Slashback: Futurama, Shattering, Footage

Slashback items tonight include a hopeful picture of the Futurama future, good news for Ziff-Davis fans worried about bankruptcy, video-release updates for two films reviewed on Slashdot, and more -- read on for the details.

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."

Comments

Speaking of skateboards...

[wiredog]

The Washington Post Sunday Magazine has an article on the corporatization of boarding.

Always a shame to see magazines go.

[RumGunner]

I mean, having a computer in the bathroom, just ISN'T sanitary.

.

What!?

[ucblockhead]

You mean that the wild, unconfirmed rumors about Futurama were untrue!?

If we can't trust wild, unconfirmed rumors, what can we trust?

Re:What!?

[1010011010]

If we can't trust wild, unconfirmed rumors, what can we trust?

The Office of Homeland Security!

</not>

Futurama

[frovingslosh]

/. seems to have completely overlooked this, but Futurama showed up on Fox's Fall schedule a couple of months ago.

Re:Futurama

[Flynnhustler]

Futurama has stopped production, but thanks to constant pre-empting they have an entire season worth of episodes in the can.

Think of Futurama as a dead star, whose light is still reaching us across the vast reaches of space.
-g

Thank {insert deity of choice} for Cartoon Network

[blackcoot]

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....

Futurama RERUNs

[jimmcq]

Apparently Cartoon Network said that there are negotiations going on between Fox and Cartoon Network for the reruns of Futurama, not new episodes. We can hope that if the reruns do well, that they might produce new episodes, but that is not what they are currently talking about.

Re:Futurama RERUNs

[demaria]

I don't think CN has enough ratings & money to justify the expense of producing a full Futurama episode. Those are expensive - it isn't like making a powerpuff girls or aqua teens episode. :)

Futurama rumors

[anotherone]

Not a chance... in TV guide a while ago it said that the cartoon costs Fox around $1,000,000 an episode. And Cartoon Network recently shitcanned Mission Hill due to $400,000 an ep figures. They like cheap shows like Sealab and Aqua Teen Hunger Force (two of the best shows on TV right now IMHO) better.

Rumors are usually just that, rumors... remember that Invader Zim/Hot Topic thing a while back? More bullshit. Why does /. even publish this stuff, I'm thinking that a single email would clear it up.

Re:Futurama rumors

[kaphka]

Not a chance... in TV guide a while ago it said that the cartoon costs Fox around $1,000,000 an episode. And Cartoon Network recently shitcanned Mission Hill due to $400,000 an ep figures.

Actually, to me, that sounds very encouraging. I thought the difference would be much greater.

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.)

Re:Bleah

[ConceptJunkie]

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.

Ahh.. Happy Ending for Futurama

[finny]

I think that Dr. Zoidberg said it best when he emoted:

"As the candy hearts poured into the fiery quasar, a wonderous thing happened, why not? They vaporized into a mystical love radiation that spread across the universe, destroying many, many planets - including two gangster planets and a cowboy world. But one planet was exactly the right distance to see the romantic rays, but not be destroyed by them - Earth. So all over the world, couples stood together in joy. And me, Zoidberg! And no one could've been happier, unless it would've also been Valentine's Day. What? It was? Hooray!"

ACK! Glad I don't do napster (et al)...

[killthiskid]

Taken from http://www.politechbot.com/p-02305.html, posted there by Duncan Frissell.

The $1K limit applies to the retail value of the product. Let's apply the law to Napster as an over reaching prosecutor might.

1. The average CD costs $12 and contains 18 songs (assumed for illustrative purposes). Each song is therefore worth $0.66.
2. One thousand dollars divided by sixty-six cents equals 1515 songs.
3. If one values songs by the price of CD singles, it takes even fewer songs (500) since those go for about $2/song.
4. So any Napster user who made 1515 (or perhaps fewer) songs available was knowingly infringing copyright law and trafficking in copyrighted materials with a retail value of more than 1000. As the US argued in its AMICUS CURIAE in A&M v. Napster "When a Napster user makes the music files on his or her hard drive available for downloading by other Napster users, he or she is distributing the files to the public at large." See http://www.loc.gov/copyright/docs/napsteramicus.ht ml
5. Likewise, a Napster user who just downloads songs is arguably "distributing" copyrighted works (to himself) since it is his command, generated by his computer, that grabs the song. So once he passes 1515 songs in 180 days, he's (arguably) a felon.

Time for a new slashdot poll: How many slashdotters are fedral felons due to their file sharing activities? The person closest to guessing the correct quantity without going over wins a get out of jail free card, curtousy of John Ashcroft! Yeah!

I'm afraid...

[cachorro]

The OS Revolution will not be televised.

Re:Futurama not cancelled?

[handsomepete]

This is news. If you consider the fact that Futurama *is* cancelled (hasn't been renewed to be super accurate), but had 1 - 1.5 seasons worth of episodes to show before they're done. Fox has also stated their intentions of not renewing the show and this has been doubly confirmed by Groening and Cohen in interviews. Absolutely.

Moreover, it is definitely news that they could be joining Adult Swim, which is fast becoming a big part of my Sunday night viewing diet.

The anti-virus alarm

[hayden]

Is triggered because it does contain the virus code (or enough of it for the scanner to recognise it). You have to inject code into the other programs address space and the virus code does something useful. On *nix you would use something that opened up a shell (which would now have root priveleges) but under Windows a shell is about as useful as a one legged man in an arse kicking competition so he used something else.

<bitch>
Of course if you'd read the article (specifically the only bit in red, I know it's hard to miss) you'd know this.
</bitch>

Re:Bleah

[glwtta]

anyone with a room temperature IQ (which doesn't seem to include Fox programmers) won't watch them.

Celcius of Farenheit?

Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Julie Schwartz Slide Oddball Comics Show..."

Proper noun, proper noun, verb, adjective, noun, noun...

What the FUCK would this be in English?

giFT

[Robotech_Master]

You can probably find it on the giFT internet File Transfer (OpenFT) network.

You can also find the made-for-Finnish-TV-yet-almost-entirely-in-English Linux documentary The Code (for which I tried to submit a review to Slashdot, only to have it rejected) floating around on it. (Ironically, at least a couple of dozen people on giFT have The Code--but absolutely nobody has it on KaZaa itself!)

The "problem" with Futurama

[geekoid]

is that it is subtle, very subtle. I'm surprised at the number of post that don't find it funny.

It is completly nerdsville, and I love.
they make programming reference, engineering references, sci-fi references, and modern culture references.
How many people would have the guts to put this on the air:
"that happened in 2506...just after the second coming of christ"?
I paraphrased the year.
in the last episod I saw it had:
A marriage between Iron chef and Soylent green.
A styx reference(group not river)
Homophobic reference from a robot.
Wraith of Kahn joke.
poisoning
revenge
a frame up
destruction of a ship(in a bottle)
secret code(granted, they're in every episode)
Its one of the few shows that I don't understand why it is NOT 'embraced' by slashdot, yet Buffy is.

I suspect its because the first generation gamers/video game players/star wars people are getting old, and this generation is trying to glom onto anything they can call a product of there generation.

I guess I'll have to start all my conversations with "Back in my day..." ;)

I saw Groening speak 3 weeks ago...

[TheTomcat]

Matt Groening spoke in Montreal a few weeks ago, and he specifically stated that Futurama has "at least one more season" he was hoping for more, and that he also "has a few projects up [his] sleeve"

I'm looking forward to said sleeve-projects.

S