I agree that the FX blew me away back in 1977, but there was more to it than that. I was at the Chinese Theater in 1997 for the ANH rerelease and the audience was rocking like it was Rocky Horror Picture show. People genuinely love that movie and it's not just nostalgia. It's the characterizations. You CARE about the characters. Obi-Wan dying impacts you so much more than Qui-Gon in the prequels. And there is a big character development PAYOFF in the end. After all the buildup, when Luke turns off his navicomputer, it's a moving scene. When Han comes dashing to the rescue, it's thrilling to this day. And the final award ceremony and cut to the credits make you want to pound your fist in frustration that it's over since you've just been exposed to a tantalizingly small chunk of a really cool universe and you can't experience any more of it.
I think (especially on the internet) there is this desire to deconstruct entertainment. It's like a form of vandalism. Nothing is allowed to be great anymore. You have to somehow qualify it with an asterisk some how, find some fault somewhere. Everyone's an armchair critic.
The fact of the matter is that when everything settles down, the original trilogy will still resonate and the prequels will be considered its bastard children as it rightfully should.
If these insurgents would lay down their arms and take part in the peacefull democratic process then we wouldn't have to BE there. These "resistance" fighters have no cause other than that their own ethno-religious bigotry and their fragile bruised egos over US troops physically being there. They are also killing a hell of a lot more other Iraqis than they are US troops in cowardly carbombs and that's hardly a just cause, no matter how much you hate the Bush agenda.
You reach a point of diminishing returns with larger cars. Moving heavier cars means adding more batteries which also increases the weight which in turn requires more battery power. The weight starts to drag you down and it gets harder and harder to increase your range. I'm not saying you can't do a standard sized sedan but the EVs with the highest range are going to be the small 2-seaters that weigh next to nothing or small trucks with heavy suspensions loaded up with batteries. That's exactly what we've gotten with things like the EV1 or the Ranger EV. Lithium will help but not completely solve this problem.
I'm okay with freedom of speech as long as it is symmetrical. If it's okay to distribute terrorist videos, it should be okay to distribute stuff like this:
Hello. We're talking about Intel macs, not SGI Indigos. There is nothing proprietary about the hardware in Macs other than the DRM they put in to try to identify it as a Mac to OSX. People could and would build their own machines to be able to satisfy a very narrow list of approved hardware for OSX if it were made available for non-Apple systems.
The problem with using HTML for publishing is that to this day there is no viable downloadable font system. So you are limited to a lowest-common-denominator list of 2-3 fonts like verdana and new times roman. With Flash and PDF you can do a lot more, but obviously authoring becomes a problem.
This article ignores the main cause of the crisis: the overpopulation which drives the demand-part of the equation. Obviously it's being ignored because there is no expedient solution, but nature will provide its own cruel solution. If we raise the bar on sustainability, unchecked population growth will only ram us head first back into a crisis. Eventually we will hit the physical limit of what technology is able to do with the raw materials of this planet. Even with nuclear, the environment will continue to suffer from the base impact of our numbers (i.e. deadzones, overfishing, deforestation). The only solution is forced population reduction. It's not pleasant and it's not politically correct, but nature is amoral. We live with certain natural limits whether we want to or not. If our population were small enough, renewable sources alone would be enough to keep us going. As it is now, our species' population size is a result of the crutch of fossil fuels, and with that pillar removed, the house of cards will fall one way or another.
Oil was probably once algae. The problem with bio oil is the rate at which nature produces oil products is not high enough to substitute for the rate of extraction of oil and gas. So it's really a problem of demand, not supply. The demand is caused by industrialization and population growth. As long as the human population increases, technology will have to get more and more exotic for the planet to be able to sustain us, and most other lifeforms will probably go extinct without our direct protection.
Re:The whole REASON I stopped using AmigaOS..
on
AmigaOS 4.0 released
·
· Score: 1
The soul of the Amiga was its chipset. Slow by modern standards, but still "cool" in the same way people still enjoy tinkering with the Atari 2600. Once you drop the chipset, all you are left with is an OS with no software support. You really have to concede that the legacy software is outclassed by modern equivalents. By hitching their wagons on PPC and taking so long they are now an entire processor family behind the times as Apple has thrown in the towel and gone Intel. The fact that Apple had to leverage Unix to bootstrap OSX should indicate how difficult it is to get a new OS off the ground. I don't see how any alternative OS can succeed unless it's built on top of a Linux or Unix kernel and can run at least some of those apps.
The core rendering engine stays mostly intact, but Opera removes a lot of features to cram it into smaller devices. Opera for Windows Mobile 5 for instance is missing a lot of features that I like best with the desktop version, like being able to incrementally zoom in and out.
You want to stop "Big Oil" or just revel in victimhood? Do something besides being such a fatalist, otherwise you and the other knee-jerk "Big Oil conspiracy" blog posters should shut the F up.
The rovers don't operate that autonomously. They constantly need to be given instructions from the ground crew, which could be considered to be working overtime.
It's not just price, it's population. As the population increases, and industrialization spreads out into new areas, products are increasingly cost-reduced to meet the same pricepoint. Look at furniture, for instance. In the old days everything is solid wood. These days you pay a premium for particleboard with stickers on it. The same is true of consumer electronics. Miniaturization increases the power of chips, but it also reduces the raw materials used. And switching from metal to plastic. In the old days all VCRs were mostly metal. Some years back you started to see VCRs that had cases made of 100% plastic. Same deal with computer cases. Computer cases used to use a really solid sheet metal. Now they are mostly plastic with very flimsy metal innards. And the metal on car bodies are almost as thin as aluminum foil. You can dent them with a fingernail and the paint is ultra thin. Maybe you can give cars a pass if their aim is to reduce weight, but the paint shouldn't make much difference. It's getting to the point that the quality of plastic in products used is also going down. Today's plastics are thinner and more brittle. Metal hinges on doors of components are being replaced by plastic tabs that can snap off. Most candybar phones easily shatter their tabs when trying to open them to get to the internal flash cards.
I think the problem may have to do with the fundamental concept of a computer being an exposed motherboard with a series of slots that house exposed cards. This goes all the way back 30 years to the first micro bus standard (S-100) through most subsequent computers.
This is indeed a practical and economical solution to the idea of putting together and updating your computer. It's really a holdover from the hobbyist days and people have gotten used to it, but it's not really consumer-friendly.
The cartridge approach as used with videogame consoles is better.
I think Atari had the right idea with how it implemented expansion on the 800.
The only exposed surfaces were the card edges and the slot. Then you just close the lid.
You see this kind of design approach applied currently to flash memory. If you follow the evolution of the MMC card up through SD and into MINI SD and MICRO SD adapters, imagine the same approach taken with bus specifications. Older cards could be used with newer bus specifications via adapter sleeves. But you'd standardize on a singular form-factor. When you open up your PC, all of the guts would be hidden behind the casing except for the mating surfaces for the cards. All cards would be enclosed.
I don't see this happening because computer technology is by definition transient, disposeable. So nobody wastes money on ergonomics like this. Bus standards change so frequently that you can't even keep your motherboard that long anymore let alone your cards. So you might not even swap cards that much for the lifecycle of the PC beyond the initial system setup.
What I'd really like to see is more effort spent on coming up with a universal backplane that would be more future-proof, maybe something more passive where the glue that binds everything together was itself a module you could swap out. That way maybe the underlying frame could last much longer before becoming obsolete.
Shatner is kind of like Leslie Nielsen these days. He's always being the comedian in interviews so it's hard to get down to how he really thinks. But the most serious I've seen him is his interview for the Archive of American Television on Google Video. He realized that interview will probably be his epitaph, so he was very honest about his opinion of the show, and he about as reverent about it as any of the other castmembers.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that the FX blew me away back in 1977, but there was more to it than that. I was at the Chinese Theater in 1997 for the ANH rerelease and the audience was rocking like it was Rocky Horror Picture show. People genuinely love that movie and it's not just nostalgia. It's the characterizations. You CARE about the characters. Obi-Wan dying impacts you so much more than Qui-Gon in the prequels. And there is a big character development PAYOFF in the end. After all the buildup, when Luke turns off his navicomputer, it's a moving scene. When Han comes dashing to the rescue, it's thrilling to this day. And the final award ceremony and cut to the credits make you want to pound your fist in frustration that it's over since you've just been exposed to a tantalizingly small chunk of a really cool universe and you can't experience any more of it.
I think (especially on the internet) there is this desire to deconstruct entertainment. It's like a form of vandalism. Nothing is allowed to be great anymore. You have to somehow qualify it with an asterisk some how, find some fault somewhere. Everyone's an armchair critic.
The fact of the matter is that when everything settles down, the original trilogy will still resonate and the prequels will be considered its bastard children as it rightfully should.
Sorry, no moral equivalence. Throwing tea into the sea is a lot different from blowing up schools and restaurants and decapitating people.
If these insurgents would lay down their arms and take part in the peacefull democratic process then we wouldn't have to BE there. These "resistance" fighters have no cause other than that their own ethno-religious bigotry and their fragile bruised egos over US troops physically being there. They are also killing a hell of a lot more other Iraqis than they are US troops in cowardly carbombs and that's hardly a just cause, no matter how much you hate the Bush agenda.
You reach a point of diminishing returns with larger cars. Moving heavier cars means adding more batteries which also increases the weight which in turn requires more battery power. The weight starts to drag you down and it gets harder and harder to increase your range. I'm not saying you can't do a standard sized sedan but the EVs with the highest range are going to be the small 2-seaters that weigh next to nothing or small trucks with heavy suspensions loaded up with batteries. That's exactly what we've gotten with things like the EV1 or the Ranger EV. Lithium will help but not completely solve this problem.
If you read onward, he's also a global warming denier. Sounds like a loyal bushie.
Did they find an amulet?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_Isis
I'm okay with freedom of speech as long as it is symmetrical. If it's okay to distribute terrorist videos, it should be okay to distribute stuff like this:
http://www.obsessionthemovie.com/
The problem is that political correctness tends to protect the speech of those who hate but muzzle those who call them to task for it.
Hello. We're talking about Intel macs, not SGI Indigos. There is nothing proprietary about the hardware in Macs other than the DRM they put in to try to identify it as a Mac to OSX. People could and would build their own machines to be able to satisfy a very narrow list of approved hardware for OSX if it were made available for non-Apple systems.
HD needs big epic movies. Wait for Star Wars and Lord of the Rings to come out for it.
The problem with using HTML for publishing is that to this day there is no viable downloadable font system. So you are limited to a lowest-common-denominator list of 2-3 fonts like verdana and new times roman. With Flash and PDF you can do a lot more, but obviously authoring becomes a problem.
News flash, your 401K won't be worth shit if the environment collapses.
This article ignores the main cause of the crisis: the overpopulation which drives the demand-part of the equation. Obviously it's being ignored because there is no expedient solution, but nature will provide its own cruel solution. If we raise the bar on sustainability, unchecked population growth will only ram us head first back into a crisis. Eventually we will hit the physical limit of what technology is able to do with the raw materials of this planet. Even with nuclear, the environment will continue to suffer from the base impact of our numbers (i.e. deadzones, overfishing, deforestation). The only solution is forced population reduction. It's not pleasant and it's not politically correct, but nature is amoral. We live with certain natural limits whether we want to or not. If our population were small enough, renewable sources alone would be enough to keep us going. As it is now, our species' population size is a result of the crutch of fossil fuels, and with that pillar removed, the house of cards will fall one way or another.
If government is so untrustworthy, then why don't we just dissolve it and have anarchy, then?
Just because criminals try to avoid getting caught doesn't mean we should just give up on law enforcement.
Oil was probably once algae. The problem with bio oil is the rate at which nature produces oil products is not high enough to substitute for the rate of extraction of oil and gas. So it's really a problem of demand, not supply. The demand is caused by industrialization and population growth. As long as the human population increases, technology will have to get more and more exotic for the planet to be able to sustain us, and most other lifeforms will probably go extinct without our direct protection.
The soul of the Amiga was its chipset. Slow by modern standards, but still "cool" in the same way people still enjoy tinkering with the Atari 2600. Once you drop the chipset, all you are left with is an OS with no software support. You really have to concede that the legacy software is outclassed by modern equivalents. By hitching their wagons on PPC and taking so long they are now an entire processor family behind the times as Apple has thrown in the towel and gone Intel. The fact that Apple had to leverage Unix to bootstrap OSX should indicate how difficult it is to get a new OS off the ground. I don't see how any alternative OS can succeed unless it's built on top of a Linux or Unix kernel and can run at least some of those apps.
The core rendering engine stays mostly intact, but Opera removes a lot of features to cram it into smaller devices. Opera for Windows Mobile 5 for instance is missing a lot of features that I like best with the desktop version, like being able to incrementally zoom in and out.
You want to stop "Big Oil" or just revel in victimhood? Do something besides being such a fatalist, otherwise you and the other knee-jerk "Big Oil conspiracy" blog posters should shut the F up.
The rovers don't operate that autonomously. They constantly need to be given instructions from the ground crew, which could be considered to be working overtime.
Ten years and still irrelevant to regular internet users. Nice work, guys.
Narnia was a children's book too and the movie made a shitload of money.
Just don't let him make Smaug go ice-skating in central park.
It's not just price, it's population. As the population increases, and industrialization spreads out into new areas, products are increasingly cost-reduced to meet the same pricepoint. Look at furniture, for instance. In the old days everything is solid wood. These days you pay a premium for particleboard with stickers on it. The same is true of consumer electronics. Miniaturization increases the power of chips, but it also reduces the raw materials used. And switching from metal to plastic. In the old days all VCRs were mostly metal. Some years back you started to see VCRs that had cases made of 100% plastic. Same deal with computer cases. Computer cases used to use a really solid sheet metal. Now they are mostly plastic with very flimsy metal innards. And the metal on car bodies are almost as thin as aluminum foil. You can dent them with a fingernail and the paint is ultra thin. Maybe you can give cars a pass if their aim is to reduce weight, but the paint shouldn't make much difference. It's getting to the point that the quality of plastic in products used is also going down. Today's plastics are thinner and more brittle. Metal hinges on doors of components are being replaced by plastic tabs that can snap off. Most candybar phones easily shatter their tabs when trying to open them to get to the internal flash cards.
I think the problem may have to do with the fundamental concept of a computer being an exposed motherboard with a series of slots that house exposed cards. This goes all the way back 30 years to the first micro bus standard (S-100) through most subsequent computers.
/ images/chassistop.jpg
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http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/6757
http://www.oldcomputers.arcula.co.uk/files/images
http://www.infodip.com/pages/axiom/bus-passif/ima
http://www.infodip.com/pages/axiom/bus-passif/ima
http://www.ixbt.com/mainboard/epox/8npa-sli/board
This is indeed a practical and economical solution to the idea of putting together and updating your computer. It's really a holdover from the hobbyist days and people have gotten used to it, but it's not really consumer-friendly.
The cartridge approach as used with videogame consoles is better.
I think Atari had the right idea with how it implemented expansion on the 800.
http://oldcomputers.net/pics/cartports3.JPG
The only exposed surfaces were the card edges and the slot. Then you just close the lid.
You see this kind of design approach applied currently to flash memory. If you follow the evolution of the MMC card up through SD and into MINI SD and MICRO SD adapters, imagine the same approach taken with bus specifications. Older cards could be used with newer bus specifications via adapter sleeves. But you'd standardize on a singular form-factor. When you open up your PC, all of the guts would be hidden behind the casing except for the mating surfaces for the cards. All cards would be enclosed.
I don't see this happening because computer technology is by definition transient, disposeable. So nobody wastes money on ergonomics like this. Bus standards change so frequently that you can't even keep your motherboard that long anymore let alone your cards. So you might not even swap cards that much for the lifecycle of the PC beyond the initial system setup.
What I'd really like to see is more effort spent on coming up with a universal backplane that would be more future-proof, maybe something more passive where the glue that binds everything together was itself a module you could swap out. That way maybe the underlying frame could last much longer before becoming obsolete.
Shatner is kind of like Leslie Nielsen these days. He's always being the comedian in interviews so it's hard to get down to how he really thinks. But the most serious I've seen him is his interview for the Archive of American Television on Google Video. He realized that interview will probably be his epitaph, so he was very honest about his opinion of the show, and he about as reverent about it as any of the other castmembers.