Slashdot Mirror

Sardaukar writes: "In his first interview since completing the script for Frank Herbert's Children of Dune, Frank Herbert's Dune writer-director John Harrison revealed that the new miniseries will be adapted from both Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, the second and third books in Frank Herbert's best-selling series." I think the first miniseries is pretty impressive, which bodes well for the second.

Two submissions hit the bin spreading news about the return of two sci-fi series to the small screen. This first announcement shouldn't be too much of a surprise for many of you. Silicon Avatar says: "Babylon 5 fans need not flounder about hoping to catch a Babylon 5 episode in syndication. The B5 powers that be have been working on a new installment in the ongoing arc. The Legend of the Rangers is a new movie-length episode in the Babylon 5 world. A trailer has been released, and you can find it at here". And this little tidbit from jcrash: "For those of us that remember what a Cylon is, Fox is resurrecting the Battlestar Galactica series. The evil Cylons with their L.E.D. eyes and 'By your command' are back to hunt down the Galactica as it searches for Earth. Now we just need Buck Rogers to return with that gorgeous sidekick he had and all the cool space series of the 70s will be renewed in the 21st century." Good news, indeed! The submissions mentioned no expected time frames for the release of either made-for-TV movie, but the indications are that both are pilots for proposed series. Legend of the Rangers will air on Sci-Fi channel while the new Galactica series will air jointly on Fox and the Sci-Fi channel.

sawilson writes "I was surfing over at scifi.com and noticed a link to a story called ' New 'Galactica' To Look Ahead'. I loved this show, and never missed an episode." I liked this show when I was little, but recently watched a marathon of it, and was pretty disappointed. (I'd like to see a marathon of Buck Rogers and see if (A) It was as cool as my childhood wants me to think it was and (B) If Erin Grey was as hot as I remember). The new Galactica is tied to Bryan "X-Men and The Usual Suspects" Singer, so it certainly has potential.

demaria writes: "Executive producers Rick Berman and Brannon Braga of ST: Voyager are at it again, and we can expect another Trek series in the fall, according to this article. Rumors are that it'll take place during the early days of the Federation. I wonder if they'll make the bridge have the same cardboard/buttons glued-on look as TOS did." Just my luck -- the more Star Trek spinoffs there are, the more toys I have to buy for Trekkie friends, and I'm always a few shows behind. Hopefully this one will have some cool merchandise. ($15 MP3 playing "communicators" for kids?) So send in scripts early, if you want to counteract an expected writers' strike. Note that Rick Berman specifically denies the "early Federation" rumors.

jopasm writes "The Matrix sequels may be in trouble. They've had one of the major actors pull out due to scheduling conflicts and Keanu is rumored to have broken his ankle while in training. Scifi.com is carrying the rumour/style. " Yes, Michelle Yeoh ^[?] (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) has pulled out - but the other part to remember is that SAG ^[?] will almost be certainly going on strike, delaying production in any case.

the_tsi writes: "Looks like Dune was pretty succesful last night. The SciFi Channel has already announced that Dune Messiah and Children of Dune will be produced. The sequels will be also written/directed by John Harrison." As well, what did everyone think of last night? I was impressed -- compared to the movie, quite a step in the right direction -- although the part with Paul acting more like a Young Luke Skywalker was irritating.

A number of readers wrote in reminding folks that the Science Fiction Channel's Dune miniseries is airing December 3, 4 and 5. CNN also has a write up about the series -- here's to hoping that it won't blaspheme the legacy of Frank.

Let's start this off with some violence! BigBlockMopar answered the age-old question: what happens when a tank runs over a hard drive. NeoCode sent the The Illustrated Guide To Breaking Your Computer, and finally, matticus discovered The Overclockerz Store is selling burnt-up athlons/durons made into keychains. Now that we've got that out of our system, lets get some schoolin' by learning about the facts of life: spankweasel sent in the invisible condom. Now math: Jonathan Hayward sent us A four-dimensional maze. And some history: John Willemin sent us a nostalgia inducing Microsoft Ad from the days of yore. After a hard day of education, why not travel home on your lawn mower powered hoverboard at a cool 15mph? (thanks LenZ) Then we can play some dot-com monopoly (thanks to gmag3) and see what's on TV. MTO sent us Trailers for the Dune miniseries, and David Hume sent an abc article about Vinyl Video which attempts to generate images from your records. Finally, we better check the weather channel to find out what the weather is gonna be like ... on Mars (thanks noctis).

Arkoth writes: "Sci-fi Newswire posted that Lucasfilm has ordered two fansites to pull authentic- looking storyboards off their sites. What used to be a fun game of bringing in rumors and secret images is now starting to become more serious when Lucasfilm ordered two Web sites, NaboOnline and Aldera.net, to pull two storyboards that looked authentic from their Web sites. Looks like George is getting out the big lightsaber and slashing leaks from his movie, which is 23 months from release."

Your calendar works fine. This episode of Slashback hits midweek instead of Saturday because we'd like to keep our facts straight and your mind alert. So (read more) below for assorted updates on everything from GRAND LARCENY to THE DONUT CRISIS. Actually, those are still secret, but the things we can tell you are below.

Tell me again why my motherboard needs it own OS? Goatbert writes: "Penguin Hardware has posted an interview with John Tsai, head of ABIT's Gentus department. He goes into ABIT's future open source plans and what they plan to do about accusations of GPL violations."

Lifestyles of the young and precocious. PerlDiver writes: "The 'Programming for Kids' thread reminded me of this, and I thought it was worth a story of its own. Former Xerox PARC researcher Ken Kahn has created an amazing tool for teaching kids how to program. Even very young children (old enough to know their letters and numbers) can be started on object-oriented programming with ToonTalk, an animated programming kit that introduces such advanced concepts as recursion, object methods, and functions in a fully visual, direct-manipulation, non-notation-based way. Kids learn by playing with an on-screen toolbox, robots (methods), birds (message passing channels), and bombs (memory deallocation :-). I saw Ken give a ToonTalk demo a few years ago and I was blown away by it. It looks great... sort of PeeWee's Playhouse meets Lego."

Mirror, mirror on the wall -- damn, where was I? Warrior writes "GameSpy was able to get some in-depth information on the closing of Looking Glass Studios by talking to LGS game designer Tim Stellmach. He gave us some good explanations of what happened and who owns what."

Oh, as long as you say it, I guess it's OK! Remember the trouble between CyberPatrol and Network Associates' 'ultra-secure' Gauntlet firewall? The ever-prolific Anonymous Coward wrote us with an interesting bit to sprinkle in that wound: "Peacefire tricked several "parental control" software vendors into revealing their double standards through an amusing gambit: they took anti-gay quotes from several large, well-funded organizations (e.g. Focus on the Family) and put them on "bait" pages on various free Web hosting systems. Then they submitted those pages to the censorware companies as objectionable hate speech which ought to be filtered, and the companies obligingly added them to the blacklists. Next, they submitted the home pages from which they got the quotes. But apparently it's not hate speech if it's on the home page of a political organization with a large legal department ..."

The wheels of government creak ever slowly. teddyfu writes "I found this link regarding the EU's decision to oepn up crypto exports. It seems that decision has only been *postponed*; hopefully the decision will still be made, just at a later date."

Who dares provide House Atriedes with ADSL? Craig E. Engler writes "The first trailer for the SciFi Channel's upcoming miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune has been posted online. ... The site also has the latest news about the miniseries (which has wrapped principal photography and is now in post-production) as well as photos, notes from the director's assistant, and more."

Your calendar works fine. This episode of Slashback hits midweek instead of Saturday because we'd like to keep our facts straight and your mind alert. So (read more) below for assorted updates on everything from GRAND LARCENY to THE DONUT CRISIS. Actually, those are still secret, but the things we can tell you are below.

Tell me again why my motherboard needs it own OS? Goatbert writes: "Penguin Hardware has posted an interview with John Tsai, head of ABIT's Gentus department. He goes into ABIT's future open source plans and what they plan to do about accusations of GPL violations."

Lifestyles of the young and precocious. PerlDiver writes: "The 'Programming for Kids' thread reminded me of this, and I thought it was worth a story of its own. Former Xerox PARC researcher Ken Kahn has created an amazing tool for teaching kids how to program. Even very young children (old enough to know their letters and numbers) can be started on object-oriented programming with ToonTalk, an animated programming kit that introduces such advanced concepts as recursion, object methods, and functions in a fully visual, direct-manipulation, non-notation-based way. Kids learn by playing with an on-screen toolbox, robots (methods), birds (message passing channels), and bombs (memory deallocation :-). I saw Ken give a ToonTalk demo a few years ago and I was blown away by it. It looks great... sort of PeeWee's Playhouse meets Lego."

Mirror, mirror on the wall -- damn, where was I? Warrior writes "GameSpy was able to get some in-depth information on the closing of Looking Glass Studios by talking to LGS game designer Tim Stellmach. He gave us some good explanations of what happened and who owns what."

Oh, as long as you say it, I guess it's OK! Remember the trouble between CyberPatrol and Network Associates' 'ultra-secure' Gauntlet firewall? The ever-prolific Anonymous Coward wrote us with an interesting bit to sprinkle in that wound: "Peacefire tricked several "parental control" software vendors into revealing their double standards through an amusing gambit: they took anti-gay quotes from several large, well-funded organizations (e.g. Focus on the Family) and put them on "bait" pages on various free Web hosting systems. Then they submitted those pages to the censorware companies as objectionable hate speech which ought to be filtered, and the companies obligingly added them to the blacklists. Next, they submitted the home pages from which they got the quotes. But apparently it's not hate speech if it's on the home page of a political organization with a large legal department ..."

The wheels of government creak ever slowly. teddyfu writes "I found this link regarding the EU's decision to oepn up crypto exports. It seems that decision has only been *postponed*; hopefully the decision will still be made, just at a later date."

Who dares provide House Atriedes with ADSL? Craig E. Engler writes "The first trailer for the SciFi Channel's upcoming miniseries Frank Herbert's Dune has been posted online. ... The site also has the latest news about the miniseries (which has wrapped principal photography and is now in post-production) as well as photos, notes from the director's assistant, and more."

Yodel_Spoogenshortz write:s "Here is an update on the Dune Miniseries being produced by New Amsterdam Entertainment to be shown in December of this year on the Sci-Fi Channel. The site has more photos and press releases. Earlier Slashdot articles on the upcoming series can be found here and here. For information on the Dune book series look at the Official Dune Web Site." Dune is an absolute classic, and probably my favorite book of all time. I'm hoping they don't screw it up.

Yodel_Spoogenshortz write:s "Here is an update on the Dune Miniseries being produced by New Amsterdam Entertainment to be shown in December of this year on the Sci-Fi Channel. The site has more photos and press releases. Earlier Slashdot articles on the upcoming series can be found here and here. For information on the Dune book series look at the Official Dune Web Site." Dune is an absolute classic, and probably my favorite book of all time. I'm hoping they don't screw it up.

Yodel_Spoogenshortz write:s "Here is an update on the Dune Miniseries being produced by New Amsterdam Entertainment to be shown in December of this year on the Sci-Fi Channel. The site has more photos and press releases. Earlier Slashdot articles on the upcoming series can be found here and here. For information on the Dune book series look at the Official Dune Web Site." Dune is an absolute classic, and probably my favorite book of all time. I'm hoping they don't screw it up.

Lets start this off with some homework: we were nominated for a 2000 Webby in Community. Please go vote for us (requires annoying login, but please do it anyway! I want a crappy little trophy!) Now with the 'biz outta the way, brainsik pointed us to the Brainshaker: a headmounted subwoofer that looks like it would make Quake a bit to real. Plastik noted a web filter guaranteed to offend the conservative and humorless. But it makes reading Slashdot damn entertaining. And if you're interesting in violating most religions, vkulkarn found an "Escort" who apparently reads Slashdot (will she go out with CowboyNeal?) Speaking of religion, Zippy noted that I am apparently a prophet in the Church of The Enlightenment , along with Jay Stile of Stileproject . Illiad, from Userfriendly.org is a bard. webword sent us CalculusGirls.com which combines 2 of the many things I don't understand. Andy Lester noted that Brunching Shuttlecocks has a book on "Fuzzy Logic Functions", in the style of O'Reilly. yek401 noted that his english professor builds barbie doll cyborgs: god bless tenure ;) Trenchcoat Steve warned us about Moon Land Registry which claims to be selling land on the moon for $10/acre: you even get a deed and mineral rights... and it might be legal! Gravey noted that their are two new Reboot movies going into production. For you conspiracy theorists, backtick noted that everyone's favorite software monopoly might be getting into the furniture biz along with Lazyboy. SgtPepper pointed us to RFC 2795 which "describes a protocol suite which supports an infinite number of monkeys that sit at an infinite number of typewriters" ucsimon noted that LegoLand in California just gota liquor license. Mind you after a few shots of vodka, finding a 2x2 blue block takes a lot longer. Let's wrap up with jyuter's note that Comedy Central has vid clips of the south park kids doing Python's parrot sketch in Quicktime or Real.

Schemer writes: "The Sci-Fi channel has acquired exclusive rights to all 112 episodes of Babylon 5 (and the 4 movies) from TNT. They plan to start airing the episodes every night at 7:00 pm starting in September."

Killjoy_b writes, "Dune fans never had it so good. First Frank Herbert's son's new Dune: House Atreides book came out in February and now there is a new Dune miniseries in the making. You can check out the pics at this Science Fiction Film Site. The page itself is German. Enjoy. " You know where the fish is.Tim sent this additional page of info. In English.

Ross Karchner writes "Just thought you and the readers would be interested to know that Ray Bradbury, one of the greatest living Science Fiction writers, is recovering from a mild stroke. While he is not dead, it is a reason to pause and wish him luck in recovery. " As a fan of Bradbury's work, I can only echo Ross' sentiments: Good luck, Ray. Get well soon.

Anonymous Coward writes "An article on Sci Fi Wire reports: Orson Scott Card said he is rewriting the script for the film adaptation of his best-selling novel Ender's Game now that Star Wars: Episode I star Jake Lloyd is interested in the project. " Ya know, that's one of those books which you had better do a good job making into a movie, because you can so easily fail. Still, I'd pay the ticket price to see it, unlike other movies.

Anonymous Coward writes "An article on Sci Fi Wire reports: Orson Scott Card said he is rewriting the script for the film adaptation of his best-selling novel Ender's Game now that Star Wars: Episode I star Jake Lloyd is interested in the project. " Ya know, that's one of those books which you had better do a good job making into a movie, because you can so easily fail. Still, I'd pay the ticket price to see it, unlike other movies.

So like many of us this weekend, I saw the Blair Witch Project this weekend. I thought about writing a full blown review, but have opted against it. I enjoyed the movie a lot, but I'd really rather solicit comments on the movie. I do ask that anyone who wants to put spoilers in their comments try to warn people before they read anything that might spoil the movie. But what did you guys think of it?Update: 08/02 08:34 by H :FiNaLe wrote to say that August 2nd, at 9pm Eastern, on irc.scifi.com in #auditorium the Directors of The Blair Witch Project will be talking.

Alex Bischoff writes "This article gives a good bulleted summary of all the rules theatres have to follow in order to show Star Wars Episode 1. My personal favorite: "Theaters can begin playing the two-hour, 11-minute film at 12:01 a.m. on May 19."" Thats 12:01 GMT, right?