I once challenged an engineer buddy to come up with a working concept for a hydrogen car and he cited turbines that generated power for electric motors at each individual wheel (because the turbine always has a consistent amount of fuel flowing from it, your throttle wouldn't regulate fuel but the electric motors). It makes sense, but they're quite a different beast than traditional piston-rod motors. While technically it wouldn't be too difficult, economic and logistical factors are the great barriers. Safety is another factor. He didn't seem too concerned about it, but hydrogen can make a hell of an explosion.
Whether it would work or not, that's the type of outside-the-box thinking our car manufacturers need today. The idea of electric cars is just stupid unless you live in an area provided with nuclear power. Where I live the power is provided by a coal plant. Am I really supposed to believe that it's better for the environment to plug my car in and burn a fossil fuel at a foreign site than within the car itself? Sure, there are problems associated with getting hydrogen in cars, but no one seems to even be trying.
Insightful? Really, slashdot? I can't use my desktop from my easy chair in the living room or the sofas. I can't take the desktop with me when I visit my friends and hang off their wifi for accessing the Internet. I can't take my desktop to Starbucks (or if you hate Starbucks just substitute another public location with free wifi).
Of course you can get a more powerful desktop for the same price as a laptop. This is news? You buy a laptop because you have reasons for needing one that a desktop does not support.
I have to second this. Not to mention the main reason laptops outsell desktops: business travel. It doesn't matter if a desktop is more powerful and lasts longer when it doesn't go where you need it to go.
Well, that's Sociologists. They pretend to be called scientists
Fixed that for you. Statistics actually have scientific applications, just not statistics gathered from survey results asking hypothetical/personal questions.
You'd have to define a what set of morals I'd be defying... In themselves morals are usually selfish. These can vary widely from one person to the next, but they are mostly centered around making oneself "feel good about themselves."
Go back to Ethics 101. Or just read A Clockwork Orange:
What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?
Or, in other words, good actions are only good with good intent. If you give to charity because of the tax-write off, then it's not a morally good action (it may not be immoral, it could be a morally neutral action). So, doing good for selfish reasons is just selfish, which is amoral at best and immoral at worst.
In fact, the difficulty in being morally upright usually lies in the fact that doing the right thing often requires neglecting what makes one "feel good about themselves." If feeling good is one's primary concern, then it's doubtful they would be able to make the sacrifices necessary to live a morally upstanding life.
This bigger gripe I have, as with most sociological studies, is that there's no way to really demonstrate whether the data collected in the study is reliable or not. These 'studies' seem to be just a collection of survey data. If this type of data is so reliable, then how come so many Slashdotters have such a high tendency to have 'Cowboy Neal' as an answer to so many polls? Sure, it's an inside joke, but when you go to a comic convention and start asking random dorks if they'd rather be a super-villain who conveniently escapes whenever caught and the super-hero who has to both work a legitimate day job and chase down the super-villains, most people aren't going to ground the question in reality and they'll choose the super-villain. But that doesn't necessarily reflect what they would do in real life.
How about asking the question: Would you kill for money? I bet more people would answer 'yes' than those who would actually do it. But less people would answer 'yes' than those who said they would prefer to be a villain than hero. Because here's a situation they could realistically be placed in. There's no magic/superpowers involved, so people will more likely ground their answer in reality as that is the realm of the question.
As you point out, literature and history and much better sources for making sociological conclusions. Asking people questions they won't always answer truthfully doesn't tell you anything, which is what the whole 'science' of sociology is all about. The reason sociology is such a farce is b/c real experiments that would be conclusive are a double edged sword: they tend to be unethical.
Yes, but iDesign would be the stripped down consumer version. Design Studio Pro would do what you're talking about.
Re:Popcornhour Networked Media Players are the Bes
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That's true, but if I'm going to spend the money on one of those, then why wouldn't I just fork out a little bit extra and get a Mac Mini? The added advantage of a proper computer is well worth the extra dough and it'll run whatever OS I want. Going with Apple hardware doesn't tether you to iTunes.
Microsoft and Adobe merging is an option that would increase efficiency. That way I can direct my hatred in one direction with less distraction from various evil companies.
OK, if you Don't Wanna Be Evil, how about Google? They've got even more interest in Flash-on-mobile as a stopgap against Apple World Domination as Microsoft does, and could probably write a PDF viewer in less than 100 megabytes.
Yeah, and Window's 'Recycling Bin' wasn't inspired by Apple's 'Trash Can' in the least bit. They're fundamentally different. Personally, I only use Windows because Macs are so environmentally unfriendly. They can't even recycle!
On a more serious note, Kinect is a rip-off of both the Eye-Toy and Wii, but I'm sure the Wii is what financially motivated the project. Microsoft is a market-share company, they love pie charts where they have the largest piece. I don't think Eye-Toy had anything they were envious of. At least, nothing they didn't already rip-off with XBox Vision.
Although I believe the execs who allowed the project to get on its feet were only going after the Wii, I'm sure the engineers who designed the thing had larger influences. They mention the holodeck thing from Star Trek several times in the article. In Michael Bay's craptacular movie (or as I like to say, feature length action-advertisement), The Island, there is a futuristic XBox that is pretty similar to Kinect. Who cares what really inspired it. It's not particularly a new idea. It's just no one else was stupid enough to blow money on trying to make the thing a commercial product. Not now in 2010 at least.
Well, they mentioned the Wii once at the end of the article:
Over Christmas 2008, they narrowed their focus on three ideas, sport being one. “We wanted to compete head-on with Wii Sports,” Andreas admits. “We knew we could do so much more with Kinect than you could with Wii.”
Because the launch titles were aimed at the family market, Rare chose the more popular sports. “We put a bowling prototype together in three days: can we significantly improve on Wii Sports’ bowling? Could we allow people to run at the screen with the ball? We realised we could improve on it.
I think that quote is hilarious. They never mention how exactly they improved upon Wii bowling. Personally, I can't see how it could be better because the controller is why Wii bowling feels so intuitive. It gives feedback straight to your hand, both audio and rumble. It may not feel like a bowling ball, but it comes closer to simulating the experience of bowling because there is something to physically connect you with what you're seeing on screen.
I can also see potential for games that use the regular controller. Like an Elder Scrolls where you play the game normally, but when you talk to people they interact with your more realistically, perhaps recognizing your facial expressions so the character could make a comment like, "Why, you're looking happy today!" (of course, with gamers playing ES, it's more likely to say, "Why, you're looking lethargic and near-comotose!"). It's one of those things that would be best a complimentary input device, like the microphones that were used for Mario Party. If they insist on developing games using Kinect as the only input device, I don't see it going anywhere because it's not more immersive, when you take the physical controller out of one's hand you've further detached them from the game world. This thing might be pretty sweet if they combined it with something like Nintendo or Sony's motion controllers, but they seem pretty determined to do it controller-less.
Floppy drives don't hold enough information to have been useful in the past ten years (consider this -- yesterday I had to give my boss a 10mb Excel spreadsheet. Standard floppy disks held like 2-3mb). That's why we have flash drives. They fit on a key-ring. Hell, most people just use the internet - e-mail, ftp, ect.
It's not like Apple dropped the floppy and ten years later the rest of the industry followed suit. Apple dropped the floppy and within a couple years the industry followed suit.
That other way is called a "video game." Such as Indigo Prophecy, Resident Evil 4, or Heavy Rain. There's not enough to distinguish between a real-time adventure game and this concept. Just because you put it in a theatre doesn't make it patentable. That's just making the screen bigger and adding more participants.
Yeah, but he was just being pedantic. I agree with him that it was a completely inappropriate use of the word "impossible." It's like when people say, "I literally exploded into a fit of rage" when in fact they mean that they figuratively exploded.
While I agree it was quite an oversight on the developer's part, I also think this is a non-story. A mini-game for the DSi doesn't have the production value to expect them to take every little thing into consideration. There were probably like 2-3 developers, if that, and they were all right handed. And then some left-handed journalist found out about it and tried to make a big deal about it. Lefties have a tendency to believe they're being discriminated against when they're really just occasionally not taken into consideration on accident.
From the beginning of the DS, high-revenue games have all taken lefties into consideration. Just because ONE mini-game neglected the left-handed minority doesn't mean that "left-handed gamers are being left behind."
I think what the parent is complaining about isn't the social nature of the internet, but how it's become focussed on social frivolities rather than a method of exchanging information. When the www came about everyone thought that this generation of kids would turn out to be the most intelligent in history because information would be easily accessible and free. But the exact opposite is true. Despite the fact that the www hosts more knowledge than any library on earth, most people use it for social networking, porn, and videos of people acting like jackasses. It turned out to be just as big a disappointment as TV. Lets face it, even the Discovery channel only provides cursory information concerning the topics they explore. ..sort of like Wikipedia.
Google Wave's failure is a prime example of this problem. A collaboration product is what one would think the internet is ideally suited for, especially one as well designed and innovative as Wave (I use Wave for a couple projects, it's really an amazing product). But not enough people used it to make it worth Google's while.
I'll agree that the internet is inherently social--it's a network. Even Gopher was social. But there's a clear distinction between social frivolities (omg! I got my hair died today! Everyone check out my new pix!) and social productivity. More and more people are using the internet as a distraction than as a tool. Sure, most people here on Slashdot use it for both, but the more the internet becomes primarily a "social networking device" the more it reminds me of Fahrenheit 451.
Why is everyone taking the iPhone "funeral" thing so literally as if Microsoft actually expects to be the end of the iPhone?
They're just goofing off, just like that cheesy internal marketing video that surfaced on the web a few years back. Are Microsoft employees not allowed to have any fun by poking fun at their competitors?
Sure. It's not a crime to make a fool of one's self. Other people are allowed to criticize them for it as well. Funny how that works, huh?
I agree that there doesn't have to be a single 'victor' in the market, but MS has always looked at business that way. This is a prime example of their attitude that business is market dominance or bust. It will be their undoing as they just can't settle with second or third place and will continue to squander resources in pursuit of the elusive #1. Just look what they did with the XBox and are now doing with Bing. They'll sacrifice profitability for market-share any day.
Wow, that completely changes the context of the allegations. It's unfortunate that this isn't mentioned in any of these articles I've read so far. Journalists seem so eager to be the first to report that they never seem to do the full research for an initial report. The truth never comes out until several follow-up reports have been released. It may be good for their business--it keeps the public following the story--but it's one of the largest contributors to public misinformation. Whatever happened to journalistic integrity?
I don't presume that Assange is innocent of any wrongdoing, but it's unfortunate that his enemies will presume his guilt and use it against him.
This is a common myth. Ritalin/Amphetamine/Dexadrine are all stimulants, even for those who have ADHD. Stimulant doesn't mean it makes you hyperactive, it means it increases your heart rate. Whether you have ADHD or not, these drugs will make you super-attentive and much more focussed while doing any mental task. They don't make non-ADHDers act as if they have ADHD. If that were true, these drugs wouldn't be so popular among college students come finals time. They'll keep you awake and focussed --that's their stimulant effect--not bouncing off the walls like the Trix Rabbit.
So yes, they do turn kids into zombies. The type of zombies that teachers like: ones whose natural impulses to burn excess energy through exercise that aids them in physical development is redirected into mental attentiveness. Not to mention much of that energy is also lost because these drugs suppress one's appetite.
Here's a wild theory: perhaps K-12 education is structured in a format that is favorable to girls. There's not enough opportunities for exercise and overall rambunctiousness for most boys to cut the mustard without being drugged. Furthermore, teachers are quick to accept drugged students over rambunctious ones because it makes their jobs easier. Hence the findings of this study. They're quick to recommend misbehaving children for a psychological evaluation despite the fact that the only issue is that they're an immature boy (I know, your girlfriend was diagnosed, but it's a rare diagnoses for a female and the issue of exercise still remains).
Even if ADHD is real there's no evidence to suggest that drugs are a better solution than exercise. There's also less evidence to suggest that the majority of those diagnosed actually have any mental disorder whatsoever. Third-graders cannot sit through a reading of The Great Gatsby without falling asleep. Who would of thought?
but I've always had the impression that his 'philosophy' is inspired by Star Trek rather than the scientific method or logic. His AI claims always seem to be a vast underestimation of the complexity of the human mind. "Wishful thinking" is the best phrase to describe his ideas. Regardless, the summary for the article could have been an actual summary rather than just a copy-paste of the first couple lines.
Great idea, but will they really be practical without net neutrality? ISPs seem determined to choke us of enough bandwidth to host our own servers without some 'premium' package or some other sort of BS. For both home and work (small business), it's cheaper for me to pay for remote server space even though I'd prefer not to.
I don't like the word 'cloud' at all, either. It's just a buzzword for server the tech-world is trying to convince the business-world they can't live without. It gets guys like my boss to ask me, "I keep hearing about this cloud thing, it sounds like we need to get on that, should we?" No.
I think one of the big problems a lot of people had with the prequels is that they wanted to root for Anikan the whole time but Lucas didn't give them the opportunity. They wanted to feel like his turn to the dark side was justified. When I was a kid I knew all sorts of people whose favorite Star Wars character was Darth Vader, and they were the ones who hated the prequels the most. As much as Vader was Palpatine's lackey in the originals, it was far worse in the prequels. Like you pointed out, he was willing to kill children (Jedi children, but children all the same).
But unlike you, I never viewed Anikan/Vader as fully evil. I viewed him as weak. In Return of the Jedi Luke constantly begs him to fight against the emperor but Vader always has some cowardly excuse ("You don't know the power of the dark side, blah blah blah"). Being a weak, cowardly fool can be evil, but not what you call "Nazi evil."
Your post was quite interesting and reminded me of something I forgot to post in the original: Episode III is George Lucas' Hamlet. Hamlet is Shakespeare's most controversial play among critics, and you'll notice that many of its failures are reflected in Anikan: the tragic figure isn't easy to relate to, he's somewhat of a whiny bitch, and he's not quick to act unless it's at the wrong time doing the wrong thing.
Hamlet has even more questionable content that doesn't relate to Star Wars. For example, there's the distinct possibility that Hamlet is just insane and never saw any ghost. It's easy to wonder whether Rosencrantz and Guildenstern really deserved to die for just carrying out a royal assignment and Hamlet driving Ophelia insane didn't seem necessary at all.
But I like Hamlet because the monologues are dammed good. That's how I feel about Star Wars. I can pick it apart for hours pointing out plot-holes and inconsistencies and all around silliness, but at the end of the day it has great characters, a deep storyline, and lightsabres. For all of Lucas' shortcomings, I can't be anything but appreciative. The same can be said about Shakespeare and Hamlet.
I guess my biggest gripe with those who are super critical of the prequels is this: what did you expect?
One thing I disagree with is your assertion that the prequels should have set more records in theaters. When the originals came out no sci-fi movie came close to the originality, special effects, and grand scale. It was an example of untapped potential in movie making. I'm too lazy to look it up, but I'm pretty sure none of the prequels won a best special effects Oscar. When the prequels came out I knew people who didn't go see them because they didn't like Star Wars. They had to watch at least one of the original movies to come to that conclusion.
Avatar, for example, set all kinds of records. This probably had a lot to do with the implementation of 3D and IMAX theaters. Sure, other movies had done so in the past, just like Star Wars wasn't the first sci-fi film, but Avatar was the first film to do 3D right in the same fashion as Star Wars was the first to do sci-fi right.
Because the whole idea of "the Force" is based off eastern religions, so "good" and "evil" are more akin to "yin" and "yang." One of the things I like about the prequels are that the Sith aren't just evil for the sake of being evil. Palpatine believed the Jedi to be just as evil as they believed him to be. One thing that is clear in all six films is that Palpatine is a Hitler-like figure, but the prequels demonstrate how such a man rises to power and what motivates him. In the original three he's more like Dr. Evil. In the prequels he's more of a student of Machiavelli.
1. Concerning the acting, I agree, Jake Lloyd wasn't very good. But I liked Hayden Christensen's performance. I heard a lot of people criticize him of acting too much like an arrogant, immature prick, but I felt like that was Anikan's character. I never understood why people expected Anikan to be likeable. His acting seemed genuine. Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman did a great job as well.
2/3. Concerning the writing: The plotting was better and, like I said, I found the Anikan/Vader transformation to be quite believable. Before the prequels came out I sincerely doubted Lucas' ability to pull that one off. The Emperor used Anikan's selfishness against him, but he used it in a way that most people could understand: he was selfishly clinging on to any hope to save the mother of his children. The dialogue didn't impress me but it wasn't impressive in the originals so nothing was different there.
On your final point, you're right that no work is beyond criticism, but that's not what I was getting at. I meant that people who damn Lucas as the man who ruined their childhood memories, shouldn't. He didn't ruin Star Wars, he finished it. Too many fans act as if Star Wars is a thing that exists outside Lucas and they seem to refuse to acknowledge that it's a world he created. Everyone had their own vision of what the prequels would contain before they were released. The most bizarre thing about the prequels is how everyone was so disappointed that what they imagined wasn't what Lucas imagined. People forgot that it was his dream, not theirs. Of course, that doesn't take away your right to be critical, and my original word choice unfortunately conveyed that idea.
Slashdot Mirror
I once challenged an engineer buddy to come up with a working concept for a hydrogen car and he cited turbines that generated power for electric motors at each individual wheel (because the turbine always has a consistent amount of fuel flowing from it, your throttle wouldn't regulate fuel but the electric motors). It makes sense, but they're quite a different beast than traditional piston-rod motors. While technically it wouldn't be too difficult, economic and logistical factors are the great barriers. Safety is another factor. He didn't seem too concerned about it, but hydrogen can make a hell of an explosion.
Whether it would work or not, that's the type of outside-the-box thinking our car manufacturers need today. The idea of electric cars is just stupid unless you live in an area provided with nuclear power. Where I live the power is provided by a coal plant. Am I really supposed to believe that it's better for the environment to plug my car in and burn a fossil fuel at a foreign site than within the car itself? Sure, there are problems associated with getting hydrogen in cars, but no one seems to even be trying.
Insightful? Really, slashdot? I can't use my desktop from my easy chair in the living room or the sofas. I can't take the desktop with me when I visit my friends and hang off their wifi for accessing the Internet. I can't take my desktop to Starbucks (or if you hate Starbucks just substitute another public location with free wifi).
Of course you can get a more powerful desktop for the same price as a laptop. This is news? You buy a laptop because you have reasons for needing one that a desktop does not support.
I have to second this. Not to mention the main reason laptops outsell desktops: business travel. It doesn't matter if a desktop is more powerful and lasts longer when it doesn't go where you need it to go.
Well, that's Sociologists. They pretend to be called scientists
Fixed that for you. Statistics actually have scientific applications, just not statistics gathered from survey results asking hypothetical/personal questions.
How about just being selfish and pretty amoral?
You'd have to define a what set of morals I'd be defying... In themselves morals are usually selfish. These can vary widely from one person to the next, but they are mostly centered around making oneself "feel good about themselves."
Go back to Ethics 101. Or just read A Clockwork Orange:
What does God want? Does God want goodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?
Or, in other words, good actions are only good with good intent. If you give to charity because of the tax-write off, then it's not a morally good action (it may not be immoral, it could be a morally neutral action). So, doing good for selfish reasons is just selfish, which is amoral at best and immoral at worst.
In fact, the difficulty in being morally upright usually lies in the fact that doing the right thing often requires neglecting what makes one "feel good about themselves." If feeling good is one's primary concern, then it's doubtful they would be able to make the sacrifices necessary to live a morally upstanding life.
This bigger gripe I have, as with most sociological studies, is that there's no way to really demonstrate whether the data collected in the study is reliable or not. These 'studies' seem to be just a collection of survey data. If this type of data is so reliable, then how come so many Slashdotters have such a high tendency to have 'Cowboy Neal' as an answer to so many polls? Sure, it's an inside joke, but when you go to a comic convention and start asking random dorks if they'd rather be a super-villain who conveniently escapes whenever caught and the super-hero who has to both work a legitimate day job and chase down the super-villains, most people aren't going to ground the question in reality and they'll choose the super-villain. But that doesn't necessarily reflect what they would do in real life.
How about asking the question: Would you kill for money? I bet more people would answer 'yes' than those who would actually do it. But less people would answer 'yes' than those who said they would prefer to be a villain than hero. Because here's a situation they could realistically be placed in. There's no magic/superpowers involved, so people will more likely ground their answer in reality as that is the realm of the question.
As you point out, literature and history and much better sources for making sociological conclusions. Asking people questions they won't always answer truthfully doesn't tell you anything, which is what the whole 'science' of sociology is all about. The reason sociology is such a farce is b/c real experiments that would be conclusive are a double edged sword: they tend to be unethical.
Yes, but iDesign would be the stripped down consumer version. Design Studio Pro would do what you're talking about.
That's true, but if I'm going to spend the money on one of those, then why wouldn't I just fork out a little bit extra and get a Mac Mini? The added advantage of a proper computer is well worth the extra dough and it'll run whatever OS I want. Going with Apple hardware doesn't tether you to iTunes.
Office for Mac can because on OS X anything that can be printed can be turned into a PDF.
OK, if you Don't Wanna Be Evil, how about
Google? They've got even more interest in Flash-on-mobile as a stopgap against Apple World Domination as Microsoft does, and could probably write a PDF viewer in less than 100 megabytes.
GooDobeSoft
Yeah, and Window's 'Recycling Bin' wasn't inspired by Apple's 'Trash Can' in the least bit. They're fundamentally different. Personally, I only use Windows because Macs are so environmentally unfriendly. They can't even recycle!
On a more serious note, Kinect is a rip-off of both the Eye-Toy and Wii, but I'm sure the Wii is what financially motivated the project. Microsoft is a market-share company, they love pie charts where they have the largest piece. I don't think Eye-Toy had anything they were envious of. At least, nothing they didn't already rip-off with XBox Vision.
Although I believe the execs who allowed the project to get on its feet were only going after the Wii, I'm sure the engineers who designed the thing had larger influences. They mention the holodeck thing from Star Trek several times in the article. In Michael Bay's craptacular movie (or as I like to say, feature length action-advertisement), The Island, there is a futuristic XBox that is pretty similar to Kinect. Who cares what really inspired it. It's not particularly a new idea. It's just no one else was stupid enough to blow money on trying to make the thing a commercial product. Not now in 2010 at least.
Well, they mentioned the Wii once at the end of the article:
Over Christmas 2008, they narrowed their focus on three ideas, sport being one. “We wanted to compete head-on with Wii Sports,” Andreas admits. “We knew we could do so much more with Kinect than you could with Wii.”
Because the launch titles were aimed at the family market, Rare chose the more popular sports. “We put a bowling prototype together in three days: can we significantly improve on Wii Sports’ bowling? Could we allow people to run at the screen with the ball? We realised we could improve on it.
I think that quote is hilarious. They never mention how exactly they improved upon Wii bowling. Personally, I can't see how it could be better because the controller is why Wii bowling feels so intuitive. It gives feedback straight to your hand, both audio and rumble. It may not feel like a bowling ball, but it comes closer to simulating the experience of bowling because there is something to physically connect you with what you're seeing on screen.
I see potential in Kinect but it has less to do with gaming and more to do with XBox Live. It's good for this: http://comics.com/pearls_before_swine/2010-10-05/
I can also see potential for games that use the regular controller. Like an Elder Scrolls where you play the game normally, but when you talk to people they interact with your more realistically, perhaps recognizing your facial expressions so the character could make a comment like, "Why, you're looking happy today!" (of course, with gamers playing ES, it's more likely to say, "Why, you're looking lethargic and near-comotose!"). It's one of those things that would be best a complimentary input device, like the microphones that were used for Mario Party. If they insist on developing games using Kinect as the only input device, I don't see it going anywhere because it's not more immersive, when you take the physical controller out of one's hand you've further detached them from the game world. This thing might be pretty sweet if they combined it with something like Nintendo or Sony's motion controllers, but they seem pretty determined to do it controller-less.
Floppy drives don't hold enough information to have been useful in the past ten years (consider this -- yesterday I had to give my boss a 10mb Excel spreadsheet. Standard floppy disks held like 2-3mb). That's why we have flash drives. They fit on a key-ring. Hell, most people just use the internet - e-mail, ftp, ect.
It's not like Apple dropped the floppy and ten years later the rest of the industry followed suit. Apple dropped the floppy and within a couple years the industry followed suit.
That other way is called a "video game." Such as Indigo Prophecy, Resident Evil 4, or Heavy Rain. There's not enough to distinguish between a real-time adventure game and this concept. Just because you put it in a theatre doesn't make it patentable. That's just making the screen bigger and adding more participants.
Yeah, but he was just being pedantic. I agree with him that it was a completely inappropriate use of the word "impossible." It's like when people say, "I literally exploded into a fit of rage" when in fact they mean that they figuratively exploded.
While I agree it was quite an oversight on the developer's part, I also think this is a non-story. A mini-game for the DSi doesn't have the production value to expect them to take every little thing into consideration. There were probably like 2-3 developers, if that, and they were all right handed. And then some left-handed journalist found out about it and tried to make a big deal about it. Lefties have a tendency to believe they're being discriminated against when they're really just occasionally not taken into consideration on accident.
From the beginning of the DS, high-revenue games have all taken lefties into consideration. Just because ONE mini-game neglected the left-handed minority doesn't mean that "left-handed gamers are being left behind."
I think what the parent is complaining about isn't the social nature of the internet, but how it's become focussed on social frivolities rather than a method of exchanging information. When the www came about everyone thought that this generation of kids would turn out to be the most intelligent in history because information would be easily accessible and free. But the exact opposite is true. Despite the fact that the www hosts more knowledge than any library on earth, most people use it for social networking, porn, and videos of people acting like jackasses. It turned out to be just as big a disappointment as TV. Lets face it, even the Discovery channel only provides cursory information concerning the topics they explore. . .sort of like Wikipedia.
Google Wave's failure is a prime example of this problem. A collaboration product is what one would think the internet is ideally suited for, especially one as well designed and innovative as Wave (I use Wave for a couple projects, it's really an amazing product). But not enough people used it to make it worth Google's while.
I'll agree that the internet is inherently social--it's a network. Even Gopher was social. But there's a clear distinction between social frivolities (omg! I got my hair died today! Everyone check out my new pix!) and social productivity. More and more people are using the internet as a distraction than as a tool. Sure, most people here on Slashdot use it for both, but the more the internet becomes primarily a "social networking device" the more it reminds me of Fahrenheit 451.
Why is everyone taking the iPhone "funeral" thing so literally as if Microsoft actually expects to be the end of the iPhone?
They're just goofing off, just like that cheesy internal marketing video that surfaced on the web a few years back. Are Microsoft employees not allowed to have any fun by poking fun at their competitors?
Sure. It's not a crime to make a fool of one's self. Other people are allowed to criticize them for it as well. Funny how that works, huh?
I agree that there doesn't have to be a single 'victor' in the market, but MS has always looked at business that way. This is a prime example of their attitude that business is market dominance or bust. It will be their undoing as they just can't settle with second or third place and will continue to squander resources in pursuit of the elusive #1. Just look what they did with the XBox and are now doing with Bing. They'll sacrifice profitability for market-share any day.
Wow, that completely changes the context of the allegations. It's unfortunate that this isn't mentioned in any of these articles I've read so far. Journalists seem so eager to be the first to report that they never seem to do the full research for an initial report. The truth never comes out until several follow-up reports have been released. It may be good for their business--it keeps the public following the story--but it's one of the largest contributors to public misinformation. Whatever happened to journalistic integrity?
I don't presume that Assange is innocent of any wrongdoing, but it's unfortunate that his enemies will presume his guilt and use it against him.
This is a common myth. Ritalin/Amphetamine/Dexadrine are all stimulants, even for those who have ADHD. Stimulant doesn't mean it makes you hyperactive, it means it increases your heart rate. Whether you have ADHD or not, these drugs will make you super-attentive and much more focussed while doing any mental task. They don't make non-ADHDers act as if they have ADHD. If that were true, these drugs wouldn't be so popular among college students come finals time. They'll keep you awake and focussed --that's their stimulant effect--not bouncing off the walls like the Trix Rabbit.
So yes, they do turn kids into zombies. The type of zombies that teachers like: ones whose natural impulses to burn excess energy through exercise that aids them in physical development is redirected into mental attentiveness. Not to mention much of that energy is also lost because these drugs suppress one's appetite.
Here's a wild theory: perhaps K-12 education is structured in a format that is favorable to girls. There's not enough opportunities for exercise and overall rambunctiousness for most boys to cut the mustard without being drugged. Furthermore, teachers are quick to accept drugged students over rambunctious ones because it makes their jobs easier. Hence the findings of this study. They're quick to recommend misbehaving children for a psychological evaluation despite the fact that the only issue is that they're an immature boy (I know, your girlfriend was diagnosed, but it's a rare diagnoses for a female and the issue of exercise still remains).
Even if ADHD is real there's no evidence to suggest that drugs are a better solution than exercise. There's also less evidence to suggest that the majority of those diagnosed actually have any mental disorder whatsoever. Third-graders cannot sit through a reading of The Great Gatsby without falling asleep. Who would of thought?
but I've always had the impression that his 'philosophy' is inspired by Star Trek rather than the scientific method or logic. His AI claims always seem to be a vast underestimation of the complexity of the human mind. "Wishful thinking" is the best phrase to describe his ideas. Regardless, the summary for the article could have been an actual summary rather than just a copy-paste of the first couple lines.
Great idea, but will they really be practical without net neutrality? ISPs seem determined to choke us of enough bandwidth to host our own servers without some 'premium' package or some other sort of BS. For both home and work (small business), it's cheaper for me to pay for remote server space even though I'd prefer not to.
I don't like the word 'cloud' at all, either. It's just a buzzword for server the tech-world is trying to convince the business-world they can't live without. It gets guys like my boss to ask me, "I keep hearing about this cloud thing, it sounds like we need to get on that, should we?" No.
I think one of the big problems a lot of people had with the prequels is that they wanted to root for Anikan the whole time but Lucas didn't give them the opportunity. They wanted to feel like his turn to the dark side was justified. When I was a kid I knew all sorts of people whose favorite Star Wars character was Darth Vader, and they were the ones who hated the prequels the most. As much as Vader was Palpatine's lackey in the originals, it was far worse in the prequels. Like you pointed out, he was willing to kill children (Jedi children, but children all the same).
But unlike you, I never viewed Anikan/Vader as fully evil. I viewed him as weak. In Return of the Jedi Luke constantly begs him to fight against the emperor but Vader always has some cowardly excuse ("You don't know the power of the dark side, blah blah blah"). Being a weak, cowardly fool can be evil, but not what you call "Nazi evil."
Your post was quite interesting and reminded me of something I forgot to post in the original: Episode III is George Lucas' Hamlet. Hamlet is Shakespeare's most controversial play among critics, and you'll notice that many of its failures are reflected in Anikan: the tragic figure isn't easy to relate to, he's somewhat of a whiny bitch, and he's not quick to act unless it's at the wrong time doing the wrong thing.
Hamlet has even more questionable content that doesn't relate to Star Wars. For example, there's the distinct possibility that Hamlet is just insane and never saw any ghost. It's easy to wonder whether Rosencrantz and Guildenstern really deserved to die for just carrying out a royal assignment and Hamlet driving Ophelia insane didn't seem necessary at all.
But I like Hamlet because the monologues are dammed good. That's how I feel about Star Wars. I can pick it apart for hours pointing out plot-holes and inconsistencies and all around silliness, but at the end of the day it has great characters, a deep storyline, and lightsabres. For all of Lucas' shortcomings, I can't be anything but appreciative. The same can be said about Shakespeare and Hamlet.
I guess my biggest gripe with those who are super critical of the prequels is this: what did you expect?
One thing I disagree with is your assertion that the prequels should have set more records in theaters. When the originals came out no sci-fi movie came close to the originality, special effects, and grand scale. It was an example of untapped potential in movie making. I'm too lazy to look it up, but I'm pretty sure none of the prequels won a best special effects Oscar. When the prequels came out I knew people who didn't go see them because they didn't like Star Wars. They had to watch at least one of the original movies to come to that conclusion.
Avatar, for example, set all kinds of records. This probably had a lot to do with the implementation of 3D and IMAX theaters. Sure, other movies had done so in the past, just like Star Wars wasn't the first sci-fi film, but Avatar was the first film to do 3D right in the same fashion as Star Wars was the first to do sci-fi right.
Because the whole idea of "the Force" is based off eastern religions, so "good" and "evil" are more akin to "yin" and "yang." One of the things I like about the prequels are that the Sith aren't just evil for the sake of being evil. Palpatine believed the Jedi to be just as evil as they believed him to be. One thing that is clear in all six films is that Palpatine is a Hitler-like figure, but the prequels demonstrate how such a man rises to power and what motivates him. In the original three he's more like Dr. Evil. In the prequels he's more of a student of Machiavelli.
You have some good points.
1. Concerning the acting, I agree, Jake Lloyd wasn't very good. But I liked Hayden Christensen's performance. I heard a lot of people criticize him of acting too much like an arrogant, immature prick, but I felt like that was Anikan's character. I never understood why people expected Anikan to be likeable. His acting seemed genuine. Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman did a great job as well.
2/3. Concerning the writing: The plotting was better and, like I said, I found the Anikan/Vader transformation to be quite believable. Before the prequels came out I sincerely doubted Lucas' ability to pull that one off. The Emperor used Anikan's selfishness against him, but he used it in a way that most people could understand: he was selfishly clinging on to any hope to save the mother of his children. The dialogue didn't impress me but it wasn't impressive in the originals so nothing was different there.
On your final point, you're right that no work is beyond criticism, but that's not what I was getting at. I meant that people who damn Lucas as the man who ruined their childhood memories, shouldn't. He didn't ruin Star Wars, he finished it. Too many fans act as if Star Wars is a thing that exists outside Lucas and they seem to refuse to acknowledge that it's a world he created. Everyone had their own vision of what the prequels would contain before they were released. The most bizarre thing about the prequels is how everyone was so disappointed that what they imagined wasn't what Lucas imagined. People forgot that it was his dream, not theirs. Of course, that doesn't take away your right to be critical, and my original word choice unfortunately conveyed that idea.