"Likewise, so could a fish flap its fins and propel itself slowly through air, in the absence of gravity to cancel out the tiny force imparted on flapping fins against air."
However, fish are used to flapping against water, something with far more mass. It's likely that should they find themselves in air they'd rapidly flop around and achieve virtually no propulsion at all.
"This does look like a perfect excuse for already greedy airlines to try and get more money..."
That's ridiculous. If the government forced them to stop flying and was wrong, then the airlines should be compensated. Otherwise, let them do what they want. Who's hurt more by a plane falling out of the sky, a company or a government. They know when to ground their own.
"Does that not also apply to employees in private organisations? If a machine breaks in a company owned by the worker, he fixes it. If the farm is owned by a hedge fund, he has no incentive to fix it. By your own logic, socialism is the better option. The farmer with a direct stake in his farm will run it better than a farmer who's merely an employee."
- The difference is, the decision makers in the organization--the executives--have a direct interest in the outcome of the business.
That is to say that the incentive structure is direct. Failure results in executives being removed from pay and position. Success means both reputation increase and financial reward.
Employees don't have a ton of incentive, true, they've traded share in success or failure for stability.
But the situation is far worse in a government run corporation. When you have politicians in the executive position you have people who've been elected or appointed there and whom do not share in the success or failure of the enterprise. They simply don't care either way, because success or failure has no impact on them.
For reference, might I suggest the fate of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both QUANGOs.
Yes, there is an answer for why communism in the farm fails.
Read the eminent economist and commentator Thomas Sowell's book, "Knowledge and Decisions" for an explanation of why socialism/communism failed in the farms, and why the same reasons it failed there cause it to fail or be continually less efficient than capitalism in every other enterprise.
If you think a publicly-owned anything can do better than a private organization, you have to explain how it will use coercion to do that, because public org's ability to coerce is the only difference between them. Both public and private companies are simply groups of people. People denigrate private orgs for having personal stakes in the outcome, but what turns out to be worse is the indifference of those with no stake in an enterprises outcome such as we find in communal/public organizations.
Ultimately, what Sowell's thesis comes down to is that communal organizations face a distortion of incentive structures. If something breaks on a farm that's owned by the farmer he fixes it. If a machine breaks on a communist farm he expects someone else to fix it--he doesn't own it. He neither profits by fixing it nor loses by not fixing. Thus, the owner has incentive to do what maximizes efficiency. The communal farmer does not, and could actually be punished for trying.
But farming doesn't have a lot of room for error. And if you're drastically inefficient enough people start starving. See China and Mao's "Great Leap Forward" (into starvation apparently) which resulted in the deaths of some 20+ million Chinese.
Hell yeah, unagi is my absolute favorite sushi of all time. If you've never had it, find a good sushi place and try it (emphasis on 'good'). And since it's actually served cooked, you wussies can't complain:P It's also served with an absolutely delicious teriyaki sauce.
What it means is that there's likely zero problem with Toyota's cars and there never was.
What's happening is that people are missing the brake pedal and hitting the gas pedal without realizing it. Their car then speeds up, shocking them, and since they think they're foot is on the brake they slam it all the way down, stomp on it, etc., and it just keeps going.
The elderly do this all the time.
Toyota's are just really popular cars, and some lawyer out there smelled blood.
And right now is a really good time to buy a Toyota. You'll get the deal of a lifetime:)
This rationale is a lie, of course. China couches their real aim in a moral sleeve. Their real aim is nothing more than protecting their fascist government from the revolution that's coming, to keep the ruling party in power and shield it from criticism and challenge.
It's the same lie that Hugo Chavez spoke recently in creating his state police designed to conduct a "war on crime" when the simple fact is that it simply ends up creating a secret police that answers to Chavez alone and will end up reinforcing his power.
The same lie that Obama spoke about insuring millions and reducing the deficit by taking over health care. Never ends with these politicians.
Are you at all familiar with history? It's filled with skirmishes, one after the other, all over the world, with brief pockets of peace--and that was -before- nuclear weapons. On the balance, nuclear weapons have prevented far more war than they've caused skirmishes, precisely because they've kept the big boys from tumbling. The really destructive wars have always been when the reigning powers strive for survival.
Beyond all that, the reason we don't have peace should be manifestly clear: how can we have world peace when we don't have peace between individual nations, and how can we have peace between nations when we don't have peace between political parties, and how can we have peace between political parties when we don't have peace between individuals, and how can we have peace between individuals when we don't have peace in our mind, nor within the human heart?
The real cause of war is us, each and every one of us. World peace cannot be achieved while we remain human, while we have the same nature we find ourselves now with. And the only upcoming opportunity to change human nature involves transcending the flesh during the technological singularity. If we're lucky, the nuclear standoff will create just enough peace to get us there in one peace and the exodus from the flesh can begin.
While we retain the flesh we will war eternally with our own desires. That war within ourselves is the same struggle and difficulty that becomes war on the macro scale between nations. But, in the virtual world there is no shortage of property, thus wars over property can end. In the virtual world there is no shortage of food, or comfort, or anything material one can desire. Every human need can be met in an instant, because we control our environment totally, and for virtually zero cost....Look for my future novel incorporating these details in a bookstore near you (in a few years:)
Fire hoses are already heat-resistant woven material + a rubber liner. They get wet and have to be dried because they're there when tons of water are being sprayed in all directions at a fire. And, if firefighters are doing their job right, you'll never see a line running through a fire, ever. That would mean they've been cut off by the flame and have bigger problems than a line in the fire. Although, I wonder if that's ever happened and a hole got burned in the line resulting in catastrophic loss of water pressure which would then make it pretty hard to escape again.
There is some research on this in Malcom Gladwell's "Outliers", specifically how age affects spors performance. It turns out that an extremely large number of professional athletes across various sports are all born within certain dates which corresponds to cutoffs for that particular sport.
What's important is to get an extra year of development before you enter at the same level. So, people born just before the cut-off are the best off.
The same is true of academic life. The better off children, both socially and intellectually are those whom are slightly older, yet competing in the same grade. That small advantage begins to snowball with time until it becomes an insurmountable barrier.
Getting your child into school earlier is a mistake, so may be advancing kids a grade. Anyway, check out the book, lots more info in there.
I started out as kids do, performing simple hunt'n'peck maneuvers. By the time I hit high-school it was well ingrained. At age 19, I wrote a novel of over 1,000,000 characters over a 1.5 year period, averaging four hours a day of just typing. That burned the keyboard layout into me (I would -never- go DVORAK).
Even now, I don't even have to look at the keyboard to type near perfectly, long as my wrists remain still on the rest I don't lose my place. I can even type just as perfectly with my eyes closed or in a dark room by centering on the F and J keys to start. My style is now a mastered form of hunt'n'peck, hunt'n'peck taken to the Nth degree, massively improved through perfect memorization of the keyboard layout and ingrained muscle-memory, such that I can type now about 80 words per minute. It's simply 'think and the words are typed' at this point, as natural as speaking or writing with a pen.
There came a time once that I thought I should improve my typing speed by learning to do real touch-typing the way professional typists must learn. So, I picked up a 'teach me typing' program, and diligently went through the courses for quite some time. I think it was 'Mario Teaches Typing':P It had which finger you were supposed to use and all that jazz, and I did what it asked to the letter. Used the proper fingers, and arranged my hands as asked.
Only one hitch: my hands began to hurt, a lot. I noticed there was a large amount of unnatural stretching and contortion compared to my mastered hunt'n'peck method in order to reach the key with the 'proper finger', the one the program demanded I use. Now, I didn't simply give up, I wanted to master this technique, I was committed. But, after a month of daily practice I couldn't take it anymore. I was nearly as fast while touch-typing, but my hands were killing me.
I realized then why typists get carpel-tunnel syndrome and the like. Dogmatic touch-typing it terrible for your hands! You need to be able to relax your hands as your type, not stretch and contort them unnaturally. I went back to my freestyle typing and never looked back.
My typing can realistically be called freestyle because, based on what combination of letters and words I'm typing, it could be any number of fingers that are available at the moment to type that key. The difference is, I know I have to hit that key, and it happens quite naturally. I don't use my pinkies to type at all (well, maybe to hit shift), but I use everything else. That's probably the difference between my speed and a professional typist, since 80 WPM isn't really something to sneeze at but a pro typist can hit 50% faster.
But, now I'm attempting to turn myself into a professional author, and typing has become my primary skill, my devotion, my life. I'm glad I never took the touch-typing route! I'm quite certain that I will never develop carpel tunnel or repetitive strain injuries because my hands are relaxed, my fingers don't contort, and typing is done in perfectly natural motion. No overextended fingers, no awkward combinations. No pain.
That's my experience. That's the wisdom I've gained.
And if you split a 120hz signal 4 ways, you get a corresponding decrease in emitted light by half as well. So, the screen would appear half as bright for those 2 players than if just one person were viewing.
Elder Scrolls is very much a complete world. But, what you say is insightful. I like the idea of AI's playing an RTS while you play a unit in the war. That could create non-repeating gameplay. Very cool.
That tech will end up on one of the next generation console systems, and perhaps soon after on PC.
Johnny Lee was actually hired by Microsoft recently for their Xbox divions, so it's more than likely that Mr. Lee is working on this system to exploit his software and techniques for the next Xbox:)
With head-tracking and circular-polarization, true 3D is completely possible. Too bad circular polarization is very difficult to pull off. Although, I suppose it would work for a rear-projection screen TV? Doubt it would work for LCD TV's. To make it work on an LCD, you'd need some way to electrically switch polarization on individual screen elements. It might even require twice the number of pixels for the same screen space, each with a different polarization filter. I'm no expert.
(again, beware spoilers) I'm not so much worried about its designation as fuel. In fact, it seemed to me that they needed it to get the 'command pod' running.
But, the prospect of anything changing a human into an alien creature that wasn't explicitly designed to do so, is basically silly. Now again, as a writer myself, I understand why it was done that way, because that element is what ties the script together in a coherent way. It's called a doorway moment. When Wikas sniffs the 'fuel', there's no turning back and he deals with the consequences until the end of the movie.
I agree with the previous poster's rationalizations that it could have been a mutagen or alien virii which produces fuel, or something like that.
Actually, my best explanation is that not only does it produce fuel from raw materials via some living organism, but it's been designed to repair physical and genetic damage of those it comes in contact with via that same living mechanism. That way you don't need to put a medic on the ship, just send the fluid out. So, the organism in the fluid assumed that Wikas was an extremely damaged prawn and 'repaired him'.
But then we get into all new contradictions. If alien and human genetics were close enough for that to work, we then face the proposition that prawn are actually from earth, they would have to be. Maybe they are descended from cockroaches! Perhaps we'll find out in District 10... after I write it >:P
And D10 could go in a ton of directions. You have the prospect of Wikas acting as a kind of prawn Jesus, championing their rights as a human himself, one who understands how the system works. Is he really going to wait 3 years in some camp? I doubt it. So, D10 will probably have a very different storyline, probably won't begin with the prawn ship returning. It will actually probably END with the prawn ship returning, thus setting up D11. Hehehe:)
Here's a D11 spoiler: when the end comes at last, Wikas chooses to stay a prawn!
"If we're talking about good old-fashioned hard sci-fi, I might suggest that it's the only sci-fi movie of 2009."
(potential spoilers below) Hard scifi, you say? 'Hard scifi' has a definition: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction), it is a particular genre of fiction, and District 9 is definitely not hard-scifi. Hard scifi is "characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both."
District 9 has several elements that preclude it from the label of hard scifi: 'fuel' that genetically modifies a human being, genetic modification that results in partial and then total form change, anti-gravity ships, a frikkin' tractor beam, faster than light travel, various impossible weapons including a lightning gun that causes people to explode upon being hit, tiny metal plate blocks that 100% of random bullets (they really overdid that part), etc.
I'm not a hard scifi nazi like some people; I enjoyed me some District 9. But the biggest plot hole in the movie is the fuel causing genetic mutation. That's just ridiculous. But it was completely necessary to the plot as written. And, I loved the ending:)
Greg Egan (an author) is the current flag-bearer of the hard scifi genre. Historically, hard scifi has not captured the public's imagination as much as made up impossible devices:P
If the 787 project got far enough for someone to actually die on a flying plane, it would likely be considered a complete success. Rather ironic, isn't it. Inevitably a 787 will go down, but, as with other airliners, it will be so rare as to be considered not a problem, just a very unfortunate accident or mishap. It may not even be caused by a technical problem. In fact, statistically, it won't be. Human error is far more prevalent. Actual design flaws are usually caught--especially in this day of digital design and testing.
Isn't technology grand. It just keeps getting better, and better, and better, and better. I was in line to buy something at Office Depot and saw 2GB SD-flash cards for $10, and had to chuckle a bit. My first had drive was 20mb, and I actually told my parents that it would be impossible to ever fill up 20mb:P
No, I agree with you. It's really easy to say that the technology is not read yet and shouldn't be used, ignoring the fact that it's projects like this that typically push tech forward.
The future of jetliners is composites.
Whether the project succeeds or not only matters in the short-term. The tech and experience produced even by a failed 787 project will pave the way for the thousands of new projects the future will surely produce, to everyone's benefit.
Like I said, all you need is a physical simulation on the atomic level to have a working brain. Boolean operations can simulate physics quite easily, it's largely a solved problem. It just takes a ton of computing horsepower to simulate the hundreds trillions of atoms it would take to do so.
But, again, it's a certainty that we will eventually arrive at that much computing horsepower, due to Moore's law.
Slashdot Mirror
"Likewise, so could a fish flap its fins and propel itself slowly through air, in the absence of gravity to cancel out the tiny force imparted on flapping fins against air."
However, fish are used to flapping against water, something with far more mass. It's likely that should they find themselves in air they'd rapidly flop around and achieve virtually no propulsion at all.
You couldn't stop #4 from happening if you wanted to.
"Ultimately, there is no Truth"
Is that statement true? /philosophyfail
"This does look like a perfect excuse for already greedy airlines to try and get more money ..."
That's ridiculous. If the government forced them to stop flying and was wrong, then the airlines should be compensated. Otherwise, let them do what they want. Who's hurt more by a plane falling out of the sky, a company or a government. They know when to ground their own.
"Does that not also apply to employees in private organisations? If a machine breaks in a company owned by the worker, he fixes it. If the farm is owned by a hedge fund, he has no incentive to fix it. By your own logic, socialism is the better option. The farmer with a direct stake in his farm will run it better than a farmer who's merely an employee."
- The difference is, the decision makers in the organization--the executives--have a direct interest in the outcome of the business.
That is to say that the incentive structure is direct. Failure results in executives being removed from pay and position. Success means both reputation increase and financial reward.
Employees don't have a ton of incentive, true, they've traded share in success or failure for stability.
But the situation is far worse in a government run corporation. When you have politicians in the executive position you have people who've been elected or appointed there and whom do not share in the success or failure of the enterprise. They simply don't care either way, because success or failure has no impact on them.
For reference, might I suggest the fate of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, both QUANGOs.
Yes, there is an answer for why communism in the farm fails.
Read the eminent economist and commentator Thomas Sowell's book, "Knowledge and Decisions" for an explanation of why socialism/communism failed in the farms, and why the same reasons it failed there cause it to fail or be continually less efficient than capitalism in every other enterprise.
If you think a publicly-owned anything can do better than a private organization, you have to explain how it will use coercion to do that, because public org's ability to coerce is the only difference between them. Both public and private companies are simply groups of people. People denigrate private orgs for having personal stakes in the outcome, but what turns out to be worse is the indifference of those with no stake in an enterprises outcome such as we find in communal/public organizations.
Ultimately, what Sowell's thesis comes down to is that communal organizations face a distortion of incentive structures. If something breaks on a farm that's owned by the farmer he fixes it. If a machine breaks on a communist farm he expects someone else to fix it--he doesn't own it. He neither profits by fixing it nor loses by not fixing. Thus, the owner has incentive to do what maximizes efficiency. The communal farmer does not, and could actually be punished for trying.
But farming doesn't have a lot of room for error. And if you're drastically inefficient enough people start starving. See China and Mao's "Great Leap Forward" (into starvation apparently) which resulted in the deaths of some 20+ million Chinese.
Hell yeah, unagi is my absolute favorite sushi of all time. If you've never had it, find a good sushi place and try it (emphasis on 'good'). And since it's actually served cooked, you wussies can't complain :P It's also served with an absolutely delicious teriyaki sauce.
Close behind that one: ama ebi ^_^
What it means is that there's likely zero problem with Toyota's cars and there never was.
What's happening is that people are missing the brake pedal and hitting the gas pedal without realizing it. Their car then speeds up, shocking them, and since they think they're foot is on the brake they slam it all the way down, stomp on it, etc., and it just keeps going.
The elderly do this all the time.
Toyota's are just really popular cars, and some lawyer out there smelled blood.
And right now is a really good time to buy a Toyota. You'll get the deal of a lifetime :)
This rationale is a lie, of course. China couches their real aim in a moral sleeve. Their real aim is nothing more than protecting their fascist government from the revolution that's coming, to keep the ruling party in power and shield it from criticism and challenge.
It's the same lie that Hugo Chavez spoke recently in creating his state police designed to conduct a "war on crime" when the simple fact is that it simply ends up creating a secret police that answers to Chavez alone and will end up reinforcing his power.
The same lie that Obama spoke about insuring millions and reducing the deficit by taking over health care. Never ends with these politicians.
People will look back on your joke and laugh and your stupendous naivete... sometime in the year 3876 >_>
Are you at all familiar with history? It's filled with skirmishes, one after the other, all over the world, with brief pockets of peace--and that was -before- nuclear weapons. On the balance, nuclear weapons have prevented far more war than they've caused skirmishes, precisely because they've kept the big boys from tumbling. The really destructive wars have always been when the reigning powers strive for survival.
Beyond all that, the reason we don't have peace should be manifestly clear: how can we have world peace when we don't have peace between individual nations, and how can we have peace between nations when we don't have peace between political parties, and how can we have peace between political parties when we don't have peace between individuals, and how can we have peace between individuals when we don't have peace in our mind, nor within the human heart?
The real cause of war is us, each and every one of us. World peace cannot be achieved while we remain human, while we have the same nature we find ourselves now with. And the only upcoming opportunity to change human nature involves transcending the flesh during the technological singularity. If we're lucky, the nuclear standoff will create just enough peace to get us there in one peace and the exodus from the flesh can begin.
While we retain the flesh we will war eternally with our own desires. That war within ourselves is the same struggle and difficulty that becomes war on the macro scale between nations. But, in the virtual world there is no shortage of property, thus wars over property can end. In the virtual world there is no shortage of food, or comfort, or anything material one can desire. Every human need can be met in an instant, because we control our environment totally, and for virtually zero cost. ...Look for my future novel incorporating these details in a bookstore near you (in a few years :)
Fire hoses are already heat-resistant woven material + a rubber liner. They get wet and have to be dried because they're there when tons of water are being sprayed in all directions at a fire. And, if firefighters are doing their job right, you'll never see a line running through a fire, ever. That would mean they've been cut off by the flame and have bigger problems than a line in the fire. Although, I wonder if that's ever happened and a hole got burned in the line resulting in catastrophic loss of water pressure which would then make it pretty hard to escape again.
There is some research on this in Malcom Gladwell's "Outliers", specifically how age affects spors performance. It turns out that an extremely large number of professional athletes across various sports are all born within certain dates which corresponds to cutoffs for that particular sport.
What's important is to get an extra year of development before you enter at the same level. So, people born just before the cut-off are the best off.
The same is true of academic life. The better off children, both socially and intellectually are those whom are slightly older, yet competing in the same grade. That small advantage begins to snowball with time until it becomes an insurmountable barrier.
Getting your child into school earlier is a mistake, so may be advancing kids a grade. Anyway, check out the book, lots more info in there.
Perhaps he meant, you know, smallpox. That -is- worse.
I started out as kids do, performing simple hunt'n'peck maneuvers. By the time I hit high-school it was well ingrained. At age 19, I wrote a novel of over 1,000,000 characters over a 1.5 year period, averaging four hours a day of just typing. That burned the keyboard layout into me (I would -never- go DVORAK).
Even now, I don't even have to look at the keyboard to type near perfectly, long as my wrists remain still on the rest I don't lose my place. I can even type just as perfectly with my eyes closed or in a dark room by centering on the F and J keys to start. My style is now a mastered form of hunt'n'peck, hunt'n'peck taken to the Nth degree, massively improved through perfect memorization of the keyboard layout and ingrained muscle-memory, such that I can type now about 80 words per minute. It's simply 'think and the words are typed' at this point, as natural as speaking or writing with a pen.
There came a time once that I thought I should improve my typing speed by learning to do real touch-typing the way professional typists must learn. So, I picked up a 'teach me typing' program, and diligently went through the courses for quite some time. I think it was 'Mario Teaches Typing' :P It had which finger you were supposed to use and all that jazz, and I did what it asked to the letter. Used the proper fingers, and arranged my hands as asked.
Only one hitch: my hands began to hurt, a lot. I noticed there was a large amount of unnatural stretching and contortion compared to my mastered hunt'n'peck method in order to reach the key with the 'proper finger', the one the program demanded I use. Now, I didn't simply give up, I wanted to master this technique, I was committed. But, after a month of daily practice I couldn't take it anymore. I was nearly as fast while touch-typing, but my hands were killing me.
I realized then why typists get carpel-tunnel syndrome and the like. Dogmatic touch-typing it terrible for your hands! You need to be able to relax your hands as your type, not stretch and contort them unnaturally. I went back to my freestyle typing and never looked back.
My typing can realistically be called freestyle because, based on what combination of letters and words I'm typing, it could be any number of fingers that are available at the moment to type that key. The difference is, I know I have to hit that key, and it happens quite naturally. I don't use my pinkies to type at all (well, maybe to hit shift), but I use everything else. That's probably the difference between my speed and a professional typist, since 80 WPM isn't really something to sneeze at but a pro typist can hit 50% faster.
But, now I'm attempting to turn myself into a professional author, and typing has become my primary skill, my devotion, my life. I'm glad I never took the touch-typing route! I'm quite certain that I will never develop carpel tunnel or repetitive strain injuries because my hands are relaxed, my fingers don't contort, and typing is done in perfectly natural motion. No overextended fingers, no awkward combinations. No pain.
That's my experience. That's the wisdom I've gained.
And if you split a 120hz signal 4 ways, you get a corresponding decrease in emitted light by half as well. So, the screen would appear half as bright for those 2 players than if just one person were viewing.
Elder Scrolls is very much a complete world. But, what you say is insightful. I like the idea of AI's playing an RTS while you play a unit in the war. That could create non-repeating gameplay. Very cool.
That tech will end up on one of the next generation console systems, and perhaps soon after on PC.
Johnny Lee was actually hired by Microsoft recently for their Xbox divions, so it's more than likely that Mr. Lee is working on this system to exploit his software and techniques for the next Xbox :)
With head-tracking and circular-polarization, true 3D is completely possible. Too bad circular polarization is very difficult to pull off. Although, I suppose it would work for a rear-projection screen TV? Doubt it would work for LCD TV's. To make it work on an LCD, you'd need some way to electrically switch polarization on individual screen elements. It might even require twice the number of pixels for the same screen space, each with a different polarization filter. I'm no expert.
What you want is Johnny Lee-style head-tracking. Watch this and be amazed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
The Nintendo DS currently distributes games on Flash cards ;P
Ex: http://www.mediabistro.com/mobilecontenttoday/original/umd_gb_ds_carts.jpg
(again, beware spoilers)
I'm not so much worried about its designation as fuel. In fact, it seemed to me that they needed it to get the 'command pod' running.
But, the prospect of anything changing a human into an alien creature that wasn't explicitly designed to do so, is basically silly. Now again, as a writer myself, I understand why it was done that way, because that element is what ties the script together in a coherent way. It's called a doorway moment. When Wikas sniffs the 'fuel', there's no turning back and he deals with the consequences until the end of the movie.
I agree with the previous poster's rationalizations that it could have been a mutagen or alien virii which produces fuel, or something like that.
Actually, my best explanation is that not only does it produce fuel from raw materials via some living organism, but it's been designed to repair physical and genetic damage of those it comes in contact with via that same living mechanism. That way you don't need to put a medic on the ship, just send the fluid out. So, the organism in the fluid assumed that Wikas was an extremely damaged prawn and 'repaired him'.
But then we get into all new contradictions. If alien and human genetics were close enough for that to work, we then face the proposition that prawn are actually from earth, they would have to be. Maybe they are descended from cockroaches! Perhaps we'll find out in District 10... after I write it >:P
And D10 could go in a ton of directions. You have the prospect of Wikas acting as a kind of prawn Jesus, championing their rights as a human himself, one who understands how the system works. Is he really going to wait 3 years in some camp? I doubt it. So, D10 will probably have a very different storyline, probably won't begin with the prawn ship returning. It will actually probably END with the prawn ship returning, thus setting up D11. Hehehe :)
Here's a D11 spoiler: when the end comes at last, Wikas chooses to stay a prawn!
"If we're talking about good old-fashioned hard sci-fi, I might suggest that it's the only sci-fi movie of 2009."
:)
:P
(potential spoilers below)
Hard scifi, you say? 'Hard scifi' has a definition: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction), it is a particular genre of fiction, and District 9 is definitely not hard-scifi. Hard scifi is "characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both."
District 9 has several elements that preclude it from the label of hard scifi: 'fuel' that genetically modifies a human being, genetic modification that results in partial and then total form change, anti-gravity ships, a frikkin' tractor beam, faster than light travel, various impossible weapons including a lightning gun that causes people to explode upon being hit, tiny metal plate blocks that 100% of random bullets (they really overdid that part), etc.
I'm not a hard scifi nazi like some people; I enjoyed me some District 9. But the biggest plot hole in the movie is the fuel causing genetic mutation. That's just ridiculous. But it was completely necessary to the plot as written. And, I loved the ending
Greg Egan (an author) is the current flag-bearer of the hard scifi genre. Historically, hard scifi has not captured the public's imagination as much as made up impossible devices
If the 787 project got far enough for someone to actually die on a flying plane, it would likely be considered a complete success. Rather ironic, isn't it. Inevitably a 787 will go down, but, as with other airliners, it will be so rare as to be considered not a problem, just a very unfortunate accident or mishap. It may not even be caused by a technical problem. In fact, statistically, it won't be. Human error is far more prevalent. Actual design flaws are usually caught--especially in this day of digital design and testing.
Isn't technology grand. It just keeps getting better, and better, and better, and better. I was in line to buy something at Office Depot and saw 2GB SD-flash cards for $10, and had to chuckle a bit. My first had drive was 20mb, and I actually told my parents that it would be impossible to ever fill up 20mb :P
No, I agree with you. It's really easy to say that the technology is not read yet and shouldn't be used, ignoring the fact that it's projects like this that typically push tech forward.
The future of jetliners is composites.
Whether the project succeeds or not only matters in the short-term. The tech and experience produced even by a failed 787 project will pave the way for the thousands of new projects the future will surely produce, to everyone's benefit.
Like I said, all you need is a physical simulation on the atomic level to have a working brain. Boolean operations can simulate physics quite easily, it's largely a solved problem. It just takes a ton of computing horsepower to simulate the hundreds trillions of atoms it would take to do so.
But, again, it's a certainty that we will eventually arrive at that much computing horsepower, due to Moore's law.