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[KaelGotDwarves]

Oh god, when I heard orson scott card speak it was a huge disappointment, it was all about him whinging that all of his later works were better than Ender's Game, but everyone loves Ender's Game better for some reason. Also, liberals are destroying the country.

I wanted to hear some insight into the mind behind Ender's Game, not more mormon preaching.

[Dakk]

Orson is full of shit. The only times he even talks about his books is when he's advertising them or givin pre-release interviews, then he apparently forgets about key plot points from his own books. 90% he just rambles about mormon stuff, how homosexuality is hawrrible, and odd subjective references to Ayn Rand, though he'll never admit it.

Harlan is annoying aswell, but he's so unintentionally ridiculously funny nobody even cares.

[ChairmanPoo]

You know, most Harlan Ellison's books that I can recall right now fall into the "strange" subcategory of sci-fi. As in, abstract and odd.

[Neonivek]

Oddly enough I found the Alien race to be quite creepy looking...

THEN again they did just effectively morph a human face into that because it would be easier to recognise.

Well that and their stalky boney appearance and their cut off tails. How they have super strength is beyond me.

[cowofdoom78963]

How they have super strength is beyond me.

Wasent it about carbon fibers in their bones or something?

[CobaltKobold]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Also, in the end, (Hence spoilers) wouldn't the humans come back?  What's stopping them from amassing Earth's armies and burning Pandora to the ground with some well-placed nukes?

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Sequels, which rumor has as "planned on successful first movie."

At least, for the coming-back part. What I think keeps them from nuking, etc. is that they're there for profit. That would not be profitable.

[CobaltKobold]

The mistake most people make is they assume future\spaceships = Sci-fi, which is completely and totally wrong.

The genre term you are looking for is "space opera".

I feel i should also repeat; again, the problem with the Na'vi having evolved on Pandora is that there are no other tetrapods. The odds of a single species evolving to be tetrapedal with only 2 eyes, while everything else evolves to be hexapedal with 4 eyes, are effectively nil. You never get 1 of something.

Egg laying mammal?

\The message i got from that was not 'industry bad, environment good' but rather 'don't go fucking up other people's planets without their permission, unless they're too stupid or weak to do anything about it.'

Fixed it for you.

Ready for that Vogon highway?

Doom, Dungeon Siege, Dungeons and Dragons, Blood Rayne, Max Payne, and that's off the top of my head.

How can you forget Super Mario Brothers? I mean, aside from wanting to.

Yeah, the visuals are top notch, even if the movie can't be watched without polarized glasses, so it loses all fucking meaning on your home television.  I still say the Na'vi were so deep in the Uncanny Valley it's hard to take them seriously, especially with the atrociously hammy acting by Alien Princess.

1. I saw the 2d version(we don't have the other screening). It's still great-looking.
2. YMMV.

The best possible example of a bad game based on a movie: E.T.

Everybody talks about how awful that game was.  I'll bet I'm only person here who's ever actually played it.  It was awful, yeah, but just because it was an unplayable mess of nonsense.

*raises claw* Still own a copy too.

[Duke 2.0]

I feel i should also repeat; again, the problem with the Na'vi having evolved on Pandora is that there are no other tetrapods. The odds of a single species evolving to be tetrapedal with only 2 eyes, while everything else evolves to be hexapedal with 4 eyes, are effectively nil. You never get 1 of something.

Egg laying mammal?

The Platypus is strange enough in the fact that it has mammalian, reptilian and avian features. The fact that it is not the only creature with say, a bill suggests that...
 Well, it's just strange. But I'm not feeling this analogy.

[Dakk]

God was obviously playing Spore when he created the platypus.

[Neruz]

I feel i should also repeat; again, the problem with the Na'vi having evolved on Pandora is that there are no other tetrapods. The odds of a single species evolving to be tetrapedal with only 2 eyes, while everything else evolves to be hexapedal with 4 eyes, are effectively nil. You never get 1 of something.

Egg laying mammal?

I assume you're talking about the Platypus, which belongs to the 'Monotreme' group. Four species of Echidna also belong to the group, these Echidna species are also egg laying mammals.

[CobaltKobold]

i stand by cthulhu, in my opinion avatar just lacks the fur to be a furrry movie[snip] pretty blue skins and feline faces, meh, etc.

I went expecting blue cat people. I did not see blue cat people. They looked pretty human to me.

This Subnormality is better than Avatar, and even ties into the whole "Let's nuke the Na'vi" thing, but be prepared for walls 'o text like you've never seen before.

That writing is ugly. But the story is great. My eyes are unharmed.

Why the hell would we depend on viruses? Hell, our viruses can't infect most life on our own planet. We would send over germs, fungi and bacteria that would eat them alive.

Imagine the bad publicity when it got out that The Company unleashed biological weapons on primitive natives and commited genocide just to get at rocks.

Yeah, we'd have to give the survivors casinos and everything!

Plague blankets.

Windows are windows in armor. Aluminum oxynitride, or whatever the actual name is, is one step towards actual transparent armor.

Actual transparent aluminum? ...*gigglefit*

Neruz: I thought I was wrong there (knew about echidnas), but wasn't sure.

[Il Palazzo]

Windows are windows in armor. Aluminum oxynitride, or whatever the actual name is, is one step towards actual transparent armor.

Actual transparent aluminum? ...*gigglefit*

Aluminium oxide(Al2O3). A.k.a. Corundum. You've been mining those out since you first figured out sapphire's and ruby's value in DF.

The technology to make aluminum oxide "glass" is already there. Since early 1900's.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Well, it's essentially artificial sapphire created by special technology. The brand name's ALON, ALuminium OxyNitride. It's a transparent alumina ceramic. There's little info on the wiki, and even less on the site. But they do have a picture showing sheets of what I assume to be standard bulletproof laminated glass compared to ALON laminate sheets of comparable bullet-resisting performance. ALON laminate is like 4 times thinner, almost like common window glass.

[Virex]

Well, it's essentially artificial sapphire created by special technology. The brand name's ALON, ALuminium OxyNitride. It's a transparent alumina ceramic. There's little info on the wiki, and even less on the site. But they do have a picture showing sheets of what I assume to be standard bulletproof laminated glass compared to ALON laminate sheets of comparable bullet-resisting performance. ALON laminate is like 4 times thinner, almost like common window glass.

Problem with ALON, as with most other ceramics is that it's 3 times as expensive as normal bulet proof glass. Which may also explain why the windshield shattered at the end of the movie, If the humans used some outdated helicopter models with bullet proof glass alongside those with ALON to drop the cost.

[Zironic]

A bullet is a small high-velocity projectile while an arrow is a large, low-velocity projectile with length. While this means the arrow should have less forced caused by speed, it also means the arrow deforms much less, and will hit the plane with the same shape it had before and won't deflect as easily as it's mass is much more significant. A bullet on the other hand is much less significant in mass, such that, by designing a bullet proof windshield, one doesn't necessary design an arrow or othertype weapon proof windshield.