Not to rain on anyone's parade (this is certainly good news for Linux users, though of course it'd be best if it were free), but how much of th ecurrent Linux market overlaps with the Widnows market. It seems to me that if you're buying a gaming rig, you probably already have at least one HDD that boots windows automatically (especially given the relatively incremental hardware advances since last summer). I'm not saying it's not something Linux users should demean, but I'm just not sure that they can count on this gaining Linux market share since those who game, run windows, those who like Linux, run Linux. The Linux community may now run games, but is this supposed to bring new people into the fold as the blurb suggests?
*More* Libertarian and less liberal? How does that make sense? the liberals in this country support greater regulation of corporate America and its soulless exploitation as opposed to limiting their taxation and accountability. This is an issue of concern for those trying to solve concerns of everyone rather for those endorsing the limitation of rights to complete freedom with the exception of physical harm. I will always oppose Policies like strict libertarianism that seek to equte economic freedom--which the capitalist experience repeatedly demonstrates cannot be used responsibly by corporate entities--with individual political freedom, which so far the US of A has done a damn fine job of protecting. Libertarianism would have us all worrying about our own asses and laud the companies for finding new revenue streams, regulation and the environment be damned.
the argument that it takes a huge budget to do this and I shouldn't compare movies and show is certainly valid up to a point--though if you look at certain instances of American TV (often, to be fair, Disney spinoffs. I've seen a couple instances of the "The Little Mermaid" and "Aladdin" TV series whose animation is comparable to that of their namesake movies) the emphasis is stil on fluidity. Anyway, let me clarify my point. I realize in retrospect that, along with forgetting to include a slash in my italics bracket (sorry!) my statement that I'm not judging on as "better" at the end completely contradicts that paragraph. Let me be clear: as far as my criteria were going, yes, animation is all about fluidity. That's because it's nothing without it--it's a comic book. By definition "animating" is an attempt to give drawings the same feel and look as live television or movement. Thus, yes, I feel confident saying that fluidity is a sufficient criterion on which to say that as animation American animation is generally superior. My point, however, is not that American animation as a whole is better than anime, nor that anyone should watch one or the other based upon my own opinions. Watch what you want! There's great anime out there and great American animation. The point was merely that depending upon what you're looking for--really nice art or an emphasis on fluidity--one or the other is, in general (yes, of course there are exceptions like FLCL, but they're still not the norm, and FLCL is only 6 eps) preferable. I don't think that you're really reading this as some sort of patriotic assault on Japanese animation, in spite of my poor writing, but I just want to clarify that I don't believe people should watch anything but what they want to watch, merely that as I understand the definition of animation (the goal being to produce a fluid work of art to effectively portray movement) I consider American animation able to meet this criterion objectively. That said, we seem to agree on this difference between Japanese and American treatments of motion, merely not on their sufficiency as encompassing the definition of animation, and in that case we may just have to differ, but I do wish to clarify that I'm not trying to say anything about the general quality of American animation (goodness knows anime's storylines are better, though some of the archetypes need to be retired) beyond its treatment of motion.
Gah. Poor form to reply to one's own post, but poorer to double post in the same thread. I only reposted this after I assumed/. ate my previous post (which made more sense as a reply to a parent.) My sincere apologies to/. at large and my poor karma. My bad.
Many are correct in their assertion that anime is something of a "cult" following--granted, an absurdly, gigantically huge cult--but that it's still not quite mainstream enough to bring in the sort of bucks of American style animation.
More specifically, if you restrict yourself to anime, you've cut your audience--some people just won't see it or else consider it crazy, far out, and inaccessible (because, let's face it, a heck of a lot if anime is crazy, far out, and inaccessible, just in an entertaining way). And, like American animation, there is some very good anime (Cowboy Bebop, a choice I hope is non-controversial) and plenty of lame ones (I'm not going to cite any examples because that's just begging for flamewars. Think so some anime you hate and put it here). Hence, you've restricted your market by your choice of style, but anime is just that-a style. It's no guarantee of quality by any means, and Miyazaki has done some amazing work, (though let's be honest with ourselves--Mononoke and Nausicaa were more or less the same movie), but part of that may be because he hasn't whored himself out as a profit moachine, but rather as a dedicated animator, and you don't need to convert to and anime-based approach to find that, you just need a Disney willing to hire people (like those who work at, say, Pixar) who share his dedication.
And, though it's responding to flamebait, American animation isn't crap. I would go so far as to say that it's objectively better than Japanese animation. Please don't take this as an insult to anime, potential flamers, (Bebop is in fact my favoritest show ever, blah blah blah), merely an observation. The drawing in American animation tends to be less elaborate than that in anime (also somewhat less stylistically limited. It's a rare anime that doesn't include at least one of the following: drawing hair as an impossibly elaborate system of spikes sprouting of characters' heads, "expressive" eyes that take up half of people's faces, or chins likes knives). However, the animation is much better. The elaborate drawing required of anime, and in particular its frequent conversion from the still medium of manga, results in a great deal of scenes defined by minimal physical movement, or action scenes that jerk through a series of 1-second stills. Conversely, American animation, especially Disney, is always very, well, animated. Compare something like Trigun or DBZ (as examples of shows in which motion is very important) to Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast and the differences in the way motion is portrayed are just phenomenal, and there's more and smoother motion in American animation, hands down. Miyazaki's work is to some extent a partial violation of this tendency--Studio Ghibli's work at times reaches American fluidity--but the fact of the matter is that, in general, American animation is objectively better as animation. American animation tends towards the fluid and anime towards the static and elbaorate. I'm not saying either is "better," but any contention that work like Disney's represents "crap" represents the work of someone who enters a battle of wits unarmed.
Parent is correct in his assertion that anime is something of a "cult" following--granted, an absurdly, gigantically huge cult--but that it's still not quite mainstream enough to bring in the sort of bucks of American style animation.
More specifically, if you restrict yourself to anime, you've cut your audience--some people just won't see it or else consider it crazy, far out, and inaccessible (because, let's face it, a heck of a lot if anime is crazy, far out, and inaccessible, just in an entertaining way). And, like American animation, there is some very good anime (Cowboy Bebop, a choice I hope is non-controversial) and plenty of lame ones (I'm not going to cite any examples because that's just begging for flamewars. Think so some anime you hate and put it here). Hence, you've restricted your market by your choice of style, but anime is just that-a style. It's no guarantee of quality by any means, and Miyazaki has done some amazing work, (though let's be honest with ourselves--Mononoke and Nausicaa were more or less the same movie), but part of that may be because he hasn't whored himself out as a profit moachine, but rather as a dedicated animator, and you don't need to convert to and anime-based approach to find that, you just need a Disney willing to hire people (like those who work at, say, Pixar) who share his dedication.
And, though it's responding to flamebait, American animation isn't crap. I would go so far as to say that it's objectively better than Japanese animation. Please don't take this as an insult to anime, potential flamers, (Bebop is in fact my favoritest show ever, blah blah blah), merely an observation. The drawing in American animation tends to be less elaborate than that in anime (also somewhat less stylistically limited. It's a rare anime that doesn't include at least one of the following: drawing hair as an impossibly elaborate system of spikes sprouting of characters' heads, "expressive" eyes that take up half of people's faces, or chins likes knives). However, the animation is much better. The elaborate drawing required of anime, and in particular its frequent conversion from the still medium of manga, results in a great deal of scenes defined by minimal physical movement, or action scenes that jerk through a series of 1-second stills. Conversely, American animation, especially Disney, is always very, well, animated. Compare something like Trigun or DBZ (as examples of shows in which motion is very important) to Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast and the differences in the way motion is portrayed are just phenomenal, and there's more and smoother motion in American animation, hands down. Miyazaki's work is to some extent a partial violation of this tendency--Studio Ghibli's work at times reaches American fluidity--but the fact of the matter is that, in general, American animation is objectively better as animation. American animation tends towards the fluid and anime towards the static and elbaorate. I'm not saying either is "better," but any contention that work like Disney's represents "crap" represents the work of someone who enters a battle of wits unarmed.
As other have pointed out, the dissolved air at any depth would be at ambient pressure and so the delivery system wouldn't be an issue, but as has also been discussed, oxygen at that depth would likely be poisonous. At extreme dives, pressurizing a tank (as with heliox, since helium is completely inert), the percentage of oxygen is absolutely miniscule. The human lung is designed to work as maximum efficiency (*gasp*) with oxygen at a partial pressure of about.21 atmospheres (that is, the partial pressure of oxygen in atmospheric air). Hence at extreme depths the percentage of oxygen in any kind of underwater breathing apparatus is tiny because of the necessary pressure required to balance out the water pressure (mostly helium, else one couldn't expand one's lungs, as the parent points out). This works up to reasonably deep depths because the actual concentration of oxygen (as opposed to its partial pressure) needn't be too high to support life--the actual amount of oxygen respirated under atmospheric conditions is very close to that breathed out, 21% is a much higher concentration than is striclty necessary.
Anyway, the point being that although the delivery of *air* would be the same as ambient pressure (because it's dissolved at that pressure), and one could expand one's lungs, the partial pressure of oxygen is still 21% (because the concentration is still atmospheric), but 21% of an amount much much higher than 1 atm. Hence albeit one could breathe with this apparatus, there's still a possibility that the oxygen breathed in at a pressure of more than about 5atm could be toxic because it's concentration isn't reduced. (and of course this is ignoring all the nitrogen in the dissolved air, which is another problem entirely, but others have already pointed that out).
Much as I disdain replying to blatant slashvertisements (or is it just a slow news day?) I have to note that the lack of left-handed mouse options in high quality mice like the LX700 has to stop. Although those of us who mouse left-handed comprise a comparatively small market, I can't see offering a left-handed ergonomic mouse (just invert all the curvature--heck, look at a right-handed mouse in the mirror and there's your design reference) as representing so great a difficulty that not even one decent left-handed mouse can be offered. Whatever company actually decided to make one should be able to get enough sales to justify it even if they offer just one model./Rant
Much as our allies (and others) raise legitmate objections about the possibility--nay, probability--of an arms race in space following the widescale implementation of space-based weapons, it's important to realize--as the Times article points out--that such a race comes with an absurdly high pricetag. When it comes down to it, America currently has a damn sophisticated ground and air-based weapons systems, with satellities to provide supplemental information, if not attack capability.
When you think of the cost of putting such systems into orbit, let alone maintaining systems with enormous destructive power (remember what the Hubble and ISS pricetags have been so far?), it's enough to bankrupt many a nation. And of course we also have to ensure that they can't be tampered with by other satellites or massive EM storms like the recent one.
The point of all this is not to say that space should stay completely demilitarized--much as everyone would like that, the odds are that it's a pipe dream. If the United States decides to play the altruist and refrain on ideological grounds from militarizing space, that's just an invitation for less scrupulous powers like North Korea to try it at a future time. At some point the issue will inevitably come up.
But this does not necessarily mean that America needs to be proactive in the deployment (though it certainly does in the development) of such systems. The astronomical pricetag and tremendous practical issues associated with any space-based weapons deployment are such that any country attempting it, including hostile countries, could not do so without extensive difficulty and a very long time, and wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being clandestine about it.
In other words, it is unlikely given America's current military superiority that we need to militarize space at this point. We would likely (for the time being, when anti-missile lasers are not yet practical) have sufficient time to destroy any hostile nation's weapons systems and implement our own--sharing the cost with our allies instead of unliaterally bankrupting ourselves for the sake of pie-in-the-sky showboating. Frankly, now is not the time to start the arms race when we don't have to. Keep space weapons free until such time as we reasonably expect to need space-based weapons (are we really going to need tungsten rods with the kinetic energy of tactical nukes in order to take out guerilla fighters and small terrorist bands? What's the immediate large-scale military threat that requires this sort of tech?).
We can't kid ourselves that it will never happen, but we can for the time being avoid spending astronomical sums on an unproven system to address a threat that doesn't exist at the expense of international censure. The arms race doesn't need to happen now.
I've always found it ironic that DeBeers' marketing slogan "Diamonds are Forever" is ironically one of the few patently false statements they could have made regarding their chunks of carbon. Diamond doesn't form under normal temperatures and pressures because the planar hexagonal lattic of graphite is much more stable than the three-dimensional tetragonal lattice of diamond. Given sufficient time (on the order of millions of years) diamonds may even revert back to hunks of graphite when kept at normal pressures, because they are only metastable when not under the conditions that make their formation thermodynamically favorable. Hence, ironically, diamonds are in fact "for a really really long time," but claiming that they are "forever" is a lie.
While I know many fans have a tendency to bash Jedi, I feel compelled to speak up on its behalf. Granted I saw it when I was very young, but the Ewoks never really bothered me (well, not until much later after everyone pointed out how silly they could be). While they may be cute and cuddly, they were well done as far as cute and cuddly things go. And the rest of Jedi -- Jabba's palace, the space battle over the forest moon of Endor, the lightsaber duel with Vader -- was pretty darn fine.
The point of all this is that PM was a marketing gimmick, and Jar-Jar was absurd. As a whole the movie was orders of magnitude more shameless than Jedi was, Ewoks and all. Speeder bikes were awesome. Pods were a rehash of speeder bikes that could be turned into an effective marketing tool. There's a pretty significant difference there and I think that it's important to recognize why "the original tilogy" and not just one or the other of the films was so magical--they all had the same touch of Lucas' original magic, just with evidence of his increasing experience as a filmmaker as they progressed. It's PM and AotC that represent the decline (I mean, R2D2 flew)--it's not just that they were used to push merchandise, they just lost something essential that was captured in the original trilogy
I'm generally inclined to agree with the people who say that the MPAA is less evil than the RIAA. They've been less draconian, their product is undeniably of generally higher quality, and they actually release things for a reasonable cost relative to production values. Certain studios (I'm looking at you, Paramount!), however, are reaching the tipping point with forced adverts on DVD. Believe it or not, I am not interested in seeing previews I can't skip for a movie coming out in six months. Odds are I won't watch the movie anyway, but lo and behold I still get the forced ad content every bloody time I boot up the movie. One of the biggest reliefs about digital media was that at first studios didn't put all those bs previews on DVD like they did with VHS, they appeared to have learned their lesson. To those studios that are actually preserving the DVD as a useful medium--congratulations, I believe in your business model and am willing to purchase your product. To those that are ensuring I see previews for "The Matrxi: Revolutions" well into 2009, I can only say that you should straighten up and fly right or expect me to consider your product flawed and unworth purchasing.
While I love the series and am really psyched for the movie, is it just me or is the synopsis of the comic plots exactly the same as that of about half the episodes?
I could not possibly disagree more with this post. The story development in JO was pablum to nonexistent, the level design was for the most part shot (and don't get me started on level design in Jedi Academy...), the graphics were significantly worse for their time than was Jedi Knight for its (I remember looking at JK and thinking "Wow")
Additionally, JK was the first innovation in real character-controlled force powers and one of the first first-person shooters with freelook. And the level design was amazing. The levels were completely epic in scope, the puzzles were better developed and more involving, (though JO, to be fair, had its level design high points. but so much of it was running from large room a to large room b, shoot, repeat. You played against the level as much as the opponents in JK) and you weren't half so invincible as you are in JO.
The story arc was interesting and involving and the cutscenes actually used real actors (what a concept!)
Everyone of course is entitled to their opinion but I found JK one of my favorite FPSes, period, whereas JO tends towards the tedious and boring. Additionally, there's not a weapon worth its salt in JO except for the lightsaber (granted, they did a good job with it) whereas it was much less uber and much less abused in JK. Frankly I've allways considered JK something of a standard by which to measure other Star Wars games (and, of course, TIE Fighter, which was absolutely brilliant) and JO demonstrative of the compromises developers are increasingly willing to make with the franchises. JO wasn't abysmal, but I think that JK was easily better.
The only way that a computer program can possibly analyze a paper fully as a paper is if it read it as a human. heuristic algorithms, however sophisticated, just aren't enough for things of this sort of importance--after all, the profs are paid to grade (well, them or the grad students). It doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to just throw in keywords and make sure that you use proper syntax in order to fool this thing, albeit the prof says keywords alone aren't enough. I find the claim that his program can "analyze argument flow" quite dubious. I'll stick to getting my several grands' worth out of my courses, thank you very much.
I feel I speak for all frustrated nerds who have so often wished for a robotic engine of death of our very own when I say "Ha ha ha! Fools! I'll destroy them all!"
You don't care what we think. This is all part of your sinister plot to get people to add more comments to the plethora of April Fool's day articles by asking us our opionions in a politics thread. Since this appears to maybe not be a joke thread, I fear CmdrTaco that ye may know not what ye have unleashed.
A parody of the term "News" for Nerds, or else the lamest April Fool's joke ever. C'mon guys, you were on a roll. Keep the good times coming and bear in mind that no one cares about gmail...in color!!
So how exactly does the chip figure out the appropriate thought--patterns that say "turn down the volume" as opposed to "turn on the TV?" Is it a matter of actually knowing the physical manifestation of a given thought pattern, or just of asking the guy to have a general mindset?
Slashdot Mirror
Not to rain on anyone's parade (this is certainly good news for Linux users, though of course it'd be best if it were free), but how much of th ecurrent Linux market overlaps with the Widnows market. It seems to me that if you're buying a gaming rig, you probably already have at least one HDD that boots windows automatically (especially given the relatively incremental hardware advances since last summer). I'm not saying it's not something Linux users should demean, but I'm just not sure that they can count on this gaining Linux market share since those who game, run windows, those who like Linux, run Linux. The Linux community may now run games, but is this supposed to bring new people into the fold as the blurb suggests?
*More* Libertarian and less liberal? How does that make sense? the liberals in this country support greater regulation of corporate America and its soulless exploitation as opposed to limiting their taxation and accountability. This is an issue of concern for those trying to solve concerns of everyone rather for those endorsing the limitation of rights to complete freedom with the exception of physical harm. I will always oppose Policies like strict libertarianism that seek to equte economic freedom--which the capitalist experience repeatedly demonstrates cannot be used responsibly by corporate entities--with individual political freedom, which so far the US of A has done a damn fine job of protecting. Libertarianism would have us all worrying about our own asses and laud the companies for finding new revenue streams, regulation and the environment be damned.
the argument that it takes a huge budget to do this and I shouldn't compare movies and show is certainly valid up to a point--though if you look at certain instances of American TV (often, to be fair, Disney spinoffs. I've seen a couple instances of the "The Little Mermaid" and "Aladdin" TV series whose animation is comparable to that of their namesake movies) the emphasis is stil on fluidity. Anyway, let me clarify my point. I realize in retrospect that, along with forgetting to include a slash in my italics bracket (sorry!) my statement that I'm not judging on as "better" at the end completely contradicts that paragraph. Let me be clear: as far as my criteria were going, yes, animation is all about fluidity. That's because it's nothing without it--it's a comic book. By definition "animating" is an attempt to give drawings the same feel and look as live television or movement. Thus, yes, I feel confident saying that fluidity is a sufficient criterion on which to say that as animation American animation is generally superior. My point, however, is not that American animation as a whole is better than anime, nor that anyone should watch one or the other based upon my own opinions. Watch what you want! There's great anime out there and great American animation. The point was merely that depending upon what you're looking for--really nice art or an emphasis on fluidity--one or the other is, in general (yes, of course there are exceptions like FLCL, but they're still not the norm, and FLCL is only 6 eps) preferable. I don't think that you're really reading this as some sort of patriotic assault on Japanese animation, in spite of my poor writing, but I just want to clarify that I don't believe people should watch anything but what they want to watch, merely that as I understand the definition of animation (the goal being to produce a fluid work of art to effectively portray movement) I consider American animation able to meet this criterion objectively. That said, we seem to agree on this difference between Japanese and American treatments of motion, merely not on their sufficiency as encompassing the definition of animation, and in that case we may just have to differ, but I do wish to clarify that I'm not trying to say anything about the general quality of American animation (goodness knows anime's storylines are better, though some of the archetypes need to be retired) beyond its treatment of motion.
Gah. Poor form to reply to one's own post, but poorer to double post in the same thread. I only reposted this after I assumed /. ate my previous post (which made more sense as a reply to a parent.) My sincere apologies to /. at large and my poor karma. My bad.
More specifically, if you restrict yourself to anime, you've cut your audience--some people just won't see it or else consider it crazy, far out, and inaccessible (because, let's face it, a heck of a lot if anime is crazy, far out, and inaccessible, just in an entertaining way). And, like American animation, there is some very good anime (Cowboy Bebop, a choice I hope is non-controversial) and plenty of lame ones (I'm not going to cite any examples because that's just begging for flamewars. Think so some anime you hate and put it here). Hence, you've restricted your market by your choice of style, but anime is just that-a style. It's no guarantee of quality by any means, and Miyazaki has done some amazing work, (though let's be honest with ourselves--Mononoke and Nausicaa were more or less the same movie), but part of that may be because he hasn't whored himself out as a profit moachine, but rather as a dedicated animator, and you don't need to convert to and anime-based approach to find that, you just need a Disney willing to hire people (like those who work at, say, Pixar) who share his dedication.
And, though it's responding to flamebait, American animation isn't crap. I would go so far as to say that it's objectively better than Japanese animation. Please don't take this as an insult to anime, potential flamers, (Bebop is in fact my favoritest show ever, blah blah blah), merely an observation. The drawing in American animation tends to be less elaborate than that in anime (also somewhat less stylistically limited. It's a rare anime that doesn't include at least one of the following: drawing hair as an impossibly elaborate system of spikes sprouting of characters' heads, "expressive" eyes that take up half of people's faces, or chins likes knives). However, the animation is much better. The elaborate drawing required of anime, and in particular its frequent conversion from the still medium of manga, results in a great deal of scenes defined by minimal physical movement, or action scenes that jerk through a series of 1-second stills. Conversely, American animation, especially Disney, is always very, well, animated. Compare something like Trigun or DBZ (as examples of shows in which motion is very important) to Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast and the differences in the way motion is portrayed are just phenomenal, and there's more and smoother motion in American animation, hands down. Miyazaki's work is to some extent a partial violation of this tendency--Studio Ghibli's work at times reaches American fluidity--but the fact of the matter is that, in general, American animation is objectively better as animation. American animation tends towards the fluid and anime towards the static and elbaorate. I'm not saying either is "better," but any contention that work like Disney's represents "crap" represents the work of someone who enters a battle of wits unarmed.
More specifically, if you restrict yourself to anime, you've cut your audience--some people just won't see it or else consider it crazy, far out, and inaccessible (because, let's face it, a heck of a lot if anime is crazy, far out, and inaccessible, just in an entertaining way). And, like American animation, there is some very good anime (Cowboy Bebop, a choice I hope is non-controversial) and plenty of lame ones (I'm not going to cite any examples because that's just begging for flamewars. Think so some anime you hate and put it here). Hence, you've restricted your market by your choice of style, but anime is just that-a style. It's no guarantee of quality by any means, and Miyazaki has done some amazing work, (though let's be honest with ourselves--Mononoke and Nausicaa were more or less the same movie), but part of that may be because he hasn't whored himself out as a profit moachine, but rather as a dedicated animator, and you don't need to convert to and anime-based approach to find that, you just need a Disney willing to hire people (like those who work at, say, Pixar) who share his dedication.
And, though it's responding to flamebait, American animation isn't crap. I would go so far as to say that it's objectively better than Japanese animation. Please don't take this as an insult to anime, potential flamers, (Bebop is in fact my favoritest show ever, blah blah blah), merely an observation. The drawing in American animation tends to be less elaborate than that in anime (also somewhat less stylistically limited. It's a rare anime that doesn't include at least one of the following: drawing hair as an impossibly elaborate system of spikes sprouting of characters' heads, "expressive" eyes that take up half of people's faces, or chins likes knives). However, the animation is much better. The elaborate drawing required of anime, and in particular its frequent conversion from the still medium of manga, results in a great deal of scenes defined by minimal physical movement, or action scenes that jerk through a series of 1-second stills. Conversely, American animation, especially Disney, is always very, well, animated. Compare something like Trigun or DBZ (as examples of shows in which motion is very important) to Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast and the differences in the way motion is portrayed are just phenomenal, and there's more and smoother motion in American animation, hands down. Miyazaki's work is to some extent a partial violation of this tendency--Studio Ghibli's work at times reaches American fluidity--but the fact of the matter is that, in general, American animation is objectively better as animation. American animation tends towards the fluid and anime towards the static and elbaorate. I'm not saying either is "better," but any contention that work like Disney's represents "crap" represents the work of someone who enters a battle of wits unarmed.
Anyway, the point being that although the delivery of *air* would be the same as ambient pressure (because it's dissolved at that pressure), and one could expand one's lungs, the partial pressure of oxygen is still 21% (because the concentration is still atmospheric), but 21% of an amount much much higher than 1 atm. Hence albeit one could breathe with this apparatus, there's still a possibility that the oxygen breathed in at a pressure of more than about 5atm could be toxic because it's concentration isn't reduced. (and of course this is ignoring all the nitrogen in the dissolved air, which is another problem entirely, but others have already pointed that out).
Whether hacked computers and their clueless users or hideous undead out for brains, nothing beats the tried and true shotgun.
AI was the single worst waste of my time in a movie theater in my entire life, sir. I want my two and a fucking half hours back.
Much as I disdain replying to blatant slashvertisements (or is it just a slow news day?) I have to note that the lack of left-handed mouse options in high quality mice like the LX700 has to stop. Although those of us who mouse left-handed comprise a comparatively small market, I can't see offering a left-handed ergonomic mouse (just invert all the curvature--heck, look at a right-handed mouse in the mirror and there's your design reference) as representing so great a difficulty that not even one decent left-handed mouse can be offered. Whatever company actually decided to make one should be able to get enough sales to justify it even if they offer just one model. /Rant
When you think of the cost of putting such systems into orbit, let alone maintaining systems with enormous destructive power (remember what the Hubble and ISS pricetags have been so far?), it's enough to bankrupt many a nation. And of course we also have to ensure that they can't be tampered with by other satellites or massive EM storms like the recent one.
The point of all this is not to say that space should stay completely demilitarized--much as everyone would like that, the odds are that it's a pipe dream. If the United States decides to play the altruist and refrain on ideological grounds from militarizing space, that's just an invitation for less scrupulous powers like North Korea to try it at a future time. At some point the issue will inevitably come up.
But this does not necessarily mean that America needs to be proactive in the deployment (though it certainly does in the development) of such systems. The astronomical pricetag and tremendous practical issues associated with any space-based weapons deployment are such that any country attempting it, including hostile countries, could not do so without extensive difficulty and a very long time, and wouldn't have a snowball's chance in hell of being clandestine about it.
In other words, it is unlikely given America's current military superiority that we need to militarize space at this point. We would likely (for the time being, when anti-missile lasers are not yet practical) have sufficient time to destroy any hostile nation's weapons systems and implement our own--sharing the cost with our allies instead of unliaterally bankrupting ourselves for the sake of pie-in-the-sky showboating. Frankly, now is not the time to start the arms race when we don't have to. Keep space weapons free until such time as we reasonably expect to need space-based weapons (are we really going to need tungsten rods with the kinetic energy of tactical nukes in order to take out guerilla fighters and small terrorist bands? What's the immediate large-scale military threat that requires this sort of tech?).
We can't kid ourselves that it will never happen, but we can for the time being avoid spending astronomical sums on an unproven system to address a threat that doesn't exist at the expense of international censure. The arms race doesn't need to happen now.
I've always found it ironic that DeBeers' marketing slogan "Diamonds are Forever" is ironically one of the few patently false statements they could have made regarding their chunks of carbon. Diamond doesn't form under normal temperatures and pressures because the planar hexagonal lattic of graphite is much more stable than the three-dimensional tetragonal lattice of diamond. Given sufficient time (on the order of millions of years) diamonds may even revert back to hunks of graphite when kept at normal pressures, because they are only metastable when not under the conditions that make their formation thermodynamically favorable. Hence, ironically, diamonds are in fact "for a really really long time," but claiming that they are "forever" is a lie.
The point of all this is that PM was a marketing gimmick, and Jar-Jar was absurd. As a whole the movie was orders of magnitude more shameless than Jedi was, Ewoks and all. Speeder bikes were awesome. Pods were a rehash of speeder bikes that could be turned into an effective marketing tool. There's a pretty significant difference there and I think that it's important to recognize why "the original tilogy" and not just one or the other of the films was so magical--they all had the same touch of Lucas' original magic, just with evidence of his increasing experience as a filmmaker as they progressed. It's PM and AotC that represent the decline (I mean, R2D2 flew)--it's not just that they were used to push merchandise, they just lost something essential that was captured in the original trilogy
I'm generally inclined to agree with the people who say that the MPAA is less evil than the RIAA. They've been less draconian, their product is undeniably of generally higher quality, and they actually release things for a reasonable cost relative to production values. Certain studios (I'm looking at you, Paramount!), however, are reaching the tipping point with forced adverts on DVD. Believe it or not, I am not interested in seeing previews I can't skip for a movie coming out in six months. Odds are I won't watch the movie anyway, but lo and behold I still get the forced ad content every bloody time I boot up the movie. One of the biggest reliefs about digital media was that at first studios didn't put all those bs previews on DVD like they did with VHS, they appeared to have learned their lesson. To those studios that are actually preserving the DVD as a useful medium--congratulations, I believe in your business model and am willing to purchase your product. To those that are ensuring I see previews for "The Matrxi: Revolutions" well into 2009, I can only say that you should straighten up and fly right or expect me to consider your product flawed and unworth purchasing.
While I love the series and am really psyched for the movie, is it just me or is the synopsis of the comic plots exactly the same as that of about half the episodes?
Additionally, JK was the first innovation in real character-controlled force powers and one of the first first-person shooters with freelook. And the level design was amazing. The levels were completely epic in scope, the puzzles were better developed and more involving, (though JO, to be fair, had its level design high points. but so much of it was running from large room a to large room b, shoot, repeat. You played against the level as much as the opponents in JK) and you weren't half so invincible as you are in JO.
The story arc was interesting and involving and the cutscenes actually used real actors (what a concept!)
Everyone of course is entitled to their opinion but I found JK one of my favorite FPSes, period, whereas JO tends towards the tedious and boring. Additionally, there's not a weapon worth its salt in JO except for the lightsaber (granted, they did a good job with it) whereas it was much less uber and much less abused in JK. Frankly I've allways considered JK something of a standard by which to measure other Star Wars games (and, of course, TIE Fighter, which was absolutely brilliant) and JO demonstrative of the compromises developers are increasingly willing to make with the franchises. JO wasn't abysmal, but I think that JK was easily better.
The only way that a computer program can possibly analyze a paper fully as a paper is if it read it as a human. heuristic algorithms, however sophisticated, just aren't enough for things of this sort of importance--after all, the profs are paid to grade (well, them or the grad students). It doesn't seem like it would be too difficult to just throw in keywords and make sure that you use proper syntax in order to fool this thing, albeit the prof says keywords alone aren't enough. I find the claim that his program can "analyze argument flow" quite dubious. I'll stick to getting my several grands' worth out of my courses, thank you very much.
It would appear that the mad trend toward embiggening words as one can has reached even the hallowed halls of tk421.net...
You don't care what we think. This is all part of your sinister plot to get people to add more comments to the plethora of April Fool's day articles by asking us our opionions in a politics thread. Since this appears to maybe not be a joke thread, I fear CmdrTaco that ye may know not what ye have unleashed.
It's just that the monkeys couldn't get the hang of the one-buttoned mouse.
Well, it's novel. I'll give them that.
A parody of the term "News" for Nerds, or else the lamest April Fool's joke ever. C'mon guys, you were on a roll. Keep the good times coming and bear in mind that no one cares about gmail...in color!!
So how exactly does the chip figure out the appropriate thought--patterns that say "turn down the volume" as opposed to "turn on the TV?" Is it a matter of actually knowing the physical manifestation of a given thought pattern, or just of asking the guy to have a general mindset?
I confess I've always had a problem with power sources that do silicon. Snooty bastards, what with their made up verbs and their rock music...