I really enjoyed the first episode. The special effects were well done and the acting was somewhat solid. But by the looks of the later two episodes it seems that SciFi produced the first episode, then realized that they were going to come in way over budget, so they tried to cut back for the second episode, and ended up cutting back even farther for the last.
Last night's episode was terrible! The acting had become obviously forced, the costumes were too outrageous and silly, and the backdrops, while pretty, didn't fit the foreground and made it obvious that the desert scenes were shot on a sound stage. Anyone else notice how bad the explosions and flames looked in the battle scenes?
On another note, I couldn't help thinking that once Paul claimed his seat as Duke of Arrakis and was wearing that funny white costume he looked like a combination of the Karate Kid and someone from the Wu Tang Clan. BTW: Paul Atreides' Wu Name is "Victorian Cow."
This movie is fantastic if you aren't expecting it. It's even better if you don't anticipate it becoming a mega-action-Die-Hard-wannabe-starring-Bruce-Willis . With this movie and the Sixth Sense (actually, even Pulp Fiction), I'm starting to think Bruce Willis might even be a good actor. =)
Heh, maybe you should see some of his good movies, like Blind Date, The Bonfire of the Vanities and The Last Boyscout. In my opinion, Pulp Fiction is one of the last good movies that Willis (and Jackson) made.
Theres no ad or trailer or story that doesn't mention the Superhero connection..anybody who hasn't heard about it lives in a tunnel..the whole promo campaign of the movie was based on it..that doesn't give away a thing..
Sorry, jonkatz, but this is simply untrue. As I mentioned in my post above, the teaser trailer that I saw had no mention of comic books at all! In fact, go see for yourself.
Before seeing Unbreakable, I had only seen the teaser trailer, which mentions nothing of comic book heroes. I never saw The Sixth Sense, but I've heard enough about it to know the premise. I also really liked Bruce Willis' and Samuel L. Jackson's films until they both started doing crap movies.
When I realized that this movie was going to center around these two, one being white, healthy and "unbreakable" while the other is black and brittle, I almost walked out. Can't storytellers these days get beyond such bland, tired symbolism? White vs. Black (i.e. Good vs. Evil in the rhetorical sense, not the racial one) is the oldest and probably most over(ab)used theme of all!
When the comic book superhero idea came into play, the movie became only slightly more interesting. I'll admit that I was seriously into comic books in my day, but how was this going to be treated in this movie? Is Willis going to don a spandex jumpsuit and domino mask? No, he just puts on his trusty FSU Security parka, by which, of course, no one in town would possibly be able to identify him.
And since all comic book superheroes must have a weakness, we get treated to know that Willis' is, of all things, water! Hell, anyone will drown if you hold them down in a pool! It's not as if he cannot go out in the rain and rescue helpless citizens on account of this so-called "weakness."
Only at the very end did Unbreakable even begin to redeem itself. Despite the sketchy plot and poorly-developed characters throughout, the double climax is an interesting treatment. First Willis rescues a family from a homicidal sicko, and actually makes himself believe that he really can be a Hero. But then, he visits Jackson, who has become his friend, only to discover that Jackson has been his arch-enemy all along! This does little do redeem the slow, plodding pace of the rest of the movie, however. Even the big "action" scene, when Willis fights the homicidal badguy, is hardly edge-of-one's-seat material.
Bottom Line: Don't pay theatre prices to see this, especially if you have already seen The Sixth Sense
Be forewarned that Home Park is a fringe "ghetto" area. Most of the people there are nice, Techies, hippies, etc. There are some really great block parties there. But its really close to much worse areas, and if its well known that your house is full of expensive computer equipment, you may have trouble with theives.
watching them on a laptop is ok for one person, but its no party
more working machines for games
a reliable, working printer and scanner
more bathrooms
a job
We have four people living in a house that we got for only $900/month and it seems to work great. Not far from you either, we are in Athens, GA. Granted only two of us are really techies, so its not a complete Geek House. In short, use your imagination, and what you and your friends already have. A Geek House doesn't really start out as a Geek House, it becomes one.
Well, Macs have had the ability to make RAM disks since back before anyone had enough RAM to make them useful as well, so maybe some of my experience with them will apply here.
Web caching is not really a good use for a RAM disk. Since most of the files in a browser's cache are pretty small, if you have anything better than a modem connection, you may even be better off turning off disk caching altogether.
Large files, such as.mp3's, may benefit more from running off a RAM disk. This is basically like buffering the whole file into RAM before playing.
The largest benefit of RAM disks seems to come to applications on the disk. Since the executable is already loaded into RAM, it should start much faster. This may not apply to Linux, but some older Mac code was 'segmented' so that only parts of the executable were loaded into RAM at once. Having the application already entirely in RAM also speeded this up.
Personally, I've tried using a RAM disk as a browser cache, a boot volume and a temporary place for power-hungry games. I noticed marked performance increases on both booting from the RAM disk and running applications from it, but no appreciable difference for using it as document storage.
From what I understand about the Cube, and Apple's other current offerings, the video card is just stuck into a standard AGP slot, not integrated onto the mobo. Therefore, if this story is true, it probably took no effort at all to change which card they wanted to have shipped with the box. I still wish they would offer some nVidia cards as BTO replacement options, though.
PCI PowerMacs with Open Firmware (which includes just about anything after and including the era of Mac clones) can boot off nearly anything with the right OF config. The Mac OS has been a little to big to fit on a floppy for several years now, But I know that LinuxPPC and NetBSD/macPPC have both used a boot floppy for installation. Joshua E Cook sahib@earthling.net
It looked nice, as if it may have been informative had I been able to read the small text and perhaps if I had waited around another minute or two for the page to load (on a cable modem, no less!). Frames suck.
Actually, I think it goes G1 = 601, G2 = 603/604, G3 = 750, G4 = 7400. The 'generations' referred to are the PPC revision and do not include the m68k line, which had many generations in itself (68000, 010, 020, 030, 040, and the 050 which never made it into an Apple machine).
Its no longer possible to sell any hardware based on 'what it can do' alone. You've probably seen those Intel-based PC commercial that shows full-motion, high res video from some non-existant game or an imaginary Internet. It isn't about what computers can do, its about what you can convince people they can do. If this ePower machine gets to market, the company will likely try to market it as 'just as good as the iMac' when its just not true. Apple doesn't just make pretty enclosures. Their machines have high quality parts throughout: I guarantee that the speakers and monitor on this ePower won't be half as good as the iMacs. Apple is doing anything essentially different from other PC companies in advertising, they're just changing the way its done (again:). The design of the iMac isn't justu about esthetics, it is a complete industrial design. Those ridges on the top help with heat dissipation, and the handle on the back (not included on the ePower) becomes pretty useful at times. Unfortunately for Apple, the ignorant masses usually just don't realize the differences. They want to buy their computer based on how they buy a living room recliner: "Hey, these both look fine on the outside, but this one's $300 cheaper!"
It may have something to do with the alleged giant talking clitoris. (Just something I read in the latest issue of TIME) JeC
Re:Hmm what version of Mach microkernal is it ???
on
MkLinux Not Dead
·
· Score: 1
MkLinux DR3, if I remember correctly, ran on the Mach 3.0 microkernel, and did support SMP. However, the SMP code used in the Linux kernel server was Daystar property, and therefore not open. To compile an SMP Linux kernel server, you had to go through a few hoops, which involved a dummy compile, then including a pre-compiled.o file. This was for the stock DR3 kernel, and may have changed in subsequent releases.
Certain Macs, like my Performa 5200 and most NuBus-based boxes will probably never run Linux or anything other than the Mac OS. Now that MkLinux has officially been dropped by Apple, none of the other Linux distros have any real interest in developing for older machines, when there is plenty of demand to get these pretty new G3s going. If you really want to run *NIX on a cheap old Mac, buy an old 68k off eBay and squeeze NetBSD into it.
Slashdot Mirror
All clear, wail the sirens!
All clear, wail the sirens!
All clear, wail the sirens!
All clear, wail the sirens!
Be forewarned that Home Park is a fringe "ghetto" area. Most of the people there are nice, Techies, hippies, etc. There are some really great block parties there. But its really close to much worse areas, and if its well known that your house is full of expensive computer equipment, you may have trouble with theives.
- 1 room dedicated to computers, called "Houston"
- Mission Control, get it?
- cable from Charter@Home
- 8 port 10/100 switch as a backbone
- (2) 8 port 10baseT hubs
- one for firewall, DNS machines, etc. on a subnetwork; the other for unexpected guests
- cable drops in distant rooms
- (2) Linux boxen
- (2) Windows boxen
- (2) Mac OS boxen
- (1) OpenBSD box (firewall)
- a few other boxes that are either non-working or not connected to the network
- dozens of CD-Rs full of
.mp3's which can be streamed to any network computer
- (1) Bose stereo system, (1) Pioneer stereo system, (1) Monsoon MM-700 speaker set
- various guitars, amps, drums
- Call Waiting w/ CallerID
- I *hate* talking to telemarketers!
- a dog named Astro
What I'd like:- cleaner housemates
- a real DVD player
- watching them on a laptop is ok for one person, but its no party
- more working machines for games
- a reliable, working printer and scanner
- more bathrooms
- a job
We have four people living in a house that we got for only $900/month and it seems to work great. Not far from you either, we are in Athens, GA. Granted only two of us are really techies, so its not a complete Geek House. In short, use your imagination, and what you and your friends already have. A Geek House doesn't really start out as a Geek House, it becomes one.Well, Macs have had the ability to make RAM disks since back before anyone had enough RAM to make them useful as well, so maybe some of my experience with them will apply here. Web caching is not really a good use for a RAM disk. Since most of the files in a browser's cache are pretty small, if you have anything better than a modem connection, you may even be better off turning off disk caching altogether. Large files, such as .mp3's, may benefit more from running off a RAM disk. This is basically like buffering the whole file into RAM before playing.
The largest benefit of RAM disks seems to come to applications on the disk. Since the executable is already loaded into RAM, it should start much faster. This may not apply to Linux, but some older Mac code was 'segmented' so that only parts of the executable were loaded into RAM at once. Having the application already entirely in RAM also speeded this up.
Personally, I've tried using a RAM disk as a browser cache, a boot volume and a temporary place for power-hungry games. I noticed marked performance increases on both booting from the RAM disk and running applications from it, but no appreciable difference for using it as document storage.
From what I understand about the Cube, and Apple's other current offerings, the video card is just stuck into a standard AGP slot, not integrated onto the mobo. Therefore, if this story is true, it probably took no effort at all to change which card they wanted to have shipped with the box. I still wish they would offer some nVidia cards as BTO replacement options, though.
PCI PowerMacs with Open Firmware (which includes just about anything after and including the era of Mac clones) can boot off nearly anything with the right OF config. The Mac OS has been a little to big to fit on a floppy for several years now, But I know that LinuxPPC and NetBSD/macPPC have both used a boot floppy for installation.
Joshua E Cook
sahib@earthling.net
It looked nice, as if it may have been informative had I been able to read the small text and perhaps if I had waited around another minute or two for the page to load (on a cable modem, no less!). Frames suck.
Actually, I think it goes G1 = 601, G2 = 603/604, G3 = 750, G4 = 7400. The 'generations' referred to are the PPC revision and do not include the m68k line, which had many generations in itself (68000, 010, 020, 030, 040, and the 050 which never made it into an Apple machine).
400 MHz : $1599
450 MHZ w/DVD : $2499
500 MHZ w/DVD-RAM : $3499
Not too bad of a price range, if you ask me. Don't know how much those displays cost, though
I heard someone say "titties" and "booty" on NPR the other day. In a song, actually
JeC
Its no longer possible to sell any hardware based on 'what it can do' alone. You've probably seen those Intel-based PC commercial that shows full-motion, high res video from some non-existant game or an imaginary Internet. It isn't about what computers can do, its about what you can convince people they can do. If this ePower machine gets to market, the company will likely try to market it as 'just as good as the iMac' when its just not true. Apple doesn't just make pretty enclosures. Their machines have high quality parts throughout: I guarantee that the speakers and monitor on this ePower won't be half as good as the iMacs. Apple is doing anything essentially different from other PC companies in advertising, they're just changing the way its done (again :). The design of the iMac isn't justu about esthetics, it is a complete industrial design. Those ridges on the top help with heat dissipation, and the handle on the back (not included on the ePower) becomes pretty useful at times. Unfortunately for Apple, the ignorant masses usually just don't realize the differences. They want to buy their computer based on how they buy a living room recliner: "Hey, these both look fine on the outside, but this one's $300 cheaper!"
It may have something to do with the alleged giant talking clitoris. (Just something I read in the latest issue of TIME)
JeC
MkLinux DR3, if I remember correctly, ran on the Mach 3.0 microkernel, and did support SMP. However, the SMP code used in the Linux kernel server was Daystar property, and therefore not open. To compile an SMP Linux kernel server, you had to go through a few hoops, which involved a dummy compile, then including a pre-compiled .o file. This was for the stock DR3 kernel, and may have changed in subsequent releases.
JeC
Certain Macs, like my Performa 5200 and most NuBus-based boxes will probably never run Linux or anything other than the Mac OS. Now that MkLinux has officially been dropped by Apple, none of the other Linux distros have any real interest in developing for older machines, when there is plenty of demand to get these pretty new G3s going. If you really want to run *NIX on a cheap old Mac, buy an old 68k off eBay and squeeze NetBSD into it.
Nope, its the Eastern Time Zone.
That's Eastern Daylight Time spring through fall and Eastern Standard Time fall through spring.
JeC
I want one! Especially since there are absolutely no good record stores where I live.
Well, in my opinion, I've never seen a viable, well-written article come from that OSO junk-heap.
JeC