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ROFL! I wonder if that's the exact same story - I've been watching the 2nd and 3rd Doctors and seeing a lot of plots and plot elements that have be directly re-used in the reboot. I haven't seen the latest season, but I can say that the quality of the horrible rubber suits has gone way up. Compare those Silurians to the original.

That's not a sinkhole, that's a Emergence Hole. Someone better toss a grenade in there ASAP before the Locusts Horde starts streaming out!

Just pick up a Mr Fusion. http://bttf.wikia.com/wiki/Mr._Fusion Problem Solved!

I haven't had TV service in 3 years, all media has been through the XBMC and I've never had a problem with downloaded content not working. 1080p isn't a popular downloaded format, you search for any video content and 480i or similar DVD quality will be easier to find than 1080p. Unless there's a huge jump in cheap bandwidth 1080p will continue to be unpopular, especially with Comcast and Earthlink announcing monthly caps. Who'd want to waste 5gb on 1080p when 700mb 480i DivX suffices?

Like I said support is huge, you start putting the software on dozens of different kinds of hardware and OSes and you're going to have support problems. What happens when you post on a forum "1080p is jumpy"? Now they have to look at the cpu and video card and OS and other software and all these other potential problems, and while people might help you today with your dual core 1.6ghz atom in 5 years time they'll laugh at you and say your PC isn't fast enough and to upgrade.

I agree with one thing you said: "If that's just too much for you by all means keep your old XBOX too." I can give my parents a Xbox with XBMC on it and not worry about support because I know there's no problems with it, can you say the same about your $350 personal computer? If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Fragmenting the XBMC is the same mistake Android made: sure the OS is free, but the software that runs on your Android might not run on mine and many have speculated this fragmentation will destroy Android. Windows Mobile did the the same thing for many years and developers had to publish long lists of supported and unsupported Windows Mobile smartphones. That's one of the reasons the iPhone is so successful: every app works on every iPhone.

This will not end well for XBMC, this will push people off Xboxes and on to Boxee and other competitors because why bother with XBMC when you're already running a dual core PC? Might as well upgrade to Boxee or MythTV.

I don't mind the developers making a XBMC2 for modern devices, but to end support for the highly successful XBMC and close the forums and start removing things from the wiki is suicide and I can't believe they don't see that. What would happen if Sony or Microsoft announced they'd no longer support the PS3 or Xbox360 and they're focusing on next gen consoles? Think anyone that read that would buy a ps3 or 360? Sony's a genius when it comes to that: while M$ ended support for the Xbox, you can still buy a brand new ps2 and new games at most retail stores and it's paid off big, with 1.8 million Playstation 2s sold in 2009. Yes, Sony sold 1.8 million 10 yr old ps2s in 2009, and brand new ps2 games are still being released in 2010. See you don't slaughter the fatted calf as soon as the next gen comes out, and the fact that XBMC developers are doing so prove they don't care about their community and will drop you whenever it's convenient for them.

Japanese robots on the moon....why do I imagine they'll look like this?

So if they deliver that entire program whose lifetime costs are only 2.2 Billion, I would be super impressed. In fact I would be impressed if we did it ourselves for 5 times that amount.

Robot labor is much cheaper than human labor ... unless those robots just happen to become members of the 'Robot Union' (not to be confused with Futurama's Robot Mafia).

Okay, under the copyright law, everything is copyrighted by default; unless something has sent it to the public domain (age, author release, etc.). Registering a copyright just gives the copyright holder the ability to sue for damages (verses just an injunction). So, every song downloaded is copyrighted. So, I have a hard time accepting the innocent infringement when the individual actively downloads music.

According to the [Copyright Law], the only scenario she might exercise is that "[she] consciously and intentionally copies from the plaintiff's work, with a good faith belief that the conduct is not infringing." And IF she proves this, then the court may "reduce statutory damages below the minimum of $750 to as low as $200." The RIAA was asking for $200 per song anyway.

If you read the rest of the link, then to pull of Innocent Infringement, she has to prove good faith and a reasonable belief the works were not copyrighted. What's reasonable is what a jury can agree to, essentially. So, if you found 12 random people on and asked if it was okay to download known music for free.

[Copyright Law]: http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Innocent_infringement

How did they show up everywhere, then? Why did playing them in the lotto cause a meteorite to fall on Hurley's chicken stand?

Hurley's "bad luck" was coincidence not fate. The numbers showed up in various places because they were the numbers of the candidates remaining who made it onto the plane to crash on the island. IE: Jacob physically wrote the numbers down which led to them being written and used in various places.

Ok, no. You have NO idea what you're talking about. "When Hurley rides past 6 players of a girls' soccer team in the airport, each uniform has one of the Numbers. ("Exodus, Part 2")"

Jacob didn't write down those numbers on the girl's jerseys. And that other guy that had used the numbers in a game of chance before Hurley also won the game and also had his life destroyed by a disruption in the laws of probability.

So congratulations, you know a whole lot less than me about a stupid TV show!

This is one of the biggest problem with the DMCA. You have given all the power to the big conglomerates without making them risk anything in return. They just indiscriminately fire C&D letters like shotgun blasts and use them to anti-competitive effect. The only thing Tetris has is their trademark claim and a prevention on decompiling/copying their code or graphics in an exact manner. Feist We need a broader application of Assessment Technologies.

I'd be less critical of the DMCA if they had a penalty, $10,000 plus costs, for reckless or malicious take-down notices. You wouldn't get companies sending 25,000+ a day for 2 seconds of their content used in a fair use manner. This is what scares me so much about the MPEG 7.

keyboards can't grow with children's hands!

I dunno, if they can grow human ears on the backs of mice, I don't know why it wouldn't be possible to grow a keyboard together with a spare set of hands, or find a way to grow hands out of a keyboard.

Potentially kinda kinky, though. I'm not sure I want to think too much about where you'd go with that.

Cheers,

the Hindenburg was a thermite fire, not a hydrogen fire

You have been watching too much MacGyver. Anybody who has ever worked with thermite knows how difficult it is to ignite.

Even the Mythbusters have debunked that old bullshit about the Hindenburg paint. This story was funny once, it stopped being funny about the millionth time it was repeated on the internet.

For readers who don't get it (I sure didn't prior to Google-fu)...
Reference: "Cid's Airship" http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_Airships#Cid.27s_Airship_2

Don't act like that was just the finale. The whole series has had religious references from all world religions:

http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Religion_and_ideologies

It appears to be an inside joke for series-watchers. Apparently there was an episode or two involving a hatch buried in the ground.

Secrets from the Hatch

Note: what follows is my own opinion. Many viewers that were more attentive than I were very satisfied with and emotionally moved by the ending.

I've always been bicuriously Lost as the show would sometimes give me a feeling that something more was going on that would eventually be revealed. So, having caught a number of episodes early on, I started watching Season Five religiously in order to prepare myself for the ending. But at the end of Season Five with no end in sight and only more questions and more characters (and a freaking reset button that later turned out to be a multiverse splitting mechanism), I gave up. Until I watched the last episode last night in hopes that the island would have some greater meaning. It didn't. Well, it tried to I guess but everyone's got their own interpretation of what they saw last night.

So many questions I have went completely unanswered. Questions about Walt, why Faraday never recognized Desmond (the guy that unexpectedly gave him the constants to time travel one day) when Faraday landed on the island, the properties of the multiverses (some people seem to care about the futures of the other multiverse even though they shouldn't know about it until they're dead), why the black cloud killed who it did and left others (especially now that we know more about the black cloud), the list goes on and on. The worst of it is if you take each character individually and reassemble their timelines in sequential order that the episodes slowly piecemeal it out to you -- everyone is a goddamn psychotic sociopath. No rhyme or reason to the actions of half the characters. And it's not even Lord of the Flies neurosis ... just unexplainable U-turns in morality and logic.

The show started out very concrete, real and physical and slowly absolved into symbolism with last night being such pure symbolism that you cannot say for sure when they died or what the afterlife was or what the church represented or where they went at the end when the doors were opened. It reminded me of a few anime series I watched in this respect where the shows digress into absolving themselves of anything earthly or logical in some sort of ethereal climax of visual and auditory sequence or cues. Problem was that none of Lost's resolutions sat well with me.

I sympathize with the writers as they had no idea how many seasons they would get but in the end I must admit I found the writing to be more or less utter drivel. Designed only to get you to keep watching with little if any satisfactory explanations. Everyone was a chaotic actor in the past, present and alternate multiverse. Writing that many flash sideways scenes as plot devices is -- quite frankly -- juvenile at best. Also the lead writer had refuted the theory that everyone was dead, in purgatory, in heaven or in hell. Yet, at the end they're clearly in some sort of afterlife.

The series offered closure on what happened eventually to everyone but no closure whatsoever as to what the island was and how its mechanations functioned -- even on a magical fantasy level. I was intrigued with Donnie Darko when the ending was left open to interpretation but Lost takes it to a whole new (unbearable for me) level. I hope other people enjoyed the ending but for me it was a complete indication not to devote anymore time to this series or these writers. Still better than 85% of what you'll find on TV but that isn't saying much.

They could have done a lot of neat things with tying down loose ends, explaining the island and completing their work. Instead they gave us this. And finally I see no further point in discussing it because there's no hope of ever explaining anything. Unlike a finely crafted classic novel, the grand symbolism and allusions are too abstract to nail down. So what's the point? Everyone's going to experience the series differently and for me it was just some guys writing a seria

Don't any of you know what's going on? This so-called disaster is just a smoke screen for setting up a secret weapon able to control and manipulate the flow of all information with its powerful AI.

How can we hold the NSA accountable for something they're doing in international waters? Nothing to see here, move along.

Don't any of you know what's going on? This so-called disaster is just a smoke screen for setting up a secret weapon able to control and manipulate the flow of all information with its powerful AI.

How can we hold the NSA accountable for something they're doing in international waters? Nothing to see here, move along.

So that's what things would be like if I'd invented the fing-longer.

"You had best not do that, Avatar!"
http://images.wikia.com/u5lazarus/images/e/ee/U70019.ogg
http://images.wikia.com/u5lazarus/images/f/f8/U70023.ogg

"You had best not do that, Avatar!"
http://images.wikia.com/u5lazarus/images/e/ee/U70019.ogg
http://images.wikia.com/u5lazarus/images/f/f8/U70023.ogg

Great. What's in it?

Neck juice, you insensitive clod.

The agency in question is Harry Fox Agency. They represent the majority of music publishers, and were responsible for bringing down the Online Guitar Archive (OLGA) back in the 90's for publishing infringement for posting tablature.

http://itlaw.wikia.com/wiki/Harry_Fox_Agency

It expands because it's filled with a bunch of self-serving parasites

I find it harder to swallow that word after playing Bioshock.

Carmack will offer to bring back creatures from hell at half the price from other competitors. I always wanted my very own pet Baron of Hell.

Robin Williams? How about a real comedian?

North Korea has achieved fusion

Don't be silly, everyone knows that the soviets developed it first!

:match ErrorMsg '\%>80v.\+'

From the vim wiki http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Highlight_long_lines

You're forgetting that we also found a frozen ancient in the ice that was still infected with the plague that drove the ancients to Atlantis several million years ago.

Sounds like a precursor to the Poison Snooper from Dune. If they make it faster I wouldn't be surprised to see wealthy, influential people and families employing these.

If reference.com is be trusted, the term "war hammer" (TM?*) has been around and considered part of the general English language, as a variant of the term pole hammer.
It looks like JRR Tolkein used the term "war-hammer" (TM?) in LotR. The exact spacing/lettering used by Warhammer Online (TM) is probably best avoided by another commercial organization.
I think it would be clever if they renamed the site "PoleHammerAlliance".

* (TM?) indicates something that probably is not trademarked, or at least ought not to be, nor be recognized as one, IMHO. I use TM? to indicate a problematic ambiguity, not to recognize a possible trademark.

-os

Wikimedia Commons admins who wish to remove from the project all images that are of little or no educational value but which appeal solely to prurient interests have my full support...If the Wikimedia Foundation wants to declare that it is OK for Commons to be a porn host, they can do that, and I'll not be able to continue. That isn't going to happen, though...

and turned it into this:

Somebody wants information about human sexuality removed from an encyclopedia or he's going to walk? I say, let him and his puritanical beliefs walk.

That's no small leap. What he's really saying is that hosting porn isn't Wikimedia's (not Wikipedia's) primary purpose, and that admins should act accordingly. Seems sensible enough to me.

As a side note, there exists a wiki-based encyclopedia where there is no debate over what's informative or acceptable. Hop on over there and see how useful it is for even basic research purposes.

Some routers have external USB ports (typically meant for storage); some of them have the possibility of using quite "normal" Linux, and hence all the drivers it has. So just connect a good quality webcam (note: you might need powered USB hub)

Or even connect Canon digicam with modified firmware and/or use app or script (there are *nix CLI ones) which can control such cheap camera.

(cheap & energy efficient Atom nettop would be fine too, of course...but WiFi routers are somewhat closer to the "independent" webcams you mentioned)

Awesome. Everyone knows that Teutonic Knights are one of the best melee units. Once he upgrades to Elite status he'll be nigh invulnerable. Just be wary of elephants.

GNU nano also has syntax highlighting, http://how-to.wikia.com/wiki/How_to_use_syntax_highlighting_with_the_GNU_nano_text_editor

That's multiplayer, though. Not a storyline with Good Democracy-Bringing Americans vs Bad Countries Fully Inhabited By Terrorists.

That said, what I'm really looking forward to isn't a game where you play, say, some Arab guy defending his homeland against the American invasion. Nah, let the player be an American soldier, just stop fucking portraying it as a race towards liberated flower-bearing locals!

I don't think Bethesda has the guts to make it, but a war FPS based on the U.S. invasion and annexation of Canada in Fallout universe could be interesting.

... I mean, whenever the episode was dedicated to a flashback or the insight on a character... Well, it sucked to high heavens....

Actually, S06-E09 was most probably my favourite episode ever. :-)

> Dual folding screens were always a non-starter

Yeah, Nintendo found that out the hard way with all the millions of Game and Watches they sold.

Good taste is not a product of fashion.

Taste is as subjective as it gets and to claim that preferring Apple products shows you have 'good taste'

I didn't say anything about Apple products. The people I said had good taste are the ones described as "some actually think that removing features makes a product better, and adding features makes a product worse"

We're talking about good design. That's far too big a topic to discuss enough to reach a conclusion in a /. post or two, but the concept that adding too many features makes a product worse is illustrated quite well by Homer's automobile. http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/%22The_Homer%22

The commercial at 3:00 : Am I the only one who thought of Red Alert 2? Sadly, the answer is probably yes.

How about Mother Teresa, Gandi, and some other people? Maybe some Jewish people who were persecuted by Hitler? Gays? I'm sure there are people out of bounds they wouldn't mock. hmm They mock the Jewish boy - but only by a kid everybody hates. So that doesn't count I don't think.

Mother Teresa was called out by name in one of the songs in their movie. Gandhi has appeared twice, and they even put him in Hell (because he's not a Mormon, and everyone but the Mormons go to Hell you see). The Major Boobage episode featured a whole section spoofing Anne Frank's Diary, with Cartman being trapped in his attic due to persecution for having a cat. The fourth episode of the show, Big Gay Al's Big Gay Boat Ride spoofed being gay in general, and that goes on quite regularly still--Mr. Slave and D-Yikes! come to mind.

I don't think this is the first time it has been applied to Tetris. But it shouldn't be hard to solve Space Invaders.

Tetris has been solved, though not the older version from 1985 seen in the video.

So I suppose, then, that the blood spewed forth when Chell is shot is just, you know, fake "android blood"? And that GlaDOS put this supposed android in suspended animation just for kicks?

Hell, Valve stated that they added her heel supports because people didn't buy the idea that a human could fall as far as she does in the game (citation).

Your experience differs from mine. It always will. I like what I like and you can't change that. Making an ordered bullet list of things doesn't make me want to change my ways, either.

I don't compose music. I listen to it via MPD with key-combo's set to change the song, seek, set random, etc. etc.
I don't edit photos, only to resize/scale them to fit my digital picture frame better, which I do via batch command line. I run it once on a directory and it does all the photo's in one run. Try doing that in pure GUI in GIMP (not using script-fu or python-fu).
I do layout pages as I develop websites/web applications/software in my spare time. I write that all in code to form the visual-goodness. I don't use a WYSIWYG to build it. I rarely use anything like OpenOffice or AbiWord (although I have both installed).
I do not edit video. I do transcode it from time to time when I rip movies for playing on my Media Center (which also runs Gentoo).. of which I have a set of tools written in bash that do that all for me.

I'd rather have a system where I can save wherever I want (which Farcry didn't have when I played it at launch)

Then you'd like continuous background autosave: wherever you are, there you are saved. But don't try quickloading, or the angry mole will come down and kill you.

Why do we believe that aliens will be preoccupied with themselves and ignore the cosmic plot, just like we humans do? perhaps aliens evolved from a kind of ants, for example, where the 'we' is above the 'I'.

Instead of "I'm going to play Half Life" the ants would be saying "let's play Half Life." Same end state.

Except that in their version these guys would be the heroes :). Swarm LAN party FTW?

So how would the toddlers react to our friendly neighborhood aliens? We need more robust testing here people! Do they react positively towards the greys, Alf & alf-like (furry), and negatively towards Xenomorphs?

"Already the site has better coverage of some areas than Wikipedia, leading to the question of whether more such small wikis should be created for certain verticals."

What? daria42, have you been under a rock? That question is already answered!

You might remember a Slashdot article quite a ways back that talked about Wikipedia deleting entire entries where no one could definitively argue if it was "notable" content. One of them was an article detailing the weapons technology used by the Space Marines in the Warhammer 40K universe. Well now you can just type "w40k wiki" into Google and the very first search result is Warhammer 40K Wiki. It not only solves the problem of proving notability, but you can be assured that everything of relevance to the W40K universe will not be rejected by Wikipedia's nazis and is available in a conveniently cross-referenced database maintained by people who cherish the material.

If you are the gaming type, you can put in a game's title and the word 'wiki' after it as the terms for a Google search. The more popular or more dedicated fanbase it has, the greater the probability a Wiki was started for it. Some great examples are the Fallout Wiki, Star Wars wiki aka the "Wookiepedia", Star Trek wiki, Final Fantasy wiki and the Tekken wiki.....which covers quite a few the passions of the Slashdot community.

"Already the site has better coverage of some areas than Wikipedia, leading to the question of whether more such small wikis should be created for certain verticals."

What? daria42, have you been under a rock? That question is already answered!

You might remember a Slashdot article quite a ways back that talked about Wikipedia deleting entire entries where no one could definitively argue if it was "notable" content. One of them was an article detailing the weapons technology used by the Space Marines in the Warhammer 40K universe. Well now you can just type "w40k wiki" into Google and the very first search result is Warhammer 40K Wiki. It not only solves the problem of proving notability, but you can be assured that everything of relevance to the W40K universe will not be rejected by Wikipedia's nazis and is available in a conveniently cross-referenced database maintained by people who cherish the material.

If you are the gaming type, you can put in a game's title and the word 'wiki' after it as the terms for a Google search. The more popular or more dedicated fanbase it has, the greater the probability a Wiki was started for it. Some great examples are the Fallout Wiki, Star Wars wiki aka the "Wookiepedia", Star Trek wiki, Final Fantasy wiki and the Tekken wiki.....which covers quite a few the passions of the Slashdot community.

"Already the site has better coverage of some areas than Wikipedia, leading to the question of whether more such small wikis should be created for certain verticals."

What? daria42, have you been under a rock? That question is already answered!

You might remember a Slashdot article quite a ways back that talked about Wikipedia deleting entire entries where no one could definitively argue if it was "notable" content. One of them was an article detailing the weapons technology used by the Space Marines in the Warhammer 40K universe. Well now you can just type "w40k wiki" into Google and the very first search result is Warhammer 40K Wiki. It not only solves the problem of proving notability, but you can be assured that everything of relevance to the W40K universe will not be rejected by Wikipedia's nazis and is available in a conveniently cross-referenced database maintained by people who cherish the material.

If you are the gaming type, you can put in a game's title and the word 'wiki' after it as the terms for a Google search. The more popular or more dedicated fanbase it has, the greater the probability a Wiki was started for it. Some great examples are the Fallout Wiki, Star Wars wiki aka the "Wookiepedia", Star Trek wiki, Final Fantasy wiki and the Tekken wiki.....which covers quite a few the passions of the Slashdot community.

"Already the site has better coverage of some areas than Wikipedia, leading to the question of whether more such small wikis should be created for certain verticals."

What? daria42, have you been under a rock? That question is already answered!

You might remember a Slashdot article quite a ways back that talked about Wikipedia deleting entire entries where no one could definitively argue if it was "notable" content. One of them was an article detailing the weapons technology used by the Space Marines in the Warhammer 40K universe. Well now you can just type "w40k wiki" into Google and the very first search result is Warhammer 40K Wiki. It not only solves the problem of proving notability, but you can be assured that everything of relevance to the W40K universe will not be rejected by Wikipedia's nazis and is available in a conveniently cross-referenced database maintained by people who cherish the material.

If you are the gaming type, you can put in a game's title and the word 'wiki' after it as the terms for a Google search. The more popular or more dedicated fanbase it has, the greater the probability a Wiki was started for it. Some great examples are the Fallout Wiki, Star Wars wiki aka the "Wookiepedia", Star Trek wiki, Final Fantasy wiki and the Tekken wiki.....which covers quite a few the passions of the Slashdot community.