JB0

I actually like it. I think the black and purple works really well with Hot Rodimus' "space car" design. Not that I'll be buying it(Masterpiece series is too rich for my blood in general), but... I like the look.

Yeah.... I have a Wreck-Gar. Only one I ever saw. I really wanted a second one, since he's explicitly constructed to be able to ride a Junkion motorcycle(two pegs in his pelvis mate to a pair of holes in the saddle).

It's like Asteroids with gravity!

You forgot 3. Hasbro tends to avoid playing ball with Bandai to avoid pissing off Takara. So while Takara CAN'T do a Jetfire reissue(FIRST issue for their market), Hasbro WON'T do a Jetfire reissue. But then.... the classic toy reissues seem to have done much better in Japan than in the US, so it may just not be worth Hasbro's effort to do a reissue that Takara can't do too. Actually... I wonder if Hasbro still has the rights to that mold or if they'd have to re-license it. Re-licensing it would add the obvious complication of "costs more money than something we actually own." Especially for a franchise that has become worth something in the intervening decades.

Actually, at this point in the narrative, Kyon's done more time travel than Mikuru. And through the events of Disappearance, he's arguably ALREADY a slider. So I'm waiting to find out how he becomes an alien and esper, and consequently Haruhi's perfect man.

And now you know the REAL reason she flipped out.

I'd've already ACTUALLY known that was coming if I paid better attention, wouldn't I? Seriously, though... all the possibilities, and they do ANOTHER Optimus Prime?

Man, Tentative Name was my FAVORITE Transformer as a kid. Absolute best, bar none. ... Even odds it's another run of Optimus Prime.

Probably never gonna get closer than the old Lithtech 2 demo trailer. Still warms my heart. Even if YouTube DID kill the audio.

My problem with FEAR is this: Every man-hour Monolith spends on FEAR is a man-hour they AREN'T spending on Shogo Freaking 2! ... What? I can't be the ONLY person that really really liked Shogo...

I'd heard they were planning to hack Bethesda. *sigh* Really, that's just ... ridiculous. What is wrong with people?

Personally, I'm having fun. Duke's ego isn't that bad, because you don't have a lot of it... well, from a gameplay perspective. It's more a safety net if you screw up and less easy mode: It DOES play largely like an older FPS, in spite of the regenerating health and two guns thing. BTW, two guns is actually 5 guns from a 90s perspective. Pipe bombs and trip-wire mines get their own dedicated buttons, as does melee(sadly, melee attacks involve smacking people with your gun, not The Boot). So that's half a Duke 3D arsenal at once. Not that carrying two guns around isn't lame, but... it's not as bad as it sounds at first. Note that this all comes from a single-player story mode perspective. I make no claims regarding multiplayer either way, as it's simply not my thing. And don't get a console version. It's an insult to Duke, and the console ports are objectively terrible things. They run at sub-HD resolutions, have no antialiasing, struggle to maintain a playable framerate, and are just not very good. But it looks damn good for a game developed in 1997. I just assumed the jump animation was for nostalgia purposes, seriously. Personally, using some lower-res textures(or more likely, not spending money to upgrade all of them) in places where you can't get a close view makes SENSE to me. All objects are not created equal, and it keeps the system requirements down. Their recommended system has a GeForce 8800 or Radeon 3850 with 512 MB of RAM. I can't think of any other PC game I've played when it was new that I could run at anything close to max detail... not since the 3D accelerator wars started, anyways.

Hail to the king, baby! Duke Nukem Forever successfully launched, with no apocalyptic events occurring! I'm having plenty of fun with it so far. Though apparently the console versions are terrible terrible ports and to be avoided at all costs. My biggest disappointment is that the packaging(yes, I bought retail) makes no mention of the award-winning development process. Tempted to take some card stock and print up a Vaporware of the Year Edition box.

You misunderstand. I know we will be hitch-hiking for a while, but it was looking like that was ALL we were going to be doing after Constellation got canned. Now there's a plan to return to flying our own spaceships again.

Apparently NASA pulled a fast one while I wasn't looking... http://www.nasa.gov/exploration/systems/mpcv/ They took their work on the cancelled Constellation and slapped a new name on it. We DO have a plan to go into space that doesn't rely on hitch-hiking in Soyuz modules!

Ooooh, fun toys. Something to do once our 32FS100 gives up. Not the best TV EVER, but it's pretty good. And raw NTSC, so no issues with fancy HD circuits "helping"

SNES can do RGB(as long as it's not the redesigned SNES2, which can't do s-video either). Odds that a VGA input will handle the relatively low scan rates it generates are low, though. So it doesn't really help matters that much. Though I guess an RGB->component transcoder would work. But, but... the video chip used in the SMS can't GENERATE an interlaced signal, and almost certainly doesn't generate an exact 59.94 Hz vertical refresh, especially after a quarter-century of aging on the components. And the LCD shutters are dead simple. SMS switches one lens off at VBlank, and then switches back at the next VBlank. It's literally the EXACT same implementation aside from the new ones running twice as fast and commanded wirelessly. The TV CAN'T be displaying at any other frame rate than the SMS is generating, or it would get out of sync with the game(either running ahead of available frame data and start flickering, or running further and further behind until the buffer filled and the TV choked to death on it's own crappiness). Remember, it's a one-way communication. The TV can't tell the SMS or any other analog input device what IT wants, so it has to adapt to what THEY want. I'm not really surprised the computer LCD choked, though I AM surprised the HD CRT did. Curious what's going on in the electronics to muck it up. What kind of failure mode did you get, anyways? Simple double-imaging, inverted left and right, or something more complex/interesting? Meh. I need some SMS shutter glasses to experiment with now. They abandoned s-video before they abandoned composite. It's always been the bastard child of video connectors and, along with component video, exists solely to prove that consumer electronics manufacturers hate people. ... Especially component. 3 RCA connectors, one sharing a color code with the paired audio RCAs? WHO thought this was a good idea? There's not even that much of a resolution gain over the one-plug s-video connector, since it's still chroma/luma. And don't EVEN get me started about the RGB lie! Why couldn't we just get a pretty SCART connector like the Europeans? Best thing to ever come out of France, right there. Hell, the japanese RGB-only SCART look-alike would've been nice too, if a tad less versatile.

As awesome as LaserDisk is, it's time to get 'em on BluRay. Which actually STILL isn't high enough res to see Last Starfighter as intended(the CG scenes were rendered at 3000 x 5000 in 36-bit color). But it's far better than DVD(especially if you have the old DVD release and not the remastered 25th anniversary one). Your TV CAN offer a significant fraction of the original film resolution. EMBRACE HIGH-DEFINITION. RESISTANCE IS FUTILE. YOU WILL BE ASSIMILATED.

Actually, Trek gradually imploded under the weight of apathetic and ignorant executive producers until Paramount fired their asses after Enterprise. No one can explain why they weren't fired after(or DURING) Voyager.

Not true. The SMS LCD shutter glasses are the exact same tech used in modern 3D TVs. Just at 60 Hz instead of 120 Hz. They don't rely on interlacing or electron beam scan, and the shutter signals come from the SMS, not the TV. As long as the TV displays the frames when it's supposed to, or lags by an even number of frames, you're good. In fact, the SMS doesn't even output an interlaced video signal. Like many game consoles, it abuses the timing signals to create a 60Hz progressive scan display, a practice which is informally referred to as 240p nowadays. You'd probably be right if we were talking about light guns, though. But I still have me an SD tube either way, so I'm actually concerned about the future of my game collection when these things start crapping out. Lot of modern digital displays don't play well with the funky signals output by most game machines. And composite video is being phased out(never thought I'd see the day). What's a guy supposed to do when there's no composite video input? And the first era ALREADY requires mods to interface with new displays. They were all RF-only and there's no longer a TV available with an NTSC tuner.

What he said. Though mine has been visited by the Crimson Pacman, free repairs put it back in operation. I still say MS is being a cheap bunch of crapheads by not upgrading them to HDMI at the same time, especially after they designed a new motherboard exclusively for refurbs that uses the new more reliable chips, but doesn't have HDMI. They spent EXTRA MONEY to ensure they didn't have to upgrade anyone's feature set. But hey, one of your early adopters that made the system successful might not buy a replacement console just to get HDMI if you did that, and you'd be out a sale! And hey, it's not like your shoddy untested cooling design inconvenienced anyone when it failed miserably! You know what? I've got a VGA cable, and I'm not afraid to use it.

I knew the PS3 supported it, actually. When did they add 3D support to the 360? Also: It will only work on SOME 360s, since the 3DTV standard only works with HDMI.

Hell yes. This is where technology SHOULD be heading. Not doing more of the same, but doing more of MORE. I just hope it's available in red and black, so I can get one to match my Virtual Boy. Then I can get some SMS and FamiCom LCD glasses, and a Vectrex 3D Imager(fat chance), and I'll have every 3D game system that ever existed. You can take your PlayBoxes and your XStations and stuff them in the closet where the antiquated junk BELONGS!

Man, people... it's all about The Last Starfighter. And my review of 2010 can be summed up in the words of the same IBM ad that's summed up every year since it aired in 2000. Where are the flying cars? I was promised flying cars. I don't see any flying cars.

Inserting randomness is actually a highly valid approach in many circumstances. Modeling the real world being one of the more obvious. It's why microprocessors HAVE random number generators. Yup. Power and space are major obstacles. But when you look at what a supercomputer twenty years ago could do and what a laptop now can do... you start wondering how fast those barriers will come down. How would that defeat the purpose? If the problem is "generating human-like behavior" then your algorithms SHOULD do exactly that. It can't be picking the "wrong" solution if it does a dumb thing that a real human with a similar background would have done. Consider a weather forecast program. There's a lot of data that CAN'T be input into such a program because it can't be measured with the limited sensing equipment and computer capacity available. And some of it just looks like random data with no visible cause. Some of it will have known patterns, but some of it will appear as white noise to us, because we simply don't understand the system. I'm not a meteorologist, so this is admittedly speculation, but I would assume there's actually a good bit of randomization in the computerized weather models. And as paradoxical as this sounds, this can actually IMPROVE accuracy. Arguably, the human brain IS a computer running algorithms. They're just very complex ones with large quantities of input, some if it highly randomized. And, well, it's clearly NOT a classical binary Von Neuman machine. There's a lot of iffiness in the Deep Blue VS Kasparov rematch. And you grossly oversimplify how much reprogramming was done between rounds. That's also over a decade out of date. The best chess computers still have great difficulty beating the best human players. My quick and dirty research shows that most such matches end in draws. But they do it without being reprogrammed between rounds, and without forcing the opponent to come in effectively blind. I do take your point that computers play a very different style of chess than humans. I maintain that it could be coded to play more like a human if the problem was understood and the computer existed that could run the math in any reasonable amount of time. Well, my point was that there IS a deterministic process at work in the brain. It's just not one that works very well by computing standards. Ultimately, it comes down to physics. And physics is math. If the brain was understood, it could be modeled in a computer(as opposed to the more abstract neural networks that exist currently and only model neuron connections and not the whole assemblage). If it was understood well enough, it could be modeled accurately. And if that accurate model was run... you'd have an artificial brain. And legacy code can only be rewritten if you have the source code and the hardware necessary to read and write the media it's stored upon. This is a bigger problem than you might think. And you still need someone that can actually make heads or tails of that code. Obviously, we have none of that for the brain. Evolution isn't as rapid or all-powerful as you make it out. It's stuck choosing between different sets of humans, it can't just make an arbitrary "man 2.0" model and implant that on a new person. It's also more concerned with the short-term. Who's making the most babies? Which babies are surviving long enough to have their own babies? That's what evolution cares about. Besides, modern medicine has largely short-circuited evolution. Survival of the fittest no longer applies in a world of corrective surgeries and antibiotics. If someone has a defective heart, we fix it. If we can't fix it, we replace it. They live and pass those genes on. Anyways, computers do math. Given enough computer, you can solve any possible math. And like I said, the brain operates according to the laws of physics, and physics is math. Once you know the initial conditions and system constraints, you can program those in and simulate it accurately. And my point is that if you know how it works, you can simulate it. Everything in the universe is math. Some things are just more math than others. Actually, you're comparing apples and oranges. Quantum computing is a whole new hardware field. Neural networking is a SOFTWARE field. NNs run on deterministic binary math computers. Yes, some even run on ye olde IBM PC clones. Not incredibly advanced networks in comparison to organic life, but... it's PROVEN that modern computers CAN simulate small collections of neurons. It's even possible to simulate small collections of biologically-accurate neurons, to the extent that we know how they work. I'd say the issue is one of raw power, and understanding of the problem. Moreso the latter. But regarding the former... as a rough apples to oranges comparison, there are over a hundred billion neurons in an adult human brain. An Intel Core 2 Quad has some 500 million transistors, each of which is capable of doing far less than a neuron. Biology can be simulated once it is understood. Whether we'll still be running binary transistors once we understand it well enough to simulate is a less clear issue. ... Though some claim they can do it now. http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/ "With the present simulation facility, the technical feasibility to model a piece of neural tissue has been demonstrated. " Also: " In the cortex, neurons are organized into basic functional units, cylindrical volumes 0.5 mm wide by 2 mm high, each containing about 10,000 neurons that are connected in an intricate but consistent way. These units operate much like microcircuits in a computer. This microcircuit, known as the neocortical column (NCC), is repeated millions of times across the cortex. ... This structure lends itself to a systematic modeling approach." And the reality check is here: "Our Blue Gene is only just enough to launch this project. It is enough to simulate about 50'000 fully complex neurons close to real-time. Much more power will be needed to go beyond this. We can also simulate about 100 million simple neurons with the current power. In short, the computing power and not the neurophysiological data is the limiting factor." On one of the fastest supercomputers in the world, they can simulate 50,000 neurons out of 100,000,000,000. And here's the largely unrelated, but incredibly fascinating part... "Will consciousness emerge? We really do not know. If consciousness arises because of some critical mass of interactions, then it may be possible. But we really do not understand what consciousness actually is, so it is difficult to say." If they get enough virtual neurons firing, and the computer becomes conscious, it'll be just incredibly amazing(though obviously they need a major upgrade to their Blue Gene to even try). Either way, it's just incredible. That actually wasn't meant to be a RUDE "wrong on all counts." And may the joy of Hanukwanzmasgiving be visited upon you as well.