Nonsense. 3D could totally enhance the storytelling process. It just doesn't do it right now, a point that I think most of us can agree. With sufficient technological innovation (and I mean pretty far beyond what we have now), I am sure it could completely make productions that much more enjoyable. I just think that we're no where near the true starting point, and I am happy to enjoy my quality movie in 2D for time being.

You can still have true 3D and mise en scene at the same time. True 3D film would still require a director's eye to progress the story, focus the attention of the audience, and deliver some degree us suspense and drama. One could have true 3D, and not at the same time have it basically be a Holodeck program where the viewer sees everything.

Er, I mean...I for one welcome our new 3D overlords!

As much as I hate to say it, the 3D format for film will probably be the future. Even if this current fad dies down, the next iteration of 3D technology will probably carry it forward into the future. It's essentially the next logical step in production, the same way colorization was when it first came out. This is not to say I LIKE the 3D element in films that have been produced recently - I have seen The Hobbit and the Life of Pi in the past two weeks, neither of which where really enhanced by 3D. In fact, when I saw the Avengers in 3D, I wanted to puke from the crappy usage of post rendering. However, if you look back at early usage of colorization, it was gimmicky, and often extremely unrealistic. It took many many years for it to develop into an actual viable tool. Before everyone starts whining about how awful 3D is, there are many techniques for proper 3D rendering that modern artists haven't mastered, or have actively chosen to ignore. As an example, using deep focus to prevent blurring of items in the frame helps the human eye in 3D movies, but it contradicts pretty much most of what modern film theory tells us so far, and as such it's how we've learned to both make and perceive film. It's going to take a great deal of re-working and re-imagining to make 3D an augmentation, and not just an attraction. And this isn't counting the technological constraints of 3D, which still haven't quite made it to critical mass yet. The point is, see The Hobbit in 2D. You'll be much happier.

I was a little confused about the direction of this article. Is it saying that we're actually losing more rain-forest per year due to wild fires than we were to deforestation? They draw a link between urbanization and a growth in rural wild fires, but is the net loss more than it was 20 years ago? If there is an % increase in wildfires, what does that mean in context? Maybe they explained it in the video (I couldn't watch it where I was), but all this article is saying is wildfires = bad, which I think we can all agree with.

He will, however, be traveling faster than the speed of light when his chute doesn't open and he digs eight feet into the earth's surface like Wile E. Coyote. Light doesn't travel very fast through granite.

How exactly would this be moving faster than the speed of sound? Is he jumping from a non-orbiting object above the earth's atmosphere, and then hitting the stratosphere travelling 1,200 miles an hour or something? He will be going at terminal velocity for that altitude, which is (I guess) faster than the speed of sound at a lower level, but not necessarily faster than sound at where he jumps from.

Because, that would just be a problem.

Oh shiz! Foxconn worker riots were bad enough. Can you imagine an army of factory robots rising up against their masters? Apple would usher in the robot apocalypse. Android - The iPhone Killer

"Sorry, but services like Facebook fill an important gap that nothing else really caters for. If you don't like it, think of something better, but don't go round bashing it just because you personally have never moved out of your home town or made any friends who lived more than a street away." If you're this much of a douche in person, it's no wonder your friends chose to interact with you remotely.

Um, Hamas isn't a humanitarian organization. Before you accuse me of being right wing, I should tell you that I have worked in the humanitarian sector for years, and currently work for a Humanitarian NGO that actually does operations in Palestine. Just because an organization runs orphanages does not make them humanitarian. Former Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceauescu ran a huge number of orphanages, and I am sure he would have been happy if you wrote him checks. With the exception of intergovernmental humanitarian agencies like the UN or the International Red Cross, or of the donor departments of large governments, like USAID, humanitarian actors are private, neutral non-profit entities. Hamas is...a political group who happens to have some ideas you agree with. That does not make them any more of a "Humanitarian Group" than does giving money to Ron Paul. Also, you gave money to Hamas? Ha! Did you write checks to Idi Amin because he was obviously such a swell guy, you know, before that whole "dictator" thing?

You....supported Hamas? I mean, you say you gave money to the Sea Shepherds, and I assume you voted for Obama by party affiliation, but exactly how did you support Hamas other than just agreeing with them? How is comparable to refusing to buy a product. While I am sure Hamas was heavily dependent upon your moral support, you ceasing to agree with them does...well....nothing. Come to think of it, how are any of these things even remotely comparable? ...oh, wait, I get it "Bad Analogy Guy"

This idea is not new at all... I used to work for a company that holds the original patents on this type of technology (http://www.solatube.com/), and has making these types of things since the 80s. Their product was far less obtrusive, and from the inside looked a recessed can-light, and not the transporter deck from the star ship Enterprise. Their overall luminosity was far greater too, and multiple warehouses and factory floors already use this tech. The technology around carrying light through a tubular structure has become pretty efficient, however the size of the roof perforation and the overall ability of the light to turn sharp corners are the big problem. It's basically impossible to feed these things through walls and reach a second floor. Instead, you have go straight down. There is however another company that already came up with the idea of using a solar dish to track light, only, they did it much much much more intelligently. http://www.sunlight-direct.com/ With fiber optics, they can scale down the size of the perforations, go much further distances, and make the lights much less obtrusive. They can even make 90 degree turns (or 180 degree, or 490 degrees if you really wanted too....) with virtually no loss of light. Just stating the obvious...

Americans are so weird. Why does any disaster have to be Katrina, especially when there is no comparison to the scope or nature of Katrina. And what was that quip about "leaving millions of people in northern latitudes without power"? Does the rest of the world not count? While the realities of a danger like this are something to take a good look at, I find the dialogue to be western centric and kind of out of touch. Oh noes! My data is not available to me!!!1 What about places where lack of electricity is all it takes to cripple a water purification system or a hospital?

does it actually have a visual display? Am I missing something? This turns surfaces into multi-touch inputs, but does it actually turn into a display device as well? What is the point of placing this film "over a wood surface" if you can't see what the hell you're actually dong?