Oni rocked.. most fun I've ever had in a "beat'em up" adventure game. So many moves and combos, yet it still had easy controls. The only problem was the huge over reliance on switch hunting.
Aliens has got to be the finest sci-fi action film ever produced. Going by Wired's own rating system, "Vision" and "Precision" have to be at least equal in this film to Alien, which made #7. Which leaves "Adrenaline"... in this category, it easily blows away everything else up there, except possibly The Matrix. So how did it not make the list?
Great direction, story, writing, effects, and acting (Sigourney Weaver was even nominated for Best Actress, which is unheard of in a sci-fi film). And yet it doesn't even make the list; instead we get crowd pleasing soulless baloney like Jurassic Park, and nostalgic camp crap like Tron and Robocop. (Not to knock Tron's rightful place in sci-fi history, but Top 20??)
On a related note.. Terminator 2 is vastly superior to Terminator. Perhaps the folks at Wired have deemed sequels to be ineligible?
"a galactic civilization - spanning god-knows how many cultures and people with a HUGE communication lag - would almost require an emperor to even move."
Huh? What lag are you talking about? Even from halfway across the galaxy, people do real-time holographic video conferencing in Star Wars all the time.
"If you're in a vehicle, just stick you hand out to catch something, it won't even hit your hand hard enough to make you flench, even if you're going 200 mph."
C'mon.. he's a Jedi MASTER man. I'm sure he can guide it with the Force smoothly into his hand.
"If you fall a long ways, try to land on a vehicle, they won't hurt you, no matter how fast you're falling."
Perhaps he can affect his rate of descent somewhat? We already know Jedi can fall enormous distances. Maybe being infused with the Force just makes one more resistant to normal damage?
My point is, when you've got something as powerful as the Force to use, you can get away with a LOT. Like Anakin's precise timing on getting to Tatooine (you know what I mean) may seem contrived, but it can be explained in the context of his prophetic dream.
OK yes, it was probably not the best word choice.. but I still think it fits. From dictionary.com:
loophole n. 1. A way of escaping a difficulty, especially an omission or ambiguity in the wording of a contract or law that provides a means of evading compliance.
From the FCC regs:
[Each Part 15] device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesirable operation.
This allows Part 18 manufacturers to escape the difficulty of designing devices which don't interfere with Part 15 devices.
OK so we don't need to worry about THIS one, but what about the next one?
I think the larger issue here is that the huge installed base of communications equipment which operates in the 2.4GHz band is not legally protected from interference, and it could be only a matter of time before some widespread technology comes along which renders all 2.4 comm devices useless because of this loophole.
Memory Stick. It's big (physical size), expensive, proprietary, and does not hold too much data.
Big?? You could lose one of these in a pack of gum. A sneeze could carry it away. I've seen people with bigger fingernails. What exactly is small?
Expensive, and low data storage? I just ordered a 128MB stick for US $70 for my digital camera (DSC-P50, it rocks). Nearly 2MB per dollar for NV RAM? Pretty damn reasonable if you ask me.
Proprietary? Unfortunately yes. But at least they're hawking something GOOD. And yes, SmartGate is indeed worrisome, luckily my camera doesn't support SmartGate:)
However, I want to make a point that Sony are not total proprietary bastards. My DSC-P50 camera takes Sony's InfoLithium battery pack, but it ALSO takes standard AA size batteries, which means it can take NiMH rechargables, which kick ass. Kudos to Sony for not locking the P50 into a proprietary power source, which they could've easily done.
On the "war is mostly a neighborhood affair" bit, I thought I'd add that I think this is changing in today's high tech world.
Of course most wars of antiquity were fought close together. Who's gonna send tens of thousands of troops on a leaky boat across the world? The supply line nightmares alone would destroy you. These days we can cross the globe in hours, develop space based weapons platforms, lob cruise missiles, and employ fanatical human vectors carrying bio weapons, suitcase nukes, or M$ Flight Sim: WTC Detail pack.
Of course I write my own TableModels (or more specifically, AbstractTableModel). DefaultTableModel is crap. You still have to use Objects though, which was my point. If your TableModel has a million unique ints, you need a million Integer objects... no way around it.
I just hate when I have to fill, say, a JTable with a million numbers... and I have to use a million OBJECTS instead of primitives because that's how TableModel works.
Suppose I could write my own primitive model/view framework... but that kinda kills the point of using a feature rich language in the first place:)
I don't know for sure, but if I had to make an educated guess, I'd say he's talking about dynamic primitive-to-object conversion, as needed, or possibly vice versa (or both).
This is similar to how Javascript handles strings... Javascript has both a string literal type and a String object type.
var lit = "my string literal"; var obj = new String( "my string object" );
Now the cool thing is, lit isn't an object, but you can still call methods on it from the String class, like lit.substring(4) and stuff, just like you could with obj. This is because Javascript automatically creates a temporary object for the literal (ie, autoboxing?)
Once again, let me state I don't know for sure what the term actually means, I've never heard it either. But from the name itself and the context of the discussion, that's what I'd guess he's talking about.
Because they're NEUTRINOS, man! What a cool name! C'mon, say it with me.. "nooo... treee... nose...."
We need to explore these cool sounding particles so we can have devices like "neutrino blasters", "neutrino combobulators", and "neutrino themed cocktail parties".
I mean, we probably would never have electricity if electrons were called "gurdlehumps".. think about it!!
"i also thought lotr has some racist undertones as well...i mean, the book is especially bad on this score, equating darkness of skin with evil"
This is what Sam thinks about the body of a dark skinned Southron warrior who fought and died for Sauron:
He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace.
-Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, p687
I think that shows pretty clearly that Tolkien wasn't equating darkness of skin with evil. After all, plenty of fair skinned men fought for Sauron as well.
Well the title is pretty much all I wanted to say. Really. Stop reading this! What the hell is wrong with you? There's nothing else here! 3:39am.. signing off.. bleah
"I still don't understand why the government isn't looking into this (and corn) as a means to produce energy, it would be in everyone's best interest"
Nope, it wouldn't be in the oil industry's best interests. Guess what the Bush family has been heavily into for decades? Hint: They're from Texas. And lookee.... the Bush family is back in power, and.. SURPRISE! The War on Hemp has been stepped up again.
Hemp is outlawed because it would compete with (maybe destroy) the oil and timber industries. In the mid thirties, a machine was invented which made Hemp cultivation on an industrial scale possible, which was poised to launch a new Hemp industry. It was promptly buried and outlawed by oil and timber moguls. It has nothing to do with Marijuana usage, this is just the scapegoat.. the paper tiger... what they used to stir up public support and panic 60 years ago to get the prohibition passed, and what they've been using ever since to pull the wool over our eyes.
"The origin of the present Marijuana Prohibition can be traced back to passage of the Marijuana Tax Act by Congress in 1937. This bill was written by U.S. Treasury Department officials who claimed that Marijuana posed an unreasonable threat to society, and that the world would be a better, safer place to live and raise children in without it.
Today, over 50 years later, we can see that this policy is directly responsible for creating our present addiction to Oil and its Petrochemical derivatives, the domination of our economy, marketplace and the American political process by a few major industries, and the rampant destruction of the Environment all over the world, all in the name of Corporate Profit.
...
Marijuana Prohibition has not protected anyone. The established and well-documented deadly side-effects of Petrochemical by-products, processes and toxic waste fill literally thousands of scientific journals, textbooks and official government reports, while the proclaimed hazards of Marijuana smoking are still a matter of professional speculation and debate. Americans have died, and others are still at risk in Iraq to protect a source of foreign Oil that we need only because American farmers are not allowed to grow Cannabis Hemp for the production of alternative fuel.
...
The Marijuana Tax Act was prepared during two years of secret meetings, held by Treasury Department officials between 1935 and 1937. At no time was the American Medical Association consulted for an opinion on the health effects of Marijuana smoking and were not even informed that the meetings were taking place.
No expert medical or scientific evidence was introduced to establish that Marijuana represented a threat to its users or to society. Anslinger's testimony consisted mainly of reading sensational articles from tabloids which, for years, had fanned the flames of "Reefer Madness" to sell more newspapers.
...
Dr. William C. Woodward, who represented the AMA during the hearings, dismissed Anslinger's testimony as being "factually inaccurate" and complained that the AMA had not been consulted earlier. Woodward stated for the record that the AMA opposed passage of the Marijuana Tax Act and would have done so earlier but the medical community was not aware "until two days" before the hearings that the "killer weed from Mexico" that the Government was planning to outlaw was actually Cannabis, which had been safely prescribed by doctors for over 100 years.
When Senator Prentiss M. Brown, chairman of the subcommittee, asked "what dangers, if any, does this bill have for persons engaged in the legitimate uses of the Hemp plant?" Anslinger replied "I would say that they are not only amply protected under this Act, but that they can go ahead and raise Hemp just as they have always done it." This assurance was also given by C.M. Hester, Assistant General Counsel for the Treasury Department, who testified for the record that "the production and sale of Hemp and its products for industrial purposes will not be adversely affected by this bill."
If Hemp is really outlawed because of the possible misuse of Marijuana, then oil should be outlawed because of molotov cocktails, not to mention the thousands of other dangerous applications of gasoline.
Wouldn't take all that much, when you're dealing with high quality stuff. At 1200 DPI (which most decent scanners and printers these days can handle), it would only take 11 x 11 inches of true colour would give you just under 700MB of uncompressed image data.
Hell, my scanner, which is like 6 years old, can do 4800 DPI (interpolated). At 4800 DPI, it would only take a 2.8 inch square scan to take up 700MB. Mind you, that's pretty insane resolution.
"For now, I'll stick with the PC and games like diablo2"
Dude... run out and get a copy of Dungeon Siege. (In stores as of yesterday)
THIS is the game Diablo II should have been. I haven't been this instantly addicted to a game in years.
The graphics are phenomenal, and the game is by Chris Taylor (Total Annihilation guy) so the mechanics and interface are just perfect.
Some gameplay features:
ZERO loading once in game. You can walk from one end of the earth to the other, up the highest tower or to the deepest dungeon, without ever seeing a load screen. Perfectly seamless.
Control up to 8 characters, you can hotkey different weapon configurations and party groupings. Multiple, expandable formation types. 27 combat AI options (3 movement settings x 3 attack settings x 3 targetting settings)
Packmules!!! You can buy mules that follow you around. They are like regular characters, but with no stats, and 3 times the inventory space. They try to stay out of combat, but will kick with hind legs if they get cornered.
The map is so good you can play the entire game from it... it's like a subset of the graphics engine that just looks straight down.
No classes. You just choose what your character looks like and start playing. Whatever you do, you get better at.
It actually runs smooth at 640x480x32, low detail on a Celery 400 + TNT1. (But runs much better on my Athlon 1200 + GF2:)
Co-operative campaign multiplayer
Extremely moddable. The community for this game is going to be HUGE. They're releasing all the tools they used to build the campaign for free in May. AI scripting language (Skrit), even a scriptable special effects engine (Siege FX)
I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it "silly", but yeah, they hacked it down pretty good.
"BALROGS DONT HAVE WINGS"
Actually, in the book it says "His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings."
That's EXACTLY what it looked like in the movie. It was left up to the interpretation of the viewer as to whether they were actually wings, or just some smoky shadowy nether thingy. Perfection. (And even if they were wings.. doesn't mean it could fly.. see penguins)
"I really don't believe Jackson ever read it"
You're really shafting him on effort now, I think. He wrote the screenplay with two other people, and you don't think he even read the book?
From http://www.lordoftherings.net/film/filmmakers/fi_p jack_qanda.html:
"Every time we come to write a scene, or at the stage where we're revising scenes all the time, we always turn to the book"
There's a lot of other commentary on that page which gives a lot of insight into his understanding of Tolkien's works. He's read em.
"Gimli acting like an idiot"
Yeah, I didn't think Ryhs-Davies' performance did the book version justice. Gimli is much more eloquent and well spoken in the book, while in the movie he was a stereotypical D&D-ish dawrf... dour, taciturn, perpetually grumbling.
"Aragon's character seems to have been introduced from another book."
Kind of agree... but I think it was done on purpose to create more of a journey to his true royal presence. Wait for the next two films.
"The Nazgul were pathetic, highly inflamable clowns"
I dunno.. I thought they were pretty scary. And as for "pathetic"... well, they were actually beaten pretty easily in the books too.
"Loth Lorian and the continuity errors"
Yes... Lothlorien was the worst part of the movie.. they really hacked it up. Apparently there is more footage coming though, so I have my fingers crossed.
I agree.. I have a lot of respect for Ebert these past years, he's become very seasoned and insightful.
I do have the occasional disagreement with him though... for example, he gave Gladiator 2 out of 5 stars! Said it was a depressing version of Rocky. Then it won Best Picture. Yoiks! Good call there...
(Not to say that the Oscars are the best index to measure movies by, but Gladiator deserved more than 2 stars)
But they DO. Bilbo relates the story of the trolls turning to stone at the beginning of the movie to the Hobbit children.
I thought this was a wonderful way to introduce us to some of Bilbo's earlier adventures, at the beginning of the movie, instead of distracting the audience in the middle. Discussing it again when they were AT the trolls just would've been redundant.
I can't believe you claim that the film wasn't even attempting to adapt the book. It was a masterful adaptation. Everyone said it couldn't be done, and look, Best Picture nomination. (Not to mention, the dozen others) What does adapt mean to you?
I read FotR just before the movie came out, and watching the movie felt like reading the book. There is no higher compliment I can pay it.
Slashdot Mirror
Oni rocked.. most fun I've ever had in a "beat'em up" adventure game. So many moves and combos, yet it still had easy controls. The only problem was the huge over reliance on switch hunting.
First, they ignore you.
Then, they laugh at you.
Then, they fight you.
Then, you win.
-Gandhi
Aliens has got to be the finest sci-fi action film ever produced. Going by Wired's own rating system, "Vision" and "Precision" have to be at least equal in this film to Alien, which made #7. Which leaves "Adrenaline"... in this category, it easily blows away everything else up there, except possibly The Matrix. So how did it not make the list?
Great direction, story, writing, effects, and acting (Sigourney Weaver was even nominated for Best Actress, which is unheard of in a sci-fi film). And yet it doesn't even make the list; instead we get crowd pleasing soulless baloney like Jurassic Park, and nostalgic camp crap like Tron and Robocop. (Not to knock Tron's rightful place in sci-fi history, but Top 20??)
On a related note.. Terminator 2 is vastly superior to Terminator. Perhaps the folks at Wired have deemed sequels to be ineligible?
"a galactic civilization - spanning god-knows how many cultures and people with a HUGE communication lag - would almost require an emperor to even move."
Huh? What lag are you talking about? Even from halfway across the galaxy, people do real-time holographic video conferencing in Star Wars all the time.
"If you're in a vehicle, just stick you hand out to catch something, it won't even hit your hand hard enough to make you flench, even if you're going 200 mph."
C'mon.. he's a Jedi MASTER man. I'm sure he can guide it with the Force smoothly into his hand.
"If you fall a long ways, try to land on a vehicle, they won't hurt you, no matter how fast you're falling."
Perhaps he can affect his rate of descent somewhat? We already know Jedi can fall enormous distances. Maybe being infused with the Force just makes one more resistant to normal damage?
My point is, when you've got something as powerful as the Force to use, you can get away with a LOT. Like Anakin's precise timing on getting to Tatooine (you know what I mean) may seem contrived, but it can be explained in the context of his prophetic dream.
OK yes, it was probably not the best word choice.. but I still think it fits. From dictionary.com:
loophole
n. 1. A way of escaping a difficulty, especially an omission or ambiguity in the wording of a contract or law that provides a means of evading compliance.
From the FCC regs:
[Each Part 15] device must accept any interference received, including interference that may cause undesirable operation.
This allows Part 18 manufacturers to escape the difficulty of designing devices which don't interfere with Part 15 devices.
OK so we don't need to worry about THIS one, but what about the next one?
I think the larger issue here is that the huge installed base of communications equipment which operates in the 2.4GHz band is not legally protected from interference, and it could be only a matter of time before some widespread technology comes along which renders all 2.4 comm devices useless because of this loophole.
Hey, nice reply! I'm aware there are countless counter examples to what I said.
But my main point is simply this:
Technology is making it easier to wage long range warfare.
Would you not at least agree to this?
Memory Stick. It's big (physical size), expensive, proprietary, and does not hold too much data.
:)
Big?? You could lose one of these in a pack of gum. A sneeze could carry it away. I've seen people with bigger fingernails. What exactly is small?
Expensive, and low data storage? I just ordered a 128MB stick for US $70 for my digital camera (DSC-P50, it rocks). Nearly 2MB per dollar for NV RAM? Pretty damn reasonable if you ask me.
Proprietary? Unfortunately yes. But at least they're hawking something GOOD. And yes, SmartGate is indeed worrisome, luckily my camera doesn't support SmartGate
However, I want to make a point that Sony are not total proprietary bastards. My DSC-P50 camera takes Sony's InfoLithium battery pack, but it ALSO takes standard AA size batteries, which means it can take NiMH rechargables, which kick ass. Kudos to Sony for not locking the P50 into a proprietary power source, which they could've easily done.
On the "war is mostly a neighborhood affair" bit, I thought I'd add that I think this is changing in today's high tech world.
Of course most wars of antiquity were fought close together. Who's gonna send tens of thousands of troops on a leaky boat across the world? The supply line nightmares alone would destroy you. These days we can cross the globe in hours, develop space based weapons platforms, lob cruise missiles, and employ fanatical human vectors carrying bio weapons, suitcase nukes, or M$ Flight Sim: WTC Detail pack.
"Thus the data offer no reason to believe that wars are anything other than randomly distributed accidents.
...
war is mostly a neighborhood affair.
...
The one social factor that does have some detectable correlation with war is religion.
...
At all costs avoid the clash of the titans."
Of course I write my own TableModels (or more specifically, AbstractTableModel). DefaultTableModel is crap. You still have to use Objects though, which was my point. If your TableModel has a million unique ints, you need a million Integer objects... no way around it.
I just hate when I have to fill, say, a JTable with a million numbers... and I have to use a million OBJECTS instead of primitives because that's how TableModel works.
:)
Suppose I could write my own primitive model/view framework... but that kinda kills the point of using a feature rich language in the first place
I don't know for sure, but if I had to make an educated guess, I'd say he's talking about dynamic primitive-to-object conversion, as needed, or possibly vice versa (or both).
This is similar to how Javascript handles strings... Javascript has both a string literal type and a String object type.
var lit = "my string literal";
var obj = new String( "my string object" );
Now the cool thing is, lit isn't an object, but you can still call methods on it from the String class, like lit.substring(4) and stuff, just like you could with obj. This is because Javascript automatically creates a temporary object for the literal (ie, autoboxing?)
Once again, let me state I don't know for sure what the term actually means, I've never heard it either. But from the name itself and the context of the discussion, that's what I'd guess he's talking about.
Anyone have more of a clue than us?
Because they're NEUTRINOS, man! What a cool name! C'mon, say it with me.. "nooo... treee... nose...."
We need to explore these cool sounding particles so we can have devices like "neutrino blasters", "neutrino combobulators", and "neutrino themed cocktail parties".
I mean, we probably would never have electricity if electrons were called "gurdlehumps".. think about it!!
***spoilers***
If supplying a demand makes one a whore, then we're all whores.
This is what Sam thinks about the body of a dark skinned Southron warrior who fought and died for Sauron:
I think that shows pretty clearly that Tolkien wasn't equating darkness of skin with evil. After all, plenty of fair skinned men fought for Sauron as well.Well the title is pretty much all I wanted to say. Really. Stop reading this! What the hell is wrong with you? There's nothing else here! 3:39am.. signing off.. bleah
Nope, it wouldn't be in the oil industry's best interests. Guess what the Bush family has been heavily into for decades? Hint: They're from Texas. And lookee.... the Bush family is back in power, and
Hemp is outlawed because it would compete with (maybe destroy) the oil and timber industries. In the mid thirties, a machine was invented which made Hemp cultivation on an industrial scale possible, which was poised to launch a new Hemp industry. It was promptly buried and outlawed by oil and timber moguls. It has nothing to do with Marijuana usage, this is just the scapegoat.. the paper tiger... what they used to stir up public support and panic 60 years ago to get the prohibition passed, and what they've been using ever since to pull the wool over our eyes.
This is an excellent paper on the subject, allow me to quote some passages:
If Hemp is really outlawed because of the possible misuse of Marijuana, then oil should be outlawed because of molotov cocktails, not to mention the thousands of other dangerous applications of gasoline.
Wouldn't take all that much, when you're dealing with high quality stuff. At 1200 DPI (which most decent scanners and printers these days can handle), it would only take 11 x 11 inches of true colour would give you just under 700MB of uncompressed image data.
Hell, my scanner, which is like 6 years old, can do 4800 DPI (interpolated). At 4800 DPI, it would only take a 2.8 inch square scan to take up 700MB. Mind you, that's pretty insane resolution.
Dude... run out and get a copy of Dungeon Siege. (In stores as of yesterday)
THIS is the game Diablo II should have been. I haven't been this instantly addicted to a game in years.
The graphics are phenomenal, and the game is by Chris Taylor (Total Annihilation guy) so the mechanics and interface are just perfect.
Some gameplay features:
OK enough gushing. Back to the game...
"laughable fight between Gandalf and Sauruman"
p jack_qanda.html:
Agreed. That was pretty lame.
"Council of Elrond was just plain silly"
I don't know if I'd go so far as to call it "silly", but yeah, they hacked it down pretty good.
"BALROGS DONT HAVE WINGS"
Actually, in the book it says "His enemy halted again, facing him, and the shadow about it reached out like two vast wings."
That's EXACTLY what it looked like in the movie. It was left up to the interpretation of the viewer as to whether they were actually wings, or just some smoky shadowy nether thingy. Perfection. (And even if they were wings.. doesn't mean it could fly.. see penguins)
"I really don't believe Jackson ever read it"
You're really shafting him on effort now, I think. He wrote the screenplay with two other people, and you don't think he even read the book?
From http://www.lordoftherings.net/film/filmmakers/fi_
"Every time we come to write a scene, or at the stage where we're revising scenes all the time, we always turn to the book"
There's a lot of other commentary on that page which gives a lot of insight into his understanding of Tolkien's works. He's read em.
"Gimli acting like an idiot"
Yeah, I didn't think Ryhs-Davies' performance did the book version justice. Gimli is much more eloquent and well spoken in the book, while in the movie he was a stereotypical D&D-ish dawrf... dour, taciturn, perpetually grumbling.
"Aragon's character seems to have been introduced from another book."
Kind of agree... but I think it was done on purpose to create more of a journey to his true royal presence. Wait for the next two films.
"The Nazgul were pathetic, highly inflamable clowns"
I dunno.. I thought they were pretty scary. And as for "pathetic"... well, they were actually beaten pretty easily in the books too.
"Loth Lorian and the continuity errors"
Yes... Lothlorien was the worst part of the movie.. they really hacked it up. Apparently there is more footage coming though, so I have my fingers crossed.
I agree.. I have a lot of respect for Ebert these past years, he's become very seasoned and insightful.
I do have the occasional disagreement with him though... for example, he gave Gladiator 2 out of 5 stars! Said it was a depressing version of Rocky. Then it won Best Picture. Yoiks! Good call there...
(Not to say that the Oscars are the best index to measure movies by, but Gladiator deserved more than 2 stars)
"without anyone even mentioning they were there"
But they DO. Bilbo relates the story of the trolls turning to stone at the beginning of the movie to the Hobbit children.
I thought this was a wonderful way to introduce us to some of Bilbo's earlier adventures, at the beginning of the movie, instead of distracting the audience in the middle. Discussing it again when they were AT the trolls just would've been redundant.
I can't believe you claim that the film wasn't even attempting to adapt the book. It was a masterful adaptation. Everyone said it couldn't be done, and look, Best Picture nomination. (Not to mention, the dozen others) What does adapt mean to you?
I read FotR just before the movie came out, and watching the movie felt like reading the book. There is no higher compliment I can pay it.