They do support native PDF, but the text doesn't scale as it does in some of the other formats. If you have a 10-page PDF file you want to look at, you are forced to view each page in its entirety on your teensy Kindle screen. I was really disappointed to discover this. You can get somewhat larger text by rotating the reader, but it feels awkward and I found it still too small for my taste.

.AMZ and Mobi files were designed to be viewed by readers. PDFs were designed to be viewed/printed page-by-page, so technically it's more difficult to shoehorn the format into a reader. Still, the Kindle implementation of PDFs seems rather lazy and even deceiving. I love my Kindle, but I roll my eyes whenever I see Kindle bragging about "native PDF support."

I haven't watched any of his commentary except for the last 30 seconds of part 6 of this video (it was pointed out in another blog), but he directly addresses the lightsaber battle on the molten planet, with a hilarious quote from Lucas at the end.

If you haven't watched that bit yet, check it out -- the irony behind Lucas' words is beyond farcical.

Well put.

There are times when it's interesting to see the reaction of the populace, but I'm looking for insightful commentary, not trite catch phrases and indignant attempts at cleverness. To make things worse, most of the newscasts that use social media as part of their show will pose their question and pick two respondents as follows:

Do you agree with Proposition 782?

• Obammunism392: No, it stinks!
• QTinTexas_97: Yes, it's what America needs!

I appreciate that news outlets want to show all sides of the debate, but typically they display two polarized responses, which basically cancel out any sort of rational discourse. It seems to be there only so that you can agree with A/B and shout "Damn right!" at your TV.

I'm red-green colorblind, and for the most part, I don't have much of a problem distinguishing between the red and green. There are some times, however, where I have to think a bit harder to discern the two colors -- I'm not sure if it's the lights themselves or the ambient lighting (bright sunlight hitting the signal, cloudy weather, what have you), but from time to time the colors look awfully similar. In those situations I don't think about the alignment of the lights (i.e. if the top one is lit I should assume it's red) -- I either look "harder" or observe the other drivers. The alignment of the lights rarely play a part in my discernment of the signals.

I'd certainly appreciate green lights with more blue in them. I've noticed "bluish" green lights before, but I always figured it was just a given manufacturer that made the lights a bit more blue. In traffic intersections where mistakes can cost lives, I'd much rather rely on color than alignment. I know that if alignment were the only queue, I'd adapt, but there's something more primitive, direct and powerful about using color.

I felt that looked a bit constraining as well. It would be nice of them to provide two modes -- one where the applications are all aligned in the track as demonstrated in the video, and one where you unlock the interface to organize/clutter your applications as you see fit. I've performed plenty of tasks where I've stacked a window on top, or kept a calculator tucked down into a corner. If this kind of interface catches on, the creators would be wise to allow for user-designed add-ons that allow for the expansion of the base interface.

Well, that's a bit more tricky than you'd think -- they'd have to adjust the rate based upon the speed of the processor as well. It wouldn't be fair for a quad-core user to pay the same rate as a dual-core! Something's got to be done!

That's very true. Though I was approaching it more from spoken English and phonetics, you're right. The word "applaud" actually comes from "ad-" and "plaudere," but nobody says "adplaud" because "applaud" is easier to say, just as "ur" is easier to type. As much as I dislike typing shortcuts like "ur," it's basically spawned from the same principles as "applaud."

So I guess the academic question is... is that wrong?

Boy, did I ever get exposure to homophones when I learned Chinese. Chinese has loads of homophones, and somehow they get by. Somewhere along the way, tones were invented to help out (or perhaps they were always an integral part of the language), but even then, there are words such as "hao" (good) have three different tones, yet mean the same thing. Depending upon the context, it can sound like a first, second, or third tone (there are only 4!).

As a result of homophones, Chinese has very few one-character words. The word "pengyou" means friend, yet if you were to break it down, "peng" and "you" can both mean friend. To avoid ambiguity, the two are stuck together to make the word more distinct. (admittedly, I think the words were also stuck together because of an innate sense of rhythm in Chinese, who like words/phrases to be 1, 2, 4, and 8 characters long).

I guess that was a bit of rambling -- I agree with you that people do leave terms more ambiguous on purpose, but again, they seem to do it because there's no need to be more granular. Some cultures/languages only have a small handful of color words, while others have a plethora. They often have a "grue" color, which is both green and blue, because in their daily lives, it's not as important to differentiate between the two. I'd bet, though, if they discovered that green berries were poisonous while blue ones weren't, they would quickly devise a new color term or some other language invention to describe the poisonous ones!

Having studied Latin a fair deal, I have a great appreciation for solid grammar, well-formed sentences, and intricate structures. I loathe the apparent devolution of language and despise the rampant misspellings, poor grammar, and horrific stream of consciousness run-ons I've witnessed on the boards and in gameplay.

However, language really is a self-correcting form of communication. I hate the use of "ur" as a bastardized "your," but linguistically speaking, it's pretty efficient. People who spell horribly usually spell with a more consistent logic than centuries of archaisms -- why not spell "dependent" as "dependant" when we have words such as "rampant, occupant," and attendant?" Other than the baggage caused by inherited languages, why do we persist in using "right" instead of "rite?"

In my lifetime, I've seen "donut" become the de facto spelling rather than "doughnut," and I haven't even lived that long. People can say poor spelling creates ambiguities, but our language is already rife with 'em. If a term becomes too ambiguous, the term will die in its collective usage, or split. We know from context what "your" means, otherwise we wouldn't step in to correct people when it's used in place of "you're." I think it's lazy, but from another perspective, it's could be considered an ever-changing process of optimization.

I try to remind myself of this. Doesn't mean I have to like it.

I think one very important (yet passing) remark made by one of the interviewees was that all of the prawns seemed to have been part of a drone class. Perhaps the warrior/queen/etc classes were dead or unnecessary for a "routine" mission. The drones were difficult to like, difficult to communicate with, and didn't seem to have much interest in their technology over a can or two of cat food. It's easy to watch the movie and identify with the aliens' plight, but they really were... alien. While I too would have thought humans would have been in the camps working with the aliens as well, the lack of interest you mention can be explained by the fact that, as drones, they simply seemed to lack a lot of higher brain functions and were uninteresting (or immensely difficult) to deal with.

In reference to your spoiler,

I agree that fuel doubling as a biological agent turning humans into bugs was an odd (and later, very convenient) tack to take. I complained about this to my friends when the movie ended, but they did point out that the alien technology was highly integrated with their genetic code. While it's pretty unlikely that some substance can be a highly efficient form of fuel and an immensely effective biological agent, it's sort of plausible within the framework they defined.

If the well-oiled Blizzard marketing machine has its way, it should be a story leading up to the next major expansion. If it were actually well-done, I think it'd be pretty cool. For once it would make me care for the lore and backstory as I scramble my way up to the next level cap!

While I'm quite skeptical about video game movie adaptations, I'm willing to give Sam Raimi the benefit of the doubt. Blizzard could have done much worse. :^)

I am puzzled that he was so surprised at the outcomes of his actions. Feel free to pass it off as some sort of experiment if you like, but it seemed like he was using almost exploitative techniques to kill people. Couple that with the fact that he just stormed into a room and started killing people -- most folks, being the social creatures they are, do a little bit of social reconnaissance before they start to act. It seems he had already observed the social conventions in the room and made a butthead character to antagonize them -- why did he find it so shocking that people reacted negatively?

I'd also add that if you're a parent, the Wii is a much more sparkly console than its competitors. While some lament that there aren't a lot of violent games for the Wii, it's a bonus for parents. For young children, photorealistic decapitations aren't as cool as seeing a flying turtle shell knock out a princess driving a go-kart, and for that, you don't need a macho graphics processor. Parents also see the value in actually having their kids exercise while gaming. Whether or not they end up buying games that use this feature is another thing, but the Wii is currently viewed as the system most likely to get you up and moving.

This compounded with your other two reasons (cheapness, intuitive games) makes it a great family game console. Others could argue that the Xbox and Playstation also do, but their marketing certainly isn't aimed at that target audience, while Nintendo is.

You're addicted to separately scrolling backgrounds?

I don't think that quoting overexcited electronic gaming magazines is necessarily the best indicator for what people want in a game, either.

Graphics are certainly important to a game, but the novelty wears quickly if the gameplay is poor. I find it hard to believe you and your buddy bought "Separately Scrolling Background Wars" just to ooh and aah over parallax for HOURS.