Maybe I'm too easily suckered by gimicks, but I'm looking forward to the 3DS. I think I enjoyed the DS more than any hand-held to date. It just had lots of great games, versatile controls, and critically the system and games cost about 30% less than their competitor. The same thing, only with a bigger screen, higher resolution, better processor, analog stick, accelerometer and gyroscope would have been enough to get my pre-order. But the glassesless 3D really does sound sort of cool. I've been wanting that ever since that bit in Back To The Future 2 were the holographic shark eats Michael J. Fox. I'm pretty sure it will be just like that.

All of other games I'm looking forward to are due to the developer track record, The Old Republic(Bioware), Portal 2(Valve) and Warhammer 40k: Space Marine(Relic). Though with that last one I seem to be alone.

I love this quote from the source you linked

"With the extensive adoption of the SI system, it is now only a relic except in the USA, where it remains the prevailing customary scale."

Heh, relics.

In no way does F seem more intuitive than C. It only exists now to cause confusion between the two. It's a turd in the punch bowl.

We've got 3 distinct discussions going on here: temperature, imperial/metric and clocks.

In the time one, I have to add that when we "speak" about the time, we usually say "at 8" when we mean "20:00", we don't say 20-hundred hours. We just type it out when writing it. AM/PM takes far more time to figure out than just saying 20, if in doubt - to me anyway (not used to AM/PM). We should just make "Metric time" and fuck people over royally

Imperial vs. metric units: I cannot see anything positive for the imperial. No valid points at all. Please present them, anyone, because I simply don't get it other than sheer stubbornness.

>> ^entr0py:

>> ^gwiz665:
shakes fist
Ounce makes no sense
Pounds make no sense
Miles make no sense
AM/PM is stupid
Fahrenheit makes no sense - 32F is the freezing point, wtf?
It is colloquially adopted everywhere EXCEPT certain third world countries and the US... goddamit, get with the program!

1. The alternative to Ounces, Pounds and Miles are equally arbitrary measurements. Just easier to deal with since they're in factors of 10. I'd personally be happy if we switched, but it would be a huge pain for everyone and cause lots of confusion at first.
2. You've seen clocks; that's where it comes from. AM/PM has never been much of a problem for me since you can always tell which one it currently is by looking outside. And if you're telling someone a time it's slightly faster to say eight-PM than sixteen-hundred-hours.
3. 0 Degrees F is the stabilization point of brine. Fahrenheit had a lot of reasons for setting it exactly where he did (partly he was building on pre-existing scales), but the one that makes the most sense in the modern day is that "The outcome was a scale that had, essentially by design, the points 0° and 100° corresponding closely to the lower and upper limits of human comfort, an approach which made the scale inherently preferable in many everyday contexts" It's easy for anyone to remember that 32 is the freezing point. Beyond that it seems a more intuitive and precise for everyday uses.

Kills are completely killed. That is, no one can comment on them anymore, it cannot be promoted back into the queue.

Discard is a relic of olden times. It discards your video, that is, it throws it in the discard pile and it counts as not existing. People can, however, still comment on them and you can theoretically * promote them back into the queue or sift if it has 10+ votes.

You cannot move your video to the PQ other than to let it's unsifted timer run out. It's an intended limitation. If you want to move stuff out of the way, you can discard other stuff in the queue.

Be forewarned though, if you discard something and someone else posts it, his is not a dupe of yours - yours is technically out of the sift system, therefore up for grabs.

Your discarded video is here http://videosift.com/member/kurtdh/discarded which is also linked in your sidebar.

Smuggled Chinese imperial relics! She should have "donated" them back to China to gain massive charisma and PR with the Chinese government, which may become useful someday.

>> ^Almanildo:
>> ^spawnflagger:
I wonder what his take on antimatter/dark-matter is? Is it something which is being created in the LHC?
Dark matter isn't being created in any human experiment yet.
When matter/antimatter is created, what happens is merely that energy goes from one form (kinetic energy in particles) to another (rest mass of matter). The same would go for dark matter if it was ever going to be created in an experiment.


Sorry Almanildo, you are right. The LHC is not yet creating dark matter, but that is one of the aims:
"We need to study dark matter directly by detecting relic dark matter particles in an underground detector and by creating dark matter particles at accelerators, where we can measure their properties and understand how they fit into the cosmic picture."
from:
http://www.uslhc.us/LHC_Science/Questions_for_the_Universe/Dark_Matter

So, how would the law of conservation of energy apply to dark matter and dark energy?
Current theory states that dark energy is homogeneous and makes up 70% of the universe (with visible matter being 4% and dark matter 26%). I realize at the LHC they have only regular energy to use...

LHC is supposed to start back up on Feb 15th, and the proton beams are expected to reach 99.9% speed of light on December 21st 2012. (lol, just kidding. it's actually slated for sometime in 2011).

>> ^brycewi19:
Ahem, you're welcome?
Ya know, when you finish watching a marathon of The Office, that line pretty much comes out of your mouth naturally.
<div><div style="margin: 10px; overflow: auto; width: 80%; float: left; position: relative;" class="convoPiece"> rasch187 said:<img style="margin: 4px 10px 10px; float: left; width: 40px;" src="http://static1.videosift.com/avatars/r/rasch187-s.jpg" onerror="ph(this)"><div style="position: absolute; margin-left: 52px; padding-top: 1px; font-size: 10px;" class="commentarrow">◄</div><div style="padding: 8px; margin-left: 60px; margin-top: 2px; min-height: 30px;" class="nestedComment box">downvote because of the fucking moronic description.
</div></div></div>

What irks me about this comment is that the phrase "that's what she said" was being bandied around over 7 years ago. I remember my teacher used to reply with this terrible phrase whilst i was at 6th-form to almost every vague inuendo he could see. Unfortunately at the time i also thought it was funny and reiterated it to the nth degree.

The problem with the phrase "that's what she said" is that it's a staple and empty reply designed for use by people who can't think quickly enough to come up with a decently funny innuendo. It CAN be funny, but only in an ironic way.

If you REALLY think about it, it means nothing - there's no content to it, no innuendo. Think about it. You could start popularising the phrase "insert joke here" and that would have the same thoughtful content as "that's what she said." Because the implication of the phrase is "a woman said that to me once", a boring and average innuendo, and none of us even consider this idea now that we've heard the phrase 3 million times by the same bearded twats who think they're the life and soul of the party - you're effectively saying "that's innuendo! LOL! ROFL!"

I went through this thought process SEVEN YEARS AGO, when i decided to stop using the phrase. I decided - if you aren't quick witted enough to come up with a decent innuendo, don't bother doing it at all, you've already failed, and by saying "that's what she said", you're just drawing attention to your failure.

It's bad enough that the american writers of the office stumbled across this relic of a joke and started smearing it all over the fucking place, repopularising the phrase amongst the great unwashed masses, but they did that in THE OFFICE of all fucking things! A show that, in its first form, was chock full of individuality, originality and blistering comedy.

Oh how low we've sunk.

This doesn't surprise me in the slightest. The Catholic Church is an institution of the past. Like Men-Only Gentlemen Clubs, it will soon be viewed as an irrelevant and antiquated relic of a different era.

> to bitch about the folks whose land you now live on

No natives were displaced to build my home, and no native relics were found during construction. As far as I can tell, nobody has ever lived where I live, or in the area.

"whose land you now live on" - Did their tiny population own all 1.48 million square kilometers of Alaska?

You can vote for your own video, bro, so whaddya say we make it happen?

http://www.videosift.com/video/Is-that-a-relic-in-your-pocket-or-just-happy-to-see-me

>> ^EDD:
She's not hot, she's smart. And although her delivery leaves much to be desired, it's a definite upvote for the BURRRRRRRRRN
I wonder what's the ankh on her neck for though.


The ankh on her neck is a relic of her childhood, she explained that in a video some time back. Starting at about 2:30 into the tag video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fnEDm8M1cB4

In short it's an Egyptian symbol of life and she had a dream about it when she was a kid then saw one and bought it, she's worn it ever since.

Someone else, Drachen_Jager, asked "What's with the fake film grain and scratches look though?"

It's not fake, she's actually from and in Romania and her equipment really sucks that badly. I've been surprised for a while that one of her fans didn't just send her a new one, but either they haven't or she has some pride and doesn't want it. Most of her videos are like that though.

Hotmail is free. My Apple ME.com email has an annual fee.

Here's a gripe about Macs that is irritating me today, simply because I'm dealing with it at the moment. Why does Apple have to release a new OS version every two years or so? Seriously! It's fucking me up with my software (and hardware) purchases!

OSX Tiger was released in 2005. OSX Leopard was released in 2007. Now OSX Snow Leopard is coming out tomorrow. This is fucking me up! I just purchased a brand new, factory-sealed Mac Book Pro in 2007 with Tiger installed and now it's a fucking relic?! What crap. All the new software I need to purchase (or upgrade) requires at least Leopard. Can they just get their OS right and be done with it for a while?

Windows released XP Pro in 2001 and it still works adequately, even though it certainly has it's own problems. I have that installed on one of my machines I use frequently and I never have to worry about software or hardware upgrades requiring a newer version of the OS to work. Sure, they may require an update to the Service Pack, but it's all free and easy to do without purchasing a whole new OS!

Oh, and I just purchased a new Blu-Ray external drive, but the Mac OS won't play protected BD movies. Oh and don't get me started on iTunes updates with a 80MB download that happens every time a new syncable device change happens (which is VERY often)! And most important what do apples and felines have to do with each other? Nothing. It's confusing. Cats don't even like fruits, because they're carnivores.

There. Those are some legitimate gripes for you Apple-Cult hipsters to choke on for a while.

>> ^EndAll:
I'd like to hear from an Atheist the qualms they might have with the Buddhist religion/philosophy.


Not that I would become a practicing Buddhist, but I have no qualms with the Buddhist Philosophy as a whole. I find a lot of Buddhist teachings to be worth reading. I also understand the benefits of meditation. From a pragmatical viewpoint Buddhist philosophy has much in common with many Atheist/Humanist philosophies.

I do have qualms with the Buddhist religion. I am not an expert on the religion by any means of course, but from an outsiders perspective I see many Buddhist temples, statuary and relics covered in gold, and it makes me wonder. Then I see how many Buddhist dominated cultures are also male dominated cultures, treating women as second class citizens and it makes me wonder some more.

There's no "moving forward into the future" when people are electing these relics who are staunchly anti-intellectual and anti-science. The best way to move forward into the future is to not vote for these fools; they serve only to stifle progress.

For me this was one of the better Keanu Reeves movies. I actually watched it several times on HD, mostly because as mentioned about it kinda made religion be relevant in its cinematic setting. I liked the Gabriel character, the light use of CG, the usage of relics and artifacts. Lucifer himself and so on.

I never read Hellblazer but I understood the perpetual studio need to Americanize everything because they believe Americans can't relate to anyone else but Americans.

Actually, I disagree with Budzos... I enjoyed the movie a lot more than the comic. I found the comics very hokey and disjointed in comparison, whereas the movie really encapsulated what I would LOVE religion to be. To me Catholicism is empty just because it has claims to relics, spells, and traditions which are ineffective in our world but pretend to be powerful in the way they are presented in this movie.

Religion would kick ass if it was based on a reality like this... I'm not sure how else to say it, but religion (and Catholicism specifically) is like people playing a childish game in which they are trying to imagine a world like this movie portrays.

To get more specific, I liked the explanations and backgrounds of the characters much better in the movie than in the comics. The comic has John Constantine being an ex glam-rocker who is slightly psychic/mystic and who's "damnation" doesn't come from an attempted suicide as in the movie, but rather a botched exorcism which is just kinda stupid. The whole suicide thing is really well done in the reimagining in the movie and makes a lot more sense.

Papa midnight is another character which is vastly improved in the movie. In the book, he seems more like a reject from Live and Let Die, a blaxploitation stereotype, whereas in the movie they really brought home the idea of someone that lives between two allegiances.

As for the use of "guns" and other 007ny stuff, I really thought it worked a lot better than the way they present him in the books. Frankly I'd rather have Constantine wielding a holy shotgun with blessed bullets than looking for a tape of his music video in his trashy apartment.

I'll admit that I only got through three of the graphic novels before I stopped, but I just feel that the changes made to Constantine's development improve vastly over what I saw in the books. As for making him American, I hate Keanu in most of his performances and I thought he really brought it for this one. I was pleasantly surprised and this movie remains one of my all-time favs.