Don't tell me you've forgotten that whole "Axis of Evil" propaganda? A quick war (AKA "lopsided massacre") in Iraq just means we'll be attacking Iran sooner rather than later. Or if they're smart enough to take the initiative rather than waiting for the US to prepare, they'll attack us and stand a chance. Of course then we wouldn't have to cook up an excuse for war.
Of course we may not feel like going after a country as big as Iran immediately. So we may detour to Syria first.
Fact is, Iraq will make an extremely convenient base - centrally located, shares borders with two regimes that don't do what we tell them to and two others that don't always cooperate, abundant energy resources, well developed infrastructure, weakened by years of embargo, and a major port capable of handling large ships.
Domino effect my ass. If anything is going to be turning muslim nations "democratic" (otherwise known as US proxy regimes) it'll be our overwhelmingly powerful military. It's all part of the neocon plan, which has been outlined explicitly. And once we're in Iraq it will be impossible to leave.
I was watching a call-in show on C-Span. A bunch of people called in saying that because we're at war, you have to support the President, and anything less would be traitorous. Garbage. He and his ilk have created a situation that will keep us at war for years to come. Only a fool would support a president for a crisis of his own creation. But I'm sure he thinks so. He seems like the kind of self-righteous asshole that would run for a third term - "To ensure the stability of the nation in these times of danger" of course.
(Yes, I posted this on an earlier article but that was just an hour ago, obviously I was late)
It's an even more intriguing question to ask, "how can we make other key technologies last for hundreds if not thousands of years?" Computers and information archives of all kinds; vehicles, terrestrial or otherwise; renewable power generators; and so forth.
People go on and on about the hydrogen future, but it's a mere distraction. Hydrogen will not replace oil, or coal, or gas. It may replace gasoline. Because hydrogen is an intermediate energy form - it's temporary storage between production/harvesting of energy and use of energy. And for all its supposed advantages, it's got a lot of faults. IMHO, diesel/biodiesel is a much more flexible and practical intermediate fuel - and if anyone could come up with a better battery, it would beat both.
The real question is energy generation/production/harvesting. We need to stop shipping in oil and burning up coal and start harvesting it from renewable (AKA "effectively infinite") sources, particularly the ones with low environmental impact. That means solar, wind, microhydro, biodiesel, cellulositic ethanol, tidal and current turbines, and geothermal. We need on-site off-grid power generation. We need to distribute energy generation and storages so that we don't need delicate, wasteful shipping methods - be they the power grid or fuel trucks. And we need to stop letting everyone get away with building structures and devices that waste energy with wild abandon.
Long story short - hydrogen may have potential, but it's being sold like snake oil and it's years away from reality. If we focused on simpler, proven technologies and put some real effort into some rather obvious fields of research (like high efficiency solar) we could have a working system in much shorter order.
I tried something like that too. When my iBook dual usb 2001 battery was starting to run down faster and faster, I lowered the screen brightness to minimum and turned off all programs except bbedit. Lo and behold, it ran for hours even after it reached 0%.
My theory is that the battery is somehow not providing enough voltage to run the computer (or the computer is requiring more voltage than the battery can provide) which shuts itself down, even though its capacity is not terribly diminished.
I tried that again recently (now that my comp gets about 2 minutes of battery life) but it didn't work. My battery only shows a green flashing light on the bottom indicating it is empty.
For the record, I'm getting less than 5 min of life on my battery (which I now use only because it still works for sleep). Now that I think about it, it has been progressing this way since after upgrading to 10.2.4.
Any hope for a software fix? My trusty Wallstreet never had this problem.
The key would be to make a system such that you never have to give out anything that is supposedly a secret. Or rather, the dual keys. Your public key is your public identifier, your private key is your verifier. Build the encryption/decryption/data storage chip right into the card. The simplest card would require an external device to work. A fancier card could do it all on its own, including making transactions directly with other cards or over phone lines with a built-in simplified special-purpose low-power 2-way modem. You'd probably want to have a simple way of using the card with computers (USB?) for online transactions as well. Newer phones could be built to interact with them. And since that card/account could cover a wide range of functions - including all monetary ones, in a smart and integrated manner - it could actually simplify things.
I tried to come up with a way to use these cards independent of a central authority for money-issuing or identity verification. It was based on an advanced IOU system. I couldn't. Every monetary or identifying transaction ultimately relies on authoritative bodies in which we have almost complete trust. We trust the treasury and Fed to print cash that is impossible to duplicate. We trust our banks and the regulatory agencies to scrupulously manage our accounts, and not have them or anybody else monkeying with them. And we trust the government to ensure people are not allowed to commit fraud, punish those who do, and provide modes of compensation for those who have been defrauded. You might be able to streamline the system, or even make it peer oriented to some degree, but without oversight and authority it would be too easy and too tempting to exploit the system.
That's the whole problem with the current system. It IS easily abused. People DO get away with it. And you DO get hurt. For trivial (underage drinking) and non-trivial (Identity theft) matters. Precisely because there is no effective way of proving you are who you say you are and not someone else. You might assume that such isolated events are something the system can bear, and has been designed to do so, without impinging on the sort of semi-anonymity we have enjoyed in the post-cash era. But in the wake of systematic, massive identity thefts like these I don't think we can possess that sort of semi-anonymity anymore.
I'm not sure how much to trust the government if it has the ability to peer into your data. I like to think that as a democracy the populace should have strict laws protecting our right to oversight over the actions of all branches of our government - like the FIA laws, but more immediate. But I sure as hell don't trust the weak protection we have now against theives.
A better question would be "why the hell is everyone pretending a heavily distributed 10 digit number printed on an easily duplicated piece of paper is a viable means of identity verification?"
It's just plain dumb. Your SS number is no more a secret than your driver's license number. In fact, it's less of a secret since more places request it of you. And the card is easier to fake than even the most rudimentary fake id.
If you wonder whether a national ID system will ever come into being, you need look no further than large scale data thefts like these. In the wired world, being able to prove you are who you are (and be secure in the knowledge that someone else can not prove they are you) has never been more important. As online electronic transactions replace face to face paper ones, the same efforts taken to prevent counterfeiting and theft of cash will be necessary to prevent the equivalent cybercrimes.
Personally, I wouldn't mind if I only needed one card instead of a wallet full of them, with all my accounts cleverly linked to it.
Special IDs like school cards are meant for quick visual verification of identity and enrollment. Reference cards like my insurance and calling cards are meant to be read. Gift cards like Best Buy are meant to be given as physical item. Data cards, like my subway stamp card, need to cary special information. Everything else - ATM, cash, credit, ID, store membership, and so forth could be rolled into one rigorously protected and verified universal card. If you're really fancy, maybe even one that can store and display custom data, including reference and special ID.
The thing that bugs me is that the material necessary doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to make carbon nanotubes of arbitrary length and consistent shape. Last I heard, they could barely make them 1mm long! They haven't even managed it to live up to its theoretical strength in the lab.
Furthermore, they know very well that nanotubes don't like to crosslink with anything. Nanotubes are basically graphite (a planar form of carbon) wrapped into a tube shape. Graphite and nanotubes have a highly stable resonant structure, with no electrons free to bond with anything else. That's why graphite is used in pencils - the graphite layers slide right over each other. In nanotubes, there are no electrons available to bond and thus no bonding, no crosslinking, no nothing. They'll slide right through any matrix they're embedded in.
In other words, though the strength of the material seems very promising at first glance, they've got a lot of work to do for a practical solution. Remember, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Off topic, an elevator climbing the ribbon would require a lot of energy. One descending the ribbon could actually generate energy, certainly enough to support its own operation, maybe enough to help power those going up under the right circumstances.
Yeah, who determines what stories make it through, anyway? Because no story I've ever suggested has made it through, not even "Autonomous Slug-eating Robots". The faq says the "authors" select them, but how and why? Why not leave it to the subscribers instead?
Speaking of which, it would be a nice feature if the stories you submit still show up on your personal page, even if they are rejected.
All hail GW, the divinely inspired boy king of the world! May he grant us safety and rain spite upon his enemies! YEEEEE-HAW!
Seriously though, when you fail to question and if necessary confront the truth of the supposed higher powers, you are weak-minded. And if you believe that that higher power absolves you of some power, responsibility, and choice over your own actions, you are a tool.
The fact is, nobody who is informed on the subject regards Newton as having been a true scientist. He was ahead of his time but still living in the dark ages. Modern science demands that theories stand on their own merits regardless of who discovered them, and his discoveries and accomplishements were no exception. Relativistic and Quantum physics have proved themselves superior to Newtonian physics in every way except simplicity of calculation (nor are they spared the same rigors).
That's why we remember Newton for his gravitational mechanics and work on calculus, and not for his preposterous and largely forgotten mysticism.
As it is based on BSD Unix, OS X is already rather portable. And there is ample evidence that Apple has a backup plan to bring OS X to the X86 architecture, if need be. Their hardware practices have moved from using custom chips in pre-system 8 towards standardized architectures. The only real distinction these days from the rest of the market is their choice of the PowerPC processor. For now I think they're intent on perfecting OS X on controlled apple hardware, but they may very well go for the Intel box market in the future when the time is right.
Adult Swim sure, Toonami no way!
on
Giant Mecha News
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· Score: 1
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Alpha? Eva is clearly not Toonami material. Between all the underaged fan service, constant bounce, sex, occasionally savage if not graphic violence, and religious controversy, what exactly is it that's meant for tweenagers? I have no idea what they're thinking, except perhaps that they're not.
Interestingly, when Evangelion was originally aired in Japan - also at 5pm - many parents did vocally object for the exact reasons I mentioned above. Apparently, the broadcasters took one look at it, said, "Ah, giant robots" and slapped it on TV without realizing what they were doing. Just goes to show, history is bound to repeat itself.
An alternative might be to disperse the medicine in degassed water, which is already produced on a large scale by the oil industry.
You're telling me the oil industry itself makes degassed water on a large scale - for some unmentioned reason - and didn't discover this researcher's claims that oil and degassed water spontaneously emulsify? What's up with that?
DSL has been shall we say "less than optimal" in a number of ways compared to other technologies. Like how it chokes on simultaneous uploads and downloads.
This will force Covad to come up with other solutions. Like last-mile wireless, or possibly ethernet or fiber.
It won't boot up too fast if it's weighed down by too much stuff.
Clearly, it should stick only to vital system functions (especially repair, perhaps online) and perhaps user functions (email, calendar, [help] browsing), and leave the rest to the real OS.
They won't let the Pentagon spy on Americans? That's OK, I'm sure we can find somebody else to do it for us, and return the favor to them, since we are allowed to spy on foreigners.
You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Just don't lie to me, pal. Not that I'd know if you were.
Like that'll stop people from linking to the previous article. I doubt half the people on/. even bother to read the whole story or click on the links before jumping to the comments.
I'm not saying it's bad, in fact I totally agree with you. Perfect Blue, for example, is generally pretty realistic, but has a couple of hallucinatory/dream sequences that subtly but powerfully utilize the flexibility of animation. They were demonstrated things that couldn't be filmed in a conventional manner at all, even with special effects. Animation as an artistic medium made them both possible and within the context of the movie plausible. Those scenes helped the movie, but did not define it. Grave of the Fireflies didn't utilize animation in that regard but was still a good movie, with the stylistic freedom of animation.
Unfortunately, such movies are very few and far between. It tends to stereotype the medium of animation, which is a damn shame. The effect is even worse in the US, where animation is stereotyped as being for children. And in both countries they suffer from producers who think eye candy can make up deficiencies in the more basic elements of storytelling (like FF:TSW).
So what we need is not for people to stop using animation instead of live-action-with-effects, but for people to make movies that aren't based on effects, just because they want to, and to convince the public there's more to animation than they thought.
The majority of anime falls under the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre. Most of the rest are Action or Romance or Sitcoms of some sort. There are actually very few anime films that are simply the high-quality non-fanboy adult-level dramas that could win a best picture award. (Note however that LOTR fails this test also).
Two notable exceptions: Grave of the Fireflies and Perfect Blue. The former is probably one of the best films of all time.
I suppose this is because of the money, and because animation lends itself so easily to "effects movies" that would be otherwise unfeasible. Manga, which most anime is based on, caters to a smaller audience and is much cheaper to make, and as a result has a much wider thematic range. But you don't see that variety making it into anime often.
Only in California... since there's no lack of questionable business practices regarding Microsoft and Virus software makers (namely if MS software weren't so full of holes there wouldn't be much of a need for virus protection) one wonders why she picked this issue.
It wasn't just that communism failed to solve these problems - it made them worse and added new ones. The dictatorship of the proletariat never materialized, just dictatorships. Draconian, murderous, thought-policing dictatorships. It's a sociopolitical theory that has failed time and again in the real world, but never lacks for proponents thanks to its ideological purity that offers answers to all problems and looks good on paper.
Of course, the notion of purity and perfection being equivalent to good is complete bullshit, but I digress.
Every system is going to have problems and weaknesses to go with its positive aspects and strengths. Some systems are inherently better or worse than others (communism having proved itself absolutely horrible). What makes a system good is its ability to adapt to changes and deliver on its promises without imposing onerous burdens.
Certainly there a problems with the current capitalist/corporatist/democratic situation. The chief warning signs being, in my book, the decline of the middle class, increasing corruption in the media, and erosion of previously guaranteed and active rights respectively. The correct course of action under these situations is for people, individually and collectively, to attempt to remedy conditions like these within the existing system, WHICH IT WAS SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED FOR. Revolution would be massive overkill of very dubious merit.
Slashdot Mirror
In defense of Logarithms and Exponentials, they have far more meaning and utility than this war.
Don't tell me you've forgotten that whole "Axis of Evil" propaganda? A quick war (AKA "lopsided massacre") in Iraq just means we'll be attacking Iran sooner rather than later. Or if they're smart enough to take the initiative rather than waiting for the US to prepare, they'll attack us and stand a chance. Of course then we wouldn't have to cook up an excuse for war.
Of course we may not feel like going after a country as big as Iran immediately. So we may detour to Syria first.
Fact is, Iraq will make an extremely convenient base - centrally located, shares borders with two regimes that don't do what we tell them to and two others that don't always cooperate, abundant energy resources, well developed infrastructure, weakened by years of embargo, and a major port capable of handling large ships.
Domino effect my ass. If anything is going to be turning muslim nations "democratic" (otherwise known as US proxy regimes) it'll be our overwhelmingly powerful military. It's all part of the neocon plan, which has been outlined explicitly. And once we're in Iraq it will be impossible to leave.
I was watching a call-in show on C-Span. A bunch of people called in saying that because we're at war, you have to support the President, and anything less would be traitorous. Garbage. He and his ilk have created a situation that will keep us at war for years to come. Only a fool would support a president for a crisis of his own creation. But I'm sure he thinks so. He seems like the kind of self-righteous asshole that would run for a third term - "To ensure the stability of the nation in these times of danger" of course.
(Yes, I posted this on an earlier article but that was just an hour ago, obviously I was late)
It's an even more intriguing question to ask, "how can we make other key technologies last for hundreds if not thousands of years?" Computers and information archives of all kinds; vehicles, terrestrial or otherwise; renewable power generators; and so forth.
People go on and on about the hydrogen future, but it's a mere distraction. Hydrogen will not replace oil, or coal, or gas. It may replace gasoline. Because hydrogen is an intermediate energy form - it's temporary storage between production/harvesting of energy and use of energy. And for all its supposed advantages, it's got a lot of faults. IMHO, diesel/biodiesel is a much more flexible and practical intermediate fuel - and if anyone could come up with a better battery, it would beat both.
The real question is energy generation/production/harvesting. We need to stop shipping in oil and burning up coal and start harvesting it from renewable (AKA "effectively infinite") sources, particularly the ones with low environmental impact. That means solar, wind, microhydro, biodiesel, cellulositic ethanol, tidal and current turbines, and geothermal. We need on-site off-grid power generation. We need to distribute energy generation and storages so that we don't need delicate, wasteful shipping methods - be they the power grid or fuel trucks. And we need to stop letting everyone get away with building structures and devices that waste energy with wild abandon.
Long story short - hydrogen may have potential, but it's being sold like snake oil and it's years away from reality. If we focused on simpler, proven technologies and put some real effort into some rather obvious fields of research (like high efficiency solar) we could have a working system in much shorter order.
I tried something like that too. When my iBook dual usb 2001 battery was starting to run down faster and faster, I lowered the screen brightness to minimum and turned off all programs except bbedit. Lo and behold, it ran for hours even after it reached 0%.
My theory is that the battery is somehow not providing enough voltage to run the computer (or the computer is requiring more voltage than the battery can provide) which shuts itself down, even though its capacity is not terribly diminished.
I tried that again recently (now that my comp gets about 2 minutes of battery life) but it didn't work. My battery only shows a green flashing light on the bottom indicating it is empty.
For the record, I'm getting less than 5 min of life on my battery (which I now use only because it still works for sleep). Now that I think about it, it has been progressing this way since after upgrading to 10.2.4.
Any hope for a software fix? My trusty Wallstreet never had this problem.
The key would be to make a system such that you never have to give out anything that is supposedly a secret. Or rather, the dual keys. Your public key is your public identifier, your private key is your verifier. Build the encryption/decryption/data storage chip right into the card. The simplest card would require an external device to work. A fancier card could do it all on its own, including making transactions directly with other cards or over phone lines with a built-in simplified special-purpose low-power 2-way modem. You'd probably want to have a simple way of using the card with computers (USB?) for online transactions as well. Newer phones could be built to interact with them. And since that card/account could cover a wide range of functions - including all monetary ones, in a smart and integrated manner - it could actually simplify things.
I tried to come up with a way to use these cards independent of a central authority for money-issuing or identity verification. It was based on an advanced IOU system. I couldn't. Every monetary or identifying transaction ultimately relies on authoritative bodies in which we have almost complete trust. We trust the treasury and Fed to print cash that is impossible to duplicate. We trust our banks and the regulatory agencies to scrupulously manage our accounts, and not have them or anybody else monkeying with them. And we trust the government to ensure people are not allowed to commit fraud, punish those who do, and provide modes of compensation for those who have been defrauded. You might be able to streamline the system, or even make it peer oriented to some degree, but without oversight and authority it would be too easy and too tempting to exploit the system.
That's the whole problem with the current system. It IS easily abused. People DO get away with it. And you DO get hurt. For trivial (underage drinking) and non-trivial (Identity theft) matters. Precisely because there is no effective way of proving you are who you say you are and not someone else. You might assume that such isolated events are something the system can bear, and has been designed to do so, without impinging on the sort of semi-anonymity we have enjoyed in the post-cash era. But in the wake of systematic, massive identity thefts like these I don't think we can possess that sort of semi-anonymity anymore.
I'm not sure how much to trust the government if it has the ability to peer into your data. I like to think that as a democracy the populace should have strict laws protecting our right to oversight over the actions of all branches of our government - like the FIA laws, but more immediate. But I sure as hell don't trust the weak protection we have now against theives.
A better question would be "why the hell is everyone pretending a heavily distributed 10 digit number printed on an easily duplicated piece of paper is a viable means of identity verification?"
It's just plain dumb. Your SS number is no more a secret than your driver's license number. In fact, it's less of a secret since more places request it of you. And the card is easier to fake than even the most rudimentary fake id.
If you wonder whether a national ID system will ever come into being, you need look no further than large scale data thefts like these. In the wired world, being able to prove you are who you are (and be secure in the knowledge that someone else can not prove they are you) has never been more important. As online electronic transactions replace face to face paper ones, the same efforts taken to prevent counterfeiting and theft of cash will be necessary to prevent the equivalent cybercrimes.
Personally, I wouldn't mind if I only needed one card instead of a wallet full of them, with all my accounts cleverly linked to it.
Special IDs like school cards are meant for quick visual verification of identity and enrollment. Reference cards like my insurance and calling cards are meant to be read. Gift cards like Best Buy are meant to be given as physical item. Data cards, like my subway stamp card, need to cary special information. Everything else - ATM, cash, credit, ID, store membership, and so forth could be rolled into one rigorously protected and verified universal card. If you're really fancy, maybe even one that can store and display custom data, including reference and special ID.
The thing that bugs me is that the material necessary doesn't exist. Nobody knows how to make carbon nanotubes of arbitrary length and consistent shape. Last I heard, they could barely make them 1mm long! They haven't even managed it to live up to its theoretical strength in the lab.
Furthermore, they know very well that nanotubes don't like to crosslink with anything. Nanotubes are basically graphite (a planar form of carbon) wrapped into a tube shape. Graphite and nanotubes have a highly stable resonant structure, with no electrons free to bond with anything else. That's why graphite is used in pencils - the graphite layers slide right over each other. In nanotubes, there are no electrons available to bond and thus no bonding, no crosslinking, no nothing. They'll slide right through any matrix they're embedded in.
In other words, though the strength of the material seems very promising at first glance, they've got a lot of work to do for a practical solution. Remember, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
Off topic, an elevator climbing the ribbon would require a lot of energy. One descending the ribbon could actually generate energy, certainly enough to support its own operation, maybe enough to help power those going up under the right circumstances.
Yeah, who determines what stories make it through, anyway? Because no story I've ever suggested has made it through, not even "Autonomous Slug-eating Robots". The faq says the "authors" select them, but how and why? Why not leave it to the subscribers instead?
Speaking of which, it would be a nice feature if the stories you submit still show up on your personal page, even if they are rejected.
Wow, just what the American "news" scene needs - more punditry and even less time for reporting.
All hail GW, the divinely inspired boy king of the world! May he grant us safety and rain spite upon his enemies! YEEEEE-HAW!
Seriously though, when you fail to question and if necessary confront the truth of the supposed higher powers, you are weak-minded. And if you believe that that higher power absolves you of some power, responsibility, and choice over your own actions, you are a tool.
The fact is, nobody who is informed on the subject regards Newton as having been a true scientist. He was ahead of his time but still living in the dark ages. Modern science demands that theories stand on their own merits regardless of who discovered them, and his discoveries and accomplishements were no exception. Relativistic and Quantum physics have proved themselves superior to Newtonian physics in every way except simplicity of calculation (nor are they spared the same rigors).
That's why we remember Newton for his gravitational mechanics and work on calculus, and not for his preposterous and largely forgotten mysticism.
As it is based on BSD Unix, OS X is already rather portable. And there is ample evidence that Apple has a backup plan to bring OS X to the X86 architecture, if need be. Their hardware practices have moved from using custom chips in pre-system 8 towards standardized architectures. The only real distinction these days from the rest of the market is their choice of the PowerPC processor. For now I think they're intent on perfecting OS X on controlled apple hardware, but they may very well go for the Intel box market in the future when the time is right.
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Alpha? Eva is clearly not Toonami material. Between all the underaged fan service, constant bounce, sex, occasionally savage if not graphic violence, and religious controversy, what exactly is it that's meant for tweenagers? I have no idea what they're thinking, except perhaps that they're not.
Interestingly, when Evangelion was originally aired in Japan - also at 5pm - many parents did vocally object for the exact reasons I mentioned above. Apparently, the broadcasters took one look at it, said, "Ah, giant robots" and slapped it on TV without realizing what they were doing. Just goes to show, history is bound to repeat itself.
From the article...
An alternative might be to disperse the medicine in degassed water, which is already produced on a large scale by the oil industry.
You're telling me the oil industry itself makes degassed water on a large scale - for some unmentioned reason - and didn't discover this researcher's claims that oil and degassed water spontaneously emulsify? What's up with that?
DSL has been shall we say "less than optimal" in a number of ways compared to other technologies. Like how it chokes on simultaneous uploads and downloads.
This will force Covad to come up with other solutions. Like last-mile wireless, or possibly ethernet or fiber.
Not likely. Otherwise they wouldn't have ADDED python recently.
IMHO, Apple should adopt fink.
It won't boot up too fast if it's weighed down by too much stuff.
Clearly, it should stick only to vital system functions (especially repair, perhaps online) and perhaps user functions (email, calendar, [help] browsing), and leave the rest to the real OS.
They won't let the Pentagon spy on Americans? That's OK, I'm sure we can find somebody else to do it for us, and return the favor to them, since we are allowed to spy on foreigners.
You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Just don't lie to me, pal. Not that I'd know if you were.
...even though I'm an os x mail.app guy.
Like that'll stop people from linking to the previous article. I doubt half the people on /. even bother to read the whole story or click on the links before jumping to the comments.
Mod me up, proles!
I'm not saying it's bad, in fact I totally agree with you. Perfect Blue, for example, is generally pretty realistic, but has a couple of hallucinatory/dream sequences that subtly but powerfully utilize the flexibility of animation. They were demonstrated things that couldn't be filmed in a conventional manner at all, even with special effects. Animation as an artistic medium made them both possible and within the context of the movie plausible. Those scenes helped the movie, but did not define it. Grave of the Fireflies didn't utilize animation in that regard but was still a good movie, with the stylistic freedom of animation.
Unfortunately, such movies are very few and far between. It tends to stereotype the medium of animation, which is a damn shame. The effect is even worse in the US, where animation is stereotyped as being for children. And in both countries they suffer from producers who think eye candy can make up deficiencies in the more basic elements of storytelling (like FF:TSW).
So what we need is not for people to stop using animation instead of live-action-with-effects, but for people to make movies that aren't based on effects, just because they want to, and to convince the public there's more to animation than they thought.
The majority of anime falls under the Sci-Fi/Fantasy genre. Most of the rest are Action or Romance or Sitcoms of some sort. There are actually very few anime films that are simply the high-quality non-fanboy adult-level dramas that could win a best picture award. (Note however that LOTR fails this test also).
Two notable exceptions: Grave of the Fireflies and Perfect Blue. The former is probably one of the best films of all time.
I suppose this is because of the money, and because animation lends itself so easily to "effects movies" that would be otherwise unfeasible. Manga, which most anime is based on, caters to a smaller audience and is much cheaper to make, and as a result has a much wider thematic range. But you don't see that variety making it into anime often.
Only in California... since there's no lack of questionable business practices regarding Microsoft and Virus software makers (namely if MS software weren't so full of holes there wouldn't be much of a need for virus protection) one wonders why she picked this issue.
It wasn't just that communism failed to solve these problems - it made them worse and added new ones. The dictatorship of the proletariat never materialized, just dictatorships. Draconian, murderous, thought-policing dictatorships. It's a sociopolitical theory that has failed time and again in the real world, but never lacks for proponents thanks to its ideological purity that offers answers to all problems and looks good on paper.
Of course, the notion of purity and perfection being equivalent to good is complete bullshit, but I digress.
Every system is going to have problems and weaknesses to go with its positive aspects and strengths. Some systems are inherently better or worse than others (communism having proved itself absolutely horrible). What makes a system good is its ability to adapt to changes and deliver on its promises without imposing onerous burdens.
Certainly there a problems with the current capitalist/corporatist/democratic situation. The chief warning signs being, in my book, the decline of the middle class, increasing corruption in the media, and erosion of previously guaranteed and active rights respectively. The correct course of action under these situations is for people, individually and collectively, to attempt to remedy conditions like these within the existing system, WHICH IT WAS SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED FOR. Revolution would be massive overkill of very dubious merit.