Re:But the cost of keeping a satellite up is nil
on
Wi-Fi From The Sky
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· Score: 2
The topic has been discussed in an older topic and there was a link to an interview there which is relevant.
In that discussion it was quite apparent that using satellietes wasn't an alternative.
[From the interview]
"Existing satellites provide easy download capabilities, but because of their high-altitude have limitations for two-way, high-speed data communication."
"The Stratellite is designed to allow Internet subscribers to easily communicate in both directions using existing wireless devices."
"One of the many advantages of high altitude airships have over existing satellite technology is that the payload can easily be recovered, upgraded and re-launched in a matter of hours."
They calculated that they'd need 10 stratellites to cover the US. IIRC the satellite based digital radio network in the US is planned to use 3 satellites. (No you can't cover the entire hemisphere with one.) And since a geosyncronous satellite is so far away it requires bulky antennas and lots of electricity. Both is stuff you really don't want on mobile systems. (Even Iridium lost out pretty much because of the bulkyness, and they were LEO IIRC.)
Basically you can think of stratellites as a cross between satellites and cell towers. They can cover a wide area like satellites, but are maintainable like cell towers. (From the interview it's said that ones they are finished a stratellite would only need a one person crew to bring one down, do maintainence and send it on it's way again.)
Re:Dozens of ballons, or three satellites
on
Wi-Fi From The Sky
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· Score: 2
Why would satellites be more viable? The biggest benefits of these baloons is that you can bring them down. (Yeah, technically you can bring a satellite down too, just not in one piece.) The costs of building a satellite and sending it up are astronomical. Compare that to these baloons which fly up by themselves.
And long lag is very annoying even if you only surf. Particularly when you know that "it's a fast connection". It's also bad if you want to do stuff like VoIP or video conferancing.
Re:UFOs - a skeptics view
on
Starcraft
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· Score: 2
Yeah, "The Deamon-Haunted World" is a great book. On this topic he talks a lot about how different parts of the world have different aliens. Also the appearance have changed with time.
In the 40-50 when alien sightings began to be popular again in the US they looked Scandinavian. (Tall, blond, blue eyes etc.) Not until quite lately have they turned into the now archetypical "grey". If you study mythology from different parts of the world you'll find that IIRC in Africa they are often in the shape of animals. And other continents had their own style.
Sagan also writes a lot about some similarities between abduction stories and child molestation. In that in both cases you can often make the "victim" believe things which hasn't happened. This is particularly true with children of course. (And hence the strict demands on child psychologists to be good at their jobs.) But making someone think they have been abducted is quite easy if the person is susteptible.
The book also discuss a lot of other topics regarding science and para-sciences. (Such as cases of Uri Geller and those types.) I bet you'd learn more by picking it up than by reading the book reviewed in the article.
Or go to one of the "with babies" screenings. At least some cinemas here in Sweden have them. (Typically in the afternoon too.)
And what moron brings a baby into a movie like TTT? I can understand if you bring it to a drama, but a movie with loud noises and screaming? (on screen) No wonder the kid's crying, I'd cry too if my parents were idiots.
I can't remember from the book, was he really doing utterly nothing during the warg battle? I don't think there was a werg battle in the book. At least none that I can recall.
Lots of reasonably important (or at least poetic) dialogue was cut! I agree that this is sad, but OTOH it's something which is required. I had the same argument over the first movie with some friends. If you want to save "this little line" and then "that one too" you're soon looking at an extra 3 hours of material. And the more you try to do it by the book (heh) the more obvious the things you don't do will be.
Riding on top of trees had worse bluescreen than Star Wars original. Yeah, I though so to. Check out latest Bond movie for some really pathetic bluescreen work though. (When he's surfing the wave from the sat laser.) Have all the good bluescreen people retired or something?
I think they didn't add the Ents attack on Helm's Deep because it's quite hard to visualize. It's not really the Ents neither but the entire forest or something. IIRC in the book it's described as if the forest was moving, but you couldn't see any movement. Now that's good for a book, but it doesn't work well on film.
All in all it's a change I can live with. And since they are not exactly alike it gives us a reason to read the books again.;-)
It was a while ago but I though Nascar came to PC first. I remember seeing it 'bout 95 or so, but it wasn't new then. (I think.) I'm not sure what consoles were available then though, so I have a hard time telling if the consoles at that time had a decent chance of pulling it off. I can't recall hearing about Nascar for consoles then at any rate. (After checking it out it was released by Papyrus 94, seems to be a PC only release.)
From what I've seen of GT3 I wouldn't call it a sim though. Sure you can do some stuff but when I say sim I mean the F1 racers. Those where you have to trim the angles of fins by the degree to get that extra grip through the turns. And when you do turn the first few times you just skid around and go off the course since the settings are all wrong.
NFS is far from a sim, I'll give you that though. And the arcade racers have certainly taken the lead in sales. But to get real hardcore sims I still think you'll have to go to the PC. Not that I really care though, I prefer the lighter racers anyways.;-)
Yes, the Helios stay in the air for weeks or months, they have different goals than the stratelites. (And would it have been too much bother for you to write that in the post instead of just commenting on it?)
But a flyer should spend less energi in maintaining the current position than a balloon. At least that's the way it seems to me. Although there is very little preassure in the stratosphere it goes both ways. While the effect of the wind is less due to this it's also more work to move the balloon.
That said, if you want a real "geosynched stratelite" then the balloon method is probably best. (I recon that's why there's at least two corporations which are researching it.) If you want something which can move around and scan an area then something like a Helio is a better bet.
And both can to some extent be used interchangeably for the area in between.
They quote the maker saying that They are highly maneuverable and capable of extended-duration flights". Probably they just move them around like they usually move zeppelines. (With propellers or something that is.)
Too bad the article didn't have a figure or picture.
I think the point with the Nasa project is that it's quite mobile. So while you can make it circle a specific area you can also make it fly around and cover a larger area.
Note that it's primary mission doesn't seem to be telecommunication but scientific. (Though the grand-parent poster did this mistake and not the one I'm replying to.)
The vehicle could be used for a variety of monitoring purposes. NASA is especially interested in the vehicle for its ability to study the upper atmosphere without disturbing it. [... It] could spend long periods of time over the ocean monitoring storm developments to provide more accurate predictions of hurricanes. The same capability could be used to monitor forests and other large remote expanses to provide early warning of crop damage or fires for example. Another use for this kind of capability is to serve as a surrogate satellite when coverage is not available.
Since it's Nasa I wouldn't be surprised if they intend to use the technique for creating more durable machines for remote monitoring eg for other planets. (But other than Mars and the inner planets I don't think a solar powered flyer is going to be much use.)
For the record 5.1 is only 5 directional speakers. The bass is not directional. And AFAIK only the XBox support 5.1 sound. At least the GameCube only support ProLogic2.
And to answer your question, they got their at together a while ago.
# Colin McRae Rally 3 - Great looking rally game, not being released on PC any time soon because they want to capitalise on console sales.
I think Halo is due during the spring of 03 or something like that. From what I've heard they are going to redo some levels in order to make them more interesting.
And Colin 3 is due in January I believe. (A game which I'm eagerly anticipating.)
A third game which has gotten good reviews for consoles is Splinter Cell. It's also due for PC sometime early next year. (It's similar to MGS in gameplay.)
I think it's fair to make a distinction between different types of RPGs. On consoles you typically have a more storylined game where you follow a path. On the PC you have open ended and very large worlds such as Baldurs Gate or the Fallout series. These games are typically not possible on a console. (Because you have to store a lot of information about the entire world to keep track of what the player has done.)
Besides this I agree with your other points. Perhaps with the addition of racers. In which case you often find arcade racers on consoles and more racing sim style games on PC. (And I have to say that I prefer using a good FF wheel to a console pad for this.)
OTOH D3 will probably not look as good on the XBox as on a good PC. I know that Carmack has recommended 128MB gfx cards if you want to be able to play D3 decently in the future. This is because his guestimate is that it will require approx 80MB of textures. Now an XBox has 64MB RAM to share between GPU and CPU. My PC has 128MB on for the GPU and 1GB for my CPUs.
So a XBox shouldn't be able to store all D3 texture data even if it dedicated all the memory to textures. And on my PC I can store stuff like level data and everything else in system RAM.
Naturally the XBox and other consoles benefit a lot by being limited by the TV resolution. (Although there are XBox games which can do 1080i.)
Re:Spielberg Over the Hill?
on
Taken?
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· Score: 1
Now I hope you're not pissed that I mangled your post I just want to get these points through. (All within [ ] has been edited by me.)
[1] AI sucked and it was way too long, and there were way too many plot twists that didn't make any sense, no matter how long you sit around and analyze it.
[2] Because the plot of a movie is fairly simple to follow [...] and a story is entertaining to the masses and the film looks good doesn't make it crap. Actually, it makes it a classic. [About classic literature] they are still important to the development of the culture and literary classics.
[3] Therefore, Minority Report is a great flick and worthy of 'Classic' consideration. AI sucked, and if you have to read a book to understand a movie, it's no good.
What you state in [1] about AI can be said about MR (Minority Report). Apparently very few of the current big producers/directors have heard of the idiom "less is more". I have previously ranted AI not being self-consistent. The same goes for MR. Eg the scene where Cruise and the "seer" escapes through the mall. For the rest of the movie the seers are only able to see into the future when it regards specific types of murder. All of a sudden she can see all sorts of specific information, and that it rains outside. After this scene is over this power is again lost.
In [2] it's argued that a classic can be a classic even if it's popular or has a simple plot. In regards to this I'd say that MR doesn't have a very simple plot. It creates a new universe and then extrapolates the ideas in this universe to make a detective story. Not quite obvious if you ask me. (Or rather it wouldn't be, if the script didnät have the characters/repeat the bloody thing 15 times over to make sure that even those in the audience with attention span measured in nanoseconds got it all/.)
In [2] it's also pointed out that classics are classics because they are important to the development of the culture and literary classics. I have to say that I fail to see how MR will be helping the development of culture and future classics. Besides the obvious of "this movie sucks, don't do this".
And in [3] a conclusion is made. As MR has a simple plot and is popular it will be a classic. This contains logical fallacies. In [2] it is argued that a classic can be a classic/in spite/ of having simple plot and being popular. In [3]it is shown that since MR has simple plot and is popular it will be a classic. I have to say that I can't follow the logic here.
Besides I don't agree with the assertion that if you have to read a book to understand a movie, it's no good. I'd call 2001 : A space odyssey a good movie. (Though the first part is too long.) And I don't think anyone quite grasped the 3rd part without reading the book.
My own conclusion is that if you want good SF you have to look for it in other places than "the big screen". Books are good naturally, almost all new bad SF movies are mangled versions of good SF books. TV series seem to fare a bit better than movies, at least they are not so obviously bad as the movie counterparts. My personal recommendation would be to look for good SF in anime, there's quite a lot of good stuff there.
Re:Spielberg Over the Hill?
on
Taken?
·
· Score: 1
Are you trolling or being sarcastic?
I hope it's one of them because my third alternative is stupid.;-)
Re:Spielberg Over the Hill?
on
Taken?
·
· Score: 2
I remember reading this point before, probably in the last article about Taken. And I have to say that it makes the ending a lot better. (I also took the Aliens route when I saw it.)
I think that the reason I (and many others) didn't catch it was that I absolutely hated the entire movie. I get really annoyed when script writers can't be bothered to keep their universe intact for 2 hours. In AI one of the first problems like this was that when David ate all the food dropped on his mainboard. (Which engineeer would be so incredibly stupid to design a mecha like that? If you are going to have a mouth than either put a bag on other end or a pipe which leads anything through the body.) And he short ciruited.
Later in the movie David falls into a swimming pool. Apparently he has his mouth closed because as if by magic no water comes in to short circuit him this time.
Besides that the movie was dripping with poor attempts of pathos. "Ooooh loooook, poor David, the humans are so mean to him. Don't you feel sad for him?" No, I personally felt like I wanted a big bat and 5 minutes alone with Spielberg and whoever was around him at the time of production.
Part of the problem is most likely that I'm a big Kubrick fan. I couldn't help but thinking, "What if Kubrick had made this?". When I got to the end of the movie I didn't try to solve the aliens-mecha puzzle. I wanted the movie to/end/. And since the movie hadn't given me any reason to think for over 2 hours (Infact, I had been punished for doing it previously, by getting annoyed.) I'm not going to start thinking in the last 15 minutes.
The article talks about the problem of westernizing the manga. Why don't they just avoid the problem like Tokyopop has? Personally I actually prefer the back to front way of reading to a psuedocorrected format.
Eg in the editorial notes to the manga "Blade - of the immortal" the problem is discussed. Here they also comment (brag) about how detailed their transition has been. They have tried not to mirror the images and instead swap places of the comic squares within the page so that they are read left to right. Naturally this means additional work as some parts can't be manupulated like this, and likewize can't simply be mirrored. Instead those parts have to be redrawn.
But I still managed to find places where a person suddenly was sitting on the left side of the main character instead of the right. It just seems like a waste of time to me.
Another nice game if you're into math and science is the Traveller series. Currently up in version 4.5 or somesuch. (It's now GURPS based.) Also commonly refered to as Marc Miller's Traveller.
The big math and engineering part is that there is an addon called Fire Fusion and Steel. That book describes all rules used to design weapons and star/spaceships in the game. Also a lot of the ideas used in game are explained (plasma rifles, different propulsion systems etc.) as well as some alternative ways of doing things. (Eg suggestion for how to make a campaign using the basic rules but with only solar sail powered spacecraft.)
Really it's quite similar to the books about how stuff in Star Trek work. Only you can actually do something about the stuff you think suck.
Unfortuantely the series haven't done too well. So there's not much material for it. OTOH that mean that you won't get sucked into a TSR situation which drains your wallet faster than a drug addiction.
Very true. But I can't help feeling that that game would have been much more interesting if there had been a multiplayer option. For coop naturally.
Most PnP RPGs, and a lot CRPGs as well, are based around the idea of the party. But Morrowind is based around the single character. Playing in first person is really great for the immersiveness though. When going down in hunted tombs at least I felt quite uneasy about it.
I think it's mainly a difference between the Xbox's and other consoles. The XBox is quite similar to a normal PC and thus can do things in a similar way.
In this specific case I'm talking about having an internal harddrive. Since the XBox has that it's capable of doing CRPG's in the same way as PC do it. Ie a very large world which you can manipulate. This doesn't work as well on consoles since you have to be able to store all that data between sessions.
And if you like the Fallout games then check out "Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura" if you haven't already./Huge/ world, and just as with Fallout2 it's largely an amoral one. Thus you can play a thug or a valliant knight, but your behaviour has influences naturally.
Re:"The results are probably better than you would
on
Optical Camouflage
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· Score: 2, Redundant
Well you see, the trick they used in the James Bond movies was that/there was actually no car there/. It's generally a lot easier add an invisible car than to remove a visible one.
Yeah yeah, I'm being mildly sarcastic here. My point being that if you actually made the "Vanish" IRL the result would be more similar to what this guy has than to the the digitally processed movie.
Since you're using Linux anyways why not go with LVM instead? It has the same features as RAID0 but is designed to be more flexible in drive management. If you go with a basic FS (ext 2 for instance) I'd think that your chances of extracting data from a failed array could be pretty good too. (Though I haven't tried it.)
I had a LV of 200G+ fail on me however, so now I'm back with JBOD. RAID5 is problably going to be my next bet for at least some redundancy.
Re:Chrisd! Have I got a story for YOU!
on
IDE RAID Examined
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· Score: 1
Just in case you're not trolling:
The integrated "RAID" controllers are software RAID, but done in drivers instead of in the kernel. (As in Linux RAID.) In the article they included a software RAID card (The High Point card.) for some reason.
I also have a "RAID" on my MB, it's only useful as an additional IDE controller though. No way that I'll use the built in RAID function for security. But as JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) it's good. (And that's how I use it.)
Slashdot Mirror
In that discussion it was quite apparent that using satellietes wasn't an alternative.
They calculated that they'd need 10 stratellites to cover the US. IIRC the satellite based digital radio network in the US is planned to use 3 satellites. (No you can't cover the entire hemisphere with one.) And since a geosyncronous satellite is so far away it requires bulky antennas and lots of electricity. Both is stuff you really don't want on mobile systems. (Even Iridium lost out pretty much because of the bulkyness, and they were LEO IIRC.)
Basically you can think of stratellites as a cross between satellites and cell towers. They can cover a wide area like satellites, but are maintainable like cell towers. (From the interview it's said that ones they are finished a stratellite would only need a one person crew to bring one down, do maintainence and send it on it's way again.)
Why would satellites be more viable? The biggest benefits of these baloons is that you can bring them down. (Yeah, technically you can bring a satellite down too, just not in one piece.) The costs of building a satellite and sending it up are astronomical. Compare that to these baloons which fly up by themselves.
And long lag is very annoying even if you only surf. Particularly when you know that "it's a fast connection". It's also bad if you want to do stuff like VoIP or video conferancing.
Yeah, "The Deamon-Haunted World" is a great book. On this topic he talks a lot about how different parts of the world have different aliens. Also the appearance have changed with time.
In the 40-50 when alien sightings began to be popular again in the US they looked Scandinavian. (Tall, blond, blue eyes etc.) Not until quite lately have they turned into the now archetypical "grey". If you study mythology from different parts of the world you'll find that IIRC in Africa they are often in the shape of animals. And other continents had their own style.
Sagan also writes a lot about some similarities between abduction stories and child molestation. In that in both cases you can often make the "victim" believe things which hasn't happened. This is particularly true with children of course. (And hence the strict demands on child psychologists to be good at their jobs.) But making someone think they have been abducted is quite easy if the person is susteptible.
The book also discuss a lot of other topics regarding science and para-sciences. (Such as cases of Uri Geller and those types.) I bet you'd learn more by picking it up than by reading the book reviewed in the article.
Or go to one of the "with babies" screenings. At least some cinemas here in Sweden have them. (Typically in the afternoon too.)
And what moron brings a baby into a movie like TTT? I can understand if you bring it to a drama, but a movie with loud noises and screaming? (on screen) No wonder the kid's crying, I'd cry too if my parents were idiots.
Look at this children, now do you understand why you need to take your pills regularly?
I can't remember from the book, was he really doing utterly nothing during the warg battle?
I don't think there was a werg battle in the book. At least none that I can recall.
Lots of reasonably important (or at least poetic) dialogue was cut!
I agree that this is sad, but OTOH it's something which is required. I had the same argument over the first movie with some friends. If you want to save "this little line" and then "that one too" you're soon looking at an extra 3 hours of material. And the more you try to do it by the book (heh) the more obvious the things you don't do will be.
Riding on top of trees had worse bluescreen than Star Wars original.
Yeah, I though so to. Check out latest Bond movie for some really pathetic bluescreen work though. (When he's surfing the wave from the sat laser.) Have all the good bluescreen people retired or something?
I think they didn't add the Ents attack on Helm's Deep because it's quite hard to visualize. It's not really the Ents neither but the entire forest or something. IIRC in the book it's described as if the forest was moving, but you couldn't see any movement. Now that's good for a book, but it doesn't work well on film.
;-)
All in all it's a change I can live with. And since they are not exactly alike it gives us a reason to read the books again.
It was a while ago but I though Nascar came to PC first. I remember seeing it 'bout 95 or so, but it wasn't new then. (I think.) I'm not sure what consoles were available then though, so I have a hard time telling if the consoles at that time had a decent chance of pulling it off. I can't recall hearing about Nascar for consoles then at any rate. (After checking it out it was released by Papyrus 94, seems to be a PC only release.)
;-)
From what I've seen of GT3 I wouldn't call it a sim though. Sure you can do some stuff but when I say sim I mean the F1 racers. Those where you have to trim the angles of fins by the degree to get that extra grip through the turns. And when you do turn the first few times you just skid around and go off the course since the settings are all wrong.
NFS is far from a sim, I'll give you that though. And the arcade racers have certainly taken the lead in sales. But to get real hardcore sims I still think you'll have to go to the PC. Not that I really care though, I prefer the lighter racers anyways.
Yes, the Helios stay in the air for weeks or months, they have different goals than the stratelites. (And would it have been too much bother for you to write that in the post instead of just commenting on it?)
But a flyer should spend less energi in maintaining the current position than a balloon. At least that's the way it seems to me. Although there is very little preassure in the stratosphere it goes both ways. While the effect of the wind is less due to this it's also more work to move the balloon.
That said, if you want a real "geosynched stratelite" then the balloon method is probably best. (I recon that's why there's at least two corporations which are researching it.) If you want something which can move around and scan an area then something like a Helio is a better bet.
And both can to some extent be used interchangeably for the area in between.
They quote the maker saying that They are highly maneuverable and capable of extended-duration flights". Probably they just move them around like they usually move zeppelines. (With propellers or something that is.)
Too bad the article didn't have a figure or picture.
Note that it's primary mission doesn't seem to be telecommunication but scientific. (Though the grand-parent poster did this mistake and not the one I'm replying to.)
Since it's Nasa I wouldn't be surprised if they intend to use the technique for creating more durable machines for remote monitoring eg for other planets. (But other than Mars and the inner planets I don't think a solar powered flyer is going to be much use.)
For the record 5.1 is only 5 directional speakers. The bass is not directional. And AFAIK only the XBox support 5.1 sound. At least the GameCube only support ProLogic2.
And to answer your question, they got their at together a while ago.
I think Halo is due during the spring of 03 or something like that. From what I've heard they are going to redo some levels in order to make them more interesting.
And Colin 3 is due in January I believe. (A game which I'm eagerly anticipating.)
A third game which has gotten good reviews for consoles is Splinter Cell. It's also due for PC sometime early next year. (It's similar to MGS in gameplay.)
I think it's fair to make a distinction between different types of RPGs. On consoles you typically have a more storylined game where you follow a path. On the PC you have open ended and very large worlds such as Baldurs Gate or the Fallout series. These games are typically not possible on a console. (Because you have to store a lot of information about the entire world to keep track of what the player has done.)
Besides this I agree with your other points. Perhaps with the addition of racers. In which case you often find arcade racers on consoles and more racing sim style games on PC. (And I have to say that I prefer using a good FF wheel to a console pad for this.)
OTOH D3 will probably not look as good on the XBox as on a good PC. I know that Carmack has recommended 128MB gfx cards if you want to be able to play D3 decently in the future. This is because his guestimate is that it will require approx 80MB of textures. Now an XBox has 64MB RAM to share between GPU and CPU. My PC has 128MB on for the GPU and 1GB for my CPUs.
So a XBox shouldn't be able to store all D3 texture data even if it dedicated all the memory to textures. And on my PC I can store stuff like level data and everything else in system RAM.
Naturally the XBox and other consoles benefit a lot by being limited by the TV resolution. (Although there are XBox games which can do 1080i.)
What you state in [1] about AI can be said about MR (Minority Report). Apparently very few of the current big producers/directors have heard of the idiom "less is more". I have previously ranted AI not being self-consistent. The same goes for MR. Eg the scene where Cruise and the "seer" escapes through the mall. For the rest of the movie the seers are only able to see into the future when it regards specific types of murder. All of a sudden she can see all sorts of specific information, and that it rains outside. After this scene is over this power is again lost.
In [2] it's argued that a classic can be a classic even if it's popular or has a simple plot. In regards to this I'd say that MR doesn't have a very simple plot. It creates a new universe and then extrapolates the ideas in this universe to make a detective story. Not quite obvious if you ask me. (Or rather it wouldn't be, if the script didnät have the characters
In [2] it's also pointed out that classics are classics because they are important to the development of the culture and literary classics. I have to say that I fail to see how MR will be helping the development of culture and future classics. Besides the obvious of "this movie sucks, don't do this".
And in [3] a conclusion is made. As MR has a simple plot and is popular it will be a classic. This contains logical fallacies. In [2] it is argued that a classic can be a classic
Besides I don't agree with the assertion that if you have to read a book to understand a movie, it's no good. I'd call 2001 : A space odyssey a good movie. (Though the first part is too long.) And I don't think anyone quite grasped the 3rd part without reading the book.
My own conclusion is that if you want good SF you have to look for it in other places than "the big screen". Books are good naturally, almost all new bad SF movies are mangled versions of good SF books. TV series seem to fare a bit better than movies, at least they are not so obviously bad as the movie counterparts. My personal recommendation would be to look for good SF in anime, there's quite a lot of good stuff there.
Are you trolling or being sarcastic?
;-)
I hope it's one of them because my third alternative is stupid.
I remember reading this point before, probably in the last article about Taken. And I have to say that it makes the ending a lot better. (I also took the Aliens route when I saw it.)
/end/. And since the movie hadn't given me any reason to think for over 2 hours (Infact, I had been punished for doing it previously, by getting annoyed.) I'm not going to start thinking in the last 15 minutes.
I think that the reason I (and many others) didn't catch it was that I absolutely hated the entire movie. I get really annoyed when script writers can't be bothered to keep their universe intact for 2 hours. In AI one of the first problems like this was that when David ate all the food dropped on his mainboard. (Which engineeer would be so incredibly stupid to design a mecha like that? If you are going to have a mouth than either put a bag on other end or a pipe which leads anything through the body.) And he short ciruited.
Later in the movie David falls into a swimming pool. Apparently he has his mouth closed because as if by magic no water comes in to short circuit him this time.
Besides that the movie was dripping with poor attempts of pathos. "Ooooh loooook, poor David, the humans are so mean to him. Don't you feel sad for him?" No, I personally felt like I wanted a big bat and 5 minutes alone with Spielberg and whoever was around him at the time of production.
Part of the problem is most likely that I'm a big Kubrick fan. I couldn't help but thinking, "What if Kubrick had made this?". When I got to the end of the movie I didn't try to solve the aliens-mecha puzzle. I wanted the movie to
And don't get me started on Minority Report.
The article talks about the problem of westernizing the manga. Why don't they just avoid the problem like Tokyopop has? Personally I actually prefer the back to front way of reading to a psuedocorrected format.
Eg in the editorial notes to the manga "Blade - of the immortal" the problem is discussed. Here they also comment (brag) about how detailed their transition has been. They have tried not to mirror the images and instead swap places of the comic squares within the page so that they are read left to right. Naturally this means additional work as some parts can't be manupulated like this, and likewize can't simply be mirrored. Instead those parts have to be redrawn.
But I still managed to find places where a person suddenly was sitting on the left side of the main character instead of the right. It just seems like a waste of time to me.
Another nice game if you're into math and science is the Traveller series. Currently up in version 4.5 or somesuch. (It's now GURPS based.) Also commonly refered to as Marc Miller's Traveller.
The big math and engineering part is that there is an addon called Fire Fusion and Steel. That book describes all rules used to design weapons and star/spaceships in the game. Also a lot of the ideas used in game are explained (plasma rifles, different propulsion systems etc.) as well as some alternative ways of doing things. (Eg suggestion for how to make a campaign using the basic rules but with only solar sail powered spacecraft.)
Really it's quite similar to the books about how stuff in Star Trek work. Only you can actually do something about the stuff you think suck.
Unfortuantely the series haven't done too well. So there's not much material for it. OTOH that mean that you won't get sucked into a TSR situation which drains your wallet faster than a drug addiction.
Very true. But I can't help feeling that that game would have been much more interesting if there had been a multiplayer option. For coop naturally.
Most PnP RPGs, and a lot CRPGs as well, are based around the idea of the party. But Morrowind is based around the single character. Playing in first person is really great for the immersiveness though. When going down in hunted tombs at least I felt quite uneasy about it.
I think it's mainly a difference between the Xbox's and other consoles. The XBox is quite similar to a normal PC and thus can do things in a similar way.
/Huge/ world, and just as with Fallout2 it's largely an amoral one. Thus you can play a thug or a valliant knight, but your behaviour has influences naturally.
In this specific case I'm talking about having an internal harddrive. Since the XBox has that it's capable of doing CRPG's in the same way as PC do it. Ie a very large world which you can manipulate. This doesn't work as well on consoles since you have to be able to store all that data between sessions.
And if you like the Fallout games then check out "Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura" if you haven't already.
Well you see, the trick they used in the James Bond movies was that /there was actually no car there/. It's generally a lot easier add an invisible car than to remove a visible one.
Yeah yeah, I'm being mildly sarcastic here. My point being that if you actually made the "Vanish" IRL the result would be more similar to what this guy has than to the the digitally processed movie.
Since you're using Linux anyways why not go with LVM instead? It has the same features as RAID0 but is designed to be more flexible in drive management. If you go with a basic FS (ext 2 for instance) I'd think that your chances of extracting data from a failed array could be pretty good too. (Though I haven't tried it.)
I had a LV of 200G+ fail on me however, so now I'm back with JBOD. RAID5 is problably going to be my next bet for at least some redundancy.
Just in case you're not trolling:
The integrated "RAID" controllers are software RAID, but done in drivers instead of in the kernel. (As in Linux RAID.) In the article they included a software RAID card (The High Point card.) for some reason.
I also have a "RAID" on my MB, it's only useful as an additional IDE controller though. No way that I'll use the built in RAID function for security. But as JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) it's good. (And that's how I use it.)