The scaling issues, such as with Soundwave, were due to the fact that the original toy line was not supposed to represent giant sized robots but were actually life size. Yes Bumblebee was supposed to be a toy car, and Megatron was a standard sized guy, and their robot forms were measured in inches not feet. This is also why in later versions of the Transformers those characters where either changed into different forms (Megatron became a cannon and not a gun) and a good thing that the move chose to not use those forms of the characters. But disregarding the scaling issue of the cartoon, Soundwave, and the cassettes that came with him were fully transformable.
Um no they didnt, the movie animators had a LOT of trouble trying to make the G1 designs work. Then I am guessing they didn't have any of the original toys sitting around. Having owned an Optimus, many other Transformers, a number of the original Diaclones, as well as many transformable Gundam, I can tell you that most of them are fully transformable with out the need for removing parts and the operate in robot form as well as vehicle form just fine (i.e. they roll in car form and are full possible in robot form). The original cartoon, including the original movie, where based very closely on these transformable model toys, wether the animators took care in that or not I can't really say, but the designers certainly did.
the could have at least kept the surface area proportional. What the heck happens to all the body sheets on Bumblebee when he transforms? I mean before transformation he is fully surrounded by yellow sheet metal, but after transformation it's like he is in tattered rags.
Of course you have a solution for this too, I suppose. "He should've used VW anyway and took the lawsuit like a real man, he should!". First of all Bumblebee was not a VW Bug. There were no VW or Beetle insignia on any incarnation, and the design was different enough to avoid likeness, trademark and copyright. Bumblebees wheel base, for one thing, is significantly different than a VW Bugs. Bumblebee was a transformer that looked similar to a VW Bug. Hasbro was never sued by VW over the likeness, though they were died when they attempted to license to create an exact replica of the remodeled bug.
The creative director behind the movie could have easily created a vehicle design that at least made the viewer think "bumblebee," but instead made, the intelligent, soft spoken, and emotional bumblebee into a classic american muscle car. I'm afraid at some point in the movie he's going to end up with a mullet, blasting Journey through cracked speakers.
Maybe you should direct the Transformers movie, since you bash so nicely. Maybe you shouldn't take it so personally. It's not like you directed the thing yourself. Look criticism is important, it's the only way we will ever weed out the crap and get more quality stuff produced. If you like it I'm all for it but tell me what you like not, "If you so smart why don't you do it yourself" what a load of crap. I also know Windows is a poorly written piece of crap and I happen to be a Software Engineer, but that doesn't mean I happen to want to put my effort toward writing a new OS, I'll leave that up to someone that actually has a passion for that kind of work. And until that magic OS comes out I'll just keep using the alternatives hoping MS will get the point, just as I do with most movies that I don't feel deserve a chance.
Beyond updating a few classic cult films, the director of this film has not done anything work watching, let alone paying to watch. His awards, a measure of an entertainers abilities, are one Directors Guild award, and a hand full of MTV VMAs. I'm pretty sure Spielberg was not behind the unrealistic transformations, and the inability to license decent IP. My only hope is that his involvement can actually turn crap into gold.
Yes I am going to pay good money to see this film, in the theater even, but I don't have very high expectations.
And if you are the director or the directors brother or whatever, then take this as personal as you would like, just stop being a douche nozzle.
There are things that look perfectly fine in a cartoon or a comicbook but need to be modified to be believable in a live movie.
Ah yes those things that never look right in moves. Things like actually vehicle designs that are in production, and realistic or at least believable physics. I'm not saying that the new designs are not flashier and won't appeal more to the younger generation, but if you can't make the Autobots look good on the big screen then I'm not sure you should be directing/producing a Transformers movie. Just Don't let these guys get there hands on the rights to Macross/Robotech.
The designs of the Transformers, when I first saw them, seemed way too busy and overcomplicated. Having seen all the trailers and a number of stills I have to say that I still don't like the Robots. The Japanese artists that designed the characters that The Transformers were based on, as well as all the incarnations of The Transformer Toy line, put alot of care into making sure that their transformations were realistic. Most of the original Transformer Line could have transformed without need for unrealistic physics. Working versions of The Transformers, as well as most Japanese Mecha, are physically possible (with the possible exception of the aerodynamics of the flying ones). You can't say this about the versions in the upcoming Movie. It won't stop me from seeing it, but it will bring down my enjoyment a bit. And when they finally do put out a toy line for the movie, and they will, the units will look cheap and the transformations will be both unrealistic and only a weak simulation of the movie.
The HDTV spec is 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i. Ah crap that means all those 1080p TVs are not HD, and all this time I though they were. The vast majority of HD TVs in use today do not support all the possible inputs, and none support all the resolutions natively. At best the TV has a scaler built in, but many do not, specifically in those that are 1080i native. Not even to mention that 480i is Standard Definition, and 480p is Enhanced Definition. According to the ITU (International Telecommunication Union), the standards comity behind HDTV, HDTV is 1080i, 1080p or 720p. According to the US Federal Standard 1037C, HDTV is "Television that has approximately twice the horizontal and twice the vertical emitted resolution specified by the NTSC standard." and " HDTV may include any or all improved-definition television (IDTV) and extended-television (EDTV) improvements. " The "HD Ready" label in the EU has only been a standard since 2005, which is newer than many HD tvs already in use, and it does specifically state the TV must accept 720p and 1080i inputs, and must display 720p or higher native resolution.
I guess the question is, what are we patenting? The device itself or simply the plans to build it? It has to be the plans to build it or more the implementation of the plans to build it. The plans in patents are public domain, that is part of the reason behind patents, but the use of those plans is what is protected. So in the case of software, the patent should actually spell out the details of how that software work, but no one else should be allowed to use that process without permission. And since running the program through a computer does cause physical change to the machine to conform to the specified plan then this is what should be protected by the patent.
How is it that aligning and moving electrons in a specific pattern is any different than do such with gears. Both electrons and gears are physical constructs which can be combined in different different paterns to produce different effects. All a software patent is saying is that no one else may move and align electrons or other physical constructs in an way that produces the specified effect. The point of the patent is to allow an inventor to public release an idea while they work on the spcifics to make the invention a reality.
What you are suggesting is that inventors would need to define the exact and complete details on an invention and only that one implementation would be covered by the patent. So if you patented defines your machine as being made of Steel gears and I build the same thing using carbon fiber gears I am not in violation of your patent. If you don't think the patent system is wasting enough resources already it certainly would be if people had to patent every possible implementation just to protecting there patent rights.
Please explain to me how a "hello world" program in C is a blueprint. The logic used in the "hell world" program can be just as easily turned into a physical series of circuits as a Hardware design in HDL. And you don't think it's possible to create a hardware implementation of "hello world" you are fooling yourself.
What are these benefits of caffeine you speak of? It makes a good bug a weed killer and it can strip paint. But just like bullets, which also have a number of benefits, I can't see putting either in my head every day.
Well done. You took a copy of a post from a prior story and turned it into a spoiler for a TV show without anyone realizing until the already read it. But you forgot the part about Suresh and Claire's father in a stand off with a little girls life on the line, and how Sylar has acquired the Ted's abilities. Seriously to those that are upset about the spoilers I have two things to say, nothing given out was at all unpredictable and it's a free Television show!
1. Define "many bugs." This is easy. Many bugs, though variable with time, is measured by defects per instruction, not lines of code or any other abstraction. Yes this means that bloatware has more leeway for defects, but also more possibility of defects so it all works out. The reason you use in instructions is that it doesn't mater what language you use, the underlying instructions are the same (ignoring any argument that RISK architectures require more program instructions).
As for specifics, this is highly subjective, ranging from opinions like mine that 1 per program is one to many, to those that think there is no limit to the number of bugs you should be allowed. But this also depends on if you are including design defects or engineering/code defects. It's usually best to keep them separate, but not everyone does. The only thing I can add in specifics is that projects with the least bugs have less than 1 bug per 1000 instructions, and yes there are programs that contain 0 defects, just not in the business world.
not that there are bad developers and bad code. Thanks, that was the best laugh I had all day. That's like saying I have never heard anyone call themselves "a bad manager." Call yourself what ever you want, it won't actually change a thing. I can only assume you have never seen a well architected, designed and coded program, or the engineers that build high quality software. 95% or all professional programmers are bad programmers, and call themselves developers. The other 5% are few and far between, and tend to understand the difference between developers and engineers. About 1% of the quality software engineers (so.05% of the total) work on business applications, since the good engineers tend to be well paid and work on projects that usually involve the security of human life, like Medical and Flight Control systems.
I don't know how many times it has to be said, but it is possible to write and release bug free software projects.
So for a 195 lb person, the average for city/highway work out to: 28/33MPG
So for a 140 lb person, the average for city/highway work out to: 34/46MPG You must be using the old EPA standards since your calculation does not take into account the number of calories that would be used wether biking or not. Remember then when driving a Vehicle, or even being a passenger, a certain number of calories are being expended and this is not calculated into the efficient of the car so it should also not be calculated into the efficiency of a bicycle. So to calculate correctly you should subtract the number of calories just being used to maintain typical body function which is around 150 for a 140 pound person, which makes their city biking expenditure down to 231 calories/hr or 23.1 calories per mile or 76MPG.
Try that again, this time predicting something that isn't currently happening, or limiting your scope to be no larger than a country. You have a better shot at the later than the former, but even then you have a fair chance of being wrong. The aforementioned prediction you are trying to debunk actually including a situation that was not currently true and involved two very specific countries, which is a far cry from the continuation of generalities you have predicted.
I actually compared Manhattan, KS to New York (Manhattan), NY. I could have used any where in Kansas since the OP wasn't specific, but I figured using a big city in Kansas would not have been fair so Manhattan, KS was the best I could find (and it seemed more suitable).
I don't know the details on the calculators I used but they both claimed to take housing and food into account, even showing Manhattan housing costs being 275% higher than Kansas and food was something like 40% higher. Personally I'm not going to spend over $300k on a house anytime soon (but then again I hate owning a house as it is). Not only that, the last time I checked $100k was entry level IT(Software engineering) in NYC.
According to the cost of rate calculators on line, $100k in NYC is closer to $40k-$50K in Kansas. And that is comparing Rural KS to downtown Manhattan. Live across the bridge in NJ, or outside of manhattan and still in NY it gets even closer (50k in KS is less than 75K in Newark). What you do with your money is up too you of course, but being able to send you kids to college when making $100k is not a difficult task (assuming you have a reasonable number of children, which is 2 or less for those that want to know). But then again why would you live in New York if you had the choice.
Aren't you ignoring contract... [which] certainly doesn't depend on copyright. Contract work does depend on copyright, at least for creative works. Being contracted to create a work of art is done for one of a very few reasons, and even less reasons if we are talking about a work for hire. The reason works for hire are done today is because the person who contracts the work gain control of the intellectual property associated with the work. Without copyright there is no stopping someone from reaping the benefit of a work of art someone else paid to create. Using your example of a contracted movie work, where a number of theaters collectively contract a movie to be made, there is nothing to stop an unassociated theater from running the same movie after it has been created and receiving the same funds for showing the movie with a much lower cost, having reduced their overhead to be reproduction and display. This gets even worse when looking at music and writing, both of which are cheap and fast to reproduce. So now the original theaters have no reason to fund a project since they can just wait for one of there competitors and what you end up with is a situation where the first person to buckle and contract the work to be made pays the full cost and only gets a small share of the resulting revenue. In a world with easy and cheap reproduction and distribution, where survival is based on extraction of revenue, the removal of copyright would mean the end of, or at least a great reduction in, creative and purely intellectual endeavors.
Your obvious misunderstanding and misdirected hatred against people who are in monogamous relationships seems to cloud your vision and judgment of your fellow people. Have been in both an open relationship and a monogamous one (both containing the same primary partner) I can tell you that I have found no cost to monogamy and significant benefit, but I can also see how someone that has never experienced it would see it the other way around. Monogamous relationships can be very enjoyable, and there is a thrill associated with maintaining that enjoyment with a single other person, and sharing the effects of that enjoyment with those around you. Learning and working on ways to keep another person satisfied enough with their life that they do not see relationships with other people as a way to break free from some self imposed limitation.
For some reason, which I am not able to understand, you equate pleasure with promiscuity, yet pleasure can be found in so many different places and ways that promiscuity should not be a requisite for pleasure. I'm not knocking promiscuity, or even polygamy, just trying to get you to open your eyes and realize that your hatred of those who chose to be monogamous is no better then the hatred that some may have expressed towards your life style.
I'm sure a number of people are thinking that you were making a joke, and you may have been, but those of us that actually are libertarian-socialists (some lean to fascism when they realize people are to stupid to govern themselves), like Noam Chomsky, have to agree with you that we are underrepresented (no completely unrepresented). I mean we have Bernie Sanders after all (though not quite as libertarian or socialist as I would like it, he's a good start).
The same package that *always* favors big coorporations over individuals. You are out of your mind. Copyright is far more beneficial to the individual than to the big corporations. Without copyright the only people who would be able to earn revenue on creative works would be corporations. They may earn less than they do now but it would be infinitely more than the individual would earn. With out copyright any artistic work could be sold by anyone who could reproduce it, and not a bit need go to the original artist. With copyright the original artist choses how their work is distributed and who can earn from it. With copyright you can say that something is free for all and that no one can profit from it if you like, there is nothing stopping you. Musicians get to decided how much the sell the rights to their music for, and it so happens that the acceptable rate of many musicians is far less than people are willing to pay for it so the major labels decided with there resources they could extract that extra amount from the consumer. Without copyright the going rate of written or recorded music that an artist could charge would be exactly nothing. Major corporations would reproduce and market the work and still make money, while the individual would make squat.
I'm all for limitations on copyright and copyright reform, or even the abolishment of copyright, I just don't fool myself into believing that removing copyright is some how going to benefit the individual more than a large collective such as a corporation.
Most *real* economists... 'Real' economists, as you put it, do not believe that an unregulated market can maintain itself, this is why I said "free market economists." But since you decided to ignore the 'free market' part, then I assume you will pretty much ignore anything else anyone says that doesn't support your own opinion.
I don't know the details on drug production in non-capatilist countries, and don't understand why you would limit to the past 10 years. The majority of the drugs that are in use today (including all vaccines) where developed well over 10 years ago, but that is not my point. If you want to argue that development only comes by way of capitalism and free markets then you have to completely ignore the fastest technologically advancing societies ever documented. Those are, Atlantis (all be it unprovable), and The Soviet Union, clearly proven. Both of these societies are document as being non-capitalistic. I prefer to focus on The Soviet Union and just through Atlantis in there for kicks. The Soviet Union, in a mater of a decade, turned from a peasantry, feudal society using archaic technology to a civilized world power with some of the most advanced technologies in the world. Yes, the collapsed a number of decades later, and were replaced by a capitalist society, which in turn caused higher infant death rates, shorter life spans and lower standard of living, and not a single notable advancement, or discovery, but hey, who am I too argue with the benefits of capitalism.
Yes, because lord knows a bunch of politicians are best folk to decide how much 'profit' a company needs, as opposed to the market. I'm not sure if you understand the concept of "market." In this case the market, being the Brazilian government since they are the only organization wealthy enough to purchase the drug and are actually interested, determined the price. The price they determined was the exact cost of production. So now they produce the medicine for the cost of production and distribute to those who would not otherwise be able to afford it. This is market economics at it's best. Most free market economist are against patents as they are detrimental to a free market, and in this case patent law is the only argument against the Brazilian government producing their own version of the medicine. Once you give the government the right to enforce patents you give them the right to enforce them as they see fit.
Yeah, because why should anyone be allowed to recoup the massive costs they incured in researching, developing, manufacturing, testing, and getting the drug approved? So you are saying that Brazil should be paying to US (and international) tax payer for fronting all the research money? You do realize that the majority of pharmaceutical research happens by way of government grant right?
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The scaling issues, such as with Soundwave, were due to the fact that the original toy line was not supposed to represent giant sized robots but were actually life size. Yes Bumblebee was supposed to be a toy car, and Megatron was a standard sized guy, and their robot forms were measured in inches not feet. This is also why in later versions of the Transformers those characters where either changed into different forms (Megatron became a cannon and not a gun) and a good thing that the move chose to not use those forms of the characters. But disregarding the scaling issue of the cartoon, Soundwave, and the cassettes that came with him were fully transformable.
the could have at least kept the surface area proportional. What the heck happens to all the body sheets on Bumblebee when he transforms? I mean before transformation he is fully surrounded by yellow sheet metal, but after transformation it's like he is in tattered rags.
The creative director behind the movie could have easily created a vehicle design that at least made the viewer think "bumblebee," but instead made, the intelligent, soft spoken, and emotional bumblebee into a classic american muscle car. I'm afraid at some point in the movie he's going to end up with a mullet, blasting Journey through cracked speakers.
Beyond updating a few classic cult films, the director of this film has not done anything work watching, let alone paying to watch. His awards, a measure of an entertainers abilities, are one Directors Guild award, and a hand full of MTV VMAs. I'm pretty sure Spielberg was not behind the unrealistic transformations, and the inability to license decent IP. My only hope is that his involvement can actually turn crap into gold.
Yes I am going to pay good money to see this film, in the theater even, but I don't have very high expectations.
And if you are the director or the directors brother or whatever, then take this as personal as you would like, just stop being a douche nozzle.
How is it that aligning and moving electrons in a specific pattern is any different than do such with gears. Both electrons and gears are physical constructs which can be combined in different different paterns to produce different effects. All a software patent is saying is that no one else may move and align electrons or other physical constructs in an way that produces the specified effect. The point of the patent is to allow an inventor to public release an idea while they work on the spcifics to make the invention a reality.
What you are suggesting is that inventors would need to define the exact and complete details on an invention and only that one implementation would be covered by the patent. So if you patented defines your machine as being made of Steel gears and I build the same thing using carbon fiber gears I am not in violation of your patent. If you don't think the patent system is wasting enough resources already it certainly would be if people had to patent every possible implementation just to protecting there patent rights.
Well done. You took a copy of a post from a prior story and turned it into a spoiler for a TV show without anyone realizing until the already read it. But you forgot the part about Suresh and Claire's father in a stand off with a little girls life on the line, and how Sylar has acquired the Ted's abilities. Seriously to those that are upset about the spoilers I have two things to say, nothing given out was at all unpredictable and it's a free Television show!
As for specifics, this is highly subjective, ranging from opinions like mine that 1 per program is one to many, to those that think there is no limit to the number of bugs you should be allowed. But this also depends on if you are including design defects or engineering/code defects. It's usually best to keep them separate, but not everyone does. The only thing I can add in specifics is that projects with the least bugs have less than 1 bug per 1000 instructions, and yes there are programs that contain 0 defects, just not in the business world. not that there are bad developers and bad code. Thanks, that was the best laugh I had all day. That's like saying I have never heard anyone call themselves "a bad manager." Call yourself what ever you want, it won't actually change a thing. I can only assume you have never seen a well architected, designed and coded program, or the engineers that build high quality software. 95% or all professional programmers are bad programmers, and call themselves developers. The other 5% are few and far between, and tend to understand the difference between developers and engineers. About 1% of the quality software engineers (so
I don't know how many times it has to be said, but it is possible to write and release bug free software projects.
So for a 140 lb person, the average for city/highway work out to: 34/46MPG You must be using the old EPA standards since your calculation does not take into account the number of calories that would be used wether biking or not. Remember then when driving a Vehicle, or even being a passenger, a certain number of calories are being expended and this is not calculated into the efficient of the car so it should also not be calculated into the efficiency of a bicycle. So to calculate correctly you should subtract the number of calories just being used to maintain typical body function which is around 150 for a 140 pound person, which makes their city biking expenditure down to 231 calories/hr or 23.1 calories per mile or 76MPG.
Try that again, this time predicting something that isn't currently happening, or limiting your scope to be no larger than a country. You have a better shot at the later than the former, but even then you have a fair chance of being wrong. The aforementioned prediction you are trying to debunk actually including a situation that was not currently true and involved two very specific countries, which is a far cry from the continuation of generalities you have predicted.
I actually compared Manhattan, KS to New York (Manhattan), NY. I could have used any where in Kansas since the OP wasn't specific, but I figured using a big city in Kansas would not have been fair so Manhattan, KS was the best I could find (and it seemed more suitable).
I don't know the details on the calculators I used but they both claimed to take housing and food into account, even showing Manhattan housing costs being 275% higher than Kansas and food was something like 40% higher. Personally I'm not going to spend over $300k on a house anytime soon (but then again I hate owning a house as it is). Not only that, the last time I checked $100k was entry level IT(Software engineering) in NYC.
According to the cost of rate calculators on line, $100k in NYC is closer to $40k-$50K in Kansas. And that is comparing Rural KS to downtown Manhattan. Live across the bridge in NJ, or outside of manhattan and still in NY it gets even closer (50k in KS is less than 75K in Newark). What you do with your money is up too you of course, but being able to send you kids to college when making $100k is not a difficult task (assuming you have a reasonable number of children, which is 2 or less for those that want to know). But then again why would you live in New York if you had the choice.
Your obvious misunderstanding and misdirected hatred against people who are in monogamous relationships seems to cloud your vision and judgment of your fellow people. Have been in both an open relationship and a monogamous one (both containing the same primary partner) I can tell you that I have found no cost to monogamy and significant benefit, but I can also see how someone that has never experienced it would see it the other way around. Monogamous relationships can be very enjoyable, and there is a thrill associated with maintaining that enjoyment with a single other person, and sharing the effects of that enjoyment with those around you. Learning and working on ways to keep another person satisfied enough with their life that they do not see relationships with other people as a way to break free from some self imposed limitation.
For some reason, which I am not able to understand, you equate pleasure with promiscuity, yet pleasure can be found in so many different places and ways that promiscuity should not be a requisite for pleasure. I'm not knocking promiscuity, or even polygamy, just trying to get you to open your eyes and realize that your hatred of those who chose to be monogamous is no better then the hatred that some may have expressed towards your life style.
I'm sure a number of people are thinking that you were making a joke, and you may have been, but those of us that actually are libertarian-socialists (some lean to fascism when they realize people are to stupid to govern themselves), like Noam Chomsky, have to agree with you that we are underrepresented (no completely unrepresented). I mean we have Bernie Sanders after all (though not quite as libertarian or socialist as I would like it, he's a good start).
I'm all for limitations on copyright and copyright reform, or even the abolishment of copyright, I just don't fool myself into believing that removing copyright is some how going to benefit the individual more than a large collective such as a corporation.
I don't know the details on drug production in non-capatilist countries, and don't understand why you would limit to the past 10 years. The majority of the drugs that are in use today (including all vaccines) where developed well over 10 years ago, but that is not my point. If you want to argue that development only comes by way of capitalism and free markets then you have to completely ignore the fastest technologically advancing societies ever documented. Those are, Atlantis (all be it unprovable), and The Soviet Union, clearly proven. Both of these societies are document as being non-capitalistic. I prefer to focus on The Soviet Union and just through Atlantis in there for kicks. The Soviet Union, in a mater of a decade, turned from a peasantry, feudal society using archaic technology to a civilized world power with some of the most advanced technologies in the world. Yes, the collapsed a number of decades later, and were replaced by a capitalist society, which in turn caused higher infant death rates, shorter life spans and lower standard of living, and not a single notable advancement, or discovery, but hey, who am I too argue with the benefits of capitalism.