The solution? Discussion with gamers is going to be at its most helpful for the company during the early parts of game development, when ideas and features can be requested and demand can be built up in advance of a marketing campaign. As the project approaches beta testing, employees should cease discussion with the outside world and instead talk only with the beta testers, and interaction with gamers should be done with fancy advertisements in magazines and giveaways until the product hits the shelves.
For what it's worth, Quicksilver, developer of Master of Orion III, ended up following that same pattern, with various staff members contributing (often cryptic) information about "The Elephant"--the design document for MOO3. The initial transparency and calls for fan participation drew many people (myself included) to their official message board. This formed the foundation for a community that was sometimes compared to that enjoyed by Bioware's Neverwinter Nights. Yet as development wore on, the flow of information dried up. Rumors started flying about cuts that might be happening in the feature list. Taken in conjunction with the removal of several highly visible staff members, what happened next was no surprise.
Deprived of the information flow that kept everyone on the same page, the community fragmented. "Fanboys" versus "trolls". "N00bs" versus veteran forum members. Certainly, this is par for the course in many forums; however, the sudden loss of a certain camaraderie struck me as significant. The problem was compounded as people turned back to past posts by various staff members, trying to divine the current condition of the project by piecing these posts together into a coherent account.
The end result was a lot of bad feelings all around. Although discussion was quite civilized when there was plenty of information to worwith, a paucity of information led to abandonment issues.
In a post-mortem interview with GameSpy, Rantz Hosely--art director for MOO3 and frequent presence on the boards--acknowledged that the information flow could have been better managed, specifically in terms of making sure that fans knew they weren't simply being ignored.
Personally, I doubt anyone will be (intentionally) trying the MOO3 experiment again any time soon. Why have the actual developer manage the information flow when you can have a marketer spit out full-color glossies on demand?
...And even though they try their best to drive us out of our minds, we still love 'em all.
My mom called me up once to tell me that she was trying to restart the computer, but the mouse pointer had disappeared and nothing was happening. I figured that the quick fix would be to just have her reset the computer. If it kept locking up, then at least we'd be able to establish some sort of pattern.
ME: "Just hit the reset button, Mom."
MOM: "Oh. Reset." [Pause.] "Okay."
ME: "Is the Windows startup screen showing up?"
MOM: "No."
ME: "Is there a message on the screen?"
MOM: "It says 'C'. And there's a colon and a slash and an arrow. It says 'WINDOWS' too."
ME: "Okay. Hit reset again and when it says 'Starting Windows', press the F8 key immediately."
MOM: "Okay." [Pause.] "When does it say 'Starting Windows'?"
ME: "Did you press reset?"
MOM: "Yes."
ME: "And it's not doing anything?"
MOM: "No."
ME: "Read me everything on the screen. Start at the top."
MOM: "Okay. First line has that C thing. And after the arrow is 'RESET', spelled R-E-S-E-T. Second line is 'Bad command or file name'. Those two are repeated again. And now I have another C thing arrow. How do you spell 'reset'?"
ME: "Never mind. Just turn the computer off."
MOM: "Okay."
ME: "Now turn it on again."
[Pause.]
MOM: "Oh! It works. Thank you!"
ME: (aside) "I need a drink."
My best guess as to the cause of all this (reset issues aside) was that she chose to shut down to DOS instead of restarting.
First my friend's video card is better then my P200, and now this?
Don't feel too bad; consider the following info, posted to the tkc mailing list by Shawn Gordon, president of theKompany.com:
Also the XScale chips are flawed, Intel confirmed this to me
personally in conversations regarding testing some of our software, for all
intents and purposes they are running at about half speed because of the
flaw, so this chip is really slower than the 206Mhz StrongARM in the
current device.
And, shockingly enough, the folks who hang out on the MyUO Boards (often characterized as the polar opposite of the regulars at UO Powergamers) also agree that this is a very bad idea.
The two communities have something in common. I think the world is ending.
(Note: you might need to have a UO account to access the MyUO link.)
No, membership is in fact voluntary for the user. If you don't like your provider using MAPS, or your provider's provider using MAPS, then simply change companies. If MAPS is really a bad idea, it will shrivel due to lack of support. It's one of those pesky times when the principles of capitalism actually work. Providers will not use MAPS if their customers don't want it.
The problem with the above is that average users wouldn't likely know why the site they were trying to reach (in this case, Macromedia) is unavailable. The user does not receive an error message stating that the site has been RBL'ed; instead, the user merely cannot connect to the host. Without a clue as to the nature of the fault, the consumer can only chalk it up to a problem somewhere on the Internet and leave it at that.
The ideal consumer in a capitalist system is a well-informed one. Unfortunately, the tight-lipped nature of MAPS works against the process.
As the article states, both Pioneer 11 and Pioneer 10, on opposite sides of the Solar System, are experiencing the same effect, which rules out local gravitational effects.
Oddly enough, it also seems that this deviation is not evident in the orbits of the planets.
Me? I just think that they've been slowed by local debris--though I'd like to believe in a gravitational constant.
-W-
"Is it all journey, or is there landfall?"
Re:So where does the information come from?
on
A Map to Nowhere?
·
· Score: 2
So where is this extra information located? It is obvious that there must be some other mechanism at work. I would posit that the mechanism is supernatural.
Z = Z^2 + C
The above equation, when iterated over each value Z on the complex number plane (where Z is decomposed to X + Yi), produces the Mandelbrot set.
An amazing amount of complexity is evident in the Mandelbrot set. Yet, the basis is simply that one-line equation.
The genome is similar to that equation, in that it is relatively simple when viewed as a string of bases, an abstraction that ignores the existence of the cell that surrounds it. However, in terms of a biological system (DNA is near-useless without the complement of chemical reactions that work on it), the genome becomes a basis for the generation of life processes--much like the equation becomes the Mandelbrot set when iterated.
Mind you, this does not discount the possibility that some deity may have originally set these processes in motion. But I feel that whatever the origin of these processes, the amount of information that can be derived from the human genome should not be underestimated.
Why is there a second America-only tld? Why isn't this.ac.us (in the uk we use.ac.uk for educational institutions). I always thought the main tlds were supposed to be international, with only the country codes being restricted by country... Evidently not, though...
Well, the internationalization of TLDs such as COM has been only a relatively recent development. In fact, several of the top-level TLDs are reserved for the United States, in particular, GOV, MIL, and (as you pointed out) EDU. The others (COM especially) have traditionally been dominated by US organizations.
Furthermore, the administration of the US domain is a bureaucratic mess, despite the (in my mind) wonderful structural scheme that's present in it. Also, it doesn't quite have the accessibility of the top-level TLDs. (Was that.ny.us or.nv.us?)
One could go on and on about whether or not the US has the right to claim such exclusive access, but the history remains the same. ^_^
Where ignoarance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise, and it is better for the masses if they exist in joyful prejudiced ignoarance. I think that the matrix should never have been released for this reason.
Lemme guess... You took the blue pill? ^_^
Reality is a lonely place without other people to enjoy it.
It would take 15 nuclear explosions to push a rock on to a collision course with Earth to create an explosion equivalent to 15 nuclear bombs.
Is it me or is there one big mother of a middle man that can be cut out of the equation here?
Yes, there is a middle man that can be cut out. However, said middle man would (if the guys employing it were lucky) be completely unexpected--if its orbit isn't precisely known or monitored. (Which is one reason it's being proposed by Spaceguard: the funding aspect.)
I mean, with the shadow of MAD still looming large in the public imagination, who is going to expect a non-nuclear attack of that magnitude?
I'm quite impressed with this work, not because it draws out a plan for using asteroids as weapons, but because it can offer a somewhat more compelling reason for governments to fund research into 'killer asteroids'.
Face it, if astronomers say that something's got a one-in-a-million chance of hitting us, or that it passes within 600,000 miles of Earth, it lacks a certain kick--it's just astronomy, and that isn't a top priority. However, if they successfully argue that the Other Guy(s) could use these things as weapons, the issue becomes one of national defense. National defense gets funded.
Of course, one has to make a good scientific case first. I'm waiting for an actual paper before deciding how plausible it actually is--though no matter what, it's still an interesting idea.
And who wants to run software via a browser? Sheesh, these damns apps are slow enough as it is... just how is he planning in distributing a word processor, or a powerful drawing package? Perl scripts?!? Java ?!? The general death of applets should have proven that the "apps via the web" concept was a loser... and let's not forget issues of bandwidth and security...
Bob's idea of using Internet appliances seems to echo Microsoft's ideas for.NET and Hailstorm--though perhaps with less OS integration. What he's driving at is not running apps through a browser, or (another interpretation) running apps on a remote server. My interpretation is that he suggests the relevant parts of (modularized) applications will be downloaded from the net at runtime and executed on the local machine.
I believe that bandwidth will not be a serious issue for corporate users, but if such applications ever make it to the private sector, I'd agree that a lot of people would need to look at bandwidth and security as a potential set of problems.
Of course, for quite a few people I know, bandwidth can be taken care of with $50/month, and security is an issue that never comes to mind. And privacy? Well, that's a whole 'nother can of worms...
Linux is the antithesis of central control, especially for those of us who value our independence and privacy. I don't wish Red Hat ill, but I don't expect them to find success with "apps that sit on the net."
Yes, I'd wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. But if Microsoft can successfully push.NET and Hailstorm to the private sector, Red Hat, Mandrake, et al. may have to follow--after all, as Bob says, their competition model (and thus potential for increased profits) is not to take customers away from other Linux companies, but to take them away from Microsoft. And if they can't provide a service that users feel is essential to their desktop experience (rented apps, having all one's private info on someone else's server, and all that good stuff), they won't be able to turn this whole mess around.
Contact: Foonly Bar Baz
Office: 810 McGraw Tower
E-Mail: fbb00@cornell.edu
CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA NY USA--Cryptographic 'Holy Grail' discovered!
Researchers at the U. Ezra Hardware Cryptography Facility at Cornell University have created a completely unbreakable means of cryptography that may be used in a wide variety of applications.
"It's all done in hardware," says Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV, chief researcher at the facility. "We discovered that it is possible to mass-encrypt any magnetic media through the use of electrically-induced magnetic fields."
Unlike a simple kitchen magnet, the hardware developed by the team can generate encrypted data on the entire surface of a disk at once, speeding up what can be a laborious process on modern desktop computers.
"The idea came to us when Lain started generating Morse code with the bulk eraser and the floppy containing our research data," says Tivrusky. "We tried our darndest to get our data back, even set some grad students loaned from the math department on the problem, but nothing seemed to work. And that's when we realized we had something here."
The U.S. Department of Defense is considering the technology for use as a secret weapon against evil hacker terrorists.
"This is a watershed event in the war against hackers," says a colonel who wishes to remain anonymous. "If we can adapt this to encrypt network transmissions, we could protect our network traffic against rogue Russian teenagers, miscreants in black trenchcoats, and Keanu Reeves."
"Widespread use of this technology has the potential to change the way we use computers," says Tivrusky. "It's a story I'll be able to tell my kids someday."
My own opinion is that it will depend on just how powerful said alien presence is. We may be more likely to consider guaranteeing rights for an alien if it has friends or resources to back it up.
Actually, they've introduced a 3D add-on to their original Ultima Online called Third Dawn. This basically offers a 3D game engine (albeit still third-person) to those players willing to purchase and install it.
I guess this is a sort of compromise--give the existing customers something new to play with that also happens to take advantage of shiny new technology, in hopes that it will also attract players who would have thought the graphics dated otherwise.
Although T-W Corporate will hand down orders from on high from time to time, the actual enforcement of the RR Acceptable Use Policy tends to vary from region to region.
I've lived places where people have been warned for having open SMTP ports (not open relays, just open ports, mind you). There was one city where I was given the seemingly standard line of "Linux is not a supported OS", yet was directed to the local RR other-os newsgroup, where RR employees volunteered support in their off hours. Wonderful folks, those. We need more of 'em.
The same thing goes for actively scanning systems for open ports. Some affiliates do it. Others aren't as intrusive. A good way of finding out is by checking your local RR security newsgroup for horror stories.
Going back to the original subject, this is also a great way of finding out which ports (if any) are blocked by RR, and getting warning of any local script-kiddies who have been hitting firewalls.
I liked the Christmas puzzler. Just put 'em in their own category, so those of us with accounts can filter 'em if we so choose. And remember: make sure they're suitably geekish. Chess is definitely a good place to start.
(Humming "One Night in Bangkok" for some reason...)
Damn, I was wondering when somebody would take the Jerky Boys approach to email. I loved the results, especially the one concerning Ivory Soap. I'd be rather disappointed, however, if this was the first case of this happening.
Anybody know of any other features along these lines out there? These guys can't be the only people with time on their hands...
I'd definitely be interested in purchasing the long version (if not the rumoured 6+ hour version) on DVD. If it adds the introspective elements that others say it does, it'd be quite welcome in my home.:)
I hope the series gives out more background information than the movie. The greatest failing of the movie, in mine honest opinion, was that it attempted to achieve its atmosphere through whiz-bang special effects instead of through good storytelling. I found myself wondering "What's in the box?" and "Who exactly is Captain Picard/Sting playing again?" throughout the feature.
Once I actually read the book, the movie was much more enjoyable, as I could finally sit back and watch it without wondering what everything meant. Here's hoping I won't need the book for the series!
On an almost unrelated note, I've got this annoying feeling that our good friend Iain from "Star Wars" should be playing the Emperor instead of this Giannini guy--and not just because of the title! As Palpatine, he had almost exactly the character I'd expect for this role. 8)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't prayer wheels merely mechanisms that recite prayers (in their own fashion)? From that standpoint, computers' prayers should have an effect, shouldn't they?
Slashdot Mirror
For what it's worth, Quicksilver, developer of Master of Orion III, ended up following that same pattern, with various staff members contributing (often cryptic) information about "The Elephant"--the design document for MOO3. The initial transparency and calls for fan participation drew many people (myself included) to their official message board. This formed the foundation for a community that was sometimes compared to that enjoyed by Bioware's Neverwinter Nights. Yet as development wore on, the flow of information dried up. Rumors started flying about cuts that might be happening in the feature list. Taken in conjunction with the removal of several highly visible staff members, what happened next was no surprise.
Deprived of the information flow that kept everyone on the same page, the community fragmented. "Fanboys" versus "trolls". "N00bs" versus veteran forum members. Certainly, this is par for the course in many forums; however, the sudden loss of a certain camaraderie struck me as significant. The problem was compounded as people turned back to past posts by various staff members, trying to divine the current condition of the project by piecing these posts together into a coherent account.
The end result was a lot of bad feelings all around. Although discussion was quite civilized when there was plenty of information to worwith, a paucity of information led to abandonment issues.
In a post-mortem interview with GameSpy, Rantz Hosely--art director for MOO3 and frequent presence on the boards--acknowledged that the information flow could have been better managed, specifically in terms of making sure that fans knew they weren't simply being ignored.
Personally, I doubt anyone will be (intentionally) trying the MOO3 experiment again any time soon. Why have the actual developer manage the information flow when you can have a marketer spit out full-color glossies on demand?
...And even though they try their best to drive us out of our minds, we still love 'em all.
My mom called me up once to tell me that she was trying to restart the computer, but the mouse pointer had disappeared and nothing was happening. I figured that the quick fix would be to just have her reset the computer. If it kept locking up, then at least we'd be able to establish some sort of pattern.
ME: "Just hit the reset button, Mom."
MOM: "Oh. Reset." [Pause.] "Okay."
ME: "Is the Windows startup screen showing up?"
MOM: "No."
ME: "Is there a message on the screen?"
MOM: "It says 'C'. And there's a colon and a slash and an arrow. It says 'WINDOWS' too."
ME: "Okay. Hit reset again and when it says 'Starting Windows', press the F8 key immediately."
MOM: "Okay." [Pause.] "When does it say 'Starting Windows'?"
ME: "Did you press reset?"
MOM: "Yes."
ME: "And it's not doing anything?"
MOM: "No."
ME: "Read me everything on the screen. Start at the top."
MOM: "Okay. First line has that C thing. And after the arrow is 'RESET', spelled R-E-S-E-T. Second line is 'Bad command or file name'. Those two are repeated again. And now I have another C thing arrow. How do you spell 'reset'?"
ME: "Never mind. Just turn the computer off."
MOM: "Okay."
ME: "Now turn it on again."
[Pause.]
MOM: "Oh! It works. Thank you!"
ME: (aside) "I need a drink."
My best guess as to the cause of all this (reset issues aside) was that she chose to shut down to DOS instead of restarting.
RIFF. What kind of scientist would make a robot look like that and instill her with puritan views?
TORG. An evil scientist. Try to keep up here.
RIFF. I wonder if she's fully biologically functional.
TORG. Either that or she's full of sharp jagged metal parts and...
RIFF. YEAAAAHH! Question withdrawn!
Don't feel too bad; consider the following info, posted to the tkc mailing list by Shawn Gordon, president of theKompany.com:
You're in luck! It's already been done.
M-x psychoanalyze-pinhead for a conversation that's so devoid of substance, it contains anti-substance!
And, shockingly enough, the folks who hang out on the MyUO Boards (often characterized as the polar opposite of the regulars at UO Powergamers) also agree that this is a very bad idea.
The two communities have something in common. I think the world is ending.
(Note: you might need to have a UO account to access the MyUO link.)
Since this appears to have been scanned with a Lumisys LS135 desktop scanner, I believe the 9.8 one ('TiXray.orig') is DICOM-compliant.
The viewer I use for DICOMs is MRIcro at 24 bpp. Your mileage may vary.
The problem with the above is that average users wouldn't likely know why the site they were trying to reach (in this case, Macromedia) is unavailable. The user does not receive an error message stating that the site has been RBL'ed; instead, the user merely cannot connect to the host. Without a clue as to the nature of the fault, the consumer can only chalk it up to a problem somewhere on the Internet and leave it at that.
The ideal consumer in a capitalist system is a well-informed one. Unfortunately, the tight-lipped nature of MAPS works against the process.
-W-
"Is it all journey, or is there landfall?"
Oddly enough, it also seems that this deviation is not evident in the orbits of the planets.
Me? I just think that they've been slowed by local debris--though I'd like to believe in a gravitational constant.
-W-
"Is it all journey, or is there landfall?"
Z = Z^2 + C
The above equation, when iterated over each value Z on the complex number plane (where Z is decomposed to X + Yi), produces the Mandelbrot set.
An amazing amount of complexity is evident in the Mandelbrot set. Yet, the basis is simply that one-line equation.
The genome is similar to that equation, in that it is relatively simple when viewed as a string of bases, an abstraction that ignores the existence of the cell that surrounds it. However, in terms of a biological system (DNA is near-useless without the complement of chemical reactions that work on it), the genome becomes a basis for the generation of life processes--much like the equation becomes the Mandelbrot set when iterated.
Mind you, this does not discount the possibility that some deity may have originally set these processes in motion. But I feel that whatever the origin of these processes, the amount of information that can be derived from the human genome should not be underestimated.
-W-
"Is it all journey, or is there landfall?"
Well, the internationalization of TLDs such as COM has been only a relatively recent development. In fact, several of the top-level TLDs are reserved for the United States, in particular, GOV, MIL, and (as you pointed out) EDU. The others (COM especially) have traditionally been dominated by US organizations.
Furthermore, the administration of the US domain is a bureaucratic mess, despite the (in my mind) wonderful structural scheme that's present in it. Also, it doesn't quite have the accessibility of the top-level TLDs. (Was that .ny.us or .nv.us?)
One could go on and on about whether or not the US has the right to claim such exclusive access, but the history remains the same. ^_^
-W-
"Is it all journey, or is there landfall?"
Lemme guess... You took the blue pill? ^_^
Reality is a lonely place without other people to enjoy it.
-W-
"Is it all journey, or is there landfall?"
Yes, there is a middle man that can be cut out. However, said middle man would (if the guys employing it were lucky) be completely unexpected--if its orbit isn't precisely known or monitored. (Which is one reason it's being proposed by Spaceguard: the funding aspect.)
I mean, with the shadow of MAD still looming large in the public imagination, who is going to expect a non-nuclear attack of that magnitude?
-W-
"Is it all journey, or is there landfall?"
I'm quite impressed with this work, not because it draws out a plan for using asteroids as weapons, but because it can offer a somewhat more compelling reason for governments to fund research into 'killer asteroids'.
Face it, if astronomers say that something's got a one-in-a-million chance of hitting us, or that it passes within 600,000 miles of Earth, it lacks a certain kick--it's just astronomy, and that isn't a top priority. However, if they successfully argue that the Other Guy(s) could use these things as weapons, the issue becomes one of national defense. National defense gets funded.
Of course, one has to make a good scientific case first. I'm waiting for an actual paper before deciding how plausible it actually is--though no matter what, it's still an interesting idea.
-W-
"Is it all journey, or is there landfall?"
Bob's idea of using Internet appliances seems to echo Microsoft's ideas for .NET and Hailstorm--though perhaps with less OS integration. What he's driving at is not running apps through a browser, or (another interpretation) running apps on a remote server. My interpretation is that he suggests the relevant parts of (modularized) applications will be downloaded from the net at runtime and executed on the local machine.
I believe that bandwidth will not be a serious issue for corporate users, but if such applications ever make it to the private sector, I'd agree that a lot of people would need to look at bandwidth and security as a potential set of problems.
Of course, for quite a few people I know, bandwidth can be taken care of with $50/month, and security is an issue that never comes to mind. And privacy? Well, that's a whole 'nother can of worms...
Yes, I'd wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. But if Microsoft can successfully push .NET and Hailstorm to the private sector, Red Hat, Mandrake, et al. may have to follow--after all, as Bob says, their competition model (and thus potential for increased profits) is not to take customers away from other Linux companies, but to take them away from Microsoft. And if they can't provide a service that users feel is essential to their desktop experience (rented apps, having all one's private info on someone else's server, and all that good stuff), they won't be able to turn this whole mess around.
-W-
"Is it all journey, or is there landfall?"
-W-
"Is it all journey, or is there landfall?"
Contact: Foonly Bar Baz
Office: 810 McGraw Tower
E-Mail: fbb00@cornell.edu
CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA NY USA--Cryptographic 'Holy Grail' discovered!
Researchers at the U. Ezra Hardware Cryptography Facility at Cornell University have created a completely unbreakable means of cryptography that may be used in a wide variety of applications.
"It's all done in hardware," says Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV, chief researcher at the facility. "We discovered that it is possible to mass-encrypt any magnetic media through the use of electrically-induced magnetic fields."
Unlike a simple kitchen magnet, the hardware developed by the team can generate encrypted data on the entire surface of a disk at once, speeding up what can be a laborious process on modern desktop computers.
"The idea came to us when Lain started generating Morse code with the bulk eraser and the floppy containing our research data," says Tivrusky. "We tried our darndest to get our data back, even set some grad students loaned from the math department on the problem, but nothing seemed to work. And that's when we realized we had something here."
The U.S. Department of Defense is considering the technology for use as a secret weapon against evil hacker terrorists.
"This is a watershed event in the war against hackers," says a colonel who wishes to remain anonymous. "If we can adapt this to encrypt network transmissions, we could protect our network traffic against rogue Russian teenagers, miscreants in black trenchcoats, and Keanu Reeves."
"Widespread use of this technology has the potential to change the way we use computers," says Tivrusky. "It's a story I'll be able to tell my kids someday."
-W-
"Is it all journey, or is there landfall?"
-W-
"Is it all journey, or is there landfall?"
Actually, they've introduced a 3D add-on to their original Ultima Online called Third Dawn. This basically offers a 3D game engine (albeit still third-person) to those players willing to purchase and install it.
I guess this is a sort of compromise--give the existing customers something new to play with that also happens to take advantage of shiny new technology, in hopes that it will also attract players who would have thought the graphics dated otherwise.
-W-
"Is it all journey, or is there landfall?"
Although T-W Corporate will hand down orders from on high from time to time, the actual enforcement of the RR Acceptable Use Policy tends to vary from region to region.
I've lived places where people have been warned for having open SMTP ports (not open relays, just open ports, mind you). There was one city where I was given the seemingly standard line of "Linux is not a supported OS", yet was directed to the local RR other-os newsgroup, where RR employees volunteered support in their off hours. Wonderful folks, those. We need more of 'em.
The same thing goes for actively scanning systems for open ports. Some affiliates do it. Others aren't as intrusive. A good way of finding out is by checking your local RR security newsgroup for horror stories.
Going back to the original subject, this is also a great way of finding out which ports (if any) are blocked by RR, and getting warning of any local script-kiddies who have been hitting firewalls.
I liked the Christmas puzzler. Just put 'em in their own category, so those of us with accounts can filter 'em if we so choose. And remember: make sure they're suitably geekish. Chess is definitely a good place to start.
(Humming "One Night in Bangkok" for some reason...)
Damn, I was wondering when somebody would take the Jerky Boys approach to email. I loved the results, especially the one concerning Ivory Soap. I'd be rather disappointed, however, if this was the first case of this happening.
Anybody know of any other features along these lines out there? These guys can't be the only people with time on their hands...
I'd definitely be interested in purchasing the long version (if not the rumoured 6+ hour version) on DVD. If it adds the introspective elements that others say it does, it'd be quite welcome in my home. :)
I hope the series gives out more background information than the movie. The greatest failing of the movie, in mine honest opinion, was that it attempted to achieve its atmosphere through whiz-bang special effects instead of through good storytelling. I found myself wondering "What's in the box?" and "Who exactly is Captain Picard/Sting playing again?" throughout the feature.
Once I actually read the book, the movie was much more enjoyable, as I could finally sit back and watch it without wondering what everything meant. Here's hoping I won't need the book for the series!
On an almost unrelated note, I've got this annoying feeling that our good friend Iain from "Star Wars" should be playing the Emperor instead of this Giannini guy--and not just because of the title! As Palpatine, he had almost exactly the character I'd expect for this role. 8)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't prayer wheels merely mechanisms that recite prayers (in their own fashion)? From that standpoint, computers' prayers should have an effect, shouldn't they?