Akilae

Let's take this back to the basics. There are two basic functions of armor which I think should also apply to shields: absorption, and deflection. The first is usually performed by the structure of the armor, the second by the shaping of the armor. Unless you're talking about something exotic like reactive armor... but let's keep this simple. In the history of tank armor evolution has been in leapfrog phases. First metallurgy was superior enough to produce metal that was better at absorbing damange, then the Russians came up with sloping armor, then the Brits came up with Chobham... etc... So what do you want your shields to do? What stage of evolution do you want them to be? If you want them to absorb, then what's the absorption limit? What do you want to apply this armor to? Small craft? Large craft? The needs of each will be different. Also think about the culture that developed the armor. Each country on earth has different tank and armor designs based on their fighting philosophy and weapons. For the ultimate in "armor" technology, I think gravity will reign supreme. The design here will be based solely on deflection, instead of absorption. Imagine what light does when it passes by a massive gravity well and you'll get a pretty good idea why. Now reverse that effect. For better visual effects, the final few episodes of Diebuster has a STMC deflecting incoming optical based weaponry using gravity. But this is also pretty exotic stuff... to generate gravity wells massive enough to matter you'd need to harness the power of a mini black hole. On the flipside, in order for the enemy to even touch you they'd have to throw something even more massive at you.. say.. a few planets worth The problem is what happens when you power up your shields? Well, I'm not sure if the effects will mimick a black hole, but you WILL be flying blind, literally, given the effects of massive gravity wells on light... heck, reverse the effects of your shields and you won't even need shields, just open up a black hole in front of you and suck your enemy into oblivion. End of story :-p In terms of practicality, as somebody else already mentioned, lots of ablative armor. You can even go ST: Enterprise on it and pass some sort of EM current through your armor plates.

Isn't the MG Fuse used in Jin-Roh the MG-42? Why the change here to the MG-34?

QFT. I've had quite a hard time trying to convince friends that MKS is not a horror director. Unbreakable is more about believing in yourself, Signs is more about the power of belief in general, The Village was about the power of love/facing the unknown, etc... it's more an accident that the Sixth Sense was a ghost movie (note, not horror movie... MKS does not go out of his way to set you up to piss in your pants). As for Signs, I think the whole movie can be contained in one quote: "People break down into two groups when they experience something lucky. Group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence, that there is someone up there, watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck. Just a happy turn of chance. I'm sure the people in Group number two are looking at those fourteen lights in a very suspicious way. For them, the situation isn't fifty-fifty. Could be bad, could be good. But deep down, they feel that whatever happens, they're on their own. And that fills them with fear. Yeah, there are those people. But there's a whole lot of people in the Group number one. When they see those fourteen lights, they're looking at a miracle. And deep down, they feel that whatever's going to happen, there will be someone there to help them. And that fills them with hope. See what you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or, look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences?"

I'm actually more pumped up by the new 300 trailer on the same page :-p

huh? <blink>... I'll agree that the animation isn't consistent, but the storylines? They're telling the rather seperate stories of the Hakkenden in relation to Confucian values...

The novels are better developed, but suffer from the same fate: they don't end. For very good reason too, the original author is dead. Of course you could blame it on the animation company for not providing an ending, but after seeing various filler material for lots of anime, I'd rather they not do that, especially if it's GONZO...

Not really... as the man on the ground, I'd say launching more might be a waste. 1) MMORPGs are all the rage here... consoles don't have the glamour they have in other countries. 2) Nobody here is really excited about the PS3. 3) The local culture won't buy into the PS3 until they can buy it chipped and modded. I'm the only person in my company that has a vanilla PS2.

Interesting why they cut the Venom footage when all the rest of the then incomplete special effects shot made it in... the final few seconds of Venom seem to be relatively complete.

Just my opinion, but why all the fighter style seats (columns between the legs, cramped up everywhere, etc..)? 1) It's uncomfortable. 2) You have a sophisticated weapons system, assuming the two front seats are the pilot and co-pilot, why not make the rear seats face the side walls staring at consoles for weapons control? 3) Ejection: Your rear seat is equipped with an ejection handle I think. You have four crew up front (any more in the back?). My preferences would be either: a) Make the entire cockpit a seperate module for ejection, or b) No ejection at all. This is at atmospheric craft. If it gets hit, then it'll crash land. If it's shot up so bad it can't crash land, then the chances of the crew surviving outside of ejection would be nill. If it's hit while entering the atmosphere, the crew won't be surviving anyway.

What I did, since you get so much loot it's not even funny... is to simply sell anything I had twenty of... plenty of clash inflow, and almost no need to worry about selling important items.

License Board: What I did was make a straight dash for Mist Knacks for my characters, each spreading out into areas I think I'd want them to go into. With 3 mist knacks to chain, it makes boss battles much easier.

JSF Design nightmare: feature creep mostly... more and more keeps on being added. The cockpit seems awfully... exposed... so many transparent panels!

You're American cell phone will not get a signal there. You can rent Japanese cell phones, but I don't know the details, somebody else will have to fill you in on that.

Kyoto: Kyoto Tower Hotel. Relatively cheap, cozy, and right across the street from the train station, very convenient. Locations: Basically anything that can be seen has been covered by the Lonely Planet guides, I'd suggest on going on Johnny Hillwalker's walking tour if you want to take the easy way out, even though every foreigner passing through Kyoto has walked with the guy at least once... If not, get a map, plot your own course, and start walking! Kyoto isn't large, and it's easily walkable if you tackle different sections of the city each day. Personal favourites: Kiyomizu Temple, the path leading up to Kiyomizu (many temples branching off from there), Nijo-jo (yeah, experience what "oooh... Last Samurai!!" moment), Higashi Honganji, Philosopher's Walk, Kinkakuji, Jinkakuji, Sanjosangendo. Top off one of the days by becoming a Geisha groupie for a night at Gion. A day trip down to Nara is also rewarding, and you get to feed the deer too! I'm not sure about the festivities that go on, but the last time I was there in March, some noteables: the Lantern festival along the Kiyomizu path, early sakura bloomings, and supposedly I arrived around the time of the annual free geisha performance (offered once a year, FREE, for the general public), but I didn't know till after I left. In case you haven't figured out yet, I'm heavy on history and architecture, Kyoto and Nara alone could supply me with enough material for a week... Oh, plan on dining at normal hours in Kyoto. Pretty much everything closes after dinner time.

This might be personal taste, but try either stepping down the lens or jacking up the shutter speed... the images are coming across as pretty bright on my monitor...

This thing is already shaping up to be a JSF-ish design nightmare... IMHO, you might need larger h and v stabs if this thing is for atmospheric flight... they look so small for some reason. Just out of curiosity, what kind of engines are these? If they're jet engines as they are known to us, might not be a good idea having hatches opening up in front of it. Disrupts airflow, not to mention the risk of FOD.

lol, so MWers have finally gotten onto the pixel peeping boat

If your soldier is going to be that big, better make the hatches wider... remember, the hatches have to include the ejection mechanism, not to mention be able to accomodate the gel-encased soldier in full combat gear.

I'd say add an on/off ramp at the rear of the drop ship, a la the CH-47s and CH-53s.

I like it.. very Final Fantasy, but that's the part I like about it. After watching the FF movie I couldn't figure out why no other science fiction seemed to think about the use of gel for troop drops... made a lot of sense. I think how they did it was manually deployed gel after the trooper jumped out of the carrier. Just in case you haven't read the book, Starship Troopers got around atmosphere friction by shooting troops out in their individual capsules made of ablative material. In essence, they used a large carrier in orbit and just shot the capsules like bullets at the planet. Ideally in a combat drop (going by World War II Airborne drops here), I think you would realistically get only one pass over the target area. That means your troop carriers would be constructed to accomodate one or at most two sticks that all go in the first volley. Also alleviates the problem of having too many eggs in one basket. Anything larger, and you can actually go back to the good ol ramps, stuff that comes in only when the LZ is clear or at least when there's no threat of being blown to pieces by artillery (think CH-47s, CH-53s, C-130s).

The military either marches into battle (Mark I Feet, always ready to fight), rides into battle (Hummers, everybody piles out of the doors), rides into battle (Trucks, everybody piles off the sides), rides into battle (M2/3, everybody runs off the ramp), rides into battle again (Marines, everybody runs off the ramps again), flies into battle (Hueys, Blackhawks, everybody either jumps off the sides, or rapples off), or just drops into battle (Airborne). One way to tackle this would be the way they did it in Starship Troopers (the book, not the movie). Troops are shot out of their ship in orbit and make it down to the surface as individuals. Think ultra high altitude para drops. Personally I always liked this idea a bit more. If one insisted on a drop ship, then the traditional on/off ramp would be awfully time consuming. One way to do it would be to have the troops ready to drop the moment they can land without injury. Something like what choppers have would work (large unobstructed access ports on both sides of the aircraft), or do go with something exotic, individual pods that open and drop the men down and out. Think of how the Marines are loaded up in the Aliens drop ship, instead of hustling out a ramp, each is jettisoned straight from his/her chair/harness, straight down and straight out of the drop ship. Just a few thoughts.

I meant generations :-p. For reference, I swapped out a Geforce 4 4800 half a year ago for a Geforce 6800 LE, probably the last of the AGP cards, and right now I can run Call of Duty 2 and Company of Heroes smoothly at 1024 x 768, medium settings on everything. FEAR and Oblivion run even higher. That's one generation down, two if you want to take off points for the AGP interface. Generally speaking, it's better to buy the best of the previous generation (Geforce 6), than the uber value present generation (Geforce 7). But like what Hurin said, it's really just different computer building philosophies... some of my friends still find it hard to accept that I can survive on an 80GB hard drive, while to me, HD space is not that important.

Personally, from what I've seen of PC upgrades, unless you have a good reason to think you're going to be upgrading and swapping stuff out every half a year, there's no point in thinking of upgrading. The main reason is that the PC market moves so fast, by the time you're thinking of upgrading, the entire architecture would have moved onto something different (bad memories of Intel and Slot 1...). But if you want to feel a bit more comfortable about future upgrade options on the cheap, just buy the best motherboard you can afford, and get everything else for as cheap as you can. The absolute best motherboard on the market right now will last you a good three years if you play your cards right, swapping out everything else as situation calls for. Here's a sample build of what the above philosophy would entail: Motherboard: Asus P5B ($142) Power: COOLMAX CW-650T EP ($120, $80 w/ newegg combo discount) CPU: Intel Pentium 4 531 Prescott 3.0GHz LGA 775 Processor Model BX80547PG3000EK - Retail ($90) Memory: CORSAIR XMS2 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) ($148) HD: Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST380811AS 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM ($45) Optical: Pioneer writer OEM ($31) Video Card: ASUS EN7600GS ($126) That gives you a grand total of $662, with only $338 left for case, monitor, speakers, k/b, mice... oh, this is all pre-tex and pre-shipping too.

Go HERE EVERYTHING you need for $1,000, OS price included! It should also play the things you listed. My own comp is not even up to sharky's value spec, and it can run those games. Of course, that's assuming you don't crank everything up to max...

Usually unless you're a hardcore OMFGPWNZ gamer, there's absolutely no need to get the latest and greatest. A good rule of thumb is to buy one generation (or even two) behind what's on the market, you save a lot, and it'll last you a good two to three years before you start feeling its age. Go to www.sharkyextreme.com, sharky usually has a monthly budget/value/high-end/extreme setup that you can model yours after. I find it sensible and usually spot on. For optical drives, I've always been very partial to Pioneer. Reads/writes everything I throw at it, and OEM models (trust me on this, you're not losing out on any quality) go for around 30. If you can buy Asus. Abit is usually known for o/cing and being fast. Asus is rock solid. Go with the on board audio. The Latest and Greatest in audio tech is really overrated. My first generation SB Live! is still going strong, and I suspect even my m/b's on board audio will Blow It Away... only thing holding me back? My Klipshs need the four channel output that the Live! provides Take the RAM down to 1 gig, but buy the lastest and greatest that you can afford. Copy down the make and build. When you're feeling slow a year down the line, buy another stick of the same thing and plug it in. You CAN skimp a bit on the P/S if you're feeling brave. Brand name power supplies are nice and do offer additional stability, but after having two burn out on me in a year, I went generic and haven't been having any problems for two years. But no matter what you do, invest in a very good surge protector, preferablly one that also includes phone jacks (are there ones that come with ethernet ports?). Plug everything connected to your computer into said surge protector. Edit: Rule of thumb up until two years ago was: If you're going AMD, buy ATi, if you're going Intel, buy Nvidia. For some reason those pairings just work better together in terms of stability for everybody around me.