especially considering how well Sony offered complete backward compatibility so perfectly on the PS2. Nowadays, it's lost so much relevence that the "feature" is almost non-existent on the PS3 and exists only an incrimental add-on for the most mediocre of titles on the 360. (Legal issues on who owns what on the original Xbox's hardware, not withstanding...)
The only console to have it right on this generation is the Wii. (Which, strangely enough, may be why it's still doing so well despite the surprising large number of yawn-inducing, similarly designed party-game titles and the awkwardly made "classic" controller for the virtual console stuff.)
Strangely, you'd think backward compatibility would count for much more on the PS3, since Japanese households rarely have the kind of free space needed for keeping stacks obsolete hardware next to the TV. Sony wants to squeeze at least 1-2 more years of life out of the PS2 market, but without backward compatibility available to late adopters of the PS3, it's hard to see how anyone can really find much value in purchasing any more content for the older system.
... that there isn't already a database of these 911/emergency mode sounds cell phones commonly make when placing such calls. Criminals could then intentionally listen for these sounds as they work so they know exactly who to kill and when.
It was originally a public access show out in the minneapolis area.
I used to live about 10 miles away from Best Brains back in my college days, but never had a chance to visit. A friend of mine back then did actually manage to get a tour of the place and got quite a few photos of the original set and "the ball". The set wasn't much more than sheets of plywood with dozens of rubber dog toys glued to them, covered in a matte grey paint. (Kind of explains why the SOL was always depicted as a bone in the show.)
Anyway, there are some photos of the tour online somewhere, but it's been years since I last saw the site he hosted them on.
(btw... anyone else miss the 24hr turkey day marathons?)
There is an early hitchcock movie that was shot in real-time in one take, starting James Stewart. I forget the title, but the gist of it was a bachelor killing someone in his apartment just before a party and hiding the body on scene. The point was to depict the stress of having committed a murder and having the evidence in a place anybody could potentially find it, and somehow remain cool hosting a crowd around the hiding spot.
At the time it was filmed, they had to load the camera with a replacement reel. During that moment everyone had to sort of freeze in position until filming resumed to ensure a seemless cut from the first reel to the next. No other cuts were made to the movie whatsoever.
Honestly, I don't see why the fansubbing community doesn't just distribute the subtitle track data they create, and pair the data to legitimate japan region dvds. These people could then import these dvds, rip them on a dedicated machine regioned to japanese discs, then add the new subtitle tracks and re-burn out to a region free disc.
The legal aspects for the fansub tracks could prove interesting, however. For example, how far does written word need to be changed from the original source before it gets treated as an original work by itself? Also, does a fan-created subtitle track even qualify as "infringement", without the necessary audio/video tracks that put it into context?
If translation is copyright infringement, where does the law stand on tools like "babelfish" or even language-to-language dictionaries? The words are already there and ready, they just lack a logical order.
If we continually lived in constant fear of the unknown, we'd still be living in caves (assuming we even survived at all...), completely ignorant of even the simplest things we now take for granted. (Fire, anyone?)
That much aside, it's often an unavoidable necessity to tread into unknown territory because our survival might eventually depend on one of us to take the first step before someone else does. Surely you learned about Mutually Assured Destruction in school, right? It doesn't quite work if only one party is holding all the cards.
Up in Wisconsin Dells, there's a place called the Tommy Bartlett Exploratory (formerly, Robot World), which has been around since the 1980s. Back when I was there in the early 90s, the place had a huge tour guided entirely by robots. Of course, to keep the kiddies interested, some of the "robots" featured were more or less a novelty crossing of Chuck E Cheese automation and the bots from Mystery Science Theater 3000. However, the place did feature a lot of legitimate robots and plenty of scientific stuff to explore.
Since then though, it seems like they did away with most of the gimmicks in favor of making it much more educational.
Just a thought here, but once this system reached a one-to-one ratio with our current fossil-fuel usage, it may only take a single asshat to engineer and deploy a virus capable of crippling an entire country.
Somehow, I doubt a city/state/country-wide quarantine on vehicles (and other devices) using such a system would be a trivial task.
Though, my version goes back to the point where graphical user interfaces started taking over the desktop, giving rise to self-proclaimed computer "experts", who really know nothing about what goes on under the hood. The types who go out and buy the fanciest, fastest setup on the market, brag about it mindlessly for a few days, then end up having to call you to fix something stupid they did to it.
Whatever happened to the days where you almost had to know how to program a computer just to use one? And why is it that computers rarely come with easily accessible programming tools available to the user from the very first time they boot up the machine?
(Then again, I'm betting the pre-command line interface folks are getting a good laugh at this post...)
... than Mac OS X blatant disregard for the Human Interface Guidelines. I'm still using Photoshop 7 here and have yet to face a problem related to the interface, even though most of it retains the same interface it had back in v2.x.
The question here, is what Adobe's follow-up to the aging Photoshop interface will be. With any luck, it won't resemble any of the interfaces created by Kai Kraus.
... that we've never seemed to need nanny technology like this, or the V-chip, until only after they had been invented?
Sure, right now, it's the "in" thing to go around villifying TV, movies, music and games for somehow "corrupting" our children. Yet, children have had access to most of these things since the mid-1970s. So why is it that this generation is so much worse than previous generations despite all these wonderful assisted-parenting devices?
Perhaps what's really going on here isn't so much that children are becoming more easily influenced by the explicit or graphic nature of the content available, but instead are being driven toward acting out unfavorably toward their parents due to an overwhelming lack of trust. Parents today are EXPECTING the very worst of their children right from the start and are overzealously placing restrictions on everything their child might use, by any means necessary. This includes going to the level of covertly gathering data on their children or using deceptive measures to maintain control. Yet, they themselves probably have the nerve to complain when their government does the same to them "for their own protection."
The fact of the matter here, is that children need to feel trusted by their parents until they do something to jeopardize that trust. If they do not have any leeway to make decisions for themselves (good or bad), then they'll see it only as any decision not already made for them ahead of time as being "bad". It only creates a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario... eventually causing them to lash out at any figure of authority purely from frustration.
Children are actually a lot more intelligent than we give them credit for. If given some amount of trusted freedom, they'll learn quickly that trust is something one must earn and not take for granted. If they value being a trusted member of the family, they'll avoid violating that trust. But unless the parents allow their child some level of trust in good faith, that child will never know the positive aspects of good behavior outside of simply avoiding punishment.
This method of modelling has actually been around for some time in the consumer arena, going back to the mid-to-late 90's. The earliest one I can think of was from a company called MetaCreations (formerly Specular, the makers of Carrara Studio's older cousin, Infini-D). However, I can't recall the name of the software that did the photo-to-model stuff. I do know it functioned very similar to Google's SketchUp, which does the exact same thing.
Google's setup is a bit more grandiose in scale though. They're hoping SketchUp users will create models of landmarks, businesses and homes in their communities using various photos, then share the resulting models for inclusion on a geographically accurate version of Google Earth.
Once finished, Google Earth may be able to provide a time accurate, browseable 3D version of any location on the planet.
I've never understood the fascination with pictographic security measures. It seems very rube-goldberg and introduces several counter-intuitive factors that could end up locking out legitimate clients from their own data, if something were to happen to them that would permanently alter how they enter such a code. (The same could be said for biometric security measures, as well...)
For example, what if the user were to end up blind, paralyzed or damages / loses part of the limb used to enter such a code? At least with alphanumeric sequences, there are several ways to accomodate such changes.
May pictographic codes were cool back in the days of Johnny Pneumonic, but realistically they're not exactly practical for everyday use. There's a few websites out there, like SpyMac that employ pictographic codes, however, they lost a good chunk of their user base after it was put into effect. (Not sure if they're still using it now though...)
Yeah... I'm still waiting on a reason to justify the value of the iPhone over my lowly $129 Nokia 770 unit that handles both VoIP and Flash right out of the box. Add in a 2gb MMCmobile card and a few bells & whistles from the numerous third party developers, there's not much reason to pay the Apple premium... especially when the "real" web can barely be accomodated by the iPhone's tiny screen.
As for the trend in unlocking iPhones, I don't see it slowing down anytime soon... even with the announced "official" SDK coming next year. I strongly doubt the "official" SDK will offer developers or users anywhere near the level of open-ness or freedom to utilize the iPhone hardware as completely as other less-official options will be able to offer. I'm sure the fine print regarding the official SDK will be far less exciting than the release of the SDK itself.
There's much to be suspicious about whenever someone like Steve Jobs suddenly has a "change of heart" regarding product policy. Does anyone really believe Jobs wasn't at all planning this back when he asserted that developers would take down the west coast cell networks if allowed to develop native apps on the iPhone? There's obviously more to it than this thinly-veiled blessing announcement that just happened to conveniently coincide with the release of Leopard next week.
Just wait... there will be some sort of costly compromise to be met for developers to use this SDK. Perhaps certain applications of the SDK, such as creating a VoIP app, may be considered a breach of contract. Maybe something more draconian, such as zero freedom to distribute an app without Apple as a middle-man, including a mandatory Apple tax for the privilege. (After the whole pay-to-play 802.11n firmware upgrade fiasco, I put nothing past what Apple might do if it means an extra buck.)
Needless to say, the former "crazy ones" are now committable.
As an owner of a Wii myself, I've been finding it extremely difficult to tolerate playing most Wii games for more than a couple days. While motion controls may enhance gameplay in many instances, it should not be the only control scheme available. Many of us who are older or disabled are extremely sensitive to repetative movement in the arms, hands, neck and back. Unfortunately, there aren't many Wii titles that allow you to switch between button mashing and motion controls, so once you hit your limit of what you can tolerate in terms of pain, you only have the option of walking away from the game to recover. Combine this with the fact that many of us also work physically demanding jobs, and soon you have to choose between gaming or job security.
Of course, a lot of the problem, is that Nintendo has yet to provide Wii users a true, wireless controller for more traditional games aside from that crappy classic controller you have to plug into the Wii remote. Sure, there's the wavebird, but a true, Wii-native controller would be better. (Perhaps Nintendo could take a page from Sony and create a Wavebird/Wii-remote hybrid that does both traditional controls and motion controls in a single unit.)
Is this really a question of ethics, or just fueling our beliefs that our beloved pets must have emotions/souls? By imposing our own human mannerisms on top of their default primal, instict-driven, action-reaction behavioral patterns, we delude ourselves into thinking our pets would really bother to think twice about eating you alive if the "easier" food sources suddenly became scarce. Sure, you might be able to stop one of them, before the main course starts, but not without enduring a decent amount of damage to your flesh.
So, big man... do your ethics of convenience come back after you committed yourself to snapping the necks of puppies and kittens to sustain your own wellbeing?
... just because something seems more powerful than you doesn't mean it must be a / the "god". It just means it's more powerful.
Beware of "gods" that announce themselves or are announced by others. No true "god" should ever have to stoop so low as to put on a magic show or resort to fear tactics to validate their credentials to a lowly human.
Suppose they eventually get to the point where creating and implanting customized genetic code is trivial. What's next? Creating code that will make the implanted cells start construction of totally new cells from scratch using loose chemicals available in the body already without the usual cell-division mechanism, and finish by delivering a viral payload of secondary genetic code? Will that satisfy the conditions of "creating" new life, or will it fail because we still used a middle-man for the construction?
The cells may not be true nanobots, but they're still machines carrying out our commands.
Realistically though, I find it kind of pointless to add in the whole qualifier of outer cellular creation, since it's unlikely to ever be used. Why reinvent the entire wheel when you just need different spokes? Most likely, we'll create a custom code set to get existing cells to replicate themselves into a neutral "blank" state, then just virally infect the whole batch with the code we need at the time.
There is a newer Blender book out, called "Introducing Character Animation with Blender", that might be a bit easier to follow than some of the earlier "guides" on the software. I've been using it for a couple months now, and I finally have enough of Blender's interface figured out to model with it without interrupting my workflow. Definitely helped to explain the difference between datablocks, objects and meshes without making your brain hurt in the process. Also, the book seems to be current up to 2.43, so it only fails to cover the post-2.43 stuff like model sculpting.
"Rather than making the car intelligent through electronic & computer wizardry, they should instead make the new car "alive" as though it's posessed by a benevolent demon."
Actually, this is probably a more extreme version of KARR, similar in design to KITT but lacking KITT's compassion for living things.
If these rumors are accurate, then what was the point of producing the iPod Touch as a separate product? There certainly wasn't any need for a test market of such a device, since we already had the iPhone. The iPod Touch is merely a crippled version of the former and offers little in benefits above the iPhone itself. Any Apple branded PDA is likely to be almost identical in hardware to the Touch (WiFi, touch display, etc...) with the only real difference being in the software itself.
Most likely this would be the same "OS X", but with a few slightly more robust apps and some iPod functionality. There's really no reason for Apple to box up yet a third product under a new name when both the iPhone and iPod touch could simply be patched to this newer OS package.
A slightly more realistic scenario would be for Apple to break from the tradition of tying the PDA OS to a device in hardware and create a PDA OS that can be truly upgraded whenever a new major update is released. They could then sell these updates for $50 or so with major updates to the applications included... sort of like their current iLife apps for the Mac. However, we may still face the no third party apps policy as a continued trade-off for this feature. After all, Apple doesn't want to deal with thousands of iBricks after each update with limitless possible causes. (Such as the situation with the v1.1.1 update for iPhone and iPod Touch right now.)
What we can do, however, is look for many of the linux-based PDAs to start employing more iPhone-like features, while still retaining the expandability options available from 3rd party developers. Companies like Nokia are getting close to managing this already.
Slashdot Mirror
especially considering how well Sony offered complete backward compatibility so perfectly on the PS2. Nowadays, it's lost so much relevence that the "feature" is almost non-existent on the PS3 and exists only an incrimental add-on for the most mediocre of titles on the 360. (Legal issues on who owns what on the original Xbox's hardware, not withstanding...)
The only console to have it right on this generation is the Wii. (Which, strangely enough, may be why it's still doing so well despite the surprising large number of yawn-inducing, similarly designed party-game titles and the awkwardly made "classic" controller for the virtual console stuff.)
Strangely, you'd think backward compatibility would count for much more on the PS3, since Japanese households rarely have the kind of free space needed for keeping stacks obsolete hardware next to the TV. Sony wants to squeeze at least 1-2 more years of life out of the PS2 market, but without backward compatibility available to late adopters of the PS3, it's hard to see how anyone can really find much value in purchasing any more content for the older system.
... that there isn't already a database of these 911/emergency mode sounds cell phones commonly make when placing such calls. Criminals could then intentionally listen for these sounds as they work so they know exactly who to kill and when.
It was originally a public access show out in the minneapolis area.
I used to live about 10 miles away from Best Brains back in my college days, but never had a chance to visit. A friend of mine back then did actually manage to get a tour of the place and got quite a few photos of the original set and "the ball". The set wasn't much more than sheets of plywood with dozens of rubber dog toys glued to them, covered in a matte grey paint. (Kind of explains why the SOL was always depicted as a bone in the show.)
Anyway, there are some photos of the tour online somewhere, but it's been years since I last saw the site he hosted them on.
(btw... anyone else miss the 24hr turkey day marathons?)
There is an early hitchcock movie that was shot in real-time in one take, starting James Stewart. I forget the title, but the gist of it was a bachelor killing someone in his apartment just before a party and hiding the body on scene. The point was to depict the stress of having committed a murder and having the evidence in a place anybody could potentially find it, and somehow remain cool hosting a crowd around the hiding spot.
At the time it was filmed, they had to load the camera with a replacement reel. During that moment everyone had to sort of freeze in position until filming resumed to ensure a seemless cut from the first reel to the next. No other cuts were made to the movie whatsoever.
Is death among the "not for children" crowd? Are we no longer equipped to deal with the reality of one's impending end of existence?
Honestly, I don't see why the fansubbing community doesn't just distribute the subtitle track data they create, and pair the data to legitimate japan region dvds. These people could then import these dvds, rip them on a dedicated machine regioned to japanese discs, then add the new subtitle tracks and re-burn out to a region free disc.
The legal aspects for the fansub tracks could prove interesting, however. For example, how far does written word need to be changed from the original source before it gets treated as an original work by itself? Also, does a fan-created subtitle track even qualify as "infringement", without the necessary audio/video tracks that put it into context?
If translation is copyright infringement, where does the law stand on tools like "babelfish" or even language-to-language dictionaries? The words are already there and ready, they just lack a logical order.
If we continually lived in constant fear of the unknown, we'd still be living in caves (assuming we even survived at all...), completely ignorant of even the simplest things we now take for granted. (Fire, anyone?)
That much aside, it's often an unavoidable necessity to tread into unknown territory because our survival might eventually depend on one of us to take the first step before someone else does. Surely you learned about Mutually Assured Destruction in school, right? It doesn't quite work if only one party is holding all the cards.
Microsoft RAMDoubler for Humans!
And all this time you thought they were after Connectix for VirtualPC...
Up in Wisconsin Dells, there's a place called the Tommy Bartlett Exploratory (formerly, Robot World), which has been around since the 1980s. Back when I was there in the early 90s, the place had a huge tour guided entirely by robots. Of course, to keep the kiddies interested, some of the "robots" featured were more or less a novelty crossing of Chuck E Cheese automation and the bots from Mystery Science Theater 3000. However, the place did feature a lot of legitimate robots and plenty of scientific stuff to explore.
Since then though, it seems like they did away with most of the gimmicks in favor of making it much more educational.
Just a thought here, but once this system reached a one-to-one ratio with our current fossil-fuel usage, it may only take a single asshat to engineer and deploy a virus capable of crippling an entire country.
Somehow, I doubt a city/state/country-wide quarantine on vehicles (and other devices) using such a system would be a trivial task.
Though, my version goes back to the point where graphical user interfaces started taking over the desktop, giving rise to self-proclaimed computer "experts", who really know nothing about what goes on under the hood. The types who go out and buy the fanciest, fastest setup on the market, brag about it mindlessly for a few days, then end up having to call you to fix something stupid they did to it.
Whatever happened to the days where you almost had to know how to program a computer just to use one? And why is it that computers rarely come with easily accessible programming tools available to the user from the very first time they boot up the machine?
(Then again, I'm betting the pre-command line interface folks are getting a good laugh at this post...)
... than Mac OS X blatant disregard for the Human Interface Guidelines. I'm still using Photoshop 7 here and have yet to face a problem related to the interface, even though most of it retains the same interface it had back in v2.x.
The question here, is what Adobe's follow-up to the aging Photoshop interface will be. With any luck, it won't resemble any of the interfaces created by Kai Kraus.
... that we've never seemed to need nanny technology like this, or the V-chip, until only after they had been invented?
Sure, right now, it's the "in" thing to go around villifying TV, movies, music and games for somehow "corrupting" our children. Yet, children have had access to most of these things since the mid-1970s. So why is it that this generation is so much worse than previous generations despite all these wonderful assisted-parenting devices?
Perhaps what's really going on here isn't so much that children are becoming more easily influenced by the explicit or graphic nature of the content available, but instead are being driven toward acting out unfavorably toward their parents due to an overwhelming lack of trust. Parents today are EXPECTING the very worst of their children right from the start and are overzealously placing restrictions on everything their child might use, by any means necessary. This includes going to the level of covertly gathering data on their children or using deceptive measures to maintain control. Yet, they themselves probably have the nerve to complain when their government does the same to them "for their own protection."
The fact of the matter here, is that children need to feel trusted by their parents until they do something to jeopardize that trust. If they do not have any leeway to make decisions for themselves (good or bad), then they'll see it only as any decision not already made for them ahead of time as being "bad". It only creates a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario... eventually causing them to lash out at any figure of authority purely from frustration.
Children are actually a lot more intelligent than we give them credit for. If given some amount of trusted freedom, they'll learn quickly that trust is something one must earn and not take for granted. If they value being a trusted member of the family, they'll avoid violating that trust. But unless the parents allow their child some level of trust in good faith, that child will never know the positive aspects of good behavior outside of simply avoiding punishment.
This method of modelling has actually been around for some time in the consumer arena, going back to the mid-to-late 90's. The earliest one I can think of was from a company called MetaCreations (formerly Specular, the makers of Carrara Studio's older cousin, Infini-D). However, I can't recall the name of the software that did the photo-to-model stuff. I do know it functioned very similar to Google's SketchUp, which does the exact same thing.
Google's setup is a bit more grandiose in scale though. They're hoping SketchUp users will create models of landmarks, businesses and homes in their communities using various photos, then share the resulting models for inclusion on a geographically accurate version of Google Earth.
Once finished, Google Earth may be able to provide a time accurate, browseable 3D version of any location on the planet.
I've never understood the fascination with pictographic security measures. It seems very rube-goldberg and introduces several counter-intuitive factors that could end up locking out legitimate clients from their own data, if something were to happen to them that would permanently alter how they enter such a code. (The same could be said for biometric security measures, as well...)
For example, what if the user were to end up blind, paralyzed or damages / loses part of the limb used to enter such a code? At least with alphanumeric sequences, there are several ways to accomodate such changes.
May pictographic codes were cool back in the days of Johnny Pneumonic, but realistically they're not exactly practical for everyday use. There's a few websites out there, like SpyMac that employ pictographic codes, however, they lost a good chunk of their user base after it was put into effect. (Not sure if they're still using it now though...)
Yeah... I'm still waiting on a reason to justify the value of the iPhone over my lowly $129 Nokia 770 unit that handles both VoIP and Flash right out of the box. Add in a 2gb MMCmobile card and a few bells & whistles from the numerous third party developers, there's not much reason to pay the Apple premium... especially when the "real" web can barely be accomodated by the iPhone's tiny screen.
As for the trend in unlocking iPhones, I don't see it slowing down anytime soon... even with the announced "official" SDK coming next year. I strongly doubt the "official" SDK will offer developers or users anywhere near the level of open-ness or freedom to utilize the iPhone hardware as completely as other less-official options will be able to offer. I'm sure the fine print regarding the official SDK will be far less exciting than the release of the SDK itself.
There's much to be suspicious about whenever someone like Steve Jobs suddenly has a "change of heart" regarding product policy. Does anyone really believe Jobs wasn't at all planning this back when he asserted that developers would take down the west coast cell networks if allowed to develop native apps on the iPhone? There's obviously more to it than this thinly-veiled blessing announcement that just happened to conveniently coincide with the release of Leopard next week.
Just wait... there will be some sort of costly compromise to be met for developers to use this SDK. Perhaps certain applications of the SDK, such as creating a VoIP app, may be considered a breach of contract. Maybe something more draconian, such as zero freedom to distribute an app without Apple as a middle-man, including a mandatory Apple tax for the privilege. (After the whole pay-to-play 802.11n firmware upgrade fiasco, I put nothing past what Apple might do if it means an extra buck.)
Needless to say, the former "crazy ones" are now committable.
As an owner of a Wii myself, I've been finding it extremely difficult to tolerate playing most Wii games for more than a couple days. While motion controls may enhance gameplay in many instances, it should not be the only control scheme available. Many of us who are older or disabled are extremely sensitive to repetative movement in the arms, hands, neck and back. Unfortunately, there aren't many Wii titles that allow you to switch between button mashing and motion controls, so once you hit your limit of what you can tolerate in terms of pain, you only have the option of walking away from the game to recover. Combine this with the fact that many of us also work physically demanding jobs, and soon you have to choose between gaming or job security.
Of course, a lot of the problem, is that Nintendo has yet to provide Wii users a true, wireless controller for more traditional games aside from that crappy classic controller you have to plug into the Wii remote. Sure, there's the wavebird, but a true, Wii-native controller would be better. (Perhaps Nintendo could take a page from Sony and create a Wavebird/Wii-remote hybrid that does both traditional controls and motion controls in a single unit.)
Is this really a question of ethics, or just fueling our beliefs that our beloved pets must have emotions/souls? By imposing our own human mannerisms on top of their default primal, instict-driven, action-reaction behavioral patterns, we delude ourselves into thinking our pets would really bother to think twice about eating you alive if the "easier" food sources suddenly became scarce. Sure, you might be able to stop one of them, before the main course starts, but not without enduring a decent amount of damage to your flesh.
So, big man... do your ethics of convenience come back after you committed yourself to snapping the necks of puppies and kittens to sustain your own wellbeing?
... just because something seems more powerful than you doesn't mean it must be a / the "god". It just means it's more powerful.
Beware of "gods" that announce themselves or are announced by others. No true "god" should ever have to stoop so low as to put on a magic show or resort to fear tactics to validate their credentials to a lowly human.
Suppose they eventually get to the point where creating and implanting customized genetic code is trivial. What's next? Creating code that will make the implanted cells start construction of totally new cells from scratch using loose chemicals available in the body already without the usual cell-division mechanism, and finish by delivering a viral payload of secondary genetic code? Will that satisfy the conditions of "creating" new life, or will it fail because we still used a middle-man for the construction?
The cells may not be true nanobots, but they're still machines carrying out our commands.
Realistically though, I find it kind of pointless to add in the whole qualifier of outer cellular creation, since it's unlikely to ever be used. Why reinvent the entire wheel when you just need different spokes? Most likely, we'll create a custom code set to get existing cells to replicate themselves into a neutral "blank" state, then just virally infect the whole batch with the code we need at the time.
There is a newer Blender book out, called "Introducing Character Animation with Blender", that might be a bit easier to follow than some of the earlier "guides" on the software. I've been using it for a couple months now, and I finally have enough of Blender's interface figured out to model with it without interrupting my workflow. Definitely helped to explain the difference between datablocks, objects and meshes without making your brain hurt in the process. Also, the book seems to be current up to 2.43, so it only fails to cover the post-2.43 stuff like model sculpting.
"Rather than making the car intelligent through electronic & computer wizardry, they should instead make the new car "alive" as though it's posessed by a benevolent demon."
Actually, this is probably a more extreme version of KARR, similar in design to KITT but lacking KITT's compassion for living things.
... KITT was still in rehab following a bad acid trip.
If these rumors are accurate, then what was the point of producing the iPod Touch as a separate product? There certainly wasn't any need for a test market of such a device, since we already had the iPhone. The iPod Touch is merely a crippled version of the former and offers little in benefits above the iPhone itself. Any Apple branded PDA is likely to be almost identical in hardware to the Touch (WiFi, touch display, etc...) with the only real difference being in the software itself.
Most likely this would be the same "OS X", but with a few slightly more robust apps and some iPod functionality. There's really no reason for Apple to box up yet a third product under a new name when both the iPhone and iPod touch could simply be patched to this newer OS package.
A slightly more realistic scenario would be for Apple to break from the tradition of tying the PDA OS to a device in hardware and create a PDA OS that can be truly upgraded whenever a new major update is released. They could then sell these updates for $50 or so with major updates to the applications included... sort of like their current iLife apps for the Mac. However, we may still face the no third party apps policy as a continued trade-off for this feature. After all, Apple doesn't want to deal with thousands of iBricks after each update with limitless possible causes. (Such as the situation with the v1.1.1 update for iPhone and iPod Touch right now.)
What we can do, however, is look for many of the linux-based PDAs to start employing more iPhone-like features, while still retaining the expandability options available from 3rd party developers. Companies like Nokia are getting close to managing this already.