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Slashback: ClonesMAX, Animation, Dislaimers

Slashback with a reader review of the IMAX version of Star Wars Episode Two,the continuing courtship of AIM and ICQ, episode 408 of Futurama, and more, including How to go around the world without going anywhere at all. Read on below!

Give me IV any old day. Rupert writes with a review of the newly IMAX-ified Episode II of the Star Wars saga:

"Since it was my wife's birthday today, last night I took her to see Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones: IMAX edition. Notwithstanding the overuse of colons, this is a movie worth seeing, even if you think you already saw the movie.

If you haven't already seen AotC, you no doubt have your reasons, and there isn't anything in this edition to make you change your mind. Likewise, the plot still has gaping holes and Anakin is still moody, so if those were enough to make you hate this movie, you won't want to see it again. The action sequences gain little from the new presentation, as objects move too fast across the large screen to follow.

On the other hand, if you want to see the pores in Natalie Portman's skin, or the individual hairs in Christopher Lee's beard, this is the movie you've been waiting for. I suspect that some time was spent re-rendering the digital characters. Yoda, Wattoo and Jex Dexter stood out in close up, looking more real than the human actors.

Some scenes were cut from this edition. Some I didn't miss, such as Ani and Amidala frolicking in the meadow with the giant bed bugs. Others, such as almost all the scenes in Palpatine's office, and many of the Jedi Council made it even harder to follow what was going on.

You might be wondering where you can see the movie."

Always cut with the Groenig. ari_j writes "It looks like Fox is giving us a new season of Futurama. From the page, "Season Premiere Sunday, Nov. 10th at 7PM/6C". Sure enough, my local Fox affiliate is carrying it as stated. From tv.yahoo.com: '"Crimes of the Hot", Episode #408.
Al Gore's head holds an emergency summit in Kyoto, Japan, to deal with global warming caused by robot emissions.'"

This does not look good on a resume. nautical9 writes "As a follow up to Henrick Schon's dismissal from Bell Labs last month for falsifying data, many of his former co-authors are retracting their articles from the AAAS's prestigious Science magazine. It's apparently the largest retraction for the journal ever. Bell labs is also pulling six different patent applications of his. Here's the Wired article."

Is this the basket you ordered for all your eggs? With regard to the AOL / ICQ integration CowboyNeal mentioned the other day, nxtw writes "At this moment, ICQ users can send messages to AIM users, but AIM users cannot send messages to ICQ users or be seen on your buddy list. However, AIM automatically postpends any screenname or group consisting of all numbers with -ICQ when added to your buddy list. (This applies to the beta AIM 5.1.3009 client.)"

They're in Australia, of course they have flying dreams. VileScum writes "Back in May a reader posted this story of an Australian Guy who built a 747 Sim in his garage. As reported in the Sydney Morning Hearld The builder and a group of his friends are now doing a round the world sim flight for charity. The full story can be found here. The details of the actual flight can be found here."

254 comments

  1. Futurama by jimmcq · · Score: 5, Informative

    Note that the "new" season of Futurama isn't quite new... The show is still just as cancelled as before.

    Fox just has a few un-aired episodes that were produced a while ago, but still haven't been shown yet.

    1. Re:Futurama by Artemis+Entreri · · Score: 2, Interesting

      but this is just policy...if you have a surplus of episodes, you terminate the show, and air all the episodes you have. if ratings are high enough, you hire the animator back to create new shows. it's crappy in human interaction sense, but i guess it's smart business. we can only hope that new episodes will be comissioned..this all depends on ratings, so watch futurama guys! ;)

    2. Re:Futurama by Masem · · Score: 3, Interesting
      It should also be pointed out that this may be preempted in your local area for football games, one of the reasons why there's still a backlog of Futurama episodes left.

      Don Del Grande has made a handy list of what football games are where this season, and thus what the chances of Furutama (being the first show on the block, and most likely to be run into by long games) will be shown are. That post is here from google's archive.

      Most likely, your best chance to catch these shows is when it goes to Cartoon Network come next year (5 times a week).

      --
      "Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
      "I can see my house from here!" - ST:
    3. Re:Futurama by WankersRevenge · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, it's not smart business sense. Here's the deal - if the show does wonderfully well and they decide to hire everyone back - now they got to wrangle all the original creative talent who will probably want way more money who are most likely committed to other projects. It'll probably take a year or longer to produce new episodes. And by the time those new episodes have hit the market, chances the public will have since long moved on.

      My girlfriends father is an animation producer and this exact scenario is happening to him.

    4. Re:Futurama by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      It's not that simple. "They" have no idea what I'm watching ever, unless I write them, tell them *and* they care enough to read the letter. The disconnection between the network and the viewer is too large. We need a better way to give feedback.

    5. Re:Futurama by FredMcGriff · · Score: 1

      that's what tivo is for.

    6. Re:Futurama by Munch1 · · Score: 1

      I work for Fox, and Futurama hasn't been cancelled. Matt had a bunch of episodes that never aired due to Fox's poor scheduling (live sports, etc..). They had planned on cancelling the show due to poor ratings (which is Fox's own fault considering the way they bounce the show around and noone knows when it's coming on). However, the last information given to us was that due to the overwhelming anger over the impending cancellation and Matt's online petition, the show has been brought back and will be worked into the fall schedule. The fans saved it!

    7. Re:Futurama by Artemis+Entreri · · Score: 2

      i guess i shouldn't have said "air all the episodes"...they have a buffer space...but if a network finds themselves with a currently hired animator, with 2+ seasons of material, chances are that they will terminate the contract, and renew it in a season or two. since they have a contract for the show, they're not going to lose it. they just terminate the animator for a while. crappy i supose, and it may not always work...i don't know all the ins and outs, as i'm not a network executive..this just seems like a fairly common policy.

  2. SWEp2IMAX: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    With the formerly-missing musical number, "Blame Amidala."

    1. Re:SWEp2IMAX: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I bet those piping hot grits really squelch when they're poured down trousers on the IMAX screen!

    2. Re:SWEp2IMAX: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut! by rlangis · · Score: 1

      I thought it was Ani and Yoda singing "Shut your F*ing Face, F*ing Obi-waan!"

      --
      GIR: I'm going to sing the Doom song now. Doom doom doom doom doom doom de-doom doom doom doom doom doom doom...
  3. His name is GOERING, not GROENIG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    n/t

    1. Re:His name is GOERING, not GROENIG! by Theodore+Logan · · Score: 1

      Actually, it's GROENING. Not that I didn't get your sick joke, but it really was spelled incorrectly.

      --

      "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok

    2. Re:His name is GOERING, not GROENIG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nein! Nein! I mean, No!

      He vas not mit Mister Hilter and most certainly did not invade Poland. Just ask Mister Bimmler.

    3. Re:His name is GOERING, not GROENIG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Who cares? He's a fag. He should die in horrible pain. Oh wait, he watches his own episodes. That's horrible enough!

    4. Re:His name is GOERING, not GROENIG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

      Am retired vindow cleaner and pacifist, without doing war crimes. Oh...and am glad England vin Vorld Cup. Bobby Charlton. Martin Peters. And eating I am lots of chips and fish and hole in the toads and Dundee cakes on Piccadilly Line, don't you know old chap, vot! And I vos head of Gestapo for ten years. Ah! Five years! Nein! No! Oh. NOT head of Gestapo AT ALL! I was not, I make joke!

    5. Re:His name is GOERING, not GROENIG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Herman Goering was Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, President of the Reichstag, and Prime Minister of Prussia, not head of the Gestapo. Not like it makes any difference, a Nazi is a Nazi, but it's always good to be historically accurate, even when making a joke about someone's spelling (and of course, he was satisfyingly strung up at the end of the Nuremberg Trials).

    6. Re:His name is GOERING, not GROENIG! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Watch Monty Python once in a while, and perhaps you can be on the same page as the rest of us.

  4. Cold day in tatooine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You really can't miss them in this version of the movie. I bet half the re-digitizing budget went into that scene alone.

  5. ATOC...argh. by BZArcher · · Score: 3, Insightful

    So...as far as I can tell, this edition removed all the political intrique and vague sense of plot, poured in more closeups of scenes we already either liked or hated, and ruined all the somewhat fun explosions and action scenes by running things so fast acrost the screen you can't see them?

    1. Re:ATOC...argh. by eco2geek · · Score: 1
      So...as far as I can tell, this edition removed all the political intrique and vague sense of plot, poured in more closeups of scenes we already either liked or hated, and ruined all the somewhat fun explosions and action scenes by running things so fast acrost the screen you can't see them?

      If you're looking for a deep plot, you've come to the wrong movie! :-) Star Wars has always been more of a comic strip set in film than anything else. No, they didn't do any of those things.

      According to a newspaper article, 22 minutes were removed from the original in order to decrease the size of the film reel in order for it to fit the OmniMax equipment (which, in Portland, had to be upgraded in order to host the film). The article also said that visual content was added in order to compensate for the larger size of the picture. And the soundtrack evidently came on CD rather than on a separate reel.

      It was odd to have to turn your head to see everything, and you had to flatten out in your seat to avoid getting a crick in your neck. And when scenes had white backgrounds, you could see the seams between the "screen", which looked to be made out of metal mesh and acted like a scrim (they played a blurb that lit up the speaker system behind the screen before the movie started).

      My wife didn't like it because there was so much visual input it was hard for her to take.

      Other than those niggles, it was great. I'm already looking forward to seeing Star Wars Episode III in IMAX format.

    2. Re:ATOC...argh. by plover · · Score: 2
      I personally thought it was a better release than the original. As Rupert pointed out, most of the Amidala and Anakin romance was removed as was the entire Jedi Library scene. (Thankfully this included removing that awful pointless closeup of Jett Lucas in the Jedi Library. For some reason, that stupid cameo in the first release really got my goat.) And yes, they did "thin" some of the plot, but since almost everyone has already seen it on the small screen, their memory of their first viewing should fill in the plot gaps.

      Initially, I found some scenes harder to follow in IMAX, and I noticed immediately that it was going to be different when I had to turn my head left-to-right just to read the initial scrolling text. I was afraid I was going to get a neckache watching a tennis match for the next two hours, but instead found myself totally immersed in the movie.

      For example, the chase scene on Coruscant worked very well in that I found myself following the frantic motions of the speeder, but occasionally scanning my surroundings looking for the assassin's vehicle, just like I might look around for speed traps while driving my car too fast :-)

      Other scenes, such as the execution arena, were magnificent when you saw how big the arena was supposed to be. And I believe they must have rerendered the CGI for IMAX. The arena was filled with the uncountable flying insect-people, but if you turned your attention to any single one of them, you would see the detail in the unique motion each one had, its wings buzzing or it standing up or waving its arms about.

      IMAX isn't about watching the whole movie, the way you might watch a TV set in your living room. It's about watching the story unfold and having action take place in the center of your vision, while your peripheral vision continues to feed you supporting imagery. You aren't meant to see the "screen" as a separate entity, framed and hanging on a wall. You're meant to follow the actors and action as if you were present, and the size of the screen is meant to keep you from seeing that frame.

      This movie was a good showcase for what IMAX can do for the viewers, as long as you realize that as a viewer you have to be willing to approach it differently. I thoroughly enjoyed it (even though I'd never paid $11.00 for a movie ticket before.) My advice on attending? Arrive early at the theater, sit near the front, and lose yourself for a couple of hours.

      --
      John
  6. Forget A-B-C plotlines and 2 dimensional charcters by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    If there's one thing wrong with movies today, it's the frame-rate.

  7. Surely the typical case by PhysicsScholar · · Score: 1, Insightful

    With Futurama, I feel that folks just simply didn't appreciate what they had until it was gone.

    And considering the timeslot that the FOX TV network placed it into, how could it not fail back then?

    Either way, let's just hope that this time it's very successful. Please try to buy all of the products that they advertise. Also if you can start fan pages for Futurama and sell merchandise of Futurama logos at CafePress.com. That's what all the big sites do.

    --

    Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada, B3H 3J5
    1. Re:Surely the typical case by Dante · · Score: 2

      Umm... your a big old troll. But thats besides the point, how do rationalize a time zone post about fox tv from England?

      "you And considering the timeslot that the FOX TV network placed it into, how could it not fail back then?"
      --
      "think of it as evolution in action"
    2. Re:Surely the typical case by Dante · · Score: 2

      ah fuck just mod me down, his sig used to day england

      --
      "think of it as evolution in action"
    3. Re: Surely the typical case by Black+Parrot · · Score: 1


      > With Futurama, I feel that folks just simply didn't appreciate what they had until it was gone. ... Either way, let's just hope that this time it's very successful.

      I'm going to wait and see it when it comes out for IMAX.

      --
      Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
    4. Re:Surely the typical case by Wee · · Score: 2
      Please try to buy all of the products that they advertise. Also if you can start fan pages for Futurama and sell merchandise of Futurama logos at CafePress.com. That's what all the big sites do.

      You think this will work? Honestly, you really do?

      A fool and his money...

      -B

      --

      Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.

  8. The IMAX experience. by Jaguar777 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I would have to agree with the submitter. Yeah it was nice to see a few of the things larger than life, but motion blur was much more noticeable and I was miffed that they cut scenes out of the movie. During the drive back home me and my girlfriend spent more time talking about why they might have cut scenes out of the movie instead of talking about the "incredible IMAX experience".

    --
    Maybe you should educate the morons of tomorrow so they'll stop believing the leaders of tomorrow. - Dogbert
    1. Re:The IMAX experience. by jherubin · · Score: 2, Informative

      Scenes were cut out because of a limitation of the IMAX reels. 120 minutes is the maximum running time for an IMAX movie.

      By the way they cut scenes from Apollo 13 (IMAX) for this same reason too.

    2. Re:The IMAX experience. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Perhaps if you knew why they cut the footage it wouldn't have bothered you that much.

      The reason why footage was cut....and from Apollo 13 as well (first IMAX DMR movie)....was because the current IMAX platters can only hold 2 hours worth of movie. Simple as that. :)

      And if you wonder where I got my info., it was posted on starwars.com

    3. Re:The IMAX experience. by Target+Drone · · Score: 5, Informative
      The reason the scenes were cut is because the original AOTC was 143 minutes but an IMAX flick can only be 120 minutes (although apparently AOTC is 128 minutes so they must of crammed a few extra feet onto the reel).

      This article has the details.

    4. Re:The IMAX experience. by Temsi · · Score: 1

      talking about why they might have cut scenes out of the movie

      It actually has nothing to do with trying to improve the storyline (even tho that would have been nice).
      It's just that the IMAX projector is physically incapable of showing a movie longer than 2 hours. That's why they also cut nearly 20 minutes out of Apollo 13 for its IMAX Experience version.
      Still haven't seen this tho... I just got the DVD which looks great, but I still want to see the IMAX, just to see a 40ft Yoda kick ass.

      --
      -- This sig for rent.
    5. Re:The IMAX experience. by readc · · Score: 1

      ?
      the dvd...is not out...

      yet!

      november 12th, people! same with lord of the rings extended platinum enhanced whatever plus edition! and the armitage 3 ova comes tomarrow. I'm set as far as dvd's go...

      --
      Da comp cant tell u da emotional story.It can give u da exact mathematical design,but whatz missin is da eyebrows. -FZ
    6. Re:The IMAX experience. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would you mind explaining why it can only be 120 minutes long (and why you can't just run two in a row in that case). I find this perplexing.

    7. Re:The IMAX experience. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I admit missing the link (I thought it was your .sig and ignored it), but after checking the article out the question still stands.

    8. Re:The IMAX experience. by Jester99 · · Score: 3, Informative

      It can only be ~120 minutes long because a reel of 120 minutes of IMAX film is about 12 feet in diameter. There's only so much that the motor can spin. Two reels in a row? I'm not sure, but I speculate that there's a decent amount of time required to load in the second reel, or something. Why not just have an intermission? Again, beats me.

    9. Re:The IMAX experience. by pacc · · Score: 2

      120 minutes should be enough for anyone, lets concentrate on the gold plating - IMAX design team

    10. Re:The IMAX experience. by L0rdJedi · · Score: 1

      An intermission was considered but decided against. It was thought that a break in the movie would hurt the flow and pacing of the film. Coincedently, with the cuts, the movie seems to flow much better. Though, from reading the comments around here, that might only be true if you already know the story.

  9. Easy way around AIM/ICQ by I_am_Rambi · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    With multiple AIM accounts and an MSN account, the search for a program that would let be run all at one time was ended. I tried trillian,but I didn't like that as much as aim. On the other hand, I tried Gaim and enjoy it. Gaim makes it easy to manage accounts,msn, ICQ, Yahoo, AIM, and more.

    Gaim is open-source and has some features (automatic logging of conversations) that I have not been able to find elsewhere. Try GAIM, its well worth it.

    ***OK, well the gui is made with GTK, but the features are rich***

    1. Re:Easy way around AIM/ICQ by umm+qasr · · Score: 2, Offtopic
      Gaim is open-source and has some features (automatic logging of conversations) that I have not been able to find elsewhere.

      Trillian does have logging capabilities, they are in the preferences. I use Gaim myself, becuase Trillian is not available for my current platform--the feature set is almost identical however. Trillian does look alot better than (GTK) Gaim though. Then again, it is closed source.

    2. Re:Easy way around AIM/ICQ by dmatos · · Score: 2, Informative

      Somewhere hidden in the Trillian menus (I found it so long ago I forgot where it was) is the option to turn on conversation logging. Considering the standard conspiracy-theory crowd that normally frequents slashdot (no offense intended, of course ;) I would think that having this feature off as a default would be seen as a plus.

      PS - I just spent the thirty seconds it took to find the options: Preferences -> Message History.

      --

      It may look like I'm doing nothing, but I'm actively waiting for my problems to go away.
      --Scott Adams
    3. Re:Easy way around AIM/ICQ by Tiro · · Score: 1

      Mac AIM auto logs as well.

    4. Re:Easy way around AIM/ICQ by ktulu1115 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Believe you me, I am no advocate of purely-closed source development. However in this situation, does the licence of the software really matter much when it comes to a simple application such as GAIM/Trillian? Personally, I don't Trillian at all (I've used it before, and its a beast)... But if someone turned it down just because it is closed source, I think that would be a bit narrowminded.

      I'm not implying anything here, just giving my $0.02

      --
      # fuser -v /dev/attention | grep work
      #
    5. Re:Easy way around AIM/ICQ by tmalone · · Score: 1

      I would say that it almost matters more. The authors of Trillian have most likely gotten a lot of knowledge from the community and are improving their program based on information gathered from reverse engineering. It seems kinda hypocritical to me. I don't see how the size of the program should make a difference. If you aren't going to be making money, I see no reason to keep it closed source.

    6. Re:Easy way around AIM/ICQ by GoRK · · Score: 2

      If by "almost identical" you mean "pales by comparison" then I'll take your word for it. In fact, the only features trillian has above gaim are pretty useless - skinning and MDI window capabilities. I guess you might include translucent windows, but who in the fuck uses that useless piece of crap? Until the *background* can be translucent, the *text and borders* solid, and buttons fade toward opaque, window translucency will be nothing more than a stupid hack.

      Anyway, that being said, Gaim: 1) suppports more protocols and plugin authors at least have the ability to write support for protocols it doesnt support 2) is scriptable via perl and 3) is monetarily free keeping it out of that shitty grey area where cerullian studios makes money on a product that would not function without the continued work of aol/yahoo/msn, some of whom, at least, lose revenue when their users don't use their own clients.

      Anyway, trillian sucks. The SDK sucks, it wouldn't be worth using if someone wrote a Win32 native GUI for GAIM. Too bad GAIM wasn't started on Qt...

    7. Re:Easy way around AIM/ICQ by MonMotha · · Score: 1

      Just FYI, there is a port of GTK+ to Windows. Stability is a bit dodgy at times (especially with 2.0 versions), but it does exist.

      The GIMP for windows makes heavy use of it (obviously, seeing how the GIMP would be the original app using GTK+).

      Some GIMP and GTK+ for windows info can be found here and here.

      --MonMotha

    8. Re:Easy way around AIM/ICQ by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nah, they just don't want logging when [b]they[/b] use it. When anyone else in their house or computer room use it, they want it [b]on, with a forked process uucp'ing it to their lm.[/b]

    9. Re:Easy way around AIM/ICQ by Genyin · · Score: 1

      However, you can't really compare Gaim and Trillian that well, because they don't run on the same platform (as you probably well know)... there is preliminary win32 support for gaim, but not remotely stable last I checked.

      If Trillian were open source, it probably would be ported to linux fairly quickly; therefore I am turning it down because it is closed source. (ie, if it were open source, it would run on my platform.)

      AFAIK, there is no good AIM client (on the scale of gaim or trillian) for windows that isn't closed source, anyway, so I don't see how someone could turn down trillian because it is closed...

    10. Re:Easy way around AIM/ICQ by GoRK · · Score: 2

      Yeah, I know. I have fooled with the Win32 compile of GAIM off and on. It's still very dodgy, though Gimp/win32 is pretty stable -- there are some other GTK apps that feel OK on windows too, but which ones elude me...

      Anyway, nothing against GTK, I like it fine and I enjoy writing Perl/GTK very much, but QT does just have that good native widget feel and is stable on all architectures, even os x! TT does a good job.

  10. Re:Eliminating duplicity by Iainuki · · Score: 0, Troll

    Are you trying to be modded redundant? This is an exact duplication of this post (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=43704&cid=456 0260) in the previous discussion. It was a troll then and it's still a troll.

  11. Re:Eliminating duplicity by IanA · · Score: 5, Insightful

    AIM and ICQ are both owned by AOL. ICQ is the original IM. And at one point was the most poular. There have occasionally been UNIX knockoffs, like the vastly inferior command line "talk" implementation, however it was incapable of letting you know whne new users had signed on, also, it could not do file transfers.


    It's interesting talk can be a knockoff of ICQ when talk came first.

  12. Re:Eliminating duplicity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Powwow by Tribal Voice, anyone? Xurely that has to be the first IM...but then again, who can deny IRC...

  13. Re:Eliminating duplicity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can someone clue-stick this guy on how many years `talk` [and `ntalk`] PRE-date ICQ/AIM/Jabber?

  14. GEORGYFRUITS! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now that's +1, Informative!

  15. Re:Eliminating duplicity by The+Axe · · Score: 3, Informative

    "There have occasionally been UNIX knockoffs, like the vastly inferior command line "talk" implementation, however it was incapable of letting you know whne new users had signed on, also, it could not do file transfers."

    Sorry to burst your bubble, but 'talk' has been around far longer than ICQ has. It is not an IM client nor was it designed to be. It was created back in the days when people had to use text-only terminals on UNIX machines and needed a form of communication.

    Trillian, illegal? All it does is use the protocol, they didn't steal the source or whatever. KaZaA only provides file sharing, it doesn't promote distributing illegal files. That's like saying Ford makes money of killing people when someone runs people over with his Taurus.

    On another note, 'duplicating effort'? Why did your parents decide to breed? After all, they're just duplicating what Adam and Eve did so long ago...

  16. AoTC & ICQ by ImaLamer · · Score: 1

    Just a refresher, ICQ was invented in Israel by two gentleman who later sold the thing(y) to AOL.

    AOL did nothing with it, but now they will?

    What I hope to see come out of this: One network which has all the users, AIM and ICQ. The ICQ client with some additional features that newbies can't/won't use, AIM for us who don't want 'groupware'.

    AIM is great. IMHO, AIM is the best client out there. Not because of the features but just the ease of use. ICQ was nice back in the day but when you just want to sit back and wait for buddies to pop into cubicals or dorm rooms: it's AIM.

    Features? Why do you need all those features in most clients anyways? Not that I'm knocking the feature set on ICQ or another client but sometimes you just want 'buddy' to 'buddy' chat.

    Fuck it, either way if it's a blow to Microsoft I'll bite.

    And BTW; we just got a new IMAX theater which was partly built with public funds... but dammit, not AoTC! Hate me, fine, I liked it.

    1. Re:AoTC & ICQ by ProfessorPuke · · Score: 4, Insightful

      AOL did nothing with it, but now they will?

      Oh, AOL "did" something important with their ICQ purchase:

      They sat on it, and prevented the development of a competitor in a new application domain. ICQ was a rather new concept, and if Mirabilils had proceeded to improve & popularize it with venture capital, they could've undercut a lot of the popularity of network services like AOL (and now MSN). Instead, they sold out to AOL, who did nothing to encourage the future of the ICQ product.

      I hope the guys at least got a nice big check out of it.

    2. Re:AoTC & ICQ by deander2 · · Score: 2

      If I remember correctly, it was 300 million little $1 checks. :-)

      But seriously, I would have done the same thing. The memory of Netscape v. MS was fresh in everyone's minds, and you can do a lot more good to a lot more people with the money.

    3. Re:AoTC & ICQ by slink58601 · · Score: 1

      Ohhh the got a big check out of it all right, it was big even then, but no they never have to work again.

    4. Re:AoTC & ICQ by Powerdog · · Score: 1
      I hope the guys at least got a nice big check out of it.

      I hope they got a lot of AOL shares.

  17. I Agree With This Post! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Now that's +1, Insightful!

  18. About the AOTC IMAX release... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  19. Re-discovering old ideas by m11533 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Absolutely. talk/ntalk is part of the original Unix networking application set... you know, those applications everyone forgot about and then disabled with their firewalls.

    It is amazing to me how many "new ideas" are just the same old thing rediscovered. That alone doesn't bother me. It is that they don't remember the past that most irks me. That dooms us to repeating the same mistakes rather than improving on the original.

    Whether it be IM, or the semantic web, its all been done before.

    1. Re:Re-discovering old ideas by Bennn · · Score: 1

      It is amazing to *me* how many "new ideas" are just the same old thing, but patented :)

  20. For once it's on-topic! by JediTrainer · · Score: 4, Funny

    Notwithstanding the overuse of colons, this is a movie worth seeing

    Not worth seeing is another misuse of a colon - a link which I would recommend against visiting to those fortunate enough to have escaped seeing it. Please don't click on the link, but allow the unfortunate of us to laugh knowingly (and nervously, with nausia at the memory).

    --

    You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
    1. Re:For once it's on-topic! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      arghhh!!! my eyes, my eyes!!!

    2. Re:For once it's on-topic! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      i think it's rather cute. i mean, i've always wanted to see out a man's esophagus through his colon. beautifulll //

    3. Re:For once it's on-topic! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      goatse.cx is on topic? (universe explodes.)

  21. Regarding Futurama by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Note that the "new" season of Futurama isn't quite new... The show is still just as cancelled as before.

    Fox just has a few un-aired episodes that were produced a while ago, but still haven't been shown yet.

    1. Re:Regarding Futurama by isorox · · Score: 1

      /me LOL's at the dumbass moderators. Redundant is there fore a reason

  22. Re:Eliminating duplicity by GimmeFuel · · Score: 1

    "Talk" vastly inferior to AIM/ICQ? It's true, but keep in mind Talk was around a little bit before the rest. It's apples to oranges, like comparing Space Invaders to UT2003; they're so far apart in time comparison is meaningless. I don't see how Trillian steals intellectual property from the other messenger companies. Instead of running 4 (5, if you count Trillian's IRC support) different clients, each using up its own system resources, each with a different interface for me to figure out, shouldn't I have the option of running 1 program to access all of the networks? Also, Gnucleus does not make money off people trading files. Gnucleus is freeware and open source. It's other companies like NeoNapster and the old Morpheus that rip Gnucleus' source code off in an attempt to make money.

  23. Re:Eliminating duplicity by Moridineas · · Score: 2

    In terms of the first "IM" that's a chat system as we know it today I wouldn't be surprised if PowWow was one of the first (_the_ first maybe) internet ones. PowWow was great for it's time (Tribal Voices software i think). I'm not really sure I'd count Zephyr or talk in the same category as ICQ/AIM, but they definitely perform similar tasks. But yeah on your point, talk definitely preceded AIM or ICQ, lol n00b to the guy who says otherwise ;)

  24. I wonder by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How can the CGI characters be more life-like than the actors?

  25. Adult IMAX Movie? by DeadBugs · · Score: 4, Funny

    If you skim the review about the IMAX Star Wars movie too quick like I did you may only pick up on quotes like:

    "Since it was my wife's birthday today".
    "Notwithstanding the overuse of colons."
    "the plot still has gaping holes."
    "Yoda, Wattoo and Jex Dexter stood out in close up"
    "Ani and Amidala frolicking"

    --
    http://www.kubuntu.org/
    1. Re:Adult IMAX Movie? by Rupert · · Score: 2

      And after the movie she put on the Princess Leia slave-girl costume and I whipped out my light saber and ...

      Well actually we picked the kids up from the kind folks who were babysitting at short notice, went home, dealt with getting the kids into bed 2.5 hours past their bedtime, then got into bed and went straight to sleep.

      I should have done like John did, and gone at noon. He also got the benefit of an empty theater, whereas the 6:30pm showing was sold out.

      Oh, one more manner in which reality departs from the fantasy that began this post: I look far more like Jabba than any of the leading characters.

      --

      --
      E_NOSIG
    2. Re:Adult IMAX Movie? by DeadBugs · · Score: 2

      Sadly I have not been to an IMAX movie since I was Yoda's height. Maybe now that more mainstream films are showing up there, I will make the pilgrimage (at least an hours drive).

      Maybe for Episode III.

      --
      http://www.kubuntu.org/
  26. Actually... by KingAdrock · · Score: 2

    Soon after AOL bought ICQ they made it run on their own proprietary protocol. Until recently it didn't let it interact with AIM, but now they have opened that up.

  27. Intellectual Property Theft?! by mofu · · Score: 5, Informative

    . . . . because they steal Yahoo, AOL, and Microsofts intellectual property, in an attempt to make money.

    My understanding is that Trillian, Gaim, and Fire were developed using standard reverse engineeing methods to duplicate the protocols required to communicate with services from Yahoo, AOL, and MSN. This is not stealing intellectual property, and Trillian Pro aside, considering Trillian is available free of charge and that Gaim and Fire are both GPL, I would venture to say that there is very little or no money being made.

    Combined with the fact that you need a valid ID regestered with your choice(s) of IM services. . .

    If you want an analogy. . . using an alternate IM program is like skipping commercials on a Tivo or ReplayTV . . . .No Advertisements! . . . . while certain corporations and **AA associations would like us to think otherwise is not stealing intellectual property . . .

    1. Re:Intellectual Property Theft?! by mindstrm · · Score: 2

      Yeah.. except it should be clear to anyone that, theft aside, Trillian and the like provide an application that is beneficial to those who use it.
      I wouldn't be surprised if they patented the idea.

  28. Duplicate of 2nd story below! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
  29. Re:Eliminating duplicity by X · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'd definitely put Zephyr in the same category as ICQ and AIM. It had presence notification and instant messaging. It also had cool stuff like categorized broadcast messages and scripting support.

    To my way of thinking, everything since has been a poor Zephyr knock-off.

    --
    sigs are a waste of space
  30. Not as funny as you'd think by Osty · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You moderators mark him as funny, but he has a point. Modern movies show in 24fps (most theaters double-shutter, so you get an effect 48 fps, but each frame is doubled). This is extremely noticeable on any pan. And before anyone jumps in with the, "Human eyes can only see 24fps anyway, so what's the point?" argument, let me just say you're wrong wrong wrong. 24 frames per second is near the bare minimum required for the human eye to distinguish motion rather than individual frames. I've never seen a study claiming a maximum value, but I'd expect it to be much higher than even the 60fps some people suggest. If that were the case, then nobody would be able to tell the difference between 60Hz refresh rate monitors and 100Hz refresh rates. Movies can get away with this because of intrinsic "artificats" like motion blur, that help create a better sense of motion in fewer frames. (Incidentally, that's also why 24fps in a video game feels really jerky, while 24fps in a movie is usually pretty smooth -- video games tend not to have motion blur, because it requires lots of computational power. It's easier to push out more frames for a smoother look, rather than add motion blur.)


    Will we ever see > 24fps in the movie theater? Possibly, but it's going to take some time. I wouldn't expect it until TV broadcasts have switched completely to 720p (60 full frames per second, not 60 fields or half-frames), and DVDs are encoded at the same (rather than the current 480i encoding, and relying on special hardware to do 3:2 pulldown conversion for progressive display). Until then, the 24fps movie is too entrenched, I think.

    1. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      the ideal frame rate is around 300 fps (if I remember correctly). more than that and there is not much benefit.

    2. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hmm, that's funny since all I can find about the subject says you're wrong and that the eye sees 30fps max. As for Screen refreshing, AFAIK, that's not the same as fps.

      The reason you notice a difference is because your brain "skips" frames to keep up with the action thus keeping things smooth, sorta the same way a pc does.

    3. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      What? Double the frame rate to 48 fps? 60 fps?

      My GOD, boy, are you trying to kill the movie industry? Film is expensive! The material costs would would be enormous.

      A typical film runs what, about $70M? Take out the fees for crappy actors who need all that money for hookers and you are left with about $1200 for the film. Once you start using more film, the studios would be bankrupt.

      Phfff... it's never gonna happen.

    4. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by magnum3065 · · Score: 1

      Part of the issue here is not how often your eye can perceive a new image, but how much flicker you can notice. While the center of your eye that sees color and detail may not notice the fact that an image is changing until you get down below 24fps, the periferal vision can notice changes in overall light intensity at much higher rates. This is the reason that 60Hz is acceptable for an active matrix LCD but not for a CRT. An LCD can keep a pixel active continuously so there is no flicker, while a CRT's pixel is brightened when the beam hits it and slowly fades.

      Hopefully digital recordings for movies and digital projectors will get more widespread use soon, since this should get rid of the refresh rate issue which is the main problem that I see with movies right now.

    5. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by NearlyHeadless · · Score: 5, Informative
      Will we ever see > 24fps in the movie theater? Possibly, but it's going to take some time.

      Roger Ebert has been praising a system called Maxivision48 which is 48 fps (and can dynamically switch to 24 fps to save money).


      Also, Douglas Trumbull's ShowScan system has been around for a while, but has only been used for a few specialty attractions. I've read comments that said that ShowScan was too realistic and not "cinematic." That reminds me of the CD vs. vinyl debate.


      I've never seen either system.

    6. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      heh, and here's a link for you.

      http://www.geek.com/glossary/glossary_search.cgi ?f rames

      Tons more where that came from, I think I found the article you base your statement on but I find that one article to go against modern medical knowledge.

    7. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      "Will we ever see > 24fps in the movie theater? "

      I can't remember the name of the company, but somebody is fishing the idea around Hollywood of 48 fps film. Saw it on Ebert about a year ago.

      I predict that soon after theaters are equipped with digital projectors we'll start seeing >24fps movies. There's technology you can get today that uses morphing algorithms to expand 24fps all the way up to 60 fairly convincingly. As a matter of fact, Lost in Space used that technology quite a bit to slow some scenes down. I bet one day they'll take movies and re-process them up to 60fps.

    8. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Osty · · Score: 1

      So good of you to post your references. Here are mine:


    9. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by blincoln · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Comparing 24fps film to 60hz video is unfair, IMO. Film frames are projected in their entirety, since you've got one giant light shining through the picture. Video is drawing with a scanning beam, so in reality only a small chunk is onscreen at a given time. A 24hz video display would be next to unwatchable, whereas I never have problems with projected film.

      --
      "...always new atoms but always doing the same dance, remembering what the dance was yesterday." -Richard Feynman
    10. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Phearless+Phred · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Like another poster has already pointed out, it really is more of a CD vs vinyl thing. From what I've heard about Trumbull's Showscan format, the 60fps motion freaked everyone who watched it out.

      If 24fps makes people feel like they're watching a movie at the theater as opposed to watching the local news, then that's what everyone (aside from the news, probably) will use. It's all about perceived quality - just because we can create a 200fps playback system doesn't mean we should, especially if everyone is already happy with 24fps! (see also: how most people don't care about the difference between standard- and high-def.)

      The only high-def stuff that's being done in 720p these days is sports. Everything else is moving towards 24p, which means 1920x1080 @ 24 frames/second (the "p" means progressive scan.) Even live stuff is starting to get shot at 24p - the recent MTV video music awards were a good example of this.

    11. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Osty · · Score: 1

      A 24hz video display would be next to unwatchable, whereas I never have problems with projected film.

      Video, even at 60Hz, still has its problems, as does cinema. They're different problems, but they're both related to "frame rate" (in quotes, because video is more about refresh rate). Video obviously suffers from flicker (unless you're lucky/wealthy enough to have an LCD display, in which case you'll probably just get ghosting), while cinema suffers from stuttering. Like I said, watch a film with a long pan (horizontal is easiest to notice, but it happens on vertical pans as well). Watch how things seem to jump and jerk along, rather than being one long, smooth pan. (pan speed makes a difference of course, but anything but the slowest or fastest pans will have issues.)


      I brought up video for two reasons:

      1. To anecdotally prove the fallacy of the "24fps is as much as you can see" argument, by noting that if your eye could only see 24fps, then you wouldn't be able to notice the flicker at 60Hz.
      2. To propose a reason why we may not see higher frame rates in theaters yet, mainly because the 60Hz/30fps video (or 50Hz/25fps, if you're PAL) format is quite established, as are the methods of up-converting from 24fps to 30fps (3:2 pulldown). If video were to increase its refresh/frame rate (and some hardware does, like DLPs), then there would be incentive to increase theatrical frame rates as well for easier/better conversion to the home market (arguably where a majority of the money is made for theatrical releases). Sure a method would exist to up-convert from 24fps to whatever video is doing, but it would be a good point in the industry to do a major conversion.

    12. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      From the first link: "A TV running at only 30 FPS is picking up a Computer monitor in the background in its view, and with the 30 FPS TV Output you see the screen refreshes on the computer monitor running at 60 FPS."

      No. Absolute horse shit. When you see a monitor rolling on film or TV it is because the refresh rates are not synchronized, not because you can see a higher rate. Blatant nonsense like that call the whole article in to question.

    13. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "24 frames per second is near the bare minimum required for the human eye to distinguish motion rather than individual frames."

      Bullshit. Super 8 film runs at just 18 fps and provides distinguishible motion.

    14. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by doi · · Score: 5, Informative
      Actually, most motion picture projectors use a three-bladed shutter, which result in 72 flashes per second with a 24 fps film. This reduces the flickering of the image. I'm not sure about IMAX projectors though, as they are custom-built around a specialized film format, but they do run at 24 fps.

      As far as higher frame rate projection, IMAX also used a 48 fps system for some productions, but it seems to have been discontinued, probably due to the need for more specialized equipment and for practical reasons (used too much film and was more troublesome)

      There is also the MaxiVision format. It uses standard 35mm motion picture film, but with a special frame size that's larger than the typical film frame, and can be filmed and projected at either 24 or 48 fps. The image quality at 48 fps is substantially better, even greater than the difference between regular video and HDTV. I can only imagine what IMAX at 48 fps would look like!

      And last but not least, there was the Showscan process, which used 70mm film exposed and projected at 60 fps with a single bladed shutter. The image is much crisper and brighter; the faster frame rate reduced motion blur and also provided more image information (and the 70mm film image has higher definition). The image was smaller than an IMAX image though, but the quality was at least as good.

      When Douglas Trumbull was developing the Showscan process, he had extensive tests done to determine the optimal projection rate, up to at least 72 fps and possibly 100 fps. 60 fps was found to be the best rate; anything higher had very little improvement in image quality or perception of motion, and would merely use more film than necessary. I've read articles that some scientists have experimented on determining the "frame rate" of human vision, and it seems to be close to the rate used by Showscan (can't remember the exact number, but it was around 60-70 fps, and very few people could perceive anything higher than 80 fps)

      Sadly, Showscan never caught on as well as IMAX did and the Showscan corporation went into receivership. If you never got to see it, it was extremely impressive: I saw the Niagara Falls film and it's pretty amazing to see single individual drops of water in the Falls in 70mm at 60 fps! HDTV (and by extension SW:AOTC) looks like an old Super 8 home movie in comparison. It truly was more vivid than being there...the theater was located a few hundred yards from the Falls themselves so it was an easy comparison to make. The only thing close to it would be to see IMAX at 48 fps, but even IMAX's new DMR process is simply up-rezzing 35mm and HDTV images. While it's pretty damn good (I saw Apollo 13 and it was amazing, I'm sure AOTC will be too) it doesn't quite capture the exquisiteness of an original 70mm IMAX or Showscan frame.

      With all of the impetus towards cutting costs, using digital production techniques, and consolidating on lesser-quality but universal digital formats, it's unlikely that anyone will continue to produce films in special, high-quality film formats, especially since most of them require special projectors and/or theaters.

      --
      A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's an erection for?
    15. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by EpsCylonB · · Score: 1

      Your right on the money, a lot of ppl (even ppl in the film industry) say they dislike digital projections because it doesn't look the same as film.

      Basically people are used to a certain feel and look of projected film. What they are really talking about is the artifacts caused by dust and scratches which they don't obviously notice anymore because it's always been this way.

      For me the difference is all too noticeable, especially when compared to the quality of a DVD (in the uk I have often seen films on dvd before they are released theatrically).

    16. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bleah. 24fps looks better. It allows your brain fills in the details.

    17. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by ed1park · · Score: 1

      I believe the Imax formatted films run at 60 FPS. I remember watching a documentary where they monitored an audience hooked up to electrodes to measure their autonomic responses, and they felt 60 fps was the sweet spot.

    18. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      HA, I knew I found the article you were referring to. Yes, let's take Dustin's word for it even though it's obvious he has no idea what he's talking about.

      You people who try to say the eye can see more than 30fps are just trying to justify higher gaming framerates and spending the money on it.

    19. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Tom7 · · Score: 1

      I agree with you. I always get dizzy when they do one of those choppy pans. (I-Max can be even worse because the field of view is so much bigger...)

    20. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, a 48 fps movie experience! I had been waiting for this a long time, I can't wait for this "Maxivision48" to be deployed.

      That's something that will definitely improve my movie experience. Now if they could eliminate the ads at the beginning...

    21. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      *gasp*

      The fabled +5 informative post!

      At too high a framerate, however, you run into the danger of the video looking like a soap opera recording. :P

    22. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by EvanED · · Score: 2, Offtopic

      Ha. Films have been made in under a million. Star Wars (the 1977 one) cost $7 mil (or maybe it was $11 but its budget was 7...). Monty Python and the Holy Grail was ~$5 mil. Material costs wouldn't be more than a few hundred thousand per movie max. For movies with $100 mil budgets, that's nothing for a better picture.

    23. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, and such a reputable source of medical and physiological information an ISP's homepage is. I highly suggest you get a clue.

    24. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by cheese_wallet · · Score: 4, Interesting

      " Your right on the money, a lot of ppl (even ppl in the film industry) say they dislike digital projections because it doesn't look the same as film.

      Basically people are used to a certain feel and look of projected film. "

      Yeah, I think you are right. I've seen lens flare in games that at no time ever made use of a real camera, much less a lens. And I have to say it helped out, it felt more real because of the artificial defect.

    25. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Osty · · Score: 2

      Bullshit. Super 8 film runs at just 18 fps and provides distinguishible motion.

      Yes, distinguishably choppy motion.


      Many movies encoded for streaming use an even lower fps, around 15 or less. Sure, they still convey motion, but you wouldn't call it smooth, would you?

    26. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by scott_evil · · Score: 1

      You don't understand humour do you?

    27. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Digypro · · Score: 1

      I think the original poster was trying use a comdedic term sometimes reffered to as sarcasm...

    28. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by EvanED · · Score: 2

      OK, I missed that one; sarcasm in print usually needs to almost bite me in the ass before I notice it.

    29. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by NeMon'ess · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I've played games with lens flare and others which mimicked the brightness of the sun. If I look into the sun, the screen is almost white. As I look away, the image darkens, and the white circle of the sun shrinks. The latter effect felt far more real, as though I was there, instead of looking through a piece of glass.

      If filmakers don't like the look of a crisp 48fps movie, I'm betting its because they haven't tried to get used to it. The human brain is never hardwired to look at a TV or movie screen at 24fps and think "this is a story." Perhaps the framrate helps us quickly understand we're not looking through a real window. As the Theater is alive and well, I think "real" movies would go over huge if they were simply tried. I'd love to actually comprehend Yoda's moves in Episode 2.

    30. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by KewlPC · · Score: 3, Informative

      The problem with shooting at 48fps as opposed to 24fps is that you cut the amount of light hitting the film in half. This means you need brighter light sources, or you need to open up the aperture more. In many cases this is just not possible (an overcast day, etc.).

      Never mind that the cost of the actual film and processing would double.

      People who complain about flicker and suchsort when going to see a movie are probably watching the movie in a shitty theater with a substandard projector. The first time I saw Spider-man it looked flawless. I saw it a mere 3 days later, at a different theater, and there were all kinds of problems (wobbling, a bit of flicker, etc.).

    31. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by RangerSpeedBumpp · · Score: 1

      Actually the 24fps framerate had nothing to do with minimum motion requirements. Remember those old jerky black and white animations? They were filmed at 18fps: that was the speed vs quality trade-off back when film stock was expensive. We went to 24fps when the talkies hit - you couldn't embed a decent sound signal in a slower frame rate. If emulsions had been better we'd probably still be watching 18fps movies.

    32. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Rothron+the+Wise · · Score: 1

      People who complain about flicker and suchsort when going to see a movie are probably watching the movie in a shitty theater with a substandard projector.

      My main peeve with cinema is the fact that to hide the flickering, and i suppose also to avoid damage to the film, each frame is flashed twice when the film is displayed, but his causes a very disturbing temporal aliasing effect as the motion predictors of the human vision system fail half the time.

      The result is that fast panning scenes are almost unbearable to watch. Instead of a smooth sweep it appears as a jittered mess. It's much less of a problem for slow motion, and I suspect the effect may be linked to the eyes trying to track the action on screen. Some people might not be able to see it at all, but everyone I've explained it to have been able to see it, and of course they all hate me now. :)

      With 48 real frames per second and no double shutters, this problem would dissappear completely. To give the illusion of perfectly smooth motion it is a requirement to have a new
      frame for each screen exposure.

      The points you make about exposure times and amount of light are valid, but as more film
      makers move to digital cameras, this becomes less
      of a problem.

      --
      A witty .sig proves nothing
    33. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Espen · · Score: 1
      Not sure why I'm bothering to sink this into a void in the middle of thread, but sometime corrections are called for:


      1) Its not about the eyes! Its the visual processing of the brain which is used to distinguish motion rather than individual frames.

      2) 24fps clearly isn't the minimum. The first films where shot and ran in 16fps (as did home format films). Most cartoons from the 24fps era where double-framed ie. 12fps fps frame-doubled to 24fps.

      3) It is correct that the brain can process much higher frame-rates. I've seen somewhere that you need to be well above 70fps to be able to insert an alien frame in a sequence and not have it consciously observed (so much for the subliminal message claims)! However, what the maximum is, is a moot point when the issue is really what is satisfactory.

    34. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by OwnedByTwoCats · · Score: 2

      I first noticed film stuttering with SW V: The Empire Strikes back. Approaching the cloud city. Ugh.

      Did anyone catch West Wing last week? For the TV debates, they showed video. The rest of the episode was on film. I noticed.

      I'd like to think that 60 Hz 720P would become "standard". Digital projection, especially if it's a whole-frame (e.g. TI's micro-mirror array) rather than projection TV done large). It would certainly be noticable, and (IMHO) help reduce film and video artifacts. In exchange for some new ones, no doubt.

    35. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      60 hz is the frequency at which showing a succession of black/white images will look grey to you, i.e. it will not flicker.

      However below 100 hz you will see a strobe effect if you have a single white screen and the rest black.

      So the optimal frequency if you don't want to see any strobe-like effect would be anything higher then 100hz.

      100 hz applies mostly to computer monitors though. An analog movie will have the shutter speed chosen such that motion looks smooth even at low frequencies.

      However, if you took pictures and view them really fast afterwards, you will need to go to 60hz and above (closer to 100 hz, like for computer games).

      Hope this helps.

    36. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A crap movie like moulin rouge is going to be just as intolerable at 48 fps as it is at 24. Hollywood should concentrate on coming out with movies with original and engaging plots, rather than re-hashing all the TV shows from the 60's and 70's.

    37. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by kalidasa · · Score: 2

      The human brain is never hardwired to look at a TV or movie screen at 24fps and think "this is a story."

      For the record, NTSC is 29.97 fps.

    38. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by srmalloy · · Score: 2
      Sadly, Showscan never caught on as well as IMAX did and the Showscan corporation went into receivership. If you never got to see it, it was extremely impressive: I saw the Niagara Falls film and it's pretty amazing to see single individual drops of water in the Falls in 70mm at 60 fps!

      Some years ago, I saw what was probably the only production of its kind -- a Showscan production in Imax at our domed Imax theatre. I had read about some of the problems that the theatre had in getting the system to work -- running an Imax film at 60fps really wrung the projection system out, and they had problems getting the projection system to handle moving the film through that fast.

      But the film itself was amazing; the combination of Imax full wrap-around and the Showscan clarity made it something I will remember for a long time. And the fact that I had brought a friend with me who was getting his first exposure to Imax with that film made it even better. The movie started with a robot moving slowly across the screen talking about the film, and then cut to a camera mounted on the front of a locomotive running through the mountains; at the cut, I heard a metallic creaking next to me -- my friend had a white-knuckled grip with both hands on the armrests, and was using that grip to force himself back as hard as he could against the back of the chair. The movie had hit him that hard; it took him several minutes to relax and be able to watch the movie without feeling that he was looking through a window.
    39. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by poot_rootbeer · · Score: 2


      The material costs don't just apply to the film the scenes are captured onto, but also to each and every copy of the film that is distributed to each and every theater, you silly person.

      Unless Lucas is able to get Digital Projection into more theaters, that is.

    40. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by KewlPC · · Score: 2

      The light issue does not become any less of a problem when shooting digital video. You would still be exposing the image capture device (the CCD in this case) to half the amount of light that you'd have when shooting at 24fps, and you'd still get all the problems that go along with it.

      And don't expect everybody to just go, "Hey, let's a)switch over to digital video, and b)shoot at 48fps." Not all filmmakers are gung-ho about digital video, mostly because of the inherent differences between the two formats (the same reasons many still photographers still do it the "old fashioned" way, developing and printing their film by themselves using chemicals and photopaper instead of Photoshop and a printer).

      And, because it would cut the amount of light hitting the image capture device (whether film or a CCD), shooting at 48fps would throw the art of cinematography backwards by several decades. Up until about 25 years ago, film stocks were just so slow that cinematographers had no choice but to throw tons of light on a scene, regardless of the mood they were trying to create, and often even when shooting outdoors in sunny conditions. Thankfully, film stocks got faster, and now filmmakers don't have to carry gigantic lights with them wherever they go. Although some cinematographers still use the huge lamps that give off tons of light (mostly when they are shooting at night and have to light up an entire area, and to ensure the lights aren't visible, they can only use a few, so they have to be big), at least he or she now has a choice of whether or not to use them. By shooting at 48fps instead of 24, because the film is only getting exposed to light for half as long, you would double the amount of light that needs to reach it, which means that large lamps capable of giving of shitloads of light would be a requirement again.

    41. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think Americans just dont understand sarcasm. Then again, what do you expect from a race which just failed the resits of its IQ test. "But Bush looked so good on TV, and tells us that only he can make America strong again!"

    42. Re:Not as funny as you'd think by Rothron+the+Wise · · Score: 1

      The light issue does not become any less of a problem when shooting digital video. You would still be exposing the image capture device (the CCD in this case) to half the amount of light that you'd have when shooting at 24fps, and you'd still get all the problems that go along with it.

      Of course, but CCDs are already a lot more light sensitive and are still getting better.

      I agree with all your points on the problems of going digital. It is a large step, and many will delay taking it as long as possible. George Lucas was one of the first to shoot a film completely digital, and is sort of a pioneer in that regard, but it will sure take a while before all films are shot digitally. It will probably be that way with faster framerates too.

      "Shown in 48fps where available". :-)

      --
      A witty .sig proves nothing
  31. Padme and Anakin? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think this sums up the concept pretty well. Fanboys, start your fapping!

  32. Bell Labs' Patents by LowellPorter · · Score: 1

    Since Bell Labs is pulling some of it's patents because they were based on bogus work, I wonder how many other companies submit patents BEFORE they fully know whether the idea works or not. (I do understand that they need to get them before someone else does, but I think they should have an idea if it's going to work.)

  33. ...doesn't say much for the level of acting... by ubugly2 · · Score: 0

    Yoda, Wattoo and Jex Dexter stood out in close up, looking more real than the human actors. There's a shocker.

  34. sigh by JediTrainer · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Moderators with no sense of humour, I see. It's a joke, people. I marked the link and warned against clicking on it!

    Sheesh.

    --

    You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
  35. Re:Eliminating duplicity by Luke-Jr · · Score: 1

    I'm not 100% sure, but wasn't Excite! PAL (long since dead) first?

    --
    Luke-Jr
  36. Why I dislike reading Slashbacks... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's subjective and the content pertains to an even smaller subset of /.ers, of which those whom subscribe to slashdot are already of a small amount of net folks.

    IMHO of course,
    AC

  37. New episodes of Futurama by LittleLebowskiUrbanA · · Score: 2, Funny

    And they laughed at my snackrifices to El Chupa Negre!

  38. You think this is good by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Check out gortbusters.org!

  39. hahahah... funny by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I thought this was awesome... hot damn, I am stoned off my ass right now and so this post is the funniest fucking thing I've seen in a long while.

    Good work, Jedi.

  40. forget Star Wars... by nuckin+futs · · Score: 4, Funny
    because of this line:
    On the other hand, if you want to see the pores in Natalie Portman's skin, or the individual hairs in Christopher Lee's beard, this is the movie you've been waiting for.
    I wanna see an IMAX-ified porn!
    1. Re:forget Star Wars... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I wanna see an IMAX-ified porn!

      That would be Beavers

  41. Dislaimers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Spelling mistakes are always laim, especially in the titles.

    1. Re:Dislaimers by MrFredBloggs · · Score: 1

      Everyone knows how hard it is to spell check text these days. You know, with all the pressing F7 (on most Microsoft software) and everything. Especially for a site which publishes up to 6 stories a day, some of which contain up to 100 words. There just isn't the time.

  42. too bad episode 2 has piss-ant actors by zaqattack911 · · Score: 1

    Or is it the shotty writing?
    Never before has it been so hard to tell which part of that movie was the shittiest.

    I suppose if you look at it as a 2hour commercial for George's hardware and special effects... then it ain't so bad.

    --Noodles

    1. Re:too bad episode 2 has piss-ant actors by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      some of those actors have given credible performances in other movies.

      i think the script sucks.

      the director sucks. ...you have to give the actors something to work with.

      those guys didn't have a chance.

  43. Can I have your wife? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny
    So your wife was kind enough to go see a new Star Wars flick with you on your birthday? I wish I had a wife that'd do that. Oh, it wasn't even new? Damn, you got a helluva wife. What do you mean it wasn't even your birthday? You said it was someone's birthday, I heard it loudly and clearly. What... why did... are you saying..?

    It was her birthday?
    Segmentation fault
    core dumped
  44. More human than a human by w_arthurton · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Even when watching the digitally projected version of AoC, I noticed that during the large digital sequences the actors looked fake. It's really ironic that we are at a point now that digital looks more real than reality.

    Perhaps for Ep III they can develop cameras that will have the same resolution as the renderer that they use. (Maybe something like a digital IMAX, which doesn't exist to my knowledge)

    --
    wayner@pobox.com -- Wayne A Arthurton -- www.pobox.com/~wayner
    1. Re:More human than a human by jpt.d · · Score: 2

      They tried to pass off Yoda as a digitial character. He was obviously fake. In this case YODA != old yoda. The old Yoda was vastly superior to this Yoda.

      --
      What we see depends on mainly what we look for. -- John Lubbock Now search for that bug slave!
  45. Re:Eliminating duplicity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    trolls, it's really really really annoying

    Your powers of observation are remarkable. Congratulations.

  46. gaim w/ a proxy by SHEENmaster · · Score: 1

    I have gaim installed on my proxy server where I can ssh over and run it through x tunnelling if I need to direct-connect with an aim user.

    It also supports my HTTP proxy server in Linux on my iBook. I would like to see iChat compatibility routines to support some of iChat's extra features like image/file transfer from behind a proxy.

    All in all, open source source software whips close source to the ground. We seem to be playing 'catchup' for that one feature (grammar check for abiword *cough*) but upon closer inspection our products are better (excel at school can't edit an older excel db in place).

    --
    You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
    1. Re:gaim w/ a proxy by waj3 · · Score: 1
      ... excel at school can't edit an older excel db in place...
      I'm curious, what is an Excel DB?
  47. rofl, retards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    This exact post is right above you, at +5 Informative.

    YHBT, YHL, HAND.

    Suckas.

  48. Showscan by bofh23 · · Score: 1

    Showscan, a format used for ride films and
    other LBE, used a frame-rate of 60fps.

    I've heard anecdotal evidence that it was
    `too real' for the cinema experience.

    I haven't seen Showscan myself but I have
    seen those annoying artifacts of the low
    frame rate of regular cinema which occur
    on pans across certain types of detail
    and action.

    1. Re:Showscan by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      > I've heard anecdotal evidence that it was
      > `too real' for the cinema experience.

      Much like the old people who should be shot because when a letterbox movie appears on their screen, they feel "ripped off" that the full screen isn't shown.

      If you crack their skulls open, you can actually watch the gears grinding.

      All I have to say for realism is: people used to "dodge" the bullets of guns fired "at them" in movie theaters when movies came out.

      I, for one, do want to see the fine peach fuzz on the tummy of Natalie in high res, high speed 10-story cinema, or at least on a 35" home TV.

    2. Re:Showscan by Verne · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I've heard anecdotal evidence that it was
      `too real' for the cinema experience.


      I can believe this comment. I have a Philips TV with 'Digital Natural Motion'. What this does is predict pixel movement, and fill in extra frames to effectively give you 100fps.

      Picture quality is so crisp and smooth, that I've had comments like "it looks fake" or "it looks like the making of, not the actual movie".

      Personally, I can't live without it. I go to the movies and think, crap, the pictures are all jumping round and blurry. I actually find it hard to follow action with such a low frame rate when I'm used to about 4x that. Flames and explosions look so crap without Digital Natural Motion.

      Last I heard philips were going to put the Digital natural motion chips into DVD players and VCRs, so you don't have to buy the top of the line TV just to get natural motion. There are white papers on the net, but I can't find them just at the moment.

      In short: I'm happy for movies to have 24fps, cause it all gets smoothed out to 100fps when I watch them anyway.

      Verne.

      --


      There are only two things in this world that smell like fish. And one of them's fish...
    3. Re:Showscan by Breakfast+Pants · · Score: 1

      Yeah, you won't have to buy special equipment to get the effect. Yeah. Standard TVs are only 29.whatever fps, you putz. Using image morphing won't do anything to help this. The only useful place this would be is on a computer monitor or something.

      --

      --

      WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
    4. Re:Showscan by earthman · · Score: 2, Informative

      I've been playing with one of those TVs for a weekend. The digital natural motion makes movies look like a cheap soap opera, news broadcast, or, indeed, 'making of' footage. And you can actually see that the explosions are just special effects. I tried watching Saving Private Ryan with DNM turned on, but I quickly turned it off. I suppose the real problem is that all the special effects in films were never meant to be watched in such smooth motion, and they only look convincing at the original framerate. Remember that there is quite a bit of processing between the original footage and the final movie, and it's there to make sure the movie looks good. If you then add things like DNM on top of that, you break all that. The right way to make movies look good at high framerates is to shoot the movie at the higher framerate first, and do all the processing to make sure it looks good at that framerate.

    5. Re:Showscan by doi · · Score: 1
      I, for one, do want to see the fine peach fuzz on the tummy of Natalie...

      ...and on the nape of her creamy, luscious, exquisite neck...mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!

      --
      A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's an erection for?
    6. Re:Showscan by Verne · · Score: 1

      Well said. I am however used to DNM, and see things the other way. Normal explosions look fake, and DNM explosions look real.

      I suppose it's all just subjective.

      Verne.

      --


      There are only two things in this world that smell like fish. And one of them's fish...
  49. Imax Advice by Joey7F · · Score: 5, Informative

    I got back from seeing AOTC in an Imax dome (very cool!). I sat about just shy of the half way mark and found myself needing to turn my head to see all the action. I recommend that you sit at the top so the center is 10 to 15 degrees below your horizontal eyeline.

    The Coruscant chase was made for IMAX!

    Oh, and if you have friends that still haven't checked out this awesome flick, you may want to show them the DVD first (Nov 12). Because this movie is not exactly straightforward anyway, and with the cuts, they make the story harder to understand.

    --Joey

    1. Re:Imax Advice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think the cuts were what made it hard to understand...

    2. Re:Imax Advice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Oh, and if you have friends that still haven't checked out this awesome flick

      Huh? What? Yeah, only if you don't want them to be your friends anymore. Are we both thinking of the same movie?

    3. Re:Imax Advice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I hate to comment on a sig, but what is up with that url? "Compustore.com\linux%20pc.htm" First of all, it's a forward slash, not a backslash. Second of all, the filename is "linux pc.htm" which is just bad form. Rename it to linux_pc.html or something. I only point this out because you're trying to sell a linux computer, and that filename looks like it was created by a Windows user.

      Oh wait... <meta name="GENERATOR" content="Microsoft FrontPage 4.0"> If you want to sell linux, USE linux!

  50. Kinkatta? by yerricde · · Score: 1

    [Trillian] wouldn't be worth using if someone wrote a Win32 native GUI for GAIM. Too bad GAIM wasn't started on Qt...

    Homework: Port Kinkatta or Kopete to Windows.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  51. More episodes by TheFlu · · Score: 2

    You can check out Episode #404 right here.

  52. And may football go the way of Tlatchli by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And may football go the way of Tlatchli (the Aztec game with the I-field and stone hoops). Baseball to, it interfered with Enterprise quite a bit last year at least.

    1. Re:And may football go the way of Tlatchli by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Bwahahahaha.

      I smell a feature film:

      Nerds vs. Football



      (It's a drama)

  53. Haven't seen.. by macdaddy · · Score: 2

    ...Episode II. Besides Natalie Portman (yum) am I missing anything? Heck I didn't even see Episode I until many many months after it hit the theaters. There were only a handful of folks in the audience. Wait, maybe that was opening day...

  54. Another couple of things to note about CloneMAX... by Bora+Horza+Gobuchol · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I saw it a few nights ago here in Calgary, and have been meaning to write up a review. Seems I was beaten to it... Aside from the cuts, there's a few things that readers have thus far failed to mention.

    First, while I was worried about the digital transfer on the far larger IMAX screen ("pixels as big as fists pummeling your eyes!") the picture looked very nice and clean, with a couple of exceptions. On the very rare occassion, very thin lines that are close to horizontal or vertical get a distinct case of the "jaggies", where one can see the staircase effect of pixelisation. (This is most evident during the Lucasfilm logo at the opening and at a moment during the descent of Senator Amidala's ship to Corsucant).

    Second, the sound is incredible. Those who haven't heard a well-tuned theatre - and IMAXi are amoung the world's best - will get a kick out of that aspect of the movie alone.

    Last - a traditional IMAX movie focuses on vistas - grand sweeping praries and the like - and where Episode II is most like this, it works very well. At other points - closeups of actor's faces, in particular - the IMAX image can be too revealing, much as the higher resolution of HDTV is acknowledged to reveal the flaws of those appearing on television. There are other scenes - that of Anakin next to the Jawa sandcrawler while searching for his mother on Tatooine, for example - that the framing of the scene is just "off".

    To those intending to go, I would recommend arriving early and getting seats near the center of the theatre, for the most compelling experience - again, big vistas work well from most any viewpoint, but not head-shots. For me, it was more than worth the price of admission.

  55. How to go around the world without going anywhere? by autopr0n · · Score: 5, Funny

    Just sit on your ass and wait a day. Duh.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  56. Made me think I was nuttz! by GweeDo · · Score: 2

    I saw Star Wars IMAX on Saturday and didn't know until the end of the movie that they had removed the scenes. I seriously thought I had lost my mind after the library scene with Obi Wan was missing. Then after the dumb scene in Naboo was missing (the CG sucked) I thought I had fallen asleep or something! It made me crazy until I found out what happened!

  57. Not really by autopr0n · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "flicker" like you see with A CRT or (I guess) movie is caused by the screen going from black to colored over and over again. You notice the change.

    You don't notice flicker on things like LCDs because there is none. There is a 'frame rate' but the screen doesn't go black between each image.

    Interestingly, I've never really noticed flicker at the movies even though the screen blanks only 48 times a second. 24hz flicker would be really obnoxious though.

    Also, I can see flicker on a 72hz screen while moving images on it seem silky smooth.

    One interesting effect of having a high enough frame rate is that you can actually see 'motion blur' with static images, for example with my old monitor I could do 640x480 at 120hz. Some 3d graphics would appear to blur as they moved, just like objects in the real world. You could probably produce some cool visual effects that at 120-200fps in a film. would be impossible at lower speeds.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
    1. Re:Not really by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Magnum3065 said:

      This is the reason that 60Hz is acceptable for an active matrix LCD but not for a CRT. An LCD can keep a pixel active continuously so there is no flicker, while a CRT's pixel is brightened when the beam hits it and slowly fades.

      Autom0ron said:

      "flicker" like you see with A CRT or (I guess) movie is caused by the screen going from black to colored over and over again. You notice the change.

      How what he said is "not really" what you said is what I don't get.

    2. Re:Not really by Murdock037 · · Score: 5, Informative

      Slightly off-topic, but the thread is an interesting one. So:

      I shoot motion picture film, as a student. So take all this for whatever it's worth. You probably won't ever see 120-200fps in film for a couple of reasons.

      For one, there's just not enough light to expose it properly. Shooting 24fps at f2.0 is hard enough on your average B&W reversal stock, which is ASA 160, IIRC. The fastest motion films that Kodak will sell you go to about 800 speed, but that's only three or four steps up from the 160.

      I know Kubrick used some specially-made wide lenses to shoot "Barry Lyndon" in candle-light, but I think they were only as open as f0.5 or f0.7. Again, only a couple steps away from f2.0, which is as wide as the average camera lens will go.

      So you'd need some massive wattage to get anywhere. But beyond that, there are mechanical issues: there's a claw that pulls film through the gate by its sprockets. The Bolex and Arriflex cameras I've used won't go any faster than 48fps, because apparently you start tearing the film itself when you go much past that.

      So maybe there's specialized cameras out there-- they'd need a huge aperture and smooth mechanics, and the film would need to be super-fast and probably large and durable. Which most film is not.

      Hope somebody out there might care about all of this enough to make it worth my writing. You can't really compare film and, say, monitors by numbers alone, as most people seem to want to do. Too many differences. They just happen to both result in moving 2D images.

    3. Re:Not really by martingunnarsson · · Score: 1

      I once saw a super high speed camera made to record fast stuff like drops hitting a water surface. It didn't use a mechanical shutter but a rotating prism. The results were absolutely beautiful. -- Martin

      --
      Martin
    4. Re:Not really by RangerSpeedBumpp · · Score: 1
      I know Kubrick used some specially-made wide lenses to shoot "Barry Lyndon" in candle-light, but I think they were only as open as f0.5 or f0.7. Again, only a couple steps away from f2.0, which is as wide as the average camera lens will go.

      I call bullshit! It's IMPOSSIBLE to make a lens that's lower than 1.0. Fstops are a ratio of how much light gets into the front of the lens vs. how much hits the film. F1.0 is the maximum: every photon ends up on film. F0.5 would mean 119% of the incoming light hits the film.

      Good luck with your studies.

    5. Re:Not really by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      cut and paste for f-stop

      The ratio of the focal length of a lens or lens system to the effective diameter of its aperture

      thus 1.0 is possible

    6. Re:Not really by doi · · Score: 1
      I call bullshit! It's IMPOSSIBLE to make a lens that's lower than 1.0

      Well, that might explain why you don't work for Zeiss or Angenieux, cause they did make faster lenses. I happened to use a 0.95 lens in college and it was excellent, except for the shallow depth of field when it was wide open. Since the lens was a wide-angle the depth wasn't too bad, but you definitely have to be right on with the focus.

      And there are 0.7 lenses out there, I believe NASA had a few made by Zeiss for the Apollo missions.

      --
      A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's an erection for?
    7. Re:Not really by pmc · · Score: 3, Informative

      I call bullshit!

      I'll see your bullshit and raise you a moron. Special Lenses for Barry Lyndon.

    8. Re:Not really by SpectreGadget · · Score: 1

      That's why it's going digital....

      --
      Jim Harry
    9. Re:Not really by Eccles · · Score: 1

      Shooting 24fps at f2.0 is hard enough on your average B&W reversal stock, which is ASA 160, IIRC.

      You could use two cameras, with shutters synced to take alternating frames, to get 48 FPS with no change in lighting. That would probably correct most of the visible flaws.

      --
      Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
    10. Re:Not really by Willis+Wasabi · · Score: 0

      Just where did you get your definition for f-stop?

      I'll get mine from Basic Photographic Materials and Processes 2e. F-stop is defined as the focal length of the lens divided by the effective aperture. You are making shit up.

      BPMaP (copyright 2000) also specifically mentions 0.7 and 0.5 lenses. It goes as far to say that 0.5 is the fastest possible *conventional* single element optical lense. It would be a half-sphere with the film in contact with the flat side of the lense.

      --
      All true wisdom can be found in sigs.
    11. Re:Not really by Karel+Capek · · Score: 1

      Ha! that's what you assume. But you didn't stop to check, did you?

      The F-number of a lens is the ratio of the
      focal length of the lens to the effective
      diameter of its apperture. Low F-numbers are
      hard to achieve because of the amount of
      corrective optics needed

    12. Re:Not really by RangerSpeedBumpp · · Score: 1

      Aha. I stand corrected. I was looking off this web page and possibly mis-reading it. D'oh. http://members.tripod.com/~Prophotoman/fstop.html

  58. Scenes/WHO CARES!? by stevejsmith · · Score: 2

    Regarding the IMAX movie, does anybody know what scenes exactly were cut, or was it just little things here and there?

    Regarding the ICQ/AIM "merger," who the hell cares? Honestly, I don't know one perosn that I've met in real life that uses ICQ. And in this day and age, who cares what platform you're using? Programs like Trillian can use them all at once, and you'd never know you were connecting to completely different servers!

    And when you think about it, it all boils down to the users. What's the difference between AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Y!? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Just the subscribers. I know, I have AOL/TW as much as the next, but I don't have any qualms with using their servers and eating their bandwidth while chatting on Trillian without ads!

    1. Re:Scenes/WHO CARES!? by stevejsmith · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      *I hate AOL/TW...

    2. Re:Scenes/WHO CARES!? by Kredal · · Score: 2

      How does a correction to his previous post qualify as "flamebait"?

      --
      Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
    3. Re:Scenes/WHO CARES!? by stevejsmith · · Score: 1

      What I want to know, is what exactly does "underrated" mean, and why is it +1? I'm not complainin' or anything...just wonderin'...

    4. Re:Scenes/WHO CARES!? by Kredal · · Score: 2

      It's the opposite of "overrated"... Pretty much means the moderator felt that whatever moderation it got before is unfair, so should be bumped back up, and none of the other options fit.

      Or something.

      --
      Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
    5. Re:Scenes/WHO CARES!? by stevejsmith · · Score: 1

      Hm...what if there was no previous moderation? This intrigues me, I must ponder...

    6. Re:Scenes/WHO CARES!? by Kredal · · Score: 2

      I've gotten "underrated" moderations on posts that I didn't use my +1 bonus on, because it was something I wanted under the radar, so to speak. I have no idea why it got moderated that, and couldn't ask, because then the moderation would poof if the moderator answered.

      And I don't think that made any sense at all. (:

      And yes, now that I've become eligible for mod points (only took two years of capped karma!) pondering other moderator's decisions has become a part time activity of mine.

      --
      Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
  59. Re: Realistic vs. Cinematic by JosiKlaki · · Score: 4, Informative

    Check out CML, the cinematography mailing list. There this has been a holy war for many years.

    Many believe that the higher frame rates of video subconsciously tell us that something is "real" and that good ol 24 fps film tells the subconscious: "You are watching a story"...


    --


    --
    Is that all there is to relationships -sex and robotics?
  60. AotC in Omnimax not all that great by Burdell · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I saw AotC Friday night in the US Space & Rocket Center's Spacedome theater (it is an Omnimax dome), and I was underwhelmed. The print seemed too dark (which I don't think was the fault of the theater or projector; I've seen lots of movies in this theater and never seen that before), making some scenes like the chase on Corescant very difficult to follow (most action scenese tended to blur and be difficult to follow). I sat near the center (just a couple of seats from the projector), and it was just too big - when two people were talking on the screen, I had too look back and forth too much.

    However, the scroll at the beginning looked like it was going straight up a wall, which was kind of cool. :-)

    1. Re:AotC in Omnimax not all that great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      This is actually quite normal for an Omnimax theater vs an IMAX theater. Contrary to popular belief, the lens isn't the only difference between the cameras.

      Now, keep in mind that your average IMAX movie is made for IMAX and is slightly perverted for Omnimax.

      There are also physical differences. The screen area is MUCH larger. It may look the same size (depending on the theater, of course), but it's actually got more surface area. This can seriously affect the picture.

      The reason this relates to AOTC, though, is because it was digitally filmed. You could easily have gotten some pixellation effects without noticing. THe first and most subtle pixellation effects I've ever seen were, in fact, the print appearing darker.

      Sorry, if it was made for IMAX and viewers are noticing pixellating in an IMAX theater, then it's almost certainly under-rendered for Omnimax.

      Nice to know that those years I spent working in an omnimax theater finally turned into something useful....:)

  61. They did do something with it by autopr0n · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They killed it.

    I was never really a fan of ICQ. The interface was horrible, and way, way over designed. The company's business model was 'give away the software, charge for the manual' and I think it affected their design decisions. You shouldn't need a 450 page manual for IM software.

    The UI design was atrocious, and the system itself was pretty insecure, even by windows user standards.

    Anyway, that's beside the point. People still used it, and it can take a long time for people to migrate from crappy software to software that doesn't suck. (just look at how long people used MacOS 6-9. Look how many people still use Netscape 4)

    But by AOL buying ICQ they locked up the IM market, and killed innovation in ICQ. I don't think ICQ would have ever innovated, but they could have. And by AOL purchasing it they were able to get a strangle hold on the market... Until M$ decided to bundle MSN...

    So it made business sense, although it didn't really benefit the world.

    Personally, I really wish some open standard would replace AIM/MSN so that we can use any software we like.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
    1. Re:They did do something with it by __aaahtg7394 · · Score: 2

      Ironically enough, MSN Messenger is based quite heavily on an open standard =) (IMPP iirc)

      It happened about the same time as TOC, mostly because MS wanted to force AOL's hand. This was during the whole MS/AIM interoperability debacle.

      text protocols are just nasty. and don't get me started on XML-based protocols.. (hi Temas/Jer, other random Jabber guys i've hashed this over with =)

      -josh, former OSCAR RE geek and all-around binary protocol cheerleader.

    2. Re:They did do something with it by DigiDarkCloud · · Score: 1

      Personally, I really wish some open standard would replace AIM/MSN so that we can use any software we like.

      Jabber uses an open protocol, and has pushed to try and make it a standard. But as someone who's tried to get people to switch over to Jabber, I can tell you, it's very difficult. They like their current IM software (every Jabber client I give them to try is flaky, if not downright broken), and don't want to lose the friends on their buddy lists (Jabber's cross-protocol transports never seem to work).

      Open standards are great, but they aren't as important to J. Random Luser as is what "everyone" uses and what "works". Ask anyone who's tried to get someone to switch from MS Word. (Going OT: the company I work for is driven entirely by the pushing of an Open Source solution on Linux... yet the suits send us company correspondence in MS Word documents that AbiWord chokes on.)

      --
      SIG: 11
  62. Re:Eliminating duplicity by h0mi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Programs like Trillian, that do what the author of this article suggests have been having a difficult time lately because they steal Yahoo, AOL, and Microsofts intellectual property, in an attempt to make money."

    You mean

    Step 1- Trillian.
    Step 2-
    Step 3- Profit.

    I suppose if you look at it like that, Trillian might be about "stealing" other people's IP for making money.

    I thought it was about having 1 client for 3 different IM systems (Yahoo, ICQ and AIM)

  63. It's because george shot on digital. by autopr0n · · Score: 2

    And only at 1000p HTDV resolution. That might look nice on your TV at home, and it might look nice in a standard movie theater, but the fact is that's pretty low res for movies. It's lower then regular 35 millimeter film.

    OTOH, all they had to do was re-render the digital graphics at a higher resolution, which as someone else who's also seen it, seems to think they did.

    If they had filmed this on regular film, or at, say 5 or 6 megapixles, you wouldn't have felt that way.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
  64. Slashback: ClonesMAX, Animation, Dislaimers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I missed the part about dissing lamers. Can someone fill me in?

  65. Counselling by antic · · Score: 2, Funny

    Since it was my wife's birthday today, last night I took her to see Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones: IMAX edition.

    I recommend counselling. Seriously. By all means, see the film, but for your wife's birthday?!?

    --
    'Thats they exact same thing a banana wrench monkey.'
    1. Re:Counselling by Rupert · · Score: 2

      Like I said elsewhere, my wife is a wonderful woman, who understands geeks, without being geeky herself.

      OTOH, maybe she's a baking geek. She loves kitchen gadgets, and trying new recipes, modifying the source until the finished product is to her satisfaction.

      --

      --
      E_NOSIG
    2. Re:Counselling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      modifying the source in the kitchen ?

      not with apple pie shurely ?
      Free-PIE, RedHat-Cookies ?
      is your wife a communist ?

  66. Monitor refreshes by readams · · Score: 1

    The reason you can see flicker on monitors running at 60Hz is because the phosphors on modern displays decay very quickly -- they are designed to decay in time for a high-refresh display running at 85Hz or higher. Use slower phosphors, and 60Hz is flicker-free as well, but you get a bit of a "motion blur" if objects move across the screen very quickly.

    The maximum that the eye can see is considerably higher, but it isn't a constant fps. It depends on what part of the eye is being used, the intensity and color of the light, the ambient light in the room, how dilated the pupil is, which specific receptors you inherited from your parents, and many other factors.

  67. -1, Informative by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hilarious. Also, where's the "YHBT" moderation option?

  68. Around the world by itwerx · · Score: 1

    I kinda thought that's where we were going with this. Having somebody go "around the world" has different meanings depending on the context.

  69. Take my wife. Please. by Rupert · · Score: 2

    Yes, I have a wonderful wife. I say this with particular feeling right now as she is basking in afterglow and I'm posting to Slashdot. She understands my needs, see?

    --

    --
    E_NOSIG
    1. Re:Take my wife. Please. by Rupert · · Score: 3, Funny

      I can't believe I posted that. Good job my wife doesn't read Slashdot.

      --

      --
      E_NOSIG
  70. hrm? by autopr0n · · Score: 2

    Whats wrong with text protocols? Seems to work fine for http, smtp, ftp and everything else on the 'net these days, except telnet.

    Ease of implementation == good. we have tons of bandwidth, and chatting dosn't take much of it.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
    1. Re:hrm? by __aaahtg7394 · · Score: 2

      it's not really a BW issue, but a server-side processing issue.

      delimited protocols don't scale terribly well. you have to do a lot of "grab some data, scan for the delimeter, if not there, buffer and grab some more" crap.

      especially in C, implementations become a lot trickier, finickier, and break much more subtly when you start using delimited protocols.

      and it only makes trivial/prototype implementations easier. implementation in C with a fully encapsulated protocol is trivial (especially something based on TLVs like OSCAR, which is a really wonderful protocol to work on), but trickier in things like perl, where access to binary data isn't as common.

      there are a lot of factors that affect this, but in general, looking for delimiters in a large message body is almost as expensive as routing that message. putting the message body length in the packet/chunk header is much more efficient, but still has more overhead than is really needed. and nobody does it that way in IM =) (HTTP does it)

      (i used to work for ActiveBuddy, where we handled tens of thousands of messages per second. The MSN stuff was notably more complicated at the protocol-reading level than the AIM stuff. And when you're shooting for 10+kmessages/s, the extra code Really Matters (none of the processing was done on this machine, its job was to translate to an internal protocol) )

  71. Re:Eliminating duplicity by quinto2000 · · Score: 2

    Zephyr is nice as it goes, but a more interactive IM client is what I prefer. I think that Jabber is the best replacement for Zephyr. BTW, no need to talk of Zephyr in the past tense. It's still alive and well. I use it daily.

    --
    Ceci n'est pas un post
  72. Simulator by Hank+Reardon · · Score: 2, Funny

    Jeez... The guy can build a frigging 747 simulator in his house but he can't resist using... The BLINK tag! ...

    --
    There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
  73. Framerate Enhancement using morphing by tfinniga · · Score: 2, Informative
    There's technology you can get today that uses morphing algorithms to expand 24fps all the way up to 60 fairly convincingly.

    So, that's what I do at work.

    It's pretty cool. There are some really large unsolved problems with it though - the biggest is that it's really tough to detect when objects go in front of each other (occlusions). If you don't detect them correctly, then you get really bad results. Of course, you can do things with a little human intervention, which lets you get almost perfect results, but the time that that takes is proportional to the number of source frames.

    That's why you see those kind of effects for slow-motion (in Lost in Space or the Matrix) which has relatively few source frames, but I doubt we'll see it any time soon to increase framerate in movies, because 24fps for a whole movie is a whole lot of frames to manually tweak.

    --
    Powered by Web3.5 RC 2
    1. Re:Framerate Enhancement using morphing by Anonvmous+Coward · · Score: 2

      Yeah I know what you mean. I did some frame expanding on an explosion once, the result was.. uh.. interesting but not realistic. :)

      Ever hear of 'Icarus'? It's a camera tracking package. Part of me wonders if the technology there would help. Although it's not perfect either.

      Oh well. Maybe they'll rerender Toy Story for us. =)

  74. Re:Eliminating duplicity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    step 1 : have no real comment
    step 2 : ?????????????????
    step 3 : profit

  75. If you want to see what 48fps IMAX looks like... by Dai_Quat · · Score: 1

    Go ride Soarin' Over California at Disney's California Adventure. Really neat.

  76. Rendered vs. Real by jonr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "I suspect that some time was spent re-rendering the digital characters. Yoda, Wattoo and Jex Dexter stood out in close up, looking more real than the human actors."
    Now, this I could belive. If you have watched the trends in digital imaging, the cameras today are already at the resolution limit of the lenses. Take for example the 2 biggest: Canon 1Ds & Kodak 14n, they are already shotting at 11 & 14 megapixels! Now, maybe I am wrong, but you are going to need seriously expensive glass to go with that resolution.
    So, the reason why real actors will look fuzzy and CGI generated will look super-sharp is that Mr. Jackson Puss has gone through 8-15 pieces of glass, while digital Yoda only has gone through... ugh, probably none. May Pixar programmers should add lens fuzzyness to the sunlight flair and other defects? :)

    1. Re:Rendered vs. Real by evilviper · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Nooooo Noooo Noooo Noooo. The biggest problem is that damn CGI artists don't know what the word 'focus' means.

      Just think about it... Even if Yoda is way the hell in the background, he will be perfectly in focus. Obviously that is not something that looks real... Focus gives us depth-perception in movies. Without it, everything feels flat (*cough* *cough* *cartoons* *cough*). Now, when they start spending a litte money on putting the CGI characters in foucs, our movie effects might start looking as realistic as they had before CGI.
      (yes, cheap CGI looks better than cheap classic effects, but expesive classic effects looked MUCH better than CGI does.)

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    2. Re:Rendered vs. Real by Shelrem · · Score: 2, Informative

      You're half-right.

      On the one hand, focus is the issue here. Focus is very important, and i myself HATE when the CGI looks like CGI because it's too in focus.

      BUT, as someone who's done a few high-quality computer animated shorts, there's a large amount of work that goes into, and a significant number of applications to help with, post-processing effects, such as blur and focus and color temperature. It's fundamentally a very hard problem. For color and lighting, Paul Debevec has been doing a lot of new and interesting things to use real-world lighting to light computer models, and computer lighting to light real people. As for blur and focus, i'm not sure of any really good algorithms or techniques, but in practice, it's largely all hand-tweaked, which is bound to be imperfect.

      It's easy to say that "damn CGI artists don't know what the word 'focus' means," but when you take a good look at the problem, it's hardly that trivial.

      ben.c

    3. Re:Rendered vs. Real by evilviper · · Score: 2

      Yes, I realize that it's not something you can just throw a switch to fix, but that wasn't the point. My point was only that the problem IS focus.

      I would be singing a different tune if there was at least some simple *attempt* at focus in motion pictures. Alas, there's nothing. CGI stands out like a sore thumb, and still it's extensively used, and no-one is applying even experimental effects to relieve the problem.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
    4. Re:Rendered vs. Real by Shelrem · · Score: 1

      Yes, and my point, which i now realize i could've made clearer in my post, is that they DO attempt to use some faux focus in motion pictures-- if they didn't, it'd look even worse-- but it's really hard to get right, and they often err on the side of overly-clear.

      b.c

    5. Re:Rendered vs. Real by evilviper · · Score: 2

      I seriously doubt that any CGI I've seen underwent any attemts to alter the focus. If true, I could do a better job with Gimp... wouldn't look perfect, but it would look better. In fact, I could setup a studio for a few thousand $$$, where I could run the CGI under a real lense, and mimic the lighting. For a multi-million dollar production, my fees would be chicken-feed.

      Hey, assuming they aren't even trying, made sense. If they are trying, that means they must be grossly incompotent.

      --
      Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  77. Re:hi there by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You fucking bitch ass whore moderator shitbag. I just managed to get my karma to 'bad' and I was on my way to becoming a better slashdot citizen, but you had to hit me with -1, Offtopic. Fuck you, you dickwad.

    Your mom sucks cocks in hell.

    --
    sweetandsourjesus

  78. AoTC: Vibrating Seats by Ececheira · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The theater I went to is a part of a furniture store. Yes, a furniture store has a 3D IMAX theater!

    The best part though was the vibrating seats whenever there was an explosion or other low-bass sound... That and the seats were made from Tempurpedic material, so they were ultra comfortable.

  79. Re:How to go around the world without going anywhe by Joey7F · · Score: 3, Funny

    Actually if you sat directly on the northpole, you would have a very cold ass touching every longitudnal line so you would 'go around' the world forever.

    --Joey

  80. Not informative or funny. by TPIRman · · Score: 3, Informative

    Did anyone bother to click on the link in the parent post? It's a prank -- there is no UPN story. Yes, I fell for it and got my hopes up. Please mod it down so nobody else does.

  81. TV coverage games by Goonie · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I'd say this effect looks really cool in games where you view the action from a floating third-person perspective, and especially for games where the graphics closely mimic TV coverage of the "event". It looks cool in auto racing games, for instance.

    However, lens flare would look horribly out of place in a first-person shooter, IMHO.

    --

    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
    --Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
  82. Super 8 is jerky as hell... by Goonie · · Score: 2
    Dad used to make Super 8 movies of us as children. They were jerky as hell.


    #ifdef SLIGHTLY_OFFTOPIC

    However, super 8 at least allowed you to edit your films.

    20 years later, it seems we're finally getting back the ability to easily edit film/video footage again at a reasonable cost. Why did 8mm film die when consumer video cameras had this horrible flaw? Pr0n (the home-made stuff) striking again?


    #endif

    --

    Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
    --Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
  83. Re:Eliminating duplicity by evilviper · · Score: 2

    Umm, was that english? If so, why did I have to read it a dozen times to understand what you were trying to say?

    How about we try it with a little punctuation?

    It's interesting, 'talk' can be a knockoff of ICQ, when 'talk' came first.

    Ahhh, my brain feels much better now. I know good grammar is an evil subject on slashdot, but at least do a good enough job that others can read what you are trying to say...

    --
    Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
  84. Dammit. [was: Re:Intellectual Property Theft?!] by YinYang69 · · Score: 1
    while certain corporations and **AA associations would like us to think otherwise is not stealing intellectual property . . .

    Heh.

    It's either *AA or ??AA. **AA is completely redundant. :)
    I can also tell you why bash is better, vi is the one true god, and how you can avoid the useless uses of cat.

    /me suddenly hears moans, distant screaming, and more heads slamming against keyboards everywhere...

    /me ducks and runs away. ;)

  85. Re:100hz TV by nattt · · Score: 1

    The interpolation software used to generate the extra frames is bad - it introduces bad digital artifacting and makes the whole picture a mess. Speak to any TV professional and they'll tell you that 100hz technology is an abomination designed only to get people to buy new TV's when they already had a perfectly decent one.

    --
    -- oldthinkers unbellyfeel ingsoc
  86. Re:How to go around the world without going anywhe by i+chose+quality · · Score: 1
    offtopic, but:
    if you sat directly on the northpole
    reading this i just had a moment of clarity(tm)... when i was a kid, i always wondered, why they would draw the northpole as a red-white-striped stick stuck in the earth(/snow) in american comics and cartoons. in german the northpole is called Nordpol and Pol doesn't have anything to do with a pole (like in stick). it is more like the pole of a magnet. just another miracle solved...

    *phew* i'm growing up, me thinks... :-)
    --
    the computer is online
    i am not at it
    what a waste of ressources
  87. Dislaimers? by Dr.+Pain · · Score: 1

    Shouldn't that be "dislamers"? Actually, that might be a pretty handy term of art on /.

    Scott

  88. 60Hz. v. 100 Hz. by Royster · · Score: 2

    I think that the real problem with 60 Hz. is flourescent lighting. Practically anything looks better than a screen which is being redrawn in sync with the (otherwise unseen) 60 Hz. flourescent lights.

    --
    I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
  89. Re:100hz TV by Verne · · Score: 1

    Well, I'm speaking from a my own point of view and experience here. My 100Hz TV with Digital Natural Motion looks awesome imho, I couldn't care less about what other people think, or try to tell you.

    However, I am aware that normal 100Hz TVs suck. There is no real point in going to them, apart from a reduced flicker, as they can also introduce scan line artifacts and suchlike. Digital Natural Motion gets around this problem.

    Here's an interesting bit of information for you: I have a friend who works in a TV store. He changed stores recently, and they don't do anything with 100Hz TVs in his new store (it's a small store). He is under strict instructions to tell consumers that 100Hz TVs are utter crap and should not be bought, this is to keep consumers buying their crappy 50Hz non digital natural motion TVs.
    Moral: never trust salesmen.

    --


    There are only two things in this world that smell like fish. And one of them's fish...
  90. Re:Eliminating duplicity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    That's like saying Ford makes money of killing people when someone runs people over with his Taurus.

    Well, Bill Clinton and Janet Reno seem to think the gun maufacturers somehow profit from the illegal use of their product. Maybe the troll is a Democrat.

  91. This article titel speling is fscked up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Slashback: ClonesMAX, Animation, Dislaimers Dislaimers != Disclaimers

  92. Re:Eliminating duplicity by Moridineas · · Score: 2

    I'm a junior at college. When I was a freshman the seniors all used zephyr and 'top' would always show it running on the login computers. Now people barely check their email in pine anymore (so most people never login to unix anymore) and I don't know of anyone using zephyer anymore. Sic transit gloria mundi as they say.

  93. Re:How to go around the world without going anywhe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So THAT explains GoatSe.cx Guy. . .

  94. Re:Eliminating duplicity by X · · Score: 2

    Well, the nice thing about Zephyr is that it was a protocol, and there were a number of clients for it. Rolling your own was pretty easy too. I'm not sure though by what you mean by "more interactive". Zephyr messages are delivered immediately, and you can reply immediately. That's pretty interactive.

    --
    sigs are a waste of space
  95. Re:Eliminating duplicity by quinto2000 · · Score: 2
    The client that I use for Zephyr is Zwrite for the most part. For a while I had the kerberized Gaim plugin for Zephyr, but it was a pain to recompile Gaim --with-kerberos for every time I upgraded. Someone else was doing it and I linked to their binary for a while, but they graduated.

    So when I use zephyr, I always use the commandline version, and believe me, it's much less useful than an interactive client like AIM. Also getting zephyrgrams when you're in the middle of using Pine and having it screw up your display is pretty annoying :) All of the nice Zephyr classes are useful, but if you think zephyr use in general is down, use of zephyr classes is close to 0. The useful ones are defunct or not worth the bother because of better alternatives.

    --
    Ceci n'est pas un post
  96. Re:Eliminating duplicity by quinto2000 · · Score: 2

    I meant to add that zephyr classes could be easily reproduced with Jabber, which is why I put it forth as a good replacement for AIM. It works well in an institutional setting as well, which makes it like zephyr again. But it is also more mature and robust than the hacked-together-ness that is zephyr.

    --
    Ceci n'est pas un post
  97. Re:Eliminating duplicity by X · · Score: 2

    Back when I was playing with Zephyr (which greatly predates Gaim... for that matter it predates ICQ & AIM) there was already a very nice X client (can't remember it's name) which was quite well established, providing a list of "friends" who were logged on, and allowed you to select one and send a message. It also provided message history from some friends (although by default I tended to let the messages post up in message boxes).

    --
    sigs are a waste of space
  98. Last Post! by alpg · · Score: 1

    /*
    * Oops. The kernel tried to access some bad page. We'll have to
    * terminate things with extreme prejudice.
    */
    die_if_kernel("Oops", regs, error_code);
    -- From linux/arch/i386/mm/fault.c

    - this post brought to you by the Automated Last Post Generator...