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.'"

Comments

How callous and mirror of pics

[winkydink]

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.

Re:How callous and mirror of pics

[stu_coates]

When asked to comment, George Lucas said: "I've got a bad feeling about this." ;-)

That's funny.

[xor.pt]

Presidio means jail in Portuguese(from Brasil).

Re:That's funny.

[EnronHaliburton2004]

"Presidio" means "military fortification" in Spanish.

The Presidio used to be a Spanish military base, then a Mexican military base, and then I think it was briefly military base for California when we were briefly a soverign entity, and then finally, it remained an American military base from 1849 until the early 1990s.

thanks george

[misterlump77]

and it's a half block from my apartment.

there goes my rent...

Re:thanks george

[kesuki]

No, Really. I need to find a new place.

If you're looking for living on el-cheapo, outfit a nice, cheap fleet vehicle type van (they usually have a few unfurnished models in the fleet vehicle section that only have the captain's chair for furnishing) get the tinted window option, or just buy some mini-blinds, get a port-a-potty of some type (they sell things just for van owners that will probably work) install a bed, buy an annual membership at the Y (coz that's where you're gonna need to go to shower in the mornings or whenever you need to shower) and then buy/rent some kind of parking space that someone is renting out who dosen't have a clase saying they can kick you out for not leaving your vehicle while it's parked overnights etc.. TCO is probably going to be under $30,000 for 10 years of reliable dual use as house and transportation... the car's alternator can probably be used to keep a spare lead acid battery charged (when you drive) enough to run a low power notebook, or posibly even an imac g5.. you might want to find a shade filled place to park so that you don't die in the summer, and even then it'll still be hot, but you've got that cool ocean breeze, if you can find a shaded parking place near the ocean.

And if you ever get laid off, you're ready to move anywhere in the us or canada you need to go to to find a job, as long as the town has a Y or similar place whhere members can shower day or night as they please...

Re:thanks george

[JargonScott]

You can also throw footballs just over your camcorder, and dream of getting back to '82.

Faster or Better?

[Shadow Wrought]

'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.'

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.

Re:Faster or Better?

[DrEldarion]

If you wanted to be optimistic, you could say that more power doesn't translate into more CG, but rather higher-quality CG.

(Plus, it's near-impossible to put more CG in his films anyway...)

Re:Faster or Better?

[Trogre]

Perhaps one day they'll come up with a way to fix one thing that's always bugged me about the Tattooine sequences in old and new SW movies:

Shadows.

On a planet with two suns, all shadows cast would look deicdedly different from what we're used to. Going by the two shots that show the suns, they appear to be (impossibly of course) in the area of 10 sun radii apart. This would produce two sharp, light shadows for each object, with a darker patch where both shadows intersect.

Because they were filmed in mono-sunned Tunisia, it would have been impossible to give the correct effect when filming the OT, and very difficult with the last 3 films. Even with current state-of-the art CG post-processing such a task would be very time-consuming, and would probably involve creating a 3D model of the objects and environment to get the shadow casting looking anywhere near realistic.

Of course some shots would need to remain unaltered for artistic reasons (for example the shadowed Padme/Anakin hug on the igloo wall in AOTC), but you could use the justification that this was late evening and one of the suns may have already set.

If done well, this would be one CG revision that I would welcome.

I can't believe I just typed this.

Re:Faster or Better?

[Anonymous Coward]

Going by the two shots that show the suns, they appear to be (impossibly of course) in the area of 10 sun radii apart.

Some scientists believe there's a third dimension (I know it souds crazy). I think they call it "depf" or something. It's a direction that is not sideways or upwards, but is a direction that is perpendicular to both, if that makes anysense..

Anyway, the theory goes that two objects that are side by side can actually be very far apart in this third dimension.

Re:Faster or Better?

[Frostalicious]

(Plus, it's near-impossible to put more CG in his films anyway...)

He could create a CG director. Which might be a good idea actually.

Pride and Presidio

[Tackhead]

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.

Leather Pants

[flood6]

So San Franscisco is going to solidify it's position as a Meca for those "outside the mainstream"?

Isn't it funny how . . .

[dgrgich]

. . . 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.

Huh?

[K8Fan]

I thought the Presidio was supposed to be for non-profit organizations, like the Internet Archive.

Re:greebo shot first!

[nomadic]

Did you hear about the special edition of Raiders of the Lost Ark? The guy with the scimitar shoots first.

Mixing SciFi -- The Presido is Home of Star Fleet

[HighOrbit]

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!

not even tops on the Presidio ...

[akb]

... for storage. That honor goes to the Internet Archive with over 500TB.

We are moving

[OneArmedMan]

To the Precedio .....

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 ..... *Destiny*

Mega-whoring here

[GuyMannDude]

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

Presidio is required to be self-supporting

[aaronrp]

From http://www.nps.gov/prsf/

On October 1, 1994, the Presidio became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Since 1998, the Presidio has been jointly managed by the National Park Service and the Presidio Trust. The Presidio Trust is a special public-private governmental agency tasked with managing most of the buildings of the Presidio and making the park financially self-sufficient by 2013.

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.

A give away of public resources?

[doom]

Not everyone is happy about Lucasfilm moving to the Presido. Here's a sample: from the San Francisco Bay Guardian

New Lucas Headquarters

[Knightcrawler]

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.

Re:New Lucas Headquarters

[malducin]

Not all the companies are moving to the Presidio. Lucasfilm and Skywalker Sound will still be based at the Ranch, while ILM will retain some operations in San Rafael. Also THX was spun off from Lucasfilm in 2002.