Slashdot Mirror

Win 3.1 was a graphical shell that installed on top of DOS. DOSbox's emulation is good enough that Win3.1 installed properly on top of DOSbox. Now I can pull up the DOSbox prompt, "CD \WINDOWS" and type "WIN", and up comes ye olde Program Manager.

Yep. I've used this to play old 3.1 games that don't work under Wine. Star Trek: Klingon comes to mind. One of the best FMV games there is, which means it's still awful, but in a fun way.

suppose a normal person like you(most probably) and me had a brain 1000x faster than normal. we would learn faster, understand faster. we would achieve in a week what would take even a genius decades to accomplish.

We'd be able to achieve that much on a slow tuesday night. (looks like page has broken CSS or something, but any slashdotter worth his username should be able to find a way around that).

Off topic, but Ron Moore confirmed Starbuck is not related to Daniel in any way. Starts talking about it at around 34 minutes in the podcast for 'Islanded in a stream of stars'. Link here: http://media.scifi.com/battlestar/downloads/podcast/mp3/420/bsg_ep420_FULL.mp3

I just turned 27 on Steak, Blowjob, and Pi day! I just thought my rapid mental decline was from watching too much TV

I think if you hate this as much as I do, please take a moment and email them, below is their contact information from their website:

----

If you have suggestions or comments for our Programming Department about the SCI FI Channel or any of its shows, please contact: feedback@scifi.com

Maybe they were just concerned that the title was inaccurate since 75% of their content is terrible low budget horror films and retarded stuff like Ghost Hunters? I can't imagine the kind of person that is going to be "fooled" by the new title (OMG, I think I saw a spaceship on that channel! They tricked me! I thought it was a channel for people who like sticking 'y' in inappropriate places! Isn't that right my little Madysyn?"

Skylon....

All this *has* happened before, and it will happen again.

We're frakked.

you can get the full episodes of BSG from here

I recall Countdown to Doomsday was on the SciFi channel a while back. (Sorry, 600,000 triggered the memory) It went over the 10 most likely doomsday events and was kind of unsettling. Most of the events that were "time-based" (supervolcano, meteor, giant solar flare) were real close to the interval they seem to occur at.

I take it with a grain of salt though, my lifetime is a very tiny percentage of any of those intervals.

I don't know how you can cram that entire graphic novel into a 2-hour movie.

By cutting a lot and releasing an extended version later that is 220 minutes long.

I don't get worked up about it - but I've read reviews of other books where they basically explain Scalzi's book in terms of which Heinlein that it matches.
 
This Zoe's Tale Review wonders if "...Scalzi has perfected some kind of occult ritual to allow the spirit of the late Grand Master to possess his body."
 
This Last Colony review says that it is really 2 books in one - one of which is The Tunnel in the Sky. Which I really can't agree with and think it is only the Heinlein tie in that made them go there.
 
So it's out there and I thought it was worth throwing in my thoughts on it - in case anyone had read those types of reviews and might appreciate a different opinion.

You realize rthat James Tiptree Jr was actually a female? Her real name was Alice Sheldon.
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue22/tiptree.html

Jack McDevitt had a similar idea in one of his books. The protagonist is a historian's assistant. One of the ideas was to use faster than light travel to intercept old radio and video broadcasts to recover some history. I believer it was mentioned in Seeker but I may be wrong. The characters got sidetracked by something else so never got past the idea stage.

The Milky Way Darwin Award Committee has to wait a bit longer before awarding the little blue ex-planet.

We are a type 13 planet in it's final stages.

http://scifipedia.scifi.com/index.php/Little_Blue_Planet_(LEXX_episode)

On a brighter note, My End Is Near sign business still has some life left in it.

And He Built a Crooked House

Based on your description, I believe you mean the novel (by Arthur C. Clarke & Stephen Baxter) rather than the story of the same name by Bob Shaw...

No, Fluoride is definitely a conspiracy, and it is alive and well today.

It doesn't take that long to become a superhero.....just look here: http://www.scifi.com/superhero/

Layne

Of course, Made in Eureka...

As usual, science fiction is way ahead of the curve. This concept was covered by Norman Spinrad in his short story "Carcinoma Angels" back in 1967: http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/spinrad/spinrad1.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinoma_Angels // No sigs is good sigs.

-FL

I think you'll find that SG-1 has more PhDs than the combat/response teams. Their strength lies in the combination of brains and brawn. SG-3 as well as 5, 10, and 12 are the "armed response teams."

While flipping around the cable they may also run across a re-rerun of Eureka. The meal made from cloned chicken didn't turn out so well for the people who ate it.

...a bun in the toaster... Awesome.

http://www.scifi.com/rockmonster/ is sure to be cool.

See also the Fantastic Four and The NeverEnding Story.

SF author Paul Melko told SCI FI Wire that his novel Singularity's Ring postulates a future Earth in which computers and networks are not the technological basis of human society.

"Humanity has been genetically altered to form pods--groups of two, three, four or five humans--which can share emotions and thoughts chemically," Melko said in an interview. "These pods now govern a desolate Earth that has been vacated by the technologically advanced entity called the Community," he said. "The main character is a quintet named Apollo, created to pilot a starship in search of what happened to the Community."

Tell me this would not have both geek appeal and joe public appeal! It's just too funny to pass up. (Oh wait...it's also an original idea. Can't have that in Hollywood these days, can we?)

Yep, it's completely original. Sassy, female-AI-controlled vehicles have never been done in sci-fi before, and certainly never played for laughs where they show up the macho, testosterone-driven male characters...

And you can grow skin in a lab...

I think you just reinvented slow glass

Disclaimer: its a TV show. I understand that.

What I really like about that show is that unlike most 'psychics', they go into a 'haunted' house trying to DISprove a haunting. If they have a 'personal experience' they note it, but it doesnt count. Audio holds a little creedence, but not a ton. Video evidence holds much more, but only if they cant reproduce what they say - and they try to.

You can watch episodes online (tho the website seems to be behaving oddly atm) http://www.scifi.com/ghosthunters

Apparently. at Eureka High School

http://www.scifi.com/eureka/

Obligatory Asimov reference: http://scifipedia.scifi.com/index.php/I,_Robot_(Book)

"Reason" (1941)--Powell and Donovan are assigned to an energy station--it gathers solar energy, and then sends that energy, via a focused beam, to Earth. (...) QT-1 banishes the humans from the beam control room. This worries Powell and Donovan, because a storm is approaching, and it could deflect the energy beam, destroying a good portion of the Earth."

Hey, we need to invade outer space. All it takes is one terrorist asteroid, and entire city is cooked. Oh the humanity! Screw the space station, what we need is for the USA to build ....

http://www.scifi.com/galactica

Battlestars!

My theory is that a lot more of them are actively reading than you might think; they're just more Zen about it, and don't feel the need to talk as much. Occasionally they see fit to drop some pearls of gnomic wisdom on us, but most of the time they just read. The low-UID threads are a particularly funny (and easy) joke for them, so they tend to pipe up on those. For a fictional version of the usually-silent-elders concept, check out Lafferty's story Nine Hundred Grandmothers.

No amount of web pages, youtube videos, or self-appointed researchers can convince most people that there was anything suspicious about 9/11. Forget about alien saucer crashes or the health benefits of battery acid.

I actually LOVED this game, and would welcome a movie. I thought it was a great and interesting take on the world, and strangely original. The game story had much more depth than similar stories or movies of today.. Say Hostle or the Saw Series! Not to mention it had a nice ending, wrapping everything nice and neatly up. As for the "To Be" Oz movies.. I would like to see something similar but not as Dark. Something a little more sombre, When I was a child I remember loving the books, and reading them not only for fun happy times but because some of the stories were a little dark and scared me. They captured my imagination, and I believe the original stories STILL have the potential to do so as an Adult. I do like what I see coming from Sci-Fi http://www.scifi.com/tinman/ .. This seems like a great concept, something along these lines would be nice.. But a little closer to the actual story rather than an interpretation would be nice.

I see your minefield and raise you with an ED-209 worthy opponent.

Actually, they never said anything like that. They always maintained that they understand the mythology and that it's not as complicated as people think. They've said the "full disclosure" two-parter was made because the mythology had become become too byzantine for the audience (not for them). Believing at this time that they only had 1.5 seasons left, they thought they had enough material left over to sustain the mythology through season 7. Alas, season 7 had very little myth at all. http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue134/interview.html What directions do you plan on taking the series, after having resolved much of The X-Files' mythology last year in the episodes "Two Fathers" and "One Son"? Spotnitz: Our feeling was that the mythology was becoming an awful lot for people to continue to keep track of. And by definition every time you tell a new story you have to complicate [that mythology]; you can't just keep repeating the same old information. As we sat down to the mythology episodes for February, [we felt that] we'd reached a critical mass. And so we [decided to] just bring it all to a head.

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?id=36328

"Blade Runner: Final Cut will arrive in 2007 for a limited 25th-anniversary theatrical run, followed by a special-edition DVD with the three previous versions offered as alternate viewing."

Right... were they tired of making money? Or maybe they didn't make any money for the network? That seems more likely. So they creatively decided to stop the series because there were no interest from advertisers.

Then again, it would be pretty weird for SciFi to arbitrarily cancel Battlestar when they've already greenlighted a spinoff series. If you want to come up with cynical conspiracy theories, I'd buy the one that says they didn't want to pay what Olmos was asking for another season, but none of these actors are exactly superstars with Hollywood knocking down their doors.

I didn't get an error message while checking your card numbers, though oddly enough the first 8 digits do happen to match the dimensions of one 'battle star galactica'.

Second search result in google for me. http://scifipedia.scifi.com/index.php/Battlestar_G alactica_(BSG_2003)

Coincidence? I think not.

Executive Producer David Eick is quoted as saying, "For those of you who have been paying attention over the years, this is not the first time Eddie has made an announcement about the possibility of the show's end ... I promise you that when Ron and I make a decision about Galactica's future, we'll let you know."

http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/index.php?category= 0&id=41457

Why not have a series, Sci-Fi or otherwise, that has a known end point, as LOST as now professed to have? Might be interesting. If it's a hit, I am sure they can figure out a way to make sequels. (A series of series-es) Geez, just imagine if books acted like that. Oh, wait, Richard Jordan is already doing that... Tho he does say that there are only 2 more coming out (along with 2 more PREQuels, for Richard's sake.) Won't matter to me, I quit reading about 4 or 5 books ago.

1. The one commercial I remember seeing for the series was hyping up that it was from the producer of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. This Buffy/Angel hype led me to believe Firefly was a Drama series mixed with Sci-Fi elements.
2. I don't watch FOX. It's banned from my channel listing.

THIS is the only possible result!

If I'm not mistaken, the new Battlestar Galactica series is fairly accurate with sound in space.

The new Battlestar Galactica is explicitly inaccurate about sound in space. If you listen to the commentary tracks on the miniseries, they talk about sound in space and how they came to the conclusion that BSG is really a drama, and that sound in space caused a more dramatic experience than realistic sound in space.

Ultimately BSG is about the characters. They're attempting to create a realistic-seeming world, but in places where depicting reality would distract from the story, the story comes first. There are plenty of examples of things that, strictly, are less than realistic, but are done because it makes the story progress better.

I can't really come up with a good example, but if you listen to the commentary tracks or to the commentary podcast they'll frequently talk about things that had to be changed to be slightly less realistic to make the story flow better.