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KDE on the NBC Show "Heroes"
Vesuv writes "The pilot episode of NBC's flagship drama for the 2006 fall season proudly features a laptop showing a KDE desktop and KDE applications such as Kopete and KMix running on Mandriva Linux. " The show itself looks to have potential for essentially an x-men knockoff. I mean, it ain't written by Sorkin (all hail jesus) so I'll give it a few more episodes to decide if all the angst is gonna kill me or not.
Don't get me wrong... teleportation, flight, invulnerability, etc... all okay. But a hot girl using linux on the desktop? Yeah, right!
It does make sense that in TV and films people would use free and open software on computers, they need it to look like people think a computer should look (and KDE does that) and they need to have the right to use it without worrying about being sued because it's proprietry and they like to not have to give thousands of dollars and coppies of the script over to people so the whole show doesn't get pulled for creating a negative image of software.
The only thing that amazes me is that more people aren't doing this
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
The scene in question with the KDE stuff involves a hot chick getting naked online.
:)
And you notice the windowing system and applications on her laptop.
Slashdot, you never cease to amaze me
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
And if you squint really hard you can see Elvis in the background.
This looks more to be along the lines of DC superhero's.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Not really big news.
TV has been doing that for a while. It might not have been KDE. But I can't count the times I have seen alternate OS's.
Mac OS has been shown all the time, even advertising software or websites that do not even work on a Mac (Or is not needed for a Mac like virus scanners). (Movies follow the general trend. Heros use Macs, while Villains or Dark Heros use Windows)
Unix and Linux (because they often look the same on TV) with various windows managers. CDE is often popular. This is often used in the Big Data Centers, or when people are doing some real hacking.
Now they probably used KDE because they didn't need to pay royalty to any company to show it. Plus it looked high-tech enough for the show. But in the grand scheme of things most people don't care what the hero's computer is running. It wont bring packs of people to install linux because they saw linux on their favorite TV Show. Just like in Jurassic Park you didn't see a migration back to Unix because the park ran it, or a huge migration away because the park failed because of it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I don't reply to Anonymous posts; if you have something to say to me, identify yourself or I won't reply.
Point no.3 is very valid. By making it look "techy", it gets featured on Slashdot! Seriously,it has helped spread the show.
Wincopy
I watched Heroes the night it was on and loved it (I missed the Linux part; as someone mentioned earlier in this thread, there were better things to be looking at in the scene).
:)) The site above did not mention/post about his desktop, but I'm sure someone can get a capture of it.
I didn't delete it from TiVo because my wife missed it. Last night she was watching it, and I sat down right as the camera was pointing at the desktop, and my eyes noticed the blue in the window's title bar and I laughed and said "they're using Linux".
Later on when they showed the Japanese guy's friend screwing around on his computer at work, I noticed his desktop was also not Windows or Mac, but didn't recognize the theme (and no, I wasn't going to pause and try to figure it out
Dude the show is available online @ NBC's site.
You can even download it if you have the intel processor they require.
Check this NBC page http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/
Wincopy
I've always wondered about all the terminology that we have for derivative creative work. I doubt that anyone could come up with a coherent definition of "rip-off" that didn't rely on subjective evaluation of quality and/or a subjective evaluation of sameness.
Ask yourself this, is it possible to have a story about a group of super-powered students that won't be considered an "x-men rip-off"? Is that really fair to the authors who actually do come up with interesting and creative ideas of their own?
I'm not saying Heroes is a unique and beautiful flower. I haven't seen it, and maybe all it does have going for it is its x-menness, but I refuse to evaluate fiction on the sole basis that it is "like" something else. IMHO, it stands on its own merits, or it falls on its own flaws. Anything else just seems like being dishonest and unfair to the creative folks that put the fiction together.
... we'll see the news:
"Last night's episode of NBC's drama 'Heroes' scored surprisingly high in the Hopeless Geeks demographic, according to Nielsen Media Research."
Heroes on iTunes. $1.99 an episode. It was actually available prior to being on TV.
"I would have gladly paid to watch - but it's not on iTunes. Oh well, off to the TorrentMobile, batman! Another idiotic network failing to grasp they could make money by letting me watch the show when I want."
It is the #4 download on iTunes as of Thursday morning. It is also front and center on the "TV Shows" page, presently directly above the free episode of Battlestar Galactica. Shows generally appear on iTunes the day after they air.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
Its not an X-Men ripoff - Its a ripoff of Misfits of Science, which was the best television show ever.
That was true pathos and I was surprised to see such pathos in a TV show. The nurse brother's empathy for his ambitious brother was so high that he (brother 1) had the dreams of flying for him (brother 2). But the fact that brother 1 began to associate being able to fly with some kind of self-validation: that made the twist that it was actually brother 2 who flies all the more juicy. Oh, the humanity. Good stuff.
Wait, isn't this the same show where some 10 year old kid was soldering his computer because it was broken? Now, I know they were trying to illustrate that he was a smart kid and all, but you can't fix a computer that was made any time after 1982 with a soldering iron. I really think they should hire consultants to read through the script before they put in stupid things like that.
I know some geek is going to respond saying he soldered his computer and made it work, but realistically, it's not something that you can do. Some script writer thought it would sound good...
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
By making it look "techy", it gets featured on Slashdot! Seriously,it has helped spread the show.
I know, I downloaded it on Bit Torrent ad free already!
I believe that quote is from Picasso.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Examples of shows I watched: 24 with Pine v4.44 and Alias with an old version of KDE.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The real news here is that someone got a USB camera working with KDE.
It's also the premise of the 70's TV series "The Tommorrow People" as well as hundreds of other science fiction stories, novels, movies, and TV shows (many of which LONG pre-date the X-men's use of the idea).
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Wow, someone is running KDE on national TV!
Can you say "Marketing Opportunity"? I thought you could. If the show takes off, prepare to have OS X or Vista on that puppy.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
If you want to go back, X-men "ripped it off" from Darwin.
Yup, because Darwin was all about random mutations resulting in awesome super powers.
Kde was the desktop used on the computer in the chat room company last night as well (the one about the Child being Auctioned off - P911)
A little dated, but I thought that was a pretty impressive reference for a television show to make.
Maybe his computer is an Apple II