Well, I finally found out how to add JAR files so that Mac OS X's Java implementation automatically picks it up, much like adding JAR files to the MRJClasses directory in Mac OS 9. You have to add the files to "/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Home/lib/ext/" which requires root access or sudo. Now I have to figure out how to get the OTM working from the Terminal...

Apparently 5% of people in Korea are playing this one online RPG. The commentator goes on to say "...but the numbers are still astonishing -- imagine if 5% of all Americans all plated the same online game, for instance." (The number is 2 million out of 46 million have active accounts). The only problem I have with the commentator is that nothing extrapolates that well.

Saying that 5% of 40 million can extrapolate to 5% of 250 million is nonsense because it won't get that high. America is just too diverse for something that marginal to take hold (which implies that the Korean figure is a statistical abnormality, which it is in this case). I can imagine it if he said "imagine 5% of California" since we're about that big, we're one state with more of a common culture with each other than with New York or Texas say...

I'm reading "D-Day, June 6, 1944" by Stephen Ambrose. Unlike "The Longest Day" which is more of a story (much like "The Killer Angels" on which the movie "Gettysburg" was based on), "D-Day" uses contemporary accounts mixed with narration. Many of the accounts are oral histories taken after the invasion or after the war.

If you've seen "The Longest Day" then you'll recall the scenes with the 29th Infantry Division assaulting Omaha beach, running down the ramps of their Higgins boats and up the beach, some men getting hit but most making it to the shingle. For it's time it was as accurate a potrayal as Hollywood could get. Let's face it, you can't show certain in a movie -- it just wouldn't be accepted.

Contrast that scene with the same one in "Saving Private Ryan". Now you have people taking casualties as soon as the ramp is down and before they can move out, boats exploding from artillery fire, people getting shot up and blown up and very few making it to the shingle where there would be a little bit of cover. Much more realistic of what happened at Omaha Beach. There was even a Ranger battalion there (I though all the Rangers were taking out the Point du Hoc batteries) so Tom Hanks' character could have been a Ranger.

My image of D-Day is essentially Omaha Beach, a tough beach assault under fire, where 2000 of the almost 5000 casualties on D-Day occurred. But you look at Utah Beach on the right, where the 4th Infantry Division only took a couple hundred casualties and the three British/Canadian divisions on the left where casualties weren't too bad (the paratroopers took a lot of casualties) and now I know that it wasn't quite that bad, other than on Omaha Beach.

Some people say that "Saving Private Ryan" is the greatest war movie ever and that all war movies from now on should be that realistic. Those people were rather disappointed with "Pearl Harbor" which wasn't as gory. Personally, though I think that "Saving Private Ryan" was a really good movie, I don't want all my war movies to be that intense. Certain scenes in SPR were intensely draining -- emotionally, spiritually, whatever. You just can't do that to an audience every time out, people would stop going to the movies.

Pick any movie. Whatever profession/hobby/pasttime it depicts will never stand up to people in that profession/hobby/pasttime. Hollywood always changes the way it is to make it more dramatic or whatnot. If you were totally satisfied the way a movie depicts your job, then you were probably watching a documentary. Although real life jobs and occupations can be exciting, it's not exciting to most people. That's the way it is and that's why I'm fine with movie inaccuracies, not that I notice many in any case.