Whenever you get something that's a really huge engineering success or scientific success -- or both -- you proceed to scrap it. Then apply the money saved to other programs that are on their way to becoming hopeless boondoggles (re: shuttle, ISS, Moon-Mars initiative).
Both the Amiga and Atari ST shipped with two-button mice in 1985. Ever since then IMO the one-button mouse has been obsolete -- if not before that. (Didn't the original Xerox machines have a mouse with three color-coded buttons?)
The Amiga was particularly interesting because you practically couldn't use the computer without a two-button mouse. (I mean, aside from playing games with a joystick.) The left button was used for most typical GUI input, but the right button was used to access the drop-down menus. Yes, all of them.
So. . . On Amiga, avoiding the right button, or failing to learn what it did, was never a realistic option for the user. Somehow I don't recall ever hearing any complaints about it during all the years that I used an Amiga. (And for some time after getting a Mac, I habitually accessed the drop-down menus using the right button -- why this even works on a Mac, I really don't know.)
All nostalgic rambling aside, I think Amiga had the right idea. If some people are confused or intimidated by the right button, *make* them learn it. I say tie it to the desktop interface so closely that they will soon become familiar with it, like it or not.
I wish I could RTFA and rebut the article more closely, but it appears to be slashdotted. I do feel like I've seen all the arguments before -- time after time. This is something that has bugged me for a long time. For goodness sake. . . Can't Apple at least ship the "professional" end of their line -- the Power Mac -- with a multi-button mouse? Can't they at least put two buttons on the Powerbook? It's not like the user has an option to easily replace the trackpad on those things.
As far as forcing developers to make their interface simpler, and make it work with a one-button mouse. . . If that was the intent, it's not working. The Mac has a convention that you can hold down CTRL and left-click to simulate a right-click. Application programmers haven't been shy about asking their users to do that. But it's needlessly awkward, it's a kludge.
In fact, one might argue that double-clicking to launch apps is a kludge too. A lot of people have trouble with double-clicking, it requires a bit of dexterity, and we didn't all grow up playing Asteroids. Double-clicking is an awkward convention forced onto Apple by their choice of a one-button mouse, and then thoughtlessly copied by everyone else.
Why stick with these awkward work-arounds? It would be simpler for everyone if we just tossed the one-button mouse onto the ash heap of history, where it should have gone 20 years ago. Apple's obstinance over this issue is just puzzling to me.
She's not. She's manipulating him. And he's either too stupid to see it, or he just doesn't care. (No wait. . . He thinks she's just a figment of his guilty imagination. That falls into the 'stupid' category.)
As for things blowing up. . . Unfortunately, there is a shortage of SF shows of any kind, with or without stuff blowing up. Enterprise, SG-1, Atlantis and Galactica are just about it. Oh, and there's Andromeda, but I don't really have to count that, do I? (Please tell me I don't!)
I think my favorite series of all time was Babylon-5. It had a lot of the well-developed characters and complex (sometimes downright convoluted) plots that challenged the viewer. But Battlestar Galactica seems like a cheap and somewhat clueless rip-off of B-5. It's like somebody copied all the superficial elements (right down to the officers' uniforms), but forgot that the story ought to make some kind of sense.
And, as somebody else pointed out. . . Galactica is so relentlessly dark. Is that really necessary?
I'm sorry, but I just don't see what the big deal is with Galactica. Yeah, it's great that we have all these flawed characters trying to work through their problems, but. . . . Has anybody noticed all the *stupid* stuff in Galactica?
I mean, Cylons that look like humans and apparently can't even be distinguished from humans with medical tests -- yet still have robot-like abilities. How could that possibly work?
Cylons wiping out humanity for reasons that are poorly defined and make no sense. (The parent must die before the child can come into his own? Give me a break!)
Religious Cylons. Nuff said.
Baltar's inexplicable tendency to side with the Cylons even after they *duped* him into helping them. Wouldn't you be hacked off if they did that to you? Maybe the point is that he's a jerk. Why does so much of the show focus on a jerk?
Confusing plot line developing on the Cylon-occupied planet. Maybe it will start making some kind of sense eventually?
Celestial bodies with WATER are rare? I guess our solar system is some kind of freakish curiosity, since it's littered with icy bodies.
But most of all I'm disgusted by Baltar's hallucinations, daydreams, Cylon mind-control transmissions, whatever they are. . . I'd much rather watch a good old-fashioned outer space show -- with things blowing up -- rather than this strange rambling exploration of some jerk's unconscious.
I'm not blind to ST: Enterprise's shortcomings. . . But if Enterprise and Galactica came on at the same time, I imagine I'd opt for Enterprise.
It'll be nice seeing a couple of familiar faces again, with fresh characters and settings. I don't seen any problem with that.
Personally, I thought Farscape was a great series that got way too dark and jumbled in the last season or two. It was a show that lost its way. Maybe it was too ambitious? SG-1 is less ambitious, and though it may have stumbled a few times, it never really lost its way.
I'm a big fan of SG-1, all the more since there aren't many real SF shows left on TV. However. ..
Am I the only one who thinks SG-1 is getting kind of old? And cheap? I mean. . . In the beginning they had great, elaborate costumes and sets, and lots more bit parts and extras (including great ethnic actors to represent some of the planets they visited) and great military equipment props. As season after season rolls by, the production gets pared down more and more -- it gets more austere and repetitious. Fewer characters, fewer cool props, more austere sets, more of the same stuff getting recycled. And I swear, someday they are going to step out of that stargate onto yet another alien planet covered with the same damned pine trees, and I'm going to lose it.
"The studios will come around to the superior format," Peterson said. "Capacity and picture quality are directly related."
It's been a long time since I was naive enough to imagine the studios care about picture quality. If they care at all, it's because they see high quality as a minor disadvantage: something that encourages piracy.
And to be fair. . . They have to look at consumer response. Consumers mostly rejected S-VHS because most of them "couldn't see any difference" from regular VHS. Consumers mostly rejected Laserdisc because they couldn't record on it, despite the superior picture quality. History shows the majority of people don't give a flying flip about picture quality -- which is a source of endless frustration for the minority who do.
Also funny. . . People complaining because people aren't ready to replace their DVDs, since it's still a new format. And worse, asking whether BlueRay will offer any significant improvement over DVD.
DVD is a new-ish format, but it basically offers the same audio and video performance as Laserdisc, which was introduced in . . . 1978, if I recall right. Both of them will output basically what NTSC can display.
As for some form of high-def videodisc, I don't think it's too soon -- I think it's way overdue! Seriously, I believe this is the main thing holding back adoption of HDTV. You can buy HD sets, you can buy HD satellite receivers, and even Tivo-like recorders that will handle HD. The element that's missing is any HD videodisc. HDTV fans have been waiting and waiting and *waiting* for this, and the companies just keep dragging it out.
A few years ago, a prototype of a smart holster was shown -- it wouldn't let you draw the gun from it unless it recognized your fingerprints. Although this wasn't perfect, it seemed very promising, and it seems like an idea that many people would find more acceptable than smart guns.
Smart guns conjure up a lot of fears from gun owners. There's a fear that "smart" technology might be required on new guns. There's a fear that they might be too expensive, or unreliable (batteries gone dead), or that it might be possible to disable them remotely with something like EMP. Don't laugh, it's already possible to stop many motor vehicles this way.
Smart holsters could provide practically all of the same benefits without all the associated fear.
Humans are not born intelligent, but most are born with the ability to become intelligent through a learning process. So the question becomes: How much of a human brain's "software" is coded genetically (like firmware) and how much is learned? Nobody knows the answer. Not yet, anyhow.
It's not obvious that the genetic portion is so complex that we can never figure it out. It might be relatively small and simple, and there may be evolutionary pressures to keep it that way. If this were the case, it might bode well for AI research. Then all you have to do is synthesize this "firmware" enough to enable the AI to start learning.
It was recently announced that the human genome only contains about 25,000 genes. There's a limit to how much complexity you can encode into that. Intuitively, it seems this should be possible to figure out someday.
It would appear that someone was stung by the many negative comments posted to that article. I can't find the previous quote (from Virgin) about open standards, but now the article has this somewhat more vague sentence:
The $249 Virgin Player, weighing 3.1 ounces, supports MP3 and WMA music formats and is capable of working with various digital music services, the company said.
Of course the iPod supports AAC and MP3 and "is capable of working with various digital music services" too. So I guess that's fair enough.
X86 fan: Macs are way too expensive! I can buy a bargain PC at Wal-Mart for way less, or even build a PC out of generic parts for 1/3 what any new Mac costs.
Mac fan: You fool! You're comparing Macs with generic, stripped-down, bargin systems from Wal-Mart, or (even worse) to home-built systems! That's not fair -- if you compare them with comparably-equipped name-brand PCs, the Mac is just as affordable or possibly cheaper.
X86 fan: You fool! You're comparing Macs with comparably-equipped name-brand PCs, which (as we all know) are only bought by techno-idiots! That's not fair -- I can buy a bargain PC at Wal-Mart for way less, or even build a PC out of generic parts for 1/3 what any new Mac costs.
Mac fan: You fool! You're comparing Macs with generic, stripped-down, bargin systems. . . ..
And so forth, ad nauseum. It's been going on for years. So. . . Which comparison is really more fair?
If you are a high school or college kid who has little money and loves tinkering with computers and playing computers games, then the Mac must look to you like something only an idiot would buy. The mistake is thinking that everybody else is just like you. They aren't. Most people aren't.
If you are an adult who has money and has work to do, but has little spare time and little patience for tinkering and troubleshooting, then buying a fully-featured, name-brand PC (either Windows or Mac) can make a lot of sense. From your viewpoint, building a PC from generic parts is out of the question, and the bargain box from Wal-Mart must look like something only an idiot would buy.
It's this latter group that Apple have chosen to sell to. It's nothing personal, it's not intended as any kind of insult against the young and cash-strapped computer geeks of the world. It's just their business decision about where they can best turn a profit. And as some have pointed out, Apple would face some hard obstacles switching over to X86, both technical and otherwise. There would have to be a huge payoff for doing that, and I don't see it.
If you boil all this down, the complaint about Macs costing too much is really misplaced. . . What they're complaining about is that there are still other hardware platforms besides X86. They think it's great that all these companies in Asia are cranking out mass quantities of inexpensive X86 hardware -- never mind the shoddy stuff, or the compatibility and driver pitfalls, or the general blecherousness of the X86 architecture. Cheap and plentiful is what matters, and companies like Apple should get with the program.
Personally, I'm glad there's still a viable hardware platform other than X86 in this world. I don't think it's the destiny of all other hardware to fade away, and for mankind to be stuck with X86 from now until robots take over the Earth. (Which happens in 2084 AD, by the way.) I think a lot of these people should quit their whining, save their pennies for a while, and buy an iMac. They are good machines.
No. This does not look cool. A Firebird looks cool. A Dodge Viper or a Ford GT looks cool. This thing looks like a golf cart with a plastic shell around it. It looks like a toy. The word "dorky" comes to mind.
In fact, before I bought one of these things I would resort to buying a motorcycle -- and I've never ridden a motorcycle in my life, but I'd learn.
Space tourism? Okay. . . Sure, I can see it becoming a viable ongoing business, but I still think the really big payoff in the long run will come out of asteroid mining. The space tourist business might help that along -- if it leads to putting payloads in space at lower cost.
If only the original Macintosh had come with a trackball 20 years ago, they might well be ubiquitous today and mice would be the niche product. Perhaps someday the masses will wake up and correct this mistake. (Yeah, right. . . Probably at the same time when we all switch to Dvorak keyboards.)
I have a Logitech Marble Mouse USB, the older one with only two buttons. It's more efficient than a mouse: fingertip control, less movement, less effort, and takes less desk space. I have it configured so I can hold down my control key and scroll with the trackball.
"The Macintosh was indisputably years ahead of every other PC platform in terms of user-interface design. The mouse pointer. The desktop metaphor. Overlapping windows. Icons. WYSIWYG word processing. Ten years later, every desktop computer in the world offered similar features; but in 1984, they were only on the Mac."
How many years ahead of "every other" platform was the Mac? Macintosh introduced all this GUI goodness at the beginning of 1984. Around early summer of 1985 Atari began selling the 520ST with practically all of the same features, while the Amiga 1000 shipped only a few months later.
In short, it took other companies (aside from Microsoft) about 18 to 24 months to imitate the "revolutionary" features of Macintosh. It may have taken Microsoft upward of a decade, but you know. . . That's Microsoft for ya.
Also from the article. ..
"It's generally agreed that the first version of Windows that didn't suck shipped in 1995, a decade after the arrival of the Mac."
Personally, I think the first version of Mac OS that didn't suck shipped in 2001, when Mac OS X hit store shelves. (And if you want to get really technical, Mac OS X isn't a version of Mac OS at all. It's just what Apple imported to replace Mac OS after finally realizing they could never transform it into something that didn't suck.)
We don't need 10 years to develop new technology. The basic technology for cheap access to space was invented in the 1960s. Just ask Bob Truax. . . He did the cost and feasibility studies for a project he called "Sea Dragon", when he was working for Aerojet General.
If this idea were updated and developed today, it could both slash the cost of sending freight into orbit and allow launching much larger assemblies -- just think what that would have meant for space station construction!
Sea Dragon was not intended to be a manned vehicle. We would still need another vehicle to replace the shuttle. Developing one specifically for lifting people to orbit shouldn't be that hard -- that might even be something like a scaled-up version of Spaceship One. Part of the folly of the Shuttle is that it tries to be everything: freight lifter, passenger vehicle, miniature research station. Breaking out these functions into specialized vehicles would make everything easier.
The worst thing about this article is, he's starting with valid data and then drawing the wrong conclusions from it.
He's pointing out the failure of our human space flight since Apollo, or perhaps since Skylab. All the budget-busting cost overruns, all the delays, and the relatively crippled capacity of the International Space Station -- yes, I'm familiar with all of that. Dr. Allen says that the paltry results we've gotten from manned space flight for the last 30 years don't come anywhere near justifying the resources we've expended on it, and he's right. Manned spaceflight for the last 30 years can be summed up as a costly failure.
The catch is, he concludes that manned space is a bad idea. Any more reasonable or unbiased observer would look at the same span of history and conclude that we've been doing manned space flight stupidly for the last 30 years.
I personally think about 70% of the failure stems from the decision to scrap the Saturn rockets and replace them with the Shuttle. The other 30% can be laid down to NASA's ever-shrinking budget and general bureaucratic ossification.
Moving a serious human presence into space isn't going to make sense until we have an economical, high-capacity, transportation and freight link between here and there. We could have constructed that link in the 1970s if we'd gotten serious about it, and we could do it more easily today. But instead our leadership (both inside and outside of NASA) keep dithering around without any focus.
This article is full of so many distortions, it's mind-bending. First, they are revealing the secret -- which they assume none of us gullible rubes ever realized before -- that most digital music we get from the internet is stored with lossy compression. The article goes on to explain that all music with lossy compression sounds crummy (comparing it with 8-track tapes), and the only measure of digital sound quality that matters is the bit-rate.
Music from the iTunes Store, they say, sounds extra-crummy since it's compressed to only 128 kbps. (The distinction between AAC and MP3 is never even mentioned.) The implication is that consumers will rebel someday when they discover they've bought a bunch of music that isn't "true CD quality". Clutching torches and pitchforks, they'll storm the ramparts at Cupertino.
Maybe I'm just a tin-eared old goat, but the difference between a CD and a 128 kbps MP3 track doesn't leap out at me in casual listening. When it comes to 128 kbps AAC or 192 kbps MP3 tracks, they sound like CDs to me -- even when I listen closely, with headphones. Maybe if I had audiophile speakers or better headphones (or younger ears) it would make more difference, but honestly. . . This is not a distinction that keeps me up laying awake at night, wondering if my music collection is subtly flawed.
At the other extreme, the true golden-eared stereophiles of our world have complained since CDs first appeared about *their* low sampling rate. What, only 44,000 samples per second? You can't capture sonic detail at the high frequencies that way! But given the difference in sales between iPods on the one hand, and SACD or DVD-Audio players on the other hand, I think anyone can see which way the wind is blowing.
Quote: The new craft designed by Germany's Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik -- named Zeppelin NT for "New Technology" -- is filled with helium rather than the intensely flammable hydrogen that fuelled the earlier generation of airships.
1. Flammable is a non-word. (Re: The Elements of Style) The word they were grasping for is "inflammable".
2. Airships were never "fueled" by hydrogen or helium. It provides buoyant lift, it's not burned for energy.
3. The first generation of Zeppelins were made to use helium, not hydrogen. The Germans only switched to hydrogen after the USA embargoed them and cut off their supply of helium.
Furthermore, it irritates me that nobody can mention airships without harking back to the Hindenberg. It's as if every news story about a large oceangoing ship was compelled to recap the Titanic disaster.
I don't think "innovative" is exactly the right word. I would call it forward thinking. Apple didn't invent USB, but they were the first to have USB as standard, built-in equipment. Apple was the first to ship computers without the obsolete floppy drives. And now. . . A mass-produced CPU from a large manufacturer that comes with liquid cooling. Who else is doing that?
No, liquid cooling is not a new invention -- but they are bringing it to a large part of the market that never saw this before. I could tell a similar story about Apple and dual-processor systems. Or 802.11b networking. Or the switch to selling only flat-panel monitors. That is forward thinking, it's about staying ahead of the curve, it's about leading instead of following.
Yes! That is exactly what I've been hoping for. Some people call it the "headless iMac". I just think Apple should make a home computer in the tradition of the old Atari and Amiga systems, like the Amiga 500 for example.
The closest thing they make to a home computer is the iMac, but it's too expensive -- at least partly because of the monitor. It would be especially great if they made one with DVI and HDTV output.
It could also give Apple a kind of sneaky back-door entry into the videogame business. If this little box can hook up to a HDTV, if the specs are pretty standardized and stable, and there's a standard console-style controller made for it, and there are no royalty requirements for developing and publishing games on it . . . . it could become attractive for game developers. (That's in addition to the obvious consumer apps: web-surfing, word processor, email, and the whole iLife package.)
The only problem with this plan is that it goes 100% against Apple's traditions. They've never gotten into the inexpensive home computer business, they've never been heavy into games. Apple needs to "Think Different" for something like this to work.
I once knew an Englishman who was trying to create an accurate simulation of the Alamo siege. His theory was, he could sell this program to schools all over Texas and make a fortune. It sounded like a good idea. . . He just failed to reckon something: Texas schools have almost no interest in teaching history.
During my 12 years in grade school, we studied the Texas Revolution probably for a total of about 30 minutes. We never got any explanation of why it took place, and our coverage of The Alamo simply repeated the Hollywood myths.
We learned: The Alamo was one of only two battles in the history of the world (the other occurring in ancient Greece) where all the defenders fought to the death.
Historians say: A few defenders escaped during the confusion of the fight, and a few others were captured and later executed by the Mexicans.
We learned: Each Texan killed, on average, four or five Mexican soldiers before he fell.
Historians say: The death toll was probably roughly even on both sides. Santa Anna's army wasn't crippled by the battle.
We learned: The two weeks of time spent laying siege to the Alamo allowed Sam Houston to gather his troops and made ultimate victory possible.
Historians say: The Alamo had no strategic military importance.
My point is that if Texas schools were motivated to teach this story accurately, they certainly wouldn't have needed a computer program to do a better job than this. And the idea that they would spend money on it is fairly laughable.
However. . . If my British friend could have made a simulation program to teach football plays -- he probably could have sold a ton of them to Texas schools and be a millionaire by now. It's all a matter of priorities, you know.
The animated Star Trek series was published as a boxed set of six laserdiscs. "The Animated Adventures of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek", LV 60754-6, from Paramount Home Video.
Yes, I have the discs. No, I don't have a working LD player at the moment. Is anybody even making new ones anymore?
The distinction of the animated series that amuses me most is the appearance in six episodes of Lieutenant M'Ress serving as the communications officer.
A Google search will show that M'Ress is remembered surprisingly well among fans, for such an obscure character after such a long time passed without ever being seen again.
The hype this article lays down in the first page turned me off.
The next generation of console and home computer hardware is going to bring a revolutionary leap in available computing power; a teraflop (trillion floating-point operations per second) or more will be on tap from commodity hardware.
How much power will it draw? How are you going to cool it? The laws of physics appear to present certain obstacles, these are starting to become real problems. But even if you can make this kind of power happen in a game console -- will it make the game drastically better? Will it even make the graphics drastically better? I have doubts.
It looks to me like we've reached a point of diminishing returns with 3D graphics. Each new generation of hardware is resulting in less dramatic improvement to the images we're seeing. Continuing to throw more hardware at games and calling it a "revolution" will lead only to disappointment.
Our stories will have the potential for the same depth and sophistication as is expected today in a film or television show.
Ha, I say! Ha! This is the kind of drivel I've heard from game industry pundits going all the way back to the mid 1980s. Somehow it never seems to happen. We've got plenty powerful enough hardware today, and advanced enough AI algorithms, if only there was a serious push to use them. Yet, this article seems to be implying that a deeper and more sophisticated story is somehow tied to better graphics.
I was recently looking at screenshots from upcoming games: Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft. EQ2 definitely has highly advanced graphics, from a technical standpoint. Tons of polygons, massive detailed texturemaps, advanced lighting effects, yadda yadda. . . So why does WoW often look more attractive? I think it's because Blizzard focussed on art with a sense of style rather than flogging the technology.
Blizzard are also working hard to create a well-designed, well-balanced game that's fun to play. Sony, on the other hand, are bragging about their voice acting and how cinematic everything is. Is it a game, or is it a movie? I'd like to play a game, please. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned that way?
After the introduction the article dives into a lot of technical subjects that I'm not qualified to comment on. At the end it wraps it with a surprising admission. ..
The graphics revolution that is upon us will be a creative one; present work methods are too labor intensive to scale to the volume of data that we will need to create to support the medium.
The author implies that this is a problem to be overcome -- probably by borrowing techniques from film and television. I'm thinking instead: Maybe this is the point where we should take a step back and ask if we're even on the right path, if this is the direction videogames (and computer games) should even be going? Is this real progress?
Slashdot Mirror
Saturn V
Skylab
Hubble
Whenever you get something that's a really huge engineering success or scientific success -- or both -- you proceed to scrap it. Then apply the money saved to other programs that are on their way to becoming hopeless boondoggles (re: shuttle, ISS, Moon-Mars initiative).
I found iCab 2.9.8 and OmniWeb 4.5 appear to be immune to the exploit. It does successfully fool Safari, Firefox and Opera, though.
Both the Amiga and Atari ST shipped with two-button mice in 1985. Ever since then IMO the one-button mouse has been obsolete -- if not before that. (Didn't the original Xerox machines have a mouse with three color-coded buttons?)
The Amiga was particularly interesting because you practically couldn't use the computer without a two-button mouse. (I mean, aside from playing games with a joystick.) The left button was used for most typical GUI input, but the right button was used to access the drop-down menus. Yes, all of them.
So. . . On Amiga, avoiding the right button, or failing to learn what it did, was never a realistic option for the user. Somehow I don't recall ever hearing any complaints about it during all the years that I used an Amiga. (And for some time after getting a Mac, I habitually accessed the drop-down menus using the right button -- why this even works on a Mac, I really don't know.)
All nostalgic rambling aside, I think Amiga had the right idea. If some people are confused or intimidated by the right button, *make* them learn it. I say tie it to the desktop interface so closely that they will soon become familiar with it, like it or not.
I wish I could RTFA and rebut the article more closely, but it appears to be slashdotted. I do feel like I've seen all the arguments before -- time after time. This is something that has bugged me for a long time. For goodness sake. . . Can't Apple at least ship the "professional" end of their line -- the Power Mac -- with a multi-button mouse? Can't they at least put two buttons on the Powerbook? It's not like the user has an option to easily replace the trackpad on those things.
As far as forcing developers to make their interface simpler, and make it work with a one-button mouse. . . If that was the intent, it's not working. The Mac has a convention that you can hold down CTRL and left-click to simulate a right-click. Application programmers haven't been shy about asking their users to do that. But it's needlessly awkward, it's a kludge.
In fact, one might argue that double-clicking to launch apps is a kludge too. A lot of people have trouble with double-clicking, it requires a bit of dexterity, and we didn't all grow up playing Asteroids. Double-clicking is an awkward convention forced onto Apple by their choice of a one-button mouse, and then thoughtlessly copied by everyone else.
Why stick with these awkward work-arounds? It would be simpler for everyone if we just tossed the one-button mouse onto the ash heap of history, where it should have gone 20 years ago. Apple's obstinance over this issue is just puzzling to me.
Why is Six helping Baltar?
She's not. She's manipulating him. And he's either too stupid to see it, or he just doesn't care. (No wait. . . He thinks she's just a figment of his guilty imagination. That falls into the 'stupid' category.)
As for things blowing up. . . Unfortunately, there is a shortage of SF shows of any kind, with or without stuff blowing up. Enterprise, SG-1, Atlantis and Galactica are just about it. Oh, and there's Andromeda, but I don't really have to count that, do I? (Please tell me I don't!)
I think my favorite series of all time was Babylon-5. It had a lot of the well-developed characters and complex (sometimes downright convoluted) plots that challenged the viewer. But Battlestar Galactica seems like a cheap and somewhat clueless rip-off of B-5. It's like somebody copied all the superficial elements (right down to the officers' uniforms), but forgot that the story ought to make some kind of sense.
And, as somebody else pointed out. . . Galactica is so relentlessly dark. Is that really necessary?
I'm sorry, but I just don't see what the big deal is with Galactica. Yeah, it's great that we have all these flawed characters trying to work through their problems, but. . . . Has anybody noticed all the *stupid* stuff in Galactica?
I mean, Cylons that look like humans and apparently can't even be distinguished from humans with medical tests -- yet still have robot-like abilities. How could that possibly work?
Cylons wiping out humanity for reasons that are poorly defined and make no sense. (The parent must die before the child can come into his own? Give me a break!)
Religious Cylons. Nuff said.
Baltar's inexplicable tendency to side with the Cylons even after they *duped* him into helping them. Wouldn't you be hacked off if they did that to you? Maybe the point is that he's a jerk. Why does so much of the show focus on a jerk?
Confusing plot line developing on the Cylon-occupied planet. Maybe it will start making some kind of sense eventually?
Celestial bodies with WATER are rare? I guess our solar system is some kind of freakish curiosity, since it's littered with icy bodies.
But most of all I'm disgusted by Baltar's hallucinations, daydreams, Cylon mind-control transmissions, whatever they are. . . I'd much rather watch a good old-fashioned outer space show -- with things blowing up -- rather than this strange rambling exploration of some jerk's unconscious.
I'm not blind to ST: Enterprise's shortcomings. . . But if Enterprise and Galactica came on at the same time, I imagine I'd opt for Enterprise.
It'll be nice seeing a couple of familiar faces again, with fresh characters and settings. I don't seen any problem with that.
.
Personally, I thought Farscape was a great series that got way too dark and jumbled in the last season or two. It was a show that lost its way. Maybe it was too ambitious? SG-1 is less ambitious, and though it may have stumbled a few times, it never really lost its way.
I'm a big fan of SG-1, all the more since there aren't many real SF shows left on TV. However. .
Am I the only one who thinks SG-1 is getting kind of old? And cheap? I mean. . . In the beginning they had great, elaborate costumes and sets, and lots more bit parts and extras (including great ethnic actors to represent some of the planets they visited) and great military equipment props. As season after season rolls by, the production gets pared down more and more -- it gets more austere and repetitious. Fewer characters, fewer cool props, more austere sets, more of the same stuff getting recycled. And I swear, someday they are going to step out of that stargate onto yet another alien planet covered with the same damned pine trees, and I'm going to lose it.
YEARGH!
This is what I found funny, in a sad sort of way:
"The studios will come around to the superior format," Peterson said. "Capacity and picture quality are directly related."
It's been a long time since I was naive enough to imagine the studios care about picture quality. If they care at all, it's because they see high quality as a minor disadvantage: something that encourages piracy.
And to be fair. . . They have to look at consumer response. Consumers mostly rejected S-VHS because most of them "couldn't see any difference" from regular VHS. Consumers mostly rejected Laserdisc because they couldn't record on it, despite the superior picture quality. History shows the majority of people don't give a flying flip about picture quality -- which is a source of endless frustration for the minority who do.
Also funny. . . People complaining because people aren't ready to replace their DVDs, since it's still a new format. And worse, asking whether BlueRay will offer any significant improvement over DVD.
DVD is a new-ish format, but it basically offers the same audio and video performance as Laserdisc, which was introduced in . . . 1978, if I recall right. Both of them will output basically what NTSC can display.
As for some form of high-def videodisc, I don't think it's too soon -- I think it's way overdue! Seriously, I believe this is the main thing holding back adoption of HDTV. You can buy HD sets, you can buy HD satellite receivers, and even Tivo-like recorders that will handle HD. The element that's missing is any HD videodisc. HDTV fans have been waiting and waiting and *waiting* for this, and the companies just keep dragging it out.
A few years ago, a prototype of a smart holster was shown -- it wouldn't let you draw the gun from it unless it recognized your fingerprints. Although this wasn't perfect, it seemed very promising, and it seems like an idea that many people would find more acceptable than smart guns.
s _151_25/ai_70380673
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0BTT/i
Smart guns conjure up a lot of fears from gun owners. There's a fear that "smart" technology might be required on new guns. There's a fear that they might be too expensive, or unreliable (batteries gone dead), or that it might be possible to disable them remotely with something like EMP. Don't laugh, it's already possible to stop many motor vehicles this way.
Smart holsters could provide practically all of the same benefits without all the associated fear.
Humans are not born intelligent, but most are born with the ability to become intelligent through a learning process. So the question becomes: How much of a human brain's "software" is coded genetically (like firmware) and how much is learned? Nobody knows the answer. Not yet, anyhow.
It's not obvious that the genetic portion is so complex that we can never figure it out. It might be relatively small and simple, and there may be evolutionary pressures to keep it that way. If this were the case, it might bode well for AI research. Then all you have to do is synthesize this "firmware" enough to enable the AI to start learning.
It was recently announced that the human genome only contains about 25,000 genes. There's a limit to how much complexity you can encode into that. Intuitively, it seems this should be possible to figure out someday.
Of course the iPod supports AAC and MP3 and "is capable of working with various digital music services" too. So I guess that's fair enough.
X86 fan: Macs are way too expensive! I can buy a bargain PC at Wal-Mart for way less, or even build a PC out of generic parts for 1/3 what any new Mac costs.
.
Mac fan: You fool! You're comparing Macs with generic, stripped-down, bargin systems from Wal-Mart, or (even worse) to home-built systems! That's not fair -- if you compare them with comparably-equipped name-brand PCs, the Mac is just as affordable or possibly cheaper.
X86 fan: You fool! You're comparing Macs with comparably-equipped name-brand PCs, which (as we all know) are only bought by techno-idiots! That's not fair -- I can buy a bargain PC at Wal-Mart for way less, or even build a PC out of generic parts for 1/3 what any new Mac costs.
Mac fan: You fool! You're comparing Macs with generic, stripped-down, bargin systems. . . .
And so forth, ad nauseum. It's been going on for years. So. . . Which comparison is really more fair?
If you are a high school or college kid who has little money and loves tinkering with computers and playing computers games, then the Mac must look to you like something only an idiot would buy. The mistake is thinking that everybody else is just like you. They aren't. Most people aren't.
If you are an adult who has money and has work to do, but has little spare time and little patience for tinkering and troubleshooting, then buying a fully-featured, name-brand PC (either Windows or Mac) can make a lot of sense. From your viewpoint, building a PC from generic parts is out of the question, and the bargain box from Wal-Mart must look like something only an idiot would buy.
It's this latter group that Apple have chosen to sell to. It's nothing personal, it's not intended as any kind of insult against the young and cash-strapped computer geeks of the world. It's just their business decision about where they can best turn a profit. And as some have pointed out, Apple would face some hard obstacles switching over to X86, both technical and otherwise. There would have to be a huge payoff for doing that, and I don't see it.
If you boil all this down, the complaint about Macs costing too much is really misplaced. . . What they're complaining about is that there are still other hardware platforms besides X86. They think it's great that all these companies in Asia are cranking out mass quantities of inexpensive X86 hardware -- never mind the shoddy stuff, or the compatibility and driver pitfalls, or the general blecherousness of the X86 architecture. Cheap and plentiful is what matters, and companies like Apple should get with the program.
Personally, I'm glad there's still a viable hardware platform other than X86 in this world. I don't think it's the destiny of all other hardware to fade away, and for mankind to be stuck with X86 from now until robots take over the Earth. (Which happens in 2084 AD, by the way.) I think a lot of these people should quit their whining, save their pennies for a while, and buy an iMac. They are good machines.
No. This does not look cool. A Firebird looks cool. A Dodge Viper or a Ford GT looks cool. This thing looks like a golf cart with a plastic shell around it. It looks like a toy. The word "dorky" comes to mind.
In fact, before I bought one of these things I would resort to buying a motorcycle -- and I've never ridden a motorcycle in my life, but I'd learn.
Space tourism? Okay. . . Sure, I can see it becoming a viable ongoing business, but I still think the really big payoff in the long run will come out of asteroid mining. The space tourist business might help that along -- if it leads to putting payloads in space at lower cost.
I'm curious. . . What's the longest FSO (laser) link that anybody's heard of, and what's the throughput on it?
If only the original Macintosh had come with a trackball 20 years ago, they might well be ubiquitous today and mice would be the niche product. Perhaps someday the masses will wake up and correct this mistake. (Yeah, right. . . Probably at the same time when we all switch to Dvorak keyboards.)
I have a Logitech Marble Mouse USB, the older one with only two buttons. It's more efficient than a mouse: fingertip control, less movement, less effort, and takes less desk space. I have it configured so I can hold down my control key and scroll with the trackball.
It works pretty well for me.
From the article. . .
.
"The Macintosh was indisputably years ahead of every other PC platform in terms of user-interface design. The mouse pointer. The desktop metaphor. Overlapping windows. Icons. WYSIWYG word processing. Ten years later, every desktop computer in the world offered similar features; but in 1984, they were only on the Mac."
How many years ahead of "every other" platform was the Mac? Macintosh introduced all this GUI goodness at the beginning of 1984. Around early summer of 1985 Atari began selling the 520ST with practically all of the same features, while the Amiga 1000 shipped only a few months later.
In short, it took other companies (aside from Microsoft) about 18 to 24 months to imitate the "revolutionary" features of Macintosh. It may have taken Microsoft upward of a decade, but you know. . . That's Microsoft for ya.
Also from the article. .
"It's generally agreed that the first version of Windows that didn't suck shipped in 1995, a decade after the arrival of the Mac."
Personally, I think the first version of Mac OS that didn't suck shipped in 2001, when Mac OS X hit store shelves. (And if you want to get really technical, Mac OS X isn't a version of Mac OS at all. It's just what Apple imported to replace Mac OS after finally realizing they could never transform it into something that didn't suck.)
We don't need 10 years to develop new technology. The basic technology for cheap access to space was invented in the 1960s. Just ask Bob Truax. . . He did the cost and feasibility studies for a project he called "Sea Dragon", when he was working for Aerojet General.
Rather than retell the whole story here, let me just provide a URL --> http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/searagon.htm
If this idea were updated and developed today, it could both slash the cost of sending freight into orbit and allow launching much larger assemblies -- just think what that would have meant for space station construction!
Sea Dragon was not intended to be a manned vehicle. We would still need another vehicle to replace the shuttle. Developing one specifically for lifting people to orbit shouldn't be that hard -- that might even be something like a scaled-up version of Spaceship One. Part of the folly of the Shuttle is that it tries to be everything: freight lifter, passenger vehicle, miniature research station. Breaking out these functions into specialized vehicles would make everything easier.
The worst thing about this article is, he's starting with valid data and then drawing the wrong conclusions from it.
He's pointing out the failure of our human space flight since Apollo, or perhaps since Skylab. All the budget-busting cost overruns, all the delays, and the relatively crippled capacity of the International Space Station -- yes, I'm familiar with all of that. Dr. Allen says that the paltry results we've gotten from manned space flight for the last 30 years don't come anywhere near justifying the resources we've expended on it, and he's right. Manned spaceflight for the last 30 years can be summed up as a costly failure.
The catch is, he concludes that manned space is a bad idea. Any more reasonable or unbiased observer would look at the same span of history and conclude that we've been doing manned space flight stupidly for the last 30 years.
I personally think about 70% of the failure stems from the decision to scrap the Saturn rockets and replace them with the Shuttle. The other 30% can be laid down to NASA's ever-shrinking budget and general bureaucratic ossification.
Moving a serious human presence into space isn't going to make sense until we have an economical, high-capacity, transportation and freight link between here and there. We could have constructed that link in the 1970s if we'd gotten serious about it, and we could do it more easily today. But instead our leadership (both inside and outside of NASA) keep dithering around without any focus.
This article is full of so many distortions, it's mind-bending. First, they are revealing the secret -- which they assume none of us gullible rubes ever realized before -- that most digital music we get from the internet is stored with lossy compression. The article goes on to explain that all music with lossy compression sounds crummy (comparing it with 8-track tapes), and the only measure of digital sound quality that matters is the bit-rate.
Music from the iTunes Store, they say, sounds extra-crummy since it's compressed to only 128 kbps. (The distinction between AAC and MP3 is never even mentioned.) The implication is that consumers will rebel someday when they discover they've bought a bunch of music that isn't "true CD quality". Clutching torches and pitchforks, they'll storm the ramparts at Cupertino.
Maybe I'm just a tin-eared old goat, but the difference between a CD and a 128 kbps MP3 track doesn't leap out at me in casual listening. When it comes to 128 kbps AAC or 192 kbps MP3 tracks, they sound like CDs to me -- even when I listen closely, with headphones. Maybe if I had audiophile speakers or better headphones (or younger ears) it would make more difference, but honestly. . . This is not a distinction that keeps me up laying awake at night, wondering if my music collection is subtly flawed.
At the other extreme, the true golden-eared stereophiles of our world have complained since CDs first appeared about *their* low sampling rate. What, only 44,000 samples per second? You can't capture sonic detail at the high frequencies that way! But given the difference in sales between iPods on the one hand, and SACD or DVD-Audio players on the other hand, I think anyone can see which way the wind is blowing.
For example, consider this sentence. . .
Quote: The new craft designed by Germany's Zeppelin Luftschifftechnik -- named Zeppelin NT for "New Technology" -- is filled with helium rather than the intensely flammable hydrogen that fuelled the earlier generation of airships.
1. Flammable is a non-word. (Re: The Elements of Style) The word they were grasping for is "inflammable".
2. Airships were never "fueled" by hydrogen or helium. It provides buoyant lift, it's not burned for energy.
3. The first generation of Zeppelins were made to use helium, not hydrogen. The Germans only switched to hydrogen after the USA embargoed them and cut off their supply of helium.
Furthermore, it irritates me that nobody can mention airships without harking back to the Hindenberg. It's as if every news story about a large oceangoing ship was compelled to recap the Titanic disaster.
I don't think "innovative" is exactly the right word. I would call it forward thinking. Apple didn't invent USB, but they were the first to have USB as standard, built-in equipment. Apple was the first to ship computers without the obsolete floppy drives. And now. . . A mass-produced CPU from a large manufacturer that comes with liquid cooling. Who else is doing that?
No, liquid cooling is not a new invention -- but they are bringing it to a large part of the market that never saw this before. I could tell a similar story about Apple and dual-processor systems. Or 802.11b networking. Or the switch to selling only flat-panel monitors. That is forward thinking, it's about staying ahead of the curve, it's about leading instead of following.
Yes! That is exactly what I've been hoping for. Some people call it the "headless iMac". I just think Apple should make a home computer in the tradition of the old Atari and Amiga systems, like the Amiga 500 for example.
The closest thing they make to a home computer is the iMac, but it's too expensive -- at least partly because of the monitor. It would be especially great if they made one with DVI and HDTV output.
It could also give Apple a kind of sneaky back-door entry into the videogame business. If this little box can hook up to a HDTV, if the specs are pretty standardized and stable, and there's a standard console-style controller made for it, and there are no royalty requirements for developing and publishing games on it . . . . it could become attractive for game developers. (That's in addition to the obvious consumer apps: web-surfing, word processor, email, and the whole iLife package.)
The only problem with this plan is that it goes 100% against Apple's traditions. They've never gotten into the inexpensive home computer business, they've never been heavy into games. Apple needs to "Think Different" for something like this to work.
I once knew an Englishman who was trying to create an accurate simulation of the Alamo siege. His theory was, he could sell this program to schools all over Texas and make a fortune. It sounded like a good idea. . . He just failed to reckon something: Texas schools have almost no interest in teaching history.
During my 12 years in grade school, we studied the Texas Revolution probably for a total of about 30 minutes. We never got any explanation of why it took place, and our coverage of The Alamo simply repeated the Hollywood myths.
We learned: The Alamo was one of only two battles in the history of the world (the other occurring in ancient Greece) where all the defenders fought to the death.
Historians say: A few defenders escaped during the confusion of the fight, and a few others were captured and later executed by the Mexicans.
We learned: Each Texan killed, on average, four or five Mexican soldiers before he fell.
Historians say: The death toll was probably roughly even on both sides. Santa Anna's army wasn't crippled by the battle.
We learned: The two weeks of time spent laying siege to the Alamo allowed Sam Houston to gather his troops and made ultimate victory possible.
Historians say: The Alamo had no strategic military importance.
My point is that if Texas schools were motivated to teach this story accurately, they certainly wouldn't have needed a computer program to do a better job than this. And the idea that they would spend money on it is fairly laughable.
However. . . If my British friend could have made a simulation program to teach football plays -- he probably could have sold a ton of them to Texas schools and be a millionaire by now. It's all a matter of priorities, you know.
The animated Star Trek series was published as a boxed set of six laserdiscs. "The Animated Adventures of Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek", LV 60754-6, from Paramount Home Video.
Yes, I have the discs. No, I don't have a working LD player at the moment. Is anybody even making new ones anymore?
The distinction of the animated series that amuses me most is the appearance in six episodes of Lieutenant M'Ress serving as the communications officer.
Animated STAR TREK - Lt. M'Ress
A Google search will show that M'Ress is remembered surprisingly well among fans, for such an obscure character after such a long time passed without ever being seen again.
How much power will it draw? How are you going to cool it? The laws of physics appear to present certain obstacles, these are starting to become real problems. But even if you can make this kind of power happen in a game console -- will it make the game drastically better? Will it even make the graphics drastically better? I have doubts.
It looks to me like we've reached a point of diminishing returns with 3D graphics. Each new generation of hardware is resulting in less dramatic improvement to the images we're seeing. Continuing to throw more hardware at games and calling it a "revolution" will lead only to disappointment.
Ha, I say! Ha! This is the kind of drivel I've heard from game industry pundits going all the way back to the mid 1980s. Somehow it never seems to happen. We've got plenty powerful enough hardware today, and advanced enough AI algorithms, if only there was a serious push to use them. Yet, this article seems to be implying that a deeper and more sophisticated story is somehow tied to better graphics.
I was recently looking at screenshots from upcoming games: Everquest 2 and World of Warcraft. EQ2 definitely has highly advanced graphics, from a technical standpoint. Tons of polygons, massive detailed texturemaps, advanced lighting effects, yadda yadda. . . So why does WoW often look more attractive? I think it's because Blizzard focussed on art with a sense of style rather than flogging the technology.
Blizzard are also working hard to create a well-designed, well-balanced game that's fun to play. Sony, on the other hand, are bragging about their voice acting and how cinematic everything is. Is it a game, or is it a movie? I'd like to play a game, please. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned that way?
After the introduction the article dives into a lot of technical subjects that I'm not qualified to comment on. At the end it wraps it with a surprising admission. .
The author implies that this is a problem to be overcome -- probably by borrowing techniques from film and television. I'm thinking instead: Maybe this is the point where we should take a step back and ask if we're even on the right path, if this is the direction videogames (and computer games) should even be going? Is this real progress?