2009-07-20, 20:08 | Link #2243 | |
Blazing General
Join Date: May 2006
Location: CA
Age: 38
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The most 'magical' ability in Nanoha is probably the prophecies. The fact that they spit out vague descriptions instead of nice neat probabilities makes them pretty different in flavor from most other Nanoha 'magic'.
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2009-07-21, 01:41 | Link #2248 | |
Blazing General
Join Date: May 2006
Location: CA
Age: 38
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Though Rein did look like she'd gotten a bit, uh, bigger in the first page of Force. Going by release chronology, obviously.
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2009-07-21, 02:49 | Link #2249 | |
blinded by blood
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The effects appear to increase exponentially when accompanied by a Nana Mizuki image song.
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2009-07-21, 10:53 | Link #2250 |
Once and Current Subber
Join Date: Dec 2005
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Why, surely you've read my latest monograph, "Suspension of Disbelief: Mammary Disposition During Transformation Sequences", in the latest issue of The Science of Lechery?
Which brings up an interesting point. (More than one, really, but seriously for a second.) One thing we don't see a whole lot of in Nanoha is evidence of an advanced society. I don't mean the big things like spaceships and endless free power and magical technological staves, I mean the little stuff. Think about the things you see when the crew wander around Mid - there's not a whole lot there that isn't "21st century Earth except a little nicer". One exception is out of MGLN Vivid - the use of minor Devices to replace cell phones is an obvious application (goodness knows I would be happy if my Blackberry were intelligent). But where's the rest of it? I don't necessarily expect flying cars, but they ought to be driving themselves, right? An example of this from Xenosaga... anyone remember Shion's glasses? How they're just the band on her nose, and she touches them and they "project" the lenses? That's the sort of thing I'm talking about. Little things that imply that a lot of advancement has been going on... |
2009-07-21, 16:16 | Link #2253 |
blinded by blood
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Just because it's new doesn't mean it's better. This is 2009, and we still use thousands of technologies that are a hundred years old or older.
I don't really see the need for cell phones to get much smaller, or become intelligent... I run my own bill up without help, thanks very much. I don't need my cell phone making prank calls at 4 am. ^^;
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2009-07-21, 16:29 | Link #2254 | |
Sword Wielding Penguin
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If someone invents an intelligent cell phone-like device tomarrow, it will have a market, and it will be sold. A lot of people create this hyper-tech for their story without thinking about the impact it would have on society. Take the TSAB computers they're filing reports on. If it's easy enough to make devices that are sentient, can have conversations or even communicate telepathicly. Why not create a terminal that operates on the Telepathic link? What about Voice Command? Would it be so much easier to THINK your report up than to spend four hours typing it up? Don't come up with reasons why this wouldn't be the case, it's just a simple example. A thead actually popped up on spacebattles recently about this particular topic. It's called Tech Desparity. You have super awesome tech over here who's principles would make a fortune in that market over there. Just like the internet was originally a military communications concept. |
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2009-07-21, 20:02 | Link #2255 |
blinded by blood
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Speaking from a more literary analysis perspective, it is somewhat strange, but the writers may have not considered it important, or wanted to leave the Nanohaverse with enough tangible connections to 21st century Japan. So the viewers could relate better.
If you've read Transmetropolitan you know how dizzying a society far removed from our own is.
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2009-07-23, 23:01 | Link #2256 |
~ Your Smile ~
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Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: 346Pro
Age: 38
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Which thus brings us to how annoying some aspects of Mid are. We think that it should be far more alien... but no, not only is it familiar, we can even see mistakes in their design sometimes.
All this can be blamed on something though; they didn't innovate all they had, but they modified what they were given or dug up. I blame the Ancient Belka's Adeptus Mechanicus and their ridiculous hopla, boxy machines and outrageaous engineering to be the predecessor of modern Midchilda machination. Mid's must've thought that whatever they dug up worked best and simply modified it from there. Look only to their Lost Logia hunting to see that they don't really have to invent but keep rediscovering...
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2009-07-24, 00:31 | Link #2257 | ||
Senior Member
Join Date: Jul 2007
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What will most likely happen is that the output will be, if you are lucky, the length of an abstract, written in fragments so disjointed and incomplete you won't dare present them at 2chan, let alone as a proper report. You probably won't even recognize what you wrote yourself. You might think you can dream up a report just in your head, but your brain doesn't work that way. It handles only a few fragments at a time, either general or specific. To a great extent a report is made up as you type. A new decision comes every paragraph, with subdecisions for every sentence and even each word has its own cognitive processing. And then you go back and look at the paragraph and more processing follows. You won't be able to handle them while thinking of the whole essay in your mind, and when the mind-reading machine tries to process your thoughts into words, it has nothing to process. You just hadn't thought of the essay in enough detail. If it can miraculously turn the excuses of essay concept fragments in your brain into a presentable essay, it is writing your essay for you. Not only will it place your own value in doubt, but common AIs in Mid aren't that advanced - they can't even automate most combat decision-making, and that in many ways is easy compared to writing an human essay. The problem also occurs with speech - people are much more careless with their spoken speech than written report, even if the Voice Recognition is perfect. The act of being forced to type out every letter creates discipline in a mind. The fact is, for a reasonably proficient touch typist, they can almost certainly type faster than they can think up an essay or report in the required level of precision. To take myself, I can type up to 70WPM or so in a typing test, which means 7-8 minutes to fill a 500 word page. I know my practical limit when writing an essay is in the region of 500 words PER HOUR, and that's if I don't have a brain block, don't have to look over references and I'm not counting over real read-back time, just a one-pass of the kind you'll do when the assignment is due tomorrow and you hadn't touched it... Under such circumstances, the certainty of the keyboard arguably wins over VC or Thought. It can be presumed that they've tried out such ideas and learnt this. This is one of the reasons I actually think MGLN has this part right - it is all too common just to write in tech for tech's sake itself, thinking only of potentials rather than a realistic appraisal. No gratuitous use of technology. Just use it where it is needed. |
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2009-07-24, 08:06 | Link #2258 |
blinded by blood
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When it comes to tech writing, especially in fanfiction, I try to stay as close to canon as possible. With my original writing, I like the Twenty Minutes into the Future type setting. Close enough to be familiar, yet different enough to adhere to the Rule of Cool.
The only outrageous tech in A Path Through Remembrance is Nena's sniper rifle, which the TSAB ends up classifying as Lost Logia (I think that is just their catch-all phrase for any tech or magic they don't understand). And particle-beam weapons, even man-portable ones the size of a large real-world sniper rifle, are less outrageous than talking magical staves. ^^; Nena's rifle is unique and original. There aren't any more--it was a proof-of-concept weapon that in trials proved to be useless for anything other than extreme long-range sniping. Nena, of course, discovered another very good use for it--killing powerful mages. As we know, regular kinetic weapons failed to do the job properly on even moderately powerful mages due to the autobarrier function built into most Intelligent Devices. On another note, the only fully-functional true AI in the entire series are the Unison Devices and the Guardian Knight program (which are in sort of a gray area, since they're closer to "artificial human" or "magical construct" than AI). Some of the Intelligent Devices manage to have a level of intelligence higher than others, though. Subaru's rollerskates even acted without her prompting while she was unconscious, and Raising Heart and Bardiche hold nearly-complete conversatiions (chock full of Gratuitous Engrish) with their owners.
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2009-07-24, 18:11 | Link #2260 |
blinded by blood
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They don't understand and cannot replicate it, but it wasn't created by a vanished civilization--it was created by a human weapons company, who also produces particle-beam weaponry for mount on starships and vehicles.
The neutron rifle was a one-off project, a proof-of-concept design merely to show to potential investors and clients how advanced their miniaturization technology was. Unique, one of a kind, outside of the TSAB's understanding and technology. Considering that the Tome of Night Sky is considered a Lost Logia, and the Belkans are not dead...
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