Re:OT: where'd all the 4/5 comments go?
on
Xbox 360 for $300
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· Score: 1
Pshaw. I haven't had mod points in forever - months, if not years, despite having near-perfect karma at all times. I suspect metamoderation has something to do with it.
It's not a matter of original ideas; it's downright copying.
Deep Impact; Armageddon A Bug's Life; Antz First Daugter; Chasing Liberty Tombstone; Wyatt Earp Volcano; Dante's Peak Finding Nemo; Shark Tale Garfield; Scooby Doo
To say nothing of the endless procession of superhero movies.
So no we have Voltron and Transformers. Admittedly, Go-Bots would have been a better match. What's Next? Alf versus Small Wonder?
The titanium dioxide particles are only a few nanometers wide. The whole power of nanoscale approaches like this one is that nanoparticles often have unique properties which they do not possess in larger particle sizes, due to the very high surface-to-volume ratio and/or limited electronic states available. In this case, TiO2 becomes reactive.
What nobody has said for some reason is that an otherwise harmless material is not necessarily harmless at the nanoscale, so you have to go back and do toxicology studies all over again. And furthermore, nanoparticles are so small that they can penetrate and embed themselves even within your living cells, where since they are minerals they may not be degraded.
In fact, TiO2 nanoparticles have been documented to be toxic. Embedding them in the surface of buildings puts them in a position where they are likely to wear off into the atmosphere or runoff water.
A dupe of a subject that never should have been posted in the first place. I know it may be hard to appreciate in this day and age, but rumors aren't news. Report new 'ware when it comes out.
Developer 1: Hey, did you hear Apple is using INTEL processors now?
Developer 2: Really? Wow, maybe our programs will be easy enough to port now. We never bothered before.
Developer 1: Yeah. Even though we use window APIs there are some solutions that make porting much easier. All you really have to do is make the interface mac-like, and it turns out apple has a tool called Interface Builder that makes that a cinch.
Developer 2: Of course we make games, so all that involves is a full screen and keyboard control. Sweet.
Developer 1: Hmm. Only problem is our program won't be compatible on legacy macs.
Developer 2: Who cares, it's too much trouble to port to any non-intel mac. We'll just skip them and work for the next generation.
Developer 1: You're right, we'll just put a notice in the requirements about intel processor macs required. Ha Ha! Fragged you bitch!
From the site: Although lighting accounts for only 3.3% of the energy use in homes, it often accounts for a large fraction of the electricity bill.
That sentence makes no sense. A small percent of use but a large percent of the bill? How does that work? Are they figuring in the pure heat BTUs from the gas/oil driven appliances? If so it means little, since we've been talking about electricity here.
Sorry, but what percentage of energy is used for lighting? It must be tiny.
If by tiny you mean up to 34%. Most figures I've heard suggest around 20% though, plus another 5% accounting for the need to run cooling systems to counteract the heat of the lighting systems. Of course, it's more significant to talk about this in quantitative rather than relative terms - so out of the 3,858 terawatt-hours consumed in 2003, that would be between 900 to 1300 terawatt-hours per year. And growing.
Personally, I think thats a rather significant figure.
Indeed, turning the lights off when you don't need them and using more efficient lighting saves a great deal of energy, particularly in commercial operations. Low surface-to-volume ratio and all. But for home use, daylight counts for a lot.
As for oil, mining operations for coal or nuclear fuel and virtually all small-scale generators run on it. The cost of oil also has an indirect effect on the cost of other fuels by making them more attractive for certain applications and allowing them to charge a steeper price.
The purpose of DST is not to control when it gets dark. The purpose is to control when it gets LIGHT. People don't mind doing stuff after dark in the evening (much), but few enjoy getting up in the dark or wasting daylight by sleeping through it.
To say nothing of the energy necessary to light the dark hours. Why do you think they implemented Daylight Savings in the first place? Have you seen the price of oil lately?
Personally I think we all should all just use zulu time and let businesses and schools etc. set their own hours. Of course we'd have to stop thinking of 12 as noon and midnight... but then we could learn true times based on longitude instead.
It's not just Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD... you also have to include DVD in there, which as far as most consumers think is just fine. They aren't going to upgrade their hardware without a compelling reason - and the only compelling reason considered here is image quality on HDTV. That won't push hardware sales.
Video game console sales will, however. Folks will be a lot more inclined to buy next-generation disks if they've already got a player sitting around and don't have to buy an expensive separate unit.
PC applications might help push things along, but not until we start seeing multiple-DVD programs and filesets. Few applications generate that much data outside of video.
BitTorrent is by design a two-way connection-saturating medium-cpu-intense very-disk-and-RAM-intense process commonly employed for very large files and thus long stretches of time. Even on broadband connections it is necessary to exercise some choices and direct control so that using BT doesn't interfere with your other computer use, and if you happen to switch between different ISPs (AKA wireless notebook use) you will often have to deal with different BitTorrent policies and liabilities.
Your "you too gauche to appreciate the genius of this film" argument never flies. No matter the anime there's always a fan who will brook no dissent. Hell, I've been ripped on for criticizing Yu-Gi-Oh. I call them as I see them, and I see that Miyazaki's not the first auteur to let his creative vision blind him to basic principles of filmmaking, namely direction and cohesiveness in the plot. Ignoring things like that (repeatedly) doesn't make him a visionary, it makes him overblown. And all the eyecandy in the world doesn't cover it up. Fortunately for him he's so famous people will still come to his films and pat themselves on the back for being sophisticated.
I gave SA four out of five stars, for the same reasons as I gave MNT and KDS four stars. I've stated why enough times and I'm not going to do some scene-by-scene deconstruction. If that's not enough for you, too bad. I've got better things to do than defend my opinion about every noob fanboy's sacred cow.
Don't lecture people about cultural biases you've supposed on me. I'm not even Christian. I've seen every Miyazaki film except Howl and probably more anime than you ever will. I'm quite familiar with the idiosyncrasies of Japanese film and anime.
My point, once again: Miyazaki, IMHO, is overrated. He is not the best anime has to offer. His storytelling style in SA, KDS, MNT, and probably HMC is disjointed. The stories are loaded with style but lacking in substance and direction. You are free to disagree, but I am hardly alone in thinking so. Contrary to the parent article, Miyazaki's incoherent storytelling will not save Disney from their crappy scripts.
A) Firstly, Miyazaki films don't develop their characters much. We see them at work in mundane or magical situations and their personalities may change over the course of the film, but in general we learn little about their inner motivations. No more than usual, anyway.
B) Younger children never sit still for 2 hours, which partly why renting is so much more popular with parents than going to the theater. Totoro sure didn't hold my 3 year old nieces attention.
My point was:
1) I think Miyazaki's storytelling style is dull, however unique and unusual it may be. Frequently I perceive it as (visual) style over (written) substance. Critics desperate for variety and fanboys who love eyecandy are quite willing to embrace this style and sing his praises. Their emotionally invested and in the case of the critics they hope some of the better aspects will rub off onto American animation. Ergo he is in my opinion overrated. This was my main point. However, it's his prerogative to make movies as he sees fit, and he's such an institution in Japan he can make whatever he wants, and of course everyone else is entitled to their own opinion. However ordinary American moviegoers rarely buy it - when they sit down to watch a movie they expect it to actually go somewhere. Not everyone, but most people. I've seen this on more than one occasion. Try renting Kiki, Totoro, or Spirited with friends or relatives who're not into anime and see what I mean.
Well, I'll make my own direct assessment of Howl during the wide release (the first I can think of for any anime film) and we'll see how America likes it too.
I've shown Miyazaki films to a number of people (family/friends) and very few of them came away impressed by anything but the animation. Most people thought it was wierd and/or boring. They certainly didn't seem emotionally connected.
I didn't say it didn't have a plot. I said it had no plot development. Stuff happens but it's not connected and it doesn't really go anywhere or mean anything within the greater context of the movie as a whole. That's my issue: Kiki and the others play like a string of vignettes, not a coherent whole at all. If each vignette had been released separately it might have been fine, but it wouldn't have been a movie.
If you will, there is a theme and characters and a plot, but no plotLINE.
It's common practice to animate at 15 frames per second and include various still scenes to save money on anime. This allows them to draw their characters as more visually complex than the Powerpuff Girls even on a budget. It's a tradeoff, and yes it is certainly related to the fact that manga is frequently the source material for anime - they have to preserve character designs as much as possible (even so they usually simplify somewhat). Even so, there are often high-action scenes in anime where it counts.
When you see both smooth complex motion and visual detail, you're watching money in action, and yes, it looks good. When you see a whole film like that, you're seeing a LOT of money. Which describes pretty much all modern big-budget animated features.
American animation's general suckiness is mainly a matter of crappy kiddy subject matter and delivery. In film, Pixar is the only company that does a consistently good job anymore. On TV, there's a handful of absurdist comedies worth watching and that's it.
Slashdot Mirror
Wasn't mini-magnetospheric plasma propulsion supposed to offer robust shielding, in addition to efficient travel?
Pshaw. I haven't had mod points in forever - months, if not years, despite having near-perfect karma at all times. I suspect metamoderation has something to do with it.
It'll happen eventually, just you wait. I'm looking forward to the day where the internet has a layer that correlates to the layout of the real world.
Am I really the first person to say this?
Yes I do expect them to ask if she runs linux, and I'm sure they plan have all sorts of useless little things they want to install in her.
It's not a matter of original ideas; it's downright copying.
Deep Impact; Armageddon
A Bug's Life; Antz
First Daugter; Chasing Liberty
Tombstone; Wyatt Earp
Volcano; Dante's Peak
Finding Nemo; Shark Tale
Garfield; Scooby Doo
To say nothing of the endless procession of superhero movies.
So no we have Voltron and Transformers. Admittedly, Go-Bots would have been a better match. What's Next? Alf versus Small Wonder?
The titanium dioxide particles are only a few nanometers wide. The whole power of nanoscale approaches like this one is that nanoparticles often have unique properties which they do not possess in larger particle sizes, due to the very high surface-to-volume ratio and/or limited electronic states available. In this case, TiO2 becomes reactive.
What nobody has said for some reason is that an otherwise harmless material is not necessarily harmless at the nanoscale, so you have to go back and do toxicology studies all over again. And furthermore, nanoparticles are so small that they can penetrate and embed themselves even within your living cells, where since they are minerals they may not be degraded.
In fact, TiO2 nanoparticles have been documented to be toxic. Embedding them in the surface of buildings puts them in a position where they are likely to wear off into the atmosphere or runoff water.
A dupe of a subject that never should have been posted in the first place. I know it may be hard to appreciate in this day and age, but rumors aren't news. Report new 'ware when it comes out.
Developer 1: Hey, did you hear Apple is using INTEL processors now?
Developer 2: Really? Wow, maybe our programs will be easy enough to port now. We never bothered before.
Developer 1: Yeah. Even though we use window APIs there are some solutions that make porting much easier. All you really have to do is make the interface mac-like, and it turns out apple has a tool called Interface Builder that makes that a cinch.
Developer 2: Of course we make games, so all that involves is a full screen and keyboard control. Sweet.
Developer 1: Hmm. Only problem is our program won't be compatible on legacy macs.
Developer 2: Who cares, it's too much trouble to port to any non-intel mac. We'll just skip them and work for the next generation.
Developer 1: You're right, we'll just put a notice in the requirements about intel processor macs required. Ha Ha! Fragged you bitch!
From the site:
Although lighting accounts for only 3.3% of the energy use in homes, it often accounts for a large fraction of the electricity bill.
That sentence makes no sense. A small percent of use but a large percent of the bill? How does that work? Are they figuring in the pure heat BTUs from the gas/oil driven appliances? If so it means little, since we've been talking about electricity here.
Sorry, but what percentage of energy is used for lighting? It must be tiny.
If by tiny you mean up to 34%. Most figures I've heard suggest around 20% though, plus another 5% accounting for the need to run cooling systems to counteract the heat of the lighting systems. Of course, it's more significant to talk about this in quantitative rather than relative terms - so out of the 3,858 terawatt-hours consumed in 2003, that would be between 900 to 1300 terawatt-hours per year. And growing.
Personally, I think thats a rather significant figure.
Indeed, turning the lights off when you don't need them and using more efficient lighting saves a great deal of energy, particularly in commercial operations. Low surface-to-volume ratio and all. But for home use, daylight counts for a lot.
As for oil, mining operations for coal or nuclear fuel and virtually all small-scale generators run on it. The cost of oil also has an indirect effect on the cost of other fuels by making them more attractive for certain applications and allowing them to charge a steeper price.
The purpose of DST is not to control when it gets dark. The purpose is to control when it gets LIGHT. People don't mind doing stuff after dark in the evening (much), but few enjoy getting up in the dark or wasting daylight by sleeping through it.
To say nothing of the energy necessary to light the dark hours. Why do you think they implemented Daylight Savings in the first place? Have you seen the price of oil lately?
Personally I think we all should all just use zulu time and let businesses and schools etc. set their own hours. Of course we'd have to stop thinking of 12 as noon and midnight... but then we could learn true times based on longitude instead.
From what I understand the sex scenes aren't even particularly explicit. Who does it with their clothes on, I mean really?
Oh wait, considering how objectionable these people seem to think this scene is, they probably ARE the type of people who do it with their clothes on.
Those are all still more concrete than Yet Another Apple Product Rumor.
Let's leave the rumors to the rumors sites. Slashdot is crowded enough with articles on real news already. How did this even get published?
They certainly never had a problem driving up costs for their viewers. Renting GANTZ is twice as expensive as most other series.
It's not just Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD... you also have to include DVD in there, which as far as most consumers think is just fine. They aren't going to upgrade their hardware without a compelling reason - and the only compelling reason considered here is image quality on HDTV. That won't push hardware sales.
Video game console sales will, however. Folks will be a lot more inclined to buy next-generation disks if they've already got a player sitting around and don't have to buy an expensive separate unit.
PC applications might help push things along, but not until we start seeing multiple-DVD programs and filesets. Few applications generate that much data outside of video.
I think e-ink would be a cheaper, less power-hungry option for the keys. Also, making the keys contoured would be a good idea.
BitTorrent is by design a two-way connection-saturating medium-cpu-intense very-disk-and-RAM-intense process commonly employed for very large files and thus long stretches of time. Even on broadband connections it is necessary to exercise some choices and direct control so that using BT doesn't interfere with your other computer use, and if you happen to switch between different ISPs (AKA wireless notebook use) you will often have to deal with different BitTorrent policies and liabilities.
Well if it can be used to accurately fold proteins, it'll definitely be worth it.
Your "you too gauche to appreciate the genius of this film" argument never flies. No matter the anime there's always a fan who will brook no dissent. Hell, I've been ripped on for criticizing Yu-Gi-Oh. I call them as I see them, and I see that Miyazaki's not the first auteur to let his creative vision blind him to basic principles of filmmaking, namely direction and cohesiveness in the plot. Ignoring things like that (repeatedly) doesn't make him a visionary, it makes him overblown. And all the eyecandy in the world doesn't cover it up. Fortunately for him he's so famous people will still come to his films and pat themselves on the back for being sophisticated.
I gave SA four out of five stars, for the same reasons as I gave MNT and KDS four stars. I've stated why enough times and I'm not going to do some scene-by-scene deconstruction. If that's not enough for you, too bad. I've got better things to do than defend my opinion about every noob fanboy's sacred cow.
Don't lecture people about cultural biases you've supposed on me. I'm not even Christian. I've seen every Miyazaki film except Howl and probably more anime than you ever will. I'm quite familiar with the idiosyncrasies of Japanese film and anime.
My point, once again: Miyazaki, IMHO, is overrated. He is not the best anime has to offer. His storytelling style in SA, KDS, MNT, and probably HMC is disjointed. The stories are loaded with style but lacking in substance and direction. You are free to disagree, but I am hardly alone in thinking so. Contrary to the parent article, Miyazaki's incoherent storytelling will not save Disney from their crappy scripts.
A) Firstly, Miyazaki films don't develop their characters much. We see them at work in mundane or magical situations and their personalities may change over the course of the film, but in general we learn little about their inner motivations. No more than usual, anyway.
B) Younger children never sit still for 2 hours, which partly why renting is so much more popular with parents than going to the theater. Totoro sure didn't hold my 3 year old nieces attention.
My point was:
1) I think Miyazaki's storytelling style is dull, however unique and unusual it may be. Frequently I perceive it as (visual) style over (written) substance. Critics desperate for variety and fanboys who love eyecandy are quite willing to embrace this style and sing his praises. Their emotionally invested and in the case of the critics they hope some of the better aspects will rub off onto American animation. Ergo he is in my opinion overrated. This was my main point. However, it's his prerogative to make movies as he sees fit, and he's such an institution in Japan he can make whatever he wants, and of course everyone else is entitled to their own opinion. However ordinary American moviegoers rarely buy it - when they sit down to watch a movie they expect it to actually go somewhere. Not everyone, but most people. I've seen this on more than one occasion. Try renting Kiki, Totoro, or Spirited with friends or relatives who're not into anime and see what I mean.
Well, I'll make my own direct assessment of Howl during the wide release (the first I can think of for any anime film) and we'll see how America likes it too.
I've shown Miyazaki films to a number of people (family/friends) and very few of them came away impressed by anything but the animation. Most people thought it was wierd and/or boring. They certainly didn't seem emotionally connected.
I didn't say it didn't have a plot. I said it had no plot development. Stuff happens but it's not connected and it doesn't really go anywhere or mean anything within the greater context of the movie as a whole. That's my issue: Kiki and the others play like a string of vignettes, not a coherent whole at all. If each vignette had been released separately it might have been fine, but it wouldn't have been a movie.
If you will, there is a theme and characters and a plot, but no plotLINE.
Let me break it down for you:
length x visual detail x motion detail = budget
It's common practice to animate at 15 frames per second and include various still scenes to save money on anime. This allows them to draw their characters as more visually complex than the Powerpuff Girls even on a budget. It's a tradeoff, and yes it is certainly related to the fact that manga is frequently the source material for anime - they have to preserve character designs as much as possible (even so they usually simplify somewhat). Even so, there are often high-action scenes in anime where it counts.
When you see both smooth complex motion and visual detail, you're watching money in action, and yes, it looks good. When you see a whole film like that, you're seeing a LOT of money. Which describes pretty much all modern big-budget animated features.
American animation's general suckiness is mainly a matter of crappy kiddy subject matter and delivery. In film, Pixar is the only company that does a consistently good job anymore. On TV, there's a handful of absurdist comedies worth watching and that's it.