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The real thing is 12.8km long!

The Kessel Run has been the topic of much speculation given Solo's confusing boast of completing the Kessel Run in "less than 12 parsecs." Given that a parsec is a unit of measurement and not of time, it hardly seemed like a speed record.

The Star Wars Technical Journal came up with a workable explanation that saw a Kessel Runner have to deposit smuggled spice shipments in between freighters traveling at a fixed speed, so that the shorter distance covered by said freighters during a Run was worth bragging about. Another version of the Kessel Run, spun out of the Jedi Academy Trilogy, required a smuggling ship to skirt close to the black holes of the Maw Cluster, shortening the distance only through skillful piloting and powerful engines.

Of course, the simplest solution is the one favored by George Lucas, and the one that appeared in the screenplay for A New Hope. Han's boast was nothing more than a lie, meant to hoodwink provincial customers. Obi-Wan's knowing glance suggests he saw right through Solo's meaningless bragging.

This is from the official Databank

Yeah yeah smarty pants. EXCEPT there is an explanation

Of course all that shit is make-believe anyways. *ducking* BUT, I had to set the record straight anyway!

Han claims that the Falcon made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs -- but a parsec is a unit of distance, not time. What's the deal?

While Captain Solo is known to make boastful claims that seem to defy the basic laws of space-time physics, in this particular case, an understanding of the mechanics of the Kessel Run illuminates this statistic.

The Kessel Run is a contest of speed and endurance for smugglers. Those who undertake it must deliver specified cargos (usually illicit in nature) to a series of divergently moving transport vessels. The smuggler must deliver the cargo before the transports wander out of the free trade lanes into restricted Imperial space.

Solo's record is impressive, since the transport vessels covered less than 12 parsecs of distance during his hurried run between them, a testament to his piloting and the speed of the Millennium Falcon.

There is more than one way to smuggle spice out of Kessel. According to one tale, Solo left out the middleman and ferried the stolen goods himself, skirting dangerously close to the Maw Cluster, a baffling congregation of black holes. In doing so, he shortened the distance for the run, achieving an impressive record of under 12 parsecs.

Using either methodology allows Solo's claim to stand, but there are many, including the Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi, who felt that the Corellian captain was just blowing hot air.

I like farscape, but DRDs were a ripoff of MSE-6 Droids, but those were probably a ripoff of something else.

Funny though. But an urban legend none the same.

Here's the official word.

The rumor has been that the title for the 3rd Episode will be "The Creeping Fear" and unless this is a horrible April Fool's joke it looks legit.

Go to the official site and check the options under the menu item 'THE MOVIES'.

Let's hope its a joke!

If you cared to read a little before jumping on the 'I hate Star Wars' bandwagon that seems so popular with the 'kids' these days, you would realize that a second season and 20 episodes were planned from the start...

Posted 1 year ago

Ahhh, the beauty of 30 seconds with 'Google'

A little history on this is in order. Imagine wavy vertical lines transporting you back to the past.

The year is 1989 and I'm growing out a mullet. The first president Bush makes an attempt to rejuvenate NASA by setting Mars as a goal. Since he's a politician and not a scientist, he delegates the details to a group to give him a plan and price tag. What he got was the infamous 90-day report. The 90-day report amounted to implementing a Mars exploration plan that included every pet project that NASA had. It involved building giant craft in orbit, sending them to lumbering to Mars, have a crew land for 2 weeks and then go back to Earth. The estimated cost was an insane $450 billion which they comically expected to get. At the time, I was too concerned with getting my hands on a Sega Genesis to care or understand.

NASA had lost their minds and took the presidential initiative to mean that they were getting a blank check for everything they ever wanted to fund. King George the First saw the price and turned them down flat. He wasn't aware that there were any other ways to do it so it was slated to happen in "the future". Since then, there have been several different plans developed to get to Mars on a tight budget and stay there long enough to do some real science and establish a permanent presence.

Wavy lines back to the present.

...they ruled out this theory...

It's in the pay section of the site so I wasn't able to look at it, but I read somewhere on the Star Wars site that they are filming the last episode with new holographic technologies. Anyone have any info on this? It would be cool if they could display it on this technology.

This is pretty much an official press release.

Strictly speaking, your text was not a link. A link requires 'a' tags, such as encase this paragraph, so that the browser knows how to present them. Also, due to the Slashdot lameness filter, your string had a gap in it, requiring anyone copying and pasting the text into their browser to hand edit the string to be in compliance with URL specifications. Next time, take the little extra effort and encode your link properly. It isn't difficult.

No, I won't! I'm a Toydarian you insensitive clod!

Clicky Clicky Clicky Clicky

Not really, I like Naboo very much.

I built the Death Star!

Remakes are best done in the manner of Gus Van Sant or Shigeru Miyamoto: preserve the essential elements of the original while updating the bells & whistles. "Remakes" (and sequels, for that matter) that appropriate the name or concept of the original while ditching the core elements are what give remakes (and sequels...) a bad name.

That being said, I'd like to see (Yet Another) remake of "Elite" for the new millenium. "Freelancer" does not count.

He then tried to sell a reporter an R2 unit with a bad motivator

I hate to be picky, but that was an R5 unit. The dead give away was the more cylindrical head than the R2 units have. And before someone mentions that the droid on Owi-Wan's ship in Attack of the Clones was an R4 unit with a spherical head like the R2 units, that was something that bugged me from the first time I saw that movie...

(ok, ok, my 4 year old son loves the Star Wars movies...)

He then tried to sell a reporter an R2 unit with a bad motivator

I hate to be picky, but that was an R5 unit. The dead give away was the more cylindrical head than the R2 units have. And before someone mentions that the droid on Owi-Wan's ship in Attack of the Clones was an R4 unit with a spherical head like the R2 units, that was something that bugged me from the first time I saw that movie...

(ok, ok, my 4 year old son loves the Star Wars movies...)

He then tried to sell a reporter an R2 unit with a bad motivator

I hate to be picky, but that was an R5 unit. The dead give away was the more cylindrical head than the R2 units have. And before someone mentions that the droid on Owi-Wan's ship in Attack of the Clones was an R4 unit with a spherical head like the R2 units, that was something that bugged me from the first time I saw that movie...

(ok, ok, my 4 year old son loves the Star Wars movies...)

At least, Beagle wreckage won't profit them much.

I wonder if they're looking into giant robot anteaters as an alternative to costly bunker-buster bombs?

How about AT-AT's?

Garg

I FAILED IT!

Today I was taking a final exam. We ran out of time and many of us were still taking the test. My teacher gruffly took my test and exclaimed, "YOU FAIL IT"! We all were taken aback by his manner. After that he said, "You must be new here! I, for one, welcome our failing student overlords." and then he showed us his Goatse and left us mortified. He laughed and walked away saying, "In Soviet Russia, Student fails YOU"!

One of my classmates, an especially sick fuck, shouted, "Wow! Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those things"!

In related news, I just heard some sad news on talk radio - anus stretcher, Goatse was found dead in his Maine home this morning. There weren't any more details yet. I'm sure we'll all miss him, even if you weren't a fan of his work there's no denying his contribution to popular culture. Truly an American icon.

1. Take class over next semester (I wonder what the SCO licensing fees are for one of these?)
2. ???
3. Profit!

By the way, BSD is dying...you insensitive clod...

Oh well, at least we have little more Natalie Portman a little more (& then less) of that white outfit on Natalie Portman

Check out this website: Natalie Portman, Unofficial Site

And the killjoy says: Unless you're making a Star Wars reference in the middle of a Monty Python joke, I think you mean "newt".

For those who want a direct comparison... here it is:

Senator Palpatine
Canadian $5 bank note

You be the judge!

Horaay for fem-bots.

The movie's not scheduled to be out until 2005 - almost two years from now (source, starwars.com). I read the spoliers content in the knowledge that I will have forgotten them by the time I see the film...

here, you can see how the laser glanced off its target, without a scratch:

Isn't that really supposed to be C-3PO?

No, I really don't have anything better to do.

Prequel talks? Where have I heard this before... But in this case, what stories would fill the gap between the end of The Hobbit and the beginning of The Lord of the Rings to fill two more movies?

So you too can now look like Lobot

Be careful, coders! We all know what happened to the last bounty hunter that crossed Lando.

Been tried before. Probably still not a good idea.

Your facts must be wrong:
The Matrix Revolutions : The IMAX Experience(R) (DMR)

At 130 minutes, it's not that much longer. I don't see why they can't split in to two movies if it's too long though...

I was going off the info from the Star Wars IMAX page:

Feature films have to be cut to 120 minutes since that is the current maximum the platter can sustain. For number-minded trivia fans, the Episode II IMAX print is 58 inches in diameter and weighs 390 pounds! "It's the limit now," explains Bonnick. "We are actively developing a 150-minute solution that would be employed as an upgrade to the theaters in the future."

At almost 400 pounds, you can see why they can't just switch reels during the production. I wonder if that website mentioned above didn't just paste the normal running length of the movie onto the website (or they could've gotten the 150 minute upgrade).

At least the first ten chapters are all airing this month. Link here click on schedule. They're also coming out on DVD next year.

Yes, I don't believe it until I see it from starwars.com.

The source of this is Aint-It-Cool-News, which has been a major source of false rumors since the prequels began to come out.

Aint-It-Cool-News is the source of such things as the Grando Calrissian rumors... entertaining, and surely a contribution to Star Wars fandom, but hardly a source of definitive reporting.

I would suggest that the editors do not place such things on the front page until they are confirmed from such places at the Official Site.

I am taking this story with a grain of salt.

CNN is reporting that the 218 Slashdot readers simultaneously yelled 'BULLSHIT' upon reading that millions of users allegedly deleted all the music files from their computers in a story posted here. The force of the simultaneous blast woke up Daryl McDumbass, CEO of SCO, whereupon he finally confessed to being the model for a picture posted here, confesseed his undying love for IBM's Lou Gerstner, and his secret desire to take Jar Jar Binks inside himself while George Lucas masturbated with a Yoda doll.

Here's proof.

(Forgot to login, dammit...)

Here's proof.

Sure the Ion drive is a really neat addition, but it's soooo slooooow.
That's why any good imperial trooper knows you use twin ion engines.

Yeah, but I figured that the blatant comparisons to Jesus Christ would be enough ego-tripping for Lucas.

Then again, that only offended a handful of Christians. Maybe he's thinking bigger now, so he's throwing Moses into the mix to get the Jews and Muslims pissed too.
>
According to this article in Salon Lucas stated for Time magazine in 1977 that Star Wars was "just for fun". But as the movie became a pop culture milestone, he began dropping Joseph Campbell's name (in the author of the Salon articles supposition) to lend the movie a bit more "legitamacy".

The article also supposes that Campbell himself (who was to that point a somewhat obscure Sarah Lawrency academic) was pleased as punch to have his name linked to the Hollywood blockbuster. Certainly couldn't hurt the sales of some of his books, now could it?

Ever since then Lucas has been shamelessly borrowing these grand mythological archetypes. Though in the case of "the immaculate conception" yes, Jesus was one of the more obvious choices. But this motif has run through many different cultures over the centuries, not just referring our homeboy J.C.

We already know how the movie franchise ends. Vader dies, balance is restored. See this link for more about it.

Weisenheimer! If you read a little more carefully you'll see that I said: I am intrigued to see how the movie franchise will end.

Note, what I did NOT say is that Ep III is how the story will end. But, again, unless Lucas changes his mind* THIS is how the movie franchise will end. You wanna pick nits? Let's pick some nits! Yeeeeeaah! C'MOWN!!! How ya like me now??? ;P

*Of note is that therobot 4-LOM stood for "For love of Money". And where money is the motivating factor, I don't think we can entirely rule out the last trilogy ever being made.

We already know how the movie franchise ends. Vader dies, balance is restored. See this link for more about it.

Weisenheimer! If you read a little more carefully you'll see that I said: I am intrigued to see how the movie franchise will end.

Note, what I did NOT say is that Ep III is how the story will end. But, again, unless Lucas changes his mind* THIS is how the movie franchise will end. You wanna pick nits? Let's pick some nits! Yeeeeeaah! C'MOWN!!! How ya like me now??? ;P

*Of note is that therobot 4-LOM stood for "For love of Money". And where money is the motivating factor, I don't think we can entirely rule out the last trilogy ever being made.

Darth Bainwol under order from Darth Rosen

Darth Bainwol under order from Darth Rosen

Insert lame joke about trolls in WarCraft and trolls on Slashdot here.

If you think that's bad, you should see the jokes about a lack of nerfs in SWG, as contrasted with the abundace of nerfs to SWG. =)

i believe the reason there are explosion noises is so the sound dude can have a job.

but i distinctly remember reading about this a long, long time ago (in a website far away), and somebody, i think lucas, said the ships have an explosion noise box in their ships so the pilots know when they've made a kill. i can't find the url though.

Also as a reference, Doug Chiang is no longer at ILM. He worked on the 2 prequels but left last year. He is the Art Director for Robert Zemeckis' Polar Express. VFX by Imageworks under the supervision of Ken Ralston:

Doug Chiang update

Also in his place Feng Zhu has joined the art team for Episode 3. He is this incredible artist that worked at Blur Studios. You can see more here:

Meet the Episode III Art Department
Feng Zhu - Concept Artist

now that i know what a chimera is, it makes the star destroyer of the same name seem less bad-ass. oh well.