I have to agree. It has that home movie feel popularized by the Blair Witch Project. Take the dialog. It "tries" to sound too much like real life. If I want real life dialog, I go to the nearest Starbucks to eavesdrop on the chitchat. Unless viewers start preferring "Blair Witch" type movies over a fairly well-scripted big budget movie like Pandora, no, this won't spell the end of Network TV as we know it. A better bet would be something like the Hunt for Gollum, which reaches or nearly reaches Sundance Film Festival quality. Maybe it helps that it's based off a critically successful literary franchise. But hey, if finding an inspiration is the problem, there are lots of "proto" sci-fi from the late 19th and early 20th century that only need to be updated with modern techno-babble (e.g. Jekyll & Hyde, Frankenstein, Jules Verne's adventure stories).
If you don't like Matroska, you can download the lower resolution AVI file (XVid codec) linked at the site. But I'm curious, what computer system of recent vintage can't play a Matroska file? I can play the 720p version (x264 codec) without any problems on my five-year-old AMD Sempron 3000 (1.8 GHz single core) system. This is using stock MPlayer under 64-bit Ubuntu with a mere 750 MB of DDR1 (!) RAM. For other systems, VLC can play most non-subbed and plain text-subbed video files you can download off the 'Net. (Some anime fans hate VLC for its "alleged" inability to play fancy "soft subs".)
I have a friend whose 14-year-old son spends all his time gaming, like any normal teenager. However, my friend would like to find a more productive interest for him and asked me how to get him into coding.
...besides gaming and coding, that is. I mean, if finding a "more productive interest" is more important to your friend as a parent, then there are other computer-related activities that involve more brainpower than simply fragging or planting imaginary fauna or flora. Why not get him into something closely related to his passion? How about game asset creation? Get him into 3D design, say, with a free program like Blender.
I really wish that dpkg had the -V flag like rpm does, I've used that more times than you probably could imagine. rpm always seems faster at finding a package name given a file path and at listing out the files in a package.
Agreed. I think Modu should have taken the next leap and designed modular computers. Imagine a computer smaller than half the size of a cellphone or a handheld PC of the late nineties (Psion, anyone?). You can then create "jackets" that will turn the module into the core of a variety of gadgets such as:
(a) a cellphone (b) a tablet (c) a netbook (d) a PDA (do they still make these?) (e) the onboard computer of a car (doubling as the ignition key) (f) a toaster (g) a Chumby
I can even imagine Intel or AMD selling not bare-bones processors but computing cores for entry-level desktop systems. Instead of slotting it into a motherboard (a beastly operation for any non-geek), just slot it into the docking station so you can use a full-size keyboard, monitor, etc.
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I have to agree. It has that home movie feel popularized by the Blair Witch Project. Take the dialog. It "tries" to sound too much like real life. If I want real life dialog, I go to the nearest Starbucks to eavesdrop on the chitchat. Unless viewers start preferring "Blair Witch" type movies over a fairly well-scripted big budget movie like Pandora, no, this won't spell the end of Network TV as we know it. A better bet would be something like the Hunt for Gollum, which reaches or nearly reaches Sundance Film Festival quality. Maybe it helps that it's based off a critically successful literary franchise. But hey, if finding an inspiration is the problem, there are lots of "proto" sci-fi from the late 19th and early 20th century that only need to be updated with modern techno-babble (e.g. Jekyll & Hyde, Frankenstein, Jules Verne's adventure stories).
If you don't like Matroska, you can download the lower resolution AVI file (XVid codec) linked at the site. But I'm curious, what computer system of recent vintage can't play a Matroska file? I can play the 720p version (x264 codec) without any problems on my five-year-old AMD Sempron 3000 (1.8 GHz single core) system. This is using stock MPlayer under 64-bit Ubuntu with a mere 750 MB of DDR1 (!) RAM. For other systems, VLC can play most non-subbed and plain text-subbed video files you can download off the 'Net. (Some anime fans hate VLC for its "alleged" inability to play fancy "soft subs".)
I have a friend whose 14-year-old son spends all his time gaming, like any normal teenager. However, my friend would like to find a more productive interest for him and asked me how to get him into coding.
...besides gaming and coding, that is. I mean, if finding a "more productive interest" is more important to your friend as a parent, then there are other computer-related activities that involve more brainpower than simply fragging or planting imaginary fauna or flora. Why not get him into something closely related to his passion? How about game asset creation? Get him into 3D design, say, with a free program like Blender.
I really wish that dpkg had the -V flag like rpm does, I've used that more times than you probably could imagine. rpm always seems faster at finding a package name given a file path and at listing out the files in a package.
You mean something like this:
Agreed. I think Modu should have taken the next leap and designed modular computers. Imagine a computer smaller than half the size of a cellphone or a handheld PC of the late nineties (Psion, anyone?). You can then create "jackets" that will turn the module into the core of a variety of gadgets such as:
(a) a cellphone
(b) a tablet
(c) a netbook
(d) a PDA (do they still make these?)
(e) the onboard computer of a car (doubling as the ignition key)
(f) a toaster
(g) a Chumby
I can even imagine Intel or AMD selling not bare-bones processors but computing cores for entry-level desktop systems. Instead of slotting it into a motherboard (a beastly operation for any non-geek), just slot it into the docking station so you can use a full-size keyboard, monitor, etc.