Absolutely... if you don't like what he has to say or how he says it, don't interview him, or don't read it. It's not like he came to Slashdot begging to answer our questions. I happen to agree with him about coding practices... there are far too many programmers out there who stop coding a feature as soon as it compiles and (more or less) does what it's supposed to do, regardless of how efficient/bug free/foolproof it is or isn't. This only leads to more and more problems later on when the code is copied, reused, or modified. Write it properly the first time, dammit.
I have actually met Theo in person and he is NOT egotistical or arrogant in the slightest. He's quiet, reserved, and interesting. I think he's just impatient with a world where software quality standards aren't as high a priority as they should be.
Good post, we must always expand and explore. A couple of things though...
Less overpopulated Earth, cleaner Earth due to people leaving, etc etc. This planet has an extremely good chance of healing itself if we get some people off it and on to other worlds.
It will take too long before we develop the technology for this to help us. In order for this to make a real difference, you'd have to move billions of people. Where would you put all of them? Before this becomes a reality, the Earth will probably get a lot worse than it is now. Things are moving in a much better direction than they used to be though; that article about the ozone hole finally starting to close because of concerted global effort is proof enough of that.
IMO also, man will always exploit everything he finds due to simple human greed. I think the biggest reason to expand into space is for simple survival of the species if something DOES happen to the Earth through global warming, deforestation, pollution, giant asteroid collision, or chemical or nuclear war.:)
That's the point... B can tell A what the address of C is and vice versa, but if A and C are both behind a firewall (or many other types of indirect internet connections), neither one can actually "listen" to a port on their true internet connection, so if they try to open a socket to one another, it won't work because they will be talking to the NAT router, IP Masq box, etc, which has no way way of telling which internal LAN address the inbound request is meant for.
Now someone with a direct 'net connection can communicate with someone behind a firewall, as long as they act as a server, and the firewall'd client establishes the connection to them. Once the TCP connection is established, you can stream data both ways no problem.
As the articles more or less states, there are two theorectical ways to connect two firewall'd clients... one method is to have a third computer act as an intermediary server for both clients, handling all messaging and data transfer.
The other way, which he referred to as "blind spoofing" would be to rewrite the initial handshaking signals at the packet level to "spoof" the return address. That way you could "magically splice" two outgoing TCP connections together. AKAIK this has never been done, which is why all programs like Napster, Scour, and ICQ can't establish direct connections between two firewall'd clients.
I'm actually head (well, ONLY right now;) coder for an all Java P2P file sharing app called File Rogue. We're still in beta testing but it's starting to look pretty good.
This is not emulation, emulation is recontructing a hardware architecture in software so you can run code through it. This is something which takes a platform independant low level language and compiles it into NATIVE code specific to the host system.
Real hardware than performs well? What, like an Athlon 1.2 GHz? I would say most hardware out there performs "really well"... 99.9999% of the world's computer problems are software related. (*cough* Micro$oft *cough*)
Exactly! Everybody here keeps saying "why don't I just use C or Java".. I can't believe that everyone seems to really not see the incredible possibilities of a platform independant assembly language.
Java is a great, feature rich, high level language, but even with JIT you have to recompile the program every time it is run, and just this demo has convinced me to can do much more low level stuff than with Java. (Also I have read that the new Amiga DE has a built in, blazingly fast Java VM)
And C? Sure, you can distribute your source code (which often takes a lot painstaking work to make it truly portable) and let people compile for their native platform, but your average user doesn't want to have to compile programs, they just want to run them... and the entire world is NOT open source, I'd much rather distribute a platform independant binary like Java byte-code or this new Amiga Virtual Processor code, which will compile once, optimized for the host system which runs it. And from all reports thus far, Tao has done a phenomenal job of making the technology live up to its promises and run error free. (I love Java and use it for everything these days, but anyone who thinks Java is bug free is smoking crack)
What he meant by not "experiencing acceleration" was that she herself will experience weightlessness, (the thread was about blacking out at high acceleration) because she is accelerating downward at the speed of gravity. I don't think he was trying to imply that her velocity won't be increasing.
"It was intended by the early emperors of China to serve as a barrier against the marauding nomads of the barbarial North. Although it failed to keep out the Mongols it did establish a border within which the Chinese developed their distinctive civilization."
I realize they didn't simply walk around it, I was just kidding around about the details... the main point of my comment was quoting the geologist who claimed their irrigation tunnel was running dry before it's even started.
Baloney. Tell them you already have a previous copy of Windows you're going to install yourself, or that you're going to install Linux. Refuse to buy the system if they're going to make you pay for a copy of Windows you don't want. It's worked for me everytime. They cannot force you to pay for software if all you're interested in is the hardware. Remember, the customer is always right. Otherwise, take your business elsewhere.
Software copy-protection hasn't died, it's merely switched to a less intrusive form. Most commercial software products (particularly computer games) have copy protection schemes designed to prevent you from making a workable copy of the CDs, such as SafeDisc, SecuROM, DiscGuard, etc. Most of these schemes revolve around putting weird stuff on a track that that standard CD burners can't duplicate. There are also other techniques like oversizing the CD, dummy files that "appear" to be hundreds and hundreds of MB, physical errors, etc.
Of course, like any other copy-protection scheme, there are always ways around it, the software industry however, banks (and rightly so) on the fact that these circumventions are quite out of reach for the average user. Of course what happens nowadays is one group or another cracks the protection and releases a "copyable" version online anyway. Also of note are new CD burners than support burning Disk-At-Once in "raw" mode with special software, such as CloneCD which allows one to make an exact copy of a CD despite copy-protection schemes.
Here's a good site which explains most of the copy-protection schemes out there.
Actually I would agree with you on the caveman question.
My real disagreement is with what you presented as examples of "REAL" shifts... allow me to elaborate:
"Certainly, its volume and openness make information widely available but it's not changing the way I get information, fundamentally. I'm still reading, viewing, and listening to content, be it news or advertising or whatever. In that sense, the printing press, radio, or television created a much bigger shift. The internet takes those "information roads" and adds instant access to it. It's just not really 'new'."
But look at what you're advocating...
The printing press took something written on paper and printed it on paper. "Certainly, its volume and openness make information widely available but it's not changing the way I get information, fundamentally. I'm still reading, viewing... content"
The radio took audio and gave it to the masses, supplanting (or complimenting) public speeches, announcements, and forums, the "grapevine", live concerts, etc. The radio "takes those 'information roads' and adds instant access to it. It's just not really 'new'... Certainly, its volume and openness make information widely available but it's not changing the way I get information, fundamentally. I'm still... listening to content, be it news or advertising or whatever"
The television added vision to the principles established by the radio. Once again, it took a live, "hand-crafted" medium, packaged it, and distributed it to the masses. "Certainly, its volume and openness make information widely available but it's not changing the way I get information, fundamentally. I'm still reading, viewing, and listening to content." "The [television] takes those 'information roads' and adds instant access to it. It's just not really 'new'."
Do you see where I'm going with this? Information has always existed. These 3 inventions simply made information distribution more efficient, and they transformed society as we know it forever... and they weren't even interactive. Now look at the power of the Internet. It's going to be an interesting future.:)
Perhaps what you say is true, but I have to disagree about your use of Slashdot as an example. Full of "like-minded people"? Oh yes... I'm sure you're right. That's why you never see any arguments or disagreements on Slashdot.
"Lack of tolerance for alternative opinions?" well yes, these people are called critics, or advocates of the status quo, or sticks in the mud, (or much worse, on occaision;), and are an essential ingredient in any sort of healthy discourse and dissection... contrast is an excellent analytical tool.
Moderation encourages conformity!? What rubbish. Moderation encourages the poster to stand out from the crowd, say something startling, intelligent, insightful, or funny. Something that gets noticed, in other words, which is exactly the opposite of conforming. Go to a big discussion and filter for only comments rated 3 or higher, and you will find some real gems. (Including your own post, I might add. Would you classify your own post as conforming and not indentifying any original ideas?)
Is it a perfect system? No... is anything? But it is simply overflowing with new ideas, opposing viewpoints, and real commentary from real people, not slick, dumbed down, polished editorials.
You've got to be kidding me. That's the most understated description of the Internet I've ever read.
The Internet is the closest thing we've developed to realizing a collective consciousness. ANYONE can now be a global publisher of information. The Internet empowers the individual to create and disperse any type of media they can envision.
The printing press? The radio? Television? These are merely one-way broadcast mediums. (I use the term 'broadcast' loosely when applied to the printing press, but you get the point) The internet has ALREADY "created a much bigger shift" than any of these. Why? Because the 'net is interactive, it connects people to each other instead of some central point.
The internet takes those "information roads" and adds instant access to it. It's just not really "new".
Ahh, but the internet is so much more than just information! Look around you... the whole world is migrating to the net. Millions upon millions of services, offered freely online. Watch a streaming video feed of the news, view a movie trailer, join a chat room with people scattered across the globe, shop online, pay your bills, download more free software than you could EVER hope to use, stock market trading, gaming. People are making friends, enemies, falling in love and getting married over the Net, something they never would have even thought possible merely a decade ago.
The Internet IS the "new dimension [of] human interaction."
but Prof.X and Cyclops guessed as much when they were trying to figure out what he intended to do with Rogue
Yes, they guessed what Magneto was going to do, but they never said that the reason was because he wasn't strong enough to make it work; just that it would kill him, same as it practically killed Rogue.
I seem to remember Magneto saying that he wasn't strong enough to send the field out a far as was needed in order to execute his plan, and that was why he needed Rogue
Magneto never said anything like that... (saw it twice over the weekend) He knew whoever used the machine would die, he just wanted it to be Rogue instead of him.. when Wolverine confronted him with that in the Statue, he just flew away.
I think you're absolutely right about the senator though.. when Storm said "I saw him die" Magneto responded with "Are you sure you saw what you saw?".. I think the Senator's new power is just that he can transform to liquid state.. This would also explain him squeezing through the bars and swimming what looked like miles and miles to shore safely. Maybe when he fell apart in the med bay he just needed to rest, like Odo and his bucket from Deep Space 9.
By the way I think Katz's review was total BS... I don't think I've ever in my entire life read a movie review I disagreed more with.
"We're supposed to hate Magneto, but there isn't anything particularly hateful about him."... They gave Magneto enough depth of character so we could sympathize with his plight... and you COMPLAIN!? Also I suggest you go and rent "Masterminds" to cure yourself of your Patrick Stewart hero worship.. I mean, he's good, but he didn't "overwhelm the movie" with his acting.. personally I thought Hugh Jackman as Wolverine was the most dead-on performance in the film.
"we never really get to know any of the X-types well enough to care a lot about what happens to them" Hmm, lessee.. in 90 minutes they told backstories for Magneto, Rogue, Wolverine, and Xavier (self-narration in his case), and some about Jean Gray, in ADDITION to telling a good story. I'm SURE in the next film we will find out more about the histories of some of the other X-Men... would you expect to find out the backstories, histories, and motivations of every single character in a single comic book? Why would you expect this in a single movie? There are so many X-Men that they simply HAVE to space out the exposition. "...or to understand why they're doing what they're doing." Really. All the main characters' motivations and intentions seemed pretty clear to me. Storm, Toad, Mystique, and Sabretooth didn't have very many lines. This is true. They were portrayed more as henchmen than as individuals. But they were all very memorable henchmen, and were responsible for a great deal of the movie's outstanding mood, colour, and flavour.
"has a U.S. Senator pushing for the public listing of all "mutants" and seeking to remove them from the public school system of America... The very same thing, of course, is happening to "geeks, Goths and freaks" all over the United States today, post-Columbine" I actually laughed out loud when I read this part. You take EVERYTHING with an element of alienation and announce it to the world as a perfect parallel of "what's happening to geeks", to the point of utter absurdity.
"But X-Men has to be judged as a film and not as a political statement." Well, I agree with you there, which is why you should NEVER have reviewed it.
You're right.. Katz COMPLETELY ignores the fact that people adapt to their environment, and affect their own development. All the "perfect" genes in the world won't stop someone from becoming a fat lazy slob if that's how they act. Genes won't produce perfect athletes, that takes years of hard work and training.
Certainly genetic tinkering can vastly change the birth of a child, and perhaps even give them a genetic predisposition towards a particular lifestyle, but Katz's article makes it sound like genetic manipulation will create a race of mindless clones incapable of making decisions about their path through life.
Who knows? Maybe they emit a very short range, low powered gravity field around the ship to prevent workers from floating away while working on the hull? Maybe his spacesuit itself has advanced magnetic or gravitational properties? The point is that if we can learn how to precisely control gravity fields, I would submit that ANYTHING is possible twelve centuries from now, and any claims we make in present day about how it might work are pure speculation.
Re:Scientifically inaccurate, but still entertaini
on
Review: 'Titan A.E.'
·
· Score: 1
And according to The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy you can survive in space for about 30-40 seconds.. so it MUST be true!:)
My point is simply that when 'creative license' is employed to move the story along, you get a lot more enjoyment out of it by accepting it for what it is, instead of trying to nitpick technical details.
I thought this movie was great also! Wonderful blend of computer and hand drawn animation. JonKatz can keep questing for a cartoon with an Oscar calibre storyline if he wants, I wish him luck.. I'm just enjoying the ride. As for "unoriginal, unimaginative, recycled" I COMPLETELY disagree. Sure, the main good vs evil storyline is formulaic, but the details are everything.
How many movies blow up Earth in the opening sequence? How many movies have an intelligent guard? (THAT was priceless) Dogfighting through a hydrogen tree forest? That scene with the manta-ray things following the ship was one of the most beautigul things I've ever seen in a movie. Unimaginative? You've got to be kidding. I'm going to see it again tonight. I haven't done that since The Matrix.
Re:Naysayers still think MS is just being picked o
on
Copyrant
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· Score: 1
My favourite bit was how Bill kept saying (whining) things to the tune of "well what Microsoft is doing is good for the consumer.. prices are low, etc" and then some guy from the audience asked this question:
"Standard Oil and AT&T both said the same thing... oil is good, low phone charges are good, what's the problem? Yet they were still found guity of antitrust"
Ol' Bill got a bit flustered over this one... spouted a bunch of evasive PR-speak bullshit. Then again, all of his responses were pretty much like that.
Don't see too big of a use? Are you crazy? Show me a computer system with no moving parts and I will show you a blazing fast performer with extraordinarily small power requirements.
Check out ExpertCity, a neat site that lets you talk in real time with an expert, and it installs client-server software which allows him to literally show you how to do something by taking control of your mouse (which requires your permission and can be disabled at any time of course). I believe the software this service is based on is at BuddyHelp.com.
I had the opportunity to try this service when they were in beta test, before they started charging and it's really pretty cool.
Slashdot Mirror
I have actually met Theo in person and he is NOT egotistical or arrogant in the slightest. He's quiet, reserved, and interesting. I think he's just impatient with a world where software quality standards aren't as high a priority as they should be.
IMO also, man will always exploit everything he finds due to simple human greed. I think the biggest reason to expand into space is for simple survival of the species if something DOES happen to the Earth through global warming, deforestation, pollution, giant asteroid collision, or chemical or nuclear war. :)
Yeah, that's pretty much calling it unstable.
That's the point... B can tell A what the address of C is and vice versa, but if A and C are both behind a firewall (or many other types of indirect internet connections), neither one can actually "listen" to a port on their true internet connection, so if they try to open a socket to one another, it won't work because they will be talking to the NAT router, IP Masq box, etc, which has no way way of telling which internal LAN address the inbound request is meant for.
Now someone with a direct 'net connection can communicate with someone behind a firewall, as long as they act as a server, and the firewall'd client establishes the connection to them. Once the TCP connection is established, you can stream data both ways no problem.
As the articles more or less states, there are two theorectical ways to connect two firewall'd clients... one method is to have a third computer act as an intermediary server for both clients, handling all messaging and data transfer.
The other way, which he referred to as "blind spoofing" would be to rewrite the initial handshaking signals at the packet level to "spoof" the return address. That way you could "magically splice" two outgoing TCP connections together. AKAIK this has never been done, which is why all programs like Napster, Scour, and ICQ can't establish direct connections between two firewall'd clients.
I'm actually head (well, ONLY right now ;) coder for an all Java P2P file sharing app called File Rogue. We're still in beta testing but it's starting to look pretty good.
This is not emulation, emulation is recontructing a hardware architecture in software so you can run code through it. This is something which takes a platform independant low level language and compiles it into NATIVE code specific to the host system.
Real hardware than performs well? What, like an Athlon 1.2 GHz? I would say most hardware out there performs "really well"... 99.9999% of the world's computer problems are software related. (*cough* Micro$oft *cough*)
Exactly! Everybody here keeps saying "why don't I just use C or Java" .. I can't believe that everyone seems to really not see the incredible possibilities of a platform independant assembly language.
Java is a great, feature rich, high level language, but even with JIT you have to recompile the program every time it is run, and just this demo has convinced me to can do much more low level stuff than with Java. (Also I have read that the new Amiga DE has a built in, blazingly fast Java VM)
And C? Sure, you can distribute your source code (which often takes a lot painstaking work to make it truly portable) and let people compile for their native platform, but your average user doesn't want to have to compile programs, they just want to run them... and the entire world is NOT open source, I'd much rather distribute a platform independant binary like Java byte-code or this new Amiga Virtual Processor code, which will compile once, optimized for the host system which runs it. And from all reports thus far, Tao has done a phenomenal job of making the technology live up to its promises and run error free. (I love Java and use it for everything these days, but anyone who thinks Java is bug free is smoking crack)
What he meant by not "experiencing acceleration" was that she herself will experience weightlessness, (the thread was about blacking out at high acceleration) because she is accelerating downward at the speed of gravity. I don't think he was trying to imply that her velocity won't be increasing.
uh read your chinese history again dude
Hmm, OK.
http://www.cernet.com/beijing/GreatWall.html:"It was intended by the early emperors of China to serve as a barrier against the marauding nomads of the barbarial North. Although it failed to keep out the Mongols it did establish a border within which the Chinese developed their distinctive civilization."
I realize they didn't simply walk around it, I was just kidding around about the details... the main point of my comment was quoting the geologist who claimed their irrigation tunnel was running dry before it's even started.
Baloney. Tell them you already have a previous copy of Windows you're going to install yourself, or that you're going to install Linux. Refuse to buy the system if they're going to make you pay for a copy of Windows you don't want. It's worked for me everytime. They cannot force you to pay for software if all you're interested in is the hardware. Remember, the customer is always right. Otherwise, take your business elsewhere.
Software copy-protection hasn't died, it's merely switched to a less intrusive form. Most commercial software products (particularly computer games) have copy protection schemes designed to prevent you from making a workable copy of the CDs, such as SafeDisc, SecuROM, DiscGuard, etc. Most of these schemes revolve around putting weird stuff on a track that that standard CD burners can't duplicate. There are also other techniques like oversizing the CD, dummy files that "appear" to be hundreds and hundreds of MB, physical errors, etc.
Of course, like any other copy-protection scheme, there are always ways around it, the software industry however, banks (and rightly so) on the fact that these circumventions are quite out of reach for the average user. Of course what happens nowadays is one group or another cracks the protection and releases a "copyable" version online anyway. Also of note are new CD burners than support burning Disk-At-Once in "raw" mode with special software, such as CloneCD which allows one to make an exact copy of a CD despite copy-protection schemes.
Here's a good site which explains most of the copy-protection schemes out there.
Maybe this explains Arnie's accent in The Terminator?
Actually I would agree with you on the caveman question.
My real disagreement is with what you presented as examples of "REAL" shifts... allow me to elaborate:
But look at what you're advocating...
Do you see where I'm going with this? Information has always existed. These 3 inventions simply made information distribution more efficient, and they transformed society as we know it forever... and they weren't even interactive. Now look at the power of the Internet. It's going to be an interesting future. :)
Perhaps what you say is true, but I have to disagree about your use of Slashdot as an example. Full of "like-minded people"? Oh yes... I'm sure you're right. That's why you never see any arguments or disagreements on Slashdot.
"Lack of tolerance for alternative opinions?" well yes, these people are called critics, or advocates of the status quo, or sticks in the mud, (or much worse, on occaision ;), and are an essential ingredient in any sort of healthy discourse and dissection... contrast is an excellent analytical tool.
Moderation encourages conformity!? What rubbish. Moderation encourages the poster to stand out from the crowd, say something startling, intelligent, insightful, or funny. Something that gets noticed, in other words, which is exactly the opposite of conforming. Go to a big discussion and filter for only comments rated 3 or higher, and you will find some real gems. (Including your own post, I might add. Would you classify your own post as conforming and not indentifying any original ideas?)
Is it a perfect system? No... is anything? But it is simply overflowing with new ideas, opposing viewpoints, and real commentary from real people, not slick, dumbed down, polished editorials.
You've got to be kidding me. That's the most understated description of the Internet I've ever read.
The Internet is the closest thing we've developed to realizing a collective consciousness. ANYONE can now be a global publisher of information. The Internet empowers the individual to create and disperse any type of media they can envision.
The printing press? The radio? Television? These are merely one-way broadcast mediums. (I use the term 'broadcast' loosely when applied to the printing press, but you get the point) The internet has ALREADY "created a much bigger shift" than any of these. Why? Because the 'net is interactive, it connects people to each other instead of some central point.
Ahh, but the internet is so much more than just information! Look around you... the whole world is migrating to the net. Millions upon millions of services, offered freely online. Watch a streaming video feed of the news, view a movie trailer, join a chat room with people scattered across the globe, shop online, pay your bills, download more free software than you could EVER hope to use, stock market trading, gaming. People are making friends, enemies, falling in love and getting married over the Net, something they never would have even thought possible merely a decade ago.
The Internet IS the "new dimension [of] human interaction."
but Prof.X and Cyclops guessed as much when they were trying to figure out what he intended to do with Rogue
Yes, they guessed what Magneto was going to do, but they never said that the reason was because he wasn't strong enough to make it work; just that it would kill him, same as it practically killed Rogue.
I seem to remember Magneto saying that he wasn't strong enough to send the field out a far as was needed in order to execute his plan, and that was why he needed Rogue
Magneto never said anything like that... (saw it twice over the weekend) He knew whoever used the machine would die, he just wanted it to be Rogue instead of him.. when Wolverine confronted him with that in the Statue, he just flew away.
I think you're absolutely right about the senator though.. when Storm said "I saw him die" Magneto responded with "Are you sure you saw what you saw?" .. I think the Senator's new power is just that he can transform to liquid state.. This would also explain him squeezing through the bars and swimming what looked like miles and miles to shore safely. Maybe when he fell apart in the med bay he just needed to rest, like Odo and his bucket from Deep Space 9.
By the way I think Katz's review was total BS... I don't think I've ever in my entire life read a movie review I disagreed more with.
"We're supposed to hate Magneto, but there isn't anything particularly hateful about him." ... They gave Magneto enough depth of character so we could sympathize with his plight... and you COMPLAIN!? Also I suggest you go and rent "Masterminds" to cure yourself of your Patrick Stewart hero worship.. I mean, he's good, but he didn't "overwhelm the movie" with his acting.. personally I thought Hugh Jackman as Wolverine was the most dead-on performance in the film.
"we never really get to know any of the X-types well enough to care a lot about what happens to them" Hmm, lessee.. in 90 minutes they told backstories for Magneto, Rogue, Wolverine, and Xavier (self-narration in his case), and some about Jean Gray, in ADDITION to telling a good story. I'm SURE in the next film we will find out more about the histories of some of the other X-Men... would you expect to find out the backstories, histories, and motivations of every single character in a single comic book? Why would you expect this in a single movie? There are so many X-Men that they simply HAVE to space out the exposition. "...or to understand why they're doing what they're doing." Really. All the main characters' motivations and intentions seemed pretty clear to me. Storm, Toad, Mystique, and Sabretooth didn't have very many lines. This is true. They were portrayed more as henchmen than as individuals. But they were all very memorable henchmen, and were responsible for a great deal of the movie's outstanding mood, colour, and flavour.
"has a U.S. Senator pushing for the public listing of all "mutants" and seeking to remove them from the public school system of America ... The very same thing, of course, is happening to "geeks, Goths and freaks" all over the United States today, post-Columbine" I actually laughed out loud when I read this part. You take EVERYTHING with an element of alienation and announce it to the world as a perfect parallel of "what's happening to geeks", to the point of utter absurdity.
"But X-Men has to be judged as a film and not as a political statement." Well, I agree with you there, which is why you should NEVER have reviewed it.
You're right.. Katz COMPLETELY ignores the fact that people adapt to their environment, and affect their own development. All the "perfect" genes in the world won't stop someone from becoming a fat lazy slob if that's how they act. Genes won't produce perfect athletes, that takes years of hard work and training.
Certainly genetic tinkering can vastly change the birth of a child, and perhaps even give them a genetic predisposition towards a particular lifestyle, but Katz's article makes it sound like genetic manipulation will create a race of mindless clones incapable of making decisions about their path through life.
Who knows? Maybe they emit a very short range, low powered gravity field around the ship to prevent workers from floating away while working on the hull? Maybe his spacesuit itself has advanced magnetic or gravitational properties? The point is that if we can learn how to precisely control gravity fields, I would submit that ANYTHING is possible twelve centuries from now, and any claims we make in present day about how it might work are pure speculation.
And according to The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy you can survive in space for about 30-40 seconds.. so it MUST be true! :)
My point is simply that when 'creative license' is employed to move the story along, you get a lot more enjoyment out of it by accepting it for what it is, instead of trying to nitpick technical details.
You guys really think you can testify as to how artificial gravity will work in 1200 years?
I thought this movie was great also! Wonderful blend of computer and hand drawn animation. JonKatz can keep questing for a cartoon with an Oscar calibre storyline if he wants, I wish him luck.. I'm just enjoying the ride. As for "unoriginal, unimaginative, recycled" I COMPLETELY disagree. Sure, the main good vs evil storyline is formulaic, but the details are everything.
How many movies blow up Earth in the opening sequence? How many movies have an intelligent guard? (THAT was priceless) Dogfighting through a hydrogen tree forest? That scene with the manta-ray things following the ship was one of the most beautigul things I've ever seen in a movie. Unimaginative? You've got to be kidding. I'm going to see it again tonight. I haven't done that since The Matrix.
My favourite bit was how Bill kept saying (whining) things to the tune of "well what Microsoft is doing is good for the consumer.. prices are low, etc" and then some guy from the audience asked this question:
"Standard Oil and AT&T both said the same thing... oil is good, low phone charges are good, what's the problem? Yet they were still found guity of antitrust"
Ol' Bill got a bit flustered over this one... spouted a bunch of evasive PR-speak bullshit. Then again, all of his responses were pretty much like that.
Bah. ASP is crap. Have you seen any DivX encoded AVI movies? ~600 MB, 2 hours of video, approaching DVD quality (up to 720 x 480, 30 frames/second)
Here is a good link.
Don't see too big of a use? Are you crazy? Show me a computer system with no moving parts and I will show you a blazing fast performer with extraordinarily small power requirements.
Check out ExpertCity, a neat site that lets you talk in real time with an expert, and it installs client-server software which allows him to literally show you how to do something by taking control of your mouse (which requires your permission and can be disabled at any time of course). I believe the software this service is based on is at BuddyHelp.com.
I had the opportunity to try this service when they were in beta test, before they started charging and it's really pretty cool.