"If you look at all the clues, you can figure it out..." - Lisa, in "Blame It On Lisa" (the one where they go to Brazil)
The fact that Springfield is a fictional city does not make it too much of a logical leap to conclude that it is situated in a fictional state (State motto: "Not Just Another State"). However, the abbreviation "NT" (probably not "Northwest Territories") has been seen on at least one driving license in the show. This is conjectured to stand for "North Takoma".
Even the layout of the Simpsons' house changes from episode to episode in order to fit the plot. Watch the episode "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy" and you will see Bart through Homer and Marge's bedroom window, climbing up a wall of the house which does not exist.
Shortest possible proof that Springfield does not exist: "The Mansion Family" places Springfield Nuclear Power Plant within eyeshot of international waters and along with many other episodes gives it a harbour, while "Bart's Comet" explains that a single bridge is the only route out of town.
Hoshi no Koe (Voices of a Distant Star) is one of the best animes (if that is the word) I've ever seen. It marries CGI and traditional cel-shaded animation in a way that is just gorgeous to look at, and is also an amazing story. It was also made entirely by one man, Shinkai Makoto, on his Mac G4. He and his wife did the voice acting.
One day this kind of stuff will make it to Hollywood.
The point of CGI is to do things we CAN'T do in real life. There's no point in trying to do 100% realistic humans in CGI when you have perfectly good actual humans available. If you change that from "completely CGI" to "mostly CGI", then you have a fair point - there are Star Wars I and II, and the Matrix sequels, but most people wouldn't put them under "good plot"...
Chaos theory is such that very tiny changes that far in the past would have VAST alterations to the future. We all know how an unmeasurable change in a local weather system - say, the change caused by you waving your hand in the air a bit, or, classically, a butterfly flapping its wings - can add up to the point where the world's weather in a month or a year's time will be completely different from what it would be like if you HADN'T made that change. Sensitive dependence on initial conditions, dig?
So simply staying on antigravity paths wouldn't do you much good. You're still interacting with the past and still therefore changing the future by a HUGE amount. Different people would be born, different histories would play themselves out. You'd return to a world which doesn't even know who you are...
I haven't really ever watched a Voyager episode that I enjoyed.
Me neither. I think an exemplary example would be *SPOILER* the one where they finally get home. (Oh come on, you doubted it?) They all stand there on the bridge, looking at Earth - and NOBODY REACTS. Actually, I think some of them crack a smile. That's all they have to show for a seven year voyage home.
I want to set one up so it shows a video of what my internal organs look like. Or just the picture from a camera attached to my back, so it looks like I have a hole in my chest. Mmmmm.
Just listen to what the characters are actuallysaying next time you watch I or II through. I'll give you Hayden Christensen can't act, but when you look at what everybody has to work with you can almost forgive Ewan McGregor and the rest.
If you look on your Preferences page there's actually a whole load of options which allow you to exclude news about certain topics from appearing on the front page. One of the boxes is marked "Star Wars Prequels"; if you want, you can use it, and you won't have to see what will probably be quite a lot more similar topics with similar spoilers over the next months/years.
Pixar isn't primarily a rendering company, it's a movie studio. They don't set out to "go where no movie has gone before" in terms of graphics - their technology, while still improving, is probably nearly peaked at this point. They set out to entertain and moreover they succeed - even based on the merits of script and storyline alone, their previous efforts like Finding Nemo have been amazing.
The novelty value of entirely computer-generated movies may have worn off, but that's not why most of us are watching.
For a golden ratio-proportioned piece of paper, you can cut a big square off the end and end up with a big square and another golden-ratio proportioned piece of paper. You can keep chopping off squares forever. However, while fascinating, this property isn't as useful as the root 2 ratio, where you chop it in half and get two pieces of paper in the same ratio as before.
I would have infinitely greater respect for the Imperial system if all of it did indeed work in twelves, like with feet and inches. But inches are not divided into twelfths but sixteenths. Then there are three feet in a yard, 5.5 yards in a rod, 40 rods in a furlong, 8 furlongs (or a nice round 1760 yards) in a mile. 16 ounces in a pound, 14 pounds in a stone, 2000 pounds in a ton. Don't get me started on liquid measure. And ultimately, you have to measure so closely that you *have* to use decimal places of the smallest unit (like 11.6 inches or whatever) - which means tens all round.
The videogaming industry is actually relatively young - only about 30 years old, really. By comparison the movie industry dates from the 1930s, and is a lot more mature.
The discovery of extra-terrestrial intelligence would be catastrophic for organized religion. What if they have the exact same religion as one of the ones on Earth? Then it must be the correct one, and there's no such thing as faith anymore, and at least 80% of the Earth's population was wrong all along. What if they DON'T share any of our religions? Then ALL of ours must be wrong.
Video card prices are coming down all the time. Me, I'd wait until maybe a month before the release date before purchasing my Doom III-specific video card. I mean, sure, if you needed a new one anyway to run Far Cry or some other games, fair play to ya, but if you are upgrading in anticipation of D3 specifically I'd suggest being patient. By the time it does come out, you'll probably be able to afford a better one.
And if you then press F5, type X97:L97, hit Enter, then Tab, then hold Ctrl+Shift and click the Chart Wizard toolbar button, you can play a doubly-secret flight simulator game...
...within which, if you type "yellow" and then press Backspace six times, hold down Alt and click, you get taken to a secret load screen, from which you can start a game of Doom III!
Slashdot Mirror
The Simpsons is best described as a single gigantic continuity error.
As with pretty much any show, certain facts jump about a bit before they get settled. Nowadays the Simpsons' home address is definitely fixed.
"If you look at all the clues, you can figure it out..." - Lisa, in "Blame It On Lisa" (the one where they go to Brazil)
The fact that Springfield is a fictional city does not make it too much of a logical leap to conclude that it is situated in a fictional state (State motto: "Not Just Another State"). However, the abbreviation "NT" (probably not "Northwest Territories") has been seen on at least one driving license in the show. This is conjectured to stand for "North Takoma".
Even the layout of the Simpsons' house changes from episode to episode in order to fit the plot. Watch the episode "Grampa vs. Sexual Inadequacy" and you will see Bart through Homer and Marge's bedroom window, climbing up a wall of the house which does not exist.
Shortest possible proof that Springfield does not exist: "The Mansion Family" places Springfield Nuclear Power Plant within eyeshot of international waters and along with many other episodes gives it a harbour, while "Bart's Comet" explains that a single bridge is the only route out of town.
Hoshi no Koe (Voices of a Distant Star) is one of the best animes (if that is the word) I've ever seen. It marries CGI and traditional cel-shaded animation in a way that is just gorgeous to look at, and is also an amazing story. It was also made entirely by one man, Shinkai Makoto, on his Mac G4. He and his wife did the voice acting.
One day this kind of stuff will make it to Hollywood.
Why not just make a live-action movie, then?
The point of CGI is to do things we CAN'T do in real life. There's no point in trying to do 100% realistic humans in CGI when you have perfectly good actual humans available. If you change that from "completely CGI" to "mostly CGI", then you have a fair point - there are Star Wars I and II, and the Matrix sequels, but most people wouldn't put them under "good plot"...
Chaos theory is such that very tiny changes that far in the past would have VAST alterations to the future. We all know how an unmeasurable change in a local weather system - say, the change caused by you waving your hand in the air a bit, or, classically, a butterfly flapping its wings - can add up to the point where the world's weather in a month or a year's time will be completely different from what it would be like if you HADN'T made that change. Sensitive dependence on initial conditions, dig?
So simply staying on antigravity paths wouldn't do you much good. You're still interacting with the past and still therefore changing the future by a HUGE amount. Different people would be born, different histories would play themselves out. You'd return to a world which doesn't even know who you are...
Me neither. I think an exemplary example would be *SPOILER* the one where they finally get home. (Oh come on, you doubted it?) They all stand there on the bridge, looking at Earth - and NOBODY REACTS. Actually, I think some of them crack a smile. That's all they have to show for a seven year voyage home.
You underestimate the number of us who are planning to get the DVD-quality .torrent four or five days before the film opens.
Well, you've never seen Jar Jar and Bush in the same room, have you?
I want to set one up so it shows a video of what my internal organs look like. Or just the picture from a camera attached to my back, so it looks like I have a hole in my chest. Mmmmm.
Not to put too fine a point on it:
THE. DIALOGUE. STUNK.
Just listen to what the characters are actually saying next time you watch I or II through. I'll give you Hayden Christensen can't act, but when you look at what everybody has to work with you can almost forgive Ewan McGregor and the rest.
If you look on your Preferences page there's actually a whole load of options which allow you to exclude news about certain topics from appearing on the front page. One of the boxes is marked "Star Wars Prequels"; if you want, you can use it, and you won't have to see what will probably be quite a lot more similar topics with similar spoilers over the next months/years.
Try fifteen hundred years: Stained glass windows are translucent, are they not?
Pixar isn't primarily a rendering company, it's a movie studio. They don't set out to "go where no movie has gone before" in terms of graphics - their technology, while still improving, is probably nearly peaked at this point. They set out to entertain and moreover they succeed - even based on the merits of script and storyline alone, their previous efforts like Finding Nemo have been amazing.
The novelty value of entirely computer-generated movies may have worn off, but that's not why most of us are watching.
For a golden ratio-proportioned piece of paper, you can cut a big square off the end and end up with a big square and another golden-ratio proportioned piece of paper. You can keep chopping off squares forever. However, while fascinating, this property isn't as useful as the root 2 ratio, where you chop it in half and get two pieces of paper in the same ratio as before.
I would have infinitely greater respect for the Imperial system if all of it did indeed work in twelves, like with feet and inches. But inches are not divided into twelfths but sixteenths. Then there are three feet in a yard, 5.5 yards in a rod, 40 rods in a furlong, 8 furlongs (or a nice round 1760 yards) in a mile. 16 ounces in a pound, 14 pounds in a stone, 2000 pounds in a ton. Don't get me started on liquid measure. And ultimately, you have to measure so closely that you *have* to use decimal places of the smallest unit (like 11.6 inches or whatever) - which means tens all round.
Remind me again what makes it easier to use?
Just go with tens. Tens are simple.
The videogaming industry is actually relatively young - only about 30 years old, really. By comparison the movie industry dates from the 1930s, and is a lot more mature.
The discovery of extra-terrestrial intelligence would be catastrophic for organized religion. What if they have the exact same religion as one of the ones on Earth? Then it must be the correct one, and there's no such thing as faith anymore, and at least 80% of the Earth's population was wrong all along. What if they DON'T share any of our religions? Then ALL of ours must be wrong.
Video card prices are coming down all the time. Me, I'd wait until maybe a month before the release date before purchasing my Doom III-specific video card. I mean, sure, if you needed a new one anyway to run Far Cry or some other games, fair play to ya, but if you are upgrading in anticipation of D3 specifically I'd suggest being patient. By the time it does come out, you'll probably be able to afford a better one.
And if you then press F5, type X97:L97, hit Enter, then Tab, then hold Ctrl+Shift and click the Chart Wizard toolbar button, you can play a doubly-secret flight simulator game...
...within which, if you type "yellow" and then press Backspace six times, hold down Alt and click, you get taken to a secret load screen, from which you can start a game of Doom III!
Hence the subtitle for Bender's dating service in Futurama: "Discreet and discrete".
Yeah, I mean, one, when has there ever been proper blood in a Zelda game? and two, his shield didn't break!
Personally I thought the graphics were the best aspect of Wind Waker. The game itself was sparse, easy and too long.
Um, how can you be said to have won the game if you didn't play it at all?