But Avatar is great. How many people can make a film with such good effects? And on a budget? The world was immersive, the cinematography was brilliant (which used a never-before-used technique that Cameron pioneered) and the director utilized new 3D cameras that no one else has ever used in a studio movie. Sure the plot is thin, but on a technical level, I don't think this movie has any competition.

You want a movie about a dysfunctional family shot with a steadycam? Maybe have Parker Posey or Michael Cera in it? Yeah, those don't make a billion dollars because they're not different. Some indie films are still great, but there are movies with good plots, and movies with great cinematography. There's room for both.

I have a 4-year old Dell budget laptop and I'm tired of it. I love the look and feel of the Lenovos, and I'm sure screens and have gotten better looking, so I'd like to get a new one.

Problem is, the computer is still running too darn well. I'd imagine most of us here don't have viruses, spyware, adware, etc., so our computers are running pretty much just as well as the first day we got them - aside from software updates to programs like Office and Firefox things are pretty much the same. No new hardware has really necessitated an upgrade either. Even 802.11g is doing well, since it's faster than broadband connections. And RAM upgrades are easy, so it may actually be running faster than 4 years ago.

I'd say except for gaming (which I don't do on PC's) there's been little reason to upgrade. Vista and Win 7 are prodding me along, as I can't run Aero, but is shiny bits worth a $500 computer? Sigh - maybe my gf will sit on it one day and I can go buy a new one...

The lack of money is exactly why I watch the networks, and while they're not going anywhere. While friends are spending $100/month to watch a compressed TV signal, I get uncompressed HDTV for free. Sure I miss the cable channels, but it's not like there's nothing on. NBC alone has Conan O'Brien, The Office, 30 Rock, Law and Order, and SNL.

People are realizing that the networks are the most affordable way to watch good TV and that's not going to change anytime soon.

That's actually a bumper sticker I've seen around DC (Goddard Space Flight Center is in a suburb):

On a red field:

"If this sticker is blue, slow down!"

>Pretty much the same headache grandma would have looking for any missing linux drivers, and funny enough, in a bare-bone install, linux is likely to support more out of the box than Windows. Go figure.

That's still not true yet. You can install drivers in Windows with just the GUI - you go to a website, find the driver, hit 'Run' and then hit 'Next' a few times. When I last installed Kubuntu this year, I had to use the broken apt-get programs, and then had to resort to the console. And on the (few) drivers I found for Linux on websites, it was a .tar.gz file. With zero indication on how to use them. Even after I figured out how to untar them (or whatever it's called) I was just left with a bunch of files. I think I'm computer-savvy (just ignorant of Linux) but I couldn't figure that out.

Installing drivers isn't super-easy on any OS, but Linux vs Windows is no comparison. Until Linux supports all peripherals on newer laptops - which it doesn't - it will never take the desktop market.

I can't do Google because of the load time and the fact that the search bar steals focus. Until last week or so, when I first loaded up Firefox, I would hit Alt+D, and my address bar would end up with "slash" and then I'd end up searching for "dot".

Programmers' errors/naivete aside, if an error of 0.3433 seconds can mean the target aperture is 687m off, then a resolution of 0.1 seconds - even when working properly - could still be 200m off.

And I see other comments about using fixed-point. I wonder why couldn't they just use an integer and use deciseconds as their base time?

Well, it's a federal crime to distribute movies without authorization.

True - and it's almost the opposite of the end of the world scenario.

The long count flip is only significant (other than being the largest rollover possible for the calendar) because that's how long the previous world existed. Mayans believed that gods didn't like their first three worlds (presumably because there were no Mayans to worship them) and took a good 13 baktun (or 5,000 years or so) to scrap them and start over each time.

This date simply marks the time where this world lasts longer than the other world - it is not Doomsday, it's a celebration to revel in the fact the world is going to last so long.

Probably no time zones. If it's noon in Sydney it's noon in New York city. This has obvious social/contextual downsides, and is a terrible idea.

"Hey, so I woke up at 6am this morning"
"Wow, you slept in a lot!"
"No, I live in Perth"
"Oh... then, wait, don't you guys eat dinner at 6am?"

- Video NTSC was the only 'option' and it was superior to PAL anyway if you had a black and white TV. It's the same reason DVD's were "chosen" over Blu-Ray discs - no one could use Blu-Ray in 1990, so why adopt the standard?

- Voltages. Same reason why there's HD-DVD and Blu-Ray - different companies/inventors trying to get some consumer lock-in.

- Car filters. Profit again - if only Mercedes-Benz companies make Mercedes-Benz parts, Mercedes-Benz gets to keep that revenue.

- Keyboards. That I don't know. Some guy thought people in his country would take advantage over the "optimum" placement and that was more important than international travelers. He/she may have been right.

- DVDs. Same as most others - consumer lock-in.

- Steering wheel/Street flow.,/b> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right-_and_left-hand_traffic#History

The continuous-shuffle machines are in full use on lower-stakes tables. You're right in that some people don't like them, and don't play them as much. It's a very small number (most players just know Blackjack has the best odds, they don't necessarily understand that not shuffling is part of that).

But casinos don't simply care about the number of players - remember that for a casino, profit is not only a function of number of players, but the amount of money bet per hour. And casinos have already noted that the very small drop off in players is worth it, because CSM's remove the time spent shuffling and they can get in 75 hands/hour rather than 65.

I have a very dominant eye as well, but this new 3D that's coming out isn't too bad, because you need goggles to view it.

That's good for two reasons: 1) No widespread adoption - putting on goggles will work for some home and commercial use, but I'd say at least half of the eyeballs-on-screens will not have goggles. And 2) it should work with people like us - the screens switch inputs on and off, so you will still see the normal screen out of your good eye. They're not using colors, or separating one image into composite images or anything - it's one full frame on for half, then another full frame on for the second, then back to angle 1, etc. So you'll see a 60fps 3D image rendered in 2D at 30fps.

The exact, specific sound a duck call makes has nothing to do with this lawsuit. Technically, the NBC chimes and the MGM Lion sound different every single time they're played. It depends on the quality of the audio signal, the cables, EM interference, the size and material and condition of the speaker driver, etc.

No one cares about the exact sound, and it's not like they're trademarking a waveform.

The original tour people use quacks (of different consistencies - who cares?) to identify their brand, and the quack calls are certainly not functional - it's just a fun thing for tourists to do (for some reason - I hate walking around downtown when those things go by). The company's logos and tour vehicles branded with all sorts of duck crap - and now a rival tour company is stealing their idea and taking their gimmick. I don't think I've ever heard of a better example of trademark infringement than this case, save for "Magnetbox" type electronics.