Day: May 19, 2011

Deano’s answer to: “In Thor, why does the Destroyer walk in such a hip-swiveling sexy manner?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A

After much researching online, and despite counter-evidence in the form of IMDb listing, it seems that the motion capture for The Destroyer was done by Joseph Gatt:
“I’m a lover, not a Destroyer…”

Though Gatt’s IMDb entry for Thor (2011 movie) listed him as Frost Giant Grundroth several weeks before the release, in several interviews Gatt gave before the movie’s release, he made it clear that his role was “top secret”, and that all he could say was the following:

  • He’s a villain
  • Action-oriented role
  • Gives Thor lots of trouble
  • Has scenes with Loki
  • Has sweet weapons
  • Is an Asgardian warrior

The last three items make it much clearer – the only ‘Asgardian warrior’ (Frost Giants are… uh… Juntenheimers?) who gives Thor trouble, who also has scenes with Loki… Well, he’s either Odin or the Destroyer. And last I checked, the guy in the photo above doesn’t look nearly cut enough to be Anthony Hopkins, so…

As far as the “beefcake factor” with female viewers… I think the prospect of a crazily-morphable unstoppable sexy robot eunuch is a fantasy that spans gender identity, so in that sense, no, it’s probably not aimed at the ladies (exclusively).

Finally, none of the data at IMDb, Gatt’s website josephgatt.com, or Wikipedia reveals the specific sexy-quotient of Mr. Gatt’s stride for comparison. Intrepid researchers are undaunted, however, and are looking for copies of the God of War video game series for possible corroboration.

This answer originally appeared on Quora: In Thor, why does the Destroyer walk in such a hip-swiveling sexy manner?

Deano’s answer to: “Where is U from?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A

Okay, this question requires a bit of explanation… There I was, just chilling on Quora.com, reading questions, writing and voting on answers, and suggesting edits here and there to help out my fellow Intertronians.

Then I run across this question: “Where is U from? I is from China”. Oh man. How could I possibly resist?!?

So, without further ado, I give you my answer, in all it’s snarkalicious glory:

From the Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U):

The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details.

During the late Middle Ages, two forms of “v” developed, which were both used for its ancestor u and modern v. The pointed form “v” was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form “u” was used in the middle or end, regardless of sound. So whereas valor and excuse appeared as in modern printing, “have” and “upon” were printed haue and vpon. The first distinction between the letters “u” and “v” is recorded in a Gothic alphabet from 1386, where “v” preceded “u”. By the mid-16th century, the “v” form was used to represent the consonant and “u” the vowel sound, giving us the modern letter “u”. Capital “U” was not accepted as a distinct letter until many years later.

Also, contrary to your assertion in the question details, it seems that ‘i’ is not originally from China, but rather is, like ‘u’ Semitic in origin (if you have supporting evidence to the contrary, it would be fascinating):

In Semitic, the letter was probably originally a pictogram for a leg with a hand, derived from a similar hieroglyphics that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative (/ʕ/) in Egyptian, but was reassigned to /j/ (as in English “yes”) by Semites, because their word for “arm” began with that sound. This letter could also be used to represent /i/, the close front unrounded vowel, mainly in foreign words.
The Greeks adopted a form of this Phoenician yodh as their letter iota (‹Ι, ι›) to represent /i/, the same as in the Old Italic alphabet. In Latin (as in Modern Greek), it was also used to represent /j/. The modern letter ‹j› was firstly a variation of ‹i›, and both were used interchangeably for both the vowel and the consonant, coming to be differentiated only in the 16th century. The dot over the lowercase ‘i’ is sometimes called a tittle. In the Turkish alphabet, dotted and dotless I are considered separate letters, representing a front and back vowel, respectively, and both have upper-case (‹I›, ‹İ›) and lowercase (‹ı›, ‹i›) forms.
In modern English, ‹i› represents different sounds, either a “long” diphthong /aɪ/ as in kite, which developed from Middle English /iː/ after the Great Vowel Shift of the 15th century, or the “short”, /ɪ/ as in bill.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I)

This answer originally appeared on Quora: Where is U from?

Deano’s answer to: “Why doesn’t Apple do more to limit the iPod / iPhone / iPad hacker scene?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A

A few points:

  • The harder you lock it down, the harder they try to break in – Apple keeps things open and easy enough for Grandma to use, which also means really clever folks can figure out ways to hack the system.
  • App makers who are concerned with the piracy numbers are app makers who can’t sell apps. Stop whining, start coding, until you have something people will gladly pay for.
  • There really is no good alternative for developers – app sales across other devices is largely abysmal compared to iOS app sales… So, in a way, Apple doesn’t need to worry about losing too many Apple-friendly devs to greener pastures, especially not over app sales lost to jailbreakers.
  • Apple can use the jailbreak community as a hostile skunkworks – sometimes, some really brilliant app ideas come out for jailbroken phones, and either prove that an Apple or carrier-based dev restriction is unnecessary, and can be removed in a future OS release (Google Voice comes to mind). This is especially great, because if Apple gets complete deniability with the courts and carriers, but get to see and “steal back” any good ideas which most users could benefit from.
  • Jailbreakers are Apple customers – they don’t like some aspect of the official OS releases… Not modifiable enough being the main complaint. That said, they either refuse to migrate to Android (or soon, WebOS), or they’ve gone there, and run back screaming (I put it at about 50-50). Anyway, even when you agree to disagree, you still want to keep those customers, especially when you make much larger margins from device sales.

This answer originally appeared on Quora: Why doesn’t Apple do more to limit the iPod / iPhone / iPad hacker scene?