I heard that the brother's W were making a Speed Racer movie quite some time ago... honestly it puzzled me how anyone could make a movie worth watching with Speed Racer as the source material.
I had also heard that they were using an experimental new HD camera tech that allowed all object in frame to be in focus at all times unlike traditional cameras that have a set focal distance. So this aspect really intrigued me.
Basically I didn't know what to think and I was increadibly impressed by what I saw in the trailer. I didn't get any idea of what the plot was about (but all of 30 seconds on imdb fixed that.) Visually it looks stunning and after V for Vendetta I have faith in the creators to make it something worth watching...
Now if I could only find someone else who's interested in going to the theater to see it with me...
I've had absolutely no issues with the IR remote on
the wii with a projector, just set it on your home theater center channel. As far as shadows, hang the projector from the ceiling.
My projector is hanging from the ceiling, and my center channel is mounted behind the screen.
The problem is that the screen is so tall that the closest mounting location for the sensor bar is at the top. There's no where to mount it on the bottom unless it's sitting on the floor. With this setup the pointer gets rather spastic on the left and right sides, and almost unusable along the bottom.
As for casting shadows, the projector is setup to throw the image without any keystoning (since that will distort the source material. so while it's on the ceiling it hangs fairly low... not to mention there's a table in front of my front row of seats so once you've spaced yourself away from that you're pretty much standing about 3ft from the screen so it's hard not to cast shadows no matter where you're standing.
Projector's aren't designed for well-lit rooms. My setup is in my basement and I have a more traditional well-lit "living room" on the main floor of my house where I watch TV on occasion and have the Wii hooked up.
Newer Projectors do much much better in terms of displaying in a lit room... but they'll never reach the same visibility as a traditional screen.
Think of it this way... The screen you're projecting on is white... The color of the screen when the projector is off is the darkest black you will ever achieve. If there is enough light in the room that the screen is clearly white with the projector off then you're pretty much guaranteed that the image will look washed out, even if the projector is bright enough to overpower the light in the room.
I seem to remember some "black screen" tech that Sony was showing off a few years ago, so maybe we will eventually get projectors that will work in daylight, but if you want to use a projector one of the trade-offs is that it will always look best in complete darkness... they're not built to be installed in your family room, they're best served in a purpose build room.
What's the resolution of your projector? Only 1280x768? After getting used to my 30" monitor, playing with any less resolution than 2560x1600 seems cheesy by comparison.
having a resolution higher than my projector is worthless for the kind of gaming I do. 99% of Xbox 360 games output at 1280x720. My projector is setup to "just scan" so I lose 24 lines on the top and bottom for the sake of pixel matching. Having a higher resolution than that would just be a waste of money since all of my source devices would simply get upscaled.
1280x768 is a fairly versatile resolution since if I decide I want to hook up to a PC source I can pixel match to 1024x768.
I'm not a PC gamer so my choice in display resolution is based matching the source material as close as possible. Bigger doesn't not always mean better.
It depends on the game. I've been using a Projector as my main gaming screen for the last 7 years or so. My current setup is an Optoma HD-73 throwing on to a 94"x94" Dalite Glass Bead Pull-Down. I use an Xbox 360 for most of my gaming.
some games become much easier to play, Fighting games, Racing Game, and Turn Based Role players. Other Games take some getting used to like FPSs and the Tony Hawk Series are nauseating at first due to the fast movement of the entire picture at once. Once you get used to it though, it's no different than playing on a normal screen.
Some games do suffer though. For instance I do much worse when playing FPSs or DDR games on the projector because I have to move my eyes around the screen to see everything. On a normal screen 100% of the on screen activity is in my field of view 100% of the time. Also playing the Wii on the projector is difficult, for one you often find yourself casting shadows on the screen, and there are other issues associated with the IR pointer that make using that aspect of the controller difficult at best.
Even still all Games are much more engaging and immersing on such a large screen IMO... I wouldn't trade my gaming setup for any alternative... Playing on a normal screen after the projector just seems cheesy by comparison.
These numbers are meaningless without corresponding numbers on how much flying was done. With the soaring price of avgas I wouldn't be surprised if accidents were down slightly simply because people are flying less.
I disagree, they're measuring the accidents as a percentage of the total flights... so even if the total number of flights per year drops the percentage should theoretically remain the same.
There are a large enough number of flights even with fewer flights that it shouldn't effect the overall percentage of incidents per flight.
I did actually do that test. My mother wanted a portable MP3 player, so I let her try out my Zune, an iPod Classic and a Zen Photo... the Zune won handily and she sort-of figured the iPod out after 15minutes but didn't like it. The Zen was pretty much a non-starter.
Microsoft doesn't care what you think or what you do with it. They got their $75 already.
Really? Because if I ditch the Zune then I also wont:
-Buy anything from the Zune Store
-Buy anymore Zune Accessories
-Upgrade to a newer model Zune
-Encourage friends and family to buy a Zune instead of other media players
Not to mention that the Zune software is one of the few applications keeping me from migrating to a Mac as my primary platform, and I have less incentive to stick with the Xbox as my gaming platform in the future since any future integration with Zune will be worthless to me.
I'd say they would have quite a bit to lose actually.
Have you ever actually used the Zune interface? Personally I find it far easier and quicker to navigate than any other portable media player on the market, including the iPod and the iPhone. IMO it's one of the few things they actually got right wit the device.
This new DRM "feature" is another story, but don't troll on something you know nothing about just because you're an Anti-MS fanboy.
I've got a Zune... I bought it because I didn't have a media player and a 30GB version was on sale for $75, I figured it'd at least make a decent portable hard drive.
I've grown to like it quite a bit and I've been very pleased with my purchase despite the lack of integration with most car audio system and the way overpriced 1st party accessories.
One of my favorite features is it's ability to play video exceptionally well coupled with a long battery life, namely TV series that I rip from my DVD collection so that I can watch them on the frequent business trips I take from the east coast to the west coast (USA).
I fear that this new "feature" will likely destroy the most useful aspect the Zune actually holds for me.
That's the problem with DRM... it makes things less useful, and not just slightly less useful, A LOT less useful.
If MS does add this feature I'm likely to just go out and buy an iPod since it will integrate with the stereo interface in my car and it happens to also not include this great new "feature". Despite the fact that I don't particularly care for the iPod's interface, nor it's price, nor it's trendy attitude, the Zune will be demoted back to portable hard drive status and sit in a box along with my USB memory sticks.
Exactly what I was thinking. What happens 10 years down the line when I try to play a game or watch a Movie that has some funky DRM on it, but I can't because the company is out of business or has shutdown the DRM server.
Do you actually think Company X cares about people using their products after they've gone out of business. That is, without question, one of the things that no company ever cares about.
I know BT made #1 on the US Dance charts TWICE. I don't know enough about Hybrid to comment on them.
BT has had more music used in movies, commercials, and remixed by other artists than you've had hot dinners. Just because it's a genre you don't listen to doesn't make it irrelevant, and if it is a genre you listen to them you must be living under a rock.
What a colassal house of cards the RIAA has built for itself. They are doing everything BUT look at the core reasons why people are buying fewer and fewer CD's.
Of course they think everyone is stealing music. When you try to understand the mindset of someone else the first thing you do is look at yourself. RIAA execs think that people are stealing music because they're cheap bastards and it's free, because they know that would be their own motivation if they were in the consumer's shoes.
Did you ever notice that the people who are paranoid that they'll get screwed over are often the same people who screw over others every chance they get?
You think the PS2 was a bad dvd player? dude, you are so totally wrong about that, PS2 did dvds right out of the box.
Playing DVDs and being a great DVD player are two different things. No one is arguing that the PS2 didn't play DVDs, it did, and it did it right out of the box... but it did not play them well, the black levels where horrible, it had all kinds of artifacting, and the video would pretty much lock up for a whole second on layer change. The PS2 was a cheap, low-quality DVD player and while it helped a generation migrate from VHS it didn't even hold a candle to mediocre stand alone players of the day and is completely trounced by everything on the market today.
In terms of the PS2 being "an order of magnitude" overhyped, about say, the toystory quality graphics, I think games like Metal Gear Solid 2 etc qualify as having CG movie quality graphics, wouldnt you?
I know I wouldn't say that. MGS2 had good graphics for a PS2 game, but I also owned a Dreamcast, a Gamecube and and Xbox 1 in addition to my PS2, and games on those platforms always looked much much better than the PS2 versions. The simple fact is that Sony showed pre-rendered footage and sold it as "in-game graphics" to a people who didn't know better. And they tried the same trick with the PS3 as well, execpt it didn't work as well because more people were wise to their shady hype tactics... need I remind anyone of "killzone 2". Don't get me wrong the PS2 wasn't BAD but it wasn't movie CG by a long-shot, nor was it even the best console of it's generation (most popular yes, but popularity does not the best make).
I believe the Xbox lost MS a big bundle of money. The 360 is still not an earner?
The Xbox division started turning a profit well over a year ago. and I recall reading an article that as of the end of last fiscal year that day-in profit has brought the division into the black for the first time since it was first formed with the Xbox 1.
As for looks, IMO that's a very stupid reason to buy one piece of hardware over another. I don't really like the looks of the 360 or the PS3, but I'm not buying them for looks I'm buing them to play games. I don't need WiFi because NEITHER console is portable and a physical connection is always better, and I don't want either device to play movies because Stand Alone players are always better in quality (and if you buying Blu-Ray or HD-DVD aren't you pretty much only buying it for quality?).
Your argument also doesn't make sense, on the one hand you're going on about how the PS2 was great because it was a cheap DVD player and played ps1 games, and then on the other hand you still bought a PS3 even though it's essentially the antithesis of everything you bought the PS2 for.
I hate MS personally but I bought both the Xbox 1 and the Xbox 360 because they play the games I want to play better than any other platform. I bought a PS2 because it played games that I couldn't play at all on any other platform. Ultimately what I'm spending my money on, is a machine that will play games, not something that has the name brand I like, not something that looks pretty, not something that has worthless bells and whistles that I'll never really use. The fact is that the Xbox 360 plays more games that I like, and does a better job playing those games than any other console this generation. I'll buy a PS3 if and when it offers games that are distinctly better in quality and features than the Xbox 360 versions, or when it has games that I want to play that I can't get anywhere else... and when it has a enough of these that warrant the price they're charging for the system. I could give a damn about Blu-Ray or how the hunk of plastic looks sitting on my shelf.
Release Schedules are nice and all but what's the point of bundling up a "stable release" if it's not actually stable?
If you want to download the latest SVN snapshot every 6 months that should be your prerogative but I've been burned too many times by "stable release"s that weren't actually as advertised simply because someone said "it's release day... SHIP IT!".
I always do some form of testing but it's a lot of wasted effort if you're installing something that you assume is already as clean as it can be, and it's really not.
If they really think that people are so completely unable to distinguish games from reality then they should understand that it means that people are so stupid that they can't be educated to stop drinking and driving anyway.
You know what's interesting... I have GTA4 and I actually played the "drunk driving" scene last night. When you walk out of the bar drunk (and BTW you had the choice whether to go to the bar or some other place), the game actually says "If you're having trouble walking, you should call a cab instead of driving".
In reality you have the choice to go to the bar or not, and you have the choice to drive drunk or not. In the game you have the choice to go to the bar or not, and you have the choice to drive drunk or not... I don't see what the big deal it.
One thing the game does that you might not get in real life... is a suggestion to take a cab.
I completely agree that mass transit should improve, and for more reasons than just drunks getting home.
I guess I don't understand how a keylocker would hinder nor help the situation you described. Though I would think it would make your job EASIER in other regards, if the patron did get drunk at your bar it's leaving the judgment of impairment up to the machine rather than your wait-staff which would relieve you of a lot of responsibility. Not to mention it would likely prevent more people from driving away increasing demand for more public transit.
Recently I heard that they've come out in favor of mandatory ignition interlock systems for all automobiles -- not just as a punishment/deterrent for those previously convicted of DUI. Yeah, I should have to pay extra money for my car and blow into a tube every time I want to start it just because a small minority of people make stupid decisions and drive drunk.
Perhaps a more suitable solution would be a Breathalyzer key locker required for pubs and restaurants who wish to carry a liquor license. If you order more than one drink you give up your keys to the locker, if you want them back you have to blow for them. Then the cops could patrol a wider area instead of hanging outside bars like hookers looking for cash.
FWIW I don't drink any alcohol, nor do I smoke, or do any drugs (save for my caffeine addiction). I am abhorrently against drunk/impaired driving, but I am also feel that people should be able to drink smoke, snort or shoot-up whatever they feel like. Who am I to decide what should or should not do to their own bodies? Suggesting that ANYONE can make that choice for them is a short road to a 1984 society. If they want to do that in their own homes or at a bar, that's fine with me, heck I even built a bar in my home to entertain guests.
Letting those people out on the roads is obviously bad because it puts the lives of other's at risk, but as long as they're not hurting other people they can do whatever they want to themselves.
I despise any group that uses "child safety" as a guise to shove their own morals down other people's throats.
IIRC there are a few ROMs from popular games that are legal to share/download. Also a few of the arcade stick manufacturer (like X-Arcade) have made deals with a few license owners to include legal MAME roms with their product.
you can technically do it without breaking the law, it's just expensive and requires a high level of expertise to construct the ripping mechanism.
at that point it'd be easier just picking up some old hardware too. Obviously by ripping your NES carts you'd miss out on the enthralling experience of blowing on the connector to get the damn thing to boot.
A friend of mine had his laptop "searched" when returning from vacation through Florida.
He wrote about his account if you're interested. He used to own a website that sold console modding/hacking paraphernalia and their reason for searching is that they assumed he was smuggling something into the county.
I think the real question is whether or not they can search all storage media or just the computer itself, what's to stop you from removing the hard drive and replacing it with a small flash media card on a hard drive adapter containing a clean install of Ubuntu whenever you fly? Or better yet just leave a Live CD in the drive and install a switch under the battery to cut power to the HDD.
I've noticed that a lot, and I actually think Google inflates their ranking since they are usually a great resource, but I doubt they would ever admit it... Maybe I'm wrong though.
Google is setup to naturally favor sites like wikipedia. Wikipedia has a high page rank because it's full of useful information and links to lots of other useful sites as well as well rooted self linking and tagging (which Google loves) and it doesn't produce any kind of spam.
In addition to that, lots of people link to wikipedia with appropriate terms boosting wikipedia's page rank even higher... it just happens to cover broad enough topics that it seems to come up all the time.
I find that searching for movie related information usually gets imdb in the top results... it's just that these sites happen to be the most referenced on the web and Google caters to well referenced sites.
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I heard that the brother's W were making a Speed Racer movie quite some time ago... honestly it puzzled me how anyone could make a movie worth watching with Speed Racer as the source material.
I had also heard that they were using an experimental new HD camera tech that allowed all object in frame to be in focus at all times unlike traditional cameras that have a set focal distance. So this aspect really intrigued me.
Basically I didn't know what to think and I was increadibly impressed by what I saw in the trailer. I didn't get any idea of what the plot was about (but all of 30 seconds on imdb fixed that.) Visually it looks stunning and after V for Vendetta I have faith in the creators to make it something worth watching...
Now if I could only find someone else who's interested in going to the theater to see it with me...
The problem is that the screen is so tall that the closest mounting location for the sensor bar is at the top. There's no where to mount it on the bottom unless it's sitting on the floor. With this setup the pointer gets rather spastic on the left and right sides, and almost unusable along the bottom.
As for casting shadows, the projector is setup to throw the image without any keystoning (since that will distort the source material. so while it's on the ceiling it hangs fairly low... not to mention there's a table in front of my front row of seats so once you've spaced yourself away from that you're pretty much standing about 3ft from the screen so it's hard not to cast shadows no matter where you're standing.
Projector's aren't designed for well-lit rooms. My setup is in my basement and I have a more traditional well-lit "living room" on the main floor of my house where I watch TV on occasion and have the Wii hooked up.
Newer Projectors do much much better in terms of displaying in a lit room... but they'll never reach the same visibility as a traditional screen.
Think of it this way... The screen you're projecting on is white... The color of the screen when the projector is off is the darkest black you will ever achieve. If there is enough light in the room that the screen is clearly white with the projector off then you're pretty much guaranteed that the image will look washed out, even if the projector is bright enough to overpower the light in the room.
I seem to remember some "black screen" tech that Sony was showing off a few years ago, so maybe we will eventually get projectors that will work in daylight, but if you want to use a projector one of the trade-offs is that it will always look best in complete darkness... they're not built to be installed in your family room, they're best served in a purpose build room.
1280x768 is a fairly versatile resolution since if I decide I want to hook up to a PC source I can pixel match to 1024x768.
I'm not a PC gamer so my choice in display resolution is based matching the source material as close as possible. Bigger doesn't not always mean better.
It depends on the game. I've been using a Projector as my main gaming screen for the last 7 years or so. My current setup is an Optoma HD-73 throwing on to a 94"x94" Dalite Glass Bead Pull-Down. I use an Xbox 360 for most of my gaming.
some games become much easier to play, Fighting games, Racing Game, and Turn Based Role players. Other Games take some getting used to like FPSs and the Tony Hawk Series are nauseating at first due to the fast movement of the entire picture at once. Once you get used to it though, it's no different than playing on a normal screen.
Some games do suffer though. For instance I do much worse when playing FPSs or DDR games on the projector because I have to move my eyes around the screen to see everything. On a normal screen 100% of the on screen activity is in my field of view 100% of the time. Also playing the Wii on the projector is difficult, for one you often find yourself casting shadows on the screen, and there are other issues associated with the IR pointer that make using that aspect of the controller difficult at best.
Even still all Games are much more engaging and immersing on such a large screen IMO... I wouldn't trade my gaming setup for any alternative... Playing on a normal screen after the projector just seems cheesy by comparison.
There are a large enough number of flights even with fewer flights that it shouldn't effect the overall percentage of incidents per flight.
I did actually do that test. My mother wanted a portable MP3 player, so I let her try out my Zune, an iPod Classic and a Zen Photo... the Zune won handily and she sort-of figured the iPod out after 15minutes but didn't like it. The Zen was pretty much a non-starter.
-Buy anything from the Zune Store
-Buy anymore Zune Accessories
-Upgrade to a newer model Zune
-Encourage friends and family to buy a Zune instead of other media players
Not to mention that the Zune software is one of the few applications keeping me from migrating to a Mac as my primary platform, and I have less incentive to stick with the Xbox as my gaming platform in the future since any future integration with Zune will be worthless to me.
I'd say they would have quite a bit to lose actually.
Have you ever actually used the Zune interface? Personally I find it far easier and quicker to navigate than any other portable media player on the market, including the iPod and the iPhone. IMO it's one of the few things they actually got right wit the device.
This new DRM "feature" is another story, but don't troll on something you know nothing about just because you're an Anti-MS fanboy.
I've got a Zune... I bought it because I didn't have a media player and a 30GB version was on sale for $75, I figured it'd at least make a decent portable hard drive.
I've grown to like it quite a bit and I've been very pleased with my purchase despite the lack of integration with most car audio system and the way overpriced 1st party accessories.
One of my favorite features is it's ability to play video exceptionally well coupled with a long battery life, namely TV series that I rip from my DVD collection so that I can watch them on the frequent business trips I take from the east coast to the west coast (USA).
I fear that this new "feature" will likely destroy the most useful aspect the Zune actually holds for me.
That's the problem with DRM... it makes things less useful, and not just slightly less useful, A LOT less useful.
If MS does add this feature I'm likely to just go out and buy an iPod since it will integrate with the stereo interface in my car and it happens to also not include this great new "feature". Despite the fact that I don't particularly care for the iPod's interface, nor it's price, nor it's trendy attitude, the Zune will be demoted back to portable hard drive status and sit in a box along with my USB memory sticks.
BT has had more music used in movies, commercials, and remixed by other artists than you've had hot dinners. Just because it's a genre you don't listen to doesn't make it irrelevant, and if it is a genre you listen to them you must be living under a rock.
Did you ever notice that the people who are paranoid that they'll get screwed over are often the same people who screw over others every chance they get?
As for looks, IMO that's a very stupid reason to buy one piece of hardware over another. I don't really like the looks of the 360 or the PS3, but I'm not buying them for looks I'm buing them to play games. I don't need WiFi because NEITHER console is portable and a physical connection is always better, and I don't want either device to play movies because Stand Alone players are always better in quality (and if you buying Blu-Ray or HD-DVD aren't you pretty much only buying it for quality?).
Your argument also doesn't make sense, on the one hand you're going on about how the PS2 was great because it was a cheap DVD player and played ps1 games, and then on the other hand you still bought a PS3 even though it's essentially the antithesis of everything you bought the PS2 for.
I hate MS personally but I bought both the Xbox 1 and the Xbox 360 because they play the games I want to play better than any other platform. I bought a PS2 because it played games that I couldn't play at all on any other platform. Ultimately what I'm spending my money on, is a machine that will play games, not something that has the name brand I like, not something that looks pretty, not something that has worthless bells and whistles that I'll never really use. The fact is that the Xbox 360 plays more games that I like, and does a better job playing those games than any other console this generation. I'll buy a PS3 if and when it offers games that are distinctly better in quality and features than the Xbox 360 versions, or when it has games that I want to play that I can't get anywhere else... and when it has a enough of these that warrant the price they're charging for the system. I could give a damn about Blu-Ray or how the hunk of plastic looks sitting on my shelf.
Release Schedules are nice and all but what's the point of bundling up a "stable release" if it's not actually stable?
If you want to download the latest SVN snapshot every 6 months that should be your prerogative but I've been burned too many times by "stable release"s that weren't actually as advertised simply because someone said "it's release day... SHIP IT!".
I always do some form of testing but it's a lot of wasted effort if you're installing something that you assume is already as clean as it can be, and it's really not.
In reality you have the choice to go to the bar or not, and you have the choice to drive drunk or not. In the game you have the choice to go to the bar or not, and you have the choice to drive drunk or not... I don't see what the big deal it.
One thing the game does that you might not get in real life... is a suggestion to take a cab.
I completely agree that mass transit should improve, and for more reasons than just drunks getting home.
I guess I don't understand how a keylocker would hinder nor help the situation you described. Though I would think it would make your job EASIER in other regards, if the patron did get drunk at your bar it's leaving the judgment of impairment up to the machine rather than your wait-staff which would relieve you of a lot of responsibility. Not to mention it would likely prevent more people from driving away increasing demand for more public transit.
FWIW I don't drink any alcohol, nor do I smoke, or do any drugs (save for my caffeine addiction). I am abhorrently against drunk/impaired driving, but I am also feel that people should be able to drink smoke, snort or shoot-up whatever they feel like. Who am I to decide what should or should not do to their own bodies? Suggesting that ANYONE can make that choice for them is a short road to a 1984 society. If they want to do that in their own homes or at a bar, that's fine with me, heck I even built a bar in my home to entertain guests.
Letting those people out on the roads is obviously bad because it puts the lives of other's at risk, but as long as they're not hurting other people they can do whatever they want to themselves.
I despise any group that uses "child safety" as a guise to shove their own morals down other people's throats.
IIRC there are a few ROMs from popular games that are legal to share/download. Also a few of the arcade stick manufacturer (like X-Arcade) have made deals with a few license owners to include legal MAME roms with their product.
you can technically do it without breaking the law, it's just expensive and requires a high level of expertise to construct the ripping mechanism.
at that point it'd be easier just picking up some old hardware too. Obviously by ripping your NES carts you'd miss out on the enthralling experience of blowing on the connector to get the damn thing to boot.
A friend of mine had his laptop "searched" when returning from vacation through Florida. He wrote about his account if you're interested. He used to own a website that sold console modding/hacking paraphernalia and their reason for searching is that they assumed he was smuggling something into the county.
I think the real question is whether or not they can search all storage media or just the computer itself, what's to stop you from removing the hard drive and replacing it with a small flash media card on a hard drive adapter containing a clean install of Ubuntu whenever you fly? Or better yet just leave a Live CD in the drive and install a switch under the battery to cut power to the HDD.
In addition to that, lots of people link to wikipedia with appropriate terms boosting wikipedia's page rank even higher... it just happens to cover broad enough topics that it seems to come up all the time.
I find that searching for movie related information usually gets imdb in the top results... it's just that these sites happen to be the most referenced on the web and Google caters to well referenced sites.