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I think it's from the BBC show comedy Coupling episode 15 entitled "The End of the Line"
http://epguides.com/Coupling/guide.shtml

"Steve has stupidly swapped phone numbers with a girl he chatted to in a bar, and fearing that she may actually call him, takes to answering the phone in an Australian accent, as "Bruce's Bar and Grill". Meanwhile, Susan, in order to get out of an awkward situation being chatted up by an Australian in another bar, phones home using a French accent."

Century City was a lawyer drama set in the future which tried to look at future legal situations (think cloning, meddling with embryos to produce the "perfect" child, etc). Only eight episodes were produced in 2004 and four were never aired (including the one I'm thinking of; though they are (were) obtainable via p2p). One episode (Without a Tracer dealt with a possible result of this sort of device.

Basically, every child has a tracer (linked to video/audio surveillance no less). The episode revolves around a teenage girl who was fed up with being watched by her parents and removed her tracer, at which point the parents panicked because she'd apparently vanished. IIRC she hired a lawyer to get a ruling to "allow" her NOT to wear the tracer.

Their point was that this sort of device, whilst well-meaning, can become intrusive. I think (and the drama hints) that the tendency will be to rely on devices, further abdicating parental responsibility. Furthermore, I wonder if anyone's considered whether this would make the wearer EASIER to target, should the ID for their device become available, e.g. to someone wishing to kidnap a child for extortion.

you misread - the production company has produced for seasons of DVDs. JAG Has a total of 10 seasons and has been cancelled.

I care about the fact that I can't write and publish my own version of "Lord
of the Rings", even though J.R.R. Tolkien has been dead for almost 35 years.

You picked a poor example there, because right now everybody is lambasting the writer of the teen novel 'Eragon' for his direct ripoffs from Tolkein among others. He doesn't seem to be in jail, I haven't even heard of any warning letters from Christopher Tolkein.

I wonder how big of a copyright supporter Disney would have been had the writings of the Brothers Grimm not been in the public domain for them to make millions from with no financial responsibility to anyone?

I grew up watching Walt Disney live in person on televison each Sunday night introduce us to another story on his 'Walt Disney Presents' show. I try not to project onto Disney the man what his company has become since his passing.

It's kinda like Hewlett-Packard after the founders left, or WalMart after Sam passed away.

It's pretty sweet that we've got it on Sky over here, however they appear to be showing the episodes out of order.

According to epguides season 10 pt. 2 should go:
e12 The Quest
e13 Bounty
e14 The Shroud
e15 Line in the Sand
e16 The Road not Taken

They are actually showing them in this order:
e12 The Quest
e15 Line in the Sand
e16 The Road not Taken
e14 The Shroud
e13 Bounty

They appear to be trying their damnedest with this, and pushing the series back in America, to piss of the fans and kill the series.

FireFly Episode List

Season 1
1. 1- 1 1AGE01 20 Sep 02 The Train Job
2. 1- 2 1AGE02 27 Sep 02 Bushwhacked
3. 1- 3 1AGE05 4 Oct 02 Our Mrs. Reynolds
4. 1- 4 1AGE06 18 Oct 02 Jaynestown
5. 1- 5 1AGE07 25 Oct 02 Out of Gas
6. 1- 6 1AGE03 1 Nov 02 Shindig
7. 1- 7 1AGE04 8 Nov 02 Safe
8. 1- 8 1AGE08 15 Nov 02 Ariel
9. 1- 9 1AGE09 6 Dec 02 War Stories
10. 1-10 1AGE11 13 Dec 02 Objects in Space
11. 1-11 1AGE79 20 Dec 02 Serenity (1)
12. 1-12 1AGE79 20 Dec 02 Serenity (2)
13. 1-13 1AGE10 UNAIRED Heart of Gold
14. 1-14 1AGE12 UNAIRED Trash
15. 1-15 1AGE13 UNAIRED The Message

Feature Movie

F- 1 30 Sep 05 Serenity

IMDB Episode Guide

Season 1, Episode 1: The Train Job - 20 September 2002
Mal and his crew pull a train robbery.

Season 1, Episode 2: Bushwhacked - 27 September 2002
The crew of Serenity stumble upon the ruins of a transport ship and decide to search the vessel for any salvageable goods, only to discover that the ship is not entirely deserted.

Season 1, Episode 3: Our Mrs. Reynolds - 4 October 2002
A woman claiming to be Mal's wife appears aboard Serenity.

Season 1, Episode 4: Jaynestown - 18 October 2002
The crew pulls a heist in a town where Jayne once robbed the local magistrate, making him a local folk hero, and a target for the local police.

Season 1, Episode 5: Out of Gas - 25 October 2002
When Serenity's life support system fails, Mal orders the crew off the ship - but he stays behind.

Season 1, Episode 6: Shindig - 1 November 2002
After scuffling with one of Inara's clients, Mal is challenged to a duel.

Season 1, Episode 7: Safe - 8 November 2002
While visiting an outlying planet, Simon and River are kidnapped by local villagers in need of a doctor. Meanwhile, the rest of the crew are forced to seek medical help from an unlikely source when one of their own is shot.

Season 1, Episode 8: Ariel - 15 November 2002
When the crew of Serenity arrives on the core world 'Ariel', Simon realises it is the perfect opportunity to sneak River in to an Aliiance medical facility and find out what they did to her. In return for the crew's help in getting them in to the facility, Simon helps them organise an operation to steal valuable medical supplies.

Season 1, Episode 9: War Stories - 6 December 2002
Wash feels threatened by the bond between Mal and Zoe. In order to see for himself how the two work together Wash demands that he goes on a mission with Mal to sell the medical supplies instead of Zoe. Unfortunately, Niska has found out where Serenity is and captures Mal and Wash and tortures them as revenge for their failure in the train robbery mission they took from him.

Season 1, Episode 10: Objects in Space - 13 December 2002
The crew of Serenity consider ways to deal with River as her illness makes her a danger to them. That night, a bounty hunter named Jubal Early, who has been tracking Serenity since it left Ariel, invades the ship in order to try and take River and Simon. Early gets the crew in lock-down and it seems that River is the only one who can stop him.

Season 1, Episode 11: Serenity - 20 December 2002
In the first half of the original pilot episode, the crew of Serenity takes on several passengers and make their way to another planet to try and sell goods they salvaged from a wrecked ship. Their efforts are impeded, though, when Wash and Mal realize that there is an undercover alliance fed on board. In the second half of the original pilot, Simon struggles to save Kaylee, and in turn River and himself while Mal, Zoe, and Jayne attempt to unload the cargo from the salvage to a trigger-happy mayor of a border moon.

Season 1, Episode 12: Heart of Gold - 4 August 2003
Serenity responds to a distress call from Nandi, an old friend of Inara's, who is running

kinda funny and embarassing to admit that I'm in the same shoes -- I paid for satellite service pretty much only for battlestar galactica.
I'm a HUGE fan of Battlestar. You'll be very disappointed to know how they plan on scheduling the remaining episodes of season 2.5. In Feb they are putting almost 11 months off before the final 2 (which ends New Years eve). That means from episode 2x01 to 2x10 is almost an 18 month stretch. I'm so disgusted (especially since it recently made #1)

Source here
16. 2- 1 201 15 Jul 05 Scattered
...
27. 2-12 13 Jan 06 Resurrection Ship, Part 2
...
33. 2-18 3 Feb 06 **episode name removed to be spoiler free**
34. 2-19 219 31 Dec 06 **episode name removed to be spoiler free**
35. 2-20 220 31 Dec 06 **episode name removed to be spoiler free**

Considering the second season has already started airing

In which alternate universe? Be sure to check: http://epguides.com/DoctorWho_2005/ before responding....

That does it then. With this news, and the fact that it didn't rank in the top 50 Sci-Fi shows, I'm going to have to dump my Manimal tapes.

At one point, I was working on a Python program that would act as a proxy, and would parse TV.com pages and make them look like TV Tome pages (I was using the Wayback Machine as reference). It was going to cache the pages from TV.com as I went to different shows' areas, and present them as one page if that was the way it looked at TV Tome. It would also remove all the flash ads that slow my browser down.

However, I realized I was wasting my time and that it would not be a good idea, as I'd basically have to be running a proxy all the time to notice a benefit. I gave up writing it, and have since moved on to http://www.epguides.com/.

If your just looking for episode listings and the episode names, http://www.epguides.com/ is pretty good. No flash ads or anything. It also links straight to the TV.com page when you click on the episode link. So that option is still available.

I can just imagine how it would sound in a movie: My name is Wolschansky, Vojzeh Wolschansky.

There was an old police sitcom called Barney Miller with a character named Stan Wojciehowicz. When ever anyone asked how do you spell it he would simply say, "spell it like it sounds". But as you might imagine the character had the nickname Wojo.

Going to school with kids who also had -ski /-sky sirnames also got abbrivated. I would imagine this person would get shortened to Wolsky and be happy with it.

I wonder how other fellow slashdotters from overseas solve this problem

I'm not from overseas and my name wasn't hard to convert to english. Just replace Z with dot above (stupid slashdot) with a Z and sometimes replace I with Y randomly. It's not hard to pronounce but no bugger knows how to spell it. The nickname Zuke became common among my family and others who share my sirname.

Though I can't for example say "Z" because it will end up being C.

Er, not sure what you're talking about. Check out the titles and air dates guide over at epguides.com. It shows 16 episodes listed so far, with the air date of 4x16 during the same week that 3x17 aired last year. At most, they're one episode behind last year's 24-episode schedule. I don't know if they plan to announce/air more episodes after 4x16, but they're certainly not behind in content for this season, considering the date.

Disney already did a Toy Story series, see here for details. It was basically the Buzz Lightyear show as it would have existed in the Toy Story universe I believe.

And the ratio of IE::NN (Mozilla, Firefox, et al.)?

I realize even one is a security issue, but now we're dealing with issues of scale.

Microsoft's problems lie with their code architecture. That's it - simple[1]. When WHG3[2] redirected as many keyboards as possible for a one-month effort to shore up the code and squash security issues, did it work? No. It was PR. Nothing more, nothing less.
They need to start over and have some code architects who actually know how to deal with preventing buffer overflows & anything else squirming around in the bowels of their code.
Years ago, they were trying to hire people who would work 20+ hours a day. Mass coding was more important than style (or quality).
If you've played competitive soccer, you know the difference between a finesse game and a physical game. Microsoft cares nothing about finesse, even if it wins in the long-run.
Most people who have been around and had an opportunity to write code on a semi-reasonable schedule and care about how solid their code is can do so.
Regardless of where they are, 95% of the people in this business probably shouldn't be there. They think they are and they think they're good, but because of a variety of circumstances, you don't have to be good, just good enough. Unfortunately, that's not good - particularly for the users - and that sucks.
If Microsoft were to lock a few of their better code architects away and let them do their job(s), then base the remainder of their code on it, you'd see far better products coming out. This is part of why a lot of the Open Source products|projects are generally better. Not because "they aren't Microsoft", but because if there's inherently something wrong with what you check in, someone else is going to trump it. I don't think that's the case at Microsoft. Stomping on someone else's code means the stomper should be working on something else (in Microsoft's eyes).

Most people who have paid attention over the years know MS almost missed the Internet boat (rescued by one of Billy the Kid's Summer sojourns); almost missed the XML boat - and have overdone it in some ways - we go from switches in .bat files, to variously named and formatted files, to .ini files, to registry, to XML files - for practically everything in some areas.

What's Microsoft's next snag? We've all discussed it here. And it's not Linux. It's the underlying philosophy & mindset behind Linux. They don't understand Open Source and instead focus on the output, hence the appearance they're against Linux (see influx of M$ to SCO - they see SCO as anti-Linux, not anti-OpenSource). Were Linux developed in a setting where everyone was paid a salary and Linux were sold in shrinkwrap, Microsoft would have an enemy they could fight. They understand money. And when they had people working 20+ hours/day, that was for money, power, and prestige.
Remember NightCrawler in the opening scenes of X-Men 2? The Secret Service didn't have a chance - they didn't understand what they were seeing - never mind they weren't equipped to fight (although they thought they could). That's one example. Want a sillier one? Remember the episode of M*A*S*H where Hawkeye and BJ have a bathtub shipped to them so they can cool off in the heat? When the Scrounger comes, he wants to know how much they're charging people and simply cannot believe it's free - accusing them of being communists.
Microsoft simply cannot understand a standard accounting|bookkeeping system not being used for the purpose of generating business-quality and -targeted software. Shareware is one thing, but for all-purpose use? Unless & until they untangle what Open Source really means, they're going to chase their tails - perhaps until it's too late.


[1] "Make things simple, not simpler." -Erasmus
"From simplicity arises elegance." -me
[2] William Henry Gates 3rd

Then of course there's the times when they change a great show and destroy it...

Why did they change it? Why?
Nephilium
Man is certainly stark mad: he cannot make a worm, yet he will make gods by the dozen. -- Michel de Montaigne

Shows like Friends, ER and NYPD Blue have started a trend of producing only 16-18 episodes a year of hit shows

Every season of ER has 22 episodes (except the first which had 26 including the pilot) and the only season of Friends with less than 24 episodes is the last one which has 20. NYPD Blue has always had 22 episodes per season the only exceptions being season 8 with 20, and season 9 with 23.

You really should check your facts before posting, oh sorry I forgot this was /.

Oh and yes I know some of the friends eps are two parts, but they air as two seperate episodes so get counted as 2.

Maybe what you are thinking of is the way networks instead of running a new episode per week spread them out throughout the year and fill the gaps with re-runs. This is a very annoying practice which greatly frustrates fans trying to follow storylines from episode to episode. Tricky to do when you have to wait through a 6 week sceduling break for your next fix.

Shows like Friends, ER and NYPD Blue have started a trend of producing only 16-18 episodes a year of hit shows

Every season of ER has 22 episodes (except the first which had 26 including the pilot) and the only season of Friends with less than 24 episodes is the last one which has 20. NYPD Blue has always had 22 episodes per season the only exceptions being season 8 with 20, and season 9 with 23.

You really should check your facts before posting, oh sorry I forgot this was /.

Oh and yes I know some of the friends eps are two parts, but they air as two seperate episodes so get counted as 2.

Maybe what you are thinking of is the way networks instead of running a new episode per week spread them out throughout the year and fill the gaps with re-runs. This is a very annoying practice which greatly frustrates fans trying to follow storylines from episode to episode. Tricky to do when you have to wait through a 6 week sceduling break for your next fix.

Shows like Friends, ER and NYPD Blue have started a trend of producing only 16-18 episodes a year of hit shows

Every season of ER has 22 episodes (except the first which had 26 including the pilot) and the only season of Friends with less than 24 episodes is the last one which has 20. NYPD Blue has always had 22 episodes per season the only exceptions being season 8 with 20, and season 9 with 23.

You really should check your facts before posting, oh sorry I forgot this was /.

Oh and yes I know some of the friends eps are two parts, but they air as two seperate episodes so get counted as 2.

Maybe what you are thinking of is the way networks instead of running a new episode per week spread them out throughout the year and fill the gaps with re-runs. This is a very annoying practice which greatly frustrates fans trying to follow storylines from episode to episode. Tricky to do when you have to wait through a 6 week sceduling break for your next fix.

According to Episodes Guide (an address worth memorizing - you won't need need a bookmark for it), there were seventy-nine articles not including the pilot. The pilot is labelled "UNAIRED".

... then maybe get a chimpanzee to ride around with you in the truck and name him Bear!

Epguides.com
TV Tome

Another British first was the in-house system described in this show (episode 5)

www.epguides.com/homemovies

Pure TNT is highly unstable and will go off with a hit from a hammer. You're probably thinking of dynamite where TNT is mixed with keiselguhr (a type of clay) which is far more stable, as long as the two stay mixed. If old style dynamite is left too long the TNT can leak out, often called "weeping jelly". This stuff is very unstable, as seen in MacGyver.

Since i got broadband a few years ago i started downloading TV shows off kazaa mostly and IRC if i was looking for something specific, i know downloading tv shows is a legal grey area, but i downloaded some commercials too(anyone seen the trunk monkey car ad?). Once i had every episode of the simpsons i realized i needed some more space. Added an 80gb HD, which was later upgraded to a 160gb and so on, i currently have about a quarter TB in my main PC. I kept everything well organized, folder for each series, all filenames were "Show Title - Episode #/production code - Episode Title", the prod.#s and episode titles i got all from here. Then i noticed a lot of the shows i had sitting on my HD were coming out on dvd. DVD has so many advantages over the stuff i downloaded/encoded myself; quality, special features, portability, etc. I started to burn entire seasons to data CD-Rs(dont have a dvd burner yet) for backup as shows were released on DVD. This's freed up A LOT of HD space. I havn't gotten around to buying all of what i've burned, still havn't bought the Dr Who, DS9, SG1 or Red Dwarf sets, but i have The first season of Farscape, and all of the Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama and South Park Sets and also the Complete Series of Firefly on preorder. :p If your looking at several $K NAS solutions i think just buying the DVDs is within your budget. The only thing i miss about not having all the shows on HD is just opening up my playlist with every show in it on shuffle, but i guess i could get a 500 disc DVD player or something. Do they even make those?

This kind of looks like a crude first step towards M.A.N.T.I.S. - an old sci-fi show where a paraplegic puts on an exoskeleton and gets to be a superhero.

Since a good percentage of you probably weren't even born yet when the show that this reference came from aired:

http://epguides.com/WKRPinCincinnati/guide.shtml#e p007

From TV Tome:

"For millions of years earth was fertile and rich. Then polution(sic) and waste began to take their toll. Civilization fell into ruin. This is the world of the 25th century. Only a handful of scientists remain. Men, who have vowed to rebuild what has been destroyed...This is their achievement...Ark II, a mobile storehouse of scientific knowledge, manned by a highly trained crew of young people. Their mission: to bring the hope of a new future to mankind. Ark II log, entry #1 - I Jonah, Ruth, Samuel and Adam are fully aware of the dangers we face as we venture into unknown, maybe even hostile areas. But, we're determined to bring the promise of a new civilization to our people and our planet."

Ooh, and a cheesy picture here.

Strange. I've heard that `Lew Morton' is a fake name which writers use to sign material which is so bad that they don't want to take credit for it.

from this page...

In response to a rumor that Lew Morton is not a real person, Paul Simms responded with:

"No, Lew Morton is a real writer, but often the episodes on which he gets a "Written By" credit aren't very good ones. It's probably just a coincidence."

Manimal!

Anyone else head about this? Apparantly theres some new saturday morning cartoon called Stargate Infinity, i just got the first ep off kazza, but i havn't been bored enough to watch it cuz the quality is shite. Speaking of shitty quality anyone else seen the pilot for firefly? Why didn't they air that!?!??

Don't forget manimal!

I wouldn't call it early. Very few series get as many as 79 episodes, especially one hour series. Getting cancelled early is something like the ex-Seinfeld shows with 5, 8, or 10 episodes.

I wouldn't call it early. Very few series get as many as 79 episodes, especially one hour series. Getting cancelled early is something like the ex-Seinfeld shows with 5, 8, or 10 episodes.

I wouldn't call it early. Very few series get as many as 79 episodes, especially one hour series. Getting cancelled early is something like the ex-Seinfeld shows with 5, 8, or 10 episodes.

Science Fiction has proven many times to be prophecy. Artificial Intelligence is hard SF. It has basis in the real world. I may come to pass. It may not, as well. But to say we will never be able to create "HAL" is ridiculous. It may be 100 years, and "never in our lifetimes" may be accurate. But it may happen. Never rule our science.

Heck we might not even notice when this happens. People don't bother about computer architecture, just products and stuff. Did the whole world make a big deal out of SiS integrating Northbridge and Southbridge onto one chip? Was it on CNN? Nope. But they did make a big deal out of human cloning.

I think one day Intel will release a Pentium 5 and say, "Oh yeah, BTW 20% of this chip is biological". They'll pay off the senators so nobody questions them. And then one fine morning these biological CPUs will mutate or "evolve" and migrate through the keyboard and connect directly to the nerves in your fingertips forming a symbiotic relationship. Next step: Borg. Just like Sharon Apple and the neural interface in the YF-21 in the manga movie Macross

AMD can get a head start though because the Itanium runs so hot it'll bake any biological component integrated with it. Go AMD!

Boring, old news dude. This is the centralised Daedalus system in Total Recall 2070 episode 18 that takes care of everything - air travel, citizen identity, health insurance, medical records, vehicle insurance, police records, etc. And then an AI expert (Farf's designer presumably) hacks in and makes the machine self-aware. It starts crashing planes, nobody is capable of stopping it. The megacorporations (presumably Disney-equivalents) try to make intelligent robots using human foetal brain tissue.... It just starts to get interesting, and then they axe the series. Nice one.

The person is probably referring to Rebecca Schaeffer, who played on the TV show My Sister Sam. She was killed in 1989 by Robert John Bardo, who got her personal information indirectly from the California DMV.

Tron had a nifty environment and music, in Wargames the geek got the girl, but Whiz Kids was the best, I was 13 and it made me want to get a modem more than anything else.

Anyone else remember this show?

IMHO, I think a list of hardware, bios settings, and hardware and software tuning parameters are required in benchmarking results.

Otherworld - damn it, replay this series! http://epguides.com/Otherworld/

Anybody remember that cheesy mid-eighties serie ? :-)

"A door is what a dog is perpetually the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash

Sledge Hammer!

--
and of course the obligatory "Wow, imagine a beowulf cluster of these"