uses an amatuer rocket setup and lauches say 5000 lbs of NON-METALLIC ball bearings into HEAVILY used geo-synch orbits patterns at decent relative velocity and tears holes in Trillions of $$$'s worth of satelites
What this is all about is putting up a few more trillions of dollars worth of satellites in orbit so that some fraction of those amateur rockets can be destroyed on the ground or in flight from space weapons. 'Some fraction' can probably be raised by additional trillions of dollars of investments, but in the end you still probably can't justify putting any weapons up because it's still easier to knock them down with much cheaper means...
the Air Force can whip out this portfolio and say "Well, with only $60 million, we can put these forces in place."
$60 million for a weapons system? I think you forgot a couple orders of magnitude there. It probably cost $60 million just to put together the proposal we're reading about here.
There are departments in every branch whose only job is to constantly think up the most outlandish scenarios, idea, plans, etc.
And it's the job of congress and the public to make sure we only spend money on systems we need. This isn't a contingency plan (a plan for using existing forces in a certain way in some scenario)- it's a real proposal for real hardware which will cost huge amounts of money that will either take money away from more necessary military systems or just get added on the the immense deficit. (The administration recently announced that the deficit would be cut in half in few years- if they can spend a $250 billion extra this year then they can say they'll cut it by a two-thirds in the same time without having to re-cook the numbers: the more we spend the more we'll be saving when we stop spending it!) You can't say some guys just drew this up without wanting to actually get money for it and have it implemented.
There's all sorts of interest in strike-anywhere on Earth or orbit in 30-minutes with nobody's permission technology because of all the resistance to the Iraq war. But what we should have learned from that is that there isn't a strike-capability gap, but there are severe problems with our leadership, the ability of our military to engage in 'nation building', and most of all our intelligence. If we had real solid intelligence we wouldn't be in the Iraq mess, and if there was a real threat then it wouldn't be hard to get anyone's permission or assistance using force to deal with it.
Protecting space-assets is nice, but maybe we should focus more on capably using ground assets (HUMINT and diplomacy and so forth). There's this huge over-emphasis on spy satellites and high bandwidth battlefield communications- which are very nice in some circumstances, but the cornerstone of an effective military should be at the person-to-person-at-the-same-place-and-time level.
The consequences of a war in space may be devastating to our communication and weather networks.
This 'space war winter' problem is compounded by the greenhouse effect- the cooling of the atmosphere has caused the the air density to go down on the top-most layers - where low-orbit satellites are. Stuff in low-orbit (like clouds of junk from a space war, say) usually loses altitude after a time from air friction, falls into ever greater air density and then just plummets and burns up, but with less air it'll stay up and be hazardous for a lot longer. I think NOAA issued a report on direct measurements that showed this thinning was happening now, but I can't find it online (it was in Science or Nature or something).
The Sky Road by Ken Macleod deals with some of that in a science fiction setting, although he doesn't take into account the greenhouse effect.
It should in any case be in a higher orbit, and it should be expanded so that it can be used to assemble large interplanetary spacecrafts.
The space station was originally conceived as a launch pad for interplanetary missions, but after the cold war they changed the design to a high inclination orbit so the Russian launches from Baikonur would be able to reach it easily- but high inclination means that the natural path for things launched from it would be to go out of the plane of the solar system (there are launch windows still, but very slim). I'm not sure if it's true, but I've heard it's easier energy/safety/money-wise to just launch a new station in a regular orbit than try to change the orbit of the existing one.
no major party does care about the same things I do
I think health care and the economy and environment and frivolous overseas military adventures affect nearly everyone, and therefore it's the sort of thing the two parties usually talk about. The DMCA is important, but not in the 'people are dying right now' kind of way. Also, understanding why it's important presupposes a certain level of slashdot readership or technical competence that makes it something only a few politicians will take a stand on and only in more specialized forums,
it is doubtful two party system would be able to encompass even a portion of those views
Yeah, a European style proportional representation would be nice. But how does not voting make that happen? How have the past few decades of low voter turnout made any positive changes in our system- we haven't reached some magic threshold (1%? 0%?) for instant political change yet? I think the less people that vote the easier it is to focus those billions of dollars and media framing of issues to manipulate the few who do.
Great, you've rationalized your inability to make hard choices.
Abstension is just as much a part of the democratic process as is casting a vote
There isn't any penalty specified in the constitution if voter turnout is low- 10% percent turnout doesn't make the winner 10% president. Therefore, the only result you and people like you not not voting is that no major party will care about things you and people like you care about.
The thing is, in a free country there's bound to be a huge diversity of incompatible world views- the chance that you and a candidate or party agree 100% is pretty low. Refusing to choose is just a cop-out.
If the incumbent is a corrupt incompetent moron who can't string two unrehearsed sentences together, and the other candidate may be no better, what do you do? Kick the incumbent out- at least the guy coming in will be a little more humble and thoughtful about whether they're doing the right thing if they know the public will judge them harshly.
hey will be using the timeslot for another unfunny pile of shit from the Wayans brothers.
The thing is, Angel probably costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per episode, while a pile of shit from the Wayans brothers costs, well, whatever the going rate for piles of such stuff goes for (a lot less). So the piles can get much worse ratings and less advertising dollars but be more profitable.
This morning a guy contacted me saying he was unemployed and wanted some advice on starting an open source project that might establish his reputation.
Well what happens if everyone does that?
Since there is a significant difference between projects people are willing to do themselves 'for fun' or because they want to sharpen their skills or whatever, and projects a company needs to get done real soon now and there is a infinite amount of potential software projects, I don't really see an issue here.
Typically you directly employ people to do something to do things you need done with certain expectations of timeliness and quality- open source can be both rapidly done and high-quality, but you can't just say 'hey our business would do a lot better if some of y'all open source types would make a program per this 300 page spec'.
It's true that making very generic and widely used software (e.g. OS's, web servers, & office programs) is probably not going to be a guaranteed revenue stream forever, but there are lots of niches for proprietary software to continue to thrive, as well as a large potential for open-source developers to be paid for what they're doing.
Free-trade is also the only thing that makes sense in a democracy.
Right, but we don't have a world wide democracy do we? Free trade works great for the interstate trade within the U.S., and the EU, but I'm not convinced we can have free trade globally prior to a world wide representative governing system...
When's the last time you watched a movie that showed a lot of zooming? Did you know that film camera lenses don't even have zooming capabilities?
Once Upon A Time In Mexico had several shots with zooming, albeit it was 'filmed' in high definition with the Sony HDCAM 24p- it had a zoom lens, among other interchangeable lenses. Lots of tv shows and some movies are being shot with cameras like this. You don't notice zooming in a Hollywood movie any more than you notice the focusing, because professionals know how to do it subtly and effectively.
You should notice that every movie has lots of extremely high focal length shots, especially for back-and-forth conversations shots- it's a sure sign of a very amateurish production to always use the default wide angle. The point of a zoom lense on a camera is not to shoot while zooming, but to allow a huge number of different focal lengths. Since anyone using a cheap consumer camera is unlikely to buy or want to hassle with lense add-ons, and no low-end cameras have interchangeable lenses, a big optical zoom gives them maximal freedom.
You're right that it is annoying to shoot scenes very close by because these cameras are telephoto oriented, but there's always more stuff further away from you than closer by.
50 years later we finally realize that this only impeded our recovery by jacking up prices of food during a time of great starvation.
So any booms during intervening years (prior to recent trade liberalizations) were artificial/unsustainable? Even if you told me that all economic gains in the all the years since the depression (which even discounting inflation are hardly insignificant) were correlated with relaxed protection, it still doesn't follow that instantiating 50 years worth of progress towards free trade during or immediately after the depression would have produced the same results in a much shorter period.
Capitalism is a fantastic system where people are always driven by 'greed'.
Right, which is why we currently have low tariffs on things that will make domestic shareholders/corporations richer, and high tariffs to protect some of our old-world industries and others that can't compete globally or simply because they can get away with it. The shareholders and workers, motivated by greed, lobby the government to do what's beneficial for them, and ideally you have a democracy that ends up reflecting the interests of the majority of the people when different groups of shareholders and/or workers come into conflict. I think when most corporation where primarily domestic in scope we had a lot more protection because that's what they thought was good for them, and now their globalized versions want more free trade and that's what we're getting. There's is a complex system there that developed gradually, you can't pose it in the simplistic chicken-and-egg type terms.
Economic theory is still too reductionist to be universally applicable, and therefore we should be cautious before applying supposed absolutes to the real world.
This is absolutely right- the only way free trade will work on a global level is on a level playing field (and I for one would prefer the level to be what we have now or had in the last half of the 20th century, rather than bringing ourselves down to everyone else's).
States all are subject to the same federal laws, the same constitution, everyone gets to vote for president and a national congress, and they rarely fight wars with each other, and it's almost as easy for citizens to cross state borders as it is for money and goods to do so (Notice the economic boom in the U.S. following the construction of the interstate highway system). People are in the similar economic situations from state to state, and speak the same language, and have similar educations. There's a uniform legal system where grievances (possibly linked to trade) can be addressed in the context of freedom and quality of life. Nearly all of those things are prerequisites for a successful system of free trade like the one built inside the U.S.
Make no mistake, tariffs are ALWAYS a bad thing, regardless of which side institutes them
You provide a single speculative anecdote and then throw this absolute in there, with capital letters in case the powers of reason of lowercase were insufficient. Blanket statements like these strike of ideology and blind faith rather than a pragmatic and reasoned approach to markets.
There's a balance between protectionism and free trade that the government has to find. Strong mature economies need more free trade to grow further, and weak fledgling economies need to be protected and subsidized more- sort of like how people usually do better in life if they are given food and shelter and the rest the first few years of their lives...
It would be great to have a whole INS inside the camera so it really knows where it is, where it's pointed (x,y,z+yaw,pitch,roll) , and how fast it's moving (well that one may not be as useful, but give us the data and the applications will come). A rangefinder would also be useful in finding out what the camera was really pointed at- you want to browse by image not by vantage point. Of course, right now that type of capability in a camera would cost $100K and be the size of a loaf of bread, but just wait...
And I forgot that it needs longrange wireless comm to immediately upload the pictures to a searchable server as they are taken.
I imagine google image search will have advanced search functions for location or other metadata soon enough and make the need for a centralized site like the one linked in the story unnecessary. Also google needs to add some facial recognition, so I can upload a picture of someone and it will return results with all other searchable pictures of that same person (and their location according to the GPS data on the most recent photo). Bad for stalkees, I suppose, but interesting tech.
Google Boogle Broother? I dunno, probably a better name than 'Froogle' was for their product search.
I have gone back and played it (the single play) many times, and still do
As good as it was, the swimming and jumping sequences really kill the replay value for me. In any fps, it's just a chore to get past those sections as quickly as possible. Having those sections would be fine if there are alternate routes available as well, but unnecessary bottlenecks with inferior gameplay are the worst.
Jumping from first person doesn't work well because in real life people have peripheral vision- not so with a single 17-inch monitor, you never know where your feet are (and games more a than a few years old didn't even give the players feet that they could look down and see...).
Swimming: You move slowly, and the movement controls don't allow things anyone can easily do underwater (tumble, push off surfaces, etc.). You can't shoot (most of the time). You can't see very far (no admiring off the engine's draw distance).
I think a year ago people were trumpeting LOTR and the Matrix films as the new genre movies of choice, and not thinking of Ep III at all. Then the Matrix sequels came out and were underwhelming, so maybe there's a chance fans will look to Star Wars again for that inspirational spark or whatever the first trilogy had in spades.
I'm going to keep my expectations low, but see it in the theaters anyhow.
I'd rather someone would come out with a new science fiction franchise to take the reins from Star Wars- something fresh, with mind-blowing imagery in every frame. Maybe a live-action Ghost in the Shell?
How about SciFi based on today? Getting to the Moon and Mars. Perhaps that could help increase public interest in such projects in real life.
Anything filmable has to be set after the invention of artificial gravity- dozens of takes on the 'vomit comet' (the freefalling airplane astronauts train on) get pretty expensive, not to mention the limitations on set size. FTL has to exist because it's easier to have the plot arc over several days or weeks rather than months or years.
On the other hand, I've always wanted to see something all-cgi (perhaps npr/cel-shaded) set place within the solar system with lots of attention to get various gravity conditions right, and with an epic enough scope to allow long interplanet flights.
Military spending is a very effective form of public subsidy.
I don't think it's the most effective form, because while weapons systems require high-tech workers, they aren't economically productive after being built- A soldier is a worker out of the workforce, a tank doesn't transport goods across the country, and fighter jets don't have business passengers. Why not just subsidize high-tech businesses directly?
how do they know it's you when they couldn't possibly have seen your face?
This is annoying, especially when the cops forget about you after a few minutes- I think there should be some more balance between the two- a close encounter with the cops or enemy gangs would allow them to id you, but not the second you're in range.
I always thought GTA: Baghdad would be an interesting concept.
That's what I'd like to see as well- the star system could go a lot higher, with much more devastating counter attacks- killing a soldier would bring in helicopters and trucks full of more soldiers, and then taking some of those out would have the area get shelled. There could be more of a strategic bent to those encounters (instead of the police simply forgetting about you the next day as in GTA3): The more invaders you kill, and the more violent their response (killing lots of innocent locals), the more people will support you and resist the invaders- but of course there's dozens of other insurgent groups to work for or fight against, as well as local gangs, corrupt police, and international terrorists, and some interaction with journalists.
Soon you'll attract a lot of attention and be on the news, wanted posters on the walls (to be replace by murals celebrating you near the end).
In the opening portion of the game the city would be wide open for travel, but then after some successful missions the invaders will really crack down and roadblock everything, and then after some more successes you'll have made parts of the city too dangerous for the invaders- and then you'll push them out entirely, and win.
It wouldn't actually have to be set in Baghdad, but in an alternate universe with Russia invading the U.S. or more imaginary settings to make the game more marketable- but the parallels would be obvious.
Slashdot Mirror
uses an amatuer rocket setup and lauches say 5000 lbs of NON-METALLIC ball bearings into HEAVILY used geo-synch orbits patterns at decent relative velocity and tears holes in Trillions of $$$'s worth of satelites
What this is all about is putting up a few more trillions of dollars worth of satellites in orbit so that some fraction of those amateur rockets can be destroyed on the ground or in flight from space weapons. 'Some fraction' can probably be raised by additional trillions of dollars of investments, but in the end you still probably can't justify putting any weapons up because it's still easier to knock them down with much cheaper means...
the Air Force can whip out this portfolio and say "Well, with only $60 million, we can put these forces in place."
$60 million for a weapons system? I think you forgot a couple orders of magnitude there. It probably cost $60 million just to put together the proposal we're reading about here.
There are departments in every branch whose only job is to constantly think up the most outlandish scenarios, idea, plans, etc.
And it's the job of congress and the public to make sure we only spend money on systems we need. This isn't a contingency plan (a plan for using existing forces in a certain way in some scenario)- it's a real proposal for real hardware which will cost huge amounts of money that will either take money away from more necessary military systems or just get added on the the immense deficit. (The administration recently announced that the deficit would be cut in half in few years- if they can spend a $250 billion extra this year then they can say they'll cut it by a two-thirds in the same time without having to re-cook the numbers: the more we spend the more we'll be saving when we stop spending it!) You can't say some guys just drew this up without wanting to actually get money for it and have it implemented.
There's all sorts of interest in strike-anywhere on Earth or orbit in 30-minutes with nobody's permission technology because of all the resistance to the Iraq war. But what we should have learned from that is that there isn't a strike-capability gap, but there are severe problems with our leadership, the ability of our military to engage in 'nation building', and most of all our intelligence. If we had real solid intelligence we wouldn't be in the Iraq mess, and if there was a real threat then it wouldn't be hard to get anyone's permission or assistance using force to deal with it.
Protecting space-assets is nice, but maybe we should focus more on capably using ground assets (HUMINT and diplomacy and so forth). There's this huge over-emphasis on spy satellites and high bandwidth battlefield communications- which are very nice in some circumstances, but the cornerstone of an effective military should be at the person-to-person-at-the-same-place-and-time level.
The consequences of a war in space may be devastating to our communication and weather networks.
This 'space war winter' problem is compounded by the greenhouse effect- the cooling of the atmosphere has caused the the air density to go down on the top-most layers - where low-orbit satellites are. Stuff in low-orbit (like clouds of junk from a space war, say) usually loses altitude after a time from air friction, falls into ever greater air density and then just plummets and burns up, but with less air it'll stay up and be hazardous for a lot longer. I think NOAA issued a report on direct measurements that showed this thinning was happening now, but I can't find it online (it was in Science or Nature or something).
The Sky Road by Ken Macleod deals with some of that in a science fiction setting, although he doesn't take into account the greenhouse effect.
It should in any case be in a higher orbit, and it should be expanded so that it can be used to assemble large interplanetary spacecrafts.
The space station was originally conceived as a launch pad for interplanetary missions, but after the cold war they changed the design to a high inclination orbit so the Russian launches from Baikonur would be able to reach it easily- but high inclination means that the natural path for things launched from it would be to go out of the plane of the solar system (there are launch windows still, but very slim). I'm not sure if it's true, but I've heard it's easier energy/safety/money-wise to just launch a new station in a regular orbit than try to change the orbit of the existing one.
no major party does care about the same things I do
I think health care and the economy and environment and frivolous overseas military adventures affect nearly everyone, and therefore it's the sort of thing the two parties usually talk about. The DMCA is important, but not in the 'people are dying right now' kind of way. Also, understanding why it's important presupposes a certain level of slashdot readership or technical competence that makes it something only a few politicians will take a stand on and only in more specialized forums,
it is doubtful two party system would be able to encompass even a portion of those views
Yeah, a European style proportional representation would be nice. But how does not voting make that happen? How have the past few decades of low voter turnout made any positive changes in our system- we haven't reached some magic threshold (1%? 0%?) for instant political change yet? I think the less people that vote the easier it is to focus those billions of dollars and media framing of issues to manipulate the few who do.
Great, you've rationalized your inability to make hard choices.
Abstension is just as much a part of the democratic process as is casting a vote
There isn't any penalty specified in the constitution if voter turnout is low- 10% percent turnout doesn't make the winner 10% president. Therefore, the only result you and people like you not not voting is that no major party will care about things you and people like you care about.
The thing is, in a free country there's bound to be a huge diversity of incompatible world views- the chance that you and a candidate or party agree 100% is pretty low. Refusing to choose is just a cop-out.
If the incumbent is a corrupt incompetent moron who can't string two unrehearsed sentences together, and the other candidate may be no better, what do you do? Kick the incumbent out- at least the guy coming in will be a little more humble and thoughtful about whether they're doing the right thing if they know the public will judge them harshly.
hey will be using the timeslot for another unfunny pile of shit from the Wayans brothers.
The thing is, Angel probably costs hundreds of thousands of dollars per episode, while a pile of shit from the Wayans brothers costs, well, whatever the going rate for piles of such stuff goes for (a lot less). So the piles can get much worse ratings and less advertising dollars but be more profitable.
This morning a guy contacted me saying he was unemployed and wanted some advice on starting an open source project that might establish his reputation.
Well what happens if everyone does that?
Since there is a significant difference between projects people are willing to do themselves 'for fun' or because they want to sharpen their skills or whatever, and projects a company needs to get done real soon now and there is a infinite amount of potential software projects, I don't really see an issue here.
Typically you directly employ people to do something to do things you need done with certain expectations of timeliness and quality- open source can be both rapidly done and high-quality, but you can't just say 'hey our business would do a lot better if some of y'all open source types would make a program per this 300 page spec'.
It's true that making very generic and widely used software (e.g. OS's, web servers, & office programs) is probably not going to be a guaranteed revenue stream forever, but there are lots of niches for proprietary software to continue to thrive, as well as a large potential for open-source developers to be paid for what they're doing.
Then she states that India consumes goods as a result of their increased wealth.
Until just recently, India had huge tariffs on computers... Why were we shipping all these jobs there if they hadn't done that already?
Free-trade is also the only thing that makes sense in a democracy.
Right, but we don't have a world wide democracy do we? Free trade works great for the interstate trade within the U.S., and the EU, but I'm not convinced we can have free trade globally prior to a world wide representative governing system...
When's the last time you watched a movie that showed a lot of zooming? Did you know that film camera lenses don't even have zooming capabilities?
Once Upon A Time In Mexico had several shots with zooming, albeit it was 'filmed' in high definition with the Sony HDCAM 24p- it had a zoom lens, among other interchangeable lenses. Lots of tv shows and some movies are being shot with cameras like this. You don't notice zooming in a Hollywood movie any more than you notice the focusing, because professionals know how to do it subtly and effectively.
You should notice that every movie has lots of extremely high focal length shots, especially for back-and-forth conversations shots- it's a sure sign of a very amateurish production to always use the default wide angle. The point of a zoom lense on a camera is not to shoot while zooming, but to allow a huge number of different focal lengths. Since anyone using a cheap consumer camera is unlikely to buy or want to hassle with lense add-ons, and no low-end cameras have interchangeable lenses, a big optical zoom gives them maximal freedom.
You're right that it is annoying to shoot scenes very close by because these cameras are telephoto oriented, but there's always more stuff further away from you than closer by.
50 years later we finally realize that this only impeded our recovery by jacking up prices of food during a time of great starvation.
So any booms during intervening years (prior to recent trade liberalizations) were artificial/unsustainable? Even if you told me that all economic gains in the all the years since the depression (which even discounting inflation are hardly insignificant) were correlated with relaxed protection, it still doesn't follow that instantiating 50 years worth of progress towards free trade during or immediately after the depression would have produced the same results in a much shorter period.
Capitalism is a fantastic system where people are always driven by 'greed'.
Right, which is why we currently have low tariffs on things that will make domestic shareholders/corporations richer, and high tariffs to protect some of our old-world industries and others that can't compete globally or simply because they can get away with it. The shareholders and workers, motivated by greed, lobby the government to do what's beneficial for them, and ideally you have a democracy that ends up reflecting the interests of the majority of the people when different groups of shareholders and/or workers come into conflict. I think when most corporation where primarily domestic in scope we had a lot more protection because that's what they thought was good for them, and now their globalized versions want more free trade and that's what we're getting. There's is a complex system there that developed gradually, you can't pose it in the simplistic chicken-and-egg type terms.
Economic theory is still too reductionist to be universally applicable, and therefore we should be cautious before applying supposed absolutes to the real world.
I love my Free Trade with other US States.
This is absolutely right- the only way free trade will work on a global level is on a level playing field (and I for one would prefer the level to be what we have now or had in the last half of the 20th century, rather than bringing ourselves down to everyone else's).
States all are subject to the same federal laws, the same constitution, everyone gets to vote for president and a national congress, and they rarely fight wars with each other, and it's almost as easy for citizens to cross state borders as it is for money and goods to do so (Notice the economic boom in the U.S. following the construction of the interstate highway system). People are in the similar economic situations from state to state, and speak the same language, and have similar educations. There's a uniform legal system where grievances (possibly linked to trade) can be addressed in the context of freedom and quality of life. Nearly all of those things are prerequisites for a successful system of free trade like the one built inside the U.S.
protectionism of domestic industries gives those industries a short term prop but damns them in the long term.
So why not give them protection in the short term and then open them up when they have legs to stand on?
Make no mistake, tariffs are ALWAYS a bad thing, regardless of which side institutes them
You provide a single speculative anecdote and then throw this absolute in there, with capital letters in case the powers of reason of lowercase were insufficient. Blanket statements like these strike of ideology and blind faith rather than a pragmatic and reasoned approach to markets.
There's a balance between protectionism and free trade that the government has to find. Strong mature economies need more free trade to grow further, and weak fledgling economies need to be protected and subsidized more- sort of like how people usually do better in life if they are given food and shelter and the rest the first few years of their lives...
It would be great to have a whole INS inside the camera so it really knows where it is, where it's pointed (x,y,z+yaw,pitch,roll) , and how fast it's moving (well that one may not be as useful, but give us the data and the applications will come). A rangefinder would also be useful in finding out what the camera was really pointed at- you want to browse by image not by vantage point. Of course, right now that type of capability in a camera would cost $100K and be the size of a loaf of bread, but just wait...
And I forgot that it needs longrange wireless comm to immediately upload the pictures to a searchable server as they are taken.
I imagine google image search will have advanced search functions for location or other metadata soon enough and make the need for a centralized site like the one linked in the story unnecessary. Also google needs to add some facial recognition, so I can upload a picture of someone and it will return results with all other searchable pictures of that same person (and their location according to the GPS data on the most recent photo). Bad for stalkees, I suppose, but interesting tech.
Google Boogle Broother? I dunno, probably a better name than 'Froogle' was for their product search.
I have gone back and played it (the single play) many times, and still do
As good as it was, the swimming and jumping sequences really kill the replay value for me. In any fps, it's just a chore to get past those sections as quickly as possible. Having those sections would be fine if there are alternate routes available as well, but unnecessary bottlenecks with inferior gameplay are the worst.
Jumping from first person doesn't work well because in real life people have peripheral vision- not so with a single 17-inch monitor, you never know where your feet are (and games more a than a few years old didn't even give the players feet that they could look down and see...).
Swimming: You move slowly, and the movement controls don't allow things anyone can easily do underwater (tumble, push off surfaces, etc.). You can't shoot (most of the time). You can't see very far (no admiring off the engine's draw distance).
I think a year ago people were trumpeting LOTR and the Matrix films as the new genre movies of choice, and not thinking of Ep III at all. Then the Matrix sequels came out and were underwhelming, so maybe there's a chance fans will look to Star Wars again for that inspirational spark or whatever the first trilogy had in spades.
I'm going to keep my expectations low, but see it in the theaters anyhow.
I'd rather someone would come out with a new science fiction franchise to take the reins from Star Wars- something fresh, with mind-blowing imagery in every frame. Maybe a live-action Ghost in the Shell?
Inserting 'gate' into the short hand term for a new political scandal automatically robs that scandal of any real importance.
How about SciFi based on today? Getting to the Moon and Mars. Perhaps that could help increase public interest in such projects in real life.
Anything filmable has to be set after the invention of artificial gravity- dozens of takes on the 'vomit comet' (the freefalling airplane astronauts train on) get pretty expensive, not to mention the limitations on set size. FTL has to exist because it's easier to have the plot arc over several days or weeks rather than months or years.
On the other hand, I've always wanted to see something all-cgi (perhaps npr/cel-shaded) set place within the solar system with lots of attention to get various gravity conditions right, and with an epic enough scope to allow long interplanet flights.
Also it is kind of a crappy picture: with all the processing and superimposing it doesn't look real at all.
It's the orbital imaging equivalent of Maxim or Playboy...
Military spending is a very effective form of public subsidy.
I don't think it's the most effective form, because while weapons systems require high-tech workers, they aren't economically productive after being built- A soldier is a worker out of the workforce, a tank doesn't transport goods across the country, and fighter jets don't have business passengers. Why not just subsidize high-tech businesses directly?
(I know, there's no incentive like defense)
A good empty canal for chases would be cool as- and also trucks with trailers that can jackknife.
how do they know it's you when they couldn't possibly have seen your face?
This is annoying, especially when the cops forget about you after a few minutes- I think there should be some more balance between the two- a close encounter with the cops or enemy gangs would allow them to id you, but not the second you're in range.
I always thought GTA: Baghdad would be an interesting concept.
That's what I'd like to see as well- the star system could go a lot higher, with much more devastating counter attacks- killing a soldier would bring in helicopters and trucks full of more soldiers, and then taking some of those out would have the area get shelled. There could be more of a strategic bent to those encounters (instead of the police simply forgetting about you the next day as in GTA3): The more invaders you kill, and the more violent their response (killing lots of innocent locals), the more people will support you and resist the invaders- but of course there's dozens of other insurgent groups to work for or fight against, as well as local gangs, corrupt police, and international terrorists, and some interaction with journalists.
Soon you'll attract a lot of attention and be on the news, wanted posters on the walls (to be replace by murals celebrating you near the end).
In the opening portion of the game the city would be wide open for travel, but then after some successful missions the invaders will really crack down and roadblock everything, and then after some more successes you'll have made parts of the city too dangerous for the invaders- and then you'll push them out entirely, and win.
It wouldn't actually have to be set in Baghdad, but in an alternate universe with Russia invading the U.S. or more imaginary settings to make the game more marketable- but the parallels would be obvious.