The picture (or at least the thumbnail versions) contains all of New England, New York, Michigan and much of the Midwest, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey. And I think a parts of the rest of the northern border states.
Shhh! It's part of Operation Snowgoose. Why do you think those States considering importing cheap prescriptions from Canada are included in the photo?;-)
At any rate, I'm still waiting for the much vaunted "Ground telescopes are better" crowd to start posting. Since most of the big discoveries are coming from the space based observatories, it's getting harder and harder to argue that "image clarity" and magnification are the end all and be all of Telescope judgement.
Not really. As I understand it, it was seen pretty much as a theory that happened to explain certain things, but theories don't mean much until they correctly predict/explain something not originally intended.
Which happened fairly quickly with his prediction about the diffraction of light due to gravity which was proved before 1920 and made Einstein an overnight sensation not just in Physics but in the well-read general public. One biography of Einstein said because this was just after the end of WWI, people were looking for any sort of good news about the world.
I got the impression that Relativity was quite trendy and the "hip" thing for prominent physicists to talk about and investigate. The only real doubter I ever read about was Michaelson who had inadvertantly provided some evidence pointing to relativity. Normally, doubters of famous theories do get preserved in history, if only for ridiculing them. But I haven't read any history of science that shows there were a lot of vehement doubters.
Although if you want to talk about theories that were a hit but with a strong reactionary backlash, let's talk about the Big Bang theory. There are still astronomers from the "old school" Steady State model trying to write popular science books to get the public to reject the Big Bang.
...but there's a difference between saying that many people might benefit from coding, and professionals will be unable to do anything but manual labor without coding experience.
Good point. The author was probably exaggerating for the benefit of attracting readership. I don't think it'll be "Coding or the work camps for you!", but a question of who does really well and who doesn't. Kind of like having a Business degree to augment your expertise gives you a better chance of becoming rich than simply being an expert. He seems to believe that not being able to code will hamper you in all professions, but I don't believe there is definitive evidence either way for that prediction.
I would imagine that long before a company would ask every employee to learn to code, they would find a few people to develop the apps they need in-house.
But that's viewing programming as Big App oriented. A lot of code will be written like FORTRAN used to be: lots of small things scattered all over the place. A lot of enterprises already have dozens or more of these mini-apps. One sales manager might use MS Access to manage his customer contact information; a project manager creates the Excel spreadsheet/macros from Hell to do project estimation. Because they can do a little bit of coding, they will be more productive that their counterparts who don't. And in the end, the productive employees are kept.
Not everyone is going to work on Big App projects. It's just that if they want to get that little, annoying but time consuming task done faster, the productive will program their computers. Non-programmers will become a slave to their computers manually doing something that could be done with code, and the author's argument was if your job's existence only depends on doing something that code can do, you will be replaced by code. So to thrive in tomorrow's job market, you gotta be just that little bit smarter than the rest, and he argues coding will be that edge.
And it's not like you can go to the IT department for help anymore. More and more companies outsource their IT so going for that help can prove to be really expensive, so if you can do these small things for yourself, you will have an edge over the one who can't. And in this age of cutting staffing to the bare minimum, the more productive employees and professionals will survive. That's what I thought his argument meant.
Having said that, this does suggest a strong opportunity for some creative entrepeneur: creating a "coding" environment that lets non-programmers program their applications and computers without becoming a hard core programmer. Hypercard was a step in that direction. A more specialized version is Flash and Shockwave. Visual Basic for Applications is a massive step backwards, IMHO.
For the record, I work for an IT outsourcing company and I am "embedded" with the client. I do a lot of this little grunt work on a fixed cost basis. A small macro or a small app can go a long way to improving someone's productivity.;-)
One other problem is that in the PC industry, hardware product lifespans are 2-3 years.
Unfortunately, game console lifespans are 5-7 years.
Bingo! Because Sony owns the plant, a 5-7 year lifespan suddenly becomes an asset instead of a liability. A lot of electronics have to be designed with "future compatibility" in mind. I.e., you ship out your consumer electronic product and you want to make sure your authorized repair places can still get parts for the damned thing 5-7 years down the road.
Dealing with companies like Intel who like the shut down a line almost immediately after its run its shipping lots makes this whole exercise that much more painful.
As I've stated elsewhere, if someone tries to convince me that a doctor or lawyer's time is best spent coding, I'm going to call bullshit. That's what programmers are for -- I wouldn't expect a coder to diagnose illness, and I wouldn't expect a doctor to write code.
I think I know what you're getting at now, and now that I think about it more carefully, I'm beginning to see what the author of the article's point was.
For years, Astronomers have written their own code. Theoretical physicists write their own code. You're treating programming as a rarified art that can be safely left only to the coders, but that's not ever been true. There are lots of professions where programming knowledge is not only useful, but essential. They don't hire Comp Sci grads to write chemical analysis software. Accountants prefer to have accountants write and design critical accounting software (I know a few accountants so sue me:-)). Accountants still have to verify the code and final binary before it can be certified for use in certain situations, and that does require knowing something about code so they can read it and verify it.
Programming is not the same as being a doctor. It might, at best, be like being a lawyer. There is a need for professionals who devote their time to it, but everyone has to have some understandind of the legal system or be screwed by it. In most of Canada, consumer education is mandatory for high school graduation and it also includes basic law that every citizen should know. Doctors especially have to know the law. Why isn't programming like the law in this case?
In the case of programming, sure not everyone is going to be an expert coder, but there are an increasing number of professions where having familiarity with programming is important. Whether or not *every* profession will be affected is debatable, but you can't deny that programming isn't, and never has been, the exclusive domain of Computing Science types.
Sure, not everyone has to become an expert coder, but programming is slowly creeping into a lot of professions. Getting a good job with a pure Comp Sci degree is getting difficult. I needed at least a Geography minor to get into GIS, and the analysts I work with are Geography majors with Comp Sci or InfoTech minors. There are countless other professions like expert machiners who need to know how to program a CAM lathe. Even though it isn't VB or C, it is still programming a computer.
I think the author does have a point: programming is becoming more pervasive, and what will separate the expendable from the indispensable is your ability to control the machine.
Considering Intel's stock was doing a slow decline today, I'd say not well. Something tells me Intel will retaliate, and that Palladium initiative may find itself having "problems" very soon.;-)
You seem to confuse being able to perform normal
maintenance (changing oil, inspecting various components, checking
fluid levels, etc.) with understanding how, say, a limited-slip
differential or CV joint works.
That level of knowledge is akin to assembly language and digital
circuit design. Programming experience isn't about that level of knowledge
about the computer; you're using a C or assembly view of programming.
There are lots of higher level languages users can learn and be aware
of, and that's my impression of the author's point. He said that the
user interface has completely hidden the nature of the computer, and
that as long as people only have that kind of relationship, they can
end up serving the machine instead of the other way round.
Cars have not completely hidden the nature of their machinery. The
average driver may not know what a friction plate is, but if they
drive standard, they have to know that you need to engage and
disengage the clutch to change gears. The average driver is painfully
aware the car needs gas and oil changes. Windows XP and the Mac have
hidden all that from the users so you either have to call tech support
or a really knowledgable friend to fix your computer when it goes
down. The user who has no idea how a virus works is more vulnerable
to infection than one who knows how Outlook Express behave with
regards to attachments. You become at the mercy of the machine if you
don't have any idea what the nature of the machine really is.
But he also made a more specific point. He's saying that if you
only have a superficial relationship with your computer, then you have
no job security. A secretary or admin clerk with zilch programming
experience vs. one who has some knowledge of how to use VBA will have
radically different productivity rates. I've seen it here at work how
a little knowledge of VBA improves their productivity thus making them
more valuable employees and thus giving them better job security than
the poor user who only knows how to mechanically enter and tabulate
data.
He's saying most people are doing such menial jobs in the
information sector that they could easily be replaced by a machine.
If you don't want to be replacable like that, you need to develop
skills a computer still doesn't have: creativity and the ability to
instruct (or program) the machine. People who could merely use
DreamWeaver were the first to lose their jobs when the Dot Bomb hit.
But those who either had the creativity to design and draw, or a
good knowledge of HTML and Javascript (not just how to drag n drop in
Dreamweaver), found they could either keep their jobs or find new work
faster. So the secret, he argues, is either be creative or be a
programmer.
And I don't like SUVs. If I wanted something tall with
tons of cargo room that handled much worse than the average car, I'd
drive a minivan.
Good for you! Now to convince the rest of them.:-)
Others have addressed the specific point, but as for your claim about cars:
that in the future people would have to know how every drivetrain component works in order to drive or face losing the ability to use public roads.
Pretty much true to keep your car on the road unless you want to either a) pay LOTS of your hard earned money to someone who does, or b) take some time to understand what the basic components are and how they are maintained.
If you don't know that your drive train needs to be inspected every 200,000 miles, your car could be an immobile artifact on the side of the road. If you don't know how to check the oil in your car, you could end up losing your engine block.
This argument that "we don't need to know anything about the inner workings of the car" is bupkis. You use standard transmission on your favorite SUV? That's a rather obvious exposure of the machine to the driver.
This is a side topic, but saying one can be blissfully ignorant of how the machine works for you is just a recipie for the machine to work you.
There's an anime called Angelic Layer that uses this basic idea and extends it to controlling a small robot fighter in a virtual environment.
There's all sorts of interesting game ideas you could take from this. Of course, as others mentioned, death match FPS will never be the same.
Re:Well, since the conclusion of his last book
on
Human Accomplishment
·
· Score: 1
If you ask the question, "Are there really differences between races?" and eliminate "Yes" as a possible answer, you aren't being intellectually honest.
Science has asked that question, and found no consistent differences. So far, the only genetic marker that really seems to identify a race is the Jewish "Cohen" marker on the X-Chromosome. The rest are not unique enough within a "race" to be considered a reliable generalization. A gene may appear in two (and only two) completely separate "races". Does that mean these two should be considered one "race"?
When you really get into it, you're forced to ask: What do we mean by race? Is it just skin colour?
If you really want to get into more of this, and an interesting rebuttal to the Bell Curve, read Stephen Gould's Mismeasure of a Man. Try to remember: Gould made a name for himself by becoming the expert at identifying inheritable traits in the fossil record and tracing species through time. He knows a thing or two.;-)
Well to be fair, Nova is a coproduction of the BBC and WGBH, one has a lot more money...
Yes, WGBH Boston, so you have to wonder what their excuse is.
NOVA is not a co-production with the BBC. It's an all-American show that sometimes teams up with international TV producers to make shows. E.g., they've teamed up with just NHK a number of times and they often co-pro for specific shows with a German TV broadcaster as well as the BBC so that's why it seems like it's a co-pro. When the same show airs in England, it's usually on Horizon. Although lately, they've teamed up more with Channel 4 rather than the BBC lately...
Wouldn't you love to sit in on some of those presentations rather than waiting to hear about one of them in a 30-second encapsulation on network TV?
No, I wouldn't. Most of these presentations are duller than paint drying, and I've seen video of ones I was interested in. Also, Michael sounds like he wants it to be the Skeptics Network. I think the Skeptics movement are their own worst enemy. They sound as shrill as the people they're attacking.
I would love real science on the Discovery channel and TLC (back when it used to do that occasionaly), but you know what needs to happen first? More content. More production. That costs money. Real money. Horizon by the BBC kicks Nova's ass most of the time, and when it doesn't, it's because Nova is actually showing a Horizon documentary with Peter Coyote narating instead.
We need documentary makers who'll make interesting documentaries about math, physics and other hard sciences. I'm sick of the "animal/nature" specials that are nothing more than an hour of "Awww! Look at the *cute* animals!" Feh! At least Steve Irwin makes it interesting.
If you want to do an animal show, do it like Sir David Attenburough and make it about the science. I want the details. I want the cold, rational view of things that teaches me things I didn't know. You can talk about the philosophical or subjective aspects of it too, but it's first about the science, then the human side. Example: Industrial Revelations with Mark Williams for Discovery Networks Europe. All too often (like in Horizon/Nova's doc about Fermat's Last Equation), it's only about the human side.
Dubs outsell subtitled versions on VHS like 10:1. There's a lot of people who like them.
What annoys me is the poor quality of the voice actors and sound mixing. Disney at least puts some effort into getting people who can act and makes a damned good effort at sound mixing.
Compare that to Pioneer Entertainment which
hires the wrong voice actors
makes little effort at emotionally matching the characters
records the voices "hot" (recording levels right at the hot line so the level will actually peak out)
barely adds any environmental effects
and mixes it louder than the original Japanese voice tracks.
Their dubs float on top of the film as opposed to feeling a natural part of it. Kind of like someone using liquid paper(TM) to white out text on a computer screen then writing on top of it.
BTW, apologies to the recording geeks if I made a mistake in describing the audio terminology. Hopefully you still got what I meant.:-)
Yes, it's all coming out on DVD. Disney got a distribution deal for Japan & North America (I don't know if they have it Worldwide) for all of Ghibli's back catalog. They released Spirited Away, Castle in the Sky and Kiki's Delivery Service earlier this year. Now we just need to know what the 3rd movie will be. They seem to like releasing them in groups of 3.
It's Mother Nature's own nanotech. The proteins are like Maxwell's Demon but for water. Anything else is kept out and only H20 is passed in.
Remember osmosis from high school biology? This is the mechanism that makes it work.
The most remarkable thing is so much of this work used computational models of the proteins to understand how they work. This is one of those discoveries that become the basis for real cool SF science. We can now model, construct and manipulate structures on the atomic level.
... as a kid I remember Tom Baker being the best, but I personally prefer Pertwee and Davison now.
I feel vindicated. I kept saying Pertwee and Davison were better than Baker, but nooooo... All my friends in high school kept insisting Baker was better. Actually, what they said was: "What a pathetic loser!" but that's irrelevant now.:-)
You all laughed at me in the Computing Science lab! "Why are you using vi? Get with the times, at least use Emacs." But I preservered.
I got my Amiga, and what editor did I end up using in favor of everything including for my word processing needs? Yup, a vi clone.
When I got my PC a couple years ago, the happiest day for me was finding out ready and waiting for me was my beloved vi. Cleaned up, slicked up and VIMproved. I still love using vi. Mouse? Why would I want to slow down? Can you use Notepad's Search & Replace command to change a tab-delimited data file into properly formatted C code? I think NOT!
VI will outlive them all! After the nuclear war, the cockroaches will rebuild society and use VI as their editor of choice. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
It was nice to read this article again; I had only read part of it before. What I like is a LISP fetishist owning up to the problems of his language community then encouraging them to be (gasps of horror) practical.
Slashdot Mirror
is a group I want to join!!! :-)
Shhh! It's part of Operation Snowgoose. Why do you think those States considering importing cheap prescriptions from Canada are included in the photo? ;-)
Free medicare for you!
A target for AC Troll jokes:
* Spitz-or swallows?
At any rate, I'm still waiting for the much vaunted "Ground telescopes are better" crowd to start posting. Since most of the big discoveries are coming from the space based observatories, it's getting harder and harder to argue that "image clarity" and magnification are the end all and be all of Telescope judgement.
Which happened fairly quickly with his prediction about the diffraction of light due to gravity which was proved before 1920 and made Einstein an overnight sensation not just in Physics but in the well-read general public. One biography of Einstein said because this was just after the end of WWI, people were looking for any sort of good news about the world.
I got the impression that Relativity was quite trendy and the "hip" thing for prominent physicists to talk about and investigate. The only real doubter I ever read about was Michaelson who had inadvertantly provided some evidence pointing to relativity. Normally, doubters of famous theories do get preserved in history, if only for ridiculing them. But I haven't read any history of science that shows there were a lot of vehement doubters.
Although if you want to talk about theories that were a hit but with a strong reactionary backlash, let's talk about the Big Bang theory. There are still astronomers from the "old school" Steady State model trying to write popular science books to get the public to reject the Big Bang.
Good point. The author was probably exaggerating for the benefit of attracting readership. I don't think it'll be "Coding or the work camps for you!", but a question of who does really well and who doesn't. Kind of like having a Business degree to augment your expertise gives you a better chance of becoming rich than simply being an expert. He seems to believe that not being able to code will hamper you in all professions, but I don't believe there is definitive evidence either way for that prediction.
But that's viewing programming as Big App oriented. A lot of code will be written like FORTRAN used to be: lots of small things scattered all over the place. A lot of enterprises already have dozens or more of these mini-apps. One sales manager might use MS Access to manage his customer contact information; a project manager creates the Excel spreadsheet/macros from Hell to do project estimation. Because they can do a little bit of coding, they will be more productive that their counterparts who don't. And in the end, the productive employees are kept.
Not everyone is going to work on Big App projects. It's just that if they want to get that little, annoying but time consuming task done faster, the productive will program their computers. Non-programmers will become a slave to their computers manually doing something that could be done with code, and the author's argument was if your job's existence only depends on doing something that code can do, you will be replaced by code. So to thrive in tomorrow's job market, you gotta be just that little bit smarter than the rest, and he argues coding will be that edge.
And it's not like you can go to the IT department for help anymore. More and more companies outsource their IT so going for that help can prove to be really expensive, so if you can do these small things for yourself, you will have an edge over the one who can't. And in this age of cutting staffing to the bare minimum, the more productive employees and professionals will survive. That's what I thought his argument meant.
Having said that, this does suggest a strong opportunity for some creative entrepeneur: creating a "coding" environment that lets non-programmers program their applications and computers without becoming a hard core programmer. Hypercard was a step in that direction. A more specialized version is Flash and Shockwave. Visual Basic for Applications is a massive step backwards, IMHO.
For the record, I work for an IT outsourcing company and I am "embedded" with the client. I do a lot of this little grunt work on a fixed cost basis. A small macro or a small app can go a long way to improving someone's productivity. ;-)
Bingo! Because Sony owns the plant, a 5-7 year lifespan suddenly becomes an asset instead of a liability. A lot of electronics have to be designed with "future compatibility" in mind. I.e., you ship out your consumer electronic product and you want to make sure your authorized repair places can still get parts for the damned thing 5-7 years down the road.
Dealing with companies like Intel who like the shut down a line almost immediately after its run its shipping lots makes this whole exercise that much more painful.
I think I know what you're getting at now, and now that I think about it more carefully, I'm beginning to see what the author of the article's point was.
For years, Astronomers have written their own code. Theoretical physicists write their own code. You're treating programming as a rarified art that can be safely left only to the coders, but that's not ever been true. There are lots of professions where programming knowledge is not only useful, but essential. They don't hire Comp Sci grads to write chemical analysis software. Accountants prefer to have accountants write and design critical accounting software (I know a few accountants so sue me :-)). Accountants still have to verify the code and final binary before it can be certified for use in certain situations, and that does require knowing something about code so they can read it and verify it.
Programming is not the same as being a doctor. It might, at best, be like being a lawyer. There is a need for professionals who devote their time to it, but everyone has to have some understandind of the legal system or be screwed by it. In most of Canada, consumer education is mandatory for high school graduation and it also includes basic law that every citizen should know. Doctors especially have to know the law. Why isn't programming like the law in this case?
In the case of programming, sure not everyone is going to be an expert coder, but there are an increasing number of professions where having familiarity with programming is important. Whether or not *every* profession will be affected is debatable, but you can't deny that programming isn't, and never has been, the exclusive domain of Computing Science types.
Sure, not everyone has to become an expert coder, but programming is slowly creeping into a lot of professions. Getting a good job with a pure Comp Sci degree is getting difficult. I needed at least a Geography minor to get into GIS, and the analysts I work with are Geography majors with Comp Sci or InfoTech minors. There are countless other professions like expert machiners who need to know how to program a CAM lathe. Even though it isn't VB or C, it is still programming a computer.
I think the author does have a point: programming is becoming more pervasive, and what will separate the expendable from the indispensable is your ability to control the machine.
Considering Intel's stock was doing a slow decline today, I'd say not well. Something tells me Intel will retaliate, and that Palladium initiative may find itself having "problems" very soon. ;-)
That level of knowledge is akin to assembly language and digital circuit design. Programming experience isn't about that level of knowledge about the computer; you're using a C or assembly view of programming. There are lots of higher level languages users can learn and be aware of, and that's my impression of the author's point. He said that the user interface has completely hidden the nature of the computer, and that as long as people only have that kind of relationship, they can end up serving the machine instead of the other way round.
Cars have not completely hidden the nature of their machinery. The average driver may not know what a friction plate is, but if they drive standard, they have to know that you need to engage and disengage the clutch to change gears. The average driver is painfully aware the car needs gas and oil changes. Windows XP and the Mac have hidden all that from the users so you either have to call tech support or a really knowledgable friend to fix your computer when it goes down. The user who has no idea how a virus works is more vulnerable to infection than one who knows how Outlook Express behave with regards to attachments. You become at the mercy of the machine if you don't have any idea what the nature of the machine really is.
But he also made a more specific point. He's saying that if you only have a superficial relationship with your computer, then you have no job security. A secretary or admin clerk with zilch programming experience vs. one who has some knowledge of how to use VBA will have radically different productivity rates. I've seen it here at work how a little knowledge of VBA improves their productivity thus making them more valuable employees and thus giving them better job security than the poor user who only knows how to mechanically enter and tabulate data.
He's saying most people are doing such menial jobs in the information sector that they could easily be replaced by a machine. If you don't want to be replacable like that, you need to develop skills a computer still doesn't have: creativity and the ability to instruct (or program) the machine. People who could merely use DreamWeaver were the first to lose their jobs when the Dot Bomb hit. But those who either had the creativity to design and draw, or a good knowledge of HTML and Javascript (not just how to drag n drop in Dreamweaver), found they could either keep their jobs or find new work faster. So the secret, he argues, is either be creative or be a programmer.
Good for you! Now to convince the rest of them. :-)
Others have addressed the specific point, but as for your claim about cars:
Pretty much true to keep your car on the road unless you want to either a) pay LOTS of your hard earned money to someone who does, or b) take some time to understand what the basic components are and how they are maintained.
If you don't know that your drive train needs to be inspected every 200,000 miles, your car could be an immobile artifact on the side of the road. If you don't know how to check the oil in your car, you could end up losing your engine block.
This argument that "we don't need to know anything about the inner workings of the car" is bupkis. You use standard transmission on your favorite SUV? That's a rather obvious exposure of the machine to the driver.
This is a side topic, but saying one can be blissfully ignorant of how the machine works for you is just a recipie for the machine to work you.
There's an anime called Angelic Layer that uses this basic idea and extends it to controlling a small robot fighter in a virtual environment.
There's all sorts of interesting game ideas you could take from this. Of course, as others mentioned, death match FPS will never be the same.
Science has asked that question, and found no consistent differences. So far, the only genetic marker that really seems to identify a race is the Jewish "Cohen" marker on the X-Chromosome. The rest are not unique enough within a "race" to be considered a reliable generalization. A gene may appear in two (and only two) completely separate "races". Does that mean these two should be considered one "race"?
When you really get into it, you're forced to ask: What do we mean by race? Is it just skin colour?
If you really want to get into more of this, and an interesting rebuttal to the Bell Curve, read Stephen Gould's Mismeasure of a Man. Try to remember: Gould made a name for himself by becoming the expert at identifying inheritable traits in the fossil record and tracing species through time. He knows a thing or two. ;-)
We don't get that in Canada. :-(
Yes, WGBH Boston, so you have to wonder what their excuse is.
NOVA is not a co-production with the BBC. It's an all-American show that sometimes teams up with international TV producers to make shows. E.g., they've teamed up with just NHK a number of times and they often co-pro for specific shows with a German TV broadcaster as well as the BBC so that's why it seems like it's a co-pro. When the same show airs in England, it's usually on Horizon. Although lately, they've teamed up more with Channel 4 rather than the BBC lately...
No, I wouldn't. Most of these presentations are duller than paint drying, and I've seen video of ones I was interested in. Also, Michael sounds like he wants it to be the Skeptics Network. I think the Skeptics movement are their own worst enemy. They sound as shrill as the people they're attacking.
I would love real science on the Discovery channel and TLC (back when it used to do that occasionaly), but you know what needs to happen first? More content. More production. That costs money. Real money. Horizon by the BBC kicks Nova's ass most of the time, and when it doesn't, it's because Nova is actually showing a Horizon documentary with Peter Coyote narating instead.
We need documentary makers who'll make interesting documentaries about math, physics and other hard sciences. I'm sick of the "animal/nature" specials that are nothing more than an hour of "Awww! Look at the *cute* animals!" Feh! At least Steve Irwin makes it interesting.
If you want to do an animal show, do it like Sir David Attenburough and make it about the science. I want the details. I want the cold, rational view of things that teaches me things I didn't know. You can talk about the philosophical or subjective aspects of it too, but it's first about the science, then the human side. Example: Industrial Revelations with Mark Williams for Discovery Networks Europe. All too often (like in Horizon/Nova's doc about Fermat's Last Equation), it's only about the human side.
Balance, people! Is that so much to ask for?
In North America, they are now released as 3 books (2 vol/book).
Dubs outsell subtitled versions on VHS like 10:1. There's a lot of people who like them.
What annoys me is the poor quality of the voice actors and sound mixing. Disney at least puts some effort into getting people who can act and makes a damned good effort at sound mixing.
Compare that to Pioneer Entertainment which
Their dubs float on top of the film as opposed to feeling a natural part of it. Kind of like someone using liquid paper(TM) to white out text on a computer screen then writing on top of it.
BTW, apologies to the recording geeks if I made a mistake in describing the audio terminology. Hopefully you still got what I meant. :-)
Yes, it's all coming out on DVD. Disney got a distribution deal for Japan & North America (I don't know if they have it Worldwide) for all of Ghibli's back catalog. They released Spirited Away, Castle in the Sky and Kiki's Delivery Service earlier this year. Now we just need to know what the 3rd movie will be. They seem to like releasing them in groups of 3.
It's Mother Nature's own nanotech. The proteins are like Maxwell's Demon but for water. Anything else is kept out and only H20 is passed in.
Remember osmosis from high school biology? This is the mechanism that makes it work.
The most remarkable thing is so much of this work used computational models of the proteins to understand how they work. This is one of those discoveries that become the basis for real cool SF science. We can now model, construct and manipulate structures on the atomic level.
Now to do it on a mass production scale...
But in those cases, the brute is also an intellectual. Batman could solve the Riddler's puzzle and beat the snot out of him.
I feel vindicated. I kept saying Pertwee and Davison were better than Baker, but nooooo... All my friends in high school kept insisting Baker was better. Actually, what they said was: "What a pathetic loser!" but that's irrelevant now. :-)
I know that. What I want to know is where's my telepathic humaniform robots!? We already have the U.S. Robotics Corporation...
You all laughed at me in the Computing Science lab! "Why are you using vi? Get with the times, at least use Emacs." But I preservered.
I got my Amiga, and what editor did I end up using in favor of everything including for my word processing needs? Yup, a vi clone.
When I got my PC a couple years ago, the happiest day for me was finding out ready and waiting for me was my beloved vi. Cleaned up, slicked up and VIMproved. I still love using vi. Mouse? Why would I want to slow down? Can you use Notepad's Search & Replace command to change a tab-delimited data file into properly formatted C code? I think NOT!
VI will outlive them all! After the nuclear war, the cockroaches will rebuild society and use VI as their editor of choice. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!
It was nice to read this article again; I had only read part of it before. What I like is a LISP fetishist owning up to the problems of his language community then encouraging them to be (gasps of horror) practical.