It's actually probably the *only* thing that would make me want to spend money on the format. I'd be just as happy with frame-sequential 3d dvds, though.

It's a little more complex than that. It's important to keep the 3d field internally consistent - it's bad when 'forward' elements of the scene (i.e. placed 'in front' of the screen plane) have 'further back' elements forced in front of them. This includes the *edges of the screen* and subtitles that are fixed at the screen plane but still drawin in front of elements that should be in front of them. There are parallels to issues found in (mostly older) 3d games, when the draw order is wrong.

If the forward elements and the subtitles don't intersect, though, it can work to have the subtitles further back. I noticed this a couple of times when seeing Avatar tonight - the Na'vi subtitles weren't absolutely in front of everything, but the rest of the scene was carefully arranged so as not to conflict.

sound quality on vinyl tends to degrade much more gracefully to the human ear.

Not really - it's very much a cultural preference. If you grow up listening to audio that's distorted the way vinyl/tubes make it, then you think that it sounds better than the undistorted audio (or audio that is distorted differently.) It's becoming apparent that younger people are preferring the lossy sound of lower-bitrate MP3's (which are *definitely* not 'better') over vinyl or uncompressed audio, simply because they're always listening to that sort of audio on their ipods.

Actually establishing communication is a secondary goal - just detecting incidental radio output of an alien civilisation would be a monumental discovery. That said, it does require both sides to have radio capability. So it's probably unlikely that we'll see anything if there are/were only a couple of other inhabited planets out there, but if instead the universe has a lot of life in it, we may get lucky and be in the right place and time to see *one*. If we aren't looking, then even that possibility is wasted.

Additionally, we're able to see a hell of a long way out there; astronomers are peering deeper and deeper into the universe all the time. If the universe systematically scattered all energy from far away, we wouldn't be able to do that. And in fact, matter that's 'in the way' can be a major advantage, with gravitational lensing.

But *why* is it still the square of the distance when I always thought that was just a natural consequence of the increase in volume of a sphere as it's radius increases? If antenna gain makes no difference, then why bother with it at all?

I got modded troll? Really? It's not a stupid suggestion, thin skinned moderator dude.

Why oh why is it so hard for people to stick .nyud.net onto urls so they get coral cached before submitting them to slashdot? You people are supposed to be smart!

Which is fine until that one virus manages to get through by accident. I ran my machine AV-free for a long time until that happened, and the cleanup was unpleasant - the preventive features of AV software are far superior their cleanup ones. :S

That said, the performance of my machine running AVG got worse and worse with each new version till I got fed up and ditched it. I'm running Avast now, and the best feature is the easy access to the "disable on-access protection" option in the systray. It stays on most of the time, but I don't have to go digging through menus when I just want it to get the hell out of the way.

Hang on, they repeatedly tried to help you, but they're arrogant assholes because they were wrong? Because they couldn't magically pull the correct answer out of their arses when only given a limited view of the machine?

The real problem is that they have to deal day-in and day-out with people who come in to the channel with a problem, give inaccurate information about their system, refuse to listen to the advice they are given, then storm off in a huff even though the advice was *right*. And yet they were still trying to help you out.

Arrogant assholes are on both sides, buddy.

There's nothing special about these devices. Hell, I got a similar device on sale over a decade ago - an Aura Interactor - and it was pretty meh.

Getting royalties on a patent does not make you a patent troll. Buying up patents you didn't invent just to make money off them IS. (There is NO "research, patent, troll" cycle, only a "buy/write trivial patent, wait, troll" one.)

The CSIRO spent money developing the technology in the patents. They're reinvesting the royalties (which are a fucking PITTANCE) back into new research. That's the very opposite of being a patent troll.

Sure, for subcutaneous use, but there's nothing stopping one being put in a ceramic package and placed on the motherboard looking like just another IC.

I think it's more a case of "if you're going to be an asshole, don't be a coward as well." You can be critical without being a dick (and in that case anonymity is worthwhile/necessary) but if you're being a dick just for the sake of being a dick, you shouldn't expect to be protected.

I think the perceived value of the 'speech' in question should be taken into account. There can be valid reasons to keep the author of a text anonymous - but protecting the author of hate speech from a (well deserved) lawsuit shouldn't be one of them.

Exactly - he's only talking about people with "entrepreneurial spirit", i.e. those people who only care about getting as filthy rich as possible, as fast as possible, and not about working in an industry they enjoy. If they all decide to piss off to China then good luck to them.