Everyone knows it. All the nations who can reach space have informal agreements with each other that if something gets put in orbit, something must come down.
NASA is fully aware of the high-velocity bolt problem, and consequently they try to avoid or minimize human spacewalks when they can. Imagine the Uber-whinefest that will erupt when an astronaut is pegged by a flying paint chip as he steps outside the shuttle to look for wing damage.
NASA and others have been looking at ways to scoop up space debris since at least the mid-70's. The problems are primarily physics and the vastness of space. How does one cheaply and safely hoover up particles in orbit? The most sensible proposal I've seen is to send huge catcher-mitt panels coated on one side with several inches of material akin to solid butter, right at known micro-clouds of debris.
But, trying to catch a wayward bolt that everyone forgot about for 30 years? It just ain't gonna happen.
What is with the sudden onslaught of superhero movies?
It isn't sudden, its periodic.
I'm an amateur filmmaker in my spare time, and have been thinking lately that it is about time to do a drama with a heroic character, rather than the spate of anti-hero characters my stories have been obsessing on. Time to fight the tide!
Matrox (Matrox.com) sells the RTX100, a real-time editing card which allows one to suck in as much DV as one wants, onto FAT32 or NTFS partitions, via their 'Infinite Capture' feature. This is aka auto-split. Of course, their product isn't free, but it freakin rocks!
Before we all rush lemming-like over the cliff of enviroshock, consider how much labor and other resources that chip is replacing during it's expected lifetime.
It is a no-brainer that making that chip is so evironmentally favorable when weighted against the resources we'd have to consume to equal it's productivity.
Worse... while I believe that Kennedy -also- used it as a political device, at least Kennedy was trying to boost our national pride and point out to the world that we have the best defense technology. I don't see Bush as doing this for anything other than personal reasons and pork barrel politics.
OK, so you are a Bush bigot. He can't possibly operate for any altruistic reasons, unlike yourself, right?
Assuming the existence of evil motives presumes the corresponding possibility of good motives.
In short: the geek factor on this project is off the scale.
Need another reason? One of the posters who have been answering questions here is "Trixter". I know this person from another online venue... the Matrox RT2xxx user's forum.
Anyone who ever spent extra $$$ so their computer could go faster/harder/farther/louder, just for the sake of it, would appreciate the Matrox real time video editing card product line.
My OTHER hobby, besides computers, is making indie movies and music videos. I use a Matrox RT2500, which is a PCI-based video processing card that allows a lot of video editing functions to be done in real time. It isn't perfect, but I can make professional-looking content with this hardware faster on my dual 600mhz system than any G4 Mac out there.
Anyway, Trixter is one of the regulars on this forum. This user gives great advice and help for free, consistently. If Trixter has a Significant Other, they have to be jealous, because Trixter is one serious video geek.
So buy the frickin' DVD already. You can also get it at Amazon.com, search for MindCandy.
Hey, what do you know, some real, literally hands-getting-dirty investigative reporting.
I'm totally on the side of the reporters on this one. Since the Supreme Court has already ruled that access to what used to be private property in public areas is allowed, the police may go fishing in a suspect's garbage for evidence. Boo-hoo, that battle has already been lost.
Conversely, since trash has been put out in public, the Portland politicos have no expectation of privacy either, and have no recourse when the Press turns the tables on them. If I had been one of those reporters, I'd have laughed in the face of the Mayor at her 'summons' to her private chambers.
Folks, this is what a Free Press is all about. Government is by nature expansionist; the Press, when it is doing its job, is an effective tool in beating back that tendency.
I particularly savor this kind of approach when dealing with legislative types who propose yet another overly-invasive policy, such as blanket video surveilance, such as that practiced in Washington DC or in London. If I were a citizen of those places, then I'd very publicly petition the populace to mandate video surveilance of all legislative chambers, and use the same arguments put forth to justify general video spying. How would officials like to be watched, every minute of their day, by the public? A citizen referendum which makes an end-run around legislators would be a powerful message from the populace that spying is not necessarily the best possible way to combat crime.
In general, I am not keen on the idea that police might target me for some reason, and routinely search my garbage. A container in public is far too subject to planting of evidence, in my opinion. But occassionally citizens can and should remind their officials who they work for, and how laws made to ease law enforcement's job may have unintended consequences.
Hypocricy also runs the other way. Here in Denver, it was recently uncovered by the local press that the Denver police had been maintaining files on citizens who participated in protests, seemingly regardless of the issue involved. it seems the press are complaining that Denver has 'no written policy' concerning the collection of intelligence about citizen dissidents, and darn it, there's got to be a state-wide consistent policy established.
Interestingly, at the height of this country's gun control phase a couple years ago, the two biggest local papers, who were shilling for ever-stricter gun control laws, did so under the justification that Colorado is a 'home rule' state, meaning that each jurisdiction has the freedom to determine its own policies concerning the enforcement of gun controls within its own boundaries.
So, while our state constitution clearly states that no person's right to bear arms shall be called into question, the Post and the News argued that Denver City and County had the right under home-rule to abort that constitutional clause within their own borders.
Now that the issue is police surveilance in a public place, these papers have conveniently forgotten about their holy home-rule stance.
It would also be interesting to study how many years experience each cop who was killed had. I have applied to be a metro cop in my home state, and my background investigator told me the most likely cops to be killed had about 4 or 5 years of experience, because they get careless.
Also, it would be interesting to find out the percentage of cops who were killed with their own guns while being alone on the call. In my own state, the policy is one cop, one car, because it is considered more important to have a greater perception of police presence, with more cars out on the streets, than to buddy up for safety.
I have talked to about fifteen cops in Colorado about the 'smart gun' issue, and ALL of them think it is a stupid idea that endangers them. One guy told me that if a policeman is THAT concerned about having a gun stolen from him, he needs to carry a second weapon within easy reach.
Reliability is a big thing in most cop circles. The ones who are really concerned about it carry revolvers, which are about as reliable as anything can get. The ones who are willing to risk a little reliability at the bonus of extra firepower and quick loading times, carry semi-autos.
Have you ever had a serious conversation with a 5 year old? He will know it's "bad" to play with the gun, but he cannot understand "accidental death", "shattered families", etc.
I remember when I was five years old, and I distinctly remember right from wrong, and also distinctly understood that handling a firearm without supervision was a dangerous act.
This idea that children can not behave responsibly, even from an early age, is urban hogwash. The losers that I encounter these days, who haven't yet moved out of their mommy's basement, yet are 30+ years old, are pathetic, and a direct product of this stupid 'Save the Children' impulse.
"...Who decides that these endeavors aren't important enough?"
Hmmm, the point of this question sounds an awful lot like someone who thinks that they are entitled to the benefits of innovation, while sitting on their ass and slurping endless Mountain Dews.
Here's an important rule to remember, Dexter: He who has the gold, rules.
"...Humanity in general is held back by large corporations that edge out the smaller and perhaps more innovative companies..."
Big corporations had NOTHING to do with the shutdown of SoloTrek (which, by the way, hasn't happened yet!) Successful innovators are a combination of stubbornness, technical experts, and salesmen. They have to be able to stick to the project until their innovation is mature enough to deliver sufficient value. They have to actually be competent enough to innovate in some way. And they have to keep their Sugar Daddy amused enough to keep them financed throughout the innovation lifecycle.
I had read Brin's scathing criticisms of Lucas and his worsening Star Wars epic, and I wholeheartedly agreed with Brin's points about how Lucas had lost the ability to tell a story to commercial gluttony. And recently seeing the latest Star Wars installment, my opinion of Lucas, who flabbergasted an entire generation of movie goers with the first Star Wars episode, has been confirmed.
And so it was with great trepidation that I absorbed Brin's commentary of LOTR. My personal favorite fiction of all time, LOTR was a sacred gem that I desperately hoped wasn't going to be exposed to be in actuality a plastic ornament. But I was willing to chance my world view (so to speak) on the strength of Brin's previously insightful commentary.
Alas, it appears that Brin is merely trying to impress us with the Size of His Intellect.
The very first thing he does is mock our culture's habit of escapism. This is hypocritical in the same way that leftie Hollywood actors wail about the scourge of guns on our streets, yet use them excessively in movies to enrich themselves. Brin's medium, science fiction, is just as much escapist as any fantasy story.
I don't buy Brin's position at all about Tolkien's elitism. The heros of the story are Hobbits, which are basically modeled after working class Brits.
Aragorn, who we can think of as representing the future, was a humble, reluctant, introspective royal, who, through his strength of character had caused, among other things, an Immortal elf to give up her Elevated spiritual stature. Sounds like just the kind of guy we'd like to have running the show!
What about those snotty aloof elves like Elrond and Galadriel? Well, their origins place them somewhat higher on the spiritual scale than Men, and they have been around an awful long time. Don't you think that you'd be a little disdainful at having to deal with men who had only perhaps one percent of your life experience?
There are some things to dislike about Tolkien's writings, such as his seemingly endless obsession with elvish heritage, but they can be forgiven in light of the sheer size of universe J.R.R. has created for us.
Whatever Brin was trying to do with his thought experiment about Sauron, I didn't get it. Yep, Sauron is 100%, irreversably, evil. Our culture is not going to collapse under its own weight if we don't pause a moment to look at the world from Sauron's point of view. It hasn't been made clear from the movie, nor really from the LOTR trilogy, where Sauron comes from. You have to go to The Silmarillion to discover that Sauron is NOT the biggest, baddest guy that ever lived, it was what is essentially a fallen angel named Morgoth, who corrupted many of the lesser spirits before even Middle Earth really manifested. Sauron is a mere leutenant to Morgoth, who has his own history of trying to ruin all creation.
Which brings us to what Sauron's motivation is. One would think that ruling Middle Earth is the objective... nope. Sauron, like his idol, wants to utterly destroy creation and put a new one in its place.
That's really the definition of '100% evil,' and is to me plenty of justification for not feeling sorry for slaughtered orcs. There's no bargaining with the empire of Sauron, no 'dialogue', no 'power-sharing' arrangements.
The biggest impression I got from Brin's article was that he'd just love to drown Tolkien's romantic epic in mud, but knows he can't. So he mutters around the work like a resentful janitor in DaVinci's workshop.
I checked out lots of books, statistical studies, and arguments from both sides of the gun debate before coming to the conclusion that Guns, In The Hands of Good People, Are Good. Bad People With Guns Tend To Do Bad Things. Boo Hoo.
Second: just because Canadians enjoy a lower per-100,000 murder rate than Americans, does not have anything to do with the mere fact of similar statistical per-100,000 gun ownership. No, it has to do with national temperment. I love my Canadian brothers, but, as a society, they are more mellow than Americans, except when it comes to French-speaking issues and drinking.:) Also, per-capita Canadians live a more rural life than Americans, and since the percentages of murders shoots sky-high in primarily urban settings, this must also be taken into account as a factor for gun-related murder rates.
Third: I have come to admire and appreciate the craftsmanship and engineering involved in producing a well-made firearm, which is a laudable end unto itself, in addition to the other utilitarian benefits gun ownership confers.
Finally: I am sick of hearing whiny liberals without a backbone try to tell me how to behave morally. I happen to think that deadly force is sometimes preferable to knee-jerk capitulation.
I was a computer tech and systems analyst in the aerospace biz for seven years, and here's some of my thoughts as I watch this footage:
Rocket building is about overcoming physics in a brute-force fashion, because budget concerns weigh heavily into the issue of getting your payload to low-Earth or geosynchronous orbit.
Those payloads have varying degrees of tolerance to G-forces, thus we can't just put everything in a Mother-of-All-Cannons and shoot them into space.
Most payloads are lifted into orbit as if there were human occupants included, whether or not there are such in the payload.
Most rocket technology, by and large, is at this point 40 years (or better!) old. I have actually been on projects where we have had to call engineers out of retirement after 30 years because their paper drawings, which hadn't yet been digitized, were starting to fade, and we need to know WHY they had designed certain structural and electronic features into their work.
Yes, solid fuel boosters and the shuttle are inefficient ways to get to space. We knew this before we designed the shuttle. But there is a cost-vs-efficiency trade-off which must be made, as well as a 'will to get the job done' factor. We no longer have a 'do-or-die' ethic as regards space utilization. Perhaps another Sputnik is in order...
The producer claims that studios are 'barely making it.' Using what measurement critia?
Studios are primarily financial factories, they only happen to make movies as a side effect of their operations.
If you sign up as an actor in a major movie, your compensation 'deal' is not done as a percentage of sales, or even as pure fixed fee. It is most often done as a 'share' AFTER studio expenses are tallied. The problem with this is that everything the studio does can be considered an expense. The practical result is that even though hundreds of individuals benefit handsomely for selling services at top dollar to the studio, the studio can claim that it made no money on a particular movie because it's expenses happened to equal its income.
The actual costs to make a film in LA are enormous, not because of the logistics involved (although those can be considerable for big budget flicks) but because Screen Actors Guild wages are so damned high.
I live in Colorado, my neighbor across the street was the stunt guy who was thrown into a sack, kicking and screaming, in that Wild Wild West debacle. No lines, and his face never actually appeared in the movie... his SAG pay for half a day: $5000.
There tend to be two bottlenecks when processing video on Intel platforms: render time and disk I/O. And render time is far more significant and less easy to fix.
Currently, Intel platforms with more than 512Megs of RAM enjoy only marginal performance benefits over 512Meg systems.
Most of your editing time is taken up waiting for your system to render that cross-dissolve, which you need to check multiple times before you get the pacing just right...
Dual processor systems and applications definately shorten your render time, and thus increase your productivity, if the NLE app supports SMP. Pay the extra $125 for the 2nd processor!!!
Using a RAID0+1 setup for your video/audio drive(s) helps, and especially does so when you have real-time processing cards doing the work, but not as much in this instance. Although RAID can shorten your time to shuttle huge video files around, it is really CPU and backplane which determine how quickly your system can edit video.
If they can't get even this most obvious and important UI issue right it is hard to trust them on the rest of the product. It looks very unprofessional. The product names do not help here either.
One can easily fit 2 hours of video and audio on a 4.7 gig DVD-R disk, but you must encode your movie at a sufficiently small bitrate to fit on your media.
Using approximations, DVD-R is 4.7 gigs of space.
Use the '600' rule of thumb to determine maximum bitrate for your movie:
If your movie is 95 minutes long, 600/95 = 6.3, which is the max bitrate for your video AND audio stream. The DVD standard calls for 1.6M/sec max on uncompressed audio, or an average of 0.2M/sec for AC3 (Dolby Digital), which is compressed.
So, if you go with uncompressed audio, 6.3 - 1.6 = 4.7M/sec max for your video stream bitrate, or 6.3 - 0.2 = 6.1M/sec if you encode with AC3.
All encoders are not created equal. TMPGENc is a good free encoder, but takes at least 10x real time to convert your.avi movie to MPEG2.
Folks, you don't HAVE to eat what they're dishing out. Honestly, 525 scan lines and a mono speaker really is enough for me.
Acck! I can't stand to look at regular TV any more. And while Digital Video at 720x480, 29.97 frames/sec is nice, even that is starting to look clunky to me.
It is high time for 1080 progressive 24 frames/sec, baby!
All this talk of not broadcasting Hollywood movies unless some sort of copy protection is in place makes me want to start up my own cable/satellite broadcast service which specifically broadcasts unprotected content.
Who would want to allow their content to be copied by consumers? Independent film and video outfits, that's who.
I am also so sick of bleeps and 'time-compressed' content on the networks, I've considered starting up my broadcast station for subscription which only shows uncensored material. I'D PAY FOR THAT.
We consumers should start considering these futile attempts to completely control distribution as damage, and route around them.
I am boycotting Walmart because of their increasingly anti-gun politically correct policies (wherein the latest is insisting on not selling firearms to customers whose background checks don't get done in the requisite three days).
But, now that they are offering an alternative to XP autodroidinally installed on PCs, I want to buy one and encourage my friends to do so, else how will crack the retail side of the MS market dominance?
I have been telling everyone I know, and many people I don't, the ownership ramifications of using XP, or even downloading the latest Media Player patch.
It is the first time I've actually seen a glimmer of understanding from my non-computer-professional associates.
I'm also busy letting all my application vendors know that Win2K was the last Windows O/S I'm ever going to buy. For example, Avid (who makes high-end video editing software) just released an upgrade for their product. But it only runs on XP or OS X, not on Win2K. I told them they instantly lost the sale because of that policy.
All of you 'realists' who say that Microsoft has already won, and will keep on winning, are wrong in that we have to start really nagging consumers about Microsoft's continued software fascism. The situaion won't change any other way.
In my 20+ years of computing, I have NEVER had a computer spontaneously burst into flame. I've worked on projects where I was responsible for over two hundred separate computers of all sizes, ranging from dozens of PCs to Vaxen.
Not one, not a single one, popped a smoke alarm. Never have I been required to 'grab the fire extinguisher.'
Plenty of power supplies have burned out; in fact now my experience is that power supplies burn out faster than hard drives do. But dust-bunny-laden or not, no PC has ever been a fire hazard in my experience.
Congrats to Warner for finally listening more to the bean counters than to yammering lawyers.
One of my hobbies consists of producing independent film and video. Having got into the business, I am now a video and audio quality snob. If we do a production that doesn't live up to DVD distribution, we call that production a failure.
Nobody on my crew can stand to watch VHS any more. All of us now have a shelf full of DVDs, whereas before we wouldn't buy VHS. Those are real sales. Are you listening, movie studios?
From discussions I have heard between serious scientists, the news that this much water has been found is great. BUT:
It looks like the biggest roadblock to Mars colonization will not be air, water, or shelter, but microdust particles.
Simply put, Mars has a very active atmosphere, which is a big planetary grinder, for lack of a better word. Some of the dust on Mars is so fine as a result of the atmospheric dynamics that it poses a danger to humans.
How? Even though colonists would not breathe Martian air directly, the very small dust particles there will get into pressure suits and living quarters. Essentially, there is a danger that people would be breathing particulates and getting a Martian version of black lung.
We don't know the extent to which this issue poses a danger to settlers, but it is a very real one. Add to that the harsh conditions, the dangers of dust storms, meteor showers, and unknowns we can't forsee, colonization of Mars will be very difficult indeed.
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Everyone knows it. All the nations who can reach space have informal agreements with each other that if something gets put in orbit, something must come down.
NASA is fully aware of the high-velocity bolt problem, and consequently they try to avoid or minimize human spacewalks when they can. Imagine the Uber-whinefest that will erupt when an astronaut is pegged by a flying paint chip as he steps outside the shuttle to look for wing damage.
NASA and others have been looking at ways to scoop up space debris since at least the mid-70's. The problems are primarily physics and the vastness of space. How does one cheaply and safely hoover up particles in orbit? The most sensible proposal I've seen is to send huge catcher-mitt panels coated on one side with several inches of material akin to solid butter, right at known micro-clouds of debris.
But, trying to catch a wayward bolt that everyone forgot about for 30 years? It just ain't gonna happen.
It isn't sudden, its periodic.
I'm an amateur filmmaker in my spare time, and have been thinking lately that it is about time to do a drama with a heroic character, rather than the spate of anti-hero characters my stories have been obsessing on. Time to fight the tide!
Matrox (Matrox.com) sells the RTX100, a real-time editing card which allows one to suck in as much DV as one wants, onto FAT32 or NTFS partitions, via their 'Infinite Capture' feature. This is aka auto-split. Of course, their product isn't free, but it freakin rocks!
It is a no-brainer that making that chip is so evironmentally favorable when weighted against the resources we'd have to consume to equal it's productivity.
OK, so you are a Bush bigot. He can't possibly operate for any altruistic reasons, unlike yourself, right?
Assuming the existence of evil motives presumes the corresponding possibility of good motives.
Real attempts by clever and obscure means to trick users into options they wouldn't normally choose.
Who would have dared to think it?
In short: the geek factor on this project is off the scale.
Need another reason? One of the posters who have been answering questions here is "Trixter". I know this person from another online venue... the Matrox RT2xxx user's forum.
Anyone who ever spent extra $$$ so their computer could go faster/harder/farther/louder, just for the sake of it, would appreciate the Matrox real time video editing card product line.
My OTHER hobby, besides computers, is making indie movies and music videos. I use a Matrox RT2500, which is a PCI-based video processing card that allows a lot of video editing functions to be done in real time. It isn't perfect, but I can make professional-looking content with this hardware faster on my dual 600mhz system than any G4 Mac out there.
Anyway, Trixter is one of the regulars on this forum. This user gives great advice and help for free, consistently. If Trixter has a Significant Other, they have to be jealous, because Trixter is one serious video geek.
So buy the frickin' DVD already. You can also get it at Amazon.com, search for MindCandy.
I'm totally on the side of the reporters on this one. Since the Supreme Court has already ruled that access to what used to be private property in public areas is allowed, the police may go fishing in a suspect's garbage for evidence. Boo-hoo, that battle has already been lost.
Conversely, since trash has been put out in public, the Portland politicos have no expectation of privacy either, and have no recourse when the Press turns the tables on them. If I had been one of those reporters, I'd have laughed in the face of the Mayor at her 'summons' to her private chambers.
Folks, this is what a Free Press is all about. Government is by nature expansionist; the Press, when it is doing its job, is an effective tool in beating back that tendency.
I particularly savor this kind of approach when dealing with legislative types who propose yet another overly-invasive policy, such as blanket video surveilance, such as that practiced in Washington DC or in London. If I were a citizen of those places, then I'd very publicly petition the populace to mandate video surveilance of all legislative chambers, and use the same arguments put forth to justify general video spying. How would officials like to be watched, every minute of their day, by the public? A citizen referendum which makes an end-run around legislators would be a powerful message from the populace that spying is not necessarily the best possible way to combat crime.
In general, I am not keen on the idea that police might target me for some reason, and routinely search my garbage. A container in public is far too subject to planting of evidence, in my opinion. But occassionally citizens can and should remind their officials who they work for, and how laws made to ease law enforcement's job may have unintended consequences.
Hypocricy also runs the other way. Here in Denver, it was recently uncovered by the local press that the Denver police had been maintaining files on citizens who participated in protests, seemingly regardless of the issue involved. it seems the press are complaining that Denver has 'no written policy' concerning the collection of intelligence about citizen dissidents, and darn it, there's got to be a state-wide consistent policy established.
Interestingly, at the height of this country's gun control phase a couple years ago, the two biggest local papers, who were shilling for ever-stricter gun control laws, did so under the justification that Colorado is a 'home rule' state, meaning that each jurisdiction has the freedom to determine its own policies concerning the enforcement of gun controls within its own boundaries.
So, while our state constitution clearly states that no person's right to bear arms shall be called into question, the Post and the News argued that Denver City and County had the right under home-rule to abort that constitutional clause within their own borders.
Now that the issue is police surveilance in a public place, these papers have conveniently forgotten about their holy home-rule stance.
It would also be interesting to study how many years experience each cop who was killed had. I have applied to be a metro cop in my home state, and my background investigator told me the most likely cops to be killed had about 4 or 5 years of experience, because they get careless.
Also, it would be interesting to find out the percentage of cops who were killed with their own guns while being alone on the call. In my own state, the policy is one cop, one car, because it is considered more important to have a greater perception of police presence, with more cars out on the streets, than to buddy up for safety.
I have talked to about fifteen cops in Colorado about the 'smart gun' issue, and ALL of them think it is a stupid idea that endangers them. One guy told me that if a policeman is THAT concerned about having a gun stolen from him, he needs to carry a second weapon within easy reach.
Reliability is a big thing in most cop circles. The ones who are really concerned about it carry revolvers, which are about as reliable as anything can get. The ones who are willing to risk a little reliability at the bonus of extra firepower and quick loading times, carry semi-autos.
I remember when I was five years old, and I distinctly remember right from wrong, and also distinctly understood that handling a firearm without supervision was a dangerous act.
This idea that children can not behave responsibly, even from an early age, is urban hogwash. The losers that I encounter these days, who haven't yet moved out of their mommy's basement, yet are 30+ years old, are pathetic, and a direct product of this stupid 'Save the Children' impulse.
Hmmm, the point of this question sounds an awful lot like someone who thinks that they are entitled to the benefits of innovation, while sitting on their ass and slurping endless Mountain Dews.
Here's an important rule to remember, Dexter: He who has the gold, rules.
"...Humanity in general is held back by large corporations that edge out the smaller and perhaps more innovative companies..."
Big corporations had NOTHING to do with the shutdown of SoloTrek (which, by the way, hasn't happened yet!) Successful innovators are a combination of stubbornness, technical experts, and salesmen. They have to be able to stick to the project until their innovation is mature enough to deliver sufficient value. They have to actually be competent enough to innovate in some way. And they have to keep their Sugar Daddy amused enough to keep them financed throughout the innovation lifecycle.
And so it was with great trepidation that I absorbed Brin's commentary of LOTR. My personal favorite fiction of all time, LOTR was a sacred gem that I desperately hoped wasn't going to be exposed to be in actuality a plastic ornament. But I was willing to chance my world view (so to speak) on the strength of Brin's previously insightful commentary.
Alas, it appears that Brin is merely trying to impress us with the Size of His Intellect.
The very first thing he does is mock our culture's habit of escapism. This is hypocritical in the same way that leftie Hollywood actors wail about the scourge of guns on our streets, yet use them excessively in movies to enrich themselves. Brin's medium, science fiction, is just as much escapist as any fantasy story.
I don't buy Brin's position at all about Tolkien's elitism. The heros of the story are Hobbits, which are basically modeled after working class Brits.
Aragorn, who we can think of as representing the future, was a humble, reluctant, introspective royal, who, through his strength of character had caused, among other things, an Immortal elf to give up her Elevated spiritual stature. Sounds like just the kind of guy we'd like to have running the show!
What about those snotty aloof elves like Elrond and Galadriel? Well, their origins place them somewhat higher on the spiritual scale than Men, and they have been around an awful long time. Don't you think that you'd be a little disdainful at having to deal with men who had only perhaps one percent of your life experience?
There are some things to dislike about Tolkien's writings, such as his seemingly endless obsession with elvish heritage, but they can be forgiven in light of the sheer size of universe J.R.R. has created for us.
Whatever Brin was trying to do with his thought experiment about Sauron, I didn't get it. Yep, Sauron is 100%, irreversably, evil. Our culture is not going to collapse under its own weight if we don't pause a moment to look at the world from Sauron's point of view. It hasn't been made clear from the movie, nor really from the LOTR trilogy, where Sauron comes from. You have to go to The Silmarillion to discover that Sauron is NOT the biggest, baddest guy that ever lived, it was what is essentially a fallen angel named Morgoth, who corrupted many of the lesser spirits before even Middle Earth really manifested. Sauron is a mere leutenant to Morgoth, who has his own history of trying to ruin all creation.
Which brings us to what Sauron's motivation is. One would think that ruling Middle Earth is the objective... nope. Sauron, like his idol, wants to utterly destroy creation and put a new one in its place.
That's really the definition of '100% evil,' and is to me plenty of justification for not feeling sorry for slaughtered orcs. There's no bargaining with the empire of Sauron, no 'dialogue', no 'power-sharing' arrangements.
The biggest impression I got from Brin's article was that he'd just love to drown Tolkien's romantic epic in mud, but knows he can't. So he mutters around the work like a resentful janitor in DaVinci's workshop.
I checked out lots of books, statistical studies, and arguments from both sides of the gun debate before coming to the conclusion that Guns, In The Hands of Good People, Are Good. Bad People With Guns Tend To Do Bad Things. Boo Hoo.
Second: just because Canadians enjoy a lower per-100,000 murder rate than Americans, does not have anything to do with the mere fact of similar statistical per-100,000 gun ownership. No, it has to do with national temperment. I love my Canadian brothers, but, as a society, they are more mellow than Americans, except when it comes to French-speaking issues and drinking. :) Also, per-capita Canadians live a more rural life than Americans, and since the percentages of murders shoots sky-high in primarily urban settings, this must also be taken into account as a factor for gun-related murder rates.
Third: I have come to admire and appreciate the craftsmanship and engineering involved in producing a well-made firearm, which is a laudable end unto itself, in addition to the other utilitarian benefits gun ownership confers.
Finally: I am sick of hearing whiny liberals without a backbone try to tell me how to behave morally. I happen to think that deadly force is sometimes preferable to knee-jerk capitulation.
I was a computer tech and systems analyst in the aerospace biz for seven years, and here's some of my thoughts as I watch this footage:
Rocket building is about overcoming physics in a brute-force fashion, because budget concerns weigh heavily into the issue of getting your payload to low-Earth or geosynchronous orbit.
Those payloads have varying degrees of tolerance to G-forces, thus we can't just put everything in a Mother-of-All-Cannons and shoot them into space.
Most payloads are lifted into orbit as if there were human occupants included, whether or not there are such in the payload.
Most rocket technology, by and large, is at this point 40 years (or better!) old. I have actually been on projects where we have had to call engineers out of retirement after 30 years because their paper drawings, which hadn't yet been digitized, were starting to fade, and we need to know WHY they had designed certain structural and electronic features into their work.
Yes, solid fuel boosters and the shuttle are inefficient ways to get to space. We knew this before we designed the shuttle. But there is a cost-vs-efficiency trade-off which must be made, as well as a 'will to get the job done' factor. We no longer have a 'do-or-die' ethic as regards space utilization. Perhaps another Sputnik is in order...
The producer claims that studios are 'barely making it.' Using what measurement critia?
Studios are primarily financial factories, they only happen to make movies as a side effect of their operations.
If you sign up as an actor in a major movie, your compensation 'deal' is not done as a percentage of sales, or even as pure fixed fee. It is most often done as a 'share' AFTER studio expenses are tallied. The problem with this is that everything the studio does can be considered an expense. The practical result is that even though hundreds of individuals benefit handsomely for selling services at top dollar to the studio, the studio can claim that it made no money on a particular movie because it's expenses happened to equal its income.
The actual costs to make a film in LA are enormous, not because of the logistics involved (although those can be considerable for big budget flicks) but because Screen Actors Guild wages are so damned high.
I live in Colorado, my neighbor across the street was the stunt guy who was thrown into a sack, kicking and screaming, in that Wild Wild West debacle. No lines, and his face never actually appeared in the movie... his SAG pay for half a day: $5000.
Beats pumping gas, doesn't it?
There tend to be two bottlenecks when processing video on Intel platforms: render time and disk I/O. And render time is far more significant and less easy to fix.
Currently, Intel platforms with more than 512Megs of RAM enjoy only marginal performance benefits over 512Meg systems.
Most of your editing time is taken up waiting for your system to render that cross-dissolve, which you need to check multiple times before you get the pacing just right...
Dual processor systems and applications definately shorten your render time, and thus increase your productivity, if the NLE app supports SMP. Pay the extra $125 for the 2nd processor!!!
Using a RAID0+1 setup for your video/audio drive(s) helps, and especially does so when you have real-time processing cards doing the work, but not as much in this instance. Although RAID can shorten your time to shuttle huge video files around, it is really CPU and backplane which determine how quickly your system can edit video.
Dude, the product is free .
Using approximations, DVD-R is 4.7 gigs of space.
Use the '600' rule of thumb to determine maximum bitrate for your movie:
If your movie is 95 minutes long, 600/95 = 6.3, which is the max bitrate for your video AND audio stream. The DVD standard calls for 1.6M/sec max on uncompressed audio, or an average of 0.2M/sec for AC3 (Dolby Digital), which is compressed.
So, if you go with uncompressed audio, 6.3 - 1.6 = 4.7M/sec max for your video stream bitrate, or 6.3 - 0.2 = 6.1M/sec if you encode with AC3.
All encoders are not created equal. TMPGENc is a good free encoder, but takes at least 10x real time to convert your .avi movie to MPEG2.
Acck! I can't stand to look at regular TV any more. And while Digital Video at 720x480, 29.97 frames/sec is nice, even that is starting to look clunky to me.
It is high time for 1080 progressive 24 frames/sec, baby!
Who would want to allow their content to be copied by consumers? Independent film and video outfits, that's who.
I am also so sick of bleeps and 'time-compressed' content on the networks, I've considered starting up my broadcast station for subscription which only shows uncensored material. I'D PAY FOR THAT.
We consumers should start considering these futile attempts to completely control distribution as damage, and route around them.
Hmm, what's a politically active person to do?
I am boycotting Walmart because of their increasingly anti-gun politically correct policies (wherein the latest is insisting on not selling firearms to customers whose background checks don't get done in the requisite three days).
But, now that they are offering an alternative to XP autodroidinally installed on PCs, I want to buy one and encourage my friends to do so, else how will crack the retail side of the MS market dominance?
I have been telling everyone I know, and many people I don't, the ownership ramifications of using XP, or even downloading the latest Media Player patch.
It is the first time I've actually seen a glimmer of understanding from my non-computer-professional associates.
I'm also busy letting all my application vendors know that Win2K was the last Windows O/S I'm ever going to buy. For example, Avid (who makes high-end video editing software) just released an upgrade for their product. But it only runs on XP or OS X, not on Win2K. I told them they instantly lost the sale because of that policy.
All of you 'realists' who say that Microsoft has already won, and will keep on winning, are wrong in that we have to start really nagging consumers about Microsoft's continued software fascism. The situaion won't change any other way.
In my 20+ years of computing, I have NEVER had a computer spontaneously burst into flame. I've worked on projects where I was responsible for over two hundred separate computers of all sizes, ranging from dozens of PCs to Vaxen.
Not one, not a single one, popped a smoke alarm. Never have I been required to 'grab the fire extinguisher.'
Plenty of power supplies have burned out; in fact now my experience is that power supplies burn out faster than hard drives do. But dust-bunny-laden or not, no PC has ever been a fire hazard in my experience.
One of my hobbies consists of producing independent film and video. Having got into the business, I am now a video and audio quality snob. If we do a production that doesn't live up to DVD distribution, we call that production a failure.
Nobody on my crew can stand to watch VHS any more. All of us now have a shelf full of DVDs, whereas before we wouldn't buy VHS. Those are real sales. Are you listening, movie studios?
It looks like the biggest roadblock to Mars colonization will not be air, water, or shelter, but microdust particles.
Simply put, Mars has a very active atmosphere, which is a big planetary grinder, for lack of a better word. Some of the dust on Mars is so fine as a result of the atmospheric dynamics that it poses a danger to humans.
How? Even though colonists would not breathe Martian air directly, the very small dust particles there will get into pressure suits and living quarters. Essentially, there is a danger that people would be breathing particulates and getting a Martian version of black lung.
We don't know the extent to which this issue poses a danger to settlers, but it is a very real one. Add to that the harsh conditions, the dangers of dust storms, meteor showers, and unknowns we can't forsee, colonization of Mars will be very difficult indeed.