Impossible movie

"Use of Weapons" is a great story… and pretty unfilmable as a standalone movie, sorry. You need a TV miniseries there.

Thunderbolt

Being Thunderbolt mostly an external PCIe bus thing, it will have to rely on bridge chips to be usable, so quite possibly the cheapest ones will be TB-eSATA and TB-USB 2.0/3.0.

(Does eSATA support USB-style drive mount-unmount without rebooting the host? If not so, the winner would be USB 3.0 for cheap external drives)

Douglas Trumbull's Showscan process realized

This VFX guru (2001, Close Encounters, Star Trek, Silent Running, Blade Runner, Brainstorm, etc.) investigated high fps for inmersive cinema, and found that, above a certain framerate, the brain perceived the image as "real". ShowScan was a 70 mm 60 fps process.

Now it can be done digitally and, seemingly, quite affordably. I can't wait!

Flash isn't a factor

…As this is about baseline video in the HTML5 standard. Flash is a plugin HTML5 doesn't care about. H.254 ought to work like a plugin, too.

Will we be able...

...to peek and poke it?

Editing and virtual keyboards

Seeing how Apple's Numbers offers an alternative virtual keyboard layout when entering cell data, I was wondering why those code editing apps don't do the same. Without a numerical upper row, cursor movement keys and a few extra characters around, having to use the .?123 all too often will result in intense expletivity and genocidal impulses.

It already does in normal tasks.

The fragmented Churchs of Nokia, Moto and the like

The funny thing is, i remember all too well how people boasted about their N-this or N-that phones years before and after the iPhone launch. Apple's advantage is having a single product brand name instead of a miriad of names and letters+numbers codenames. It makes for a better monotheism.

For some it was all about digital projection

Interestingly, for some of the pioneers in shooting films with HiDef digital cameras, 3D was really about forcing movie theatres to install digital projection systems.

But then, WebOS is theirs now

Windows wasn't so. And Android is rather me-too (they can PlanB into it anytime if everything else fails, though)

I really want this to work. And, actually, WebOS For Printers is a rather quite nifty idea.

It's all true

That's the Mutants Red Cross.

Surely.

iPads for the elderly, disabled and computer-illiterate

I'd be mightily interested in you people covering the iPad as it applies to the elderly, to people with disabilities and the computer-illiterate. The iPad seems to be right now one of the best devices out there for them. I've ordered one to see if my mum can take advantage of it (she has quite bad eyesight so she cannot read regular books and newspapers' font sizes. Also, she is not computer-knowledgeable at all).

I like this ship

…It's exciting

Try before buying

I need to evaluate the thing to see how it works for people with sight disabilities. How do I do that, then? No Apple Store in Spain yet.

Solving the Fermi Paradox

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3aa.html#fermiparadox

If we ever develop antimatter-based rockets, then:

-We will be abe to build relativistic missiles able to snuff whole biospheres.

-These engines will produce unmistakable radiation signatures.

If we don't happen to civilizationally fritz ourselves, building those engines is mostly a given. For us and for any other technological race out there. So then you have several players, us included, able now or in the future to get the means to exterminate each other. Would we risk it, or would we hit first? Would they risk it, or would they hit us first?

strange design thing

Doesn't that cover panel act as an enormous airbrake?

What about Human Rights?

Shouldn't they supersede any non-compliant national law?

A couple of things

Warp drive doesn't isolate the ship from surrounding space (it isn't really an Alcubierre-type drive but a "grab a wet soap bar and press until it shoots out your grip" drive, with extra apparent mass reduction effects), so the deflector beam must be active while at warp, as the warp bubble is permeable to external matter.

Shields are gravity-based instead of magnetic.

I love nerding.

…it is proven

On2 codecs are already in commercial use, some of them are comparable to h.264 and so on.

Bussard Ramscoops but no Bussard Ramjets

The "Star Trek The Next Generation" guys, when doing the series' bible and the "science" behind the show, certainly did a good job at spotting the most obvious issues and formulating adequate treknobabble. That ST:TNG Technical Manual is a delight for science fiction aficionados.

One problem with any scientist or science journalist that tries to har har at the series is that the people doing it had some scientific knowledge or knew who to consult. Of course, Trek's science is pants, mostly, but they acknowledge its problems even if just by plugging the holes with some dandy buzzword.

So, anyway, there we go: the show's version of Warp Drive implies that the "subspace" bubble that propulsively distorts spacetime and also lowers the apparent mass of the ship to avoid a relativistic snafu is permeable to external particles in the way. So the navigational deflector pushes them out of the way or, if too big, the ship alters course and avoids them. That has been so since the original series.

About the Bussard Ramscoops: they are there to collect interestellar hydrogen but they are not Bussard Ramjet engines at all. The idea is to collect matter and feed part of it into a matter-to-antimatter converter. Its efficiency is terrible, but as a M/AM reaction is the only means to feed the warp engines, the ramscoops are the only way to collect fuel if you run out of antihydrogen and have not enough hidrogen left to convert (one can imagine lots of nitpicks here, but…).

I think they have never been used as intended in the show, really, but they have been featured here and there as some means to escape some tricky situations.

I love technology-fiction, and I collect spacedrives as others do coins or stamps. I also happen to not have a life, sad anorak that I am.

Adobe's own take on Apple's Aperture

"Instead, Apple pushed out its own take on Adobe’s Lightroom - Aperture 3"

Wouldn't that be the other way round? Aperture was first to market by a decent margin.

iSoma

Apple's model isn't Orwellian but Huxleyan, actually.

"64bit operation is the default modus operandi"

"…because 64-bit operation is the default modus operandi under Snow Leopard…"

What do you mean by that, exactly? As far as I know, Snow Leopard behaves just like Leopard, supporting 32bit and 64bit apps. Also, for now it defaults to booting in 32bit kernel mode.

Sounds like FUN

Is that picture available in HiRes somewhere? All those guys and gal look like having great fun.

Yes, but…

If it is a true update disc, that's what will happen. But most retail editions of OS X are full installers that don't demand any previous OS install to exist, and the last known "update disc" (Snow Leopard) happened to be a full installer too.

Ant they fall for it… again

Our current Leftoid government is a master at throwing this kind of moral outrage silliness targets to its Rightish opposition, so that it does its usual foaming mouth act and gets both distracted and painted as retrograde. Abortion law reform, euthanasia, etc., now this. Please don't see it as another idiotic act from government: the dosage is too precisely measured. You could argue good reasons behind every initiative of those, but they usually are all too well designed to push the Right's right buttons. It doesn't help that the Right has too many of those, plus its eagerness to froth at the mouth whatever the real level of offense.

Yes, being a Spaniard IS fun these days.

The manual, by the way, is a simple sexuality Q&A guide covering everything from masturbation to peer pressure, A bit disorganized and faux-hip, but nothing to worry about.

Mushroom mushroom

You KNOW what happens if badgers take up residence.

Call Emmerich!

He knows how to sex this up. "Crack in the World" remake, anyone?

Shuttle

Because the shuttle was and is a bad idea: its cargo capability is not that great,its dead weight wings don't contribute lift during ascent, its placement in the stack produces off-axis loads, subjects it to fuel tank pieces impacts and makes emergency separations problematic, uses uncontrollable solid fuel rockets, and above all, has a deadly track record.

Getting a heavy loads launcher is more interesting and flexible, I think.

Women are from Mars

Klingon women… mmmm…

flash-fried food for thought

This is mostly spacebattles-related, though it covers the physics of laser weapons quite well, including all the little things that make them so complicated, expensive and rather inefficient. Some USAF laser-turret Jumbo data there, too.

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3x.html#laser

(an excellent site, really)

Apple's

"...Linux would do well to copy where Apple have gone, as a massive amount of research and development has gone into, what many consider to be, the best Desktop experience bar none..."

That could be said of Apple during the classic Mac OS era: they had an Humane Interface Group doung actual UI development and testing back then. Nowadays, OS X' desktop is a mess, with lots of glitzy things band-aiding the user experience.

Being Muslim

"...On one hand, she was a practicing Muslim following Muslim law, and knew that drinking alcohol was illegal. She knew full well that she would be tried as a Muslim if caught..."

One could argue that she has no choice but be a practicing Muslim, or else.

And, law-wise, how do international laws work in a case such as this?

Actually...

Weeeellll... First of all, no, we don't go abuse-happy at nobody unless, one, we know each other enough to understand we are being a bit playful or brash and all is in good humor, or two, we are reeeeally furious.

Also, in context, many brutal pejoratives express admiration, actually: "de puta madre", "el puto amo", "de cojones", etc ("puto" this and "puta" that, although the term is the short and brutal for "prostitute", would translate better as "fucking" this or that).

It is not that different to swearing in English, really, and the same rules apply: you don't even try unless the context allows it or you are about to bust a blood vessel in ire.