Okay, I did mention that I grew up in the suburbs, I know of what I speak.
Second, I like that you generalize all cities as crime ridden noisey terrordromes full of 'city assholes' paying overpriced rents then mention that YOUR rural area is different from my description and they must be the problems of the Midwest.
Third, being able to drive into the city to experience the arts and interact with different cultures only supports my arguement. They don't exist in your area so you have to leave your cozy little nest to get to them. In the City.
And yet General Motors was rewarded with a 30-year near-monopoly of the US transportation markets...
I would hardly paint GM with the monopolistic tar brush. At that point in time GM was being actively competed against by Ford, American Motors, International Harvester, etc. As for GM buying up a lot of rail right of ways, well the Rail Barons didn't get that name because they were shy and introspective types, and they had a long history of bending Congress' their way, so if they rolled over for GM it was for more reasons than because GM wanted to sell more cars.
Your also neglecting to mention that the military had some power over the freeway system. As I recall the freeway system was designed to allow easy troop movement across the US in the event of a third world war.
Uh huh... Spoken like a true urbanite. Ok, Mr. Metrosexual, here is my response:
Well, by the same methodology that you used there, I can discern that you're a repressed homosexual. Was I close? Well, it's okay because you were dead wrong about me. I grew up in a suburban community surrounded by more green that I can shake a stick at, it still doesn't change anything.
Tell me, how many gallery showings are in your community? How many playwrites wrote down their masterpieces in the hopes that someday they could get it produced in the school gymnasium as their ultimate goal? How many of your neighbors look nothing like you or come from a different country?
As for culture, we have coffee shops and bars too, only ours are nicer, our bookstores are bigger, and parking is easier.
Starbucks and Barnes & Noble are not culture, they are the antithesis thereof. Don't even get me started on Applebees.
Add to that the fact that in my nice, quiet, working-class suburb, I've never heard of anyone being robbed, murdered, raped, mugged, invited to buy drugs, or otherwise annoyed. In the nearest city, the people living downtown have quite a different experience.
Wal-Mart has a quiet, unpublished limit on the amount of lithium batteries, cough syrup and other items that a person can purchase to limit the rural kids (that is where most Wal-Marts are, after all) cooking the stuff down into drugs. Crystel Meth happens to be a rising drug in the rural communities in America. I wouldn't walk of the trails in a lot of forests, not because of animals but because you could run into some pot farmers boobytraps. Does teen alchol abuse count as a drug to you? Better believe it's there.
As for the 'otherwise annoyed' part, well it's hard to be annoyed when you and your neighbors have filtered out all the 'undesirables', isn't it?
Anyway, the point I was making (I'll repeat it one more time, then accept that you're just going to ignore it) was that cars helped spread the population out.
You're posting on/. because you expect to get someone to admit you made them change their minds?... You're new here, right?
Look at how much you spend on your car, in the form of buying the damn thing, insuring it, gassing it up, and paying all the taxes for the gigantic infrastructure that supports it. Not to mention fighting lots of nasty wars to protect those oil sources we need so badly. Even if the French taxpayer is getting ripped off, he not that much worse off than you are. The only difference his his taxes are mostly being spent in France. A good chunk of your car costs are going into the pockets of the Saudi elite.
One, it's my choice, even if it's not really a choice because there are few alternatives, it's still my choice.
Two, so what if some of the money that I spend on gas goes to the Saudi's? Some of it goes to some East European countries too, some even goes to South America. Then there are the countless domestic industries employing millions that exist to service my choice, from insurance agents to the guy at Jiffy Lube. If I want my car to be lime green with plaid spinner rims, cherry bomb exhausts and day-glo running lights, then that's exactly what I can get. I can buy a $500 POS and lovingly refinish it as a hobby or I can buy a $50,000 sports car penile substitute. I work for a living so that I can buy things with my money, not so the government can tell me that they have better uses for it.
Three, if I want to take a midnight trip out to BFE then I can jump into my car and drive. How does a train compare to that? How many transfer's and how far do I have to walk to get to Krispy Kreme? Will some homeless guy be sleep masturbating in the carriage? Do I need that hassle?
Four, we've fought wars for guano, why don't I hear how evil it is to eat organic foods because of the bloodshed over natural fertilizers? Why don't the picketers outside Starbucks slap the British opium wars in my face when I buy a cup of chai? Every nation on this earth has fought a war over some scarce resource, deal with it.
A century ago, the U.S. was spread out because it was a mostly agricultural country, populated by individualist farmers that didn't like to be dependent on central transporation systems. Now we're an industrial country, but we still think like those 19th century farmers. So we invest in highways and cars instead of in rail systems. That supports huge suburban complexes that couldn't be served by mass transit even if that was a priority. So we build more spawl, which means more cars and highways, which means more sprawl, and so on.
Dude, first: the US population is still spread out, despite a population of 290 Million much of the US is friggin empty compared to the population densities of most European countries. Second: the US has been an industrial nation for at least a century. We had trains and they simply could not compete with the plane and the car. Planes are much faster and more flexible for travel across the country but the automobile, however, is the ultimate train killer. Nothing else beats it's flexibility, convenience, price, autonomy and privacy.
I'm told that millions of French people now commute to city jobs, living in remote locations that were almost unpopulated before the TGV came.
Congratulations, you've just described the suburb, something that's been popular in the US for 50 years and didn't require $3 in taxes added to gasoline to fund.
I think last month's Atlantic had a Frenchman reprise DeToncville. One of his observations, on seeing the desolation that is Detroit, is that US citizens do not really like cities, like the Europeans do.
On the contrary, Europeans simply have no other choices. There's just not enough open land in Europe for the large suburban communities that have sprouted in the US. The population of France is 60 Million, while the US is around 290 Million, consider that France isn't even as big as Texas though and you start to get the idea of just how dense the populations are in Europe and why they have no other options.
As opposed to the soulles, insular conformity of the suburbs, eh? Cities are alive and vibrant and utterly human. Humans strive to build great cities and they become the centers of our economic and artistic endeavors. It's no coincidence that no one ever hears about the gated communities of Babylon or the Whispering Date Palm subdivision of Thebes.
If you don't like the series then you don't like it, I doubt I'll change your mind but regardless I enjoy the series quite a bit. As for your quote, if I remember correctly that quote was about the state of interstellar warfare prior to Basilisk Station. Basilisk was the first novel and many of the tactics talked about in it have changed as weapon systems have advanced such as the introduction of missle pod carriers and the LAC carriers which are roughly analagous to the introduction of aircraft carriers.
As for "Crossing the T", the Honorverse is in many ways Horatio Hornblower in the future which is where such tactics came about.
However:
When you mention naval battles today, yes, no one bothers with the crossing the T maneuver because missles can easily hit a target over the horizon within seconds of launch. Also take into account that current terrestrial long range guided missles use maneuvering fins to make course corrections, a space launched missle would require reaction jets and fuel, adding to their mass and slowing their acceleration curve. These are important things to consider when you're aiming for a moving target a couple of light minutes away from you.
Consider the dynamics of ships in the Honorvers: 1) The gravity bands above and below the ship can not be penetrated in either direction. 2) The best way to guarantee a hit on an enemy ship is to overload it's defences with a massive barrage. The sides of the ship have more area to mount more missle tubes and have weaker shields that can be lowered for launches. 3) Missles in space need fuel to maneuver since there's no atmosphere for fins to work against. Most missles in the Honorverse use large capacitors to power gravity drives, newer Manticoran missles use fission reactors for extra range. Either way there is a trade-off between range and missle size, longer range=fewer missles on a ship (although the fission drive missles are less bulky for their range). Now, I can eject my missles to the side of my ship forcing them to use their limited energy to turn and then begin to accelerate relative to their targets OR I can turn my ship and fire them from powered launch tubes which give them a significant amount of velocity before they even begin to use their own internal drives thus saving some power for last minute course corrections.... Gee, tough decision. Not. 4) A great deal of the battles in the Honorverse are spent maneuvering their ships into tactically superior trajectories which allow them to fire their missles into their targets on intercepting vectors. I'm not sure what vision you have of space battles but again missles only have so much fuel and can not chase an enemy ship down from across the solar system. In a space battle with the propulsion systems available in the Honorverse it is best to fire on a least time to target trajectory so they have more fuel for last minute course corrections as they near their targets. 5) Firing your missles on a least time intercept course from directly in 'front' of your target also limits the amount of course changes they can make to avoid your missles. So yes, you still want to "Cross their T".
Again, the books never claim that rolling the ship was a guaranteed method of blocking a missle. The missles do come in on a number of 'planes' but they must also fight their way through numerous electronic and active counter-measures as well. I also pointed out that ships are frequently swamped by more missles than they can defend against.
Weber never claims that by simply rolling the ships that they are always impervious to damage, such a stance would indeed be absurd as no vessel would ever take any damage so why have a battle anyway? No, rolling the ship is just one tactic that sometimes works, sometimes doesn't but is no less valid to use in the universe as he's layed it out.
In the Honorverse the ships are propelled by gravity bands on the top and bottom of the ships, this configuration is locked in by the nature of the propulsion system. These bands are of such magnitude that they are impeneterable, HOWEVER, the sides are defended by armor and lighter bands of gravity waves. In the newer novels they have developed shields for the front and rear but their use prevents the ship from maneuvering.
This means that the best targets on a ship are the front, rear or sides. The front or rear, being smaller targets are not frequently sought and most fire is concentrated to the sides. Most missles do not have the fuel for sustained maneuvers and usually end up on balistic courses by the time they lock onto their targets, which is why sometimes a ship is able to roll and interpose their impenetrable gravity bands rather than the weeker sidewalls.
However, if an enemy can overwhelm the electronic counter measures and point defences to swamp a ship with missles then they can and are destroyed.
Try reading the books and understanding the tactics a little more before you criticize them next time.
He had 'forgotten' to pay for installation of the radio he had bought the day before.
He hadn't 'forgotten' anything. The sales clerk at Best Buy had told him that the installation was free because they had sold him the wrong stereo. He received a call later telling him to pay the fee or go to jail.
A stellar example of Best Buy's customer service in action.
Yes, but given that most things have to accept coins *and* bills, wouldn't it make more sense to replace low-denomination bills with coins? Visit somewhere in Europe and see how it makes sense.
Look, it works for us so leave it alone. You might as well ask why people still use money instead of debit cards pulling directly from their banks.
Also, many vending machines were altered to accept the Sacagawea dollar coins but the coins were never accepted by the public any more than we accepted the Susan B. Anthony dollar coins.
its possible that these students did not think or know that accessing this "hidden" url was against the rules. (or maybe they did but its not explicitly clear).
You're in law school, right? Cause who else would argue that a student reading an unaffiliated forum and coming across an unidentified person describing a technique to view documents that they did not otherwise have access to could possibly have thought, "Gee, nothing shady going on here, I mean it's completely logical that ApplyYourself would post this information here rather than place a handy button on their website, right?"
So... Hacking a bank machine and checking to see if you're admitted to a school are the same thing huh?
Morally, yes, yes they are.
I seriously doubt they can confirm that every person who followed the instructions was infact the same as the application they checked.
The exploit that was posted was in the form that required you to log in under a valid account to use and which could only access the letters for that account. The server logs should have all the information needed.
IANAL, however, this seems like something that Harvard should get sued over. You read something on a bulletin board, telling you a URL and telling you to type in your user name and password, and see whether you were accepted, and because of that, you get rejected? No Fucking Way!
You read in a public bulletin board detailed instructions for robbing a bank by typing in an unpublished keycode into an ATM machine and you get arrested??? No F'n WAY!!!!
I for one applaud Harvard's decision to stand up and demand a certain moral fiber from the applicant's to it's instituions. Better that these people learn what is acceptable behavior now (although they should already have some concept that what they did was wrong) then when the SEC is investigating them for plundering the savings of untold thousands in a few years.
As you mentioned these students probably have admissions at other schools. I can only hope that Harvard publicly publish their names so that they can be blacklisted throughout the nation.
Ogg support is very nice, but I hope this device can play other formats as well. One of the things that is making media-playing consumer devices so popular today is the support for all different formats of media. DVD players that can play every type of file format out there, and car cd players that can play mp3. The key to success is multi format support.
Funny, the iPod is the most successful media player currently on the market and it only plays Apple's AAC format plus it's tied to Apple's iTunes software. Don't see too many consumers biatching about it either.
90% of consumers couldn't tell you the difference between a wav and an mp3, little lone make a purchasing choice based on FLAC compatibility.
As for Multi-media DVD players, the US consumer market could give a crap about VCD or SVCD compatability, it's the fact that DVD Players are built in Asia where VCD/SVCD was already huge that the support was built into them. It's the Asian market's desire for DivX that is driving it's inclusion as well. As for your fantasy that they can "play every type of file format out there", tell me, does your DVD player support Quicktime? What about Real Media? No? How about XVid encoded AVI's with OGG audio? Didn't think so.
A good book can not always be shot page by page for a movie. Personally, I was willing to give up a few chapters of hobbits walking along a trail and singing about pipeweed if it meant a sensational battle at Helm's Deep or a kick ass Gollum.
Peter Jackson may not have put together a 100% accurate tribute to LOTR but he treated it a lot gentler than any other Hollywood director would have. For God's sake man, what could a hack like Joel Schumacher have done to it!!! Imagine some Hollywood deal maker trying to get Chris Rock a bit part as a wisecracking Orc or something "So it will resonate better with the urban youth". Sweet jumping baby Christ, some people don't know when they got it good.
If I'm not mistaken Sci-Fi stopped ordering 'space' shows for a period because their financial outlook within Vivendi was grim and they were trying to make the company look better financially while in negotiations to sell it off.
"no more space shows" order - on a SCIENCE FICTION network, no less
Not all science fiction has to be about spaceships and aliens. Science fiction is best when it slices into what makes humanity tick not when it's about techno-babble and blue chicks. Blade Runner, Soylent Green, The Fly, 28 Days Later, 12 Monkeys... great science fiction movies with nary a space ship in sight.
Am I the only one who finds the fact that nostalgia is driving the current Science Fiction series aired to be supremely ironic?
Considering that many of the sci-fi staples are either already here or have been discredited and that older series have a built in audience versus the financial risk of developing a new series that might not find an audience it doesn't surprise me in the least that many 'new' series are retreads of old shows.
Also, unlike the audiences of the past who had an optimistic, childlike view of the future, most people today are extremely cynical of technology and it's impacts on our future.
Sci-Fi has a Farscape mini series scheduled for next year too that's supposed to take up from where the series ended.
As for why Sci-Fi schedules the shows that it does, it all comes down to money. Science Fiction shows are expensive and easy to screw up in the eyes of the hardcore audiences that follow them like they're Jim Jones with a fresh batch of kool-aid.
The fact that Sci-Fi has any original programming is pretty cool, but it's far cheaper for them to run 'freak-of-the-week on their way to dvd' movies and 'reality' (*cough* Edwards *cough*) shows than to produce a good science fiction series.
Also, considering that broadcast television has f****d up with Enterprise and couldn't figure out Firefly, a network that goes out on a limb to update a series like Battlestar Galactica, creates 3 Dune mini-series, buys up Stargate and spins off another series, is developing an Earthsea mini and is finally giving Farscape a mini isn't all that bad in my book. At least they're trying dude, which is more than NBC, CBS, FOX or the others can say.
The biggest thing lacking about NWN has been the engine is old
For some people a game is more than the number of polygons it pushes. I'm still playing Icewind Dale, Diablo and Dungeon Keeper 2 just as much as newer games. If the story or gameplay is there then the graphics are secondary.
God I live people who like to play time-machine generals because nothing is clearer than hindsight.
Hell, if you want to play that game lets really play. How about if Europe hadn't punished Germany with crushing reparations after WWI we could have prevented Hitler's rise and the slaughter of a few million Jews in death camps and the soldiers who had to die in the effort to stop him.
How about if the US hadn't had to use it's trade with Japan as a foil against the colonialization of China by the Europeans then perhaps Japan wouldn't have felt the need to put themselves on a steroid enhanced industrialization of their nation that ultimately led to their invasion of China.
Or how about you and all the other apologists accept the fact that war is ugly and no one is innocent, the bombs were dropped, Japan surrendered unconditionally and the US won only to be later invaded by Sony, Mitsubishi and Nintendo.
I'm not sure if you noticed, what with your head up your ass and all, but nobody else except maybe the Swiss fight by the 'rules' either.
For 50 years Russia was our dance partner in assuring the worlds swift and radioactive death and Stalin's willingness to send millions of his own people to 're-education' (death) camps wasn't the kind of thing that lets national security advisors sleep easy at night.
Hell, I'm still expecting a permanent sunburn just because some whack job in North Korea might decide to play Russian Roulette or perhaps the Pakistanis and Hindus might finally decide the world would be better off without one of the others. Then there's terrorism, the non-government funded really whackjob kind because nothing makes you want to play by gentleman's rules like someone who thinks God told them to kill you.
Suppose instead of two thin membranes with air in the middle this 'bubble' were actually several layers of membranes inflated with a gel capable of sealing any minor impacts. Multiple layers would help to slow the velocity of any object that can penetrate the initial membranes while the gel could congeal around the hole creating a seal. We know the military is working on 'fluid' armor that goes rigid on impact as well.
Such a scenario might actually be safer than the 'tin can' approach as the 'bubble' could heal itself.
I would also be curious if a lead powder suspension could be used in such a gel that could possibly serve as radiation shielding.
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Okay, I did mention that I grew up in the suburbs, I know of what I speak.
Second, I like that you generalize all cities as crime ridden noisey terrordromes full of 'city assholes' paying overpriced rents then mention that YOUR rural area is different from my description and they must be the problems of the Midwest.
Third, being able to drive into the city to experience the arts and interact with different cultures only supports my arguement. They don't exist in your area so you have to leave your cozy little nest to get to them. In the City.
Your also neglecting to mention that the military had some power over the freeway system. As I recall the freeway system was designed to allow easy troop movement across the US in the event of a third world war.
Tell me, how many gallery showings are in your community? How many playwrites wrote down their masterpieces in the hopes that someday they could get it produced in the school gymnasium as their ultimate goal? How many of your neighbors look nothing like you or come from a different country?
Starbucks and Barnes & Noble are not culture, they are the antithesis thereof. Don't even get me started on Applebees. Wal-Mart has a quiet, unpublished limit on the amount of lithium batteries, cough syrup and other items that a person can purchase to limit the rural kids (that is where most Wal-Marts are, after all) cooking the stuff down into drugs. Crystel Meth happens to be a rising drug in the rural communities in America. I wouldn't walk of the trails in a lot of forests, not because of animals but because you could run into some pot farmers boobytraps. Does teen alchol abuse count as a drug to you? Better believe it's there.As for the 'otherwise annoyed' part, well it's hard to be annoyed when you and your neighbors have filtered out all the 'undesirables', isn't it?
Two, so what if some of the money that I spend on gas goes to the Saudi's? Some of it goes to some East European countries too, some even goes to South America. Then there are the countless domestic industries employing millions that exist to service my choice, from insurance agents to the guy at Jiffy Lube. If I want my car to be lime green with plaid spinner rims, cherry bomb exhausts and day-glo running lights, then that's exactly what I can get. I can buy a $500 POS and lovingly refinish it as a hobby or I can buy a $50,000 sports car penile substitute. I work for a living so that I can buy things with my money, not so the government can tell me that they have better uses for it.
Three, if I want to take a midnight trip out to BFE then I can jump into my car and drive. How does a train compare to that? How many transfer's and how far do I have to walk to get to Krispy Kreme? Will some homeless guy be sleep masturbating in the carriage? Do I need that hassle?
Four, we've fought wars for guano, why don't I hear how evil it is to eat organic foods because of the bloodshed over natural fertilizers? Why don't the picketers outside Starbucks slap the British opium wars in my face when I buy a cup of chai? Every nation on this earth has fought a war over some scarce resource, deal with it.
On the contrary, Europeans simply have no other choices. There's just not enough open land in Europe for the large suburban communities that have sprouted in the US. The population of France is 60 Million, while the US is around 290 Million, consider that France isn't even as big as Texas though and you start to get the idea of just how dense the populations are in Europe and why they have no other options.
As opposed to the soulles, insular conformity of the suburbs, eh? Cities are alive and vibrant and utterly human. Humans strive to build great cities and they become the centers of our economic and artistic endeavors. It's no coincidence that no one ever hears about the gated communities of Babylon or the Whispering Date Palm subdivision of Thebes.
If you don't like the series then you don't like it, I doubt I'll change your mind but regardless I enjoy the series quite a bit. As for your quote, if I remember correctly that quote was about the state of interstellar warfare prior to Basilisk Station. Basilisk was the first novel and many of the tactics talked about in it have changed as weapon systems have advanced such as the introduction of missle pod carriers and the LAC carriers which are roughly analagous to the introduction of aircraft carriers.
As for "Crossing the T", the Honorverse is in many ways Horatio Hornblower in the future which is where such tactics came about.
However:
When you mention naval battles today, yes, no one bothers with the crossing the T maneuver because missles can easily hit a target over the horizon within seconds of launch. Also take into account that current terrestrial long range guided missles use maneuvering fins to make course corrections, a space launched missle would require reaction jets and fuel, adding to their mass and slowing their acceleration curve. These are important things to consider when you're aiming for a moving target a couple of light minutes away from you.
Consider the dynamics of ships in the Honorvers:
1) The gravity bands above and below the ship can not be penetrated in either direction.
2) The best way to guarantee a hit on an enemy ship is to overload it's defences with a massive barrage. The sides of the ship have more area to mount more missle tubes and have weaker shields that can be lowered for launches.
3) Missles in space need fuel to maneuver since there's no atmosphere for fins to work against. Most missles in the Honorverse use large capacitors to power gravity drives, newer Manticoran missles use fission reactors for extra range. Either way there is a trade-off between range and missle size, longer range=fewer missles on a ship (although the fission drive missles are less bulky for their range). Now, I can eject my missles to the side of my ship forcing them to use their limited energy to turn and then begin to accelerate relative to their targets OR I can turn my ship and fire them from powered launch tubes which give them a significant amount of velocity before they even begin to use their own internal drives thus saving some power for last minute course corrections.... Gee, tough decision. Not.
4) A great deal of the battles in the Honorverse are spent maneuvering their ships into tactically superior trajectories which allow them to fire their missles into their targets on intercepting vectors. I'm not sure what vision you have of space battles but again missles only have so much fuel and can not chase an enemy ship down from across the solar system. In a space battle with the propulsion systems available in the Honorverse it is best to fire on a least time to target trajectory so they have more fuel for last minute course corrections as they near their targets.
5) Firing your missles on a least time intercept course from directly in 'front' of your target also limits the amount of course changes they can make to avoid your missles. So yes, you still want to "Cross their T".
Again, the books never claim that rolling the ship was a guaranteed method of blocking a missle. The missles do come in on a number of 'planes' but they must also fight their way through numerous electronic and active counter-measures as well. I also pointed out that ships are frequently swamped by more missles than they can defend against.
Weber never claims that by simply rolling the ships that they are always impervious to damage, such a stance would indeed be absurd as no vessel would ever take any damage so why have a battle anyway? No, rolling the ship is just one tactic that sometimes works, sometimes doesn't but is no less valid to use in the universe as he's layed it out.
In the Honorverse the ships are propelled by gravity bands on the top and bottom of the ships, this configuration is locked in by the nature of the propulsion system. These bands are of such magnitude that they are impeneterable, HOWEVER, the sides are defended by armor and lighter bands of gravity waves. In the newer novels they have developed shields for the front and rear but their use prevents the ship from maneuvering.
This means that the best targets on a ship are the front, rear or sides. The front or rear, being smaller targets are not frequently sought and most fire is concentrated to the sides. Most missles do not have the fuel for sustained maneuvers and usually end up on balistic courses by the time they lock onto their targets, which is why sometimes a ship is able to roll and interpose their impenetrable gravity bands rather than the weeker sidewalls.
However, if an enemy can overwhelm the electronic counter measures and point defences to swamp a ship with missles then they can and are destroyed.
Try reading the books and understanding the tactics a little more before you criticize them next time.
They'd rather just piss off the most powerfull nation in the world.
He hadn't 'forgotten' anything. The sales clerk at Best Buy had told him that the installation was free because they had sold him the wrong stereo. He received a call later telling him to pay the fee or go to jail.
A stellar example of Best Buy's customer service in action.
Look, it works for us so leave it alone. You might as well ask why people still use money instead of debit cards pulling directly from their banks.
Also, many vending machines were altered to accept the Sacagawea dollar coins but the coins were never accepted by the public any more than we accepted the Susan B. Anthony dollar coins.
I for one applaud Harvard's decision to stand up and demand a certain moral fiber from the applicant's to it's instituions. Better that these people learn what is acceptable behavior now (although they should already have some concept that what they did was wrong) then when the SEC is investigating them for plundering the savings of untold thousands in a few years.
As you mentioned these students probably have admissions at other schools. I can only hope that Harvard publicly publish their names so that they can be blacklisted throughout the nation.
90% of consumers couldn't tell you the difference between a wav and an mp3, little lone make a purchasing choice based on FLAC compatibility.
As for Multi-media DVD players, the US consumer market could give a crap about VCD or SVCD compatability, it's the fact that DVD Players are built in Asia where VCD/SVCD was already huge that the support was built into them. It's the Asian market's desire for DivX that is driving it's inclusion as well. As for your fantasy that they can "play every type of file format out there", tell me, does your DVD player support Quicktime? What about Real Media? No? How about XVid encoded AVI's with OGG audio? Didn't think so.
Peter Jackson may not have put together a 100% accurate tribute to LOTR but he treated it a lot gentler than any other Hollywood director would have. For God's sake man, what could a hack like Joel Schumacher have done to it!!! Imagine some Hollywood deal maker trying to get Chris Rock a bit part as a wisecracking Orc or something "So it will resonate better with the urban youth". Sweet jumping baby Christ, some people don't know when they got it good.
If I'm not mistaken Sci-Fi stopped ordering 'space' shows for a period because their financial outlook within Vivendi was grim and they were trying to make the company look better financially while in negotiations to sell it off.
Not all science fiction has to be about spaceships and aliens. Science fiction is best when it slices into what makes humanity tick not when it's about techno-babble and blue chicks. Blade Runner, Soylent Green, The Fly, 28 Days Later, 12 Monkeys... great science fiction movies with nary a space ship in sight.
Considering that many of the sci-fi staples are either already here or have been discredited and that older series have a built in audience versus the financial risk of developing a new series that might not find an audience it doesn't surprise me in the least that many 'new' series are retreads of old shows.
Also, unlike the audiences of the past who had an optimistic, childlike view of the future, most people today are extremely cynical of technology and it's impacts on our future.
Sci-Fi has a Farscape mini series scheduled for next year too that's supposed to take up from where the series ended.
As for why Sci-Fi schedules the shows that it does, it all comes down to money. Science Fiction shows are expensive and easy to screw up in the eyes of the hardcore audiences that follow them like they're Jim Jones with a fresh batch of kool-aid.
The fact that Sci-Fi has any original programming is pretty cool, but it's far cheaper for them to run 'freak-of-the-week on their way to dvd' movies and 'reality' (*cough* Edwards *cough*) shows than to produce a good science fiction series.
Also, considering that broadcast television has f****d up with Enterprise and couldn't figure out Firefly, a network that goes out on a limb to update a series like Battlestar Galactica, creates 3 Dune mini-series, buys up Stargate and spins off another series, is developing an Earthsea mini and is finally giving Farscape a mini isn't all that bad in my book. At least they're trying dude, which is more than NBC, CBS, FOX or the others can say.
For some people a game is more than the number of polygons it pushes. I'm still playing Icewind Dale, Diablo and Dungeon Keeper 2 just as much as newer games. If the story or gameplay is there then the graphics are secondary.
God I live people who like to play time-machine generals because nothing is clearer than hindsight.
Hell, if you want to play that game lets really play. How about if Europe hadn't punished Germany with crushing reparations after WWI we could have prevented Hitler's rise and the slaughter of a few million Jews in death camps and the soldiers who had to die in the effort to stop him.
How about if the US hadn't had to use it's trade with Japan as a foil against the colonialization of China by the Europeans then perhaps Japan wouldn't have felt the need to put themselves on a steroid enhanced industrialization of their nation that ultimately led to their invasion of China.
Or how about you and all the other apologists accept the fact that war is ugly and no one is innocent, the bombs were dropped, Japan surrendered unconditionally and the US won only to be later invaded by Sony, Mitsubishi and Nintendo.
For 50 years Russia was our dance partner in assuring the worlds swift and radioactive death and Stalin's willingness to send millions of his own people to 're-education' (death) camps wasn't the kind of thing that lets national security advisors sleep easy at night.
Hell, I'm still expecting a permanent sunburn just because some whack job in North Korea might decide to play Russian Roulette or perhaps the Pakistanis and Hindus might finally decide the world would be better off without one of the others. Then there's terrorism, the non-government funded really whackjob kind because nothing makes you want to play by gentleman's rules like someone who thinks God told them to kill you.
Suppose instead of two thin membranes with air in the middle this 'bubble' were actually several layers of membranes inflated with a gel capable of sealing any minor impacts. Multiple layers would help to slow the velocity of any object that can penetrate the initial membranes while the gel could congeal around the hole creating a seal. We know the military is working on 'fluid' armor that goes rigid on impact as well.
Such a scenario might actually be safer than the 'tin can' approach as the 'bubble' could heal itself.
I would also be curious if a lead powder suspension could be used in such a gel that could possibly serve as radiation shielding.