OK, to be fair, maybe it's just because I'm not a kid anymore, but it really does seem like the funnies just aren't funny anymore. (MST3K did a pretty good bit about this a while back) I'd cite Dilbert, Calvin&Hobbes, and Far Side as exceptions, and two of those are no longer running. Too many just aren't clever, insightful, or comedic in any other regard. How many strips were padded out with Y2K material for last week's paper? Either "Wow, the world really is still going", or "Wow, I drank a lot last night", or "We wish you all a happy new year!" (Blondie) - and that's the whole strip. I'd include the gaming strip in the lot, too. So the kids take the football video game too seriously... alright, good premise, where's the gag? He finds a stand in because his eye hurts... "Ummm... ha?"
I think he's too quick to condemn the Dilbert method of E-mail suggestions. At least Adams is taking feedback - maybe that's part of the reason why Dilbert is usually funny.
Oh, come on, who gives a shit if making fun of people makes us "look bad"..? Are we concerned about our image here? Is it really all that important that the entire world embrace geek sub-culture? I think the opposite is closer to the truth - having a little something of our own, something that "outsiders" don't understand, is what gives us definition. Isolating ourselves from those who don't understand what we do or why is how we keep that definition intact. As long as the "outsiders" are still treated with what respect they deserve, I say laugh it up.
This isn't something limited to geek culture, it's a common element of how human society works. "In" groups are defined by shared traits, shared habits, interests, characteristics, whatever, and used to isolate and distinguish from other groups. Sports fans divide themselves from non-sports fans by measuring levels of knowledge and, presumably, understanding of sports history (past and present), and divide into smaller groups by team preference, locality, etc. People form social circles by doing the same things - like smoking, for one - being told they shouldn't, or being forced into uncomfortable situations in order to continue, is just one more way their group identity is strengthened. Racial identity works pretty much the same way, esp. when there's persecution and misunderstanding involved.
"The respect they deserve" is the key issue here as far as whether, for example, UF is abusive or not. (As far as funny goes, I've found UF to be hit-or-miss. No, I haven't worked tech support or sysadmin) Everyone deserves a simple measure of interpersonal respect to start. Certain things can cancel that out - persistant, obstinate ignorance, for one. People with problems caused by their limited understanding of the situation, wanting a quick fix to the problem without their learning anything, for example. This is obstinate ignorance - not only does the person not understand, they don't -want- to understand. I believe it's because they don't want to take the responsibility on themselves to figure anything out. That's how they earn disrespect, and mockery. UF isn't even very hard on such people.
It's Japan, there's always some huge monsters, giant robots, or multi-tentacled aliens roaming about causing havoc. The Patlabors were deployed in the landfill zone a few years ago now, scientists are still working on that "Macross" ship that crash landed this year, I think Gamera and Ultraman are hanging out in Shinjuku after kicking Mothra's pansy ass. Godzilla doesn't run with that crowd anymore - not since becoming Capt. Majors's bitch.
Heh, I think we're all sick of hearing the term "Y2K", especially when people try to be clever by working it into their usual bullshit. "Yes 2 Kia", "Y -not- 2K?", etc.
Sadly, what would otherwise be a good (but not quite great) radio station has succeeded in making asses of themselves on a very regular basis. Every time the do station identification they say "W.. C... Y... Y2K!" It makes me want to puke. I hold back the puke impulse by changing station.
When it's deployed, a profile like this isn't used in the way you describe. It's used as a heads-up, "Hey teachers, counselors, etc., this is the kind of geek who's gonna plant a bomb". They use it to go fishing, and that's why it's not good for the students.
Well, unlikely, maybe, but not prohibitively so. Systems other than MS-Windows, Linux included, are gaining ground. There's no reason Amiga can't be a player if their approach is good.
Re: "Pokemon isn't the devil or anything... just exists to sell cards and toys... Toy Story is cool because it's about the hype" etc. (paraphrased) That just means Toy Story has different appeal. And there's nothing wrong with merchandising. Ask Yogurt. If you discriminate agains Pokemon because it -began- with the game, you're just splitting hairs, really - you're contrasting a game which evolved (through popularity) to include toys, cards, comics, and a TV show with movies (or TV shows, etc.) which are made to curry the popularity needed to merchandize, or TV/movies in which this is at least a hope. Anyway, it's fun stuff. The show is entertaining and the comics are better. Quite off-topic. But what the fuck. ---GEC
Re: "I hope kids like this movie better than Pokemon..."
And what's wrong with Pokemon? OK, to be fair, if you're talking movies, the Pokemon movie had some problems - the short was cool but the Mewtwo thing got a bit preachy.. But if you're talking franchises, then what exactly is your beef w/ Pokemon?
Eh, I can't relate. Palms are a lot of fun. It's all the rage to whine about screen size or color or processing speed, but if that's what you really want, the wince palmtops are for you. The Palms are about compromise, the compromise necessary to make it a useful machine without making it unreasonable to carry around. I've found mine to be very handy to use, and fun to program. Now if you already have a Palm, an excellent gift would be a keyboard for it - this isn't a substitute for Graffiti by any means - but having the faster input of a keyboard makes it much more practical to use the Palm for editing stuff away from the computer. Two models - Landware's GoType and ThinkOutside's folding keyboard. ---GEC
This is dumb. There's no need to waste time arguing over when the 21st century really begins. In another year, it won't matter, and most likely not even the people who were "right" will remember the ecstacy they felt that time they got to be superior to someone for one, brief moment, by virtue of knowing a bit of trivia about our calendar system. 2000 should be the start of the 21st century. Now that 0 is a part of our number system, it makes more sense. Beyond that, it's really not worth arguing about - it's just a handy way to yell at people who hype the turn of the century way too much. ---GEC
On the other hand, NBC couldn't get Orson Welles for their movie project... Call me skeptical but I'm just not sure the creative talent pool they had to fall back on is gonna measure up. ---GEC
This point was actually very well supported by the documentary "Sneakers" When what's-his-name was talking to that guy about causing runs on banks, and how the same could be extrapolated to his taking down the entire monetary system.
Gutenberg is cool, one of these days I'm gonna buy their CD so I don't have to download everything. But I have one serious beef with them. Everything's in plain ASCII, formatted for an 80 column screen or line printer. (Some of it is even double-spaced). This is nice if you wanna read on a VT100 or something, but what if you want to read on a Palm Pilot, or make some nice printouts, or just on-screen with a nice (proportional-spaced) font, huh? Then you've got a jumble. I can understand the need to have ASCII versions -available- but here's the problem with the Gutenberg Project's assertion that the ASCII version is enough - it's -easy- to convert non-ASCII (HTML, SGML, LaTeX, etc.) into ASCII - it's something that can be completely automated. Going the other way can't be automated so easily - pretty much the best a person can do is mark it up while they're reading it. Of course, it's also dumb to make everyone out there mark up their own copies by hand if they want it in another format. Maybe Proj. Gutenberg could start making all their new E-Texts in SGML or something, so all their hard work doesn't look like shit on-screen. ---GEC
The way I read it, the university doesn't want the domain - they just don't want Mr. pty misrepresenting the school. (His message certainly seems to indicate that the reason he included "Purdue" in his site's name was in reference to the school) ---GEC
No need to trash-talk those who haven't quite figured it all out yet. Otherwise, right on - people gotta get out there, stick their neck out if that's what it takes, go get what they deserve. Also figure out what you want to be, and be it. (If you can't figure it out, experiment. Let experiments be dangerous and even catastrophic, too.) If it turns out you do find yourself to be boring, mix things up - figure out what box you're stuck inside and think outside of it. In my experience, limiting yourself and/or being somewhat self-repressed doesn't -only- hold you back, but it also builds up potential - you can take advantage of this potential by breaking down some of those old barriers. Jaa ne, ---GEC
That all depends on how you feel about yourself, doesn't it?:) I mean, if you're like me, really aware of your potential and the strength you've got inside, maybe you wouldn't have it any other way. I think a woman I'm with at least needs to share some of the same ideas about life. Similar experiences, even really negative ones, are also a powerful bond between people. And if you're as much of a geek as I am, you're probably not going to find enough of that in a non-geek (or at least not in someone who has -never- been a geek) Geek pride fascinates me. Very liberating, also very limiting. Jaa ne, ---GEC
Some guys love dumb girls, girls they can manipulate or at least lead. Maybe attraction to geeks is another form of this. Someone without a lot of confidence or inner strength is likely to be a lot more open in all circumstances to suggestion, even control. Note that there's nothing wrong with any of this, it all depends on what's the right kind of relationship for both people involved and whether the dominant one is going to make the relationship an abusive one. Also keep in mind, it's just a theory. jaa ne, ---GEC
I've always been super-shy, so I've tried the online thing a few times, w/ one big success.
I also figured a few things out along the way, at least things that make sense for how I am - 1: move to "real life" asap. E-Mail gets boring fast. As soon as you've established the basics, meet in person and don't go back. In my experience on-line interaction of any kind is massively limiting when you get right down to it, it breeds all kinds of miscommunications, too. 2: Pay attention to what it is you're doing on-line. The same things that make it easier to interact with people on-line also make it easier to hurt people once you turn it into something real. That's not something anyone should toy with.
My story - I had what could have been a success w/ a girl I met on my dial-up BBS back in '95 or so (yeah, back when a 386 with a 172MB hard drive was passable as an all-purpose online fileserver) - she was nice, but I handled the first meeting badly and really made her uncomfortable and nervous, then stalled too long before a second meeting. The big success was a bit over a year ago, met a very beautiful, smart, and affectionate girl. We were very like-minded, had an almost year-long relationship w/ lots of good times.
Oh, and for the flamers, a friendly hello and "eat shit". Yada Yada, we already know you don't respect people less socially adept than yourselves. But somehow I really don't think insulting people would be rewarding to a person who's already happy with their life. So fuck off already and quit wasting our time.
Debian does take too much time between stable releases for my personal taste - seems I'm always stuck between running a far-outdated "stable" and taking my chances (mainly with broken dependencies) running "unstable".
However, on the bright side, this gives me a chance to get my package into Debian before it freezes, meaning it could be in a Debian "stable" before the 21st century (2001). That's always nice.
OK, I'm not a Microsoft fan, but pointless MS bashing really isn't that cool anymore. It's the same advice I give to people who are obsessively intimidated by Barney or the Teletubbies - get over it, move on, there are more important things to worry about.
Everything popular's done some merchandizing. B5 has pretty much the same lineup of shitty little toys, novelizations, comics, etc... It's not selling out by any measure. The potential is there, the people who have the opportunity are taking advantage of it.
- The books are trash because they're written for people who aren't interested in reading a good book. They're supermarket impulse-buys, wanna-be bestsellers, etc. You get the same from most any book based on movies or TV. If you want to get moralistic, you could say that they're a full step up from trashy romance novels. - The same (sadly) goes for comics. American (US at least) comics are shit. Few exceptions. - IMO the lameness of the movies are as much a product of the times as anything. Not many (again, US) movies today go for any kind of quality. Maybe that's true of any decade..
Oh, and B5 hasn't quite gone. I believe TnT still runs it at 7AM. In a perverse kind of way, this is actually better exposure than Voyager gets on UPN prime time. It's true that TnT cut Crusade tho - it turns out that they didn't have room in their lineup for another non-western, and the old "Wagon train to the stars" routine didn't cut it.:)
Prople will probably post a billion messages on this thread about Babylon 5... here's another one.
IMO, this is one very positive edge B5 has always had over Star Trek. When the original B5 series started, it was started with a fixed scope (5 years). A single story, beginning, middle, end, Straczynski planned out what he wanted the series to be and did it. It's a pretty good idea - figure out what you want to do, do it, then (hopefully) go on to something different. Star Trek sometimes did this on a per-episode basis... but all the episodes of all the series have a lot in common, so potential for innovation is really pretty limited. I think it's gotten to the point where more Star Trek is just "more".
BTW, Michael Dorn, TV's Lieutenant Work from TV's Star Trek: The Next Generation, gives a stunning performance as I. M. Weasel.
OK, it's kind of a splitting hairs issue, since if you like the old series anyway you probably like it (among other things) because it was cheesy. The characteristic soundtrack while Kirk fights the rubber monster to save the scantily-clad alien woman who's somewhere between a 60's kind of beautiful and "creepy", the Irwin-Allen-esque stage tumbling when the ship's hit, etc. For anyone who enjoys the old series, it's pretty much impervious to scrutiny.
The old series had its high points, and its low points, as did the old-series movies... (In fact, I think Star Trek 2 and 6 are the only good ones of the bunch.) The series did some good stuff, being partly inspired on occasion by good sci-fi.. but it also had issues - budget, censorship/network influence, and Roddenberry's (I think it was Roddenberry's) supremely lame, sort of hippie-ish idea that understanding, time, and technology could lead to a future humanity with virtually no conflict except from alien influence. IMO this is where the old series really went sour.
Star Trek is just (and has been for quite some time) massively overrated. It probably only stood out in the first place because there's virtually no decent-quality sci-fi on US television. And every stage of the Star Trek thing has had its good and bad points. Yeah, even Voyager's done some good stuff. I think all the series had a lemon of a first season (except original, which had a lemon of a last season)...
Oh, and whoever wants to be a shithead and tell us all why we shouldn't waste time discussing this can just get on their knees and suck it. Like it or not, Star Trek is a major fixture of US culture, and it may be on its way out. I won't miss it.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, to be fair, maybe it's just because I'm not a kid anymore, but it really does seem like the funnies just aren't funny anymore. (MST3K did a pretty good bit about this a while back) I'd cite Dilbert, Calvin&Hobbes, and Far Side as exceptions, and two of those are no longer running. Too many just aren't clever, insightful, or comedic in any other regard. How many strips were padded out with Y2K material for last week's paper? Either "Wow, the world really is still going", or "Wow, I drank a lot last night", or "We wish you all a happy new year!" (Blondie) - and that's the whole strip. I'd include the gaming strip in the lot, too. So the kids take the football video game too seriously... alright, good premise, where's the gag? He finds a stand in because his eye hurts... "Ummm... ha?"
I think he's too quick to condemn the Dilbert method of E-mail suggestions. At least Adams is taking feedback - maybe that's part of the reason why Dilbert is usually funny.
---GEC
Oh, come on, who gives a shit if making fun of people makes us "look bad"..? Are we concerned about our image here? Is it really all that important that the entire world embrace geek sub-culture? I think the opposite is closer to the truth - having a little something of our own, something that "outsiders" don't understand, is what gives us definition. Isolating ourselves from those who don't understand what we do or why is how we keep that definition intact. As long as the "outsiders" are still treated with what respect they deserve, I say laugh it up.
This isn't something limited to geek culture, it's a common element of how human society works. "In" groups are defined by shared traits, shared habits, interests, characteristics, whatever, and used to isolate and distinguish from other groups. Sports fans divide themselves from non-sports fans by measuring levels of knowledge and, presumably, understanding of sports history (past and present), and divide into smaller groups by team preference, locality, etc. People form social circles by doing the same things - like smoking, for one - being told they shouldn't, or being forced into uncomfortable situations in order to continue, is just one more way their group identity is strengthened. Racial identity works pretty much the same way, esp. when there's persecution and misunderstanding involved.
"The respect they deserve" is the key issue here as far as whether, for example, UF is abusive or not. (As far as funny goes, I've found UF to be hit-or-miss. No, I haven't worked tech support or sysadmin) Everyone deserves a simple measure of interpersonal respect to start. Certain things can cancel that out - persistant, obstinate ignorance, for one. People with problems caused by their limited understanding of the situation, wanting a quick fix to the problem without their learning anything, for example. This is obstinate ignorance - not only does the person not understand, they don't -want- to understand. I believe it's because they don't want to take the responsibility on themselves to figure anything out. That's how they earn disrespect, and mockery. UF isn't even very hard on such people.
---GEC
In fact, the 200:1 compression ratio was an average taken from the developer's entire porn collection.
Unfortunately, his whole collection was comprised of pictures of gradients having sex.
---GEC
What, are you on crack?
It's Japan, there's always some huge monsters, giant robots, or multi-tentacled aliens roaming about causing havoc. The Patlabors were deployed in the landfill zone a few years ago now, scientists are still working on that "Macross" ship that crash landed this year, I think Gamera and Ultraman are hanging out in Shinjuku after kicking Mothra's pansy ass. Godzilla doesn't run with that crowd anymore - not since becoming Capt. Majors's bitch.
Way off-topic. Deal.
---GEC
Heh, I think we're all sick of hearing the term "Y2K", especially when people try to be clever by working it into their usual bullshit. "Yes 2 Kia", "Y -not- 2K?", etc.
Sadly, what would otherwise be a good (but not quite great) radio station has succeeded in making asses of themselves on a very regular basis. Every time the do station identification they say "W.. C... Y... Y2K!" It makes me want to puke. I hold back the puke impulse by changing station.
---GEC
When it's deployed, a profile like this isn't used in the way you describe. It's used as a heads-up, "Hey teachers, counselors, etc., this is the kind of geek who's gonna plant a bomb". They use it to go fishing, and that's why it's not good for the students.
---GEC
Well, unlikely, maybe, but not prohibitively so. Systems other than MS-Windows, Linux included, are gaining ground. There's no reason Amiga can't be a player if their approach is good.
---GEC
Re: "Pokemon isn't the devil or anything... just exists to sell cards and toys... Toy Story is cool because it's about the hype" etc. (paraphrased) That just means Toy Story has different appeal. And there's nothing wrong with merchandising. Ask Yogurt. If you discriminate agains Pokemon because it -began- with the game, you're just splitting hairs, really - you're contrasting a game which evolved (through popularity) to include toys, cards, comics, and a TV show with movies (or TV shows, etc.) which are made to curry the popularity needed to merchandize, or TV/movies in which this is at least a hope. Anyway, it's fun stuff. The show is entertaining and the comics are better. Quite off-topic. But what the fuck. ---GEC
Re: "I hope kids like this movie better than Pokemon..."
And what's wrong with Pokemon? OK, to be fair, if you're talking movies, the Pokemon movie had some problems - the short was cool but the Mewtwo thing got a bit preachy.. But if you're talking franchises, then what exactly is your beef w/ Pokemon?
---GEC
Eh, I can't relate. Palms are a lot of fun. It's all the rage to whine about screen size or color or processing speed, but if that's what you really want, the wince palmtops are for you. The Palms are about compromise, the compromise necessary to make it a useful machine without making it unreasonable to carry around. I've found mine to be very handy to use, and fun to program. Now if you already have a Palm, an excellent gift would be a keyboard for it - this isn't a substitute for Graffiti by any means - but having the faster input of a keyboard makes it much more practical to use the Palm for editing stuff away from the computer. Two models - Landware's GoType and ThinkOutside's folding keyboard. ---GEC
This is dumb. There's no need to waste time arguing over when the 21st century really begins. In another year, it won't matter, and most likely not even the people who were "right" will remember the ecstacy they felt that time they got to be superior to someone for one, brief moment, by virtue of knowing a bit of trivia about our calendar system. 2000 should be the start of the 21st century. Now that 0 is a part of our number system, it makes more sense. Beyond that, it's really not worth arguing about - it's just a handy way to yell at people who hype the turn of the century way too much. ---GEC
Well, I don't write COBOL, but I do happen to be absolutely stunning, and I'm sure I could learn COBOL in an afternoon if there was a need for it.
---GEC
On the other hand, NBC couldn't get Orson Welles for their movie project... Call me skeptical but I'm just not sure the creative talent pool they had to fall back on is gonna measure up. ---GEC
This point was actually very well supported by the documentary "Sneakers" When what's-his-name was talking to that guy about causing runs on banks, and how the same could be extrapolated to his taking down the entire monetary system.
---GEC
Gutenberg is cool, one of these days I'm gonna buy their CD so I don't have to download everything. But I have one serious beef with them. Everything's in plain ASCII, formatted for an 80 column screen or line printer. (Some of it is even double-spaced). This is nice if you wanna read on a VT100 or something, but what if you want to read on a Palm Pilot, or make some nice printouts, or just on-screen with a nice (proportional-spaced) font, huh? Then you've got a jumble. I can understand the need to have ASCII versions -available- but here's the problem with the Gutenberg Project's assertion that the ASCII version is enough - it's -easy- to convert non-ASCII (HTML, SGML, LaTeX, etc.) into ASCII - it's something that can be completely automated. Going the other way can't be automated so easily - pretty much the best a person can do is mark it up while they're reading it. Of course, it's also dumb to make everyone out there mark up their own copies by hand if they want it in another format. Maybe Proj. Gutenberg could start making all their new E-Texts in SGML or something, so all their hard work doesn't look like shit on-screen. ---GEC
The way I read it, the university doesn't want the domain - they just don't want Mr. pty misrepresenting the school. (His message certainly seems to indicate that the reason he included "Purdue" in his site's name was in reference to the school) ---GEC
No need to trash-talk those who haven't quite figured it all out yet. Otherwise, right on - people gotta get out there, stick their neck out if that's what it takes, go get what they deserve. Also figure out what you want to be, and be it. (If you can't figure it out, experiment. Let experiments be dangerous and even catastrophic, too.) If it turns out you do find yourself to be boring, mix things up - figure out what box you're stuck inside and think outside of it. In my experience, limiting yourself and/or being somewhat self-repressed doesn't -only- hold you back, but it also builds up potential - you can take advantage of this potential by breaking down some of those old barriers. Jaa ne, ---GEC
That all depends on how you feel about yourself, doesn't it? :) I mean, if you're like me, really aware of your potential and the strength you've got inside, maybe you wouldn't have it any other way. I think a woman I'm with at least needs to share some of the same ideas about life. Similar experiences, even really negative ones, are also a powerful bond between people. And if you're as much of a geek as I am, you're probably not going to find enough of that in a non-geek (or at least not in someone who has -never- been a geek) Geek pride fascinates me. Very liberating, also very limiting. Jaa ne, ---GEC
Some guys love dumb girls, girls they can manipulate or at least lead. Maybe attraction to geeks is another form of this. Someone without a lot of confidence or inner strength is likely to be a lot more open in all circumstances to suggestion, even control. Note that there's nothing wrong with any of this, it all depends on what's the right kind of relationship for both people involved and whether the dominant one is going to make the relationship an abusive one. Also keep in mind, it's just a theory. jaa ne, ---GEC
I've always been super-shy, so I've tried the online thing a few times, w/ one big success.
I also figured a few things out along the way, at least things that make sense for how I am -
1: move to "real life" asap. E-Mail gets boring fast. As soon as you've established the basics, meet in person and don't go back. In my experience on-line interaction of any kind is massively limiting when you get right down to it, it breeds all kinds of miscommunications, too.
2: Pay attention to what it is you're doing on-line. The same things that make it easier to interact with people on-line also make it easier to hurt people once you turn it into something real. That's not something anyone should toy with.
My story - I had what could have been a success w/ a girl I met on my dial-up BBS back in '95 or so (yeah, back when a 386 with a 172MB hard drive was passable as an all-purpose online fileserver) - she was nice, but I handled the first meeting badly and really made her uncomfortable and nervous, then stalled too long before a second meeting. The big success was a bit over a year ago, met a very beautiful, smart, and affectionate girl. We were very like-minded, had an almost year-long relationship w/ lots of good times.
Oh, and for the flamers, a friendly hello and "eat shit". Yada Yada, we already know you don't respect people less socially adept than yourselves. But somehow I really don't think insulting people would be rewarding to a person who's already happy with their life. So fuck off already and quit wasting our time.
Jaa ne,
---GEC
Debian does take too much time between stable releases for my personal taste - seems I'm always stuck between running a far-outdated "stable" and taking my chances (mainly with broken dependencies) running "unstable".
However, on the bright side, this gives me a chance to get my package into Debian before it freezes, meaning it could be in a Debian "stable" before the 21st century (2001). That's always nice.
---GEC
OK, I'm not a Microsoft fan, but pointless MS bashing really isn't that cool anymore. It's the same advice I give to people who are obsessively intimidated by Barney or the Teletubbies - get over it, move on, there are more important things to worry about.
---GEC
Everything popular's done some merchandizing. B5 has pretty much the same lineup of shitty little toys, novelizations, comics, etc... It's not selling out by any measure. The potential is there, the people who have the opportunity are taking advantage of it.
:)
- The books are trash because they're written for people who aren't interested in reading a good book. They're supermarket impulse-buys, wanna-be bestsellers, etc. You get the same from most any book based on movies or TV. If you want to get moralistic, you could say that they're a full step up from trashy romance novels.
- The same (sadly) goes for comics. American (US at least) comics are shit. Few exceptions.
- IMO the lameness of the movies are as much a product of the times as anything. Not many (again, US) movies today go for any kind of quality. Maybe that's true of any decade..
Oh, and B5 hasn't quite gone. I believe TnT still runs it at 7AM. In a perverse kind of way, this is actually better exposure than Voyager gets on UPN prime time. It's true that TnT cut Crusade tho - it turns out that they didn't have room in their lineup for another non-western, and the old "Wagon train to the stars" routine didn't cut it.
---GEC
Prople will probably post a billion messages on this thread about Babylon 5... here's another one.
IMO, this is one very positive edge B5 has always had over Star Trek. When the original B5 series started, it was started with a fixed scope (5 years). A single story, beginning, middle, end, Straczynski planned out what he wanted the series to be and did it. It's a pretty good idea - figure out what you want to do, do it, then (hopefully) go on to something different. Star Trek sometimes did this on a per-episode basis... but all the episodes of all the series have a lot in common, so potential for innovation is really pretty limited. I think it's gotten to the point where more Star Trek is just "more".
BTW, Michael Dorn, TV's Lieutenant Work from TV's Star Trek: The Next Generation, gives a stunning performance as I. M. Weasel.
---GEC
OK, it's kind of a splitting hairs issue, since if you like the old series anyway you probably like it (among other things) because it was cheesy. The characteristic soundtrack while Kirk fights the rubber monster to save the scantily-clad alien woman who's somewhere between a 60's kind of beautiful and "creepy", the Irwin-Allen-esque stage tumbling when the ship's hit, etc. For anyone who enjoys the old series, it's pretty much impervious to scrutiny.
The old series had its high points, and its low points, as did the old-series movies... (In fact, I think Star Trek 2 and 6 are the only good ones of the bunch.) The series did some good stuff, being partly inspired on occasion by good sci-fi.. but it also had issues - budget, censorship/network influence, and Roddenberry's (I think it was Roddenberry's) supremely lame, sort of hippie-ish idea that understanding, time, and technology could lead to a future humanity with virtually no conflict except from alien influence. IMO this is where the old series really went sour.
Star Trek is just (and has been for quite some time) massively overrated. It probably only stood out in the first place because there's virtually no decent-quality sci-fi on US television. And every stage of the Star Trek thing has had its good and bad points. Yeah, even Voyager's done some good stuff. I think all the series had a lemon of a first season (except original, which had a lemon of a last season)...
Oh, and whoever wants to be a shithead and tell us all why we shouldn't waste time discussing this can just get on their knees and suck it. Like it or not, Star Trek is a major fixture of US culture, and it may be on its way out. I won't miss it.
---GEC