That's kind of the way technology works. First no one can do it (or it's not cost effective) then someone tries it out and experiences success, so the other companies start copying them, and pretty soon it's hard to imagine (or sell) the product without that feature.
The Model-T didn't have seatbelts, airbags, or crumple zones. However the fact that early cars didn't have those features isn't a good argument not to include them now. I certainly wouldn't want to get in a car without them (well, no airbag would probably be okay) Or if you want something a little more analogous, there weren't any car radios or CD players back then, but they're sure popular now.
This is an argument I've never understood. Did a Sony rep come into their house with a baseball bat and bash apart their old Playstations when they bought at PS2? My family owned the NES, SNES, N64, Playstation, and Gameboy.
A: No, the Sony engineers built a product that was starting to have some serious issues about the time the PS2 came out. (At least in my case.)
B: Marginal space savings can be important. I had a lot of older systems too, and the space around my tv was starting to get pretty cluttered. I'd retired the NES when i got the N64 to save space. (Still played the NES games in emulation even though i prefer the actual console better.)
Backwards compatibility meant that i could get rid of a console without giving up the games (and without having to put up with an on the fritz PSX.) It also meant that i didn't have to buy a new switcher (had a 4 channel one with PSX, SNES, N64 and Dreamcast hooked up.) It also meant i had something to use my PS2 for once i'd exhausted the only two worthwhile games in the initial lineup.
There's one area you haven't hit. I've heard rumors and some pretty good arguments for this, but no firm proof. The story is that the reason the PS2 has only two controllers is because the I/O chip is the PSX emulator. It was designed to handle the two controllers the PSX had, and the Sony engineers decided it was too dificult to work in 4 controller compatibility while still using the same chip as a pseudo-PSX.
It's a rather strange disadvantage, but a disadvantage none the less. (If it's true of course.) Presumably with more time to work on the issue, and (hopefully) having seen the importance of four controllers for the GameCube and XBox, they'll have figure out a way around this issue for the PS3. (Perhaps having a seperate chip or two for the backwards compatibility, rather than trying to merge functionality with the I/O process?)
I have to prefer the society where everyone does what they feel is important to get done, and only unite behind goals for their own purposes.
To quote the parent poster, "I reel at the idea of what we could accomplish if everyone was united to one idea."
How do those two ideas disagree? Obviously not everyone in the Soviet Union was united in those ideas, even if most of the resources were forcibly allocated to them by those in power.
You are right, it's unlikely that _everyone_ in the world would unite behind _one_ idea. However as things currently stand almost _no one_ (statistically speaking) is doing what they'd really want to do, given the education and freedom to do it. Most people are too constrained by the systems under which they live (political, societal, economical, enviromental, etc)
"Imagine if everyone on earth was able to combine their resources and technology with no political, religious, or cultural boundries."
I think those are big problems, but equally important are money and energy. Money because so many people and groups are obsessed with getting it and because almost everyone needs it to survive. Energy because if everyone was able to do whatever they wanted we'd quickly run out of power to support everything.
If everyone on the planet was educated and lived under a government that allowed them to freedom to do what they want, were free of the constrictions of money, and had access to an effectively limitless source of power, things would be very different. Either we'd see a huge surge in the development of science and technology and the arts, or everyone would sit at home watching tv all the time and all progress would cease. I'm not sure way it would go, but it would certainly be interesting finding out.
As much as everyone is griping about backwards compatability, do you really need it? I thought it was a cool feature when buying the ps2 over 3 years ago but I never used it.
Here's a hint, if you thought it was a cool feature when you were _buying_ the PS2, that's all Sony cares about. They couldn't give a damn if you thought it was cool when you were _playing_ it. They'd far rather you bought the newest (and more expensive) PS2 games rather than buying older PSX games anyways, but getting you to buy the console in the first place was the critical juncture.
The same applies to XBox Live. Far more people talk about how cool it is than actually use it, but if the talk encourages people to buy the system, it's all good to Microsoft.
Halo 2? That's a little sad. It's not even out yet, and it's a sequel to the original "after this, what next" game. Sequels aren't bad, but having to count every game in a series to bolster your argument is.
I've got about 20 PS2 games and 20 GameCube games sitting on my shelves justifying my purchase of a PS2 and a GameCube after SSX and Pikmin. And that's just the games i _own_. I certainly haven't bought _all_ the good games. (Sucks how a more than full-time job keeps you from finishing too many games.)
(And if you want, i can quantify my list just like you did, but they'd be two long lists, and i'm lazy =)
If there's no backwards compatibilty in the Next X-box, then I have no extra bit of incentive to stay with the platform for the next generation, meaning I could just as easily jump to a PS3 or the next nintendo or whatever.
AND quickly build a library of cheap older games from the previous generation if the other consoles are backwards compatible.
Marketing can be a powerful thing, but i wonder how many PS2s would have been sold in those first few months (after the inital hardcore gamer purchases) if it hadn't had DVD capabilities and backwards compatibility, given the tiny selection of release games. However who cares if it's got many good games on it's own when you can buy all the best games of the previous generation, frequently at bargain prices.
No, the reason why bacteria have not covered the world is because there are limited resources for growth. Populations are self-limiting to resource constraints.
I'll challenge you on this. Bacteria grow just fine in the human body up until antibodies or such come along and stop them. When something dies and whatever defenses it has stop working the bacteria have a field day, why do you think things decompose?
Sure, there are some areas that bacteria won't grow period, but that's generally areas where there's nothing living anyways. Bacteria don't grow very well in water, but they can certainly survive in there for awhile since you can get various infections by drinking unclean drinking water.
Sure, if everything on earth lost all their defenses at once the bacteria wouldn't cover the entire earth at once. Well, they might actually, since everyone has bacteria inside them already, so the entire world would be entirely consumed at the same rate. However even if a specific bacteria that could eat any sugar and was immune to all anti-bodies developed at one point on the world, it would quickly spread around the entire world barring massive quantine efforts. It would certainly spread across whatever continent it was on. By the time it reached the other end of the world/continent technically yes, it would have run out of food were it started. However that doesn't much matter to the people who lived there since they're all dead already.
Even people who arrived after the fact would probably be at risk, since many kinds of bacteria can go into suspension for long periods of time. Nanobots would probably excell at this kind of suspended animation until they bumped into another food source.
We've had enough trouble containing SARS, AIDS, west nile virus, bird flu, and a whole other host of diseases, and those are restricted to just a few species of animals and our immune system is helping us out. Look at mad cow disease, it's difficult to spread, but the body has zero defenses against it, so if you get infected, it's guaranteed 100% terminal.
Really. I've actually done those experiments to completion and here is a basic fact for you: exponential growth is only sustainable as long as there are available resources in the environment. They explode for 48 hours, peak, then die off. Basic ecology whether you are talking about E. coli, rabbits, or self-replicating machines.
Sure, they're limited by the food source, but if the food source is humans, and other animals and plants, waiting for it to run out of resources is not a very good solution. The grey goo will die in the end, or at least go quiescent, but that won't help us.
I'm pretty sure this is how life worked early on in earth's history. Some lifeform would get started in the oceans and spread through the entire ocean, then another species would evolve that had an advantage, and it would spread throughtout the entire world. The species that produced oxygen as a waste product spread across the entire ocean and then suffocated on it's own waste gases making room for the oxygen breathing bacteria. The only reason we don't see such behavior now days (as long as you don't count humans =) is because of all the defense mechinisms various species have developed to prevent it.
So yes, i maintain that if we develop nanotech that is capable of "digesting" sugar and reproducing itself with access to carbon, oxygen and nitrogen (and whatever other trace chemicals it can find in plants and people) then we would be capable of creating a grey goo type nanotech.
Whether or not that technology is feasible or not is a good question, however i think it's beyond our current ken to say definitively one way or the other.
Basically, I have yet to see any convincing argument that grey goo is possible. Where is this grey goo going to get the energy for even self-assembly from raw substrate, much less unchecked exponential growth?
I'm not much of a bio guy, but i remember those experiments where you put some bacteria and watch them spread, or about how quickly fruit flys can reproduce and such. Getting the energy for exponential growth isn't such a hard thing. Developing nanotech that's as good at using sources of energy as bacteria would certainly be a technical challenge, but it may not be impossible.
The only reason bacteria haven't covered the world is because living creatures have defenses against it, but those defenses probably wouldn't work against nanotech. At the point where someone develops nanotech composed mainly of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, and which can metabolize sugar, _then_ we need to start worrying about grey goo.
The Achilles Heel of the conspiracy theorists is that they forget the press: secrets leak.
You don't steal elections at the top
Watergate more or less proved that: George Bush (or any of the Democratic candidates) can't decide to steal an election. Much as the Democrats would love to prove otherwise, the governor of Florida did not "steal" the election for his brother. The people who might have stolen the election were the judges who were evaluating all of those chads. The people who absolutely, positively, did their damndest to steal the election were the "community organizers" who were rounding up people on the streets, crowding them onto buses, and shipping them to the polling place. But that involved voter registration cards of dead people--and that's another subject.
So what do you have to say about the claim that the republicans wrongly removed thousands of Florida voters from the registry shortly before the election on the false claim that they were felons?
It got leaked, the press got ahold of it, it involves the Florida Secretary of State (and who knows who gave her the marching orders since she isn't talking) and yet it just disapeared into the ether. It still gets mentioned from time to time, but there was no real outcry or investigation. Even if it really was an accident it's still a serious issue, but one way or the other no one seems to be really bothered by it. Sure, secrets leak, but what happens when the press, the people and the courts don't seem to care?
Yeah! Support the US! Buy the console that's made here! Well, designed here at least. And made in Mexico, that's the same continent at least! Er, wait, they decided that cheap Mexican labor was too expensive and moved their manufacturing to China didn't they?
Wrong, bundled games don't count towards the "software sold with system" number that Microsoft always touts, since the user is not actually buying them, but getting them for free.
"Beyond mere console sales, there's interesting reading in the other figures as well. The software attach rate for the system, a key indicator of its viability as a platform, is at a healthy 5.2 units per console - although it's thought that this encompasses bundled games (Microsoft was unable to confirm this at time of publication), which would make it altogether less impressive since few Xboxen are sold without at least two cut-price (or free) software titles in the box."
And as someone else pointed out, when the XBox first came out people were strongly encouraged or required to buy extra games in a kind of bundle pack, which may also skew the figures.
You're right, games the user gets discounted or for free with the system probably shouldn't count, however just because they _shouldn't_ count doesn't mean that Microsoft won't count them anyways.
They did, and they do in the extended edition. However in non-war like times, i think they're supposed to be like sheperds, they take care of the trees like a flock. So i agree with the parent poster, he's a pretty lousey tre-herder if he didn't notice until then. (The cutting had been going on for weeks or months.)
And i also agree with him that it was pretty stupid and out of character for them to have a long debate deciding not to get involved, and then change their minds over the course of about ten seconds of grief, with all the other Ents located conveniently close by.
The question I have is this: Is there any change from the book that actually bothers people?
In FotR:
Glamdring didn't glow when Gandalf drew it in Moria!
They didn't get the gifts grom Galadriel.
One of those was fixed in the extended edition, the other not.
In tTT:
The whole Aragorn falling off the clif thing.
Everyone making fun of Gimli.
The Ents, who are continuously described as slow and thoughtfull creatures first deciding after long debate not to help in the war, and then flying off the handle in rage when they saw the trees cut down.
Faramir being such an ass, and the diversionary trip back to Osgiloth(?)
The siege lasting less than 24 hours! In the book it was several days at least!
The lack of the woods marching.
The last is the only one they fixed in the extended edition.
in RotK:
Not dealing with the white tree of gondor at all. Aragorn never finds the seedling, and the tree just magically goes from looking really sickly for most of the movie to flowering at the end.
_AGAIN_ the siege of Gondor lasts only a single day!! What is this? Barely any time to build tension at all. It's not like showing a progression of days takes any more time on film. Look, they're fighting during the day, look now they're fighting during the night. Look! It's day again!
Sam didn't have to face the watchers of the tower with the vial of galadriel. (Hoping this one gets fixed in extended version since they never showed Sam actually walking through the gates)
The eagles arrive to help them at that final battle! And there are only about _five_ of them! Whoop de doo!
Gollum falling into the lava accidently in a fighr with Frodo, rather than just tripping and falling in while dancing with the Ring. And i'm not sure if it's a difference from the book, but Gollum should have incinerated before he even hit the lava, instead of lying in it for a good ten or fifteen seconds.
Was the point that when asked what changes bothered him, he answered?
I'm failing to see why this discussion should be limited to people who have the entire set of books memorized and have honed their arguments through years of debate on usenet. He read the books, he saw the movie, he has an opinion, and when asked for it, provided it. Deal.
I've been a devout fan of english my entire life (or at least was indoctrinated into accepting it at an early age) and i mispell english words all the time.
The way Jackson did it, this contrast is completely lost. Boromir tries to steal the ring, and Faramir probably would have if it wasn't drawing Nazgul to him.
Instead Faramir went through the brilliant thought process, "I just saw Frodo try to give the Ring to a Nazgul. For some reason I think this means he should get to keep it and carry it to Mordor, rather than taking away from him and taking it someplace I believe to be safer."
I see you're still supporting that hopeless idealist who would call himself President. Tell me, are you doing it out of spite? Would you really want the First Lady to look like a rat*? And lastly, did you or did you not vote for Nader in 2000?
* Don't get me wrong, I love ratty women. But it's just not First Ladylike. Neither is "YAAGH!" presidential.
And i'm supposed to care about the opinion of someone who thinks the height of discourse is to go around insulting other people's political choises without even the pretense of rational thought? You think we should choose a presidential candidate based on what their _spouse_ looks like? And people thought democracy was in trouble when what the _candidate_ looked like started to influence the results!
No, i didn't vote for Nader in 2000. I voted for Gore. What that has to do with the issue at hand i'm really failing to see.
It's another sad commentary about the state of our democracy when people are more concerned about one spontaneous act of genuine exuberance than they are about the actual issues. People seem to be making more out of "the scream" than they did about the sex scandals surrounding Clinton when he was running. They're certainly making a bigger deal out of it than the fact that the administration has finally admited we probably won't find WMDs in Iraq.
When you feel you have both the desire and the ability to talk about the significant issues in this campaign, come back and try again. Until then, your opinion is irrelevant and your contribution worthless.
People seem to be trying to counter your claim via the fact that Weird Al always tries to get permision before making a parody. However there are a lot of other parodies getting sold out there, and i doubt all of the creators are as curteous as Weird Al.
Spaceballs, Bored of the Rings, Barry Trotter, etc.
Faced with the choice of "selling out," or facing a multi-year legal challenge that could end up costing who knows how much money (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands? millions?) can you really blame him?
Sure, i would have cheered him on if he'd decided to go for the golden ring, but i'm not going to criticize him for taking the easy way out and covering his ass.
- They intend for new media to go into it, but could potentially play GBA games, as evidenced by their choice of processors. However, it stands to reason that they will do what they can to encourage new games to be delivered to it.
...
- It'll be a 3rd system in the market, with continuing games being developed on the other two systems. My guess is this is a 'test the waters' system, but not a full fledged effort.
Here's what i think. I have no insider knowledge, so this is just a guess, but it relates to something i've been thinking they need to do for awhile.
The PSP is going to use mini-disks, it's going to be 3d, it's basically going to be a mini PSX, er PS1 (damn Sony and their naming schemes!)
Nintendo has the perfect counter to this, a mini-GameCube since the GameCube already uses mini-disks. However the technology to package a GameCube in a handheld format at a reasonable price isn't available yet.
Unfortunatly by the time it will be afordable the PSP will already have a foothold in the market, and making the Nth generation of the GameBoy play GameCube disks but still be backwards compatible with the older cartridges will be akward and possibly expensive (making space to put two readers in there, plus the cost of both readers, etc.)
Giving up the backwards compatibility would be a real problem, but if the PSP does well they'll eventually need to match that capability or be doomed, and the longer they wait the worse it will be.
So my theory for this new device. The two screens are mainly a gimick. Sure, Nintendo may have some cool ideas for what to do with them, and they'll encourage developers to take advantage of them. However the main point of the system will be that it uses mini-disks, the same size as GameCube disks. This is why Nintendo is efectively denying the backwards compatibility.
I don't know if the first generation of games will be 2D or PSX/N64 level 3d (tie in to iQue perhaps?) but the point will be to establish a third line of products, to make this device destinct fromt he GameBoy so that DS sales won't be canabalizing from the GameBoy.
So at first it would be a kind of competition with the PSP. If you're going to buy a second handheld, are you going to get a DS or a PSP? However the big thrust will occcur in the next generation. They'll release the 2nd (or maybe 3rd) generation DS with the capability to play GameCube games, and backwards compatibility with earlier DS games. The second screen for this edition will either be able to be folded back when you're playing GameCube games, or it will be detachable. Or perhaps they'll have a larger than normal screen (good for GameCube games) that will emulate the double screens for older games.
So i think this is a long term attempt to compete with the PSP without damaging the GameBoy market directly.
Though it would be very expensive, you could take a two- or three-bedroom house, insulate it with aerogel, and you could heat the house with a candle.
Maybe I'm missing something, but elsewhere they said "But, Dr. Tsou said, the material was not used much, except in powdered form as a nontoxic anti-caking agent for food."
If it's so expensive, what kind of food exactly were they using it on? Caviar?
A lot of candles can heat up a poorly insulated house, why can't one candle heat up a very well insulated house? Most houses are heated by blowing warm air into them. As far as i can tell you are claiming that this doesn't work.
And they weren't saying the entire house should be made out of aerogel (although doing so would provide an interesting peep show for those outside) just that it could be insulated with it. You know, the same way we do with houses now. The walls aren't made out of that pink fiberglass stuff (or whatever it is) they just put it inside the walls.
Slashdot Mirror
The Model-T didn't have seatbelts, airbags, or crumple zones. However the fact that early cars didn't have those features isn't a good argument not to include them now. I certainly wouldn't want to get in a car without them (well, no airbag would probably be okay) Or if you want something a little more analogous, there weren't any car radios or CD players back then, but they're sure popular now.
A: No, the Sony engineers built a product that was starting to have some serious issues about the time the PS2 came out. (At least in my case.)
B: Marginal space savings can be important. I had a lot of older systems too, and the space around my tv was starting to get pretty cluttered. I'd retired the NES when i got the N64 to save space. (Still played the NES games in emulation even though i prefer the actual console better.)
Backwards compatibility meant that i could get rid of a console without giving up the games (and without having to put up with an on the fritz PSX.) It also meant that i didn't have to buy a new switcher (had a 4 channel one with PSX, SNES, N64 and Dreamcast hooked up.) It also meant i had something to use my PS2 for once i'd exhausted the only two worthwhile games in the initial lineup.
It's a rather strange disadvantage, but a disadvantage none the less. (If it's true of course.) Presumably with more time to work on the issue, and (hopefully) having seen the importance of four controllers for the GameCube and XBox, they'll have figure out a way around this issue for the PS3. (Perhaps having a seperate chip or two for the backwards compatibility, rather than trying to merge functionality with the I/O process?)
To quote the parent poster, "I reel at the idea of what we could accomplish if everyone was united to one idea."
How do those two ideas disagree? Obviously not everyone in the Soviet Union was united in those ideas, even if most of the resources were forcibly allocated to them by those in power.
You are right, it's unlikely that _everyone_ in the world would unite behind _one_ idea. However as things currently stand almost _no one_ (statistically speaking) is doing what they'd really want to do, given the education and freedom to do it. Most people are too constrained by the systems under which they live (political, societal, economical, enviromental, etc)
"Imagine if everyone on earth was able to combine their resources and technology with no political, religious, or cultural boundries."
I think those are big problems, but equally important are money and energy. Money because so many people and groups are obsessed with getting it and because almost everyone needs it to survive. Energy because if everyone was able to do whatever they wanted we'd quickly run out of power to support everything.
If everyone on the planet was educated and lived under a government that allowed them to freedom to do what they want, were free of the constrictions of money, and had access to an effectively limitless source of power, things would be very different. Either we'd see a huge surge in the development of science and technology and the arts, or everyone would sit at home watching tv all the time and all progress would cease. I'm not sure way it would go, but it would certainly be interesting finding out.
Here's a hint, if you thought it was a cool feature when you were _buying_ the PS2, that's all Sony cares about. They couldn't give a damn if you thought it was cool when you were _playing_ it. They'd far rather you bought the newest (and more expensive) PS2 games rather than buying older PSX games anyways, but getting you to buy the console in the first place was the critical juncture.
The same applies to XBox Live. Far more people talk about how cool it is than actually use it, but if the talk encourages people to buy the system, it's all good to Microsoft.
I've got about 20 PS2 games and 20 GameCube games sitting on my shelves justifying my purchase of a PS2 and a GameCube after SSX and Pikmin. And that's just the games i _own_. I certainly haven't bought _all_ the good games. (Sucks how a more than full-time job keeps you from finishing too many games.)
(And if you want, i can quantify my list just like you did, but they'd be two long lists, and i'm lazy =)
AND quickly build a library of cheap older games from the previous generation if the other consoles are backwards compatible.
Marketing can be a powerful thing, but i wonder how many PS2s would have been sold in those first few months (after the inital hardcore gamer purchases) if it hadn't had DVD capabilities and backwards compatibility, given the tiny selection of release games. However who cares if it's got many good games on it's own when you can buy all the best games of the previous generation, frequently at bargain prices.
I'll challenge you on this. Bacteria grow just fine in the human body up until antibodies or such come along and stop them. When something dies and whatever defenses it has stop working the bacteria have a field day, why do you think things decompose?
Sure, there are some areas that bacteria won't grow period, but that's generally areas where there's nothing living anyways. Bacteria don't grow very well in water, but they can certainly survive in there for awhile since you can get various infections by drinking unclean drinking water.
Sure, if everything on earth lost all their defenses at once the bacteria wouldn't cover the entire earth at once. Well, they might actually, since everyone has bacteria inside them already, so the entire world would be entirely consumed at the same rate. However even if a specific bacteria that could eat any sugar and was immune to all anti-bodies developed at one point on the world, it would quickly spread around the entire world barring massive quantine efforts. It would certainly spread across whatever continent it was on. By the time it reached the other end of the world/continent technically yes, it would have run out of food were it started. However that doesn't much matter to the people who lived there since they're all dead already.
Even people who arrived after the fact would probably be at risk, since many kinds of bacteria can go into suspension for long periods of time. Nanobots would probably excell at this kind of suspended animation until they bumped into another food source.
We've had enough trouble containing SARS, AIDS, west nile virus, bird flu, and a whole other host of diseases, and those are restricted to just a few species of animals and our immune system is helping us out. Look at mad cow disease, it's difficult to spread, but the body has zero defenses against it, so if you get infected, it's guaranteed 100% terminal.
Really. I've actually done those experiments to completion and here is a basic fact for you: exponential growth is only sustainable as long as there are available resources in the environment. They explode for 48 hours, peak, then die off. Basic ecology whether you are talking about E. coli, rabbits, or self-replicating machines.
Sure, they're limited by the food source, but if the food source is humans, and other animals and plants, waiting for it to run out of resources is not a very good solution. The grey goo will die in the end, or at least go quiescent, but that won't help us.
I'm pretty sure this is how life worked early on in earth's history. Some lifeform would get started in the oceans and spread through the entire ocean, then another species would evolve that had an advantage, and it would spread throughtout the entire world. The species that produced oxygen as a waste product spread across the entire ocean and then suffocated on it's own waste gases making room for the oxygen breathing bacteria. The only reason we don't see such behavior now days (as long as you don't count humans =) is because of all the defense mechinisms various species have developed to prevent it.
So yes, i maintain that if we develop nanotech that is capable of "digesting" sugar and reproducing itself with access to carbon, oxygen and nitrogen (and whatever other trace chemicals it can find in plants and people) then we would be capable of creating a grey goo type nanotech.
Whether or not that technology is feasible or not is a good question, however i think it's beyond our current ken to say definitively one way or the other.
I'm not much of a bio guy, but i remember those experiments where you put some bacteria and watch them spread, or about how quickly fruit flys can reproduce and such. Getting the energy for exponential growth isn't such a hard thing. Developing nanotech that's as good at using sources of energy as bacteria would certainly be a technical challenge, but it may not be impossible.
The only reason bacteria haven't covered the world is because living creatures have defenses against it, but those defenses probably wouldn't work against nanotech. At the point where someone develops nanotech composed mainly of carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, and which can metabolize sugar, _then_ we need to start worrying about grey goo.
Bullets don't kill people, hydrostatic shock, organ damage and blood loss do! (And occasionally infection after the fact)
You don't steal elections at the top
Watergate more or less proved that: George Bush (or any of the Democratic candidates) can't decide to steal an election. Much as the Democrats would love to prove otherwise, the governor of Florida did not "steal" the election for his brother. The people who might have stolen the election were the judges who were evaluating all of those chads. The people who absolutely, positively, did their damndest to steal the election were the "community organizers" who were rounding up people on the streets, crowding them onto buses, and shipping them to the polling place. But that involved voter registration cards of dead people--and that's another subject.
So what do you have to say about the claim that the republicans wrongly removed thousands of Florida voters from the registry shortly before the election on the false claim that they were felons?
It got leaked, the press got ahold of it, it involves the Florida Secretary of State (and who knows who gave her the marching orders since she isn't talking) and yet it just disapeared into the ether. It still gets mentioned from time to time, but there was no real outcry or investigation. Even if it really was an accident it's still a serious issue, but one way or the other no one seems to be really bothered by it. Sure, secrets leak, but what happens when the press, the people and the courts don't seem to care?
They're currently all being used for a beowulf cluster in Soviet Russia.
Yeah! Support the US! Buy the console that's made here! Well, designed here at least. And made in Mexico, that's the same continent at least! Er, wait, they decided that cheap Mexican labor was too expensive and moved their manufacturing to China didn't they?
From this article at Gamesindustry.biz:
"Beyond mere console sales, there's interesting reading in the other figures as well. The software attach rate for the system, a key indicator of its viability as a platform, is at a healthy 5.2 units per console - although it's thought that this encompasses bundled games (Microsoft was unable to confirm this at time of publication), which would make it altogether less impressive since few Xboxen are sold without at least two cut-price (or free) software titles in the box."
And as someone else pointed out, when the XBox first came out people were strongly encouraged or required to buy extra games in a kind of bundle pack, which may also skew the figures.
You're right, games the user gets discounted or for free with the system probably shouldn't count, however just because they _shouldn't_ count doesn't mean that Microsoft won't count them anyways.
And i also agree with him that it was pretty stupid and out of character for them to have a long debate deciding not to get involved, and then change their minds over the course of about ten seconds of grief, with all the other Ents located conveniently close by.
In FotR:
Glamdring didn't glow when Gandalf drew it in Moria!
They didn't get the gifts grom Galadriel.
One of those was fixed in the extended edition, the other not.
In tTT:
The whole Aragorn falling off the clif thing.
Everyone making fun of Gimli.
The Ents, who are continuously described as slow and thoughtfull creatures first deciding after long debate not to help in the war, and then flying off the handle in rage when they saw the trees cut down.
Faramir being such an ass, and the diversionary trip back to Osgiloth(?)
The siege lasting less than 24 hours! In the book it was several days at least!
The lack of the woods marching.
The last is the only one they fixed in the extended edition.
in RotK:
Not dealing with the white tree of gondor at all. Aragorn never finds the seedling, and the tree just magically goes from looking really sickly for most of the movie to flowering at the end.
_AGAIN_ the siege of Gondor lasts only a single day!! What is this? Barely any time to build tension at all. It's not like showing a progression of days takes any more time on film. Look, they're fighting during the day, look now they're fighting during the night. Look! It's day again!
Sam didn't have to face the watchers of the tower with the vial of galadriel. (Hoping this one gets fixed in extended version since they never showed Sam actually walking through the gates)
The eagles arrive to help them at that final battle! And there are only about _five_ of them! Whoop de doo!
Gollum falling into the lava accidently in a fighr with Frodo, rather than just tripping and falling in while dancing with the Ring. And i'm not sure if it's a difference from the book, but Gollum should have incinerated before he even hit the lava, instead of lying in it for a good ten or fifteen seconds.
I'm failing to see why this discussion should be limited to people who have the entire set of books memorized and have honed their arguments through years of debate on usenet. He read the books, he saw the movie, he has an opinion, and when asked for it, provided it. Deal.
I've been a devout fan of english my entire life (or at least was indoctrinated into accepting it at an early age) and i mispell english words all the time.
Instead Faramir went through the brilliant thought process, "I just saw Frodo try to give the Ring to a Nazgul. For some reason I think this means he should get to keep it and carry it to Mordor, rather than taking away from him and taking it someplace I believe to be safer."
* Don't get me wrong, I love ratty women. But it's just not First Ladylike. Neither is "YAAGH!" presidential.
And i'm supposed to care about the opinion of someone who thinks the height of discourse is to go around insulting other people's political choises without even the pretense of rational thought? You think we should choose a presidential candidate based on what their _spouse_ looks like? And people thought democracy was in trouble when what the _candidate_ looked like started to influence the results!
No, i didn't vote for Nader in 2000. I voted for Gore. What that has to do with the issue at hand i'm really failing to see.
It's another sad commentary about the state of our democracy when people are more concerned about one spontaneous act of genuine exuberance than they are about the actual issues. People seem to be making more out of "the scream" than they did about the sex scandals surrounding Clinton when he was running. They're certainly making a bigger deal out of it than the fact that the administration has finally admited we probably won't find WMDs in Iraq.
When you feel you have both the desire and the ability to talk about the significant issues in this campaign, come back and try again. Until then, your opinion is irrelevant and your contribution worthless.
Spaceballs, Bored of the Rings, Barry Trotter, etc.
Faced with the choice of "selling out," or facing a multi-year legal challenge that could end up costing who knows how much money (tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands? millions?) can you really blame him?
Sure, i would have cheered him on if he'd decided to go for the golden ring, but i'm not going to criticize him for taking the easy way out and covering his ass.
- It'll be a 3rd system in the market, with continuing games being developed on the other two systems. My guess is this is a 'test the waters' system, but not a full fledged effort.
Here's what i think. I have no insider knowledge, so this is just a guess, but it relates to something i've been thinking they need to do for awhile.
The PSP is going to use mini-disks, it's going to be 3d, it's basically going to be a mini PSX, er PS1 (damn Sony and their naming schemes!)
Nintendo has the perfect counter to this, a mini-GameCube since the GameCube already uses mini-disks. However the technology to package a GameCube in a handheld format at a reasonable price isn't available yet.
Unfortunatly by the time it will be afordable the PSP will already have a foothold in the market, and making the Nth generation of the GameBoy play GameCube disks but still be backwards compatible with the older cartridges will be akward and possibly expensive (making space to put two readers in there, plus the cost of both readers, etc.)
Giving up the backwards compatibility would be a real problem, but if the PSP does well they'll eventually need to match that capability or be doomed, and the longer they wait the worse it will be.
So my theory for this new device. The two screens are mainly a gimick. Sure, Nintendo may have some cool ideas for what to do with them, and they'll encourage developers to take advantage of them. However the main point of the system will be that it uses mini-disks, the same size as GameCube disks. This is why Nintendo is efectively denying the backwards compatibility.
I don't know if the first generation of games will be 2D or PSX/N64 level 3d (tie in to iQue perhaps?) but the point will be to establish a third line of products, to make this device destinct fromt he GameBoy so that DS sales won't be canabalizing from the GameBoy.
So at first it would be a kind of competition with the PSP. If you're going to buy a second handheld, are you going to get a DS or a PSP? However the big thrust will occcur in the next generation. They'll release the 2nd (or maybe 3rd) generation DS with the capability to play GameCube games, and backwards compatibility with earlier DS games. The second screen for this edition will either be able to be folded back when you're playing GameCube games, or it will be detachable. Or perhaps they'll have a larger than normal screen (good for GameCube games) that will emulate the double screens for older games.
So i think this is a long term attempt to compete with the PSP without damaging the GameBoy market directly.
Maybe I'm missing something, but elsewhere they said "But, Dr. Tsou said, the material was not used much, except in powdered form as a nontoxic anti-caking agent for food."
If it's so expensive, what kind of food exactly were they using it on? Caviar?
And they weren't saying the entire house should be made out of aerogel (although doing so would provide an interesting peep show for those outside) just that it could be insulated with it. You know, the same way we do with houses now. The walls aren't made out of that pink fiberglass stuff (or whatever it is) they just put it inside the walls.