Meh, I think you can fault the directors for this. CGI allows a director to translate their vision more or less directly to the screen. And if that vision *isn't* a big, lumbering star destroyer, then you won't see it. Similarly, CGI-yoda looked ridiculous because the directory chose to have him look ridiculous.
The reality is that the directors, limited by technology, created a better product, probably by accident.
Actually, A.I. *could* have been at least an okay movie, had it not been for the absolutely dreadful "and he lived happily ever after" ending . If they'd just ended the movie with him dying in the ocean, I would've been much more impressed... but no, gotta cap it off with a happy ending!
Which means the solution is as simple as changing Mars' core.
Bingo! Fortunately, as we all know, that just requires a fantastical digging machine that can tunnel to the center of Mars, where it will detonate a number of nuclear devices, after which one or two of it's remaining (and, coincidentally, most attractive) occupants will barely make it back to the surface.
Mars doesn't have a magnetoshpere, which is the reason why some astronomers think its core has cooled and is solid
Heh, actually, the precise reverse is true.:) *Why* Mar's core cooled is unclear, but it's more or less accepted that the fact it did so resulted in the lack of a coherent magnetosphere.
There's also that pesky problem of a lack of a magnetosphere, meaning the solar wind would slowly strip the atmosphere away (this is one theory of the lack of a martian atmosphere).
Another potentially real problem would be that vista as an actual OS in a computer runs slow as hell.
You know, I have *no* idea where this comment is coming from. In my experience, Vista is no faster or slower than Windows XP. Granted, I'ved turned off Aero and SuperFetch (it's a laptop... grinding the hard disk isn't really great for battery life), but overall, everything is perfectly functional, and this is on a 2 Ghz Core2Duo with 2GB of RAM... not exactly a blow-your-hair-back, top-of-the-line machine.
Granted, given my choice, I'd prefer Linux... I'm far more familiar with the toolset, I like the flexibility of the command-line, etc, but for web browsing, checking email, and other run-of-the-mill activities, Windows does the job just fine. Yes, I know, blasphemy!
Meanwhile, on my new laptop, in Linux, the sound drivers cause a kernel panic, the wireless worked but only after I built a new set of drivers from source (and I was forced to install Ubuntu Gutsy... on Feisty, which uses an older 2.2.16 kernel, IIRC, I got oopses), I can't change the display brightness, and sleep/hibernate doesn't work at all (hangs on wakeup, though I suspect the nVidia drivers may be to blame for this). Granted, this laptop is a very new model, so I didn't expect things to work right away, and in time, I'm sure these issues will be sorted out. But, in the mean time, I use Vista, because at least it works.
A film (or CD, or book, or whatever), costs something to create, costs something to manufacture, costs something to promote, and costs something to ship. Due to technology, the highlighted items are, or can be, very close to zero (cents, or fractions of cents). The other costs still exist.
And, ignoring books for the moment, as they are a genuinely different animal, the cost of marketing and production for movies is recouped during the theatre run, and for CDs, during the concert tours (merchandising, merchandising!). Thus, there's no reason to continue to overprice these products, other than to increase profits, in which case you can expect some consumers will opt for piracy, given the odds of being caught are so low, while the cost savings is high.
Well, to be fair, content creators are also part of the public, and it's important to have their views represented. Of course, their views shouldn't be *disproportionately* represented...
Season Pass (or the equivalent) makes recording all new showings of your favorite programs hassle free. If you're using it as a VCR, and the show ends up swapping time slots without your knowledge (you're probably ffwing through commercials that would warn you...) you risk missing the show in it's new time slot. Or if it's pre-empted by another program, or delayed, etc.
Wha? Certainly with MythTV, you just say "record any time on any channel" and "only new showings", and you'll never miss an episode. I assume most other software DVRs have similar functionality. It's hardly unique to TiVo.
Point being, using a DVR "as a solid state VCR" means you get to leverage the scheduling intelligence in the DVR, something a real VCR could never do.
Scrape tvguide.com or some other web-based listing service. Myth existed before labs.zap2it was borne, and it will exist long after it dies (assuming some other solution isn't reached).
Or, god forbid, buy a cheap digital tuner box (in theory, the FCC is supposed to provide cheap, subsidized ones, to make ATSC available to the masses), and drive the thing with an IR blaster. That's how I record all my content (I have a pair of moto DCT2524's driven with blasters), and it works like a charm.
Of the console design and control system, of course. I already addressed the fact that games have been somewhat lackluster (though, relative to the PS3 lineup, the Wii is doing stellar). But the system has demonstrated it's potential, and people are happy with it. Meanwhile, I've yet to see a review that casts the Wii in a negative light. So either the hype continues unabated, and Nintendo is crushing all negative press, or your view of things is just a tad skewed.
There are a bunch of sentences after "no no no." Perhaps you should read them.
Maybe you should, as you apparently don't understand what he said. Here, I'll quote the text for you:
I think PlayStation 3 is following a particular trend of 1 and 2, and if you looked at the history of it, it's a very similar history. It takes a long time for producers, and more time because of the cost factor, to embrace the full bandwidth of PlayStation 3. It's only using 20% of it right now. And producers will always wait to see how it's going, and once they use the full bandwidth the games experience is stunning. And while people have not bought as many PlayStation 3s as it looks, it is no different from PS2 and PS1 in terms of percentage of sales, and it is an experience that is dazzling. People who play it, using only 20% of the bandwidth, are perfectly happy playing it and their games will get better.
To paraphrase: "The PS3 sales are following those of the PS1 and 2. Once developers learn to use our awesome hardware, the games will be awesome, and the PS3 will start selling like hotcakes"
The thing is, that's not an answer to the question "Is the Wii more fun", unless you equate "fun" with "neato graphics" (which, apparently, Sony does). That's just the same line they've been trotting out for quite a long time now about why the PS3 isn't selling. Does he address the issue of control systems? No. Does he address the issue of lackluster, same-same game lineup? No (aside from the comment about technology, but I consider that tangental). Hell, the best part is when he says:
Most of the games are not third-party games yet; they're mostly our own games and we've got Home coming out;
Translation: Even we, the guys who invented the damn thing, can't create a game for the PS3 that fully utilizes the hardware onboard. If that isn't a bad sign, I don't know what is.
Certainly Sony knows that the Wii is currently selling because of a combination of price and hype.
What you call hype, I call positive reviews (and evidence of your pre-existing bias against the system). It makes no sense, six months after the system's release, to refer to the current ferver over the Wii as hype. Hype, to me, implies a lack of evidence. But at this point, it's pretty clear the Wii is delivering on it's promise (though, admittedly, the current game selection is a bit limited... 'course, this was also true of the DS for a while following it's release, a situation that has since been remedied).
You'll also notice that Stringer did counterargue the idea that the Wii is selling better because it's more fun.
No he didn't. All he said was "no no no". That's not an argument, that's an opinion. And honestly, what can you expect? It would be a cold day in hell long before he would ever be allowed to admit that the Wii might actually be more fun than the PS3.
Yes, but which isotope of Si? Three occur in nature in various quanities. Did they use just a single isotope? If not, what are the various percentages?
Do you *honestly* believe they haven't thought of that already? Seriously??
And BTW, what is it with Slashdotters who think they're smarter than the average PhD? Do you really have that high an opinion of yourself?
It just makes me realize how smart Douglas Adam's was when asked, if he could make anything in the world happen (ie, cure all disease, poverty, etc), what would it be, and the answer was: give everyone the ability to tell when someone else is smarter than them.
Interesting, I see you were careful to leave out the most important part of that paragraph. This part:
The agents retained the information anyway in their files
*That* would be the illegal part. Yes, I agree, this is a bit of a tempest in a teapot, but it's clear the agents were in the wrong, here (even if they were ignorant of that fact).
Heck, without having the methodologies available it's not even clear those stats are comparable.
That statistic shows per-capita murder rates. You said, and I quote:
"Prove to me banning firearms wouldn't just create a pool of focibly disarmed victims."
The answer is in those statistics, and the answer is, in general, "it wouldn't" (yes, there are some outliers). In countries where gun ownership is significantly lower, there is no increase in per capita murder rates, or overall crime (see here), for that matter. Thus, the population doesn't become "disarmed victims", as you originally posited.
Now, to be clear, I'm not arguing that the answer to all violent crime is to ban guns. However, it is clear that doing so would not automatically lead to a disarmed, victimized citizenry, as you seem to insist.
Prove to me banning firearms wouldn't just create a pool of focibly disarmed victims.
Prove to me that it would. And as a counterpoint to the UK (which seems to be the favorite choice of gunnuts these days), I suggest taking a look at Japan.
Slashdot Mirror
Meh, I think you can fault the directors for this. CGI allows a director to translate their vision more or less directly to the screen. And if that vision *isn't* a big, lumbering star destroyer, then you won't see it. Similarly, CGI-yoda looked ridiculous because the directory chose to have him look ridiculous.
The reality is that the directors, limited by technology, created a better product, probably by accident.
Actually, A.I. *could* have been at least an okay movie, had it not been for the absolutely dreadful "and he lived happily ever after" ending . If they'd just ended the movie with him dying in the ocean, I would've been much more impressed... but no, gotta cap it off with a happy ending!
Which means the solution is as simple as changing Mars' core.
Bingo! Fortunately, as we all know, that just requires a fantastical digging machine that can tunnel to the center of Mars, where it will detonate a number of nuclear devices, after which one or two of it's remaining (and, coincidentally, most attractive) occupants will barely make it back to the surface.
Mars doesn't have a magnetoshpere, which is the reason why some astronomers think its core has cooled and is solid
:) *Why* Mar's core cooled is unclear, but it's more or less accepted that the fact it did so resulted in the lack of a coherent magnetosphere.
Heh, actually, the precise reverse is true.
There's also that pesky problem of a lack of a magnetosphere, meaning the solar wind would slowly strip the atmosphere away (this is one theory of the lack of a martian atmosphere).
Err... make that 2.*6*.16 kernel... talk about dating myself. :)
Another potentially real problem would be that vista as an actual OS in a computer runs slow as hell.
You know, I have *no* idea where this comment is coming from. In my experience, Vista is no faster or slower than Windows XP. Granted, I'ved turned off Aero and SuperFetch (it's a laptop... grinding the hard disk isn't really great for battery life), but overall, everything is perfectly functional, and this is on a 2 Ghz Core2Duo with 2GB of RAM... not exactly a blow-your-hair-back, top-of-the-line machine.
Granted, given my choice, I'd prefer Linux... I'm far more familiar with the toolset, I like the flexibility of the command-line, etc, but for web browsing, checking email, and other run-of-the-mill activities, Windows does the job just fine. Yes, I know, blasphemy!
Meanwhile, on my new laptop, in Linux, the sound drivers cause a kernel panic, the wireless worked but only after I built a new set of drivers from source (and I was forced to install Ubuntu Gutsy... on Feisty, which uses an older 2.2.16 kernel, IIRC, I got oopses), I can't change the display brightness, and sleep/hibernate doesn't work at all (hangs on wakeup, though I suspect the nVidia drivers may be to blame for this). Granted, this laptop is a very new model, so I didn't expect things to work right away, and in time, I'm sure these issues will be sorted out. But, in the mean time, I use Vista, because at least it works.
A film (or CD, or book, or whatever), costs something to create, costs something to manufacture, costs something to promote, and costs something to ship. Due to technology, the highlighted items are, or can be, very close to zero (cents, or fractions of cents). The other costs still exist.
And, ignoring books for the moment, as they are a genuinely different animal, the cost of marketing and production for movies is recouped during the theatre run, and for CDs, during the concert tours (merchandising, merchandising!). Thus, there's no reason to continue to overprice these products, other than to increase profits, in which case you can expect some consumers will opt for piracy, given the odds of being caught are so low, while the cost savings is high.
How much money does the government get in taxes from business that make smoke detector
Huh? The home smoke detector was invented and patented by Kenneth House and Randolf Smith. Hell, even NASA admits they didn't invent it.
Surprise surprise, yet another technology erroneously attributed to NASA...
Well, to be fair, content creators are also part of the public, and it's important to have their views represented. Of course, their views shouldn't be *disproportionately* represented...
Surfing on a PVR? Doesn't that, like, completely defeat the point?
Season Pass (or the equivalent) makes recording all new showings of your favorite programs hassle free. If you're using it as a VCR, and the show ends up swapping time slots without your knowledge (you're probably ffwing through commercials that would warn you...) you risk missing the show in it's new time slot. Or if it's pre-empted by another program, or delayed, etc.
Wha? Certainly with MythTV, you just say "record any time on any channel" and "only new showings", and you'll never miss an episode. I assume most other software DVRs have similar functionality. It's hardly unique to TiVo.
Point being, using a DVR "as a solid state VCR" means you get to leverage the scheduling intelligence in the DVR, something a real VCR could never do.
Scrape tvguide.com or some other web-based listing service. Myth existed before labs.zap2it was borne, and it will exist long after it dies (assuming some other solution isn't reached).
Or, god forbid, buy a cheap digital tuner box (in theory, the FCC is supposed to provide cheap, subsidized ones, to make ATSC available to the masses), and drive the thing with an IR blaster. That's how I record all my content (I have a pair of moto DCT2524's driven with blasters), and it works like a charm.
Positive reviews of what?
Of the console design and control system, of course. I already addressed the fact that games have been somewhat lackluster (though, relative to the PS3 lineup, the Wii is doing stellar). But the system has demonstrated it's potential, and people are happy with it. Meanwhile, I've yet to see a review that casts the Wii in a negative light. So either the hype continues unabated, and Nintendo is crushing all negative press, or your view of things is just a tad skewed.
There are a bunch of sentences after "no no no." Perhaps you should read them.
Maybe you should, as you apparently don't understand what he said. Here, I'll quote the text for you:
I think PlayStation 3 is following a particular trend of 1 and 2, and if you looked at the history of it, it's a very similar history. It takes a long time for producers, and more time because of the cost factor, to embrace the full bandwidth of PlayStation 3. It's only using 20% of it right now. And producers will always wait to see how it's going, and once they use the full bandwidth the games experience is stunning. And while people have not bought as many PlayStation 3s as it looks, it is no different from PS2 and PS1 in terms of percentage of sales, and it is an experience that is dazzling. People who play it, using only 20% of the bandwidth, are perfectly happy playing it and their games will get better.
To paraphrase: "The PS3 sales are following those of the PS1 and 2. Once developers learn to use our awesome hardware, the games will be awesome, and the PS3 will start selling like hotcakes"
The thing is, that's not an answer to the question "Is the Wii more fun", unless you equate "fun" with "neato graphics" (which, apparently, Sony does). That's just the same line they've been trotting out for quite a long time now about why the PS3 isn't selling. Does he address the issue of control systems? No. Does he address the issue of lackluster, same-same game lineup? No (aside from the comment about technology, but I consider that tangental). Hell, the best part is when he says:
Most of the games are not third-party games yet; they're mostly our own games and we've got Home coming out;
Translation: Even we, the guys who invented the damn thing, can't create a game for the PS3 that fully utilizes the hardware onboard. If that isn't a bad sign, I don't know what is.
Certainly Sony knows that the Wii is currently selling because of a combination of price and hype.
What you call hype, I call positive reviews (and evidence of your pre-existing bias against the system). It makes no sense, six months after the system's release, to refer to the current ferver over the Wii as hype. Hype, to me, implies a lack of evidence. But at this point, it's pretty clear the Wii is delivering on it's promise (though, admittedly, the current game selection is a bit limited... 'course, this was also true of the DS for a while following it's release, a situation that has since been remedied).
You'll also notice that Stringer did counterargue the idea that the Wii is selling better because it's more fun.
No he didn't. All he said was "no no no". That's not an argument, that's an opinion. And honestly, what can you expect? It would be a cold day in hell long before he would ever be allowed to admit that the Wii might actually be more fun than the PS3.
Yes, but which isotope of Si? Three occur in nature in various quanities. Did they use just a single isotope? If not, what are the various percentages?
Do you *honestly* believe they haven't thought of that already? Seriously??
And BTW, what is it with Slashdotters who think they're smarter than the average PhD? Do you really have that high an opinion of yourself?
It just makes me realize how smart Douglas Adam's was when asked, if he could make anything in the world happen (ie, cure all disease, poverty, etc), what would it be, and the answer was: give everyone the ability to tell when someone else is smarter than them.
Uhuh... yeah, and 99.5% of the public probably think a Koala is a bear, but that doesn't make it any more true.
What you're describing is democratically defined knowledge. You must *love* Wikipedia.
Interesting, I see you were careful to leave out the most important part of that paragraph. This part:
The agents retained the information anyway in their files
*That* would be the illegal part. Yes, I agree, this is a bit of a tempest in a teapot, but it's clear the agents were in the wrong, here (even if they were ignorant of that fact).
Heck, without having the methodologies available it's not even clear those stats are comparable.
That statistic shows per-capita murder rates. You said, and I quote:
"Prove to me banning firearms wouldn't just create a pool of focibly disarmed victims."
The answer is in those statistics, and the answer is, in general, "it wouldn't" (yes, there are some outliers). In countries where gun ownership is significantly lower, there is no increase in per capita murder rates, or overall crime (see here), for that matter. Thus, the population doesn't become "disarmed victims", as you originally posited.
Now, to be clear, I'm not arguing that the answer to all violent crime is to ban guns. However, it is clear that doing so would not automatically lead to a disarmed, victimized citizenry, as you seem to insist.
When I lived in Japan, I knew two people who were murdered.
Uhuh... so a pair of anecdotes constitutes proof to you? Wow... well, I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.
See, silly me, I was expecting something like this. You know. Real proof. But apparently you don't understand the difference.
Prove to me banning firearms wouldn't just create a pool of focibly disarmed victims.
Prove to me that it would. And as a counterpoint to the UK (which seems to be the favorite choice of gunnuts these days), I suggest taking a look at Japan.
The point, from my view, is that banning firearms doesn't really solve the problem.
So you're opposed to trying to minimize it? Do you also oppose seatbelts, because the fundamental problem is one of bad drivers?
Spree killers in Japan use knives.
Actually, I believe you mean "spree killer"... as in, *one*. Somehow, I think mass stabbings, in general, are far less common than mass shootings.
Gun control laws only remove the guns from people who obey laws.
Congratulations, you've just demonstrated your inability to read. Why don't you go back and read my second paragraph, and then get back to me.