Slashdot Mirror
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).
and it's a half block from my apartment.
there goes my rent...
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"?
SEO Firefox Extension
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.
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
No, but they had the staff of Ra medallion, Threepios' Arm plus other props, a two story library complete with stained glass and a one-piece carved wood circular stairway... all in a beautiful victorian era mansion.
I mean, you KNOW Lucas made gajillions on Star Wars but you don't *KNOW* exactly what that means until you see what he did with it.
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
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.
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.
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
I think a lot of knew about this (those who live in SF that is) My roomate and I live like 2 blocks from the presidio and we used to talk about it and how we wanted to get a job there. That was two years ago. It's right on the edge of the Presidio near the Marina.
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
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.
Letterman Digital Arts Center
...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
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.
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.
Like the Marriott that competed for building there? Regardless of whether or not you like Star Wars, George has a real sense of architecture. The new buildings are beautiful, and match the 100+ year old facility perfectly. And yet they are totally state of the art, and have many green features. It could have been much worse.
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
Heh, why do you think the backstory of Babylon 5 is that San Francisco was nuked sometime in the undefined past?
Not that I'm a fan of B5 or anything.