Slashdot Mirror
Slashback: Futurama, Shattering, Footage
This would be reason enough to have cable. MrChubble writes: "Seems that futurama isn't as dead as previously believed. Here is a quote from a someone's experience at ComicCon: "Julie Schwartz Slide Oddball Comics Show (Hilarious as usual), and at the FUTURAMA panel they showed a preview of a forthcoming episode in which Fry, Leela and Bender become super-heroes. One thing they didn't mention at the panel, was the news that FUTURAMA would be joining Cartoon Network's ADULT SWIM in the near future." Is this too good to be true?"
We have semi-successfully identified a potential security problem ... Jim Driggers writes: "You guys recently had an article on how to escalate one's security status on a Win32 machine. The article included a link to a download called shatter.exe. My Norton antivirus says it contains the beavuh virus. I don't have IIS 5, so it is not a worry for me, but I thought you guys should know."
Actually, it shouldn't be a worry for anyone: apparently, the shatter.exe file triggers some anti-virus software, but according to several readers this is a false alarm.
How to win friends and influence people. In response to this posting ("Congress to Ashcroft: Go After Song Swappers"), Declan McCullagh writes: "FYI I've placed the congressional letter to Attorney General Ashcroft here: Also see this analysis from last summer on why P2P piracy violates the federal No Electronic Theft act: 'Duncan Frissell on why Napster users are federal felons'."
Up against the wall (of videos). An anonymous reader writes "Looks like the film Revolution OS finally makes it to a small screen near you. First copies available at HP booth at LinuxWorld, San Francisco.
It includes footage from LinuxWorld '99 in San Jose where Stallman accepts the "Linus Torvalds Award" from the hand of Linus and proceeds to talk about why Linux should be called GNU/Linux". This is a treasure."
In addition, for the skateboard-inclined, note that Dogtown and Z-Boys is finally out on DVD, too.
Slimmer and trimmer like I ought to be. prostoalex writes "The rumors of Ziff Davis filing for Chapter 11 can just stay rumors, as company claimed it achieved a compromise with bondholders on financial restructuring. Recently ZD has been shutting down a sleuth of print publications including Yahoo! Internet Life, Family PC, Expedia Travels, Interactive Week, eShopper and Smart Business. It is still a publisher of eWeek, PC Magazine, CIO Insight, ExtremeTech and other computer and gaming magazines."
I don't usually usually go around invoking any powers-that-bes' names (well, unless I'm debugging, but that's a different story ;-)), but yet again, CN has won my devotion --- I mean, Dexter, PPG, Samurai Jack, and now Futurama *bliss* The only thing that could make this any better is if I could figure out how to get the sattelite feed into my WinTV card so I can watch while I'm "working". Hrm... sounds like an Ask /. question....
Short answer:
Fox sucks.
Long answer:
It seems that they had it out for this show and were determined to kill it by giving it the crappiest time slot on their schedule (short of the middle of the night). When you are pre-empted by football through 80% of the season, people won't see you. Then they started showing it at different times... I got to the point where I didn't even know when it would be on next.
Meanwhile, they keep puking up more and more profoundly stupidly shows that last all of 6 episodes (if that) because anyone with a room temperature IQ (which doesn't seem to include Fox programmers) won't watch them.
To me, "Futurama" is "The Simpsons" freed from its format and need for consistency with 13+ years of history. There is much more room for experimentation and therefore, to me, the show seems fresher. Still, I enjoy both greatly, but obviously Fox wanted Futurama to fail. Otherwise why would they move it to 7 and keep firing crapppy show and after show at us at 8:30 (they got lucky with Malcolm, almost every other show that followed the Simpsons was pathetic (anyone remember "House of Buggin'"?).
So long answer:
Fox sucks.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I don't know much about the TV business, but I'm sure that "Futurama" is much more marketable and mainstream than "Mission Hill". I'm also sure that the "Futurama" people could shave quite a bit off that budget, if they're willing. (Groening calls "Futurama" a "gift to animators"... You can tell just by looking at it that it's a flashy show, but they could cut 80% of the flash, and the average viewer wouldn't even notice.)
IMO, CN should pony up the money to start making new episodes on a more reasonable budget, and make it the anchor of their whole Adult Swim block. It would be the best decision for all parties concerned. (Except maybe Fox, but screw 'em.)
MSK
I'm really surprised at this kind of behavior, I really am.
Ceci n'est pas un post
If you had ANY idea how hard it is to get a show put together, not to mention how competititive the television business is, you would not accuse FOX of deliberately sabotaging a show any more than you would Linux of deliberately torpedoing his kernel.
I know. I've pitched shows at Fox as well as the other networks.
Of the dozens of scripts that are written and pitched to a network, a tiny sliver of them are actually produced as pilots. Of those, only a few ever make it on the air-- of those few, very few find an audience.
With the tremendous amount of energy a network puts into cultivating a show and trying to help it find an audience, to think they'd be intentionally trying to make one of their own shows fail is utter insanity.
When a network has to kill a show, it's because they've tried their hardest to get the show to gain traction with an audience. If they've moved around your beloved Futurama (or Star Trek or My So Called Life or Freaks and Geeks or whatever) it's because they think it'll do better somewhere else or because another show might be able to attract a larger audience in that time slot.
You can blame Fox for their lack of skill in marketing or programming "Futurama" but to say they are trying to kill their own show makes no sense. They want as many hits as they can get.
Saying Fox sucks, incidentally, is smearing the network that gave you the Simpsons. That alone is heresy in my book.