So are we at a Significant, High, or Severe risk of volcano attacks?
Re:Star Wars Via Lens of Star Trek
on
Star Wars TV Show
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· Score: 1
The big screen is inherently inferior to television. The plot of Babylon Five is full of depth, and gems of this nature cannot be crammed into a single 2-3 hour block.
(Obviously we're both wrong. They both have their advantages and costs, and require different styles and methods of storytelling.)
Star Wars is not dystopian, but you can't deny that the designs were unlike virtually everything before it. Spaceships used to be perfect, smooth hulls with impeccable paint jobs and carefully curving lines. Spaceships in Star Wars are used- streaked paint, uneven surfacing, scorch marks, asymmetry, areas of incredibly dense detail instead of featureless flat surfaces. The props, weapons, and other world elements have similar details- compare a Star Wars blaster to a Star Trek phaser. Blade Runner and Alien may have had as great an effect on movies after them, but even those two were inspired partly by Star Wars (Scott admits as much in the trilogy special features).
Lucas has never denied any of this. He very carefully followed the classic story archetypes, working closely with Joseph Campbell, the professor who first pointed out the common themes of mythology. He just decided to set it in space for some reason.
Authentication? Most IM programs can be configured to store the necessary password and server information, so this only has to be done once.
The real difference between email and IM is that the former is store-and-forward and the latter is direct transmission. Real-time email conversations are the exception, not the norm, and people are often completely unavailable through IM.
A 100% open, anonymous, and unrestricted communications medium (like email) is not feasible in the real world in the long run. It's too easy to abuse and too hard to counter said abuse, and both of those traits tend to become stronger as the pool of users grows.
Spam is a social/technical problem (people want to spam, and plain SMTP provides no way to prevent them), so it requires a social/technical solution (convince everyone not to buy things through unsolicited email pitches, change the protocol to shift the costs of email traffic and make spam unprofitable). It's the best example of the tragedy of the commons in history.
If you can use the desktop as an access point, you don't need a separate base station. This was useful in adding my new laptop to a pre-existing wired network.
The vast majority of mod chips are used to allow pirating Xbox games and emulating ROMs with a real controller and TV screen. After that, it's probably to turn them into media players- they can read any CD or DVD media, and stream movies over the built-in Ethernet port, and they're designed to be hooked up to a TV or stereo. Using them as "real" computers is pretty far down the list of reasons people mod.
Not only that, but lots of games are including non-interactive features similar to those found on movie DVDs- art galleries, making-of videos, early demos (video, not executable), etc.
At precisely absolute zero, everything is solid. Movement even on the atomic level requires kinetic energy; the presence of kinetic energy means the temperature is a tiny fraction above absolute zero.
Video cards have also grown their performance and features more than virtually anything else in the industry. The current generation of video cards is several hundred times faster than the original Voodoo (tens of gigapixels per second as compared to a few millions)- and the 3.4Ghz processor you're pairing it with is a mere 10-20 times the speed of the 200-300Mhz contemporaries of the Voodoo. (I realize these are gross oversimplifications, but I'm sure real benchmarks would show suitably impressive numbers that support my point.)
256MB became the low end for main system RAM a while ago. Video cards would catch up sooner or later.
Just as an ironic example, the original Macintosh did in fact have more VRAM than main system RAM, to support the 1-bit 512x384 framebuffer. Some clever companies used it as cache space during tasks that did not require user interaction, at the cost of displaying garbage while the operation was in progress.
The X800 does not support Pixel Shader 3.0, only 2.0; ATI's logic being that games that use PS 3.0 won't begin to appear until after at least one more video card generation anyway. Also, the X800 is little more than a rev and scaling-up of the Radeon 9800 core, while nVidia discarded the FX architecture and redid the 6800 from the ground up.
Pretty soon, VR equipment is going to be small enough to cram into a pair of slightly oversize (and overweight) wraparound sunglasses. Picard to la Forge...
You're free to withhold all the information you want from the domain name registry- and not have a domain name. This will not impede your use of the Internet or operation of servers in any way; you'll just have to use your IP instead of an easier-to-remember character string when you want to link someone to your server. Think of it as the Internet equivalent of an unlisted phone number.
You have a right to privacy, but you don't have a right to a domain name.
Fortunately, this plumb bob is large enough that it would be easy to attach all sorts of stabilization devices directly to it, making it much easier than what you're describing.
Try to give that thing a test drive before putting down cash- I personally find it very uncomfortable to use and it's probably worse for the carpal tunnel than a scroll wheel already is.
Regardless of what Microsoft tells the public (and what the gaming press dreams up on its own), it's certain that the *developers* already know whether or not the Xbox 2 will be backwards compatible and are basing decisions around that.
Red vs Blue is made with Halo on the Xbox, not the PC. It also uses some relatively extensive post-production effects.
"Mount St. Helens Alert Status Increased"
So are we at a Significant, High, or Severe risk of volcano attacks?
The big screen is inherently inferior to television. The plot of Babylon Five is full of depth, and gems of this nature cannot be crammed into a single 2-3 hour block.
(Obviously we're both wrong. They both have their advantages and costs, and require different styles and methods of storytelling.)
Star Wars is not dystopian, but you can't deny that the designs were unlike virtually everything before it. Spaceships used to be perfect, smooth hulls with impeccable paint jobs and carefully curving lines. Spaceships in Star Wars are used- streaked paint, uneven surfacing, scorch marks, asymmetry, areas of incredibly dense detail instead of featureless flat surfaces. The props, weapons, and other world elements have similar details- compare a Star Wars blaster to a Star Trek phaser. Blade Runner and Alien may have had as great an effect on movies after them, but even those two were inspired partly by Star Wars (Scott admits as much in the trilogy special features).
Lucas has never denied any of this. He very carefully followed the classic story archetypes, working closely with Joseph Campbell, the professor who first pointed out the common themes of mythology. He just decided to set it in space for some reason.
Authentication? Most IM programs can be configured to store the necessary password and server information, so this only has to be done once.
The real difference between email and IM is that the former is store-and-forward and the latter is direct transmission. Real-time email conversations are the exception, not the norm, and people are often completely unavailable through IM.
A 100% open, anonymous, and unrestricted communications medium (like email) is not feasible in the real world in the long run. It's too easy to abuse and too hard to counter said abuse, and both of those traits tend to become stronger as the pool of users grows.
Spam is a social/technical problem (people want to spam, and plain SMTP provides no way to prevent them), so it requires a social/technical solution (convince everyone not to buy things through unsolicited email pitches, change the protocol to shift the costs of email traffic and make spam unprofitable). It's the best example of the tragedy of the commons in history.
How would you propose to save people from obesity and heart disease? Take away their freedom to choose their diet, exercise patterns, and lifestyle?
If you can use the desktop as an access point, you don't need a separate base station. This was useful in adding my new laptop to a pre-existing wired network.
The vast majority of mod chips are used to allow pirating Xbox games and emulating ROMs with a real controller and TV screen. After that, it's probably to turn them into media players- they can read any CD or DVD media, and stream movies over the built-in Ethernet port, and they're designed to be hooked up to a TV or stereo. Using them as "real" computers is pretty far down the list of reasons people mod.
The Riddick developers compromised by including a *video* of the demo rather than a buggy executable.
Not only that, but lots of games are including non-interactive features similar to those found on movie DVDs- art galleries, making-of videos, early demos (video, not executable), etc.
At precisely absolute zero, everything is solid. Movement even on the atomic level requires kinetic energy; the presence of kinetic energy means the temperature is a tiny fraction above absolute zero.
So now everyone in the city is compelled to invest in this guy's new venture?
Video cards have also grown their performance and features more than virtually anything else in the industry. The current generation of video cards is several hundred times faster than the original Voodoo (tens of gigapixels per second as compared to a few millions)- and the 3.4Ghz processor you're pairing it with is a mere 10-20 times the speed of the 200-300Mhz contemporaries of the Voodoo. (I realize these are gross oversimplifications, but I'm sure real benchmarks would show suitably impressive numbers that support my point.)
256MB became the low end for main system RAM a while ago. Video cards would catch up sooner or later.
Just as an ironic example, the original Macintosh did in fact have more VRAM than main system RAM, to support the 1-bit 512x384 framebuffer. Some clever companies used it as cache space during tasks that did not require user interaction, at the cost of displaying garbage while the operation was in progress.
The X800 does not support Pixel Shader 3.0, only 2.0; ATI's logic being that games that use PS 3.0 won't begin to appear until after at least one more video card generation anyway. Also, the X800 is little more than a rev and scaling-up of the Radeon 9800 core, while nVidia discarded the FX architecture and redid the 6800 from the ground up.
That only accomplishes the wipe, not the reinstall an return to normal use. Unless you subscribe to various Eastern religions...
Pretty soon, VR equipment is going to be small enough to cram into a pair of slightly oversize (and overweight) wraparound sunglasses. Picard to la Forge...
Actually, I find those jokes even funnier than the people comparing typing a made-up name into a web page to a papers-please police state.
Minor nit- Powerbook keyboards are made out of plastic too. The keys are just painted to precisely match the metal case.
You're free to withhold all the information you want from the domain name registry- and not have a domain name. This will not impede your use of the Internet or operation of servers in any way; you'll just have to use your IP instead of an easier-to-remember character string when you want to link someone to your server. Think of it as the Internet equivalent of an unlisted phone number.
You have a right to privacy, but you don't have a right to a domain name.
Fortunately, this plumb bob is large enough that it would be easy to attach all sorts of stabilization devices directly to it, making it much easier than what you're describing.
Try to give that thing a test drive before putting down cash- I personally find it very uncomfortable to use and it's probably worse for the carpal tunnel than a scroll wheel already is.
Regardless of what Microsoft tells the public (and what the gaming press dreams up on its own), it's certain that the *developers* already know whether or not the Xbox 2 will be backwards compatible and are basing decisions around that.