Tag: Quora

Deano’s answer to: “Is the 3D in Thor any good?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A

Compared to other recent 3D conversions, Thor is exceptional… Great summary of the European release reactions here:

Compared to the 2D “native” version of Thor, it is an inferior experience, at lower resolution, and with muddier colors and less dark blacks.

If you can only afford to see it once in the theater, I would recommend the 2D version. Your brain and eyes will have much less visual decoding and recompositing work to do, and thus will be more fully free to absorb the storyline and “splosions“.

Is the 3D in Thor any good?

Deano’s answer to: “In Thor, given that Loki is actually a frost giant, why doesn’t he look blue and scary like other frost giants?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A
If by scary you mean scary addicted to the new Pokémon game, yeah.
What could be scarier than sexting between scenes?

Since we see in a flashback that Baby-Loki is picked up by Odin, and begins to switch to a human appearance immediately, that some aspect of Odin’s magic, or “Asgardian Magic” more generally, causes Loki to appear Asgardian.

Conversely, it could be that Jotunheim itself, and the Frost Giant magic, bestows the blue skintone to its inhabitants.

A few corroborating points to this theory:

  • While fighting on Jotunheim, Volstagg is injured, and his wound turns bluish in color;
  • When Loki is attacked, his skin turns blue while his attacker is holding him, and then reverts once he is let go.
  • When Loki lifts up the magical blue cube which contains the Frost Giant magic, he slowly begins to turn blue, only reverting to Asgardian appearance when he releases it.

My personal theory is that, if relieved of his Asgardian clothes and weaponry, and left on the Jotunheim “planetoid”, Loki would indeed slowly revert back to his naturally blue “Frost Giant” appearance, though whether or not he might begin to grow in stature to become a full-on Frost Giant is still doubtful.

This answer originally appeared on Quora: In Thor, given that Loki is actually a frost giant, why doesn’t he look blue and scary like other frost giants?

Deano’s answer to: “At the beginning of Thor, why does Odin tell Thor and Loki (as boys): ‘Only one of you can ascend to the throne. But both of you were born to be kings’?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A
Thor and Loki Attending Dad in the Asgardian Men's Room?
Thor and Loki Attending Dad in the Asgardian Men's Room?

Yes, this refers both to Loki’s Frost Giant anscestry, as well as Odin’s plan to someday forge a peace in which Loki would rule over Jotunheim as King of the Frost Giants.

At the beginning of Thor, why does Odin tell Thor and Loki (as boys): “Only one of you can ascend to the throne. But both of you were born to be kings”?

Deano’s answer to: “Why couldn’t the bridge in Asgard be repaired to allow Thor to get back to Earth?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A
Bifröst, the Rainbow Bridge
If Charlie Sheen were a Norse God, he'd be Bi-Frösting!

It’s not that such a bridge cannot be rebuilt, but rather that in this version of Asgard, at least, it cannot be “magically” rebuilt with a wave of Odin’s hand.

Given how the “bridge cannon” itself seems to work, there seems to be some form of scientific basis around wormhole and/or teleportation theory (and throughout the movie, as much is said). The technology to establish such wormholes seems to have existed in but one location on Asgard – whether that is a security measure to ensure a single route for any large scale invasion, or due simply to the massive energy resources required or other unseen operational costs remains unknown.

The ending makes it pretty clear: Thor will next be seen in The Avengers, and in order for that to happen, he (or perhaps his new flame Jane Foster) will need to find a way to bridge the worlds once more. My guess is that restoring the Bifrost bridge will take approximately 1 year of godly effort – or just in time for Thor to appear onscreen next to the Hulk, Captain America, and Iron Man(*).

(* Just as likely, this plot point will be completely ignored, giving fans yet another thing to discuss once the ensemble movie is released. 😉 )

Why couldn’t the bridge in Asgard be repaired to allow Thor to get back to Earth?

Deano’s answer to: “Why is Dropbox space limited to 100GB?”

Posted on by Deano in Q & A

Update, 4/30/2011:

It is now possible to sign up for Dropbox Teams (http://dropbox.com/teams), a service that allows for pooled storage shared by multiple Dropbox users, which scales well beyond the 100GB individual account limit.

Specific pricing as of today is:

  • 350GB and 5 users for $795/year
  • $125/year per additional user (no additional storage)
  • $200/year per 100GB additional storage

There appears to be no limitation that requires Dropbox Teams be used by a set number of users – a single user could, in theory, purchase as much storage as desired, and use the Teams account as a "really big" individual account.

—————– deprecated, but awesome-for-its-time answer follows ———–

Technically, it's not. In theory, you can PAY for 100GB, and then keep referring additional new users to add to your cap.

Practically speaking, that's just not a viable solution for a business, especially one looking to double the cap, or up it by a factor of 10+.

So, the question then becomes "if I'm allowed to have multiple 100GB accounts, why can't I have one 200GB account?" The answer to that is a bit simpler – you're simply not the target market for Dropbox right now. While Dropbox claims to be looking into solutions in their FAQ ( https://www.dropbox.com/help/160 ), since no movement has been taken on this in over a year, it's clearly not a high priority, and with good reason (for Dropbox).

Dropbox aims to improve sharing and syncing of files for individuals and teams, rather than for the enterprise. 100GB is a good cut off to help dissuade larger companies from relying on Dropbox for their cloud storage needs, since Dropbox storage is NOT guaranteed for backup/disaster recovery/etc… It's running on top of Amazon's S3 storage, and basically at the mercy of whatever Amazon's policies are in that regard.

If you're really interested in cloud storage greater than 100GB, you should read up on "What are Dropbox's major competitors?", which will point you at a few alternatives that operate similarly (SugarSync, in particular, seems to have near-identical features, if clunkier UI).

As a former IT Director, I spent a lot of time thinking about this possibility as a way to "farm out" storage to accomodate the needs of an army of external freelancers. Eventually, I realized I was probably thinking about things a bit backwards – even for a fairly large organization, 100GB can accomodate a great deal of "active" storage. By using Dropbox as the file transfer/sync point for remote and local workers for projects in play ONLY (basically the original intent of the product), and then syncing everything to a secondary server to handle additional versioning/ageing out of older/archive data, you can achieve the best of both worlds – potentially unlimited total storage (even using other cloud solutions if you like), combined with the speed and simplicity of Dropbox.

This type of hybrid setup also gives a nice spread of providers/points of failure, so that if Dropbox experiences an outage, you'll still have access to the data via another local/cloud server… And if you lose your secondary server, it will only affect older/completed projects, not your active working files.

Why is Dropbox space limited to 100GB?