Actually, the C++ standard provides the bitset container for this. Certain classes (such as iostreams) do require a large number of booleans. Looking at my compiler (Metrowerks) it appears can use less than one byte per bit, although other implementations may vary. Of course, OpenGL is not written in C++.
I was reading the standards, and noted that GLboolean was 8 bits. OK, so this is C, not C++, and 8bits is probably the smallest efficient size, but this adds a new demension to "fuzzy logic."
Oops. Sory. I should have read yet more about in Molecular Biology of the Cell.Basically in fertilization, the entire sperm eventually enters the egg, carrying its mitochondria. However, the egg's mitochondria do substantially outnumber those of the sperm. Perhaps there are other selective pressures that further limit the male derived mitochondria.
Actually, a sperm cell contains several mitochondria, positioned near its flagellum (tail). Now, the question becomes-- why is a sperms's contribution to mitochondrion makeup nil?
A sperm cell is rather tightly compartmented. The sperm's "head" contains the acrosomal vesicle (enzymes and other proteins for bonding with an ova's zona pelucida, or egg coat.) and a nucleus, containing the genetic material to be delivered.
Behind the head lies a midpiece, filled with mitochondria, and behind that, the flagellum. Basically, in fertilization, only the nucleus of the sperm merges with the cytoplasm of the egg, and the sperm's mitochondria don't get a chance to enter the fertilized egg.
The whole American system is biased towards "moderating the mob." Right, now, of course, it places that "moderation" power in the hands of the rich.
If you fear the mob, this may be a good thing. On the other hand, it's not alltogether clear that such a system would have prevented the rise of fascism in this country, had conditions in the US been similar to that of interbellum central Europe.
I'm not even sure that the Perotistas of the Reform Party can be considered a radical group. And I still don't think it was particularly wise to give the chairmanship of the Foriegn relations commitee to Senator Jesse "Get US out of UN" Helms.
I think the reason most states don't have obvious "anti-fraud" programs is that voting is a right, not a privilege. Any program that denies legitimate voting rights on the basis of anti-fraud will probably be frowned upon by the courts. And rightly so.
Anti fraud investigations are usually launched at the behest of the losing candidates, and in most cases, the process is considerered to be vaguely "insulting." In many cases, such as the recent Bob Dornan/Loretta Sanchez contest, the racist undertones can be rather pronounced.
I have official versions of 5.1, and 5.2. Then I discovered Cheapbytes... and got 6.0 for 9 bucks, total. (Source: $2, Binaries: $2, Shipping: $5)
Neither 5.1, nor 5.2 offers MetroX. 5.0 may have. The bonus CDs didn't contain anything that was of interest to me.
Cheapbytes Redhat comes with a Myth2 demo and a copy of Wordperfect. It does not come with a copy of the Redhat Manual (which is quite good, btw), a bumper sticker, a mousepad, or a boot floppy. I upgraded mine by booting the cdrom, so even this last item wasn't really missed.
As for not using the name redhat, I'm not sure that's possible. After all, rpm builds take place in the/usr/src/redhat directory, and certain rpm interfaces are programmed to look in/mnt/cdrom/RedHaT/RPMS/. Even Xinit is set up to display a image of Tux wearing a RedHat hat.
I don' think it's appropriate for one person to "apologize" on behalf of slashdot for "abusive" emails.
At this point, I think we already know that rich corporations have underpaid individuals whose job is to slog through all the emails and correspondence, however abusive.
There are two major imaging standards on the WWW. One is free (jpeg), the other is not (gif). When gif was created, Compuserve was too busy to inform us that GIF included some patented technology, and sooner or later, some snot nosed company was going to demand royalties for it. GIF should be replaced by PNG, and good place to start is the mozilla project.
As for liability, it's hard to say. Unisys did claim that it would go after commercial websites that used unlicensed GIFs, including, presumably, many Linux focused sites.
Hmm, I wonder if it's possible to batch convert all LZH gifs to gifs using, say, zip compression. And would such gifs be compatible with modern browsers? LZH should die a lonely death, unloved and unknown.
A CFC is relatively inert molecule. Under exposure to ultreaviolet light, the CFC liberates a chlorine free radical. It is this free radical that does most of the damage, destroying ozone in a chain reaction.
2. How did get up into the ozone layer?
Convection. The atmosphere is hardely static. As I said, a CFC compound is relatively inert. The journey to the stratosphere is likely to take years, but the molecule will probably survive the journey, intact.
3. What about other chlorine compounds released by volcanoes?
Most Chlorine compounds released by a volcano are in the form of relatively non stable HCl gas. Most of this material does not enter the stratosphere. Major eruptions can "inject" HCl into the stratosphere, but such eruptions are relatively rare (once a decade). The eruption from Mt Pinatubo is, at the most, of the same magnitude as a years worth of human sources.
4. Why is there an ozone "hole", rather than a ozone "thinning?"
Beats me. I'm not a metereologist, although apparently, the extreme cold of the (ant)arctic environment causes more ice crystals to form which act as some sort of catylyst for the ozone depletion chain reaction.
I said that economic success is not neccesarily related to poulation growth rates. I chose my words carefully. In the modern world, it may cause a reduction. In other parts of the world, economic success translates into lower infant mortality rates. If you can feed a population, it can survive to breed.
I don't know much about population studies-- but I suspect this negative correlation comes from several sources-- urbanism, and feminism. There's also a moralistic component.
I may be blowing smoke here, but the pressure to have kids is probably stronger in a agricultural society, where labour is important. Richer societies tend to have less subsistance agriculture.
Feminism will obviously bring about a reduction in the birth rate, and is connected to female education and literacy-- something that is neglected in poorer societies. A host of other things follow, including birth control, less time forsex, etc.
Caveat: all of the following remarks are purely speculative. Evolution in modern humans is often related to the perverse pseudoscience of Eugenics-- the tenets of which I most assuredly do not endorse. Nor do I subscribe to the social-Darwinist view.
The driving force of evolution is natural selection. Genes become more prominent in a popultion if they provide a significant pre-pubescent survival advantage or a significant reproductory advantage. It also helps if the gene pool is small and isolated.
In other words, organisms that survive childhood, and have lots of children, are "selected for."
But humans are different. Generally, technological developments have reduced infant mortality-- and this intervention has reduced the influence of natural selection on human populations. Had the polio vaccine not been invented, a gene for polio resistance might well have established itself after hundreds of thousands of deaths, and thousands of years. Personally, I prefer technological innovation...
It might be nice to believe that humans will evolve into a "super-intelligent" species. Humans value intelligence, and intelligence is often associated with economic success. However, economic success is not necessarily related to population growth rates.
It is not likely, in the absence of dramatic environmental and economic change, that homo sapiens will "evolve." However, if the ozone layer continues to diminish, and if childhood skin cancer becomes a major cause of death, anti-carcinogenic genes may appear in more of the affected population.
The most dramatic aspect of evolution is speciation-- in which a population loses the ability or desire to have sex with another population. Speciation diminishes the size of a gene pool, and after a process of speciation, evolutionary change is likely to be far more rapid.
Now, personally, I would consider that any science teacher that _didn't_ familiarize his/her students with evolution would be doing them a great dis-service, as they would be both ill-prepared for college (where it is universally taught), and ill-prepared for living life in a country where it is the prevailing view.
Actually, evolution isn't the prevailing view. Most Americans would agree with some form of creationism. Most Scientists would sy that evolution is among the most rigorous ly proved scientif theories today. Most of Biology is based on neo-Darwinism (Natural Selection + Genetics + Molecular Biology).
Lots of scientific theories contradict religious doctrine. The Bible defines PI as being equal to three. To define exclusionary zones where science must not penetrate would reduce science pretty quickly.
Science depends on education. Science is not some strange priesthood, willing to offer all it's secrets to a student who has not heard of DNA until college. The basics should be taght early.
Look at Math: Calculus may be tagught in High School or College, but will remain impenetrable to someone who has not learned his/her arithmatic.
Any Course in Biology should include coverage of evolution, because to omit would not be teaching Biology. Most of Molecular Biology is pretty damned difficult tounderstand from the perspective of "intelligent-design" because of the many inneficiencies (from an engineering perspective) in cellular metabolism.
Attorney General- It's well known that Reno mae her mark in Florida with a bunch of shodilly prosecuted "kiddie" cases. So I guess she qualifies as "child related" Treasury - My guess is that the Treasury Department is there because of the ATF. Guns Alcohol and Tobacco... Or, if you're particularly paranoid, Reno's old friends from Waco. Child-related? Doubtful-- although this may cause the death nell of internet liquor and gun sales to minors. I guess this might be scary to the "You can have my kid's gun, when you pry it out of his cold dead fingers" crowd.
Commerce - I can't think why they qualify, unless the're planning to "crack down" on MP3 commerce. Education - very possibly child related...
The ACLU, like many other organizations, believes that its main tenets do have a moral basis. Their ethos is based on the belief that freedom of conscience should be absolute.
School prayers seems to be a flashpoint for many, and some might argue that the freedom of religion dictates that religious expression be allowed. The establishment clause, however, dicatates that no religion shall be established. In many localities, tacit support is given to "student-initiated" religious activity by some groups (particularly christaian evangelicals), while no support, or active resistance is presented to adherants of other religions.
Another flashpoint is the display of "The Ten Commandments" in publically funded institutions. While it may be argued that these commandments represent an basis for morality, they do notserve as the basis for all moralities. Several of the commandments deel with specifically religious issue, and some would argue the ten commandments are superceded by the Christian doctrines of the new covenant and the Great Commandment.
Previously, discussions of software liabilty were a non-issue. Closed-source developers (such as Microsoft) disclaimed liability, or, if they were feeling especially generous, limited liability to original product cost.
I can't confirm this, but I suspect the only vendors who depart from this policy are value added resellers and those who sell support-contracts.
The GPL just is operating from the philosophy-- "Look, you can't really sue anybody in the software world, so why should you be able to sue us?"
But in the medical devices arena, vendors are responsible for what they distribute, and can be liable for damages in the thousands, or millions of dollars.
An open source model may be appropriate, but unless some company can take the source-base, internally validate it, and provide signed, certified releases, no insurance company will want to touch it.
Frankly, the avoidance of risk has been one of the major reasons medical costs have been steadily climbing. Many medical devices, however complex, are disposable, because sterilization can never be 100% effective.
Re:Not the same as video hardware
on
LinModems?
·
· Score: 1
Apparently, some of the lower end computers use main memory instead of video ram for video. So, if you get a machine with 32 MB, you'll end up with only 28-30 MBs free for programs, windows, BO2k client, etc.
Actually, Most Favoured Nation status represents what we might well call "normal trading relations." Essentially, the MFN terminology is from an era of high tariffs, and "free trade" wasn't subscribed to by most governments. Back in the 19th century, most countries imposed tariffs to generate revenue, and any deviation from that policy was reserved for "favoured" nations.
I think there was a bill that would change "Most Favoured Nation" to "normal trade relations" in the official lexicons. I don't know if it passed.
Personally, I'm against free trade, inasmuch as it removes the ability of a country to conduct foriegn policy. If a country wants to close its markets for ideological reasons, it should be able to do so.
I would include a smallish section on the birth of usenet spam, and the subsequent (near) death of usenet as a result. Documents relating to C&S's infamous Green Card Spam might be appropriate (the original post, possibly a sampling of posts to the various news.admin.abuse groups, etc.)
I think the Internet worm qualifies, as well, and Melissa may be of interest years later.
I first accessed the Internet in 1992. I used it for email, usenet, and ftp. I really didn't pay much attention to the more non-collaborative services-- WAIS, gopher, HTTP. IMHO, Usenet wasn't as conducive to essay writing as HTML is today. To only include essays and single documents in preference to (edited) usenet threads would be a mistake.
The actor chosen to play Jar-Jar (Ahmed Best?) was not chosen because of his accent, but rather because he could move in the lankily uncoordinated manner Lucas had envisioned as being appropriate for Jar-Jar.
Lucas has had a tradition of using accents to simulate a community. In the original trilogy, the imperials generally had british accents, and the rebels had American accents. So perhaps Lucas felt that this was a effective cinematic tool. Certainly the callowness of Mark Hammil's southern Californian accent resonated with me. I could really feel the disapointment in his voice when he wanted to "waste time with his friends."
What puzzles me is why the "not really Jamaican" accent of Jar-Jar gets far more attention that the Vietnamese accents of the trade-federation folks. But then, they would probably get misidentified as Japanese.
Gregory Benford's Cosm (published 1998) involved the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider's creation of a micro-universe. A pretty good novel, if you like hard-SF. I wouldn't expect of cinematic version, though.
Slashdot Mirror
If you have to ask, you can't afford it.
I was kidding, really.
Actually, the C++ standard provides the bitset container for this. Certain classes (such as iostreams) do require a large number of booleans. Looking at my compiler (Metrowerks) it appears can use less than one byte per bit, although other implementations may vary. Of course, OpenGL is not written in C++.
I was reading the standards, and noted that GLboolean was 8 bits. OK, so this is C, not C++, and 8bits is probably the smallest efficient size, but this adds a new demension to "fuzzy logic."
Oops. Sory. I should have read yet more about in Molecular Biology of the Cell.Basically in fertilization, the entire sperm eventually enters the egg, carrying its mitochondria. However, the egg's mitochondria do substantially outnumber those of the sperm. Perhaps there are other selective pressures that further limit the male derived mitochondria.
Actually, a sperm cell contains several mitochondria, positioned near its flagellum (tail). Now, the question becomes-- why is a sperms's contribution to mitochondrion makeup nil?
A sperm cell is rather tightly compartmented. The sperm's "head" contains the acrosomal vesicle (enzymes and other proteins for bonding with an ova's zona pelucida, or egg coat.) and a nucleus, containing the genetic material to be delivered.
Behind the head lies a midpiece, filled with mitochondria, and behind that, the flagellum. Basically, in fertilization, only the nucleus of the sperm merges with the cytoplasm of the egg, and the sperm's mitochondria don't get a chance to enter the fertilized egg.
The whole American system is biased towards "moderating the mob." Right, now, of course, it places that "moderation" power in the hands of the rich.
If you fear the mob, this may be a good thing. On the other hand, it's not alltogether clear that such a system would have prevented the rise of fascism in this country, had conditions in the US been similar to that of interbellum central Europe.
I'm not even sure that the Perotistas of the Reform Party can be considered a radical group. And I still don't think it was particularly wise to give the chairmanship of the Foriegn relations commitee to Senator Jesse "Get US out of UN" Helms.
I think the reason most states don't have obvious "anti-fraud" programs is that voting is a right, not a privilege. Any program that denies legitimate voting rights on the basis of anti-fraud will probably be frowned upon by the courts. And rightly so.
Anti fraud investigations are usually launched at the behest of the losing candidates, and in most cases, the process is considerered to be vaguely "insulting." In many cases, such as the recent Bob Dornan/Loretta Sanchez contest, the racist undertones can be rather pronounced.
Except that in Virginia, Y'all has been used for the singular.
You is already plural, btw. Thou is singular.
I have official versions of 5.1, and 5.2. Then I discovered Cheapbytes... and got 6.0 for 9 bucks, total. (Source: $2, Binaries: $2, Shipping: $5)
/usr/src/redhat directory, and certain rpm interfaces are programmed to look in /mnt/cdrom/RedHaT/RPMS/. Even Xinit is set up to display a image of Tux wearing a RedHat hat.
Neither 5.1, nor 5.2 offers MetroX. 5.0 may have. The bonus CDs didn't contain anything that was of interest to me.
Cheapbytes Redhat comes with a Myth2 demo and a copy of Wordperfect. It does not come with a copy of the Redhat Manual (which is quite good, btw), a bumper sticker, a mousepad, or a boot floppy. I upgraded mine by booting the cdrom, so even this last item wasn't really missed.
As for not using the name redhat, I'm not sure that's possible. After all, rpm builds take place in the
I don' think it's appropriate for one person to "apologize" on behalf of slashdot for "abusive" emails.
At this point, I think we already know that rich corporations have underpaid individuals whose job is to slog through all the emails and correspondence, however abusive.
There are two major imaging standards on the WWW. One is free (jpeg), the other is not (gif). When gif was created, Compuserve was too busy to inform us that GIF included some patented technology, and sooner or later, some snot nosed company was going to demand royalties for it. GIF should be replaced by PNG, and good place to start is the mozilla project.
As for liability, it's hard to say. Unisys did claim that it would go after commercial websites that used unlicensed GIFs, including, presumably, many Linux focused sites.
Hmm, I wonder if it's possible to batch convert all LZH gifs to gifs using, say, zip compression. And would such gifs be compatible with modern browsers? LZH should die a lonely death, unloved and unknown.
A CFC is relatively inert molecule. Under exposure to ultreaviolet light, the CFC liberates a chlorine free radical. It is this free radical that does most of the damage, destroying ozone in a chain reaction.
2. How did get up into the ozone layer?
Convection. The atmosphere is hardely static. As I said, a CFC compound is relatively inert. The journey to the stratosphere is likely to take years, but the molecule will probably survive the journey, intact.
3. What about other chlorine compounds released by volcanoes?
Most Chlorine compounds released by a volcano are in the form of relatively non stable HCl gas. Most of this material does not enter the stratosphere. Major eruptions can "inject" HCl into the stratosphere, but such eruptions are relatively rare (once a decade). The eruption from Mt Pinatubo is, at the most, of the same magnitude as a years worth of human sources.
4. Why is there an ozone "hole", rather than a ozone "thinning?"
Beats me. I'm not a metereologist, although apparently, the extreme cold of the (ant)arctic environment causes more ice crystals to form which act as some sort of catylyst for the ozone depletion chain reaction.
I suspect, though, that there is a strong inclination towards physical sciences( CS, physics, engineering, chemistry, and less towards biology.
Creation "Scientists" typically are drawn from this group, rather than from biology, because of a bias towards a mechanistic world view.
Just a thought regarding the recent Darwin flamewar/discussion.
BTW, I'm firmly in the biologists' camp.
I said that economic success is not neccesarily related to poulation growth rates. I chose my words carefully.
In the modern world, it may cause a reduction. In other parts of the world, economic success translates into lower infant mortality rates. If you can feed a population, it can survive to breed.
I don't know much about population studies-- but I suspect this negative correlation comes from several sources-- urbanism, and feminism. There's also a moralistic component.
I may be blowing smoke here, but the pressure to have kids is probably stronger in a agricultural society, where labour is important. Richer societies tend to have less subsistance agriculture.
Feminism will obviously bring about a reduction in the birth rate, and is connected to female education and literacy-- something that is neglected in poorer societies. A host of other things follow, including birth control, less time forsex, etc.
Caveat: all of the following remarks are purely speculative. Evolution in modern humans is often related to the perverse pseudoscience of Eugenics-- the tenets of which I most assuredly do not endorse. Nor do I subscribe to the social-Darwinist view.
The driving force of evolution is natural selection. Genes become more prominent in a popultion if they provide a significant pre-pubescent survival advantage or a significant reproductory advantage. It also helps if the gene pool is small and isolated.
In other words, organisms that survive childhood, and have lots of children, are "selected for."
But humans are different. Generally, technological developments have reduced infant mortality-- and this intervention has reduced the influence of natural selection on human populations. Had the polio vaccine not been invented, a gene for polio resistance might well have established itself after hundreds of thousands of deaths, and thousands of years. Personally, I prefer technological innovation...
It might be nice to believe that humans will evolve into a "super-intelligent" species. Humans value intelligence, and intelligence is often associated with economic success. However, economic success is not necessarily related to population growth rates.
It is not likely, in the absence of dramatic environmental and economic change, that homo sapiens will "evolve." However, if the ozone layer continues to diminish, and if childhood skin cancer becomes a major cause of death, anti-carcinogenic genes may appear in more of the affected population.
The most dramatic aspect of evolution is speciation-- in which a population loses the ability or desire to have sex with another population. Speciation diminishes the size of a gene pool, and after a process of speciation, evolutionary change is likely to be far more rapid.
Actually, evolution isn't the prevailing view. Most Americans would agree with some form of creationism. Most Scientists would sy that evolution is among the most rigorous ly proved scientif theories today. Most of Biology is based on neo-Darwinism (Natural Selection + Genetics + Molecular Biology).
Lots of scientific theories contradict religious doctrine. The Bible defines PI as being equal to three. To define exclusionary zones where science must not penetrate would reduce science pretty quickly.
Science depends on education. Science is not some strange priesthood, willing to offer all it's secrets to a student who has not heard of DNA until college. The basics should be taght early.
Look at Math: Calculus may be tagught in High School or College, but will remain impenetrable to someone who has not learned his/her arithmatic.
Any Course in Biology should include coverage of evolution, because to omit would not be teaching Biology. Most of Molecular Biology is pretty damned difficult tounderstand from the perspective of "intelligent-design" because of the many inneficiencies (from an engineering perspective) in cellular metabolism.
Attorney General- It's well known that Reno mae her mark in Florida with a bunch of shodilly prosecuted "kiddie" cases. So I guess she qualifies as "child related"
Treasury - My guess is that the Treasury Department is there because of the ATF. Guns Alcohol and Tobacco... Or, if you're particularly paranoid, Reno's old friends from Waco. Child-related? Doubtful-- although this may cause the death nell of internet liquor and gun sales to minors. I guess this might be scary to the "You can have my kid's gun, when you pry it out of his cold dead fingers" crowd.
Commerce - I can't think why they qualify, unless the're planning to "crack down" on MP3 commerce.
Education - very possibly child related...
The ACLU, like many other organizations, believes that its main tenets do have a moral basis. Their ethos is based on the belief that freedom of conscience should be absolute.
School prayers seems to be a flashpoint for many, and some might argue that the freedom of religion dictates that religious expression be allowed. The establishment clause, however, dicatates that no religion shall be established.
In many localities, tacit support is given to "student-initiated" religious activity by some groups (particularly christaian evangelicals), while no support, or active resistance is presented to adherants of other religions.
Another flashpoint is the display of "The Ten Commandments" in publically funded institutions. While it may be argued that these commandments represent an basis for morality, they do notserve as the basis for all moralities. Several of the commandments deel with specifically religious issue, and some would argue the ten commandments are superceded by the Christian doctrines of the new covenant and the Great Commandment.
It ma
Previously, discussions of software liabilty were a non-issue. Closed-source developers (such as Microsoft) disclaimed liability, or, if they were feeling especially generous, limited liability to original product cost.
I can't confirm this, but I suspect the only vendors who depart from this policy are value added resellers and those who sell support-contracts.
The GPL just is operating from the philosophy-- "Look, you can't really sue anybody in the software world, so why should you be able to sue us?"
But in the medical devices arena, vendors are responsible for what they distribute, and can be liable for damages in the thousands, or millions of dollars.
An open source model may be appropriate, but unless some company can take the source-base, internally validate it, and provide signed, certified releases, no insurance company will want to touch it.
Frankly, the avoidance of risk has been one of the major reasons medical costs have been steadily climbing. Many medical devices, however complex, are disposable, because sterilization can never be 100% effective.
Apparently, some of the lower end computers use main memory instead of video ram for video. So, if you get a machine with 32 MB, you'll end up with only 28-30 MBs free for programs, windows, BO2k client, etc.
Actually, Most Favoured Nation status represents what we might well call "normal trading relations." Essentially, the MFN terminology is from an era of high tariffs, and "free trade" wasn't subscribed to by most governments. Back in the 19th century, most countries imposed tariffs to generate revenue, and any deviation from that policy was reserved for "favoured" nations.
I think there was a bill that would change "Most Favoured Nation" to "normal trade relations" in the official lexicons. I don't know if it passed.
Personally, I'm against free trade, inasmuch as it removes the ability of a country to conduct foriegn policy. If a country wants to close its markets for ideological reasons, it should be able to do so.
I'm pretty sure those are Mercury, not Apollo suits...
It's interesting to note that the astronauts depicted with Jar-Jar appear to be wearing silver Mercury era spacesuits.
I would include a smallish section on the birth of usenet spam, and the subsequent (near) death of usenet as a result. Documents relating to C&S's infamous Green Card Spam might be appropriate (the original post, possibly a sampling of posts to the various news.admin.abuse groups, etc.)
I think the Internet worm qualifies, as well, and Melissa may be of interest years later.
I first accessed the Internet in 1992. I used it for email, usenet, and ftp. I really didn't pay much attention to the more non-collaborative services-- WAIS, gopher, HTTP. IMHO, Usenet wasn't as conducive to essay writing as HTML is today. To only include essays and single documents in preference to (edited) usenet threads would be a mistake.
The actor chosen to play Jar-Jar (Ahmed Best?) was not chosen because of his accent, but rather because he could move in the lankily uncoordinated manner Lucas had envisioned as being appropriate for Jar-Jar.
Lucas has had a tradition of using accents to simulate a community. In the original trilogy, the imperials generally had british accents, and the rebels had American accents. So perhaps Lucas felt that this was a effective cinematic tool. Certainly the callowness of Mark Hammil's southern Californian accent resonated with me. I could really feel the disapointment in his voice when he wanted to "waste time with his friends."
What puzzles me is why the "not really Jamaican" accent of Jar-Jar gets far more attention that the Vietnamese accents of the trade-federation folks. But then, they would probably get misidentified as Japanese.
Gregory Benford's Cosm (published 1998) involved the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider's creation of a micro-universe. A pretty good novel, if you like hard-SF. I wouldn't expect of cinematic version, though.