Doesn't anyone remember Verner Vinge's "Rainbows End" where everyone has "smart" clothes and retinal implants, and use body motion to control the interface?

This is very true! The Harper Regime is a Neo-Con wannabe, with many fundamentalist Christian members exhibiting some fscked up ideas about the end of the world and heave based upon their ideas...Remember, their flavour of Christianity believes that the more money you make shows you are more in their God's favour. This idea came from the fact that when Protestants left the Catholic Church, they needed some way to see if God was going to let them into Heaven. So they decided that God showed His favour by allowing them to make money, thus is became an obligation to work and make money for otherwise, they could not know if they were saved. Hence what we call the Protestant Work Ethic.

Therefor, if you are rich, it means that you are part of "The Elect", and are going to Heaven. Why is this not surprising?

So things like environmental protection and other limitations to making money (what we call laws against fraud, and other regulations), and welfare (which they see as giving people money for not working) are evil and must be removed because it's against Gods will.

I agree! The first time the program is run, it should pop up a box and and give the user a choice!

ttyl
          Farrell

It's all about how well the film makers can can tell a story. Too many SF movies are created by people who are enamoured with the *idea* of SF, but who know almost *nothing* about SF. This is this is similar to people who try to sell steaks based upon their sizzle, rather than how the meat tastes.

I love your comment about how they used the Turbolift in Star Trek...that is a *classic* story telling device. And it doesn't depend on on any SFX.

Similarly, It doesn't matter if the SFX are done digitally, or with models....if you are telling a good enough story, it won't matter. That is why theatre works, it's all about the story, not the props, or the sets...but how the story is portrayed by the actors.

A good example of this is the movie Dark Star. Crap SFX, but a compelling a twisted story, and this movie is a cult classic. Who wrote and produced it? John Carpenter, and Dan O'Bannon. Watch it. These guys understand SF, and that is why these people went on to produce some of the classic SF and Horror films of our day.

No, it was a brilliant move, since it was a signpost showing if the concert promoter/event host had actually read the contract and addressed the safety concerns of the band. If they showed up and saw that the wrong type of M&Ms present it tipped them off that the their host had not read the contract completely.

That move by VH was the most brilliant single thing that any band/artist has added to the standard touring contract!!! And probably the most misunderstood!

ttyl
          Farrell

Actually, QNX is not a new platform, in fact, it pre-dates *ALL* of the platforms out there, the QNX operating system is 29 years old. It's a very successful niche player, being a real-time microkernel based Unix like operating system. It is used in many embedded applications around the world. I do have a pesonal connection to QNX, I was fortunate to know Dan Hildebrand, who was one of the early leading lights of QNX, as well as a number of past and current employees. I followed the continuing success of QNX over the years. It is a company and an operating system that can stand on it's own, but RIM acquired them from the Harmon Company (aka Harmon/Kardon). If RIM goes done, it won't be because of the quality of QNX...and I hope that they spin off, or sell off QNX if they go down.

ttyl
          Farrell

Now the Virtual I/O iGlasses true stereoscopic in that they had two distinct displays, one for each eye, and each display could be run separately to show the correct offset for stereo vision. They were fairly lightweight, and it had a few design features that made them very nice. First was that they used have silvered prisms to display the image to the eye from the LCD displays. This meant that it could be used not just for VR type games, which is what the place I worked at used it for, but for augmented reality. This was before GPS was generally available, but with a head tracker, plus a GPS, you could have had a full augmented reality that was transparent, and didn't need you to hold your tablet in front of you! No need for cameras either....since you could easily see through the half silvered prisms. The other feature that I really liked about the iGlasses was that you could wear corrective glasses using them.

ttyl
          Farrell

Ah...those days...it's definitely Nostalgia Day on Slashdot! What with this, and the first Linus posting about Linux....I've loved this space, and I was one of the earlier adopters...and used to brag about the site to others saying that tomorrow's tech stories that matter have already shown up today on Slashdot!

Thank you for your insanity in starting this thing!

ttyl
          Farrellj,
          user #563