battleship Yamato and the works of Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon, most other series, OVAs, etc.. I just feel so disconnected from.
Either the themes are utterly ridiculous and melodramatic (teenage girl market) or they're juvenile and sexist (teenage boy market).
And the fact that Israelis have managed to build a highly developed society in the little piece of desert they turned into a blooming oasis is commendable.
Yes, you can do a lot with a tiny strip of area when it gets infused with massive amounts of foreign capital!
Disliking Israel's political policies and being antisemitic are two separate things.
This is why I basically operate on a time expiration. If a certain amount of time has passed, you cease to have any bitching rights that land was stolen from your ancestors. Oh, some folks stole land from people 20-30 years ago? That's a big problem, they might have a case. Oh, some people are bitching because they had that land a few hundred or thousand years ago? Too fucking bad.
For example, look at the following image in both PNG and JPEG (100% quality setting):
PNG
JPEG
Would the results have been better if both pictures had been based off of the same source picture, rather than the second being made from the first? I was always taught that creating a lossy image out of a lossy image yielded poor results..
I'm glad to see that the "Invite CmdrTaco to your cool place" campaign has went a lot better so far than its predecessor, the "Come kick kdawson in the balls" campaign.
Oooh, so that's who the Ow, My Balls guy is!
If some duche bag wants to drag religion into this, then it is fair game to point out that officially, China is Atheist (No God but the State). They don't like any religion, but tolerate some more than others.
The Chinese government is ok with religion as long as it doesn't interfere with their vision of society or their power hold on the people. The Chinese government is vehemently opposed to anything that can threaten their role of being all-powerful and all-authoritarian in their country.
The first few are about there being only one religion, that keeps sectarian violence to a minimum
Yes, outlawing personal choice is certainly one possible way to lower violence.
If color accuracy is important (and I mean really important), look for the HP DreamColor LP2480zx.
It's a 24-inch fully color-calibratable flat panel, the first that I've seen. They're pricey too, at $2500, about the price of the 30" displays when they were first put on the market.
I'm digging my HP zr24w - 24" of IPS goodness, matte surface, and standard color gamut. If I could find a 30" with a matte surface and standard color gamut, I'd probably get it, but I don't think they exist.
The closest to the above is the Apple 30" HD Cinema Display which have the best color gamut of the various 30" displays, and a matte surface. The HP LP3065 has a wider (and thus worse) gamut, but it's still not too bad, and is also matte. Sadly, neither of these are made any longer.
Hell even though I don't approve of his policies just look at how quick the MSM was when it came to isolating Ron Paul when it looked like he might actually gain some support
Actually, most Americans dismissed Ron Paul when they finally checked out what his political beliefs were and what the consequences were. He gained a lot of followers when the faithful spoke in rather vague "the government has gone too far" terms, then lost them again when people heard him in debates and saw his stances on issues.
[ those who jumped on the 'intellectual property/copyright' bandwagon... ] Who should be called what they truly are: modern day slavers. That is simply because an attempt to control the information one can access translates directly into an attempt at control what thoughts one can think. Which directly impacts what actions one can perform. Anyone who tries to restrict the mental capacity - and thus actions - of someone else in order to profit from it is a slaver.
No one is restricting the mental capacity of anyone. Oh, you mean that those who write the books have to do so for free or at a loss, because the learner's right to learn is more important? Isn't that slavery as well, just of a different group? Now you could say that there's no reason for people to use those $150 textbooks when others would do, and that's certainly right. For some reason students, parents who pay the bills, etc have not demanded that professors use lower-priced materials. I don't think it's any surprise that textbook prices are astronomical without such outcry. The professors seem to think that the extra-high content of those books should be the only factor in what course textbooks they use.
To expand upon what the other guy said, as explained towards the end of FFX, a thousand years ago the kingdom of Zanarkand was at war with the kingdom of Bevelle. Fearing for its destruction, the high priest of Bevelle, Yu Yevon, channeled the most massive spell the world had ever (or would ever, probably) know: the creation of Sin, which he merged with. Yevon/Sin quickly laid waste to Zanarkand as shown in the game introduction. The survivors of Zanarkand become the Fayth, people who give up their lives to have their souls sealed in statues. This allows them to commune with the summoners, the only people capable of channeling the energy needed to defeat Sin. So in a way, the war never ended, you have the people of Spira fighting against Sin, and the only people to know the truth are the inner circle of Bevelle's priesthood who outlawed technology in an effort to appease Sin and to hide Bevelle's true role in Sin's creation.
The Fayth use their combined forces in various ways:
*) They keep a pristine copy of pre-destruction Zanarkand in their living memory. This is where Tidus and Jecht came from. Since he was a resident in the channeled Zanarkand, Tidus exists only as long as the Fayth exist and as long as they keep the Zanarkand summon going. At the end of the game, the Fayth depart as spirits, and Tidus fades from existence.
*) The Fayth send Aeons forth at the summoner's call.
*) The Fayth enable the "final summon" to defeat Sin.
Unfortunately, the spirit of Yu Yevon still exists, and passes to the final summon. It incubates for several years, then is reborn anew as Sin. So every generation, a summoner dies defeating Sin, and the summoner's guardian merges with Yevon to become Sin (which is why Sin was Jecht). This is why the group decides not to go through with the Final Summon, since it would kill Yuna, and would only cause Sin to go into hibernation for a few decades anyway. The only way to defeat Sin was to kill Yevon, the (surprisingly easy) final boss of the game.
So. The Zanarkand you see destroyed was a dream/projection of the Fayth. (There are several clues that things are not quite real in the game's opening movie, such as the bending and warping of buildings when Sin drew near)
Tidus and Jecht were also dream/projections of the Fayth.
Auron was an unsent spirit; he'd died 10 years earlier after confronting Lady Yunalesca.
Seymour is a normal Guado, but is killed halfway through the game, and exists as a unsent spirit for the rest of the game.
Final Fantasy X-2 may have changed this continuity, but I didn't play much of it so I wouldn't know.
That's not a world problem, that's a dungeon design problem.
It's both when the game (frequently the plot) prevent you from revisiting previous areas. If you can only explore the area that you're in and advance the plot, then you have a dungeon and world problem.
I loved FF13's worlds, but I'd love a little more flexibility.
what i'm more interested in, is WHERE THE FUCK IS THE MONEY GOING? I mean, for that much loss you're paying some guys a lot of money!
If you play Final Fantasy 13 for awhile, you'll see where the money is going. That game's production values are amazing. Art is expensive, effects are expensive, and it's clear they had a lot of artists working on that game. They probably did the same for the dead-out-of-the-gate FF14. Now look at all the games that Square-Enix makes, and you might see where that money is going -- the games' expenses are rising, but the units purchased are not.
I don't think the movie was bad at all, but calling it Final Fantasy just to attract the people that knew about the games was bound to become a dissapointment after they realized that it had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Then again, each Final Fantasy title is in its own self-contained universe, so Spirits Within wasn't too far off from that. It was made shortly after FF7's successful "future dystopia fantasy" and went for the same sci-fi feel. But really, other than a character named Cid, it could have been any random sci-fi movie.
a lot of critics panned it as well. It was strange, in those days, to see a realistic CG animated film, rather then the more cartoony/whimsical cg of stuff like toy story. Triggered an uncanny valley effect as well.
The makers of Toy Story specifically chose plastic and fabric toys for characters in their first film because that's what renderers of the time could make look good. Not surprising that they knew the limitations of the Renderman software that they (and Square) used, since they also wrote it.
But I suspect that those games had a lot of their development work done pre-merger, or in the immediate aftermath of the merger before corporate identities had really come together.
It seems like when companies merge, or get bought out, the integration process is quite slow. They still get to exist for awhile as separate companies doing what they'd been doing (unless they were REALLY on the wrong track), and then they start slowly getting knitted together. A little executive interference here, a talented VP fired due to redundancy there, and you get a very slow death spiral. At least, if it ends up being a bad merger in the long term.