You are trying to impose moral obligations on people who don't exist yet - that they should spend resources on reviving you and giving you medical care.
Okay, I'll feed the troll. I'm imposing no greater moral obligation on others than anyone who makes a financial loan with the expectation of being paid back, or anyone who goes into an emergency room. In the later case I'm actually making less of a demand, since I'm pre-paying for my own long-term care and eventual restoration. I cover this in the FAQ I linked to above. Regardless, cryonics is simply a medical procedure, albeit a fringe one. I have just as much right to live as anyone else, thank you. I shudder to think what your attitude must be toward elderly care facilities.
I would argue that people in cryonic suspension (at least the ones whose circumstances permitted a good suspension) are not dead. They're in stasis. If you can be recovered then you were never dead in the first place. Please google "information theoretic death" if this is unclear.
Your comment also assumes that I'll contribute nothing to society in the future. Bullocks. I've learned skills and adapted to radically different environments in the past and am perfectly willing to do so again.
Even if your absurdly dark scenario were correct, I'll take living in a zoo over death. As long as I'm alive I have the possibility of improving my situation and the situation of those around me.
I cover the long-term viability of the Alcor Patient Care Trust in my FAQ. There are no guarantees of course, but they're well situated for the long haul. And any society with the ability to repair organs on a cellular level can likely grow/build new ones, so there'd be little incentive to scrap us for parts.
But... Although you deserve respect for your beliefs, you should have stuck with old fashion religion. It's cheaper.
Actually, compared with what a lot of people tithe it isn't. It's not even close. And I'll take the arguably low probability of success of cryonics over the zero likelihood of religion providing an out. Besides, the two aren't mutually exclusive.
Unless of course in the future revived cryonauts will have no legal status as humans and will be revived to create a slave population to work in the Overlords sugar mines for all eternity.
A society with the technological capability of repairing damage on a cellular level and constructing a replacement body will have no need of slaves. At the very least, they'd have no need to go through the hassle of recovering my brain to operate the slave body when they could presumably build one from scratch that's optimized for that role.
As for zombies, well, I hope that I have the mental clarity upon waking up to have my first word be "Braaaaaains..." With my luck, there'd be a guy with a shotgun standing by, and the last thing I'd hear would be "We've got another one that turned! Shoot it!"
I don't mean to seem curt (it's late and I'm off to bed), but please check out one of the links I posted. Both cover your question pretty thoroughly. Thanks.
Re:Geek funeral?
on
A Geek Funeral
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
You're making quite a few presumptions here. I'll try to take your main points one at a time, and will ignore the ad hominems and obvious trolling: * I'm not screwing anybody over. I have no children and no plans to have any. My wife and I both established *plenty* of life insurance long before making any cryonics arrangements. If I go down tomorrow my wife is well taken care of, and vice versa. The separate policies that cover our cryosuspension are just that- separate. And no, we're not wealthy by any means- at least compared with the average non-student slashdotter. I suspect you're grossly overestimating the cost of cryonic suspension and the cost of an insurance policy for a healthy non-smoker in his early 30's.
* You may find my assessment of the Patient Care Trust's financial stability "laughable", but I find the idea that it'll take 1000 years for us to obtain control over matter at the molecular level patently absurd. Eric Drexler estimates that it'll happen within our lifetimes (or at least my lifetime), and the trends in nanotech development point to him being not too far off. Even if he's wildly optimistic, I suspect that nothing short of a global cataclysm will keep us from reaching that goal in this century, and I'm willing to bet my life on that. (And as I mention in the FAQ, if a global cataclysm does happen then we're all SOL anyway.)
* Why would they bother to revive us? Again, I covered this in the FAQ. The PCT is under contractual obligation, and one of the requirements to be on the board of directors is that you have to have a family member already in the tank, so they have a vested interest in their well-being. Why does anyone help anyone in a critical medical situation? You can call the question naive if you like, but the fact is that people do help each other. If nothing else, it's likely that anyone who does get revived will be highly motivated to rescue their fellow cryonauts. (I base this statement on my personal interactions with over 2 dozen Alcor members, every one of whom would take that position.)
If you prefer to disregard basic human empathy entirely, and are looking for a completely economic/rational reason, as technology continues to improve and spread eventually the cost of reviving patients will be less than the cost of maintaining their stasis.
* I'll disregard your conjecture about the future population levels in "1000 years", as well as your incorrect assessment of the cost of cryosuspension, but I will point out that defeating aging is far less of a challenge than reviving a vitrified person. Assuming that the revived person is instantiated in a "meat body" (which is not a given), undoing age-related damage will likely be a side effect of undoing suspension-related damage. In fact, I can scarcely imagine a scenario where that wouldn't be the case.
* I don't know that being revived will be better than being dead, but a society that's a living hell is a society that won't be in a position to revive cryonics patients. And if nothing else, being revived gives me the ability to make that decision for myself. If I'm revived and for some reason prefer oblivion then I can simply find something large and fast moving to step in front of. If I rot in the ground then I rob myself of any control over my fate. (And for the record, I don't believe in Heaven either, so that argument is a waste of time.)
Re:Geek funeral?
on
A Geek Funeral
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
http://www.alcor.org/ . My wife and I are both signed up for cryonic suspension. Even if the chances of success are low, they beat the pants off of the alternative!
I guess it depends on the crowd with whom you associate. My wife is both a scientist and a damn fine shot. When headcrabs start materializing out of thin air she's the one I want watching my back!
Even as a fellow die-hard Mac fan your stance saddens me. In my living room alone we have 3 Macs, and that's not counting the server and various "museum piece" Macs elsewhere in the house. And still I keep a PC for precisely two reasons: the Half-Life games and the Command & Conquer games. Either series is good enough to justify having a PC just to run them. Really.
Yes, I know that C&C 3 is out for Intel Macs, but I bought the PC version the day it came out, and our household didn't get its first Intel Mac until earlier this week. Regardless, PC Gamer called Half-Life 2 "The best computer game ever made", and I support that statement 100%. It's amazing, and much too good to pass on just for the sake of platform loyalty.
As an aside, the original Half-Life WAS supposed to come out for the Macintosh. Like the Dreamcast port, the project was (tragically) terminated just prior to release.
You're not kidding. I'm *still* playing the original Half-Life. When it first came out my co-workers and I played roughly twice a week, but it wasn't until a few years later that I ever got around to trying out the single player mode. I tend to jump around between games, and sadly don't have a lot of free time to game. I've finished HL2, Blue Shift, Portal, and HL2 Ep 1, and am playing HL2 Ep 2 and the original Half-Life concurrently (if infrequently).
Sure, the graphics don't stand up to current offerings, and the later games have much more involved plots than the original did, but it's still the same compelling world, and playing them out of sequence had made things... interesting. I'd encountered Vortigaunts as allies long before I ever faced them as enemies, and feel just a bit guilty giving them the crowbar.:-)
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you've never worked in advertising. Image advertising is a significant and valuable part of an overall marketing strategy, even for a well-known and well-established company like Microsoft. Heck, especially for a company like Microsoft, which at this point could only worsen its public image by actively murdering its customers.
I also have to disagree with your statement "You do NOT suck up to your existing customers, you just give them good deals but not fancy smancy ads because they are already buying your product." Disregarding your current customers in your marketing campaign is a ruinous idea- even more so when your current customers make up over 90% of the market and your market share is being steadily eroded by a competitor who is perceived as cool and sexy and whose products are generally regarded as superior (I'm speaking in generalities of public perception here, not making a claim either way regarding reality).
Apple recently had their highest sales quarter ever - something which happens so frequently now that it's no longer considered noteworthy. Presumably the consistent sales increases aren't because their established customer base has decided to start buying 2 or 3 new Macs every 3 months. Those new customers are coming from the very group that you suggest Microsoft should disregard in its advertising.
Now don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that I think that the ad is good. Personally (and I fully admit that I have a strong bias against Microsoft), the nicest thing I can say about the ad is that people can no longer point to Vista as the most pointless waste of money to come out of Redmond.;-)
I do agree with you that the ad was likely written with an eye toward amusing Bill by letting him appear on TV with Seinfeld and shake his ass at the world.
Want to get fit in a hurry? The people advocating Parkour, running, or boxing all have part of the solution, but combine them all with calorie-burning adrenaline and you've got the ultimate workout plan: crime!
Start out small. Breaking and entering works all of the major muscle groups, especially if you're going for large items, and the rush from your first job will have your heart racing before you've even taken crowbar to window! Plus, since you'll likely botch your first job you get the added workout of fleeing from the scene.
Once the "newness" wears off, increase the cardiovascular component by only breaking into 2nd story windows. Eventually you can even move up to 3rd floor or higher. Bigger challenge and potentially bigger profits!
There's more than just B&E, however! Join your local underground fight club? No such thing? No problem! Just pick a fight with a random stranger! The punching and dodging will give you a great upper body workout to balance the sprinting you've been doing to escape from police and light-sleeping homeowners! I suggest starting light- find someone unsuspecting with their guard down (in line at Baskin-Robbins is a good start) and just start pounding on them. Move up to bigger people, and then finally people with lots of friends around for the ultimate workout! You can keep a small weapon like a kubotan or a roll of quarters handy in case things get out of hand, but that's bad form and will potentially reduce the effectiveness of your workout.
Getting busted? Well, fitness comes with a price. On the other hand, a trip to the big house is like a trip to a 24/7 gym, and at the same time it'll solve your "I don't have time to exercise" problem! It's win win!
Spending a little more to get a better mat is the best investment you can make. I use a RedOctane Ignition 2.0 mat with hard foam inserts and it's fantastic. If I'd started out with one of the crappy fold up mats then I likely would've lost interest in DDR after a couple of hours, but I've owned the same mat for about 2 years now and still use it regularly. I wear socks when I play and can feel the switches well enough to never have to look down to stay centered.
I don't know what selection of DDR mats is available for the Wii, but any mat that is compatible with the GameCube will work just fine. Even the "made for Wii" mats plug into the GC ports on the side.
Wow. And here I thought that I was the biggest fan of the game around! I've only beaten it 3 times, but it definitely ranks among my top 2 games of all time (possibly behind Deus Ex).
I've considered TRON 2.0 to be "the" sequel to TRON. The story, the visual style, the music, and the overall execution make it a more than worthy successor to the original movie, taking everything that made TRON special, expanding upon it, and updating it while remaining completely true to the original. A long while back I downloaded a script for a proposed sequel to TRON, and despite being an actual movie script it still fell far short of TRON 2.0's storyline.
And therein lies my only concern about TR2N. Even though it's "just" a video game, TRON 2.0 sets the bar very high indeed for a sequel. The ComicCon video clip is stunning, but they're still going to have to do something very special to make a sequel that lives up to TRON 2.0.
As an aside, the only aspect of TRON 2.0 that I didn't love was the Green Hornets light cycle circuit. I was able to beat it (3 times), but it's insanely difficult! Your thoughts?
How do you even pronounce something like that? "Two" doesn't sound like the letter "O" nor does it look like one.
It definitely violates L337 sp34k convention, but if you take the typeface into account it's a valid permutation of "TRON 2". Compare the logos of the two movies- the top half of the "O" and the "2" are identical. The only variation is in the bottom half of the character. Sure it's contrived from a phonetic standpoint, but visually it works.
Disclaimer: I just watched the vid for the first time and am bursting with excitement over this, so for the moment at least I'm in complete NRE/"They can do no wrong" mode.:-)
For someone I never met, and who I only know through his work and interviews, I'm shocked by how upset I am by this. I found out this morning, and in the few minutes it took me to make a quick blog post about it I was in tears.
Since I was a kid Winston's work has been the inspiration for more wild dreams and terrifying nightmares than I could ever recount, and I've loved all of it. Between the Alien queen and Terminator endoskeletons I have more representations of Winston's work in my cube at work than I do pictures of my own wife, and my home is like a shrine to the Terminator franchise. Schwarzenegger may have played terminators, but it was Winston and his team who built them and brought them to life.
Oh yes, I am obsessive. I have a Terminator 2 arcade machine in my front room, and in the time that I've owned it not a single day has gone by that I haven't played. Today it will remain powered off.
The world has lost a master artisan, and is a less colorful place as a result.
the problem is that the freezing creates ice, sharp ice...
Very good point. This is why cryonic suspension efforts typically involve displacing as much water as possible with a cryoprotective (usually glycerol-based) solution before reaching the freezing point. This minimizes ice crystal formation, which is very much a Good Thing.
The current state-of-the-art in cryonic suspension involves using a vitrifying solution that never actually freezes at all, but instead becomes glass-like. There are still technical challenges that are being overcome, but Alcor has been using vitrification in at least some of their patients since 2000. Electron micrographs of vitrified tissues show that in cases with good perfusion cellular structures survive the process with little or no damage.
Apple is able to dictate the price of song sales over the internet.
Are they now? So if Apple decided to charge $2 per song instead of $.99 then all of the other online retailers would be forced to do the same? Not so. The other retailers would retain their current pricing and eat iTMS' market share.
Or are you arguing that the popularity of iTMS allows Apple to refuse RIAA's attempts to force them to charge more for songs? I believe that there'd be some truth to this claim, but I fail to see how that fits the definition of a monopoly, given that the other online retailers are able to charge the same price. I also fail to see how one could view that as being bad in any way.
If Apple's volume allowed them to force RIAA to mandate that the other retailers charge more per song then your claim would have merit, but that's clearly not happening.
Why? Because it makes a loud noise? I've "used a gun" thousands of times, and unless you consider making little holes in paper targets 'a violent act' then I think that your blanket claim is way off base.
I've also played Link's Crossbow Training on the Wii, and given that it involves shooting at animated humanoid targets who return fire and also attempt to run away I'd argue that it comes much closer to being a violent act. The controller is even (*GASP*) gun-shaped! Where's your outrage against that?
Concealed carry permits aren't firearm-specific. They allow one to carry a concealed weapon, be it a firearm, long knife, or crossbow. I've had a CC permit for several years, and I've actually carried a concealed firearm on my person maybe twice. However, I carry a knife that would otherwise be illegal to conceal every day, and use it as a tool for my job all the time.
Slashdot Mirror
I challenge you to back up that accusation. Please google "information theoretic death" before attempting to do so.
You are trying to impose moral obligations on people who don't exist yet - that they should spend resources on reviving you and giving you medical care.
Okay, I'll feed the troll. I'm imposing no greater moral obligation on others than anyone who makes a financial loan with the expectation of being paid back, or anyone who goes into an emergency room. In the later case I'm actually making less of a demand, since I'm pre-paying for my own long-term care and eventual restoration. I cover this in the FAQ I linked to above. Regardless, cryonics is simply a medical procedure, albeit a fringe one. I have just as much right to live as anyone else, thank you. I shudder to think what your attitude must be toward elderly care facilities.
I would argue that people in cryonic suspension (at least the ones whose circumstances permitted a good suspension) are not dead. They're in stasis. If you can be recovered then you were never dead in the first place. Please google "information theoretic death" if this is unclear.
Your comment also assumes that I'll contribute nothing to society in the future. Bullocks. I've learned skills and adapted to radically different environments in the past and am perfectly willing to do so again.
Even if your absurdly dark scenario were correct, I'll take living in a zoo over death. As long as I'm alive I have the possibility of improving my situation and the situation of those around me.
I cover the long-term viability of the Alcor Patient Care Trust in my FAQ. There are no guarantees of course, but they're well situated for the long haul. And any society with the ability to repair organs on a cellular level can likely grow/build new ones, so there'd be little incentive to scrap us for parts.
But... Although you deserve respect for your beliefs, you should have stuck with old fashion religion. It's cheaper.
Actually, compared with what a lot of people tithe it isn't. It's not even close. And I'll take the arguably low probability of success of cryonics over the zero likelihood of religion providing an out. Besides, the two aren't mutually exclusive.
Unless of course in the future revived cryonauts will have no legal status as humans and will be revived to create a slave population to work in the Overlords sugar mines for all eternity.
A society with the technological capability of repairing damage on a cellular level and constructing a replacement body will have no need of slaves. At the very least, they'd have no need to go through the hassle of recovering my brain to operate the slave body when they could presumably build one from scratch that's optimized for that role.
As for zombies, well, I hope that I have the mental clarity upon waking up to have my first word be "Braaaaaains..." With my luck, there'd be a guy with a shotgun standing by, and the last thing I'd hear would be "We've got another one that turned! Shoot it!"
Either way it'd still be funny. :-)
I don't mean to seem curt (it's late and I'm off to bed), but please check out one of the links I posted. Both cover your question pretty thoroughly. Thanks.
You're making quite a few presumptions here. I'll try to take your main points one at a time, and will ignore the ad hominems and obvious trolling:
* I'm not screwing anybody over. I have no children and no plans to have any. My wife and I both established *plenty* of life insurance long before making any cryonics arrangements. If I go down tomorrow my wife is well taken care of, and vice versa. The separate policies that cover our cryosuspension are just that- separate. And no, we're not wealthy by any means- at least compared with the average non-student slashdotter. I suspect you're grossly overestimating the cost of cryonic suspension and the cost of an insurance policy for a healthy non-smoker in his early 30's.
* You may find my assessment of the Patient Care Trust's financial stability "laughable", but I find the idea that it'll take 1000 years for us to obtain control over matter at the molecular level patently absurd. Eric Drexler estimates that it'll happen within our lifetimes (or at least my lifetime), and the trends in nanotech development point to him being not too far off. Even if he's wildly optimistic, I suspect that nothing short of a global cataclysm will keep us from reaching that goal in this century, and I'm willing to bet my life on that. (And as I mention in the FAQ, if a global cataclysm does happen then we're all SOL anyway.)
* Why would they bother to revive us? Again, I covered this in the FAQ. The PCT is under contractual obligation, and one of the requirements to be on the board of directors is that you have to have a family member already in the tank, so they have a vested interest in their well-being. Why does anyone help anyone in a critical medical situation? You can call the question naive if you like, but the fact is that people do help each other. If nothing else, it's likely that anyone who does get revived will be highly motivated to rescue their fellow cryonauts. (I base this statement on my personal interactions with over 2 dozen Alcor members, every one of whom would take that position.)
If you prefer to disregard basic human empathy entirely, and are looking for a completely economic/rational reason, as technology continues to improve and spread eventually the cost of reviving patients will be less than the cost of maintaining their stasis.
* I'll disregard your conjecture about the future population levels in "1000 years", as well as your incorrect assessment of the cost of cryosuspension, but I will point out that defeating aging is far less of a challenge than reviving a vitrified person. Assuming that the revived person is instantiated in a "meat body" (which is not a given), undoing age-related damage will likely be a side effect of undoing suspension-related damage. In fact, I can scarcely imagine a scenario where that wouldn't be the case.
* I don't know that being revived will be better than being dead, but a society that's a living hell is a society that won't be in a position to revive cryonics patients. And if nothing else, being revived gives me the ability to make that decision for myself. If I'm revived and for some reason prefer oblivion then I can simply find something large and fast moving to step in front of. If I rot in the ground then I rob myself of any control over my fate. (And for the record, I don't believe in Heaven either, so that argument is a waste of time.)
http://www.alcor.org/ . My wife and I are both signed up for cryonic suspension. Even if the chances of success are low, they beat the pants off of the alternative!
Also, if I may tout my own unofficial FAQ: http://datan0de.livejournal.com/144534.html
Your basilisk vs my unicorn! IT'S ON!!! :-)
(Thanks for the flashback, BTW. Archon was/is a brilliant game!)
I guess it depends on the crowd with whom you associate. My wife is both a scientist and a damn fine shot. When headcrabs start materializing out of thin air she's the one I want watching my back!
Even as a fellow die-hard Mac fan your stance saddens me. In my living room alone we have 3 Macs, and that's not counting the server and various "museum piece" Macs elsewhere in the house. And still I keep a PC for precisely two reasons: the Half-Life games and the Command & Conquer games. Either series is good enough to justify having a PC just to run them. Really.
Yes, I know that C&C 3 is out for Intel Macs, but I bought the PC version the day it came out, and our household didn't get its first Intel Mac until earlier this week. Regardless, PC Gamer called Half-Life 2 "The best computer game ever made", and I support that statement 100%. It's amazing, and much too good to pass on just for the sake of platform loyalty.
As an aside, the original Half-Life WAS supposed to come out for the Macintosh. Like the Dreamcast port, the project was (tragically) terminated just prior to release.
You're not kidding. I'm *still* playing the original Half-Life. When it first came out my co-workers and I played roughly twice a week, but it wasn't until a few years later that I ever got around to trying out the single player mode. I tend to jump around between games, and sadly don't have a lot of free time to game. I've finished HL2, Blue Shift, Portal, and HL2 Ep 1, and am playing HL2 Ep 2 and the original Half-Life concurrently (if infrequently).
Sure, the graphics don't stand up to current offerings, and the later games have much more involved plots than the original did, but it's still the same compelling world, and playing them out of sequence had made things... interesting. I'd encountered Vortigaunts as allies long before I ever faced them as enemies, and feel just a bit guilty giving them the crowbar. :-)
You misspelled "grammar". :-)
I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you've never worked in advertising. Image advertising is a significant and valuable part of an overall marketing strategy, even for a well-known and well-established company like Microsoft. Heck, especially for a company like Microsoft, which at this point could only worsen its public image by actively murdering its customers.
I also have to disagree with your statement "You do NOT suck up to your existing customers, you just give them good deals but not fancy smancy ads because they are already buying your product." Disregarding your current customers in your marketing campaign is a ruinous idea- even more so when your current customers make up over 90% of the market and your market share is being steadily eroded by a competitor who is perceived as cool and sexy and whose products are generally regarded as superior (I'm speaking in generalities of public perception here, not making a claim either way regarding reality).
Apple recently had their highest sales quarter ever - something which happens so frequently now that it's no longer considered noteworthy. Presumably the consistent sales increases aren't because their established customer base has decided to start buying 2 or 3 new Macs every 3 months. Those new customers are coming from the very group that you suggest Microsoft should disregard in its advertising.
Now don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that I think that the ad is good. Personally (and I fully admit that I have a strong bias against Microsoft), the nicest thing I can say about the ad is that people can no longer point to Vista as the most pointless waste of money to come out of Redmond. ;-)
I do agree with you that the ad was likely written with an eye toward amusing Bill by letting him appear on TV with Seinfeld and shake his ass at the world.
Want to get fit in a hurry? The people advocating Parkour, running, or boxing all have part of the solution, but combine them all with calorie-burning adrenaline and you've got the ultimate workout plan: crime!
Start out small. Breaking and entering works all of the major muscle groups, especially if you're going for large items, and the rush from your first job will have your heart racing before you've even taken crowbar to window! Plus, since you'll likely botch your first job you get the added workout of fleeing from the scene.
Once the "newness" wears off, increase the cardiovascular component by only breaking into 2nd story windows. Eventually you can even move up to 3rd floor or higher. Bigger challenge and potentially bigger profits!
There's more than just B&E, however! Join your local underground fight club? No such thing? No problem! Just pick a fight with a random stranger! The punching and dodging will give you a great upper body workout to balance the sprinting you've been doing to escape from police and light-sleeping homeowners! I suggest starting light- find someone unsuspecting with their guard down (in line at Baskin-Robbins is a good start) and just start pounding on them. Move up to bigger people, and then finally people with lots of friends around for the ultimate workout! You can keep a small weapon like a kubotan or a roll of quarters handy in case things get out of hand, but that's bad form and will potentially reduce the effectiveness of your workout.
Getting busted? Well, fitness comes with a price. On the other hand, a trip to the big house is like a trip to a 24/7 gym, and at the same time it'll solve your "I don't have time to exercise" problem! It's win win!
I was going to suggest that! I'm currently mid-way through week 2. :-)
Spending a little more to get a better mat is the best investment you can make. I use a RedOctane Ignition 2.0 mat with hard foam inserts and it's fantastic. If I'd started out with one of the crappy fold up mats then I likely would've lost interest in DDR after a couple of hours, but I've owned the same mat for about 2 years now and still use it regularly. I wear socks when I play and can feel the switches well enough to never have to look down to stay centered.
I don't know what selection of DDR mats is available for the Wii, but any mat that is compatible with the GameCube will work just fine. Even the "made for Wii" mats plug into the GC ports on the side.
Have fun!
I've beaten it at least ten times
Wow. And here I thought that I was the biggest fan of the game around! I've only beaten it 3 times, but it definitely ranks among my top 2 games of all time (possibly behind Deus Ex).
I've considered TRON 2.0 to be "the" sequel to TRON. The story, the visual style, the music, and the overall execution make it a more than worthy successor to the original movie, taking everything that made TRON special, expanding upon it, and updating it while remaining completely true to the original. A long while back I downloaded a script for a proposed sequel to TRON, and despite being an actual movie script it still fell far short of TRON 2.0's storyline.
And therein lies my only concern about TR2N. Even though it's "just" a video game, TRON 2.0 sets the bar very high indeed for a sequel. The ComicCon video clip is stunning, but they're still going to have to do something very special to make a sequel that lives up to TRON 2.0.
As an aside, the only aspect of TRON 2.0 that I didn't love was the Green Hornets light cycle circuit. I was able to beat it (3 times), but it's insanely difficult! Your thoughts?
How do you even pronounce something like that? "Two" doesn't sound like the letter "O" nor does it look like one.
It definitely violates L337 sp34k convention, but if you take the typeface into account it's a valid permutation of "TRON 2". Compare the logos of the two movies- the top half of the "O" and the "2" are identical. The only variation is in the bottom half of the character. Sure it's contrived from a phonetic standpoint, but visually it works.
Disclaimer: I just watched the vid for the first time and am bursting with excitement over this, so for the moment at least I'm in complete NRE/"They can do no wrong" mode. :-)
For someone I never met, and who I only know through his work and interviews, I'm shocked by how upset I am by this. I found out this morning, and in the few minutes it took me to make a quick blog post about it I was in tears.
Since I was a kid Winston's work has been the inspiration for more wild dreams and terrifying nightmares than I could ever recount, and I've loved all of it. Between the Alien queen and Terminator endoskeletons I have more representations of Winston's work in my cube at work than I do pictures of my own wife, and my home is like a shrine to the Terminator franchise. Schwarzenegger may have played terminators, but it was Winston and his team who built them and brought them to life.
Oh yes, I am obsessive. I have a Terminator 2 arcade machine in my front room, and in the time that I've owned it not a single day has gone by that I haven't played. Today it will remain powered off.
The world has lost a master artisan, and is a less colorful place as a result.
Yes, and you'd better hurry. You've got until 2:14 am Eastern time, August 29th. (We'll fudge the year.)
the problem is that the freezing creates ice, sharp ice...
Very good point. This is why cryonic suspension efforts typically involve displacing as much water as possible with a cryoprotective (usually glycerol-based) solution before reaching the freezing point. This minimizes ice crystal formation, which is very much a Good Thing.
The current state-of-the-art in cryonic suspension involves using a vitrifying solution that never actually freezes at all, but instead becomes glass-like. There are still technical challenges that are being overcome, but Alcor has been using vitrification in at least some of their patients since 2000. Electron micrographs of vitrified tissues show that in cases with good perfusion cellular structures survive the process with little or no damage.
Apple is able to dictate the price of song sales over the internet.
Are they now? So if Apple decided to charge $2 per song instead of $.99 then all of the other online retailers would be forced to do the same? Not so. The other retailers would retain their current pricing and eat iTMS' market share.
Or are you arguing that the popularity of iTMS allows Apple to refuse RIAA's attempts to force them to charge more for songs? I believe that there'd be some truth to this claim, but I fail to see how that fits the definition of a monopoly, given that the other online retailers are able to charge the same price. I also fail to see how one could view that as being bad in any way.
If Apple's volume allowed them to force RIAA to mandate that the other retailers charge more per song then your claim would have merit, but that's clearly not happening.
Using a gun is always a violent act.
Why? Because it makes a loud noise? I've "used a gun" thousands of times, and unless you consider making little holes in paper targets 'a violent act' then I think that your blanket claim is way off base.
I've also played Link's Crossbow Training on the Wii, and given that it involves shooting at animated humanoid targets who return fire and also attempt to run away I'd argue that it comes much closer to being a violent act. The controller is even (*GASP*) gun-shaped! Where's your outrage against that?
Concealed carry permits aren't firearm-specific. They allow one to carry a concealed weapon, be it a firearm, long knife, or crossbow. I've had a CC permit for several years, and I've actually carried a concealed firearm on my person maybe twice. However, I carry a knife that would otherwise be illegal to conceal every day, and use it as a tool for my job all the time.