From TFA: "There needs to be a wide societal debate informing and underpinning government decisions, and this can't be confined to technical issues alone. It would be a mistake to attempt to sideline this discussion to a group of experts..."
Great thinking. Let's take the debate out of the hands of the people who know what they're talking about, and put it firmly in the hands of John Q. Public. "But I read a book about nanotechnology, and these swarms of tiny robots killed people. Won't somebody think of the children?" I'm not saying that it's a mistake to involve society at large in a matter like this, but experts' opinions are going to be the most well-informed, and therefore the most valuable. People who know nothing about nanotechnology except for the fact that a manufactured particle can damage the environment just don't know as much about the issue as people who have been studying nanotechnology for years. The public's opinion can easily be swayed by politicians with hidden agendas, and somehow I doubt that scientific advancement will win out against mass panic and sentimentalism. What we need are some honest, unbiased reports of the pros and cons of nanotechnology: where it's headed, how it could help us, how it could harm us, and what the cost will be. Instead we'll have a mob of people going off half-cocked and writing their senators because them thar robots are goin' take over, and you cain't even see 'um. Give authority to the people who have earned it; they're the ones who will know the right thing to do with it.
From TFA: "It's really a beautiful system, and one of the reasons I'm promoting it today is I'm extremely anxious to reissue that old group of films I did so long ago in a galaxy far away," Lucas said.
Well, you know, it has been almost eight years since the original trilogy was rereleased in theaters, and six months since the DVDs came out. Of course Lucas is anxious to reissue the movies - the public has pretty much forgotten about them in this fast-paced world. Lucas needs to bring the movies back to the forefront of the public consciousness, because they haven't been there in months.
Seriously, though, does Lucas think he's kidding anybody anymore? It's so obvious that his vision isn't artistic, it's financial. He sees a way to keep making a mint with a minimum of effort, and every new film-oriented technology allows him to release Star Wars according to his "original vision," which was somehow compromised in every previous release.
If the Revolution is really so different as to discourage third-party developers from bringing out games, it would be a really brave move on Nintendo's part. However, look at their history. It is full of brave moves. The video game market had already crashed and burned when Nintendo wanted to bring out the NES. People thought that it would fail, but Nintendo pushed it anyway and changed everything. Then Sega came out with the Genesis, a superior system to the NES (at least hardware-wise) and Nintendo waited to bring out the Super NES until it had the right technology and the right gameplay ideas. They brought out Virtual Boy, which was completely different from anything on the market. Granted, that was a failed experiment, but it was an experiment nonetheless - not just an advance. With the Gamecube, they decided to shun the online players that Sony and Microsoft were going after, and have instead focused on the community aspect of multiplayer. Now there's the DS, an innovative, if imperfect, competitor for Sony's straight technological advance, the PSP. I have a feeling Nintendo knows what they're doing with these risks. They aren't going after the largest market share, they're trying to make good, innovative games that consistently change how we think of video gaming.
It became ok to have no self-control when the lawyers took over the country. Now, if anything can conceivably be seen as somebody else's fault, it's a lucrative opportunity to sue. Personal responsibility is passe; now that there's money to be made, self-control is only a barrier to financial success.
The reason that you think of Linda Richman is because the words for all of the different gameplay components come from Yiddish, which Mike Myers' Jewish mother-in-law (upon whom Richman was based) used. Now, I'm no expert on Yiddish, but here are the meanings of some of the words:
Mishegas (n) - Craziness
Meshigina (n, adj) - Crazy person, or just crazy
Meshugen (n) - Crazy person
Filn (n) - Feeling
Farklempt (adj) - Choked up, emotionally overwhelmed
Even though EA and Vivendi have announced that they will support Blu-Ray, the gaming industry won't have any significant effect one way or the other. For the most part, games still come on CDs, even if they're 6 CD monsters. Some games come out on DVD, but this is more a novelty than anything else (HL2 SE.) Maybe by the time Blu-Ray has been as widely accepted as DVDs are now, games will be released on DVD. Then when super-HD ultra-high-capacity ultraviolet-ray DVDs come out, we'll see games on Blu-Ray.
There has been at least one computer in my house since before I can remember. I grew up with computers, and always felt comfortable around them. My comfort level was increased in elementary school, where I got to play around with BASIC and Logowriter on Apple IIGSs. My teacher was an old-school, strict, Russian woman who expected nothing less than the best from me, and because she challenged me so much, I picked up a lot from her. She taught me the basics of programming in BASIC and Logowriter, and then would come up with a new challenge for me to complete every week or two. This made me confident and comfortable with computers.
When it was finally time to have a computer in my room for schoolwork, my parents decided to go with a local company so that frequent repairs wouldn't be a hassle. The computer, however, was not very well put-together, it had some fun little component conflicts, and having a teenaged kid messing around with it didn't make it any better. I messed up that computer six ways from Sunday, but I always managed to fix anything I did myself. I formatted the HD multiple times, I installed my own CD burner when I could finally afford one, I upgraded my RAM, upgraded my HD, upgraded from Win3.1 to Win95, and fixed any and every problem that I created.
If you want my suggestion, the best way to introduce children to computers is just that - introduce them to the very basics of computers (no pun intended,) let them get comfortable with the way computers work, and help them work through any problems that may arise. Once the children feel comfortable enough with comptuers, set them loose. Let them create and solve their own problems. Naturally, if something is beyond their capabilities, it would be wise to aid them. However, let them get frustrated. Let them walk away from problems only to have to solve them later. Not only is this a good way to learn about computers, it's a good way to learn about life.
The N64 had some code names too, as I remember. I know that it started out as Project Reality. Then, if memory serves, it was the stage when dinosaurs were still something of a fad because of Jurassic Park, so they codenamed it the Dinosaur, until someone realized that that made it sound old and outdated, so they changed it to Project Ultra. From there it became Ultra 64 and then finally the Nintendo 64. God, it's sad that I know that.
That's weird, because I've been playing through San Andreas with subtitles. Either my version is really glitchy, or I went into the options screen and enabled subtitles.
Supposedly, the logic behind Anakin looking like Hayden Christiansen rather than Sebastian Shaw (who played the unmasked Anakin) is that the Jedi ghosts would appear as a light Jedi did at death. When Anakin became Darth Vader, the good Jedi who was Anakin was destroyed. Therefore, from a certain point of view, when Anakin "died" he looked like Hayden Christiansen, hence the ghost of Hayden.
Is it just me, or does this argument/rebuttal happen every single time there is a story posted about one of the LOTR movies. Seriously, go back to the beginning, since Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition was announced, and go back through those posts... I guarantee these will be there, word for word.
Well, I screwed up and sent 2 invites to one guy, so only the first five got invites (unless he cares to forward it to the next person in line, if they work like that). There'll probably be another GMail rush soon...
Ladies and gentlemen, er, we've just lost the picture, but, uh, what we've seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft has been taken over -- "conquered", if you will -- by a master race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here.
And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.
The reason the Clone Wars cartoons are so good is because Lucas is giving the fans what they want. When the trailers for the prequels first came out, Star Wars fans, myself included, flooded the trailer website, watching the trailer again and again. We paid admission for movies like Wing Commander in order to see the trailers on the big screen. The trailers were the parts of the prequels that actually lived up to the hype. Lucas noticed this and gave us what we wanted - brief, action-heavy glimpses into the Star Wars universe, long enough to show us some cool visuals and a little bit of plot, but short enough that no one cares that the plot is as simple as "bad guys attack, good guys defend, good guys win."
This is called FF7 because it is a direct sequel to FF7. This is much the same as FFX-2, which recently came out, and was a sequel to Final Fantasy X. As every Final Fantasy has a different universe and storyline, marketing a release as FF7: Advent Children or FFX-2 denotes that these are direct sequels to games with most of the same characters, taking place in the same universe, and picking up where the storyline of the original games left off. Calling the movie simply "Final Fantasy: Advent Children" would be similar to calling it "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within." People would expect certain Final Fantasy aspects, but they would not expect a sequel to an already existing Final Fantasy. The VII serves to clarify, not confuse.
It is hard to take your comments seriously when you are so obviously biased against Smith and his films.
Well, take my comments seriously, because I am not biased against Kevin Smith. I liked Clerks, loved Dogma, and thought Chasing Amy was pretty damn good too. That doesn't mean I liked Mallrats or Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and I didn't even see Jersey Girl, so I guess I'm just not as big a fan as you. However, I don't think the sign of a good writer is making a movie just to pack it with as many inside jokes as possible. Nor do I think it is the sign of a good writer to go back and make an entirely unnecessary sequel. I thought that the Clerks story, while superficial, was wrapped up at the end of Clerks. I also thought that the Jay and Silent Bob universe was pretty much done, as Kevin Smith stated before and after Jay and Silent Bob came out. Following the money rather than following an artistic vision, as Smith is doing by going back to a proven moneymaker that limits his versatility as an artist, makes a writer a hack. Don't agree with me? Look up the word hack. Smith is doing this entirely for the money. That doesn't mean that I'm rabidly anti-Kevin Smith; on the contrary, I will probably see this movie when it comes out. I just disagree in principle with what Smith is doing: taking the easy money by writing a script, which he said he would never write, with a built-in fanbase, rather than going out on a limb and expanding his horizons. Sorry if I've offended you by having an opinion different from yours.
THANK YOU! You don't know how painful it is for me to get modded down for saying what I feel is, in essence, the same things that people responding to my thread are saying. I said that Smith made movies that defied expectations, like Jersey Girl, and got smacked down for it, so he's writing where the money is instead of doing his artistic thing. Of course, the kneejerk reaction of Kevin Smith fans is to mod that down as flamebait, but come on!
To me, this represents Kevin Smith taking the final plunge into sheer hackdom. None of his movies lived up to the expectations that naturally came about as a result of the edginess of the original Clerks, so Kevin Smith is kowtowing to his fans' demands rather than making good movies. Jersey Girl both sucked and bombed. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was just a series of in-jokes for the rabid Kevin Smith fans. And wasn't that supposed to be the last movie set in the "View Askewniverse" that contained movies like Clerks and Mallrats? To me, this just makes Smith sound a lot like George Lucas. "I'll never make another sequel in this series. Wait, what? Money? Oh, yeah, I'll do it for money. What do you guys want to see? More Jay, more Randall, and the origins of Boba Fett? Ok, here's exactly what you want! Now pay me!"
Slashdot Mirror
From TFA:
"There needs to be a wide societal debate informing and underpinning government decisions, and this can't be confined to technical issues alone. It would be a mistake to attempt to sideline this discussion to a group of experts..."
Great thinking. Let's take the debate out of the hands of the people who know what they're talking about, and put it firmly in the hands of John Q. Public. "But I read a book about nanotechnology, and these swarms of tiny robots killed people. Won't somebody think of the children?"
I'm not saying that it's a mistake to involve society at large in a matter like this, but experts' opinions are going to be the most well-informed, and therefore the most valuable. People who know nothing about nanotechnology except for the fact that a manufactured particle can damage the environment just don't know as much about the issue as people who have been studying nanotechnology for years. The public's opinion can easily be swayed by politicians with hidden agendas, and somehow I doubt that scientific advancement will win out against mass panic and sentimentalism. What we need are some honest, unbiased reports of the pros and cons of nanotechnology: where it's headed, how it could help us, how it could harm us, and what the cost will be. Instead we'll have a mob of people going off half-cocked and writing their senators because them thar robots are goin' take over, and you cain't even see 'um. Give authority to the people who have earned it; they're the ones who will know the right thing to do with it.
Well, if you're the average /.er, it's sitting right there in your right hand.
From TFA:
"It's really a beautiful system, and one of the reasons I'm promoting it today is I'm extremely anxious to reissue that old group of films I did so long ago in a galaxy far away," Lucas said.
Well, you know, it has been almost eight years since the original trilogy was rereleased in theaters, and six months since the DVDs came out. Of course Lucas is anxious to reissue the movies - the public has pretty much forgotten about them in this fast-paced world. Lucas needs to bring the movies back to the forefront of the public consciousness, because they haven't been there in months.
Seriously, though, does Lucas think he's kidding anybody anymore? It's so obvious that his vision isn't artistic, it's financial. He sees a way to keep making a mint with a minimum of effort, and every new film-oriented technology allows him to release Star Wars according to his "original vision," which was somehow compromised in every previous release.
I'd worry more on a highway about the bike's top speed of 50 than I would about the wind from a passing truck.
If the Revolution is really so different as to discourage third-party developers from bringing out games, it would be a really brave move on Nintendo's part. However, look at their history. It is full of brave moves. The video game market had already crashed and burned when Nintendo wanted to bring out the NES. People thought that it would fail, but Nintendo pushed it anyway and changed everything. Then Sega came out with the Genesis, a superior system to the NES (at least hardware-wise) and Nintendo waited to bring out the Super NES until it had the right technology and the right gameplay ideas. They brought out Virtual Boy, which was completely different from anything on the market. Granted, that was a failed experiment, but it was an experiment nonetheless - not just an advance. With the Gamecube, they decided to shun the online players that Sony and Microsoft were going after, and have instead focused on the community aspect of multiplayer. Now there's the DS, an innovative, if imperfect, competitor for Sony's straight technological advance, the PSP. I have a feeling Nintendo knows what they're doing with these risks. They aren't going after the largest market share, they're trying to make good, innovative games that consistently change how we think of video gaming.
Aaah, but where are the Wookiees? This isn't the entire storyline.
It became ok to have no self-control when the lawyers took over the country. Now, if anything can conceivably be seen as somebody else's fault, it's a lucrative opportunity to sue. Personal responsibility is passe; now that there's money to be made, self-control is only a barrier to financial success.
No, it's MHz that don't matter. GHz... those matter. Just not as much as THz.
Oops, sorry about that.
Umm... ha! HAHAHA!
The reason that you think of Linda Richman is because the words for all of the different gameplay components come from Yiddish, which Mike Myers' Jewish mother-in-law (upon whom Richman was based) used. Now, I'm no expert on Yiddish, but here are the meanings of some of the words:
Mishegas (n) - Craziness
Meshigina (n, adj) - Crazy person, or just crazy
Meshugen (n) - Crazy person
Filn (n) - Feeling
Farklempt (adj) - Choked up, emotionally overwhelmed
Even though EA and Vivendi have announced that they will support Blu-Ray, the gaming industry won't have any significant effect one way or the other. For the most part, games still come on CDs, even if they're 6 CD monsters. Some games come out on DVD, but this is more a novelty than anything else (HL2 SE.) Maybe by the time Blu-Ray has been as widely accepted as DVDs are now, games will be released on DVD. Then when super-HD ultra-high-capacity ultraviolet-ray DVDs come out, we'll see games on Blu-Ray.
There has been at least one computer in my house since before I can remember. I grew up with computers, and always felt comfortable around them. My comfort level was increased in elementary school, where I got to play around with BASIC and Logowriter on Apple IIGSs. My teacher was an old-school, strict, Russian woman who expected nothing less than the best from me, and because she challenged me so much, I picked up a lot from her. She taught me the basics of programming in BASIC and Logowriter, and then would come up with a new challenge for me to complete every week or two. This made me confident and comfortable with computers.
When it was finally time to have a computer in my room for schoolwork, my parents decided to go with a local company so that frequent repairs wouldn't be a hassle. The computer, however, was not very well put-together, it had some fun little component conflicts, and having a teenaged kid messing around with it didn't make it any better. I messed up that computer six ways from Sunday, but I always managed to fix anything I did myself. I formatted the HD multiple times, I installed my own CD burner when I could finally afford one, I upgraded my RAM, upgraded my HD, upgraded from Win3.1 to Win95, and fixed any and every problem that I created.
If you want my suggestion, the best way to introduce children to computers is just that - introduce them to the very basics of computers (no pun intended,) let them get comfortable with the way computers work, and help them work through any problems that may arise. Once the children feel comfortable enough with comptuers, set them loose. Let them create and solve their own problems. Naturally, if something is beyond their capabilities, it would be wise to aid them. However, let them get frustrated. Let them walk away from problems only to have to solve them later. Not only is this a good way to learn about computers, it's a good way to learn about life.
Cue the "Zerg rush r0x0rs" posts...
The N64 had some code names too, as I remember. I know that it started out as Project Reality. Then, if memory serves, it was the stage when dinosaurs were still something of a fad because of Jurassic Park, so they codenamed it the Dinosaur, until someone realized that that made it sound old and outdated, so they changed it to Project Ultra. From there it became Ultra 64 and then finally the Nintendo 64.
God, it's sad that I know that.
That's weird, because I've been playing through San Andreas with subtitles. Either my version is really glitchy, or I went into the options screen and enabled subtitles.
Supposedly, the logic behind Anakin looking like Hayden Christiansen rather than Sebastian Shaw (who played the unmasked Anakin) is that the Jedi ghosts would appear as a light Jedi did at death. When Anakin became Darth Vader, the good Jedi who was Anakin was destroyed. Therefore, from a certain point of view, when Anakin "died" he looked like Hayden Christiansen, hence the ghost of Hayden.
Is it just me, or does this argument/rebuttal happen every single time there is a story posted about one of the LOTR movies. Seriously, go back to the beginning, since Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition was announced, and go back through those posts... I guarantee these will be there, word for word.
Well, I screwed up and sent 2 invites to one guy, so only the first five got invites (unless he cares to forward it to the next person in line, if they work like that). There'll probably be another GMail rush soon...
Yeah, me too... first six replies get an invite... and then get laughed at for not having GMail accounts yet.
Ladies and gentlemen, er, we've just lost the picture, but, uh, what we've seen speaks for itself. The Corvair spacecraft has been taken over -- "conquered", if you will -- by a master race of giant space ants. It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive earth men or merely enslave them. One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here.
And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them that as a trusted TV personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.
The reason the Clone Wars cartoons are so good is because Lucas is giving the fans what they want. When the trailers for the prequels first came out, Star Wars fans, myself included, flooded the trailer website, watching the trailer again and again. We paid admission for movies like Wing Commander in order to see the trailers on the big screen. The trailers were the parts of the prequels that actually lived up to the hype. Lucas noticed this and gave us what we wanted - brief, action-heavy glimpses into the Star Wars universe, long enough to show us some cool visuals and a little bit of plot, but short enough that no one cares that the plot is as simple as "bad guys attack, good guys defend, good guys win."
This is called FF7 because it is a direct sequel to FF7. This is much the same as FFX-2, which recently came out, and was a sequel to Final Fantasy X. As every Final Fantasy has a different universe and storyline, marketing a release as FF7: Advent Children or FFX-2 denotes that these are direct sequels to games with most of the same characters, taking place in the same universe, and picking up where the storyline of the original games left off. Calling the movie simply "Final Fantasy: Advent Children" would be similar to calling it "Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within." People would expect certain Final Fantasy aspects, but they would not expect a sequel to an already existing Final Fantasy. The VII serves to clarify, not confuse.
It is hard to take your comments seriously when you are so obviously biased against Smith and his films.
Well, take my comments seriously, because I am not biased against Kevin Smith. I liked Clerks, loved Dogma, and thought Chasing Amy was pretty damn good too. That doesn't mean I liked Mallrats or Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and I didn't even see Jersey Girl, so I guess I'm just not as big a fan as you. However, I don't think the sign of a good writer is making a movie just to pack it with as many inside jokes as possible. Nor do I think it is the sign of a good writer to go back and make an entirely unnecessary sequel. I thought that the Clerks story, while superficial, was wrapped up at the end of Clerks. I also thought that the Jay and Silent Bob universe was pretty much done, as Kevin Smith stated before and after Jay and Silent Bob came out. Following the money rather than following an artistic vision, as Smith is doing by going back to a proven moneymaker that limits his versatility as an artist, makes a writer a hack. Don't agree with me? Look up the word hack. Smith is doing this entirely for the money. That doesn't mean that I'm rabidly anti-Kevin Smith; on the contrary, I will probably see this movie when it comes out. I just disagree in principle with what Smith is doing: taking the easy money by writing a script, which he said he would never write, with a built-in fanbase, rather than going out on a limb and expanding his horizons. Sorry if I've offended you by having an opinion different from yours.
THANK YOU! You don't know how painful it is for me to get modded down for saying what I feel is, in essence, the same things that people responding to my thread are saying. I said that Smith made movies that defied expectations, like Jersey Girl, and got smacked down for it, so he's writing where the money is instead of doing his artistic thing. Of course, the kneejerk reaction of Kevin Smith fans is to mod that down as flamebait, but come on!
To me, this represents Kevin Smith taking the final plunge into sheer hackdom. None of his movies lived up to the expectations that naturally came about as a result of the edginess of the original Clerks, so Kevin Smith is kowtowing to his fans' demands rather than making good movies. Jersey Girl both sucked and bombed. Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back was just a series of in-jokes for the rabid Kevin Smith fans. And wasn't that supposed to be the last movie set in the "View Askewniverse" that contained movies like Clerks and Mallrats? To me, this just makes Smith sound a lot like George Lucas. "I'll never make another sequel in this series. Wait, what? Money? Oh, yeah, I'll do it for money. What do you guys want to see? More Jay, more Randall, and the origins of Boba Fett? Ok, here's exactly what you want! Now pay me!"