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Sorry but Fett did not debut in Empire.

https://www.starwars.com/news/...

Here's the actual premier if you want to watch it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=...

It's part of a larger Christmas special and is pretty terrible for those not familiar

He wasn't responsible for the special effects in the original Star Wars though.

* http://www.starwars.com/news/t...
* http://www.wired.com/2013/02/s...

Somebody forgot to tell the empire!

http://www.starwars.com/databa...

http://www.starwars.com/news/t...

You are right, we can only speculate what a world without copyright would be like. But I think it would be a fairly boring place.

Well, copyright didn't exist until the 18th century, and then didn't become widespread until the 19th and 20th centuries (in many places, due to colonialism, rather than because the local population liked the idea).

So now you have a pretty good idea of what it would be like.

Of course, you'd have to factor in differences unrelated to copyrights: many places have less censorship than they once did; they have higher literacy rates; they have publishing technologies that are far more efficient than what was available when they adopted copyright laws, including the ability to publish sounds and moving pictures, which had not been possible; we have artificial lighting, inexpensive and widely available means of telecommunication, and data capture, editing, and storage technologies; improvements in agriculture, manufacturing, and labor law provide somewhat more leisure time than once may have been available; the population has increased (thus increasing the number of actual and potential authors); etc.

Wile I think that we're better off with some degree of copyright than none at all (though probably less than we've got now), I think that a world without copyright would be okay; not optimal, but okay.

I enjoy watch movies that were made on a $100 million dollar budget. They tend to be better than movies made on a $10,000 budget.

I think that what matters is the writing and the performance, not the budget. I saw the play version of Driving Miss Daisy before the movie came out. The play had three actors, and usually the third wasn't on stage. The set consisted of a couple of chairs and nothing else. The actor playing Hoke (the driver) had to hold his arms in front of him and pretend that he was steering the car. It worked fine, and everyone enjoyed it. The movie added real sets, real cars, location filming, a number of additional actors, and wa fine too, but it didn't need to. It would've been just as good had they filmed the black box stage performance, like the movie Dogville.

Also IIRC, there was a low budget (I mean really low budget: http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/index.php/2008/12/19/star-wars-live-on-stage/ ) that went over well. While multi hundred million dollar movies with bad writing and bad acting like this year's The Lone Ranger, get to go directly to the trash. Big budgets are not necessary.

Yeap, you have the answer, the blogger doesn't know what he's talking about; problem solved, thread closed.

And they can always recycle the "Christmas Special." Or the cartoons.

Dunno what counts for you, but here's a few:

Cnet

gizmodo

Starwars.com

The interesting thing about regular robots is that they're supposed to control themselves

I'm not sure what you mean by regular robot. But there are precedents for remotely controlled robots, both in science fiction and real life. E.g. the battle droids of the Trade Federation in the Star Wars prequels appear to be remote controlled:

"These droids would blindly obey orders spoken to them by their commanders or transmitted to them from an orbital Droid Control ship. The efforts of Bravo Squadron, and Anakin Skywalker in particular, destroyed the Droid Control Ship, thereby rendering the army useless."

The droids may have had some sensory autonomy but were largely "mindless", pretty much like a phone "app" whose data processing back end is in the cloud.

The robonaut that was sent up to the ISS is basically a telepresence device, a telerobot if you will. And of course there are the unglamorous industrial robots that are all tools and arms.

http://www.starwars.com/databank/location/kessel/?id=eu

Yes it's stupid and Timothy Good is a cock. But there you go.

This one is so much better.

Don't worry. They didn't read the fine print. The Death Star uses turbolasers, not regular lasers. Sometimes turbolaser is shortened to the more common term "laser", but they mean "turbolaser".

It's that damned particle accelorator. They created a mini-black hole, and it escaped to Guatemala City. THAT's where all the material went!

I would vote for this

And this is different from this how?

From the official site there's an announcement from April 5th. Probably not a late April Fools joke.

After Robot Chicken and Family Guy's parodies of Star Wars, I guess Lucas knows what the fans want: humor. And let's face it, they were funny. At least for me anyway. Star Wars used to be a religion to me until Phantom Menace. I distanced myself and have since had plenty of time to recover. Even though I had read all the expanded universe material in my youth and could recite from memory more about an Aqualish than even Wikipedia would tolerate (hooray for retroactive continuity!), I found Robot Chicken's sketch of Ponda Baba's Bad Day hilarious. Laugh for ten minutes hilarious. Re-enact for my friends hilarious.

And it saddens me that all he has left is humor. I mean, I'd rather see both serious material and humor. Futurama had a great way of making fun of itself but also baking in really serious themes that made me love it. I hope Star Wars manages to maintain some sort of integrity through all this. I agree with what the quotes said about this being a large intricate universe with a lot to work with. And I had always been hoping for a TV show similar to the Tales from ... series in both short story and comic book form. I mean, you have a whole invented universe just sitting there waiting for writers to discover new intricacies with it. And, aside from the expanded universe, all we've gotten in approved cannon is three really bad movies and some decent kids shows. Where are the Grand Admiral Thrawns and Admiral Daalas? Where is the fleshing out of a background story for each of the aliens you see in Mos Eisley and Jabba's Palace? Confined to books I guess. I just don't understand why TV writers haven't been solicited to explore the Star Wars universe in the same way the expanded universe books have. Sure some have been trash (Barbara Hambly's Children of the Jedi) but you'd think someone could write a really neat story line with new villains, new force sensitives and new characters that are distantly related to the movies.

The franchise is dead. Lucas killed it.

The franchise is still churning out TV shows and selling merch.

normal people don't have an interest in a 30 year old sci-fi movie

You're right, they don't.

Lava tube is just a theory.

Lightsabers are supposed to be closed circuits of energy that are held in shape by a confinement field (possibly the force imbued within the lightsaber crystals upon construction). Presumably it is the force that gives the blade its solid surface. Because lightsaber blades are closed circuits, they recycle their power and expend almost nothing unless they are in contact with a solid surface or another lightsaber. They do not cast shadows and even if they did, you would not be able to see it because the "blade" is microscopic in width. The fat blade that you see is mostly coronal light bleed, not the blade itself. As far as I know, any visible shadow in the films is an editing slip-up cast by the lightsaber prop. As you can see here and here, there are no shadows cast by the blades in the ideally lit Yoda training scene of episode 2, yet you can see the shadows of the lightsaber hilts. None of the Star Wars games that I know of have lightsaber blades that cast shadows either.

Of course it's all fiction and there is no plausible explanation for how one could possibly work in the real world, so the discussion is pointless beyond a fun factor. This is only they way I've come to understand how they work through the films, books and games based in the Star Wars universe.

...and one more

http://www.starwars.com/databank/starship/tieadvancedx1/

No, it's "Gaffa Tape".

No, it's "Gaffi Stick!"
Rrhrr! Rr rr rr rr!

A communications disruption can mean only one thing...

Keep your eyes peeled for those Trade Federation landers.

(Yeah, just kidding. Here's the real page.)

--
Toro

The same post office that paints mailboxes to look like R2D2?. Lets see, who paid for that?

Or do you mean the post office that spends $8000+ on a hotel room for one of its execs?

Certainly, you're not referring to the USPS that uses its budget to unseat a senator.

Wonder how long it will take until we progress from cowbot to Lobot.

This is Awesome, I Totally want one!! But It's been all over the tubes for Over a week now: http://gizmodo.com/386007/r2+d2-projector-in-action-video-verdict-a-must-have http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/index.php/2008/04/30/r2-d2-is-the-best-roomie-ever/ http://shop.starwars.com/catalog/product.xml?product_id=1218818

This is Awesome, I Totally want one!! But It's been all over the tubes for Over a week now: http://gizmodo.com/386007/r2+d2-projector-in-action-video-verdict-a-must-have http://starwarsblog.starwars.com/index.php/2008/04/30/r2-d2-is-the-best-roomie-ever/ http://shop.starwars.com/catalog/product.xml?product_id=1218818

Here's a link with the price (US$2995).

I personally would say no : http://www.starwars.com/theclonewars/news/news20080129.html Unless you like skinny, werid King Tut style tattooed regject that looks like she's from a Tim Burton Film...

I have a feeling this won't be much different except this time it's CG and not traditional animation.

You lose. You call Viacom to complain, they call George Lucas, and then launch their own defense. You now have two, count 'em, two lawsuits on your hands, against high-powered, connected, retainered corporate lawyers, and you're running for public office and that hits your town papers.

Good luck.

Also, if you published their interview material, that is their copyright, so yours is the only likely violation as Viacom is almost certainly "fair-use" defensible as a major media organization showing short clips of the local elections on their show.

You need permission to show their stuff, unless you have a "fair-use" defense of your own, but even if you do have one ready, they can still prosecute (and seek an injunction/take down in the meantime) because "fair-use" is a defense, not a right. You have to prove it in a court.

So applying to Slashdot isn't going to help here. File suit and claim "fair-use" and end the take down. Or, quietly count your blessings and stay clear. I know what I'd do.

Might I add, nice General Crix Madine haircut.

--
Toro

Stupid Google Stars... I'm looking for Kamino, just beyond the Outer Rim, and I can't find it. It's like someone has removed it!

Looks good...

That's no cave!

It's a space slug.

At first I thought it was just a research project to show how advanced they are, after all it may not be ASIMO but walking on two legs with something on top of them was one of the hard problems. You could stick the two legs under anything you like. I even read how wheeled robots don't fit into stairs, cars, and other things made for humans but legged ones do.

But then I realized, ahah! I had an ahah moment. This year is the 30th anniversary of Star Wars and of course that that means this is really a power droid

At first I thought it was just a research project to show how advanced they are, after all it may not be ASIMO but walking on two legs with something on top of them was one of the hard problems. You could stick the two legs under anything you like. I even read how wheeled robots don't fit into stairs, cars, and other things made for humans but legged ones do.

But then I realized, ahah! I had an ahah moment. This year is the 30th anniversary of Star Wars and of course that that means this is really a power droid

I clicked the link and ended up here:

http://starwars.com/noflash.html

The 'Click here to get a modern browser'-link points to http://www.mozilla.org/.

I was kind of surprised.

http://svextra.com/blogs/gmsv/2007/05/star_wars_ep isode_vii_the_empire_wises_up.html
May 24, 2007
Star Wars Episode VII: The Empire Wises Up

George Lucas has always had an ambivalent attitude about all the creative fan activity that orbits around his "Star Wars" universe, embracing some that stays within the limits of homage, sending the legal storm troopers after any he feels damage the image or profit from his art, and generally guarding his properties like they were the plans for the Death Star. But starting tomorrow (cue brief, fair-use snippet of "Star Wars" theme music) there's a new hope.

As part of the 30th anniversary celebration for the first movie, Lucasfilm is making 250 clips from all six "Star Wars" movies available on its Starwars.com site, providing a set of drag-and-drop editing tools and telling fans to remix and mash up to their heart's content. Rework the wisdom of Yoda? Sure. Take your revenge on Jar Jar Binks? Have at it. As long as you don't try anything like hot Wookiee-on-Wookiee action, Lucasfilm doesn't mind (and there's a team of screeners in Costa Rica to filter out that stuff anyway). The mashups can then be posted on blogs or social network pages.

Interview with the author here -- http://www.starwars.com/episode-iv/bts/article/f20 070423/index.html

http://www.starwars.com/databank/character/salacio uscrumb/

I hate to nitpick, but actually, it's Alderaan.

So we're going to pick up an alien version of "The View"?

With Jabba the Hutt instead of Rosie O'Donnell? Oh, wait...

My design submission is here:
http://www.starwars.com/databank/droid/imperialpro bedroid/

There are two ways to phrase that absolute, with greatly differing meaning.

Whoever is not against us is for us.

Either you're for us or against us.

You are either with us or you are against us.

Gollum was believable because of Andy Serkis; Jar-Jar just looked fake, as did many other CG characters in Star Wars.

Your analogy is flawed. You assume Gollum was a person and Jar-Jar was just computer generated. In fact, Jackson originally planned to do Gollum as entirely CG (check out his one scene in "Fellowship" to see what that would have looked like) but later changed his mind when he started working with Serkis. Jar-Jar's motion, on the other hand, was always referenced to a real person.

Well, then probably they're going to follow in Lucas's footsteps by waiting several years and releasing a new edition with the untouched and retouched versions side by side. Suckers.

This is what the poster is referring to.

Man, they love that 'digital tunnel set extension'

First: Here's a shot-by-shot comparison of the newly released footage to recent home releases.

Next, here's a simple explanation of what "anamorphic" is all about. It originally comes from the cinema. An anamorphic lens stretches or shrinks the image along one axis. In the movies, they use it to shrink the image horizontally when they film it, and stretch it back when they project it. This is what allows theaters to fit a widescreen image on square cells on the film. Anamorphic DVDs work similarly.

See, the aspect ratio (ratio of width to height) of the Star Wars theatrical release is somewhat larger than TV's traditional aspect ratio of 4:3. Annoyingly, the video format that DVDs use is hard-coded to a range of fixed resolutions, all of which have 4 times as many pixels across as they have vertically. (Ok, I'm oversimplifying slightly, but not critically.) To fit content wider than 4:3 onto a 4:3 format, you have 3 choices:

• Shrink the image uniformally so that it fits width-wise. This gives unused areas at the top and bottom of the image. The resulting output is referred to as "letterboxed."
• Crop away the sides, adjusting camera shots to bring in the most interesting aspects of the scene. This is referred to as "pan-and-scan."
• Shrink the image horizontally so that it fits width-wise but fills the screen top-to-bottom. This uses all the available pixels but gives you the complete image. This is referred to as "anamorphic."

To display an anamorphic DVD on a regular-screen TV, the DVD player will still need to shrink the image top-to-bottom, otherwise everything will look tall and thin. On such a TV, an anamorphic DVD will not look much different than a letterboxed DVD. On a wide-screen TV, though, the DVD player can stretch the image side-to-side to fill the entire width of the display. This provides a direct benefit over simply enlarging a letterboxed DVD image: You gain vertical resolution.

But which Original Star Wars, I bet Episode IV is in the opening titles.

This is the original theatrical release so "Episode IV" is not in the opening titles.