Slashdot Mirror

Sadly, this is the "solution" to there being too much "seamy" stuff on television.

http://www.tv.com/story/story.html&story_id=2524

Isn't this precisely why the V-Chip hullabaloo was created? I guess that didn't work cause people don't know how to set the stupid parental lock password?

So instead of people actually parenting, the government wants people to pick and choose their cable options? This is a horrid idea (i'd be all for it so I could actually limit the number of extranneous channels I have to surf through), everyone knows products customized on a per person basis causes them to be expensive. If people actually knew how to work their tv sets, this wouldn't be a problem (that and if watchdog groups would loosen and grow up). Then again, how many average people know how to set the clock on the VCR?

land of free aint wat it used to be

Another example is the "Magic Bullet" experiment from the Kennedy assasination. They assumed the "Magic Bullet" was made out of ice.

I regret to inform you that you are incorrect. The ice bullet episode had nothing to do with the Kennedy assasination, and I think was based on a scene from the movie Most Wanted. I don't believe that the Mythbusters have ever done an episode involving the Kennedy (at least not according to a basic search of their episode guides on tv.com). You may be confusing it with a special that the History Channel ran.

Another example is the "Magic Bullet" experiment from the Kennedy assasination. They assumed the "Magic Bullet" was made out of ice.

I regret to inform you that you are incorrect. The ice bullet episode had nothing to do with the Kennedy assasination, and I think was based on a scene from the movie Most Wanted. I don't believe that the Mythbusters have ever done an episode involving the Kennedy (at least not according to a basic search of their episode guides on tv.com). You may be confusing it with a special that the History Channel ran.

Law & Order:SVU did a similar show.

Not terribly surprising from L&O tho. Dick Wolf has always said that he "rips the stories from the headlines" and I've even heard lines on L&O that were word-for-word quotes from 60 Minutes before.

Kinda bizarre to see a story on 60 Minutes then 3-6mo later catch the same story as fiction on L&O.

Killer instinct had an episode about this a couple weeks back. The episode was called 'game over' and featured a killer using the levels on a video game as a plan for the crimes.

More info is available here - http://www.tv.com/killer-instinct/game-over/episod e/498048/summary.html

Wow I need to post fast before your crap gets modded any higher.

Interesting comment--considering that they are teaching Intelligent Design alongside Evolutionary Theory.

Except this is a science class, and Intelligent Design is not science.

Your comment seems to indicate that, by teaching ONLY Evolution, that's how we develop Independent Thinking? Tell one side of a story? Somehow, that seems more like indoctrination to me.

As we are talking about science class, there IS only one side to this story. This is part of the strategy of ID'ers: argue and argue and argue, so it appears to the layman that there is an actuall scientific controversy on the issue, and if there's controversy, why not "teach both sides" to "let people make up their minds for themsevles". But their is no scientific controversy between evolution and ID, only a manufactuered political controversy.

And as far as "indoctrination" goes, we have our children go to school to learn, not fill their head with random bs and "let them figure it out for themselves." We don't give holocast-deniers an equal time in histroy class and tell students to "decide for themselves what really happened". The same goes with flat earthers in geology. Otherwise people just start to spew crap out of their mouths.

As could have you. You can find that link here. Dick.

Dude...you are so lazy. try searching for yourself the next time before you call him out... BTW: GP was right and it cost me more time to write up this post than to find out.

Love that episode!
http://www.tv.com/south-park/worldwide-recorder-co ncert/episode/2464/summary.html

Kyle: Cartman, what the hell are you doing?
Cartman: We're trying to find the brown noise--it's this one pitch, this certain frequency that makes people lose bowel control.
Stan: What's "lose bowel control?"
Cartman: That's a scientific term for crapping your pants.
Kyle: Oh, brother, here we go again. Cartman, there is not a sound frequency that makes people crap their pants!
Cartman: Yes there is! The French experimented with it in World War II!

South Park did a similar study, and it worked flawlessly.

Here's a early recording;
http://www.melaman2.com/cartoons/singles/mp3/m-mou se.mp3

Brief background piece;
http://www.tv.com/mighty-mouse/show/8922/summary.h tml

I noticed the article mentioned the cheesy lame cartoon series, Super Mario Bros. Super Show. You can watch that online on Yahooligans! TV for free. Even The Legend of Zelda cartoons are there.

I noticed the article mentioned the cheesy lame cartoon series, Super Mario Bros. Super Show. You can watch that online on Yahooligans! TV for free. Even The Legend of Zelda cartoons are there.

Can't remember the last time I actually watched anything on a TV (directly anyway). Pretty much every show I watch now is downloaded off the internet. I just use Dark Horizons and TV.com to keep track of what shows are currently airing that I want to watch.

Just my two pence worth :)

Also be careful not to tape your fairly obvious observations while standing by and doing nothing while a fat guy is being mugged :)

Don't tell the MPAA, they will buy it and turn it to something horrible like movie.com! See tv.com!=tvtome.com

Everyone knows that it was the Wacko Brothers and their sister Dot selling kid scout cookies to Einstein that helped him create E=mc^2, by singing the Acme song.

http://www.tv.com/numb3rs/vector/episode/382456/su mmary.html

"Like watching the original Star Wars for the first time, or better yet, watching The Empire Strikes Back... Mal is a guy who would shoot Greedo first."
-- Fred Topel, ABOUT.COM

He neither conceived the idea of a robot nor built any.

Then you've got omissions like "Farscape", "Blake's 7", "Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy", "Star Cops", "The Tomorrow People", "Smallville", "UFO", "Crusade", "Captain Scarlet" (old or new version), "The Incredible Hulk", "The Invaders", "Lexx", "Red Dwarf" amd "VR.5". Are seriously telling me that "Batman", "Lost In Space", "The Jetsons" and "Logan's Run" are better than all of those?

It's a pathetic list if you think about it - cooked up by someone with no knowledge of TV science-fiction (woefully lacking in non-US shows as well - I count only 3, yes three, from the UK). Even the most novice list compiler would check another list on another site as a reference point - for example, why didn't they go to tv.com's large alphabetical list of "all science-fiction shows" (no, it's not all of them, but it's a reasonable starting point)

That's fine, except that I said episode 12.

As it happens I misread the OP so my comments are off base.

But nevertheless, the objections stand. WRT why the other site is implicitly better... it's the same reason I'd call a the GIMP better than Photoshop. It may not actually surupass it yet, but the openness makes it all worthwhile.

I'm still waiting for the "Evil villian, his protege with glowing green hand, his cheerleader arch nemisis, and her goofy sidekick all get pulled into a television reality where the protege learns the word 'froopy', the villian has to escape Mr. Sitdown, the hero cheerleader ends up on Star Trek with a red shirt, and the goofy sidekick is running from monkeys," genre. I could make millions!

Wait. What's that? It's been done before? Damn. Guess I'll have to try for the "Turtles turned into mutagenic superheros who fight a bad guy named after a kitchen appliance" genre. :-P

No. Find a review of Blake's 7 episode 3.

Now, tell me which episodes of Dr. Who have been lost in entirity, and also list which Hartnell episodes are only partly available.

Both of these things wre dead easy on TV tome and cannot be done on TV.com.

What if I want to check continuity between episodes of Thundercats? Show me that on tv.com.

I don't think that is at all relevant to this conversation. "I watch shows 1-2 years late and I want reviews of it" has nothing to do with old shows. I agree that this information should be available on this site, but we aren't talking about you, we are talking about him. It should be more than sufficient for him.

Also, the information you are looking up is not very representative of the common person. If 90% of people hate TV.com, and 50% still have all the information they would need on the site, then why does it matter to them? Obviously it should still gather that information you are talking about, but it's still a new site. This TVIV site has even less, so how could it possibly be "better" in your opinion (which I know you never stated).

The site is more than sufficient for me, and should be for the great grandparent. That's all I was arguing. Even the older shows I watch (Black Adder and Yes, Minister to name a couple) have plenty of information on it, at least what I want to know, I haven't looked for what I don't want to know.

As far as Buffy goes, that's a bit more on topic. That is about 4 years old (that episode), so I looked it up. Apparently Buffy was, well, I didn't look up the previous episodes so I didn't see what happened, but in S06E02 she dug herself out of a grave and was back and ready to kill more vampires. Also regarding the Charmed thing, TV.com's code is still new, so there are probably bugs in it still.

http://www.tv.com/buffy-the-vampire-slayer/bargain ing-2/episode/70472/summary.html

For me it is. I'm not in the US, and many of the US series are shown here a year or two later. So I could read the reviews and such about episodes immediately after watching. However, TV.com apparently didn't carry over these reviews, written by editors who knew the shows and added to the experience with their insights. As these shows are "old", they're probably not going to be reviewed at all again, and unlikely to be of the same quality; in any case they have none when I want to read them. Unfortunately, the Wayback Archive doesn't help, every time I try after I get a few pages in I get bounced to the new TV.com site with nothing but ads.

It sounds like you are making a lot of assumptions in that, "As these shows are 'old', they're probably not going to be reviewed at all again".

Let's take 24 for instance, that show started in 2001 (old enough for you?). Now let's take a random episode from season 1, but not too close to the beginning, and especially not close to the end, because those are the episodes that are supposed to get you into the show, and keep you on it, so there are probably a lot of reviews for those. Here's season 1 episode 8, aired on 01/15/02:
http://www.tv.com/24/700-a.m.-800-a.m./episode/854 03/reviews.html

So, we have one very long review, one good sized review, and one somewhat small review. That should be plenty to gauge how good the episode is, especially with 61 people rating it an average of 9.3.

I agree with RupW, this is not a big deal, yet everything thinks it is. This is coming from someone who used to use TVTome almost daily to look up TV information.

The only "big deal takeover" that CNET has done in my opinion was Mp3.com, lots of my favorite indy artists disappeared off the face of the Earth after that happened...

It's still a big deal. A lot of the content missing are goofs/nitpicks/cultural reference items (at least for the shows I used TVTome for, namely all the Star Trek series). Not all the notes made it intact either, none of those had any potential to create a lawsuit unless it's now against the law to note that such and such actor has now played a character in so many different Star Trek series. (Some of the missing notes are exactly like that along with other equally innocent stuff.)

I have a feeling that if data wasn't successfully transferred over, there was just a problem trying to convert all/some of the data into the new format. If you've ever actually tried to convert databases that are COMPLETELY (not just somewhat) different, you would realize how hard it can be to get it to work properly. Also, as far as I'm concerned, goofs/nitpicks/cultural references aren't exactly infomation that is a necessity to run a TV information site, just interesting tid bits.

Completely disregarding that fact though, I believe there is plenty of that information available. I read through goofs for Red Dwarf for a day straight before just because I was bored. Just a week or two ago I looked up the Peacekeeper Wars (Farscape Miniseries):
http://www.tv.com/farscape/the-peacekeeper-wars-pa rt-2/episode/367768/summary.html

Under Episode Allusions it seems that it has three, when I actually only spotted one while watching it. Seems more than adequate to me.

As far as "such and such now plays this person", I don't quite understand. Click Cast on any show page and it has a list of the cast members, click a cast member and you can see what shows he's been in.

You also can no longer pull up a complete episode listing on one page. At best you can get one season at a time per page. With all the fancy widgets/graphics/flash/crap on the pages now it takes a good 10 times as long just to view the entire episode listing of a series.

What?
http://www.tv.com/the-black-adder/show/4747/episod e_listings.html&season=0

The also seem to think that everyone wants lots of fancy, flashy graphics and widgets on every page. All of this makes it difficult to get the information you actually came there for, unless you visit to look at flashy graphics and viewer ratings.

So what, they are supposed to know exactly what YOU want to know about the show immediately when clicking a show? It's difficult to type "farscape", "star trek next generation", or whatever then click "episodes", "cast", or "reviews"?

And what do you mean it has "fancy widgets"? Gradients on a tab to make it look a bit nicer doesn't make it "fancy" or "bloated", it's when you have animations for every action and Flash for everything (having a flash menu thing on the front page is not "everything") when you get bloat and fanciness. Also, most modern web browsers cache images, they don't download them on every page. Lynx is an exception to that.

The split columns are just fine, and yes I do care about similar shows, otherwise half of the shows I'm watching right now I wouldn't have known existed. You are complaining about how little of the screen it uses, well, I'm using a widescreen laptop and it still looks just fine to me.

This is coming from someone who absolutely despises Mac, Windows, KDE, and GNOME for their overuse of graphics and hard to use menus. I don't have a problem with graphical interfaces when they make sense, like TV.com does. All your "major problems" are non-existant or very minor.

I agree with RupW, this is not a big deal, yet everything thinks it is. This is coming from someone who used to use TVTome almost daily to look up TV information.

The only "big deal takeover" that CNET has done in my opinion was Mp3.com, lots of my favorite indy artists disappeared off the face of the Earth after that happened...

It's still a big deal. A lot of the content missing are goofs/nitpicks/cultural reference items (at least for the shows I used TVTome for, namely all the Star Trek series). Not all the notes made it intact either, none of those had any potential to create a lawsuit unless it's now against the law to note that such and such actor has now played a character in so many different Star Trek series. (Some of the missing notes are exactly like that along with other equally innocent stuff.)

I have a feeling that if data wasn't successfully transferred over, there was just a problem trying to convert all/some of the data into the new format. If you've ever actually tried to convert databases that are COMPLETELY (not just somewhat) different, you would realize how hard it can be to get it to work properly. Also, as far as I'm concerned, goofs/nitpicks/cultural references aren't exactly infomation that is a necessity to run a TV information site, just interesting tid bits.

Completely disregarding that fact though, I believe there is plenty of that information available. I read through goofs for Red Dwarf for a day straight before just because I was bored. Just a week or two ago I looked up the Peacekeeper Wars (Farscape Miniseries):
http://www.tv.com/farscape/the-peacekeeper-wars-pa rt-2/episode/367768/summary.html

Under Episode Allusions it seems that it has three, when I actually only spotted one while watching it. Seems more than adequate to me.

As far as "such and such now plays this person", I don't quite understand. Click Cast on any show page and it has a list of the cast members, click a cast member and you can see what shows he's been in.

You also can no longer pull up a complete episode listing on one page. At best you can get one season at a time per page. With all the fancy widgets/graphics/flash/crap on the pages now it takes a good 10 times as long just to view the entire episode listing of a series.

What?
http://www.tv.com/the-black-adder/show/4747/episod e_listings.html&season=0

The also seem to think that everyone wants lots of fancy, flashy graphics and widgets on every page. All of this makes it difficult to get the information you actually came there for, unless you visit to look at flashy graphics and viewer ratings.

So what, they are supposed to know exactly what YOU want to know about the show immediately when clicking a show? It's difficult to type "farscape", "star trek next generation", or whatever then click "episodes", "cast", or "reviews"?

And what do you mean it has "fancy widgets"? Gradients on a tab to make it look a bit nicer doesn't make it "fancy" or "bloated", it's when you have animations for every action and Flash for everything (having a flash menu thing on the front page is not "everything") when you get bloat and fanciness. Also, most modern web browsers cache images, they don't download them on every page. Lynx is an exception to that.

The split columns are just fine, and yes I do care about similar shows, otherwise half of the shows I'm watching right now I wouldn't have known existed. You are complaining about how little of the screen it uses, well, I'm using a widescreen laptop and it still looks just fine to me.

This is coming from someone who absolutely despises Mac, Windows, KDE, and GNOME for their overuse of graphics and hard to use menus. I don't have a problem with graphical interfaces when they make sense, like TV.com does. All your "major problems" are non-existant or very minor.

For the non-brits, Channel 9 was a sketch on the The Fast Show.

So if I, say, cremate someone, who's the man that can undo this?

Hallowed are the Ori.

-- Stolen Memories (episode #8) --

* I wonder if it is going to confuse and anger Smallville fans when Brainiac is based on Vril Dox, the alien scientist from the comics rather than the Kryptonian AI from Superman: The Animated Series and Justice League Unlimited. (At least I assume that's what they are doing since James Marster's is playing Milton Fine.)

And now to post anonymously so no one will ever see this cosmic geekout!

I have multiple physical disabilities, and I am unable to drive a vehicle. However, this could be useful for me and others with multiple physical disabilities. It would be like KITT from Knight Rider's without the advanced weapons, AI, etc. :)

This episode is the first thing that came to mind when I read the story:
http://www.tv.com/the-outer-limits/stream-of-consc iousness/episode/21470/summary.html
The moral of the story? Always keep books around!

Well, the people who view other people wearing their god-given birth costumes will probably not be the people who complain. So, all she'd have to do is keep other people from viewing the computer screens in use. So, she helps privacy invasion. Catch 22 avoided.

The problem in this case is pr0n was found on the hard drive. If people are going to be that nitpicky about it, they're going to find something wrong, whether the user is offending others with their content or not. Besides, I think this case has more to do with laws being broken than people being offended, I'm just not sure why the librarian was brought into it. It's like the Extreme Makeover: Home Edition lawsuit, why was ABC brought into the lawsuit? They're simply a third party that happened be around the dispute and had big pocket... er, been a "contributing factor" in the arguement.

In the end, this has almost nothing to do with "ideals" and more to do with rules-lawyers finding an excuse to cause suffering on someone else for their own benifit. (How much you want to bet there's a vote going on in the area where this will become a "poster story" on the subject?)

One can hardly take seriously staff of a company that thinks a reality tv show is going to give them "America's Next Top Fashion Designer."

Maybe it will, actually, because that's more about marketing than ability these days, probably. But they need to learn that style doesn't trump substance in the back office, at least.

Clearly someone hasn't watched Saturday morning TV in a while. A newer CGI version called Voltron: The Third Dimension was on a few years ago. My kids got their introduction to Voltron through that dreadful version.

---> http://www.tv.com/reboot/show/2138/summary.html

You're right on the money - for anyone interested, it's called The Front, season 4 episode 19. The scene in question is about fourteen minutes in, although Lisa and Bart are walking with Roger Meyers (the I&S exec), not Grandpa.

Will they have to update Theodore?

I don't think I'd feel comfortable letting my children watch television shows about "Space Tugboats".

----
MetaNews for real nerds, stuff that matters

Glen Larsen had great ideas

You stole that idea from the Dirty Bomb episode of NUMB3RS!

Good news everyone! There's no longer a need to download your torrents of The Electric Company ;-)

Oh crap. Electric Company, The - TV Guide: DVDs coming later this year

You're thinking of the Voyager episode Threshold; they went into great detail about how a ship at Warp 10 was everywhere in the universe at once.

I.R. Baboon beat you to it.

The inhabitable planets are cloaked. Unfortunately the planetary cloaking device makes them sterile, hence their need to kidnap the children from passing ships.

I know, but the chemistry that they have generated between the Doctor and Rose is somewhat hampered by adding a third persistent character in the mix. I prefer the current set-up rather than the Doctor and his rag-tag bunch of time-misfits trapsing about the continuum. I'd hate to see Rose dissappear and the series turn into the Voyagers

I liked this when I was 12-- HBO used to show it all the time:
"A pilot is sent into the Soviet Union on a mission to steal a prototype jet fighter that can be partially controlled by a neuralink."

1984-- a very good year-- Macintosh first appeared, Firefox on HBO, and Airwolf on CBS. Best... tv show theme... ever.

Click here for details.

I suppose I only have about 13 items I use semi-regularly and for the rest I can use the non-intuitive finder, but it just seems silly to have to do that. What's wrong with the menu/categories method?

Intuitive, organized, and resource friendly! NOT!!

Here are the links to the larger versions of the pictures used in the CNET review:

http://a.r.tv.com/cnet.1d/i/uff/21169039/ovr/21169 039_1_overview_440.gif
http://a.r.tv.com/cnet.1d/i/uff/21169039/ovr/21169 039_2_front_440.gif
http://a.r.tv.com/cnet.1d/i/uff/21169039/ovr/21169 039_3_back_440.gif
http://a.r.tv.com/cnet.1d/i/uff/21169039/ovr/21169 039_4_sides_440.gif
http://a.r.tv.com/cnet.1d/i/uff/21169039/ovr/21169 039_5_top+bottom_440.gif
http://a.r.tv.com/cnet.1d/i/uff/21169039/21169039_ DT1_440.gif
http://a.r.tv.com/cnet.1d/i/uff/21169039/21169039_ DT2_440.gif
http://a.r.tv.com/cnet.1d/i/uff/21169039/21169039_ DT3_440.gif
http://a.r.tv.com/cnet.1d/i/uff/21169039/21169039_ DT4_440.gif
http://a.r.tv.com/cnet.1d/i/uff/21169039/21169039_ DT5_440.gif
http://a.r.tv.com/cnet.1d/i/uff/21169039/21169039_ DT6_440.gif
http://a.r.tv.com/cnet.1d/i/uff/21169039/21169039_ SS1_440.gif

The possible resolutions (numbers at end of filename) seem to be 200, 300, and 440. If anyone can find larger versions, please post them.