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New Lucas Headquarters To Open in San Francisco
Afroloop writes "This article (with pics) in the SFGate covers the opening of the new Lucas Headquarters in San Francisco's famous Presidio. It will house up to 1,500 employees by next fall. From the article: 'The Presidio will feature 600 miles of fiber-optic cable. 4,000 processors and 150 terabytes of storage -- massive computing power and speed, with the ability to work 10 times faster than they can today.'"
Lucasfilm President Micheline Chau says, "We do have to exist after George. He's not going to live forever. The man's in his early 60s."
Geez! I mean dig a hole and send out the obits already! What's the matter, getting impatient?
The pics are pretty non-exciting (an aerial shot of the Presidio, wide-angle shot of Presidio, outsdie shot of generic-looking hq bldg, pic of map showing location of Presidio, and a headshot of the man himself), but you can see them here if you want to decide for yourself.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Presidio means jail in Portuguese(from Brasil).
I think he should call it "Presumptuo" instead.
and it's a half block from my apartment.
there goes my rent...
for the first time ever due to the "massive departure."
Ok, maybe not.
Wow, so for every Jar-Jar rendered, there can be 10 more just like him! Flippancy aside, I do wonder that the ability to make eye-candy that much faster might actually have a negative effect on movie going.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Don't be so proud of this technological terror you've constructed... the ability to make two out of your past three movies suck galactic superclusters through buckytubes is insignificant next to the power of the Farce.
So San Franscisco is going to solidify it's position as a Meca for those "outside the mainstream"?
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Peace? Well, maybe he should have considered choosing something different from a word which (in italian, but I assume also in spanish) means "garrison". Is he preparing to fight the hordes of raging SW fans? :^)
I thought they meant Lucas Electric, that Brit company that built electrical auto parts that crumbled to dust. You know the jokes, why do Brits drink their beer warm? They have Lucus refrigerators, etc, etc.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
"...150 TB of storage..." ...don't put me in charge of backups
don't sell George Lucas short: he made his old movies suck too.
FreeBSD for the impatient.
. . . a terabyte just isn't as impressive as it used to be? After all, it is possible for a relatively green computer tech to go down to Best Buy and slap three 400MB drives into her rig (ahem...) and have a terabyte ready for whatever goodness she chooses to place there.
I know, I know, in three months, this will be quaint but it used to be - not so long ago - that a terabyte was this massive hill on the horizon. Now - well, not so much.
Which means that, instead of waiting 26 years between trilogies like last time, they'll have Episode VII out 2.6 years from now instead!
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I was quite baffled there for a minute.
Over here in blighty, you see, "Lucas" is the name of a car part manufacturer (now part of TR automotive - the people who made the wheels for the model T interestingly enough), and while it is important to be able to buy a spare headlamp for your car, it isn't news for nerds.
{Don't mind me folks, I'm just grumpy because I had a submission rejected on the grounds that "someone posted the same story with worse links after you did, so we ran with that one"}
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
I wonder what happens to it?
(Especially when he dies).
Been there once. It was... quite a thing to see...
It's true!
In fact, Lucasfilm's HQs will someday become the Academy's freshmen dorms.
... there's going to be episodes 7,8 and 9?
I thought the Presidio was supposed to be for non-profit organizations, like the Internet Archive.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
Noooooooo! Not even the "Temporal Cold War"(R)(TM)(C) can explain this.
The Presido is the home of StarFleet Command. Not the seat of the Galactic Empire.
Somebody call for a re-write!
This is - of course - tres cool. I envy Lucas and his minions who are going to work there. I'd like to work in such a facility. Being a 3D Animator is hard work but I figure it would be very rewarding. Imagine something like "Yeah, I did the Shading on the Podrace" or "Yepp, T-Rex. He's mine." - Neat.
However, I think this is more of Lucas fullfilling his dreamstudio than something extremely future focused.
Movies and their making as we know it are about to go through radical changes. I even figure Lucas knows this, since he's actually partly lead the way.
Global viewing habbits and a big shift in the classical work and entertainment preferences ("work up the sweat at day, zero activity passive entertainment at night") will have todays movies decline in importance.
I actually expect Video Gaming (in it's broadest sense) to outrun moviemaking within an decade or two.
Just think of an ultra high resolution, lightweight tablet, wireless broadband everywhere and the promise of constant revenue streams for MMORPG providers. On the tram? Log in and re-outfit your character. In the car? Dial into the Chatroom and check with the Clan how things are going. That's not far away at all.
A game like World of Warcraft, Phantasy Star or Ragnarok is just to complicated for Grandma nowadays, because the AI avatars leading you on a tour through the virtual world aren't there yet. But they will come.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
I have 1.1 terrabytes in my computer, it's worth about 400 bucks. The next number that'll get my jaw to drop is seeing someone with a petabyte kicking around.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
No one noticed this was already covered last month in Wired?
I bet Mr.Lucus will have fans come up to him infront of the new offices and say "Oh my god, Star Wars is so awesome, and Luke is soooooo HOT"
public class null extends java applet { System.out.print ("Tabula Rasa"); }
Maybe they can have the Bush Presidential Library on campus!
In San Francisco... sure. I know there has to be some closet Republicans there, but I don't think there's enough of them for a parade much less for a conservative presidential library. You might have better luck putting the Nixon presidential library on Alcatraz Island.
Somehow, I had hoped that the Presidio would be home to something with a bit more class and style than Lucas and his company. It's just such a beautiful and unique spot.
Does anyone have links to articles about the technology infrastructure behind the Force? I'm looking for something describing the server room side of the operation.
What are you talking about? Once the building went up, the property values became more powerful than you could possibly imagine...
Bryan R.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance, or $12.50 as seen on eBay.....
...now that Enterprise is dead.
I, for one, pity Poor Wee George, so unable to make the smaller films he has so craved.
Too, we must take comfort in the fact that has gathered sufficient moss that he won't be hitting the road next year, when he turns 62
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
... for storage. That honor goes to the Internet Archive with over 500TB.
I have known about this for quite sometime. San Fransico, I believe was chosen becuase there are many companies already based here, that relate to Lucas Arts work. The "can work 10 times faster" is just becuase of basic centralization. The whole company was spread out, and it was more productive to place a large firm in the most expensive realstate second only to Manhatten.
$sig$
To the Precedio .....
..... *Destiny*
Employee : But i dont wanna..
GL : Search your feelings , you know this to be true.
E: No thats not true, thats impossable!!!!
GL : It is your
Slashdotters may wish to look through the comments in the article posted two years ago when they were first breaking ground. And, hey, who's that handsome stud who submitted the article?
Give me a break. That was my first accepted submission to slashdot. I'm very proud. I've got a printout of it hanging up in my cubicle next to my stuffed Tux doll, a defaced photo of Bill Gates, and a poster of that blonde swordswoman from Lord of the Rings in a chain-mail bikini!
GMD
watch this
Yeah, by that time we'll all have this kind of comupting power on our wrist watches. pshaw.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
From http://www.nps.gov/prsf/
Certain areas are rented to non-profit groups, and much is set aside for public space, but development in the Presidio is required for it to pay for itself. It is the only National Park Service unit expected to do so.
The Presidio Trust site is here.
Write Only Memory: Another pointless blog.
Is it my paranoia, or just the thought that Lucas's spawn, Pixar sits quietly across the bay, podcasting its reality distortion field, awaiting the completion of the new Bay Bridge, which will carry a massive bundle of fiberoptic cables to connect two of the largest renderfarms in the world, with the express goal of destroying Bambi?
Letterman Digital Arts Center
Perhaps you should read up on why that area is called the Presidio.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
... which is on the other end of the city.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
...and lot's of air conditioning.
Not everyone is happy about Lucasfilm moving to the Presido. Here's a sample: from the San Francisco Bay Guardian
My grandma almost has more than that. That's only the equivalent of 300 half-terabyte drives. At my last job, I had a single system with 200 disks... For a company that makes movies, I sure hope they have a lot more storage than quoted here.
I sure hope it's the Sith. I would hate for Lucas to have a headquaters in a building that was built using non-absolute measurements.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
CONSUME
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Meet my new apprentice...Darth Presidious.
And my backup apprentice, Darth Congeniality.
Maybe that 4000 processors is just a render farm or something? Overall it's not that impressive, but if all those stats are just a render farm then it's not too bad.
Wow, now I can complain locally when my electrical system in my Triumph fails. Now I don't have to go to England. Lucas the King of Darkness.
Oh you mean there is another Lucas?
The Presidio was(is?) the home of a talented fencing club. I suppose they've been displaced. :(
It would be funny if one were to walk down a row of office doors and pause at one to see blades flying ;)
Though maybe they'll still be around...
"They'll be eating in the same cafeteria, exercising in the same gym."
~Fricka
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Lucas bid on putting something on the Presidio as a lark and was surprised when he won. The new headquarters combines all of Lucas's companies into I place; Lucas Arts, Lucasfilm, THX, ILM, Lucas Merchandising. Before this alot of it was at Skywalker Ranch and the rest scattered throughout California. He thought that since the video game company and the movie company were often working in much the same thing that they should work together more. Also, no more episodes even after he dies. Lucas has specifically made it so that no one can use the Star Wars property after he dies.
...after those pesky Rebels destroyed the headquarters at Yavin.
now all those third rate retards from fourth rate "art" schools will flood the place looking to find a way to be shackled to a desk in some giant veal fattening pen so they can see their name fly by on the Big Screen at 30 miles per hour for crappy wages only to be replaced by a fourth rate retard from a fifth rate art school in Bangalore who gets to watch his name fly by at 60 miles per hour on the Big Screen all in order to model some great steaming tourde oozing from some Future Villian's Butthole, exquisitely rendered by some multi-googlebyte monstrosity lurking in the Presidio.
No friends, this is not a great step forward - it's just another corporation cashing in where it can so it can manufacture more circuses for the clueless proles.
Ha ha! That is a lovely sentiment. Sounds like you speak from experience.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
The site is quite nice. I remember it being built when I worked at the Presidio Trust one summer. I went by a few weeks ago and it looks like they're ready to open it. It fits in quite well and looks much better than that old and ugly hospital building that once stood there. Hopefully they'll extend trolley buses into the park now that there'll be demand for them. Also, hopefully Lucas will provide some sort of a visitor center to attract people, considering the fact the Palace of Fine Arts, Exploratorium and the Golden Gate Bridge are a few steps away. BTW. Lucasfilm will get a much better view of the bridge once the new approaches get built in about 10-12 years.
-Palal
4,000 processors and 150 terabytes of storage -- massive computing power and speed, with the ability to work 10 times faster than they can today.
Cue the users to increase the workload by 20 times.
The Jar Jar, or the endlessly repeated Jar Jar jokes on /. that follows it?
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
150 Terabytes = 153600 Giabytes
153600 Gigabytes / 1500 employees = 102.4 Gigabytes per employee
Heh, why do you think the backstory of Babylon 5 is that San Francisco was nuked sometime in the undefined past?
I thought this was going to be full of British refrigerator jokes...
u cas-prince.html
http://www.kitcar.com/articles-kitcar/humordept/l
An engineer who ran for Congress. http://herbrobinson.us
Total spinning disk capacity on Internet Archive machines is actually around 2PB (2000TB) currently... but mostly at another colo facility across town.
Not that I'm a fan of B5 or anything.
So, when George dies, who's going to be his Rick Baker? Sounds like a good slashdot poll.
"Now, are you sure you want to have a fight? Because I'm only gonna use my thumb... My right thumb. My left one is too powerful for you." (Sean Connery, 1988)
--- -a- "I'd love to change the world, but it'd be easier if the universe exposed its API."
They never showed current-time Earth in the first Star Trek series, but frequently did in the The NExt Generation. When you saw the Golden Gate Bridge, you knew you were at Star Fleet HQ or its Space Academy. Move IV about the whales show futuristic S.F. too.
But now Paramaount has shelved the Star Trek franchise, Star Wars has taken over!
Pfft big deal, thats what like what two or three xbox3's or ps3's?
About 8 months ago I was offered an a job at ILM. Granted this was an entry level full time job with ILM. But here is the catch. They wanted me to work for $38k and live in SF. Isn't this BELOW the povery line in SF? Needless to say, I didn't take the job. The future of the job was essentially 5+ years, you may move up and become a TD, and we may pay as much as 65-75k for a TD. So, the option was: Move to SF and make MUCH less that I currently make in my dream job, live about 1.5 hours away from work, sell my cars and buy a junker, live in a smaller house, adjust to CA COL. or... Stay here and make much more and live 5 min from work, never deal with traffic, and etc.. etc.. Anyone think I I made the wrong decision?
Lucasfilm President Micheline Chau says, "We do have to exist after George. He's not going to live forever. The man's in his early 60s."
I hear that Rick Berman and Brannon Braga are available...
Carthago delenda est!
From what I understand they actually encourage people to park their RV's and camp out overnight. Since most of them are open 24hrs at least you'd have a bathroom indoors. And it'd be easy to find a new one if they kick you out.
One option other than the Y. Try a state park membership. Usually around $20-30 a year plus you'd have some nice scenery. State parks with camping usually have showers but they probaby wont be open in the winter in most of the country. Maybe then you could find a truck stop for showering? As for food there are always food pantries/soup kitchens in cities.
The sending of this message pretty much inconveniences everyone involved.
1. How much extra is it to print the word "Minion" on 1,500 ID badges?
Thats pretty cheap, droids are glorified slaves.
2. Is the vulnarable spot of the complex clearly marked on the blueprint so you can just drop a cherry bomb in a toilet somewhere and blow the whole place up?
No, they have removed the need for a secondary thermal exhaust system in this building.
3. Are you invulnerable to laser fire in the halls if you put your back against the wall?
We're not real sure, but you're welcome to break in and help us find out...
4. How long will it take a manager to get beat down for saying "You have failed me for the last time!" ?
General Manager Palpatine and Operations Manager Vader are no longer with the company (due to some unpleasantness), and have been replaced by Thrawn and Palleon, respectively...we understand they are a little less capricious with employees.
5. Will they have those cheesy inspirational posters everywhere? Of course theirs will say things like "Do, or do not. There is no try."
No, our idea of 'inspiration' is more along the lines of a poster of Jar Jar Binks hanging in effigy outside of our old facilities with a very poignant message beneath it: "Never let this happen again. Ever."
I do hope that this has cleared up your questions, and please be sure to not bother us with these type trivialities again. Thanks.
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
Sound like a Poltergeist sequel?? Could be!!
The Lucas facility was built on the site of the old Letterman army hospital. A lot of pain, suffering and death happened in that location. I know... cause my dad was in the military. So we went to Letterman a lot. It wasn't pretty. In fact, it was downright scary.
So all you Lucas employees... When you go into the subterranean parking garages to drive your SUVs back to Marin, better watch out for the spirits of all those tormented soldiers who died horrible deaths right where you stand!